Haemotoxic Jupiter

      As with most people, what I found cool when I was a kid was highly influenced by what my older cousins were into. As such, I had one cousin who was really into emo and nu metal bands. One summer vacation, when our families got to gather together, she brought her CD of Korn's See You on the Other Side with her. In its original jewel case, WITH the booklet still inside. I got to flip through that booklet, and I thought the album art was the coolest shit ever. Painted by David Stoupakis, the art tells a dark fairy tale that seems like a messed up version of Alice in Wonderland. The white rabbit with the clock being the most obvious piece of inspiration. It would have been one of my first introductions to this type of creepy-cute aesthetic, and dark fantasy. Later, I'd watch Coraline when that came out.  It would take years for me to learn about American McGee's Alice, a series whose art style I hold in high regard, which this album art reminds m...

    It's not uncommon for small-time vendors and food stands and stuff to have branding that is cobbled together from random sources. So you'll have a carwash or a pizzeria that has a photoshopped Mario as its mascot. I find this phenomenon to be charming, I think we end up with off-brand versions of characters that look bad in a really funny way.      Some while ago I stumbled upon this ice cream shop that had a sign with the seven dwarves on it. It was the Disney version of the dwarves, based on the 1937 designs for them. But there was something else about them. They looked like 3D models, and something about the colors and the lighting looked very familiar. After looking at them for a few seconds, I clocked them as being renders from Kingdom Hearts, Birth by Sleep to be specific. Recreated from memory      That was a couple years ago, in the summer of 2023. Last summer, in 2025, I was walking past another ice cream vendor when I looked at their...

 Like a lot of people, I had a Star Wars phase when I was a kid. But unlike most people, I had this phase without actually watching any of the movies. Star Wars is such a massive cultural phenomenon that it's impossible to know how or when I would have first been exposed to it. I was a kid while the prequels were being made too, so it would have been relevant at the time, and it had a big marketing push. It being a series that originated in the '70s, it was influential and nostalgic for the artists that were in turn making the art that I grew up with, and there were tons of homages and parodies to be found. I suspect that I would have been exposed to such parodies before the real thing, but either occurence would have happened so early in my life that it's unknowable. Zurg and Buzz in Toy Story 2 In 2005, Burger King had a cross-promotion with Episode III, where the kids' menu would come with a Star Wars toy. Pretty much all of the toys were based on the original tril...