I spent New Year's Day in Yuma, Arizona, where I had a chance to see a local oddity — the Swastika Bridge, which can be found out in the desert just north of the city.
According to local legend, the swastikas were carved into the bridge by German POWs held nearby during WWII. Another story has it that the bridge was designed by the Nazis and shipped to Arizona from Germany.
The reality is that the bridge was built in 1907 by the U.S. Reclamation Service. The engineers decorated it with swastikas after seeing similarly designed and decorated bridges during a trip to India.
The bridge was part of the larger effort to dam the Colorado River and create an agricultural oasis around Yuma.
Would you drive by the above and keep going thinking it was fake? A man beheaded his mother and kicked her head around before stepping in front of a train. Passers-by said they thought it was a Halloween prank.
. NewDealDesign, a design house out of San Francisco, is behind an idea for implanted tattoos that carry information about the wearer that could be exchanged by touch. The Bible has long been quoted about the mark of the beast and the Anti Christ being from the Middle East, guess where the CEO of the company is from, just sayin'.
It appears that the 126 year old cold case of Jack the Ripper has been solved by DNA testing. A shawl that was alleged to have been found next to Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper's victims, carries mitochondrial DNA profiles from both Eddowes' line and the familial line of one of the Ripper suspects. Polish immigrant Aaron Kosminski, who subsequently spent his later years in mental asylums, lived in the area of the killings, and was a suspect, left his DNA behind on a bloody shawl. That shawl turned out to be a time capsule for justice.
He used to be Gavin Paslow, security guard. Now, thanks to thousands of dollars worth of body modification, he's become Diablo Denefer, Devil Man. But he says he's actually not satanic at all, "it's just a piece of fun." He's hoping to get a real, organic tail to complete his look. [catholic.org]
Evil snowmen is a horror trope that had never occurred to me. But I'm sure it's in one Stephen King novel or another already.
Anthropomorphic icicles is another notion I was blissfully unfamiliar with. Can they really run far enough and fast enough to the north to escape Spring?
If H. P. Lovecraft were alive today, sixteen years old and a Goth, this is the song he would have written. The only things missing are the word "eldritch" and some tentacles.
Reach the ancient heart of the stygian obscurity
Wherein all the names of mine are written
In pits profound,where festered dreams sigh
And longings scorched seek reason to return.
Admire the flame flowered mansions arcane
The sulfurous secrets gowned in rapture profane
Fear not the fire of all-knowing wisdom
Furiously burning with such ravishing splendour.
On the wings of my most fervent passion
Which the fools dare name blasfemia
To thee I have returned from the heart-dead sunworms domain
A coffin-shaped lair they have woven around me
For I've pledged no allegiance
To their fabulous sacred theories
Those spurious servants of a crownless king
Who holds their cross in vain.
No Phoenix phenomenon shall their fall contain!
Leave their carcasses scattered and slain!
And now I'm visualised
To blind-faithed eyes
Lofty and proud, to be recognized.
As the mourning-scented bloodstorm winds
Of their final downfall blow
Like a nightclad werewolf upon the moonlit glade
I shall hunt them down in the snow.
...and the frostbitten ground
now consumes their wretched gore
My victorious hiss fulfills the oceans ethereal
And the stars gleam nameless above
As shadows call forth the seas of Cthulhu
Be wide awake my dearest
Of my fiery necromantic kiss!
Thine arms soothing around me enfold
To cease my yearning cursed
The sweetest witchcraft thy lips do hold
Can only quench my thirst.
'Neath the enchantingly blazing corona of night
drown thy desire into mine!
With all the senses cast to a feverous grandeur
In the sins of the flesh we entwine.
This puzzle appeared in The Strand magazine, December 1903, demonstrating that swastikas and clowns had an affinity for one another even before the Nazis came along. (Technically it's a Sauwastika Clown Puzzle, not a Swastika one.) The answer is below in extended.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.