Four score and 28 days later.

The Asylum, the studio behind many a mockbuster, including Almighty Thor (released the same time as Thor), I am Omega (instead of I am Legend), 2010: Moby Dick, 3 Muskeeters (the other one), Battle of Los Angeles (the other one), and Titanic II (what is this I don’t even). Now they’re prepping a rip-off of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The Asylum’s version will pit Abraham Lincoln against zombie Confederates during the Civil War. HISTORICALLY ACCURATE. So historically accurate, in fact, that they sent out a casting call with photos of the Lincoln family, John Wilkes Booth, and Stonewall Jackson attached, so agents would know they mean business. When you’re going to have a guy in a stovepipe hat killing Confederate zombies, by God he had better have Marfan syndrome, or so help me. We aren’t going to sink this production with historical inaccuracies.

The casting call also calls their John Wilkes Booth character “part of the New Secret Service”. Man, I’m learning new things about history every day you guys. Anyway, if Abraham Lincoln fighting hordes of Dixieland zombies isn’t your thing (How couldn’t it be?), The Asylum is also prepping other designer imposter movies of this year’s blockbusters, including Grimm’s Snow White (to coincide with the release of Snow White and the Huntsman) and American Battleship which is like 300% more patriotic than Battleship. You too good to call yourself American, Battleship? I don’t much cotton to that no how.

[Sources: Moviehole, Uncyclopedia]

Obsessive Compulsive Hoarding Disorder has found its way into Skyrim. Now you can see several examples rounded up into this one post before TLC greenlights a show about it. First up is the meme-tastic picture to the right [via Reddit]. Then we have a selection of videos and pictures after the jump:

1. FIRST PICTURE AND VIDEO: FieryTigerWolf filled his house with over 1000 troll skulls (which were almost certainly spawned using a PC, rather than hunted down, but we still appreciate the effort). [via Geekologie]
2. SECOND PICTURE: Angerrage appears to have figured out a cheat to carry dead bodies into the house. That really ties the room together and isn’t creepy even a little bit. [via TheDailyWhat]
3. SECOND VIDEO: Speaking of things that totally aren’t creepy, some guy (who certainly isn’t on a watch list now) made a video of his “trophies”, the decapitated bodies of several disrobed women. Something tells me this guy doesn’t have a girlfriend, thinks he’s entitled to a perfect ten he would classify as “only an eight”, and doesn’t deserve even a solid two. Just a hunch. Then again, if I could do this to my Sims I probably would, but only the older ones of any gender who had already lived a full life. And are still clothed. You gotta draw the line somewhere, creepy dude. [via Buzzfeed]
4. THIRD PICTURE AND VIDEO: JuicyTheZombie has been filling a house with all the weapons and armor of his or her slain enemies. [via Geekosystem and PCGamer] Then, upon request, Juicy unleashed an unrelenting force shout on this massive pile of metal and captured the video for posterity. In accordance with the prophesy, the computer capable of handling this task is the Chosen One which will show us how to run Crysis.

There’s one more bonus video at the end.

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With studios buying the film rights to Rubik’s Cubes and board games and Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, it should come as no surprise that New Line Cinema is developing a movie based on a video game already owned by their sister company Warner Bros. Well, maybe it’s just a bit surprising since the game in question is Rampage, the 1986 Midway Games franchise where you punch buildings, eat the stuff behind those broken windows, and try to find the woman in the red dress. How is that a movie? Okay, there is a hint of a back story in which George (giant gorilla), Lizzie (giant lizard), and Ralph (giant werewolf) are mutated humans, and later installments of the game cast them as employees of Scumlabs who were experimented on by the unethical company.

The film is being produced by one of Brett Ratner‘s former assistants, so you know he’s experienced at dealing with unstable monsters.

John Rickard, who has acted as a co-producer on a wide range of New Line movies from A Nightmare on Elm Street and Final Destination to Horrible Bosses and next year’s tentpole Jack the Giant Killer, will produce and is meeting with writers to develop a story for the project. [...] The project aims to take advantage of the title and the visuals of the game. [THR]

The title and the visuals of the game? Is that even necessary? Is it going to “take advantage” when it’s limiting the plot to make something that’s basically Cloverfield with different monsters? King Kong is already in the public domain (or at least it was in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. RKO General Inc., et al.) and werewolves and giant lizards are from folklore. You don’t need to adhere to the details of the video game’s backstory to make a cool monster movie with those characters. They’re already free to use.

On the upside, if a Rampage movie is anything like the game, it’ll teach us the names of several more cities in California we’ll never visit. So that’s something.

When not euthanizing animals and objectifying women, PETA found time to call Mario — a fictional character — a murderer with their Mario Kills Tanooki campaign. (Least objective opening sentence? Probably. And we’re certainly not guilt free when it comes to sexism, but at least we’re not calling ourselves moral crusaders and getting tax-exempt status. We know we’re bastards.) Anyhow, since Tanukis are a real animal and Mario is back in the “Tanooki” suit for Super Mario 3D Land, PETA is attention-whoring again (guess it worked) by calling Mario a murderer and making a flash game about it. You can play the flash game here, but there’s really not much to it. Here’s the screen you see when you get 45 coins and catch Mario:

Just a couple obvious things. First off, Mario isn’t real. “Tanooki” also isn’t a real thing. I didn’t finish a game of Super Mario Bros. 3 as a kid and then go outside looking for Tanukis to skin so I could fly. It didn’t make me want to wear fur or curb stomp a turtle any more than it made me try to flush myself down a toilet in search of coins (only happened once). You guys couldn’t find anything better to nitpick?

Secondly, the Tanooki Suit was a reference to Japanese folklore, where Tanuki is mischievous, jolly, shape-shifting, and a little bit absent-minded. Oh, and he has enormous balls:

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The epic facepalm in video form above comes from KPHO in Phoenix, Arizona. The news station learned of a Facebook group where anti-vaccination zealots were hooking up to mail chicken pox infected items to parents who wanted to intentionally give their kids chicken pox. Because giving a kid a potentially deadly illness (and putting them at risk for shingles later in life) is totally a better idea than just, you know, using the vaccine which has a much, much lower rate of complications than getting the disease. Hence the reason vaccines exist. You know, the whole saving lives thing these douche canoes stubbornly ignore while clinging to completely-discredited fraudulent studies and insisting chicken pox is no big deal because, hey, it didn’t kill them when they were kids. (Maybe it should have.)

And here’s another problem (among many) these child abusers didn’t consider:

Well, for starters, they’re breaking the law. Varicella is classified in biosafety risk group 2, meaning the those working with it must be trained in how to handle it and follow certain protocols to prevent inadvertently letting it out into the environment. In order to ship material like this, the sender must be trained in proper packaging and handling of the material, and trained carriers with a permit can transport the package. Clearly, though, the law does not matter to these twits, since in response to someone pointing out that it was a Federal offense, one woman answered: “Tuck it inside a zip lock baggy and then put the baggy in the envelope :) Don’t put anything identifying it as pox.” [Harpocrates Speaks via Bad Astronomy]

The smiley face lets you know she’s a trained biohazards expert.

The Arizona TV station learned that lollipops and rags tainted with chicken pox infected saliva had been mailed from Arizona to California, Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia, and Canada. Anyone along the way — mail sorters, drivers, postal carriers — may have been exposed to whatever disease(s) were in the saliva. If any of those people had a compromised immune system (or later came in contact with someone with one, like, for example, an infant) these Facebook loons may have killed someone. Also, who the hell accepts a slobbered-on lollipop from a stranger and jams it into their kid’s mouth? What. The. Eff?

And it gets worse. At least two wonderful parents on the Facebook group were looking for measles, mumps, and rubella in order to infect their kids. The World Health Organization says measles is the number one cause of vaccine-preventable child deaths, but, yeah, both of you go ahead and infect your kids with it on purpose. That’s just great. A pox on both your houses.

It’s finally happening. The trees are turning on us, just like in The Happening except they’re robbing us of oxygen instead of robbing us of our will to live. Well, not really, but that is what a doctor in Cambodia is offering as an explanation for the 136 students at a high school in Kompong Cham who fainted while being forced to stand at attention in the hot sun for an unspecified amount of time “as punishment for not showing deference to the national flag”. Yeah, I’m sure it was the trees that caused the fainting.

“According to the hospital’s analysis, the reason why the students fainted is [because of] the huge tree in the school compound and the farmland surrounding the school, which absorbed the oxygen,” said Heng Meng, police chief of Chamkar Leu district, adding that the punishment could not be blamed as one of the teachers “also [had difficulty breathing] and felt dizzy”. [...] A doctor from the local hospital, Iv Then, said that based on his examination, the lack of oxygen was due to an abundance of trees, which trapped the oxygen, adding that the first four or five students fainted because they were standing under the school’s large medicinal oil tree. [Phnom Penh Post via io9, emphasis mine]

ಠ_ಠ

Trees do not work that way.

Completely related:

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