It would be easy to dismiss, on first glance, Miguel Sternberg’s Night of the Cephalopod. It relies on the outdated, yet still popular, sprite based graphics and its premise is a model of simplicity: you find yourself in a forest, shotgun in hand, surrounded by floating, milky-eyed cephalopods and are told that the sun rises in six hours time. On the face of it there is not much here, just the usual survival-horror trappings: run from enemy, find and conserve ammo, don’t die.

The real meat of NotC , however, is the narration. It begins immediately, the voice of Scott Moyle intoning “I had run from the cottage in a blind fear, having only time to grab my shotgun and a handful of shells. Hours, or minutes, later, when the madness finally fled from my heart, I found myself lost, but blessedly alone.” and from there on it proceeds to narrate your entire play through. It’s a brilliant feature, a running, Lovecraftian color commentary detailing almost every move and action the player makes. Its success is based on both the quality of the writing and the unexpected timing of the narrative tidbits. At one point I failed to reload and when I finally did so — after having “wandered about like an impotent fool” — the narrator thrilled “Oh, how I love reloading during battle!”

In those two lines I may have actually given away too much. Discovering these flourishes is a joy in and of itself. There is a demo available, small with a self contained executable, and you would be cheating yourself if you did not not take a quick look at it. If the breathless voice of the Lovecraftian scribe fills you with glee, then this is most certainly for you.

Apologies to ye Apple users as it appears to be Windows only, but there is a video if you would like a basic idea of the game.

Night of the Cephalopods [Main Site] : Thanks to cleveland and chip for this!

Frequently featured ectopeep, and Ego Likeness front-man, Steven Archer has hit the halfway mark of his Lovecraftian art project “365 Days Of Blasphemous Horror,” in which he aims to create a Cthonic painting every day for a year. Being one hell of a mensch, Mr. Archer is offering up the pieces that haven’t yet sold to the tune of a mere $25 a piece.

Naturally, when I discovered these works were available for a pittance I snapped up a few for myself. For if my predictions are correct, these’ll be worth a tidy sum once this ritual project is complete and poor Mr. Archer gives birth to a tentacular monstrosity from the crown of his skull. There are but a few works left to be had, so to those of you interested in owning a piece of the Octopocalypse I recommend purchasing early and often.

Blasphemous Sale! [Steven Archer]

I can say that one of the good things that has come from writing for Ectomo has been the wide range of music it has exposed me to. It almost outweighs the many downsides of working under They Who Shall Not Be Named including, but not limited to, a new-found hatred of squid chips, the slow, painful whittling away of my self esteem, and shingles. Also, soy. I feel no need to explain that one, you’ll just have to trust me.

Today’s offering hails from the island near Europe that is a part of Europe but refuses to use Europe’s money; the United Kingdom. Specifically that part of Great Britain which causes people to pronounce “nothing” as “nuffink” which, if the wikipedia article I skimmed is correct, is Essex. Should I be wrong some politely incensed Briton shall correct me; of this I have no doubt. They are a proud, if not predictable people.

“Letter From God To Man” is, then, an serving of British hip-hop, my knowledge of which is limited being confined mainly to the works of Mike Skinner, known as The Streets, a fact that the aforementioned Britons will perhaps sneer at. The themes here are decidedly different than Mr. Skinner’s; they are, in the simplest of terms, bigger. Scroobius Pip’s verse is not concerned much with the day-to-day routines of his fellow citizens but with things of a more philosophical nature. Nowhere else is the more plain than in this single. Less about god than about man’s idea of god and his own place in nature, it is a song that you will either love or hate depending much on your ideological leanings. It is an unavoidable side-effect of making a song with “A Message”.

If you can avoid internalizing the meaning I think there is still much to appreciate here. Pip’s slightly slurred delivery retains a natural, easy rhythm, a fact that makes the more clearly enunciated emphasis that much more pointed. His verbal gymnastics lope along comfortably inside Dan Le Sac’s stuttering, churning sampling of Radiohead’s “Planet Telex” with all the anthemic trappings it brings with it.

The video is odd. I find it interesting in the sense that I get the feeling that there may be meaning, subtext, metaphor but I cannot, for the life of me, figure it out. Should I be mistaken, then it is simply footage of a little girl walking around in a dinosaur costume. WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?

Letter From God to Man OFFICIAL [YouTube] : Thanks, Frowardd!

Someone, somewhere saw this photo by one jimofwales depicting a warning to swimmers of cephalopodal jellyfish rapists and thought “My god, this is absurd; a squid would never molest a swimmer. The real danger is tentacled cock monsters with transgender fetishes. I’ve got to warn them!” And so, they did.

Oh yeah, might be NSFW.

Continue Reading…

Amanda Palmer — one half of the musical duo Dresden Dolls — recently released her first solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. A concept album, it features many non-musical accoutrements including a fake radio station’s website, a book of photographs with words by Neil Gaiman, a number of interconnected videos, and a t-shirt. As for the concept, well, someone killed Amanda Palmer. As for how that is conveyed on the album, well, it isn’t. In fact, come to think of it, it isn’t actually a concept album but merely an album and a bunch of extras to spend your money on.

The album itself, regardless of the trail of superfluous tchotchke that drags behind it, is quite good. Ms. Palmer is an accomplished musician who has in her possession a stunning voice. “Runs In The Family” is both one of the better songs on the album and the best representation of Palmer’s oeuvre; the themes of lonely promiscuity, self-alienation, and lamentations of “No one understands me!” are all here in full force, delivered with a theatrical bombast and accompanied by raucous piano, and wavering strings. It all runs the risk of sounding like a 15 year-old Goth’s diary but it mostly avoids it.

The video, unfortunately, is merely 5 minutes of Palmer writhing in a cluttered room of meticulous staging. It does make it easier to ignore and simply listen. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Amanda Palmer “Runs in the Family” Music Video (WKAP Part 4) [YouTube]

One of the world’s leading rocket scientists, Britain’s Daniel Jubb is the ideal mascot for Science! (Science!, as we all know, is different than science which is almost fundamentally boring). He’s young, adventurous, and, of course, moustachioed; a fact that The Times’s Will Pavia is keenly aware of:

It is a magnificent moustache, bristling with mischief, sweeping from cheek-bone to cheekbone like a second smile. It was the first thing I saw as I entered a room in the faculty of computing, engineering and mathematical sciences at the University of the West of England. The moustache was in the middle of a meeting: engineers in jeans and shirts sat on either side. Daniel Jubb, 24, the owner of the moustache, was wearing a crisp black suit. He looked like a Victorian scientist transposed to the 21st century.

Jubb, who hopes to build the rocket that will crush the world land-speed record of 763.035mph, is a prodigy of both rockets and moustaches. He helped set up his development company, The Falcon Project, with his grandfather at the tender age of 12 and dropped out of school one year later to devote himself full-time to it. He has also had a moustache since that very same age, being without it only once, when an explosion singed half of it from his visage when he was 15. Luckily it made a full recovery. Truly, Daniel Jubb is one of the modern era’s great minds and we look forward to his future, hirsute accomplishments.

Rocket Man set to become Record Man [The Times] : Thanks to the tenacious BostonEddie!

For this particular Moustache Monday post I pull a Doctorow and turn the floor over to reader Seamus Heffernan, who writes with the wistfulness that only America’s northern neighbors can honestly summon up for hockey:

Ah, ice hockey from the windswept tundra of my homeland…

Saturday night in Toronto, former Maple Leaf Wendel Clark had his number retired in a pre-game ceremony. As part of the celebrations, the Leafs organisation provided fans with replica moustaches in tribute to Clark’s trademark appearance. Thought it might be an interesting choice for Moustache Monday.

P.S. Here’s a picture of Clark during his playing days, if it helps

Ectomo is always pleased to see the achievements of moustaches recognized by those beyond these pages, a trend we hope will branch out into other fields culminating one day, we hope, with a Nobel Prize for moustachery. We can always dream.

Wendel: The man, the moustache [Toronto Star]