The late 1970s/early 1980s saw the birth of some of the freshest pop music ever created by Humans without the aid of alien technology or Machine Intelligence. Landscape’s “Norman Bates” is probably THE catchiest little jam ever written about Psycho, and one of the best synthpop jams ever created: if you do not find yourself bopping around all damn day singing “My name is Norman Bates, I’m just a normal guy”, there’s something not wrong with you and you should never read this blog again.
Good luck finding this music on CD or mp3, though. As far as I can tell, Landscape’s catalog only ever appeared on vinyl. I managed to track down mp3s of most of their tracks, but I’m an obsessive music freak and will gladly pull an Indian Jones and raid mysterious Mexican jungle temples filled with old vinyl and mysterious BitTorrent trackers to find what I desire. It’s Out There, though!
Naegleria fowleri.
Doesn’t sound so threatening, does it? What the heck is it, anyway? you think. Some kind of glaring pigeon?
No. It’s am amoeba.
You remember amoebas, right? Everyone’s favorite microscopic critter: a shapeless blob of primal sludge that consumes food by simply engulfing it and absorbing it. You know, like the Blob…but smaller than the eye can see unaided.
Well, Ectomo-boy Mr. Fancy-pants-scientist Pegritz, you say, that doesn’t sound horrifying at all! The Blob is scary because…well, it’s like a gigantic Jell-O mold with an appetite for human flesh–but the Blob isn’t real, and amoebas are so damn small every footstep I take destroys a few million of ‘em, probably. FEH! I publicly mock amoebas!
Yeah, but guess what, smart-ass? Naegleria fowleri eats human brains. Continue Reading…
The coconut crab, the largest terrestrial arthropod in the world. I deeply regret not knowing about these bony behemoths prior to leaving Japan; they are sold as pets there. Better than a Roomba by far, and easier to maintain. Forget yanking hairballs out of a spinning brush, all you have to do for your coconut crab is dispose of all your can openers, bone saws, wire snips, and gardening shears: the crab is easily upset by competition.
Imagine my sopping wet glee, when going through the rigmarole of avoiding accomplishing anything of merit at my job, that I discovered a vinyl toy version of my favorite tiny rhythmic geisha.
It’s obscenely easy to justify purchasing a lump of injection molded plastic when simply gazing upon it’s shiny visage induces excitement to the point of micturation. I first discovered my beloved geisha several months ago during an evening of drunken internauting and was immediately enamored. It’s difficult to quantify why I find myself revisiting this strange animation so often, yet every time I do I am once again transfixed by pint sized geisha braining themselves on equally miniscule drums as their overlord weaves back in forth from the safety of her toothy orb. While the above video is relatively good, the animation is best seen in it’s original table breaking form here.
Boris Artzybasheff was a Russian-born illustrator who moved to the United States in 1919. He illustrated books prior to World War II when he was an adviser to the Psychological Warfare Branch of the U.S. State Department. After WWII he did mostly commercial work, as well as many illustrations for magazines such as Time, Life, and Fortune.
The Wikipedia article on him does a fine job of describing his visual style:
“His graphic style is striking, to put it mildly. In his commercial work he explored grotesque experiments in anthropomorphism, where toiling machines displayed distinctly human personalities. In his personal work, he explored the depiction of vivid and extreme ranges of human psychology and emotion.”
“Striking” is putting it mildly. If I had to describe his work I think I would describe it as being that of a twentieth century Hieronymus Bocsh. There are three separate galleries, and almost every image is a winner, so make sure to look through them all.
I don’t know about where you live, but in my corner of northeastern Pennsylvania there isn’t much in the way of interesting food. The closest that I come to danger, upon the rare occasions that I eat out, is the threat of contracting bovine spongiform encephalopathy from my steak. I certainly do not partake in the life-on-the-edge culinary experience of fugu, or pufferfish.
Considered a delicacy in Asia, the fugu contains a deadly neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin (TTX), found in the liver, ovaries, and flesh. The fish are so deadly that sushi chefs in Japan must endure a vigorous test; a test that only about thirty percent actually pass. The small amount of poison found in the flesh produces a “funny tingly sensation on the tongue and lips”, which is good because, if you’re anything like me, garnishing your hamburgers with Demerol is both expensive and stressful (not so much post-meal, admittedly).
However in large doses, like those found in the liver and ovaries, the effects are quite different:
“Those poisoned gradually lose muscle control, although not consciousness, and eventually suffocate to death when the diaphragm becomes paralyzed.”
Fun! A firsthand account of a non-lethal case of fugu poisoning is quite harrowing:
Endearing Ectomite Steven Jay sends in this picture of a Cthulhu cake made for him by his lady friend. That I don’t have women baking me Lovecraftian goods in attempts to garner my favor is simply a tragedy. Well played Steven, well played indeed.
Toren Atkinson’s work has a storytelling quality about it that I find irresistible. Each piece communicates a capsule of information that at once conveys action and premise while, at the same time, producing stunning imagery. His pieces, entitled “Cthulhu” and “Cthulhu on the Rampage”, seem as though they were made to be included in the printed version of a certain survivor’s last journal, and it should come as no surprise that he has done album art for is the lead singer of The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, however, it’s this piece, “Where the Great Old Ones Are”, that may be my favorite.
Man, those Great Old Ones get around! One minute they’re chillin’ at R’lyeh in the southern Indian Ocean, next thing you know, they’re showing up in Chesapeake Bay.
Apparently, in Japan, PET cola is a Big Thing–and there are lots and lots and lots of empty PET bottles just lying around heaped up in the streets like evidence of a bizarre nanoassembler outbreak (and if something like that is ever going to happen, trust me, it will happen in Japan first). Artist Kosuke Tsumura was requested by the company itself to make this Totally Bitchin’ suit of armor out of sliced-n’-diced PET cola bottles!
Now…just how effective can a suit of armor made out of pop bottles be? Oh, ho HO!–sit at my feet, grasshopper, and let Sensei Pegritz explain! The materials from which the suit are made are, of course, fragile and completely pervious to even the slightest blow with a sharpened twig or spork. However, note the multiple layerings of shiny, reflective plastic that make up the suit’s helm. I dare anyone to draw a bead on that plasticky head with a laser target acquisition system–or, even better, to snap off a gigawatt blast! The suit materials themselves may melt damnear instantly in the heat of a KillDroid-1100’s eye-laser attack, BUT the overlapping reflective surfaces would disperse a great deal of coherent light and perhaps save the wearer a nasty burn and/or prevent the wearer from being easily targeted for drone bombing.
So, basically, it will save your ass in a laser battle–at least for a short time–but will get you killed within seconds if so much as a three-year-old tries to shank you (an ever-growing danger in these days of skyrocketing youth violence).
Ripped from the very neural simulation spaces of Qais Fulton’s mental “barn o’ bad-assed bestial boning” comes the above video, a complement to his most recent post about the guy who died from horsey/human butt ballet: purportedly a clip from a documentary that aired outside the United States concerning zoophilia and all manner of weirdos who have all manner of weirdo sex with their pets, we get to watch a be-mulletted blonde guy and a lady who looks like she should be behind the counter of some “quaint” roadside Americana store selling Yankee Candles speaking very candidly about how they…well, “go ’round the world” with the lady’s miniature stallion. Discussed are their first date, in which the woman decided to try the “shock factor” on her prospective beau by ducking under the horse for a quickie, their marriage, and their current sex life…with the horse. At no point do the two ever discuss actually meshing genitalia in the traditional human-on-human approach, which leads me to believe their marriage is actually a farce–indeed, actually a threesome, in which one member is, well, a horse. Do I hear charges of bigamy?! Going once…going twice…?
I’ll bet ANY reader Out There in Ectomoland that one or both of these horse-humpin’ honkies are furries, as well. So, to anyone checking out that event in Atlanta on the 29th, keep a keen eye out for two people in horsey costumes, who may be rubbing up against each other in a manner thoroughly inappropriate to a family place like a bowling alley. If so, approach with caution: they were last sighted trying to make a campfire and chasing each other around with leathered donkey dicks.
(BTW: What the hell is up with me an alliteration these days? Damn!)
Having just returneth from the deeps, and by that I mean the Tokyo Games Show, I can say with authority that I have squandered more yen on rice crackers, train tickets, yaoi, and squid chips than I care to relate.
I miss Tokyo with an intensity I did not expect. Even now, sitting in my squalid yurt somewhere in the Bay Area, I can think only of boarding a train crammed with fragrant schoolgirls, only to emerge five minutes later in gorgeous, novel parts of a metropolis so bizarre that even the dump trucks say Please and Thank You.
I would like to extend our gratitude to Ross, Derek and Qais for holding down the fort so admirably while we were gone. They really did better with Ectomo than Brownlee and I have been doing these days, although we’re both getting back on the horse as soon as we stop shitting mochi.
We here at the Ectomo Junior Varsity League, as I’ve taken to calling the trio of Peregritz, Rosenberg, and Q while I lay awake at night constructing disgusting fantasies featuring our inimitable crew and a bevy of tentacles, appear to have a strange affinity for man/animal love as evidenced by the past week’s horrible mockery of journalism. So it is with some trepidation I broach this subject yet again, for fear of further cementing our and my reputation as partakers of the bestial delights.
You see Seattle is famous for many reasons, the near constant rain, the hurling of fish in public markets, Dr. Frasier Crane, and a massive phallic structure marring the skyline. However for those of you internautically inclined, Seattle is famous for a far more repellent, darker reason.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
Naegleria fowleri.
Apparently, in Japan, PET cola is a Big Thing–and there are lots and lots and lots of empty PET bottles just lying around heaped up in the streets like evidence of a bizarre nanoassembler outbreak (and if something like that is ever going to happen, trust me, it will happen in Japan first). Artist 
Having just returneth from the deeps, and by that I mean the Tokyo Games Show, I can say with authority that I have squandered more yen on rice crackers, train tickets, yaoi, and squid chips than I care to relate. 
