Before the epic meme of doing crazed things with Garfield strips put Fatal Farm in the upper echelons of internet stardom they had previously worked on a number of reworkings of classic televison intros; none of which were nearly as disturbing as their reworking of DuckTales in which Webbigail “Webby” Vanderquack meets a hottie on myspace. Unfortunately said hottie is, in reality, a Beagle Boy cruising for underage ducks to exploit for child pornography. A harrowing tale with a twist that will stay with you long after the clip has ended; most likely a queasy, empty feeling from having watched your beautiful childhood memories perverted and degraded. On a web-cam. In a basement dungeon.
Eliza put out a call for suggestions and the Ectomite Hive Mind responded with a bevy of bizarre links and nostalgic requests leaving us with a hodge-podge of old childhood favorites and surreal art-house films. Thanks to everyone who took the time to post and if you don’t see your contribution here, rest assured it will make an appearance in the very near future. Now, go Ectomomites! TO THE JUMP!
Matthew Gibeault was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia in Ida County, Idaho which, judging by his mug shot, only moments before had been filled with some sort of incredibly potent stimulant. It would be unsurprising if, after checking for any known aliases, Mr. Gibeault was found to have been responsible for a string of what police described as “mad bombings” and numerous cases involving damsels secured to train tracks with sturdy rope.
As a child you may remember the moments of abject terror that you felt between the time when the lights in your room being switched off and when you passed out from sheer exhaustion. Those minutes stretched themselves into hours as you huddled, alert to even the slightest sound, under your blanket, its protective shell broken only by a small opening in order to allow fresh, cool air to enter so that you could breathe. Wrapped in your cloth cocoon you were safe from Closet Monsters, Boogeymen, and Dire Otters.
Fast forward and you have, hopefully, outgrown your fear of the dark. Certainly, such ridiculous fears like being torn apart by over-sized aquatic mammals are best left in the hazy land of childhood. You know now as an adult — older, wiser, and with a trail of life experiences behind you — that such fears are totally unfounded, especially when cast in the light of real threats like Natural Disaster, Terrorism, and People — No Doubt Minorities — Coming To Take Your Stuff.
We’ve profiled other bedroom protection accessories before but they pale in comparison to the level of protection offered by the Quantum Sleeper, a device that takes the protective blanket and replaces it with a bulletproof shell, complete with a bevy of features from a rebreather and “Biochemical Filtered Ventilation” to a refrigerator, microwave, toilet system, and DVD player. That is to say that the Quantum Sleeper is not so much a bed but more like a smaller, safer house inside your house, that also happens to be a bed.
The inventors of the Quantum Sleeper are quick to point out that they developed it before September 11th, lest you think they are merely reactionaries or overly paranoid when, in fact, they are just being practical. Unfortunately this fantastic contraption is unavailable as of today, the inventors are still looking for funding. They estimate that a unit would cost somewhere in the area of one hundred, thirty-five thousand dollars to manufacture. They do, however, have a demonstration model that they made from wood, a decidedly less fire, tornado, chemical, and machine-gun resistant material than advertised, but capable nonetheless of giving prospective investors an idea of the device’s real world attributes and that is, at least, one step forward for your peace of mind. Isn’t it?
The city of Santa Ana wants to know if your child is a filthy tagger and they’re providing you with a number of telltale signs, complete with diagram, in order to help you figure it out. Signs that your child may be a paint splattered hooligan include frequently wearing baggy pants, carrying a backpack or being in possession of an inordinate number of “Hello My Name Is” stickers. More obvious signs are carrying around cans of spray paint, tagging things, or suspicious behavior such as leaving the house and saying, “Bye mom, I’m going over to Jimmy’s and we’re going to hook up with the rest of the crew and bomb the community center.”
Seriously though, parents need to be on the lookout for this sort of thing. No one wants their child to be a tagger. Those people never amount to anything.
Above are two gentleman, Daniel Navarro and Jose Luis Sanchez, arrested in connection with the torture of cows, which led to the recall of one hundred forty three million pounds of beef, the largest in U.S. history. I’ll admit, when I heard of cows being tortured I expected to see amateur photographs of hooded bovines attached to car batteries with electrodes and wire. However, there are pictures of cows pausing “while eating at a farm in Sunnyside, Washington” perhaps to chew or perhaps to contemplate the mysteries of life and the impact of government corruption and impotent federal guidelines upon the lives of its people.
Alas, I can’t help but feel that the two moustachioed suspects above may only be pawns in a larger, delicately marbled and tender game. My only regret is that Ectomo’s font, unlike The Consumerist’s, does not allow me to properly convey the apoplectic outrage, and adrenaline fueled frothing at the mouth of someone who has just kicked a minimum wage Circuit City employee in the teeth for not honoring an expired coupon. Perhaps a redesign will allow me to properly bring injustices such as this to you, my dear readers, in the future.
Let me start out by saying that I loathe The Beatles. While I understand their place in the history of pop music I have trouble fathoming the praise that has seemingly been heaped upon them in terms of substance and lyrical acumen. Their songs may well be catchy and they must be credited (if indeed it is deserving of credit) for the explosion of pop music into the marketing and money making juggernaut it has now become but to say that The Beatles spoke for a generation is, to me, the equivalent of choosing a Hallmark card to represent my world view.
There are moments in their repertoire, however, that eschew the insipid, saccharine-sweet, posturing of songs like “All You Need Is Love” or the vapid, masturbatory day dreams of solo offerings like “Imagine” and, most certainly, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is one of them. It is a song that, at least, does not aspire to be anything besides what it is: a pop song. A pop song that happens to be about a young man named Maxwell Edison who murders his girlfriend, teacher, and a courtroom full of people with his gleaming, silver hammer. The literal take on the song, via flash animation, makes it all the more enjoyable.
I apologize for the video being clipped off on one side, I had a hard time fitting the clip inside our “paper” template.
Featured prominently amongst this collection of Russian criminals and their tattoos is this menacing gentleman, his shoulder adorned with tentacles. It was only moments after this picture was taken that he leapt at the photographer, viciously beating him to death with his cat.
Witness the candy deliciousness that is Saturday morning cartoons: creamy, comedy goodness in a sweet, crunchy anime shell!
• FLCL continues its meteoric, guitar wielding, robot spooging, sexually awkward descent into madness, in the second episode, “Firestarter”.
• Some of my earliest and fondest memories of Nickelodeon involve Rocko’s Modern Life. Featured today are two episodes, “No Pain, No Gain” and “Unbalanced Load”. The intor is the version from season two, featuring the talents of The B-52s.
• I am no fan of Seinfeld so I maintain that Duckman is the best work Jason Alexander has ever done. “The Noir Gang” does a fantastic job of incorporating the show’s perverted, foul-mouthed detective and porcine sidekick into a black and white film noir motif.
• If you had told me that a re-boot of Max Fleischer’s Felix the Cat would be worth it, I may have condescendingly sniffed at the idea. However Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat was an amazing cornucopia of oddity and downright weirdness. Two episodes for you: “Phony Phelix” and “The Petrified Cheese” which features a cleverly named shamus named Seamus. “Ok, pally, let me fill you in on the facts. The skinny. The scam. The poop.”
• Paranoia Agent “The Golden Shoes”. Who is Lil’ Slugger? For Yuichi “Ichi” Taira, the most popular kid in school, top of his class in academics and sports, who plans to run for Student Council President, his golden roller blades and red baseball cap are cause for growing concern among his peers, turning his life upside down. Now, paranoid and looking for a way out of this new nightmare, he focuses his attention on foreign transfer student Shogo “Usshi” Ushiyama, convince he is trying to ruin him.
As the constant bombardment of ads for the sure to be execrable Will “The Fresh Prince For Life” Smith vehicle I Am Legend, a film that Hollywood producers sadistically refuse to make correctly, continue to drive me into a deep morass of depression and malaise it is comforting to know that the Japanese are ready, willing, and able to step up and fill the artistic void.
In this case it’s The Machine Girl, a film whose purpose isn’t so much to fill said void but, rather, to fist it with a chain gun. The plot is simple: a girl is raped, her family slaughtered and, in order to facilitate her violent, bloody vengeance, she outfits herself with a death vomiting machine gun-arm which she uses to dissever those responsible in a hail of righteous gunfire. Featuring yakuza, ninjas, yakuza ninjas, and drill bras The Machine Girl looks to be a tour de force of impenetrable, kinetic, Far East nonsense genius.
May be unsafe for the workplace. I’m not positive, mind you, but maybe.
An episode of the Batman TV series that I can’t remember ever having seen, but which exists nonetheless. Batman, Robin the Boy Wonder, and Batgirl are taken captive by the evil Commissioner Nora Clavicle who places them in the devious Siamese Human Knot which the slightest movement will cause to draw tighter, crush their bones, and strangle them. It also produces a visual that, at first blush, very much resembles Batgirl in a comic book geek’s perverted DP/ménage à trois fantasy and at second blush very much resembles Batgirl in a comic book geek’s perverted DP/ménage à trois fantasy.
The plot is equally nonsensical. Whilst our heroes are otherwise “preoccupied” the nefarious Commissioner plans to destroy Gotham City, on which she has recently placed a ten million dollar insurance policy. In case you were wondering just what that would cost, Batman provides the answer: a seemingly quite affordable two hundred dollars a month. In the end the heroes untangle themselves via a technique that Batman “just recalled” and which consists of him wiggling his ears while Robin bends the fourth finger on his left hand. And now you know, should you find yourself in a similar predicament, although you should, perhaps, refrain from imitating Adam West’s gasp of “I’m wiggling,” as you do.
Burt Ward’s usually silly exclamations reach ridiculous heights here, “Holy knit one purl two,” being just one of many in this short scene. This show was never intent on taking itself seriously but, truly, they achieve a new level of absurdity here. “Exactly Robin. This is torture at its most bizarre…and terrible.”
For the gentleman of good breeding -or woman who wishes to have the experience of wielding a death-dealing phallus in the genteelest way possible- we present this exquisitely engraved example of the MP5K Machinenpistole. This toff firearm comes with a supple, leather attaché case from which it can be fired without having to be removed, especially helpful if taken by surprise by a gang of ruffians and there are no constables in the area vicinity.
In January 2005 Rick Rodriguez stabbed Angela Smith to death in his apartment in Tuscon, Arizona. He then drove to Blythe, California where he committed suicide. Rick was the son of of Karen Zerby, who Smith was a former associate of, and the adopted son of David Berg, leader and founder of the Children of God, or simply The Family. The family preached a New Age version of Christianity which specifically focused on sex. To recruit new members Berg instituted a practice he called Flirty Fishing (pamphlets detailing their work appeared on T.o.M.) by female members he dubbed “God’s Whores”. These women would make themselves sexually available to men with the purpose of indoctrinating them into the group.
As the heir apparent to Berg, Rick, along with his “sister” Davida Kelley were used as propaganda for the darker purpose of encouraging pedophilia amongst the group. Rick and Davida were sexually abused by Berg on a regular basis and Rick was, allegedly, made to have sex with his own mother while Davida masturbated Berg next to them. A childhood of sexual abuse led, unsurprisingly, to a life of shame, depression, and rage, which Rick detailed in the video that was to be his suicide note.
The Family, now known as The Family International, insists that pedophilia was institutionalized and steadfastly denies the group’s responsibility for the actions of individuals, regardless of the fact that one of those individuals was their founder. This documentary is from the U.K.’s Channel 4 and was aired in August, 2006. It details the history of the cult, Rick’s murder suicide, and the events leading up to it. It’s a brutal tale of what can only be described as a very painful life. Profanity and nudity here, so wait until you’re home.
A short film entitled I Am Elena, starring Emma Thompson. This was done for the Helen Bamber Foundation, “a UK-based human rights organisation, formed in April 2005 to help rebuild lives and inspire a new self-esteem in survivors of gross human rights violations.” The foundation had released a previous film entitled Lost in Fucking Translation which, while well done, distinctly lacks the raw immediacy found on display here.
Let me say this: Qais Fulton - street vintner, gigolo, Maccaroni- is a fecund, paragon among men; a bright, shining beacon on ye fetid and filthy interwebs. It is, then, with a pointed sense of guilt and shame that I -hunched, twisted, back-woods denizen- lay waste to the beauty this gentleman has brought us by exposing its horrid, Furry center. I pray that he will find it in his heart to one day forgive me.
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.
