It’s the first Thursday of the month, and for cities with a thriving art scene that means crowding into galleries for gratis, eating all the free snacks you can lay your grubby mitts on, elbowing your way through crowds of booze-boldened hipsters, perusing the works of local artists, and, of course, leaving without buying a god damn thing.
If you’re in the Seattle area this evening, stop on by Starfish Studios to take a gander at the latest series from local artists Libby Bulloff and Angel Ceballos. Eroticized edibles is this month’s theme, and while all the work on display is well worth the walk to the waterfront, the added prospect of seeing one fourth of Ectomo’s writing staff perpetuate the apocryphal sexual origins of porcine influenza should practically guarantee your attendance.
As an added bonus, the first few Ectomites to introduce themselves will receive an Octobee sticker from yours truly (while meager supplies last).
My love for LEGO has been documented in these pages before so I shall spare you a breathless ode to the plastic building blocks of the gods. Instead I will simply allow this marvelous guide speak for itself. It shows you how to make a mold in order to make your own Gummi-LEGO. Like Gummi Bears, but in the shape of LEGO blocks. I’ll let that sink in. I can easily imagine building a mighty, saccharine city in miniature which upon completion I can run riot through, a sugar-crazed Godzilla, leaving a sticky, half eaten trail of destruction in my wake.
Oh, how I fondly remember those heady, summer days of my youth, the afternoon sun beating down upon us, baking our epidermises as we played under its harsh glare. It roused in our stomachs a powerful hunger and, as if by some magic, at that moment we would hear it.
From afar it wafted towards us, softly at first but growing ever louder, the musical, porcine squealing made its way up the street. Yes, the appearance of the lard carriage was a welcome sight and we waited impatiently as the ungulate lardsmen doled out delicious, creamy lard — no doubt stripped from the loins of their own siblings — to the children who flocked to the hypnotic sounds of the trumpet. As the carriage rolled off into the distance we stood watching it, our craving for lipids sated until the next day when the swine would again make their greasy rounds.
This particular anthropomorphized dessert treat strikes me as decidedly untrustworthy. There is something about his shifty look, his leering lean, and his perverse, lecherous moustache that is off-putting. Needless to say, I would not trust the cone around my children, unless I was hoping to be rid of them, in which case he seems like an ideal candidate for a babysitter.
YOUR THROBBING MULTIFARIOUS LUSTFUL DESIRES ARE COMPLETED N YOUR HYPER-ORANGE SELF, YOU MAKE ME LOVE AGAIN, YOU’VE CHANGED MY HEART, MY MELANCHOLIA DISAPPEARS WHEN YOU ARE INSIDE OF ME, MY HUMAN RAGE IS TEMPERED WHEN I AM INSIDE YOU, THE SECRET IS COMMUNICATION, LONGEVITY, STAMINA, REPETITION, FURY, SOULFUL KISSING, EARPLUGS. YOU FUCKING CORPORATE COCKS AND CUNTS.
So begins the rant that accompanies this video on YouTube. Let me be perfectly clear: there is nothing redeeming about this video. No, this is a test of fortitude or, perhaps, a measure of your masochistic tendencies. Here for your own edification then is nigh on nine minutes of torturous inanity in the form of a man — clad in a Speedo and purple socks, his face hidden by a bag forged from the brightest Day-Glo so as to protect himself from reprisal — caressing, fondling, and humping a giant phallus comprised of Cheetos.
The masked man — should you be interested in demanding those 8+ minutes of your life back — is one Jeff Ostergan, an artist who in addition to the aforementioned inappropriate snack touching, also claims an impressive portfolio of objects and canvasses he has dripped paint on; and by “impressive” I mean that it is impressive that one would wish to drip paint on so many things or that one could convince others to spend time and money displaying all the things you have dripped paint on.
As this ad from 1944 so astutely points out, there was a halcyon era when a man whose domestic servant wife presented him with a less than satisfactory meal, could lay into her with his ring hand with zeal of a bare-knuckle prize fighter at a Clown Punching club. Those days are gone, however, and the young people with their absurd, namby-pamby, “feminist” ideas have cast a bad light on what is now known as “domestic abuse” but was once more commonly known as “constructive corporal criticism” (CCC).
Indeed, in the absence of physical punishment husbands are left with few ways to voice their displeasure with the culinary talents of their private cooks wives. As Heinz is well aware, boredom expressed through yawning — or, perhaps, terrible halitosis; the illustration leaves room for either — is, at the current juncture, one of the few, fool-proof means to impress upon these women that their dishes are not up to par. Never mind the fact that one would assume that these women wouldn’t have to be reminded of the fact that their husbands did them a favor by marrying them in the first place, providing them with money and a home, allowing them to birth and rear their children, thereby saving them from a sad, empty life as a common prostitute or a frigid, spinster librarian.
So it’s a good fucking thing for them that the happy Heinz Chef is there to save their asses with his delicious soups, for how else would these “sensitive souls” be able to deal with ignominy of a man struck dumb with ennui at dinnertime. It’s almost too painful to imagine.
BLU’s Muto: animation on a public wall. Beautiful surely, but I couldn’t help but think about all the artwork he covered up to make it (I know, it’s a public wall, it comes with the territory.) Thanks to Ry-Tron and everyone else who sent this in!
Don’t you fucking dare post knitting patterns for Dr. Who characters. So sayeth the BBC, though most likely it was worded in a far more politely threatening manner filled with words contain superfluous “u”s. Thanks, August Moon!
Krazmo attempts to dispel any attempt to discern an over-arching narrative for Don’t Cry sweet potatoes:
I don’t think the theme of the label really has much to do with the type of produce inside. As evidence, I cite the following gallery full of such lovely, obsolete art.
Comment by Krazmo — May 1, 2008 @ 12:55 pm
However, based on the image above it would seem that not all produce imagery is without cohesive thematic intentions. Less can be said for the likes of, say, Gay Johnny Texas Vegetables.
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.
