Our deepest apologies, dear readers, for having fallen down on the job as of late in regards to one of our most sacred traditions. Needless to say, we are filled with a great sense of shame and assure you it will not happen again. If, in the future, one of us is unable to fulfill their obligations our newly acquired team of Korean animators will leap into action, producing original cartoons for your enjoyment, although in all honesty I personally cannot guarantee this. You see, by “team of Korean animators” I actually mean a Korean family that Eliza met — and subsequently forced into her windowless van — while running errands at Home Depot. They have tried to reason with her, explaining that they are involved in other professions, the father is a salesman for a lighting manufacturer and his wife works as a bank teller. The children are, well, children.

Eliza would hear none of it however, either assuming that they were lying or under the impression that all people of Korean descent have an innate ability to animate. The rest of the staff has done their best to ignore the situation, knowing full well that once Miss Gauger has set her mind on something, one has little chance of ever changing her opinion. It is for this reason that we do nothing when she insists that her aforementioned van has the ability to travel through time or that Qais is, in her words, “a spy sent by space Turks to steal her chocolate secrets.” Regardless it has been uncomfortable, the tired and nervous familial unit has taken up residence in our break room where they were horrified to find only four items : coffee, tea, pipe tobacco, and squid chips. It would be worse when they found out that these items were our sole sources of sustenance. The children, unsurprisingly, did not take well to the tobacco. Perhaps we should send out for food.

Ah well, I’m sure they’ll be fine, besides it’s cartoon time! Click through, loyal Ectomites, and witness their triumphant return!

P.S. Also, remember that if you visit the YouTube page for a particular video you have the option to watch it in high quality. Especially well suited to the anime.

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Fired from Wired last year for the evacuation of various mucousy Eldritch discharges upon the beard of a paralyzed and supine Lore Sjoberg — not to mention ancillary transgressions such as making an executive decision to rename Table of Malcontents to “Conde Nast = Cunt” for the first week of May 2007 — Eliza and I founded Ectoplasmosis. Nine months later, the tag line’s still pretty good: “Technically, the viscous progeny of material ectoplasm and the mind-controlling brain parasite toxoplasmosis, aborted from the belly of an octobee.” But the scrambled-embryonic aftermath of that abortion was always our template.

Consider this a violent flushing. We’re all tickled pink to unveil the new template in all its mewling, slimy glory. Designed by none other than the Gypsy CSS King, Mr. Rob Beschizza, we’re aping the style of the broadside for a smart layout designed to look pretty swank and force an endless parade of advertisements in front of your squirming eyeballs.

It’s not entirely finished yet. There will be bugs, and we would encourage you to report them in the comments here. Ectotweet is currently missing, but coming back shortly (and we’ll still read Ectotweets). The site looks best in a modern browser: IE6 users, it should look okay, but be warned that it’s not perfect. Also, although the site should look fine without installing them, Ectomo looks best when using the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society font pack. It’s a free download for both Mac and PCs. Shortly, you shouldn’t even need to have those fonts installed to see the site as intended, but if you want the 100% experience in the meantime, it’s worth the small download.

We’ve also shifted hosts. Though for the last nine months, we’ve been hosted with aplomb (and dirt cheap prices) by POE Hosting, ultimately they couldn’t keep up with our traffic. We would still heartily recommend them to anyone looking to start up a blog: they would respond to summonings at belief-defying hours of the AM and put up with us long after we had become more of a liability to them than anything else. Plus, it’s run by Chet of Old Man Murray fame, one of the guys who wrote Portal. Give these guys your business if you’re just starting a blog. We’re now hosted by the equally awesome Wing Six and you should notice a huge speed and stability increase.

And that’s about it! Please drop problems, bugs, criticisms, compliments and anti-consumerist outrage in the comments! The Octobee is pleased