This is perhaps the saddest moment in all of human history.

When the entire weight of all the world’s tragedy lit, for long enough to matter, on the shoulders of one small boy. A boy who, thanks to his mask, was safe to twist his face into the unfathomable rictus of ultimate suffering: an expression we can only imagine, and only by imagining it, can we understand its true poignancy. A literal photograph would fail us.

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most profound. Photographer Sam Taylor-Wood’s project “Crying Men” consists of images of celebrities, all men, simply sobbing. In one way or another the subject of each photo is a masculine figure, making the heartbreak etched in the faces of those who were able to summon a memory painful enough to elicit a convincing reaction all the more poignant.

I am not particularly interested in what essentially amounts to the hero-worship of American Royalty. I do not care about these men. But their sadness, achingly conveyed in the shattering of their celebrity facade, makes me feel some strange connection with them. As if in despair we’ve found our common ground.

Crying Men [Arab Aquarius : NotCot]

The power of Ectomo is both wondrous to behold and terrifying to contemplate, as any ectomite knows all too well. Certainly it is a wonder closet of dazzling proportions but it also has a dark and unholy box perched on its top shelf, high up where little ones can’t get to it. Things lurk in this neat little package, things not fit for the minds of man, let alone his spawn.

One must assume, however, that some will find their way into Ectomo’s stash, perhaps when it was left out on the table; after all, these things do happen and the occasional moment of forgetfulness can be forgiven. Not so in this case, however. No, faithful readers, no in this case we must turn our stern eye of judgment toward one Nathan Myers, a gentleman with a wanton disregard for human life and a destroyer of innocence. Mr. Myers is responsible for the most heinous of crimes he has shown his no doubt wonderful and carefree eight year old daughter Ectomo’s secrets and wrought untold damage.

Once exposed to the tentacled, crawling blasphemy contained therein his once lighthearted progeny at once fell into a deep morass of babbling, incoherent madness; her eyes, no doubt, displaying the same dual irises portrayed in In The Mouth of Madness. Her mind shattered, she shuffled off and immediately took up a waxy writing implement and began to work feverishly, trying desperately to put on paper the horror that now assaulted her mind’s eye in a futile attempt to make sense of it.

The product of this sick experiment was this piece, entitled “Sun Goes Like This”. As you can see, clearly the dank recesses of Ectomo have wormed their way into every aspect of the poor little girl’s world, rendering everything a tentacled nightmare. A parade of transmogrified beasts — Shoggoth, perhaps — travel through an empty wasteland under the scorching gaze of a mindless, Cthulhoid sun, led by what appears to be a banished Innsmouth resident upon a R’lyehan death-horse. Truly a bleak and terrible world and a warning to all: the power of Ectoplasmosis is mighty and not to be wielded by those who would prove irresponsible. Take care, Nathan Myers, your daughter’s lost sanity rests on your head.

Driving the I-5 into the Los Angeles basin means a gradual immersion into a sort of toxic dustbath. All the exposed skin on your body becomes damp with the heat, and gritty with the particulate of one million belching tailpipes. No desert wind dips into the dugout city, only skims the pudding-skin off the smog as it passes by overhead.

Toxins in a biome cause mass extinction, sickness, mutation. The vast majority of the Los Angelan population is what’s left when everyone vulnerable, everyone who can be poisoned or infected, has died or crawled away. The remaining residents suck in their soot with relish, their brains going mineral with coal buildup.

These people, the ones who actually like it there, stay in LA to be with their own kind. They go to Pinkberry in their slouchy boots and sideswept hair, sucking down frozen yogurt and gibbering about MySpace. They shop at American Apparel, “study” at Starbucks. They are hell’s own furies, and you will never see them spend a dime in a place as otherworldly as the Nova Express.

Nova glowed and pulsated with the galaxy of alien artifacts gathered within. It was open late, very late, and stood facing the far more staid Canter’s Deli across Fairfax. It was a blacklight beacon in the cold vacuum of the city, attracting its own kind of alien moths from out of the void. Nova was sincere in its playfulness. It had no schtick, no target demographic, no bullshit. Its theme was true. The giant Cthulhian fursuit, the holographic collages, the lava lamps and blobby tables: all authentic, somehow, amidst the creeping urban styrofoam that surrounded it.

Nova’s children were the tiny knot of undefeated survivors in the apocalypse, still maintaining sanity and hope, scattered throughout the Angelan dustbowl. I spent hours there on every visit, dipping myself into this ultraviolet recovery tank, seeking relief.

Stickypig, nee’ Jhonen Vasquez, is one of the Few. Sheltering from the zombie horde, and occasionally making forays into the wilderness for daifuku buns and tea. His thoughts on the closing of a favorite spot ring horribly true.

For each one of these places that goes down, twenty Starbucks open up, and there will always be hoards of people that pile into them with their laptops and homework, not knowing any other world but this faceless, personality free zone of comfort, inhabiting these monstrous places like the bacteria that will grow in even the most hostile of places, boiling ocean vents or supposedly clean rooms in space stations, perfectly willing to feed off the soulless atmosphere of it all. Fuck, I’d rather have a nice cup of tea while burning to death on the lip of a boiling ocean vent than have to listen to that guy did the Curious George soundtrack sing a happy tune at a Starbucks. No offense, Jack Johnson, my venom is not directed at you.