The internet is one of the crowning achievements of the twentieth century, an achievement that brings both joy and sadness into the lives of those who use it. It is a fantastic repository of information and ideas, as well as a forum for their exchange. For modern artists it is a tool of nearly limitless potential, allowing them to broadcast their endeavors to far more people than they would ever reach by showing that same work at a gallery. Truly it is an amazing thing, this internet, but as mentioned previously, it does have its downsides; the foremost being that artists can broadcast their endeavors to far more people that they would ever reach by showing the same work at a gallery.
With that in mind I present William Lamson’s video piece entitled Think Globally, Act Locally featuring a gentleman — presumably the artist himself — wearing a mask adorned with bananas stuffed with firecrackers, which he precedes to detonate for the next three minutes. Yes friends, the internet is a harsh mistress indeed, offering the user delicious candy with one hand, while providing agonizing jolts of electricity to the user’s genitals with the other. Indulge at your own risk.
To say Salvador Dali became unhinged in his later years would imply that he wasn’t unhinged in his earlier years. What possessed the man to involve himself in ultimately mundane commercial endeavors isn’t exactly clear; though his infamous eccentricity may have had a bit to do with it. Regardless, if commercial breaks insist on interrupting our sedentary delights I think it’s safe to say we’d prefer them featuring disinterred madness of Dali.
Here we have a peculiar modernist/retro take on an old Japanese folk song, “Kokiriko Bushi.” The video features disembodied hands, dancing puppet-skeletons, and more giant eyeballs than an ophthalmologist’s convention at The Residents’ house. If the blippity-bleepity 8-bit arcade-game sounds don’t summon up an urge in you to play Pac-Man while shakin’ your butt to the buzzy Moog bass, there’s something wrong with you. Dance, you Space Invaders, dance!
Recently, a group of devoted Cthulhu cultists Lovecraft fans produced an astonishing silent-film adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” that is simply a must see for any and all devotees to the Big Squid Himself. Witness the trailer above, and then tell me that 1) this is not the definitive adaptation of the story and 2) it’s actually more eerie in black-and-white. Can’t, huh? Precisely.
The Great Old Ones demand that you order the DVD here.
Metallic sodium reacts violently with water—it literally burns when it gets wet. Most people who took highschool chemistry know this, and the slice-of-sodium-in-a-glass-of-water demonstration is usually everyone’s favorite. Now, take 20,000 pounds of metallic sodium and “dispose” of it by rolling it into a frozen lake. The result? Instant Massive Completely Bad-Assed Explosions. And neither Frank Darabont nor Michael Bay were involved!
Beneath the ocean, in his sunken city of R’lyeh Cthulhu waits, dreaming. In the meantime, he takes your phone calls. Cthulhu covers a range of topics from soul swallowing, to cell phones and soul swallowing, to relationships, dating and soul swallowing as well as providing computer technical support. Also, soul swallowing.
Watch as Cthulhu opens up about what it’s like to be an imprisoned deity, his thoughts on being worshiped by legions of nerds, and gods he likes to drink with. I love the internet for shows like this. Where else would one be able to find the antics of a Cthulhu hand-puppet behind a cardboard desk? Future episodes will be found here, as YouTube cannot hold the unfathomable evil that is Cthulhu!
This week’s Noise du Jour theme is: robots. Songs about robots, songs by robots.
There is no band more robotic than Kraftwerk, and no song by Kraftwerk can be more robotic than “The Robots.”
When I was a kid in the 1970s, Kraftwerk’s music literally sounded like The Future. I was certain that all music would sound like Kraftwerk (and/or Gary Numan) by the Year 2000. Well, the Year 2000 is history now, and technically, we’re now living in The Future. You can keep your disappointment over the lack of flying cars in the Year 2007, I’m disappointed that the radio isn’t full of angular German electronic music.
Cody and I sat watching this video one time; he’d come over to my place a few months after coming home from Iraq. He was a classic-rock-and-Top-40 kind of guy—never did understand my taste in strange music…but I had this video playing on my desktop when he walked in the door. It caught his eye. “What’s this cracklin’ garbage, cracker?” he asked. “Converter. Song’s called ‘order/creature.’ Supposedly the guy who made it tried to film a vision he had.”
R’Lyeh was still a mile deep…but rising. Inexorably rising. The “sensitives and artists” and other extremely susceptible right-brain folks were already beginning to tune in on the transmissions. I didn’t then know whether I was Immune or not…but I certainly wasn’t dreaming dreams of Rage and mutation—and in some perverse way, I was angered by that. Sick, right? But I’m an English teacher, a writer, a musician, an artist—and a certified weirdo—and I was being left out of all the fun. Only recently have I come to regret those thoughts. Regret them so hard they make my belly ache. Continue Reading…
Rather reminiscent of Annie Lennox when she feels like actually singing instead of caterwauling like a snakebit opera diva, but the video is a surrealist masterpiece! Enjoy its visual noise.
For the reasons illustrated in this clip. Four people, two men who look like waiters, one forty-ish housewife, and what appears to be a cracked out, Japanese, Chippendale’s dancer compete at yanking tablecloths out from under plates, utensils, glasses of wine, and bowls of fruit. It is intense.
My God, you have no idea how much I’ve been obsessed by this song since I was but a lad seeing it on MTV during the early years when all you got from MTV was wall-to-wall New Wave/post-punk purity (and, occasionally, a really awesome Billy Joel or Pat Benatar or Johnny Cougar* jam).
Every October, I start adding this jam to my DJ playlists…and you’d better believe that I have turned my home into the Bates Motel. All young blondes passing through southwestern Pennsylvania are welcome to stop by for a stay. First night’s free! Second night’s…well, it’s still kind of free - but only kind of. AaaaaHHHAHAHHHHAHAHHAHHA!
Is my obsession with songs dealing with Psycho starting to become evident to any of y’all yet?
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.
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!)
BE STIFF! It’s hard to believe that 1) Saturday Night Live used to be funny; and 2) DEVO was once regarded as the future of music. Here at Ectomo, we believe heartily in Devo’s theory of de-evolution! I may only speak from personal experience here, perhaps because I am the only member of the staff who lives in the wilds of southwestern Pennsylvania and routinely ingests mutagenic materials for Fun and Profit, but I have seen de-evolution in action: both in my neighbors, and in myself. My newly-grown semi-prehensile tail clearly demonstrates a step backwards–but not so much as my realization that Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction” describes visually, musically, and conceptually my entire love life.
*Le sigh* I guess I’m just a spud boy, looking for a real tomato. You’d think things would’ve de-evolved enough by now that I’d be able to find on every street corner spud girls being stiff, through being cool, to get me jerkin’ back and forth…but not, it was all just wind in sails. ARE WE NOT MEN?! Sadly, we all still are. Nothing but a bunch of damn new traditionalists bound by our duty now for the future. As a transhumanist, I know that someday…someday I’ll be a mechanical man and be above all this human BS, but until then…I’m just a blockhead.
On the opposite end of the Noise du Jour discussion would be the song that, while musically satisfying, may not have the strongest video. Saul Williams’ video for his single “Black Stacey” is a wonderful example for, while the video isn’t a complex, slick plot based/art piece, I do feel that it complements the song well. Being a graduate of the Def Jam/open mike/poetry slam scene it only makes sense that it would be presented as Williams simply performing his song.
Saul Williams was one of the first artists that I really latched onto when I began to acknowledge Hip-Hop as something beyond the healthy heap of shit that represents the genre on MTV. Not to sound like a curmudgeonly old man, but I find that as I get older my musical tastes have expanded exponentially with each year. It’s amusing to me now to look back at, say, the me of 11 years ago and think that, at the time, if a song wasn’t made by sampling the sound of sheet metal being cut I would not listen to it.
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.
