Starting off your Saturday on a bit of a down note, Ectomo presents Isao Takahata’s Hotaru no Haka, Grave of the Fireflies, based on the book by Akiyuki Nosaka of the same name. Released in 1988, with animation production by Studio Ghibli, Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of Seita and his younger sister Setsuko, orphaned after the loss of their parents in World War II; their mother in the fiire-bombing of Kobe, and their father who served in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Forced to live with a relative, who treats them as little more than a burden while selling their mother’s kimono’s to buy rice for herself, they eventually leave and take up residence in an abandoned bomb shelter.
Grave of the Fireflies is a tough film to watch, and a movie which begins with the death of the young, main character was probably not what many audiences were expecting to see when it was released in Japan as a double feature with Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro. It is also the only Studio Ghibli movie the Disney does not have the rights to distribute in the U.S., meaning that it has not seen the same, widespread release here. It is a film that should be seen at least once, whether one is a fan of animated features or not, remaining just as powerful now as it was 20 years ago.
Some wars are timeless, their beginnings receding into the haze of aeons past. None are so bitter as the ages old feud between the regal unicorn and the gentle Monodon monoceros. Here, now, a final battle is to be fought, upon hallowed ground to which both claim as their birthright. Can anyone stop these two foes before the annihilate one another? Will Cecily and her trusty dragon-steed Windstar, make it in time to broker some sort of peace between these two? Why is Cecily’s boyfriend on a date with some other girl? The answer to these questions and more lie within Unicorn vs. Narwhal!
In presenting to his little readers “The Book of Accidents,” the Author conceives he cannot render a more important service to the rising generation and to parents, than by furnishing them with an account of the accidents to which Children, from their inexperience or carelessness, are liable. If generally studied it will save the lives of thousands, and relieve many families from the long and unavailing misery attendant on such occurrences.
So begins The Book of Accidents: Designed for Young Children, published in 1831, which catalogues an array of hellish contretemps that may or may not befall your children, or you if you happen to be a child. Indeed, if you are a child, this tome provides you with invaluable information such as:
• Playing “Firing Squad” with actual firearms may not be the wisest of ideas.
• Harassing dogs may lead to being disemboweled.
• Teapots filled with scalding water are not meant for pouring over yourself.
• Bother not the cook, lest ye be cooked.
Truly an eye opening read, it will, at the very least, make me think twice before partaking in the Annual Ectomo Rock Fight. That much is certain.
Allow me to present Eric Fogel’s The Adventures of Mutilator: Hero of the Wastelands. Mr. Fogel was a staple of 90s era MTV having created both The Head and the more popular Celebrity Deathmatch. Neither of these shows is worthy to lick one of Mutilator’s boots. Animated in the crudest manner possible, Mutilator is a tour de force of constantly shifting perspectives, unnatural spacial relationships, and absurd violence. Combine thses with a classic, 80s, post-apocalyptic synthesizer soundtrack, theme song by Deth Boat and ridiculously terse dialogue — “My arm needs bandaging; your skin will suffice.” — and you have a masterpiece of schlocky toonage. Seriously, it’s worth it just for the scene in the second video where Mutilator appears to dance his way towards a nefarious enemy before plunging his hands through the fellow’s torso. His dance is the dance of death.
Keeping with the fine Japanese, cinematic tradition of unconstrained insanity and over-the-top violence, comes Tokyo Gore Police by the same people who brought the world Machine Girl. The “plot” of Tokyo Gore Police is as follows: in the future, Tokyo is in the grip of a plague which allows infected individuals to turn their wounds into weapons. These individuals are called Engineers and in order to keep them under control a private, heavily armed police force — whose members are imaginatively named “Engineer Hunters” — is created.
All of this takes place in a world where the denizens of Tokyo are so tumid with fluids that one would expect to hear it sloshing in their bulbous, distended limbs as they waddled about. The aforementioned ability to use one’s wounds as weapons also leads to some inventive situations, such as a gentleman using his severed penis as a cannon, a woman who sprays acid from her chest after being separated from her breasts, and a woman whose torso terminates in a toothsome toothy, alligator vulva. The level of gore in this trailer reaches such a hysterical pitch that at times it appears that the filmmakers have stooped to just throwing rubber organs in the air and spraying fake blood on the camera lens. In one scene I cannot even be sure if what is being depicted is a truck driving through a pile of mannequin parts or if said parts are supposed to be human bodies.
Needless to say this clip is NSFW and brilliant in a way only something so completely ridiculous can be.
The New York Times has a horrifying article up about albinos in Tanzania. Long feared and discriminated against in Tanzanian culture, they are now being hunted, and their body parts harvested, by people who believe them to contain magical properties, including the ability to make one wealthy. Tanzania’s president has recently tried to reform the attitudes of his citizens towards albinos, even going so far as to sponsor an albino parliamentarian — Al-Shaymaa J. Kwegyir. This recent spate of killings, now numbering 19 — some of which are children — has forced police officials to draw up lists of albinos in their precincts in an effort to better protect them; some have even taken to escorting albino children to school. The effectiveness of these measures has yet to be felt:
But the killings go on. They have even spread to neighboring Kenya, where an albino woman was hacked to death in late May, with her eyes, tongue and breasts gouged out. Advocates for albinos have also said that witch doctors are selling albino skin in Congo.
The young are often the targets. In early May, Vumilia Makoye, 17, was eating dinner with her family in their hut in western Tanzania when two men showed up with long knives.
[…]
When Vumilia’s mother, Jeme, saw the men with knives, she tried to barricade the door of their hut. But the men overpowered her and burst in.
“They cut my daughter quickly,” she said, making hacking motions with her hands.
The men sawed off Vumilia’s legs above the knee and ran away with the stumps.
Officials theorize that Nigerian movies, with their emphasis on witchcraft, to skyrocketing food prices for the increasing black market demand for albino body parts.
A 1979 documentary focused on gang culture in the South Bronx. The film focuses on two gangs, the Savage Skulls and the Nomads — whose members have such colorful sobriquets as Fly, Comanche, and Crazy Joe — as well as Bob Werner, a member of the Youth Gangs Task Force that oversaw the area at that time. While it doesn’t spend a whole lot of time really digging into just how violent these gangs were, it does offer an interesting snapshot of New York at the time. Crime in the 70s was on a slow and steady upward climb as the city verged on the edge of bankruptcy and the increase in gang activity was one of the more direct results of an ever growing under class confined to the outer boroughs. Few perhaps realized how bad it would become in the 80s with the introduction of crack until its peak in the early 90s.
Also, notable for the plethora of 70s pornstar moustaches on display.
Note: the video itself is fine, however the language contained therein is of the NSFW variety.
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.
Channel 4’s look into one of modern western culture’s more enduring urban legends, the snuff film. An interesting look a the history of the idea and people’s obsession with it. Only one downside: the presence of Eli Roth.
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?
Madness Combat has everything you could want in a series: violence, suspense, violence, clowns, Jesus, zombies, and violence. Brilliantly animated by Krinkel using faceless, Weeble-esque figures; it is a truly epic tale. An epic tale of violence. Presented above are all eight episodes available thus far. Watch and be entertained.
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.
Being the first part in five of the autobiographical chronicle of a curious dwarf and his even curiouser career, as related to Mr. Florian Eckhardt at a Men’s Penal Colony in the late autumn of 2007. Read onward!
When people first meet me, the first thing they notice is not the tiny dwarf standing before them, or — as my school chums used to call me right before grabbing me by my ankles, swinging me around their heads and lazily chucking me into the stratosphere — “Tiny Midget Mowcher.” Nor is it my throbbing biceps, my oiled pectorals, my abdominals arrayed like a colony of quivering, bronze-shelled oysters. In fact, when people first meet me, they don’t notice me at all, but only the enormous, fluid-filled scrotum I carry around on my back. In short, I suppose you could say that the first thing people notice about me is my career, and considering the fact that most people define themselves by their professions, I guess that makes me as normal as the rest of you.
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.
