While recently wandering the Hackescher Markt flöhmarkt with the inamorata, our joint bibliophilia inexorably led us to a slush pile of DDR-era East German pulps, fifty pfennigs to the kilo.

Although the quality of ablauted prose in these magazines is as cheap and itchy as the newsprint, the covers are fascinating. Judging solely from these covers, there seem to be four genres of DDR pulps.

The first genre is also the largest: romance pulps that are usually bound in bright and florid photographic covers featuring the real life weddings of alarmingly mucousy looking East German couples. Given the romance pulps’ cover models, all of whom have a certain Smeagol-like quality that identifies them as villagers caught at the peripheral of Chernobyl’s fallout area, these photographs are likely plucked from submissions of wedding pictures sent in by actual readers.

There’s then an additional three genres:

a. Pulps about trucks.
b. Pulps about monsters.
c. Pulps about both monsters and trucks.

As an example of the vibrant subgenre c, then, I give you the cover to Dinoland vol. 1, issue 1. There’s no actual publication or copyright date anywhere in the magazine, but given the Dinoland logo’s font, this must have come out around 1993, around the time of Jurassic Park.

Still, the cover is interesting. One can only imagine the progression of events that led to this snapshot in time. Two stranded RV campers are changing a flat tire in Germany’s vast and arid desert wastelands when a rampaging Tyrannosaurus pulls up to them. Eager for help, one camper lifts an arm in an insistent attempt to flag the dinosaur down. However, his companion is more cautious, and places one hand — quivering with trepidation — upon her boyfriend’s elbow.

“Gunter!” she whispers, “Look at his arms! That dinosaur’s never going to be able to help us change this tire.”

Hello drooglets.

You may have noticed that there are now in-content advertising links on Ectomo. They appear as green, double-underlined words and phrases and I am sure you’ve seen them on other sites. I’m doing a trial run of these bad boys for a few days, after which they may or may not remain.

Overall, I agree that more advertising = worse site. But Ectomo is a place where we work, and thus a place where we would like to get paid.

What are your thoughts? Are the little green links more obnoxious than is tolerable? Do you notice them at all? Do you have alternate suggestions? Do tell.

We go out of our way to avoid political discourse here on Ectomo. This is usually the place for discussing disturbed German Dwarves and R’lyehan (-ese? -ish?!) delicacies, not Democrats and Republicans. However, when an intellect of downright otherworldly proportion deigns to speak from on high, we are but thralls to its phlegmy gurglings. Reel in horrified wonderment as this jowly political maven delivers a slurred rendition of what Wonkette calls the “most devastating critique of the Obama administration yet.”

Do listen to the entire diatribe if you can, it’s well worth it.

Inpeached [Wonkette

On June 6, 1881, in Willet’s Point, NY it came to the attention of General Henry L. Abbot — head of the Engineer School of Application — that a “worthless mule” was to be destroyed and it struck him that this would be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to a military class the sensitivity of photo-geletine plates. To this end the unfortunate beast was positioned in front of the camera with a a bag containing 6 ounces of dynamite strapped to its forehead. Both the fuse and the camera shutter were connected to the same circuit and, at the press of a button, the mule’s head was separated from its body in a spectacular and gruesome fashion. The resulting photo was published in the September 24th edition of Scientific American that same year, complete with expository “Before” and “After” engravings. Recently, what may have been the original copy of this photograph was found and sold at auction for $2750.00

Rare Important Instantaneous Photograph [Stereoviews] : Thanks, John Brownlee!

I’m not sure I would remain as calm if my computer suddenly sprouted a fleshy, pulsating tumor.

mechanical tumor [YouTube]

Lately, my father Rick Gauger has been dropping into the Sweatshop chatroom to hold court, and to regale the audience with stories both real and imagined. He’s a two-tour Vietnam War veteran who has worked in every adventurous occupation from private investigator, to science fictional novelist, to Dungeons and Dragons professor, to cowboy.

He told us the following story during a recent Sweatshop. I have edited it into paragraph format, although he told it in the chatroom, complete with commentary by the other guests, thoughtful pauses, and ellipses to heighten the suspense as we waited for his next sentence. Some of the timing of the chatroom delivery is lost in this format, but really, you had to be there.

I used to be the night watchman at the Memphis Methodist Cemetary. One night, I was sitting in the little caretaker’s shack, about to make my rounds. I noticed an awful stink, and there was a knock at the door. There had been a huge constuction project right across the cemetary, many graves had to be moved. It was a high-voltage power line, from the (then) brand-new TVA Rural Eletrification Project.

There had been a big political fight in the city, people who wanted the power line and those who objected to messing with the cemetary, which dated from Andrew Jackson’s time. They had just powered up the high tension lines the previous week.

Even though the stink was awful, I went to the door, thinking it was a motorist in trouble, a not infequent happening. I got the shock of my life. A walking corpse was standing at the door!

(lurid description of zombie)*

“W-wha do you want?” I finally was able to say.

To make a long story short…the fresher denizens of the Cemetary had a complaint. The electrical induction from the power lines was activating their decaying nervous systems just enough to make them aware of their situation. I actually recognized this one; he was the pastor of the local Baptist Church, a very religious man.

I said, “Brother Phil is that really you? Have you risen from the dead?” Anyway, Bro Phil spoke in a gurgly voice. He said he really wasn’t Brother Phil, he was only Brother Phil’s body, Brother Phil having gone off to the afterlife, about which I naturally inquired. Phil replied that he was sorry, but he knew nothing about it. Brother Phil’s corpse went on. It said that he had been elected to visit me in the night to ask that the powerline be shut down.

I was backed all the way to the rear corner of the shed. I asked Brother Phil how he expected me to call the authorities with this story. They would fire me from my job.

[At this point in the story, Rick announced that he had to go to bed. We clamored for him to stay and finish!]

Oh, I was just giving the preamble to telling about how I led the first civil rights demonstration in Memphis that had nothing to do with race! We had to march down the power line right of way that day, not the street.

[And that was that.]

*Unedited. Rick decided to skip the details of an animated corpse, which we all know by heart, anyway.

Several times a week, I host a live video broadcast of my daily drawing and sketching. It’s called the Sweatshop, and it’s slowly growing in popularity.

Sweatshops are my own personal nighttime open mic drawing lessons, storytellings, and heckling opportunities. I announce the session is starting via my Twitter, and the call to arms is bounced around by viewers as the night goes on. Sometimes I point my cam at a page, sometimes at a Photoshop window, and very occasionally at a canvas. Guests wander into and out of the chatroom, offering wisecracks, critique, and shaggy dog stories. It’s a blast.

Over the past few nights, my nibs have strayed to the Dark Knight. These are the fruits of my (and our) labor.