What else can one say, really? Having viewed hundreds of hours of indescribable weirdness spewed forth from The Land of the Rising Sun over a period of years, I may have finally reached my limit. I have been struck dumb with fantastical nonsense; my brain unhinged by ultra-violent absurdity. I have been laid low by RoboGeisha.
From Noboru Iguchi, director of Machine Girl, RoboGeisha is the story of a robot geisha who fights ninjas, other robot geishas and robot geisha ninjas. The trailer consists of a long list of various robot geisha attributes, read aloud by a man with a ball-gag in his mouth. We learn that RoboGeisha has swords in her arms and that she can shoot rockets. She can also transform into a car, which is especially helpful when fighting assassins with mini-guns instead of breasts. Also, tengu milk. I’ll offer no explanation for that last one, you’ll just have to see it for yourself.
I know Ectomo is usually not for gaming news. Regardless, all of my mucusy compatriots are varying levels of Gamer, with Ross boasting a Best Sportsmanship title for Puzzle Fighter HD two years running, John chairing a successful Chinese gold farm, and Qais barely moving his arms at all anymore when he takes corners in Wipeout. Me, I’m known throughout the No Mutants Allowed forums as “a Baba Yaga-like wisewoman who speaks only in tangled truths” (props to my dawg mutiejewz44).
So it was with great excitement that I reveal on Ectomo, as a worldwide exclusive, the leaked title sequence for Crackdown 2. I seriously cannot wait to play this.
A beautiful collection of paintings by Blanka Dvorak based on Lovecraft stories. For no good reason — other than, perhaps, the manic scribbles found throughout — they remind me of Stephen Gammell.
Mathew Rainwaters returned from Alaska after documenting the World Beard and Mustache Championships with a fantastic and terrifying collection of images. Something happened up there in the frozen north; something that broke men’s minds and shattered souls. This is the wide-eyed stare of the lost.
Once in a great while, I am pleasantly shocked by the direction taken by self-appointed internet comedy teams. Once in a great, great while.
My friends and I have a yearly tradition that we refer to as LobsterFest. LobsterFest consists entirely of us comically harassing a Red Lobster restaurant and then seeing if they will be willing to serve us afterwards. This year was the 5th year anniversary of LobsterFest so we decided to go for broke and attempt to get banned from the restaurant forever.
Bookended by scenes from an episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, entitled “Professor Peabody’s Last Lecture” what follows is madness of the highest order. I can’t really explain what ensues but it involves J-Pop and choreographed dance moves.
Depending on your musical proclivities you may either love or loathe MGMT and their pretentious, indie, keyboard stylings. I have seemed to avoid just enough hype in order to enjoy them, having been exposed to them by one of my employers. Either that or I am simply not indie enough. This is always a possibility.
They took their time releasing a video for the ubiquitous single, “Kids”, and the results are interesting. It has been pointed out that the child being accosted by putrescent, otherworldly beings and people with degloved faces seems to be distressed in a way that may not be entirely due to his acting chops. I can say that I do not disagree and that, were I grabbed by taloned monster hands as a neonate, I too may have been agitated. Still, that is a situation best left to child services and, really, it’s none of my business. Stranger, perhaps, is the silver leotards and spaceman/tribal face paint. Neither is as egregious as attributing a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche to Mark Twain. Maybe it’s some sort of inside joke, the origins of which I am not privy to, or perhaps it’s a mistake. Either way it’s unconscionable.
Update: In my rush to find an embeddable version of this I failed to notice that I picked a video that cut off the last minute or so. This is why it pays to watch the video all the way through, kids! This new version shows it in its entirety. The link below, to MGMT’s official YouTube account with non-embeddable version, remains unchanged. Thanks, chiablo.
A stunning short film by the trio of South African artists known as The Blackheart Gang, The Tale of How is the story of a giant octopus who consumes the kiwi bird-like denizens of a tiny island. One of them places messages in a bottle, in the hope that someone will come to rescue them. But who?
It’s a truly beautiful piece of animation and they even have a book/DVD set and an upcoming series of prints available in their shop.
Gentlemen of the jury, I am pleased to invite all Berliners to my very first overseas art show.
SCHOEN VON TINTEN
featuring artwork by
Sam Gieben
Stefi Haslberger
Tom Mason
Ahu Dural
Gert-Jan Akerboom
Eliza Gauger
and Paul Thomas
VERNISSAGE June 5, 19.00
FREE VODKA (enhanced in a surprising manner!)
FREE FOOD (snacktime!)
COFFEE BEER (it’s even caffeinated!)
CAKE (better than your mom’s!)
DJ PER PERON aka PER ASPERA AD ASTRA & friends putting a boogie in your butts.
LOCATION: CAFE CK Marienbergerstr. 49
Do come. As usual, I will be penning free octobee cartoons to all Ectomites that appear, an offer that has never actually been exploited. I am showing a body of work that’s completely unseen outside of a few online posts; it’s all new. I think it is some of my most inky work to date.
If you aren’t planning on showing up, let me know so I can give your cake to the dog.
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.