In this, the latest episode of Men Surrounded By Things, we present nine-year major-league first baseman and outfielder Pete LaCock surrounded by (as you have surely imagined and feared) …

Le Coq Sportif athletic footwear! Look at Pete LaCock, happy to be surrounded by Le Coq Sportif athletic footwear.

This has been Pete LaCock surrounded By Le Coq Sportif athletic footwear. This has been Men Surrounded By Things.

I have deemed it too long since the last installment of NotGraphs’ Men Surrounded By Things series, so I present the Cubs’ first base prospect Rock Shoulders surrounded by wrestler/actor The Rock’s shoulder. Both subjects are delightful mixes of muscularity and artfulness.

This has been Men Surrounded By Things.

I bid good weekends to you all.

We present an inglorious return to the non-cherished genre of “Men Surrounded By Things.” In today’s episode former Expos third baseman Coco Laboy is surrounded by, as you might expect, cocoa and boys …

This has been Coco Laboy surrounded by cocoa, boys.

The category “Men Surrounded by Things” — known colloquially and widely as “The People’s Category” — returns today with the nearly great Urban Shocker surrounded by things both urban and of a shocking nature …

This has been “Urban Shocker Surrounded by Urban Shockers.” This has been “Men Surrounded by Things.” This has been my toil.

Often, the sub-genre “Men Surrounded by Things” involves images of men surrounded by things. On this fine day, though, “Men Surrounded by Things” brings us a man surrounded by another man and his puissant essence. Bear whetted witness:

Now go and ponder love and those who make it.

The spats-wearing reader will recall the writer’s affections for a certain base-and-ball-ist and member of the landed gentry by the name of Malcolm Clapsaddle. His name, you will agree, is wondrous, a cornucopia within which are numberless sets of Russian nesting dolls, and within each of those: multitudes.

And so, still, yet, alas, thus, and alack this is Malcolm Clapsaddle surrounded by the things that one would suspect: Malcolm McDowell, a devastating gonorrhea culture and a saddle. It is thus because thus it is:

This has been Malcolm Clapsaddle surrounded by Malcolm McDowell, the clap and a saddle.

Maker of love, babies and fine cabinetry Robert J. Baumann passes along what follows, which is, as the title of this breathless dispatch suggests, Bartolo Colón surrounded by a colon …

Sure, we could have spared you the distressing visuals and instead surrounded Mr. Colón by the punctuational colon (pictured here: :, with this text added in advance of the closing parenthesis so as not to inflict an emoticon upon the unsuspecting reader), but we at NotGraphs have never been one to shy away from the visceral and corporeal. So what you see is Bartolo Colón surrounded by a human colon, the disemboweled colon of David Appelman, it turns out.

Did Bartolo Colón somehow vanquish David Appelman? Of course not. David Appelman, in the service of human amusements, ripped out his own colon, placed it around Bartolo Colón’s neck in a perfect and ceremonial double-windsor knot, polished off a vast belt of scotch and a plate of gorilla legs, and then punched his way out of the county jail.

Look at Stan Hack. Just look at him. The hacks are necessarily drawn to him, but ol’ Stan smiles anyway. Bless that Stan Hack and his Job- and Frodo-like burdens.

This has been “Stan Hack Surrounded by Hacks.” This has been your Daguerreotype of the Evening.

It was with a sense of both agency and sexual uplift that I recently introduced the loins-first category known as “Men Surrounded by Things.” And then it was with a sense of almost imperceptible disrupt — like a godhead, phallus tensed, vaguely and amusedly aware of a fly in another universe’s outermost unmapped regions — that Mr. Cistulli’s unfortunate, flaccid, oozing, splotchy, papule-ridden prose — prose lampreyed on to an otherwise fetching image — caught my attention. There are things in this world that I am resigned to abide, but this is not one of them. And so I shall not. I dipped into my trillions and commissioned a rejoinder, since I can scarcely be bothered to do it myself.

And so Chris Cwik, known around the NotGraphs office as “Murray St. Gorgeous,” has saved the day, perhaps a genre once adored and most assuredly the streets. All at my bidding, of course. With the pride of the proud, I present his masterwork, “Chipper Jones surrounded by Chips”:

And the saints, people and dearly departed say: amen.

It goes without saying, but should be written down as often as is reasonably possible, that the present author has no intention ever of attributing greatness either to the actions or actual person of Dayn Perry. This is a point in the defense of which I’d be willing to engage in an elaborate, choreographed knife fight.

However, I’ve also made it clear that no milk moves me so thoroughly as the milk of human kindness — and it was this sort of milk with which, thanks to reader and noted loin-girder Santos, the Team NotGraphs Inbox (email) was runnething over this morning.

With the image included here, Santos has contributed not only another installment in, but perhaps the very apotheosis of, Perry’s own series, Men Surrounded by Things.

In conclusion, the reader should not gaze up into the darkness and see himself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and his eyes should not burn with anguish and anger.