Pre-stressed mice.
“Literal machine translation often misses the mark by a mile, but true translation can seem to spin off past the moon. Take ‘He was never more sinister than when he was at his most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding.’ (J.M. Barrie’s description of his Captain Hook.) Here it is in Scottish Gaelic: ‘Bheir e air falbh thu gu saoghal dìomhair. Tall agus tana, tha a ghàirdeanan sìnte a-mach a’ toirt comhfhurtachd agus uabhas dhuinn.’ Which gives, ‘It takes you away to a mysterious world. Tall and thin, his outstretched arms comfort and shock us.’ And there is the entire story compressed to madness, backwards and in high heels, or rather: Agus tha an sgeulachd gu lèir air a dhlùthadh gu cuthach, air ais agus ann an sàilean àrda. (‘And some rin up hill and down dale, knapping the chucky stanes to pieces wi’ hammers, like sae mony road-makers. They say it is to find out how the warld was made!’) Eat your tea and get to work.”
Here’s the recording of last night’s (2019-08-16) KNYO and KMEC Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show ready to re-enjoy. (Left-click for instant-play. Right-click to download.) And thanks to Hank Sims of Lost Coast Outpost here’s a page with the latest show and also other ones going back about a couple of years. And you can go to Links To Recorded Audio, see above, and hear older shows yet.
KNYO always comes through like a champ because it’s the first place the MOTA signal goes. On show nights, half an hour or so into the show I’ve got used to putting on a song and using the time to go to KMEC’s computer via remote to check whether the proper switch was set so I won’t be kicked off the air /there/ by automation reverting at the top of the hour (10pm), and I put it right if it’s not right and leave it alone if it is. (Then at the end of the show, just before 5am, I let go of KNYO and set KMEC back to normal.) But this time, at 9:30, the switch I’m used to seeing in KMEC’s operating computer was not on top, and the song was half over and I didn’t have time to go digging. Were things working anyway? I listened to KMEC on my phone: someone’s singing soulfully in Spanish about his inflamed corazon. Tch. Alicia, formerly of KMEC, works at KZYX now, but I texted her. She phoned KMEC. Turns out, a deejay there who shall remain nameless had wandered in, decided to just cut off my show that I spent all week getting ready for and instead play her own records, because, heck, why not, ya know? Sorry, bye, and fixed. And… I think that’s fine. She’s not likely to do it again, but eventually something else goofy will happen or something will break or a person will get a wild hair or a cosmic ray or an EMP will flip some bits, and we will all deal with it. Really this is more like the world I’d like it to be than rigid compliance with expectations in all things. Fascist clockwork may make the trains run on time, but slack is the meat and potatoes of life, and so what if nothing is perfect? Think what a nightmare a perfect world would be. We wouldn’t even be conscious of the horror of it. It’d be like Camazotz. (Not the cross-eyed Mayan bat god but the planet in /A Wrinkle In Time/.)
Anyway, the recording of MOTA, see above, is always made on my end, wherever I’m doing the show from, so it’s complete.
Besides all that, here are links to further worthwhile educational and/or sensational items that I set aside for you while gathering the show together, found mostly thanks to the fine websites listed to your right:
Blink and they’re gone.
https://vimeo.com/305929872
And that’s tapdancing! I just don’t have the knees and ankles for it anymore.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2019/08/appalachian-flatfooting.html
Wilson, Keppel and Betty, who also don’t have the knees and ankles for it anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2fqjsijaMM
Further Wilson, Keppel and Betty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srLc6dTsewM
Slow motion moves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr5P58qABjA
Wrestling.
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/08/wrestlers-todd-antony/
Clearly if you’re afraid of mountain lions and other big cats, you should always have a roll of toilet paper with you, on a stick, to offer up and occupy the beautiful monster while you flee slowly backward blindly into a crevasse, and/or to trade to get your little dog back before it’s too punctured to be of any use.
http://misscellania.blogspot.com/2019/08/wild-cats-vs-toilet-paper.html
Stairway to Heaven on all different-size balalaikas.
https://theawesomer.com/stairway-to-heaven-russian-edition/535729/
B.R. on bass. Zander Zon, his real name.
https://theawesomer.com/bohemian-rhapsody-on-bass/535768/
You know how I’ve said about helicopters, /That’s just brute-force clawing at the air. Call that flying? ‘Cause I don’t./ Well, this is a little helicopter-thing, and I call this flying. This is just like flying in a dream.
https://theawesomer.com/viking-valley-fall/535888/
Fly! Be free!
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2019/08/photos-week-1/w27_1165719049/main_1500.jpg
Wait for it. Wait for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VLQZ9HsX7o
Nano-impressions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFXTxQPV79w
Little calculators.
https://vid.pr0gramm.com/2019/08/02/2ee1d13c913cdd70.mp4
About the ants. Can’t we all just get along? No.
https://theawesomer.com/the-world-war-of-the-ants/535357/
A music video train ride.
https://theawesomer.com/anna-meredith-paramour/535324/
Fancy dance.
http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/pina_bausch
Scottish Theresa May’s final speech to Parliament.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYpR52etUoQ
Is the hypocrisy breathtaking? You bet.
https://boingboing.net/2019/08/14/help-wanted-sneak-into-americ.html
English translation captions for a seal. There’s a caption contest on the last page of every New Yorker magazine, and I don’t know why but I always imagine the caption to be something like what this seal is saying. It’s just primally funny, for the same reason: the little office workers, or rich people at a cocktail party, or space creatures, or someone trapped on a desert island, always saying, “Blefgh! … GAAGH… mmmph!… NNNUHngg,” and so on, and understanding each other like an amorphous cloud of birds, the sky black with birds, all turning this way and that at the same time, ink swirling in a glass of water.
http://misscellania.blogspot.com/2019/08/talking-seal.html
A path. (In hemaworsten.blogspot.com)
https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a3RvBzQ_460sv.mp4
Instinct. “Of which we lost most.”
https://hemaworsten.blogspot.com/2019/07/instinct-of-which-we-lost-most.html
Similar lack of sense, also involving glass.
https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a85dpd3_460sv.mp4
Well, /a/ glass.
https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/amBjGAv_460sv.mp4
Just to warn you: when it finally comes out, what he’s poking at, you will rock back in your chair and swallow your tongue.
https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1158781082545872903
“Notice where her eyes are. She’s not showing off, she just /doesn’t need to look anymore./
http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2019/08/cup-stacking-as-competitive-sport.html
Marten Berger’s brilliant project.
https://theawesomer.com/sounds-like-van-spirit/535634/
Visual aids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HEVIJ80BRs
How to make a wonderful skylight-looking, skylight-/feeling/ skylight out of a broke teevee you found in the dumpster because someone threw it away because it was a broken teevee. Oh, and also you might need a cheap LED strip. Also it suddenly occurs to me this would make a great thin light table for calligraphy, tracing, photographic contact sheets, old-fashioned art layout, etc.
https://theawesomer.com/faking-daylight-with-a-broken-tv/535838/
The latest from Luca Stricagnoli
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C507aSl0rz4
Five basses, no waiting.
https://laughingsquid.com/double-bass-quintet-cover-of-pink-panther-theme/
Watch preying mantises capture lizards and eat their faces alive. Compare to that video I showed you a couple of years ago where a family of happy Asian humans sit around a table eating an octopus alive and laughing happily as it struggles. In that case the only one horrified is the toddler, who soon comes around when she discovers how yummy.
https://twitter.com/Miye_tani/status/1160998599473414144
Well, that was fun. Wanta go again? Let’s go again.
http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/mad_mouse_wild_mouse_roller_coaster
Further ant-mills of little trains.
https://boingboing.net/2019/08/13/watch-this-mesmerizing-spiral.html
We must give monkeymind job.
https://theawesomer.com/how-to-meditate/535056/
Rerun: Looking at my robot.
https://boingboing.net/2019/08/09/gideon-irvings-special-effec.html
You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.
http://www.amyoops.com/2019/08/youll-shoot-your-eye-out.html
The poor little creature is all like /Help me!/ and the tattooed beardo (or beardy tattoon) is all like /muscle pose/.
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/photo/2019/08/photos-week-1/w06_1159260626/main_1500.jpg
P for presentation. P-plus. “Oh, so good.”
http://www.cynical-c.com/2019/08/16/proper-possum-pumpkin-butter/
You’ve seen those demos of camera-stabilizing gimbals that use a chicken held in the hand and twisted this way and that, to show how its head stays level with what it’s concerned with. Here’s what the sky looks like if you’re the chicken and you’re concerned with the sky. Look away eventually, because if you go more than twelve hours like this in real time your head will pop off like a ketchup cork.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zJ9FnQXmJI
A cello player’s brainwaves artistically visualized on a giant screen. Pretty cool.
https://theawesomer.com/say_superstrings/536091/
Three slow-motion explosions.
https://theawesomer.com/ultra-slow-mo-explosions/535983/
What if it’s all a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f2f5fd0cac9ed0f0edc61e0e5347f4c2
A very interactive map of death in America.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/mortality-rates-united-states/
Suddenly bicyclist.
https://www.fark.com/vidplayer/10526939
Animated sketch of Jupiter’s cloud rivers. Keep in mind that it would take several Earths to cover and hide just the Great Red Spot (which is a long-lasting whorl in the clouds).
http://tabletopwhale.com/2019/08/02/an-animated-sketch-of-jupiter.html
Sexual harassment found footage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vAbCzkUXJQ
One small thing. This reminds me of Alex Bosworth’s story about how “…we really like your screenplay. We just have a couple of suggestions…”
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/one-small-thing-famous-artists-consider-changes-to-their-masterpieces
Speaking of which:
https://vole.wtf/work-reply-soundboard/
Your Japanese is great. Where are you from? Do you like natto? You look just like Keanu Reeves.
http://misscellania.blogspot.com/2019/08/advanced-japanese-lesson-15-conversation.html
I can’t understand anything at all about this. It’s some kind of gambling game, I get that, but what are the rules?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-09/meet-the-spy-11-kids-with-250-billion-riding-on-their-lives
Whereas this makes perfect sense. “Weirdly creepy animatronic burlesque queens grinding their metal hips for the entertainment of fair patrons.”
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/sex-robot-burlesque-worlds-fair-18927146
Somebody’s precious little lizard.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/08/15/dragon-lady-spends-61000-body-modification-become-genderless-reptile-10574390/
How to survive a plunge down a waterfall.
https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-survive-a-plunge-down-a-waterfall/
And five things to know about Lyme disease, which apparently can fuck up your whole day, so don’t catch it.
https://www.theonion.com/5-things-to-know-about-lyme-disease-1836999093
Memo Of The Air 