A case of the bazazzas.
“Oh, ‘scusi moi. I was just pampering myself with a Sleeping Beauty glow masque.” “Actually, I’ve also been wearing that masque, except I’ve combined mine with a Scrubulator oxygenation masque for complete relaxation.” “I think chemically you’re not supposed to combine those.” “Oh, really? I feel fine. It’s like a faceful of hot snakes.”
Here’s the recording of last night’s (2022-02-04) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA), ready to re-enjoy.
Thanks heaps to Hank Sims of Lost Coast Outpost here’s a page with not only the above MOTA show but also other ones going back quite a way. And I sometimes forget to mention Kevin MacLeod on the air, for his Scheming Weasel, the intro and outro I’ve been using for ten years now when the show is live from Juanita’s apartment and not from Franklin Street, so you know. (It’s the Paul Whiteman Orchestra and Happy Feet when it’s Franklin Street.)
And thanks to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which provided almost an hour of the above eight-hour show’s most locally relevant material, as usual, without asking for anything in return. (Though I do pay $25 annually for full access to all articles and features, and you should too if you can. As well as, show some largesse once in awhile to KNYO. Why not go there and do it now? While you’re there, tour the retro-renovated site, assembled by whimsical webmaster Chris Dunn, with an updated schedule, whole new design and new features, plus the mobile version has been repaired. There’s a big red heart there too now, down here somewhere, hold on… Yeah, there it is. Good.)
Email me your work on any subject and I’ll read it cold on the radio this coming Friday night. That’s a great way to learn to express yourself in writing and be understood. You hear for yourself where to put the commas next time so people don’t think you’re saying the exact opposite of what you want to. You learn to vary sentence length. And so on. Bend the language to your will and purpose. It’s like Orson Welles told Ed Wood: “Why spend your life making somebody else’s dream?”
BESIDES ALL THAT, here’s a fresh batch of not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items that I set aside for you while gathering the show together, found mostly thanks to the fine websites listed to your right:
The shipment. I’m a sucker, and so are you, for a good tragic father-daughter story. In space. (31 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJo-xajORwY
Rerun: What happened to giant flying boats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f906Sy79hA
Tripping on the moon. (via TackyRaccoons)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEdYf4SGhuI
Harvest Moon. (via TackyRaccoons)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml22cp4ojHg
Rerun: Lachy Doley and his homemade whammy-bar clavinet.
https://laughingsquid.com/jimi-hendrix-voodoo-child-on-whammy-clavinet/
Natalie Taylor covers Phil Collins’ /In The Air Tonight/.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycGpb8b6HeM
Jeff Beck and Imelda May – /Remember (Walking In the Sand)/ and /Please, Mister Jailer/.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu1ZaXB2SMA
“I don’t believe in Jesus but I sure do like his songs.”
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/02/have-little-talk-with-jesus.html
Nina Hagen – Taitschi-Tarot. (She might have meant tai chi.) (via Dangerous Minds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM3n816PN7Q
I’m inviting you to compare your own pursuits and obsessions and dedication and accomplishments with Lily Hevesh and her projects, like this one:
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/02/this-hexagon-is-world-record-domino.html
Photos of a collapsed bridge.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10452285/Bridge-collapse-Pittsburgh-hours-President-Biden-set-visit.html
Camera event. (via BoingBoing)
https://twitter.com/NBCOlympics/status/1489218449188573193
The ten minutes of Koyaanisqatsi the camera thing makes me think of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6-K-arVl-U&t=5m42s
Tilt-shift beach. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d41NrXz0yMA
This illustrates why you needa keep your dukes up, kid. /Up./ Jimmy, c’mon, he’s killin’ ya here. Are you gonna let a guy in his momma’s undershorts boop your nose like that? Fight! Ehhh, what’s the use.
https://www.shorpy.com/node/26450
I read an article about Jenny Slate, who I’d never heard of but you might have, and was informed that the initial pea-size snowball of her ever snowballing fame is something called /Marcel, the Shell With Shoes On/. So I looked that up and watched the first episode, and it’s cute. Really cute. Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF9-sEbqDvU
The Tale of the Pumpkin Cowboy.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/01/pumpkin-cowboy.html
Mass buffet brawl erupts as a man is served his rare steak before another man who ordered first gets his well-done one. “Hey!” the one waiting for the steak that takes longer to cook cries, pissed off, “I was here first! You serve me first!” This prompts someone to throw a chair, and then things get freaky. (In the old cowboy movie barroom brawl sense of freaky, not the sexy sense.) Or, alternate title: America, America, God shed his grace on thee.
https://boingboing.net/2022/02/01/buffet-brawl-erupts-after-golden-corral-runs-out-of-steak.html
Newsstands without borders.
https://tackyraccoons.com/2022/01/31/nyc-newsstands-2016/
Because I’m worried about bees building something in the wall behind my bed I imagined a giant wasp wrapped around a man’s head; smugly sing-buzzing, “Stinging in the brain, just stiiiiiiing-ing in the brain…” Later it occurred to me to look up websites that use A.I. to pictify a text prompt. I chose one at random and gave it, “Giant wasp stinging a man’s head.” Here’s the art it produced:
https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/i1UCGMSiI4HzNjWOOKlv
Fairy soap. “Have you a little fairy in your home?”
http://www.fairiesworld.com/fairygifts/fairysoap.shtml
…and:
https://tinyurl.com/HaveYouALittleFairy
The dumbest timeline.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/31/2077503/-Cartoon-The-dumbest-timeline
Better than Wordle: Phrasle.
https://phrasle.com/
Placeble (say pluh-SEE-bul).
https://xkcd.com/2576/
Left on the cutting room floor: Lightbulb Man.
https://www.neatorama.com/2022/01/31/The-Lightbulb-Man-of-iStar-Warsi/
February in the Midwest.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/02/february.html
Not to scale.
https://twitter.com/pickover/status/1487811690800553990
Mixtape.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2022/01/mixtape.html
I like to think of the hive-mind-like and yet also somewhat clockworkish cloud of coordinated electrical activity in the composite brain of the wonderful machine people like this become, playing music this way. It’s like /good/ bees building something, or a flowing murmuration of starlings, or– yeah, like the planets in /Not to scale/, see above.
https://27thstreet.me/2022/01/30/earworm-3/
An ad for a real product: the Assled (say ass-sled). You also need the ski-feet, it looks like, in order to steer.
https://theawesomer.com/assled-wearable-sled/656399/
Art imitates life. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://spitalfieldslife.com/2022/01/29/the-east-london-group-photography-x/
The history of math project. Interactive exhibit. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://history-of-mathematics.org/
Click the sound on. Take your time, it repeats.
https://www.tiktok.com/@timecapsuledesign/video/7018956808278543622
Wild rumpus dance. The hands are loaded with two-inch razor-sharp organic switchblades, though. So, dancing like Peanuts people dance, not like a tango or polka.
https://i.redd.it/ade7wgzhffy31.jpg
Part of your world. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBCGVqyWrSQ
Coney Island. The romance, the happy pinheads, the soft-focus ropes of Edison bulbs in cigar smoke and steam and tangible smell of wet wool, the heaviest tapdancing pianist in the world, the amazing and perturbing headless woman, tattoo tent, clanking wheezing rides hanging by a thread, dueling calliopes, kielbasa sandwiches and taffy candy that /glues your teeth shut/… A phone with games in it can’t really replace this, but it has, alas. It’s all gone, a world lost forever.
https://boingboing.net/2022/01/30/footage-of-vintage-coney-island-sideshows-fire-eaters-fortune-tellers-sexy-dancers-creepy-animatronic-dolls-and-more.html
“I’m being persecuted just for who I am: someone who threw a fire extinguisher at a cop!”
https://boingboing.net/2022/02/01/the-tennessee-school-board-approved-maus.html
Time tunnel. In contrast to this, the rings of the real-life Time Tunnel are made of painted copper and have hidden shelves for small fireworks to simulate the short circuits of things going wrong that, every show, strand Tony and Doug in a different country and a different era, including ancient Rome, where it’s convenient for them that everyone speaks 1960s-contemporary American English, though villains use a supercilious British accent. (via Everlasting Blort)
https://www.openculture.com/2011/10/anemic_cinema.html
Rerun: “Bloody timeholes!”
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2014/02/timeholes.html
Smartass.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2022/02/03/smart-ass-2/
The accessories are a choking hazard for children. The Sword of Destiny, for example. Do not buy.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2022/01/31/cross-not-included/
Attribution.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/other-quotes-gop-congressmen-wrongly-attributed-to-philosophers
This is what they mean when they say you can see all the way to France.
https://www.vintag.es/2022/01/louise-weber.html
Get low.
https://theawesomer.com/get-low-swing-edition/656194/
Storytime! (via Fark) (click the sound on)
https://twitter.com/EverythingOutOC/status/1488195756553027587
Letters to Richard Dawkins. Some funny ignorant swearing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW7607YiBso
“This is where I carried you.”
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/02/tracks.html
Home on the range. (via Fark)
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2432-Fair-Rd-Abilene-KS-67410/113177058_zpid/
Inside the wall. This reminds me of last week, when I had to rip out the old carpet from one of my employer’s rental units, renovating in between tenants, and I found a 1999 newspaper spread out on the wood under it. The Culture section had an article about how the music industry is dying. In another two or three years, they thought, there won’t be any music anymore at all. Also, computers might go crazy and shut the whole world off at midnight on December 31, planes would plummet from the sky, dogs would lie down with cats, rivers of menstrual fluid would run backward… (The illustration for the article about music was a giant sad electric guitar with all the strings cut loose.) My previous experience with newspapers used as insulation was back in the late 1980s, when I cut out a vent in the wall between kitchen and bedroom of the house where Juanita and I lived in Caspar, and I found that the wall was stuffed with newspapers from The Great War when the house was relatively new. (via Fark)
https://www.wtae.com/article/1-600-vintage-baseball-cards-found-wall-home-renovation/38955566
Trailer for yet another videogame-to-film project –this time not a film but a teevee series, /Halo/.
https://theawesomer.com/halo-the-series-trailer/656167/
Rerun: Cutting a wire, greatly magnified, in slow motion. Remember, when you were little, cutting modeling clay with scissors? This is like that. Aluminum or copper wire is soft. Speaking of which, you can sharpen cheap scissors: fold over some aluminum foil, fold it over again, and once again, so it’s eight sheets thick. Cut the result up with the scissors. That’s all you have to do, and they’re sharp again.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=322006499653745
An ingenious device that “makes smoking easy!” And I’ll bet it tastes wonderful the more you use it. Hot rubber and rancid tobacco sludge. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://twitter.com/debjshaw/status/1488173376745189379
Birbulence. Living smoke made of birds. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2022/02/starlings-lots-of-them.html
Queen of all the eggs in a bathtub with her many subjects.
https://www.vintag.es/2022/02/egg-queen.html
Side by side. Historical and present day maps.
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/
Here’s some quickly replaceable property being damaged, barely the money equivalent of a single car crash, and probably insured against. Alcohol kills 3,000,000 people (!) every year and ruins and blights the lives of many millions more and their families. It’s addictive and more destructive than all other recreational drugs combined. I can easily imagine many good reasons for this woman to do as she did. Maybe a drunk driver killed her little daughter. Maybe her drunken lout of a husband just gambled away all their savings or slapped her face and/or merely bellowed viciously at her through a locked bathroom door one too many times while she huddled behind it, weeping. Maybe she came to a realization of the harm from her own drinking and, despairing of not being able to ever give it up, just snapped. People speak of waste– “what a waste, all those bottles”– I’m thinking of the blithe waste of production of all that poison in the first place, regardless of whether it ends up clean and fresh on that floor or mixed with vomit on a hundred other floors and in the street. [Update: I see that they removed the video. I wonder why.]
https://boingboing.net/2022/02/01/modern-day-carrie-nation-singlehandedly-destroys-shelves-of-liquor.html
Rerun: Flight of the pelican.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2014/02/pelican-learns-to-fly.html
The closest thing I’ve seen yet to the promise of a real flying car. “Remarkable flight stability.” The standard complaint about historical flying cars had been, up to now, that they don’t do either thing right; they neither fly as well as a plane nor drive as well as a car. This one does both fine. It has extendable wings, and the body itself is a lifting wing, and it weighs less than a small airplane, but there are a lot of moving parts involved in the conversion between modes, and it’s immensely expensive… My employer, in his employed days, had a little airplane to go south to the city in, to work, and the next week fly back, and he kept an old, rusty but reliable car in some of the little airports nearest the usual ends of his trip, in case he had to divert. One part of my job then was to, every six months or so, spend a day driving around to all of them with tools and oil and battery acid and a fresh battery or two and just make sure they all would always enthusiastically start. The airplane and all the cars and my service and parts and registration and insurance all together was way cheaper than this single flying car. Still, it’s pretty cool. And it can take off and fly and land itself better than any pilot can fly it.
https://theawesomer.com/aircar-prototype-1-flying-car/656048/
I’ve been flying a lot in the my dreams lately. This is more like that:
https://theawesomer.com/victoria-falls-drone-fly-through/656490/
Bob Hermines’ Midgets Band.
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/bob_herminess_midgets_band
Dan Dubuque’s latest. He’s always in a different place outdoors.
https://theawesomer.com/queens-of-the-stone-age-on-slide-guitar/656349/
You can feel the stress that finding a job poorly done puts on this person. (You might have to click the sound on to hear the stress.)
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2022/02/02/perturbing-pool-problem/
This new prospective Olympic sport is like jump-rope, gymnastics and volleyball, but also with a bow and arrow, where the arrows have squeaky-toy marshmallows on them to indicate a palpable hit. They’re having a contest right now for what to change the name of it to, because the original name is racist as well as fat-shaming, and contains the syllable /cunt/. (via Fark)
https://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_1200w/Boston/2011-2020/2020/03/11/BostonGlobe.com/ReceivedContent/Images/arch71.jpg
And twin shoulder-mounted eye-tracking high-power lasers. They set on fire whatever you swivel your eyes to look at, no matter how far away, so be careful. You don’t want to shoot somebody’s eye out, like that guy last week in Virginia who shot his glovebox pistol at a deer in a field, missed three times, of course, but felled his 81-year-old neighbor 140 yards away and then had to go over there and futilely try to stop the bleeding with a towel while he waited for police to show up. He’s in a lot of trouble. It’s against the law to shoot across a road at a deer.
https://theawesomer.com/supermans-heat-vision-irl/656553/
Memo Of The Air 
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