Memoirs of a shy pornographer.

     “You spotted snakes with double tongue, thorny hedgehogs be not seen, newts and blind-worms, do no wrong, come not near our fairy queen.” -W.S.

Here’s the recording of last night’s Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA), ready for you to re-enjoy:

 

 

Thanks to Hank Sims of Lost Coast Outpost here’s a page with plenty of other ones going back quite a way. And thanks to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which always provides about an hour of each of my Friday night shows’ most locally relevant material without asking for anything in return, going back decades. And tiny bravely struggling KNYO itself. Find the hidden donation heart there and help the station out with a holiday gift from your own hidden heart. And/or try the new fire-engine-red vibrantly healthy KNYO hot sauce, for vim and pep. (“It’s toasted!”)

This show was particularly exhausting for me, so I quit half an hour early. Every week, every show since I started doing MOTA in February of 1997, I’ve printed the material out and read it off paper. I’m really used to doing it that way. This time enough things went wrong at the worst possible times that I had to read about two-thirds of the show off one long column on the computer screen. It doesn’t sound like much of a problem, but I found it disorienting and twitchy, and when contradictions arose in the text and story order, that ordinarily I’d move the pages this way or that way and solve in an instant, I was baffled, confused. And you hear that. So… You know what, this is a challenge. I’m going to do it this way on purpose next time and fucking master it. Think of all the paper and materials I’ve been wasting all these years, even though I use each page twice lately by turning the stack over and printing on the other side.

Ah, and here’s a link to my dream journal project that I restarted a couple of years ago and have been keeping up– not compulsively like the old days but at least several dreams each week. The latest post is always on top. (I send a batch of dreams from the week all at once on Sunday or Monday night.) (I’d like to read /your/ dreams on the radio and I always offer to. Just email me. Or include them in a reply to this post. Or give me a link to your dream journal and I’ll make a note to go there and check for updates.)

BESIDES ALL THAT, here are some 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 real world exists, while we’re all focused inward on pronouns and snowflakes and slaps and gropes and imagined malice and gaslighting each other and ourselves and resenting the outrageous price of cinnamon. Lanscapes of 2022. View the full gallery.
https://newatlas.com/photography/international-landscape-photographer-year-awards-2022-gallery-winners/

A random Koyaaniqatsi generator.
https://www.monkeon.co.uk/gifaanisqatsi/

“We fart free water. Say sliders to drugs. Say no to yes. I’m a truck!!! I don’t stop when I stop I stop when stop TRUCK.” (via Neatorama)
https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-confusing-signs/

I started picking favorites here, the way I always do with something like this, but these are all my favorite.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2022/11/25/les-creatonautes

Fantastic.
https://www.vintag.es/2022/11/fantastic-adventures-covers.html

People from the somewhat distant past, who had the same basic hopes and needs and disappointments as you do, and I do. The ancient Scot woman is about to swear gently at you for forgetting her birthday and then kiss you anyway because she knows you didn’t really; the present is in the satchel. /Och, ye didnae; it weren’t needful. But I do love ye, ye great omadhaun!/ (via Neatorama)
https://www.livescience.com/gallery-of-reconstructions

Christine McVie, R.I.P.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91_1YDXTbME

Some photos of Christine, one of which she probably would have wished they’d lose. You’ll know it when you see it. Oof.
https://www.vintag.es/2022/12/young-christine-mcvie.html

And some more.
https://www.vintag.es/2022/12/christine-stevie.html

Adorable little wooden songbirds. You can imagine them singing like they know the score.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2022/12/01/wooden-islands-birds/

Rerun: Andre Antunes’ ska-ified barking-mad pastoress. An illustration of literal barking madness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSNz2tEL5C4

Exactly the way Jesus said to do it: “Do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. But when you pray, go alone into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.” Also, “Render unto Caesar,” meaning pay the taxes on your giant multimillion-dollar business empire. The Mormon church, say, has amassed /billions/ of dollars’ worth of real estate alone. I remember reading somewhere that if church leaders all paid fair taxes, all the homeless could be fed and housed, and lots more done too. Ah, here: “Question: How much money do churches bring in every year? Answer: The majority of donations in the U.S. are given to religious organizations. U.S. faith-based institutions account for combined revenue of more than $378 billion per year.”
https://twitter.com/Eric_Erins/status/1596917329010446336

Melissa Carper and Rebecca Patek.
https://27thstreet.me/2022/12/02/king-of-the-road-2/

You’ll poke your eye out, kid.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FimylUcWAAAQ_1-?format=jpg&name=900×900

Josephine Baker singing in French on Italian teevee in 1962. What a doll.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2022/11/just-josephine-baker-twisting-night.html

Some lessons and a puzzle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcgqWbp_0oU

Superman says, “Never say yes to a cigaret.” He knows. Tobacco is humans’ kryptonite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDRMeeuP3F0

The way the world works.
http://marriedtothesea.com/112722

7 to 2 if solid, 5 to 2 if hollow. This is so nonobviously cool, because once you know how it works, you can’t unsee why. It’s for the same reason a square block slides to the bottom of an incline faster than an equal-mass wheel rolls down.
https://theawesomer.com/the-turntable-paradox/689810/

The voice in the hollow.
https://theawesomer.com/the-voice-in-the-hollow-short-film/690286/

Top tier bass guy Charles Berthoud’s latest.
https://laughingsquid.com/master-of-puppets-slap-bass-solo/

A fascinating seemingly bottomless random photo archive. (via Tacky Raccoons)
https://noonereallyknowswhatwedo.com/

It forms the Chinese character for /serenity/. (via Fark)
https://twitter.com/i/status/1598102834062708736

Beer. Is there anything it can’t do?
https://boingboing.net/2022/11/29/gentleman-knocks-himself-out-after-fighting-another-man-at-hockey-game-video.html

Turn down for what. Some of these old people’s backs and knees are in way better shape than mine.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2014/11/senior-citizens-dancing-to-turn-down.html

Comfortably Numb in Dire Straits’ style.
https://laughingsquid.com/comfortably-numb-as-dire-straits/

Sing like no-one is watching.
https://www.neatorama.com/2022/11/28/Owner-Catches-Footage-of-Dog-Playing-The-Piano/

“In colour.” This was awhile ago, in like Canada, so these people were paid for this. This was their job. There used to be all kinds of jobs people could buy a house with. In a publishing house, for example, people had jobs just going up and down the elevator with bits of paper or a roll of film, and jobs cutting out shapes with razor blades and sticking them down, and they were paid for their lunch hour, which was a whole hour, long enough to walk to the automat, eat, enjoy the newspaper and digest your food a little bit; and now, all those publishing jobs can be done by one teenager with a tablet, whole buildings of music companies and studios and rooms full of instruments and equipment have been replaced with a computer in your pocket, constructed by suicidal slaves on the other side of the world, where also all the tennis shoes and t-shirts come from. I’m not sure I understand the story the dancers are telling with their motion, but they clearly have a plan, and I appreciate the mini-fridge-size teevee cameras on mobile camera cranes. I mentioned /Serenity/ above, for /Firefly/, but this all sounds like the incidental SFX in /Blake’s 7/, and for good reason.
https://boingboing.net/2022/12/02/dig-these-freaky-experimental-dancers-and-robots-modulating-to-moog-music-in-1971.html

On the other hand: Russian /Popcorn/. Synthesizers and tape technology replaced by musicians on real instruments. And maybe these people are paid. I don’t know. I’m still paid for the occasional sound-effect job. Not very well, but I can get a hamburger often (barely) enough to not forget the flavor of meat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMZghFO9SVY

See, you don’t have to scribble all over yourself with psychotic tattoos to be boss. I Break Everything, by Speed of Light. As one old fart wrote afterward: “There’s hope for youth yet.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLw7vzqfapg

Rerun: I Crush Everything, by Jonathan Coulton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RFEzpUsUBk

I don’t think you even have to know who Jennifer Coolidge is to like this, because I had no idea. “Are you lost? Mister Finch, are you trying to seduce me?” Actually, the things this woman says and the emotion involved and randomness of it all are what real people often sound and look like to me whenever I’m in a public place with people all around. It’s why I like OverheardInNewYork.com. Real conversation between strangers that you only hear a few seconds of, tell a whole complicated story, that you’re misinterpreting, sure, but there it is.
https://boingboing.net/2022/12/02/comedian-mimics-white-lotus-star-jennifer-coolidge-to-a-tee-video.html

Trailer for /Mad Heidi/. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjGIWcOrq-I

What. (via Fark)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fih2I-nXwAE-VQm

Proud, patriotic citizens of Underwear Town decorating on their special day for the king to ride past in his king car of the monorail. Just one universe above or below ours in the stack.
https://media.nga.gov/iiif/516f6abc-021d-4123-8ab3-4baefe506c41/full/full/0/default.jpg

Snake oil.
https://catandgirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2022-cgpoet.gif

Ow! Okay. No! Okay, one more chance. Yow! That’s it, no more for me. Maybe it’s for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNe1D_E3R8E

An Advent colander.
https://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/20932/1448910522/advcol.jpg

What.
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/HensandRoosters-AlextenNapel-NEDERLANDSE.BAARDKUIFHOEN.-ROOSTER32017.jpg

Rise up.
http://marriedtothesea.com/120122

The whole spectrum of shyness to boldness, and different levels of situation awareness. Some of them don’t even notice the camera. Some see it, duck their heads and smile painfully cutely… They’re all dead a long time ago. This was their youth and their time. And it’ll happen to me and to you, whether we wink at the camera, or startle and fumble, or what. And in another five thousand or five million years we’re all just rocks and molecules again, part of the earth or other creatures and things, or floating in the water or air or drifting in space. Actually, drifting in space anyway. Everything everywhere is in space.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/gibson-girl-edwardian-historic-film

Fly, Robin, Fly. Up, up to the sky (wiggle around and repeat forever, or four minutes, whichever comes first). (via PerfectForRoquefortCheese)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUPdG4DA42g

Three Dog Night – Liar (live, better-than-the-album version). I’ve been hearing this song off and on, mostly off, for over fifty years and I only just last night realized that the fingernails-on-a-blackboard effect of their shouting /LIAR/ is done not by just the reverb effect but by the drummer with a struck cymbal stopped by his fingers, just as it took Nellie McKay’s version of Three Dog Night’s song /Murder In My Heart For The Judge/, that I heard last week, for me to grasp the lyrics of /that/ song: “Judge looked down at me and said, for getting smart, boy, I’m gonna give you more than a lifetime.” The line I imagined was nothing like that. “Said, for getting smart, boy,” was, to me, “Circle getting stronger.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq5_pEO8a8U

Restoring a remarkable antique toy. In the early 1960s when I was just a sprat, my cousins in Ohio had a mostly plastic version of something like this, but it was the sun and planets, with a battery-powered motor, and a crane made of wire that went around at controllable speed as the planets also went. A lever raised and lowered the crane with a metal spaceship on the end, and the object was to transfer a cargo magnet from a planet to the ship and to a planet again, without dropping it. The distance in time between the racetrack toy and the planets toy was about the same as between the planets toy and now, just like the distance in time between the Wright flyer and the SR-71 Blackbird was about the same as from the Blackbird to the Cassini robot space mission.
https://theawesomer.com/restoring-a-mechanical-horse-racing-game/689463/

The internet: a system of electrical tubes to communicate and do commerce, that one can also laugh and play and get stuck in.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/07/londons-mail-rail.html

Here’s another thing you’ve been able to get a job doing for awhile now: shouting along with the game for everybody. Baseball, basketball, ballball, all the sportsball games; they all need people to do it. It’s a skill you can develop, and if you’re good at it you can fly all over the world and shout to millions of people who also, for some reason, care about these details, though you have to memorize the intricacies of the actual game, too. The offside rule, the designated hitter, you can’t spit on the ball or catch one in your hat, you can only castle once, a fair-catch dropkick has to be from the point of the catch, no hitting below the belt, etc. Oh, and with golf, you must not shout but whisper as if over a sleeping baby, even if you’re a mile away in a teevee truck in the parking lot. At KMFB, Lindy Peters used the wired phone to commentate Fort Bragg (California) high school ball games. He was so good at that, they made him mayor of the whole town for two terms. And now that there’s a movement to change the name of Fort Bragg from a slave-owning Civil War monster to something better, the leading two candidates for a new name are The Palms (for the palm trees on Main Street) (that we’ll put there if the name chosen is The Palms), and Lindy Petersville, which has the edge, because it showed up for practice and it came to play.
https://boingboing.net/2022/12/02/check-out-this-hilarious-meme-about-obsessive-football-fans.html

And A.I.-generated cereal boxes. (Hear that in your head in the voice of the very last line of /What Do You Want From Life/ by The Tubes.)
https://theawesomer.com/ai-generated-cereal-boxes/690242/

 

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