The smooth shmoo swoops through.

     “I am the Great Beast risen from the depths of Tartarus to bring oblivion to all; bow before my might as the blood tycoon descends upon the innocent to release your pitiful human forms from the chains of hope.” -Dana Perino in The Onion

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 lots 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, going back decades. And tiny bravely struggling KNYO itself. Find KNYO’s hidden donation heart and help the station out with a one-time gift or, if you can, a recurring gift from your own hidden heart. And/or acquire a concentrated vial of new and improved fire-engine-red KNYO hot sauce, to promote vim and pep and vibrant health. (“It’s toasted!”)

They transferred Juanita to a new store farther away and her car is still waiting to be fixed, so I’ve been staying at her place to get her to work and back. And they changed her schedule, so this time I had to connect to the transmitter at 8:30, set things playing to run by themselves, drive away, get back, and start the real show at 9:40. Those things playing for filler there are not in the recording above, but you can look them up and hear them: From the 1950s /X Minus One/ radio drama series: A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber, a true story about a small family of survivors of a rogue planet’s having pulled Earth away from the sun, so the very atmosphere has settled in layers of oxygen and nitrogen snow. The boy forays from the group’s sealed basement apartment nest in a diving suit to get ever-dwindling supplies /and literal pails of frozen air/ to melt next to their fire, which must never be allowed to go out, and in this dead city in this dead, dark, silent world, running out of the very sparse air in his suit, he sees a light moving in a building across the street! There are dozens of good X Minus One shows, most adapted from pulp science fiction stories, but that’s my favorite. So cold and bleak. And the family dynamics, with the mother having gone crazy a long time ago from the horror of the situation, and then the hopeful ending. After that, The Human Holiday, a cross between Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and a giant alien Tupperware party. “Join your host Midal Gogat of The Finite Corporation as he and a cast of thousands present to souls bored of an eternity of bliss a slickly-packaged sales pitch on the joys of incarnating on Planet Earth.” You can find the original recording here, and it’s available via Spotify. Tell your soul friends, who might also like to spend a lifetime as a field mouse, an Ordovician-era sponge, a mountain (!), a delicate Nubian princess, or any of a zillion other unique choices.

This particular MOTA show, while only 440 minutes long and not the full 480, nonetheless features the fascinating story of Paul Modic’s arrival in and impressions of peak-hippie Northern California lo these many years ago; Chuck Wilcher’s and Steve Hinnefeld’s memories of the late Ren Oschin; options for drying mushrooms if you don’t have a fancy Bluetooth mushroom dryer; an account of attending the recent billion-dollar Avatar sequel on the other kind of mushrooms; further adventures in quack psychic healing and questionable Sovereign Citizen legal advice, as well as warnings from competing time-traveling fashion influencers about the tunnel to another world beneath Area 51 and real-life Cthulhu, as big as a football stadium, stirring at the bottom of the sea, about to yawn and stretch and roam upward to land, ravenous for breakfast; heating gas delivery options; the usual assortment of /real/ medicine, poetry, math, science, history, cosmology and cosmetology; the annual end-of-year run-down of all the things Americans got stuck in their various bodily orifices that required an emergency room doctor to get them out, listed by orifice, starting at the top and moving downward: ear, nose, throat, penis, vagina, and rectum (“Rectum? Damn near killed’m!); a brief history of Glass Beach; two chapters each of new books by Clifford Allen Sanders and Kent Wallace; my dream journal of the last week; Gadeng Vadoo and Eid Ma Clack Shaw; Patrick Cockburn on Israel’s latest Government of Darkness; Ezekiel Krahlin’s adventures in homeless dog-sitting; Maggie Hart’s travel rape story; the latest in Artificial Intelligence news; and it’s all capped off with The Weird Circle: The Queer Client, a play, recorded in 1944, of a bereaved banker’s revenge, remorse and madness. Somewhere in there I recall reading a story by John Mahoney and being confused, thinking it was the John Maloney I know. Mahoney-Maloney, not the same, but the nickel didn’t drop until much later. It’s a simple mistake; no malice intended. Oh, and Ari Yovel, student rabbi, who I was hoping would call for the Ask a Jew portion of the show, had other commitments, so maybe next week we’ll try again.

By the way, here’s a link to my dream journal project, 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 send me a link to your dream journal and I’ll make a note to go there and check for updates. It doesn’t have to be a dream. I’m here to read your writing on the radio and subject is no object. See  About and Contact.

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.

A gallery of bemusingly gazeable photos of 2022.
https://newatlas.com/photography/gallery-best-photography-2022/

Slick 2022 movie trailer mashup. It makes me want to see all of them, especially the ones later on in the selection.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/12/sleepy-skunks-2022-movie-trailer-mashup.html

Here’s the tongue of a silly dog who has taught his human to bark on command. Which reminds me: I hate it when people misspell whoa, woah (WO-uh! WO-uh! Ugh) even though that’s the way translators of Tintin and Snowy spell it, but I love it when people spell tongue, tounge. I hear /townjj/ in my head and smile. Also it’s a Jerry Lewis version of the aliens behind the glass wall in /Arrival/. (via Everlasting Blort) (You might have to click the sound on.)
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1601268367461339136

Cher presents her one-woman West Side Story. She skipped /Gee, Officer Krupke/, though.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/12/cher-does-west-side-story.html

She’s fourteen years old and she’s already the greatest ice skater in the world.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2022/12/27/isabeau-levito/

Train. (via Clifford Pickover)
https://twitter.com/i/status/1607175353528901632

Moon landings faked? Not. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loUDS4c3Cs

Separate and unequal.
https://audacity.substack.com/p/separate-and-unequal

! (via Clifford Pickover) (You might have to click the sound on.)
https://twitter.com/pickover/status/1606763503058034690

The twelve days of Xmas start on Xmas day. They won’t be over till next week. So: A Three Stooges Xmas.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/12/christmas-with-three-stooges.html

Kamikaze cards.
https://www.vintag.es/2022/12/kamikaze-new-years-cards.html

A further Xmas thing.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2022/12/24/she-wants-it/

Oh, heck, one more. /Time Xmas/. Stay through the credits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eey8h0y0zCg

It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.
https://www.neatorama.com/2022/12/26/Kids-at-Christmas-Pageant-Stage-Combat-Scene/

And I didn’t know starling birds could do this. So nice. Of course crows and ravens can. If you have popcorn and a little patience you can make friends with all the crows in the neighborhood and teach them all kinds of things to do as well as say. In France a few years ago they taught crows and ravens to find coins all over a big city and put them in a vending machine in exchange for treats. And the birds invented on their own a way to crack nuts open by putting them in the street for a car to roll over them and then they wait till it’s safe and go get the nut meat. They do it at a stop light.
https://laughingsquid.com/mimicking-starling-r2-d2/

The Q continuum. These people are clearly ignorant and crazy and easily manipulated for the bad and they’re damaging their children, but really is this any worse than any family that fills their kids’ heads with emphatic nonsense, not in a spirit of fun but as though it’s real information? Religious people, for example.
https://boingboing.net/2022/12/23/heartbreaking-visit-to-a-delusional-qanon-family.html

The A.I. that wanted to be famous.
https://theawesomer.com/fckai-famous-short-film/692511/

Future hats. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://plainmagazine.com/stephen-jones-g-star-raw-haute-couture-headwear/

“Obviously, the lady doesn’t know.”
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/magic_oval_panties

How we do it.
https://boingboing.net/2022/12/28/a-desert-island-recession.html

A case of the shuffles.
https://www.marriedtothesea.com/index.php?date=122922

It’s nice, but I don’t understand how it can be a beauty contest when the only parts of her that aren’t covered up with something are her knuckles, her nose, and one ear with staples in it.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/12/tweet-of-day_0322707166.html

A Hobbit song made from the new Rings show cut up.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-hobbit-song-i-will-show-you.html

What.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2022/12/25/stylin-for-the-holidays/

Space.
https://newatlas.com/space/news-near-and-far-the-year-in-space-2022/

Rerun: Peeps into the past.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2022/12/1830s-peepshow-book.html

Freezing soap bubbles.
https://laughingsquid.com/soap-bubbles-frozen-in-real-time/

Rerun: Spirals in spirals. Inspire means to breathe in, as well as a spire being a pointed tower, so make of it what you will. (via BoingBoing)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WwxhBirHkcQ

Art. (via Everlasting Blort)
https://twitter.com/scott_kerr/status/1605533948813234180

Roger on jobs.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/12/an-honest-explanation-of-jobs.html

Jeep.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2022/12/28/no-joy-in-this-ride/

A little more about Tom Cruise. I think the sort of people who use the word jealous when they really mean envious, who may very well be the same people who spell whoa, woah, are envious, and that’s why they don’t like him, not because of any failure on his part to be friendly. They just don’t measure up to this hard-working, talented, tiny little man, and they can’t stand it.
https://boingboing.net/2022/12/27/why-is-tom-cruise-always-running.html

What doesn’t kill us… leaves it to something else to kill us.
https://www.neatorama.com/2022/12/26/How-Causes-of-Death-Have-Changed-Over-Time/

/The Originals/.
https://laughingsquid.com/carroll-gardens-brooklyn-animation/

Bill Bixby’s last interview ever. Watching /The Courtship of Eddie’s Father/, I always wondered why he didn’t just marry Mrs. Livingston. I remember thinking it was unfair that she was always cooking for them and cleaning up after them. Why didn’t they wash their own clothes and cook their own soup? I thought she was pretty and I liked her. That and the little talk Eddie and his father always had about this or that on the beach at the end of each show was my favorite thing about it. In other Bill Bixby news, after Judi Bari died slowly, over years, of complications of being car-bombed and cancer, many people were writing in the Anderson Valley Advertiser about who might have bombed her. I wrote a funny story titled /Who Bombed Bill Bixby/. That was before newspapers had web pages, so I can’t just click on something and find it again. I’d like to see it, if you have the issue of the paper with that one in it. A picture of it would be good enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlFH_PTs2lY

Linotype operator. (Click on the image for fine detail.) The paper she’s looking at is not the product, it’s what she’s composing from.
https://www.shorpy.com/node/26911

And here, watch how a linotype machine works. Newspapers and book publishers used linotype machines /for a hundred years/ before something better came along. (The story starts 30 seconds in.) I like their choice of birdlike voice to narrate this. They could have gone with an Orson Welles or a Don LaFontaine style of voice but they went another way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5slfQizimtg

Surf Rider on fretted electric zither.
https://laughingsquid.com/harpejji-cover-of-surf-rider/

Schnabelperchten kommen. (via TackyRaccoons)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EORkMDFwT0I

Fabric art.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2022/12/29/rachel-wright/

I see a giant cyclops creature’s face. The window is the eye and the rock thing at the bottom is its talking lips on a kissy stalk.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FknWAt0X0AExaZW?format=jpg&name=large

It’s only weird if you make it weird.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2022/12/weird.html

The Webb space telescope and why it’s worth every penny. Plus it’s so well made that, though parts of it are already smashed out by space debris, it still works great and will continue to work great for years to come.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/two-weeks-in-the-webb-space-telescope-is-reshaping-astronomy-20220725/

Rerun: Ze (say ZAY) Frank, end of year animal winners. (via MissCellania)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xUKzeflvR0

Whoa, don’t eat with your tongue, son, use your entrenching tool. (via Everlasting Blort)
https://twitter.com/rainmaker1973/status/1607283070201208833

“What the fuck do you think freedom means, Earl?” (via Everlasting Blort) (via Marilyn Bellamy)
https://mastodon.world/@NagOnTheLake/109540909567146901

Speaking of whom, also via Marilyn Bellamy, recordings of interviews with survivors of the Titanic. The first woman went through the entire ordeal and didn’t think anything of it; she thought this was the normal way of getting to America: ride in the dim bowels of a ship, climb out when everyone starts screaming, get in a little boat, and wait to be picked up by the next boat going that way.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2022/12/titanic-survivors-interviews-from-1956.html

How we get humanoids.
https://theawesomer.com/the-humanoid-factory-animation/692730/

They told the engineers to do anything they wanted, just make it look nice. And so they did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjuWiKz9zno

An expanded collection of A.I.-generated photographs of Burning Man in 1963. Here are some more than they showed a couple of weeks ago. I like the cars best, and the beehive-hairdo girls.
https://www.vintag.es/2022/12/1963-burning-man.html

Jonathan Coulton – The Town Crotch. A song for a cold night. Isn’t it strange that the audience laughs and laughs through this sweet and sad and true song. They must have had some risibility left from the song before, that might have been /The Future Soon/ or /I Crush Everything/, which are also sad and sweet and true, I guess. Or maybe /Mister Fancy Pants/.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY4d7hhMNEA

And winter on Mars. Don’t forget your Mars scarf.
https://boingboing.net/2022/12/28/look-at-this-gorgeous-winter-wonderland-on-mars.html