The talons of Weng-Chiang.
“This is your home now. We welcome you with three merit points and a work assignment. In your time here, full cooperation will be rewarded with further merit points, which may be traded for privileges such as food, shelter and permission to speak. Anything less than full cooperation will cost you points. Attempts to avoid service, by digging, or self-harm, are permitted during sleep period. Oh, yes, ahem, and the attitude adjustment facility is soundproof now, thanks to the generous merit point donations of those who came before you. That’s all. Get to work, and have a wonderful, uh, day.”
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 MOTA shows 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!”)
Here’s a link to my dream journal project that I add to at random every week or so, in case you’d like to look at that. I want 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. Or send me a link to your writing project on any subject. I’m mainly here to read your work on the radio and I don’t care what it’s about nor even if you can’t control yourself from swearing like a sailor; most of the show is during Safe Harbor hours when that’s okay. It’s still a free country, or so they say. See About and Contact and do what you do.
BESIDES ALL THAT, here are some not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items that I set aside for you while gathering MOTA together, found mostly thanks to the fine websites listed to your right.
Ken and Ryu. Ryu and Ken.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/02/tweet-of-day.html
Wayne. (via Fark)
https://twitter.com/BigRedCeltTT/status/1619714229275365377
The Zaoule (say za-OO-lee) dance.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-worlds-most-impossible-dance.html
The Zouave (say zwahv) dance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqXXpV4OUuA
3 Sunnys. (vie b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRWyxzmNdJc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIywz7sn_xo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcssY8ia770
Cold Little Heart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9wAC9MGpmI
John Hartford – Gum Tree Canoe.
https://27thstreet.me/2023/02/03/gum-tree-canoe/
Num-Num cat loop progressive compilation. It starts out so simple.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2023/02/03/cats-num-num-compilation/
3D Mars flyover. This would go great with Laurie Anderson’s /Big Science/ playing over it: “Hey pal! How do I get to town from here? And he said, Well, just take a right where they’re going to build that new shopping mall… Go straight past where they’re going to put in the freeway…Take a left at what’s going to be the new sports center. And keep going until you hit the place where they’re /thinking/ of building that drive-in bank. You can’t miss it. And I said, This must be the place.”
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/01/stunning-3d-flyover-of-mars.html
Pink Floyd live at Pompeii. It makes me think of /Spinal Tap/ and the Stonehenge scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGwPSPIhohk
Rerun: Turntable dance. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-sJtUpftFU
Art-chitecture. (via Everlasting Blort)
https://www.instagram.com/yanis.crys/
Asking A.I. to create a Sailor Moon Mad Max movie. (You might have to click the sound on.)
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn9_SN8oPoa/
Asking A.I. to generate a whole new sign language. Result: Ihonialllilal. Requires custom hands.
https://tackyraccoons.com/2023/01/31/a-i-creates-universal-sign-language-ihonialllilal/
The Seinfeld/Pulp Fiction deepfake.
https://boingboing.net/2023/02/02/this-seinfeld-pulp-fiction-deepfake-is-a-little-too-good.html
Howlin’ Wolf’s guitar player teaches you to play Smokestack Lightning.
https://twitter.com/bluezharp/status/1618660634090168320
A comic-strip history of company towns.
https://thenib.com/company-towns-history/
The all-aluminum 1941 Chrysler Thunderbolt. The green one– not turquoise, not aqua, not Mig-green (Russian-jet-cockpit-green), but something in the middle. Juanita’s 2000 Honda Insight is made of aluminum and plastic. The tow-truck guy had a hell of a time finding somewhere to stick on the magnetic towing lights.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/01/1941-chrysler-thunderbolt.html
Color. (via Everlasting Blort)
https://twitter.com/TheFigen_/status/1618298413338234881
Bessie Coleman Barbie. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/bessie-coleman-barbie-doll-cec/index.html
This is your brain on conspiracy bullshit.
https://twitter.com/TakeThatNurses/status/1615585414403833858
The prophecy.
https://www.neatorama.com/2023/01/29/The-Prophesy-A-Classic-Fantasy-Tale/
Those /other/ cops.
https://thenib.com/a-message-from-your-local-police/
That mecha is modeled on the robot in this scene from Robocop. They have a fully detailed life-size (car up on its hind legs size) one in Fundemonium, in Rohnert Park.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFvqDaFpXeM
You can see the Fundemonium robot in their promo video, just briefly, on the far left, at 1:22. The camera seems to avoid it, probably to not make it the focus of what the store’s about, because it’s not; it’s just cool. The last time Juanita and I went there, they’d moved it out of the window and way off to the side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfplKERh3gk
Our Town on shrooms. (via Clifford Pickover)
https://sputniknews.com/20221210/1105188938.html
Rerun: Awkward. It reminds me of a lot of Bill Plimpton’s work. (via Everlasting Blort)
https://www.notofagus.com/films/awkward
Music for (last) Sunday morning.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/01/music-for-sunday-morning_01377942261.html
Melting.
https://boingboing.net/2023/01/29/watch-everyday-objects-melt-under-a-macro-lens.html
Ze Frank on slime.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/02/ze-frank-has-lowdown-on-slime-molds.html
Rerun: Zappa – I’m the slime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPFIkty4Zvk
The /important/ issues. (via the Anderson Valley Advertiser)
https://i0.wp.com/theava.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/tt-issues.jpg
The curse of the classified documents.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-curse-of-classified-documents.html
Back in /my/ day.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2023/01/30/plentiful-past/
Black Mask Magazine cover art.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/01/black-mask-covers.html
Mrs. Betty Bowers of Landover Baptist Church, America’s Best Christian, flowcharts the Bible for you.
https://boingboing.net/2023/01/31/mrs-betty-bowers-americas-best-christian-made-a-useful-flowchart-for-interpreting-the-bible-maga-style.html
Motor Mouse and Autocat.
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/motor_mouse_and_autocat
Poker Face as old-timey Western swing. (Lantec1000 wrote: “Interesting fact about this song. Lady Gaga was very anti-war at the time when World War II first broke out. But after D-Day, she did a performance for the soldiers overseas and saw first hand the destruction that the war has caused. She decided to fully support the war effort and this song was alluding to the radar technology the British invented and played as a taunt to the Germans.”
https://laughingsquid.com/poker-face-old-timey-western-swing/
A self-explanatory game that I think I’m just average at but that’s still fun. You look at pictures that have lots of clues in them that turn out to be natural unintended tricks– black and white, for example, or anachronistic cars, or Eastern Europe, or a film still– and guess what year they were taken. You get points for how close you come.
https://www.chronophoto.app/game.html
Every time a baby is born, its country on this map flashes yellow. (via MissCellania)
https://neal.fun/baby-map/
How the cell is like Star Trek.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/01/tweet-of-day_013442219.html
If famous architects designed cars. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://mossandfog.com/cars-designed-through-the-style-of-famous-architects/
A 32,000-year-old Lunar calendar. (Edit: 1,000,000,000,000 –one trillion– seconds is 32,000 years.) (via Tacky Raccoons)
https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/oldest-lunar-calendars/
45 min. of clips of Tim Minchin’s musical standup about religion, much of it from 2019 when he was 33 (Jesus’ age).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA5lIFUply0
Curly sings the alphabet. Moe and Larry also sing, and all the college kids join in.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2023/01/30/stooges-the-alphabet-song/
A.I. generates an endless Seinfeld episode in real time forever. (via PerfectForRoquefortCheese)
https://www.twitch.tv/watchmeforever
Happy capybaras jumping in the watta..
https://twitter.com/CAPYBARA_MAN/status/1612530377708412951
AC/DC – You Shook Me All Night Long
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo2qQmj0_h4
How I met your father.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/01/at-first-glance.html
Further on the subject of Adolfo Kaminsky, the Argentinian Jew who saved 16,000 men, women and children from being murdered by the Nazis, using his fingers, a razor blade, cleaning fluid, forged forms, less than an ounce of ink, and a centrfuge made from a bicycle wheel. (via Tacky Raccoons)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dup6KOoaAUc
Art. (via Everlasting Blort)
https://gotting.fr/wp/categorie-produit/estampes/
Rerun: future of car travel. The inn’s /predigested food/ sounds delish. In your choice of colors, probably.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/02/key-to-future.html
How to make a fire-starting device to have for when all else fails and the rubber roads run down. Make it while you still have access to a drill, a file, a pocket knife, a hacksaw, copper pipe, a pipe cutter tool, a rubber O-ring, a cupboard knob, and a section of wooden dowel; don’t wait until you’re on the run from zombies in a post-apocalyptic forest and your Bic lighter is empty. (The last zombie movie I saw was made in the 1960s, so I don’t know if fire still works as well, but a tallow torch should be a pretty good defense. 1960s zombies went up like tissue paper. Also you’ll need some tallow and a stick or a real estate company sign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKJksRIBzNc
Innovative self-soldering circuitboard. His first project using the technique self-solders a circuit to control the process of self-soldering future self-soldering circuitboards. I love how excited he is about his idea.
https://boingboing.net/2023/01/30/maker-creates-electronic-device-that-solders-itself-like-a-self-cooking-pizza.html
She’s the new Pickle Queen, and her award is, she gets to kick a field goal with the world’s largest pickle, which is billed as real but clearly is papier mache, so the whole thing is bollocks. Think about that first photograph, the relationships and proportions and eye-lines. Sometimes a pickle is only a pickle, but here, I think, it’s more.
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/kicking_the_pickle
“Top this, Janet! You don’t have a chance! You’re through as County 4-H Snake Queen! Through!” Your point of view would be Janet. You’re smiling inside, gently, because that kind of overconfidence, there, is the downfall of them all, and you have nothing to worry about. Just tend to your own giant snake and enjoy inevitably re-upping your title, and watch your back. (via Fark)
https://imgur.com/br6sy81
Music.
https://theawesomer.com/playing-god-on-guzheng/696292/
A number of pocket calculator emulators. I was disappointed at first because I thought they were all broken, but then the nickel drops and I realized that all the buttons are live, including the /on/ button. You have to turn them on. (via b3ta)
https://archive.org/details/calculatordrawer
“May cause dizziness.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy7e28VUJWc
Dimension 5. The whole film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EimxJAcoU8
Pete “Big Elvis” Vallée weeg meer dan 200 kilo en gelooft dat Elvis zijn vader is. Hieronder kun je zijn verhaal bekijken. (via PerfectForRoquefortCheese)
https://vimeo.com/276103410
We’ve seen him play this instrument before. It’s so sweet. So far, this is my favorite /Over the Rainbow/, though a couple of the theremin versions are also nice.
https://laughingsquid.com/somewhere-over-the-rainbow-acoustic-reverse-slide/
A fun test of your ability to perceive color. I was close to average about it. I tried again with the monitor tipped backward a little and did a little better. (In other words, don’t be discouraged; it might be your device and not your eyes and brain.)
https://www.lenstore.co.uk/vc/colour-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/
Here’s an article about color and the above test.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/575383/color-perception-test
Rerun: Youth and aging.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/01/youth-aging-tales-of-mere-existence.html
Point of view. (via PerfectForRoquefortCheese)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BorcaCtjmog
The Eye of Smyrna (Wisconsin).
https://neal.fun/wonders-of-street-view/?v=U29JFi
History of math. (via Everlasting Blort)
https://history-of-mathematics.org/
And the wreck of the Princess May.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2023/01/princess-mays-dramatic-grounding.html
Memo Of The Air 
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