The nonstop shrieking steam-calliope of history.
“Given a choice, the vast majority of people prefer to live in a dictatorship, as long as the dictator has the same tastes they do. They like the idea that the HOA controls what color they paint their house, as long as the HOA tells people to use colors they already like. They like the idea that the HOA controls what people do with their property, as long as the HOA says they have to do things they were already going to do anyway. People blather on and on about freedom, but the ugly truth is freedom really means people doing things you personally don’t like.” -Franklin Veaux
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.
This particular show has all the features. RD Beacon, Del Potter, Paul Modic, Louis Bedrock, Douglas Coulter, Notty Bumbo, Emjay Wilson, Madeline Hagen, Caitlin Johnstone, Sarah Burris, Kent Wallace, Bruce Anderson, The Major (Mark Scaramella), Mitch Clogg, Ezekiel Krahlin (and Lucky and Flaco), Warren Hinckle (RIP), David Herstle Jones, creepy-eyed pregnant Midge, an entire jokes section, dream journal section, and twenty minutes of rapid-fire creepy-funny lies that mothers all over the world have told their children, all ending with Vincent Ialenti blowing our minds, as Jean Shepherd once did, with a vision of the far future, contemplation of times that will come, when each and all of us, all we care about and argue about and squabble over and build up and tear down and buy and sell and worship and revile, will be long ago and entirely forgotten, and that’s a fact.
Meanwhile, 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 these Friday night shows’ most locally relevant material, going back decades. And tiny bravely struggling KNYO itself. Seek out KNYO’s hidden donation heart and help the station out with some metaphorical blood from your own metaphorical heart. That would be swell. Do it while you’re alive. Give with warm hands.
Here’s a link to my dream journal project that I add to at random every week or so.. 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. In fact, 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. See About and Contact and give it a shot.
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.
The Queen of Chinatown. “Hurled by highbinders through the rat pit’s double trap!”
https://www.messynessychic.com/2023/04/14/a-brief-compendium-of-vintage-opium-underworlds/
Stories on a handkerchief. (via Craig Louis Stehr)
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/DwXhOot_9blXLQ
Oy. (via Tacky Raccoons) (You might have to click the sound on. Top-right.)
https://www.facebook.com/reel/199996332748719?fs=e&s=m
This is the way.
https://boingboing.net/2023/04/20/auralnauts-used-every-this-is-the-way-to-make-a-synth-heavy-banger.html
There’s the endless expansion theory, the big crunch theory, and then there’s the cosmic washing machine theory, which is gaining adherents. The sound this universe makes can be heard by huffing gasoline. It’s kind of /whanga-whanga-whanga-whanga-whanga/ going in and out of a squeezed tinnitus whine.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1647417245914611713
The color out of space.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/04/how-hubble-images-are-made.html
Night vision binoculars that record video. For nature, stakeouts, vicarious pervery.
https://deals.newatlas.com/sales/mini-dual-tube-digital-night-vision-instrument
Cups and balls, oranges and a melon.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2023/04/20/cup-trick-exposed/
Hide.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/04/hide.html
Escape. (Read about the project, then go to the comic and play the game.)
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2765:_Escape_Speed
Alcohol. Is there anything it can’t do?
https://www.rawstory.com/michigan-republican-party-2659878991/
Rerun: What the different colors of urine signify.
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/troubled-waters?utm_source=newsletter
Something you could conceivably do with an aquarium and enough different diseases of urine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35pYx8Cc6FQ
Shy guy.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/04/shy-guy-1947.html
Curly Howard, the unsung genius of physical comedy, the victim of circumstance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTLnUXDKgBs
What someone with powers looks like, compared to the rest of us, just before she learns to suppress it to get along.
https://www.neatorama.com/2023/04/20/Little-Girl-Does-Cartwheel-on-the-Way-to-First-Base/
Here’s a game: You have a bag of black letters and red letters and no punctuation marks. You can put anything you want to on that marquee sign. Do it, and then share it. I’ll start: In alternating black and red caps: ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE (Leave two spaces between EUROPA and ATTEMPT.) (Or start with all one color and change to the other color at that point.) Now you.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/pnp/mrg/08500/08518v.jpg
A car fit for a cosmonaut. It’s kind of Opel-ish. Bob Woelfel has had an Opel for fifty years that looks very like this. I’m not sure why but it makes me think of a big space-age false eyelash, or like the actual cat-like eye of a giant alien robot.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/04/yuri-gagarin-djet.html
Oh! The aqua-turquoise one– beautiful! The Morris Commercial JE. I had a VW bus in the old days and in the even older days drove a few go-karts; I never liked the feel of sitting right on top of either the front or back wheels of a vehicle, but I’d put up with sitting over the front ones for this one. The sides and the back of it can open wide to load a stack of full sheets of plywood; all the inside space can be used (it’s a box); it’s electric, silent. And I’m a sucker for things even only close to that color –especially vehicles, sure, a Fiat 500, maybe, a Karmann-Ghia, a 1964 Falcon Futura, the Rambler Classic I had for awhile and still think about, and so on– but remember the record player I was swooning over a couple of months ago? And think of biting a maple doughnut frosted all over in that opaque smooth shiny color, or a chocolate truffle somehow that color to indicate mint. Gun grips and stocks, musical instruments, microphones, the door of a house, a whole house, inside and out, including toilet, sink, counter, fridge, blankets, teevee frame, book covers, tile roofing, hooded path lights, and this aqua-turquoise van parked drunkenly on the clashing neglected dry brown lawn…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OISQx4A3qds
I know my legs would never fit in this, but it is cute. I met a man once at old KMFB (RIP, long may it wave) who was in the process of writing a book about driving around the edges of the contiguous United States in his cute car, just like this one. He was the one who corrected me on the pronunciation of the name of one of my favorite science fiction writers: Vernor Vinge. Not vinj at all, nor ving-geh, but FIN-jee. Fehr-NOOR FIN-jee.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/04/1934-mg-pa.html
First generation of human-Gray hybrids, the early carefree days. That thing disguised as a rearview mirror? It’s a tiny rectangular interocitor. How happy they are in this image. The world is their oyster, ripe for plucking, even in a month with an R in it, even though you can tell who they are among us today because they can’t make that Scottish-Spanish Shakespearean rolling-R sound, nor open and close their nostrils without using their fingers. They have some advantages but they don’t have the gene for those specific things. (via Fark)
https://images2.bonhams.com/image?src=Images/live/2021-01/28/25042713-1-1.jpg
A creative life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE_5QyBykgg
Gun culture. The Gunbecile Awards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVRVLNlMlqM
“You wanna take mah firearm, you jes’ come and trah ta take it from me. With your warm soft lib’rul hands! You want mah gun? Come /kiss/ me fur it, you weak soft pussy lib’ruls! Spank me fur it, hard, but not hard enough ta hurt me, just enough so ah still feel safe.” (via Tacky Raccoons) (You might have to click the sound on. Top-right.)
https://www.facebook.com/reel/183383177834300
Experience color-blindness.
https://www.theverge.com/23650428/colorblindness-design-ui-accessibility-wordle
Plaid – Return to Return.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz4pAbA5oaQ
A bicycle trip.
https://boingboing.net/2023/04/19/the-first-intentional-lsd-trip-was-80-years-ago-today-video.html
It turns out, on pop-psych testing, that my food-disgust quotient (like my male-female attitude balance and my left-brain right brain balance, though not my political opinions balance) is exactly in the middle, overall, but somewhat weighted toward disgust of what are called /human contaminants/. Putting gum in your mouth that someone took out of their mouth, for example. Ick. Take the test. Find out how /you/ feel about things.
https://www.idrlabs.com/food-disgust/test.php
Snappy. (The joke is, Al Jaffe, who died last week, invented this format and style of comic strip.)
https://boingboing.net/2023/04/19/snappy-answers-to-stupid-questions-an-al-jaffee-tribute.html
“How is babby (sic) formed?” Hint: it involves a blastocyst.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/04/12/1159753316/pregnancy-start-conception
Hubble telescope is 33 today. (via BoingBoing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qatNSVppqAw
Moyun – Hotel California on guzheng. Gesundheit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf6v59c5yuY
Garbo.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/04/as-you-desire-me.html
Joan does Dynasty. (Pronounced either way: DAHY-nuh-stee or da NAST-ee.)
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/04/joan-does-dynasty.html?lr=1
Let’s face it. Artificial intelligence programs just make better art than people do. Soon it’ll be so much better at it that we’ll think it’s crappy again, the way modern jazz is crappy because I’m ignorant of the music theory to appreciate it properly, or the Grateful Dead are boring if you’re not stoned, and abstract painting by monkeys, and by chickens with paint on their feet, are indistinguishable from a five-million-dollar masterpiece by a drunken wife-beater in 1955, and so what? If you like it, you like it, and why can’t that be enough?
https://boingboing.net/2023/04/18/winner-of-prestigious-photo-competition-admits-image-was-generated-by-ai.html
The stories behind iconic historic photographs. (via MissCellania)
https://historycollection.com/backstories-of-historys-most-iconic-photographs/13/
Precise calculus of acrobatic motion in a creature with a brain the size of a pecan.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2015/04/goalkeeper-cat.html
Motorcycle acrobatics.
ttps://www.facebook.com/rick.small.54/posts/pfbid0oLMteNw6Vb88vYqN5LF4YPbDj4yFg8FPfZopk9pHqsXaAhSrD1dAn41XRwPKp4fsl
Cyclic generation of a pentagram.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1647790905259094016
Little mechanical animations. Scroll down; it isn’t just the top one.
https://www.neatorama.com/2023/04/20/The-Amazing-Mechanical-Animations-of-Shikakugangu/
Bulbous bouffant. Macadamia. Gazebo. (The farther you scroll down, the more amazing they become.)
https://www.vintag.es/2023/04/big-hair.html
Late-night subway musician’s one-hour set of Radiohead songs.
https://theawesomer.com/a-subway-concert-of-radiohead-covers/703075/
Luca Stricagnoli’s latest.
https://theawesomer.com/arctic-monkeys-on-acoustic-guitar/703027/
It’s funny because it’s Peter Singer’s own argument.
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/494
On being informed one’s ship has come in, as they say. The last who knew one’s secret crimes is dead. All obstacles and rivals eliminated. Relief. Giddy delight. Next picture: the Twilight Zone/Columbo whiplash twist as it all turns to shit. (via Fark)
https://www.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Orkin.JinxatAMEX_05.jpg
Controls.
https://www.messynessychic.com/2016/09/30/a-brief-compendium-of-when-buttons-ruled-the-earth/
Time-lapse of an entire cruise ship being built, starting with a motor as big as a house. One day we’ll be building real spaceships in places like this but on the moon or inside an asteroid. This thing is entirely useless, it’s just to drag bored rich old people around, play the piano for them and serve them food and alcohol drinks. A spaceship, on the other hand, sigh… and we could have had real spaceships a long time ago if our priorities weren’t so fucked up. The music is okay, I suppose.
https://theawesomer.com/cruise-ship-building-time-lapse/703507/
Star Wars vehicles’ speed in atmo.
https://theawesomer.com/star-wars-spaceship-speed-comparison/703353/
Ernie, the fastest milkman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e1xvyTdBZI
Yet people will always need coal. Good jobs, good times, good smells, good sense, coal! Mature Pleistocene campfire technology with all the bugs ironed out. Sexy smudged face. Black lung disease. Alcoholic claustrophobia. Comradery in dark stifling death. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JwoMf2f9FQ
On one hand, most people on Earth have to live like slaves and hundreds of millions are actively starving all the time, but on the other hand, this truly is a modern version of Jules Verne’s (zhoo-VEHR’s /Nautilus/. It can go 3000 miles before refueling, and submerge to 450 feet for days at a time. So incredibly cool.
https://newatlas.com/marine/u-boat-worx-nautilus-submersible-superyacht-interior/
An A.I.-generated spaceship Nautilus. (via Fark)
https://twitter.com/pickover/status/1649483144934858756
ChatGPT cheat sheet. (via Cliff Pickover)
https://twitter.com/pickover/status/1647963055433691138/photo/1
Kids ensnared in an antisocial dream world of Jewish beatnik art and puerile hypersexualized fantasies of agency, revenge and magical powers. Comic books! That’s how it starts! Superman punching a bank robber, then Swamp Thing, then House of Mystery… First, medicinal wine from a teaspoon, then beer from a bottle!
https://a.1stdibscdn.com/ruth-orkin-1921-1985-american-photography-comic-book-readers-west-village-nyc-for-sale/a_215/a_83229621623953646706/Ruth_Orkin_Comic_Book_Readers_NYC_1947_PDNB_Gallery_master.jpg
Church ladies.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-messiest-easter-play-ever.html
Real-life Darling Mermaid Darlings, performing in the building across from (and upstairs from) Torchwood. In the Candyman Splash one, second video down, listen for the strange man clearing his throat.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2023/04/21/aquabatique/
Ancient Rome in twenty minutes.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/04/ancient-rome-in-20-minutes.html
Lou, Dot, Bud, Eckie, Wig and Chappie at Camp Moy-Mo-Da-Yo, 1944
https://www.vintag.es/2023/04/tufts-college-1940s.html
Or past-life of 1980s Hit and Run Theater Harry Rothman.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/04/melvyn-douglas.html
This reminds me of one time decades ago when Juanita was cutting her pet bird’s toenails, and though she was doing it painlessly/expertly, the bird was /screaming and screaming and screaming/ like a tube-amp-distorted harmonica. Juanita said, in a stern but amused Midwestern-aunt voice I never heard come from her before or since, “Oh, stop it. Anybody would think I was killing you.” I remember thinking, /Where did she first hear that? Did somebody say that to her when she was little, and what were they doing?/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kwTnMS9naw
What’s really wrong here is, the glass frame is not fastened down properly and it could fall and shatter. But people who are pissed off because they think this school-carnival game is sexually sick and inappropriate and a foot in the door for Satan (!), and who want the whole school staff fired for allowing it, are the ones with a screw loose. Or… wait… maybe the problem is one of disgust quotient. The game contestants’ tongues are forever separated, spectators know that, but the lizard part of their brains doesn’t know that. This reminds me of something I read years ago about how science has shown that right-wing authoritarian people, Evangelicals, racists, etc., are much more /viscerally disgusted/ by nearly everything than normal people are, and more driven by irrational primal fear in general. Even fear of their own thoughts, their own imagination, however stunted it might be. So they need to control others to keep them from doing and saying things that witnessing electrifies their misunderstanding and hatred of themselves. In a nutshell.
https://www.yaktrinews.com/news/education/parents-upset-over-whip-cream-licking-event-at-kennewick-middle-school/article_8539c602-d95f-11ed-8078-a78bd7a00e54.html
There! Are! Four! Lights!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk3EsXgXcyQ
And Dentologia: A poem on the diseases of the teeth (1833)
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/dentologia
Memo Of The Air 
The Fastest Milkman reminded me of The Happiest Milkman. https://youtu.be/TwgTQ68gHtI