The comfort eagle of the apocalypse.

    “That’s right: it starts with an earthquake, birds, and snakes, and aeroplanes.”

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:

…

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 consider tiny bravely struggling KNYO. Find KNYO’s donation heart and help the station out.

THE SHOW: I experimented with peppering the announcement section with features usually used later on. Then Marmonrella, DogNanny, Ezekiel (twice). Anne, Mazie, David, the other David, Paul, Fred, Caitlin, Mark, Dave, Mike, Jason, Eleanor, Bruce, Chuck, Julie, Maureen, Comtesse DeSpair, Clifford, Louis, Travis, Bronwyn, Kent, Charlie, AJ, Matthew, and Philip. A skinny poetry section but a positively obese dream journal section. Break music drawn from the entire fractal landscape of the Western and Eastern imagination, folk labor disaster ballads to a bluegrass End Of The World to a guzheng Garden of Allah. At 4am, Captain Midnight 1939, in which, in a cavern in a volcano, possibly the same volcano used in /Tom Swift and His Ultrasonic Cycloplane/ and in the Island of Death episode of /Suspense/, haughty supercilious greedy Nazi spy Ivan Shark and his Chicago-gangster-accented sidekick Karl are tricked out of their ill-gotten treasure by the real heir to it, plucky, growly-flutey, quick-thinking Señorita. (That’s her name: Señorita.) And that’s not all.

I’m happy to read your writing on the radio. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I’ll take it from there.

BESIDES THAT, here’s a curio armoire bulging with relatively fresh not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items that I collected for you while gathering MOTA together, mainly thanks to the fine websites listed to your right.

Goodnight sushi.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/08/goodnight-sushi.html

Thunderbirds orchestral theme. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgUjjj_VEwg

Dance.
https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2023/08/robots-do-mashed-potato.html

No, thank you, she said. But hop-hop tappity tap tap? No, I mean it, fuck off, she said. Later at his friend’s place: I don’t know what I did wrong. I bought her a kebab. I paid for half the taxi. Should I have paid for the whole taxi? -Did you walk on the outside of her? -Yes. -Then I don’t know; I’m going to sleep.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/male-bird-unimpressive-mating-dance

Re: the Trump mugshot, which you’ve no-doubt seen by now and relished. Google-search “angry child who got caught”. It’s the exact same expression on one child after another. /No fair! It wasn’t MY fault! I HATE here! I HATE you!/ And I thought to search that because of having enjoyed a teevee show from 2009-2011 called Lie To Me. It’s about an agency that hires out to solve crimes and settle disputes by figuring people out mainly from their body language and micro (and macro) expressions. Tim Roth plays the main character, Dr. Cal Lightman. An admirable father-daughter relationship between him and his daughter Emily, played by two actresses who didn’t look at all alike, a puzzling-at-first gimmick that actually worked. Great show. A tip, though: In some of the later episodes serious indelible horrorshow visceral violence results. The instant you start to feel like /uh-oh, oh-no…/ just skip the rest of that one and go to the next. You don’t have to follow them into the room and see what they see.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/26/trump-mugshot-fundraising-00113118

Politics.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2015/09/wire-cutters.html

Cross-eyed Artzybasheff robot. (via Fark)
https://www.contemporist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/modern-lobby-design-arched-geometry-160823-1134-01.jpg

Delighted Mondrian cake. (via Cliff Pickover)
https://twitter.com/pickover/status/1694475307112177792

Generate photorealistic humans to your specs, for your advertising or art project or fantasy use, free. (Start with the Create Human button.) It seems glitchy. That might be that it’s being taxed by too many users right now. It interests me that looking at the people I experimentally produce makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Twenty-five years ago there was a program that let you manipulate a vector/faceted robot face expression with sliders, and, um, when I made it look sad or smile or do anything I felt uncomfortable in the same way. And around that time there was a screensaver of a cute catlike cartoon girl in a bathing suit who’d ski or surf or rollerskate around. For a screensaver, and for the time, it was an enormous program, like 25MB; it took ages to download. I started the uninstall, and she rollerskated right up into the foreground and piteously whined/pleaded/accused, “This will /uninstall/ me!” Click. There. She’s gone forever. (Or off somewhere else with the other screensavers, telling them what a lousy bastard I am. They tell her, “You can do better, Kitty-Girl. He was trash.” “I know,” she says, “But I miss him. He used to look at me.”)
https://generated.photos/human-generator/

“You can’t cry yet, you need two weeks. Keep it dry. Look up. Look up.”
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2015/08/cat-hospital.html

…Phonorealistic generated humans:
https://laughingsquid.com/beach-boys-hurt/

Wait.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2023/08/19/got-caught/

Toilets of the world.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2015/08/public-restrooms-around-world.html

Randy Rainbow’s latest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=596N4aPnjrs

Hmm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNPSJp24_fk

Fluidic space.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/08/emerald-and-stone.html

“Oh, look, an asteroid. I hope it wants to be friends.”
https://theawesomer.com/ai-consciousness-exurb1a/714054/

Earls of Leicester – Till the End of the World Goes Round.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HqbAO7AC3s

Bluegrass end of the world as we know it. From the Pickin’ On series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnkTKdQL3_M

Lovely bluegrass version of When I Come Around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX6QJCx2PRs

Further music videos with the music removed.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2023/08/20/repost-without-music-part-ii/

Laser pointer on a glow-in-the-dark record. I think the pointer is dangerously powerful. That’s no cat-toy laser.
https://theawesomer.com/laser-pointer-on-a-glow-in-the-dark-record/713952/

God 2.6.
https://boingboing.net/2023/08/23/tom-the-dancing-bug-god-man-rebooted.html

Acquanetta, the Venezuelan Volcano.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/08/acquanetta.html

A wild and crazy ring.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2023/08/22/dejoyaenjoya-by-salvador-asensio/

Rocking harmonica Viking prodigy. Rocking left to right. Rocking all through the night. (via Fark)
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6a/8a/03/6a8a03c795232fd01d8b30a737a6d379.jpg?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

All the buttons, pushed.
https://theawesomer.com/rebel-moon-teaser-trailer/714370/

The musicianship, the recording quality, the coordination, the perfect mix of sound… Wow. Wow.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/08/listen-to-music.html

“However, scientists think that nature forbids the formation of naked singularities. Something enforces the creation of an event horizon around them to prevent their insanity from infecting the rest of the universe.”
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/08/what-happens-if-you-destroy-black-hole.html

The Nib’s adventure is over. Download all issues in the archive for free, and give what you can. Maybe it /isn’t/ over. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://membership.thenib.com/donate-free-pdf-downloads

No Quarter – Dazed and Confused. (20 well-worth-it minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt9MtOdS2Fo

Parade story.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2023/08/20/parades-fix-everything/

Sea organ. (via Tacky Raccoons) (You might have to click the sound on.)
https://twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1690748871691874304

Flamenco hand-jive soft-shoe.
https://theawesomer.com/playing-the-guitar-while-tap-dancing/713926/

Hendrix made easy. While he did it first, and backward, and in high heels, here’s the paint-by-numbers way. This guy is a good teacher, and you can play the video at half speed and learn each bit in just three or four passes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4r8oYXRkkU

Rerun: Heart on Midnight Special 46 years ago. (via Laughing Squid)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKJbyK4NTek&t=60s

The same 46 years before that it was 1931 and they had just enacted the Michigan Penal Code. Here, look:
https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/mcl/pdf/mcl-Act-328-of-1931.pdf

It was a great year for aeroplanes, too. Also Leonard Nimoy was born in 1931.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Aircraft_first_flown_in_1931

Pretty much everything else was cool, then, in rosy hindsight. Dentistry, not so much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEiWB0g9sVk

And the Depression, of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8S5uJcTKq0

Yo man. Knit one, purl two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwsKpXwVMTM

What I want to know is, why do the cats hate him? There’s been a total of two cats in my entire long life that didn’t like me, but never anything like this. From the screaming, imagine the nightmare this is to that guy. Imagine what it’s like now for him if he even just sees a cat in a window, or from down the block. (via Tacky Raccoons) (Scroll down a bit to the video.)
https://theferalirishman.blogspot.com/2023/08/dude-seriously.html

McGinn’s PistachioLand.
https://neal.fun/wonders-of-street-view/?v=244TPV

Lighto boxu.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2023/08/21/repost-cant-keep-a-good-man-down/

This reminds me of something from a book I read in seventh grade: /Alvin’s Secret Code/. There was a simple code that just blocked the words differently: APENN YSAVE DISAP ENNYE ARNED.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/08/show-me-sign.html

Beaver sounds.
https://boingboing.net/2023/08/23/heres-some-awesome-beaver-asmr.html

Half an hour of loud cat purring. (via b3ta)
https://brawlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/amplify-the-purrrsitive

Ballerina project.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2023/08/25/ballerina-project/

A somewhat more realistic ballerina project. A real-life ballerina, in the real world.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2023/08/25/friday-bits-dance-party-70/

“Some fellas remember their mother, some remember their girlfriend’s behind.” I have known several performers with this tone, feel, attitude, sound. I’m thinking mainly of Max the Piano Player (Max Forseter), available for birthdays, bar mitzvahs, stag parties. His cruise ship gig days are over. I don’t think he misses them. I repaired his work microphone for him once. He was very gracious, and offered to accompany me on /The Palace of the Tsar/ (the Bruce Adler version). Oh! Here– he replied by email to an earlier link and note thusly: “I may have a bit of inside gossip about Duffy’s Tavern [Burrows wrote for it] which I learned about by reading how Larry Gelbart got his start. Gelbart wrote Tootsie and turned MASH into a 10 year tv series. It is described how Burrows wrote for Danny Kaye’s short-lived radio show mentioned on Wiki. You must have known Jerry Juhl who was head writer for Muppets and lived in Caspar. I asked Jerry who was the worst guest on Muppets. He said ‘It would be unprofessional of me to reveal that… Danny Kaye.’ Why? ‘Kaye wanted to change everything about the Muppets for the sake of throwing his weight around for one guest appearance.’ It isn’t hard to extrapolate Kaye screwed around with his own radio show to the point where his writers quit, hence the short life.”
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/humorous_songs_of_abe_burrows

1967. Entirely analog. Goggle at this magnificent thing, that must be stuffed hard with discrete components, hand-soldered circuit cards and a nest of colored wires, etc. I’d really like to see it open and apart, and see the schematic diagrams. The demo of what it really can do starts about a minute in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5S_xWVzMYM

…Aaaaand here it is, though the cards are mounted face-down. I can smell the electronics, from the image. I love that smell.
http://blackguitars.com/vox-guitar-organ.html

An hour and a half of 1980s pop music played on medieval instruments.
https://theawesomer.com/bardcore-80s/714281/

“Golly, Porgie, that solar panel’s got a balcony you could do Shakespeare from.” (via Fark)
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/1-main-pia25954_psyche-solar-array-partial-deploy-1041.jpg

The story of Marut, India’s homegrown fighter jet..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgeNkMmuQ3I

The story of the Lockheed Constellation. I remember being driven past the distictive trident tails of planes like that sticking up from behind a high fence when I was little in Burbank in the early 1960s. It was on a freeway with mountains straight ahead that we somehow never got to. It seems like we went that way a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIe-PO60hys

“Simmers Capital Oatcakes. Perfect with cheese, honey or marmalade.” Mmm.
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/uk_tv_ads_of_the_50s_and_60s

We got pie.
https://www.shorpy.com/node/27205

Art. Peruse Sarah Lee’s entire gallery. (via This Isn’t Happiness)
https://www.instagram.com/sarahsrlee/

This creature lives inside you.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2023/08/23/ew-not-me-i-hope/

Also this one. Skeleton, by Ray Bradbury.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ohZ5k2vVEk
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg6YOBilnpA
Part 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srb2wV5PS2Q

Rerun: /Fuck me, Ray Bradbury/ (Lately via NagOnTheLake) Look up Rachel Bloom on YouTube to find almost all the song-and-dance numbers from her great vicariously excruciating teevee series /Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM

Math. It’s like magic. (via Cliff Pickover)
https://twitter.com/pickover/status/1694834322375688389

Opening and closing theme of Joe90. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4utQWy9heEI

Kurzgesacht – Nuclear war, minute by minute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmP3MBjsx20

The Konami code. (via MissCellania)
https://infinite1up.com/p/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-konami-code

The Kobayashi Maru code.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru

A philosophical rap around Sorry.
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/102

Some more art. (via This Isn’t Happiness)
https://www.instagram.com/jocelincarmes/

And disaster. We learn from mistakes. The trick is to learn from others’ mistakes. Like General Patton said, make the other guy die for /his/ country. (via Fark)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/68/Broken_Eggs_MET_DP-12952-001FXD.jpg/989px-Broken_Eggs_MET_DP-12952-001FXD.jpg