CHICKEN HEART! Thump-thump. Thump-thump

   “How dare you speak to me in that tone of voice! There’s murder going on in that place, I tell you, I know it as sure as I’m standing here! Research Institute? It’s a house of murder, that’s what it is! I’ve always known it was! Vivisection and torture and crimes against nature…”

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 fast-paced nearly-eight-hour Friday night shows’ most locally relevant material, going back decades. And consider KNYO, the Little Lion in Fort Bragg, California (soon to become Lindy Petersville, or The Palms, depending on democracy). Find KNYO‘s hidden shiny red donation heart and help the station out. It feels good to do it, and that feeling lasts a long time. It shows on your face and in your bearing, and people are attracted to you. A small but significant gesture to a worthy cause can change your life. Maybe it’s what you need to do.

This particular show has a couple of unusually long stories: Chapter 14 of Del Potter’s work-in-progress autobiography, the part about the LSD lab supply debacle that derailed years of work, and Eleanor Cooney’s /Tour Of Duty/, about the flying-phobia nightmare big-publisher publicity tour for her 2003 book /Death In Slow Motion/, about the years of caring for her Alzheimered mother, as she puts it, which coincided with the beginning of twenty years and trillions of dollars of ridiculous destruction and mass war crimes ten thousand miles away so a handful of obscenely rich arms manufacturers and military contractors could stay obscenely rich through their retirement years and for no other reason. And there are poems, stories, songs, health info, science breakthroughs in both the microscopic realm and outer space. Flynn Washburne’s true story about traveling to Mars as a child on the wings of his bossy sister’s contagious imagination. David Herstle Jones’ story about a restaurant cat from the point of view of the restaurant mice. Notty Bumbo, John Sakowicz, Manuel Vicent (translated by Louis Bedrock). A letter from Gaza by Ahmed Abu Artema, RD Beacon’s weekly peeved punctuation-challenged lament for a gone world, the Norm MacDonald (RIP) story of The Moth and the Podiatrist /and/ state-of-the-art A.I.’s pass-fair attempt to replicate the Norm MacDonald experience. Ezekiel Krahlin. Sebastian Iturralde. My dream journal. (I wish you’d send me your dreams, but apparently I’m the last person in the world who writes his dreams down anymore. Prove me wrong.) And so on.

I didn’t get a real nap before the show this time, so I was slogging throughout, and you can hear that. I made a number of embarrassing faux pas, chief among them putting on Patton Oswalt at 4:30am talking about movies for awhile so I could go fix dinner*, doing the time-math wrong and coming back to dead air, rookie mistake, but after I signed off I ran pause detection on the recording and had it remove all silences longer than five seconds. It’s a valuable feature of the barebones sound recording and editing program that I recommend: MP3 Direct Cut. It’s fast, reliable, easy to learn, and I’ve been using it since Ellie went on her book tour back in the Saddam days. The same company makes a folder-based music playing program that I like: 1by1. You can leave MP3DC recording for /days/ if you want to, edit and save fast, even files hundreds of megabytes long. In 1by1, make and run playlists and change them while they’re playing, and you can set it to auto-segue so when you click on something new before something else is over, it does the fade as fast or slowly as you want. Or have several instances of 1by1 open at the same time and overlap things playing. This is good for doing a radio show, running sound effects for a play, deejaying an event, driving long distance, enhancing a work environment. Both MP3 Direct Cut and 1by1 work in Windows and Android phones and tablets. I wish they worked in Linux, but swell enough is still swell and vice versa.

*Polish sausage cut up in mashed potatoes with milk, butter, garlic, jalapenos, cayenne, spinach, celery, red onions, not too much salt, and put the frozen peas in last, after cooking, so they don’t get mushy. And then ketchup and a little vinegar on top. And a glass of ice-water with lime and sugar substitute. After a week of getting material ready and an all-nighter on the radio, and your skin is buzzing, you’re so tired, this is a four-star treat. And then reading your book in bed for a few minutes, falling asleep to the sound of Juanita breathing freely in her sleep next to you, not struggling to breathe; it’s so good to hear. That’s heaven, right there. And then dreaming things.

I’d like 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. Just, if it has swears I have to wait till 10pm local time to read it. It’s a stupid law but it’s the law. Most of the show is after 10, so that’s okay too.

As usual, here’s a bunch of fresh not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items that I set aside for you, mainly thanks to the fine websites listed to your right. This is a byproduct of gathering the show together:

Show me a sign.
https://theawesomer.com/signs-short-film/719941/

Too much car. “Ridiculous,” he cries, exalted and transported. “Oh my God it’s so fast!” he says, thrilled and pleased with himself. Then, “No! AAAH!” [slide, spin, crash, roll, crumple] Then, “OUHGH. EUGHGH. GHHELPH!” he says. Just too much car. He’s a grownup. When you’re an adolescent any car is too much car. I don’t think you should be able to get a driver’s license until you grow out of this shit, even if it takes till you’re thirty or forty. Also I think: What a waste. That car cost twenty times what my car is worth. Twenty people could have a car to get to work and go places, but no, Speed Racer here had better plans for that money. And why not? It’s his money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp3LdgmZpD0

Too much feelings. Feelings spill over from this. I have no idea what they’re singing about and I don’t need to. I can imagine a hundred things, and I like that. I’m not even going to look up the lyrics and google-translate them. That’s cheating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clMg33x1_e4

When I was little I was entranced by cigaret lighters. All grownups had them, because all grownups smoked cigarets or cigars or pipes. The cars and trucks and cookpots and everything of civilization was a process of constantly pooting out clouds of smoke. And the people in that long-ago land entertainingly lovingly maintained their fascinating fire-starting contraptions, polished them, refilled them with the magic fluid that gave them life, replaced old flints from little slide-packs of flints sold at the grocery store near the vacuum-tube-tester bin they all had for people to fix their own teevees and radios with, even the grocery stores of that time, which were small and dim and kind of dingy (say DIN-jee) compared to stores now, and were all staffed by the family who owned the store, and who lived upstairs or in back. Anyway, here are some lovely lighters. Seeing them will make you want one. Of course if they catch you trying to enter a courthouse or auditorium or get on a bus with one of these in your purse or pocket or cheek-pouch (north or south) they’ll confiscate it for themselves and they might even take you in the back and question you harshly about your plans and political opinions, like they took away my folding pliers/multitool at the 4th of July freedom fireworks at the park that time, you know, where they shoot chaotic bombs over a crowd of men, women, children and babies, but a pair of pliers is a threat to life and limb. So leave the lighter at home to attract a child at loose ends between Gigantor and Fireball XL-5 to dig it out and investigate its mysteries and recapitulate the Stone Age discovery of controlled fire and carry on the tradition. Travis T. Hipp said, and I heard him on KZAP with my own ears, “A Saturn-Five rocket is just modified campfire technology.”

Ghost in the Shell locations, kind of. The anime, not the Scarlett Johanssen one. I liked /Lucy/. It goes with /Limitless/, which has Anna Friel, who I prefer to Scarlett Johanssen, though I’m not able to articulate exactly why. It might be just that the relationship between her and Lee Pace in /Pushing Daisies/ was so natural and sweet, though they could only kiss through a sheet of cling-wrap because if their skin touched she’d have to go back to being dead again, for keeps.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/10/ghost-in-shell-scenes-then-and-now.html

An attempt to reconcile the timelines in Rick and Morty. “You’ll get along fine. Everybody in this world is the same as you’re used to. Everything’s the same as in your original reality except here they say Parmesan cheese weird.” “How are we supposed to say it?” “Par-MEEE-zee-in.” “Ugh.”
https://laughingsquid.com/rick-and-morty-timeline/

Random photobooth snapshot collection. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://flashbak.com/love-plus-one-friends-and-lovers-star-a-joyful-album-of-found-photobooth-snapshots-464619/

Bill Hicks had something to say along these lines, that ended with, “And we kill those guys.”
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/520

The Onion explains the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECscKICzsJ0

Rerun: Hot Israeli army girls. And in the middle of all of them, Santa Claus parkour-flipping along battlement crenellations, for some reason. Hmm.
https://www.instagram.com/hot_idf_girls/

Spider ballet. “Now he does a little dance and then she won’t be mad.”
https://www.facebook.com/rick.small.54/posts/pfbid0PXcL29ASD6PV74sNDQD2HJKkmoQ9v2MX7SZVEgXK5jtCQtxQXdBFY2oEgMdbfFY5l

Duck.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/10/tweet-of-day_0474858615.html

Danny Boy. A true story. (via b3ta) (10 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDiFwuHXmX8

Trailer for the 1930s film Alice In Wonderland, starring Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Charlie Ruggles, Baby LeRoy, Sterling Holloway, Jack Oakie, Polly Moran, Mae Marsh, Charlotte Henry. And Edna May Oliver as the Red Queen!
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/10/alice-in-wonderland-trailer-1933.html

Art.
https://biblioklept.org/2023/10/17/sementi-agostino-arrivabene/

Art. Scroll down and down. I don’t know why but Firefox will only show me the topmost image anymore in Donna’s MOBT posts. If that happens to you too, Opera works fine.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2023/10/19/stella-tattoo/

“The taps on her shoes, Footman. They resound to a frequency produced by a peculiar alloy of aluminium and magnausium, manufactured in New York but shuffled off to Buffalo.” This woman is close to the same size and shape and pixiness as Laurie Anderson. It’s nice to imagine Laurie Anderson tapdancing like this. When I was five years old, my mother enrolled me in a storefront tapdancing school, where I washed out nearly immediately, already too horrorshow self-conscious to function, but that qualifies me to pontificate on the subject. Watch how I control myself from doing that. There’s nothing to criticize here. This dancer is a doll, a sprite. Like the once-ubiquitous cigaret lighter, see above, tapdancing could come back any time and the world would embrace it, the way the world embraces the spelling /cigaret/ again after poo-pooing for so long. And yes, poo-pooing, not pooh-poohing.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2015/10/michelle-dorrance.html

The Sing-Along-With-Khrushchev coloring book. That’s the accepted spelling, and say khh-ROOSH-tchefv. The first part is like starting to clear your throat. All together it’s a cross between a sneeze and a harrumph, like Khrushchev himself.
https://www.weirduniverse.net/images/2020/Khrushchov.pdf

I’m not at all into anybody’s self-mutilation, but this looks okay to me. I often dream of sympathetic people with black-hole eyes like that. Putting them that way in the real world, though, is risky and often results in complications including blindness, but it didn’t this time, so that’s done and over with. It was just one child who was frightened; that shouldn’t even be an issue. Kids get unaccountably frightened by all kinds of things. Pointy-edged eyeglasses, unfamiliar food, the sound of a particular laugh, a horn honking outside the window, a beard on a lady, etc. Get over it.
https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2023/10/not-allowed-to-teach-kindergarten.html

Is it cruel to use bees as sensors? It looks like it, yes, but they don’t kill them, and they let them go back outside and fly around afterward with their friends. Is it really any more cruel than making anybody do anything at all?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG-ZqO734tM

Let it go.
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/miss_frozen_foods

The fingers on the hands of time.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2023/10/16/clock-hands/

Wander around in the Int’l Space Station, examine this or that. On laptop or desktop, navigate using arrow keys, and by clicking on and dragging the image. Or try it with your phone, in the mode that lets you turn the phone this way and that to look this way or that. This is easily as cool as any cigaret lighter. And 3D computer graphics are just modified rubbing a balloon on a cat to get static electricity.
https://neal.fun/wonders-of-street-view/?v=neA9Nw

Chloe Firoanzo (say klo-ee fee-doh-AHN-zo) reminds me of my Aunt Jenny (of Aunt Jenny and Uncle Dave fame). Except Aunt Jenny wore very thick glasses that made her eyes enormous. Her eyes filled the frames of the glasses. And Dave’s ankles hurt so one or the other of his feet was always up on something. And he smoked cigars, the biggest cigars you ever saw. As big as a kielbasa.
https://laughingsquid.com/jazz-cover-enjoy-the-silence/

A facet of Stan Freberg’s career I’d forgotten about.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/10/stan-freberg-tv-spots.html

Moral panic in the UK. “The titles of the works themselves are a catalog of depravity. And the title of /Cannibal Holocaust/, well, that says it all.” CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. There, now you never have to say anything ever again. Saying things is done.
https://laughingsquid.com/jazz-cover-enjoy-the-silence/

It’s a good idea to memorize the dates and times of historical eclipses, so if you’re ever trapped in the past and about to be executed by superstitious savage peasants egged on by the local Sydney Greenstreet-like temple acolyte or feather-masked warlord or church bishop, just before they light the bonfire under the pole you’re tied to (with their lighter), you can tell them that in two (or five, or fifteen) years, on the homecoming of Odysseus (April 16, 1178 BC), or the one in Ugarit (May 3, 1375 BC), or whenever, you will return in vengeance, extinguish the Sun and cast the world into eternal darkness of demonic flux. Then when the eclipse comes, for about half an hour they’ll all be like, /What fools we were! What fools! We’re so sorry!/ A great trick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_October_14,_2023#/media/File:2023_annular_solar_eclipse_from_Winnemucca.jpg

Eclipse projected through trees. (via TackyRaccoons)
https://jericsmith.com/2023/10/14/the-prodigal-sun/

I’ve used up my allotment of articles for the month from the Wall Street Journal, but the looping solar flare at the top is free, as it should be; we all already paid for the space telescope.
https://www.wsj.com/science/environment/solar-storm-early-warning-system-b6324524

Dim sun. (via Fark)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_The_Sisters_on_the_Balcony_-_WGA8258.jpg

Renaissance (say ree-NAY-senss) UFOs.
https://boingboing.net/2023/10/17/988480.html

The future of the 1920s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL47-RIyj8E

The future we all really wanted. The future we could have had instead of the one we got.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/10/startling-stories-covers.html

Electromechanical pinball machines. How they work. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue-1JoJQaEg

And who knew? Spacetime is right-handed.
https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13688

God’s plan and purpose in the ages, diagrammed in wall charts of prophetic truth. (Scroll down to links to “Ten Free Clarence Larkin Bible Study Charts”. (va Cliff Pickover)
https://www.preservedwords.com/charts.html

Otakonme (oh-taik-on-me) on otamatone (oh-tah-mah-tohn) . (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjOyl6zS-eU

I thought of some: Mares eat oath. Quaker oath. Laszlot oath (first, deface no statues).
https://xkcd.com/2843/

“Danger. That’s my maiden name.”
https://theawesomer.com/saying-random-stuff-in-movie-trailers/719903/

Candle skeletons.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/pyropet-spooky-candles

Suzi Zipp’s friend Roberta Donnay made this song:
https://youtu.be/v9uUeAvznH8?si=VMPD4JX3KWYgyMoM

Here are some other One World songs I like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHhbeRJudY4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dZh34N1-yw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4iJH7rP_a8

Adelaide Hall – Creole Love Call.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa2p8FEz4Fc

Lucille Ball and Steve Lawrence – Hey, Look Me Over. From Wildcat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNhvqPPDyI0

Louis Armstrong – Hey, Look Me Over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q376JKc4Uo4

Andrews Sisters – Straighten Up and Fly Right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmjNIq49398

The Mel-Tones – Russian Lullaby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOo_ItbUop8

Tyler Childers – In Your Love.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2023/10/20/tyler-childers/

Biff Rose’s jazz funeral. (108 min.) (via Bob Woelfel of KTDE) It’s in portrait mode, and would only play the very middle of the picture, chopping off the top and bottom, until I full-screened it. If it’s like that for you, do that. This really drives it home. He’s gone.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=169523822817091&id=587643584&mibextid=qC1gEa

Wow! Wow! This is like the piano battle scene in /Legend of 1900/, but with fiddles. Fiddles of fury.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/10/music-for-sunday-morning_01656007195.html

Yet another in the category of women I would like to see swallow an egg.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/10/dolores-hawkins.html

When I was in fifth grade in Escondido in 1967-68, ten years before these kids got together, there were garage bands playing in their garages, hence the term. You could ride your stingray bike around for fifteen minutes and hear two or three bands that sounded a lot like this. It even had the shuddery-echoey reverb, from bouncing off all the other houses all the way down the block. They were so loud and so happy and the future was big and wide open. One person with one regular job could support a whole family and a house and take vacations in the mountains and they could go to the doctor any time they needed one. We were almost to the moon, where I’d be going someday, and I’d bring my little dog with me, who looked like the drummer in /this/ band.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/10/u2-in-1978.html

A comparison chart of two popular hole types.
https://xkcd.com/2844

My favorite is No. 25, the roofing company ad. But then 26– I dunno. 25 or 26.
https://www.boredpanda.com/home-design/architecture/ugly-suburban-homes-mcmansion-hell/

Washing instructions.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/10/washing-instructions_02013043336.html

Boonlips, angry hair, and huzzah!
https://tackyraccoons.com/2023/10/20/the-gif-friday-post-no-824-boonlips-angry-hair-huzzah/

Mad TV parody clips. (26 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4_mGEpA8c4

One way or another.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/10/one-way-or-another.html

Ice-houses.
https://peterfromtexas.tumblr.com/post/704923255235051520/drone-footage-shows-snow-hit-buffalo-l-abc-news

“My aunt died of influenza, so they said. But it’s my belief they done the old woman in. Why should she die of influenza when she’d come through diphtheria right enough the year before. Fairly blue with it she was. They all thought she was dead. But my father kept ladling gin down her throat. Then she come to so sudden she bit the bowl off the spoon./ Dear me!/ Now what call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? And what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it. And what I say is: Them ‘as pinched it, done her in./ Done her in, did you say? Whatever does it mean?/ That’s the new small talk. To do somebody in means to kill them./ But you surely don’t believe your aunt was killed?/ Do I not? Them she lived with would have killed her for a hat pin, let alone an entire hat!” Hats.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/10/victorian-hats.html

We got elegance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyxB0gWXCRQ

When nuns cut loose. Nuns gone wild. Fun nuns. Nuns of the Above. That’s all I got. You try.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/10/fun-nuns.html

“Linus and Lucy, take one.” (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OODA_K5hxyc

Peekaboo jump scare.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/10/tweet-of-day_0924433688.html

Meat power.
http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/meat_power

For, after all, they are made out of meat. Rerun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ

Red meat.
https://boingboing.net/2023/10/17/jordan-keppler-stuns-maga-man-into-dumbfounded-silence-video.html

Teamwork to transport meat. (via TackyRaccoons)
https://twitter.com/HowThingsWork_/status/1710848739571614124

Contractions’re weird. Not that one, but some.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2023/10/contractions-are-weird.html

Kepler’s trip.
https://thing.ridiculopathy.com/01-kepler/index.html

How heavy would you be in different locales on an Earth shaped like a doughnut? This link might not go to the right article within quora.com. It should show you a rainbowish-striped doughnut Earth. The colors correspond to the strength of gravity. Also, to stay a torus and not collapse into a sphere it would have to be spinning much faster than Earth spins and it still couldn’t do it, and the stripes would shift. But somebody asked, and this is a respectable answer.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-gravitational-field-of-a-torus-shaped-planet

Rerun: Life is a particle. Time is a wave.
https://theawesomer.com/life-is-a-particle-time-is-a-wave/719821/

Rock Lobster in System of a Down style.
https://boingboing.net/2023/10/17/a-new-take-on-rock-lobster-system-of-a-down-style.html

The Good Old Days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOaNMwJtbFI

Flipbook made of glass.
https://theawesomer.com/glass-flipbook-animation/719849/

Theda Bara, the What Girl. Her expression was always a flat “What.” She didn’t expect an answer. It’s a statement, not a question. You’re in a funny pose, or there’s something strange about the way you’re dressed, or you’re red-handed or about to be. You look up. Someone’s looking at you; you don’t know how long they’ve been looking at you. And you say, deadpan, What.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/10/theda-bara-cleopatra.html

Banquet Frozen Dinners ad. “I just put it in the oven, and by-and-by it was done. And I had a delicious buffet suppah —oh yes I did! Slices of turkey all covered with gravy, and little bitty giblets, DO YOU HEAR MEEEEE!”
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/10/banquet-frozen-dinners.html

Rachel Price – These Days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYcbZ25AgvE

Cat and Girl comic: Expats.
https://catandgirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2023-10-17-cgexpats.gif

I think she’s pretty, and I like the sound of her voice. That’s how old /I/ am.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coZGAR_GTtE

Money.
https://www.fark.com/vidplayer/13027222

Tim Minchin’s song about /not/ the Sydney Opera House.
https://www.neatorama.com/2023/10/19/A-Song-Celebrating-50-Years-of-the-Sydney-Opera-House/

Even yet more women I would like to see swallow an egg.
https://www.vintag.es/2023/10/ferdinando-sarmi.html

The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band – Jollity Farm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwksszrDYNw

Adelaide Hall again. At the Nightingale Club (1948)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jlfpAb3Uc8

Happy kids.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/10/nwe-jinan-artists-home-to-me.html

These guys again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7nUZ-hQvgM

Descartes a Kant – After Destruction. I like the JC-Penneys-window-display-girlscout-skirt-shaped guitars. And the musicians’ Germanic robotitude.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_igolfkQU0

And Buck and Bubbles. And a good day to you, sir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXBQAJsxzm8