Music: R. Crumb and His Cheap Suit Serenaders :: Make My Cot Where the Cot-Cot-Cotton Grows
Undulating Ceiling
Amazing shots of a “suspended ceiling” somewhere in Russia, catching water from leaky plumbing on the floor above.
Music: Cul De Sac :: The Moon Scolds The Morning Star
U.S. Americans
Twice Shy
Fun way to get your day started: Biking into work along the Ohlone Greenway this morning, suddenly felt a *thwap* against my teeth, followed a half second later by a stinging sensation in the lower lip. Durn fool bee (wasp? – never saw the critter) had flown straight into my mouth and wigged out when he hit my teeth, reacted by plunging its stinger into whatever it could find nearby. Toxin from the sting spread quickly into my lower gum, and the whole areas now feels like I’ve been visiting a dentist with very bad aim.
Speaking of dentists, heard a great idea for DIY fugu the other day — rather than risking your life with potentially deadly blowfish, just inject a slab of halibut with novocaine. Apparently it tastes very similar, and the anesthetic will give you that nice stinging/numbing/tingly sensation you get from the real deal.
Music: Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos :: Fiesta En El Solar
Hair Growing Hat
Before there were Shriners driving tiny cars in stupendous fezzes, before the advent of tinfoil-helmet-wearing denizens of alt.black.helicopters, before there was Rogaine and hair transplants and “Ladies will love you” infomercials, there were ordinary Joes just like me seeking ever-elusive hair re-growth methods. Available solutions were on par with perpetual motion machines – like this marvelous Hair Hat advertised in Popular Mechanics, 1928.
This new invention—the result of an experience gained in treating thousands of cases of baldness—is in the form of a new kind of hat. It is worn on the head just 10 minutes a day. No unnecessary fuss of any kind. Just put the hat on your head. Wear it 10 minutes. And that’s all there is to it. Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? All right. Then let me emphasize this fact. I don’t care how thin your hair is. I don’t care how many treatments you have taken without results. Unless my discovery actually produces a new growth of hair on your head in 30 days, then all you need do is tell me so. And without asking one question, I will instantly— and gladly—mail you a check refunding you every penny you have paid me.
How does it work? “My new invention gets right to the cause of most of hair troubles — the starving dormant roots.” I’m thinking the technology was more akin to the placebo effect, but who am I to say?
Music: Bruce Lash :: Small-hoping People
Buck Refills!
Standing in line with Miles for a soft pretzel at Marine World yesterday, found myself staring at big sign hawking a giant plastic bucket emblazoned with the MW logo, which one could fill with a choice of popcorn or cotton candy for a mere $7 (“Buck Refills all day!”) and thinking of Michael Pollan.
In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan describes the tricky relationship between capitalism and the food industry. You can always sell people more shoes or CDs – we just make space to accommodate them. But humans have a built-in limit to how much food we can consume. Food makers who have to satisfy shareholders’ demands on the bottom line to sell more [widgets/chalupas/corn products] every year have a tough job.
The tension between nature-limited appetites and capitalism’s need to expand, always expand, explains two things: 1) The obesity epidemic, and 2) The relentless introduction of absurd new food combinations in the drive to manufacture desire. Fast food joints re-conjure new variations on the same old limited palette of ingredients. Taco Bell sells little beyond tortillas, cheese, beans, and beef, yet manages somehow to find new ways to recombine them into Mongo Chalupas and Super Beefeater’s BurrTacos year after year. Fruit Loops Cereal Straws are drinking straws made of Fruit Loops material, lined with powdered sugar. Each suck of milk from the bowl brings a mouthful of sugared milk. When done, eat the straw. You see where I’m going with this.
The giant bucket is not a recombinant food creation – what could be more elemental than popcorn or cotton candy? The giant bucket represents the other kind of attempt to sell more food – gi-normous portions (is there a 128-ounce Coke portion available yet? If not, give it time). But it does represent an unbelievable markup on one of the cheapest food items you could possibly manufacture, with the possible exception of bottled water.
We resisted the giant bucket and enjoyed our pretzel, but the entire day at Marine World felt like equal parts pleasure and pain, this weird collision between enjoying the marvels of the deep blue sea (the people mover that carried us along the inside of a glass tube through a tank filled with sharks and sting rays was an experience of rare beauty) vs. a miasma of the most crass and offensive commercialism, not to mention the depressing weight of massive crowds, overpriced everything, and long lines for just about anything, was confusing.
Next time we either head for the tidepools ourselves or bring our own lunch (though park rules explicitly forbid this – wonder why?)
Music: The Avett Brothers :: I Would Be Sad
The RIOT Wheel
Tell me you don’t want one. “The RIOT Wheel is a huge, heavy motorized single-wheel vehicle, originally
built for Burning Man, the natural home of deviant vehicles.” The version currently being worked on is actually a hybrid (take that, Toyota!). The weight of the rider out front is counterbalanced by the weight of the engine, which hangs freely inside the wheel. An adjustable crane lifts the engine up and down, changing the angle of the dangle and thus its leverage. Apparently it’s steered by leaning, though it apparently steers like an oil tanker. Coupla videos here. Not too zippy in those vids, though inventor dude claims to be working towards a land speed record (his own, I imagine).
Music: Mahmoud Ahmed :: Belomy Benna
Alligator Foot, Kangaroo Scrotum, etc.
Scanning the Groundspeak forums for threads on the weirdest things people have found in geocaches, came up with a short list culled from several threads:
- A metal artificial hip
- A dime-bag
- A specimen cup
- A speculum
- Bottle rockets
- A $50 JCPenney gift card
- A large turd
- A turtle
- A stun gun (non-working)
- Religion
- A roach. Not the insect.
- A personal pleasure device for women (hot pink)
- A used Brillo pad
- An old sock
- A piston from a small engine
- A varnished alligator foot
- Surgical gloves
- Emergency water packets with instructions in Japanese
- A bag of molt from an iguana
- Mini chess pieces put in an ear plug case
- A urinal cake
- A plastic squeaky toy figure of a Nun in black robes
- Leopard-spotted furry handcuffs
- A kangaroo scrotum
- A pregnancy test kit
- A jar of the cache owner’s dog’s ashes (as a travelbug)
So far Miles and I haven’t been treated to anything quite so outrageous, though we have found some excellent items (a French wooden submarine model kit still tops the bill), but I look forward to the day when I’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.
The Nietzsche Family Circus
What’s more insightful and hilarious than a stack of Sunday papers with all the Family Circus cartoons cut out, sans captions? That same stack paired with a pile of Friedrich Nietzsche quotes, sans context. The Nietzsche Family Circus has it all: Guile and wit, philosophy of mind, charmless drawings paired with penetrating reflections on the will to power. So very hard to pick just one.
Steampunk Monitor
With breathtaking attention to detail, Jake von Slatt has created an amazing steampunk monitor and keyboard. See it all put together here. His RSS Sounder project converts well-formed XML to a mechanically clacking telegraph. The project description covers construction of the device in every detail, from cutting metal and winding coils to interfacing the Magpie RSS parser with text2morse. All so romantic!