Category: Out there

Start with a zebra fish. Extract the magical glowing gene from a jellyfish. Insert glowing gene into fish DNA. “Wallah,” beautiful glowing zebra fish. Now these Night Pearls have become a hit as pets in Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia. Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. fear contamination of the gene pool and have disallowed them, despite promises that all exported samples would be fully sterilized.

If you’ve been asking yourself: “What the hell is going on North Korea?,” look no further than this North Korean Physical Education Dance Video, which makes your junior high’s pep squad look sober by comparison. More sobering: North Korean anti-USA propaganda. Chilling, in more way than one.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in what oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but The wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig huh?

The 2003 Worst Manual contest winners have been announced. Who among us haven’t encountered amazingly bad instructions? But this bad?

1. Be tights part E with part I together by fitting M. Also can be installation handle part J in this side.

2. Be tights part D with part H together by fitting M. Like a step No. 1. And may be installation handle in this side too.

Honorable mention went to a manual for assembly of a baby bed:

To protect baby’s eyes offending by dazzling light; To prevent baby from dust.

And so on. No wonder people don’t read Joyce anymore.

In the 1940s, a chicken lived two years without its head. For reals. The incredible tale of Mike the Headless Chicken. Some kind of tie-in with baald’s chicken head helmet, the chickenfat song, the chicken transformation set, and Tim’s chickenfoot pads. Somehow connected to the original Superchicken: “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred”

Henry Cabot Henhaus III, the richest chicken in the world, and an amateur scientist, would drink the Super Sauce that his trusty side-kick and butler, Fred, would mix up. The Super Sauce would transform Henry into Super Chicken although it gave him no discernable powers. Thanks baald.

Urban Dictionary is the best place to look up words like “hodad” and “doofus” … Bill Maher: DVDs are for losers! … Standing on the bleepin’ moon … Gorgeous wagons (and other ephemera) … Etch-a-Sketch – hit spacebar to erase … Not fake news: Giant lizard terrorises Beirut … For someone who needs, nay requires unfettered, unbuttered, poeticized truth upside the head, dole out slackards — with parallels to Eno’s Oblique Strategies … Can a music snob learn to love the ‘Dead? … Disney and Dali collaborated on a movie “I have come to Hollywood and am in touch with the three great American surrealists — the Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille and Walt Disney” … Time for a rousing round of hipster bingo … New movie about Robert Anton Wilson, “Maybe Logic.” Now it turns out the good man is running for governor … Jesus has his own homepage … CSS Zen Garden … Howdy! … If you’re gay and you love NASCAR … Nicotinis being offered to smoking customers in Fort Lauderdale bars – soak tobacco leaves in vodka before shaking martini … So am I governor or not? … Telemarketing at midnight … 75 years of Band-Aid … George W. Bush – U.S. President and Naval Aviator – 12″ Action Figure … How to stick it to the man.

Birdhouse hosting customer pamitha turned me on to Renegade Craft, proving that embroidery ain’t just your mother’s enterprise anymore (see the vendors list). Over at Sublime Stitching, punk girls are embroidering classic tatoo art and fuzzy dice, and hawking atomic-age stitching patterns. Same tradition, new century.

For some reason, started thinking about The Banana Splits again recently. I watched a lot of them between ’69 and ’71, age 5-7, and they burned themselves into my wee brain. This was in an era when all the tripping hippies went to work for Hollywood and made mainstream TV psychedelic as well. And they did it before there was much in the way of special effects. Sid and Marty Kroffts was running Liddsville, HR Puff-n-Stuff, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters… all these amazing over-the-top sets and absurd costumes. The Banana Splits weren’t produced by the Kroffts, but they did design the costumes and sets.

Anyway. Recently looking through a family album and came across the picture above — me at age 7 in a leisure suit for lads, on a shag carpet with brother John, building the original Aurora model of the Banana Splits Banana Buggy (color pix of that box here). Like most boys, my models sat around for years, then I blew them up with firecrackers at about 13 or so. Would love to have that buggy back. RetroResin is apparently preparing to re-release it.

Joined the Banana Splits mailing list, and the very next day the guy who was inside the Fleegle costume joined the list as well. Amazing.

If your memory of the Splits is vague, listen to the Tra La La Song — it’ll all come back in a rush. Gotta find some videos or DVDs of the old shows, have a festival at home.

Flippin’ like a pancake
Poppin’ like a cork
Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snork

This is fairly old (1999) but very cool — Daniel Rozin’s Wooden Mirror uses an array of wood chips mounted on tiny servo motors which position themselves to reflect light in something resembling grayscale (woodscale?) in response to a processed image coming in from a tiny camera in the middle of the array. The result is a panel of wood chips that reflects the appearance and motion of the person standing in front of it.

This QuickTime movie is probably the best way to appreciate (catch the second half for close-ups). Can’t recall having seen digital technology used to create such a totally analog experience before. Runs on an old Mac 8600 AV, software written in a combination of C and Macromedia Director, of all things.