I wish I was a mole in the ground

I'll be so glad when this election is over. Unfortunately, if 2000 is anything to go by, this election won't be over for a month or more.

I think we'll look back on the 1996 presidential election as the last normal one we ever had.

Origins of a Blues

Years ago I got into old blues tunes and one of my favorites was Muddy Waters' signature song, "Rollin' Stone", which came out in 1950. A year or two later I heard a song called "Deep Sea Blues" (I can't find the lyrics) done by someone named Tommy McClennan. It was from 1940 and it was basically the same song.

For years I wondered who the hell Tommy McClennan was and who wrote the song. My Muddy Waters album lists Waters as the author. I wondered if McClennan was actually Waters recording under a different name. Waters' real name was McKinley Morganfield. McKinley and McClennan are sort of similar. Kinda. Same guy?

Later, to confuse matters even more, I got a John Lee Hooker CD not that long ago with a song on it called "Catfish Blues", and it's the same song as "Rollin' Stone" and "Deep Sea Blues". The Hooker tune came out around 1950-51. Who wrote this damn song? (And the lyrics site I linked to above attributes it to Jimi Hendrix, who definitely didn't write it.

Well, yesterday I finally found an article on the song. The story ends up being far more complicated than I imagined.

Burnt Weenie Sandwich

The Zappa Bootleg Page reproduces the cover art of loads of Frank Zappa bootlegs. (I could really do without the Zappa midi music playing in the background though.)

Internet Crime Archives

Internet Crime Archives is a really irritatingly designed page (they even have midi music you can't turn off), but there's plenty of interesting information.

Build Your Own Seismograph

A few months ago I wondered if there was a simple way I could build a seismograph or seisometer to measure earth tremors. I finally did some research online and found out there's plenty of material on making seismographs or seisometers. And this page has loads of links on the subject.

Of course, I'll probably never build one.

Make Room for Dada

I can't remember if I've ever seen the Digital Dada Library before, but it's an amazing collection if you're interested in Dada. [Link via Metafilter.]

Gaaaahhh!!

File under: blog attrocities.

Ick

Groupie Central is a messageboard of supposed groupies telling of sexual encounters with various celebrities. It's... um.... enlightening.

Kiss my bitter ass!

Bitter Waitress is a blog featuring stories of cheap customers and celebrity behavior in restaurants.

Music for an eclectic world

Actual discs! Real tunes! has a oddball collection of .mp3's and Real Audio files. The selection isn't huge, but it's interesting. I recomend the two Burning Spear tracks, the Agrovators cut, and Rev. Robert Wilkins' "Prodigal Son", which was done by the Rolling Stones on Beggar's Banquet.

Open Source Audio

The excellent Internet Archive has a section called Open Source Audio with nearly 3,000 public domain recordings. Lots of old blues stuff.

Public Domain MP3s

Public Domain 4U has three or four dozen public domain .mp3's. It's mainly old country blues stuff like Charlie Patton and Skip James, but there's other things as well.

Question: Why were so many old blues guys named things like Blind So-and-So? Why were all those guys blind?

Finally

Hey Volume 22 finally made the Wayback Machine. I've been looking for it there for a year or more with no luck.

Search Requests of the Stupid

Yes, one again it's time to clear out the old stupid search request bin.

are there suppose to be a whole bunch of white bumps on my vagina?
Ahhh...ew.

spanking mom OR mother -monkey -brand -new -bdsm site:blogspot.com
If you find that blog, keep it to yourself, OK?

clowns frighten children
I've been saying this for years; why won't anyone listen?

na na nana sitting in the kitchen
Sometimes the internet confuses me.

pichers funny stuff that will make a seven year old light
I know of no humorous stories with anti-gravitational properties that are safe for children. Sorry.

poison dart frog market stats
I know the economy's bad, but I hadn't realized the poison dart frog market was in bad shape as well.

"No more small pee pee "
I'm proud to be the only site Google lists with that phrase.

generate nude men sign cartoon face breast flash
You do it first.

porno in north dakota
It's just like porn everywhere else except there's lots of snow.

Reflexology & goes on a rampage
Sometimes I love the internet.

wanking for fun and profit
Hell, I've been doing it for free all these years.

Internet Explorer grannies who like sex
But I use Firefox.

lyric "na nana na" 90's
The internet makes me sad sometimes.

we got smelly ear's
Well, good for you. Now go away.

naked school teacher pee "in front of class"
Teachers sometime have to resort to extreme measures to get students to pay attention these days.

you are, your ISP , s you are running on, your cover's blown
Sometimes the internet scares me.

Dukes of Hazzard, spanking
Uncle Jesse had to keep order some kind of way and spanking was his best idea.

il.kim porn.
OK, the search results for this just make me look unbalanced.

Groggy

Ugh, people. Why do I often feel so lousy after I wake up? And, no, I'm not hungover. Nor am I ill (at least not physically).

I wish I had a sort of temporary oblivion chamber. It'd be someplace where I could just shut myself off for a long period of time. I'd probably have to be sedated and maybe have an oxygen mask. I imagine I would also need to be fed intravenously and I would have to have a [shudder] catheter so I could get rid of wastes.

Well, it sounded like a good idea until the catheter bit. I don't want to get one of those.

Maybe I just need a good night's sleep.

Detail, horrible detail!

The Zoomquilt is an amazing work of collaborative art done in Flash. [Link via The Cartoonist.]

It's pretty amazing. Things come to mind like Escher, Dali, and The Exquisite Corpse, but those aren't adequate comparisons.

Altered books, etc.

A couple of days ago in my comments for the A Humament post, Cindy mentioned book altering, a subject I didn't know that much about. Surprisingly, there's quite a bit online about it. I'm not sure I like the idea of tons of people ruining books, but it's a fascinating subject and I do like a lot of the examples I've seen.

Art-E-Zine's Altered Books page is probably the best showing of what books look like once they've been altered. It's a graphics heavy site, so be warned.

Who would've known there's an International Society of Altered Book Artists?

Jenny's Altered Books has several galleries of her work, whoever she is. Nice stuff.

The Altered Book Main Page has galleries, tips, links, etc.

Apparently some people mail the books and let others work on them along some kind of altered book network. That, naturally, reminds me of Mail Art.

The Electronic Museum of Mail Art is probably as good as any place to start to see actual Mail Art.

MAIL ART 1955 to 1995: Democratic art as social sculpture is someone's thesis.

Fan Mail appears to be new works from over 150 artists.

A.1.Mail Art Archive is a new blog I ran across recently.

Mail Art sprang out of Fluxus. I've never really understood Fluxus, but then I don't think I've ever seriously tried to understand it.

More Randomness

The Icon Poet Creative Writing Toy takes a text you provide and replaces words with random syntactic equivalents. It sort of reminds me of the Oulipo's N+7 technique.

But is it a story?

Random Story Generator creates something vaguely resembling a story when you click a button.

Writing Machine

For many years I've dreamed of a writing machine that would spew out reams of interesting, uncanny prose; the Markov Textgenerator isn't quite it.

International Insults

Years ago in a thrift store I found a book called, The International Insult Dictionary. This book is apparently so out of print that I can't even find a mention of it online, but The Zompist Phrasebook is basically the same idea.

Example:
There's a corpse on the bed. Please change the sheets.
Il y a un cadavre sur le lit. S'il vous plaît, faites changer les draps.
Hay un muerto en mi cama. Por favor, cambie las sábanas.
Da liegt eine Leiche auf dem Bett. Bitte wechseln sie die Laken.

Linguistic Stuff

The sci.lang FAQ is interesting. OK, it's not. Nevermind.

Propaganda

Chinese Propaganda posters from 1963-79. [Link via Kingdom of Love.]

A Human Document

In 1980, British artist Tom Phillips published a book called, A Humument. So what, you say? Loads of people you've never heard of publish books you'll never read. Well, what makes it interesting is that Phillips took an obscure Victorian novel and painted over each page so that only a few words showed through, effectively finding a new narrative in an old book.

I've wanted a copy of this volume since I first read about it in the late 80's, but it appears to be both out of print and very expensive. I'll probably never get a copy, but it looks like Phillips' website reproduces the entire volume.

Subvertisements

Subvertise.org has many examples of subverted advertising, art, polical images, etc.

The Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia

The Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia has pages on Literary Forgeries, Fake Folks, Vandilism, Guerrilla Hacks, etc.

Hmmm...

there is a season: detourn detourn detourn.

Proof of mass stupidity

Dogpile's SearchSpy let's you view a real-time scrolling list of whatever people have been searching for. You can chose between a filtered or unfiltered version.

Blah

I'm having a blah day. Earlier I went for a walk and took some pictures and posted them at my moblog. Maybe I'll think of something to post here tomorrow. Or not. I don't know.

Collaborative Fiction

Ever feel like writing a novel or long story, but didn't feel like going through the trouble to actually write it? No? That's just me? OK. Anyway, Snoot's collaborative fiction page lets you write, and vote on, candidates to add to a continuing story.

They also have a binary fiction page where you can chose between different options at various points to change the direction of the story. And aparently you can add to these stories as well.

Porn How-To

Ever look at porn sites and marvel at the web design? No, me neither, but just play along. At Graphix & Web Design Zone "you can find all the information you need to be a successful, innovative designer for todays fast moving Adult Design Arena." They have tutorials, free graphics, and god only knows what else. (Oh, in case you were wondering, it's not safe for work because it's, you know, porn.)

Germans

I found this a couple of days ago. Is it Germans into cosplay or just Germans being...um, German.

A Legal Conundrum

It's against the law to take illegal drugs, and it's against the law to steal, but is it against the law to steal illegal drugs?

New Invention

I've got an idea for a new invention: disposable toilets. Now before you dismiss this idea as stupid, hear me out. The disposable toilet wouldn't require cleaning; you'd use it once and throw it away. It'd be constructed similarly to paper cups: wax-coated paper or cardboard. I can imagine a dispenser filled with them in every bathroom in the world.

OK, now you can dismiss this idea as stupid.

Songwritin' the easy way!

Use Greg's Country & Western Song-Writing Machine and you'll be playing at the Grand Ole Opry in no time. Maybe not.

Here's my song, called "I Wanna Whip Your Cow"

I met her in the Stone Age wrestlin' gators;
I can still recall that plastic nose she wore;
She was smellin' kind of funny when she shot me,
and I knew that I would upchuck on the floor;
A Klingon said I'd stay a dwarf forever;
She said to me that Rolaids made her high;
But who'd have thought she'd bobsled with a robot;
She freaked out on the lawn and screamed goodbye.

Useful or useless?

Markov Monkey Random Text Generator.

It's wrong, I tells ya!

Ah, the things one finds on the internet. Who knew there was a site devoted to sock monkeys having sex? Needless to say, it's not safe for work.

Useless, but slightly amusing

Like a lot of websites, the page for Sri Lanka's US embasy has a search feature, but this one displays all the particular searches for a particular letter. Like this one for the letter d. Why, I ask, would someone search the Sri Lankan embassy website for dog birthday parties? And why would the actual Sri Lankan embassy in the US use such a cheesy search engine?

Overalls? Chowder?

I was poking around the excellent Project Gutenberg yesterday and found an .mp3 of a recording from 1901 called, "Who Threw the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy's Chowder?" It's not even from a record, it's from a Edison cylinder. Most amusing. Put it on your iPod and astonish your friends. Or not. I don't really care.

Update: Here's the lyrics.

Jazzmaster

See The Higher Evolution of Off-Set Waist Guitars: A Tribute to Fender's Jazzmaster and Jaguar Guitars for way too much information about Jazzmaster and Jaguar guitars. [Link via Guitarz.]

I'm still kicking myself for not getting that used cream colored Jazzmaster I saw hanging in a local guitar store back in the late 80's. A few months later I got my much loathed Rickenbacker 480 for $200. But since I have the musical talent of a narcoleptic baboon, it doesn't really matter at this point.