A break

I think I'm going to take a blogging break for about a week. Maybe my new brain tonic will be working by the end of the week and I can once again stand the idea of blogs.

Monk Time!

A few years ago I found about a weird band from the 60's called The Monks. They wore only black, had ropes around their necks, shaved the tops of their heads like some monks do (did?), and played particulary crazed tunes. I never could find any of their music, but recently I found The Monks Official Website, which has a biography of the band, reviews, photos, and a few songs available for download (unfortunately in RealAudio format). Strange stuff.

And how was your evening?

I've felt very leaden over the past month or so. At times all I want to do is lie on the couch and watch TV, the problem is there's nothing on TV. I have a satellite dish and get around 100 channels, but there's little on that I actually want to see.

Last night I found myself stretched out on the couch like a zombie, mindlessly flipping through the channels. And there was nothing but garbage on: home improvement stuff, sports dreck, shopping channels, stuff I've already seen, etc.

There's ten or so religious channels, most of which are fundamentalist ranting of the sort I was raised with and am quite sick of. I zipped through those channels quickly. I paused on the Mormon channel for a bit, but didn't have the slightest idea what they were talking about. Then I hit a Catholic channel with an elderly nun doing Hail Marys or whatever (I'm not Catholic) to a room filled with younger nuns. As she droned on, the camera would periodically scan the room and show the faces of the younger nuns, but mostly it was frozen on the very old, very dull nun. An attractive younger nun's face briefly appeared on the screen and I perked up a bit. Perhaps a bit too much because I ended up lying there thinking, "Show the nuns! Show the nuns!"

Smashing Boutique

Early last year I came up with an idea for a business where people could go and relieve stress by smashing things. Today I found out that in Spain there's a scrapyard that will, for a fee, let stressed out Spaniards take a sledgehammer to various items.

All my bizarre ideas end up existing. I should come up with something really stupid like edible furniture. [Link via The Presurfer.]

Found photos. Free pie

Big Happy Funhouse is a photoblog made up entirely of found photos. Weirdly hypnotic.

Breaking wind

Breaking Wind: Legendary Farts collects "folktakes about flatulance". Seriously. My own personal favorite is General Pumpkin.

Strolling down the highway

Time Has Told Me collects a bunch of Nick Drake .mp3's. As far as I can tell, it's mostly covers, but if you like Nick Drake, worth digging into.

What?

Solipsistic is a peculiar assemblage of old photos and Dada randomness. [Link via Monkeyfilter.]

Every working day

Honey, Where You Been So Long is a yet another one of those new fangled .mp3 blogs all the kids have these days. This one features pre-war (as in WWII) blues. [Link via The Leptard.]

Not in my lunchbox

Cock O'lada is "the first drink out of a cocktube." What's a cocktube, you ask? Do you really want to know? (Not safe for work.) [Link via Fleshbot.]

Old cameras

The Yashica Electro 35 & Rangefinder camera user Homepage would've been really useful to me seven or eight years ago. Back then I found a Yashica Electro 35 in a thrift store for $20. It was my first "serious" camera, but the camera was so battered it looked like someone had used it to hammer nails. But it worked. It also had sand in it. I still have it and it still works. They're great cameras.

Legendary Lester

A few days ago I found an old interview with guitar legend Les Paul from 1977.

Odd music

Oddmusic "is for anyone interested in unique, unusual, ethnic, or experimental music and instruments."

My favorite section is the gallery where they list various weird instruments and have sound samples.

Emulators!

EMU-Russia is a site with darn near a gazillion questionably legal old video game ROMs to download and play on your PC in your favorite console emulator. Now I can play Super Mario Brothers again.

Sock blog anyone?

Niqkita's Sock Journal is a blog about socks. Really. Socks.

A few days off

Since my two year blog anniversary a few days ago, I've been taking some time off from the blog. Since I'm elderly, I need my rest, as does my very elderly blog.

Two Years!

Today's the second anniversary of this blog. I'm surprised it's lasted this long. And I have no idea how much longer it'll last.

Two years is a huge amount of time in the blogging world where blogs typically only last a few months before the owner gets bored. It took me a bit longer to get bored, but I was too stubborn to stop.

If you're curious about what Volume 22 looked like in the early days, here's a link to earliest version at the Wayback Machine. (And, yes, I did post these same two links a few weeks ago.)

Thanks to all of the people who've read, commented on, and linked to this blog over the past two years.

3-way collision

Yesterday I was in a discount department store and found myself in the toy isle. But on the other side of the isle was pet products, and a little further down, rat poison. Call me crazy, but these three types of items strike me as things that shouldn't be together.

Spanking Machine

Finally, someone has invented a spanking machine: "Robospanker is the world's first robotic spanking machine. Created by DD Machinery, Robospanker is one of the most unique and fasinating adult toys on the market. DD Machinery was founded in 1997, and has for years been the pioneers in the research and development of fine new bondage products." (Needless to say, this site isn't safe for work.) [Link via Fleshbot.]

New Invention

I came up with a new invention this morning: the hovercraft toilet. It's not a hovercraft that has an onboard toilet, it's more of a toilet that's also a hovercraft.

How long have we have had indoor plumbing and flushable toilets? A hundred or more years, right? Well, it's just not that impressive anymore being able to flush stuff away. Going to the toilet is boring. You sit there, do your business for awhile, and eventually you get up and flush it away. How dull. Of course, you can read, but that's still a bit boring as well. No, it just won't do. Going to the toilet needs some excitement. We need the hovercraft toilet. And we need it now more than ever.

Ideally, the unit will be about the size of a rowboat or smaller. Naturally, it will be enclosed for privacy because you can't have people zipping around their yards on a toilet for everyone to see. What would the neighbors think? It will also need safety features such as seat-belt, roll-bars, airbag, headlights, break-lights, turn-signals, rear-view mirrors, and possibly even a parachute.

What I need to do now is draw up some plans and see about getting some investors interested so that we can build a working prototype.

Proto punk aquatic lifeforms

A band I've been curious about for at least ten years are the Electric Eels. They were an obscure early to mid 70's Cleveland proto punk band that were supposed to be unbeliveable. I first read about them in Jon Savage's excellent, England's Dreaming. I never found anything by them, nor did I ever make any huge effort to look.

Anyway, yesterday out of the blue, I decided to look online and found out there's an official Electric Eels site with photos, a history of the band, and even an album for sale. Suddenly they didn't seem so mysterious. They also have .mp3's of "Cyclotron" and "Aggitated". "Cyclotron" is glorious, genuine punk before there was such a thing. "Aggitated" sort of reminds me of a slowed down version of Black Flag's "Wasted" circa 1978. (Oddly, these two songs were released on a 45 in 1978, three years after the Eels had broken up.)

Strange tales

The Anomalist features links to news stories from around the world on various unexplained phenomena, strange discoveries, etc.

Ruins

Modern Ruins Photographic Essays has at least 20 different galleries of different abandoned sites. My own personal favorite is Hospital X, a creepy old hospital that still has lots of old equipment in it. [Link via Metafilter or Monkeyfilter and I don't feel like digging around to find out which.]

Shrunken heads anyone?

Head Hunting: History of the Shuar has pretty much all you'd ever want to know about shrunken heads. Lots of gross pictures, too.

AARRGGHH!!

OK, that's enough! I'm done with civilization. From here on out I will live my life underground in tunnels I'll burrow in a secluded site in the woods. My life will be like that of a giant mole. I'll have no more truck with your silly above ground laws and your crude sky-god. Do whatever you want, it has no meaning for me anymore.

Get Medieval

I'd liked to have had a interesting or suitably horrifying election day story to regale you with, but the whole experience was rather mundane. I didn't see any Republican and Democratic lawyers challenging anyone's right to vote. There were no arguments. There were no claims of voter fraud or intimidation. Nothing. The only thing out of the ordinary was that I had to stand in line for a lot longer than usual. And since it's unseasonably hot, I got to bake in the mid-morning sun for about 20 minutes.

I vote in an elementary school, and when the line finally moved so that I was actually inside the building, I noticed a full-sized suit of armor standing in a corner. It was holding what appeared to be a real sword that was over a yard long. I couldn't imagine having a suit of armor in my elementary school when I was growing up. We would've destroyed it. And I don't even want to contemplate what some of my classmates would've done with a sword.

Let's get primitive

Prehistoric Music Ireland features a history of prehistoric Irish instruments and they also sell several types of reproductions. [Link via The Presurfer.]

Foiled again

Yesterday at Metafilter I saw a post about the old "Trick Donkeys" puzzle. I've had a small cardboard version of this puzzle for eight or nine years and never could figure it out. (I'm a moron.) I finally got it yesterday after an online hint.

There's also a really cool version done in Shockwave.

Free Blues

Saturday I found a nice selection of old blues .mp3's.

Early Recorded Sounds

As far as recorded sound goes, it doesn't get much more primitive than tinfoil.com. They have a wide selection of the earliest known recordings and Edison wax cylinders. They actually have a recording from 1878. It's unintelligible, but still, it's 125 years old!

Old Classic Hindi Songs

Old Classic Hindi Songs has a ridiculously large selection of, yes, old classic Hindi songs in .mp3 format. Many of these recordings are from Indian films.

It takes a worried man

I'm not huge on the Carter Family, but they are an fascinating and very historically important American musical group. If you're interested in sampling their music, The Carter Family, Guitar Chords and Lyrics quite a few .mp3's. [Link via gmtPlus9.]