Surreal Art

Oh wow. It's the surreal paintings of Vladimir Kush, Part 1. And also Part 2.

While we're at it, let's throw in the surreal paintings of Jacek Yerka.

I think my favorite is the trojan rhinoceros. Or the gigantic dragonfly inside a huge hall. Or the swans swimming in a maze...

Far out, man!

Two by Two, Hurrah! Hurrah!

Whilst websurfing I stumbled across an interesting piece at A Mule in the Chapter House. An account of an early childhood encounter with the sterile, soul-stifling forces of mid 20th century Liberal Protestantism.

And then people wonder why the Presbyterian Church nationwide has suffered a net membership loss of more than 45% over the past 40 years. As a Presbyterian minister, I'm just damn glad I'm located in a remote and traditional corner of the country where I don't have to contend with such self-dissolute nonsense.

Dang Liberal Protestantism. Millstone around the neck, depths of the sea, etc...

Human Spontaneous Invisibility

"In the summer of 1994, I became aware of a very strange phenomenon, human spontaneous involuntary invisibility, which was apparently happening to people in the U.S." Well, land sakes! It seems all sorts of folks are just turning invisible!

Steampunk Computer

Check out the steampunk computer this guy made!

The screen in an antique brass frame on a marble base is cool enough, but that hyper-retro keyboard takes the prize. And I to XII for the function keys F1 to F12... that really was a stroke of inspiration.

If you're looking for a cool interface with your Babbage engine...

(h/t Steven)

Up in Sky Kingdom

A flash movie. Yeah, vaguely Sixties. "Birds Are Brothers," what is that?! Check it out.

Welcome to the Blogroll

I recently added to my blogroll the pseudonymous Spengler, who writes a column for the Asia Times Online. Like his namesake Oswald Spengler, he is gloomy, erudite, oracular, sometimes wrong and often stunningly insightful. Though (as I see from his latest piece), don't let Spengler hear you call him creative!

Disease Mongering Engine

"Why let the drug companies have all the fun? YOU can invent diseases too!" Then get the FDA to approve your new dangerous and dubiously effective drugs, and make billions off of them!

Now you can run amuck just like Big Pharma! Yes, it's the Disease Mongering Engine!

(h/t Dwight A. via Greg W.)

The Illustrated Guide to Breaking Your Computer

Seriously. "Activity 1: Keyboard and power drill."

The Pope's Website

Yes, the Pope's website. Pope Michael I, that is. Over in Kansas, though I understand he's moving to Colorado.

You didn't know? Well, now you do.

Doo Doo, Doo Doo

Former science journalist now peddles sci-fi conspiracy theories...

The secrets of the Face on Mars! Put there by aliens, it holds, in the lines and angles of its geometry, the secret to infinite hyperdimensional energy. Why NASA denies its existence.

If I remember correctly from hearing this guy years back on Coast to Coast AM, he's also into the notion that NASA is working secret Masonic rituals, and scheduling its launches in sync with certain alignments of the stars, all in an attempt to placate wrathful aliens from the Pleiades.

Radio Luxembourg

If I'd grown up over in the UK, I'd associate the kind of music I love best with the English service of Radio Luxembourg. Classic rock and roll! The Beatles! This is a station that really was part of the history of rock.

As it is, having grown up on this side of the Atlantic, I have to settle for memories of seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.

Richard Nichols' Radio Luxembourg: The Station of the Stars is worth reading, if you can latch onto a copy. But the other day I discovered something even better: Radio Luxembourg's English service is back, and now you can listen to it online!

"The Legend Is Back!" If you're into the same kind of classic rock I'm into, you'll want to give it a listen!

Better Wear Your Tinfoil Hat

UltraSonics— America's Secret Police

Yes, UltraSonics— the top secret group which operates above the law, to terrorize innocent residents of New Jersey with advanced nonlethal acoustic weapons! Their evil conspiracy is revealed here, for the very first time— by a man who, for the past several years, has been persecuted by UltraSonics!

Hutt River Province

Since 1970 the Hutt River Province Principality has allegedly been a tiny independent country located in western Australia. H.R.H. Prince Leonard presides over the 75 square kilometer country, which is located about 600 kilometers north of the city of Perth.

Here's another Hutt River website. Here's the Hutt River Province "U.S. Home Page". And here's the Wikipedia article on the Hutt River Province. The tiny country has even issued its own coins. And its own postage stamps.

Strong Bad: Monster Truck

In this episode, Strong Bad is the announcer at a Monster Truck Show!!!

Strong Bad: Fingers

Why does Strong Bad wear boxing gloves all the time? How can he type at his computer keyboard?! In this episode, Strong Bad gets some fingers. Well, sort of.

Strong Bad: Japanese Cartoon

Strong Bad shows what it would be like if he was a cartoon character in Japanese anime.

Strong Bad: Fhqwhgads

"Come... on... fhqwhgads, I said come on, fhqwhgads, everybody to the limit, everybody to the limit..." Strong Bad stars in his own music video. Directed by The Cheat.

(BTW, that's pronounced f'ho-go-gosh. More or less. And keep an eye out for the JFK/Lincoln tie-in.)

Mindjack

Looks like Mindjack is back in gear. They've been running minor items on the sidebars, but the last feature article was back in May. Until I stopped by yesterday, and found a new feature article dated December 14! "The Telephone Repair Handbook," first of three parts, all about the cyber side of social networks.

"Mindjack: The Beat of Digital Culture." I just love these funky quasi-cultural-magazine sites. You know, sort of like those free local weeklies you'll find a stack of, near the cash register in restaurants and pizza joints in Ann Arbor, or Berkeley, or on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. Funky quasi-cultural-magazine sites. I wish I could find more of them.

Now if only Shift would return...

Strong Bad: Action Figure

Wow! What if Strong Bad had his own action figure?!

Strong Bad: Trogdor the Burninator

Strong Bad gives an art lesson on how to draw a dragon. Result: Trogdor the Burninator! Complete with music video. "Burninating the countryside, burninating the peasants...

"And the Trogdor comes in the niiiiight!!!"

Strong Bad E-Mail

If you haven't discovered Strong Bad E-mail over at homestarrunner.com, where have you been the past several years?! One of my favorite episodes features Strong Bad starring in that action-packed movie, "Dangeresque 2: This Time It's Not Dangeresque 1!"

And remember... Strong Bad always does all his own stunts, he never uses a stunt double! ;-)

Zombo.com

"Welcome to Zombo.com..."

(h/t Dean)

Juju Music on Radio Abeokuta

I happened to stumble across the website of Radio Abeokuta from Africa. "Yorùbá radio," coming to you from Abeokuta, Nigeria. More online audio and video streams than you can shake a stick at!

My favorite is their Shoutcast stream of Juju music. Hate to admit it, but I was up half the night listening to it— I'm getting too old to do stuff like that! You'll soon learn that one King Sunny Ade is a major figure in Juju music&mdash sort of like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones all in one. Also turning up frequently on the Radio Abeokuta playlist are Ebenezer Obey and Kayode Fashola.

I'm about as nonmusical as they come. But I rather like Juju music.

Dreams of Keys

For years, somebody has been keeping a "dream journal." Of nothing but dreams about keys. House keys, car keys, computer keys, musical keys. Tons and tons of weird dreams about keys.

Free and Legal MP3 Downloads!

I stumbled across this site, Epitonic.com, which offers a wide variety of MP3s for free download. I don't even want to think how many hundreds of megabytes I downloaded from this site yesterday.

Somehow I got into downloading trance music. Not that I pretend to know anything about trance music! Downloaded only a fraction of what they had available. What I found myself drawn to was stuff that sounded like a hard-driving, percussive, almost tribal version of the Beatles' Revolution 9. Now all I've got to do is resist the temptation to order every CD offered for sale by Ceiba Records...

Also found tons of free MP3 downloads on Download.com, but only a few of them were keepers. Whereas the stuff on Epitonic.com was almost uniformly of high caliber.

Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger

This is no doubt the greatest flash video about badgers, mushrooms, and snakes that I've ever seen.

Emotional

Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, annoyed [sic], etc. You can "make a request" for an emotion for Eric to convey, and he will add it to his "pending list," at Eric Conveys an Emotion.

Me, I'm waiting for Eric to convey the requests, "Allergic to vertical blinds" and "Drinking out of the wrong bottle"...

NewsTalk 890 WLS

My favorite talk radio station for many years now— especially Don Wade & Roma early weekday mornings. WLS is in Chicago, but you can listen to it over the Net from anywhere.

Only Seven Planning Years Till 2012

The cycles of the Mayan calendar will come to an end in the year 2012. And so will the world as we know it.

Didn't I hear this on the final episode of The X-Files, too?

Ben Schumin

Ben Schumin is an ordinary young twenty-something dude who works at Wal-Mart. He's got his own website, The Schumin Web, where he chronicles ordinary stuff. So how did Ben Schumin become something of a web celebrity? You'll be asking yourself this question, as you keep returning to Ben's site again and again and again and again...

Well, Land Sakes!

Welcome to Die screaming with sharp things in your head! A collection of impaled garden gnomes.

Have You Been Abducted by Aliens?

Have you been abducted? Take our Alien Abduction Survey. Also, don't miss "Alien Implant Removal and Deactivation Method"!

Fhqwhgads

"Come on, fhqwhgads, I said come on, fhqwhgads, everybody to the limit, everybody to the limit..." Strong Bad stars in his own music video. Directed by The Cheat.

(BTW, that's pronounced f'ho-go-gosh. More or less.)

Britney Spears

Did you know that Britney Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics?

Trogdor

Yes, it's Trogdor the Burninator! "Burninating the countryside, burninating the peasants...

"And the Trogdor comes in the niiiiight!!!"

Portal of Evil

Warning, Portal of Evil is not kid-safe, and many of the sites it leads to are definitely not work-safe either. But I must confess, I'm a longtime fan of POE. It's a veritable catalog of the most bizarre websites on the Internet. New sites listed daily, the weirdest of the weird, the farthest out of the far out.

A few recently listed highlights: Snape MPREG Archive: "Snape (from Harry Potter) male pregnancy fan-fiction and fan-art." Living in Cars. And Cybershaman, "the most advanced integrated Psionics software ever released. It'll help you with remote viewing, astrological readings, prophecy, and it's even a higher-consciousness screensaver at the same time!"

And this is to say nothing of the thousands upon thousands of bizarre sites in the POE archives.

Portal of Evil. Go ahead, you know you wanna check it out!

Not a Cough in a Carload!

Your first reaction may be, "What's this site up to, anyway?!" I mean, divide all obnoxious pushy remarks into 88 categories or "stargates," in order to generate some zenlike rejoinder?

Then you'll see it's humble deep wisdom for "non-escalating verbal self-defense— how to change the mood when people are mean": "You should comb your hair, Peter." —"Anything else? Either way you win."

"I don't know if I can trust you" —"Just don't!" (Backup: "Life is a two-way street, as they say in Chicago.")

That's taxi1010.com. Check it out.

The New Math

Yes, it's The Prime Number Shitting Bear!

Avocado Memories

I was born in the mid 1950s, so I can especially identify with Wes Clark's Avocado Memories: Growing Up in Burbank, California in the Sixties and Seventies. This guy has tons of family photos— a meticulously documented childhood— and a colorful way of writing. You can spend hours at his site, wandering down Memory Lane.

(Hat tip to Steven)