Nirvana covers Terry Jacks’ maudlin hit “Seasons in the Sun.”
Archive for the ‘weird’ Category
Musical Value: None. Kitsch Value: Considerable.
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010Finally, Amusing Comments Spam
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010I get about 10-20 spam comments for every real one. I know all this is done by automated bots, and all of it should get filtered into the spam folder (then deleted). However, I did think that this one, with the links stripped out, was funny enough to save:
I’m currently being held prisoner by the Russian mafia penis enlargement and being forced to post spam comments on blogs and forum! If you don’t approve this they will kill me. penis enlargement They’re coming back now. Please send help!
Let’s hope posting this doesn’t get my blog labeled as spam itself…
Weird Digital Video Artist
Monday, July 19th, 2010Behold, the weirdness of Cyriak! You’ve probably seen a few of these before in various corners of the web.
And I double-dog dare you to make the “Wall of Shatner” your animated desktop background…
Worst. Song. Ever.
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010So a while back, some scientists took a survey to determine the most and least popular musical elements ever. From the survey, they then produced the Most and Least Wanted Songs ever. The Most Wanted Song sounds like many an insipid Oscar nominee for Best Song.
The Least Wanted Song combines all the least popular elements into a twenty-two minute long concoction of cowboy poetry, bad rap, bad opera, tuba, bagpipes, 8-bit bleeps, and a repeating children’s choir celebrating every holiday with the exact same tune. It’s not the worst song ever (LARD’s “I Am Your Clock” still gets my vote for that), but it’s so weird that it’s actually pretty funny. Here are all three parts in their dubious glory.
It’s oddly fascinating, but I don’t think it’s going to end up on my iPod anytime soon…
Hat tip: Karl, who points out (correctly) that it’s frequently much more pleasant than much of Hidden Agenda.
The Latest Literary Abomination Mashup
Monday, June 14th, 2010
Ben H. Winters and Leo Tolstoy’s Android Karenina
My powers of prophecy are unparalleled, even when I’m joking…
Your Pricing Scheme is Full of Shaving Cream
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010From Slashdot comes the sad news that the Dr. Demento radio show is leaving the airwaves, at least for those outside the Greater Amarillo Area (it will continue there through the end of the summer). If you’re like me, you probably listened to a fair amount of Dr. Demento (real name: Barret Eugene Hansen) in high school, and occasionally thereafter, though the show has become impossible to find in most areas recently. The doctor’s own announcement only lists six radio stations that were still carrying it.
Happily for the true Dr. Demento fanatic (a description that excludes myself), you can continue to listen to his show on the Internet. That is, if you’re willing to pony $2 a show for low-quality MP3s, or $14.95 a month to join the Demento Online Club.
As a businessman, the good doctor seems to be a fine radio personality. Maybe the Dr. Demento Show has a sufficiently large and fanatic fanbase willing to pony up $15 to keep Mr. Hansen off the breadline (and after 40 years on the air, I’m sure he’s drawing Social Security), but that price point seems pretty aggressive. Given that there are more free podcasts floating around than anyone could listen to in a lifetime, and that for the $180 a yearly membership would run, I could buy pretty much every novelty tune I enjoy off iTunes and have plenty left over, it’s hard to see it as a good deal. Put another way: That’s three times the cost of TotalFark, and Drew seems to do pretty well with that model.
Methinks the good doctor should rethink his pricing structure…
Giant Mechnical Spider
Sunday, June 6th, 2010I like to think of Futuramen as a “go to” blog for giant spider news. I mean, after all, if I’m not going to do it, who will?
So when two guys actually build a functioning mechanical spider to ride in for $15,000, you know I’m going to be all over that.
And here’s a video of it running around Burning Man at night:
Lots more video here.
(Hat tip: Fark.)
Crank Back Up Those Denver Airport Conspiracy Theories!
Friday, June 4th, 2010Of all the wacky modern-day conspiracy theories, I must admit that the one I’ve enjoyed most (next to the shape-shifting reptoids, with which it overlaps) is the one about aliens under the Denver airport. Weird-ass murals, Masonic symbols, out-of-control baggage handling systems, airport runways laid out in a swastika, and decapitated Indians, just for starters. And those are the parts that are all more or less real.
If you haven’t seen those murals (some of which have since been painted over), they really are something to behold. I mean, what air traveler wouldn’t want to be confronted with a giant gas-masked Skeletor standing in an arc of weeping women holding dead babies?
I had also forgotten that the designer of the giant blue demonic horse outside the airport had been killed when part of it fell on him.
But more entertaining than the real weirdness are the truly whacked-out conspiracy theories about the place. You know, the ones with the six underground levels with holding pens for the alien Grays to ship off people to their secret concentration camps on Mars. The great thing about it is the ease with which it’s tied into the other wacky conspiracies about underground alien bases, like the ones supposedly at Dulce, Roswell, etc. You know, the sort of mind-boggling, over-the-top theories that make Bob Lazar’s stories of alien technology at Area 51 and how Grays will use people as “containers for souls” look like models of plausibility by comparison.
Good times, good times.
Well, now comes word that they’ve erected a 26 tall statue of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, outside it. Supposedly they did this to promote a King Tut exhibit.
Personally, I think they’re just taunting Alex Jones…
Nightmare-Inducing Communist Playground Sculptures
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010Ah, Communism! The political system of the deadly controlling the deluded and disillusioned. As the system decayed, Communism would frequently produce funhouse-mirror versions of Western goods, virtually identical except the communist versions were produced by people who didn’t care and couldn’t be fired and thus sucked liked a Communist vacuum cleaner didn’t. Take, for example, these nightmare-inducing playground sculptures from Dark Roasted Blend (and here’s pages 2 and 3). Though a few of their examples come from outside the Eastern Bloc, the vast majority hail from a land forgotten by taste, talent, and personal injury lawyers.
Well, this certainly isn’t going to encourage your children to visit the doctor:
Here’s some first class Nightmare Fuel:
No way would this sculpture be put up in a Western park without some kind of fence. “Child impaled on modern art sculpture, details at ten.”
“Mommy, can I play on the giant tarantula? Please? Pleaaaseeee?”
Though they seem singularly unsuited for children, some of them are decent art sculptures in their own right. I really dig the Nightmare Bears:
This is the sort of thing Posadas would do if he were an Eastern European sculptor:
And this leather Cthulhu is awesome:
(And I’d just liked to point out that “Leather Cthulhu” is a good name for a rock band.)
Random Fark Image of the Day
Friday, April 30th, 2010