Ondrej Smeykal, didgeridoo genius

This weekend, I was fortunate to hear--experience--the mastery of a twenty-year veteran of the didgeridoo, Ondrej Smeykal, at the Matrix Coffeehouse in Chehalis. Smeykal's music is impressionistic and multitextured, surging in volume and tempo. It echoes the sounds of crashing surf, passing trains, pulsing synthesizers. It washes over you in waves. It fills your heart and your belly with gladness.

It makes hippies dance.

It makes hippies gambol and whirligig and gyrate with abandon.

The video above is the briefest possible sampling of Smeykal's lyrical and rhythmic ingenuity, a pale shadow of his live performance. Smeykal is returning to the Northwest in August, so if you're in the area, seek him out.

And bring your hippie friends.

dude can dunk

Apropos of nothing: Jacob Tucker.

when it's icy in Seattle, stay home

Video of a street in Capitol Hill, where determined drivers vastly overestimate their skills on black ice. Steering out of a skid is not intuitive, even for a professional bus driver.

(About the videographer... usually I'm the kind of person who gets out and helps. But I guess they're performing a public service of sorts. And hey, no one was hurt.)




[via Cory Doctorow]

contraption to the nth degree

Never was so much Rube Goldberg given to so many by so few.

[via Scott Tobias.]

stop, drop your jaw, roll your eyes

The stupid, it burns:

District fire chief Jon Bugher told The Peninsula Daily News he was stunned to discover several people playing lighter tag.

It involved squirting themselves with lighter fluid, lighting the clothing of the person who is "it" and beating out the flames.

As if we needed another asinine reason to visit the emergency room.

it's not a debate if you don't invite actual debaters

This sounds like quality television--which is to say, horrifyingly, shockingly bad debate:

The debate over whether Satan exists is hardly going to be settled in a 30-minute television show.

But that's not stopping a rather curious lineup from debating that question for ABC's "Nightline."

The debaters: megachurch Pastor Mark Driscoll of Seattle; alternative-medicine author Deepak Chopra; a former Las Vegas escort who founded Hookers for Jesus; and a former Pentecostal preacher who was branded a heretic for saying everyone — not just Christians — could go to heaven.

This is why the word "stultifying" was invented. Says the producer:

"We went for the most interesting voices we could find," Goldston said.

Really? Hugo Chavez wasn't available?

the YouTube symphony of funk

Had to pass this along: "the mother of all funk chords." Not just a great musical mashup, but a cleverly edited visual display as well. Outstanding all-around.

[Via BoingBoing's Mark Frauenfelder.]

Songsmith violates the Geneva Conventions

Well, not really, since you've been warned.



And, for old time's sake:

wonderful and weird images from Google

A little while ago I mentioned that Popular Mechanics and Popular Science are now available through Google. (The weird images posted here come from the former, and were found by some of my students.)

Now, something equally cool: Life photos, searchable through Google. History awaits.

color: coordinated

Warning: highly addictive.

An incredibly nifty algorithm lets you search Flickr photos by color scheme. But don't try to click on more than ten colors, lest you incur the wrath of the Search Limitations Act of 1729.

[via BoingBoing]

multi-touch with a Wii remote

Nerdness. And pretty darn cool.


[via Videocracy]

Ranch House BBQ toppled by mud

The deluge nearly shut down school today, but we made it, mostly on time. Later in the day, the bad news started pouring in: flooding drains, inaccessible streets, abandoned autos, trapped residents. The worst was yet to come. I was going to head out to Elma tonight for band practice, but I heard that Highway 8 was closed because of a massive mudslide near the Kennedy Creek junction. My stomach flipped. That's the site of one of my all-time favorite area restaurants.

No more.

A mud flow destroyed the Ranch House BBQ off State Route 8 this morning and closed off a section of the highway indefinitely.

“I just lost my whole life,” said Amy Anderson, who has owned the popular restaurant and catering business with partner Melanie Tapia for four years.

Click through to see the horrifying photo.

I hope this isn't the end of Amy Anderson's* barbecue prospects. That would be just too, too sad.

Update 12/10: It's not!

Added: Rick of Olyblog has posted an amazing photo of the flooding at Cooper Point and Black Lake. The traffic lights, at least, blithely keep on changing.




*No relation.

Moebius transformations visualized in video

I love the Moebius strip. And now I love the Moebius transformations video. [via BoingBoing]

some call it rugby

Not your standard college football conclusion.



[via Joe Carter]

an Off! night for Joba Chamberlain

Update: ESPN dropped the video, so I did as well. We'll see how long this one stays up on YouTube. But here's the scientific explanation for the bug invasion.

Oh, and here's the rundown in Spanish. ¡Sí, señorita!


Tonight Melissa and I watched the strangest playoff moment of all time, in hi-def from a safe but skin-crawling distance, as Joba Chamberlain battled bugs and lost. Everyone at the Brewery City in Lacey was equally transfixed and horrified as gnats or mosquitoes or noseeums--whatever they were--swarmed the field, followed by trainers with Off! cans.

The spray didn't seem to affect the bugs much. Every time the camera closed in on Chamberlain's neck, you could see them feasting on his chemical perspiration. (Expect SC Johnson stock to plummet.)

Long story short: coupla walks, coupla wild pitches, one run; coupla innings later, Cleveland wins.

Take that, LeBron James.

terminal council meeting

Last week, the city council that needed therapy.

This week, the council that needed a body bag.






[via Obscure Store]

California man walks 150 miles for lurve

He's...

• Probably breaking the law


• At very least, foolishly walking on the wrong side of the road


• 850 miles short of True Love

lunatic fringe

Peter Wall has discovered a group that believes that the only Americans are... well... here's a passage from an interview he carefully transcribed.

Laura West: Yeah, this is called Title 4 Flag Says You’re Schwag! Your Simple Guide to Sovereignty and what “Title 4 Flag” means is, there’s, our country, America, has only one flag, and it’s of specific dimensions and proportions of colors and, and size of shapes and, um, so we know that this is our American flag and of our country, which has a Constitution and Bill of Rights that protects us. But the United States, which is a corporation, and is not the same thing as the fifty states—in America?—they have taken this flag and, and kinda made their own version of it, you know like, longer, you’ve seen different shapes and sizes of them, and some of them have a gold fringe around them and that’s not actually the American flag. Most of the flags you’ll see flying are not Title 4 flags, and so we’re teaching people the difference between that, and how to declare sovereignty, which means that you’re born in America, if you’re born in America, in one of the fifty states, then you’re considered a “native American,” and so we are teaching people how to know to claim that, because a lot of people know their rights but they don’t know how to claim that these rights even apply to them.

There's more, much more of this frothy concoction of schizoid paranoia and juvenile pranksterism.

In other news, thank God that Tackamarks still exists on the Internet Archive. No, let me write that again, punctuationally: Tackamarks! On the Internet Archive!

Oh, and let's not forget the dumbest photo of all time.

Michigan falls to Appalachian State

The second-best college football upset this century (after Boise State, of course). The Wolverines are taken down 34-32 by a fearless I-AA squad. At home. It's only the first game of the season, and already Michigan's fans are wondering if their title hopes are doomed.

Jake Brown: one sick mo-fo

Not for the squeamish.

Doesn't matter how many times I watch it; every time I cringe. Jake Brown nails his first trick, then sails off his board, and gravity does the rest. Those aren't his kneecaps exploding. Just flying shoes.

Don't worry--he walks away. This time.