BoingBoing reader Andrew says,

I know you guys love mash ups and psychedelic/surrealist art so you may really enjoy this, some experimental work by Jim Henson in the 1970s that mixes his puppets/Muppet work with his lesser known experimental film work (pre-Sesame Street Henson was nominated for an academy award in 1967 for a live action short called "Timepiece").

"Limbo: The Organized Mind" was a stock (but very surreal) bit Henson used to perform on variety shows in `60s and `70s. This clip is from an appearance on the Tonight Show in 1974 and features a disembodied floating face (called "Nobody") taking a surrealist trip through his own mind.

I wish network TV still programmed stuff like this!

Video Link.

Reader comment: Kim Scarborough was first among many to write in and say...

The music for that short was done by Raymond Scott, and a much cleaner copy of the soundtrack (with Henson's voice) can be heard on his CD, "Manhattan Research, Inc."

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni )

Phil says: "'That's my girl, asshole!' Some guy's been replying to a variety of Craiglist Missed Connections with that lone exclamation and blogging the varied responses it elicits."

Readhead with Khrushchev bio and crossword
To the beautiful woman with in white dress reading the Khrushchev biography (and a lovely smile to boot!) on the 6 train uptown wednesday night… I had three books in my satchel about that very same period…! And was disappointed I had to get off at 77th street…

Re: Readhead with Khrushchev bio and crossword
That's my girlfriend, asshole.

Re: Re: Readhead with Khrushchev bio and crossword
She's lovely…so what's the harm of trying to say hello? There's no reason to be, well, an asshole about it… You have an amazing girlfriend; it's rather unseemly to rail at people who notice her…

Link

A MySpace page belonging to Laura Schlessinger's 21-year-old military son, Deryk Schlessinger, was removed because it contained a lot of violent, racist, hateful words and images.

The MySpace page, publicly available until Friday when it disappeared from the Internet, included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned "My Sweet Little Habib"; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets...

It also included several graphic cartoons. In one of the stick drawings, a top-hatted man laughs as he rapes a bound and bleeding woman in front of her family. In another depiction, a man forces a boy to perform oral sex at knifepoint as the child's mother pleads for her son's life.

Laura Schlessinger is a popular talk show host who gives people advice on how to raise their children to be wonderful people. (Earlier, I linked to an item on The Brad Blog claiming that Deryk was the infamous Young Republican that knocked down and kicked a protester, but I don't think it was Deryck. It seems it was some other guy.)

Laura Schlessinger's publicity machine is working hard to get out the message that her son's MySpace page is possibly fake. Army spokesman Robert Tallman also hopes the media will buy the "hacked by terrorists" version of the story:

"Our enemies are adaptive, technologically sophisticated, and truly understand the importance of the information battlespace," Tallman continued. "Sadly, they will use that space to promulgate and disseminate untrue propaganda."

Link (Thanks, 5000!!)

Cap'n Scurvy posts about his friend Rollie's Econobar, a bar he fashioned from the front end of a 1961 Ford Econoline van. Rollie built a stereo into the bar with speakers in the headlight grills. And yes, the headlights (and parking lights) are fully functional. Link (Thanks, COOP!)

Michael Lusher of Huntington, West Virginia was asleep yesterday morning when a bullet hit him in the head. He woke up four hours later surprised to see blood dripping from his skull. From the Associated Press:

The bullet that struck him was one of five that someone sprayed across his mobile home and truck at about 4:20 a.m. Sunday, (Cabell County police officer R.H.) McQuaid said. The one the struck Lusher apparently lost velocity as it traveled through two walls.

Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

Jonathan Lethem has chosen Greg Marcks (writer-director of the feature "11:14") to direct the film adaptation of his latest novel, You Don't Love Me Yet. Lethem, a Macarthur-winning sf novelist, had previously announced that he'd give a no-upfront-money option to a director who promised to release all ancillary rights five years after the film's release.

In other words, after a waiting period during which those rights would still be restricted, anyone who cared to could make any number of other kinds of artwork based on the novel’s story and characters, or the film’s: a play, a television series, a comic book, a theme park ride, an opera – or even a sequel film or novel featuring the same characters. For that matter, they can remake the film with another script and new actors. In my agreement with the filmmaker, those ancillary rights will be launched into the public domain.

Link (Thanks, Steve!)

The "Spoilt" Threadless shirt, by Oliver Moss, has more spoilers than you can shake a stick at. I laughed out loud. Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Update: Harold sez, "The webcomic Theater Hopper has been selling t-shirts like the Threadless tee for quite some time now. The artist even has two different editions."

My latest Locus editorial is out: "In Praise of Fanfic."

Two things are sure about all fanfic, though: first, that people who write and read fanfic are already avid readers of writers whose work they're paying homage to; and second, that the people who write and read fanfic derive fantastic satisfaction from their labors. This is great news for writers.

Great because fans who are so bought into your fiction that they'll make it their own are fans forever, fans who'll evangelize your work to their friends, fans who'll seek out your work however you publish it.

Great because fans who use your work therapeutically, to work out their own creative urges, are fans who have a damned good reason to stick with the field, to keep on reading even as our numbers dwindle. Even when the fandom revolves around movies or TV shows, fanfic is itself a literary pursuit, something undertaken in the world of words. The fanfic habit is a literary habit.

Link

update: WD45 sez, "The most recent podcast of Definitely Not The Opera from the CBC featured a fine intro to the world of Fan Fiction." DNTO is just about my favorite CBC Radio show, and that's saying something -- it's the only radio I've ever truly loved.

This LineRider lever is a nigh-exact replica of the first level of Super Mario Brothers -- looks like it would be a ton of fun. Someone needs to make a CounterStrike level based on this level. Link

Oh, for the golden age of spycamera watches: 1970, when spy-watches were as thick as a brick and twice and shiny:

This particular one is of the Quartz age, a 1970 SIPE LED digital watch with Steinheil 2.5/12mm lens, for 7 exposures on special cassette. Actually, it appears to be a Dynamic Scattering Liquid Crystal Display, the earliest form of LCD developed in the late sixties.

Link

See also:
History of spy-cam watches Solid wood pocket-watch from 1900
Pictorial history of kids' watches
History of armored military watches
History of slide-rule wristwatches
Early days of plastic watches Mechanical "LED watch" from 1970
History of calculator watches
Steampunk watch
Belt-drive watch
Watch guts of great beauty
All-plastic watch movement from the 70s
Awesome, impractical, expensive watch

From the BBC:

The UK's first police remote control helicopter has taken off. Merseyside police are using the "spy drone", fitted with CCTV cameras, mainly for tackling anti-social behaviour and public disorder. The machine is 1m wide, weighs less than a bag of sugar, and can record images from a height of 500m. Originally used by the military, it is due to be operational by June for a full three-month trial, which is the "first of its kind" in the UK.

Kevin says: "What we need now is 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper to shotgun the thing out of the air, like he did with a similar alien-surveillance drone in John Carpenter's They Live: 'Mama don't like tattletales!'" Link

A Boing Boing reader says: "Passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers -- a funny sub-genre of the whole found notes phenomenon, and something that anyone who's ever had to share a kitchen or a bathroom can probably relate to. (Tags include exclamation-point happy!, not-so-veiled-threats, and "helpful" advice.)" Link

Reader comment:

Guillaume says:

The usual comeback is to write "I also spit in yours" below.

Keep up the good work.

Nick says:

Made me think of this part of William Gibson's Virtual Light,

Rydell got his bag of cornflakes out of the cupboard and carefully unrolled it. About enough for a bowl. He opened the fridge and took out a plastic, snap-top, liter container with a strip of masking-tape across the side. He'd written MILK EXPERIMENT on the masking-tape with a heavy marker.

"What's that?" Hernandez asked.

"Milk." "Why's it say 'experiment?'"

"So nobody'll drink it. I figured it out in the dorm at the Academy." He dumped the cornflakes in a bowl, covered them with milk, found a spoon, and carried his breakfast to the kitchen table. The table had a trick leg, so you had to eat without putting your elbows down.

I always liked that part quite a bit! Thanks!

Ken says:

Extensive coverage of the hand-painted signage outside establishments selling gyros in Chicago. These are masterpieces of prosaic art, it says. Some will find the universal gyros visual theme, brown-thing-on-a-stick, to be vaguely disturbing, but if you are from Chicago you are probably used to it.

"Gyros is supremely sloppy, and dangerously volatile. The afterglow of gyros suffuses your being, oozing through every pore to fill out your aura as well. To eat a gyros and mingle with others is inconsiderate."

Yum!

Link

Michael Simmons, editor of the wonderful Fretboard Journal magazine says:

Since Boing Boing has become something of a clearing house for all sorts of hobo goodness, I was wondering if you knew about this new CD of Nat Wills' Tramp comedy routines that date back to 1909? The label's site includes some sound clips.

The Internet Archive has a bunch of free Nat M. Wills recordings, too. Link

Link, and here's a blog post from Scott with more about his experience at this weekend's geekstravaganza.

David sez, "If lovely pencil drawings of split brains, neurotoxic pufferfish, sprouting neurons, ghastly brain injuries and frogs with rewired visual systems are your cup of tea, then you may want to download these free PDFs for printing your own brain / mind themed notecards. Print, fold and enjoy!" Link (Thanks, David!)

Jesse Thorn from "The Sound of Young America" podcast says,

My youngest brother Brendan (age 11) is the frontman of the band Total Annihilation.

His stage name is Eddy Demon, and he plays with our family friend Damon (aka Dorkmeister Harmoniak) on bass, his and our friend Pete on drums (recently turned 14), and as of recently, his guitar teacher James on rhythm guitar.

On Saturday, they played at the Maker Faire, a really cool event in San Mateo hosted by Make Magazine. They rocked out amid fire-spouting fire trucks, mobile cupcake cars, power tool races and a two-story-high game of Moustrap. It was fantastic.

I set up some equipment and recorded a few of their songs for your enjoyment:

Coffee Break - MP3 Link

In N Out of Grace - MP3 Link

Jerkbusters - MP3 Link

The second is a Mudhoney cover -- Mudhoney are one of Brendan's faves, along with (at last reckoning) the Minutemen and the Stooges.

Previously on BB:

Ten-Year-Old Robot Punk Rock prodigy

My friend Ani Phyo is a Renaissance 2.0 woman. When I first met her in 1993, she was an economics grad creating mind-bending cyberdelic video art for raves. Then, she became immersed in information architecture and wrote an accessible and popular "howto" book on the subject, Return On Design. In recent years though, Ani has become a student (and teacher) of healthy living, eating and cooking. She co-founded Smart Monkey Foods, makers of yummy raw food snack bars and packaged foods available mainly on the West Coast. This month, Ani's first (un)cookbook was published. If you're not hip to the raw food scene, Ani's Raw Food Kitchen will surprise you with recipes that somehow seem very familiar even if you've never eaten them before.

I especially like that Ani isn't a raw food fanatic. In fact, the last meal Ani cooked for me was a fantastic leek soup, grilled spicy tofu, and a superclean salad. Don't get me wrong. Ani's a health nut, but she also has her feet firmly planted on terra firma. She's ultra-busy just like the rest of us, so most of her advice is easy to implement and her recipes are often quick to prepare. For, er, a taste of Ani's style, check out her DIY series of cooking shows she's posted for free on YouTube. (A DVD compilation is also available from her Web site where you can also check out sample recipes and other news.) Congratulations, Ani!
Link to buy Ani's Raw Food Kitchen, Link to Ani's site, Link to Ani on YouTube

The Topsy-Turvy bus is touring the US to "dramatically depict America's upside down budget priorities." Art car artist Tom Kennedy and his crew built it by welding together two yellow buses, one upside down on top of the other right side-up. Ben (Ben & Jerry's) Cohen hatched the idea with designer Stefan Sagmeister. Much more on the project at Laughing Squid.
Link (Thanks, Jennifer Lum!)

UPDATE: BB reader Brittanie Shey sends us this "mirror image" VW bug seen at the 2005 Houston Art Car Parade. Link

InfoBunker is a Cold War era government command bunker converted into a data center. The Department of Defense built it to survive a "Maximum Probably Event," such as a 20-megaton nuclear explosion. The 65,000 square foot, mostly-underground facility is equipped with a Nuc/Bio/Chem air filtration system. Secure N+1 rack co location starts at $850/month. Blogger Brien Tiemann was invited for a no photo visit:

It's not my place to go into too much detail about what's housed in the bunker, as just to get inside under escort you have to agree to a strict no-photos policy (perfectly understandable); but suffice it to say that the simplex lock on the main hut door is only the very beginning. Many hardened, keycoded, and biometric-protected doors stand between the outside world and the data centers, including the self-sufficient power systems (six days' worth of diesel fuel; 17,000 gallons of water (for drinking and fire suppression); military-grade NBC air filtration). It's built to withstand a 20-megaton nuclear blast at 2.5 miles, according to the website, and I can believe it. Your data will be intact even if the rest of the Internet has been vaporized.

Link to Tiemann's post, Link to InfoBunker (Thanks, COOP!)

What happens when the person who taught you right from wrong starts breaking the rules? In this radio segment, my NPR News colleague Jim Gates drives his father, Philip Gates, to a Los Angeles prison.

Jim's dad was arrested late last year for publicly protesting the School of the Americas, considered by many to be a sort of finishing school for torturers, death squad leaders, and human rights violators from corrupt foreign regimes (it's now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation).

Jim's story about his father appears in this episode of Minnesota Public Radio's "How's the Family? -- "Direct Link to segment in RealAudio, and I'm happy to report that Jim picked his dad up from jail last Friday -- pop's doing well.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

As an aside -- I'll be spending the next few weeks in Guatemala, following up on stories I reported on earlier this year for NPR. There are many historic links between Guatemala's bloody, 30-year civil war, and the School of The Americas: Link.

Nokia researchers are developing software to turn cellphones into lightning warning systems. The RF receivers in cell phones can detect the radio waves emitted by lightning, and the distribution of the signal can indicate the closeness. From New Scientist:

The multiple receivers in a phone, such as Bluetooth, FM, tri-band GSM, Wi-Fi and RFID, can be tuned to pick up these signals, says Nokia (US patent application 2007/0085525). Software will then interpret them, work out the distance to the lightning, and tell you if strikes are getting closer.

Link to New Scientist, Link to US patent application

Todd Vanderlin suffered a cut to his hand when his friend tossed him a wireless router. The wound looks just like a mouse cursor. Link

The famous Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen was spotted sporting a smart-looking Muslim dress and head scarf yesterday. Link

Chris Colin, a writer for the SF Gate, was curious about the people he sees hanging out in coffee shops during the day, so he interviewed them, and asked them why they weren't working. It turns out there are a great many reasons why the people weren't working. Not wanting to work seemed to be the most popular reason of all. He reported his findings in a piece called "The Mystery of the Daytime Idle."

Going over my own findings, a surprising number of people had had something job-related happen that very day. A surprising number had called in sick. Claire, who works in quality control at a biotech company, used a vacation day to get a tattoo of a bird. Another woman took the day off to be with her dogs. ("And catch up on errands," she added responsibly.)

"John," who is 18 and was strolling through Yerba Buena Gardens one Thursday morning, laid out his typical itinerary: "Watch the grass grow, get high, hit on the ladies."

How does he pay rent? "If you ask 100 girls for $10, that's $1,000, that's rent," he explained logically.

This article reminded me of Bertrand Russell's 1932 essay, "In Praise of Idleness," which contains a funny definition of work:

What is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so.

Link

Reader comment:

Brendon says:

First off, love boingboing and your contributions to it. I've even learned not to dismiss ukulele music, fwiw.

Your post, "Reporter interviews people hanging out instead of working" reminded me immediately of a story on an episode of This American Life titled "The Secret Life of Daytime" that aired (the Internet tells me) on April 14, 2000. The story in question ("Act One") was titled, "Why Aren't You at Work?" and featured New York Observer reporter George Gurley interviewing people who, like in the article you linked to, just hanging around NYC. Pretty neat. I thought you might be interested, if you weren't already aware.

Thanks for your work, and take it easy.

BoingBoing reader Lord Andrew J. Andrews II sez,

The USA Today recently gave a brief report concerning the victims of the Virginia Tech Massacre: “Slain Students Pages to Stay on Facebook”. The social networking website’s administration decided that these students’ profiles will not be taken down; instead, they will be remain frozen in their last updated state. This decision goes against Facebook’s policy of removing profiles of the recently deceased out of respect for their privacy, but this is not a new phenomenon. There is simply no way for these websites to keep track of which of their users are dead or alive - the dead are all online now; they “live” on websites like Livejournal, Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, or Flickr, and they’re not going anywhere.

Here's a thoughtful post on his blog: Link.

Reader comment: Ren says,

I wrote this post on TerraNova the other year and tired to get a discussion going about the virtual after life along the lines of the Clock of the Long Now i.e. how would we maintain an online presence long after death (which was in part kicked off by another BB post): After me, after you

Following up on a recent BB post about several US congresspersons who agreed to try and subsist off $21 in food stamps for a week (as they say our government asks program recipients to do), congressman Tim Ryan blogs today:

"You aren’t going to believe this, but all I have left is cornmeal.

I was doing SO well! I had everything rationed out perfectly and knew that I was going to be able to stretch my food out until the end. That was of course, until the TSA decided to step in....

Sure enough the very nice TSA agent explained to me the 3-1-1 regulations for liquids. As a public service I’ve decided to link you to them. He politely put the peanut butter and jelly to the side, closed my bag and gave it back to me. I was too astonished to talk.

I took my bag and walked towards the gate thinking about the 4 or maybe 5 meals that she had taken from me. What am I going to do now? It’s not like I can just go to Safeway and grab another jar. I have .33 cents and a bag of cornmeal to last today and tomorrow."

Link. Image: Wikipedia. (Thanks, Eric)

Previously:

Congresscritters try to survive on $21 in food stamps for a week

BoingBoing names a Virgin America plane: "Unicorn Chaser" (Xeni)

HD-DVD re-cracked six days *before* it is patched (Cory)

Gibson on the Neuromancer movie rumor (Cory)

The Sopranos Meet The Hippies by Paul Krassner (Mark)

Stelarc, posthumanist and artist, implants "third ear" inside his arm (Xeni)

Neuros OSD: a set-top box that treats you like an owner (Cory)

Salvador Dali: What's my line? and TV commercials. (Mark, Pesco)

Dr. Strangelove scenes recreated with everyday stuff (Xeni)

Which troll-fighting techniques work (Cory)

New, searchable index of more than 5,000 vintage LA news photos (Xeni)

Elton and Betty White (Xeni)

Windows Media Center is infected with "Macrovision." Macrovision is the crippleware that some TV stations and networks use to stop you from recording their shows. Though there is no law requiring manufacturers to install this kind of Macrovision -- and though it's not illegal to ignore Macrovision and record a show anyway -- Microsoft implements it for WMC, and infected its customers with it after disguising it as an "update."

Microsoft probably did this to bribe the cable operators into giving it access to encrypted television, though it's possible (and legal) to record their shows without permission by using the analog outputs (like the Neuros OSD and mythtv, a DIY Linux-based recorder). Link