Song for Saturday: Hoodoo Man

Junior Wells was born in West Memphis, Arkansas (maybe) in 1934 and learned to play harmonica by the age of seven.

Who Knew Sea Slugs Were So Awesome?

These sea slugs are really interesting. They can actually adapt cells from their prey for their own use including stinging cells and chloroplasts. The latter allow them to utilize photosynthesis. I want that awesome power for myself.

Lumerians -- Space Rock

Lumerians play "Black Tusk" on Dance Party Revival from m m on Vimeo.

The Lumerians are a band out of San Francisco by way of outer space. Please enjoy. Via Dangerous Minds.

Poem for Monday With Scary Ghost Ship Video

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.

And some in dreams assured were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.

Excerpted from Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

National No Name Calling Week-- Jan. 24-28

From the website:

No Name-Calling Week was inspired by a young adult novel entitled "The Misfits" by popular author, James Howe. The book tells the story of four best friends trying to survive the seventh grade in the face of all too frequent taunts based on their weight, height, intelligence, and sexual orientation/gender expression. Motivated by the inequities they see around them, the "Gang of Five" (as they are known) creates a new political party during student council elections and run on a platform aimed at wiping out name-calling of all kinds. Though they lose the election, they win the support of the school's principal for their cause and their idea for a "No Name-Calling Day" at school.

Happy Squirrel Appreciation Day

Today in the Black Mansion we're celebrating Squirrel Appreciation Day. If nothing else, one can appreciate their incredible athleticism. Of course some members of the household are extremely enthusiastic about squirrels, if not in a way that actual squirrels would appreciate.

Several of them have met their end in the jaws of the black and white monster pictured here.

Jan. 20-- Happy Birthday David Lynch

David Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana on January 20, 1946.

"It doesn't do any good to say, 'This is what it means.' When you are spoon fed a film, people instantly know what it is. I like films that leave room to dream."

– (Lynch 1997, in Cinefantastique, April 1997)

"I don't like the word ironic. I like the word absurdity, and I don't really understand the word 'irony' too much. The irony comes when you try to verbalize the absurd. When irony happens without words, it's much more exalted.”

"I don`t think that people accept the fact that life doesn`t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it."

"I sort of go by a duck when I work on a film because if you study a duck, you`ll see certain things. You`ll see a bill, and the bill is a certain texture and a certain length. Then you`ll see a head, and the features on the head are a certain texture and it`s a certain shape and it goes into the neck. The texture of the bill for instance is very smooth and it has quite precise detail in it and it reminds you somewhat of the legs. The legs are a little bit bigger and a little more rubbery but it`s enough so that your eye goes back and forth. Now, the body being so big, it can be softer and the texture is not so detailed, it`s just kind of a cloud. And the key to the whole duck is the eye and where the eye is placed. And it has to be placed in the head and it`s the most detailed, and it`s like a little jewel. And if it was fixed, sitting on the bill, it would be two things that were too busy, battling, they would not do so well. And if it was sitting in the middle of the body, it would get lost. But it`s so perfectly placed to show off a jewel right in the middle of the head like that, next to this S-curve with the bill sitting out in front, but with enough distance so that the eye is very very very well secluded and set out. So when you`re working on a film, a lot of times you can get the bill and the legs and the body and everything, but this eye of the duck is a certain scene, this jewel, that if it`s there, it`s absolutely beautiful. It`s just fantastic." "Film exists because we can go and have experiences that would be pretty dangerous or strange for us in real life. We can go into a room and walk into a dream. If we didn`t want to upset anyone, we would make films about sewing, but even that could be dangerous. But I think finally, in a film, it is how the balance is and the feelings are. But I think there has to be those contrasts and strong things withing a film for the total experience."

"It`s better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you`ll be too afraid to let things keep happening. Psychology destroys the mystery, this kind of magic quality. It can be reduced to certain neuroses or certain things, and since it is now named and defined, it`s lost its mystery and the potential for a vast, infinite experience."

Manchester Street Scene Captured on Film 1901

Water Bears in Space: A New Delight for Fans of Awesomeness

Water bears, aka moss piglets, phylum tardigrada, are microscopic organisms that live in many different environments on Earth, from the Himalayas and polar regions, deep sea and equatorial regions, to high heat in locations of volcanic activity. They can tolerate many times more radiation that a super hero, and, can be dried out for years and then reconstitute themselves upon contact with water. Now, it turns out that they have a new ability. They can survive the vacuum of space. They are the only known living organisms, other than lichen and bacteria, that can. How awesome is that? Plus, as evidenced by the video above, they're pretty cute.

Poem: My Siren

My siren is blue as the veins where she swims
For the moment she sleeps on mother-of-pearl
And on the ocean I create for her
She can visit the magic grottoes of preposterous isles
There some very foolish birds
converse with crocodiles who never finish up
And the very foolish birds fly above the blue siren
The crocodiles return to their drink
And the island doesn't come back
doesn't come back from where it's placed
where my siren and I have forgotten it
My siren has some very beautiful stars in her sky
Blonde stars with black eyes
Red haired stars with sparkling teeth
and dark stars with beautiful breasts
Each night three by three
alternating the color of their hair
These stars visit my siren
This makes for lots of comings and goings in the sky
But my siren's sky isn't an ordinary sky
My siren has seven boats on her ocean
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Saturday and Sunday
Some with steam the others with sails
Some rapid the others slow
But all beautiful all charming
with sailors who know their craft

Excerpted from "My Siren," Robert Desnos, translated by Amy Levin

Alice in Wonderland on Film 1903

Made in 1903 and directed by British film makers Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, this is the first ever film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Only parts of the film still exist and those were restored in 2010 by the British Film Institute. Alice was played by May Clark, and director Cecil Hepworth plays the frog.

In Dreams--

Phantom Galaxy Messier 74

The Pinwheel Galaxy, also known as Messier 101 or NGC 5457, is a grand-design spiral galaxy located at a distance of about 27 million light-years from Earth. It is nearly twice the size of our Milky Way.

M101 is usually referred as a classical example of an spiral galaxy. The observed deviation from symmetry is associated with a recent galaxy encounter, that triggered strong star formation visible now as bright HII regions, or the red spots in the image shown above.

Messier 74 is nicknamed the "phantom galaxy," because it is very difficult for amateur astronomers to view. This galaxy is similar to our Milky Way galaxy, containing over 100 million stars.

Nonsense and Pattern Recognition

According to research by psychologists at UC Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia, exposure to the surrealism in, say, Kafka's "The Country Doctor" or Lynch's "Blue Velvet" enhances the cognitive mechanisms that oversee implicit learning functions. The researchers' findings appear in an article published in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science.
"The idea is that when you're exposed to a meaning threat –– something that fundamentally does not make sense –– your brain is going to respond by looking for some other kind of structure within your environment," said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSB and co-author of the article. "And, it turns out, that structure can be completely unrelated to the meaning threat."

Ambiguity is good for you. We should all get a minimum daily allowance of it.

Apache for a Melancholy Monday

It's a melancholy Monday in the Black Mansion. A strange wind plays in the mesquite. Shadows flit about at the edge of our vision and nothing seems really to be in focus. What Wicked tricks are afoot today in West Texas? Tricks so sinister our most purple prose fails to color the scene.

Western Spagetti by Pes

Psychologist Says We Remember Things BEFORE They Happen

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." 

He's done experiments in which future events have been shown to influence memory. It's some pretty interesting stuff.

One of the most respected, senior and widely published professors of psychology, Daryl Bem of Cornell, has just published an article that suggests that people — ordinary people — can be altered by experiences they haven't had yet. Time, he suggests, is leaking. The Future has slipped, unannounced, into the Present. And he thinks he can prove it.

Jan. 4 --World Hypnotism Day

That's right. Here in West Texas we're all getting hypnotized today to stop littering.

Hypnotize Yourself to Become a Yodeler

You too can now learn the important skill of yodeling with this easy hypnosis video. Whew. That's a relief, eh? I'll be practicing out on the back 40 today. Hopefully the neighbors won't mind. This, of course, in preparation for celebrating World Hypnosis Day tomorrow. West Texas will be having a huge yodeling competition for the holiday. Be there, and be yodeling.