You must see this gum commercial from Europe. Too bizarre for words. (You will of course need a Quicktime plug in.)

Unfortunately, that's it for me today. It's Election Day, so I have to get into work early and start getting the paper ready. Also, I actually want to vote in the local election, so I need to get out and do that too. This is going to put me a day behind in Nanowrimo, but really what can I do?

Romanian doctors extract living plant from boy's nose. "As the boy didn't cry or tell his mother anything, it sprung to life and had little leaves when we found it."

If you haven't already noticed, my comments generator seems to be acting kinda funky. For a while, it was reading as if there were zero comments, when there was actually one or two. So I'm not ignoring you if you wrote a comment! Keep writing 'em, I love to see them. I'm going to have to start looking into another comments generator.
And to JCF: Thanks for the info on the Nova episode about JFK, sounds fascinating. What I really want to know is if the angle of the shot is really all that difficult. I remember some study suggesting that most marksman couldn't hit the target from that book depository window. Oswald was reportedly not that good a shot, so I think this is one of the crucial bits of information.

Nanowrimo continues. I'm at 4,000 words or so. And I realize, I really need to plot out some more of my story. I'm running into brick walls everytime I put fingers to keyboard. A farmer in my story is forcing me to come up with answers, he's asking a lot of questions I don't know the answers to yet. Uppity fictional farmers. Once I answer his questions, I'll probably be able to sail along in the story. (God, I hope so.)
The forums at Nanowrimo are abysmally slow. I think they've quadrupled the number of people taking part and it's just bringing their machines to a halt. Oh well, it keeps me from getting distracted.
Some of the other CT wrimos met tonight (Sunday night). I hope they had a good time. I hope to make it to a few more of these events. It seems like we have some interesting people and I'd like to get to know them better. I don't know enough writers in my life.
Anyway, I should be spending this time writing my story. But until I work out some plot points, that's not likely to happen. Alright, time to knuckle down.

So I picked up two of the Continuum - 33 1/3 books, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and "Forever Changes." If I had known the Velvet Underground book was out, I probably would have looked for that too. I picked these two because I actually own those albums. And to put my biases out front, I really love "Forever Changes" but I find "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" kind of boring (but I love, love, love the song "Astronomy Domine.")
But I really don't think that bias accounts for why I liked the "Forever Changes" book and didn't like the "Piper" book. They're both very different.
"Piper" was about the band. It explored who the band members were, what they were doing and what the engineers thought of them. It goes on and on about new techniques they used in the studio. It talks about how cool the shows at the UFO club were, you know, when everybody took acid, tripped out and danced maaan.
Much time was spent on the the minutiae of studio work. Most of the people interviewed were producers and engineers. There's some talk about lyrics and what the band was trying to say, but very little.
"Forever Changes," on the other hand, was all about the lyrics and the philosophies it pulls from and it offers up. It talked about the societal influences surrounding the album and the psychological influences of Arthur Lee (Love's chief musical "architect," as he's referred to several times in the book.)
The author, Andrew Hultkrans, makes references to prophecy, gnosticism, "Marat/Sade" and the Manson murders. Actually, if the book has a failing, it's that it could have been somebody's graduate class thesis paper.
That's not to say that the book is filled with jargon and deconstructionism and other boring academic crap that means nothing in the real world. Hultkrans never goes too far, he always keeps it grounded.
The main difference between the two is simply this: after reading "Forever Changes" I wanted to listen to the album again. After reading "Piper," I didn't.
There's my review, take it for what you will. I think the format of the books is great and if I see the others in stores (especially the VU, Jimi Hendrix and My Bloody Valentine books) I'll probably pick them up.

Despite the weird things the government did with her story, I don't think Jessica Lynch did anything wrong and she probably deserves the couple million she'll make off her biography. But it's nice to know that people are writing about the other soldiers who did the real fighting during that ambush. This Miller guy doesn't seem like the kind of guy I'd get along with, but he does seem like one brave man. Good to see he's getting some recognition for it.

Smelly grasshoppers have afflicted people with asthma in Sudan. How freakin' weird is this world?

Well, I've gone and done it. The first 2,000 words of my Nanowrimo novel are done. I've given it a title: "A Brother's Duty." I don't know if I'll stick with it, but it focuses on one of the themes I thought about for this story.
I realized, as soon as I started, that I'm going to pay for not having thought out my plot more. I keep coming up short as I realize I don't have a name for this person or that city or this religion or whatever. If you don't have an obvious goal in mind, it gets harder to write towards one. So I'm going to try and think more about where this is going.
At least I managed to get ahead of the game. I need to do at least 1,600 every day to make 50,000 words by Nov. 30. Last year, I got stuck with trying to do 5,000 in one day. It was fun, but it was sort of awful too, trying to pound out that many words when you can't think of anything. I want to keep this at a more even pace.
I'll probably write some more tonight to get further ahead.

Interesting article on Alice Cooper and how he was where punk started. Actually, he kind of loses that point halfway through. I think he's right though. Alice had an immense effect on punk (just ask Johnny Rotten (you know, the guy from PiL) who wrote the liner notes to the Alice Cooper box set). I think the writer is way too hard on Alice's solo efforts though. His late '70s albums are some of the weirdest and most entertaining albums of his career.
I also like that he mentions "Easy Action" in some detail, Alice's most underrated album, I think.

Don't go anywhere without your Vampire Killing Kit. Now only $12,000! (By the way, that story has possibly my favorite headline ever.)

Here's an article trying to spoil our fun in believing that lemmings band together and jump off cliffs in an annual mass suicide. Another great legend lost.

According to Pravda, Noah's Ark may have been a submarine. Pravda is about the most untrustworthy news organization in the world, so don't hold your breath waiting for this to be confirmed. Still, it's awful entertaining.

It's Halloween, so what better time to look at Zombie Pinups.

Here's an interview with Stephen Bissette focusing on horror. Bissette is always interesting on the subject. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of horror movies and comics, and probably better than most knowledge of horror literature.
I'm hoping the article goes at least a little into why he quit comics.
I've always thought it was a damn shame that Bissette quit and gave up working on his masterpiece, "Tyrant," a comic book taken from the perspective of a baby T-Rex. The book explored the dinosaur's world with exacting detail. The only thing like it is Robert Bakker's Raptor Red (an excellent book for dinosaur lovers, like myself.)
I'm hoping Bissette someday returns to the independent comic book fold.

The members of the Gnome Liberation Front were right all along, people don't care about their garden gnomes. Won't someone think of the gnomes?

The CIA is just weird. Not only did they create a dragonfly "insectothopter," they also created, "a 24-inch-long rubber robot catfish named "Charlie" capable of swimming inconspicuously among other fish and whose mission remains secret."
Remember, this is the same agency that tried to kill Castro with an exploding cigar. Really, I think they have an overdeveloped sense of humor.

Wow. An environmental group released these pictures of a dolphin massacre that turns the sea blood red. Also Underwater Times has a link to a video of the dolphins being loaded into the boat. This is pretty brutal stuff, so if you have a special attachment to Flipper, don't look at those links.

Interesting article on the growing number of singles in the country.

According to Fangoria, "Godzilla-Mothra-King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack" (which may well be the world's longest movie title) and "Godzilla vs. Megaguirus" will be out on DVD on January 6. Woohoo!
Which reminds me, I have to get to a record store and see if the "Destroy All Monsters" soundtrack is available. It was supposed to come out today.