Van Morrison
Oops, I accidentally wrote over my original post about Van Morrison’s contractual obligation songs. Now I forgot what I said, but here is the link:
Shining Redux
Holy crap. This thing is really funny: Shining Redux
They Do Crush Everything
Japanese scientists have become the first to capture the giant squid on film alive in the actual ocean (photos and story here). This is a really big deal for squid people, they’ve been waiting a long time for someone to figure this one out. They followed some sperm whales and set out a bait bag with an automatic camera. The squid attacked the bait, got caught on a hook, and tore one of its tentacles off in order to escape. Nice, Japanese scientists, real nice. Why do you think the giant squid is so elusive? Maybe because it doesn’t want to have to tear its own tentacles off every time it has its picture taken?
Apparently the tentacle was delicious.
Feed Me
If I did this right, there should now be a feed for the whole blog as well as a feed for Thing a Week only, and they both should include the enclosures necessary to get the mp3s as they are posted. I think. We’ll see how this goes, or if anybody cares or anything. If someone out there finds a problem with subscribing, please let me know.
In an interesting (yet tortuous) side note, John Hodgman and I recorded and posted an audio file of the 700 hobo names from his soon-to-be-published book “The Areas of My Expertise.” I play Big Rock Candy Mountain on the guitar and he reads the entire list of names. We did it in one take, one long, terrible take. It took almost an hour to get all the way through, and by the end my hand and fingers were threatening to cramp up and freeze stiff. But we somehow made it through, and it was a truly transformative experience. If you’d like to listen, you can check out the website for the book (the hobo names link is under the orange box in the top right corner – you don’t have to listen to all of it for God’s sake). And then you should buy the book, because it is plenty funny.
You are lucky that I am not using it as this week’s thing.
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