Category: True Stories

Cliffside Path, China

As wonderful as Chinese tea is, it is definitely not something you’d closely associate with exhilaration, adrenaline and the fear of death. Mt. Huashan in China, however, manages to bring all of these things together by featuring a death-defying cliff-side mountain climb that brings daring visitors to a tea house 2,160 m (7,087 ft) up on the mountain’s southern peak.

Mt. Huashan has been a place of religious importance since at least the 2nd century BCE, when a Daoist temple was established at its base. Since then, pilgrims, monks and nuns have inhabited the mountain and the surrounding area. A network of dangerous and precipitous trails allows them to access the mountain’s five summits, each of which has a religious structure like the tea house on the southern summit. Together, these five summits form the points of a flower shape.

I don’t do heights very well – I get a visceral reaction when I’m too close to the edge – and this insane video spooked me just by watching it.

[Image found here. More info & pics here.]

Saturday Matinee – Nick Offerman, John Edmark & Phi, HST & Roy Buchanan

I’ve never seen a single episode of “Parks & Recreation,” but this advert featuring actor  Nick Offerman is mildly amusing [via]. It doesn’t go far enough IMO. Someone tell Nick that I’d be happy to outline a horror story based upon actual events.

John Edmark creates some amazing stuff using the irrational number Phi, laser cutters and strobes [via].

“Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride” is a 2006 documentary about rogue reporter Hunter S. Thompson, narrated by Nick Nolte. Thompson was an amusing unhinged journalist who set the standard for inserting himself into every story he ever covered.

Gotta have at least one music vid, and we haven’t posted any Roy Buchanan in a while, so there you go.

Have a great Memorial Day Weekend, folks, and please take the time to remember what it’s all about.

Pup On The Roof

“When this old world starts getting me down,
And people are just too much for me to face;
I climb way up to the top of the stairs,
And all my cares just drift right into space.
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be;
And there the world below can’t bother me…”

Q. And what does the dog say?
A. “ROOF! ROOF! ROOF!”

[Found here via here.]

John Logie Baird’s Contribution To The World: The 1926 Televisor

The eerie image … shows the first image to ever be transmitted onto television. The year was 1926, and Scottish inventor John Logie Baird had successfully broadcast his business partner’s face through an apparatus he dubbed “the televisor”, which was of course the early version of all television sets today.

I’m guessing that’s a still from a 16mm test film, or perhaps it wasn’t animated at all and it was just a flickering image transmitted to a small (3.5″ x 2″) video display.

Another source includes this commentary:

One staff member quoted [the Editor of the London Daily Press] as saying: “For God’s sake, go down to the reception and get rid of a lunatic who’s down there. He says he’s got a machine for seeing by wireless. Watch him – he may have a razor on him.”

Following his demonstration in 1926, Baird developed colour TV and brought out the world’s first mass produced television set in 1929.

[Top image and caption found here; 2nd image and cap here.]

4 May 1970 – Kent State University

[Image found here, related posts here.]

Facebook in North Korea

Better click “like.”

[Found here.]

El Dos de Mayo y General Grouchy

By 1808, Spain had had just about enough of French Imperialism and Napoleon‘s occupation armies, and there was a bloody rebellion in Madrid that lasted for days (and led to The Peninsula War).

Francisco Goya was commissioned for paintings to commemorate the rebellion of Dos de Mayo a few years later in 1814.

Oh, and BTW, General Grouchy was a real dickhead.

Saturday Matinee – Hornet Nest Eradication Fail, Tom Sitter, Kenneth White, The Avett Brothers & The Magnetic Fields

A Peavey amp, a Gibson, Black Sabbath, a Roman Candle, a hose and a folding yard stick is no defense from hornets. The part where he says, “Hold my beer,” is missing from the video.

From Laughing Squid:

Redditor Kathy Sitter very proudly posted a video of her 93-year old grandfather Tom Sitter telling an absolutely hilarious story to a very responsive audience during The Moth in Madison StorySLAM at the High Noon Saloon in Wisconsin. The theme of the night was “Love Hurts”, so Sitter spoke about his valentines from 1933, earning him a first-ever perfect score.

Kenneth White spent over 5 years building a replica wild west village from the 1880’s right in his backyard. White built everything from scratch including a saloon, a church with beautiful stained glass windows and an old-fashioned western jail complete with a prisoner in the bed.

What a great project. [Found here.]

How ’bout some modern country?

The Avett Brothers got the licks, and they proved it at Knoxville’s Tennessee Theater in 2015.

Bunkessa ran off to see The Magnetic Fields last night. The music isn’t quite my can of beer, but the animation is fun.

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here tomorrow.

 

Sophia’s Squat Shops

Bulgarian “Squat Shops” emerged in Sophia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Bulgaria rejected fascism and communism in favor of capitalism.

In the late 80’s, private ownership of production was legalized in Bulgaria. Among the first businesses to appear were these small “Squat Shops,” operated out of floor-level cellar windows. Despite more legitimate storefront space becoming available, these small portals remained operational and lucrative – miniature convenience stores catering to the cigarette fix of the passing pedestrian or the midday thirst of those waiting on bus stops, for which patrons have no objection to stooping to street level. An idiosyncratic, now common element of the Bulgarian capital, over time the shops have evolved elaborate displays, framing the small street level openings with bottles of alcohol, coffee, and cartons of cigarettes, often in eye-catching bright colors. –Ivaylo Getov.

Did you get that? No one was allowed to own a private business in Bulgaria until about 30 years ago, and they’re still recovering from that brutal economic oppression.

[Click on any image above for detail. Found via here.]

Fang Blenny

I presume that’s the skull of a fang blennie, and one species injects an opioid venom to mess with their predators’ brains.

The fang blennies have, generally speaking, evolved into rascals. Their ancestor probably used its fangs to scoop flesh out of bigger fish, much like the non-venomous bluestriped fang blenny does today. It’s a visual mimic of a cleaner fish, which allows it to get in close without raising an alarm. Then it strikes. “A total asshole move, of course, since that bigger fish is going to take this out on the next innocent cleaner wrasse it encounters,” says biologist and study co-author Bryan Fry of the University of Queensland.

[Description and image found here, via here.]