Wooden waterwheel in front of Huanglong Cave (Yellow Dragon Cave) is a karst cave located near the Wulingyuan District of Zhangjiajie City, Hunan, China.
“Turns out the area that these wheels were traditionally in was flooded as part of the 3 gorges dam, so this is a reconstruction for people to see what they would have looked like.” -comment on Reddit
Everything ancient in China is almost always a reproduction, including this. It’s an elaborate kinetic sculpture – the water mill doesn’t appear to mill anything. China lets you look around the cave a bit on Google Maps street view: 29°22’1.62″N 110°36’47.79″E
[Video found here; a longer version without music here.]
Culinary Specialist 2nd Class Teresa Conde, from San Diego, sculpts a Halloween cake aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN-68) on Oct. 26, 2020. US Navy Photo.
USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group are currently stationed in the Central Persian Gulf.
[Image and caption found here. I posted this because it’s still not Thanksgiving yet.]
UPDATE: Also on the Nimitz – A Veteran’s Day Cake
Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Sarah Freitas, left, and Aviation Ordnanceman Airman Erica Rodriguez cut a Veterans Day cake on the aft mess deck of the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) on Nov. 11, 2020. US Navy Photo
“Au siècle de la révolution industrielle, la technologie des automates est maîtrisée principalement par les artisans français. Alexandre-Nicolas Théroude, le créateur de cette pièce pour laquelle il a déposé un brevet en 1866, est connu pour avoir le premier su enfermer le mécanisme dans le corps de l’automate.”
“Flautiste” – Life-size Flute Player Automaton by Alexandre Nicolas Theroude (1807-1883), Paris, France, c.1869-77.
“Ladies and Gentlemen:Please rise for our 2020 National Anthem.“
“If people could read my mind, this is what they’d see.”
“This is baby makin’ music for clowns.”
Mayer Hawthorne has the Motown sound down. I heard this and thought “Why don’t I remember that one?” He once stated that, when working as a hip hop DJ, he began recording his own Motown-style tracks to avoid paying fees for sampling other artists’ work. That video made me grin. An excerpt of “The Walk” was used in a Blue Moon beer TV commercial in 2017.
The Beat Farmers were a great band from So. California. I got to see them several times in the 80s, and Road of Ruin seems appropriate for our times. (Two of the original members are gone: Country Dick Montana and Buddy Blue.)
Yeah, we may be on the road of ruin depending on how you look at things, and I’m not talking about the current election fraud. It’s the bigger picture that concerns me. Not much I can do about it.
See you back here tomorrow, rain or shine, and we’ll do something stupid together.
First recorded in 1976, The Ramones‘ I Don’t Wanna Go Down To The Basement is sort of appropriate.
Sally Cruikshank‘s animations are Betty Boop on acid. Face like a Frog (1987) includes the Cab Calloway-esque song Don’t Go In The Basement (starts at 02:26 ). In 2017, Cruikshank herself added this to the YouTube comments:
“Danny Elfman composed the track for this film. Period. Copyright mine. Then a year or two later I gave his agents permission to include it on a compilation LP, I guess put out by [David] Geffen. Now they claim I got the music from the album or something. They’re wrong. My film came first. My husband’s going to get into it with Geffen.”
“I don’t always listen to Dead Man’s Party, but when I do so do the neighbors.” – YouTube comment
Oingo Boingo was a standout band of the 1980s, combining ska, punk, jazz & rock, and Dead Man’s Party became a Halloween party standard. According to Wikipedia:
The lyric, “I hear the chauffeur coming to my door / Says there’s room for maybe just one more,” is a reference to “The Bus-Conductor,” a short story by E. F. Benson about a hearse driver, first published in The Pall Mall Magazine in 1906.
Video is from the 1986 movie Back To School. Yeah, 34 years ago…
Happy Halloween, folks!
This year I’m gonna scare half the neighborhood by NOT wearing a mask. Hope you get all the tricks you deserve and all the treats that you don’t.
[Paranoia moons previously posted here. More Halloween-related posts in the archives.]
