Spooky Nebulae!

This nebualae image from Astronomy Picture of the Day is pretty creepy. It looks like a giant space phantom.

It's extra spooky to me, cuz there's a link to my castle illusion. Thanks NASA!

The Great Postmodern Pumpkin

Howard posted this funny Charlie Brown vs. the Great Pumpkin youtube video, just in time for Halloween. The best part is when Marcie and Peppermint Patty make out.

Rated PG, mild language and mass peanut extermination.

Creepy Dummies

These nightmarish album covers are even creepier than Chucky.

Roundtable! iPod under attack!

Today's Roundtable could get ugly.
Stephen is accusing the iPod of murdering Tower Records!

Would the seemingly harmless little music player really do something horrible like that? Head over to serenadeingreen and post your thoughts.

Mysterious Things... Part Fifteen

What's going on in this mysterious photo?

Click the image for a closer look.
Leave your guess in the comments,
and I'll post the answer in there tomorrow.

This scene was a mystery to me at first.
It's a very haunting image.

Previously: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.

Another Mystery Item Follow-up

Mystery item 4 was a very nice close-up of a snowflake, but this one from wikipedia is downright amazing.
Click the image for a closer view... or... click here for a really large image.

Why would a snowflake look so much like concrete?

Slow motion video sequence of a knife bursting a water balloon

This is a folllowup to Mystery Item 7!

We live in the future

Two really nice images of the Space Shuttle launching into space, taken from the International Space Station, await your viewing pleasure on Warren Ellis' blog.

via the peeve farm

Sarah Drake Design — Today's Daily Candy

My friend Sarah Drake makes wonderful letterpress invitations and other printed items. She's featured in today's Daily Candy Chicago edition. Please go check out her designs!

I did her website, by the way.

New painting: The Automaton

This painting is 25" x 28", acrylic on canvas, and it's called 'The Automaton."

Pair o' keets

Pet birds being weird.

Mysterious Thing... the Fourteenth

Ready? It's the next mysterious item for you to guess.

This time, you have to specify WHERE you would find one of these strange things, 'cuz that's part of what makes today's mystery item so special.

Post your guess in the comments...
I'll post the answer in there tomorrow.

The 13 previous mystery items:: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

Cop Killer vs. Dean Ween?

Dean Ween kept a pretty funny travel log of all the gigs Ween played this summer. But check out this entry from the show at the New York State Fair in Syracuse:

...now i swear to god that this next part is true. if you follow the news at all, you'd know that there was a fugitive in upstate new york named ralph "bucky" phillips, wanted for shooting three state troopers and he was also an escapee from the erie prison. there was a massive manhunt underway for him right about the time we were up in that part of the state. i had only heard about the story and hadn't seen him on the news at this point. on our drive back to new hope from syracuse i fell asleep in the van and when i woke up we were off the interstate at this tiny little gas station with a shitty little diner. the other guys were inside using the bathroom and gettting food and i was the last one to wake up and get out of the truck. as i was walking across the gravel parking lot all groggy this dude was walking towards me and i remember thinking as i looked at his face "if i don't stare at the top of my sneakers right now, this motherfucker is gonna kill me on the spot." it scared the fucking shit out of me. to make a long story short, i got home, slept for a couple days, turned on the t.v. and lo and behold, there was the same dude from the parking lot. they captured him right after that, and no one believes my story, but it fucking happened just like i told it.

So what do you say, supersleuths? Did our man Dean escape a brush with death? Here's an interactive map that might help you puzzle out this mystery for yourself.

Lucifer Yellow, Angelic Acid and Betweenanene

Lots of elements molecules with ridiculous names.

Roundtable. Buy one, get one free.

Once again it's Roundtable Thursday...
It's a 2 for 1 sale.
Head over to Metaphor Voodoo to discuss sex and/or astrology.

Color explosions make me happy.

70,000 litres of paint
358 single bottle bombs
33 sextuple air cluster bombs
22 Triple hung cluster bombs
268 mortars
33 Triple Mortars
22 Double mortars
358 meters of weld
330 meters of steel pipe
57 km of copper wire

Glasgow, Scotland. July 2006. Paint everywhere!

You may have seen a low quality version of this video floating around youtube, but go check out the real deal, drenched in Quicktimey goodness. And check out the image gallery.

This image is great.... thanks Sony!

(and yeah, they cleaned it all up.)

Home is where the art is

Japan's Shinjuku Station is apparently filled with an incredible variety of cardboard boxes that the homeless use for shelter. Many of them have been painted in a stunning variety of scenes and designs.

In February 1998, a fire swept through Shinjuku Station, destroying many of the cardboard homes. You can see even more incredible images of these cardboard houses photographed by eyedia before the fire, here.

intermission

Black Water Lake

This astronaut photo of Har Us Nuur (Black Water Lake) has some pretty stunning colors. That lake doesn't look black at all. More info here.

The Dayalets, Vitamin Warriors

James Lileks welcomes us to the wonderful world of the Dayalets, a series of characters created in the '60s to teach children about nutrition. Or possibly to teach kids that their food might suddenly self-assemble and attack with any nearby eating utensils — the message isn't exactly clear.

As James says, "Never has the phrase 'you are what you eat' been proved so horribly."

Roundtable Thursday.... Cooking up Trouble

This week the discussion's over in Atul's kitchen. He's bewildered by the seemingly infinite variety of cooking appliances. Help him decide which one is the most useless, here.

"Daughter"

This ad from the 14th Raindance Film Festival is really funny. Great facial expressions.

See? Slugs.

This sea slug is freaky. So is this one. And this one. This one too. What's up with this one?

They're all too bizarre.

intermission

Roundtable: Who Are You?

Once again it's Roundtable Thursday...

RW at Chasing Vincenzo wants to know... Just who the #@!! do you think you are?

"How much of you is here now and what would you leave behind if you were somewhere else? What version of you would you have if you started in another worldview where some of the stuff you do now isn't done - or even more - where stuff you don't know about isn't being done now because you simply don't know about it? Would you be an expert at that? Would you love your shaman's cigar as much as your paycheck?"

Pull yourself together and post your thoughts here.

The 13th Item Of Mystery

See if you can guess what this image is.
Click for a closer view.
Leave your guess in the comments, and
I will post the answer in there tomorrow.

Clue: It's not a desolate cityscape or a level of q-bert.

The other 12 mystery items: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

Doodle — by Squidsoup

Draw a slowly pulsating squiggle that twists itself around, at doodle by Squidsoup.

via presurfer.

New Painting, "Stygian Murk"

Here is a new painting I just finished. It's called Stygian Murk, 24 x 32, acrylic on heavy paper.

Some Ween Videos

For your viewing pleasure, here are three videos that are sure to amuse and confuse.

First is a very well-done, fan-made video of Ween's "Where'd the Cheese Go" jingle that they wrote for Pizza Hut. See it here.

Next, I've been looking for this video for a long time, and it's finally been posted to YouTube. (Legality be damned!) This is Freedom of '76, featuring Dean and Gene getting caught trying to sneak off with Philadelphia's Liberty Bell. See it here. Great video for a great song.

Finally, scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel is another fan-made video, a Star Wars montage with Ween's "I'll be your Johnny on the Spot" playing in the background. Oddly satisfying... it's here.