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March 31, 2005
Produced by Phil Spector & Bruce Dickinson
A huge compendium of US Army Bands - Serving the Nation through music
Rolling Stones Portrait Art by Ronnie Wood
The complete Al Hazan Story
The folks behind the Revolved mash-up album, has a blog, CCC, containing many other winning combinations
Grateful Dead Downloads: The band released the total vault on MP3
Great Female Vocalists, and many other musical trailblazers at the “Great Song Stylists”. Found on the original, and NS4W, ”Good Shit”)
Right now I’m going through a major Steely Dan month & Everything Must Go
Enter The Blind Faith Super Group Portal; Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton, Ric Grech, and Stevie Winwood. (From Der Schockwellenreiter)
Was doing the rounds all over: Buddy Rich at the Muppet Show. (From the previously-blogged DrummerWorld Videos)
I need more Electric Cowbell!
Many More Unusual Music Links Here
Today’s “Blog Of The Day” is Gokurousama. Gokurousama means "Thank you for your troubles" in Japanese and it is also the name of this blog. Gokurousama celebrates and recognizes the hard work of others. Found at Joi Ito. I finally made a little Linking Icon the “winner” can stick on their site, if they wish
March 31, 2005 in Music_ | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 30, 2005
A new Googlebomb: Tea
Summerhill Pyramid Winery: Every day at 2 o'clock, for three years, we toured the smaller pyramid with the general public. We did taste comparisons of the same wine, bottled on the same day, and served at the same temperature. One was stored in the pyramid for 30-90 days and the other never having being put in the pyramid. The results were overwhelming… There is a definite and profound effect on liquids placed in sacred geometry!
If you link to “Adagio Teas” Website, they will "mail you a delicious tea reward that is commensurate with your webpage's Google PageRank”
Also, a giant Tea Related Directory
If you're too much of an impressionable idiot to watch "Sideways," then don't. Maddox opinions about the movie “Sideways”. (You can also read it in Italian. Or, just browse through a fine piece of political literature, Bill O'Reilly Bingo)
Ethnographic Potshots: Send me pictures of your coffeemaker
Spike's Root Beer Reviews and Ratings: I employ a very rigorous process when taste-testing root beer, in order to determine the most accurate grade. First, I fast for 4 hours. Then I brush my teeth with a new toothbrush using only baking soda. I rinse 3 times with distilled water, then I take some fresh mint (home grown!) and lightly crush it on my tongue. I rinse again, the finish the cleansing of my palette with a very light lime sherbet. Two final rinses and I'm ready to go!
Under the table. There are more slang words for inebriation than there are for any other word in the English language
Many More Unusual Drinks Here
March 30, 2005 in Beverages | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
One Million Served!
Since opening the doors of this blog on February 5, 2004, I had over one million visitors! Here are Grow-a-Brain's current statistics as reported by Typepad a couple of hours ago:
Total number of hits: 1,000,955
Average per day: 2394.65
Today: 12,740
In the last hour: 333
This week: 34,746
Thanks for everybody who visits. My next goal is to become like the mad Maddox, and have 100 million hits within the next few years. Won’t you tell everybody you know about Grow-a-Brain? Write your congress-person, if you have one. Nominate this blog to all kinds of prizes. Help me find a new girlfriend! I need traffic! Thank you!
So here is a little poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti for you - The World Is a Beautiful Place:
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you...
Also, I’ve done it before, and here it is again: Grow-a-Brain in 1998. (With The Fulifier, which turns around any website three thousand times uglier than it was before)
Read what people have been saying about Grow-a-Brain
March 30, 2005 in Website News | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack
Uncle Meat
It’s soothing to hear Frank Zappa’s voice. Here you can listen to Zappa read 'The Talking Asshole' from William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch: "Um, as you know, I'm not the kind of a person that reads books, I've said this before many times, I'm not fond of reading…" From The Kilbot Factory. (Unrelated, and uncalled for, but possibly offensive Listen to Your Anus, the Zappa spirit at its worst)
A Fish Called Zappa and other Natural Phenomena Named After Zappa
Andrew Livingston and George Morris - Paintings Inspired by Zappa’s Music
Chauk Pie, the complete unreleased album, and Zappa custodian art. (From ”Metafilter”)
Shrenk Zappa, from “Worth 1000”
eBay item: Zappa Signed Fender Autographed Guitar
At last, here it is - the definitive, complete list of unquestionable Frank Zappa references that have been made on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 TV show
Many More Odd Zappa Moments Here and Unusual Dylan Links Here
March 30, 2005 in Music - Frank Zappa | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Holiday shopping done early
The Grocery List Collection. I found an abandoned grocery list in a St. Louis Schnuck's parking lot in 1996 or 1997. Quite simply, I decided to keep them every time I came across one. And the internet is a great place to do stupid things. So here it is
Bosom Buddies - Costume Accessories for your Cleavage
Hermès’s first in-house perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena creates a new perfume. (A New Yorker article)
The place to find hard-to-find Life Size Statues
The first Masonic Supply company on the World Wide Web. Family owned and operated for over 62 years with onsite manufacturing of quality Masonic Supplies
Gas Masks and safety products. Catering for all your paranoia needs. Taking all major credit cards.
The Impulsive Buy is dedicated to providing quasi-reviews about various consumer goods. Each review goes off on some tangent, but almost always comes back to complete the review
Many More Unusual Things To Buy Here
March 30, 2005 in Shopping | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Evercrack
Make delightful figures out of orange peel. (If you don't read French, click on "Galeries d'oranges ")
Games we play - The evolution of games since 1800
The Edmund Scientific company has been selling engineering, robotic, and astronomy supplies since 1942 -- but their stand out best seller and unofficial mascot is the Dippy Drinking Bird. (From “Rotten”!)
3441 pieces. No Star Wars Collection will ever be complete without a dreaded Imperial battle station of your own, The Lego Death Star II
Or, try Dennis Bosman’s Heavy Equipment Lego trucks. (From Ursi’s blog)
Philosophical Action Figures - collect them all!
Precision die-cast scale models of Corgi Toys. (From the same people who gave us 'Golden Memories from Japan', 'Kiddie Records Weekly' & Vertigo: Then and Now. Thanks, Michael)
EverQuest Widows is a forum for partners, family, and friends of people who play EverQuest compulsively. We turn to each other because it's no fun talking to the back of someone's head while they're retrieving their corpse or "telling" with their guild-mates as you speak
Unusual looking dolls: Juan Albuerne's Movie Stars Dolls. From Veronica Lake in “I married a Witch” to Julia Roberts in “Erin Brockovich”
Re-post: Figurative Art and Automata from Chomick & Meder: Monsieur Augure, Mack Kandinsky, Roland Montague, Jean Luc-le Chercheur & other pinheads.
Trailer Trash Dolls. Likewise, Barbie Enchiladas from “Food Chain Barbie”
Shelley Thornton, doll maker. Other Strange dolls
Virtual Romanian sweatshops where you play games for 10 hours - and earn £2.80 a day
Many More Unusual Games and Toys Here
Today’s “Blog Of The Day” is Deuce o' clubs - Award winning waste of your precious time. I finally made a little Linking Icon the “winner” can stick on their site, if they wish
March 30, 2005 in Games | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 29, 2005
Mixed bag today-
How is 64 = 65?
Porta-Lung – The Iron Lung For People On The Go. If you need more portability than the old-fashioned iron lungs, use Porta-Lung, and enjoy the great outdoors
Chinese stamps of Pig-Breeding (and many other animal stamps. From ”Purse lip square jaw”)
A Collection of Postage Stamps with Bridges On Them
Petroleum-related stamps from around the world
“Avoid shopping and making important decisions from 3:20 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. EST today”, says Georgia Nicols, Canada's most popular astrologer
Also, from up there, Archives of The Canadian Pacific Railway
The ladder theory is a theory of adult male/female interaction. It has its basis in many years of sociological field testing. You'll note that a man has one ladder while a female has two
I know it’s an old hat trick, but here’s a stereogram for you. Start crossing your eyes. All right, here’s another. Have a donut
Artificial synchronicity, language manipulation, kundalini and the corners of reality. This website is about the activities and methods of foreigners operating in disguise on the surface of Earth, masquerading as terrestrials and living as characters. The two foreign groups that operate on Earth are hereinafter called "foreigners of Our Side" and "foreigners of the Other Side". A British version of same
(Photo above of Anti-Boat from Mikan Moblog.) Many More Unusual Oddities and Crazy linkage Here
March 29, 2005 in Odds & Ends | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 28, 2005
The war against dandruff
Gore Vidal on the War for oil. This is a must-read interview, with many sad & insightful truths:
…We're governed by public relations. Very little information gets to the people, thanks to the corruption and/or ineptitude of the media…
...Iraq is a symptom of the passion we have for oil…
...It has been part of the American propaganda machine that we have no class system. This isn't true. We have a very strong, very rigid class structure which goes back to the beginning of the country…
...The Republican Party used to be the party of the small-town businessman. It now represents nothing but the gas and oil business. They own it. And the people who go to Congress are simply bought. They are lawyers who are paid to represent Halliburton, big oil, big banking. So the very rich corporate America has a party for itself, the Republican Party. The Democrats don't have much of anything but a kind of wistful style. They just want everyone to be happy, and politically correct at all times…
..."Liberal" has been demonized. A liberal is a commie who's also a pedophile…
...In (The media) Zoo, you have a number of people who pretend to be journalists but are really like animals. Each one has his own noise--there's the donkey who brays, there's the pig who squeals…
...The art of government now, the art of control as practiced by the current junta, is: Keep the people frightened... The Russians are coming. The Poles are killing Germans who live within the borders of Poland. The Czechs are doing the same thing in the Sudetenland. These are evil people. We must go after them. We must save our kin…
"The First 1000", a portrait by Mark Bryan. (As of today, it should be “The First 1704”)
Bird With Two Right Wings, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
at each election
as if it really mattered who the pilot is
of Air Force One…
(From ”wood s lot”)
10 ways Dick Cheney can kill you
Milk makes Kofi go down easier. Milk, it does a body politic good
Many More Odd Political Links Here
Today’s “Blog Of The Day” is WoodMoor Village - a community of mindfulness. I finally made a little Linking Icon the “winner” can stick on their site, if they wish
March 28, 2005 in Politics | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 27, 2005
Coming next year
The only comic book I ever read (is coming to the big screen)
Listen to the Zippy Theme Song:
Some say he was born on a distant planet
4,538 years ago
Others say he was sold for five hundred dollars
To a traveling carnival sideshow
67 cartoons by B Kliban
Rion Vernon’s Pin-up toons
itty bitty toon by Ultra Microscopic
Akbar and Jeff are NAKED!
The cartoons seen in the opening of each episode of Futurama come from a time when cartoons were produced to be shown in movie theatres
Favorite characters from The Crumb Museum: Mr Natural, Angelfood McSpade, Fritz the Cat, Crumb Hisself
Adventure - Life’s too short. Eat pie
Many More Unusual Comics and cartoons Here
March 27, 2005 in Comics & Cartoons | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Happy Easter
“Hello, and welcome to ABC-Banana-Real estate Blog. This is a great place to find useful articles related to real estate, and real estate investing. This is my first post” (and may as well be also the last)… So begin many of the new crop of real estate blogs that are now beginning to flood the market. But, I continue to provide here an ongoing list of all conceived real estate blogs known to man, even though I can see that very soon, it will become a task of diminishing returns. (Anybody not interested in this tedious subject, please scroll down to the juicy parts of this blog.)
Fortunately, Todd Carpenter of Lenderama decided to help compile a parallel list on his new Real Estate & Mortgage Blogs Directory. If you don’t get enough real estate blogs below, go visit Todd.
So here are new blogs that I found just in the last 3 weeks. Excluded are a bunch of single entry blogs, as described above:
Beverly Palmer's blog about Montecito and Santa Barbara. (From Doc Searls Weblog)
New Delhi real estate blog by NCR. (Started January 1994!)
Gulf Returns, focusing on the booming Southwest Florida real estate market
John Frost’s The Home Blog. A consumer’s repository for his research on buying a new home and reflections of selling his current home
Ask The Real Estate Professionals by Merv & Pam Forney
Karen Mason’s FL Real Estate
Nantucket Island Massachusetts Directory of Real Estate Resources
San Francisco Real Estate by Amy Blakeley
Investment blogs: The life and times of an Arizona Investor. (Seems to be related to a group of blogs about REI, like Hespy’s real estate blog and Joe Kelley's Real Estate Investment Weblog)
My Real Estate Investing Venture from Round Rock, Texas
From Bigger Pockekts Investing Community
Teresa Ellis’s Adventures with Real "T"
Gary Brey’s Sarasota Real Estate Blog
Andrew Ingram ‘s Grand Rapids Real Estate Solutions
Broker Outpost blog, for mortgage professionals only
Las Vegas real estate Blog, by Max Schmidt
Carrboro, North Carolina real estate by Kandyce Ellis
FSBO, (stands for "For Sale By Owner") real estate blog
North Carolina Homes, the first real estate blog for north Carolina
Suggestion: If you are a real estate agent starting a blog, don’t be a secret agent - Write your profile (About-page) and include information about your business. The complete List of Real Estate Blogs as well as Grow-a-Brain’s Real Estate Archives are Here
March 27, 2005 in Real estate Blogs | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
March 26, 2005
Howard! Stop it
Buttplug! (Sounds like Howard Stern? May offend. From Trans Buddha)
Scott-O-Rama's Shirtless Male Athletes
New York City mug pre- 9/11
It actually says it right there - Worst tattoo ever
Welcome to the wonderful world of Coloring Book. (Warning: May also offend many people, crack up others!)
Crack My Knuckles and wince. By Rob Manuel
Rhythmic Flash, “Play” by Dustball
A few months ago, I posted this odd picture, asking What's wrong with this picture? Here's the pictorial exposé of what it was and how it was done
Walk like an Egyptian - A cosmetically-enhanced crossing signal on Wooster Street, NYC
Cartoon above by Revilo. Many More Unusual Oddities and Crazy linkage Here
In the next few days, I’m going to compose some posts about politics, shopping, newspapers, The Godfather, literature, beverages, the future & animals. If you know of some odd, new links on those subjects, email them to me for credit or a link-back (or both).
March 26, 2005 in Odd & Crazy | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Flipping over
I didn't mean to but...I bought a big, old boat. This is the ongoing saga of Lady Jane, a steel hulled fishing trawler, built in 1963, which I bought in July 2004
Marine art by James Flora
C to C roll. How to flip over with your kayak
Tim Anderson's learning the hard way: To Cuba (almost) by Outrigger Sailing Canoe
Kite power: Sky Sails will harness high-altitude winds for cargo ships which should reduce fuel consumption as well as pollution
Ellen MacArthur’s new record: Sailing alone around the world in 71 days 14hrs 18mins 33secs
Quick Sailing, a giant directory of sailing links
Many More Unusual Yachting Links Here
March 26, 2005 in Boating | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
What is a Hurdy-Gurdy
How to build a Laser harp, by "Jarrelook"
Gypsy Jazz guitar as played by 21-year old German prodigy Joscho Stephan
The homemade instruments of composer and instrument designer Buzz Kimball
Here comes The Hurdy-Gurdy Man (“singing songs of love”. From ‘A Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Instruments’)
Watch Eddie Peabody "King of the Banjo" playing "St. Louis Blues”
A Banjo on my Knee. A Vintage Banjo Gallery. (From The Cartoonist)
An Homage to Fairbanks banjos
“Broken Sorrow” from Nuttin but stringz - Rap & Violins
Over the last five decades air guitar has been created, perfected, and eventually elevated to the status of a bona fide art form. While air guitar is a fascinating and rewarding pastime, the Brothers Randall believe that an even higher form of art is that of "object guitar", the use of various objects in order to mimic the playing of a guitar
(Art above by George Callaghan). Many Odd Links of Unusual String Instruments and other Strange Musical Links Here
March 26, 2005 in Music - String Instruments | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
To soup - may it be seen and not heard
“We were eating in this open-air café when it started raining. It took us an hour and a half to finish our soup”. Many more soup jokes. (From ”Information Junk”)
"Achhk, you bahhhhhstaaard! That's not me bagpipe!" and 49 other “Absolute Bottom Joke Punchlines”. No 49: "Now you know why they call that mustard 'Poupon.'"
A man with a winking problem is applying for a position as a sales rep for a large firm…
“Pair up in threes” - Yogi Berra quotes
Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Cokie Roberts and a U.S. Marine were hiking through the desert one day…
The political situation in Iraq is so hilarious, now that the country is liberated and democracy thrives, that the citizenry can finally release its frustrations with some harmless Iraqi ethnic jokes
Many More Jokes and other Funny Stuff Here
March 26, 2005 in Jokes | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Hello kitty, kitty
This ad for the Gaba language school asks Japanese people to fill in the blank: "If I could speak English, I would..."
Japanese name translation, the only place you can have your full name automatically translated into Japanese katakana symbols
I never thought about it before: How do you use a Japanese typewriter
The glass floor at The Tokyo Tower
Ninjukai’s Belts and Hachimaki Headbands
The new Saga “Near me” robot cat (with German-style accordion music)
Secrets of The Shuriken-do, the traditional Japanese martial art of blade throwing
Dentsu Advertising Museum from the Edo & Meiji eras
Photographer Hiroji Kubota Capturing Japan
Henshin hall of fame, dedicated to Japanese tv superheroes, mostly from the 1970s
Fast food cosplay: The McDonald Girl, the Colonel dude, the apple guy and one more individual
Many More Unusual Links about Japan Here
March 26, 2005 in Japan | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack