Category: Weirdness

Friday Freaks – Vampire Cars

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Friday Freaks – Vampire Cars
Weirdness

Today’s Friday Freaks post comes from The Hope Chest (warning: language NSFW) via BoingBoing.net. The Hope Chest’s tagline is “Bad News from the Past”, and it features scanned articles from old newspapers from the early 1900’s. Recently The Hope Chest has had a vampire obsession, specifically, vampire cars. The term “vampire auto” doesn’t refer to … Read More “Friday Freaks – Vampire Cars” »

Friday Freaks – The Ekronoplan

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Friday Freaks – The Ekronoplan
Weirdness

In my RSS feed reader I have a folder for websites called “Weirdness.” This folder orgnizes feeds from such unusual sites as Awkward Family Photos, Cracked, Mental Floss, Fail Blog, and Dark Roasted Blend, among others. Sometimes I’ll get a link to a new website that joins the list of weird feeds. Every now and then something pops up on one of those sites that is worthy of more than just a bookmark or a Tweet. So, I’m going to try to highlight the best of these with a Friday Freaks post on, you got it, Fridays!

Today’s Freak comes from Dark Roasted Blend, and it’s the Ekronoplan, an unusual ground effects vehicle from the Cold War Soviet Union that is part boat, part, aircraft, and all weirdness. The Ekronoplan is so weird, in fact, that DRB devoted two posts to this unusual vehicle.

Read More “Friday Freaks – The Ekronoplan” »

Initialed Chimneys

Posted on By Tom 4 Comments on Initialed Chimneys
Local, Weirdness

DSC_0004

The above photo is of a house near my office. It’s a bit blurry because I shot quickly as I was driving past. What caught my attention was the prominent initial “F” worked into the chimney masonry. In a post-mortgage fallout, post-“Flip this House” era, the idea of marking one’s house so indelibly seems quaint, almost laughable.

This is a very permanent mark. In many cases tan colored bricks are built into the chimney structure. Just about the only way to remove the initial is to tear down and rebuilt the chimney. Painting over it only partially obscures the letter, as the bricks that make up the initial are often of a different shape or orientation, so you can still see the outline.

Read More “Initialed Chimneys” »

The Incomparable Weirdness of Twitter

Posted on By Tom 1 Comment on The Incomparable Weirdness of Twitter
Internet, Weirdness

Twitter-Capture

As if there were any doubt, my true nerd nature is about to come through.  Some of my admissions in this post will be embarrassing, but it gets my point across about Twitter.

I freely admit that I am a Trekkie.  I can usually name most of The Original Series episode titles having seen just a few seconds of one.  I am not, however, a “Trekker”.  I don’t have a Star Fleet uniform in my closet (although I did have a model phaser when I was a teenager), nor to I dress up like a Klingon and attend conventions.

So what does this have to do with Twitter?  I’ll get to that in a moment.  I signed up for Twitter as a matter of convenience.  It was a simple way of updating my blog and Facebook from one location.  I didn’t really have any intention of “following” anyone on Twitter, but soon I got tired of looking at my own updates.  I added a few friends and locals that I knew from other social networking sites.

Read More “The Incomparable Weirdness of Twitter” »

Songs that Didn’t Quite Make It into Handel’s Messiah

Posted on By Tom 2 Comments on Songs that Didn’t Quite Make It into Handel’s Messiah
Music, Weirdness

Since I had already committed blasphemy by bringing a synthesizer to a baroque concert… Every Body Shall Be Exhausted His Yolk Is Greasy and His Bacon Is Fried Lift Up Your Head, O Bill Gates Thou Shalt Rake Them For He Is Like A Retainer’s Wire Surely He Hath Worn Our Briefs How Odorous Are … Read More “Songs that Didn’t Quite Make It into Handel’s Messiah” »

A Green Cadillac Hearse and Mistaken Identity

Posted on By Tom 1 Comment on A Green Cadillac Hearse and Mistaken Identity
Weirdness

While on our journey to the promised land, Glynda and Houston and I reminisced about another [mis]adventure from over a decade ago. Since this was pre-RandomConnections, the episode was never properly documented. So here, for the first time, is the tale of “The Green Cadillac Hearse and the Case of Mistaken Identity”…

The year was 1997 and I was still a teacher. This was in the pre-digital days, and I was using a Canon Xapshot video still camera from my classroom. This particular camera recorded still images onto an analog disk similar to a floppy disk. It was one of the first cameras that could record images that could be erased later. The images were transferred to computer via an image capture card, which could also do video stills from a camcorder.

Houston had come up to visit and we were on one of our photo rambles, this time staying fairly close to home. My intent was to capture some interesting textures as backgrounds for some classroom web projects we had underway. While I did get some good textures from that trip, the other things I captured would never make it into the classroom.

Read More “A Green Cadillac Hearse and Mistaken Identity” »