Cool Shit 3/26

I'm a sucker for lists of cool places on this big blue marble we call Earth. This one even had a few I've never heard of.

It's difficult to have too strong an opinion on a list that is essentially based on opinion. But I'll still give it a try. This list of essential albums to own on vinyl seems a little short sighted, and very "modern." For example, it has no Pink Floyd albums, which, while it might be cliche to have them on such a list, that doesn't mean they don't deserve to be on it. Other choices I might suggest would be Steely Dan, any OTHER Radiohead album than the one they chose and Yes. And that's just off the top of my head.

Rolling Stone interviewed (separately) the living members of Pink Floyd and discussed the band in general, and the classic Dark Side of the Moon.

And speaking of Dark Side of the Moon, here's a writer who allegedly is listening to the album for the first time, which...what?

Care to see what the most popular file is in the FBI's vault of declassified documents?

Cool Shit 2/11

Matt Taibbi, writer for Rolling Stone (and one of the better investigative journalists out there, in my opinion, reporting on the sins of the government), did an AMA on Redditt. (For those who don't know - an "AMA" is "Ask Me Anything.")

I don't know, do you want a list of songs about one night stands? Because one exists. And here it is. Of course, it doesn't include Norwegian Wood, by the Beatles, which I thought was about a one night stand John Lennon had. Hold on one second as I go wiki it in real time...ok, so it seems, the song isn't about a one night stand, but about an affair - though the description of its meaning by both Paul and John is a little vague on the details, so I'm going to pull an audible and say it WAS about a one night stand, possibly changing the canon of the Beatles in doing so, but hey - where were we?

(A lot of the above might have to do with the fact that I'm currently listening to Tame Impala, a band that some might suggest sound like some of the trippier Beatles catalog, myself included. Listen for yourself...



Quick - get the Weathergirls back together. I smell a new hit (though rhyming anything with "spice" and making it work is going to be difficult. Also, raining spiders might be the next title of my nightmare.)



Movie trailer for Leviathan - a documentary about commercial fishing off the New England coast...though there are many television shows that depict this lifestyle, this movie looks to perhaps take a different visual approach to it. So if you ever thought Deadliest Catch wasn't visual enough to give you the whole picture of what it's like to go out to see for weeks on a fishing boat, this movie is for you. (Warning, if you get seasick easy, this might not be for you):



And then there's this most awesome thing of taking a love of Legos and combining it with a passion of curling, to make this.

Real Superheroes?

And we all thought it was a brief moment of humor in The Dark Knight, seeing people dressed as Batman, fighting crime. A clever scene from a movie showing idol worship gone wrong.

Apparently it's a whole lot realer than we thought.

This article goes into a little detail. This one from Rolling Stone goes into it a little more.

What am I talking about?

Real life superheroes.

You didn't think we could pass this up, did you?

On the flip side - a look at the more "interesting" ones...



It's not often something on the internet surprises me. I have a decent amount of experience with the wide range of unusual themes/concepts people come up with and then publish out there for the world to see. I even lump myself into that category due to this blog, and would never hold myself above the weirdness that swirls around the cable and DSL modems for people to peruse.

That said, I got taken by surprise by real superheroes. And I shouldn't have, because it's not that crazy enough not to exist. And there's plenty of weirder things to find out there. I guess it caught me because of the size of what's going on out there, in different cities. I mean, there's a directory that you can go and look at (which kind of defeats the purpose of secret identities really, and speaks more to the idea that these people want some level of fame, but that's a discussion for therapists and sociologists, and not me).

I get that people want to go out there and stop crime. I get that many people think they can help the police in certain situations and patrol areas. I don't get the need for dressing up and taking on a superhero's persona. I can honestly say I'm not sure what to do here. On one hand, I want to make fun of them like crazy. On the other hand, I mean, this is just too weird. I think many of them should get at the very minimum, some counseling. Seriously. I can appreciate that many of them know not to intervene during an actual crime, but still. This person, the Queen of Hearts, patrols Jackson, Michigan (which apparently has not one, not two, but three actual "superheroes" patrolling the streets, which leads me to believe that Jackson, Michigan either has A LOT of crime, or there really isn't much to do there. I don't plan on visiting to find out).

It also looks as though Doctor DiscorD went to the trouble of trademarking his name, unless he believes that simply putting a "TM" next to his name is cool/considered a legally binding agreement with the reader. The jury's still out on that, and it's not worth an email to ask really.

What I think I've decided to do is perhaps attempt to get an interview with one of these people and see if they will answer some questions about the nature of their actions, and what they want to get across other than the obvious "fighting crime" answer. I'm not sure I'll be 100% successful, as I'm sure the popularity of that site (which has hit recently around the net) will have others clamoring for the same information.