"Mutts" and Zappa

I'll admit I don't (yet) know much about the comic strip Mutts. I'd seen it a few times a long time ago, I have some friends who have posted some favorite panels to forums I frequent. Shoot, quite a few years before I was even really very aware of Mutts as a daily strip I redrew (using resolution-independent vectors in Adobe Illustrator-click on image at left) one of the main characters—a cat named Mooch—uttering an iconic line from the strip..."YESH!!!" for a cousin who wanted to use it for a birthday card for her friend. I'm a newcomer to the comic, having only started reading it regularly when—a couple months ago—our local newspaper consolidated their morning and evening editions into one publication per day. I always got the evening paper, it was in the morning paper. Now, we get the comics from both editions. Nice!

On the surface, I find it to be a cute strip. I like the minimalism of the art, and the stroke styles are simple and sublime. The gags are usually pretty basic (and thankfully absent of the inane smarminess of a strip like Fred Bassett or the cloying precociousness of Marvin). Upon first glance, that is. Despite the seeming simplicity, though, every once in a while I've noticed some pretty clever and well disguised cultural references that might belie the superficial sweetness and light of the strip's appearance. I don't really know much about Mutts creator Patrick McDonnell, but I have a feeling we may like some of the same music.

Why do I make that claim? Please read on and I'll explain...

So, I'm eating lunch today and reading the paper and I come across the Mutts strip, below:

For those of you who know me—and even for those who don't—I'll remind you that I'm a died-in-the-wool fan of Frank Zappa. So when I saw those lines in panels 2 and 3, I was certain McDonnell was a fan as well. Because, you see, "Help, I'm a rock!" is a notable reference from Frank Zappa's 1966 debut double album Freak Out.

Now, you may figure that those words in the comic strip are just a coincidence, but I know they aren't. How do I know? Because about a week ago I was doing some heavy research on some obscure Captain Beefheart info on the Captain Beefheart Radar Station fan site, when I ran across the following:

(Click image for full size, or go here to see where I grabbed it from)

Now, anyone who knows much about Zappa and Beefheart knows that they are inextricably linked in the annals of musical culture. The color image is an homage to the landmark 1969 Zappa-produced Beefheart album Troutmask Replica, and the actual comic strip references at least 3 of Beefheart's songs, as far as I can discern. Given that Mr. McDonnell has made these two references (and probably more, I'd bet, if I looked through his Mutts archives), I'm willing to bet that the guy would probably be pretty fun to hang out with at a pub for an evening.

Maybe I'll shoot him an email and see what he's doing this weekend.

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Jupiter, Venus, Moon, Sylvania

(Click for larger size)
The other night I walked out to the mailbox after dinner, and coming back up my driveway I noticed a couple bright spots in the sky just over the roof. I hadn't heard this was happening, and had to do a little Googling to find out it was a convergence of Jupiter and Venus. I read that a sliver of the moon was going to be in close conjunction over the next couple nights so I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood with my camera.

I'd never tried any kind of long-exposure photography, so I just guessed at camera settings. High ISO, wide aperture and maximum exposure time—3 seconds on my Fuji E550. Of the 10 or so photos I took last evening around 6:30-6:45pm EST, the one above is the best one I could manage. Obviously, I have a little bit to learn about this stuff. Probably would've helped if I'd gotten away from the neighborhood lights as well.

Makes me really appreciate what my compadre on the Adobe Forums—Jeff P.—does with his camera/telescope/sky-tracking device. He's got some cool galaxy and nebula shots...Go check 'em out.

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Time Warp Coin

(Click Image to Enlarge)      Last week I stopped at the local con-
venience store and got a small fountain Coke. 79¢ + 6% sales tax = 84¢. 16¢ change from my dollar. I was in kind of a hurry so I just grabbed the change and shoved it in my pocket without even looking.

Yesterday, I was gathering up my clothes to do laundry and the pair of shorts I had worn to the store decided to divest itself of the change I had shoved in the pocket. As I was picking up the coins i noticed there was something different about the "penny."

It looked like a badly tarnished one-cent piece, but, hmm...what's this? The edge of the coin was flute-milled, like a dime. I shoved my glasses up on my forehead and looked a little closer. This wasn't like any coin I had ever seen.

Sooo, I took it to the sink and tried to clean it off—first with some dish liquid, then with Barkeeper's Friend. It got a little cleaner, but no brighter. Then I tried Tarn-X and then jewelry cleaner, then vinegar and baking soda. Not much luck with them, either.

But, it got cleaned up enough to see what it is: A badly worn 5 pfennig piece, dated 1944, minted in Nazi Germany. Never saw one before, or even knew about them.

According to this Wikipedia article, they are made of a zinc-aluminum alloy. 1944 was the last year for coins bearing a swastika, for obvious reasons.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, since it's too beat up to be worth much of anything. I suppose it'll just end up forgotten in a drawer or a box, forgotten like so much other weird junk we all collect over the years. Full Story & Permalink

A Whale of a Monitor

What's as much as 110 feet long, with a weight of up to 196 tons, has a tongue the size of an elephant, lungs that can hold 1320 gallons (177 ft³) of air, can travel up to 50 mph and fits on your monitor?

Why, it's the Flash-based presentation of a life-sized blue whale, created and hosted by the U.K.'s Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. (Via Core77)

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Happy Pi Day: Celebrating 3.14...

The rounder you go the longer you get.

Some stupid fun geeky stuff:
PiDay.org
The Joy of Pi
WikiPIdia
Search 200 million digits of Pi for strings of numbers
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Ferment Your Forest

People have been known to make wine out of all kinds of stuff—some of it's great, some of it must be positively awful. But hey, it's all in pursuit of a buzz, right? If it also happens to have a sublime taste, well, that's just icing on the cake.

Just today I discovered that there's a long tradition of making wine from the leaves of oak trees. There are two versions of oak leaf wine: one made from new springtime leaves, and the other from old, brown leaves. While reading about this, I also saw some references to fermenting wine from birch leaves as well. Somehow, that seems to make more sense.

What's next? Distilling whiskey from used newsprint? Full Story & Permalink

Superplexus

I'd like to have a go with the Superplexus 3D maze toy, but it seems out of stock everywhere. Dang.

I stumbled across the Superplexus while I was looking for a toy I played with as a kid. It was a cube about 3½" on a side, and the inside was divided into about 6 layers, each of which was a maze. Everything was made of clear plastic and the object was to maneuver a tiny steel ball bearing from in-hole to out-hole. Looks like I'm not the only person looking for one.

And no, I don't mean the Money Maze. That looks too simple.

It might have been the "A-Maze-Ing" toy, but I remember each level being more complex than the one in the linked image.

It's from that (possibly false) memory that makes me think it would be fun to craft a complex many-layered blind maze cube, possibly out of wood. My idea is that there would be a gate near the in-hole which would prevent the ball from coming back out; the only way to solve the puzzle would be to work it through to the out-hole. Full Story & Permalink

Guitars from Eastern Europe

As much as I love playing really fine examples of the luthier's craft, there's another part of me that just can't get enough of the oddball designs that the lesser-known guitar makers come up with. Manufacturers like Teisco, Kay, Kent, and others are pretty well-known, but I'd never seen a collection of Eastern European/Soviet/USSR guitars like Lord Bizarre has assembled. Don't care how slick they are, Boy-o, would I like to just plug 'em in and skronk some noise. Poke around the site, there are a bunch of other oddball guitars pictured there, too. Full Story & Permalink

Homegrown 3D Hypercosmic Nebulae

This might accurately portray what I'd have in mind if I were to imagine a gently exploding, evolving depiction of a SparkBox.

Magnetosphere is 92 MB of wide-screen (screen cap above has been edited to fit) streaming goodness by Robert Hodgin. He's got some more killer stuff on his Flight404 blog. (via John Nack's Adobe blog)

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