[dovate.com] » weird
About a year ago, several large, colorful street tiles appeared in Buffalo, NY. By winter the “House of Hades” tiles had been completely destroyed by snowplows. But their creators have been tenacious. Earlier this year, a new batch appeared in Buffalo. Now, a HHH tile has popped up at 9th Ave and 56th street in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. Stylistically, aesthetically, artistically and creatively these are my favorite of the “copycat” tiles:
Also, last Friday’s post listed 12 new Toynbee tiles here in Philly. Since Friday I’ve seen additional new tiles at:
5th and Walnut
5th and Market
6th and Market (2 of them, 1 already badly damaged, the other nearly destroyed)
Also, Justin reported a tile at 34th and Walnut and I’m sure there are more.
I’ve been slacking on Toynbee tile updates. A few weeks back, the first of the 08’ tiles appeared on center city streets. I’m slacking because after 2007’s re-introduction of original style tiles, these new ones just aren’t that exciting. With 1 minor exception, all are long, thin, 2-line tiles like this one:
* Photo credit: stardotjpg from the Tile message board.
To help make this uninspired batch more interesting, let’s try to trace in what order they were placed. We can also glean some interesting information from their placement.
All the new tiles were glued in crosswalks. Most are out near the center of the street. All the tiles were placed from a car. How do I know this?
All tiles appear on the side of an intersection where a car would stop for a light or sign. If you’re looking for tiles, this is a good place to start. If a road goes north, look on the crosswalk on the southern side. If it goes east, look on the western corner. All large tiles follow this pattern. Small, “index card” tiles placed between 2002 and 2007 don’t necessarily stick to this. Judging by placement, I’d say that the tiler has been using a car with increasing frequency in the last couple of years.
In contrast, a ton of new Robot Men appeared in the last couple weeks. None of these follow the glued by car pattern. They appear in any crosswalk or even in the middle of the block. They’re clearly put down by someone on foot.
Other, large new Toynbee tiles along City Ave. and Roosevelt Boulevard also suggest the use of a car. I don’t post about these tiles out of prejudice. For whatever reason the Greater Northeast and near suburbs have a hard time clicking in my mindspace.
But getting back to the new downtown Toynbee tiles, here’s how it went down:
1. The first tile was glued at Broad and JFK, where it merges westbound at City Hall. This is a large, 4-line index card style tile.
2. The tiler then continued south on Broad to Lombard, where he made a right. At 18th he made another right, dropping his 2nd tile at 18th and Spruce.
3. Continuing on 18th he dropped the third tile at 18th and Rittenhouse.
4. Finishing off his assault on the Square, the 4th went down at 18th and Walnut.
5. At Sansom, he made a left, dropping the 5th tile on Sansom at 20th.
6. He made a right at 20th and Sansom and dropped his next tile at 20th and Chestnut.
7. Going north on 20th to somewhere just past Vine, he cut back towards the city. After stopping off at Whole Foods, he made a right at 19th, dropping his next tile at Vine Street.
8. The next went down just a block away at 19th and the Parkway (north side)
9. Next was 19th and Arch.
10. 19th and JFK
11. 19th and Chestnut, then a left on Chestnut.
12. The last of the batch was dropped on Chestnut street at 17th Street.
Alternately, it’s possible that he didn’t turn at 18th and Sansom, instead traveling up 18th street past Vine, laying the 19th street tiles, making his Sansom Street turn at 19th, and rounding out the last 3 with numbers 5,6 and 12 in the list above.
Another theory states that I’ve completely lost it and should stop thinking about this for a while.
Facebook uses CAPTCHA’s (Completely Automated Public Turing Test’s) to protect against spam. I’m sure you’ve seen them. They’re those squiggly font things that pop up when you log onto your blogger profile, or into your favorite porn site.
Unlike most Turing Tests, Facebook’s reCAPTCHA technology generates real words. Because very occasionally these words can be mildly entertaining, I’ve never bothered verifying my account to make them go away. Yes, my life can be dull. Also, if you’re really lucky, a pair of offensive words sprouts up. Take this famous example:
So before that nice lady could be added as a friend by some random guy she went to high school with, he had to type in the phrase “rape now.”
But anyway, today - while adding an old co-worker to my friend list - I generated my own random mix of words. While my example is light on sexual violence, it more than makes up for it in old fashioned racism.
That’s all for now.
If you’ve lived in Philadelphia long enough, you’ve probably witnessed the strange sight of cowboys trotting coolly and deliberately up a blighted North Philly Street. Or maybe not. But they do exist and it is a strange thing to see. As with just about everything in Philadelphia, there’s even a mural dedicated to them:
There used to be an elderly cowboy who would ride up 22nd street from regions south, all the way to the stables in Strawberry Mansion. I used to see him all the time, but haven’t spotted him in years. All in all, I’m glad that these random horsemen are around. It breaks up the monotony of the normal cityscape. There’s also something about a 75 year old man in a black cowboy hat, chaps and spurs riding a horse through the intersection of 22nd and Market that’s just great.
All this is just an explanation into this google streetview scene at 17th and Cambria. Philadelphia, you’re one weird city:
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Give it about 48 seconds. It will all make sense after that.
http://view.break.com/511141 - Watch more free videos
So Second Life is kind of for weirdos, but when someone takes an idea from Second Life (flying penis) and makes it a reality… and buzzes Chessmaster/Russian opposition leader Gary Kasparov with said flying penis, then it’s fucking awesome.
At a minimum, it’s better than Polonium poisoning. Now at the risk (or absolute guarantee) of sounding like an asshole, wouldn’t something like this be great at a Hilary Clinton rally? I’m seeing a big black one. But maybe I’ve gone too far… Still had to say it though. Sorry.
Want to hear something that will like totally blow your mind? I mean something so big that you’ll be all like, wow man that’s proof of a higher power and shit. Or it’s just coincidence. Either way, here it is:
From earth, the angular size of the sun and moon is virtually identical. That means that the sun and moon appear to us here, to be the same size. This produces the amazing coronal displays seen during a total solar eclipse. The odds of these 2 objects lining up so perfectly are truly astronomical. (no pun intended)
This is even more outstandingly fucking fantastic when considering that around 5 billion years ago when the moon was born, it was much closer to the earth. It moves away from us at the rate of about an inch a year. That means that we humans exist in that incredibly narrow band of time that allows us to witness a total solar eclipse. The odds of sentient life to exist on a planet where this phenomenon exists, during the infinitely small period of time when it does exist is like, wow.
I’d be willing to bet that the presence of total solar eclipses make this planet far more unique than any of the life on it. When we enter the galactic version of the global economy, this might be earth’s biggest draw. Tourists will flock from light years around to witness the beauty and majesty of earth’s 1 in a trillion miracle of light.
What I’m saying is get your ass out there and witness one of these things before you die. Your next chance is August 1st. The only problem is that you have to go to China. Here’s a map of every eclipse between now and 2025. Plan now!
My girlfriend is tired of my posting articles she emails me, so in the interest of full disclosure, this is from one of those emails. It represents… well just watch it:
Today’s post comes via Geekadelphia. Since the post there isn’t anything I can improve on, I’ll just steal the text directly. The only thing I have to add is that this is possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever seen:
Whoever is behind Garfield Minus Garfield… I applaud you and your brilliant mind. By taking Garfield out of the Garfield comic strips, this blogger manages to create a new, even better comic, that shows off the true nature of Jon Arbuckle. A mad, lonely, and schizophrenic man living in suburban America. It’s what I picture people living on the Main Line to be like.
Enjoy, and laugh at Jon’s expense.
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I’ve got 2 hours between jobs, so this post will be short and sweet… just like this freakish piece of fruit. Thursday’s contribution to weird week is this conjoined banana. What secrets might be hidden inside? I’ll find out in a couple days when I fry it up plantain style.
I’m pushing on with week of the unexplained here with one of my favorite topics: UFO’s. I believe that the alien visitation stories found on the internet represent the source texts of a future class of religions.
Already, people have started to hammer together Christian creation stories, Buddhist and Hindu ideas on pantheism and reincarnation and mix it up with a little quantum theory pop-science and a dash of psychotropic inspired pattern recognition and present it is an ideological belief system. In a century or so, I guarantee that there will be open churches. (and not just cults like the Raelians and the Scientologists)
But anyway, my favorite UFO story has nothing to do with any of this. My favorite story is about the poor dumb alien that had the misfortune of landing in New Jersey. Every new religion needs a little absurdity. Here’s a dramatic retelling of the actual events.
It was the blackest dead of night in January, 1978 and the New Jersey State Police were in hot pursuit of a UFO. Sirens blazing, they ordered the alien craft to land, but the vehicle refused to comply.
The UFO was first spotted hovering near Fort Dix and the adjacent McGuire Air Force base. Having lost track of the target somewhere near McGuire, the pursuit was handed over to United States Armed Forces.
A Military Policeman cornered the object at the end of an airstrip. Stepping out of his car, he squinted into the pre-dawn NJ darkness. It was January 18th, the dead of winter, and the height of the Cold War. The air was still and except for the idle of the MP’s jeep, perfectly silent. Stepping carefully forward, he unclipped his holster, and placed his hand on his .45 semiautomatic. Suddenly, through his frozen breath he spotted a child-size form just a few meters in front of him. Apparently assuming it wasn’t a wayward toddler, he opened fire, hitting the being 5 times.
The alien, shocked and mortally wounded, mustered enough strength to turn from the gunfire and stagger towards the perimeter fence, before collapsing – dead.
A smell of ammonia hung in the air… which to me says that aliens either bleed ammonia or are physically capable of pissing themselves.
Apparently after this all happened, the alien body was whisked away to somewhere secret and examined by government doctors. Fortunately the aliens did not respond by coming down hard on New Jersey. Apparently when push comes to shove, aliens are just a bunch of bitches that piss themselves.
That’s all for now.
I’ve wanted to post these photos for a long time, but was never quite sure how to present them. As this site continues down its week of the bizarre, I thought today would be a good opportunity.
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Spiritualism reached its height of popularity in the United States between the Civil War and World War II. The tremendous pain of loss coupled with the nearly limitless promises of science, opened the mind to all sorts of new ideas.
If the electrical energy emitted through a radio frequency could carry a human voice through the ether, why couldn’t it also tune into the spirit world? If a camera could capture a moment in time, why couldn’t it be adjusted to photograph angels or ghosts? In the early days, the power of scientific discovery supported religious claims and was believed by many to have the ability to eventually prove them.
It was a hopeful and deeply interesting time that I find endlessly fascinating. Anything was possible and little was discounted as beyond the limits of reality.
But there were also a lot of frauds.
By the 20th century, the fad of ectoplasm was popular in the spiritualist community. Many photographs of mediums producing this “spiritual substance” were made and distributed. What look today like crude Photoshop jobs, or just clear fabric-ation. (sorry) were accepted by many as legitimate proof of the spiritual realm. Either way, I love these photos and regardless of their authenticity, think that they deserve a look.
Here are a few. Google can produce many, many more:
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This week this site will revert to the non-pron roots of the internet: craziness and paranoia. Yesterday I presented the world’s only conspiracy that links prophecy, Toynbee Tiles and 9-11. Today I take on some of those same topics myself. Enjoy:
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Recently, Sunday morning brunch talk turned to 9-11 conspiracies. Since the dovate.com juggernaut of public opinion hasn’t gone on record one way or another on this particular common myth, here’s what I have to say about all that:
I highly doubt large-scale government planning in the attacks and generally accept that the conspiracy was planned and carried out by extremely well connected terrorists. At the same time, the commonly accepted belief (Saddam Hussein and bin Laden sat in a cave with 19 evil-doers and hatched their evil Muslim plot to overthrow the United States and behead every Christian from Omaha to Boise) is at least as much myth as any conspiracy. The official account isn’t a whole hell of a lot better.
Here’s my best guess:
At least some (and probably most) of the terrorists had connections to intelligence agencies in the United States, Pakistan, Europe and the Middle East. This doesn’t mean that these governments were complicit in the 9-11 attacks…
Think of it like this.
I don’t believe that a group of 2 dozen military, political and financial elite meet in a secret chamber every August to plan out the course of human history. That’s just stupid.
But think about it. How many people really are on the world stage with their hands on real power? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Fifty thousand? Even if it’s twice that, it’s still not a substantial number. Think of it as what it is… a community. All together it’s small town’s worth of people.
So let’s think of it as a small town. No one trusts anyone else and all are out for money, power and resources. It’s a small town, so money comes from the bank, power from the police and resources from the landowners as well as from the gas station just outside of town. Interestingly, the gas station is the only thing that’s not owned by the Americans.
The 9-11 terrorists were the local drug dealers. For years the chief of police ignored them in exchange for information about the gas station owners.
They were never friends, but they did help with the old Soviet town and with the gas station. At a point, they could do whatever the hell they wanted without the police even looking at them. And not only wasn’t anybody looking, in 25 years of working as town assets, they learned how to play the system.
They knew the passport office that gave passports to anybody. The agents working there assumed that whoever came through had business being there and gave them what they needed, no questions asked. They knew how to operate in the open without raising alarms. When alarms did go off, they were quickly suppressed. You can’t touch assets. So they plotted, they planned and then one day they blew up the police station and robbed the bank.
Of course I can’t prove a word of this, but it makes much more sense to me that 9-11 was a really, really bad case of blowback rather than the perfect plot hatched, planned and executed from a cave in Afghanistan. Since it’s embarrassing, since it would expose the nasty underbelly of intelligence work and since it might compromise state secrets to reveal, only future historians have any chance at verifying any of this. Unfortunately I’m guessing that all record of Mohammad Atta as CIA asset were shredded long, long ago. O’well.
Since that’s not a gratifying conspiracy theory, here’s a crazy conclusion:
9-11 was a conspiracy. Terrorist planned or not, it was a conspiracy. All in all, it must have involved a few dozen people. Conspiracies leak. Is it possible that it people outside the terrorist circles caught wind of a plot? It’s almost impossible to imagine that they didn’t. Is it possible that someone in a position of power in Saudi Arabia knew about the attacks and didn’t say anything? Pakistan? Israel? The United States? Stranger things have happened.
If you don’t believe my general thesis, listen to Michael Springman, the man who once worked at the place where 15 of the 19 hijackers got their passports:
Culled from the Toynbee.net (sadly, now defunct site) email archives. You know maybe he’s onto something:
from what i can gather it looks like the 3 cities the plaques were in Washington D.C., Philidelphia, and New York these 3 cities were all attacked on 9-11-01. Kubricks movie was called 2001, the year that 9-11 happened.
he was alluding to the future when he put these plaques in. remember…our idea of the future writes todays present history.
maybe he knew that 9-11-01 was going to happen waaaaay before it happened and he was trying to warn us.
also maybe he knew that NASA was going to crash the Satellite into Jupiter that will be happening on Monday 9-22-03.
looks like in the major cities, he laid these plaques on certain streets in succession Example: Philadelphia 4th - 13th st. New York 36th - 57th st.
I’m way too busy to post anything so I’ll just copy/paste an “I love you, I hate you” notice from the City Paper. It’s epic. Amazing. It has twists and turns. It’s hate, love and everything in-between. Enjoy:
FUCKING DICKHEAD
To the young immature kid because you are not a woman. to made an accusation that all men at the mass transit system think that you or any woman only want our money is absurd. and with the profanity that you have displayed it seems to me that you have actually been turned down by one of those old ass men as you have put it. and to request that we should have respect for a real woman PLEASE!!!! real women do not act and carry on like you have done, real women with class do not talk with such vile and putrid language as you have done. I can only assume that you still eat with your feet and hands.. and as far as coming out of a nasty B*#@! P*$#@ as you have put it . you just might want to check yours out. because if your mouth is foul then I know for sure your P*&$! is very very foul!!! and you can take that to the bank….. sound like you are mad because you cannot get a old ass man from the transit system. actually who in their right mind would want you???? so from all the old ass men at the mass transit system as you have put it. here is a greeting to you KISS OUR ASSES!!!!!! and a good FUCKING year to you too. and if you feel that you need to carry on further my e-mail is Gymmht@yahoo.com maybe after teaching you some manners i’ll let you off the leash because you are and sound like a four legged animal.
This post thanks to the good people at Awful Plastic Surgery dot com.
Joel Osteen preaches at the largest, fastest growing “church” in the United States. It’s in Texas and it holds more than 30,000 people. Here, look:
I put church in quotes because it’s one of those weird new churches that doesn’t get hung up on denomination or religious symbolism. From the outside it looks like a Target, or a suburban office park. Although Christian, they don’t prominently display the cross or Jesus or any of that mess.
All in all though, the most frightening thing about Osteen and his church is this:
Today I offer video. Not just any video. Below are 2 Local News broadcasts featuring the Toynbee tiles and the Resurrect Dead documentary team. Also included is a Chicago story and a link to an NPR segment featuring tile nut and documentary co-collaborator, Justin Duerr. NPR’s Morning Edition ran the tile story nationally on a Sunday morning in September of 2006. After it aired I got emails from Maine to California. Although David Mamet makes some shit up in his NPR interview, it’s the best media treatment yet given to the tiles. I recommend a listen.
Philly:
Extra unaired footage from Philly:
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Chicago:
* This broadcast led to the destruction of the Chicago tiles.
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NPR:
[article] with audio link at the top of the page.
Way back in 2003, just before the start of the Iraq War, news of a talking carp “splashed” across headlines around the world. (haha)
But seriously, this was the story:
The scene is New York’s New Square Fish Market. The players are a Christian a Jew and a fish. Just as the Christian is about turn the carp into gefilte fish, it starts shouting out prophetic messages in Hebrew. The Jewish guy hears the fish, understands his message (Repent! The end is near!) and freaks out. The fish then identifies himself as a recently deceased hascidic local. The Christian, assuming the fish is the devil, kills it.
At this point, things get hazy, but I’m guessing that the fish was eaten during a seder in Queens.
But anyway, the story is picked up by the New York Times, the BBC and a ton of other news outlets. Since then, the carp has faded into obscurity. And with good reason. Fish or not, here we are. (Here’s the BBC link.)
The war in Iraq is clearly a clusterfuck, but end of the world it isn’t. I guess there’s still plenty of time for the world to end. In captivity, a carp can live for close to 4 decades. You’d just think that if he was saying the end is near, the end would have been nearer. I guess what I’m trying to say is:
I believe that the spirit of a dead man can inhabit a carp and spew messages in a NY fish market, but I don’t trust him any more than any living man.
Finally, the end of the year list everyone has been waiting for. Here are the 79 most interesting search terms that led people to dovate.com in 2007. Why 79? Why not? In addition to being an interesting lens into the collective consciousness of the internet browsing public, many of them also make excellent band names:
79. space jesus
78. abstract cop
77. pictures of fetus after using colon cleanse
76. what is that hippie smell
75. scum derivation
74. david hasselhoff colon irrigation
73. colon cleanse on 2nd in market phila
72. ’smiling anus’
71. my broken mind psychosis why
70. looking at a flickering fluorescent light
69. hippopotamus shit territory
68. artificial girl illusion
67. yearly deaths by donkey kicks
66. fetal skull for sale
65. bigfoot fucking females on porn
64. unaligned dragon
63. is licking anus harmful?
62. is my girlfriend a prostitute?
61. homemade squirrel spray repellent
60. how to repel dogs off of my property with chemicals
59. hippopotamus elephant mating video clip
58. red bellied woodpecker and the bible
57. chimps attack
56. schnauzer genitals
55. piss drinking indigestion
54. nude pictures of girls hunting grouse
53. what makes keith haring so fucking great?
52. neo swank dresses
51. metaphysical vortex
50. metaphysical bigfoot
49. arnold schwarzenegger really is reptillian
48. short clown ghost stories
47. goth pony
46. crack whore repellent
45. how many people goes through the tollbooth on the benjamin franklin bridge
44. how to kick off mastrubating
43. bigfoot cock
42. light dispelling darkness nj archive weird
41. ideal duck cages
40. i saw my cleaning lady naked
39. methamphetamine parasite terrorists
38. billy pilgrim diagnosis
37. sublime drunken clown
36. is it safe to eat my own ejaculate
35. replica rubber fetuses
34. hit by watermelon dies of heart attack
33. foodery cat
32. falcon cock porn
31. difference between mummer and mutter
30. yearly deaths from spoons
29. high definition pumpkins
28. spork utensil statistics
27. gay shiny
26. alabama crack whores
25. steel reserve hoodie
24. why are birds crows seagulls pigeons dangerous to man?
23. slaughterhouse 5 candybar
22. suicide pigeons
21. minimalist christmas tree
20. can african elephants camouflage themselves
19. military industrial complex photo archive
18. arsenio hall blacklist jews
17. verbal communication amish
16. how would a human being fare on the planet saturn
15. do male testicle stink?
14. buy hitech chastity belt made of steel
13. shakespeare schwarzenegger
12. what is common between martha stewart and stephen hawking
11. porn apes
10. seaworld intangible elements
9. barak obama for klingon high council leader
8. how i lost my job girlfriend apartment rabbit food
7. korean screaming pussy
6. my 20 month old son’s breath stinks
5. anus picket pony
4. gay hangouts to prostitute my body
3. clown gags and teenagers
2. proper attire for dayton ohio cocktail party
1. obama and his correlation to the number 666
