The Pied Piper Lured Poison Rats... and My Black Friday Money
From monoliths in Utah and Aztec death whistles, to surreal ads from Manila and the Pied Piper being real, it's your weekly dose of strange!
Greetings, human.
Are you all Black Friday'd and Cyber Monday'd out of your mind with an inbox stuffed to the gills with sales, coupons, percentage discounts, deals, stocking stuffers, and door-busters? Or maybe that's just me?
Seems like in the months since lockdown began in earnest, I've amassed a wealth of email subscriptions to digital software companies who all have a sale or three this season. And the spam is ridiculous. But, hey, I opted in, right?
Which brings me to you. Thanks for opting in to receive this email newsletter. Means a lot to me that you signed up and actually click on the subject lines every week.
But we're here to gawk at the strangest of the strange. So… as the Red Queen might say in Alice in Wonderland, "Get on with it!"
Real Life, Stranger Than Fiction
Goodbye, Utah Monolith: Did you hear about the shiny metal monolith that appeared in the middle of a Utah desert? Well, the local government didn't put it up and they insist they didn’t take it down either. And no artist has laid claim to erecting it. And 10 days after it was spotted and made global news, it was just as mysteriously taken down... by 4 men in a wheelbarrow. As the last man walked out, he said "Leave no trace," according to photographer Ross Bernards, who witnessed it. (His photo is the one below.) Performance art? Popup sculpture? X-file? SCP? Who knows?
Poison+Ratt: No, I'm not talking about the '80s hair metal bands. Who ever said rats aren't deadly never heard of this little rodent: the African crested rat can bring an elephant down with its poison. How? It chews on poisonous branches and grooms it into its fur. And because its fur has a honeycomb-like structure, it can hold a LOT of poison. If anything dares to bite or touch it. Insta-death!
You So Dope: Speaking of hair… What can an influencer do with their millions of TikTok viewers? Well, they can support an agenda like nuclear energy. That's what one Brazilian model is doing: presenting bite-sized nuggets of info on nuclear energy in one minute videos disguised as makeup tutorials, and using a retrowave 1980s visual aesthetic. You so dope, Isodope!
Aztec Death Whistles: Those human screams you thought you heard from your neighbor’s basement? Nothing to worry about, they're probably just an ancient invention which archaeologists have dubbed Aztec death whistles. (A pretty cool name for a band, if you think about it.) When blown, they make the sound of humans howling in pain. And they're believed to have been used either for sacrifices... you know, to guide the soul to the afterlife?... or as psychological warfare to strike fear into the hearts of enemy tribes. If you’re curious, there are a ton of people selling 3D-printed replicas of these whistles online. And they sound pretty close to the original! (Come to think of it… perfect Christmas gift for your macabre friends!)
Pied Piper, Reality?: Speaking of wind instruments... Did you ever wonder whether the children's story of the Pied Piper and the lost children of Hamelin was true? Turns out, there is an actual town in Germany called Hamelin, and in the walls of one structure is inscribed a mention of 130 children going missing on June 26, 1284, lured away by a piper dressed in many colors. In fact the street where the children were last seen is called "the street with no drums" because no one is allowed to play music or dance there. See, I knew there was a serious reason to disallow my kids from listening to Kenny G.
The Closest You'll Ever Get to Flying: This video is surreal in its beauty. It's a man in a wingsuit jumping out of a plane with his fiancée on his back and a GoPro 360 cam on his helmet. They glide for a few seconds together before chutes have to be released. But the flight footage itself is breathtaking.
Northern Lights: What do you do when the Aurora Borealis is just outside your front door in Senja, northern Norway? Why, you open it up and let everyone on Twitter see what you're seeing!
You Get A Cookie, You All Get A Cookie: Imagine if you got a cookie every time you hit the "complete" button on your project management software? What sort of positive vibes would this build in you? Or maybe diabetes? Anyhow, the geniuses at Will It Automate built a machine that connects via WiFi to the internet and to Monday.com (online task management tool). And when you complete a task in the software, the cookie machine doles out one cookie. It's a real product. And all proceeds from the machine go to charity. Check it out.
Eye Candy: YouTube is So Surreal
The Family That Drinks Soda Together: I haven't choked on my own spit while watching a TV commercial in years. Until this past week when one of my friends forwarded this recent ad from Manila for an obscure soda called RC Cola. I literally started standing up out of my seat shouting "WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING??" Just watch it, if you don't believe me. I won't spoil it for you.
Since the script is in Filipino, this website has provided a scene-by-scene breakdown of what's happening in English. They describe it perfectly: it's like a scene straight from Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
The Disco Chicken: My friends reminded me that these aren't the first surreal ads to air in the Philippines. A few years back, they had a disco fur-suited chicken building a house and then interviewing potential housemates, set to 70s disco music. The brand? A restaurant called Max's Fried Chicken, whose tagline has always been: The House That Fried Chicken Built. Kudos to the corporate clients who approve these shenanigans!!
The Farm in the Boondocks: Ah, but when it comes to sophisticated CGI and singalong folk tunes, nothing beats this great short video called "Russian Cyberpunk Farm," which is basically a recruitment video inviting you to come work alongside rusty robots, lopsided drones, and a lone human farmer on a rural farm somewhere very... very far away. The graphics are astounding, the script phenomenal. This should be a full length film. Or a video game.
How to be At Home: And just to even things out, here's a gorgeous, short video poem for you. Because, hey, home is where we're staying for the next few months anyway.
Ear Candy
Shia Guy: By far, my favorite video discovery of the week, once again confirms my love for the pop culture swamp that is YouTube. This is a 3:28 minute long song by Rob Cantor that is part stage musical, part spoken word, part choral masterpiece, part live band with strings, part modern dance performance, and 200 different kinds of awesome. The topic of the song? Surviving an attack in the woods by the feral Hollywood celebrity, Shia Labeouf. Hint: stay for the every end of the video. It is worth every second.
80s Flashback: This was a jaw-dropping 25-minute long 1980s medley played completely live by Martin Miller and his band of phenomenal session musicians. They start with a pitch-perfect cover of Van Halen's "Jump" and blaze their way through Tears for Fears, Depeche Mode, A-Ha, and Peter Gabriel. Ready to be nostalgic?
Beats Antique: Just in case you need some funky beat music to accompany your work-at-home sessions, I leave you with Beats Antique. This Oakland, California trio mix world music with electronic seamlessly. Here’s a YouTube playlist with all of the tracks of their Shadowbox album from 2016.
My Locrian Synthwave: Meanwhile, in my free time, I tried to make a synthwave song using the Locrian scale... which is the musical equivalent of doing a hundred jumping jacks with a 10 pound weight on your back, a flipflop slipper on your left foot, and a combat boot on your right foot, while your arms are in inflatable pool floaties. It's just uncomfortable until you get the hang of the notes in the scale. Surprisingly difficult to make something elegant. Anyway, enjoy!
And that's it from me. If you come across something strange on the internet that you think would fit on the Rambunctious Roundup, send me a tweet @WriterLionel.
Thanks for reading! And have a great week ahead.
~ Lionel