Mike Parsons is insane, in the good/bad way

Mike Parsons, SurferI’d hate to be his soon-to-be widow, though.

Unless he’s like, really, really rich. And ugly. Which he’s not. Okay, so I’d also hate to be Laird Hamilton‘s soon-to-be widow; I’m projecting a bit, but sue me; it’s my fantasy, okay?

So this is what Mike Parsons does when he’s bored. As Gerry Lopez says, “Now, let’s just pause and examine this…waves so big you can’t paddle in; you’ve got to be towed in by jet ski. Think about that.”

If he had, he’d never have found himself on this incredible wave at Cortez Banks, 150 miles off the coast of San Diego. Any good trigonometristes out there care to give me an estimate of the height of that thing?

Wave forms have fascinated me ever since I had a physics Laird Hamilton, truth be told, also fascinates meprof named Rotcod Swehttam (Doctor Matthews, backwards). It was a bit like having Dr. Who as your physics 100 instructor; he demonstrated wave theory with two fixed points and one fixed point by playing the violin (2) while playing a tiny organ (1) with his toes. My addiction was only strengthened by my subsequent reading of The Perfect Storm (did you know a rogue wave blew out the pilothouse windows of the Queen Mary, or that they are 92 feet above the water line? I shall carry that knowledge to my grave, and a fat lot of good it does me on ferry crossings) and my addiction to that place on the west side of Vancouver Island which shall remain nameless but which is referred to here as Not-Ucluelet.

So. Mike Parsons. Nuts. via Dully.

See for yourself:

extreme halloween!!!

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu nafhtagn! Cthulhu trikrtriit! 

Or at least extreme jack o’lanterns.

I rarely post anything anyone sends me, which is a shame, as I am very lazy, yo. But I’m just contrarian enough to reject the help when people offer it for free.

Except when they offer this: jack o’lanterns from Extreme Pumpkin, in the shape of an octopus attacking a fish and a flaming tiki god. Thanks, Metro!

flaming tiki god jackolantern!

shrimp on a treadmill

Just what it says. You’ve had shrimp on a bed of rice, so go wild, kick the jambs out and try shrimp on a treadmill.

This isn’t the scholarly, narrated, boring version of the video, the one linked to by everybody and his brother the Total Farker. Naw, it’s the colourized, Flight of the Bumblebee-scored, cheaply amusing version, just as you’d expect from the ol’ raincoaster blog.

And this concludes Cthulhu Day.

Oh, one more thing.

Parsnip.

The Parsnip that bubbles and blasphemes at the centre of the pressure cooker forever, or at least until Grandma remembers she left the stove on

SETI totally harshing our screaming, giggling high

 stop smiling, you smug bastard!

Bummer, dude.

from SETI.org Spaceref.com which if I’d realized back when I posted the first one, I’d not have posted them at all. So much for trusting Fark. I knew there was a reason I hadn’t blogrolled them.

Here is the actual Tuesday announcement. And below is the hold-your-boosters post from Spaceref.com.

Major SETI Institute Announcement

Editor’s update: For all of you out there who have been waving your arms around and speculating, this is not an announcement about finding a signal from ETs, the face on Mars, or anything else. It is far more mundane. Details of the announcement were released – under press embargo – to reporters last week. A press release about the announcement will be issued on Tuesday by the SETI Institute.

Editor’s update: To those of you who have been speculating about what will be announced tomorrow: The original calendar posting on this page simply had date, time, and location. Nothing else. It was posted here a week ago – on 9 October. A detailed – but embargoed – media alert was sent out at the same time to reporters by the SETI Institute in which no mention is made of signals from outer space. Yet, the announcement is indeed a major one for the SETI Institute.

Please ask yourself this: do you (1) really think that the SETI Institute would issue some sort of major announcement i.e. detection of a signal from another civilization – a week ahead of announcing it formally – and then (2) expect the media to sit on such amazing news – for an entire week? The next time y’all start to whip up a frenzy – out of thin air – use a little common sense before you hit [send].

10:00 – 11:00 am PDT

Date: Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Location: SETI Institute, 515 N. Whisman Road, Mountain View, CA, US

Web Site Address: http://www.seti.org/

live, from the centre of the galaxy…

Seti‘s heard a murmur. via Fark. Tune in Tuesday and check it out.

Major SETI Institute Announcement

10:00 – 11:00 am PDT

Date: Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Location: SETI Institute, 515 N. Whisman Road, Mountain View, CA, US

Web Site Address: http://www.seti.org/