Captain Beefheart, Teleportation, Weird Trees, No Fear, Big Predictions

• One of the most unique, fantastic voices in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), passed away yesterday. He was 69 years old. There’s nothing funny about his death. He did write some funny songs, though. If you don’t own one of (if not all of) the following, your record collection is incomplete: Safe As Milk, Trout Mask Replica, MIrror Man. I’m sure Paris Hilton was devastated.

• According to FoxNews, quantum physicists in California have designed a machine that is capable of purely quantum-mechanical motion. So…teleportation devices should be just around the corner. I’d say by no later than March, 2011, we’ll all be teleporting all over the place. And it will lead to disastrous results, much like the time travel issues raised in the classic short story The Epoch Study, by Evan LeVine. [story]

• This one is a bit of a stretch: a tree in Redwood National Park that looks like Darth Vader’s mask. I’ve been staring at this picture for, like, an hour. I don’t see what they’re talking about. If anything it looks like Dark Helmet’s mask. The best part of this article is at the end, when the author cites another tree — this one in Thailand — that supposedly looked like a naked woman with her legs spread. “But after some serious sniffing around by locals, the sexually suggestive tree turned out to be nothing but a big, fat, viral hoax.” Ha! Get it? Sniffing in between a lady’s spread legs? See kids, Journalism can be fun, too. Apply to your local J-school today! [story]

• Apparently there’s a 44-year-old woman out there who embodies the phrase “No Fear.” Her closet is filled with t-shirts with weird slogans like “Wherever the fear may be…poke it in the eye. NO FEAR.” In other words, she’s actually a sixth-grade boy in 1995. Very impressive, lady. The entire article falls apart with the statement, “Previous studies with this patient revealed she cant recognize fear in facial expressions, but it was unknown if she had the ability to experience fear herself.” So basically she’s retarded. Or reading this has been a complete waste of time because no one’s checked to see if she can experience fear. The author just went ahead and called his article “Woman With No Fear Intrigues Scientist.” Tomorrow I’m going to publish a hard-hitting, investigative blog post titled “Area Man Pleases Women With Extremely Large Member.” Guess who the subject is going to be? …Steve Guttenberg. [story]

• ”Back in 1931, The New York Times asked a bunch of luminaries to predict what the world would be like in 2011.” Sounds awesome, right? Until you see how awful these “luminaries” really were: they predicted the end of poverty (so close! just give us until 2014), estimated the country’s population to be 160 million (maybe if there weren’t so many illegals…), and predicted an industrial democracy whereby workers earn an equitable share of the wealth he produces. Uh…how come no one predicted easy shit, like war and famine and natural disasters. Those things happen every day, and if you got even one thing correct you’d be hailed as a visionary and probably given all kinds of posthumous awards. I predict in 2011 there will be at least three large natural disasters, a war, and famine somewhere. Also, Swan Fungus will finally do something with itself. [story]

Public Enemy – Sophisticated Bitch
Fu Manchu – Godzilla
Artie Lange – Swine Flu