Creepy stories are starting to pop up. It may be just my state-of-mind due to the upcoming holiday, but between the black spots on Jupiter and this story I am a little freaked out.

The mystery began a few years ago when a turkey hunter, scouting in a remote area of the 23,000-acre forest, discovered a large boulder in the top of an 80-foot-tall chestnut oak tree. What he saw wedged among its branches was a boulder about 4 feet wide and a foot thick.

Here’s a series of DVDs grouped by popular music video directors: Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry. A few of the highlights:

• Fell In Love With A Girl – THE WHITE STRIPES
• Army Of Me – BJORK
• Sugar Water – CIBO MATTO
• Sabotage – BEASTIE BOYS
• Da Funk – DAFT PUNK

This is ripe for ripping to hard drive to make a party video.

( another thing I have to not buy…I really should try the frozen credit card technique. )

Maps are life when tromping around the woods. So I was floored when I saw that Connecticut’s DEP was selling a 7 CD set with pretty much any bit of geographic data one could want about the state, and the software with which to process it, for all of $30.

Found this downloadable virtual theremin and it got my buying demon all excited. Here’s a website, ThereminWorld, that even has a list of places you can buy theremins and theremin kits.

( JIC you needed an idea for my Christmas list besides this wishlist of DVDs.)

Maybe God is trying to tell them something?

Folks who truly walk the walk that they talk are few and far between. Not sure what they carry, but if any of you Austinites need a bike, the Rhizome Collective may be the place to go.

A windmill made out of bicycle gears turns lazily on the roof, powering a system of pulleys and levers capturing rainwater. On the other side of the roof, three suspended bathtubs, brightly tiled and filled with papyrus and cattail plants, filter dirty washing machine water through bacteria in the plants’ roots. A few feet away sits a solar oven, a squat grill covered by glass that captures enough Central Texas heat to cook a batch of tasty rice and beans in about six hours…

The group also envisions an “edible neighborhood,” where fruit trees and vegetable plants dot the landscape and neighbors can munch on apples and nuts as they stroll down the street.

Rock on, hippie folk. Best of luck to you, in all honesty. Here’s their very attractive web page.

I’d like to twist the ‘favorite movie’ thread a little in light of the fact that Halloween is almost upon us… What are your top 5 scary movies of all time?

NSFW if you’re not using headphones.

Here’s a Flash animated singing xylophone with an inappropriate message. I really spent more than 5 minutes just playing songs over and over. They should make a clean version of this.

Here’s a bipartisan proposal I’ll buy off on – Send Nate Heatwole to work for the TSA.

Heatwole is the college kid who stowed away bags of contraband on SWA flights. Apparently the guy did the stowage in FEBRUARY, 8 whole months ago, and then e-mailed the TSA to let them know where their security holes were. TSA did nada.

So he’s caught, and the Administration wants to run him up the yardarm (More sailor lingo) for breaking the law, saying that “He took an opportunity to seize the latest reality-show, self-celebrity-making tactic and get himself out in front of the news.” Uh, yeah – that’s why he didn’t call channel 12 (or whomever) for EIGHT MONTHS!

In steps Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey, with a proposal that “this college student should be sentenced to working 20 hours a week for the TSA. The TSA’s punishment for this massive failure should be listening to this 20-year-old student — and subsequently closing loopholes that continue to worry passengers every day.”

Look – I’m a realist, if nothing else. I KNOW that the prospect of getting democracy and a respect for rights to stick in Afghanistan and Iraq is a pipe dream, a beer-induced haze, and a terrible attempt to impose western culture on an ancient and noble people (I really am trying to drink the kool-aid, folks, honestly)…

But then I find articles like this which show the first steps taken down a long, long road to lasting peace.

“I will tell my sons never to become soldiers,” said another former soldier, Ahmed Shah, 35, a member of the Jamiat-e-Islami faction. “We ruined this country, they will now have to fix it.”

We have made a commitment to these places, and owe it not only to ourselves to see the task through to lasting democracy, but owe it to courageous folks like Ahmed. If we pull out, the folks like him who are willing to give lawyers rather than LAW a try are going to be the ones slaughtered. 1,000 weapons is a small fraction of the total, but it’s a start.