We’ve all done it…

Well, I know I have, anyway.

So, just what is “it”?
Well, “it” is climbing the Eiffel Tower. Without ropes.

Of course, I happened to take the stairs – it seemed the sensible option, if I’m honest. James Kingston? No, he took the girders to get up there.
Less sensible, more viral video-friendly.

How are those palms doing, hey? Mildly moist? Don’t lose your grip, now.

Says James (in the video description here):

After a few more hours playing around on the tower workers & tourists started coming up in the lifts. We were spotted again around 9AM so we climbed down & met with security. We were handcuffed & taken to the local police station where we were held & questioned for around 6 hours before being released without charges (I also had to promise them I wouldn’t climb it again for 3 years).

The rest of his Youtube account is equally nuts.

I’ve still yet to understand why people do stuff like this. I get the argument for the immediate adrenaline rush of a skydive or a bungee jump, but where’s the appeal in several hours trespassing in the dark, with the threat of arrest or (near) immediate death should something go awry?

I don’t need that sort of stress in my life, and thus I shall continue to live vicariously through people like James Kingston.

Charming Charlie

An oldie, but a goodie. And with the Peanut movie coming out real soon now, almost re-topical.
Zeitgeist-tastic.

So, what do you get when you combine the drawings and characters of Charles M. Schulz with the musical meanderings of Morrissey’s mind? You get This Charming Charlie – the tumblr that… well… combines those two things above.

o-PEANUTS-570 o-LAUREN-LOPRETE-570

Plenty more where that came from. What a genius idea.
Next week: Roadrunner does Skrillex: “Meep Meep Wob-wob-wob-wob-wob”.

Man On The Moon

SUSPEND YOUR SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE, for the 2015 John Lewis Christmas ad is here and while being a whole lot less full of penguins than last year, there are a few awkward stretches of reality that you’re going to have ignore if you’re going to fully enjoy this year’s effort.

Music is Oasis’ Half The World Away, covered by Norwegian artist Aurora (Aksenes), who will be singing at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert next month, along with some other Norwegian band.

And the advert is lovely and inclusive, sending out the right messages for the holiday period. Because, it’s always nice for a strange, lonely, probably harmless, but nevertheless ever-so-slightly creepy, old man to be able to stare directly into a young girl’s home, isn’t it? Especially at Christmas.
I wonder if her parents know about this?

She is, however, clearly a scientific genius. NASA need to sign her up right now.
Rigging up a telescope that size to be able to achieve that sort of resolution is something no optical physicist in history has yet managed. And yet she’s… what? 10 years old?, and is working out of the living room of a house in suburbia while being distracted by her brother’s XBox antics. Incredible. In. Credible. No, I mean literally, not credible.
And her package delivery system of twelve apparently ordinary helium balloons to get that telescope in a shoebox to him? That’s akin to the Rosetta Comet team landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. If this analogy is to be continued, she will come down to breakfast on Boxing Day wearing a dodgy shirt, and everyone will hate her and forget her altruism and seemingly impossible lunar transport system of the previous evening, and how she made an old man who can apparently survive without oxygen, very happy.

How did he get up there, anyway? What’s he been eating? Where did the wood come from to build his house and that bench? Why hasn’t an earth based astronomer noted his presence? Why does he look vaguely like a cross between a Galapagos tortoise and Doc Brown out of Back To The Future? So many questions…

And then, if we’re going to be properly pedantic (and hey, who’s going to stop us?), then “Half The World Away” would amount to a distance of 3,185.5km. That’s not even 1% of the distance to the Moon. Each party involved is going to be sadly disappointed by that sort of meagre effort, although I suppose Mr Green Cheese wouldn’t even know about it.

Look, it’s nice, it’s touching, but it’s wholly scientifically invalid and completely implausible. What are our kids going to learn from this?

I, for one, will not be shopping at John Lewis this Xmas.

UPDATE: The Guardian: Who is Moon Hitler?
The Independent (spoiler: it’s not): The John Lewis Christmas advert and the Commodification of Loneliness.

Self-googling hippie takes offence after 6½ years

Trigger warnings: Whale Death, Middle Earth Dwellers

Something of a record, this one. Elephantine-memoried readers will remember this post from June 2009, in which I passed comment on the Kommetjie ceremony to honour the 55 pilot whales which were daft enough to beach themselves and then got shot by local authorities because they weren’t stretchy enough (or something).

Well, Chief Shaman and all-round resident of the Dark Lands Beyond The Lentil Curtain, Shelley Ruth Wyndham, was googling herself over the weekend (Halloween actually, but I’m sure this was just a coincidence) and found that she had been mentioned in that 2009 post. Presumably, the goblins in Noordhoek who archive the internet using quills and parchment so that the “magic shiny screen” doesn’t scare people in Misty Cliffs have finally got around to documenting 2009.
Well done them.

It seems that Shelley disputes the report that I used when writing up the post, and instead suggests that we read her version. I did, and it’s quite funny. Here’s how she begins:

Thank you all my loved ones, colleagues, those adversaries and my friends all of whom have helped me become who I am today, to know who I am and who I am not as I continue to awaken myself, like us all, growing, evolving and continually finding my place in all of Creation. Aho.

A ho? Unfortunate spelling error there.
But she continues, and she’s not alone. She’s brought the rest of the Loony Toons Crew too:

I am Shelley Ruth Wyndham; I am a Shamanic Healer Teacher. I stand here together with fellow Earth-walkers Sean Caulfield, a Shamanic Artist and Drummer; Kate Ann Spreckley, a Spiritual Healer Teacher; Mandy Scanlen business entrepreneur, Change Facilitator and Project Manager and Jennifer Godwin Registered Professional Nurse and Reiki Master. We five people walk the Good Red Road together.

The Good Red Road is the Deep South version of Blue Route, I think. It was originally going to be called the Yellow Brick Road, but they had to change their plans after a copyright claim by the estate of the late L. Frank Baum.

Anyway, despite the nasty little “Earth-walkers” dig at the recently-deceased whales, who, as they’d comprehensively indicated, are fatally incapable of “Earth-walking”, she expects us to respect her message:

I have been trained and guided by ancient indigenous teachings steeped in the wisdom this world needs to remember. Although I speak in ways which are coloured by Native American principles, from the First Nation People’s of the Americas, I speak a Universal message of Universal principles that needs to be respected.

Well, I would have respected the Universal message, but sadly, I was having trouble waking my consciousness and aligning my spirit that day. My chi was totally off – probably brandy related, I’m guessing.

So, what did I miss?

Whale carries the history of Mother Earth.

Heavy, man. Have you seen the Encyclopaedia Britannica? No wonder whales are so big. No wonder they are so difficult to push off a beach. If they were a bit more evolved, they could stick it all on a Micro SD card. Simples.

Whale medicine teaches that sound frequencies can bring up records of ancient knowledge from within us human beings and teaches us to use the sounds and frequencies to balance our emotional bodies and heal our physical forms and ways.

Presumably, this is like when that orthopod did an ultrasound on my ankle? Weirdly, I do recall several records of ancient knowledge flashing before my eyes. That could just have been intense pain though.

Seek the whale song from within you; in this way each of us will enable connections to be made to the ancient ones, to the ancient aspects of ourselves, on a deep cellular level for all humans to remember.

Aho! A-ha! Now cellular communications, I do know about. You’re talking about G-protein coupled receptors, receptor tyrosine kinases, and ion channel receptors? And all this can be triggered by the whale song within me? I never knew. Actually, I never even knew I had whale song within me at all, let alone it’s triggering ability on trans-membrane receptors.
Whales (which are mammals, not fish), are chock-full of whale song, though. Their cellular receptors must be firing all over the place. No wonder they get sommer distracted and swim into beaches. It’s like the tannie driving on her cellphone and crashing into the parked car.
Thus, perhaps a little less whale song (using your cellphone while driving) might result in fewer whale beachings (cellphone related road traffic accidents).

I can like to be the king of the analogy.

But, all jesting aside, I thank Shelley Ruth Wyndham for her rather tardy, but very welcome interaction with us here at 6000 miles…. And thus, I think it’s only fair that we leave the final words to her, as she (finally) signs off her June 2009 speech.

Each of us is a key, today this is a door, let us walk through this door together and be the change that is needed in this world so that we have a thriving, balanced, sustainable future for all life here.

WE ARE ONE.

Mitakuye Oyasin
Aho
Four Winds

(Yeah, ok “Four Winds”, but let’s face it, mainly a strong to gale force South Easter most of the time.)

AppealBalls 1

Do you remember the now infamous PistoriusBalls series? Some people thought it was all over, and it was then. But suddenly the State decided that actually, possibly, maybe they could swing a murder verdict, and thus there was an appeal. And with that appeal…. came AppealBalls!

Step forward… Alex Crawford, *polite applause* with her astute observation:

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Well, quite astute observation…

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Dude looks like a Lady! Except… you know, the other way around.

Also back… please welcome… Aislinn Laing! *rapturous cheering*

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This tweet works best if you embellish it just  a little and imagine it being said in a 1940’s New York private detective voice:

The doll was in the restroom when he filled her full of lead. Pistorius was once famous in South Africa for his athletic prowess. Now it’s for a devastating criminal act. I don’t usually take cases involving famous people. No private eye needs that kinda attention. But line him up in front of the district attorney and a stenographer and he could soon make dusty case law.

Mandy’s still around, too:

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Or what gender they identify as, hey Alex?

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Thanks be to she who invokes Homer Simpson. Because yes, it’s definitely time for a beer.