Help Xeno finish a song

I need your help. I started writing a song called “Mysterious Boom“, but got stuck.

Please listen  (click Mysterious Boom in the Box.net widget on the left), download if you like, and leave a comment. What do you like? What would you change?

Every view about a piece of art is interesting and equally valid to me.

No new posts here until I get 20 different people’s comments (emailed comments count too).

Leave your comment (click “Comments” below) or email me: xeno735@yahoo.com

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GIVE AWAY: One person commenting will receive a free travel sized tube of fluoride-free Oravive Toothpaste with Novamin, the stuff that was so good at healing teeth that they pulled it from the shelves.

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Weird. A few minutes updating this blog entry I experienced the Mysterious Boom (10:20 AM, Sunday May 15, 2011). What are the odds?  Okay, it was just a MASSIVE thunder clap, but I never hear thunder in my house. Not in years. And a few minutes later, the sun is coming out. What do you think of the theory that we create our worlds? Perhaps I am really living in a computer simulation. … Or the secret weather modification guys did a little demo for me. Impressive!

Update Thursday:  Almost there!  I need 4 more people’s honest comments on the song, then I’ll release the blog hostages ( a bunch of new strange and interesting news items from around the world. )

Contest: Post a Photo of the Oldest Ouroboros

The Ouroboros (Alternately: Oroborus, Uroboros, Uroborus) is an ancient symbol depicting a snake or dragon swallowing its tail, constantly creating itself and forming a circle … It represents the cyclical nature of things, eternal return, and other things perceived as cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. In some representations the serpent is shown as half light and half dark, echoing symbols such as the Yin Yang, which illustrates the dual nature of all things, but more importantly, that these opposites are not in conflict. The ouroboros is an example of tail recursion and self-reference … It is believed to have been inspired by the Milky Way, as some ancient texts refer to a serpent of light residing in the heavens. …

The name ouroboros (or, in Latinized form, uroborus) is Greek and means “tail-devourer”. The serpent or dragon eating its own tail has survived from antiquity and can be traced back to Ancient Egypt, circa 1600 B.C.E.

It can be “traced back” is what I keep reading, but where is a photo of the actual 3,610 year old Egyptian ouroboros? Can anyone find this? Or something older from Sumeria, perhaps?

What do you win? Checking the prize cabinet, a two headed lucky quarter seems most appropriate for this one.

Post a link to the photo as a comment and include your email address. Contest ends November 20th, 11:59 PM.

Win $50.00: Seeking places to include in a Subterranean Guide to North CA and Oregon

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: December 18, 2009.

My girlfriend and I writing a book: The 2010 Subterranean Guide, Northern CA and Oregon Edition.

We need your ideas for anything interesting below the surface of the Earth in our area…  a club, a bar, a cave, a lava tube, a mine, anything subterranean that we can visit and write about.

Ideas we have so far:

1. Bear Gulch Cave and Balconies Cave at Pinnacles National Monument
2. Black Chasm Cavern, National Natural Landmark
3. Boyden Cavern
4. California Cavern
5. Empire Mine State Historic Park
6. La Jolla Sea Caves
7. Lake Shasta Caverns
8. Lava Beds National Monument
9. Mercer Caverns
10. Moaning Cavern Adventure Park
11. Pluto’s Cave, near Weed CA
12. Sutter Gold Mine
13. Subway Cave, Lassen Volcanic National Park

Email your location ideas to xeno735@yahoo.com.

Contest winner will be announced here. Winner is the person or team who gives us the best idea not already on the list above. It has to be in our area so we can visit it between Dec 20 and Dec 30 of 2009. Winner gets $50 and a free copy of the book. If two people make the same suggestion, the first email to arrive in my email inbox with the idea wins.

Good luck and thanks!

Xeno

P. S. Does anyone have a  Leica DISTO D8 I can rent for Dec 20 to Dec 30 trip?

Contest: Be the first to name this animal.

Is it real? If so and if you can name it, you’ll win $10. I’m a big spender. Post your answer as a comment. Yo.

Win Something Random When This Blog Hits 1/2 Million Visitors…

I see from the Blog Stats (right side bar) that this site is about to reach 1/2 million visitors.

When it does reach 500,000, be the first to email me and win a prize.

What will it be? A piano? A postage stamp? An alien in a jar?

I don’t know yet.

UPDATE:  2/1/2009  The prize will be mailed today. Congratulations to Kevin in Waltham, MA who won a free Xenophilia (the Band) CD and a 50 million year old shark tooth.  Kevin writes:

I found your blog a few months ago and it’s turning into one of the first I check when I fire up my reader.  Keep it up!

Can you identify this expired animal?

found here.

Update: Elizabeth Barbeiri said her family saw it about a mile east of Gurney’s Inn in Montauk, July 14. And Ryan Kelso, via iPhone, said he spotted it — alive! — in the Montauk dunes. “It looked about the size of an average fox, gray in color, eyes like a mole, hairless and was breathing quite heavily,” he wrote – newsday

Below is not a turtle without a shell, it is a soft shelled turtle. They don’t look alike and according to one person a turtle’s shell is attached to its backbone so you can’t remove the shell without opening all its guts.

If it is a decaying dog, why does it seem to have a beak like a bird?  Here’s another photo:

UPDATE: 08/02/2008
Following this lead we looked into “eerie” Plum Island and contacted Dr. Larry Barrett, Center Director of Plum Island Animal Disease Center, who was kind enough to supply his take:

“It is impossible to accurately identify the species of animal from the photo. There is no scale from which to judge its size. Additionally, when a body has had prolonged exposure to water and predators, it can be altered or appear different from its normal form. If we had the actual body, we could tell you what it is; however, from viewing a canine tooth in the picture, we could guess it may be a cat or a raccoon. I can state categorically that it is not associated with the work performed at Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC). PIADC serves as the nation’s first line of defense against foreign animal diseases of livestock by identifying such diseases through diagnostic testing and by developing vaccines to protect livestock from those diseases.”

The mystery thickens … or does it? Steven T. Papa, a Senior Endangered Species/Federal Projects Biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has told Plum:

“Based on these higher resolution photos, it appears to be a raccoon based on estimating overall ear length to body length ratio in the photos to measurements found in the literature, as well as lower jaw and front leg characteristics.

This is the best I could do without seeing the ‘animal.’” – hamptons

Update 10.21.2010: Emma posted this a while ago, but I just took a close look. I looked at a lot of racoon skulls and I’d buy it being a raccoon if the poor animal lost part of it’s front jaw and large front teeth, resulting in the “beak” appearance.

The $100 Personal Energy Production Challenge

The Xenophilia Energy Company’s
$100 Personal Electricity Production Challenge

Goal: Generate and store as much of your own electricity as possible over the course of one month.

Rules: You have only $100 to spend on this project. You live in an apartment.

Prize: $ cash (Amount depends on sponsors.)

Deadline for submissions:  Midnight, April  2, 2008.

Format: Describe your energy production method in simple enough terms that it would be understandable to someone with a basic high school science background. List exact quantities and items you would purchase and the cost of each item. Describe your methods for assembly and for the use of your electricity production and storage system. Describe the amount of energy you expect the system to produce.

Finalist’s ideas will be constructed and tested by our panel of judges. The one producing the most usable electricity wins the cash and a possible TV news appearance.  School science project participants welcome!

Volunteers needed. Contact Xeno if you’d like to be a judge or sponsor for this event. We also need publicity and some cool art work to help promote this.

Power to the people!