Posts from October 2007

I work downtown T-town at 9th and Pacific, but I usually park near 4th and Broadway (5 blocks up and two blocks over).

There is a lot of construction happening on Broadway (they’re building this). I’ve recently noticed while walking to and from the car that there are some really cool instances of graffiti popping up on some of the storage units for the construction. This one of an adorable jellyfish is by far my favorite:

I’ve seen this jellyfish elsewhere around Tacoma, like on a picnic table in Jefferson Park.

Another pretty cool graffiti piece just popped up of a whole, repeated line of monsters holding up a clawed hand in front of their faces. Very cute. I’ll try to get a photo of it as well. There are a couple of graffiti signatures that pop up in these areas: Düm and Rubr, so it might be one of them.

Around 3:00 yesterday (Saturday) I was watching John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars (horrible movie, but it stars Ice Cube) when there was a big noise like a gigantically close sonic boom. It went “Whoomp!” and my whole house shook. I could see the big bay window actually flex a little bit. It startled Suki quite a bit.

I went outside and looked to make sure a tree didn’t fall on my house or something, and noticed that the sky was full of birds—they’d all fled the trees and were screeching around overhead. Then I heard dozens and dozens of sirens way off to the south.

Read this news story.

Watch this movie:

That was almost two full miles away from my house. The explosion created enough of a shock wave that it was felt at least as far away as UPS, which is another half mile further away.

Thankfully Carrie came home via Stadium Way and not Highway 16, because a piece of tanker truck actually flew up in the air and landed on the highway, hundreds of feet away.

And somehow nobody was killed.

Update: 10-16-07

Here are a couple of views of the explosion:

And here’s a remarkable video where you can see cars driving on the freeway (highway 16) as they’re silhouetted by the explosion behind them.

Unfortunately the driver of the propane truck died Sunday morning: http://www.thenewstribune.com/1001/story/179347.html

Link of the Month:
Nad Shot
A fascinating project: this website collects scans of any instance of a comic book panel where a character gets struck in the testicles. Quite horrifying if you are a guy. Probably NSFW.

DVD of the Month:
The Devil’s Rejects
Mr. Zombie’s follow-up and sequel to House of 1000 Corpses is a much more focused, distilled, and intense film than its predecessor. It is an incredible homage to 70s explotation-style horror, and is seriously disturbing. Highly recommended.

Album of the Month:
Poe: Haunted
A fascinating piece of a multi-media ensemble, Haunted is the companion piece to Poe’s brother’s landmark horror novel, House of Leaves (which I must confess to not having yet read, or else it would probably be included in this "of the month" set as well). It’s a damned catchy and subtly unsettling/creepy album.