Yessir, it’s time for another installment in this series where we collect miscellaneous items that aren’t music but still make us think, “Fuck, that’s some metal shit right there!” Once again, we had help from a few of our readers, who will be duly credited by us (and perhaps blamed by you) for their contributions. We have quite a lot of killer items today, so let’s just just dive right in.
ITEM ONE
Our first item is really a series of items, all of which appeared in a feature at Cracked.com called “8 Real Photographs That Prove Hell Exists On Earth” (credit/blame to our reader Black Shuck who pointed us to this feature). Not only are all the photos metal as fuck, but the accompanying descriptions are also funny as shit. For example, here’s the narrative accompanying the photo at the top of this post:
“If doves are the messengers of the Lord, then the Satanic Leaf Tailed Gecko is probably Old Scratch’s preferred postal carrier. Though you should know that these guys are utterly harmless. They’re tiny — usually two to five inches long — and are endemic to the little island of Madagascar. So you’re not likely to stumble across one in the first place, and it certainly won’t hurt you if you do.
“It won’t hurt you at all. It needs you.
“It might ask you to hurt others, though. Oh, softly enough at first, in half-heard whispers borne on the wind, but they will grow louder, more frequent and more insistent — until one day you wake up to find yourself in a bathtub filled with liquid that used to be your family. And what will the Satanic Leaf Tailed Gecko do? Why, just take a gander at that picture again: It will smile, friends. It will smile.”
(more after the jump)
Here are a few more un-doctored photos from that Cracked montage:
In a place called Fort Zverev, the Russian military stored a napalm-like substance that, when ignited, would burn at temperatures over 2000 degrees. Wouldn’t you know it, in the 1970s, the storage facility caught fire. The resulting inferno burned so hot that it melted the bricks of the walls and ceiling so that they ran down like icicles. That’s definitely metal, of the molten kind.
This is a photo of a volcanic eruption at “Fimmvorduhals” in Iceland. It really does look like part of Ragnarok. And Ragnarok, of course, is very metal.
The photo above didn’t come from the Cracked.com feature, though it definitely would have fit in just fine. I found it instead at Boston.com. It’s a photo of a supercell thunderstorm rolling across a Montana prairie at sunset. This thing is so fuckin’ scary I nearly wet myself just looking at the picture. Shee-it.
ITEM TWO
Speaking of natural weather phenomena that just make you want to curl up like a little girl and whimper — and that also put you in mind of Ragnarok — here we have a time-lapse video of a giant dust storm that took just 2 hours to cover the city of Phoenix, Arizona, earlier this month. According to Phoenix’s National Weather Forecast Office, the cloud reached a maximum height of 1500 to 1800 metres, with its leading edge spanning 160 kilometres and racing forward at 64 kilometres per hour. Fuck me. (Credit/blame to our buddy Phro for the link to this piece of creepiness.)
ITEM THREE
Okay, this next video is just fuckin’ nuts. Three dudes with helmet-cams taking their mountain bikes down the spine of some godforsaken ridge in southern Utah. There are two parts to this video, and the second part is even more heart-in-your-throat than the first part. This is so fuckin’ metal, I had to go lie down for a while after I saw it. (Credit/blame to TYWKIWDBI for this one.)
ITEM FOUR
Our final two items are about lighting. This seemed timely since Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate currently appear to be locked in a death-struggle over — wait for it — whether to repeal a law passed during the Bush Administration that would phase out old incandescent bulbs over three years, starting with 100-watt bulbs next Jan. 1, in favor of more efficient lighting.
If we really want to save on consumption of energy, we might give some thought to this ingenious invention being implemented in The Phillipines. Now THIS is metal. (Credit/blame again goes to TYWKIWDBI.)
ITEM FIVE
While we’re on the subject of lighting and light bulbs, I came across this bizarre piece of news. There’s probably an explanation for this, though an engineer would have to destroy the “miracle” in order to find the answer. So, pleasantly, we’ll just have to continue living with something that will remain . . . a mystery.
It’s also metal.
The World’s Oldest Light Bulb Has Been On for 110 Years
By ERICA HO
TIME magazine
June 17, 2011On June 18, the oldest-known working light bulb in the world will celebrate the 110th year it has burned bright. The bulb, which hangs idly about in a fire station in Livermore, California, holds the Guinness World Record.
However, it’s not clear how this particular bulb has been glowing since it was installed in 1901. Lynn Owens, who is in charge of the light bulb centennial committee, says, “Nobody knows how it’s possible. It is a 60-watt bulb and it’s only turned on for about four watts, but nobody knows why it keeps burning… We’ve had scientists from all over the country look at this light bulb.”
Not that the bulb’s shiny record is perfect. It has endured some initial glitches in 1901, a fraught week in 1937 and some random power outages all the way up to 1970s. Originally donated to the fire station, the bulb was actually designed by Adolphe Chailet, who – get this – originally competed with Thomas Edison to make the best light bulb in town.
For more info about this light bulb, go here.
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That’s all we’ve got for this edition of THAT’S METAL! Enjoy the rest of your fucking day. Please.
14 Responses to ““THAT’S METAL!” – BUT IT’S NOT MUSIC (NO. 41)”
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Where did you get a picture of my Russian summer home!? OMG burglars…
That gecko was awesome, I want one now.
Yeah, dude, I’m afraid your summer home as been cleaned out. Fortunately, there’s another option for you near Darvaz in Uzbekistan (also featured in that Cracked montage), where a large gas-mining camp fell into a massive sinkhole. “The Russians, being classic Russians, decided that the best way to avoid getting poisoned by all the flammable gas in their flammable gas mine was…to light it on fire” — 35 years ago. It’s still burning. It looks homey, though:
https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Darvaz.jpg
I think I remember you posting that lol. I’ll begin moving immdediately!
That’s a pretty awesome way to light up a house with a bottle of water. I’m sure the idea could be expanded upon to provide light for homes and businesses in more developed areas of the world – ingenous as this is, it’s sticking a bottle filled with water and bleach into a hole cut into a metal roof. Imagine a skylight with water between two panes of glass to provide better illumination for an office building. Hell, take a globe, stick some LED’s around it and fill it with water. During the day, it refracts sunlight. After the sun goes down, it does the same with the light from the LED’s in the ceiling circling it.
As for the light bulbs and the legislation surrounding them, that’s something I really need to look into. How the fuck are we going to afford to keep our stage lighting working after all the bulbs we have now burn out? Am I gonna have to stock up with enough bulbs to last another 50 years? Compact flourescent bulbs are nice and all, but they don’t cast as much light as an incandescent bulb does. Until they can provide similar lumens and are a bit more affordable (especially when you’re talking about dozens or hundreds of lights, as we have), I’d rather stick with what I have.
If this law is like most of the ones that get passed, it probably had a jillion exceptions and grandfathering clauses in it to avoid the kind of thing you’re worrying about, but that’s just a guess. You may have to go to torchlight. That worked okay at the Globe Theater, didn’t it? Course that thing was open to the sky . . .
Well, fortunately there’s nothing that says you have to replace all the bulbs by the federally mandated deadline, but I would hope that there is a way for people with a higher demand or simply those in need of something specific (in this case, lighting that’s bright enough and can be used reliably on dimmers) will actually be able to continue operating normally.
Who knows, maybe there will someday be cheaper fluorescent bulbs that a.) aren’t considered hazardous waste b.) don’t flicker a lot c.) can be used on a dimmer and d.) actually last longer than regular light bulbs when used in a setting that doesn’t leave them on for long periods of time. And there are probably other issues to consider.
For our theater alone, that’s well over 200 bulbs to consider, maybe over 300. I honestly don’t know how many there are; there’s one section I haven’t gotten up to yet, which takes a trip to the catwalks above the ceiling, then going into a crawlspace which may not be fully reinforced. Plus there’s the cost to replace our existing equipment if we can’t get regular light bulbs.
I don’t think opening up the theater to the sky is an option. Although, one bad step and I could fall through the ceiling (there’s a gap between the ampitheater ceiling and the roof), so it’d be a start. However, I wouldn’t be able to finish the job, since that’s a hell of a drop and I don’t think the terrazzo I’d splat against would be very forgiving, even if there is carpeting on top.
I hope you don’t get nominated to replace all the bulbs. That definitely sounds like hazardous duty. Possibly worse than riding mountain bikes down those ridges in southern Utah.
Actually…
Most of them aren’t hard to get to. I can lower the majority of the light fixtures that are above the stage.
It’s the row of reflector bulbs that I have to drag out the monstrous 14′ ladder to get to and the stuff I have to go above the ceiling to replace that I mind. Plus, only once have I not banged my head on the steel beams above the catwalk. Those fuckers hurt. And it gets rather hot up there, even in winter. It’s dirty, not well lit and I am reluctant to go into that crawlspace – but it’s not like there’s anyone else to do it.
I’ve gone down some steep, rocky terrain on a mountain bike, although nothing terribly life-threatening. Still, not something I care to do on a regular basis.
You work at a theater? I wondered how people replace lightbulbs in auditoriums and such. Not something I’d be interested in starting a career in!
Er, not exactly.
The building does have a theater, but it doesn’t get used nearly as much as it could. Sometimes people get married in there and have their reception later on in our dining room. The last performance of anything in there (for public) was Macbeth a couple years ago, and it didn’t exactly go as well as planned. People didn’t seem to have a problem with the play itself (I dunno, I wasn’t working here at the time and didn’t come to see it), but there were some backstage issues with one of the guys involved in putting it on. It gets ocassional use for other things, but I’d wouldn’t mind seeing it put to use more as a theater.
I’m sure it’s far easier in some theaters to perform maintenance than here. It’s really only the house lights, one row of reflector bulbs and the colored floods in the ceiling that are a bit of a bitch to replace. And the cove lights, which are the ones I haven’t even gone in to take a look at yet – no one’s mentioned them to me, so apparently they aren’t missed. But it’d be nice to have them working again, or at least some of them. From the way it looks, they’re only for backlighting above the front of the stage.
Torchlight also works for Minecraft! Minecraft <3
I’m not gonna lie, I used to think cyclists were whiny, prissy, douchebags.
I have clearly been proven to be full of shit.
How do I get to be able to do THAT!?!?
Start smoking crack?
I wonder if that’s even strong enough…