“Dead Skunk” is a 1972 novelty song by Loudon Wainwright III. Released as a single in November 1972, it eventually peaked at number 16 on the Billboard charts on March 31, 1973. The song appears on Wainright’s 1972 album Album III.
The song is musically a simple folk song based on banjo, but accompanied by guitar, drums and fiddle. The lyrics describe a dead skunk in the middle of a busy road and the smell it produces for people as they drive by. Wainwright has said that the song came out of an actual accident involving a skunk, and that he wrote it afterward in 15 minutes. (“Someone had already killed it, but I ran over it.”)
Crossing the highway late last night He shoulda looked left and he shoulda looked right He didn’t see the station wagon car The skunk got squashed and there you are
You got your dead skunk in the middle of the road Dead skunk in the middle of the road Dead skunk in the middle of the road Stinking to high heaven
Take a whiff on me, that ain’t no rose Roll up your window and hold your nose You don’t have to look and you don’t have to see ‘Cause you can feel it in your olfactory
You got your dead skunk in the middle of the road Dead skunk in the middle of the road Dead skunk in the middle of the road And it’s stinking to high heaven
Yeah, you got your dead cat and you got your dead dog On a moonlight night, you got your dead toad frog Got your dead rabbit and your dead raccoon The blood and the guts, they’re gonna make you swoon
You got your dead skunk in the middle Dead skunk in the middle of the road Dead skunk in the middle of the road Stinking to high heaven C’mon, stink
You got it, it’s dead, it’s in the middle Dead skunk in the middle Dead skunk in the middle of the road Stinking to high heaven All over the road Technicolor
Oh, you got pollution It’s dead, it’s in the middle And it’s stinking to high, high heaven
Aug. 22 (UPI) — More than 150 people donned dinosaur costumes at a Washington racetrack and ran a 1/16-mile race to find the fastest T-Rex in the pack.
Emerald Downs in Auburn hosted its first T-Rex Race since 2019, when photos and videos of the event made a viral splash online.
Sunday’s race featured more than 150 participants, a new record for the event, which was sponsored by TriGuard Pest Control.
Auburn resident Logan Kludsikofsky took first place in the adult race, while Sebastian Davis, 13, of Silverdale, Wash., won the kids race.
In space, no one can hear you scream, the saying goes, because sound waves can’t travel through the vacuum that extends across most of the universe. However, space can be downright noisy in the right conditions, such as the hot gas surrounding the immense black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster, according to NASA.
The agency recently tweeted an eerie audio clip that represents actual sound waves rippling through the gas and plasma in this cluster, which is 250 million light years from Earth. “The misconception that there is no sound in space originates because most space is a ~vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel,” the agency tweeted. “A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we’ve picked up actual sound. Here it’s amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole!”
Though the acoustic signals generated by the black hole were first identified in 2003 in data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, they have never been brought into the hearing range of the human ear—until now.
“In some ways, this sonification is unlike any other done before… because it revisits the actual sound waves discovered in data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory,” NASA said in a statement. “In this new sonification of Perseus, the sound waves astronomers previously identified were extracted and made audible for the first time.”
As it turns out, the sound waves in their natural environment are a whopping 57 octaves below the note middle C, making this black hole a real cosmic baritone. To make these tremors audible to humans, scientists raised their frequencies quadrillions of times (one quadrillion is a million billions, for perspective).
The effect is so chilling that it would seem totally at home in a Halloween playlist. But it is just one of many trippy earworms from the space sonification genre, in which astronomical data of all kinds is converted into sound waves. To that end, if you’re looking for some more off-Earth bops, check out these real recordings from Mars, the songs of gravitational waves, and the resonances of planetary systems.
Canadian rock legend receives beloved instrument from Japanese musician decades after it was swiped in Toronto
Legendary Canadian musician Randy Bachman’s cherished Gretsch guitar was stolen from a Toronto hotel in 1977. After decades of searching and a stroke of luck, Bachman got the stolen guitar back during a Canada Day concert in Tokyo.
Randy Bachman has performed many times on Canada Day, but the event he played this year is like no other.
The former member of the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive flew to Japan to reclaim a guitar that he’s been hunting for decades.
“I’m really happy. I’m getting my lost Gretsch guitar back,” the 78-year-old rocker told CBC News in a meeting room inside the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo.
The guitar is a 1957 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins, in orange, which he bought from a Winnipeg music store when he was 19 years old.
Forty-five years after it was stolen in Toronto, it’s back in his arms, and he can hardly believe it.
“If you never want to forget your anniversary, you get married on your birthday. You never forget your wedding anniversary. I’ll never forget this day,” said Bachman.
Randy Bachman was reunited in Tokyo Friday with a beloved guitar that was stolen 45 years ago from a Toronto hotel. (Chris Corday/CBC)
The Gretsch was his first big purchase as a young adult, and he played it on the recordings of iconic tracks like Takin’ Care of Business, American Woman, These Eyes and Undun. But when his band BTO came to Toronto in 1977, it was left in a locked hotel room, where it was somehow snatched.
Bachman launched his own search, which lasted decades and turned up nothing.
Japanese media reports suggest the Gretsch was eventually taken across the U.S. border, where it was sold to a guitar trader from Japan. The reports say Takeshi, a musician who writes for Japanese pop bands, purchased it in 2014 from a Tokyo guitar shop, without knowing its history.
Online sleuthing
Six years later, the Canadian rocker finally got a break in the case. A longtime fan and internet sleuth from White Rock, B.C., named William Long heard Bachman’s story and decided to try to hunt down the instrument using facial recognition technology. He found it in a YouTube video featuring Takeshi playing the guitar.
He contacted Bachman, who got in touch with Takeshi. Then, plans were hatched to trade it back. The Canadian bought a nearly identical Gretsch to trade for his original.
Bachman, right, receives his stolen Gretsch guitar Friday at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo from Takeshi, a Japanese musician who had bought it at a Tokyo store in 2014 without knowing its history. (Eugene Hoshiko/The Associated Press)
On Canada Day in Tokyo, the saga finally came to a close in front of a packed crowd at the embassy’s Oscar Peterson Theatre.
Bachman and Takeshi met for the first time ever on the stage, and in an emotional moment for both of them, traded their vintage instruments, with the Japanese musician handing back a piece of Canadian rock history.
‘It was all worth it’
“I was going through a lot of emotions today,” Takeshi said through an interpreter while sitting next to Bachman on stage.
“But seeing your smile after you saw that guitar, I just thought it was all worth it.”
Takeshi, left, and Bachman pose after they swapped guitars on Friday. (Chris Corday/CBC)
Bachman said he has mixed emotions, too. He said he became attached to the guitar he’s trading to Takeshi, but he’s more than happy to go home with his first love.
“To come here to do the trade has been very emotional, and I appreciate this honourable man giving me the opportunity to get the guitar back,” said Bachman.
‘Like a fairy tale’
The story of Bachman’s long-lost guitar made headlines around the world over the past year, largely because of how unlikely it was to ever be found.
Winnipeg-based rock journalist John Einarson has written extensively about the Guess Who and other bands of the era, and said the odds of getting this stolen Gretsch back were “astronomical.”
This Batmobile. Saw this in a parking lot. Luckily the operator showed up and he gave me the scoop. It is a construction company, BAT construction out of Kamloops B.C. BAT is the owner’s initials. They do all kinds of work in mines, canyons and in the mountains. Scaling is removing loose rocks near rail lines and roads. They rappel down cliffs and pry loose rocks. Also use alot of explosives. The operator was an Aussie who was in Winnipeg to see a “Mate”.
Also has flanged steel wheels adapter below the back bumper allowing it to travel down rail lines.
Tu Youyou (Chinese: 屠呦呦; pinyin: Tú Yōuyōu; born 30 December 1930) is a Chinese pharmaceutical chemist and malariologist. She discovered artemisinin (also known as qīnghāosù, 青蒿素) and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria, a breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine, saving millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America.
For her work, Tu received the 2011 Lasker Award in clinical medicine and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura. Tu is the first Chinese Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and the first female citizen of the People’s Republic of China to receive a Nobel Prize in any category. She is also the first Chinese person to receive the Lasker Award. Tu was born, educated and carried out her research exclusively in China.
Approximately 5,000 reported sightings in the United States. Some people interested in the subject argue that there are many more sightings: the unreported ones. They put forward the idea that only a small percentage of people that think they saw a Bigfoot make a report. Most people that see something like that want to avoid being ridiculed, so they keep it to themselves. Some estimates put the actual reported sightings at between 10-40 percent of all sightings. Lets go to middle and say 25 percent are reported. Then you can times the 5,000 by 4. This is all conjecture, but then you have 20,000 sightings!
With today’s technology, cameras, drones etc., there should be more good sightings. But this technology is a two edged sword. The technology also creates better fakes, hoaxes and CGI images. There are very intereting videos and photos out there. But are they real or elaborate hoaxes.
Video below is very intriguing. The end of this video shows the actual footage.
The MarkoZen Blog 