The Cacophony Society is being featured today on Yahoo! Directory. Here’s a screenshot and after today it will be archived here.

- Cacophony Society collage by Louise Jarmilowicz

Lori and I will be in Columbus Ohio this Wednesday, November 30th and while there we will be attending the Columbus Blogs Event, a gathering of Central Ohio bloggers talking place at Max & Erma’s in Arena District. In fact, Laughing Squid is one of the sponsors of the event, which is being organized by Columbus bloggers Jason Laskodi (technical support tentacle for Laughing Squid Web Hosting) and Skippy, who together recently launched Columbus Blogs. If you live in the Columbus area or will be in town on Wednesday, come on by (here’s the Upcoming.org listing). We’ll be talking about WordPress and blogging in general.

This event is about blog awareness and is open to the general public to attend. Many friendly bloggers will gladly be willing to show off their blogging talents to you. This is a great opportunity to learn just how easy it is to get started with your own blog. It’s also an excellent way to meet a great group of new friends.

If you are a Columbus blogger, sign-up to be listed on Columbus Blogs.

The BrainJams Unconference, Chris Heuer’s follow-up to October’s highly successful Web 2.1 event (here’s my Web 2.1 wrap-up), takes place this Saturday, December 3rd at SRI in Menlo Park. Laughing Squid is proud to once again be one of the sponsors of this excellent event. For more info, check out the BrainJams wiki and blog.

BrainJams Events are open spaces where the participants decide on the content of the event within a basic framework that includes one on one knowledge networking in the morning and open discussions on how to best use emerging technologies in the afternoon. The knowledge and information shared amongst participants will be gathered and redistributed online to further the discussions, learning and idea manifestation after the event and beyond.

Last Friday morning (November 25th), the infamous Church of the SubGenius radio program “Puzzling Evidence” (which I wrote about here) joined forces with Negativland collaborator Don Joyce’s “Over The Edge” for a special 5 hour marathon show from midnight to 5am. Puzzling Evidence regulars Doug Wellman, Hal Robins and Philo Drummond were joined in studio by Ivan Stang and Princess Wei “R.” Doe, who were in town from Cleveland for the thanksgiving holiday. Ivan Stang and Philo Drummond founded The Church of the SubGenius in Dallas back in 1979 and Hal Robins and Doug Wellmen joined soon after. Long-time SubGenius member Michael Peppe show up as well to round out the conversation, so this was a mini-reunion of sorts. To commemorate this occasion, I shot a bunch of photos of the SubGeni mixing it up in the studio as well as some photos of KPFA’s wonderful radio station. Here’s more info on how to support KPFA so wonderful and strange radio programming like Puzzling Evidence and Over The Edge can continue to exist. Praise Bob!

A stereo podcast of this show is available courtesy of Jeff Anton.

Photos from the SubGenius Mini-Reunion on Puzzling Evidence

For more on the The Church of the SubGenius check out subgenius.com, The Office Pulpit of Rev. Ivan Stang blog, Philo Drummond’s “Quivering Brain” website and of course the Wikipedia entry.

Puzzling Evidence, the legendary Church of the SubGenius radio program, was started back in 1982 at Berkeley’s KPFA (94.1 FM) by Doug Wellman (aka Puzzling Evidence) who was soon joined by Hal Robins (aka Dr. Howland Owll). Later on SubGenius co-founder Philo Drummond joined the line-up, which often features special guests such as KROB or various visiting SubGeni. The show airs every Friday morning from 3am to 5am and you can even call in at 510-848-4425 and see if you can work your way into the mix. Archives and a mono podcast of the show are available on the KPFA website and in addition to that, Jeff Anton creates stereo podcasts of the show each week. “Puzzling Evidence” is one of the longest running programs on KPFA along with Don Joyce’s “Over The Edge” and rumor has it that the Talking Heads song “Puzzling Evidence”, from the film “True Stories”, was inspired by this radio show.

Here’s Hal Robins’ description of “Puzzling Evidence”:

Deranged “edits” segue into a cascade of echoing glossolaliac madness, the voicing of lyric ruminations from the free-falling brains of disintegrating personalities. And some people, demented individuals, obsessively record every word and squealing sound effect. Of course, you may just hate it.

UPDATE: Here are some photos I shot from when Ivan Stang and Princess Wei were in town on November 25th for a mini SubGenius reunion during a marathon session of “Puzzling Evidence” combined with “Over The Edge”.

- photo credit: Scott Beale (from top to bottom: Doug Wellman, Hal Robins & Philo Drummond)

Here are the photos I shot last Wednesday at the 2nd to last episode of the Ask Dr. Hal Show at Cafe Du Nord. The talented and amusing duo The Beanweevils opened, followed by the The Extra Action Marching Band’s Flag Team who led the audience through a twenty minute set of aerobics accompanied by a KROB mashup workout video and then finally Pete Goldie gave one of his short astronomy news updates just before Hal took the stage to start the show.

Photos from the Ask Dr. Hal Show (11-23-05)

The last Ask Dr. Hal at Cafe Du Nord takes place this coming Wednesday, November 30th.

- photo credit: Scott Beale

As one might expect, laughingsquid.com scored low (4 out of 16) on the Web 2.0 Validator, created by 30 Second Rule. Does your website validate Web 2.0? Do you really want it to? Can we stop talking about Web 2.0 now? Please? Think of the children!

All the rules of web 2.0 are provided by users of this site. The definition of web 2.0 changes on a daily basis. Now you can keep up with your web 2.0-ness since this site checks randomly against the most recent rules decreed by it’s users.

via: Supr.c.ilio.us: The Blog

The lovable Hector, Varnish Fine Art’s resident canine, just turned ten, so Varnish owners Kerri and Jen threw a little birthday party for him. Lori and I stopped by and I shot a few photos while we were there paying our regards to the big H. They even made a birthday cake for old Hector (it’s not often you see a birthday cake with “poop” written on it).

Photos from Hector’s Birthday Party

Gale Hart’s amusing show “Why Not Eat Your Pet” was still up, so took a few photos of it as well. Varnish’s next show features sculptor Ron Garrigues and painter Charles Glaubitz, and it opens on Saturday, December 10th.

- photo credit: Scott Beale

Ok, this is it. There are only two more installments of the Ask Dr. Hal Show at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco: Wednesday November 23rd and next Wednesday, November 30th. Tomorrow night’s pre-Thanksgiving show features special opening acts The Extra Action Marching Band’s Flag Team, The Beanweevils and Pete Goldie’s Scientific Secrets.

From Dr. Hal’s newsletter:

Let proud poppa Phoenix or big Benjamin Burke, the old Odeon Bar’s (formerly) “lonesome doormen,” guide you into the club. As always, the programme at “Ask Dr. Hal” may be subject to last-minute scheduling changes. But we’re working, as always, on a show you’ll long remember. Our opening lineup will daze and dazzle. The scantily-clad Flag Team and the boisterous Beanweevils will make it a night to remember. And in the house will definitely be some Personages, visitors from afar, whose renown will add significantly to our luster. That’s all the hint we can give at present.Then, in the main part of the eve’s presentation, Dr. Hal will essay to soothe your mental and psychic turmoil by answering all questions submitted, after Chicken John sneeringly reads them, pouring out dollops of unwatered Fernet for the deserving (and the inevitable David Capurro), while the truly unheimlich K-Rob will accompany and comment on the action in sights and sounds. Jascha Ephraim, our Technical Wizard, will ride herd on the traditional mind-breaking Special Effects and of course David will, as ever, keep the show disturbingly connected to the digital world. From time to time his findings appear abruptly on our Giant Screen, to the delight of some and, it must be frankly admitted, the consternation of others. All the while, a cadre of Ultra-attractive waitresses will bus to your table food and drink, Lucullan treats the old Odeon never dared to dream of– a veritable Trimalchio’s Feast.

Here are some photos I shot at the November 16th show. The opening act that night was the David Capurro, The YoYo King.

Photos from The Ask Dr. Hal Show (11-16-05)

- photo credit: Scott Beale

Webzine co-founder Eddie Codel and independent journalist Irina Slutsky have recently joined forces to launch the new video blog Geek Entertainment TV (GETV), where they report on Web 2.0 from “deep inside the bubble”. They now have 7 snark infested episodes in the can. In their latest installment, Irina interviews globetrotting photographer Jacob Appelbaum at the Laughing Squid 10th Anniversary Party about his upcoming trip to Roboexotica in Vienna which took place last week.

Geek Entertainment TV is an emerging global media empire, reporting from deep inside the bubble as it re-inflates. GETV covers buzzword compliant topics such as web 2.0, tagging, AJAX, social software and the bubble juice known as VCs. We like robots, so you’ll hear about that too.

Cincinnati blogger Drew Vogel discovered that Google can help you find local meth labs via a sponsored link for local.com. So, taking Google’s advice, I did a search on local.com for “meth lab” in San Francisco and was presented with these shocking results. Anyone want to make a Google Maps mashup of this one?

via: Skippy.net

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg just announced that they have officially opened the doors to WordPress.com, the new hosted version of the popular, open source blog tool WordPress. Previously, WordPress.com was in private, invite-only mode, but now anyone can sign-up for a free hosted blog on WordPress.com. WordPress.com is running a modified version of WordPress 2.0, so there are a few more features and enhancements over the current, stand-alone 1.5 version.

If you are thinking of setting up a blog, but don’t want to purchase a domain name and have it hosted, then I highly recommend checking out WordPress.com. It only takes a couple of minutes to create a blog and you’ll be able to start posting to it right away. Then, later on, if you decide the host your WordPress blog somewhere else, with it’s own domain name, you’ll be able to export your database and migrate to another host.

UPDATE 1: Matt mentioned that Red Herring did a nice write-up on WordPress.com today.

UPDATE 2: Dave Winer has setup a WordPress blog. First Robert Scoble, now Dave Winer. The big guns are really starting to take notice.

Raconteur and bon vivant Chicken John, organized a delightful picnic today at the base of Michael Christian’s stunning Flock sculpture located in Civic Center Plaza. I didn’t see Chicken John, but I was there for a while and shot a bunch of photos. It was an exceptionally sunny day, so I decided to incorporate the sun in a few of my photos of Flock.

Flock Picnic Photos

Speaking of Flock photos, here are some I shot at Friday’s Flock Dedication Ceremony.

- photo credit: Scott Beale

Lisa Hix wrote an article on the Laughing Squid 10th Anniversary Party for her “Clubland” column in the “Style” section of today’s Sunday The San Francisco Chronicle. The article can be found online at SF Gate.

Overall it’s a good article, but there are a couple of corrections that I wanted to point out:

- The “Burning Mandible” installation was created by Grant Irish, not Kal Spelletich.

- The inside area of the party was not an opening for Gale Hart’s “Why Not Eat Your Pet” show, but the other half of the Laughing Squid 10th Anniversary Party. The actual opening for Gale’s show took place on November 5th.

- The article gives the impression that Laughing Squid hosted Burning Man’s website, but in reality both burningman.com and laughingsquid.com were orginally neighbors who were hosted on Brian Behlendorf’s hyperreal.org server.

Riya, a facial recognition photo search service, had it’s alpha launch party tonight at the Tech Crunch headquarters in Atherton. This location has been the scene of previous Tech Crunch BBQ’s, but tonight, at Tech Crunch Meetup #4 the focus was on Riya and my good friend Tara Hunt helped organize a successful launch party attended by several hundred geeks interested in finding out more about this new service. These numbers were inflated by several rumors that Google has aquired Riya for 40 million dollars, which in turn lead to another 5000 requests for alpha accounts. For more on Riya and how it works, check out Tech Crunch’s in-depth analysis of their service.

Photos of the Riya Launch Party

- photo of Riya CEO & Co-Founder Munjal Shah and Online Marketing Manager Tara Hunt by Scott Beale