What a long time it’s been since the last post in this series — more than a month. And I’ve collected so many items to choose from — many of them from the NCS faithful. One of them I’ve been sitting on for a really long time, because it involves a massive amount of pus. I’m still not sure I can bring myself to use it, since I’m pretty sure it’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. I think I’ll just start going with this post and see how I feel when I get to the end.

What this series is about, for newcomers: Some things are metal even though they’re not music — photos, art, videos, reports of human behavior. Some things are metal because they’re fuckin amazing. Some things are metal because they’re brutal. And some things are metal because they’re unbelievably ridiculous — just like your average metalhead (me included). In these posts, I pick out things I see that I think are metal, for one or more of these reasons. Today, I’ve got six items for your entertainment.

ITEM ONE

The first item is right up there at the top of this post, and it came our way from my friend Quigs. I poked around the interhole to see if I could find more about this awesome piece of construction. It appears to have been created by a dude in Bangkok from recycled auto and bicycle parts. More details about it can be found here. And a couple more pics of this thing are right after the jump.

This will be our last THAT’S METAL! post of 2011, unless I decide to do another one, in which case this will be the penultimate one.  It really, probably, will be the last one.  I mainly just wanted to use “penultimate” in a sentence. I don’t see why Andy Synn should be the only person at NCS who uses words like this.

“Penultimate” is a cool-sounding word, although it doesn’t really look or sound anything like what it means. In that respect, it’s like “mantissa”. Mantissa sounds like some kind of giant centipede-like monster with big mouth pincers that it uses to tear and consume human flesh. Instead, it means “an addition of little importance”. “Dragoman” is another example. It sounds like a name or the bass-player in a vicious black metal band, or maybe a Bulgarian MMA star. But it simply means “an interpreter or guide”.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, THAT’S METAL! These are the posts where we collect news items, images, or videos that we think are metal, even though they don’t have anything to do with music. Today, we’ve got four items, and I will act as your dragoman as we work our way through them, providing my own mantissas as we go.

ITEM ONE

Cai Guo-Qiang is a Chinese artist, though he has lived in New York since 1995. His medium of choice is gunpowder. He started off using gunpowder in drawings, and then moved on to the creation of “explosion events”. If you watched the waaay over-the-top opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, then you’ve seen his work. His most recent explosion event was a daytime spectacular on December 5 called “Black Ceremony” at the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar. It’s been described as the largest daytime fireworks display ever.

What do you do when you see shit that makes you think, “Fuck, that’s metal!”, even though it’s not music? What I do is save it up and then periodically throw it your way in this series, which focuses mainly on videos, photos, and news items.

This is an all-video installment of THAT’S METAL! It’s going to be a slow build from the first one to the last one. I don’t really have a choice, because the last one is so fucking ridiculous that everything else would seem pretty meh by comparison if I ran it first. So, here’s what lies ahead: a very weird cloud phenomenon; a flamboyant cuttlefish; yet another emissary of Cthulhu entering our dimension; brick carrying like you won’t believe; and that last one . . . which is just lights-out nuts.

ITEM ONE

It’s no secret: I like clouds. Cumulonimbus clouds are those big, white fluffy ones that look like giant cotton balls. They can store up huge amounts of electric energy, which sometimes results in lightning strikes. Those clouds also contain ice crystals that themselves can hold static electric charges. The ice crystals, particularly needle-shaped crystal, tend to become aligned with the electric fields within the clouds.

When something happens to the field, such as a lightning discharge, the field re-forms and the crystals realign. When the sun is reflecting off a sheet of ice crystals in a cloud when they realign, the change is visible — and it’s fucking metal to see it happen, which is what’s shown on the first video after the jump.

Here we go again — the latest installment of this series in which we feature videos, images, and news items that we think are metal, even though they’re not music. I have five items for you today. They involve sharks in a trance, humans in a slingshot, ESPNS, a blue devil horse — and a trippy bonus item.

ITEM ONE

Cristina Zenato is an Italian scuba diver who has mastered an unusual (and certifiably insane) technique: she can put sharks into a trance. According to this article, she induces the “tonic” state in sharks by rubbing the “Ampullae of Lorenzini” — which is the name of hundreds of jelly-filled pores around the shark’s nose and mouth. Those pores act as electroreceptors that detect prey moving in the electromagnetic field around the shark – but also, for some reason rubbing them produces that “tonic” state.

A “tonic” state is a natural state of paralysis in sharks that lasts for about 15 minutes. It can happen when they’re turned upside down. It also appears to happen when you rub their Ampullae of Lorenzini. Of course, to rub those pours, you’ve got to put your hand really close to the part of the shark that can bite off your whole fucking arm.

Cristina Zenato isn’t quite as nuts as it might seem at first. Although she’s been working with sharks for more than 15 years, she still wears a chain link suit in case one of the animals is tempted to make a meal from her body parts. But watching what she does is still awe-inspiring. (more after the jump . . .)

Sheesh, it’s been almost a solid month since I found time for one of these posts. That’s what I call falling down on the job! In an effort to make up for all the slacking off, I’ve rounded up five items that caught my eye. For any new readers who joined us in the last month, this series of posts collects videos, news items, and/or photos that I think are metal, even though they’re not music. All of today’s items are visual in nature, and credit goes to the incomparable TYWKIWDBI blog for all of them. Ready, set, go!

ITEM ONE

The first item is the image you see at the top of this post. Look at the squares labeled A and B. They are exactly the same color. No shit. The proof of that can be seen in the image to the right, in which cross-bars have been laid over the original image. You can see how the bars blend equally with the two squares. I see this and I still don’t quite believe it, and I don’t know the explanation for why my eyes see the squares as having different colors. As illusions go, I think it’s metal.

If you’re still skeptical, there’s video of this same illusion right after the jump. I suppose the highly skeptical among you might think there’s some kind of trickery going on in the video, but the creator insists there isn’t.

Bacon strips, bitches. Authentic camping experience, complete with acetylene campfire starter and urine streams to bring the heat down to proper marshmallow-roasting temperature. Candied bacon strips and Jack Daniels and drizzling chocolate and layering the shit three and four across. And of course stuffing your fucken face with it when it’s all done. That’s metal. That’s all I got to say about this shit.

Man, time does fly. More than six weeks have passed since the last installment of this series. With so many days drifting by like tumbleweeds on the prairie, I’ve accumulated lots of potential items, including recommendations from our readers. I’ll have to save some of them for the future or this post would go on and on and on, and I know my metalheads, so the last thing I wanna do is overtax your limited attention spans.

What we do in this series is feature images, videos, occurrences, and other items that we think are metal, even though they’re not music. Today, we’re going to start off with a couple of photos and then go from there.

ITEM ONE

You’re looking at Item One at the top of this post. You get one guess what that is. If you guessed the cover art for the next Graveworm album, you’re close, but no cigar.  If you guessed an image of a hydrothermal worm made with a scanning electron microscope, congratulations. These worms are deep-sea creatures and live near hydrothermal vents in the ocean floor. They are very small — almost as small as a bacterium. This photo magnifies the worm 525 times. The true width of the field captured in this photo is actually 568/1000 of a millimeter.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really fuckin’ glad these things aren’t the size of sharks, or pro football linemen. And as far as I’m concerned, they can stay down on the ocean floor. The original of this image is here. Thanks to our buddy Ullr for the tip on this photo. Our remaining items are after the jump.

In Seattle, the city near the metallic island that NCS calls home, there is a summer tradition called Seafair, which is just about to begin. It’s been going on since the 1950s. It involves things like hydroplane racing on Lake Washington, a Boeing air show, music concerts (no metal, of course), both US and Canadian naval warships on parade, human parades, and copious drinking and eating. But my favorite part of the festival is the air show put on by The Blue Angels.

For those of you living outside the US, The Blue Angels are a squadron of Navy pilots who perform aerial acrobatics using F/A-18 Hornet aircraft flying at the speed of holyfuckwhatwasthat! They perform for 2 days in a row (this weekend), and they have practice runs for two days before the performance (the first of which happened to be today). They’re loud — louder than a drunken fuck in a thin-walled motel. In fact, they’re so distracting that a major interstate highway in their flight path is shut down when they’re practicing and performing. You can imagine how drivers feel about that.

Yes, The Blue Angels are metal, but that’s actually not what this post is about. What this post is about is an Onion-style piece of reporting about The Blue Angels in an internet mag called The Seattle Salmon. It so perfectly captures the tight-sphincter side of Seattle culture, and it’s so goddamned hilarious that I have to put it up, verbatim, right after the jump. It is definitely metal. The title of the piece? “Seattle’s Pussies Prepare To Bitch About The Blue Fucking Angels”.

July 29, 2011. That was four days ago, right? This video was posted on that day. As of the time I scheduled this post for publication, it had already garnered 1.025,448 hits on YouTube. And no wonder.

Some people would say this is music, and therefore wouldn’t qualify for this series of things that are metal but AREN’T music. But I beg to differ. This is NOT music. But it is metal. It is also fucking hysterical.

I have only one more thing to say: Thank you ElvisShotJFK for the tip to this bit of awesomeness. It may be the pinnacle of 2,000 years of Western civilization. Or it may be a sign of the Apocalypse. If this puppy doesn’t generate comments, then I don’t fucking know what will.

And by the way, fuck toasters, just fuck them. And chairs, fuck them, too. Just FUCK. EVERYTHING.

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)