This one, "The Saga of Biorn," is sort of in the middle; a bit silly, perhaps (and maybe mildly irreverent), and nowhere near as "Backwater-level" creepy or memorable. But I think I found myself drawn to it because it plays (in a gentle way) with the ridiculousness that so often occurs when we attempt to imagine the afterlife.

Bertrand Kulik is a 34-year-old concert violinist who graduated from the Royal College of Music in London. He lives in Paris (in the 15th District), and he's a photographer who does AMAZING things with raindrops. But it's his work with spiders -- or with one particular spider -- that really caught my attention.

A "ludicrous new instrument" that "uses 2,000 marbles" to "make music" has been washing over Facebook (and through my FeedReader) all week. Quite the online phenomenon, really. Now as we all know, Internet notoriety is not necessarily predicated on quality. But in this case, Wintergatan's Marble Machine is absolutely deserving of that honor.

Captures my oddly-frantic ennui of the moment perfectly. Of course, "perfectly capturing" bizarre-yet-real moments is what The Brothers Chaps do best. That's what helped to make Homestarrunner.com such "must-see InterWeb TV" in the Susanka household for years. And why I've got my eye on "Two More Eggs.")

I really love the sound the body of the guitar makes when it's struck like this. Always so much louder -- and yet, simultaneously, more mellow -- than I'm expecting.

Here's an exchange that took place in our house yesterday that suggests that my kids tend to think of more abstract concepts in ruthlessly literal terms (at least in the early years). Also, I'm not sure this way of thinking about the mind is entirely incorrect.