DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

My buddy Chuck forwarded a link to this amazing whole-body alien tattoo. I’m not sure how he found it; I wonder if maybe he was looking for something a bit more exciting than napkin rings to add to his wedding gift registry.

Also check out the animated view of the alien head tattoo. Crazy!

I changed to Aquarian drum heads about five years ago, after growing up with Remo. I was swayed by Aquarian’s geek-appeal advertising, which explains how the hoops are constructed and why Aquarian’s approach is superior. I’ve had great success with these heads.

Recently I was re-heading my entire kit. As an experiment I installed the Performance II model, which is designed to be tuned low, but I had an unexpected difficulty — one of the new heads refused to tune up. This is an incredibly frustrating problem; it goes like this: tighten each lug evenly, moving around the head in the prescribed pattern. At a medium tension level, tap the head near each lug to listen for gross differences in pitch. Locale a high spot. Loosen the nearest tension rod to drop the pitch. Oops, the tension rod comes completely free, but the head is still higher in pitch at that spot.

How the heck can the head be tightest at the spot where there’s no tension?

This could be caused by out-of-round shells, trashed bearing edges, or defective heads. I’d just had my shells’ bearing edges reground, so I was confident the shells were not at fault. Against all odds, the problem must have been the head.

I took the head off completely, rotated it about 30°, and tried again. Same results.

Ultimately I was able to get an even tuning out of the head, by cranking it down tight, resulting in a usable but lifeless tone. So I sent an email to Aquarian asking if the head could have been defective. The response I got was a surprise: an email back from Roy Burns, drummer extraordinaire, founder and president of the company.

I called him with some hesitation. Surely he has better things to do than handle customer complaints. “Oh, I handle all the complaints,” he assured me. And then he offered to replace the defective head. On my say-so, he’d ship me a new one.

After a moment’s thought, I declined. I explained that I’d managed to make the head work, but decided that I didn’t like the Performance II model. Roy asked about my band and my playing style, recommended a lighter, livelier head (the Response 2), and asked what sizes of toms I play. I told him, wondering why it mattered. He surprised me a third time: He offered to send me a whole set of new heads.

My band has a gig in the town square in a couple weeks. I am so tempted to hang a sign reading “Endorsed by Aquarian Drumheads!” But I’m afraid Roy wouldn’t appreciate it. Deep down, though, I know it’s true, even if only for this one show.

RossIron makes Feng Shui-savvy sculptures from iron and stone. I saw a display at a kiosk at one of the ferry terminals in British Columbia (captive audiences make good art patrons, as evidenced by the two watercolors that found their way into my satchel).

The sculptures are whimsical and fun, and would likely make nice gifts for “people who have everything,” including space to put more stuff.

My favorite, I think, is the frog with a butterfly stuck to the end of its tongue. But a lot of the sculptures were neat. I try not to load up my suitcase with rocks, so I didn’t end up buying any of them.

The artist has an online catalog, but the tiny pictures aren’t representative of reality. The sculptures have more presence and appeal than is communicated there.

FastCompany’s overview of Whole Foods and John Mackey’s management style is really interesting. Corporate anarchy and organic produce… a winning combination!

The company had a written “Declaration of Interdependence“… It had a set of written core values (“satisfying and delighting our customers,” “team-member happiness and excellence”). And most striking of all, even for a small company, it had a set of quirky management rules that made Whole Foods an odd but effective workplace.

Each store had a book in the office that listed the pay of every employee for the previous year. The book was available to anyone — and was especially valuable if you were promoted or if you relocated, and wanted to see how your pay compared with your colleagues’. The pay book, surprisingly little used, set a tone of what Mackey called “no secrets management.”

Every store was divided into about eight functional teams: You were hired to the seafood team, or the prepared-foods team, or the cashier/front-end team. But you didn’t just get hired. You got hired provisionally. After four weeks of work, the team you had joined voted whether to keep you; you needed a two-thirds yes vote to join the staff permanently.

One more teaser quote…

Says Doug Greene, founder and former editor of Natural Foods Merchandiser, the 25-year-old trade bible of the organic- and natural-foods business: “If you look back 100 years from now, history will show that Whole Foods will be in the top-five companies that changed the world.”

The article also confirms that the “Whole Paycheck” meme is national.

(Seen at Kottke.org, along with some interesting responses from the community.)

The Museum of Anthropology at the U. of British Columbia hosts a great big sculpture from an artist named Bill Reid. Titled Raven and the First Men, it commemorates the Haida legend of the origin of the Haida civilization.

The presentation is pretty amazing. The sculpture sits in the “Rotunda” and dominates the space. It was so compelling, I took ten pictures. Then I bought a postcard with yet another picture, as well as a printed copy of the Haida legend to bring home. I have no idea what to do with them, now. (I guess I could store them with the sand dollars.)

You can preview the sculpture in situ at the MoA’s website, which provides a virtual tour of the grounds.