Leonid meteor shower, Marfa, Texas 2008

• ON DARK SKIES AND FALLING STARS
The last time we wrote about a meteor shower here at Arthur, we lived in the middle of the sprawling, light-polluted metropolis of Los Angeles, where the only meteor-like streaks in the sky were the tracer bullets being exchanged between LAPD choppers and some of our gang-banging neighbors. Now we live in Marfa, Texas where we’ll be taking in the Leonid meteor shower — at its peak tomorrow night (that’s November 17) — as it rains across the dark skies of the Trans Pecos from the comfort of our back yard, frosty session brew in hand. Ahhh. Click here and a nerd will tell you where to look for the meteors. [Bad Astronomy/Discover]

• IT WAS HARVEST TIME AGAIN

Speaking of California, it was around this time last year that Arthur columnist Dave Reeves and I were … uh … “camping” on a nearly-destitute drug farm in Northern California. The paranoia, the backwoods misogyny, the nightly “who has the most bullets” shooting contests with the meth-head farmers over the hill … oh the memories. You can read all about it in his story — and look at my pretty, pretty pot pictures on my photo blog — from last year. But did you know that most people don’t have this type of extremely sketched out paranoid experience up on the pot farms? Redheaded Blackbelt writes about some of the less psychotic aspects of growing and trimming with “How long until you earn a million with marijuana and other things you can learn online,” a great jumping-off point for a variety of weed-head shop-talk blogs. And don’t miss the Redhead’s more recent posts, like the one about the time he accidentally sent his kid to school with a memory stick full of marijuana porn. Lotsa nice otter photos there too. [Redheaded Blackbelt]

• BEERS, STEERS AND AFGOOEY SUPER KUSH

Speaking of high quality marijuana, that’s one of the few things that the failed state of California has going for it these days, what with the quasi-decriminalization and all, and it’s definitely something it can hold over the weak produce and harsh sentences here in Texas. Though maybe not for long, as even mainstream Texas magazines are starting to get in line with long-standing Lone Star marijuanauts from Willie Nelson to Gibby Haynes, or at least that’s sure what this “Texas High Ways” (wokka wokka) article from the October Texas Monthly sounds like. [Texas Monthly]

• SPEAKING OF DARK STARS AND FALLING SKIES

We still get email about “Uncle Skullfucker’s Band,” my memoir of spending my high school years as a closet Deadhead, a lot of it looking for pointers on the noisier inheritors of their heavy improvisational legacy, or as Ethan “Howlin Rain/Comets on Fire” Miller put it in a follow-up article, you can listen to a lot of Dead and never “[mistake] it for Fushitsusha, ya know?”

As it happens, audioblog Mutant Sounds just put this thing up that is more or less the ideal entry point for noise-heads that want to “get” the Dead: It’s the Leningrad Psychedelic Blues Machine doing a 21-minute cover of the Dead’s long-form psychedelic masterpiece, “Dark Star.” The Leningrad Psychedelic Blues Machine, of course, is a Japanese noise-blitz apocalypse supergroup including members of Acid Mothers Temple, High Rise, Mainliner and Zeni Geva, and their version is expectedly rough, rugged and raw in what sounds like a tribute to the best of the crackly, fuzzed-out late ’60s audience recordings out there. [Mutant Sounds]

• WHO WANTS A BODY MASSAGE?

Sorry for the long absence. Shortly after arriving here in Texas our pal Lil’ Earl sent us this GI Joe PSAs video from way back in 2006 and it’s pretty much the only thing we look at when we turn the internet on. “Porkchop sandwiches!“