What are these mysterious menu bar icons?

The Two Houses icon is associated with a mobile home directory--linked to an OS X server. I believe the exclamation point is its cry for help--probably telling you that the local "copy" of your home directory hasn't been sync'd to its server counterpoint for awhile. Click on the icon and see if it gives you more info.

The one on the left is for MobileMe (formerly .Mac) syncing status.

You used to be able to enable it with the application iSync.app, which I believe is no longer present on Mac OS X. It can currently toggled through a pane in the MobileMe System Preferences panel. When syncing is in progress it is animated (it spins). It does not have any other animation states I am aware of.

I'm not sure about the other icon.