Whit's Blog / 1000 Recordings

Miscellany (Soundtrack included)

• DURKL t shirts: get with us. ill, suave, cool 80s t-shirts.
  Something is happening in terms of methods of marketing here, and I don't have a word for it, but YUCK. YUCK WITH RAISINS.
• The 3hive 2005 Year-End List
  Nice wrapup of downloadable music. No M.I.A. or LCD Soundsystem here, but good solid studio work that in many cases shines.
  (tags: 3hive music)
• 3hive: Ladytron
  Take me back. TAKE ME BACK. (Read out loud; repeat until all possible meanings are exhausted.)
  (tags: ladytron music newwave)
• Kornwolf by Tristan Egolf, reviewed by Esquire
  If only I had all the time to read in the world.
  (tags: kornwolf)

Except we never go pee when we ought

This is so true it is absolutely terrifying. Also for my four-year-old.

Still to Come: Five more signs of the apocalypse

I am clipping coupons and I just noticed that Queen Latifah is a covergirl cover "girl."

One Ringy Dingy

GET HIM OUT OF MY HEAD. Seriously, this is so me. I had dinner with friends in Palo Alto in, like, 2001. And I had with me my Sony Sprint PCS phone. (This was long after Sony had stopped making phones.) It was this huge, construction site-looking thing, with a battery on it you could wedge in a crocodile's jaws if you needed to pull out both feet and you were wearing hiking books and crampons.

And the guy part of the friends just keeps saying, "THAT IS NOT YOUR PHONE. THAT CANNOT BE YOUR PHONE." His flipped open and shut; he used it to talk to V.C.'s. 

There were something like six people from those phone recycling programs walking around behind me hoping I would drop the phone. (The thumb wheel only worked if you squeezed the phone really hard.) Phone was $20, and the screen lit up when it rang. Didn't vibrate. If it was on silent, you just had to watch the screen really closely to see it kind of get a vibrate-y look.

Massively Distributed Humor Generation Infrastructure

TopFive begets the new Bad Cupid.

By Way of Explanation About The Dancing Thing

I went to cotillion growing up. In sixth grade, I think it was, you signed up (and your parents paid a bunch of money) and you want in town to dance for a few hours on Saturday night. And they taught classic dances, like the Waltz, and dances that must have seemed scandalous at some point, like the Jitterbug, and positively contemporary dances, like the Saturday Night Fever and even the Stargazer.

One night I was dancing with a girl I liked. (Which was, frankly, not unusual, as I Liked Girls. Rather more than I had previously realized, if you must know the truth.) And it was not going well, because I do not pay close attention to phyiscal instruction and I have less muscle memory than a spatula. The teacher came over, I guess he was maybe even 17, and he told me, and I quote, "You are the worst dancer I have ever seen in my life."

This smarted. No scar -- I am happy and well-adjusted. But it did sting. And I was hurt, and I bristled, for all the good that ever does. And by the time he was done with the girl I liked, it was time for the Next Dance.

Years went by. (I kept going to cotillion.) I forgot the statement, and then as I danced again at parties -- mostly on one foot, as this was 1982 or so -- I realized. The truth, and it was the truth, had set me free. I could dance as badly as I wanted! I could do whatever I wished! I was so awful I could leap like a rabid deer!

This led to excessive dancing at a recent event connected to my job. I received compliments of varying degrees of bemusement. The next morning, I heard a colleague say, "There was this one guy, we called him 'Happy Feet,' he had the wildest moves!"

I wll take this lateral immortality. I am now Happy Feet.

Key Don't Fail Me Now

Overheard while walking down a hotel hallway. People talking were behind and not in sight.

She: "I like my furry boots. Do you like my furry boots?"

He: "I like them. They're hot. 'Drop it like it's hot. Drop it like it's hot.'"

She: "You helped me get them."

He: "'Drop it like it's hot.'"

She: "I think they go well with the fishnet stockings."

Happy Holiday

RTFM

OK, so we had to reprogram the keycode on the garage door. And we looked up how to do it on the instruction sheet, wisely selecting English. (You laugh, but I once had to go to the Intermatic Web site to download a fresh manual for a timer because I saved the Spanish-language version and pitched my copy of the manual in the only language I speak.)

And we followed the instructions in Step One, like, 15 times. And it did not work. And so we disconnected and reconnected the battery and tried again. Nope, did not work. And we tried some steps with a fresh interpretation. (How would Jacques Derrida read this step? And Luce Irigaray? Now, once more, imagining myself to be that windbag Bloom? Still not working!)

And we called the company that makes the opener, and they weren't at work on the Sunday before Christmas, slackers that they are. And so we went in the house, defeated.

Then it came to me: Every thing in Step One was to be done outside the door! So, if it worked the way we were thinking it should work, it would be possible to reprogram the door without having acccess to the inside of the house! Which would mean that burglars would just go get a manual and troll houses for those using this opener! Which seemed quite unlikely.

This was when I looked at the instructions again. And this was when I realized: After Step One came Step Two. And then, I kid you not, Step Three! When we did all the steps, not just One but also Two and Three (and in that order, mind you), the reprogramming worked like a charm!

As I post this, I am advising Carol to take the phone off the hook so that when my alma mater calls to instruct me to send my diploma back to them, they will get a busy signal. Maybe they will forget to try again later.

This headline doesn't stink

Gotta read the topic of the story, too.