fine whine

I have a minidisc recorder, but it's not as convenient or practical as I once thought it would be. That said, it's several notches up on many of my other gadgets, as I do occasionally take it out and use it. I'm not very diligent with making new discs, though, so I rarely have anything new to which to listen. I've got this one mix disc that stands up pretty well, though, particularly for lawn mowing.

Among the songs (alas, no tracklist exists and I'm not willing to listen to it right now to figure it out) are such gems as:

• "Pistolero" by Juno reactor
• "Insane in the membrane" by Cypress hill
• "Fly me to the moon" by Frank Sinatra
• "I'm not your stepping stone" by the Monkees
• "The shape of things to come" by Max Frost and the Troopers
• "FNT" by Semisonic
• "Damn it feels good to be a gangsta" by the Geto boys

That last one pops up in a lot of places, not the least the Office space soundtrack, and also the movie itself. I noticed, though, that in the film the lyrics are altered from "pussy" to something like "Gucci" in the line "pussy-eating pranksters". I can but wonder what prompted this change.

Today my parents came halfway down and we went halfway toward them and met at Mohican State Park's resort. We didn't have much of an agenda, but fit in some hiking, poison ivy-spotting and a couple hours of shuffleboard.

I think that, if I could put any sports-playing-thing on my property, I'd build a shuffleboard court. Then I could work on my technique, and maybe get to a strategy whereby I don't need to send the other discs flying twenty feet away to keep the other people from scoring.

As the months go by and the leaves start to turn here in Ohio, my mind turns to thoughts of ... expiring license plate tags. As 2004 winds down fewer and fewer cars here in Columbus have stickers expiring this year, and lately I've taken to spotting them. I've even seen a couple with expired tags, and last I heard that was primary offense around here, tsk tsk.

So to explain the system to those who don't live in Ohio: License plate tags are little stickers that every car registered in Ohio must have renewed every year. These stickers expire on the birthday of the registration holder, so mine, for example, needed to be renewed before 9/23 of this year. So does my license, for that matter, but I can't do that online and must subject myself to BMV purgatory soon. But the stickers come in different colors for each year, and I only need to pay attention to the white ones this year. A lot of 9s, 10s, 11s and surprisingly few 12s are still rolling around.

Anyway, I was thinking about this, and realized that the driver's birth month is basically out in the open. As such, it wouldn't be too difficult to extrapolate potential horoscopic signs, and from there figure out what sort of drivers are sharing our roads. You know, if Tauruses or Cancers are road hogs or Scorpios are bad at switching lanes.

I think this could perhaps be useful knowledge.

so there was a bat
flying around the office
it was too hot outside

it flew right past me
it looked to be vaguely orange
my glasses were off

you see, I don't like
to wear them at work, so it's
all blurry to me

but I will admit
to noticing that its flight
was not like a bird's

I was reminded
of the time there was a cat
scared out of its wits

running all over
then again it might just be
afraid to get caught

you see, this cat, well
it had peed in some boxes
which smelled pretty bad

and as for the bat
I trapped it in an office
and three guys caught it

I do not know if,
while it was in there, if it
pooped on anything.

I'm sure by now you've been forwarded an email containing a link to a web page or Flash applet in which you are told to look at the differences or find what looks wrong or pay attention to this or that. I've even seen an mpeg of a TV commercial that works much the same way. Whatever it is, all of a sudden the window is filled with the head of a gruesome or horrifying creature, and a good third of suckers are caught off guard. They yelp, and everyone around them in the office looks at what is going on. At least, that's what happens in my office, as there are at least two people particularly susceptible to this little trick.

I'm sorry Eun Hee, by the way. I didn't know he'd forward that to you.

Anyway, what I'd like to see is one of these stupid things, but with a twist. Instead of a monster, have a baby cooing or some flowers or something. You know, a pleasant image. Would that be as jarring? Would the person still yelp? So, somebody try it.

It's times like this that I wish I knew how to use Flash. Or at least that I'd do something with those Flash books I keep getting out of the library beyond stacking my CDs on them.

Not that I was looking, but I think I might have found the first example of the use of capitalization to indicate shouting online in a movie, in the 1997 intellectual drama Contact, based on Carl Sagan's book of the same name. I have not read the book, but I highly doubt that Carl was thinking about IM systems and 'netiquette back when he wrote it.

Anyway, in the film, Jodie Foster's character Ellie Arroway is having a real-time chat session with the cryptic billionaire John Hadden, currently floating around on Mir. She doesn't know it's him, though, and asks "Who are you?" He replies cryptically with a classified document to which he probably shouldn't have access. Confused and probably enraged, she then asks "WHO ARE YOU?"

I've been so conditioned as to immediately see the emphasis there; I can't not see it anymore. My suspicions are that this is deliberate, from somebody in the know and not just the flippant decisions of a production designer.

I am, naturally, seeking prior art, or some sort of confirmation.