Dr. Robert Moog invented the modern synthesizer. He stands alongside Les Paul and Leo Fender as an inventor who changed the sound of popular music.
By the way, his name is pronounced like “rogue” rather than with the “moo” sound. My high school physics teacher met him once.
When I first saw that M&M’s were tied into the latest Star Wars marketing onslaught, I didn’t think much of it. I thought it was a little dumb, actually. Not quite as dumb as Darth Vader hawking Cheez-Its, but still kinda goofy.
Until I tried the dark chocolate M&M’s with peanuts.
Over the last few months I’ve bought many, many bags of them. Now my neighborhood Kroger is out. These are a limited-time deal as far as I know. I was saddened until today when I discovered a cache tucked away at the Kroger in North Little Rock on Pike. I bought eight bags. I sold two to Shane. I am the pusherman. Hopefully the people at M&M’s will make this thing a permanent offering.
In what will hopefully become a trend of unlikely, paradigm-shifting headlines, this article entitled US scales back expectations on gains during Iraq transition, is making its way around the news sites. It says, among other things:
”What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground,” said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. ”We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.”
The cracks are showing; the administration can’t keep up its sunny exterior much longer. Jon Stewart and The Daily Show have been keen to point out that the rhetoric from the administration is changing quietly from the “War on Terror” to the “Global Struggle Against Extremism.” Odd thing to see them employing the kind of euphemistic language that conservatives tend to rail against. He’s not “crippled,” he’s “differently abled” – this isn’t a war, it’s now a struggle. Perhaps as old soldiers don’t die, they just fade away, the Bush administration is hoping Iraq will fade from the public consciousness.
Here’s hoping we can instead continue in our struggle to shed the unreality.
New ploggage here. A motley assortment from the last month or two. Mostly Minolta, some Motorola. There are a couple of pictures from last weekend’s trip to scenic Pottsboro, Texas, where we played at the Highport Marina and Resort. It was a long trip, the weather was hot, and setup was exhausting. The show went fairly well, though. Since I had Jeff and soundman Richard in the car, I didn’t have the freedom to stop and take pictures at the peculiar things we drove by (the town of Fink, Texas, for example, or the stretched-limo-style 70’s van in somebody’s yard). I did get some pictures of a freaky bird swarm and a Napoleon Dynamite display at a gas station.
This was in my spam box today at work, underneath some ad for debt relief or something:
The dumb calculator was active. The homosexual cloud said deaf.
The rich fox used to be hetrosexual.
The fair bicycle were rude.
The smelly policewoman said normal.
The unhygenic u f o used to be active. The fair cockroach is pink.
I keep getting emails from plentyoffish.com, a personals/dating website. At first I thought it was just spam, but their regularity of transmission and their format suggested to me that either I had signed up without knowing or someone had signed me up. So I clicked over to it to investigate. My username is kobalt. I see that my matches are all Canadian. Then I realize: someone mistyped their email address. Into mine. I have the luxury of colter at gmail.com, so possibly someone forgot a modifier of some kind, numbers or whatever.
The sad part is, plentyoffish.com doesn’t save names or personal info, so I have no way of contacting the Canadian guy who’s probably sitting around wondering when he’s going to get some messages from the site.
Reflecting on the recent hullaballoo on Social Security and how it will supposedly crash on us, I began to wonder about how many children from the 70’s and 80’s will actually make it past age 65, given the dietary trends of the past few decades. Fast food and microwaveable meals, two terribly unhealthy and overwhelmingly popular sources of nourishment, really took hold during those generations. Factor that in with an overall decline in cooking skills, and you may have a recipe for untimely demises for people my age. We have a tendency to think that in the future people will be living longer, but given the eating trends of the last few decades I have to wonder if the opposite may prove true.
I’m going to make fish and broccoli tonight. What are you having?
Just a few weeks after my post on cat hoarding, the delightful San Francisco columnist and incisive master of the cheeky run-on sentence Mark Morford goes off on the same topic. Coincidence? Or is my blog truly becoming the trend-setter, the taste-maker? Consider also that Charlie Murphy recently announced that Chappelle’s Show is over. I can’t help but think I’m to blame. See my lame previous post.
Dave Chappelle went on an unexpected hiatus this year just before beginning his third season. No doubt the pressure of following up two seasons of already-classic comedy is enormous, so here’s something I thought of that might help Dave on his return, a sketch that explains his departure:
The pressure was too much to bear, so Dave has to find some new place to mine for comedy. So he visits the comedy mines administrated by Billy Dee Williams. But it’s a trap! Wayne Brady’s back to take over the show and so Dave has to go on Whose Line Is It Anyway? to prove his comedy Jedi skills. It’s a draw until Billy Dee offers Dave a Colt 45, which Dave and Wayne use in an object-improv showdown. Dave comes up with more bits using the can than Wayne, and wins. Billy Dee says “works every time.”
I really should get back to work.
I was having a discussion today with a lady at the church where I play bass about Antiques Roadshow. I think someone needs to come up with the Anti-Antiques Roadshow, a show where people bring things in to be appraised, in hopes of being told they have some horrendously rare and valuable item, only to find out it’s utter crap, worth nothing.
Sometimes I’ll get sucked into watching the show, because I’ve always held an interest in old things, but it only makes me wonder what the big appeal of antiquities is. How can any desk be worth $100,000? It’s a desk, for pete’s sake. The exorbitant prices for old, rare things has only one source: rich people who can outbid everyone else.
When you get right down to it, antiques are only valuable because there’s a certain magic to any item that survives a series of decades (or centuries) intact. There’s an even greater magic if the item is rare and beautiful, but overall the magic of an antique is, at its heart, pure novelty. It’s a novelty that a particular item was lucky enough to withstand the ravages of time and remain in good condition. What that item gives us is the closest opportunity we’ll ever have to experience time travel. So perhaps the people who pay vast sums of money for antiques are really obssessed with time travel.
As someone who freely admits to being fascinated by time travel, I certainly understand the appeal of an antique from that perspective. I also enjoy pondering the stories that a particular item accrues over its lifetime, stories it will never tell. The movie The Red Violin is a great example of why an item gains value with age. I can’t imagine paying huge amounts of cash for that novelty magic, though. I guess it’s all relative. Fortunately for me I tend to collect small things like old postcards and matchbooks, and I can continue to do so, safe in the knowledge that no rich people care about those items (not enough to make them prohibitively expensive, anyway).
What’s unfortunate to me is that people will pay thousands of dollars for an 80 year old piece of furniture, but often won’t give an 80 year old human being the time of day. Here are stories that can be told. Which reminds me, I need to interview my grandmother more. She has so many stories I’ve never heard. She grew up in Houston in the same neighborhood with Howard Hughes. I only found that out this year.
OK I’m rambling now. Go listen to old people and don’t pay too much for something just because it’s old!
