Author: colter

For Improved Cat Hoarding Awareness

Fark.com, as hopefully everyone knows, is the best place to get news. Fark allows odd news stories from various regions to be concentrated into a central location. These stories are the kinds of things you might read in your local paper but almost never see on national news. Something I realized today is that, as a result, Fark makes us aware of human behavior patterns that we might otherwise miss. For example, cat hoarding.

Headlines like “today’s house with 300 cats brought to you by X” show up on Fark with remarkable regularity. On a local level, cat hoarding might seem like a peculiar, isolated incident, but with the advent of Fark, we can see that it is in fact something of a national mini-epidemic. People hoard pets all the time. There are hundreds of pet hoarders out there. It’s a legitimate psychological disorder.

So there’s another benefit of the Internet. It allows us to discover how truly freaky we really are. Pet hoarding just scratches the surface if you consider that the Internet also allows people with niche fetishes to come together more easily.

Linguistic Inequities

Why is it that we still have no word for strings of initials (HTML, NAACP, BFE, FCC) yet we have a term for the reversal of logical phrases? Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I present to you hysteron proteron, an overly lengthy phrase describing the inversion of a logical statement or clause. For example, saying “bred and born” instead of “born and bred.” This particular term was brought to my attention by my drummer and fellow language nerd, Steve Chapman.

Ah, but you say “acronym” is the term for things like AFL-CIO, DEA, and AARP, but it’s not. An acronym only qualifies as such if the initials create a word like “radar” (RAdio Detection And Ranging) or maybe even “SCSI” (pronounced “scuzzy”). Given that the Internet has created an unprecendented glut of what I like to call “initializations” (ASP, IIS, AOL), we really should get ourselves a word for this phenomenon. I vote for “initialization” if only because it has only slightly fewer[1] letters than “hysteron proteron.”

1.) Let it be known, mom, that I said “fewer” and not “less.”

Unlikely Developments on the Marconi

Jason added a comment to one of my older entries about the format of FM101.1 here in town. He gave a link to an MSN story entitled, “Increasingly, stations move toward variety.”

There’s an unlikely headline. Everything I know about radio is seemingly refuted by this development. It’s a paradox, a conundrum, and I am flummoxed. Radio stations are experimenting with…diversity. Not the same old homogenous, bland formatting of the most chart-topping pablum, but a gloriously random mishmash of lesser-known favorites and hits. You say you want a revolution? Corporate radio, in a panic to compete with iPods and satellite radio, seems ready to deliver.

What are some other similarly unlikely headlines? “MTV Plays Video,” “Pope Promotes Prophylactics,” “Republicans Balance Budget,” “Michael Jackson Dates a Black Woman.” If you’re bored, make up some of your own and post them as comments.

Barry: “But I’m The Tick!”

So I’m now covered in tick bites. I haven’t had tick bites since camp. I’m sure I’ll get Lyme Disease now, as I failed to properly remove the seed ticks with tweezers as all the field guides tell you. Sorry but those bastards had to be removed in the car manually. I probably should have tossed my clothes into the wash before I took my shower rather than after…I wonder if I’ll have little ticks running around my house and onto my pets. Maybe I’m just being paranoid but Billie seemed to be scratching herself an awful lot last night. I have about 30-odd bites on me now as punishment for going into the woods unprepared. I guess I’m just glad I don’t have poison ivy. I’m such a dork.

The Unhappy Expedition to Glory Town

I had heard some months ago that the remains of an abandoned hamlet called Glory Town could be found in the woods on the west side of Lake Maumelle, and yesterday I finally had a free Saturday to go and search for it. I had directions provided for me by a guy who had been there, but after a few sweaty, seed tick-infested hours of exploring, I gave up. I did find the area where a small graveyard was moved, and took some pictures of that (moderately creepy), and I had a nice time sitting alone on some discarded concrete slabs by the lake, but mostly the day was a failure. Driving home I noticed the seed ticks on my arms, so I did my best to pick them off while driving quickly home so I could scrub myself thoroughly and shower. So far I’m not itching, so that’s a good thing. I thought for sure I’d end up with itchy tick bites or poison ivy.

While roaming the woods, I got a call from Elizabeth, who admonished me for going into the woods alone, but I’d hate to have brought someone along on such a dubious adventure (next time I’ll remember to bring Deep Woods Off!®). Plus roaming the forest alone is really quite pleasurable. The path was the old route of Highway 113, so it’s not like I was just lost in the woods with no compass. There are several old highway routes through that area, as Lake Maumelle is a manmade reservoir which required the evacuation of settlements and re-rerouting of roads.

I’ll get some more detailed instructions from my guide and try again soon. If anyone’s interested in coming along this time, let me know.

P.S. Yesterday VH1 Classic played Tears for Fears’ “Closest Thing to Heaven,” from their amazing 2004 reunion album, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending which is unbelievablly fantastic and everyone should own this album because it sparkles like the shiniest of gems and sounds like a million quid. I can’t remember the last time I sang along to the TV. It’s an amazing video featuring a curly brunette “long time Tear for Fears fan” Brittany Murphy. Yum.

More From Our London Bureau

Here’s an update from John and Susan, my expat people in London. You may recall them from last year’s vacation travelogue.

“We’re all good. Had to buy a bike to get home, but Susan wanted a new one anyway. The English are pros at this sort of thing — no one is freaking out, we kinda expected it. The response was, “let’s have a cuppa [tea].” They should re-open all the tube stations tomorrow morning. Wow. I’m very impressed. The incident is being treated like a crime scene, very cool and professional. It sounds like the Americans are taking it harder than the British – wacky. You changed to orange alert from yella. Very curious.”

Reality Upgrade

“Tube Blasts: Commuters Dead” read the Evening Standard headline placards across London. I can see them at Flickr, which gives me something that the traditional news media never quite deliver: firsthand perspective. With the help of Flickr tags like “blasts,” “bombs,” and “London,” I can get an idea of what my fellow photobloggers on the street in London are seeing. They become, in effect, a worldwide network of amateur news photographers.

So far, at least one of them was on the Tube this morning, and his cameraphone pictures are now making their way up to the major media.

So this morning brings to our attention not only that the Western world is still a terrorist target (lest we get complacent in our relative lack of post-9/11 trauma), but also that we have avenues of information that we didn’t have in, say, 2001.

Please Shop at Anthro-Pop

If you live in Little Rock[1] and you need a CD, then please just get it at Anthro-pop. Rod can special order anything in the world and usually have it in faster than Amazon.com. Sure Amazon is cheaper, but then there’s that whole shipping charge, isn’t there? Sure you could shop at Best Buy, but you must realize that if you do so, you are effectively crushing music stores everywhere. Remember music stores? Remember High Fidelity? These places are getting fewer and further between because Best Buy loses money on every disc they sell. They just want to get you in the store to buy an appliance or a computer. It’s a shrewd business model, but if you care about music then you’re not necessarily concerned with business excellence are you? Do you want to watch a movie about John Cusack and Jack Black working at Best Buy? I would hope not.

The sad state of music retail aside, I say all this because Anthro-pop is a fabulous place to spend an hour or two and because Rod is an exceptionally knowledgeable and generous guy. I bought a couple of CDs and he gave me Season 3 of Land of the Lost on DVD for FREE. It was a promo thing he got for free, but still. Fun excerpt from the back of the box:

“Behold the fire-breathing dinosaur Torchy – menace to Human, Pakuni, and Sleestak alike!”

I have no idea what that means but how can it not be awesome!? Thanks, Rod!

1.) If you live in North Little Rock, then please buy from Bill at Arkansas Record/CD Exchange.

I am Lane Meyer

You know that scene in Better Off Dead where John Cusack has been dumped and he’s driving along and every song on the radio is a breakup song? That happened to me this morning, except that every song came from the same album, in this case one of my all-time favorites, Sugarbomb’s Bully. I had never noticed that the record is populated almost exclusively by breakup songs. Witness:

“Waiting”

Waiting for the phone to ring (refrain x 3)
and I hope it will be you

“Hello”

One thing’s for sure
What I would give to simply open my door
And see your smiling face

“Mail Order Girlfriend”

It’s over I feel it
She’ll never come visit

“What a Drag”

What a drag how people change
Once you really get to know them

It gets even worse when you get into “Poster Child for Tragedy” so I’ll spare you that one. Suffice it to say that the defunct Dallas band made one of the great one-album wonder classics. If you can find a copy, it has my highest recommendation.