July 2008

It’s all about .Me

or

How many times can I change the domain name before the last person stops following me? (NOT a winning strategy for “Blogging Idol”)

July 16, 2028: Walmart*, after 17 years with over 80% of the market share of Everything for the bottom 80% of the population (by income/net worth), files for Chapter 23 Bankruptcy with the Federal Business Insurance Corp. (FBIC). The one member of the Walton family still living in the U.S. and associated with the company, Chief Nepotism Officer Binky Walton, makes a statement declaring “there’s no money in it anymore” and repeats for the 475th time in 20 years that the asterisky thing in the logo (*) has nothing to do with steroid use.

July 16, 2028: Walmart*, after 17 years with over 80% of the market share of Everything for the bottom 80% of the population (by income/net worth), files for Chapter 23 Bankruptcy with the Federal Business Insurance Corp. (FBIC). The one member of the Walton family still living in the U.S. and associated with the company, Chief Nepotism Officer Binky Walton, makes a statement declaring “there’s no money in it anymore” and repeats for the 475th time in 20 years that the asterisky thing in the logo (*) has nothing to do with steroid use.

…million-name watchlist yet, this aughta do it.

Let me make this clear: I don’t want the Terrorists to win… but I have bet on them to cover the spread.

When I hear somebody say “my body is a temple” I imagine that someday SOME religious group would build a temple shaped like a body, and it will revolutionize the ‘going to church’ ritual, depending on the model for the building… and where they place the entrance and exit.

For myself, sadly, my body is a WalMart, too damn big and filled with low quality junk.

Generally, I’d worry less about displeasing Xenu than displeasing Xena… that babe can kick your butt!

Let me make this clear: I don’t want the Terrorists to win… but I have bet on them to cover the spread.

When I hear somebody say “my body is a temple” I imagine that someday SOME religious group would build a temple shaped like a body, and it will revolutionize the ‘going to church’ ritual, depending on the model for the building… and where they place the entrance and exit.

For myself, sadly, my body is a WalMart, too damn big and filled with low quality junk.

Generally, I’d worry less about displeasing Xenu than displeasing Xena… that babe can kick your butt!

(Insert reference to Portal or cake or Jonathan Coulton here)

Random neural firings continue to pass through my head so I am not brain-dead (just brain-disabled):

When an article says “studies show”, always remember that studies can show any damn thing you could want them to show. This is based on a study by the Institute for the Study of Studies.

And “think tanks” are well known for drowning any thinker that doesn’t think like the rest of the tank.

Just so you know, The IndyMac Bank is totally unrelated to FreddyMac, Bernie Mac, the iMac, the Indy 500, Indiana Jones, the Independent Movie Channel, Mac and Cheese, Mack Trucks, Independence Day the Movie, Mac Davis or the Left Bank.

It really NEVER rains in California. which, dammit, is becoming the awful truth. of course, it does pour, for certain definitions of “it”.

Random thoughts continue to pass through my head so I am not brain-dead (just brain-disabled):

When an article says “studies show”, always remember that studies can show any damn thing you could want them to show. This is based on a study by the Institute for the Study of Studies.

And “think tanks” are well known for drowning any thinker that doesn’t think like the rest of the tank.

Just so you know, The IndyMac Bank is unrelated to FreddyMac, the iMac, the Indy 500, Indiana Jones, the Independent Movie Channel, Mac and Cheese, Mack Trucks, Independence Day the Movie, Mac Davis and the Left Bank.

It really NEVER rains in California. which, dammit, is becoming the awful truth. of course, it does pour, for certain definitions of “it”.

I don’t know exactly when the background-music suppliers switched from bland orchestral covers of pop music to the original recordings, but it does have a decidedly different effect for me. Back in the Golden Age of Muzak, I would distract myself from the more tedious shopping trips by playing “Name That Tune” with the homogenized melodies and was once put into a state of shock when I recognized a song playing in a Mervyns store as an obscure pre-”Pina Colada” piece by Rupert Holmes that was on an album that sold maybe 20 copies (and I had one of them). Sadly, the best part of Holmes’ early musical output were his wry, often sharply cynical lyrics while his melodies – well, they fit well into the Muzak. From then on, I imagined that every unrecognizable tune I heard in the background had some wonderfully subversive lyrics… somewhere.

Once the sounds of shopping were changed to the original hits by the original artists, it became a totally ‘nother thing. I could no longer control the distraction value of the music; either it faded into the background of the soundtrack of my life, or some association of the song to a past memory or feeling would totally disrupt the process of selecting a dress shirt or breakfast cereal.

It happened a couple of times during a recent shopping excursion. First, hearing Billy Joel singing “Keeping the Faith” broke through the noise, if only because I had not heard it for so long and when I first heard it, well, I pretty much lost all faith I ever had in Billy Joel. Then, immediately afterward, I heard Paul McCartney and whatever-he-called-his-backup-band-in-1982-but-who-cares with “Take It Away”, another prime example of the decline and fall of a former pop legend. Who decides that those two songs should be played back-to-back?

I don’t know exactly when the background-music suppliers switched from bland orchestral covers of pop music to the original recordings, but it does have a decidedly different effect for me. Back in the Golden Age of Muzak, I would distract myself from the more tedious shopping trips by playing “Name That Tune” with the homogenized melodies and was once put into a state of shock when I recognized a song playing in a Mervyns store as an obscure pre-”Pina Colada” piece by Rupert Holmes that was on an album that sold maybe 20 copies (and I had one of them). Sadly, the best part of Holmes’ early musical output were his wry, often sharply cynical lyrics while his melodies – well, they fit well into the Muzak. From then on, I imagined that every unrecognizable tune I heard in the background had some wonderfully subversive lyrics… somewhere.

Once the sounds of shopping were changed to the original hits by the original artists, it became a totally ‘nother thing. I could no longer control the distraction value of the music; either it faded into the background of the soundtrack of my life, or some association of the song to a past memory or feeling would totally disrupt the process of selecting a dress shirt or breakfast cereal.

It happened a couple of times during a recent shopping excursion. First, hearing Billy Joel singing “Keeping the Faith” broke through the noise, if only because I had not heard it for so long and when I first heard it, well, I pretty much lost all faith I ever had in Billy Joel. Then, immediately afterward, I heard Paul McCartney and whatever-he-called-his-backup-band-in-1982-but-who-cares with “Take It Away”, another prime example of the decline and fall of a former pop legend. What warped mind decided that those two songs should be played back-to-back?

TinyURL now allows you to make a “custom alias” for your condensed link. Good for people who want to make clearer what’s being linked to; unfortunately also good for people who want to mislead you. There was an inevitable ‘land rush’ for good aliases, and I did get http://tinyurl.com/wendell to direct back to here. So if you need a reminder that this is still Wendell’s blog, use the TinyURL.

Or you can use http://bit.ly/wendell, brand new service also offering custom aliases AND a shorter base url than tinyurl.com…