January 2007 Archives

Dear Music Choice People,

As an occasional listener (when I need background music while I write) and distracted viewer of your cable channel "Light Classical," I must tell you a few things I've noticed. I hope you will indulge my suggestions here on improving your service.

1. Your graphics make me feel like I'm watching TV in a room at the Paducah Holiday Inn, ca. 1983. I have watched a bowl of oatmeal that was more interesting. What's with the weird montages? The clunky graphics? The photos of jaundiced musicians that look like they were safety-scissored out of an airline magazine? Feh.
2. Speaking of musicians, do not ever show the public what the flute/oboe/violin/piano player looks like. I say, better heard than seen. Enough said.
3. Why is it that every time I look up, there's some tidbit on the screen about when the composer died? "Schubert died in 1828" or "Liszt died in 1886" or "Bizet died in 1875." Why not call this channel "Elevator Music by Dead White Guys?" It would be more descriptive, and it might bring you some more corporate subscriptions.
4. This brings me to your little trivia tidbits. I'm not sure who writes these, but I suspect these are either auto-generated from some big dusty reference CD-ROM from 1989 or they are written by a Mr. Bo Ring McBoringson who works in a broom closet in the Music Choice HQ and has a tuna fish sandwich for lunch every day with a carton of milk and exactly 7 Milk Duds for dessert. If you don't have anything better to write than when Stravinsky died, why not tell a joke? I can think of a ton that you could write about Bach ("Bach wrote all his fugues Bach-to-Bach in the spring of 1748", etc.), Lizst ("Q. How do classical composers get fresh breath? A. They gargle with Lizsterine!"), etc. At the very least, bring in a writer or two from NTN. They manage to slide some real zingers in their little trivia game answers, and I suspect they make those writers work in broom closets too.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Music Choice Light Classical Listener

I have resisted, for several days now, the urge to sit down and write an entry about my renewed love affair with prunes. Because I feared that a passion for prunes would mean I'm just around the corner from early-onset senility, and before you know it, I've got 64 oz. jars of cold cream and the complete DVD set of Mama's Family. And soon I'll be waving my graham crackers and scowling at my neighbors who leave their mailbox flap open and my tinfoil hat tells me that's how all the aliens get into our city milk supply.

Unrelated:

• Erdos numbers
  
• Erdos-Bacon numbers
  
• Mega-list of web design/development references
  

Quote of the day, or at least this morning:

We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.

This was lifted from a NYT piece, quoting someone who had lifted it from the Talmud.

Other thoughts:

• Can't someone improve upon the umbrella, for god's sake? I mean, this design has been around forever, it breaks, it sucks, and you'd think by now someone would have come up with a better solution. I don't have any bright ideas, other than using some new space-age material (that's my solution for everything...), hire some Italian designer, and uh, magic happens. I'm pretty sure that's how the process happens at Target. And I love Target. ...Forget designing "a better mousetrap": umbrellas suck the big one.
  
• Ditto internal combustion engine.
  
• Negroponte's laptop UI. Hmm. The jury is out. I must hold one in my grubby hands and mutter ignorant remarks.
  

I predict that this blog will get more attention in the coming months, as I invent and revisit ways to procrastinate from writing my thesis. I also predict that my house will never be cleaner. The effects of thesis research are already being felt: today I lint-rollered my cat. She didn't seem to mind. Also, I have rearranged my medicine cabinet twice after I ran out of laundry to do. And it's only January.

Question: Is blowing one's nose a modern custom, evolving from our fascination with hygiene, or is it a natural human response to having a drippy nose? Did cavemen with allergies run around looking for leaves to wipe their noses with? Or did it just run down their faces? Or did they wipe it off when it dripped with the back of their hands? These are the important questions.

• Rosie and Trump shut up.
• More money. Less fretting about it.
• Lots of giggling.
• More meatballs. Specifically: Five meatballs, arranged in a star formation around the perimeter of my plate, with a small blop of mustard in the middle.
• More civic accountability; fewer asshat city leaders.
• My master's degree (finally).
• My tire patched.
• Being where I want to be, with the person/people I want to be with.