The Isle of Marm

Of all the musical tastes that have rubbed off on me, AN’s (intermittent cohabitation 2000-2009) is surely the one that still annoys my neighbors the most.

It’s a weird thing to realize that some people who’ve known me for years still have no firsthand data for what I am like without the sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

This manuscript will totally go out in 2012.

I wish I could say that Curious Giorgio and the Infinite Discoteca was a result of a cold medicine or some such, but the fact of the matter is it was an idea that was soberly conceived in an airplane bathroom (the mile-high clubhouse!) last week and birthed at my desk while waiting for a crane to cease its looming over my laboratory causing safety to lock us out of the whole corridor.  LOOMING!

I should think the fluid dynamics papers (or even the postcards from tattooine/papyrus stuff,) were a lock for “probably my best work this year”, but my work as a powerpoint* ranger makes a weirdly compelling last minute case for itself sometimes. 

(*Technically this is Keynote based.  It could have just as easily been a powerpoint file.  Determination of “the best tool” is mostly based on capability and proximity.  Mostly.  My laptop was right here.)

Some less disorienting variation of CGatID would probably appear in the cutaway view of my “undivided attention”, c.f.:

…just so you know.

(Source: vimeo.com)

It must be a seasonal thing.  Back then, it came up due to a very specific calculation to determine if my general kleptomania was extending to cradle-robbing.  I’ve totally reformed.  Generally.  Mostly.  Sometimes.

(Today it came up because when I figured out what I thought was an irreproducible science thing that has been a turd in my mental punchbowl all week, I made a sound that reminded me of ~3:09.)

You hear “Back in Black” in the morning and it sets a tone for the day.  An awesome tone.   While I believe this power is inherent to the music itself, I am open to the idea that it may be due to things associated with it, which include:

• The memory of a mixtape I made for someone I was ass-over-teakettle in love with back in 2001.  Said tape opened with “Big Balls” which may not have been the clearest way to say “yes, we’re friends, but there is a distinctly non-platonic thing that I would be curious about exploring with you.“  AND YET IT TOTALLY SAYS THAT, RIGHT?  I think it may have ended with “Back in Black”.  Or it was in there elsewhere.   It was, to say the least, an “uneven” tape.
• The phenomena of off-white whiteness, i.e., there is maybe only one song that makes me feel quite white/American as this song and that is Billy Squire’s “Stroke”. This is not Mexican music.  This is not Arabic music.  This is not something that would play in the family mini-van  (i.e., this is not my parents’ music.)  This is music I weirdly gravitated toward once let loose to roam the airwaves of upstate New York.  Ithaca’s choices were primarily College Radio/Prog Rock (or as I thought for an unfortunately long time, “Prague Rock”, as in “what do you mean this isn’t Czech”)  or “Classic Rock”; basically, stations with Metal Mondays.  Boom.  Or Clang.  Whatever.
• Lewis Black. (And Dennis Miller, but maybe that is just a playlist proximity based hold-over.)  Every time I see him, I am just gladdened by the fact that one can be so angry and not die from stress related complications.  His continued existence is like a tiny triumph. 
•  
•  
• etc.

I just got a grumbley stepper motor working (after a long phone conversation with an Eastern European about controllers and baud rates).  That is a bigger triumph, so I listen to this now before being back in data.  Then back to TCB’ing.  Minus the BTO.  Okay.

I am not inclined toward the selection of favorites, however—and despite what some old acquaintances might joke, I am not a unrepentant kleptomaniac—the thing about locks is one of my favorite lines of this song.

Fun Fact: In the mid*80’s, I was of the firm belief that I would make my fortune on “Name that Tune”.  Now, every time I hear those first 8 notes it is with a mixture of joy and panic as it very well could be that Kid Rock song that makes me want to punch someone. 

Joy because it could—Panic because it might not—involve Werewolves and the United Kingdom.

[*probably later, in syndication]

“Fact: KFJC, a college radio station in Los Altos Hills, California, once played [Louie Louie] for 63 hours straight without repeating the same recording twice.”

(a short history)

Wikiousness:

In February, 1964, an outraged parent wrote to Robert Kennedy, then the Attorney General of the United States, alleging that the lyrics of “Louie Louie” were obscene. The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the complaint. In June 1965, the FBI laboratory obtained a copy of the Kingsmen recording and, after two years of investigation, concluded that the recording could not be interpreted, that it was “unintelligible at any speed,” and therefore the Bureau could not find that the recording was obscene. In September 1965, an FBI agent interviewed one member of the Kingsmen, who denied that there was any obscenity in the song.