Horn Tooter

Now I'm not one to toot my own horn but I'm tooting my horn anyway and you will damn well like it. Or not. Eighty-nine peole and growing cannot possibly be wrong can they? When a lot of people like something, that makes it true. I'm pretty sure that how it works, aina? The point is, bringing laughter and levity to the world is what I'm all about. What can I say, I just love people. Well, some people at least. At least 89 people.

http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?threaded=1&v=ywE6aA4ul4w

Unfortunately a proper threaded view in YT is a little hard to come by, but hopefully you'll get the gist. Actually I think it is a PEBCAK error, because some people reply to the root and some people reply to the comment even though the content of their comments is usually directed at a specific commenter's comment. I hope that sentence contained enough inadvertent alliteration to annoy you just slightly. The name you are looking for is spamsponge, that's me. Whatever you do, never use your real name on the internet, you'll get fired, the universe could blow up, or worse!

The point is, I rule. +89 Up votes. *pat pat, pat pat* Thanks to this direct injection of sarcasm, the voodoo practice of reflexology has been taken down a peg as confirmed by the Big Book Of Facts (2011 Edition). Huzzah!

This is my 2nd 15 minutes of (worthless) fame, the first being the Elemental Voice audiophile products, which brought levity and laughter to the world, including Israel which I regrettably can't read. This is more interactive, though. I love it when other people add to the riff. What can I say, I'm all about jazz. Oh wait no, no I'm not. But riffing neverthless. It doesn't HAVE to be that round robin everyone-take-a-solo jazz thing to count as riffing you know.

Apologist Fodder For Grammatical Relativism?

You've probably seen this clever gobbledegook floating about:

AOCDRNDICG TO RSCHEEARCH AT CMABRIGDE UINERVTISY, IT DSENO'T MTAETR WAHT OERDR THE LTTERES IN A WROD ARE, THE OLNY IPROAMTNT TIHNG IS TAHT THE FRSIT AND LSAT LTTEER BE IN THE RGHIT PCLAE. TIHS IS BCUSEAE THE HUAMN MNID DEOS NOT RAED ERVEY LTETER BY ISTLEF, BUT THE WROD AS A WLOHE. IF YOU CAN RAED TIHS, PSOT IT TO YUOR WLAL. OLNY 55% OF PLEPOE CAN

Although it does work, you can read it and thus is sort of a fascinating little bit of trivia, I've always felt resentment at this paragraph because it seems to offer philosophical fodder to the lazy apologists for bad spelling that always creep out of the internet's woodwork. I know that probably isn't the intention of the person re-posting the paragraph, nor is it the intention of the research (assuming it is real research, but it doesn't especially matter) but it nevertheless has always stuck in my craw.

Maybe what bothers me is that the paragraph promotes the idea that the end justifies the means. Or maybe that what's on the outside is what counts, not the what's inside, the content. It forsakes true integrity for an illusion which our brains are still able to decode. That is often what happens with careless spelling, even with the most vulgar violations of language (i.e. YouTube comments) the painful truth is that often you CAN read it and understand it. But is that what's important? Does the end truly justify the means?

Luckily to spell in this manner would require even more work than it would take for bad spellers to correct their work. (I am not sure what the pattern is, but I think it must be a script you run with a Regular Expressions find\replace—something I regrettably never fully got the hang of) So there's no real danger of people feeling they can somehow relax and only put the first and last letters in the right place when they write; but I can see how it could be trotted out as a "Ha-Ha-You-Suck-For-Correcting-Me" insult by the ignorant-and-proud bad speller.

Each word in the paragraph is spelled wrong, but it becomes a code which can be translated with near-equal speed. Perhaps since there is a more regular pattern to the errors than there are in casual use spelling mistakes our brains are able to more easily apply a "noise correction" filter to the incoming data.

As of yet I have not heard anyone actually use the paragraph as an apology for their own errors, so this may all be wild projection on my part, but it is something I have worried about. The world is full of errors and so it can be painful to see error celebrated with a casual cheeriness in e-mail forwards.

A Subtle Difference

Ahh yes, it all becomes clear now. Thank you, Microsoft Xbox documentation!

Hiding In Plain Sight

As a fan of heavy metal you may think you've heard all possible permutations of religious\satanic lyrics that could ever be. But then along comes this new album by Atheist "Jupiter" (which ain't bad by the way) which features the tune "Faux King Christ". The chorus is "Jesus Faux King Christ". That's so brilliantly clever but obvious, why the hell hasn't someone thought of it before? Why the hell didn't I think of it? I guess for the same reason I don't have an all-red painting in the modern art museum. It's good, perhaps even Sofa King good. Plus, it's got woodblock on it! Can't hardly get that on a metal record these days. Even a strange Faux Vinyl Surface Noise segment too, which I don't entirely understand.

You may want to play it back to back with Weedeater's "For Evan's Sake".

Best Buy\Monster Cable Anecdote + Rant

I went to Best Buy to purchase a Toslink audio cable for my mom's audio system. She has this moderately problematic Sony system which is an integrated Blu-Ray player and 5-channel amplifier. To be perfectly honest I am confused by all the gozintas and gozouttas and haven't put together a proper mental model of how to connect it all in my head, as I can do with my own equipment at home. The thing does this sporadic muting thing, I don't know what its problem is. Anyway, I wanted to try connecting the cable box via Toslink rather than using the HDMI to see if that works.

So I go into the local Best Buy and head towards the audio section. I see the cables and know I am only one aisle away from what I want. A young Best Buy clerk says, "Can I help you sir" and instead of saying "No thank you!" like I should have I said, "Yeah, I'm looking for an optical audio cable." So we walk over to the other side of the shelf and whaddaya know, audio cables.

"So what do you want? Six foot? Four foot? Good? Bad?" he asks.

I am now perfectly happy to look through the selection by myself and have no further use for this guy.

"Thanks!" I say.

"The Monster cable is good."

"No, I'm not buying anything from Monster."

"Why not? They make the best cables around." he says matter of factly.

"They're bullies. They go around suing other companies."

"Well, AT&T is successful too, what's wrong with that?"

"AT&T doesn't sue unrelated companies that have names which might sound something like "at & t"

"No, they just buy them out!"

I say nothing and continue looking.

"Well let me know if you have any questions".
----------------
It's so annoying. Yes, I'm sure Monster makes prefectly fine products, but so do plenty of companies. Ones that DON'T use the legal system as their own personal cudgel. They're good at marketing, which is what the majority of the audio industry is built on. Nothing immoral about that, but Monster just has an especially icky affinity for targeting uninformed, non-technically minded folks at big box stores and selling them on this superfluous bling and packaging. Sending out your vulture lawyers to harass folks for imaginary branding infringements is fucking bullshit any way you slice it. I don't give a fuck about the laws, it's basic common sense. That kind of behavior is just plain nasty.

Fundamentally it's not Monster's fault, it's the existence of a band of criminals and miscreants otherwise known as the government. Sure Boromir didn't make the ring of power, he may not be as evil as Sauron himself, but he's still a dick for wanting to use that power. (and unlike Boromir, Monster did actually use the hell out of the ring) Just because a library full of shitty laws can cast magic spells to make suing unthreatening companies with the name "monster" in them "okay" doesn't make it okay.

So anyway, I grabbed the cheapest cable they had and bought the damn thing. It's light fer Pete's sake. A blinking light shone through fiber optic cable. Whoop de doo. It either transmits a signal or it doesn't. And if there IS evidence that one brand is objectively better than another I can guarantee you my mom won't notice. (no offense ma, I probably couldn't either)

So anyway, here's hoping the "cheap" Toslink does the trick. And to all litigious assholes everywhere: get a real job!

Spoung

SPOUNG
verb
To make sounds which are a combination of singing and speaking.
e.g. "The vocals on this song should be spoung."
e.g. "David Tibet's spounging can be heard on numerous albums."

SPOUNGKEN
adjective
The sound made by the human voice between singing and speaking.
e.g. "The spoungken section of the song starts at two minutes."