The Airplane Saga, Part 1: One Head is Better Than Two

Somewhere during second grade I got a new kid in my class.  He told us his name was Gary, but that his family called him Chip; not because he looked like a chipmunk, but because he was a "chip off the ol' block."  I still don't believe him about that, but either way I can't remember ever calling him Gary.  To me he's been Chip the whole time.

I've never had to be the new kid in class but I imagine it's pretty traumatic.  I remember the teacher, Mrs. Belding, bringing him up in front of the class like you see in movies and introducing him while he stood there looking terrified and uncomfortable in his red wind-breaker.  On the playground later that day I kicked a soccer ball around with him for a few minutes, learned that he had enough nine volt batteries in his possession to build a life-sized replica of the Kremlin, and that was all she wrote.   

We shared a passion for building things and enjoyed many brain-storming sessions where we tossed around our potentially world-altering ideas for new inventions.  Maybe brain-storm isn't the right term.  It was more like a brain-shower, or a brain-drizzle.  Who am I kidding, it was a brain-barely-perceptible-spritz.

After one such session, in flurry of sketches, schematics, and crumpled up notebook paper complete with edge frizz, one of us hatched a terrible idea.  Unfortunately we both latched onto it like two brain-damaged snapping turtles.  It soon became the sole focus of our collective existence.

We would build an airplane.  Oh yes.  

It made sense.  We both wanted to fly, and since no amount of jumping from the tops of fence poles armed with garbage-bag parachutes had done the trick so far, what better way than to build our very own flying machine, and conquer the skies once and for all?

All the pieces fell into place.  I prided myself on my ability to whittle, so the propeller became my responsibility. It would turn under motor power, and Chip claimed to have just the lawnmower engine for the job.  Both of us had immediate access to hundreds of acres of Vermont forests where we could gather raw materials.  The plan couldn't have been more perfect.  All that remained was to build it.  


Next:  Part II

Another Dead Language In Our Midst?

I was writing an essay tonight and thinking about how tricky it is to get my words to have the right "voice".  It occurs to me that as advanced as our written language may be, it is still sadly lacking in what a musician would refer to as "timbre".  There's no way to tell what the writers voice would actually sound like if you could hear them speaking.  Was he or she a smoker?  Nasal?  Loud, quiet, obnoxious?

In music, timbre is expressed through the use of various instruments.  There are only so many voices, as limited by the instruments.  A note played by a trombone sounds different than the same note played by a flute.  How does a writer convey the sound of their voice?

"Bollocks!" he said, in his raspy, yet oddly soothing and somehow nasal voice.  What does that sound like?  It's up to the reader to plug in those variables and make a voice for the speaker.  I imagine it's just as hard, if not harder for a musician.  

How hard is it for a musician to translate their music into a readable medium?  The great composers of the past; Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, etc, etc, etc.. were all forced to "speak" the same written language.  Musical notation is mankind's best effort when it comes to writing down what music is supposed to sound like.  It's brilliant, and detailed, and complicated, but is it good enough?  Look at this:

It takes a trained musician to be able to even begin to decipher this in order to duplicate what the composer was trying to say.  Yet every orchestra will play it a little bit differently, because there is a level of interpretation required.  

I submit that things have changed.  Whereas once a musician had to annotate everything precisely and had to use every trick available in the language of written music in order to convey what he or she was trying to convey, today all a musician needs to do is have any number of easily accessible forms of mufti-media.

Anyone can listen to a recording of anyone else and know exactly what that artist intended the music to sound like.  Is the language of written music a dying language?  I wonder.

After a massive electromagnetic pulse, will there be enough of our music recorded in hard copy for someone to be able to accurately reproduce it in 500 years?  Or are we depending on digital recordings of everything to survive the ages?

I wonder.  

I Interpret A Picture With No Context

I was asked to interpret this picture without context for a writing class recently. I recommend that you study it for a minute or so before you read on.

So here's what I think is going on:

  

Some years had passed since humanity, in a last-ditch offensive coup against the dreaded Hay Fever People of the Fourth Apocalypse, rose from their only remaining bastion in a whirlwind of antihistamines and Kleenex to win back the Earth.  All was well until it was discovered that some vestiges of the enemy still clung to life.  Symptoms reminiscent of the last struggle began to manifest themselves; itchy, watery eyes, sinus pressure, and hard boogers that hurt started to proliferate with alarming speed.  The growing dread of anarchy threatened to drive up the price of NyQuil to market-busting proportions.   

In the nick of time, science and a good bit of dumb luck revealed the answer:  The human immune system was lethal to the Hay Fever People, and could be weaponized.  Unfortunately the delivery systems for the dispersal weapons were made in China, and when the shipping containers got hung up in customs it became clear that drastic methods would have to be taken.  It wasn't pretty, but it appeared that the only remaining option was to flick freshly-picked nose-goblins directly into the faces of the enemy. 

Modeling herself after Anita Tzissue (a legendary folk hero), Omminoff Lickem Ania (or just "Ania" in more colloquial situations) vowed to follow her destiny and curb the onset of another uprising.  She had a very fine, and dangerous line to walk.  Protecting herself enough to stay alive while allowing just enough bits of sinus-irritating motes of red schmutz emitted by the Hay Fever People into her nose would prove to be trickier than she thought.  Timing would be the all important factor, and re-picking fresh greeblies for each enemy she encountered would be next to impossible, especially considering the scarf she'd need to wear around her face. 

Her solution was pure genius.  Pearls could be coated with nose-goop and would still be effective for seven to ten minutes before losing their potency.  Ania had only to fashion a loading mechanism and she could rapid-fire the pearls directly from her finger.  The enemy, surrounded as they were in perpetual clouds of luminescent bio-debris, would never see it coming. 

Ania enlisted the help of local celebrity Sir Knuckles Bodsworth IV to aid her.  Sir Knuckles was the only miniature swine around with training enough to speed-load the pearls from the canisters in her ring onto her tensely coiled finger and then move before being catapulted into sneezy, sinus congestion hell. 

Ania and Sir Knuckles braved unspeakable odds.  Their journey took them deep into the heart of the secret world of the Hay Fever People until they found themselves face to face with the fabled El Groano, spiritual leader of the enemy.  The moment of truth at hand, Sir Knuckles rolled one of only two remaining deadly pearls onto Ania's fingertip.  He scampered to the side just as El Groano leaned forward, seemingly to administer a fatal dose of mucus-layer irritants.  Time stood still, except for a guy named Frank who was there to fix the garbage disposal in El Groano's kitchen.  Frank had the presence of mind to paint an exceptionally detailed picture of the moment. 

An instant before the fatal shot was fired, El Groano said something unexpected.

"Can I borrow your loufa?"

Ania paused. 

"What?"

"Your loufa.  Can I borrow it?" 

There was some confusion, but at last Ania discovered that all the Hay Fever People wanted was to learn from humans how to exfoliate more effectively.  Ania gave him a few tips, recommended a good mani-pedi guy, and left El Groano with a pumice stone and what few Biore pads she had on her person as a gesture of good will. 

The world was safe again.  Sir Knuckles was re-knighted as Sir Sir Knuckles.  Ania accepted only a box of thin-mints and a free lifetime subscription to Netflix as payment.  El Groano lived out the rest of his days with perfectly radiant skin, and co-founded a software development company.  

The Problem With Spam

Spam exists, and it finds its way into my life.  

I get Spam regardless of the impervious imaginary language barrier I construct between myself and the peddlers of the world, and no matter who I threaten with bodily, psychological, and even spiritual harm. 

No matter how many boxes I check while ordering things online requesting that I not receive promotional email or calls, I get Spam.  Regardless of how many subscriptions I cancel via email or phone, no matter how many telemarketers I ignore, or salespeople around whom I transform into a Norwegian blacksmith circa 1601 who only accepts chickens and wool as currency, I get Spam in my inbox. 

Spam is an unstoppable force of nature the likes of which laughed maniacally in the very face of the meteor that exterminated the dinosaurs.  It trivializes and mocks the impending zombie apocalypse with the confidence and cavalier attitude of a cockroach with binoculars; eating popcorn with its family and watching a nuclear bomb fall. 

It cannot be stopped.  It is akin to a living thing, in that it seems to seek only to perpetuate its existence. 

It will succeed by any means necessary. 

Resistance is futile.

45 Seconds of Me Playing The Guitar

I recorded a little acoustic blip tonight, trying out the free recording app I downloaded on my kindle fire.  The app is called RecForge, it works pretty well.  Then I thought it sounded cool, so I thought I'd put it here in the blog.  

For whatever reason, probably my gross ineptitude, I had some trouble uploading an audio file... so I made a movie and threw in all the pictures I could find of me playing the guitar, then posted it on YouTube just so I could copy the link to my blog.  And that's how this sort of thing happens.

It's short.  Anyway, after all that, here it is:

I've had way more good times playing my guitar than I have pictures of it.