Errors-To: owner-ecto@athos.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu From: ecto@athos.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@athos.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@athos.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #162 ecto, Number 162 Wednesday, 12 February 1992 Today's Topics: *-----------------* ectopost Mehr Allerlei--or is it Allerlei Mehr? snicker Blue? Happy Dreaming ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 11 Feb 92 16:14:00 GMT From: S.A..Ezust@p38.f1.n721.z5.fidonet.org (S.A. Ezust) Subject: ectopost Date: Tue Feb 11 16:14:20 1992 GMT+2 #include "c:\fd\happy\ectopost.txt" Well, I am back online in Zimbabwe. My trip from Boston back here was relatively uneventful except that I was deprived of sleep for more than I care to think about. I arrived in Zim around 9am on Saturday night and for the rest of the weekend I didn't spend more than 3 hours at a time awake, and most likely I spent about 32 our of 40 hours sleeping. I woke up on Monday morning around 12 midnight, and I've been awake ever since (it's now 11pm on monday night, so I've been up for 23 hours. Jeez. I hope I can get my body back into shift, but unfortunately, I had two back-to-back overnight flights, and I had to spend 13 hours in Heathrow Terminal 4, the Land Of No Comfortable Seats To Sleep In Unless You Are A Member Of the Elitist British Airways Executive Mileage Club Which Only UK Residents Can Join. I am starting to wonder if I'd have liked Frankfurt Airport better, but at least I know that British Air will get me to my destionation with me and all my luggage intact (and I'm earning United Air miles). So I've got lots of new stuff to listen to now that I am back in Zimbabwe, and that's a damn good thing because I was dying for something new. Thanks to Justin Bur for introducing me to : Loreena McKennitt, Momus, and Mathilde Santing. An interesting thing about Mathilde: Some of the tracks are really obscure cover songs. One which comes to mind is the one that's called "Think About Your Troubles" which starts "You can take a teardrop, and drop it in a teacup..." which if I am not mistaken is a song which came from the musical cartoon "The Point".. I never saw the cartoon, but every song from the record is etched in my brain. Talk about deja-vu!! And the other song she sings, which may or may not be a cover (I don't have the disc, so you tell me) is called "Too Much" and that one can be found on Beautiful Pea Green Boat's LP, Still Life. I think I like the Santing version better though. And also special thanks to Greg Brossert for taping Rainbirds "Two Faces". Since I never heard their older stuff, none of my expectations were shattered. That album is incredible! I want it on CD... Klaus or Klaudia: Are either of you able to purchase this on CD and mail it to me? Will you take a check for $US or $CAN? Anyway, my favorite songs are Two Faces, Ha Ha! Houdini's Laughing, Big Fat Cat, Woman With the Golden Eye, Mystery Train, and maybe even Real and Invisible, and what the heck, lets put Head Over Heels on my list too...(I guess I can't really decide between them all). I was listening to it for the first time on the airplane to London, and the time passed so quickly that when the tape finally ended, I said to myself, "IS THAT ALL? Must be an EP or something!!" and then I looked at the tape and realized that it was almost 45 minutes worth of music. Wow. And every time I listen to it and the tape's over I think "Jeez that was fast" and rewind it back to the beginning again. I love the way they blend classical instruments with cool computer sounds. I guess I was always a sucker for that kind of thing. Strange, but the World Is Growing Old really reminded me of Edie Brickell - not just the fact that she uses the words "I am what I am" but her voice tone just conjured an image of her... Is it just me? Jessica: Put me down for an XL t-shirt next time you make up another batch of them. I already gave away the two L t-shirts I bought from you (since I don't like wearing any t-shirts that don't hang on me like a tent, I figured I had other friends who were smaller than me who would definitely appreciate it). I still have lots of ecto reading to catch up on, and I am not sure if mail is getting forwarded to me here from my suffolk account yet, so excuse me if I am being terribly out of date with my msgs, but it was really fun getting together and finally meeting Greg, Jessica, Angelos and Claudia. Tell me when the pictures are digitized; I'd love to see them. I'd like to order the HGP, The Ecto SiG, the XPN interview, and anything else of interest in a similar vein which has been floating around. Is there ONE person I can just send a check to and have them all taken care of in one fell swoop? As far as I can see, I gotta see Doug about one of them, Vickie for the other and Jessica for another? What's a poor girl to do? don't throw a coin, throw a stone, sometimes one's left all alone, on this foolish charade... - Rainbirds oh yeah - it's hot, dry and 31 degrees (celsius) here. Just thought you'd all like to know that. (gloat, gloat!). #include --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ezust@p38.f1.n721.z5.fidonet.org University of Zimbabwe, Harare Engineering CAL Project --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This e-mail address will no longer be valid after March 31st 1992. After that please use: sae@cmpsci.suffolk.edu -- INTERNET: S.A..Ezust@p38.f1.n721.z5.fidonet.org ======================================================================== Date: 12 February 1992 14:37:21 CST From: Subject: Mehr Allerlei--or is it Allerlei Mehr? In the last two days, I have managed to help address and mail several hundred Chicago Sociological Practice Association newsletters, watch the niece of a professor in my old department finish somewhat below the medal positions in the luge, pay a couple of overdue bills, and check out what's what with the vaunted Warmroom. The time seemed right to return to what I seem to most love doing these days: reading what's new in ecto, and throwing my own bloviations on the pile. Granted, there are a myriad of more important things I should really be doing instead of this; but, to borrow a catchphrase from _Easyriders_ magazine, whatdafuck? The squibs in the press about Sergei Krikalev, the rocket man, have gott- en me thinking about what other musical tributes besides Kate's cover would be apropriate. I first thought of Harry Nilsson's song, the full title of which escapes me, which starts out, "I wanted to be a spaceman/That's what I wanted t o be/But now that I am a spaceman/Nobody cares about me." But it then occurred to me that if one of us posted a mention of his saga when it first hit the pape rs, obviously we do care about him, exhausting the categorical statement. Ac- tually, his plight seems to me to resemble nothing so much as the plight of Charlie, the hero of the Kingston Trio's "MTA," who was doomed to a life stuck on the Boston subway for want of the recently increased fare. My recording of this is not readily accessible for the time being, or I'd have posted the lyrics. Therefore, I shall instead pay tribute to the intrepid airman, as the legendary Chicago disk jockey Howard Miller might have dubbed him, with the only other song I know having anything even remotely to do with space hardware: SATELLITE MOON Michael Flanders & Donald Swann It's a satellite moon It's a plagiarized tune That duck on the lake's a decoy And there's a sodium glare In the purified air And the girl In my arms Is Mabel Figworthy and if she says "Oh, really" just once more I shall break he r neck! (I just remembered David Bowie's "Space Oddity," but I'm not sure the lyri cs' goodness of fit with the case in question is any better than "Rocket Man, or even "MTA.") A sort of earthbound converse of Krikalev's problem (not to mention Char- lie's), which inspired it's own lyrical association: the other afternoon I waited interminably for a bus, only to be greeted at long last by a close succession of buses on my route, too crowded to board; until finally one came that I could get on. As I waited, I noticed that the hologram on this week's transit pass bears a mandala-like design; needless to say, I thought of Peter, Paul and Mary's (I think) "The Great Mandala," and how it could be just as rele vant to faltering transit systems as to the Vietnam War: Take your place on The great mandala As it moves through your brief moment in time Win or lose now You must choose now And if you lose you've only wasted your life (The choice, of course, is between being squeezed mercilessly on one bus, and waiting out another that may or may not actually come) Only one more, this time fragmentary, lyrical allusion (thank god! :-) ): this being the birthday of the winner of the Presidential sweepstakes 132 years ago, I am somehow reminded of Martin Mull's "Show Me Yours, I'll Show You Mine, " in which a boy utters sweet nothings (ostensibly innocuous) to a girl "with a face as straight as Abe Lincoln/But the more he lies/The more she sighs/Cause she knows what he's thinkin'." :-) (This is also the centenary year of Shredded Wheat, for what it's worth. Remember, you heard it here last.) The lyric that Vickie was reminded of by my closing epigraph the last time sounds like it might have come from a blues genre called the "dirty blues." Given the relationship of the concepts "dirt" and "fuzz," how much of a stretch might it be to assert that she has unearthed a relic from the fuzzy blues? Happy's addressing us, in her thank-you note, as "FU_BLU_MA_LI" sent me to a geographical dictionary (in the absence of a readily available atlas in the place from which I am typing), to see if there really was a Fublu, Mali in west Africa. I found none, meaning there is not such a place already extant in which the International Ecto Hall of Fame could be established years from now. If we wanted to establish one closer to home, the theoretical ideal would be to establish Fublu, MA and Fublu, LI, sort of along the lines of Texarkana, Arkansas and Texas respectively, as well as similar paired communi- ties surrounding several other state lines. Alas, the separation of Long Islan d from Massachusetts appears to preclude this. Planned communities are not always the easiest things to bring off. (In the worst case, fans of classic R&B could end up asking, tongue in cheek, if Fublu Molly were a relative of Mustang Sally. :-) ) In the great words of Dick Buckley, "happiness." (Or should it, in the current context, really be "happyness?" :-) ) Mitch Pravatiner for the Godot Transit Authority users group ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 17:43:13 -0500 From: gb10@gte.com (Gregory Bossert) Subject: Re: Mehr Allerlei--or is it Allerlei Mehr? Mitch, er, bloviates: > The time seemed right to return to what I seem to most love doing > these days: reading what's new in ecto, and throwing my own > bloviations on the pile. Granted, there are a myriad of more > important things I should really be doing instead of this; but, to > borrow a catchphrase from _Easyriders_ magazine, whatdafuck? in the midst of an otherwise *delightful* post Mitch utters a bafflingly crude phrase, to whit: > Granted, there are a myriad of more important things I should really > be doing instead of this goodness only knows what he was thinking about... whatdafootah! -greg -- gb10@gte.com -- "if love is a game, i win" -- HR ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ and even if it isn't i'm pretty darn pleased about it :) ======================================================================== From: kyrlidis@athena.mit.edu Subject: Re: Mehr Allerlei--or is it Allerlei Mehr? Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 18:00:04 EST Mitch deciphers the enigmatic 'fublumali' that Happy used to refer to ecto using brute force. My attempt reveals a whole new meaning to 'fublumali'. It is indeed true that one could interpret fublumali as simply the initials of FUzzy BLUe MAiling LIst, but why use the initials? There is a deep hidden message somewhere there, along the lines of the messages KaTe Herself has included in her songs. Let us examine all possibilities: Backwards masking: i-lam-ul-buf Naaah, too obvious. Anagrammatic reconstruction: if-u-mall-b-u (Translation: If You (come to see me signing records in a) Mall (I will ) Be (embarassed to be seen doing this by) You.) albumi-ful (Translation: Ecto is full of albumin, and I quote from webster: W>al.bu.min \al-'byu:-m*n\ n : any of numerous simple heat-coagulable W> water-soluble proteins that occur in blood plasma or serum, muscle, the W> whites of eggs,milk, and other animal substances and in many plant tissues W> and fluids for those of you not too familiar with water-soluble proteins. The meaning of this is flattering to ectopians, because it can be taken metaphorically to mean that ecto is as essential to Happy as water-soluble proteins that occur everywhere. Greg wonders: Mitch> Granted, there are a myriad of more important things I should really Mitch> be doing instead of this Greg>goodness only knows what he was thinking about... The above bloviations of course! :) Angelos ======================================================================== From: Kiri is ectO Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1992 19:54:32 EST FU= short for Fundus - the portion of the stomach that lies above the esophagal opening BLU = short for blue-green algae aka cyanobacteria - the bacteria that were thought to be responsible for the onslaught of oxygen on primitive Earth MA = once thought to stand for the "morning-after" pill but in actuality stands for motor activity - that activity responsible for moving us about causing muscular confusion LI = stands for the Limbic system...that system that plays a key role in emotion and behavior what does this all stand for - who the heck knows! :) kiri bugging on a camel and boogieing to her current favorite song _Winter_ by Tori Amos in preparation for this weekend....and wondering what/who this anonymous person/love that Mr. Gregory keeps referring to...:) On Feb 12, 5:43pm, Gregory Bossert wrote: } whatdafootah! } -greg -- gb10@gte.com -- "if love is a game, i win" -- HR } ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ } and even if it isn't i'm pretty darn pleased } about it :) }-- End of excerpt from Gregory Bossert ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 20:06:16 EST From: woj@remus.rutgers.edu Subject: snicker a bit o'fluff/trivia...there is a bitnet node at rhodes college in memphis called rhodes.bitnet - be amusing if happy were to get an account there: or maybe that'll confuse a net.person or three... :) woj ======================================================================== From: kyrlidis@athena.mit.edu Subject: Blue? Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 20:11:45 EST Kiri is ectO writes: >BLU = short for blue-green algae aka cyanobacteria - the bacteria >that were thought to be responsible for the onslaught of oxygen >on primitive Earth Are these the fuzzy blue algae-like parasites that are in my ears? :-) :) :) Angelos +================================================+ |'My ears have cyanobacteria'-hApPy RhOdEs (NOT!)| +================================================+ ======================================================================== Date: 12-FEB-1992 22:01:45.14 From: MTARR@eagle.wesleyan.edu Subject: Happy Dreaming Hi! Well, it's finally happened. I've had my first Happy Dream. A bunch of people I can only describe as Amorphous Ectophiles and I were in a school sort of place, sitting in a classroom. Happy and Kevin walked in and Happy started talking about movies and music and ecto and I was thinking Hey this is really cool, just hanging out like this, and then she picked up her guitar and started singing "Poetic Justice", which has been going through my head for the past three days solid. Then my alarm went off, which did not please me at all... Not as legendary as my Kate Dreams, but on the way. :) <> (subliminal word from our sponsor) Okay, so do we have a list anywhere of who's going to Albany and/or Philly? And if anyone out there is planning on going to Boskone in Springfield, MA, this weekend, let me know ASAP- woj and I will be there, it would be great to get together with anybody we could! It would be too bad to go and then find out afterwards somebody we virtually know was there... *---------------------------------------------* | Meredith Tarr | | *** | | "Living in the gap between past and future" | | *** | | mtarr@eagle.wesleyan.edu | *---------------------------------------------* ======================================================================== The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is a README file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me (or leave in the incoming directory, just let me know) things you'd like to have added. -- jessica (jessica@athos.rutgers.edu)