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 #174 ecto, Number 174 Thursday, 27 February 1992 Today's Topics: *-----------------* Re: FU_BLU_MA_LI Bulging Bulgares ectodreaming Stuff ectodreaming Cavalcade of Squibs (with apologia to the McLaughlin Group) ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 13:20:06 PST From: "John M. Relph" Subject: Re: FU_BLU_MA_LI >Anagram programme produces the following for FU BLU MA LI [list omitted] >I like the"AM FBI LULU" Ok, here are some more. I like the third one. FU_IM_A_BULL MALIBU_FUL MAIL_BUFU_L A_BULL_MUF_I U_FLAMIBUL I_AM_U_FLUB BULIMAFUL I_AM_BUFULL BUFU_AM_ILL -- John ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 16:22:46 EST From: tempest!john@sunne.east.sun.com (John M. Wheeler) Subject: Bulging Bulgares I recommend seeing Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares at McCarter. I saw them there about 2 years ago; I had great (side balcony) seats. I wrote to a friend of mine after she called them the "Bulging Women": * There were some very incredible things going on at that concert. Those instrumental pieces were amazing in that they could keep together. It was very very hard just to find the beat! Of course, the vocal stuff was amazing. All those different vocal qualities. I thought that the woman in the middle who looked like the stereotypical Jewish grandmother had the most distinctive voice. How they could hit those low notes! (You're right, they were bulging women. Oh so European features. So matronly.) It is also amazing how they could just hit a note, steadily, on tune, powerfully, and just keep it going for a long time while another singer improvised atop of that. Also interesting was the similarity of music between the voices and the instruments, most particularly the similarity between the first bagpipe solo and the women's vocal tricks. And on and on....a most excellent concert. * And my friend wrote: * The harmonies were incredible. As the program notes pointed out, they were mostly in 2nds and 7ths. It was really neat to hear Oh Susanna with their harmonization... some awesome intervals in there. The instrumentalists were hilarious. The bagpipe is one of the few instruments that can augment a leering grin. * So, all in all, a concert worth going to! -john tempest!john@sunne.east.sun.com p.s. Vickie, I'll be sending tapes for the HGP soon! ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 23:38:47 EST From: woj@remus.rutgers.edu Subject: ectodreaming well, i'd already had a happy dream before (i dreamt about a concert a few weeks ago and recall nothing of it except that a) i dreamed it and b) it was neat), but the dream i had this morning was a new one for me: i dreamt i met stevev@greylady! (whose last name i can never remember how to spell or pronouce). again, i recall very little of it except that steve had come to my apartment for some reason or another. i vaguely recall opening the door and seeing him, but that is about it. weird...this isn't the first time i've dreamt of net.people before meeting them. and it probably won't be the last either... woj ======================================================================== Date: 27-FEB-1992 00:40:01.06 From: MTARR@eagle.wesleyan.edu Subject: Stuff Hi! Well, I decided to showcase the new Sugarcubes album on my show yesterday morning. I was very pleasantly surprised: Einar really does seem to have Gone Away to _Life's Too Good_ proportions, and Bjork has been allowed to let her voice go as a result. Those of you who got into this band because of the Icelandic (or whatever it is) flavor of "Birthday" are immediately going to think they've sold out. I thought that when I first heard "Hit", the first single from _Stick Around For Joy_: Bjork may well have hung out with 808 State a wee bit too long. But it's still a wonderfully poppy, stick-in-your-head-for-days dance song, and it just might live up to its name. The rest of the album is like "Hit" in flavor. However, they're still the Sugarcubes: my favorite song title from this one is "Hetero Scum". :) It's still Bjork, and Einar is still Einar, albeit a bit suppressed. This album has proven to me that their first effort was a one-time thing, but I still like it a lot, and they're still one of my favorite bands. Unfortunately, for the first time in the history of Champagne Jam I didn't end with a Katesong. The DJ who comes on after me consistently shows up five minutes after his show is supposed to have started, so at 11 I assumed he wasn't there, since I hadn't had to let him in. Well, it turns out a janitor let him in and he didn't let me know, so after I'd put on "Waking Up" he marched in and took over. I couldn't demand my last song since I was already ten minutes into his show, so I left. This normally wouldn't have bothered me, except for the fact that I had planned to play "Reaching Out" and dedicate it to the memory of Hannah Bush. I know nobody in the listening area would've cared, but it would've made me feel a lot better. Oh, well. Valerie Nozick is doing Amelia Earhart this Sunday, so if she decides to do rock stuff, I'll pop by and make a guest appearance (you still with us, Val?)... Today I was presented with an album by P.D.Q. Bach and ordered to listen to it. It's called _Black Forest Bluegrass_, and is apparently a scream. The first thing I noticed when looking at the liner notes was this: Cantata: BLAUES GRAS ... Happy Traum, guitar and harmonica ^^^^^^^^^^^ ... Connections? The world may never know. :> *---------------------------------------------* | Meredith Tarr | | *** | | "Living in the gap between past and future" | | *** | | mtarr@eagle.wesleyan.edu | *---------------------------------------------* ======================================================================== Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 23:22:29 PST From: stevev@greylady.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) Subject: ectodreaming Whoa. While there's still a chance of you possibly remembering anything about this, can you describe anything you can remember about what I looked like? Even given that I have described myself somewhat here on ecto, I am deathly curious to know what I looked like in the dream. I will reciprocate by comparing the dream image to the mundane reality. But then you'll only know what _I_ think I look like . . . I am fascinated by the possibility of knowing what someone imagines I must look like without having had any visual contact to go on. I must confess I haven't even tried to imagine what most of you look like, although Jessica talking about her blue hair has prompted some interesting images. If you have your Ecto SIG or HGP tapes, woj, you can hear both Vickie and me pronounce my name correctly (I guess the phone coaching worked, Vickie). The main idea with my last name is that the first 'e' is long ('eeee'), not a schwa ('uh') which is how most people guess first. Now everyone say it along with me: Van DEE ven der. Very good. But you can call me stevev (almost like "stevie", which I dislike) if you say "steve-vee" with just that little pause between syllables and the distinct second 'v' sound. It's unfortunate that the exotic site name "greylady" will probably disappear in a few months. I will continue to have an account on a machine currently named "grayback", but it will change to "misers" sometime. I wish instead that it could change to one of the currently unused but reserved names "wahoo" or even "titanic", but I guess our accountant is influencing this new choice a lot. Even after a long and involved e-mail exchange with Vickie and spending 3.5 hours (not a typo) on the phone with Vickie and Chris, I have forgotten to mention my net.people dream where I met Vickie and Chris. I can remember very little about it now except that it happened and that Vickie had long light red-brown (?) hair and was kind of pale. I can't remember exactly when I had the dream but I think it was in the long-ago B.E. (Before Ecto) days. ======================================================================== Date: 20 February 1992 13:58:08 CST From: Subject: Cavalcade of Squibs (with apologia to the McLaughlin Group) ISSUE #1: I've moved too. Like Jeff, I'm up against the imminent death of the account I've been using for ecto purposes. Effective immediately, my ecto address is now U38373@uicvm.uic.edu (or if you're at a Bitnet site, just plain @uivcm). ISSUE #2: The winter olympics on TV A couple of days ago, either Kiri, Vickie or both opined that CBS's coverage of the games sucked. This reminded me of something I read in _TV Guide_ a week or two ago. The article said that the last time CBS did the Olympics was in 1960, when it became the first network to do the winter games. The rights cost them $50,000 (don't know how close that is, in current dollars, to whatever they paid for the current games), they did 15 hours of coverage for the whole thing, and Walter Cronkite anchored it (and that was the way it was, 32 years ago?). The clincher was that it was all on film, even though the winter games were in California that year. Surely, even in 1960 it was possible for an American network to do remotes from Calfornia. Cynics may argue that this should have foreshadowed what CBS is doing now :-). ISSUE #3: Running in Chicago when it isn't election day While in the post office this morning, I had the opportunity to look up the zip for the Chicago Area Runners Assn. For the benefit and use of the now one and only Steve V., and any others on ecto who may wish to run in local races, their full address is 459 N. Milwaukee, Chicago 60610. ISSUE #4: Tennis and me Meredith wondered if I'm a tennis fan. The answer is yes, albeit a fairly casual one. (Translation: I watch the Grand Slam tournaments on TV, look at an issue of _World Tennis_ every once in a while, and try to catch convenient sessions of the Virginia Slims when they're in town.) I don't think I could play nearly as well as she does, however :-). I think it all dates back to the time I flew over the U.S. Open. Having been in New York for the 1980 meeting of the American Sociological Association, I was in the process of checking out of my hotel when I noticed a humongous number of people in tennis wear crowding the lobby. I asked a bystander what was what, and was told what was what. Later that day, on the plane, my seatmate (who was also dressed for tennis) spontaneously (I think; it may have been in response to some query of mine) pointed out the tennis center out the window; by adopting a somewhat strained position, I was able to see it, as well as Shea Stadium across the road. To this day, it's the only Grand Slam tournament I've ever flown over. Six years later, the next time the ASA was in New York, my hotel was also occupied by a lot of Open people, apparently including the rather amourous couple in the room down the hall from mine--perhaps they should have established a division called the U.S. Open-and-Notorious :-). Since then, I have always maintained that the Open people were more fun than the Jerry Lewis Telethon people also apparently bivouacked in the same hotel at that time. I also have memories of eating lunch in a pseudo-English pub up Seventh Avenue from my hotel while the Open was on TV, and a late night wrapup in the bar of the convention hotel in which a member of my drinking group recounted how she had snuck into the country from Canada, after the INS had denied her a visa due to her having visited Cuba in the early 1960's, and--more to the point--how she had seen that day's action at the Open on the scene. Needless to say, if the ASA ever wants to designate an official sports event, the U.S. Open will get my vote. Last year, when it looked like the singles titles would go to Connors and Navratilova (the latter of whom, coincidentally, Nancy Lieberman is discussing on NPR as I write this), I naturally cheered them on, delighted at the prospect of people my age getting all the marbles for once; and was naturally disappointed when it didn't happen. (NOTE: Material above this line was written Thursday, February 20th.) (NOTE: Material between this line and the next one of its kind was written Tuesday, February 25.) ISSUE #5: Which reminds me, as always, of something completely unrelated It is written that at the beginning of World War II, the BBC was ordered to curtail its experimental TV transmissions immediately--so immediately, in fact, that the plug was pulled right in the middle of the Mickey Mouse cartoon that was being broadcast at the time. When the war ended, and the telecasts resumed, the very first program was the same cartoon that had been cut off years earlier--though I'm not sure whether it was restarted at the beginning, or simply picked up at the point of interruption (which would have had much more symbolic value, needless to say). It seems to me that this posting is coming to have much in common with the above scenario. One of these fine days, I shall have to consult the Guinness Book to see what the longest total completion time, from start to finish, for a mailing-list posting is. No matter what, I could well be within striking distance of beating it with this one. :-) ISSUE #6: I, too, have finished something during the interregnum Like all the rest of us, I am happy for Martin and Kiri on the occasion of the completion of their respective bits of academic business. My own excuse for taking a powder from contributing to these pages for nearly a week (which did, nonetheless, give you all a breather from having to slog through all my verbiage, at least until I finally returned with a vengeance :-) ) is that I was preoccupied with transferring several years worth of archived files from my expiring account, to one where they'll continue to be safe. Having devoted Friday, much of the weekend (with a break to go to a book-signing appearance by Sara Paretsky at a local bookstore on Sunday), and Monday to this task, I finally completed it yesterday (2/24/92)--months after the necessity first stared me down. Appropriately, the last file I rescued was from my personal Ecto archives. In view of the amount of time that all this had gone undone, I went home yesterday with a gnawing sense of disbelief that I had finally, actually, accomplished it. ISSUE #6.5: Back to drowning in the stream of consciousness :-) By the usual ironic coincidence, NPR is broadcasting an interview with Paretsky at this moment, only days after she autographed the copies I bought of her most recent books. At this moment, she is expounding on how V.I. Warshawski is facing the big 4-O, and how she herself is coping with the inexorable course of human development--something I can well identify with. This should perhaps serve as a cautionary tale for younger readers of these pages--someday, all this will be your headache. The conversation has now turned to why she would saddle her lead character with a name like _Victoria Iphigenia_ Warshawski--which, characteristically, immediately reminded me of the fact that Peter Schickele's first P.D.Q. Bach record had a piece entitled, "Iphigenia in Brooklyn." :-) By another of the usual ironic coincidences, I have scarcely resumed this verbal diarrhea when I must again interrupt it, to go resolve an array of overdue books at the library. I hope to pick it up within our lifetimes, or at least the next day or so. (NOTE: Material between this delimiter and the next--if there is one--was written on Thursday, February 27.) ISSUE #6.7: Now I, too, am sick Having taken yesterday off to attend the very successful February meeting of the Chicago Sociological Practice Association, I now attempt to pick up the pieces for (hopefully just) one more round. I'm fighting against resistance--to wit, the cold or other virus that is now making my head un- comfortably scratchy; and is diverting too little of my physical and mental energy to keep me flat on my back at this moment, but enough of it to make me very inefficient when it comes to thinking and writing (so what else is new? :-) ). The large lunch I ate to try to maintain my strength is proving only partially successful. Tonight may prove to be a reprise of last night, when I found myself incapable of numerous things I'd pondered doing, and ended up falling asleep on _When Harry Met Sally_ without even once dreaming of anyone even remotely connected with Ecto. Sunday, Dick Buckley opened his afternoon traditional jazz program with the observation that he, too, was down with a cold, now that everyone around him had recovered from the bugs he had theretofore been able to avoid catching. He observed, however, that "the one thing I've learned--you never really sound as bad to the listeners as you sound to yourself." This should prove reassuring to all of us who were self-conscious about how our intros for the HGP tape came across. Much later, he described the formula for the best cough remedy he had ever encountered--a couple of spoonsful of honey and a couple of shots of bourbon in a glass of water (I think). A couple glasses of the stuff, he continued, and you don't care that you're coughing. I sincerely hope that the physicians who have been malpracticing on Court (cf. her posting of several days to a week ago) were from student health, rather than National Health. The latter scenario would give too much aid and comfort to those who oppose national health insurance for the U.S. on the grounds that it would send the quality of care into the potty. On the other hand, consider my HMO: my regular doctor is superlative, but it takes upwards of two weeks to get an appointment with him. One can take pot luck with another doctor, but--particularly when you come in as a walk-in--it's a crap shoot whether the one you get will be any good. Therefore, when- ever possible I resort to the expedient of letting Mother Nature cure me or kill me, as the case may be. In the meantime, I shall continue to fight the good fight against my current enervated state, conscious of Pierre de Couber- tin's dictum that the important thing is not to have won, but to have fought well. ISSUE #7: Speaking of sports, again :-(' A week ago Tuesday, during the Olympics, they did a feature on short track speed skating, the roller derby of the winter olympics, in which they described it as "a sport only Steven King [who, BTW, was pictured with Paul Tsongas at the Maine caucus in Sunday's paper] could love." My first thought was that this would automatically be a sport, or at least a characteriza- tion, that EctoMotherTrucker (and SK buff) Vickie would enjoy. When I recounted this to her a couple of days later, she was indeed amused. The thought has since occurred to me--as, it seems, do many thoughts--that the women's gold medalist in short track was a singer before entering speed- skating. Should alternative possibilities for opening acts for Happy ever be exhausted, would she be worth considering? :-) :-) :-(' Some may find it noteworthy that a Japanese-American won the gold in women's figure skating, one day after the 50th anniversary of the order relocating Japanese-Americans from the west coast during the war. Seems it's easy to overestimate the extent of social progress in this country on the basis of single observations. ISSUE #8: Rocket man redux Last Thursday (2/20) was the 30th anniversary of John Glenn's space flight. NPR carried a commentary for the occasion by Andrei Codrescu, focusing on the cosmonauts currently sandbagged in space while their nation worries about other things. He said, "They will now join that vast store of symbols without reality, which is the ex-USSR's greatest commodity." He went on to quote Glenn: "When they get around to doing a geriatric study I'd like to go up again," on which he comments, "Makes you wonder where all that future went." ISSUE #9: Songs of the sandbagged redux Kudos to Doug for sharing the lyrics to "MTA" with all of us. If I ever manage to unearth my Kingston Trio tape, I'll have to post the open- ing monolog from their definitive version (the one that starts "These are the times/that try men's souls..."). The only error in the transcription not already pointed out is in the spelling of the station where Charlie is finally sprung. As I have alluded to a couple of times before, it is Scollay Square, now known as Government Center. Earlier in the same posting, Doug quips ("who'd have thought that Ecto would improve your vocabulary?," or words to that effect. My impulsive, emotional reaction to that, of course, was "what do you think I've been try- ing to do all this time?" :-) (BTW: The online Oxford English Dictionary here makes no mention of "cruziverbalists." Only after reading the entire passage a second time did I pick up on the meaning.) BTW: Do the older cars still have those little placards, promising a $10 reward to anyone turning in another who has ripped off the MTA? (This, of course, presupposes that the now MBTA still has the older Green Line rolling stock, a situation that may have changed since I was last there in 1979.) ISSUE #10: Is it coincidence, or is it Memorex? Early last week, Meredith wrote that her housemate's box ate her tape of "Ecto" and "Rearmament." Only now, rereading the posts from that date, did it become apparent to me that the tape so eaten was a dub rather than the originals--at least, that's what I infer from the implication that two albums were on one tape. The first time I read it, nearly a fortnight ago, I had assumed that the originals had been so consumed, which reminded me (again?! :-(' ) of an admittedly tangential recollection from the early 60's. The ad campaign at the time for a major brand of hair tonic dichoto- mized the world between the advertiser's product, and "that greasy kid stuff." An entrepeneur with a sense of humor, naturally, came out with a cream hair tonic called--you guessed it--"Greasy Kid Stuff." The label on the back of the bottle gave "instructions" for the use of the product, one of which was to apply it copiously, because that would greatly enhance their reorder business. Nearly three decades later, it occurred to me that in the worst case, the hardware failures of its customers could greatly enhance Aural Gratification's reorder business. It is fortunate that A.G. has prospered even without the occurrence of such misfortunes. :-) More recently (and unrelatedly), I noted with interest that Meredith had sampled the music of P.D.Q. Bach, just days after I had alluded to P.D.Q.'s music in my last posting to these pages (the "coincidence" alluded to in the subhead). ISSUE #11: A case study in the diffusion of innovation The same night that the Olympics coverage was introducing us to short track speed skating, the weekly episode of _Home Improvement_ had a bit of business involving battery-heated clothing for winter camping. Except that it shorted and smoked in actual use, it seems uncannily reminiscent of the Walking Toast clothing line proposed in these pages some time ago. Well, I now seem to be caught up for the last 1.5 weeks, except for one thing. And so, last but least... ISSUE #12: Has the blooper phenomenon hit Ecto? I'm surprised no one else noticed this, or at least (and perhaps more likely) _let on_ to having noticed it. Early last week, Klaus noted he could now get the full run of digests through ftp "instead of buggering Jessica with such trivia." Forgive him, EctoMother Jessica, for he knows not what he implied. (At least, that's what I assume and hope :-). ) Mitch Pravatiner Now at U38373@uicvm.uic.edu ________________________________ "Up your bum, up your bum; up your bum, up your bum. Up your bum." --Emily Lloyd in _Wish You Were Here_ ======================================================================== 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)