Author: FlowCoef

A hopefully entertaining blogger, frequently of technical things, but some artistic commentary too.

Slow, modern Heptameron story eight (VIII)

Probably close to 20 years ago now, when P2P other than Bittorrent was popular and YouTube not much established, I downloaded a copy of the song “Convoy” by C. W. McCall. It’s someone using alot of CB radio slang while driving a tractor trailer. Fair enough.

(Word of warning: avoid the sequel song. It is really uncountably bad. Listen to it entirely alone so you won’t have to be embarrassed that any one else can hear it while associating it with your face.)

This particular copy that I downloaded had, after maybe 15 seconds of dead air at the end… a newsreader describing how doctors were trying to find out what sickened so many people at a recent American Legion convention.

The worst of it is, being sure that it would be on Youtube by now, I deleted it with most of my other downloaded music. I have not been able to find it since.

Slow, modern Heptameron story seven (VII)

With a new tablet (that has some sweet features) I wanted to try my accidental find Bluetooth speaker again. On the old tablet, enabling Bluetooth once made Windows so obnoxious that I use it as an excuse to make a fresh installation.

Of course, when I first got the speaker I used my favorite sound test, but this time I wanted some musique. This lead me to a memory of earlier:

In younger says, before I could have legally driven, my mother usually drove me where I needed to be. At the time, it was school (far too far for a bus to drive). On the way, I would often listen to the radio. There was a station out of a nearby cittie that played “oldies” (ca. 1950s to 1980s). This was the first time I remember hearing Smokey Robinson and the Miracles‘ song “Going to a Go Go“.

I have always known parsing sung words are hard, and would do the best I could. More than a decade later, I am still undoing this. Sometimes, the originals are hard to forget. (One has ruined a classical piece for me and has proven the hardest to get rid of.)

Anyway, I had never heard of a “go go” and the term wouldn’t have made sense to me, so my mind “go” into “vote”. (If you think that’s so far fetched, listen to the song yourself.) The lyrics that I could pick out didn’t contradict this interpretation:

  • “Goin’ to a go go” / “Going to a-vote vote”
  • “…and don’t be shocked if you find your baby there.”
  • “Don’t you want to go?” / “Don’t you want to vote?”

The only one that would have been confusing was “There’s a brand new place I found-a, where people come from miles around-a.”, but I knew this was from the 50s/60s, that the singers were Black, and the civil rights laws were being enforced for the first time in likely living memory, so assumed it was a reference to the polling place being “brand new” to the singers.

(That “featured image” icon took me about 3+ hours to make, and is derived from this [Public Domain] and this [CC-BY: Wikimedia Commons users “G ambrus” and “Junaidpv”] ALL BY HAND. It better not be more interesting than my story… ):<…)

Slow, modern Heptameron story six (VI)

(Reminded of this by the comment of Laura on the awfullibrarybooks.net post about “Middle Age / The Prime of Life?”.)

At County College, I took a course on public speaking (rhetoric), which is the practice of standing in front of some people who are giving their attention to you while you talk about something. It is not elocution (making speech sounds). I think I got a B?

The professor was an old dude of some humor and, according to some, an appearance like a board game character. We got along with him well, but here are some memorys:

1. He had a camcorder on a tripod that he used to video us, so we could watch our performances later and see how to improve. I don’t know who else didn’t do this, but I was one who have always had an aversion to my voice and face, so I never did and made sure to destroy the VHS at the end of the semester. I am still glad.

2. He forgot to include the grade composition in the syllabus! This wasn’t brought up until we were preparing for the last speech we would have to give, when he reminded us it would be 40% of the final grade. I remember being the one to ask him the grade breakdown and answering him that it wasn’t in the syllabus. (He was cool about it and immediately told us what it was.)

3. One student gave a very polished speech (I think it was the third of 5 we had to do) and I remember when leaving the classroom after that period had ended the professor striking up what was very clearly a touchy conversation. I didn’t stay, but the next period I remember noticing she was not there. The entire time since I have a fear that she plagiarized it and had to, at minimum, withdraw from the course.

4. Someone who sat next to me gave a couple of speeches I remember, one was on procrastination and he mentioned intentionally procrastinating on preparing or practicing it. I felt it dragged out and had evidence that the professor didn’t like it.

5. The professor had some entertaining storys, like the time he taught somewhere else. It was in a cement block building with a lower cieling, probably a dropped one. The speaker (a student) began by firing a hand gun of some type (with a blank round, or it was a starter/cap gun), calmly saying “Now that I have your attention…”, and then “had the nerve” (prof’s words) to give a speech totally unrelated to that.

6. (Here is what Laura reminded me of) Somewhere along the line the subject of bad drivers came up while he was seated at the front of the class and lecturing in a sort of conversational way. I think it had turned to old people drivers (he had a completely white mustache, so was old/older) and he stated his opinion that “some people must have gotten their license out of a cereal box”. (Awhile ago, breakfast cereals sold in boxes would have some free toy, implying that these bad older drivers could only have gotten a license if there was no testing at all.)

7. I remember some of my fellow students’ speeches, such as “the best advice I ever got was from my father, who said I needed to know how to change a tire” (with examples!), Dagorhir, making something unexpected out of peanut butter, public unawareness of the current Cabinet (this was extemporaneous and a good one), and more I do not remember.

8. I once was loitering outside the building library, reading the New York Times and others’ headlines through the window. He walked by and, being a jokester but not a mean one, said “Ahh there you are.” like he was looking for me. I replied, off guard and vanishingly slightly displeased, “O no, it’s you.”. On seeing me the next class period (I sat near the back by the door), he brought it up to me and I obligingly repeated it, and then again to get the right tone of disgust for him. (This was not done out of anger and I am confident if I refused he would have let it go.)

This course was helpful when I had to give a speech in another class, later on. Particularly the advice and practice in speaking clearly, looking around the room, and not unconsciously moving my hands/arms/body. I wish I kept that professor’s evaluation, I remember his rubric specifically considered eye contact and other things. I got an “Excellent” in that, and I think the other two. More on this course later.

P O L I T I C S again

Short policy idea for all persons: we (the United States, and the people part of it) should not be using the self-titles of the various people who went to work for the Confederate States during the Civil War.

In examples, Jefferson Davis wasn’t a president, Braxton Bragg wasn’t a general, John Reagan wasn’t the postmaster-general, and so on. The entire time of the war, the United States rejected the idea that the Confederacy was a legitimate thing, fought it over that conclusion, and physically defeated it from holding that idea before eventually being proven correct.

For histories, scholarly or popular, it makes sense to retain them so it is clear who outranked who else and so could give (or have given) this or that order. Elsewhere they just give a dishonest dignity.

FEMA subversiveness

In the United States, emergency management/civil protection (what used to be called civil defense) is coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA (read as “FEE-mah”). The justly respected Florida COVID Action site recently linked to a page of FEMA’s on how to prepare for hurricanes (which Florida is the constant target of) with COVID-19 in mind. Looking closer…

Continue reading FEMA subversiveness

Slow, modern Heptameron story five (V)

I was rereading (and editing, if really needed) old posts of mine, including this one, and remembered this.

When I was returning from the last job interview, I drove through a part of the State that had a very large Hebrew and Yiddish speaking population, indicated by the many signs near the road written and typeset in the letters of their common alphabet. I distinctly remember driving by a kosher dairy bar and only catching a view of a sign in the window that was both Hebrew or Yiddish and English and feeling sad I would never see it again to finish reading.

Of course the job I did end up getting was maybe a mile from there, and I still drive by it once or twice a day. I never have gone in the place, but that is because the parking is bad and other things.

Windows messed up my icons unneededly

I just exchanged my monitor of many years for my grand father’s. The one I had been using was almost exactly square, this one is closer to 2:1 horizontal to vertical. After turning my PC back on and signing back in, I find my desktop icons are all scrambled around, even though the old arrangement could have been maintained within the new default resolution.

P O L I T I C S, and 3 independent discoverys

I live in the United States. This post is completely political. I do not use insulting language, mention any person, or encourage crime. (Some people may be trying to avoid this for emotional health.)

Continue reading P O L I T I C S, and 3 independent discoverys