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And we’re back. Sorry about yesterday and today; my internet provider died on me. Experience has taught me to check my own settings, realize it’s not my fault, and wait for the bit-gush to resume. If only we didn’t have so much experience to draw upon.  Well, my gold standard for internet hell is still AOL – unable to connect, random disconnects, interminable art download. Remember that? No? Gather ‘round kids, because before the great wooly wild web as we know it today,  we had to use AOL, and you couldn’t do anything until it was done shipping new art one bit every six minutes. It was like calling up a web browser and waiting while it preloaded the entire internet. Usenet included.

This fell on the day before I was supposed to take a vacation, too. (I’m off buzz.mn for a few days.) (Oh, who am I kidding; I’ll be posting. Just not in the early AM.) Last night I didn’t write the morning note, but tapped out something I’d add at the coffee shop; having busted the template for the day, I figured I’d do something different. This afternoon I wandered downtown and shot video of the public artwork, such as it is. It’s up at buzz now.

I also had a few minutes to clean my desk. Really! you say. Tell me more! Well, I’ve been moved to a new desk. The previous tenant did not clean it out. I was waiting for him to get his stuff, since there were drawers and drawers of folders pertaining to something, but he never came back. Today I learned that the previous tenant had actually left the paper a year ago. Well. Safe to say we can throw the stuff out.

Hello, what’s this?

Corn?

Corn and dirt? What is this, the back 40?

I learned from the office manager, who knows all such things, that the previous tenant fed the rabbits across the street. Oh, the rabbits across the street. Right. I’ll have to bring a vacuum cleaner. The other drawers were incredibly depressing, if you find office supplies depressing, which I do. Everything about office supplies depresses me. The bulldog clips. The gummed labels for hanging files. A stratum of loose paperclips; rubber bands; boxes and boxes and BOXES of those gummed circles you glue on triple-hole-punched paper so they aren’t ripped by the binder rings. Pen caps without matching pens, pens without matching caps.  Half-used spools of linty tape. Floppy disks; empty covers for those old gigantic floppies we used in the mid 80s. Two little canisters of finger-moistening fluid. Seriously: you dip your finger in the liquid, and it makes it easier to turn the page. This presumes you’re doing it so much your mouth would go dry. I had no idea they made that stuff. There was the inevitable sad ketchup pack. One of the lessons of office life I learned long ago: never hoard condiment packs. This is America. We don’t run out of ketchup. You cannot turn around without experiencing ketchup.

I don’t know why it depresses me, but it does; perhaps I’m thinking back to my first office job, when the lure of fresh, free office supplies seemed exciting and new – for a minute, maybe two. Then they just looked like links in the chain of servitude.

Nothing you really want to do requires that many bulldog clips.

re: the Screedblog return - I have mixed emotions. On one hand it’s amusing that Barry Manilow cannot bring himself to appear on “The View” because there’s a horrid Ilsa She-Witch who swore fealty to Darth Dick, but on the other hand there’s nothing more to be said. Beating up on Manilow for being unable to inhabit a room with the commingled exhalations of a conservative says it all about him, and harping on it for 900 words would say something about me. There are so many targets these days, but the desire to send in the Warthog to strafe a barrel full of minnows has been lacking for a long time. Why? Not because it isn’t fun. I think I got tired of being seen entirely through that particular lens, though; I hadn’t written on these matters much for a long time, and from some mail and some interview questions after I took over buzz.mn you’d think I’d been running Heil-Hitler-Hell-Clck-Central 24/7 for the last five years. I get sick of that.

On the other hand, if that’s the albatross that’s going to be draped around your neck no matter what you do, well, walk up the aisles and sell it with gusto.

 

So the Screedblog will resume. I guess when it comes to nuanced opinions that actually run the gamut, I haven’t got any bloody choco-ices.  Just this bloody albatross.

As long as we’re referring to Python: I thought I’d seen them all. But I do not remember this. Lord, it's brilliant.

 

Site updates: missed yesterday’s “Advertising Is Good For You” update, obviously. We’re working our way through the March 1936 Popular Science ads. Last week it was Spotty McPimple, cured by yeast; today it’s a famous fighter shilling for seaweed.

I hesitate to do this next part, because finding the links is hellish, but over the weekend I finished the 07 version of the Motel site. If this doesn’t make this the web’s largest resource of old pre-chain motel postcards presented with a width of 700 pixels, I will eat my hat.

The links have to be individual, since they’re scattered all over. This one is my favorite.

HereHere. Here. Here. HereHere. HereHere. HereHere. Here. Here. Here

This week’s Bleat Radio Theater: it’s X-Minus One, always a favorite, except when it’s lame. “The Tunnel Under The World” proves that absolutely nothing you ever see on the movie theater screen is new or original, and was probably published in a cheap paperback magazine 50 years ago. I’ll say no more.

 

Remember: minor buzz.mn tomorrow, but there's a vidcast up right now. See you tomorrow!

 

 

 

         

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