Mimsy Were the Borogoves

In the days of our ancestors, people put out novelty records as singles. Ray Stevens was the master of this, but lots of people did it. Haunt used record shops that carry 45s and you’ll see all sorts of strange titles. If the single took off, they’d either make an album of non-novelty music, leveraging the novelty hit to sell it; or quickly come up with a whole bunch of new novelty songs to fill out an album. The result, usually, is one good novelty song and an album full of bad ones.

Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia did the latter after their 1981 hit Pac-Man Fever. The record companies, who as usual for record companies had no clue, had no idea that kids were spending their money on games instead of music, or that they’d buy music that talked about their games. Bucker & Garcia’s agent released it to the Atlanta area and sold thousands of copies in just a week.

This, plus a CBS executive listening to his kid, got them a contract. They put out an album of songs celebrating Frogger, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Defender, Mouse Trap, and Berzerk. And while most of them fell into the filler category, I have to say I like Froggy’s Lament even better than Pac-Man Fever. It’s downright philosophic.

• • Froggy takes one step at a time.
  • The way that he moves has no reason or rhyme.
  • He hops and jumps, dodges and ducks
  • Cars and busses, vans and trucks.
• • Go, froggy, go!
  • You got to keep on hopping ’til you get to the top.
  • Go, froggy, go!
  • You got to keep on hopping, you can never stop.
  • Go.
  • Go, froggy, go.

All of it interspersed with sounds from the original games. They recorded the sound effects in working arcades—or places with arcade games. There’s a story that the very beginning of Pac-Man Fever contains, if you listen closely, someone ordering a pastrami sandwich, because those sound effects were recorded in a deli. I don’t know; I just spent way too much time listening to the opening of Pac-Man Fever on the vinyl and I can’t hear anything except Pac-Man (after listening to it at volume over and over, I’m hearing Pac-Man Ringtone). I even tried listening to each speaker at a time in case it was only audible on one channel. I’m nearly certain it’s just a legend.

I read All*Star Superman recently; it was so evocative I’ve been having Superman dreams. Last night’s was a bad movie that I only watched because it supposedly had a good commentary track. Superman was still Superman, but he was turning evil—this was Warner’s dark reboot. Superman’s father was still alive, an alcoholic in a one-room apartment played by Paul Reiser. To symbolize the merging of Superman with Batman’s darker universe, Michelle Pfeiffer played his mother; she was an author; I awoke before I found out what her role was, but she was working with the FBI to try to rein in Superman.

It was not a good dream. Superman’s best stories haven’t been the dark ones. Not the Death Of or the Goes Crazy. They’ve been Last Son of Krypton; Miracle Monday; Superman: The Movie; Superman Returns, All*Star Superman; The Sandman Saga. They’ve been Superman Uplifting.

Superman II is a bit weird on that score. It’s a rambling movie, due mostly to political machinations in Hollywood. Superman is still Christopher Reeves’ smiling hero from the first movie, but the nebbish is taking over. In the good stories, a Superman who loses his powers will retain a Super outlook on life; will retain the Super confidence. Not here. Clark Kent isn’t an act. Clark Kent is who Superman wishes he was.

The Salkinds had always wanted more camp, and Kent’s incompetence is emphasized even more here than in the first movie. While Superman II doesn’t go as far into slapstick as the third movie would, it does begin the slide, especially during the blowhard section of the fight scene.

Nuclear weapons figured prominently in both movies, mainly because of the decision to drop the original director and change the ending of the first movie. Specifically, they ended up using the ending of the second movie in the first movie. The movies were originally set back to back, with the nuclear explosion in Superman I freeing the criminal Kryptonians to wreak havoc in the second movie. Parts of the second movie were already filmed—including some expensive parts—so they made up the terrorists with nukes story.

I was trying to find some information about the transitional period when computers were just becoming popular and typewriters were trying to be a little more like computers, and I discovered that you can still buy typewriters on Amazon.

Cool. But the comments are a laugh. I read the comments for the Brother SX-4000 and wasn’t sure if they were real or a joke. The most common complaint: typewriters are noisy. “Too loud.” “The only drawback is the noise.” And, my favorite, “This machine is much to noisy with three loud clicks for each boldface character.”

The latter reviewer also complained that his wife had vision problems, and was unable to see what she was typing. Did he expect the size of the tiny LCD screen to be software configurable? Or for the size of the typewriter’s daisy wheel to be software configurable? Or for the font weight to be software configurable? The size of the text is obviously bounded by the size of the LCD screen and by the physical size of the type ball. Making it bold means having to hit the paper multiple times slightly apart.

But I’m unsure about this reviewer who called Brother technical support:

…he stated that in order to continue, he wished for more information but that if I didn’t want to give any personal information, I had to say “refuse” or “continue.” I said I just had some questions because I did not think he would need any personal info if I just wanted some answers without committing to buy anything. To my surprise, the gentleman stated again (quickly and abruptly, like the first representative), “In order to continue, you must say “Refuse” or “Continue!”

This felt very strange to me. I felt very robotic and awkward and forced myself to do what he told me to do—i.e.; say “refuse.”

Were they talking to an automated support line? Filtered through another person’s description, it’s hard to tell. I have only seen that behavior when a computer was on the other end, but the reviewer goes on to say that they asked questions and received serial numbers in response; however, they don’t describe how those questions went. So I guess it might have been that Brother’s call line just has very strict rules about when not to ask about personal information.

The rest of the reviews seem pretty positive. Though, if I had my choice, I’d get a typewriter that looks more like this:

Underwood No. 5 courtesy Kolossos on Wikimedia Commons.

Larry Lessig is officially an idiot, or he thinks we’re idiots. He already knows through his experience with the Eldred copyright case that the difference between “a limited time” and an unlimited time is precisely zilch when it comes to Congress. Copyright law has taken the constitution’s “limited time” and made it forever. Now he wants to amend the constitution so that free speech can be “limited” but not “banned”.

He knows better than this. His misguided movement to put the government in control of campaign speech has now progressed to the point where he’s either lying to himself or he’s lying to us.

Planet Iran appears to be providing on-going, daily coverage of events in Iran and events affecting Iran.

“Today Democrats Dale Kildee and Jim Oberstar announced that they would be supporting the healthcare bill and the media had a spasm reporting that they were ‘Stupak allies’ who were bailing on him. This is an extension of the argument over the weekend that Stupak’s Dozen were really Stupak’s Half-Dozen and that even they were crumbling.”

“This is a misleading attempt to scare wavering Democrats into thinking that momentum is building for deeming the Senate language good enough for pro-life Democrats. Look down at my ‘Stupak’s Dozen’ category. Guess who was never in it: Dale Kildee and Jim Oberstar. Of course they’re voting for the bill. Everyone knew this. Their announcement today, intended only to burnish their own dubious pro-life credentials for furious constituents and put pressure on Stupak, does not change the numbers. Their votes do not get Pelosi any closer to 216.”

As the health takeover vote comes down to the wire, it’s reminding me of the Democrats’ weird shenanigans on S-CHIP. Remember that? The Republicans wanted to spend more on S-CHIP. The Democrats wanted to increase spending even more than the Republicans did. So the Democrats brought out a bunch of sick kids to show why their spending increase was better than the Republican spending increase… and every one of their props already qualified under the then-current system. Neither the Republican nor the Democrat spending increases were necessary.

Now Obama is claiming he had to come to Ohio because of a woman who wasn’t getting health care. But she couldn’t show up… because she was getting health care, and not having to pay for it. Under the current system.

Meanwhile, our cash cow has been milked to death. Our other really big social “reform” and ponzi scheme, Social Security, is drawing down its reserves. The problem is it doesn’t have any: we already borrowed it all for other spending. All it has are a bunch of IOUs.

This is not the time to start another spending boondoggle.

Especially not on a plan guaranteed to cause spending to skyrocket. The Democratic plan takes an expensive system and makes it more expensive; it takes an unresponsive system and makes it less responsive. It mandates everything stupid in our current system and jettisons the parts that are working. A money quote comes from Ace of Spades commenter HeatherRadish:

You have to be pretty fucking stupid to believe this bill is ‘reform’.

Real reform would let us exercise choice, and let doctors, hospitals and the insurance industry provide us with the choices we’re willing to pay for. Competition reduces prices. It increases options. When more people can afford better health care, the cost of providing it to everyone else will drop! But that will only come from making the insurance companies and the health care providers work for our business, instead of mandating not only insurance for everyone, but every little detail of what that insurance must cover.

“Spend first, then haggle” is a philosophy of disaster. Like “vote first, then read the bill.”

Matt Welch describes how the Democrats get a CBO “budget surplus” out of the health takeover bill:

1. They put some costs into separate bills, and tell the CBO not to score those bills.
2. They promise massive service cuts that everyone knows will never happen, and tell the CBO to count those “savings”.
3. They game the CBO’s 10-year window by taxing immediately, but delaying spending until 2014.

Oh, and the claim that lobbyists are the reason it isn’t passing? Pro-takeover lobbyists have outspent anti-takeover lobbyists five to one. “There’s a three-letter word for blaming the defeat of his bill on health care lobbyists, and it rhymes with pie.”