Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Chilling to some 80s tunes
While it usually takes me loud angry music to get out of a bad mood, I should also remember the following music can also lift my bad mood:
For that last one, it doesn't have to be the actual New Order version—these two work as well:
- Orkestra Obsolete, Blue Monday (using 1930s technology)
- Modern Music of the Dark Ages, Blue Monday (using medieval instruments)
Oh, this is indeed a deep rabit hole I can happily fall into …
Notes about a fragment of “Hotel Hack”
I received a nice email from a reader regarding A Fragment of “Hotel Hack”, written some twenty years ago wherein I mused about hypertext. The sad thing is that most (if not all) of the links I referenced have not survived. Yes, I could go back in and update the links, only for them to slowly rot again over the next two decades. Or perhaps changing the links to point to The Wayback Machine are in order (archived version with most links working—I've long since forgotten what I linked to).
Or perhaps I could change the links to a “director's commentary”—that might be an idea, but the commentary itself would dwarf the scant few paragraphs and might make for an interesting NaNoWriMo entry (even if it's not technically a novel). I mean, the commentary for “making him think he's Ethel Merman” would be something like:
Ethel Merman was a singer and actress in the mid 20TH century, known for her powerful singing voice. The reference here is not to Ethel Merman herself, but to a scene in the movie “Airplane” (1980), where Lieutenant Hurwitz had delusions of being Ethel Merman, and was played by Merman herself, breaking into song as orderlies tried to restrain her.
The movie “Airplane” was itself, a remake of the 1957 drama “Zero Hour!” which did not star Ethel Merman, sadly.
One could do a deep dive on all the references in “Hotel Hack”—Phone Cops, Boys from Bell, Leni's films, hoomei, tons of references to cover.
Maybe one day I'll get a round tuit.
Notes on an overheard conversation
“I have one thing to say about that Max Headroom stuff.”
“And that is?”
“Whatever works. For me, it's Beethoven's Ninth. Turned up to 11.”
