Sycophancy of Tramp-Brigade

Deep in the recesses of my memory I recall listening to music on vinyls which were also commonly referred to as records. One drawback of records is that most bands refuse to record entire albums containing only high quality compositions. Often albums are released with one or two excellent songs and a number of filler songs which the majority of people only listen to in order to fill the time between the excellent songs on the album. To skip songs on a record player one would have to pick up the needle and put it back down where the good song started. This would require getting up, walking to the record player, picking up the needle, having some knowledge of the song order and placing the needle back in the right place. All the while knowing that one false move could scratch the vinyl and ruin the record, thus a few minutes of suffering was often tolerated to avoid the risk of utterly destroying the music you loved.

If we fast-forward to the cassette era we also have developed the ability to fast-forward. It seems quaint now but at the time it meant we could move about the music listen to things more than once or skip things entirely. No longer would we worry about ruining our records but we did have to know the layout of the tape to find the desired song with any speed. To counteract the music industry’s unwillingness to produce albums without the appalling or at best mundane filler songs people made “mix tapes.” This would allow people to live life in complete bliss, listening to only their best loved songs, never having to stoop to the level of listening to any song that was not up to their high standards.

With the introduction of CDs, player technology was finally harnessed to allow for programming a “play list.” Since many albums have qualities similar to the last chocolate chip cookie to be scooped from the mixing bowl (the last cookie has between one and three chips on average (never grab a homemade cookie blindly from a cookie jar for this reason)) this bit of technology was a blessing. With a little effort the chocolate chip cookie that is the average album could be separated into “chips” and “other” thereby allowing easy listening without having to rerecord the music. Read/write CDs and affordable CD burners furthered this boondoggle of benefit with the ability to make a “mix CD” of the best songs, and then play an even more select subset those best songs. This way the not-so-super-duper-best songs could be separated from the super-duper-best songs.

One thing these mediums all had in common was that we were required to buy hours of average music in order to own our favorites. In spite of the fact that I have devoted several paragraphs here to the discussion of how horrible it was to live through these eras there was a bright side to this austere existence. It built character. By listening to music that was not my favorite, I would sometimes find that after a few plays of the album, I had a new favorite song. Some times what I originally thought was the last chocolate chip cookie was actually a cookie with some butterscotch and peanut butter chips and my desire for the different flavors changed with my mood over time. Albums that I bought years ago because I liked a particular song, I now listen to because I really enjoy different songs on the album.

Today I can go to itunes and buy nearly any song I want. I can buy all the music I want and never have to be exposed to anything that does not meet with my approval. It’s as though consumers have finally won. The victory, however, has left me empty. The convenient, economical value of buying the songs I love individually robs me of the joy that was listening to a new album for the first time. There was the impatient wait for the song that inspired my purchase and the discovery of the few other hidden gems as well as the larger themes or messages that coursed through the entire work. Today every song on my hard drive is ranked and I don’t have to listen to anything less than a four star song if I don’t want to (and why would I with all the “first-rate” music I have to choose from). My shining musical city on a hill has become a prison camp. I will never again have to listen to the strange or obscure. I will live a blissful stagnant life. My sense of community will slowly close like the drawstring on a hooded sweatshirt.

Who will save me from myself?

Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Mr. Peabody’s Coal Train

I woke. It was Sunday. Went to church. It was outside. Outside church is interesting. We, and most everyone else, brought lawn chairs to sit on. Those who did not bring lawn chairs sat on folding chairs that were claimed from the church’s secret folding chair stockpile. After the service I watched people putting the chairs away so now I know where the folding chairs are stored. This fall when we join the congregation and receive a tour of the church grounds we will likely see the wine cellar, the holy water cistern and the folding chair shed. I’ll probably say something like, “Let’s keep it moving. I’ve seen this before.”

I digress.

We were at church, on the lawn. There were some trees. So naturally everyone picked the shady spots first since it was 11:00 and 85 degrees. As I write this, I wonder if as Christians we should have sat in the sunny places first and allowed the later arriving people to sit in the shade. I would like to claim that I sat in the sun for the benefit of others, but in fact it was because I arrived too late to get a good shady spot. So putting my education to work I sat in a spot where I knew the shade was going. Sadly, the service was too short to allow my plan to come to fruition. I was barely half shaded during the benediction. It was not a cleverly placed mid-service benediction either. It was tucked away, right at the end, like it was supposed to be. I have never complained that a church service was too short and this seems to be a silly place to start. So I wont. What I will comment on is the fact that we all sat down with our own chairs and placed them in what we felt were ideal viewing locations and for some reason we ended up forming rows. It was as though we missed the pews to such a degree that we formed our own makeshift versions of them.

Thus, a nagging question is: Is forming rows at a venue such as the aforementioned one a natural occurrence, either beneficial or not, or is this something we have been programmed to do?

Afterwards we went to Dell’s Diner. If you are ever in Waverly Iowa at breakfast or lunchtime I recommend eating at this fine establishment. They are not open for supper. It’s the kind of small town diner that you just don’t see much any more. They serve good, tasty food at a reasonable price and the service was down-home and friendly. It’s sad the time I have wasted passing the place by to eat at some other box of ticky-tacky restaurant when this was right under my nose.

Matt has written a wonderful bit about the Walmartization of the world. That’s where the “ticky-tacky” reference is from.

If we are naturally inclined to sit in rows then it makes sense why Dell’s Diner has no more than 12 tables and at least four of them were empty when we arrived at the peak of the lunch rush, and our McDonalds is always nearly full at the same time of day. Next time Matt is in town perhaps we can go eat there and he can talk about how he used to eat at the diner that occupied the same location prior to Dell’s and maybe the one prior to that. Perhaps we could also cover the topic of exactly how big the world’s largest shovel is.

Coke Addict

My experiences with caffeine have been many and undocumented. Back in college I would drink a glass of Mountain Dew with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Prior to that I didn’t have many caffeinated beverages, my parents didn’t have soda in the fridge for casual daily drinking, and I never made a priority of spending my own money on soda pop either before or after school. Constant access to caffeinated beverages in the college cafeteria changed all that for me. Then when I graduated and found myself working in a cubicle all day. The monotony of work and the momentum of a long established habit collided and Mountain Dew (my beverage of choice) was usually not far from my desk. The machine at work stocked cans at the time (they have since changed to bottles) and within a month I was having a can in the morning and one in the afternoon plus glass with refills at whatever lunch establishment we chose to patronize.

One day, after about four years of loyal work, my manager just up and fired me, for no reason. It certainly wasn’t about the Mountain Dew.

Actually I didn’t get fired. That was just to see if you were paying attention. What really happened was that I felt my heart beating irregularly. Every once in a while it felt like it was trying to beat twice in a row without pausing and it kind of hurt. I went to the doctor and he suggested, among other things that caffeine could be causing this. So I quit. From that day forward, for six months perhaps, I didn’t have a single caffeinated beverage. Then one day when I was out and about I got a splitting headache and with no other remedies at hand I reached for my old friend, Mountain Dew. Within minutes my headache was gone and I was a happier person. I could think more clearly. The world seemed brighter. The air smelled fresher. My future seemed fraught with wonderful possibilities of greatness that had never occurred to me before. I was confronted with a new reality. Caffeine was not the devil I had made her out to be. Caffeine was instead perhaps a gift from the almighty to cure my ills. Still fearful of endangering my heart I only drank caffeinated drinks when I had a headache and pain medication was not readily at hand.

That’s how it’s been for the last few years. I drink caffeine only for headaches or if I am somewhere where it’s the only beverage available, which might happen once more often than never. Then about a month ago I came to work one Monday feeling run down from the weekend and thought, aside from being good headache medicine caffeine also makes me feel better. So I bought a bottle of Mountain Dew and drank half of it. I was awake, alert and alive. My mood became brighter. I walked with a spring in my step. I was more productive. Life was grand. The next day I had half a bottle of Mountain Dew on my desk. I felt it should not be wasted, and I was excited to repeat the prior day’s experience of productive work, and happy go lucky Mark was just a few sips away. So I drank it. The day was once again productive and fulfilling. The next day, Wednesday, I showed up to work with a bit of a headache and immediately got a Pepsi. It had been so long since I had tasted the sweet cola. I drank the whole bottle, but the affect was not as exhilarating as Monday or Tuesday. Thursday I arrived at work resigned to the fact that the price of happiness was one dollar for a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew which I drank before lunch. After lunch I felt that another bottle would be overkill so I got a 12 ounce can of Coke from the machine. For some reason Pepsi and all the juice machines went to bottles in our office but cans of Coke are still available. Monday’s euphoria was not altogether foreign to me, but it was becoming more expensive than and not nearly as satisfying as it had once been. On Friday I got another bottle of Mountain Dew in the morning. For lunch I went to a restaurant, and ordered a Coke and refilled the cup before going back to work.

The increased intellectual acuity and improved mood I received from a mere 10 ounces of Mountain Dew on Monday was not quite attained with nearly 60 ounces of soda on Friday. I had to face the facts. I am an addict. I am unable to control myself. I would have to quit again. I would detoxify over the weekend and then only touch the stuff for rare medicinal purposes.

I’ve been on the wagon now for a few weeks again. My coworkers, with either no sympathy or no knowledge of my predicament, continue to drink large volumes of caffeinated beverages right in front of me. Sometimes they do it during long meetings when my mouth is dry and parched and I thirst for something, anything to drink.

I must find some other way to acquire the vast stores of intelligence and bliss that will forever be ten ounces of Mountain Dew away. Until then I will just be dim-witted, melancholy Mark.