[wordup] we're baaaack ....

[Adam Shand]

mostly this is a test message to make sure that mailing lists have been 
successfully moved over to the new server and to let ya'll know that 
the reason for the long silence has been because the mailing lists have 
been on the *old* server.

actually that's not quite true, or not entirely true.  whatever.  the 
real reason is that in two weeks (almost exactly) i'll be a married 
man.  this is quite strange to think about, stranger i think then 
turning 30.  for one glorious week my family, teresa's family and 
friends from all over will decent on the coromandel peninsula for a 
week on the beach, culminating with our wedding ceremony on the beach.  
after that we'll be traveling around with friends for a bit before 
plunging headlong back into daily ritual of sleep, work, eat, drink, 
sleep.

so i bring you back to wordup just in time to depart again, but that's 
what you get.

anyway back to our regularly scheduled nonsense.

From: http://oblivio.com/road/04031201.shtml

12 March 2004 | Atlas

The cliche about accidents is that everything seems to happen in slow 
motion. In this case, everything sped up. I was in the shower and, 
having long since finished washing myself, was singing A Day in the 
Life in the voice of a German torturer. This is my favorite thing to do 
nowadays—sing popular songs in the voice of a German torturer. I used 
to sing popular songs in the voice of Johnny Rotten, but that got 
tiresome. At any rate, A Day in the Life is a nice song to sing in the 
voice of a German torturer because several things happen in that song 
which the torturer can take sadistic pleasure in reporting, and also 
because the line I’d love to turn you on can be sung in such a way as 
to mean, I’d love to make you suffer. It’s all in the delivery.

Anyway, smoke alarms are incredibly annoying. Obviously they’re 
designed to be annoying, that’s the whole idea, but come on. I ran 
around the apartment in desperate search of an implement to wave at the 
thing so as to clear the smoke away and squelch its horrible screech. 
Actually the first thing I did was turn off the burner under the 
charred and smoking pot of oatmeal; then I ran around the apartment. I 
was naked of course, naked and dripping wet, but more to the point I’d 
left my glasses in the bathroom, which meant I couldn’t see anything. 
Three times I started back to get them, and three times thought better 
of it. I didn’t realize this at the time, but in retrospect the scene 
resembled a compacted, minimalist version of the Keystone cops, with 
all the cops played by a single actor—or rather, a naked, wet, and 
severely nearsighted actor.

Here’s something I learned today: Dynamic HTML by Danny Goodman, while 
certainly an excellent reference source, comprehensive and 
well-written, is not the best thing to wave at a smoke alarm. For 
starters, it’s 1,073 pages, not counting the front and back matter. 
That’s a lot of pages. Despite using two hands, I couldn’t get any 
speed going. Worse, the book is just nine by seven inches, so there’s 
not much surface to generate resistance. Of course the problem wasn’t 
with the book itself, but the book type. A coffee table book, being 
both lighter and larger, would have been ideal; that or an atlas. I 
just now thought of the atlas. I don’t own any coffee table books, but 
I do own an atlas. Two, in fact. They’re tucked between my desk and my 
filing cabinet. Fuck.

Anyway, whatever, I used Dynamic HTML because that’s the best thing I 
could think of. For a moment I considered looking for the off button on 
the smoke alarm, only this would have meant getting my glasses from the 
bathroom and dragging a chair from the kitchen, and I wasn’t even sure 
that the smoke alarm have off buttons. Do they? Probably they do. Which 
is too bad for me, because I must have waved that book for two full 
minutes before the screech finally stopped. When it did, I turned to 
the bathroom to dry myself, but then the screech started up again. This 
happened four times, with the pause between screeches growing 
progressively longer. During the pauses, I dried myself, put on my 
glasses, dressed, moved the pot to the sink, opened all the windows, 
and turned on the vent above the stove.

Now it’s few hours later, and I can’t tell if my apartment smells a bit 
better, or if I’m just getting used to it. Probably it’s a combination.

Also, I’ve been entertaining myself for the last half hour by singing 
Radio, Radio in the voice of a German torturer. The best part is when 
he goes:

  You had better do what you were told
  You better listen to the radio