Calling Out an Audible

Peeve: Sign Typos

Ok. I misspell stuff. I punctuate wrong. I have a running battle with the Real Change editorial staff over whether periods and commas go inside the parentheses or outside. I want to do parentheses like we do in math, they want to do them like they do in the New York Times. "Screw the New York Times," I say. "Screw you," they say. Round and round we go.

Still, I consistently manage to produce 666 words of copy each week with no more than five, six, or seven typos (according to THEM.) [Or I should say: (according to THEM).]

That's a typo rate per wordage of about one per cent. I don't even get paid to pull that off. Plus, we're talking about ephemera. The paper circulates one stupid week, then is pretty much forgotten.

Now let's say some government agency, like, I don't know, Metro King County, puts out a sign with 15 goddamn words. Not ephemera: it's a sign meant to last for years. One per cent of 15 words is about one seventh of a word. How stupid do they have to be to not proofread said fucking sign and get rid of the typo of one whole wrong word that is equivalent to me misspelling 50 words in one of my idiot columns?

Audibly? You might be audibly recorded? As in, you might hear the recorder while you're being recorded? Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

[Above: Sign seen at the International District Tunnel Station Plaza, and also visible (as opposed to visual) on many Seattle buses.]

Coincidence?

Video Find of the Day

I checked my YouTube playlist of Algerian Rai today, and found out that every single video has been pulled. Damn. So I looked for some new Algerian Rai and found one with a song called "Dana Dana". Then, I noticed that there are songs with the same name all over the world. Are these all the same song? I don't think so. But I'm so retarded aurally I could be wrong. How is this coincidence to be explained? Is it purely coincidence, or is there something about the sound of "dana" that inspires people to sing about it, and repeat it? I think "dana" is wired into the human brain.

Rayan & Rima - Dana Dana [Algerian Rai]



Rayan & Rima - Dana Dana [WTF?]



Dana Dana - Pind Di Kuri

Horowitz

Video Find of the Day

MAYONNAISE, n. One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion. - Ambrose Bierce, the Devil's Dictionary.

Mr. Bierce unfortunately had no such entry for Polonaise, which I used to think was a Polish secret sauce. (Being Polish, it should be reversed, like Polish logic. Therefore the secret ought to be that it should not be secret.)

Anyway, this looks hard.

Vladimir Horowitz - Chopin Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53

Dick Gregory

Video Find of the Day

The first album I ever owned wasn't a music album, it was Dick Gregory's 1961 In Living Black and White, which contained such material as:

* Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I understand there are a good many Southerners in the room tonight. I know the South very well. I spent twenty years there one night. *

* Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant and this white waitress came up to me and said, "We don't serve colored people here." I said, "That's all right. I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken." *

* Then these three white boys came up to me and said, "Boy, we're givin' you fair warnin'. Anything you do to that chicken, we're gonna do to you." So I put down my knife and fork, I picked up that chicken and I kissed it. Then I said, "Line up, boys!" *

I wanted to post an audio of the album but couldn't find one. Instead I found these recent clips of him doing the State of Black Union 08 in New Orleans (certainly out of order.) They show that he still has it.

Dick Gregory apologizes to the first Black President



Dick Gregory at State of Black Union 08 Pt.1

Two of Josephine Baker

Video Find of the Day

First one is from a 1935 French movie called Princess Tam Tam, in which, according to IMDB, a French novelist tries to pass off a Tunisian shepherdess in Paris as a princess. There's more but I don't think any of it helps. Besides, the excerpt speaks for itself.

Josephine Baker. Princess Tam Tam



Here, in this next, the unsuspecting guys from the audience dance too well.

Josephine Baker - Cha Cha Cha

No Blue Angel

I spent a lot of time today at the Real Change office running in and out trying to position myself to take a video of Blue Angels flying over. I never got a good shot. So I gave up and consoled myself by taking these pictures of Sid Vicious. No Blue Angel, no angel period, but we love him anyway. As usual, click on them for larger versions.

Suspicions Justified

In this one below, it looks like the flash bounced off his retinas. Cool.

Ghost-Kitty.

Carnaval de Barranquilla

Video Find of the Day

Since we're having what amounts to a rather feeble attempt (Seafair) at a carnival (it wouldn't be so feeble if there were much, much, more meat) I thought maybe we should see how real carnivals look. This one is in Colombia.

Carnaval de Barranquilla: Ayer y Hoy [Then and Now]

Funky Studios

Alley of the Week

I think this is one of the most visually interesting alleys in Seattle. It's the alley from Blanchard to Bell, between 2nd and 3rd, behind the Funky Belltown Studios. I like the inviting barbed-wire (much friendlier than the concertina razor wire found so often elsewhere in Seattle.) I like the odd second floor protruding window space, the flying duct, and the little sign that warns loiterers in the alley that they may be videotaped.