Don't take candy from them either

Winamp random play. 3031 items. "Swimming in the sound of Bow Wow Wow." That's how it began. I wanted candy. An artist search on AMG allmusic. Perusal of discography, sub-directories for regular releases and compilations. The decision was the 1996 release The Best of Bow Wow Wow. I agonized though. Their debut release was called, and I kid you not Dear Reader, See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy. All the way to the House of Records I vacillated. Oscillated really. Part of me hoped that the greatest hits compilation wouldn't be there and I would have no choice but to get See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy. (Copy and paste job, not a re-type). When I discovered they had neither, nor in fact, any Bow Wow Wow, I stepped up to place a special order. I chickened out and ordered the Best of Bow Wow Wow. It has the track "Don't Dance with Strangers." See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy does not.

This is ground control...

I can't think of a positive employment of the word "snag." Not that I am trying particularly hard to do so. Or at all. Jumping to mind: snagging my shirt as I tried to squeeze my way through a barbed-wire fence as a child; that feeling when you know you have not just hooked into a big one on the McKenzie River, but are snagged on the bottom and are about to lose the whole rig. That's enough. I don't want to go on. I can't. I must. I will. Our move into our new house has been very smooth. Snag-free even. From the moment we decided on it, through closing, even the packing and early stages of moving in. I made an appointment for the digital cable and internet service to be switched to the new address. Heck, I even decided to go wireless. But wait, there's more! I decided also to switch to digital phone service. To bundle. I don't like the sound of that one bit. I was elated when the appointment window was two hours, instead of the old "sometime before lunch." Between 8 and 10. Ante meridian. This was gonna be a cinch. No furniture in the way. Lot's of cable outlets. The equipment all nicely laid out where it would reside. Cables at the ready. Plug and play baby! Plug and play! I could even putter around until they arrived. Get a few things unpacked. I started to wonder when I heard the clock strike 9:30. At ten I became a little annoyed. At 10:30 I decided that I would catch the 11:15 bus if they had not arrived. At 10:45 they arrived. They were apologetic, and battered from their first morning job. What could I do or say? Nothing. When the techs saw everything laid out they became...giddy. Yes giddy. Thanking me for making it so easy for them that they might catch up with their schedule, they set about hooking up everything. This was so cool! When they went to check the signal, things veered off course. Badly. The cable signal was too weak. Like totally way too weak. On the exterior of the house they found that the previous dog had chewed the cables. All of them. Cables were replaced. Signals were checked and re-checked. Etc... After every single cable in and around the house had been replaced, some more than once (I suspect), the signal was again checked. Nope. What next? They pulled up the underground cable leading to the house from the Big Green Box and replaced it. At last, we had a winner. We were all quite happy to put a really bad morning behind us. As the guys were looking around out back during the ordeal, I heard one tell the other, let's call him two, that there were "lots of balls out here." I knew of the basketball the former owners left in the back corner, but that was it. It took me a minute. Shall I explain Dear Reader? I shall. "Balls" is cable tech code for doggie-you-know-what. The previous owner's dog was apparently not only a chewer, but also quite an athlete.

Time plods, but quickly

Panic. Palpitations. Pessimism. Peril. Perhaps. (I should face the peril). Susie and I signed the papers for our house a day and a half ago. The keys to the kingdom will be delivered tomorrow. Maybe late today. Maybe. Moving day bears down on me like... I don't know, it just bears down on me. Rather, moving days bear down. We shall begin tomorrow evening. Most, well, a lot of Saturday and then, March 1, U-Haul Day. (Celebrating that holiday a bit early. Maybe a bit late). The goal is to get all the things moved that wouldn't do well snuggled between boxes and furniture in the back of a moving van. Why the "back of a moving van?" Who would load the front of a moving van? Extra words for this post. That's why. Now even more. I have a plan for the move. I should probably have charted it out. Maybe a spreadsheet-slash-checklist. Nahh. Just load the stuff and go. Unload. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Gently eddying brain squall. Must begin with the dinosaur skeletons. Not real ones mind you. Wood models. Oooh! I know! Moving day reminds me of the time, OK, times, as a child when I misbehaved. This may be familiar to you Dear Reader. "Just wait 'til your father gets home!"

Yes My Master

Oh yeah! I did it. St. Basil's Cathedral offers some perspective. (Don't confuse it with the Kremlin.) He doesn't say anything. Too bad. He is only too happy to offer packages of assorted fruit flavored PEZ candy, to the tune of the Star Wars theme music. And, his eyes glow while doing so. Trick or treat for adults. Well, for me at least. Still, it would have been pretty cool if he would say "I'm your father Luke. Would you like some candy?" Or, "Candy, Princess?" OK, that was just creepy. I don't have an Ewok PEZ dispenser, but if I did, I bet Big Darth could swallow it whole. Little Darth would probably point and snicker. Better be careful Yoda.

Ruling pending

I now detect an alien vibration here. I should probably have used quotes. But they would have been distracting. Although, now that I have mentioned them, it is probably more so now than ever. Ever ain't that long in this instance. Where had I been? Could I? Should I or shouldn't I? Will I or won't I? There. Of course. Maybe. You bet. I think I need to establish some boundaries. Robots, or whatever you want to call them. From outer space. Not necessarily originally. But generally associated with it. More machine than man really. What about Storm Troopers?

Request lines are open

I just don't have the words. Any words. Which is convenient since the album is instrumental. This gem caught my eye at the recent vinyl show here in town. Which town is really quite irrelevant to the matter at hand. Left or right. I have not listened to it yet, but I have cataloged it. Sorry. Metadatated it. (I love typing "metadatated" because a little red line appears underneath. Oooh! There it went again!) I bought this for the cover. I have no idea what the music sounds like. Except for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television show theme. The rest probably sucks. But who cares? Just look at the cover Dear Reader! In other words, check it out. Gaze upon it. Let your mind wander, even play a few tricks on you. Please overlook that the title ends in a preposition. Dangling. Ooops, I'm thinking of dangling participles. I think. Grammar teachers would probably make good murderers. Like totally. They could likely get the charges reduced to manslaughter. Like, if you, like, know, like, what, like, I, like, mean, dude. As for me, well, if I had to choose a soundtrack for my own demise, I suppose I would opt for something in the genre of Swedish black metal with traditional death metal progressions. That sounds familiar, and easy. Maybe something by Morphine, or just about anything from the Miami Vice television series, I suppose. I can name that tune in two notes Tom.

Fsst, fsst, fsst

We are all a little disturbed. It's a good thing too. Just a little. Quirky. A little eccentric. You get my drift. I issued a plea for assistance in identifying a character whose likeness came to me in the form of a couple PEZ dispensers. At first I thought it might be My Melody, the cookie-baking friend of Hello Kitty. I was not sure though and asked for help, the first step in... Nevermind. Within hours I received an e-mail confirming that it was indeed My Melody. I changed entries in my catalog. "Bunny" → "My Melody." (As an aside, ALT + 26= →). Then the cat scat hit the fan. I received a message from a connoisseur of all things Sanrio. It was not My Melody, but U*SA*HA*NA. There was a link as well. I got the scent. But I was Shanghaid before I even began. A few days ago I received a package from Xiao Meng-qiu, bka Sophie. (I know "Shanghaid" was pretty lame). Among the gifts she sent was a bag featuring something called Charmmy Kitty. Cute. I chalked it up to some Chinese rip-off of Hello You-Know-Who. Fast forward. When I clicked on the Sanrio friends link (overkill?) what should I find? Charmmy Kitty! She is Hello Kitty's cat. Slavery? She is the keeper of the key to Hello Kitty's jewelry box. Back to U*SA*HA*NA. I scrolled down a bit, and sure enough, there was the bunny. It was, it is not My Melody. U*SA*HA*NA loves to show her happy dance. But what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks is up with those asterisks? She's not Barry Bonds mind you. Conflicting identifications. Dancing. Raquel Welch. CAT FIGHT! I'd better update the metadata.

Bite Me!

On a mission. When it's over... How easy for you was that beginning, Dear Reader? There are only so many cover images available in LibraryThing. Lots, to be sure. But still. Only so many. And then there are works unique to My Library. There had better not be cover images available. That would be just freaky, man. I mean, woman. (I don't think I have any male readers. Heck, I barely have any readers.) Back up a step. For clarity. Just let me explain. There are 1260 titles in My Library, so far. I have diligently verified the bibliographic integrity of each record as I have brought them into the library of pharvey4. But there were not always cover images available for each title. Not just any image, but the correct image. The one and only image that was for the edition and printing of the book I own. So, I started bringing a couple books to work each day to scan their images and upload them to you-know-where. Is there no end to local cataloging decisions screaming to be made? Some of my books, especially older ones that have been passed down through the years, do not have jackets any longer. Should I scan the plain front? No. That would be useless in every way and more. Scan the spine? I actually did this at first. Then I decided it looked like crap, and I went back and scanned again. Scanned what again? The title page. It allows that each and every title have an image. I can live with the idea that there are title page images in a field labeled "Cover." Can you, Dear Reader? If not, well, you can...

The Capital of the World

A musing. Maybe simply a mulling. After I, or anyone else for that, or any other matter, catalog a book, we refer to the aforementioned book as being cataloged. (We all scream for ice cream as well). Everybody gets it. It is clear to one and all. Hopefully. Even if it is a brief record, it is cataloged. We will not get into entry levels here. All shall be lumped together as one. A great big cataloged one. OK. OK. So I got to thinking. To pondering. Always a weighty proposition. Often a most, well, mainly treacherous time. After I have created metadata describing, say, a photograph of a hurdler, taken sometime during the 1930s, at what is now called Hayward Field, how should I refer to it? Tell me Dear Reader, how? "Done?" It is not a piece of meat. A tidy attributive adjective is attractive to me here. And now. I stumbled upon, well, actually tripped over (and skinned both knees) the answer to my own question. The image for which metadata had been created could be called "metadatated." Indeedely-doo. Sorry Flanders. A metadatated image. Yes! I am a cataloger. I am a metadatator. You might suspect a superfluous syllable here Dear Reader. You might. But metadator was quickly passed by as sounding a bit promiscuous. No. Metadatator held firm. Holds steady. Hemingway intruded. "A severed femoral artery empties itself faster than you can believe." Olé!

Vitamin?

Sure, many will know that this is the robot from Lost in Space. Not the terrible movie, but the old cheesy television series. "Danger! Danger!" But who among you know the robot's name? See how helpful he is? Why would I need to show the relative size of this "toy"? Because it's not a toy. It is a big-ass, battery-powered PEZ dispenser. Yes, Dear Reader, another line has been crossed in my slow yet steady descent into, well I'm not sure into what exactly. I bet it is Danteesque though. And tepid. It does not dispense individual PEZ candies however, but entire packages. Pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty neat. Pretty neat. Here's the cool part. The battery-operated part: when one tips the head back to get candy, the robot (still nameless to you I bet, but not to me) speaks. To me. Others may be able to hear it, but I am the one who listens to it. I obey the robot. He doesn't ask for much. If anything. Just friendship. It really must get lonely at times for a 12" tall PEZ dispenser. I ordered some friends for him as well.
Extra credit: what is the name of the bunny? Seriously, I don't know. I used "Bunny Winking" and "Bunny Waving" in the catalog records. Good enough for now. Right now. Only for the moment. These cataloger-assigned names should probably be in brackets, but I don't know if or how that would affect indexing. It just feels so K-level. Smells like, like, retrocon.