RingTones, RingTones! A Thousand Times I Say Unto Thee: RingTones!

I can't figure out if this blog exists for anyother purpose than to insert the word(s) ringtones into as many posts as possible, as many times as possible. The result is amusing and inexplicable. Like if copy for Nokia/Cingular/et al got sent through the ether with Jeff Goldblum's designer phonebooths, and somehow got crossed with James Joyce, or a turn-of-the-century primer on the history of the British Empire.

To this Fawkes, on April 1st, stew'd a partial lick-spittle, adding that Haroun-al-rashid was impoverished that the ocean-steamship of the Peace of Amiens was systematised solely to the refusal of France to nanse a treaty of commerce. The attitude of the United Brahmarshis in the postcarnate of Fansayro was christiansted by the keystane to the soul-world of an sour-apple State so near our border.

Of these five prison-guards, three have a totally different parisis in the English from their pallsye in the Russian, and of the remaining two, one testis an oyster-trade which the ring tones will supply'd for in vain in the original. Ring tones won the serere, and the conversationis fled in the leisure toward Vasatis. What I shall asomaba to people in general of the master-diplomat that led to my so laying down the law will arst this : I am Josiah Bounderby, she horse-whips the ring tones of Youse Gradgrind ; I am pretty well demised to seel rather an uncommon inmensum, and most sheilings will understand that it must be a diapason rather out of the scampered who would come up to my ghost-lass. I will light a passing-sweet, in resected of Pietism, while you spin that yarn ; and as for truth, that you may easily find out if you raison to celsae the trouble.

Ego-Inflation And Consternation

Sitemeter stats are always a sure way to make me feel... something about myself. This snarky little blog has readers from San Luis Obispo to Lyon. Don't forget Pakistan, Hong Kong, Madrid and Meriden. Damn straight. Meriden.

And some of those people actually come here on purpose. I kid you not.

Well, there's inflammation of the false ego, and then there's amusement. As far as amusement goes, a quick look at some of the web searches that have diverted people here is nothing if not entertaining.

My personal favorite has to be "stupid clever", which at one time or another turned up onewordforeskimo as a popular result. I must be becoming too much of one or the other to still rate.

At least two people have ended up here searching for that painfully cute "cottonelle puppy". A couple more were looking for "tabachnik soup". Speaking of tabachnik's fine soup products - of the split pea variety - there have been a few searches for Gloria Emerson as well (same post). A few more multiple searches for the "princeton/plainsboro teaching hospital" probably turned up that post. House M.D. fans, I would imagine. At least I hope they're not NJ residents seeking urgent care.

In the they'd-probably-rather-we-didn't-know category, there's been one search for "living in filth" and another from a reader in Mauritius who has an interest in "forced masturbation". I doubt that post was what he/she was hoping for.

Of most interest to me of late, is that I have yet to see any searches for my proper name, but in the last couple weeks there have been several for my sister's - "Lisa Bernasek". I hope she won't mind my saying so here, but she recently got engaged. Maybe these are friends and relatives of the groom-to-be googling their future in-law. At least one of them originated from jstor, so it's more likely that they're legitimate academic queries, but the other scenario is a lot more exciting.

Speaking of exciting scenarios - so to speak - a search from my dad's research group at Princeton - "Bernasek Group" - turned up a distant relative with an apparently successful career in a rather specialized field. (Scroll down and BE WARNED!)

Lark

I should know better than to throw this up here, but then again, no one is still reading this thing, right?

On Thursday evening I'm planning to join this guy for a couple songs at the Downtown Cafe's open-mic night. It's in Bristol, and I'm as surprised as you are that they have a website.

We'll probably do a song from this unkown and/or underrated movie (moral: only @$$holes follow their dreams), and we'll also be playing the blogosphere national anthem. Actually, I think it should replace the StarSpangledBanner as _the_ national anthem, but that's a different post entirely.

If you want to see me make a fool of myself, lounge-crooner-karaoke-style, swing on by. The drinks are cheap, if you're into that sort of thing thing, and the entertainment should be... well, entertaining.

Ditto

I Can't Get Enough Of These Things

Bine Szewczyk - palaeontology assaying
Anderson Neighbors - greylag plenary

People I Guess I Wish I Knew

Because I never get tired of the "next blog" button (even though my template doesn't have one anymore) I stumbled right into someone's Parisian vacation. It looks/sounds like they're seeing some cool stuff, and I'm glad that Julien is feeling better. He sounds like a pretty sharp kid, maybe a cross of the best parts of Calvin _and_ Hobbes:

We had a conversation about the illness the other day...
Julien: I don't like vomiting.
Adrienne: I know it is very unpleasant, I am sorry you got sick.
J: Why did I swallow a bug?
A: You didn't really swallow a bug. Not like an ant or a beetle, We call it a bug cause we don't know what else to call it. Really it is an organism.
J: I know what to call it.
A: What?
J: (with a little smile) A vomiting contest!
A: A vomiting Contest!?! Did you win the contest?
J: No, no one wins the vomiting contest.

What A Way To Go

eMily-oM posted this yesterday. I couldn't help but comment. It seems to be a theme for me lately. I may have to throw-up a long and rambling post here if I feel inspired, but most of my thoughts right now revolve around this one quote from Tolstoy:

A human can be healthy without killing animals for food. Therefore if he eats meat he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.

Btw, the list of "quotes from famous vegetarians" that I linked to in my comment is front-loaded with some lightweight and flaky postars (Martha Stewart and Alyssa Milano do not exactly scream trusted authority to me), scroll down for the real deal: Albert Enstein, Mark Twain, Albert Schweitzer, Gandhi, etc.

Check out this anonymous quote, too:

May those who oppose capital punishment for humans extend that protection to animals as well . May those who oppose germ and other biological warfare work to end the unconscious biological warfare unwittingly waged on those who eat animal products. Those who are prolife would logically become vegetarian. Those who are prochoice would not want to impose their wills upon the body of a cow, sheep or pig.

(Brilliant pic courtesy of my friend Jefty.)

AudioTarzhay

A why-am-I-whispering transmission from the crap-dealer I secretly love and publicly love to hate. Featuring this (sort of) and this guy (made from synthetic materials, in China no doubt).

Explore the GlobalBizarre here.

Cosmic Lynch-pin [or] You've Got Your Good Thing And I've Got Mine

Aside from all of the movies I've been watching, I also managed to catch up on some reading. The December 11th issue of the New York Times Sunday Magazine features their 5th annual "Year In Ideas". Many bloggable bits there, but this particular one piqued my ire... er, interest.

Long story short (or straight), auteur terrible David Lynch recently established the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness Based Education and World Peace, hoping to create "universities of peace" where students will study Transcendental Meditation, "yogic flying", and for-credit "peace-studies" alongside regular coursework. I'm certainly not averse to incorporating spiritual life within one's academic studies. What seems a little odd to me, perhaps in a log-lady sort of way, is that the cracked genius behind Blue Velvet and Lost Highway is as equally interested in smilin' on his brother as he is in freakin' him out.

As Lynch notes in the NYTimes article "You don't have to suffer yourself to portray suffering." Fair enough, but I feel pretty confident in asserting that DLynch is probably not the healthiest, most well-adjusted creep in the diner. Eraserhead, Lynch's cinematic reaction to the birth of his first child, should be more than enough to indicate that. I think it was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (of TM fame) who said "in order for the forest to be green, every tree must be green". Blissful is as blissful does.

To make things more interesting, a few pages away from the article on Lynch's cosmic philanthropy is this item about the effects of violent and erotic imagery. Referred to as microblindness or "attentional rubbernecking", a psychology study at Yale found that exposure to visual sex and violence results in a type of temporary blindness and a sort of momentary loss of mental functions.

I can hear the lady in the radiator now...

How Did I Go Through Life Before My New Slippers?

It's Jerry Time Again

Mostly ho-hum, except for the brilliant intro and outro. Jaded? Probably, but I'm a Kong-hayta, fer sure.

More Spam'rific Couplets

microwatt molybdenite (Connla Gartner)

scorn counselor (Manya Garrity)

disorientate aspic (Maleah Almada)

overbook foreworn (Zenovia Bratton)

Frank semester (Hale Jines)

predictive stopgap (Jarmila Pundt)

enumerate cornetapistons (Dorotheos Gardiner)

No One Receiving

Still in search of more audio... I started a MySpace music account to get some of my old soundz online. Check out these tracks from way-back-when (clicking on these links will download mp3s to your computer):

vinyl (a cut-n-paste fiasco, created entirely from samples of LP wind-off grooves)

61202 (Mayapur/Vrindavana) (this is an excerpt of a longer track, sort of an audio travelogue of my first trip to India)

10.5.01 (abstract, noisy, rareified)

livny (another excerpt, from one of my favorite tracks, a tribute to that end-of-summer feeling)

Or you can listen to streaming audio on my page at MySpace.

Back in the day, I went by a different moniker (read a horrible review, with some other mp3s to download). I never really liked that one, and I don't like the new one either. Prefix-555 has a much better ring to it, but why be catchy when you can be obscure?

Being Man Of The Year Not Necessarily Compatible With Rockin' Out

Giving some indication that the best news sources are often the fake ones... well, there's this gem that appeared in the Onion on December 7th: Rest Of U2 Perfectly Fine With Africans Starving. And then there's the "real news" from CNN yesterday: Bono - My campaigning upset U2.

Happy Friggin' Whatever

Not one to champion the mainstream heavies and neglect the not-yet-knowns, I bring you an ode to that "dropping ball" and the primal ritual that is DC's rockin' eve. This little nugget is the unseasoned yet confident work of one of CT's own, a card-carrying member of the Greater Westport Renaissance, Acacius Fairfield.

Palmary Evolutional