If you remember the days when one listened to “phonographs” on “turntables,” you may remember the days of the Tylenol poisonings. That’s the time in the early 80’s when some sickos spiked Tylenol bottles with poison, killing some people and sending everyone else into a panic. The changes that came afterward were for the better: medicine now comes with tamper-evident seals.

I suppose on the basis that people put other things in their bodies, not just medicine, manufacturers began to apply seals to other consumables. Juice bottles have seals. So does milk, peanut butter, and (of course) baby food. All fine and good, right?

When I began to find these seals on things in my garage, I began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, we’ve gone off the deep end. I popped open a quart bottle of oil and lo and behold – it was safety sealed! Thank goodness that oil was tamper-free! Nothing should pollute my sparkling pure motor oil!

I thought I’d seen it all until it was time to kill off all my weeds and grass. Popping open a bottle of professional herbicide, I burst out laughing when I saw … a seal!

That’s right. A seal … on a bottle of poison!

Some sicko might try to put baby food in there.

I just discovered that my humble blog has been included in a list of political blogs in NC. I’m in some good company: Monkey Time, Orange Politics, Ed Cone among many others.

I don’t really consider my site to be about politics, though I will own up to being a political junkie. It’s more of a place where I say what’s on my mind, and sometimes what’s on my mind is politics. I will rant about one thing or another and then feel dumb about ranting, since ranting doesn’t fix things. Its much easier to complain, isn’t it?

Thanks to whomever out there nominated me. I promise to do some more ranting, but only if the mood strikes.

Speaking of mugshots, My buddy Wade got a nice head shot in this weekend’s Durham Sun.

Unless its accompanied by a mugshot, parents usually enjoy when their kids make the papers. My friend Vinnie Petrarca’s “kid” made the paper this weekend, only his kid is the “Honeymoon Cottage”, the house he designed and built. I remember him sharing pictures of its construction, like a proud papa.

Vinnie was a teammate on my Raleigh city league basketball team. He is also a talented architect who runs his own firm, Tonic Design. Vinnie designs as well as he can drive the lane. Maybe even better.

Back in 1967, Van Morrison wanted out of his recording contract with Bang records. The only problem was, he owed them another album. So Van sat down and recorded 31 songs in a row, all of them dreadful.

I’ve been chuckling about them all weekend long. Give a listen to them here, and try not to laugh.

[Update to fix spelling in title.]

I remember dancing to this at the Five-O just after it was released. Good times.
—
Loser
Beck

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
Butane in my veins so I’m out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables
Dog food skulls with the beefcake pantyhose
Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flamin’ with a loser in the cruise control
Baby’s in Reno with the vitamin D
Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love seat
Someone keeps sayin’ I’m insane to complain about
A shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt
Don’t believe everything that you breathe
You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve
So shave your face with some mace in the dark
Savin’ all your food stamps and burnin’ down the trailer park

Yo cut it
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Last week may have been the start of fall, but this morning is the first one that felt like it. A nice, crisp 62 degrees on wakeup. The next few days look like more of the same.

Now, if we could only get a little rain.

Boing Boing alerted me that the band Harvey Danger has posted its new album Little By Little for downloading in its entirety. You can download it by BitTorrent in MP3 or OGG Vorbis formats. I find it cool that I had it downloaded in the time it would’ve taken me to find my shoes for a trip to the store.

I make a very poor music pirate. A large stack of blank CDROMs and DVDs I bought years ago still sit vacant of illegally-download “content.” Occasionally, though, I’ll borrow a friend’s MP3s of a band and check them out. I’ve bought a number of CDs that way, too. The Internet can be a fantastic way to connect with new music.

While Harvey Danger isn’t a new band, its songs are in my playlist. Its cool to see a band of their stature connect with their fans using the Internet (as opposed to other so-called artists). Like Harvey Danger? You were probably already gonna buy their new CD. Don’t like Harvey Danger? No problem. You don’t have to take the CD back to the store. Don’t know if you like Harvey Danger? You have the chance to give them a test-drive for free. Its a nice arrangement for everybody.

The door to the server room in our office is normally left open. When I closed it the other day, an immediate calm settled throughout the office. It quickly became apparent just how much noise is generated by the stack of servers in that room. Most people don’t realize it, but our days are flooded with noise, all the time.

I’ve valued my hearing for quite a while. I have long worn earplugs to the concerts I go to, whether or not it looks cool to do so. Back when I was a morse code jockey in the Navy, I would keep the volume in hy headpones at a manageable level. I even cut the grass while wearing earmuffs.

Last week, research was released which warns that the widespread popularity of portable music players such as the iPod could trigger a coresponding rise in hearing loss. It figures that hearing loss would follow – unless those music fans are keeping the volume at a sane level.

Don Adams, the actor who played Maxwell Smart in TV’s Get Smart, died this week. One of the show’s secret-agent gadgets was the Cone of Silence. How nice it would be if there was a real-world cone of silence that would instantly quiet the noise all around us.