You know why I don't like miserable people?

The scene on the way to the bank.

There is a new guy working at the bank, a scruffy white guy with a short beard ringing the bottom of his head, like an exagerated. partial outline drawn on when he looks at you straight, and a yellow polo shirt working among five older black tellers. While I was filling out my deposit slip, he was asking the other tellers, "You know why I don't like miserable people?" but no one was biting. He persisted, "You know why I don't like miserable people?" The woman directly to his left did not acknowledge him and instead said, "May I help you?" to me. The guy started to ask again but another teller to her immediate left, the guy that helped me set up my account a couple months back, glaced at me and then sideways at him and cut him off. "Why, man." "Beacuse miserable people are just trying to make other people miserable." and the teller nodded in affirmation. "True. That's true," and without looking, walked past him to the little glassed-in area where he sets up new accounts.

Fred Frith, Nowhere, Sideshow, Thin Air
The Music Tapes, First Imaginary Symphony for Nomad


Streaking gentleman hits unexpected obstacle, via BoingBoing

I just talked to the singing saw guy from Neutral Milk Hotel and the Music Tapes on the phone, which means were I to be plunged in darkness right this second, I might give off a faint glow.

When I interview relatively famous people, or even less than famous people, I keep their contacts on my phone just so when I scroll by looking for the pizza place or Maya's friend's mom I'm like, oh yeah, there's so-and-so, even though it's usually the case that I'll never contact them again. Even if for another interview, I'd go through "their people." A lot of times these things require a couple of calls to get everything scheduled. I wonder if the guy from Men at Work has my name in his phone.

Phone numbers are weird like that. They linger. Plenty of people have the same phone number forever and you know it forever and you still don't call and instead feel anxious about it. I wonder how long until we don't have phone numbers anymore and will those connections remain somehow? Will the resulting anxiety from not using connections remain? I already barely know anyone's number by heart because "they are in my phone". It was not long ago that I'd reccomned someone just look me up on MySpace and then Facebook and then when that implodes, will I join the next thing or just let the connections dangle? Data like that, in database terminology, is called "orphan records" - it is there, forever until it is forcibly removed, holding the key to something but you can no longer get to that thing that has the key; you instead start cutting new keys.


The Music Tapes / The Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour / Static The Television performs "The Television Tells Us" live at SUNY Purchase on 10/16/2008