Jingle jangle

Hey-o folks. It’s J time here at the A-to-Z and this little jewel of a topic comes from a very fine man, a bit of a jokester, a joyful and jovial Jamaican-dreadlocked white dude; a very fine judge of music and talent and a wicked musician himself; the Jazz Lion. And the deal is:

Jamming

Now I’m not a musician. I dick around on the guitar and keyboard. I’ve written a dozen songs at least. Maybe closer to twenty. They’re pretty basic usually. I’m not a performer. I’m certainly no singer. I’m good with the lyrics though.

Jamming is not really an option for me. I have zero ability to play by ear.

There were two happy occasions though. Once at the farm that Jazz Lion rented for a while; a kind of informal drop-in centre for youth like himself. He was deeply connected. Dullards my age would have called his crowd hipsters. They would not have. They were wonderful kids and too good for labels.

We brought together a fine meal one night. I had much wine and they had their own sacrament.

Lion monkeyed with his guitar tuning; got some rich India vibes happening. We played whistling water bowls and the like. It was very ethereal and atmospheric. I went for the simplest thing available: a length of chains.

I rattled them at patient intervals; only when the improvisation begged for them. The master approved. It was clear on his face.

Fine times.

There was one other, but I’ll save it for later.

An influencer and her impersonators

Hey hey A-to-Z-ers. I’m almost keeping up with things! Today’s instruction is from a very intelligent, informed, imperturbable, irreproachable (and currently impregnated) individual; my only in-law, the wife of my brother. And the idea is:

Inspiration

A new person of interest to me… (did that sound weird? I’m not investigating a murder) is Miranda Sings; the 2008 creation of then-22-year-old Colleen Ballinger, a multi-talented writer/performer who is currently touring before all-age audiences, many, if not most of whom dress up as Miranda look-alikes, but who is most-known as a youtuber with millions of followers.

The Miranda character is basically a terrible person; self-centred, delusional and talentless. Her singing is notoriously dysfunctional.

Forbes names her the 5th ranked digital influencer in the world. I only learned of her existence in 2018 seeing her guesting on Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, which closed with a brief appearance of the real Colleen. I have slowly been drawn in by the humour of it, despite initially thinking it was the kind of novelty likely quick to dissipate. As of today she has become the most common contributor on my youtube playlist as I gradually explore her massive back-catalogue.

With all this influence it’s great to see that Miranda champions the most kind and socially responsible views; she just does it in some accidental intellectually ass-backwards way, in keeping with her standard comic duncery.

While she is notorious for gathering youtube and twitter comments both adoring and hating (prompting one of her main trademark expressions Haters Back Off! - the title of a two-season Netflix series), much or most of the hate mail is likely intentional baiting and meant for fun. In her semi-weekly vlog she shares her favorite fan mail (from her Mirfandas) and favourite hate mail. Getting your message chosen, regardless which category, is almost certainly any Mirfanda’s wet dream.

And speaking of wet dreams; the Miranda comedy material is a curious crossover of the traditionally-kid-friendly and traditionally-adult, and as times have changed and the internet has made superstitious over-protection of children next to impossible, it’s still a little eye-opening for me to see no apparent concern over this would-be transgression.

But Colleen has revealed that some of the early hate mail was decidedly real and severe, which prompts me to ruminate: I think that whether or not your sense of humour intersects with Colleen plays a part, certainly, in whether you’re a fan or not. But as for the deeper inclinations of love or hate, I suspect much has to do with this:

Miranda is clearly broken, and completely without empathy. And I think that her brokenness attracts people who possess much empathy, while people lacking it, are in a way threatened by her, the way that the deepest-closeted homosexuals of the previous century were so often outwardly the loudest homophobes. The game that non-empaths must play… Miranda is breaking all those rules. To some that can be infuriating, I think because it brings an unwanted mirror into play.

It does not seem that Colleen designed this paradigm. She just started mimicking annoying shallow peers, perhaps hyperbolically, and eventually on video for the benefit of her friends. And like most youtube sensations (while the corporations have not figured out how to contain the platform) her popularity just grew.

For some reason in my life, I have been deeply drawn to people with an ultimately alarming lack of empathy. And there I have generated pity and love. This has happened to me within the categories of friends, lovers, and in life-coaching relationships.

It is… hopeful to see young people so loving toward the broken Miranda, who is so easily detestable. Pragmatically though, I am inspired when I see how a simple sense of humor can reach people and open a conduit for healthy higher-order ideas.

For a couple years now I have wanted to explore youtube as a creative outlet, with comedy being the hook. Some day when I’ve taken control of my health and productivity I’m sure I will.

For now I’m taking some lessons from Colleen’s creation, and I’m ready to be called a Mirfanda.

Hear us, people of Portugal!

Hey hey my little homies! It’s H day and here’s my helpful, heady, higher-order, humanitarian hiking pal… The Healer. And she has heralded this little number for us to deal with, which sure sounds like an adverb but I’m fairly sure it is not:

Hyperdactyly

Indeed it is a noun; an abnormality in mammals characterized by the presence of bonus fingers or toes above the usual count. Also known as polydactyly.

There is only one such human ever to come onto my radar and that’s the girl from John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids. This is easily my favourite Wyndham piece (which I haven’t read since high school) because it’s the most compelling type of plot I can imagine; one where the most vulnerable of heroes (children) are in essence pursued by an overwhelming force of evil and must struggle for their lives and well-being. It’s a story of great injustice and it tugged at my young heart of course.

Now the eleven-toed heroin eventually finds salvation. Sorry for the spoiler but that needed to be said in order to explore the lesser known sequel to the book: The Chrysalids 2: Jake the Cat, which is very factually based on a true story about a Canadian cat named Jake who is the most famous polydactyl cat in the world with a record-breaking 28 toes. Please note I’ve done the research and can verify Jake the Cat is real and indeed holds the world record for toes (distributed through all four paws by the way). Go ahead and look it up. He’s adorable by the way.

In Chrysalids Two this cat, whose extra-toed paws are so wide he can walk on the surface of water, leaves his home in Burnt Cove Newfoundland and strolls out across the Atlantic ocean. But as a sudden storm obscures his sight of the land he rushes in the wrong direction and is lost at sea.

He wanders for forty days and forty nights and meets some interesting creatures such as a whale named Jonah and a woman named Amelia who is just floating around in her damaged airplane, drinking absinthe and painting pictures of the clouds. He also meets a colony of teenage mutant zombie turtles who live on a floating island of plastic garbage and these scenes are particularly disturbing.

Eventually he arrives on the coast of Portugal in the town of Praia da Vagueira which is Portuguese for Fish on a fork. A local telephone repair woman spies Jake’s arrival and welcomes him and takes him to Father Pedro, telling the amazing story of the cat who walks on water. So Father Pedro asks Jake to walk across the village fountain and observing this miracle pronounces to the gathering crowd that this is Jesus returned in cat form. Quickly the entire village flocks to feline Jesus and worships him and congratulates themselves on being the chosen village in all the world and Jake has a great time. He’s eating the best tuna, drinking the best port and smoking the best cigarillos all day every day and submitting to selfies with all the villagers.

But when Archbishop Alfonso learns of this madness he declares the Vagueirians sinners for this false worship and declares Jake a terrible demon cat sent by Satan to deliver a lethal coronavirus to the doomed people of Portugal. A terrible civil war is fought for an afternoon which is swiftly ended when the Portuguese army riddles Praia da Vagueira with rockets. Jake and Father Pedro die in each others’ arms.

But the story does not end here. Redemption follows. The Canadian people having learned of this hideous tragedy demand action from their federal government. They demand retaliation.

Their leader, Justin Trudeau makes a speech which is heard by every man, woman, child, and cat in the country. The dogs were like, whatever…

Trudeau begged his people to remember that they “…are Canadians and as a proud Canadian it is your job to chill; to reap the lush rewards of lethal global first-world corruption so generously provided by the world’s great roster of slave countries and the lush material rewards of the terminally insane rape of the biosphere and to overlook the beguiling landscape of financial smoke and mirrors which transfers ninety per cent of our fabulous ill-gotten riches into the hands of my corporate sugar daddies and do not worry about the gathering storm or the fate of poor Jake. Jake will have eight more lives.”

But the people of Canada were angry because they didn’t understand a word he had said. He had said nothing about hockey or the weather or how polite we all are.

So the next day Trudeau was given a new speech to present in order to win back his favour. And he said, “Hear us, people of Portugal! We are Canadian and we will not have you molest our national cat hero, Jake the Many-Toed and expect us to take it sitting down! It is a dark dark day in the world, when a sweet and innocent feline freak can not take a moistly walk across the water to visit a NATO ally-”

But here he was interrupted as the nation fell apart in riotous laughter.

“Dude, did he just say moistly?”

“I think so! LMAO!”

“Who says moistly!”

“I don’t know Dude, but next hockey season better not be delayed or I’ll personally kill the fucker.”

“No doubt,”

And in the glee of this great comedy Jake was forgotten but his spirit lives on. And Trudeau, refusing to be rattled over the term moistly, hired the finest musicians in the land and he recorded the Moistly Song and he sang it with pride.

The end.

Now if this tale sounds far-fetched I assure you it is all true. And here’s the proof:

Get this Monopoly game over with!

Uh oh… running late. It’s four in the morning but I’m gonna call it Wednesday night!

The grounded, gracious, good-natured, green thumbed, friend of the biosphere; the Green Lady; Earth Writer has given us the good word and it is…

Games

I guess she wanted to go easy on me. I have a gargantuan heap of material on this subject. One of my premier hobbies is building board games. Many are variants of games already out there. Many are my own inventions. A couple are straight up rip-offs where it’s more affordable to produce my own version than to buy the product. That said, I do purchase games as often as I reasonably can. Their makers deserve their income but my personal game appetite far exceeds my budget.

My 30 or 40 creations tend to fall into a few different categories and I shall succinctly reveal one interesting category tonight and perhaps another later in A-to-Z month.

This category is the modernized version. There are old time board games out there which still have much to offer but bear badly outdated, undesired components by today’s high standards. The copyright holders have no impetus to replace their classic products and no one else has the legal permission to.

I however, don’t need to give a shit about the legal realm because I’m not selling anything. Some examples (the titles are working titles):

Masterpiece Pro

The old art auctioning game. The dynamics here are very flat and random and yet the game was popular and might still be?

In my version each player is both artist and collector and earns income buying and selling. You actually create little works of art which can be perfectly rudimentary and which are added to the game permanently so that the realm of possibilities grows the more times you play the game. There are specific game-bot collectors and galleries which come into the fold and affect the value of different pieces. The dynamics around value evolve from a combination of random factors and strategy.

Clue Millenium

Gone are the goofy rolls for movement. Each room is only one space away from its neighbours but the layout of the rooms and door placements makes every room slightly unique. There are nine suspects and nine weapons now. What? That will make the game too long! No, I don’t think so. The clue-gathering will happen much faster for a few reasons. I may include a strategy guide and advance “logic charts” which show the less experienced player how to more quickly isolate the secret cards.

Each character has their own unique combination of movement rate, number of starting clue cards and weapon status. Some players have to grab weapons on their way to their destination in order to call on it while others have the power to summon weapons to their current location. Thus there are three factors with each combination intended to sum up to equal overall advantage. So you choose your avatar based on the strategies you prefer.

Monopoly Village

No bartering or bargaining. No waiting forever to start building properties. This version will never be dragged out a long time.

There are villagers of various professions who gradually enter the game and are dragged about the board, sometimes helping, sometimes harming, the players who encounter them. There are many new dynamics. For instance, some hotel builds actually manifest institutions instead, which have their specific effects on those spaces. It’s a very different and fast-paced game.

Oh and when you are eliminated from the game: You may if you wish, return as a zombie! The zombies can not win the game but they can help to end it more quickly by killing off or converting the other players, so that you can more quickly move on to the next game at game night!

I’m looking forward to completing these “prototypes” and convincing pals to play-test them.

Bye for now!

Fiendish demons

Hey my fine feathered friends. We’re still at it over at the A to Z. And today the friendly, frugal, feminine, foofoo dog-friendly... Foreign Correspondent has forwarded the following word for us to fiddle with:

Flossing

Now it was many many years ago when I discovered the fabulous rewards of procrastination and ever since then I have continually made solid plans to one day visit a dentist again - who knows - maybe next month or definitely probably maybe next year at the outside. The biggest reward in this case is that I have not had to tolerate a masked monster or his evil minions (called hygienists) prying my mouth open and jabbing all my tenderest bits with sharp bloody instruments of torture - for years. Pretty nice really. And apparently when you’re an adult there are no police forcing you to go or fining you for not going. So yeah. Screw it.

I know I know. How could I not be all in for such an experience? Why am I not on the sidewalk in front of his office every six months just shaking with gleeful anticipation before they’ve even unlocked the door in the morning? Yeah I’m weird that way.

And another thing I haven’t had to do is mislead said monster and/or minion with regards to my flossing habits or future flossing habits or a complete and utter lack thereof. They know how to avoid the utter awkwardness around this. They wait until your face is stretched to hell and they’re rooting around in your mouth searching for the most delicate nerve within reach to gouge the hell out of when they ask you about your flossing and remind you to floss a little more often. This way the patient’s answer - whether it is “Oh yes, I love to floss and I can’t wait to get home and really have a good long session” or else, “Sorry I keep forgetting to do that. I’ll put a note in my calendar” or else “Go to hell you fiendish bloody demon. I’m going to follow you home and run your car off a cliff” it all sounds completely ambiguous. It all comes out “uiouoiyuiooaeeaeaeaiuiouoiuoaeeaeuouououogh” which they hear as “Yes Ma’am. I promise to do better.”

Now I don’t know if this is what Foreign Correspondent had in mind or if she was thinking of the “Backpack kid” who I learned about by youtube searching the word flossing:

This backpack kid is frankly amazing. For one: he has learned to survive with milk in his arteries instead of blood. (he’s pale… is what I’m saying.) And two: he devised this dance which he can perform to a 4/4 time signature though the dance - which is called flossing, I understand, has an awkward six-beat cycle, and yet appears natural and easy when he does it. He also does it SO FAST that people think it’s a sped-up video but it’s not. If my arm could move as fast as his I’d never leave the house…

(that joke works better in times of non-quarantine)

Anyway… I got up and tried the flossing dance and I’m sure I looked like a complete and utter idiot.

So yeah. The kid’s a star. Good on ya kid! Keep kicking ass.

Flossing. So there.

Eh? What’s that??

So the excellent, endearing, even-tempered but elusive Eczilon has been entrusted with the letter E and she has elected a word what looks like this:

Eurynome

What’s that, you ask?

I don’t know. But we’re going to find out together. We’re going to wing this. You’re going to watch me struggle. I’m okay with that. Ready? No? Me neither. So let’s start with Google:

Okay, she’s mythological. Cool. And there are videos too.

I think the third one is a red herring. Let’s look at the first one.

So she’s moving silently and super slowly. Is she a mermaid? She has no legs. Okay, no wonder she’s slow.

Wait. This is way too slow. Is she a snail maybe? Eurynome the Silent Snail. Lets check this first wikipedia link.

Okay, so she’s an Oceanid (that’s a mermaid, right?) and the third wife of Zeus. Wait. She was also… I’m reading… Queen of the Titans? What? And what’s this?

Those look like some important accounts she’s got there. So she’s a banker? I guess? That’s a lot of hats to wear for a snail. Something doesn’t seem right. Let’s see if there’s a disambiguation page... And… there is.

What the actual hell is this? This is way too many Eurynomes. Who am I supposed to - hang on. Excuse me! Excuse me!

Okay I’ve flagged one down.

Hi there! Are you a Eurynome?

Of course. Don’t be stupid.

I’m writing an article for - practically no one. Just entertaining myself really. May I ask you a few questions?

Certainly.

How do you properly pronounce your name?

Eurynome.

And... are you a wife of Zeus?

No.

Of Ophion then?

No.

Lycurgus of Arcadia?

No.

Do you have a husband at all?

No.

But you’re a mermaid.

No.

A snail?

No.

Can you tell me something about yourself? Anything?

I am the daughter of King Nisus of Megara and the mother of Bellerophan.

But you’re not married.

No. Poseidon is the baby-daddy. I also have a pair of horses named Fyre and Fury, a pet phoenix named Cinders and a cat named Mister Whiskermuffins. He’s really cute. He likes to lie on his back and kick himself in the chin.

That’s adorable. I like your robes. Where do you shop for clothes?

I have tailors and seamstresses. This piece is from my favourite designer. He’s an enchanted ferret who lives in my garden.

Do you like to garden?

Certainly not. Gardening is for plebes.

Do you have any hobbies then?

Yes of course. Many. Scrapbooking, martial arts, casting impertinent maids down the well, poisoning over-ambitious men, competitive eating. These are just the first things which come to mind.

Competitive eating? Like hot dogs? Really?

Don’t be ghastly. We don’t eat dogs in this court. This is plebe behavior. No, I’ve done pheasants. I ate two whole pheasants in one afternoon, which broke the record by one whole pheasant - what’s so funny? Why are you laughing?

Two? In an afternoon? That’s nothing. I ate twelve hot dogs, buns and all in like twenty minutes. And I only stopped because I ran out of hot dogs.

Well you’re an utter plebe then aren’t you?

Well…

Aren’t you?

Well…

Good day.

Wait, don’t go…!

Oh well. I tried.

Dance and Trance

Today’s direction was doled out by the dear, dependable, doting, devoted… Dog Whisperer! And she has determined that the dissertation of the day shall be:

Delirium

Which is a state of confusion which I tend to dabble in thanks to regular sleep deprivation. But I’ve written about that quite enough, thanks, so how about we fudge one letter:

Delerium!

That’s better. Now, back in high school some of my pals would talk about this new Canadian band, now referred to as “industrial dance pioneers,” called Skinny Puppy. I never once looked into them which in hind sight might be a mistake. One of Skinny Puppy’s premier regular guests was Austrian-born Canadian Wilhelm Anton “Bill” Leeb who is probably most famous as the founder of group Front Line Assembly.

But Bill Leeb is also the founder and constant component of a long evolution of partnerships who passed through blended phases of industrial, trance and dance  recording projects under the commercially successful brand Delerium.

Leeb and his Delerius partners have produced fifteen albums since 1989, more than a dozen charted singles, twenty music videos and two Juno awards; the last in 2000 for single Silence with vocals by Sarah McLachlan. It charted number three in the UK and number one in both Ireland and Scotland and it’s in pretty much every conversation about best trance songs of all time along with best dance songs of all time.

Rockin’ Roddie put me on to Delerium early in the millennium and I really dig them for all the same reasons I dig Enigma. Though I’ve never been a dance music guy they have many songs I just straight-up dig, and partly for the ambient ethereal qualities which have been a regular component through the decades, to varying degrees, and which makes all their music (like Enigma) very prone to the sci-fi, fantasy and mystical moods which make these two groups constant features on almost every writing project music playlist I ever throw together. I often write to music.

Here are some great lesser-known offerings from my fave albums if you wish to sample:

Consensual Worlds from Semantic Spaces, 1994

Tectonic Shift from Nuages Du Monde, 2006

Chrysalis Effort from Music Box Opera, 2012

And of course: One of at least 60 remixes of word-wide hit Silence with vocals by Sarah McLachlan:

Contractual Obligation

Hey hey! Today’s chapter was conceived by my clever, considerate, conservative, Christian, community-conscious creative, word-counting writing cohort… Chess Champ… and he has charged me with this topic:

The Cars.

But first! A confession. This article is a catastrophe! Not nearly concise enough! I allowed my dear comrade to dictate not just the topic but what he wanted me to do with it, and while his conditions were clever, it wasn’t quite right with regards to my experience with this particular group. I am advising you move on to D-Day! Unless you are a big Cars fan in which case… you might relate.

A good high-school buddy who lived down the road was a year older and the first of our gang to drive his own car; a compact Toyota Tercel which he zipped around town in as constantly as possible. Half the time he blasted the Doors’ Break On Through from the stereo and the rest of the time it was Let’s Go by the Cars. He was clearly making a public statement about his particular brand of coolness. A couple years later I got my own car and it was coincidentally the very same Toyota model but I was way too mature for such bombastic public broadcasting. And by that I mean my speakers were too small.

The exhilarating Let’s Go “double-edged anthem” (as described by critic Brett Milano), one of dear Ric Ocasek’s finest offerings, is the kind of epic that could rev an arena crowd into a frenzy. Personally it always brings me back to the summers of late adolescence where we were always revved up to fucking do something but with few places to actually go, and with those endeavors which could barely satisfy us being covertly plotted beneath the radar of our seemingly-clueless pain-the-butt parents.

But we survived. Our dear parents survived us, and with more than a little sadness, Ocasek has not. Though I suppose that 75 years is a pretty good run by rock star standards.

He wrote Let’s Go during the late seventies but in music-years it’s a solid eighties phenomenon and magnificently one of at least five Ocasek pop-rock or new wave masterpieces any of which, if attributed to any similar songwriter in pop history, might qualify as their best song ever written.

… In my humble opinion.

Bye Bye Love is another. Similarly anthemic, it was one of those giant songs I had to wait years to acquire while it spent some of that time at the very top of that list: that magical roster of songs which I don’t think that net-entwined youths of today have: songs you dearly wish to possess but which elude you and which prompt you to swiftly murder any loved-ones who dare open their mouth and distract you when it has suddenly, magically leapt from the radio and made your whole day.

The third of the giants is My Best Friends Girl, less frenzied but with an addictive goofy rockabilly twist. This was the piece which endeared me to the very cool but slightly nerdy and vulnerable Ocasek and the I’m gonna do whatever I want here, goofy-or-not and if you love it, fine! attitude which I perceive.

Cue 1984 and an impossible barrage of masterpiece pop and hard rock music albums including the Cars’ Heartbeat City, my apex of eighties new wave and one of my fave discs ever. It was produced by the the legendary Robert “Mutt” Lange who ran straight from its completion right into the production of Def Leppard’s epic album Hysteria!  

Here’s my Heartbeat City experience (are you still reading? I warned you not to!):

1. Hello Again: A simpler song perhaps, middle of the road by Cars standards, but the pounding energy, the rising call-and-answer, is a wake-up call. You’re in for an experience here! All my memories of this song revolve around the album itself and anticipating another full listen, perhaps with drumsticks in hand for air-drumming, likely the lights out and maybe even an illicit can of beer from my cleverly hidden cache: the bottom drawers of the basement fridge which, I found out years later, my folks knew about the whole time.

2. Looking For Love: Lyrically it’s the thematic epitome of this album’s tracks, though it might be the only perspective not in the first person (I can’t believe I noticed that. Are you finding this a torture yet?) Not one of the album’s highlights by any normal measure but a great tender, melodic tune according to my ears and a mighty big step up from the opener.

3. Magic: …And then, bang! Another huge step up, right to the top. This is, upon most recollections, my favourite Cars song ever. The chorus utterly soars and I dig the transition back to verse with the resounding straight-up guitar riffs. I am reminded of summer holidays (all these songs take me back to high school) with sunshine galore, no summer jobs yet, and no fucking school. For years I assumed this was the most popular Cars song ever and was shocked to find out years later that while it charted and proved an MTV darling, it didn’t even crack the top two of this album!

4. Drive: The Cars melodic masterpiece. A ballad. I assume this track charted highest. Deep and patient and every single word, note and moment delicious. Very oddly, it always takes me back to earlier summer vacations which happened well before this song was released. Weird, I know. I once sang this at Karaoke with a 20-year-old pal who glared at me when I sang “Nothin’s wrong differently in it’s last incantation, exactly right, the way Ben Orr (not Ocasek!) sang it. Later I left his body in the dumpster behind the pub. Wait! No I remember now. I let him live. I didn’t even mention it afterwards.

5. Stranger Eyes: Filler. But filler doesn’t get much better.

6. You Might Think: If I had to pick Ocasek’s epic six, instead of five, this would probably make it. It’s got all the hallmarks of the Cars best, charted second best after Drive, as far as I know and won MTV’s (first ever I believe) Video of the Year. So there.

7. It’s Not the Night: Hard rock filler like Stranger Eyes. And yet it hit 31 on the rock charts. Oh well. Beats me.

8. Why Can’t I Have You: Not as great or quite as slow as Drive but it’s a keeper. Melodic, tender, sincere, with the same harmonic diversity in the vocals and the electronics as the faster songs. The album’s fifth single but I don’t think it charted.

9. I Refuse: The rapid, jumping, simple track that pretty much every rock album reserves a spot for. But consistent with its peers in almost every way (Only Drive was a departure).

10. Heartbeat City: I know of very few albums besides this one, where this engaging whimsical title track couldn’t crack the top three. Musically this is the mystical magical track. It’s wondrous, wonderful and lyrically the deepest. All my memories of this track revolve around the act of deliberately absorbing the album, and its deeply satisfying conclusion.

Ee-gads. Am I done? Yep. I’m done. If you read the whole damn thing you win a prize. Something priceless like a pack of toilet paper.

The Brain

Hey hey, I’m back! Today’s bit is brought to you by the bright, bold, brave, brash, boastful, benign, bighearted (and bipedal)… brother of mine. And he has assigned the topic…

Blindness

One of the most fascinating bits of science documentary I ever absorbed was an experiment with regards to total blindness in individuals who suffered a dysfunction of the eye but whose visual cortex (in the brain) was intact, meaning they were equipped to interpret sight but not to gather the light to start with.

They were equipped with headgear featuring a camera, headphones and some software which performed this little trick:

The incoming video was converted into sound as follows: An array of musical notes played simultaneously at constant repeating intervals. Each tone referenced a row running across the video frame; the highest tone representing the top row; the lowest at the bottom. Each wave of sound in terms of its duration measured the row running left to right for each tone. The tone for a given column sounded softer or louder as it panned, in accordance to dark or light. Thus each brief wave of sounds referenced every (albeit course) pixel In the moving image. The sounds were delivered to the subject’s ears through the headphones.

And that’s it. There was no key; no primer; nothing to inform the brain what was being attempted.

The subjects would train by holding an apple in hand for instance, feeling the apple while their headgear camera filmed it.

Magnificently… amazingly… the brains of many of the subjects caught on. Using these devices the subjects gained rudimentary sight. They saw shapes and shadows.

Their brains made observations, recognized patterns and spontaneously put their visual cortex back to work. The brain assumed there was a problem that needed to be solved and of its own accord, it adapted in order to solve it.

These days they are working with neural implants instead of soundtracks to relay visual information but the science still has a long way to go in terms providing any rich degree of visual detail.

The original experiment, though, provides vital evidence that humanity has the capacity to evolve quickly, given the opportunity.

Augusta

Hey kids: Welcome to April A-to-Z blogging 2020. I’ve been farting around with this for a bunch of years, actually completing the entire challenge in 2015 with 26 must-read books, which may have been some of my most useful blogging ever. I followed that up in 2016 with 100 must-see films which I am very happy with - so far - and I still plan to complete this effort one day!

This year I have outsourced my topic assignments to my associates. Without further ado, I give you the amiable, affectionate, almost-altruistic, athletic and academically apt… Aqualad! And he has assigned the topic:

Albatross

The very prestigious invitational Masters golf tournament was first launched at Augusta National Golf Club which was built specifically for the occasion (as far as I understand), in 1934.

Craig Wood was a damn fine golfer in the day; though perhaps not as big as the threesome of Bobby Jones, Gene Sarazen and Walter Hagen for each of whom the Masters would prove fairly elusive.

Wood finished the inaugural tournament second only to Horton Smith at 2-under and 4-under par respectively.

Then in year-two of the gig, 1935, Craig Wood kicked ass, leading his nearest challenger by three strokes as he entered the clubhouse on the final day. That challenger was Gene Sarazen who was informed by playing mate Hagen that his chances “were dim” with four holes remaining.

“Oh you never know,” Sarazen is reported saying. “The ball can go in from anywhere.” He then hit a mighty drive on the 530-yard par-5 fifteenth hole, and then aggressively opted to go for the green in two. Today there is a plaque at that very spot, titled “the shot heard around the world.”

The long ambitious shot bounced, then landed on the green, then rolled… right into the cup.

The incredibly-rare three-under par shot suddenly tied him for the lead with Wood, who at that moment first coined the phrase “Are you fucking kidding me?” [not true that I know of].

Sarazen finished the round still tied and the two then played a 36-hole playoff (unheard of today) which Sarazen won decidedly.

The three under-par result is called a “double eagle” in America due, I assume, to some amazing American mathematician concluding that -2 (an eagle) multiplied by two is, not -4, but -3. Who knew? In the British Isles/UK/Great Britain/whatever such a feat is called an albatross. So there.

This feat gave Sarazen his only Masters victory and combined with previous PGA Championship, British and U.S. Open victories, gave him the very first Career Grand Slam status in golf history. That feat has only been replicated by Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.

Craig Wood, meanwhile, did not so much wear “an albatross around his neck” having finished runner-up twice, but more of a “monkey on his back.” Always the bridesmaid…  

This first phrase loosely refers to being haunted by something you are guilty of. It comes from lyrical ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in which an angry crew hangs a dead Albatross around the captain’s neck, believing the captain doomed them by killing this bird who had evolved to be a good, not a bad, omen. Or something like that.

But Wood would finally shake the monkey off in 1941, winning the Masters three strokes ahead of two-time Masters champ Byron Nelson.

See you tomorrow!