From the news:
Hip-Hop Celebrates Pioneers Like LL Cool J09/23/2005 2:22 PM, AP
Nekesa Mumbi MoodyLL Cool J wore his Kangol hat, Big Daddy Kane broke out the old-school rhymes and dance moves, and Salt ‘N Pepa rapped and sashayed like back in the day as VH1 celebrated rap’s pioneers at the second annual “Hip-Hop Honors.”
…and somewhere Kool Moe Dee is, no doubt, pissed!
Years ago, living in Chattanooga, my house was invaded by Starlings. They found a hole in the eave and built a nest, essentially in my bathroom ceiling. You know how they say “the early bird gets the worm”? Well, I do not want the worm, nor do I get up early, unless I’m going fishing or something, in which case I will gladly purchase the worms from the ‘early bird’. Unfortunately, my little avian invaders and I weren’t on the same page in this regard. They were definately early risers, and noisy little buggers to boot.
I tried ignoring them, I tried chasing them away, finally they pushed me beyond rational thought and I went to K-mart, bought a pellet gun, hunted them down, and killed them (then returned the pellet gun for a refund… take that, K-mart!)
Now, if these had been Robins, Cardinals, Wrens or any other of a multitude of ‘good’ birds, I would have called whoever you call about such things and tried to have them relocated.
But they weren’t, they were Starlings! Introduced, non-native avian vermin pushing out the native songbirds, looking ugly and making way too much noise.
Anyway, I’m telling you that story to set up this story, from Chattanoogan.com:
Grape Attacks On Starlings Begins Monday Evening
posted September 9, 2005The attack on swarms of starlings in downtown Chattanooga begins next Monday evening, City Forester Gene Hyde said.
Continuing for three straight nights, the city of Chattanooga will be using the services of a company called “Flockfighters” which specializes in dispersing populations of nuisance birds. The goal is to try to persuade the starlings to find new roosting sites away from sensitive downtown locations, it was stated.
For approximately 30 minutes each night around dusk Flockfighters will be fogging selected starlings roosts with a food grade ingredient which is derived from Concord grapes. This material persuades the birds to leave the area. The effects are temporary and felt only by birds. Humans and other mammals may detect a pleasant grape scent but are not otherwise affected, officials said.
Because the small fogging machines are quite loud, the city will divert pedestrian traffic around the treatment areas for the 30 minutes these machines are in use.
Fogging operations will be conducted in the following areas:
1. The intersection of Broad and Second Streets.
2. The 1200 block of Market Street.
I’m curious to see how well this works. Although, somehow I don’t think I would have derived the same sick pleasure from spraying the little bastards with grape juice that I did from shooting them. But that’s just me. Plus when you’re dealing with tens or even hundreds of thousands; well, that’s just too much shooting.
I’m stealing borrowing this story from PW Fenton, who posted it to the Blues-L mailing list several years ago.
I was at Skipper’s Smokehouse during late January. It was one of those rare nights during the Tampa winter when it was actually cold. I was dressed in a coat, and wore thick gloves. Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, performing on stage, stopped between songs to cup his pipe in his hands and draw in hard to create some warmth for his fingers.
Despite the cold, he played like the guitar master that he is. During the break after the first of two sets, I went over to this blazing bonfire that the management had started in an effort to thaw the audience. As I stood there enraptured by the soothing heat on my frozen face, who should walk up and stand beside me but “Gatemouth” himself. As he held out his hands toward the flames we made small talk about the unusual Florida weather. Gatemouth confided that he had to take a leak badly and asked for directions to the men’s room. I offered that since I had to go as well, I would lead the way.
We made our way into the empty bathroom, which at that time was a rather crude affair. It had one long tub at which 4 or 5 men could stand and urinate at the same time. We walked up to it, unzipped, and began the business at hand. At almost the same time, a young audience member walked up to the trough on the opposite side of “Gate”. After a few seconds he realized he was standing next to one of the great figures in Blues, and said, “Oh Mr. Brown, I just want to say how great you are. I can’t believe it. You make it look so easy.”
Gatemouth, looking down at the business at hand, replied instantly,
“Shit man, I just point the thing, the piss comes out all by itself”.
This is an absolutely true story.
You can read my own, much less funny story about Gatemouth here.
So, the other day I was blogging about my satisfaction with WD’s customer service, right? Well, as Paul Harvey would say, here’s the rest of the story.
They shipped the replacement via UPS second day air, it arrived on time and I happily prepared to install the new drive. One little problem, though. They had shipped me the wrong drive! This was immediately apparent, the replacement drive was a WD1600JB (EIDE interface); the drive it was replacing was a WD1600JS (SATA-II interface). After a bit of handwringing and grumbling, I called their customer service folks to inform them of the error. The girl I spoke with had a peculiar cadence and lilt to her voice that I found very difficult to understand (though nothing like the poor stuttering engineer from ATI I got tech support from a few years ago!), so I hung up not exactly sure what she had said, other than that they would email me a return shipping label and another drive would be on its way. A couple of days passed, no packages arrived, and the RMA information page on their website was still only showing the original shipment, so I called again. Amazingly, this time I got the same technician I had spoken with the first time, Grant. He seemed as mystified as I was that the drive hadn’t been shipped yet, made sure I had gotten the return shipping label, and assured me that the correct drive would be on its way immediately. It was, it arrived promptly 2 business days after finally being shipped, and so far it’s working just fine.
So, Western Digital has been downgraded from an enthusiastic “Crazy Greg’s Seal of Approval” to a qualified “CGSOA”.
And now you know the rest of the story.
From the AP:
Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown , the singer and guitarist who built a 50-year career playing blues, country, jazz and Cajun music, died Saturday in his hometown of Orange, where he had gone to escape Hurricane Katrina. He was 81.
So, I was watching old re-runs of SCTV on TV Land tonight. During the closing credits there was one that really caught my eye:
Wigmaster!
That’s right, there’s a person whose actual job title is “Wigmaster”. I wonder how one goes about pursuing a career in the hair-piece sciences? That seems like a job I could do, plus, everyone could call me “Wigmaster G”. That would be pretty cool.
Yep.