Do Not Throw PowerBook Mmmmkay

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Took the PowerBook into Apple Store to an “Apple Genius”… they say the dent and fractured AirPort is a “Tier 3” which gets us an estimated $900 repair bill.

That is a flat rate for anything involving replacing the case, and they don’t let you opt out of a case repair.

Since the new iBook with comparable capabilities is only a little more than that, I think we’re gonna go ahead and not do that.

My Sweet Satan

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Years ago someone told me that if you played Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven song backwards that you could make out “satanic messages”. It is not my opinion that Led Zeppelin was given the power to make these backwards sounds have a satanic message. And, no, I did not create this to show the evils of Rock and Roll. Instead I made this flash piece for two reasons: 1. I was new to flash and wanted to be better at it and 2. The backwards file sounds cool.

From the too-much-time-on-my-hands department:

The forwards lyrics:

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow
don’t be alarmed now
It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen
Yes there are two paths you can go by
but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on

What people heard in the reversed lyrics:

Oh here’s to my sweet Satan
The one whose little path would make me sad
Whose power is Satan
He’ll give you give you 666
There was a little toolshed where
He made us suffer, sad Satan

My mapping of reversed sounds to forwards lyrics:

heard ” Oh ” here’s to my sweet Satan
sounds naah ohrydoahruhtttth zhehhsh o’t mai(t) eeelss et’
mapped on you’re road the change to time still there’s
lyrics There’s still time to change the road you’re on

heard The one whose little path would make me sad
sounds Nrrr Ngone ethni tahb ohg naah’c eeyy sthap
mapped runlong the in but by go can you paths
lyrics paths you can go by
but in the long run

heard Whose power is Satan
sounds ooo t au rer esthsSay’
mapped two are there Yes
lyrics Yes there are two

heard He’ll give you give you 6 6 6
sounds Eyuuuh Qyih yaymeth orrthneac pssats uhst tsih
mapped Queen May the for clean spring a just It’s
lyrics It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen

heard There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer sad Satan
sounds awn d’ma laehb’d woolshdge’ yerr’er nih elst sub seretdhif’
mapped now alarmed be don’t hedgerow your in bustle there’s if
lyrics If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow
don’t be alarmed now

UPDATE 2005-05-15:
After just over a year, the original link is dead. I’ll update it here so people can still hear it backwards… so maybe you can actually listen to it before shooting your mouth off.

Other locations:

Someday when I feel even crazier I should do a phonetic transcription in the IPA… which I believe theoretically should be easier to reverse into something just as legible as the forwards version! -brainWeb link of note: My Sweet Satan
(At http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/stairway.php)

Cause Celeb

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Helen Fielding’s more serious romance. Her main character Rosie is a lot more together than Bridget, but her leading man Oliver is a lot more one-dimensional than Daniel from Bridget Jones’ Diary.

Rosie has a bad relationship with the manic-depressive Oliver, then throws herself into a relief effort in an Ethiopia-like country which is on the verge of famine. She then returns to grab a bunch of celebrities to do a sort of “Africa Aid” thing, and in the end they all learn a very special lesson.

The first half of the book is setup for the African portion (more on that later), but mainly Rosie’s experience being adopted as an accessory to Oliver, a well-connected television producer. All the celebrities know him, and she learns about dealing with “the Famous Club.” However, their antics aren’t as interesting or as depraved as say, Less Than Zero or even Glamorama, both by Bret Easton Ellis.

The second half is mostly the impending locust crisis. At this point the celebrities are more a gimmick and make me want to destroy my television. The celebrities are all slightly traumatized by the famine and by being in a third world country in general… but their “quirky” personalities makes them a constant annoynace. As in the Bridget Jones stories, there are quite a few social situations that could have been solved by raw violence.

I can’t really recommend this book. The crises in Africa are interesting but not very developed… and the celebrities are so lacking in any kind of development they are just not interesting at all. I don’t say this about many books, but Cause Celeb is a book that needed to be longer for what it seemed to be trying to accomplish.

0142000221

Honeymoon Day Four

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A quick shopping trip, lei lesson, snorkelling, and a dinner cruise.
We drove to Down to Earth this morning- we had to get Diane some oil for her insect bites. We have gone through about 10 different products trying to get her to stop itching, including I think benzocaine(?!), ammonia, and hydrocortizone.

We eventually heard about Tumanu Oil (courtesy of Newchapter), which you can get at Down to Earth, Maui’s flaky organic food food mart. In other words, if we lived here, the place we would get all our groceries. The oil did the trick, and I picked up some wacky drinks for myself… including bottled kombucha, which was a trip.

I can’t decide whether I like kombucha or not. It sort of tastes like a oolong tea soda, with vinegar in it.

We had a quick lei-making lesson. Basically you just have a 6 inch needle and run a string straight through the center of the flowers. We made leis for our mothers; I hope they survive the trip and the fridge until Sunday (Mother’s Day). We got free drink coupons so tonight is THE NIGHT WOOOOO.

Did some more snorkelling in the lagoon at the resort. I took a bunch of underwater photos; I hope they come out. I really should have taken them yesterday when it was clearer!

We had a cocktail cruise, which I thought was going to be a lot more formal than it was- good thing we didn’t wear formal wear! We basically just took the boat out and drank mai tais. This turned out to also be produced by the Pacific Whale Foundation, although we didn’t get any propaganda this time.

Although the cruise wasn’t what I was expecting, it was still pretty cool- the boat had a sort of trampoline for the front, so you could sit and look below at the blue water. Awesome.

Actually the best part was the guitar player “Nathan.” He was this burned-looking Hawaiian guy with a headset mic and a mullet, with giant sunglasses and a constant patter. He really didn’t give a damn if anyone was listening or not; he just did his show.

We were speculating how the Minnow could possibly have gotten lost, considering they were going out for “a three hour tour” which means only an hour and a half out, and then an hour and a half back… and on both our trips we had around an hour of travel and never got to a point where Maui did not dominate the horizon. We decided that we were Ginger and the Professor, and the rest of these fools could stay on the island, but we were going to take Nathan and get back to Maui.

Afterwards, Diane treated me to dinner at the resort. You know all those wacky tropical “Specialty” drinks you see at the hotel but are too cheap to buy? We tried a bunch of them; our coupons came in pretty handy.

Tonight there were some major gecko sightings- 8 on the way back to our room from the resort restaurant.

Style Network is very scary. There is a show called the Brini Maxwell Show which I thought was a joke at first.

Honeymoon Day Three

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Mainly a spa day- I had promised Diane I would treat for some serious spa action, and today was the day.

I did some putting (there are two putting greens at our resort!) and then we went to a Luau.

I tried to force poi on our table mates, who were from Utah and own two “Taco Time” franchises. Jeff and Steph. I had never heard of Taco Time. I guess we all learned something!

Things to look for in a luau:

  • How many guests will be there – less is better
  • how close guests get to the pig- I prefer the luaus where you are actually around the pig when they pull it out of the ground
  • if there is a stage, etc- are they really cooking the pig in the ground? I think that adds to the experience
  • I also prefer grass and enclosures to an established stage, incidentally
  • What else is on the menu. I think every luau should have poi and lomi salmon!
  • How many drinks you get
  • Whether they will have all-flower leis for everyone or not. Usually the answer is “not”- the men get small shell leis, the ladies get leaf leis with some flowers in them
  • fire dancing – some don’t have this. After years of Burning Man, I don’t really care either way, but this is a big deal for some people

I bought real sunglasses- Oakleys. I have never owned non-dimestore sunglasses before, and I have to say these are pretty nice. They perch on my face just right, only touching the bridge of my nose and the tips of my ears. They have rubber ends and springs to keep you from bending them out of shape if you yank them off sideways or just have a wide face.

Honeymoon Day Two

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Today we took a snorkeling trip run by the Pacific Whale Foundation, then did a bunch of random lounging and ate at Longhi’s in Lahaina.
Things to ask about your snorkel trip:

  • how big is the boat (for seasickness issues)
  • how many people will be on the boat (less is better)
  • how long each stop will be (longer is better)
  • where the stops will be

We tried to get to Molokini but alas, the water was too rough and cloudy. Next time for sure!

I had really forgotten how much I love snorkeling in the open ocean- it was liberating to break away from the surface and swim free in the middle of schools of fish. I definitely appreciate the check valves on the bottom of modern snorkels too… they didn’t have those last time I went snorkeling in… uhm… the late 1980s.

It was really funny watching the masses of snorkellers paddling out to various areas- they mostly had those bright orange floating noodles tucked in front of them, so there were all these noodle ends sticking out of the water like giant insect parts.

We saw a spot the guides called “coconut” and another called “turtle cleaning station” where the sea turtles would go to meet the fish that eat algae off their shells.

Our trip was produced by the Pacific Whale Foundation, and all the guides had a bachelor’s degree in some sort of Life Science. At one point on the way back, one of the guides started geeking out about a cancer the sea turtles have been getting recently, and breeding habits of the humpback whales. It was kind of like being at a dinner in Berkeley.

I could swear I saw a gecko on the wall with two tails. Just the tip. Maybe it was a mutant. Or a house god of some sort.

I sure am getting sick of eating resort food. It’s all the same. Maybe I am spoiled by living in the San Francisco Bay Area™, but I need a little variety. What happened to all the Hawaiian food I remember from the last time I was in Maui? Where is my lomi salmon, shredded pork, poi, spam musubi, and random Japanese pickles? After a few days I still couldn’t find any… So I finally called my mom and found out where we were getting all that stuff. It turns out we got most of it from small restaurants away from the resorts in Kihei, like “The Kitchen,” places which serve “plate lunch.” I eventually found lomi salmon in the grocery store.

There is a supermarket called Star Markets, but every time we drive past it we misread it as “Stan Market.” So now we just call it “Stan’s.” Stan’s is a little overpriced, it turns out. Napili Market was much cheaper.

I found my jam- it’s called Poha jam. Named for the Poha berry it is made from. I still have no idea what a poha berry looks like, but it has a lot of seeds apparently.

Diane has so many mosquito bites she looks like she has polka dots. 30+. Gah. We need some repellant with DEET in it- somehow ours is defective.