If A Tree Falls In The Woods...

I read an article today that absolutely fascinated me. I'm fascinated with history, archaeology, anthropology...all that stuff.

Even though this article is accessible online, I read it in the hard-copy version of The Chronicle, while I was on the can at work today. More info than you need, I know.

There was something interesting that appeared, quite prominently, as a pull quote for the article:

Indeed, it is known that in 1857, a French scientist named Leon Scott invented a proto-phonograph that recorded, but could not play back, sounds.

I thought for a second that I was reading a story by Jorge Luis Borges.

From The Great Beyond...A "Whatever"

ennui:
Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest; boredom.

Lunchtime at work is pretty boring. Three or four of us find our way upstairs to a parts room/customer lounge, grab our lunches, microwave them, and then plunk our asses in front of the television or computer. I'm usually in front of the computer, and my co-workers, Pete and Harry, usually watch TV in the same space.

Harry and Pete usually tune into the local Noon News. Harry and I have tried to convince Pete that Charlie Rose is a good show to watch. Pete is of the opinion that Charlie Rose is one of those Sundayesque talking-head political shows like "Washington Week," or "This Week." He writes it off, as he does all of those Sunday shows, as bullshit. Charlie Rose doesn't help Harry or me in our effort to convince Pete. If we turn on Charlie Rose in order to show Pete that the show is more than just politics, Charlie, by pure, dumb coincidence, will have a politician on. "See," Pete says when this happens, quite satisfied that he's right, "it's all BOOLshit." Pete has a heavy Chinese accent, and when he says "BOOLshit," it sounds like he's mooing the "Bull" part up from the bottom of his colon. This lends a certain gravity to his opinion, and Harry and I have, for the most part, stopped trying to convince him that Charlie Rose is an okay guy.

Actually, I have my own issue with Charlie. I think that the lighting and camera angles in his studio make him look like he's straining stool. Part of it is that he bends over and stares at his guests intensely, but part of it is his set design. Anyhow, back to lunch.

Harry and Pete don't often catch the top of the news. They usually catch the local stories, the sports and the weather. They're both fairly free with their tongues, and their commentary can be charged, especially when they do happen to catch the top of the news. Harry, a Viet Nam Veteran, becomes emotionally super-charged when news of Iraq comes up. Pete, a naturalized citizen, born in Mainland China, will often add his two cents about stories having to do with business crooks, murderers and crooked politicians. One of Pete's favorite anecdotes is one about how, "in China, if someone is sentenced to die, that's it. They take that person outside the courtroom and shoot him. Then they bill the family for the bullets."

He tells that story a lot. Sometimes I think that story would make a good premise for a TV show. "Extreme Justice." It would combine the whole "extreme sport" fad with peoples' penchant for courtroom television shows, à la Judge Judy. Maybe you could add a "Price Is Right" aspect to the show if you had family members of the condemned play silly games like "Plinko" to reduce the number of bullets the firing squad got to use. If you added celebrities to the mix, you might really score a hit. Martha Stewart just lost an appeal, and now she's looking at sentencing. On "Extreme Justice," she'd be bound in the stocks, and painted a soothing pastel green. She'd be forced to repeat "Obstruction of justice, it's a bad thing," until she became haggard and hoarse.

Speaking of celebrities and justice, the show that comes up after the Noon News is called Celebrity Justice. Fancy that coincidence! The show highlights the legal troubles of various celebrities. As you can imagine, Michael Jackson, Robert Blake and Kobe Bryant are frequent subjects on the show. They seem to be the poster children for bad, bad celebrities these days. I personally prefer the half-assed stories like Diana Ross' DUI, or Jack Nicholson's golf club fiasco.

Courtney Love's continued woes are what I'm talkin' 'bout here, although I must say that I feel really terribly for Frances Bean Cobain. Curt, I say this sans irony, and after repeated sightings of your former wife on Celebrity Justice--you...are in a better place now.

Since we're talking to the dead, I might as well tell you about the show that follows Celebrity Justice. Ironically enough, it's a show about talking to the dead! Will the ironies never cease! The show is called Crossing Over. Crossing Over is a show that features a studio audience and a psychic medium. John Edward is his name, and talkin' to the dead is his game. And what a game it is! John is a pudgy thirty- or forty- something east coast psychic who bears a striking resemblance to Billy Joel.

The whole gist of Crossing Over is that John Edward, psychic, receives messages from the dead relatives of specific audience members, and relays the messages to those people. He often starts his spiel with a vague "feeling"--"I'm picking up an "E". Does someone in this section of the audience (points to a section of the audience) have a relative with an "E" in his or her name?" From that point on, he homes in on a few audience members and tells those gullible souls that he's in touch with a loved one. The people sit, stunned, nodding and wide-eyed, as John explains to Mabel, from Connecticut, that her father on the "other side" has some unfinished business in the realm of the living. The people love it. John works them like a bunch of underpaid day-laborers.

I don't buy it. I don't believe that anyone can "pick up" specific messages from dead people. I'm not saying that I don't believe in spirits or dead people "crossing over." I'm just saying that, with all the dead people in the world, there are a lot of spirits saying a lot of things. And they're all talking a lot of different languages. See, in my mind, spirit chatter is a lot like listening to a short-wave radio. You're going to pick up everything from BBC Radio One, to some guy speaking in a language that you can't even recognize as a language. And not everything they're saying on short wave has any meaning or import. Same goes with spirits.

Let's say that someone could pick up a spirit chattering away in Russian. That's the spirit of a guy who used to live in a Brighton Beach Co-op. He recently died, but he needs to make it clear to anyone who will listen, that he left his oven on when he had his heart attack. Somebody, for the love of God, turn off his oven. The electric bill is going to be a Doozie!

That's the kind of stuff I imagine floating through the spirit chat-world.

And actually, I've been thinking about how you and I, ordinary people, with no particular psychic ability, can access this spirit chatter. I've created the Ennuija Board.

Communicate with the spirits in Purgatory!

Ask them your burning questions: "Ennuija Board, great, mysterious and indifferent! Guide me. Tell me what I should have for dinner tonight."

Look it's saying something:
L-E-F-T-O-

"Leftovers!"

Where the standard Ouija Board has a YES or a NO, the Ennuija Board has a WHATEVER and a SO? The graphics on the Ennuija Board are simple. There are pictures of a bejeweled, turbaned swami either shrugging or yawning. This is what the spirit world really has to offer us. Indifference, petty concerns, an eternity of boredom and disaffection. The Ennuija Board, simply put, is your vehicle for tapping into that.

So, does anyone want to talk to Curt Cobain?

Old Hippies Don't Die, They Just--Wait A Sec...What Do They Do?

Here's the tame beginning of something that just started to get carried away and out-of-hand:

There's something about aged hippies that makes me a little queasy.

When I talk about aged hippies, I'm not talking about my parents or my friends' parents or my parents’ friends. My parents and their ilk are the hippies who "did their thing" back in The Day, and then decided that they actually wanted to get on and earn a living or contribute to society in one form or another. They used to look like Janis Joplin or Eric Clapton (back in his Cream days) but now they're lawyers or teachers or nurses or social workers. They're over 30 now, into their fifties, and they've long since found that people over 30 are just about the only people they can trust these days.

They are the hippies of yore who will smile and nod their heads and say "yeah, I remember seeing The Doors at Winterland." Unconsciously, they’ll continue, “yeah…man, I remember it….” They’ll start to tell you about the show, but then they'll pause for a second. You can tell that they don't mean to pause, but they do. That one second pause lingers, turning into a five second pause, while they're transported back 37 years. When you watch them, you can almost see the memories of marijuana and protest and psychedelic music orbiting their heads like stars orbiting the heads of cartoon characters who've had an Acme anvil dropped on them. The hippy parents are in the Fifth Dimension; they’re Eight Miles High, flashing back to paisly and fringed leather jackets, and headbands and sillyserious talk of The Revoloution.

These are the hippie parents who tried to raise their kids on whole grains and banana chips and raisins, but eventually just gave up because, let's face it, when the kids vote, they vote the Oreo Cookie ticket, across the board. These are the good aged hippies, the ones who survived and stowed the goodness and idealism of their generation in their hearts and carried it with them into the present.