Guitar Store Attitude - "What's a Five String Bass For?"

I don't think that there is any place on earth that is more full of unspoken dismissiveness and 'tude than a store that specializes in electric guitars.* The guys working there tend to be mad that their band isn't more famous, and as a result, the more they actually know about guitars, the more it makes them resent other people who play guitars. This might not apply to you, if you work at a guitar store and happen to be reading this. But I'm going to go ahead and bet that you know what I'm talking about. Anyway...

I don't go to guitar stores very often, but yesterday I went to a local independently-owned guitar shop with a friend of mine. He was buying guitar strings, and I picked up an acoustic and thought to myself "What can I play that these guys aren't totally sick of?" Then it hit me, the beginning of "Happy Days" by Jim O'Rourke. For those of you who don't know, it's just one note (the lowest note on a guitar), and then another note, an octave higher, back and forth, over and over again, played at a kind of dirge-like pace for about four minutes. It's quite a sinister sound, let me tell you. This guitar part is not hard to play. It's completely delusional to think that I was impressing anybody with this riff, except perhaps only if I was impressing them with my great taste. They probably hated it.

He got done buying the strings, and then I put the guitar down, and we went in the back of the shop to look at the electric guitars for sale. We got to the bass guitars, and just then the same guy that rang up my buddy for the guitar strings, he asks us if he can help us with anything, or maybe he asked if we had any questions about anything, because seemingly out of nowhere, this comes out of my mouth:

Me: What's a five-string bass for?
(the guy's like... Is this actually happening? Does this guy actually not know what the fifth string on a five-string does?)
Him: It has lower notes.
Me: How many?

He just looked at me like I was from another planet. I just looked at him. I tried as hard as I could to keep a straight face, and I held out for what felt like an eternity. Then I just laughed and said I was just playing. He looked really pissed. I don't think I will ever be able to go there again. Oh well.

Just in case you were wondering about the answer to my second question, the answer is five. There are five additional lower notes that you can play on a five-string that you can't get on a regular four-string bass. Dare I say it? - When you think of it that way, it kind of almost makes that fifth string seem not even really worth it.


*Except maybe the Apple Store.

The Joys of Knowing Nathan Cook

Day at the Zoo

Chillin' with my dogs.
And a baby.
More important:

Noogin' B.G.

Untapped Humor Potential

You know how sometimes you can go through life not noticing that something is totally hilarious?

It never occurred to me that the Japanese word for "mouth" is hilarious to Americans. Today, I was teaching my Upward Bound students parts of the body, and when we got to mouth, they just lost it. The word is kuchi. Yep, it's pronounced like that. I just looked at the chalkboard and thought "Oh yeah, that's a lot like cootchie." Or however that word is spelled.

Then I really did something awkward. I said "Well, you shouldn't have any trouble remembering that one then" meaning that the absurdity of the mouth/cootchie connection plus the sheer cognitive weight of the word "cootchie" should cement it in their memories. But they were all like "Uh, what's that supposed to mean?!" At that point, I realized I had no way of recovering, and probably switched into some awkward form of damage control.

They also really got a kick out of the word ashi which isn't actually pronounced like "ashy" but they kept saying it like that and laughing anyway. I don't fully get the "ashy" thing, maybe I should look it up on Urban Dictionary or something.

OK. Now I get it. Ashy. Who knew dry skin could be such a big deal.

Large, Very Public TV Watching

On the corner of Kirkwood and College there is a swank second-story apartment above Talbot's with a very large, modern TV that is often very visible from the street as I walk home. Whoever lives there is probably male, since "dude sports" seem make a large portion of this person's TV viewing. I mean, I suppose it could be one of those fake women who exist only in TV commercials who are both totally hot and love to watch football just like dudes do. But I really don't think so. Sure, there are women who watch sports. But not like that. It's a weird fantasy though, someone who acts just like you, except she has long blonde hair, boobs, and vagina.

Anyway, it's not always just sports on the huge TV at this apartment. Sometimes it's bad reality TV (wait, is there any other kind?), sometimes it's action movies. Thing is though, everytime I walk past, I think that if I lived there, I wouldn't put the TV in a place where it was so visible from the outside. Nobody needs to see that I happen to be watching Rock of Love because nothing else is on. Nobody needs to see me watching whimsical documentaries about various types eccentric people (my favorite genre). Good or bad, I'd just be a tad weirded out by it.

This guy though, he probably thinks it's awesome. He wants people to see his awesome TV and he wants people to think he is awesome. He wants them to wish that they could hang out at his expensive apartment. BUT Y'KNOW WHAT? That's cool, because he is just playing his role in the symboitic relationship between people who think they are cool/hooked up and people who think they are smart/creative. Neither of the two could exist without the other.

He gets his awesome TV, I get something to blog about. Everyone is happy.

I'm a Bad Plastic Surgeon

More Googlegänger fun. I'm a (sometimes) bad plastic surgeon in Amarillo, TX. [via]:

I had plastic surgery done by this doctor. He left me dented in quite a few places. I recommend using someone else in Amarillo if considering plastic surgery. Michael Dixon did not do as he promised. He said he would do whatever it took to make me happy and he did not. He tried to fix the bad surgery but it was even worse after the second time. He wanted to try again but I refused. He also did a breast aug at the same time and it was not the correcft size I had asked for. He offered me a very small refund if I would sign a paper holding him NOT responsible for the damage but I refused.

Here we have another buster out to ruin the good Mike Dixon name. Dude, stop messing up people's faces and breasts. It's bad for the 'gänger community as a whole.

The Milk's Shaped Wrong! Waaaaaa!

Ain't that America... From the NYT, emphasis by yours truly:

“When we brought in the new milk, we were asking for feedback,” said Heather Mayo, vice president for merchandising at Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart. “And they’re saying, ‘Why’s it in a square jug? Why’s it different? I want the same milk. What happened to my old milk?’ ”

Mary Tilton tried to educate the public a few days ago as she stood at a Sam’s Club in North Canton, about 50 miles south of Cleveland, luring shoppers with chocolate chip cookies and milk as she showed them how to pour from the new jugs.

“Just tilt it slowly and pour slowly,” Ms. Tilton said to passing customers as she talked about the jugs’ environmental benefits and cost savings. Instead of picking up the jug, as most people tend to do, she kept it on a table and gently tipped it toward a cup.

Mike Compston, who owns a dairy in Yerington, Nev., described the pouring technique in a telephone interview as a “rock-and-pour instead of a lift-and-tip.”

Demonstrations are but one of several ways Sam’s Club is advocating the containers. Signs in the aisle laud their cost savings and “better fridge fit.”

Sometimes a Monkey is Just a Monkey

I don't usually write about politics, but I really think this is interesting. The blogosphere has been up in arms about a Japanese cell phone commercial featuring a monkey that co-opts Barack Obama's campaign of "change." Check it:



Sure, the initial reaction to that should be "Yikes, an ad relating Barack Obama to a monkey?" But it's not actually that simple. First off, the company uses the same monkey as its mascot in other ads. Second, people like Barack Obama in Japan, and so using his "change" campaign is a natural connection. And third, and most importantly, Japan does not have a history of associating black people with monkeys. They don't have a history of associating black people with any kind of animal, simply because they don't really have much of a history with black people at all.

Yes, of course, it is an unfortunate pairing of innuendos, but I mean, c'mon. Not racist.

I guess what is offensive about all of the sensationalist blog/media coverage of this commercial is this: America, being a country that once did very screwed up things in relation to black people and the way that they were depicted, finds it in its heart to try so hard to rectify their past depiction of blacks as monkeys that they seek to remove even accidental depiction of blacks as monkeys in a commercial made in a culture that does not hold any association with blacks and monkeys. Monkeys mean something different in Japan, something that has nothing to do with black people.

All of this offense at the ad comes from the presumptuous standpoint that America's standards of political correctness (standards which are an awkward attempt to somehow magically right the past wrongdoings of the nation) are the basis by which all culture everywhere should be judged. But why judge this commercial? Why take offense when there is no offense intended and nobody who the commercial was intended for would even make the connection?

Congratulations to Japan, for not having a culture in which black people were at one point depicted as monkeys. Want to talk about real racism in Japan? Let's talk about their treatment of Chinese and Koreans. Sorry it's not as sensational or bizarre, easy, or interesting as a commercial that uses a monkey to imitate an Obama campaign. The American media's response to this is just kind of whiney and a waste of political resources. This is not real racism, and it does nothing for the cause of equality to police culture in this witch-hunt sort of way.

I think this entitled, crybaby for the sake of crying attitude is summed up by CNN's coverage of this scuttle:



So, to the English-speakers living in Japan in the CNN video, I can't help but just think about all the other things that are worthy of real activism. Statements like "People's minds should be more open as world citizens" really just imply that the rest of the world should somehow magically be more familiar with the intricacies of the U.S.'s oppressive history. It's culturally egocentric and seems to be narrow-mindedly searching for offense when any sort of background knowledge about the culture of Japan or the company that made this commercial would prove that offensive behavior is absent.

Also, not to be a dick, but saying "It was totally insensitive to the cross-cultural faux-pas that it represented" is pretty much circular and meaningless. A faux-pas is exactly that, an insensitivity or mistake that is not at first perceived by the person who has done it. Why would you be sensitive to it? What this sentence really means: "It is a faux-pas." And that's fine. Faux pas? Definitely. Racist? C'mooooonnn.

And to the dude from Temple: Puh-leez. Santa's reindeer are probably incredibly offensive to someone somewhere, but Christmas will continue to be unoffensive. Because it's part of the "international canon," which what you really mean is the Western discourse. It's basically like saying this: "Note to the world: You are now subject to the US's arbitrary, post-hoc rules of eracism. We won't tell you what is offensive, because it's embarrassing. But when it's wrong, we'll be sure and make a huge deal about it."

The company's mascot is a monkey. Nobody in Japan linked it to Obama. The ad could not conceivably be created out of malicious intent, so being offense toward this ad is completely misdirected.

Unlike the U.S., Japan's economic success is not founded on the forced labor of African slaves. So let them enjoy their monkeys. Seriously. Come. On.


p.s.
Someone agrees with me, sort of.

p.p.s.
ALL THIS HYPE DISTRACTS FROM WHAT THE AD IS ACTUALLY TELLING US: THEY HAVE A CELL PLAN THAT LETS YOU TALK ALL YOU WANT FOR $20 A MONTH. THAT IS A RIDICULOUSLY GOOD DEAL!!!!

Oh, City Life

And now, a return to form with a late-night blog entry. Here goes:

What a weird week it has been! When my friend Jerry Atwood was in high school, his senior year they decided to get senior shirts made that said "What a long, strange trip it has been," you know, like the Grateful Dead thing. Anyway, he didn't like this idea, and wrote a letter to the school newspaper. Long story short, he was suspended for bring a stun gun to school because he was afraid that a bunch of jocks were going to beat him up. To hear him tell this story is a real treat.

Some moments just feel totally cosmic. Not like it's always a good thing, but that the balances of the universe have evened out, and you get what you have coming to you, good or bad. Let me explain:

The day after my birthday, I went to Indianapolis to meet my parents at an Italian restaurant downtown. My aunt Helen was there and so was Grandpa Dixon. My dad had just returned from Brazil, and he was going to be traveling with Helen and Grandpa to a family reunion in New Hampshire. Grandpa got to talking about how he had met Doris, my grandmother, and he said that when he first met her, he thought that he didn't stand a chance against all the other guys who were vying for her attention, but that for some reason he just decided to go for it, and the rest is history. The cosmic alliteration of Dwight and Doris Dixon was sufficient, and they found it in themselves to not pass this tradition of alliteration to all of their children, (although now that I think about it, it may have seemed like they were headed down that path at first, because their first child was named Deanna).

Grandpa is quite hard of hearing at his age, and speaks quite loudly. As he was telling his story (and his voice was carrying), I wondered if the people sitting in the neighboring booths were listening in on what he was saying as well. "Is it possible that they are finding this interesting at all?" Would I want to listen to the stories of someone else's grandpa? In my heart, I want to say yes, but I really can't be sure. What if that person's grandpa was Noam Chomsky? Is James Lipton a grandpa? These are things that I wonder. I really do not like James Lipton. I bet he is a creepy grandpa.

On the way home from this restaurant, I ran out of gas. I walked about .5 miles to buy a gas can and fill it up. My state of mind as I made that walk was one I will never forget. As I walked slowly and cars whizzed by so fast, I couldn't help but think that it was my own negligence that had landed me in this predicament. "E" means empty. Don't think you know how much further below "E" it's supposed to go. I had put off getting gas, and now it had come back to get me. I had really been "nipped in the butt."* <- more on this below! At the gas station, the woman at the counter said that they had been selling more gas cans than they ever had before. She said "It might be expensive, but that doesn't mean you don't still have to fill your car up." All throughout high school, the notion of ending up a gas station attendant was thrown around by teachers as a threat for those who didn't take school seriously. "Sure, you can drop out of high school, if you don't mind working at a gas station for the rest of your life." It worked. I studied, not for the desire for any sort of greatness, but from the fear of ending up working at a gas station. But this woman at the gas station, she knew what was up. Without flat-out saying it in so many works, she knew that the laws of thermodynamics that run an engine are as unchanging as the balance of the universe. Maybe she knew it from seeing so many other people screw up, or maybe she knew it because she had been there before.

You'd think by my 31st birthday I would know this, but I guess I'm still trying to figure it out. Nip it in the bud, they say. Make it right early on.

*Speaking of "nip it in the bud," here's some wonderfully recursive irony: At a meeting for work the other day, one of the supervisors kept saying "nip it on the butt" in contexts that suggested that she really meant "nip it in the bud." However, this malapropism was not nipped in the bud early enough, causing her to continue using it about three times throughout the meeting.

In her defense though, I will say that "nipping something on the butt" is perhaps a more culturally tangible phrase than its predecessor. If you were nipped in the butt by something, like a dog (dogs are the only things I have heard of that nip, but maybe that's just me) then you would probably not do it again. If a problem was quickly nipped on the butt, it is unlikely that it would happen again (although they disagree here).

What's great about the evolution of oral language is that it does whatever the hell it wants, there's no stopping it, even with prescriptive grammar. Words mean whatever people believe them to mean, and as long as that meaning is shared, the word embodies that form of reality. Whoa dude, I know, yeah.

Last Sunday, on the day of my b-day, I drew a comic, but by the time I got around to thinking of posting it, it seemed completely inappropriate, wrong. Maybe I'll sneak it in later.

In closing:

BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT EVER.

OOHH CHECK THIS OUT TOO! Yesss.