Programming Found Dead
I Like Your Bass, Your Beat Is Nice
Mark Rushton’s Abundant Spare Time is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist.
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This week’s topics:
Programming
Found Dead
Beck - “Ghettochip Malfunction”
Programming
I love word play and malapropisms.
Kind of like how George Carlin did.
When I was young, maybe about 5 years old, my mom would drive by a bar on our side of town that was called Barry’s Lounge. I’d call it “Barney’s Lodge”. It was torn down decades ago. My mom was humored by “Barney’s Lodge” so much that she continues to use that phrase to describe anything happening in that area.
This week, I was talking with a friend on the phone. He said to me, “You can hear a lot if you listen.” I was like, “Did you make that up or are you reading a biography of Yogi Berra?” (Yogi Berra the baseball player was famous for his malapropisms.) My friend didn’t realize what he’d said. I repeated it back to him while writing it down, and he agreed that it sounded like the kind of thing Yogi Berra would say.
This week, I was also thinking about the word “programming”.
I don’t watch TV, which is programmed. I think a lot of what’s on TV is “programming” for people. The internet, too. You’re being told to think a certain way. To react to events.
When I’m getting my car’s oil changed, the repair shop always has the old TV shows on. They show the westerns, which I now understand is total fiction but at one time I thought there really was a Wild West. Soap operas are more believable, if you ask me.
Well, they got rid of the soap operas. They got rid of freeform TV a long time ago. They’ve erased all local programming, like shows for kids. Every town has the same gals in cocktail dresses at 6:30 am, reading the “news” like the overpaid hostages they are. And they’ll all be jettisoned before hitting menopause for a new crop. Where do they go to school to be trained for that job? Langley Community College?
Radio is the same way. Freeform radio used to be cool. Now it’s barely on the fringes. DJs are robots, playing you the music you’re told to like.
Because I don’t watch broadcast TV, and rarely listen to radio stations, I feel like I’ve become somewhat “deprogrammed”. It’s freeing. I don’t let the outrages of the day bother me. “Oh, did something happen? Well, something else will take it’s place for you next week. Kind of like the hostages in cocktail dresses at 6:30am when they hit 45…”
Found Dead
A fairly recent realization is that the word “Founded” possibly means “Found Dead”.
Those of you who are programmed might be not be able to fully understand what I’m suggesting, and that’s OK. You can believe what you want to believe.
Some of you may know that I occasionally volunteer with cleaning and tidying up gravestone in cemeteries. I’ve been doing it for several years. It’s a nice outdoor activity in the summer, except around Memorial Day weekend when the cemeteries are way too busy.
This past week, I picked up a couple of clients in Glendale Cemetery, in Des Moines. While driving over to the section where I can get some water for my pump sprayer, I noticed this beautiful stone and family plot at Block 37, Lot 73.
Anybody around in the Des Moines area in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, knew who Medical Examiner Dr R. C. Wooters was. The local TV news let you know. He was the coroner. If there was a dead body, he thoroughly examined her, and she’s not only merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead. FindAGrave has a lot of good info on him.
I forgot that he had a morphine addiction for more than 20 years.
Well, nobody’s perfect.
I’m sure being a coroner is difficult work. That’s why I like to work with the dead after they’re in the ground and have a stone on top. I clean and dig out stones for family and friends who might visit some day, or those who are walking the cemetery. There’s a lot of history in cemeteries, and I think those stories get lost over time.
Beck - Ghettochip Malfunction
This came out in 2005, when our daughters were very young. The tune is pretty good, and they liked the animation. They would sing along and say “Hell” without being programmed by me that it’s a “bad word”.
Beck’s playing in Des Moines on July 24th with the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra at Lauridsen Amphitheater at Water Works Park. I probably won’t go. Soy un perdedor. I would go if he was playing indoors.
I think it’s best to let one of the word robots describe the back story on this song:
"Ghettochip Malfunction" is a remix of the song "Hell Yes" by Beck, done by 8-Bit. It was released in 2005 as part of the GameBoy Variations (Hell Yes Remix EP) and also appears on the album Guerolito as the "8-Bit Remix" of "Hell Yes." The track is a chiptune-style remix, giving the original song a retro, electronic vibe with a runtime of about 2:40.