Tom Lehrer Rests Eternal-L-Y

Well, darn it all. I just got the news that Tom Lehrer passed away. He was 97, so he had a pretty long life, but it’s still sad.

That’s probably the song that everyone knows him the most for, but the first one that I knew to be his was called “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”

When I found out his name, I decided to see if I could find more of his stuff…and merrily down the Tom Lehrer rabbit hole I went.

At which point, I landed on a song that I had heard Dad sing a few lines of from time to time. I just thought Dad was being weird, but I finally knew it was a real song. That was a revelation.

It took a while, but I think I found almost all of his stuff, and what a collection of stuff! There were songs about war, songs about nuclear bombs, freedom of the press…kind of, pollution, Harvard,, you name it, he probably wrote a song about it. And he wrote a bunch of them in the 50’s and 60’s and they’re still funny today.

And then he went and wrote kids’ songs! I had no idea he was in The Electric Company!

But I feel like a jerk mentioning all his music because in his later years, I heard that he really didn’t want to talk about that anymore. I don’t know if he was just sick of everybody talking about it, or if he wanted to be more known for his work in math, but that guy made a lot of good music. Lots of it was dark, but all of it was brilliant! But what else can you expect from a guy who got a math degree at 18? He says we can’t get away from mathematics, and he couldn’t get away from his music.

We’ve lost a genius today. But his music will stay with us for a long long time.

Now Boarding Flight Out Of My Mind!

Someone at Heathrow Airport has spent a little too much time at Heathrow Airport. They have stopped noticing the ambient noise that is caused by people doing what you do at an airport. You know, hearing announcements, picking up your luggage, going through security, walking from A to B. So they thought “You know what would Spruce up this place? If it had a soundtrack of baggage carousels, planes taking off, announcements, people walking around, beeps and boops from security and other airport noises, all set to music! Brilliant!” and it was done!

Does anyone else see the problem with this? Those real sounds are already in the airport. We don’t need a second layer of them. That just causes chaos to anyone who might be relying on those sounds for clues about where they are or what’s going on. I don’t want to have to think “There’s a gate announcement. Is that a real gate announcement or one of those fake ones?”

This happens to me on a smaller scale whenever I enter a store with self-checkouts. When I was younger, I could walk into a store and listen for the sound of cash registers. Cash registers were manned by humans, so I could walk towards that beeping, find a human, and ask for assistance around the store. But self-checkouts make beeps and boops just like the old registers, so I can’t target the beeping things and get help. It sucks! Now amplify that by a whole pile at the airport.

I know that usually I’m getting help around the airport, but there are some crazy good frequent flying blind folks that walk through airports independently. And even if I’m getting help, I’d like to be able to trust my ears to give me clues about what’s happening. If my gate changes, for example, I might hear that announcement before my assistant notices the change on the board. Now, I’ll have to wonder if the announcement I’ve heard is a real one or a fake one.

I know the soundtrack of airport noise is set to music, so maybe that will be no big deal if real announcements stop the music when they talk, but what if they don’t?

Airports are noisy enough as it is. We don’t need double noise. I don’t think the effect will be exciting for travellers, even the ones that can see. Some people are sensitive to sound and don’t need more of it. I think what they will have done is make the experience unnecessarily overwhelming.

If You Don’t Like The Song “Stayin’ Alive”, How About These?

Back a very very long time ago, I learned that if you ever have to do CPR and need a way to keep the compressions well-timed, you can use certain songs. At the time, the only one I had heard about was ‘stayin alive’.

Now, I have found a whole medley of good CPR songs.

I do have to giggle that “Another One Bites the Dust” is in here. I found another medley that contained “Highway to Hell” and “Baby Shark” But I think you get the idea with this one. I guess the key is that it needs to be 100-120 beats per minute, which matches the number of compressions.

Somebody created a Spotify playlist of good CPR songs, and it’s 9 hours long! Duuuude! I hope nobody ever needs that much CPR music. Hopefully they can find a LUCAS or something!

Chain Of Fools

We were going to call this “MRI in the Mourning”, but I like my title better. Even so, have a song.

I heard about this story of a dude with a weight training chain around his neck getting sucked into an MRI machine. I can only stammer and gape and wonder how this was allowed to happen! I feel like this could have been stopped at so many points, and it could be definitely stopped by the MRI tech! Why wasn’t it?

I have had two MRI’s, and the staff made a very big point of asking in many and varied ways if I had any metal in or on me. I had to fill out forms, get asked questions, get asked questions again, lock any metal up that I might have had, get asked some more questions, and then and only then was I brought into the room where the MRI was, the lair of the snuffling beast. Dammit I can’t find just that noise it makes when it’s at rest, but in my twisted mind, I pictured some kind of beast, tightly coiled and waiting for the signal to spring into action. There is no denying that I’m weird.

Anyway, this is what went down according to the story.

  • Adrienne Jones-McAllister was having an MRI on her knee.
  • She had had previous MRI’s at this facility.
  • Her husband Keith had accompanied her to her scans before.
  • For reasons that are not explained, Keith just walks around with a 20-lb weight training chain around his neck.
  • The tech, not sure if it’s the same tech, but techs, have noticed the chain previously, commenting “Oooo that’s a really big chain!”
  • At the end of the scan, it was requested that Keith come in and help his wife off the table. This is Keith, the fella with the weight-training chain, and the table is the MRI table.
  • Keith is summoned by the tech,
  • aaaaaand…doom occurs. Keith is pulled into the MRI machine, waves goodbye and goes limp.
  • They got him out, but he died later.

How did that happen? The lion’s share of the blame goes to the clinic and tech who didn’t stop him and his giant metal chain from approaching the *magnetic* resonance imaging machine. Why did Keith even need to come in the room? Why wasn’t the tech helping her down? But if the tech needed hubby to come in, for the love of Pete, tell him to take off the chain!

But I am kind of surprised that neither of them realized, especially since they’ve been there before, that metal and magnets don’t mix and he should take it off. I have met people who don’t know what an MRI is, but those people have never had one. This woman has, and her husband has been there.

What a completely preventable tragedy.

That Skunk Gave Me The Flu!

I haven’t written in a while, like 3 months, oops. So I thought I’d start with something silly.

Did anyone else hear the song “Sad Songs Say So Much” and think it said “I’ll hold the skunk”? No? Just me?

To be fair to myself, I was only 4 or 5 and the song was playing softly on a crackly radio in the bedroom. But I was laying there in bed thinking “Why do you want to hold a skunk? I mean, that would definitely make me sing some sad songs.”

Of course it says “When all hope is gone”, but there will always be a small part of me that thinks “I’ll hold the skunk”.

And this one came out when I was a little older, Good Thing by the Fine Young Cannibals.

At least this guy mumbles, so I’m not a total idiot. But at the end of the third verse, I was convinced it said “I had the flu.” Now that I’ve heard the real words “like a fool”, I can’t hear “I had the flu” anymore. But I listened to that over and over and over again. Am I the only one? I was convinced this guy’s girlfriend finally came back, and now he had the flu so couldn’t go out and have fun with her. I knew that couldn’t be the real line, but I couldn’t find another one that made any more sense.

So those are a couple of thoughts from my childhood. They just happened to come to me while we listened to music on the balcony.

Pop Goes The…

This is so perfect that if I didn’t know the source was a real place I’d think it was fake.

A priest has been placed on leave for the second time after once again being accused of child sexual abuse. that priest? Peter J. Popadick.

The Diocese of Buffalo placed Monsignor Peter J. Popadick on leave for the second time Wednesday, after previously allowing the priest to return to ministry.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the diocese wrote that Popadick was placed on administrative leave after it received a child sexual abuse complaint.
Popadick serves as the pastor of St. Aloysius Gonzaga in Cheektowaga.
Diocese spokesman Joe Martone told 7 News the claim is more than 20 years old.

So at least no one should try to molest it.

In addition to his work as the pastor at the very fun to say St. Aloysius Gonzaga in Cheektowaga, the article also notes that Popadick had served as the secretary to Bishop Edward D. Head.

Sometimes it really does feel like you’re born for something.

Hello, Wrestling Commentators. I Would Like To Steal A Moment Of Your Time

You’ve been bugging me for a long time with something you all keep saying, so let’s talk about it.

When someone gets rolled up and pinned, the person who pinned him did not steal the win. Stealing a win involves something like a low blow, pulling the tights, having your hands or feet on the ropes, using a foreign object, outside interference, etc. It does not involve being out-wrestled and trapped in a legal manoeuvre for three seconds. I might hear you out if you want to call a situation where a guy gets rolled up while he’s busy yelling at the referee stealing, but even then I tend to disagree. It’s your job as a combatant to be paying attention. You take your eye off the ball and get schoolboyed or whatever, you lose fair and square. Sucks to be you. The only exception is when the ref fast counts you because he’s had it with your shit. Then you might have a case for calling it theft and yelling for a rematch.

But other than that, please, stop calling one guy being the better man stealing. It kind of ruins wrestling a little. Eventually you’re going to create a generation of fans and wrestlers who won’t see any win as legitimate unless it comes after a finishing move, which will take all of the strategy, fun and unpredictability out of the matches. I’m not sure if this is one of those Vince McMahon rules that he drilled into everyone for years or what, but if it is, he’s gone now. So if this could go away too, that would be lovely.

Hulk Hogan Jobs To Dr. Death

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Hulk Hogan these days. He ended up being a Trump supporting racist who chose steroids over the vitamins he told the rest of us to take, never passed up a chance to lie about basically everything (no, Andre the Giant did not weigh 1000 pounds at Wrestlemania 3) and who I really hoped would just go away by the early 2000s, so the less he enters my brain, the better.

But none of that changes the fact that he was my first favourite wrestler or that I literally cried and punched things when Ted DiBiase bought Andre from Bobby Heenan and paid off those twin referees to screw him out of the title back in 88.

Or that I was worried King Kong Bundy had killed him in 86.

Or that I watched him and Mr. Wonderful in the cage probably 100 times.

Or that him suplexing Big Boss man off of the cage made me jump out of my chair.

Or that he somehow managed to have a great match with the Ultimate Warrior at Mania six.

Or that him turning heel and joining the NWO was one of the craziest things I’d ever seen.

Or that I watched “NO Holds Barred” more than once for some reason.

Or that “Real American” might be the best theme music ever.

Or that “American Made” was pretty damn good too.

I could go on all day, because love him or hate him, he was a huge part of my childhood. And even though I spent more time kinda hating him than anything else, I still have a ton of fun family memories and some of my best friends because of him, and I’m grateful for that. It sucks that we all have to get older and that in the end, nobody Hulks up on Father Time forever.

Note: I wish the title was my idea, but it was a text from a friend at which I laughed heartily.

Let’s Go To The Hop. And The Courthouse. And The Jail

$700,000 is a pretty nice chunk of change to be sure, but if I’m going to need to amputate my legs and then tell the insurance company that sepsis got me in order to claim it, I’ll do without, thanks. I guess I’m just not as determined as the now appropriately named Neil Hopper.

It is alleged that between 3 and 26 June 2019 Mr Hopper made a false representation to insurers by claiming that injuries to his legs were the result of sepsis and not self-inflicted.
He also faces a charge that between 21 August 2018 and 4 December 2020 he bought videos from a website called The Eunuch Maker which showed the removal of limbs and he encouraged Marius Gustavson to remove the body parts of third parties.
Mr Hopper, who is originally from Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, had been employed by the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust from 2013 until he was arrested in March 2023, police said.
He has been suspended from the medical register since December 2023.

You Can Cross, But You’ll Want To Watch Out For Self-Driving Teslas

There are variations, but generally, an accessible pedestrian street crossing signal sounds something like this:

But for a little while in Redwood City, California, some of them sounded like this:

Or in Palo Alto, like this:

Those are obviously not the real voices of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, but I must say that the fakes are pretty well done.

Right now, you’re probably wondering how those poles came to sound like that. City officials were too, so they investigated. And while those investigations didn’t yield a who, they’re pretty sure they’ve got a why. They don’t seem overly keen to talk about it, but everybody say it with me now…Always change your default passwords to something stronger!

For years, Polara has had a publicly accessible app on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store that allowed city officials to access Polara systems. Within 48 hours of the incident being reported in Silicon Valley, the app was pulled from the stores.
Theoretically, access to the crosswalk buttons requires a four-digit numeric code created by the city. However, many online commenters have pointed out that some cities never change the default password: 1234. Polara later republished the app with additional password security requirements. While a four-digit password allows for 10,000 possible combinations, some cybersecurity experts say it can be cracked instantly.
Polara has since added a lockout feature that limits users to two password attempts and gave cities the ability to disable connectivity altogether.

I’ll admit, this is funny. But I’d like to make a request.

Eventually, I will die. But I’d rather not have it happen preventably and prematurely with Elon fucking Musk as a soundtrack, thank you very much. So even if you know how to do this, please don’t. Those signals serve an important purpose. People’s lives (mine included) literally depend on them functioning properly.