Elevator Music

My first post for November- happy November, everyone!

(A bit late, but that can't be helped anymore...)

Right into our main topic-

If you read Blue Roses, you probably have read Questa's post about Olympic elevator music.

Four words: Olympic. Elevator. Music. STINKS.

Not, sadly, that I would know firsthand, but when (Spoiler Alert!) Percy wonders whether he should have given up immortality to change the awful elevator music, it gives you the idea that it is not the best.

(Who chooses the elevator music? Apollo? Zeus? Random Maintenance Guy?)

The only reason I bring this up is that K, my wacky brother, is playing one of his favorite Wii games ever, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, and he is going "Staying alive! Just barely!" and Stayin' Alive is one of the perfectly horrible songs on the Olympic Elevator-ing System.

Here is the video for the song. Enjoy. Or not.

[Warning: If you have an aversion to tight pants (like me) you might want to skip this video. Think: All the Jonas Brothers. Put together. *shudder*]

Even if I think Stayin' Alive is a horrible song, my ABBA and Green Day and Led Zeppelin and Simon and Garfunkel and etcetera punky music is probably not music to someone else's ears, so ignore me.

(K likes this song.)

One cool things about this song is you can sing Stayin' Alive while doing CPR. Why? Because (a friend told me this) the song has 100 beats per minute, the recommended number of compressions per minute for CPR.

So sing Stayin' Alive to yourself the next time you perform CPR.

But if you're singing that, they may pretend to not be breathing just so you'll leave.

Quote for Tuesday, November 10, 2009:

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

-John Von Neumann

(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mathematics)

(You just get used to the varying feelings of confusion.)

Muse(ic) for Today:

The Bee Gees!

FRAS

My nickname, comprised of my intials, is FRAS. It sounds cool to me, like a flower. Fras.

I did a search on my nickname (http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/FRAS), and look at this:

• Frame Relay Access Support (Cisco)
• Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society
• Federal Reserve Automation Services
• Frame Relay Access Server
• Four Rivers Audubon Society
• Florida Resident Assistant Seminar
• Free-Rocket Antisubmarine
• Force Recording & Analysis System (chiropractic treatment)
• Florida Resident Assistant Symposium

What you never knew about Freedom R.A.S.:

She IS, yes indeed, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. (No, not really.) (I could be, but I'm not a fellow.)

Nostalgia

If you type 'nostalgia' into Google (or Blackle or Givoogle or whatever it is you use) you get songs and definitions of nostalgias, but 'nostalgia' is really when people gaze off wistfully into the distance and remember the times passed.

A few days ago, my mother found her old school, and Facebook communities formed by people who'd graduated from there. It was a Kindergarten through Grade 12 school, so she knew it all her life. She said she feels so nostalgic right then.

This means something, I'm sure, but I'd like to consider nostalgia at some other time.

[K just got home from soccer. They lost again. Let's hope they weren't playing first graders. (We can only hope.)]

Mr Bean is a lovely TV series and I think group of movies too, but I wonder about him. He's funny and confused and nice and oblivious, but does he ever get lonely? In The Return of Mr Bean, he is forced to buy himself a birthday card and be surprised when he gives it to himself. I don't remember exactly, but I saw the episode Merry Christmas, Mr Bean, when his girlfriend broke up with him, and it was very sad.

Does he have any family? Is he ever scared?

I have to remind myself that Mr Bean is actually Rowan Atkinson who has two brothers and a mother and father and a wife and two children and does have a family, thankyouverymuch, but Mr Bean seems a person to me. Thinking of Mr Bean as a person and not a character is so sad.

I'm going to Gives Me Hope now.

Quotes for Saturday, October (yikes! October?) 3, 2009:

They're sharing a drink they call loneliness

But it's better than drinking alone.

-Billy Joel, "Piano Man"

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

-The Beatles, "Eleanor Rigby"

(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Loneliness)

Muse for Today:

Mr Bean.

Captain Obvious and Things Not Obvious

This is a lovely picture, and one of my many sarcastic catchphrases. I got it from the MuggleNet Wall of Shame. This was at the very bottom, when someone tried a formula for how much hate mail Emerson Spartz, founder of MuggleNet, gets.

Needless to say, it was epic fail.

Moving on.

I have this book that is quite nice, called Fact of the Matter. It has random facts, trivia, and it's really really cool.

I can't find a page to cite it. Grr. Here's the ISBN: 978-81-89906-12-2. Does that count? I hope so.

• The oldest known goldfish lived to be 41. Its name was Fred.

This is quite heartening, seeing as I have two goldfish, and one is named Fred. (The other is called George, in case you want to know.)

• Elephants only walk on their tip toes, because the back of their foot is complete fat. There aren't bones in the back to support their feet.

This means that elephants could conceievably do ballet. It's not a fantasy anymore. Ella and the Dancing Elephants: Coming to a Dance Theatre near you.

• The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896, when Zanzibar surrendered in 38 minutes.

Must have been dinnertime, huh? I wondered how much that 'war' cost. It's about the length of a TV program, for Pete's sake!

Quote for Sunday, September 13, 2009:

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

and

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

-Mark Twain

(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain)

Muse for Today:

Euterpe, Muse for Music.

Feeling blue, Indigo?

A few days ago, I posted a post about the fact that I am an Anglophile. Obviously, most of my favorite characters are British as well. Like Indigo Casson, from the books by Hilary McKay, about the Casson family. He has a friend, Tom Levin, who says, Feeling blue, Indigo? In my head, he says this in a British accent even though he is not British. He is from New York.
Our current family vacation is not quite decided yet. We could go to Mt. Rushmore, Smoky Mountains, or New York. My brother wants to go to New York, because of many reasons. One is to go to the 600th floor of the Empire State Building. Although my mother tried explaining to him that there is no 600th floor, he replied that mere mortals cannot see it. (For all non-Percy Jackson readers, the 600th floor is the location of Mt. Olympus.)
I want to go anywhere, really, but New York would be really cool. Especially because of Tom Levin! Whenever Rose, a certain character, imagines Tom in New York, she imagines him in front of a large sign that says NEW YORK. I would do the same thing, and hold up a stupid picture of Hello Kitty as Tom that happened to be drawn a while ago, despite several protests that that was insulting. Yeah. Sure.

Quote for July 26, 2009:

The family is always the family but during vacations it is an extended family and that is exhausting.

-Gertrude Stein

(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vacation)

England, Scotland

I am an obsessed Anglophile. My dreams consist of heading off to the UK when I'm older, being rich and nomadic, and living happily ever after surrounded by utter Britishness.
Enter sarcastic people, crushing my hopes and dreams with their criticizing looks. Like my brother. He dreams of going to Austrailia, and he makes fun of me. Whatever.
But that is my major goal right now. London. Or Scotland, where JK Rowling lives! (I had to do my customary HP plug.)
But the UK will have to wait! Because I, much to my dismay, am still a minor, with dreams of grandeur that might not happen, except in my head.

Quote for July 24, 2009:

I've been walking about London for the last thirty years, and I find something fresh in it every day.
-Walter Besant (1901)

(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/London)