Whoo

Now that's what I like to hear.

I'm here

I'm in Chapel Hill now. I spent a whole bunch of money on new apartment stuff like soap and food and a toilet brush and a silverware tray and detergent. I'll probably be buying more stuff, like furniture, as the time goes by and I hopefully get a roommate. It's way too hot here. But I have the internet, and I watched Ghostbusters II last night as an apartment-christening. Such an awesome movie. Now I just have to get all my crap organized and make the place look nice and fresh. It's nice to know that I was able to get out here and accomplish all this getting a dwelling place stuff.

But I realize more and more every day that my friends pretty much the most important thing to me. Any of you guys reading this, I love you all, and I miss you. I'm excited at the prospect of meeting and getting to know people out here.

News

One of my co-counselors from camp this summer, Rufus, and I are starting up a funny website. It's called The Deception of Raju.

Sometimes they come back

So I had this horrible English teacher in 10th grade. Her name was Mrs. Harmon. She was old. Old as in one of my other teachers that year had her when he was in high school. She had this annoying way of talking. She would talk incessantly, stopping only long enough to take short, loud breaths. We would often pay no attention at all to what she was saying in favor of counting how many times she made that breathing sound in one class period. She would always make us write a "precis", a one sentence summary, for whatever story or book chapter we had just read. She had the worst literary interpretation I've ever come into contact with, sometimes basing her insights on a misreading of the grammar of the text. Aside from the readings, we were covering the parts of speech. What's even sadder is that most of the people in the class still didn't get it. Mrs. Harmon would say stuff like "Number L" and "Letter 12" that would make me grind my teeth. One day she told the class that there were only 6 adjectives that ended in -ly. I understand, of course, that adjectives with this ending are relatively rare, given the rule in English that -ly is typically an adverbial suffix. But I sat there and thought up about thirty on the spot. So, the rest of that semester I compiled a list of all the -ly adjectives I could think of or locate in my dictionary. I never showed it to Mrs. Harmon, but I want to say I got up to around 170-180 words. And then I lost the list somewhere in our computer change about 5 or 6 years ago.

Today, I was going through a stack of 3.5" floppy discs. In the 23 MB strewn across thirty discs or so, I found the list. I haven't gone through and counted the words yet, but I am thrilled. Trust me, one day, you too will see this list. It will be enshrined in digital website glory as a testament against bad English teachers everywhere.

Progress

The other day, a friend and I were discussing whether we have reached a point where science and technology could no longer necessarily be considered progress. Questions of progress aside, there is some fairly cool stuff going on in the world of technology.

Whee

It's always super to feel light in the chest from hanging around with someone you like. It's also awesome whenever I get a Supertramp album. I did both today, so things are going pretty well.

Prince

Here you go..."Prince" by the Bert Fershners. It really doesn't need an explanation. Hopefully within the next month I will have some really good news about the Bert Fershners, so stay tuned.

In other news, I found some Gnocchi at K-Mart, so I'm pretty stoked. It makes me think of Waldsee. I will miss being Otto.

Loss

I will deeply miss my fellow counselors from Waldsee Vergas. With luck I will see many of them next summer.

Jelly Truck

Today we've got a five-minute long video from the Bert Fershners performing "Jelly Truck" in Tomkins Square Park in 1996. It looks like this (along with a few other short video clips) was just posted to YouTube a week ago, so perhaps we'll be seeing more in the days and weeks to come.

Mysteries of the Universe, Part Nine

The Bert Fershners were a comedy troupe from the 90s. It was a group of guys all named Bert Fershner (so they said). Most of their act was songs. I remember seeing them a couple of times on Comedy Central doing their act, which I remember included an insanely complicated version of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. They even had a music video that would come on during the commercials every now and then called "Tube Tops". A few years ago, I found their website, which had some Real Player and mp3 downloads of a few of their pieces. Unfortunately, you can't save Real Player files and I didn't think to save the mp3s. Now, their website is down, and there is virtually no information on the Bert Fershners anywhere online. So, my mystery this month is--who were they, really? And where can I find information on them? And what all did they do? I was able to find the cached version of their website on Google. There's still a link to an email address for Mike Rock. I've emailed him to inquire after mp3s or anything he's got of Bert Fershners stuff. I also remember that when I listened to the Real Player audio files, they listed Charlie Cheney as the artist. I remember that because I found a website for a Charlie Cheney who's a singer/songwriter/guitar player back then and downloaded some of his stuff. Not bad stuff, neither. Apparently, according to the internet, Josh Lewis and Joey Garfield were also members of the group. And somebody named Dan? The only other place I find them is on IMDB, and it's only that they did something in 1998. And only Joey Garfield is listed on IMDB as being a member of the Bert Fershners.

So, one of my side project goals is now going to be to track down every single bit of information about the Bert Fershners as possible. Anybody wants to help, hop on.

My 100th post

Read anything by Jimmy Carter lately? He's the one president that I honestly don't think was a dope or a crook. He also makes me rethink the common American stereotype of old people being daft. What happened to the idea that the older among us had more experience, and therefore more wisdom? Jimmy Carter is for me right now the still, small, sure voice. Not so much what he's saying, but that he's still saying, and still doing, and that what he's saying and doing is important. His voice is reminding me that help is always needed, and can always be given. So give him a read, wontcha?