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From 1983 to 1987, there was a band of very nice if somewhat tempermental lads from Manchester known as The Smiths. Although their lineup was conventional — a front man, a guitarist, a drummer and a bass guitar, they were unconventional in most other ways, with their odd chord patterns (the closest thing to a standard rock song being Bigmouth Strikes Again, whose chords are reminiscent of All Along the Watchtower), odder lyrics and even odder front man and throat, one Steven Patrick Morrissey. Morrissey (on the album credits, he went by only his surname), also affectioantely known as Moz, was your classic tortured soul: angsty, lonely, depressed and mopey. Exactly the kind of personality that many a teenager — especially pasty, gloomy Brit kids writing poetry in a tiny bedsit in something-on-another, UK, could really appreciate.

Prior to his stint with The Smiths, Moz had a pen pal named Robert Mackie. Mackie collected this correspondence and made them available to anyone who would cover the cost of the photocopying them. Someone’s taken some of these letters and put their text on a Web page — complete with Moz’s spelling and punctuation — here.

A long time ago, Spin magazine ran an interview with Morrissey, after which someone wrote a letter to the editor saying that Morrissey should get over himself, and that what the perpetually glum vegetarian needed was “a cheeseburger and a fuck.” After reading these bits of correspondence, I’m inclined to agree.

Some choice excerpts:

Dear person,

So nice to know there’s another soul out there, even if it is in Glasgow. Does being Scottish bother you? Manchester is a lovely place, if you happen to be a bedridden deaf mute. I’m unhappy, hope you’re unhappy too.

In poverty,

Steven

Do you really like Kate Bush? I’m not surprised. The nicest thing I could say about her is that she’s unbearable. That voice! Such trash!

…thank you for your photo. It came in handy until the plumber arrived. Did you know you had a dead caterpillar on your lip? Real deco, man. You could have smiled but it’s dreadfully unfashionable, isn’t it? Observe the enclosed piccy of your author, disguised as an artiste. This photograph is suitable for framing. Incidentally your real name IS Robert, isn’t it? Everyone in Scotland is either Robert or Billy or Jimmae. Have you got a real Scottish accent? How novel! Why don’t you join a traveling circus?

I’m sure there are worse groups than Duran Duran, but I’ll be damned if I can think of any.

I’m glad your body is still untouched by human hands, at least it gives you something to look forward to, besides Christmas.

He hated Duran Duran? Blasphemy!

Recommended Reading

The Reflex. Lyrics to the greatest song about self-gratification ever written. Even better than the Divinyls’ I Touch Myself.

Is Your Son a Computer Hacker? Is he obsessed with “Lunix”? Every parent should know about this.

Lawrence Lessig’s new book, The Future of Ideas. I may have to get a copy of this.

One cartoonist’s take on Segway, a.k.a. Ginger, a.k.a. It, a.k.a. Dean Kamen’s new invention.

And in honour of your birthday, I present you with this lovely photo of when I last came down to NYC for your birthday. It’s me, George, Alicia and none other Misharu Morimoto (Iron Chef Japanese) at Nobu.

Okay, I may have edited the photo just a little.

I’m leaving today…

…for New York City for a mini-vacation and to celebrate my friend George’s 32nd birthday.

I know it’s a day early, but George, as you once wrote on a birthday card: Happy birthday, you old poop. I’ll be in Manhattan by lunch, and maybe we can hit that nice Mexican place a couple of blocks up from your house. What say you, George?

Thanks to the Current Situation, I have to wake up at yet another ungodly hour in order to allow for enough time for airport security to make me crack open my accordion and prove it’s a working instrument. Hence this short entry…gotta get some shut-eye. But first, a couple of links…

Recommended reading

CBGB OMFUG and The Knitting Factory: Someday I’ll gig at these places. Someday.

The Soup Nazi. Yup, he really exists.

The app I’ve been working on

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks hammering out a prototype of an news-gathering app that would be based on the peer-to-peer kernel that we’re developing. I’m pretty proud of this prototype for a number of reasons. For starters, it’s my first serious application written in C#. Second, there’s a clever little database-based engine underneath it that simulates a network of users exchanging and recommending news stories. For a “canned” app, it’s pretty smart. Finally, with only the most vague of specs provided by the suits and with the departure of our UI specialist and our graphic artist, I’ve had to do all the interaction and graphic design — this sucker really has my fingerprints all over it. I think I can show you the splash screen I designed without violating my NDA…

Ah gotz to reprasent to them wack-ass VC bitchez, yo

One of the occupational hazards of being a programmer at a start-up is doing early morning demos of your latest work for the monthly “dog and pony show” for the investors. The Chief Suit likes my prototype app and wanted me to show it to the guys from our VC, who I’ll just refer to as “J-Low” and “L-Dogg”. The prototype app isn’t quite done yet and I haven’t had a chance to build an installer, so I decided it would be safest to run it on my development machine, so there’d be no nasty surprises come demo time. I spent a good chunk of last night and the wee hours of this morning putting up enough “scaffolding” so that I could run a reasonable-looking demo. I woke up after 4 hours’ sleep to double-check the prototype for bugs (None! Yay!) and then wait for Johnny to come and pick me up from the corner of Queen and Spadina.

Ten minutes after he was supposed to pick me up, the wind started to blow and I was beginning to feel a little chilly.

Fifteen minutes after he was supposed to pick me up, I was really getting cold. I gave his cell phone a call and got his voice mail.

Twenty minutes later, still no lift. No answer on his phone either.

Half an hour later, I was trying to reach the office to tell them I’d be late. I’m imagining J-Low and L-Dogg sitting at the office, wondering where this nifty prototype that Chief Suit promised was.

I wrote Johnny off and called Kostya, the co-worker who normally gives me a lift to work. I arranged for him to pick me up at the usual place at our more civilized usual time and went to Lettieri (the Italian cafe at the corner) to have a hot chocolate and bash on the app a little more. Kostya picked me up about forty minutes later and got me to the office in time to do the demo, which took less than two minutes and got an simple nod of approval (and barely a mumble) from L-Dogg. This is what I stayed up late and woke up early for?

Normally, I’d say that L-Dogg is the strong, silent type, but that sounds too close to a compliment for the likes of a VC. They all need a good pimp-slapping.

One tiny upside

While waiting in the cold for Johnny to not show up (it turned out that he slept straight through his alarm clock’s blare), a car pulled up to the curb where I was standing. The cute brunette driver rolled down the passenger window (where an equally cute passenger was sitting) and they both yelled out “Hey, Accordion Guy! How’re you doing?”

Being greeted on the street like that — to me, that’s worth more than a million half-hearted nods of approval from a semi-interested VC.

When my alarm clock goes off each morning, I look at it like it’s some tool of the inquisition whose nature is clear but exact use and application I’m still trying to puzzle out.

— Ry4an Brase, a friend and ex-co-worker of mine, on IRC.

My ex used to say that I had this way of saying the word pants that sounded really dirty. Pants has a certain je ne sais quoi when you say it with your teeth place together in some kind of lecherous demi-smile. And that, my friend, is the theme of today’s post.

pantscam.com

Apparently a student named Alison has decided that it would be a worthwhile use of technology to place a webcam in her pants. A hand-sized Tri-M computer (powered by a 486), a small webcam and a Lucent 802.11 wireless card make this great contribution to the Internet possible. The whole thing is viewable on this page, and there’s even a handly little chat facility so that you can make Beavis and Butt-Head-esque comments to your fellow lechers.

In the twenty minutes I had my browser trained on the site, I caught a lot of darkness, then light, then some long-haired guy, then a bed. Naturally, I would be doing Way New Journalism (and the Internet as a whole) if I didn’t post some screen shots…

Suddenly, I am flooded with vague memories of my own birth.

What’s a dorm room doing in these pants?

And now the kid pants are off!

So this is what Marshall McLuhan was going on about.

Boong Ga Boong Ga

I got the link to Alison’s Pants Cam while reading about the latest Japanese videogame craze, Boong Ga Boong Ga, which translates loosely as “spanky-spanky”. The user interface consists of a derriere and a large finger which you wear on your hand. You gain points through ramming said derriere with the finger. This is probably not what Doug Englebart was thinking of when he invented the point-and-click interface.

If this kind of thing were invented in the States, there’d be all kinds of furor, but I can see the digerati going on about the inscrutability of Japanese culture. Let’s get off the blind Nihon worship, kids. Iron Chef was neat, but they’re capable of many dumb-ass ideas too.

Hey, I’m all for kink as much as…well, actually even more than the next guy, but I don’t think I want to be known throughout the arcade as the guy who’s really good at ramming his finger up people’s asses. In fact I’m worried that someone out there is thinking At last! A use for my secret talent!

Required reading

All your boonga are belong to us. The brochure for the video game, in classic Engrish.

Korean Ass Shooter. Korean. Ass. Shooter. What, you want me to draw you a picture?

A clever pun you can use when discussing Boong Ga Boong Ga: “The game may have its bottom-feeder appeal, but don’t expect much penetration in the North American market.” Arf! Arf!
Free Habbo Coins
I’m sticking with Dance Dance Revolution.

My “con man” stories from the past couple of posts have stirred up something. Friends and family have been telling me about how they were recently approched by con artists.

Clothes make the scam

This happened only a couple of days ago. My dad was using an outdoor ATM in the parking lot of a Royal Bank, out in the deep suburbs of Toronto. A man approached him and asked for directions to the airport. He gave them, after which he was asked “Would you like to buy a Prada suit?” The man said that he had some overstock that he had to get rid of because it would actually cost him more money to bring them back to the warehouse. He pointed to a white van parked in the lot. This seemed way too sketchy, and as my Dad said, “even if it was legitimate, who’s going to buy a suit in a parking lot? You can’t try it on.” Sounds like a variant of the white van speaker scam to me.

More bank machine hijinks

A couple of months ago, my friend Adina was burned in a scam that’s been making the local news. She tried to withdraw money from the bank machine when it suddenly refused to work and wouldn’t return her card. A stranger offered to help, saying that this sort of thing sometimes happens and the way to fix is to repeatedly enter your PIN number (the “secret code” you have to enter). As Adina entered it, she noticed that the stranger was leaning a little close for comfort. The card never came out, and the stranger assured her that she could just get a new one from the bank on the next business day.

What she didn’t know was that the stranger put some kind of device in the card reader slot, causing it to be stuck part of the way in the machine. The stranger’s touchy-feeliness was just a way of covering up an attempt to see her entering her PIN number. When Adina left, the stranger retrieved her card, and knowing her PIN number, had complete access to her bank account. All the money was drained from her account, and a cheque for a large amount of money was deposited and withdrawn from it as well.

What’s in the box?

My old high school pal Nat was once approached by a guy offering to sell him a video camera for around a hundred bucks. Nat’s a screenwriter and director, and being able to get a video camera on the cheap sounded appealing to him. However, he was a little short cash and had to talk his friend into loaning him some money for the camera. As the deal drew to a close, the stranger grew increasingly agitated and Nat got slightly suspicious. Wanting to make it clear that he was no sucker, he said “Hold on. I want to see this box. I’ve bought empty boxes before.”

The stranger opened the trunk of his car and handed Nat the box. It was a sealed box for a video camera and had the right heft to it. As soon as he got the money, he drove off. Nat opened the box to discover that he’d really bought a stack of old magazines.

Recommended reading

ATM safety tips: Here and here. and more ATM safety tip: Good advice, especially since they’re phasing out tellers in favour of ATMs.

Forget the PIN, just look into the ATM’s camera: An old CNN article on ATMs using eye-scanning instead of a PIN number to identify customers.

Crimes of Persuasion: A site devoted to “schemes, scams and frauds”. Check out the section on street scams.

Next on AccordionGuy

All this talk about scams reminds me of a sketchy business I used to work for, and how I managed to get out of a street scam in Prague. As long as I’ve got a theme going, I might as well milk it…