Tetherd Cow Ahead

Even though that last story was told as an amusing anecdote, it points, as some of you quickly realized, to some fundamental and important ideas about sound and the way we perceive it.

The question “What if we could have the sound of nothing, rather than silence?” is not a question about sound. It is a question about psychology. Many questions about sound are.

My director continued:

“What I mean is that sound, you know, when you’re out in the middle of nowhere and there’s nothing there… You know, not silence, but an absence of sound.”

And, although there’s a complete logical stump-jump here, I do in fact know exactly what he means.

Of course there is no such thing in the natural world as ‘an absence of sound’.

The quietest natural environment in which I’ve ever been was a cave in Jenolan in Eastern Australia. I was helping some friends complete a geographical survey. They were also divers, and needed to survey a section of the cave that was underwater. I couldn’t help much with that part of the exercise so I sat in the cavern as they disappeared into the inky black water and listened as their scuba bubbles trailed off into… silence.

There was no sound. No water lap, no dripping, no wind, no airconditioner, no next-door tv, no conversation down the hall, no computer drives, no distant traffic. Nothing. After a while, if I moved, any little noise I made sounded unnaturally loud. It was dead, dead quiet. Silence. Well, no actually. Not silence. I could hear my breathing. I could hear my blood moving. I could hear my heart beating. Wow, after a while it was actually noisy. I knew at that moment that human beings never, ever know true silence.

But we nearly all have some experience of that deep contemplative quietness of nature, or the dark black hush of the early morning hours, or the unbearable silent weight of gaps between speech at a funeral.

The question my director is really asking, then, is a different one: “Is it possible for us to have our audience feel that kind of mental silence within the bounds of what we are doing?”

And the answer, in my educated opinion, is that in this particular excercise we will achieve that effect. Because it’s not about the sound we put there, in that place where silence is, but rather, how we get there and what we have encouraged people to be thinking at that time.

Listening is only partially about hearing.

OK. I’m working (for free) on a small but very tasteful commercial for a major world charity. The sound is subtle but significant. At the very end of the ad, the pictures fade to black, and a simple piece of explanatory text appears.

This morning I’m playing what I’ve done to the director, an awfully nice but very intense chap.

“So, what do you think for the end when we fade out, then?” he asks.

“Oh, I dunno. Silence I guess. I thought that worked pretty well. Unless you want some other kind of thing there…”

He looks deeply thoughtful, and runs his hands through his hair.

“I was thinking, rather than silence, maybe we could just have, you know, the sound of nothing.”

“Uh-huh,” says I. “And that would be different to silence in exactly what way?”

Alex Dragulescu, a clever man if ever I saw one, has performed a near-miracle. He has taken the torrent of unadulterated swill generated by spammers and turned it into something beautiful.

Go and visit his gallery of Spam Plants to see what I mean, and make sure you take a look at some of his other inspiring work too.

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Thanks jedimacfan for pointing me to Alex’s site!

Spam Observations #26

On the weekend, someone called Ted Herring (or Kenton Winn – yes, you guessed it, SIC* strikes again) wrote to me breathlessly:

From: ted_herring@shit4brains.biz
Subject: Fw: Hi! I have good news!

Greetings Reverend!.

How are you? I hope you are fine. I missed you so much honey. I have been thinking about our last meeting so much…

O-k-a-y… So. That was an important meeting, then? Honey?

…and I’ll never forget all the fun we had together that month.

(Looks like it left more of an impression on Ted/Kenton than it did on me. I must have been really smashed).

About me all the same, same town same city same job hheheh all the same I am bored and I cant wait to visit u next year.

No. God. Please no! I’m not living here, er there, er, wherever we had fun that month.

Almost nothing has changed between us; my hart is waiting for you.

Hart? Hmm. I don’t remember a deer either. Man it must have been perverted.

Hey, and what do you mean by ‘almost nothing has changed between us’? Are you keeping something from me Ted?

By the way, do you remember that distributor of art, who helped me selling different items,

No.

yes, that ones I was reselling to Artists and Collectors.

Nope. Not ringing a bell. But then I guess if I don’t remember a deer…

Their Comicion to our money-bags!!

Right on! (I have no idea what he’s waffling about).

They want to sell their antiques at the Art Market in Australia. But they have some reasons for not opening a branch in Australia for the moment. Maybe next year, this means that I can move to Sydney very soon.

Don’t feel you need to hurry… I might be moving anyway. To… er… Tierra del Fuego, yes, that’s it. To start up, er… an anchovy trawling business…

The only thing I can say is that I’ve worked with this company for a long time and they are really the best bosses I ever had in my life, you know all the time I have in my life for my activities.

Yes, I’m beginning to get some idea.

In short they are searching for people for distant-work. This job will take only couple of hours a day, but blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah blahblah…

…ad nauseum. He signs off:

PS. By the way, you promised me to call and didn’t keep it. It’s no good forgetting your old and faithful friend. I’ll always be glad to here from you,

Remember me to your mates,
Love you Heepss,

Kenton Winn

So mateys. I’m remembering Ted/Kenton to you all. And I’m sending on all your email addresses so he can love you heepss as well.

I know you’ll want to here from and old and faithful friend. And his deer.
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*Spammer Identity Confusion. In case you forgot.

The Art of (Cat) War #1:

Use extreme caution when your opponent gains control of the higher ground.

Today I buried Kate‘s ashes with the Newton apple tree.

So, Nurse Myra and I have been invited to visit our friends Tuan and Trinh. They’ve just finished doing some renovations on their apartment and they’re showing us around.

The gadget above, sitting on a table, catches my eye.

You’re probably thinking what I thought – some kind of tennis racquet, right? With a power button…? Hmmm. That’s weird. Maybe for a game or something?

“No, no, no!” says Tuan, and picks it up.

He swishes it through the air and there is a z-z-z-z-z-a-p! You know the kind of thing – like an Insect-O-Cutor® sound. And a little violet flash of light.

Oh man! It’s a rechargeable electric mosquito zapper that you can swing! All my life have I wanted this gadget, had I only known it existed.*

Yes, I had found the:

Of course I know that you’re way ahead of me with the ‘all purpose‘. Like, it’s just one purpose, surely? That being the total annihilation of the little blood-sucking creeps.

Aha! Again you’re forgetting the VCF (Vietnam Chaos Factor). Shall I elaborate? Sit back, grab a bowl of dried watermelon seeds, pop yourself a can of Bird’s Nest White Fungus Soda and get comfy.

Nurse Myra and I knew we had to get some of these things to take back home. Hell, with some judicious plugs from Engadget and boingboing I reckon I could sell off a container-load of hand-wieldable Ozzie Mozzie Terminators™ come Sydney summer, but for the moment we thought maybe we’d grab just a modest half dozen for friends and family. Next morning we headed off on our bicycles to a nearby electrical appliance shop.

With the help of our phrase book and some RADA-quality mosquito-extermination miming (with zapping sounds), we simultaneously amused the locals and procured our goods with lavish amounts of our exotic currency†. Now this is what Free Trade is all about!

Simplicity itself.

Unfortunately, Free Trade often comes a cropper when you cross the border, and The All-Purpose Mosquito-Killer Bat was to demonstrate one of its other purposes rather quickly; it is also very effective at holding up the departure of aircraft.

The next day, just as we were about to board our already delayed flight from Danang to Hanoi, we were taken aside by airport security people and quizzed about our belongings.

“You have a mosquito killer in your baggage, yes?” said the polite‡ official.

“Er… yes,” I said.

“It must be switched off for safety reasons,” she said.

“Oh, er, of course,” I said, feeling like a complete idiot. Little zillion-volt spark generator; aircraft-fuel/oxygen mix in the baggage compartment – I got the picture pretty quickly.

The Cellotape came out, there was some quick swishing and sticking – they’d done this kind of thing before. And we were on our way.

Danang to Hanoi, no problem. Hanoi to Sydney…

Nurse Myra got all her zappers confiscated at Sydney Customs.

“But why?” she asked.

“Because they are classified as dangerous weapons,” said the Customs Official.

Well, sure, if mosquitos are drawing up the Import Legislation.

“He told me you could kill a dog with one,” she told me later.

“You could kill a dog with a litre bottle of single-malt whisky,” I said “But they didn’t stop me from bringing that through”.

They somehow failed to stop me from bringing my Mosquito-Killer Bat through either. Tsk. How careless is that?

Do they have any idea who they’re dealing with?

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*Those living in colder climes sans mosquitos may not fully realize the magnitude of my rapture at this discovery. Calloo Callay! No more prancing naked around the bedroom in the middle of hot summer nights with a rolled up newspaper (well, not in the pursuit of exacting vengeance on mosquitos, anyway).

†They cost us about $3 each…

‡I should probably just dispense with the ‘polite’ whenever I’m talking about Vietnamese officialdom; it can just be assumed.

Although my time in Vietnam was hugely enjoyable and full of laughs and surprises, there was, as some of you know, a more serious side to the trip too.

Nurse Myra goes to Vietnam partly as a break from the Sydney winter but mostly to do volunteer work at an orphanage in Quang Ngai. I spent some of my time with her at the orphanage, and I thought I might tell you the story of the Dentist.

Children in Vietnam don’t get much in the way of dental care. Those of us who live in privileged Western societies mostly take for granted the fact that our teeth are not decayed, chipped, rotting or causing pain. In Vietnam, those things are part of everyday life. The kids at the orphanage do have some health care, but for reasons that are possibly cultural, dental care is not a priority in the Orphanage Scheme Of Things.

This year, Nurse Myra raised some money back home in order that a dentist be organized to examine the children and carry out any work required. I think she originally thought this would be an easy task to accomplish. As it turns out, it was full of obstacles. Politics, cultural misunderstandings and other orphanage ‘priorities’, along with language difficulties, conspired to make the visit to the dentist a lot more complex than simply booking an appointment.

Truly, if it had been me trying to get this done, I would have thrown in the towel. The extreme resistance that the orphanage administration showed to this generous act seemed to me to be simply baffling. Nurse Myra is a very patient and persistent person though, and it is to her great credit that after nearly four weeks of negotiation she managed to get most of the children (nearly 80 kids) thoroughly checked, and all their dental problems dealt with. It was a big task. Only two children required just a simple ‘clean’ – most of them had a lot more work than that. I can’t begin to tell you how ridiculously small an amount of money was needed to do this.*

The boy above is our Poster Boy†. There are not too many Before and After shots of any of the kids. It’s kinda hard to get Vietnamese children to smile for photos.

Maybe from now on though, the orphanage kids won’t feel so bad about it.

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*Consider: a trip to the dentist for a child here in Australia, with, say, a couple of fillings and a clean would cost at minimum $50 (US). For 80 kids that’s $4000. It cost about a fifth of that.

†You all know that I’m a whiz with Photoshop, but you’ll have to trust me that I didn’t tinker with these shots.

For reasons far too entangled to go into, Nurse Myra and I were bounced from our booked flight from Danang to Hanoi, and the enchantingly polite and apologetic staff* from Vietnam Airlines bundled us off for a few hours to Danang’s Bamboo Green hotel.

Some people might see this as an inconvenience. Here at The Cow, we look upon such things as an opportunity.

Aha! More guest rules:

Well, of course I already knew by now to check my dry squids at the kitchen, but Conspicuously bulky materials? And Animals including pets? Damn that souvenir water buffalo! Busted on two counts. Well, three I guess – it didn’t smell too good either.

Bamboo Green is the only hotel I’ve ever stayed at which had its own theme song (handily provided as a laminated sheet on the bedside table†):

I think Hyatt and Hilton could learn something from this.

I’m available. And not too expensive.
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*Seriously, how can these people possibly be so nice? It doesn’t matter what goes wrong they handle it with such manners and aplomb that you can’t help but smilingly go along with whatever alternative they offer. (“We are so sorry that your plane has been engulfed by toxic fumes, please accept this plate full of crushed jagged glass and a trip on a rusted bus as a substitute…” Sure!)

In fact, in this case because they had to put us on a later flight, they paid for our temporary stay in a Danang hotel along with a meal, and, I discovered later, crammed a wad of cash (nearly half the fare) in our ticket folder by way of compensation. I guess I’m not used to this kind of concern. Well, not without a lot of whining anyway. In my experience it’s usually: “Your plane’s grounded bud, deal with it.”

†Well, I suppose you never know when you’ll be at a loss for material for a singalong…

Over at Radioactive Jam’s pad, the discussion turned to some issues of Political Correctness and I advised a trip to cartoonist John Callahan’s website for a good dose of (humourous) reality from someone who sits (in his wheelchair) on the other side of the able-bodied fence.

Callahan has a great selection of hate mail he has received for his work. It is possibly the funniest part of the site. Cheeze, people are so humourless and easily upset. It’s just cartoons folks, he’s pulling your strings!

I thought this was particularly chuckle-worthy in reference to some previous Cow observations (Now Pil, no hate mail, you know it’s just a joke!)