The first note of Frogger

On the old Atari 2600 I would play a lot of Frogger. The opening theme, you may recall, went something like this:







(at 0:49 in this review)

However, if you held down the reset switch, that first note would go until you let it back up, which made it seem like a pickup note and made the melody sound more like this confusing version:






I remember holding down the switch for as long as I could. That's still the feeling I have for long pickup notes landing into the start of a melody. And maybe it has something to do with these retarded remixes I am so fascinated with.

Also, there is the matter of

Fun with anagrams

I saw that movie The Vanished a few days back, and like a week or two before that, Shutter Island, and then maybe a couple years ago Memento, all of which got me thinking about anagrams in the back of my mind somewhere, I guess, cuz then lo and behold the other day my mind went blank for a while, then when I came to I realized that "saint" and "isn't a" are anagrams, and then I did this thing you always have to do in music theory where you find the different "rotations" of a series of notes, resulting in something like this (only scrawled out in the sort of messy writing indicative of a crackpot revelation in progress):

isn't a saint
(sntasainti)
(ntasaintis)
(tasaintisn)
as ain't isn't
saint isn't a
ain't isn't as
in 'tisn't as a
(ntisntasai)
(tisntasain)
isn't a saint


Then I thought it would be cool to make a poem where you had to use all the five letters before you reused them, but I had to sort of cheat, and it looked like this:

saint isn't a saint
-but-
saint ain't isn't as saint isn't
-so-
ain't a saint a saint?


I dunno, it seemed worthwhile at the time but now it seems like Matty ran out of crosswords and the internet was broke.

G

G is for a lot of things but for today let's say G is for Gravity.

Because when I was oh let's say 12 I must have learned about Gravity, probably there was an inset on a corner of a page of a brown-paper-bag-dust-jacketed book. It must have been from some source less reputable, though, that there was, there in my 12 year old mind, the strangely potent word Vortex, that fascinating kind of scientific word with both a V and an X, its definition vaguely trailing behind.

The two ideas were there in my 12 year old mind, in my 12 year old brain inside my 12 year old body, inside a blue dodge van that hurtled what I imagined to be tens of thousands of miles from Akron to let's say Utah. They must have been there still beneath that tree, where on a family hike I found it slightly harder to stand from a crouch than it ought to have been.

This is the place, my 12 year old self thought. This is the Vortex, this is a glitch in the structure of Gravity and it has only this subtle effect: that it is slightly harder to stand from a crouch than it ought to be.

G is for Gravity but F is for Fishing pole, and as I recall it now, I guess I had one in segments in my backpack, the longest and most elastic of which arched like a Bow-flex between backpack and tree limb as I rose and fell, flush with the sense of the Momentous.

Help me complete my Magical Bandana Color Vortex

Dear everybody,

I am sorry that I never go out with you anymore. I am really really poor and also I am seriously always working on these movies, plus I have a girlfriend and forget what bars are for in the first place. Maybe we can hang out after the two big shows on September 27th and October 31st. By then I bet I have a little dough too so like we can go to a bar or a show or something. Also I will get you back for those beers you bought or for that time when you paid for a pizza that I ate some of. It'll be fun. I hope you will still be my friends, everybody. I miss you.

Love,
Matty Lite

The cutest in medical terminology

I broke my toe. It's the first bone I've ever broken. It hurt and it turned all blue. It is the second from the left on my left foot. My "ring toe," as you might call it. I wouldn't call it that, though, because I mean when am I ever gonna wear a ring on my toe, you know?

Well I don't know if you've heard, but there isn't much they will do for your broken toe if you go to the hospital. Even WebMD admits it, and usually they are great at convincing you a muscle cramp is leprosy and a cold is lupus (who agrees with me that WebMD is a scam to try to get more people to go to the doctor?).

Figure 12: It's never lupus

Instead, they recommend the cutest-sounding medical procedure on the books: the "buddy tape." This is the process of taping your broken toe to the toe next to it, so they can be "buddies" (I got a certified nurse's assistant to help me with this part; as far as I can recall it went something like this).

Naturally I spent the day imagining the fun times my "ring" and middle toes were having together now that they were buddies. In my mind my toes were like two adorable kittens that had been taped to one another.

Figure 12: What my full complement of left-foot toes would look like if they were five adorable kittens duct-taped together

The only downside to the buddy tape is it made it hurt less to walk, so I wasn't able to limp around and pretend I was House anymore.

Figure 12: Never forget

This happened to me yesterday.

I was watching Caddyshack, and I suddenly didn't think it was funny. I mean, like, at all. But then after the commercial break it seemed funny again.

It was weird, man.