Since November 21, 2006, I have unknowingly borne the epithet (above) bestowed on me by the recently cited Thomas Nephew. And maybe I’ll be able to retain it even after I succumb to his initially polite but soon more importunate request that I share with the world five examples of how weird I am.
I was amused by the assumption involved, until I realized it was more likely a conclusion, since he actually knows me. But “five examples”? Had I displayed that much weirdness? Or is it, in fact, an assumption about everyone—that they are at least that weird, fivefold weird, every man jack of them? What to do, what to think …
Naturally I parried, but Thomas stuck me good. Then I forgot about the whole thing.
Until today, when I saw something in the restricted area of the Basement, where the dials and knobs are, and levers marked “Humor Level” and buttons labeled “LAUNCH” and “DELETE”: a link to a link on Thomas’s site that links to mine. Yes, I got dizzy. And as a result, I typed up five things.
Now, I still think this particular edition of “blog tag” will be less enlightening than some others I’ve seen. Does a weirdo ever think he’s weird (really)? Or take so-called normal people: do they know they’re doing something weird? Right—they do when someone tells them it’s weird. But do they end up agreeing it’s weird, or do they just think the other person is the weird one?
Who’s to say what’s weird, anyway? Haven’t you ever said, “Boy, that’s weird!” and had others respond in unison: “No, it isn’t!” You haven’t? Boy, that’s weird.
Weirdness is clearly in the eye of the beholder. (In fact, the word weird looks weirder and weirder the more you look at it.) The list I produce will almost certainly not be the list my family would draw up, or my coworkers, or my friends, or that person at the Safeway today who was looking at me funny.
But enough temporizing. Herewith, Five (random) Examples of How Weird I (possibly) Am (you be the judge):
- I refuse to drink cheap beer, but will cheerfully drink cheap wine.
- I never wear sunglasses. (Well, almost never. Very, very, very, very rarely.)
- Every single T-shirt I have owned for the last 30 years has been given to me. (Not counting softball jerseys.) I think the last T-shirt I bought was from the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas.
- I have not gotten rid of my LPs (hundreds of them, many of them duplicated on CDs I own [some triplicated as mp3 files]).
- I cut my own hair.
There! That was fun.
Behold the haggard blackguard,
Of bleary mien and weirdly green,
Lost at sea, tempest-toss’d,
Leaning o’er the watery deep,
Perhaps to sleep—his final nap,
Or maybe … maybe just to …
You know … toss his toast …
Now that’s weird!
Cool. You are hereby no longer a blackguard. So how do you get LPs to .MP3?
Well, I can turn LPs into mp3s, but usually I just rip CDs into mp3s. Usually when I digitize LPs it’s to CD (via intermediary .wav files) rather than mp3. I hook up my laptop to the receiver and digitize the analog stream. From there it’s just messing with formats.
If you want to do LP-to-mp3 conversion on a massive scale (and somehow I sense that in your question), you can buy an “mp3 turntable” that you hook up to your computer via USB. It looks pretty easy. I think I read that the software recognizes the gaps and automatically creates a separate file for each track.
I also have a lot of mp3s that are live performances of stuff I own on LP or CD. I don’t consider those dupes (let alone trips). Lots of George Szell—whatta guy! Some say he was a blackguard. Or at least a bastard. It’s no coincidence that the bad guy in Marathon Man is named Dr. Szell. At any rate, the best conductor I’ve ever heard.