Commanding menus

That's the topic of tonight's hastily-written paper. Well, kinda. It's a review of the menu- vs. command-driven interfaces...

I know; I'm falling asleep too.

What's worse is that it was written ages ago, and it may be "important", but I have enough else jogging around in my brain that I just don't care right now.

One less thing jogging around in my brain is that damn song, thanks to Gino (I know that's rude as hell, but I'm too lazy to decide if he should legitimately be called Nosmo King). He came in to finish beating the living shit out of his Redirector again today, and I ended up (after offering to help and being turned down 27,000 times) talking to him in the hopes that he wouldn't get bored and shoot more rubberbands at me. :-) I suck at talking, and he likes "so what's new in your life?" questions (the most-utliest hated of them all), so I decided to enlist his help; he's old enough that he was probably more cognizant than I was then anyway, I figured.

I'm still having problems with the words, but the melody has been waffling in and out ever since last night; of all the questions I was answering online & via email (how I spend most of my Sundays in-between fielding live questions from people who should be asking Someone Other Than Me, but kvetching about it is pointless, 'cos they're not going to stop coming. A lot of them are intimidated by their Someones, and I feel for that, or their Someones have the weekend off), I was tempted to slack off and search obsessively.

Oh, yeah...like that would happen. Perfect approach-avoidance setup, huh? Or would that be double approach-avoidance? I think it would be double.

Butsoanyway.

Although I'm a music junkie, I'm not frickin' Rainman; I misremember things, misclassify, etc... Particularly when it's not "my" kind of music. I mean, I might like--or even really, really like--a song, but it's pop, or bluegrass, or something; I know nothing about it, so I stick it somewhere that it doesn't belong. A perfect example is that song '65 Love Affair; I like the song. It's got, as the saying goes, a good beat, and you can bounce to it. I hear it rarely, and I never cared enough to do more than bounce to it. Somehow in my mind it became attributed to Hall and Oates. I guess, to my method of classification, it has something in common with other representative samples of their work.

Hell...I don't know, but it sounded good. Ok--I'm retarded. Happy?

I won't even go into what an idiot I felt like when I found out it wasn't Hall and Oates. I guess I hadn't heard it enough. But the point is that I'm aware I misclassify, and my remembrance of this one song is scanty at best. But I've pulled a few facts together:

1) I think I thought it was a girl singing it, and that she had a "powerful" voice, a la Joan Jett, Cher, Wendy O. Williams. But it sounded distinctly male to me last night. Guess I was wrong there.

2) There's a chorus of girls; I can't recall a word that they're saying, but I have the melody somewhat pieced together. Somewhat.

3) There's piano playing in parts that reminds me of that song "Cool Change"; really similar melody there. I think.

4) The song is a gestaltly (is too a word) kind of peak experience-y -ish, powerful-ish, celebratory one. I know--that's not googleable. But it helps to narrow it down a little. Kinda.

5) I'm figuring it's from 1975 - 1985. Broader than I'd speculated before, but I had to admit that I might not have been hearing the first run, or at least remembering things from the first time(s) I heard it. I think it was popular, though.

6) Considering movies like Fame and all, I'm not totally ruling out the possibility that it could be from a cinematic or theatrical production; it seems to me to have had some kind of big orchestra effect, or wall of sound, or something like that. The guy could be soloing. Or it could even be some group kinda like Chicago, but one that uses a girl chorus.

7) I'm doubtful that it isn't American. But all in all, that doesn't mean much.

That's the bulk of my revelations, and all that I am working with for the most part. S'ok though; I've worked with less and succeeded.

So I enlisted Gino's help. Parts 1 - 7 meant nothing to him. Sing it? I have no words for certain, and any I came up with stand a good chance of being wrong; sorry. Plus, I don't sing in public, so double-no.

We finally compromised, and I la-la'd the parts I could remember, with a few da-naa-naa-naa's in there to convey the effect of I think some kind of orchestra. Concentration and stage fright meant I had my eyes closed, and when I finished and opened them, Gino's got his elbows on his knees, and head in his hands.

I waited politely to let him think.

When he raised his head, he was laughing. "If that's what's bouncing around in your head, you have a mind like a steel cuisinart. That has to be the most god-awful rendition of 'Isn't It Time' that I've ever heard."

Jerk. Now I feel really dumb. But grateful. Ok, I'm grateful enough that I can forgive the laughing, I decide; it probably was pretty bad, anyway.

I ask, just to confirm it--the name of the song is "Isn't It Time"? I don't remember that in the words, but...

Yep. Isn't It Time, by The Babies, he says.

Cool beans. I'm at allmusic.com in two shakes of a lamb's tail. The Babies, it says, was a group in the 60's. And nothing else. Literally. Nothing. Their entry is blank! Bastards! Was it maybe The Something Babies? I've got Inca Babies, Hot Babies...all kinds of babies, I ask Gino.

No way, saith the Gino. He comes over to see. It's not B-A-B-I-E-S, it's B-A-B-Y-S, he says, snickering.

Like I should know that people have been having issues with pluralisations for that long. I'd been hoping it was more recent than that. As I'm putting B-A-B-Y-S in, I ask hopefully, "is that as in more than one baby, or as in the way one would say 'baby'--like 'oh, babys'?" I can deal with The Babys as in "Oh, baby".

Gino looks at me like I'm from outer space. He has no idea, he says. And, do I know that I am Positively Frightening sometimes?

I resist the urge to tell Gino to bite my ass.

The page loaded, I set to reading. Waitaminute...I've heard of John Waite! Is he the guy that is singing?

Yeah, laughs Gino; you've found your woman.

Not that I remember anything about John Waite off the top of my head, but, well, familiar names help. And no offence to Mr Waite intended, but he could have benefitted from a little more makeup. I've heard of Bad English, too... Not that I remember anything about them. Do any of the three have more songs like Isn't It Time?

No. They suck. Gino has decided to launch into a Lesson on Taste. Ancodia has none, it is clear. This is easily noticeable by the fact that she listens to the public radio classical station, and the other public radio jazz station.

Excuse me, buddy? It's called work-neutral music! I usually don't even listen to A Prairie Home Companion if anyone else is working on our hall, because I try to not offend! I just don't need the hassle. What I listen to is neutral and good. Grrr...

Oh; wait--we can rebuild her...he has the technology...some outfit in his car that he's blown enough on that the proverbial Reasonably Prudent Person would feel warranted that he be held for observation, I'm sure.

I try my best to look fascinated. No, really.

What I hear is destined to be reconstructed now as, "a QZX 2040 plus dual-mod triple something-something, blah, blah, blah." Its pedigree, like engine specs and computer equipment, travels in one ear and out the other; there's just nothing in-between that cares enough to latch on to it.

Why do men think we care? How do they remember all of this? Put it on flash cards, and memorise it?

"Wow," say I.

Oh, I haven't heard the best of it...

I went back to typing while he talked; after all, this humiliation and education is costly. Gino's got the luxury of free time that I don't.

And we got into a disagreement over whether or not he was going to take the pack of cigarettes I'd bought to repay him (I hate owing people), and he went back to his office to re-reinstall Redirector at least five times. Heh. I could've had it working by then. *Nothing* can be *that* wrong with Redirector that you aren't personally responsible for. But I offered again and again, and got turned down again, and again. He finally gave up, leaving it still not redirecting. But if he'd not kept trying to keep me from getting work done, he might have been much more successful in subduing the Beast. Sigh.

It galls me that we girls couldn't possibly know more about it that Mr Man. Okay, sure. After we'd left, I was tempted to double-back and break in and fix it for him. It's pretty self-explanatory, for crying out loud. I didn't because he insisted no, and it's his choice to give up on it and have everything all screwed up for the weekend, week, or life. Not Ancodia's problem.

Though I think I will be nice and make sure he has it together on Tuesday, when I am back.

Earth-mother? Hardly. More like Earth Big Sister.

Speaking of which; Sister finally called, and is perfectly fine. At least for now.

So I worry. What of it?