
click above for photo
My phone messages:
Most of my phone messages are annoying and silly and don't even
involve saying who I am or what my number is. Most of the messages
are long gone, and I hope to re-create some of the lost ones, so this
archive should grow over time.
- "Message Song". My friend Trent was
moving from place to place while looking for work, and needed a stable
phone number to leave on his resume, so I offered mine. This forced me
to make a message that was "approachable", so as not to frighten away
potential employers, yet still be silly. It ended up being my most
popular message, and I kept it for 9 months after Trent had gotten a job. (310K)
- "Kungfu", quotes taken from a dubbed Jackie Chan
movie, "Half a Loaf of Kung Fu". (184K)
- Morning Chores. This has been my second-most
popular message. The first half is a speeded-up song from a 'Lassie' story
on the B-side of a terrible children's album, "Eustace the Useless Rabbit"
(I'm not kidding). The ending sound clip comes from an animal
encyclopedia CD-Rom. (388K)
- "A bad time to call", a growing cacophony
of disaster. (163K)
- The Sensuous Woman, from a vinyl porn album of
the same name, by "J". Heavily clipped and rearranged. Nothing dirty.
(172K)
- The furniture of your mind. Shortly after I'd
made the "J" recording, there was a chance that I would be getting together
with a woman, and it seemed inappropriate - the phone message, not the woman.
So I made this recording instead, cobbled together off the 1972 Allen Spraggett
album, "How to develop your E.S.P.", with faint background music added. (109K)
- "King's Quest". This is
a message I've tried to reconstruct. The speech is Robby Benson from the computer
game King's Quest VI, reading a passage from an incredibly boring book.
On top of this is Lawrence Welk music being played off-speed, ending with an
explosion and a teeny tiny clip from The Firesign Theater's album Everything
you know is wrong.(90K)
- "Breakfast". From a Larousse set of 4 small records
for teaching British English to French tourists. Everyone on the record inunciates
like crazy, saying "please" all the time. Originally I had hoped for this message to say
something like, "Hello, The Queen - or whatever my name is - has been gone for
five hundred days. I would like three gallons of raspberry pudding..." and so on,
except the sound clips either weren't all available or just didn't sound right
when put together. The final recording still turned out pleasantly amusing and
short. (76K)
- Vietnam. From an album of radio ads encouraging
Americans to buy war bonds during the Vietnam war. The sound clips in this
message are barely changed from the original, except perhaps in one obvious spot. (130K)
- "Introduction". Another language album this
time. The selected phrases were chosen partially because I don't always
get back to people too quickly. (110K)
- Just show me a rich geologist. Three absurd English lesson
phrases, all unaltered from the album "Jetzt sprechen wir englisch". The background
music is called "Left Bank Two", familiar to some as The Gallery music from
the BBC children's art show, Vision On. (188K)
- "Madness". A little something short and dark.
Music from Prokofiev's "Dance of the Knights". (105K)
- "Dear mom and dad".
Clips of Diane Linkletter (daughter of Art Linkletter), from an album that was
made to combat a perceived decline in family values. It won the 1969
"Best spoken word recording" grammy. (105K)
- "Similar words".
I wanted a message that sounded like, "Hello, you have reached [my phone number].
I can't come to the phone at the moment, so please leave a message, after the beep." So
instead I said, "Echo, glue lab creased [my phone number]. Why camp bun through
the bone hat the rodent, crow freeze knees a leverage, plaster the sheep." (47K)
- Be loyal to... the BAND!
Sound clips from two cartoons, "Silverwing" and a Warner Bros. short,
"Piker's Peak".(80K)
Strange StufF
- Calligraphy and making it work for you!
Something silly I wrote for the medieval-themed issue #32 of
YIP Magazine. The printed version is different
from what you see here, because I accidentally made some of the same jokes
that were in the editorial column.
- Inspired by the great site that is
www.badmovies.org, my friends and
I got together to make
a review of the movie Volcano. Click
here for a couple of extra sound clips that didn't
get onto the official page.
- Mangled English. We've all seen it, and it's no surprise.
English is a very messy language to learn, while at the same time it's
flexible enough that you can make tons of mistakes and still be
understood. Usually. The following items are rather amusing.
- First, a sheet from a notepad for ordering breakfast and other
services, taken from an old-fashioned tourist train in India.
Front and back.
- Secondly, the
instructions... I'm sorry, instrelltions for
a combination musical lamp/clock/waterwheel of some sort. Original
cardboard preserved - this is the real thing. You can also read
the warnings, although they're not as funny.
- The Tounge of Frog, an internet classic.
For another web site and more links with mangled English, try
Engrish.
- The beginning of the 'A' section from the
business white pages of the Toronto telephone directory from a few years ago.
Note the recurrence of automobile glass, moving companies, lawyers, and (cough)
'escort agencies'.