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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'.

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