Dilemmas

The following case study came unbidden, and thoroughly disrupted my carefully arranged plans. I tend to accept these twists of fate these days. Thus I give you a diversion that I nominate as Part 10 of the Things Fall Apart series, another entry that falls under the banner of Social Living. Do let me know if it fits the bill.

An Examination Question

Date: Saturday June 10, 2006
Time: 8:55 am EST

Problem Statement

You are manager of Toli inc., a small but growing concern. The following situation presents itself to you. Discuss how you would resolve the various competing concerns. Provide enough detail to satisfy the reporting requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley act in light of the corporate history of Enron and recent judicial verdicts.

Constraints

Hunger: You haven't had any breakfast although you woke up at 6 am on the dot as is your custom this time of the year. The reason for the delayed breakfast. Well...

Dying computer: Your desktop computer has been giving you fits for the past 3 hours as the power supply cuts out every five minutes as a result of being subjected to one too many lights out. More disaster recovery in prospect.

Laundry: There are at least 3 loads of laundry that need to be washed if you want to have something to wear this evening beyond tracksuits.

World Cup: the England vrs Paraguay match starts at 9am. 5 minutes.

French Open: the women's final starts at 9am. Or has it started already? Henin-Hardenne against Kuznetsova.

Day job: Need to check in the code that you promised the team this week. You want to be the Karl Malone of Lotus: "The Mail Man, I deliver". Prospects are dim.

Marriage: Desire for quality time with The Wife. 'Nuff said.

Groceries: Probably a good idea to do. See also: marriage.

Family: The mother-in-law is in town. You should see her sometime today. Also: need to do weekly phone calls to Ghana and all the cousins and friends. You remember that 8 members of the family are due to head to Germany today to support the Ghana team. You need to find out whether they got visas. Basically, catch up with people, talk football.

House: A mess. See also: mother-in-law.

Reading: you normally curl up with a book or three on weekends.

Futures: The Great Move West beckons, you have a month or so to finalize on the moving company, pack your apartment, and purge your possessions. Would be good to get a head start. See also: house and marriage.

Bills: The usual suspects need to addressed. Corollary: day job.

Preliminary Solution

Prioritize: football, laundry, house, mother-in-law, bills, reading, The Wife, day job, hunger (you'll work the rest out later).

Risks: marriage (justification: "in good times and bad"), day job (justification: well it is Saturday), tennis (life is like a box of chocolates), groceries (whatever), The Move (next week).

You're an engineer but technology can only help so much... You could use a Tivo, but even if you had the prescience to have bought one, it would only be good for pausing if you have to run out for a minute. With an event like the World Cup, you can hear the screams of people in nearby houses and in your building. Your upstairs neighbour, like you, is living every moment of the matches and your ceiling felt every half chance yesterday. Unlike that guy at the office who got his Tivo installed on Monday, you have procrastinated. You don't even have VHS tapes to record the games on your old vcr. Also your old TV doesn't have split screens. In any case, you don't like switching during football matches. Well maybe rolandgarros.com, there's an idea: laptop deals with tennis and day job in one stroke...

The immigrant workers outside your window have a radio blaring as they work, so they too are in the mix.

The Set-Up

1. The TV situation

Yesterday you started looking into the furniture business and adjusted the TV stand so that the angle is more amenable for long term viewing. Final is July 9th.

Within reach are two of The Wife's travel neck pillow things. They might come in handy since you are using your 10 year old bachelor futon: furniture from hell and source of chronic back pain and worse. Resolve: Burn it during The Move.

You have six pillows to fashion the futon into some semblance of comfort.

Remote control for switching back and forth with tennis. Check.

Sleep cloth, Dutch wax. Check. Good Ghana boy.

New cell phone. Check. No longer a high-tech Luddite.

Cordless phone for landline. Oops. Need to recharge it. Head to study.

Broom. Within sight.

2. The Laptop Configuration

You don't like to use laptop keyboards for extended periods, you normally use a full-sized keyboard and monitor on your desk in the study. This situation however calls for a laptop intervention.

You borrow The Wife's Cool Pad to prevent the scorching of the family jewels. The wireless access is all set... You decide you need to order one of your own pads. You open up a tab in the browser, search for "Cool Pad" at Amazon... open up another tab for Froogle "laptop accessories pad", another one for PriceScan

You get up to grab the laptop power cord from your study, you don't want to run on battery today.

3. Reading Material

1 copy of Friday's New York Times. You only buy the hard copy on Fridays and Sundays and don't have home delivery, it forces you to go to the convenience store to commiserate with that Persian guy about Dubya bombing his hometown two weeks before the upcoming November elections. Jesus wept. You bought said copy during the hour between games yesterday but have only read the front page... Remaining: the arts section, Krugman and that whole Zarqawi thing...

Kwasi Wiredu - Cultural Universals and Particulars, An African Perspective. Some philosophical reading for the theme for your Social Living series.

Madison Smartt Bell - The Stone that the Builder Refused. You've been carrying this novel around for two weeks and it's getting great. Haiti. Toussaint L'Ouverture. Napoleon. Revolution! Things fall apart.

All set for World Cup.

9:02am. Laundry. Quarters. Quick: downstairs. 5 minutes to go.

The Match

9:06am. Couch. Remote. TV. Okay.

American TV channels don't show the build up of the games unless the US is playing, the broadcasts start on the hour so you only get 7 minutes of pre-game commentary. There's barely enough time for analysis and you don't get to hear the national anthems unless the US is playing... And then there's the fact that if it's on ESPN there's that annoying ticker taking up the bottom of the screen. They are literally missing the big picture... Univision of course delivers on the comprehensive coverage but their image quality is worse and your Spanish? Well... ¿Se Habla Español? Well the game's on ABC today and they do full screen, so you'll try the English language commentary.

Sometimes you do want to hear the national anthems that the crowds sing, watch the players pretend to know the words, and soak in the tribal atmosphere. You've missed that today. Most Americans won't know what they are missing. Their country is becoming the Third World in the globalization sweepstakes, and some even seem proud about it... Well hopefully their team will do well in Germany and the underground football nation that I know lurks might manifest itself. Of course, I hope that Ghana will beat them handily, we need a little soul uplift.

Game on. Psyched.

Hmmm... the Paraguayan goalkeeper sustains an injury and has to leave the game.

The American commentator notes, "this is the second fastest substitution of a goalkeeper in World Cup history".

What the hell? You yell at the screen, "What does that have to do with the price of potatoes? This isn't baseball, football isn't a game of statistics."

Well anyway, experiment over. You promptly switch to Univision, they must be talking about things that matter. Anyway you'll need to know Spanish in Mexico, I mean California. (Justification: The Move).

It's a good game, England are looking great. Joe Cole terrorizing everyone, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Becks: the Axis of Solidity. Steven Gerrard, mon dieu. Peter Crouch: the hardest working man in the business... The whole team is shining and on the basis of this start, they could beat anyone. Meanwhile laptop on. Connect to Big Blue network, download latest build. Check rolandgarros.com.

Paraguay is keeping it close. Free kick. Beckham bends it...

"Gol! Gol! Gooooooooool".

Excitable announcer. Another one: "Goooooool".

Loud thumping overhead. A few shouts from neighbour. You shout. "Gooooooooooool".

Workers cheer from outside, must be Boston Irish or something.

"Here we go, here we go, here we go..."

Sounds of Wife stirring in bedroom...

"Gol! Gol! Gol!... Bravo. Goooool... Impressionante... Bravo... Gol... Mundialiasta... La pelota... Gol!..."

Remote. French Open briefly. Hmmm... Back to football. Start thinking about your glory days.

Laptop down. Pick up newspaper. Put down newspaper, match is too exciting.

Half time. Mexican adverts come on, skimpy dresses, rhumba dancing, eye-candy. Hmmm, you really need to learn Spanish... Still, remote: switch channel to French Open. Henin-Hardenne ahead. Whatever. Come on Kuznetwhatever. New York Times, now on page 4.

Oh! Laundry. Time to change the loads. Run downstairs.

Back upstairs. Hmmm. Hunger, food. Let's see...

Wife is up and about in the kitchen and looking grim... She's having breakfast but with that butter knife in hand, you need to tread carefully, you might get the macho treatment.

You try small talk and start muttering something lighthearted about the World Cup, widowhood and dilemmas... and begin to explain the various things on your plate, and talk about the match so far.

"You should eat", she says.

Good idea. More small talk... The food preparation business is not going too well, you turned on the kettle for the tea, but there was a noise on the TV, so you run there. False alarm, excitable commentator. You head back to pick up the toast. The broom is in your other hand. Start sweeping. Meanwhile more banter about glory days long gone...

You hear: "You're all over the place. You can't go on like this... not a bachelor anymore... A mess..." You nod your head and reach for the butter knife. Fridge. Marmalade. Milk.

The Wife is off in a huff (see also: evil eye). She comes back (avoids your eyes), grabs her laptop and heads for the bedroom.

Yesterday was your boycott day, it seems she's taken your message to heart and is boycotting you today.

Whatever. Justification: The Shankly Code (Shankly, Bill)

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I'm very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

Second half is starting. There's the day job business. Food, laptop, cushions. Remote. Check French Open briefly. Switch. Watch.

10 minutes later, she shouts your name....

"What's up?", you yell between munches.

"I sent you an email".

Uh-oh. A deft multi-tasking effort now takes place.

• You put down the slice of buttered toast and marmalade and the bowl of Frosties (well Frosted Flakes in the US; the same Tony the Tiger, they're great!)
• You turn to the laptop, note that the build has long since finished downloading, start the install.
• Switch to Firefox and open up a new tab.
• You note that Peter Crouch just got a yellow card... Damn... England are looking like the most interesting team in the World Cup but yellow cards might be their downfall. Gerrard and now Crouch?
• You click on the Gmail icon in the browser toolbar.

You take a guess on the title of the email that should have shown up in your inbox:

Ultimatum.

Once again The Wife proves her fortitude and you read

From: The Wife
To: Koranteng@Toli

Subject: Fwd: The World Cup at the Enormous Room

Maybe you can see the match with some friends... Maybe I can meet their widows.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Soul Africa Bulletin
Subject: The World Cup at the Enormous Room
To: Boston Crew

Greetings,

The Enormous Room is hosting live Telecasts of the 2006 World Cup every day for the month of June. The 12 pm and 3pm games will be shown live. The 9am games will be recorded and played after the 3pm games. The bar will be open, but the kitchen will not open until 5:30pm. Feel free to bring some lunch.

see you there.

You smile. Great idea, the Africans in Boston are rallying... Commerce mixed with community. You could do that tomorrow and for the rest of the month, you vaguely hope they have Wi-fi so you could perch there during the work day. The World Cup is a 9 to 5 occupation for a month every four years, you wish you could get paid for it. Still there's no time today.

You fiddle around, back and forth between the Bloglines and delicious tabs, copying and pasting links and titles of things you remember reading yesterday.

You compose the reply in Gmail and hit the send button

From: Koranteng@toli
To: The Wife (Disgruntled and long-suffering)
Subject: Widowhood

Great idea...

See also from my internet friend Noel and his wife Elissa.

Avoiding World Cup Widowhood

Avoiding World Cup Widowhood -- a Guide for the Uninitiated (pdf)

Close game so far.

Cheers.

Back to the game... Paraguay getting close. What gives with England?

Day job: not much progress. New York Times: nope, too tense.

The game ends, England wins... A Google search about your nagging concern "World Cup 2006 yellow card policy first round", nothing obvious.

Ah yes, remote; you switch to the French Open... Henin-Hardenne wins the last point and throws her hands in the air 6-4, 6-4. She deserves it although you prefer Kuznetsova. Better luck next time.

What do you do next?

You head into bedroom to face recriminations.

They are blistering as expected... "In good times and bad". You're in a good mood so you continue with the small talk: lots of things that you're juggling today, talk about the match.

It's not working... Whatever. More football banter... Still not working... more football banter, reminisce about distant glories....

But then she softens for a moment at your evident enthusiasm and asks:

"When is the next match?"
"I don't know, I have to check."
"12pm".

One hour to go before the next match...

Arrggh! You forgot the laundry. You turn. Vague thought: you can't do the groceries in that time... after the next match maybe.

You gather up the towels and such for the next load... You would have washed the sheets too but you don't fancy your chances of survival if you try to remove them while The Wife is lying in them...

You rush down to get to the laundry before that other desperado you met at half-time gets there (you recognized the type, he's also doing laundry and watching the game).

Made it... Arggh! You don't have enough quarters... remember that inflation calypso you were singing six months ago... prescience huh?

You run back up to get some quarters, you almost trip on the narrow stairs.

You steady yourself... there's no need to rush, nice and slow. Quarters. Back down the stairs.

You nod your head at the guy who arrives as you put the quarters in...

"Good game."
"Yeah, England might well win the whole thing."
"Those yellow cards though. Do they carry over?"
"I don't think so. Google it."
"Will do. Again."

You start humming Jerusalem as you walk slowly back up the stairs, it's been on your mind recently

And did those feet in ancient times
Walk upon England's mountains green

You break out in full song as you open the door to the apartment.

"..pleasant pastures seen..."

Hold on, the Belgian national anthem is playing on the TV, the trophy is being awarded.

You settle down on the sofa and take up the cool pad and the laptop

".. builded Jerusalem..."

Kuznetsova is praising Henin-Hardenne. Justine looks as cool as Belgian beer and chips.

In England’s green and pleasant Land.

End of hymn. You need some more music... but the remote for the Rotel amplifier is out of reach, and the universal remote that you have doesn't control said Rotel amplifier, they said it was universal.

That Rotel remote is the worst remote you've ever had the misfortune to use, you remember that you were going to blog about its design flaws at some point. Laptop, you open up Notetab, open toli-ideas.txt and write this nugget down. Later.

So you do the next best thing, you start to sing the next hymm in the Boycott Hymnal: To Hunt the Wren

How will you kill him?
With sticks and stones

You have 54 minutes before the next game: Trinidad and Tobago against Sweden... Now you're talking, The T & Ts are the Dream Team in the World Cup, there's a shortage of Trinidad T-shirts. Like the Ghanaians, Togolese, Angolans and Ivoriens, they are in it for the first time...

Oh yes order the cool pad, it worked fine. Lets see... Where's that credit card?

Portugal will be playing Angola somewhere near the town of Marburg. You take pride in that you see things that others can't. You hum along:

Hatchets and cleavers
Honouring his bones

You decide to do the dishes. Ah yes, the kitchen. Then sweep. Then you'll run to the convenience store across the street to get some blank VHS tapes talk with the guy about his relatives in Tehran and their preparations.

The question is what do you do when you come back?

You've just read the answer.

See also Ecstasy

File under: life, whimsy, Small Things, football, world cup, tradeoffs, dilemma, decisions, obsession, fever, attention, A.D.D., community, relationships, modernity, multi-tasking, juggling, humour, internet, web, conversation, fun, soccer, organization, preparation, observation, funny, Things Fall Apart, Thought Process, toli Risks: Day job, perception. Next: Ghana vrs USA

Flickr's Godfather

The 3,000th photo I uploaded to Flickr is a howler. Well at least I think it is, let's have a look (full size image).

A little context is in order...

I, and countless others, had complained about Flickr's excessive use of Flash. First I had inveighed about rendering and accessibility concerns in Cultural Sensitivity in Technology. Then I used Flickr's Flash buttons as a prominent example in The Unloved HTML Button and other Folktales.

In any case, 2 days after the folktales were told, Flickr finally switched from Flash. They no longer use a wrapper for image display - allowing native browser image rendering, and they changed their button toolbar from Flash to DHTML. I'd like to think my snarky comments were the tipping point but I won't flatter myself. They now only use Flash where it's appropriate, for drag and drop organization of photo albums, the kind of job that Flash or applets are particularly well suited for. Now of course they didn't use unloved html buttons in their toolbar but we'll take what we get. DHTML has greater reach than than Flash and accessibility concerns are more easily addressed on that front. Also there are an evolving set of design patterns for dealing with unobtrusive DOM scripting and forms.

So there I was, pleasantly surprised by their responsiveness, and going about uploading a little comic image to punctuate some later toli essay. You'll notice from the image that there were a bunch of glitches on the first morning of the big switch. The icons for some of buttons of the toolbar weren't showing up. Oh well, we'll ignore that but simply note that if they were standard HTML buttons, there would be no images to download. Moving right along...

Then I noticed a couple of typos, I had tagged the photo as sopronos instead of Sopranos and the image's title mentioned Godfarther which tickled me somewhat.

Flickr's Godfather or Flickr Goes Further?

Well anyway, Flickr implements a Click-to-Edit feature, a little unobtrusive DOM scripting that allows you to edit in place, so I corrected the title and hit the save button that appeared. That's when this error message came up and I took the screen capture

Taking a step back for a moment, let me just say that I love glitches. They expose the interesting aspects of complex systems and, much as we aim for simplicity, software tends inexorably towards complexity. As users of software we see lots of glitches daily. As an engineer, I am always interested in the first few days of a new deployment. You can test all you want but all bets are off when you get contact with real users and the real world. As an example, Technorati's recent makeover exposed lots of unforeseen glitches and they have had to work hard to address most of them in the past month. I was chatting recently with Dale Schultz, globalization architect at IBM and noted that I have a standard set of user names when I test new pieces of software, I make sure to have hyphens (hence I use my surname), ampersands (Sun & Sun is my canonical company), and, of late, accents (Rokia Traoré) because I've been bitten by various curses in the past in the software I've written. My former team has a José López test user for the same reason. Sam Ruby uses the word Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn as his proving ground in the same vein. We got to discussing the tyranny of patents at IBM and I pointed him to the Prior-Art-O-Matic for a laugh. Dale is obviously many steps ahead of me and of course he tried entering a euro symbol and immediately noted that that CGI application was broken and couldn't handle euros. Glitches often tell you a lot about application internals and the things that the developers tried to foresee or, as the case may be, ignored.

But back to Flickr's Godfather, what can we say about the glitch?

• Flickr is passing xml back and forth in their API calls.
• They are likely using XMLHttpRequest to do the voodoo of incremental loading without refreshing the page.
• There's an API key, probably tied to the user's identitiy that is likely passed around in every call. Sensible enough.
• They have to implement a Javascript layer to catch API errors and display something to the user.

Now I could have determined a lot of this and more by poking around and doing the View Source investigation. At the time, I wondered if I would have done any different and concluded that my implementation would have been much the same.

I have to say that like many others I'm highly impressed with Flickr, they had defensive programming and had appropriate error messages. Most people wouldn't have bothered dealing with these boundary cases. I haven't seen similar glitches since that first day thus the teething pains were temporary and they continue to add nice features to their service.

In any case, the juxtaposition of Silvio growling and in full bloom, the Godfather typos and the error message that popped up under Silvio's hands certainly made for a little amusement then and even today and now has occasioned a short blog entry. It reminded me of an advertisement for Fosters beer I believe that goes "It touches the parts other beers fail to reach". I guess the analogue in this case is "Flickr Goes Further".

As to why I had uploaded that particular Sopranos image, well let's just say that there's a famous quote from that scene and that's for some later toli.

[Update] I tried to cross-post this to my internal IBM blog only to find that the post was chopped off at Ruby's Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn magic word. Thus ironically as I was pointing out glitches, I just got bitten by one. I believe BlogCentral is based on Roller software and I suppose that I'll have to figure out whether the problem is in IBM's additions or in the core framework. The interesting thing about bugs with special characters is that sometimes you can't write the issue up because the software can't handle the characters in question. Perhaps BlogCentral needs a Godfather.

File under: flickr, technology, web, dom, scripting, glitches, funny, whimsy, programming, development, javascript, DHTML, software, error handling, design, photo, error, message, collage, toli

The Joy Of Small Things

• The Joy Of Small Things
• Life Is Sweet
• A Soundtrack of Small Things

Happiness is noticing blinking lights on your answering machine just past midnight in your hot apartment, bleary eyed as you try to open a window to let out that bee that somehow made it past the nets or alternatively dodge mosquitos to avoid the West Nile Blues.

Happiness occurs when you check your messages and hear that your favourite aunt has given birth to a new cousin, a baby girl.

Happiness is forgetting all about the bees and mosquitos and screaming to wake your neighbours up.

Happiness is the 3 hour conversation you then have with your parents back home about life, family, change and everything else.

Happiness is hearing about your grandma so overjoyed that she broke out in voluminous prayer. Your symptoms are genetic.

Happiness is going to sleep with a smile on your face.

Happiness is the dream you have of blowing off work the next day to catch the Fung Wah bus to head to New York.

Akua Abigail has arrived a few weeks early but is wonderfully healthy and her mum is similarly content.

Although we are thoroughly modern, having your first child in your forties is still extraordinary and there had been some trepidation all around.

Happiness will be the mad rush to New Jersey to welcome mother and daughter when they are discharged from the hospital over the weekend.

Happiness is being in England, Germany, France or Ghana (in addition to being thoroughly modern, we are a thoroughly dispersed family) and hearing said news and joyfully negotiating with travel agents to change flight plans handwaving away the prospect of paying several thousand of dollars for tickets to see your daughter or niece.

I first heard about my aunt's "loaded condition" a few months ago on the day I made my own modest proposal and a dear cousin stepped into matrimony. Thus the entire family has been smiling ever since and anticipating a wonderful end of July. Thank goodness I caught a few glimpses of her pregnancy and we all have bits to add for the historical record when I went to visit her. But back to happiness...

Happiness is remembering the various churches you passed in Brooklyn on that same day. New York's finest on display.

Happiness is recalling the name of the church you passed on your way to help a fellow bachelor out in Ikea and that confusing place we call the modern department store:

The Institutional Church of God in Christ. inc.

Happiness is trying to be a personal shopper and attempting to convince someone whose apartment has only a bed, computer, iPod, and beer in the fridge that it's worth it to spruce up since The Parents would be landing in just a few weeks to stay with him.

Happiness is your chutzpah when you, who are only a couple of weeks removed from confirmed bachelorhood,

have the gall to expound to your cousin on "thread counts" and explain that "some people" (you don't qualify who) may feel better in the morning if they slept on 450 thread count sheets rather than utilitarian prison-ware.

Happiness is recalling when you asked that young black woman in Target if "there were any deals on sets", her subsequent laugh and response that

"This is a family store!"

since she mistook your enthusiasm for sets of bedsheets with garden-variety sexual propositions.

Happiness was the spontaneous laughter you all shared. She had just herself propositioned Mr Bachelor with a Target credit card with "An additional 15% off today's purchase" that finally tipped the deal and would ensure the success of your home decorating campaign.

Happiness is knowing that she lost the pen that you offered her for the credit card application your cousin and her filled out.

Happiness has been writing for the past few months with the replacement Target pen she gave you.

Happiness is the decor of furniture in Pierre Deux, which reminded you of the most awful florid French and English houses.

Happiness is the curious looks you exchanged with your cousin as you walked into Pierre Deux as you saw the bright colours and the knowledge that in future you'll be able to crack him up with that codeword.

Happiness is making phone calls to your other cousin now ensconced in Richmond Virginia for her to launch her browser and reserve a car at Newark Airport since both of you guys were not air travelers and apparently you can no longer just walk up to those rental locations and pick a car.

Happiness is remotely directing the web transaction from New Jersey and discussing car options knowing that you were at the mercy of this babe in Virginia, sweet talking her to make sure she picked a large sedan.

Happiness is her astute interior decorating advice about which shops to attack in your bachelor intervention.

"Door Store, Ikea, Secaucus outlets and Target".

She pronounces Target as if it was some french word, that soft "g".

Happiness is leaving Ikea having only persuaded your cousin to buy a third of the things on his list

"I don't want to buy anything too permanent if I'll just be moving soon"

and seeing some normally unemployed guys on the roadside wearing signs promising a

Closing Down Furniture Sale!!!
Everything Must Go!

Happiness is following the signs and gesticulating to the 5 or 6 "Breadcrumb Guys" and being directed to the back of a furniture warehouse, it turns out that it was Corts Rental Furniture. Oh joy: bargain-basement rates on items that literally fell off the back of a truck.

Happiness is avoiding that business of making eye contact with the clientele of fellow desperados that had similarly been drawn by the flashy (fleshy?) advertisements. It reminds you of teenage expeditions to some "special shops" in Soho in the Red Light district of London when a bunch of you managed to get away from chaperones during school trips. You both feel a little dirty about being titillated by this "product".

Happiness is the sight of the gruesome furniture therein and the jokes you exchanged with one of the brothers who worked there when you enquired about a dining room table.

"It's seen better days".

Happiness is cracking up and quipping that

It's been to war... It's just come back from Iraq or Afghanistan.

Happiness is all the people in that dank warehouse breaking up and beginning to comment on the forthcoming draft, and Dubya's grudge match with evildoers who "tried to kill his dad".

Someone started calling the furniture Weapons of Mass Destruction.

At that we had to leave, those verbal Scud missiles hit too close to home, passing right by our Patriot (Act) defenses and Star Wars shields.

Happiness is getting lost in the twilight zone of New Jersey on the way to visit your aunt. Did you know that there were 4 adjoining towns within a 2 mile radius that all have streets with the same name - and not just one street but 5 or 6 streets with the same name and layout and all near the same rail tracks? Did you know that neither Google Maps nor Mapquest had cottoned on to the strange archeology of the Garden State?

Happiness is the increasingly frantic phone calls as you were lost and drove right to her address only to not recognize the house that was there.

Hmm... Everything sure looked familiar.

Happiness is your pregnant aunt, after an hour of this business, heading to the Bank of America parking lots of the wrong 3 of the 4 towns in a bid to rescue both of you hapless bachelors from your Garden State misery in the streets of Teaneck, Bogota and the like.

Stay where you are. I'll find you.

Really?

Happiness is your cousin's cell phone. Both you and your aunt don't have one so of course you can't call her up while she's looking for you in the wrong towns.

Happiness is the huge plate of jollof rice and chichinga (suya the Nigerians would call it, and others more generally kebab) that you wolfed down when you somehow finally made it to her house. Google Maps had suggested 30 minutes for your 2 1/2 hour expedition. Home cooking made up for the difference and your aunt dotes on you.

Happiness is hearing your aunt arrange for your cousins in France to join you and gatecrash a wedding in London that you just mentioned you were about to attend next weekend.

Happiness is remembering the conversation you'd had just weeks earlier with your friend Kweku in which you told him to expect that Ghanaians would "always gatecrash weddings" and commiserating about the madness of wedding preparation, something you've just begun thinking about.

Happiness is realizing that, after a mere 5 minutes of trans-Atlantic conversation, it looks as if you will be leading a party of French gatecrashers to said wedding and imagining Kweku and Zai hyperventilating.

Happiness is your aunt asking for Kweku's mum's phone number.

"I don't want to talk to Kweku, he'll be too busy with the wedding. I want to talk to his mum."

Indeed.

Happiness is going to a bus stop to wait for a New Jersey transit bus to return to New York's Port Authority.

Happiness is realizing that she had looked at the wrong column on the schedule for Bus 168 so that you will have an hour to wait on this Sunday evening.

Happiness is the pair of you sitting at the bus stop and simply chatting about whatever comes to mind. That waiting hour becomes one of your fondest memories of your aunt in retrospect.

Happiness is discovering that you have a copy of your musings on Inauguration à L'Africaine and laughing with her as she reads it and you recount on the even more absurd items you didn't write about.

Happiness is seeing your aunt's permanent outrage and also when she encourages you to continue doing what you do:

"You should send it to the president. He should sack all of them. And you've written it in the nicest way."

Thus I'll modify Arundhati Roy's formulation and write a short piece about

The Joy Of Small Things

Life is Sweet

My favourite movie on this theme is of course Life is Sweet, Mike Leigh's brilliant exercise in celebrating small things from 1990. Delusions of restaurant grandeur, a slice of family life, dance classes, encounters with spoons and broken limbs, chocolate fetishes, eating disorders, sexual confusion, teenage angst, and most of all inimitable and life-affirming laughs. The decor of some of the rooms in this British middle class nirvana seemed to have come straight from Pierre Deux. It's a real pity it hasn't yet been released on DVD.

A Soundtrack of Small Things

As usual a playlist for this joint

• Anita Baker - Sweet Love
  There you have it.
• Incognito - Step Into My Life
  Positivity is the thing.
• Price Nico Mbarga - Sweet Mother
  Ever since 1976, this has been the quintessential Highlife joint. Afrobeat was never more danceable or happy. Its lyrics are a celebration of African motherhood.

  Sweet Mother I No Go Forget You
  For The Suffer Wey You Suffer For Me.

• Cameo - Attack Me With Your Love

  Baby

• Curtis Mayfield - Sweet Exorcist
  Soul music's premier falsetto.
• Bunny Mack - Let Me Love You

  My Sweetie, My Sugar

  My long search for a good copy of this continues...
• Chaka Khan - Sweet Thing
  How to start everyone singing in 4 bars.
• Finlay Quaye - Your Love Gets Sweeter

  Love gets sweeter every day
  Love gets sweeter every way

• Prince & The New Power Generation - Sweet Baby
  Like a lullaby
• Mary J. Blige - Sweet Thing
  Puffed up hip-hop soul
• Loose Ends - Mr Bachelor

  You should have told me

  From The Real Chuckeeboo, I need to do a Loose Ends appreciation at some point; they are truly London's finest.
• U2 - Where The Streets Have No Name
  a.k.a. New Jersey

See also: New York Trip

File under: life, happiness, children, babies, cousins, aunts, family, scramble, conversation, airlines, buses, plans, Small Things, New York, New Jersey, whimsy, funny, travel, journalism, storytelling, shopping, joy, food, jollof, toli

On Musical Obsession

If you live with a music lover you'll know that there's something not quite right with them. They're damaged goods.

By music lover I mean 'real' music lovers, the kind that Nick Hornby loving depicted in High Fidelity. The main reason that novel is so loved is its systematic mapping of the emotionally stunted psyche of the 'real' music lover. The novel appears sharp and knowing because, in essence, it's a self portrait; the terrain of musical obsession is Hornby's daily minefield. We all know these music lovers and have to deal with their many foibles. (The book inspired the less funny John Cusack film, I've raised my objections to the film previously).

The 'real' music lover (typically male as empirical evidence shows) is someone who is plumbing the depths of musical obsession, who'll engage you in all sorts of musical obscura, evangelizing some middling (from your point of view) or unfailingly under-promoted (from their point of view) artist; he'll be constantly drawing up Top 10 lists on any topic (desert island disks, best B-side, best break up music, best make up music etc), reorganizing their music collection by genre, alphabetically, by mood, by theme, or by date bought, by girlfriend or by some contrived criteria.

They'll kick you out of their record store because you're looking for Stevie Wonder's I Just Called To Say I Love You, while at the same time furiously insist that MC Hammer's Turn This Mutha Out is the shiznit ("You know Early Hammer was quite revolutionary really"). Their bigotry or unerring snobbishness cannot be questioned.

Of course, in this our iPod and file sharing age, their old standby, the mixtape, is dead and rather it's the playlist that matters. Even if it is easy enough for anyone to download 26 versions of Besame Mucho, on the whole though, most of us are content with shuffle serendipity. Still though, the real music lover has embraced these trends and will put the same craft into turning out playlists or into amassing "The Complete Story of Roxanne", those 103 responses to UTFO's 1985 novelty hit Roxanne, Roxanne.

And so, in addition to my other peculiarities, I plead guilty to musical obsession, to Top-10-listopia, to hearing lyrics everywhere. Others can attest to some of my obvious weaknesses. On any given day, I could be going on about Omar, the Crown Prince of soul music in this our millennial age, or declaiming the virtues of the Johnny Kemp's Secrets of Flying album (unfortunately overshadowed by the swingbeat single Just Got Paid - there's a lot more in there, he's a complete artist) or insisting that the peak of Jam & Lewis's Minneapolis Sound was Alexander O'Neal's Hearsay and Cherelle's Affair album as opposed to their production efforts with SOS Band or the higher selling Janet Jackson joints. And so on...

A month ago, on the Chinatown bus returning from New York after vibing with Abbey Lincoln, my cousin was increasingly irritated with the two loud ghetto women sitting behind us. You know the kind, they just hadn't been socialized: "It's inconsiderate cell phone man" with the urban twist. The loud music - it sounded like a boombox not a walkman, the gooselike laughs at how Meldrick has been dealing with his baby momma, their snide cell phone conversations with Bobo and LaFanqua about distressed, shark-skin jeans (I kid you not) and, the last straw, Cousin Ray-Ray's toe operation.

All of which was interesting to me as a cultural anthropologist of sorts, but even I have to admit that their performance was a rising crescendo for the almost 4 hour trip. When it looked as if my cousin was finally about to lose it (we were still an hour away from Boston) and turn around, fists ready and prepared to take off her heels for the imminent combat, she made the mistake of loudly saying "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" Of course that elicited this from me:

"Oh yes. What Have I Done To Deserve This? I know... Hmmm... From the Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield? That would be late eighties or so... 1987 I think."

I immediately begun singing their mantra:

What Have I, What Have I,
What Have I Done To Deserve This?
What Have I, What Have I,
What Have I Done To Deserve This?

And then I started composing a Top 10 list of songs about irritation or annoyance: some favourites:

• Had Enuff by Al B Sure without a doubt
• Dennis Brown laying down roots reggae on I Can't Stand It
• James Brown - I Can't Stand It (I prefer the Godfather of Soul's 1976 version)
• Stevie Wonder - I Ain't Gonna Stand For It from Hotter Than July
• The Pet Shop Boys and Dusty of course. And so on...

True this outburst served to defuse the tension, but for the whole trip, I had been so lost in my thoughts comparing Abbey Lincoln to Amel Larrieux that I hadn't intervened earlier or nudged our neighbours into toning down their aural invasions.

And musical obsession doesn't only intrude in the mundane as above. I live with 24 hour music, it's pervasive in my mindset, at work, at play, and even in love. I assume that it's especially annoying to "The Girlfriend" when it comes to intimacy. From my point of view though, it makes evident sense to quote the occasional lyric, or four. After all, how can you be original in this day and age? Thousands of years of evolution have brought us to down to this. What haven't men and women said to each other before? What haven't Marvin Gaye, Barry White, Al Green or Luther Vandross, those lotharios of longing, whispered carelessly in the dark. Turn Off The Lights, Teddy Pendergrass insistently demanded; Truly I Adore You, Prince almost leered...

But anyway I try to make the effort at least in affairs of the heart, but it's hard to be original... It's so easy to slip in 'I Love More Than You'll Ever Know' as Donny Hathaway put it... A work in progress...

Just last night again, when the same cousin remarked in passing that her roommate would be away for the next few weeks, I was immediately compelled to start singing Wyclef Jean's Gone 'til November.

See You Must Understand
I Can't Work A Nine To Five
So I'll Be Gone Til November
Said I'll Be Gone Til November.
Yo. Tell My Girl, I'll Be Gone Til November
January, February, March, April, May
I See You Crying But Girl I Can't Stay
I'll Be Gone Til November, I'll Be Gone Til November
And Give A Kiss To My Mother.

Then I started thinking about autumn songs. First the obvious:

• Autumn Leaves. I love Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis's version on Somethin' Else, but you can't dismiss Duke Ellington's take on the Indigos suite, not to mention Bill Evans quiet contemplation of the falling leaves on Portrait In Jazz, and what of Rachelle Ferrelle's performance on that one-off and sadly out-of-print album The Manhattan Project (you know, the one with Wayne Shorter, Michel Petrucciani - that one that I spent $45 for the VHS bootleg, hard bop at its best).
• You'd have to add Autumn in New York but which version? Well Billie Holiday can't be wrong but what about Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's version?
• Not to mention Ben Webster's Early Autumn with his warm saxophone growling as the leaves turned - or is it rather glowing?
• And the vocal perfection of John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman's Autumn Serenade, lyrical tenderness incarnate.

And then onto November songs, what about Kenny Garrett's November 15 from his Songbook? And of course I remembered my favorite November song, Troop's Sweet November

Someday Soon, I Know We'll Come Together.
Even Though I Feel A Change Of Season's Due,
But Maybe Sweet November Will Tell Us A Story
That Will Bring Us Back The Love That We Both Knew.

As you can expect, the conversation degenerated from there on. First she giggled, sighed in exasperation, then just before she hung the phone, pointedly put it:

"There's something not quite right with you, Krantz".

See also

• Found, a playlist
• Annoying, a playlist
• Autumn, a playlist

File under: culture, music, obsession, twisted, soul, observation, damaged, jazz, completist, psychology, life, funny, humour, toli