The wonders of the modern age

So I've mentioned before my friend Sarah Ovenall and her amazing art car, Undersea Mah Jong. Well, one of the things that Sarah does with her amazing art car beside drive up and down half of North Carolina looking for barbeque (read down, including the comments), is drive in an artcar parade as part of the Baltimore Artscape Arts Festival. And, this year, she's wired for pictures: As she describes on her diary/blog, she has put together an amazing Frankentech assembly so that she and several other people will have live webcam access during the parade: Her TiBook is hooked up to an AirPort, to provide WiFi access to the parade. On the other end, it's plugged into the dataport of her cell phone, giving her moderate-high-speed modem access to the Internet as a whole. Her cell phone, in turn, is plugged into the car's cigarette lighter, so the battery won't run out during the parade.

When I was discussing this today with nellorat, she asked, "Isn't the bubble machine also plugged in to the cigarette lighter?"

Well, actually, I assume that there's a power strip plugged into the lighter--cell phone, TiBook, Airport, bubble machine, and, of course, deep fat turkey frier--heavens, they're tasty! Sure, she only gets 2 MPG, but it's worth it.

(Incidentally, I'm currently listening to a CD she burned for me of odd and wonderful music. You can get your own dose of Ovenallish music every Tuesday morning all summer long through WXDU, the radio station of our Alma Mater, Emphysema Polytechnic Duke University. Kevin-Bob says, "Check it out.")

One of those odd coincidences

Over the last few months, I've had occasionally intense moments when I wondered, "What is the name of the music which was used as the theme to Masterpiece Theatre?". Then I forget to check when I'm actually in front of a computer.

About five months ago, a friendly acquaintance of mine, gamer Peter Sarrett, appeared on the daytime version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. I agreed to be one of his "Call a Friend" lifeline pals in case he needed help with American History, the Bible, Comic Books, or a couple of other subjects. He ended up calling a different friend on a different subject (though he actually had a question on the Bible, it was early and easy).

Peter was, of course, contractually obligated to refrain from commenting on how much he did or didn't win until the show was broadcast. The shows finally aired this week just past, and he's put a long description of the questions and answers up on his blog.

One of the questions, of course, involved the theme music to Masterpiece Theatre. It's Jean-Joseph Mouret's "Rondeau"; as soon as I read the title in the question on Peter's blog, I recognized it, and said, "You've got to be shitting me."

It's coincidences like that which make people believe in psychic phenomena.