It works like this: the last thing on this page is the update, which I probably did four or five weeks ago. The below-the-fold stuff was done about three weeks ago. The stuff above the fold between the dividers was written this afternoon. This, up here, is the last thing I do unless it's a column night, usually between 10 and 11 PM. It is now 11:26 and the reason I don't have a big fun ripping read up here is because . . .

I have been driving around the neighborhood at 5 MPH for half an hour. Looking for the dog.

He's a hound. He's a digger. He's got to go after the raccoons. He cannot do otherwise. Usually in the evening he sits out in a comfy chair and regards the world with occasional interest, but there was a 20 minute period when I realized A) I hadn't heard him bark, and B) hadn't heard the door downstairs open or close, and I thought aww, not again. But yes again.

Daughter found him after 40 minutes; he was by the back steps, having returned for the warm place and some food. Usual expression: hi there! What's up? Boy oh boy! Ain't life grand?

So now what? I have to bury L-wire the entire length of the fence to keep him from going out, and I don't even know where to get the stuff. I didn't even know it existed until I googled tips to keep the dog from digging under the fence. One of the suggestions: make a concrete trench under the fence. Oh, sure! Why not a flaming moat with carnivorous fish while I'm at it.

Anyway: sorry for the lack of stuff up here, but I do believe there's stuff aplenty down there - including the story, however short, behind a piece of music you know, but probably don't know you know.

Today on my desk: a welcome package from the building.

Working in this building is like having a new girlfriend.

Inside were coupons for restaurants, a chocolate truffle with the building’s logo imprinted in white, a bottle of hair oil in case you need oil in your hair, and a USB charging hydra with three (3) types of input. I also made my first cup of K-Cup coffee today, using my own cups, and making sure that the cup had a lid before I left the staging area. The carpet of the old place was spattered with hundreds of coffee spills - as I may have said before, it looked like Jackson Pollack during his monochromatic period. Here you do not spill coffee. It isn’t done. If it should happen, we are told to alert maintenance, and some minions will appear and laser out the offending blotch, and then you will be strapped naked to the window-washing platform and smeared with the blood of small mammals, attracting nearby eagles.

The lid also does away with that minor, pervasive element of office aesthetics: the filthy stained coffee cup. People’s desks often have stained cups, with those indelible rings and dingy drips. Now you cap your cup and no one sees the shame. What’s that, you say? Why not wash them? The great and powerful Oz has every intention of washing his cup, but that requires walking to one of the three Pantry Nodes where the sinks are located. No one makes a special trip to the Pantry Node to clean out your coffee. You go for more coffee. So you clean the cup for the new batch, but then at the end of the consumption process you have re-stained your cup.

I should also note that the bathrooms do not have motion-activated water faucets, which seems at odds with the rest of the building. I keep putting my hands in the sink expecting automatic water, like someone from Starfleet walking up to a very old replicator and saying “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot” when the machine actually requires insertion of a data solid.

Okay, that’s enough evasion. I should finish the column now.

PS "Data Solid" was the term for those pieces of colored wood Spock stuck into slots so the computer could say WORKING and make a clattering sound.

The Downtown East construction update is starting to come to an end; they'll top off soon.

Shed a small tear for this tree, which will be uprooted so they can build . . . a park.

To state what I've said before, the ugly bare concrete will be filled in with housing. Made of sticks of wood, and perhaps stapled to the side of the office tower.

Pupdate: the Tree Whisperer.

Look I'm sorry, I didn't know. I'll do my thing on another tree from now on. We good?

This segment, as you might have figured out by now, is devoted to library music, industrials, cues, and other forms of uncollected and unappreciated commercial music. Now and then I'll be listening to an old BBC radio show and hear something familiar from another source, but it's rare I can actually find out what the music's called. Well. Surely you know this:

But what's the tune? It's the Devil's Galop, by Charles Williams. He stamped out countless yards of music for the Beeb and films, and most of it seems forgettable. He wrote his ticket to immortality with this one, though - even if it's only used now to parody the original intention. From what I glean on the web, the Dick Burton tune was as well-known as the "Mission: Impossible" theme, so the Python boys were trading on the assumptions of their generation. Something lost on us Yankside.

Now, as usual for Friday, the Music Cues. Of course we begin with the Couple Next Door, with its cheerful soundtrack of the mid-century domestic scene.

CND Cue #534 The crazy city horns get to finish, for once.

Moving along with the innumerable Gunsmoke cues, all the same, all different.

The late-season Johnny Dollar cues, drawn from the library of big bad boss sounds:

YTJD #22 "Yeah." You surmise he's underplaying it.

YTJD #23 Music to get hit on the head by, and become unconscious.

To round out the radio offerings, here's the weekly ad . . . .

High School!

And now I'm done for the week. It's been grey and dank but good nonetheless, and I hope yours has been a pleasure. See you Monday!