They Still Make You?

Albums Released on Vinyl

The New York Times reports that author and humorist (St.) David Sedaris's new audiobook, “Live for Your Listening Pleasure,” will be released, in part, on vinyl.

According to the Times,

Reminiscent of Blue Note albums from the 1950s and 1960s, the cover features a photograph of a woman sprawled on a white shag rug with a come-hither look, albums strewn about. Albums are enjoying something of a renaissance, posting $57 million in sales in 2008, more than double the previous year and the best for the format since 1990, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The format is so rare for audiobooks, however, that the Audiobook Publishers Association has never even tracked its sales.

While the vinyl album will feature 2 out of the 5 tracks from the compact disc version, the album

will [provide] a code enabling purchasers to digitally download the entire program.

Rest assured Gen-Y-ers.  If dragging your parents' old record player out of the attic proves too taxing (or your hipster sibling got to it first), you can just download the whole thing to your iPod and call it a day. 

Albums released on vinyl: They Still Make You?

Teddy Ruxpin: Sited on 30 Rock

Teddy Ruxpin, a talking teddy bear, was a really cool toy that your parents refused to buy you back in 1985.  He came with tapes, told stories, and moved his mouth.  What wasn't to like?

Years passed, you grew up, and the kids these days with their their tickle-me-Elmos and their Zhu-Zhu pets, they don't know what the jazz Ruxpin really is.

That is, until Teddy Ruxpin made a guest appearance on November 19's episode of 30 Rock as Cathy Geiss' lawyer.

Teddy Ruxpin: They Still Make You?

Faxing Important Documents

A casual perusal of craigslist turned up the following:

"Fax resume with salary requirements."

Businesses that required applicants to fax resumes: They Still Make You?

Anglicizing Your Name to Get Ahead in Business: Taos New Mexico's Paragon Inn Owner Orders Hispanic Employees to Adopt Anglicized Names

Last month, the AP reported on a Taos, New Mexico hotelier and his archaic business practice of requiring his employees to adopt new names. 

Specifically, Larry Whitten demanded that his majority Latino staff at the Paragon Inn adopt names that, according to Whitten sounded more American and would not confuse tourists who had purposely chosen to visit a city "where Spanish language, culture and traditions have a long and revered history."

As the Paragon (of what?) Inn's new owner, Whitten's first order of business made an impression on several of his Hispanic employees. Allegedly Whitten's told employees, including Kathy Archuleta and Martin Gutierrez that,

he was changing their Spanish [] names.

because according to Whitten

it's a routine practice at his hotels to change first names of employees who work the front desk phones or deal directly with guests if their names are difficult to understand or pronounce.

And

"It has nothing to do with racism. I'm not doing it for any reason other than for the satisfaction of my guests, because people calling from all over America don't know the Spanish accents or the Spanish culture or Spanish anything."

[crickets chirp]

When Archuleta and Gutierrez protested, Whitten fired them.  And the New Mexico chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a national civil rights group, sent Whitten a letter, raising concerns about treatment of Hispanic workers.  In response Whitten alleged that the group's letter contained a racist slur against him.

Talk about Chutzpa nerve.

Whitten maintains that what he did was just good business practice and has nothing to do with ethnicity or race. 

Anglicizing your name to get ahead professionally: They Still Make You?

Microsoft Works

We have our first reader contribution!

My grandmother is 85.  They were barely making the automobile when she was born.  But she has adapted well to the 21st century.  She owns a computer and likes to get in touch with her grandchildren on "The E-Mail."  She calls herself an immigrant to the world of computers, and gamely tries to keep up with the technology. 

Recently she and my grandfather replaced their old computer, and began the arduous task of moving 15 years worth of files from the old computer to the new computer.

My parents both sent in the following story of helping my grandmother set up her new computer.  I have edited and merged their contributions.  They share a last name, children and bank accounts.  They can share a contribution.  Thanks to Beth and Vance L.

Jenn,

Last weekend at Grandma's was a good example for "they still make you?" 

She couldn't open her documents which were all made in Microsoft Works.  You may recall that Works 1 was a program with spreadsheet and word processor and calendar/contacts all in one.  Sort of like Office Jr.  I went to her new computer and the word processor is Word.  I checked at Microsoft.com and low and behold they are on Works 9.  My mother's documents are in Works 2.

Microsoft Works: They Still Make You?

Not Playin' The Ebony and The Ivory: Racist Judge in Louisiana

Last month, Louisiana justice of the peace Keith Bardwell gave miscegenation the old niche-niche and denied an interracial couple a marriage license.   

Bardwell explained to the Associated Press that,

“I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way… There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage…I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

It’s as if the 40-plus years since Loving v. Virginia, where the Supreme Court found that laws prohibiting interracial marriages were unconstitutionally discriminatory, never happened. 

Keith Bardwell, antimiscegenationist: They Still Make You?

TAB

My old old friend Katie W. (who had a baby in September) was feeling a bit sleep deprived and gave the following update on Facebook:

..."I might have to start having a Tab first thing in the morning..."

Tab, as in:

 

Tab drinkers: They Still Make You?

Cash Only

You haven’t visited an ATM in god knows how long.  Your wallet is a mess of receipts, business cards and quarters for laundry, one dollar coins from the post office, and so many pennies.

You just want a 3 dollar cup of coffee from the new hip coffee place by your office.

You go in, order your large cup of caffeine, and hand over your Visa (or MasterCard).  The clerk then says “sorry, we don’t take credit cards.  We’re cash-only.”

Stores that only take cash: They Still Make You?

GeoCities

They Still No Longer Make You?

Remember GeoCities, the cumbersome DIY website platform, proto-networking website from the 90s?  The one where we tested our nascent HTML skills and tried to figure out what to say to the big wide Internet? 

And how long after most of us moved on to big, brighter sleeker technologies and modalities (CSS), Yahoo! purchased GeoCities, and a passel of loyalists continued to tool around with their homestead accounts?

Earlier this year, TechCrunch described GeoCities as:

One of the pioneers of web-hosting sites, GeoCities gave users personal publishing tools and created “neighborhoods” within its web platform for users to be able to create pages, add a picture, text, a guest book and a website counter. Long before MySpace, Geocities was known as a place where teenagers, college students, and eventually others could impose their own garish taste upon the rest of the world.

And then, on October 27th, Yahoo! quietly pulled the plug, erasing an entire World Wide Web Universe. 

Or so we would think.  As it turns out, a small dedicated group of Internet archivists are working feverishly to preserve what Time Magazine describes as "people's personal home pages, which were pulled offline with no backup and no permanent record of those users' frenetic early forays online."

While GeoCities failed to churn revenue for Yahoo!, groups such as ArchiveTeam view GeoCities as "the largest self-created folk-art collection in the history of the world."

Until a couple of weeks ago, our web searches still held the possibility of ending up at a website hosted by GeoCities. 

And whether we groaned over loading a site containing bandwidth eating solipsism, reminders of our own cringe inducing first websites, and  "that guy from webpages that suck better get over here quick;" or delighted in stumbling upon authentic outsider digital art-- we all proclaimed:

GeoCities, they still make you?

Analog Watches

A couple of weeks ago, I had the following g-chat conversation with my friend:

Friend: It's always hard for me to adjust to standard time after daylight savings.  It always throws me for a loop.

Jenn: I spent half of today thinking I was really behind schedule-- then I realized I hadn't set my analogue watch back

Friend: An analog watch? Those things still exist????

Analog watches and people who wear them: They still make you?