Ruminations

For no other reason than because I think it’s cool and want to share, having been among the Lucky 10,000 this spring: presenting “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet”, AKA “Like the Wind”, “Blind the Wind”, “Check It In, Check It Out”, “The Consequence of Living”, and “Summer Moon” among others.

This song, purportedly taped circa 1984 from a West German radio broadcast, has been making the online rounds since 2019–and has stubbornly defied all attempts to establish provenance; part of its captivating oddness comes from the singer’s stern metallic baritone, heavy accent, and melismatic vocal styling unusual for Western pop music of the period.

Furthering the song’s mystery is the tantalizing half-intelligibility of the lyrics, resisting resolution and encouraging open interpretation; even the title is an individual judgment call. It has the air of an artifact captured from a parallel universe.

Nor does it hurt that it’s a 24-karat banger.

(Crossposted to little_details.)

I’m awed and delighted by the sort of monuments to their obsessive special interests, in sprawling fractal encyclopedic detail, that people have posted on the web to share: there’s an invaluable body of folkademia out there.

1. Flutetunes.com: https://www.flutetunes.com/

Since 2009, the people at Flutetunes.com have been posting a new public-domain flute score every day at 10:00 UTC on the nose, listing the composer, history, key, time signature, BPM, and genre, including downloadable sheet music, MP3s, and MIDIs (the last are adjustable for key and tempo, for the sake of transposition.)

The website's database is exhaustively searchable by genre, nationality, composer, difficulty, and arrangement; this is where I was able to find out that the piece Lizzo famously performed on James Madison’s crystal flute was “Carnival in Venice”, and that the meandering oboe solo that opens “1984” on David Live was in fact Debussy’s “Syrinx.” They’ll even post arrangements of original compositions contributed by volunteers (they’ve got an arrangement of that Creative Commons YouTube and Tiktok favorite, Kevin McLeod’s “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys.”)

Flutetunes.com also includes a variety of other flute resource pages: articles on flute technique; outlinks where one can buy flute sheet music for works still under copyright; a virtual metronome; templates for printable staff paper, and a compilation of further miscellaneous flute-related links. The two site operators are so determinedly anonymous that they won’t even accept donations; they’re the Phantom Flutist Enablers.

2. The World Carrot Museum: https://tinyurl.com/world-carrot-museum

The Junior Woodchucks’ Guide to Daucus carota, courtesy of John Stolarczyk of Skipton, England. Carrot art, biology, cultivation, history, recipes, folklore, and pop culture are all covered here; should you ever need to know about the British government’s propaganda campaign to promote carrots during World War Two rationing (with posters, mascots, and period recipes!), or what the deal is with that lone purple floret on a Queen Anne’s lace blossom, or musical instruments made from carrots, the World Carrot Museum’s happy to oblige.

(Note that the website has been down since September 2022; the above URL is a Wayback Machine archive. Stolarczyk still has an active Twitter devoted to all things carrot: https://twitter.com/carrotmuseum?lang=en)

3. The Museum of Menstruation: http://mum.org

(Warning: the front page is text-only, but some links are NSFW.)

Harry O. Findlay’s Museum of Menstruation is a grand rambling cross-referential time suck covering cultural, historical, medical, and commercial aspects of the subject. Just a few of the topics this display aisle of menstrual esoterica covers: Belts to hold sanitary pads (and if you remember those, you've almost certainly outlived your menstrual worries); artwork with menstrual themes; home remedies for menstrual discomfort sent in by his readers; various religious attitudes toward menstruation; historical menstrual hygiene methods.

Since Findlay has grown old, and doesn't think that he as a cis man is the ideal curator of such a museum, he's sent out an invitation to anyone--preferably a current or past menstruator--interested in taking over his work and hosting his physical collection: http://www.mum.org/future.htm)

Sources, left to right and top to bottom, as far back as I've succeeded in tracing them:

1. Modified from http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/BvtTarYSTB2IZS93wJeXwAa53c-wUsGFgWTMTz0sPhv8soSNN-EHLx3wEvTB63Vp8dviZwRP=w176-h220-p-no; the originator *may* be one Deebo P. Solomon, although their Peperoncity account is now defunct: http://f1.pepst.com/c/29CCD4/332473/ssc3/home/062/deebu.p.solomon/albums/minnal.gif_480_480_0_64000_0_1_0.gif

2.Modified from a post at http://jogosts.blogspot.com/2011/02/wallpapers-gifs.html; the earliest version I've found (June 12, 2010) was downloaded by stissa88 at http://www.ownskin.com/gif_detail?t=c6UFYWU7

3. Here's one whose exact originator I've been able to trace: modified from https://imgur.com/tA78xWb by @fugulolo: https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1pp01a/rain/?st=jeho0u80&sh=76760203

4. Modified from http://oi47.tinypic.com/2nropyh.jpg.

5. Modified from https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/0ZaV5-iCFhOuu0AJfr5AgjTupTccSUI9IMEITfvWXNAemZcYyQlJK6pdSPe0WPD1WaFp3FCCLBplrFI=w289-h220; the earliest version I've found seems to be by Bia Tomaz.

6. Modified from http://files.fatakat.com/2010/5/1272891685.gif.

7. Further color modification of the source of #2.

8. Taken from http://f0.yomowo.org/c/298B07/224905/ssc3/home/015/clo176x220/albums/rain190210_1.gif_480_480_0_64000_0_1_0.gif, and appearing earlier at http://www.umnet.com/pic/diy/screensaver/1/Rain-19813.gif; both are now defunct.


9. Modified from http://www.animated-gifs.eu/category_nature/phone-240x320-rain/0118.gif.