Scratch Pad: Elvis, Mario, Dronescrolling
At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.
▰ The TV has a remote and the remote has a mic, so I queried it with “Pump Up the Volume” and, of course, this simply made the TV raise its volume level
▰ Going to see Elvis Costello this week. The tour is of the “early songs,” which apparently restricts itself to merely the first 11 albums (1977–1986).
▰ A friend mentioned having played a “url” show, which I initially figured to be a typo for an “irl” (in real life) show, but it turned out to have been a livestreaming show. I like clearly paralleled typology: There are URL shows and there are IRL shows (and, of course, hybrids).
▰ I had noticed that many shows on this current Elvis Costello tour had, thus far, opened with either “I Hope You’re Happy Now” or “Mystery Dance,” and most featured both, and I thought little of it, but when he sang them here in San Francisco, I realized the first was a sign that you weren’t quite getting what you thought you asked for, and the second includes the phrase “Don’t bury me ’cause I’m not dead yet.”
▰ Exploring some old Mario games, circa 2001-ish. It’s like going back to some summer camp I forgot I’d attended.
▰ A new installment of the Frame by Frame comic series I’ve been doing with illustrator Hannes Pasqualini should appear this coming week. Here’s a sneak peek. Meanwhile, the previous ones are at disquiet.com/fxf.
▰ The wind is prelude. When you hear it blowing, you step outside to confirm that, yes, the Golden Gate Bridge is again singing, and somehow the bridge’s song sounds the same (droning, unearthly) and different (today: steadier, thinner, more persistent, higher-pitched), and you can’t believe this remains a thing.
▰ Finished reading one book this week, Stephen King’s The Long Walk. I think it’s the only Stephen King novel I’ve finished reading, aside from The Green Mile, which I bought when it was first serialized as tiny little paperbacks — and I’m not entirely sure I finished that one.
▰ And this week in #dronescrolling — i.e., stuff other people posted: Matthew Wilcock has this ongoing series of sonified videos, on Instagram, of vehicular activity that are fantastic, turning streets and highways and even parking lots into piano rolls. And he’s also done table tennis and pedestrian intersections. (Thanks, Lowell Goss!) ▰ Bruce Levenstein said, on Bluesky, what many of us non-UK folks think: “it’s 2025. i want to pay for access to BBC iPlayer.” ▰ Mahlen Morris provided, on Mastodon, a run-through of resources for what the Golden Gate Bridge sounds like when it’s singing.
