said moneymoney don't get you too far getchatoofaar

8/3/2010

On my last night in Honolulu, friends from the department and I stood on a peninsula across from a gray-sand beach and watched astronauts, fully suited, practice the next moon landing under intense purple and pink aurora borealis.* We headed down to the industrial zone near our apartment to hit a bar but accidentally dispersed before that happened.

I arrived back home at the apartment, in the Shoreland. The Michelson RHs were there, waiting impatiently for me to move out. One was dumping out my boxes to force me to re-fill them in a more organized fashion, and the other was complaining about the questionable ethics and judgment of a graduate student who owns a Barbie doll**.

When I arrived in Providence, Nick wasn't there yet, so I stopped by the most popular new tourist attraction in New England--a karaoke bar where you entered a little cubicle, chose a song, then tablature scrolled behind a little piano whose hammers rang little metal hockey-blade-shaped bells and the adorable puppy sitting in the cubicle with you "sang" along.

There were only 8 songs to choose from, so I chose the best of what was available--"Rich Girl" by Hall and Oates. As the tabs started to roll, I played for the first 30 seconds or so before noticing that the bells weren't really sounding and the dog was ignoring me. I called an attendant, who upgraded me to a salad bar piano in the front of the establishment.

At the salad bar pianos you chopped vegetables on a conveyor belt to sound the bells instead of playing a keyboard. The lady played the first chorus and the bells sounded great.
"The puppy still isn't singing along, though," I said.
The lady leaned in close to me, looking sideways.
"Dogs just don't sing very often, really," she said. "It's a very specific behavior."
I chopped the vegetables and the song tumbled out haltingly. About halfway through I realized the karaoke bar was just using me to make salads for its snack bar. I gathered my most recently chopped pineapples into a plastic container and left.

*The Mac OS X 10.5 default wallpaper, now that I think of it =\
**I don't, but half the boxes the other RH was dumping were full of Barbie shoes.