Almost an hour, and nobody's posted yet? Gosh.

10 great albums you've (probably) never heard of...

- "Permutation" by Amon Tobin
- "Dust to Dust" by Steve Roach & Roger King
- "Below the Waste" by The Art Of Noise
- "Substrata" by Biosphere
- "Aquarello" by Hans Joachim Roedelius
- "Slider" by Bruce Kaphan
- "The Golden Wire" by Andy Summers
- "Black Tie, White Noise" by David Bowie
- "The Mix" by Kraftwerk
- "Bloodline" by Recoil

In 1985, on Sept 28... The woman who'd soon become my wife moved in with me. That day I went to pick he rup at the aiport after buying a copy of story collection A Sound of Thunder.

she may get love but she won't get mine,
'coz I got you.

Domitian was pretty reasonable for the first 1800 years or so, but lately he seems to have gone round the bend a bit. That fuss over Janet Jackson's breast, for instance. I'm coming to believe that perpetual censors are a bad idea.

"Captain! Ship censors indicate a large Jackson's breast on starboard!"

Ah, now, that's a common mistake that people make.

He actually appointed himself perpetual censer, and used to go around Rome swinging a brass ball on a chain, scattering incense everywhere he went.

They used to call him "Fumidus". Because his personal icon was a bear, he later became the symbol of the US Forest Service's fire-fighting efforts. They even named an orphaned brown bear after him.

abi... That would explain why censors become so easily incensed.

Yes, it all makes sense, doesn't it?

"1985" was Spike Milligan's classic parody of "1984", in which renegade employees of the Big Brother Corporation (or, as you knew it, the BBC) are strapped down in Room 101 and tortured by being forced to listen to the Light Programme.

#6: I am trying to make some sort of Bujoldish pun about Jackson's Whole, but I can't think of one; can everyone just pretend that I have done so and it was awfully funny?

Since it's open thread:
Does Ellen Asher have a blog or a place one can send a general "good luck and I think bookspan s*cks" message?

"It's great to be alive on [Pow!] channel 85!"
--Proctor & Bergman, "TV or Not TV"

("And it's free; only a dollar.")

Ajay #10: *groan* OK, I admit your pun was awfully funny, but don't you think that bit about the clones was in poor taste?

Steen @13
I'm just impressed that he managed the whole thing in French!

#7: What is less well known is that he had some fascinating, if suspicious, personal connections in the Gaulish territory of the Senones, later known as Sens.

#6:

There's breastses on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow...

abi@14

It was the trilingual pun that had me ROTFL.

In 1985, a five year old me took part in a paper recycling drive in my hometown in the Yorkshire Dales on a bleak, rainy day. Later, my mother appeared on local television in front of the radiation monitoring unit the government set up in the car park to give Friends of the Earth's view on Chernobyl.

Daniel "Dsquared" Davies was in North Wales at the time and claims that he is detectably radioactive as a result. Me, I've never dared to find out.

J @ 16... You've been listening to Doctor Demento's Star Trek homage again?

"Always moving forward because we can't find reverse..."

Results 1 - 10 of about 940,000,000 for 85 include Interstate 85 at Wikipedia; 85 Broads, a "network of women from leading universities, graduate schools, and companies from all over the world"; bus 85 from Spring Hill to the Kendall/M.I.T. T stop; and STS-85, a Shuttle mission from 1997 that involved continuing work on the International Space Station.

#19:

Again? I heard it once, ten years ago or more. And I still can't get the damn thing out of my head at times like this...

jenny1ofmany @17

It was a trilingual pun?

Huh. Must brush up on my Finnish.

I'm sorry ajay. The pun you were going to come up with was so funny that it would have caused a rip in the fabric of the internet, sucking thousands of poor, hapless LOLcat macros into a gaping, humorless vortex. This left the world with a critical shortage of LOLz at a vital historical moment, leading slowly but inevitably to the infernokrushocalypse.

I know this because my descendant (Hereziark m3, the new model with the laser-guided missile-launcher attachment) was sent back in time with a humor-impairing gas to release into your home's ventilation system at the critical moment, preventing you from coming up with the future-killing pun. He left me a note, explaining it all before leaving (and the little punk drank all my beer too!).

It was all for the best, ajay.

Isn't "Star Drek" a Bobby Pickett tune as well?

What year was Heather Mills born? He may have been right after all...

abi @22
I missed it at first. It only works if you say it with a Betan accent. (bug or feature?)

J @ 21... I know what you mean. When we moved from Toronto to the Bay Area in January 1989, the darn thing was playing on the van's tape deck as we were driving down from the Sierra Nevada to Sacramento and I still associate that with Spock saying "It's Life, Jim. but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it..."

Heresiarch @23
Drat your future self! The memory of the joke is fading away now, like a dream just after one wakes.

Something about a vambrace, and some guppies?

Say, does anybody have a link to photos of Ted Cassidy as Ruk? I need an icon that reflects my true self for my LiveJournal.

abi @ 27... I thought it'd happen more like it did for George Orr in Le Guin's The Latte of Heaven...

Free associated press:

"May be innocent, may be sweet... ain't half as nice as rotting meat."

Also circa '85.

Heresiarch: if this is true, then the joke we saw must have been left here by Ajay's future robotic double, who should not exist at all but Hereziark m3 left a crucial piece of machinery behind. Obviously Ajay found this while housecleaning and inadvertently started the MekTek corporation which will one day be our destruction, throwing our present and future into and infinitely recursive loop!

(that's what happens when you clean the house)

Ajay @ #10.

*groan* That gives a whole new meaning to "beta software."

I always forget that Michelle Trachtenberg is a year older than my elder child. Which means that the mad winter when our house was all-Joss, all the time, (first run BtVS, Angel, and, for as long as it lasted, Firefly, and two hours of Buffy reruns twice a day to catch up on what I'd missed) the offspring were very young teenagers.

My son turned 21 two weeks ago Saturday, which was two weeks after his 19-year-old sister came home from her first year of college. If there are three other adults living with me, why am I in change of cleaning the microwave?

argh

"It's life Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it. It's life, Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, Jim!"

Dammit, it's been veritable weeks since I've had that thing as an brainworm, and I'll even take back "Raised on Robbery" in exchange, although my brain is not up to the speed of Joni Mitchell's articulation.

JESR... It's worse than that, he's dead, Jim, dead, Jim, dead, Jim!

If there are three other adults living with me, why am I in change of cleaning the microwave?

Thread crossing alert!

Ye canna break the laws of physics!

1985? Big fannish year for me. According to my journals, I met Teresa (and Avedon Carol and Martha Beck) on the brink of 1985, at a New Year's Eve party at Lani Litt's; I attended my first Fanoclasts meeting (at your home) later that year. (I also met Walter Breen that year, at another party.)

Why am I always late to threads with temporal paradoxes? They're always cleaned up and gone by the time I get there.

So much for my GCSE Finnish and A-level Temporal Mechanics.

1985 was the year my older son was born. It was also the year I acquired my first PC (a Sanyo PC clone), and modem (300 baud).

For those who know dresses: is there a name for the style of 1770ish colonial things? Like you have Victorian stuff, Regency stuff, is there a name I can search for this sort of thing with?
That was such a horrible sentence. I apologize, O Light-Wrights, but my brain is not working with words just now.

Also, in 1985, my brother was born. It was a sad Christmas because Mom was still in the hospital, but hey, baby brother! Dad didn't brush my hair all week, and I think we meant to eat Christmas dinner at McDonald's... but it was closed. I don't remember a bit of this; I was almost two years old.

1010101 could be broken down into 10 + 10 and 101...

Sorry...every time I see "In A.D. xxxx" my Zero Wing reflex kicks in...

JESR @ 34: take
JESR @ 33: offspring
Skwid @ 42: every

Zig?

JESR #33
If there are three other adults living with me, why am I in change of cleaning the microwave?

Because there's a secret ritual initiation one has to go through these days in order to clean microwaves* and you're clearly the only one in the house who's had the initiation.
If it weren't for all the temporal paradoxes in this thread, you'd probably find it easier to remember the initiation. There's a secret handshake and everything.
Do you recall anyone handing you a can of cleaner and saying something like "Hic est Bon Ami; nondum abradet"?

*and lots of other things.

As a self-appointed reporter of all news regarding the noble Hamster, anxiously awaiting a new open thread, I submit for your consideration:

How a hamster can save you e-mail trouble about a new book titled: The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your E-mail Before it Manages You.

I hope the multiple links are ok.

Firefighters Rescue Hamsters in Eagle Lake, MN

There were also some buzz (about 20 hits on Google News) about the Man Hospitalized After Hamster Attack (that link has a cute picture) story which was mentioned in Open Thread 84.

Serge (#29):

...Le Guin's The Latte of Heaven...

Wasn't that the story about the canonization of Howard Schultz?

fidelio, actually, I used up the Bon Ami scrubbing moss off the north side of the F250 the other day.

#47 That doesn't surprise me a bit. It's great stuff.

Serge #29: Regarding your comment on The Lethe of Heaven ... oh drat. There it goes again. I'll remember it later, I'm sure...

When I was of an age to attend YMCA day camp in the summers, our counselors were obsessed with that song, and it was played at morning and afternoon assemblies for weeks on end. I can not only sing the whole thing, but can also do the hand gestures. Being unable to change the laws of physics was represented by a gesture like playing with a Slinky. I suppose that's appropriate.

(YMCA summer day camp exhausted me because it was like living in a pep rally. You had to have SPIRIT! ALL! THE! TIME! Even though it was 95 degrees and so humid you couldn't breathe.)

But the Vulcan Science Academy has proven that time travel is impossible!

Diatryma @ 41, I haven't seen such a name -- in my experience, 18th-century costumes tend to be called simply by their time and place, or associated with whatever was going on at the time, so a mid-18th-century English gown, or a Marie-Antoinette-style shepherdess costume, or a Colonial-era shoe (this would probably imply that the shoe was a style worn by colonials in the Americas). Certainly the Costumer's Manifesto historical index doesn't give names to any part of the 18th century, as it does for the Regency, Victorian period, etc.

Larry, that's next year's headline!

Caroline at #50, yes. It's always been a wonderment to me that no one was ever strangled with a woven lanyard made of plastic (that I know of).

This summer I'm going to be doing some field research work, some of it in boats. One piece of standard equipment that many of my peers seem to bring with them is a pocket knife. Everyone has a different knife. I'm trying to choose one for myself, but I am bewildered and confused. Looking on the Internet is not helping; everywhere I look seems to lack useful information, while having lots of hyperbole and macho bullshit. Then I remembered that this community has (a) plenty of people who do interesting things for a living and who might have opinions on pocket knives and (b) low amounts of macho bullshit.

So my question: What kind of pocket knife would you recommend, and why?

Thank you, Jenny of Legion-- I'm a bit disappointed, but I figured it was a long shot anyway. At least now I know the era; I'd been sort of rambling about the 1700s and 1800s and confusing people who didn't know much more than I did. Asking them to find the dresses shaped the same way I am was no help, either.

Andrew T., My first recommendation is to get one that you feel comfortable with. It's no good to get one that you won't carry. My second is to decide what you're going to do with it. Cutting rope or twine? Cleaning animal carcasses? Serving as a tiny toolbox for doing everything from getting in computer cases to help fix an ailing outboard motor? Fighting off eldritch horrors?

For simple cutting, I've carried generic pocket knives, the kind you can get at a local store. When I've wanted two blades plus a screwdriver and maybe a small saw-like blade, I've carried a Victorinox "Swiss Army" knife. Careful: those can become so packed with stuff that you won't want to carry it in a pocket. When I've needed the next step up in tools, like when I've wanted pliers plus files plus etc. for when I'm doing field demonstrations, I've gone with a Leatherman. Their Wave in particular is full-featured enough to be useful without being too bloated, and fits nicely on your belt.

Andrew T. @ #55, There's actually been some discussion of pocket knives on here in Open Thread 32[1], and my advice would be the same. I like Buck Folders, and my Buck multi-tool. For boating-type excursions, you're almost certainly going to want a 1/3rd serrated folder.

[1] As a followup to that thread, the adhesive joining the ivory to the blade body on my Frost Bulldog finally gave out a while back...I haven't got around to repairing it yet.

Andrew @ #55: Gerber makes a variety of outstanding utility knives.

Andrew @55, First, and foremost, don't get a knife that feels uncomfortable in your actual pocket.

Me, for the last... thirty years? at least? I've carried a Victronix with two cutting blades, scissors, a phillips screw driver, a magnifying glass, and a corkscrew, all of which I use constantly, and an awl, hook disgorger, can and bottle openers which I never use. Unfortunately the things I need come bundled with the ones I don't, sort of like TV cable packages. I'm on my second one, and it needs replaced because I've broken the side that holds the wonderful little tweezers, which I also use constantly, bent the scissors a little, and somewhat straightened the corkscrew.

Don't get a knife without a lanyard ring; they get lost less easily if you've got a way to tie them down. Mine, recently, has grown a tiny 1M tape and an LED light, and the cluster is of more use than the car's tool box.

In a perfect world, they'd put thee things together as custom arrays.

I have always thought well of Victorinox Swiss Army knives. There are a bewildering number of models; what suits my needs is at least one pen blade (generally they come equipped with small and large in the models that have the other things I want), scissors, can opener, bottle opener, corkscrew, Phillips head screwdriver (the top of the bottle opener makes a flathead screwdriver), and pokey awl thing, as well as the toothpick and tweezers that seem to come with all the models.

This is just the sort of thing I keep in my purse for the demands of daily living. I don't use it in my work; I'm a baker and have a variety of tools at my disposal there. And I don't have a job or hobbies that cause me to need pliers or small electronics tools or other things that people like to have on their multi-tools or pocket knives.

I'm sure there's a model out there that will match up with the way you want to use it.

Andrew T @55:
It depends what you want to do with the knife. If you want to screw and unscrew things, cut wood, open wine, and repair a hyperdrive, go for a Swiss Army knife.

If you want to, you know, cut things, I'd suggest that you choose a knife with a lockback function, so you can't accidentally close it on your fingers. I used to use Buck knives, which were very good quality and lock back.

Considering my overwhelming grace*, Buck knives are one of the major reasons I'm not currently known as Abi Nine-Fingers.

-----
* none at all

Whoops, the correct link should be: Open Thread 32.

Sorry!

Andrew T, if you want a knife for messing about in boats, go to a shop that sells boat stuff and get a proper boating knife that won't come apart if exposed to salt water and spray, that has a spike for splicing ropes and undoing shackles, as well as a knife blade. Boating being what it is, mostly these knives now include a bottle opener.
And it must have a loop to which you can tie a lanyard (what boaties call a piece of string) with the other end tied to your belt, or you will drop it in the water.

I graduated high school in 1985.

It was also the year my family bought its first home computer. It was made by Epson and ran Valdocs and Peachtext and used 5 1/2 inch floppies.

It was the first new appliance my family had bought since 1969. We still had the black and white tv my parents bought to watch the moonwalk, a 1969 Chevrolet Biscayne and the Maytag washer and dryer and GE stove and whirlpool refridgerator my parents bought when they moved into the apartment in 1969.

I get burned out on time-paradox stories pretty quickly (wait, you mean in this universe I am a different person? oh noes!), but a customer at the bookstore swears by The Man Who Folded (by which Gerrold means F***ed) Himself. The customer is a big trekkie, so I can't always trust his judgement when original series writers might be involved. Is the book worth reading?

Diatryma @ 56,

You're most welcome. At the risk of excercising my penchant for geeky overhelpfulness, another way you can describe lines and dresses is by the specific cut and waistline. So you can say things like "I'm looking for something with a Basque waistline," (that's the kind of starting-at-the-waist-narrowing-to-a-point waist seen on some dresses from the 18th century, as well as in certain mid-Victorian-era dresses) "and a square neckline, and a very full skirt."

A good dressmaker should know what all these terms mean.

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, of course, I've chosen a sort of stereotypical, generic mid-18th-c. set of ideas, and expressed them very vaguely. Here's a nice resource for the entire century, with a good overview of the styles and silhouettes.

so far, three hours, 66 posts...
22 posts an hour...
about a hundred posts every 4 hours...
at this rate, we'll hit a thousand posts in 40 hours,
figure 12 hour days (posting rate drops as people sleep), that's about three days...

damn

I was just in a conference room where the remains of a "catered" lunch (read: sandwiches and chips) were being cleaned away. The chips were in a large white bag with black lettering: Lay's Potato Chips. Regular Lay's logotype and everything else that you might find on a standard bag of Lay's except that it was plain b&w.

I turned to the several other people in the room and said, "Look, it's generic potato chips! Are you all too young to remember generic packaging?" And with one exception, they were.

The person who remembered and I spent a few minutes enlightening the younger folks about "generics."

I remember that I was working at Berkley Publishing at the time and that at the height of the generic craze we published three or four "generic novels," including, iirc, a Science Fiction Novel and (maybe) a romance. But it was 20+ years ago and memory dims.

Does anyone else out there remember generics in general and the generic novels in particular, and does anyone have any idea where I might find a visual on the web of the generic novels to use to further enlighten younger Tor staffers? Preliminary searches of amazon, ebay, alibris, etc. have been unhelpful.

I know, I know, this is a weird question, but this is an open thread and the people here are some of the smartest folks with the most wide-ranging interests I know.

#52, thanks for the reference! I've been trying to figure out what the folks in my 1920s-set WIP would be wearing (and almost as importantly what it was called), and there's some great stuff at that site.

#56 Diatryma--were you thinking of something closely fitted, or something more like the style called sacque or Watteau?

Melissa @ #69: Generic! I remember that. As a lad, one of my scout troupes even had the collective sense of humor to call itself The Generics at the Silver Mocassin jamboree. Our flag was all white with a black dot in it.

This Wikipedia was interesting. No images of generic books, though.

Gursky @ 66 I read The Man who Folded Himself some time in the mid 90's, when I was a teenager. So all of this is with the caveat that my memory is imperfect and my reading sophistication has increased since then.

It was interesting enough to keep me reading to the end, but when I got done I didn't see the point. Our protagonist falls into the possession of a time machine and uses it to explore all sorts of paradoxes, alternate histories and sexual escapades with alternate versions of himself. Ultimately, he is an extremely bored dilettante who keeps hoping to find something interesting in some timeline somewhere. I wound up feeling like "well, that was amusing, but couldn't this guy find something worthwhile to do with all this power?" I don't know, maybe that was the point.

I certainly remember the Generic Novels - I owned the one entitled Science Fiction. The motto of the series was "If you like one, you won't mind the rest". I'm sure MITSFS has a copy of the SF generic novel, but I have no idea if they can send you a scan.

Melissa @69
I know it's not generic in the classic sense, but at the MOMA Design store they carry a line of, what, office wares? house wares? by a Japanese brand that follows the same design precepts. They're called MuJi if I remember correctly. It translates into something like "No-Name".

Also, I know a guy following more directly in the generic lineage who constructs blank boxes designed to be the same shape as real products and leaves them on the shelves at local stores. Like a little refresher for folks who've been blinded by row upon row of ad-text.

Cathy @ #65,

We also got our first family home computer in 1985. It was a Commodore 64. IMHO one of the better mid-80's home computers to emerge before the generic PC proliferation forced just about everything besides Apple off the market. Its color and sound beat the daylights out of the just about everything else released that same year; even the Macs of the time.

I loved that computer. Used it until 1992 when I got an actual PC as a graduation gift. I think my parents still have our C64 in the attic? I wonder if it works. I'd love to get it and set it up again. I have not played "Legacy of the Ancients" or "Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set" in decades!

I have vague memories of military commissaries selling generic canned goods back in the 1970s. Even then I'd been so conditioned to bright colors on cans that the black-on-white labels made me uneasy about the quality contained therein. Unreasonably, I'm sure.

#46: No. That was Battlestar Galatteca.

I loved the matter-of-factness about generics.

You'd look at the cereals, and see the pure white box with the words CORN FLAKES shouting amidst the sea of colorful boxes and capering kiddie characters.

No gimmicks. No bullshit.

And they tasted just like cornflakes should taste.

As did the GRANULATED SUGAR you'd sprinkle on it in the morning, and which was sold on the opposite side of the isle from the CORN FLAKES.

I remember my mother being very suspicious of the generic TUNA--I think she thought it was cat food. But I bought TISSUES and TOILET PAPER and a few other products (the memory dims).

John Silbersack, now an agent, wrote SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL. David Hartwell reminds me that Terry Bisson wrote WESTERN NOVEL. Neither of us can remember who wrote the other two books.

Gursky @75: I like the guerilla art guy. My 11-yo dd and I just read The Plain Janes, a graphic novel which is very much about guerilla art.

Melissa @69: There's still one place where I see generic products, and that's in the Generic Value Products line of knock-off shampoos etc. A bit of Googling turned up this example of their generic conditioner. Their design is busier than the generic products of old, but that's mainly so they can say THIS IS JUST LIKE THE STUFF WE'RE RIPPING OFF.

I have nothing good to say about 1985 except that that was the year I discovered that BEER in the generic sixpack made excellent banana slug traps.

I can't hear about generics without thinking of the recurring joke in "Repo Man" that everyone is always eating from generic cans of FOOD or drinking bottles of DRINK (or, of course, BEER), etc. "Do you want some FOOD, son? It's meat flavored."

1985.

That was the year I started my library, in that I began to act on the thought that I'd be keeping books long-term.

Not that I didn't have a library before, but I hadn't yet connected "books" with "deep time." Buying not just for the me of today, but the me of 22 years (or 44, or 66) from now*.

Then, my used book-buying budget was about $10/month. Most of that went to a local flea-market, where books tended to be about 4-5/$1 for paperbacks, $.5-$1 for a hardcover.

I could easily find my 40 books for the month if I didn't worry too much about the spine's condition. But sometime in 1985 I started to look much harder. I wanted the books to be in reasonably good condition. Books that'd last.

Books I still have**.

-----
* 22 years? 2007? That's the 21st century! So far away.

** Mostly. I did finally work out a rule for getting rid of bad books, because otherwise I'd be a Smaug with gold in my library.

Cathy @65 We got our first home computer in 1985 too. It was a Corona, and we splurged on the one with two 5-1/4 floppy drives. We got an 9-pin dot matrix printer with it. With the later addition of a daisy wheel printer, I word processed my doctoral dissertation on that machine in 1988. The daisy wheel printed about one page every 2 minutes, and had a tractor feed for fan-fold paper but did not have a sheet feeder. So the final copy of my 180-page dissertation took 6 hours to print, the night before it had to be turned in, with me sitting there feeding it one ... page ... at ... a ... time of the special watermark paper the graduate school required.

Melissa @69 I remember the generics, though not the novels. The food product labels used to say things like "suitable for everyday use," which has survived in our household as "suitable for everyday abuse."

abi@62: Buck knives are one of the major reasons I'm not currently known as Abi Nine-Fingers.

You have instantly earwormed me with music from the Rankin-Bass Return of the King.

"Abi of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom! Why does she have only Nine Fingers? Where is the Ring of Doom???"

abi@62: Buck knives are one of the major reasons I'm not currently known as Abi Nine-Fingers.

You have instantly earwormed me with music from the Rankin-Bass Return of the King.

"Abi of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom! Why does she have only Nine Fingers? Where is the Ring of Doom???"

Some generic stuff was truly bad.

I bought, from Pathmark circa 1985:

Generic frozen ravioli. Careful examination of the label showed that they were imported and that the cheese was made of sheep's milk.

Generic spaghetti sauce. It was like the slippery, translucent, orange stuff that comes with Raviolios or Chef Boyardee canned pasta. Awful.

* * *

I think there's a big difference, marketing wise, between knock offs and generics and house brands.

Some house brands are really good. They sell on quality and trust.

Knock-offs in look-alike packaging sell via a sort of reputation voodoo. If it looks like X, it must have the same qualities as X.

The closest thing to generics these days are specialized low-rent house brands. For example, the local Kroger chain, Fred Meyer, sells Fred Meyer stuff, Kroger brand stuff, and also FMV. ("For Maximum Value.") FMV stuff is always cheaper; sometimes suspiciously cheap.

One of these days I'll buy a bag of Fred Meyer frozen peas and FMV frozen peas and do a comparison.

I'm not sure how far the Grocery Outlet chain extends these days, but my wife and I shop there all the time and it's always a gas to see all the strangely packaged stuff, some of it quasi-generic, some of it just off-the-wall. One time we found a box of approximate Lucky Charms, only the writing seemed to be in Arabic, and Lucky The Leprechaun was entirely absent. Sure tasted and looked liked Lucky Charms.

Huh. I hadn't noticed generics were gone--but then it's been a while, even before I switched to the co-op, that I've pursued that "follow the outer wall of the market" principle.

I remember having read The Man Who Folded Himself, but next to nothing about it. Only comment I can make is that I do occasionally think I ought to look for it and read it again, so the experience must not have been entirely negative.

1985 was the year that I was first mentioned in a fanzine (Uncle Dick's Little Thing) in a news report about the SMOF-BBS, which first went online as one of the first science fiction specialty bbs's on January 26th, 1985.

Right.

Someone had to kick it off. And it has mutated inside my head. Now I pass it back on to the world. Soon my revenge will be complete!!!!!1ONE!

Web Surfing
__________________________________________

Web surfing, across the Internet
Computer networks, servers: look at all those tubes!
Web surfing, across the internet
Boldly clicking forward, because we are not n00bs

Communications report!

There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, through my brain.
There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, Argh!

Analysis, nerds and pedants!

Well, they're memes, sir, but not as we know them
Not as we know them, not as we know them.
They're memes, sir, but not as we know them,
Not as we know them, LOL!

There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, through my brain.
There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, Argh!

Web surfing, across the Internet
Computer browser, websites: look at all those tubes!
Web surfing, across the internet
Boldly clicking forward. Dammit, we're not n00bs!

Data filtering report!

It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir. Spam, sir
It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir, Spam!

Well, they're memes, sir, but not as we know them
Not as we know them, not as we know them.
They're memes, sir, but not as we know them,
Not as we know them, ROFL!

There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, through my brain.
There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, Argh!

Weblog administration report!

Ah ha! Stay on topic! (disemvowel)
(Disemvowel, disemvowel)
Stay on topic! (disemvowel)
(Disemvowel trolls)

It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir. Spam, sir
It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir, Spam!

Well, they're memes, sir, but not as we know them
Not as we know them, not as we know them.
They're memes, sir, but not as we know them,
Not as we know them, ROFLMAO!

There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, through my brain.
There's earworms running through my brain.
Make it stop, please!

Web surfing, across the Internet
Computer networks, servers: look at all those tubes!
Web surfing, across the internet
Boldly clicking forward — hey, look: b00bs!

Systems analysis report!

Ye canna change the laws of logic
Laws of logic, laws of logic
Ye canna change the laws of logic
Laws of logic, sir

Ah ha! Stay on topic! (disemvowel)
(Disemvowel, disemvowel)
Stay on topic! (disemvowel)
Crap, the server crashed.

It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir. Spam, sir
It's worse than that, it's spam, sir
Spam, sir, Spam!

Well, they're memes, sir, but not as we know them
Not as we know them, not as we know them.
They're memes, sir, but not as we know them,
Not as we know them. WTF?

There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, through my brain.
There's earworms running through my brain.
Through my brain, Argh!

ALL UR BASE BELONG TO CATS!
MY BUCKET, HAVE YOU SEEN IT?
I CAN HAS PR0N?
OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!!!!
Server meltdown. Network meltdown.
Computer meltdown. Brain meltdown.

Tubes all blocked.
The rest is silence.

Melissa @ 69:

A little Google research, and I turned up the term "No Frills Books" and "No Frills Science Fiction". After that, I was able to find this picture of the "No Frills Science Fiction" book:

"No Frills Science Fiction"

In June, 1985 I was recovering from my first and only (knock wood) surgery - the removal of an osteophyte (dang, that word is not in the spelling reference) and preparing for a big move from Utah to Illinois. That's quite the culture shock for a 13 year-old.

And speaking of generics (always popular in my household) I had a grey tabby named Generic; I had acquired her as an Easter gift in '83, and it took a month for a name to "stick". Generic was my dad's suggestion, based on her complete nondescript gray tabby-ness. She gained a "sibling", Spot, shortly after we adopted her. Generic only lasted one year in Il, before being hit by a car, but Spot was nearly 20 before he wore out.

Stephen Granade (#20): the 85 bus is one of a handful of MBTA buses that consistently runs on schedule. (The rest, of course, fail to do so with varying levels of failure from mild to "there's a bus route here?".)

Ken houghton (#24): I have both Bobby Pickett's "Star Drek" and The Firm[1]'s "Star Trekkin'"; the latter is the one being repeatedly quoted here.

[1] Not to be confused with either of the two "supergroup"s that used the name.

Owlmirror (#92): Bravo.

On knives: I have the Victorinox "Cybertool 34", because it has (among other features) Torx bits. I have found that it is a sufficiently versatile tool that I can disassemble a large rack-mounted server with no other tools necessary. I wouldn't recommend it as a boating knife, unless you're planning to sail around a data center.

A notable musical reference to 1985 is in the SR-71 song of the same title, most famously covered by Bowling For Soup (complete with a video referencing a number of 80s music video clichés).

"So tell me, future boy, who's the President of the United States in 1985?"
"Ronald Reagan."
"Ronald Reagan? The actor?"

(Please note I'm 5 hours east of the server time...)

Earl @ 91: How soon after that was "Godwin's Law" coined? I remember it being discussed one evening at Schultz's Beer Garden, and it certainly came up on SMOF-BBS.

Gursky 66: The Man Who Folded Himself is, in my opinion, the best time travel novel ever. YMMV.

PRV 79 As did the GRANULATED SUGAR you'd sprinkle on it in the morning, and which was sold on the opposite side of the isle from the CORN FLAKES.

Well, that's not so bad in Manhattan, but it's still kind of a long walk. Blocks and blocks, unless you're wayyy downtown.

1985 was when my first post appeared on Usenet. It was in rec.comics. It was a review of issue #7 of Crisis on Infinite Earths, which included the death of Supergirl.

I have fond memories from the mid-'80s of the generic bus in the Champaign-Urbana bus system. It was assigned to different routes, was painted with the classic olive green stripe, and cost less to ride than the other buses in the MTD.

Melissa,

I can't find any images of the generic books either. But there are what seem to be copies of the sf one ("Science Fiction I") selling on abebooks.com for $1.

Xopher @ #98: LOL! Yah caught me in another 'lexical' blunder. Good eye.

1985 - the year I graduated from high school AND discovered Beer. (I was a bit of a late bloomer.)

#89: I love Grocery Outlet. Friends and family call it (and places like it) "the used food store."

Not used as in digested and shat, but because it has a grotty thrift store vibe to it.

As PVR suggests, the place has entertainment value, as well as occasional wonderful bargains.

Last year I saw a shelf full of Pathmark house brand pop-tarts. I'm in Oregon; as far as I know Pathmark doesn't have stores west of New Jersey.

Once Grocery Outlet got a shipment of 5 lb. bags of things like collard greens and brussel sprouts. Very cheap, very good. I had hopes they'd show up again. Not to be. Wah!

Can anyone recommend a book on Russian daily life around the time of the Napoleonic Wars?

Insightful comment about the number 85. Witty reply to earlier comment.

See? I'm topical.

I remember generic products. "This product is suitable for everyday use. Color and consistency may vary." There was a generic Knight and Lady at an SCA event; even her favor was bar-coded.

I believe that by 1985 I no longer had to eat generic products. But in about '80 or so, I remember that they saved me from starvation, at a time when I had $60 to my name, and had to make that last for six months (food only; I had a different arrangement for my rent). That wasn't as ludicrous as it would be today, but still pretty extreme. Generic mac&cheese was 19¢ a box. You were supposed to make it with margarine and milk, neither of which I could afford; I'd cook it at noon and have half for lunch and half for supper. Breakfast was not a meal.

I did a certain amount of scrounging to supplement during that time. Also my sister gave me a huge bag of assorted potatos left over from the ag lab she worked on. That helped a lot. Also I never knew there were so many kinds! And I may have been one of the first people to eat what is now called a Yukon Gold potato; they were developed at Michigan State around then.

I won't eat box-mix mac&cheese now. I WILL eat the zingy pasta-cheddar casserole I invented, with the mushrooms and onions and sundried tomatos and the herbs and spices—but I never, ever make it with elbow macaroni.

1985. As someone else mentioned, that was the year Back to the Future opened. I hadn't seen Michael J. Fox before; I fell in instant lust.

On the down side, it was also the first year of the second Reagan administration, as watching that movie reminds us.

Stefan Jones @ 104

I used to love Grocery Outlet for the cereal boxes printed in Urdu and Hindi and Mandarin. Especially Count Chocula.

Bill @ 97: Yes, the SMOF-BBS was one of Mike Godwin's first online venues, but I think his meme was formed after he had spread his wings a bit to a variety of other online locations. My own "Bentsen's Defense" was first used in 1991 on austin.general.

While we are on the subject of the Man Who Folded Himself (but not did not spindle or mutilate), does anyone remember the title or author of a novel that came out in the last few years with a similar concept, a woman who receives a visit from an older version of herself, is given a time machine, and proceeds to jaunt all over the Multiverse, changing history to see what happens. The end, when she dies after having given herself the time machine, is very different. Well, it's different after she dies. It's irritating me like a mosquito bite that I can't remember who wrote it. And I liked it better than the Gerrold story, too.

Generics, yes. My mom always shopped for value, so I'm sure we bought a bunch. However, the only one I can specifically remember was the BEER, because I thought it was amusing. I turned 17 in 1985, which may explain that bit. 1985/1986 were also my maximal years of MTV watching.

Re knives: it is illegal for any person to be in possession of a weapon, including "any knife with a blade of 2 or more inches", within 1000 feet of a school in the state of Georgia. (O.C.G.A. § 16-11-127.1) You might want to consult your local laws if you regularly carry a pocketknife and might find yourself near a school. (Exceptions exist for certain categories of people, e.g. law enforcement personnel.)

Melissa @ #69, I certainly do remember generic groceries, but did not realize there had been generic novels.

Stefan,

The used food store! LOL! That fits entirely.

Although Grocery Outlet, as a chain, seems to be doing far better these days than it did ten years ago. Ten years ago, when we went to the outlet in Mt. Vernon, WA, it really was grotty. Dirty floor, bad lighting, hulking and unclean register workers.... Not attractive.

The location in Tacoma where we now shop is almost like a regular Safeway or Albertsons or something similar. Lighting is better, aisles (hah, Xopher) are clean and well organized, they even have produce now, and much of the discounted stuff is 'normal' brand; though you still see the off-name stuff, like the pop tarts you mentioned.

I'm always amused to find store brand Piggly Wiggly canned items at Grocery Outlet. Talk about seeing things not normally found in the West!

Bleargh. 2001, not 1991:

So we have Bruce, Stefan, and myself.

Any other Grocery Outlet shoppers here?

Bruce @109

Do you remember there being a war in your story? Your description reminds me of one recent story, but I hesitate to name it here because your description + the title could be a spoiler.

In some respects, bulk food sections are a modern version of generic foods.

Across the street from me is a WinCo, a huge no-frills supermarket. The bulk section is remarkable; everything from candy and dog biscuits to whole grain pasta and three-colored couscous.

Last month, when various news outlets were covering the "[Congressperson|mayor|governor] shops on a Food Stamp budget," I took some scratch paper to WinCo and figured out what I'd buy for $84 a month. It seems doable, and I'd probably eat better than a good chunk of Earth's population, but it would be a boring and rather starchy diet that requires lots of prep time and cooking. Lots of cabbage, potatoes, pasta, oatmeal, and so on. (Of course, not everyone lives next to WinCo. If you shopped at a ripoff urban grocer you'd be in deep trouble.)

Fidelio #44: Shouldn't that have been 'Bonus Amicus'?

Kathryn,

I don't remember a war, but I do remember gung gur cebgntbavfg ng bar cbvag fcrag n ybg bs gvzr va na nanybthr 19gu Praghel Ybaqba nffvfgvat n Ubyzrf-nanybthr va qrgrpgvba. That help?

I'm thinking of getting an e-book reader (sony's, maybe, depending on how nasty their file format/drm thing is)...anyone want to share experiences?

I have gone to Grocery Outlet; there is even one very near me. They're OK as far as amusing grocery shopping goes,and a reliable place to find good sardines, but for a real thrill of dependably exotic stuff (aisles and aisles of sauces! aisles and aisles of frozen dumplings!), and amazing fresh produce, I prefer Uwajimaya.

However, I will never again go to the one in the ID on the day the Mariners are playing at home. It's pretty visited by every Japanese tourist in the Northwest at such times, and I don't like crowds much any more.

Bruce @118,

Ah. Different story, and not ringing any bells.

Abi #62: Do you have a Ring of Doom?

abi @ 62... Abi Nine-Finger sounds almost as scary as Nightmare Abi.

Stefan Jones #88: What is wrong with sheep's milk? The cheesemakers of Roquefort would like to know.

Xopher #98: Or way uptown (former Inwood resident here).

And if abi is going to have two noms-de-terreur, I'd like to have one for myself. Considering that I almost blinded myself with a screwdriver last night while trying to set up blinds, something piratical might be in order.

Serge of the Seven Seas?

While we are on the subject of the Man Who Folded Himself (but not did not spindle or mutilate), does anyone remember the title or author of a novel that came out in the last few years with a similar concept, a woman who receives a visit from an older version of herself, is given a time machine, and proceeds to jaunt all over the Multiverse, changing history to see what happens.

Could this be Here, There and Everywhere by Chris Roberson? I haven't read it, but it sounds like the synopsis.

Serge #126: Wouldn't that make you a Tidal Serge?

Fragano @122:
Abi #62: Do you have a Ring of Doom?

No, but my doorbell does.

It's the sound that a double glazing salesman hears when he presses the button beside the door during the dinner hour, shortly before he is flensed in one neat, swift tongue-lashing and sent upon his way, still skinless.

I do it to phone spammers as well.

abi... Do you show them the skull that's encased in a bowling ball?

Sarah @ 105:

Personally, I'd have to say "War and Peace" is about the best novelization of Napoleonic-era life in Russia that I've ever read.

Andrew @ 55:

First, get one with a lanyard hook.

Second, I'd have to say that in my opinion (which counts for little if anything at all) the best knife is always the one that someone gives you...I had a Swiss Army Knife for about two decades based on it's status as "coolest gift I was given on my 11th birthday" and NOT on it's merits of practical usefulness.

After it broke from over sharpening and one-too-many tumbles down a rock wall after falling out of my pocket (no lanyard ring) I tried several alternatives.

For my personal taste, a leatherman tool with the needle-nose pliers in the fold up is the perfect multi-use tool. They make several that are durable, fit nicely in the hand, and have as few or as many "extras" as you need (but seriously, NO ONE needs an awl on their pocket knife).

For boating I'd get one with a nice serrated blade and a corrosion resistant finish. And a lanyard hook.

Trust me on the lanyard hook.

---

I used to have ellipsis-itis...but now I seem to have developed hyper-hyphenation-disease...is there a reliable and effective cure someone could recommend?

#124: Any reputable cheese maker would disown the grainy, almost tasteless sheep's milk concealed in those utility grade ravioli!

Abi @129,

You may enjoy the story I just told in the White Horse thread on why my acquaintance will never again get door-to-door religion salesmen.

Abi Nine Fingers sounds like one of a) a 19th century Cree Indian b) a Delta blues player or c) a minor character from "Goodfellas".
Or, indeed, all three.

#75: Muji opened shops in London a couple of years ago. Not bad.

#95: there was a band called SR-71? I'll file that along with the B-52s and U2. And, I suppose, the Eagles. And the Foo Fighters.

Any others? Was there a rock and roll band called the Phantoms? It sounds as though there ought to have been. Glamorous Glennis and The X-1-ettes? (better than Enola Gay and the Liberators)
Has Charlie Stross set up a cover band called the B-36s yet?