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Uncle Al is annually sentenced to abide twelve weeks of penance in the People's Republic of Canada. It is not because he is an Internet deity in need of calming perspective or his woman wants to steam clean the home bathroom. Organic synthetic chemist Uncle Al has whittled three unprecedented classes of catalytic hyperlethal agents and, as his CEO said many years back:
"Vancouver Island has a lovely summer, UVic is supportive, and if the stuff gets loose we'll call up an emergency thermonuclear cauterization. Who will care if an obscure island disappears?"
Funny! (Molecular Genesis LS Ltd. only buys Uncle Al one-way tickets. Hmmmm...)
In the summer of 1999, before the world ended by neither water nor fire but not by computer glitch either, Uncle Al was lurking the Net and came upon the RadioQ website. What passes for rock music in British Columbia (Sheryl Crow, because ya gotta suffer! We turn up the fume hoods) comes through the air at 100.3 FM and floods the labs. At 1705 hours each weekday a moderately ripped DJ paws through the day's snail mail, fax, and e-mail accumulation and plays three requested songs. If the requester calls in (1-800-717-1003) during the medley all sorts of war surplus goods and unsalable CDs are his/hers to own. Visit the station with a portable dumpster.
The US has not expanded its territory since Alaska and Hawaii; British Columbia would shed no tears giving the Confederation a Trudeau salute. Uncle Al was impelled to act - for the good of mankind, for the manifest destiny of the United States, and because two seconds of full blast microwave oven hammers aesthetically spiffy fractal devastation into free CDs' metallization. The Canuckistani Netscape 4.0 browser was forms-capable. Uncle Al attacked:
Loreli / Styx / Equinox
Love is a Stranger / Eurythmics / Sweet Dreams
Cup of Wonder / Jethro Tull / Songs from the Wood
Lorelei dates from 1975 when a female of the species hot to live with you was an Official ghastly countercultural wild orgy bad ass anti-Christ dirty sex thing (and bless Papa Carl Djerassi for the Pill). Real world living with a young adult guy is an irremedial combination of a pigsty, a bar after closing, and a sperm bank. Living with a gal - seeing her at 0630 hrs - is a resolute argument for celibacy and hermitage. Queer Nation changed all that. Parents now pray for the slightest allusions to heterosexuality in their offspring. Loreli is toe-tapping good time music.
Love is a Stranger is 1991: sex and drugs gave way to sullen singles bars where looking for Mr. Right has a 0200 hrs default to looking for Mr. Right Now. Annie Lennox was kinky, dangerous, and on the prowl; an orange-haired succubus eager to drain your fluids while flogging you into ecstasy. Your withered grinning husk would discard and eject the way a sated black widow spider cleans her web. La Lennox let her brown hair grow out and dropped some kids. Still, one can dream.
Cup of Wonder, 1977, is the foulest and most dangerous of the three. It is splendidly intricately euphonious, too! Ian Anderson wove a tale of pagan worship, Celtic lore, witches' sabbat, blood sacrifice, and viciously literate punnery. It is an exuberant festival of everything to dance for aimed right up the One True Church's nose. The Vicar of Christ and his silk-clad butt buddies offer pallid watery ersatz exsanguinated anile miracles to come. The cup of crimson wonder is a chalice of piping hot human circulatory fluid courtesy of quaint Druid religious rites. Listening to the song makes me crave ripping into the world for the greater glory of corporate net retained earnings, with visions of scything through an ocean of chubby corpses, giggling. (You get happy your way, I get happy my way.)
I submitted the form. The result was... nothing. I resubmitted the form, e-mailed them, computer faxed them. Nothing. A good time in British Columbia is the oral consumption of a pastie, getting it all down before you gag on tasteless dry overcooked dough and saying how fine it was after the exercise completes. Ketchup and mustard are non-existent. Tabasco sauce will get you arrested and summarily executed.
I was not without resources. Solicitation amidst graduate students and undergrads brought forth a small reel of Memorex that fit into a lab boom box. Lorelei came to live amidst the Pyrex, Annie Lennox purred "gilt-edged, glamorous, and sleek by design," and Jethro Tull bought a round for the house. The rest of the tape was Korn.
I poured my day's catalytic hyperlethal work into the drain and hoped for the best.
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