Today at the office we are celebrating Towel Day with a lunchtime reading of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And brownies.

Douglas Adams was the first author who made me think that maybe after all I could become a writer. I’d been plagued with self-doubt for most of my life, which kept me from trying or from sharing any of the work I did. Being a grade a weirdo is generally frowned on when you’re in grade school, and in college I found myself in an environment that valued conformity so highly that independent thought was a virus that caused social leprosy. It wasn’t till I skipped town for my junior year in London that I realized there was a wide world of weirdos out there, and cutting myself down to size so I could fit into a prepackaged box wasn’t the only path life offered me. I could be myself, and people didn’t have to like me. In fact, if people didn’t like me for choosing myself over conformity, they weren’t worth my time.

Shortly after arriving in London, I picked up a battered paperback of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at a second hand shop on Portobello Road, and finished it in a few hours at a pub near Notting Hill Gate. The title sounded entertaining, and at 35p it was within my budget range. It blew me away the first time I read it, and I still relish being thrown into fits of giggles by Adams’ turn of phrase. It was utterly unlike anything I’d ever been exposed to. The stunted literature courses I’d taken in college chose tame titles and taught them within safe boundaries, using the curriculum to make been-there-done-that observations worthy of a monthly book club — nothing that expanded thought and experience. But this text threw all convention out of the window. Whatever I had previously believed that literature had to say about the meaning of life, religion, god, interpersonal relationships, and the kitchen sink, it was all blown away with the irreverence of a rowdy kid doing a high-dive cannonball into a nice orderly lap pool. It was the first book that really made me think about reality and existence, and it made me laugh while I was doing it. What a revelation.

I gobbled up all of his works as quickly as I could. As much as I was enthralled by his fiction, it was ultimately his least known work that I loved best. Last Chance to See is an amazing text; it ought to be taught in high school Biology courses because I have never encountered something that really gets it when it comes to conveying the nature of the relationship between human beings and the rest of the planet. I can’t recommend this work strongly enough.

The day Douglas Adams died I was very upset. He’d spent most of his career trying to get the damn movie version of his book made, but he died just shy of its release. Leave it to the creator of the Infinite Improbability Drive to kick off in the most improbable way possible; prematurely and while exercising at a gym. I wish he could have written a few more books, and that he could have lived to see the iPad so he could have made fun of it.

So wave your towels high, kids, and raise a cup of tea in honor of DNA. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

I used to DJ a lot of dances in high school (you know, back before everything got so ridiculously formal and commercial) and my giant bible of CDs was an expensive but worthwhile investment. A friend and I would tag team so we could spin and dance, and we had strict rules. Requests trump prepared playlists, period. If you pick a stinker and it clears the floor, swallow your pride and change it ASAP. Play three or four fast songs and then throw in a slow dance, but pick slow songs shorter than four minutes long. (Anybody remember the social agony of trying to make small talk through the long version of November Rain?) In fact, as a general rule, try to change up what’s going on often. Perfect dance songs are two and a half minutes long, three tops. And first and foremost, don’t play the stuff you like if it isn’t what the crowd wants to hear.

This is a little different — I need to provide ambient happy sound for people in a way that stimulates good vibes and friendly conversation and a general hum of energy, but I can’t pick songs that are too noisy or obtrusive. They need to be there to contribute to the background but not actually draw attention. Even trickier, I won’t be there to make adjustments as I’ve got a plane to catch later on. So let’s get the constraints . . . hmm humm hrmmmm . . .

Genres: Electronica, Classic Rock, Blues, Funk, Soul, Indie, Shibuya-kei, and just a dash of New Wave and Glam for flavor.
Constraints: Must be happy and energetic but not attention-grabbing. No screaming, no foul language, no overtly sexual language. Must be able to last several hours without requiring attention or a second thought. Not too many of any one artist so we can just hit random and let her rip.

So here’s what we ended up with:

Can’t Take My Eyes Off You — Muse
Hungry Like the Wolf — Duran Duran
Short Skirt Long Jacket — Cake
Drive My Car — The Beatles
Modern Guilt — Beck
Rock The Casbah — The Clash
Help Me, Rhonda — The Beach Boys
That’s Too Bad (Byron Jam) — Donavon Frankenreiter
Viva La Vida — Coldplay
Such Great Heights — The Postal Service
Wonderful Night (feat Lateef) — Fatboy Slim
Different Colors — Fantastic Plastic Machine
Nothing Better — The Postal Service
Good Vibrations — The Beach Boys
My Mustang Ford — Chuck Berry
Dance the Night Away — Van Halen
Susie Q — Creedence Clearwater Revival
Here It Goes Again — Ok Go
Ramble Tamble — Creedence Clearwater Revival
Human — The Killers
Que Onda Guero — Beck
Higher And Higher — Jackie Wilson
Middle of Nowhere — Hot Hot Heat
And The Beat Goes On — The All Seeing I
Journey Of The Sorcerer — Eagles
Clark Gable — The Postal Service
Black Tambourine — Beck
Code Monkey — Jonathan Coulton
Up Around The Bend — Creedence Clearwater Revival
E-Pro — Beck
Numa Numa — O-Zone
Twiggy Twiggy — Pizzicato Five
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough — Marvin Gaye
Runaway — Jamiroquai
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da — The Beatles
One Way or Another — Blondie
Let’s Stay Together — Al Green
Canned Heat — Jamiroquai
Electric Lady Land — Fantastic Plastic Machine
Move By Yourself — Donavon Frankenreiter
You Must Learn All Night Long (Dauerfisch Remix) — Fantastic Plastic Machine
Sudden Stars — Stereolab
We Will Become Silhouettes — The Postal Service
Bobby Dazzler — Sons Of Silence
Sweet Pea — Amos Lee
Mustang Sally — The Commitments
September — Fantastic Plastic Machine
Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp — Mercury Rev
Frank Sinatra — Cake
Something Happened To Me Yesterday — The Rolling Stones
Brown Sugar — The Rolling Stones
Robot Rock — Daft Punk
All Summer Long — The Beach Boys
Coconut — Harry Nilsson
Bandages — Hot Hot Heat
Love and Wonder (Club Edit) — DJ Earworm
Love Like Rockets — Angels and Airwaves

I love nice people.

I made an post asking for input on a certain topic, and I got some responses that came off to me as dismissive and weren’t even from the group I was addressing, so I responded back in a way that came off as ragingly rude although my intent was to show that I wasn’t angry, just eager not to see my idea scrapped so quickly. It only took a quick IM to sort out that we’d both stepped on each others’ toes completely unintentionally. I failed to read playful sarcasm and instead saw an attack on my ideas and so responded in a way that just sent us on another Merry-Go-Round of unnecessary misunderstanding.

When personal computers started getting big, I kept hearing older people say that the art of writing would soon die. I disagree. I think that since hypertext stinks so much at conveying tone of voice, emotion, and sarcasm, good writing is becoming more important than ever. So are thick skins, short memory spans, and quick apologies.

In the meantime, though, I’m just trying not to feel like such a dunderhead . . .

My reaction to a cold call depends on the techniques of the salesperson, which can vary from polite to sleazy. When callers are very professional and courteous, I explain that they have called the wrong person, but I also take the time to tell them a little bit about who we are and what we do. It’s a fun opportunity to turn an unwanted sales pitch into an evangelism moment. Sometimes we part on mutually friendly terms, with the cold caller feeling just a bit more enlightened.

About half of the sales calls I get are from people who lie to me. They ask for my boss, but they use nicknames that my boss doesn’t use. I play dumb and explain that that person isn’t in this office. They get confused and say “I just wanted to catch up with him about a conversation we’d had.” I then cheerfully explain that, although my boss has a gender ambiguous name, she is a woman. Then comes some awkward silence. Doh! You have been pwned by moi, who has the finest tuned BS detector this side of the Mississippi. They usually hang up at that point, because being busted for lying — however politely — is totally embarrassing. Some of them shamelessly perservere after their shady attempt to bypass me and still think that I’m going to let them try to convince her that we need their service to come in and train us how to use MS Office. It doesn’t happen. I happily pretend to take a message and don’t feel any guilt over that. After all, they lied first.

If somebody wants to sell me something, being pushy will just make me want to transfer him to the Teletubbies phone extension, which we keep around for this exact purpose. (“The person you are trying to reach has been brutally murdered by the Teletubbies!”) But lying to me? How on earth is that the foundation of a positive business relationship? The salespeople who call Mozilla have rarely done their research on who we are or how we function, which is usually why they’re peddling the wrong wares with the wrong methods. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that if they haven’t even bothered to research the gender of the person they are calling, then they wouldn’t understand that using lies to push an end goal violates good business ethics.

So just a word to you skeezy sales guys out there: you cannot bypass the Human Spam Filter. I understand psychology. I understand sales technique, and I understand that closing a deal is infinitely more important to you than actually serving my needs. That’s just how you roll. Just please be prepared to be called on it when you lie.