This one ain’t for the kids! Shot and edited by Cameron Chiles, with additional footage by Shelley Justiss. Featuring Lauren Plum (music) and Steve Harris (vox); lyrics adapted from his short story “One Fine Day in the Old Folks’ Home…”
Apparently you aren’t allowed to put up an ad on Craigslist and update it after you’ve sold the advertised stuff. I just wanted everyone to know that my coffee table was no longer available.
Just letting you know. It was a fine table.
The admin took the above post down five minutes after I uploaded it. Ah, well.
Found this ol’ tune on a beat-up hard drive, figured it needs uploadin’ fer history’s sake… This is a fine post-apocalyptic song demo from 2006 or so, recorded in New Orleans. Music and lyrics by Brady Walker, embarrassingly rushed vocals by Stephen Harris. “Bunkertown” Demo MP3– Performed by Another Insect/Cicada
Oui Sequitur
IF YOU LIKE SONGS WRITTEN FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF NOSTALGIC SOCIOPATHS, THEN “BINARY” IS THE SONG FOR YOU!
HOW TO EXPERIENCE THE MOST ENJOYMENT FROM “BINARY”:
MUSIC BY LAUREN PLUM (aka CYCLES) & LYRICS BY STEVE HARRIS
Despair. Avoidance. Minimal Effort.
To: Stephen Harris
Re: Fax Transcript, October 2011
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5/5/2011
Mr. Harris,
This is in response to your request of me for a professional recommendation.
Will this rec will help you land the associate professor position you’re applying for? Who knows. You asked for the truth, and I’ve obliged.
Please find below a facsimile of the detailed information I wrote, as per your request, to the contacts and addresses you listed.
-Best,
Prof. W
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5/3/2011
To Whom It May Concern,
A prospective employee, a colleague of mine, has asked me to send you a professional recommendation.
Where to begin.
Stephen Harris, or “LaRhonda” as he sometimes calls himself, disrespects his students: he treats them not as fellow writers who deserve encouragement, as first-year composition instructors should, but rather as failing writers who need “cruel discipline,” to use his own words. He engages students in his lectures, debates, and written responses, yes, but only to abuse them. Harris is hateful. I should know, as I shared office hours with him.
Perhaps a recollection of those hours, especially the end of those hours, might explain his repugnant nature best.
Harris is and was an odd kind of fellow. At the end of each one of our common office days, he would run through a strange routine that I tolerated only because I assumed he had OCD and couldn’t help it. First, he would begin humming the most haunting, wistful melody I have ever heard, a tune that would gradually become louder throughout the rest of his bizarre ritual. Then he would rise stiffly from his chair and stand still for a minute or so while darting his tongue in and out of his mouth like a snake or a dyskinetic Mr. Chips before abruptly breaking his pose and convulsing wildly, his tongue back in his mouth, his mournful hum ever-resonant. Harris would then take long, calm strides toward the hat rack near the door. After plucking it from its perch, the great and terrible man would delicately place his trademark fedora atop his teacherly pate, adjusting it to his satisfaction by flicking his index fingers so rapidly that they resembled nothing so much as the faint blur of a hummingbird’s wings.
By this point, the volume and emotional intensity of Stephen’s nasal dirge would be so great that feral cats from all across campus could be heard mewling and screeching in frightened subservience, their hisses a cacophonous pledge of eternal allegiance to their mad lord. Stephen would next reach in back of the rack and find on one of its branches the jade and onyx handle of his bejeweled walking cane. He would grasp it extraordinarily tightly in his right hand, his knuckles turning as white as the dull ivory studs set in the collar of his utterly unnecessary but transcendentally beautiful crutch. His face as cold and stony as Buster Keaton’s, the Lizard King of State College would then start to spiral his neck back and forth and side to side in long, drawn-out flourishes as if his head were a Russian dancer performing arabesques in time with the booming hum of an orchestra pit filled with many, many classically-trained cicadas.
As he dazedly twirled his noggin about, this unholy progeny of demon and angel would lift his cane mechanically and thrust it righteously at the bolt handle of the office door. The door would spring open triumphantly. Heavy, wailing gusts of chill wind would roll through the doorway, crashing upon the tattered brim of the insane instructor’s prized fedora and beating furiously against his blank countenance.
And, all of a sudden, the gusts would cease and the air would be still and everyone and everything would be silent– including Stephen Harris. The neck-craning, hum-bellowing idiot-god would immediately cease his neck-cranes and hum-bellows. He would then scratch his nose for a moment absentmindedly before turning to me and saying, clearly and simply,
“Okay, man, I guess I’ll see you later! Take it easy!”
He did this every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon for an entire semester.
It was really, really annoying.
Fuck Mr. Harris.
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Cordially,
Prof. W
