For Duchess to Play With

[Stynky Tudor]

So how many licks does it take?

. . . to get to the end of a technical service support phone tree and talk to a live person?

So...did the button pounding ever lead to satisfaction?

I don't recall that particular attempt, but I usually can get through and talk to somebody.

But on Sunday, not that it matters I must have talked with half a dozen people or more - plus their Supervisors - and their Supervisor's Supervisors. . . all of them unable to think outside their box of bureaucracy - content with their automaton lives.

Unless they were all just messing with me and conspiring in some sort of monkey wrench gang sort of way. Then that would be kind of cool - in a twisted sort of way, but it would still suck.

[Duchess]

Sadly I find people are rarely messing with others out of cleverness, but rather mere stupidity.

[blackjohn]

Is mere stupidity better than sheer stupidity?

[Patrick Hand]

Is mere stupidity better than sheer stupidity?

That would depend on how nice she looked in the sheer ... stupidity.....

[Mission]

And now... the cat organ. A (possibly) period musical instrument.

This is an organ containing a line of cats whose tails were stretched out beneath a keyboard so that the appropriate tail gets pulled when a key is pressed. They may have been organized in order of voice.

Supposedly (as the legend goes) when the King of Spain was visiting Charles V in 1549, he saw a parade or some such that included such a device with "sixteen cat heads each with its body confined; the tails were sticking out and were held to be played as the strings on a piano, if a key was pressed on the keyboard, the corresponding tail would be pulled hard, and it would produce each time a lamentable meow."

While the above (more easily understood) image is from the 1800s, we do have one from 1657 called Katzenkavalier by Gaspar Schott which was contained in the book Magia Naturalis.

[Duchess]

You are resurrecting my thread with a cat torturing post?

[Pixel Pirate]

Boy PETA would have a field day with that thing...

[Duchess]

Didn't Monty Python do one with mice?

[Mission]

Yes, they did.

I was going to start my own thread, but when I was searching your forum to see if there were any existing threads on the cat organ, I found this thread and knew that this thread and that topic were meant to be as one.

[Capn Bob]

The ass was bad but the donkey was good...

I believe the translation was "Badass".

You want a piece o'this? You feel'n lucky?

[Mission]

You know, I have been thinking about the cat organ as a physical reality and I think it would have been impossible without sedatives. Cats are not willing creatures and would fight mightily if you tried to put them in confined little boxes, let alone tie some taut rope to their tail. One would be hard enough - imagine trying to do it with sixteen! You would be badly damaged in the process.

[Duchess]

I have discovered the way to create a cat organ. First acquire cats. Second, allows cats to acquire the desire to go outside/eat all the food/pilfer all the objects. Third attempt to prevent the cats from Step 1 from doing the action in Step 2. The more cats you have the more complex pieces you will be able to play.

[Mission]

The trick is to get them to do it on cue and in harmony.