A Netflix employee: “After working at Netflix for a while, it starts to get boring and it really brings your emotion down since there’s not many interactions with your fellow coworkers, like for me, sometimes I feel really shitty after shipping for about three and a half hours and that’s why I try to do many talking, walking during our breaks. We can talk during shipping cause our manager don’t mind and we can talk very, very little during rental return cause we need to concentrate on inspecting the DVDs at a fast pace.”

In my continuing obsession with furniture store commercials, where I am now convinced the best TV commercial cheese can be found, I have discovered that Norton Furniture has a MySpace page and that the creepy proprietor offers free bread to his customers when they walk into his store. The man’s name is Marc Brown and, according to Cleveland Scene, Brown has “an uncanny ability to remember customers’ names and what they bought.” With Brown’s voice, it’s doubtful he’ll ever have to hire a collection agency.

And Overstated does some digging on Flea Market Montgomery. Apparently, the man’s name is Sammy Stephens and there’s even an “It’s Just Like a Minimall” remix contest in the works. Sammy Stephens also appeared on Ellen.

And here’s some blue-screen footage for Adobe Premiere enthusiasts. This guy interviewed Sammy Stephens on the phone, where Stephens claims “they’re dancing to it in the clubs.”

[UPDATE: Here’s a pretty good Flea Market remix.]

If you are a professional musician and/or composer (ideally, you cut your teeth with keyboards), I need to talk with you. This is in relation to a fiction project I’m working on. I’m hoping to talk with you for about 20-30 minutes on the phone (don’t worry: I don’t bite!) or, if you live in the Bay Area, I’d be happy to buy you a coffee. You can leave a comment here or shoot me an email at ed AT edrants.com

Thanks so much!

MISS PAGLIA had that kind of loquacity which seems to have been thrown into relief by poor dress. Her mind and mouth were so smugly formed that she could only bear fruit comparable to a costermonger. Had she run out of topics to write about? The servants and the plebs thought not, but their collective emolument steered their ratiocinative rudders. Once a peacock, always a peacock, feathers flitting in the hot air. It became necessary for her to return, huffing out phrases like “aimless hejira” — note the alternate spelling — in relationship to banalities about Anna Nicole Smith. Because this was what Miss Paglia did. She fooled her readers into thinking they were masticating upon something significant, when the meal was mere venison — a common table d’hôte for an unsuspecting commonweal.

Miss Paglia had once been an essayist of some note, sending engaging epistles and pleasant postcards to her fellow baronesses. Then something quite catastrophic had occurred. Pears and oranges flew in parabolic trajectories after every meal involving MIss Paglia. Then Miss Paglia disappeared and returned. But her loyal pups with previously perked up ears had grown up, their perspectives broadened by the lineaments of time.

But Miss Paglia had not changed. If anything, her overbite had grown worse.