AOL ends dial-up.

Amidst everything going on in the world, take a moment.

It would exhaust me to list all the serious matters I could be addressing in today's blog. So much news. So little time.

So let's just skip it this morning.

AOL is shutting down its legacy dial-up service. That set me off on a revery about "bittersweet," and then to sweet and sour candy. Some things in life are simultaneously unpleasant and pleasant. I liked Red Hot candy in my childhood.

Stores sell a variety of sweet-and-sour-themed candy. Candy I bought in Mexico combines sweet and fiery hot. The conflicting tastes grab our attention.

We get that same frisson from sounds, too.

The robot-screech sound of dial-up internet was memorable because it was unpleasant, even while it triggered a sense of satisfaction and relief. It was a good/bad sound. Dial-up was glitchy and uncertain. Sometimes it took multiple tries to get a connection. But when we heard that dial-up screech we knew we were "in." Whew. Here is 13 seconds of it. Remember?

Click

I enjoyed being a parent of an infant. A crying baby is simultaneously jarring but reassuring. The baby is alive and well, healthy lungs calling for attention. It's another example of good/bad. Biology saw to it that my ears were attuned to respond.

Here is something I recorded at home. I used it briefly as a ring tone for my phone, but even at low volume it drew too much attention. It stopped conversation. Here are 17 seconds of it, but you don't need to listen to the end:

Click

My mind races with analogies to the politics of this moment, with its rewards for the attention-getting sounds that stimulate our ganglia. But it is a weekend so I am going to let it go. I will just reflect that AOL dial-up is gone and the baby has grown up. I'm a little bit sad about that. The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.

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