They took the whole Indian nation
Locked us in this institution
(Of higher learning)
And though I wear a shirt and tie
I still part Redman deep inside

So we Weasels are working on yet another pointless record and the recording software we use is called Samplitude, which made by a German Company called Magix. The program has not worked properly since I bought it - specifically it crashes a lot, and it especially crashes when I use its amplifier simulations. As you can imagine it can be frustrating when you’ve tediously edited a section of music and the program crashes and you lose that work. So mostly I’ve eschewed using the effects because I only have so much patience and the rest of the process is trying enough.

As we’ve come closer to the end applying effects becomes more important though and so I decided to get to the bottom of the Samplitude matter. It used to be that Sam offered phone support, but no longer. Now they offer email support through their German “help desk,” which is helpful in the same way that cholera is, with the added bonus that their support is offered in a vippering vipporvill sort of broken English as a second language - imagine Sargent Schultz with a brain injury, it’s about like that.  Aye no nut think!

So I contacted the help desk and spoke to “Klaus.” Klaus’s initial suggestion was that I run this diagnostic program they have, which I did. The diagnostic was supposed to mail the results to Klaus, except it didn’t, so I had to run it again, and email the results myself, which I did. Klaus then passed the ticket to “Dietrich,” who suggested that I install and run this diagnostic program they have, which I did. This time however I cleverly skipped the part where the diagnostic was supposed to email the results to Dietrich, because fool me once. Dietrich determined that I had to install a “patch,” which was available on a certain page on the Magix website, the location of which on the internet he vaguely described, he thinking this more efficient than sending me a direct link to the program. Much hilarity having ensued I located the patch - less of a “patch” than a 100 MB executable file but whatever - which I installed, which patch failed to alleviate the crashing, after which Dietrich suggested that I run the diagnostic, which found that the patch had not been applied for some reason, after which I ran the patch again, after which I ran the diagnostic, which found that the patch had been applied, at which point Dietrich transferred the ticket to “Franzi,” who suggested I run a diagnostic.

I should mention at this point that the Germans at the “help desk” only respond to emails between 7AM and 10AM EST, which means if I send an email on Monday morning they respond on Tuesday afternoon. When I asked one of them about their 24-hour turn around time they described their efforts as “bending over backwerds to try and get this resolved.” So needless to say all of this run the diagnostic stuff took about two weeks.

Franzi determined that Samplitude was installed in the wrong path in the wrong directory. You could have knocked me over with a strudle. When I asked Franzi why Samplitude would have installed itself in the wrong directory, why no one would have noticed that before, and why it would only cause the amp sims to crash the program he replied: “You can ignore my tip but that will change nothing.” And that was all he said. At which point I asked to speak to his supervisor, who, predictably, suggested I run a diagnostic.

Somewhere along the way it occurred to me that it if Klaus, Dietrich and Franzi had been guards at Treblinka this whole holocaust unpleasantness could have been avoided. Doctor Mengele would have ordered Klaus to bring him a couple of twins to dissect and Klaus would have been all ‘Nein you haf not taken der hint vit der lookink alike babeez” and when Himmler told Franzi to gas a few box cars full of Poles Franzi would have taken a nap and when Rudolf Hoss sent Dietrich a memo ordering him to burn a few Juden in the crematoria a week later Dietrich would have sent Hoss a memo asking Hoss to resend the memo he’d sent a week ago and by then the Russian troops would have overrun Berlin.

In a 1993 Roper poll, one third of German adults agreed that it was possible that the Holocaust had never happened; 28 percent of German adults and 39 percent of German students didn’t even know what the term Holocaust meant; and 50 percent of German high school students couldn’t identify Auschwitz as a concentration camp. Having been unsuccessful in eliminating the Jews from Europe at least the Germans have been successful in eliminating the memory of their unsuccessful attempt. So obviously they can still be efficient, when it suits them.

As for the Weasels and Samplitude?

Never again.

“I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket.  Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes,” says Nancy Pelosi, who eats ice cream for breakfast.

If Pelosi really wants to do something for the health of the nation, she should get the president to stop smoking.

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.

Mark Twain