One of my favorite Far Side cartoon shows heaven and hell. The punch line is something like “Welcome to heaven here is your harp; welcome to hell, here is your accordion. Whenever someone new joins a project I am part of, I explain to them that “we are, unfortunately, fresh out of accordions”, just to see if they are among the Far Side cognesceti. If they are, they gain valuable project insight. If they know nothing of the Far Side, it serves to cement my reputation as a loon.

[Photo courtesy of JReid]

So when I saw this digital accordion on Gizmodo I immediately wanted to get one and start taking lessons. My awkward lack of rhythm and near tone deafness may make this one of my worst ideas to date. Still the idea of the all electronic accordion amuses me. You can plug in headphones and the device will appear silent. What a boon that must be to the parents of fledgling accordion players. Can you imagine seeing people playing these on the subway and no noise coming out?

This isn’t related in any way, but I found this Larson/Goodal controversy funny. It would fit better into this post if a wild chimp had thrown an accordion at Larson, but we’ll stick with the truth for now.

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