Here’s a weird story I heard recently.
In 1977, Eric and Greg Hentzel of Palo Alto came up with a plan. They were at their local ice cream parlour when they noticed a promotion: sign up for the shop’s mailing list and you would be entitled to a free ice cream on your birthday.
Cool, but each of them only had one birthday apiece. So to try and get a bonus frozen treat, they invented another kid by the name of Johnny Klomberg. They gave Johnny a different birthday but placed him at their real address. It all worked out fine and eventually the boys moved on, their trick fading into the past along with their childhoods.
And then, in 1984, an interesting letter arrived in the mail from the Selective Service.
The Selective Service was the office of the American military that diligently reminded 18-year-olds to register for the army. Eric and Greg turned 18 in 1984, so that in itself wasn’t a surprise. The surprise was that the letter was addressed to, you guessed it, Johnny Klomberg.
So rather than reminding Eric and Greg to register for the army, all the letter did was to expose the fact that the Selective Service had used the ice cream store’s mailing list to find people who were turning 18.
The story spread quickly; it understandably struck people as creepy that the government would use a free ice cream list to draft new recruits…especially since the year was now 1984.
Lawyers jumped in. The ice cream parlour (a national chain who must have feared their reputation would be destroyed) insisted that they hadn’t knowingly provided the list, the military insisted using mailing lists wasn’t illegal. Eventually, it was determined that because those signing up did not consent on the form to having their information shared, the Selective Service could not use the list.
Is there a lesson here? Maybe. Probably something about reading the fine print. Or maybe now – in the age of mile-long user agreements that nobody could ever possibly read – the only solution is to sign up under the name Johnny Klomberg.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. Skúli Sverrisson is a bassist, even though I don’t think either of these guitars is a bass, something about the way he plays them – the tuning maybe, or the way the one that carries the melody slides around – feels bass-ish.
2. At about a minute in, there are some very surprising and sneaky chord changes.
3. Because there are two guitars, and because of their sneaky chord changes, I’ve decided that one guitar is named Eric, and the other Greg. The piano is Johnny Klomberg.
Recommended listening activity:
Creating a junk email account just in case you need to provide an email account when you sign up for something.