auctioneers: the ancient pleasure

I've always thought it would be fun to do a track based on an auctioneer's patter. It turns out people have enjoyed listening to recorded auctioneers for just about as long as there have been wax cylinders to record them on:

http://www27.brinkster.com/phonozoic/auction.htm

W. O. Beckenbaugh appears to have originated the "auctioneer" record -- a recording of fast, witty, auctioneering speech, sometimes including sound effects. The genre was first introduced in 1891 and became "exceedingly popular for exhibition work, especially in displaying the marvelous qualities of the Talking Machine in reproducing rapid speech" (Columbia catalog, November 1896).

This Phonozoic site also offers CDs such as Home and Amateur Recordings on Wax Cylinder, 1902-1920.

The original materials here have mostly entered the public domain, but I'm not sure about Phonozoic's dubs -- if they've done restoration work, for example. The surface noise in the mp3 samples can be pretty overwhelming.

Redenbacher microwave kettle corn

Real kettle corn has flecks of sugar crust on the popcorn. This stuff has instead a sourceless sweetness all through it, and the sweetness cloys and lingers in the way that makes Diet Sprite undrinkable. And in fact, the ingredients list reveals that the sweetener is sucralose. Sugar had technical problems? I can imagine it wouldn't caramelize in a microwave bag, but they weren't trying for that anyway. Anyway, feh.

I have no point, but I'd like to say "fervent, repeated, nearly emotional consumer requests".