“Hi.  I’m Pete, and this is my sister . . . okay, you’re going to have to give me a minute.  Our mother named her Louisa, but then halfway through her life she suddenly decided that she hated that name, and she started insisting that we call her Miley.”

“After Miles Davis,” the off-camera voice noted, as if this was a sore point.

“Right.  But then a few years later that Hannah Montana show became popular, and she decided she didn’t want to be Miley anymore.”

“Can you blame me?”

“So she changed her name again, this time to Dizzy, because she falls down a lot.”

“It is an homage to Dizzy Gillespie.”  It would not, however, be unfair to say that Dizzy was not a skilled athlete, or even a skilled walker, nor would it be incorrect to add that even an Olympic gymnast might have trouble balancing with that much hair.

“Yeah, and I’m sure he got the nickname by being a paragon of grace and coordination.  But enough about him.  My sister is the only member of our family for at least three generations to fail a class in high school.”

“Not bad.  No one likes an overachiever.”

“She despises machines, or they despise her; we’ve never been able to figure out which.  Either way, it’s not a healthy relationship.  Maybe things would go better if she used the normal method for dealing with computers or cars or calculators that don’t work, but she won’t.  My sister refuses to swear.”

“It is because—”

“Yes, yes, we’ve all heard the ‘because.’  The common swear word has been overused to the point where it has lost all meaning.”

“Exactly.  If I’m going to curse something, I’ll use words that have plenty of meaning.”

He could have argued, as he had many times before, that a sharp, senseless expression of pure frustration is precisely what is called for in some situations, but he was running out of steam.  The annoyed feeling that had driven him to overcome his camera frigidity was fading fast.

“I could go on about her obsessions, compulsions, and neuroses, but someone told me you were looking for musicians, not mental patients.  So from here on I’ll let her introduce herself.”