Mining The Mail
Recycling Resources
During a fit of compulsive hard drive cleansing brought on by my doctor-mandated immobility, I discovered a batch of ancient emails from which I was able to extract sufficient observations, anecdotes, and even the occasional semi-precious bon mot to make reopening this slag pit worthwhile.
Warren Zevon, Master of the Simile
The second verse of “Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” one of Warren Zevon’s less famous songs, deserves, I’m convinced, more attention and appreciation.
Now, I ain’t namin’ names.
Well, he really worked me over good,
just like Jesse James.
Yes, he really worked me over good.
He was a credit to his gender.
He put me through some changes, Lord,
sorta like a Waring blender.1
I don’t know your stance, but I’ve always held that one can never have too many introspective pop songs that examine the deterioration of a dyadic, sexuallly charged relationship through the use of a figure of speech based on a small, motorized brand name kitchen appliance.
Thoroughly Thoreau
According to Thoreau,
On consideration, I would opine that, considering the alternatives, this is not a bad arrangement (especially the “quiet” part) and that, indeed, increasing the percentage of participants might be to mankind’s advantage.
The Dirty Joke Didactic
I find myself once again playing the bumbling paternal figure in another scene from the forthcoming movie, “No One Told Me That About Single Parenthood.”
This past week I realized that both my sons were laughing loudly but awkwardly, as 14 and 12 year olds are wont to do, at jokes by Robin Williams that played between songs on the “Good Morning Vietnam” soundtrack. And, indeed, a careful query or two revealed that they knew the lines were funny but had not a clue why that might be so.
I was then faced with the choice of allowing them to remain naive or instructing them in the art of appreciating the sort of soft-core double entendres as practiced by Mr. Williams. I chose the more active option (well, this wouldn’t be much of a story if the point was that I elected to do nothing). In any case, I spent 20 minutes defining terms and explaining the context that transforms mysterious lines like “[She has] gone down on everything except the Titanic” and Q: “Where are you stationed [in Vietnam]” A: “I’m stationed in Poontang” into high jocularity.
This fatherhood thing is a puzzler.
Ani Difranco, Another Simile-Slinger, Sings A Little Rock Song
I can’t get the first two lines (the ones in bold type) of this excerpt from Ani Difranco’s song, “Gravel,” out of my head:
like a stupid circus clown
telling us both we are the one
and maybe you can keep me
from ever being happy
but you’re not going to stop me
from having fun
“How,” I keep asking myself, “are ‘two women are like a stupid circus clown’ and what impact would that have on juggling them?”
While we most often refer to Daniel Defoe’s important but sludgy 1719 novel about a castaway simply as Robinson Crusoe, the actual title is The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner: who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an uninhabited Island on the coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pirates. Written by Himself
I’m all for requiring that the full title always be used in order to warn potential readers about the literary swamp throough which they will be trudging, should they venture into the pages of that book.
Watching You Watching Me
Marilyn von Savant, who possesses, according to the estimable Guinness Book of World Records, the World’s Highest I.Q., answers reader’s queries and posts her own brain-teasers in her long-running weekly column in Parade Magazine. In doing so, she has also provided, albeit unintentionally, a career for a guy named Herb Weiner.
Herb, you see, runs a web site with the difficult-to-misconstrue self-explanatory name, Marilyn is Wrong, which is, indeed, exclusively dedicated to disputing and belittling Marilyn’s answers, explanations, and puzzle solutions.
I’ve become fascinated with the notion of Herb serving as a self-appointed truth squad for Marilyn, especially since he seems to make a buck or two from what has clearly become a labor of love.
I have, in fact, become so fascinated that I may establish my own web site devoted to finding and exposing errors in Herb’s site, which is devoted to finding and exposing errors in von Savant’s columns.
If I actually open that site, someone else, of course, will soon establish his or her own web site devoted to finding and exposing errors in my the site, which is devoted to finding and exposing errors in Herb’s site, which is devoted to finding and exposing errors in von Savant’s columns. And then, someone else will open a web site dedicated to … and so on and so on and … .
My calculations demonstrate that the web sites thus born as a consequence of this phenomenon would outnumber the combined sites sponsored by educational and business entities within 18 months and would inexorably grow to take over the entire Internet, trammeling the last organized resistance, a guerrilla-operated coalition of Bee Gees fan sites and eBay merchants pushing Hummel figurines and Beanie Babies, when a 14 year old Peruvian girl takes the next sequential site in the “Marilyn Is Wrong - Herb Is Wrong … ” chain online sometime in the second half of April 2012,
Play That Funky Playlist, Prodigal
Until recently, I’ve always burned the CDs for the Prodigal’s MP3 player. I finally realized, however, especially now that he is on summer break, that he has more time and, one suspects, more motivation for this task than do I. Consequently, I gave him a quick tutorial and (this may be the tragic flaw in my master plan) access to my hoard of MP3 files ripped from CDs and downloaded from the net (some of those downloaded ditties must have been mislabeled as the works of Peter, Paul, and Mary or perhaps Donovan because I would never, ever seek out those salacious tunes the offspring somehow found).
In any case, nNext thing I know, my 12 year old son is bopping along with a new CD, which is fine and dandy but not much of a story. It’s the content of this CD that is, I think, significant.
I’ve listed a representative sampling of titles below. I don’t think any one of the specific selections is altogether incongruous with the others (well, I do have a bit of a problem explaining the inclusion of the rendition of “Loch Lomond” proffered by Baker’s Dozen, Yale’s a cappella chorus); it’s the juxtaposition of titles that seems intriguing. One doesn’t often, for example, see a recording of the Jordan era Chicago Bulls pre-game lineup announcements in the same playlist with CW McCall’s immortal “Rubber Duckie,” Iron Butterfly’s “In A Gadda Da Vida,” and “76 Trombones” from the Music Man soundtrack.
Testosterone surges appear to be the most likely explanation for other choices; the reader’s attention is directed to “Sexbomb,” the elegant “I Like Big Butts” by Sir Mix-A-Lot, and “She’s a Lady.” I must also confess that I have Bowdlerized the list, excluding the title of a musical offering from the Lords of Acid, a group with a penchant for song designations featuring the term “pussy” despite the absence of content dealing with matters feline. This male coming of age lustfulness, however, is not the only force at work. The Prodigal, for example, rejected a batch of impressively perverse lyrics by the notorious Reverend Horton Heat (one song suggests DSM-IV eligible paraphilic uses of Little Debbie products), selecting only one song attributed to that group - the theme song from the “Jonny Quest” cartoon series – the stirring but, as far as I can determine, asexual “Stop That Pigeon.”
For my money, it’s hard to beat the range represented by these consecutively listed titles:
- Theme from The Gummy Bears
- Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love
- Theme from Indiana Jones
- University of Missouri Marching Band - University of Missouri Fight Song #3 (Hurray, Hurrah! Mizzou! Mizzou!)
- They Might Be Giants - 88 Lines About 44 Women
- Dialog from Tombstone: Doc Holiday - I’m Your Huckleberry2
I am, moreover, without a clue as to the psychosocial factors that led to his selection of the tracks that follow, beginning with a “special occasion” medley comprising excerpts from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” which then segues into an extensive collection of contemporary and traditional Christmas music.
Naming Names
I’ve convinced my kids that, had either of them been a girl, that offspring would have been favored with the name, “Kumquat” …
… with “Mae” for the middle name.
Yep, that’s right - that daughter would have been little Kumquat Mae.
Reason #322 To Study History
This is one of the sexiest lines I’ve ever received in an email:
I would venture the same concern about you, Allan.
Footnotes
- The version offered here features a feminine perspective and pronouns of the corresponding gender because, while Warren did sing the lyrics himself, far more air time has been devoted to broadcasting covers of that tune by Terri Clark and other female singers. ~back~
- For the uninitiated, “I’m Your Huckleberry” is an excerpt of dialog spoken by the Doc Holliday character in the movie “Tombstone” in which he takes up a challenge to “fight for blood” uttered by one of the bad guys. ~back~
