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Sunday: March 25, 2007

Sunday Song Lyric

Filed under: — site admin @ 12:22 AM GMT-0500

Perhaps not the most appropriate lyric for a Sunday morning, but I haven’t gone to bed yet from Saturday, and I can’t get the song out of my head:

Arnold was an armadillo
And oh so in need of romance
And it chanced that one Saturday evening
Arnold went to a dance

The moment he walked in the room
He saw her, as if he had known
She’d be there, by the side of the stage
All he wanted, all in black, all alone

She was there, she was his, dressed to kill, oh
if only his glasses were cleaner . . .
He was an armadillo
She was a concertina

He struggled to make conversation
He leap-frogged from topic to topic
If only she’d say something back . . .
If only he weren’t so myopic

Bright silver buttons in rows
From head down to toes in black leather . . .
Could this beauty love him?
“Here goes,” Arnold thought,
“It’s now or never!”

He could picture her head on his pillow
He had loved her the moment he’d seen her
He was an armadillo
She was a concertina

You can’t help but feel for the lad, oh
How happy poor Arnold would be
If they could make love in the shadows
And no one, but no one, would see

Alas, what he hoped might have been a
Sweet secret was soured completely
Sex with a concertina
Is rarely accomplished discreetly

The dancers stopped stripping the willow
It was oh such a loud misdemeanor
He was an armadillo
She was a concertina

Picture love as a kind of concerto
Poor Arnold, his first was unfinished
For what let everyone who was there know
A very loud C sharp diminished

Someone said, “Look, it’s Arnold,”
And he ran from their scorn and their laughter
Into the darkness outside
And never returned ever after

Tales of lost love and dreams unfulfilled, oh
Cruel Cupid, you’ve never been meaner
He was an armadillo
She was a concertina

The song is “Arnold”, by the Austin Lounge Lizards, from their 2006 album The Drugs I Need. I wonder if they read Protein Wisdom? The previous song mentions bloggers. Perhaps I’ll post the lyrics to it as well.

Saturday: March 24, 2007

Human Autocorrect

Filed under: — site admin @ 11:04 PM GMT-0500

Eve Tushnet has a top-ten post on horror in pop songs. Unfortunately, I’ve never heard of any of the songs, and only one of the performers – Siouxsie and the Banshies – who was (were?) the object of a Beavis & Butt-Head text-and-commentary segment. The last title on the Tushnet list is a song by the Cramps (whoever they are) called “Eyeball in my Martini”. My split-second reaction was “shouldn’t that be ‘Eyeball in my Highball’?”. A Google search shows that a song by that name has already been written, and is available for 50¢ from Lulu. I haven’t decided yet whether to pay for a copy.

Wednesday: March 21, 2007

Musical Snark

Filed under: — site admin @ 5:28 PM GMT-0500

Charles Rosen, The Classical Style, p. 170:

It was Handel who said that Gluck ‘knows no more counterpoint than my cook’ . . . Tovey has pointed out that Handel’s cook, who was also a singer in Handel’s opera company, probably knew a good bit of counterpoint.

Monday: March 19, 2007

A Must-Have For Latinists?

Filed under: — site admin @ 11:48 PM GMT-0500

Next Tuesday, the Criterion Collection will be coming out with a five-DVD collection of Ingmar Bergman’s earliest movies. Here’s the IMDB plot summary of the earliest of all, Hets or Torment (1944):

Jan-Erik Widgren is a high-school senior. His Latin teacher, Caligula, is feared by everybody, both teachers and students. Widgren falls in love with Berta, who works in a tobacco store. She tells him that she is harassed by a mean, sadistic man, but does not tell him that it is Caligula himself.

Here’s a user comment:

The brilliance of Stig Järrel needs to be mentioned. He is so convincing in his performance that when you’re leaving the movie-theater you might just see him coming around the corner with his wooden ruler . . .

According to IMDB, this was a reprise of a previous performance as a sadistic Latin teacher in a non-Bergman movie, not available on DVD. I hope my local Border’s has the Bergman set in stock on the day of release, since that’s also the last day of Teacher Appreciation Weekend (March 22-27).

Sunday: March 18, 2007

What Is To Be Done?

Filed under: — site admin @ 10:14 AM GMT-0500

Powerline and other sites have been covering the story about Muslim employees at Minnesota Target stores refusing to ring up pork products. I’m wondering if it would be possible to get the message of tolerance across to the Muslim community with a tit-for-tat demonstration. Surely Target has a few Hindu employees. Could they be permitted or even encouraged to refuse to ring up beef for Muslim customers, just for a week or two, to make a point? I’m guessing that a town like Minneapolis has a fair percentage of vegetarians, too, including some of the stricter Hindus, and that some of them work at Target. Could they refuse to sell beef, chicken, and lamb to Muslim customers, again just for a week or two?

One obvious objection is that encouraging discrimination against Muslim customers likely violates some anti-discrimation law or other. Then again, allowing Muslim cashiers to discriminate against infidel customers should be equally illegal. Not to mention that allowing Muslim cashiers to discriminate while Hindus and vegetarians do not looks as if it may be illegal, too. Perhaps the Hindu and vegetarian cashiers should sue their Muslim fellow employees to force them to do their fair share of the work?

Thursday: March 1, 2007

An Epitaph by Lope de Vega

Filed under: — site admin @ 11:32 PM GMT-0500

Enseñé, no me escucharon;
escribí, no me leyeron;
curé mal, no me entendieron;
maté, no me castigaron;

Ya con morir satisfice;
oh muerte, quiero quejarme,
bien pudieras perdonarme
por servicios que te hice.

I lectured, they did not listen to me;
I wrote, they did not read me;
I ministered badly, they did not understand;
I killed, they did not punish me;

Now, by dying, I have paid in full.
Death, I wish to lodge a complaint:
you might well have pardoned me
for my services to you.