There Is No Cat

Dude!

A comment on a contentious subject over at Shelley Powers’ Burningbird blog reminded me of something (utterly trivial and unrelated to the actual subject of her post) that I’ve been thinking about lately. That’s the phrase, "you rock!" and other uses of the word "rock" as derived from music as a verb (I rock, you rock, she rocks, we rock, they rock).

What I’ve been thinking is this: it sounds stupid. (Yes, I think deep and profound thoughts.)

Why don’t we use other music genre names in this manner? I think that one of my New Year’s Resolutions this year will be to substitute another genre for "rock" when tempted to use this phrase. I have one in mind.

Posted at 12:35 AM
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Blue Christmas

I didn’t take many pictures this Christmas, but of the ones I did take, I think I like this one best.

Posted at 9:31 PM
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Tonstant Weader Fwowed Up

Reading these posts about people hitting their six year anniversary of blogging made me realize that today, December 23, marks six years since I started blogging too. My first blog, now defunct and created with Blogger, was about shortwave radio. A couple of months later, I started a blog about my search for my genealogy; that one’s been dormant for a while, as I’ve been concentrating more on our (not quite so) new (any more) house, but I’ll restart it at some point when I start researching again.

I don’t have any startling insights about this, no great self-reflection about why I do this. I don’t think I remember why I started at this point. And given how infrequent my posts have become, I don’t think I can say I’ve gotten any better at it over the years. But I’m still doing it, for whatever reason. Maybe that counts for something.

Posted at 6:43 PM
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Holly Hippodays

A couple of days ago, my friend Jay, knowing of my interest in all things Ukrainian, passed along a link to the lyrics of a song he heard on a Canadian radio station, "We Are Ukrainian Band", a piss-take on the moldy oldie by Grand Funk Railroad. I did a little poking around and found the actual audio of the song on that site, Twisted Tunes, which appears to be connected with a radio show run by a guy named Bob Rivers.

I also discovered the perfect Christmas music channel on XM Radio, Special-XMas (the Christmas version of their sadly online-only auditties channel, Special-X), specializing in playing offbeat, unusual and funny Christmas music, whether it be surf music versions of Christmas carols, parodies of the Chipmunks (surprisingly and frighteningly ubiquitous), or oddball oldies like Spike Jones’ version of "All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)", long a family favorite thanks to its appearance on a four LP set of Christmas music from Reader’s Digest that was the backbone of family celebrations. As someone who looks forward to the Christmas compilation of seasonal weirdness sent out by a friend of mine every year, this station seems custom programmed for me. I haven’t heard yet if they have a copy of that timeless chestnut, "Honky the Christmas Goose".

So it was interesting to note that quite a few of the tracks on Special-XMas were done by Bob Rivers, like "The Twisted Chipmunks Song" and "Toy Sack" (think B-52s). Sure enough, you can find a whole section with dozens of Rivers’ take on Christmas on the Twisted Tunes site. Okay, it’s not quite as much fun as the unintentionally funny songs the season inspires, but still, not bad. Go wild, and have a happy holiday.

Posted at 4:25 AM
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