Babelpop!

A Hot Baby of Substance (Donna Summer)

2007-08-23T06:07:00.000-05:00

Language: Russian

If there's one common saying I hate, it's "Be careful what you wish for; you might just get it." I hate it because, of course, everybody already is careful about what they're wishing for, and by definition, nobody intends the unintended consequences of wishes.

It is, nevertheless, the saying that best applies to my current life situation, unfortunately.

It turns out that I don't so much mind the work; I'm not really in shape for it yet, and there really is a lot of lifting and standing and pulling and what have you, but that's not especially worrisome, since my body will adjust to that in time, I assume. What I'm having more trouble with is the heat. I've done actual work at work now on six different occasions, and on at least three (maybe four) of those occasions, I've experienced symptoms of heat exhaustion.

Which maybe that's something that can be adjusted to too, given time, but, well, here's the story. I was scheduled to work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Monday, I didn't go in due to a misreading of the schedule. On Tuesday, I worked a full day: it was hot (and in fact the greenhouse temperature got as high as 96F, which when combined with the 100% humidity in there means a heat index of 167.5F, according to the forumla the National Weather Service uses to calculate heat index)¹, and I was pretty miserable for the last half of it or so, but I worked, and I lived through it, though I was pretty exhausted when I got home, and I woke up at about 3 AM Wednesday morning with a screaming headache. It's been a long time since my body woke me up to tell me that we had a headache, but no big deal, it didn't keep me up very long.

But so anyway. I go in at 8 AM on Wednesday morning and more or less immediately felt like I was either going to barf or faint, which didn't go away when I moved into a cooler, non-greenhousey part of the building, or when I tried to work a lot slower, and the thing is that it wasn't even that hot yet, at that point (I don't remember the temperature exactly, but I do remember looking at the thermometer in there and being shocked and frightened to see that it hadn't even gone above 80F yet². The outdoor temperature yesterday was supposed to be hotter than on Tuesday, and I was already feeling barfy/fainty, so I left early. I have no explanation for why this would have kicked in so soon in the day; the best I can come up with is, well, maybe I hadn't recovered entirely from Tuesday.

So but here's my situation now. I've been scheduled to work, so far, seven times. One time out of the seven, we have a fluke no-call-no-show because of the boss's quirky scheduling system, which isn't going to happen again. And two or three times I show up and work my shift and everything is fine. But this business of showing up and experiencing life-threatening heat³ every other day that I work is fucked up. Maybe this is something I'll adapt to in time, too, and even if I don't, the temperatures are all downhill from now until mid-January, so this could theoretically work out for a while. But I'm not making enough money that I can miss a day here and there and still get by, either.

It's still too early to tell for sure what's going to happen, but I'm not optimistic about this. Which sort of sucks, because I do kind of like the work otherwise. It's a lot less customer-intensive than cashiering was, and what little customer interaction there has been has been pretty enjoyable so far. But for as little money as I'm getting (and of course no benefits like health insurance or whatever, that might actually cover expenses if I were to, say, pass out at work and crack my skull open on some concrete), and the level of discomfort and actual danger I'm experiencing, there has to be something better somewhere out there. So maybe this isn't going to work out. And even if it does, maybe it's not going to work out for more than seven or eight months. I really can't be drinking more water at work than I already have been (which is what everybody at work keeps telling me to do: "Are you drinking water? You should have some water." In an 8-hour shift, I probably have 64 to 96 ounces of water⁴, plus whatever I have before I go in and whatever I have after I get home. I'm not dehydrated, I'm just too fucking hot.), so I'm not left with a lot of options.

-Jessi

¹Metric equivalents: actual temperature of 35.6C, heat index of 75.3C.

²so, less than 26.7C.

³Body temperatures above 104F/40C are considered life-threatening; at this temperature, one typically experiences mental confusion, profuse sweating, drops in blood pressure which lead to faintness, and cramping or vomiting, which reads a lot like my day yesterday. Prolonged, continued exposure to heat fills in the following other spaces on the Hyperthermia Bingo Card: abrupt cessation of sweating, hostility, headache, behaving as though intoxicated (staggering, slurred speech, etc.), increased pulse and respiration, flushing followed by pallor, chills, shivering, muscle weakness, convulsions, temporary blindness (!), unconsciousness, coma, death. Plus, obviously, the free square in the middle of the card. All this is from Wikipedia except for the bingo stuff, which is my own addition.

⁴(1/2 to 3/4 of a U.S. gallon, or 1.9 to 2.8 liters)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I ate my heart here to await, to sit,
to call a certain lover of
approximately a thousand numbers. I collected
it, almost rang the telephone from the wall

[a]
to look for a certain hot baby of substance this evening,
a certain hot baby of substance tonight,
I want a certain hot baby of substance (which I was) this evening.
Gotta have a certain hotter substance;
certainly gotta have love tonight for
myself. A hotter substance:
I want a certain hotter substance.
I need the hotter substance.

He does not want another lover: others look for the
night. In my own portion
with the warm-blooded lover, my love is that which wanna . . .
wanna bring the tail end of the house (the reactionaries of it).

[a]

Hotter, it's hotter, it's hotter, it's a hotter substance --
hotter, it's hotter, it's hotter.
Hotter, it's hotter, it's hotter, it's a hotter substance --
hot, hot, hot!

[a]

It sat here, ate my heart for no reason;
it carried another night out on me.
I collected it about 100 numbers, which babies
jumped to, finding "someone" home: I am.

It's gotta have a certain hot baby of substance this evening,
a certain hot baby of substance tonight (which is me).
Looking for a certain hot baby of substance this evening,
I'm your baby of love,
of your love tonight.

[a]

Say It to Yourself, Say It to Me (Lionel Richie)

2007-08-11T05:34:00.000-05:00

Language: Spanish

And I am employed again. Barely, but still. I got a job at the greenhouse / garden center in town that I like, and where about a third of my 200-odd houseplants originally came from, and this is a good thing, though I don't actually know what kind of wages I'm getting. Or what my hours will be. Or how many hours there might be. Or whether I'm physically up to the job: there's a lot of lifting, which doesn't worry me that much, but then there's also a lot of work in very warm, humid conditions, and I am not very good at dealing with heat. I hate summer, I hate humidity, I hate heat. So, naturally, I get a hot, humid job in the middle of the summer.

I'm also severely underslept: I was anxious about the job last night, plus thinking about a previous job that ended catastrophically and which I'm still not entirely over, and so when I woke up at 3:30 AM I found myself unable to go back to sleep again.

There's potential for this new job to be good, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I always expect new jobs to turn into that one. Makes stuff scarier than it really has to be. I'll let you know.

The song here, which didn't wind up being terribly good after Babelfishing, was one that I heard a lot when I was at the catastrophic job. There are (mostly pleasant) associations.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[a] Say it to yourself, say it to me; always say that, for
it must be that way.
Say your opinions to me, who is;
say it naturally, together.

That'll have an ideal, impressive dream: had
people in the park played games in the darkness?
What he played was masquerade, and
he shouted outside, "Behind walls of doubt and a voice!"

[a]

Because we go under the solitary highway of life,
we must find a friend (the hardest thing to seem to do.): we
understand the hand that helps. Some of the two, she or whomever,
feel that you have lost your way. When (to him)
you have some there to demonstrate, to say I will --

[a]

So you think you know the answers. Oh, no, you
have the entire world! Because to him, the dances
are correct. I'm saying to him, that one,
that it is the hour to begin to think; oh,
you are shining, yes. Who are you? A star that she creates?

[a]

say it naturally, together.

Are You Still Crazy (Alanis Morrisette)

2007-07-23T16:56:00.000-05:00

Language: Italian

I didn't mean to take such a long break, there, but things have been weird. I'm not sleeping well, for the past few weeks, and my unemployment is about to run out (one more full check, on Friday, and maybe a partial check in two weeks, but that's it otherwise), and there's always something more important than Babelpop! to be done, so there you go. Today, the exciting thing was that the ceiling started to pour water, out of nowhere, around 9 or 10 this morning: the upstairs neighbors recently moved out, and apparently left the place utterly trashed, because there's been construction / maintenance noises from up there for a couple weeks now. Until today, the noise was the only real inconvenience, but this morning, I heard dripping noises, and upon investigation, found water dripping from the doorframe of the bathroom door. Then water started coming from the air conditioning vent, the room vent, and the light fixture in the hall. Took a while to mop up, and I had to call maintenance to get it to stop -- which leaves me wondering whether it's maybe going to happen again. I'm a little afraid to leave the building.

Anyway. The above picture is something I found with Galaxy Zoo, which is an effort to catalog hundreds of thousands of pictures of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using human volunteer eyeballs, like my own. The picture is easily the coolest one I've found so far, but there are others:

The second picture is a galaxy that was previously known, and the first one might be, for all I know, but considering the magnitude of the project, there's a good chance that you might be seeing pictures of galaxies that nobody has seen, and so there is much potential coolness. If you're interested, go to the Galaxy Zoo site and sign up: there's a quick and pretty simple test, to make sure that you can tell the difference between spiral and elliptical galaxies, and that you know clockwise from counterclockwise, and then you're on your own. Some of the pictures are quite pretty.

Anyway. There are still a couple more songs in the Strawberry Trilogy to come, so be watching for that. I just thought, after all this time, that I needed to put something up, and I'd been meaning to post about Galaxy Zoo for a while, so there you go.

This song turned out okay, I think. The original is, of course, "Are You Still Mad?", and the whole mad-to-crazy joke gets pretty tired pretty quickly, but even so, I think it did nicely for itself.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Are you still crazy? You've given yourselves to the soccer base.
Are you still crazy? I've given you ultimatums.
Are you still crazy? I had all my forty-year-old male friends confront you.
Are you still crazy? I've communicated our problems with you to everyone.

Are you still crazy? Impressionable, I had a transaction without you.
Are you still crazy? Have you tried to model who you wish I could be?
Are you still crazy? I don't trust you there, your intentions.
Naturally you are,
naturally you are.

Are you still crazy? Who flirted wildly?
Are you still crazy? You have had a tendency to generate one of them.
Are you still crazy? The outside hatch is a foot towards that.
Are you still crazy? After we slept, that concluded it. Also, we had that in its entirety.
Naturally you are,
naturally you are.

Are you still crazy? I carried the pants more of the time than you did.
Are you still crazy? I seemed to put yours on fire only to upgrade them. Have that.
Are you still crazy? I've thrown that in the napkin.
Are you still crazy? I gave in much before that.
Naturally you are,
naturally you are.

That Strawberry Wine (Deana Carter)

2007-07-06T22:54:00.000-05:00

Language: Portuguese

The husband and I went to my childhood home (from age 2 to 11) on the 4th of July. It wasn't the first time we'd been there; the first time was maybe two or three years ago, which is when I found out that the house I grew up in had been (briefly) a methamphetamine lab, then was bought and demolished by the neighbors. Now, you can't really even tell where it used to be. These neighbors had two daughters, considerably older than I, and one son who was a year younger, and who was, for all intents and purposes, my nemesis when I was a kid. We didn't ever actually hurt one another that I can recall, but we weren't friends, and there were fights. Unpleasantly, it turns out that he, the son, is still living in town there somewhere, which means that he's probably the one who's going to inherit the land when his folks kick, which seems grossly unfair to me. Not only does the neighbor family get to buy and knock down my old house, but then they give the land it used to sit on to Jared?

So but anyway. The town isn't much to look at -- it had about 150 people in it when I lived there, and is now down to about 125-130, depending on whose numbers you believe. But our old property used to be nice. There was a row of walnut trees along the west side of the property, and then a gigantic, ancient weeping willow in the front yard, in the northwest corner. A small patch of rhubarb in the middle of the back yard that we never did anything with, though I occasionally broke off a leaf to taste the stems, which tasted good. Sour-appley. A bunch of raspberry canes ran wild in the southwest corner, and were very very good when they got ripe -- I remember we used to collect bowls and bowls of them, and they were awesome. One or two mulberry trees on the southeast corner, which Dad cut down before we moved away, because when birds eat mulberries and then sit on Mom's clothesline, which birds are wont to do, they get purple bird poop all over whatever clothes are on the line.

There was also a crabapple tree by the rhubarb, which wasn't any good for eating, but provided things to throw at Jared (they had a tree in their yard too), and a few smallish lilac bushes on the east side of the house -- my main memory of the lilacs is that at some point, for reasons I maybe didn't even know at the time, Mom took me with her to break into a neighbor's house (oh yeah -- nobody locked their doors, but you should have guessed that) to leave a giant vase of lilacs on the neighbor's table. I don't even remember it being a neighbor we were especially friendly with, so it was kind of weird, and stuck in my mind. As far as I remember, it only happened the one time, too.

There was also a strawberry patch in the back yard, sort of in the center along the south side of the lawn. Like with the raspberries, when they ripened, they all ripened at once, and we used to have strawberries morning, noon and night for a week or so. They were awesome. Strawberries are bigger now than these were -- the huge mutant strawberries you can get in the grocery stores actually alarm me, sometimes -- but they're not any better. And God, I miss that kind of stuff, just having edible stuff just out growing in the yard, instead of getting them at the store. We didn't even have to work for the strawberries and raspberries, as far as I remember. They were just there.

What pisses me off is that none of this is still around: the neighbors not only bought the house to tear it down (which I understand it wasn't in the best shape anymore: despite what you may have heard, meth users aren't really fastidious house cleaners), but everything else got torn down at one time or another. The loss of the willow tree still pains me to think about, but that wasn't the neighbors, that was my uncle, who we sold the house to when we moved away, and he destroyed the tree rather than clean up the fallen branches. And Dad did the mulberries. But the rest -- the lilacs, rhubarb, walnuts, crabapples, raspberries, strawberries -- gone, at the neighbors' hands. I guess just so it would be easier to mow.

It makes the place kind of depressing to go back to, but there was also a little marker in the ground by the elementary school (where I went to kindergarten and first grade before they closed it for lack of students) saying that a time capsule was buried there. They'd put it in the ground in 1976 sometime, I forget the date, and they were going to open it on July 4, 2007. Which, growing up, I must have seen that marker hundreds of times, and 2007 would have been kind of abstract, but I figure I must have thought about it, what would I be doing in 2007, where would I be. I know I had to have done the math to figure out how old I'd be, though that would have been abstract, too -- when you're eleven, it's hard to visualize yourself much older than fourteen. I figured I owed it to my younger self to try to get back and see what was there, even though the objects in it wouldn't have had anything much to do with me -- my parents didn't contribute to the time capsule, so it would have just been some random 70s crap, other people's tastes, other people's memorabilia.

We got there too late, though. It was like 4 PM, and it had all been over some time before. Nobody around, no indication where the items might have been. A big area in the vicinity of the time capsule marker had been dug up; apparently nobody knew where it had actually been located. Which is funny. But otherwise, nothing. Just the neighbors, on a swing out in their back yard, which I could have gone and asked -- he used to be the mayor, and they knew the town, they would have known what happened. But I didn't feel up to dealing with them.

So in the end, there's just one more thing from my childhood that's not there anymore. All the plants are gone, the house is gone, and now the time capsule marker. It's not that there's nothing left, but even the things I remember are different -- I haven't been in the elementary school in maybe 20-25 years, and I don't know what they're doing with it now exactly but I think somebody's living in there. Maybe multiple someones. Also, there's a horse penned up in what used to be the school's back yard, right about where the slide used to be, which feels surreal.

I know you can't go home again, but still. Gosh. So much of the rest of the town is just like it was: only the stuff that was specific to me seems to be different.

This seemed like a good song for the occasion. It'll also be the beginning of a strawberry trilogy, even though I liked the raspberries better. (People don't write songs about raspberries so much.)

Possibly I should also note that slightly more liberties than usual have been taken with the song: normally I restrict myself to a fairly small number of changes¹, and it's still not like I rewrote it all from scratch or anything, but it's less like the lyrics that came back from Babel Fish than usual. Not that you'll notice.

-Jessi

¹rearrangement of word order; pluralization/depluralization; change of verb tense; deletion of words that just can't be made to fit into the song; addition/subtraction of articles (a, an, the); addition/subtraction of helping verbs and forms of "to be;" occasional reversion to the original word; changes of gendered pronouns. Most of these things are effectively randomized by the Babel Fish code to begin with.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The college worked it out through
grandpa. In my farm,
I thirsted for knowledge and had a car
stopped someplace. Yeah, I was agitated, in between a woman and summer --
a child finding the love of a wild one. We grow
in the banks of the river, in a well-beaten passage.
Those memories lasted; they were as funny as we were.

[a]
Seventeen: as the strawberry wine and
the hot moon of July capsizes everything,
my first taste of love was bitter candy,
as was the strawberry wine in the green grapevine.

I remember the thirty distillers well. When the elderly were
to go (when they had that mine), they were "Great September!" The fears
were absent: some cards, and letters, and an inter-urban call
that drifted. We were like fall foliage in the
place, but in the year after the year I came back to this,
only the taste of the strawberry wine was remembered.

[a]

The fields have grown an excess now, in the years since
the plough capsized them. That -- is not that,
that is nothing. The time didn't touch
my innocence, really, or -- is it that the loss of it is
so very lacking to me?

[a] [a]

Fifty Ways to Leave His Lover (Paul Simon)

2007-07-03T09:36:00.000-05:00

Language: Spanish

When the husband and I moved into our current apartment, he signed us up for DirecTV, among other things, because it was kind of a bargain, the way that Qwest and DirecTV had it arranged. Since then, many, many things have gone wrong.

DirecTV, at least in our area, comes with two satellite dishes, one for local channels and one for everything else. The one for everything else hasn't really caused us any problems, but the one for the local channels was installed so that it was pointed right into a tree. For the first couple months, this was a problem, because the leaves of the tree block enough of the signal that all our local channels cut in and out unpredictably. And we called DirecTV about this, and they told us that there was a software upgrade they could do, or something like that, and they talked the husband through a reinstallation of the card that programs the receiver, and stuff like that, but it didn't really get any better until winter happened, when the tree shed its leaves.

So all winter, we could watch TV just fine, and we knew that this was going to suck when the tree grew leaves again, but there wasn't anything else to be done, really -- the guy who came to install the dishes didn't tell us that he was pointing one of the dishes directly into a tree, and he didn't tell us that this might cause problems with the reception, and as far as I know, DirecTV customer support never asked, even, if there was anything blocking the signal.

When the tree leafed out and we began having problems again, DirecTV said that they'd be happy to send someone out to fix it for us, but they'd have to charge us for a service call, which I don't remember how much that was but it was a lot more than we wanted to pay. Considering that none of this was our fault, and that we weren't told that the installer was going to have to point the dish into the tree, and this was, therefore, entirely DirecTV's fuck-up, asking us to pay anything to get it fixed was, frankly, a little insulting.

Of course part of the deal was that we had to commit to a whole year of service from them, so we are only now getting around to the point where we can start thinking about getting out of the deal and having something else put in instead. The husband called DirecTV yesterday to get the service cancelled (and the weasels hung up on him, put him on hold for half-hour stretches more than once, tried to argue that our contract actually extended a month longer than it was supposed to, and all manner of other corporate vileness), and today we're supposed to have a cable guy come in and give us regular, good old-fashioned cable TV like Mom used to make. Which means I have to be around here all day, but it wasn't like I was anxious to go anywhere anyway.

So, moral of the story: the service provided by DirecTV isn't that great to begin with. They're awful to deal with in the event of technical problems, and you will almost certainly have technical problems. Where they're not malicious, they're greedy; where not greedy, they're inept. Save your money. Read books if you have to. Just don't sign up with DirecTV.

And, Qwest -- you might want to rethink your business partners here. Associating yourself with DirecTV is not going to make anybody think more highly of you or the service you offer.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The problem within his head is everything, she said to me,
if the answer is easy. Are you taking that logically?
She wanted to help him in his fight to be free.
There must be fifty ways to leave me to your lover.

She said, "Not to impose, really: my habit is
hope (or meaning -- in addition,
I interpreted that so it isn't lost to me; it isn't bad),
but I will repeat myself." At the risk of being crude,
There must be fifty ways to leave me to your lover,
fifty ways to leave me to your lover.

[a]
As soon as the cat's rear part slips,
they formulate a new plan. They're you, Stan.
No, Roy, they just need to be timid.
Get the free jump in the bus, Gus:
we don't need to discuss that much.
The key is the right drop of the lees,
and geting itself to freedom.

[a]

I said, "To see him is in such pain, so troubled,
could make a smile." (That desire had something to do with it.)
I said, "Please. That esteem again? Would you explain that to him,
on the fifty ways, and --"

She said, "Because we don't sleep, do it tonight, as soon as they both
begin to see the light in you, and I will create him in the morning,"
and then she kissed me. (She was probably right to.) And I realized that
there must be fifty ways to leave me to your lover,
fifty ways to leave me to your lover.

[a] [a]

Song of the Superman (Crash Test Dummies)

2007-07-02T13:24:00.000-05:00

Language: Portuguese

The year 2007 is halfway over, as of today. I'm not a huge fan, but it's been a better year so far than some.

Grumpy at the moment because I was just out riding my bike, and a couple was jogging toward me on the sidewalk, and they didn't get out of my way so I had to get out of theirs. Rode off the sidewalk into some grass, and then when I went to get back on the sidewalk again, I didn't make a hard enough turn, so the front tire of my bike skidded along the edge of the concrete until the whole bike tipped over on its left and scraped up my left arm and both hands. I'm okay, but pissed all the same. Also the bike wasn't working quite right on the return trip, though that may or may not be major, or permanent.

Anyway. What we've got here is the bonus fourth song in the Superman trilogy. I probably like this song better than the other three; not that those ones are bad or anything, but I like the Crash Test Dummies aesthetic, and especially on the album this song is from (The Ghosts That Haunt Me), I think the CDT were doing a good job. Later on, they got a little less interesting to me, but that sort of thing happens.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Tarzan wasn't a man of the ladies:
it would only come longitudinally, and it would excavate them.
Under his arm quickly as that one, as a cat in the forest above.

Now Clark Kent had a real gentleman.
Wouldn't be stopped around in junglescape seat; none is as dumb as a monkey
that doesn't make nothing.

[a]
Superman never made all the money
that conserves Solomon Grundy's world, and at times I despair of the first world: never
will we see another man as he does.

Hey Bob, Supe had straight work,
that could've torn it into pieces through all the banks in the United States –
he had the force, but not.

The family said its peoples were all inoperative.
But Superman, he forced that disintegrated planet to continue,
to forget it and keep going to Krypton.

[a]

Tarzan was king of the forest, and the excess gentleman of all the monkeys,
but he could badly moor together four words:
"I Tarzan, You Jane."

The times when Supe stopped crimes,
I'll bet that the man was tempted to stop and turn his back part in,
join Tarzan in the forest.

But he remained in the city, and he remained in the clothes.
The change in dirty old telephone cabins finished its work; it didn't until
the rest had nothing to do but go in completely.

[a]

Or Superman (Laurie Anderson)

2007-07-01T09:33:00.000-05:00

Language: Spanish

And the third song in the Superman trilogy. This didn't wind up all that far from the original song -- sometimes there isn't a lot to work with. That's how it is sometimes. I believe I've made my feelings for Laurie Anderson quite clear in a previous post; that kind of leaves me without a whole lot to say right now. Plus I've only just gotten up -- it's between 9:30 and 10 AM, but I haven't been sleeping well for the last four or five days. So I'm not really able to come up with much to say about this post.

Looking at the picture, there, I realize that the husband and I never did see that movie. We intended to. People said it was good at the time; I don't know whether or not it actually was. There just always seemed to be better things to do, somehow.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Superman's Mama, or Dad. And / or "Judge Dad."
Mama, or judge, or Papa and / or Mother. Or "Superhombre and Mother-Papa."
Hi.
I'm not homemade now.
But if you wish to leave a message, that speaks right at the beginning sound of the tone.
Hello? This one is its mother. Are you there? You're coming to the house?
Hello? He's a caretaker? Well, you don't know me, but I know him,
and I have a message to give him.
Here the planes come.
So you better get a list ready to go. You can come as you are, whereas you go pay.
But payment is as you go.

And I said: AUTHORIZATION. Who's this one, really?
And voiced this: This one is the hand, the hand that takes.
This one is the hand, the hand that takes. This one is the hand, the hand that takes.
Here come the planes. They are flat Americans; America, in fact. Smoking or not-smoking?
And voiced this: neither the snow, nor rain, nor the nightly discouragement,
will complete the fasts of these messengers. They remain
because of their designated round ones.

When the love goes away, there is always justice.
And when justice goes away, there is always force.
And when the force goes away, there is always Mother. Hi, Mother!

Hold me so, Mother, in your long arms.
Hold me so, Mother, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms, your electronic arms. In your arms.
Hold me so, Mother, in your long arms.
Your arms of petrochemical products. Your arms of the military. In your electronic arms.

Super Man (R. E. M.)

2007-06-30T13:33:00.000-05:00

Language: Dutch

Part 2 of the Superman trilogy. The song here isn't terribly interesting, because the original repeats itself so much, but oh well.

I have yet to hear anything official, but I think it's safe to assume that I didn't get the job I interviewed for, and it probably has been safe to assume this for some time. I have mixed feelings about this, many of which are depression.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - -

[a]
I'm a super man, I am, (Am I?) and I know what I happened.
I'm a super man, I am, and I can do, no matter what.

Do you make love with that guy? Now it's not really you.
I know that guy loves you, 'cause I see it exactly; you cannot.

[a]

[b]
I will trust you, little girl, if you leave me a million miles below, on
the way to your heart. Follow when I say I know.

[b]

[a] [a]

Superman (Sister 7)

2007-06-29T07:15:00.000-05:00

Language: French

It's been such a long time since we had a good trilogy around here, don't you think? So here you go, the first (and most obscure) in a Superman trilogy. Why Superman? Because people name songs after him.

Sister 7 is an Austin, TX band, now split up, that a co-worker of mine a few jobs ago liked and introduced to the rest of us. This isn't their best song by a long shot¹, but you know how these things are. The lead singer, Patrice Pike, has gone on to have a solo career; I couldn't tell you what the other members of the band have done, not being a big follower of the Austin music scene. In any event, the CDs are still out there, though they're not easy to find and apparently never were.

This is the only video footage of the band I could find on YouTube. They do a little bit of "Superman" from about 7:55 to 6:55 remaining, but I'm pretty sure the whole song isn't in there. It's hard to tell for sure: it's been a long time since I actually heard the whole song myself. I'm not even 100% sure that the lyrics I used here are all the lyrics the song has. Call me irresponsible.

¹I liked "Nobody's Home," myself. "Bottle Rocket" was pretty awesome also.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I feel that, then.
To roll you up around me,
to note that I'm still awake.
The devil's laughing at me, counting each hour:
I only said that I loved you since you were leaving.
Then I speak a prayer in favor of
Mary: with the cause of anything, there's
Superman on the left, saying
"What I made could never save me!
Suffer with my twisted head!"
(You said that!)
You would run one defect above.

I guess your notification didn't
please, but – remain!
The heat of summer is surplus,
but I always need your chocolate jolt.
(Which I like it when you seem amused.)
I call you a word that you always liked,
but all your softness was employed, and I leave.

Energy is on Your Mind (That Which is Pure) (Information Society)

2007-06-28T09:07:00.000-05:00

Language: Italian

My parents were fans of Christian rock music when I was a kid, though they, like many other Christians of the time (and probably many Christians now, for all I know), considered ordinary secular pop music a tool of the devil which would lead to abortions and homosexuality and devil worship (or atheism, which was plausibly worse), all things they were afraid of.¹ This led to certain in-retrospect funny moments, like when I was traumatized in grade school by a classmate playing a single of Toni Basil's "Mickey" at 45 rpm.²

This wasn't the first secular song to be interesting to the 16-year-old me, but it's pretty close. It wasn't even the song I liked best on this album (that was "Tomorrow," which apparently Insoc and/or Tommy Boy Records never cared for enough to try to market it as a single, though that probably wasn't a bad call -- I'm not sure what I liked about it so). But it was still a song that happened to be in the right place at the right time, I guess, and sparked many years' appreciation for tinkly-boop electronic dance music (e.g. Depeche Mode and the Pet Shop Boys³).

I don't necessarily still like the song, though it still sounds to me like an improvement over the band it's clearly trying to rip off, the Human League.

Decide for yourself. Here is the video:

¹Some of these did subsequently happen, though I'm not sure that Mom and Dad were right to be afraid of them. My life hasn't really turned out how I'd envisioned it, but I hardly consider it ruined.

²If I remember right, I cried and everything. Very scary stuff, to have the devil attempting to brainwash you when you're nine years old and there's nothing you can do about it.

³Pet Shop Boys songs are, in general, Paula-Abdul-like in difficulty, though I did manage to do one, once.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(spoken:) It's worked up now, but we're still not outside.

[a]
I desire to know what that's been thinking.
There are some things that you cannot hide.
I wish to know what that's been thinking.
What that says to me is, it's on your mind.

(spoken:) The pure energy. The pure energy.

An indication is around here in the hush: without observing,
I still find myself all alone. Is it the same with you?
I can see your things; I don't know that, behind the eyes,
our love can be developed. You hide from me, as if . . . .

[a]

So I could break it off in order to drain it,
but would that make it good?
I couldn't know for sure
what you align. That is to say,
they're here in the hush;
I must play that game. It's
you in the hush, and
the others, with nothing to say.

[a]

(spoken:) The pure energy. The pure energy.

Destruction. The pure energy.
Destruction. The pure energy.
Destruction. The pure energy.

[a][a]

Joy to the World (Three Dog Night)

2007-06-26T12:18:00.000-05:00

Language: Spanish

Another placeholdery post. I could come up with something to say, probably, under normal circumstances, but I just got back from riding my bike not too long ago and my body and brain haven't entirely recovered from the heat and exertion yet. I will say that although I'm not, as a rule, fond of music written between about 1963 and 1983¹, I actually like this one okay. Frogs are nice.

-Jessi

¹(I don't know why.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jeremiah was a frog, a bullfrog,
was my good friend:
he never said a single word.
I helped him to drink, but who understood his wine?
(He always had a certain and
powerful singing of the fine wine.)

[a]
Joy to the world!
All the joy of the boys and the girls is
into the blue depths now. The fish
from the sea are joy to you and me.

If the king of the world were outside,
what would he do? Say it to me:
the cars would send the bars and the war far away, and
the sweet love does that to him. It sings
to him now.

[a]

You know that love of the ladies? That's for me.
My diversion has a love
of life; I'm the high aviator.
I threw the rider and a son-of-one-weapon straight to that rainbow; I
said, a son-of-one-weapon threw that straight.

[a]

Friends in Low Places (Garth Brooks)

2007-06-24T22:53:00.000-05:00

Language: German

Nothing much going on at the moment: the weekend kind of went by without anything getting accomplished (or even attempted), so this is just kind of a placeholder song.

On the more positive side, for a placeholder song, it's a really good one. A few very nice lines scattered around in there. Especially toward the ending.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He blames it all on my roots,
which I showed. In the loadings above,
I ruined your last affair of the black latch-plate.
In order to know
the latter, show me over to
the latter. Your thought was that
you'd see it.
And I saw the surprise:
his eyes can be in fear.
When I took his glass of champagne
and I roasted you, I said, "Honey, through
the weight, you heard me, but never myself."

[a]
Because friends of mine are in the low places,
in which the whisky and beer
drown my blue pursuits away.
I'm okay, and have
handled forms. I'm not social;
I thrash to Oasis. (Think on that!) The large are to slide
in low places. Oh, I have friends.

I estimated properties. I
wasn't wrong then; however, I belonged. As straight
as I was then, before, with
everything in order,
I didn't mean that. Good night, straight legend;
point me to the door. I and
he, I, a large fair
to cause a scene --
give me one hour and then
I'm as highly well as
this ivory essay, and
you live in that.

[a]

I'm not straight. I estimate I belong,
however. I was wrong then;
I've been there before.
I say everything straight, and am
completely good, right? That night has the facts,
and I point myself to the door.
I didn't mean for a large scene to cause
me to terminate this waiting period. Until the fair,
sweet, small glass lady
precedes me, then, I'm back to the staff.
And, I mean, you can kiss donkeys.

It Really Makes Me Want to Wound It (Culture Club)

2007-06-20T18:04:00.000-05:00

Language: Portuguese

Moderately upset right now, because I just found out that the ongoing indoor pest problem I've been having since February or so, which had been limited to a small set of about six plants, has moved on to two new ones, a couple gigantic cacti that I've had for over three years and am kind of attached to.

The pests in question are called mealybugs, for those of you who aren't into indoor gardening. I thought that I had them more or less under control -- in fact, I hadn't even seen any of them get big enough to be positively identifiable; I only knew that gray-white oval spots appeared on my plants sometimes and that they were way too symmetrical not to be insects of some kind. Now, there are some bigger ones, big enough that I can see some details.

The problem doesn't seem to be serious yet, but the gigantic cacti in question are big enough that they're hard to move -- over ~~six~~ five feet tall, with, of course, spines, so you can't just grab them and move them, you have to do it really carefully, and sooner or later the spines get you anyway, which is generally surprising, which if you're me often results in reflexively jerking away from whatever caused the pain, which if it's a ~~six~~ five-foot cactus is just going to result in more problems. No serious injuries yet.

So there has been a pretty hard-core shower (blasting them with water from a detachable shower head will physically knock off a good portion of the problem), followed by insecticide (which may or may not have given me a slight headache), and we'll see how well that worked. Even if it does, it was kind of a bummer to find out about this. Mealybugs are not supposed to be among the easier pests to get rid of, and it'll be some time before I know if they're gone or not.

This seemed like an obvious enough song to choose, given the circumstances, and it only got more appropriate after being run through Portuguese.

-Jessi

(Edited: the cacti are five feet tall, not six.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It gives me to the hour
to carry my crime through to itself.
Left me to love and steal,
its eyes had danced inside of me; they
can be as real as I.

It really makes me want to wound it;
it really makes me want to make a shout.
The precious words
of the kisses that burn me
never ask the loving ones that.
Because in my heart, if the fire is burning
(my choice),
finding the color of a star
is a stage. The precious people always say to me that it
is the stage of the much-too-distant one.

[a]
It really makes me want to wound it;
it really makes me want to make a shout.
It really makes me want to wound it;
it really makes me want to make a shout.

The few words
that I have said myself
could waste a thousand years.
I'm involved in symbolic words of sorrow.
Come inside, and stop my rips: I'm to
believe you have spoken, but to me,
you will be yourself. True,
you didn't know that
this boy loves without a reason.
Are you prepared to leave it? I'll go.

If you want love of me, it will be
moved away. Then the examination makes
everything. That's not what
you saw that on today.

[a]

You and Your Hand Control (Pink)

2007-06-17T22:59:00.000-05:00

Language: Italian

This is the 200th Babelpop! post that's a reworking of song lyrics¹, so I wanted to do something special. And this is special, to the extent that it's a song that's even kind of contemporary -- unlike some of these, they actually play this on the radio sometimes -- and it's one I really like. Which I couldn't even tell you what the last song I heard on the radio that I actually liked was. It's pretty few and far, these days. You might disagree that this is a good song, and that's fine. I don't blog for your entertainment², muppetfucker.

How did it turn out? Well, I like the idea of being "sweeping drunk." I'm picturing the kind of drunk where you decide to start cleaning the house and rearranging the furniture and shit. This has actually happened to me before, so I'm pleased to have a term for it now.

I also kind of like "you turned your drinks upside down to me," which seems like one of those obscure cultural signals that get American tourists accidentally committed to duels and stuff. In the movies. ("But it was an accident! How was I supposed to know what it meant?")

The video:

-Jessi

¹The awkward phrasing is because two of the posts are for the same song, "American Cake (Don McLean)," parts I and II. So I can't actually say that this is the 200th song, though for all practical purposes it is. There's also one post that doesn't count, because it's just an index.

²(Mostly, it seems, I blog for my own entertainment. For other people to be entertained, other people would have to visit the blog, and almost everyone who does so, sad to say, is a non-English speaker who's hoping to find a translation of either "I'm Too Sexy," by Right Said Fred, or "Comfortably Numb," by Pink Floyd. Seriously. Those two get a completely unreasonable number of hits. The rest, not so much. Which for the record -- I do feel a little guilty about all the non-English speakers I'm confusing. It's mostly accidental.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

To indent it, towards the outside,
to exit the late night, that
tight sensibility seems pleasant.
I can fight it, tap that area.
This evening, as soon as I know that he's going,
we go down to the hatch. They don't attend because we know
the bar blows. Hardly six of them had begun,
when the dickhead put its hands on me. It's that,
but you see --

[a]
Your entertainment's not here.
The disorder this evening isn't with me; I really wished to
arrest the just, and be necessary a second.
I walked very well before you were in my life.
Knowing that before that ended,
the conservation began.
Your drink just gave me money! It's
you and your hand this evening, right?

Midnight: I'm sweeping drunk.
I do not wish to dance.
Fotune touched the support; the conjectures are from me.
Not to happen, not to listen -- is it just "bye-bye?"
You can say that that's hardly what your boyfriends wished to have;
you want to have my diversion this evening?

[a]

The breach of the breach
of the breach of the --
it's down.

In the angle with your boys, five bucks bet on
the girl: they sucked, but in order to obtain. She's walked in, hardly thinks that
you see -- you've hardly obtained the entire order. You're not that dressed up,
so who renounces you? You turned your drinks upside down to me, yeah --

You're high fiving, know shit,
not talking, but you've been going to the house alone.

Because it's not for your entertainment.
(no)
I'd really not wished for disorder this evening:
take a second to arrest the just, and
(just to arrest and be necessary a second)
walk here. My life's cause was very well before you were in that;
you know you're surplus.
(knows that ended)
Before the conservation began, that
drink of yours just gave money to me.
Are you and yours "of the right hand" this evening?
(are you and your right hand)

I'm not for your entertainment,
(No, no, not here)
I really wished to disorder this evening with myself, not
to arrest the just and take it to a second
(just return for a second)
life. You walked in very well, that was my thing.
Because, you know, that ends
before that begins.
Your drink just gave me money to conserve!
Are you and your hand right this evening?
Oh, yeah.

I Love Rock 'n Roles (Joan Jett and the Blackhearts)

2007-06-15T12:37:00.000-05:00

Language: German

I think this one came out better than most. Something about the way "another dime comes into the jukebox" works out rhythmically appeals to me.

I don't really have any news or anything much to talk about. Still waiting to hear back about the job, though I think I'm hoping I didn't get it.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Seventeen: I saw him dancing by the record machine. I was to have been there.
(I could approximate it, which I did.)
The impact must go strongly.
My favourites were playing a song,
and I couldn't explain that to him
until he was with me. Yeah, I was singing, and you were longing.

I love rock, and roles;
therefore, another dime comes into the jukebox. You set a
rock in, and love rolls
the baby; thus, your time lasts, and I dance with myself.

He smiled, so I rose and asked for his name,
which he said doesn't constitute
the same thing (because he is a whole).

[a]
I mentioned your house, in which we could be alone.

And we shifted to following
it. Yeah, I was with myself.

First, we shifted to
it and sang. Yeah, I was with myself.

[b]
I love rock, and roles;
therefore, another dime comes into the jukebox. You used
the rock to roll your baby, and I love time,
so dance with me to the last.

[a]

We moved on
to sing the same old song.
Yeah, sing that with me:

[b]

The Cube Makes Me Wanna (Tricky)

2007-06-12T15:10:00.000-05:00

Language: Greek

This is probably one of my top ten favorite songs. I am crazy about this song. I don't really know why. One thing I can point to that I like about it is the structure -- it's kind of weirdly put together. But beyond that, who knows why people like things. I just do.

Which seems like as good a time as any to note that I'm disappointed in the new Bjork album. I like Bjork, rather a lot, which should be obvious. I think "Earth Intruders" is magnificent, and "Innocence" is a rocking good time, but the album as a whole -- I dunno. She lost me somewhere around Homogenic.

On the other hand, the new Tori Amos, American Doll Posse (warning: sound / graphics intensive) is the best in many years. So I suppose these things even out.

Anyway. Behold the video for "She Makes Me Wanna Die:"

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The cube makes me wanna
follow Mary, where she does it, and
go worship the things she does.
She says if I change my stride,
then I'll fly.
The cubes wanna change me.
I make my stride of this,
then I fly.
The sun looked in,
mental: "I see myself in the pollution!"
I walk in the moon.
How could you dare?
Who do you think that you are?
You are insignificant!
A piece of smallism,
the least, from no other, no.
The world does try, you'll learn. It does!
(Even the world can't discuss it.)
Smoking hydroponic is ironic, you know.
The cube makes me wanna
change my stride, and you
will fly this. Then I'll
wanna make the cube
follow Mary. Where does
it go to worship? Do the things know?
She says if I change my stride,
then I'll fly,
and change my stride.
Then I'll fly
in the sun's look.
I see myself in the mental pollution,
where I walk in the moon.
How could you dare?
You are insignificant!
A piece of smallism,
the least, from no other, no.
The world tries to learn from you;
even in the world cannot discuss it.
You know.

Would I Find Myself in You? (Eurythmics)

2007-06-11T14:38:00.000-05:00

Language: Greek

Part of the application process for the job I interviewed for on Thursday is a personality test. This makes me really nervous (in some respects, more so than the interview itself): among other things, I prefer it when my personality is a surprise to people.

A lot of the questions were about the sorts of things you'd expect: whether or not it's okay to steal from an employer (even if they're really, really mean to you), whether or not it's good to be nice to people, etc. The strangest part was a series of items sprinkled in among the other ones about accidents, whether they were preventable, whose fault they were, etc. It struck me as an odd thing to be asking questions about.

But then, the whole thing was kind of screwy, frankly. Any halfway intelligent person could easily figure out the answers that the test was angling for, especially if you know, going in, that there's a scale built in to catch people who are trying to give the most socially correct answer. I suspect I could get into some trouble if I posted one of the exact questions, word for word, but there were things in there like, "I've gone out of my way to be mean to people before." Well, duh. So clearly questions like that are checking to see if you're being honest.

I had initially been toying with the idea of e-mailing and asking to be removed from consideration, because of the personality test thing. It really bothered me, seemed like a weird kind of asymmetric invasion of privacy (and still kind of does). In the end, I decided not to, and went ahead and took the test, and told the truth, because 1) I figure actually getting the job is kind of a long shot anyway¹, and 2) I can't imagine that they're getting any usable, real information out of these things, so to the extent that the test counts for anything, I'm thinking it's just an extra randomizing device, a wild card if you will. So there's no particular reason not to take it if you think, as I do, that I was not especially impressive in the interview: it could only help my chances of getting the job.

This song seemed like the only sensible song choice, given the aforementioned situation.

-Jessi

¹The husband would actually prefer that I not get the job, for reasons which are specific to the job and which I don't want to address at the moment, but which are very possibly valid and which I have some concerns about myself.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Would I find it in you?
Would I find it in you, honey?
Would I say something now that wasn't genuine?
I ask you that, sugar: would I find it in you?

My friends know what's in the shop.
I won't be here otherwise.
I've packed my bags,
I've cleaned the floor.
You're careful with me.
Walk outside the door.

(You consider me: I'll make him, I will make him)

You fall in a straight line - no intervention.
No deceit in your person.
You are the bigger imitation, but
A lot of him is genuine.
I had all of it I can take;
Now I leave it to you.

(You consider me: I will make him, I will make him)

(You are careful with me – you are careful! Ooh, yeah)

I'll be Its Shelter (Taylor Dayne)

2007-06-07T13:25:00.000-05:00

Language: Portuguese

Well. The interview was better than I expected, though I was expecting there to be some twitching and drooling, so that doesn't say as much as it might. I have no idea how I did, and even less idea whether I want the job or not than I did going into the interview. But it's over.

Meanwhile, Iowa City expects to have weather later on today. Damaging 75 mph winds, maybe some large hail, possibly a tornado or two (there have already been some tornadoes to the west and north). I wouldn't mind a tornado. The last one was entertaining, and almost nobody¹ died. And I do, after all, need something to take my mind off of the employment thing for a little bit. I guess we'll see how it goes. Nothing visible going on at the moment.

-Jessi

¹Mobile homes really are, when there's a tornado about. Consequently, there was one death in Muscatine County, to the east of Iowa City.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When I have one, hanging clouds in its sky of
light, and I'm not leaving, no, right inside,
and you'd like to give it that sensation, as inside yourself
(above?), don't give so soon.
You're in a friend. What you need to count
(what started somebody, baby) is yourself. It starts
when rain is falling, and will remain that way.
And you're not leaving it to fall in
completely; I'll see that you
cover it with a love. Thus, I'll be deep and warm and true;
oh, I will be there.

[a]
Honey, I'll be its shelter, that's
always this to you. I'll make an examination of the night, with
the shelter that you need.
I'll make everything all right to you,
yes. Everything to everyone! Make in the one, of the one, in the one,
of the nana, of the one, in the one, of the one, in the right one.

I arrested you. You sufficiently started the strong arms.
Anything that you cross with it starts to
move away; any thing that you need, it's only a touch, you know.
When a heart needs a heart from the side, it
must be mine, in keeping with the times (if that's
the inside of love). So I started
it. I stroke for you each day, cousin.
I'll be giving this to it for the love.
Oh, when mine just isn't sufficiently there, it'll be as it seems.

[a]

I'll see that you completely
cover me with a love. So, that'll be deep and warm
and true: oh, I'll be there.

[a]

The Sky is a Place on the Earth (Belinda Carlisle)

2007-06-06T16:13:00.000-05:00

Language: Italian

This song has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on. They don't actually write very many songs about dealing with the Iowa unemployment office, it turns out.

So here's the sitch: I'm still unemployed. That might change soonish, because, like I've mentioned, I have an interview tomorrow¹. But nevertheless. And part of collecting unemployment in the state of Iowa is that one has to call a 1-800 number every week and report how many potential employers one has contacted, and whether or not one turned down any offers, and etc.

So about a week ago, I got a semi-threatening letter in the mail telling me that I had reported, a few weeks ago, that I was not "able and available for work," and that someone would be calling me on June 6 between the hours of 10 and 11 AM to discuss this. This is a sort of serious issue, because, apparently, they don't have to give me money if I in fact wasn't available to work.²

So, long story slightly less long, I was here this morning, and they didn't call on-time. Nor did they call late, either. The actual notice they sent doesn't have a phone number on it for contacting them (there was a letter that came with the notice, but I had apparently thrown that part away last weekend, because I can't find it anymore). So I called the local office. The guy I spoke with wasn't even sure that there was supposed to have been a call in the first place; he said that there was nothing in the computer that he could find that indicated anything was going on. He was then going to give me the number of the person at the State office who was dealing specifically with my case, but his computer cut off the last two digits of the phone number, so he gave me a different number, of someone who is in the general dealing-with-problems department, at which point I thanked him and called that number. Which is how I found out that said person is on vacation until next Monday.

So, to summarize: I didn't get the call they said I'd get. I couldn't do anything about this by calling someone at the local office directly, but that's okay because I may or may not have a problem in the first place. Furthermore, the local office can't give me the number of someone who actually has anything to do with my case, but they can give me a different number, for someone who may or may not be able to help, who isn't there, and who may or may not call me back on Monday.

And round and round we go.

-Jessi

¹I remain almost incapacitatingly nervous about this.

²For what it's worth, I was available that week. I suspect computer error or typo.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When the night falls down,
you and an aspect of them come around,
and the world is alive
with the sound of kidskin
on the way outside.

When the room walks in,
and the pulled ones begin to move that close,
and they're spinning with stars here,
and a wave of love is rising --

[a]
Ooh, child, you know what the value of that one is?
Ooh, the sky is a place on earth
that says, "in the sky, love comes in the first place."
We'll make the sky a place of the earth,
Ooh, the sky is a place on earth

When I think alone, it
centers my capacities, and catches up to you.
When they're lost in that sea,
I feel your voice, and transport it [to them].

This world was just the beginning!
In understanding the miracle of the child,
I was frightened: living before that
frightened me, but not that pit.

[a]

Sensuality of Big Times (Bjork)

2007-06-05T17:03:00.000-05:00

Language: Greek

I have a job interview on Thursday. This is, in theory, a good thing. The job itself looks pretty craptacular, but it's only 20 hours a week, and pays as well as my last two jobs did at 40 hours. Which helps.

The problem is, I am a terrible interview. Which some of you will be saying at this point, Geez, Jessi, way to give up ahead of time. But: you don't understand. You couldn't.

I've tried going into interviews with the idea that I'll be glib and charismatic and likeable and corporate and witty, and I inevitably wind up being myself regardless¹. And I've tried going with the idea that I'll just be myself, and if they don't like that then fine, it probably wouldn't have worked out anyway. That is an even worse interviewing strategy. I should, it seems, never be encouraged to be myself.

It doesn't help that this is a job nobody in his/r right mind could possibly actually want. I mean, it's not the sort of thing kids dream about becoming.² Which makes faking enthusiasm hard. (And, in truth, I'm not good at projecting enthusiasm even when it would be appropriate. I'm not, fundamentally, a person prone to enthusiasm. On me it looks wrong.) And it involves some dealing with the public, which I would really like to never have to do that again. But of course I still need a job. Unemployment's going to be over within a month or so, I think.

This song wouldn't seem to have anything to do with the situation I've just described, but I have trouble finding a Babelpopped line that doesn't relate, in some fashion. Though one wouldn't know it from the original song, of course.

-Jessi

¹(who is, often if not always, witty. But I've never done charismatic well, or corporate. And, as the cartoon above points out, I don't look very good on paper, either.)

²I'm not sure I should say anything about what the job actually is, publicly. At least not yet, not this publicly. You understand.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I can feel that something important is ready, is scheduled to happen:

The gentle and noble sensuality of big times takes courage.

I know that I'm a little too familiar, but
I was included also. The two meet, and much is presented,
and something is precisely itself.

The gentle and noble sensuality of big times takes courage.

Since this weekend, I do not want to know my future, and

The gentle and noble sensuality of big times takes courage.

The People are People of People (Depeche Mode)

2007-06-03T10:35:00.000-05:00

Language: French

Went to the Iowa City arts festival yesterday with the husband and some of his family. It was a lot like all the other years. If we had significant wall space, or a yard, or enormous amounts of money, then it might have been more interesting, but as it was, it was mostly just hot and crowded, and I was having a bad day anyway. And a lot of the art sucked (though this guy was there, and his stuff is kind of interesting in-person. I don't know that it translates well to the internet.), too, in all the predictable ways.

I told the husband after that we really did need to stop scheduling events with his family that involve going to big, crowded places. We had a bad experience in downtown Minneapolis at the end of March, going to Macy's with the same family group. It was advertised as a special show all about Africa, and especially plant life in Africa, but although there were in fact a lot of plants, the science was extremely superficial, when they made any kind of effort at all, and some of it was also just plain incorrect. (This is the sort of thing that makes me nervous when people say that the answer to our declining public school system is increased corporate involvement.)

The Minneapolis trip, at least, got better. Love love love the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory. This visit in Iowa City, not so much: there wasn't all that much time to do anything with them, and they weren't having such a great time themselves; the three-year-old girl with the group apparently threw up all the way down from Minnesota, which may or may not have been motion sickness.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[a]
People are people;
thus, why is it that
you and I should get the length
so terribly?

We're various colors
and different faiths,
and the different people
have various needs.
It's obvious you hate me,
although I did anything falsely;
I never even met you, so
what could I have made?

[b]
I cannot understand
what encourages a man
to hate another man:
help me to understand.

[a]

Help me to understand.

Now you punch and you give a kick and you shout with me.
I count on your common decency, that
has a gloss. Up to now it doesn't ,
but I'm sure that it exists.
It's taken them right there, to travel in a moment
from your head to your fist.

[b]

[a]

[b]

[b]

Well (Morphine)

2007-06-02T09:41:00.000-05:00

Language: Dutch

Many, many years ago (about ten), Stan and I would invite people over about once a week to . . . well, I'm not sure what we were inviting people over to do. Drink, I suppose. I mean, it wasn't like we were quilting. Though drunk quilting is fun by itself (ask the Amish). But I digress.

I guess the term is "hang out." And when, on those occasions when we'd extended lots of invitations that people accepted, and the apartment was full of people in varying states of sobriety, there was a spell where sooner or later someone would propose a game of Murder in the Dark.

Murder in the Dark is, for those of you who don't know, where one randomly assigns a person at the party to be a detective, and another person is the murderer. This is traditionally done by writing on slips of paper, though if memory serves we usually used playing cards (for the uniformity and opacity). If you drew a jack, I believe, you were the detective, and if you chose something else (ace of spades?), you were the murderer. Everybody else got 2s and 3s.

The lights are then turned off, and everyone mills around in the dark until the murderer kills somebody. This is achieved by either finding a way to whisper to the intended victim, "You're dead," or else a strong, unambiguous squeeze or something, at which point the victim counts to some number (three? five?) and then cries out and falls on the floor. Everyone is then supposed to freeze in place, the detective (or someone standing nearby) turns on the lights, and the detective tries to identify the murderer by asking questions of everyone (except the victim, who is dead -- being the victim was kind of the crappy assignment, because it meant that you had to just lay there on the floor and not move while everybody else got to do something). Everyone except the murderer has to tell the truth, whatever this might be.

Only the detective or the murderer could "win" any given round, but that was okay because we weren't ever really playing for points or anything anyway. It was all about the mind games, and the chance to work through your issues with whomever by "killing" them, or at least groping them briefly. Pretty much the perfect game for college students, really. But, shit, it was fun. I'd play it now, too, except that the occasion doesn't present itself anymore.

The reason why I go to the trouble to explain and describe all this is, there was a designated mix tape¹ that went with the game, which we started and stopped when the lights went off and on, and this was the song that started it off. So now the song conjures up all these mental images of being totally dark, except for the orange streaks of people's cigarettes waving around randomly (sort of a hazard of the game: people did burn one another sometimes, accidentally) and the occasional faint outline of a window.

Booze! Cigarettes! Sublimated aggression! Whee!

-Jessi

¹(the "Strychnine" tape: for reasons we will leave unexplored here, all my mix tapes were referred to by chemical name. "Estradiol" was another early favorite, though it didn't have a game that went with it.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You're well, well, well,
(well you are),
well well, well .
You tell me something is well:
tell me something,
tell me something.
You can read my opinion: tell me something,
tell me something,
tell me something.
You can read my opinion; you're something to me.
Tell your brain to read my opinion one more time.
Your brain can call me,
your brain, your brain calls to me one more time.
Your brain calls,
your brain, your brain calls to me one more time.
You push, you push,
push this way.
Well, you push,
you push well, push well:
It's something to tell your brain one more time.
Something calls me: you?
My opinion is possible.
Tell your brain to read to me one more time,
to call your brain,
your brain,
call your brain to me one more time.
Your brain, your brain,
call your brain to me one more time.
Well, you're good
this way? Well, good.

The Star-Star-Spangled Flag (Francis Scott Key)

2007-06-01T09:31:00.000-05:00

Language: Spanish (obviously)

I am not, by nature, a big joiner of things. I've never had any "school spirit," never given a damn about any particular sports team (save for a brief period around kindergarden when I was fond of the Miami Dolphins football team, but that was bleed-over from being interested in dolphins; I never developed any comprehension of football because of it), and as an adult, don't belong to any organizations where the process for membership is any more arduous than donating money (and even then, I'm prone to let the membership lapse). I prefer the Democratic Party, but I don't consider myself a member (any political party I'd consider myself a member of wouldn't piss me off so damn often). I throw away the Baylor Alumni magazines when they arrive, and keep meaning to write and try to get the Alumni Association to stop sending them to me.

I am, consequently, not given to big displays of pride. I like Iowa, and am native to Iowa, but there's something kind of unseemly about being proud of Iowa.¹ My ethnic heritage is, for all intents and purposes, meaningless to me, and I am endlessly baffled by the husband's level of identification with the Irish. In fact, as a general rule, I don't understand why anybody takes pride in anything that they themselves didn't have a pretty free hand in creating or shaping. I mean, I get that it's more emotional than rational, that I'm getting nonsensical answers because I'm asking the wrong questions, but still.

I can, however, be very easily embarrassed by groups that I have (even very loose) affiliations with. The most typical occasions for such embarrassment are Baylor University (my almometer²) or the Democratic Party, both of which are doing dumb things all the time, but the shame's not limited to those two by a long shot.

And lately, like for the last ten years³, being an American has been a first-class ticket to Shameville (with a six-hour layover in Disbelief City), though when I look back into the country's history, I'm not convinced that things haven't always been this bad. But even so: more people than just me have noted that we're going through an especially dark time in American history right now. I think I remember something about a record number of people (72%?) in some recent poll saying that the U.S. was "on the wrong track," which could just mean that people think gas prices are too high, or that the Pussycat Dolls are obviously inferior to the Spice Girls⁴ -- but there's more than that. Or at least I hope people are picking up on more than that.

If this makes me unpatriotic, then so be it, I guess. Though I'm at least not flying the Nazi or Confederate flags (which, let's remember, we've fought Nazis in a war somewhat recently, and they were the bad guys. And the Confederates wanted to rip the country in half. I mean, if you want to talk about lack of patriotism, then let's talk, motherfucker.). I worry about shit like that picture, what it means. Suppose 1993 is as good as the country's going to get, in my lifetime. What then?

-Jessi

¹Feeling that it's unseemly to feel proud of Iowa is itself a very Iowan thing, as is feeling a certain smugness when comparative state statistics are released showing Iowa to be superior to some of the more self-aggrandizing states (Texas, I'm looking at you) in some way.

²(a David Foster Wallace coinage, as far as I know)

³(Roughly the beginning of my political awareness; previously I had been congenitally Republican.)

⁴(true. Destiny's Child also pales in comparison, though in fairness I would probably like DC better had I not been endlessly involuntarily exposed to it when it was popular. The Spice Girls, in turn, are inferior to TLC, Bananarama, En Vogue, Salt-n-Pepa, the Pointer Sisters, the Supremes, Wilson Phillips, and any number of other girl groups. In fact, I think the Spice Girls -only- beat out Destiny's Child and Pussycat Dolls, now that I think about it.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Can you see, by the early light of dawn or an opinion of yourself,
what we hailed in the last of the twilight, flashing so proudly
that ample rays and shining stars fought with the dangerous?
We watched on embankments, so we flowed gallantly.
And the red fulgor of the rockets, the pumps that exploded in air
gave the night a test: our flag was still there.
are you of the opinion that the star-spangled flag still shakes stars
on the home of the free, brave one and the Earth?

(I Had) The Time of My Life (Bill Medley/Jennifer Warnes)

2007-05-30T15:33:00.000-05:00

Language: Portuguese

Okay. Well. I don't want anybody to get the impression that I'm going to start putting up new posts all the time again, but today I ran into two pieces of information that I thought was important enough that Sammie, in particular, would want to know. And, rather than just sending her an e-mail like a normal person, I Babelfished a song and turned it into a post.

The two pieces of information are:

1) The video game, The Sims, a game to which I am somewhat addicted (if the sequel, Sims 2, counts as the same thing), which has no English-language dialogue, and which has no real plot whatsoever (though it's flexible enough that one can impose a plot on it from without, if desired), is being made into a movie. Which was weird enough, but then I read about . . .

2) The movie, Dirty Dancing, which I have only seen once (if even that -- I may have missed some of the beginning and ending, plus I saw it on TV, not in a theater, so some of it may have been edited out) but which I don't recall having any car chases or gunplay or flesh-eating monsters, is being turned into a video game.

I'm sure there are other examples of ridiculous merchandising crossovers. But still. I think "Dirty Dancing: the Video Game" has got to take the prize for something or another.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[a]
Now I 've had the time of my life, that
none felt before. I'm never like,
"Yes, I swear that it's the truth,
and I must owe all."

('Cause I had the time of my life,
and I must owe all.)

I've waited so long that
I've now, finally, found somebody
to be that for me!
We saw the writing in the wall
while we felt magical. This is a fantasy.

Now, with passion in our eyes,
we don't have a disguise; thus: we've no way that could be --
private.
Because of the hand examination, we became that which
we seemed to understand.
We remembered only that urgency.

[ b ]
You are a thing that
I cannot start sufficiently.
So who says that I, you, it, something
could be loved? Because this is

[a]

With my body and soul,
I want one more of it than you do. He'll always know.
So we only go to leave, that's it --
we lose the controls, are distrustful.
Yes, I know what that is, in his mind.
Today when you say, "Sojourn the night with me,"
I can only remember. . . .

[b]
***
[a] [a] etc.

Most Beautiful Peace (Devo)

2007-05-29T12:33:00.000-05:00

Language: Russian

I've been sick for the last day and a half. Some kind of food poisoning thing, I think. So I've slept for about eighteen hours out of the last twenty-four, and when I was awake, I had fever and chills, and then there was a bunch of gross stuff that I predict you aren't going to want to hear about.

So I hope it was a beautiful Memorial Day -- for you. It wasn't for me.

-Jessi

UPDATE: It was actually probably not food poisoning, technically. Wikipedia and (apparently) some other sources differentiate between "food poisoning" and norovirus infection, the critical distinction being the presence of an actual toxin or not. So, cholera could be food poisoning, because the symptoms of cholera are triggered by a protein toxin produced by the cholera bacterium, but noroviral infection can't be, because the virus, though it will fuck you up just like a chemical or bacterial toxin, is classed as a virus, rather than as a poison / toxin. This strikes me as a really dumb distinction to draw, but apparently some people draw it.

See also my Krill, Numinous Krill post on the subject.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This which we live in is the most beautiful peace.
The people from sweet, romantic places
show the beautiful road everywhere.
Models worry them.
I want to say,
"This will be the most beautiful peace
for you."
It's a wonderful time to be here,
to be living famously.
Wonderful people everywhere
comb hair, their hair, and
make me to want to say,
"There will be a wonderful place
for you."
Hey!
They tell me I speak!
A girl and boy with new clothing on
can shake it to me for the entire night, at length.
Hey hey!
That's not for me.

Frozen Snowman (Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson)

2007-05-27T13:12:00.000-05:00

Language: Greek

This is, of course, not at all the right time of year for this song. But I like to feel that I'm not a slave to the calendar, when it comes to these things. If I want to put on a Halloween costume in February, or sing Christmas songs in May, then I'm fucking well going to do it, and you can't stop me, you bunch of fucking sheep. So there.

I should also mention that I may be sophisticated and highbrow, but I'm also not above making (or being amused by) jokes about bodily functions: see the second line of the second verse, below. Though obviously Babel Fish deserves some of the credit for that one. There's also a bit of sodomy double-entendre sneaking in there in spots, in the second verse.

It's all about freedom for me today. Christmas music! Poop jokes! Chocolate cake for breakfast!¹ Wheeee!

-Jessi

¹Really. I did. Also a banana and a shitload of coffee. There might be a dill pickle in the cards later, too: I'm deciding.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Frozen Snowman's soul was pleasant,
with a corncob pipe, and a nose of buttons, and two eyes formed from coal.
Frozen Snowman says it's a fairytale,
constituted by the snow, but the children know that life came in one day. It was the
old silk that they found: a certain magic should've existed in that,
for when they placed him in his head, it began to dance around!
Oh, the Frozen Snowman's one life was as it could be.
(The children also say that it could laugh and play with them,
the thing being precisely the same as you and I.)

The hurt, thumpety, hurt, thumpety hurt, hurt,
goes and examines the frozen ones.
Hurt thumpety, hurt, thumpety hurt, hurt,
beyond the hills of snow.

Frozen Snowman knew that the sun was boiling hot that day,
thus he said, "Have a certain amusement now, before I melt (and have the runs)."
The village was under his hand – in with a broomstick!
They ran all around the square.
They said, "Touch me if you can!"
This led them right under the city's roads, in the circulation.
He only stopped a moment, when he heard them holler, "attitude!" and
the Snowman should have pressed for temporarily freezing in the street,
but he said goodbye: " Don't shout; I will be behind you again some day."

Do We Take Manhattan First? (Leonard Cohen)

2007-05-25T19:24:00.000-05:00

Language: Dutch

Today's song is more or less in honor of Lynneguist, whose blog I ran into today, via a link from Francis Strand's blog, a link which could have mentioned me in passing but didn't and which I mention in an attempt to shame Francis, though it will not.

But anyway. Last I knew, Lynne was a Leonard Cohen fan, and probably still is, and she was nice enough to say nice things about the very blog you are reading right now, so I thought a shout-out of some kind might be in order, positive feedback being rare. And also I hadn't posted in a while so I was due.

Was this babelpopping successful? Well, as with most of them, yes and no. There are certainly some strange moments. I cannot, for example, explain the insertion of the word "bowl" in the third line. I'm also a little unsure what a "triplex viol" might be. I picture a viol with three sets of strings, 120 degrees apart from one another, that has to be played by three performers at a time. And probably somebody should build one of those, despite the obvious safety hazards. But it could mean something else entirely.

In other news, I went on a long walk today with the husband, and now my head hurts. This is either some kind of heat / sunburn / exhaustion thing, or I'm having a reaction to the DEET that we sprayed on to protect us from mosquitoes. Or both.

The mosquitoes seem especially motivated this year. Both times we've been in foresty areas in the last week or two, they've just flown at us from all directions. This had particularly bad results for me the first time, hence the DEET today.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now they've condemned me to twenty years of trouble
for trying the change system within myself.
I come, I reward them, I bowl,
then we take Berlin. (We'll take Manhattan firstly.)

I'm accompanied by an indicator in the sky;
my skin conducted me by this birthmark.
The weapons of mine are conducted by our beauty.
We take Manhattan firstly, then we take Berlin.

[a]
I'd love a baby beside you,
your body and your spirit, and I'd love your clothing to live,
but you see that mail there, moving by the line? (Really?)
I told you, I told you, I told one of those about you.

Ah, you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I might've been made to win.
You don't have the manner, but you know to discipline me. Only stop --
first, let my work start. How many of these night baths for me?
We'll take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

I don't love the manner of your company, sir,
and I don't love these drugs you keep: I'm not thin.
Do we love Manhattan first? (Take
what happened to my sister.) Then we take Berlin.

[a]

(Me and you:) Those points that you thank me for,
the monkey and the triplex viol, are sent
now. I managed to exercise each night.
We take Manhattan firstly, then we take Berlin.

I'm accompanied by an indicator in the sky;
my skin conducted me by this birthmark.
The weapons of mine are accompanied by our beauty.
We take Manhattan firstly, then we take Berlin.

Ah, remind me, for I used to live the music.
Remind me: I brought all your grocers in well.
Take the wounded first, father, and on the day, everyone
will take Manhattan; then we take Berlin.

Experiment IV (Kate Bush)

2007-05-05T11:02:00.000-05:00

Language: French

I'm going through a spell lately where watching music videos, almost any music videos, makes me cry. Today it was "Someone to Love," by Fountains of Wayne, but it's been all kinds of things before. Songs that aren't sad, songs when I feel otherwise happy, anything. Jessica Guilford + music video = tearing up.

I don't know why this would be. Maybe it says something about the kinds of videos people are making today. Maybe it says something about the kinds of videos I'm drawn to investigate. Maybe I'm just dangerously emotionally volatile: that happens sometimes (though it wouldn't explain why it's specific to music videos). It's not like I have a job, to occupy myself with. And yes, I am still looking.

In any case, the video for this song seems to be one of the exceptions, possibly because it's old, or because it's so cheesy. So I like it. Also I always liked it anyway. Way better than that "Wuthering Heights" crap. Plus, bonus: Hugh Laurie ("Dr. House") appears at about 1:21 to 1:11, and then again around 0:44. You . . . well, you wouldn't have him pegged for a good actor from those shots, let's say.

I think the Babelpopped version of the lyrics is an obvious and inarguable improvement on the original.

Video:

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

We secretly work for the soldiers.
Our noise experiment was almost ready to begin:
we only know what we're making in theory.
The music is made for pleasure, to make it quiver --
it was music we made here, until

[a]
They said to us that all they wanted
was a noise which could kill somebody at a distance.
Thus, we advanced more meters, and the deficit --
it is a manufacturing error.

Terrifying cries of the mothers, a painful, piercing cry -
we recorded it, and put it in our machine.

[a]

As in, love could be a feeling.
The bad one could smell it; thus,
it could be smelled. So, good.
The sleeping ones could sing it with you,
dreaming, but this is your enemy!

We will not be blamed.
There will not be any there to 'sell the wick'
(somebody that can strike the right switch).

[a]

And additionally: inform the public that they are to remain.

Geniuses in a Bottle (Christina Aguilera)

2007-04-27T00:12:00.000-05:00

Language: Italian

There's no news at all: I just finished this, and, at least in the middle of the night, it tickles me, so I'm posting it. The actual reworked lyrics are semi-gibberishy ("I just have to polish the sense."), but how can you not love a title like that?

I'm not entirely happy with the picture, though I'm a little bit alarmed that there's a whole industry devoted to trying to make babies incrementally smarter in the future. Not because I object to smart babies. (I'd be a little concerned about smart babies banding together and taking over the country, but one, they don't have the fine motor control, and two, I don't know if I'd notice a difference.) I think all babies, across the board, should be either just as smart as they are, or else smarter. I object to the industry because I don't really believe that any of these videos and toys and mobiles and what have you have been demonstrated to do anything at all.

But I suppose parental anxiety will keep the business booming. Everybody wants to have an edge over that damn Pfeiffer kid down the block. And anxiety sells. Still.

I miss Mr. Rogers.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Oh, that --

I think they've been blocked strongly,
for a century of sunny nights,
waiting for someone to free them.
Been licking your lips and jumping, it kisses my sense,
but that doesn't mean that I'm going to give it one.
Child, child, child
(child, child, child.).

[a]
Oh, whoa,
my body has a saying: "You go to their leaves."
Oh, whoa,
but my heart isn't saying it.

[b]
If you wish to be with me, child, a price has to be paid.
They're geniuses in a bottle; I just have to polish the sense. (You got it!)
Come to: I can make your desire align with me, if you wish.
You have to make a large impression; you have to like what I obtained.

[c]
Child, they are geniuses in one bottle.
It has just got to polish the sense, honey.
They are geniuses in a bottle, child,
come, come, I come to leave it outside.

The game of music and the level of the down-low,
a dance, and then we are good.
Someone has that need, of waiting for it.
My heart is beating to the speed of the light,
but that doesn't mean that this evening; it has one being.
Child, child, child
(child, child, child)

[a]

[b]

[c]

[a]

[b]

If you wish to be with me, child, a price has to be paid.
They're geniuses in a bottle; I just have to polish the sense. (You got it!)
Come to: I can make your desire align with me, if you wish.
Child, I am free and regulated. You come with me, and

They are geniuses in a bottle, child.
I come, I come, I come to leave it outside.

I Fuck Upward (Cracker)

2007-04-19T23:28:00.000-05:00

Language: Russian

More of the same, for me personally. I'm kind of undecided about whether the song wound up essentially unchanged after being Babelfished, or wound up kind of broken and incoherent. It's possible that the original was incoherent too, obviously.

But in the end, I suppose I have to go with neither. In the original, after all, the speaker is being all cynical and suspicious, and this has turned it into self-castigation. Which, the two are not as far apart from one another as you'd think, but even so, it's not entirely gibberish, and it's different enough from the original.

It's odd that now that I have more or less any and all time to do whatever I want, I find I don't have any time for writing Babelpop! posts. Things happen, and I sometimes really mean to, but then I don't, and there's not really anything terribly positive to say anyway, so why bother, right? But I feel neglectful all the same. Maybe we'll turn it around. Or maybe I'll get a job and just not give a crap about whether or not I've mangled song lyrics on any particular day.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Here I am now, the youngest old person in the world
and I came to bring my burden to you,
each sleepless night without you in my handles
to be drilled and calm and (sometimes) sober

I mess up by being kind-hearted
I mess up by being wise

I'm here now, I'll be the earth angel
and I came to bring my burden to you.
I was here; now, I'll be the game warden of love.
Someone accepted my gin and tonic.

I mess up. I am content, located on the bank.
It is wise; I will inspire.

I fuck upward with peace, and you won't get me to fall in love.
I fuck upward with peace, and you won't get me to fall in love.
(Which, I didn't get it in me,
I didn't get it in me; it's more.)

I fuck upward with peace and love
I fuck upward with peace and love
I fuck upward with peace and love
I fuck upward with peace and love
I fuck upward with peace and love (I fuck any)
I fuck upward with peace and love (I fuck by any)
I fuck upward with peace and love (I fuck by any)
I fuck upward with peace and love (I fuck by any)

The Little Girl of the Rubber Link (Kate Bush)

2007-03-13T10:17:00.000-05:00

Language: Dutch

Well. Thanks to the one of you who wrote to ask how I was doing.

The answer is mostly, not all that well, though I'd be worse if I weren't collecting unemployment. I've never been very good at rebounding from problems, hence the song. Though I'm very good about being in denial that there are problems. Having had more practice with that.

Anyway. So I'm still around. And maybe I'll even get back to posting again semi-regularly, some day.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - -

To see which trees
bend in the wind
has more meaning than my destiny: then they found me.
You see, she tries against herself.

[a]
A rubber link plays at marbles to resist;
the rubber link bends the beats.
If I could learn what a rubber link is,
I'd return to my feet.
The rubber links my trousers,
the rubber stops linking the ponytails:
if I could learn to twang, such as a rubber link,
I'd be the little rubber link girl.
Me, the little rubber link girl!
Me, the little rubber link girl!
Oh, I have wanted to be a little rubber link girl.

When I slip
from my catapult,
I got my feet to land firmly. With
the body, let the wear in, for delays.

[a]

Give as a rubberband;
twang, such as a rubber link;
crack, such as a rubber link.

Oneffenheid-a-kopie
Oneffenheid-a-kopie
Oneffenheid-a-kopie

[b]
You won't keep one rubber link,
you won't keep two rubber links,
you won't keep three rubber links.

Here I go . . . .

[b]

The Goddess of Venus (Bananarama)

2007-02-20T10:37:00.000-06:00

Language: Italian

No real progress yet on the employment thing. This has me, actually, kind of depressed, as in clinically. Also I've been kind of fevery and headachy for the last few days and haven't been sleeping well. So maybe I'm catching a cold or something too. Hard to tell.

Doesn't really matter, I suppose, but even so, I'm feeling pretty low. Also bored, and cranky.

On the plus side, a fern I've had since like October, which had been losing frond after frond after frond during the winter, has just begun to sprout new ones. This is very exciting, in a weird way. I've never had a fern before, and was under the impression that this was kind of a long shot. So it was nice to see it growing.

Also, the husband and I went to Cedar Rapids last Friday, because he had a thing to go to up there and I had nothing better to do, so we made a day of it and visited garden centers. I found a Chamaedorea metallica at Pierson's Flower Shop and Greenhouses (1800 Ellis Rd. NW, Cedar Rapids), which I had given up on seeing any in Iowa and figured I was going to have to order seeds from somewhere. So that was pretty cool. They also had a few Fatsia japonica, which I also haven't been able to find anywhere else and kind of wanted, but I didn't buy one of those, mostly because they'd let their smaller, cheaper specimens dry out to death. But even so, we're totally going back sometime.

This means that I now have two plants whose botanical names overlap with a band name: Chamaedorea metallica / Metallica and Ficus elastica / Elastica. That might actually be all there are, unless some scientist somewhere has just classified a Dieffenbachia bonjovi or a Dracaena devo or a Cissus bjorkiana or something. Which, by the way, some scientist should totally do.

The song has no connection to any of that (again). I just thought it was a nice idea. I hate the disposable razor ads that use this song, mostly for being omnipresent some time back (have they stopped those, or am I just not seeing them anymore?). Nothing wrong with the song in and of itself, though. Anyway.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Advanced on the mountain,
burning as a silver flame,
the top of beauty and love,
and Venus was her name.

She has it!
Yeah, child, she has it.
I'm your Venus; they're the fire
to that desire of yours.

Its crystal eyes were its crews,
that render blackness to every man,
like a dark night
that obtained what no others have been.

She has it!
Yeah, child, she has it, that
fire. They are yours, Venus; I'm the
well of your desire.

Fire your Venus. I'm
your desire.

Advanced on the mountain,
burning as a silver flame,
the top of beauty and love,
and Venus was her name.

She has it!
Yeah, child, she has it, that
fire. They're yours, Venus; I'm the
well of your desire.

Fire your Venus. I'm
your desire.

Large-Boned Woman (k. d. lang)

2007-02-12T07:47:00.000-06:00

Language: Dutch

Sorry there's been so little blog activity lately; the whole unemployment thing is surprisingly demanding. I don't have a lot to say about anything anyway; this particular song (which wound up having some good lines, by the way) is kind of a placeholder. Hopefully soon things will return to some kind of normal and then we can proceed.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

She was large-boned: not a woman
of Southern Alberta.
Only you could call her small.
And each Saturday night, you can bet
on her in the legion room.

Her blue clothing was conducted to move,
and she'd rolled him up --
which, oh, she'd already yielded.
And with a jump in her step,
and a wiggle in her pace, wait
below the street: she'll swing.

You could tell they were ready
by eyes on her can,
since she slipped by the mob.
She has run with grace
since they entered the place
yes, was a proud large-boned Woman.

Hey! Hey! Large-boned woman!
Don't doubt it: they're not natural.
A snake shakes, and
the floor breaks crossways, and we're concerned.
Hey! Hey! Large-boned woman!
I doubt they're natural.
Wind and a rock,
now she is shouting for more!

Now, people will manage themselves
from miles,
and would collect there to dance,
but then in the large-boned woman's shuffling,
she ended up keeping them in a trance.

The Super Shuffle of the Basin (Owens and Meyer)

2007-02-02T22:49:00.000-06:00

Language: Portuguese.

We reluctantly interrupt the epic poem that is Jessi’s employability tango to bring you this increasingly-ubiquitous-as-we-approach-Sunday “rap” from 1985. Not much to say here, other than maybe it didn’t need to be seven minutes? Maybe cut the saxophone solo? We note, helpfully: a song already laden with double negatives in its pre-Babelpopped state begins to buckle under the weight of triple negatives post-op (“We are not here, not to start no problem”), so we hasten to add that if you want to skip ahead, line six of Steve Fuller’s verse might be the one to hit and get out.

Interestingly (I guess), D.T. Dan Hampton declined to participate in the performance, so we’ll have to imagine what could have been. If I could, just for a moment, step into the shoes of Mel Owens and Dick Meyer (and why would I; read this sad-ass article from the Sun Times about Owens, holy crap), I think it would go a little like this:

I’m Dan Hampton; something something “defensive tackle”
Here is the call of the common grackle
Um, I don’t actually know anything about this position
But I am a sucker for McSweeney’s Limited Editions
I don’t like Superbowl commercials; they all kind of suck
Do that many Americans really need trucks?
If you have severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome
You have to live in a bubble
Which would preclude you from doing
The Superbowl (&c.)

“The Superbowl Shuffle”, N.B., was nominated for a Grammy for “Best Rhythm & Blues Vocal Performance” (so I was wrong when I said “rap” up above, mea culpa), but lost to Prince’s “Kiss”, which means, sometimes, there is justice (yay!). Prince is actually performing at halftime on Sunday. Do I smell a rematch?

If so, all due respect to Walter Payton, who, it is said, runs the ball like he’s making romance, but “Kiss” remains about the sexiest damn thing I can think of right now, and it’s sort of late, and that’s when I think of sexy damn things.

I don’t want to step on Dimetrios Georgos Synodinos’ toes (What? He’s dead? Are all the heroes gone?), but I’m going to call it:

Game: Blouses.

-Samantha

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CHORUS:
We are the bears
That group that mounts in confusion
On for low, making for you.
We are, thus, that bad.
(We know that we are good.)
To cast its mind as we know in them .

You know that we are to support, just for the amusement,
Whom we support our material. For all,
We are not here, not to start no problem.
We are right to make the super shuffle of the basin here.

Of Walter Payton:
Well, call me sweetness, and I taste to dance.
To function the sphere is as to make romance.
We had the objective since that encampment of training
To give to the Chicago a super possibility of the basin.
We are not making this because we are greedy.
The bears are making it to needily feed.
We did not come here to look the problem.
Us? We only came here to make the super shuffle of the basin.

Of Willie Gault:
That is: Willie, Speedy, and I am classroom of the world.
I taste to function, but I love starting the ticket.
I practice the entire day and dance all the night,
Me, I started to start soon for the Sunday fight.
Now I am so smooth. How much a whirlwind of the chocolate?
Me, I dance a little funky.
Thus, he gives the Attention Girl to me.
He does not have one here that he makes likes it.
My super shuffle of the basin will adjust it exempt.

Of Singletary of the Microphone:
I am Microphone of the Samurai;
I stop them cold.
Part of the defense? great!
And bold me has bogged for completely one, when,
Making what he is, right and adjusting the style,
they give a possibility to me.
It will balance it good.
Nobody that messing in my neighborhood.
I did not come here looking the problem.
Me? I only came to make the shuffle that super of the basin

CHORUS

Of Jim McMahon:
I am the QB punky, known as McMahon.
When I beat turf, I not have got no plant.
I game only my body, all on the field.
I cannot dance, but I can play “pill”.
I motivate the cats, me, exasperate, taste.
I game thus that cool, I point (please!).
This is because you all here in the double started to stop me.
That it makes the super shuffle of the basin.

Of Otis Wilson:
I am Otis! Boy of the breast, one of a type!
Mrs. All, the love for me, my body and my mind.
I am smooth in the wooden floor, as I cannot be,
But not to sucker he that goes to start me after.
Some guys are jealous of my style, and the classroom.
That one is because some extremity above in its donkey
did not come here looking the problem.
Me, starts only for low, to the super shuffle of the basin.

That Fuller of Steve:
They say that Jimbo is our man.
If Jimmy will not be making, certain can of I.
This is Steve. And it is not no wonder
That I function, I eat the lightning and step as the thunder.
It brings thus in Atlanta, bring in Dallas.
That is, for the Halas bear of the microphone and the Pope.
I am not here to feather its ruffle,
Me, I only came here to make the super shuffle of the basin.

Of Richardson of the Microphone:
I am L.A. Microphone, and I cool game it.
Not sneak for me. Because I am not no fool,
I fly in the field and start on for low.
All know that I around not mess.
I can break them, agitate them, in any height of that day.
I taste to steal it and to make the payment to them,
Thus satisfied, I do not cry out to beat to mine hustle.
Because I am just to make the super shuffle of the basin here.

CHORUS

Of the Tooth of Richard:
The man of sack: that he comes, I am its tooth of the man.
If quarterback to be late, he is going to start bending.
We stop the functioning, we stop the ticket,
Me/we like to pour guys in its donkey.
We love playing for the better fans of the world;
You, we improve the start that makes its super plants of the basin.
But he does not start soon, nor does not go to no problem
(Unless you practice the super shuffle of the basin...!).

Of Gary Fencik:
Is Gary here? I am Mr. Limpo.
They call me “beaten man”.
I do not know what they mean.
They play it for much time, and they give attention
To me to function (me, are in my man, a-in-one).
Guys of the Comrade Covers! It for low to the bone, that one.
Because in them, they call “Zone 46”.
Come in! All he leaves us to cry out and to cry out,
“We are going to make the shuffle! To follow, we sound its bell!”

Of William Perry:
You are looking at the coolant. Me, you are rookie.
I can be great, but I am not no cookie (dumb).
You, he saw to beat me, you saw me to function,
When I start to ticket us, he will have more amusement.
I can dance. You, I will see
the other (they who all learn of me).
I do not come here looking the problem.
Me? I only came here to make the super shuffle of the basin.

CHORUS

The Promise of a New Day (Paula Abdul)

2007-02-01T08:35:00.000-06:00

Language: Spanish

I've been wanting to do a Paula Abdul song for ages, but the first attempts ("Forever Your Girl" and "Vibeology") fell as I was taking them out of the oven¹, so eventually I lost interest. But then I found interest again, apparently.

Greenhouse update: went in again on Tuesday and was told that they're not going to do any actual hiring until after Valentine's Day. So continued limbo. Though Valentine's isn't actually that far away, I suppose. Even so. The promise of a new day, or job, or whatever, is not interchangeable with an actual new day.

So the husband and I have decided to have a "Closure Party" for my fellow cashiers (except the one I'm not very fond of²) on Friday night. Which might be fun. I'm not sure. I haven't hosted a collegey drinking party like this in like ten years, and I'm not sure that most of those went all that well. Having low standards certainly helped. But we'll see. It should be fine. I suppose the worst that could happen is, husband and I get hauled off to jail for giving alcohol to minors and it forever ruins our chances of holding professional jobs or traveling anywhere else in the world and drives us into bankruptcy. Some of those things have already happened, so I'm not losing sleep over it. I sure as hell don't care if I'm forever known as a crappy hostess.

-Jessi

¹So to speak. And actually with "Vibeology" it was more like the souffle exploded and then turned into roofing tar, truth be told.

²Nothing wrong with her. I'm sure she's a nice person and she loves Jesus and puppies and her mother and everything. But we'd never really talked, and when we did talk she rubbed me the wrong way, somehow, and space in the apartment was a concern already, so it didn't take much of a push to convince me that she didn't really need an invitation. Also she has nebulous connections to the family who owned the place, and as there seems to be some bitterness towards said family from certain of the invitees, it's a little risky to invite someone who might eventually carry gossip back. Though in fairness it couldn't really matter if gossip were carried back anyway: what could they do, lay everybody off again?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

An eagle called his well-known ones, and then he
returned to bring winds and tides, giving the change.
Why do I do it? I feel this way:
the promise of a new day.

[a]:
The promise,
the promise of a new day, is
like that time the Earth moved closer. Under my feet, more
complete love makes a step.
The promise of a new day has the final opinion.

[a][a]

[b]:
What terms will change the world in a certain time?
Nobody knows that,
so the only promise to give is a day to live,
and part the one with the other.

Considering the wisdom of our past errors,
to hear the youngest generation ask
"Why do I do it this way?" feels so
new: the promise of a new day.

[a][b]

(Repeat song)

The Army (Ben Folds Five)

2007-01-30T09:19:00.000-06:00

Language: Portuguese

So yesterday was the actual last day I worked, and I was the last person not related to the owner to work, and that was all kind of interesting, in a way, but it's beside the point now, since now I have to come up with something else to do. Hence the song.

So far, the only place that I've found that I would actually like to work in is a greenhouse / garden center which is . . . well, not too far away from my place, and I'm pretty sure I could handle the work, and I think I'd probably even enjoy it some, a little, but unfortunately they put up the sign saying that they were hiring and then the person in charge of hiring went on vacation for a week. Or so I was told on Saturday. Which means I'm in limbo.

It might even have been two weeks, actually, since I didn't get called about it yesterday, and I'm pretty sure nobody's called my references either.

Late January is a very bad time of year to be looking for work in a college town: all the students are back, so every place is back up to their normal amount of business, but on the other hand, they have all already hired the people they need in the last couple weeks, and it is going to take a while for the various employers to find out that they hired some jerkoffs, which means that people will be hiring again in a month, but for right now there's almost nothing. So the greenhouse thing is all I've even seen since the announcement came that the grocery store was folding. It might yet work out for me, since it's at least a job I really want, and I only need the one job, but there's some waiting to experience first. And probably some more looking. And thinking.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Well I thought Dad said,
"The army is rising, son; you are high,"
and I thought, yeah, a first time for everything.
So I made an examination of my old man's advice,
over three semesters, where "sad"
was the only thought in the fifteen great bed expenses.
I left the army to fall for itself
and joined a band instead.

I grew one moustache, and one mullet, and
started a work in the Chic-Fil-A.
Citing differences, that band broke: inside it, that artistic thing.
And in June, without me, it remodelled
and started a different name. I nuked
the apple pie of my other grandma, and
hung my head in the shame.

Very much thinking today.
Thinking very much today.

Oh! I think I will write one screenplay.
Oh, I think I will examine the make of LA.
Oh, I think that I will start it yesterday. (Done!)

At this time of introspection,
in the eve of my election,
I say to my god of the reflection,
"please cause more rejection." For the care of
my pairs, I criticize myself,
and my former wives all despise me.
Behind me, it's all for the attempt,
but my jumps are pinching my rednecks.

I have thought
I have thought today, very much.
I have thought that today, very much today --
I thought on the army.

Good-Bye to You (Michelle Branch)

2007-01-26T08:07:00.000-06:00

("She's a sad tomato" --R. E. M., "Crush With Eyeliner")
Language: German

Well. So originally, the idea was to keep the store open until about the end of the month, but everybody's exhausted, and there's not much stuff left, so it's looking more like sometime this weekend. Possibly even today, though I think that's unlikely. In any case, it's going to be my last day.

Which is fine, though I still don't have anything to go to yet, not really having had the time to look into much. Still nothing from the possible job (which I really want -- plant-related). My co-workers mostly have moved on already, which good for them, I guess. I had hoped to maybe get everybody together one last time, ideally with alcohol, but I don't think there's time left to coordinate something like that, so probably nothing is going to happen to mark the occasion.

I don't actually know if I'm sad or not, but in either event, this is kind of an appropriate song. Goodbye to something, for sure.

UPDATE: Well, maybe not the last day after all. About a 50-50 chance I'm working Monday too. But for all practical purposes, today was it.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I believed all the things inside that, which
I would like to keep straight. Moreover, with it
behind my eyes, tears form,
but I do not cry.
Counting the past days leads me.

I descend into my soul, have deep
words, become old. I begin to search for that audition,
like I believe it again.
The last three straight years were pretend?
I said,

[a]
Good-bye to you,
good-bye to everything I thought. (I knew that.)
You were that which I loved,
the one thing I tried, which also held on.

I keep still in your eyes, lost
without you, and it seems that I cannot live. One day,
my thoughts closed away, and my eyes are
made blind by the light. I am in a place to hunt, which
isn't quite

[a]

At the same time, I wish nothing. It hurt to wish over everything, and
what is mine is theirs. And I wish . . . what?
I wish for you, which
this time, don't give it to me.

[a]

And if the stars fall,
I'm awake. You lied,
my shooting star.

Stayin' Alive (Bee Gees)

2007-01-25T08:25:00.000-06:00

Language: German

Well. So the going-out-of-business sale continues apace, and the percent reduction in prices continues to increase (it's now up to 40%), and I'm hanging in there, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't going to be happy when it was over. Most days, we're selling about four times as much stuff as we were over Christmas, and there are about half as many people to do this, so I'm working, I figure, about nine times harder than I was just a few weeks ago. And even that was sometimes exhausting.

I have more or less made my peace with the closing, I suppose. I have one possible job to move to, though I haven't interviewed for anything, and it's been a few days now since I brought in the application and haven't gotten called back. Not sure if that signifies anything or not: I'd follow up by going in or something, except that I have no time in the morning to do anything, and I get home from work after this other place is closed already. So at least until the weekend, I guess I just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope to get a call.

The customers continue to be stupid. I try to help them regardless. I babysit their groceries¹, I find products for them (when we have then -- we're obviously out of a lot of things right now), I even double check to make sure that the discount is getting applied to all the stuff it's supposed to be getting applied to². And a lot of them whine and bitch and accuse me of keeping their receipts and act like I should carry their groceries a couple blocks out the door for them³ anyway. We're still getting the occasional question about whether there's a sale going on -- this two weeks after the original announcement was made, with about 3/4 of the items gone from the shelves, and giant-print signs by every entrance. God, I hate people.

-Jessi

¹A completely ridiculous percentage of customers, exclusively women over the age of 50, don't want to push a cart around or carry a basket: they want to leave their stuff at the checkout counter and then wander back and forth. I'm not sure why this is happening -- if carrying a basket is too heavy, then use a cart -- but the leading theory is pathological egocentrism. I am always tempted when people do this to start re-shelving their stuff, though so far I haven't.

²For some reason, certain products aren't in the system to take the discount. It's easy enough to figure out whether everything got it that was supposed to, and easy enough to correct if something didn't ring in right, but it does take extra time and effort.

³There actually is a customer like this. She has a bad back, she says. Also she has/had breast cancer. But she's so personally nasty -- mostly just to me -- that I come away a little disappointed that the cancer didn't finish her off. And she seems to think that because she has a bad back, we should be willing to carry her groceries up several flights of stairs to the parking garage next door for her. As opposed to her coming out of the parking garage and pulling up to our door like everybody else. I knew, the first time we agreed to do this for her, that it was trouble, because then she'd expect us to do it every other time. Yesterday was the first time in months that she ever didn't request that, but she ruined the moment by making a point of telling me that she would carry her stuff out herself, like I should be grateful or something.

She's also so slow one always suspects she's doing it on purpose to fuck with people, so every time she shows up, the lines start getting really long. She's never given any indication that she notices this or cares about it. I wish her tumors. Big honking tumors.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Explain to me the way property can use you.
I'm the man of a woman: no time to speak.
Music loud and warm, a woman myself,
I've stepped around since I was born.
And now it's completely OK. It is.
And you can look the other way.
We can try to understand
the effect of the New York Times on man.

Whether you are a brother, mother, or nut, you
remain alive, and remain alive.
He shakes the city, and each one who believes, breaks,
and remains alive, remaining alive for us.
Ah, hectar, hectar, hectar: lasting, and remaining alive.
Ah, hectar, hectar, hectar: lasting, alive.

Now, I keep low wells, and I keep high
also, and if I cannot receive, I really try not to.
My shoes' wings received the sky.
I'm not a dancing straight man, and I can lose.
They know that it's completely OK. It is.
I live in order to see another day.
We can try to understand
the effect of the New York Times on man.

Whether you are a brother, mother, or nut, you
remain alive, and remain alive.
He shakes the city, and each one who believes, breaks,
and remains alive, remaining alive for us.
Ah, hectar, hectar, hectar: lasting, and remaining alive.
Ah, hectar, hectar, hectar: lasting, alive.

Someone help me: life doesn't go anywhere!
Someone help me, yeah.
Someone help me: life doesn't go anywhere!
Someone help me remain alive, yeah.

Explain to me the way property can use you.
I'm the man of a woman: no time to speak.
Music loud and warm, a woman myself,
I've stepped around since I was born.
And now it's completely OK. It is.
And you can look the other way.
We can try to understand
the effect of the New York Times on man.

Whether you are a brother, mother, or nut, you
remain alive, and remain alive.
He shakes the city, and each one who believes, breaks,
and remains alive, remaining alive for us.
Ah, hectar, hectar, hectar: lasting, and remaining alive.
Ah, hectar, hectar, hectar: lasting, alive.

Someone help me: life doesn't go anywhere!
Someone help me, yeah.
Someone help me: life doesn't go anywhere!
Someone help me remain alive, yeah.

And She Was (Talking Heads)

2007-01-18T08:14:00.000-06:00

Language: Italian

I don't know what it is about Talking Heads lyrics, but for some reason, like Aerosmith, they always seem to work really well when Babelpopped.

I am very nearly the last employee of the store now who isn't related to the owner. It's hard to tell if this is a good thing or not: I have, at least theoretically, money coming in for another couple of weeks that the rest of the employees don't have. On the other hand, they're all ahead of me in the finding-new-work department, having had lots more time to try to find something. So possibly I'm not better off but not worse off either, just a couple weeks later in time.

The wind-down of the store is kind of emotionally difficult. Former employees are angry about various things. Some of the few remaining part-time people are taking the opportunity to unleash varying amounts of abuse on the customers (which really is a temptation, though so far I'm pretty nice, if occasionally blunt). The customers themselves either want to tell me how sorry they are that the store is closing (which I've heard hundreds of times now and can no longer respond to with any kind of sincerity: I've never known what to say in the first place, and having to come up with something twenty times an hour is pushing me to some kind of edge or another), or they are completely oblivious about what's going on. Some of the better customer questions lately:

Are you guys hiring?
Soooooo, do you know when you'll be getting more bananas in?
Are you guys having some kind of a sale?
What do the ["Going Out of Business: Everything 20% Off"] signs mean?
How come you're out of so much stuff?
Is [item] included in the [Everything 20% Off] sale?
Are you guys really going out of business?
So, why's the store going out of business?
Do you know if you have any [item] in stock?¹

And you just want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. And shake them. Until something important ruptures, and they collapse on the floor and start twitching and drooling. Some of them are, obviously, pretty close to the twitching-and-drooling thing already.

And you get angry with the customers who say "Maybe I should have shopped here more." And you get angry with the customers who say "Maybe if your prices hadn't been so expensive." And you get angry with the customers who want you to explain what went wrong, why the store didn't work out. And you feel kind of sorry for the owner and his wife, because you're well aware that they did try to make the place work, and they're no more happy about having to close the place than you are². And you're kind of pissed at the owner and his wife, because the owner, at least, was always kind of an ass to everybody -- disrespectful, dismissive, superficial, overbearing, secretive -- and it's difficult not to get pissed at people who are like that. And you're anxious whenever somebody asks you where you're going next, because you don't know, while simultaneously being pissed whenever people ask how the owners are doing and don't even seem to realize that you, also, are affected by the closing, and it's like by not asking they're telling you that you don't really count, that whatever happens to you is of no consequence compared to the OWNERS, who are actual people, worth caring about.

And so, ultimately, you wind up in a state of being nowhere in particular all day. The world is moving, and you're right there with it, and you are. Too many emotions from too many directions to deal with, so you just kind of push them off to one side somewhere and focus on giving the right change and shrugging in what you hope is a pleasant manner. And then when you get home and find out that the husband has dumped over a tray of plant cuttings that you were trying to start, everything comes up all at once in such overwhelming intensity that you literally find yourself unable to speak for half an hour.

Really not going to be able to take much more of this.

¹The answers, by the way, are:
No.
Never.
Yes.
That we're going out of business, and everything is 20% off.
Because we're going out of business.
Unless it's beer or wine, yes.
Yes.
Because it wasn't making money.
No, because I can't keep up with what we're sold-out of. Learn to fucking read.

²Though, muting your sympathy is the awareness that they have a much more substantial financial cushion than you do. They might be hit harder emotionally than you are, but they're not in any particular danger of having their electricity turned off, either.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And they found themselves in the grass,
and she could feel the respiration,
and the factory could see nearly to the main road.
She's making sure it's not dreaming,
sees that the lights of the neighboring house
are beginning to increase. The hour
to return to the concentrated one: a minute,
and the world opens its eyes.

Chorus:
It was moving, and it was right here, (and it was) with
the world; she was moving, was floating over it (and was).

And she was going to drift through the courtyard,
and dressed. Removing her
lot slowly, and moving, she was
to increase in and over the earth.
The universe enters, in that
sense: this all goes to that drift.
I'm not moving that earth on and over the yard.

(Chorus)

She was happy to doubt this purpose: without this purpose,
she isn't sure where the time has gone. No,
to think what not to say to them, that next
time they think.
That is approximately what was made.

And she was watching,
and things were similar to the film.
She has had a pleasant height, and is
moving, in all the "outside" senses.

(Chorus)

They were joining the dispersed world:
missing enough to think that's in order, all right.

Idioteque (Radiohead)

2007-01-15T07:44:00.000-06:00

Ordinarily there would be a picture here, but Blogger is not permitting me to post one at the moment. UPDATE: Got it.

Language: Greek

So, well, the going out of business sale began on Friday. So very many people came in after seeing the giant "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS" signs and asked me, or somebody else, "Are you guys really going out of business?" Sometimes, "Why are you going out of business?" Well why would you think. Money coming in < money going out.

Which, you know. You understand why they're asking: it was sudden for them if not for us. And they're being nice about it, saying that they're sorry and that it's such a nice store and they loved shopping there¹ and blah blah blah. But at some point it gets to be too much. Any one conversation about it is fine, but what they don't realize is that I'm having to have this same conversation every fifteen minutes, and it's hard for me. This is not really something I want to be thinking about much right now.

And no (while we're at it), I don't know what I'm going to do for money now, and no, I don't actually qualify for full unemployment benefits, because I've worked there less than six months, like almost everybody else, and no, I'm not even one-hundred percent sure that I'm going to get paid for the time I'm spending here right now talking to you, as I know the former Human Resources / Accounts Receivable person didn't get paid when she came in on Friday, and the rumor has it that there's a whole department that wasn't paid either. So while I sympathize with the fact that you're going to have to start walking another six or seven blocks to buy your groceries, and this is a terrible, terrible hardship for you, allow me a moment or two to not fucking care. Either offer me a job or shut the fuck up.

Anyway. So here's a song. There's also a video.

-Jessi

¹Impossible not to think, yeah, well, but I guess you didn't love shopping here all that much, now, did you?

Picture (c) Kari Christensen

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(Deposit in whom?
Deposit in whom?)
The women and children first,
and the children first,
and the children.
I will laugh until the toy comes from my head.
I will swallow the toy until it bursts,
until the toy bursts:
it's up to me.

(Deposit in whom?
Deposit in whom?)
I've seen a lot of very --
I haven't seen enough of that. Him
you have not seen.
I will laugh at you until toys come from my head.
The women and children first,
and the children first,
and the children.

Here. I have the authorisation
for all time. In all, the
authorisation is here, where I have
all the time. In all, for

the coming age of ice.
The age of ice that comes
allows me to hear the two sides. Also,
I allowed myself to hear. Also, the two sides
allowed it. Also, I hear my two
coming ages of ice,
ages of ice.
It throws him in the fire,
throws him in the fire,
it throws him.

We aren't worrying about news distribution:
it happens. This is
really happening.
We aren't worrying the distribution.
Really: it happens,
happens.
Mobiles that --
chirp. Mobiles.
He takes the money and runs,
takes the money and runs,
takes the money.

He has the authorisation here,
the time for it, all in all.
Here is where I have the authorization
for time, all in all.

Here I have the authorization.
All in, for all the time
I have the authorization. Here, where
the time is for all

of the first children.

What to Do With the Love He Obtained (Tina Turner)

2007-01-10T07:22:00.000-06:00

Language: French

Found out yesterday that the store where I work is going out of business. Traditionally, I leave jobs by getting really mad at everybody and quitting, which then leads to extensive periods of obsessive second-guessing. Having a job leave me instead is new, and kind of confusing.

Nothing is actually official until Friday the 12th, when the Going-Out-of-Business sale commences. (It would have started today, but there was an issue with the sign they were getting to advertise said sale.) In fact, I'm not supposed to know yet. I figure I can post this because I've been relatively careful to avoid anything that would identify the place unambiguously on here, and because in a couple days it won't matter anymore.

At this point, I'm still a bit too much in shock to have anything particularly intelligent to say about the matter. I mean, I understand what's happened, and really it wasn't like it was a surprise -- the store hadn't been doing real well at any point since I started working there (or, possibly, any time since Aprilish) -- but one still assumed that things had time to turn around, until they started laying people off. I suppose I should have known something was up when the low sales suddenly seemed to stop bothering the owner.

This is not really the right song for this situation, but it was as good as I could do, out of the songs that had already been kind of worked on.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You must include it.
That contact of your hand
makes my impulses react.
It`s only that quiver
of the girls' opposites
that attracts the boys' meeting.

It's only a logical, medical examination.
You must try to be unaware
that it means more than that.

[chorus]
Oh, what is the love with him obtained to make?
What`s love but the emotion of a second hand? What of
the love he obtained to make that with?
A heart can be broken, when a heart needs.

I tend to seem astounded: you can be with me, if it seems
I've read some. I've gotten by, to share the causes.

There`s an expression for it, there`s a name for him,
but reason does it for me. That's it.

[chorus]

I'm thinking from a new direction,
but I must indicate the
protection of my own thinking.
It frightens me to feel this way.

What to make with the love he obtained?
What`s an old love but the love of a concept? What soft mode
is obtained to make with him,
which needs a heart (when a heart can be broken)?

Lucy in the Sky With the Diamonds (Beatles)

2007-01-06T11:24:00.000-06:00

Language: Russian

Watched a two-hour History Channel special on cults a night or two ago. In the special, it was claimed that Charles Manson had given LSD to the other members of the cult on a regular basis. Which, so far, so comprehensible. But then it went on to say something like "gave them LSD until they would do anything he said." When did LSD become a mind-control drug? And, if it was a mind-control drug, then wouldn't we see more of it around? Or is the main use of the mind-control to make us think that we're not being mind-controlled and we don't see any LSD laying around?

I mean, clearly Manson's girls were willing to do some pretty extreme things, and clearly there were drugs involved. But there's something missing from the cause-effect relationship here. Is all I'm saying.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Depicted in a riverboat
with tangerine shafts, by marmalade skies,
someone calls you. You answer sufficiently slowly,
with eyes and a kaleidoscope girl.
Yellow and green cellophane flowers are
being raised above your head.
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,
and she is gone.
Lucy in the sky with the diamonds.
Follow it up to the bridge by the fountain
where horse people eat rocking marshmallow pies.
you are moved by each smile, in proportion to the flowers,
which grow incredibly high.
The taxis from newspapers appear on the coast,
in order to accept you.
You climb in the tail end with your head in the clouds,
and you are gone.
Lucy in the sky with the diamonds.
The image itself, on the train in the station,
where the porters of plasticine look to glass connections,
someone is unexpectedly located there on a turnstile,
to eyes with a kaleidoscope girl.

Direct Dirty Conversation to Me (Poison)

2007-01-02T08:17:00.000-06:00

Language: Russian

Really only the chorus of this song ("The baby of reason will be governing us, etc.") worked out. But I really like it.

As I get older, I find I have fewer and fewer opportunities to swear, and when I do, I'm more likely to use euphemisms of some kind, like the Battlestar-Galactica-inspired "frakkin'." It's not like I'm holding back for the kids' sakes -- we don't have any. And it's not like I'm suddenly more concerned that people think I'm uncouth. I just don't have as many moments during the day when I feel like it.

What do you suppose that's about, then? Maybe some kind of peer-group thing?

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You don't know me.
I look to you in order to see.
Well, you act expensive; therefore it is you,
but I never love you,
and I know your loves: they are too
expensive. I want you,
I gotta have you,
oh, yes, I'll make you.

You know, I never
remain. I'm never late, which is always . . .
You know that I can await difficulty
in order to see you,
and I know you cannot await it
in order to see me too. In expectation,
I gotta contact you.

The baby of reason will be
governing us, in
the Ford of an old person.
After, the bushes
will be screaming for more.
Lock the basement down from
the door. We will converse
about the baby, and the dirty cellar.

You know I call you,
I call you on the telephone.
I only hope that your domestic
can hear you. Therefore, I
speak those words, when you gotta
whisper to me so softly,
and I hear you.

C.C.: they select that guitar; they speak up to me.

Certain Days are Better than Other Days (U2)

2006-12-31T09:27:00.000-06:00

Language: Greek

Many, many years ago, I read something about Seasonal Affective Disorder, probably in some Christian self-help book belonging to my parents, and thought, wow, it would be kind of cool to know when life was going to suck ahead of time; I wonder if I have better and worse seasons like that too. And so I started keeping a diary, supplemented by ratings for each day on a zero to four scale.¹

7,268 days later, I can pretty conclusively say that I don't have SAD. Or if I do, it's not winter SAD, at least (late spring to mid summer, April to July, seems to be the worst time for me). But even so, I can confirm that U2 is correct here. Some days are, in fact, better than other days.

And certain years, also, are better than other years. Which is the real motivation for doing this song at this time: 2006 is almost over, which means revising the spreadsheets again. And the above picture is more or less how things have been shaping up for me since 1987: high and red is good, low and blue is bad.

All the numbers are not yet in for 2006, obviously. But whatever today winds up being like, 2006 is still going to land about there on the graph: not as bad as 1997², but worse than everything else, even 2005, which wasn't exactly my best year either.

Will 2007 be an improvement? [shrug] Odds are. But then, that was also true last New Year's, and it didn't quite work out that way. So. Cross your fingers.

-Jessi

¹ Originally this was a one-to-four scale; I went back years later and retroactively changed some days when it occurred to me that symmetry kind of demanded an odd number of possible rankings. Which is why it's zero to four instead of one to five. A similar historical-accident kind of thing made zero good and four bad, which is sort of the opposite of what everybody assumes and makes graphing marginally more complicated than it really had to be.

²1997 was frakking miserable. 2005 and 2006 haven't actually seemed all that awful while in progress, but 1997 was a monster.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Certain days are lands, certain days are leaky;
certain days come clean, and other days are sneaky.
Certain days take less, but most take days --
a certain slipping via your fingers above the floor.

Certain days are fast, but most days are rapid;
certain days you use more force than is essential.
Some days fall on us precisely;
certain days are better than other days.

Certain days add above it all,
and you aren't taking enough. What
is better than certain other days?

Certain days are sleepy, other days untidy,
certain days you cannot stand to view the puppy.
They are better than your other skin.

Certain days you wake up complaining, with those.
Certain days are wetting sunny wishes.
Certain days are sulky, certain days have a grin,
and certain days have ruffians, and they will leave you inside.

Certain days hear your voice
in another place;
other days are certainly better than that.

Certain days are honest, certain days are not,
the days are grateful because you have that certainty.
Certain days, you wake up in the army,
and certain days it is an enemy.

She is working certain days; you are lazy, most days.
That baby is feeling certain days.
Looking for the Jesus, and the mother ,
it's better than what the others said. Certain days,
certain days, they are better than the other days.

Certain days hear your voice
in another place;
other days are certainly better than that.

The Sweet Dreams of the Dreams (Make This) (Eurythmics)

2006-12-27T08:09:00.000-06:00

Language: Russian

Ummmmkay. Well. So there's this guy, Peter Watts, who writes science fiction. And I wouldn't have found out about him, except that Pharyngula linked to a page of his a while back about vampires.

The page was a clever Power-Pointish presentation about vampire physiology, origins, etc., which is actually brilliant. Not brilliant so much for being well thought-out biologically (though it more or less is), but brilliant for matching the tone and style of this sort of scientific presentation. And I highly recommend watching it, because it's carefully thought-through and elaborate and tonally-perfect. Plus, some of us think physiology lectures are cool in and of themselves.

So, my interest piqued, I looked around his site at basically everything else, and decided, okay, this guy knows how to build worlds in a way that meets or exceeds my exacting standards, and he's got his novels on-line, for free, so what the hell, let's give him a chance and read the book even though science fiction isn't really, "Battlestar Galactica" notwithstanding, my thing.

So I read Blindsight, which is the book for which the Power Point presentation is relevant. And . . . I think a lot of the reason why I don't read much science fiction is that when I do, I'm always interested in the wrong things. Watts is wanting me to think about the nature of consciousness and alien intelligences and the shape and function of the ship, and I'm more interested in the mundane stuff. I want to have long, digressive conversations between crew members completely unrelated to the business at hand. I want the characters to be charming and funny and clever and, you know, personable². Distinct. Which he does lay out, more than once, the way in which each character is different, physically and mentally, from a standard-issue twentieth-century person. But they all have a tendency to talk kind of the same way, and the characters never really progress beyond their functions on the ship: I know what they look like, and what their job is, but I'm never especially intimate with any of them except the narrator, and so by the time the carnage starts³, I don't feel particularly bad about any of the characters potentially dying: I've never made a connection with any of them, really, despite trying to the whole time I've been reading.

Which means I was a bad reader. Watts points to the breathtaking philosophical space opera taking place on the stage, and I'm back in the control room talking to the guy in charge of the lights about his pets, and where he grew up, and we're discovering that we had the same third-grade teacher, and I only look back at the stage when the explosions begin.

So, Mr. Watts, if you're reading this: it's not you, it's me. But we can still be friends --

I'd still recommend the book to people. Those more accustomed to science fiction as traditionally practiced will no doubt like Blindsight just fine. And in fairness, I think I have probably been somewhat ruined for reading sci-fi by all the sci-fi viewing I've done: this would possibly work just fine for me as a movie. I may yet try one of the other books, reading more slowly, to see if that helps. But so far, the Power Point is the best thing I've seen.

-Jessi

¹"FizerPharm: Trust. Profit. Deniability.", e.g.

²Some of them are not un-charming, exactly. And the reader's way into the story is via a character that the others don't especially trust or like, so they don't have much reason to try to ingratiate themselves to him. Which means, they don't have much reason to try to ingratiate themselves to you, the reader, either. Which might be an unavoidable structural flaw.

³I think this can't count as a spoiler, because what sci-fi books don't have carnage?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This will be made sweet:
is it necessary to contradict me?
Peace moves me, and seven seas –
each one is looking for something.
Some of them want to use you;
some of them, they want utilized by you.
To get some from them, they want to misuse you;
some of them, they want to be misused.

(You hold up your head,
you hold up your head;
moving further.)

I Will be Domestic, for They Have Been Born (Bing Crosby)

2006-12-23T07:29:00.000-06:00

Language: Italian

There's considerably more to this song, but I figured I didn't have to do all the lyrics if I didn't want to, especially if I was pretty sure I had never heard most of them.

I don't know if this was really written by Bing Crosby. Doubtful. But I'm a little pressed for time, and don't, frankly, really care all that much either.

The last couple days at work have been pretty miserable. People are mean, impatient, whiny, exceptionally stupid, rude, oblivious, demanding, short-fused, and just all-around miserable to be anywhere near, at this time of year, and I hate all of you. Yes, all of you.

Christmas can bite me.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I will be domestic, for they've been born;
You can count on me.
I pray it has snow and mistletoe,
and that the tree is present.

The will finds its eve: they've been born
where the love-light is tipsy.
I will be domestic, for they've been born,
if only in my dreams.

Saturn (Stevie Wonder)

2006-12-21T06:46:00.000-06:00

Language: Russian

The last of the Planets Trilogy comes from Stevie Wonder, who is known to Babelfish as "Stevie Interest." At least, in Russian he is.

I don't know the original song, though, you know. It's Stevie Wonder. Probably the song is just fine. Of more interest to me at the moment are the lyrics here. I doubt Saturn's as hospitable as he says, but it's not like I wouldn't be willing to go check it out, on the off chance. 'Cause Earth mostly makes me sad.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Packing my bags, to go away
to the place where there's pure air, Saturn.
Will there be any feeling as we sit by people and observe them to die?
(Is this your road? What is war? We don't make our wars.)
We place all our things back
on Saturn.
Will anyone hold on to such feelings, and thereby make crimes?

Principles won't be in you; you speak
in any direction. You are the things which you make.
For your peace not to arrive soon,
all the large people learned about the end times.
Is it possible to purchase -- or sell -- truth and happiness, exactly?
Why are you people such cold ones? Say it to me.

I walk back to Saturn where everything incandesces in the ring:
rainbow, moonbeams and orange snow.
On Saturn, people
live in order to be 205!
Going back to Saturn, where people smile
(the reason we learned to fly automobiles
on Saturn)
in order to live exactly to our natural maximum.

They came here many times
earlier, to find your strategy: "war will be the peace."
Helplessly killing people, women and children:
they do not know they die for us. Even
they cannot trust you, when you assume
the gun and Bible in your hand, with
a cold expression. And your statements on
the side! "Give us our wants, or we will destroy."

I walk back to Saturn where everything incandesces in the ring:
rainbow, moonbeams and orange snow.
On Saturn, people
live in order to be 205!
Going back to Saturn, where people smile
(the reason we learned to fly automobiles
on Saturn)
in order to live exactly to our natural maximum.

Mongoloid (Devo)

2006-12-16T07:53:00.000-06:00

Language: German

When I was very little, like pre-third grade, my family attended a little Lutheran church where one of the parishoners had a son about my age (I think slightly older) with Down's Syndrome. I remember being unclear about what this "Down's Syndrome" thing was all about: among other things, I had trouble figuring out whether it was desirable or undesirable, and I think there was also confusion about whether it was voluntary. Mainly I remember my Mom talking to people about it a lot, and being told that when this boy did stuff that I found annoying (I don't remember what things), I should just ignore it, or get away, or deal with it in some fashion other than getting angry.

Which is probably where the confusion about desirable / undesirable came from, actually.

And then there was some renewed confusion, later, when Mom put an aspirin bottle insert about Reye's syndrome up on the inside of the bathroom door. To my six- or seven-year-old mind, a syndrome was a syndrome, and so I quickly reached the conclusion that Eddie (this was the boy's name, Eddie) had come to be the way he was because he'd taken aspirin, and was scared to death of taking aspirin myself.

One hopes that Eddie's out there somewhere, bringing home the bacon, though I guess it's statistically unlikely.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Mongoloid, he was mongoloid,
which is luckier than you and I were.
Mongoloid, he was mongoloid
and it determined what could be seen.
Mongoloid, he was a mongoloid,
one chromosome too much.
Mongoloid, he was that mongoloid,
and it determined what could be seen.

And he carried a hat, and had a job,
and he got the bacon to the house,
so, didn't anybody know
that he was mongoloid? Mongoloid:
his friends notionless.
Mongoloid was, mongoloid he was,
nobody was even interested.

The Butterfly Flies (Machines of Loving Grace)

2006-12-15T07:44:00.000-06:00

Language: Portuguese

I don't know if this one counts as "pop" for our purposes or not. I pretty much never see anything about the Machines of Loving Grace anywhere anymore; I don't know what this means. Wikipedia says they broke up in 1997. But still. People still talk about Elastica from time to time, and they aren't the same band they used to be either.¹

Anyway. So the actual song is some of your basic home-use kind of cynicism, dilute 10:1 with water for cleaning, do not mix with other attitudes, etc. Which when this song was current and popular and everything, was more or less the degree of cynicism I found appealing. Plus it's energetic and does the soft-loud-soft thing like everybody did in the 90s, and I like the electronic stuff, and it's pretty tightly-produced, so, you know, whatever.

In the years since, cynicism has continued to be appealing to me, mainly because the main alternative is so obviously wrong². And I don't think it's wrong or bad or depressing to stop and consider, every once in a while, whether one is expecting too much from other people. But even so. I'm mellowing out in my old age, I guess, what with having found a husband I trust. And it's not unpleasant.

-Jessi

¹Wikipedia says a band of that name still exists, but the line-up hasn't been the original one since 1997.

²Like, maybe if you dance like nobody's watching, you're pretty much guaranteeing that everybody's going to be watching. If you love like you've never been hurt, then you're loving in the exact same way that got you hurt previously -- this seem smart to you? Small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world for the better, true, but it does not necessarily follow that every group of same actually does change the world, or that it's for the better if they do. Sometimes, God actually does give a person more to cope with than they can bear, and then they go crazy or kill themselves or do awful things to other people. Etc.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You cannot place the faith in material things:
the material things, they will fail you.
A hurricane provoked a butterfly; the wings of
its conspirators are betrayed.

[a:]
Don't you put the faith in human beings:
human beings are the unreliable ones.
Don't place faith in human beings,
of human beings, or in the wing of the butterfly.

You cannot place faith in a new regimen of
fascists; that will kill the faith.
A hurricane provoked a butterfly; the wings of
its conspirators are betrayed.

[a]

I know that that deep interior burning has something.
That has something, inside of this puncture.

(Today I will pursue the dragon into the night
for its fruits: you'll know them.)

Don't place the faith,
don't place the faith.
When I, myself, decide to live in my mind,
the heart dies.
The superior mothers in the sky --
the heart dies,
the data of the heart dies.

[a]

Pluto (Bjork)

2006-12-14T08:44:00.000-06:00

Language: French

Well okay. Um. Switching over to the new improved super-duper fantastico version of Blogger, which means lots of rearrangement of things and cleaning-up of spreadsheets and so forth. This seemed like an appropriate song for that.

Speculation on the internet is that this song is about getting drunk. There are some good arguments to be made for this. On the other hand, the video leads me to different conclusions. I don't know what the video is, you know, about, but I know it's a little disturbing.

Bjork always has the best videos.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Excuse me,
but I just must
burst --
burst this body
in addition to an ego.

Court-ooh
Oooooh (x4)

I'm new,
new:
tomorrow will
be a little tired, but new.

OOoooh!
Aaaaah!
Aaaaaah!
Woaahh!
etc.

Brides of Neptune (Cracker)

2006-12-12T07:44:00.000-06:00

Language: German

Hi all. I know I've been slacking. Really it's just that various other hobbies are competing for my time, most notably the houseplant hobby / obsession. I'm sure it will get better eventually, but in the meantime, I have to say that it is nice to have some green things around, as the weather gets colder. Possibly I don't need seventy-seven green things. But still.

Meanwhile, there are a couple new items I'd like to direct your attention to, in the links: The Misadventures of Hello Cthulhu, though it seems to be, like Babelpop!, somewhat sporadically updated, is charming and funny and downright adorable and you should check it out as soon as possible. Unless you already knew about it. In which case, you should check it out whenever you get around to it.

The other one is Shemp Duchamp's "This is the New That." It's a lot easier to just go and look at it and figure out what it is than it is to continue reading my attempt to explain it, but it's basically a listing of the various combinations of the "The New Black" snowclone. I don't know how Shemp finds them, but in any case, it's sort of disorientingly amusing, or amusingly disorienting, to read through them.

Oh, and, I Babelfished a song, too.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

She says that this is my film;
thus, you will do what I explain to you.
In Bali, she mixes up a gift –
you keep a hunted ape.

[a]
Brides of the cross, and Neptune's water,
get us your sons, and get your daughters for them.
I don't leave thee deep in the blue sea;
I'll take you to the house.

I tried to date one first;
she buys the first assistant's pot.
This mysterious charge
is still protected by apes.

then
[a x 4]

The brides of Neptune,
the brides of Neptune,

the brides of Neptune,
protected by the apes.

Alison (Elvis Costello)

2006-12-06T07:23:00.000-06:00

Language: Russian

Sorry. I've been slacking a bit lately.

I have two dreadful secrets to confess along with this song: one, I actually like Jay McInerney.¹ Which this song gets quoted in Story of My Life, is why the association, and the main character's name there is Allison.

Two, I actually like the show "Medium." (lately on NBC Wednesdays at 8 PM Central) Which is not like me. I mean, it's yet another cop show², which is bad, but it gets around this most of the time by trying to be an entirely different cop show every week (the "Monkeyheads" episode blew me away, as did the one where Allison gets "I Will Survive" stuck in her head), plus there's some really well-imagined stuff in there about how being a crime psychic would effect one's home life. Some marvelously-written arguments, funny bits, TV children who have personalities: it's a well-written show about a completely absurd premise³. Much like "Buffy: the Vampire Slayer." Or "Dead Like Me." Or "Veronica Mars." Or etc. I think "Medium" has actually bumped off "House" for a spot in my top five current TV shows.⁴

-Jessi

¹Or at least I like some Jay McInerney. His earlier stuff, though I could do without Ransom. Bright Lights, Big City is really good, Michael J. Fox movie or no, and Story of My Life is probably even better than that. I re-read BLBC and SOML semi-regularly. Whether I still like Jay McInerney as an oeuvre or not, I don't know. And I never knew whether I liked him personally, of course, but I always suspected that I didn't.

²I liked "CSI" when I first saw it. Hell, I even liked "CSI: Miami" and "CSI: New York" to some degree or another. But, first, somebody needs to sit down the executives at CBS and read them the story of the goose that laid golden eggs, 'cause I think they've missed the point. And second, the longer these have gone on, the more bizarre and gruesome they have to be to "top" what prior episodes have done, and at some point it's just like, you think to yourself, well, I could watch several people be horribly tortured, mutilated and killed for the sake of that bit of relief at the end of the show when justice is served, or I could watch a "Blossom" marathon.

³No, I do not believe in psychics.

⁴It's a competitive field, with "Dead Like Me," "Battlestar Galactica," "Medium," "Lost," "Metalocalypse," "Robot Chicken," "Veronica Mars," "Eureka," "House," and "The Office" all competing from week to week. Fortunately, several of these are bound to be on hiatus or in repeats at any given time, so there are only ever about five real contenders anyway.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Oh, girl, it's so funny to see you afterward, so "in order."
You understood the road with me, and you look
unimpressed. That's you.
But I heard that you prevented my small friend
from taking off your party dress.
I am not too sentimental to get
those valentines sticky, as others are.
I don't know if you're loving someone, which is the reason
I know this won't only be mine.

Alison, I know this peace will be killing you.
Oh truly, Alison is my purpose.

See that you obtain a husband now. Kindly
leave your dear fingers lying in the wedding cake. (She did?)
You used to hold them correctly in your hand.
I bet you accepted everything; I was what you could accept.
Sometimes I desire that I could stop you from speaking,
when I hear you speaking silly things.
I think someone outside high society assumed that's better: more to
reason, it's what I can't stand. You saw that road.

Alison, I know this peace will be killing you.
Oh truly, Alison is my purpose.
Truly my purpose.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Hugh Martin, Ralph Blane)

2006-12-05T10:07:00.000-06:00

Language: Greek

Wikipedia has an entry on all the drafts this song went through, with an eyebrow raisingly dark “early draft”, (1) complete with Old Testament God threatening to muck things up for you and an “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” caliber opener: “Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last.”

Heartening, then, to see the “Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow” in the original Meet Me in St. Louis version, always my favorite line, and which omission and replacement by that “hang a shining star” nonsense I can now blame on Frank Sinatra.

All that said, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Jim Nabors “shining star” version, and not because of “make the yuletide gay,” either (as I am no longer in junior high, NB), but because he holds out the word “bough” at the end for like nine measures but doesn’t actually resolve the word, so it comes out like, “Hang a shining star upon the highest baaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.”

Also, when the song is over, I do my famous-in-some-circles Sergeant Carter impression and go, “Merry Christmas, Pyle.”

If you call me, I’ll do it for you, but until then you’ll have to muddle through somehow.

- Samanth.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Himself has one cheerful few Christmas.
You leave your heart to be light.
The following year, all our problems will be from the view.

Himself has one cheerful few Christmas.
It makes the homosexual yuletide.
It’s the following year that all our problems will be miles along.

Other time as in the old,
Golden days of dance floors,
Of friends of past that were dear in us.
Will neighbor be in us, still, a time?

Someday shortly all we will be together, if the fates allow.
Up to then, it will be supposed, we tangle somehow.
Thus, himself has one cheerful few Christmas now.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(1) Update, a year later, almost to the day: the Wikipedia article has been Wikipedia'd into near-pointlessness, and I don't feel like fixing it right now. Interested parties are advised to read There's Something About Merry on the Entertainment Weekly site, which being almost a year old itself hopefully is here to stick around a bit. -SM

Rudolph, the Red-Smelled Reindeer (Gene Autry)

2006-12-01T07:07:00.000-06:00

Language: French

So let's get seasonal already.

The store where I'm working switched over to Christmas music a week or so before Thanksgiving. I've never understood why people think that shoppers want to hear Christmas music at Christmas time in the first place, personally: it's one thing if you're listening to it because you want to listen to it, like if you throw on the Muppets Christmas album and get really stoned and make a night out of Miss Piggy singing "Fiiiiiiiiiiive! Golden! Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiings!" and eating potato chips. But it's something else to be subjected to it everywhere you go, with no escape, and this is particularly obnoxious for employees in such places. I am not, personally, down with the whole Baby Jesus thing. Even if I were, I am not a big fan of the music that goes along with the whole Baby Jesus thing. I like "Angels We Have Heard on High." I used to like "Silver Bells." And that's about it.

To make it worse, the songs we're hearing over and over again aren't standard versions of the songs: a few of them are, but mostly they're popped-up versions sung by famous people (I'm pretty sure I heard Cyndi Lauper a few weeks ago, though she's not resurfaced, so maybe I'm mistaken.). So it takes a little while for my brain to identify the songs as being Christmas music, but that doesn't help as much as you'd think it would, because my brain treats it like a game and actually focuses on the songs to some extent now. I get them stuck in my head, too. The Elvis Presley version of "Silver Bells" was in my head for hours last Friday after I left work. Nobody needs that.

Which, every co-worker seems to have his or her own personal bane. Mine is either Peggy Lee / "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" or an unknown song that sounds like maybe the Jackson 5. It's not one of the traditional Christmas songs: so far all I've been able to make out is the super-repetitive and earnest-sounding chorus, "it's going to be a VERy SPECial CHRISTmas, a VERy SPECial CHRISTmas." One of my co-workers is particularly tormented by the standard version of "Frosty the Snowman." Another co-worker reserves her special hatred for something she describes as "Burl Ives, set to techno," which I have no idea what she's talking about but it does sound truly dreadful.

It's worth noting, if there are any store owners reading this, that I have not heard one positive comment yet from any customers about the presence of the Christmas music. A few have commented negatively. Most seem not to notice. So if you decide to play Christmas music round the clock, keep in mind that mostly what you're doing is making your employees, and a few customers, mad at you. Nobody else gives a damn. People do like Christmas lights, though.

Anyway. So. Let's get seasonal, seasonal. I wanna get seasonal. Lemme hear your lobbies pop, your lobbies pop. Etc.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rudolph, the red-smelled reindeer
had a very shiny nose.
And if you never see it,
you would even say that it is luminous.

All of the other reindeer
called him names, for the laughter, and
they never let poor Rudolph
join any reindeer play.

Then, one misty Christmas
took care of Santa. He came to indicate:
"Rudolph with your so-luminous nose,
don't you guide my sledge this evening?"

Then, all the reindeer liked it
while they shouted outside with joy,
"Rudolph the red-smelled reindeer,
the history will enter you downwards!"

Rocket Men (Elton John)

2006-11-29T07:10:00.000-06:00

Language: Russian

Greetings to visitors from Zaius Nation!

Another song here that's been hanging around for a while without me ever finding the occasion to post it, so I thought I'd toss it up here. It's one of my favorites. Elton John seems to mistranslate well, in general.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It packed my bags yesterday, in the hour of preflight testing (9 AM).
I'll be high by then, in proportion to snakes.
I pass Earth; I pass my husbands.
It's so much lonelier, outside in space
on this timeless flight.

I'll think, "so that's gonna be a long, long time,"
to find touchdown brings me around again.
They aren't me: they think I'll be by a man. Who is the house --
oh. There are none, there are none; I'll be a man of the rocket.
Upward, here, the man of the rocket burns out his fuse independently.

Mars won't be the place to raise your little ones.
In actuality, it's cold, in proportion to hell,
and there's no one there. (It's necessary to raise them if they make you.)
I don't completely understand this science -- which
is valid. My 5 days: men, rockets, the work week,
the rockets, and the men.

I think, "so that will be there a long, long time."

Joey (Concrete Blonde)

2006-11-28T08:03:00.000-06:00

Language: Russian

Another random sort of post to clean up old songs that were done a while ago.

The husband and I spent a good chunk of yesterday watching the "Battlestar Galactica" original miniseries, which neither of us had seen before, though we also pretty much knew what was going to happen, since we've been watching since the top of Season 3¹. It was damn good anyway. Way better than any given episode of "Friends," though the episode where Joey dates the really hot girl who turns out to be a robot, inadvertently triggering the near-extinction of the human race, comes close, and in retrospect was probably ripped off a bit by the "Battlestar Galactica" people.²

The DVD arrived at a fortuitous time, since the husband and I were both in a bit of pain: I'd been achy all day, and stayed home from work on the theory that I might be coming down with something (results inconclusive; I'm going in today), and he did something to his hip and wasn't feeling so hot either. I also got "BG" season one in the mail, from Amazon, which is what we're going to be watching on slow nights this week, I guess.

-Jessi

¹I.e., this current season, '06-'07.

²I think it's called "The One With the Near-Extinction of the Human Race." Fourth season?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Baby Joey won't get the crazy
detour fences. I get defensive,
which is me. I know you heard everything before – she
doesn't say more than I do – therefore,
observe. I prepare myself, exactly as you war your secret war.
I used to be interested in why, although
I was dry, too. I used to begin to cry.
Still, I get pain inside, sometimes: strange.
I hurt, therefore . . . oh, if you'll be Joey –

Joey, honey - I obtained certain money,
which listens to forgiveness. It was entire; it listens to itself.
If I seem to imply that it's confused, then I, you, and it didn't go
away with me. I was frightened when you said, "I guess."
(It frightened you too? Good. Away, you and it!)
But before we obtained the luckiest times,
you were out of there. Somewhere.
I'm more angry at the floor, and if –
Joey, oh, I was not outside.

The Christian's Sister (Night Ranger)

2006-11-26T07:56:00.000-06:00

Language: Dutch

Saw some long, drawn-out VH1 special a couple days ago, the best 100 videos of the 80s or something like that. I was terribly disappointed when they got to #2, and then even more disappointed when they hit #1. No Tina Turner anywhere in the top 100, yet somebody found room for Journey and Def Leppard and Foreigner and shit. This song made it to #32, if this tells you anything about the quality of the selections.

-Jessi

P.S. I note with some pride that, of the 100 songs, Babelpop! has already covered 14 of them [(1) (8) (10) (16) (29) (32) (34) (37) (49) (53) (59) (62) (63) (79)], and have several others in varying stages of preparation. So clearly I have my finger on the pulse of something or other.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Christian's sister
came. (Oh, she had the time!)
You don't know no longer; only some of you
say "OK." You go where you want:
those boys want to play
"Where Is It" with you.

You're motoring:
what price for your flight?
In finding Sir Right,
tonight is already right for you.

Babe, you grew this way rapidly, which you
have blamed. And mummies
don't make themselves.
Who was worried that you said, let's play
there. Says the sister of the Christian,
"Don't give so much of that up: you
are living it before your time."
Yes, it's been inappropriate.

Motoring
is your price for flight. What
you have in your face is him,
floating by, and
motoring.
(Your price for the night flight) What
is finding Sir Right?
You're already his tonight, right?

Motoring
is your price for flight. What,
in finding Sir Right,
is right? You've already come tonight. [repeat]

The Christian's sister is
the time, oh,
and you say that some of you are
O.K. Say,
"But we're motoring,
we're motoring."

Free (Kenny Loggins)

2006-11-22T08:34:00.000-06:00

Language: French

This is, I think, one of the better ones. The verses aren't all that, but the chorus is oddly poetic. I like the idea of feet blowing "loose and free," like autumn leaves, or possibly drifting snow. Which I looked for a picture in that vein, but couldn't find one.

These days, I'm more likely to think of this song in connection with Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion than Footloose, but whatever.

Happy holiday to those of you who actually, you know, get days off for it.

-Jessi

Picture credit: Lorraine Shemesh. See more of her paintings here.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Subsistence is so hard. I'm functioning,
perforating my chart,
for what? Eight hours?
Ah, that tells me to get

this feeling: I get
the right of possession. At the end of that time,
I'll strike the ceiling,
or I'll tear this city: which one
this evening? I got a cut.

The feet blow loose and free
(in addition to your Sunday shoes).
I'll satisfy Louise,
withdraw myself, jack my knees, and
get behind
before we split. I advanced
your blues and lost them, so
that everyone crossed freely.

You play so freshly,
in the manner of obeying each
rule with your heart. The excavation of the bottom
is certainly extreme; you are to aspire to it.

Somebody said to you
that your life doesn't pass.
It's for me to say that
you don't judge yourselves, even if
if you'd only cut the fly can.

The feet blow loose and free
(in addition to fitting your Sunday).
Oowhee, Marie jolts
it, shakes it for me.
Whoa, milo:
advance, advance, go left.
Your blues lost; that is,
everyone crossed freely.

Initially - we turn you around, to obtain it.
Second - you put your feet on.
Third - maintain your heart, seizing.
Four - a coward turns me to the ground, whooooooooa,
free and loose.

The feet blow free
(in addition to your Sunday shoes).
Louise is satisfied,
my knees withdraw. Jack me,
advance before a behind gets split.
Your blues lost:
everyone crossed freely.

I Felt a Voice (Bananarama)

2006-11-21T08:02:00.000-06:00

Language: Italian

Well, first off, I'd like to thank everybody for your thoughts and prayers yesterday: yesterday was so slow at work it was actually somewhat painful. This wouldn't be a slow day at any other grocery store in the area: before Thanksgiving, people buy food. The week after is the slow one. But my store is different. This had a number of people somewhat depressed.

The other thing is that the rumors I've been hearing for a couple weeks about various department heads leaving their departments turn out to be true. This doesn't affect me directly, but it means that for a while, I'm going to have to look like a moron whenever somebody asks me a question pertaining to one of those departments, because there will be nobody to refer the question to.

But, I guess, if this keeps up, there will soon be no customers around to ask questions anyway.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Who has need of friends who never show? I don't
wish to know what you'll say to that.
A broken heart could conserve
the wish, if you'd discovered it in order.

[a]
He hardly thinks, next to me. Those nights that
I waited for your call, when the sun had
uncovered all my friends, until I had rights --
I haven't known. Ooh, ooh: that's all.

[b]
Ooh, I felt a voice; ooh, they felt a voice.
They say that you have obtained a broken heart.
Ooh, I've felt a voice; ooh, yes, boy,
I've felt a voice, ooh.

The hour seems to be telling me
that you can sense the bad changes.
According to probability, you'd have given me a child, but
I was much too frightened.

Therefore, realize that what you have made has been damaged,
and the love you've thrown
can be forgotten soon, like I will.
It's never going to be the same one.

[b][b]

[a]

[b][b][b]

My Breath Makes Examination Absent (Berlin)

2006-11-20T07:52:00.000-06:00

Language: Portuguese

Not a lot to say about this one; I have the same associations with it that everybody else does (1986, Top Gun, Tom Cruise), and the outcome here of the Babelpopping isn't especially noteworthy, except insofar as it's resulted in more polysyllabic words than usual.

Keep Babelpop in your thoughts as we move towards Thanksgiving: this is no week for ordinary mortals to be working in retail grocery stores.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Giving attention to each movement in the foolish game of my loving,
one finally doesn't know shame. In the infinite loving of this ocean, no
one turns inside to some private place. It returns, and that
slow turnaround gives you attention as you say (with the movement),

"Remove my breath;
the absent ones are taking my breath."

Giving attention to you, I remain, still anticipating the love. Waiting on yourself
is never fated: that hesitation will change that.
They return to some private place for hiding, and they turn that (the
slow movement says to turn). And all the while, you give attention to

the absentee examination of my breath.

I moved away through the hourglass; the time slid
when all function left me. They called it "the mirror,"
and it turned. I heard it ask
if I was only unafraid for today.

"Remove my breath;
the absent ones are taking my breath."

Attention to each movement of this fool-loving game
haunted me, for the notion that I'm someplace in flames --
I return to some private place inside. They turn that there, and that
gave attention in the slow movement. As you turn me, he says

"To remove my love,
I remove my breath."

Point it Out to Me (Röyksopp)

2006-11-19T08:26:00.000-06:00

Language: French

It's been a long time since I heard a new song anywhere that made me sit up and say, oh my god I must have a copy of that now. But I happened on the video for this song and feel in love, more or less, with it.

It's not just the aesthetic of the video, the clean, super-Euro, Wallpaper*-magazine-type design, though that's part of it: I enjoy Wallpaper*. It's also thematic: the cutting away of facades, the revelations of what's behind this thing, and then what's behind that, and what's behind that. It has, really, very little to do with the text of the song, but it happens that I like that kind of music too, so it all works out. With some songs, lyrics are kind of beside the point.

Haven't bought the CD yet. For the time being, it's good enough to be able to click over to YouTube and see the video. But someday.

I should possibly warn people who are unfamiliar with the song, if I wasn't the last person to hear it, that it's catchy to the point of being potentially obnoxious. I had it stuck in my head for several days straight¹, after seeing the video. So don't say I didn't warn you.

-Jessi

¹(with occasional breaks for the "Love Boat" theme, which gets stuck in my head A LOT while I'm at work -- I haven't been able to figure out why this is yet. "Crush With Eyeliner," the R.E.M. song, gets in my head a lot at work too, but that's because of the "she's a sad tomato" line, combined with being around a lot of tomatoes. One has to assume that at least some of them are sad ones. Law of averages, and everything.)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Recall it, recall, recall it to me [4x]

It's been only one week that
the rapid obliteration of the house and the precipitations were to be.
This doesn't point out
what I missed in England, all this time.

Sent me without a goal
or assistance, by foot, to the transport of
windows. Where to be struck?
I had forgotten, in a friendlier phase.

Recall it, recall, point it out to me [4x]

And everywhere I go,
there is always something to remember.
Another place and time to
me, which found where the love had traveled: far.

We remained outside until two,
awaiting the return to light.
I knew it didn't speak to us
until you asked what I thought.

Point it out, recall, recall that to me [4x]

Face the truth, man: some say
analogy and puzzles are the tools of men's wisdom, but
the women hold its language.
I know that the silence speaks.

I never know much, so now that
you're sleeping close, I'm the only cause of
everywhere that I go.

Recall it, recall, recall it to me [8x]

It's been only one week that
the rapid obliteration of the house and the precipitations were to be.
This doesn't point out
what I missed in England, all this time.

Sent me without a goal
or assistance, by foot, to the transport of
windows. Where to be struck?
I had forgotten, in a friendlier phase.

Recall it, recall, point it out to me [4x]

Baby Baby Baby Baby Baby (R. Kelly)

2006-11-18T09:48:00.000-06:00

Language: Russian

As best as I can determine, this was never a single. It's from the self-titled album, so 1995ish. But in the context of the just-ended Baby Trilogy, how could I pass it up?

I don't think I have anything much to say about this song. I've never, to be honest, actually heard the original. And, while I've heard things about R. Kelly's sexual proclivities, I don't know enough about them to even say something uninformed, so I'll pass on that too.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(Spoken:)
You want that, baby? Anything that
your heart desires: anything,
because you're there for me (truly there for me).
I'll listen to you. Which pliability's it gonna be?

[a]
Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby.

You gonna be a pliable girl? You want anything, I'll
raise it up. Because when my head was down, it was always from you that I
had an exhibition. I was completely in "The Love Store" for you; you're gonna
know that. Truly, you gotta lower yourself with me, oh.

[a]

You'll always be there for me, as no another homie: you'll
truly satisfy only my needs. (Which girl is it by? I know which.)
You was hanging downward from my side, when I was
holding you, and now you'll always be in my life, oh . . .

[a]

Taking me to church on Sunday morning is cold, girl,
because I certainly found blessings and happiness in you.
You're the darkness which shines up my day, G, when my will is for you
to understand. Oh, Lord, I thank my roads for you, because you, you --

[a]

Today when I break you, then I will see, 'k?
I'm mighty glad to know that you sent your love by Paradise Road.
It's something about that road: you make your loving when you're not making it.
And now, baby, I'll be loving you to forever, oh . . .

(Spoken:)
You were always there for doing me -- do you know I speak?
I assume you'll purchase something glorious outside today, so you're real.
I'm gonna be here for you as long as the day doesn't become night (which it will).

[a]

Yes, promise me that we won't divide my heart from the bottom:
let's say a prayer together, say a prayer together to the baby.
Can we tell the baby's father (together) to pray
for the artistic ones in paradise, who
hold this love together? The mole is me and you: that'll be
my prayer. Baby, baby, baby, I love you.

Baby Baby Baby (TLC)

2006-11-17T07:29:00.000-06:00

Language: German

And now for the thrilling conclusion to the "baby" trilogy. . . .

The main thing I think about with respect to this song should be kind of obvious from the buildup thus far: how many "baby"s can a person fit into a song title before it becomes a joke? Opinions will differ, but I think anything more than three is excessive. Why? 'Cause threes seem "complete" to people. This is probably culturally determined. Maybe there's a culture somewhere where genies grant four wishes, and God is four persons in one, and so forth.

But I could be wrong.

This song kind of fell apart in translation, in a bad way, which happens sometimes. I'm going to blame the Germans.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And you wish for my love,
which is, well,
probably there for you morning, noon and night,
but you received goodness,
right? And it's
no time for part-time love in my life.

Would you like to be loved? Well, uh,
okay. He becomes
right with my sexuality, and falls in line with the cause,
but you received
a nickel to be applicable. You're receiving a
different cause, not receiving this "B time" for yourself, no.

[a:]
Oh baby, baby, baby:
I received as much
love in me, baby, baby, baby (Ooh, baby, baby), to
cause you to receive my will. If
you received me, dear, receive deeply.

My heart wells. I, uh, wish you
time, and my whole
understanding. Well, it's not there, if you cannot
employ a cause. (Which a girl like, uh, me
does not stand for less.)
I need my sex with much discussion.

[b:]
You know, I could possibly have a long man, since I wish that
the baby's based on actual facts. And who
decided you were around me? But I still
better work on you, so I don't flake it up, and . . .

Ohhhhhh

[a]

Baby, baby, baby:
there's no time for partial time. I love
to receive, but I did not receive as much love.
I love to be received, and
that becomes okay.

Baby, baby, baby --
a cause, if you will: I'm away from it. Receive
the deep love you received; I'll be
away for a long time. You receive me.

[b]

"My heart wells:" you wish.
And the whole time, my
understanding isn't there. Well it is: if you can't employ my
girl with a cause, as I do --
I do not stand for smaller ones;
I need much sex with my discussions.

[a]

Can I have each man whom I would possibly like?
And set aside time that I select too, to determine which?
I think you know that I would be with you, but . . . .

Yeah.
I'm actually here, and I'm rather based on facts. That
seems to run you straight back (which I also let that
order me away from you). To receive in
myself, to receive love, to receive love, I received it, to love myself.

[a]

Baby, baby, baby, it's time:
I would like to
determine whom to select (and I set that too),
but I think that you know that I would be with you (yeah).
Rather, I am actually here, and that is based on your facts.
You seem to let me run back.

Baby, Baby (Amy Grant)

2006-11-16T09:16:00.000-06:00

Language: French

Shocking-confession time: I actually attended an Amy Grant concert, at about the time this song was popular (or maybe the song got big just after the concert: I don't remember). I don't really recall it much one way or the other; it was a good 15 years ago, but I probably had a good time. I also had the "Heart In Motion" album, where this song appeared, and may still -- some stuff got thrown out in the course of the most recent move, and some stuff didn't; I don't know where this album wound up. It doesn't seem likely that I could have sold it to a consignment store or anything, though: it was on a cassette, and the case was fucked up in some way or another.

So I guess what I'm saying is that my associations with this song all revolve around partial amnesia. Which is perhaps odd, but not necessarily inappropriate for a singer who abandoned her Christian audience and sold out for the chance at MTV videos in endless rotation and a chance to show cleavage and get divorced.¹

This is not necessarily a bad thing -- some of my favorite musicians actually started out as Christian artists and then moved on when they realized that they had talent of some kind². With Amy Grant, though, I do remember that it was a HUUUUUGE deal in the Christian world, Grant being the closest thing that Christian rock had to a superstar unless you're going to count, like, Carman, or Michael W. Smith, which let's please don't. There are, even now, people who believe that Amy Grant is going to a literal fire-and-brimstone kind of hell, to have her flesh seared for eternity, for singing songs like this one instead of songs which are explicitly about how cool Jesus is. Though perhaps not as many as there used to be, now that people have discovered how much money there is to be made by doing such things.

-Jessi

¹Or at least I think there was a divorce. Another case of my Amy Grant memories being a little fuzzy, apparently.
²Okay. Actually just one -- Sam Phillips, who used Leslie Phillips as her recording name when she was a Christian artist. And "talent" is possibly stretching it for Phillips, though I still like her stuff and listen to her occasionally; I don't know what the present critical consensus on her level of talent might be.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Baby, baby,
I am taken with the concept
of devotion to you, with the softest love.

Baby, the baby,
my tender love will rise from
most of the ocean into the deepest blue sky.

For a little stop,
baby, I'm so happy you are mine. Yes
you are mine.

Baby, the baby
is the first role for you. Hold a shine,
and they adore you. I'm sure of that, right as I am.

Baby, the baby,
the forest will walk by,
singing. A chorus of birds is above you.

For a little stop,
baby, they're so happy you're mine, oh yes,
and since moving day, my heart put you
above, to obtain you. (I realize that there is no baby, just that.)

Baby, the baby,
survive in any kind,
and I'm here for you always and always.

Baby, the baby
could divide a muscle man (which isn't
true, and never was). Isn't it my love for you?

For a little stop,
baby, I am so happy you are mine.
And since my heart is moving, you put the day
there, baby. I realize that that is just. You've nothing above to obtain.

And since you put my heart to moving, the day
is just to obtain you. Baby, I realize that there's nothing above that,
above you.

Baby, the baby,
always and for always.
Baby, I'm so happy that
the baby is so happy. Here for you,
baby of mine: are you?
I'm so happy that
when I think of you, it makes me the smiling baby.
Baby, you're my baby:
I'm so happy, baby, that
you don't cease giving love.
(Don't stop, no.)
Baby, I'm so happy that you're my baby, who
is happy thus. I'm
happy (I am so.), that
when I think of you, it makes me smile.

Baby (Rufus Wainwright)

2006-11-15T07:37:00.000-06:00

Language: Dutch

It's time, I've determined, for another trilogy. This one will be the "baby" trilogy. Not 'cause I'm having a baby. Just because.

This song is not my favorite Rufus Wainwright by a long shot -- to me, the pacing feels all wrong. It's like it takes him considerably longer to sing the song than the song deserves. But whatever. It's fine.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This way nothing is clear, so nothing is smooth.
Nothing is pure (such
as my baby).

I dreamed each of my days all in one night of life, as if
I were my own baby.

My days were intertwined with darkness up to
your silver eyes,
my baby. Who's on my tail?

And since then, I can't see directly
(funnily?), and my false
problems smile then. Which I know since I
have one clean eye (that only sees by itself), but

if you bring along your needles,
then I'll bring my sharpened pencils,
and I'll draw my baby
a funnier tragedy.

Question the children this way: "Players,
will we rent the living room of Ms. Omhoog
and dance with
my baby?"

Where the Ways Don't Have Names (U2)

2006-11-14T07:22:00.000-06:00

Language: Italian

Let's talk about gerrymandering.

What with the recent election, and the national attention being given to individual House races (at least by people blogging about the races in their own districts), I've become curious about where all these other districts are and what they're like. The districts in the Upper Midwest -- Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin -- are pretty sensibly drawn (Iowa, in fact, has a redistricting process which is often pointed to as the way all states should do theirs; see here.), and the states in the Rockies are generally not populous enough to need many districts, so they wind up having sensible plans whether they like it or not.

But I found this web site, which contains maps for each of the 538 House districts currently operational, and spent a while looking at the individual districts. And there are some doozies in there.

The best five examples I could find are here in this post, but if you find this sort of thing interesting, click on a few random examples from California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Texas. They're not all insane, but often enough. My hall-of-famers here are, from top to bottom, GA-13, which I think looks like an ant¹; IL-04, which is known for it's "earmuff" design; IL-17, which has a certain pornographic-Smurf quality to it; PA-18, which makes me think of pictures of turbulence, from wind tunnels; and NC-12, which evokes snakes and genies leaving bottles and women-crawling-through-deserts.

These sample districts are presently occupied by Rep. David Scott, Democrat (GA-13); Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat (IL-04); Rep. Philip G. Hare, Democrat (IL-17); Rep. Tim Murphy, Republican (PA-18); and Rep. Melvin L. Watt, Democrat (NC-12).

There's not necessarily anything wrong with having oddly-drawn districts, to my mind: in some cases (IL-04 being an example), the district links up scattered members of a group which might otherwise go unrepresented (in IL-04's case, the ears of the earmuff are two mainly Hispanic neighborhoods). But it's certainly not in the spirit of things -- ideally one would have relatively compact districts, if for no other reason than to make it clear to people moving in what races they were voting in. In the aforementioned NC-12, Guilford County, North Carolina is part of three different Congressional Districts, NC-06, NC-12, and NC-13. This seems excessive.² There's also the matter of people, by and large, having similar interests as their neighbors. It's not clear to me, for example, what interests Sterling, IL, in the north central part of Illinois, has in common with Quincy, IL, on the Mississippi River, or Macoupin County in Southern Illinois, which suggests to me that perhaps the intent of the district lines was to work against the interests of some of the people included in the district, at the expense of others.

But anyway. Enough of that. This song was as close as I could get to map/place/lines issues, of the songs I had started already. So it's not hugely appropriate to the discussion, but these things happen. Sometimes the song's more important, sometimes the discussion is.

-Jessi

¹Maybe a scorpion, or a spider, or something. Definitely an arthropod of some kind, though.

²On the other hand, Guilford County, NC, is one of very few in the country with dual courthouses, effectively having two county seats, so maybe a little confusion is customary there. I don't know; I've never been.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I desire to make it work,
wish to hide,
wish them to tear down the inner walls
that hold it.
I wish to catch up that part outside,
and touch the flame, to
name the ways they don't have.

I want the solar light to think on my face.
To cloud the powder, I disappear. (See that?)
Without a trace,
I wish to take the poison. Shelter the rain from the
ways in which they do not have names.

[a]
Where the ways don't have names,
where the ways don't have names.
The constructions are calm,
then love burnt them down.
The love burns that down,
and I go here (when
I go here with you).
That's all he can make.

The city aflood,
and our love turns towards rust:
we are struck, and jump to you from the wind.
On powder, tracked in,
I will show you that a
high place on a desert plain
doesn't have a name in that way.

[a]

Our love turns, in order to rust.
We are battered, and we
jumped from the wind,
jumped from the wind.
Oh, and I see that the love
turned in order to rust. I'd love to see ours
jump from the wind. We're battered, and
jumped from the wind.
(Oh, and the love turns towards rust.)
We are struck, and jump to you from the wind,
treading on powder that is
here. When I go (and
I go here with you),
I'm all I can make of myself.

The Roxanne (Police)

2006-11-12T11:06:00.000-06:00

Language: Greek

Apparently they've been around for a few years, but I've just become acquainted with LED Christmas lights, as of a week or two ago, and I think they're pretty neat. They don't use much energy (about 14 watts for three strings of 50 lights), they're bright to the point of being kind of alarming, and they stay cool, so they're a lot less likely to set things on fire than the other kinds of Christmas lights.

There are a couple drawbacks: LEDs don't burn out or break like normal bulbs do, but they do get dimmer over time. They're more expensive¹. And (the one that bugs me the most) they flicker. The reason is that apparently they can only emit light when electricity is moving in one direction, not both. When on alternating current, they turn on and off at the frequency of the current, which in the United States is sixty times a second: this is enough to be noticeable, especially when you and the lights are moving relative to one another. Inside, where the husband and I have our lights, this is obnoxious: outdoors, where the lights could swing back and forth or sway with a tree, it might actually heighten the glittery effect that Christmas lights seem to be going for in the first place.

Particularly if one were using white LEDs (actually more of a blue-white: when I look at them, I think of things like class-B and -A stars, or moonlight, or the color of a room which is being illuminated only by a single small black-and-white television), there'd be some glitter. Which is what the husband and I bought, white ones, as it is "not essential to put in the red light."

-Jessi

¹$10.00 for a set of 50 lights at K-Mart. This is partially or totally offset by the much-reduced cost of operation, since they use so much less energy than the equivalent number of C9 or C7 bulbs. Some C9 and C7 bulbs use as much as 7 W per bulb, as opposed to about 4-5 W for a string of 50 LED bulbs. If you're inclined to go nuts with Christmas light displays,^a the savings in energy could add up very quickly.
^aWhy? I mean, they're pretty, but come on. Lots of things are pretty.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Roxanne, it isn't essential to put you in the red light.
Those days are beyond you;
selling your body in the night isn't essential.
Roxanne, it's not essential that you wear the dress, or
walk the roads tonight for the money.
Whether it's erroneous or right, don't attend.

Roxanne, it's not essential to put you in the red light.

I loved you since I knew you;
I wouldn't speak while under you.
I should say it to you, precisely how I feel:
I won't be shared with other boys.
I know it's arranged; thus, it's been decided
above you. This rendered you mine as soon as I said it.
I won't say this again: I'm in a bad way.

Roxanne, it's not essential that they put you in the red light.
Roxanne, it's not essential that you put the red light in.

I'm Too Sexy (Right Said Fred)

2006-11-11T17:13:00.000-06:00

Language: French

Not planning to make a habit of including the video in these posts; among other things, You Tube links have an annoying tendency to go dead in fairly short order. But with this one, I couldn't resist.

I have relatively precise memories of when this song came out, because I had just started college and was getting accustomed to dorm life. One of the girls down the hall bought this song on cassette single, and the B side of the cassette was a Spanish version of the song. Not speaking Spanish fluently myself, and being curious about how things translated from language to language (an interest which has remained with me, as you can see), I encouraged my Spanish-speaking roommate, whom we will call "S.," to listen to the Spanish version and provide a translation, for comparison purposes.

So S. listened to the song, and I'm all like, yeah? So? How's it different from the English version? What does it say? What's he singing?

And in the very best deadpan I have ever seen in my entire life, S. shrugged her shoulder and said, with a certain amount of deliberateness, as though talking to a slightly brain-damaged child, "He's very sexy."

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I'm too sexy for my sexy love,
for my love of activity.
You love to leave me.

I'm too sexy for my,
too sexy (so sexy) for my shirt. The shirt
wounds me, and it's too sexy
for Milan too. Sexy
for Milan, New York and Japan.

And I'm too sexy for your
part, too sexy for your part.
Am I to dance in the manner of disco? Not that music.

I'm a model: you know what I
want to say. I make my little light on the footbridge, yeah, and
on the footbridge, on the footbridge, yeah,
I make my little light on the footbridge.

I am too sexy for my car by far, too sexy
for my too-sexy car.
I am too sexy for my too-sexy hat, and
what do you think of my hat for that?

I am a model; you know I want to say that.
And I make my little light on the footbridge,
yeah, on the footbridge, on the footbridge, yeah,
I shake my little tush on the footbridge.

I am too sexy for my,
too sexy for my,
too sexy for my --

Since I am a model, you know what I want to say,
and I make my little light on the footbridge.
Yeah, on the footbridge, on the footbridge,
yeah, I shake my little tush on the footbridge.

I am too sexy for my cat, too sexy
for my cat, of the cat.
Poor cat, poor cat of
mine, which I am too sexy for. The too-sexy love
loves to leave me, for my love of activity.

And I am too sexy for this song.

7 (Prince)

2006-11-08T08:55:00.000-06:00

Language: French

Caught a little unprepared for the good election news, so I had to work this one up in kind of a hurry. Sorry, Prince, you deserved better.

On the other hand, I could have gone with "Promise of a New Day (Paula Abdul)," and didn't, 'cause this is a better song, so.

Chet Culver, douche though he is, won in Iowa (54-44), which I guess is good. Democrats took both houses of the Iowa state legislature (it had been just one, I think -- hard to keep track when it changes every other year).

Iowa and South Dakota have kind of a weird relationship: we acknowledge that we're similar, among ourselves, but we don't like it when anybody else says so. Kind of like a sibling thing. But good job, little Ess-Dee, on voting down your abortion referendum. Now if you could only freak out a tad less on gay marriage . . . .

CNN is saying that IA-02 (my House district) went to Loebsack, the Democrat, by 51-49. One feels mildly bad about this, since Leach was one of the better Republicans. I mean, if it was Rep. Leach vs. Sen. Grassley, there'd be no contest -- I pretty much think Grassley is the devil incarnate. Or, you know, one of them. (So many to choose from.) But Leach was a Republican, in a year when it was bad to be a Republican, nor was he perfect by any stretch. And I'm sure he'll do just fine for himself. I may be a liberal, but my heart doesn't bleed all that much for the wealthy and well-connected when they have a setback.

The other interesting race for me was IA-01, which covers northeast Iowa: we've been bombarded with all kinds of TV ads for the past couple months about Bruce Braley (D) and Mike Whalen (R). One of Whalen's ads even noted that Braley had been voted a "Peace Candidate" by the National Communist Party. And I believe there was also something about how he had criticized the repeal of the estate tax, and was critical of the way the Iraq War was being conducted, and so on and so forth. "Bruce Braley: wrong for Iowa," being the message.

And I'm like, my goodness, Communists like him? And he likes taxes which will never ever apply to me? And he's in favor of peace? Can I vote for him even though I'm not in his district? I can't help but think that maybe Whalen and his advisors misestimated the area. Iowa has a reputation for being a hick state, and even occasionally deserves it, but we're not automatically against peace, or rich people paying taxes, for Chrissakes. We're not Kansas. And in this day and age, calling somebody a Communist sounds more like a joke than like a slam. How long has it been since we were afraid of Communists? So it's entirely possible that Whalen did some of Braley's advertising for him.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[a]
All seven and we will observe them falling;
they inconvenienced love, and we will smoke them all
with intellect and know-how.
Nobody in the whole universe will never compare.
I am maintaining with you and you are mine,
and together we'll like all spaces and hours:
thus, let's not cry during the day when each of the seven will die.

[repeat a]

And I've seen an angel go down to me,
and in its hand it holds the key:
words of compassion, the same words of peace.
And in the distance, army feet going (hut two three four, hut two three four),
but he sees them: we will observe them falling.

And we fix on sea sand,
and before us, animosities are held and issued.
We don't speak about the love, only the blasphemy that's
in the distance, and six others will curse me,
but it's very exact (which is to say, very exact),
because I'll observe them falling. (four five six seven)

Each of the seven and we will observe them falling;
they inconvenienced love, and we will smoke them all
with intellect and know-how.
Nobody in the whole universe will never compare.
I am maintaining with you and you are mine,
and together we'll like all spaces and hours:
thus, let's not cry during the day when each of the seven will die.

(never age)

And we see each bad heart, and plague, and river of blood
will surely die, in spite of
their seven tears, but do not fear!
For in the distance, twelve hearts (as of now)
are always here. You and I, we will be here.

There is a new city, with streets of gold.
Thus informed, the young people will never age.
And -- oh? There will be no death, for with each breath,
the voice of "bold" colors sings much of a song, which if that is,
sing it while we observe them falling (autumn).

[a]

(never age)
(never age)
(never age)

Don't Worry Yourselves; He's Against Government (Talking Heads)

2006-11-07T08:05:00.000-06:00

Language: Russian

Francis asked me yesterday how I was feeling on "Election Eve," which made me realize -- this is very nearly the feeling I used to have on Christmas Eve as a kid. Except that on Christmas Eve, I wasn't anticipating that I might unwrap a box and have my face clawed off by badgers, which is still sort of (metaphorically) a possibility here.

I voted already; held my nose and marked the Governor dot for Chet Culver, even though I don't like him, because the alternative (Jim Nussle) is ridiculous (by Iowa standards; he'd seem the sober, rational alternative to somebody in Texas). So now it's all over but the waiting. Possibly I should have waited to vote until today, so I could still feel like there was something for me to do.

(I know, I know, I could be out there helping the Democrats GOTV and calling people and knocking on doors and whatever. It's just that it's kind of tough to get real fired up about a party whose only real voting hook is that they're not the Republicans. I mean, this particular election, not being Republican is good enough for me, but the Democrats have been useless -- Supreme Court nominations, PATRIOT Act, torture, gay marriage, stem cell research, abortion, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, estate tax, etc. -- and I don't feel it's fair to expect me to give them any more effort than they're willing to give me. Plus I have to work anyway.)

But so here we are. Hope everybody gets video games and ponies. No badgers! No badgers!

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I see clouds move through the sky; they
see me. The wind moves clouds away,
over the building, it moves clouds by
living. I want to select a building.

I smell of the pine shafts and of peaches in the woods.
Pinecones fall by the highway, which I see.
There will be a highway which goes to the building:
I'll select a building I want to move into.

[a]
It's over there (It will be over there.):
my building has each of the conveniences.
It's gonna be for my lungs: these will make a life.
I will obtain things easily after I make this; it is gonna
fell in love with itself. (I will weaken somewhat independently.)

[b]
It fell in love with some, it fell in love with some of you who will visit the building;
accept the parks, and come up those highways to me.
I will be working, but if you come visit work,
I'll make myself put it down: my friends, they are important.

[c]
Do not make your uneasiness about me.
It would not worry itself about me. I'm what
you are. Do not make your uneasiness about me,
do not make your uneasiness about me.

I see positions through this large nation;
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I examine my favorites; I think some
people think they work for me.

They fell in love; they are as valid as some. They use some civility;
therefore, they work it and they attempt it. Be strong, strong:
it is necessary to live in my building. I will be by the luckiest guy, who
has buildings for that. Soak them, so that they will go forward.

[a]

[b]

[c]

A Brick in the Other Wall, Part II (Pink Floyd)

2006-11-05T21:14:00.000-06:00

Language: Greek

I've never been all that fond of this song, like I've never been fond of Comfortably Numb. It's possible that I just don't like Pink Floyd, actually. Many people don't.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

No, we didn't need education.
We didn't need uncontrolled thinking.
There's no order to the dark sarcasm;
the schoolteacher leaves those kids alone.
(Hey! The schoolteacher leaves those kids alone!)
In general, it's a brick, precisely in the other wall.
In general, you're a brick, precisely in the other wall.
No, we didn't need education.
We didn't need uncontrolled thinking.
There's no order to the dark sarcasm.
The schoolteacher leaves those kids alone.
(Hey! The schoolteacher leaves those kids alone!)
In general, you're a brick, precisely in the other wall.
In general, you're a brick, precisely in the other wall.

Teen Angst (Cracker)

2006-11-04T07:34:00.000-06:00

Language: Russian

Clearing out some of the lyrics I've had ready to go for a while, because I spent most of my spare time yesterday tracking down a large new set to begin processing, and am feeling, consequently, somewhat overwhelmed.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I don't know peace,
but I'm confident that hell begins with me. As it
laughed, there will be wisdom above. And I'm on that.
I don't know what peace could want,
but it doesn't make good rigid drinks confidently.
So I think the tall one will go correct it.

Now peace will be the new form of stress, because
the old one bores death into me.
Peace will now be another singer of folklore, because
I opened my mind.

I don't know peace,
but V-8 will be a good start for my engine.
I'll think in order to find a place, in order to be surly.
I don't want what peace could know:
some comfort-wisdom words? We could have them, but
someone wiser would leave me, I think.

Because peace now truly needs some words of wisdom,
as "la la la la la."
Peace will now be another singer of folklore, because
I opened my mind.

I don't know peace,
and I never gripped your complexities.
I would be happy to obtain your attention.
I don't know peace, but it could want
your longer, sweet body lying next to mine.
Certain of my perfumes could raise it.

Now will be a new, Frank Sinatra peace;
therefore, I'll get you in the can. The bed
will now be folklore, another singer of Peace, because
I opened my mind.

Heart-Box of Forms (Nirvana)

2006-11-03T07:35:00.000-06:00

Language: Italian

(See the video, if you like.)

I do miss Nirvana occasionally.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

It eyes me like pisces when I'm a weak person.
I've been blocked for a week in your heart-box of form; part it.
I've been designed in your sink; I've taken the magnet tar.
I wish I could eat behind your cancer, when it turns.

Hey
Attended
I've always got a new claim in order,
in the debt of your priceless
aversion.
Haight
I've always got a new claim in order,
in debt to your priceless counsel.
Hey
Wait
I've always got a new claim in order,
in debt to your priceless counsel.

The orchids' meat-consumption is not of the pardoned, no;
however, I just cut angel hats out of child breath.
Highness, your hymen is left shooting black,
therefore I can scramble (up / down / behind / to the right of) your umbilical noose.

Of the Unpretty (TLC)

2006-11-01T07:05:00.000-06:00

Language: Spanish

When this song was first released, and went into seemingly endless rotation on MTV (this being back in the days when MTV played music occasionally, if not all the time), I initially liked this song. Most of us have to deal with these feelings one way or another, from time to time. Maybe men not so much, though I'd be surprised if guys escaped the feeling entirely. Anyway.

But then eventually it dawned on me that hey, how sympathetic can TLC really be to feeling ugly in the first place? I mean, even if they really were, they have teams of highly-trained professionals to spend hours on their hair and nails and makeup and lighting and photography, plus hordes of adoring fans available at the drop of a hat to tell them how wonderful and beautiful they are. I mean, I get that it's about how you feel about yourself, and this feeling isn't necessarily going to respond to what other people tell you about yourself if you don't really feel pretty, but damn.

There was also the fact that it was suddenly cool, for a little while there, to be a beautiful person writing music about beautiful people who felt somewhat less than beautiful. (The example that leaps to mind is "Beautiful Girl," by INXS, but I know there were others that I just can't think of at the moment.) Who, it should be noted, aren't really the people who need reassurance in the first place, given that they get breaks all over to begin with, by virtue of being pretty. And 'cause there are some genuinely fugly people out there who could probably stand to hear nice songs about themselves too, and (I imagine) never do.¹

I'm just saying.

The other thing I want to point out is that there exists such a thing as the World Beard and Moustache Championships (link), and nobody writes songs about them. Maybe ZZ Top. But nobody else.

-Jessi

¹Related but still tangential: in the show "Ugly Betty," are we as the audience supposed to sympathize with her because we're not all supermodelly either, or supposed to enjoy seeing her treated badly because that's how we would treat her if we worked there and could get away with it? Or is the ambiguity the whole point, that we're supposed to want to be cruel and hate the people who are being cruel?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

His desire could tie my shoes, for
I also do that unpretty sensation to him.
"That was beautiful," he said to me,
"but that means it makes you cautious."
There, in the mirror's interior, the
one with the long hair -- that is
the same old me again, yes. (For today.)

[a:]
The glance refreshes my outsides;
my interiors are blue.
Everytime I think that I'm with him,
it's due to you.
I've tried diverse ways, but
at the end of the day, all are equal: the one
I must blame is myself.
Am I right to shoot?

[b]
You can buy hair, if you don't grow it;
he can fix his nose (if you say so to him).
You can buy everything marked up, for
the man: you can do that.
But, if you cannot watch inside yourself,
I'll discover who you are also.
Done to me in that position, the sensation is
unpretty, so, damn, I'll do it to him!
(The unpretty sensation is also never uncertain.)

I satisfied him until now.
I'm being stupid:
I used to be so pretty to myself
(a little skinny), hardly
watching all these things. Why do I do it?
To maintain happiness? To
(perhaps) get to him ruined for you?
Then again, I got myself (hey), and

[a]

[b]

[b]

of the
Oh oh oh oh oh Oh oh oh oh oh (oh)
Oh oh oh oh oh Oh oh oh oh oh (oh)

[b]

Let Us Dance To It (David Bowie)

2006-10-30T07:41:00.000-06:00

Language: French

On Saturday, I went to a Halloween party being thrown by my boss and his wife. This is the good, immediate boss, not the evil¹ ultimate boss. Just so we're clear. I was, alas, the only person from the store to show up, which made me a little sad. But perhaps I get points for attending.

I went with a costume idea I've threatened for a long time but never actually had occasion to pull off, stolen from Lorrie Moore, in her book Anagrams². In the book, Gerard suggests that Benna, for her Halloween costume, should "make a belt out of old spice tins and go as a waist of thyme."

Which was more or less what I did, though the thyme was in two plastic containers, tied together and looped over my shoulders. It wasn't enormously practical, but at least I never lost track of thyme. And I could take a thyme out whenever I wanted. (There were a million thyme puns, each worse than the last.)

No real dancing to speak of: it wasn't that kind of group so much. (The choice of song here is just 'cause I didn't have anything else ready that's party-ish. Though I did hear Talking Heads at one point, which is very danceable.) The husband and I wound up, somewhere around midnight, in the apartment of someone named Courtney, whom we didn't know, drunk enough to not be all that clear on how we got there, in the company of another former cashier who I'd never met before, who was dressed as a Republican and who had been handing out Jim Nussle³ and Jim Leach⁴ stickers all night.

So, so, so very hung over the next day, though. I haven't been that drunk, or that hung over, in years. Which is why there was no post yesterday morning: typing was too loud.

But it was worth it. I'd do it again. I had a good thyme and all.

-Jessi

¹Really not so much evil as just really type-A and at least moderately narcissistic.

²Anagrams was a huge influence on me, and remains one of my all-time favorite novels. I've probably read it a good twenty or thirty times. I'm thinking of getting some t-shirts made up that say "Lorrie Moore is my homegirl."

³Who is presently running for Governor of Iowa, and who bears a striking (to my mind) physical and political resemblance to the Democratic candidate, Chet Culver. I'm having a difficult time justifying to myself voting for either of them.

⁴Who is, for a Republican, not especially evil, and who did something, some time ago, relating to the Iraq War that I found principled enough to be noteworthy even if I can't recall specifically what it was. Still voting for the other guy, though.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dance: put your red shoes above
the blue dance, and

dance with the song
which they play on the radio.

Balance
while the color lights the top of your face.
Let us balance,
swinging with empty space by the crowd.

You said to race: I ran with you.
If you said the skin will hide us,
my love for you
would break my heart in two.
You fall into my arms as if
a flower, and tremble.

Dance for the fear
that your grace should fall;
let us dance, for this fear is all of the evening.

Balance: you could look in my eyes.
Balance under the moonlight.
(Serious moonlight!)

You said to race: I ran with you.
If you said the skin will hide us,
my love for you
would break my heart in two.
You fall into my arms as if
a flower, and tremble.

Dance: put your red shoes above
the blue dance, and

Dance with the song
which they play on the radio.

Balance: you could look in my eyes.
Balance under the moonlight.
(Serious moonlight!)

Cigarettes of Chocolate Milk (Rufus Wainwright)

2006-10-28T09:13:00.000-05:00

Language: French

I suppose technically it's not too late, but I feel a little bit bad that I haven't been being more seasonal. I mean, I could have done "Monster Mash," or something by The Cure, or maybe "My Heart Will Go On." Something. I'm just never quite prepared for these things. I suppose this means that I should get working on some Christmas carols now.

But, even if it's not a Halloween song particularly, this is still a nice song, and it came out well enough. I'll try to do something scary by Tuesday.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Milk of cigarettes and chocolate:
those are a couple of my cravings, right?
It seems that I liked that a little thicker,
a little more extreme, a little harmful to me.

If I buy soft candies, then I
must eat them all while resting.
They seem a little larger than I like:
a little softer, a little harmful to me.

And then there are these other things
that we will not mention, for several reasons.
It's a little stranger about them, all
a little harder, a little mortal.

It makes a share
of pain so sorry.

Always rest here to remember.
The city, to me, is a shoe made for the
show. The places disappear just ahead. My song is about
the weak boys in the city, with whom the general faces have raced.

Wireplay, with prodigals of much
sentiment (catch the valiums!).
The world is ragged, but it's yours. Andy cannot expect that
while you're running everything on a vacuum
(a little headstock, with a wrinkling of the ol' eyebrows).

You maintain, obtain, in the
mystic reserve I play, all while facing ahead.
A lesson in the tightropes suggests a reading of
Kansas or "Adios, Surfer" or On High Hopes.

It's not very smart;
tends to make a share
of pain so sorry.

An exposure there; on my back. It still does not have
friendly holes or intervention.
I am a little Irish heiress, a little right turn, a little
Pisa. Of all the times that I see you,
I'm satisfied if you are pleasant. So that's a disorder.

Milk of milk, cigarette of cigarette,
and chocolate. And chocolate.

Of My Sharona (Knack)

2006-10-25T08:22:00.000-05:00

Language: Spanish

I don't really follow Israeli politics, but I have the impression that I'm not a big fan of Ariel Sharon. I don't, however, know where this impression comes from, specifically.

Possibly it's just all the time I've spent looking over and over the lyrics, but even though I can't figure out what it might mean, the repeating bit about "the tact of the youngest class" seems to me like it really wants to mean something. I don't know where that feeling comes from either. Maybe it's just going to be that kind of a day.

In any event, if someone has a guess about what the tact of the youngest class might be, let me know. I'm open to theories.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Enough, my little one, oh my pretty one:
when are you going to give me Sharona some of the time? Is that you?
Oh, my motor works: my weapon's operation does that.
Sharona never leaves the motor line. Who is he?

The elasticity is going to stop
upon a dirty mind, so he
always gets it over
the tact of the youngest class.

My my my my my, whoa,
my Sharona.
He comes a little nearer.
Will you, huh, huh?
Enough closing of the eyes, Sharona. Watch me.
Who guards them is a mystery:
the thighs of Sharona get me to it.

The length is never under the works.
My elasticity is going to stop upon
a dirty mind, so he always gets above
the tact of the youngest class.

My my my my my, whoa,
my Sharona.
When are you going to obtain me, obtain me?
Is it a question of the time? Sharona, as soon as
it's destiny, it's destiny.
Or is "right" a game in my Sharona's mind?

Never going to stop -
elasticity upon
a dirty mind.
My Sharona
always gets it above
the tact of the youngest class.

My my my my my, whoa,
My my my my my, whoa,
My Sharona.

Give a Discontinuance To Me (R. Page and J. Graydon)

2006-10-24T17:04:00.000-05:00

It’s the fourth Monday in October which means it’s time for Themesong Friday, and at any rate this made me think of this:

It’s a mere six years since The Jeffersons, and “piece of the pie” has been transformed to “piece of the cake” as the new catchphrase to connote “sassy” (the late 20th century version of “uppity”). No fish is safe from the sucking, opening credits stizz.

This show has an interesting connection to the number nine hundred million.

Nine hundred million is:

The number of police roles played by Dolph Sweet (“The Chief”) in his career
The number of times Nell Carter says “Gimme a Break” at the end of the song (twelve million in the Shep Pettibone remix)
The show’s average Nielsen ranking
The total number of characters named “Joey” played by Joey Lawrence in his lifetime (Gimme a Break marked his four-hundredth)
The score I hit on the Surprise-o-meter when I was reminded that Jonathan Silverman was on this show toward the end (he married Julie!).
(Hm. Jonathan Silverman also played a character named “Jonathan”. Wait, and Matthew Lawrence’s character was named “Matthew” and Nell Carter played a character named “Nell”… WHAT THE SNOT?!)

This show is also the show that taught me what an IUD is (Katie has to go to the hospital to get one removed or something) and once featured Joey Lawrence in blackface in order to teach us all a lesson about something that escapes me now.
Oh yes, “Don’t hire Joey Lawrence.”

Now here is a joke that the writers missed by not being as clever or pretty as me in the Joey Lawrence in Blackface episode:

JOEY: But everyone else in the house was talking about their minstrel cycle, so I thought…
[UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS OF LAUGHTER]

See, writers? You could have scored big with that one, but instead you moved the show to New York. Boo, writers.

I punish you with Dutch.

-- Samanth~

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Give a discontinuance to me.
Certain, I it deserves.
It is time I to the upper part made it.
Give a discontinuance to me.
Ahead I look,
Recovers me, appetite each end.

I want a happy end,
I have been tired of claiming,
Will not let them the bests of me get.

Whoawhoa of Whoa,
Give a discontinuance to me!
The game is overlevering!
My arrival gives a discontinuance
, and plan me!

Me, gives a discontinuance
For the importance of the sky!
What happened to my piece of the cake?

Give a discontinuance to me!
Me gives a discontinuance!
Oh, give a discontinuance, me!
Me gives a discontinuance!
Hey, give a discontinuance to me!

[repeat nine hundred million times]

The Dance Of Safety (Men Without Hats)

2006-10-22T22:06:00.000-05:00

Language: French

Have yet to see a credible theory for what this song means. According to songmeanings.net, it is either about nuclear disarmament or slam dancing. Not many things in this universe could plausibly be about both of those at once. The abovelinked discussion is surprisingly contentious.

The new lyrics alternate between sections which are remarkable either for their fidelity to the original (" . . . 'cause they don't dance, and if they don't dance, well, they aren't friends with me.") or a Victorian primness that appears out of nowhere ("O fortuitous dance of safety, taking everyone!"). This may be a side effect of having done this through French, which has not otherwise been a common Babelpopping language.¹

-Jessi

¹No particular reason. Italian isn't getting much work either.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ssss-aaaa-ffff-eeee-tttt-yyyy
Safety-dance!

We can dance, if we want, with
your friends. We can leave behind
your friends, 'cause they don't dance, and if they don't dance,
well, they aren't friends with me.
I say, we can go where we want,
(a place where they'll never find us?)
and we can act like we come from out of this world.
Leave the truth far behind, and we can dance.

We can dance, if we want, with
your friends. We can leave behind your friends
'cause they don't dance, and if they don't dance,
well, they aren't friends with me.
We can go where I want us,
a place they'll never find,
and we can act like we come from out of this world,
and we can dance far behind truth.

François!

We can go when we want.
The night is young, so I am.
We can equip our feet with our truly-ordered hats,
and astonish the supporting end with a cry of victory.

I say we can act if we want; if not, nobody will.
True, you can act coarse and completely removed,
and I can act like an imbecile.
I say that we can dance, we can dance all out of order.

We can dance! We can dance! We did it, we can dance wall to wall!
We can dance! Everyone, glance with your hands!
We can dance, we can dance! O fortuitous dance of safety, taking everyone!
Yes, spout out the well of safety dancing! The dance of safety!

Ssss-aaaa-ffff-eeee-tttt-yyyy
Safety-dance!

We can dance if we want, with all the life and mines that we have.
We'll maltreat time, never going to lose it (as long as it's not
well-established). Everything will be up to me.
Say, we can dance if we want. Leave your friends behind,
'cause your friends do not dance, and if they do not dance,
well, they are aren't friends with me anymore.
I say that we can dance, we can all dance out of order:
wall to wall we dance. We can dance,
we can dance, we can make it dance. Everyone, glance with your hands!
We can dance, we can dance, yes, everyone's taking the well
of safety! Oh, the chance of – ah, the dance of –
Oh, the dance of the well of safety!
Oh, the dance of the well of safety!
Oh, yes, the dance of safety!
Oh, the dance of safety!
Oh, yes, the dance of safety!
That's it: the dance of safety!
It's the well of dance,
of safety: it is the dance.
Oh, it is the dance of safety!
Oh, it is the dance of safety!
Oh, it is the dance of safety!
Oh!

Ave Maria (traditional)

2006-10-21T13:23:00.000-05:00

Language: Portuguese

This third song in the virgin trilogy was of course a bit more translated than usual: I was working off of what I'm told was a relatively literal English translation of the song. So the chain is, Latin to English to Portuguese to English.

My primary association with this song, not having been raised Catholic, is a pop-cultural one: I don't recall the context particularly, but I remember that Nell Carter, on "Gimme a Break," once took a ridiculous (considering how much airtime costs) amount of show time to sing it once, and it was very pretty the way she did it. That may well have been the first time I'd heard the song, and it's still kind of the way I expect to hear it, when I hear it, which is not very often.¹

The photo is from the Ugly Duckling car dealership in Clearwater, Florida, in 1996. There were apparently similar streaks on the building's other windows, but only this one looked like a figure in a hooded robe. The likely explanation is that the sprinkler system was throwing oil from the palm trees adjacent to the building up onto the glass, building up over time and forming rounded interference patterns. I think it's pretty, in an odd way, though not supernatural.

-Jessi

¹Carter's is kind of a tragic story, by the way. Check out the Wikipedia link.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

They hail Mary of grace,
Mary, completely full of grace.
Hail Mary, full of the grace:
hail you, Sir. You are blessed with
women; you enter,
and bless, and bless,
the fruit of its womb
(of its womb).

Hail Mary de Jesús! Pray
so that we will pray for them (sinners).
Pray for us sinners
now, and in the hour of death,
and the hour of our death,
and the hour of our death,
and our hour of the
death of Mary. Hail!

For My Expectation (Rebecca St. James)

2006-10-21T12:07:00.000-05:00

Language: Russian

Well. I didn't wake up this morning thinking, hey, I should do a virgin trilogy on Babelpop! today. But I guess it stayed on my mind, and now here we are.

This is also, I think, the very first CCM¹ song I've ever run through, and as such it's kind of special, I guess. The video (link) is harmless enough, as these things go. Basically trying to be Shania Twain but without all the sluttiness, and I suppose I don't mind that too much. I mean, if you can get past the idea of wanting to be Shania Twain, then wanting to be a Christian Shania Twain isn't really that big of an additional step.

Nevertheless, there's something kind of not right about this song, and this video. I think Babelpopping has actually led to something slightly insightful here: it's not about waiting, it's about expectations. Probably specifically, male expectations of deflowering a virgin, and patriarchal expectations that one's little girl is keeping herself pure for somebody (is it symbolic that Ms. St. James is being kept in a box, or just a bad pun?). And speaking of the box, isn't it a little strange that she's more or less being equated with decorative objects? I mean, those are the only other things in the box. And what's up with the ending? I mean, if they've been waiting for one another for the whole song, shouldn't they at least kiss? Or make eye contact, or talk about Jesus, or something?

That said, I have to give Ms. St. James points for being prettier than Shania Twain. We should all be blessed with such skin. (Actually, the guy is prettier than Shania Twain too, when you get right down to it. I mean, if we're going to be giving out points for physical appearance.) It's not an uncharming video, all things considered. But the message is kind of ooky.

Also, before you ask -- I have no idea where the "mole" in the first verse came from.

-Jessi

¹(=Contemporary Christian Music)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Darling, you know that
I dream about you:
your eyes in view
when we meet for the first time.
Darling, you know that I'm it,
(about your mole . . . )
which you will hold. (that mole . . . )
Content, your loving eyes for me,

I only wait to
pray for you, darling.
For my expectations, too,
I await you in proportion to myself. The expectations for me
I await. To me, they are
to pray for you, darling.
Expect it from me, too.
Expect it from me: I await you in proportion.
The expectation of a darling

life together. You knew about my darling dream;
(knowing they'll be forever:
I will be yours and you will be mine)
and darling, when I say I'll
make death part us, it will.
I intend it with all of my heart,
accurately, now and always to you.

I only wait to
pray for you, darling.
For my expectations, too,
I await you in proportion to myself. The expectations for me
I await. To me, they are
to pray for you, darling.
Expect it from me, too.
Expect it from me: I await you in proportion.
The expectation of a darling

error. I know you can complete it now.
But there will be forgiveness, and the second chance,
therefore: my expectation for a darling,
my expectation,
my expectation.

As a Virgin (Madonna)

2006-10-21T08:18:00.000-05:00

Language: German

Well, a few good lines here and there. I think "like a virgin / all affected during the first time" came out nicely.

Does true love, in fact, wait? It's been my experience that the answer is not so much "yes" or "no" as "yes, but:" as in, "Yes, but not indefinitely, and it still makes plans."

One concept that's emerged in the last ten to fifteen years that amuses me is that of "secondary virginity." Secondary virginity is the way that the Christian evangelicals try to make girls anxious about losing their virginity when they've already lost it: methods vary, but the most basic idea is that, having already lost one's virginity, it can be partially reclaimed by the decision to just not have any more sex until marriage, which in some spiritual realm or another restores the virginity. This is also known as the "Once, Twice, Three Times a Virgin" method of abstinence, and I don't expect it ever to be particularly mainstream 'cause it's so silly. Though I've been wrong about the mainstream's tolerance for silly before.

Boys are not so much into the secondary virginity thing, as a rule.

I'm not really sure what to make of the picture above. Apparently, while true love is waiting, one gardens.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I formed it in the wilderness.
Somehow, through it I
couldn't form. I was lost
until I was you.

The impact,
is which. I had became incomplete;
I was blue, sadly,
but you educated me to feel
formed and shining. You feel me? Yeah.

Like a new-found virgin,
who was all affected during the first time.
Like a virgin,
near my –

My whole love is going to be given, boy;
your heart impacts my fear.
You're fading fast, saving it, which can all last for you.
Only a "love cause,"

it is so my form, and
my form is fat-strong: yeah, it's fine.
Oh, their love thawed out,
yeah, their love thawed out,
what was frightened of cold weather.

Like a virgin,
all affected during the first time.
Like a virgin,
with your impacted heart near my –

Oooh! Oooh! Oooh!

And thus you are mine. (Are you, finely,
until the end of the time?) I did not form it, which
formed you. I caused a feeling for
you. Yeah, I'm believing myself:
I have to hide anything.

Like a virgin,
all affected during the first time.
How does a virgin
impact, with your heart near my –

Believe like a virgin,
ooh, ooh like a virgin.
So if you hold me inside: good,
and your heart impacts, and you can love me.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
Ooh, baby.
You mean the heart didn't impact
to hear, all during the first time?

The Other One Bites the Substance (Queen)

2006-10-19T07:40:00.000-05:00

Language: Dutch

Working with two serious handicaps this morning, which may affect the quality of posting, or at least proofreading. The first is that my monitor, after a few weeks of randomly expanding and contracting the view of my desktop by small amounts, yesterday decided to shrink the whole thing in half horizontally. (The monitor would be the "other one" referenced in the title, which "bit" the "substance.") So to me, as I type this, all these letters are very very small and skinny and difficult to read. A new monitor is en route, even though I can't really afford to buy one, and this is depressing.

Handicap number two is that I have gotten sick, again. In some ways this wasn't surprising, since I get a cold- or flu-like thing in September or October every year, and since people are remarkably indifferent about covering their faces when they sneeze or cough in a checkout line, I didn't have much hope of avoiding illness through lack of exposure. Which just so you know: cashiers are people too, and if you wipe snot on your hands right before handing dollar bills to the cashier, you really shouldn't be surprised when the tomato sauce goes on top of your eggs and bread. You deserved worse.

So I feel like crap, is the point, and I can't really see what I'm writing.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Steve runs warily below the street,
below with the manner of the low-drawn edge.
No sound sounded, but his feet ain't
machine guns, or ready.

Are you ready,
are you ready for this?
Are you on your edge, or the seat that
hangs the balls from the opening? By
the sounds, it cracks to the beat.

The other one bites the substance,
the other one, the substance.
And another one goes to be bitten, and another one goes,
and the other one bites the substance.
Hey, am I gonna get you also?
The other one bites the substance.

You are happy, you are satisfied:
how long will you can the heat?
Be yourself, from opening the door's balls
to the sound of the crack beats.

The other one bites the substance,
the other one bites the substance,
the other one bites the substance,
the other one, the substance.
There is an abundance of you people. Manners can bite, hurt,
and bring them to the ground.
You can beat him badly,
you can deceive him,
you can treat him, and he'll leave
when he has something below,
but I'm ready: yes, I'll manage for you.
I'm myself, on my own two feet,
opening the door from the balls
to the repeating sound of tearing beats.

It Inscribes the Sandman (Metallica)

2006-10-16T06:54:00.000-05:00

Language: Portuguese

Bought a plant yesterday. Actually it was two plants, but now, because I potted two plants into the same pot, most people would call it one plant. So in some ways you could say that I made a plant disappear yesterday, by buying it.

I've also recently read Wittgenstein's Mistress, by David Markson, which may show up in the style of this entry.

Although in some ways Wittgenstein's Mistress is "by" its narrator, Kate.

It occurs to me that Kate, despite being fictional, is now known to quite a few people, probably more people than I, Jessi, am known to, and is therefore, overall, more "real" than I am. If by "real" one means things that can be talked about among people.

Certainly one made two plants disappear, from the perspective of the other plants in the greenhouse, who would not be aware of places outside the greenhouse. And from the perspective of my other plants, I made either one or two plants appear, in my home.

Metallica, of course, is known to even more people than Kate or myself, and would be even more "real" by the definition that things are real when people know about them.

But maybe this is not the definition one should be using, then.

Certainly a thing could be real even if it were never discussed at all. A particular cloud, perhaps, could go completely unremarked from the time of its formation until the time of its dissipation, and yet it could still block sunlight and possibly rain and do all sorts of other real, cloudly things. Even without anybody ever saying, "Look, there is a cloud."

The point being, obviously, that things do not need human observation in order to exist.

There being a good deal of evidence of this from astronomy, where one can infer that planets and the like existed even before human beings noticed them.

Although we are told that sometimes in physics things are in indeterminate states until detected by a human observer.

On my honor, people sometimes say this.

Like Schrodinger and his cat, which was both russet and non-russet, depending on the outcome of an atom's radioactive decay.

By which I hardly mean that the cat was, say, streaked with russet, or russet-spotted. One was given to understand that the cat was of a uniform color, even if the non-russet alternative was never specified.

One feels that surely this whole emphasis on human observers to determine the states of things has been exaggerated somewhat, however. Or misunderstood. Which is frequently the case when dealing with quantum-mechanical things.

The plant that I made to disappear was a Monstera deliciosa.

Sometimes I felt that Metallica in general, and this song in particular, was a bit over-played. On the radio.

I suppose Metallica wanted to be as real as possible.

I did not like their songs about Napster and file-sharing and how musicians deserve to be able to make a living, however.

Though possibly these were not songs, but were press releases.

Also yesterday, I saw another episode of "Metalocalypse," a show which I've mentioned previously on this blog.

James Hetfield, the lead singer of Metallica, has done a guest voice at least one time on "Metalocalypse," and possibly more times than that.

One could argue that James Hetfield's hair could be called russet, if that were the sort of word one used for hair.

One could also say that James Hetfield can make a Monstera deliciosa disappear, though, even though one has never seen him do so.

The point obviously being that one can say a great many things.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The small one says its prayers:
don't forget, my son,
to include inside
you all the warm folds, inside
you the sin of free sustenance.
Until the sandman comes, he
sleeps with the one
eye firmly open, arresting his rest.

The exit light
enters, taking my hand: the night
fills with earth. We must never, never be outside.

We're closed today: something's wrong.
The night clears the heavy thoughts,
and they aren't white.
The war dreams, dreams of the snow, dreams of liars,
of the fire of dragons
and the things that will bite --
the sleep opened firmly, with one
eye arresting its rest.

The exit light
enters, taking my hand: the night
must never never fill with earth. We're outside the

sleep place, now. We ourselves bring
Mr. Soul, and remain to pray.
I've woken up, if I die before
the examination. Pray, Mr. Soul: to make my
small babies hush, to say the word. We never do the
noises, and not if he (who you heard) occupies that
bed. It's the crossbows under that, it's
the closet in his head.

The exit light
enters. The grain of the night
exits the sand. The light
enters, taking the night.
We must never, never fill my hand with the outside earth.

There Was a Lucky Lady (Frank Loesser)

2006-10-13T23:21:00.000-05:00

Language: Russian

I've never seen "Guys and Dolls," the musical from which this song comes, but I don't think that means I can't still use it here. I think I've heard Barbra Streisand sing it a time or two. Or somebody parodying Barbra Streisand.

It's been some time since we had any real Babelpoppy wisdom, but I think this sentence breaks the trend:

A lady does not wander everywhere,
and does not screw on the blow of a certain other guy.

It's hard to imagine truer words.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

They were called by the lucky lady,
but there was room for doubt.
From time to time, you've run
a very un-ladylike road outside.

Your date was with me,
pickings were lush,
and yet before this evening is over, you could give me a brush.
We could forget your means,
you could refuse to remain,
and so I must pray that I can make it better . . . .

There was a lucky lady tonight, there was a lucky lady tonight.
You were always by a lady; if it was necessary to begin by luck,
then there was a lucky lady tonight.

I was longing to see luck in order;
you can be like a good friend
with me, sister. They arrived, so you put one inside me;
you'll be a lucky lady with me.

A lady does not leave her escort:
it isn't valid, it isn't glorious.
A lady does not wander everywhere,
and does not screw on the blow of a certain other guy.

Thus, let's hold politely to the party.
Hmm...
Never get out of my sight;
knob with me, sister.
I arrived (that is, I've a gallon inside):
you'll be by a lucky lady tonight!

No lady flirts with strangers.
She'd have a heart; she'd have a soul.
A lady wouldn't make a little sneak of your eye,
not when I bet my life on this bank.

Thus, let's hold to the party politely.
Never get out of my sight;
knob with me, pal.
I arrived inside; that is, that gallon will be your reason.
There was a lucky lady...
was a lucky lady...
was a lucky lady tonight!

Of Jaque, and of Diane (John Cougar Mellencamp)

2006-10-13T08:56:00.000-05:00

Language: Portuguese

Just so you know: this is the first picture that comes up when you do an AOL picture search for "Jack and Diane." They look like nice folks. He might want to consider shaving, though. Amish beards are so 1998.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A little song on Jaque and Diane.
The heartland grew two small Americans, who were above it:
Jaque, who's gone to be a backseat debutante; and
Diane, the star of Jaque's football car.

Sucking in freezing chili dogs is tasty;
Diane sits that down in Jaque's lap.
Jaque's words have her on hands and knees;
Diane left us outside. (Hey! The functions
of the tree are: to be shady, and to dribble behind.)
Bobby has those brooks outside, that
leave me to make what I please,
and Jaque says,

Go in the life of the oh-yeah;
later, that emotion of livin' is long gone.
The life of the oh-yeah goes in;
later, that livin' emotion is with them, on a long walk.

Jaque sits down backwards, stops, risks his thoughts for a moment, reflects:
his head and his dean made James better. Well, more of that --
that . . . Diane. You know, we ought to be the whole function of the
city! Diane says, "Baby, you aren't lacking nothing, you
word of Jaque."

You go in the life of the oh-yeah;
later, that emotion of life is long gone.
Oh yeah, it goes in;
later, that emotion of life is long gone.

I'm left balancing,
left rolling.
The leather strap of the Bible left me
low, came on to
my soul. Hold the exceptions
for much time as you can, so the sixteen
changes that come in return soon. The real
in them make the women and men.

A little song on Jaque and Diane:
two small Americans who can make more, better.

Constant Thirst (k. d. lang)

2006-10-11T07:35:00.000-05:00

Language: Russian

This could have gone better, I suppose. K. d. lang doesn't often offer one a lot of words to work with.

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Darkest through the flat section,
be it thick or thin,
someone marches bravely, always
under my skin. Here it is.

(to thirst constantly, always)

The largest possible magnet draws
out all truth to the showers,
or, possibly, life will be
very giving of wisdom.
It will be, to the youth.

(a constant thirst)

Always to thirst, to thirst:
ah-ha, it's always constant.

It's constant thirst; it
is constant thirst, always.

To always thirst, to thirst:
ah ha! It's constant, always:
always always always always always. . . .

Dude, Viewed as Lady (Aerosmith)

2006-10-08T07:58:00.000-05:00

Language: Russian

I'm not actually a fan of Aerosmith at all, really (I kinda like "Janie Got a Gun," and I would like "Crazy," "Cryin'," and "Amazing" except that all three are the same song, with different lyrics.¹), but their songs are very co-operative when Babelpopped. I'm not sure how (or whether) to explain this.

A cursory search of the internet reveals two main theories behind the "real" meaning of this song.

1) One of the band members almost had sex with a man dressed as a woman, by mistake. (1a - or not by mistake. 1b - actually did have sex. 1c - more than one band member.)

2) The song is making fun of another musician. (2a - Bret Michaels, lead singer for Poison. 2b - Vince Neil, of Motley Crue. 2c - both. 2d - neither.)

-Jessi

¹Listen to the choruses back-to-back sometime.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

That, that, dude regards the lady
Which, which, dude regards the lady
Who, that, dude regards a lady
Who, that, dude regards a lady

Cruise on the coast into the rod.
Its image graced door grime,
it'll be a bite longer than love, lost on the first baby.
Which possibly you're incorrect, but you know you're entirely right;
that will be the the first rights, which –

Backstage we will have time
in our real life. "As long as someone's opinion of time
doesn't seem from the line. Forgive me if I'm too . . . ."
Then, she shook up her gun! She attempted to blow me absentee!

Never judge the book by its cover;
say you're gonna love to be a lover of love.
Her love wisely assumed a disguise for me:
she had a Venus body.
Lord! My surprise present!

So baby, it prevented me from following you down
(prevent me from accepting an expensive peek).
Baby, it prevented me from following you down
(make me, make me, make me entire night).
Baby, it prevented me from following you down
(turn another expensive cheek).
Baby, it prevented me from following you down
(make me, make me, make me, make me).

Ooo, that funky lady.
Ooo, she loves it as that.
Ooo – it was a lady!

Dude, dude, dude, the dude regarded the lady,
dude, dude, dude, the dude regarded the lady,
dude, dude, dude, the dude, viewed as a lady,
dude, dude, dude, the dude, viewed as a lady.