W8ing @ Work = Rhyme Time

 

Sitting at a desk
To work, not to rest
Might not be the best
Opportunity to jest
While wearing a vest at your employer's request or behest

Just the thought causes distress and duress
So I'll drive to a music fest beyond the hill's crest
My ticket is free. I'm the promoter's guest.
(Lest you fear my tuneful quest renders me broke, poor, financially bereft.)

Soothing sounds are all I have left to heal the deep cleft that is torturing my breast
As I test which chest to wrest for some zest
In an otherwise dull, drab, dismal, dreary, depressing, and decidedly down-tempo day.

Right Now

 

I am currently--

Well, not concurrent with the time you are reading this, because it will get posted several weeks after I'm done writing it.

Or rather, it got posted several weeks after I was done writing it. (He said, speaking in past tense about something that hasn't happened yet.)

And just because I'll be publishing this  -  ahem  -  just because this got published at 5:07 Central on the morning of August 19, 2022, doesn't mean that's when you'll be reading it. Augh! Doesn't mean that's when you are reading it.

Right now.

At this moment in time when your eyes are sending electronic signals to your brain which get interpreted into shapes that represent sounds that are strung together in specific ways that your brain recognizes as words, which are symbols representing things and concepts and actions.

Whew.

Now, what was I saying? Or should it be what am I saying? Or what will I be saying?

Oh bother...

What the What?: The 436th Greatest Song of All Time

 

The more I write about Rolling Stone's list, "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time," the more confused I get.

I'm not puzzled that songs I've never heard before are on the list when those songs are from the 90s and later. (I stopped paying much attention to pop radio sometime in the 80s.) But if the song was recorded in 1967, I expect to be familiar with it...since it's such a great song and all.

However...

Song number 436 absolutely befuddles me.

It was recorded in 1967, but not only had I never heard it before, I had never heard of the group that recorded it, namely, Love. Yeah, a group named Love from 1967 and they are a complete mystery to me.

According to Rolling Stone and songfacts.com, the song is a tribute to the composer's mother, who was a flamenco dancer. While I can certainly hear the Latin influence in the music, the lyric contains no reference to any mother figure I've ever encountered:

Yeah, I said it's all right

I won't forget

All the times I waited patiently for you

I think you'll do (just what) you choose to do

And I will be alone again tonight, my dear

Yeah, I heard a funny thing

Somebody said to me

You know that I could be in love, with almost everyone

I think that people are the greatest fun

And I will be alone again tonight, my dear

MAYBE the first verse could be sung by a long-suffering mother to her teenage son, but the second verse sounds more like a proposition than a frustrated sigh. Ole'!

And the title of the song puts me into an OCD-related spasm: "Alone Again Or".

OR WHAT?!!?

But maybe I shouldn't be surprised, what with Love's only song to make the charts in the U.S. was the Number 33 song, "7 And 7 Is".

IS WHAT?!!?

#RuinASimonAndGarfunkelSong

 

What if Simon and Garfunkel's choice of song titles was just a little bit off? How much difference would have spelled the difference between success and failure?

A Pound of Silence  -  A strange little ditty about 16 ounces of cotton balls

I Am a Sock  -  "A winter's day in a deep and dark clothes dryer, I am alone."

Scarborough Fare  -  "Are you paying the Scarborough fare? Drive yourself and take far less time."

Homeward Hound  -  A first-canine narrative about a dog sniffing his way back to his owner

At the Grocer's  -  "The celery will stalk you while the corn will lend an ear. Just a fine and fancy ramble down the aisles."

Fridge Over Troubled Daughter  -  The sad tale of a parent opting to keep a household appliance instead of dealing with their delinquent teenager

My Boxers  -  "I am just a poor boy and my underwear is torn."