Maybe a Gift Horse's Mouth SHOULD Be Looked Into

 

Imagine my rush of excitement when I saw the word "Free" in the "Price" field of a listing on Facebook Marketplace. And I'm not talking about free firewood or free kittens or please-help-me-get-rid-of-all-these-zucchini. I'm talking about a pretty fine-looking 1968 Ford Galaxy!

And then I read the Seller's Description:

Looking to trade.  -  Apparently, the seller doesn't understand the meaning of the word "free". If I'm expected to trade something for your car, then you are not giving your car away for free, now are you?

Frame has been repaired. New steering gear box.  -  What part of "Clean title. This vehicle has no significant damage" implies that the frame has needed to be repaired or a new steering gearbox has needed to be installed?

Pumps are good but sheared [off] a bolt...will need to be replaced for it to work properly.  -  And yet there is "no significant damage"?

And here's the cherry on top...

Unsure of mileage; motor and tranny out of a '73 Torino.  -  So when you said "Driven 12,345 miles," you meant that's how far you've personally driven it since putting in a 49-year-old engine and transmission from a completely different car??!?

Let the buyer beware, indeed.

What Would Happen If...

 

What would happen if I just sat down at my computer's keyboard and let my fingers do the talking? You know, just do my best not to self-edit and let whatever's in my consciousness go ahead and stream out onto the virtual page.

Would I see something profound being produced? Would there be an unconscious insight brought into the light? Would some longing-to-be-heard nugget of wisdom appear, or would it be a heaping pile of nothingness suddenly given weight and volume?

The prevailing wisdom is to write what you know. So, Dewey, whaddaya know?

I know one plus one equals two. But wait, do I really know that? Really, I've just been conditioned to repeat that as a canned response to the equation. Maybe the Truth of the matter is that one plus one equals ravvadilly...whatever that is. I mean, the concept of one or two or eighty-seven is pretty subjective, right? Trace our so-called knowledge of numbers back in time far enough and you'll find some ancient ancestor just kind of making up all these words.

Right?

C'mon, just write!

How easily I am drawn into rabbit holes of sidetracks and cul-de-sacs and to-the-future wanna-go-backs.

Which brings up the question: Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?

I'm heavier now than I was in the past. I sure hope that trend doesn't continue. I mean, last weekend, I bought a couple pairs of pants and they had to be bigger than the pair I was wearing at the time. If I keep shopping like that, I'm going to need a bigger car.

Not to be confused with "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

All of which is to say that when I sit down at my computer keyboard to write...I really ought to have some kind of plan instead of just a stream of consciousness.

Right?

Thank You, Tea Leoni

 

Because of producing the music-centric podcast, Dewey's Jukebox, I have become acquainted with a little website called Songfacts. It's got thousands of factoids about thousands of songs and artists.

Its page on "Beast of Burden", the 435th greatest song of all time, has educated me on the mostly-improvisational origin of the words. It informed me, as if I didn't already know, that "some of the lyrics are less than meaningful and a little repetitious." It educated me about how Mick Jagger was burdened with leading the Rolling Stones while Keith Richards was wasting his life away with heroin, and this song was Keith's way of saying, "I'm back. I'm ready to share the load." It quotes Ron Wood talking about how he and Richards spontaneously wove their guitar licks around each other.

What it doesn't say is that the real lasting impact of the song is how it immediately pulls up the joyous memory of Tea Leoni dancing and singing in the shower in the fine cinematic experience known as The Family Man.

If you've seen it, you know.

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."