deus ex mama
ray parker junior ought to be ashamed of himself for ripping off huey lewis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCHFVTQKqdQRPJ riffed off one of my worst personal earworms; i hear the horn section, ad infinitim, for hours after i hear huey lewis and the news. and yet i sheepishly love this song, so there you go…
madonna completely ripping off arthur lee and love.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VggPq9bHRr4accept no substitute.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVV830vsJes
what the hell is an altima, anyway?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldyx3KHOFXwback in the olden days — you know, the days when we kids would be loaded in the back of a station wagon — what’s a station wagon you say? aw geez, just go with me, you thirty-somethings — cars often got majestic names. they’d be named for animals: impala, mustang, falcon. they’d be names for places you’d rather be: monte carlo, bel air, malibu, capri. or, they had names that made you know they were packing heat…maverick, cutlass, land cruiser. or packing a load of schoolkids: suburban.
but then again, there have always been the names that were completely made up.
toronado? touareg? yaris?
WTF?
galant? aztek? cruze? does anyone have spell-check out there?
i wonder sometimes about who is charged with making up new model names. what a gig that must be.
L: okay, jerry. imagine that the car buyer is dreaming that his car is his boat, sailing amongst other boats owned by the rich and famous. handcrafted and so exclusive.
J: okay, lou — how about reatta? sounds like regatta, but it’s different.
L: great! let’s do it!
some creative car model names make me laugh. whenever i see an aspire, i imagine that the person aspires toward having a more expensive, better-working car.
whenever i see a focus, i think that the probably under-30 year old driver would like you to focus more on his inner qualities rather than the fact that he cannot afford a different car.
alera? lumina? sounds latin to me, but they’re not, i assure you.
i suspect no one expects people to come up with negative associations with these names. for example, back in the day, rumor had it that ford fieros had engines prone to explosions. fiero…yeah, that’s apparently what it caught when hit from what an acquaintance told me about her own car back in the 1980s.
and altima? every time i have seen one of these, it has been driven by someone over 65. i read altima as old timer. can’t help it.
can’t wait to see names for next year’s models.
yesssss. you know what i meannnnnnnnn!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJDBERdHzUAi realize that this mostly is generational. but jeez! what is going on with spelling these days? i see posts from people, generally under the age of about 25, where they take poetic license with spelling, and not just because they are abbreviating, either. i completely understand that in the age of texting, people are shortening words as much as possible in order to expedite the communication of the message.
but reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeallllly now?
there’s a whole school of thought behind satirical misspellings; but there’s something different about these misspellings — they seem to happen just because. it started for me with prince. i think he started a ball rolling with his creative titling ability, like LOtUSFLOW3R, Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, and so on. (maybe having your own symbol has something to do with it?)
and now? as a result of creative urban misspellings (dawg, anyone?), the world is littered with messages like:
lucy is myyyyy besssssssssst frendddd, my BFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF! i looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee her!
lord. if i see BC typing away like that, i may lose my mind. spelling is something she could work on, and i don’t think a trend that simply adds and subtracts letters wherever one pleases is going to help her later in life.
do youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu?
(and yes. i realize this is all being stated by a woman who refuses to capitalize much.)
not everyone can be doogie howser.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96avgzOZ8sothey pump bach into their bellies while they’re pregnant, hoping it will boost junior’s math scores. they start teaching their child to read before he’s a year old. potty training? done by 18 months. and by age 5, junior’s expected to tackle Dostoevsky. oh, and he’s also a contender for the next olympics in gymnastics, too.
oh, their child is gifted, oh so bloody gifted. let me tell you something: i was a freak of nature back in the day, tested with a college reading level in the 2nd grade. i know a thing or two about getting that label slapped onto your file. i was (and AM!) very fortunate to have parents who never pushed me one way or another. i was permitted to just be me, which isn’t always the easiest thing to be, you know.
i remember a time when i was 9 years old. i was at the OLD ocean county library (not the big beautiful one that stands now in the middle of town). backtracking: my mother may never join a 12-step program for library addicts, but she pretty much wrote the book on how to visit a million different libraries every week. consequently, i believe that in the 1970s and into the 1980s, she knew every librarian in ocean county. the happy consequence of this is that Middlebro and i have always loved to read. (BTD, not so much, though i hear tell he now reads… voluntarily…) anyway, i brought my books up to dennis, the long-haired librarian, to check them out. elaine, he called to my mom, are you sure you want to let your daughter take these out? and before her, my mom saw my selections du jour: romeo and juliet by shakespeare, god bless you, mr, rosewater by kurt vonnegut, and war and peace.
i’m sure my mother wanted to burst out laughing, but with a straight face, she turned to me and said: are you going to read all of these?
and earnestly, i replied, yes, mom.
it’s so important to let your child’s personal freak flag fly. besides, it can provide hours of amusement.
in short, i have no patience for parents who are pushing their kids to be la creme de la creme. i’m not entirely sure what drives this, but i suspect something went kerflooey in someone’s childhood, and he or she is trying to make it right by foisting this heavy weight onto his or her child’s psyche. sure, it’s great to expose children to all sorts of experiences; and if your child shows an early extra interest in math, or reading, or whatever, then by all means, let him pursue that as long as he enjoys it. but don’t push so hard.
this isn’t a science experiment; this is your child.
let him be a child. he will learn to read, he will learn to compute mathematical equations, he will learn to do all the things he is supposed to do. but right now, stop pushing him into some sort of mold of what you think he ought to be. instead, why not sit back and watch this person unfold into a unique individual. let him be himself. and love him, warts and all.
if you want to put that much effort into making someone change, work on yourself first.
there’s only one line you can cut me on: the line to hell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71IFbyQ7D-owe have become a nation of people who believe that rules are there for other people to observe. somehow, other poor schmucks should be reading and following the words on a sign or face severe penalties. lines are there to control crowds, make order out of chaos, and keep people from going where they oughtn’t. the rules of lines are clearly outlined in kindergarten: someone is in front, then everyone else is behind him or her. and we wait until we get our chance to be wherever it is we wish to be.
but not you, my friend. for you are special.
you do not need no stinkin’ line. lines are for suckers. so you trample my kids at the Costco checkout like an elephant on speed and push in front of us because you’re bigger. (mommy needs a moment to get herself together and not bark at the other grownup, i found myself saying to jools when he started marveling at what happened. what i really needed was a mojito and perhaps a water pistol. but i digress.) you ignore the mile-long line of ladies waiting desperately to pee at the concert. you let your kids push in front of all the other kids at the moonbounce.
i think what grinds my gears the most about this: what you are teaching your children… and mine. i get that there are emergencies at times, and i am most willing to give up my place in line to someone who needs it more for very serious reasons. but you are teaching your kids that other people do not matter as much as they do in all arenas of life. and for those of us who are trying to teach our children that lines are part of life, you are showing them that following the rules does not pay.
in short: you suck, and you are making your kids suck, too.
i have a special memory. we are in disneyworld, a land that makes me break out in hives inherently for so many, many reasons (some of which i have shared here. and here. and here. (among other places.) you may ask yourself why i continue to go to disney. i wish i had a good answer for you, but in short, i am often outvoted. and there are bright spots to it, of course, starting with the fact that i actually get to go ON A VACATION. a huge plus, and not something everyone gets to do these days. i wrote about it once, but i thought i’d end with this little bit.
we were waiting on line for the animal safari in animal kingdom — a neat place and a neat ride, incidentally. i like to use lines as a teachable lesson for my kids. you know, an exercise in patience and fairness? a woman and her two kids continually tried to push ahead of us, the family ahead of us, and the older couple on the motorized scooter in front of them. eventually, they succeeded, hitting their trifecta of triumph. what we didn’t know: the woman’s friend and the friend’s young son did not push ahead and remained behind us. why are you so far behind? miss pushypushy asked her friend. why don’t you come up here and join us?
in one of the rarest moments ever, BS and i said in unison, NO! we had had it. for 20 minutes, this woman kept on pushing, nearly trampling over people. i added, if you’d like to join your friends, you can move back and join them.
i noticed that the friend behind us suddenly had a few words with BS. i didn’t hear them at first, so i asked BS what the woman left behind had said.
he replied: she told me “have a nice day! hope you get sent to iraq!”
yes. it’s a small world, after all.
it’s national blog posting month again! squee!
it’s like the bataan death march of forced writing. but writing is good. and as my cousin, a writer, told me when i was 13 years old, one must write daily to improve your craft.
well, not so sure that any of my blather this month will put me any steps closer to getting my novel published, but what fun trying! in previous years, i’ve had different themes (just remember to scroll down to start at the beginning of the month):
kids books and music i love and loathe
so i thought and i thought and i thought. sure, i could skewer music from the ’90s; who couldn’t? and maybe i will do that someday.
but it is election season. and i’m irked. cranky. annoyed. perterbed. and all the other words that the thesaurus might spit out at me if i were to look at it. so why not share my pet peeves?
and while i’m at it, would love to hear about yours. really.
i can’t be the only cranky chick around, right?
so break out the thorazine and join me as i tiptoe through the world of things that make you go AAAARRRRGGGHHH!