Job Jitters

I was starting to think this day would never come, but here at long last it is: I have a job. Granted, it’s only a temp job and doesn’t look to last long, but it does mean I have a reason to leave the house, and I got to use a cash register, and I’m pretty certain this place doesn’t pay in monopoly money (although the “Get Out of Jail Free” cards I got as a Christmas bonus have been useful). For those interested, I work the cash register afternoon shift 2 days a week at a local greenhouse and market. This time of the year is rather slow, so I probably only get 6 to 7 people over my 4 and a half hour shift. As you can see, this shouldn’t be so hard. Let me go ahead and walk you through what a normal day thus far consists of.

10:00 AM: At home. Remind self I have a job now, and I can’t forget to show up (again).

10:30 AM: I Dream of Jeannie marathon starts.

2:40 PM: Suddenly remember that my shift started 10 minutes ago, and rush to get ready (during commercial breaks).

3:10 PM: 40 minutes late (again.) I explain that I was distracted by a I Dream of Jeannie marathon. I am fired. I correct myself; it was a Matlock marathon. I am granted a second chance.

3:30 PM: First customer. Phew. I was getting worried for a minute. They look around for a while.

3:45 PM: They bought a Fruit Roll Up? Just a Fruit Roll Up? They show for 15 minutes and that’s all they get? What is wrong with humanity, I ask.

4:00 PM: No one else has shown up yet. I’m starting to wonder if there’s been some kind of cataclysmic event that wiped our humanity, and somehow I’ve survived because of some kind of, um, I dunno, radiation that the vegetables give off. I am alone. So very alone.

4:35 PM: Still no one. My hopes for the survival of the human race are dwindling. I believe if there were survivors I would have heard something by now.

4:57 PM: I have begun constructing the necessary tools for survival. I set fire to the crates that held the watermelons, so I will be able to keep warm. I have designated the former cash register desk as the lookout point, and using a pair of binoculars I fashioned out of paper towel rolls I am scoping out the charred and burnt countryside (which looks surprisingly pristine for having just survived an atomic holocaust.) I have spotted several cows wandering the deserted plains, and have contemplated using them for food. They would be heavily irradiated, but when the winter months set in, I’ll need to stay alive no matter what.

5: 48 PM: I have made my first kill! Crossing what used to be a street, I ventured boldly into the cows’ habitat, and used a bow and arrow I made to hunt one down. I am now a man!

6:27 PM: I am so lonely. After finishing off my kill, the tragic hopelessness of my situation set in. Staring at the raging inferno of the watermelon crate fire, I just sat there contemplating what was left of my life. When the embers finally died out, I began to weep. It feels like I’ve cried for days. And with no one here to console me, I feel like it will be several more days before I stop, or until I collapse from dehydration.

6:59 PM: Swing low, sweet chariot…

7:00 PM: Oh, hey my shift’s over. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

7:10 PM: I am fired.

The Best Things in Life are Vague

…Or in this case, songs.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have been giving this a lot of thought lately, but I have decided that unclear song lyrics really are the best. I think the reason is that you can only say so much when you do it with precision. When you repeatedly sing about something clearly and specifically, it’s only a matter of time before you realize just how much the emotions that we feel can only be expressed in song are just like everyone else’s. There’s only so many ways to sing “I love you”, “I no longer love you”, or “I’ve changed my mind, I love you again”. And seeing as how these are apparently the only regular emotions that are musically inclined, we end up with decades worth of top forty hits all expressing the same sentiments, and a future bevy of songwriters desperately trying to find new ways of saying the same things, often landing on retarded ways that irreversibly embed themselves in the popular culture.

Two words: Disco Stick.

But then there are those artists who realized that the only way to sing something different was to write lyrics that were indecipherably vague, or outright nonsensical. Growing up, They Might Be Giants were one of my favorite bands, partly because they had impossible to resist catchy music, and partly because there was no one else in history who had sung about Particle Man (particle man), doing the things a particle can. Another of my favorites was Laika and the Cosmonauts, who eschewed lyrics altogether and just used Russian surf guitar riffs. Instead of hearing how much some guy wants “you” back being expressed in the simplest terms possible (“I want you back”), I got to listen to surf guitar and picture wacky aliens doing wacky things. Which is not too hard to imagine when their album cover looks like this:

Am I just showing off how much better my musical choice as a child was then yours? Okay, yes.

Going by this logic that vagueness makes the best lyrics, I’ve decided that two of the best songwriters ever are Beck and KT Tunstall. Listen to almost any song Beck has ever done, and there will be maybe one line that sounds like it makes sense. He talks about “robots and gigolos”, “one’s got a weasel and the others got a flag”, and says he’s “wishing I was living with a hit man.” Not a one of those lines makes any more sense in context, either. It doesn’t take long to realize he’s most of the time saying absolutely nothing, but he says it so well, often, even humorously. KT Tunstall on the other hand is not too different from mainstream writers, if you only count subject matters. She’s a perfect reminder that you do sound totally original even when you sing about the same things as everyone else except that you dredge them through extended metaphors until they’re gloriously unrecognizable. I listened to her first album for a couple years, and it still took her outright saying in an interview one song is about long distance romance before I got it. Makes sense in retrospect, but I’ll be damned if I was ever going to guess something so mundane from lyrics about icebergs melting. And that, it turns out, is what she does best: bringing metaphorical imprecision to what would otherwise be mundane (she also holds the distinction of creating the only positive use of the term "banjo solo" that I can think of).

So for all you fledgling songwriters out there reading this, learn from these artists and always remember to write vague.

Perfect Driving Music... on the Roadtrip to Insanity!

You may not know this about me, but I suffer a bit from stage fright. This extends to several media in my case, like for instance, writing. While I feel I am relatively good at writing, and while I often write “to” a (non-existent) audience, I don’

t often imagine anyone actually reading the useless things I have to say. Imagine the surprise, and even the hint of panic, I felt when I was informed that someone was indeed reading this very blog. I was comfortable with the metaphorical empty theatre, as it meant I basically had the whole stage to do whatever I wanted, say whatever I wanted, use whatever shift key symbols as rudimentary euphemisms I wanted. No one would object or disagree, because I was the only one reading this, and I always agree with what I have to say.

Now, finding out that I was not alone in this imaginary theatre was not by itself enough to drive me to madness, even considering I was halfway there already. No, the real problem began when, while in this emotionally vulnerable and mentally volatil

e state, I opted so soothe my fragile nerves with the calming sounds of Radiohead.

Big mistake.

Listen up people, if you ever feel like you might be coming down with a bad case of mental disorder, do not put on Radiohead. I don’t care how much the song “Kid A” sounds like an eclectic lullabye, do not play it, and do not listen to the lyrics. The lead singer himself claims he sang them through a voice changer because they were too horrific. Do you hear me? Thom Yorke, who wrote the song is terrified by his own lyrics!

And for goodness sake, do not watch the music videos! I saw the video for “There, There” while still but on the threshold of insanity. After it was over, I threw myself bodily over the precipice, and into the dank, dark abyss. Iagne the horrifying woods scene from Snow White, except instead of the fair princess you have the homely features of Thom Yorke, the kind hearted woodland animals are joining in on the attack, and instead of being saved by dwarves, he gets turned into one of the monstrous demon trees that attack weary travelers. Is it any wonder that my hazy recollection of all the time from the moment the

video ended to about two days ago mostly resembles the results of a drunken Salvadore Dali robbing a paint store. Upon recovering my wits, I promptly set to writing this post into my notebook, only to discover all the pages filled with grisly sketches of the Kid A Bear. When I close my eyes, I can still feel it watching me. Watching…