Noises Sounds and Sweet Airs

His bill an auger is,
His head, a cap and frill.
He laboreth at every tree, –
A worm his utmost goal.

Well, Miss Dickinson, that is most awesomely poetic. Normally, I'd be tip-toeing right along with you through nature's splendor, basking in one of those warm and fuzzy, one-with-the-universe-and-all-of-God's-creatures kinds of moods. In fact, I actually was last week when I first took this shot. But then the woodpecker stayed. And stayed. And now, he's gone all Rainman, trying to cull worms out of the vent up on the wall outside my office. Dude. Ixsnay on the etalmay. Go find some wood. Like, next door at the neighbor's.

That is all I have for today. It is one of those days. But if you want some amusement, come visit us at The Bitches of Fashion and answer the question at the end of the post. Boys can play, too, even if they think they can't.

Mute Monday: LIGHT on their Feet

California Dreamin'

This post is inspired by one of the songs on Kym's recent play list post.

One of these days, if it ever comes to fruition that I rule the world and education is no longer held hostage by bureaucrats, I am going to introduce into the curriculum for incoming Freshman, a class called Rock as Poetry. Don't get me wrong, I loves me my Donne and Shakespeare and Yeats and Plath as much as the next person. But I contend some of the best poetry that's been written in the past fifty years or so has been written as a rock and roll lyric.

Don't believe me? How about this, from Nirvana's "Heart Shaped Box"?

Meat-eating orchids forgive no one just yet
Cut myself on angel's hair and baby's breath
Broken hymen of your highness I'm left black
Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back.

Take that, Anne Sexton.

Here's another song that gives me goosebumps every time I hear it (thanks, Kym, for reminding me!):



What's your favorite piece of rock and roll poetry?

We Were Liberated From the Fall That's All

Writing about the crowd who pitched up for last fall's Rally for the Republic in Minneapolis, in an article called "The Republic Strikes Back," political writer Bill Kauffman was heartened by what he sees as a newly skeptical attitude towards the Old Boss ethics on either side of the aisle:

"Liberty has a constituency . . . bright and enthusiastic kids afire with the spirit of liberty, of resistance to regimentation and the tyranny of standardization. Homeschoolers, homebrewers, punk rockers, evangelical Christians, radical Kansans, and reactionary New Englanders. These were American girls and boys, beautifully stained in the American grain, hip to Republican lies and numbing Democratic statism. Hell no, they won’t go. They’ll not be cannon fodder for the wars of Bush-Cheney or Obama-Biden. They demand honesty and liberty and respect for all things small and smaller; they have nothing but scorn for the liars and whores who run the empire.

"They reminded me of Emerson’s description of the Loco Foco generation: 'The new race is stiff, heady, and rebellious; they are fanatics in freedom; they hate tolls, taxes, turnpikes, banks, hierarchies, governors, yea, almost laws.” (Spare me the mewling about “ordered liberty,' please—50 years of conservative pieties about “ordered liberty” led to Dick Cheney and a movement full of “men” who dared not open their mouths to defend liberty when she needed it most. Give me disorderly hinterland rebels any day.)"

Yippie kay yay, I say.

Love Hurts

Sometimes, it's also downright embarrassing. Especially when it comes to music. You know, those songs that every tenet of good taste begs you to eschew but that nonetheless manage to stick in your head like a fist full of spaghetti after it dries on the wall. Songs that make you break out into spontaneous, against-your-will sing-a-longs just as traffic comes to a complete standstill during rush hour and you've left all the windows open.

The ones you furtively stash in your iPod because who else besides you is going to know they're there? Well, you and the BofA account executive that sends you your eBill every week, but Suresh lives in Mumbai and most likely hasn't gotten around to Lady Ga Ga's latest yet. The songs you try, try, try to kick to the curb but they keep getting right back up like sister christian and her eye of the tiger to hit you with their best shot because everybody was kung-fu fighting.

So, tell Moi: what are the Top 10 Songs You Know You Shouldn't Love? If you show me yours, I'll show you mine, and we can all hate ourselves in the morning.

1. Even Better Than the Real Thing – U2. I can't abide U2 for very long. It's Bono's fault, I readily admit; he's just so insufferably earnest. Still, on this song, the Edge's sibilant guitarwork is like waves breaking one after the other on a sunlit, white sanded beach. Sparkling, hypnotic, and impossible to ignore.

2. Beautiful - Christina Aguilera. Yeah, yeah, the tuned-to-eleven, poor-poor-pitiful-me wince factor outdoes even that of Janis Ian's "Seventeen," but the vocals are scary good.

3. Zombie - The Cranberries. If Boudicca decided to raise herself from wherever she's been spending these past, what, one thousand years, she'd probably want to inhabit Dolores O'Riordan's body.

4. Poker Face – Lady Ga Ga. Girl's a hot ass mess just begging for some Paglia-esque psychoanalysis, but I dare you to try to mum mum mum mah this song out of your head.

5. Mmmbop – Hanson. Speaking of mmmmm . . . come on, you know you like it, too.

6. I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) – Meatloaf. Everything a woman needs to know about a man's approach to relationships in a near 15 minute opus for which rock opera status is just a chorus line out of reach.

7. I Used to Love Her (But I Had to Kill Her) – Guns N' Roses. Is it funny or is it misogynist? I vote funny because, come on ladies, admit it: sometimes we all just need a good bullet to the head.

8. La Vida Loca - Ricky Martin. So, sue me.

9. If I Could Turn Back Time - Cher. I have been quietly waving my freak flag for Cher ever since "Half Breed." I even forgive her all those Bob Whacky outfits.

10. Once Bitten Twice Shy – Great White. Everything that was sooooooo wrong and yet soooooooo right with early '90s hair band music. Plus, it was written by the great Ian Hunter, so there.

Mute Monday: Dark

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

Every time my in-laws come to visit from Louisiana, they bring with them a bounty of goodies that includes things like crawfish pie, Boudin, fig, mayhaw, and muscadine jellies, a box of salsas of varying degrees of hotness made by one of my father-in-law's clients, and, of course, a big ol' honking box of Gulf shrimp. Only problem is, the shrimp comes frozen. Which means short of sticking the thing under S.B.s table saw and risking my life and limb, I have to unthaw the big brick of shrimp and cook it all within a few days.

No worries, though. After a couple years of this, I have the routine down pat. I usually start with a lemon, parlsey, and shrimp pasta, move on to the ubiquitous shrimp 'n' grits (a new recipe this year, thanks to Shamu), then end it all with a big pot of gumbo that we can eat on for a couple days more and still have some left over to freeze for later.

Last night, to celebrate the fact that today is a rest day in our workout schedule, S.B. and I decided to allow ourselves some alcohol and a new dish that we could cook together while sipping our drinkees and enjoying the mellow summer evening: grilled skewered shrimp wrapped with fresh basil and bacon. Mmmmm . . . bacon.

Anyway.

It was with major anticipation that, after spending a full thirty minutes on the messy, slightly tipsy business of skewering and wrapping shrimp, S.B. opened the lid to the BBQ grill to find that a mouse had not only taken up residence in the smoker box, she was also in the process of giving birth.

Needless to say, Momma Mouse was none to happy to see us (actually, scared out of her mousie mind was more like it) and although we tried to snag her while she was in her box in order to relocate her and her little family, she was having none of it. She quickly ran up the wall on the side of the house and wouldn't come down.

A sad, sad sight greeted me when I finally got up the courage to peek in the box: Two tiny newborns the size, color, and texture of jelly beans were squirming helplessly in a nest crafted out of the Pepto Bismol colored insulation that protects our pool pump. No doubt stolen by momma on one of her daily foraging expeditions. How she managed to get by both Ivan and Maddie is one heck of a testament to the evolutionary success of these wily little critters.

Yes, I realize that the vast majority of mice are simply up to no good. Scratching in the walls, getting into the pantry, gnawing through car engine cables, spreading Hanta virus. Still. Only seconds into their life on this great and glorious earth and this is how they are greeted? After I made a big enough fuss, S.B. finally sighed his S.B. sigh, agreed not to shoot the lot of 'em, and instead pulled the baby birthin' box out of the grill and set it in a larger box on a law chair next to the wall where mamma had attached herself.

And then we proceeded to grill our shrimp. Because hungry eventually trumps blubbery and tearful in Moi's household.

We should have thought to replace the birthing box in the grill once it cooled down but I'm ashamed to admit I forgot about the mice. This morning, S.B. had to remind me. When I checked on them at 8:30, I was surprised to find them still alive and squirming. But no sign of momma. So S.B. took the smaller box and placed it back in its original spot in the grill and shut the lid, in the hopes that mom would come back.

It's two o'clock in the afternoon and I just lifted the lid. The jellies are squirming up a storm, but mom isn't in the box.

Help.