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 A blog about music from my unique perspective (also a spot for some poetry I’ve written) |
A blog, generally about music, usually for projects hosted by Jeff  . I may also write about the 48-Hour Media Prompt Challenge if I don't feel like writing a story or poem inspired by the given song. Other bits of poetry or different topics of discussion might end up here as well.![Merit Badge in WDC Media Prompt
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| It's Thanksgiving evening, and I've had a long and exhausting day. Not because I'm a hostess for an event, or because I spent the day on the road. No. It was that time of the month, rendering me NPO with waves of intestinal discomfort for at least twelve hours. Fortunately, I had absolutely nothing planned for the day, so I basically just vegetated around the house, slipping in and out of a hypnogogic dream state, vaguely hoping I wouldn't have to deal with running out of paper towels and being a cranky pain in the rear end to anyone who had to interact with me. (My autistic traits become amplified during times of bodily malfunctioning…) I'm thankful for a safe place in a small, quiet town. I'm thankful for the dull nudge of hunger that finally creeps in like a wayward cat after the peak of period nausea subsides. I'm thankful for sleep and the ability to let go of everything and crawl under warm blankets for a few hours. I'm thankful for beautiful music and high-quality audio. I'm thankful I was able to get every writing goal accomplished this month except for one, which I'll hopefully have the energy to tackle over the weekend, after a good meal and some solid rest. I'm thankful for the iPad I won in a sweepstakes five years ago, keeping my writing projects accessible since my old phone died. I'm thankful to achieve my dream of having a short story published in a magazine (out December 1st!) with work that took place from start to finish on my iPad. I'm thankful, especially, for writing.com, which has shaped the past two and a half years of my life in ways I never expected. I've made friends, lost friends, navigated drama, made peace, and written works I never thought I could. If you'd told me ten years ago that I'd write a series of stories tracing the life of a detective, ("Reflections"  ) inspired by a vault of demos celebrating an album that had only just been released by a band I would become a superfan of with a song called Demons, I'd have assumed you were out of your mind.I've come a long way since 2015. Imagine Dragons has been there with me for four-fifths of the decade, and WdC has been there for over one-fifth of it. The friendships I've made and the lessons I've learned here, I'll remember the rest of my life. I'm looking forward to writing a year-end wrap-up in December, discussing all the goals I'd set for 2025 in my "Dear Me 2025" letter.Thank you, The StoryMaster  for dropping a bonus challenge this month even as you work so hard remodeling the site. I'm grateful for you and The StoryMistress      Words: 460. Written for "Note: 48-HOUR CHALLENGE : BONUS Media Prompt ..." |
| A couple months ago, a mentor friend and I were discussing having ChatGPT assist us with our humor. I said I would never use AI because I thought its humor seemed repetitive and exaggerated. I think the difference here is that I didn't tell it to rewrite my story to make it funnier; instead, I asked it for advice, breaking down what exactly humor is in the first place, so I could do it myself. Following is the entire extent of our conversation about my November Bard's Hall entry, "Exotic Species" ✅Start Chat✅ Me: I need some advice on creative writing. There's a prompt I wrote a story for, for a contest, but I'm not sure it's as funny as they're expecting. I'll give you the prompt and my story, and you can give me some tips on refining the humor or making it more culturally sensitive. Sure — I’d be happy to help with that. Go ahead and share the prompt and your story, and let me know anything specific you’re worried about (tone, humor style, cultural sensitivity, etc.). I can walk through what’s working, what might land differently with readers, and offer concrete revision suggestions. Me: Insert prompt and first draft... Here are **high-level strengths**, **potential risks**, and **concrete revision ideas** for humor and cultural sensitivity — without flattening the emotional realism you’re clearly good at portraying. --- # ⭐ First: What’s working well **1. Your voice is strong and believable.** Layla feels like a real person: earnest, observant, and slightly overwhelmed. The sincerity actually *helps* set up a humorous twist, because earnest narrators can be unintentionally funny when chaos swirls around them. **2. There *is* humor here — it’s just subtle, situational, and character-based.** The leprechaun-like boy trying to pick her up in a Garda lobby? Fatima yelling at him? That’s great. **3. The ending “Inshallah!” tag is genuinely cute.** Because it mirrors the parents’ probable exasperation: “Even her *joke* ends with religious hedging.” **4. You’ve chosen a risky but rich cultural terrain.** Fish-out-of-water humor between Muslim American students and Irish locals is *viable*, if handled lightly. --- # ⚠️ Where readers may get uneasy (and how to fix it) Right now the story leans toward **political realism** (riots, hate crimes, protests, accusations, databases, deportations). Comedy contests generally expect a bit more *exaggeration*, *whimsy*, or *delightful absurdity* rather than **real contemporary tensions**. What risks humor deflation: * The protestors’ lines echo real-world xenophobia very closely. * An innocent Muslim young man being mistaken for a criminal migrant and detained is *plausible* — but not *funny plausible*. * Deportation to Afghanistan is extremely high-stakes. * The No-Fly List is connected to real-world trauma for some Muslim readers. None of this is *wrong*, but for a **light comedic contest**, it can feel too real, too sharp. What you want is exaggeration that signals: **this is obviously comedic and not commentary.** --- # 🎭 How to make it funnier *and* safer: Specific revision approaches Below are three ways you can shift tone while keeping the same general structure. Pick whichever aligns with your style. --- ## **OPTION A: Lean into absurdity rather than realism** Instead of real hate groups and current events, make the antagonists comically misguided or ridiculously misinformed. Examples: * Protestors holding signs like *“Ban All Foreign Spices!”* or *“Save Our Potatoes!”* * They accuse Abdullah of “stealing the Book of Kells,” “smuggling shamrocks,” or “tampering with the Guinness flavor matrix.” * The Garda’s “international database” flags him because a medieval Irish saint had the same name. **Effect:** The culture clash becomes *silly* instead of political. --- ## **OPTION B: Shift the “mistaken identity” into pure farce** Instead of confusing him with a criminal migrant, he’s confused with: * A famous Irish TikTok prankster * A legendary Gaelic folk hero reincarnated * A wanted sheep thief * A banned Eurovision backup dancer * Someone who owes €4,000 in overdue library fines **Effect:** Readers laugh *with* the situation rather than feel bad for the character. --- ## **OPTION C: Use Layla’s devoutness as a comedic engine** You already do this well. You could amplify it safely: * Sean says, “Would you like to see my favorite pub?” Layla internally panics: *Does the Qur’an address Irish pubs specifically?* * She sees a statue of St. Patrick and worries he’s watching her. * She tries to politely decline snacks because she can’t identify whether anything contains alcohol, pork, or “Irishness.” **Effect:** The humor stays character-based, affectionate, and harmless. --- # 📝 Structural, scene-level suggestions ### **1. Cut or soften the hate-crime backstory.** Replace the “Afghani attacked a girl” line with something neutral but funny: * “A rogue alpaca escaped from a petting zoo and everyone blamed the foreigners.” * “Someone graffitied a Viking statue and the Irish blamed outside influences.” ### **2. Make the protesters ridiculous rather than hostile.** Example dialogue: > “You foreigners stole our cultural heritage!” > “Sir, this is a halal butcher shop.” > “Exactly! Ireland was founded on… uh… non-halal principles!” ### **3. Change the detention reason to something humorous.** E.g., the Garda thinks Abdullah is the mastermind behind: * A conspiracy to turn the Spire into a giant kebab skewer * A stolen batch of corned beef * A rogue drone that keeps delivering kebabs to the Prime Minister’s house ### **4. Let the host parents be slightly eccentric.** Dr. Naik could keep accidentally making things worse: * “Officer, surely you can see my son is far too cowardly to commit a crime.” * “What do you mean cowardly?” * “Sweetheart, you fainted at a loud sneeze.” ### **5. Build a stronger comedic crescendo in the letter.** Everything should escalate: * Protestors → misunderstanding → detention → bizarre interrogation → surreal bureaucratic twist → panicked “call immediately!” Then the P.S. becomes a bigger, funnier snap. --- # 📬 Suggested micro-edits that improve humor without changing plot You could keep 90% of your story and only change certain lines: * Make the protest signs silly: *“Ireland for Irish People and Irish-Themed Tourists!”* * Replace the accusation: “Someone claimed Abdullah was the mastermind behind a harebrained scheme to replace all Irish traffic lights with blinking ‘Inshallah’ signs.” * Adjust Fatima’s line: “Sean O’Donoghue! You cannot ask a Muslim exchange student to go to a pub. We talked about this at the diversity workshop.” * Change the No-Fly List detail: “His name matches a man wanted in Bolivia for smuggling llamas into a soccer match.” These kinds of shifts keep your culture and characters intact but lighten the emotional stakes. --- # 🧭 Summary **Your story has heart, vivid cultural texture, and clear humor.** For a comedy contest, the safest path is to nudge it out of **political realism** and into **heightened ridiculousness** or **character-driven farce**. If you’d like, I can: 1. **Help you rewrite specific sections**, 2. **Punch up individual jokes**, 3. **Tone-map the story** to balance humor and sincerity, or 4. **Produce a fully revised alternate comedic version** while keeping your characters and voice. Just tell me what you’d prefer. Me: Oh my, those are good suggestions. I'm never good at exaggeration - I have a tendency to overrealism and kinda struggle with humor. I'll definitely work on it with your advice :) Thank you You’re really welcome — and honestly, your “overrealism” is a *strength*. It’s why your scenes feel textured and lived-in. Humor built from realism can be fantastic; you just need to let one or two elements tip gently into the absurd so readers can see the comedic frame around the emotional truth. If you ever want to practice exaggeration in a way that still feels natural to you, here are a few gentle techniques: ### **1. Shift only one detail out of reality.** Keep the situation real, but make *one* element nonsensical. Example: a very serious Garda officer who believes Abdullah looks exactly like “The Great Dublin Chicken Thief.” ### **2. Let characters misinterpret each other.** You’re already great at cross-cultural nuance. Humor often arises from earnest people misunderstanding each other in harmless ways. ### **3. Add contrast, not silliness.** If everything is realistic, and then one character is comedically confident or illogically sure of something (“It *is* illegal to wear green on Wednesdays, lassie”), the joke lands without cartoonishness. ### **4. Make the stakes sound dire, but for a dumb reason.** Instead of real deportation, something like: > “They said they’d send us to County Offaly if we didn’t comply — and Mom, you know how I get around peat bogs.” It keeps your tone grounded but gives readers permission to laugh. ### **5. Let Layla’s inner monologue do the heavy lifting.** Her confusion, politeness, religious conscience, and occasional panic are naturally sweet and funny. Lean on that. If you end up revising and want a second set of eyes — or if you want me to help you turn one scene into a comedic version so you can see how the exaggeration might look — I’d be happy to help anytime. Me: Here's my second draft. I had fun editing it :) Insert draft Your revision is **genuinely delightful** — and you’ve made *exactly* the kind of tonal shift that elevates this into true comedic territory without sacrificing your grounded, character-driven voice. Let me give you a clear, craft-focused evaluation so you can revise confidently or tweak before submitting. --- # 🌟 What You NAILED in This Draft ## **1. The absurdity is spot-on.** It’s whimsical, not chaotic; exaggerated, not cartoonish. It hits an excellent “Gentle Farce” tone. Examples that are perfect: * *“Ireland for the Irish setters!”* * Two hundred hungry camels loosed in a cathedral * Glitter-bomb riots * Hidden Arabian dune mice * “Outlaw pork” petition littering * The No-Fly List replaced with “spray-painted inshallah five thousand times in crosswalks” This is **exactly** the kind of exaggeration that keeps cultural humor safe, affectionate, and funny. ## **2. Cultural sensitivity is handled with warmth and playfulness.** You don’t mock Muslim identity or Irish culture; instead, you heighten misunderstandings in silly, impossible ways. Your choices are respectful *and* hilarious. ## **3. Layla’s voice is consistent, sweet, and charming.** Her polite panic (“…how much would that offend Allah!”) and earnest confusion are comedy gold. The humor *flows from character*, which is the safest and strongest type. ## **4. The pacing is dramatically better.** You escalate beautifully: * Protestors → glitter riot → mistaken identity → detention → ridiculous suspicion → threat of monastic exile. The final beat (“my manuscript illuminating skills have never been especially good”) is a perfectly quirky closing before the P.S. ## **5. The exaggerated cultural mashups are extremely funny.** “Corned beef and cabbage with a side of hummus” made me laugh out loud — and it does exactly what you think: it shows the Commissioner is irrational, not prejudiced. --- # 🔧 Micro-tweaks That Could Make It Even Funnier (Optional) These are tiny polish-level notes — not “needs,” just “coulds.” ## **1. Clarify the running gag about animals.** You have: * Irish setters * Exotic animals * Camels * Dune mice It’s funny, but if you want the humor to feel even more cohesive, you could tie them back to one absurd rumor (“Arabian animals are taking over Ireland”). But it already works as-is. ## **2. Boost Professor Naik’s absent-mindedness once more.** One additional line could set up the “alibi” joke earlier, making it land even bigger. Something tiny, e.g.: > Professor Naik wandered off at one point because he thought he smelled cardamom in the air and wanted to “follow the trail.” ## **3. The “cloistered life on the Isle of Man” is great — you could push it one notch.** Example: > “Males to the monastery, females to the convent, and any pets to the monastery gift shop.” But again — optional. ## **4. Consider giving Sean one more silly line before he slinks off.** He’s funny, and one extra beat could make him a recurring comedic note without overuse. E.g.: > “Sean, we talked about this!” > “But the pub is having a buy-one-get-one shepherd’s pie night…” Small, not required. --- # 🎉 Overall Evaluation **This draft is contest-ready.** It’s warm, culturally aware, respectful, tonally consistent, and genuinely funny in a literary way — not slapstick, not satire, but charming character-driven comedy. You kept your original strengths (voice, detail, sincerity) and layered the humor lightly but effectively. If you’d like, I can help with: * A polishing pass for line rhythm * Making the humor even punchier * Adding or trimming 50–100 words * Giving you a “judge’s perspective” on which moments stand out most * Or even helping with your “Full Disclosure” note formatting. But the core story? **You should feel proud of this.** ❌End Chat❌ This was a lot of fun for me; it took something I'd been dreading and felt inadequate to do and sounded more like sad political commentary than an absurd prank, and guided me on what needed to change and how. I think it's a good example of how we can use AI as a coach and adviser, without leaning on it to modify our voice or do the work for us. |
| This month's 48 Hour Media Prompt Challenge is Royals, the 2013 breakout hit single by New Zealand pop artist Lorde. I've been familiar with Lorde and Royals for approximately as long as it's been around, though I hadn't realized it was now twelve years old. It came out before I had internet access, in that blurry period when I was beginning to be fascinated by the current soundtracks of the day, yet had no clue what any of them were. For context, it came out the same year as OneRepublic's Counting Stars, a year after Imagine Dragons broke out with Demons and It's Time. I look back at songs from this era with nostalgia, as they marked a coming of age at a time when pop music, generally speaking, had a degree of “gospel” styling that rendered it fairly decent (influenced in part by the hard work of songwriter and producer Ryan Tedder behind the scenes…) I digress. At the time, Royals held a certain mystique for me. I didn't know what it was about and couldn't tell what she was saying. The words “royal” and “blood” made me think of a prizefight, and the overall tone and style seemed ominous and unnerving. I was relieved to finally look it up and discover she was only complaining about rich people showing off. I then looked her up, glanced over her Wikipedia bio, nodded in vague understanding, and haven't Googled or Shazamed her or the song in about ten years. I hear it occasionally at Walmart or McDonald's, so I haven't exactly forgotten it. In fact, just a few months ago I marveled at how a song that had once sounded so rad and edgy now sounds quaint and old-fashioned, compared to the trashy hip-hop drivel that passes for pop music nowadays. When this was announced for the challenge, I decided to download it for the first time and run my eye over its Wikipedia pages again. Though I haven't heard anything else from Lorde since this, I see she's been busy and has made a good name for herself over the years. I wasn't sure what type of content I would write for this, because Royals has always piqued my imagination, more from the sound and style than the actual words. I could have written a story, but I'm not really motivated to write yet another story this month, considering I'm all caught up at the Bradbury. I'm not in a poetry mood, because I just spun off a poem for Quihadi. A blog post is perfect, because I was just looking at my music blog and noticing how I haven't posted anything there since Party Week. I've never before listened to Royals, only heard it. Here follows some loose analysis of what I think about it… My first impression is that it's an extremely muted version of ID’s Thunder, instrumentally. The music is low-key, allowing the lyrical melody to carry the atmosphere without being overproduced. I remember when Taylor Swift's You Need to Calm Down came out, I compared her production there to that of Royals. Spare and simple, without any memorable flourishes. Oh, whaddya know… My shuffle button was activated, and when Royals ended it moved on to Randy Travis's Forever and Ever, Amen. Now there's a song with charm, clarity and texture. Royals? Meh. I think it's more interesting when I leave it at arm's length. Listening close up didn't reveal anything I didn't already know. I probably will remove it from my playlist at some point. Words: 590. Written for "Note: 48-HOUR CHALLENGE : Media Prompt Deadl..." |
| Prompt 7: "The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." - Bill Watterson Today's prompt made me chuckle at first… it's sad, though, that humanity has made such a mess of the world that extraterrestrials wouldn't dream of approaching us. Although, there are weighty implications to that statement. For starters, how can we assume that if there is extraterrestrial life, the creatures automatically have a higher moral system than we do? If there's anything pop culture can teach us, it's that aliens can easily be far more monstrous than us. In some cases, we're nothing more than a light snack to them, or bodies to lay eggs in  Of course there's no use, really, in overanalyzing a joke. My opinions on the existence of extraterrestrial life are a bit muddled. When I was a kid, Mom used to enjoy watching episodes of UFO Hunters (starring William J. Birnes et al) on YouTube. So I'm familiar with a lot of the sightings and analysis and whatnot. Logically and secularly speaking, the chances of other forms of life evolving on distant planets in other galaxies are… I don't know  I'm not a scientist. Judging by what the Intelligent Design people say, I doubt that miracles like the precise placement of Earth in relation to the Sun and Moon, and the complexities of cell structure, would happen by random chance more than once. On the other hand, considering the sheer vastness of the universe, and everything we don't know about it, it could be entirely possible that somewhere out there, life exists, even if only in a primitive bacterial form.But what about UFO sightings, close encounters, and other strange phenomena? Now we're getting into what I believe is different territory. As a spiritual person who believes in God and believes there is evil in the world, I have developed the idea of physically unexplainable events being caused by supernatural forces rather than extraterrestrial ones. Ok, now all you thoroughly secular people probably think I'm off my rocker. Bad enough to take UFO sightings seriously – even worse to attribute them to the supernatural! It's something I find difficult to explain rationally on short notice… I've always found Paul's words in Ephesians 6:12 to be peculiarly chilling: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms..." Perhaps our Christian friend LightinMind  would have some useful input on this subject.On further consideration, I think I have this belief because of the general overlap between the types of things reported as UFOs, and the sort of things that happen in haunted houses and such: flashing lights, moving objects, the manipulation of human energies to create alarm and confusion, the disruption of electrical items. This points to something dangerous, something bigger than we can understand, and I believe such things should be avoided as useless distractions from the real world. I've never been much of a fan of space exploration, partly due to a solipsistic perspective that if I can't see it or experience it, it doesn't really exist. The idea of people going to “colonize” Mars (as if we didn't already know what a bad idea colonization is) seems as silly as if someone asked me if I would like to live in Antarctica. Some things are never meant to be done. When God made Adam and Eve, He did not commission them to take over the known universe and litter it with abandoned, outdated space gadgets that are now threatening to collide with each other. He wanted them to grow and tend a garden. My head may be in the clouds, but my feet are squarely on Terra Firma. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Maybe if I meet a friendly E.T. we can take a ride together in the stars. Until then, I'll keep weeding my yard. Words: 660. |
| My final Barrel of Monkeys track is the Simply Three string cover of the famous Avicii song, Wake Me Up. I threw this in for variety, after checking and seeing that it has well over 25 million streams. It's possibly Simply Three's most well-known single. What it Sounds Like Simply Three use a cello, a bass, and a violin to weave an entrancing web of wordless music, tracing the path of the original EDM track while making their version truly unique. It soars at the bridge, captures the infectious hook, blends the chorus in, and draws one along on a breathtaking journey, similar to the imagery in the music video. Personal Significance This is the cover that introduced me to Simply Three. I remember scrolling through YouTube one evening on a scratchy WiFi signal while traveling the backwoods of Tennessee in 2018. I noticed the official music video with the thumbnail of three guys holding a cello, a giant cello and a violin on the edge of a mountain, and since I knew and liked the song I thought it would be interesting. Boy, was it ever. It opened a whole new world of music up to me. I had never thought of myself as someone who liked classical music or violins, but show me string covers and I was enamored. I devoured S3’s covers of Counting Stars and Believer - naturally - and explored all manner of other covers of whatever pop songs I was familiar with. It taught me to look beyond the words of a song and consider the workability of the lyrical melody. Sometimes even songs I despise make great cello covers. Wake Me Up is a song I love, of course, and it's a delight to have this version on my playlist. Which reminds me, Simply Three used to offer it as a free download on their website, I think if you signed up for their emails, so it was one of the first tracks I actually “owned” and could play offline. I've used it over the years as a bellwether for judging the capabilities of different sets of earbuds, because it features a prominent bass. I remember the first pair of Bluetooth earbuds I ever had was one I picked up off the ground in Tennessee. When I connected them for the first time, the first song I had access to was S3'S Wake Me Up. I almost fell over in amazement at how different the opening notes sounded with a proper bass. What an experience. I hope you've enjoyed my leap into a "Barrel of Monkeys" this month. Kudos to Jeff for hosting this each year. It's always fun for me to write about music.Words: 450. |
This was the idea of iKïyå§ama  , for "Writing.Com in Wonderland"  1. Melancholy: a collie wearing a watermelon costume 2. Serendipity: when you slather Dippity Doo on your Saran wrapped sandwich 3. Theosophy: one of those "people pairs," specifically Theodore and Sophy 4. Watershed: what happens when your dog comes in out of the rain and shakes 5. Waverly: watching the ocean waves while climbing a coconut palm 6. Mondegreen: when your leftovers start looking like they've been "laid on the green..." 7. Footloose: what happens when the Halloween skeleton is left in the closet for too long 8. Foresight: that third eye in the middle of your forehead... 9. Jigsaw: when someone joggles your arm as you're doing something delicate and precise... 10. Frenetic: when you get a new hairstyle by sticking your finger in a light socket 11. Background: the ground in back of the haunted house (where the graveyard is) 12. Graveyard: when the owl in that tree looks down at you like "you shouldn't be here..." 13. Wednesday: the day all the Weds get nesed. 1. Wonderlanditis: when one gets lost down the rabbit hole and can't get back home 2. Conflusticated: a state of frenzied concern and flustered anxiety 3. Dracognomist: a gnome who rides dragons 4. Ghostethtician: someone who makes ghosts beautiful 5. Planchard: a type of lettuce used in Wonderland 6. Yukgort: a creature something like a yak, but with six horns and leathery skin 7. Slindering: the art of sneaking past your dozing spouse while holding a tray of snacks 8. Fraxidallion: a fractured medallion that's been glued back together, usually with magical properties 9. Endronititis: when a lazy person starts taking root and turns into a tree 10. Libriascale: arranging all your books on the shelf in rainbow order of their spine colors 11. Thenoscope: a telescope that lets you see into the future 12. Delgradosis: what happens when you take a train to sightsee and it won't let you off So... Yeah   Let me know what your favorites are! |
| My sixth Barrel of Monkeys track is a single off of the 2022 Imagine Dragons double album Mercury Act 1 & 2. I chose this because I was getting tired of trying to find ID tracks with slightly over 25 million streams. For some reason their tracks either have a gazillion views (on YouTube) or surprisingly few. I don't have a Spotify account, and it's rather difficult to access streaming stats per song. This, obviously, has way more than the challenge requirements. What it Sounds Like Sharks is a spartan song, with a simple bass line and production reflective of Rick Rubin’s influence. My first impression was that it had a demo feel, perhaps because of the real instruments combined with the synth effects. (The bass line is actually identical to another single off of Act 2, Bones. But that's a different story…) It has a spooky sound, of course, suitable to the theme, complete with unnerving laughs and ominous popping bubbles added at the beginning of the second verse. Now that I think of it, it resembles one of Michael Jackson's horror type songs, something that kids love to be scared with. What It Means Thematically, Sharks reminds us that everyone is a shark. It deals with envy, backbiting, and toxic behavior, while also reflecting on the brevity of life and how one tends to become the very thing one dislikes. For some reason, kids love this song. I've never liked real sharks, for much the same reason that dinosaurs never interested me. I would think Sharks is even a bit creepy for kids, but it's more playfully exaggerated than truly sinister, and it does teach an important lesson about human nature. The music video for Sharks is the cat's pajamas. I absolutely love it. The evening it came out, I must've watched it a million times on loop. It portrays a story purportedly inspired by the movie Ocean’s Eleven, where some kind of carefully planned heist is taking place at a landmark casino in Vegas. As a person who doesn't watch movies, I thoroughly appreciate the effort that went into creating a mini-movie for this song. I also love how a folding smartphone is prominently featured; some people might laugh at the commercial aspect of that, but good grief, the only other time I've seen those is when I played with the test devices at Best Buy  Personal Significance Sharks was released in June of 2022, during a time when I was still finding myself after the pandemic and a toxic job. I found comfort in the relatability of Dan's words, seeing my own experience reflected, especially in the second verse: “don’t you let ‘em see you struggle - hiding your tears/ crisis, take advantage of your niceness… prey on your fears.” I made an art piece for this song… Technically, it was supposed to be a birthday card for Dan Reynolds, to be posted on my Twitter page and appreciated by the fandom, but I was in the process of pulling away from social media and ended up missing the day entirely. I think I posted it a year later, but by then everything had changed and it lacked significance. I got the idea because the band released an animated lyrics video of Sharks in time for his birthday - I think it had something to do with National Shark Awareness Day - and I took a screenshot of the phrase “you're a light in the dark” and thought it applied nicely to him, so embellished it. I must've listened to Sharks a gazillion times, between my initial release analysis and watching the music video and streaming it on my personal offline shuffle mix. Like all the tracks off of Mercury, I wore it threadbare and haven't really played it much since joining WdC. I'm glad to have a chance to give it a fresh listen with good earbuds. Words: 640. |
| Prompt 5: Espresso Macchiato, by Tommy Cash, from Eurovision Today's prompt from Petra is a song, which I chose not to listen to nor to attempt to read the lyrics. For starters, the video she embedded is unavailable in the US, and when I googled the phrase she gave us, I was presented with a detailed Wikipedia page . Judging by the song's description, it isn't anything I would care to hear, but it does provide me with plenty to write about.I've instinctively never tolerated stereotypes. I learned all the reasons why they're bad from an early age, reading stern warnings in my textbooks to not make jokes about one's “Italian temper” or “ginger hair” or anything else of that nature. My mom is Italian, which means she's had to put up with all manner of stereotyping over the course of her life. I've gotten by with less of it because I'm more Anglo, being half Irish… We moved from the relatively metropolitan atmosphere of Florida to a small town in Tennessee when I was little, and oh boy, was it a culture shock. The locals didn't know what to make of us. In many ways, it was classic William Faulkner – a “crooked little town,” as a fellow outsider and nextdoor neighbor called it. One time, Mom was talking to the bus driver and shared her Italian background. He then repeatedly insisted, “oh, you're here because the Witness Protection Program sent you! You're in hiding because of the Mafia.” Sheesh. Even a neighbor lady from Chile, another outsider, leaned in close to Mom and asked her repeatedly “so what's the real reason you moved here?” Honestly, we could have asked her the same. With this kind of upbringing, having to deal with a backwards, intolerant and insular community, I have a good amount of sympathy for the people criticizing this nonsensical song. An Estonian making jokes about Italians? Come on, how would he like it if someone wrote a song utilizing a bunch of Estonian stereotypes, written in a mashup of pidgin languages? He wouldn't be calling it playful and fun. Espresso Macchiato seems like an attention seeking cheap trick, attempting to go viral by sheer idiocy. I do appreciate a little fun, certainly, and in fact I was just thinking not long ago about how touchy Italians can be with how others see their culture. Recently, there was a kerfuffle when a British news site reinterpreted an Italian dish by adding an ingredient. Italians were quite upset and insisted it could no longer be called the original name if it wasn't the same dish. All I could think of was that it didn't sound like a very appetizing recipe in the first place I've learned a few terms from this: Macaronic, broccolino, Italian brainrot, Dolmio, and the existence of a casino called Wigan and a 1982 Danish movie perspective on the US called 66 Scenes from America. None of it is anything I'm particularly interested in, except perhaps to marvel at how strange worldly culture is. I'm fascinated by the ways countries view each other, and it's somewhat amusing to stand back and see two European countries getting uptight when others around the globe may not know where to find either one of them on the map. Words: 540. |
| My fifth Barrel of Monkeys track is another deep cut from OneRepublic's 2013 album Native. I pulled it off a list of 1R tracks with slightly over 25 million streams. What it Sounds Like Listening to it now, with my new earbuds - I'm pretty sure for the first time - I don't hear anything particularly notable about the music. It has pretty standard Native style production, with hints of the soaring synths of Au Revoir and other deep cuts. I might call it bland. Perhaps that's why it slipped under my radar for several years. This time around, I realize Burning Bridges has no bridge… Well, that's ironic! I've known this song since 2017, and I never picked up the pun. I know Ryan did that on purpose, because he did it a few years later in 1R’s 2021 song Savior, where he mentioned the word “bridge” at the bridge. A double irony is that he quite literally has burned his (musical) bridges down these days. What It Means The meaning is perhaps the most interesting part of Burning Bridges. I remember being fascinated by two prevailing interpretations of the idiomatic titular expression. On Genius, it was explained as either a positive theme or a negative one. Negatively, it could be seen as asking to be set free from the relationship. I prefer the positive interpretation, which makes more sense in the context. The narrator sees how valuable the relationship is, sees how he keeps forming unhealthy connections to things beyond it, and is asking for the bridges he's built to everything that could pull him away from it to be destroyed. Perhaps the best way to explain it is with a visual. I see a couple standing on an island, hand in hand, surrounded by bridges on fire. All they have is each other, and that's all they want. In my Genius days, I used to love drawing from Ryan's Christian upbringing to help interpret his songs. This one has a clear resemblance to gospel type themes, of wanting nothing to distract from what is seen as the greatest relationship of them all. Even the purifying aspect of fire is significant. Personal Significance Despite my initial fascination with Burning Bridges, I've let it slip away from me over the years. I remember I was vacationing in South Carolina when I wrote down the lyrics and proposed explanations for it on Genius. Many memories were made that year, as summer slipped into autumn and I explored the state while exploring music as well. I'm glad I had an excuse to play it again. It's a song I've been telling myself I should go back and listen to, ever since I saw it listed in a recent article describing 1R deep cuts (all of which I'm intimately familiar with.) Words: 460. |
| Prompt 4: "Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese." — G.K. Chesterton. Make this quote the start of your blog today. I couldn't help chuckling when I first saw the prompt this morning… Then I immediately tried to remember a poem discussing cheese. All I could come up with is the old nursery rhyme, If all the world were paper And all the waters ink And all the trees were bread and cheese What would the people drink? This little doggerel always unnerved me, because it seemed distressing to imagine people being unable to drink water. Since it wormed its way into my head at an early age, I changed the final word to “think” instead of “drink” to make myself feel better. So… Beyond this, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say. Is this a challenge to write an eloquent, elegant poem about cheese? Are we supposed to contemplate the importance of cheese in our lives? Or what? Cheese has always been one of my favorite foods. My earliest memories of picnics feature cheese and sardine sandwiches, fruit bowls and yogurt, all purchased at Publix. As I grew older, I ate so much cheese, I would liken myself to a mouse: quiet, unobtrusive, sneaky, and cheese obsessed. I was quite picky about it, though: American cheese in particular tasted like plastic, and I insisted on only eating it melted over omelettes or homemade burgers. American cheese straight from the fridge, peeled away from inside those wax sheets? Yuck! My favorite cheese was and still is Muenster, though Cheddar, Swiss and Parmesan come in close. Nothing finishes off an Italian pasta dish like the Parm! Mac and cheese, of course, is a classic. Going through puberty, I had awful acne, to the point where I avoided wearing pinks and reds because it brought out the irritated flush in my face. After a while of doing the usual salicylic acid washes and whatnot, Mom realized I should try cutting back on cheese and dairy products. It worked, and I've had clear skin since then. I still eat a reasonable amount of them, just more balanced with whole grains, fruits and vegetables. Dairy is important for women at all stages of life because of osteoporosis; we need to maintain bone strength. It's also a good idea to have as much as possible from a young age to set up strong teeth and bones at the start. Cheese is a great way to consume dairy, because it's so versatile and comes in a whole range of varieties. I should end with a cheese themed poem… American, Swiss, English, French - So many cheeses on the bench! Cheddar, provolone, parmesan, mozz – Variety overwhelming gives me pause! I must decide between Gorgonzola or Stilton - Oh, no, Limburger - my brain's wiltin’! What's really in that Kraft Mac and Cheese? Is it top quality, tell me please! Oh dear, someone else likes cheese as well Little mouse friend, I'll share, but don't tell! Sometimes I'm so goofy, I make myself blush… Enjoy! Words: 506. |
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