Tag Archives: holidays

Bad Love (Songs)

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What are the worst love songs of all time?

Well, this list on Yahoo! is a good start, but it barely scratches the surface of love songs that leave something to be desired, such as “love,” or in some cases, “song.”

Along with Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman,” noted here for describing the sociopathic, needlessly cruel behavior of the woman in question, there should be a couple more. Let’s start with the Beatles’ “Girl,” another chronicle of an abusive woman, and “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

This Worst Wedding Songs list has the ever-creepy “Run For Your Life” from the Beatles, along with Sting’s stalkery “Every Breath You Take.” Both of these songs are stalker anthems.

How about “Close to You”? “Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?” Isn’t that an Alfred Hitchcock movie?

Then again, I have to admit I do like Elton John’s “Your Song,” even though it’s apparently written from the point of view of a guy with ADHD who’s trying to write a song but keeps interrupting himself, leading to a totally incoherent tune that’s somehow sincere and sweet anyway.

Other Things That Are Not Romantic, many of which I’ve noted before:

  • “Phantom of the Opera.” It seems very romantic when you’re 15 years old (I know I thought so). It’s only later that you think it through and realize the play is about a man who literally kidnaps a woman and drags her into a basement, where he wants her to stay. Forever. That’s not romantic, that’s criminal.
  • Flowers. I love you, therefore I’m giving you the severed reproductive organs of plants. Better toe the line or you’re next.
  • “Twilight.” Elderly man creeps into a high school girl’s room and watches her while she sleeps. Yikes!
  • “Titanic.” I have to admit, I had to stifle a giggle when they were on the raft at the end of the movie, she says “I’ll never let go” and then almost immediately shoves her love’s corpse off the raft. It’s all about timing, am I right?

Halloween Roundup: Witches, Wizards, Superman and Inexplicably, Kale

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Plenty of Halloween-related material out there this week, and the Smithsonian in particular has a lot of great stuff.

Halloween: Rapidly Becoming Truly Scary

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Halloween might be the scariest holiday out there, at least for women and girls. The above image came from a Tumblr blog (warning: profanity).

I can’t say that I’ve ever watched Sesame Street, but Cookie Monster doesn’t look like the kid on the left, does it? Cookie Monster looks like the kid on the right. Do we really have to start sexualizing kids when they’re toddlers?

It’s bad enough that we already have this:

At least the woman in this “costume” is a woman, not a toddler.

And The Bloggess (warning: profanity here too), who found the above picture, also has a roundup of some “astronaut” costumes for women. None of which have a helmet and two of which don’t have pants, either. Because women astronauts wear skintight miniskirts, high heels and revealing shirts, obviously… with no helmets.

It’s great that some women are confident enough to dress up like this, I guess, but it’s getting to the point where there’s not a lot of other costumes out there. Everything either has a super short skirt or a plunging neckline, unless of course you’re plus-sized, in which case the solution seems to be … well. There isn’t much out there for plus-sized women at all. No idea what it’s like for big men, so maybe they have the same problem.

Is this really what the market is demanding? Maybe it is, but do we really want to foist that on toddlers, too?

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

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It’s Ada Lovelace Day, a good day to celebrate women in technology careers!

If you don’t know who Ada Lovelace is, check out this wonderful Science Chicks blog post.

She was the first computer programmer. Not the first woman programmer, the first programmer, and she did it without having a computer to program anything on. She wrote for Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which was still theoretical.

Incidentally, until I started keeping an eye on Science Chicks, I had no idea there were so many women scientists throughout history.

I wish they’d been in the curriculum when I was in school; I might have ended up in quite a different field altogether, or at least, I might have a stronger science journalism background now.

Lefties Unite! With Your… Weird Scissors and Stuff

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Today happens to be Left-Handers Day, dedicated to all you weirdos who use funny-shaped scissors and golf clubs and stand on the wrong side of the mound in baseball games.

Not being a lefty myself, I don’t have a lot to say about it, but I do like the old phrase “Only left-handed people are in their right minds,” due to the way the different sides of the brain control their opposite sides of the body (the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body).

There’s all kinds of interesting studies about the corpus callosum and what happens when it’s partially or fully severed, enough to make a person very glad that regardless of whether he or she is a lefty or a righty, at least the two sides “talk” to each other.

If you’re interested in how different parts of the brain influence how we think, I highly recommend “Brain Sex,” which focuses on gender but also covers a number of other issues with brain parts, such as the left-right stuff. Quite interesting!

Thoughts on the Runnin O’ the Green

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(John Steiner/Jamestown Sun)

I talked to too many people at the Runnin O’ the Green.

Yes, it actually is possible to do that, when you’re a reporter. I found there were at least four or five people extra interviews I ended up not using in my article, which clocked in at 38.18 inches.

For those of you who don’t speak newspaperese, let me translate for you: 38.18 inches=pretty dang long.

So even though the article was a leetle too long, it didn’t include everything I had.

It also didn’t include my own thoughts on the Runnin.

I have to admit, before the event, I was a little concerned. I was afraid the whole thing would turn out to be nothing but an excuse to drink, and for a few people, maybe it was.

However, of the dozen or so people that I talked to who were participating in the Runnin O’ the Green, many of them mentioned, unprompted, that it was all “for a good cause,” and then they’d talk about the way money from the event goes to Elks Camp Grassick and local people with cancer.

A few times they didn’t mention the causes, so I would say in passing, “It’s for a good cause, right?” and then they usually brightened and said “Yeah, Camp Grassick!” or “Yeah, cancer patients!”

I thought that was cool.

Happy Viking Day!

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Pillage and plunder and loot your hearts out, today, my friends, for it is Viking Day, the day upon which we celebrate our Scandinavian heritage (or lack thereof) and steal candy and flowers from everybody else!

Viking Day is a widely-celebrated holiday, in which people buy flowers and candy and exchange them as weregild, as the ancient customs of our people dictate. The colors of this violent and dangerous holiday are, of course, red (for blood) and pink (for entrails).

Now, as we are all Midwesterners, it is, of course, important to pillage politely.

Creepy Christmas Carols

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I love Christmas carols, but some of them are downright creepy if you think about the lyrics a bit.

I didn’t really notice it much until a colleague commented that “Baby It’s Cold Outside” may possibly be a story about sexual violence, rather than a harmless, coy flirtation between two people in love. Now I can’t hear the song without getting creeped out.

Then all of a sudden many Christmas songs seemed suspect. A friend commented on “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” whose lyrics are ominous at best: He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake.

That’s enough to give a kid nightmares, I’d say. Heck, that’s enough to give an adult nightmares. I’m gonna start keeping mace under my bed just in case.

And then there’s “Winter Wonderland,” in which a couple performs a mock marriage ceremony officiated by a snowman and later they “dream by the fire” about the plans they made. Yes, that’s what the song is really about. Which isn’t creepy, but it’s a little strange.

“Santa Baby” is a song dedicated to the me-first selfish mentality, and seems to be about a woman with a sugar daddy who she hopes will marry her. Weird at best, and creepily anti-feminist at worst.

I don’t know. I’m re-evaluating some of these Christmas tunes this year…

The Long Dark Christmas Carol of the Soul

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My friends who work in retail are already beginning to get a little… funny… about having to listen to the same twenty or so Christmas carols over and over again at work.

I’m not sure this constitutes torture under the Geneva Convention, but it is certainly annoying. My workplace doesn’t play Christmas tunes over any sort of loudspeaker, and if it did, I would probably want to take an axe to said loudspeaker too.

I always maintain that the problem isn’t Christmas songs in and of themselves, so much as the painful lack of variety of said Christmas songs. There are literally hundreds and probably more like thousands upon thousands of Christmas tunes out there, yet our ears are assailed by the same 20-25 of them every single time we step into a store during the holiday season. Even the new Justin Bieber Christmas songs might be an improvement.

… okay, maybe not. But at least they’d be new.

The shame of it is how many great Christmas songs there are that simply don’t get played, because they’re weird, old, or just because Elvis hasn’t done a version of them. Instead they play Paul McCartney’s “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time” which, Geneva Convention or not, is definitely torture.

So. Why do we keep singing Christmas carols? Here’s a wonderful article from Slate that examines the question, and gives the long history of Christmas songs–how the early Church hated pagan adaptations, how Puritans hated them and how the modern Christmas celebration arose.

And I also have two additions to my 12 Carols series, one of which is based on the other. Yes, I know that makes 14 carols, technically. What can I say, math has never been my area of expertise.

Lord of the Dance is only a quasi-Christmas carol. Its words were written in 1967, and it tells the story of Jesus’s life in first-person. It has absolutely nothing to do with Michael Flatley, I promise.

Lord of the Dance was based on Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day, however, which was a Christmas Carol, published in 1833, but traditional long before that.

They’ve disabled YouTube embedding for this one, but have a listen. It has a weird little syncopated rhythm, and I remember singing it once in choir. It was fun.