Thursday, February 10, 2011

Ramblings #3


Thanks to Christina Aguilera, and her atrocious rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl on Sunday, I learned a new word: melisma. This is when you put multiple notes into one syllable, or "oversouling" a song. I didn't know there was a word for it, but I hear that a lot in music today.

That made me think of a live recording I heard recently of "The Police" from their 2007 reunion tour. Sting had changed the arrangements, either speeding it up or slowing it down, or adding jazz or reggae touches to every freakin' song! Is there a word for an artist that deliberately makes their songs worse than they were originally? Maybe we should call it the "Bob Dylan Syndrome" Sometimes we just like to hear our favorite songs in their original version (although, for Bob, this would be impossible.)
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I always thought the motto of the US Post Office was:
"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

So I thought. It seems like whenever it's really cold outside, our mailman does not deliver the mail. Last week we didn't get mail for 3 days straight because of the weather, and the weather wasn't even really that bad. Could it be that I just didn't have any mail on those days? Not likely. I always seem to get some kind of crap every day, and the beginning of the month is when I get the most crap (like bills.) It seems to me that our local mailmen are just wimps.
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Saw the movie "127 Hours" recently, the true-story about the hiker who had to cut off his own arm after his hand got stuck in a rock. Very good movie.

Also saw "Paranormal Activity 2." Not so good. Basically it's just more of the same. Lights going off and on and doors opening and closing just isn't that scary anymore.
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In a related story to my last blog about cuts in education, I was reading an article on Yahoo! yesterday regarding the GOP's ideas to cut the deficit. The first paragraph read:

"Eager to take a quick, $35 billion bite out of government, House Republicans called for termination of at least 60 federal programs Wednesday and cuts in hundreds of others, targeting education and the environment, food safety and law enforcement."

Education...Environment...Food Safety. Wow. No mention about defense spending.

We spend so much on defense spending, but yet it seems our biggest threat to the country is from within: The GOP.

2 comments:

  1. I'm glad to know there's a word for destroying the Star Spangled Banner song. It's one of those songs I only really want to hear the way I've heard it all my life. She isn't the only one who ruined it. Oh gosh, who's that black singer, a man, who sang it at the Super Bowl one year? He ruined it too, IMHO. Rosanne sang it better than either C.A. or that guy!

    We don't get mail delivered here. Everyone in town has po boxes. I wonder if they got their mail in Emporia. I remember Larry talking about his relatives going out to the mailbox in blizzards in Wyoming. So yeah, gotta agree, your postal carriers might be kinda wimpy.

    What the GOP is doing to this country on both the federal and state levels is appalling. I'm thunderstruck at what is happening in Kansas. Brownback is cutting things that draw people to the state. He is going to be a bad governor I am afraid.

    Janet

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  2. Music has been melismatic for as long as people have been singing. You could not have opera, gospel or even Stevie Wonder without it. Listen to "Wish You Were Here".

    The USPS has no official motto. That quote is simply engraved on the main post office in New York. There are many situations in which your local letter carrier will divert from his appointed rounds.

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