Small talk

Breda has a link to an article on whether size really matters. As one that grew up at the opposite end of the height spectrum , I can tell you that when your sleeves and pants hit 4 inches above your wrists and ankles, you don’t exactly feel elegant, either. But I digress.


I first met Shorter Half’s family when his little sister graduated from high school. I’m over a foot taller than she is, and she was trying very hard to make small talk. (“Small” talk, get it? I crack myself up.) She wondered if a lot of people asked me if I played basketball in high school. I answered in the affirmative, and then, completely unbidden by my brain – the words just fell out of my mouth, I swear – I inquired if a lot of people asked if she played miniature golf.

True story. Luckily she laughed.

Origins of a National Anthem

I was talking to Bitter Young Guy at the office this morning and it turns out that he didn’t know that our National Anthem started out in a gentleman’s club in England. The Anacreontic Society was dedicated to "wit, harmony, and the god of wine," but their (alleged) primary goal was to promote an interest in music. The melody for The Anacreontic Song (a.k.a. To Anacreon in Heaven) was written by 16-year-old John Stafford Smith in the mid 1760’s and if you try to convince me that this melody was composed without the assistance of liberal amounts of alcohol I'll disbelieve you. The song was first published by Longman & Broderip in London in 1778/1779.

There is one school of thought that thinks the melody may have originated in Ireland, but to each his own.

Regardless of origin, the song traveled across the pond, and was popular enough that Francis Scott Key’s brother-in-law noticed that the music fit Key’s 1813 poem Defence of Fort McHenry and put them together. The pairing became known as The Star Spangled Banner, but wasn’t officially adopted as the national anthem of the United States until 1931.

The original lyrics are below – and you thought “O say can you see …” was difficult.

The Anacreontic Song

To Anacreon in heaven where he sat in full glee,
A few sons of harmony sent a petition,
That he their inspirer and patron would be,
When this answer arrived from the jolly old Grecian:
Voice, fiddle aud flute, no longer be mute,
I'll lend you my name and inspire you to boot!
And besides I'll instruct you like me to entwine
The myrtle of Venus and Bacchus's vine.

The news through Olympus immediately flew,
When old Thunder pretended to give himself airs,
If these mortals are suffered their scheme to pursue,
The devil a goddess will stay above stairs,
Hark! already they cry, in transports of joy,
A fig for Parnassus, to Rowley's we'll fly,
And there my good fellows, we'll learn to entwine
The myrtle of Venus and Bacchus's vine.

The yellow-haired god, and his nine fusty maids,
To the hill of old Lud will incontinent flee,
Idalia will boast but of tenantless shades,
And the biforked hill a mere desert will be,
My thunder, no fear on't, will soon do its errand,
And, damn me I'll swinge the ringleaders, I warrant
I'll trim the young dogs, for thus daring to twine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine.

Apollo rose up and said, "Prythee ne'er quarrel,
Good king of the gods, with my votaries below
Your thunder is useless - then showing his laurel,
Cried, Sic evitabile fulmen, you know!
Then over each head my laurels I'll spread,
So my sons from your crackers no mischief shall dread
Whilst snug in their club-room, they jovially twine
The myrtle of Venus and Bacchus's vine.

Time for warm weather cocktails

I just had my first gin and tonic of the season. Ahhhh. Now I’m motivated to see if I have any Pimm’s left in the liquor cabinet. My previous roommate “borrowed” my last bottle, and never replaced it. We have a local ginger ale that goes quite well with it, lacking the proper fizzy lemonade. Hmmm, that sounds like something that would travel well this weekend – they’re calling for temperatures in the upper 80’s in Charlotte. Now I need to go add cucumbers to the grocery list.

Sounds reasonable to me

Failing to profile based on one's life experiences is to abandon man's basic instinct to learn through trial and error. Such trials, when cataloged by intelligent people, reduce and oftentimes eliminate unnecessary future errors. This is good.

I don't have much of an opinion on Nugent personally, other than I saw him play the National Anthem live before a Minnesota Twins game about 20 years ago, and it was clear that he "got" it (unlike Roseanne Barr). But if you don't evaluate (profile, judge, appraise, gauge, classify, etc.) what's going on around you -- if you can't take what you've learned and apply it to a new situation -- well, I probably can't dumb it down enough to explain to you why you should.

That just ain’t right

For Mother’s Day, I received a gift certificate so I could download some music. I wanted to start filling in the missing chunks from the “collection”, especially from my college years when I couldn’t afford much. Among other things, I picked up some Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music, Patti Smith, Haircut 100, Dropkick Murphys, and Benny Goodman’s “Sing Sing Sing”. (What can I say? I was raised on Big Band, Dixieland, and bagpipes.) I thought back to what vinyl I had that didn’t survive the move of 1999, and I remembered my first week of college and hearing U2’s Boy for the first time. So I went and downloaded “I Will Follow”. And then I saw this, and my world sort slipped into another dimension.





Look! The Edge isn’t the only one losing his hair …

Next week at this time

We'll be in Charlotte unless catastrophe hits. And plans are to be at the soiree Breda is organizing Saturday night. My introverted self is looking forward to meeting new people, and I’m glad that Breda got us a room where maybe the background noise will be low enough that a bunch of people who may have been a little too lax with hearing protection or little too enthusiastic with those cool little Walkman headphones in their youth can hear each other. Or, at least the lighting will be bright enough that we can see to lip-read.

Don't sugarcoat it.

This sums things up pretty succinctly. Back when one didn’t have to apologize for the possibility of hurting somebody’s feeeeeeeeeeeeeelings just because Grandpa Schmidt still had family in the old country.

It's interesting to see "center of target" instead of "center of mass" being illustrated.