Weekend Plans Post: The Joke that Still Bugs Me
Back in 1990, one of my buddies had a thing for The Nylons. The Nylons, if you don’t remember, were an a capella group that did a lot of fun covers of songs that I’m sure you’ve heard a million times (and some of their songs even charted). Sha na na na hey hey hey goodbye, The lion sleeps tonight, Happy together…, there were one of the best groups out there that did the a capella thing and they did it for, yes, the longest time. Well, one of my favorite songs they did was a ditty that, as far as I can tell, was original to them. This Island Earth:
A lovely little song that pretty much entirely captures everything you’d want from an a capella song: harmonies, a tenor singing over basses and baritones, whoa-oa-oas and ooooohs in counterpoint to what the lead is doing. Golly, I love that song.
But that’s not the problem.
The problem is that I was listening to a morning radio DJ who was doing his schtick and he was rattling off his morning News of the Weird and asking questions about the story that I don’t remember what they were beyond being neither rhetorical nor thought provoking. I got to the stop sign and he finished hit bit up with “and who was the IDIOT who called it ‘rotisserie chicken’ and not ‘poultry in motion’?”
I almost sprained my finger jabbing the radio console.
For the first thing, I wanted to look up how long that phrase goes back. The OED seems to take it back at least to 1813 where it referred to dance in particular rather than a spectacular way to describe someone you’re mooning over (like in the 1960 song). For another thing, when I go purchase a rotisserie chicken, it has stopped moving. It’s in the little bucket waiting to be picked up and taken to checkout. And on top of that, the term is purely functional and tells you everything you need to know about the chicken. Oh, it was cooked on a rotisserie. Nice. Information instead of a pun.
Argh. That joke just bugs me. Still.
And, worse than that, it comes back to me every single time I re-listen to that song by The Nylons. Which, seriously, I very much enjoy.
This weekend is going to be spent doing a handful of chores and errands, like every weekend. Some games will be played, some jogs will be run, and some dishes for the coming week will be cooked. But no chicken.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “makeout session”. Taken by Maribou.)
Jaybird, you’ve got to let it go. You’re letting that joke roost in your head rent free!Report
(sigh)Report
I’m sure I had jokes that bugged me intensely, but I’ve forgotten most of them. Well. Not two, not ones that were barbs directed directly at me by a now-former administrator who just had a bad reputation with many people (a colleague of mine, someone not ever given to expressing a desire for violence, once commented “If he were crossing a street as I was driving down it, I’d speed up….”). But of course that should tell me more about HIM than it does about me but I admit that the one (implying I was an impostor, that my credentials were not what they should be) bordered on something I should have gone to HR about….
Anyway. Plans this weekend are, even though cases are up A BIT in my area, to make a quick socially distanced run to the JoAnn Fabrics again, and maybe the Ulta next door to it, and to a larger nicer grocery store than what I have locally. To Stock Up. Because I suspect even though it’s not great right now, it’s going to get worse soon, and I will probably be glad to have that extra chicken broth* and Golden Syrup (if it’s back in stock) and various canned goods when it dies.
(*Because of my celery allergy, there is literally one brand I’ve found I can use – Pacific Foods’. Of course none of the local places sell it so my choice is to buy it when I’m in Sherman, mail-order it, or, I guess, make my own stock, but I don’t have time for that usually)
I also just need to “stock up” on what it’s like to be out of the house in a non-work setting. I think of a book I read as a child about a mouse named Frederick who gathered up “colors” and “pretty things as memories” while his companions gathered seeds. When I was younger I always thought of Frederick as a bit of a wastrel – after all, he’s eating the food the other mice had to work hard to gather – but now I see the importance of having some kind of pleasant memories to sustain you when you’re hunkered down in your burrow 🙁Report
I am going to visit Cape May, New Jersey for the first time since the pandemic.Report
Did early voting today. Straight ticket Dems. Husband and I convinced two friends who don’t normally vote to come with us and do it. So Biden gets 4 in MN at least.Report
If the cure is to totally immerse yourself then I heartily recommend reading Lt Col Alexander Vindman’s Atlantic article where he beautifully and perfectly nails the Orange One as ‘free chicken’Report
He didn’t save that joke for this song?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ery3yREft6kReport
Trying to plan things out. We’re scheduled to move to Fort Collins in 16 days. Colorado State University, in Fort Collins, locked down 900 dormitory students. Any who test positive for COVID-19 will be put in isolation somewhere. Wonder if they’ll still be letting people in and out of the city by moving day?
On a lighter “disease” note, both granddaughters in Fort Collins have mild cases of head lice. If I recall the time when their mother came home from school with head lice one year correctly, it’s inconvenient as all get out.Report
My brother got lice three separate times in his school years (the last time being when he was staying in a college dorm one summer for JETS teams). It is super inconvenient because all the bedding has to be washed on hot, and pillows and the like have to be isolated for a couple of weeks.
I never got lice. I guess that’s one upside to being massively unpopular – no one was sharing hats or brushes with me, and there was no barette-swapping like some of the girls did.
If I got them now? I’d be tempted to just shave my head and be done with it; I have no one that I would want to task with combing through my hair to find nits.Report
I read a paper a few months ago by an epidemiologist and a historian. There is apparently a hot debate about how plague spread through cities back when it was the Black Death. The three theories are pneumonic plague (human-to-human, pretty contagious), rat fleas, and human lice. The historian had collected all the known material about the speed of spread of plague across individual European cities (city records, dairies, etc). The epidemiologist fit that data against what we know now about contagion by the three methods. The only model that fit reasonably was lice.
This year, of course, the concern is that head lice implies head-to-head contact, or something like hats and barettes, which all imply social-distancing failures.Report
High 80’s yesterday. Now it’s in the 40’s.
Oh yeah.Report