The night shift squirrels strike again!

[truepenny]

At some point in the long weary hours between midnight and 8:30--actually at several points, since my brain would not FUCKING SHUT UP about it--the night shift squirrels who'd been left running the front desk, in between trying to get all their own work done, began a campaign to convince me that the words to AC/DC's "Shook Me All Night Long" belonged to a New Order song from Substance (okay, and how scary is it that you can buy a Home Defibrillator from Amazon.com, and off their front page no less?). I don't remember which one, because the squirrels were ALSO trying to convince me that the title of the song was "People Are People" (which as we all know is a Depeche Mode song), and THAT's what I now have stuck in my head, to the exclusion of all other music.

But I remember that AC/DC's words fit New Order's melody. Like Emily Dickinson and "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

This is so bad. I want to scrub my brain out with bleach now.

Comments

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

You can sing Emily Dickinson to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas"???

Reminds me of the classic song, "Stairway to Gilligan's Island". It was the words of the Gilligan's Island theme, sung to the tune of Stairway to Heaven.

I heard it on the alarm while I was on a business trip, and lay there in bed for quite some time, trying to determine if I was really awake or not, because it was so weird I had to still be dreaming. This is what happens when you judge a radio station acceptable because of what they're playing at 10pm at night, rather than what their morning show will be like. :-)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You can sing Emily Dickinson to anything in hymn meter. Including "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." "The Yellow Rose of Texas" is just the one most people have been told about.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

This, like singing Blake's "Jerusalem" to "Yellow Submarine", is one of those things best done while washing up in other people's houses, to see how long it takes to sink in.

Note also that sonnets can be sung to "Stairway to Heaven", and that anything that goes to the Ode to Joy will also go to either "Camptown Races" or "Mack the Knife".

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

"First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting gooooo--"

Yee-hah.

And for the earworm to end all earworms, I thank you.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oops.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's fine. Goes with my mood and the general dreariness of the day.

Except now i'm wondering what other poems go with what other popular songs.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

It led to a classic moment on "Barney Miller".

Annoying Suspect: Did you know you can sing the works of Emily Dickinson to "The Yellow Rose of Texas?"

(beat) Dietrich thinks this over.

Dietrich (singing): Because I did not stop for Death,/Death kindly stopped for me. (half-beat) Damnit!

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I think your squirrels are talking to whatever serves the same place in my mental ecology, because mine have been trying to convince me that the chorus to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" goes:

Hello Mother
Hello Father
Here I am at
Camp Grenada
Life is very
Entertaining
And I'm sure we'll
Have some fun if
It stops raining (x4)

This have proven vanquishable only by earworming myself with VNV Nation's "Solitary", of which I am fortunately very fond.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You know, there's a way in which that's actually perfectly appropriate. Or perhaps that's just my sense of humor at work.

Oh, and I dreamed last night, in between go-rounds with the squirrels, that I found a store, run by gypsies, that had doll-sized editions of obscure Alexandre Dumas works. I remember thinking, in the dream, I have to tell rysmiel about this!

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

You know, there's a way in which that's actually perfectly appropriate. Or perhaps that's just my sense of humor at work.

Yes, I thought so, in the same way as papersky pointed out about Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" going to "Greensleeves" and vice versa: an awful lot of heavy metal boils down top "Alas my love you do me wrong to cast me off discourteously.. " in sentiment alone.

Oh, and I dreamed last night, in between go-rounds with the squirrels, that I found a store, run by gypsies, that had doll-sized editions of obscure Alexandre Dumas works. I remember thinking, in the dream, I have to tell rysmiel about this!

That would be extremely cool. Have just read The Queen's Necklace over the weekend, and am musing on what it does with wedding as happy ending, and I have the last two of the Marie Antoinette cycle waiting to be read soon. *bounce*

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, it's bad when the squirrels get going, because you know that part of their musical sensibility was formed on cheesy, alarmingly catchy 80s ditties. They can and will do it in your sleep!

That said, my favorite for the Emily Dickinson-hymn-meter bit is doing "A Solemn Thing It Was I Said" to "Amazing Grace." And while we're on Dickinson, I must confess that the way I realized I was a big, big geek in college was when I decided that if I had a rock band, I'd want to call it Emily Dickinson and the Nobodies. You see how grad school became an inescapable conclusion for me, right?

the grrly grrl

[larryhammer]

Whereas my dream was about working on a production of Little Women set in Antarctica. Which I can justify mentioning using the tortured logic that, by doing so, we lost the Amherst social scene much the way you do by singing Dickinson to the Gilligan's Island theme song. We Can Rationalize It For You^TM.

The director justified the setting decision, btw, by pointing out that this way she got to include penguins, which was a big plus over Amherst as far as she was concerned.

---L.