I like music quite a bit, which sometimes makes me ashamed about how little I know about it. I have trouble even understanding the concepts of basslines and tempos and treble clef aria reverb synthesizers. I also don’t know a lot about the people who make music. But just in case I ever get roped into some sort of Music Knowledge contest, I’m going to make this list, so that the facts will be on the Internet to back me up! Here comes a list of the Top Ten Things PDR Knows About Music:

1. Music is played by musicians or groups of musicians (colloquially known as “bands”). The act of playing music (called a “gig”) is, in fact, a form of communicating with noise!
2. The first musician was probably Beethoven! This was ironic because in his later life, he suffered from a condition which would make it hard to appreciate music: Orneriness!
3. Instruments were first added to singing by accident after a singer forgot the words and tried to cover it by pretending to get a trombone stuck in his mouth, but it turned out even better.
4. Modern music was invented by humans (Homo Sapiens), a species on the planet Planet Earth. They use music to give people time to think between commercials on the radio!
5. Elvis Presley was a musician whose name is an anagram of “les evil’s prey” because he was constantly being hunted by Les Evil, supercannibal.
6. Rick Davies from Supertramp and Ray Davies from the Kinks are not the same person, in spite of the fact they have the exact same name!
7. Speaking of names, the band Radiohead takes their name from a song by Talking Heads. The name of that song is “Radio Head”, which leads to the astounding coincidence that the song the band took their name from, has the same name as the band! Spooky coincidences like that make me suspect their may be some truth to those people who think musicians are in league with the devil (or multiple devils).
8. They even have music in Greenland! It is not even punishable by death there!
9. Even the full twenty-three minute long version of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” is not long enough to sate me. I could listen to that song for roughly Four Hours at a time.
10. From classical to country, from reggae to rap, from folk to funk, music is always, always, capable of rocking.

At some point during the week I was in the office at work and I heard some guy on the radio complaining, like a lot, about dandelions. I have to wonder why people hate dandelions so much. I like them. I think they look nice. They add some color to the grass. Why that so bad?

Haiku!

Yellow in my brain
making all my thoughts come out
and fall on the floor.

Thinking about color, it occurred to me that something can be “Yellowy” but not “Purpley” or “Reddy” or whatever. You’ve got “Purplish” and “Reddish” and “Bluish” and all that stuff. My spellcheck tells me that “Yellowish” is okay, so why does yellow get a bonus one with “Yellowy”? It’s a conspiracy of some kind, I am sure.

A message for radio stations: When you come in between the songs to tell us that you don’t interrupt the songs, you have interrupted the songs. That is all.

Why are there so many sitcoms set in radio stations, but I can’t think of one set in a graveyard.

In my office at work there is a radio that used to play Alice Cooper’s show at night, but for the last year has instead played a radio show by some other musicman who I don’t even really know or care to know. I could probably get a whole post out of just complaining about how I perceive this new guy to pale in comparison to the Alice Cooper show, but instead I have a much more specific complaint that isn’t localized to that show which makes the bulk of this opening paragraph a complete waste of space.

So anyway, I was listening to this show one of the nights this week and the topic of breast feeding babies in public came up. From what I heard everyone on the show came down on the “it should be allowed” side, which is where I land too, so I agree with them. But then, as always seems to occur when the topic comes up, some guy on the show started joking about how sexy breasts being out in public would be. This, I feel, is hurting the cause and yet it seems like it comes up every time the topic does.

Okay, I fully admit that my status as a heterosexual male is “amateur” at best, but even though I mostly try to keep out of that whole scene, I also reluctantly have to admit that I am sexually attracted to women. I do genuinely think breasts are pretty great. But when they’re stripped of an erotic context, they’re just body parts. I mean I can enjoy a woman’s lips or eyes just as much and they’re on display pretty much at all times, but not in an erotic context. I’m certain plenty of people are attracted to the chests of men, right, but those can be displayed just fine in most places. Why isn’t this the same?

A big part of the argument against breastfeeding in public seems to lie in the idea that breasts are somehow purely sexual things, which is pretty stupid considering their actual primary purpose is, you know, breastfeeding. Bare breasts have no special power that will corrupt society. If anything has that power it is the mystique that is built up around nudity the bare breasts that has apparently turned men into such slavering idiots that even the sight of a breastfeeding woman seems sexual to them. We should do something about that instead.

Anyway, I figure I should cut my rant short here because I know from experience that anything more and I will just be repeating the same points in different words. And anyway, nobody will ever let the mystique of nudity fade away. Keeping everyone horny is too useful as an advertising tool.

Okay, so sure, I’ve been like double my already high usual levels of both “self-hatred” and “hating my job” because this month sucks more than typical at work. I’ve beat myself up for not getting a closer look at a cat and I’ve beat myself up for locking myself out of my apartment (see my last two posts) and that’s the just stuff I hate myself for that I remembered to post about. At least the lockout thing I can find funny because it was a way of shaking up dull routine, but it still took several hours of my time. I’ve also been sleeping fitfully at best and getting less reading done at work. So anyway, I’m not spending as much time doing things I’d like to do is what I am trying to use this paragraph to say.

So one day this week I woke up late and watched the Daily Show and Colbert as I am wont to do and then turned on my music and prepared to do whatever it is I do with my days, but then I realized the time and that I needed to get ready for work sharpish. I muttered to myself “No one told me when to run, I missed the starting gun” and people with good taste will recognize that is a line from “Time” by Pink Floyd, an awesome song about the passage of time bringing us all closer to death.

Within ten seconds of my quoting this, the clamorous opening to the song begins on my computer. It was on random, so there was no way I am aware of that I could have subconsciously picked up that it was next. It was a pretty sweet coincidence, but I didn’t think so much of it that I would have bothered to post about it here.

Tonight, at work, during a rather dull moment I got the assistants to watch things while I went into the office to get a head start on the paperwork I had to do at the end of the night. In the office I had a radio playing tuned to a local station. As soon as I sat down I realized Time was playing, which reminded me of the previous occurrence. It was a pretty easy night at work so there were literally a dozen or more times when the operation was smooth enough that I could have gone off to do that and I chose the one time that Time was playing. Pretty neat.

So anyway, ruling out the possibility that I have just developed some sort of unconscious prescience relating only to that one song, I am left with the option that the Song is Following Me. If the universe is using the song in an attempt to cheer me up, I thank it, but couldn’t it maybe choose a song that is not about Exactly What Is Depressing Me? If the universe is trying to mock me… okay then yeah, good choice.

For posterity’s sake I will point out that at the actual end of the night when I was finishing the paperwork they played Wish You Were Here, another Pink Floyd song which, while melancholy, does not cut so deep into specifics with me. And I love that one too. Clearly Q104 is the station to go for for Pink Floyd, I guess. Not that they don’t play plenty of crap in between.

Anyway, the time is gone, the post is over… thought I’d something more to say…