Scanning

I was running late today, and realized, after I got into my car, that I hadn't loaded any new audiobooks on my ipod or remembered any cds.  This meant I was stuck trying to find something decent to listen to on local radio stations.  It also meant that when I hit scan at the stop sign beside our house, the radio was still scanning when I got to work.

I've had to do this many times, and the result is always the same--45 minutes later, when I arrive at work, the radio is still scanning, since I have found nothing worth listening to.  Today, I decided, I would pay a little closer attention to those little "blips" that come up when the scan pauses.  I would carefully analyze what each station was projecting at its intended audience (really, I just had nothing better to do on the drive to work).


On one station, I heard the following portion of an ad: "Somewhere in your community, skilled neurosurgeons are . . ."  Somewhere in my community?  I live in a town of like 1500.  I'm pretty sure there are no neurosurgeons here.  And "somewhere?"  What are these neurosurgeons doing?  Lurking in bushes and waiting to hijack patients?  I do hope they aren't at Pizza Hut because, really, I only want a pizza.  Maybe some breadsticks.  But not a lobotomy.  Since the station flipped, I didn't even get to find out what the skilled neurosurgeons are doing.  I just had to imagine.  I decided they were all convened in the local Krispy Kreme playing Yahtzee.  Or maybe they were hosting a Tupperware or Avon party.  This made me sad.  I like parties.  Why wasn't I invited?  Was it because I wasn't a skilled neurosurgeon?

I actually stopped the scan only two times.  Once for Pearl Jam's "Once."  Like the song says, I really only should have stopped the scan once.  But I did it a second time.  I'm embarrassed to admit, but the only other song that attracted my attention was Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair."  The song only has about 2 lines to it, one of which is "I whip my hair back and forth."  In my defense, the song is quite catchy.  I will let you hear for yourself:

Or, you can also try Jimmy Fallon's and Bruce Springsteen's version:

Alright, so if you watched the video, pretty much I was just trying to sucker you in so I didn't feel quite so mortified about not disliking (I cannot admit to actually liking) that song.  Also, congratulations!:  You now have one line of a peppy little preteen song stuck in your head for the next 5 days!  I won't even begin to ponder what it says about my music tastes that those were the two songs I listened to.  It's just too scary.

It is definitely one of those days, because next up, I hear "da da dah dah / da da dah dah / da da da da da da dah dah . . ."  NO!  Not Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner!"  For the rest of my day, I'm gonna have that stupid da da line running through my head.  I think I was in high school when this song came out.  All I'd have to do to make my friend, Jen, cringe was sing the da da da dah part.  The song isn't near so much fun when you can only make yourself cringe.  I definitely need to give her a call.  And just start singing da da da dah.  I think what made this song so "great" was its infectiousness.  And not a good infection.  It's the infection that you feel obligated, and also somewhat self-satisfied, to pass it on, knowing that whoever hears it also will have the same, horrible syllables suck in their head for days. On top of the cringeworthiness, the whole song says nothing.  Besides, the waiter guy only gives her half a cup of coffee in the morning, and she doesn't even argue.  That right there tells you something is wrong with this song.  If somebody only have me half a cup of coffee in the morning, things would get ugly. 

The song did get me to thinking, though.  Just how bad of a songwriter do you have to be to stick in whole lines of things like da, da, dah, dah or oooohhh, or yeaaahhh?  Not to mention all those songs that stretch out vowel sounds.  It's like the songwriter had writer's block, and decided, "hey, I can't think of any words to put here, so I'm just gonna sing whoooaaahh, whooaaah for a few lines, and see if anybody notices."  I missed my calling--I should have been a songwriter.  Without further ado, here's my brand new number one song--never mind the fact it has no music.  I can play the first few notes of "Mary had a Little Lamb on the piano, so maybe you can just imagine my song to the tune of the first half of Mary Had a Little Lamb (not the second half, though, because I never learned that).

Lisa's #1 Hit Song

Ooooh,  Woooooah,

You broke my heaaaart,

 Yeahhh, you really did, soooo

Why, ohhhhhhh, did you rip it apart?

Baaaby, Baaaaby, I just want to know

Did you really have to steeeeal

My fried chicken?

Chorus

Ooooh, it hurts--

It hurts so baaaad,

Ooooh, it hurts--

Thinking what I coulda haaaad

I want my chicken back

So I won't feel so saaaad.

Youuuu, left me,

Standin' in the kitchen

Woooahhh, the misery--

You make me keep wishin'

The paainnn would disappear

But no matter how bad the itchin'

My fried chicken doesn't reappear.

Chorus

Thank you, thank you.  I know, in your head, you are stunned at my song's complexity and the depth of emotion it conveys.  Since everyone knows artists don't make much money of albums, I will be retiring off the world tour income.

As my scan continued, it seemed as if country and religion stations were alternating, with not a whole lot else in between.  I decided I would count the number of each different station genre, just because, well, I still had like 25 more minutes before I got to work, and I needed something to keep me busy.  (Okay, so this blog actually took longer than 1 drive to work, but for the purpose of flow, I will say I only did this once.  Jeremy actually spotted me out the window, still scanning through stations in our driveway after I got home.  When I walked into the house, he just looked at me and said "You're so weird."  I replied, "Why am I weird?"  It was not a defense, just simply wondering what I had now done that "seemed" weird to him.  "You were sitting in the driveway scanning radio stations, weren't you?"  Well, yes. . .)  Where I live, I pass from one region into another, which means one set of stations fade out, and by the time I get to work or home, I have a whole new set.  This means that I should have a huge variety of stations to draw from.  Not so much.  My final calculations came up with 13 country, 9 religion, 7 classic rock, 7 hip hop/r&b/rap, 5 classic hits/oldies, 4 top 40, and then NPR, ESPN, Fox News, and 1 Spanish station.  There were roughly 5 unidentifiable stations that I had no clue what their genre was supposed to be, so, for the purposes of this study, they will simply be known as "unidentified crap" stations.  

I then decided to survey each genre selection's broadcasts.  From the religion channels, I surmised the following things about myself: I was saved, I was going to hell, I should not have a mistress, I need to make my children obey and say "yes/no sir or ma'am," the ice cream man is creepy (don't ask me.  I almost stopped to listen to this one just to find out why the ice cream man was creepy.  I decided the radio hosts must have been watching too many scary movies, but that there was something to the ice cream man creepiness), I should blow my "trumpet on Zion (they obviously don't know I have no music talent)," and that God was going to be calling me (in case you're wondering, he still hasn't.  Maybe it's because I don't have a red phone).  

As for the country stations, I found the lyrics to several country songs very intriguing.  I don't know who the singer was, and I will probably misquote him, but the lyrics went something to the effect of "I got all cleaned up clean / cut and clean-shaved. . ."  The scan ended at that point, and all I could think was "deep."  Actually, I just wished I knew who the song writer was so I could send him/her a thesaurus.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm very glad he is clean.  Nothing worse than a stinky singer on the radio.  There also was the song that went "Lover, lover, lover, you don't treat me no good no more."  I was awed!  Not a double negative, but an actual triple negative!  Such of amazing feat of grammatical incorrectness I had never witnessed before!  Had I already not exerted myself with my non-word and extended vowel song, I might have been tempted to try my hand at a quadruple negative.  But alas, I had worn my songwriting creativity out for the day. 

Regarding the classic rock stations, I am now going to say something that many might find sacrilegious (including Jeremy, but I think we've already established he has bad taste in music): I could happily go the rest of my life never hearing Led Zepplin's "Stairway to Heaven," Lynnard Skynnard's "Free Bird," Bob Segar's "Old Time Rock and Roll," or Creedence's "Bad Moon Rising."  I never really liked those songs, but since they are on a never-ending and continual cycle on all classic rock stations, I have grown, well, putting it mildly, to despise them.   Therefore, I've decided to "rework," these classics into a much more compact, 1 song form.  I even added in a little of The Steve Miller Band's "Joker."  I believe my version vastly improves upon the original, and I call it:

Crap Condensed
I see the bad moon arising.               --I hate it when the moon goes bad.  Nothing worse than rotten cheese smell
I see trouble on the way.
Don't try to take me to a disco
You'll never even get me out on the floor      --imagining Bob Segar trying to disco makes me shudder
But, if I stayed here with you girl
Things just couldn't be the same
Ooh, it makes me wonder
Oh, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, ooh, whoa, oh          --note that I also made sure to include the long vowel sound lyrics in my revision
People talk about me, baby
Say I'm doin' you wrong, doin' you wrong

Chorus
I play my music in the sun.
I reminisce about the days of old
There's a bad moon on the rise.
And the bird you cannot change
And she's buying a stairway to heaven.                   --No, I'm not.  Everyone should know by now I prefer an escalator

Call me a relic, call me what you will
Say I'm old-fashioned, say I'm over the hill
But please don't take it so badly
'Cause the Lord knows
I'm to blame                                                           --finally, a man who admits it :P
You're the cutest thing I ever did see
Really love your peaches wanna shake your tree             --I love subtlety
Don't go around tonight,
I know the end is coming soon
There's a sign on the wall
I sure don't want to hurt no one wooo wooooo            --yay!  More long vowels
There's only one sure way to get me to go
If there's a bustle in your hedgerow.                            --so many things running through my mind, so I'll just leave this line alone

After that, there were a few horrifying encounters with John Tesh and John Boy and Billy in the Morning, two different radio programs area stations carry.  With John Tesh, you just can never get enough of his words of wisdom.  He imparts such wonderful information as "if you put a brick in your toilet, you can save 500 gallons of water a year" and "having a pet can increase your life span (he's obviously never been around our pets).  As for John Boy and Billy in the Morning, just , uggh.  There are like 15 radio stations in the area that carry this show because, obviously, listeners must be too stupid to be able to find it if only a single radio station carried it.  I don't know which is John Boy and which is Billy, nor do I really care.  Every morning, they pack the studio full of their friends (Tiny, Bubba, Joe Bob, and token female who they always pick on).  Then, they spend most of their show making bad jokes that everyone then laughs at for several minutes.  For example, here's what I caught this morning as they were doing celebrity birthdays: "And Mozart would be 260 years old today if he hadn't died.  Instead, today, he's finally done decomposing."  Then everyone laughs for 5 minutes.  I also discovered that John Boy and Billy are embarking on their "No Collar Comedy Tour."  I'm so excited, I can't see straight.  I'm going to rush out and buy my tickets immediately!  I was wondering what I was going to do until Justin Bieber came back around, and now I have light in my life again!

By the time I arrived at work, I was mentally exhausted after such intense analysis.  Okay, so it was John Tesh's advice that finally did me in.  But, I had several profound realizations!  1) If one were inclined to sing at the top of their lungs in their car (which I am not inclined to do), Alanis Morissette's "You Outta Know" is one of the best songs ever to sing/scream loudly while hurtling down a rural country road.  2)  The Spanish station caught me off guard for a second.  I thought I was listening to polka on the radio.  3) "Candle in the Wind" actually has a line that says, "They set you on a treadmill."  What the heck does that mean?  The treadmill was too high for Marilyn to climb on, so somebody had to help her up?  And why did they set her on it?  Should they stand her on it?  Did no one know how to use a treadmill in the 60s?  They should have just watched The Jetsons.  4)   That I should never, ever, ever, forget my ipod again.  In fact, maybe I should go buy a spare, so that if one breaks, I still have another.  I'm not sure.  I might need counseling after this traumatic experience.  I think I was shaking a little when I finally pulled into my parking spot at work.  I'm going to self-medicate with some wine now, and hope I don't have nightmares.  Crap.  Jeremy just pulled up the Bee Gees station on Pandora.  Will the suffering never end?

New Year's Irresolutions

I know you're supposed to make resolutions at the start of the new year, but to be quite honest, I've never really stuck to a resolution.  In fact, I quit making them years ago, pretty much when I realized I never stuck with a resolution.

The Abandoned Resolutions
Sure, there's been tons of them over the years.  The standard, going to diet and exercise always used to be a top one.  That whole resolution only ended up with me stockpiling things like canned bean sprouts (which I still have some of in my cupboard) and used exercise equipment.  There was the stationary bike.  I was actually very sad to see that one go because it was a wonderful place to hang up clothes in the bedroom for years.  There was the ab roller-cruncher-buncher-feller (no clue what it was really called) that was missing a bolt.  Did I ever replace the bolt?  No.  Mostly because I never really used the buncher-feller after the first week I bought it.  There was the manual treadmill.  Of all the pieces of equipment that could have provided a great workout, this treadmill was the one.  Because it was manual, you had to get the thing moving yourself.  That would have been great, if I didn't have to give myself a hernia trying to get it going.  Unfortunately, the thing also weighted a ton, so it was impossible to move.  Fortunately, it collapsed into a nice, compact form that fit under the bed.


Another new year's resolution that I only made once was trying to be more patient.  What a stupid resolution to make!  The only think I taught myself to do was, at times when I was slightly calmer and less impatient, to substitute certain phrases for swear words.  Now my vocabulary is littered with horrendous sayings like "good grief," "fudgecicles," and "holy cow," and every time one of them comes out of my mouth, I find myself cringing.  However, when I'm really ticked off or impatient, the same old stream of swear words come out.


There also was the resolution to try to be better at cleaning.  I hate cleaning.  I don't know why I ever made that resolution.  Maybe it was purely to torture myself for the solid week I clung to it. I started and ended with the living room.  First, there was all the woodwork to clean and all the stupid cracks and crevices in the woodwork.  Then there were all the electronics -- the gigantic stereo speakers, the television, the amp, the big heavy device that does something important that we had to buy, the television.  Next, I had to move on to the lamps, the remotes, the two larger ship models with all their billion, tiny, wooden, glued on ship pieces, and all the other various accumulated stuffs (which made me really think minimalism was the way to go).  Once I had finished all that other crap, I still had to vacuum all the pet fur off the furniture and sweep and mop the floor.  By the time I finished that one room, I pretty much decided I was never going to be very good at cleaning things and that I was pretty much abandoning that resolution.

Another reason for abandoning it was because it was extremely detrimental to my marriage.  I was not happy; therefore, by extension, Jeremy was not happy, which meant he spent the entire week avoiding me.  Occasionally, he would pop in, check the progress, and give me little platitudes like "See how much better the television looks once the inch of dust is gone," and "The stereo speakers look great!  Did you remember to clean the ceiling fan blades before you started dusting?"  My responses always went along the lines of "this sucks" and "fudgecicles," only not altering the word.  Of course I didn't remember the stupid ceiling fan blades, of course it's going to rain down 20 tons of compacted dust all over everything I just cleaned, of course I'm not going to go back and clean them, after all, the ceiling fan is running, so who's going to see it?  Given the strain that cleaning put on my marriage, it was obvious which one had to go.  So, in reality, I actually abandoned the cleaning resolution in order to have a happier and healthier marriage.

This Year's Irresolutions
Moving forward to this year, I'm trying a new plan.  I'm reflecting on things I've learned, or maybe not learned is the better terminology, and I'm going to make irresolutions this year instead because I know I can keep those.

First there are projects.  I do a wonderful job at thinking about projects.  I get the complete project researched and mapped out to the fullest extent.  Then comes the next step--actually doing the project.  I have discovered I have three standard project outcomes.  The first is that the project never gets beyond the "research and development stage."  I have tons of links bookmarked for making stained glass, for intricate stencil designs to paint on walls, for making balloon shades.  The reality is, I will never do any of these projects.  They are way too complicated for my deficient (or maybe that should be nonexistent), artistic and sewing abilities.  For that matter, the only time I ever used a sewing machine was in the high school home ec class I was forced to take my freshman year.  And even then, I was so horrible that I took most of my projects home and had my mom finish them.  The only sewing project I ever completed was a pair of shorts.  Nobody told me you had to do something called backstitching on clothes.  Just a little advise: never wear homemade, nonbackstitched shorts detasseling.

The second project outcome is that it is actually completed, but then somehow just fails.  Maybe I shouldn't say somehow because there's obviously a rational reason the project fails.  Take for instance my landscaping project for this year.  After the previous year's failure with the whole seed starting/planting thing, I just went for buying plants.  I bought some type of red flower, sweet potato vines, and two, yellow shrub roses for the beds that flank the front sidewalk and I bought a yellow climbing rose and caladiums for the side of the house.  Then I planted a few ferns and some more caladiums on the other side of the house.  I carefully watered and watered and watered, dragging 50 feet of hose around behind me several times a week.  Somehow, around July when it got really hot, I started "forgetting" to water.  By the end of the summer, all I was left with were some very yellowy, straggly sweet potato vines.  Everything else was dead.  Jeremy has told me that until we get irrigation, he is not "investing" any more money in any landscaping projects.  I'm not sure why he used the word investing, because that implies that there is some sort of reward/value reaped from my landscaping projects.  Unless you consider dead plants a value. . .

The third project outcome is that I get the project started, then take, oh, a year or so to finish it.  A fine example of this is the front half of our hallway, which I started painting in August.  I did not realize the hallway was going to take quite so many coats of paint.  I managed to get 5 coats on.  Three of those coats actually were in August.  Then I got busy with school.  In September--no wait-- in November, I got 2 more coats on.  I was determined to get my painting job finished before I put Christmas decorations up.  I did not get it finished.  It wasn't my fault!  Honeslty!  It got cold, and our hallway is not heated.  Not to mention the fact that the Christmas decorations had to go up, and, obviously, I can't paint with Christmas stuff up.  Now it's mid January, and I still need to finish the paint job I started in August.  Could I have finished and done the whole paint job in August?  Yes.  But with no real deadline, what's the point?  Eventually, what will happen is that we will get company or something, and I will go into freak out mode, and decide not only do I have to get the whole house cleaned in two days, but I also have to finish the last 2 coats of paint on the front half of the hallway and do all seven on the back half of the hallway.  At this point, Jeremy will avoid me until said company arrives because he actually wants to keep his sanity and also knows that my logic often is, well, slightly faulty.

My irresolution, therefore, is that I will continue to do projects at my own speed.  Yes, this means it will probably be February before the Christmas tree comes down, which means it will be March before I get another coat of paint on the hallway, but in the meantime, I'm quite happy and content.  And so is Jeremy.  Okay, so maybe he's grumbling inside a bit about why the Christmas lights are still on in June, but I figure if I spent that much time putting them up, and they're still up. . .

Procrastination.  This tendency probably goes hand in hand with the projects problem.  Yes, New Year's day was approximately three weeks ago.  Yes, I am just now getting a New Year's blog finished.  To be fair, I started it on New Year's day.  Then I got sidetracked.  I got a Wii for Christmas.  I've been bowling and golfing a lot.  I kept thinking I needed to finish the New Year's blog, but. . .  Essentially, if I can procrastinate, I definitely will.  I've decided that this has to have some benefit, so why bother changing it?  Besides, you can't just play a game of cards on the computer any old time.  That takes lots of planning.

Experimental Cooking.  As Jeremy frequently questions, "why don't you just follow the recipe the first time you make something?"  Because I'm a chef!  I must tinker with the recipe!  I can make it better!  The reality is, I usually make it worse.  Take, for example, yesterday's banana bread.  I only had 2 bananas instead of the required 3.  "What could go wrong," I thought to myself, "if I make it only using 2 bananas?"  I mix up the batter, and think, "my, this seems awfully runny."  While that should have been my first clue, I chose to ignore it.  So, into the oven my banana bread goes.  I cook it for the required hour, open the oven, look at it, and think "something looks a little off here."  I stick in my toothpick, and stir.  Hmmm, seems to be the consistency of . . . I don't know.  I don't even have any comparisons here.  Did I give up on the banana bread, at that point?  No (see, this should be a good quality--I stick with things to the . . . sludgy end).  I cooked the banana bread for 15 more minutes.  Still goopy.  I cooked the banana bread for 20 more minutes.  Still goopy, and, somehow, the shortening had melted and separated from the "loaf" (if you can call a quivering mass a loaf), and there was a layer of grease on top.  I still didn't give up--maybe if I cook it for just 15 more minutes. . .  After cooking my banana bread for nearly 2 hours, I finally had to give up.  The sad part was, I then had to let it cool on the counter before I could throw it away.  On the plus side, it slid right out of the pan.  As it was sitting there cooling, Jeremy walks by.

"That looks disgusting!"
"You're lucky, though," I responded.  "At least I'm not trying to feed you my experiments anymore."  Okay, so I still do occasionally (he did not appreciate the garlic "pancakes" I made very much, which were supposed to be garlic naan), but even I couldn't pass off the banana "surprise" as edible.  In the long run, I probably would have a lot more success if I just followed the recipe.  But the reality is, I can't control my cooking "urges," so we will continue to get very "unique" by products.


I'm sure there are a ton more irresolutions (probably many of which Jeremy can happily point out), but for now, I just need to finish this blog.  Mainly because I have to get ready to go to work, and I still haven't showered.