Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 4: Sensitive iPods

If your iPod is like mine, it can sense when you’ve had a rough night--one of dark brooding thoughts and existential questions that banish sleep when you most want it--and it looks at you and thinks, “That one needs a bit of cheering up.” And out of that generous spirit it delivers you, out of 3,000-plus songs in the playlist you’re shuffling, this obscure bit of aural sunshine:  Ian Dury and The Blockheads’ “Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3.”

Reasons to Be Cheerful



And, god love the internet, some hapless souls have taken the hours from their lives to type out the lyrics for us to all sing along. Ahem...

Why don't you get back into bed (x 10)

Reasons to be cheerful part 3
1-2-3

Summer, Buddy Holly,
The working folly
“Good Golly Miss Molly”
And boats.

Hammersmith Palais,
The Bolshoi Ballet
“Jump back in the alley”
And nanny goats.

18-wheeler Scammels,
Domenicker camels
All other mammals
Plus equal votes.

Seeing Piccadilly,
Fanny Smith and Willy,
Being rather silly,
And porridge oats.

A bit of grin and bear it,
A bit of "Come and share it.
“You're welcome, we can spare it.”
Yellow socks.

Too short to be haughty,
Too nutty to be naughty,
Going on 40,
No electric shocks.

The juice of the carrot,
The smile of the parrot,
A little drop of claret,
Anything that rocks.

Elvis and Scotty,
Days when I ain't spotty,
Sitting on the potty,
Curing smallpox.

Reasons to be cheerful part 3 (x 4)
1-2-3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3

Health service glasses,
Gigolos and brasses,
Round or skinny bottoms.

Take your mum to Paris,
Lighting up the chalice,
Wee Willy Harris!

Bantu Stephen Biko,
Listening to Rico,
Harpo, Groucho, Chico.

Cheddar cheese and pickle,
The Vincent motorsickle,
Slap and tickle.

Woody Allen, Dali,
Dimitri and Pasquale,
Balabalabala and “Volare.”

Something nice to study,
Phoning up a buddy,
Being in my nuddy.

Saying "Okey-dokey,"
Singalong a’ Smokey,
Coming out of chokey

John Coltrane's soprano,
Adi Celentano,
Bonar Colleano.

Reasons to be cheerful part 3 (x 4)
1-2-3

Yes yes,
Dear dear,
Perhaps next year
Or maybe even never...

in which...case...

[awesome sax break] 

Reasons to be cheerful part 3 (x 9)
1-2-3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3 (x 4)
1-2-3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3

[repeat to fade]

If you’d like to get a rundown of all the references here--some veddy British, some silly, others just obscure--may I refer you to this helpful page at the BBC website:

Will This Make You Cheerful?

Yes, someone did this, too. Vives les interwebs!

The Fever

I know you'll probably see versions of this about ten million times during the Cup, but this really woke me up to the fact that the whole delirious show begins in about 3 weeks. Feel it!




This also reminded me of Nike's terrific Joga Bonito spots starring Eric Cantona during the 2006 Cup. Ole...ole ole ole...ole...ole...

Why I Live at the P.O. (pace E. Welty)

At the post office in Little Rock recently, I was behind an elderly man who had slowly shuffled in, at great expense, apparently, to his aged knees and hips. Reaching the desk, he complimented the clerk on her reliable smile (a frequent customer, apparently). She parried and then asked the pro forma questions about his package--about the size and shape of a shoebox, wrapped in brown paper, with an address written on it in large capital letters.

"Anything perishable, flammable, etc., etc. in your package?"

"No," he replied, "Just normal."

"Just normal?" she chuckled.

"It's ball point pens," he said.

"Pens. Okay."

"They can't be refilled, but they're too nice to throw away, so I'm sending them back to the company."

The clerk did a masterful job of controlling her eyebrows at this point.

I imagined the work this mailing represented to the old man: saving the pens up over years, finding the company address in the collection of phone books in the public library, wrapping the box, driving to the P.O. The futile gesture was the fruit of a mind dedicated to the idea that quality, even in a disposable item, must be retained in the world. There is no effective composting for design elegance, a way to retain the beauty after the object is ground up in the treads of a bulldozer.

The old man paid for his postage, and then shuffled out, carefully, moving on to the next task is his lengthy and patient list.

As long as there is a next task, there is life. Take note of this.

Apophenia 2

The ridge on my right
thumbnail is Hadrian’s Wall
as seen from Skylab.

Apophenia 1

The Virgin Mary’s face peed into the snowbank
under the lifted hind leg of the labradoodle
who lives three doors down was radiant (though crusty).

I thought of Serrano's Piss-Christ, which
I wanted to hate but couldn't because
it was beautiful. My neighbor who talks to herself

as she digs her Tercel out of the snowplow-banked snow
stomped Mary just as NewsTeam 4 was setting up
their camera--a desecration to prevent desecration.

Since they'd come that far in the cold, the cameraman
shot the new miracle of Trent Lott's pompadour,
created of snow and pee and a righteous boot heel.

I watched the news that night but the story never aired.
Instead, the broadcast closed with a human interest piece:
a young Seminarian who lost his nose & faith

in a botched hang glider landing in La Jolla. He now
professes that accidents are the natural effluence
of a rational cosmos perceived as chaos

via the narrow lens
of individual experience.
So help me God.

Memes We Like: Apophenia

Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The identification of a face on the surface of Mars is an example of pareidoliac apophenia. --Wikipedia

Love Accordingly

Moment of Bliss: Soccamatic!

Two of my favorite things together: Wallace and Gromit and soccer! Who could ask for more. (Well, maybe a full-length soccer feature with the Preston North End Soccamatic...). Extra credit for catching all the name-drops: Nobby Stiles, Geoff Hurst, Stanley Matthews...use both sides of the paper if necessary.

I Can Think of Nothing More Perfect and Humane...

...than this expression of accepting with grace our temporariness and imperfection. To hold this view leads to a living humility that becomes empathy, forgiveness, and the wisdom to live connected to the eternal rather than the moment. I may post this every day. I will certainly repeat it every day until I can call it to mind in any moment when I am trying to control the uncontrollable, or judge others out of weakness. 

 ==================================

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

-- Reinhold Niebuhr

The Year I Almost Didn't Make It

My inner music-dork does love to create playlists in iTunes. Normally I just put a best-of together at the end of the year. But this year I decided to also create a monument to my turbulent emotional year with an iMix so you, too, could enjoy the experience of a strangely personal, uncomfortable, and largely inexplicable  experience, like visiting the The House on the Rock, but in my head.

So: explore, enjoy (if that's the right word).