’20 A To Z Challenge – U

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s New Pussycat? Whoaoo-oaoo-oaoo-whoa!  Tom Jones says, It’s Not

UNUSUAL

to hit a bit of writers block, but that’s old news.

What is also not unusual is that, like many other entertainment personalities, the Welsh singer, TOM JONES, isn’t.  He is Sir Thomas John Woodward OBE.  Jones is the most common Welsh surname, although there does not seem to be any among his immediate ancestors.

I can find no proof that he assumed the name Tom Jones because of a desire to reference the raunchy 1749 English novel with that name, which enjoyed a resurgence and republishing, just as he was beginning his public career.

Still, at the height of his popularity, inside industry observers estimated that he was having sex with up to 250 female fans per year.  His son/manager says that he is astounded and embarrassed that even into his 60s and 70s, female audience members were throwing panties with their phone number onstage.

So, I you got screwed without even a kiss, because Creativity bailed out and went for a beer, Desperation moved into the pilot’s seat, and barely landed a post with a U word in it.

I could go on a #MeToo rant, about guys like Bill Clinton, Harvey Weinstein, Peter Nygard, Jeffrey Epstein, Randy Prince Andy, Keith Raniere and Bill Cosby.  Men like this regard themselves, and are regarded by others, as alpha males, somehow entitled to unlimited sex with an unlimited number of females.  Sadly, these actions and attitudes are also not unusual.  Cosby’s only difference was that he had a kink where he preferred his victims unconscious.  All they have done is bring the concept of droit du seigneur up to date into the modern, electronic age.

I won’t do that (Too late!) because this post is already too depressing.  I’ll have something a little more upbeat in a couple of days.  C U then.  😀

’19 A To Z Challenge – U

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A USELESS TALE ABOUT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

O Nostalgia, where is thy sting?

What do I do when a blog-post theme occurs to me while I am having lunch?
Keep munching! A good platter of nachos is like a contract with God Himself. You guys can read my blatherings any time.

My Father was a minor performer. Before the advent of radios in automobiles, he used to regale us with ditties and folk-songs on Sunday drives and road trips. I have found most of them on Google, as folk or minstrel songs, but no indication that any of them were ever recorded. He must have received them as oral history.

The other day, as I was dashing through melted cheese and jalapeno rings, I recalled my mother crooning a little ballad to me in the late 1940s. At first, I thought it might have been just something that she had heard Dad sing. My friend, Dr. Google assured me that this had been a real, live song.

I typed in, “Down In The Garden Where The Praties Grow.” If you tap, you will see that the title is merely, The Garden Where The Praties Grow. I remember asking my Mother what ‘praties’ were. She explained that this was an Irish term for ‘potatoes.’

I already knew what indignities the skirt-wearing Scots had inflicted on the language. It was no surprise to find that the drunken Irish couldn’t keep their words straight. Mom must have heard it on the primitive radio when she worked in the big city of Detroit. It was recorded in 1930, but the original version must have been written about 1870, with fashion references to Grecian Bend – women’s hunched stature, caused by a huge bustle – and ‘chignon’, a large, then-trendy, braid or bun at the nape of the neck.

I hope that some of you enjoy a bit of entertainment/fashion history. While I claimed that this story is useless, and about nothing, to me it is a fond remembrance of the soft, kind, loving support that my Mother gave to me as a growing child. This post, and the history/musical link, are particularly dedicated to 1Jaded1, who likes when I connect my story to a song.

Seinfeld Re-Run

Being another collection of unrelated thoughts which carom and rattle around inside my vacant skull.  Think of this as mental spring-cleaning, which it would be, if this were spring.  This is fall.  By the time I post this, I will have overnight become 68 years old, and that fact should be obvious.

I recently, righteously, slagged four female Canadian singers.  I ran out of space and energy before I could include a fifth.  I give you the, famous in her own mind, even when she’s out of it, Nelly Furtado.  Like the others, Nelly is a decent singer and performer.  Unlike Shania Twain, she doesn’t have a long history of verbal malaprops.  She managed to do it all in one TV interview.

This one occurred just as she was breaking out.  She was booked on a meet-the-artist show on MuchMusic, Canada’s we-don’t-need-no-stinkin’-American MTV, alternative.  For a half an hour she unwittingly proved herself to be an up-and-coming Canadian racist.  Everything she bragged about herself, was because she was Portuguese, not Portuguese-Canadian, just Portuguese.

She was born in British Columbia.  Her first big song, I’m Like a Bird, contains the line, “I’m like a bird.  I don’t know where my home is.”  I think it fitting that, the only bird which doesn’t know where its home is, is a cuckoo.  The same pair of robins flew back from Florida, and nested in my porch for five or six years. Apparently, she also doesn’t know where the National Geographic Channel is.

She claimed to be a great song-writer because she was Portuguese.  I don’t know what that says about Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot or Buffy Saint-Marie, who have Jewish, English and Cree heritage, respectively.  She lauded herself about her high morals because she was Portuguese, and I almost choked.  I’ve watched Portuguese girls coming home from Catholic school on the bus.  The only thing sluttier, might be some Romanian girls.  The only thing they don’t show is restraint.

I’d even forgive the Portuguese references if her parents had been born there, but they weren’t.  They come from the Azores Islands, which are to Portugal, what Newfoundland is to Canada, only more so.  Further out in the ocean, more isolated, more ignored, poorer, less literate, if it weren’t for the fact that several airlines use the big island for trans-Atlantic fuelling, they’d be eating jelly-fish and smoking seaweed.

There was another blogger, whose site was also called Archons Den.  He was a Filipino who posted on BlogSpot.  He was big into electronics, posting about Smartphones, iPods, expensive car stereos and big-screen TVs.  He may have gone bankrupt.  I haven’t seen a new post in almost a year.  Archon is also the name given to a yearly science-fiction conference in Kansas City.  I believe this year is number 37.

Booksellers like Chapters have a current book for sale, titled “Archon.”  It’s sort of an H E Ellis’, Reapers With Issues, crossed with 50 Shades of Grey.  A book titled, “The Archon”, is a children’s story about a trek to seek peace with the Rain Queen.  I’m honored, in a vague way, but I think I’ll skip them both.

The niece who ate Ex-Lax, but only drank Javex once, went with her parents and siblings for a weekend visit with her other grandparents on their farm.  Out of her clothes and into a nightgown, the six-year-old wanted to know what was in the coffee-pot protruding over the edge of the stove.  She pulled it down on her left shoulder, and the boiling coffee was held like a sponge by the flannelette nightie.  By the time the adults pulled it off the screaming child, she had been burned so badly that she developed a quarter-inch thick mass of scar tissue from the base of her neck to her vaccination mark.

Mr. Automotive Q&A published another duh-mb letter this week.  The writer wanted him to help, because he had bought a used car from a dealer.  He gave the salesman a cheque, which had been cashed.  The day he bought the car, he needed to do some running around, so he got them to let him take the car out.  He was to return it, and they were to do a safety on it.  When he brought it back, the dealership refused to safety his car, and he wanted the columnist to pressure them into it.  That’s his story, and it sounds straightforward.

Mr. Q&A did some phoning, and quickly found out that:  He left the dealer’s lot at about noon on a Friday.  He was supposed to return the car before end of workday.  Closing time came, no car.  Monday came and went, no car!  Tuesday came and went, no car!!  On Wednesday, the dealer plate and its holder were hanging on the dealer’s front door when they opened for business.  That was early in April!  Now, early in September, he wants them to do all the work necessary to pass a government test, and of course, they demurred.

In Q&A’s response, he told the guy that the dealer was willing to do the rear brakes, which should have been fixed five months ago, along with several other minor repairs.  They would not replace the windshield which was not cracked when he took possession, nor the right headlight, which was working when he left.  Since he drove 3800 kilometers after he left, they would also not replace the alternator or the windshield wipers.  They would do the emission testing, but he would have to pay for any parts needed to get the car to pass.

The dealer admitted that they should never have let him off the lot, and should have notified the Ontario Transport Ministry when the car did not return.  Mr Q&A, and the rest of us, assume he was driving for five months with illegal licence plates, not registered to the car.  Also, since the vehicle was not in his name, he drove for the five months without the legally required insurance.  Q&A gave him one week from the date of the column printing to get all this stuff done, because, as a licensed mechanic, he is legally bound to inform the ministry, if he has knowledge of non-compliance.

This all happened in Southwestern Ontario, but I’ll bet you drove past a car today, driven by a yahoo like this.  Scary as hell, isn’t it?