Hey, what did you expect? If today were a “Friends” episode, it would be titled, “The One Where We Tortured People and Lied About It.” But it’s day six of Zappadan 2014, and Charles P. Pierce is all the friend you’re ever gonna need for the bird’s-eye lowdown on this torture caper.
Category: Arts & letters
He used to cut the grass
I used to cut the grass. I should do it again today. But I’d rather take a nice bike ride, maybe dwindle off into the twilight realm of my own secret thoughts. It’s day four of Zappadan 2014, and I don’t know any nice songs for cutting the grass.
Except for this one. And no, I won’t turn it down. I’m not a very nice boy.
Zomby woof
Mister Boo’s recovery continues nicely, thanks to some timely musical therapy from that Over-Nite Sensation Frank Zappa on this, day three of Zappadan 2014.
The cone comes off more often now, and a neighbor who saw him motoring along like the happy little guy he is proclaimed that The Boo was “walking tall.”
Don’t mess with the Zomby Woof, y’all.
Do, however, feel free to mess with the UCI for this hash of a press release. Jesus H. Christ, it takes talent to say less than fuck-all while using 714 words to do it.
I remember discussing a semantic analysis of the Budweiser jingle during my college days. What it boils down to, the professor explained, is a list of the various Anheuser-Busch trademarks for Budweiser that says absolutely nothing about the quality of the beer. A masterpiece of obfuscation that remained unsurpassed until the UCI came on the scene. Well done.
Can without Spam
After yesterday’s launch was scrubbed, Orion finally got it up today, so I thought I’d post this horn-fueled version of “Stairway to Heaven” from FZ and the gang on this, the second day of Zappadan 2014.
When I was a squirt and sci-fi nerd, I watched as many launches as I could get away with. The old man was pretty liberal about that sort of self-education, bringing home plenty of autographed pix of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts, and it was one of the things I really liked about growing up in an Air Force household.
I’ve always wondered how much further we might be along today had we spent a little less time blowing stuff up and a little more sending it up. Instead of contemplating a few unmanned laps around the Earth and moon, which is slightly old hat, we’d have had at least one Starbucks on Mars by now, on Podkayne Fries Boulevard, and a share apiece in Venus Corporation.
Oz-some!
Ozzy Osbourne turns 666 today (OK, so he’s only 66; sue me) and I expect that this surprises him nearly as much as it does the rest of us.
Now, you all know me as a discerning connoisseur of the arts, whether culinary, graphic or sonic, but there was a time in my misspent youth when I was something of a headbanger.
In those dark days all I required to drive everyone over 16 in the neighborhood completely witless was my parents’ Telefunken console stereo and any one of three albums: “Led Zeppelin,” the band’s debut LP; “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” by Iron Butterfly; and “Paranoid,” by Black Sabbath.
By laughing Satan’s spreading wings, ’tis a wonder my family was not chased from the ‘hood by angry villagers brandishing crucifixes, pitchforks and torches when I spun the volume knob all the way to the right for “War Pigs,” quite the anthem to hear thundering from the home of a WWII veteran.
You could actually see the picture window thrumming like the drums out of which Bill Ward was beating the shit, and Tony Iommi’s guitar licks killed all the flowers from Constitution to Maizeland. A neighbor’s canary almost chewed through the bars of its cage before exploding like a feathered M-80.
Today, of course, my tastes have become a good deal more refined. Either that or I’ve gone stone deaf. What?
