I feel like the web log is a carpet scuffing pair of giant bathroom slippies trying to shock my exposed and hunting and pecking finger when I approach the keyboard to post.
Therefore I leave this in trepidation as I dip my toes into the carpety static.
Also some people said some stuff I didn’t like and it made me mad and in my own mind I wreaked mental havoc upon their poorly considered ideas. Also, I taught myself the use of firearms in a Celeb Dream Cameo of quality.
I believe the correct response to a *BOOP* post is
*BOOP*
My response is
OHHHHH That’s FUCKING AWESOME!!1!!
~
This is precisely what happens when Jennifer illustrates poorly spelled music videos. Wowee!
Would it be in bad taste to point out that this song is 1000 times better than anything Rush ever did?
yeah, fish, Limbaugh can’t compose for shit.
Also.
it is, however, no “My Pal Foot Foot”
Which I demand that the Ombudswhatever re-write and record, illustrated by Jennifer, as “My Pal Boop Boop”
A feasibility study will be undertaken.
Would it be in bad taste to point out that this song is 1000 times better than anything Rush ever did?
No.
Oh, like bad taste would stop anyone around here…
I’d love it if they turned the input volume down. Aw hell, I still love it.
Would it be in bad taste to point out that this song is 1000 times better than anything Rush ever did?
Wrapped in sorrow words are token.
I would also like to mention that Chuckles is rocking a Geddy Lee pony right now, and I think this only strengthens my point.
Chuckles is rocking a Geddy Lee pony right now
If that lasts more than four hours, he should consult Dr. Fish.
a Geddy Lee Fish?
Is that LEGAL in Canada?
I recently heard “The Trees” for the first time in almost twenty years (or at least it was the first time I paid any attention to the lyrics).
Ewww.
I mean, the music is decent, but the Randian miasma on that one is pretty thick. People who don’t understand your wonderfulness are inferior beings and probably totalitarians to boot?
According to Peart: “I was working on an entirely different thing when I saw a cartoon picture of these trees carrying on like fools. I thought, “What if trees acted like people?” So I saw it as a cartoon really, and wrote it that way. I think that’s the image that it conjures up to a listener or a reader. A very simple statement.”
Ok, but when creators don’t pay attention to the subtext of their cartoons the results are often rather revealing…
The maples just want more sunlight, plover. Is that so wrong?
a Geddy Lee Fish?
Is that LEGAL in Canada?
Yes, although I believe this Fish was outlawed for crimes against hairmaneity.
Mullets ahoy!!!
But then, Brando, that Fish is not Canuckinoid…..
Regarding the above request:
I wanna be blogged by you,
just you, and nobody else but you.
I want to linked by you alone,
*BOOP* *BOOP* be-do.
I will just sit here on my perch and listen.
I would hate to see you flounder.
Stop this line of puns or you will contribute to my basser instincts. This is going to turn into some serious clownfishing around. Next thing you know, someone will need sturgery.
I left the Official Geddy Lee Rocking Pony with my nephew. It fits in with the rest of his Band of Horses “Silverado Rumpus Room Playset” and his Captain Jefferson’s Zeppelin Starship Launch Pad Lego kit.
All of his toys will soon be worth more than your mortgage.
Brando:
If I’m not entirely misinterpreting something about your joke, then it seems to be directed at a different take on the lyrics than the one I was suggesting. Though I’ll probably end up just belaboring the obvious, here’s the more detailed version.
To me, the lyrics come across as a characterization of those who seek the common good (which libertarians deny the existence of) as deluded (“quite convinced they’re right”), whiny (“the maples scream ‘Oppression’”), and totalitarian (“all kept equal with hatchet, axe, and saw”). The oaks are Randian heroes or the BS cardboard version of Nietzsche’s overman who “like the way they’re made” and “just shake their heads” over all the fuss (presumably until they’re hacked apart). When Peart asks, “What if trees acted like people?”, somehow they end up acting like libertarian stereotypes.
I don’t see a non-strained reading where the oaks (whatever they in their Social Darwinist loftiness may think) aren’t actually harming the maples, and thus the lyrics come across to me as straightforwardly anti-egalitarian. The best one might be able to do is a “plague on both your houses” sort of reading where the oaks are deluded too, but that seems hard to square with Peart’s overt libertarian sentiments.
I’d pull a William Blake “One law for the lion & ox is tyranny” reading out of it if I could, or perhaps a non-BS Nietzschian one, but I don’t see either. (Blake’s dictum is sometimes also read as anti-egalitarian, but can be looked at this way: both “grab all the sunlight you can” and “cut everyone to the same size” are both “one law for the lion & ox”.)
I don’t think Peart is one-dimensional, and I’m not making a blanket condemnation, but I don’t see how these particular lyrics escape what to me are some of the worst aspects of the worldviews he’s connected with. And that quote in my previous comment (which is almost 30 years old, so perhaps he feels differently now), is just the standard excuse of someone who doesn’t really want to look at how the effect of their words differs from the intent. Being a (certain kind of) individualist means never having to say you’re sorry for anything you didn’t intend.
Should I feel reassured that, somewhere in the wilderness of Pinko’s mind, some ill-considered ideas have had appropriate havoc wreaked upon them?
Most definitely. I mixed it up by myself at A’s regarding S (TDH). I found myself defending SM from LGM, not out of love, but out of annoyance. Also, I thought about nut-punching CB. I also denounce Geddy ponies.
plover- you should bounce over to fish’s- I think some Rush lyrics have popped his little fish brain.
I have just discovered that the striped maple, Acer pensylvanicum, is also known as moosewood. This is, no doubt, Relevant.
Emusing.
And I found that the AQX results in MRW and the SAFDFSDF has something to do with the LHDLSDLFKJ and dfljksgag
DSFsdfhNO CARRIER
The treeism on display in this thread leaves me cold.
You saps are barking mad…
~
thunderpants gets to the root of it, without being syrupy. I suspect he/she/it/thunder will leaf, and shant be back.
But he just interrupted the phloem of the conversation.
He did it on a larch.
Or should I say, he did it on a larch.
I pine for the days before this post….
Pinko, did you mean ITTDGY won’t be bark?
Aw, heck, I’m just needling ya. Don’t start birching.
This thread makes me want to clutch a poisonous aspen to my breast.
Or worse, be tossed into an insane a-xylem.
I’m going out on a limb here and guessing that Pinko Punko’s alder ego is secretly loving this thread.
~
yeah, PP is probably branching out.
OMG! He figured out a way to work in xylem! Oaky-doak.
I’m getting a twig head with all these comments about me. I bough before you.
Leave it to Mandos to spruce up the place. I prefir it this way.
This thread is very poplar, all of a sudden.
~
I hate it. For crape’s sake you son of a beech, I am going to kick your ash for what you have done.
I was going to reply to plover but now I’m stumped.
Suddenly this thread has made me much more chipper.
A man and his wife went for a nice little boat ride on the lake. While out there, the motor sputtered and quit; Philip hurt his arm trying in vain to get it restarted.
Cloris asked, “sweetheart, how will we ever get back to shore?”
The owner of the boat rental place yelled from the dock “Clor, row Phil!”
Thank you, try the veal.
That joke was petrifyingly bad. It must have stemmed from a terrible childhood.
Well, I was worried about coming up plank.
Why, did it rubber you the wrong way Mandos?
You should walk the plank for that, cedarously.
A very wooden attempt at humor.
We might be forest from the internet because of these shenanigans.
I would bet that we will all be barred from b-logging.
We should very deciduously walk away from this kind of pulp punnery.
I knew I would take one in the walnuts for that, though.
Just trying to cherry everyone up.
no need for the chorus of bamboo.
Booooorealing!!!
[plover's incredibly intelligent analysis of a rather silly song]
plover, I think you could see the song as expressing the Randian message you described. However, I also think there’s a context that simply shows one group’s selfishness could undermine a larger group as a whole. I frankly don’t think Peart was deep enough to come up with something as nuanced as what you posted. Because if he was, he would have written something better than this.
In the end, I think it’s mulch ado about nothing, and I tend to leave the lyrics of this song behind so I can rake in the much better instrumental that falls next.
“rake in…falls”
Hah. Coney, but clever.
I don’t think Brando has a clear-cut concept of the direction this thread has taken.
Oops. Missed that.
Sorry Brando. I’m a sap.
Anyone got more puns? To sycamore on us?
Game, set and match to Brando. He woods be wise to be careful lest anything befall him.
Wait, what was I saying- an appetizer tray just went by with some canopies.
Mandos, that old chestnut?
This thread has entered termital decline and we may as well log out.
Brando tills it like it is!
UC, you are too kindling.
And when it comes to puns, this thread is fully fernished.
UC fail.
I think the guys in Rush must have hairy palms, from all that wanking, but maybe I’m not seeing the forest for the trees.
Puns bud evergreen.
Yew and your pawpaw might like Rush, but in my house not even the dogwood listen to them.
I always willow them a debt of gratitude for making music I liked.
different oaks for different folks, fish.
But hey, I don’t want to be a basswood about it. I don’t want you to sumac me.
The guys in Rush may make you crabapple; but they worked hardwood to construct a career and nurture fans; yes, they cambium naturally.
I feel like Pinko and fish are off spreading the (3)Bull’s-Rush
Gee, I hope fish isn’t getting annoyed at arboring Rush talk….
It’s certainly knot what I intended.
Someone needs to palm down a little.
Damn PP already used palm.
Damn PP already used palm.
How do you know that? Can you see his bathroom?
maybe he uses an aid…
In any case, I don’t think I want to know a quarter-sawn of what that implies.
78 comments? What is this, firedogwoodlake?
Ok, I know that dogwood’s been used, and most of the comments are mine, but really, this goes against the grain. It doesn’t ring true. It makes my heartwood yearn for the veneer of half-assery and citrus lacquered trolls…
I hope PP isn’t teaked off.
I’m like a modern tree production facility. Quantity, not quality, cuz it’s all gonna get chewed up and spewed into Ikea panels anyway….
So anybody who wants me to stop posting like a meth-addled tree squirrel, is free to contact me for gainful employment.
Zombie OUTFEED.
Fear of Blog 81
zombie rotten mcdonald, fish, zombie rotten mcdonald, zombie rotten mcdonald, fish, fish, zombie rotten mcdonald
This does not have quite the resonance of fish, fish, plover!1!!
It might still be a workable ballad.
~
This does not have quite the resonance of fish, fish, plover!1!!
Link Nazis will never hold me down. Never!
~
All this talk of Rush and trees appears to have struck a cord.
Weeee are the zombieeeeees my luuuuuuunch,
And weeeeeeee’ll keep on eating the braaaaaaains
I hope PP isn’t teaked off.
PP never gets board of our oaks.
I like joaks. I don’t like hoaks.
This thread is in grove danger of imploding.
When it implodes, we’ll have a general clearing of puns. A new order will blossom in its place. A world of punlessness for evergreen.
Trying to hedge, Mandos?
My beleafs are not at stake. Don’t be such a stick in the mud. Maybe one day we’ll be kindling another tree thread pun.
Might SongMeanings be the new Yelp?
I frankly don’t think Peart was deep enough to come up with something as nuanced as what you posted. Because if he was, he would have written something better than this.
I wasn’t really saying that Peart’s process was any “deeper” than is implied by the quote I found — where he comes across as determinedly non-introspective on the subject. As with the New York Post cartoon, the point isn’t intent, but effect. The vocabulary used in the lyrics evokes a whole context of libertarian discourse. It is a question of how meanings are socially constituted. On some level, it is precisely a lack of depth that leads to the most strongly evoked context being a libertarian stereotype; as you noted, artistry could have made of the underlying ideas something less ticky-tacky.
I think you could see the song as expressing the Randian message you described. However, I also think there’s a context that simply shows one group’s selfishness could undermine a larger group as a whole.
Of course, I’m not saying that my interpretation is the “real” meaning of the song in some determinate or Platonic sense. And I would also stress that I’m not pushing a concretely allegorical reading like the one “Garthnak” does in my previous comment. I’m saying that the text fits a certain structure of libertarian thinking, and, to my eye, seems to fit that structure better than any other, not that the song is “really about” some particular libertarian idea, or that the libertarian structure I’m suggesting exhausts the plausible readings. It is the reading that was evoked most strongly for me, and the one that spurred me to anti-libertarian invective in my initial comment above (for Rand-style libertarianism, not exactly a daunting challenge, but there you have it, too many notes).
For example, while trying to come up with a concrete example to fit your suggested reading, I realized that the struggle between scientists and creationists fits the text extremely well. Ironically, though, this is the case at least in part because the “Christians are oppressed” crowd have taken up the rhetoric of whiny victimhood that the right so often projects (most of the time inaccurately) on the left. This reading, however, is a specific allegory, and thus at methodological cross-purposes with what I was trying to do earlier.
[It is not clear why I feel driven to methodological excursus (which is not as contagious as it sounds, but may be illegal to take across state lines) amidst a punnacious burl-esque. Perhaps, it is related to the old eucalyptic saying: momma was a pistil and I'm a son of a gum.]
“yew and your pawpaw” is win
*BOOP*
As with the New York Post cartoon, the point isn’t intent, but effect.
True. I don’t say this to somehow relieve them from responsibility, but often effect (or at least part of it) is out the hands of the artist. They may intend one thing and have the public come to a completely different series of interpretations. Again, not to relieve artists from that completely — in many cases they should see a controversial angle (like the New Yorker Obama terrorist cover). But the sheer nature of interpretation often makes it hard to hold an artist acorntable for the axetions of the public reacting their works.
As usual, Brando and I are in accork.
Wood that I had not read UC’s pun. He’s probably eaten too much chips and balsa.
God these are so bad.
God these are so bad.
Yes, I’ve just about had my chlorophyll of tree puns.
Would you cellulose your soul to make it stop?
I would axe that the group show some restraint, and stop hammering the puns. Yesterday, I saw that it might be possible, but today it is apparent that you awl intend to continue burning the field.
I presume somebody saw that one coming.
Hereabouts tis a veritable bay o’ babble. But twas ever thus.
Perhaps, the mgmt should mull it over, but they don’t mulberry well.
You could burn myrtle the cows come home, and the stinkwoodn’t clear.
I guess we’ll never plum the depths of the problem.
yep; I think I’m plumb out of puns.
Brando:
I don’t think what you’re saying is incompatible with what I’ve been saying. Are you seeing an actual disagreement? Or were you trying to make sure your position is clear? (The latter being largely the purpose of my previous comment on this.)
Just discussing the issue a little more, plover. And searching for more excuses for puns. I don’t think we were really disagreeing, but simply looking at how you can interpret something like a song. Exploring the studio space, if you will.
Incidentally, and apropos of nothing, there’s some pretty good Phil Collins-bashing going on over at Sadly No!.
They’re really taking the bark offa him.
What’s all this about Phil’s colon?
Brando: Ok. Just wanted to make sure we weren’t rowan in different directions.
Unbelievable half-ash from plover.
110 comments and still growing fast! This thread should really see a dendrochronologist.
Pretty acorny, mdh.
He’s just plywooding his trade. Hilumberjacking this thread.
hi everyone!
If a blog is not updated in the woods and there is nobody around to refresh it, …
…. it’s half-ash.