Good kitty!

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Diamonds and Rust: a love that lasts a lifetime

The Nobel Prize for Literature is yet another step towards immortality for Bob Dylan. The rebellious, reclusive, unpredictable artist/composer is exactly where the Nobel Prize for Literature needs to be.
His gift with words is unsurpassable. Out of my repertoire spanning 60 years, no songs have been more moving and worthy in their depth, darkness, fury, mystery, beauty, and humor than Bob’s. None has been more of a pleasure to sing. None will come again.

- Joan Baez


Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Joan Baez. She was the queen of folk music then and now. She took a liking to my songs and brought me with her to play concerts, where she had crowds of thousands of people enthralled with her beauty and voice. People would say, "What are you doing with that ragtag scrubby-looking waif?" And she'd tell everybody in no uncertain terms, "Now you better be quiet and listen to the songs." We even played a few of them together. Joan Baez is as tough-minded as they come. Loyal, free minded and fiercely independent. Nobody can tell her what to do if she doesn't want to do it. I learned a lot of things from her. A woman of devastating honesty. And for her kind of love and devotion, I could never pay that back.

- Bob Dylan

Halle-freakin'-lujah: this one's for you, Bob

For Bob Dylan: on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature

I hear you won the Nobel Prize

The trophy goes with your blue eyes

But you don’t care too much for trophies, do ya?

I heard your thunder at my door

You shook the beams and cracked the floor

And woke me with a howling Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

You wrote some songs, you wrote them well

You cored my soul and gave me hell

It made me quiver when I listened to ya.

We sang your songs down by the lake

The loons all cried like William Blake

And flamed the sky in shining hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

I can’t say why I feel this way

You’ve been my brother all the way

It hurts when this much truth is blowin’ through ya.

You said the things I could not say

The pain will never go away

A blazing sad refrain of Hallelujah 

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Blowhard: why Trump looks exactly like Willie the Whale

Sometimes I just need cute

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Blah, blah, blah: Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

So what on God's green earth could these two songs have to do with each other? One is nothing but blah-blah-blahs pasted together with the "moon-June-Saskatoon" cliches of bad love songs (and no. . . it doesn't actually have Saskatoon in it. Which makes me think of Peter Lorre in the Spike Jones version of My Old Flame: "No. . . it couldn't have been Moe. . .").

I love the Blah-Blah song, which was written by George and Ira Gershwin for a movie called Delicious in 1931.  But I am also irritated by it, mainly because nobody knows how to sing it. I've suffered through several YouTube performances, all of them awful except one (and I posted it already - I'll have to look it up). Almost everyone "blah-blahs" as if they don't remember the words. They roll their eyes and wring their hands and rack their brains and look as if they want to run offstage with embarrassment. But the joke is - and maybe people were cleverer in 1931 - THE WORDS DON'T MATTER. Nobody pays the slightest bit of attention to them. Furthermore, most love songs have crappy words anyway, so crappy they're interchangeable. There's a blueprint that most songwriters stick to, and it's tried and true, and banal and dull, and it works. 

OK then, whoof. How did I get from this blah-blah-blah thing to Leonard Cohen?

I think I am the last person on the planet who does NOT like Hallelujah. I just don't. The tune isn't. . . too. . .bad, but the lyric is a stinker. But that shouldn't be a problem, and do you know whyyy?

No one has ever noticed it.

No one has ever noticed this lyric ("it goes like this"), and I say this because people are constantly wanting to have it sung at weddings, or at confirmation services, or at baptisms. Why? Because it has the word "hallelujah" in it, probably sixteen or eighteen or twenty times.

It's not a dirty song or anything, but it's just all wrong: a typical angsty, brooding, narcissistic, self-involved, dark, vaguely profane, masturbatory Cohen thing. I'm not sure I want to hear that anywhere, let alone in church.

I read somewhere on a web site - Mormon or something - that the choir was asked by the minister to sing Hallelujah at a service. Everyone was on-board and very enthusiastic about it, because they all loved the song. They didn't have time to go over it at choir practice, but hey - they all knew the tune anyway! And they loved that chorus: Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, etc. Surely with a refrain like that, it must be a truly holy song.

Instead, it was more like: HOLY SHIT! The choir director, just as she was passing out the sheet music before the service, happened to just glance at the words, and the lines "you saw her bathing on the roof. . .she tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair. . . "

Actually, that IS pretty scriptural. Bathsheba liked to take her bath in public, especially if sexually-rampant men were watching.  And anyone familiar with scripture knows what happens next. (Adultery, anyone?). And didn't somebody get a hair cut at about that time? It was David, wasn't it? Or not. And I'm not too sure he was tied to a kitchen chair.

So they sang something else. They did Praise God From Whom All, or Blessed Be The, or I Praise Thy Whatever (or whatever they do in the Mormon church). And afterwards, everyone ran up to the choir director and said, "Awwwww. Why didn't you do Hallelujah?"

What the fuck do people think this song SAYS, anyway? True, it's sort of scriptural, but it was Samson who had the haircut, not David, losing all his strength to that wily succubus, Delilah. So scriptural accuracy is compromised, sliced and diced for his own convenience, but perhaps Cohen realized no one was going to notice it anyway. No one was going to notice any part of it except the refrain, and the word that's repeated sixeen times (or eighteen, or twenty-four, depending on how long the fade is).

I've written often about mondegreens, those misheard/mistranscribed words that swarm all over internet lyric sites. Bizarrely, the SAME mondegreens seems to be replicated over and over again, on every site. I don't know how this happens, unless there is a Badly Transcribed Song Lyric Central somewhere that has all the lyrics with all the errors, all the time.

I know they're mondegreens because I listen to the original version, with the original artist, sometimes more than one version, just to be sure.  So kids, it really ISN'T "s'cuse me while I kiss this guy". 

Hallelujah doesn't qualify as a mondegreen, at all. It's not misheard. It's an ignored lyric, or a disregarded lyric, or a lyric with an erroneous assumption attached to it that it will be a Truly Holy Song because it has the word Hallelujah repeated so many times it's like machine-gun fire. So in the church I used to go to, and suffered through (especially in the choir, which was abysmal), one woman said, "I'd really like to do the Leonard Cohen song, Hallelujah," and everyone went "ohhhh!" and "yeah!" and chimed in with enthusiasm. The choir leader said he'd order the sheet music. 

I said something about the lyrics being kind of inappropriate, and, conversation-wise, the floor dropped about 37 feet. I disappeared and vaporized as surely as that supposedly-holy Leonard Cohen lyric. I no longer existed because I wasn't chiming in, and besides, I was just being "negative" like I always was, spoiling things. (This was because I didn't want a six-voice version of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, bawled off-key by people who couldn't sing a note. But the congregation thought it was simply wonderful.)

Hallelujah was never sung in my former church, for some reason, but I did see a very famous, viral video of a priest singing it at a wedding - and by the holy, all the lyrics were changed! Suddenly there was no one being tied to chairs, no haircuts, no one splashing around naked on a rooftop. It was all rendered extremely bland and weddingy. But what are the chances Leonard Cohen was ever consulted about this? And I am sure that when churches and wedding/baptism planners FINALLY get to the point of glancing at the lyrics and realize it's about an adulterous affair, they just get a pencil and start to work. "Oh, then, we can just sing our OWN version of it."

Last time I checked, that was extremely illegal. At very least, it's unethical, particularly for a church. Even some normal, ordinary songs like hymns can't be sung in church, at all, because of copyright. Not everything is in the public domain, and casually butchering a Leonard Cohen song is just not a good thing. 

I don't like this song, but I don't think it should be naively gutted just to sanitize it. Either go with the naked chick and the haircut, or forget about it.

Or maybe, instead of the David and Bathsheba thing, everyone should just go like this:

Blah blah blah blah blah blah-blah-blah

Blah blah blah blah blah blah-blah-blah

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, do you?


ADDENDUM. As usual, there is More To The Story.

A cold and broken Hallelujah: singing priest removed from YouTube
Wednesday, April 30, 2014

By Denise O'Donoghue
Reporter

The singing priest is no more - his video has disappeared from YouTube. Fr Ray Kelly’s rendition of Hallelujah was pulled following a copyright claim by Sony ATV Publishing.

Sony ATV Publishing own the rights to the original Leonard Cohen song.

The video had gained over 30m views on YouTube since it was uploaded to the website earlier this month, making Fr Kelly an instant star.

Fr Kelly recently revealed he was meeting with Sony to discuss a record deal.

Although the original video has been removed, other videos of his performance are still available on YouTube.

The Oldcastle parish priest surprised newly-weds Leah and Chris O’Kane with a personalised version of the Leonard Cohen song. He received a standing ovation before returning to the pulpit to deliver the final prayer.

Fr Kelly's fame led to him appearing on the Late Late Show and he is jetting off to New York to perform a concert on May 13 at The Town Hall on 123 West 43rd Street.

(I can't decide which of the Ten Commandments he broke here: Thou Shalt Not Steal, or Thou Shalt Not Write and Perform Sappy, Maudlin Lyrics to a Song by a Well-Respected, If Overly-Commercialized Poet? Or is it. . . Thou Shalt Not Gut a Popular Song and Casually Substitute Dreck of Your Own and Thus Become World-Famous Overnight, Not That You Care Because You're A Priest and Above All That Worldly Stuff? Moses would've needed a few extra tablets for that one.)

OH GOD! More verses. As I listened to a few of the recorded versions, I kept hearing extra stuff. It's kind of dirty, too, making the song even MORE inappropriate at weddings where nobody even thinks of sex, for Christ's sake (what is the matter with you?). Some versions have these verses, some don't. Did Leonard Cohen really write these, or was it that dirty old Irish priest? You know about priests, don't you? Dirty things.

Baby, I've been here before
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor (you know)
I used to live alone before I knew ya
And I've seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah...

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me, do ya?
But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah...

Maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah...
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah...
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah

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George and Ira Gershwin at the pool

Hometown: an essay in gifs

I just found this video of Chatham in the early '60s, dreamlike, timewarped, and made gifs of the most interesting parts. I am always interested in technical awfulness because it is so revealing. Here, the cameraman puts his fingers over the lens, shoots directly into the light, and nearly drops the camera at several points. But in its orange-flash-y surrealism, with flames shooting out of the back of an invisible Studebaker, it holds magic for me.

For this IS Chatham: a place that no longer exists even remotely in this form. The cars all had ears then, sort of like Porky Pig. Everything was brick. I had no idea then that these would be the happiest times of my life. No, not happiest, but simplest. I had no idea what was ahead, or I would have run screaming.

This is rush hour in Chatham: car horns blaring, end-to-end, bumper-to-bumper traffic jams, road rage, and, uh, er. No. The cars just sort of crawled along, but nobody noticed because that was the normal pace. I have no idea why the lens was briefly covered. Did a nude man suddenly parade along King Street? Or is this some version of avant-garde cinema, in which the cameraman's hand is a character in the drama?

I have no idea what the Pyranon Record Hop is. I thought it must be Record SHOP, but it isn't. A hop is something you put in beer, isn't it? Or is it like a sock hop? There's a song about that. Let's go to the hop. Let's go to the hop. Let's go to the hop (oh baby), let's go to the hop.

This building, whatever it is or was, some industrial thing, surely not a school, or maybe a reformatory, was of such interest to the cameraperson that he or she filmed it twice, panning right to left, then left to right. I cannot imagine what went on in that place.

FOUND: unseen footage of the Challenger disaster (for real!)

Creepy clowns? Give me a break!

http://www.snopes.com/scary-clowns-kill-23-people-in-canada/

Fact Check
Fake News
Killer Clowns in Canada
Fake news reported that weapons-wielding clowns from the U.S. invaded Canada and murdered 23 victims.

Dan Evon Oct 04, 2016




CLAIM: Weapons-wielding clowns from the U.S. invaded Canada and murdered 23 victims.

FALSE


ORIGIN:On 3 October 2016 the Global Sun web site published an article reporting that weapons-wielding clowns from the U.S. had invaded Canada and murdered 23 victims there:

As it’s getting closer to Halloween, what seemed to be a harmless joke at first, suddenly turned into a serious matter with the police. What started off as reports of creepy clowns luring around neighbourhoods in the US, has suddenly escalated to another level. It is believed that the surge of clowns spotted wielding weapons originated from some states in America, but has made it’s way up north.

There was no truth to this story. The Global Sun is a fake news web site that does not publish factual stories, as noted in their disclaimer:

The Global Sun is a satire website, articles/post on the website are all made-up stories and should not be taken seriously.

This fabricated killer clown story was published in amidst numerous reports of clown sightings in the United States. In August 2016, residents of Greenville, South Carolina reported that clowns were attempting to lure children into the woods. A few weeks later, the clowns had migrated to North Carolina, and since then scary clowns have been reported in various locations across the United States — although actual evidence of their existence is lacking:

But amid all of these reports, no clowns have been photographed. Police investigators have found no traces of clown activity. Not even a stray red nose or a strand of blue hair.

So what are these insidious creatures? According to one clown expert, they’re probably “phantom clowns.”

Fake news web sites have taken advantage of the recent uptick in coulrophobia to publish bogus reports about clown-related deaths. However, clowns did not kill 23 people in Canada, nor was a clown shot in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

BLOGGER's COMMENTS. OK then. . . From the very beginning, the "creepy clown sightings" reports made me groan. There was more than a faint smell of bullshit about them, but everybody seemed to be getting on the bandwagon and reporting it as straight news - including CTV, the Vancouver television station my daughter Shannon works for as a reporter.

The other day, a school in Vancouver had to be put on lockdown due to high school kids in creepy clown costumes chasing after kids. So is this a copycat crime of a NON-crime? 

What probably disturbs me the most is how quickly pure fabricated bullshit becomes actual news. If it's on the internet, no matter how hokey the site, it MUST have happened, and it is replicated and replicated without ANYONE checking to find out if it's factual or not. So much for getting it from three sources. That just takes too long for today's lightning-paced media demands, so you just grab whatever pops up, anywhere.

I see this in coffee rooms and bus stops and everywhere people casually talk (not that they do any more: too busy looking down and wiggling their thumbs). "Did you see that story on the blah-blah?" "Yeaaaaah. . . it's really awful, isn't it. The world is getting so violent." Never mind if the item appeared in the Bogus Satirical Fake Parody News, or if other stories on the same site were along the lines of "man eats 5000 gallons of ice cream in 5 minutes and dies on the street". 

So I'm not sure what is going on. I'm going to ask Shannon.

'Clownpocalypse' hits B.C. with creepy clown confrontations

Teens arrested for creepy clown threat

Local teenagers are jumping on an unsettling prank that’s sweeping North America, but police aren't laughing.

Clownpocalypse hits B.C. with creepy clown run-in

A letter was sent home to parents in Langley, B.C., after students reported being confronted by someone wearing a clown mask.

CTV National News: Clown hoaxes becoming frequent

A U.S. trend is making its way into Canada. Creepy clown sightings are becoming frequent and freaky. CTV's Kevin Gallagher reports. Police forces and school districts across B.C. are urging caution as a bizarre trend dubbed the "clownpocalypse" on social media triggers arrests and school lockdowns.

It comes in the midst of a string of "creepy clown" sightings in Canadian cities including Toronto, Halifax and Edmonton, as well as many U.S. cities. The phenomenon has also involved threats made on social media, and usually involves vague warnings about violence at schools.

RELATED STORIES

'Clownpocalypse': Canadian students fall prey to viral scare

Why are we so afraid of clowns?

PHOTOS



In this file photo from 2015, a man dressed as a horror clown is pictured when thousands of revellers dressed in carnival costumes celebrate the start of the street-carnival in Cologne, Germany, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner

That's prompted action by police forces in British Columbia. Surrey RCMP are asking the public to report any unusual clown sightings after a terrifying incident Wednesday night where a man wearing a clown mask jumped out of the bushes and chased four teenagers.

"He was carrying something in his hands that may have been a baseball bat. The male was laughing as he was chasing them," said Sgt. Alanna Dunlop. No one was injured but the force is taking the incident very seriously.

In nearby Langley, a stranger wearing a clown mask apparently approached middle school students on their way to class, which prompted a note sent home to parents. "On two recent mornings students have reported being confronted by a stranger in a clown mask on the way to school," the letter dated Thursday from HD Stafford Middle School reads. Principal Shawn Davids said the school administration and RCMP believe there is no immediate danger to students, but advises students to walk in pairs and avoid distractions like iPods and text messaging.

“Out of an abundance of caution, it is recommended that students walking to school be vigilant in the coming weeks as we approach Halloween and in light of the ‘creepy clown’ internet phenomenon being reported,” Davids wrote. Two teens in Prince George, B.C., were arrested after a posting a clown-related post on Instagram that read: "Every school in PG is about to get hit."

The post prompted a partial lockdown at a local high school. RCMP said at no time did its investigators believe the threat was credible, but officials asked all area schools to keep children inside and lock all external doors.

"Although we had no evidence that indicated violent action would take place, police were deeply concerned about the threats and acted with an abundance of caution," Cpl. Craig Douglass said.
The 17-year-old taken into custody was released without charges, but the 16-year-old was scheduled to make his first court appearance Friday and criminal charges are being considered.

More threats were reported to local schools on Friday, prompting six area high schools to be briefly locked down. RCMP investigators in the latest case determined that the threats were not credible and, in some cases, outdated.

With an increased police presence posted at schools in the Prince George area, Douglass said the investigation into the threats was tying up resources "that could be better used responding to where they are truly needed."

The clown pranks are drawing serious police resources to American schools, where every threat is taken seriously.

It's even drawn concern from the White House.

"This is a situation that local law enforcement authorities take quite seriously," said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.

Social media users have been documenting the prank phenomenon under the hashtag #Clownsightings.

OK, the emphasis is mine, but doesn't this sound like Prank-o-Rama or a Prankfest to you? Who has actually gotten hurt in these things? Isn't this just a case of a high school kid in a dollar store mask running around in circles after a screaming little kid, her fear whipped up by her gullible, know-nothing parents?

The blue/italic portions indicate that the cops really think the whole thing is bullshit, but they dare not say so. Hey! It says there are creepy clowns ON THE INTERNET. So it must be true.

RELATED BLOG POST (one of my better ones, I think!):  

I Hate Clowns

Addenda. WHY we are afraid of clowns. The Experts Speak!

So-called “creepy clown” encounters are making people nervous across Canada and the U.S.

The sightings may be part of a viral trend that swept into several U.S. cities, where there have been reports of clowns terrorizing children and stalking people in the street. But why are we so scared of clowns to begin with?

Child and adolescent psychiatrist Steven Schlozman says it has something to do with how clowns are portrayed in popular culture.

“They are supposed to be fun, but they have been part of the horror canon now for awhile, at least 20 years and probably more,” Schlozman told CTV News Channel on Thursday.

He points to films and television shows that have taken the idea of a fun-loving, happy clown and turned it on its head, introducing the maniacal killer character clowns into our thriller lexicon.

From a neuro-biology perspective, Schlozman said clowns also “violate” the rules of pattern recognition.

“We know what a person looks like -- they’ve got two eyes, a nose and a mouth, and so do clowns,” Schlozman said. But with clowns, their facial features are exaggerated and “grotesque.”

In addition, their features are frozen or “stuck,” says Schlozman.

“There’s a permanently painted smile or a permanently painted frown, so you don’t actually know what their motivation is,” he said. “That’s I think what gives people a bit of the willies.”

Schlozman acknowledges some of the fear of clowns is circumstance.

“I think clowns at the circus or a birthday party are not that scary,” Schlozman said. “Clowns in your backyard – that’s a little creepy. I wouldn’t want to see it.”

(So now we know!)

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The Northern lights of Norway

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You tell 'em, Bobby

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A ladder to the stars: way to go, Bob

May God bless and keep you always 

May your wishes all come true

May you always do for others 

And let others do for you

May you build a ladder to the stars 

And climb on every rung

May you stay forever young

Forever young, forever young 

May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous 

May you grow up to be true

May you always know the truth 

And see the lights surrounding you

May you always be courageous 

Stand upright and be strong

May you stay forever young

Forever young, forever young 

May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy 

May your feet always be swift

May you have a strong foundation 

When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful 

And may your song always be sung

May you stay forever young

Forever young, forever young 

May you stay forever young

Bright birds

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Sweet kitty blue eyes

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National Anthem subliminal messages: I can't even SEE these fucking things!

In the past few years, the internet has gone from "the gift that keeps on giving" to a cacaphonous bedlam of screaming-each-other-down-so-we-can-go-viral, wildly competing voices. The worst aspect of this is the mad competition to post a video of your kid having a meltdown and screaming in terror and grief, so that it can appear on the TV news and make the kid's parents vaguely famous for a day (until someone else comes along with a cuter, more traumatized kid). Never mind the one-year-old strapped to water skis that I recently saw: it was "his idea", of course, just like Jon-Benet begging and begging her mother to put her in beauty pageants when she was two. And just as safe .

And never mind what the KID thinks when he/she is a little bit older, and the humiliating, shitty-pants, howling video shows up on her Instagram page, mocked and jeered at by her "friends". It's quite ironic that while internet fame is ridiculously fleeting, these videos are forever. There is really no such thing as "delete". (And with kids, there is no such thing as "choice").

The aptly-named viral video is truly a sick phenomenon, but who notices it? Who even says anything any more? Once more, we're frogs in hot water, chuckling away at the casual violation of a child's emotional wholeness for the sake of popularity and "fame".

Which leads me to something KIND OF related to this.

Every time I look on  YouTube, there are approximately one billion more videos on the subjects I am interested in: meaning that it is much HARDER for me to find anything I want. With no sort of filter on the quality/quantity of content, YouTube is simply drowning in its own material. I found a playlist with 1,697 videos in it just of old TV signoffs. You know: those things they used to have at the end of the broadcasting day before everyone went to 24 hours.  (Too long ago for YOU to remember, of course.) I seldom saw them as a kid because I just wasn't up that late, except for the few times I was allowed (as a rare treat) to sleep on the pullout sofa in the den and watch Hoolihan and Big Chuck.

But since they continued well into the '80s, I do remember signoffs and the strange things that happened in them, especially the religious messages - why on earth do we need a religious message before we turn off the TV? Is it like that awful prayer, "If I should die before I wake" - ? But even in the '80s, there were sermonettes and reflections and Thoughts for the Day, generally sappy and pretty excruciating. They usually rotated Christian and Jewish (but likely not Muslim) clergy for these, just to show they were Not Prejudiced and Jewish people maybe had something to say too, before the test pattern and the "booooooooooooooop" came on for the next six hours.

Sleeping in the den, if I was watching Canadian TV, which was not too bloody likely, there would be a nice version of O Canada with pictures of moose and squirrels and stuff, and Mounties doing the Musical Ride. But usually I'd have U. S. channels on.  So I'd have to sit through the plodding, martial, heavy-handed American national anthem (which I now see has so many question marks in it that it should be called The Star-Spangled Banner?), in which the tune is almost as bad as the militaristic, violent, battle-inspired words. Sorry, American friends (especially YOU, and you know who you are), it's the anthem I hate and not you. In my present frame of mind, I despise ALL anthems, in fact. The very idea of one makes me squeeee-yuke.

So in clicking around amongst all these hundreds and hundreds of signoffs - most of them too recent to really please me very much - I once again ran into the above National Anthem Conspiracy Theory video. There are tons of them on YouTube.  Like most conspiracy theories, it's stupid: people rabidly WANT to believe them because their lives are dismal and they feel like flops and failures as human beings. Or else they're just bored. Real life isn't spicy enough, they don't yet realize they're going to die, perhaps horribly - so they have to jack up their adrenaline by climbing the sides of buildings and stuff, and believing this shit.

Supposedly, way back in 1966 or whenever, The Government had someone doctor up the words on the screen to say all kinds of subliminal, authoritarian things (but only if you looked real fast). It's hard for me to wrap my head around the concept of displaying the lyrics of your own national anthem, to begin with. Unless English is your second or third language, you're going to know them already. You sing them at every sporting event, You would know them from childhood, along with putting your hand on your heart and reciting, "I pledge allegiance to Big Brother" (etc. etc.)  I think you HAVE to know them to become an American citizen, don't you? So the whole idea of flashing the words across the screen, especially in such an ugly font, is pretty ludicrous, and may well be a hoax in itself.

Maybe if your brain works either really quickly or really slowly, you'd be able to somehow perceive all those Orwellian messages about God and the government and obedience and, most menacing of all,  Naomi. (I am reminded of - oh, I've GOT to do a palindrome post soon, they'll get me out of this vile mood! - "I moan, Naomi", or even "'Naomi, sex at noon taxes',  I moan".)

But this probably isn't THAT Naomi. This is a Naomi meant to read backwards only.

If all this had worked, how do you account for the unprecedented upheaval in the social order in the late 1960s? Couldn't people read? Weren't they paying any attention to the subliminal messages? Reading them - actually reading words they had been singing since they were two? Several videos have debunked the subliminal messages as mere video doctoring, which of course never happens! How can you change a film? A film!

Think of the Hanging Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz. There are STILL people who believe that sucker was there in the original film, and that the studio somehow blotted it out by superimposing a bird. Thus Judy Garland and her merry companions danced down the Yellow Brick Road with a dead human body just hanging there in the woods, in full view of the camera, the cast, the director and the technicians.

Though it could very well be that the munchkin blotted out the bird. These things happen in the merry old land of paranoid mistrust.

The Star Spangled Banner Lyrics

By Francis Scott Key 1814

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Now, there are aspects of this that I find strange. Of course Americans don't go on and on singing EVERY verse of their national anthem. They make the first verse look like a walk in the park, and even speak of slavery in an ambiguous way (not to mention justifying conquest "when our cause is just").. But putting that aside, I find it strange that there are three question marks in the first verse, the one they DO sing at sporting events. I noticed this in the subliminal messages video, and thought it couldn't be right. I don't expect Americans to question things like this - oh, maybe they do, I'm just in a bad mood about Trump, and no doubt you are, too. HIM I question, and how he ever got so far.

Just for the sake of fairness, and because I don't really know the other verses, here's the Canadian one. We've been squabbling over the sexism of  "in all thy sons command" for years now, wanting to substitute "in all of us" - which I wouldn't mind so much, if it didn't clang so badly in a lyrical sense. But it will probably happen anyway. At least it's better than the original suggestion: "in all of thy command", which demonstrates a jaw-dropping ignorance of the grammar of that line. In that version, Canada is somehow the one with (noun) "command". The actual meaning is in the imperative: "please, please, wonderful Canada, command true patriot love in all your sons (which includes sons with no wee-wee)!" It's the upside-down sentence structure that has people confused. But there are still people who argue bitterly with me about this. "All of thy command", indeed.

When I decided to dig this up, I was astonished to find all these different versions. The thing evolved. I am not going to bore you with an endless history of all the different permutations, except to say that it evolved from a quite majestic French lyric that nobody understands, into the middle-of-the-road English one we sing today (at sporting events). Incredibly, in the current official version there is still a mention of God, which for some reason no one objects to - yet. Who knows what the substitute for the lines "God keep our land/Glorious and free" will be? "Justin Trudeau" might work for the first one.

O Canada! Terre de nos aïeux,
Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux!
Car ton bras sait porter l'épée,
Il sait porter la croix!
Ton histoire est une épopée
Des plus brillants exploits.
Et ta valeur, de foi trempe,
Protègera nos foyers et nos droits.
Protègera nos foyers et nos droits.

Verses additionnel:

Sous l'oeil de Dieu, près du fleuve géant,
Le Canadien grandit en espérant.
Il est d'une race fière,
Béni fut son berceau.
Le ciel a marqué sa carrure
Dans ce monde nouveau.
Toujours guidé par sa lumière,
Il gardera l'honneur de son drapeau,
Il gardera l'honneur de son drapeau.

De son patron, précurseur du vrai Dieu,
Il porte au front l'auréole de feu.
Ennemi de la tyrannie Mais plein de loyauté.
Il veut garder dans l'harmonie,
Sa fière liberté;
Et par l'effort de son génie,
Sur notre sol asseoir la vérité.
Sur notre sol asseoir la vérité.

Amour sacré du trône et de l'autel,
Remplis nos cœurs de ton souffle immortel!
Parmi les races étrangères,
Notre guide est la loi;
Sachons être un peuple de frères,
Sous le joug de la foi.
Et répétons, comme nos pères
Le cri vainqueur: Pour le Christ et le roi,
Le cri vainqueur: Pour le Christ et le roi.

In the following version, there was an attempt at a literal/word-for-word translation of the French original, which came out about as well as these things usually do:

O Canada! Our fathers' land of old
Thy brow is crown'd with leaves of red and gold.
Beneath the shade of the Holy Cross
Thy children own their birth
No stains thy glorious annals gloss
Since valour shield thy hearth.
Almighty God! On thee we call
Defend our rights, forfend this nation's thrall,
Defend our rights, forfend this nation's thrall.

Now, HEY, this one reminds me so much of America the Beautiful that it just isn't funny. Amber waves of grain, and stuff. (I still haven't figured out what a "fruited plain" is.)

O Canada! In praise of thee we sing;
From echoing hills our anthems proudly ring.
With fertile plains and mountains grand
With lakes and rivers clear,
Eternal beauty, thos dost stand
Throughout the changing year.
Lord God of Hosts! We now implore
Bless our dear land this day and evermore,
Bless our dear land this day and evermore.

And here you see our staunch ties with Britain, which existed until they weren't there any more. Which they aren't. But I do remember having to draw a Union Jack in school, and singing God Save the Queen.

O Canada, our heritage, our love
Thy worth we praise all other lands above.
From sea to see throughout their length
From Pole to borderland,
At Britain's side, whate'er betide
Unflinchingly we'll stand
With hearts we sing, ‘God save the King.’
Guide then one Empire wide, do we implore,
And prosper Canada from shore to shore.

THIS one is getting closer to the final version, but it just goes on too long.

O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love thou dost in us command.
We see thee rising fair, dear land,
The True North, strong and free;
And stand on guard, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.

(Refrain)

O Canada! O Canada!
O Canada! We stand on guard for thee.
O Canada! We stand on guard for thee.

O Canada! Where pines and maples grow,
Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow,
How dear to us thy broad domain,
From East to Western Sea;
Thou land of hope for all who toil!
Thou True North, strong and free!

(Refrain)

O Canada! Beneath thy shining skies
May stalwart sons and gentle maidens rise,
To keep thee steadfast through the years,
From East to Western Sea.
Our own beloved native land,
Our True North, strong and free!

(Refrain)

Ruler Supreme, Who hearest humble prayer,
Hold our dominion within Thy loving care.
Help us to find, O God, in Thee,
A lasting, rich reward,
As waiting for the Better Day
We ever stand on guard.
(Refrain)

And now, pant-pant-pant, here we are at the one we actually sing. Pared down immensely. It has been subtly changed through the years, particularly removing three or four "stand on guards" that really didn't need to be there. But I like it. I don't sing it very often because I don't go to sporting events.

O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

TOP-UP. I usually top these things up because I forget something, or else think of something else I want to tack on. 

My Dad, bless his sometimes-belligerent soul, was born in England and had not much patience with what he called The Americans. He especially did not like their anthem. How often I remember (over and over again, because he didn't seem to remember doing things) he would bellow his own version of the first couple of lines:
O say can you see
Any bedbugs on me?

He generally ended his satirical version with "the land of the free, and the home of the slave." He had something there. I grew up in Chatham, which is in the Windsor-Detroit area and a settlement point for the Underground Railroad, a historic route of refuge for slave families. I didn't even know what it WAS until much later, as it was never once mentioned in school, though we had a high black population in Chatham. Each of my classes had at least 3 or 4 black kids out of 30, and sometimes more like 5 or 6. But nobody stopped to ask how that happened. 

As with the Royal York Hotel turning away George Gershwin because he was a Jew, Chatham turned away black history and virtually annihilated it - when it should have been a point of pride. So everybody got cheated. One wonders why humanity has such a tight grip on mean-spirited bigotry. It will be the death of us, I am afraid - and sooner than we think.

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