Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves

[vovat]

I don't really have anything to report just now. You'd think that would mean I wouldn't bother writing an entry at all, wouldn't you? When I haven't written in a while, though, I feel like I should at least post something, even if it's totally insignificant. I'm not sure why, since hardly anyone ever reads my entries anyway, and I get the impression that most of the people who do don't care about them. Oh, well.

Today, I got my copy of the Fastbacks' New Mansions in Sound in the mail. I also got a call from Longwood Gardens, and I should be going there and doing some cataloging two weeks from today. I've also been spending some time looking at This Might Be a Wiki. A pipe dream of mine was to make a database of information about They Might Be Giants songs, but I never had the skill or the industriousness to actually do something with that idea, so I'm glad someone else came out with something similar. I put up a few of my own interpretations of songs. I've been interested in interpreting TMBG songs for some time, but a lot of my earlier takes were probably a bit on the ridiculous side. I came up with the idea that "Chess Piece Face" was about the Red King from Through the Looking-Glass, but I think that was based pretty much entirely on the line, "But I don't believe he's dreaming." Still an interesting idea, I think, but I doubt it's something the Johns were thinking of when writing the song. I also remember thinking that "Mainstream USA" was about homophobia, but I never really did much with that. Then there was the time I tried to connect all of the TMBG lyrics about writing on foreheads or scalps. I get the impression that a lot of people aren't interested in interpreting songs, but I've always found it kind of fascinating, at least as far as TMBG goes. I think earlier TMBG songs are more open to interpretation, though. Their more recent songs are still pretty weird, but nowhere near as esoteric as the early stuff.

EDIT: By the way, when reading newsgroups in Outlook Express, is there any way to mark all posts made before a certain date as read? I remember I used to be able to do this on Netscape's newsgroup reader, but I haven't been able to figure out if it's possible with Outlook Express.

Comments

[revme.livejournal.com]

I used to really get into the interps a lot, but I've sort of come around to thinking that TMBG songs are actually more straightforward than people seem to think. I used to have a huge interp (think it might still be at tmbg.org, I dunno -- I know a while ago they sort of rolled up the interps into essays that were basically "some people think X, but others say it's about Y", which I always thought was kinda ehhh) on Ondine as about a murder from the POV of the corpse, where now I'm pretty sure the corpse thing is just a metaphor for a break-up song.

But I think part of that might be from poking around TMBW and seeing some positively _wacky_ interps, heh.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think I sort of went from thinking most TMBG songs weren't about anything at all, to thinking there were hidden meanings to most of them, to thinking they were largely straightforward but with OCCASIONAL hidden meanings. I think there are some songs that even the Johns don't really understand, and I get the idea that some lines were stuck in just because they sound good. And there's nothing wrong with that.

[3x1minus1.livejournal.com]

posts before a certain date as read? how so? you mean, just select certain ones to mark as read?

[vovat.livejournal.com]

No, I mean if I know I left off reading at a certain date, I would want only posts from that date and afterwards to be listed as unread.

[3x1minus1.livejournal.com]

oh... well, i only have it set to only show me unread messages. (and if i have read and unread visible, i have red messages set to turn a different color (red) so i know i read them.)

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well, my problem is that, when I read posts on a different computer, my computer doesn't know that I've already read them, so they still show up as unread.

[slfcllednowhere.livejournal.com]

I like interpretations, but it bothers me when people will insist that their interpretation is the "right" one, especially if it is contrary to what The Johns have said ("No, I don't care what the guy who wrote the song thinks, this is what it's really about") or when they'll intentionally go with the most ridiculous thing they can think of, although I'll admit that those can be entertaining. When we were going out richegreen would look for the goofiest one he could find and then insist that it was true, but I suspect he did that just to piss me off.

I definitely agree about "some songs The Johns don't really understand." I know sometimes with my poetry things will just come out that I don't know the origins of at all.

Re: "Mainstream USA": I think of it as being about prejudice in general, so homophobia works.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well, I got homophobia from the "These are the words that HE told the FELLOW next door" part. A guy asks another guy to dance with him, and the other guy flips him off because the first guy isn't conforming with mainstream ways. The song is pretty ambiguous as to who's saying what, though, so I'm not totally sure that works.

[onib.livejournal.com]

Re: Outlook.

I thought you could sort the messages by posting date. If you did that, you could just highlight all the ones up to the date you want and set them as read (it's been a while since I used Outlook for newsgroups, but there should be some kind of "mark all selected read" option either on the toolbar or via a right click). Then, resort them however you want.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess that WOULD work. Maybe I'll try that, if the need should ever arise. Thanks!