Tag Archives: rock and roll

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’25 A To Z Challenge – L

The Prince of Procrastination – the Potentate of Put-It-Off – the Poohbah of postponement, has struck again.

You must have noticed a distinct lack of blog-publishing on Monday.  Since I didn’t have anything for today, I couldn’t just switch, so this is a rather obvious, two days late.

Back in the Turn On – Tune In – Drop Out, peace, love, and rock and roll days of the Hippies, the word

LACKADAISICAL

would simply have meant a shortage of flower-power.  More recently, it seems to be the measure of my composing and posting.

without interest, vigor, or determination; listless; halfhearted, lazy; indolent, idle, sluggish, slothful, casual, careless

So many meanings for a word that means, essentially doing nothing – or very little – or doing it poorly.  13 letters!!?  A word that long could be a Bridge Over Troubled Waters.  This post is a bridge to Fibbing Friday.  CU there.

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’24 A To Z Challenge – Y

C’mon everybody – get your

Ya-ya

on, or raise your ya-ya.  These are both delightfully imprecise phrases of encouragement, intended to urge someone to improve their performance, do their best, or even exceed all previous attempts.  Back in the ‘80s, there was a musical group (I refuse to say that they were a rock band.) called the YA-YA-YAs, who failed to achieve that direction.  If you don’t remember them or their work – you’re the same as pretty much everybody else except three die-hard members of a fan club in Dubuque, Iowa.

Ya-Ya is the American cousin of

Yé-Yé

  1. of, relating to, or characteristic of the rock-‘n’-roll music, fashions, entertainment, etc., of the 1960s, especially in France.
  2. of or relating to the people associated with these trends.
  3. having exuberance, optimism, and enthusiasm for current fads, as a teenager or young adult.

Both of these seem to have come from the same place as The Beatles’ Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, a powerful urging of acceptance – from the word YES.  If you don’t remember either of these any more than the group, above, don’t worry.  They both applied largely to partying and entertainment.  As they say – If you can remember the ‘60s, you weren’t in the ‘60s.

Please remember to follow the yellow brick road back here on Friday.  I got a new shipment from my Metamucil supplier, so that you can stomach my fibs.

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Remaking Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 said it was Time For Hit Remakes this week.  Who could have recorded the following (your nominations do not have to be singers) or had it for their signature tune?

Cinderella Rockefella

The San Francisco Boys Marching Band, with special guest Elton John, appearing on the Ru-Paul Drag Race TV show.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

2.   I want it all

Vladimir Putin!  😳

3.   I’m just a forlorn boy

Axe Body Spray bought the rights, and used the first eight bars in a commercial.  I’m just a lonely boy…. and showed some Incel dork looking forlorn and dateless.  Then the video moved on to show him dousing overly-liberal spraying himself with their toxic chemical miasma concoction, and suddenly he’s surrounded by 6 good-looking chicks, none of whom seem to mind the presence of the other five.

That advert campaign came to a sudden halt when truthinadvertising.com released a spoof version.  It intercut portions of the original showing Young Reekie, the Axe-man, then it showed six hot females gasping for breath, and grasping for N95 COVID masks and running away, showing that they had a sense of smell, and a sense of taste – or distaste.  👿

4.   Here comes the night

The Silicon Valley Bank Senior Management Choir.  Then they do a Patreon PSA video, titled,
What Happens In LA – stays in our Golden Handshake accounts.

5.   All I have to do is dream

Any new parent, especially new mothers.  When the Terrible Twos Twins are simultaneously teething, the police are getting noise complaints from your neighbours – not about your dog, but because of the yowling young-‘uns.  They never seem to achieve unconsciousness at the same time, so sleep is just something that you read about in a book one time, long, LONG ago.

6.   Wand’rin’ Star

That was Edwin Starr, who had a hit back in ‘69 which asked, “What is the good of war?”  Putin recently sent him a text that just read, “Posterity Project.”

Then he sent me one that absolutely, positively denied that I saw a Russian ZIL that read KGB, in last week’s alphabet soup.  Good thing I don’t own a smart phone, and never got it.  🙄

I tried to listen to the Portishead version of it, but the Suicide Hotline called ME, and told me to turn it off.  😦

7.    Rock On

Tina Turner has redone this old song.  She’s 85!  With a big front veranda, (and her house has one, too) and a mint julep, it has taken on a brand new meaning.  😉

8.   Purple Rain

I have adopted this, at least temporarily, as my Life Motto.  I have absorbed so much COVID sanitizer that when I pee, I also clean the toilet.

9.   When will I see You Again?

This is the new anthem for Beijing.  Between COVID masks, and the worst air quality in the word, it’s creating a lot of identity confusion, and causing some people who want to telephone someone they think they met on the street, to Wing the Wong number.

10.  You can’t hurry love

It’s still $4.99 a minute, but when you get as old as me, sometimes you have to change the batteries in your hearing aids.
EH??  What am I wearing?  Depends!  On What??  On my crotch!  I don’t think I trust an adult incontinence product named Depends any more.  I want one called Fer Shur, or Boulder Dam.

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A Spun Fibbing Friday

Last week, Pensitivity101 asked, ‘So, what spin can you put on the following?’

  1. What are fish nets?

They are the piscatorial equivalent to the human Interwebz.  They are constructed using fiber-optic lines, so that water doesn’t short them out.  To prove that fish are smarter than some people, they don’t have Facebook, Twitter, or Tik-Tok.

2. What is a teddy?

He’s my emotional support animal.  He’s so cool that he has his own diminutive teddy – although the little traitor drinks Coke, instead of the proper Pepsi.

3. What is cross stitch?

So….  I stumbled over the dog’s new chew toy, startling him, so that he jumped against my ankles, completing my fall.  I banged my forehead on the corner of the coffee table, and bled like a stuck pig, but I was more than irked when the wife insisted that we spend almost five hours in the hospital Emergency department, waiting for some young intern to apply one suture, and a drop of Krazy-Glue.

4. What is a basque?

This is when you can finally afford to holiday in the French Riviera, and you decide that you will return to Old Blighty with a tan, or die trying.  So you risk offending the Gods of Cancer, and slather on sunblock lotion like you own an oil well, and lie out in the sun until you sizzle and crackle like a haddock filet in a fish and chips shop.

5. What are daps?

They are a series of quick, almost subliminal actions that a young female performs to entice and arouse the interest of a suitable male – a hypersonic application of lip gloss, two damp fingertips rapidly redefining already carefully plucked and shaped eyebrows, a tug on bra straps to nicely display her best points.  Older women don’t generally care that much.  Often, they’re searching for the human equivalent of roach powder or termite poison.

6. What are culottes?

They are slices of lean veal or pork, that I dip in egg, coat with breadcrumbs, and fry in olive oil.

7. What are pedal pushers?

Guys who sell stolen bicycles.

8. What are trews?

They are a Canadian soft-pop band who advertise as being rock and roll, when the closest they get to Rock is in the Bentwood on the front porch.

9. What is a gym slip?

It’s an excuse note, from the school office or nurse, to the P. E. teacher, explaining that female students may sit out the physical class while they have their Monthlies.

10. What is a feather cut?

During the Middle Ages, paper did not exist, so scribes didn’t get paper cuts on thick, soft vellum, but if they weren’t careful, they could get a nasty gash while using a dull knife to carve their quills.

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A Fear Of Fibbing Fridays

So, Pensitivity101 wants to know, “What do you think these are phobias of?”

Ablutophobia

It’s a fear of having to watch old Popeye cartoons.  Does anyone remember when the bad-guy character, ‘Bluto’ suddenly became ‘Brutus,’ because King Features couldn’t keep their books straight?

Androphobia

It is the fear of having yet another Terminator sequel movie released.  It would be sad to see Arnold hobbling around like a geriatric T-800 model with a cane, or walker.

Ataxophobia

This is the fear of the approaching, mid-April deadline, both with the American IRS, (Notice that The IRS spells theirs) and the UK Inland Revenue.  Canadians get another two weeks of paralyzing terror each year – until the end of the month.  It’s no favour!  I say it’s like ripping a Band-Aid off.  Be like Nike, and Just Do It!

Autophobia

This is the quite-reasonable distress caused by having to go out upon the streets and roads with all those Other Drivers.  I’m okay, but they’re all just a bunch of weird accidents, waiting to happen, and probably catching me in the crunch.
Anyone who doesn’t drive as fast as me is an idiot.  Anyone who drives faster than me is an asshole.  Forget World Peace – envision using your turn signals.

Bathmophobia is the fear of the end of the day, when you have three preschoolers and a sandbox.  Soap suds spreading faster than The Big Bang – and when you finally get them all clean, you discover that one of them is the neighbour’s kid.  😳

Chromophobia has suffered technological obsolescence.  50 years ago, the little gear-head greasers plated every piece of exposed metal on their cars bright and shiny silver.  Today’s OY-Generation decorate their penis-substitute Lego-plastic toy cars with neon brothel-lights, rear spoilers whose only purpose is to hold beers while they brag to each other, and modify their exhausts so that little Dachshund cars sound like Great Danes.  They claim that they soup them up!  Yeah, right – soup in a sieve.  😯

Ephebiphobia is the feeling of unease, when you realize that your unmarried aunt has been batting for both teams all along.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Genuphobia is the fear non-Catholics have, of having to attend a wedding or baptism in a Catholic church.  You never know when to kneel, or when to stand up, or sit down.  They’re all up and down like a prostitute’s panties.  By the time you figure it out, they’ve got the hymnbook out, and are singing.

Heliophobia

Ever since Kobe Bryant’s little mishap, it’s what has caused me to decide to not use gasoline-powered aerial eggbeaters as a mode of transportation.  It’s not what I want people to mean when they say, “He was a down-to-Earth person.”  👿

Nomophobia

This is an irrational fear of garden figurines.

Osmophobia was the absolute panic I felt when I heard a rumour that some television network, desperate to replace lost viewers, was going to give Donny and Marie another hour-long variety show.  At their age, they can’t carry a tune in a bucket.  Donny’s ‘little bit Rock and Roll’ would be shuffle and wheeze, and his purple socks would be orthopedic.

Podophobia is a fear of being unexpectedly called upon to say a few words at some community gathering.  Unaccustomed as I am at public speaking – I’m gonna sit down, have another beer, and let the paid performing seals do their job.

Trypophobia

This was the terrible uncertainty that I felt recently.  I went into the office break room early in the morning.  Someone had put out a Tupperware container of fudge brownies, so I took one.  I returned soon after, to see if the coffee machine had finished.  There was now a note on the brownie box.

I Made These Brownies For Shits And Giggles
Half of them have cannabis.
The other half have laxative
Try One. Wait a half-hour, and find out which.


Wiccaphobia

Which way did they go?  How many of them were there?  When did they leave?  I must find them – for I am their leader.

This is the fear that you are going to be assigned another project, because your boss is not sufficiently computer-literate to access the internet and look for himself.  Not only will you have to do extra research, but it will be on constantly-changing websites that can be edited by people who wear MAGA hats, and believe that the world is flat.  😥

Zuigerphobia

It’s the feeling of imminent doom that arises locally, beginning about the middle of September, when we realize that half a million people who want to get drunk and obnoxious, and throw up in a different town, are about to descend on our city for Oktoberfest.  Before I retired, I used to book the week off – not to party, but because I was tired of getting pulled over in DUI/RIDE Program Traffic checks.  That really sucks.  😉

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I have a phobia that Pensitivity didn’t list.  It’s demifiniphobia.  That’s the fear I felt when I looked at all these big, fancy words, worried that I will only be able to respond to about half the prompts, and end up looking like a half-assed halfwit.

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Thirty For Fibbing Friday

No theme this week, so pensitivity101 wants to see where your imagination takes you with these.

  1. What is a bandana?

That is the industry term for the female leader/singer/writer of a rock musical group – someone like Chrissy Hynde of The Pretenders, lamenting the loss and urbanization of rural Ohio, in her song My City Was Gone.
2. What is a rum baba?

It’s what alcoholic sheep drink.
3. What is a marinade?

It’s a new flavor of cooling, summer drink, that tastes like seafood.
(And seagull shit, seal snot, whale sperm, and rotting kelp – sales are not good!)
4. What is an asset?

A pre-pubescent female Kardashian child.  They usually have names only a drug dealer, or psychotherapist could love – like Chicago, Psalm, North, Saint, Penelope Scotland, True, or Reign)
5. Who was Apollo?

He was the male half of the former American pop singing duo, Paul and Paula, best known for their 1963 million-selling, number-one hit record, “Hey Paula”.
6. What is meant by BYOB?

Times are tough, and finances are tight, even among the monied elite.  Unless you’re someone like Randy Andy, attending a NXIVM party, where all the willing female company is paid for, it means you have to Bring Your Own Bimbo.
7. What is a pekingese?

It’s my favorite variety of Chinese cuisine.  The duck is tasty, if a bit dry and chewy.  It’s hard to find a restaurant that serves it though.  They only exist where stray cats are plentiful.
We no see you cat.  You stop ask.
8. What is a crockpot?

This is the ridiculously wrong information, answers and opinions that you will receive from someone who just had their ‘medical marijuana’ prescription filled at one of the now ubiquitous cannabis dispensaries.
9. What is meant by upbeat?

This happens mostly, though not exclusively, in Southern, Appalachian, America.
(High School is open agin.  Y’all git yer lazy ass outta bed and go, or ah’ll whup ya good!)
10. What does it mean to recycle?

It’s when you’ve had to give up working from home for a day and rode your bicycle all the way to the office – only to find that you’ve forgotten your office key at home.

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Fibbing Friday Noon

Sshhh!   Pensitivity101 wasn’t looking, and I had a chance to snaffle another list of things to lie about, which is better than just being a lazy lay-about lout.

  1. What is rolling stock?

It’s what a stoner keeps in his pocket – a little more openly, now that Canada has decriminalized the shit – some BC Gold, or Maui Zowie if he can afford it, and Zig-Zags.  I used to buy my grass from my German uncle.  I would only ask for the weed, just to hear him say, Papers??!
2.  What is a rolling deck?

That’s what a professional gambler uses to shear sheep separate the naïve hopeful from their paychecks.  In the hands of an adept card-sharp, (No, that isn’t spelled wrong.) those playing cards go more places than an IRS auditor.
3.  What is role play?

In the distant past, it was a method of improved, sexual enjoyment.  You put on your teeny bikini, and I’ll pretend to be the pool-cleaner guy.  Nowadays, it serves a more sedate purpose.  I’ll pretend to be Red Riding Hood’s Grandma…. and take a nap in the bed.  Don’t disturb me for about an hour.
4.  What is ‘on a roll’?

It’s how I want my garlic pork pâté, and baked Brie and red-pepper jelly, served.  Fancy crackers are okay, but they should be reserved for cheddar or Oka cheese, or smoked oysters.  After I finish grazing my way through the hors d’oeuvres, it’s where my elastic-band track pants rest.
5.  What does a rolling stone gather?

It used to be underage, willing eager groupies.  These guys have been around so long that recently, a spirit-channeller got a message from a T-Rex, saying, “Enough, already!  Retire!”  Now, it’s bionic joint transplants, an obituary notice for the one who can read a calendar, and one member’s father’s cremains.
6.  What is a rolling boil?

It’s what I reach, listening to/reading these scientifically-illiterate, anti-vaxxer morons.
I don’t want that stuff injected, because Bill Gates will insert tiny robots that can track me and know what I’m doing.
Do you own a Smart-Phone??!
Yeah.  Why?
Ha-ha-ha-ha!
7.  What is a rolling pin?

 

It’s what I hope to see after I toss a ball down a bowling lane.  Of course, whereas Canadians are nice guys, (sorry) we don’t have the balls to be bowlers like Americans.  Many of us use metric-sized balls to bowl five-pin games.
8.  What is a steam roller?

In the big-hair days of the 70s and 80s, it was what stylists used to create body.  They wrapped women’s hair around cylinders as big as a beer can, and stuck their heads into a space-suit helmet kind of thing that spewed hot vapor.  The beauty-seekers came out as fluffy and moist as rice buns at a Chinese buffet.
9.  What is a roller coaster?

Something like the patented Rolls-Cunardly children’s Curb Blaster scooter.  It Rolls downhill quite easily, but Cunardly make it up the next slope, so the rider remains just a coaster until the little screen addict actually puts some energy into their transportation.
10. What is a roller skate?

He’s a seldom-seen flat-fish character in the Sherman’s Lagoon comic strip.  He’s related to my earlier beach-ape Cruiser character , but didn’t have the ascendancy to evolve into a land creature.  He would love to be a high roller – sex, drugs, rock and roll, booze and gambling – but winds up breaded and deep-fried.

I decline to make any more statements, or answer any questions, until my lawyer gets here to inform you that I will be back on the straight and narrow in a couple of days – HONEST!  😉

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WOW #74

Yeehaw, buckaroos, this here’s a rootin’, tootin’ yarn about three funny, over-the-hill characters.

Not that three!!  That there is a picture of me and my brother and sister!  😯  How did that get in here?

No, I’m talking about the even older and less significant, Middle English comedy trio of

ROOTLE

TOOTLE

AND

FOOTLE

Do not confuse Rootle with The Rutles, a fake British band that became a real one, much like the fake American band, The Monkees, did.

Rootle is the sometimes-used British alternative verb form of root – to root about like a hog.
to turn up the soil with the snout, as swine.
to poke, pry, or search, as if to find something

Melodious little Tootle means to toot gently or repeatedly on a flute or the like.
to move or proceed in a leisurely way.
Hong Kong English driving instructions include, If pedestrian do not move advantageous, tootle him gently.

You can get footloose with Footle, if you act or talk in a foolish or silly way, loiter aimlessly; potter, or talk nonsense.

Trust the English language to confuse those who are trying to learn it – three words – one basic spelling – two different pronunciations.  😳

Showing the difference between Canadian English and British English, I was taught to putter, rather than potter.  To ‘potter’ would require a throwing wheel, and a kiln.  For me to ‘putter’ only takes a long, strangely-shaped stick to get the ball rolling.  Golf is a lovely walk in the sun and fresh air – spoiled by having to chase a little white ball.  It’ll be par for me to be rootin’ and tootin’ again in a couple of days.

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Flash Fiction #261

PHOTO PROMPT© Roger Bultot

WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR?

I took Psychology as a major, and got a job as an Uber-Eats driver.  The two fit like pliers handles.  The most intriguing are hotels/motels.  I knock on the door and often get, Who is it?  I wanna say, it’s your damned pizza.  Who were you expecting?

With a glimpse inside some rooms, the answer might be – a hooker, Border Patrol, irate management, FBI, an exorcist priest, or all of the above.  Many of the paranoid use the peephole.  Sometimes I put my eye about an inch from the lens.  Once, I had to slide the pizza in vertically.

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I’m keeping notes.  I’m pretty sure there’s a bestseller in there somewhere.  😉  😯

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If you’d like to join the fun, go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Click the title to hear The Genies do another oldie but moldy goldie.

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Rave On

A Flash Fiction about a rave in a park, brought questions from ‘Old Fogeys’ about WHY.  I responded that I once worked with a young fellow who said that, after work, he was going to the big bar down the street, to party with 300 strangers. He was strange enough to fit right in. I didn’t see the attraction.

The answer may lie in the ability to make a drunken (and/or drugged-out) fool of yourself in anonymity.  A second layer to that answer may relate to ‘Good Christians’, who want to engage in (to them) SINFUL behavior, without friends, relatives, or neighbors finding out.  It’s how my Father and Mother met and got married.

During the 1940s and ‘50s, in my area, it was not considered wise to go drinking (and perhaps, pursuing the company of young females) in a local establishment.  I heard the axioms, ‘Don’t Shit Where You Eat,’ and, ‘Don’t Mess Your Own Nest.’   During the war years, young men of Armed Service age, who were  drinking in a bar, might be loudly and forcefully accosted.

My Mother’s younger brother and a pal, used to drive 30 miles north, to my Father’s home town, to do their drinking and Hoo-Rahing.  My Mother returned from Detroit, sans husband.  When my Father returned from Naval Service, her brother was quick to point out that she was single and available.  Introductions were made, and soon, a marriage was performed.  Don’t start counting on your fingers.  I was born 14 months after the wedding date.

Even after he was married, the local undertaker/furniture store owner used to drive 30 miles south every Saturday night to go anonymously drinking.  The town was a mile off the north/south highway, and the access road used to come out to a T-intersection.  Drinking and driving must have been an Olympic sport.  So many cars wound up through the fence, and into a farmer’s field, that the Department of Highways added a 90 degree curve merge ramp.

One Saturday night – actually Sunday morning – he went screaming around the merge ramp at highway speed.  Normally, at that time, the highway would be empty, but this night there was a young family returning from a visit to his parents.  If he even noticed them, he still slammed into the side of their car, spinning it out of control, first into a tree, and then a deep drainage culvert.

The mother and young boy were killed instantly.  The father survived, but was so badly smashed up that he could never work.  The dark joke around town was that the undertaker was just making more business for himself.

You want to party?  You want to get drunk?  You want to do drugs?  You want to do it –not at Cheers – where nobody knows your name?  You have the right to be stupid.  Just carry ID, so the cops know who to notify – either for a funeral, medical treatment, or bail.

Click to hear Buddy Holly going to a rave, back in 1958.