In case y’all couldn’t tell, I’m taking a mini-vacation from blogging. I’m completely burned out on politics, and besides, it’s gorgeous outside. I’d much rather be rubbing doggeh bellies in teh sun than fuming about Obama’s regressive policies (see, for example, FISA; taxpayer-funded faith-based programs; and the US/Mexico border fence, to name a few).

I’m also working on reformatting all the old “vintage” posts that I copied here when I left my old blog, kellygarbato.com. I tried automating the process, but that introduced all sorts of weird characters and code. So it looks as though I have to tweak each post - 558, to be precise - by hand. Then I can finally scrap the old blog for good. After which I’ll write a shame-faced apology for some of my early posts, which are tinged with blind privilege. I have half a mind to just delete them all, but that strikes me as dishonest. Better to own my mistakes and learn from them. Plus, it’s interesting to look back and see how my thinking has evolved; I’ve become increasingly progressive since I began blogging. Still, I have a ways to go, and by leaving evidence of my past “isms” up in the archive, I hope to remind myself to always, always consider my own white, heterosexual, cisgendered, middle-class privilege. No, I don’t want a cookie; but if you do happen to go browsing through the archives (particularly 2005/2006), just keep in mind that most of my views have changed. Drastically.

Now for them memes. I won’t be tagging anyone, since I wasn’t tagged myself. I’m an island, yo.

The first meme, Seven Summer Songs, comes from Cara at The Curvature:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

Cara went with an all-Beatles theme; me, I’m stumped. I sometimes go on a genre kick; occasionally, I’ll whittle it down to one band or even an album. But just a few songs? Way hard. Impossible, actually.

So rather than being The Seven songs I’m stuck on, these are just representative of the types of music I’m listening to.

1. The Bravery - Believe

After mocking it as a st00pid show idea for the first two or three seasons (”OK, they’re stranded on a deserted island. Now what?”), Shane and I rented Season 1 of Lost during the writer’s strike and were immediately hooked. We just finished Season 3 last weekend, and have Season 4 all queued up on DVR. So no spoilers, please! I am crazy obsessed with it, to the point where I’m re-watching pivotal episodes and reading episode guides and shit. I don’t think I’ve loved a show this much since the X-Files.

Believe sounds as though it was written for the Season 1 soundtrack. Just check the lyrics:

The faces all around me they don’t smile they just crack
Waiting for our ship to come but our ships not coming back
We do have time like pennies in a jar
What are we saving for [x2]

There’s a smell of stale feeling that’s drinking from my skins
The drinking never stops because the drink absolves our sins
We sit and throw our roots into the floor
What are we waiting for [x2]

[chorus]
So give me something to believe
Cause I am living just to breathe
And I need something more
To keep on breathing for
So give me something to believe

Something’s always coming you can hear it in the ground
It swells into the air
With the rising
Rising sound
And never comes but shakes the boards and rattles all the doors
What are we waiting for [x2]

[chorus]
So give me something to believe
Cause I am living just to breath
And I need something more
To keep on breathing for
So give me something to believe

I am hiding from some beast
But the beast was always here
Watching without eyes
Because the beast is just my fear
That I am just nothing
Now its just what I’ve become
What am I waiting for
Its already done

Ohhhhhhh

[chorus]
So give me something to believe
Cause I am living just to breath
And I need something more
To keep on breathing for
So give me something to believe

I thought about using The Google to find out if there’s any connection, but then I thought better of it. (SPOILERS! Oh, the horra!)

2. The Replacements - We Know the Night

Bah. The video above is actually Achin’ To Be, since I couldn’t find one for We Know the Night. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great song, but it doesn’t quite capture the lazy summer melancholia like We Know the Night:

Best things in life don’t come for free
Best things in life always come unexpectedly
Well, we watch the clock and it comes as no surprise
Till the day is late and we let out a sigh
‘Cause we know the night could fall at any time
With scissors and a comb I cut my lawn
And there’s no one in the world I’m counting on
There’s a war ragin’ outside - I hope my grass stays green
Till the day is late and we let out a scream
‘Cause we know the night could fall down on its knees
We don’t know the prime lending ray
And we don’t know the pain of a broken day
We don’t know what’s wrong or what’s right
We know the night…we know the night
You can bust your back from now till the sun goes west
Best things always come when your mind’s at rest
In the afternoon, my mind ain’t sleepy, it’s preoccupied
Till the day is late and we let out a sigh
‘Cause we know the night could fall at any time
Yeah, we know the night could fall at any time
We know the night…we know the night

3. Save Ferris - Come on Eileen

This is just a ridiculously fun and infectious song. Plus it makes the yardwork go way faster. (And it almost makes me forget about my sunburn, bug bites and poison ivy rashes. Almost.)

4. Woody Guthrie - Do Re Mi

Like most fathers, I imagine, my dad let my mom do most of the present-shopping for us kids. Erratically and on occasion, he’d pick out a gift for one of us himself. Two of these I still have and cherish to this day: a leather-bound copy of Edgar Allen Poe’s complete works (yes, as a vegan, the leather makes me cringe on a certain level, but the book is also beautiful and sentimental; and as there’s no way to redress a skinned cow, the damage has already been done, and throwing it away won’t fix the problem) and A Tribute to Woody Guthrie. I’d never heard of Woody Guthrie before then (I was probably in my early teens), but he’s one of my all-time favorites now.

Do Re Mi is a song about migrant workers. And heat. Searing. Desert. Heat.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a video with Woody’s version, or even a decent cover by Dylan, so…yeah.

5. Green Day - American Idiot

It’s an election season - and dubya’s last few months in office, to boot. ‘Nuff said.

Any song from American Idiot will do, but the title track is my favorite.

6. X-Ray Spex - Oh Bondage Up Yours!

Awesomeness.

7. Wilford Brimley’s DIABETES DANCE MIX

Every time I see the version where Wilford talks about “finding out something about diabetes, and your own body in the bargain,” I picture the man butt nekkid, head between his legs, trying to view his taint with a hand mirror. Call it the diabetes monologue.

Today’s bonus meme is the Mosaic Meme, via Diary of an Anxious Black Woman.

Hop on over to ABW’s pad for the ground rules.

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Tagged: meme blogging summer music videos mosaic photos the bravery believe lost the replacements we know the night Save Ferris Come on Eileen woody guthrie do re mi green day american idiot X-Ray Spex oh bondage up yours wilford brimley