According to WordPress, the two most recent posts linking to Tiny Cat Pants are “Wake then bake” and “Buds, but a lot of stems.” Neither of these posts actually link to Tiny Cat Pants, but they both have a certain theme in common.
I don’t quite know what to make of that, but it made me laugh.
In regards to True Blood, the Shill asks
Also, have we discussed the completely stupid way Bill says Sookie’s name?
We have not. But now we are about to. In full disclosure, I feel a personal stake in this matter because my dad’s sister’s nickname, given to her by Grandpa Hick, is Sookie.
On True Blood, the main female character’s name is Sookie and this is pronounced by everyone as either rhyming with cookie or sounding like Sue-key. Her undead Confederate Boyfriend pronounces it “Suck-ay.”
I went to the experts.
Dwight Yoakum:
(see about 2:55)
King Floyd:
and Don Covay
All three of them seem to agree with everyone else’s pronunciation and contradict Bill’s choice.
But, because I am a giant nerd, I look up “Sookie” in the OED and what do I learn?
“Sook,” “Sook cow,” and “Sookie” are Scottish cow calls. Like you call to any pig, regardless of its name, with “Sooey!,” you, if you are Scottish and live in the past, call cows “Sookie” to get them to come.
Now, on the one hand, Bill is right that “Sook” probably comes from “suck,” so maybe Suck-eh isn’t such a weird way to say it, but let’s just think about this word pragmatically. We’re standing out in a field. You are, for some reason, standing in a pile of cow poop. You should remember, when standing in a cow pasture, to watch your step. Where were we?
Yes, we are standing in a field. The cows we want are way on the other side of the pasture. We want to call to them and get their attention. If we should “Suck-eehhhh,” only the last syllable carries and barely. But, if we yell “Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” now we have those cows’ attention.
And now we’re back to talking about my biggest problem with Bill. If I think about him too hard, I do not believe he’s a real Confederate Southerner. First there was the bullshit about him not owning slaves. Who, who in Louisiana with a house that big did not own slaves? I’m not buying it. Second, him talking about his dad owning slaves and how he knew the name of one of the field slaves, but not the house slave? No way. You don’t know the name of the person who works in your Dad’s house all the time? Then how do you ask for tea? “Oh, um, hey, you, could I have some sweet tea?”
And now, I’m supposed to believe that Bill, who did not own slaves, but who lived in his big farm house, which would have made him responsible for the livestock on that farm, called his cows with “Suck-ah”?
Again, I’m not buying it.
The Scots-Irish, who, I would assume, brought the term with them, seemed, as evidence by the music we can hear the term in now, to have spread it pretty far in the South and across various Southern cultures. If Bill were just hearing the name for the first time, one would assume that he would say it the way that everyone else around Sookie says it. That he says it differently indicates, I believe, that he’s heard the name before.
If he’s heard the name before, the most obvious instance in which he’s heard it is either as it is frequently used even now, as a pet name, or as it was originally used, a call name.
Either way, “Suuuuuuuuuue-key” is much more likely to get you nuzzled than “Suck-ah.” And so, I cannot believe that Bill would call her “Suck-ah.”
Here’s what we need. We need someone with a college-educated white Southern grandpa. And not one of those 60 year old Pa-paws. I’m talking someone pushing 80, who speaks with that “Ah went to Suh-waneeh” accent that you just don’t hear any more and who you call “Grandfather” or your mom shoots holes in your skull with her eyes. If that’s your grandpa, we need you to call him this evening and ask him how he would pronounce Sookie and report back.
On the phones, people! On the phones.
1. We have not even touched on the main problem with T-Pain and Ludacris on SNL, which is that T-Pain is the Pale Rider on the Pale Horse signalling the death of hip-hop. Just like that moment when I was sitting in McDonalds and heard the elevator music rendition of “Patience” and knew heavy metal was dead, listening to T-Pain make what amounts to hip hop Musak, tells me the genre is a zombie.
This has got to be about the most inane song produced in the last one million years, and might I remind you that the past one million years have contained such inane songs as “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies and “Mammoth Mammoth” by Ogg and his Groggs (I trust I don’t have to translate that into English for you for you to get the gist of how stupid it was. Those Neanderthals with their puns. Yes, it was a big hairy elephant. We get it. God, shut up already. And yet, one summer in 14973 b.c.e., that was all you heard around the fire).
2. Speaking of Guns and Roses, I can’t bring myself to even listen to samples of this album.
3. You say “tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt” like there’s something wrong with that.
4. To me, this post is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with Salon.com. Inspiring quote by a Catholic priest trying to do right; damn depressing comments beneath it. Listen, for the record, separate but equal is bullshit when it comes to race and it’s bullshit when it comes to gender. Tell yourself whatever little story you have to in order to disbelieve me, but I speak the truth.
5. This depresses me more than I can tell you. The only thing that’s going to save the Tennessee Democrats at this point is a full-scale revolution.
6. I love this post so much I ate up Barry Mazor. Sorry if you were counting on him for Thanksgiving. I’m just going to make one larger point: country music deserves to be written about thoughtfully and critically. It is an art form. It can stand up under the pressure of scrutiny. The sheltering that the industry and, more embarrassingly, many “country music journalists” do is insulting to the genre and I’m tired of it.
7. It was all I could do to not call Mack and say “Houston, We haz a Pomeranian.” The only thing stopping me is that, if he hasn’t see this, it won’t be funny. Though, truthfully, many things that make me laugh hysterically, he doesn’t find funny. And things I don’t find funny, like his Pomeranian getting right in my ear and making these noises like a cat with a particularly ugly hairball, seem to amuse him.
8. You know what’s really stupid? That I can’t go to either Amazon.com or iTunes, type in “True Blood” and get every song played on the show. Do they not tag songs that way? Apparently not, but isn’t it the most obvious use of an electronic catalog the size of the iTunes or Amazon catalogs? That they can put together playlists that aren’t real albums and sell them to us?
They break my heart. My grandma was going out to dinner with my mom, dad, Aunt B. and her family and my grandma fell in the parking lot of the restaurant and busted up her arm. The whole family spent the night at the hospital and they thought she was going to get to come home yesterday, but the CAT scan showed that the bone was pretty much shattered up near the shoulder and so they’re going to have to go in and fix it.
She’s almost 90, so, you know, no one’s very excited about putting her back under anasthetic.
I like to pray, you know, sometimes. It brings me comfort, just to articulate things outloud and put them out there in the Universe. But I never know in cases like this what the best thing to ask for is. I guess just the best resolution and leave it to the Universe to sort out that.
Anyway, so it means the folks might not come down for Thanksgiving, which is fine. But my dad’s best friend is coming through and I called him to ask him if we should plan on having them for Thanksgiving dinner and he was all evasive on me.
Not the kind of evasive you can take too personally. I’ve known him as long as I’ve known my dad and I see how they both have no idea what would make them happy. Their whole adult lives as ministers have been spent opening themselves up wholly to the needs of others and both of them have been terrible, in their own ways, about making a safe space for them and their families where that work doesn’t intrude.
And I’ve noticed that asking them to think about what they’d like to do–do you want to have Thanksgiving here?–is almost paralyzing to them. They do not know if they want to have Thanksgiving here. They do not know what they want.
I don’t know. I guess this isn’t making any sense. My point is that I will not be upset one way or another if they do or don’t show up here on Thanksgiving. I am upset and my heart is broken that my dad’s best friend has devoted his whole life to serving others and it’s come at such a cost to him that his whole soul is bent under the weight of it.
I love these men with my whole heart, but seeing the price they’ve paid as ministers to do their god’s work is about the worst advertisement for Christianity ever.
This?
Is just not as good as this.
And I’m not sure why. I think that, in James’s voice, I hear that her life has been heartache before this, that all that waiting has been difficult for her and so, while she’s relieved to find someone, she isn’t coming to him without having walked a hard road to get there. And I just don’t hear that in Beyonce’s voice, as lovely as it is.
And did they cast Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters? I reserve my judgment on that shit. Don’t get me wrong. I like Wright, but Morganfield? There just aren’t a lot of men like Morganfield in the world, who have that… something…
Look here
That’s an old man. But look at the way he gets that twinkle in his eye, that little grin on his lips… It’s a different kind of manliness than we’re normally shown–a man who takes great pleasure in being a man because he enjoys women. I don’t know, it’s hard to talk about. But there are straight men who enjoy fucking women–and lord knows there are eight thousand songs about that. And there are straight men who enjoy being men. But the kind of straight man so sure in himself…
Don’t get me wrong. In his personal life, Morganfield seemed to be much like all the men I knew his age, which was too damn fucked up by what they went through to get the success they had to be very pleasant company 75% of the time.
But Morganfield sings like he’s going to enjoy every second he’s with you, from the slight hint of your perfume he smells when he takes your coat to the way his fingers are going to play with the lace on your slip, just beause it feels good.
How many men can pull that shit off? And also bear a passing resemblance to him?
I don’t know. I’ll give Wright the benefit of the doubt, but I’m just not sure he can do it.
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