So, I went to buy a magnolia today. It’s harder than you’d think it purchase a magnolia. All I knew is that I wanted one that would grow very, very large, like the magnolias on the campus of Wake Forest, which were my first introduction to the plants.
Well, it turns out that there are all kinds of cultivars and most of them are pretty small, so that they better fit in urban yards. The guy at Bates was showing me two cultivars, Edith Bogue and Bracken’s Brown Beauty. The Bracken’s Brown Beauty supposedly gets a little bigger but the Edith Bogue was cheaper and looked more like the magnolias of my memory.
I asked if they didn’t just have magnolia grandiflora “no fancy name, just the plain old tree” and he said no AND that he wasn’t actually sure if any commercial nurseries in the area could get you a plain old magnolia. He suspected, no matter what they tell you, that they’re all some sort of cultivar that’s been bred to be more winter-hearty than the regular old magnolia usually is.
Well, I’ll be damned.
The Edith Bogue is supposed to get about 30 feet tall and 15 feet wide. That doesn’t seem that extravagantly monstrous. But it was too big to fit in my car, so it’s being delivered on Monday. And it’s probably about ten feet tall now, so if it gets three times that high, that’ll be nice.
I am a sucker for any song with a bass line that could easily be played by the best parts of a brass band (sorry, trumpets, but we don’t need more than two of you, one to make out with the flutes and the other to actually play your part. Not that we would have flutes in our brass band, but I assume you’d find flutists to make out with no matter where we took you, so I’m anticipating the situation. Really, there is almost no song that can’t be improved by six tubas and twelve trombones. Go ahead. Try to think of a song that can’t be improved by six tubas and twelve trombones. I defy you! It can’t be done. There’s only not more of it because the awesomeness is so… um… awesome that there’s a court order preventing it. You remember, Young Buck v. United States? Sure, yeah, established that only synthetic tubas can be used in hip hop in order to protect America from all that cool. Poor Young Buck, he fell off the face of the earth, didn’t he? You can’t really top rap tubas, though, so it’s understandable. If he’d used trombones, too, American music would have just had to close up shop and go home.).
Anyway, Ludacris. I can’t help it. I have a soft spot for the dude and I’m really loving his new song, “My Chick Bad.” But whatever you do, don’t go for the Trina, Diamond, and Eve remix, which totally undermines the whole best conceit of the song, which is that there is this one badass chick, with swagger, and crazy friends, and a volatile temper that this dude is just crazy for. Once you add in Trina, Diamond, and Eve, then it just becomes a song about a dude who has some chicks he admires. But in the non-remix, there’s a really delightful hint of awe. I mean, there’s even a nice phrasing of “my chick do stuff that your chick wish she could.” Not “my chick do stuff that you wish your chick could,” but even the chicks who aren’t as awesome as his chick have agency.
I don’t know. Maybe contrasting it with the remix does make it more clear what’s so awesome about this song. Because once it’s about three chicks, it’s actually about the speaker, about how he’s so awesome that he knows three chicks like this.
But in the original, it’s just three and a half minutes devoted to how awesome that girl is, not because of how her existence reflects on him, but just because of how she is. In a way, it reminds me of “Gloria,” (Heh, I was trying to find a YouTube video of “Gloria” only to discover the terrible world of bizarre The Doors coverbands. Anyway, here’s The Doors.) all passion and unfettered delight. You just so rarely hear songs in which men are unabashedly delighted about a particular woman. But I like it when you do.
How about that’s none of your goddamn business? What kind of tool would even ask that question? Mumpower answered “almost shyly”?! He should have answered with a double bird.
What an asshole question.
Seriously.
I have heard asshole questions in my life, but this just about tops is.
Unless it affects state business in some way, who Mumpower fucks and when and to what end is not our business. It is incredibly rude and intrusive to ask someone about their reproductive status. And the Mumpowers don’t owe anyone an explanation for why they do or don’t have kids or when or if they’re going to.
Jesus Christ.
How is this an appropriate line of questioning for a political reporter?
And, here’s the thing, since it’s not your business, you don’t know. You ask a question like that, you risk forcing someone to talk about miscarriages or infertility or how they have put off having kids because they’re practically raising their sister’s kids or whatever. Personal family shit that is not your business.
Unbelieveable.
Really.
And yet reporters still want to talk shit about bloggers.
That being said, I plan to misbehave. I have no issues what-so-ever with those tossing a few bricks through windows or other appropriately directed ‘civil disobedience’. The cutting of gas lines and other actions directed at harming people I do have issue with.
The rest of you can take whatever course you wish, but for me the time for just standing around sipping tea is over.
Oh my, you must have missed the race riots of the 60’s, the anti-war protests of the 70’s and your liberal anti-war March this past weekend with 9 arrests. I learned how to ‘misbehave’ from liberals back in my liberal days [emphasis mine]
Fair enough.
I would just like to offer two bits of advice. In the future, you might want to refrain from premeditating your ‘civil disobedience’ on the internet. It’s going to make it harder for your lawyer to argue that you’re a good person who was just caught up in the emotions of the moment. Instead, you’re going to look like the kind of dude who planned and calculated whatever it is you’re going to do.
Premeditation usually means a longer sentence.
I mean, you didn’t forget about that part, did you? Where the cops come and they arrest you and you stand before a judge who doesn’t have much sympathy for brick throwing being “civil” and you go to jail? And, hell, if you’re an interesting enough target and this is y’all’s 60s, they audit you for the next decade?
And you forget the worst part. John Rich is the music of your movement. And, don’t get me wrong, he’s a talented song-writer, but he’s not the best singer in Nashville. Is that really the voice you want over the montage of your exploits in your biopic?
Anyway, I look forward to watching your perp walk on the news.
Tiny Cat Pants 