GuysBlog

For what is likely to be the only time in my life, an album I bought as soon as it was available has been voted “Best Country Album” of the year. The Dixie Chicks took five Grammy awards last night:

• Record of the year - “Not Ready to Make Nice”
• Album of the year - “Taking the Long Way”
• Song of the year - “Not Ready to Make Nice”
• Country album - “Taking the Long Way”
• Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal - “Not Ready to Make Nice”

That disc, along with Dar Williams’ 2005 disc “My Better Self” and the new Norah Jones disc “Not Too Late” is spending a lot of time in my CD player and on my MP3 player.

I noticed a package of Rayovac IC3 rechargeable NiMH batteries (and charger) at Orchard Supply Hardware recently, and was intrigued by their claim of 15 minutes to recharge and a 1000-recharges lifetime on the batteries.  Somehow, these came out a couple years ago without my noticing. Getting curious about other brands and the claims, I turned to Google.  It turned up what appears to be a very good article comparing the NiMH with other rechargeables and discussing a few different brands, including a new "eneloop" model from Sanyo. Between my digital camera and new MP3 player, I think it’s time to get one of these puppies.

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The Snopes urban legends site has a roundup of Christmas Mondegreens. [Of course, first they explain that a mondegreen is a misheard song lyric.]

Indeed, some folks apparently hear Christmas songs and carols with somewhat different words than the authors and performers intended. Old favorites, like:

While shepherds washed their socks at night

and

Police car ahead…

and

Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel,
Barney’s the King of Israel.

and

Get dressed ye married gentlemen…

Back in the early 1960s, I became a fan of The Clancy Brothers.  Tom and Paddy Clancy from Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Eire, had come to the US in the late 40s and rambled through a variety of jobs before going into theatre.  When their younger brother, Liam, and a buddy of his, Tommy Makem joined them, a musical phenomenon was born. Recording first  on their own "Tradition" label, and later for Columbia, they delivered quite a series of albums of (mostly) Irish folk music.  Over the years the act was manned by a variety of Clancy kin, with and without Tommy Makem.  Later, Liam and Tommy did a few albums of their own.

On their "The Makem & Clancy Collection" (Shanachie, #52001, 1990) they included an Eric Bogle song.  He called it "No Man’s Land."  They called it ‘Willie McBride."  The lyrics are available in various versions but this site quotes it pretty much as I hear them singing it. 

Willie McBride    or    No Man’s Land

Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the dead heroes in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

[chorus]
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o’er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

…
And I can’t help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it’s all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

[chorus]

That site includes some other songs of a military vocation, including another of Eric’s: "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda," about the survivors of a WWI battle on the coast of Turkey.

. . .
How well I remember that terrible day
When our blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk he was ready
Oh he primed himself well.
He rained us with bullets,
And he showered us with shell.
And in five minutes flat,
We were all blown to hell
Nearly blew us back home to Australia.
.  .  .

Today, let us remember all the veterans, of wars declared and merely "authorized."

I discovered an extensive resource dedicated to the topic of recordable CDs.

The CD-Recordable FAQ appears to have all the info I’m likely to ever need about the subject.

What does this FAQ cover (and not cover)?

This document attempts to answer Frequently Asked Questions about Compact Disc Recordable technology and related fields. It was originally developed as a Usenet newsgroup FAQ, and is updated and posted about once a month. The main foci are explaining CD-R technology, describing hardware and software solutions for creating audio CDs and CD-ROMs, and helping people find solutions to common problems.

It is organized into 10 sections:

Introduction
Simple answers to simple questions
CD Encoding
How Do I…
Problems
Hardware
Software
Media
Net Resources and Vendor Lists
Contributors

Note that:

This FAQ does not, and will not, cover DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, or any of the other formats in the ever-expanding DVD morass. There are other resources on the web for DVD topics.

You will not find a lot of detail about “backing up” copy-protected software, or where to find unlock codes or “warez”. There are many web sites that explain these matters at length.

Ever get a song stuck in your head? “It’s a Small World Aaaaafter Alllllll”?

Here, in MSNBC, they report that “James Kellaris, a marketing professor at the University of Cincinnati” has studied “How unwelcome songs get stuck in our heads — and how to unstick them.”

Now, they say that he calls them earworms, as though this was a new label, but this term has been around for years, and is just a translation from the German: “Ohrwurm.”

That citation is to The WordSpy: a “web site and its associated mailing list are devoted to recently coined words and phrases, old words that are being used in new ways, and existing words that have enjoyed a recent renaissance.”

Thanks are due to Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, of the COPYEDITING-L mailing list, for bringing the “earworm” article to my attention.