{"id":819,"date":"2010-05-05T19:53:02","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T01:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=819"},"modified":"2010-05-05T19:55:07","modified_gmt":"2010-05-06T01:55:07","slug":"song-of-the-day-lemmings-including-cog-by-van-der-graaf-generator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=819","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Day – “Lemmings (Including Cog)” by Van Der Graaf Generator"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do I do this song justice in one of my crappy “Song of the Day” posts?<\/p>\n

I guess I don’t.\u00a0 I originally intended these posts to be discussions of the song, its meaning, its tune, its structure.\u00a0 Instead, I provide a YouTube link and make lame jokes.<\/p>\n

Part 1<\/a>
\nPart 2<\/a><\/p>\n

Pee pee poo poo.<\/p>\n

VDGG specialized in making music that was at once elegant and brutal.\u00a0 Peter Hammill, the singer and main songwriter behind the band, is one of the best wordsmiths I’ve heard in music.\u00a0 His lyrics can evoke a full range of emotions from giddy happiness to soul-bleeding despair.\u00a0 Sometimes he does something like that within the same song.<\/p>\n

He does have a very distinctive voice, and a bit of a stuffy upper-crust British accent.\u00a0 But so do I.\u00a0 No, actually, I don’t.<\/p>\n

I have a Canadian accent… Western Canadian to be exact.\u00a0 I can tell when I’m talking to someone from the East because they say things like “oot” instead of “out” and “aboot” instead of “about”.\u00a0 If you ask me, I don’t have an accent at all.\u00a0 Everyone else does.<\/p>\n

So all you people out there remember that.\u00a0 It is I who speak the One True Language!<\/p>\n

Toggle!<\/p>\n

(Old personal joke that no one will understand.\u00a0 I speak Minglish)<\/p>\n

Now, this is exactly what I’m talking about.\u00a0 I’m not even remotely discussing anything to do with this song, even though I (theoretically) have lots to say about it and even though it’s one of my favoritist songs in the history of everything.<\/p>\n

I remember when I bought VDGG’s albums and was listening to them for the first time, this song and the album “Pawn Hearts” made me stand up and shout “HOLY FUCK I’M GLAD I BOUGHT THESE!!!”<\/p>\n

Actually, I merely nodded to myself and thought that.\u00a0 And as I type this, I’m reminded by myself that I wanted to talk about how that legend of Lemmings being frequently and massively suicidal is all bullshit.\u00a0 Disney set it all up.<\/p>\n

Disney set up us the bomb!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nYes, even old and worn out memes are welcome here on this blog.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nSo, who would like an update on my flu?\u00a0 Well, since no one responded let me tell you that I’m feeling better.\u00a0 I will use my awesome powers of prediction to predict that I will feel shitty tomorrow on account of this motherfucking flu coming back to strike me down again, as it has done three times.<\/p>\n

And here’s something funny.\u00a0 A blonde woman I work with had this to say when I told her that my flu keeps coming back in waves and has gone on for almost two weeks:<\/p>\n

“Then it can’t be the flu!\u00a0 It must be a virus!”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThat was, officially, a blonde moment.<\/p>\n

How are you liking the song?\u00a0 Maybe I’d better just shut up (real-life equivalent: STOP TYPING) and let you listen to that.\u00a0 I wanted to review albums on this blog.\u00a0 That was the main reason I started doing this actually.\u00a0 Well, consider \u00bc of “Pawn Hearts” reviewed.\u00a0 A million stars out of ten!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XGOSWx-Bp2s<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do I do this song justice in one of my crappy “Song of the Day” posts? I guess I don’t.\u00a0 I originally intended these posts to be discussions of the song, its meaning, its tune, its structure.\u00a0 Instead, I provide a YouTube link and make lame jokes. Part 1 Part 2 Pee pee poo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[160,273,281],"class_list":["post-819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-of-the-day","tag-peter-hammill","tag-sweet-mockery","tag-van-der-graaf-generator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}