*blinks*
*tries to let eyes adjust to light*
*peers into strange new empty space*
What shall I do with this shiny new thread?
Well, I think you can bring scissors into the thread now, so hijack the thread, perhaps?
Please CIA man, I'm only commenting about threading!
Hijack the thread? Cool.
Let's make up pornographic names for card games that were originally played in The Family Circus, and then talk about whether we're being sexist!
Sufjan Stevens' Illinois is a really good album, by the way.
You know, his other albums are good too.
I'll do your grading if you send me a picture of your tits.
Meatman: I checked out that album. It's good, just like you said! But it's called Come On Feel the Illinoise.
Armsmasher, you have invoked the retaliatory nitpicking strike: The spine says Illinois. The cover says Sufjan Stevens invites you to: Come on feel the Illinoise. I think it's felicitously called any of the three.
B-wo, I definitely intend to check some more of his stuff out, probably over winter break. (I bought a whole mess of other CDs while in Pittsburgh--that's why it took me so long to get to this one--and will be listening to them for a while.)
I hope that didn't come across too snotty, Smasha. One thing I wonder is the extent to which the strange titles are just an element of indulgence laid over a different vision and to which they're integral. "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Run for Your Lives!! Ahhhh!" is just a cutesy title, for a rather majestic song that evokes the state's mythic history (admittedly that's true of just about every song). But "Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois," though it may seem similarly goofy, strikes me as just the right modernized Robert-Lowell-based-on-Jonathan-Edwards tone for the song.
Is this my most earnest comment ever?
Speaking of zombies, mission accomplished.
And I can completely imagine the post title being sung in a Sufjan Stevens arrangement. One part singing the words before the dash, the other part the words after. "Googlebot come find me now" scans the same as "Are you writing from the heart?"
And if "winded" and "fatigue" were "windéd" and "fátigue", you could sort of force the part before the dash into the part that precedes "are you writing from the heart?"
Hrm, I thought Ogged's extensive experience with fellatio would have taught him better breathing technique. Well, I'm sure this new discovery will improve everything!
Yeah, inhale from the moment your mouth clears the water until the moment you turn your face back in. Competitive swimmers do this very quickly because they swim slower with head turned, but you don't have to worry about this I guess.
Then, don't hold your breath: just exhale slowly and smoothly underwater, through both your mouth and nose, until it's time to breathe again. You shouldn't spend more than a moment with lungs either empty or full.
I got the idea that if I pursed my lips a little for the beginning of the exhalation, to give my diaphragm a little resistance to blow against, the slightly higher pressure in the alveoli might force a little more oxygen into my blood. But I suspect that was more the product of a bored swimming brain and freshman biology classes than sports training fact.
12: I was kind of thinking "Swim, Breath, Tired, Fatigue, and Winded" to the tune of I L L I N O I S from "They Are Night Zombies!!" (Which, in a surprising development, I am listening to at this moment.)
That's nice, but the post title actually goes "Swim, Breath, Tired, Winded, Fatigue".
The similarity was enough to enable me to imagine the post title being sung to some Sufjan Stevens arrangement if not that exact one. Pronounce "Tired" with two syllables if you want to force the existing title in.
It's funny, I did age group swimming from about 6 until 13, after which I began running cross-country, and I can never remember being as winded after swimming as I was after running.
I can't remember how I breathed, though, and breaststroke was by far my best stroke.
So, Matt Weiner is in fact Sufjan Stevens; the truth of SB's Tiresian identity crisis is apparently made clear from a careful reading of the comments; and soon I'll know Ogged's true (nick)name. Are there no more secrets at Unfogged?
Is this my most earnest comment ever?
It's fitting that Sufjan Stevens would bring that out in you.
Songs about Michigan is my favorite, and I like Seven Swans a lot, too. I've had the Illinoise album in my car for a while, and I'm enjoying it, but the song about John Gacy just bums me out. I've taken to skipping it. It seems a little adolescent, to me, this elegaic singing about serial killing.
But since I've had kids I tend to have a much stronger reaction to really dark stuff. Less tolerance. more desire to just shut it out. I guess that explains my life here in American Beauty.
It seems a little adolescent, to me, this elegaic singing about serial killing.
I agree--he goes for transcendence on every single song on the album, and on this song it's kind of weird. But it doesn't stop me from appreciating the song, somehow; I just sort of grant that he's being woolly-headed and then I can be moved by the elegiac quality. I don't have kids, though.