A Friday Threefer: Poetry, Random 10 and Cat Blogging!

Friday Poetry Blogging
I wans't planning on doing the song-lyric-as-poetry thing, even though poetry and song are fraternal twins, at the very least, but on my drive to Cowtown, the following Neko Case song came up on shuffle and I realized how, with a few changes, it suited Rust Belt. So I'm adopting it as the unofficial theme song of this blog. Plus, it reads well even without the music, since her lyrics tend to scan pretty regularly (very little clipping of syllables or holding them over multiple notes) and it's not stupidly repetitive in print. I particularly like the way the fourth line of the first stanza actually slows down as she sings "Ta-co-ma" over longer notes than the rest of the verse (which continues throughout).

Without further ado: Neko Case's "Thrice All American"

I want to tell you about my hometown
It's a dusty old jewel in the South Puget Sound
Well the factories churn and the timbers all cut down
And life goes by slow in Tacoma

People they laugh when they hear you're from my town
They say it's a sour and used up all place
I defended its honor, shrugged off the put downs
You know that you're poor, from Tacoma

Buildings are empty like ghettos or ghost-towns
It gives me a chill to think what was inside
I can't seem to fathom the dark of my history
I invented my own in Tacoma

There was nothing to put me in love with the good life
I'm in league with the the gangs guns, and the crime
There was no hollow promise that life would reward you
There was nowhere to hide in Tacoma

People who built it they loved it like I do
There was hope in the trainyard of something inspired
Once was I on it, but it's been painted shut
I found passion for life in Tacoma

Well I don't make it home much, I sadly neglect you
But that's how you like it away from the world
God bless California, make way for the Wal-Mart
I hope they don't find you Tacoma

Friday Random 10: Still unpacking
More music! The following ten songs came up during my bouts of book unpacking yesterday. (The bookshelves are done! Photos soon!)

1. "Free Again" -- Alex Chilton
2. "All I Do is Dream of You" -- Debbie Reynolds (from Singin' in the Rain -- shut up! That movie is one of my all time favorites!)
3. "Climbing to the Moon" -- Eels
4. "Waitress in the Sky" -- The Replacements
5. "Race for the Prize" -- The Flaming Lips
6. "Girl in my Dreams" -- The Screaming Tribesmen (Bet ya never heard of them -- they're an Australian band from the early '90s. They looked like a hair metal band, but they were more alternative pop. How I ended up with their CD is a bit complicated, but it's still worth listening to, so I ripped it.)
7. "Settled Down Like Rain" -- The Jayhawks
8. "Born Spirit" -- Broadway Project
9. "Nowhere Man" -- The Beatles
10. "(Drawing) Rings Around the World" -- Super Furry Animals
    

Friday Cat Blogging -- A First at Quod She!
This is my sister's cat, Callie. Sure, she looks like an ordinary cat here, under my parents' coffee table...


But what you don't realize is that she has secret Mutant powers. And here, I caught her just as she began to activate her power:


Invisibility! That's some cat!