not falling down

There are a number of lyrical, rhythmic and tonal cheap tricks employed in pop music for which I am an absolute sucker. I started a list of those earlier this year, and eventually I’ll write an entry on it too. One of the most specific and fun to talk about, though, is hip-hop songs that define their own terms. They’re great! They’re extremely helpful to geeky white people like myself–you’re given a new cool slang term, and immediately know its usage and basic etymology–and moreover, they’re completely happy and unself-conscious about it. I think Radiohead would have a lot more fun if they took a few pages from the same book.

I first noticed the phenomenon quite some time ago, but I was holding off on writing about it until I had three examples I could remember all at the same time. Last night, Maria inadvertently provided the third, and they are as follows:

• Nelly’s “Pimp Juice:” “She likes my pimp juice! Pimp juice is anything attract the opposite sex.”

• Alicia Keys’s “Girlfriend:” “I think I’m jealous of your girlfriend, although she’s just a girl that is your friend.”
• and the granddaddy, TLC’s “No Scrubs:” “I don’t want no scrubs. A scrub is a guy that can’t get no love from me–hanging out the passenger side of his best friend’s ride, trying to holler at me.”

When I told Jon about this, months ago, he immediately suggested that we start putting our own terms into general parlance via Rhythm Method songs, then created the first one on the spot: “She like mah mantelpiece! The mantelpiece is the bulge in the front of your pants.”

If anybody knows more of these, drop them off. With a little thought we could have our very own Rap Dictionary.

In deference to my avuncular ex-roomie David Flora, who, like everybody, wants nothing more than to be plugged in Brendan’s Journal:

“Flora IMed me the other night and also today, and I wasn’t there to graciously receive his chat, and I miss the kid, and I wonder what he’s doing, and ladies, his junk fills the closet, although he’ll tell you otherwise…”

And it’s true–I’m never around when the poor little man chats at me. Not that I could comprehend him if I was. He has no taste in fonts! (But don’t tell him I said that.)

My three hundredth journal entry, and bang, I’ve lived through my first week at A Real Job. Today was fairly empty–I waited on a lot of queries and snuck out ten minutes early, although it wasn’t really sneaking, since everyone was just standing around talking anyway, and my boss had left three hours before to go play golf. But I experienced my first Casual Day! I wore my Scary Go Round monkey shirt, and felt hip and indie.

Also, Sumana worried about her degree of influence over me regarding Mr. Coupland’s book. I have to say that my opinion changed after I wrote that in my journal on Tuesday–I didn’t finish it until Thursday, and I liked the very end a lot. The rest of it was just kind of vanilla to me, though, which I guess is what you get when you read a cutting-edge culture book ten years after it’s published. Also, the characters had a whole lot of Neat Idea Monologues. To Coupland’s credit, he did follow up on several of them, instead of just tossing them out like disposables the way Bruce Sterling does. I still dislike the monologue-a-minute style, though, and the Neat Idea mentality is even worse. Which is why I hold a dear affection for cyberpunk, but really don’t like Bruce Sterling.

(Now, with any luck, Sumana will link back to this entry regarding her own experience introducing Mister S., and I can link to that, and eventually we’ll form an entirely self-contained Blogging Ecosystem. And they said it couldn’t be done! Fools! I will make a grandiose but unlikely attempt to destroy them!)

Okay. Struggling back on topic: yesterday was more interesting. The aforementioned boss, Mr. Taylor, took me out to lunch, and then we got back and the power went out for an hour. It’s a mark of how cool and laid-back my office environment is that nobody even broke a sweat over it, except maybe ITS. We just stood around the water cooler and joked about the fact that we’d have a lot more issues in the queue when it came back (”I could not access the system from 12-1 on Thursday. Also, there were no lights and the toilets wouldn’t flush”). It was like… well, like I imagine a lot of tall buildings were, before 2001.

On a more cheerful topic, I finally got to see The Maria and buy her comic books, and I made us French toast! Which she pretended to enjoy. She also pointed out to me something crucial, which I will address in my three hundred and first journal entry, coming right up.