mondegreens

edited November 2007 in JoCo Music
you know... excuse me while i kiss this guy?

anyone have any fun/funny/embarrassing misheard joco lyrics they would like to share?

i know we've got access to all the lyrics but sometimes i just don't look. i was tryin to figure out what is 'the smile that doesn't come with tea' in big bad world one... is that some colloquial usage? no, duh, it's the smile that doesn't come with teeth. i think we should coin that though,the smile that doesn't come with tea... like the sandwich that doesn't come with pickle?
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  • Man, I get posts all the time for my Code Monkey video where people say, "ooohhhh, it's Tab and Mountain Dew!". I'll look and see if I can find any examples.
  • One poster writes: I thought it said "Code Monkey got big fuzzy secret parts :-O
  • Another guy thinks the line is: "Code monkey like tower of mountain dew". Maybe the stacks of soda bottles in the video confused the guy...
  • k, here's another i misheard that i just remembered..

    in brand new sucker, i was hearing, you'll have to get your bud from someone else... when of course he's saying blood. d'oh.... sounds like a mistake one might make when they've had too much bud, but i haven't done that in more than two decades. did i really kill that many brain cells?
  • My little boys absolutely love to sing along to JoCo and they are always getting words wrong. But, of course, I can barely remember now that you put me on the spot.

    One I do recall was "Shock Vac" for "Shop Vac". This from my seven year old who we too to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit when it rolled through Seattle and was very disappointed at the end because he wanted to know where the squirrels were. You know, the "Dead Sea Squirrels"! Hmm, sounds like a homage to Furry Old Lobster.
  • now that's what i'm talking about. though a 7-yo has a lot more excuse than i do...
  • That reminds me too, my 8-year-old daughter, when singing "Mandelbrot Set", always sings "bad-ass monkey fractal" instead of "bad-ass fucking fractal", which is obviously better...

    (sure, it looks bad when you just read it like that, that I let my daughter listen to songs with filthy lyrics. But she doesn't get to listen to First of May and she thinks the bad word is actually "monkey", so I think I'm OK, parenting-wise. ;)
  • ok parenting wise as long as you take her to get her hearing checked ;)

    i do not judge you. filthy language has never been something i thought was worth censoring, myself, though i know many who do and i try to respect that too... and yeah, i have kids, and they do know this, and yet... don't have foul mouths. go figure.
  • Hey Spiff, I always let my 5 and 7 year old boys listen to Mandelbrot Set. We tell them the the song is "M" for mature and they can't repeat "that" word. Notice how I have to couch it in video game terms.

    I just want to make sure they fit it at fucking MIT!

    Every time The First Of May comes on, I notice right about the time Robin Redbreast begins to sing. This causes me or my husband to sprint over to the computer to casually forward to the next song. I don't care about the language but I don't really want to have the sex talk yet. He already told the whole class that there is no Santa and no God.
  • Oh, jesss. That brought a smile to my heart. :)
  • edited November 2007
    My eight-year-old and I had the sex talk, because of questions linked to "First of May."
    She added all my Coulton to her iPod, and had heard my mom say "fucking" as an adjective a FEW times.
    So, she wondered how the adjective could be a verb. While outside. With a lady who sells ice cream.
    I explained by reading with her the book, "Where Did I Come From?" Which was how I learned.
    Then told her if she ever did anything to a Shar Pei, I'd disown her.
  • "Then told her if she ever did anything to a Shar Pei, I'd disown her."

    Must we shame the devotees
    of the wrinkled tan shar-pei?
    It may be that furry kink
    Is not so far-out as we think;
    After all, though it sounds zany,
    At least one woman fucked Dick Cheney.

    Sorry, awryone, I actually thought that was a really sweet anecdote and you sound like an awesome parent. The Devil made me do it.

    :~|
  • THAT'S FANTASTIC!
  • "Where Did I Come From?" taught me what was what 30 years ago too, and I've picked up a new copy for my daughter as well. That book (and the puberty-focused "What's Happening To Me?") are fabulous.
  • Those days are coming up fast for my family. I'll have to pick up a copy for my sons pretty soon. Maybe right at summer vacation, so the novelty will be worn off at the start of school.
  • Wow, I'm totally never having children. I would have no idea what to do with them. And they kind of freak me out - I can't even tell if they're real people or not. If they are, why do I have to talk differently around them than I do around normal people? And if not, then how *am* I supposed to act around them? Gah. Most alive things that are "cute" are inherently eerie, I find...I can never tell what their motivations are.

    Anyway.

    Luke M: Your poem was wonderful and made my day.


    ...As for mondegreens, I usually read the lyrics as I listened to the song for the first time so I wouldn't have that problem, but I'm sure there are still some lyrics I hear/remember wrong, I just don't know which.
  • i agree about the poem.

    and since i've got 3 kids (that i know about) i'm inclined to agree that no one should ever have kids, too
  • Hi! Back to the topic at hand ...

    When I first heard A Talk with George, I heard the opening line as, "There's a dolphin man standing in the shadows..." It didn't make sense, but hey, with JoCo, you never know. ;-)
  • "That reminds me too, my 8-year-old daughter, when singing "Mandelbrot Set", always sings "bad-ass monkey fractal" instead of "bad-ass fucking fractal", which is obviously better..."

    You let your daughter say "ass"? When I was little, that was considered a bad word.

    I'm 25 and my parents still disapprove of even mild cursing like ass or hell. Maybe it's something with my family.

    Personally, I believe no cursing until you hit high school. Then you're old enough to start swearing.
  • I cartoon cuss when I'm angry. Rackem frackem rikumrakum. Dod gamn futhermuckin bun of a sitch. That's how I get past my dislike of cussing and still release anger.
  • The only people I know that never swear are my parents....it didn't pass on to me.
    I'm a mother hubbard of a swearer!
  • I love generalized swearing -- the kind you do when some annoying accidental thing happens, or when you're commenting negatively on the weather or the policy initiatives of the other political party, that kind of thing.

    But I'm very bugged by personalized swearing -- the kind that uses some term or phrase as an angry or mocking epithet that verbally attacks a person you don't like, whether they're present or not.

    Somehow the first category of swearing gives me a feeling of freedom & easygoing open-ness to life in general, while the second category makes me feel either like I'm listening to some 4-year old turning into a little bully or like I'm around some kind of dangerously projecting grownup, watching the beginnings of a pogrom.
  • edited November 2007
    I mainly swear at computers. In fact that is pretty much it when it comes to involuntary swearing for me. Very few things get me annoyed enough to swear like I do at computers.
  • jinx ... I'm not sure what you mean? In the second category, especially. Haha, I guess I got thrown off by "epithet" because now all I can picture is someone being like, "Persephone, the bitch" or something ridiculous like that, because I guess I was first introduced to the word "epithet" in terms of mythology and the association sort of stuck. But, seriously, what do you mean?
  • BryBry
    edited November 2007
    Not to speak for Jinx, Shruti, but the way I read her comment was that she feels cursing is okay if it's not directed at someone in particular. (To be clever about it, it's the difference between "Oh, s---!" and "You s---!")

    "Epithet" does mean "a word or phrase used to characterize someone or something," so you can see how it can refer both to "rosy-fingered dawn" and "that _____ _____ ____ John Smith."

    (Full disclosure: For that example, I am indebted to the authors of "Pocahontas Mad Libs, Vol. 5.")

    Here's Paul and Storm on the second meaning of epithets: http://www.paulandstorm.com/lyrics/epithets/
  • Stupid Homer and his repeating of dawn rising rosy fingered...

    I don't mean it that much, sure it's a little irritating but in a story that good who really cares?
  • Like Bry said, Shruti. It's shoving a lot of venom at somebody by calling them names.

    Say you hear somebody say something along the lines of -- "I can't believe I was stupid enough to say something that bitchy to my dentist BEFORE he picked up the drill!" To me, that's just using a couple of words to evaluate an action, to vent some intensity of reaction, to put some color into one's speech. Those words don't bother me at all.

    But then say you hear somebody else saying "You stupid bitch, I TOLD you not to say anything to my dentist!" With heat. That's getting into the second category of swearing, and that's when I feel my inner feminist start to bristle a little bit, and when I get the feeling that I don't like that person. I have a low tolerance for people who somehow have to vent all their intensity against somebody else with name-calling. Yell at somebody because you didn't like what they did? Fine. Tell them that what they did really bothered you, no problem. But call them a bitch or a prick or a ho or an ethnic slur, with heat, and I hate that.

    Is that a better explanation? Sorry about the unclear term -- blame it on the english major.
  • AlAl
    edited November 2007
    Has anybody here heard Monty Python's "Uses of the Word 'Fuck'"?
    I got my copy from www.mp3raid.com
  • I know about that monty python thing....I wouldn't be a proper brit if i didn't.
  • Oh. I guess I enjoy profanity *because* of the venom. I guess that makes me a terrible person? But I mean, I don't know. It's just, there's something so powerful about that. And I'm kind of a sucker for power...It terrified me that I could identify with what's-her-name in The Fountainhead, especially since Ayn Rand is a self-centered bitch (bad kind of swearing?), but I kind of could. Not completely. But sort of. I don't know, actually. I'm not going to try to clarify but I suppose I could upon request. I just think people overuse profanity to the extent that it becomes commonplace, and that sort of devalues it. I want it to be venomous and hateful and vicious. I want it to convey a feeling more powerful than not-profanity could.

    (as for "epithet," I wasn't so much confused by the term; rather, I just wondered whether you were referring to direct or indirect name-calling, or both)
  • Oh, do, Shruti. Clarify. I'm finding this an interesting discussion. I can see your point about liking the potential power of it. And it wouldn't bother me if it were used by a person of less power against a bully of more power.

    I'm way more used to hearing the name-calling stuff used by strong bullying types against somebody weaker -- or worse, by a gang of collectively strong bullying types against a weaker individual, who are using the expression of power as a bit of social cement to keep their group feeling self-satisfied and BETTER than that weaker person.

    Even if somebody is name-calling in the absence of the hated person, the more vehemence there is, the more it feels to me as if the speaker is making use of the venom to prop up their sense of self by putting that other person down. It displaces the conflict, substitutes the name-calling for actively dealing with the issues directly with the person or people involved, and (in my experience, at least) keeps the speaker from recognizing what the sides of the conflict are all about, because it places all the negative stuff on the other person via this label thing.

    On the other hand, I prefer calling a turd a turd to being all nicey-nicey about using politeness talk, so I guess that makes me officially neurotic. Your turn!
  • The thing though is that profanity IS kind of an equal-opportunity weapon. There's no reason for only a certain class of people (for example, "bullying types") have access to it, so to speak.

    As for the whole putting-people-down-to-increase-one's-self-esteem thing, people do that all the time in so many different ways that I feel it's hardly fair to single out profanity and use that as another argument against it.

    And I think ultimately words are just words; they are what you make them. And so you could actually probably make any word sound offensive and cruel if said with the right amounts of disdain and vitriol. And this isn't actually countering any point you made, but it's just something else I think about profanity - semantically, there's absolutely no difference between saying "fuck you" and "screw you" or "oh crap" and "oh shit," but for some reason one's viewed as profane and one is not. And that seems kind of stupid. Also people who are like "I don't cuss...I just use substitute words to mean the exact same thing! and that makes me a better person!" piss me off too. I mean, really. Is saying "what the frick" instead of "what the fuck" really going to save them from Hell or give them a clearer conscience? I mean, apparently it does at least do the latter, but I don't understand why.
  • Actually, to some people, "oh, crap" is the only one of the above not viewed as profane.
  • What bothers me more are folks who use cursing in place of actual language, as I see with many high school and young college kids in my area. (Kids these days! I feel old.) "Blah, blah, fuckin' blah, blah, fuckin' blah, and shit." (Why does every sentence have to end with "and shit"?) For me, cursing has a time and a place, and folks who just curse ubiquitously are lazy communicators. To speak to Shruti's point, these words *do* have force of meaning, when used judiciously. When overused, they become meaningless. The clash comes when someone who thinks these words are meaningless uses them around folks who assign some meaning to them. Then it's like listening to a jackhammer; it's just too much. I try not to curse much in public, because I don't want to have this effect on other folks. Also, I work with kids, and their parents may not share my views about such language, so I refrain.

    As for name-calling, I don't like it in any form, whether it's calling someone a fuckety-fuck or a bitch or an idiot. To me, it means that the person has run out of anything meaningful to say, or, as noted above, is unable to communicate effectively. It reminds me of that great soliloquy by Cyrano de Bergerac on how to insult someone with pizazz. :-)
  • I really hate having a conversation with someone who uses "fuckin'" as a modifier for every single noun in a sentence.
    Theres a joke about two guys talking like that with the punchline, "what the fuck do you think happened? We had sexual intercourse."
    Kind of shows how the meaning get's lost. I agree that it's lazy communication, but when it's used properly at the right time, it feels good.
  • I'm just always interested in why people use various words under various circumstances, and why not. I'm not religious, so I don't have that sense of certain words being holy, and therefore using them wrong would desecrate the words somehow.

    But I get a sense of freedom and lightness from general swearing because I grew up being trained not to use coarse language because that was how BOYS talked, and of course GIRLS couldn't say those words, because it wasn't NICE. So I have a big anti-niceness chip on my shoulder (word-wise) that contributes to my reactions.

    And, even though I've heard people who talk like Gle3nn describes it -- "I was gettin fuckin tired of the fuckin movie so I fuckin left the fuckin theater blah blah blah" but I've never really known any, so I don't have much of a reaction one way or another to the lazy communication concept.

    Where do you guys feel the line should be drawn with the ethnic & gender slur kind of swearing?
  • Y'all know I'm a timid fellow, but I find it so very enjoyable to be terribly cruel without resorting to cursing. Not that I do it often, and not that it's unprovoked (and not that I'm all that skilled at it), but if you think profanity is powerful, you've never seen someone eviscerate an interlocutor without sullying his dignity with foul language.
  • I too prefer a war of words to a cussin contest. Unfortunately in a battle of wits, I face too many unarmed opponents.
  • I know how you feel Gle3nn...
  • "Where do you guys feel the line should be drawn with the ethnic & gender slur kind of swearing?"

    I'm not a fan of any ethnic/gender/orientation-related swearing, personally. I don't find the emotions behind such cursing to be very pleasant, within myself or from others. And I'm not deluded enough to think that I'm a completely non-biased person, but I feel that resorting to these particular ways of expressing that bias is not productive in trying to counteract that bias within oneself.

    I've been enjoying this thread and haven't weighed in at all on how I feel about cursing in general... but I personally enjoy a well-placed swear. I work around people who use a curse five times a sentence, and find that to be excessive and unnecessary, but I've been known to utter a "bastard" or "motherfucker" on occasion. I generally don't use curse words to refer to people... that is, even when using the curses mentioned above, they are not directed AT anyone. My sister and I are known to call each other "bitch" on occasion, for the funny and not out of any seriousness. Also, I rarely use these words in encounters. These words are reserved for times when I've stubbed my toe or lost an important battle in some video game I'm playing.
  • I find it fascinating.

    We see the fight between cursing and not cursing as JoCo inserts a duck call or a humorous pause in his performances of Baby Got Back, and as we debate which of his songs can be called in as radio requests. And yet he's the author of the very earthy & joyous First of May. And he's a father, hence (presumably) a *duckcaller.*

    I was very happy about last year's resolution to the Don Imus scandal -- it was so great to see the widespread response of "oh no you don't" from so many quarters, but not just because people were scolding him for misuse of a single word or phrase -- there was so much reasoned debate & discussion of why exactly it was a snide, cowardly, unthinking way to put down a group of youngsters who the man didn't even know.

    But on the other hand, I kind of think that Imus (whom I have never liked one iota) was just kind of a white guy gingerly playing around with black slang -- slang that in a previous age he might not even have been aware of, because there was so much segregation and such automatic silencing of black voices. The fact that he is/was also an emotionally frozen & self-satisfied cooler-than-thou kinda guy made the context he used that slang in particularly slimy, and got the remarks noticed.

    But there's a schoolmarmy self-righteous rigidity among the character traits of the kind of liberal folks who normally I agree with, nearly always vote with, and would probably be identified as. And I begin to get a bit antsy when those folks start shaking their fingers in some direction and trying to silence bad speech under the impression that it will somehow stop bad behaviors.

    And I don't really know where I personally want the lines to be drawn, or what can be done about all the really bad effects of bias & prejudice & group-based hatred if well-meaning people try to push the overt signs of it underground.
  • I just go down the passive/mildly assertive route, if people curse no end then I'm not going to stop them (free will and all that) although I would make it known that I'd prefer they didn't, or at least use it in grammatically correct situations.
  • I will say, in addition to my previous statement, that where I draw my personal line for cursing is not where I expect others to draw it.
  • jinx: You just reminded me of something that REALLY irritates me...(I assume I can talk here without racially offending anyone and strive not to do so) But why are there words that "black" people can use, but as soon as a "white" person says it we are being racist and are expected to be punished for it?

    Like I said-hope I didn't offend anyone, if I did you can just say and i reove this comment and replace it with some completely different rambling. :P
  • Bry and Gl3nn: Of course highbrow insults are fun. But I mean, sometimes you can't really beat a well-placed expletive.

    As for what you're talking about, Jon, I think it's basically people creating an in-group/out-group sort of thing. And while solidarity amongst people of similar cultural backgrounds alone isn't a problem, you see this sort of self-segregation, I think, this sort of perpetuation of stereotypes. And that just seems unnecessary and counterproductive.
  • "Where do you guys feel the line should be drawn with the ethnic & gender slur kind of swearing?"

    I curse like a drunken sailor. "fuck" this, "shit" that, and more creative joinings of curse words and non-curse words. (Asshat is probably my favorite of those. I giggle when I think about a chapeau for someone's tush.) I started in high school, where I decided I was old enough to start swearing. It's just part of who I am. I rather like it.

    But ethnic, gender, and sexual orientation swearing I have absolutely no tolerance for. "Fucking asshole" is just general swearing. It doesn't hurt any group in particular. But "That's gay"... well, now you're picking on a group, aren't you? You're using a group as an insult.

    The only one that I slip with is "lame". There's no reason to use physically disability as an insult. And yet I slip with it sometimes.

    And yet, it's funny. I love "motherfucking, cocksucking, ass raping, son-of-a-bitch" when I'm really incensed. And yet, there's anti-gay sentiment in it. I get pissed at other people for "fag" or "gay", but I use "cocksucking" myself. Hmm.
  • Don't have to be gay though do you? *Rhetorical*
  • About the whole swearing thing, I have an anecdote to share:

    Several years ago, I was a trainer for Kinko's in the Boston area (Go, Customer Service!). My boss, who was a great guy, criticized me for my use of the adjective "sucks". As it "It sucks when a customer . . ." He went on to explain that it was a sexual term (yes, that kind of sucking, c4bl3fl4m3). I had never thought about it like that at all.

    I tend to be pretty clean mouthed, especially because of my sons. Plus, I like words and prefer to use more specific ones when communicating. Constant swearing seems to show a lack of imagination to me. There is a something to be said for a well placed "fuck" or "shit", especially if you don't swear regularly. I try very hard to never to use gender or racial epithets. Funny the things that you heard growing up that you never really thought about before. "Lame" is a good example, also "Indian Giver" or "That's mighty white of you." I wonder what we are saying now that the next generation will look back and be aghast.
  • Actually, the term "sucks" has nothing to do with sexuality, but rather is an old sailing term. They've been using it long before it got into use as a sexual thing.

    Sucks comes from the water that gets pulled into an area as a ship moves through the water.

    I can't remember where the hell I learned this.

    My last job didn't let me say "sucks" either. I thought it was fucking stupid, especially because I was already censoring myself to not say "fucking sucks".

    I now work in a job where my boss says fuck and I can say any words I want whenever I want to. This makes me happy.
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