Thursday 13: Self-Referential, Moi?

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Following my last Thursday Thirteen, here's yet another list of songs. I remember (or possibly misremember) Douglas R. Hofstadter claiming, in his book Metamagical Themas, that all great art is self-referential, so with that in mind this week's Thursday 13 lists thirteen songs that refer to themselves:

1. Hook - Blues Traveller

Probably my favourite self-referential song, this is a song all about itself and its own hook. Also, there's a bit near the end that's ridiculously catchy.

2. True - Spandau Ballet

A song that could have easily fitted in my last Thursday 13 about repetitive songs, since it seems to have been written solely with the purpose of seeing how many times the word 'True' could be mentioned. Somewhere, amidst all the 'True's, there's the refreshingly honest Why do I find it hard to write the next line? which I assume refers to the song. Maybe the answer to why he finds it so hard is due to the next line not containing the word 'true' (although it does contain the word 'truth' so it's not exactly a radical departure). Of course, it might not be a self-referential song, and the singer could be just be struggling to write a letter, or possibly blogging (in which case the reason he found it so hard to write the next line would be that blogging hadn't yet been invented).

3. The Leaves That Are Green - Paul Simon

I've already mentioned this in a previous Thursday 13, and its opening self-referential lines of
I was twenty-one years when I wrote this, I'm twenty-two now but I won't be for long which were later appropriated for Billy Bragg's New England. It now also occurs to me that its "Hello Hello Hello" refrain might have been appropriated decades later by Nirvana for Smells Like Teen Spirit, not to mention by stereotypical English policemen.

4. Yes Sir, I Can Boogie - Baccara

Probably the best thing about the song is its wonderfully self-referential lines You wanna know if I can dance, Yes Sir, Already told you in the first verse, And in the chorus.

5. Boring Song - Status Quid

A fairly accurate parody of the British band Status Quo, in this self-proclaimed boring song performed by the Hee Bee Gee Bees on their sadly now-unavailable album "Never Mind The Originals, Here's The Hee Bee Gee Bees". Also slightly self-referential is their Bee Gees parody Meaningless Songs In Very High Voices which is indeed a meaningless song sung in very high voices. The writer of the songs, Philip Pope, went on to write near enough all the songs for the UK version of Spitting Image.

6. Thank You For The Music - Abba

Thank you for the music, the song I'm singing sang the palindromic pop sensations, who were so brilliant they never even bothered releasing this masterpiece as a single at the time. Soon afterwards, aged Forces' Sweetheart Vera Lynn used to turn up on UK TV occasionally singing this, but she never included the first verse which began I'm nothing special, in fact I'm a bit of a bore - not particularly interesting admittedly, but it segues nicely into my next choice:

7. You're So Vain - Carly Simon

You're so vain, I bet you think this song is about you. But if you were to think that you'd be wrong, it is of course about me.

8. Your Song - Elton John

If you really want a song to be about you, then you can tell everybody that this is your song. Actually there are quite a number of self-referential songs with the word "Song" in the title: The Beautiful South's beautifully cynical Song For Whoever, The Beatles' Only a Northern Song, Petula Clark's This Is My Song, Simon and Garfunkel's "Song For The Asking", and Scarlet's "Independent Love Song" spring to mind.

9. The Intro and The Outro - Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

A song devoted entirely to introducing the band and their amazing guests.

10. Number Three - They Might Be Giants

The third song from their eponymous debut album, which declares Since there's just two songs in me
and this is Number Three.

11. School's Out - Alice Cooper

After some cool puns about class and principles/principals, Alice cleverly gets around the lack of rhymes for 'principles' with the line We can't even think of a word that rhymes.

12. 99 Luftballons - Nena

I got the idea for this week's Thursday 13, but was struggling to come up with anything after my first eleven, so I started googling and found that my idea wasn't the least bit original and had already been done ridiculously comprehensively already at the List of Self-Referential Songs (a similar thing happened with my Comic Book Romance Thursday 13 when I came across a site called coincidentally enough A Comic Book Romance). Anyway, from fairly early on in the site, I went with Nena's Neunundneunzig Luftballons which refers to itself in the German version, but not in the English version Ninety-Nine Red Balloons. The German version is also used in the movie Watchmen, which I tend to mention a lot on this blog (and I'm assuming the Watchmen fans out there are net-savvy enough to have already discovered that cool '80s Saturday morning cartoon version of it, so don't need me to tell them about it).

13. Tribute - Tenacious D

A song about the greatest song in the world, which seems self-referential, but near the end they reveal And the peculiar thing is this my friends: the song we sang on that fateful night it didn't actually sound anything like this song, which I guess it means it really shouldn't be on this list, but, hey, it was either this or Joe Pasquale's I Know A Song That'll Get On Your Nerves (thankfully one of the songs I couldn't find a link for on Youtube).


So, that's the end of my list. Please let me know if there are any of your favourite self-referential songs I've missed.

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Thursday 13: At The Risk Of Repeating Myself

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At the moment, I'm trying to edit a novel and, as I travel on that journey, I'm coming across a lot of repetition that I have to fix. While doing this, it's struck me how unfair it is that songs can get away with as much repetition as they like, indeed they thrive on it, and I've thought how slightly funny it would be if songs were edited to remove their repetition. So here are thirteen examples of why editing songs to remove their repetition just wouldn't work:

1. The Hallelujah Chorus

Back in 1741, George Frideric Handel wrote this song, which repeats the word hallelujah over and over again. Sure, it could stand to lose a couple here and there, but if all the repetition was stripped, it would hardly be a chorus, and so would just be called Hallejulah (like that Leonard Cohen song, the one which repeats the word hallejulah over and over again).

2. The Mamas & The Papas' "Monday Monday"

If you remove all of the repetition, this would open with "Monday, nah , can't trust that day". Somehow I don't think Monday by The Mas & Pas would have been quite that big a hit.

2-4. Various Beatles Songs

"She loves you, yeah," doesn't quite have the same impact as the original, and you can hardly sing along drunkenly with ever-increasing volume to the minimalist "La, Hey Jude". If that's not bad enough, the chorus of Yellow Submarine would just be one line.

5. Musical Notes

They're always using the notes A to G in songs, but H to Z never get a look in. What kind of musical conspiracy is that?

6. Gladys Knight & The Pips

Sadly, since their sole purpose in live was to repeat her words, the Pips would all be leaving (leaving) on the Midnight Train to unemployment.

7. Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody

"Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening" is a bit long-winded. Thunderbolts are just lightning bolts, which is a subset of lightning, so this could be reduced to "Lightning, very frightening". Don't even get me started on the Galileos.

8. On The Twelfth Day Of Christmas

The first eleven verses are made fairly redundant by the twelfth which relates near enough everything that's gone before. The twelfth verse would be sufficient, although, maybe just a preamble is needed about how the true love kept increasing the Christmas presents, never thinking of the storage and maintainance problems they would cause, nor the pointlessness of buying more rings than the receiver's fingers could possibly ever accommodate.

9. Happy Birthday

As an attempt at topicality, I'll drag in this song on this day of birthdays (Shakespeare was born and died on this day, it's also my sister's birthday today, and most importantly of all, it's the birthday of Lee Majors, the Six Million Dollar Man). Anyway, if the song was sliced down to the minimal "Happy Birthday to you, dear " then no one would have had the time to taken the requisite deep breath to blow out their candles, and as a result all those wishes would be lost.

10. Meat Loaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)"

Maybe Meat would have had more time to actually get around to doing that, if he hadn't spent so much time mentioning "I would do anything for love".

11. 2 Unlimited's "No Limits"

A song that seems to consist mostly of the line "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no ,no ,no, no there's no limit!". If something was done about the repetition then the song would be in danger of vanishing, although, on the plus side, there'd be far less negativity present.

12. Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha

Just because the Dolls have made up a new mispronounciation of "Don't you" they feel obliged to repeat it ad infinitum. Clearly by their next record Stickwitu the novelty of repeating made-up words had dimmed slightly.

13. Britney Spears' Song

I can't remember what it's called, only the lyrical genius that is the chorus, which goes something like "Womanizer, woman-womanizer, you're a womanizer. Oh, womanizer, oh, you're a womanizer baby. You, you-you are, you, you-you are Womanizer, womanizer, womanizer (Womanizer)". Maybe removing repetition from songs wasn't such a bad idea after all.

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Thursday 13: Comic Book Romance

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This week we've actually been given a theme of weddings, so, since I've not been to that many weddings, here's a list of thirteen comic book weddings I've read about (all characters copyright Marvel and DC Comics):

1. Reed Richards And Sue Storm

Back in Fantastic Four Annual #3, Mister Fantastic tied the knot with the Invisible Woman (what did he see in her?). Clearly the idea of a wedding wasn't thought enough to lure in the fans, so they gave us this cover:



The marriage also featured in the acclaimed '90s series Marvels, in which artist Alex Ross gave us this scene. Talk about a guest list (click on the picture and play spot the celebrity).



2. Crystal and Quicksilver

Another Fantastic Four issue, and another wedding. This time we have Crystal of the Inhumans marrying the mutant Quicksilver. All they wanted was a quiet wedding.



3. Superman and Lois Lane

Back in the '60s, Superman was always marrying Lois Lane (or Lana Lang or Lori Lemaris), but in imaginary stories (below is a famous one where he's married both Lois and Lana).



Then in the '70s, he married Lois for real, albeit on a parallel world, Earth-2:



Then, finally, in the '90s, after shuffling his feet for over half a century, Lois and Clark finally got married:



4. Batman and Catwoman

Back on that parallel world, Earth-2, where Superman married Lois Lane, Batman was depicted as marrying Catwoman, and they eventually had a daughter, The Huntress, who continued his heroic legacy.



5. Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson

Spider-Man married Mary Jane back in the '80s in Spider-Man Annual #21 (but they've both recently forgotten about it and gone back to being single - hey, that's comic books for you):



And, just to show that zombies can be in love too, here's a zombie version:



6. Jor-El and Lara

Superman's parents are shown being married below. A few years later their planet will explode. You win some, you lose some.



7. Adam Strange and Alanna

Adam Strange, a nobody on Earth who's beamed to the planet Rann and gets to be a hero (a cool metaphor for reading superhero comics if ever there was one), here marrying his longtime alien girlfriend, Alanna. Alan Moore subsequently took some of the romance out of it all by revealing that Adam was merely being used for breeding purposes, the male populace of Rann being sterile.



8. Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl

Two members of the Legion of Super-Heroes who recently turned up on the TV show Smallville (as did Zatanna, but not in the same episode of course, that would just be like bad fanfiction). Anyway, the two Legionnaires got married in this over-sized Treasury Edition with a cover that screams everything but wedding at you.



9. Bruce Banner and Betty Ross

The Incredible Hulk got married, although his wife later died due to his gamma radiation. Poor Hulk.



10. Rick Jones and Marlo Chandler

Now we get down to some of the more obscure characters to non-comic-readers. Rick Jones is one of the Hulk's friends and he got married a while back in undoubtedly the funniest wedding comic I've ever read (courtesy of writer Peter David), which also featured a cameo from Neil Gaiman's Death.



11. Donna Troy and Terry Long

Donna Troy, aka The Teen Titans' Wonder Girl, got married to dull non-superhero Terry Long back in the '80s.



12. Yellowjacket and The Wasp

Yellowjacket (aka Hank Pym aka Ant-Man aka Giant-Man aka Goliath) married his girlfriend The Wasp, in one of those weddings you hear about where a python tries to crush the bride. Don't worry, the animal wasn't hurt.



13. The Flash and Iris West

I've not actually read this one, but I wouldn't reach that magic 13 without it, and it's got a cool cover, so let's include it.

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Thursday 13: Nay Sayings

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This week, a list of thirteen proverbs and sayings that don't really stand up to rigorous analysis:

1. A Stitch In Time Saves Nine

I could snarkily point out that while the current scientific view of the universe allows for the bending of time, it does not currently entertain the notion of the stitching of it, but let's not be picky. This proverb basically says that if something needs stitching, then you're best doing it at the start when it will take a single stitch to fix it, because later on the tear/hole/whatever will just get larger and you'll end up having to do nine stitches. Now, let's be realistic; if you're too darn lazy to do just one stitch, there's no way you'll ever get around to doing nine of them, is there? No, best to just see it as an excuse to throw the thing out and go on a shopping spree for a replacement. The proverb should really read, A Stitch In Time Robs You Of A Shopping Trip.

Also, in its wider sense, this is a warning about procrastination but I think my analysis of that aspect's best left for another day.

2. A Trouble Shared Is A Trouble Halved

No, it isn't. You just get the other person worrying about it too, and maybe gossiping about it to other people, and then things escalate and you wish you'd just kept quiet. Possibly more accurate would be A Trouble Shared Is A Trouble Squared, which at least has the grace to rhyme.

3. It's Always Darkest Before The Dawn

Well, at a wild guess, given the way the Earth rotates, and not dragging any reflected light from the moon into things, it'll actually be darkest about halfway between dusk and dawn.

4. A Bird In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Bush

I wasn't sure about this, so I did the following rigourously scientific experiment:



Score = 24



Score = 23

As you can see, A Bird In The Hand wins, although it's a close call, and it would have been an easy mistake to make in those pre-Scrabble times.

5. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Hardly the most insightful of sayings. What else can you let a sleeping dog do. It won't bark, it won't play fetch, it won't chase its tail; pretty much all a sleeping dog can do is lie, and possibly play dead.

6. Don't Count Your Chickens Before They're Hatched

With the advent of X-rays, surely that's no longer the case. Also, with counting them before they're hatched, at least you're fairly sure of the maximum number, whereas if you try and count that plethora of chicks running around everywhere you're bound to lose count or miss one.

7. You Are What You Eat

But surely that would make us all cannibals. Ick.

8. Accidents Will Happen

Well, duh. If they didn't happen, there'd be no need to mention them, would there?

9. Two Heads Are Better Than One

Well, call me picky, but I'm far happier with just one. Having two would just get people staring and pointing at me. Two Heads Are Better Than None would be more accurate, since I'd far rather have an additional surplus head added than have my current one removed.

10. An Englishman's Home Is His Castle

Actually, mine's more of a junkyard.

11. A Watched Pot Never Boils

Oh yes, it does. You've just got to be patient.

12. Laughter Is The Best Medicine

Not if you've got a sore throat, it's not.

13. Money Doesn't Grow On Trees

So, dollar bills are made of paper, and paper comes from trees... Yeah, someone's not quite thought this one through.

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Thursday 13: Things I Learned From The A-Team

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This week, thirteen things I learned from watching The A-Team:

1. If you look like George Peppard there's no point in trying to disguise yourself, because you'll still end up looking just like George Peppard (albeit George Peppard wearing a bad disguise).

2. Mental illness is fun; you get to be wacky and fly planes.

3. If you've got a friend who's afraid of flying, just give them a drugged glass of milk before their fllight; they'll fall for it every time.

4. The corollary to #3. If you're ever confronted in a dark alley by a big black blinged-up dude, be sure to be carrying a drugged glass of milk; works every time.

5. "War is stupid and people are stupid," sang Boy George, a guest star in one of the episodes, and of course he has a point. There's no point sacrificing soldiers and unleashing your most powerful weapons to win a war, when, as we saw week after week, all you need to defeat the enemy and win any battle, no matter what the size, is a set of tools and the contents of a garden shed (or if McGuyver's on hand, any three random household items will suffice).

6. Statistics say that flying is the safest form of transport, but statistics can be misleading, and you only have to watch a few A-Teams to realise that the safest form of transport is undoubtedly a crashing vehicle. It doesn't matter how it crashes, how many times it rolls over, or the number of ensuing explosions, the occupants will inevitably still walk away from it unharmed.

7. There are all kinds of love, from platonic to puppy, from true to tainted, but surely the greatest love of all, the love that stands the test of time, is the love of a plan coming together.

8. If you're a fugitive from justice, don't worry. You can star in movies like Hannibal, you can wear jewelry like B.A., you can keep driving the same black van all the time, and you'll still be able to blend in and go unnoticed.

9. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. To be fair this lesson came from the military who kept chasing the A-Team, kept failing, but finally managed to capture them in the last series.

10. Fools should be pitied.

11. At the very end, after the credits, the writer Stephen J Cannell was seen pulling a page out of a typewriter and throwing it into the air. This is clearly how all writers work, and ever since then, hoping to be a writer someday, whenever I've finished writing something I throw it up in the air (although when I switched to writing things on my laptop, this definitely caused a few headaches).

12. If you've got a dull name like John Smith, change it to something a bit more Carthaginian like Hannibal. Then again, you might prefer to meet Pocahontas, or shoot a presidential candidate (like Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone), or become an angel (like Jonathan Smith in Highway To Heaven). Hey, you might even decide to call yourself John Smith like The Doctor or the android superhero Red Tornado. Wow, I'm glad my name's not John Smith or I'd be really conflicted.

13. If you want to be cool, wear lots of bling and use your initials (like BA). The whole of rap is built on this premise (Ice-T even stole Mr. T's surname).

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Thursday 13: The Future's Bright, The Future's Apple

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Don't you just hate it when you have prophetic dreams about what Apple are planning following the successes of the iPod, iTouch and iPhone? I know I do. Anyway, I had one such dream last night and here, verbatim, are the 13 future items that I saw on one of their top-secret hush-hush executive memos (to tell the truth, there could have been more than 13, or maybe it just said "Stuff" - it's all a little hazy now):

1. iSay

It's been said that television has killed the art of conversation, and indeed the same accusation could be levelled at the iPod (although we of course wouldn't hear it with our volume cranked way up high). Anyway, to redress the balance, and to help the conversationally-stifled, we have the new microsocopic iSay which lodges in the eardrum and, whenever it detects a deafening silence, will provide the user with an apt quotation or a deep insight that the user can then utter (or, if the user remains silent, its telepathic shuffle feature will cycle through some alternative responses). Due to Digital Rights Management, the user can then repeat the said utterance to up to five listeners, although any further repetition will naturally cause the iSay to self-destruct, thus handily leaving the user needing to buy another one.

Of course, even if they don't upgrade their iSay due to its self-destruction, they'll no doubt prefer to be thought of as funny rather than profound, and so will want to upgrade a year later to the subsequently-released third-generation iSay-iSay-iSay which will provide them with numerous witty ripostes to help fill any vacuum of silence, which the user can buy in numerous comedy stylings to suit their taste (observational, surreal, droll, sarcastic, witheringly sarcastic, childish, puntastic and classic).

Of course, when faced with such wit, some might just want to fling epithets back at the speaker, which is where yet another version, the iCarumba comes in.

Naturally, none of these will be made available to the UK market, where instead they'll be supplied with the iOfTheStorm which will provide users with suitably uninteresting things to say about the weather.

2. iMax

Following the success of the iPod nano, it's time for the other extreme of the iMax, a giant iPod of immense proportions. With enough hard disc to hold every movie, song and television programme in existence (and then some), its massive high resolution screen, taller than the tallest skyscraper, offers the ultimate audio/visual experience. Even when it's not showing anything, its screen rotates its pixels through all their near-infinite possible combinations at speeds too fast to take in, so that in its downtime, in a matter of seconds, amongst all the static, observers will see every image possible - every event that there ever was, is, will be, might have been or can never be (plus numerous subliminal advertisements for the other products listed here).

Naturally, the iMax isn't portable, but that doesn't matter because it's so big you can see it from everywhere. Of course, there's no obvious place where the owner could keep it, so instead they'll be placed into orbit, where the screen will still be clearly visible. Yes, it's THAT big!

3. iOfTheTiger

Tests carried out by Apple have shown that pets don't like their owner's music; indeed when dogs might appear to sing along with music they are, as their sounds suggest, actually howling in pain.

That's where iOfTheTiger comes in - an iPod for pets. Now pets can listen to special pet-specific music (available exclusively from the iTunes store).

4. iClaudius

Claudius, the most famous stutterer in history, gives his name to the latest iPod which can do automatic scratching of any music on it to give it that '80s hip hop sound.

5. iGore

Since teens love horror movies, this version of the iPod adds additional blood to any movie, not to mention an ever-increasing eerie baking track to any song being played, until eventually the singer's voice is distorted into screams.

6. iCandy

While the world's not quite ready yet for the iRobot (as market research disguised as a Will Smith movie showed), a more human robot is planned. iCandy is her name and she's been shown by market research to be man's new best friend. Not only does she come in the desired anatomically-incorrect proportions, but she can cook, clean, run completely silently and, most important of all, she gets all the sports channels.

7. iStillHaven'tFoundWhatImLookingFor

Having trouble finding music, movies, car keys? Whatever, you lose, the new iStillHaven'tFoundWhatImLookingFor, using advanced search engine technology to search reality itself,will find it for you.

Unfortunately, while development's complete on this, we've mislaid the prototype.

8. iBelieve

A new iPod that analyses the world's music preference to deliver only the most heavenly tunes to the listener. Available in cloud white, angelic white and whiter than white.

9. iPredict

Using data gathered from iPods all over the world, this gadget analyses the current state of the universe and extrapolates it to show you the future.

Work has been slow on this, especially with the development teams constantly leaving as they found themselves winning the lottery, but we finally got a large city-sized working version. Using that we saw what they did in the future to shrink its size, stole that future technology, and now it's reduced to its optimum shape, that of a magic 8 ball.

10. iFive

It's an iPod! It's a glove! It's a glove and an iPod! Driven by hand gestures, the iFive will play appropriate music for every occasion, whether it be hardcore rap for the more colourful gestures, or the Theme from Rocky when you make a fist. Finally, thanks to this revolutionary technology, blind people will get to play Rock, Scissors, Paper.

11. iCanDoAnything

The ultimate gadget, brought to us years ahead of our time thanks to the power of iPredict. It would have been called the iGod but that was dropped after it didn't quite do it justice.

Yes, the iCanDoAnything can, as it's name suggests do anything, perform any feat, answer any question. For what it's worth, Douglas Adams was right with 42.

Available for a limited time only, until it takes over the world.

12. iiCaptain

Not just an i- prefix, but an ii- prefix, as this gadget takes charges of all your other Apple gadgets, keeping them running at their maximum capacity, along with maintaining a log of everything that's happening.

To the end user, this gadget should be unobtrusive, and it might appear to the casual observer that it isn't actually doing anything that important. This is indeed the case, so we'll charge an exorbitant price for it to convince everyone it must be doing something important.

13. iCanCountToThirteen

Surveys have shown that people seem to have trouble finding the thirteenth item to add to a list. This gadget automatically generates one for you. How invaluable is that?

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Thursday 13: Pitches

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Several weeks ago, buried in my list of thirteen excuses for not doing Thursday 13 the previous week, I mentioned my trip to Hollywood pitching a movie. To tell the truth, I actually pitched thirteen other movies while out there, so here they are:

1. Since Enchanted has sort of stole Shrek's thunder in the fairytale mickey-taking stakes, I proposed a sequel to Shrek where the green ogre, along with Fiona and Donkey, find themselves transported out of their computer-generated landscape and into the real world of New York City. It's called "Shrek's In The City".

2. Superheroes meet Harry Potter, as a stray spell at Hogwarts creates havoc by producing four super-powered pizza-eating Moaning Myrtles, in "Teenage Mutant Whinger Myrtles".

3. A sort of Gremlins-meets-Chucky scenario as a Furby takes on a life of its own, slaying people and then repeating their final screams. It's called "Furby Goes Bananas".

4. Everybody knows that all good movie franchises come in trilogies (Lord of the Rings, Back To The Future, and, hey, look what happened when Star Wars decided to add a fourth film), so how about a sequel to the Kill Bill movies. Now the main problem with this is that the Bride slayed all of her enemies (and then some) in the first two movies, so most of the characters from the first two movies are no more, but we'll get round this by using some voodoo to bring them all back. That's right - a Kill Bill zombie movie where all of the Bride's victims are raised from the dead to get their revenge. It will of course be called "Kill Bill Vol. 3" (sorry, got to stick to the winning formula. Bet you thought I was going to say "Bride's Dead Revisited") .

5. Speaking of Kill Bill, how about a Disney sequel, ripped off ever so slightly from the former, in which the kick-ass heroine travels to France to avenge her family, and finally ends up stained red by the blood of all of her opponents. It's called "Mulan Rouge".

6. Sticking to the Disney theme, I pitched a TV spin-off in which some cooks, desperate to win a restaurant of their own, compete with each other in a kitchen, in a race against time to prepare a meal for two, all under the watchful eye of a monstrous chef with unkempt fur who keeps growling at them, and with the added disadvantage that sometimes the clock they use to time things suddenly performs musical numbers along with their cooking utensils. It's called "Belle's Kitchen".

7. Steve Guttenburg, Tom Selleck and Ted Danson wake up to find their little lady's all grown up and considering gender realignment surgery in "Three Men and a Maybe".

8. Snake Plisken's back, but this time, thanks to state-of-the-ark 2D graphics, he's trapped in a two-dimensional terrorland, in John Carpenter's "Escape From Flatland" (or maybe that should be "Snake's on a Plain").

9. Ben Stiller plays a milkman (not just any milkman, mind you, this is a high-concept movie where he's a man quite literally made of milk following being bitten by a radioactive cow). Anyway, he falls in love with Cameron Diaz, only to discover that she's lactose intolerant, in the romantic comedy "There's Something About Dairy".

10. Following the success of High School Musical comes a musical based on Smallville. It's called Super-Kal-El-Lionel-Chloe-Lex-Pete-Lana-Lois.

11. No doubt the upcoming Star Trek film will reinvigorate the franchise, but, if not, here's a Plan B. To appeal to the teen market, how about a Starfleet Academy movie that drifts into American Pie territory. Since no one wants to see Kirk going around being successful with women, let's focus on Spock and McCoy, on the eve of graduation, desperate to go where they've never gone before, before they get sent off on their five year mission. Anyway, while Spock's going through Pon Farr and McCoy's overdosing on cordrazine, they hatch a desperate plan - with the aid of their incomprehensible Scottish pal - to use a replicator to create duplicates of Kirk's sexy latest squeeze Carol Marcus. Unfortunately, some of Spock's Ponn-Farr-imbued DNA gets mixed up with the DNA they steal from Carol Marcus, and they end up creating two new sex-crazed Carol Marcus clones, and hilarious hijinks ensue, with the red-hot twosome threatening to give tribbles a run for their money. It's called "Doc, Spock and Two Smoking Carols".

12. A follow up to The Bourne Ultimatum (hard to see how they resisted calling that one Bourne Three). This time around, in a fourth-wall-breaking Truman-Showesque twist. the former amnesiac finds that he's not actually Jason Bourne but just a Hollywood actor playing Jason Bourne and in disbelief has to resort to expletives. It's called "I'm %£!$ing Matt Damon".

13. Jason Vorhees turns to memes in "Thursday The Thirteen".

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Thursday 13: Boulevard of Broken Memes

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Since everyone loves memes, here's a list of thirteen potential memes covering all the days of the week (for the sake of giving credit where credit is due, I should point out that the better ones have been provided by Blog In The Rough).

1. Make-A-Blog Monday

It's the beginning of the week, so what better time to start a new blog. Participants create a new blog from scratch, pouring their heart and soul into it, using the ideas they might have had for their own blog but never got round to, using a different blog creation site (for the learning experience and just to make it that bit different from their current site), creating what they consider a must-read blog.

Anyway, once that's finished, and the participants have created a site, posted some posts, commented on other people's new blogs, and maybe learned ways to improve their current blogs, it's time for the final act as the blogs are abandoned, never to be returned to. The excitement and the heartbreak of blogging, captured in a single day.

2. Monkey Monday

In this meme, based on the infinite monkey theorem, everyone types a post by just hitting keys at random (a method I tend to favour anyway). Sure, most of them will be unreadable junk, but if enough people get involved then a masterpiece is bound to come along sooner or later.

3. Tumbleweed Tuesday

A fun meme where you post something so lame that all the readers are reduced to silence. This finally gives you an excuse to posts the posts you consider to be too mundane, too unfunny or just too strange; posts that would either have the readers abandoning you, scratching their heads, or pulling their jaws up from the floor. The great thing is that when nobody comments on it, you know that you've succeeded.

4. Takeover Tuesday

On Monday, numerous heartless types abandoned their fledging blogs. Now's your chance to take one of those, mold it, shape it, and make it the greatest blog of all time.

5. World Hunger Wednesday

Every week the might of blogdom concentrate their collective powers on solving a major problem affecting the world. It could takes weeks, years, maybe even decades, but eventually this meme would no doubt lead to a utopia.

6. Weeping Gorilla Wednesday

Well, in a vague attempt to be topical, with the opening of Watchmen this week, here's a meme based on writer Alan Moore's Weeping Gorilla Comix which featured in his Promethea series.

For those unfamiliar with the Weeping Gorilla, it was a gorilla who'd weep (you'd probably guessed that part) while thinking a sad thought. Seems to me, that with the number of bloggers liking animals, this could be a natural, as each week the bloggers produce a picture of a weeping gorilla - either by drawing one (not just swiping as I've done here, that's just lazy), modifying a stock phot of a gorilla, or, for those lucky bloggers with gorillas as pets, taking a photo of it in one of its melancholy moments - and then adding a pithy caption to indicate what's saddening the simian. Who knows what pathos and profundity would result?

7. Thoughtless Thursday

It's time to admit to all those thoughtless actions you did to others and repent, or maybe tell us about the thoughtless things done to you, or maybe just leave the blog for that day because you've got no ideas and just wile away the hours conversing with the flowers. To be honest, I haven't really given this one a lot of thought.

8. Theatrical Thursday

Memes - the natural enemy of just telling the readers what's happening in your life. However, this meme combines both meming and diarying into one, as the participants tell the readers what they've been doing recently, but doing it in an overly-theatrical manner. Thus, even those of us with the dullest of lives can verily wax lyrical, canneth we not, about how on this day in this year in this century, verily did we arise from the grip of Morpheus and go about our lives and sat before a distorted mirror of finest rectangle that reflected our thoughts and our fingers tippety-tapped against the glyphs beneath them, producing something spectular, nay, spectacularly spectacular and the whole world rejoiced upon reading the outpourings.

Something like that, although obviously far better and with way more name-dropping.

9. Feedline Friday

A fun meme where people think up interesting things that I can say when I reach a converational impasse while chatting online. Think of it, you'd be providing a service for me, providing me with chat material, while also getting to exorcise your messianic tendencies knowing I'm a puppet voicing your words (well, maybe that's more your ventriloquistic tendencies, albeit a ventriloquist whose dummy types rather than talks).

10. Filibuster Friday

Participants type a really long post, discussing something at bizarre length, going on and on, way into the night, until their fingers no longer work, their eyes are getting blurry and the readers have fallen asleep. Oh, wait, sorry, wrong meme; I was thinking of Thursday 13.

11. Sick Saturday

For all the hypochondriacs out there, and the genuinely sick, a chance to discuss whatever ails you. Share your problems and worries with others, and hey, with the power of suggestion, they'll start to feel the same symptoms, and soon, thanks to the internet, the whole world will be sick; which is a bit of a waste really, when you're probably off work for the weekend.

12. Super Saturday!

A meme so super it's got an exclamation mark! Who cares what it's about, it's got an exclamation mark! Isn't that exciting enough!?

No? Okay, well as the exclamation mark indicates, the participants have to answer some questions with unbridled enthusiasm, regardless of any disinterest, finding some reason or other to find the whole thing super! Isn't that super?! What's that you say? It sucks? Wow, you'd be lousy at this meme.

13. Sarcasm Sunday

Just one meme for Sunday - after all, it is a day of rest - but what a meme, undoubtedly the greatest meme of all time. It truly is phenomenal.

No, it isn't; I was being sarcastic. Unfortunately, until they invent an emoticon for sarcasm, it's not always obvious when that lowest form of wit is present. That's why we need a day for unbridled sarcasm, where it's obvious where people are being sardonic about the questions they answer. Needless to say the comments on these posts can also be sarcastic, just to mess with the participants' heads as they worry because they're getting such nice comments.

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Thursday 13

Header from samulli

This week, thirteen of my favourite lyricists/lyrics:

1. W.S. Gilbert - Someone from incredibly long ago, mainly known these days for his comic operas with Arthur Sullivan (Pirates of Penzance, Mikado, H.M.S. Pinafore, etc.). While I'm naturally impressed with any writer who uses the words "binomial theorem", as he did in his song about a Modern Major-General, I actually decided to start with Gilbert purely in an attempt to be topical. Topical? I hear you say in disbelief (although you probably didn't say it out loud, so it's a wonder I heard you). Yes, topical, I reply (though again not aloud), since the following lyric seems appropriate for this time of year:

For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I've no desire to be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don't know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.
Through some singular coincidence - I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy -
You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of February;
And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover,
That though you've lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you're only five and a little bit over!

Sorry for such a large quote, but just quoting the February bit out of context would have been a bit unfair on Gilbert. Anyway, it's got numbers, leap years, as many words on each line as possible, "discover" rhymed with "over", and the whole song revolves around a paradox; what's not to like?

2. Paul Simon - Tons of great songs, tons of great lyrics to choose from, but since we had a paradox last time, let's continue the trend with this one, the opening lines to "The Leaves That Are Green":

I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song

I'm twenty-two now but I won't be for long

Lyrics so good that Billy Bragg also borrowed them as the opening lines for his song A New England. As an aside, another memorable pair of opening lines of Paul Simon's come from his song "Duncan", which starts, "My father was a fisherman, my mother was a fisherman's friend"; although this might only be memorable to me because in the UK a Fisherman's Friend is a kind of inedible cough sweet.

3. Howard Ashman - Late great lyricist who provided songs for The Little Mermaid, Beauty & The Beast, and Aladdin, but I'll pick a lyric from Little Shop of Horrors' Dentist Song:

I thrill when I drill a bicuspid

It's swell though they tell me I'm maladjusted

Apart from the pleasing way he manages to fit three rhymes into two lines, I quite like the way that this is one of the few songs that uses the word "bicuspid" (just as "Gaston" from Beauty and the Beast is one of the few to feature the word "expectorating"; and similar to Gilbert who regularly uses seldom-lyricised words like hypoteneuse in his songs. Oh no, it looks like there's a theme developing).

4. Neil Innes - terrific songwriter both on his own (I wish his TV series The Innes Book of Records was available on DVD) and in groups (The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The Rutles). As far as seldom-used words in songs, I think the following lyric from The Rutles' "Good Times Roll" winds hands down:

Psychadelicatessen

Fricasse chorus girl's thigh

Toffee and mackeral gateau

Pineapple pie in the sky

Dull trivia fact: Psychadelicatessen was on the shortlist when I was thinking up a name for this blog.

5. Neil Hannon - Driving force behind The Divine Comedy, as well as performing a few songs that have been played in the background of Doctor Who and also a few songs on the Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy soundtrack. He writes some great intelligent music in all sorts of different styles, and here's a lyric I like from the Divine Comedy's "Don't Look Down":

Old-fashioned ferris wheels

Are no big deal

They’re just big wheels with chairs

So don’t be scared

Just set yourself free

6. Andy Partridge - main songwriter with XTC and their whimsical offshoot The Dukes of the Stratosphear. I was going to pick a lyric from one of my favourite XTC songs, Mayor of Simpleton , because it used the word "eproms", but when I looked up the exact lyrics I discovered I'd been mishearing it all these years (D'oh!) and I couldn't find a nice short snippet from my other favourite song of theirs, Dear God , so instead let's go for this from The Dukes of the Stratosphears' "The Mole From The Ministry":

I'm the mole from the ministry

And you'll all bow down to me

I'm the mole in your potting shed

I'm the bad thoughts inside your head

And you won't catch me

7. They Might Be Giants - Purveyors of quirky lyrics. Here's a palindromic lyric from "I Palindrome I" (which also features one of my favourite opening lines, "Someday mother will die and I'll get the money"):

"Son I am able," she said "though you scare me."

"Watch," said I

"Beloved," I said "watch me scare you though." said she,

"Able am I, Son."

8. Jim Steinman - Wagnerian songwriter behind Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell, who does terrific over-the-top lyrics that match the subtlety of his tunes. Here's one of my faves from his "Out Of The Frying Pan":

It's never been this hot and I've never been so bored

And breathing's just no fun anymore

9. Suzanne Vega - Singer/songwriter who writes great lyrics and tells great stories (Tom's Diner, The Queen and The Soldier). Choosing a lyric, I've got to go for something from her first album which I listened to ridiculously often when I first got it. Here are the opening lines of "Undertow":

I believe right now if I could

I would swallow you whole

I would leave only bones and teeth

We could see what was underneath

And we would be free then

10. Voice Of The Beehive - Terrific band, who did some terrific pop tunes (their second album Honey Lingers is notable for not having a bad track on it). Here's some lines from their song "Perfect Place":

I will assure all of the husbands who are guilty and the wives who feel useless.

I will nurse all of the black and blue babies with their unhappy parents who had unhappy parents.

I will assure all of the boys who feel awkward and the girls who feel clumsy.

I will walk alongside the old man who feels so alone as everyone rushes by him.

11. Tori Amos - Singer/songwriter/friend of Neil Gaiman. Thought her debut album was terrific, and my favourite lyric of hers are the first words of the first song I ever heard of hers, "Silent All These Years":

Excuse me but can I be you for a while

My dog wont bite if you sit real still

I got the anti-christ in the kitchen yellin' at me again

Yeah I can hear that

12. Neil Finn - I remember reading a possibly apocryphal story in Q Magazine about how, backstage after a Crowded House concert, Sting walked in singing "Hey now, hey now, don't dream it's over," to which Neil Finn sang back "De-do-do-do De-da-da-da," and a disgruntled Sting promptly turned on his heels and walked straight out. Hope it's true, but regardless, Neil's written some terrific tunes for Split Enz and Crowded House. Here's some lines from Crowded House's "There Goes God".

Hey don't look now

But there goes God

In his sexy pants

And his sausage dog

And he can't stand Beelzebub

Cos he looks so good in black, in black

13. Kirsty MacColl - Wonderfully witty and talented songwriter, although tragically most of her big hits in the UK (A New England, Days, Fairytale of New York) were written by others. Here's some lyrics from her song "Soho Square":

An empty bench in Soho Square

If you'd have come you'd have found me there

But you never did 'cause you don't care

And I'm so sorry, baby

I don't mind loneliness too much

But when I met you I was touched

And that was good enough for me

But do we always have to be sorry

Why can't we just be happy, baby?

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Thursday 13

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Well, after last week's no-show, it seems only fair that this week I offer thirteen very feasible excuses as to why I didn't do the Thursday 13 last week:

1. I was abducted by aliens. Fortunately they returned me on Friday morning at one minute past midnight, but by then I'd missed the deadline.

2. I was staring at my screen, waiting for inspiration to hit, when I fell asleep and had a ridiculously-convincing dream where I'd written the greatest Thursday 13 of all time. Anyway, I woke up the next morning, not realising it was a dream, thinking I'd already written it (and thanks for all the nice comments I dreamed you left on it, by the way), and it was only when I looked back this week, and noticed that it wasn't there, that the truth dawned on me. Needless to say, dreams being what they are, I can't actually remember the contents of this greatest Thursday 13 of all time, although I'm fairly certain it didn't comprise a list of excuses.

3. I pushed the Publish Post button, but my internet connection is so incomprehensibly slow that you'll not see it until next Thursday.

4. You know how sometimes the brain can protect itself from traumatic situations by repressing memories. Well, that's what yours has done with last week's Thursday 13 of mine. I suspect if you look back you won't even see it - isn't the human mind an amazing thing?

5. Following my previous Thursday 13 about my favourite numbers, I was being held hostage by some militant mathematicians, incensed that I'd omitted their favourite of ninety-nine, a number that conjured up images for them of red balloons and bottles of beers on the wall. When I pointed out that I'd also had to miss out seven, despite it being magnificent, they finally let me go.

6. I was going to post a Thursday 13. Indeed, I'd spent ages working on a list of my favourite months, but then just at the end I saw the horrible flaw in my plan. As a result, at the last minute, thinking on my feet, I switched to discussing my favourite signs of the Zodiac. D'oh!

7. I had to abandon it since, despite hours working on it, it failed to reach the stringent standards of quality control required for my blog (i.e. it still consisted solely of the words "Thursday 13").

8. I did actually post it. It was a list of thirteen conspiracy theories, which blew the lid off just about everything. But as soon as I posted it, THEY removed it.

9. I posted it, but then it turned out to be exactly the same as the first person's Thursday 13, word for word. Thinking I'd be accused of plagiarism, I typed up another 13, but they matched the second person's. So I did it again, and they matched the third person's. At this point, I think you can see the pattern emerging.

10. Sure, I wrote it, but I didn't think you could handle it. Maybe next week.

11. At the last minute, I realised that if I did post it, then this week's Thursday 13 wouldn't make any sense.

12. Okay, my most faithful reader, I'll tell you the truth, but you're sworn to secrecy (don't worry about the other readers; I'm using clever HTML so that they're actually now reading something different and far more funny). I was out in Hollywood pitching a movie, hoping to get it greenlighted. It's yet another entry in the "Look Who's Talking" franchise, but this time with the high-concept twist that instead of having the adventures of a baby voiced by Bruce Willis, I turn things on their head and have the adventures of Bruce Willis voiced by a baby. It'll be called "What You Talkin' 'Bout, Willis?"

13. All of the above

Honest, that's what happened. Would I lie to you?

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Thursday 13

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Thirteen of my favourite numbers:

1. Negative numbers

Not a number as such, but a whole substrata, and yet, despite being just as prolific as the positive numbers and indeed being identical to them apart from their minus sign accessory, they get nowhere near the same level of attention and are sometimes actively discriminated against.

For instance, how many times have you seen a quiz show where the host will ask a question like "What's the square root of 81?" Of course most numbers have two square roots (and three cube roots, but then things start to get complex). Anyway, because of this, I usually feel obliged to shout out "-9" at the television in support of that infinite minority of negative numbers (I used to shout out that the question itself was erroneous in its premise but that was a bit long-winded and made me even more unpopular with those watching television with me than merely shouting out negative numbers does).

2. Zero

Not positive, not negative, possibly the most apathetic of numbers. Still, while it doesn't seem to amount to much, and having zero dollars in your bank account is fairly depressing, start shoving those zeroes after other numbers and things look a lot rosier.

Having said that, the reason I like it is that it's the only number with one square root, so it saves me shouting at the television.

3. One

Why do I like one? Well, mainly because one is the loneliest number, so I figure it needs all the friends I can get.

4. Two

Why do I like two? Well, it's the loneliest number since the number one, so again I figure it needs friends.

5. Euler's Number

Well, it lets me call it e. Sure it can be irrational at times, but if you differentiate e to the power x you get e to the power x so that's kind of cool.

6. Pi

The ratio of a circle's cirumference to its diameter. I like it because it sounds like PIE. Also, it's had a film named after it, unlike so many other numbers.

7. Thirteen

Where would I be without the number 13? Doing another meme, that's where. Sure, some people think thirteen's unlucky, but being a Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy fan, I quite like the fact that in base 13, six times nine does actually equal forty-two.

8. Thirty-Six

Sure, it might look like a square, but it's the highest number on a roulette wheel, and if you add up all the numbers between 1 and 36 you end up with 666, the Number of the Beast.

9. 789

It reminds me of the hilarious joke:

Q: Why do all the numbers fear 7?

A: Because seven ate nine.

10. 1729

Long, long ago, in the mists of time, back when I was at University, a lecturer told us the tale of some famous mathematician of the past (I sadly forget the mathematician's name). Anyway the mathematician and his friend were talking and for some reason the number 1729 came into the conversation (maybe that was the year, maybe they were discussing PIN numbers, maybe it was almost half past five, who knows). "1729," said the mathematician, "there's an interesting number. It's the sum of two cubes - twelve cubed (1728) and one cubed (1) - and also the sum of another pair of cubes - ten cubed (1000) and nine cubed (729)."

Now, you can't get much more interesting than that, can you?

11. Avagadro's number

Picture the scene. It's the past and Euler walks into the bar after a long day at work and reveals he's been building a number.

"How big is it?" asks the guy at the end of the bar.

"2.71828 18284 59045 23536 or thereabouts," replies Euler.

"What?" says the guy, laughing. "That's less than Pi."

As Euler walks off in a huff, Max Planck enters. "Hey, I've just come up with a new constant."

"Is it big?" asks the guy at the end of the bar.

"Nein," says Planck, suddenly realising he's German, "Es ist sehr kleine."

Just as the guy's about to burst out laughing, some astronomer or other rushes in and says he's measured the speed of light at 300 millions metres per second."

"That's nothing," says the guy at the end of the bar. "My name's Avogadro and I spent the day counting the atoms in a mole. Something like 6.022 times 10 to the power 23."

It's possible that this story's apocryphal, and even more possible that I just made it up, but regardless of those things, Avogadro's Number is really, really big, and you've got to respect that.

12. Googolplex

A googol, as you no doubt all know, is a one with a hundred zeroes after it (there's a one that's not a lonely number). Following on from that, a googolplex is a one with a googol zeroes after it, and is more than the number of the atoms in the Universe (or so I seem to remember Carl Sagan saying on Cosmos once). It laughs at Avogadro's number.

13. Aleph Numbers

Let's finish, as we began, with a bunch of number. Once upon a time, I spent a term at University doing Logic and learning about levels of infinity, and cool numbers like Aleph-null and Aleph-one. What I discovered the next year was that I could have learned exactly the same things just by reading Rudy Rucker's White Light. Anyway, I can see I've started to send you off to sleep already (and myself too for that matter) so I'll spare you the gory details (if you're really interested please feel free to ask).

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Thursday Thirteen

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Thirteen examples of Muppet deception:

1. "Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side?" sings Kermit in The Muppet Movie. In actual fact, I can only think of' three: Somewhere Over The Rainbow, the Rainbow Connection song itself, and A Kiss At The End Of The Rainbow (which Kermit couldn't have been referring to since it came along way after The Muppet Movie). Maybe a better question to have asked would be Why are there so few songs about rainbows, and why do they all get Oscar-nominated?

2. Who amongst us hasn't ventured to Sweden and, following failed attempts to engage in conversation with the locals and failed, just assumed that nobody there knows the language. But no, the startling truth is that the Swedish Chef isn't actually speaking Swedish but just some crazy made-up language. Also, not all of his recipes bear close scrutiny.

3. Vampires are evil bloodthirsty creatures of the night, and if they should laugh it's not because they've just counted to three.

4. All dog owners should be wary of the example set by Rowlf. While it might be quite possible for dogs to play the piano (although their repertoires tend to err on the highly-experimental side), they should on no account be given a mask and asked to do open-heart surgery.

5. It is easy being green. Recycling has never been easier.

6. Kermit's nephew, Robin, trots out some A A Milne propaganda, says that halfway down the stairs is the stair that he sits, and that there isn't any other stair quite like it. Now, unless you're an obsessive stair-counter the adjacent stairs are exactly like it. Also, why does he always stop there - he should be stopping at the top or the bottom. Has no one taught him the concept of stairs?

7. Rubber duckies don't make the bathtime lots of fun. You get bored with them after twenty minutes.

8. Despite what Sesame Street teaches you, kids really should try and avoid talking to anyone who lives in the local trashcan.

9. Despite the strange appearances of Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker, surveys have shown that a good five percent of scientists are normal looking.

10. There is a school of thought that suggests the Muppets are just puppets. If this is the case then there is now way they could have ever been two-dimensional babies.

11. The Cookie Monster alleges that nobody loves cookies as much as he. I beg to differ.

12. Despite the example of Marvin Suggs and his Muppaphone, creating music by beating fluffy sentient creatures on the head is still frowned upon by society (as it was by my flat-headed childhood pets).

13. Bert seems like a nice guy, but a quick browse of the internet reveals that he is in fact evil.

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