Mondegreens, 5th Graders, and the PLUCO of Doom

If I were Paul Harvey, I would call this a potpourri of random babble.  In fact, let me call it that even without being Paul Harvey.

My Mondegreen

If you don't know what a Mondegreen is, follow the link above to the exhaustive and exhausting link to Wikipedia in the heading.  Long ago, I submitted this mondegreen to some web site that collects them, and I believe it's still there.  But since I've never seen it elsewhere, I shall practice not only conservation of text, but conservation of sililitude as well.

In the song Jailhouse Rock, Elvis sings,

Everybody in the whole cell block,
Is dancing to the Jailhouse Rock

He manages to give "cell" an almost-two-syllable pronunciation, and I swear that for most of my young life, I heard him singing:

Everybody in a wholesale frock,
Is dancing to the Jailhouse Rock

Which makes as much sense as the original.  At least it did to me.  And it's mine.

Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?

I'm certainly smarter than the person who came up with that program title, since "smart" as generally used doesn't correspond to how much one remembers from any particular grade.  (However I've never developed a popular teevee program, so perhaps that's a dimension of "smart" that I lack.)  I came home the other night and my housemate, an experienced television observer, told me about this program and asked me some of the questions that she had seen.  I was astonished to discover that alleged grown-ups on the show could possibly miss them.  I don't remember all that much from fifth grade itself, but the general knowledge seemingly required was paltry and I answered all the questions instantly.  My housemate isn't unduly keen on math; like most adult Americans, her geometry slid down a brachistochrone and into a singularity.  But she told me that one question was something like "can you determine the area of a triangle knowing just the length of its base and its height?"  Well, yes, I can, since it's just the base times the height divided by two.  She was impressed that I remembered such arcane information and I felt I had to offer an explanation.

"Of course I remember!  I have a mind like a steel trapezoid."

The PLUCO of Doom

I have once again gone defective.  I have a code in my node and can't taste a thing.  Normally this is not a tragedy; it means that I eat a bit less for a day or so, and no cracks about the farmers, please.  But it may turn into a tragedy.  Without delivering yet another shrimp story, let me just say that today's PLUCO was an unbelievably yummy collation of shrimp and garlic gloop on a bed of highly-absorptive couscous.  I know it's unbelievably yummy because yesterday I could taste it.  Codes in the node are like that.  The candidate tragedy is that if I'm not better by tomorrow, I shall have to eat it anyway, lest it, too, go defective.  In which case I'll have the shrimp but miss the yum.  Sigh.

Not-Now Playing

As I was driving home, I heard the first few seconds of a George Thoroughgood song, one which always makes me assault the radio button.  It was 1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer.  I hate that song.  I don't hate it nearly as much as "(My gal is) Red Hot," which on rare occasions has caused me to actually damage hardware in my eagerness to turn it off.  In fact I hate it just about as much as "Bad to the Bone," another Thoroughgood drinking song.  The problem is that, for whatever reason, a local radio station plays Thoroughgood every day.  Every day.  Every day. 

I don't propose to turn my NP (Now Playing) into an NP (Not Playing) since that could become unwieldy.  But those three songs will never appear below the line.

Thank you very much for your concern.  Indeed I recovered from my episode of defectivity the next day, and as of now the PLUCO of doom is no more, in the best possible way.  No shrimp were left unconsumed as a result of my code.

NP:  "Armageddon" - Pendragon

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