Neckties, Contracts, High Mountains!

[rolanni]

Audible lets us know that!

There's a free excerpt available of the audiobook edition of Alliance of Equals.  Here's your link.  Enjoy -- and tell your friends!

I had planned to go to the ocean today, but that wasn't possible, because Reasons.  Steve and I did go cat-shopping (as opposed to shopping for cats), because one of the sisal-bound (you notice I say "one of") scratchers has gone to that great sisal forest in the sky. So, naturally we need to replace it.

We knew what we wanted, we had found what we wanted on the web last night, but -- we wanted to take a look at it before committing.  According to the web, the item was available at PetSmart, so off to Augusta we went, to discover that --

You see where this is going, right?

Right.  Plenty of devices made for the grooming of cat claws, but of the perfect scratcher there was no sign.

Since we were in Augusta, where there are two pet supply emporiums, we went down to the other one, but -- no luck.

So, after stopping for lunch, we came home and ordered the dern thing off of the internet, anyway.

Neogenesis. . .stands at about 85,000ish words.  Maybe.  You know what I'm going to wind up doing, and so do I, and I might as well just make my bow, and Do It, instead of wasting energy trying to do it the other, more comfortable, way.  But -- old habits.  Anyway.  Back to writing scenes with an eye toward building bridges after I've written enough to know where everybody is, and when.

Next book -- one character who sits in a room and pets his cat for 100,000 words.

Oh, no. . .wait.

About today's blog title:  AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" has long occupied a Special Place in my Heart, which pretty much proves that I am Not a Nice Person.  And the rendition that I know best includes, at the end of the third stanza, where our narrator is listing the services offered, he says:

Concrete shoes, cyanide, TNT
Done dirt cheap
Neckties, contracts, high mountains!
Done dirt cheap

Google Lyrics renders "high mountains" as "high voltage," which just isn't the same.  And what does Google know, anyway?

So, I have used that line as I know it, for the blog title. And now?  I'm going to send you to Joan Jett's cover, which she ends at the bottom of the third stanza.  Here's your link.

#

"Indeed not!" Bechimo sounded scandalized. "It is the captain's place to order for ship and crew."

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

I got about two paragraphs into that narration and had to quit. I. Do. Not. Like. His. Narration. It sounds clumsy and plodding. Sigh. I really wanted to like it, too ;/

When my kat (and his siblings when they were still alive) ripped up their scratching posts, I ordered a spool of 3/8 sisal from eBay and just re-wrap the posts each time they get too torn up. I hold the sisal on the posts with a couple of plastic-coated electrical staples that I put at top and bottom where they don't get scratched. The carpeted bases are getting rather threadbare, but the working parts stay in good shape. Given how expensive scratching posts have gotten for thin, inferior posts, I'm very pleased with how my re-wrapping has stood up.

Song lyrics

[thomas stewart (from livejournal.com)]

Perhaps it's from a different recording, a later remix or whatever, but the version of that song I most often hear on Pandora actually does say "high voltage". Of course, being Pandora, the version commonly played isn't necessarily the original or most popular, but rather the one with the lowest licensing fee. I imagine that in the intervening 40 years since the original release, the band has re-recorded it quite a few times.

[thewol.livejournal.com]

The lead singer of AC/DC (a) has an accent, (b) a really weird vocal quality, and (c) electric guitars going on around him. I find their song lyrics pretty generally unintelligible, so you're already streets ahead of me. BTW, the mishearing of a song lyric (e.g., Hendrix's "Purple Rain" -- 'scuse me while I kiss this guy.) is called a mondegreen. My favorite occurred shortly after Simon and Garfunkel released "Homeward Bound" -- I heard a kid I was babysitting warbling, "Home, where my dog's escaping" as the second line of the chorus.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

My own favorite personal mondegreen, which I infinitely prefer to the actual lyrics is in Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love."

For years, I heard: "Oh, you like to think that you're a nuclear stud, oh yeah"

The Actual Lyrics are: "Oh, you like to think that you're immune to the stuff, oh yeah"

I may need to write a story titled "Nuclear Stud."