Happy Eleven Eleven Eleven day (11/11/11)! This also turns out to be Nigel Tufnel Day, in honor of the Spinal Tap guitarist who famously cranked up his amps as far as they would go, then took it up a notch from there.
These go to eleven!
Stained, glaucous, glycerine, gold, goat, clover
gold, local, stocks, type, food, wild, national, lake, flag,
valve, gyroscope, sect
heat, helium, lead, bare, state, invention, medieval
refraction, faction, ultra-action,
hunter, interest, bullet, market…
Loads, liquids, neon, heater, jaws, jungle
mains, signal, knives, kitchen
ingot, lovely, mirror, mold
Mycenaean, moat, poppy, rubber,
radar, rags, sugar, teak
silver, poke, tin, beetroot,
carrot, ebony, fruit, copper, silk…
Carpet, distant, pigmy, hid, pack,
timber, pudding, straw
raindrops, spattering, ramps
chameleon, prairie, pods, trigger
museum, scales, square, ultra, out of map, vent
volcano, vain, wreck, tactic
tidal, arches, valley, hand
inflect, impression, loom, last, molten
you gamma, meeting
lighting, signal, island, coral-cold
Just because it’s Friday and I’m in this kind of mood, let’s listen to Little Cloud, by the The Incredible String Band. Sing along, everybody:
Little Cloud
How sweet to be a cloud, floating in the blue.
Lying awake, late the other night
Heard above me a trembling,
I looked up, it was a little cloud,
From which a gold string was dangling;
You know, I gave the string a little pull,
Just to see what was on the other end.
Just then a voice came down to me, says,
“Hey, now, don’t you want to be my friend,
And float with me to distant lands, wondrous and fair;
Float with me to distant lands, wondrous and fair;
You see I’m just a happy little cloud,
I laugh and float and sing my song,
But the other clouds don’t like me none.
They say I am behaving very wrong.
You see a cloud’s supposed to be sad,
To cry and weep and tear its hair and all,
And don’t matter how hard I try,
I can’t get the first little tear to fall.”
And float with me to distant lands, wondrous and fair;
Float with me to distant lands, wondrous and fair;
I said, “Hey, I like you little cloud,
You are a nice little fellow, yes.”
“You making some, kind of a joke?”, said the cloud,
“Now can’t you see I’m wearing such a pretty dress?
You see I am the prettiest little chick cloud
That you’d find anywhere up above.
I just dropped in on you awhile
To see if you could give me some kind of love.”
And float with me to distant lands, wondrous and fair;
Float with me to distant lands wondrous and fair;
Just then the chief cloud come into view
And says, “Hey, girl, now what you
think you’re doing there?
I told you so many times before
You just don’t seem at all to care.
You know you should be floating up above, now
Don’t let me catch you down here again.”
And as my cloud pulled out of view,
There come failing down a gentle shower of rain.
Happy rain come failing down,
Red, green, blue and golden.
And every drop, as it fell, it smiled
And, throwing back its head, began singing,
“Oh float with me to distant lands, wondrous and fair;
Float with me to distant lands, wondrous and fair.”
Many of you techno geeks know all about “foo”, or think you do, when “used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything, esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files)”, to quote the <a href=”http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/F/foo.html”>Jargon File</a>. But what about the Foo Fighters?
Dave Grohl, formally a drummer with the likes of Freak Baby, Mission Impossible, Fast, Dain Bramage, Scream and a little-known band called Nirvana, now fronts Foo Fighters. But what’s with the name? The Jargon File entry continues:
<blockquote>
One place “foo” is known to have remained live is in the U.S. military during the WWII years. In 1944-45, the term ‘foo fighters’ was in use by radar operators for the kind of mysterious or spurious trace that would later be called a UFO (the older term resurfaced in popular American usage in 1995 via the name of one of the better grunge-rock bands). Because informants connected the term directly to the Smokey Stover strip, the folk etymology that connects it to French “feu” (fire) can be gently dismissed.
</blockquote>
For more on Foo and the Smokey Stover comic strip <a href=”http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/F/foo.html”>go here</a>. If this post has whet your curiosity and you’d like to know the origins and meanings behind other band names like Goo Goo Dolls and Pearl Jam, these are sticky questions and you’re on your own. This is a family program and we mean to keep our PG rating. Sort of.
