This is country music

Unfortunately, due to copyright restrictions, readers in some areas of the world may not be able to see all the videos linked to in this article. Watching the videos is not necessary to appreciate and enjoy the piece.

I used to love country music. I still do, really. Martina McBride's "Independence Day" is one of my all-time favorite songs, and it showcases one of the reasons country music as a whole is so successful: the genre tackles hard subjects. In the case of "Independence Day", it's domestic violence.

Well word gets around in a small, small town / they said he was a dangerous man / but Mama was proud and she stood her ground / she knew she was on the losing end / some folks whispered, some folks talked / but everybody looked the other way / and when time ran out there was no one about / on Independence Day.

It's heartbreaking. Another example of why country music is so good is Rascal Flatts's "Skin (Sarabeth)".

Sarabeth is scared to death / 'cause the doctor just told her the news / "Between the red cells and white, something's not right / but we're gonna take care of you."

Sarabeth has leukemia, another tough subject that country music tackles and most folks prefer to avoid.

Well you're not supposed to say the word 'cancer' / in a song [...] yeah, that might be true / but this is country music / and we do.

That's from Brad Paisley's "This is Country Music".

Do you like to drink a cold one on the weekends / and get a little loud? / Do you wanna say 'I'm sorry' or 'I love you' / but you don't know how? / And do you wish somebody had the nerve / to tell that stupid boss of yours to shove it / next time he yells at you? / Well, this is country music / and we do.

That's the good side of country music.

The bad side? Look at the lyrics I omitted from "This is Country Music".

And telling folks that Jesus is the answer / can rub 'em wrong.

Look at Trace Adkins's "Songs About Me", also a meta about country music.

It's songs about me / and who I am / songs about loving and living / and good-hearted women / and family and God / yeah they're all just songs about me.

There is no sense in either of these songs, or in any country song about religion that I can think of, that Christianity might not be the One True Way. More than that, there's barely acknowledgment that there are people who are not Christian in this world.

This is real, this is your life in a song

Brad Paisley sings, with no clue that some of his listeners might be among those who are rubbed wrong by being told that Jesus is the answer.

Well if there's anyone that still has pride / in the memory of those that died / defending the old red white and blue,

Paisley continues,

this is country music, and we do.

Country music tends to fetishize soldiers and war.

"Yeah your uncle and I made quite a pair / flying F-15s through hostile air / he went down but they missed me by a hair." / He'd always stop right there and say / "That's something to be proud of / that's a life you can hang your hat on."

Montgomery Gentry, "Something To Be Proud Of". As an Air Force brat, I can't say service to one's country is not something to be proud of, but at the same time, I cannot accept the implication that killing and dying are things to be proud of.

In the same song, Montgomery Gentry says

No need to make a million, just be thankful to be working.

The ways in which this line is wrong I leave as an exercise for the reader.

Going back to Trace Adkins, we have "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk". "All right, boys, this is her favorite song [...] so if we play it good and loud she might get up and dance again" leading into

Ole TW's girlfriend done slapped him outta his chair / poor ole boy, it ain't his fault it's so hard not to stare / at that honky tonk badonkadonk

and

Lord have mercy how'd she even get them britches on.

The entire song is an ode to the male gaze, in particular at an attractive female ass, with no conception whatsoever of the idea that maybe she doesn't want a crowd of strange men leering at her, or that maybe it's possible for a man not to leer at a pretty woman. The music video is worse.

The music video improves the song in the case of Carrie Underwood's "All-American Girl". The song is about gender roles: fishing and football are for boys, cheerleader is for girls. Watching the video tells us that 'soldier' is an occupation only available to boys.

When the nurse came in with a little pink blanket / all those big dreams changed.

Again drawing from the video, girls can be nurses, flight attendants, Miss America, waitresses, teachers, cooks, fashion designers, dancers. Stereotypical female jobs, all. Girls can also be police officers and firefighters and chemists and welders, though in our first glimpse of welder!Carrie, she doesn't exactly look experienced using the equipment. The sight of a woman at a podium with the presidential seal helps improve the song as well, but not enough, considering that glass ceiling remains firmly in place. (Here I take a moment to raise a glass in memory of Geraldine Ferraro.)

Country music is a constellation of fail. Carrie Underwood's "Some Hearts" used to be one of my favorite songs until I figured out that when she sings

I wake up feeling like my life's worth living / can't recall when I last felt that way / guess it must be all this love you're giving,

she's talking about magical healing sex lifting depression.

Blake Shelton's "Who Are You When I'm Not Looking" is all about how the singer thinks he's entitled to know his girlfriend's secrets, just because she's his girlfriend.

Tim Mc Graw's "Down on the Farm"—Farmer Johnson's daughter's just pulled up in a Jeep / man he knows how to grow 'em if you know what I mean.

I leave the analysis of Kenny Chesney's "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" to the people with a personal stake in explaining why it is bad and wrong to believe that heaven is less fun than earth and to believe that putting money in the church plate pays for the sins committed earlier that weekend; the title of the song alone brings us back to the unrelenting Christian-centrism of country music.

Despite all this, I still love country music. I wish someone would tell me why.

-- MercuryBlue ____________________________________________________________________________

 

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Comments

[Kristin]

I didn't do any US history in college. I think I AP tested out of it, though...

[Ruby]

Damn, PJ, your memory is better than mine. I remember lots of colonial and Revolutionary War history in elementary school, and state history in fifth grade, world history and geography in middle school, and world history in high school, and then choices about the rest: regular American history, AP American history, AP European history...

As well, if my mother and grandmother are any indication, Canadian public schools do a great job teaching American history. I cannot begin to tell you how many times my mother knew more American history or geography than Americans (on TV or that she was talking to), and my grandmother remembered a lot, too, despite being in her eighties and having a 10th grade education.

[Lonespark]

Craig Morgan tends to make me bang my head on the desk. Although he does have some catchy party songs. And "Every Friday Afternoon" seems like country at it's best. Makes me sniffly.

[Mmy]

@Kristin: there's Johnny Cash, whose Jesus at least seems to identify with oppressed people... I get the idea that this is why he wanted, for example, to record an album at Folsom Prison--not because he wanted to preach to anyone, but because he identified with these as his people, people like him.

Check out the lyrics for Cash's "Man in Black" as Cash answers the question "why do you always wear black":

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.

[Brin (not Meir)]

>That'll teach me to make assumptions about the ages of people on the internet.<

I would be flattered that you think I sound more mature, but it's a pretty safe assumption based purely on Slacktiverse demographics. Everyone else I've ever seen state their age, however vaguely, has been at least twenty.
Because of so many homeschoolers going to public high school, homeschool groups tend to be 3- or 7-12. All of the other girls in my Girl Guide troop are thirteen. I'm so used to being the oldest by several years that being here makes for a nice change. (We have a teenage homeschool group now, but the only one older than me is nineteen, too old to technically be homeschooling anymore, and is having trouble finding opportunities to hang out with us. At least it's not a big gap: the next youngest is a few weeks younger than me.)

>I hope that didn't sound like a jab at *all* homeschooling. I'm wary of the Quiverfull/fundamentalist kind, but not all of it.<

As long as you're very suspicious of any organisation with "Christian" in the name and run screaming from anything requiring a "statement of faith" (which we can't do anyway because they're always statements of Christian faith and we're Jewish), you'll probably be fine.
There was one Jewish mom in New Jersey* who tried to give us a "biology" textbook called "Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day", assuring Mom that it was all Old Testament stuff, no Jesus, as if that made it okay. (I wasn't really aware of why I should avoid religious schoolbooks at the time, so my only reaction was thinking Does it talk about flying fish?)
Later, after we moved, Mom bought this vocabulary book. Cunningly, it hid its Christianity until it was too late to return it. I took to writing snarky notes in the margins instead.

*We lived in a town that was, judging by my social circles (and I don't think my parents made any effort to skew them), roughly half Jewish. Considering that, I'm amazed there weren't more fundie-Jew homeschoolers.

Starting at around nine or ten, my main history was through The Story of the World, which (or so it seems to me) did a decent job of living up to its name. I loved them so much Mom soon stopped bothering to assign them as schoolwork and just had me read them in my spare time.
Currently I've been reading this, written by the same person for older readers. I don't love it, but I don't mind reading it, either. Unfortunately, it looks like I'll have to wait for the next book for the Inquisition. (She skipped over it in Story of the World, saying it was too graphic, so I don't know that much about it.)

Wow, this is long. Forty-five minutes mysteriously vanished while I was writing it, too.

[alienbooknose]

Speaking as a high school teacher of US history, although we certainly teach the Civil War and all that led to it, the actual term "antebellum" isn't really used around here anymore. This is another negative side effect of testing: terminology not on the state history test that the kids won't already know isn't taught. I'm too busy making sure they do know the buzzwords and random vocab from the state test.

This is extra frustrating teaching in a school like mine- a lot of my 10th and 11th graders don't have a large vocabulary, so I find myself teaching vocab words to make sure that they can pass a test of their history knowledge. They get the basic understandings just fine, but are so often tripped up by the language used. (I teach in a school with about 40% on free and reduced lunch, the standard marker for poverty in public ed. I also teach inclusion special education courses where about 1/3 of my kids have learning disabilities, many of them related to reading. There is nothing more frustrating than a student who can sit there and explain the origins of World War II to me quite well, if in their own limited vocabulary, and then fails a test on it because the questions are simply written out of their comprehension.)

Honestly, from my college education, I got the impression that the term "Antebellum South" was a bit dated these days.

[The Board Administration Team]

For reasons best known to TypePad the version of "This week in The Slacktiverse" that was posted was actually a preliminary draft.

Material was added to the post in subsequent drafts and there were broken links in the initial draft.

A later version has now been posted.

[Angelia Sparrow]

I enjoy country music, but I really loathe the ClearChannel Monopoly stuff and most of the newer stuff. (you kids get off my lawn! My rock taste ends at 1989, so make of that what you will)

I have a satellite radio in my truck, so I can listen to Outlaw country for my Waylon Jennings and Steve Earle and Band of Heathen fix, and the Roadhouse for my Earnest Tubb, Hank Snow and Patsy Cline. I never have to hear Shania Twain singing the SAME SONG on three different channels again, or Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban or Taylor Swift at ALL.

I like country because it's very close to folk in a lot of ways. And I adore folk and roots music. It is the music I grew up, Hee Haw every Saturday night, Church on Sunday, The Glen Campbell Show and 61 Country on the radio.

The Jesusness used to be a feature, but has gotten annoying. Murder ballads don't bother me, as I understand them in context of that whole genre, which includes a variety of folk and rock as well.

The sexism gets to me. so I tend to throw in some of the stronger women stars. Dolly Parton has some brilliant stuff, including Romeo, Why'd you come in here looking like that and the PMS Blues. (I like her Muleskinner blues, too, such fun for a lady trucker to hear her pretty voice bellowing out a traditionally male work song)

I also like nontraditional takes on favorites. I have Adam Lambert's Ring of Fire and Metallica's Whiskey in the Jar (which is lyrically an abomination, neither scanning nor rhyming, but much less anti-Jenny than most)

[Laiima]

I think it's because I went to private (Catholic) schools, but we never learned *any* state history. All the stuff I know about Illinois, and it's not much, I picked up piecemeal as an adult. But Mr Laiima, a public school kid, learned a lot about Kentucky history. Even more than state (political) history, I wish we'd learned state natural history. I've had to search that out as an adult.

[Sara Laird]

My rose-colored glasses recollection of country lands me squarely in the middle of 90s country, in the territory of Garth Brooks and Reba McEntire, still the country vocalists I have the most songs from in mp3 format. It was a period I remember fairly fondly; I got out of country music when I started making friends in high school with cars of their own who listened to more rock music. (My love of Aerosmith came very late.) In that way, I'm less familiar with modern country, though I know I find it infinitely more grating to listen to on the radio, in a way that makes me wonder if it actually has gotten more problematic since I was young, or if I just have the songs that I like and remember and my brain has edited out the more troubling songs from country in the 90s.

My dad liked the older country (Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, etc) which I never really got into--though in my college years, he got me onto Emmylou Harris' folksier later stuff--basically Red Dirt Girl and onward, when she started writing her own material. There's a particular week of my life when our phone line went down that is basically scored to that CD--I fell in love with it. The title track so perfectly encapsulated a particular fear of mine that I've rather loved Harris ever since. I'm agnostic myself, but her songs about faith are so deeply felt and raw that I always end up liking them anyway, with Prayer In Open D being probably my favorite of all of her songs, save perhaps The Pearl. Likewise her songs about women are (at least in what I've heard) always so achingly sympathetic to the women in question, so absolutely empathetic to their trials and woes.

/rambling about youthful music recollections

[Literata]

About NC and degrees of US fascination with the Confederacy - I think it was Kristin who mentioned the general lack of Confederacy-totemism in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area, and having lived in both that part of NC and other parts of the state, I can tell you that the RDU area is a small bubble of the North that wandered south for the winter and got stuck. Other parts of the state are frequently mystified by its misfitness. I feel perfectly confident in saying that the number of "rebel flags" you would see in various areas would correlate well with the local socio-economic status and education levels.

I moved to NC - not the RDU area - while in elementary school. The kids immediately wanted to know where I'd come from. The state I'd moved from wasn't on a side in the Civil War. They wanted to know where I was born. That was also somewhere without a stake in the Civil War, but definitely in the northern part of North America. Thus, they concluded that I was a Northerner who needed to be educated. The next few weeks were full of my peers saying things like "The Saath Shall Riiiise Ahgin!" while shaking a fist in my face.

I highly recommend Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz for a look at the Confederacy-worship that persists today.

[P J Evans]

@ Ruby
I think I have most of my report cards - my mother saved them. But I actually do remember most of those; they were about the only classes that really changed from one year to the next. (The teacher in 10th grade had been to China and Korea, and actually taught us a few words in Chinese. He was also the only teacher I've had who could keep me from doodling in class.)

[P J Evans]

Laima, you might like the Roadside Geology books.

[Kristin]

@ Brin: Ah, right. I *am* skeptical of Christian homeschooling, but was just noting that not all homeschooling happens for religious reasons. I was a little unclear there.

[Ruby]

Literata: I highly recommend Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz for a look at the Confederacy-worship that persists today.

Sounds cool--going to reserve it.

Reading the 1-star reviews at Amazon is fascinating, btw: "The author seemed to want to come back time and time again to the issue of race...which played little or no part in the real war)."

http://www.amazon.com/Confederates-Attic-Dispatches-Unfinished-Civil/product-reviews/067975833X/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar

[Kristin]

I moved to NC - not the RDU area - while in elementary school. The kids immediately wanted to know where I'd come from. The state I'd moved from wasn't on a side in the Civil War. They wanted to know where I was born. That was also somewhere without a stake in the Civil War, but definitely in the northern part of North America. Thus, they concluded that I was a Northerner who needed to be educated. The next few weeks were full of my peers saying things like "The Saath Shall Riiiise Ahgin!" while shaking a fist in my face.

Oh, ick. That is interesting, and actually very surprising to me. I have only lived in the RDU area in NC, but my extended family actually comes from the rural eastern--that is, the poorest--part of the state. So, it's not like I live in a bubble, but my experience *mostly* comes from the RDU area and the farming/rural communities of the east (which are quite different from Fayetteville, which is another story altogether). I know the community where the family members live and most of the people in it, and am often there myself--and have been for the 31 years I've been around. I have not once seen a rebel flag in the area or heard anyone talk that way. The cultural norm there is that you do *not* speak about politics or religion, and that includes jingoistic speeches about the South "rising again."

Some are conservative Southern Baptists (My family is politically mixed), but they don't think it's appropriate to discuss those two things. The stock cop out is, "The two things I won't argue with anybody over are politics and the Bible 'cause I don't know very much about either of 'em." And you always must vote 'cause it's your duty, but you *do not* discuss it because this is a personal matter. And there's no forced religious ritual or anything like that because, again, it's presumed that this is a personal thing that you don't talk to everyone about. If you do, you'll get shut down pretty quickly. Or everyone will just smile at you and nod politely without participating.

This is partly why my openly gay cousin in retirement from his career as a dancer and choreographer on Broadway can live there and attend the Southern Baptist church without incident. He even *directs the choir.* It's not like anyone *doesn't* know. It's just no one thinks it's their business, and they love the guy... Not that none are homophobes, but they are not *at all* open about their homophobia.

I don't doubt what you've said, and I expect it's rather common in predominantly white areas. Or even in areas with redneck culture (like Fayetteville). No one where I come from--or where my family live--would *ever* get away with saying that sort of thing. But...

No one I know comes from predominantly white NC (mostly in the mountains where Eric Rudolph hid). Also, I'm a bit skeptical that this is solely about social class. Working class people whose families have been here for at least a couple generations(My family were/are tobacco farmers) don't know much of anything about ancestry. I don't know who any of my relatives were past my great-grandparents. I've met people in Connecticut who know how their ancestors were involved in the Revolutionary War or the Civil War... That is very uncommon here. Most working class people *from* North Carolina who can trace their ancestry back a few generations can't even name their family's country/countries of origin. I cannot. I've never known anything about it, but based on appearance (and last names), we've always assumed Anglo-European heritage.

I think what you experienced is probably more likely in mostly-white regions in the Western part of the state. But generally no one has a lot of Civil War pride or whatever if we have *no idea* if any of our relatives were involved in any way--or what side they were on. I think people in Virigina imagine their descendents in the middle of those Civil War reenactments or something. The huge Southern aristocracies that popped up in VA and SC? People from here have always just been poor. That's how the whole thing about the "valley of humility between two mountains of conceit" moniker started. Poor. And at least in the rural farming communities, extremely reserved.

Things would be different in other parts of the state. But for that reason, I wouldn't live in those.

But, you know... The RDU area combined with Asheville and Charlotte tipped the election in favor of Obama in 2008. We are actually the majority of people in the state, so it's not entirely fair to call RDU a tiny enclave. NC's residents are primarily in or around the major cities now.

[Kristin]

Honestly, from my college education, I got the impression that the term "Antebellum South" was a bit dated these days.

Well, yeah, which is why it seems so anachronistic and weird when a popular band uses a name like Lady Antebellum.

[Kristin]

I think it's because I went to private (Catholic) schools, but we never learned *any* state history. All the stuff I know about Illinois, and it's not much, I picked up piecemeal as an adult.

But I think it's important to teach state history. Without it, I'd never have learned about the Cherokee expulsion from North Carolina and the Trail of Tears. My schools were remarkably good about teaching the worst things about our histories. But without a critical perspective, I'd be very suspicious of state history teaching, as I am of the more jingoistic US history textbooks.

[Kristin]

Also signing on to the praise for Confederates in the Attic. When I was at UNC, it was assigned summer reading for incoming students, and I had to lead some seminar discussions about it.

[Amaryllis]

Brin: my main history was through The Story of the World, which (or so it seems to me) did a decent job of living up to its name. I loved them so much Mom soon stopped bothering to assign them as schoolwork and just had me read them in my spare time.
Now that sounds like homeschooling at its best.

I wasn't familiar with Susan Wise Bauer's books, so I googled her: according to her blog, she's been criticized both for being too Christian (because she cited Biblical sources along with other ancient texts, as examples of ancient texts) and also, not Christian enough (not aimed at evangelizing). I liked her response to the second group:

Dear worried speakers who don’t want parents to buy my writing and history books because I’m not using them to evangelize: You’ve got it wrong. If God can only reach people if all the conditions are right, he’s not much of a God. And if my grammar book can stand in the way of the kingdom of God, it’s not much of a kingdom.

---
@Sara Laird: there are songs on "Red Dirt Girl" that can still make me cry.

---
The entire song is an ode to the male gaze, in particular at an attractive female ass, with no conception whatsoever of the idea that maybe she doesn't want a crowd of strange men leering at her, or that maybe it's possible for a man not to leer at a pretty woman.
Getting back to "Honky-Tonk Badonkadonk" for a moment, I'd heard the song before, of course, one couldn't get away from it for a while there, but I'd never realized how vile the video is. It glorifies not just the male gaze but what the video imagines is the enthusiastic female collusion with the male gaze. All the women in that video seem delighted to have strange men leering at them.

But you know what? Besides being vile, he lies his, uh, badonkadonk off when he says, "We don't do this for the money." Just try asking a professional musician to perform for free because the venue is full of pretty girls, and see what response you get.

[Izzy]

I never learned state history in high school, but I think that was because I went to boarding school: everyone came from a different place, so making us all learn about Massachusetts seemed like a waste of time, I guess.

Either that or the fact that US History was the DEATH CLASS already--eleventh grade, when everyone's worried about college applications, some of the most notoriously hardass teachers in the school, and a THIRTY PAGE PAPER OF DOOOOOOM at the end--and adding more would have inspired some kind of armed revolt.

[Launcifer]

Izzy: Actually, you may well be correct in the first assumption. I'm English - and the vast majority of my fellow students were English - but, in the cut-and-thrust of my (private school) education, the kind of Anglo-centricism afforded by an education that centred on Bonny Prince Charlie, Glencoe, Hastings and the rest was generally considered A Bad Thing. 'Course, your place might not have felt the same way, so it may well be all your fault :P.

Ahem. Seriously, i've never understood this aspect of American history. Perhaps it *is* my fee-paying luxury, but I got to hear about all the shitty things *my* empire did over and above everything else relevant to the period.

[Lila]

Amaryllis, re Lobscouse and Spotted Dog, try the frumenty. It's become an almost-weekly tradition in our house. Yummy. ("Cracked wheat" = "bulgur" in our local grocery store. I can't afford saffron, so I substitute 1/2 tsp of mace. Also I decrease the quantity of currants slightly and make it up with a few dried cranberries.)

Re "Pretty Polly", my daughters and I made up our own version on a long road trip. It diverges from the original thusly:

He led her over mountains and valleys so deep,
He led her over mountains and valleys so deep;
She conked him on the head while he was asleep.

She took Willie's knife and his wallet so new,
She took Willie's knife and his wallet so new,
She took all his cash and his MasterCard too.

Poor Willie woke and found he was lyin' in a rut,
Poor Willie woke and found he was lyin' in a rut,
For pretty little Polly had kicked his sorry butt.

Now 15 to 20 poor Willie must do,
Now 15 to 20 poor Willie must do,
They took away his belt and the laces from his shoes.

[Izzy]

Launcifer: Most things are my fault. ;)

But yeah, my school was pretty liberal and aware of America's...Issues. I remember reading bits of Howard Zinn. I don't actually remember the bits, mind, but I remember reading them, and highlighting them very carefully with seven colors of pen.

There's a lesson there about the value of high school education, but hey.

[Raj]

We haz histurry discushunz! I went to elementary school in Singapore (it's called primary school over there), where I learned real history (Khmer civilization, Mauryan Empire, and Imperial Chinese dynasties, anyone?) as opposed to the kind that would have us believe that the world began in 1492; or the kind of “World History” that ignores the existence of Asia (other than the Middle East) prior to World War II and all of Africa outside Egypt. (I'm not bragging about that; I know I'm not justified in bragging about where I happened to grow up.)

[Raj]

Izzy: Most things are my fault. ;)

That's okay; your beauty is in your spirit. Here, have some tea.

*runs*

[Amaryllis]

@Lila: Hah. And serve him right.

Do you know the Child Ballad #4 variants-- The Outlandish Knight, Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight, etc? Your daughters' Pretty Polly is clearly a relative of Lady Isabel:

Wi' his ain sword-belt sae fast as she ban him,
Wi' his ain dag-durk sae sair as she dang him.
'If seven king's-daughters here ye hae slain,
Lye ye here, a husband to them a'.'

Or in a more modern version:

'Lie there, lie there, you false-hearted man,
Lie there instead of me;
Six pretty maids have you drowned here,
And the seventh has drowned thee.'

Not all traditional ballads end with the woman getting the worst of it.

Frumenty, eh? Well, at least it looks way more achievable that Floating Archipelago, for instance.

But I think I'm going to learn to make French-style baguettes, just so that I can refer to them as The Last of the True French Bastards.

----
I have nothing in particular to say about history, but the antebellum/Southern belle references remind of the time that my husband purchased some materials from a company called Patuxent Recycling, located on Belle Grove Road. Which it showed up on the credit card statement as "Patuxent Belle."

"Uh, honey? And what riverboat have you been gambling on? Wait, we don't have riverboat casinos here...honey...? Yes, certainly I believe you about the gravel..."

[Madhabmatics]

Okay, my previous post didn't go through, so let me try again with just a link to the picture.

So when I was going through the basement I found one of the history "textbooks" I was taught out of as a child, before I managed to convince people to let me go to public school. Here's a picture I took from the workbook!

http://flic.kr/p/9vKkY5

[Brin (not Meir)]

@Madhabmatics
>What political developments in the last two decades have contributed to the Communist goal of world domination?<
They actually used the phrase "world domination" in all seriousness?
Also, I'm curious as to what they meant by "last two decades". I have no idea how long it's been since you were a child, but just last year I had a chemistry textbook* that referred to the Soviet Union in the present tense.
My inner proofreader is grumbling about the misplaced apostrophe in #4. Or, possibly, they were talking about some generic Christian.

*It wasn't a very good book. There was one four-question test I got a 1/4 on. Mom was disappointed, until (with Dad to back me up) I demonstrated that I was right and the answer key was wrong. Among other things, he (IIRC, the author had a masculine name) fell for his own trick question, confusing mass and weight. (Kilograms are a unit of mass, not weight. Therefore, density measured in kilograms-per-whatever will not change with changing gravity.)

[Jenny Islander]

My homeschooler is enjoying A Child's History of the World by Hillyer, although I had to revise some of the earlier chapters in light of recent research. Other parents using my chosen method (Charlotte Mason) suggested This Country of Ours as the American history text, but I will not use a book that starts the history of Americans with the Vikings and calls my neighbors savages, thanks anyway--and it also completely omits the West Coast, Southwest, and Alaska. I'm using the first volume of Story of US by Joy Hakim instead. Eight chapters on Native Americans, as if they, you know, have a past. (To be fair, parents using TCOO have noted the word "savage" and crossed it out and some have said that they plan to introduce Native American history when the kids are old enough to handle stories of smallbox-infected blankets and scalpings. But that also assumes that Native American history begins with contact with whites, which again, no.)

[Izzy]

Raj: Gaaaah!

Amaryllis: I always liked/was vaguely embarrassed by that one, in the way you get with songs where the main character has your name. There aren't many, for me.

There's also a modern filk variant: Here. Which I always liked, particularly verse 4.

[Brin (not Meir)]

>I'm using the first volume of Story of US<

I think I read those before starting Story of the World. I definitely remember the series sitting on a shelf for several years before we sold it in a pre-moving garage sale. I thought it was a cute title, although I was young enough that I don't really remember actually reading them.

[Nenya]

Ahaha, Madhabmatics, someone else who was raised on A Beka! I particularly recall their rant about marijuana and how it was a gateway drug to other, more terrible drugs. Also how the Bible totally supported Young Earth Creationism, and evolutionists were really in it because they hated God. At age 10, 14, I ate it up uncritically, not knowing any better. But I could still tell it was politically charged.

How was it reading an explicitly Christian history text if you were a Muslim kid?

[Kit Whitfield]

Do you know the Child Ballad #4 variants-- The Outlandish Knight, Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight, etc?

Bellowhead do a good version of that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH-tihCjYxA

(Not country music, unless you count 'country' as 'rural England', but never mind.)

[Kit Whitfield]

Now 15 to 20 poor Willie must do,
Now 15 to 20 poor Willie must do,
They took away his belt and the laces from his shoes.

That's excellent - laconic, graphic and full of implication. Did you write that?

[Mime Paradox (formerly The Other Ian)]

ArianaDream:

Man, if I were in Japan as an English teacher (which I would love to do), I'd probably be listening to Jpop all day nonstop.

Ditto and ditto. The fact that I spend nearly a million man-hours and had to do some rather complicated maneuvers to send my JET Program application and still didn't get in...gah. So disappointing...

As for J-Pop part of its appeal, to me, is that since I can't understand 98% of it, it's much easier to focus on the sound and much harder for me to be offended at potentially problematic and/or vapid lyrics. Also, The JAM Project—because how can you not love a song that goes “DARWIN! DARWIN! GALILEO!!”? (Answer: Quite easily, if you're not me.)

As for country, it's a complete non-entity here, which means that the only time I hear it is when they play promos for country music awards on the telly. I'm guessing it's Puerto Rican equivalent would be reggaeton, except with 10% of country's social relevance, and 200% its offensiveness. Or maybe I'm projecting—I couldn't get away from the stuff back in high school, so I'm forever biased against it.

Ruby:

And man, are there ANY other dog people around here??? :D

Oh, me, me! I'm fonder of smaller dogs than larger ones, and currently have two adorable specimens, a shih-tzu and a mutt who insist on waking me up no later than 6:00 a.m. I lurve them.

High School History: I I'm not misremembering, 10th grade was world history, 11th was U.S. history—or was it the other way around?--and 12th grade (or at least its summer equivalent, which I took so I could have an extra free period during the regular semester) was Puerto Rican history. I mostly remember reading ahead on the books, which is how I did most of my learning, lending my friend my GBA with Advance Wars so he could play during class, and lots of falling asleep. Good times.

[Lila]

Kit: thank you. It was a cooperative effort by me and my three daughters. (Note that even Willie gets a better deal in our version--the original implies that he's executed for murder and goes to Hell.)

[sarah]

Ah, history. Here's what I remember:

4th grade: Long Island history (yup, not New York State history. LI history, complete with geography)
5th grade: Not sure I remember, perhaps state history
6th grade: "world" history (I remember doing projects on ancient Greece and Rome, and then doing a massive project on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam)
7th grade: US History
...and then we moved to MA, so...
in 8th grade, I got US History again! Woo.
9th grade: Global Studies, which was sort of a mishmash of things, and American Government, which was actually very useful.
10th grade: World History (Best thing about this was that my teacher had us do a unit on the US involvement in Latin America in the late 20th century. It was...eye-opening)
11th grade: AP US History
12th grade: AP European History (oh so brutal, but I really learned a lot)

I ended up with a minor in history in college, focusing on European. One year, I took a class on the Crusades one semester and then the Byzantine Empire the next--they were taught by the same professor and were rather fascinating. We did a lot of primary source reading in Byzantine. Procopius' *The Secret History* is kind of hilarious.

[truth is life]

Here in Texas (and very recently), it went something like:
6th grade: World history (I skipped this grade, so this essentially consisted of me reading a huge chunk of the state textbook)
7th grade: Texas history
8th grade: US history
9th grade: World Geography (we drew a lot of political maps)
10th grade: World History (I recall actually talking about non-European things)
11th grade: AP US History
12th grade: None. Instead, economics and US politics.

Thanks to AP, I have not had to take any history classes in college, either. Which didn't really matter that much, because I've also drastically increased the amount of history I've been reading outside of class, to the point where I probably have more history books than any other type except for science fiction novels.

Procopius' *The Secret History* is kind of hilarious.

Even just knowing that it's a pre-modern secret history tends to point that way...having looked it up, it's really not surprising. Gossip gossip gossip.

[Caryb]

On more woman-friendly country music, may I recommend Miranda Lambert's "Gunpowder and Lead." It's about a woman who's abusive boyfriend is about to get out of prison and come after her- so shes waiting for him on her front porch. With a shotgun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyGAvulgWmw

[Ross]

My vague recollections are:

3rd Grade: Maryland history. The history of Maryland covers approximately "Indians" and "The battle of Baltimore"
4th grade: US History. We read Tolliver's Secret and got, I think, perhaps as far as the Civil War, but I doubt it.
6th grade: World history. My only memory of this is that the teacher indicated a picture (perhaps http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christopher_Columbus4.jpg), and said "And here is Christopher Columbus, and his dinghy" and I, not being a nautical sort, broke down laughing.
8th grade: US History. As woudl become a recurring theme, we spent half the year getting up through the revolutionary war, and had to rush to make it to the civil war
10th grade: AP US History. We were on track to actually make it through vietnam this year, but shortly after covering the Spanish-American war, the history teacher's husband died in a tragic boating-related electrocution, and then she got breast cancer, so we had substitutes for the next three months, and therefore only learned about how the jews were secretly running the world. (He wasn't asked back by that teacher.). SHe recovered in time for us to watch The Sound of Music in order to learn about WWII.
12th grade: World History. Students in my track had traditionally taken AP Modern European History this year, but there were new state requirements that required all 12th grade students to take World History and World Geography, so your choices were to either take 3 semesters of Social Studies your senior year, or not take MEH.

[Jason]

I don't remember what years we had what history classes.

All I know is that I have regularly learned about historic events as an adult due to the fact that there have been storylines in Doctor Who where the Doctor showed up at one of those particular events. I will watch and episode and then look up the history behind it and think "you know, I probably ought to have already known about that."

I blame this mainly on the fact that history was presented mostly as learning names and dates and facts. It was dry and boring. I think the only reason I retained any history was field trips to historic sites and my mother taking me to the museum. Those were both instances that made history interesting.

Doctor Who was originally conceived as edutainment and I think something like that would have made a bigger impact on me as a child than learning names and dates.

[Jenny Islander]

I think history class was one of the main reasons I decided to homeschool my kids. There was no Story of US for us--there still isn't in my old school--and no Child's History of the World either. Names, dates, places, facts, indigestible gobs of small print--the teachers either doggedly taught to the test or threw up their hands and let us watch movies. I knew that there had to be something better. My kids will darn well get something better.

[Dav]

I didn't even know there *was* a Vietnam war until 8th grade, and only then because one of the other students did a special project on it. We got bare background on state history, I think, which lumped together long-gone, historic Indian groups with current Indian populations (natch) and a lot of the Revolutionary, Civil, and Second World Wars.

My home-based history was pretty good, but decidedly ancient European - Greece, Rome, Dark Ages. I knew about the Silk Road and crusades. I liked history, and read a fair amount on my own, but I still have a really inconsistent background, since I like character-based histories, so I have a pretty good grip on a few people, and sort of an impression of events around them that fades out.

[Amaryllis]

Izzy: I always liked/was vaguely embarrassed by that one, in the way you get with songs where the main character has your name. There aren't many, for me.
Some of us had the opposite problem. Some of us had to learn, as early as kindergarten, to get over the embarrassment of being teased as "lazy" and "quite contrary," and asked where the little lamb was.

Even though my grandfather, in honor of my grandmother for whom I was named, used to sing to me that "it's a grand old name."

And then I got older, and met with the hazy visions of "along comes..." and "and the wind cries..."
Or the country-ish exhortations to "keep on rollin'" or the tales about "...took to runnin' with a travelin' man."

And the invitations to party, everyone from Sam Cooke to Bruce Springsteen singing "meet me at..."

Movies and shows--
"there's just something about..."
"...is the girl I love, and ain't that too damn bad!"

Even rap: "...why ya buggin'?"

Or trendy indie parody: "full of grease, scary are the fruits of your tomb..."

And don't even ask about the folk/trad stuff:
"last night there were four..."
"we'll all be makin' merry when I marry..."
"keep your hands off red-haired..."
"...the rose of Tralee."
"...of Murroe/of Argyll/of Dungloe/of the Wild Moor..."
Even "of the curling hair."

And so on, and so on...and that's not even touching on the specifically religious. You'd think no one was ever named anything else.
(Scene: Irish Music Festival
Voice calls: "Mary!"
Reaction: A good third of the female heads turn in response.
True story.)

Well. Anyway. Um. Good filk.

[Amaryllis]

Procopius' *The Secret History* is kind of hilarious.

Gossip gossip gossip.
Oh yes, and--

"Allow me to ask and answer one question before departing for Mount Everest or Lake Ossippee--
Who says men aren't gossipy? Men say men aren't gossipy."
-Ogden Nash

[Izzy]

Amaryllis: Hee! And aww.

I think any group can be divided roughly into those who feel their first names are too obscure and those who feel they're too common. And it tends to skip generations: my mom's a Kate, which I suspect is why I got Isabel.

[Raj]

So...Amaryllis...your first name would be.... Wait! Wait! Don't tell me!

*scratches head and frowns in concentration*

AHA! JANE! Amirite? Amirite? Amirite?

[Caryb]

Actually, for true bad-pun-suckage, Jane should be her middle name....

Amaryllis, I feel your pain. "Cary" is a great name to have in 1950, when being named after Cary Grant had some cachet. As it is, if I never hear another reference to Jim Carry, Drew Carrey, Care Bears, my greater physical ability to tote loads compared to people not named "Cary", John Kerry, or Cary, North Carolina again, it could fill me with nothing but overwhelming joy.

[P J Evans]

Dav, when I was in 8th grade, Vietnam was only just on our radar; it hadn't quite reached 'war' status. (I think that was the next year.)

(I do remember wondering why we were bothering with it, along about 9th grade, after either another of its administrations collapsed or one of its leaders was assassinated.)

[Amaryllis]

@Raj: *soft cushions*

@Caryb: Boy, you gotta carry that weight...

*ducks*

If it's any consolation to you, I've always liked the name. And because I come from an area where "Cary" doesn't sound like "carry," any more than "Mary" sounds like "marry," load-bearing connotations never occurred to me until you mention them.

I shall promptly forget them again, and simply admire the way that "Cary" can be either a Gaelic word or a "Charles" derivative, depending on your mood at the moment.

"Isabel" is nicely versatile, too, isn't it: it might be regal, romantic, or literary, as you please.

[Deird, whose name isn't even spelt like that]

As it is, if I never hear another reference to Jim Carry, Drew Carrey, Care Bears, my greater physical ability to tote loads compared to people not named "Cary", John Kerry, or Cary, North Carolina again, it could fill me with nothing but overwhelming joy.

My sympathies.

I had my entire primary school class stop speaking to me when Mary-Anne Spier broke up with Logan in the Babysitters Club series. No matter how often I tried to point out that she was a fictional character... and American... and not me...

[Brad]

I'm amazed at how many people remember which grade went with world history, which with local, etc. I just recall bits and pieces of my history classes. In high school our teacher hated the textbook and refused to use it – for weeks we stayed at the same chapter (I remember a picture of a suffragette rising to make a point) while he handed out mimeographs instead. He was also big on hypothetical discussions – who would you kick out of the bomb shelter, that kind of thing.

I don't remember being interested in history until Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe.

[julie paradox]

Most of my history I originally learnt from 1066 and all that.

Seriously.

The bits I didn't get from Jean Plaidy novels, that is (several of them start with the protagonist as a small girl).

I was utterly delighted to discover that there is a book called Little Arthur's History of England.

When we played Trivial Pursuit my dad used to say "that's not history, I remember that!"

Nowadays, of course, british bookworm children read Terry Deary's Horrible Histories, which are fabulous. (and obviously sold well, because there also exist Horrible Science and Horrible Geography, which... fair enough.)

[Lonespark]

Did someone say something about characters with your name.

The Girl in Trisha Yearwood's "She's in Love with the Boy" doesn't have my name, but her boyfriend has my husband's, and I used to request it back when we were sneaking out to see each other.

Then there's a song by...Kenny Rogers? Thinking hard about what the title might be, I'll guess it's "The Coward of the County." The main characters have my name and my husband's. The song is so vile, I pretty much cried with rage the first time I heard it. Or maybe the second. The first time I probably just stared in shock. That's just down to content, but the name coincidence adds a layer of WTFargh to the proceedings.

[Literata]

Kristin - good points. I was thinking as I wrote that there's a whole lot of more complex factors than just SES, and you bring up a lot of them, but I stand by the suggestion that in the South as a whole, the correlation would work - it wouldn't be a great predictor, definitely not 1:1, but it would stand. Thanks for more detail on the eastern part of the state. I'm delighted to hear that the urban areas swung the state for Obama; I was gone by that time. On the other hand, RDU and the other urban areas aren't a tiny bubble, but Durham has much, much higher town-gown tensions because in many ways Duke is a tiny bubble with much more of a stark contrast to the rest of the city than UNC or RTP have to their surrounding areas. That probably influenced my turn of phrase.

I actually think a lot of what was going on where I was was that my elementary school was on the fringe of another small bubble (and this one actually is small compared to the urban areas) of predominantly high-SES whites who came from somewhere else, and so there were some high-SES white kids, most of whom weren't "from" NC in some difficult-to-define sense, some low-SES white kids who were, and black kids with on average mid-to-low SES who also were "native," and a lot of what I was getting came from the low-SES "native NC" whites. And part of the reason I recommended Confederates in the Attic is because those whites seemed to buy into some of the nonsense that explicit support for the Confederacy wasn't a racist thing to say, which I can't explain at all, but the author puts a similar mindset on display in ways that really resonated with what I experienced from time to time.

[spinetingler]

hrumph, Typepad ate my comment (TP really doesn't like links, I suppose).

Here's 80's/90's scream/metal band One Bad Pig with special guest Johnny Cash.

I like this all out of propotion to its actual musical merits.

http://new.music.yahoo.com/one-bad-pig/tracks/man-in-black--54034669

[The Board Administration Team]

@spinetingler: hrumph, Typepad ate my comment (TP really doesn't like links, I suppose)

TypePad does take links but they need to be configured "just right" to work. We are working on a "cut and paste" feature for the sidebar that would help people to insert links in their comments.

Until then -- would you like the ModSquad to got into your post and reconfigure the link into "click and it opens up a new browser window" form?

[Jason]

@CaryB-

Amaryllis, I feel your pain. "Cary" is a great name to have in 1950, when being named after Cary Grant had some cachet. As it is, if I never hear another reference to Jim Carry, Drew Carrey, Care Bears, my greater physical ability to tote loads compared to people not named "Cary", John Kerry, or Cary, North Carolina again, it could fill me with nothing but overwhelming joy.

When I was a child, I was getting a bit tired of references to a certain hockey mask wearing, chainsaw wielding denizen of Camp Crystal Lake.

[truth is life]

(I do remember wondering why we were bothering with it, along about 9th grade, after either another of its administrations collapsed or one of its leaders was assassinated.)

I would guess that you were in 9th grade in 1963, when Diem was assassinated? He was about the only person who might have held the thing together, but comparing him to Qaddafi (so Firefox says his name is, and who am I to disagree?) would be doing the latter a favor.

Mostly, we (I assume you mean the US; anyone else was pretty much bothering with it because the US asked or they were South Vietnamese) bothered with it because the Democrats were sensitive to charges that they had "lost" China in 1949 and were overly friendly to Communists, so they became more hawkish than the Republicans in an effort to show that that wasn't true (sound familiar?). It didn't help that Eisenhower had been the President through the '50s, and of course had essentially infinite foreign policy cred, nor that Johnson (who was the one who actually started the war in Vietnam; Kennedy only sent in advisors and would probably have pulled us out if he hadn't been assassinated) had basically no foreign policy experience at all and therefore felt he had to show that he was tough on Communism even more.

On names in songs: My name is pretty unusual, at least in its particular spelling, in the US (not so much in Scotland and Ireland, I believe), although a certain variant is extremely popular, probably because of the vast number of saints that have that name (one of whom baptized many people). So at least I didn't have to deal with that sort of thing. It makes it all the more surprising when I do come across other people with the same name, though.

[truth is life]

On links: The HTML magic is < a href = "your-url-here" > flavor text here < / a > (without the spaces). Eg:

< a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML" > HTML! < /a >

becomes

HTML!

[Amaryllis]

That usually works for one or maybe two links.

More than that, Typepad will devour as spam.

---
Hmmm...one of the John/Sean variants?

[hapax]

The name I generally go buy (which is different from my legal name; to call me by my "real" name is a pretty good tip-off that you're trying to sell me something) is unusual enough that I don't encounter it much in popular books or songs.

For some reason, it's more common in webcomics; fortunately, I love every such character that I've encountered so far.

Both daughter and son have excessively common first names, on purpose; they were each given much more distinctive middle names (two each) so they could mix and match their names to their own preference, when old enough.

As it is, I usually call them (respectively) "Princess" and "Bug"*, anyways.

*Son has hit the age when he begs me "PLEASE don't call me that in front of my friends anymore!" I try, but it's hard. I expect I will finally get the hang of it when he reaches the age of "Why don't you call me that anymore? Don't you still love me?"

[Will Wildman]

'Trevor' is a sufficiently uncommon name that I don't often have to put up with it being attached to unpleasant or evil people (other than me!), and I've limited the number of places where I'm called Will enough that I don't really think about it when I encounter its use for fictional characters.

However, when threads here (such as the newest At Patheos thread) discuss God's Will, or Divine Will, that is definitely very weird.

[renniejoy]

My first name is so common among my age group that there is a song indicating how common it is. :/

Duran Duran's new album has two songs on it that make me go arrrrrgh. One is the first-person POV of a victim-blaming kidnapper (at the very least) and the other is first-person POV of a Nice Guy(tm), the title and chorus of which is "It's Too Bad You're So Beautiful". Bleeech!

[Brin (not Meir)]

>'Trevor' is a sufficiently uncommon name that I don't often have to put up with it being attached to unpleasant or evil people (other than me!)<

I would have thought the uncommonness makes it worse, in a way. All the jokes will be about Harry Potter and/or toads, without any variety.

I've never had anyone make fun of me for my name, but when I was little I watched multiple sitcoms with characters sharing it (perhaps because they were made around the time I was born, when it was in the Top 10 most popular names). Maybe because of that, reading my name in reference to someone other than me is much weirder than hearing it.

[MadGastronomer]

I got soooo sick of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm." The only variation I ever got was, very occasionally, someone would mention (but not make a joke about) the Hitchcock movie or the book it was based on.

[Ellen Brand]

My first name is Travis. I'm female. I think there may be two or three others out there. Maybe? I tend to go by my middle name for social stuff, as seen here, and my first name for professional things. Said first name has lead to all sorts of teasing throughout school, and an order to register for the draft if I wanted to keep my scholarships...

[spinetingler]

Until then -- would you like the ModSquad to got into your post and reconfigure the link into "click and it opens up a new browser window" form?.

yes, thanks, if what I try here does not work.

I'm reasonably certain that I got the html right the first time, but the post was there and then disappeared.

One Bad Pig and Johnny Cash

[Caryb]

I shall promptly forget them again, and simply admire the way that "Cary" can be either a Gaelic word or a "Charles" derivative, depending on your mood at the moment.

I don't suppose its a cool word, is it?

I recently discovered, thanks to an Indian friend, that "cary" is "mango" in hindi. So he and his family have taken to calling me "Mango." Ironically enough, I'm allergic to mangos. Unfortunately, I can't use that excuse to get out of fruit-based nicknames.

@lonespark: Ugh. Of all the god-awful songs to have your name in...

[Jason]

The only variation I ever got was, very occasionally, someone would mention (but not make a joke about) the Hitchcock movie or the book it was based on.

At least its a good movie. I got Friday the 13th. :P

[MadGastronomer]

I recently discovered, thanks to an Indian friend, that "cary" is "mango" in hindi. So he and his family have taken to calling me "Mango." Ironically enough, I'm allergic to mangos. Unfortunately, I can't use that excuse to get out of fruit-based nicknames.

There's a friend of my brother's named Andrew whom my entire family calls Wonka.

[MadGastronomer]

At least its a good movie. I got Friday the 13th. :P

I wouldn't know. I've never seen it. I did read the book, and was not flattered by the comparison. Plus, while I usually find queer subtext good, in this case it was deeply creepy.

[MercuryBlue]

I've seen the new Friday the 13th, and the only thing I liked about it was Jared Padalecki in short sleeves.

[Jason]

I forgot that they remade it.

I am a horror fan, but I do not like slasher films, because they are stupid and derivative and generally get more stupid and more derivative the more of them there are in a series. I do enjoy a crappy horror movies suitable for MST3King, but slasher films are all so similiar that I don't find them entertaining for that either.

I wish that we could get over the torture porn and remaking old classics to make them like torture porn (Texas Chainsaw Massacre did not need a remake. The original is perfect) trend that we have going on now.

Just in general, can we stop remaking and rebooting things? They're going to reboot the 3 Stooges? WHY?

[Lonespark]

Thank you for feeling my pain, Cary.

My dad is a conscientious objector. And a union leader. Yeah, sometimes you do have to fight to be a self-respecting human being. Not with violence, though. And not on behalf of your no-agency-having lady love. LonesparkSMASH!

It's really the combination, though. If it were just one of our names...not to mention that a lot of my husband's family has spent time in prison. Bleh.

[Amaryllis]

CaryB: I don't suppose its a cool word, is it?

*goes off to verify her inexact recollections*

According to the baby-name sites, it might mean "stream," "hill-fort," "dark-complected," or "love." Take your pick.
(Hmmm..."I met my darling dark boy near the hill-fort by the stream"...there's bound to be a song like that, somewhere, don't you think?)

Any actual Gaelic/Welsh speakers among us? Because you can't always trust the baby-name sites.

@Lonespark: my sympathies also, that's a truly horrible song. I'll take "Mary of Wherever" -- of the Third Moon of Jupiter for all I know, of Alpha Centauri station if things go on like this-- over it any day.

@MadG: What, no one reads Scott any more? Than again, even I don't read Scott any more, so maybe not.

[MadGastronomer]

What, no one reads Scott any more? Than again, even I don't read Scott any more, so maybe not.

No, no one reads Scott anymore, as far as I can tell. I don't read Scott, and that's my last name.