Tag: Lady Gaga

Music to My Earworms

Posted on by Carol A Westbrook

by Carol A Westbrook

What song did you have in your head when you woke up today? Was it, “Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling” as you recalled your St. Patrick’s Day celebration from the previous weekend?

Probably not. Chances are, the song in your head was not a slow, melodic ballad with simple lyrics, but a catchy, snappy tune. It might have been a line from a popular song, such as Lady Gaga’s  “Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah” from her song Bad Romance, or Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Maybe it was an annoying commercial jingle “1-8-7-7-Kars-4-Kids.” Maybe you’re thinking of food, and getting hungry. O-Oh! How about some Spaghetti O’s? Or Rice a Roni, that San Francisco treat?

If you didn’t wake up with a song in your head, you probably have one after reading this far. I’ve just infected you with an earworm.

An earworm is a catchy tune that worms its way into your head when you hear or even read it, and then seems to get stuck there. And it’s really hard to get rid of. Many people enjoy these tunes that loop through their brains, much like they enjoy listening to music on the radio or their iPod. Others find them distracting. And for a very small number of people, they can be incapacitating. Read more »



Monday, October 25, 2010

What Obama Can Learn From Lady Gaga (And Progressives From The Tea Party)

Posted on by Evert Cilliers

by Evert Cilliers aka Adam Ash

Lady_Gaga My name is Obama. But call me Icarus.

I soared on the wings of an angel. I was the biggest star the planet had ever seen, without having to go near a guitar. I was dancing on the moon, when suddenly, the moon gathered its bowels and dropped me like a turd back on earth.

Plop!

And here I sit, in my redecorated Oval Office, surrounded by all these clever Ph.D people, and by my pointillist-picture-perfect family, and I'm gobsmacked and paddywhacked and privately pissed and publicly petulant.

People scorn me. Left and right. They treat me like a dog.

After all I've done. What a record of legislation! How did I legislate? Let me count the bills.

On my 24th day in office, I whelped a $787 billion Recovery Act that included $78.61 billion of green energy stimulus, and cut the taxes of 95% of our taxpayers.

But I didn't rest.

I squeezed out Healthcare Reform. That took a little longer. It was an almost stillborn breech baby, but today it is incubating and will start kicking about four years from now if the Republicans don't starve it to death before then. Wonder of wonders, in its placenta can be found the detritus of the “pre-existing condition” scam. Unfortunately the baby is missing its genitals — the public option — but some industry deal snipped that one out of its genetic code.

Still, I didn't rest.

Soon I begat Financial Reform that included a Consumer Financial Protection Agency birthed by Elizabeth Warren and now being midwifed by her.

And then, lest you forget, as most Americans have, I saved Detroit. Plus I shook down BP for $20 billion.

Those were my five biggies. Stimulus, health, finance, Detroit, BP shakedown. There's a lot of little stuff too numerous to mention: my ban on torture, the student loan overhaul, our foreign rep restored, two okay Supreme Court ladies, etc.

But what happened? Where have all the voters gone? I feel like Sartre locked out of De Beauvoir's bedroom because she's banging the husband of the wife I banged, or their daughter, all because of some combination of nausea and misplaced ressentiment because our final philosophy agregation exam jury quibbled about whether they should give first place to me or to her, and then naturally confirmed her second-sex status.

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