Monday 27 March 2017

Top 25 Misheard Lyrics by Nick and Jesse

Morepork (Ninox novaeseelandiae)
When I was googling for an old misheard lyric from my childhood, I found this old list of a top twenty-five misheard lyrics. Merely because the list existed only cached, I thought I should put the list up in full. Moreover, when I did have a look at the cached page, I thought the misheards were funny and interesting enough to be worth blogging.

The list below originally came from two young me (in their picture) who give their names only as “Nick” and “Jesse”.

25) Beyonce – ‘Single Ladies’
  • “I’m missing a leg Sue”
24) Green Day – ‘21 Guns’
  • “twenty wine gums”
23) UB40 – ‘Please Don’t Make Me Cry’
  • “peas on toast”
  • (instead of “please don’t go”)
22) Australian Crawl – ‘Boys Light Up’
  • “when the boys line up”
  • I always heard it that way as a child, along with “I was heading for my Mukden home” at the song’s beginning.
    • Mukden is an old Manchu name for the Chinese city of Shěnyáng, and I always knew it made no sense after the line following
21) Robbie Williams – ‘Candy’
  • “liberate your sons and daughters the bush is high and in the hole is water”
20) The Corrs – ‘Breathless’
  • “make me breakfast”
  • Nick and Jesse’s listener’s daughter requested this song every morning
19) Rod Stewart – ‘You’re In My Heart’
  • “you’re in my breath, pure alcohol”
18) Red Hot Chilli Peppers – ‘Californication’
  • “feel my fanny for an occassion”
17) National Anthem
  • “in the bones of love we meat”
16) Adele – ‘Set Fire To The Rain’
  • “set fire to Lorraine”
15) George Michael – ‘Faith’
  • “Got to have fanta, fanta, fanta”
14) Elton John – ‘Bennie And The Jets’
  • “She’s got magic boobs, her mum’s got them too”
13) The Commitments – ‘Mustang Sally’
  • “mustard and salad”
  • Shelly said a colleague thought “Mustang Sally” was “Mustard and salad”. She was singing it once and I cracked up and had to correct her
 12) The Police – ‘Every Breath You Take’
  • “My poo hole aches”
  • “When I was little (about five) instead of saying my poor heart aches, I thought it said.... Omg... how embarassing!”
11) Beyonce – ‘Single Ladies’
  • “I'm a singlet”
10) One Direction – ‘One Thing’
  • “Shout meow to the sky, you’re in my crib tonight. You keep making me reek, yeah frozen in Cadbury”
9) Split Enz – ‘Poor Boy’
  • “What more could a morepork do”
  • as opposed to “What More Could A Poor Boy Do”
8) Rihanna – ‘Diamonds’
  • “She ain’t white like a diamond”
7) Village People – ‘In The Navy’
  • “Swing the lady”
6) Sandi Thom – ‘I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker’
  • “I wish I was a prawn cracker!”
5) Bob Sinclar – ‘Love Generation’
  • “Feed and hug little Asians”
4) Robbie Williams – ‘Angels’
  • “I need protection to cover my erection”
  • instead of something about love and protection
3) Gin Wigmore – ‘Black Sheep’
  • “I’m a trash heap”
  • Miss five-year-old not interpreting “I'm a black sheep” correctly?
2) Bruno Mars – ‘Locked Out Of Heaven’
  • “Yeah your sex tapes made in paradise”
1) ACDC – ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’
  • “Dirty deeds done to sheep”
Although I have no recollections of hearing them as those words given above, the misheard lyrics of ‘Faith’ and ‘In the Navy’ do sound a little like the real thing. The one of ‘Boys Light Up’ has extremely solid memories within my childhood, whilst the one of ‘You’re in My Heart’ (as I have noted earlier actually about Rod Stewart’s love of soccer) can easily be made sense of from the rhythm. I do wonder if anybody who realise the song is about soccer would think soccer is “pure alcohol” and/or that because of low scoring and ties it is dozy or some similar adjective?

Some of the lyrics were listed by Nick and Jesse as “Warning – naughty” – I have chosen to include them minus such notes. The one of ‘Every Breath You Take’ is a little funny and understandable, though everybody should know the proper word “anus” from younger than I did. I often have aches in my bowel due to a diet too heavy in sugar and I tend to accept them, but whether I would have accepted bad anus pains as a child I doubt gravely!

Friday 17 March 2017

AbeBooks Most In-Demand Out-of-print Books for 2016

Today AbeBooks, where I get most of my reading material, published its annual list of the “Most In-Demand Out-of-Print Books”. I have vague recollections of such a list form previous years, but after having had other things to besides post here I decided to do my familiar thing and post the list:
  1. Westworld by Michael Crichton
  2. Sex by Madonna
  3. Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual by Bill Mollison
  4. Unintended Consequences by John Ross
  5. Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns by Barbara Brackman
  6. Finding the Winning Edge by Bill Walsh
  7. Mastering Atmosphere and Mood in Watercolor by Joseph Zbukvic
  8. Fast Times at Ridgemont High by Cameron Crowe
  9. Margin of Risk: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor by Seth Klarman.
  10. Alla Prima: Everything I Know about Painting by Richard Schmid
  11. Rage by Richard Bachman/Stephen King
  12. The Vision and Beyond, Prophecies Fulfilled and Still to Come by David Wilkerson
  13. Sled Driver: Flying the World’s Fastest Jet by Brian Shul
  14. Bandit Country: The IRA and South Armagh by Toby Harnden
  15. Snake by Ken Stabler
  16. Halloween by Curtis Richards
  17. Parts Work: An Illustrated Guide to Your Inner Life by Tom Holmes
  18. Promise Me Tomorrow by Nora Roberts
  19. Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper – Case Closed by Patricia Cornwell
  20. Down Through the Years by Jean Shepard
  21. The Sisters: Babe Mortimer Paley, Betsy Roosevelt Whitney, Minnie Astor Fosburgh: The Lives and Times of the Fabulous Cushing Sisters by David Grafton
  22. Me and My Likker by Popcorn Sutton
  23. Monte Walsh by Jack Schaefer
  24. Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by James Lovell
  25. The Making of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry
  26. The Last Course: The Desserts of the Gramercy Tavern by Claudia Fleming
  27. A Life Worth Living by Lady Colin Campbell
  28. The Essential Woodworker: Skills, Tools and Methods by Robert Wearing
  29. Women and Men by Joseph McElroy
  30. The Art of Holly Hobbie by Holly Hobbie
Most if not all of these books are books of no interest to me. Many are sexually explicit or so violent their authors do not want them in print, for example Sex and Rage. My main interest in out-of-print books are in old hardback poetry titles, which a mere glance will show as never listed, or in old, specialised books on sport.