You know that Wolf Parade song Grounds for Divorce? And how the opening lyric goes: “Said you hate the sound/of the [???] on the ground/said you hate the way they scrape their brakes all over town/I said pretend it’s whales/keepin’ their voices down?”
What’s he say there in the [???]? I bought the album, but it doesn’t come with any lyrics.
When I first heard the song I thought for sure he was saying “bicyclists” (in three rushed syllables, like: bi-seh-klists) but the internet disagrees. The internet thinks he’s saying “buses.” But you know how if you think a song is saying one thing you hear that thing no matter what the song’s really saying?
I suppose “buses” makes more sense in that it’d be easier to pretend that buses are whales (too easy?), but bikes definitely “scrape their brakes all over town.” Maybe someone from Montreal can tell us whether buses or bicyclists have the more annoying brake scraping in that city (or, failing that, which one sounds more like whales keeping their voices down). Of course, I’m a known bike sympathizer (I almost wrote “bike synthesizer” there, which would be awesome if it existed) so I could be wrong.
I broke my bike the other day. The frame just cracked all of a sudden while I was riding to work. I had another frame ready to go so I only missed a day of riding, but it was traumatic. I had to take the bus, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the worst possible form of transportation. Like a concentration camp on wheels. Honestly, when I got on, I thought I’d stepped into some kind of communicable disease treatment bus. The kind that tours Africa caring for patients with Ebola and flesh-eating bacteria. Seriously, everyone had some kind of disease on display. I kept changing seats the whole ride, trying to lessen my chances of catching anything serious. I made it from Wet Sores Guy to Probably Bird Flu Guy to Recent Case Of Dysentery Woman and finally to the sweet relief of Good Old Fashioned Eczema Guy, where I stayed for the remainder of the trip.
What’s crazy is that I know people who ride the bus to work every single day! Needless to say, these people are now on my permanent “do not hug” list.
In other news, I realize this website is turning into one of those blogs where maybe you read something funny a long time ago and thought it had promise so you bookmarked it and maybe linked to me? And ever since then it’s really gone down hill, and then one day you read the archives from before the funny post that you first read and you realize that this site was never that funny to begin with? So probably you keep linking to me just because this whole blogs’n'links thing is so new that none of us know the etiquette of ceasing to link to someone who’s still writing (hint: it’s okay!) but you definitely move the bookmark from your bookmarks bar to some folder deep in your browser’s bowels? And then maybe one day you go out and buy a new computer and when you’re transferring all the old stuff to the new computer you come across my link again and you hesitate for a second but eventually you just leave it on the old computer and figure that digg or del.icio.us will let you know if anything good ever comes out of feaverish again?
