Song lyrics often read poorly in print, and also often seem pointless and affectless in captions. There’s an idée fixe that lyrics are telegraphic and choppy, an assemblage of phrases. Some are, some aren’t.

I’ve been trying to think of lyrics, from any genre, that actually form lengthy complete sentences. Better: What about consecutive sentences in lyrics that actually border on intelligible paragraphs? It’s OK to begin a sentence with “and” or “but” to stretch a syllable, but the whole shebang has to read perfectly. I do not know how to treate song choruses or refrains; sometimes I leave them in my assessment, other times not.

The longest example I can recite from memory is “Tiny Voices”: “The brown-and-orange sky holds its breath as the sun retreats to the distant horizon, and our hearts palpitate anxiously as we soon will lay supine and wait for sleep to overcome us. And from somewhere in our black, subconscious minds when we’re asleep comes a haunting, swelling mass of voices resonating. It screams of forgotten victims and the cries of innocents and the desperate plea for recognition and recompense.” (A tight 71 words, uttered in 33 seconds.)

Others?

“Love Vigilantes”? “When I walked through the door, my wife, she lay upon the floor, and with tears her eyes were sore. I did not know why. Then I looked into her hand and I saw the telegram that said that I was a brave, brave man but that I was dead.”

The spiritual B-side of “Love Vigilantes,” “Camouflage”? The entire song qualifies. (Gotta quote the whole thing to prove it.)

I was a PFC on a search patrol hunting Charlie down. It was in the jungle wars of ’65. My weapon jammed and I got stuck way out and all alone and I could hear the enemy moving in close outside. Just then I heard a twig snap and I grabbed my empty gun, and I dug in scared while I counted down my fate. And then a big marine, a giant with a pair of friendly eyes, appeared there at my shoulder and said “Wait!”

When he came in close beside me, he said, “Don’t worry, son, I’m here. If Charlie wants to tangle now they’ll have two to dodge.” I said, “Well, thanks a lot.” I told him my name and asked him his – and he said “The boys just call me Camouflage.”

Well, I was gonna ask him where he came from when we heard the bullets fly coming through the brush and all around our ears. And then I saw that big marine light a fire in his eye, and it was strange, but suddenly I forgot my fears. We fought all night and side by side. We took our battle stance. And I wondered how the bullets missed this man – ’cause they seemed to go right through him just as if he wasn’t there.

And in the morning, we both took a chance and ran. And it was near the river bank when the ambush came on top of us and I thought it was the end and we were had. Then a bullet with my name on it came buzzing through a bush – and that big marine, he just swatted it with his hands. Just like it was a fly!

And I knew there was something weird about him ’cause, when I turned around, he was pulling a big palm tree right up out of the ground and swatting those Charlies with it from here to kingdome come. When he led me out of danger, I saw my camp and waved goodbye, but he just winked at me from the jungle and then was gone.

And when I got back to my HQ, I told ’em about my night and the battle I’d spent with a big marine named Camouflage. When I said his name, a soldier gulped and the medic took my arm and led me to a green tent on the right. He said, “You may be telling true, boy, but this here is Camouflage, and he’s been right here since he passed away last night.”

Hard to top, I’d say. Anything vaguely similar?

Another drive-by shooting:

Not the even-more-fabulous sign on Richmond St., as yet unphotographed.

A tab is a “tab” and not a “page.”

I have written at some length, including in the book We’ve Got Blog [short for “Web log”], that during the 1998–2001 Web “gold rush” I couldn’t fucking get arrested. One reason was I knew more than they did. Another was that knowing more than they did intimidated typically mediocre Toronto “recruiters.” Plus my personality is viewed as quite forward by many Canadians, whom I would simply describe as backward. The result was that everyone and his dog (who also got space in the office) had a job and I didn’t.

After I signed the book contract, the doors closed and I gave up pining for an actual day job. It simply never occurs to me. (Except once recently, but I discount that case.) I am nonetheless reminded frequently that the majority of my confreres simply never have to worry about money. They all actually have jobs. The minority that do not nonetheless have many more freelance contracts than I do.

That era looks like it is set to repeat less than a decade later, as “Web 2.0” businesses start up and are bought out. I am not opposed to either of those phenomena (and I think Yahoo’s $36 million for Flickr was criminal underpayment), but I am also pretty sure that I won’t benefit in the slightest from this next bubble. You’ll all continue to have jobs and contracts, some of you will become Butterfield/Fake–level rich, and I won’t.

I screeched to a halt when I saw this combination of parks-department vehicle, lesbian driver, and raccoon blocking the path.

“I thought they were nocturnal,” I said jauntily.

“It’s very sick,” said the lesbian severely. And indeed it was, just barely able to walk. I am pretty sure I startled it by screeching to a halt, causing it to freeze in fear.

“Oh,” I replied brilliantly, and abashedly walked my bike around everything.

I can superexclusively document (and you can’t) that warning labels in a brand-new $750,000 ladder truck are typeset in Arial (also, confusingly, Helvetica and Futura).

Tactile signage in ladder truck

Additionally, this warning sign (yes, it really is located above an A[(]E[)]RIAL INLET!) is somehow typeset in three-dimensional, tactile Avant Garde Gothic and Helvetica Condensed, as though some ill-defined category of blind firefighter were expected to read it at a three-alarm blaze.

I’m sorry, but I am seriously creeped out by the photographs posted to Flickr by the user named Hurls103 (also blog [short for “Web log”]). Her (indeed her) photos are entirely G-rated and show nothing but red-haired males (sic).

Nominally this should not be a problem, because everything that creeps me out has a countervailing factor. They’re athletes, which should be totally hot, but they are fully clothed nearly all the time. They’re all guys, but… they’re not all adults. There are too many goddamned teenagers in that photo stream. I do not know that they’re at least 14 or 18 years of age.

The entire purpose of the Flickr stream is to ogle red-haired guys. If you start doing that and click on to the next photo, what you might end up looking at is a teenager. Is that what you want?

This is not child pornography. It is, however, too frigging close for comfort. Not only do I not do kids, I don’t do teens. Talk to me when you’re in your 20s, all right?

Since many of these photo subjects are legally minors, are their parents or guardians aware of these photos? Again, nominally the pictures are perfectly Christian and pure, but context is everything.

Why are so many of the photos clearly graduation pictures? How does she get access to those?

Are the indisputable adults in that stream really unaware why they are included? Is anyone that naïve anymore? (If these guys look at the whole stream, does the purpose not become apparent?)

What are the exact terms of the photo releases these subjects signed? Did they?

How many girls are going to look at these photos compared to guys? If her contacts are any indication, exactly 1/7 times as many. (Excluding me, her contacts include 14 males, two females, and one unstated or transgenderist.)

Cutline (often incorrectly called a caption) to an illustration by Arnold Roth accompanying Gladwell’s piece on Harvard admission requirements:

In the élite-education business, you are whom you admit, and when Harvard changed whom it admitted, it changed Harvard.

Only in the New Yorker. Is that even English?