Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Thongs of Excellence

Scientists have long argued that rap music incites people to commit violence. One explanation suggests that the rhythms of rap correspond with those of the heart, causing blood pressure to rise and increase a person’s aggression. It must be true. I’m feeling really aggressive today and I’ve been listening to rap.

I feel so mean, I could strangle a squirrel.

A big red squirrel.

If there’s a dumber idea than producing a rap version of Wordsworth’s Daffodils, I’d love to hear it. Actually, I’d prefer listening to just about anything rather than the version of the dullest of all the nation’s favourite poems. I suggest that you don't visit Cumbria's tourism website.

Ms. Baroque and Arthur Clewley drew my attention to this little atrocity and each receive one of my new shining awards; or the Thong of Excellence as I like to call it.

Wear the badge with pride, fellow Thonglateers. Commemorative posing pouches are winging their way to you with tomorrow's morning post.

Ms. Baroque imagines ‘poor William Wordsworth, trying to do his bit so that we could have our bicentenary of the publication of "Daffodils," when all at once he spies a host, a crowd of rude boys outside his window...’ The problem with Wordsworth is I think people forget that he himself was something of a rude boy in his youth. The Lyrical Ballads were something new. He and his friend Coleridge were radical, revolutionary. Only now is Wordsworth plagued with problem daffodils and Coleridge is troubled by an albatross. It’s like Peter Cook only being remembered for his role in Bedazzled. People might get the wrong idea and think of him as a gentle comedian from the school of Barry Took.

Wordsworth needs to be remembered for something other than daffodils. Which is why I propose we begin to celebrate the eleventh book of his Prelude.

This last opprobrium, when we see a people,
That once looked up in faith, as if to Heaven
For manna, take a lesson from the dog
Returning to his vomit.

How about marking that with a special day of making dogs vomit around Windermere? The tourists are sure to love it.

Mr. Clewley has a point when he argues that ‘If we can ban Snoop Dog from coming across the Atlantic then surely we can ban a giant hip hop Squirrel Nutkin from crossing the Pennines and doing a break dancing Remains of Elmet.’

Here, however, I have to take issue with what is an otherwise admirable sentiment. I wouldn’t be so quick to ban the little fellow. Across England, the red squirrel is facing extinction because of the spread of the grey. It can’t be long before the grey squirrels make it as far north as Cumbria. We should then let nature take its course. We should stand back and watch, with great satisfaction, as the grey take over Nutkin’s hood in a spay of bullets from their Mac-10 submachine guns. Then we hear no more about these bloody daffodils.

4 comments:

Gorilla Bananas said...

If there’s a dumber idea than producing a rap version of Wordsworth’s Daffodils, I’d love to hear it.

How about tapping out one of Shakespeare's sonnets in Morse Code?

Ms Baroque said...

Chippy I'm with you all the way. Thank you SO much for the Thong of Excellence, which is a far deeper honour than I ever would have imagined back in my bluestocking youth (though the key word there may be "stocking").

I think I should make it clear that I have nothing against red squirrels per se, but I see no reason for them to cavort inanely whilst mindlessly vandalising the most annoying poem in the canon.

But listen! On to other things. I checked out my fellow Thongateer Arthur's blog, and I found a statement there that I couldn't understand. Could you perhaps explain it to me? He says "The Dales are currently full of proud and protective ewes."

Big Chip Dale said...

Gorilla: I still think the rap version of daffodils is dumber. At least the Morse Code version of the sonnet keeps to the iambic pentameter.

Ms. Baroque: I'm glad you like my thong. And I'm delighted that you hate Daffodils too.

I'll have to go and check Arthur's blog. These comments about us Dales sounds tantamount to slander. And if it's a vulgar comment about us Welshmen and sheep, then he's got the biology wrong. Isn't the ewe the female of species?

Arthur Clewley said...

chip, thanks for the award. I'd like thank my agent, my mother, the lightning which struck the primorial soup thus creating life itself and making my blog possible...

Chip and Miss baroque, very sorry about any inadvertant slur on the great welsh clan known as the Dales. I meant of course the Yorkshire Dales, who are a completely seperate family all together