My radio station played John Mayer's Wonderland this morning as I was driving in to work. (Yes, my drive is short enough that I generally only hear one song on my way to work. One song, a segment of ads, the news/sports/traffic spot, and some calls in on the topic of the moment that usually make me wish I were from another planet entirely - and this is in all seriousness the radio station that actually plays the most actual music in their morning show. I hate mornings.)

Anyway, they played Wonderland.

I'm still waiting to hear a John Mayer song I actually like. He came close with The Real World but the line, "I'm gonna scream at the top of my lungs" would have been infinitely better if he'd actually screamed it - a little roughness in the voice - not just a raise in pitch to simulate screaming.

In Wonderland, too, he has this annoyingly breathy singing voice, like he was late to the recording session and had to run up six flights of stairs and then they made him start singing before he could catch his breath. Is there a purpose to that? Or is his singing voice really that awful?

And he mumbles. How a person can mumble when they're singing, I don't know, but he manages. I just now looked up the lyrics to Wonderland and there are whole words in there that I can't hear at all on the radio. What the lyric-sheets tell me is "Discover me / discovering you," I hear as "Discover me / discovering" That's it. I can't hear the "you" at all. And the line "This is bound to be a while" sounds to me like "This is bound to be my" with no modifier on the "my".

(That was, in fact, the reason I looked it up this morning. My brain was putting the "you" in after "discovering" because that's what the rhyme implied, but I couldn't figure out what "This is bound to be my" was supposed to mean.)

I know, I know I suck at comprehension of song lyrics, so I'll take the blame for mishearing "a while" as "my", but I should at least be able to hear where the syllables go! There's no excuse for the missing "you"! There are a couple of lines in Real World that would probably be better if he'd actually ennunciate a little, too.

Though perhaps not. I'm not too wild about the lyrics, either.

If my lover ever told me I had "candy lips" and a "bubblegum tongue" I'd tell him to go fuck himself. I don't want some idiot chewing on my face! And that's precisely the mental image I get with that line. It makes me cringe. Even if you don't get the face-chewing image, they're at least absurdly trite and cheesy metaphors that completely ruin the elegance of the "porcelain skin" in the preceding line.

On the other hand, it could be easily argued that candy and bubblegum are good fits for the body-as-amusement-park theme - but then what's the fragile beauty of porcelain doing in there?

Yeah, I'm aware I'm in the distinct minority on this. There's no need to look at me with big, beaten-puppy eyes and say, "B-but I like that song!" I know. I'm all alone over here.

And the stupid thing is, I kind of want to like him. The music is pretty good - bouncy and fun. And I appreciated what he was trying to say in Real World, even if I thought he could have said it better.

He's so close... But not there.

Wow, that was way more time and effort than I reallywanted to put into a little rant about a song I don't like.

It's probably just as well, though, as I didn't really do anything yesterday worth talking about. I edited a few pages of the novel; and I learned that my project leader at work is smoking something interesting, but I can't ask him what until he's back in the office next week (not literally, of course, just that the directions he gave me were completely out of whack); and I ate the last of the cream of reuben soup that I'd had in the freezer (must remember to make more soon); and I Halled; and I read about half of this book Jeff gave me for Christmas (I think I'll be picking up some more of the books in the series soon).

None of that really warrants any more discussion. Well, I might talk about the book a little once I've finished it. And I already talked about the cream of reuben soup a while back.

Everyone keeps telling me that I'm in for an utterly miserable summer, as pregnant women traditionally perceive the temperature as being much warmer than it actually is - and I hate being hot anyway. So yes, I'm not really looking forward to summer at all.

On the other hand, I'm about ready for winter to be over. I can't touch a door, a cabinet handle, my car, my cat, or my husband without getting a static shock. And if my skin were any drier, it would probably just flake completely off.

And - I know someone's going to remind me of this when summer gets here and I'm bitching about the heat, but - I'm damned tired of being cold all the damn time!

There. I've said my piece.

--Liz