Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Brandon Flowers Is Ticked Off!


Granted, the lyrics of Human are a tad odd. Well, for lack of a better word, they are grammatically problematic. Flowers uses the noun 'dancer' in the predicate which is, well, not the best of choices.
The chorus says: 'Are you human or are we 'dancer'?'
Many people are speculating that he's actually saying 'denser.'
I am not one of these folks. While I did find the lexical choice odd, I did some research and found out that he is actually making a deliberate reference to Hunter S. Thompson's quote: 'We’re raising a generation of dancers.’ The only problem is that Thompson couched the noun 'dancer' correctly. Flowers not so much. But then again poetic license might be worth something here.

Here's the a bit from the RS on the topic:

The Killers’ Brandon Flowers continues to be frustrated by fans being frustrated with the lyrics to the chorus of his new single “Human.” “Are we human, or are we dancer,” Flowers sings, imploring that the ambiguous word is the grammatically-incorrect “dancer” and not “denser.” “That sucks a bit. I don’t like, ‘Are we denser?’ as an alternative,” Flowers said. “I really care what people think but people don’t seem to understand ‘Human.’ They think it’s nonsense. But I was aching over those lyrics for a very long time to get them right.” Part of that time aching was evidently spent reading books by Hunter S. Thompson, as Flowers himself has admitted the “dancer” line was inspired by the former Rolling Stone contributor.

Read more here.

graph per rs

A Favorite Photo


And this is one of my most favorites.
Confession: the art of photography is almost as important and relevant to me as literature and music. Indeed. And while a photographer I am not, I have learned well to appreciate. By request, I will be regularly posting some of my all-time favorite photos. Some of the pictures come from publications and others from my photographer friends and my own iPhoto collections.
This one is of John Lennon and his son, Sean. The chiaro/scurro contrast is incredible here.
graph per rs

Picture of the Day


It's worth all of the Op-Ed's from the whole week.

graph via torsten

Who's Your Literary Crush?

I regularly contribute snippets of conversations I have with various people during the day.

Here's one:

Person: 'So, who's your literary crush?'
I: 'Beg your pardon?'
Person: 'Which author is your, you know, favorite? Dante, right?'
I: Well, Dante's gravitas doesn't allow him to be just a crush. You know Canto 3 of the Inferno, right? We're past that point, he and I. A crush would be the South African novelist, J. M. Coetze.'
Person: 'Why's that?'
I: 'He economizes on speech.'