Somewhere in this house, in some box, some closet, some room, some cabinet, possibly even some garage, is something I needed to make my next post. That something is a folder containing Songs of the South, a collection of all the song parodies my friend Tom and I wrote over the years for our annual AT&T office Christmas parties. The post I envisioned would have followed my last post so nicely, too, especially since I mentioned in a comment that for one of our AT&T office Christmas parties I had composed a song called “Up To The Fourth Floor NYNEX Went, Lots Of Money For Training Spent” which we, the assembled AT&T gang, sang to the tune of “Up On The Housetop Reindeer Pause, Out Jumps Good Old Santa Claus.”
Alas, it apparently is not to be.
I can’t find the dadblamed folder.
I just know you would have been rolling in the aisles. You would have loved, I’m sure, a song from the year Robert Allen, AT&T’s Chief Executive Officer, decided to acquire the National Cash Register Corporation to bolster our stock. It was called “Bob Wants To Buy A Company So We Can All Get Rich, (Just Last Week He Purchased NCR, But They’d Rather Fight Than Switch)” which we sang to the tune of “The Holly and The Ivy.”
Or not. I suppose one had to have been there.
If I find the folder, I’ll certainly let you know. Until then, you’ll just have to use your imagination.
I do hope that folder rematerialises. Soon.
ReplyDeleteYour filing system is uncannily complex. Why not ask your secretary - Miss Ellie - where the required folder resides, Women tend to know things like that in their homes.
ReplyDeleteWe wait, with patient anticipation...
ReplyDeleteMy imagination is overly active, I might get arrested.
ReplyDelete"Dad-blamed"? My mind is reeling to find that you've suddenly become profane in your old age. When I was 13, my girlfriend's mother was fanatically opposed to profanity. Rightly seeing words like heck, darn, shoot, dad-blamed, gosh-darn, and so on as thinly-veiled substitutes for profanity, she declared that they were no better than profanity, and she enforced this view so rigorously that it made me acutely uncomfortable around her, maybe the moreso coming as I did from a home where sure-enough, out-and-out profane tirades were as common as the air. Unlike you, I think all words are good in their place, which is why I'm one of the few bloggers--who I know anyway--who EVER uses the f-word in his posts. At the same time, I'm offended by it on the street or when it's overused. I think, like one my English teachers did, that it's a sign of a shallow inferior mind. I wonder if the word "like" is any better. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteI forgot to thank the commenters earlier, so "Thank you, commenters." As for the late comment (Dec. 21) from Snowbrush, I'll have you know that I have not suddenly become profane in my old age. Like you, I do think all words are good in their place, and the place for the four-letter Anglo-Saxonisms so popular in our society nowadays is definitely with the Anglo-Saxons. John Grey and Michelle, for example, use such words with impunity, but it is, after all, their language. I have always said profanity was the sign of a poor vocabulary. My son still quotes me on that.
ReplyDelete"I have always said profanity was the sign of a poor vocabulary. My son still quotes me on that.”
ReplyDeleteI suppose you mean to imply that you raised your son well, that great minds think alike, or some such, yet I demur. In my confirmed opinion, the overuse of any half dozen words is the sign of a poor vocabulary. For instance, if my every third word I used was sociology, biology, psychology, hematology, hamartiology, or embryology, you might well wonder about the well-roundedness of my vocabulary. The trouble with cuss words is like the trouble with violence in movies in that both are so overused that they lose their impact. If you should get so angry as to use the f-word, it would be such a meaningful occasion that your friends and family would talk about it for decades, whereas if someone known for the overuse of profanity should use it, the opposite would be true.