I'm still looking for the Great American English Geek song.

Recently I've been listening to a lot of free music at 3hive, not so much because it's especially good as because it's new. And I think I mentioned the free.

The Metasciences have grown on me, and their song titles have some clever wordplay, e.g. "Afraidioactive" and "TiVo the Revolution."

Not to mention the fact that the first verse of their song "High Noon" is the demented love letter I'll always wish I'd written:

You know that the words I wield
are weapons of sardonic virtue
I just use them as a shield
And I would never, ever hurt you

(Aside: I have looked sardonic up many, many times, and I still don't know exactly when to use it. My last, slim hope is to find the prototypical instantiation of the adjective and extrapolate from there.)

The other 3hive song of English-note was Vampire Weekend's "Oxford Comma." I am a huge proponent of the Oxford comma, and so I just had to download it.

It's a catchy tune, but the unflinchingly descriptivist refrain is the only part of the song I really like. Here's my best guess:

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
I've seen those English dramas too
they're cruel
So if there's any other way to spell a word
It's fine with me
with me

Neither of these songs comes close to what I really want, but Modest Mouse's "Black Cadillacs" has a few brilliant lines that hint at the Great American English Geek song. Needless to say, I listened to this obsessively my senior year of college, often skipping ahead just to get to the really good part:

And we were laughing at the stars
while our feet clung tight to the ground
So pleased with ourselves
for using so many verbs and nouns

Labels: geekery