Aural Analysis: "Bad Romance" by Lady GaGa

Another commute, another aural assault. This time it was the GaGa-thing’s “Bad Romance.” I had this song stuck in my head for something like five or six days, and only managed to finally expunge it by means of a liberal application of Viking metal and medieval Norwegian folk songs. But then, yesterday, as I surfed through the vaster wasteland yet that is SoCal radio, the GaGa-thing came crashing back at me. As will be evident from an examination of the lyrics, the Gaga-thing is fixated on revenge; I believe she is reaching through the radio to make a personal attack on me. Well, it’s time for me to fight back using the only weapon available to me: Swiftian wit.

It’s notable that I heard “Bad Romance” three times on my way to Orange County, rather than the subsequent single, “Alejandro.” Is this owing to the absolutely outrageous acts of homosexual gang rape and blasphemy and Nazi fetishism in the “Alejandro” video that represent GaGa’s crossing of three too many lines? I wonder.

Before I begin, I should say that I actually have some modicum of respect for the GaGa, if only a modicum. In the intellectual desert that is contemporary pop music, I must concede that she exhibits some shred of originality and talent. She is the best of the worst. She can sing, and isn’t all autotuned to Hell and beyond. She has talent. Her songs are undeniably well-crafted; they are all earworms waiting to happen. She and her collaborators have catchiness down to a science.

But oh, how she opts to expend such on weirdness and fetishism when she could probably use it to make much better music. There is a Tori Amos inside of Lady GaGa, trying to get out but constantly getting beaten back by means of bizarre displays of perversion. So my criticism of the GaGa-thing is a criticism of misused ability, rather than a criticism of an absolute lack of ability, which is the criticism I might level at, say, the current incarnation of the Black Eyed Peas.

You want my revenge, GaGa? Oh, I’ll give you my revenge. As before, my responses to your lyrics are in the brackets. As before, I offer the video up to those who, in their innocence, have been spared the seeing of it. It would be another essay entirely to describe the aesthetics of the video which…I actually really like, much as it tries to toe this weird line between sexiness and repulsiveness which…I actually really like. But whatever. The song still be dumb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I

Let’s go, GaGa. Me and you, toe-to-toe, no maybe.

Oh, and spoiler alert: if you have not already seen Vertigo, you suck.

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

Caught in a bad romance

[These are the lead lyrics from the lead single for The Fame Monster album, intended to describe the negative aspects of celebrity culture. I think the concept is breaking down here; bad romances are hardly exclusive to trashy celebrities. I, being about as unfamous as it is possible for a person to get, will attest to that.]

Ra Ra-ah-ah-ah
Roma Roma-ma
GaGa
Oh la-la
Want your bad romance

[Let me stop you right there, Dame GaGa. Now, I know your name implies that you have only a cursory apprehension of human language (and your video reveals that you have an outsider’s dim and unintuitive appreciation of what human clothing is supposed to be), but that doesn’t mean you have to actually employ strings of baby-talk in your lyrics. You’re an adult, as your video abundantly reveals. You can use adult words. Can’t you?

Okay. Let’s keep going.]

I want your ugly
I want your disease
I want your everything
As long as it’s free

[Wow. Apparently, being ugly and diseased and poor, I am the GaGa-thing’s ideal lover. Nobody tell my fiancée.]

I want your love
Love love love
I want your love

[It really takes something for somebody to make an expression of love sound like “blah, blah, blah.” Thank you, GaGa-thing, for cheapening affection and emotion.

Actually, no. I take that back. I’m not going to thank you for that, not even sarcastically.]

I want your drama

[You do? Okay. I’m going to see a performance of King Lear next Friday night in Garden Grove. Would you like me to get you a ticket? It’s only $14.50 on Goldstar, which I know isn’t free (freeness being apparently the threshold for your love, in spite of your otherwise overwhelming materialism), but it’s close enough to it.]

The touch of your hand

[Wow, Lady GaGa. That actually sounds…totally human and relatable. You’re slipping.]

I want your leather studded kiss in the sand

[Oh, good. You’re back to being a freaky weird person again. Don’t ever change, Lady.

On a different note, can you imagine how awful a “leather-studded kiss” would be? It makes me think of studded leather armor. I do not want to kiss boiled leather onto which circular metal plates have been affixed. If my lover’s lips had that texture, I think I would need to get a better lover. Or some serious fucking chapstick.]

I want your love
Love love love
I want your love

[When you say that, Lady GaGa, somehow I don’t feel as though you’re being sincere. Something tells me that, in spite of your repeated requests, that if I were to try and give you my love I would very quickly be getting some hate from a bodyguard’s boot.]

You know that I want you

[I do? Well, okay, Lady GaGa. I guess you can have me. But I’m going to wear about seventeen condoms. I don’t know where in the universe you have been, and frankly, I don’t want to know.]

And you know that I need you

[That’s funny. You seem to have been doing pretty well without me up until now. Your vitamin-me deficiency hasn’t much affected your ability to wear spinal-cord extensions and twitch like vat-born abortion that you are.

I want it bad
A bad romance

[Alright, so let’s examine this wanting of the bad romance. What qualities does a bad romance have that you find desirable? Tragic failure? Does that mean you do want to see King Lear with me? Or are you drawn to the emotional or physical abusiveness? If so, I know a certain Katy Perry who, judging by her song lyrics, is desperately looking for a sub to dom over. You girls should hook up.]

I want your love and
I want your revenge

[Well, how convenient for you! ‘Cause that’s exactly what I want to give you!]

You and me could write a bad romance

[You know what? I bet we actually could. The bad romance that you and I would write, GaGa, being drawn together by a volatile mix of queasy lust and utter disdain, would be near-unlimited in its badness. I’ll take the first chapter; you get the second.]

I want your love and
All your lover’s revenge
You and me could write a bad romance

[Yes, I still think we could, too.]

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Caught in a bad romance

[Hey, wait. When did you go from wanting a bad romance to being caught in one? In the space of like two lyrics? You move too fast for me, Lady GaGa! Usually it takes at least eight lyrics for me to commit.]

Ra ra-ah-ah-ah

[Sis-sis, boom bah-bah. Are we doing some role-playing now, Lady GaGa? Are we supposed to be late 19th century college cheerleaders? Are we supposed to be reciting some sort of prayer to the Ancient Aegyptian sun god? Or are we back to talking in proto-linguistic babble syllables again? So now you’re into submission and paraphilic infantilism. That makes some kind of sense, I guess.

Oh God. If Lady GaGa starts to make sense to you, fear for your sanity.]

Roma roma-ma
GaGa
Oh la-la
Want your bad romance

[Yes, I know. Your wanting of my bad romance is abundantly clear at this point.]

I want your horror

[Really? First you want to go to see King Lear with me, and now you want to go see Piranha 3D? Well, okay. But we’re going Dutch. International superstars in my company can pay for they own damn tickets. And, seriously, have you seen the prices for a 3D movie these days?]

I want your design

[Uh? Well, I’m not much of a designer, but okay. Besides, seeing your outfits, it’s not like I could possibly do any worse than the designers you already wear. An eyeless ape who has had half of his brains scooped out with a spoon could probably design more attractive clothes.]

‘Cuz you’re a criminal
As long as you’re mine
I want your love
Love love love
I want your love

[You know, Lady GaGa, you’re an adult human female (I think?), and I’m an adult human male, so for you to have my love would have would probably be legal in most areas. Then again, I am confident that if anyone could start at consensual heterosexual sex and end up at the point of criminal sexual perversion, it’s you.]

I want your psycho

[So you want me to dress up like a woman and stab you in the shower as you scream and bleed chocolate syrup? Eh…maybe.]

Your vertigo shtick

[So you want me to fall in love with you, whereupon you will fake your own death, whereupon I will fall into a deep depression until I find you again and fall in love with you again, whereupon we will recreate your fake death and end up actually killing you? That’s a pretty complex fantasy to have, Queen of the GaGas.

It takes a lot to get you off, doesn’t it?]

Want you in my rear window

[Oh, I get it now. All this discussion of classic Hitchcock movies is just a lead-in to you asking for anal sex. Thanks for ruining some of my favorite films for me, Lady GaGa. Never again will I be able to watch Jimmy Stewart and the incomparable Kim Novak climb those fateful stairs without thinking about you taking it in the butt.

You know, Lady GaGa, the other pop stars—they’re just ignorant fuckwits. They know not what they do. But you, you have just enough talent and culture and intelligence to cause actual harm to the things I hold dear. With moderate ability comes moderate responsibility, and it’s unfortunate that you have opted to use your powers for evil.]

Baby you’re sick

[*I’m* sick? Hey, I’m not the one who just turned one of the best movies of all time into a request for butt sex.]

I want your love
Love love love
I want your love

[I don’t know. I was having considerable doubts about our love you even before you asked me for all the Hitchock murder roleplay. I don’t know if me repeatedly pretending to kill is a good foundation for a relationship.]

You know that I want you (’Cuz I’m a free bitch baby)

[I doubt that. I’m gonna go with the supposition that you’re actually a ludicrously expensive bitch.]

And you know that I need you
I want it bad romance
Your bad romance

[Yeah, I think we both know at this point that any relationship between us would prove to be pretty fucking terrible. And yet you want it anyway? This song really is a cry for help, isn’t it?]

I want your love and
I want your revenge
You and me could write a bad romance
I want your love and
All your lover’s revenge

[More revenge? I haven’t given you enough yet? Okay, well, we have a bridge and a last verse and one more instance of the chorus to go. I hope to have satisfied your revenge quota by the time we’re done.]

You and me could write a bad romance

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

Caught in a bad romance

Ra ra-ah-ah-ah
Roma roma-ma

[Roma—like the Roma people of Cenral and Eastern Europe? So we can just flat-out use the names of ethnic groups as non-lexical vocables now? Let me try, using my own ethnicity. “Ger-Ger-German American.” Eh. Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.]

GaGa, Ooh la-la
Want your bad romance

Walk walk fashion baby

[How is it that we’re discussing fashion now? This is the second time you’ve brought it around to fashion for no apparent reason, O atrocity that goes by the name of GaGa. I feel like you’re just trying to draw attention to your outfits, which probably don’t need any help in that department.]

Work it, move that bitch c-razy
Walk walk fashion baby

[In _those_ heels? I don’t think so, girlfriend.]

Work it, move that bitch c-razy
Walk walk passion baby
Work it
I’m a free bitch baby

[If that were true, how would you be paying for all those ridiculous clothes? Shit that ugly has got to be super-expensive.]

I want your love
And I want your revenge
I want your love
I don’t wanna be friends

[You don’t? But isn’t being bad friends a good way to lead up to being bad romantic partners?]

Je veux ton amour
Et je veux ta revenge
Je veux ton amour

[Look, you’re just saying the exact same thing in French. You don’t fool me. That’s not really very sophisticated. And yet there’s definitely something about the way your tongue curls around those vowels…ah! No! Must…resist…!]

I don’t wanna be friends
(Want your bad romance
I want your bad romance)
Want your bad romance!

I want your love and
I want your revenge
You and me could write a bad romance
I want your love and
All your lover’s revenge
You and me could write a bad romance

[We’ve been over all this already.]

Caught in a bad romance

Ra ra-ah-ah-ah
Roma roma-ma
GaGa

[You know, just because you took your name from the Queen song “Radio Ga Ga,” which criticized the kind of infantile pop music that was “becom[ing] some background noise / A backdrop for the girls and boys / Who just don't know or just don't care” doesn’t mean that you have to continue you to speak baby talk. If anything, Lady GaGa, you are becoming the very thing that Queen set out to criticize. And, in the end, that’s my real criticism of you—that, in your addressing of the topics of materialistic excess, our culture’s obsession with celebrity, and the pop music that is devoid of artistry and serves only to provide an accompaniment for sex, by means of your hyperbole, you seem to be critiquing all of these things by means of hyperbolic excess, but I really don’t think you’re critiquing these things so much as I think you’re reveling in them with an absolute abandonment of self-discipline. You are not satire so much as you are self-parody. I don’t think you’re pop culture’s greatest critic as you are its worst perpetrator.]

Oh la-la
Want your bad romance

[You know what? No. Sorry, but no.]

I Have a Nightmare

Fox pundit Glenn Beck has said that President Obama is a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred of white people or the white culture.” He characterized health care reform as “reparations.”

Tomorrow, on the 47th anniversary of the delivery of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech”—King’s dream having certainly found at least partial fulfillment in the election of a black American President—Fox pundit Glenn Beck will be gathering his people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for the “Restoring Honor” rally. Beck characterizes the event as a “non-political” tribute to American soldiers, this in spite of the fact that the majority of attendees are likely to be outspoken members of the Tea Party, and politically charged figures such as Sarah Palin and Beck himself will be speaking about matters of national import.

It is possible that Palin and Beck will refrain from employing the divisive rhetoric that is otherwise their stock in trade. It is possible that the Tea Partiers will observe the solemnity of the occasion by refraining from holding up signs with insulting and abusive epithets on them or booing any mention of President Obama, which is otherwise their stock in trade. It is possible that the event will, indeed, be as “non-political” as any gathering of otherwise highly political people meeting at a highly political location can be.

It is also possible that monkeys will fly out of my dick. Rather profoundly unlikely, but possible.

Fox pundit Glenn Beck has said that he did not originally intend to meet at the selfsame place on the selfsame day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his speech. He has called the coincidence “divine providence.” Out of deference to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Beck will be standing “two flights lower” on the steps of the memorial than where King himself stood. Beck has said “I am not Dr. King.”

And yet, inspired by this “providence,” Beck has gone on to say that “This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the Civil Rights movement…We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and, dammit, we will reclaim the Civil Rights moment. We will take that movement because we were the people that did it in the first place.”

We were the people that did it in the first place? We meaning the affluent white people who comprise the lion’s share of the Tea Party? Affluent white people were the people who did the Civil Rights movement?

Wow.

I hope that the notion of the kind of affluent, conservative, Caucasian Tea partisans “reclaiming the Civil Rights Movement” turns your stomach as much as it does mine, gentle reader. I have a very hard time seeing Beck and his people as being in the same situation as American Negroes in the 1960s. To the best of my knowledge, nobody is opening up on Tea Parties with firehoses. Nobody is unleashing attack dogs on Tea Partiers. While Tea Partiers might live in fear of a fantastical socialist takeover of America, they don’t live in actual fear of being lynched by their detractors. Nobody is liable to threaten a Tea Partier with beating or death because that Tea Partier might opt to date outside of the Tea Party, and I believe most states will recognize a marriage between a Tea Partier and a non-Tea Partier. Tea Partiers are not compelled to use inferior facilities or required by law to stay among their own kind or categorically excluded from places of business. Tea Partiers are not, to the best of my knowledge, systematically excluded from institutions of education, denied the right to vote, or the recipients of endemic generational economic discrimination. Glenn Beck ‘s expressions of disobedience are vetted and vouchsafed by the government, and have never landed him in jail.

Tea Partiers are, apparently, compelled to pay more taxes than they would like to pay in exchange for government services that they do not want.

Government services like assistance for the poor, which is a thing that Dr. King expressly did want. I’m willing to bet he would’ve wanted universal health care, too.

In my estimation, Tea Partiers have it pretty fucking good compared to African Americans in the middle part of the 20th Century. Pretty fucking good, indeed. Which doesn’t stop the Tea Partiers from portraying themselves as an oppressed minority victimized by a brutal and unjust state.

I extrapolate out and imagine the Tea Partiers “reclaiming” the Civil Rights movement which they “started” as merely the beginning of a trend. Soon, all oppressive groups will “reclaim” the victimization of their victims, and so gain self-pity and self-righteousness on top of privilege that comes at the expense of others. Meat-eaters will reclaim animal rights from PeTA: “Animals have the right to be carnivores!” Child molestors will reclaim molestation from children: “That six-year-old forced herself upon me with her sex-crazed ways!” Neo-Nazis will reclaim the Shoah from the Jews—“Our ancestors were oppressed because they had to shove your ancestors into the ovens. Do you realize how heavy a body, even a body starved down to bones, can be?”

And, in the coup de grace of inappropriate appropriation, Glenn Beck will reclaim the Civil Rights movement from black people. Because God knows we can’t leave something so important as the struggle against oppression in the hands of actual oppressed people.

Aural Analysis: "California Gurls" by Katy Perry

Katy, my lady. (Yeah?). Now listen here, baby. (Uh-huh!). I had to listen to your stupid song three times today on my way from O.C. down to S.D. After being assaulted in this manner, I felt compelled to mount a counter-attack in the only way I know how: exposing the idiocy of popular culture by means of the ripping, mean-spirited satire that is ever the domain of those who receive an inadequate amount of sex from the bubbly, beautiful people described in your song and your video.

Here's the video. Watch it, if you've not done so already, if for no other reason than to see a woman strapping cans of whipped cream to her impressive breasts and blasting out a moneyshot of whipped cream all over an army of evil gummi bears, and then to try to carry on with a normal human existence after having been exposed to such imagery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwE-SLnLkqY

So greetings, loved ones. Let's take a trip into the stupidity of "California Gurls." My responses to the original lyrics are in brackets.

I know a place
Where the grass is really greener

[Really? Where would that be? Surely not Southern California, where we have water rationing and many of the lawns die during the summer.

Are you in Paradise City? Axl Rose said that the grass is green there, but I still haven't seen it with my own eyes.]

Warm, wet and wild
There must be something in the water

[You mean the water we import from hundreds of miles inland and upstate? Or do you mean the water we plunder from the Colorado river, sloppy seconds water that has flowed through six other states before it gets to California? Either way, this is a poor claim for California Exceptionalism.]

Sippin' gin and juice
Laying underneath the palm trees

[I somehow doubt you or the professional models in your video have ever done anything so ghetto or high-calorie as to drink gin and juice. At 252 calories per serving, you and your girls aren't going to be able to pull off your Daisy Dukes for very long if you were to drink Snoop Juice. More likely, I can see you drinking reduced calorie pomegranatinis and then spending an hour purging afterwards. See also: your silly video.]

The boys
Break their necks
Try'na to creep a little sneak peek
(at us)

[This is weird on multiple levels. First of all, how is it "creep[ing] a little sneak peek" if you are clearly making a sexual display of yourself? But then there's this notion that the boys are "break[ing] their necks" just to look at you. What the fuck, Katy Perry? Are you suggesting that your sex is overpowering that it causes people to VIOLENTLY DIE? I'm sorry, but I'm not really seeing this as a good thing.

Oh no! I feel a mind-rapingly hooky pre-chorus coming on!]

You could travel the world

[Thank you for your permission!]

But nothing comes close
To the golden coast

[In what respect? Sluttiness? I hear Singapore beats us out in that regard.]

Once you party with us
You'll be falling in love

[That's as may be. It's hard to ignore the hormonal demand to fuck you when you're practically begging for it. But it's been my experience spending the whole of my lifetime among California Gurls that it's relatively rare that the kind of women who figure in this sex fantasy will never love you back unless you're a producer, a director, or somebody who otherwise has six figures to throw around. So there's that.]

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

[Congratulations. You know how to fake an orgasm into an autotuner. Your Pentecostal parents must be proud, Katy Perry. Tell me, does that Jesus tattoo on your wrist ever itch or turn weird colors when you're doing stuff like this?]

California girls
We're unforgettable

[Well, that's for fucking sure. I can't go anywhere without stumbling over this song. Its simple major harmonies and insipid beats stick in my brain like barbed fishhooks.]

Daisy Dukes
Bikinis on top

[So, you're saying California is special because its women employ a fashion made famous by a character who was supposed to be from Georgia?]

Sun-kissed skin
So hot
We'll melt your popsicle

[Is that...is that supposed to be a metaphor for ejaculation? I think it is, but it has got to take the prize for the weirdest and dumbest double entendre of all time. And again with the weird violence; I don't know about the rest of the Y-chromosome havers in the world, but thinking about my dick melting off doesn't make me feel all that comfortable.

You're into S&M, aren't you, Katy? I feel sorry for Russel Brand. But I guess you met him by chucking a bottle at his head, so he must like it when you hurt him.]

Oooooh Oh Oooooh

[Now I'm envisioning you achieving that fake orgasm by strapping on stilettos and stepping on live mice. I like this image; it makes me not want to bang you so bad.]

California girls
We're undeniable

[Do you deny that I have devoted all of this previous blog posting to denying you? Hah! DENIED!]

Fine, fresh, fierce
We got it on lock

[While I actually appreciate the attempt at alliteration here, these lines have a couple of problems. First, that "sun-kissed skin" does not look all that fresh. Once California Gurls get exposed to about 30 years of golden sunshine, they start to sag and wrinkle like mountain hags. Of course, they then get botox injections to compensate, which makes them look like the plastic dolls they really are. Nothing comes close to the Golden Coast when it comes to presentations of surgical sexuality, I do grant you that!

Except Singapore, I guess. I hear they have some pretty wild things going on over there.

Also, to say you "got it on lock" makes sex sound like some sort of Xbox achievement. Don't do that.]

West coast represent

[Which West Coast are we representing here? The illusory one drenched in sex and smiling, or the one that I inhabit, full of bourgeois affectation and soulless pop media layered over racism and grotesque economic discrepancies and disappointment?]

Now put your hands up

[Yay, grotesque economic discrepancies!]

Oooooh Oh Oooooh

Sex on a beach
We get sand in our stilletos

[Oh, come on. Even the alien clone women of L.A. who represent an evolutionary leap forward into artificial life don't wear stilettos to the goddamn beach.]

We freak
In my jeep

[The lyrics site I adapted this from misquoted the lyric as "We freak / And we're cheap." Ho ho ho. As if that would be the lyric for this song.]

Snoop Doggy Dogg on the stereo

[Yeah, I'm sure you listen to "Murder Was the Case" and "Deez Nuuuts" on a daily basis.]

You could travel the world
But nothing comes close
To the golden coast
Once you party with us
You'll be falling in love
Oooooh Oh Oooooh

[Just one verse before the chorus now? Yeah, I know. Writing words is hard. Showing boobs and smiling like a naughty girl is much easier. And a much more effective way of selling records.]

California girls
We're unforgettable
Daisy Dukes
Bikinis on top
Sun-kissed skin
So hot
We'll melt your popsicle
Oooooh Oh Oooooh

[The more I think about my dick melting off, the less sexy this song becomes. But again, anything that helps me not want to get blasted by whip cream from Katy Perry's tits is a valuable asset in my fight to not have my sexuality hijacked by Hollywood.]

(Snoop Dogg)

[Hey, Snoop Dogg! I haven't really been following your career since _The Chronic_, one of the finest examples of West Coast Hip-Hop of all time! How have you been, Mr. D. O. Double G?]

Toned, Tan
Fit and ready
Turn it up cause its gettin' heavy
Wild wild west coast
These are the girls I love the most
I mean the ones
I mean like shes the one
Kiss her
Touch her
Squeeze her buns

[Oh, I see. That's how you've been.]

The girl's a freak
She drives a jeep
And lives on the beach

[Didn't Katy rhyme "freak" and "jeep" and "beach" a few verses ago? You know, Snoop, I never took you for the sharpest of wordsmiths. Your style was always more contingent upon your smooth delivery and your creative use of the letter "z" more than intricate wordplay. Even so, I would think you would have a little more self-respect, as a veteran rapper, than to take your rhymes from a twenty-six-year-old white girl.]

I'm okay
I wont play

[You'd better not. I saw _Get Him to the Greek_. That Russel Brand is scary when he gets a few (thousand) drugs in him.]

I love the bait
Just like I love LA
Venice beach
And Palm Springs
Summer time is everything

[I hate summer in Southern California. Everything is hot, dry, and slathered in U.V. radiation and inaccessible sex. I guess that's not all Katy Perry's fault. But it is partially.]

Homeboys
Hangin' out
All that ass
Hangin' out

[Lyricism at its finest, folks.]

Bikinis, zucchinis, martinis
No weenies

[Did you just rhyme "zucchinis" with "weenies," Mr. Dogg? I struggle to come up with a coherent response to that.

Except that I might observe that, while according to the most recent data gathered in 1996, California did place second in national summer squash production (being edged out by Florida), and that fresh zucchinis are indeed available here during the summer months, the presence of zucchinis would hardly seem to be a defining feature for California. Zucchini tends not to factor strongly into local cuisine, being far more prominent in the dishes of Mediterranean countries and Mexico. I grant you that, according to Wikipedia, California was the most likely place where zucchini production was introduced into the U.S. (the squash having been taken from the new world, hybridized and selectively bred in Italy, and then brought westward back over the pond). Were you reading up on agricultural history while composing your lyrics, Mr. Dogg?

Or were you just coming up with a ricockulous rhyme for "bikinis"?

And what's with the "No Weenies" injunction? No weenies other than your own, I take it, the better to leave you with your sexual pick of all these fine, fresh, fierce females. But I am thinking that the nature of the "California Gurls" video engenders a response that will involve a lot of weenies, even if those weenies are only being used for masturbatory purposes.

Because it's PORN.]

Just a king
And a queen-ie

[Ugh. No comment.]

Katy my lady
(Yeah)
Now lookie here, baby
(Uh huh)
I'm all up on you
'Cause you representin' California
(Ohhh yeahh)

[Hey, Mr. Dogg, I'm representin' California, too. The underside of California; the after-image of glamor, what's left when the lights fade. Does that mean you'll be gettin' "all up on" me, too? I'd best bust out my Daisy Dukes.

Now bring that chorus back! It's like sugar being directly injected into your brain!]

California gurls
We're unforgettable
Daisy Dukes
Bikinis on top
Sun-kissed skin
So hot
We'll melt your Popsicle
Oooooh oh oooooh

California gurls
We're undeniable
Fine, fresh, fierce
We got it on lock
Westcoast represent
(Westcoast, Westcoast)
Now put your hands up
Oooooh oh oooooh

Snoop Dogg:
(Californiaaa, Californiaaa)
California girls man
I wish they all could be
California girls
(Californiaaa)
I really wish
You all could be
California girls
(Californiaaa, girls)

Yeah, so that's "California Gurls." No matter how you might criticize it, at least it's not "I Gotta Feeling." It's got that much going for it.

Here are some other links to songs that, in my humble estimation, represent the Southern California experience in a far more musically adroit and psychologically realistic manner.

"Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwlogyj7nFE

"Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlUKcNNmywk

"Parallel Universe" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fPYyoY49Bc

"Down Rodeo" by Rage Against the Machine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KEKL8fcvzY

"Like a Stone" by Audioslave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QU1nvuxaMA

"L.A. Woman" by The Doors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMVnEGcMsFs

"Straight Outta Compton" by N.W.A.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkPb4s0-QcI

"What I Got" by Sublime
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Uc3ZrmhDN4

"Aenema" by Tool
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCEeAn6_QJo

(Every time you listen to "AEnema," with lyrics like "Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA / The only way to fix it is to flush it all away. / Any fucking time. Any fucking day," a pop star goes to Hell! So put it on repeat.)

There are many more I might pick, but these will serve as a primer for quality Southern California music.

Also notable: this pitch-perfect gay tribute to "California Gurls." Gin and Juicy Juice! This is camp at is absolute finest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kelUCEcdO8M

Fairness

Teaching teaches you a lot about fairness. Like how, basically, it doesn't exist.

Today I suggested to the instructor of the class that a student fail because she had been absent from three tutoring sessions. I had made it abundantly clear to the class that repeat non-attendance would result in failure, giving the students a written syllabus and verbal instructions to the effect that the second unexcused absence would warrant a failing grade in the class. I opted not to fail this student after the second absence, because I prefer to be more lenient in person than I am on paper. But with the third absence, my capacity for permissiveness has been pushed beyond its limit.

No doubt, the student will claim that it is unfair of me to fail her. Last semester, I was exposed to any number of allegations from students as to the "unfairness" of the exercising of my power as an instructor, when I was only operating in accordance with the established standards that they could and should have been aware of all throughout the duration of the semester. But of course, most any punishment is unfair when you're on the receiving end of it, isn't it? And if I don't fail her, the other students in the class will insist that I am being unfair, singling her out for special treatment.

What is fair? Is it fair to try to accommodate the rules to suit the needs of the individual? Or is it fair to try to uphold the rules as impersonally as possible? Neither one seems, objectively, to be more right than the other, and circumstantially either could be interpreted as the right thing to do. One's own experiences and personality will probably prioritize one over the other, but it doesn't seem to me that there's any absolute way of determining the rightness of mercy or justice; when to apply the rules and when not.

When it comes right down to it, there's no right or wrong here. Just a shot in the dark for me, the authority figure, as to what is the best for me and the student in question and all the other students who have not violated the rules but whose compliance might well be contingent upon the equitable enforcement of the rules.

And thus we come to a quandary, where all options are both right and wrong.

I wish the ethical option in any given situation were always obvious, but if it were, we wouldn't need ethics, would we?