Lyrics: Useful, or Mental Clutter?

The other day, I was scrounging around in my parents' house for a blank CD and came upon the Mount Everest of CD stacks. They were not blank, however, but a collection of mix CDs made throughout my middle and high school years. I decided to go down memory lane and popped CD after CD, some terribly scratched, into my car's CD player. The vast majority of the tracks I hadn't heard in years and years, and yet I noticed that I had the majority of the lyrics memorized word for word. On some occasions, I began singing along to a song perfectly and could not even remember its name or who was the singer or group.

This got me thinking...

The storage space in my brain dedicated to 80's, 90's and early 2000's music including that of Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears, Seether, Bush, and Lifehouse (to name a very select few) along with soundtracks from various movies, classic rock tunes, and some numbers from famous musicals must be the absolute largest of all mental storage spaces in my brain. I mean, how is it fair that I can remember all the words to "Come What May" from Moulin Rouge without hearing it for years but I can't remember information from my nutrition class one week ago?

Maybe the key is just to put all information I wish to truly store forever into a catchy tune. Honestly, that would probably work. One of my elementary teachers had us sing multiplication tables to kids tunes and I can STILL remember that almost twenty years later. So all you professors out there, perhaps it is time to conduct your lectures entirely in song. If nothing else, it would be incredibly entertaining.

ANYTHING That Swims??

Today, as I was driving behind a seafood delivery truck, I realized how bizarre some slogans are. Plastered in gigantic font on the back of the aforementioned ice truck (Dexter flashback, anyone??) were the words "if it swims, we have it." First of all, what lame, lackluster marketing employee came up with that one (how embarrassing would it be if he/she somehow came across this post??)? It does not rhyme, nor is it witty, nor were there any accompanying graphics to catch the eye of the consumer. It starts off with the potential to be a great catchphrase. The introductory words "if it swims..." left me in suspense on the edge of the driver's seat. My mind went wild with the myriad possibilities that could follow.

The one redeeming quality of the aforementioned slogan is that it got my mental cogs spinning. However, the thoughts sparked by my firing neurons were not the ones the company would want me to think. My first emotion was skepticism. Anything that swims? What those creepy fish with the glowing orb hanging off its face that dwells in the deepest depths of the sea? Technically, people swim too (Michael Phelps as an entree??) and domestic animals, are THOSE hanging out in the back of the refrigerated truck, too? Okay, okay, I understand that I was being a bit literal.

I don't want to eat that

....or that

The same thing happens with me and song lyrics. The other day, the Bruno Mars song "grenade" came on the radio and for the first time I realized the absurdity of what he is saying. So, in the chorus he lists a series of insane things he would do on behalf of some girl who doesn't care for him in the slightest. He claims he would "catch a grenade," "throw his hand on a blade," and "jump in front of a train" all for this nonchalant chick. Okay, I'll just start with the first one. Is the theoretical grenade in this scenario active? Did someone pull the pin before chucking it at Bruno? I mean, that makes a pretty big difference. I would catch an inactive grenade for a complete stranger without a second thought. 

Okay, number two. He would "throw his hand on a blade." Is this a saying I have never heard before? Does throwing one's hand on a blade equate to taking up a sword and dueling for her sake? Or does it mean he would cut his hand on a blade as some sort of Game of Thrones-style blood oath? 

Time for the third- jumping in front of a train. Is he doing this because she is already on the tracks and he is trying to jump in front of her so that he gets hit instead of her? I'm pretty sure if a train is heading for you full force, they would both go down in an instant. Or is he just jumping in front of a random, moving train just as a gesture to demonstrate his love? Because unless he jumps out of the way last minute which would seem quite cowardly, he would die and not get to reap the benefits of her returned love earned by his heroic act. If he did somehow live, he would be a vegetable most likely incapable of love. 

Final one, and then my rant is over. The last thing Bruno claims he would do is "take a bullet straight through (his) brain." Not at an angle? Come on, only taking bullets through the brain at any and all angles shows true devotion. 

Wow, if any of you made it to this point in the blog, I applaud you- you're a trooper!