Presidents (Colors)

So this post's song is thanks to one of those random Utah Mormon bands. Something you never hear of (and generally for a reason) unless you live near the Wasatch Front or attend one of the BYUs, that is. This peppy little number is a marginally educational tune that would be right at home in a hoe-down. Nonetheless, it's become quite the viral song for me lately. I have a habit of doing this with some pretty mediocre songs (see: "Leavin" by Jesse McCartney as another shameful example), but for some reason, this one is a great pick-me-up during a running session. Not to mention that I can now remember the order of all the presidents for the first time since junior year of high school. Though, of course, I play it in my mind to a tune that wouldn't be out of place in Gint or O Brother Where Art Thou?

The only saving grace this song has going for it is the peppy beat and clever - though elementary - educational value. My largest personal grievance with it comes in the form of poor punctuation, You see, madeningly, the song appears on iTunes as "President's". (Scowling Face) What is the President going to do? (President's going for a run; he'll be back in an hour.) What does he own? (President's cat died the other day: First Lady ran it over.) Which singular president are we discussing here? For the last time: a word is never pluralised with an apostrophe! Grrr! (As you can see, OD and I do not care: poor grammar and punctuation are disgusting.)

I have also made a discovery: snowballs are quite violent. Particularly when wielded by brawny baseball players. The sundry snowball fights of Sunday evening apparently took their toll. Since I tend to exercise by the philosophy, "go hard or go home" I assumed that the pain along my ribs on the right back side was just a pulled muscle. Not difficult to assume, really: lots of upper body weights lately. Oh no. Turns out that it's a massive bruise...from a snowball. Wielded by one of the aforementioned brawny baseball players. There's a matching blue-greeny splotch just over my left hip. Also from a snowball. Nice to know, though, that I didn't just weirdly pull a muscle in my back somehow.

And of course, exercise brings along another tangent (which, I promise will yield yet another tangent). The second one first: tangents are a literary art form. Don't believe me? Read Dumas; read Hugo. The art form of the pages-long, or even at times full-chapter-length tangent was brought to its height by 19th century French novelists. Though to be fair others like Emily Bronte did a servicable job as well. Only Dumas could go on for pages at length about the history of so obscure a character like Jacques Seguiers. The Chancellor of the Royal Seals appears in only one chapter of The Three Musketeers, and his entire backstory is given to justify one sentence that Dumas wished to use: "no doubt at that moment Seguier looked for the famous bellrope that was to save him from temptation, but not finding it, he stretched out his hand to the place that the Queen admitted the letter lay." (I also take this moment to point out that I quoted the previous sentence with no help from the book...which I've read now about 25 times since high school.)

Here he is: master of the superfluous tangent. Love it.

The exercise-related tangent was this: I have discovered anew the power of Disney songs in raising one's energy and levels of motivation. The fun-factor of climbing miles-worth of stairs is greatly increased when one can drum along to the beat of such wonderful childhood classics as "Under the Sea", "Kiss the Girl", "Friend Like Me", and "Prince Ali". It's good to switch it up.