ACHTUNG!

Sometime in the latter part of the 20th century, German teenagers rebelled against their accordian-loving parents by learning to play the shockingly more hard-core Casio Keyboard. The result was popular German Mega-Stars, Kraftwerk and their contemporaries. Today, on Sirius First Wave, it was Nick Rhodes' (from Duran Duran) birthday, so he got to choose a song...he chose a Kraftwerk favorite: Pocket Calculator. The lyrics go like this:

I am the operator...
of my pocket calculator.

(this is repeated several times in a semi-robotic manner)

I am adding...
I am subtracting...
I am controlling...
I am composing...

When you press a special key...
It plays a little melody...

(And so forth)

Between each line, there is the sound of old-skool 50's computers, like this: boo poo BE poo boo BE boo boop, etc.

Listening to this song has given me new confidence in my ability to write lyrics. You can't get much worse than the calculator people. German people are good at beer and polka and sausages, but I don't know about popular music. I don't even want to get started on the bad lyrics the Scorpions were tossing out in the 80s and 90s, but I'm sure they were armed with an English Rhyming dictionary during the songwriting process.

Speaking of old skool 50s computers, Kev and I watched some 50s sci-fi movies on TCM last night. First was Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Frankly, I didn't like it. I found the whole "pod-people" concept silly and not at all scary, and the ending was very unsatisfying. Then we watched the first part of Earth Versus the Flying Saucers, and I have to say I really liked this one a lot. We recorded the ending, and I am looking forward to watching it.

Anyway, a special shout out ot Dave Howard and his pocket calculator, wherever he is.