helvirago | Well, I don't care if I'm pretty at all...

Coming up, the answers to the unguessed lyrics from the quiz. Some thoughts spurred by writing this entry:

Am I the only person who listens to Dido? I keep feeling that there's something, I don't know, relentlessly middlebrow about liking her, as though I should be embarrassed about it. But I have no idea where that feeling's coming from! Anyway, I just go on liking her a lot.
My French ~~kind of~~ really sucks. Despite my listening to the Les Miz soundtrack a silly number of times. Seriously, I don't understand any of it -- but I do wonder why on earth the French version has "My prince is already on the way" and the English version has "There is a castle on a cloud." Huh? Never liked that song, anyway. At least the castle on a cloud version. I mean, among other things, the line about crying not being allowed irritated me, because I imagine the ~~Javerts~~ Thenardiers (Javerts, psha. What's wrong with me?) looked pretty harshly on crying too! I, um, may have thought about it too much. It's funny, I think I have some of the same issues with Cosette as with Harry Potter, in that their childhoods were supposed to be entirely dominated by these people who essentially hate and (at least emotionally) abuse them, but it doesn't have all that much impact on their personalities. Okay, really overthinking it.
Apparently, the phrase "open palmed" appears in a fair number of sex-related sites -- Kama Sutra and erotica. I guess it doesn't come up all that much, but where it does come up it's often in the context of caresses -- or, in the case of the Kama Sutra, slaps, but in the context "kissing and slapping between her breasts", which sounds not particularly erotic, but hey. Kama Sutra.
I overthink stuff a lot.

Ooh! "William's Doll"!

4. Mes yeux te cherchent sans arret/ Ecoute bien mon coeur t'appelle/ Nous pourrons si bien nous aimer/ Tu verras la vie sera belle... - "Tu es partout" (You are everywhere) Edith Piaf (apparently it was in Saving Private Ryan as well, of course, as Montmartre sur Seine)

My scavenged-from-years-old-French-lessons translation attempt: "My eyes look for you without ceasing/ Listen, my heart calls you/ We could love each other so well/ You'll see life will be beautiful." castalie, how'd I do? (Heh. When I searched for "Mes yeux te cherchent sans arret," Google suggested "Did you mean 'Mes yeux te cherche sans arret?'" Ha! In your face, Google! My crappy French grammar is better than yours! I think.)

5. Soy'ooz neroosh'imi resp'ooblik svob'odnikh/ Splot'ila nav'eki vel'ikaia Rus - The Soviet National Anthem

Translation: "Unbreakable Union of freeborn Republics/ Great Russia has welded forever to stand." (That, I just looked up. I had all of one semester of Russian - enough to know how to say hedgehog, American, and where - "gde yosh Amerikanka?" Except that's the noun form for American female, so probably it's wrong. Ah, well. Ya Amerikanka. Gde yosh?*) Y'all remember the Soviet sub crew singing this from Hunt for Red October? Go give a listen. It's as good as you remember.

7. The geraniums on your window sill/ The carnations, dear, and the daffodil - "Bring It On", Nick Cave - Dude, pyrric must have just skipped this quiz. Sniff.

13. He lay open palmed to her world.../ She stretched in arched abeyance,/ Holding thunderclap and starlight in one mind. - "Sad to See the Season Go" Cowboy Junkies, off the "Rarities, B-Sides and Sad, Slow Waltzes" album. Although I'd forgotten which song it was, so I googled the lyrics, spurring the observation above.

14. A neurotic, paranormal impact is waiting to explode/ Another mindless constellation is going to overload - "Music for a Paranormal Life" Neuroticfish - Totally didn't expect anyone to get this one. It's on a synth-pop collection.

16. When I've been here for just one day/ You'll already miss me if I go away/ So close the blinds and shut the door/ You won't need other friends anymore - "Don't Leave Home" Dido - I thought this was a nice comforting little song until I went to quote the lyrics.

18. She is only twenty-two/ And she feels her life is through/ Blames it on fate, starts drinking at eight - "Sorrow Floats" Voice of the Beehive ("So don't drown your sorrows, or on you will be the joke. Because the only thing that you will drown is yourself, cause you see my dear, sorrow, it floats.")

20. As you sink beneath the soothing streams of time/ May you be thankful that you had another day - "Lullaby" Assemblage 23 ("As you drift into the gauzy realm of dreams/ May you take comfort in the thought that you are safe/ For it only takes a fraction of a second/ For all of this to change." Cheery!)

The extra credit was from "Housework," voiced by Carol Channing on the Free To Be... You And Me soundtrack -- "Nobody smiles doing housework but those people you see on TV. Your mommy hates housework, your daddy hates housework, I hate housework too! And when you grow up, so will you!" seems, on reflection, like not the greatest punch line for young kids, but the real moral of it is, "If you want all the days of your lives to seem sunny as summer weather, make sure, when there's housework to do, that you do it together!" Oh man, and then next there's Rosey Grier - The Gentle Giant Rosey, Rosey Grier's Needlepoint for Men Rosey, N.Y. Giants and L.A. Rams defensive lineman Rosey, wrestled Sirhan Sirhan to the ground Rosey -- singing "It's All Right to Cry". Man, it just doesn't get much better than Free To Be... You and Me.

(* No, wait! I also know how to say both "I don't have a girlfriend" and "I don't have a grandfather." Which, come to think of it, I don't, so who knows? Might come in handy.)