Daily affirmations of a word mercenary
Yesterday as Andreas was giving me a ride to work, a song came on to KEXP. It was your average “electronica with woman singing” sort of song, but all of a sudden my head whipped over to Andreas and I said, “Was that squeaking sound part of the song?”
We stopped talking and started listening. SQUEAK SQUEAK, said the beautiful lushly produced electronica song. And I started laughing. SQUEAK SQUEAK, the song said. And I laughed some more. The song went on, and every time I heard the squeaking (which was every 4 bars or so), I would laugh harder. Within a minute or so, tears were streaming down my face from laughing so hard.
I have this penchant for hysteria, you see. I start laughing sometimes and there is no end in sight. The laughter encompasses my whole universe and there is only me and my open mouth and sheer amusement. The short version of this is what’s known as the Open Mouthed HA, but once I get going it’s hard to stop and I start crying from laughing so hard and my stomach starts to ache from all the laughing.
The song was Rear Moth by Psapp, and you can listen to it here. But I highly recommend the whole damn album. It’s quite good — it samples squeaky toys, puppies, and lots of other really good happy noises.
Hey there. I'm Ariel Meadow Stallings, a native Seattleite who's written my way up and down the Left Coast. Electrolicious is where I post daily randomata, but I also write for a living. My first book, Offbeat Bride, was published last year.
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dr. dave
March 1st, 2005 at 6:03 am
That was oddly enjoyable.
(And in 5/4 too! Always a bouncy time signature!)
Maggie
March 2nd, 2005 at 9:50 pm
I too suffer from Open Mouthed HA from time to time. There’s an ointment for that, I think.
Dawn
March 3rd, 2005 at 12:17 pm
LOL. Of course when you mentioned squeaking, I wasn’t think of squeaky toys (dirty, dirty mind). I read this post to Michael (the consummate collector of weird electronica and strange samples, which he LOVES to mix into stuff when he DJ’s), and he’s all over SoulSeek right now checking out this band. Thanks for the lead!
Dawn
March 3rd, 2005 at 12:31 pm
OK, so we just played the song, and sure enough, a couple squeaks had me giggling out of control. So then I had to go get Pixel (our chihuahua) and make him listen. Not quite the reaction I expected (he LOVES squeaky toys), I think because the squeaks are too in time with the music, but he did cock his head questioningly a few times…