Here is The Web Pen’s official entry into The Spicy Cauldron’s Spicy Awards. The rules stipulate that ‘cauldron’ be used somehow. After wracking my brain for ideas I figured that a write-up of an obscure song from an obscure album by an obscure British band would be just the ticket. I’m writing this introduction before created the piece itself so I have no idea where this is going to go. To make things even more confusing, I’m going to listen to ELO while writing it.

XTC is a band known for its trippy, catchy, psychedelic-era Beatles sound especially due to the excellent songwriting of Andy Partridge (no relation to the 70’s musical family — mostly due to the fact that they were fictional). Partridge’s lyrics are many times full of excellent metaphor and clear meaning although there are times when he dives into the obtuse lyrical content that is Tori Amos in its massive discombobulation. “Summer’s Cauldron” is the first song on the album most regard as their best, Skylarking. (Personally, I prefer English Settlement, but this isn’t about my ego-inflated opinion.)

Let us see if we can decipher Partridge’s meaning in this excellent song.

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The song begins with noises of nature — frogs, crickets, flying insects, birds — which give you the feeling that you have been planted firmly where they are no shopping centers, gas stations or outlets to recharge your iPod! How horrible! And then Partridge starts to sing:

Drowning here in Summer’s Cauldron
Under mats of flower lava
So we are to assume that the season of summer is like a giant bowl made to mix potions and cast spells. Okay, I can see that, but flower lava? I can only assume he is talking about pollen, which is the reason summer is my least favorite season. Oh, yes, I said it. The flower lava being produced gets into my sinuses and makes me feel awful. Suddenly all the plants are having sex and I get their sexual by-products shot up my noses and in my eyes. Have you ever had pollen shot in your eye? It iiiiiitches and burrrrrns!

Please don’t pull me out this is how I would want to go
Translation: Summer makes him want to commit suicide. I totally understand.

Breathing in the boiling butter
Fruit of sweating golden Inca
Um, ew. I just looked up how hot butter has to be to boil. 428°F / 220°C. Breathing it in would cause all sorts of damage to your mouth and bronchial system. We’re talking scalding, blisters, damaged tissue, infection and possibly death. The good news is that it would burn off your taste buds so you wouldn’t have to register the sensation of drinking the sweat of a gold-painted, long-dead member of a conquered society.

Please don’t heed my shout I’m relax in the undertow
Translation: “Even though I’m screaming in agony from the boiling butter and pollen in my lungs, I’m relaxed as I’ve accepted death.”

Trees are dancing drunk with nectar
Grass is waving underwater
So here is where the hallucinations so commonly associated with dying come to play. Or he’s watching Fantasia after eating a dozen poppy-seed bagels. Wait, don’t plants produce nectar? That means the trees are drunk on their own waste product. Ah, that means this entire passage is about his urine fetish — golden showers and such. In fact, there is a lot of yellow either invoked or mentioned in this song. I see now that the ‘grass’ is a metaphor for his own manhood and guess what it’s doing? That’s right, it’s waving water — spraying it all over. In fact, he’s probably writing his name in the ground. That’s just gross! (Pssst, Mr. Partridge. Caaaaall me.)

Please don’t pull me out this is how I would want to go
Okay, now I’m just confused. He obviously wants to “pull it out”. Oh, wait, I get it. He wants to “go” in his jeans. Got it. I think I saw that in a porn once.

Insect bomber Buddhist droning
Copper chord of August’s organ
Huh-huh, he said ‘organ’. Is his bladder full again already? What the hell is he drinking? And what the heck is a Buddhist bomber? Death by large belly, I would presume. Even more puzzling is why there is a copper-pipe organ in the middle of nature?

Please don’t heed my shout I’m relax in the undertow
Oh, he’s relaxed all right. …in his pants.

When Miss Moon lays down
His ass is tired…

And Sir Sun stands up
…but he’s horny.

Me I’m found floating round and round
Like a bug in brandy
In this big bronze cup
I have to pee so badly right now.

Drowning here in Summer’s Cauldron
I believe that cauldron is his metaphor for chamber pot and he wants to drown in it. Again. Ew.

Wow, I never realized how disgusting this song is. Here I was thinking that it was some drug-induced ode to one of the seasons. I mean it segues directly in to Colin Moulding’s “Grass” so I just automatically thought they were connected in theme. Remind me to never study music theory. I’m going back to English Settlement with realistic songs about Jason and the Argonauts, how woman are better than man, violent juvenile delinquents, and overstimulation of the senses.

There’s always trouble brewin’ at humor-blogs.com.

Listening to: “Endless Lies” - Electric Light Orchestra

I’ve needed to unwind for a while. Two jobs, four improv shows and fourteen days of antibiotics will do that to anyone. Unfortunately, I haven’t been in the mood to read or even watch the ever-growing lineup of animation that is sitting on Tivo (notable exceptions: Bleach and Naruto). What’s a poor queek to do? I broke out the ancient GameCube. Remember those? Why do I get the feeling that I’m getting the kind of stares that mentioning 8-Track or Reel-To-Reel invoke?

I discovered three games that I had never finished. One is called Chibi-Robo. You start the game at a birthday party where you discover that you are to play Chibi-Robo — a little robot who becomes a personal indentured servant and is so small he barely come up to the human’s ankles. Yet you have to make everyone happy by getting around the house on your own and — get this — by cleaning. You actually get happy points for picking up trash and scrubbing dirt off the floors. In the meantime, you have to deal with toys that come to life and the most dysfunctional family in video game history. The father is a lazy slob who won’t get a job (I had to help him make burgers for the family last night).

The mother is passive-aggressive and deals with the family problems by locking herself in the bedroom most of the game. And the daughter… where to start? She dresses up as a frog and will only say “ribit”.

And I’m totally addicted. Losing track of time Tuesday night, I got off the couch to discover that it is two in the morning. I’m a little task oriented. Waking up in the morning in a sleep-deprived stupor, I walked into the living room to find the couch surrounded by a beer bottle, three cans of Pepsi, a bottle of that new red-flavored Mountain Dew, a used container that had had chopped fruit, a plate full of crumbs from toast and a Pop Tart wrapper.

That’s right, I had just spent six hours solving the Sandersons’ problems and cleaning up their damn house by picking up trash and scouring their floor with a tiny little toothbrush; however, clean up my own mess? Hahahahahaha! You make me laugh. Actually, the irony did strike me hard enough to feel enough guilt to pick up my decadence that morning.

Now I’m back to playing and so far I’ve had to hook up a princess and a mummy, cure a teddy bear of his nectar addiction, help a blue jay grow strong enough to fly away, grow a family for one of those dancing flowers you get at novelty stores, find blocks for a redneck Lego T-Rex, help a bunch of eggs who think they are in the military to overpower the family dog, call aliens to help find the family’s old robot and chat with a dog toy about her love of a superhero action figure who doesn’t know she’s alive. No, I’m not high, but I think the Japanese game developers were.

Get yo surreal ohhnn at humor-blogs.com.

Listening to: “You’re Sixteen (You’re Beautiful And You’re Mine)” - Ringo Starr

How many of you go back to a blog to see if the author has responded to your comment? Hands? I see. Well, I do it all the time. One of my favorite gay news blogs Good As You (G.A.Y. — get it?) handles news of prejudice, non-acceptance and cruelty to the GLBT community with the perfect balance of seriousness, humor and satire. It’s a joy to read.

They (although I’m convinced that they are like The The and there is only one ‘they’) recently posted about the Church Of Latter-Day Saints’ (The Mormons!) release of a pamphlet about how to deal with same-sex attraction (they recommend denial). As a recovering Mormon myself, I saw so many of those pamphlets. They have a pamphlet for everything. “How To Skirt Around Talking About Your Secret Underwear With The Crosses Over The Nipples To Your Non-Mormon Friends”, “Explaining To Your Kids That The Bread At Sacrament Is Not Really The Body Of Christ And They Are Not Cannibals”, and my personal favorite, “Masturbation Is Totally Not Cool And Your Mother Is Tired Of Trying To Get The Stains Out Of Your Underwear”.

That last one was printed in the 80’s if you can’t tell.

So I went back to G-A-Y this morning to check out how my comments were received. Simply put, they don’t respond to comments which IS totally cool, but I also get curious if my comments are good enough to illicit a response. I know, I’m silly. Well, my comment on the LDS post had a line that made me laugh because I didn’t realize how funny it was:

Religion is like high school. It’s only important when you’re enrolled.

I’m so deep. Actually, what the line really shows is that I still have issues with organized religion and how people acted like high school was the penultimate experience in their lives when there was a big world out there to explore afterwards. Oh, well. We each travel on our own quantum particle through the universe bouncing around acting is if we have control. The only thing currently I have control over is my bladder and — as we all know — that is as fleeting as life itself.

You can easily wash out your stains with Fresh Scent Humor-Blogs.com.

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Listening to: “Pornographer’s Dream” - Suzanne Vega

This morning I was awaken by a revelation. When the alarm went off, it was to KBCO playing Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”. Then by divine inspiration, I was suddenly seized with wonderment. The thunder that was brought down? What if you really could have your own Personal Jesus®™©?

PROS

• Built-in group of friends. He’ll bring his own posse of twelve.
• He’ll have your back. The man would die just so wouldn’t get into trouble.
• Hungry? Free manna! Tired of manna? He has an ‘in’ with the shift lead at Panera.
• You have someone to wax philosophical with. Possibly even discussing the latest lead article in The Nation Magazine.
• If you do find yourself in trouble, it turns out he has a couple of powerful connections who will help if you ask with a pious heart.

CONS

• Christmas can be hell. You’ll have to buy him two sets of gifts.
• You’ll have to listen to him pontificate about how we should love each other. …except for The Nation Magazine after they had the gall to publish that damned “The New Atheists” article.
• He’ll want to go everywhere in his righteous VW van.
• Always wearing sandals. Sometimes even with socks.
• Due to his “kind buds”, he’ll be paranoid and constantly saying “One of you will betray me” until he finally snaps at dinner and disbands the entire posse. He’ll then go on a binger and get arrested by the authorities when Jude — concerned for his health — turns him in.

Looking for humor salvation? Funny services start at 10:15 at Humor-Blogs.com.

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Listening to: “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” - Culture Club