No embedding, so you’ll have to click to see this video of Prince covering Radiohead.

The point (for Jim & Jeri) is to note the guitar. And here is Eric’s addition to day two of Prince week.

However, while I’ve got this platform, I’m going to expound a bit.

First things first, I’m hard pressed to understand why someone would despise Prince. I can understand not liking an artist’s voice–I cannot stand Bob Dylan’s voice. nails on a blackboard–but I like many of his song when they have been recorded by other artists. I can get not liking an artists style of music, except that Prince has written songs in so many musical genres that seems a rather ridiculous statement as well.

So I’m going to take a shot in the dark about what I’m guessing bothers at least some people: sex.

Prince really likes to write and sing about sex. A lot. Hell, his 3rd and 4th albums were “Dirty Mind” and “Controversy” so it’s not like he’s hiding his themes.

But here’s the thing: Rock & Roll and R&B have a history of misogyny. But here’s the thing about Prince’s music: for the most part he doesn’t write about women, he writes to women. And to be honest, I often find it disconcerting, since I tend towards prudishness. But if you listen, what he’s pretty much saying is that he loves women, and let him tell you all about what he wants to do to you (assuming you are a woman).

But there’s something else to note as well.

Consider Little Red Corvette released in 1982. Did you ever notice that he blithely throws out the use of condoms as an expected occurrence? Or Sign O’ the Times from 1987, which implicitly mentions AIDS, and male to female transmission (via needle sharing, but still). And I love I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man: “Wouldn’t be satisfied, with a one night stand, and I could never take the place of your man.”

And he has had women in his bands–not just token females there to look good or female back-up singers or female lead singers with a male band but female musicians. It’s a more common occurrence, but still far more rare than one would expect.

So despite the sex–or perhaps because of it–Prince has always given off an attitude of respecting women, which is something that certainly wasn’t common when he was starting out.

I’m going to take a slightly different tack from Eric, who is also celebrating Prince week.

For those of you who are not on Twitter, Eric and I were taken to task by Jim & Jeri for our love of Prince. And this is the song that started the whole thing off. Except, of course, that I was listening to the Prince version.

And here’s Eric addition to Prince week: Medical advice by the Purple One.

Tulip
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Oh really?

I’ve been considering lessons in relaxation.

I’ve got two experts in the house to demonstrate.

Actually, we seem to have breezed right past spring and went straight to summer, with temps in the mid and upper 80s.

But that’s neither here nor there.

Today’s word: tulips

Why is it that three day weekends are never long enough?

I finished three books this weekend, yet still I wish I had another day off. Probably because I did nothing to the garden this weekend, and with temps already in the 80s, it’s going to be hot when I do get to it.

Of course the nice thing about having an established garden is that I’ve plenty of perennials to come up on their own, and the soil has been worked enough to make things easy on me, so it’s not difficult to weed, just time consuming.

Perhaps one evening this week I’ll work in the garden, but since I have fresh rhubarb and need to make something with it–probably not.

The best part about early spring bulbs is they come up with absolutely no effort on my part.

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LET’S GOOOOOOO!

MOUNTAINEERS!

ADDENDUM:

:(

So the reason we go to Cincinnati is because my friends live there: Susan, and Andy & Heather and their absolutely adorable kids (you saw the fantastic Natalie in the aquarium pictures).

And the other reason is of course Jungle Jim’s. Let’s just say I spent about $100 an hour there, and leave it at that.

Susan met us at our hotel. Well, actually she was sitting in the hotel bar, drinking Guinness and waiting for us.
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Since it was raining Monday, we went to the Krohn Conservatory. Which was fine with me, because conservatories have plants, and plants in the spring are flowering.

Needless to say, I went nuts.

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One of the recurrent pressing problems in the US is how to deal with nuclear waste in a way that those who come upon that waste in a couple millenia will recognize the danger inherent in the containers.

How can we make the message clear to those in the future, when English (and any other “modern language” will by then be ancient languages–perhaps unreadable by future generations. And we’ve all seen the movies–war or disaster wipe out modern technology, leaving the survivors only rudimentary skills and the need to rebuild/recreate the technology of even a century ago.

With that in mind, I find the following discovery to be quite worrisome.

In the ruins of a city that was once Rome’s neighbor, archaeologists last summer found a 1,000-pound lead coffin.

Who or what is inside is still a mystery, said Nicola Terrenato…

…”It’s a sheet of lead folded onto itself an inch thick,” he said. “A thousand pounds of metal is an enormous amount of wealth in this era. To waste so much of it in a burial is pretty unusual.”

Yeah, let’s just go ahead and open that right up. I’m sure it’s perfectly safe.

The only good news about today is that although it’s my Monday, it’s ALSO secretly Thursday. So there’s hope.

Today’s word: ice cream