Two items for today.

First up is the song, 'Ode To Billy Joe'. To me, the lyrics are confusing, much more so when a guy sings the song, but confusing even when the vocalist is female. It seems clear to me that the singer and Billy Joe's 'throwing somethign off the tallahatchie bridge' is supposed to be a significant point in the story, but what did they throw that made Billy Joe want to die? At first blush, I'd assume it to be an aborted child, but it doesn't make sense. The singer lives at home, male or female, so any pregnancy that came far enough to term to have something to throw off a bridge would've been visible to the family, seems like, so that can't be it. Reading the imdb plot summary of the 1976 movie of the same name, it appears the movie is about Billy Joe being raped and killing himself in shame, and the singer is just an observant friend, which just doesn't jive with the song in my book.

Item two, some teenage punker seems to think I'm his bandmate hopeless; he'll IM my work-desktop MSNessenger account with quick little hello's, usually when I'm home for the weekend. The band's website doesn't have any music samples that I've noticed. Oh well. The kid seems nice enough, skater, drummer, punkrawker. Still funky.