Why I will never want to bear Dave Eggers' love child

Dave Eggers on being a temp, as described in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius*:

"It's bliss. The temp doesn't have to pretend that he cares about their company, and they don't have to pretend they own him anything. And finally, just when the job, like almost any job, becomes too boring to continue, when the temp has learned anything he could have learned, and has milked it for the $18/hr and whatever kitsch value it may have had, when to continue anymore would be a sort of death wand would show a terrible lack of respect for his valuable time--usually after three or four days--then, neatly enough, the assignment is over. Perfect."

Me on being a temp, as described in "Why I will never want to bear Dave Eggers' love child":

"It's soul-sucking. Because a long-term temp ends up caring about the company, or at least the people with whom she has direct contact, and as the months pass she begins to think that yes, the company does indeed owe her something for all the work they've taken from her. They owe her sick leave and paid vacation and health insurance, including dental. Vision would be nice but is not crucial, because the temp's parents were kind enough to pay for laser surgery on her steadily deteriorating vision, and now instead of wearing two contacts in each eye** she sees 20/15. And the temp reads "the $18/hr" part of the excerpt from Eggers' AHWOSG and begins frothing at the mouth. Where are these $18/hr temp jobs? Can she get one? Failing, of course, becoming a bona fide employee and having health insurance so she can go have a physical and her semi-annual dental cleaning and checkup. Would it be a long-term temp job, because she likes security, likes knowing that she'll be able to pay her rent and her cell phone bill, and she dreams of being able to afford cable/satellite TV someday and going back to buying books instead of taking them out of the library all the time--$18/hr! Bliss!

"Of course, she values her time too, so the second she sells a novel and gets a decent advance [oh, the beautiful dream], she's quitting the $18/hr temp job [oh, the not-as-attractive-but-still-pretty-in-an-abashed-sort-of-way dream] to spend her days clacking at the keyboard and looking pensively out the window. Perfect."

So that's why I will never want to bear Dave Eggers' love child. Our views on temphood are too disparate. Well, there's also the fact that I don't want to bear anybody's love child. But the previous clinches the deal (or non-deal, as the case may be) re: Dave Eggers' love child.

A side note: My spam file keeps getting e-mails from insurance companies with subject lines like "Exciting New Opportunities" and "I've Had Your Resume on My Desk for a while Now." The most recent is "You Are the One We've Been Looking For."

I haven't yet, but I'm sorely tempted to e-mail back and write, "Trust me, I'm not. My poor sales skills would bring your company to its knees, and I'd hate the job and contemplate suicide nightly."

But then... d'you think they'd pay $18/hr?

*Which, despite the espoused views of temphood, is an excellent book.
**True. Referred to as "piggybacks."

Examining the grammar of a song lyric

First off, let me just mention that my brother told me the other day that my blog hadn't been updated in over a month. I will remind him that my last post was dated May 22, and today is June 12. Three weeks is not over a month (and even if he doesn't count the weirdo "we make suicide beautiful" post, I do). So there.

Now, on to today's topic: grammar in song lyrics! Well, a particular song lyric, anyway.

So I was listening to Lisa Loeb's CD Tails on my way to work this morning. If you don't recall Lisa, her most famous single is probably "Stay," which was featured on the Reality Bites soundtrack. And if you don't remember Reality Bites, quite making me feel old. I'm only 24, and so, yeah, the movie came out half my lifetime ago, which--well, now that I think about it, I've lived half my life since that movie came out. Fifty percent is a lot. Lots of a lot.

Enters depression spiral at aging

Forces self out of depression spiral so that she can post on

One of the songs that I sit through on my way to "Stay," which remains my fave on the CD, is called "Sandalwood." It's a love song and features the line "Your skin smells lovely like sandalwood." I'm not quite sure what sandalwood smells like, but I can buy that it smells lovely. That makes sense to me. More confusing is the next line, "Your hair falls soft like animals."

Fanbase, I have checked the liner notes on this repeatedly, and what Lisa seems to sing and what's on the liner notes matches up. "It is indeed "Your hair falls soft like animals." This, I don't get. How does hair "fall soft like animals"? Not all animals have soft hair. Not all animals have hair. Mammals, sure, but I'm pretty sure sea sponges fall under the category of animals, and they don't have hair.

Then there's the falling bit. I've heard of hair falling across a shoulder, and hair falling softly, but falling softly like animals? Do animals fall softly? I certainly haven't researched the falling habits of animals, but again I would say that there are several that do not fall softly. Elephants. If an elephant fell, I doubt it'd be soft. And I would also say that there are some animals that never fall at all. Left in their proper habitats, I don't think those glowy-fishes that live way deep down in the sea ever fall. They don't surface, so how can they fall? They swim, and maybe float belly up when they die. That's it. No falling at all.

So what in the world can "Your hair falls soft like animals" mean?*

After much pondering, I thought that maybe Lisa had missed some of her punctuation in her lyric, and what she really meant was "Your skin falls soft, like Animal's" meaning:


I just can't come up with any other rational conclusion. There you have it. "Your skin falls soft, like Animal's." "Sandalwood" is written about a guy, or so I assume, but I can't say that if I were a guy, I'd be impressed.

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*I am aware that "Your hair falls soft like animals" could be a simile of some sort. But what's the point of having a simile that makes no sense? If you care to explicate the lyric, fanbase, or you happen to be Lisa Loeb or have connections to Lisa Loeb so that she can explain it, I'd be much obliged.