Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge (May 2018)

When Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge was created in the 1930s, the Army Corps of Engineers did not buy the mineral rights. Those rights remained in the hands of private people, so there are quite a few oil pumps there. The pumps aren't exactly eco-friendly; they spew god-knows-what into the surrounding areas. It's a shame, but I guess people probably wouldn't have been as willing to move if they hadn't been able to keep the mineral rights.

Fossil evidence. I guess that's why they're pumping up oil...

Anyway, back to the reasons I like to visit:

Wildflowers

Lots of wildflowers blooming this time of year: coreopsis, spotted beebalm, firewheel, coneflower, and lots of others I don't know the names of…

American White Pelicans

I think there's a squadron of American white pelicans that live in the refuge year-round. It's strange to see them so far from the Gulf coast; I don't think of pelicans as being inland birds.

This group of pelicans was watching me pretty closely as I watched them. They're eerie-looking birds up close.

Red-winged Blackbird

There were a lot of red-winged blackbirds out on my last visit. This one was giving us a full show: displaying his feathers and singing his heart out.

Snowy Egret

Most of the snowy egrets at the refuge are unworried by humans. It's not that they come close up to people, but they're not overly concerned when you get within several feet of them. This one was more concerned with looking for food in the water than concerned about me. I'd never thought much about snowy egrets one way or another, but encountering them at the refuge has given me a serious appreciation for them. They are absolutely beautiful birds.

Canada Geese

I still want to refer to them as "Canadian geese" even though I know that's incorrect. Canada geese get a bad rap for being jerks, but I think that's just because humans don't like animals that they can't tame and that dgaf.

I was unable to get a picture of the gaggle of baby geese, but they were absolutely adorable! There must have been 20 or so babies swimming with their parents (who were keeping the little ones corralled near the reeds).

Snowy Egrets and Cattle

Because Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge attracts so many birds, you definitely see them in the areas surrounding the refuge. I especially enjoy watching snowy egrets mingle with cattle in the area.

Animals at Hagerman (April 2018)

As well as being filled with birds, there are plenty of animals in Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge. They're not always as visible as the birds, but they're there. During our visit in April, we were lucky enough to see some.

River Otter

Until very recently, I didn't even know we had otters in this part of Texas. I thought that they'd been eradicated outside of a few areas in far East Texas. When I read about an otter sighting at Hagerman, I understood it to be rare. I certainly didn't expect to see one on my next visit.

I realize that the photos aren't great and they're far enough away to make you think it might be a beaver. It's not though; it's a river otter.

Note: If you zoom way in on the first picture, you can see it even has a fish in its mouth.

 

Raccoon

A bit less exciting than the river otter, but definitely closer up.

 

Yellow-headed blackbird

When I was at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge in April, I saw something I've never seen before: a yellow-headed blackbird.

We lucked out, too; the bird was sitting in a tree right next to our car, only about 10 feet up from where we were sitting. The yellow-headed blackbird hung around for quite a while, so we were able to get some nice photos.

Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge (April 2018)

One of my favorite places is about an hour north of me: Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge.

Hagerman used to be a small Texas town but was abandoned in the 1930s when Lake Texoma was built. (Fun fact: Texas only has one natural, non-man-made lake.) The city that used to be Hagerman was flooded when the Denison Dam was built. When Hagerman was still a town, it was a thriving railroad community that was bolstered by natural springs. The springs still exist in the refuge.

Although I've lived in this area most of my life, I didn't realize that the refuge was so awesome. Everyone "knows" that there's no nice scenery in Texas outside of Hill Country... and the pine forests in East Texas... and the Gulf Coast. Anyway, there's no nice scenery in North Central Texas (supposedly). Except that Hagerman Refuge is beautiful! And, it's a big migration spot for myriad birds. Even the most inexperienced birder (like me) will get to see some beautiful birds and do so pretty up-close.

 

In late April, we were still having nice cool weather around here so we took a trip up there one afternoon to see what was around. The flocks of snow geese that wintered over were gone, but the egrets and other shorebirds were still there.

Snowy Egret

 

Great Blue Heron

 

Coot

Various shorebirds

 

Prickly Pear Cactus

Went hiking at Sister Grove last weekend with some friends. The Safari Loop offers a nice survey of the park and it's not too challenging of a hike. The creepy tree that looks like something out of a Guillermo del Toro movie was still as creepy-looking as ever. There were a ton of ants at Pecan Field; thankfully, they didn't seem interested in stinging anyone.

If you visit, be sure to watch out of the poison ivy; there's a lot of it. And use bug spray; you'll need it.

My favorite part was seeing that the prickly pear cactus is blooming:

Animal statues

The city of Frisco, TX has included small-ish animal statues in a lot of the public spaces. I absolutely love them! Two of my favorites are by the senior center downtown: an armadillo and a red fox.

One of the things I love about these statues is that they're life-size, so they kind of take you by surprise the first time you notice them. They're a good exercise in paying more attention to the world around you.

Treasure trove in my closet

Ages and ages ago, when I was in high school (and college), I collected any magazine and newspaper clippings I could about David Bowie. I was (am) a huge fan and I devoured everything I could find.

Earlier today, I was cleaning my closet out and discovered a bag full of clippings and magazines from those days. I hadn't realized that I still had any of this. I knew I had my concert books -- are those still a thing? -- but I didn't realize that I'd kept everything else, too. I had a lot of fun sorting through everything though.

Most of the stuff is from the 1990s. The collection starts around the time of the Sound+Vision tour and goes through about the time Earthling was released. There are some clips about Tin Machine, him getting married to Iman, and even his ex-wife's "tell-all" book tour.

Had I stumbled on this treasure trove five years ago, i probably would have trashed a lot of it. However, in light of Bowie's passing, it feels appropriate to keep all this with the rest of my Bowie collection. Context and whatnot.

Here is some of what I found:

(I absolutely adore that Raygun cover.)

favorite albums, part 3

Port Entropy (Shugo Tokumaru)

Released 2010:

2010 was a pretty positive year for me: good job, personal stuff getting sorted out, goats! This album has a lot of the positivity baked into it that I was feeling at the time. Although not Tokumaru's first album, it was the first album of his that I encountered.

Favorite tracks:

Tracking Elevator; Lahaha; Rum Hee; Laminate; Suisha; Malerina

Additional thoughts:

I'm fairly certain that I picked up this album solely based on two things: I liked the cover artwork and the artist is Japanese. I have a really bad (annoying? perhaps adorably quirky?) habit of buying records based on their cover art. Sometimes, I'm horribly disappointed (ugh: NonMeters Volume One by Risil) but most of the time I come away with something halfway decent. Every once in a blue moon, though, I end up with a gem like Port Entropy. As for picking it up because he's Japanese – I tend to like Japanese musicians. If I find their stuff in the states, it's usually because it's really good. (Otherwise, it probably wouldn't make it over here.)

I love Tokumaru's unconventional instrumentation and how the vocals are so so soothing and evocative. I don't understand Japanese, but I don't feel I'm losing out by just enjoying the songs without understanding the lyrics.

And although I don't watch a lot of music videos anymore, Shugo Tokumaru has some of the most interesting and fun videos I've seen:

Let's talk about Let's Dance

This was my first-ever Bowie record,
bought (used) sometime around 1988
(It came with the sticker already on it.)

Talk to any die-hard David Bowie fan and they'll never tell you that their favorite album is Let's Dance. It probably won't even make their top 5. Let's Dance considered Bowie's commercial concession and, even though it was his most successful (hits and income-wise), saying you like it feels lame. Lame in the same vein as people in the mid-1980s who still considered themselves fans of disco.

David Bowie was an artist. He was a musician. He was a theatrical performer. What he was not was mainstream. —And that's why so many fans disregard Let's Dance, with its square-in-the-middle of 1980s top-40 style.

I disagree that this was Bowie pandering to the tastes of the mainstream. I posit that far from being Bowie's blatant attempt at future financial solvency, Let's Dance was actually one of the most subversive albums of Bowie's career. Let's Dance was THE great rock-n-roll swindle. Something so subversive that people never even noticed they were being taken for a ride.

On the surface, the songs are 1980s pop at it's most flamboyantly conventional. Even Bowie's look was ordinary for the time. Gone were his eyebrow-raising bodysuits and gender-bending – replaced by pastel suits (with wide shoulders and nipped waists) and a bleached, teased blonde coif. He traded the in-your-face gender confusion of the glam 1970s for the subtle feminization of masculinity that was de rigueur for the time.

And the public ate it up. The people who wrote him off as a purposefully provocative art wank suddenly embraced David Bowie's music all the way up the charts.

Underneath the top-40 sound, you have:

• an infamous punk rocker (Iggy Pop)
• a well-known (in specific circles) blues guitarist, at a time when blues was still fringe (Stevie Ray Vaughn)
• a Brazilian/Latin fusion percussionist, more versed in R&B (Sammy Figueroa)
• a washed-up disco producer other people in the music industry wouldn't touch (Nile Rodgers)

Topping it all off – like a bum-waving, middle-finger extending, slap in the face – were videos that were appeals against British colonialism and orientalism.

Yet, people looked at (and still look at) Let's Dance as nothing more than Bowie kowtowing to the capitalist public and the soul-eating music industry.

I'm still not willing to say the album's one of my favorites – there are plenty of others that I like a lot more – but I don't believe it deserves the bad rap that most fans give it. It wasn't the departure from his oeuvre that it appears to be on the surface; it's just as anti-establishment as his other works. We just weren't paying close enough attention to see it.

Blacklight Braille

Blacklight Braille is one of those bands that even my most music-nerdy friends consider "weird shit." I admit that the music is pretty weird and some of it might not even be considered music so much as performance.

My collection of Blacklight Braille vinyl

I discovered the band by chance, thanks to my brother's college radio station. (I think that was my freshman year in college.) Most people I've played the records for consider them to be "music" — at least one person referred to it as unlistenable art wank — but I have a major soft spot for them.

Blacklight Braille labels themselves as "fringe rock." I consider them American prog rock with more non-instruments than synth. While I've never really been a fan of prog rock, there's something about this band that captivated me. The combination of reworked Arthurian poetry and experimental music (and instruments) was (and still is) unlike anything else I'd heard.

I had wanted to find more of Blacklight Braille's music, but couldn't find anything in the stores. (As it turned out, these were limited pressings and I'm not even sure how they managed to wing their way out of Ohio.) Back then, you could write to the label for a catalog and buy music that way; so that's what I did. (This was the early '90s, the Web was still "cool" and "futuristic" and "pointless" — no companies were actually using it.)

So, I wrote to the label and asked specifically about getting additional Blacklight Braille albums. A few weeks later, I got a phone call from the band's frontman, Owen Knight. We talked for quite awhile (in my memory it was almost an hour, but who knows…) and I got to learn about him and the band. He was particularly interested in how someone in Louisiana had even heard of them and then more interested to learn that I was a music student. He made a real impression on me at a time when I was seriously considering dropping my music major.

Sadly, I don't have any of the band's releases past 1993. (The label is now defunct.) It looks like they may have only released a few more and at least one is a compilation of songs from other albums.

I don't listen to the albums too much anymore. But every once in a while, I pull them out and enjoy how different they are from pretty much everything else in my collection. "Music to Mow Lawns By" still has a special place in my heart…

Favorite albums, part 2

There are a lot of albums I really love. Here's some more…

Let Love In (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)

Released 1994:

1994 was the year I met Scot. At the time, I didn't realize that would be significant. It was also the year I started listening to Nick Cave. The college radio station didnt have a copy of Let Love In, but they did have a copy of Henry's Dream (released 1992) and that totally got me hooked. This was during my episode of major depression and Nick Cave's anger and darkness really spoke to me.

Favorite tracks:

Do You Love Me?; Nobody's Baby Now; Red Right Hand; I Let Love In;

Additional thoughts:

Nick Cave writes a murder ballad better than any contemporary musician. His songs remind me of Flannery O'Connor's short stories -- dark and nuanced; examining the motivations and lives of the people who live on the edges. His attempts at novel writing aren't quite as stellar as his song-writing, but his songs would hold their own against most writers. His songs are as much story as they are music.

And I don't know that I'll ever get tired of these opening lines,

Despair and Deception, Love’s ugly little twins
Came a-knocking on my door – I let them in
Darling, you’re the punishment for all my former sins
I let love in

Absolute Beginners (soundtrack)

Released 1986

I was in elementary school when this came out, but I never knew about it until I was in high school. I got a copy of the soundtrack (on cassette) from a friend who knew I was a huge David Bowie fan. Around the same time (1989?), the movie was shown on television and I videotaped it – and proceeded to watch it over and over and over, much to the rest of my family's chagrin, I'm sure.

Favorite tracks:

Absolute Beginners (David Bowie); Killer Blow (Sade); Have You Ever Had It Blue? (The Style Council); Quiet Life (Ray Davies); Selling Out (Slim Gaillard)

This album is so trapped in nostalgia for me that it's really hard for me to choose favorites…

Additional thoughts

It's probably a cheat to include a soundtrack on a list of favorite albums. However, Absolute Beginners is so part of who I am and so much of my high school and college memories are tied up in this that I can't ignore it.

The movie had a profound effect on me, too: its focus on racism and the corporatization of youth culture were messages that I still carry with me.

A handful of favorite albums

I was recently asked to post 10 of my all-time favorite albums. This is a tall order. Limiting myself to 10 feels overly restrictive. Anyway, I took a stab at it and realized that if I'm going to do this, I need to do it right. So there will probably be more listings later.

In no particular order:

Heathen (David Bowie)

Released 2002:

In 2002, my life seemed pretty on-track. I was approaching the end of my 20s, but I thought I had my shit together: house, marriage, good job. The U.S. was still reeling from the aftermath of 9/11 and domestically things felt uneasy, but my life was good.

Favorite tracks:

Sunday; Slow Burn; Everyone Says 'Hi'; A Better Future

Additional thoughts:

When Heathen was released, I liked it but wasn't sure if I would ever consider it one of my favorite Bowie albums. I listened to it a decent amount over the years and seemed to gravitate to it whenever I was having a hard time with something. When my grandfather died a few years back, this was the album that helped me work through the grief.

The Fifth Release from Matador (Pizzicato 5)

Released 1999:

In 1999, I was transitioning from freelance work back to an FTE, office job. This was the year we bought our house and our friends were trying to figure out why we moved out into the country. (Spoiler alert: It's now one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S.) I was finally starting to feel like a grown-up.

Favorite tracks:

Roma; La guerre est finie; Tout, Tout, Pour Ma Cherie; Darlin' of the Discotheque

Additional thoughts:

This feels like a little bit of a cheat since most of the album is made up of songs that were previously released on EPs. So many good songs though! This is one of those albums I like to listen to on those (too rare) days when the weather is perfect for driving with the windows down.

Confessions of a Pop Group (The Style Council)

Released 1988:

In was transitioning from middle school to high school in 1988. I probably didn't even know this album existed then. In 1988, the Berlin Wall hadn't fallen yet, and other than knowing who our president was at the time, I was not politically aware or active. I bought a copy of Confessions of a Pop Group when I was (I think) a sophomore in college. I was battling some major depression and wondering if I was on the right path academically and personally.

Favorite tracks:

Life at a Top a People's Health Farm; It's a Very Deep Sea; Why I Went Missing; How She Threw It All Away

Additional thoughts:

The Style Council gets a really bad rap (especially by fans of The Jam). However, if you listen to The Jam's catalog chronologically, the emergence of The Style Council makes perfect sense. This album, in particular, gets panned for being pretentious. Perhaps it is, but that's not what I hear when I listen to it. There are some fantastic lyrics in this album and some of the music is just brilliant.

My first copy of it was on cassette; I listened to it until it wore out. I've picked up several copies on CD/vinyl over the years. I bought this (pristine) copy of the album in 2000 for $3 at Half Price Books.

The Big Express (XTC)

Released 1984:

Although I was a huge new wave fan in 1984, I was into the Human League, Culture Club, Men at Work and other terrestrial radio bands. I doubt I ever heard this album when it came out. The first time I took notice of XTC was after the release of Skylarking (1986) when "Dear God" was getting a lot of airplay on the local alternative station. My brother gave me a copy of it for my birthday in (I think) 1988. At any rate, I bought my first copy of The Big Express on CD at some point in the early 1990s. I really started to get into XTC while I was in college and was buying everything I could find; I think my copy came from the clearance bin at Half Price Books.

Favorite tracks:

Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her*; All You Pretty Girls; Shake You Donkey Up; I Bought Myself a Liarbird; You're the Wish You Are I Had … pretty much the entire album?

Additional thoughts:

XTC has better albums. In fact, they have a LOT of albums that are better than The Big Express. However, when it comes to lyrically fun songs that are a lot of fun to sing along with, this one ranks at the top. This is one of my go-to albums for waking myself up in the morning on the drive to work.

* "Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her" just might be my favorite XTC song of all – and that's saying a lot because I love a lot of their songs. There's something about the vivid imagery int he lyrics and the slightly menacing synths that just works so well.

…And Then We Saw Land (Tunng)

Released 2010:

In 2010, I was finally dealing with a lot of my personal shit in therapy. I was contracting but it was an extremely stable gig. Oh yeah – and after years of wanting to, I adopted 3 adorable Nigerian dwarf goats (Carl, Hansel, and Gretel).

Favorite tracks:

Hustle; Don't Look Down or Back; Sanitago; These Winds

Additional thoughts:

Is there a time when this album isn't a good fit? Because I can't think of one. Comforting when I'm feeling down. Relaxing when I'm stressed out. Lovely when I'm already in a good mood. This is the album that got me into them; I bought it after hearing them play live on BBC 6 Music one afternoon. (I tried to explain what they sounded like to Scot afterward and didn't do a very good job. I think I said it was "eclectic but not in a weird shit way.")

I still don't really know wtf "folktronica" means and I still think the genre sounds dumb, but Tunng is great and I love this album.

Handcream for a Generation (Cornershop)

Released 2002

Another from 2002. Not sure I have much else to say about that year.

Favorite tracks:

Staging the Plaguing of the Raised Platform; Music Plus 1; Lessons Learned from Rocky I-III; Motion the 11; People Power

Additional thoughts

Another album that's perfect for road trips or driving with the windows down on a lovely day. Also great for getting into a groove that helps me to do the boring stuff that I otherwise would avoid (e.g. dusting, sorting the mail, anything related to verifying data in a spreadsheet).

Cloudcuckooland (The Lightning Seeds)

Released 1990:

This was released while I was in high school, but I didn't get my copy until the summer after I graduated. I vaguely remember the local alternative station playing some songs from Cloudcuckooland. This album hooked me though and I remember playing songs from Jollification and Dizzy Heights on my college radio show.

Favorite tracks:

Pure; All I Want; The Nearly Man; Don't Let Go

Additional thoughts

I love pretty much everything by The Lightning Seeds. This was their first album, though, and I have a soft spot for it. The synth work is a bit dated and cheesy in places, but that doesn't affect how much I enjoy it.

My first copy was on cassette but there are several CDs and vinyl copies in my collection now. According to the receipt I found in this record sleeve, we bought this copy for between $2 and $8 in 2003 at Recycled Books in Denton, TX.

When Scot and I got married Cloudcuckooland was one of the few (I think 3) albums we ended up with duplicates of when we combined our music collections. (I think the other 2 were The Ramone's Mania and The Stone Roses' Second Coming.) Considering our collections and our taste in music, this was pretty surprising.

Finally, as many people know, "Pure" is Scot's and my 'song' and we danced to it at our wedding. It's still one of my favorite songs ever and as much as I think it would benefit from some updating, I don't know that I would like it as much if it did sound more current. There's something about it that's just Perfect. /nerdy fan joke

Perpetual Motion People (Ezra Furman)

Released 2015:

2015 was a pretty good year…until it wasn't.

Favorite tracks:

Restless Year; Lousy Connection; Body Was Made; Wobbly; Can I Sleep in Your Brain?

Additional thoughts:

I don't care that this album is only 3 years old; I say it counts as an all-time favorite. There are some albums that I just know I'm going to adore forever after I listen to it the first time, and this is one of them.

A mixture of punk, glam, and doo-wop – Perpetual Motion People is just plain fun. Pretty much every song is catchy enough to get stuck in my head for days at a time, and I don't even mind because the music is just that good.

Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds)

Released 2004:

2004 was a "rebuilding" year for me. I'd been laid off for the first time the year before and gone through a mini "what am I doing with my life?" crisis. By 2004, I'd raised my first hens from chicks (Mabel and Tilly) and was starting to get the hang of the whole raising-chickens-thing. I remember being disappointed that I could only buy these albums on CD; I really wanted vinyl. When it was later re-released on vinyl, I snapped it up.

Favorite tracks:

Get Ready for Love; There She Goes, My Beautiful World; Nature Boy; The Lyre of Orpheus; Breathless; Supernaturally; Spell

Additional thoughts:

These two albums were released together, so I can't rightfully separate them – if I had to do that, I'd probably just have to choose a different Nick Cave album altogether. The songs on Abbatoir Blues and Lyre of Orpheus represent a lot of what I enjoy about Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and, yet, they are not representative of their catalog. I would never suggest Abbatoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus as a good overview of their music. (Maybe start with Let Love In, Henry's Dream, or Push the Sky Away – all fantastic albums in different ways – instead.) However, these 2 albums have some of the most widely listenable and catchy songs of Cave's discography.

Nick Cave has probably written some of the darkest songs I listen to. But, as I like to point out to people who think that's all there is to his oeuvre, he's also written some of the most absolutely wonderful love songs I've ever heard. Some of them are lust-driven and some are awe-driven, but almost all of them are smart and enjoyable. This twin album is full of them. (It also has a fair number of the darker stuff I enjoy, just not as much as a typical album.)

Not everything is a love song on these 2 albums by any means, For instance, Cave rewrote the story of Orpheus. Instead of Orpheus perfecting the lyre, charming all of nature and the gods, and winning his wife back from the dead, Orpheus creates a sound so beautiful that it kills everything and everyone who hears it (including his wife). Only Orpheus is so in love with the sound, he keeps on playing – even after God smites him and sends him to Hades. I've always enjoyed the song, "Lyre of Orpheus," but seeing it performed live when we saw Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds in New Orleans 2014 was a surprise and extremely memorable. I don't think any other singer could seriously perform the lines —

Eurydice appeared brindled in blood
And she said to Orpheus
If you play that fucking thing down here
I'll stick it up your orifice

—without laughing and/or being laughed at.

And while I'm on the subject of seeing him in concert: If you have the chance you should go, even if you're not a big fan of his music. Nick Cave is an absolute force live. He thrives on his audience and he is completely mesmerizing. I've said it before but we should all be glad he decided to become a rock musician instead of a preacher. I'm pretty sure that man could throw a tent revival and talk half the audience into doing whatever the hell he wanted.

Endnote: If you're a fan of the Harry Potter movies, you'll recognize the song, "O, Children," from the last movie. It's in the scene where Harry and Hermione are dancing in the woods. If you liked that song, you should check out this pair of albums and also Nocturama (which was released the year before these were).

Brick Factory (Crayon)

Released 1994

I discovered this in the college radio's collection shortly after the album came out. 1994 was filled with grunge and I remember being enamored with the upbeat nature of the album in a sea of Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

Favorite tracks:

Chutes and Ladders; The Snap-Tight Wars; Pedal; Schirm Loop; Jenny Don't Be Sad; Knee-High Susan

Additional thoughts

If you want to know what I was like in college – this is one of my favorite albums from back then. I still know all the words to all the songs and I still love to sing them loudly and out-of-tune. (Because loud and out-of-tune is kind of the signature of this album.) The songs totally take me back to mortgage-less, responsibility-free days of babydoll dresses with knee socks and lunchbox purses.

Crayon is noisy sweetness. It's got that grungy mid-'90s sound coupled with adorable lyrics about relationships and growing up. The singers are fantastically out-of-tune at times and I think they were still learning how to tune their instruments. If there's such a thing as twee punk or punk twee*, this is it.

Sadly, Brick Factory was the only album Crayon ever released. Two of the members would eventually go on to form the twee band, Tullycraft (another favorite band of mine).

Where did you get those knee-highs, Susan?
Oops, I forgot: Your name is Kim.

*I think that twee is pretty darn punk, for the most part: DIY sensibilities coupled with short, fast-rocking songs. I know that the idea of twee as punk is horrifying to some people, but… Shonen Knife, case in point. I'm convinced they're the closest thing we have to The Ramones and they sing about taking out the trash on garbage day, strawberry cream puffs, and capybaras.