Oh Hey There

The Ragbag

It’s a testament to his larger-than-life je ne sais quoi—honestly how would you describe it?—that Raynor Ganan managed to infiltrate the typically community- and group-oriented Tumblr Tuesday recommendations. I know nothing about the person behind the persona, but I’ve long enjoyed his work: an almanac in the obscure and quixotic, a Consumer Reports of marginalia and all things colophonic and accidental, a precisely curated museum of things you do not know and do not need to know but will very much enjoy coming to know. I’ve seen many language enthusiasts on Tumblr but most are know-it-all, unprincipled, self-indulgent grammar-nazis—you took Latin in high school and know Strunk & White! congratufuckinglations you literate functional monolingual!!—but Raynor, he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty in the rich mess of the English language. He’s not intimidated by linguistic technicalities or logical gymnastics, and he can even crack a few good jokes about the International Phonetic Alphabet. Raynor is one of the few to whom I grant my Linguistic Seal of Approval.

“Heartbeats”

So last night I wrote a little something on “Heartbeats” on Tuneage and in my blurb I call José González’s cover of the song “insipid”, which is a hedge because his version is actually very very bad as he flattens out all of the emotional nuance and richness of Karin’s performance for a sappy, anhedonic acoustic rendition. I mean, you don’t even get the sense that he’s conflicted about having the best night ever!

But I digress, and I know that a lot of people really like that version, which is why I made such a disarmed hedge—acoustic covers are insipid by definition, right?—but as fate would have it, my run of the mill Tuesday-morning post turned out to coincide with a mention on Tumblr Tuesday (btw, yay!), which makes today basically the biggest day ever for the generally NPOV site, a day in which one might like to avoid hedged criticisms so one does not scare off more sensitive readers! I shudder to think of the :( I don’t like this site comments I might have inspired.

I don’t know. I tend to get nervous when I think about how incredibly large the Tuneage readership is.