Author Archives: Tin Man

My Pop Music Gap

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We watched a little bit of the Grammys last night. I’m embarrassed to say that it was only the second time I’d purposely seen part of the Grammys — the first time being last year.

The Grammys have always confused me. Song of the Year, Record the Year, Album of the Year? (Here are the differences.)

Plus, I’ve never been all that knowledgeable about pop music. Take an artist, a title, and how a song sounds: I often only know, at most, two out of three. I could tell you who sings a song but I have no idea what the song sounds like, or I know who sings a particular song but I don’t know the name of it, or I know the name of a song but I have no idea who sings it. This is true of tons of songs from the ’70s and ’80s that I’ve been hearing since I was a kid.

For instance: last week on Glee, they performed “Silly Love Songs” by Wings. The only part of the song I knew was an excerpt from a song medley in Moulin Rouge. Or at least I thought that was the only part I knew. When they got to the chorus (“I… love… you…”) I realized, “Oh! This is THAT song? I love that song!” And yet I had no idea what it was called or that it was sung by Paul McCartney and Wings.

I don’t know why this is the case. It’s probably because I never watched much MTV growing up.

There are also lots of songs that I first encountered by hearing them sung by college a capella groups. I’d hear an a capella version of a song over and over — by seeing the group perform it often or buy owning the album –and then one day I’d hear the original song on the radio, and it would sound so weird with instruments.

Today my knowledge of pop music comes mainly from two places: Saturday Night Live and Glee. Honestly I don’t think I’d know who Katy Perry was otherwise.

At least these days I have the excuse of being over 35.

Dirty Dirty Mozart

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So I’m telecommuting from home today, and I’m listening to some Mozart on iTunes that I’ve recently downloaded. This really cool piece comes on that I’ve never heard before. It’s a round, and it’s sung by a men’s chorus.

I’m too busy with work to check and see what it is. But later I take a break, and I find the piece in iTunes and listen to it again. The title’s in German, so I look it up on Google.

The title is Leck mich im Arsch.

It translates as Lick me in the ass.

Nice.

Tax Refunds are Bad

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It’s tax time, so everyone is figuring out whether they get a refund or whether they owe some taxes. While it’s great to get a refund, and it’s a bummer to have to owe the government, you’re really better off owing something.

Why? Because when you get a tax refund, you’re not really getting a gift of money. You’re getting a refund of money that should never have been taken out of your paycheck in the first place. It is what it says: a refund of money you’ve already paid and shouldn’t have paid. The extra money that was taken out of your paycheck over the course of the year is money that you could have kept in a savings account and earned interest on. Or if you don’t have a savings account, it’s money that you could have used to buy groceries or other essentials.

Meanwhile, if you do your taxes and find out that you owe money, that means you’ve had the benefit of holding onto that money for the past year, earning interest on it, and so on, when it should have been taken out of your paycheck all along.

The only way it’s a bad thing is if you weren’t planning to owe money and you’ve already spent it and therefore can’t pay it. Or if you’ve already mentally “spent” your refund. Or if you owe too much money and the IRS charges you a penalty.

Psychologically, yeah, it’s much cooler to get some unexpected money from the IRS. But rationally, owing money instead of getting a refund isn’t as bad as it seems. So don’t feel too bad about it!