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Chaps: because if they had an ass, they'd just be called pants.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

What kind of entendre said I. Double she said, so Double I did.

Given my 'colleagues' aren't really doing any 'work' for our fake 'company', and hence we have no 'posts', I thought of something to fill some space. Quantity, quality - whatever.

A few years back JohnnyM and I were in New York state on a business trip, in the magical town called Binghamton. It was a real shit hole, but oddly enough has a storied history:

  • From 1923 to 1927 Binghamton was the Northeast headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan.
  • The concentration of the defense industry in the town during the cold war made it the seventh most likely area in the nation for a nuclear attack.
  • With 6 historic wooden carousels, Binghamton boasts itself as the carousel capital of the world.
  • And finally, Unlike most small American cities, Downtown Binghamton still has a full-sized department store.

Which leads me to the real reason for writing this post. While we were there, drinking in a local watering hole, the band that had been playing the requisite honky tonk shit all night suddenly broke out into this classic song, "I Used to Work in Chicago". It's now one of my favorite songs in the world. It goes like this:

I used to work in Chicago, in a department store.

I used to work in Chicago, but I don't work there anymore.

A woman asked for some gloves, "What kind of gloves, said I",

"Rubber" she said, so rub her I did.

I don't work there anymore.

The reason it's so goddamn funny is the permutations. When the song is sung, and the request word is sung (ie. "Gloves"), you are already laughing waiting for how it will be used. For instance, here is a short list of other permutations I recall:

tools, hammer she wanted, and nailed she got

drinks, liquor she wanted, and lick her I did

hardware, bolts she wanted, and my nuts she got

German airplane, Fokker she wanted, and fokker I did

A quick scan of the net shows some people have taken this to extremes, with some outright classics:

lobster thermidor she wanted, creamed clam she got

German method of coal extraction she wanted, mine shaft she got

translator she wanted, cunning linguist she got

diamond choker she wanted, pearl necklace she got

Some Shakespeare she wanted, Dickens she got!

As you can see it's quite a creative opportunity.

Well, that's really it, just wanted to share that fucking awesome song with you. Also, through writing this post, I've also been able to determine that Wikipedia is probably better than most real encyclopedias, and from the facts available there, I learned a lot about why Binghamton sucked so much ass. Also, I finally got to use Ku Klux Klan in a post. It's been a long time coming.

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