A farewell to arms, and legs, and heads and hearts

The above lyric is from the song “Help Me” by Alkaline Trio (lovingly known by fans as Alk3) off their new album Agony and Irony. I often use single lines from songs as my away messages on AIM, and this was the choice for today. It doesn’t really have any special, intrinsic meaning to me — I just thought it sounded that way. Thus, it’s up for all my AIM buddies (and non-buddy creepers who have my screen name on their buddy lists) to see.

In order to get the correct lyrics, I visited my favorite lyrics Web site, SongMeanings. In addition to being, in my experience, the most accurate site of its kind, users are allowed to hypothesize what the words represent. Since to me, lyrics are as important to a piece as its melody, SongMeanings was a major discovery when I came across it a few years ago.

One of its other features I find useful is the ability to search by song name within the site. Placing “Help Me” in the search box returned 17 results. That means there are 17 songs by 17 bands out there titled “Help Me” (and SongMeanings, with basically user-generated pages and lyrics, has the vastest number of artists I’ve ever found — a great way to discover other people who enjoy a particularly unknown band). Granted, a few of those cuts are likely covers of one of the other ones. Curiosity got the best of me. Of the 4,000-plus songs in my iTunes library, three are named “Save Me” (another generic title, methinks). How many of the millions of existing songs also go by the same name? Well, according to SongMeanings, 84. Eighty-freakin’-four. By bands such as The Rembrandts (whose only fame came from penning the song that eventually became the Friends theme), Dave Matthews Band (the band I, and many others, love to hate), Hanson (can anyone say mmmbop?) and American Hi-Fi (a band I can actually stand). For the record, I own the “Save Mes” by Unwritten Law (decent song), Shinedown (OK song) and Queen (who could do no wrong).

I wonder if “Save Me” is the most-used song title ever. Probably not. A quick Google search says it’s “Hold On.” Plugging that into SongMeanings reveals 103 songs by that name. My iTunes library only holds one of those (Linkin Park’s version). I guess I’m not representative of the data.

Anyway, onto bigger and more important things.

This morning, I watched a Modern Marvels episode on electricity production and fell even further in love with solar energy.  A few experts interviewed hypothesized that in the future, power plants as we know them would cease to exist — houses would be responsible for their own energy through solar panels on their roofs and extra energy would be distributed through the rest of the grid. The episode showcased Maine couple Bill and Debbi Lord (their Web site is here), whose home is entirely powered by the sun. Their monthly electricity bill is $7.76 (a charge for hooking up to the grid) — and they don’t have to live like crazy conservationists. If the Lords can make that work in Maine’s cold climate, there’s no reason for people to worry about wintertime energy.

I was actually able to watch more than 5 minutes of TV this morning because I finally changed around my morning routine. For more than two weeks, I’ve fought myself to wake before 8:15 — and work starts at 9. So this a.m., I made sure to get up around 7:30. It’s amazing how much more productive I feel in the morning. A weird paradox in my life is that I consider myself something of both a morning person and a night owl. I love the feeling of being up before (or at least with) the rest of the world and taking in a deep breath of crisp, dew-heavy morning air. But I also enjoy late-night adventures with my friends, whether it’s a Tim Hortons run followed by a visit to the beach or sipping a cold beer on the dock.

Last night, we did the latter — it was the clearest it’s been since everyone got here and the sky was absolutely plastered in dim little dots. We actually went down to the dock to see if we could find the moon anywhere, since the trees around our houses prevent a 360-degree view of the horizon. Upon arriving at the dock, the moon was nowhere to be found. We sat talking for a while and before long, a huge, orange-glowing half-sphere of lunar eye candy surfaced to our northeast. I’d never watched the moon rise like that before. Experiences like that make me happy I’m also a night owl.