Monday 1 November 2010

do you realise??


... that Do You Realize?? by The Flaming Lips is the official rock song of Oklahoma? (The State Vegetable is the watermelon, the State Percussive Instrument is the drum*, the State Soil is Port Silt Loam** and the State Meal is fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecue pork, biscuits, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken fried steak, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas.)

I have long been a fan of Norman Oklahoma as a character name. I think he should be married to Enid Oklahoma, which was originally called Skeleton Station. Some official didn't like that so he renamed it after a character in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. A Pulitzer prize-winner once wrote: 'A trip to Enid was surely a marvelous treat, the stairways one saw being the very least of it.'

If the stairways were the least of it, who knows what the most of it was. Maybe the grain storage capacity, which is the third highest in the world.


* Oklahoma must have been pretty near the front of that queue. What the hell did you get if you were 50th? Wait. I know what you got if you were 49th, according to Wikipedia: nothing. Poor Alaska.
** Medium-textured, reddish in colour. Alaska got Tanana, which is a mis-spelling of banana. Just kidding. It's well-drained, moderately permeable and weathered from limestone.

3 comments:

Holly said...

Norman Oklahoma must have beautiful eyes.

Janet Tryner said...

I'd happily have 'do you realise' by the Flaming Lips as the UK's anthem.

Claire said...

As soon as I read "Do You Realize" I sang it : )
Do you know Thank You Jack White For The Fibre Optic Jesus That You Gave Me?

Meg White drummed for The Flamming Lips some summers ago.
I'm full of useless information