You don’t need a fiscal stimulus if you’ve got Jesus

Heh. Words of Wisdom from Chase me ladies, I'm in the cavalry.

One of the things about living between two houses is that you often find yourself moving furniture between one or the other, then, when something changes (like the impending arrival of someone to stay for a year or so) you move it all back.

So yesterday, I was in a borrowed Toyota van, moving a double bed back into town, and a single bed, and sundry other items, back up the coast.

Someone else's car can tell you lots about the owner: it may be messy, or pristine, full of ciggie butts, or other odds & ends, but the most joy by far, is to listen to someone else's choice of radio channel.

I'd change the station, but last time I did that with this van, I'd failed to notice which frequency I'd started off with, and it was mentioned to me that leaving the dial on Radio NZ was not appreciated.

So yesterday I decided to leave the station as was & I tootled into town to the strains of variously:

Bend It - Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, and Titch
12 Steps to Love - The Tremeloes
I Write the Songs - The Guy Who Wrote the Songs
Something by Dean Martin that I didn't recognise

I misted over slightly at that Pony She Named Wildfire, I marveled that it had been a long time since I'd heard Jonothan Livingston Seagull (and I have now renamed one of the characters in my nascent novel, Jonathon Livingston Segal).

At Pukerua Bay, Michael Jackson's Ben* segued perfectly into something by Roberta Flack & the rest of the trip was spent with Mana FM, who seem to specialise in Motown funk & R&B.

On arriving home, I told Mrs Llew that I wasn't sure what was scarier, the steering or the radio station. Mrs Llew revealed she'd made a passing comment to the van's owner a few days ago, about the singer Pink. The van owner asked "Who?"

On the return trip, the Supremes on Mana FM sputtered once, and morphed into a Jackson song so heinous, that my mind had blocked it out until now & channels I tuned into pretty much deny its existence, no mean feat for a Jackson song at this time - The Girl is Mine (The Girl is Nine?), a feeble duet with Paul McCartney. He was a lover, not a fighter, apparently.

I endured ABBA's Dancing Queen, Queen's Another One Bites the Dust, Buddy Holly's Oh Boy, The Streak by Ray Stevens, and surprisingly, Hello Sailor's Blue Lady followed by Midnight Oil's Power and the Passion..

I warbled along to It Never Rains in California, Roy Orbison Crying, and gritted my teeth to Sir Cliff's Devil Woman.

I didn't catch the station's name, but much mention was made of "Timeless Hits", for which the cutoff date seems to be around 1975.

* A quick word at David Gest, who hosted an MTV show of MJ's 40 "Greatest" videos the other night on TV, Ben was not a song Jackson wrote about his pet rat, it was the theme to the 1971 movie Willard, a mediocre schlocker about a guy with a rat called Ben, whose friendship goes horribly wrong.