Give the people what they want

UPDATE: Looking for the words to seafaring/philosophizing drinking songs? You've come to the right place. Want moving pictures you can sing along with? Go here.

Ever since I installed my site meter (thanks, fish!) I’ve noticed that, with the exception of the five people who actually come here on purpose, most of the traffic to my blog is from search engines. The first few times that I saw 'Google' or some such listed in the ‘referring URL,’ I had a Navin R. Johnson “The new phone books are here!” moment: Wow, people are actually looking on Google to find out what I think about stuff. I am so important. So relevant. Things are going to start happening for me now.

Turns out, though, that they’re mostly looking for the words to drinking songs. Primarily the drinking song from Jaws. The hell? Don’t get me wrong. I love Jaws. It’s on my list. (What? It’s not? Okay, now it’s on my list.) Jaws is a lot of things--a wunderkind director's ambitious big-screen debut, a genuinely great summer movie, a rollicking seafaring adventure--but I just don’t think of it as the source of drinking-song lyrics so famous or obscure that they merit, y'know, googling. I mean, are the people looking for this song doing a paper for school? Do they need something to sing while they sit around with their pals comparing scars and knocking back rot-gut rye? Just strikes me as a bit odd, is all I'm saying.*


In any case, I saw this as a chance, given lemons, to not only make lemonade, but set up a virtual lemonade stand. I get an easy way to feel validated about having updated my blog (I’m beginning to think that if Ben Franklin were alive today, he’d lump blog posts in with houseguests and fish, vis-à-vis, their respective shelf lives) and ostensibly to perform a public service for the random passers-by, whom I hope to spare a few mouse clicks. We here at ADS welcome you with a laurel and hardy handshake, and hope you enjoy your stay. When your blog is called ‘A Drinking Song,’ apparently it's reasonable to presume a certain level of hospitality, a higher standard of service, if you will, than your usual, everyday blog content of me, me, me, all day, all night, in stereo.

Here then is the song from Jaws and, as a bonus for those who order before midnight tonight, the Monty Python Philosophers Drinking Song. Cheers!

Show Me the Way to Go Home

Show me the way to go home (bum, bum),
I’m tired and I wanna go to bed,
I had a little drink about an hour ago
and it went right to my head.

Where ever I may roam, (bum bum)
by land or sea or foam,
you can always hear me singing this song,
show me the way to go home…

The Philosophers Drinking Song

Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant
who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could drink you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.

There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ye
‘bout the raisin o’ the wrist
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.

And John Stewart Mill (of his own free will)
On half a pint of shanty was particularly ill
Plato, they say, could stick it away:
Half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle
Hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
“I drink, therefore I am!”

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed:
A lovely little thinker
But a bugger when he’s pissed!

*So, if you've found what you were looking for, how about a little something, y'know, for the effort? Leave a brief explanation in the virtual tip jar otherwise known as the comments section and you could qualify for that most coveted holy of holies: total consciousness. Which is what I suspect brought you here in the first place.