not about my bathroom ceiling

[rm]

Still poking at my LJ Idol entry in my head. This one is a real PitA because I know a lot about the backstory of the two different ideas that are topic choices, and I want to be true to them and not focus on colloquial sloppiness.

But, I finally just figured it out, thinking about my favorite misheard song lyric ever.

It's from a Decemberists song called We Both Go Down Together.

The correct verse is:

I found you, a tattooed tramp
A dirty daughter from the labor camps
I laid you down in the grass of a clearing
You wept, but your soul was willing


What I heard for ages was:

I found you, a tattooed triumph
A dirty daughter from the labor camps
I laid you down in the grass of a clearing
You wept, but your soul was willing


I still think mine is about 800 times better and more interesting and really, really disturbing. And hey, kinda works as a fic prompt, but first I have to write about goats and then I have to write about a realization I had about current fandom weirdnesses AND THEN I have to finish a chapter proposal for something....

Goats.

Yeah.

Comments

[neifile7.livejournal.com]

There is actually a word for these kinds of mishearings. It's "mondegreen." As far as I know, it was coined by Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle (although Google might tell you differently). He wrote a series of columns about them some ten years ago that I still recall as about the funniest things I ever read in a daily paper.

Oh, and speaking of mondegreens as fic prompts: the all-time classic is "Purple Haze," as sung by the incomparable Jimi: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky" becoming, of course, "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy."

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, it was in my English text when I was in Junior High in the early seventies.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Here it is:http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mondegreen.
Dates from at least the '50s.

[neifile7.livejournal.com]

Glad to be corrected!

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Your servant.