FALSE

The weakest contender of the twelve is the Band Aid song, but I'm struggling to think of a replacement.

Thought of the gag a minute too late: kindly replace that by "Jiggery-Pokery", Athropolis.

Can't not have that in. My LJ may not have been a twelfth of my life measured by time, but it's certainly been a twelfth of my life by influence.

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Whew. That "sound effect" breaks my friends page in this browser (IE 5 on the mac) really quite spectacularly.

What I get is pages and pages of whitespace, with the sound effect in the middle of it all, and then everything after that on my friends page (which is normally LJ standard "simple" page) has a blue background. If I view it behind the cut-tag it does similar but with the LJ footer after the pages of whitespace at the end of the sound-effect, and then the comments below that.

I think the table height=100% may be what's doing it. Isn't that 100% of the page? If so, isn't that going to play merry hell with the rest of the page?

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Oops, sorry about that. How does it look now?

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Congratulations on the best answer I've seen for "life soundtrack" - most of the answers seemed to be soundtracks for current events instead of an entire life (or entire so far; I wish you as much longevity as you can take).

And I'll even ignore that you thought answers like my "Halle Berry-Intimate Apparel" one were cheesy. In Wisconsin, that's a compliment.

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....biggila bah-jah-goo-juh-much!

*HUUUH!*

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Name twelve songs for the soundtrack of your life.
Very well designed, in terms of actual time coverage -- I'm impressed. (I actually went through and answered this one question for myself just now, following your guidelines -- though I have 13.) Also, you've had the Moby song playing countless times -- I went and downloaded it tonight, just to see what you're so hyped about. :-P EXCELLENT.

Batman or Superman?
Superman in a heartbeat. Moral ambiguity and darkness are not desirable characteristics in my book. (Ooh, I hear the intake of breath from you Snape fans from here...)
Undesireable in any people, or only in superheroes? If only the latter, why? I sort of have this not-yet-understood feeling that heroes in general are the most entitled to ambiguity in any sense, though I don't know if I necessarily like that.

You can start any business of your choice, whether for-profit or non-profit, regardless of whether this business exists practically in the world or not and whether there's an existing business model to make your chosen business work or not. Irrespective of what it is, it will start off moderately successfully and eventually become very successful. You will make a very satisfactory wage and your investors/sponsors will be very pleased with your work. What business would you start?
What sort of a jerk would write a question as long as that?
I must say that I couldn't possibly know anyone who likes to pose such difficult and convoluted questions... :)

And as before, there were no promises as to the quality of the comment-questions. :)

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Porcelain is by far the most credible of the twelve songs as a piece of pop music, though I would demur from comparing it to Handel.

Undesireable in any people, or only in superheroes? If only the latter, why? I sort of have this not-yet-understood feeling that heroes in general are the most entitled to ambiguity in any sense, though I don't know if I necessarily like that.

In story characters first and foremost. Probably I just don't appreciate complex stories and the shades of grey to be found within enough.

And as before, there were no promises as to the quality of the comment-questions.

Even fewer to the quality of the comment-question-replies. :-/ :-)

(Eep! It's 2:16 and I haven't even started writing my LJ post yet!)

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the Vorlon has left the building.

Yes.

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I repeat, the Vorlon has left the building.

Sounds like he's kidnapped Jimmy Saville !

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Nah, that'd be

now then *now then* rattle rattle jewelry jewelry what's all this then Jim'll Fix It Badge

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Whew. That "sound effect" breaks my friends page in this browser (IE 5 on the mac) really quite spectacularly.

What I get is pages and pages of whitespace, with the sound effect in the middle of it all, and then everything after that on my friends page (which is normally LJ standard "simple" page) has a blue background. If I view it behind the cut-tag it does similar but with the LJ footer after the pages of whitespace at the end of the sound-effect, and then the comments below that.

I think the table height=100% may be what's doing it. Isn't that 100% of the page? If so, isn't that going to play merry hell with the rest of the page?

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expetesso has explained her soundtrack in full, so here are the references behind mine:

"Baa Baa Black Sheep": apparently my favourite nursery rhyme when I was very young. Mum tells me that I took some time to learn how to recite its first line and spent a long time going "Baa Baa Black... Baa Baa Black... Baa Baa Black..." before finally and triumphantly appending "Sheep" to finish the line.

"Mah Na Mah Na": I think I actually had a cover version of this. There was a tape I owned at the time called something akin to "Trendy Pops for Today's Tots", which certainly featured a version of Mah Na Mah Na, which I think was sung by a Cockney fellow rather than K. T. Forg. (Other songs on that were "Tiger Feet" and "Save All Your Kisses For Me", plus many others that I don't remember.)

"Rat Rapping": popular rodent puppet du jour. Least said, soonest mended. Not too incredible or embarrassing for someone born in 1975 - at least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Handel's Messiah, "Zadok the Priest": I was in the choir at school and I think this was the song I remember singing as part of it most vividly. I would've been a soprano at the time.

"Black and White", Michael Jackson: most notable because it was used in Channel 4's coverage of the 1992 General Election campaign. I had liked it beforehand for its cheeky, upbeat squealings, but the (completely unpredictable) election context always springs to mind.

"Sesame's Treet" - eep, I managed to get the name wrong in my post! - was a sort of dance/techno/ I-never-know-what-you'd-call-it version of the theme tune to Sesame Street. It was spectacularly silly and the first song of that type that I can remember proactively liking. I particularly liked it for considerable quotation from Count Von Count.

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"John Kettley Is A Weatherman" is probably from the mid-'80s, but was always a footnote until university when I fell in with a group of gamers who liked singing it and other such comedy songs at considerable volume while drunk. JKIAW is the one which has stood the test of time best, against considerable competition. It is frankly a moronic song, more akin to a nursery rhyme involving the misadventures of membes of British pop culture of the time, but it is very silly in a good way. The chorus goes: "John Kettley is a weatherman, a weatherman, a weatherman. John Kettley is a weatherman and so is Michael Fish." They are indeed both weather presenters on television of the day.

"Three Lions", Lightning Seeds, Baddiel and Skinner makes it because it caught the nation's imagination at the time like very few others. The context is that it was the summer of 1996, and England were hosting the European (Nations') Football Championships. It's again a very simple song, somewhere between a Nursery Rhyme and an anthem, suitable for singing when you're drunk. (This is a common theme of many of my chosen songs. The fact that I do not get drunk is irrelevant.)

The chorus goes "It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming, football's coming home". Twice. The "three lions" of the title refer to the badge of the England football team. It's a remarkable song for being in the right place at the right time. Very English indeed. Football was changing significantly at the time (well, over the past few years or so) and this is an indication of its extent. Broadly, supporting a football team was traditionally a working-class pastime and it has become a middle-class pastime. So to get two TV comedians singing a very simple song about it really caught the Zeitgeist of the time. See "I love 1996".

The next choice relates to the fact that one of the significant influences in my life since the start of university has been the game show fandom. "All-Star Blitz" was a not-at-all-missed 13-week game show in the USA which can best be described as a "Hollywood Squares" rip-off, but with triangles instead of squares, and dumber. However, it did have a very silly scat-style theme tune. Now over the 8 years or so I've been in the fandom, some of the folks in the USA sent around tapes of clear cuts of game show theme tunes, before mp3 sharing on the Internet was widespread. ASB had the silliest theme tune by far on any of these tapes. This explains the comment by lambertman above.

"Porcelain", Moby: That's most reminiscent of the good year or two working for the MSO web site full-time, when I would work from home listening to our local independent radio station. Simply, it's my favourite song that they used to play at the time, over the period of the MSO web site at its peak.

"The Last", 2ndavemusic: 2ndavemusic, the wonderfully-named Clay Zambo, is someone else who I met through the game show fandom. By profession, he composes and teaches music in NYC. He sent out a tape with some of his songs thereon and "The Last" was my favourite of them. It's essentially a paean to New Year's Eve. It isn't available online, though I've mentioned that it should be to him and he's said that putting it online is something he wants to do at some point. Hopefully this will be a nudge.

The twelfth tune, substituting for "Do They Know It's Christmas Time?" (a worthy but frankly not-very-personal choice) would indeed be that very strange "Jiggery-Pokery" song I discovered by chance due to Googling for Jiggery-Pokery to see what else it came up with. It's a very strange sort of country tune with a hilariously bad group-of-kazoos instrumental break. I pick it as being the most apt representative of my year on LJ, which has been very much different to the 26½ years beforehand, though it has been by no means the most-played song over that year.

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Considering your preference for songs that make you laugh, I'm surprised you chose "The Last" from my work. (You're in good company, though; it's my wife's favorite as well.) I was just running over it in my mind, trying to recall the "good bits" or "good sounds" on the recording you have.

'T any rate, tho' it's still not available online, if anybody's particularly interested I'll make a version of it so in time for the holidays.

Thanks for the nudge, and for your support!

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