Journal: News & Comment

Permalinks to this entry: individual page or in monthly context. For more material from my journal, visit my home page or the archive.

Ouch. My head hurts.

Yours will too after you view this very strange animated online short film (requires Macromedia Flash). [Link updated 11-Apr-2001. The original site is gone, but my friend Alistair managed to preserve the movie. - D.]

A friend of mine who can understand Japanese writes:

Okay, I played this repeatedly to try to catch all of the lyrics... and almost drove myself insane. However, I did gain a minor measure of understanding (or whatever) from it.

To begin with "Hyakugojyuuichi" means 151: hyaku (pronounced "hee-yah-koo") = one hundred; gojyuu ("go-gee-you") = fifty; and ichi ("ee-chee") = one.

After that, nothing makes sense. The phrases that pop up occasionally (eg. "Found a hobo in my room", "The yodel of life", "Kazoo", etc.) are not the actual lyrics. They are English phonetic interpretations. You've probably guessed that by now.

The people and things that appear (eg. Chris Benoit, Rowan Atkinson, McGruff the Crime Dog, Peewee, Harry Potter, Napster, the singing toy plane, Budweiser, ambulances, etc. etc.) have absolutely nothing to do with anything. Nothing! None of them are mentioned in the song. [By the way, does anybody else think that that's Willem Dafoe with the crazy hair and googly eyes at the end of the song? Or have I truly gone mad?]

The number "151" is the focal point. The singers say it dozens of times and it seems to be the number of iterations of an event that is (or will be) happening. They say that if this event occurs 151 times, it will make them happy. If they dream about it 151 times, it will bring contentment. They think about it constantly. They sing that they are trying very hard to "reach 151". They say that they are looking forward to this event with fervour. The only problem? There is no explanation of what the event is, and why 151 times is the charm. It appears to be a totally random number

Other than that, the lyrics are very hard to make out. It's sung as a novelty/nonsense song (think "Chantilly Lace"), with weird voice inflections and slang. The children's lyrics are almost completely indecipherable, but they seem to echo the adult male's lyrics, verbatim. The words that are recognizable are not strung together in a coherent way. The only phrases I caught that made any sense were "I am thinking properly", "Well, that's it for me", "Whatever it is, I've forgotten", "I've got lots of friends, but I don't remember how many", "I have more friends around here somewhere", and a few others that make my brain hurt trying to translate. Umm... yeah.

Alright, that's it. Screw this. I've listened to this thing on a continuous loop while writing this e-mail. I can't believe I've even written this much about it. I quit!

 |