As if I needed another reason to love They Might Be Giants

I'm in Brawley this week. Think cows, and the accompanying smell of cows. Vast feedlots of bovinity. I pass the lonely nights during this quadri-annual hajj trying to convince my exhausted body to actually go to sleep instead of staying up until 2am watching train wrecks like "Tila Tequila's Shot at Love" that I wouldn't dare tune into at home.

Brawley = pit of turpitude (whereas Blythe is just a pit).

This trip, trying to avoid such reality tv horrors, I'm still staying up way too late browsing the net. This is how I found the They Might Be Giants gem "Turtle Songs of North America." It's a collection of imaginary turtle calls introduced in a soothing drawl by John Linnell. I found it on the TMBG ClockRadio application http://www.tmbg.com/radioIndex.html , but you can also download it or listen to it at http://tmbw.net/wiki/Download:Turtle_Songs_Of_North_America .

Even were I not to have an affinity for testudines, purely professional of course (remember, Brawley = pit of turpitude), I would still consider this .... offering (can't really call it a song) ... from TMBG pure genius. The Marty Stouffer-esque delivery of descriptive prose like "the blinding taste of sunlight on the hood of a truck" mixed with mention of Fibonacci sequence while a Tudlow turtle gasps out its call in mathematical glory is ambrosia for geeks like me. I snorted Diet Dr. Pepper through my nose, MY NOSE mind you! while hearing of Eastern fighting turtles aggressively coursing through miles of swamps.

Midnight nears, and I lay awaiting the call of the zombie turtle to send me to sleep.