he opening gem on 9 Black Poppies is both an anti-love song and a list song in the classic tradition of Cole Porter's "Let's Do it" ("Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it"). In this case, what John Darnielle (AKA The Mountain Goats) catalogues is a knowingly ironic list of improbabilities, nay impossibilities. Given the "why can't Johnny read?" state of American education, clearly Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th century masterpiece will never be a bestseller here, although it happened as recently as 2003 in Great Britain, even if the cause of this surge in interest, BBC 1's infamously modernized TV miniseries was cancelled early.

The song wears its learning lightly but confidently expecting its hearers to be as smart as its composer about a broad range of cultural issues like the Philips corporation's hand in the digital-analog debate, the Perfect Sound Forever campaign for CDs in the 1980s, that we now know was a crock. Likewise it helps if you know the convoluted history of Heaven 17, the band named after a fake band on the Top 10 in the record shop in Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. This band formed from the ashes of The Human League featured two former computer operators, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, masters of tape looping and techno synthesizer dance grooves. One suspects given its tech heavy emphasis, this is music even the geekiest of nerds could love. And, of course, there's a certain irony in Bill Gates spearheading the revival of a group, one of whose hits was "Crushed by the Wheels of Industry," which could be the Microsoft corporate mantra!

The point here is that none of these things will ever happen and that sets up the sting of the refrain's "And will love you again." Ain't … GONNA … HAPPEN … EVER! And particularly NOT "like I used to."

Take heart Cubs fans; if the Bucs can do it just as Darnielle the Omniscient predicted, surely your day will come too! Just in case, here's my list for John; please write an alternate first verse and chorus. Something like:

I'm gonna destroy Ken Jennings straight up at Jeopardy
And Quantegy will admit they made an awful mistake
And George Bush
Will single handedly spearhead the compassionate conservative revolution

And the Boston Celtics will beat every team in the league
And the New Orleans Saints will make it all the way to January

And I will love you again etc.