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Gibberish, she wrote...
Apr 01, 2006

"Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put 'em together and what have you got
Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo..."

So go the lyrics to the Disney classic. You hear a lot of Disney classics as well as a number of Sesame Street chestnuts when you have a small child. You also find yourself considering them in a new light. For those of you who are familiar with them both, Bert is Santi will seem funny. It did to me, anyway...

I was listening to the scat-tastic Angela Lansbury contribution to the Cinderella soundtrack and I started wondering how you put "salagadoola", "mechicka boola", and "bibbidi-bobbidi-boo" together and still end up with "bibbidi-bobbidi-boo." Is it some magical property of bibbidi-bobbidi-booism? Is Angela Lansbury a higher power? There's really only a couple of possibilities which work here:

First, it is possible that mechicka boola is the opposite of salagadoola. If you look at the equation X + Y + Z = Z, you can see that if Y = -X, you can substitute -X for Y and end up with X + -X + Z = Z. It would seem odd that an incantation would call for something, cancel it out, then call for something else all for the express purpose of calling for the final piece - "Turn him into a Frog! Change him back! Turn him into... a newt!"

The second possibility is that bibbidi-bobbidi-boo is actually equal to infinity. No matter what you add to infinity, you still end up with infinity. Therefore, this incantation might be, "Turn him into a frog! Now, give him a peacock's tail! And, everything is pretty much the same as it was before!" This makes a bit more sense to me... It's kind of demystifying magic. No matter how spectacular an event is, the universe just keeps chugging along.

The third possibility is that never getting enough sleep is starting to make me go a little loopy and start seriously analyzing gibberish from Disney feature films...

That being said, it's a given that Angela Lansbury is a higher power...

Comments [add a comment]

devin (Apr 04, 2006)
I forgot the case where they're all zeros - 0+0=0. Bringing to mind the Billy Preston classic "Nothing from Nothing," which leaves nothing. And, you gotta have something if you wanna be with me, baby. All of which begs the question, "what if Billy Preston and Angela Lansbury had a love child?" Which, in turn, begs the response, "ewwww!!!"
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