Temperatures have been in the low 50s overnight this week, and you know what that means!
I'm mostly past the age where my clothes have to be seasonal, beyond the point of survival. My last Hawaiian shirt went to the charity box as a gift to my wife. Now it's someone else's problem. Everything else is just layers.
But then there's plaid. I have a short-sleeve plaid shirt, but a part of me will always think of plaid as being the color scheme for thick cotton shirts, thus the kind that you leave in the closet until the first day of autumn. And not crazy colorful plaid, either -- they don't wear that stuff in Quito or Honolulu, you know. I mean plaid based on black + one other color.
The sad thing is, that with the loss of my Hawaiian shirt, I only have one other really summery number, a very bright blue that's quite airy and good for the heat. But it also must be ironed after washing, or it looks like it was balled up under the car seat from September to May. That's an issue because 1) I'm lazy and 2) the dog is scared of the steam iron. That hissing really bothers him. Consequently I have worn that blue shirt once this summer, and at the rate things are going it may not come out of the closet again.
There's another problem with happy colors, and that's you just look dumb wearing them if your countenance is very serious. I used to wear lighthearted ties to work sometimes for that very reason -- to remind me that if I went around grumpy with, say, my Looney Tunes tie, I would look like a fool. And then I got sacked. And then no one was wearing ties anymore. And then I was working from home. So now I just go around grumpy anyway, and wear dark colors.
This is a lot more than I intended to say about clothes, and I apologize if I've wasted your time. If it made you grumpy, put on a Hawaiian shirt and smile. There's still almost a month of summer to go.
Wednesday evening I hit a wall. I guess I've been coasting on inertia for a while, and a large job I had expected to arrive got delayed -- and suddenly I had nothing I had to do, and I fell into a pit of misery. It came on fast, like a bad case of the flu. At three I'm okay, by four everything seems completely, even uniquely pointless. And then other thoughts and memories rush in to fill the emptiness and reinforce the endless sorrow.
I guess I'm a little burned out.
I did try to bounce out of it, spending time with youthful dog Izzy and going over the headlines of the day (Babylon Bee headlines, that is) with some old friends on a group text. But texting with my old friends reminded me that this year it will be a decade since one of our best guys, the one who helped make us all friends and kept us so through the years, died suddenly and left a wife and two young kids.
And playing with Izzy reminded me that it's almost six months since we had to put Fazzy down.
At the vet. Last photo, ever.
And I just couldn't stand anything anymore.
Sorrow is the curse and the consolation of Christianity. We can't pretend, like so many foolish Communists and transhumanists do, that some combination of perfect intelligence and technology will wipe every tear and bring humanity to a state of perfect joy. We know man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. On the other hand, it's the only religion that teaches that God Himself knows exactly what that is like, having assumed humanity and suffered for it. Our sorrow can never be thought of as meaningless; it has touched the heart of God.
Still, I prayed last night, saying that if I never felt sadder than I did just then, I thought I could take it -- but that I didn't expect that to be the case.
Sorry I was so low yesterday. I took steps to remediate it. Actually, I got right to it and put on my happy pants!
You can't go around looking glum with bright red sweatpants on. You just look like an idiot. It's the same reason I used to wear amusing neckties to the office when I was unhappy -- if someone would cheese me off or something would fill me with disgust or discomfort, I'd look down and see I had on a tie with Warner Brothers critters or cartoon elephants or something, and I'd have to turn that frown upside down. It was my Sun-Will-Come-Out-Tomorrow, Give-a-Little-Whistle, Fake-It-Till-You-Make-It, Whistle-a-Happy-Tune, even Smile-Though-Your-Heart-Is-Breaking moment, and it would get me through the day. Then I'd take the tie off and scowl all the way home. But I'd made it to five!
The bright red sweatpants were a bit of an error. I love Jockey's sweatpants, and while ordering a couple of pairs I noticed the red ones were on sale. They looked red on screen, but they looked REALLY red on my legs. I'm not one to wear bright colors, being more old-fashioned in my couture, so this was a surprise for my wife. I had to explain that my cheapness had brought about this change in style.
I do wear these semi-clown sweats at times other than needed to cheer myself up. I dig out my New York Giants cap and wear the sweats with a blue shirt to annoy my Cowboys-fan neighbor. I think that wearing them with a blue shirt and white socks (as pictured) also makes me look like a Great Value Golden Age Superhero. Sweatsman! And Panty, the Wonder Pooch!
And then there's Santa. It's warm now, but Christmas morning was freezing. I put on a Santa hat, my red sweatpants, and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man coat that I only wear when it gets close to zero. It was very early, and figured maybe some kiddies might like to see Santa out walking his dog. Or I'd just tell them I was an elf, since I have no beard. "Yeah, all us elves actually are about my height. A lot of us own dogs, sure. Only friendly ones. Santa uses the dog crap when he stuffs the stockings of Congressmen."
Well, I didn't see a soul -- it was really early and really cold -- but the next day I had the same getup on when I got up, and a pickup truck honked at me. Local utility company truck, I think. Anyway, I gave him a Merry Christmas salute as he went by.
Is the rooster facing the wrong way on this weathervane clip art?
I'm not sure if I'm dealing with seasonal affective disorder or post-Christmas blahs or what, but our unseasonably warm temperatures haven't lifted my spirits. Maybe I like the fighting with the snow that usually comes in January. Takes my mind off things. I don't think I'd miss the snow much if I moved south and never ran into it again. But a good fight can bring a guy some pride.
As usual, most of our neighbors couldn't wait to get all their Christmas decorations down, as if the whole thing had been a big mistake and they wanted to forget it and move on. The rest have been taking them down one by one, or just not lighting up anymore. Not us. We're lit till Epiphany, boys! Technically that's today, but it's not celebrated until Mass on Sunday. Then we return to Ordinary Time. (I always hear the voice of Lili from Blazing Saddles: "Oh . . . how ordinawy.")
If we're the last house with lights on through Sunday night, so be it. I'll clear the outdoor stuff Monday. There's no blizzard on the way.
Work is starting to rev up again -- a little slow off the starting blocks this week with the freelance assignments, but we're getting there. Meanwhile there's always the sense that No One Likes Me Anymore and I'm Going to Have to Live in a Box. Not that I worry about things.
Fighting snow, fighting through a pile of editorial work, keeping body and soul together and house intact through the winter -- maybe it does give a man a sense of purpose. That's one way to fight the January blues. I don't know what people do in the south. Enjoy themselves, maybe. I don't know how to do that.
I have to tell you, it's been a rough time, and I'm not even discussing concerns about the country or the stupid state of New York. In addition to being quite stressful with work, I've also in withdrawal from the duloxetine that the doctor recommended for neuropathic pain almost three years ago. I never found it helpful with depression, but I certainly have found withdrawing from it to be helpful for depression -- four weeks in and it's depressing as hell. I know it's biting me harder than usual, because seasonal affective disorder doesn't usually set in for me until the dead of winter, and this year it's starting way early.
Plus, I can't stop missing my dog Tralfaz. He was such a good boy, and the first dog that ever loved me, and you just can't let that go easily. But this is ridiculous -- my wife had The Polar Express on last weekend and it almost brought me to tears just passing through the room.
I mean, A Charlie Brown Christmas, maybe, but The Polar Express? I'd sooner be caught weeping at Die Hard.
And here's where I get to the Rodney Dangerfield joke above. Our veterinarian has an admirable service -- for three months after losing a pet, they'll pay for phone grief counseling. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I appreciated the thought when he gave me the card. But I didn't have more than a few bad days after we lost Nipper last year, so I didn't expect losing Fazzy to be tougher. It has been.
So after much contemplation, I dialed the number.
They hung up on me!
Seriously, there was a rattle on their end and the phone went dead.
What the---?
Okay, so it's not like a got a counselor who was recommending suicide, but still. It took me days to get over my typically manly reserve (well, a little manly) and dial that number, and bang! Sorry, no time for you, Freddy Boy. I guess you could say the moment had passed, and I didn't try again.
Anyway, thanks to Rodney Dangerfield, I did get a good laugh from it. In related jokes, he told of the time he complained to his doctor (Dr. Vinnie Boombatz, of course) that he wanted to stop aging, so Vinnie gave him a gun. In his song "Rappin' Rodney" he sang (well, a little singingish) a version of the other joke:
I can't take it no more! I'm getting too old! I called suicide prevention--they put me on hold!
So if I can't fight off this mood or get help for it, maybe I can at least laugh through it. High five to Rodney, the Patron Schlemiel of Perpetual Woe.
I don't want to startle people, but we're all gonna die.
Plus, we're going to have an enormous economic crash.
How do I know this? It's not that I have any great economic knowledge; I just know what everyone ought to know.
I was reminded recently, though, that not everyone does have such knowledge. A highly intelligent friend, an accomplished young man for whom I have tremendous respect and whose company I enjoy, said that he couldn't blame Trump for anything good or bad on the economy, and similarly Biden shouldn't get blame for inflation or gas prices. Presidents can't control that stuff.
He is, of course, a Trump hater and is a liberal Democrat. So I was faced with the choice of explaining how inflation works when money is not tied to anything hard -- that every dollar printed is borrowed by the government, and makes every other dollar worth a little bit less, and how supply and demand affect fuel prices, especially when the government adopts anti-supply policies, and how fuel prices raise the price of everything else -- or enjoy dinner. So for a change I kept my mouth shut. (Trump was a spendthrift in office too, of course, so he didn't help in that regard either, even if he was not at anything like Biden levels.)
Thus even smart people don't understand why the current picture is as bad as it is, and fated to get worse. But that only matters tertiarily to my prediction of economic doom. And no, my prediction is not based on the fact that the Phillies are in position to win the World Series, and the Wall Street Journal claims that every time a team from the City of Brotherly Love wins a championship, the nation goes into a recession.
My prediction is based on my observation that so many things around look like the Internet boom of the 90's, only without the concurrent economic flourishing. What I mean by that is, there is an absolute torrent of software startups out there -- all founded by "disrupters" and "innovators," of course -- who are based in expensive cities and whose main success so far lies in getting rounds of funding. As in the 90's, half of them can't explain what they actually do in 5,000 words or less.
What I'm not seeing, unlike the 90's, is everyone rushing straight to the stock market for an IPO. A bunch of worthless stocks from startups like TwoGuysAndAParrot.Com (not real) helped cause an avalanche of losses spread widely among investors. If companies are flush with cash from funding rounds A through Triple H, only the big-money guys are on the hook if these startups go under.
However, that's still a problem. For one reason, your savings may be linked to funds that invest in these companies, looking to strike gold. For another, the big-money guys can go on a profit-taking spree to make up for investment losses, which could easily lead to a big fun selloff pile-on that further squishes your 401(k), which is already losing value faster than a herd of cattle diagnosed with Mad Cow Disease.
What to do? Well, naturally, I recommend putting all your cash into Fredcoin, the Favorite Cryptocurrency of Guys Who Live in My House!
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Quite a few years ago my wife and I were honored to be invited to a colleague's wedding in Chinatown. We were very touched to be included, along with some other people I knew, and were looking forward to it. It was a beautiful ceremony, a gorgeous blend of Chinese tradition, Christian church, and no fewer than three outstanding dresses for the bride at different parts of the evening.
We were also promised an amazing feast of many courses. I was a little wary, knowing that this was not going to be the takeout that Americans normally think of as Chinese food. But we had recently started to frequent a wonderful Indian restaurant and were all in on that cuisine, so we figured this might be a similar situation.
As you might guess, it was not.
To my uncultured Ugly American palette, what we faced was just dish after dish of weird things from the sea, stuff you would throw back, stuff that might make you give up fishing forever if it landed in your net. Everything seemed runny, gummy, wobbly, gushy, weird. We and the other white folks at the table were fighting over the rice as the meal progressed. Also, we of some Irish extraction drank all the beer before the reception was half over. (Meanwhile, the groom, who did not like to drink, was borne by tradition to toast every table of the large extended family with Chivas Regal.)
I bring this up as an example of why I think it's perfectly natural to resist unfamiliar food, and the more unfamiliar the stronger the resistance. My wife has lately taken to watching the show Monsters Inside Me, and if you are trying to lose weight this new year, I advise putting it on during dinner.
Monsters Inside Me details the real-life horrors of people who at some point contracted a terrifying disease, most often caused by parasites. Doctors are unhelpful, because early symptoms and signs are confused with more common complaints -- but eventually the effects turn hellacious, and usually life-threatening. If that's not enough, the show provides gruesome magnified animations of the "monsters" at play in the body, munching, bursting, oozing, and multiplying. My wife turned it on once and the narrator was saying something like "When the fungus finishes eating the natural bacteria on the eyeball, it can adapt to eat the tissue of the eye itself." I called out from the kitchen, "That is the most typical piece of dialogue you can imagine from the show." Every episode I've seen includes little talks from Dr. Daniel Riskin, explaining why these creatures are so deadly and how many people they kill. He's lots of fun at parties.
No offense to our wedding hosts, and I can promise you no one got sick there, unless it was from too much Chivas Regal. The only reason I bring it up is that there are consequences to eating unknown foods in strange places, especially things that have not had the hell cooked out of them, and we seem to have a natural urge to avoid foreign things if we can. Evolutionary biologists might say it comes from millennia of watching Og or Thunk so hungry that him eat weird thing raw and then him turn green and devoured from inside out. Our natural reaction to new food, thus, ranges from caution to spurning to horror.
Heck, what's more anodyne than American peanut butter to those without food allergies? And yet I'm told many people from foreign lands think it's weird and won't touch it.
It's not a bad idea to be cautious when sojourning outside the country. As the CDC says, "International travelers can be at risk for a variety of infectious and non-infectious diseases. Travelers may acquire parasitic illnesses: through ingestion of contaminated food or water, by vector-borne transmission, or through person-to-person contact. Contaminated food and drink are common sources for the introduction of infection into the body." I think Monsters Inside Me has turned my wife off sushi permanently.
It's not bad enough that eating raw crabs or something can infect you with a parasite that will kill you. It's that the parasite may also make you want to kill yourself. You may have heard that the common cat-related Toxoplasma gondii parasite is linked with depression, but so too is Ascaris lumbricoides, which may be ingested if good hygiene is not observed.
Which got me to think of chef and author Anthony Bourdain, largely remembered for traveling around the world and eating weird foods on shows like No Reservations. Well, now I have reservations -- I wonder if his mental state had been wrecked by some ingested parasite. If the autopsy did not look for it, we'll never know; Bourdain was cremated.
I'll add a note too to Andrew Zimmern, host of various Bizarre Foods shows: Bring a microscope with you when you dine out. Or Dr. Daniel Riskin.
Naturally there was much written yesterday about the rowdy debate between Trump and Biden on Tuesday night. I didn't see it, but I gather it was not a pleasant event. Normally three men with a combined age of more than 220 years fighting like that would mean a bad day at the home. But these are the times in which we live.
In my faraway youth, I recall elderly relatives who bemoaned the ugliness in politics, often harking back to the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The celebrated FDR pulled us all together in the Depression and then especially the war, uniting Americans with his beloved fireside chats. They knew that he and we were all pulling at the oars together to move the great ship of state in the same direction. Not like now, when [insert recent president] was always sniping at someone.
The Beloved FDR
But here's the thing. I have been called on to work as an editor on many historical books, about Lincoln and Eisenhower and the presidency in general, and one germane to today's topic -- a compendium of Roosevelt's speeches. And let me tell you, from what I read, Franklin Roosevelt, with the exception of the famous Pearl Harbor speech, never missed a chance to sling vile accusations against his opponents.
As here, from FDR's first inaugural, after winning in a landslide. Having vanquished his opponents, he takes the high road by dumping a load of crap on them:
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
And his message to Congress, 1936:
We have earned the hatred of entrenched greed. The very nature of the problem that we faced made it necessary to drive some people from power and strictly to regulate others. I made that plain when I took the oath of office in March 1933. I spoke of the practices of the unscrupulous money-changers who stood indicted in the court of public opinion. I spoke of the rulers of the exchanges of mankind’s goods, who failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence. I said that they had admitted their failure and had abdicated.
Abdicated? Yes, in 1933, but now with the passing of danger they forget their damaging admissions and withdraw their abdication.
And again at his second inaugural, where Republicans lost support in Congress and Alf Landon was sent packing:
When four years ago we met to inaugurate a president, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision—to speed the time when there would be for all the people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. We did those first things first.
Remember, everyone is a beloved citizen in this country, except those unnamed ones who have no faith in our new direction, and they must be cast into the outer darkness.
Here's Mr. Unity's "Arsenal of Democracy" fireside chat on December 29, 1940, a time when many well-meaning Americans wanted to get involved in overseas butchery as much as other Americans wanted to be in Vietnam in 1968:
Let us no longer blind ourselves to the undeniable fact that the evil forces which have crushed and undermined and corrupted so many others are already within our own gates. Your government knows much about them and every day is ferreting them out.... There are also American citizens, many of them in high places, who, unwittingly in most cases, are aiding and abetting the work of these agents. I do not charge these American citizens with being foreign agents. But I do charge them with doing exactly the kind of work that the dictators want done in the United States.
See, he's not charging these Americans with actually colluding with the Axis powers, he's just noting that the ones who don't want to do what he wants to do are unwitting suckers of the Nazis.
And here's one of my favorites, from Mr. Unity's Economic Declaration of Rights, an attack on capitalists and promotion of government control of industry that could warm the blackened heart of any red-diaper baby:
A mere builder of more industrial plants, a creator of more railroad systems, an organizer of more corporations, is as likely to be a danger as a help. The day of the great promoter or the financial titan, to whom we granted anything if only he would build, or develop, is over. Our task now is not discovery or exploitation of natural resources, or necessarily producing more goods. It is the soberer, less dramatic business of administering resources and plants already in hand, of seeking to reestablish foreign markets for our surplus production, of meeting the problem of underconsumption, of adjusting production to consumption, of distributing wealth and products more equitably, of adapting existing economic organizations to the service of the people. The day of enlightened administration has come.
Move over, Rover, let Franky take over!
In the 1943 State of the Union, when we are already mired in two wars:
Every normal American prays that neither he nor his sons nor his grandsons will be compelled to go through this horror again.
Undoubtedly a few Americans, even now, think that this nation can end this war comfortably and then climb back into an American hole and pull the hole in after them.
Read any of his speeches and wait for the moment he slips the cosh on some pack of Americans. He's always got to prove that he's the man by whacking someone else, even when it's unnecessary. He may have put on a genial front, but there was little real grace in the man.
You are certainly entitled to think that FDR was right about everything he said, right about every target he aimed. I am glad he fought the Axis powers and encouraged desegregation. But don't tell me he united the country. Whatever unification he achieved was by stomping on the faces of some Americans for the applause of others.
Most of all, no one ought to believe that presidents lashing out is something new. FDR was as good at it as anyone, and better than most.
And P.S.: As I have noted before, St. Eleanor of 74th Street was no prize either. She was more than willing to steamroll other people in pursuit of her aims, even her own family.
Correspondent and non-commenter Mr. Philbin wonders how my back is doing. This may come from the goodness of his heart, or indeed it may come from his desire to inherit my vast collection of Precious Moments figurines upon my passing. As I have drawn up no will, at this time no non-family member can expect to get anything. Sorry, Philbin old boy.
As for the question, though, regular readers of this site (you handsome devils, you) will recall that last February some spinal issues landed me in the hospital in absolute agony. I haven't mentioned much about my medical progress since, only my financial progress, as bill after bill keeps coming in from my two-night stay. Just FYI: Business Insider says the most expensive hotel in Manhattan is the Central Park Ritz-Carlton, whose rooms start at $4,000 less per night than my hospital bed (not including doctors or treatments or drugs or tests, which are billed separately).
Anyhoo, what about the back itself? When I left the hospital, in grave fear of a relapse, I could not walk more than a hundred feet without shooting pain in my back and/or my leg. Follow-up care with a pain specialist and another spinal injection barely made it scarcely better at all. I was forced to order groceries for pickup and abandon walking the dogs. I wondered if this was going to be as good as I would get for the rest of my life.
The problem is
in here somewhere.
By the time I was due for a follow-up to the follow-up, my pain doc was doing virtual appointments because of the Wuhan Death Virus. I figured he would suggest trying more shots, or maybe go straight to surgery, but to my surprise he recommended... an antidepressant.
What the hey...?
Yep, duloxetine (known as Cymbalta to its friends) is an SNRI drug that for some reason treats chronic musculoskeletal pain (also diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain). I have taken antidepressants in the past, for (duh) depression, and was not eager to go back on one. But I was sick of debilitating pain and was willing to try almost anything.
And what do you know: It works.
I've been able to do normal supermarket runs now, and have walked the dogs for a mile or so at a time without having to stop and wait for the pain to subside. I do have some weird leg and foot cramps and the odd shot of pain, and sometimes a cold feeling in my back where the disks went flooie, but it's almost normal. I am not advised to do very strenuous things, like tossing cabers, but the fact that I'm able to do normal things without suffering is almost a miracle compared to how I felt that night I came home from the hospital.
Now, duloxetine does not actually change the situation; it doesn't put slipped disks back in place or heal bone or anything. I am mindful that the whole spine issue could come crashing down on me again. The doctor said these things can improve on their own, so I have hope. But it's definitely improved the pain situation, so thumbs-up for that.
The funny thing is, I don't think the drug has improved my mood at all. It ranges from kind of average to bleak, depending on my worried fixation on money and quarantining and things, probably like everyone else. I think it makes me drowsier, and certainly the naps have been more frequent. But we have plenty of coffee, so I'll get through.
Thanks to everyone but Mr. Philbin for the kind wishes. You're not getting my Precious Moments, pal.
Who are all you freaks dreaming about White Christmases out there? KNOCK IT OFF!
I'm writing this at lunchtime Monday, and last night we had a lot of freezing rain as well as snow and a little hail. This morning was a treacherous mess.
We were actually lucky to get a little snow, because it was the crunchy kind that was good for walking. The ice beneath it is a stone-cold killer, a menace to drivers and to pedestrians with two legs or fewer, and I've had enough concussions for one year and am not looking to add to the total.
We may get a foot of snow by the time it ends in the wee hours on Tuesday. It should be over by four a.m., so there will be at least a school delay, possibly another cancellation.
It wouldn't matter so much if we didn't have a still-not-healthy dog -- Nipper keeps improving but he isn't normal. He did play in the yard with his normal vim and verve this morning, so I have to count that as a good sign. I am mainly concerned about dehydration at this point. More selfishly, I am concerned about the frozen diarrhea awaiting when this white sky garbage starts to thaw later in the week (high on Wednesday: 38; next week we hit the forties).
Earlier this year I thought I'd do a little photo project for this site -- try to take the same tree picture to see how it changes over time. I actually forgot the November update, but here goes:
August 13, 6:50 a.m.
September 20, 6:41 a.m.
October 15, 6:52 a.m.
December 2, 6:48 a.m.
One of these things is not like the other...
Ugh. Any wonder I'm so depressed today?
⛄⛄⛄
TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE: Nipper's still not 100%, but is getting better. The Curse of Frustration is still upon me. I missed the garbage this morning, because I was digging out and trying to get the dogs to do their thing, and I expected the trash men to come a little late and they did not. Now I'm stuck with sick dog's poop and a turkey carcass until Friday.
I know that when things start to go wrong, it's easy to get confirmation bias; start looking for wrong things and you'll find them. But I can't escape the feeling that I have the Creeping Dangerfields upon me.
So you may hate Christmas, or just the way it's celebrated, or just the music that plays everywhere in December. Okay! This post is for you.
I've decided to rank the most depressing Christmas songs in order of their depressive qualities, from least to worse. I have absolutely no idea if there are even more depressing Christmas songs out there; probably so. These are the ones I'm familiar with. Please feel free to add your own in comments. And go ahead, dispute my rankings. We're all friends here.
I understand full well that for someone suffering illness, loneliness, grief, any of the many ills that plague us in this fallen world, that the most depressing carols may be the most cheerful, mocking our misery. If you're stuck in Saskatchewan on this second day of winter and dealing with seasonal affective disorder, "Mele Kalikimaka" might be the cruelest thing you could hear. If that is where you find yourself, I am heartily sad for you. However, my mission today is to find songs that can ruin Christmas even if everything is going well, all by their miserable little selves. So here are my picks:
Depressing Christmas
"A Christmas Carol" - Tom Lehrer's mockery of the Christmas celebration is only mildly depressing, since it is pretty funny and contains some of his trademark clever rhymes ("Relations, sparing no expensell / Send some useless old utensil / Or a matching pen and pencil"). It also contains the earliest known (to me) poop joke in popular music ("Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle / Driving his reindeer across the sky / Don't stand underneath when they fly by"). It's not a bad song, but it may take some wind out of your Christmas sails.
"Here Comes Fatty Claus" - Hard to top this one for negativity about the holiday season, unleavened by any cleverness. Makes you laugh the first time you hear it, then never again.
"Father Christmas" - The Kinks' 1976 ditty features violence against a department store Santa by children, followed with a plea for charity to these same thugs. Its humor keeps it up as high as #3, but really, it paints a bleak picture of Christmas in the UK, at least in the 1970s.
"In the Bleak Midwinter" - And speaking of bleak, this poem by the wonderful Christina Rossetti has been used for a dirge-like hymn for a long time now, and yet it takes too many liberties. It paints the midwinter scene beautifully -- "Earth stood hard as iron. Water like a stone." And I know the midwinter is a metaphor. But a metaphor has to be true on both ends, and Christmas Day is exactly four days into winter. You know what the temperature forecast for Jerusalem is this Christmas? Sixty degrees Fahrenheit. I'm not saying it can't be cold there, or that we know that Jesus was born on the day we celebrate as his birthday (we don't, but could be), but Rossetti's poem only works properly if it really is as cold in Bethlehem as it is in our sinful hearts. So it's wrong and sad at the same time. The most common music with the poem is from Gustav Holst, best known for The Planets, who was an amazing composer but not a merry, sprightly type.
"I'll Be Home for Christmas" - A sad, longing song about not being home for Christmas, it made me sad when I first heard it as a kid, at an age where I kind of wouldn't have minded being away from my family for Christmas. (Which I would have regretted had it happened, but you know how kids are.) Even sadder when you know it was written in 1943, during World War II, and how many Americans fighting in Europe and the Pacific and everywhere else who heard the song never did get home for Christmas, ever.
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" - A friend of a friend was in the Peace Corps, and my pal passes along his assessment of this 1984 drek: "It represents the worst form of patronizing arrogance and paternalism and feeds the savior complex of many international development professionals. It is a vile song that will cause me to walk out of a room." Plus, most of Ethiopia is Christian, so I think they'd gotten the message that it was Christmas. And, if it weren't for the God-damned Soviet Union there might never have been a famine. But don't let that stop your wealthy Western guilt; the accusatory nature of depressing Christmas songs will be visited again below. Meanwhile, Sir Bob Geldof got rich and got a knighthood. Hey, you don't get to be Sir Bob for "I Don't Like Mondays," do you?
"Blue Christmas" - If, like me, you grew up thinking that this song sprang like Athena from the dark-browed forehead of King Elvis, you too are mistaken. "Blue Christmas" was first recorded by Doye O'Dell, and you can read the rest of its winding history thanks to the unbeatable Mark Steyn, who mentions everything about the song worth knowing except that it's the only song used in Rankin-Bass's The Year Without a Santa Claus that was not written by Jules Bass and Maury Laws. Anyway, its brokenheartedness earns it a spot on our depressing list, but its bitterness ("You'll be doing all right with your Christmas of white") keeps it from scoring higher on the Depress-O-Meter.
"Christmas Song" - The first of two by Jethro Tull, with the admission that Tull is one of my favorite bands EVAH!!😍 But what an anti-Christmas song front man Ian Anderson wrote here, for 1972's Living in the Past. You get the idea: "When you're stuffing yourself at the Christmas parties / You'll just laugh when I tell you to take a running jump" and "How can you laugh when your own mother's hungry? / How can you smile when your reasons for smiling are wrong?" It calls for a remembrance of Christ, but you can't take that seriously from a pretty obvious non-Christian. However, it does end with the call for "Santa! Pass us that bottle," baring the singer's own complicity in the revels. But Anderson would return with:
"Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow" - Almost a decade later this was recorded by Tull during the Broadsword and the Beast sessions, but it didn't make the album; it would appear as a B-side and on the band's box set released in 1988. This one goes straight to threats - your lack of charity could bring punishment from God, who'll take away all your good things and throw you in the gutter with the loathed punks ("The Lord may find you wanting / Let your good fortune disappear"). Eek! Sad and scary!
"Santa Can't Stay" - Dwight Yoakam's yuletide tribute to broken homes is funny, but of course it isn't. Yeah, Santa shows up drunk, like Mom expected, driving a car just like Dad's, and it's all seen from the point of view of the kids. But it is funny, especially when Santa "threw a present really hard that almost hit Mom's new boyfriend, Ray" (we are also told that Santa "might just beat the crap outta Ray"). But it's horrible too. But the music is festive! And it's awful. One of the great country music songs. Depressing.
"Please Come Home for Christmas" - It kind of figures that the first recording, from 1960, of this Christmas blues song would be from a guy named Charles Brown. No wonder he told Linus he couldn't understand Christmas in 1965. First the ironic start ("Bells will be ringing," the kind of observation that makes for happy Christmas songs and happy wedding songs), then you get it right in the teeth on line three ("My baby's gone, I have no friends"). Wow, you lost your woman and all your friends!? The title plea follows and we, the listeners, have little doubt that it will do no good at all. Next Christmas he'll be drunk and living in a box. And he'll be crying...
"Christmas Tears" - Yes, a year later, in 1961, Freddie King put out his own song of Christmas blues, blues that this singer has been carrying for years. "You been gone such a long, long time / But it's Christmas and I can't get you off of my mind / Seems like you been gone a hundred years or more / But if you were here with me now / I'd hang 'Merry Christmas' on my door". Not only did his woman leave, but he absolutely cannot get over it. Jeez, the next song up for this guy would be a holiday cut of "He Stopped Loving Her Today." Forget the wassail; pass the strychnine.
"Pretty Paper" - I have a somewhat limited appreciation for Roy Orbison, and this song is one of the reasons why. Seems to be Christmas as seen from the eyes of someone lonely, poor, drunk, stupid, God knows what else. Of course everyone ignores the pathetic reject. (Supposedly it was based on the really sad story of a handicapped seller of gift wrap, as detailed on Wikipedia, if you're not depressed enough.) It has the subtlety of an RAF Grand Slam bomb. Anyway, Willie Nelson wrote it, so maybe that explains it.
"I Believe in Father Christmas" - Emerson, Lake & Palmer's bitter little song to a cheerful melody has always depressed me. The singer apparently has lost faith in everything because it rained on Christmas. ("They said there'd be snow at Christmas... But instead it just kept on raining.") Okay. Actually, reading a little about the origin of the song has softened me on it, but it's still sad, disgruntled, and wet.
"Looking for Eden" - And here comes Ian Anderson again, this time from his solo album Walk Into Light, trying to get some of that ELP soggy Christmas money: "And where on earth are all those songs of Eden? / The fairy tales, the shepherds and wise men? / Just one old dosser lurching down Oxford Street / To spend his Christmas lying in the rain." Not only does Christmas suck, and everyone who celebrates it sucks, but it's just a pack of fairy tales. And it's raining. Kill me now.
"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" - And here we are at last, the only Christmas song by an ex-Beatle so bad it could almost make us forgive "Wonderful Christmastime," if it were possible to forgive "Wonderful Christmastime." John Lennon's soggy little paean to peace uses Christmas in a way that makes Willie Nelson look subtle, to tell us if we all decide not to have war, we will not have war. How simple! How easy! And guess what? If we all decide not to steal, we'll have no theft! If we all decide not to be jealous, we'll have no jealousy! But you know something? It only takes one side to start a war, and then everyone involved has to play along. Maybe on some other planet Lennon's ideas would have worked, but I live with human beings here on Earth. And the choir sucks too. I think the most depressing thing about this song is that people still seem to think it's profound. I liked it better as a Jamaican tourist jingle.
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You may have noticed one thing most of these songs have in common -- airplay. Some are hits, and kept their creators in royalties for life. Clearly there's a market for depressing Christmas songs. I'm working on one called "Strange Ornaments," in which Santa comes down the chimney to find a whole family has hanged themselves because of the horror of living in HERR TRUMP'S AMERIKKKA!!!!! I think it'll be big on college radio stations.
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Honorable and Dishonorable Mention
"Christmas with the Devil" - Okay, if you take Spinal Tap seriously, this would be a horrible sentiment, and possibly depressing. But you can't, so it isn't. "The sugar plums are rancid / And the stockings are in flames!" Sure. Though I guess its bad taste could sour some people on Christmas. I think it's a funnier as an idea than in execution, but this really does sound like bad heavy metal.
"'Zat You, Santa Claus?" - A weird number, unlike any holiday song I know, with a totally a Halloween sound. First done with great pizzazz by the incomparable Louis Armstrong in 1953 and covered by everyone else since, even the Muppets. May leave you scratching your head, but the semi-implied threat doesn't make for depression. It does, however, seem to be particularly popular with people who hate Christmas.
"Christmas at Ground Zero" -Weird Al sings of the "crazy fluke" of the world being destroyed in a nuclear holocaust on "this jolly holiday." Really gets the '60s pop-Christmas sound down solid, so the parody music is on target. Kind of depressing, I guess, if you're worried about nuclear war, which we were more in 1986 when this song came out than in 2018, thank God.
"Another Christmas Song" - And here comes Ian Anderson AGAIN! This time from 1989's Rock Island, but by now Tull's flutemeister has gotten a little less petulant, and actually paints a poetical picture of the "Old Man" calling all his children home at Christmas, "proving that the blood is strong." And a sweet sentiment bordering on faith: "Everyone is from somewhere / Even if you've never been there." Of course, it wouldn't be an Anderson Christmas song without an accusation: "How many wars you fighting out there this winter's morning?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry we're not living up to your expectations.
"Xerox Xmas Letter" - This one's totally unfair, as it's funny and comes from Ray Stevens's Christmas Through a Different Windowalbum. It's the supposed text of a pathetic family's annual photocopied letter that comes from the Christmas cards. I could see it maybe making you sad if that sounds like your family ("We took down the front yard tire swing / Now that Junior's in the pen / But it looks like a happy new year / They moved him off death row again!"). Then again, every song from the album could have that effect ("Bad Little Boy," "Guilt for Christmas," "I Won't Be Home for Christmas," "The Little Drummer Boy--Next Door," and so on). Hell, so could Tepper and Bennett's "Nuttin' for Christmas," if you've been a rotten little kid.
"Same Old Lang Syne" - Dan Fogelberg does meet his old love in the grocery store on Christmas Eve, but the title of this sad and wistful number says New Year's Eve. So, not quite eligible as a depressing Christmas song.
"Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto" - This ditty from the unexpected Christmas singer James Brown is not depressing at all, actually, unless the very idea of poor neighborhoods or ethnic ghettos is that depressing for you. If it is, don't listen to Run-DMC's "Christmas in Hollis" either.
"I'll Be Home for Christmas (Though Just in Memory)" - Wait, didn't we cover this? Yes, but no. This is the 1942 song by Buck Ram, awfully similar to the 1943 song by Walter Kent and Kim Gannon mentioned above, and if you think there had to have been a lawsuit, you are sooooo right. But this song doesn't have the heartrending quality of Kent and Gannon's song; it's more wistful than sorrowful, and it doesn't save the punch until the end ("though just in memory" is the second line; "if only in my dreams" is the last line of the latter song). Sad, yes, but not as sad, or as good.
Well, all right! That's enough depression! We need a pickup, quick, and that means the Drifters!
Phew! That was close. Thanks, Drifters! And Joshua Held (who did the animation)!
And if that's not enough, here's Lionel Hampton:
Okay, I think that'll hold us through Christmas Eve! May your Christmas be lovely and totally non-depressing.
Good Friday is a depressing day by nature, but yesterday was lousy. Oh, the weather was terrific. I had two jobs on my desk and knocked one of them off in the morning. Yay money.
Then the ennui entered.
Spent an hour on project #2; could not motivate myself past that. Wasn't expecting any work-related calls or messages; seemed like all my clients had knocked off early. Maybe I will too.
Started to mope. Could've started on the yard work. Meh, neighbors outside -- jerks. Looking at them makes me sore. Writing project? No ideas. Laundry? Too noisy; wakes the sleeping dogs, and you know what they say about sleeping dogs. No, obviously the shroud of misery had descended on me.
I know doing something productive usually helps at times like these. I did bring that no-good Cuisinart pot to the UPS drop box to return it (because it's so much cheaper for everyone involved than sending me the tiny plastic piece that was missing). And when the dogs woke up I did allow myself to be hauled outside by my wife so we could frolic in the backyard. But all of it felt like I was like I was dragging around one of those big cartoon ball-and-chain sets.
stylin'
There were other things I could have done that would have helped. I could have gone to church to sit for a little while. I could have cleaned the bathroom. I could have tried to do something good for someone -- there are usually opportunities like that around if you look for them. I could have taken a nap. Well, I actually did try to take a nap after I dozed off in the chair, but the moment I hit the sofa I woke up.
When you can't even nap right, you know you're having a session of depression.
And now we're in Holy Saturday, which is also unhappy. The Apostles are in hiding. Mary's lost her son. Everything has gone as wrong as it can, and there's barely any hope of escape the worst that is yet to come.
Am I identifying too much? Maybe. Not that I don't have some difficult things going on; who doesn't? But I know that tomorrow is Easter, when everything turns around; the Apostles et al. did not know that.
This morning I'm doing better than yesterday, but I still feel like a trapeze artist who's flung himself free of his swing, trusting that there will be someone on the other side to catch me.
I tend to see Lent as a spiritual journey, and indeed it is often described that way in homily and song. But I never got off on a good foot this year. I had no directions, no ideas, no inspiration. Definitely no road map.
This actually would have been an improvement.
I feel like that first step dropped me into the Slough of Despond, and there I wallow.
Oh, sure, I had some plans, the usual giving up of this and intending to do that. Usually I make it a point to do some appropriate reading in Lent as well as Advent -- the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles, some of the more crucial prophets, books about the faith, as well as books by great Christian authors like Lewis and Belloc, have all been in my reading list at these times of year. This year it's been a failure. I decided to read G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man, which I probably last read close to twenty years ago. I got a couple of chapters in and I got stuck. It's not Chesterton's writing, which I love, or his arguments or anything else. I just would appear to be having some kind of revolt against books.
You probably know about these novels I've written; you may know that the bulk of my freelance work comes from editing books. I've been devoted to the written word since childhood. Now I want to start my own little book burning in the backyard. (With all my books it would rival the Texas A&M Aggie bonfire.)
It's true; the last book I finished with no one paying me to do it was John Delaney's A Woman Clothed with the Sun, my Advent reading. It's not a fun read. Yet somehow a handful of months ago I was able to get through that, and now I can't make myself read a book I love.
I fear I may be dealing with a case of depression. I've been diagnosed with major depression in the past, and submitted to counseling and medication for a while, but it has not reared up at me in a few years. Back then I was still able to read, although unable to write. Maybe because I was working in magazines at the time rather than books.
Even worse, I've come to a place where I can no longer trust my hunches or instincts at all. "Go with your gut" is pretty good advice -- but no longer for me. Nowadays if I have a strong conviction or inspiration, I guarantee you I will be proved wrong. If there is a bundle of primordial nerves that give us good direction when our higher brains fail, or if there is a guardian angel seeking to lead each of us to good decision and good action, I'm telling you I cannot get proper messages from either of them.
I'll grant you there's a lot of things going on right now, some of them frustrating or depressing, but whose life does not have challenges and even dangers? If my faith isn't helping me deal with these things, then there's something wrong with it or there's something wrong with me. Experience tells me to suspect first that the problem is sitting in my chair, typing on my laptop, right this second.
Punch Jeff Lynne in the mouth
Punch Jeff Lynne in the mouth
When you see your ship go sailing
When you know again you're failing
Punch Jeff Lynne in the mouth
It was Jeff, wrote this song
Said to schlep on and on
When your life's a glob of spit
You didn't know when to quit
Punch Jeff Lynne in the mouth
When you get so down 'cause your life is done
And you've heard this crap since '81
When you're so downhearted and it's just no use
And you're tying the end of your rope in a noose
A frappé Lynne dans la bouche
A frappé Lynne dans la bouche
Vous avez acheté un canard
Maintenant ta vie est une merde
A frappé Lynne dans la bouche
When you get so down that you need to cry
And you want to punch ELO in the eye
When you're so downhearted and feeling sore
And you're sixty and stocking the shelves at the store
Punch Jeff Lynne in the mouth
Punch Jeff Lynne in the mouth
When you've nothing but a scream
Threw your life away on a dream
Punch Jeff Lynne in the mouth
Punch Jeff Lynne in the mouth
Punch Jeff Lyyyyyyyyyyyynne... in the mouth!
In one of her early disquisitions on the topic, Van Pelt described post-Christmas letdown this way:
I know how you feel about all this Christmas business, getting depressed and all that. It happens to me every year. I never get what I really want. I always get a lot of stupid toys or a bicycle or clothes or something like that.
In her own case, of course, she linked her disappointment and depression for not receiving the gift of real estate.
Not getting what one hoped to or expected to receive can naturally lead to disappointment (see the work of R. Parker, "Red Ryder Dismay: The Physiological Effects of Denial, and the Ophthalmological Effects of Acquisition").
Thing is, I get rather sad after Christmas even now, and I'm not bothered by what I got or didn't get as a gift. I have not lost any dear ones in some time, deaths that leave an acutely painful space at the dinner table. I'm not one who is saddened by the holidays, although I can let myself get stressed. All I can think of that causes my blue state is what we casually refer to as an emotional hangover, a feeling of sadness or even desolation that comes at the end of any event that excites high emotion. I knew a woman who was so sad after her wedding that her beautiful island honeymoon was almost ruined.
So is this a real thing, this post-Christmas (or other emotional event) letdown?
Apparently so.
Researchers at NYU and other universities have found that strong emotion does affect memory in significant ways, notably improving memory of non-emotional events that follow emotional events. This new study doesn't say that emotional events leave one feeling sad, but there is clearly a physiological effect on the brain.
On one hand it seems silly to have to come up with a label for the sorrow we feel when something we enjoy and have looked forward to is over. On the other, post-Christmas letdown (or PCL) seems quite common, and fairly strong. As usual, I think Charles Schulz was onto something.
Since the boffins like to label everything, I think they could do worse than an official title of Post-Christmas Letdown. If that's too calendar-specific for people like my friend with the post-wedding blues, maybe Post-Event Affective Disorder, or PEAD. Not as catchy as SAD, though. In any event, it is usually over by Epiphany, so there's probably no need to prescribe anything for it. Take two gingerbread men and call me in the morning.
If it's not bad enough I have to work on other people's books all day, which labor is better for me than honest work like digging ditches (I have delicate knees, you know), I am compelled to work on my own books, which is a goddamn nightmare. There, I said it.
What are books? Novels are stories lies about fake people. Histories are lies about real people. Self-help books are lies through and through. Who cares? Stupid books.
The U.S. Library of Congress, chock full of stupid, stupid books.
Even my immature rampages don't come from nowhere, and mine is caused by a project I've been trying to get started. I had intended to write a mystery, a real whodunnit, and when you do that you face a sophisticated audience that's been reading these things for a century and is hard to surprise. So I've been plotting, plotting, plotting for weeks, and finally got an outline I thought would work. At last! After a challenging day of beating others' books into shape, I sat down to write.
Nothing came out.
I can't even write about how hard it suddenly was to write, because I couldn't write.
They call it writer's block, but it's more like writer's constipation, although one hopes the eventual product will be superior to that of the metaphor.
I feel like an ED sufferer, to switch medical metaphors: This never happened to me before! And while that's probably not true, it hasn't ever felt quite so... useless, shall we say. Like shooting pool with a rope, to quote the great Rodney.
And there are reasons. The last project I engaged in was not my idea initially, but rather was suggested to me; I wound up doing hundreds of hours of work for nothing. Hey, I'm no government employee; if I don't work, I don't get paid. How much time can I reasonably spend writing things on spec? Hollywood may be full of vipers, but everyone gets paid. Publishing? Not so's you'd know.
When I woke up this morning I realized what part of the problem was; I had intended to use a bit of exposition early on that would have made the opener bland, a kind of "and then this happened and then that happened" passage that would bore the character who was telling it, let alone the reader. By working in the information in with some more craft, I could remove the blandness and make the opener work better.
A rainy spring day is not too depressing. Day 5 of rain begins to bring me down.
We had very little snow over the winter, so I know we need it... But of course, if I'd wanted to live in Portland, Oregon, I would have moved there.* Remind me never to move anyplace that has "Monsoon Season" written on the calendar.
That said, I would probably be in a lousy mood anyway. While trying to give my career a kickstart, I seem to have instead gotten a kick in the pants, which is very disappointing. In fact, due to the circumstances, it was painfully discouraging. That's a story for another time. Or maybe never. Maybe I'll look back on it and chuckle in a few years. Maybe I'll look back on it and shake my fists and say WHY WHY WHY as bitter tears roll down my ashen face. Well, could go either way.
Now the dog is acting up again too. He got hold of something terrible. I mean, of course, wet food. Yep, some fool fed him the canned stuff. How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree, huh? So we're trying to get him back on the bagged stuff, and he's gone on hunger strike. If he thinks he's winning this one, he does not know my wife very well.
What's that? The election? Hey, if America is so addicted to celebrity ("I know him from TV! He must be awesome!") and stunt casting ("Oooh, a woman! We haven't tried one of them yet!") that it has lost its ability to make sober judgment, then it deserves what it gets.**
But really, I think a little sunshine would make all these problems more bearable. Then I look on the weather app and see no sun icon until Monday. And guess what is shown for Tuesday and Wednesday?
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* Dear Oregonians: I know that Portland is not actually the rainiest city in the nation, and neither is Seattle; while the Pacific Northwest has some of the wettest places in the country, the wettest cities are actually in the Southeast -- New Orleans, Miami, Atlanta, and so on. Even Northeastern cities like New York and Hartford get more rain than Portland or Seattle. But you guys got the rep. ** And yes, the Old Man Yelling at Cloud is still in the running, I know. Come to think of it, I may have more in common with him than I thought.
Today we remember James "Pig Fats" Kelly, one of the most influential blues singers of the latter half of the twentieth century.
Mr. Kelly, of course, was one of the most recognized voices out of Alabama, that, admittedly, being a pretty small group. His nickname, "Pig Fats" or "Pigs," was often said to come from the fact that his family was so poor they could only afford to buy pig's fat from the butcher, which his mother would serve on brioche or scones. The story was disputed later by his cousin, Archibald "Twinkle Toes" Kelly, who said that "he got yclept 'Pig Fats' because he weighed three hundred pounds by his senior year in high school."
Either way, "Pig Fats" was unquestionably a powerful and influential blues singer, who played in clubs all over the south and eventually throughout the north, except in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. (The citizens of Wilkes-Barre just told him, "Please, keep rambling through. Thanks.") His many blues songs were renowned for their depth of feeling. Numbers like "Morbid, Morose Monday," "Life Is Horrible," "Everything Is Miserable," "Agony Is My Friend," "I Wish I Was Dead," "I'm Going to Hang Myself with the Extension Cord," "My Head Is in the Oven," and "Moribundt Cake" quickly established his reputation. During a show in San Diego he once made SEAL Team Two leave a jazz club in tears.
"Pig Fats" recorded two albums in those early days, Can't Get Up and My World Is Hell, and things were really beginning to come together for him. Sadly, though, like so many blues artists, Mr. Kelly had his Achilles' heel, a substance that threatened his career and changed the course of his life. This, for "Pig Fats," was the turning point.
Just not feeling it for Presidents Day this year. Can't get worked up about it.
It's not that the day confuses me, although it does. The federal government still celebrates this as Washington's Birthday, but that falls on February 22, which is also a Monday. So why are we celebrating this on the 15th? If they want it on a Monday, why not the actual Monday rather than the Monday before? No sense.
And it's not just because I'm a freelancer, and so I never get a day off. (Even yesterday, when I had a very busy Sunday, I still had to put an hour in; today will be a lot more.)
And it's not because I have something against the presidents. I mean, yes, I do, against some of them, but overall, of the 43 men who have held the presidency, I think 21 of them get my Good rating, and 10 get a Meh. Only 12 get a Bad rating from me. When you consider the kind of egotism and contempt for others that usually accompany men who seek high office, 12 out of 43 is not that bad.
I am refusing to count Cleveland as two presidents in my total, so we have 43.
So why can't I get all happy about the holiday? What's the matter?
I'm certainly not alone in thinking that America has completely lost her way, even more so than in the Vietnam era when everyone felt the joint was coming apart at the seams. At least then, regardless of what shenanigans politicians pulled, the people were pretty solid, meaning they believed in work and family, and even God. Now work is for suckers, families are shattered everywhere, and God is supposedly being supplanted by Science, whatever that's supposed to mean.
So there's that, plus the fact that it is an election year, and I have never seen such a sickening crop of dodos running for office in my life. Every bright spot that pops up soon winks out. (Apologies, Gov. Pataki, grateful as I am for your actions during 9/11, I do not consider the loss of your candidacy a tragic moment for America.)
It's just hard looking at the landscape to feel that the idea of America means anything to anyone anymore, and if that's the case, even my 21 good presidents are just chumps who were wasting their time. I've said before that I need a program like Amer-anon, to learn to separate with love, that I might still love my country but not let my life be ruined by her foolish and depressing behavior. Maybe it's time.
(If you're interested in my list of the Good, the Bad, and the Meh, and my criteria for judgment, send me a line at frederick_key AT yahoo.com and let me know where you'd put the gang of 43. Maybe we can start the support group together.)
Gonna be a short one today; my Christmas spirit took a bit of a beating yesterday. It was the anniversary of the death of my oldest friend, who left a wife and kids behind. Didn't help that it was the shortest, darkest day of the year---but thank heaven the weather was only cold and not bleak. Of course, we can't ignore the fact that the first day of winter means there are 90 or so more to go.
I also finished an editing job that, while not from hell, may have been from heck. I won't go into telling details, but I will say that it was a nonfiction book, and while the author has an ear for the illustrative anecdote, he also constructs sentences with the care of a man with delirium tremens building a house of cards while wearing oven mitts.
I only had a few days to get it done, including all weekend, and as I was being paid a flat fee rather than an hourly wage, no matter how much time I put in the pay didn't change. And it was such a mess. I kept at it right up to deadline. It put me in that awful position of having to turn in a job that I knew was no good (because the original was just horrible). It injures my reputation, because no one ever blames the author. Unless I'm the author. Then I'm the one who sucks.
Editing is not digging ditches, but it ain't easy money, either.
All that was followed by a nightmare that woke me up at two in the morning and made it hard to settle back to sleep.
So I'm sorry that this is just a kvetch blog today; sometimes winter happens, even in Advent. My apologies, and I hope to be back to my usual goofy self tomorrow.
