Nah, the artificial sweeteners are said to cause gas, bloating, diarrhea, stroke, heart disease, and I'm still thinking about cancer even though that was fifty years ago and pretty much disproved. And death! Maybe death!
OKAY OKAY! Here! Have some seltzer! It's cold! It's fizzy! It has NOTHING ELSE IN IT! It couldn't possibly harm you!
That's what you think!
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Yes, it's true -- according to an Italian report last April in the journal Nutrients("Damage from Carbonated Soft Drinks on Enamel: A Systematic Review"), "An abuse of carbonated acid substances leads to an increase in the possibility of dental erosion with consequent structural disintegration and reduction of the physical and mechanical properties of the enamel. There is thus greater bacterial adhesion on rougher surfaces, determined by the erosive process, and therefore a greater risk of caries." You read that right -- drinking seltzer water or club soda that contains nothing else at all is bad for you, because the minuscule amount of carbolic acid in fizzy drinks will rot the teeth out of your head. You've heard of meth mouth? Meet soda smile.
But really, how dangerous is it? As the old saying goes, the poison is in the dose. How many carbonated drinks a day is considered abuse? The report does not say. It just scares us with some pictures of damaged teeth and tells us to drink water and eat fruit (which, just sayin', is loaded with sugar).
Now, of all people, the American Dental Association dropped a flag on this one, God bless 'em. Yes, they say, "any drink with carbonation—including sparkling water—has a higher acid level" than water, but "sparkling water is generally fine for your teeth". Why? "In a study using teeth that were removed as a part of treatment and donated for research, researchers tested to see whether sparkling water would attack tooth enamel more aggressively than regular lab water. The result? The two forms of water were about the same in their effects on tooth enamel. This finding suggests that, even though sparkling water is slightly more acidic than ordinary water, it's all just water to your teeth."
The ADA still maintains that fluoridated water is where it's at for teeth health, but standard oral care ought to prevent any damage from carbolic acid in sugarless drinks (although they do add that sodas with natural citrus flavors will likely have a stronger level of acid).
So, it's the usual hullabaloo-- small studies question the safety of an innocent pleasure, meta study combines results to set off a panic. Study authors never get money or notoriety for proving that something is harmless, unless they are so deep in the pocket of an industry that they're covered in lint, in which case they may be completely insane ("smoking prevents asthma!").
Today's medical journals are part of the campaign to make everyday life miserable. We must have schools that don't teach, jobs that don't pay, appliances that don't work, chemicals that are so safe they do nothing. Go suck water out of the tap, plebe.
Well, the hell with it. Seltzer is only dangerous if you shoot it in your face, and I'm standing by that opinion.
Banana peels are a danger to the same segment of the population, by the way. Just a little caution.
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.
You may have gathered from the few shows and movies I've written about that we watch a lot of basic cable around here. And it's true. We have not yet bothered with any streaming services, and I don't think we will anytime soon.
I hear a lot about the amazing shows that are available now, and I'm certain that the quality is mind-blowing, especially compared to the shows I watched growing up.
But it all looks so damn dark.
No soul, no hope, no wonder, no human dignity, no respect for fellows, nothing but despair. The shows may be deep but the human spirit on display is shallow.
It's not just TV -- movies, books, comics, everything. Even when something is adapted from a source with genuine heart, the heart and meaning is torn out of it. (Looking at you, Grinch.)
No wonder everyone is so insane. We're living on a diet of despair. And make no mistake, the crazy was there before the Chinese Death Virus blew into town.
A few years back I remember a rainy Saturday when my wife was binge watching House; after a full afternoon of Dr. House and his brilliant hatred I wanted to kill myself. My wife has a higher tolerance for this stuff than I do. She loves Criminal Minds, which looked to me like television's #1 show for guys who like to see scared women shivering in chain-link cages. Every audition went like this:
Director: "Okay, read the line." Blonde: "Is... is anybody there? H-hello?"
The intention of today's entertainment is to create a premise and story line so dark that even a positive ending cannot erase the misery and despair in which the viewer has been immersed. Like yeah, we won the war, but now we all have awful PTSD. I find this unhealthy. Maybe that makes me a Philistine. There has to be some place to escape from menace and dread.
Am I wrong? Are there any shows that have genuine heart, that don't get their dramatic tension by hating others (like everything on Freeform)? Convince me!
Yesterday in Florida the pitchers and catchers reported for the Beloved Mets. And I think the season is already over.
Not that, as far as I know, anyone got hurt already, although I think the Trojans had fewer injuries in The Iliad than the Mets do in an average season. And it's not that there were any tremendous changes to the squad, which was very competitive in the latter half of 2019, when it was already too late. And it's not that I disagreed with the dismissal of manager Mickey Callaway, who racked up the streakiest W-L record I ever saw.
No, it's because we almost pulled off a major trade, and it looked like it was in the bag, and it all fell apart a couple of days ago.
I am referring to the trade of our owners, the Wilpons.
The Wilpons have a bad rep for spending money stupidly, not spending it where it would count, charging fans for everything short of the air they breathe while watching the games, for falling for two pyramid schemes including Bernie Madoff's, and mostly ignoring the team until they bumble in and do something dumb. Aside from that, they've been great. As Rolling Stone of all places noted five years ago, "the Wilpons have lived on a shoestring budget for six years, taking profits from their ownership in SNY to make up team shortfalls and hoping that a tight budget and crossed fingers can arrest the team cratering that began in 2009. The Wilpons have seemingly never met a problem for which an absence of a solution will do, unless they have a solution worse than the problem, and that solution is invariably 'them.' As a distraction, they've repeatedly used the Daily News as their mouthpiece to trash players and deflect attention from complaints."
Apparently what screwed the current deal to sell the team to Steve Cohen, according to the New York Post, was Jeff Wilpon, heir of the family, who for some strange reason had to hold on to operational control of the team for at least five years after the Wilpons sold the majority stake. Which is like saying, "Okay, Turnaround Artist, I'm glad to sell you my interest in Amalgamated Widgets for a tremendous amount of money, but I will continue to run the company into the ground for five more years."
Which is a little strange.
Now they claim that they won't insist on maintaining control of the team -- but why say that now, when the deal has fallen through? Did they just use that as a torpedo to sink the Cohen deal for some other reason? Don't tell me that it's because the Wilpons are such good judges of character.
Further, they want to keep hold of SNY, the Mets' cable channel, which by many reports is more lucrative than the team itself, probably because the expenses are so much lower -- but without the team it would be a really poor sports channel. Anyone else would sell the channel and team as a package deal, but not this bunch.
And so now we're stuck with them again.
We're certainly not alone in the world of sports for having hated ownership. When the Yankees fell into a funk in the eighties, fans wanted Steinbrenner's head on a pike. Dan "Chainsaw Dan" Snyder of the Washington Redskins is loathed -- well, pretty much by everybody, not just Redskins fans. Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks sometimes acts like he ought to be locked up somewhere before he hurts himself or others. And there are many others.
Probably everyone who loves a team has had to hate the management at some point. But to have the bright sunshine of a new Mets era blackened over by the storm clouds of Same Ol' Crap at the last second truly is hard.
I know I may seem a little obsessed with food this week, doing two entries in a row already, but we are coming up on the holidays and I'm hungry.
That said, I know that the holidays can be quite sad for people who have no family or friends, at least not close by, or who are suffering from ailments of all kinds. Sometimes we can't make things better even if we want to desperately.
And some things make me wonder if they make everything better or worse.
You've probably seen little overpriced snack packs around, mostly in with the cold cuts. Hormel and Oscar Mayer and Hillshire were out in front on this, apparently an adult version of longstanding kids food packs like Lunchables. Now Butterball, the turkey magnates, have jumped into the game with their own turkey-based snack products.
And it's sad. Or is it?
They come in three varieties as I write this, and two are Cajun Style and Citrus Teriyaki. Nothing sad about that, unless you're a turkey. But it's the Thanksgiving one shown above that made me sad.
It's not the interior of the snack, shown here:
What we have here is an almost Jetsons-style Thanksgiving meal: sliced turkey breast, dried cranberries, "stuffing bites," and a coupon at the top to buy more of the same. Not quite a meal, but it would see you through for a while. The turkey tasted good, as one might expect from Butterball; the cranberries were fine. The stuffing cubes really are croutons, even though seasoned with poultry seasoning, and belong on a salad. The coupon is acceptable, though small and easy to lose.
It's just that the idea of the Thanksgiving meal being reduced to this little snack pack seems sad, like it's saying, We know your Thanksgiving will suck so we made this for you. Which is kind of nice. I wish every deployed American in the field on Thanksgiving Day could get one of these if he wanted it. I'm sure it beats the MRE.
Butterball was probably thinking this would be a little taste of our great American holiday for those who don't want the turkey dinner to be just a one-day thing. And maybe I should stop looking at the gloomy side of life and take that as such.
However, I think it might be smart for the Tofurky guys to come up with a similar snack tray. After all, fans of the meatless substance are the most likely to get sore about the food at the family feast and want to storm out and go eat something conscientious. I'd call that a win all around, actually.
I was cleaning out the ol' desk at home, a little task that's been, oh, maybe... 15 years in the making.
Hey, it takes me a long time to accumulate that much junk.
The proximate cause of this week's action was that I couldn't find my thumb drive backup, so I just dumped the three drawers on the floor.
I did find the object of my quest. Then I had to do something about the mess on the office floor. A mess that included old floppy disks, a billion paper clips, zombie ballpoint pens, and notebooks. Pounds and pounds of notebooks.
It's stuff I wrote ten or closer to twenty years ago. Oooh, maybe that short story I couldn't find is in there! Let's have a look!
Ugh.
After reading through them for a few minutes, I found a blank page and summed up what I'd seen:
Sometimes I forget the turmoil I've gone through, which hardly makes sense -- you don't forget the hurricane that ripped off the roof just because you had it fixed. These notebooks were part of my attempt to work through a lot of the doubt, terror, resentments, and self-pity -- OOOH the self-pity -- that I probably should have gotten past in my teenage years. I'm usually not this bad anymore.
I'm glad to say most of the issues that plagued me as regards personal relationships have been resolved. Some, not much I can do. But it's not so painful these days. As I've gotten older I've realized that people can only do what they can do, and even with the best will they can muster, sometimes they fall short, sometimes they can't change. Anyway, I've learned not to fight with dead people anymore. You can't win. You can't lose, but you can't win.
I guess it's good to know I've made progress, but bad to know how annoying I can be.
So, I decided to pack up all of the books and throw them all away. I hope I'm not that man anymore, and I don't want to drag his notebooks around like Jacob Marley and his chained ledgers.
I once put a question to a Catholic group like this: If you died and went to Purgatory, and part of your rehab involved watching a movie of your life -- every minute of it, everything you did and said, all of it (it's Purgatory; you have all the time there is) (maybe you could fast-forward through sleeping and bathroom breaks) -- how would you feel about it?
I think you can tell a lot about someone by their answer to that question. Some people were all gung-ho. Yes! I'll bring an eternal bucket of popcorn! It's showtime! Others were more pragmatic. There will be painful memories but if that's the cost of heaven, I will pay it. And then there were those like me. No thank you very much and could I spend a thousand years scrubbing toilets instead?
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.
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!
Why oh why did I take my car back to the dealer for an inspection and an oil change?
What am I, stupid?
Yup; next question?
There was a slight key issue that turned out to be a nonissue; the other reason was the coupon. The dealer has sent me coupons for oil changes, tire rotations, A/C check, and so on, but I never use them. I'd gone to the dealer for routine maintenance and it always took forever. So I usually go to the guy down the block. But this time, I don't know, I just thought they might have gotten better in the last three or four years.
WRONG.
Two hours for an inspection and oil change. They threw in an exterior car wash, but I would have happily told them not to bother if I had known they were going to do it. It might have saved me what, an hour and a half?
Yeah, sure.
Not that they don't try to make it comfortable for you. There is a lounge with magazines you'd never read, the newspaper one of the employees straight-up stole three minutes after I went in, and vending machines with no prices posted (but they'll take your credit card, so it's okay). The best of all was the TV that was on to one channel and could not be changed or shut off.
Now, if you work for a living, or otherwise avoid daytime television, you may not be aware that everything that is wrong with the United States of America can be determined by spending a couple of hours watching daytime television. I don't think it was as bad when I was a kid, as there were few talk shows and lots of game shows, and Mom never watched the soaps. What I saw on the idiot box while pining for my car told me that the acting on soaps was worse than ever, and that daytime talk shows are written and performed for morons.
I'm not sure what irritated me most about the talk show. Was it the celebrity suckup that was so powerful that James Dyson would have been envious? The heroic celebration of people whose accomplishments are minimal, self-centered, or stupid? Or the slavish pandering to the addle-pated crowd? ("That's what I think, amiright?" "YAAAY!") And there am I---because you can't leave, your car could be ready at any moment---looking toward the garage through the window like a sad Pierrot.
View from the window, my sad little clown face staring out.
Was Meredith Vieira ever really considered a legitimate journalist?
If the entire staff of the dealership hadn't been zombie-assing around like DMV employees on Ambien, I might had some sense that an effort was being made to get me on my way. If the idiot who figured out the bill had been able to figure out how to apply the coupon that the dealership sent me, I might not have told them they would never see my face again. (I told him to skip the coupon because I had to get back to work, which was true. At least one of us was willing to do some work that day.)
Maybe if the dealership spent more time getting non-dingdongs to work there and less time making signs telling everyone how great their service is, things would run better there. As it is, never again.
Sorry -- I got nothing today. I am so miserable with this winter, and we have two more frigging months to go.
The new book is going very, very poorly; my early reader gave the first chapter a thumbs-up, but I've had no time and no patience to work on it. You ever hit a one-damn-thing-after-another phase? So have I. And there's so many more things that need tending to, things that don't resolve any major issues or put a dollar in the checking account. So I'm going like a hamster on a wheel, furiously pumping, staying put.
And I'm already tired of being cold every day, a weariness that doesn't usually set in until mid-February.
Bite me, winter.
Yesterday the dog was romping in the white crap (sorry, "snow") and unexpectedly one of the neighbors' kids came down the street. Tralfaz took after her like she was a squirrel, except he never bothers to chase squirrels. He refused to acknowledge being called. It escalated. He was even going into the street, which he knows is 100000000% bad. By the time I corralled him, I had managed to look like a maniac in front of the entire block. Because I am. I suppose they might as well know it.
So the dog is nervous (although still misbehaving), the wife is sorry (maybe that she married me instead of that nice bowling-ball polish salesman), the neighbors wary, and me, depressed and ashamed to show my face outside. I'm falling behind on a freelance project despite working on it every freaking day. And more snow is coming Monday.
You know the difference between me and a hamster on a wheel? The hamster can get off.
I am tempted to go back to bed now. It's just gone six thirty a.m., but if today is like yesterday, it's not going to get any better from here.
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