crap-ass xmas carols.

song of the day: anything on "holly, xm radio station 103"
word of the day: shutup!!!!!

as most of you know (because you know me), i'm not terribly fond of christmas music. i am going to use this opportunity to explain why this is so.

ahem.

perhaps you are thinking, maybe she just doesn't like xmas. this is not the case. i don't like how commercialized it has become (just like charlie brown). but i really think that when you try hard enough, you can actually have a decent xmas by simply ignoring all the people around you who are scurrying around trying to find ridiculous presents for people they don't know who probably don't want a present from them anyway. simplicistic values flourish in the xmas season, contrary to popular belief. less really is more, at least in my personal opinion. and by less i mean "stuff" and by more i mean "thought." so, no, i do not hate x-mas.

maybe if you don't know me, you might think i hate music. for all you out there who do know me and are laughing right now, you know that is a ludicrous statement. but, you are getting warmer...

let me just start by saying this: most xmas music sucks. it does. admit it. the melodies are boring and repetitive. the lyrics are terrifying. and must they all involve a flute? for the most part, it's just bad music altogether. not to mention the fact that everyone and their friggin mother has to get in on the deal. how many people really need to come out with their own rendition of "have yourself a merry little xmas?" it seems like there are an awful lot of people who think they can do just a slightly better job than the 50 million other people who have already recorded that damn song. it's not that i don't like the song itself (my personal favorite version is with john denver and rolf, the muppet dog) but you can really only hear it so many times before it crawls underneath your skin and starts gnawing at things, as is true with almost any song.

that brings me to my next point: please, consumer, let me cram this music down your throat. why do we need to start listening to it before thanksgiving? why are there radio stations that completely discard their normal genre of music in order to play xmas music 24 hours a day? i understand that it has been proven that people spend more money when they hear xmas music in the store they are shopping in but i work at a service center for cars. what exactly are those people going to spend more money on? "oh, hell. i know i don't need 'em but throw some brakes on there too. hey, it's xmas!!" i just don't see it happening. why, then, am i listening to jingle bells in the filing room?

my third point: who the hell wrote this shit? has anyone heard "hey santa" by wilson philips? holy god, that is an absolutely horrible, horrible song! let's not even get into the fact that it's sung by the most annoying trio of women i could imagine. and there's one song called "the holiday season" that could very possibly be my least favorite song in the whole entire world. here are some lyrics from that piece of garbage:

It's the holiday season
And Santa Claus has got a toy
For every good girl and good little boy
He's a great big bundle of joy
He'll be coming down the chimney, down
Coming down the chimney, down
He'll have a big fat pack upon his back
And lots of goodies for you and me
So leave a peppermint stick for old St. Nick
Hanging on the Christmas tree
It's the holiday season
With the whoop-de-do and hickory dock
And don't forget to hang up your sock
Cause just exactly at 12 o'clock
He'll be coming down the chimney
Coming down the chimney
Coming down the chimney, down!

what the french toast??? "a big fat pack upon his back"?? that sounds pornographic! and what's this "whoop-de-do and hickory dock" business? are those biblical terms???

and why do so many songs need to make such a big deal about being "home for the holidays?" ya know, some people can't go home for the holidays. many times, it is the same people who are forced to listen to this bullcrap all day at work because they work in retail and, if they live far from home, aren't allowed to go home for the holidays. after all, it is the busiest time of the year. take me, for example. i moved 3000 miles away from my entire family, made the "decision" to work in retail and then had to listen about how everything is just so much more spectacular when you can spend xmas at home. well that's just great. i can't afford to go home, my boss won't let me go home even if i could and now i'm forced to listen to these morons tell me how empty my life will be because "i will (not) be home for christmas."

so there you have it. with all that said, there are actually a few xmas songs that, when i am permitted to listen to them on my own terms a week or so before xmas, i actually enjoy. i shall list them for you:

river -- joni mitchell
2000 miles -- the pretenders
christmas time is here -- vince guaraldi
the entire john denver & the muppets album
celebrate me home -- kenny loggins
o holy night -- pavarotti
last christmas -- wham!
(christmas) baby please come home -- u2
do they know it's christmas? -- various artists

i'm sure there are a few others but that's generally it.

i hope this has cleared some things up. i'm not a "scrooge," i'm just very selective about my holiday music. but only 8 more days til i can start listening to the radio in my car again. insert: big, giant sigh of relief....

new jersey and you: perfect together. well...maybe not you. but perhaps you? definitely not you though.

song of the day: "jersey clowns" -- josh rouse

i really hate new jersey. i do. it should be no surprise to anyone i know by now. it's cramped. it's ugly. it smells...bad. but what bothers me most about it is not so much the place itself but how it has the capability to affect me. there is a negativity here unlike any place i've ever seen. it just lingers in the air. you can almost feel it. (you might think you can almost smell it, but that's just staten island.) i take responsibility for my own actions but you know when you're concentrating really hard on doing something and someone keeps repeating your name or poking you in the back over and over and over and over.... and then you just snap and say "knock it OFF!!!" you know when that happens??? that's kind of like what it's like to live here. someone is almost always poking you in the back. over and over and...you want to ignore the little obnoxious things but they build and build until you do something absolutely unnecessary that almost borders on crazy. oh, it's a fun place to live.

today, i yelled at a remarkably old lady (not directly) who was going 5 miles under the speed limit. who does that?? well, people around here do it all the time. it's not just me, although that doesn't make me feel any less ashamed for having done it. i have tried, i mean really tried, to not let stupid things bother me in such a volatile way but it is harder than you'd think. when you're surrounded by intense negativity, it takes a lot of energy to not fall into the trap and become negative yourself. what's so weird about it to me is that i would have thought that being a witness to all this negativity would be a catalyst to become more positive. you see all these nasty people walking around and you think to yourself, "i'll never be like that." it's not so. at least not for me and not on such a large scale. i can handle one or two or even a dozen negative people in one place (let's use my job as an example) but after a while, it gets tiring and i start to get discouraged. that's ususally when my fall from grace occurs and i join the ranks of the bitter and disheartened. i become the kind of person that i just hated. that feels pretty crappy.

i don't ever want to be put in the same category as the majority of the people that live around me. unfortunately, i can't very well say to every single person i meet "yes, i'm from around here but i don't fit in. i'm not like them." it's just not possible...especially when i yell at elderly women through my windshield.

i'm not trying to put myself in the victim slot in this scenerio, although it may seem that way. but i really do believe that the kind of person you are and the kind of decisions you make are at least partially based on the environment you are in. it's that whole nurture/nature deal. both are important and i think it really has to do with how easily you are affected by your surroundings. when i lived in pdx, i rarely found myself getting angry at strangers for exhibiting largely acceptable behavior (except perhaps when i worked at the kk but that's a whole other story). for some reason though, it's very easy in nj to curse out someone who takes a millisecond longer than you think it should take to make that right-hand turn. (you will notice an awful lot of my frustration is driving related...if you have never driven in jersey, put it on your "1000 things not to do before you die" list.)

so, with all that said, i am trying again to break free of this cycle. everytime i realized i've fallen below the caliber of person i want to be, i begin again. fall down seven times, stand up eight. well, actually i'm working on falling down roughly 34,000 times, stand up 34,001. hopefully, i will only have to continue doing this until i graduate in 2 years. then we'll see if a change in venue will actually alter my behavior. i hope so. it's so much easier to blame jersey for my downfalls.

happiness is just a twist-off away.

song of the day: "cold beer and remote control" -- indigo girls

just how excited should one person be about the thought of beer? well, the other day after i got home from a particularly aggravating day of gathering knowledge on how to take x-rays, i sat down to eat dinner. i was also watching tv, checking my email and sorting through the regular mail (i like to multi-task) when a vision appeared in my head: a lonely corona in the back of the refrigerator. i literally jumped off my chair and exclaimed, "oh! beer!!!" now let us ignore the fact that nobody else was home when i shouted out my joyful noise but focus on my reaction to a bottle of beer. it was as though i had just discovered a new planet or a friend i hadn't seen in ten years was standing at my front door. you know that feeling you get when you spot money on the ground? yeah, it was like that, except instead of the usual quarter, it was a hundered. a benjamin, if you will.

i was a little bit shocked to realize how happy a 3-month old beer could make me. it wasn't even that good but, damn, it put me in a superiorly fantastic mood. i've always known that it's the little things that generally make me happy...but this is bordering on ridiculous.

(by the way, i am fully aware that coronas, like many imported beers, are not twist-offs. i just liked the way it sounded in my title. so there.)