My brain hurt like a warehouse

Let's shut down the shutdown! Am I right, people? This is clearly not working. Our legislators have lost all purchase on the national interest. What the country needs, not pandering to what the country wants. It burns me up, so that I have to start ignoring the news. There's never any hope any more. No hope of good governance. No hope of real change. Not anything that you can use to fuel yourself with. What keeps us going? The pursuit of cash. Is that all there is? A crass, advertising-driven profit society? I am so disappointed.

Who does not love women, wine, and song....

Remains a fool! But may we add, anyone who automatically disdains box wine will soon be parted from his treasure. A 3 liter box of wine gives you the equivalent of four standard 750 ml bottles, usually at a very good price compared to buying by the bottle. I got a box of Big House Cabernet, a nice discount label from California, for about 20 bucks yesterday in DC. Why pay more for bottles? Because a box is uncouth? I beg to differ. A box is economical, and probably better for the environment in the long term. If I don't pay for the glass in the bottles, I come out ahead. And you can always go for glass when the occasion calls for it. My kingdom for a good box of wine!

Multi-typing-tasking

Shout out to all my ipad people!

Sent from my ipad, easier to type on than i thought, but it seemz like the apple store employees are judging me, as i'm using them for free internet access

Second-grade fresh

The inaugural meeting of the International All-Russia Skype Book Club is tomorrow. I'm excited.

Рукописи не горят

When did Scott Weiland show up? How long’s he stickin’ around?

Michelob Ultra: the beer for people who like holding beer bottles, looking cool, and ingesting flavorless liquids, but don't like drinking beer

Try one today

With bland beer comes limited responsibility

With great periphrasis comes precious little

Dig if you will the little warning on the end of alcohol ads (because alcoholic beverage producers care about your safety a great, great deal)

It starts here:

-Don't drink and drive

It becomes this:

-Please drink responsibly

It starts to meander:

-Responsibility matters

It devolves into this here:

-With great beer comes great responsibility

I see it going here:

-A responsible person does responsible things

And in 2046, when all meaning has been painfully wrung out of the warnings and we live in a euphemistic hell of saying what we don't mean, it will end with this:

-Just be

I was so in shock my heart went down south

We're Christmas veterans

John McEnroe has no shame, and you wouldn't either if you were him

The Radio Shack commercial with Biz Markie? Takes cringing to a new level. It almost physically hurts me to see that crap. Who thought of this? Who? I want names and addresses. It is so unfair that the people who made this monstrosity have cushy advertising jobs and get paid. I can write a commercial twice as good for half the money. No kidding. This is the spot. It's beyond awful. Don't watch it, you might be hurt. Yeah we get it, Biz Markie had a hit song a long time ago and he badly needs some money. You don't have to hit me over the head with it, Radio Shack. And the part that kills me is that ad industry people are patting themselves on the back about the spot here. Could you be anymore out of touch? Please, someone justify this thing to me. I am dumbstruck.

x

my eardrums for a moment of peace

The question, fellow Romans, is how we could possibly endure approximately three weeks of commercial radio Christmas tunes at the workplace, supposedly a sacred place? And how can a radio station possibly sell this tired trick of attempting to go all-Christmas 24 hours a day for nearly a month straight? It is a fool's-errand. Nobody, but nobody, needs 24-hour a day Christmas songs.

And the repeats. O, the awful repeats. Mariah Carey's frighteningly exuberant All I Want for Christmas is You, in which she sounds positively tickled to be desperately pining for her significant other at Christmas time. Paul McCartney doing an interminable, and very, very dated 80's-style (it came out in 1979) holiday song, of which every other line appears to be the dread refrain "Siii-imply haaa-aaving a wonderful Christmas time."

Elvis Presley with Blue Christmas, which is fine, but no one needs to hear it more than once a day (we had it twice in four hours already yesterday), even at Christmas time. And the real problem at the root of all this holiday-themed sonic evil: today was only Monday, November 30th. What will we do for 23 more days when today was already jam-packed with repeats, played within lit'rally 4 hours of each other as if there weren't offices which through no fault of their own had been listening all the live-long day.

And besides all this, have you ever actually listened to the words of these Christmas songs? They are intolerably bad. The only thing they do is rhyme, the only thing. They are nearly devoid of meaning. We desperately need new Christmas songs (By the way, I actually enjoy the more religious Christmas songs that deal with the nativity and all, but you don't really get those on commercial stations like WODS Boston, usually a much-loved oldies station for me, transformed into a hideous holiday monster of trite, oft-repeated, cookie-cutter (how appropriate!) Christmas sentiments).

Let's run down what the Christmas songs say. All of them seem to come back to these several themes:

-Christmas is the BEST time of year. No serious person may question this.

-Snow is fun, even though it may at times be 'frightful'. Those are the times when it's a good excuse to spend more time with your beloved.

-You are always surrounded by many loved ones at Christmas. Relations with these people are blissful, always.

-It's no fun to be away from your beloved at Christmas time. You should aspire to be with them, and write a song about it if you can't.

-Sleighs

If you have any other themes, let me know, but I think those are the major ones.

Christmas seems to be so much a sham right now. A sale masquerading as a cultural institution. People whip themselves into a frenzy with Christmas music and tear themselves up over what to get for their loved ones. Just enjoy the time off, don't get stressed out about stupid stuff, and spend time with your family. Because a man that doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man. Just take it easy. And lay off the 24-hour Christmas songs, they will drive you nuts.

A postscript: And today, Amanda's computer at work contracted a virus from a Christmas music website and had to be sent away to the help desk. It goes to show that the age-old maxim is true: If you play fast and loose with Christmas music, you're bound to get burned.

The fast-food chain doth protest too much, methinks

"I like not fair terms and a villain's mind"

The idea that McDonald's is trying to tell me what a real New Englander is, and how such a person feels, disgusts me on a level that I cannot express in words.

And by the way, fools, a real New Englander would never say the phrase "real New Englander". You sicken me with your pathetic attempts to connect to people. Your so-called restaurants are dehumanizing assembly lines for disgusting, nearly inedible food, which people only eat because it is cheap, and likely addictive. It is clear to any impartial observer that our society would be much better off without the influence and presence of McDonald's. Begone!

(Obviously I'm on some kind of little Shakespeare run here)