The Big Green House

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

 

Every rose has its thorn

I’m wondering if my brain is still under warrantee. Lately there’s been some unpleasant, disturbing, and downright unsavory activity going on in there, none of which is of my own volition. Specifically, I seem to be especially prone to 80’s power ballad earworms, which come unbidden from out of nowhere. It starts in the morning and sticks like spilled krazy glue on an heirloom Persian rug. If we think of my brain as a cheap iPod knock-off (not a bad analogy, actually), I seem to only have access to the crappy files in my mental hard drive, even though I’ve made it my life’s mission to stuff my head full of wonderful music. Last week it was Journey; I was wrestling with “Don’t Stop Believin’”, or whatever the hell that horrible piece of aural feces is called, for a good day and a half.

Today was even worse. As per usual, I arose from bed before Science Girl, went down stairs, got the newspaper, put the kettle on and made myself a bowl of corn flakes. While I was waiting for the tea water to heat up, I switched on the computer to check email and read a few friends’ blogs. A normal morning, so far. With my brain still blissfully free of anything resembling rational thought, I checked out Dana’s place where, sadly, I was infected by this post. Through no fault of either Dana’s or Maud’s, I suddenly found myself trying to cope with REO Speedwagon echoing through the warehouse of my mind and I hadn’t even had any caffeine yet.

Ordinarily, my tactic in fighting such an infestation is to counter with an equally “catchy” yet superior song. Lately I’ve had a lot of success with “Rattlesnake Kiss” by The Green Pajamas. Today I must have pushed the wrong mental button, though, because what I tried to replace “Can’t Fight This Feeling” with was, yes, “I Write The Songs”, by none other than Barry Manilow.

Fire, meet gasoline.

The term “mental anguish” doesn’t even begin to describe my situation. And still it continues – as I’ve been writing this, I’ve also been fighting off another onslaught from the Speedwagon. Not to mention the flashbacks to the record store I worked in during 1980, where one of the other clerks played the Hi Infidelity album every stinkin’ chance she got. (As it turns out, that’s not even the album “Can’t Fight This Feeling” is from, although it did have the equally icky “Keep On Loving You”, a staple of Casey Kasem’s “Long Distance Dedications” for years to come. Not that it really makes much difference, ultimately; my recollection of those guys is that one album was pretty much interchangeable with the others. For those nitpickers among you, though, this was the guilty culprit.)

Is it going to be like this for the rest of my life? If so, do you have a gun I can borrow?

bmarkey 1/13/2004 08:45:00 PM