Tales from the Steppes

2005-12-29

7:52 a.m.
Thursday, December 29

There is freedom within, there is freedom without
Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup
- Neil Finn

While I actually do enjoy the holidays, I am glad they are over. From Thanksgiving through Christmas I feel like the radio is being held hostage by an elf with bad taste and dubious sanity. It is not that I don't like Christmas music - I do. It's just that the Christmas music I like is generally acoustic and played by people who are making merry - the Chieftains, for example. It is not a choir of earnest Mormons or Mariah Carey yodelling.

I do not begrudge the stations that play only Michael Boltonesque music for the holidays - I do not listen to those stations. They cannot ambush me. It is the other stations that are going along like normal and suddenly Paul McCartney is singing a song so banal that you wonder if he was not the evil twin of the guy who was in the Beatles. Bleah! Perhaps these stations should play a warning tone, like the emergency broadcast test signal, so that we have adequate notice to change stations

Well, ok. There are a few pop Christmas songs that will not cause me to lunge for the dial. The Kinks "Father Christmas" John Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War is Over)" Band Aid "Do They Know It's Christmas?" Pilate's "Fairytale of New York" And of course, the Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping" You can keep your roasting chestnuts; I'll take cranberries from the A&P.

In completely unrelated news, I am actually going to 12th Night this year. Without the Mongols. I am not exactly holding my breath because it is more than a week away and things could still happen. (Like more green gunk coming out of my eyes - that would be three times for the right eye and once from the left. Quite unsavoury.) I have no idea if I have anything to wear or how I am going to get presents together. All I know is that I have sent my check in, put it on the calendar, and reminded the SU when he went to plan something on the same day. So this could happen.