I. Music & Lyrics
The only songs left in my iTunes library are by George Jones––about 100 of them. I almost never download anything on iTunes. Mz must have bought these while she was on this computer? I'm playing them this morning.
I love Country Western. As George Jones sang, it's the brother to the blues. [He also wrote, "Blue must be the color of the blues."]
Lots of it's about hard times and things going inevitably wrong––acknowledging the law of entropy, the opposite of the currently hyped hygge lifestyle.
Lots of CW is mediocre, of course. I'm with Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap. But some of CW lyrics are "bad" in such inventive ways, they're fantastically good:
It takes a kind of genius to write lyrics worse than mediocre. Most bad stuff is an uninteresting muddle.
It's like donations to the thrift store.
On the one hand, you're hoping for the high quality, top-dollar donations––sterling silver with a maker's mark.
On the other hand, you're looking for the fabulously tacky stuff:
bubbly green Dippity-do Setting Gel in the vintage jar with stars on its white plastic lid.*
Mostly, you get empty Cool Whip containers.
George Jones is top-notch tacky:
Dippity-do in a crystal chalice.
Still, I've got to download some other music.
The Little Prince enjoying the falling snow ^ this morning
II. Work
I woke up with a cold coming on, outside it's 23ºF and snowing, and I'm trying to decide if I'm going into work. I'm so relieved I'm not cashiering anymore and can choose how to allocate my 24 work-hours/week.
If I were cashiering, I'd go in so I wouldn't burden the other cashiers. (They're burdened anyway since the store hasn't hired a replacement... But that's not my problem.)
I'm working twenty-four hours/week, not twenty: Big Boss asked me if I'd work four more hours doing social media.
I'm happy about this, and I want to tread carefully.
Last spring, I'd tried to move the store the way I thought it should go, but my efforts set off my coworkers' alarm signals.
Like so:
Mr Furniture especially complained, calling it gentrification.
He acted as if he were threatened, and he was partially right---my vision is a thrift store that's funky and radically charitable like ours, but clean and orderly like Starbucks and Target.
If we really tightened up along those lines, there wouldn't be much place for many workers who can't read and write fluently and can't use a computer, like plenty of my coworkers.
I don't want that.
So, I tread a weird invisible line, expanding our social media.
Big Boss wants me to set up an Instagram for the store, for instance, but the point of that would be to advertise to millennials, right?
Would they patronize a store with disgusting bathrooms?
I think not, but Big Boss and the others don't seem to see anything wrong with our bathrooms...
Well, I'll inch ahead and see where I get.
So... now it's almost noon and the snow is coming down thicker, so I guess I'm not going into work today. Better to lay low, drink fluids, and keep reading Lord of the Rings. I'm just starting the second volume.
III. Home & Away
Meanwhile, HouseMate went to the hospital emergency room yesterday morning and spent last night hooked up to an IV and sleeping on a cot there. Today she is waiting for a private room to open up.
She needs a private room because she has antibiotic-resistant cellulitis--a bacterial infection of her lower leg that started when she gashed her shin on a plant pot outside a month ago.
HM used to work as a nurse, so I figured she'd know if her leg needed attention.
I figured wrong.
She didn't do anything until the infection started to spread.
TIP: Don't do that.
When even super-sulfa drugs didn't halt the infection, the doctor sent her to the ER. It's actually a little scary-- cellulitis that gets into your bloodstream can even kill you.
Surely it's not that bad! Right?
Pleasegod they'll get HM's infection under control in another day or two, and I can just enjoy having the house to myself, which I was going to have this week anyway.
(HM was supposed to start driving to Georgia today, to protest the School of the Americas.)
Concern for HM aside, I am actually enjoying the time alone, by doing nothing––something I haven't done enough in a long time.
Soooo much has changed in my life in the last few months--or the last couple years (father died, new job, moved house, etc.), and I haven't had enough empty time staring into space to digest it.
I'm going to retire to the couch and do that right now.
_______________________________________
* I pulled a full jar of Dippity-do from the trash at work, where the church ladies had thrown it, and offered it for $5 to a woman who I know is refurbishing a mobile home in 1970s decor.
She bought it, along with these 1970s books based on The Partridge Family.
Remember that TV show, starring David Cassidy and Shirley Jones? My sister used to love it and had the album.
Speaking of bad? pop music--not sure what's going on here at the show's Feminist Rally, but here's the catchy "I Think I Love You," from 1970:
Reminds me of the pop songs in one of my favorite movies, Music and Lyrics (2007), like "Way Back into Love":
Is this a bad movie, and bad music?
I'd say they're simple and pleasing. There's a formula for that, yeah, but getting it right still takes some doing.
I wouldn't say it's genius, but Music and Lyrics goes a little above and beyond: because it's about work--the work of musical collaboration between the unlikely pair of Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.
It's sweet, and smarter than you might expect--and funny too.
"I haven't felt like this since before Frankie said, 'Relax'":
"Don't Write Me Off Just Yet".
As a youtube commenter said, "The touchest scene in this movie".
The only songs left in my iTunes library are by George Jones––about 100 of them. I almost never download anything on iTunes. Mz must have bought these while she was on this computer? I'm playing them this morning.
I love Country Western. As George Jones sang, it's the brother to the blues. [He also wrote, "Blue must be the color of the blues."]
Lots of it's about hard times and things going inevitably wrong––acknowledging the law of entropy, the opposite of the currently hyped hygge lifestyle.
Lots of CW is mediocre, of course. I'm with Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap. But some of CW lyrics are "bad" in such inventive ways, they're fantastically good:
"With the blood from my body, I could start my own still,Is that way below or way above mediocre?
But if drinkin' don't kill me, her memory will."
It takes a kind of genius to write lyrics worse than mediocre. Most bad stuff is an uninteresting muddle.
It's like donations to the thrift store.
On the one hand, you're hoping for the high quality, top-dollar donations––sterling silver with a maker's mark.
bubbly green Dippity-do Setting Gel in the vintage jar with stars on its white plastic lid.*
Mostly, you get empty Cool Whip containers.
George Jones is top-notch tacky:
Dippity-do in a crystal chalice.
Still, I've got to download some other music.
_____________
II. Work
I woke up with a cold coming on, outside it's 23ºF and snowing, and I'm trying to decide if I'm going into work. I'm so relieved I'm not cashiering anymore and can choose how to allocate my 24 work-hours/week.
If I were cashiering, I'd go in so I wouldn't burden the other cashiers. (They're burdened anyway since the store hasn't hired a replacement... But that's not my problem.)
I'm working twenty-four hours/week, not twenty: Big Boss asked me if I'd work four more hours doing social media.
I'm happy about this, and I want to tread carefully.
Last spring, I'd tried to move the store the way I thought it should go, but my efforts set off my coworkers' alarm signals.
Like so:
Mr Furniture especially complained, calling it gentrification.
He acted as if he were threatened, and he was partially right---my vision is a thrift store that's funky and radically charitable like ours, but clean and orderly like Starbucks and Target.
If we really tightened up along those lines, there wouldn't be much place for many workers who can't read and write fluently and can't use a computer, like plenty of my coworkers.
I don't want that.
So, I tread a weird invisible line, expanding our social media.
Big Boss wants me to set up an Instagram for the store, for instance, but the point of that would be to advertise to millennials, right?
Would they patronize a store with disgusting bathrooms?
I think not, but Big Boss and the others don't seem to see anything wrong with our bathrooms...
Well, I'll inch ahead and see where I get.
So... now it's almost noon and the snow is coming down thicker, so I guess I'm not going into work today. Better to lay low, drink fluids, and keep reading Lord of the Rings. I'm just starting the second volume.
III. Home & Away
Meanwhile, HouseMate went to the hospital emergency room yesterday morning and spent last night hooked up to an IV and sleeping on a cot there. Today she is waiting for a private room to open up.
She needs a private room because she has antibiotic-resistant cellulitis--a bacterial infection of her lower leg that started when she gashed her shin on a plant pot outside a month ago.
HM used to work as a nurse, so I figured she'd know if her leg needed attention.
I figured wrong.
She didn't do anything until the infection started to spread.
TIP: Don't do that.
When even super-sulfa drugs didn't halt the infection, the doctor sent her to the ER. It's actually a little scary-- cellulitis that gets into your bloodstream can even kill you.
Surely it's not that bad! Right?
Pleasegod they'll get HM's infection under control in another day or two, and I can just enjoy having the house to myself, which I was going to have this week anyway.
(HM was supposed to start driving to Georgia today, to protest the School of the Americas.)
Concern for HM aside, I am actually enjoying the time alone, by doing nothing––something I haven't done enough in a long time.
Soooo much has changed in my life in the last few months--or the last couple years (father died, new job, moved house, etc.), and I haven't had enough empty time staring into space to digest it.
I'm going to retire to the couch and do that right now.
_______________________________________
She bought it, along with these 1970s books based on The Partridge Family.
Remember that TV show, starring David Cassidy and Shirley Jones? My sister used to love it and had the album.
Speaking of bad? pop music--not sure what's going on here at the show's Feminist Rally, but here's the catchy "I Think I Love You," from 1970:
Reminds me of the pop songs in one of my favorite movies, Music and Lyrics (2007), like "Way Back into Love":
Is this a bad movie, and bad music?
I'd say they're simple and pleasing. There's a formula for that, yeah, but getting it right still takes some doing.
I wouldn't say it's genius, but Music and Lyrics goes a little above and beyond: because it's about work--the work of musical collaboration between the unlikely pair of Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.
It's sweet, and smarter than you might expect--and funny too.
"I haven't felt like this since before Frankie said, 'Relax'":
"Don't Write Me Off Just Yet".
As a youtube commenter said, "The touchest scene in this movie".
3 comments:
Best wishes for your HM’s recovery. Infections can be scary stuff.
Thanks, she's recovering, finally. She said the doctors were very concerned...
That is the CUTEST frog! It's the terrier of frogs!
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