Chronicide Online

(Two days in a row having troubles getting these up on time. Grr! Okay, Friday, play nice…)

I talked yesterday about how Halloween seems more suited to TV and movies than other holidays. That’s in contrast to Christmas, which has an unbreakable grasp on music. (Yes, yes, not all “Christmas music” is technically related to that particular holiday, but even stuff like “Winter Wonderland” becomes “Christmas music” by proximity. Hell, “My Favorite Things” became a “Christmas song” by proximity just because of a few vaguely winter-y lines.) There’s a small selection of what might be termed “Halloween songs” — novelty songs like “The Monster Mash” mostly — but this holiday is hard-pressed to present a definitive soundtrack. Even my favorite Halloween-y musical, The Nightmare Before Christmas, is more about Christmas than Halloween!

As I mentioned yesterday on Facebook, I’m trying to put together a Halloween playlist, and since obvious selections are limited, it requires a bit of thinking outside the box, looking for songs with creepy themes or a title/lyrics that represent something in the Halloween oeuvre. So far, I’ve got a few no-brainers (“Thriller,” White Zombie’s cover of “I’m Your Boogie Man”, Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein”, Santana’s “Black Magic Woman”), a bit of geekery (two Jonathan Coulton songs — “Creepy Doll” and “Re: Your Brains” — and two Nightmare Before Christmas covers — “This Is Halloween” by Marilyn Manson and “Oogie Boogie’s Song” by Rodrigo Y Gabriella), and a few weaker picks (“Highway to Hell” and “Hell’s Bells” by AC/DC, “Devil’s Haircut” by Beck, “Helter Skelter” by The Beatles). Beyond that…well, I’m still scouring iTunes for brilliant options, and I’m sure I missed some gimmes, but I’m not sure where else to go.

If you’ve got any good Halloween music suggestions, hit me with ‘em in comments. And keep an eye peeled; on Sunday, I’ll share an update with my finalized playlist for this year.

I’ve been trying all day to write a little something about politics, but I’m quickly coming to the (not terribly surprising) conclusion that I hate politics.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m passionate about many a political issue; I love following the electoral and legislative process; I even have my preferred political commentators. But something about talking about politics — not the issues, not the statistical ebb and flow of elections, not the art of the possible that is making the law of the land, but the whole liberal vs. conservative/Republican vs. Democrat/us vs. them aspect of politics — makes me break out in hives.

I just…I have no patience for people who have decided they’ve staked out the ground on what truth is, and that anyone who doesn’t agree with them has secret, nefarious motives for their position. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are trying to plot ways to impose totalitarian rule; neither conservatives nor liberals are actively trying to ideologically oppress anyone else. They’re all just people, trying to do what people of good will always try to do: to make the world a better place in the most efficient way possible. We can disagree about the means of doing that without questioning that that is what we’re trying to do.

The problem is, government isn’t a place for doing things as efficiently as possible. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature. But we’ve become an impatient people, and a deliberately inefficient system seems like an unacceptable way towards making the world a better place.

…aaaand this is about as far as I get. I think it’s all the political ads and phone calls and mailers & etc. etc. as election day gets nearer and nearer that has me brooding on this particularly much lately. There are just so many instances lately where I want to smack whoever’s responsible for these things alongside the head and tell them to grow up; that no one is served by playing these gotcha games of misquoting, pandering, and distorting. But it’s an old refrain, and one that (Rally to Restore Sanity aside) no one seems to be able to do anything about.

*sigh* I dunno. All I know is, this is one of the most uninspiring ballots I’ve faced since I started voting, and I don’t like it. So someone, please…tell me there are still grown ups in the game.

For those keeping score at home: yup, third day in and I missed a blog-every-day goal already. I don’t want the apology and mea culpa to fall into Monday’s post (or, an even bigger cheat, count as Monday’s post), so I’m writing this and back-dating it in.

If I was going to miss a day, though, at least I missed it making sure my lovely wife had as awesome a birthday as I could muster. So I don’t feel too bad. But still: gonna try not to miss another one.

Today is one of those days where you just want to punch things; where nothing exactly goes wrong, but where things are going just Not Right enough that you reconsider having gotten out of bed in the morning. (I mean, it took me a half-friggin’-hour to find Cool Whip at the local Jewel. It’s that kind of day.)

I think it’s just that chaos makes its presence extra known on days like this: people stop walking right in front of you at the mall, or the car in front of you is going just slow enough to make you miss each and every traffic light. So to battle the chaos, I need a little order. I could impose physical order and clean the house, but that’s just craziness talking. So let’s try a little mental order. I haven’t written a poem in probably…oh lord, since ‘94 maybe? But I’ve been reflecting on poetry a bit — how the defined structures of classical poetry styles compel you to tell a story in a specific way — and I’ve been meaning to dabble. Depending on how this goes, I might even make a habit of this.

To start, let’s hop on over to Wikipedia’s list of poetry forms and choose one that I can actually, um, do. I think I’ll try my hand at a roundel:

It’s Hard to Think

It’s hard to think about future or past
When the mind’s a mess with all kinds of fears.
You have to let go to make moments last.
It’s hard to think.

Sometimes through laughter, and sometimes through tears,
We dwell on what was, what is. But we cast
Our secrets and hopes throughout life and years.

When a mem’ry or dream feels good, hold fast,
In case it otherwise should disappear,
To counter the bad times when, by contrast,
It’s hard to think.

Okay, so maybe not the best poem ever written, but for my first try in over a dozen years, in a form I’m not familiar with, I think it’s passing fair. And more importantly, it did the trick: I no longer feel like punching anyone!

I’ve made the commitment to write something every day in this blog, so that means I’ve got to, well…write something. I think I’m going to try to come up with a topics schedule so it’s not quite so ad hoc, but right now I’ve got no formal structure. Until that structure is in place, though, I’m going to write about whatever comes to mind. Today, I’m going to look at something that being unemployed makes me particularly qualified to write about: daytime TV commercials.

I actually try to keep from watching TV during the day — it’s too easy to fall into it and lose time that I could better put to use avoiding other things I need to do — but every so often I get sucked in (I’m looking at you, Wednesday and Thursday House marathons on Sleuth and USA), and when I do I am always stunned by the sheer…I don’t want to say “stupidity”, but maybe sheer lack of critical thinking these seem to assume of their audience. Probably my favorite current example of this is a commercial for a reverse mortgage service, the name of which I haven’t bothered to run. In it, Fred Thompson (of U.S. Senate, Law & Order and failed presidential bid fame) stands on camera saying, “You’ve probably heard of reverse mortgages and wonder if they can work for you. Well, I’m Fred Thompson, and you can take my word for it.” And it just makes me wonder…does that work? I mean, it’s not like they’re even trying for the toothpaste “I’m [an actor playing] a dentist, you can trust me;” it’s literally just, “I’m a guy you’ve heard of for nothing having to do with this whatsoever; believe me.”

There’s another commercial for the same firm that uses Henry Winkler. This one at least doesn’t use an appeal to false authority. What it does, inexplicably, use is a conceit that he’s using a carousel slide projector to show you the benefits, even though it is clearly NOT being done on a slide projector. Nothing super-insulting about this commercial; it’s more just weird.

The winner for weird commercials, though, is an offering from Ancestry.com. It’s a pretty stark commercial, with a woman standing against a white background, explaining the things she’s able to do with the website. It’s got this sprightly music playing as she cheerfully explains her research path…which ends with her saying, “And that’s when I found out that my great grandmother had five children — only one of which survived past infancy!” All this, without her dropping her cheerful tone, as the sprightly music plays on.

Now, I understand that the point of the commercial is how much fascinating stuff you can learn, and how much fun it is to explore this data, but really, however you cut it, they are talking about dead babies here; perhaps a bit of somber-ness could be called for?

(I was really hoping to find a video of this commercial to paste in, but sadly, I’ve yet to turn it up.)

Okay, that wasn’t so hard. Day one: accomplished. Tomorrow’s post will be much more interesting. You can take my word on it.