Why does he do this to me
Everyone says Scott is so great, and here’s the thing: okay, fine. He’s kind and responsible and loving and funny and always he smells nice. (A typical conversation: Scott: “I need to take a shower, I am ripe.” Me: “You smell like a literal angel, the hell are you talking about? Goddamn.”)
But you know what? You know what I have to put up with? This guy, he puts songs in my head all the time. And not good songs! Never good ones. He walks around the house or while we’re walking Leo, humming and whistling and scatting whatever awful ditty has infected his consciousness and blammo, just like that, it’s got me as well. I can’t fight it. I’ve tried! I’m not that strong.
I can’t tell you how many time he’s inflicted garbage on me like “The Candy Man” or the Dr. Pepper commercial jingle from 1977 and I’ve been like, “No! No, you must stop!” and he ignores me and then ten seconds later I’m singing that shit to myself.
You have no idea the torment, when you find yourself murmuring I’m a pepper, you’re a pepper and your beloved emerges from the shadows to point at you and taunt, “Ha ha, put a song in your head.”
The worst part is that he’s going to read this and eventually he will put the Dr. Pepper jingle in my head, because in reality he has not yet put the Dr. Pepper theme song in my head; I made that part up. But oh, it will become real. I am like a soothsayer for Scott’s internal musical soundscape.
No. No, that’s not the worst part. The worst part: I already have the Dr. Pepper jingle in my head, because I watched that video. It’s there. I did it to myself. Damn it all.
Let’s talk about something more pleasant
I’ve been meaning to put together a list of my favorite books, but then I’ve been questioning the concept of a “favorite.” What does “favorite” mean? Favorite of when? Who was I when I read it? I can really get in my head about these things!
Anyway, here are two favorites. I can’t give you all of them at once! I need you to have a reason to return. If you toggle between these two real fast, you’ll understand my personality. If you’re into that. (By the way, I’ve added affiliate links, meaning I will get a teeny percentage if you buy something. Thanks!)
I have long held up Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (Amazon/Bookshop) as my favorite novel, meaning I wish I had written it. I read it again recently, and it’s phenomenal. It’s dark, though. Sheesh. Lighten up, Atwood! (Actually, it has plenty of funny parts, too.) It’s about an artist returning to Toronto after years away for a retrospective of her work, but it’s also about memory and regret and how girls can be incandescently cruel to each other. It will rip your heart open. Yay!
Then there’s the book I’ve read and re-read the most: Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim (Amazon/Bookshop). It’s about a lecturer at a British university whose job is in peril. Hijinks ensue. It is a perfect comic novel. There are so few truly funny novels, and this is one of them. My favorite passage is when the main character wakes up with a hangover:
“Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”
You see? Hilarious and also: ensures that I will never get drunk again. (Probably.)
Anyway, if you like book recommendations, please do let me know. I’ve read a lot of books. I know more than two! Not to brag.
Or if you just want me to keep lobbing half-baked criticisms at the people in my life who are inarguably superior to me, that’s cool, too.