Three Things Very Dull Indeed

It's a Box Hill kind of day. Oh, not because it's so hot and sticky - quite the opposite: apparently we've just had the coldest and wettest June in forty years here. Which, perhaps, has something to do with my boxhillian state. It's a Miss-Bates-Box-Hill state: I don't have anything clever to say today - not one thing very clever, or even two things moderately clever. I might, however, manage three things very dull indeed.

Actually, talking about the weather might count as the first dull thing for the day.

The second is something that I've been meaning to tell you about for a while: Songs I Can't Stand Hearing Any More. Oh yes. There was, back in my teen years, "Morning Has Broken", which was the theme music of the early morning radio show which I had running on my little transistor radio when I got ready for school at 6:30 AM. And trust me, 6:30 AM is not a time at which much of anything is endearing to me. That song became associated with having to get up when I'd rather be sleeping, having to hurry when I'd rather be leisurely dawdling, having to leave the house when I'd rather be staying snugly inside. "Morning Has Broken", indeed, and nobody would fix it for me.

The next song like that was ca. 1997, "My Heart Will Go On". Eeew. I never watched the Titanic movie, but that year, the song was incessantly blowing out of every single loudspeaker in every single store one might conveivably set foot in. And then in the spring of '98, I took a trip to Germany, thinking I'd escaped the inundation of the syrupy song for a couple of weeks, only to find that the movie had recently been released in German. Aaaack! They don't dub songs, so "My Irritation Will Go On..." Nothing against Céline Dion, oh no. I just couldn't stand the song any more.

And right now, it's a toss-up between about three of them. There's "Rumor Has It" by Adele; there's "The Harbour Boys" by I dunno whom; and there's "Death To My Hometown" by Bruce Springsteen. They're great songs - about the first dozen or so times you hear them. After that, I, for one, have to fight a nearly irresistable urge to scream and pound my head against the nearest horizontal surface whenever I recognize those sounds. And as those sounds are, in my case, coming through the speakers of my car radio as I'm driving down a short stretch of narrow and winding provincial highway at 80km/h, said surface is the steering wheel, and cranial impact not recommended on account of road safety.

So that was dull thing number two: there's songs I can't stand hearing any more.

And dull thing number three - dull thing number three... I can't even think of one, my brain is so dull today. Let me go ask Steve, he might have something to tell you. Oh, he's busy talking to Horatio. We'll get back to you on that.

Life, the Universe, and Three Things Very Dull Indeed. Hope your day's a little more interesting than mine.