Welcome to Crazy Town

4.14.08

  

You know that phenomenon where you get a song or piece of a song stuck in your head for hours and hours, sometimes days? They’re called earworms and they can be brutal (somebody’s been watching the “Today” show again). I got the worst earworm ever this weekend…

 

“All around the mulberry bush

The monkey chased the weasel;

The monkey thought 'twas all in good sport

Pop! goes the weasel.”

 

Words cannot describe how many different ways this sucked. First was the general persistence of the tune. Every time I had a quiet moment, that tune was there. Every time I went to sleep and woke up, that tune was there, just waiting for me. It was relentless and merciless, like that bully who you’re hoping somehow will have to get picked up by his mom right after school but he doesn’t, his mom’s a deadbeat, so he has all afternoon to knock the books out of your hand and call you a “bookworming little bitch” in front of that cute girl you like but are never gonna get the nerve up to ask out after this. For some reason you’re not even that mad at the bully, you’re mad at his deadbeat mom and your dad, who always seems to casually show up two minutes after you’ve had your bookbag kicked around while it was still on your back, asking why your book covers have mud and grass stains all over them.

 

“…yeah Dad, I had a great day at school, they love me there… I just can’t wait to go back tomorrow and be with my friends and learn learn learn...”

 

The second thing that killed me about having the Pop Goes the Weasel tune stuck in my head is it’s the kind of rhyme and cadence that takes on different meanings depending on who’s singing it. If a bunch of kids are singing Pop Goes the Weaseal, it’s kinda endearing, like a Norman Rockwell vision of recess, back when teachers were still called school marms and kids didn’t wear shoes to school even though they walked five miles each way. If one little girl is singing it by herself on an empty playground, you need to look away, that girl is about to be gruesomely dispatched by some otherworldly Predator-like monster who was lurking in the woods nearby (why to the hugest, most fearsome movie monsters always start out their killing sprees with kids, hormonal teenagers and old people? That doesn’t get much street cred where I come from, lands you somewhere between a Powerpuff Girl and that dude who played Stacey Dash’s anal retentive boyfriend in “Mo Money”).

 

So what does it mean for an adult male aka yours truly to singing be singing Pop Goes the Weasel to himself in the shower? Psychopath or someone just about to become a psychopath, doesn’t realize yet that he’s about to go on his first killing spree, just knows he needs to keep scrubbing and scrubbing until all the “uncleanliness”, aka skin, has been scrubbed away. Heaven help whomever he sees out the window in the morning…

 

“Who’s that new guy with Christina? He sure looks unclean… oh no, he touched her hand. Now they’re both unclean. I will have to ‘punish’ for their ‘uncleanliness’…”

 

Wow, I think I just creeped out myself there, definitely channeling a bit too much Eli Roth for one blog. Enjoy your day readers; if anyone needs me I’ll be reporting myself to the authorities as a “person of interest”.

 

Mike