Musical interlude
When I was a kid and the internet didn’t exist, I used to spend a lot of time listening to records. That’s why, to this day, my brain still has access to the entire scores of many Broadway musicals and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. The mind of a child is a spongelike thing, and when I say entire scores I mean every single word.
And so, with the news of Biden’s pardon of son Hunter, this song started to enter earworm territory for me. Yes, I know it’s a different kind of pardon, but here it is anyway for your listening pleasure:
In college I had a summer job on an assembly line in a factory. My duties varied, but I was typically standing and picking two things off of one conveyor (one with each hand) pivoting about 90 degrees and setting them on another conveyor. Pivot back and repeat. The entire motion took around 10 seconds and, for added cruelty there was always a clock within my line of sight.
It was mental torture. I had to stay alert enough to not fall or stumble (often I was within feet of a blast furnace) and there were hard, sharp surfaces everywhere. Yet, I found if I was too alert I would notice every 5 seconds transpire (one separate view of each of the two clocks in my sightline; pre and post pivot) and I couldn’t help but continually do the math on how many more repetitive actions I would have to do until the next, 15 minute break.
So I would play albums in my head. Complete albums, note for note, track by track. Had it not been for that I think I would have gone mad.
As The Lord High Executioner should say
… I’ll put the Bidens on the list,
The Bidens on the list,
They never will be missed,
Never will be missed, …
Once upon a time there was a better quality of satire available. Maybe A.I. will return to such artistry and create a new Golden Age for us.
The return of Tom Lehrer types, Aggie?