Top 'o the Pops

[As you may have noticed I've changed the old page a bit. Yup, I just pressed a "new template" button and voila! I might try to fool around with it a bit and try to spruce it up, but I doubt it. In any event, it's different - no need to adjust your screen. And hey, the comments are working! What do you know about that?]

As I have made reference to in the past, the office that I'm currently working in is quiet. Library quiet. Morgue quiet. Audience after a Carrot Top performance quiet.

Quiet.

And it's just about driving me nuts. It makes the occasional "fuckity-fuck fuckin' fuck fucker" that I mutter when I make a mild mistake seem so inappropriate. There's not even an easy-listening radio station softly playing anywhere to break the tension. Which makes me realize that I need noise in my life. I don't want it, I need it. How do I know this? Because when there is a void of noise my brain switches to overload to try and make its own.

Right now I'm working with a database of about 15,000 people, all of whom, strangely enough, have names. Did you ever notice how many songs incorporate names into them? No? Neither did I until this job.

Let's take a look at some of the songs I have found myself singing to myself in the past week as I worked updating personal files:

1. Making Plans for Nigel - XTC
2. Ride Sally Ride - Wilson Picket
3. Goodbye Lucille #1 - Prefab Sprout (for those of you who are not familiar with the song, it doesn't actually mention a Lucille but repeats "Johnny Johhny Johnny" about 800 times)
4. Michelle - The Beatles
5. Ladi Dadi - Slick Rick (mostly so I could sing the part about (Sally) from the (Valley))
6. Sweet Rosylyn - Sheryl Crow
7. The Kelly Kelly Kelly song from Cheers

Also, there are a lot of places that are mentioned in songs, too. Here's another list of songs that my brain prompted me to sing in my head while updating addresses:

1. Straight Outta Compton/Locash - N.W.A/CB-4 (mostly CB-4, though)
2. New York State of Mind - Billy Joel
3. Waterloo - ABBA
4. Theme from Gilligan's Island - Actually, no address included "Gilligan" or "Island", but there was a guy with the last name "Backus" and my brain made the leap. (Jim Backus played Mr. Howell and Mr. Howell was part of the cast and... What can I say? It's frickin' boring at work.)

Anyway, the point is that left to my own devices I'm a noisy, confusing jukebox full of half-remembered theme songs, old skool rap and horrible 80s pop songs. There's really no telling what's next on the play list for me at any given time. And it's not just names and places, oh no. It can be any old remark or phrase that sets me off. The other day I had to mark "Rush" on a package I begin to singing Paula Abdul's Rush, Rush. Paula. Frickin'. Adbul. I didn't even know I knew that song.

I tell you it's frightening. If something as hideous and blandly tuneful like that can come out of my brain unbidden like that, what else lurks in there? T'Pau? Avril Lavigne? *gasp* Atlantic Starr? *shudder*

All I know is that something better happen in that office soon or I'm going to snap. I've found myself clinging to the phone hungrily listening to Muzak one too many times for my liking. When you breathe a sigh of relief and tear up while listening to a lounged-up version of No Doubt's I'm Just a Girl you know you're on the edge. Hm...

On the edge... On the edge of a dream... Oh, fer--damn you, Bryan Adams! Goddamn you to hell!