Here’s the deal: if I or anyone I’m forced to care about is graduating from high school in a particular year, I agree to sit through endless strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” for up to 3 hours straight on one Saturday in May.  I loathe that piece of music deeply, and any prolonged exposure to it could very well cause Bad Things To Happen in my sometimes unpredictable psyche.  But it’s part of the deal: if you are graduating from high school  or only are you forced to endure The Song but you are also dooming your entire family to the same fate.  Which really isn’t fair: they sat through it when they graduated…that should be enough.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is because the Lockdown and the media’s attempts to normalize things are messing with the equation.  The equation is delicate and not to be messed with: having to hear The Song more than once in any given year is both cruel and unusual. But now, before every single commercial in every single local newscast in Anhedonia for the last two weeks, I have to hear Pomp and Fucking Circumstance while they post pictures and career aspirations of these poor high school graduates, looking all hopeful and optimistic before they get out into the World and have all their hopes and dreams ground down to an unrecognizable turd by the forces of life and love.  Which, you know, fuck them…but I don’t want to hear the goddamn song anymore.

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I’m probably going to take tomorrow off, dear reader.  Fear not…everything’s fine.  With any luck, I’ll be far too stuporous to even attempt to string a sentence together.  I’ll probably be back here Friday (unless things are going really well and bleed over into Friday too, in which case I will see you back here Saturday).

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N.P.: “Rescue Me” – Y&T