Double Flee A

There are different reasons for telling stories.
Sometimes you tell stories because "hey, look how awesome I am because I did this", sometimes it's like a fable. Sometimes you just have to make sure that you're not going crazy. You have to tell a certain story because you doubt that it was possible that it happened.

This morning I woke to the second-craziest song I've ever heard on the radio. The craziest one was yesterday. Yesterday it was a guy playing the acoustic guitar, singing about the mystical nature of water. The closing line to the song which I had slowly been waking up to (unsure if it was sleep doing this weird shit to me) was a children's-story-on-tape-earnest-delivery of the line: "there's magic in that kitchen sink." I looked over at the radio -- "what the fuck...?" -- like I expected to see something else in its place. Something a little closer, scarier and more herbal. I don't know if you're familiar with my kitchen sink, but it's full of dishes pretty much of the time. Today it was really weird too, but it didn't stick like yesterday's and the people at the station can't tell me what it was because of pledge drive.

When I was a kid the "morning funny" would come on the car radio on the way to school in the cold, and they had about four or five songs they'd rotate. My favorite one went like this:

Oh how I hate to wake up in the morning
Just look at all the things you have to do
[can't remember] new day dawning
you should have turned that rooster into stew
it's time to resurrect you living dead ones
[can't remember] from your semi-conscious state
cause no matter how you're feeling in the morning time
by five o'clock tonight you'll be just great

Another one they played a lot was "the day the squirrel went berserk" by Lee Greenwood.

Is a silly song a good way to wake up? Are there different ways to wake up that are good? Waking up for me takes a good two or three minutes, and if there is noise in that time my reaction can be anywhere from jangled nerves to confused stupor. The answer to this question may be process-of-elimination-friendly, as in, the wrong ways to wake up are these, and I speak from experience: top 40 radio, smash mouth's "you're an all star", a skipping cd, a cocktail party, a screaming woman, a honking horn outside, roofers above your head slamming away, the demolition of a gas station across the street, telemarketers, the world trade center disaster (for me a frantic phone call, "David, America's being attacked!"), tubulence and the seatbelt sign beeping on (the famous musical "oh, shit" "-BOUNG-"), aphex twin, Doctor Laura's radio show, or bagpipe music. I can imagine a bear attack is up there, too, but that hasn't been my misfortune yet.

Silly songs just don't figure in the same way as those others, though, do they? This is a question for the ages if I've ever heard one. I guess if one had to pick one wake-up for the rest of one's life, I'd choose gently crashing waves, and I don't mean the ones on a cd with a hippie playing a sitar or a flute over the top of it "pure moods" style. I mean real waves, created by a real ocean, just outside the window there. We're walking around with the salinity of the sea literally in our blood, (0.9 percent saline solution is isotonic) and smelling that in the morning is physiologically reassuring as well as pleasant to hear.

Speaking of the ocean, I've got to plan a vacation for my brothers and I in May to the outer banks. We're planning to invent the airplane, but with more beer and less airplane.

posted by dale @ 9:20 AM