Concentration and Incongruity

Concentration and Incongruity...

I ate eggs for breakfast. This is something I do despite knowing that a.) it makes my skin break out and b.) they make me cantankerously flatulent. Seriously, it's like I'm frightening skunks, and then setting them ablaze.

Then, I ate rice and beans for lunch.

Because I'm that bright a guy.

And because rice and beans go well under a nice plate of pollo diablo.

I think I'm a freighter crash away from being declared a toxic accident.

So, I wandered around today, taking care at what points I would squat or otherwise contort my torso so that I would not do so in such a way that a yellowish puff of hellbred nasty might squirt forth (or aft, as it were), peeling paint and losing friends along the way.

It was a beautiful day here in southeast Tennessee. Sunny. Near 80. The colors in the trees are beyond my limited abilities to describe, at this point. It's a truly wonderful time to be living in this neck of the woods.....

It was with my windows down that I rode today, listening to the radio. I wore shorts and a t-shirt, and was actually, at one point, a little warm wearing just that.

It was during that time that I wandered into the K-Mart here in Athens. I walked in, letting the tint fade from my Transitions lenses, wondering at what kind of wintry rubberband snapback we're looking at down the road, telling myself I should enjoy it while I'm wearing shorts and t-shirts in the first week of November....

All that was thrown into a different, sharper relief when I realized what I was hearing in the K-Mart....

Good God...they've got the Christmas music going.

It's not surprising, I suppose, but still, as warm as the day was, it made me just stop and wonder.

And feel for those working in the store.

Don't know if you've ever worked retail.

There's an odd osmotic relationship I have with the Muzak we play in our store, and various conversations have borne out that many retail workers have similar experiences.

We do not actively listen to the music being spouted on the Muzak.

But we absorb it.

And on some level, it affects us.

Slow music, designed one would reckon, to slow shoppers down a touch, to make them buy more? That's a bitch to work to.

And on another level...though we don't particularly like or dislike a song being played day-in and day-out, we tend to absorb it. We learn the song. We deconstruct it. We know the words, perhaps better than the artist. All by constant, near subliminal repetition....

And the Christmas music?

I won't lie to you. Working retail in the holidays is rough. People wander around, short-fused, at their wit's end, and we live in a society where it's almost acceptable to take frustrations out on retail workers...

And whether we realize it, some of us start making a connection between the negativity, and the Christmas music, which some of our stores play earlier, and earlier each year.

K-Mart beat my store to the punch, at least...

It's scary, though. There's a connection I make. I can't speak for everybody. But I make it. It's Pavlovian, almost. I hear Christmas music, and I start swinging....

Suffice it to say, a certain large-framed, smelly-farting, ass-kicking machine isn't allowed in the Athens K-Mart, anymore.

The buttkicking commenced when Randy Travis's rendition of "Rockin' ARound the Christmas Tree" hit my ears....

Keep that in mind.