Tag: Music

I am normally an even-tempered man, despite what you may have heard or incorrectly deduced from my feverish rants on these very pages.  But I do have an extremely low irritation threshold, which gives the lie to the above.  Allow me to illustrate the point.

I generally wake up in the morning a little after New Wife leaves for work, or a considerable time later if I had a late night.

Whatever the time, my first activity after leaving the bedroom is to make myself a cup of coffee, and some explanation thereof is in order.

Because I am often concentrating on writing this blog, I often forget about the coffee, yea even though it rests but a few inches from my hand.

So a while back, I decided to take action to remedy this circumstance, and started using an insulated metal mug (cheap, from Academy).  It works really well, but here’s where the problem starts.

You see, after I’ve dumped my sugar in the coffee, I tap the spoon three times on the rim lightly, to shake off any extraneous sugar granules into the coffee.  And the musical sound the spoon makes on the full metal cup is exactly same as the opening three chords of the Kingsmen’s horrible Louie, Louie song.

So those opening chords make it almost impossible for me not to continue humming the whole bloody intro, and that makes:  EARWORM.  Which persists in its brain-rattle until I can sit down and open up a decent song video on EwwwChoob and banish the fucking thing from my consciousness.

Until I make myself a cuppa the next morning, whereupon the whole bloody thing starts all over again.

And of all the songs ever written, I would submit to the jury that Louie, Louie  is quite possibly the worst earworm material of all time.

I know, I know:  “But Kim,”  you may ask (and quite reasonably so), “all you have to do is to stop tapping your spoon on the rim!” 

Might as well expect me not to snarl every time I see Jane Fonda’s face on TV, or not to start playing with my M4 bayonet when Chuck Schumer makes the news.

No, I’m afraid that this particular habit is far too deeply ingrained for me to stop it just like that.  Of course, were I actually awake when I stagger into the kitchen then I might be able to consciously forestall the tapping, but that would be to miss the whole point of making coffee so soon after getting out of bed.

Hence my irritation first thing in the morning.  Don’t blame me;  it’s the fucking Kingsmen’s fault.

I’m getting grumpy just thinking about it.