Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

On his drive home this evening through the Storm of the Century of the Week, ol’ Robbo heard Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” played over the airwaves by the local classkickal station.

In all fairness, the spinning of said CD was actually a function of the station’s annual classickal countdown, a survey of listeners’ 100 faves that runs this week and finishes up on Thanksgiving night.   Nonetheless, the reminder that, so far as the current so-called cultchah is concerned, we are now entering into the “Xmas” season was enough to cause ol’ Robbo to sprout fangs and hair all over his face and start baying at the moon, wherever she might have been behind the fog, rain and cloud.

You see, I know what’s going to happen.  I listen to said station both during my commute and during my regular work day down the shop.  Starting on Friday, teh station is going to start slipping a few Xmas toons into its rotation.  Gradually, over what is supposed to be the season of Advent, they’re going to increase the flow, until round about December 23 or so, when it’s going to be wall-to-wall Xmas musick, most of the tracks having been played some tens if not hundreds of times already.  And at that point, should I choose to listen, I’m going to be Absolutely. Sick. To. Death. Of. All. Of. It.

And the punch line?  at 12:01 ack emma on December 26, the second day of the actual twelve days of the Feast of Christmas when, you know, such musick is actually appropriate?  “We now resume our regular programming.”

AWOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

People don’t get it.  They just damn don’t get it.

Well this year, I am not going to succumb.   I won’t go so far as to cut out all musick from my work day (as I do during Lent), but I am going to forgo the radio and instead rely on a rotation of my own CD’s brought in from home.   I know this is a very small and perhaps futile  gesture, but it’s what I’ve got.