Santa Claus is Coming to Town (SCICTT), the 1934 holiday anthem penned by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie, is a dank and terrifying morass of Western religious child terror, wallowing in the threadbare banality of Orwellian paranoia.

The first strains of this well-worn dreadnought of a carol set an appropriately hopeless tone: “You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry, you’d better not pout…”  Children — ostensibly the intended audience of this misanthropic musical melange — are put on notice. They are to be observed, measured, and managed. Not only their behavior but their mental and emotional states will fall under the purview of a merciless overlord in red and white fur. A cheerful melody and jaunty accompaniment lay a whistling-in-the-dark veneer over the lyrics, which summon a haunted existence so unoriginal as to numb the mind.

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Pic of the day: Three people and a muppet. for some reason.

I’m supposed to be working. Right this minute. But I’ve just spent an hour reading through the (for me) interesting back columns on Measure for Measure, the NYT’s (thankfully non-subscription) blog about songwriting, by songwriters. Okay, so i went there just for Suzanne Vega’s recent piece, but I ended up reading a whole bunch of stuff. Yay! Songwriting! I should do some more of that, someday… my songs are getting stale, like cookies left in the cupboard too long. And I should write about something other than the ups and downs of dating, since I no longer have any dating ups or downs. I do have a song about a dead possum. And some snarky songs about politics. I could become this generation’s roadkill/protest singer. I shall get right to work on that.

Anyway, as I was saying, I have lots of work to do. None of it (sadly; so sadly) has anything at all to do with writing, singing, or even listening to songs.

Sigh. I think I need some Suzanne Vega, now. Yay, MP3s!