Outside Counsel

In our dogged pursuit of diminished productivity, our office has a very strict "Guess What Song Is Stuck In My Head?" policy. If it's stuck there, the only thing to do is tell everyone, so that we can all become infected. Science has shown that "Surrey With the Fringe On Top" has consumed more man hours than the Manhattan Project, with similar devastating results. Indeed, one of the things that makes the "surrey" so effective is its mutable quality. Some people get stuck with an endless loop of the entire number, but others are ground to a halt with just fragments. Over there is someone tapping a pencil and mouthing "Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry, chicks and ducks and geese better scurry, chicks and ducks and geese better scurry...." I am particularly vulnerable to, "The wheels are yellow, the upholstery brown, the dashboard's genuine leather...."

The only defense to "Guess What Song Is Stuck In My Head" is if the intended victim is unfamiliar with the ditty in question. This came to mind this morning as I was brushing my teeth, thinking, "New enzyme active Axion, stains and dirt are gone/Stains and dirt are gone, gone/Gone with Axion." Most people are immune to that one. Another, obscure in this part of the state, but deadly in my youth, was a tune that used to come on WLIR ("Avant Garde Radio") every morning at the same time. For some reason this popped on just as our clock radios turned on. We discovered one morning in homeroom that we had all been waking up to the same song every day. It haunts me still: "What do they do at Subaru when they're not building cars?/They're building trains and planes and that explains/Why Subaru can do for you/What nobody else can do!/Can do, Subaru/Can do, Subaru/Can do, Subaru." What made this one particularly great was the little horn section bit: "When they're not building cars? (Tra! Tra!)".

And now I'm done for the day.