Today's Song: Wrong Number by The Cure
Today was a boring day at work. I get that work is not supposed to be fun. Red Forman explained it best, "If it wasn't work they wouldn't call it work. They'd call is 'Super Wonderful Crazy Fun Time' or Skippity-do." But initial hearings are the worst. Everyone at the office hates them, initial hearings are everyone's least favorite part of the job. Initial hearings are soul crushingly boring. The same words droned on dozens of times each session, hundreds or thousands of times will a lawyer have heard them by the end of his career, prosecutors will break a million if they work long enough in a large enough county.
So as the morning drags on the mind begins to wander. I'd worry about it but it happens to everyone. To combat this problem my boss and I have been splitting the morning session. Right about the time she is ready do do anything to escape the drudgery, I come in an pitch relief. Today, however, she was on vacation so I got the morning to myself. There would be no middle reliever for me, not even a closer to get us out at the end. I was going to get to sit through the whole thing and it was even more boring than baseball without beer.
Often when I have one of these long boring sessions a song will pop into my head. This is my mind's way of combating its own boredom. The mind will force the tune and lyrics into my consciousness because it is not getting enough stimulation. As a child this sort of thing happened as well, but my mind and myself were not as well equipped to handle boredom. I am not permitted childish outbursts any longer, not if I want to keep working, so my mind has become more subtle. Random songs are its current effort.
Earlier in the year I had a morning of initials that included a lot of shoplifting and theft cases. Deprived of stimulation my mind decided it was time to inject Been Caught Stealing into my consciousness on loop. Occasionally these songs will cause me to miss my cues but better to miss my cues than dismiss every remaining matter out of an effort to maintain one's sanity in the face of an existential crisis of ennui. It is not impossible that the court system was devised by Lovcraftian Elder Gods with the express purpose of destroying the sanity of mankind's brightest and most rational minds. This is not likely, but it is not possible to distinguish the current system from one intentionally devised for that express purpose.
Today my internal DJ, who I assume looks a lot like Paris Hilton, decided to go with Wrong Number. The song is pure nonsense with a great beat. The video's director, Tim Pope, is on the record stating, "This is probably my favourite Cure video, just because it's so bonkers." (He is English so you can probably hear the "U" in the word "favorite" when he says it.) Take a song with a frenetic energy and catchy rhythm, add Robert Smith's distinctive voice, and then add the crazy visual images from the video and you can just imagine how distracting this can be when you are trying to work.
Fortunately it is possible to push my personal boulder to the top of the hill, and thus end my torment. At the conclusion of today's hearings I went down to my office and put on Wrong Number. This is the quickest way to purge the song and get back to business. But Wrong Number is a great song so I listened to it twice.
Later
Bob
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