Wednesday’s Theme Music

Back in 1992, when this song came out, I’d listen to it on the car radio while commuting and think, WTF are they singing?

My commute was short in those days. Assigned to Onizuka Air Station in Sunnyvale, CA, I lived in NAS Moffett base housing in Mountain View. Using the base roads and back gates, it was about a five or six minute drive to work. I didn’t get to hear much of the song.

The net was growing then, but had a long way to go. It was years before I was able to find the lyrics for “Ignoreland” by R.E.M. and verify that it was a political scree, mostly against Republicans, but also against the press for regurgitating whatever was fed to them.

The lines which brought the song to mind this morning were:

I know that this is vitriol
No solution, spleen-venting
But I feel better having screamed
Don’t you?

h/t to Genius.com

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lot of mornings in the last four years have featured spleen-venting mental rants for me — or rants to my wife, who ranted back at me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As an antidote, I always look for humorous, non-political stuff or take refuge in sports, or warm animal stories. Anyway, it seems like a song that’s a political scree about ignoring what’s really going on and just voting for a party seems apt as a theme song.

Why’d the song come up today? Trump fatigue. He rants on without evidence about the same crap, apparently doing his own spleen-venting. He never seems to feel better for venting, carrying a bitter, hostile expression on his face and vowing to never change his mind.

What a way to go through life, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wear a mask, stay positive, and test negative, yeah, yeah, yeah.