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See, I've got this song in my head

A pretty good proportion of the population — meaning a lot maybe but I don’t know how many exactly — gets songs stuck in their heads once in awhile.

It can happen when you hear someone whistling some tune while they toil away at some task or another. You go to your kids’ school plays and the little ones sing something just darling and later that night while you try to sleep that song is still there. And then, there is background music as in music to shop by.

Now the grandpappy of background music, known as Muzak, has been around for years. As early as the 1950s — a time when the least little thing could get people wound up, a special congressional committee would be formed — there were charges Muzak was causing brainwashing.

I would imagine the subject of manipulation through background music would be research gold for a music-loving social psychologist. From what little scientific reading I have done I don’t know this to be one way or the other a fact. This piece suggests that playing classical music in a wine store made shoppers buy more expensive wine. Whether that would mean that playing Sousa marches in a gun store would cause customers to arm themselves to the teeth is something to think about, but I don’t know that to have been specifically studied and affirmed.

Nonetheless, it seems at the very least background music in grocery or department stores do seem to make songstuckus — my made-up word for a song being stuck in one’s head — more severe.

Since a great deal of my work is done in different stores, I listen to a lot of background music. I never really thought much about store music until I started visiting many different stores. Even when I go to stores now just to shop I am somewhat taken aback by the variety of background music in stores.

Go to the store just up the street, with a decidedly more working class black population, and you may hear Soul from the 60s and 70s. Before you know it, you’re walking out of the store with groceries in your arms and Eddie Kendricks and the Temptations in your head singing “The Way You Do the Things You Do.”

Sometimes the songs you hear will stick with you even though you may not have ever heard them or hadn’t listened to a particular song in years. Like at a drug store in Port Arthur awhile back while waiting to speak with a pharmacist. “Hmm, hmm, hmm.” Wow, what is this? And you remember from way back to “Toulouse Street” on which the Doobie Brothers quietly sing “I might just pass this way again.”

Today it was early Beatles I hear over and over. “If there’s anything that you want/If there’s anything I can do/Just call on me, and I’ll send it along/With love from me to you.” Such simple, melodic, pop music. You wonder what all the hubbub was about when the Beatles first appeared on the scene wearing identical suits and moptops? Nonetheless, the song got stuck in my head at a store this morning and now I can’t get it out!

I don’t really know why music from the store has such an impact. It is played at level in most cases where it is almost subliminal, which makes some sense. But if it’s meant to affect you, to buy more toilet paper and six-packs of Busch, then why does the lyrics and music get stuck in your head and not the products themselves?

It’s jus another one of life’s great mysteries, unsolved, with love from me to you.

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What it was, was those darn Rooskies

 Sven didn’t know what it was. Ole didn’t know what it was. Even Lena didn’t know what it was. But what it was was blue and big and very prominent over Norwegian skies. Oh, and it wasn’t Air Force One flying to Oslo so the President could accept his Nobel Peace Prize.

 Norwegian space officials were inundated with calls about a strange blue light  that turned out to be from a Russian missile test. That’s last part’s kind of spooky in itself.

 But I suppose it is better knowing than not knowing. And it is better knowing it was from a Russian missile than from a giant extraterrestrial Blue Light Special from Planet K-Mart.

 Attention K-Mart shoppers: Da!

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Congressional panels: Improving government or political grandstanding?

 It is difficult for me to recall but I am almost certain that I did not go to the bathroom during my only visit to the U.S. Capitol some five or six years ago. I feel pretty sure about that fact because I have not yet been investigated by a congressional committee.

 I did have something I wrote in a newspaper column once read into the Congressional Record. That was nice. But, no, I have never been grilled by Congress for using the bathroom at the Capitol or anywhere else for that matter.

 The reason I bring the matter up is because Congress seems primed for an publicized inquiry anytime they catch someone using the Capitol water closets. Now that is pure hyperbole but I use the statement because large-scale congressional investigations sometimes seem as if they are more often than not disproportionate to the importance of the subject under scrutiny.

 Now I certainly believe that an inquiry might be warranted into how the glam couple and perhaps future reality TV stars, the Salahis, allegedly crashed the White House state dinner for the Indian prime minister. However, the fact that the show in Congress seems to be amplified by Republican Rep. Peter King of New York, the ranking opposition member of the Homeland Security Committee, makes it obvious that King might just be more interested in hurting Obama and  his staff members than worrying about the safety of the President himself. King now has beat that dead horse to the point that he is willing to hear from the White House social director while she is not under oath or before cameras.  It looks as if that reprobate King might have just drilled himself a dry hole. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not a big fan of Peter King. I think the best description of him remains that from Slate media critic Jack Shafer who called King “an explod­ing car­bun­cle mas­querad­ing as a mem­ber of Con­gress.”

 Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee is busying themselves trying to exploit examine the leak of a sensitive Transportation Security Administration document. The 90-some-odd-page manual on how to screen airline passengers was posted, for awhile, on the Internet. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said “action” has been taken against those responsible. I’m not sure what she meant by that. Perhaps they were made to stand in line at a TSA screening station for 24 hours. Or maybe they were subjected to continual body cavity searches.

 A lot of good can come from these congressional inquiries. For instance, learning about chinks (and no, I am not making a racial slur against Chinese people!) in the armor of White House security can help make the Prez’s place more secure. And surely the TSA screening process has room for improvement. They can take me off their “watch list” or whatever it was that caused me to be denied an online boarding pass during my departure from Houston to Memphis in October. This afternoon I have filled out a form to send their redress program so maybe I won’t find myself in a dark little room being manhandled in the nude by two former Russian women wrestlers who now are TSA security people. Or I might just make things worse for myself. One never knows.

 Nonetheless, if I was in charge congressional inquiries would help improve matters rather than used as a platform to bludgeon political foes. Or else, if I was in change, I might be out on a big yatch somewhere fishing. I can’t say. I’m not in charge and likely I will never rise to such a high station.

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No 'Parent of the Year' award for suspects sought by police

Among the criminal of our species there are “bottom feeders” and then there is a whole class for below that division.

Right here in “River City” — to borrow from “The Music Man” — otherwise known as Beaumont, Texas, police are seeking a couple who fall somewhere in that class below the lowest.

Theft_Suspects The suspects are the couple in the picture. They look like Joe Bob and Tanya Jean Blow what with Joe Bob in the orange shirt pushing the baby while sweet little Tanya Jean in the black shirt pulls up her hair into a ponytail.

But police say the pair are actually a couple of thieves who use their baby as a distraction.

A Beaumont police press release said the man — who has a mustache and goatee — allegedly snatches and grabs the merchandise while the woman serves as a lookout. Here the alleged sticky-fingered duo at 4:56 p.m. on Nov. 23 search for a real steal at Radio Shack in the Parkdale Mall. They are also suspected of thefts at the Sunglasses Hut in the mall and at the H-E-B Plus on Dowlen Road.

Lowlife is a word that comes to mind when a couple uses a baby to steal or commit other crimes. I once had neighbors who used their kids as a shield for selling crack. The police would make a pass and Mrs. Not June Cleaver would grab up her older Roly Poly or the baby and rock-a-bye until the cops went bye-bye.

So-called adults putting truly innocent children — like a baby — into such a situation is bad enough. But such is the nature of this couple’s alleged crime that the baby himself or herself is a cause of concern for the police. Beaumont police told local media that they want to both collar the couple and check on the welfare of the child.

If you see this couple or know people like them, slap them silly call your local police or Crime Stoppers. In my nekkid of the woods, to lighten this piece just a bit and give someone a chance to say you misspelled “neck,” the phone number is (409)833-TIPS.

Seriously, people who do stuff like use their kids to steal really ticks me off. Of course, lots of things tick me off. But I don’t have time to get into all that, so I will just say “au jus,” dear friends.

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My teams sink into the mud yet the World continues to turn

 A  fast-moving snow came through our normally snow-deprived area Friday and left about a 1/4 inch. Unfortunately, there was little left for a photograph as what was left on the ground was in the dark and by the time I got out of bed the next day the snow was long gone. Such are Gulf Coast snows. At least we got to share our snow with my friends up in the Northeast. My friend Sally, in Western Massachusetts told me she enjoyed the first snow of the year which was thanks to the same potent weather system.

 Otherwise the weekend was one of mostly watching all my football teams go down in flames save one. The Longhorns squeaked by Nebraska and thus will play in the National Championship against the Crimson Tide. I have to be almost apologetic in saying that I root for Texas because, as most of my friends are Republicans while I am a proud Democrat, most of my friends and relatives are also Aggies. Many are such Texas A & M fans that they will root for any team but “TU” or what they call The University of Texas (at Austin). That I don’t understand. It seems like we are all Texans and we would support a fellow Texas team fighting for the national title. But not so many Aggies.

 My high school fell in quarterfinals. I wasn’t surprised because Newton played No. 1 Daingerfield. My college alma mater, Stephen F. Austin was destroyed in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs — formerly NCAA Div. I-A — by No. 1 Montana. University of Houston was beaten by Eastern Carolina for the Conference USA championships. Last but certainly least in the NFL, my Texans got whipped by Jacksonville and slipped to 5-7.

 So yes that one-second nail-biter between the Cornhuskers and the Longhorns was my little bright light. Well, the Saints won in overtime but I didn’t get to see that because Fox cut completely the Saints’ exciting OT finish off for the Cowboys miserable loss to the Giants. I mean, I like Wade Phillips and all but give me a break.

 Needless to say it was a disappointing weekend. Not much snow. My favorite teams were mostly left trampled in the mud. My feet continue to hurt including my non-broken toe that feels now like a broken foot. Yet, the world continues to turn. One cannot watch cable TV news without everything being laid down in the context of politics. With every breath that Obama takes a new poll is released. Will his exhales excite the independent white Christian women or will his inhaling raise his numbers with the black male Muslim upper class cross dressers? Stay tuned. I’m sure we will find out eventually.