Content-Type: text/shitpost

I came here to write a shitpost that would say:

I wish I believed in Hell, because it would be comforting to think that the author of “Jingle Bell Rock” was in it.

But then I wondered if I'd said that before, so I looked in my tweets archive. (Tweeting is just shitposting, except that the comment section is permanently open to every yahoo in the entire world.) It appears that this is on my Christmas wish every year:

19:30 on Dec 02, 2012

Today my ears were assaulted by "Jingle Bell Rock" for the second time this season. Did you write it? If so, I AM COMING FOR YOU.

19:35 on Dec 02, 2012

It seems that the perpetrator of "Jungle Bell Rock" died in 1997. I wish I believed in Hell so that I might imagine he was in it.

02:01 on Dec 19, 2013

Went to Ms. 9's school's concert, which unexpectedly delighted me by completely butchering my least favorite song, “Jingle Bell Rock”

19:02 on Nov 25, 2015

Heard “Jingle Bell Rock” today. It's times like this that I wish I believed in a Hell where the souls of the damned are tormented forever.

22:49 on Dec 19, 2015 There are always many good reasons to shop at the halal market. This time of year there is one more: Jingle Bell Rock.

Last year we went to Fort Lauderdale for vacation and I discovered to my relief that in Fort Lauderdale they don't really go in for Christmas music in the relentless way they do here in the Northeast. In fact they didn't really go in for Christmas much at all. The only real evidence of it that I saw was that on the 25th there was a guy in a Santa suit driving his pickup down the beach handing out gifts to kids.

There's no JBR tweet from 2014. Perhaps I felt that I had exhausted my tweet quota about Christmas songs for the year:

18:18 on Nov 30, 2014

Second time this week I've been subjected to "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".

But that didn't stop me from complaining about Rudolph twice in 2013:

20:20 on Nov 15, 2013

For no reason this afternoon I asked myself "What's the worst song ever written?" A candidate came to mind: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

00:41 on Dec 02, 2013

It must be December, because I was unable to go to the store for paper towels without being forced to hear Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.

Objectively, I would say that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is worse than Jingle Bell Rock, but I seem not to have tweeted about it as much. Jingle Bell Rock bothers me more in the moment, but Rudolph's awfulness is more sophisticated. As Rocco Caputo observed:

The Parable of Rudolf contains an important social message: The Patriarchy controls the distribution of prestige.

More generally, I have complained:

14:46 on Dec 16, 2012

Supermarket playing Christmas carol medley; I amuse myself by replacing all the lyrics with variations on "choke on my cock".

20:24 on Nov 15, 2013

Clearly, the competition for "Worst song ever written" needs "Christmas song" and "Non-Christmas song" divisions.

14:40 on Dec 08, 2013

→@pozorvlak I'd be glad for a Christmas playlist that didn't try to relentlessly shovel the same 16 songs at me everywhere I go for 6 weeks.

That last one really gets to the part I hate. It's not so much that the songs themselves are worse than any others, although it is partly that. It's that I have to endure them constantly. If I heard each one only once or twice per winter, I don't think I'd have a big problem with it. But I don't need to hear Jingle Bell Rock ten or twelve times during the month of December. (One year I kept track.)

This time a couple of years ago Ms. E my piano teacher suggested that since Christmas was coming up I might like to learn to play some Christmas songs. I think I turned a bit pale, and I stammered out quietly “I don't really like Christmas music.” She hasn't brought it up since.