Christmas songs WROR can play all they want.

(In no particular order.)

Nat King Cole : The Christmas Song
U2 : Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Boston Pops : Sleigh Ride*
The Ronettes : Sleigh Ride*
Mariah Carey : All I Want for Christmas Is You
The Kinks : Father Christmas
Frank Sinatra : Jingle Bells
Stevie Wonder: Someday at Christmas
Elvis Presley: Let's face it - anything.
Bing Crosby and David Bowie : Little Drummer Boy
Rosemary Clooney : Sisters**
Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby : Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep**

* Note the absence of the Johnny Mathis version.
** I know they won’t.

A note I made at work some time ago.

My coworker just reminded me of a post-it I left for her after spending a day placing publisher orders. On this particular occasion I had been placing an order with Perseus Distrubution for a book on prejudice.

My note read like this :

The word was prejudice.
She pronounced it « Pray Judas »
Then she corrected herself,
Pre-Justice.

How much of this response is canned, I wonder?

Hi Jessica ,

Thanks for listening to 105.7 WROR and thanks for your comments about our programming.

Here at WROR, we find Christmas fun and worthy of celebrating. With Thanksgiving next week, we thought it we’d get into the spirit now. Led by Loren and Wally, we are all excited to celebrate the season by having some fun and playing Boston’s Favorite Christmas Songs. I’m sorry you don’t agree.

We will try to vary up the list, although there are only so many Christmas songs that are good and that people like.

Hopefully, when the spirit of fun touches you, you might join us. Santa will be available to talk to kids of all ages weeknights from 6 to 8.

I appreciate you taking the time to write and appreciate your loyal listening over the years.

We will return to playing Boston’s Greatest Hits on December 26.

A letter to the Program Director of 105.7, WROR

Mr. West,

Let me first say that I listen to WROR at home because I like some of the music that is played - in particular the Beatles at 9 and 12.

As yours is the only station apart from FM Talk that my place of employment gets any reception for in the basement, we play WROR all day long on our store's loudspeakers. I know that somebody far higher up the Greater Media ladder, likely someone who doesn't even live in the city of Boston, made some decision back in June that WROR would play Christmas music before it is socially acceptable - that is to say before Thanksgiving, even. So I'm not even going to touch that one.

My complaint is this: of all the Christmas songs out there, is it really necessary to repeat so many throughout the day? I'd heard three renditions of "Frosty the Snowman" by 2pm today. In the space of 10 minutes, WROR played the same song twice ("I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" - by the Ronettes at 4:17 and by John Mellencamp at 4:25)! I heard that ridiculously high-pitched song from "Mame" - "We Need a Little Christmas" - twice today as well. I'm pretty sure that wasn't even a different artist.

This is driving me crazy. I'd turn the radio off, or change the station, but as I said, WROR is all we've got. And if you want your target demographic to be listening more, you should give them more [variety] to listen to.

Sincerely

Jessica Mullen
Boston, MA

A good idear.

So I may be late on this, but I was just turned on to what may be the most constructive site ever, freerice.com.

I’m a big fan of the Hunger Site, and its brethren, the Breast Cancer Site, the Child Health Site, the Literacy Site, the Rainforest Site, and the Animal Rescue Site. You know, you go to the site, which is covered in ads to support it, and you click on a big button that donates 1.1 cups of staple food to the hungry (or a mammogram, healthcare for children, some educational funding, protection for 11.4 square feet of rainforest, or .6 bowls of food to rescued animals). These sites are a great idea ! Freerice.com takes it to another level.

Freerice.com makes a game out of it. Human beings are naturally competitive, constantly trying to prove their skills, and freerice.com banks on that. Go to the site, and you’ll see a multiple choice vocabulary question (some of these words, for all three years I took Latin, are really quite hard !) – if you get it right, you donate 10 grains of rice to the hungry.

I know : 10 grains of rice really isn’t that much. But think of it as 10 points, and look at the bottom of the screen, and it keeps tabs on your vocabulary level. In the space of 5-10 minutes yesterday, I had donated 600 grains of rice. That, dear reader, is a lot. For those of us with boring desk jobs that have us on hold on the phone all day, we can do a lot of good.

Better still, if you get it wrong, they give you the correct answer, so you, the benefactor, can build your vocabulary and do even better the next time you engage in competitive philanthropy.

Wh-why, exactly?

Yeah I know: I suck.

Why does the start of NaBloPoMo have to coincide with my attention span in French class slipping to the point at which I need to spend most of my free time studying?

And also: why did my computer have to break down before the start of this semester so that I would have to use my dad's computer while he was in the next room talking to the woman he's cheating on his girlfriend with on the phone? What does that say for what stock I put in men when my own father cheats on his girlfriend?

My concentration is nil.

This sucks. I know it's not just me.

I already talked to him about cheating. I hate this! This is probably the number one reason I need to move out.

I'm not built for this. My heart hurts.

Eyebrow waxing: the cure for the common cold?

A couple weeks ago, my kickball division had a party. In the weeks leading up to it, the mid-season party was pretty much all I could talk about. My friend Rachel and I spent a good five hours in the Copley area looking for the perfect shirts to wear. I slept regular hours and tried to drink less - all so I could be in tip-top shape for the party.

And then I got sick.

I suppose it wasn't that bad a sickness. Just a niggling cough and stuffy nose and headache. But when I get sick, it will be just that - for a month! Miserable, horrible, kill-me-I've-forgotten-what-it's-like-to-breath-normally kind of sick. And so when this sick started four days before the party for which I'd been so well-prepared, I was pissed. I drank a gallon of water before I even left the house in the morning. Airborne tablets, horse-sized zinc pills, 10-hour nights of sleep. Two days of that and I still felt like trash.

"No," I said to myself, "I'm not going to get any better. That's the kind of pathetic and worthless sack of shit I am. I will go to the party with a tissue permanently attached to my red and chapped nose, nobody will want to talk to me, the Walking Plague."

But I was still going. I was helping to run it, and I was working the first door shift. I had to go. And my eyebrows were a mess.

I went across the street to the Northeastern local tanning salon, which had waxing services as well, and felt even more miserable and disgusting and ugly while surrounded by Northeastern barbie dolls who were waiting for their turn in the buzzing tanning beds. I was led into a back room (for the pasty ugly people, I'd figured), and had my eyebrows waxed. While the lady tweezed I had to sit upright and sneeze, like five times in a row. Afterward I was led out to the counter, where I paid. The girl asked me if I'd used their tanning beds before.

I had to laugh. "Do I look like I've ever seen a tanning bed before?"
"No," she admitted, "but we always have to ask."

Time out. I made a joke! And I laughed! This was not the same person who walked in. This was someone who was getting better!

I left the tanning salon with such a spring in my step it was like I was walking on a stairway of air. I could beat this nonsense cold. It had only just started, and I was already kicking its ass, I could tell.

And anyway, I was a human being, not some odious and snivelling splat of pond scum, worth bringing back to health.

Cold was gone by Friday morning, and better still, it hasn't come back. Take that!

Because I'm too busy for NaNoWriMo this year...again.

NaBloPoMo is similar to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but for lazy people like me or for people who want to jump start their blogs, etc. You can learn more about National Blog Posting Month at nablopomo.com.

I wish they had a badge that didn't feature a cat. I hate cats.