Two Spaces

A Small Victory - Faith No More (mp3)

“That’s just how I was taught.”

Interesting how that phrase gets used by most of us. It’s a defensive statement. It tends to mean, “Hey, don’t blame me. Someone else did this to me. I was just a kid, and this is what I learned.”

When it comes to matters of prejudice, bigotry, or hatred, and when it involves someone inheriting/learning from the small-mindedness of previous generations, many of us are impatient or outright angry at the excuse. Being raised by racists, or being raised by a misogynistic father, or being taught that the original lunar landing was a conspiratorial hoax by a wacky teacher... None of these are excuses for carrying forth with or propagating such nonsense.

But if you throw down the gauntlet about something like the proper number of spaces between sentences, folks come out of the woodwork in defense of two spaces with this very desperate cry, “I was just taught that way!”

Or, better yet, “It’s just a matter of habit!”

Slate.com offered a polemic against double-spacing recently, and were it not for the hype of a Tiger Mother, it might well have been one of the most unpredictably viral screeds of the week. Slate’s page received a barrage of commentary, well over 100 at last count. Of particular fascination is how much time many people took to observe that the entire issue was a waste of time. That is, people wasted their own precious time to point out the time they clearly wasted to read the piece and scroll down and sign in and offer opinion.

Compared to matters of warfare and world hunger, the issue of space width between sentences is certainly trivial. Yet more than 100 people, myself included, find ourselves wasting time and some level of emotional energy on the matter.

Two spaces versus one. Edward versus Jacob. Yankees versus Red Sox. We Americans crave meaningless and superficial debates about things which ultimately mean little or nothing, because we seem so poor at handling matters of greater import. We are so irresponsible in how we debate and discuss truly important issues, and we embrace such a low level of intellectual discourse, that we instead drift into debating things with little true significance. Because, ultimately, even the lowest-educated soul can find some way to argue for a favorite football team or a preferred lover for Bella. You need only read two books or sit in front of a TV for a few hours, and suddenly you have all the firepower necessary to engage in a heated and passionate debate.

With the matter of sentences and spacing, the bar is set even lower: Have you ever written a paragraph? If you answer in the affirmative, then you are immediately capable of injecting your opinion into the debate.

While Mr. Manjoo comes across too much like a snooty bully for my tastes, his “side” of this debate is backed with more than ample research and information which, if you remove his taint, is quite convincing.

The real deal-breaker: everything anyone reads online or in newspapers or in magazines or in books. Almost every printed piece you’ve ever laid eyes on that wasn’t written for or by an educator uses a single space after sentences. Even the most conservative, anti-evolutionary, most change-o-phobic sites on the Interwebs use a single space between sentences.

What’s more, most of us have accepted this online reality without batting an eye. We read the papers and the Internet articles, and few of us notice or care about the single space.

Personally, here’s the reason I prefer single space: I’ve rarely if ever seen a single-spacer inconsistently use that option in writing. Double-spacers are maniacally inconsistent. Rarely if ever do I run across anything of modest length by a double-spacer where at least one or two sentences are followed accidentally by a single space. (My job requires that I read and edit lots of copy from lots of sources, so this isn’t some willy-nilly claim.)

A single space is economical. Eventually, piled up sentence after sentence, single spaces save trees. Compared to two-space people, I’ve probably saved a whole tree. And each tree means something to some little dog out there in the world, needing to take a piss. Or a bird needing to build a nest. Hell, it's possible I've helped save an entire small ecosystem compared to those wasteful, space-eating, greedy two-space sumbitch bastards.

Help save the planet. Stop pressing that space bar so many dadgum times. Quit using that lame “That’s how I was taught” nonsense and join us here in the 21st Century.

Assault on the Avetts

Avett Brothers--"Shame (live)" (mp3)

There are no good reasons at all why I should turn against the Avett Brothers. They play a melodic, largely acoustic brand of music with confessional lyrics, effective harmonies and some pretty good songs. They seem like nice guys. They are strongly rumored to put on a very good live show. People love them. Critics have been on board for years. They use a banjo. All of these characteristics taken together are practically a blueprint for a major strand of music that I have liked for over 40 years. So what's the problem with the Avett Brothers?

They're safe.

Perhaps now that I've said it, you realize it, too. If you do, you're quickly becoming indifferent or, more likely, defensive.

The realization crept up on me and then whacked me on the head like Maxwell's Silver Hammer. Now, as I've gotten older, as things have begun to slow down a bit, I don't possess the Safe-O-Meter that maybe I once did. A band that's kind of alternative, that's pretty acoustic, that is underproduced and doesn't seem to take itself too seriously can suck me right in. Maybe it always could. To think of Crosby, Stills, and Nash as once somehow revolutionary seems hard to believe.

But the path of the Avetts is more insidious. See, we received the Avetts for Christmas, a very thoughtful gift from a music-loving friend. I received a two-disc homemade-burned set of favorite Avett songs. And I've listened to them pleasantly for several weeks. My wife liked what she heard, too. They're in heavy rotation in the kitchen Bose.

So here's what brought the Avetts down for me and what may make you angry: the Avetts have become darlings of the Conservative Christian community around here. It has turned me against them. I should have realized it, but I wasn't paying attention. Avettmania started among the Christian students. The first time I heard about them was from a student who told me that they were "kind of bluegrass" (completely wrong--I guess it was the banjo) and that they were great in concert. Then more and more of his friends were dropping their names, too. When the Avetts played nearby, a lot of the students went. At first, if you're a teacher, you think, 'Oh, they must be a popular band among students these days.'

I'm here to suggest that it's a bit more than that. See, if you went back a few years, we might be having the same conversation about David Wilcox. I never heard that much of his music, except on an endless admission trip with an admissions guy (and Young Life leader) who declared Wilcox his favorite performer and seemed to listen to nothing else, at least during both directions of that car ride to Jackson, Mississippi. But it became clear after I returned from that trip and mentioned Wilcox to students that he, too, had spread along similar paths.

To have received the Avetts from a Conservative Christian adult was the reminder that the Avetts had achieved that same kind of Christian status. The Avetts are now a Conservative Christian "talking point," a band guaranteed nods of approval and acceptance.

And, unfortunately, that means they're safe. Because the tunes that drift through the FCAs and Young Lifes and PCA Presbyterian churches of America are not edgy, challenging, or controversial. They are bland-ish songs of families and relationships, dogs and parents. If they touch on social issues, those issues are likely to be safe social issues--Down's Syndrome or bad parenting.

And, unfortunately, in that context, I hear the songs in a new light and I realize there are no solos, the musicianship is not particularly accomplished, the melodies are familiar enough to attract me, but the lyrics are generalized and somewhat trite, even on a song of theirs I quite like, "I And Love And You":

That woman she's got eyes that shine
Just like a pair of stolen, polished dimes,
She asked to dance; I said, "It's fine,
I'll see you in the mornin' time."

Oh, Brooklyn, take me in,

Are you aware the shape I'm in?

My hands they shake, my head it spins,

Ah, Brooklyn, take me in

If you listen to a bunch of their songs, you'll discover how easy it is to finish their lyrical lines with common rhymes and stock phrases. You won't discover any depth to any relationship they write about, nor will you stop to ponder a line for additional meanings. In short, they are easy to listen to, but not rewarding. I wish it were otherwise.

What I don't know, can't know, is if the Avetts themselves cultivated this kind of Christian audience. Nor do I know if when they play in other parts of the country they draw the same of listeners. I'm guessing, if you're a performer, you take what you can get. Because the Avetts aren't singing God, Jesus, or faith. Maybe they're just what you listen to if you want to take a secular walk and not stray too far.

But now that I've seen them painted with this brush (or painted them myself), I have a hard time hearing them any other way. The Surgeon General has declared them safe for Christian listening. No, thanks. There are still songs and melodies I like, but I won't be traveling with them much longer, unless they find a way to reinvent themselves. Sorry, fans.

She Be Kim-Jong-Illin'

Bleed American - Jimmy Eat World (mp3)

Amy Chua is the kind of guest blogger I’d love to have scorching up the pages of Bottom of the Glass. She’s clearly brilliant. She’s a great writer. She is convicted with strong opinion. And she’s off her frappin’ rocker.

She wrote a barnburner of an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” and pulls no punches in preaching her truth to us mamby-pamby American weenies.

I love that Eastern cultures don’t generally worry about annoying trifles like political correctness. They don’t let little things like notions of equality or universal rights get in the way of their perceived superiority. They don’t worry about self-esteem because they’re obviously the awesomest, so what’s to question?

In many ways, folks like Ms. Chua are a much smarter and more Type A version of the French, and she reminds me of that French knight from “Monty Python & the Holy Grail,” on the castle wall shouting insults down at the little English “kuuhhh-niggits!”

A lot of Western folks will read her piece and get all wiggy and pissed off and defensive. These people, I suspect, haven’t had much experience with families from Far Eastern countries like India or China, Japan or Korea. Seriously, if you can read that whole thing without once getting annoyed, pissed off, or rolling your eyes in disbelief, then you are a calmer soul than most parents I know. Or you’re not a parent, at which point you might just find the entire thing amusing on both ends.

One of my favorite sentences: “Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything.”

As is usually the case with brilliant, hyper-opinionated people, Ms. Chua’s argument is not entirely ludicrous; it’s only 15% ludicrous. But it’s a big, important 15%. One might suggest that Ms. Chua was being over the top to be provocative or funny, but I would have to honor her love of stereotypes by saying that I don’t know many over-the-top funny Chinese people. At least, not any who didn’t grow up in the U.S.

Funny doesn’t get good grades. Funny doesn’t play the hell out of an instrument. Funny doesn’t focus. Funny often requires a knowledge of stupid or useless information found in popular culture. Funny requires an impatience. Therefore, according to her, there’s nothing Chinese about Funny.

Funny is a waste of time and energy. Funny is Western civilization. Funny is pathetic.

What I really loved about Ms. Chua’s column is how hard she tries to pretend to be reasonable. It reminded me of comic book supervillains who pity the poor clueless hero and his pitiful weaknesses, like his notions of decency, honor, respect, foolish things with which one can never achieve world domination. Ms. Chua pities American parents, with all their sad focus on trifles like self-esteem, freedom, choice. And she does so with a disdain that oozes out of her eyeballs as she writes.

Because I’m a mamby-pamby relativist without the balls to believe much of anything to an extreme, I conveniently believe Ms. Chua is plenty right and plenty wrong. I believe her children might grow up more financially successful than my children, and I believe they might well play a meaner fiddle (or whatever their instrument of choice), and I believe they might well grow up with better grades. Might, as they say, doesn’t make right.

More importantly, I don’t believe any of that will lead to her girls, decades after they are independent, to be happier or more satisfied human beings. Nor does it increase their odds of doing anything more world-changing than my children. If American history has shown anything, something about the wacky way we raise kids kick-starts ingenuity, breeds insight, stirs inspiration.

Still, to outright dismiss Ms. Chua’s argument is also foolish. Plenty of the ways we raise our children deserve to be mocked or at least questioned, and the kind of rigor and level of expectation Far Eastern parents demand of their children have results that are often difficult to scorn too harshly.

When foreign students board at our schools and outscore us on the English section of our own college entrance exams, they're basically playing on our own home court with one hand behind their back and still kicking our butts. That kind of mismatch deserves respect.

In some sense, their parenting philosophy is much like the story of Ray Kinsella from “Field of Dreams.” Chinese parents believe If you build it, they will come. If you build up a high, almost-unattainable level of expectation, your children might get close to reaching it, and sometimes they might even rocket right past it.

We Amur’cans parent more like that age-old proverb stolen by Sting: If you love somebody, set them free. And, much like Sting’s music, it’s a very hit-and-miss proposition. When you drop a rock off a bridge, it rarely flies; it usually plunges in the water.

And, in honor of great American bumper stickers, my kids could kick your honor student kids’ butts! (Well, or at least they’re gonna be funnier.)

The truth is that all parents screw it up one way or another, because parenting isn’t some chemistry experiment. It’s not paint by numbers. It’s an organic experiment where every portion of the equation changes constantly, and where any attempt to roboticize the experience seems doomed to failure.

Then again, I'm quite positive it's myself and my own parenting that Ms. Chua would deem an utter failure. God bless us, everyone!

Editorial Follow-up (2:10 p.m., 1/13): A column by Lisa Miller in The Daily Beast catches up with Ms. Chua in the aftermath of her WSJ column. The information provided in this column is important and suggests the book is less extreme in its approach than the WSJ excerpt might suggest.

A Hatred of Speech

Meg Baird--"I Don't Want To Talk About It" (mp3)

Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode. Seriously. It usually comes when I see too much television and when, on that television, there are a multitude of people talking. Just talking, talking, talking, as if they were paid to talk, which they are, as if they were paid by the word, which I don't know if that's true or not.

A given football game has a minimum of 6 people weighing in on the action--the play-by-play guy and the color guy, plus the four fucknuts sitting in the studio in New York City, offering their "insights" before the game, at halftime, and after the game. That does not even begin to include the talkers who have been previewing this game for a week or a month, or the ones who will break down the action after the fact for as long as there are words to say about it.

The same thing with economic recovery or how to fix unemployment. The same with health care or immigration or Afghanistan or the moon mission or the latest Iphone or how much money we think the poor American suckers spent at Christmas. Turn the TV dial (symbolically) or turn the radio dial and it's talk, talk, talk. Sometimes I can't take it.

Here is the modern world in a nutshell: we all wonder what should I, we, he, she, they, it do? In response, everyone in the world has an opinion. And those who are paid to do it spend all of their time telling us what we should do, what we should eat, how we should invest, where we should live, what we should believe, who we should trust. If Hamlet had had all of these spin doctors, prognosticators, and "experts," he'd still be hesitating. How is one to progress in such an environment?

The stupidest man in America is Rush Limbaugh. He's not the dumbest, for he certainly has the business savvy to turn being a bag of hot air into a very, very lucrative and influential career. No, he's the stupidest. Why? Because he wants to pretend that what he and his ilk babble and pontificate about week after week and year after year doesn't affect the way people act.

In particular, of course, he wants to believe that hate speech doesn't make people hate and then act on that hate.

Let me prove you wrong, you stupid ass. Simply. President George Herbert Walker Bush declared one day that he hated broccoli. We all know what happened. Sales of broccoli in this country plummeted. Broccoli growers were outraged that a president would use his "bully pulpit" to impact an industry so negatively. Yeah, Rush, it was just a man who hated a vegetable that his Mommy probably shoved down his throat when he was a kid. But people heard.

And then, of course, his son, in response to a Saudi Arabia-based terror attack on the U.S., created his famous "Axis of Evil" and started, with his staff, hammering home the idea that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. And guess what people believed? Guess who people hated? People hate what they are told is evil. And hated it enough to support an irrelevant war!

Now, I have no interest in making a connection between Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the motives of the shooter in the Arizona slaughter (though I certainly do enjoy that these people are on the hot seat!), but I do want to argue the more general case: people who become well known become influential and have the power to impact the ways that people act. That shouldn't come as a surprise, and for Limbaugh to pretend otherwise is more than disingenuous; it's cowardly.

When the Hannitys and the Becks and the Limbaughs hammer away at a president, not his actions or policies, but at his very being to suggest that he is a "socialist" or a "racist" or a "Muslim" or a non-American or a person who "hates America" or "hates white people," then, yes, Rush, the people who listen to those types are going to develop hatred, and, yes, the less stable of this listeners may be more inclined to take or try to take some kind of confused, misguided action. When a president suggests that those who don't support his war are un-American, he creates the same kind of hatred.

But back to my original problem--there are thousands of bully pulpits out there now. That is no longer exclusive to the president. Sarah Palin has one, Glenn Beck has one, various commentators on ESPN have them (that they used to keep Peyton Manning from winning the Heisman), the Kardashians have one. Heck, even a comedian like John Stewart has one, which he used to break the logjam over a bill that would provide health care for First Responders on 9/11.

So when something like the Arizona tragedy occurs, the opinions from the talking heads come almost immediately and all of the talk, talk, talk, talk, talk becomes the point, becomes the story, becomes the purpose. While people lie dead or injured, those television faces and those radio voices have to be heard and then the story becomes the talkers reacting to what each other has said. It's kind of disgusting.

But I also can't pretend that the spotlights aren't on this situation, and so I have these takeaways: 1) Mrs. Palin is also a coward for hiding behind Facebook and Twitter to respond to the tragedy; coincidence or not, her PAC had crosshairs on key races, had a crosshair specifically on Rep. Giffords' race and she should have confronted this more directly, 2) Much as Mrs. Palin might like to celebrate Alaska as the last American frontier, once again, we see what an incredible mess Arizona is; the last state to embrace MLK's birthday is such a chaotic blend of immigration troubles, racist laws, "maverick" senators who have declared that they were never mavericks, violence, assassination, that it feels like Arizona has never gotten beyond the Wild West, and finally, 3) I wish that all of you professionals on TV, regardless of your professions, would just shut the fuck up for awhile, stop talking, stop backtracking, stop analyzing, stop trying to sell your positions.

If you want to relay the news to us, that's fine. I guess. I won't be watching. But other than that, all of you, from the left, the right, or just from your own ego, I'm really not interested in what you have to say. Maybe if you could think about it for awhile and then write it down, maybe it would have a little more weight. Maybe.

My apologies if you are offended by the highly-controversial editorial cartoon, which has outraged and disgusted some people, but it does make an important point. You might, for balance, take a look at Paul Revere's engraving of the Boston Massacre, which was published all over the country in 1770. As for the song, someone on another blog mistakenly identified it as a "Rod Stewart cover." The song was written by Danny Whitten, the Crazy Horse rhythm guitarist in the original line-up of Neil Young's off-again/on-again band, and it appears on Crazy Horse's first album away from Neil. There's a nice version out there by the Indigo Girls.

Flaky White Stuff

White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes (mp3)
Life is White - Big Star (mp3)

Sunday, my family spent more than $200 on clothing items, another $50 at Ace Hardware, and another $100 in groceries in spite of the fact that we’d been grocery shopping less than a week prior. My boss called me three different times. This is not usual on a Sunday.

Yesterday, My aunt and uncle rearranged their vacation and chose to remain with us longer than originally planned. Our friend who had to attend a relative’s funeral in Arizona is still out in Arizona. Almost a dozen people sent me pictures on my cell phone before noon, when most weeks I’m lucky to get two or three pics, and usually from just one or two specific people. Pics from school. Pics from Wal-Mart. Pics from driveways and living rooms.

My very selective Facebook friends (ha) posted at least a few hundred pictures yesterday. My friends don’t generally post many pictures.

Most unusually, I met four of my neighbors for the first time. We spent several hours sharing space with more than a dozen other children, teenagers and adults we hardly knew and hardly ever see.

All because it snowed.

Granted, Chattanooga didn’t just get a flurry. Most of the Southeast was slammed with a winter storm that woke us up Monday morning to more snow than we’ve seen in almost 20 years, since the freakish storm of March 1993. Perhaps the most astonishing part about this snow is how dead-on accurate the weather forecasts were. They’ve been spot-on all year regarding snow, actually.

Maybe you’re a person who has faith in weather forecasts. If you’re a person like that, you’re most definitely not from Chattanooga, because our particular geographical issues make us a damn tough place to predict weather. We know better. Weather forecasting might as well involve chicken blood or rolling dice.

Milk and bread jokes aside, what happened in our little neighborhood today, and what happened in neighborhoods all over the South, was something that just doesn’t happen much in our modern society. People actually hung out at length with their neighbors, and they did so outside and without the need for some party or BBQ or pre-determined Event. We shared sleds. We offered each other hot chocolate or other fun winter amenities. We took pictures of other families with their cameras and told stories while our children disappeared from view at moderate speeds.

One of my neighbors spent almost an hour shoveling the driveway of an elderly neighbor before ever even thinking of doing so for his own driveway. (In fact, I don’t know if he shoveled his own driveway at all today.) Two of us helped push the newspaper delivery dude down the road. Clearly the guy needed the money, because no other explanation fit his risking it with the piece of trash he drove.

Some rowdy teenage boys with awesome blade sleds, the kind of boys who tend to soar down a hill with reckless abandon and fail to think about small children or dogs who might get in their way, were nothing but polite and considerate. They offered their sleds to my daughters and several times shouted down as I was walking up to make sure the path was clear for them to be reckless and stupid.

It was the kind of neighborhood day people romanticize about, where everyone gets along, and no one talks about politics or broaches icky subjects like the NRA or traffic cameras. Everyone smiles at one another, because snow days are bigger than us in our little Dixieland and certainly bigger than our even littler neighborhood, and everyone around us has enough bread and milk and food, and we can all just smile and savor this rare occurrence together.

So we had that going for us. Which was nice.

Good Day Monday!

Good Morning! 

I'm in a fairly decent mood for a Monday morning, it must be because I tuned out reality for most of the weekend!  HA!  Coming back to reality is usually a bummer, but in today's case it's not.  Thank the universe for small wonders!  :)

Anyway, I spotted this image of a beautiful entryway/foyer over on Apartment Therapy and thought I'd share it with you.  Personally, I would choose another entrance table and mirror, but the floor and stained glass paned turquoise door are spectacular!  

Be patient with me as I warm up my engine this week, I have so many ideas on the brain that it's gonna take some time to calm them down and organize them all into cohesive posts.  Also, as I mentioned in my hiatus breaking post the other day, my boyfriend and I are collaborating on a new blog that will cover a range of social issues along with our theoretical analysis and discussion of them.  It's just another outlet for our passions.  As it is we can only discuss them between us for so long before longing for more of an audience!  Here in Miami it isn't easy to find others on our level.  I don't say that in snobby way, I just mean that the prevailing culture here in Miami is very superficial and rides predominantly on image, money and power rather than substance and real life issues.  I know that's a major generalization and does not apply to everyone living in Miami, however from what I have observed and experienced in 26 years here, it certainly applies to A LOT of people!

Okay, I'm not going to get carried away.  I have stuff to do, catch ya later!  ;)

 

Festival Of A Light

Cold War Kids--"Long As I Can See The Light" (mp3)

Yes, the holidays are over, but there is a celebration here that continues day after day.

Eighteen years ago, way back near the end of 1992, we moved into this house. My older daughter, about to graduate college, was three years old; my younger daughter was about to be born. My wife had finished law school the previous spring, and was in her first year of practice. My friends John, Hank, and Billy were unmarried. My friend Steve did not live across the street. Bill Clinton had just been elected for the first time. There had only been one war in Iraq. The Steelers still only had 4 Super Bowls. My mother was alive and well, with no hint of the cancer that would take her eight years later.

I could go on and on about how different the world was back then, but you get the idea. Inside the house, the same litany of changes since then.

But through it all, there is one thing that hasn't changed. Down in the basement, in a very small, tight bathroom that has all the trappings of having been homemade, there is a flourescent light that burns to this day, every time we turn it on.

We did not install the light. It was in place when we moved in, so I have no idea when it started its life of light. The fixture is actually a two-light fixture, but the lower light has long since worn out.

But this one light continues. And it has not been spared heavy use. For years, I have showered in that bathroom every morning; my wife usually does, too. We do not shower in the dark. I often use that room as my escape from the rest of the house, a place to sit and read. The larger room that the bathroom supports has served at different times as our den, my niece's hangout room when she lived with us, my older daughter's bedroom, a guest room, my younger daughter's room (briefly), the locale for untold sleepovers, Super Bowl parties, Tennessee football parties, including the second half of the championship game, plus clothes-folding marathons and music fests of various sources. I can't even begin to guess how much beer has been swallowed down in that room. We do not pee in the dark.

We are also not a family known for turning off lights, and that light has run for hours, sometimes run for days, even for the duration of brief vacations when we have neglected to turn it off.

I fully realize that this means nothing to you. It's an anomaly, a quirk, a meaningless occurence. It's the toy in the drawer that still works, the lawnmower that starts after being left outside all winter, the dead Ipod that starts working after you whack it against the wall.

But I think there is something to these smallest of miracles.

Miracle? Yes. Miracles are signs. Miracles startle us with the unexpected; they make us pause and rexamine everything beyond us. As Miriam-Webster reminds us:

Definition of MIRACLE
1: an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs
2: an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment

I'll leave the choice of more appropriate definition to you. For me, that light coming on each day, especially now as it takes longer to "warm up" and how it needs to "blink" one time before it's fully on is a reminder that the laws of the universe, the rules of physics, the expectations of nature and science don't always apply. Whoever made this light expected me to have to place it ten or more years ago, way back when all of the other flourescents went out. There was money to be made from the replacement. That size light may not even exist anymore. I don't know who made it or why it's still working, but no one else can explain it either.

For some reason, I find great comfort in that.

Cold War Kids' cover of the classic Creedence song comes from Cover Me Songs.