One of those days (Part 1)

For a Saturday the 14th, today definitely seemed more like Friday the 13th.

Quite apart from the fact that I go into a coughing fit every time I assume a horizontal position, I was downright weepy most of the morning, though I attribute this to unlucky programming of the background music. Imagine this block of four in sequence on your local oldies station:

"Past, Present and Future" - The Shangri-Las

"Ask the Lonely" - The Four Tops

"The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)" - The Walker Brothers

"Save It For Me" - The Four Seasons

From back to front, hope, dashed hope, permanently dashed hope, and paranoia. Curiously, the Walkers track started out as a Frankie Valli solo effort, which inexplicably flopped; in some almost-but-not-exactly-parallel universe, this set might have ended with a Four Seasons twin-spin.

The real killer here is "Past, Present and Future", which contains this truly twisted text (it's not really a lyric, since it's not sung):

Beyond that, deponent saith not.

The real fun to come, however, was in cyberspace.