Ever since a car accident in 2004, I haven’t really liked music. I don’t know if it’s because I prefer silence after the crash or if I really just hate running into that annoying B-52s song “Love Shack.” I mean, I was listening to music at the time of the accident, and I remember liking music before the accident. The accident was the dividing point in my life between liking music and not liking music.

Now I try to understand all the time why people actually like music. While I could live with just the near-silent whoosh of air going past my ears, other people obviously can’t. So it’s been a philosophical and anthropological mystery I have been trying to figure out for the last four years.

I just realized I was looking at the reasons for the importance of music from the wrong angle. It isn’t some psychological need that people have. It stems, instead, from physiological reason, or rather the masking of a physical condition.

Recently, at a gathering of individuals where there was no music, someone’s stomach grumbled. The person was embarrassed and apologized. If there had been music, this normal human bodily noise would have gone unnoticed. The same for any resulting loud (yet unsmelly) farts or other fart-like sounds (for example, getting off a leather couch in vinyl pants).

Thus music masks something we would rather hide, in the interest of easing social relations, much like dim lights at parties hides physical imperfections in one’s skin and aids sexual friendships.

Biscotti, I believed since their initial appearance on the Canadian culinary landscape, were stupid, stale cookies.

Coffee, meanwhile, smelled nice but tasted like something you’re meant to vomit. (That’s what bitterness indicates in the wild.)

No one told me you were supposed to dip biscotti into coffee.

Holy moly!

That makes both of them not merely palatable, but downright delicious.

My life has just a little more meaning now.

Having been invited to a literary fundraiser, I now have the chance to wear my Texan fedora. Matt bought it for me on Boxing Day. I haven’t worn it outside yet. Quite frankly, I am not charismatic enough for a hat. Which is too bad. I aspire to wearing big hats like some seventeenth century rake. I just haven’t managed yet to pull off the look or the reduction in peripheral vision.

But now, I am facing a dress code that requests something crime-inspired, like a film noir trench coat and fedora.

A few days ago, I came across a Lubbock blog by journalist Karen Brehm. I combed through her archives, eager to re-live that holiday feeling Lubbock always imparts.** I had saved a particular post of Brehm’s in one of my tabs. I wanted to cement the wisdom of her words and make use of them, some day.

Brehm offered some advice to would-be hat wearers:

1. Put the center of the hat over one eyebrow (doesn’t matter which one) instead of the center of your forehead.

2. Pull it forward.

She got this advice from a milliner.

*Karen’s Brehm’s words.

**It’s a good thing I only ever go to Lubbock for holidays. My opinion of the place is coloured by happy vacation memories. Not like Vancouver, where I have had to go to school. Ruined it for me.

“Someone should make allergy potato chips,” said Matt as we spied a bag of rosemary and basil chips.

We brainstormed on some flavours:

• Peanut and cat
• Shellfish and milk
• Dust mite and egg
• Cedar and ragweed
• Latex and pollen

“Wait,” I said.  “What sort of target market are we looking at?”

“People who want to live on the edge but are not into the whole bungee jumping thing.”

My idea is a new skit for Saturday Night Live circa 1989. It’s called “Tranny Granny.”

Pretty good huh? Any of you comedy scriptwriters can take it away. Go wild with my idea.

I’ll be waiting for the royalty cheques.

*****

Matt suggested a bumper sticker for tranny grannies: “Old tranvestites never die, they just disrobe.”