Cult – "Fire Woman" (1989)

My heart’s a ball of burnin’ flame

Prancing like a cat on a hot tin shack

I have a real problem with procrastination, and it’s gotten worse since I retired.  

I’ve always thought that the reason I have a myriad of unfinished jobs hanging over my head – like dealing with the thousands of family photos that my late parents took over the years – was due to a lack of willpower.  

But I’ve recently learned that many of those who have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder – or “OCPD” – procrastinate because they are perfectionists.  Their perfectionism may be so extreme that it interferes with their ability to complete tasks. 

Some people who come into possession of boxes full of old photographs as a result of the death of their parents might simply toss them.  “What do I need with a bunch of photos taken at our family Christmas celebrations and birthday parties when I have plenty of my own photos from those occasions?” they might ask themselves.  

That’s not me.  My ultimate goal for those photos is to organize them in chronological order and assemble them into comprehensive albums for each of my four children.    

I know that going through those thousands of photos and putting together albums that will satisfy my high standards will take an enormous amount of time and effort.  When I think about what will be required for me to do that job – and to do it right – I feel overwhelmed. 

Which is why those photos are sitting untouched in the boxes that I transported from my parents’ home to my home after my father died in 2016.

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Occasionally, I do manage to finish a project.  For example, a few years ago I made a list of all my LPs and circulated it to several used record dealers in the area.  I ending up holding on to a few of those records purely  for sentimental reasons – I no longer own a turntable – but sold the rest to the highest bidder.

But that’s the exception, not the rule – most of my post-retirement projects remain unfinished.  

In addition to all the family photos, I have thousands of pre-1964 silver coins that my mother and I collected when I was a child.  Those coins are worth something like 35 times their face value as “junk” silver – so each $10 roll of quarters is worth roughly $350.

A lot of people would have already sold those coins to a dealer or pawnbroker a long time ago.  But before I do that, I want to select the coins from each year that are in the best condition and put them in albums to pass on to my grandchildren someday.  

I also need to go through all those dimes, quarters, and half dollars to make sure that there are no coins with scarce dates that are worth more as collectible items than for their silver content.  

For example, I came across a 1932-S quarter when I was a teenager and have held on to it ever since.  It’s worth maybe eight bucks for its silver content, but its value as a scarce collectible coin is more like $100.  I need to be sure there aren’t more such rare quarters lurking in those dozens of rolls of pre-1964 coins before I unload them.

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Another symptom of OCPD is an unwillingness to throw out worn-out or worthless objects, even those with no sentimental value.

My old coins are clearly not worthless, but I’m holding on to a lot of stuff that has no real value to me.

For example, my storage unit contains several large plastic bins full of shirts, sweaters, and pants that I haven’t touched since I rented that unit a couple of years ago.

Before I moved them to that storage unit, most of those clothes hung in closets in my former home for God knows how long.  (I would have preferred to leave them in those closets rather than spending money to rent a storage unit, but the other resident of that house had other ideas.  “You moved out,” she said, “so MOVE OUT!”  

Quite a few of those clothing items still fit me fine, and are in good condition – and when it comes to style, they’re not all that different than the clothes I do wear.  So I’m having a hard time getting rid of them, even though I know deep down inside that I will never wear them again.

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My baseball card collection falls somewhere between my coin collection (which is quite valuable) and the clothes in my storage unit (which are essentially worthless to me).

I have gone through the 75,000-odd baseball cards from the seventies, eighties, and nineties that I’ve accumulated over the years, selling perhaps a third of them but unable to find a buyer for the rest.  (I have a feeling that a lot of you with boxes of old baseball cards sitting in your garage or attic are going to be solely disappointed when you try to sell them.  Unless those cards are at least 50 years old, you’ll find that there are a lot more sellers than buyers out there.)    

I always planned to hold on to the complete sets that I assembled back in the day, and at some point I’ll buy the cards necessarily to fill in the gaps in a few near sets as well.  I have eight grandsons, and eventually I’ll pass down those sets to them.  

But that will still leave me with thousands of relatively common cards that no dealer is interested in buying them.  I don’t know what I’ll eventually do with them, but I can tell you that I won’t just throw them away.

While those cards might have little or no monetary value, keeping them isn’t symptomatic of OCPD if they have sentimental value.  

Does it make sense to say that something that you haven’t looked at in years and rarely think about has sentimental value?

It seems like a real stretch to argue that my baseball cards have sentimental value simply because I’ve held on to them all these years.

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I may have only recently realized that the Cult and the Cure weren’t the same band.  

They’re both terrible, but that’s no excuse for my confusing them – because they’re terrible in very different ways.

(Sometimes a picture really is
worth a thousand words)

“Fire Woman,” which was released in 1989, was featured in the Severance episode titled “Sweet Vitriol.”  (Based on the lines quoted at the beginning of this post, I assume that whoever wrote the song’s lyrics was a Tennessee Williams fan.)

Sweet oil of vitriol was the original name of what came to be called ether.  I knew that ether was once a popular surgical anesthetic.  But I didn’t know until I saw the Severance episode that it could be used as a recreational drug.

At 19th century “ether frolics,” people would inhale ether for recreational purposes.  Ether drinking was once popular among Polish peasants, and is still practiced by the Lemkos (an ethnic group whose members live in the region where Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine meet).

One of the characters in Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas says that “there is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.”    

Click here to listen to watch the official music video for “Fire Woman.”  I’m sure there are more insufferable music videos out there, but I can’t think of one right now.

Click here to buy “Fire Woman” from Amazon.  

Ella Fitzgerald – "Sunshine of Your Love" (1969)

I’ve been waiting so long

To be where I’m going

One of the particular behaviors that experts say may be symptomatic of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder – or “OCPD” – is list-making.

It just so happens that I am a list-maker par excellence.  For example, I started recording all the books I read shortly after I took my last law school exam in May 1977.   

Me too!

It took me 20 years to fill up my first notebook, which lists about 1200 books.

The second notebook covers the next 25 years, and it lists some 1500-odd books.  That means that I averaged reading about five books per month from 1977 until 2022:

I’ve slowed down since moving into my 16th-floor apartment in the 2 or 3 Lines World Headquarters Building not quite three years ago.  I managed only 21 books in 2023 and 24 books in 2024 – that’s about two a month instead of five.

I’m doing a little better so far this year – but that’s not the point.  The point is that I’ve kept a list of every book I’ve read – plus the name of its author, and how many pages it had – for over 48 years!

Do you wonder why I’ve maintained that list?  Well, SO DO I!

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My ostensible reason for keeping a list of all the books I’ve read is that I don’t always remember whether I’ve already read a particular book I see at the public library.

That’s a real problem with certain authors.  For example, John Sandford’s Prey series consists of 34 books with very similar titles – Shadow Prey, Silent Prey, Sudden Prey, Secret Prey . . . you get the picture.  Having my list enabled me to avoid starting a Prey book that I’ve already read.  

But because my list is handwritten, finding a particular title required me to flip through my notebooks and scan the twenty or so books listed on each page – a time-consuming and not entirely reliable process when you’re as easily distracted as I am.  

That’s why I’m creating a searchable computer list of the books written by some of my favorite authors so I won’t waste so much time doing manual searches in the future.  

That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable thing to do, but there’s something more going on here.  

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In addition to my list of all the books I’ve read, I also have a list of every streaming TV series I’ve watched.  I recently expanded that list to include movies.

I also keep track of all my bike rides in a weekly appointment book.  I got in the habit of buying one of those books each year to keep track of my legal work for billing purposes, but now all I use them for is to note where I ride and how long each ride is.  (I’ve never added those distances to see how many miles I logged in a certain month or year – I just stick each book in a drawer at year end and order a new one.)

When I began to play competitive trivia a few years, I created a spreadsheet so I could keep track of my team’s weekly results – how many points we scored in each round, our final score, where we placed, and so on.

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List-making helps those with OCPD to satisfy their need for structure and control.  Such people may focus more on the process of list-making than the practical reasons for making the list.  

For example, rather than creating a simple shopping list that helps him remember what items he needs to buy, a list-maker with OCPD may spend excessive time working on an overly-elaborate list that fulfills his need to achieve perfection in every aspect of his life. 

(That’s a really good idea!)

I don’t think that’s what causes me to keep so many lists.  My theory is that my somewhat obsessive list-making is related to a deep-seated fear that I’m wasting my life – that I’m not going to do anything of significance before I die.  

My lists record some of my accomplishments – books read, movies watched, miles ridden on my bike, trivia victories.  

I know those accomplishments are of no great importance.  But at least they’re tangible, and quantifiable.  They’re better than nothing.

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Before we move on, here’s something I read on the website of a group of Los Angeles psychologists:

Did you know that autism and the love of lists often go hand in hand?  Many autistic people create lists of their favorite songs, shows they want to watch, or recipes they want to try, among many others.  This affinity for lists is common enough that many people wonder whether making lists is a sign of autism.

However, that website goes on to say that “there are many allistic (non-autistic) people obsessed with lists.”  

Based on my research to date, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder seems like a much better fit for my particular brand of weirdness than autism.  So I’m going to continue my trip down the OCPD rabbit hole, eschewing any further exploration of autism for the being.

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Speaking of weirdness, I’m currently watching the Apple TV series Severance – which is about as weird as TV gets.  Today’s featured recording accompanied the closing credits of the Severance episode I watched today.

In 1969, a German jazz label released an album featuring Ella Fitzgerald performing with Ernie Hecksher’s big band at the legendary Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco: 

The first track on that album is . . . “Hey Jude”?   

AllMusic’s review accurately described Ella’s performance of that song as “border[ing] on the embarrassing.”  But her take on Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” isn’t too bad.

Click here to listen to Ella Fitzgerald’s recording of “Sunshine of Your Love.”

Fun and Games – "Grooviest Girl in the World" (1968)

You’re the grooviest girl in the world

And I’m a guy with impeccable taste

A few nights ago, I went online to shop for a fleece throw that I could use to make watching TV in my apartment a cozier experience.

I’m usually pleased with the stuff I get from L. L. Bean, so I went to their website first.  Their “Wicked Plush Throw” – which was touted as a New York Times Wirecutter pick – seemed to fit the bill.

Are you familiar with Wirecutter?  They test and rate a wide variety of products – everything from televisions to winter boots for kids to boxed macaroni and cheese.  

I discovered Wirecutter a couple of years ago when I was shopping for an electronic keyboard.  I picked the keyboard that they recommended, and have been very pleased with my choice.

The Wirecutter review of the L. L. Bean throw – which cost $32.95 – made it sound perfect for my needs.  But the “Wicked Plush Throw” wasn’t in stock at the nearest L. L. Bean retail store, and I hated to pay eight bucks in shipping and handling to have it delivered.

I did some more looking around online and decided to look for a throw at the Target store that’s near my gym.  I found a nice plaid one – it was much nicer looking than the solid-color Bean throw I had considered – that cost only $15.

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When I showered after undergoing a minor medical procedure recently, I ended up with a little blood on my bath towel.  I spritzed the towel with some laundry stain remover and dropped it into the washing machine with the rest of my laundry.

While waiting for my washing machine to do its magic, I decided to see if Consumer Reports had anything to say about laundry stain removers.

It turned out that Consumer Reports had tested a half-dozen different laundry stain removers a couple of years ago.  I was pleased to find out that my brand I had been using – OxiClean Max Force – was the magazine’s top choice.  (It did particularly well when it came to removing blood stains.)

I’ve made a mental note to pick up a bottle on my next visit to Walmart.  (I could have picked one up the next time I went to the grocery store, but OxiClean Max Force costs $4.49 at the local Harris Teeter and only $4.39 at Walmart.)

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Was it really necessary for me to go to product testing websites and then compare prices at various retail stores before purchasing a fleece throw and laundry stain remover?  

As a matter of fact, it was.  Because in each case I wanted to get the perfect product.  And I wanted to get it at the best price possible. 

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder – or “OCPD” – is characterized by excessive perfectionism.  Based on my description of the effort I put into shopping for a couple of simple and inexpensive products, do you think I sound like someone who suffers from OCPD?  Or am I just a little (or a lot) weird?

We’ll continue to chew on that question in the next 2 or 3 lines.

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One final thought before we get to today’s featured record.

This may sound paradoxical, but I don’t think my need to get the lowest price for everything I buy has anything to do with money.  I’m comfortable financially – but even if I wasn’t, we’re talking about very small amounts of money here.

I could give you many more examples of the lengths I go to in order to save money.  For example, my car takes 89 octane gasoline, and I figured out a long time ago that I can save a couple of bucks each time I fill up by mixing 87 octane regular and 93 octane premium in a 2:1 ratio instead of pumping 89 octane gas directly. 

Sure, that requires spending more time at the gas station to save an insignificant amount of money.  

But there’s a very real psychological reward for my effort.  Humans have an innate desire to master skills and achieve competence.  Figuring out a way to save money without sacrificing quality makes me feel like I feel when I solve a sudoku puzzle or finish first at trivia.

What is more satisfying than knowing that you’ve beaten the system!  

And so am I!

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The Fun and Games were a short-lived Houston group that broke up shortly after releasing their one and only album, Elephant Candy, in 1968.  

Click here to listen to their recording of “Grooviest Girl in the World,” which stalled out at #78 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in early 1969.  

The song’s lyrics contain references to three well-known sixties records – “Judy in Disguise” (by John Fred and his Playboy Band), “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (by the Beatles), and “Up, Up, and Away” (by the Fifth Dimension).

A cover of “Grooviest Girl in the World” by a New Zealand group, The Simple Image, was a #3 hit in that country later that year.

Click here to buy The Simple Image’s cover of “Grooviest Girl in the World” from Amazon.