I have become a whistler. I’m not sure how it happened, really. I don’t whistle especially well.

Certain songs tend to earworm their way into my brain, leaving me unable to stop whistling them (and variations upon) for the duration of the day. This is especially true when I’m walking from my desk to the printer, or at home when I walk from my desk to the refridgerator.

The tunes are mostly standards: Yankee Doodle, Old Susanna, the theme from Star Wars. However, I occasionally throw together a medley, my favorite so far being “Movie Tunes of the 30s, 40s, and 90s,” which included a terrific seugeway from Alanis Morissette’s “Uninvited” to a Judy Garland Overture, complete with key-change.

Elise has deemed my new habit completely unacceptable to the point that she seemed to be delighted when I spent half an hour playing major scales on my guitar last night – a practice whose duration is typically frowned upon. Honestly, I find my new habit unacceptable too… the sort of aimless, pointless, eccentric thing that makes me wonder at the intelligence of the person doing it. Couldn’t they expend all that lip-pursing effort lost in thought, or some other silent activity.

Of course, now I understand: it’s a 9-to-5ism. Hopefully an isolated one, because if i get to the point where i hum the same note over an over again for six minutes at a time like the woman on the other side of my cubicle wall i think my head will explode from the dissonance between the habit and my complete and utter contemptual annoyance with it.