A Critic's Meta-Review: 4/5
Yet another check that awaits me in the (hopefully) near future - once I settle things with the Porter estate, of course. The Pollyanna principle? More like “what I have been telling myself to do in order to be able to sleep at night without waking up my neighbors at four in the morning with tears of bittersweet anguish and recalcitrant agony as the acrid memories of all of my mistakes and wrongdoings, deeply woven into my consciousness, permanently ingrained in my brain, prod and poke at the inner lining of pruritus-stricken soul.”
It is not just me who has been given no choice but to adopt this approach. To be honest with you, I know very few people who do not have this outlook - at least among my circle of friends, and whichever relatives I actively keep in touch with. Forcing oneself to see the positive in every situation is, quite frankly, what I have come to conclusion is the best possible strategy for navigating this highly meretricious yet perennially inscrutable instance of existence we have all been placed within.
Elizabeth Cotten understood it. Ma Rainey understood it. Bob Dylan understood it. Bob Marley understood it. Bob Weir understood it. Bob Ross understood it. Mr. Rogers understood it.
Monty Python understood it.
Damn. That is quite a sizable bunch of folks to split a check with. You know what? On second thought, forget about that check. I didn’t need it anyway. I will make up for it by...bottling and selling homemade pasta sauce! Yes, yes...with all those tomatoes my neighbor has growing next door. Surely this will rake me in a pretty fortune.
(*Mr. Burns voice*) Excellent…
Well, there you have it. The Pollyanna principle at work. Here I am, contemplating siphoning a produce product of contested categorization (Fruit? Vegetable? I have heard it depends on the circumstances in which it is deployed, but I feel that this is a bit of a cop-out by those indecisive pencil pushers up in the big food naming convention committees) in order to substitute the portion of the check I would have been designated following such a wide split, and I still cannot seem to shake my good mood. I have not seen the family dog in months. My cat will not stop climbing into the sink and licking all of the dishes.
And yet...my smile ain’t going nowhere.
:)
