blue monday
According to BBC news, today is 'blue monday'(12 inch mix), the most depressing day of the year, which makes me wonder if yesterday was 'gloomy sunday'.
Wikipedia says:
This date was published in a press release under the name of Cliff
Arnall, at the time a tutor at the Centre for Lifelong Learning, a
Further Education centre attached to Cardiff University. The Guardian reported that the press release was delivered substantially pre-written to a number of academics by PR agency Porter Novelli, who offered them money to put their names to it. The Guardian later printed a statement from Cardiff University
distancing themselves from Arnall, whom they described as a 'corporate whore'.
Dr Arnall says the date was calculated by using many factors,
including: weather conditions, debt level (the difference between debt
accumulated and our ability to pay), time since Christmas, time since
failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling
of a need to take action. Writing about the calculation, The Guardian
stated: … the fact is that Cliff Arnall's equations … fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms.
So it would seem that the whole thing is a fabrication of mendacious marketing. And as such we can dismiss it and be as positive as we like here at Welcome to Optimism.
Despite this revelation, at Wieden + Kennedy's palatial East End offices, there has been concern about the whole 'blue monday' thing. David Stevens suggested that if anyone had the ‘Now That’s What I Call Music: Volume 1’ 25th anniversary album we should put it on the in-house radio now. This seemed to many like the perfect soundtrack for a miserable day. None more so, perhaps, than Kevin Chesters, who said:
From memory NTWICM 1 contained "Clouds across the moon"
by the Rah Band. This was playing on the school bus at the exact when
Tracy Davis dumped me aged 11. I was pretty miserable as I recall.
Crying into my Um Bongo.
Have a nice day.