Complaints Choirs

There are many Complaints Choirs around, and I've watched and listened to most of them this weekend. The Helsinki is by far my favorite--the choir is first-rate, and the complaints are a riot ("Going to work in the morning, then home again at night, eventually you lose your mind"). I'm going around the house humming to myself "On se niin vaarin, on se niin vaarin!" = "It's not fair, it's not fair!"

The Helsinki Complaints Choir is running on the right side of my blog in the video spot I've been using for TEDTalks. The ones (i.e., TEDTalks) I've posted here from the many available on the website have been simply about topics or presenters I'm interested in: Zipcar, Jane Goodall, a brilliant young violinist, ants, family correspondence, a smart bunch of MIT students (led by a young woman) who are devising cooking stoves to replace the ancient charcoal devices used in developing countries and killing more than two million children under five ever year, architecture.

Considering that last year at this time I couldn't hear at all, these little video snippets with sound have been both a revelation and a load of fun.

Yes, "it"--life--is indeed not fair; but it is often, and sometimes all at once, beautiful, brilliant, heartening, and hilarious.