THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

Whistling pretty much should just stop. Now by “pretty much”, I’m leaving room for good whistling: namely, whistling employed well in a musical context, and whistling deployed to mock whistling. So I’m not going to tell Otis Redding to not whistle during the last portion of “Sitting By the Dock of the Bay”, nor would I outlaw the humorous mocking whistle like in the scene toward the end of The ‘Burbs where one of Ricky Butler’s friend tries to sneak past the police tape to get a closer look at the freshly exploded Klopek residence and, in the background of the shot, tries to whistle with his hands in pocket past the police tape as if he’s just going for a casual stoll. Or like when my brother and I mock by dad’s nervous whistle. See, that’s really the key to whistling needing to stop. Most people whistle out of nervous habit. Or just for positive stimulus, to fill their head with vibtrations or whatever. But never is this type of whistling, which is 95% of all whistling, pleasing to a third party. No one ever rocks out to someone else’s nervous whistling. On the contrary, it’s almost always annoying. One reason is that whistling has a happy connotation, which conflicts with the fact that our bodies are all slowly deteriorating and there is no afterlife. Moreover, most people are bad at whistling. Again, there are good whistlers, but unless it’s music, whistling sucks. Stop whistling. I think a lot of people whistle for the same reason that people sing music in the shower. Good music is good and leaves a good impression on us so that we seek to rekindle it by singing to ourselves. There are two categories here: whistling a song to yourself, and whistling the whistle part of a song to yourself. They are both bad, but at least the latter has some academic value. But then again even a good facsimile can be annoying, just look at how quickly we all got tired of “Young Folks” purely on account of too many people whistling the whistle part of the chorus.

Oh, also, the hot chick whistle is fine. That might be a corallery of the mocking whistle. I guess the loud-sporting or get-your-attention whistle has legitimate pragmatic value as well…. It may seem like I’m widdling away at the initial stance here, but still, I stand firmly. Most whistling needs to stop.

-Shark