It's been going on for weeks, the freelance songwriter of the K-Landnews unflinchingly wanders around the big building humming " 'tis the season to spend money, da da da da daaah".
Last week, for good measure or to annoy us, the artist added " 'tis the season to be folly, hm hm hm hm hmm".
At least, we have not had to endure a full on Albert Camus version of the Christmas song, as we had feared when the media celebrated the 100th birthday of the chain-smoking French philosopher.
As the season of shopping heats up, National Public Radio (NPR) had a cool show on the psychology of big and small presents. Scientists looked the size and the sequence of presents and found recipients feel better if you give a small gift first and then a larger one. If you get a big present and then a smaller one, you tend to value them less.
The K-Landnews team feels vindicated in its common sense observation of life and emboldened to claim the phenomenon applies to politics and promises as well.
We started to test the "big and small" theory at Halloween. Instead of buying pounds and pounds of bit size treats, we got a case of standard size chocolate bars (100 g, about 3.5 oz).
Correctly accounting for sweets is hard, as any parent knows. But we figured out that we spent the same amount of money as we did in previous years.
And the trick or treaters were happier with a single big chocolate bar than with the bite size candies.
The kids' eyes were bigger, their thank you more sincere.
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