When even the Associated Press is sending up trend-story signal flares about the current, crappy state of the world, there’s only one song to sorta-fit the collective mood: Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day,” which I have come clean about enjoying before and which has an attendant YouTube comment section that’s 45% semi-anonymous support group, 35% incoherent assholes, 20% comments along the lines of “I’m eating chips right now! Wow that was random lol,” and 100% desperately in need of The Elements Of Style being thrown its way:

First, the “my day is worse than yours” contest, which kicks off with a comment from the appropriately named AmyDee911 and goes on:

AmyDee911: “This is the song that was on the radio when I was on the way to the hospital, following an ambulance that was carrying my 5 year old son. He’s fine, I mostly am, but I heard this on the radio and said “ya think??”"

xXAnimexChickXx: “omg i love this song so so much, it makes me wanna cry everytime i hear it cuz it reminds me of this little boy me and my mom baby-sat since he was born. he used to sig it all the time he loved this song. but when he was 3 he moved away and we miss him SO much!”

ilikeoreos101: “this song makes me cheer up and i need it right now, ive been going non stop for about two weeks and then going through puberty on top of that rele sux and this song cheers me up alot, i hate being a girl!!!!!!(sometimes, but i love… guys)”

wiscbrat13: “this song is grat it rmindes me of my girlfriend she cheated on me and now its no more”

xleper17: “god, isn’t that everyone’s life? every day is a different one, but it is exactly the same. “

someweirdogirl22: “hell yes i specifically looked this one up cuz my day sucked”

Uh, that last one rings a bit too familiar there. Anyway, there’s much more where that came from, but of course, one person has to spoil the collective catharsis, because it’s the Internet:

MASProductions777: “What are the words supposed to mean? It doesn’t mean anything, its actually not very deep. Its just a bunch phrases put into a song really. I mean its a great song and all but what does it really mean?”

But all is not lost! A ray of sunshine comes through thanks to one person noting some basic laws of physics:

ni0kin: “The world isn’t coming to the end.  In fact it still spinning 365 days a year. So let live with our happiness and put aside the bad feeling. I wish ya all feel better soon.”

Thanks, ni0kin (although it’s kind of troubling that you threw around the number “365″ in a leap year–ack!). Maybe you should also get in touch with the folks at AP? It seems like they’ve been faking their smile with their coffees to go for a long time now.

Daniel Powter – Bad Day [YouTube]
Everything is seemingly spinning out of control [AP]