It's always nice when some little tidbit of information drops out of the sky and lands exactly where you want it, exactly when you want it - that is, when it confirms something you already knew but couldn't prove to save your life.

You could always turn to the Bible, of course - just claim it says so in Paul's Second Letter to the Norwegians. But that would be wrong.

And anyway, this time I've got something more concrete to hang my hat on - an academic study that backs up something I've always known: Grumpy people are smarter than cheery people.

Well, not exactly.

What Professor Joe Forgas, a researcher at the University of New South Wales, actually told Australian Science Magazine was more like this:

"Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation, and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world. Our research suggests that sadness … promotes information processing strategies best suited to dealing with more demanding situations."

In other words, feeling grumpy "is good for you."

Well, not exactly.

Professor Forgas didn't actually use the word "grumpy." He talked about "sadness" and "negative" versus "positive" moods.

"Positive mood is not universally desirable," he wrote: "People in negative mood are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eyewitness distortions and are better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages."

In other words, the sad, the gloomy, the melancholy and the blue are more thoughtful and less gullible than the giddy, the perky and those who are tickled pink or on cloud nine - who are more likely to believe anything they're told.

In the professor's experiments, "those in a bad mood outperformed those who were jolly - they made fewer mistakes and were better communicators."

In fact, the only disturbing part of two articles I read about this study was one writer's thoughtless equation of grumpy with "miserable."

Humbug! Sure, one might conceivably manage to tra-la-la one's way through life's pains and trials and disap-pointments behind the distorting shield of rose-tinted glasses; one might even go a-tisket-a-tasketing along for decades in a state of perpetual, jovial bliss.

But that hardly seems like a rational response to reality.

And here comes the nature-versus-nature question: Maybe grumpiness is genetic or maybe (at least in my case) it's situational. Because by the age of, say, 20, I had received two ominous messages from the oracle at the Chinese fortune cookie factory, and had taken them much too seriously. They were, in order: "Life is not a bowl of cherries" and "The fish that got away was the big one."

* * *

But what's really making me grumpy this week is the news that Generous Motors is planning to pull the rug out from under the Alderman Motor Co., which has been doing business in Meriden since 1923 - first as a Studebaker dealership, later picking up Oldsmobile and Cadillac.

Then, in 2001, we learned that GM was planning to kill the Olds.

Then, last week, we learned that GM is planning to kill Alderman.

You see, there's a "wind down" plan to cut its fleet of dealerships almost in half, and Alderman is on the list. Even though they've been selling GM cars since 1931. Even though the closest Caddy agencies are in Hartford, Waterbury and Shelton.

The owners are asking people to sign a petition at the Cadillac store, at 380 S. Broad St., and hoping that local, state and federal leaders will pressure GM to reconsider. The City Council passed a resolution Monday to that effect.

Of course, GM "certainly would listen to anyone," a spokeswoman said last week. On the other hand, the time for dealers to appeal "has come and gone."

Translation from corporate-speak: Drop dead.

Reach Glenn Richter at grichter@record-journal.com or (203) 317-2222