Let's all #tweetignorantlyaboutAfrica

Because if three tweets is a blog post, inventing a hashtag to mark the Mandela funeral (and the cringeworthiest of the evening's cultural appropriation and insensitivity on Twitter) is practically an essay.

 

The Doctor is OUT.

Don't listen to the radio

Don't listen to the radio
Hear something you already know
I, I, I got no radio

- The Vines, off their third album which nobody bought because by then they had well and truly transversed the shark, which I picked up in a bargain bin in JB HiFi, the album not the shark I mean

Be gentle. I slept badly. Sleeping badly is something you do as you age, like making old-man noises when you get up from recliners, like taking a disproportionate concern ref. one's lawn and the prophensity of young people to congregate upon it. Not only did I sleep badly, I woke badly. About as badly as you can. I woke to Def Leppard.

Some context though, lest you think I woke to a one-armed drummer in my boudoir (which given old mate's history with domestic violence is not an appealing prospect by any stretch). Like most people who aren't insufferable cunts, I am not a morning person. I require something unpleasant, some form of aural violence to get me out of bed. Like a radio alarm playing commercial breakfast FM radio. Because if there's only one thing more fucking unpleasant than commercial radio, it's radio commercials. Radio ads - fuck-awful, parochial, chintzy, jingly local radio ads - are just The. Fucking. Worst. Throw in a genuinely fucking gormless pack of giggling breakfast hosts on full 'FUCK WE'RE FUNNY' mode and I'm vaulting the bed to fist-pound the 'FUCK OFF' button faster than you can say 'Shit Music, 23FM!'

Shoutout to The Rock Otago for providing all those items in one convenient location, 93.4FM on your radio dial.

Occasionally, being a commercial breakfast show, the Rock's Morning Rumble interrupt their schedule of fuck-awful ads and fuck-awful banter to play an item of music. And here's often where the issue lies. The only problem with The Rock - in terms of their utility as a get-out-of-bed-to-damage-the-radio device - is their playlist isn't quite appalling enough. More often than one would like, they deign to crank something actually listenable like AC/DC or the Fooies or Led Zep which are inclined to make one smile, listen in, drift back off to sleep and reawake sometime around 7.55am, which is suboptimal in extremis deo. However, there's always Nickelback. (There's ALWAYS fucking Nickelback. When will someone buy Choad Kroeger a course of suppositories or sennapods or something because that man sounds like he's gurning through a profoundly unpleasant shit. You're up, Avril.) And this morning, there was fucking Def Leppard's 'Animal'.

I fucking hate Def Leppard. Fairy-floss guitars, helium vocals, enough hairspray to dissolve the ozone layer, years upon years of production wank, and a pair of raised manicured digits to the hard-edged legacy of the NWOBHM which spawned them. From Judas Priest and Iron Maiden to these piss-dismal milquetoast arriviste fucking poodles.

Early evolutionary precursor of Nickelback. Also of the Paddle Pop Lion and the Vileda floor mop

It's also a really good way of having girls immediately lose interest in you as soon as they find their best-of in your music collection. Fuck you, JB HiFi bargain bin. You have betrayed me for the last time.

Waking up to Def Leppard's 'Animal', while about as pleasant as being hit in the face with an aircraft carrier, does allow for the entertainment of a mondegreen. Because, and I expect this may be the fatigue talking, but it totally sounds like this fucking munter is singing 'Enema'.

Not only does it fit the metre and tone of the song perfectly, you can't convince me that ISN'T what old mate's faux-Sunset-Strip-hair-farmer drawl is actually attempting to enunciate. Furthermore, it makes the entire miserable fucking enterprise a lot more entertaining. Sing it buddy:

And ah wawnt...
And ah neeeed...
And ah lurve...
Enema.

Also, I think we might have found a solution for Choad Kroeger's digestive issues. Everybody wins! Avril, get the Karcher.

The Doctor is OUT.