My head is alive with the sound of morons.

Is it just me, or is there also music in your head every chuffing day? Today it's Santa Bring My Baby Back (to Me) by Elvis. (Is there any other version? I can't imagine Doris Day doing it. Or Bono, despite his odd Elvis "poem." Maybe Tony Bennett. Or Crystal Gayle.)


Elvis is not the worst thing to have in your head. I like Elvis, and the song is a perfect carbon copy. All the uh-uh-huhs and chunky stuttery phrasing are as they should be. The UB40 phase was a problem. It was playing in a shop with a particularly attractive sale so I was exposed to it for far longer than one might ordinarily expect and it hung around for weeks, like catarrh.


I wake up with a musical phrase on repeat and it is there all day on and off like some sort of gnawing tinnitus, though I am clear it is in my head, not my ears. If Queen is occurring in my vicinity it will seep into my brain like some sort of toxic industrial pollution, which is unfortunate as I would rather fill my ears with petrol and set my head on fire than have that crap on a loop for days on end.

The policemen are looking younger too.

The Cramps* are playing in the kitchen as a radiator cover is being assembled by the less fortunate resident of this lover's paradise, and I'm thinking, as I do when I see old footage of the Sex Pistols, that it's a bit quaint and old fashioned that people were shocked by their music and swearing and generally disruptive antics.


So John Lydon's gone all sincere and stuff.


Not that it's any business of mine. No one should remain a gobbing, gurning teenager forever (though I seem to have held on to my crippling self-consciousness and nagging sensation that I will never be old enough to have to achieve or commit to anything).


The thing that I found surprising was the bit about the butter ad. Nicola Stanbridge is just a nipper has never heard of the Sex Pistols didn't do her research and... er no, never mind, she apparently ran a student radio station and should know better. Nicola, your question about selling out is not big and it's not clever. You're not interviewing Bob Dylan.** How is the concept of selling out relevant in any way to John Lydon, hater of earnest middle-class longhair types, devotee of himself and only himself, whose last Sex Pistols tour was entitled Filthy Lucre? Selling out what?


So aside from the cheap question about selling out, I was disappointed that Lydon addressed it as if it was a real question, but then he went on to lament the end of all things British in the same tone as the old buffers who decried the Sex Pistols as the end of all civilised society in the 70s, which was quite fun. Bless.


The radiator cover looks okay.

*Now it's The Stranglers. Ditto.

**I got a little stuck on this. Bob Dylan came to mind because of the Judas thing, but who else would fit? Bono? Raving Tory Phil Collins, who was in a little prog rock combo but took it to the next level commercially and had to move to Switzerland because he didn't want to pay tax? Then recorded a sad song about a homeless woman? I don't know if that makes him a sellout; isn't he just a tosser? If you're a professional musician, making a living selling music, an accusation of selling out seems a bit, well, hollow.

Heartwarming.

It's good to say sorry.

Is it wrong that I find this story so, well, warming of the cockles? I have in the past felt a little cynical about the belated municipal apology that comes years or maybe hundreds of years later from a completely different generation of people with only a tangential connection with the original event(s). What is the value or validity of this gesture? In this case it seems that it was quite cathartic for all involved.

Drinking your own urine, monkeyfighting and other survival tips.

I'm keeping this bookmarked. You know, just in case.