No Night Sweats N o  N i g h t  S w e a t s No Night Sweats
Sydney's Post-Punk Bands
I Like Music
Slapp Happy are Terrific
A List of CDs
Text is What I Write
Crime Fiction is Silly
[ High On Pooty-Weed or Something Else ]

Fanned by winds coming in from the deep desert country, the thermometer inched towards the magical 40 degrees centigrade mark this week. It's oh, so Christmassy in an Australian kind of way. Ofcourse, like the eediot I am, I decide that the lawn needs to be managed with whipper snipper, mower and hand mixed 2 stroke fuel. (Well, we've got friends coming over for Boxing day and the place has got to look it's best - whatever that is). I started very early to miss a total scorching (with neighbours peering sleepily from their windows) but, even so, at about the half way mark an hour later my mind was playing minor heat frazzled tricks with me.

I just kept on hearing the "feet on gravel, bleep of sax and tinny bad-disco guitar" introduction to Roxy Music's 'Love Is The Drug'. Now, I physically hate this song. At the time of it's release, it embodied everything that I loathed about this once glorious band. But this revulsion was crystallized by a similar mind loop I had during my first ever full-time job - in the weeks after high school and before college.

The world around Allawah was sweltering in a heat that ovens barely reach but I was also stuck inside a large corrugated iron box amongst forges, metal presses, grinders, hurtfull shavings of steel, thick grease stains and cigarette smoke. My job was menial at best - hammering rivets into the innards of fold-up beds - but I tried various tricks to make the time go faster : a little competition amongst myself to see how quickly and securely I could rivet (rudely stopped by my co-workers who told me to "slow down, ya bastard"); trying to make conversation with the two slightly older blokes who were supposedly always out of it on Aspro and Coke (now that was a dead loss) and singing my favourite songs to myself. Until 'Love Is The Drug' came along and wouldn't go away, that is. 

I tried all the known tricks in the mentally fatigued universe to break it's satanic hold on me. But even the mantra of singing The Beatles 'Help' over and over again (so cleverly moronic that it drives all other thoughts and melodies out of the brain) didn't help. Luckily, quite soon after this started, I finished the job and, magically, the song dissappeared from my cranium...until a couple of days ago that is... 

Oh, cursed life (or devil-Santa), what have you brung me now?

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