New Employment, New Dangers

I've settled comfortably into my new office role. Despite expected teething problems, such as horrifying initial incompetence and why-is-no-one-else-wearing-a-suit-syndrome, it's going okay. The people, though different from my usual crowd of hapless, giggling misfits, are affable and approachable. The office, though lacking in privacy and humidity, is spacious and calming. The work and procedures, though at first bewildering, are slowly sinking in and becoming familiar and comfortable. My major current concern is the office radio.

I like good music, not popular music, ffs. I feel like an old man, or, more accurately, a fraudulent geek. I don't understand these new cultural references. Why is everyone laughing when someone says a singer sounds like Avril Lavigne? I thought it was Avril Lavigne. And, anyway, what happened to Avril after her fabulous I'm With You. Wow, that was a cool song. Pretty nifty, in fact. Hip n' shit. But I don't understand. How come some of these new-fangled accepted songs have industrial-like instrumentals on when my own music is disregarded for its "noisome" tone? For what purpose auto-tune?

And why do they only ever sing about their worthless, failed relationships, their disgusting history of the inbreeding of the vacuous and the banal, their half-baked misremembrances of fictionalised saccharine pairings, concocted in the sweaty mind of the songwriter and regurgitated by a singer devoid of personality or flair, and whose entire claim to celebrity entitlement stems from a stealthy act of fellatio gleefully delivered to an emotionless Simon Cowell at the beginning of a long and sticky journey through a well-watched but ultimately soulless reality television show?

I even had the chance to put an end to the madness today. There was some dispute in the office when the Luddites in the row behind complained that their analogue radio clashed with the echo of the DAB radio next to me. I stupidly, selflessly fixed everything by pointing out that our radio could also receive and transmit an FM signal. Now I'm stuck in the Dark Age of analogue listening to popular music.

I can feel it eroding my soul. I have to come home and bathe in the disinfectant of Black Sabbath.

But they also have a nice water cooler here. So, like, swings and roundabouts.