LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID, THE ALBUM: U IS FOR GETTING UGLY

I don’t know about you, but for a guy who’s verging on the bald, if I don’t get a haircut soon I’m going to be the source of a rash of Bigfoot seen in wilds of Karratha suburbs rumours coming your way very soon…..

It’s the end of the first week of school holidays, and as intimated by Scum the Crime Minister yesterday, Luscious and I are enjoying slacking off by being at the school, writing stay-at-home programs for our students for next term and creating online quizzes to give them something entertaining to do while they’re in lockdown, because as teachers we are, in equal parts, essential, sacrificial, and scapegoatable.

Scum the Crime Minister is a floating piece of weasel shit, and after he is voted out, he and his fascist lackey the Oberstumfuhrer Potatohead should be brought up on as many criminal charges as can fit on the charge sheet. But you already knew that, from watching their corruption, illegal gaoling of refugees, and acts of malice towards the democractic state already. And if you didn’t, either wake up or take the Lieberal-coloured sleeping mask off your eyes.

Right about now, as we face day 1000 of no-touchie-time, it’s tempting to forget that other people exist below the waist. Memories of complete humans fade as humanity appears to be no more than a series of floating torsos on computer screens. Luscious and I exist in a world where our neighbours — mainly FIFOs and guys working for months at a time on the oil rigs offshore — are an abstract concept, but for many of you, the absence of neighbours must come as a blessed relief.

To remind you what they’re like, our musical offering comes from the depths of early 90s dudebrorock. Ugly Kid Joe pastiched all that was risible about the wannabe-white-n-word-boy culture that slithered out of grunge and street music, with a sense of humour that used the broadest brush available, and a blatant disregard for good taste, musical finesse, or style. They were the perfect antidote to the self-conscious posturing of Nirvana and the tortured faux-artistry of Pearl Jam, and I loved them for it.

So here’s a song that reminds me of the one-armed Bogan Sloblord we lived next to before we came North, who believed that all teams except Collingwood, all humans except him, all beers except the ones already in his prodigious belly, and anywhere up to one or all of his wife and kids, were (and I quote) “CUUUUUUNTS!”, and harnessed the power of Foxtel to inform the street of this fact for up to 24 hours each day, at a volume that can only be described as typical-Collingwood-fan.

God bless isolation.