Muzak

I was having breakfast in the cafe at my local shopping centre today.  I have long since trained all of the staff as to my standard order (double shot long black in a mug, eggs benedict with bacon and a hash brown) so it's pretty much a matter of rock up, collapse into a chair, deploy the paper, and wait for beverages and sustenance to arrive.

You know you're a regular when the waitress says "what'll it be, the usual?".

You know you're a local when you just sit down and a few minutes your usual is placed before you.

So I'm about 6 pages into The Age and making inroads into my coffee, and vaguely listening to the muzak drifting in from the centre, when whatever subconscious part of my brain is responsible for processing vague, non-specific auditory stimuli (e.g. wife telling me to do something) begins a pattern recognition sequence.  I know this song.

Now I have a theory then when it comes to cheap muzak played in theatre reception rooms, shopping centres, cruise ships and the elevators of the world, there is a vast unspoken conspiracy among the public amenity administrators of these sorts of places that only cheap, crappy reggae covers of anything may be played.  I realise the reggae is to distort the original work sufficiently that there is no fees payable for the use of the content, but serious, does it have to be reggae?  I mean, why??  There's already been more than enough crappy reinterpreted reggae perpetuated into the consciousness of the world by UB40 without needing to encourage the production of more of the bloody stuff.

I suppose it could be worse, if it was England the bastards would be playing Greensleeves.

So the brain daemon has engaged the reggae filter and is now trying to figure out what the hell is playing behind all the steel drums and ska beat, while the forebrain is getting on with the serious business to hand of poached eggs with a damn nice hollandaise and crispy fried applewood bacon, when it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks.

To my horror, I've just realised the tune playing is Unchained Melody, done with the pan pipes (or more realistically the shitty pan pipes filter on someone's bloody Yamaha home organ), to a reggae theme.

There ought to be some sort of a law, seriously.  There's no need for that.

There might have been a chance I'd be put off my breakfast, except that I'd just finished a ritual bloodletting at the local GP clinic for which procedure you're required to starve yourself, you can't even have a bloody coffee beforehand.  Surely some roasted, dried and ground beans in hot water aren't going to affect a cholesterol test much?  Can they not allow for the normal levels of water in a man's caffeine stream?

There ought to be a law about doctors, too.

And I only won $11 in the Tatts the other night, so I shall have to buy myself a nice new set of arrows to console myself, I think.  Who knows, in a couple of days my arms might stop hurting from the dubious attentions of Vampirella and Selene from the local recreational bleeding establishment so I can put the things together.