Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Scintillating Justice Secretary Wong Yan-lung says that passage of the Hong Kong government’s electoral non-reform package will “help achieve consensus in the Legislative Council over the future of functional constituency seats.” Although the official press release for some reason fails to elaborate, this is a superficially attractive argument that could help swing public opinion behind the package.

Wong’s reasoning is that, under the proposals, functional constituencies’ veto power over future reforms will be diluted by the five additional FC seats elected by district councils. This would, so the theory goes, make it much easier for a bill broadening FC franchises or even abolishing the things to get through Legco. The assumption is that FCs elected by restricted corporate franchises representing commercial interests will fight to the death to preserve their exclusive status, while those elected by relatively large numbers of humans (pro-democrat teachers, nurses, lawyers, etc) will be happy to vote for their seats’ extinction. District Council representatives, with no economic privileges to protect, will help tilt the balance away from the plutocrats in the functional part of the quasi-bicameral system.

This argument has a logic to it. Although the FC ‘chamber’ is divided along pro-democrat/pro-Beijing lines, it is split by another division: that between big-business (banks, factory owners, real estate, etc) and everyone else (the pro-democracy professionals plus constituencies for labour and some small-business sectors, which are rigged to produce pro-Beijing representatives). The five new district council seats (like the existing one) would obviously fall into the latter group of FCs. A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that passage of the government’s proposals could shift the balance from roughly 1:1 to 1:1.3 in favour of the non-tycoon FCs. This even raises the theoretical prospect of the FC bloc being less able to promote the rights of producers over consumers, or private interests over public in other legislative affairs.

But if that were the case, why are the tycoons’ FC representatives in Legco supporting the reform package so avidly, for example through the Alliance for Constitutional Development? They might calculate that there are enough grey areas between the tycoon and non-tycoon FCs to enable them to keep their influence; for example, the sports/culture seat is occupied by a second-generation plutocrat. (Anyway, their presence in the weak legislature is not the cause of the big family-owned conglomerates’ behind-the-scenes sway over policymaking.) But the simple fact is that Beijing’s liaison office has phoned them up and told them to support it. And if Beijing can do that now, it can do it at any time it likes further down the road. The FCs’ supposed ability to veto reform is a myth. Wong Yan-lung’s “consensus” (actually a victory through numbers by one side) is whatever the Liaison Office says it is, now or at any time.

Still, FCs are a linchpin in the reform drama, and on the face of it this could be an interesting argument for officials to push more vigorously, were they confident that its basic illogicality would be overlooked by witless pro-democrats too busy splitting hairs on what constitutes the ideologically pure way to fight their good fight.  Or could have been. It’s too late now: the city’s attention very obviously switched from politics to the World Cup over the weekend.

Who should I see coming out of the Tribal Car Pet Cave on Hollywood Road this morning but elegant Administrative Officer Winky Ip? Why, I wonder, would she be frequenting the famous purveyors of exotic domesticated animals for trendy and glamorous people to keep in their luxury vehicles? Has she, perhaps, bought a Lexus and is thinking of enhancing it with a tame lion cub in a diamond collar to recline on the dashboard? Or could she be looking for a cute lemur to squat next to the Hello Kitty tissue box on the rear shelf of a new Mercedes and wave to children in passing school busses? Or has she become the proud owner of a truck-size people carrier and now wants to augment this ultimate success symbol among Hong Kong’s public-sector elite with a giant boa constrictor to slink around the seven passenger seats and flick the window contemptuously with its tongue as sweating pedestrians peer through the dark glass of the illegally parked palace to see who is keeping the engine running?

“Actually,” she snaps, “I was seeing the tailor upstairs about some alterations.” She is clutching a file and is clearly in a state of distress. I persuade her to join me for breakfast and a quick look through the newspapers, but no sooner have we settled into our favourite alcove at Yuet Yuen Restaurant and ordered their finest congee than her phone goes.

“Yes – the lost tree registration patrol!” she blurts out to the caller. “Yes I know it’s a disaster! Yes this is a secure line! Yes of course the press mustn’t learn about this at all! Or the unions!” She suddenly looks around, notices that curious faces have turned in her direction and runs out into the street for relative privacy.

It seems the agitated conversation will go on for some time, so I discreetly peruse the Top Secret, ‘Destroy After Reading’ pale yellow file from the old Environment, Transport and Works Bureau.

What I find within is the stuff of a horror story – perhaps a cross between the Blair Witch Project and the Naked and the Dead, plus a dash of the Marie-Celeste, all with a sort of forestries angle.

It was a job-creation scheme that went terribly wrong. Some years ago, to provide employment opportunities and foster the development of a more harmonious society, the government recruited several hundred long-term jobless on non-permanent contract terms to register and label every publicly owned tree in Hong Kong. All went well until a group of about a dozen mostly Nepalese workers set off into a remote, thickly wooded valley in Shing Mun Country Park. They never came back.

Search parties found that the trail of tagged trees extended nearly a kilometer into the thick jungle and mysteriously stopped, with no trace of anyone. The possibility that the workers were eaten by a tiger is officially ruled out. When the movie is made, they will be abducted by extraterrestrials in a giant UFO emitting a pink-purple glow and an eerie hum. Personally, I would like to think that they have seceded from the Big Lychee and founded an independent Hindu kingdom deep in the woods, and are living off cardamom-scented dhal and venerating a living goddess. The main suspicion, however, is that they defected en masse to illegal but better-paying recycling yards. That, at least, will be the Line to Take.

Winky storms back in as I nonchalantly take a sip of tea. “No, of course not!” she splutters down the phone as she grabs the file from the exact spot on the table where she left it. “It’s with me – absolutely no-one has seen it!”

By and large, the mood on the Mid-Levels Escalator this morning is one of deep foreboding, verging on near-panic. The human conveyor belt transporting hundreds of Hong Kong’s clean-living, hard-working, disfranchised taxpayers into the central business district, long seen as the height of commuter comfort and convenience, has become the stairway to doom. The people glide down the slope, not mulling over their usual concerns like P/E ratios, IPOs or marketing plans, but gripped by the terror of what faces them at the bottom of the hill. The ‘electric ladder’ is carrying them unstoppably into a pit of killer rats.

However, not all of us share their fears. Wednesday’s horrifying attack in the unlovely little lane full of shoe-repairers off Peddar Street, in which a British woman was mauled to death by a swarm of vicious 10-inch rodents, has made headlines worldwide. In travel agencies around the globe, keyboards are clicking cancellations into reservations systems as holidaymakers come to their senses and decide to steer clear of the Big Lychee. Far better to chance it shopping in the smouldering ruins of Bangkok, bathing in the venomous jellyfish-infested waters of Bondi beach, or posing for photos on the lip of a bubbling volcano in Iceland.

Could this be, to quote Winston Churchill, “not the end … not even the beginning of the end … but perhaps the end of the beginning” of Hong Kong’s long and bitter struggle against the Great Tourism Menace?

Our despotic government, ever in the pay of the landlords who profit from the crush of map-perusing designer-label addicts from overseas, is pouring resources into what I hereby rename Ratty Alley. Cleansing officers are laying down poison and using high-pressure hoses to make sure that no little furry sewer-dweller sinks its teeth into a succulent bit of foreign flesh again.

Along that particular 150-foot stretch of pathway, that is. What our bureaucrats don’t realize is that Ratty Alley is not the only dingy and dirty backstreet in Central. And Central is not the only district in Hong Kong. There are lots of other places where tourists go, and giant psycho-rodents lurk.

On the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets. We will specially breed and expertly train the courageous little creatures to sniff out Lonely Planet guidebooks, Hysteric Glamour shopping bags and Shanghai Tang souvenirs, approach their victims stealthily, and pounce without mercy upon their exposed body parts, dragging them to the ground and devouring them, leaving nothing but a pile of mangled bones, a camera and a floppy hat for their homeland’s press to report. Let’s see 30 million of the wretches swamp every spare inch of our space per year then.

On the top floor of S-Meg Tower, in the teeming heart of Asia’s leading international financial centre, the Big Boss surveys his senior management team around the conference room table. Before the morning meeting comes to an end, our visionary Chairman and Chief Executive has one more thing to say.

“You, you, you, you, you and you,” he announces, jabbing his finger at innocent victims trying hard not to be noticed, “and you, and you… and you. And you. I need you with me in Guangzhou for the signing ceremony. I’ll see you up there.” He rises and strides out of the room, thrusting his insatiable digit at a few more unfortunates along the way.

Everyone bar one spotty head accountant and a heavily pregnant company secretary must, with no advance warning, drop everything and go up to the ancient capital of the Pearl River Delta for the day to give face to the slick – and some – bosses of Shiti Enterprises to inaugurate our new joint venture. The three Stanleys in the mailroom are swiftly dispatched to Grand Splendour Villas, Joy Gardens and San Francisco Court respectively to retrieve high-ranking executives’ home return permits. Loyal and cheerful domestic helpers and one or two shorter-tempered spouses dash from lowlier residences clutching others’ travel documents – including one Filipino Elf, who speeds down the hill from Perpetual Opulence Mansions on her hi-tech, non-street-legal scooter carrying the company gwailo’s passport.

She screeches to a halt alongside one of three double-parked, vast, shiny black people-carriers with cross-border licence plates and hands it to me through the slightly lowered tinted window and lace curtains. The driver cranks up a Mandarin pop singer-who-isn’t-Faye-Wong on the sound system to put us in the mood, and off we go. My plans to frame the rather fetching photo in today’s press of US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton calming down after what would appear to have been quite a vigorous romp in the hay with Chinese President Hu Jintao will have to wait until tomorrow.

Dawn, and the day’s first dozy and dolorous commuters arrive in the central business district of Asia’s leading international financial centre. They are watched discreetly by wild American friend Odell in his upholstered little lair near the window in the IFC Mall branch of Pacific Coffee. The perv-voyeur has to be careful as he monitors the passing parade of pert secretaries and marketing floozies in their shiny heels, black stockings and tight skirts, for his Thai wife Mee is at his side. Apart from furtive glances during occasional sips of his air-dried durian and organic hibiscus mocha, he pretends to read the newspaper. Or even reads it.

“Wow… Oh my god… Jeez, Hem, look at this here. This is it!” He thrusts page two of the South China Morning Post’s City section in my face, leans towards me and starts whispering. “Doncha think that a certain, uh, brown person sitting next to me who could, ya know, bring a bit more money in, might, um…be interested in this?”

He has seen an ad in the personal announcements section:

“What, exactly, are you getting at?” I ask after reading it.

A loud gurgling noise announces that Mee has finished the Coke she brought in from McDonalds. She burps politely, declares, “I go see cake,” and walks over to the pastries counter.

“It’s obvious,” Odell tells me and starts to describe how his underemployed wife could apply to work as a sort of trophy masseuse/nurse/maid to what he envisions as a slightly obscure version of centenarian billionaire Sir Run-Run Shaw. “The old guy’s obviously lonely and freakin’ loaded right?”

“And,” – I remind him, knowing full well I shouldn’t – “he probably doesn’t have any family or, um, heirs.”

Odell’s eyes widen.

“But let’s be realistic,” I hasten to add. “Look what it says here: ‘refined, educated, single Chinese classy lady’. Let’s go over those one by one, shall we?”

“Naaah.” Odell waves me aside. “The old guy don’t care about that. Mee’s grandfather was Chinese – local rice miller. She’s kinda classy. In her own way.”

I hold my tongue. I’m not sure how she came to be here in the Big Lychee. I do know that many years back she paid a police constable with serious gambling debts to officially marry-then-divorce her, thus providing her with a Hong Kong ID card, which in turn led Odell to marry her after he was expelled from the Mormons for lapsing disastrously from missionary work in Wanchai into alcohol and women.

Mee returns with a chocolate croissant on a paper plate. “Hey, monkey ass!” she demands. “Why you look at girls walking past again?”

Odell sits her down. “No I’m not looking at the girls,” he reassures her. “Just their clothes. The dark blazers, the white blouses, the smart black shoes.” He takes her hand. “How’d you like it if, um, after work today, we go and get you some really nice formal stuff like that, huh? Maybe some pearls?”

A few random and hasty observations to summarize Jakarta succinctly in a brief, condensed nutshell…

1.  The restaurants don’t have smoking areas – they are smoking areas. One exception: one of those places selling chocolate mousse with shaved cheese, where customers may smoke indoors (in the air-conditioning) but not outside on the sweaty veranda.

2.  You can ignore seat belts in cars but must by law sport a big shiny crash helmet if you are one of the teeming billions on mopeds weaving around the clogged-up traffic like corpuscles streaming through capillaries. The logical explanation for this is that, since only motorbikes attain any real speed, only their users need protection. Logical and thus, of course, wrong. My sordid and cynical assumption was that maybe the helmet industry is monopolized by someone important’s niece, but I am assured that such shenanigans are a thing of the past in Indonesia these days. The real reason, I am told – and it’s so absurd it must be true – is that the government made expensive protective headwear compulsory in an effort to curb the growth in motorbike numbers after cut-price installment payment plans for the locally assembled mopeds proved overly successful. That is, the helmets are less affordable than the bikes and thus a form of tax. (It doesn’t seem to be working.)

3.  Not only does the Sari Pan Pacific’s Irish bar charge HK$90 for a local beer, the business centre demands 39 US cents a minute to access the Internet. Good thing the hotel doesn’t sell crash helmets. However, it’s nothing personal: step outside and wander around, and going on-line is pricy everywhere. Broadband in Indonesia is a duopoly, and introducing competition – according to a business magazine – would be fraught with complications. Nothing to do with important people’s nieces, presumably.

4.  Although the redundant ‘visa’ is issued on arrival for US$25 without even the slightest check to see whether you pose any threat to national well-being, the immigration officer who stamps your passport when you leave asks you the reason for your visit.

6. I am out of touch. Does Greece and/or the Euro still exist?

5.  Condemned to Cathay Pacific economy class on the flight back, I finally get to examine the new seats that caused such anguish and mouth-frothing when they were launched. For years, airlines have attempted to market cattle class – human history’s cheapest-ever method of transport – as something semi-luxurious. They are finally learning to be honest. Rather than have backs that recline, these new seats have bottoms that slide forward. It is horribly uncomfortable and long overdue. Never again will innocent, unassuming passengers capable of sitting upright have to put up with the selfish bore in front leaning right back so his headrest sticks into their face and traps them. Now all the airline needs to do is train the cabin crew to explain that business class is for leaning back, and economy class is for leaving the passenger behind you with a bit of space – the one thing they have a right to expect when paying less than a dollar a mile to travel at not much less than the speed of sound.

Once tough, manly and fearless, ever-prepared to send its young men to Gallipoli, North Africa, Vietnam and Iraq, the Australian Government loses its grip and issues the following advice to its citizens:

We advise you to reconsider your need to travel to Indonesia at this time due to the very high threat of terrorist attack … On 17 July 2009, terrorists detonated bombs at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. Australians were among those killed and injured…

There is a possibility of further terrorist attacks in Jakarta … Terrorists have previously attacked or planned to attack places where Westerners gather including nightclubs, bars, restaurants, hotels and airports … We continue to receive credible information that terrorists could be planning attacks in Indonesia…

The WHO has confirmed human deaths from avian influenza in Indonesia … rabies is present … Malaria (including chloroquine-resistant strains) is prevalent … Dengue fever occurs … Outbreaks of chikungunya have been reported … Japanese encephalitis and filariasis are also present…

Petty crime is common … Violence is sometimes used. Thieves on motorcycles … Bag snatching … Thefts from cars stopped at traffic lights … Credit card and ATM fraud … Foreigners have died after consuming brand name alcohol or local spirits adulterated with harmful substances … Cases of robbery and temporary confinement in taxis have been reported…boil all drinking water or drink bottled water, and avoid ice cubes and uncooked food … Avoid temporary ‘black henna’ tattoos…

The alert goes on to examine in great detail the nightmarish driving, unsafe aircraft and perhaps the most horrifying potential threat to antipodean visitors to Indonesia: the dastardly volcanoes (of which, it must be said, the country has a generous supply). Thankfully, I am not Australian and therefore unaffected.

What the wimp Foreign Affairs officials in Canberra could mention, if they wanted to temper their breathlessly hysterical backside-covering with a little level-headed calm, is that precious foreigners can at least be assured of a safe haven at the Museum Nasional in Jakarta. This will also cause surprisingly little damage to their wealth, because at Rp750 (64 HK cents, or just under one US dime), the admission ticket must be the cheapest thing in Jakarta. Not even the really down-market, costs-less-than-a-beer apartments are in this price bracket.

Set in a purpose-built 19th-Century colonial building, the Museum Nasional doesn’t just display artifacts from the past – it is from the past. The labels on the exhibits are jaw-droppingly uninformative in any language. Anything not in a glass case may be touched. It looks dusty and fusty, even if strictly speaking it isn’t, or at least not much. Children come because they are forced to and hate it. (Although they seem boisterous and cheerful, many of them are, sadly, suffering from the delirious advanced stages of chikungunya. They are miserable really.)

The curators don’t reach out, or try to connect or be relevant or part of the community. The essential message is: if you can’t tell Hindu from Buddhist statuary or don’t know a bit about Asian trade patterns during the times when Ming and Qing dynasty ceramics turned up here, you can just go away.

Gamelan, puppets, masks, costumes and Chinese pottery, as well as Persian, Indian and Arab imports attest to a thriving and rich creative and commercial culture going back well over 1,000 years. And then you see the necklace made of human teeth to remind us that the modern Javanese Empire, like its Han Chinese counterpart, has taken into its embrace regions where we’re not in Kansas any more – in this case, jungles far to the west full of stone-age cannibals, though obviously we don’t call them that. As in Shanghai, Tibet, Beijing and Xinjiang, every regional and ethnic group has its own name and is a happy member of the family.

I love this place. No IMAX cinema, no simulator experience, no multimedia, no gift shop with plastic kit dinosaurs that glow in the dark. No political correctness, no revisionism. Not an interactive, inspiring, environmentalist or ‘fun’ exhibit in sight.

A few stuffed orangutans would be good. Also maybe a big, grainy, blown-up black-and-white 1920s photo showing henna-covered, filariasis-addled Papuan cavemen tucking into a freshly fricasseed, Melbourne-based explorer. Otherwise, what can I say? This is a museum that should be in a museum.

Some describe Jakarta as the city of tropical charm and Javanese hospitality; others call it the warm, throbbing heart of the island of paradise. I call it the place that’s like Manila except the police cars don’t have doors missing.

My trip gets off to a good start when, checking in here at the hotel, I casually leave a message with the girl at reception for two remote members of the Hemlock clan who are due in any minute from Yogyakarta. “Hi,” the note says, “In the bar on your left – H.” Tiny, bespectacled, coffee-coloured women with jet-black hair, scarlet lipstick and slightly other-worldly pouts hum and buzz about their business among the air-conditioned marble, carpets and gilt tables and chairs. Outside, beyond the plate glass and the palm trees, the traffic silently crawls through the thick kretak-, urine- and diesel-scented heat.

But reality intrudes into this great International Man of Mystery scenario when, after a joyful reunion, we find ourselves examining with un-Bond-like perturbation the prices in Flanagan’s, the Irish pub in the lobby. The last time I was in Indonesia was in 1998, just after the pogrom that left a thousand dead, Chinatown smouldering and 15,000 Rupiah to one US Dollar. The exchange rate is now half that, which works out at Rp1,000 to HK$1, and one (not very) large Bintang in this fake Hibernian drinking hole is Rp75,000 plus 10% plus 11%. That’s HK$90. A greater outrage than even Lan Kwai Fong or Lee Kuan Yew would ever inflict on thirsty innocents. But what do you expect in a country where the minute you land they charge you US$25 for a no-questions-asked ‘visa on arrival’? No wonder only the most desperate and hopeless Westerners live here – typically (it is said) under-achieving financial types condemned to career death by a vindictive head office.

The distant Hemlocks flew in two weeks ago for the wedding of a glamorous Eurasian model cousin to the scion of a seriously wealthy local family. It was a two-day, 2,000-guest affair in which the groom arrived with a police escort to keep the paparazzi at bay and the bride changed costume and gold headdress every couple of hours. Nothing to do with me. Or that’s what I thought. However, as we leave the bar, a small but elegant woman strolls past the sniffer dogs, metal detectors, bag checkers and doormen and enters the hotel accompanied by her two taller and lighter-skinned daughters – the newly-wed and her sister.

Much effusive hugging and distasteful, French-style cheek-pressing ensue, even of the step-nephew-twice-removed-in-law from Hong Kong. We are bundled into transportation with curtains drawn and driven through the choking streets to inspect the happy couple’s prized wedding present, a luxury apartment near the (yes we have a) stock exchange.

After coming through the foyer – decor possibly inspired by the Albania Expo pavilion – and up in the private elevator, we find the love nest full of unpacked furniture and matching gifts. The new couple will move in after some renovations, like a new floor. It has a good view of the usual low-rise expanse, sleepy old government offices and half-finished towers you get around central business districts in unsuccessful economies. The vital statistics: 1,700 sq ft, three bedrooms, nice big open-plan kitchen adjoining lounge, punishment cell with squat toilet for the maid out the back. The answer to your question is Rp5 billion. Knock the three zeros off, and you suddenly realize it might, at a stretch, get you a faded 800-sq ft semi-hovel within walking distance of Shatin station.

We enjoy a pleasant stroll around the pool, the gym/spa/sauna, the library (golf magazines, no books), the kids’ playroom, something called the teens’ hang-out and the barbecue area. Apart from a few attendants there is no-one to be seen. The mother explains it to me. “Indonesians don’t like the sun, so they don’t swim. And they don’t like barbecues because you have to do it yourself. They like to be served.” She grins. She then adds that most of the units are bought as investments, and the owners only drop in from time to time, maybe for an afternoon at the weekend. The groom’s family all have one each.

The new residential block has a private tunnel connecting it to the gleaming mall/office complex across the road. But we decide to slum it and walk over. A security guard strides out ahead of us on the black-and-white striped pedestrian crossing and tries to get vehicles to stop and give us right of way, with partial success. In the deli-supermarket, 100 grams of French cheese costs a day’s wages for the average staff.

One of those coconut-and-pandan things

The matriarch holds court

After dinner, we go our separate ways. Across from the hotel, I decide to stock up my room’s ruinous and, anyway, under-provisioned mini-bar at a grimy local supermarket. As I pay one of the hijab-wearing checkout ladies for my (Rp13,500 a can) six-pack of Ankor beer, the theme from Exodus starts playing over the PA.

Jeez, just found this in his thumb drive…

Dusting cinnamon powder over his pomegranate-tree oil and organic frangipani iced mocha in the clinically pristine surroundings of the newly renovated IFC Mall branch of Pacific Coffee, wild American friend Odell

I’ll spare you the rest, but I mean puhleeze! I never ever drink that shit OK? I just have regular.  He’s just making this stuff up and it’s like complete BS from start to finish.

OK, so where is he? Apparently Southeast Asia (But I guess not Thailand cos the Hong Kong government says it’s dangerous and obviously if they say so it must be true right?.)  Not sure what he’s up to. Who cares. Obviously some place where they still don’t have internet but apparently he’s rigging up some sort of system with rickshaws and he’s on line later today or tomorrow.  OK that’s it. Outta here.

The voice of Suzy: “I’ve come home to my mothers…”

Concentration Moon - Zappa

Hey that’s another freakin 10 years for mutilating the flag right?!

Anyone out there get up like really early in the morning? Like me today. It used to be that RTHK 3 just played some kinda taped show with all music and no talk right up to the morning news show at 6.30.  then maybe 3 or 4 months back, cant realy remember, they put a real live DJ on. This guy Tim Littlechild. (They don’t have any cash right? So maybe he does this show for free like an intern, who knows?)

So I have to listen to this guy screamin at me FREAKIN LOUD the minute I wake up and I tell you this guy just TALKS an TALKS and TALKS. It doesn’t stop. He talks over the beginning of the record then the middle, then the end. Then he finds some retard excuse to talk some more like read some half-assed crap like a list or celebrity gossip as suggested in Being a Morning DJ For Dummies  And most of the time it’s between songs and he’s just blabbing away at 100mph and really seriously urgent and frantic like he’s kinda desperate to tell you.

Know what I think?  (Dead giveaway really – just listen to him)  He’s on speed.

Why not?  He has to get up even earlier in the morning than the listeners, so I reckon he just pulls an all-nighter in Wanchai or somewhere and drops a black beauty around midnight and gets to the station all sweating and hyper and Zingggg! “Hello good morning listeners blabbah blabbah blabbah, let me shout at you at 100 mph while youre still half asleep.”

Am I right or what?

Also, the music he plays just sucks, I mean who wants to hear Two Doors Down by the Mystery Jets at 20 to 6? Totally f***ks up your hangover I tell you. I just wanna know the weather.

Mind you on the subject of bad music…

Click to hear Martha - Jefferson Airplane

(This music is just freakin impossible to listen to.  Sorry.)