Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Current Earworm, Aussie Punk Style

I have been a big fan of Australian punk music ever since I first heard such bands as the Saints and the Celibate Rifles on college radio while I was in middle school. My current earworm is a song by The Chats, a group of Queensland teenagers led by a kid with a glorious red mullet. I have been obsessively listening to their ode to the workplace 'smoke' break. I'm not big on the whole video thing, but this particular video pays off with a visual punchline, and the kid's mullet has to be seen:





The best thing about the song is that it set me off on an exploration of Australian slang, particularly the diminutives, like 'smoko', that they use.

Yesterday, I had a day off, but I got called about, as luck would have it, a smoke alarm in one of our buildings... I couldn't joke that I was 'on smoko' under the circumstances. It was one building that nobody in my department has keys to... thankfully, there was somebody working there, and even more thankfully, it was a false alarm, most likely due to dust in the room where the sensor is. My coworker was able to handle the situation with the local fire department, and the president of our organization put in an appearance so my co-worker looked good in front of the mucky-mucks. I was able to talk him through the process of resetting the alarm system after everything was settled... no smoko when the smoke alarm goes off.

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