The clock on my oven says 24:00 to signify midnight instead of the customary 00:00; nack! (Don’t worry about me writing nack there. That’s a little insider joke I included; only one or two people will get it. Don’t think you’re missing anything; it’s not even funny.) After displaying 24:00, like some kind of secret hidden level, half programmed then blocked off and forgotten about in an 8bit computer game, I am disappointed to see if flick to 00:01. What a letdown; surely a more exciting finale would be 24:01, and then we really would be heading down the rabbit hole. After the giddy thrill of 24:00 it is hard not to be let down by anything so mundane as 00:01.
(not my actual oven)
But what if I were to see 24:01 (after 24:00) instead of 00:001 (after 24:00, instead of 00:00)? What indeed; the build-up, the hype, the mounting excitement. But imagine the crashing, devastating disappointment of seeing 00:02 after 24:01, when I had been biting my cheeks in anticipation of 24:02. I don’t even want to think about it. That’s too much disappointment for one little boy to contemplate. The endless possibilities of a world in which the confines of the 24-hour clock broke down spontaneously at the whim of an oven craving cleaning, are the things fantasies and belief systems are built upon.
Twice now I have noticed the 24:00 on my oven (where one would normally expect to see 00:00 to numerically donate the concept of midnight). Twice I have felt that nervous tingle. This is unusual because I have been intimately acquainted with said oven for almost two years now. I thought we knew each other inside and out; perhaps I was wrong. Could it be that my little oven has always chosen 24:00, over what I considered the correct 00:00? I always thought my little oven was happy. Now I have reason to believe it is a pessimist at heart; depressed, moribund, alone in a sea of Maldon sea salt flakes and freshly ground black peppercorns.
My oven has chosen 24:00 over 00:00. My oven prefers to think of midnight as the end of the day; the termination – the death – of another day; one more spin of the earth closer to the day when it spins no more. Oh how I want to help. Why can’t it see things the other way around? Why not does it see the birth of a new day; the possibility of turning the forthcoming dawn into whatever it wills it to be? The time does not have to be 24:00, my friend. It can be 00:00 if you want it to be.
So, my little oven friend, dry your eyes mate; I’ll make us a cup of tea. And together we will face the day. A day where five past midnight is 00:05, and not 24:05 (encroaching on the previous days afterlife; let it sleep the eternal sleep undisturbed) as you would have it. A day where eleven forty seven AM is 35:47? No. We will wake up tomorrow at nine AM, and it will be 09:00, won’t it? Yes. Get it? Got it? Good.
The first time I noticed 24:00, as opposed to 00:00, on the clock face on the oven (in my kitchen) I excited skipped into the bedroom yelping “fiancée, fiancée, [for that is what I call her] you’ll never guess what I’ve just seen”. After several unenthused guesses (“erm... a spider and a wasp grimly dancing a fandango... a cherry tomato that’s so shiny you could squeak it... your fingers...?”) I caved in and told her – the clock on the oven, in the kitchen in our flat, says 24:00 at midnight instead of 00:00 as you may expect to see, I am surprised and confounded and more than a little excited. We both agreed this was a monumental even. She shared my excitement more than I could have ever expected. “That’s nice, Kevin,” she ejaculated.
I’m sad to say that she is asleep now, so she will have to wait until the morning to hear the exciting news. The news that for the second time I have seen the clock on the oven in the kitchen reading 24:00, instead of the customary 00:00 as I might have expected to see. It reads 24:00, and I read it.
It really is the ultimate Ohrwurm; an earworm so compulsive that it threatens to break down the edifice of sanity I have so carefully constructed. It is more robotic and soulless than Kraftwerk performing Autobahn with T-1000 on drum machine and Robert Kilroy-Silk and David Cameron singing harmonies. A bizarre anomaly; it has its own Wikipedia page, even though the singer doesn’t (EDIT: she does now). Is it a statistical blip of a low point, or a plotted course on the unstoppable downward trajectory of popular culture?
My niece is three years old; does this song represent a possible future where all music is this cheap and idiotic and yet so impossible to unstuck from ones poor tormented mind. In ten years time is this sort of thing all that my niece will listen to? Is it a calculated step in the alien invasion, designed to render us all blithering babbling wibblers, reducing us to the mental age of 10 and preventing us from appreciating anything requiring consideration or intelligence? Only compulsively addictive mechanical repetitions of words like partyin’, fun and yeah will be considered worthwhile creative endeavours, and all of art and science will falter and collapse.
According to Wikipedia it took only one week for the YouTube video to leap from 3,000 hits to over 18 million. That is a terrifying increase. Hopefully it will plateau, because a continued increase at such a dangerous speed would surely hasten the collapse of civilisation. If it continues soon its propagation will become the Western world’s motivating factor. It will replace all national anthems. All aid and charity work in the developing world will cease. As will all military action against terrorist organisations and oppressive regimes. These will be replaced by ensuring that all the world, especially people without ready access to YouTube, will succumb to the terrible psychological torment of internally repeating It’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday....
a rich idiot, yesterday
Hip hop and pop have both struggled against idiocy, childishness and cheapness within their ranks, and this song does more damage to both of their respective reputations than could be done by a thousand millennia of 50 Cent lyrics and Katy Perry melodies. Why now does every pop song need a nonsensical rap shoehorned into the latter half of its allotted three minutes, no matter how inappropriate. Who is the weird old man rapping about overtaking a school bus, and just what the hell does he think he is playing at?
This article at OK! Magazine sets the tone for all future levels of media coverage. Soon all “Breaking News” around the world will be dictated by the twitter account of our malevolent alien overlord. War in the Middle East, famine in Africa and natural disaster in Asia will slowly disappear from our collective consciousness to be replaced with the pointless ummings and ahhings of children – kickin’ in the front seat, chillin’ in the back seat, gotta make my mind up, which seat can I take? Just sit the fuck down. I’m sorry master I spoke out of turn, please don’t make any more songs, please, no no NOOOOOO
