10 o'clock news

there's a huge crowd of me gathered in the main square of my state's capital, burning records, waving banners and clamouring against radiohead. i think. they might as well be yelling we want barabas. the same crowd used to preach radiohead in my churches, teach radiohead in my schools, perscribe radiohead in my clinics, grow radiohead in my gardens, sell radiohead in my markets. only a few days ago did they all become aware of its destructive effects, as a consequence to the allarming increase in the number of reported cases of acute neurosis, paranoia, schizophrenia, insomnia and abulia. there is now talk of radiohead in the context of heresy, misleading information, malpractice, poison, counterfeit. the people demand compensation for the damage.

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offended by the protest, radiohead are sending troops over. it is feared they have already broken the defense line and are moving forth at full throttle.

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the news of this epidemia-revolution-war situation has startled the brain government. a decision will be made as soon as the right and left sides come to terms with each other and their weakness. the right are discombobulated and quite incapable of taking action, while the left promote a radically lucid approach that can be neither echoed nor carried out by the deadened nation. in the mean time, the illness is spreading, people no longer go to work, the economy is collapsing, villages are being plundered, laws are losing all credit.

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sometime around christmas i became obsessed with radiohead's ok computer. it wasn't a pot shot. their hunt was long and patient, and though it was my every intention to get caught, i just wouldn't. then i did. life in the age of shuffle and skip had made me forget how it is to listen to an entire album, to preserve the original song order, to see it how it was meant to be seen. the mood it creates. the world it contains. the vortex of emoness it drags you into. hehe. it is located right where two eras of radiohead overlap: pristine radiohead, with its innocent riffs and unpretentious lyrics, and dehumanized radiohead, with its creepy synths and hermetic poetry. rock but electronic, warm but cold, heartfelt but eerie, stirring but lulling, introspective but audience-friendly. two layers of meaning, just like le petit prince or gulliver's travels or the wizard of oz. there's more than meets the ear, and what meets the ear is great. no use. i could write a book on ok computer and still wouldn't find the words to pinpoint that something that does what it does to me. i haven't felt this way about an album on the whole since the hazy times of my early teenage addiction to linkin park's hybrid theory. ouch, me and my dirty past. i was not a fan of radiohead, but of ok computer itself, as an attitude, as a phylosophical system, as one hell of a record. silly me. what did i know? i was soon to be overthrown by the kid a - amnesiac - hail to the thief triad and dragged even harder into the above vortex of emoness. ok computer? happy bubblegum pop. outside world, leave me be. all of you. shush. radioheadness permeates my skin, turning me into something i'm not. this i have to see. be gone. i've lost my way back to the real world. there's nothing but radiohead around here. no palpable coordinates. in limbo.

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but no. lying in bed all day like an antisocial junkie chewing on those four albums and a couple of accidents on the bends was not enough. i had to get myself into the frantic chase for b-sides, unreleased tracks and live performances. this just wouldn't have been called a true obsession otherwise. what have i become? where does it stop? tomorrow i'm definitely joining that crowd of me that's been burning records, waving banners and clamouring against radiohead.
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last minute info: if there were anyone sane left in this country, they would be perplexed by this strange occurrence. the rebels in the main square of the capital have all suddenly lain down on the pavement and drifted into peaceful slumber.
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crap. what do i do now? i can't go out there by myself. they'll arrest me on the spot. guess i'll stay at home with my radiohead.