Going the extra mile

Today, I would like to offer some congratulations. Congratulations to whichever consumer electronics R&D department first thought of beefing up the internal speakers on mobile phones to the point where music could be played out loud on them.

You bunch of total bastards. What the fuck were you thinking? Congratulations on taking the most annoying device known to man and finding a way of adding a whole new dimension of irritation to it.

I mean, for Christ's sake! Wasn't it bad enough when we had to sit in the pub, or on the bus, listening to braying idiots discussing every minute detail of their soul-destroyingly dull social lives at the top of their voices, whilst punctuating every sentence with "innit" or "knowworrimean"?

Clearly, it wasn't enough. Clearly, the mobile phone had potential to impact still further on the collective frustration levels of the public, because there's nothing we want more than to listen to tinny R&B as part of the rich collage of sound we experience on public transport, or in other public places. Screaming children and bleating teenagers not enough? No, of course not! Let's add Eminem to the mix! Yeah!

Up until this point, we all genuinely believed that the tss-tss-tss-chff-chff-chff sound of someone listening to music through headphones was probably the most annoying thing known to man.

We were wrong. The weedy, mono, bass-free screechings that emerge from a mobile phone playing back music through its speaker is actually the most annoying thing known to man. Congratulations on pushing back the frontiers, on expanding the boundaries of what is truly, teeth-grindingly, homicidal-rage-inducingly infuriating.

But ... wait! Let's also spare a thought for you, the people who are so unbelievably arrogant as to think that we, the rest of the world, actually want to hear your preferred choice of what passes for music in your narrow little view of the cultural world.

I have news for you, you socially retarded, inconsiderate fucktards. We don't.

I have impeccable taste in music, and I don't presume that anyone other than me would want to listen to it on the bus! More to the point, even if I did think that other people deserved to hear it, why in the name of buggering fuck would I think that playing back the weedy, mono, bass-free screechings that emerge from a mobile phone would be the best way of introducing people to that music?

Stop it.

You know perfectly well that you are just annoying the living shit out of everyone around you. You fucking know it. If you pathetic little bastards were actually interested in the music, you'd have it on your headphones and would be listening to it properly. You aren't interested in the music, you're only interested in making the day-to-day environment of everyone you encounter just that little bit less tolerable, just that little bit more irritating.

I hope that one day, some day soon, somebody finally snaps. Just loses it and goes flat-out, bugfuck crazy, takes that phone off one of you and shoves it so far up your self-centred arse that it makes your eyes bulge. You absolute bunch of unutterable cunts.

Failing that, how about we - the general public - show a bit of backbone? How about that? The next time we're sat in a public place and there are a whole bunch us all gritting our teeth as we're tormented by the bastard Sugababes squeaking out of some chavved up little bleeder's Motorola, how about just one of us has the balls to tell them to shut the fuck up? And, when this audacity earns the inevitable tirade of unoriginal abuse, how about just one more of us has the balls to say: "No, actually, I agree. That's really fucking annoying. Will you please turn it off?"

How about it? I'm game if you are. Remember that there really are more of us than there are of them.