BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

Brian Pounce sauntered down the street, blasting out the Pussycat Dolls on his iPod. He'd just come back from a deeply satisfying morning mingling with the proletariat in Woolworths, and he was feeling peckish. The cultural studies lecturer decided to grab something to eat immediately, instead of waiting til he got home later on. After all, despite the protests of left-wing snobs, hedonism was an important component of the working class psyche. He and the kids just wanted to dance, fuck and eat! And anyone who said different might as well just hoist a swastika to the top of the mast and spit on the black man.

Outside MuckDonalds, two protesters handed out leaflets, grimly detailing the multinational corporation's crimes against the planet and humanity. Not that Pounce was having any of it, though!

"Reactionary rockist scum!" he yelped, screwing up one of their leaflets. "I suppose you expect us all to listen to Stockhausen and Napalm Death, while chewing our cous-cous and sun-dried tomatoes!"

"What?" enquired one of the protesters, genuinely bemused.

"Hippies!" Pounce foamed. "This isn't just a fast food joint, selling barely edible processed meat to punters, it's the powerhouse of the Black Pop Revolution! The Tamla Motown of takeway food! Look!" he gesticulated, dragging the protesters inside and waving his hand around the restaurant. Some hoodies sat around near the back, swearing. A morbidly obese mum fed her sprogs. An old man muttered in the corner. Two black nuns were wolfing down their burgers after a morning spent hard at prayer.

"But that woman - she's making herself and her children ill by eating this crap," said one of the protesters. "And it's not even that cheap, compared to.."

"You're the ill ones!" Brian screeched. "I suppose you'd rather see these people in a gas chamber? Why not just stick on your brown shirts and stamp their gay pop-friendly heads into a pulp?"

"You're fucking bonkers, mate!" the protesters retorted in unison.

Pounce suddenly grabbed the Fanta carton from the hoodies' table and took a glug. "A toast...a toast to CHAV POWER! Death to the fascist rock elite, to its Nuremberg summer festivals and to all the scum who'd gladly see R Kelly crushed under a..."

"Fuckin' pussy'ole, you takin' the piss?" one hoodie raged, trying to grab his drink back.

"Go on, merk him," his mates chanted. "Fuckin' wasteman".

"Would you like a leaflet?" one of the protesters asked the hoodies.

"Oi! What's going on here?" cried Michael Wanktrap - store manager! Like most managers, he was a complete cunt who'd push a blind man under a train for the price of promotion, and he wanted to restore peace and order in his branch.

"Fuckin' wanker," the hoodies roared as Pounce jumped up on the nearest table, continuing his rant. "THEY CALL HER 'SODCASTER', BUT I CALL HER SISTER!" he yelled, pointing at one of the nuns.

"Get out of here, or I'm calling the old bill," Wanktrap snarled, grabbing one of the protesters' arms.

"GIMME THAT FUCKIN' DRINK BACK, CUNT!" the aggrieved hoodie yelled as Pounce leapt from table to table.

"Get your hands off me, you fucking twat!" the protester shouted as Wanktrap made a feeble attempt to restrain him. "I'll have you for assault. This is a free country, I can hand out what I like..."

"GO ON, WES, SHANK HIM!" a girl's voice screamed.

The protester kicked Wanktrap in the bollocks, sending the officious prick reeling - to the delighted cheers of the long-suffering MuckDonalds staff! Wanktrap tumbled across the restaurant, bowling into the group of hoodies and knocking them to the floor. Assuming the staff's applause was directed at him, Pounce bowed, raised a clenched fist and exited the restaurant. He had a lecture to give at Goldsmiths College that afternoon, and didn't have time to wait around for the cops to come and sort out the MuckDonalds fracas.

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"Now," Pounce said, addressing the students in the lecture hall. "Your assignment last week was to listen to and analyse the song Surfin' Bird by the Trashmen. So, what do you think? Any theories as to the meaning of the song?"

One student raised his hand. "Is it a thinly-veiled reference to amphetamine sulphate?"

Pounce snorted in disgust. Another hand shot up. "Well, sir...it was recorded shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis..maybe the 'surfin' bird' is a nuclear warhead?"

"Yes," a fellow student joined in, "and there was mass panic across the US at the time, they thought there'd be a serious escalation to all-out nuclear war...hence 'everybody's heard /'bout the bird / bird bird bird / the bird is the word'!"

"Not only that," another excited student chipped in, " but the whole MAW-PA-PA-POW bit could be an attempt to simulate the sound of ten million gurgling, frenzied death rattles, as the entire Western hemisphere is plunged into the Styx of atomic holocaust!"

"NO....NO..." Pounce groaned, banging his head against the desk.

"I know!" one rugby-playing student snickered. "It's about a bloke whose bird's dumped him!"

"WHAT IS FUCKING WRONG WITH YOU?" Pounce screamed, kicking his chair across the hall. "It's not about anything, you fools! Understand? It is GLEEFULLY MINDLESS POP! You're supposed to get drugged up, go wild, fuck each other in the streets, anything - but don't listen to the lyrics or try to make sense of them! What sort of rockist brainwashing did you idiots undergo at school?"

"So, sir," asked one girl, furrowing her brow with concentration, "are you saying that we should totally ignore a song's lyrical and/or aesthetic content, so long as it's amusing on a simplistic, childish level?"

"No, don't ignore it...embrace it!" Pounce howled, barely answering her question. "Become the song! They're your songs, they belong to YOU...the factory worker...the washer up....the single mum...the garage mechanic...the Asian....drifting through the hell of 9-to-5 drudgery, just living for the weekend...."

"But sir," another girl objected. "I applied for this 3-year cultural studies course so I could land some fantastic job at the end, like editing the NME, or publishing books about art and music - not to work in a kipper factory or bring up kids on my own!"

"You'll never graduate, you stuck-up BNP fuckbitch, til you've spent six months listening to workplace radio! That's real pop for real people, not some neo-nazi Goldfrapp pap for halfwit Guardian-reading muso-whores!"

"Take that back," the girl wept. "I'm half-Balinese".

"No - you should be taking POP back from the oppressors!" Pounce wailed. "Stock, Aitken Waterman....that golden hit factory of yore, betrayed by the fascist rock scum who've conned you into building contrived careers, steeped in rivers of teenage working class blood!" And with that, Pounce tore up the coursework that his group had submitted earlier in the week.

"Hey! We spent hours on that!" the disgruntled students yelped. But Pounce had already stormed out of the building. If the rockist pigs wanted to wallow in their own racism and classism, so be it. But Pounce wouldn't be the man to sit and watch as their sordid ship went down!

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Pounce was in a huff. He was playing ABC at full volume on his headphones as he marched into Oval tube station. On the northbound platform, two emo kids were sniggering as they defaced a Hed Kandi poster, drawing moustaches and glasses on the cartoon faces of the dancing babes! Pounce clenched his fist and seethed. These nazi bastards were literally pissing jets of steaming HATE into the faces of the billions of teenagers who'd grafted long and hard to look the part on a Friday night. These scummy rock leftovers didn't have a clue about working class womens' dreams and aspirations, nor the crystalline beauty of the Wigan Casino all-nighter!

By the time he reached Camden, he was beside himself with fury. He decided the best course of action was to head for the Music and Video Exchange. Normally, he only bought his CDs at Our Price or ASDA - the peoples' stores. But then, he didn't intend to purchase anything from this scuzzy joint! It was well known that the MVE only catered for the type of die-hard Tory filth who venerated John Peel as if he were a god, rather than a snide, sexless puritan who'd spent his Beeb career cocking a snook at young black women up and down the land. No, Brian was on a more fulfilling mission - an all-out assault on rockist oppression!

"HA HA HA! Oh, HO HO!" he chortled to himself as he discreetly thumbed through the Stereolab rack, carefully damaging the record covers within! Dozens of Ike Yard, Big Black and Swans rarities were rendered unsaleable, as he tore, gouged and ripped the sleeves! A limited edition Motorhead import depreciated in value by £30, thanks to a spot of deft, destructive fingerwork on Brian's part!

"Oi, it's him, over there, that's the prick who's been trashing our stock!" one of the counter assistants yelled. Several MVE personnel hurled themselves over the counter, tooled up with marker pens and pricing stickers! Brian dropped the Bishi 12" cover he'd been mangling and fled the store, legging it towards Kentish Town tube.

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"Fuck this, let's have a break," panted Gary, gesturing to his work colleague. They'd been struggling all day to get a grand piano down 9 flights of stairs, and they still had 8 floors to go! "I fancy a pint, how about it?"

"Sounds great," said Barry. "I'll just tie the piano to this stair rail, so it doesn't come loose, and we'll be off. What's the weather like?"

"Looks like rain," mumbled Gary. "Also looks like this blog can't be bothered to continue the story anymore!"

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph...watch out!" Barry snapped, as he lost his grip on the piano. The instrument whizzed past Gary, crashed through a plate glass window and plummeted into the street - landing on Barry Pounce, as he fled the irate MVE workers. The popist was dead, killed by the very instrument that had once pioneered such astounding hits as Candle in the Wind and Ebony and Ivory. THE END (thank fuck)