Because I'm old and still enamored of the old brand names that saw me through my extended adolescence, I sprung for the new Pet Shop Boys CD. It arrived yesterday and I played it.

Yikes. The first tune I heard was a song called "This Used to Be the Future"; as I listened to it I kept thinking the title should have been "These Guys Used to Be Talented."

The music itself wasn't so bad -- same old sound, not even much update.

The lyrics started at about 1:30 in, an angst-riddled lament that can be either hokey or hackneyed depending upon the listener's reservoir of actual angst:

I can remember planning for leisure
Living in peace and freedom from fear
Science had promised to make us a new world
Religion and prejudice disappear

Followed by typical post-modern moralizing and alarmism. So I was already cringing when at about the 2:30 mark the music got very earnest -- hysterically so. The stuff was so futuristic and forthright it made me think of Zlad's "Elektronic Supersonik."

Hey baby, wake up from your asleep
We have arrived onto the future
And the whole world has become
Electronik supersonik

Onto my love rocket climb
Inside tank of fuel is not fuel
But love
Above us there is nothing above
but the stars
Above

As social commentary, Zlad's work definitely provides more insight and packs more punch. All systems gone: prepare for downcount!

And speaking of social commentary, what the hell is Frylock eating before going to bed at night? He's lying in bed having such cramps and sweat that even spectral phantasms are offering to put towels on his head.

Dude, you are watching too much CNN. I went to the doctor yesterday and had to sit a whole friggin hour in the waiting room watching an endless loop of an insufferable CNN feed. Bad enough they do it to us when we're herded at airport gates; now they have to torment us when we're waiting for our meds?

Believe me, I got enough pain. And why CNN? Who's going to believe anything they hear from them?

After an hour of listening to the two blowhard hosts I wished a ghost would throw in the towel for me as well. Who needs Death Panels when you have stuff like that?