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Pandora has become a constant companion for me at work in the last few weeks. For those that haven't checked it out, it's a great way to discover new and old music, within a genre that you select. I currently have about five different "stations" set up on it to fit my various moods at work. My 80s Hair Bands station (containing such notable artists as Poison, Ratt and Van Halen) often gets some play late in the afternoons when deadlines are approaching and I need to kick it up a notch or twelve. My Emo station is mostly used during periods of deep depression and world hating (such as when I first get to work on Monday mornings).

However, my Coldplay station has got to be my all-time favorite. My love of all things Coldplay and Coldplay related is well documented, so it's probably no surprise that I've got a Pandora station dedicated to bands that sound like them. I was particularly surprised yesterday when a cover of Radiohead's Optimistic started playing on it. Normally I don't support covers of certain bands like Radiohead, because in my opinion trying to redo something that good usually turns into the musical equivalent of shitting in the palm of your hand and using it to give Michaelangelo's David a Hitler mustache. However, this particular cover was pretty damn good - to the point that I may have started singing out loud. I can't actually be sure if I was or not because somewhere between the stress of my job and the stress of renovating our new house, I have lost the ability to tell if what's being said in my head is being channeled by my mouth. Whatever. So there I was, having my mid-morning jam session when I decided I might actually want to hear more of this particular group, so I checked to see who they were...

They say that if you try and hold your breath during a bad dream, you'll wake up.

When the cerebral hypoxia wore off and I came to on the floor under my desk, I was forced to accept that I was not in a nightmare conjured from the depths of Hell, but in fact I was living a reality so horrible that not even the joyous thought of strangling my boss could provide me with solace.

Hanson. The band I had been listening to doing that awesome Radiohead cover had been Hanson. Those Mmmm-bopping mother fuckers had infected their way back into my life and actually tricked me into liking one of their songs. Bastards.

And now what do I do? I can't deny I liked their version of Optimistic. But to live with that means acknowledging them as musicians, which then contradicts the position I've held for the last decade in that the term No-Talent-Assclowns was created specifically for their particular brand of pre-pubescent craptacular-ness.

The Bible says that the greatest trick the Devil ever played was convincing the world he didn't exist. On principle I don't like to disagree with scripture, but I gotta believe that El Diablo's most dastardly move was actually to convince the world that crappy soul stealing one-hit-wonders featuring boys with girl's hair cuts had been banished to France, only to have them resurface singing decent cover songs ten years later.