Frogallergy

At my golf club job today, while I made cheese and pickle sandwiches for people who presumably had no taste buds, Northsound One subjected me to the Crazy Frog song for the first time. Apparently it got to Number 1 this week, but I find it impossible to tell why.

I'd been aware that such a composition existed, but I'd imagined it to be more upbeat and maybe with the gibberish set to some sort of tune, creating some sort of manic J-pop style babble. I might even have enjoyed it then. Well, let's not go too far. Instead, it included a collection of unmodified half-second-long snippets from the detestable amphibian, and I can't even remember how the actual tune of it went - I think my brain refused to process such a simplistic melody.

You have to wonder what started the whole Crazy Frog phenomenon in the first place. "Here's an idea," Person A must have said to Person B after seeing the "Insanity Test" Flash file, "Let's steal this sample of a Scandinavian impersonating a two-stroke motorcycle, get an impossibly-proportioned blue frog wearing flying goggles to advertise it and see if people are stupid enough to buy it as a ringtone."

Indeed, I would like to think that the whole craze is just an experiment on the British public to see if people are truly that stupid. If this is the case, we've failed that test by an astonishing margin. The people who thought up this idea, as much as I detest them, are marketing geniuses - as long as you push the right idea on to the right impressionable people, you'll make a fortune even if you lose your dignity on the way.

I haven't even touched on the opinion yet that phones should ring and not play either a deluge of gibberish or the latest single translated in to MIDI format. (Both the Tetris theme and Bubble Bobble music are excusable.) I find that many people attempt to gain some admiration in their taste in music from people recognising the tune as they deliberately delay picking up the phone so that it can be heard. This seems to be a remnant of the situation a few years ago when phones were very much a fashion accessory rather than a functional communication device. The truth, of course, is that no one cares.

Anyway, the charts have never mirrored quality or talent very well at all, but I'm vastly disappointed in the British public. In fact, I'm so disgusted that I'm leaving the country for at least a month, as I conveniently have a plane ticket that will get me to California on Wednesday.