A quick one for Jake.

  A lifetime - or several lifetimes - ago, I made a silent vow to myself that if I must fuck with peoples' heads, then I would do so in the best way possible and that is to enrich rather than diminish what I consider to be the better aspects of being human, such as curiosity, compassion, mercy, thoughtfulness and forbearance - in short, all those pesky qualities that denote something of virtue.  We live in a world where one is considered to be unsportspersonlike if they do not early on master the art of fucking with the heads of others.  We live too in a world where apologising is a forgotten art and people can no longer say the word 'sorry' let alone spell it or commit it to print.

  But I'm sorry.  Outside pinballs and skateboards, I was always crap at sports.

  ...

  Indulge me, then, the following non sequitur of logic.

...

  Possibly - just possibly - it's less than auspicious that my first blog article should revolve around the death of my dearest friend who passed away one week ago tonight.

  It's cold tonight.  His beautiful widow and fine sons are still struggling through the morass of confusion, shock and anger at his passing, to say nothing of the near-byzantine state of the finances. And the rest of us poor fools who knew him are lamenting and trying to laugh in the face of the loss. And posting photos of him on Facebook or songs we think he loved but more than likely he really didn't care about.  But that's hardly the point, is it?! WE can post songs that WE love and say that he loved them and who among the living would dispute it unless the error was so obviously egregious?!

  And besides, frankly so much of the stuff he loved was utter dross.  Especially his taste in 80s music.

  Back in the late 70s and early 80s he and I drank at our local pub in Ryde, Sydney and every night without fail someone would put Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual Healing' on the jukebox.  And every night I would swear that I would kick the living snot out of whoever did this, if ever I should catch them red handed.

  I know I telegraphed the punchline and you all clearly realise  who the culprit was, but it was the manner of Jake's revelation that still makes me smile.  First of all, at least two decades had to elapse before he would laughingly reveal to me that it was in fact him who kept playing the tune.  And secondly, he revealed a  reason why which shows his Machiavellian mind in full flight.  He knew I would always counter this musical transgression by playing at least five songs so as to rinse the audial taste out of my ears, if that doesn't mangle any metaphors too much. And that he frankly liked the choices I made, whether it was a song by Midnight Oil (I don't wanna be the one), The Squeeze (or UK Squeeze as they were billed here in Australia), the Cure (Killing an Arab), Ian Dury and the Blockheads (Sex and drugs and rock and roll), The Church (Unguarded Moment/Bus Driver), The Clash (Tommy Gun), The Jam (Town Called Malice/Ghosts) and so the list goes on.

  You see? He had the whole Pavlovian thing down pat even back then.  He would call with what I considered to be the worst offering a genius like Marvin Gaye could ever produce and I would respond faithfully with half a dozen punk or post punk tracks.  Not bad value for the price of one song, all things considered.

  Using this twisted logic on life and how to abuse it then, it's only fair that I should open my blog with a tragic and senseless death.

  Goodbye my brother - Brett Andrew Jacobson (20th October 1964 - 13th July 2014).

  We'll always be as thick as thieves.