Go To Hellvis!

You might think that I'm back on the religious kick this morning, full of fire and brimstone.

Ian, do you even know what brimstone is?

Not a clue.

Shall I look it up for you in Wikipedia?

Yeah, that'd be great.

Brimstone is the ancient name attributed to sulfur.

This is kind of freaky, but when I eat dried apricots, they give me bad gas that's quite sulphuric. You can set your watch to it, like Old Faithful. You could sell tickets to tourists, it's that reliable.

Have you applied for an ACOA grant, so you can build a viewing platform and an interpretive centre?

No, but I've thought about it. There is a connection between dried apricots and brimstone, in case you're wondering why I brought up apricots when trying to initiate a discussion about hell. I wondered, for years, why dried apricots were so noxious, then one day I read the ingredients. I always assumed that the ingredient list would be very short, like this...ingredients: apricots. It turned out that the apricots had one other (insidious) ingredient: sulphur dioxide.

Sulphur dioxide is produced naturally in volcanoes, and unnaturally in Delaware by companies like Dupont. Sulphur dioxide seems like an odd thing to add to an apricot, but it prevents the dried fruit from becoming rotten, so I guess that it makes sense. I pay a price by ingesting the sulphides, as does everyone within ten metres of me. Sulphur dioxide is also used to make wine, though I don't experience any side effects from generous imbibing, other than an overwhelming desire to table dance in the buff.

If I was marketing apricots, I wouldn't call them Sunkist or Sun-Maid or Casa de Fruta, I'd call them Brimstone Bites or something to that effect. Then I'd sit back and count my money, while sales skyrocketed.

Ian, you don't really think that Brimstone Bites, a healthy snack, would be a best seller, do you?

Go to hell!

Hell? I heard that you were there yesterday...is this true?

Yes, it's true, but I was only there for about four and a half minutes.

Did the radio station play a Def Leppard song?

Yup. I hate that band. I just can't abide their music. It's the demise of rock n' roll as far as I'm concerned. I actually walked up to the radio and changed stations for that one song, which had the title 'Pour Some Sugar On Me'. I'm not providing a link to that song because it's awful. Here's a few lines, though, just so you get a sense for my unbridled loathing...

You got the peaches, I got the cream
Sweet to taste, saccharine

'Cos I'm hot, say what, sticky sweet
From my head, my head, to my feet

Somebody get me a bucket...I'm going to hurl. This is the kind of music that I imagine plays in hell, likely on an 8-track.

This got me thinking, yesterday. I decided to make a list of the three musical groups/artists that would play on an endless loop in hell. Here's my list:

1) Def Leppard
2) Aaron Neville
3) Celine Dion

Def Leppard makes rock seem like chalk (soft and weak). Aaron Neville is this big, muscly guy who looks like he should be driving a bad ass Harley, then he opens his mouth and I'm looking around for Tweety Bird sucking on a brown paper bag full of helium. Celine Dion is a poser. Yes, she's got a voice and a half, but she comes across as a fraud when I see her (it's a visual).

It was incredibly easy for me to pick my top three, though difficult not to include Neil Sedaka. Or jazz. Any jazz. All jazz. Who would be on your top three hellishly awful acts? Drop me an e-mail and let me know, or leave a comment on the blog.