The wretched Tim Dick is at it again, but as we scoured through We need to be nice to cyclists ... and play nicely, we came across a vital clue.
Dick's ostensible subject is road safety for cyclists, but then the penny dropped:
So the fun old days of playing blindfold chicken with the 380 bus to Bondi while listening to AC/DC are over.
Akker Dakker! Mr. Dick is a bogan, and his preferred choice of music while playing blindfold chicken is of the head banging kind. Not Mozart, not Beethoven, but Akker Dakker!
Say no more! It explains so much, and in particular it explains his hatred of classical music, as expounded at dreary, mind blowing length in There's just no sound argument for being hooked on classics.
Let's remind ourselves of that whiff of hellfire brimstone and sulphur:
One of the few things classical music has in its favour is a dogmatic retention of the intermission: an escape hatch for those unable to sleep in concert hall seats. I wanted to but couldn't, so I left.
On and on he ranted, about ageing audiences, and funereal funeral music, and self-indulgent meanderings and tortured lows, and clapping conductors at the start, and the need to study music like academics, and the suffering of those in the grip of Stockholm syndrome, and well-educated class snobbery (what, no chardonnay sipping?), and a stuffy industry, and dreadfully dull concerts, and so on and so forth.
It was a hate-filled tirade, a dirge of loathing, and now best guess places the deadly Dick as an Akker Dakker fan.
Say no more. Unlike the Dick we won't revile Akker Dakker. We run a broad musical church. We have a soft spot for the lads, but insist in a purist sense that once the lead singer Bon Scott choked on his vomit (here), the real AC/DC came to an end.
Never mind, the rest of the Dick piece on cycling is reassuringly dull and stupefyingly banal, prompted by a NSW government pamphlet on bicycle safety, and a hint that the feral packs of lycra clad zombies and vampires terrorising hapless, innocent Sydney motorists be culled to a size of twenty. Even then, there's no certainty the fragile flowers in their Woollahra tractors will feel truly safe from these wildebeest cavorting on the roads as if they own them.
As is the usual way with MSM, there's no link to the actual pamphlet, but I did dig up this handbook for bicycle riders (in pdf form), and if you're interested in forensic activity, you can reference this Bicycle New South Wales Guidelines For Ride Leaders, prepared as long ago as March 2005, and you can reference the current story here and here.
Never mind, it's just more of the same from the Herald, after it discovered courtesy of Miranda the Devine, that cyclist bashing and cyclist stories is good for circulation. No need for them to do more than a head's up - there's more information about safe cycling on the full to overflowing intertubes than can be canvassed here - so that the likes of Dick can do yet another colour piece on the pecking order of cyclists on Sydney roads.
No it's the depths of the reprobate mind of Mr Dick we want to explore. Suddenly he's all peaches and cream and piety, and fearful of hate:
As cyclists, we hate drivers, pedestrians and all other cyclists. As pedestrians, we hate cyclists, drivers and all other pedestrians. As drivers, we hate cyclists, pedestrians and all other drivers – and taxis, trams, buses and trucks; and stopping for roadworks, traffic lights and give way signs; and dogs, old people and cars brandishing Jesus fish stickers.
We just hate generally ...
Yes, and as writers, it seems we hate classical music.
Well of course Dick tries to have a heel in both camps, and spends his column urging drivers to be considerate and play nice, and pedestrians to be considerate and play nice, and cyclists to be considerate and play nice. Why, it's as banal as Mozart's Ein Musikalischer Spaß K. 522, with all the familiarity of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
No mention of writers being considerate and playing nice about classical music! So enough already with the classical music metaphors.
Well of course on reading Dick I immediately became enraged. I hopped on my bike, and ran over a pedestrian, then walked back home, knocking over several ill-advised children who stepped into my path, before getting into my car, and knocking over a pack of ill-advised cyclists who got in my way as I went to pick up my damaged bicycle. While listening to Akker Dakker at such high volume I was certain to damage my hearing.
I blame the whole affair on Mr. Dick for revealing that he's a bogan, and I wasted my time getting indignant about a bogan's opinion of classical music.
Take it away Akker Dakker, in what arguably is the best early Ozrock music video created, as well as the definitive use of bagpipes for haggis lovers:
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