When Terrible Wordplay and Earworms Collide (Oct 2022)
Turning Dragonese
It all started innocuously enough. A slight scratch in the throat, a little gastric discomfort.
Things escalated rapidly from there over the next few days: The scratch became a raking burn, the discomfort a continually roiling churn. It was when I belched and emitted a thick plume of black, acrid, smoke that I really started to worry.
To make matters worse, an itch on my abdomen revealed itself to be a scaly growth which seems to be spreading across my torso. And now I'm finding myself imagining stealing all of your wealth and…sleeping on it?
What is happening to me? I wrote this hurriedly while sat watching the world go by from a bench on Exeter Quay, on a delightfully sunny October morning. I'd gone to my favourite coffee shop for a morning pick-me-up and on the five minute walk from there to the Quay, I had the phrase "turning Dragonese" running constantly through my head to the tune of "Turning Japanese", the evergreen ode to masturbation originally performed by The Vapors. This was an attempt to exorcise the earworm, which didn't quite work. The surroundings more than made up for the shoddy punnery though...