Someday you may find yourself driving in your wife’s car – or anyone else’s car, for that matter – without your usual music, surfing the channels, trying to find something acceptable to listen to for what is really just a five minute drive back to your house. You may find that there are no acceptable alternatives. Maybe you can find DJs talking about how great the last song was and how awesome the music will be if you only stick around until after the twenty minute block of commercials they have coming up. Most likely quite a few of those channels are in the middle of a commercial marathon.

In the course of your search, you might discover  one channel playing music, albeit a Katy Perry song. You might here a little voice inside your head tell you that you might as well listen to this, since there isn’t anything else on the radio. You might think that it’s got a decent pop beat and, as a child of the 8os – presuming you are one of the chosen generation – you probably have a soft spot in your heart for a poppy love anthem. You might justify the listening to of this song because, after all, she’s instructing you to put your hands on her, and is informing you that you are, indeed, quite the turn-on. These are themes that most men can get behind.

Put these thoughts out of your head. What you might think is a 5 minute tryst that no one will ever know about is, in fact something much more insidious.

This is not mere music. It is the musical equivalent of an STD. It is ear herpes.

Shortly after you get out of the car, you will find that the tune is still in your head. You might not think much of this at first, but then you’ll catch yourself humming along. You might randomly inform your spouse that she makes you feel as though you’re living in a dream of some kind. Perhaps a teenage one. Perhaps telling her this will be intentional, perhaps not. It depends on just how bad your infection is.

Once you’ve let Katy in, she won’t let go. She’ll latch onto your neurons and squeeze out every last drop of what used to be your humanity.

With time, rest and plenty of less craptacular music, you can find solace again. But the price is high – far to high – to risk letting a diabolical earworm like this into your mind.

I beg of you, heed my example and turn back to the commercials before it’s too late.