‘The issue we have across all genres is that we’ve run out of note combinations,’ said an industry insider. ‘We have a total of 12 notes at our disposal, but note combinations are like oil – eventually you use them all up and have no more. What we are left with is the music equivalent of wind farms. It means well, and may even look good, but the output is a bit weak. I mean, have you ever actually listened to Scouting for Girls?’

It is believed the last remaining note combinations were used up by Bjork in the 90’s, with critics proclaiming her music as ‘new’, ‘experimental’ and ‘shit’.

But Simon Cowell denies that running out of original songs will be a problem. ‘There’s loads of classic songs that I own the rights to, and thankfully the talentless morons we need to murder them are a naturally renewable resource.’

Perks (hat-tip to waylandsmithy)

A capacity crowd – keen to ‘work from home’  for a couple of weeks – packed out the new H1N1 Stadium in Sydney to watch the event. A poorly athlete staggered up to the centre of the stadium with the ‘flame of ill-health’, carried from Mexico City, before extinguishing it with an impressive sneeze. Teams of consultants and medics representing every nation trooped out onto the pitch to receive the virus, creating a beautiful sea of grubby off-white for spectators. As Margaret Chan of the WHO mounted the podium to officially declare the start of the 2009 pandemic, a sea of green and yellow fireworks filled the sky above the stadium. Following this, Bjork gave a rousing performance of musical hacks, snuffles and oinks, dressed in a voluminous white handkerchief.

‘This is of huge symbolic importance’ claimed Margaret Chang, defending the building of the multi-billion pound stadium with Burmese child labour ‘nations may be divided by ideology, religion and long-running historical feuds, but I believe we can all unite around the universal creed of the WHO: ‘One World, one people, one nation under the weather.’