POP HATE: Lileks got the new EW and posted something about the inherent ridiculousness of Avril Lavigne. He's not familiar with her music--he says once you get past thirty you "live outside the rules of radio"--but I still got the radio on and I wish to register a complaint about "Sk8er Boi" which is infecting the airwaves right now. It's musically okay but starts out with something like "there was a boy/there was a girl/can I make it any more obvious?" and--I mean--it's so jarring in a bad, pointless way. And she has this horribly affected lisp (lisp would be pronounced lishp but only sometimes.) God, I hope it's affected; if it isn't I apologize. And there's this line where her and her boyfriend "rock each other's world" and you hear something that sounds like a slide whistle--they're hinting at the intensity of their relationship using a slide whistle. It is the Song I Must Turn Past when scanning the radio--a spot usually occupied by whatever Lenny Kravitz's last song was. But maybe I'm not the target audience.