Some day, I will track down the disc jockeys who choose what songs will be put on heavy rotation on Top 40 stations, and I will promptly club them all with my shoe. It’s not that I have had much of a problem with them in the past. I tend to find that my relationship with Top 40 tends to be a pleasant one. They give me stuff to dance to in the shower and I won’t sue when I eventually slip and crack a rib. But this summer, we hit a snag. At first, it seemed like something we could work past. Something minor that appeared to be a mere annoyance, nothing else. But then the summer progressed, and I could feel myself getting more and more irritated, until finally I found myself standing there at work, part of an espresso maker in my hand, screaming, “THAT’S IT! I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE! I CAN’T HANDLE THIS! NO ONE PERSON COULD EVER HANDLE THIS.”

I’m talking about Katy Perry, “California Gurls,” and how my summer was repeatedly ruined by one, utterly wretched song.

The song, in itself, is relatively innocuous. It’s a bland, catchy bit of pop drivel that has stupid lyrics and a completely irrelevant video (apparently Perry decided to reinvent herself from fake bisexual to a game piece from CandyLand). But somewhere along the line, someone decided that this would be “the” summer song. You know the song: it’s the one that plays over and over again on every corporately-run station in an attempt to make the incredibly lucrative yet intensely stupid youth market buy the song as their “soundtrack” for the summer, meaning more sales in CDs, tickets, merchandise, sex toys, and spray cheese.

Let me just put this out there: Katy Perry is an awful singer. She yells everything, over-enunciates like she’s announcing a volleyball game in a cave, and tries too hard to sound like a young girl trying to be Madonna trying to be a dying cat. Even just writing this article, I can just hear the poorly sung chorus in my head:

“CAL-LI-FORN-YAH GURLS, THEY’RE UN-DEE-NYE-ALBULL,

DAY-SEE DUKES, BIKINIS ON TOP.”

“ENOUGH,” I’d be shrieking, standing on a chair in the middle of a store. “THIS SONG CAN’T KEEP PLAYING THIS MUCH.”

And yet, it played on, and on, and on. I could feel myself hating summer for the proliferation of this song. I wanted to never see candy again. I wanted to kick the Beach Boys for ever talking about girls from California in the first place. Hell, I was even mad at Snoop Dogg for appearing on this track. The hate was getting explosive and irrational. I had to find a way out, but there was nothing I could do, although sometimes, it’d come on at work and I would find myself contemplating crushing my own skull with the waffle iron on the counter just to finally end it all.

Katy, if you’re reading this, I just want you to know that I have no real problem with you as a person, nor with that life-sized muppet that you’re planning to marry. Sure, I thought your girl-kissing stage was nothing more than a tired attempt for publicity by co-opting a legitimate sexual preference in the attempt to get boys to think you were attractive, all the while delegitimizing actual outpourings of female-to-female lust. But the song was at least mildly catchy. I even kind of liked that “Hot N’ Cold” song, even though the lyrics were apparently written by a 13-year-old with absolutely no imagination. But this song may have ruined you for me. I can’t handle it anymore. You can’t keep writing crap like this, no matter how many cupcakes you try to work into the video. I have to stop talking about this, I have to. In fact, I’m just going to stop writing about it. Right now.