There is always something to appreciate in a skilfully written opening line, something that grabs your interest and indicates exactly what it is you are getting yourself into. For my money you can’t really go wrong with Raoul Duke’s, “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold”, or maybe even Shaun Ryder’s, “Son, I’m thirty, I only went with your mother ‘cause she’s dirty”.
However absolutely the greatest opening line to anything ever is “In retrospect, lighting the match was my big mistake, but I was only trying to retrieve the gerbil.”
If you haven’t heard it, the Armageddon soundclip is one of the funniest things ever, both in terms of the subject matter and in terms of the radio announcer totally pissing himself laughing as he tries to read the news report out. If you are feeling even slightly fed-up I recommend it whole-heartedly, it would cheer up Thom Yorke (probably). Be warned it may not be suitable for the office, having said that it gets played where I work roughly once every 2.4 hours.
