Let's just suppose you were deeply asleep for a few days — almost as though anesthetized. Perhaps this happened after you attempted to read Snooki's latest book and swooned into a coma over the harsh realization that ours is indeed a stupid, stupid world.

No matter.

What's important is that you were SO deeply asleep you didn't even stir when a plague rat, teeming with poisonous ticks and Yellow Jack mosquitoes, lurched inside your mouth — and then died.

The important and good thing is that, for some reason, despite the decomposing rodent carcass being rife with Hot Zone-style infection, you didn't contract plague as a result of this odd situation.

The bad thing is, once you woke up two days later, and, horrified and disgusted, spat the foul corpse out of your mouth, you simply could not get rid of the taste and sensation. No myriad and fanatical bouts with toothpaste and mouthwash and bubble gum and strong liquor were able to erase the, ah, FLAVOR and the scent that was tattooed inside your head and will remain there forever, as though chemically singed into the DNA of your sinuses.

Disgusting, isn't it?

(Happy New Year, by the way.)

But a scenario such as the above is the only way I can accurately describe how I felt after watching a link sent to me by my friend Pete "Hopps" Huoppi. The video is a live performance clip of Miley Cyrus and her band covering Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

This is worse than Snooki writing books — and that's a sentence I never thought I'd write. Ever.

And yet …

If this was 17th century Salem, Mass., Cyrus would be burned as a witch for her foul incantations and blatant blasphemy. If this was the time of Henry VIII, he'd yank Thomas More off the guillotine, commute his sentence, and behead Miley instead — and I say these things as not particularly huge fan of Nirvana but, humbly, as a proud defender of the Human Mind.

Y'see, some things are just wrong and there are no excuses. No "Well, Miley's a precocious former child star with too much money but she's well-meaning if misguided." No "Well, she's an ego-stained loser with a ghastly sense of self-importance." Not even, "I feel sorry for her dad, who was Christpher Hitchens, I think, and by all accounts was a nice, smart guy."

This is an awful way to start a New Year, but I bring it to your attention because, when you think about this video, things can only get better from here.