Put down your microphones. Please?

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s true – karaoke will kill you. Or at least I wish it would, but it won’t. Still, there’s every reason to avoid it because, other than causing widespread deafness, hair loss and American Idol, it’ll also give you what’s known as “karaoke polyp” – a condition where an abnormal growth appears on the vocal chords due to the constant strain inflicted upon them by your over-imitating of Screamin’ Dion. You can read all about it in this severely overdue but life changing article.

Obviously, this is great news. Not since Nazism has the world seen a greater threat than that which lurks in karaoke lounges, all of which have horrible names like K this or Party that. It is an abomination that we simply must destroy or we will all suffer endlessly from a severe malady. Get it? Malady, melody? *Guffaws*

Ahem… yes. Actually, there’s a bit more to it than that.

Back in the old days, young men grew up drinking and smoking in billiard saloons where, if nothing else, they at least mastered the manly sport of poking balls with sticks. These days, youngsters spend their adolescence drinking and smoking while murdering some Taiwanese song. And what good does that do? Just an hour ago, I heard something that went “Woah woah, woah woah, woah woah” from someone by the name of Jay and from what I know, that’s a hit among karaokeists. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life looking like you’ve got a c**k in your mouth, I see no conceivable benefit of this.

To make matters worse, karaoke addicts are willing to pay ludicrous fees for the opportunity to drive each other insane. The lounges know this and charge upwards of $50 a session. $50! Really, that’s like paying to have your ears cut off. Still, what truly makes this whole obsession with karaoke scary is that no one’s safe. Even Pat – the most rational human being on Earth – is reduced to a warbling mess in the face of lyrics that slowly change colour. I know grown men who, when clutching a microphone, have suddenly believed that they are Mariah Carey. It is all just impossibly stupid.

So, in just a few short paragraphs, we’ve established that karaoke is harmful to your health, more evil than Nazism, damaging to our children’s future, devastating to families because it causes financial ruin and that it makes people behave like idiots. Why do I somehow feel that that’s not enough?

Finally, 300 has been watched.

And since I am probably the last person on earth to catch it, I shall refrain from posting a meaningless review. I will say, however, that the last time I saw this many bare chests on a screen was during a documentary on apes. And that so much testosterone emanated from each and every scene that my testicles are now swollen and all I want to do is shag lampposts. In other words, it was great and definitely worth the wait. And the minor traffic accident.

300. Almost.

It’s been three weeks since 300 opened and I still haven’t watched it. I tried getting seats last Friday but the only ones left would’ve given me a cricked neck. And so I waited till this Friday only to be surprised by a last minute job for a bank, which will remain unnamed, that held me back till 9pm. Still, I wasn’t too cross about that because in advertising, you get shit thrown in your face from time to time. Besides, there was always Saturday. Wrong. Yesterday, as I was driving in what can only be considered a leisurely fashion to my date with the most testosterone filled movie of all time, lo and behold, a motorbike crashes into the side of my car. Had this happened on any other day, I would’ve scrambled right out of my car and begged the rider to please be alive. Yesterday, however, my immediate reaction was “What the fuck is it this time?!” followed by “How can a man ever watch a film if he’s going to have things running into him all the time?” followed by “Good God, I hope he’s alive.”

And he was. A youngster who’d only gotten his licence three months earlier along with his pillion lying on their sides for some reason. Just to be sure, I ran out and asked if he was still alive. He answered in the affirmative and then asked me what I wanted to do about all this. I hadn’t a clue. So we made some phone calls, some relatives came down including my very accusing mother, and we all had a chat. This morning, I wrote my first ever Statement of Events, which my uncle informed me was rubbish. And so I rewrote it, slightly. Tomorrow, I will have to bring the car down to the workshop to have it unbroken. This, in itself, isn’t really daunting except that my mother insists on coming along which means that by the time I get there, my ears will be inside my head. But it doesn’t matter because guess what I’m going to be doing after that. Yes, that’s right.

Marathon

I ran last night. And it doesn’t matter that I was overtaken by a snail or that I have now lost the use of my legs. The fact is that I finished 8km. Now, that may seem like a meagre distance to some of you but to me, the most sedentary human being in all of Asia, it is an achievement not unlike trekking to the North Pole solely on a pogo stick.

I might have intimated before that I’m running because I’m a vain pot. This is not strictly true anymore because I am now supposed to take part in a marathon along with three (or is it two?) other lunatics. There are, of course, certain obstacles in the way. Like my heart, for instance, which will almost certainly explode after 10km. And then there’s that steely determination of mine which is made up completely of feathers.

But the worries don’t end there. You see, with every running step, your body is forced to absorb up to three times your body weight in pressure. Over 42km, that works out to about the weight of a small continent. Which is fine if you’re Atlas, but you’re not. The result is that the average runner loses two centimetres in height over the course of a marathon. This is due mainly to a compression of the spinal column which means that my torso will be shorter while my limbs will still be the same length which means that I’ll cross the finish line looking like Gollum. Clearly, that is unacceptable. The whole point of doing a marathon is so that you can pay an obscene amount of money for a picture of yourself looking heroic at the end. And that’s ruled completely impossible if you turn up looking like you’ve just taken a few steps down the evolutionary ladder.

So then, a marathon is tiring, pointless and you’ll come back a midget. And yet here I am training for it. Maybe I really am mad.

Some religious stuff

I just love this discussion. First off, Richard Dawkins is involved. Then there’re some moderate Christians who define God as love (sounds like a cop out to me) and moderate Muslims, all of whom are extremely eloquent. And finally, there’re the few token Christian fundies who, as usual, show no sign whatsoever of any level of intelligence. Love it when Avi Lewis gives it to one of them about 25 minutes into the interview forcing the fool to squirm around before finally, and in some desperation, coming to the ludicrous conclusion that “the bible interprets itself”.

Of course, you’ll have to watch the The Root of All Evil? first since this is a discussion of the issues raised in that documentary. That’s the Wiki link. Find the video yourself.

St Bernard

Yesterday, at a pet shop near my place, I saw a St Bernard in the flesh for the first time. Which means that in addition to a dream car (the Golf GTI), I now have a dream dog.

The St Bernard, as some of you already know, is not a handsome type of dog. In fact, it rather looks like a brute. Its cheeks sag to the floor and its eyes are droopy, meaning that it bears a striking resemblance to James Earl Jones. But unlike other brutish looking dogs such as the pug and the shar pei, it’s got the size to match its face. I mean, weighing in at up to 90kg, this isn’t a dog you’d want to trifle with. The specimen I saw yesterday had paws the size of steering wheels and a head even more cavernous than mine. Any burglar who had the temerity to break into a house guarded by one of these would be remembered in the morning with nothing more than a burp.

And yet it must be said that the St Bernard is a gentle giant. The one from yesterday was running around quite happily with poodles and pomeranians though it could have quite easily popped them like aspirins. They’re good with children too. Which is actually something of a downer for me. I’d hoped that if my child should one day get out of hand, I could simply call upon the dog to erase it from existence. I’ll just have to stick with the mincer.

Of course, the sheer size of a St Bernard poses some problems of its own. For example, if the dog should decide to have a poo, I’d never be able to clear it out because I can’t fit a bulldozer in my living room. And if it should have a little wee, then I’d have to go and put on my snorkel. Therefore, from an early age, the dog must be taught to relieve itself around my neighbour’s front door. That’ll teach them to dump shit outside my house on the pretext of fertilising their plants.

There is one more thing though. St Bernards don’t like being left alone for long periods. Now that’d be ok with a small dog because they can’t do much harm to your furniture. With a St Bernard, however, you’d be coming home to a war zone every evening. And that’s assuming you make it past the mountain of manure and the rivers of wee. It just sounds too daunting.

I’m sad to say, then, that the St Bernard will have to wait. In the meantime, I’ll just have to make do with the (now bald) maltese.

Vain Pot

I have just returned from a light jog around my estate and I’ve gotta tell you, the pounding of your lungs, the sound of your feet hitting the asphalt, the wind in your face; God, does jogging suck. Some people tell me that jogging is addictive and that I’ll soon grow to like it. Plainly, they must be mad. Jogging, to me, is the single most boring activity on earth. Honestly, I’d have more fun contemplating my own navel – a pursuit which, I have been reliably informed, is known as omphaloskepsis. If I wasn’t such a vain pot, jogging would be about as high on my list of priorities as getting murdered. Unfortunately, I am just such a vain pot. And in my pursuit of abdominals, I have resorted to plodding around twice a week in ugly shoes in the vague hope that, after a couple of hundred kilometres, I will have a midriff that you could crack your skull on. It’ll happen. Eventually. Still, don’t put your helmets on just yet.