09 August 2006

Fool, I know what time the eight o' clock train leaves the station...

I have an irrational morbid fear that one day I'm going to be confronted with a life or death situation and be lucky enough to emerge only to say something retarded redundant on live television.

Imagine some kind of tragedy has occured and there you are; center stage, perhaps in shock, maybe a little traumatised with a camera man and boom looming. We viewers at home are not expecting "I have a dream" from you, but please, for your own sake, at least consider the words you're about to push out of your mouth. Trust me.
On top of it all, you don't want to look like a dick on the news now do you?
No, of course you don't.
So do yourself a favour and try to remember this. If you are ever involved in a horrific catastrophe or emergency and/or when a newspaper reporter or anchor person approaches to question you about the incident, try to muster every last remaining ounce of your strength against babbling something obvious like this:

  • " ...He came running at me, with those crazy eyes, swinging that big kitchen knife... and I knew right then I had to do something..."
  • "... the plane's wing torn off and we plunged into an uncontrollable nose dive, and at that moment I remember thinking to myself, we're going to crash..."
  • "... he wasn't moving at all, the shark had clean bitten off his entire lower torso and I could tell if I didn't act quickly and get some medical attention, he wasn't going to make it..."
  • "...I immediately knew something was wrong when the bungy cord snapped..."
It's practically an inescapable everyday occurrence. I wait squirming through news segments whenever participants or onlookers are asked to describe what happened, because they always do it .

Now I know this might sound harsh, and I don't want to come off like an uncompassionate individual for mentioning it.
But y'know what?
If I was the reporter, it would be a struggle for me not to just lean over and clock 'em right in the mouth and say "Don't you know how f--ken stupid that sounded?".

By Erueti Brown with 1 comment

1 Jabber?:

Hilarious post. Love the picture of Scott Christian, who never really made it past being on a couple of Simpsons episodes.