Читать книгу The Men Commandments - Christian O’Connell - Страница 46

I wonder whether there should be a TV show called The World’s Dumbest Man. Think about the enjoyment we still have watching The World’s Strongest Man: ‘Sven the big guy from Iceland is really coping well with the 2CV he’s carrying this year – awesome stuff.’ The World’s Dumbest Man is the next generation. Teams of men from around the world would enter with their mates, as we all know that men are spurred on to even greater feats of stupidity when with their mates. Britain could do well at this. Alcohol would feature in most events.

THE WORLD’S DUMBEST MAN SHOW EVENTS

Chair Sitting. Last man still just sitting in an armchair wins. This could take some time; months even.

Man Tears Challenge. Can any man sit through an episode of Extreme Makeover or Rolf’s Animal Hospital (featuring dogs passing away) or The Champ without crying?

Synchronised Toenail Clipping. (I once saw a man doing this on a train. I was both horrified and impressed.)

Mattress Endurance Challenge. Teams have one mattress to transport as far as they can using a small family car. It can only go on the roof and no ropes are allowed. It’s the classic man driving with one arm on the mattress.

These man games would include Freestyle Bullshitting, where male entrants must talk about anything that has or has not happened to them and then lie about it. As we do. Men are born bullshitters; it is in our DNA. That’s why most car salesmen are men. Pat Butcher included.

Even smart, educated, brave men let their man DNA get the better of them. It would appear that our entire sense of logic and reasoning is drastically altered when in proximity to other men. Man molecules affect and change other man molecules, causing a Man Big Bang.

Imagine you work at the international space station doing important astronaut space work. You wake up in your astronaut bed one day and think:

1 I should go and collect some rock samples so mankind can learn about the life forms up here

2 I should see how far I can hit a golf ball into space with a gold-plated six iron and film it

b) is what Expedition 14 commanders Michael Lopez-Alegria and Mikhail Tyurin went for. Boys together. In space. Hitting golf balls. Doing important work.

In case you’re wondering about the gravity during the shot, Lopez-Alegria held Tyurin’s feet, which were affixed to a ladder. Tyurin carried three golf balls, but only had time to hit one of them before ground flight controllers instructed the spacewalkers to proceed to their other tasks.

I love that. He held his feet. Don’t tell me we fear intimacy. Here we have two grown men, astronauts who have trained for years, for crying out loud, who agree that one will hold the other’s space boots. Playing Intergalactic Golf. It’s a real shame that the boring ground controllers made them ‘proceed to their other tasks’ rather than hit some more balls. What could possibly be more important than this task? There is, however, a sad end note to this.

The golf ball did not travel in the full retrograde direction, away from the space station, as intended. Instead, Tyurin shanked the ball.

So we go from ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ to ‘Told you you should’ve used the five iron, dickhead.’ Even in space men together will do something stupid. It’s the collision of man molecules. You ask Professor Hawking. I bet the Hawkman, when he gets together with his mates, arses about like any man.