The Edge 183:The Edge 172.qxd
19/12/2011
MAN FLU
Before we start, let’s be clear about one thing: Man Flu doesn’t exist. If, as a man, you’ve ever ‘had’ it, then (in medical terms) you’re a great, galloping jessie. It’s that season where everyone seems to have a cold or the flu, but have you ever wondered why?
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ME & MY adamantium skeleton
Basically, this ‘holiday’ was just made up in the 1800’s, supposedly by bored soldiers from the Napoleonic wars. Originally it was literally a festival involving little more than getting right royally pissed, fighting and setting things on fire (we call it The Premier League in the UK) but after a while, and for Odin knows why, the festival suddenly acquired a Nordic theme.
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Finally, a Doctor who gets it. With just a tiny bit of knowledge you’d know that both viruses and bacteria don’t like the cold weather anymore than we do, nor can you catch a cold or a ‘chill’ simply because it happens to be cold. Medical ‘advice’ such as this is on a par with sticking a toad under your bed to get rid of warts, so if you ever hear anything like it, I suggest a swift elbow to the ovaries is in order. Whatever the reason behind the cold and flu ‘season’, I’m currently surrounded by people coughing and spluttering and complaining all day long at the moment, yet once again I find myself immune to bacterial blandishments of any kind. I often joke about my Wolverine-esque immune system, but, by and large, it’s actually true.
The Kingmeister reports
ble, so you do actually end up feeling worse than you really are. But you won’t actually have the flu. If you aren’t running a fever and you’re not aching to the tips of your hair follicles, then it’s not flu. Poor baby just has an ickle cold, so shut up moaning about it. The next time you get ill, try the Kingpin method of self healing. Just carry on as normal and tell yourself you’ll be right as rain in a day or two, and I bet you will be. If you can’t manage this though, go and bloody moan somewhere else will you?
HAPPY HOLIDAYS?
The lovely HIV virus, which I got over in about 3 days. I do get ill on occasion, but unless it’s really bad, I refuse to take any form of medication as I want my immune system to earn its keep, thank you very much, and while there’s no medical evidence to support the claim that this will make my immune system stronger, I still think that not relying on ‘medicinal crutches’ at the first sign of a runny nose is a very good thing. The second secret weapon in my immune system arsenal is the fact that if and when I do get ill, I just ignore it and keep on going. Moping about and whinging about how ill I feel will only do two things: (1) make me feel worse (2) make me look like an effeminate ponce. Bizarrely, in the case of the common Rhinovirus - or cold at least - the medical profession is actually backing me up on this one. Colds are apparently highly susceptible to emotional and psychosomatic responses. So basically, you can easily get a little sniffle and then convince yourself you’ve got the flu and you feel terri-
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I’ve saved the best ’til last. In fact, even I’m surprised that I’m ranking this last one above both monkeys and sex, but there you go. If you travel to the Shetland Isles, you may be lucky enough to witness the insane and drunken glory that is called ‘Up Helly Aa’.
So it’s all over again for another year. We’ve survived yet another Christmas and New Year where I assume we all indulged in the time honoured traditions of getting pissed, getting fat and possibly making unwelcome advances to one of the girls in Accounts.
Seriously, what’s not to like in this? It’s already making Christmas look like a dick, isn’t it? What’s not to like about seeing a massive table of food being swarmed all over by monkeys for a few hours, before watching the inevitable fighting, fornication and shit-flinging break out? OK, I guess you could argue the food would be better off going to the homeless or orphans or whatever, but on the other hand: Monkeys! In Russia there’s a public holiday called ‘The day of Conception’. Alarmed at the falling birth rates in the Motherland, the enterprising (and obviously insanely brilliant) Governor of Ulyanovsk created a new holiday for the people. On September 12 each year the citizens of Ulyanovs are given a day off of work, and this day off is given over solely to what renowned romance writer Barabara Cartland called: “Maximum Boneage”.
Nowadays the festival of ‘Up Helly Aa’ still involves copious amounts of drinking and burning things, but now they do it in Viking armour while they wave axes and broadswords around. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Swearing allegiance to the ‘Guizer Jarl’ for the day, groups of men design their own coats of arms before donning their armour and then marching down streets lined with petrol soaked torches, singing Viking battle hymns, just before burning a full sized replica of a Viking longboat.
Church of England take note: This is how you do shit. “Ho-Ho-Ho. Ah, bollocks to the lot of yer.” Now, I’m not about to go into the expected anti-religious rant about Christmas as we’ve pretty much beaten that camel and its wise man to death over the years. But what I will complain about though is what’s probably our most treasured holiday being a bit shit, at least compared to holidays in some other countries. If we lived in Thailand, for example, we could all be celebrating the ‘National Monkey Buffet’ once a year. Yes, this is truly as awesome as it sounds. Every year in the Lopburi province of Thailand a huge feast is created by some of the countries top chefs, purely for the enjoyment of thousands of monkeys.
“Man, I love me some bonin’!” That’s right, for one day a year you get a free day off work purely to have as much sex as you can. OK, I’m sure the sex is supposed to be with your actual husband or wife as opposed to a free-for-all-f ***athon in the streets (and I’m trade marking that name for Children in Need next year), but it’s a genius idea all the same.
I think part of the reason I like ‘Up Helly Aa’ so much is that it isn’t from a long and storied tradition and it’s pretty much been made up for the excuse of getting hammered, dressing up in armour and burning things all day because, well, why the hell not? So next year, rather than a few nights out down the local and too many mince pies, who fancies a trip up to the Shetland Isles? Count me in!
Thing is, we don’t actually have to go all the way to a different continent for this sort of shenanigans though, and
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