Run Fat Shanga Run!

Part I

12 weeks ago, at work, a good friend said to me, “Never start a sentence with a number”. My mind fashioned this as peculiar. And then she said, “You shouldn’t start sentences with and either”. Jesus Christ Kate why do I talk to you. Then she finally said, “Shanga, join a gym... join a gym or you will die”. Seemingly harsh but very necessary words for my adorable ears to hear and my munted mind to process. I finished consuming my Double Quarter Pounder with extra awful, digested said culinary atrocity with great shame and loneliness and continued to entertain my mildly annoying 8 pint hangover with hilarious notions of actually doing some work.

The next Monday, in a fit of delirious lunacy, I went to Fitness First next to work. Challenge #1: It’s on the second floor with no elevator or human trebuchet. INCONVENIENT. I want to get fit, not trek to fuckin’ Mordor. I reached reception at the seemingly stratospheric summit and took a seat for about 10 minutes. There wasn’t a queue. I just needed time to get my breath back. In fact the perky receptionist was looking at me the entire time, perfecting her ability to shrug unapprovingly using just her eyebrows. She has a gift, a worthless worthless gift.

All of a sudden, a scatter bomb exploded with shrapnel flying at me in the form of energetic white toothed personal trainers. The girls walked like men and the men walked like girls and all of them had the unexpected flamboyancy of a ladyboy Halloween party, (which reminds me, check my credit card statement from my Thai holiday then make appointment with Dr Russell accordingly).

I was finally cornered by the Alpha-fit-bastard-I-hate-you-male. I’m not sure exactly what transpired next but shortly thereafter I became alert and aware on the sidewalk with a 12 month membership and weekly personal training sessions to boot. None of this concerned me all that much. I was just thankful I hadn’t woken up in police lock up or in her bed. Any day that begins with neither of those things is going to be a fuckin’ pearler! The point being, I was now, officially, a gym rat for the first time in my life.

Part II next week – The Attack of the Kat

Mutant Olsen Twins

Welcome back! To you, to me, to the written word which then becomes the read word by you and the spoken word by my friend Ben because he’s too dim witted to read like everybody else. I like to takes this crapportunity to speak about a recent tragedy. My life without alcohol. Ok maybe not completely without alcohol. I mean, come on, I’m not Batman. That guy’s like on call like all the time. He touches a drop of clean skin wine and he puts the entire city of Gotham and the mercy of unmarked, unchecked thuggery buggery. As for me, let’s assume that I’m on my 6^th beer, each beer with alternating chasers of straight Glen Fiddich and bottom shelf cab merlot, and I get a call from the commissioner to go defend city hall from international cross dressing mega bandits, chances are no-one’s going to bat an earlobe when I simply respond with, “wrong number pal”.

So here I am, stone cold sober on the hottest day of the year and nary a Carona raping lime wedge in sight. Like I said. Tragedy. I’m here to protest that there’s a reason alcohol has been enjoyed before history started becoming chronicled. It’s fucking… awesome. Perhaps a little too awesome for its smug self. Subtle and deserving in its smugness might I add. You see, it’s bottled awesome. And when you drink the contents of bottled awesome, well it doesn’t take a puke in a handbag to realise that awesomeness is now inside you.

However it’s awesomeness with an expiry. Not to mention the price you pay to get the awesome and the price you pay the next day in any number of other ways. Be it porcelain hugging “butterflies are too noisy” hangover. Or be it the cost of your pride for making poor overweight practice girl Jennifer walk the hall of shame at 7:46am in your shared house while you’re one successful flatmate Brendan is getting ready for his banking job all the while nodding disapprovingly at you while you lie in your 2 month old sheets, smelling your fingers and eating stale corn chips that you’re quite certain fell out of her hair during a courtship rife with rank and unspoken sweaty horror.

With that said… (sorry, I can still imagine Ben reading this out loud…”wif dat sed”). So ah, yeah, look, they can’t all be winners. Now here’s where I would go on about the heavenly joys of booze but that’s a song you’ve heard and a dance you’ve witness before. I shall never force you through it again. So I have naught but the choice to continue discrediting our friend and saviour, alcohol.

During this last week, where I only got drunk one night and mildly tipsy another (seriously, that’s considered a dry week folks), I’ve become reacquainted with a person long since forgotten. Me. And my God what a stark raving disappointment I turn out to be. Did you know, sober Shane, is completely incapable of contributing to a conversation. He can’t think, create, focus, drive or be interesting in any conceivable or inconceivable way. (all of you who have the Prince’s Bride on your mind right now, kudos to you… now lend me your ears). I’m watching more tv than I ever have before. I’m hungry more often. I don’t play guitar or write. I smile at least 80% less and I’ve forgotten what my laugh actually sounds like, (probably just as well as I’ve been told it sounds like the Olsen twins if they assimilated into one mutant person). I just sit and stare at tv programs I hate and not even notice the poor hapless hours of my life falling through the cracks into wasted oblivion… again.

The wisest of you will interpret these words of mine as just a bit of guff for shits and giggles. The worst of you will say I have a drinking problem. To that I say, read the previous paragraph again you naff. Clearly I have a SOBER problem.