Sunday, November 09, 2008
There may be trouble ahead doo doo do dooo….
Dance, intransitive verb, 1. to move or seem to move up and down or about in a quick or lively manner 2. to engage or perform in a dance
Ok folks I want to do a quick straw poll; hands up if you like to dance? C’mon don’t be shy, get those hands raised. Right let me do a quick head count here, ladies first of course 1.2.3.4.5.6 mumble mumble…. I’ve run out of fingers but I think 27 girls like to dance out of ..123.4... mumble mumble … 27! Ok now for the boys …. Boys? …. C’mon gents I can see you; who likes dancing? …
I think we all know how many hands were raised, and the reason is actually more complex than you’d imagine. I’m going to let you Gals into some secrets about blokes that will blow you away! This is the sort of expose that could result in a couple of large gentlemen knocking on my door and cracking their knuckles in an unfriendly manner ‘your gender are not impressed Mr Shanks’ will be the last thing I ever hear before I’m dragged away to sleep with the fishes. However I think it needs saying so I’m going to say it ……
Firstly ladies you need to understand that guys can’t dance, not much of a revelation I agree but bear with me and I’ll explain why we can’t dance. It’s genetics you see. Many thousands of years ago man was a hunter gatherer and the ability to maintain perfectly motionless whilst carefully stalking prey animals was essential. Your average woolly mammoth could get quite tetchy, especially when you attempted to creep up on it and thrust a spear in its backside. So to avoid being trampled into chunky salsa ‘Man’ had to able to remain concealed.
Most prey animals were not only well armed with pointy horns and hooves like dinner plates but they had good eyesight, keen hearing and excellent olfactory skills. So this ability to remain still as a hunter was crucial. Swivelling your hips and mincing across the forest clearing to the rhythm of the universe didn’t just leave the dinner table bare but was a good way to meet your ancestors slightly earlier than you might have wanted. As such ‘Man’ developed a fierce rigidity in our movement, not dissimilar to the flexibility seen in a plank. It’s also the reason why boys smell; it’s to mask ourselves and prevent prey locating us.
Of course woman didn’t develop these traits because they would be left at home tending the cave; usually complaining about the state of the floor. Repeated furious sweeping actions lead to development of a rhythmic sway in the hips and an opposing swing of the arms. This combined with an absence of razor toothed carnivores and gigantic hooved herbivores trying to mash, spear and generally eviscerate them allowed time for singing and ’music’ to develop. In between bouts of obsessive cleanliness of course.
It is a wonder that men and women ever managed to procreate given that the man would come home covered in excrement dragging the corpse of some recently deceased creature in his hands, he’d be sweaty tired and hungry, looking to collapse on a comfy rock when instead he immediately gets his heid nipped for bringing ‘that dirty thing’ into the house ‘and you’re humming by the way’ these are not the gracious words of thanks he was expecting for putting a meal on the table.
Given that ‘woman’s’ over zealous cleanliness regime has allowed her to develop a sense of smell that could detect a gnats chuff at four hundred yards, the still warm and bloodied antelope cadaver cooling on her good kitchen floor was unlikely to pass unnoticed. Cue heid nipping and mans hand on spear for the first ‘domestic’ of the Stone Age.
But moving forward a few thousand years the real reason we don’t dance is because we’re actually intimidated. No not by you! Don’t be silly silly girls now (condescending enough?) It’s actually something you’ve probably never thought about. But when you are all dancing round your handbags a cold shiver runs down our spines. Because not only does that never leave home without item have significantly more co-ordination style and rhythm that your average bloke, it looks better!
And it doesn’t end there either. We can’t compete with your handbags on any level; we’re up against it from the start. Not only is the bag better at dancing but a handbag wont get p*ssed and start chatting up your friend with the big t*ts. It won’t spend the whole evening looking at other bags and dribbling when a black patent leather number with tight silver buckles wiggles its strap past your seat.
A handbag won’t stand you up in the pouring rain or forget your anniversary. It doesn’t fart nosily in bed then force your head under the duvet to ‘savour’ the aroma. Nor will your bag keep you awake all night because its snores are akin to a badly running tractor. To rub salt into the wounds a handbag is actually quite useful; you can store things in it that aren’t burgers and beer.
Many's the time in years gone by I’ve stood at the bar, imbibing courage with my fellow youth, whilst eying up the talent ‘hey Ham what aboot the one wi the shoulder pads?’, ‘naw I fancy the one wi the pink legwarmers’ (it was the eighties) ‘ach hud on though have ye seen her bag’, ‘aaaw naw man it’s fuuucking gorgeous man, OH! It’s got extra pockets on the side and an adjustable strap’, ‘fuuuckinggreat!’, ‘what aboot the minger with the tie-dye jute bag?’, ‘dinna be feel min she’s got a better tache than me!’, ‘beggers cant be choosers Ham’, ‘Oh aye like you’re beating them aff wi a sh*tty stick’
At which point a drunken fight with the fellow suitor would ensue and finish any chance you had with Miss Moustache and her hippy hold all anyway. Not that I need have worried as the doormen would be arriving by now to ‘escort’ us off the premises via the back door where we could receive a complimentary kicking free of charge. Ah the 1980’s what a f*cking dreadful decade. I blame that bleached flat top ‘Dolf Lundgren’ haircut for my baldy napper now. I remember asking the hair dresser at the time if it should be painful getting hair bleached?
So you see girls it’s not our fault, we’re ‘programmed’ this way. Thousands of years of evolution and your selfish addiction to bags are the root cause of our inability to dance. So you’ve nobody to blame but yourselv- ‘Heeey I’ve just thought, that John Sergeant gets top blonde totty on strictly come dancing?’ and he cant dance for toffee either? … Aaaah you know why don’t you …. Cos they don’t have bags!!
Anyway can’t stay to chat I have to get to my ballroom dancing cha-cha-cha ….
Dance, intransitive verb, 1. to move or seem to move up and down or about in a quick or lively manner 2. to engage or perform in a dance
Ok folks I want to do a quick straw poll; hands up if you like to dance? C’mon don’t be shy, get those hands raised. Right let me do a quick head count here, ladies first of course 1.2.3.4.5.6 mumble mumble…. I’ve run out of fingers but I think 27 girls like to dance out of ..123.4... mumble mumble … 27! Ok now for the boys …. Boys? …. C’mon gents I can see you; who likes dancing? …
I think we all know how many hands were raised, and the reason is actually more complex than you’d imagine. I’m going to let you Gals into some secrets about blokes that will blow you away! This is the sort of expose that could result in a couple of large gentlemen knocking on my door and cracking their knuckles in an unfriendly manner ‘your gender are not impressed Mr Shanks’ will be the last thing I ever hear before I’m dragged away to sleep with the fishes. However I think it needs saying so I’m going to say it ……
Firstly ladies you need to understand that guys can’t dance, not much of a revelation I agree but bear with me and I’ll explain why we can’t dance. It’s genetics you see. Many thousands of years ago man was a hunter gatherer and the ability to maintain perfectly motionless whilst carefully stalking prey animals was essential. Your average woolly mammoth could get quite tetchy, especially when you attempted to creep up on it and thrust a spear in its backside. So to avoid being trampled into chunky salsa ‘Man’ had to able to remain concealed.
Most prey animals were not only well armed with pointy horns and hooves like dinner plates but they had good eyesight, keen hearing and excellent olfactory skills. So this ability to remain still as a hunter was crucial. Swivelling your hips and mincing across the forest clearing to the rhythm of the universe didn’t just leave the dinner table bare but was a good way to meet your ancestors slightly earlier than you might have wanted. As such ‘Man’ developed a fierce rigidity in our movement, not dissimilar to the flexibility seen in a plank. It’s also the reason why boys smell; it’s to mask ourselves and prevent prey locating us.
Of course woman didn’t develop these traits because they would be left at home tending the cave; usually complaining about the state of the floor. Repeated furious sweeping actions lead to development of a rhythmic sway in the hips and an opposing swing of the arms. This combined with an absence of razor toothed carnivores and gigantic hooved herbivores trying to mash, spear and generally eviscerate them allowed time for singing and ’music’ to develop. In between bouts of obsessive cleanliness of course.
It is a wonder that men and women ever managed to procreate given that the man would come home covered in excrement dragging the corpse of some recently deceased creature in his hands, he’d be sweaty tired and hungry, looking to collapse on a comfy rock when instead he immediately gets his heid nipped for bringing ‘that dirty thing’ into the house ‘and you’re humming by the way’ these are not the gracious words of thanks he was expecting for putting a meal on the table.
Given that ‘woman’s’ over zealous cleanliness regime has allowed her to develop a sense of smell that could detect a gnats chuff at four hundred yards, the still warm and bloodied antelope cadaver cooling on her good kitchen floor was unlikely to pass unnoticed. Cue heid nipping and mans hand on spear for the first ‘domestic’ of the Stone Age.
But moving forward a few thousand years the real reason we don’t dance is because we’re actually intimidated. No not by you! Don’t be silly silly girls now (condescending enough?) It’s actually something you’ve probably never thought about. But when you are all dancing round your handbags a cold shiver runs down our spines. Because not only does that never leave home without item have significantly more co-ordination style and rhythm that your average bloke, it looks better!
And it doesn’t end there either. We can’t compete with your handbags on any level; we’re up against it from the start. Not only is the bag better at dancing but a handbag wont get p*ssed and start chatting up your friend with the big t*ts. It won’t spend the whole evening looking at other bags and dribbling when a black patent leather number with tight silver buckles wiggles its strap past your seat.
A handbag won’t stand you up in the pouring rain or forget your anniversary. It doesn’t fart nosily in bed then force your head under the duvet to ‘savour’ the aroma. Nor will your bag keep you awake all night because its snores are akin to a badly running tractor. To rub salt into the wounds a handbag is actually quite useful; you can store things in it that aren’t burgers and beer.
Many's the time in years gone by I’ve stood at the bar, imbibing courage with my fellow youth, whilst eying up the talent ‘hey Ham what aboot the one wi the shoulder pads?’, ‘naw I fancy the one wi the pink legwarmers’ (it was the eighties) ‘ach hud on though have ye seen her bag’, ‘aaaw naw man it’s fuuucking gorgeous man, OH! It’s got extra pockets on the side and an adjustable strap’, ‘fuuuckinggreat!’, ‘what aboot the minger with the tie-dye jute bag?’, ‘dinna be feel min she’s got a better tache than me!’, ‘beggers cant be choosers Ham’, ‘Oh aye like you’re beating them aff wi a sh*tty stick’
At which point a drunken fight with the fellow suitor would ensue and finish any chance you had with Miss Moustache and her hippy hold all anyway. Not that I need have worried as the doormen would be arriving by now to ‘escort’ us off the premises via the back door where we could receive a complimentary kicking free of charge. Ah the 1980’s what a f*cking dreadful decade. I blame that bleached flat top ‘Dolf Lundgren’ haircut for my baldy napper now. I remember asking the hair dresser at the time if it should be painful getting hair bleached?
So you see girls it’s not our fault, we’re ‘programmed’ this way. Thousands of years of evolution and your selfish addiction to bags are the root cause of our inability to dance. So you’ve nobody to blame but yourselv- ‘Heeey I’ve just thought, that John Sergeant gets top blonde totty on strictly come dancing?’ and he cant dance for toffee either? … Aaaah you know why don’t you …. Cos they don’t have bags!!
Anyway can’t stay to chat I have to get to my ballroom dancing cha-cha-cha ….
