Apparently, Michael McIntyre is “the new king of observational comedy”. I’m not going to argue with that, even though it seems to be a a widely accepted fact Michael McIntyre is a bit middle-of-the-road. After all, it seems to be another widely accepted fact that democratically elected leaders are far better than kings. A king is only a king because of who he came out of when he was born, not because more people voted for him than voted for any other person. Hooray for the democracy and all that.
Because that this computer was made by an American man named Steve Gates, a lot of the people who are inside this computer and read this blog are American people. And I am very sure indeed that they will all firmly enjoy reading something about basketball. Fortunately, I have played some basketball recently (incidentally, I’m quite shitty at it, because basketball is a kind of sport), and I observed something. People often chuck the ball at the basket when they are a quite long way away from the basket, even though they nearly always don’t manage to get the ball into the basket and it just bounces away into the grubby hands of someone else. If they were to chuck the ball at the basket when closer to the basket, they would be much more successful.
It is rather a shame that I am not in a position to make use of what I have noticed. Maybe my lack of prowess is what blew the wool away from my eyes and turned me into the little boy from The Emperor’s New Clothes. Of course, I could always tell my more talented peers about my vision, as any sensible person would, but actually I couldn’t really. For starters, I don’t think people would pay much attention to advice pouring out of the mouth of someone who is not very good at playing basketball – they’re too blinkered to consider that maybe a lack of that distracting stuff, being good at playing basketball, is what is needed to be able to see the light. For the main course, allowing other people to become better at playing basketball will make the gap between them and I even bigger. And for pudding, there’s the fact that our basketball season is over now anyhow, not that that’s of much interest to anyone who isn’t (or even is) me.
There are, I think, many parallels between this overambitious throwing of balls through hoops and the world as a whole. Why is it that whenever there’s a fly buzzing around, defecating on the raspberry tart, being sick all over the sausages, rubbing its hands together (why is it that they rub their hands together? Oh, they’re cleaning themselves when they do that. And, incidentally, they’re feet rather than legs), I will nearly always attempt to squash it even though I know that it will manage to dart out of my way?
Sometimes I manage to squash a fly, when the fly is a particularly tipsy fly. But most flies have pretty robust innards, or just stick to ginger beer. Still, I lunge at every single fly, just in case it’s one of those alcohol-eating ones. Think of all the energy that’s wasted whenever I ambitiously wave my hand in the direction of a fly. It must be much more energy than I would use by calculating a fly’s drunkenness using my brain.
I’m sure there’s a philosophical point to be made here. Unfortunately, it needs to be made by a philosopher, and I’m not a philosopher, so there. Sorry.
All this would be ripe and juicy if I were Michael McIntyre, because if I were Michael McIntyre I’d be able to say it in a funny voice and the people of the world would find it funny. But I’m not Michael McIntyre, so I can’t say it in a funny voice. You’re right, Michael McIntyre’s not the only person ever who can do a funny voice, but any tiny grain of possibility dust of me doing one is gobbled up and farted into the bin by this being a blog rather than a podcast. Sorry.