15) Marching bands

There is a 77% chance that in a mall somewhere in Dubai, a marching band is weaving its way loudly through corridors, several times a day, much to the joy of open plan coffee shop patrons, of which I am generally one.

I don't get this, but I'm pretty sure that no one over the age of eight gets a kick out of a marching band.  Okay maybe parents do, but then shouldn't all the parents and kiddies get confined to an arcade.  Or a very small, echoey room where they can all clap and cheer to the circumlocuting band of pipe-blowers, till they have a big happy, clappy ear bleeding session?  Why on earth is everyone else in the mall subjected to it?

A ubiquitous truth - grumpy people are actually really pleasant if they're left alone.  It's when you throw buckets of gooey, fake happy-chappies at them that they get grumpier...and want to kill something.

I admit, the joy for things like musicals and people dressed up as fluffy things, marching bands and weirdos on stilts died in me several hundred thousand years ago (8 is a loooooong way away for me), but I can still understand the 'need' or the 'attraction' of such assinine entertainment.  The kids love it...its colourful...it helps unscrupulous people make money, so I get it.  But shouldn't a larger audience want it?

Yesterday, a marching band of what looked like a cross between the children of a lobster and a football mixed with the Austrian ski team were roller blading all around the mall as though they'd won the lottery.  Following them were a troop of trumpeting and drumming morons in tacky world cup football uniforms, with peeling makeup and scary smack on smiles.  I don't know about you, but marching bands and kids' television presenters are some of the most frightening people I've ever encountered.  It's completely unnatural to be that happy without a reason.  I'm betting all these guys are either on serious ecstasy habits or they're taking powerful anti-depressants.  Wouldn't you have to if your job was to skate around empty shopping malls dressed like a lobster or to look as though making a camel out of straws and felt was just as joyful as losing your virginity...every day?  I would.

Marching bands, mimes, jugglers and stilt-people belong in the circus.  And not because they're freaks or anything (coff), but mainly because circuses or fairs are atmospheres in which people expect to be assailed by people in costumes and painted smiles.  There I'm less likely to be minding my own business and becoming grouchy about what's happy with the world.  I'm in a shopping mall.  I'm drinking coffee and trying to expound my vitriol on a little cyber corner of the world.  How would you like it if I stood on a soap box and screamed all my blogposts at you with a bullhorn?  Exactly.  Marching bands - get a blog!  If there's one thing I've learned about blogging, it's that people can ignore you at will.  And that is every individual's God-given right.