Okay. Just humor me for a minute … could the inventor of karaoke be guilty of a crime? Because the students are doing karaoke on the quad right now — at 10PM on a Saturday and if what they’re doing to Tina Turner isn’t a crime, then we’re living in The Purge. Someone really needs to tell them that Sandra Bullock and Regina King are actors and that’s why Proud Mary sounded so good when they did it in the movie.

Ah. Good news. A drunk guy has taken the mic and is singing The Piano Man. Oh no, make that two drunk guys. Welp, we’ve just disproven the argument that two heads (mouths) are better than one. We’ve also learned that it was a lot easier for Billy Joel to stay in key during that famous la-la-la de-de da chorus than it is for the average drunk karaoke-ers. Also, they can’t follow the prompts and they’ve interrupted the song to apologize for screwing it up. And now they’re volunteering to sing it again. Please no.

Oh thank God. Someone took the mic away.

And now I’d like to point out that I still haven’t learned my lesson … which is that things can always get worse. And they have. Because we now have a man and woman singing the PG version of Cee Lo Green’s Forget You. See … I’m being ungrateful again. I should be thankful it isn’t 120 decibels of the NSFK (not safe for karaoke) version.

I’m both pleased and chagrined that I can’t report on the song that’s just starting. It’s a country song with a lot of OOOOOOOOO-ing. It’s off-key so it’s more like OOOEEEEOOOEEEOO-ing but not quite to the level that it’s EIEIO-ing. 

Okay. Okay. I get it. I’m actually being pranked right now. Right? Right? Haha You guys are funny. You almost got me. But you went too far with the second country song. And the group singalong. Nice touch. How did you get all the students to sing so badly? I hope you realize that I’m sitting in my bedroom so there better not be any cameras around taking pictures of my tiger face mask right now.

Gratitude. Gratitude. Gratitude. It’s my new mantra. I’m in cobbler pose on my yoga mat as I type. It’s a multi-task meditation — just go with it. If I use that word — gratitude — in my meditation right now, will the karaoke sounds fade away or will I come to appreciate them? So far, neither one has happened but I’ll keep trying.

There’s a woman doing a banging rendition of Walk the Moon’s Shut Up and Dance with Me. It’s really rocking. Yeah, I’m just kidding. It’s so awful the slugs in the garden have packed their little slug bags (got to use a bag if you don’t have a shell, you know?) and moved out. I would too but my daughter has the car so I’m trapped here. 

When you think about a song you hope never to hear sung by anyone other than the original artist, you think automatically of Uptown Funk, don’t you? If you were sitting here with me right now, trust me; it would be the first song that came to mind, especially with all 300 enthusiastic young women shrieking “Hot Damn” at every opportunity, whether the lyrics call for it or not.

I know. I know. They are enjoying that as much as I enjoyed singing “The Roof Is On Fire” and all the inappropriate lyrics that went with it. Well, I’m old now (but unlike Yusuf/Cat Stevens, I’m embittered) and I no longer remember how to have fun. I keep yelling “get off my lawn” but the music is so loud they can’t hear me.