After posting my last blog on Xenophobia I was pretty exhausted and poured myself a drink. I thought it was a good opportunity to chill out and watch the news - that’s when the trouble started.
I was half asleep and found myself channel hopping from one news cast to the next. I saw vague pictures in and out of focus before my eyes, faces talking to me in distorted images Dr Phil leaned into my lounge asking me ‘What do you do when you’re driving and you’re confronted by a drunk driver? With my mind reeling I thought to myself, well let’s get him out from behind the wheel, take his car keys away and because of our caring community spirit, let’s take him down to the local bar and get him to buy us a round - suddenly Oprah tapped my shoulder ‘Bill what would you do if your daughter weighed 400lbs?’ In my drowsiness I replied ‘If she gets in an elevator with Pavarotti I’m not getting in with the two of them.” And then from nowhere Robert Mugabe appeared before me looking thin and emancipated wearing his most modest shirt, it’s the green one with photographs of himself on back and front. ‘I’ve had diarrhea for two weeks I think I’m melting’ he taunted me waving a Paris Hilton blow up doll. ‘I love this kind of chick’ he uttered ‘they help inflation and I’m taking her to the run-off election party’.

It was terrible, a horrific experience. I woke up and realized what my problem is – I have a phobia, and it’s a lot worse than a cold. Everywhere I go there is a television set looking at me, following my every move, in the local bar, in the super market, in my bedroom everywhere even on my mobile phone. It’s driving me crazy, I’m beside myself and no matter what I do, I cannot escape its gaze.
I immediately searched for Phobias on Wikipedia and was devastated by the severity of my condition – there was a list of at least 40 phobias available. I had an entire menu to choose from, it was ‘phobias to go, with fries’
Okay, after some extensive research what I did establish was, I was suffering from one of the most common phobias known to modern society. It’s called Telephobia. Now to you folks out there who might suffer from this debilitating disease I would like to warn you that some of the side effects of Telephobia are: A reluctance to play chess, a resistance to reading books, compulsive nose picking, having no conversation, getting no visitors, rushing foreplay in the ad breaks, not sending emails, trashing the lounge furniture during power cuts (we have them in South Africa) and in extreme cases having surgery to make your bladder capacity keep in line with the length of the commercial breaks.

You might not be aware of this but another phobias that’s out there is Shoephobia. This phobia is of pandemic proportion particularly amongst the Asian nations - they hate their shoes. They don’t mind wearing them around the streets and when they go shopping but whenever they can they leave them outside – they’re terrified of their shoes. I have a Chinese friend his name is Wong Shoo, he stalks around places of worship stealing shoes and burning them – some say he has lost his sole. A Doctor with very bad eyesight down the end of town treated Wong for yellow jaundice for two years until he realized he was Chinese.
Now if you’re cruising public toilets late at night and you meet a guy by accident in cubicle one and you beat him up and leave him for dead, you have a problem. If you catch your teenage son wearing his sisters clothes and he tells you it’s because he didn’t have time to pick up his laundry – and you go crazy, you have a problem, no you’re wrong, it’s not a George Michael Phobia - it’s called Homophobia. I find Homophobics interesting because they are capable of being extremely violent against gay people and I’m sure you’ve watched the news where you see shots of convicted homophobics with covered heads being escorted by the Police, have you noticed - why is it they’re usually 7 foot tall dudes built like football players? They make Mike Tyson look anorexic. Maybe you have to be big in cubicle one. I have a theory here folks. Homophobics who hit on gays and carry that kind of hatred, should take a careful look at themselves, they might just discover an itch of their own that has to be scratched. Check it out babe.

Okay here’s a great phobia, it’s a Hippopotomstrosesquipedaliophobia which is a fear of long words. I can see you falling about but it’s true. Hey, I have to go it’s almost news time, and I have to hide under the bed where they’ll never find me.