Be careful if you find your way into a karaoke bar in the Philippines! This from The New York Times about a spate of killings in Philippines karaoke bars, all seemingly associated with Frank Sinatra's hit 'My Way' -

 

"The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling 'My Way' in karaoke bars over the years . . . but the news media have recorded at least a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a sub-category of crime dubbed the 'My Way Killings'. The owner of one Filipino singing school explained the song's connection with violence thus: 'The lyrics evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in the singers, as if you're somebody when you're really nobody. It covers up your failures. That's why it leads to fights.'"

 

Wonder what happens if you break out into a version of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly"? Slow strangulation?

Oh dear! One of the best-known Filipina karaoke warblers, Imedla Marcos - she of the shoes, the rape of the country's treasury, she who believed her beauty, her jewels and designer clothes were necessary to bring joy to the lives of the the people (the little people whom her dictator husband rendered amongst the poorest in the world), is making a political comeback by running for the Philippine Congress at the age of 80. She said yesterday -

 

It's true I'm 80 years old, but I can run and be a grandmother who can love and embrace the people more than a mother can

And one of her first campaign promises? To redress one of the country's "major injustices." Oh really? Does she intend to end poverty, reduce the power and staggering wealth of the clan families, improve the country's dire education system?

 

No. The "major injustice" is successive presidents' denial of her wish to bury her husband in the heroes' cemetery in Manila.

 

Long may he continue to rot in his glass case coffin in the north of the country.