I keep trying. I do. I get excited about the prospect of going to karaoke, and I spend a lot of time thinking about what song I'm going to sing and telling everyone about it, and belting out a few bars to show the world just how totally incredibly rocking and super-D-awesome I fabulously am going to be, like a rock star. The way that rock stars rock? That is what I will be doing. Because I am—and I might have mentioned this already, but it totally bears repeating—a rock star.

I am ready to rock! Woo! We go to the karaoke bar, and we page through the giant binders to pick out the songs that will make everyone in the bar pause, and stop, and stare and suddenly feel conflicted in their secret hearts and shivery in their pants—do they want us, or do they want to be us? Or is it both? And is that weird? Man, we're hot.

Everyone gets up and sings and everyone does so well and I admire my pretty friends who do so well and everyone is cheering and yay, karaoke, it is fun and we all rule! Then it is my turn, and things break. What it is, is...I don't know what it is. I know that I am not musical. I know that I cannot carry a tune even if it were a nuclear weapon in a bucket. I know that if I met a note on the street, it would beat me to death with its own shoe for the way I have tortured its people over the course of my lifetime. I know I can't really sing, though sometimes I am convinced that I am not so bad—not actually good as per the strictest definition of goodness and possibly even vague competence, but surely I do not kill babies and dogs when I am in the shower, right? Maybe? Shit.

Let's assume, though, that my voice is actually passable when I am on a barstool with the jukebox blasting, in the shower with the water on full-bore, taking a road trip with the radio going to 11. You can keep your stupid Grammy—I just want to lift my voice in praise, hallelujah! to "Sexy Back" and enjoy the way I am not actively killing anyone. Probably. But when I get up on stage, everything is different. It totally is. The acoustics are different and the choruses don't go the way they're supposed to, and I don't understand why the karaoke monitor is telling me that I have to keep singing this one note when that is a lie or maybe I'm dumb and I never hear the intro bars or whatever they're called, and I can't hear myself at all, and I start screaming because no one else can hear me either if I can't, right? I forget about the whole "microphone" thing. It has come to my attention, additionally, that I never actually sing the words at the right time they're supposed to be sung. There is a Doppler affect happening, when I am on stage. It is not flattering. Or pleasant. For anyone.

You know, I've had spectacular and notable karaoke failures in the past, but somehow, I was too dumb to let that stop me. But now, there's this video. Which I watched for a full minute. And then I had to turn the sound off because I couldn't take it any more. And I wanted to close my eyes but I was afraid to miss something awful I did that I should really know about. With the advent of this video, I officially give up on karaoke. I am not bad enough to be spectacular and funny; I am just bad enough to be a little sad. And to make others pretty sad for me as well.

The fact that I have not only come down with the Cold From Hell (which knocked poor E. out of the loop for a full 24 hours) that makes me want to die a lot, but I have additionally lost my voice entirely. I go "croak" and it hurts and that is the punishment I deserve for yelling OH OH OH OH, SWEET LOVE OF MINE at a room full of people, fully three notes behind the actual song. Every time I cough and it is like razors across a blackboard in my soul and knives in my head, that will remind me, and maybe even scar me deeply enough to keep me away from the mic, for all time.