Crab Claw syndrome - its so 2009

May 9th, 2009

So there I was on the underground in London. And I did the unthinkable, I did the one thing that creates panic in the urban community, I became an untouchable, a biological terrorist of unspeakable proportions - I coughed. The office workers around me immediately covered their own mouths and noses in a desperate attempt to ward off any virus I might be carrying - it was like the plague had come to London - as I left the tube I expected to see salesmen offering the bones of saints as the only real protection from the impending apocalypse. I wanted to explain to the people around me that a virus is very very small, and could actually sneak between their fingers anyway, but I didn’t that would have meant breathing on them and I was concerned that this could only lead to them entering into a series of convulsions and potential coma.

The point was, I wanted to explain that holding your arm in that position for the 10 minutes that I stood next to you was likely to become uncomfortable, and perhaps even painful after a while, inducing RSI type symptoms that would be quite unpleasant. But I knew that wouldn’t worry them - because RSI isnt named after an animal.

Then it hit me, this is where we are going wrong, we need to find a good animal to link RSI to, then people would start to think about the issues (well panic anyway and thats the same thing) The media would cover the story daily and there would be high tech presentations on the news of the growth of the hand plague as it swept the nation. It had worked for Avian Flu, it had worked for Mad Cow disease and was sweeping the planet as swine flu. I realised that 5 letters was a little long for the editors of the Sun, Avian flu was bird flu, Swine flu had become Pig flu. So clearly Lobster arm condition was far too long. Instead RSI needed to be rebranded as Crab Claw syndrome. Thinkabout it, we could have great graphics of arms metamorphising into pincers, Crabs could be seen crawling across towns to illustrate the impact and even the weeklies could happily carry headlines from distraught wives “I was powerless as my husband mutated into a crab before my eyes !!”

Come on buy the badges, come to Crab Aid at Wembley this summer, buy the single - “Do they know its an ergonomic keyboard and voice recognition solution” Youll all be humming it this christmas

Alternatively we could just continue to explain the issues and solutions calmly and rationally - but wheres the fun in that - I want to meet Bono !