Blood and Wine

The art of yelling.

There is an art to yelling. With enough practice of, say, a few years, both from the receiving and giving ends, a connoisseur can pretty much tell the difference between some wannabe punk and a trained drill instructor. It's not very apparent at first since you're probably more worried about this guy blowing out your eardrums. And with what all that yelling might lead to -- usually a little field trip to discover the local jail. But there is. Some people think that yelling is just talking very, very loudly. They're amateurs.

The objective of yelling is to create tension. Really. Whether it's coaxing the men's military enthusiasm and discipline for the march with a sweet blend of unreasonably demanding perfectionism laced with bouts of confusing compassion to scaring the hell out of that old lady into handing over the only money she ever had since 1983 so you can buy that comic book with cute bunnies on the cover, yelling is about tension. And that's crucial because if you sound like a speech disability class and people have to write it down word by word so they can decode it later, you can just forget about it. There's no tension. Yelling must get the message across loud and clear -- with emphasis on the loud.

In any case, here are some pointers so you'll get it right the next time you see that comic book with the bunnies that you've just got to have:

1. Project that damned voice. Amateurs -- especially the ladies -- tend to yell through the voicebox in the throat. That's bad because:

(a) you'll sound like a girl -- which is actually not a bad thing for the ladies because most guys still find the shrill feminine scream to be inexplicably disarming, leading them to do strange things like buy flowers and Hallmark cards, but absolutely unacceptable for guys. Please, boys -- this is not the 80s anymore; get that mascara off and cut your damned hair. The only thing you're going to get showing that whiny voice of yours to the world is an amused look on the guy's face before he sinks a fist into that yapping flap of yours. Maybe you'll sound manlier with your teeth in your throat.

(b) you'll damage your voicebox. Seriously, who's never had a wild night at the bar screaming their lungs off at those girls, erm, dancing, only to find you can't manage more than a squeak afterwards, killing off any chances you ever had scoring with anybody. Better luck at a gay bar.

So project that voice. Use your lungs and diaphragm. Don't know how? Not my problem. Go find a choir singer or drill instructor near you. Projection gives strength and volume to the yelling voice with minimal damage. I say minimal damage because it's not no damage. Don't say I didn't warn you that everyone will know the next morning that you were the idiot who was losing it and yelling "Me Tarzan. Me want booty!" when the dancing girls came out at the party last night.

Practice helps. I remember this leadership camp when I was fourteen where the drill instructors forced us to project our voices across a soccer field repeatedly until we could hear it echo off this hill in the horizon that was, like, a million miles away. Years later, all that practice would come useful in announcing to the whole hostel (and probably much of Bukit Timah) that some guy in Hall F was pretty pissed off about the noise coming from those damned Chinese High School kids upstairs.

2. Be coherent. There's nothing more humiliating than launching a 20-point tirade at someone only to get a puzzled look and "I'm sorry, could you repeat that? Didn't get anything after you piece of at the beginning."

It is vitally important that what little content you have is transmitted intact. You are not a walrus. Walruses have tusks that make them automatically scary when they open their mouths. You do not. Disgusting teeth and bad breath just aren't the same.

3. Wrap it up -- make them tell you they understand. This is a double-edged sword. While it is the best way to humiliate your victims by forcing them to verbally submit, you also potentially open yourself to them giving you that puzzled look and going "I'm sorry, could you..." Which is the second most humiliating thing that could happen to you, the first being a fist in the kisser knocking you clean out in a spray of blood and broken teeth.

Which leads us to our last, and possibly most important, tip of the day:

4. Always be ready to dodge.

I hope you learned something from all this today, kids -- just a bit of what I took away from my years yelling and being yelled at in the Malaysian Red Crescent Society. Which I'm sure those Chinese High School boys I yelled at yesterday right in their faces for waking us up much too early on Teachers' Day appreciated. And by early, I mean 10am.

Never give former drill instructors a reason to yell at you.
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