Vuvuzelas

If you've seen any of the World Cup, you've heard the vuvuzela. If you haven't, you might want to use this miraculous Internet connection to call for rescue from the lead-lined cupboard at the bottom of the Marianas Trench you're improbably trapped in.

You may have noticed how soccer differs from other American sports: they don't use their hands, they don't take breaks every 30 seconds and there's the constant nightmarish drone of a the million pestilent flies of Beelzebub, Hellish King Of Lies. That comes from the vuvuzela, a meter-long plastic horn South African soccer fans blow to show their support for the sport and contempt for everything else in existence.

Vuvezelas can sound at 131 dB, louder than a jet engine (yet somehow it's only called terrorism when someone brings an actual jet into a populated building). A new model reduces the noise by 20 dB, meaning the vuvuzela lite is merely as loud as 10 pneumatic hammers drilling into your skull. In accordance with the rule that 'lite' anything has to suck compared to the original but still be terrible for you.

Vuvuzelas are now made of plastic and limited to one meter in length because otherwise they could be used as weapons, which should tell you everything you need to know about the antisocial assholes who blow them. Oh, and it was invented by a man who voluntarily nicknames himself "Saddam."

Freddie "Saddam" Maake created the vuvuzela, just in case someone couldn't tell he's a douchebag by looking at him.

Saddam claims he's been ripped off and hasn't received his true reward for inventing it, which is obviously true, as he's still alive.

These abominations unto Earth and all Her creatures have been linked with permanent hearing loss and are the ICBM of spreading communicable disease: all you need is a mouth, big lungs, a plastic-projection-tube and to be the sort of filthy lout who'd do that in a capacity crowd. Stephen King didn't come up with that level of horror in The Stand. Even UK soccer fans are complaining about the noise, and they consider it girly to mention that you've lost an eye.

When the instrument itself warns against use near other people it may be time to stop.

The Nazareth Baptist Church, a combination of the Old Testament and Zulu culture which makes our fundamentalists look like the Nobel Committee, have begun legal action claiming that the vuvuzela is part of their religious heritage. They also claim that their founder Isaiah Shembe was bigger than Jesus and that players hearing the noise are stealing the power of their Holy Spirit*, but let's not get distracted: These guys want to stop the vuvuzela from being blown at matches. Well done, soccer fans, you've made us agree with fundamentalists so insane we didn't even know they existed a paragraph ago.

*Apparently he's the God of Deafness and Being Pissed Off

...and people retroactively ruining (for the second time) the actually funny work of comedians who could create instead of copy.

FIFA won't be solving this problem. FIFA President Sepp Blatter is on record as saying "we should not try to Europeanise an African World Cup" - apparently under the impression that Asians, Americans and Australians don't count or care about hearing. And since natural throat-bursting justice is all too rare, we're going to have to solve this ourselves:

Specially Trained Bald Eagles

If we can train bald eagles to tear the eyes from vuvuzelizers they'll never be endangered again - from what we can hear during matches, the entire population of South Africa is potential prey. The incredibly patriotic crowd control method will also force American to care about the World Cup, as well as replacing every "funniest home video" show with constant clips of some idiot sitting down, deciding to annoy the ever-loving shit out of everyone in range, and having his face ripped off by feathered justice. Once the World Cup ends, these brave birds can be retrained to listen for exhaust whistles, motorbikes that can be heard from more than a block away, and the word "synergize."

Poisoned Vuvuzelas

We could prepare special noisemakers for those who want them. We can't be sure poison will work, as anyone prepared to stand at ground zero of that noise for 90 minutes clearly isn't human, but whatever else they are we know they must have mouths. Which means they probably have asses.

A corollary

By coating the mouthpiece in powerful laxative, the next time they stand there and brace themselves to powerfully blow they'll get two ends instead of one, and even they may be able to comprehend publicly shitting themselves as a bad thing (this is only a possibility: they certainly can't detect any other social conventions).

Legalize Murder

These are capacity crowds so we can guarantee that for every person blowing a vuvuzela his 20 neighbors are ready to kick him to death. This will also allay South Africa's PR fears over the security of visitors - compared the in-stadium murders the random slayings outside of regular events will be almost negligible. Beyond legality, the Darwin Awards should upgrade to offering a bounty on every corpse recovered with a vuvuzela jammed through their esophagus.

Horny Elephants

Some say that thevuvuzela is to recreate the traditional sound of elephants, which is not only bullshit but gives us a great idea: We collect an army of horny bull elephants. Then we dose them with the pachyderm equivalent of Jagermeister, let them loose in the stadium, and those noise polluters will see what a real asshole can do with a meter long tube of pain.

Shame The Users

A British Broadcasting Corporation commentator described the sound as "quite irritating," and if you don't watch much BBC that's the polite UK equivalent of a Jerry Springer victim pulling a knife on set. We get a few Brits on the speakers, tell the audience they're really "very disappointed" in them, and anyone who doesn't shut up is simply arrested on official charges of putting up a very poor show, indeed.

Legal Action

New legislation requiring vuvuzela manufacturers to be followed 24/7 by the constant unrelenting noise of their own creations will be implemented the very second we're in charge of things*.

*Also applied to those behind Justin Bieber, "Wavin' Flag," and the producer of Jon & Kate Plus 8 will be made to live in her distended abdomen.

Filter the Noise from Television Broadcasts

We have the sonic sorcery to create T-Pain but we can't get rid of an annoying noise? Can't a simple band-pass filter eliminate this annoying frequency from the stadium mikes? (YES).

Why do we even have stadium mics? Are we hoping for an infinite typewriters kind of thing where 40 thousand lunatics screaming about a small ball suddenly don't sound like the collapse of civilization?