Are Adrenalin junkies sick?

I'm a huge fan of Maximum Exposure, Sports Disasters, World's Most Amazing Videos - you know, the stuff they show on AXN. What awes me is not so much the "man triumphing over nature" mantra of these shows but the incredible stupidity of man in getting himself into trouble. I mean, how else would you describe the act of jumping roof-to-roof on a bicycle, crashing down and breaking some bones and saying on the hospital bed that you can't wait to heal so you could try again?

Ok, so most of these home-made daredevils are babies - young and always hungry for attention. They practice hard to prepare for the obligatory cameraman and audience - usually their friends who dutifully egg them on to an inch of their lives. These are the true amatuers, the wannabe schoolyard heroes. Been there, done that. We all go through our stupid phases in search of character.

But surely grown ups are different right? Well not according to these reality shows. Just watch the post-botched-stunt interviews. Notice how the adult pro and a 12th grader all tell the same story. From their hospital beds with an arm or leg amputated and flesh torn off their faces, they'd say really smart things like, "As long as I have my other arm/leg and I can move about on a wheelchair, I will continue to race / skydive / basejump / whatever. I just can't do anything else. It makes me feel alive."

Err, come again? The only way to feel alive is to be an inch of death? You mean being of sound health and having all limbs intact is to feel dead? Somehow I think survivors of the real reality show - the victims of natural disaster - will beg to differ.

There are those who are unwillingly thrust into disaster and those who willingly seek to cheat it for thrills. The latter is an addiction, like chain smoking. Losing one's left lung to cancer will not deter a hardcore smoker when the right lung is still functioning. Some will admit they can only stop when they lose both lungs, have their cancerous lips removed or when they are dead. Like William Hung, they'll say they have no regrets. So strong is the desire to quench one's addiction that nothing else matters. Not even the impact of their deaths to their loved ones. That is the true reality behind this type of reality show. But then I'd be a party pooper to mention it wouldn't I.

Now I believe everyone has a right to choose their own brand of excitement. Thrill seekers can base-jump, scream in glee on the way down and splatter their brain cells on the rocks below for all I care. They know the risk. But what's really funny is how these juveniles talk all Lao Tze-like with the triumph-of-man-over-nature shit and emerge with bloodied faces and bones broken in 5 places. To think they'll be spending the rest of their lives of their lives going in and out of therapy for a twisted backbone or some shit, and making alcohol and painkillers part of their daily diet to numb the pain. "You have to pay the price," these kids would ominously say with a broad cheeky smile.

But if surviving the odds of nature is their thing and if they're up for a real honest-to-goodness challenge, then I do have a recommendation. Take a plane ride and parachute down into the deep African wilderness or the Amazon jungle alone with nothing save the clothes on your back. If you come out in one piece after 3 months, then you have beaten the odds and truly deserve my respect. But all this skateboarding on top of little handrails outside the library and driving race cars around a circuit protected with helmets, gravel traps and tyre barriers, that'sno challenge. You stand nowhere next to those who have truly survived war and natural disaster.

Meanwhile I will continue to get my kicks from Max X and the World's Most Amazing Videos, not to celebrate man's triumph over nature but to marvel at the unlimited bounds of human stupidity.