GrodsCorp has long been scathing of Sally Morrell’s vacuous and anti-intellectual dribblings in the Herald Sun, but anti-blogging blogger Jim Schembri has staked a serious claim for the Sally Morrell equivalent at The Age, having written one of the most stunningly vapid grade eleven essays to ever be shat onto the opinion page. The lame by numbers article begins:

When taking the weighty decision to get into shape by investing in a “home gym”, one must stay focused on the primary purpose of the enterprise, which is to get healthy and prolong life, not to kill yourself while attempting to operate the aforementioned home gym. Thus, I heartily recommend to anyone contemplating the purchase of a bargain-priced treadmill to get their head examined, promptly.

Even if anyone gave a flying fuck about the process of buying a treadmill, or if the subject of buying a treadmill was worthy of the opinion page, Schembri doesn’t provide any insight into the subject, instead rolling out the most pathetic cliches and tired jokes imaginable.

You should have heard this chick [salesperson] go. She went on about how much time it would save, about energy-burning co-efficients, about reduced joint stress, the in-built calorie counter, the free pedometer. She even worked in a reference to NASA, which I didn’t quite catch, but it had something to do with anti-gravity technology or exercising in orbit. She made it sound too great, and her enthusiasm was so infectious I felt that leaving the store without this treadmill would be the biggest mistake of my life. So we rang it up and home it came.

Still awake? If so, I bet you’ll never guess what happened next.

Assembling it was a trial, and for a while it looked like I was going to burn more calories putting the thing together than I ever would using it. But once it was in one piece I felt the world open up before me. “This is it,” I thought. “I shall be Adonis, just like the guys in the gym.”

He had trouble assembling it! How original! I bet you’ll never guess what happened next.

Then I got on and gave it a go. Or tried to. I need to stress here that there was nothing wrong with the machine. All the parts moved the way they were supposed to. It merely required ventricle-bursting strain to get the thing going. Sweat showered off me. You know those old movies about ancient Egypt where you see the slaves pushing those big stone blocks up the ramps to build the pyramids? Those guys are my brothers.

He didn’t like using it! How original! I bet you’ll never guess what happened next.

So what was I to do? What else? Leave it right there, in the middle of the living room. Eight months later the treadmill wound up the way 95 per cent of all home-gym equipment winds up: covered in towels, jackets, socks and shirts. I was going to sell the dreaded thing but then thought, no, this is actually garbage, so the next hard-rubbish day it was gone. I even watched through the window as they carted it away.

He didn’t use it and it sat in the corner collecting dust! How original!

Jim Shembri, you are the hackest of hacks. You are a disgrace to the profession of journalism. If anyone needed any further proof that The Age was a paper no longer worth even a tenth of the cover price they need look no further than the presence of this abomination on today’s opinion page.