Life in Vietnam has its privileges: for example, a karaoke machine on every corner and in a fair portion of the personal domiciles in the city. Did I say privileges? Well, privileges, punishments, it’s mostly a question of semantics, isn’t it? Rather like ‘torture’ and ‘enhanced interrogation,’ not that I’m making analogies.

Here in the developing world, a karaoke machine is as necessary a part of life as the With this simple bit of technology, easily entertained local residents serenade their friends, peers, colleagues, and the immediate neighborhood with “traditional” songs pirated from the Chinese and re-rendered in the vernacular of synthesizers and electronic drum kits. The singers typically do not have any formal training, nor, indeed, bathroom showers in which to train. (Or even bathrooms, judging from the number of Vietnamese men urinating on the side of the road at all hours of the day). This does nothing to dampen their zeal for the pastime, however, and they indulge it with masochistic lust, apparently nowhere more so than in my apartment block.

Given the number of Vietnamese men hopped up on locally-brewed bia hoi and yowling like car-struck cats into microphones every evening beginning at dusk, one might expect there to be more violence — as for example in this striking bit of reportage from the Philippines, where bloody carnage often accompanies the performance of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” among other similarly incendiary fare.

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

Many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks, and the country’s many Sinatra lovers are practicing self-censorship out of perceived self-preservation.

It seems karaoke-induced butchery is not limited to the Philippines.

In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Karaoke-related assaults have also occurred in the United States, including at a Seattle bar where a woman punched a man for singing Coldplay’s “Yellow” after criticizing his version.

In fairness, you’ve got to admit John Denver and Coldplay will have that effect on people almost anywhere. I find it interesting that Vietnam’s not on that list. After some reflection, I realize this must have to do with the facts that 1) there are no guns in Vietnam (although you can blow up a cow with a claymore if you know the right people), and 2) drunkenness is Vietnam is not undertaken lightly but with the seriousness as befits life in a developing, communist-ruled nation.