Idle Vice

I have usually got a sizeable number of reasons to feel shame. Oh not the grand shame of a serial poisoner or some other wickedness, just the normal common or garden variety. I’m thinking of the sort that stems from leaving the dishes in the sink. But there is ‘leaving the dishes’ and Leaving The Dishes!’ There’s a lot of difference … This morning I have more than my usual “fair share” of shame … though what’s fair about my terms of judgement I cannot say. We are, when all is said and done, our own most pitiless judges. My sister paid me a visit yesterday as family concern mounts over my financial solvency … if not my sanity. Reason to feel shame number one then. The general condition of the inside of my house has declined at a rate that resembled free-fall and which seemed generally oblivious of the concept of such a thing as “terminal velocity”. This is so important! I hate untidiness. I loathe dirt grime. But I do not seem to have a shred of a work ethic. Yes. When I force myself to clean up I sit down and admire my handiwork and I feel pleased with it … but a few days later when the clutter and dust begins to reassert itself I’m right back at square one. I can try to bombard myself with logic … go through all the reasons why the aphorisms concerning prognostication make perfect sense and then I step over the mess and go and do something pointlessly satisfying. I’m hopeless and beyond help.

The Work Ethic - Defining the Definition

Ok I'm not even going to attempt it ... well not all in one go. A quick Google search reveals only two significant foci of the internet community's obsession with the concept:

1. Employee focussed desire to shrug off wage-slavery
2. Employer focussed obsession with exacting the full pound of flesh

Eh? do the search yourself, if you want to. The headline link is just an example of a sparsely served genre ... not an affirmation of a specific endorsement. I'm looking for answers, too! OK? So first principles is always the best place to start. Work, as a human activity, has to be defined so here goes. Work is any activity that has a specific goal that -- if not achieved -- causes the effort involved in the attempt to be regarded as wasted. Put another way, all animal activity can be divided into 2 simple flavours: work and leisure. At the most basic level this means eating and sleeping. Oh ... bloody hell ... I need to lay down ...

Ring Ring

Am I the only person on the planet who gets pissed off every time I hear a Nokia phone's distinctive ring tone from the TV? Even when it isn't the one my phone is set to I still jump up and start looking for the damned thing. TV producers need to find the audio equivalent of "555" ... Meanwhile there's something else about TV that's been bugging me recently. As an unemployable unemployed person I have a greater degree of access to daytime TV than is probably good for me. Mostly I don't actually watch it ... it's just on in the background ... mostly because my TV set is behind me as I sit here at my PC. I have to say that when heard and not seen, current British TV programme making values have gone down the toilet ... and I blame it all on Blue Peter. OK now you expect me to justify that .... Prgramme Scenario Fresh faced non-entity with chirpy manner arrives at a non-descript suburban home. Inside we meet Mr and Mrs Average who are either

• eager to get on TV but not eager enough for Jerry Springer style experience
• to dumb for Countdown and too lairy for The Weakest Link
• so mean that they really will sell grandad's war medals to raise a piffling couple of grand for their daughter's wedding/big family holiday/new kitchen/wife's boob job
• ... or else they actually are that stupid they need help finding out they own 'some stuff'.

Two more non-entities - "experts" - appear and ransack Mr and Mrs's A's home. Quite where their field of expertise lays is anyone's guess ... but one thing is certain; dear old Mr and Mrs A will be found in possession of an astonishingly large number of Clarice Cliffe crocks or else a whole attic-full of 1950's toys still in original packaging ... or both. The tedium escalates. The show adjourns to the sale rooms where Mr and Mrs A's 'treasures' go under the auctioneer's hammer. (How on earth did someone actually think this would be entertaining?) Undeterred non-entity numbero uno, narrates the whole fucking auction in the the most pretentiously paternalistic style you could imagine but imagine Blue peter presenters narrating their annual safari to Kenya with Princess Anne and you're getting the picture ... it was OK when you were 10 ... not so good when 40 is but a fond memory. Meanwhile ... lots one to four all go for excellent prices well above the "experts" valuation then lot #5 valued at £80 goes for £75 and non-entity is trying far too hard to make it interesting and I'm just thinking I couldn't care less. It used to be the case that TV could accurately be described as "radio with pictures", which if you stop to think about it isn't really a negative comment. All has now changed. TV is now pictures with radio and that is a very bad thing. It is true that a picture can be worth a thousand words and that is what TV should be a significant augmentation to that which sound-only media can achieve. It ain't doing it though. A far worse example is parlous state of the modern documentary ... they can 'look' pretty good on the trails but in reality they are merely radio programs with an unlovely slideshow. Such stuff makes a mockery of both the medium and the audience. To substitute "filmed-action" scenes which might actually enhance and improve the narrative with stupid, out of focus 'generic' stock images is lazy and insulting. In most cases a story can be better illustrated by a good entertainer, a few toy soldiers and a tray of sand. Anyone else remember Michael Bentine's talent for recreating epics in a sandbox? There's a moral here somehwere ...

Waiting For Armageddon To Come

Intrigued by the title, huh? Hope you stick with me for a while. I thought that I'd better start this thing while there's still time. It has been my opinion for some time that the world is kinda holding its breath. It's as though we're all waiting for something if not actually earth-shattering then at least apocalyptic enough that there won't be anyone left alive who isn't instantly aware that the agenda has changed. Changed in such a way that all avenues of retreat into previous lifestyles are irrevocably cut off, all established patterns of thought and belief are rendered instantly obsolete. I'm pretty sure that this pregnant pause in humanity's consciousness is a numerolgical thing ... a millenial effect. As in everyone feels a bit sort of cheated and let down. We woke to the 21st century and realised, for the first time--more or less--that the groovy future full of robots and other funky techno-bling that we were 'promised' in our '60's and '70's childhoods had sort of snuck in under the door while weren't paying attention.