FTW
DemonSpawn
Date:
14/11/2004
I've been struggling to find something original to write about. You see, I have two weeks of exams coming up, and I think I've hit writer's block. Not good.
I went through all the usual stuff, like siblings, poetry, reality TV shows, and it all seems so stale.
I could talk about how shallow and cruel the horse industry is, but that's been done to death.
I could point out the idiocy of Pop Idols or whatever it's called. I mean, let's all sing someone else's songs, the popular ones, please, and see who does it the best. That sounds very much like karaoke to me, but not nearly as much fun because they're all actually taking it seriously, and there's no beer.
However, it's all yesterday's news.
I could talk about how music these days has lost all its originality, and how assholes who call themselves 'musicians' are the laziest fuckers in the history of the industry. All of the great hits of yesteryear are now being dredged up from their resting places as samples in an electronic version of projectile vomit. Because people cannot think for themselves anymore. Creating real music is hard work, but they just see an easy way to make money. But it seems that's the way things are going, and everyone is quite happy to sit back and let it happen.
No, I'm not giving up. I'll only give up when I'm fairly certain that either myself or the world is about to go belly-up.
I actually keep thinking about the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I don't know how many of you have read it, but if you haven't, get a copy, stupid! It's possibly one of the most excellent books I have ever read.
What really gets me is in the first couple of chapters where Arthur Dent's house is about to be demolished, and Ford Prefect talks the foreman into lying down in Arthur's place in the mud so they can go for a pint. I canned myself! I mean, it can only be a pommie with an intellect like that! Although it did take some skillful verbal manipulation on Ford's part.
Anyway, while Arthur's house is being demolished, those Vogon ships demolish the Earth to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and Ford and Arthur end up on the Vogon ship as stowaways.
I think human appreciation of Vogon poetry is the reason why no other species from outer space has made official contact with our planet. Although in the Guide, humans were considered “mostly harmless”.
To get back to the point, I recall getting that same feeling as Ford Prefect got just before the Earth was demolished. It has happened on many occasions over the last couple years. Most of the time, it has been when I have listened to the radio and heard one of those experiments in musical necromancy. Other times, it's happened while watching those awful reality TV shows, where you know that if it really was reality, those lazy stupid fuckers would all be dead. Watching the news also brings it on, as does going places and seeing the advertising everywhere.
You know the feeling I'm talking about? Douglas Adams will have to explain for me:
“In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is never possible to be further than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn't far, so such signals are too minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this moment under great stress, and he was born 600 light years away in the near vicinity of Betelgeuse, ” (Adams, 1979: 27).
Good book. Adams knows what it's like to feel completely doomed through no fault of your own, but by the stupidity of the rest of the species.
So I leave you with a really profound and potentially revolutionary statement I managed to pick up on my travels, and which I'm sure will not change your lives one bit:
