Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah


Listen very carefully, I will say this only once.
Well, OK, I will probably say it more than once, but I will paraphrase it and make it seem like new material every time.
Have you ever noticed that humans are crap at truly new ideas?
Yes, things are being invented everyday, yes, technology allows us to create this widget and that flat thin thing that makes our lives faster and more expensive but think about this....
The Internet is an extension of the telephone, which took the place of letter writing, which was invented after paper was invented which happened after cave painting was all the rage which came about after words were used which took the place of grunting. Therefore and ipso facto, the Internet is sophisticated grunting.
Don't believe me?
Spend an hour cruising the webisphere.
Most of what you read there is grunting.
And I'm not just talking about redtube.
Some days I dream about not turning on my computer.
I wonder what will happen.
Will I fall out of the loop so dramatically that I will instantly lose all credibility in the modern world?
Will I miss out on that one email that could turn my life around?
Will my children forget me?
It's doubtful, but I am not courageous enough to try.
A sad confession.
Today online I watched a 4 minute demonstration on how to wear evening style false eyelashes for the party season. This then led to a 5 minute discussion between a 'journalist' and the owner of an 'Eyelash Bar' in Sydney about knowing which false eyelash was suitable for which occasion.
I sat there enraptured and drooling, transfixed because I simply couldn't turn away.
It was on the SMH site, the SMH is a newspaper, newspapers are credible, thus the information had value....right?
9 minutes of my life I could have been looking for a cure for cancer, and here I was fascinated by the intensity of the topic.
I caught myself grunting 'hmmm' several times throughout the broadcast.
I was actually dumbing down by the second and yet begging for more.
" Yes," I was saying to the eyelash technician of dubiously arched eyebrows for a man, " teach me more of your ways. I can see your point. How could they have missed this at college?"
It's not just the web that does this to me.
Even as I type, a show called 'Extreme Fishing' is playing out it's melodramas in silence on the tele in front of me.
Every so often the musky, but suitably buff, outdoorsy types on this testosterone heavy half hour waves his hands about and I am distracted from my writing and look up to check if he has, in fact, caught the requisite 7 pounder, or if he has failed in his attempt and must endure the tension that is brought about by only paying for a single cameraman and sound guy in failing light.
Will he catch the right fish before the sun sets?
And if he does, will there be enough light to capture the shot?
God knows, all the fish will no doubt be gone tomorrow, so it's 'make or break'.....and I am so enraptured at his plight my hands are beginning to sweat.
Yesterday the news in England was all about the fact that the BBC did not disclose that its team of worthy documentary makers had not actually crawled into a polar bears den and filmed a mummy Polar bear with her cubs. Instead they had taken footage from a zoo and spliced it in.
This is what you look like when you get close to a polar bear.
Personally, I'm good with the decision to fake it.
But my point was, none of this is really new.
It's just communication, innit?
And whether it's done via drum and smoke, or wireless cloud puffs of ethernet, talking and time wasting are nothing new.
Nor is 'smack talking', which I am reliably informed by the Urban Dictionary is being derogatory towards others, which has been around since forever.
Give a human 10 minutes and another person to look at and fault will be found.
I do it all the time, and I am not even that committed to the human race.
Frankly, I think most of us are so stupid we should be drowned in buckets at birth.
Seriously.
And quite frankly, given what I have told you here today, I know for certain I would have drowned me long ago.
Being inordinatly backward is perfectly acceptable if you can communicate.
Even if everything you say is drivel.
It is the way of things.
And for as long as we fill our lives with the prattling of others, any real ideas, anything TRULY new ,will be lost in the diatribe of the moronic.
What a depressing thought.
And not a new one.