Man, in his stupidity and arrogance ( what am I, the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy? ), has a habit of inventing things intended to make life easier, but without exception, they have the inverse effect of making life infinitely more difficult.
Eg. 1 ): The wheel.
The intention: To get from A-to-B quicker. Move more people and stuff around.
The reality: Spending the equivalent of three years of your life in traffic jams, moving at a speed roughly a third of that of a camel in 3000BC.
Eg. 2 ): Air travel.
The intention: To visit far-flung corners of the globe, facilitating trade, international relationships and ethnic diversity.
The reality: You are now only three hours from either a black widow spider, an assortment of lepers, or the Ebola Virus.
Therefore, my personal philosophy is: Keep it simple.
Unfortunately, living in the Twenty-First Century, this is almost impossible. Advertising, media, and plain old bureaucracy conspire against us having a simple life, if it means we can be sold to, persuaded, or controlled by, those who run these systems. Some of the most recent examples of new systems designed to make life simpler - but which actually create more aggravation - are internet sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.
For me, if I meet an interesting girl, my instinct is to go, ‘You’re nice, let’s meet up for a double mocha latte, then maybe go out for ten years’.
Inevitably, this fantasy version swiftly crashes-and-burns when confronted with the hideous actuality of Social Networking in the Twenty-First Century.
Let’s use the example of my friend, Kev.
Me: Hey, man, what’s up?
Kev: Paranoid, man.
- Who is?
- Me, man.
- What about?
- That mad bird that I met at the exhibition the other day.
- The socially-inept one?
- Yeah.
- The one that gave you the funny look?
- Yeah.
- Why are you paranoid about her? You didn't do anything to embarrass yourself, did you?
- No, man.
- You didn’t get drunk and attempt to try on her clothes, like the one last week?
- No, man.
- While she was still wearing them..?
- No...Well, I did get drunk, but nothing happened.
- So what’s the matter, then?
- It’s just that I told her I’d add her as a friend on Facebook, and now I don’t want to. I was just being polite, but she is definitely nuts. So I don’t want her anywhere near me. In fact, she scares me.
- You know what, Kev? We are in previously uncharted territory here. There are no established protocols for this.
- I know, man. I’ve got Adding Paranoia.
And there Kev coins one of the great phrases of our age: Adding Paranoia. I guarantee this will become a recognised mental illness in the near future. Then, the following week, I saw Kev again. He still had that haunted look all-too-common to the overly-sociable in this modern age.
- What’s up, Kev?
- I decided to de-clutter my Facebook page, so I had a Friends-cull. Now I’m paranoid about them finding out that I de-friended them. I’ve got De-Friending Paranoia.
And so it goes on…
I was talking to my friend - let's call him J - who, after extricating himself from a particularly tumultuous relationship, got over it by finding solace inside the numerous women he met while studying for a post-graduate degree in London. He now lives in his hilltop fortress away from the clamour of everyday life, and devotes his time to writing philosophical novels about the human condition. I recently consulted him on another delicate matter of modern social mores...
Me: Guess what? I’ve had an epiphany.
J: What about?
- I’m going to erase all the women off my Facebook account, with the exception of my sister.
- Haha, why?
- Because they are totally superfluous.
- How do you mean?
- Let’s face it, man. What are they for? It’s pure unadulterated ego on my part.
- …That’s interesting.
- They’re just there to show off. To show everyone how many friends we have.
- What’s brought this on?
- Well, since I split with my ex, not a single one of these bastards has been in touch to find out how I’m doing. When I think of the sheer amount of airtime I gave these idiots and their clueless relationships. Never in a million years will these emotional retards achieve the kind of longevity in a relationship that I did. So that’s it. They’re history.
- Hmm.
( Yeah, exactly. Ominous pause. So I said )
- What’s the matter? You don’t agree?
- I don’t think it’s a good idea.
- Oh shit, you mean, just having blokes on there, it would look weird?
- Yeah. But also, believe it or not, you need these women.
- You’re kidding - why?!
- As an Alpha Male, you need them to entice other women. Prospective women must see that list, and think: What can I do to get on there? How can I be top of his list?
- Oh my god…
- You need those women, if only to get the one you do want.
- Good grief…It’s a good thing I checked. That could have been catastrophe..!
- But it’s a good realisation to have.
But even J can have his challenges. Reassuringly, it is still possible to be paranoid about relationships that form in the real world, but as you will see from this example, the internet has an insidious and pervasive effect on those, too.
- Do you remember the girl I told you about - ? he asked me while we were out walking.
- The one with the - ?
- God yeah, they’re spectacular.
- Yeah, I remember.
- Well, she keeps requesting meetings in my office, and I don’t know whether she’s trying a new tactic, but her behaviour is becoming more and more suggestive. Bear in mind that she perceives a level of familiarity incongruous with our working relationship.
- Such as?
- Well, she apparently talks about me to her parents, to the point where they seem to think I'm a close friend. And she keeps asking me to come and see her various performances, etc, etc. And then the other day, when the weather was hot, she rang me in advance of one of these meetings, and asked if I wanted an ice cream.
- Okay. So you like her. Please tell me you said yes.
- No, I didn’t, because of the Atkins Diet -
- Oh no - !
- Yeah, no carbs and sugars. So anyway, she came in for our one-to-one, and she’s sucking on this -
- Good god, man, what?!
- This Calippo.
- Oh yeah - I love those.
- I know, they’re nice, aren’t they? So anyway, she’s licking away at this thing, staring at me the whole time. It was getting more and more difficult to concentrate. I mean, it was like I was living in an 80's Mickey Rourke movie.
- Holy shit. What happened?
- Nothing, I remained professional to the end, even though it was a struggle. I was relieved when she left, quite frankly.
- Then what?
- I immediately Googled: Body language, female. It was all there: Dilated pupils, knees pointing toward me, adjustment of clothes…
- Wow.
- So then I thought back to a previous session, when she turned up with a banana.
- A banana?!
- Yeah. You should have seen her eating it. Well, she didn’t just eat it. More like she massaged her tonsils with it.
- Oh my god.
- It took her forty minutes to swallow the thing.
- Jesus Christ - ! What did Google say about that?!
- Potassium deficiency.
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Additional -
According to the dubiously-titled Global Language Monitor, we are due to invent the millionth word at precisely 11.23pm on the night of the 10th June, 2009.
There have been several noted examples of new words created in the last few years, such as de-friend, noob, greenwashing, among others. However, there are many things in life which need a name but don't yet have one, so here I shall put forth a few ideas*:
Schlurpfukkit - No matter how many times you've done it before, every time you open a new goddamn carton, the stuff goes everywhere. You spend half an hour cleaning up the mess, by which time, your drink has gone cold.
Blingtwat - White male, usually fat with a shaved head, who has a tendency to wear tasteless jewellery over a hideous nylon tracksuit.
Kroksnak - Female golfer in Florida, who's not paying enough attention to her surroundings.
Schwingbzzt - Male golfer in thunderstorm.
iGrope - When you're in a supermarket doing the shopping, and your iPod suddenly disappears down your trouser leg. You then laboriously fish it out, but get mistaken for a sex-offender playing with himself, and arrested by security. You're then tagged and told not to live near schools.**
* There is a high probability that all of these words have already been appropriated by IKEA, as the names of tasteful and affordable home furnishings.
** Believe it or not, the iGrope scenario actually happened to a guy I knew. When I was a kid, a friend of the family - let's call him Paul - a good-looking guy who was perceived as a local eccentric ( furniture restorer, virtuoso folk violinist ), left his job at the local high school under 'mysterious circumstances'.
One evening, my mom had left him in charge of me and my bro while she went to the pub ( I think I was around thirteen and my bro was ten ). Before she left, she gave me this cryptic instruction:
'Don't leave your brother alone in the room with Paul. He's a bit funny'.
I reassured her that I would do as she said, and of course, the minute she left, I went upstairs to play with my Space Lego, leaving my bro downstairs with Paul.
Don't worry, nothing happened!! We knew how to handle ourselves in those days, there was none of this bloody hysteria. I had an ear cocked the whole time, in case I heard any weird noises emanating from downstairs.
Anyway, we'd often bump into Paul, and one notable time was when I was out with a girlfriend - in a supermarket - and Paul sidled over and congratulated me on was a cracking piece of ass she was. I agreed wholeheartedly, and in actual fact, his woman was pretty tasty, too.
Fast forward a few years, and my mom tells me Paul was in the local newspaper. Apparently he'd been arrested and imprisoned for playing with himself in a supermarket.
His excuse: 'I had an itchy leg, Milud'.
True story.
