I read the news today…oh boy
Well, more specifically I started reading a news blog. Within the post were ten hyperlinks to other posts. This always fills me with alarm. I stand at the crossroads provided by each link… Shall I carry on reading the thing I started on, or shall I go down the tempting new path. I stand at the portal of the colored hyperlink filled with anxiety. I can’t stop myself… I click.
Aarrgghh!! This post also has ten links, and the next and the next and OMG where has my day gone? My mind is now a Russian doll factory. My fingers haven’t typed a thing, and there’s an ant’s nest of tunnels in my search engine drop down menu.
The internet may be an amazing web of information, but between its silken threads are black holes of deadly proportions.
4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire.
My boyfriend keeps trying to teach me about the necessity of “grazing” – get the gist and move on. This is great until the need to have an opinion is called for (sadly a little too often in my case) and I suddenly realise I have no facts with which to back up my argument. While my brain seems incapable of holding onto a single relevant bit of information, my body is extraordinarily gifted at holding onto ALL of the emotions. Welcome to the world of RANT – well meaning, incoherent rage with nowhere to go. I’d say it was a conspiracy, but this would just be falling further into the black holes of the conspirators.
I have no idea how long Bradley Manning has been incarcerated (AGES!) or how small his cell (TINY) or the numerous ways in which his human rights have been violated (LOADS). But I do know I’m really, really pissed off about it.
Which brings me neatly to the phenomenon of the royal wedding. We are so desperate to escape from the meanderings of our fragmented brains and the spinning tops of our unchannelled emotions that we LONG for something to focus on. We want to be hypnotized.
We no longer have to think about the possibility that our politicians and media are mere puppets of the oil barons and that Guantanamo Bay is filled with random civilians who were rounded up by bounty hunters on the basis that ‘they’re Muslim so there’s bound to be a terrorist somewhere amongst them.’
Instead we can speculate on THE DRESS.
Because though this is a royal wedding, we’re not really interested in William, we want to be mesmerized by Kate and her fabulous transformation from girl next door to future Queen. Gawd bless her.
We want the transformational story of Cinderella. We don’t want the responsibility of global citizenship, we want a Fairy Godmother who’ll wave a magic wand and make life wonderful again. I can feel myself getting sleepy. I’m already succumbing to the trance in Kate’s transformation.
It’s quite nice really. A bit like mescalin… Now I wonder how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.