Stuff n Nonsense

[apolla]

I thought I should drop in and update on real life, which is something I dabble in occasionally.

Still, today I began to believe once more that humanity is one of God's least-successful experiments. The planet is full of sheep and lemmings and mindless drones that don't seem to care that they're sheep, lemmings and mindless drones! Look at the shit we get fed on TV and in the news: for every story of a little child being bombed in Lebanon there are six about Posh being pregnant, Gillian Anderson being pregnant, Cristiano Ronaldo possibly being paid truckloads for kicking a ball around for someone other than Manchester United.

It just tires me. I would love so much to have faith in humans, to find you all amusing, but I can't. I feel like an outsider with my own species because I simply don't get it. I mean, I do a pretty good job at coasting through life (The Clare Human Outreach Program) but the idea that other people live this way because they want to blows my mind. Seriously: are there people happy to live one of these Quiet Lives, with mortgages and stuff?

Do you realise that hardly anyone OWNS anything? I mean it- what do you own? Do you own a business, or the means of production for anything? Aside from a house perhaps, what do you own that is of consequence? The land you live on? You don't own much, do you? A few books, some clothes, maybe a tin of food, a computer. Sure, this is a LOT MORE than a lot of people have, but it's not much is it? The land we live on, it's all owned by a small moneyed minority whose fathers and great-grandfathers and Norman ancestors owned.

Can you tell that I read some George Orwell essays on Saturday? I'm not suggesting Britain (or even less likely, L'America) go Socialist, as he did... but the only parts of his essays that are dated involve the Empire. Seriously, most of the stuff he said in 1940-46 is not only still relevant, it is more relevant!

The article about the English language really got to me, and I shall copy out his five rules for you now, because we are ever more riddled with cliche and meaningless managementpoliticspeak than ever.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
5. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

He's not talking about the literary use of the language, because in books and novels and poetry these things are sometimes required. Now, I'm the first to admit I use cliche sometimes, although usually in a knowingly mocking manner. I use long words all the time because that's my way. Still, these are points we should all take into account. This isn't the usual pedantry regarding apostrophes, it's an attempt to grasp at the truth behind what people are saying: "language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought."

The soundbite of the whole collection is included in this particular essay as well as printed on the cover:

"Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is desinged to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

I tell you this: even Orwell himself has been taken and twisted into cliche: How Orwellian, etc etc. Do not fall for it. Be brave and singular and vast armies of angels will come to your aid when you need them.

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Enough of that serious stuff, for I am the master of the trivial. I have now been off Diet Coke for nearly two months, and only broke my regular Coke embargo the other weekend at Guilfest although I've been drinking some (not much) since then. I'd like to say that my life has improved beyond measure, but I'd be lying. My hair has stopped falling out quite so much, but I can't really tell the difference. I haven't been ill or anything once three days had passed. I haven't even minded it being gone from my life, although I find water unutterably boring.

So is aspartame the devil's semen? Maybe. I don't know. I can live without it and I'm trying to break the bonds of capitalist corporate dependency by drinking Frappacinos every lunchtime at Starbucks...

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What else? Oh, Jim Morrison's last notebook is being auctioned soon by Cooper Owen and is already at forty thousand pounds with a guide of eighty. Does anyone have a spare one hundred thousand pounds I could borrow? I can't bear the idea of the boy's last, terrible and tortured ramblings (have read some pages. it's not easy or pleasing or particularly good, but it's what I imagined a dying man might write like) falling into the hands of a rich person who doesn't care about him or his thoughts. I imagine that anyone who CAN afford it is the kind to either shove it away from the world or buy it simply to brag "Hey, I've got Jim Morrison's notebook from Paris."

Surely it belongs with someone who actually cares about the man behind the legend underneath the myth? Not me necessarily, but someone who cares that Jim Morrison was once a living, breathing man. I would love to own it, to read it, to have it... not in an acquisitional manner but in a... I'm never going to be able to look into my boy's eyes, OK? I'm never going to hear his voice in the room with me. I'm never going to know what he smelled like (probably not good towards the end) or what he felt like. I'm never going to have him sat opposite me unless God Himself In All His Divine Grooviness lets me go back to look after him. This is something I am (begrudgingly) resigned to, but it leads me to look for ways to fill the hole in my being. It may be listening to 'Unhappy Girl' six times in a row, or trying to learn 'Take It As It Comes'  on the guitar. It may be running to Paris for an afternoon or the occasional mental breakdown.

Actually, that's all bollocks. I want that notebook because more than almost anything else in existence, it contains Jim's mind. It's his thoughts and with someone like Jim, that's his soul. I'll never get to look into his eyes, but to see the biro marks on the page is nearly almost as good.

So, let the fundraising begin. I'll be buying a Euromillions ticket on Friday I think. Just in case, you understand.

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Saw Failure to Launch on Saturday with my brother after he rented it on DVD. Is it me or are romantic comedies becoming increasingly smug? They've almost always been about the wealthy portion of the world, but it's becoming almost intolerable.

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Stomach hurts. That is all.