Tedious Introspection

This wretched blogging business bores me silly. Lord knows what it must be like for any readers, although that’s not my affair. As I have remarked before, I only do this for my own amusement. Unfortunately, I am not amusing myself much these days and so I find myself wondering whether to continue to churn the damned thing out.

Should I give it up, I wonder, and do something useful with my time ? Whilst this is an inherently horrifying prospect to a flaneur, one must sometimes take tough decisions. I fritter away time producing this nonsense that might be better spent writing vituperative and reactionary letters to newspapers and member of parliament, pasting threatening messages to the front doors of prominent businessmen, or telephoning senior clergymen and breathing heavily. Or even working.

The problem is a certain vapidity has crept in of late. These blatherings have lacked the spice of controversy, the piquancy that only venom can bring. I have not been anything like unpleasant enough. I have not been intentionally rude, patronising, or aggressive. And where, I hear you asking, is the fun in a blog that goes round being nice? What is the point of a blog that doesn’t irritate or amuse?

Exactly – although the missing word is “me”.

What is the point of a blog that fails to amuse me?

I spend most of my days now in a constant state of low-level irritation because I so thoroughly detest the modern world. The amusing thing is that I am so utterly a creature of that world that I could not exist elsewhere. This is literally true, inasmuch as I am dependent on the drugs it produces to keep my lungs functioning. And of course, I must “earn” (in the loosest possible sense of the word) a living but am entirely unsuited to useful or productive labour, being a product of the British educational system of the late 20th century. So I cannot escape. It is like finding oneself handcuffed to a garrulous, vulgar, aggressive idiot. And when you consider that I too, could be described thus, and must live with my own follies and irritations constantly, perhaps you understand my seething hatred of the modern world.

I accept, of course, that this is funny, in the way that only the discomfort of others can be. We can feel compassion (or more commonly its self-indulgent and vulgar cousin, pity) when we witness suffering, provided it is not ridiculous. There is something about the combination of suffering and absurdity that curls the corners of the mouth upward. Don’t deny it just because it is unpleasant. It’s true. My armed stalemate with the modern world can make other laugh, no matter how vile it is for me. My impotent hatred is, I realise, sometimes amusing.

The question is, do I continue to share that hatred with you? Or do I close myself up and keep it all to myself, simmering in it until I am utterly permeated with bile?

A rhetorical question, I hasten to add: I hope you will have grasped that I am utterly uninterested in your views on the matter.