All the imaginary reviews including the one(s) I forgot to add yesterday.
In other news, the UK fails its quality of life test. Who’s surprised. Brits live in hutches on a petrol station forecourt at the edge of a hypermarket car park or an airport. They seem to like it there. They eat a slurry of reclaimed meat. A few hundred yards away it’s possible to see, through the fog of diesel particulates, an eight lane road along which race the nondoms & celebrities in their SUVs, off to view their money in another country. That’s the entertainment. Behaviour is controlled by cctv & peer pressure, mediated by liars who regularly tap phones & supply the results to the police. The rules are simple. Actually, there’s only the one, & when it’s delivered, it’s delivered in a dead but somehow startled tone: if you want anything better you have to pay more. Quality of life–quality of anything–is a feature of the premium package, not the one you signed for. I don’t think you’ll find it says anywhere that you’ll actually get the thing the ad said we were selling.
The way this article reveals most about UK quality of life is not in its content but its position in the paper: the Guardian put it not in News, or even in the grotesque Life & Style section, but in Money, under “Consumer Affairs”.
You old trot, you.
p.s. really can’t wait for Empty Space!
‘We’re sorry to announce that the train has been delayed by … twenty … three … minutes.’ I love how the tone of the automated voice becomes more solemn as the delay increases, on a crowded platform you can actually see joy being leeched from the commuters.
I met an Algerian chef today, lived all over Europe and he’s just bursting with vim about Blighty, this is a land of milk and honey to listen to him talk. His theory on why we spend so much? Because we love life in this country. I was almost persuaded. And who’s to argue with him?
Follow shadows, find darkness. Sure enough. And perhaps the light in his eyes was his own shadow. But then again, perhaps we are too hard on ourselves, or not hard enough. I’m glad it’s not up to me to judge.
We love life so much in this country that we measure its success in terms of the relief of commuter anxiety. Of course we’re happy.
: )
He didn’t say we’re happy.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve bitched about our condition all my life. Greed, desire, pride, arrogance, certainty, fear, suffering. And yet something is changing, much deeper than all this surface babble. These are interesting times and we all know that something will give, very soon. People are waking up everyday, so perhaps it is something in the geist. I’d go so far as to say that I think I’m seeing it wherever I look. I live in hope.
Well I live in hope, too, Jason. But then there’s the gap between the Audi A6 hummingbird ad & the reality of everything else…