I appreciate that we started at a time that can only be described as 'the rear-end of a rectal shagging chimpanzee beating his wife' or something, but that's no excuse for being utterly imbecilic. It's not as if you can have forgotten how to function, or how to get up, or move, or glance along the edge of sentience. These are all skills you've been working on for years: are they not? Have not you spent many a rough morning dragging your pointless carcass out of bed? Shaking your hollow humanoid carapace into sapience in front of a mirror which if it could talk would be bemoaning the state of your split-ends and dishevelled piss-poor attempt at growing a beard? Not remember these days? Not recall that time someone said "hi" and you had to engage your brain into forming the rejoinder "hello"? I bet you probably don't, actually; looking at you. Just get over it. It's not hard. It's just work.
How fabulous is this? I just stumbled across this article whilst on the BBC site and it's fairly damn appropriate. I hate this kind of thing. Any article which labours under the delusion that 'not being productive' is conducive to a healthy office environment is working under the false pretence that people who don't know each other to already know how the other person's holiday was want to actually know how these other people's holidays were. That doesn't improve working relationships - aside from ones between small, rhesus monkeys - and all it does is cloud the fact that other people there are actually trying. A lot of people today asked me how my holiday was, so I said "fine". It wasn't "fine": it was really, really fucking awesome. I don't want to say that because then there'll be follow-up questions, during which time I will have to rack by brains for language they understand, and situations they can relate to. Heavily subjective fleeting romances aren't going to hold people's interests when they barely know me - and I don't want to have to feign interest when the inevitable happens and I have to reciprocate the non-interested 'head-tilt'. I don't want to have to partake in this puerile pseudo-engagement because it's not any fun for either party. And I don't mean that I will never enjoy a bit of a small-talk with people I don't know very much - but I'm not plying my shtick with the assumption that what we're talking about is going to improve my social network dynamic. My social network dynamic is fine, thanks, because it's small.
And what's with this awful inference that this stupid woman is propagating? That 'chit-chat' will improve the office-dynamic. So, presumably people cannot get along with one another on a level adequately high enough to produce good work without mindlessly involving themselves in other people's lives - however temporarily? Am I now going to have to make really awful forced-chat with the doctor the next time I have a spot on my pecker? I don't want to exchange pleasantries with people checking out my Johnson, thanks. I don't want the hollow platitudes because it reminds me that people are so awfully aware of just how lonely they are. If you boil down this kind of banality all you are left with is a harrowing, stark cry for attention from a person probably over-wrought with attention from one of their other hundreds of friends. There's your problem there. That doesn't give real, satisfying interaction: that just gives you a temporary respite from despair. Where - if you have three-hundred friends - do you turn when you're crushingly afraid or worried or upset? Nowhere, because chances are that your massive pool of friends have the collective ability to empathise of a small, decaying dog. They don't care, and they don't care because your conversation is just a swirling vortex of self-pity, self-aggrandisement: revolving wildly around the fallacious axiom that anyone is interested in your self-love. Not that I bemoan people who think that they're wonderful. But I do.
So I don't like that article - and I only read about 20 lines of it - and I don't like this kind of thought process. I think it damages traits which should be inherent in any human being: empathy, interest, and compassion. ----- I felt bad about not having actually read the thing I was moaning about, so I went back and did it - and then I got more irritated:
"I'm feeling really productive. I went for a run this morning."
Oh bully for you: I'm feeling quite productive to. I went along to the bathroom before my bladder got distended this morning. I didn't have to, logically, but I felt that going meant I could congratulate myself over my forethought and insight into my own biological requirements. Pre-empting my own bodily functions presumably means I can now maintain a perfectly static weight, and all of my other health problems (drinking, smoking, etc.) will be null and void because I went to the bathroom slightly before I needed to. It's only "productive" (as the word means) if you felt that you achieved something. I guess you probably did feel like you achieved something, because you will feel a little bit better about having eaten you own body weight in ice-cream over the holiday period. Surely you could have negated the needed for this pointless façade by simply eating less? Then again, that probably wouldn't have made you feel as good. Instead, you gorged yourself euphorically for a fortnight, and then went on a little run. Good job, darlin', you'll be Queen by next year with that spirit.
New Year's resolutions are great, I just don't understand what people are content to operate under these horrible platitudes which aren't real. I don't like deluding myself to the point where I can't tell reality from the immaterial. I don't ever want to find myself so utterly confused with the world where I think that my one gesture to health, or society is going to make any difference. Call me cynical if you want, but I do believe that people can make a difference: just not by lying to themselves. If you have to make a pre-emptive promise, you will fail.
Here is a conversation I had earlier in one of my lectures. It fairly well typifies the attitude from above, except here I don't think the 'first day syndrome' is broad enough.
Bear with this, as the transcription will be relatively long. I'd apologise, but it enrages me so I don't want to. Here we go:
Person A: "This is my new watch."
Person B: "How much was it?"
Person C: "Ha. That's what I said!"
Person A: "£100 or so."
Person C: "I can't believe you paid that much for a watch. It just tells the fucking time. Check your phone."
Me: "You're a philistine."
Persons A, B, and C: "What's a philistine?" (synchronization added post-conversation).
Me: "Well, it means you don't..."
Persons A, B, and C: "Blah blah blah cutting across the answer to the question we asked you."
Person C: "Isn't a philistine a person with no arms?"
Me: "No. That's a thalidomide."
Person A: "I swear it's a person from the Philippines."
Me: "No. That's a Filipino."
Person A: "No. I don't mean that. Hmm..."
Person C: "What's a philistine then?"
Me: "Let me clarify. A Filipino comes from the Philippines, a thalidomide child is normally a baby whose mother took the drug thalidomide whilst they were in gestation which caused their limbs to form improperly. It's also a drug which is used to treat leprosy..."
Person A: "Leprosy!? People still have that!?"
Me: "Yes. But it's really hard to catch. You'd have to like... move to a leper colony and have sex with everyone, and then eat some of them." (see what I mean about the metaphor?)
Person A: "Oh. Well. I didn't think anyone had it anymore."
Me: "There's like two cases a year over here or something. It's treatable anyway."
Person C: "So what's a philistine?"
Me: "Well. I was explaining before you all rudely interrupted me. A philistine is a person who doesn't appreciate the finer things. You think that was a waste of money; us decadents think that art for art's sake is fine."
Person A: "Oh. I was thinking of Palestine!"
Person B: "Jack's brain looks like it's melting."
Me: "It is."
Person D: "What did you get for your A-levels [standardised post-compulsory end of year, pre-university exams]?"
Me: "Two B's and a C [not very good]."
Person D: "Oh."
End conversation.
Also: I'm giving up smoking. RAGEEEEE.
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