What Have We Sown?

I'm going to delve into something highly controversial and decidedly inflammatory. I'm going to risk the wrath of some good friends and I'm going to ridicule people I wouldn't dream of doing it to in person. Sorry, but I was once known as 'Phil the cunt' ...

I have this pad on my desk; I write down stuff that I want to extrapolate on in my blog. Sometimes its a couple of words, normally its a sentence or two, so that I know what kind of tack I'm taking with the extrapolation.

There is a growing phenomenon, especially with a specific social networking site, that is slowly killing the art of real time conversation. This weird anomaly is people who live with each other having conversations on Facebook - in public.

I was first alerted to this strange behaviour by a good friend, who mentioned that two people close to his heart were holding a conversation in Facebook chat while sitting on the same sofa. He rightly pointed out that what took about ten minutes could have been achieved in seconds had these two people bothered to speak to each other!

So over the last couple of months I've seen all manner of things on Facebook that has just made me go, 'Wha..?' A few examples: two married people sending each other wall posts; people living together making comments in each others status updates - and I'm not talking about witty or amusing bon mots here, I'm talking about bland and boring shit that could be kept between the two of them in the frigging kitchen. Or how about the profession of love between two people; yeah they might think its great to profess undying love for each other in front of all their mutual friends, but it really is just sick inducing. If you want to get all lovey dovey, then do it in the bedroom with the curtains drawn, for God's sake!

Is Facebook destroying the art of conversation more than television ever could? Well;, you could argue that it's stimulating conversation. These people are communicating with each other - after a fashion - so it all can't be bad. Can it?

You could argue that status updates, like Joe Public tweets, are only interesting to the person who writes it and maybe, very occasionally, others who feel the need to make a witty comment about it. I'm just as guilty of putting banal bollocks in my "What's on your mind" box; but I know for sure that if my wife (you remember her) had a Facebook account I would avoid responding to anything she said because she spends 50% of her life with me anyway!

Can you imagine me shouting this at you in an incredulous way? Good, because that's how strongly I feel about it! Maybe not as strongly as the fuck up the ConDems are making of my country, or the fact the BBC are a bunch of worthless twats who rival News International in their own self-serving way, but enough for me to wonder if most of my friends and acquaintances all need a good boot up the arse!

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I did something yesterday and this morning that I've never ever done before and it didn't involve any form of strange or degrading sexual activity!

I listened to an audiobook.

I listened to UR by Stephen King, read by some geeza called Holter Graham. I downloaded the audio version because I wasn't about to buy a Kindle to read it.

I can even review this story in a really succinct way. Here goes: Meh.

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Incidentally, speaking of Mr King. I also read Blockade Billy. I don't really understand baseball, therefore most of the 81 pages of it were meaningless. I can also review this very short story in a very succinct way. Here goes: Shit.

I want his new book of four novellas for Christmas. The words: For, Glutton and Punishment seem to spring to mind.

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I've been trying to get Roger to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer for years. He normally takes my recommendations on board and 99% of the time thoroughly enjoys them; but he's constantly resisted this series.

I watched the finale of season two the other day and while it has to be said that the special effects are no longer special and some of the set pieces have a definite whiff about them; it is still a thoroughly brilliant TV series, one that deals with issues in a superb way and a series that still to this day has my favourite single episode of television in its canon. For those who would be interested, that is The Body, which, even today, has me laughing, crying and remembering that even superheroes have to face the reality of sudden death.

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Nostalgia, eh? It's not what it used to be...

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Right. That's enough of that. I'm being taken down the pub by Ex-wonky Finger Man and One Ell. So I'll leave you this with this thought: Bollocks!