Rhetorical Questions Round a Rectangular Dining Table
Vol.20 Today’s and Tomorrow’s.
Vol.20 Today’s and Tomorrow’s.
Do you ever have that inner voice that says “Go on you silly sausage! Write something! See where it takes you?” It’s a blessing and indeed a curse I can tell you, but then again, I have no need to tell you because I can see that you’re a member of our club. I see that twinkling in your eye, that faraway gaze, that wistful thought escaping into the great unknown. Do you jot it down? How did it make you feel? Can you make it funny? Is it offensive? Why did you think that thought? Have you thought that thought before? Is it a memory? Is it a program? How was it influenced?
Have I been watching the films of Christopher Nolan again?
The obvious answer to that question is a resounding yes, but neither that nor the fabulous film reviews I’m constantly posting here are relevant to this short diversion into my existential madness. Between you and me, the film articles are exceedingly good if a little verbose at times and probably wildly inaccurate to your particular “take” of the film but look, no-one reads them anyway so please do read away. You’ll be doing me a favour.
Shush! It’ll be our little secret. OK?
Since I last penned an ode to my life through a lens of apathetic lethargy we’ve lost a Queen and gained a King as well as losing a buffoon and gaining a supply teacher as Prime Minister. The UK continues to teeter on the brink of anarchy but despite my relentless pleas for my country comrades to light their torches and grab their pitchforks, we’re all going to freeze whilst Rome burns. This week alone, let alone the weeks and months of madness that preceded it, has really taken the biscuit. Racial and societal tensions are at a volcanic boiling point, the Red team have held their “Party Conference”, the Blue team do likewise next week and the carnival of the bizarre never, ever, leaves town.
Here’s a digressing question for you: Why have we collectively accepted the “humanising” of markets? How can a bunch of electrical units of measure, just the simple ones and zeroes of life, be described as “buoyant” or “reflective” or “positive”, “depressed” or “surging”. It’s not an adolescent teenager! I could make an argument that this very humanising of such markets is targeted at a populace dumbed down to the level of mid-teenager age with a political faith aimed at people and targeting their reactionary emotional responses, but we don’t have time for such ruminations in this particular article and anyway, why would anyone blow up their own pipelines?
This question has vexed me since the middle of this week and the middle of yet another crisis after crisis. When you turn the “News” on here in the UK, the Television just screams a high pitched siren and the word “Emergency” over and over again. OK it doesn’t, but it might as well. The latest Coen Brothers catastrophe to befall the UK is a simple one: If Vladimir Putin did indeed sabotage and blow up his own pipelines, then he’s clearly a fucking bigger madman than we’ve previously thought, and with his finger on the nuclear trigger of annihilation who are we going to send to defeat this out of control madman before he splinters the earth asunder and into a nuclear winter that will devastate large swathes of our planetary home?
A clipboard carrying supply teacher who if all the lights are on the bulbs need changing.
Excellent.
Maybe I’m just vexed that my beloved Los Angeles Dodgers are having the season of all time, records tumbling day after day and when the season ends, they’ll have the vaunted “Best record in baseball”. This all counts for nothing come the play-offs but I do wonder and worry where Dave Roberts and his team will go should they finish the season as overwhelming favourites in the yearly “Big Dance” but go home before midnight and without a World Series boogie. I just hope no-one blows up the world before the October Dance. This’ll give my equally beloved Reds of Liverpool Football Club a chance to regain top spot in the Premier League as we can’t have the world ending without the Reds being top of the league now, can we?
I was going to posit some questions regarding the unrequited love of my life Elon Musk, but he still refuses to return my telephone calls. I was going to try to make a melancholic sounding idea entitled “My Epiphany of Emptiness” into something vaguely amusing and maybe I will, someday. But not here. I was thinking of lamenting on how I’ve thought and reminisced about the two real loves of my life today and how a silly random thought made me think of an old card game, played around an old table and full of such distinctive laughter and the brightest of smiles. But then I was sitting in my car, the rain pelting down from all angles as I sat waiting for the appointed time of my appointment, and how hearing Coldplay’s incredible song “The Scientist” never fails to transport me to another time, another of life’s real loves, and a plan I had for that song and how it’s only meant for one person in the entire world. Alas.
If you’ve seen the film “Magnolia” just picture me in place of Tom Cruise singing
“Nobody said it was easy. It’s such a shame for us to part”
as the rain lashes the car and I look distraught through the foggy interior of the car. Tom and I go way back, so I’m sure he’ll be ok as I usurp him in your current mind’s eye.
But I’ve also been thinking of writing an article on today’s and tomorrow’s and how my existential dread, incredibly low self esteem and darkened moods are shaped by simple today’s and tomorrow’s. Today is ok (it wasn’t) but it’s today. Tomorrow on the other hand. Who knows? But today is tomorrow’s yesterday, and yesterday’s are ok aren’t they? But tomorrow still looms.
After today.
And before tomorrow.
“Questions of science, science and progress. Do not speak as loud as my heart”.
Thanks for reading.
“Limbo” (2020).
“It’s a good job God made dreaming for free”.medium.com
“Dune” (2021)
“This is only the beginning”medium.com
“Gold” (2022)
Dystopian Mad Max survival thriller without the thrills.medium.com