Rhetorical Questions Round a Rectangular Dining Table
Vol.21 Letters, Numbers and a Disaster Capitalism discount.
Vol.21 Letters, Numbers and a Disaster Capitalism discount.
Hello and welcome to the 21st edition of my existential angst riddled questions for which you won’t have an answer, but first, here’s both a prediction and the first of the many rhetorical questions that will hopefully pepper this article that at the time of writing, hasn’t been written yet.
I predict this article will be seen and read by as many human beings as can be fitted into a particularly snug church chapel, giving rise to one singular response. Once completed, I will post this to Twitter (zero expected responses), Facebook (possibly a response from a family member, possibly not) to a Facebook Group for Medium to which I’ll get three, maybe four responses and all from either bot accounts or people just spamming my article, having not read it and to purely spam and plug their own article and get this, a demand to read theirs! What larks! Normally these take the shape of “6 things you don’t know about New Zealand” or “Here’s 100 reasons why you need to buy crypto” and once I’ve posted my article to Instagram (with a fancy picture or two), I can sit back and watch the zero responses this too will receive on that particular platform.
So to summarise: I may receive a word or two from a young Canadian man and I may get the thumbs up from a brother-in-law closer to home. Spammers and bots will attach themselves to my Facebook post and Twitter and Instagram will flatly ignore it. Regardless of the content (and this could very well become very dark indeed, who knows, I still haven’t written this yet) I’ll receive next to zero responses. I’ve re-posted a raft of old film reviews, numerous new and updated film reviews, television series reviews, personal matters, off the cuff pieces of prose, sporting and footballing match reports, yet still the result will be the same, next to zero responses. Oh, and I’ll get a “follower” here on Medium on the strength of this article but a follower who will have only just joined, have no followers of their own and crucially, not have penned a single word in articulate anger.
Which obviously raises the pertinent question: Why do I fucking bother?
Maybe it’s the use of swear words? I can discount this as I use them incredibly sparingly and only used within context or as a quotation from someone else.
Boring and uninteresting? Maybe.
Not unique or enticing? Hopefully less so.
Not current or click bait worthy? Perhaps.
Not full of links to other websites, friends websites, bad links, dubious links, spam and other assorted shenanigans that ensure “writers” (deliberate use of quotation marks) earn 0.00001p per click on vacuous nonsense that could have otherwise been written by a monkey smoking a cigar?
Perhaps.
What if Charles Darwin isn’t correct?
What if Erich von Daniken is only partially correct?
Why do we have to believe that 2+2=5?
Why is everything so anti-human?
When is your next bout of organised, state sponsored fun?
Why do we give any credence to the “Doomsday Clock”?
Can we have some more “Chinese Spy Balloons” please?
Oh come on! Where IS your sense of adventure? Has your Government’s monthly organised day of fun just zapped that adventurous spirit from you? Come on! More spy balloons! Litter the damn sky with them! Call it a real life game of “Space Invaders” or, considering their shape, a game of “Asteroids”. Hours of fun for all the family! Put it on Pay Per View. Make a little coin. Come on! You’re all bloody capitalists aren’t you? Let’s cash in on the end of the world and feel mighty fine about it. More spy balloons I say!
Get ‘em high and in the sky, roll up, roll up! Let’s have a little unorganised fun, blow away all these dastardly spy critters, forever, and then we can all forget that as recently as two weeks ago, the #TwitterFiles demonstrated, beyond any reasonable doubt, that clandestine, black operatives within the USA Government working for the CIA and FBI colluded, some dare call it a conspiracy, to censor, shadow ban, outright ban and well, spy on everyone they damn well pleased.
Hooray!
You don’t need a conspiracy theorist to tell you which way the balloon blows, do you?
“99 red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it’s red alert
There’s something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
The 99 red balloons go by”
Why did I allow a letter to destroy my Thursday this week? There I was, minding my business and ensconced away from an upside down world with the truth being stranger than fiction tale of “The Serpent”, when my very own puff adder rose once more to bite me. That decade old rotten albatross that has more hands than an adult shire horse dropped through the letterbox of doom and although I promised myself that I wouldn’t let it affect me, it destroyed the rest of my day. This latest letter, even whilst acknowledging the long running legal pickle that’s pickling me, offers me a discount for immediate payment of an inordinate sum of money that due to the algorithmic roulette wheel of life has seen a company I’ve never had any dealings with whatsoever, threaten me with the full force of disaster capitalism lore (Law, surely? Legal Editor). I could make a lazy argument that it’s a form of spying but moreover it’s the raging stampede of disaster capitalism death, pyramid dreams of pyramid schemes, of standing not on the shoulders of giants but of those beneath you on the financial pecking order of life, trampling on the shoulders of fellow human beings for pennies on a tainted pound and all by virtue of winning the disaster capitalism lottery, and with the house of disaster capitalism’s money.
Alas that was Thursday fucked with Friday a delightful day with my son and Saturday a day dominated by silly games of chasing a bag of wind around a football field and a team in all Red deteriorating in front of my still disbelieving eyes. But Saturday was a day like every day whereby I am alone and without the comforting blanket of responsibility for my son. My days of being alone are far too frequent and frequently darker and more desolate day after empty day. When I’m with my son I have a purpose and a meaning. When I’m alone? I’m alone with a letter offering me a discount for a snake I never bought from a reptilian wraith I’ve never had the displeasure of not meeting. Nor the purchasing of a snake for that matter.
I have a half century of years behind me now and still I have no other purpose than being an overly indulgent father. I’m nearer death than I am of life. A man who desperately misses an old lady and bitterly yearns to hear her voice once more. A 50 year old in need of the comforting blanket of a frail old lady and a young son basking in the very fountain of youth.
Today is Sunday, my son is here and the at time of writing, I’ve cooked him a bacon sandwich for breakfast (as is custom) and congratulated him heartily and in person for the second of his fan fiction stories. It’s quite a remarkable piece of writing, and for many and varied reasons. The tiny baby I held in my arms for the first time on an early Monday morning far too many full moons ago has now written his own short stories and I couldn’t be more proud. He’s sitting opposite me now, oblivious to my writing of him and about him. We’ve just shared my favourite chocolate bar over silly jokes and film quotations. Life this afternoon is as perfect as Nena and her 99 luftballons.
Tomorrow is Monday. Tomorrow I will be alone again and it will be intolerable. Again.
Can we have some more “Chinese Spy Balloons” please?
I could do with the entertainment.
“99 dreams I have had
In every one, a red balloon
It’s all over, and I’m standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you, and let it go”
Thanks for reading. For less serious fare, perhaps, please see my three most recently published articles below or alternatively, please visit my archival lists here for a cave of wondrous wonders on all things film, television, Liverpool FC and a variety of other rambling musings:
“The Serpent” (2021)
Truth is again stranger than fiction.medium.com
“The Rig” (2023)
AKA “Alien” in the North Sea.medium.com
“The Last of Us” (2023)
Depeche Mode and a whole lot of love.medium.com