[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.And it all happens so quickly, you don’t even have to think your opinions through; if you can’t be bothered doing the brainwork, you can simply repeat what someone else has said using slightly different words.And poorer spelling.Most opinions, however, don’t really need to be written down at all.They can be replaced by a sound effect—the audible equivalent of an internet frowny face.Imagine a sort of world-weary harrumph accompanied by the faintest glimmer of a self-satisfied sneer.That’s 90 per cent of all human opinion on everything, right there.Internet debates would be far more efficient if everyone just sat at their keyboards hitting the ‘harrumph’ key over and over again.A herd of people mooing their heads off.Welcome to 2007.25?Mind you, even the most bone-headed online debate is infinitely more sophisticated than any kind of public discourse’ you’ll see on TV, particularly if you’re watching the news and they’ve just invited their viewers to call in for some kind of faux-democratic ‘Have Your Say’ segment, which inevitably functions in the same way as someone turning on a gigantic idiot magnet, given the sort of dribbling thicksicle it attracts.In fact, that’s what they should call it.The Idiot Magnet.At the end of each item on Sky News, they should say ‘We’re switching on the idiot magnet now.Let’s see what we dredge up.Ah, Dick from Colchester, you’re on the air…’Cue five minutes of Dick repeatedly tapping the ‘harrumph’ key on his phone.What is it with all this patronising ‘Have Your Say’ bullshit anyway? They don’t call the rest of the programme ‘Have Our Say’.I can have my say now, can I? What, right here, in this two-minute slice of airtime which no one’s listening to anyway since they’re too busy trying to get through themselves, or texting their disapproval or going online to moo at a rival? Why, thank you, Lord Media, and harrumph to you, sir.Anyway, that’s my two cents.Your turn.It is a truth universally acknowledged that I must be in want of a wife[29 January 2007]I need a wife.Strangers keep advising me to get one.Three times in the past fortnight, women unfamiliar to me have broached the subject with a blend of amusement and pity.Two weeks ago I was on the phone to the bank, absent-mindedly bemoaning my own uselessness at opening bills until it’s too late.‘You need a wife,’ chuckled the woman at the other end.A few days later I took a jacket to the dry-cleaners and asked the woman behind the counter if she could sew one of the buttons back on.She laughed and said she would, before explaining that what I really needed was a wife.Today I was at a supermarket checkout, and when it was time to pay I delved in my pocket and pulled out a crumpled wedge of notes, receipts, distressed flecks of tissue, and a pen top.As I picked through the bird’s nest in my hand, hunting for change, the cashier sighed that a wife would sort me out.Another woman, in the queue behind me, agreed.Quite loudly.It’s all quite warm and fuzzy really, this unsolicited maternal attention, but what’s troubling is that they instinctively knew that I’m not married.Clearly I’ve been shuffling around emanating tragic waves of wife-needing energy.It shows up on their internal radar as a flashing alert: clueless bachelor at ten o’clock.Launch sardonic advice.Target patronised.Mission accomplished.Well stop it, all of you.I don’t want a wife.I can’t imagine proposing marriage.Never.Not to a human.We’re too unreliable.Besides, marriage inevitably leads to kids, and that’s just weird.I don’t want to stand in a delivery room watching someone I’m supposed to love blasting a baby through her hips in an orgy of mucus, gore and screaming.My mind couldn’t stand the horror.I would probably grab a rake and start thrashing at it like a farmhand startled by a rat.Speaking of farmhands, don’t assume that by ruling humans out of the marriage stakes I’m ruling animals in.Cows may have beautiful eyes, but no one wants to accompany their wife to a dinner party only to leave beneath a cloud of embarrassment because she spent the entire evening chewing with her mouth open and emptying her bum on the floor.On the drive home, the atmosphere would be poisonous.Silent opprobrium at your end, oblivious drooling at hers.What’s more, a cow belches out almost eight pounds of methane a day, so good luck on your honeymoon.But we’re getting off the point here.If I must have a wife—and womankind has evidently decided I must—can’t I just be assigned one by the government? It would take all the guesswork out of things—the root cause of the chronic commitment-phobia I’ve suffered for the past few years.The moment I so much as shake someone’s hand I start assuming I will be sharing a cell with them for the rest of my life, and my subconscious ruthlessly scans them for character flaws that might grow annoying when experienced at close quarters for several decades.What’s that? A faint lisp? Oh, sure, it’s endearing now.But come the year 2029 you will want to smash yourself in the mind with a housebrick each time she opens her relentless, lisping gob.Better get out while you can
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]