There Ain't No Cure for the Summertime Blues

In a cafe, deep in the depths of a hellish middle-class suburb on Dublin's south side, I sat and put the following to paper last Sunday.

The sun is out. I know this because I have my own personal barometer, namely grave, tormented feelings of nihilistic anxiety. What is supposedly a great boon can be such a crushing misanthropic experience. There is no such thing as hope on a sunny day in the suburbs, a veritable lethargic Hell, pervaded by a will to do nothing. Mankind has never achieved anything as a sloth, not even happiness, when you consider things in the long run. I'm sitting in a cafe, where a pianist plays familiar songs, each one a lament. He is perhaps harking back to another era, desperately longing to be elsewhere. Perhaps he is running his fingers along a career that never was? He wishes to roll back a decade or more, and do it over, or better yet, he wishes to wake up in a bygone era — perhaps Paris at the turn of the last century — and stay there forever. Looking at him, I wonder if he was lamenting his life this time last summer. And what about the year before that? How many years has he been doing this? How ugly it is to lament your life perennially. And how ubiquitous such a sentiment is; a yearning to find your way back to a time consigned to the past. I know far too many adults who are all ice-cream and kittens. I used to get excited about ice-cream, but then I turned nine. I can tolerate a dreamer, an idealist, or someone who holds a vision, but not if the dream is to return to childhood. It reflects poorly on your if your aspirations are virtually no responsibilities, playtime, ice-cream, lying around, fawning over the naivety of animals, and onesies. Is it not pathetic, to beat on like a  boat against the current, being borne back ceaselessly into the past, as I would so originally phrase it? 

The pain of lounging helplessly in the sun is compounded by people talking about it. Here in Ireland, we use this bizarre tone that makes our gratitude sound like a back-handed compliment. "I can't believe it's so sunny.", you'll hear one say. "I wish it was like this more often.", says a more transparent other. "It's gorgeous, isn't it?", asks the less confident one, needing confirmation when scolding the weather for being unreliable, as if the gods of the sky might hear them. Beware these wretched creatures — strange folk who resent something that clearly has no agency, often with poor, joyless sarcasm. I appreciate that circumstances anchor the conversation, but talking about how sunny it is makes me feel like I'm in a banal limbo of mindless chatter. A close runner-up is talking about food while having a meal, which, I am willing to bet, has been responsible for deaths, such is the level of bourgeois tedium. Incidentally, the sandwich I just finished here was so pretentious I wasn't entirely sure if I was supposed to eat it. Food rots so much quicker on sunny days, incidentally, as does my mood. If you like flies and dehydration, then 'tis the season for you.

Brighter days do energise people's mood, but you pay the price for the accompanying nihilism. The heat exhausts me, and I lose my cool both figuratively and literally through my sweat glands. Sunny days oblige me to do something, to make hay while the sun shines, and I have to do it then and there. The opportunity will disappear. And soon. Looking out the window, I cannot help but notice how ugly the suburbs look in the sun, uglier than the busy city centre. I would escape to the beach or the nearest patch of nature, but the suburbs always follows me. Even if I could escape them, it would bring me only limited joy. Cake and desperate longing to return to childhood are great if you like growing fat with your head buried in the ground, but some of us prefer something more difficult. There is a joy is facing the hardness of things, in overcoming a difficult situation. No flavour can compete with the satisfaction of relieving hunger or thirst, in the same way that no pleasure can measure up to the alleviation of pain, especially an alleviation borne out of struggle.

I have no doubt that many of you reading this are telling me to 'live a little' in your mind, but you most likely say this without any real thought or consideration, and you may not be familiar with the glorious feeling of taking the harder path. Deep down, you must know that life is ultimately a struggle. Physical and emotional attrition greets you everyday, even when you do nothing. Things will get worse, at least for a while, and if the universe has a plan for you, if you have a destiny, it is certain annihilation (as well as annihilation of everyone you love). Make your life harder and cast away your dependency on sunny days; not for the sake of it, but the sake of an unrivalled joy. Being a wise, venerable man of action, it is time for me to stand up and walk out of this place. I may be a nihilist with a neurotic inability to enjoy a sunny day, but at least I'm not you, precious reader.

Sarah knew what it's all about.

Hopefully Someone at Upworthy Will Repost This.

We live in uncertain times. That's not to say any time is certain, for surely all times are uncertain insofar as we never can tell what lies behind the corner of that which has yet to come. If we ever had certain times, then we could never have uncertain times, as we would see them coming. Unless you mean to say that many things seem in doubt these days, rather than a few. You see, reader, we live in uncertain times in the sense that we cannot even say when times are certain or not. Our uncertainty is mitigated, thankfully, by the reliable beacons of light that guide us through life, recurring in the same fashion as they always have. Few of these lights shine brighter and more stalwartly than a certain pint-sized, over-bitten Aussie. Kylie Minogue has remained an international superstar for three decades, and every time we assume she has retired to her former glories, she reemerges, like the proverbial queen of come back. The sum total of Holly Valance, Jason Donovan, Peter Andre, Deltra Goodram, Natalie Imbruglia, Gotye, Olivia Newton-John, Men at Work, and even Kylie's sister Dannii are dwarfed when placed next to her stardom and staying power (Dannii's problem is that she cannot spell her name properly).

I recently assumed that Kylie's run had finally ended. She is descending into her sixth decade and has to complete with a pantheon of young Über-skanks, such as Rihanna and Ke$ha, the latter who has succeeded despite having acute difficulties in spelling her name. I felt there was little hope for a star who had her renaissance around the time of Christina Aguilera's Dirty, a video that caused much controversy at the time of its release, but seems average compared to most videos of today. However, Kylie's most recent endeavour has silenced all doubters, proving she has the stomach for the sub-mediocrity required for contemporary pop. Sexercise has all necessary ingredients to be a hit in this decade. Its lyrics are rendered largely inaudible by the poor hip-hop style and computerised voice. Fortunately, the word 'sex' stands out clearly, and careful listeners will be able to pick up the obvious innuendos that comprise the rest of the lyrics. Playfully drawing comparison between sex and working out, Kylie fearlessly unveils the truth, and candidly explains that sex is a long, arduous labour of erotica. In the songwriter's office, I imagine you would a bin fill of crumpled up paper, bearing rejected, less glamorous lyrics such as, 'fat people find it difficult to find training partners', 'I quickly lose my motivation', 'this is very monotonous', 'I take drugs to enhance my performance', 'I don't like the idea of people seeing me all red-faced and sweaty', and 'I prefer not to be seen doing it in public'. The lyrics fall short of required standards, however, as they request an adequate sexual performance from her lover, implying that some sense of dignity and implying she has some needs of her own. If she were a younger woman, Kylie would most certainly recognise that her value lies solely in her body and her ability to conform to male sexual desire.




What makes this a true masterpiece is the tightly-edited video, which has all trappings a simple man lead around by his penis longs for. As well as the portrayal of exiguously-clad females in the gym, the video also boasts of a feast of obvious sexual hooks: clearly visible nipples; (w)edgy ass shots; simulated sex; wet bodies; contorted torsos; gyrating; pained, sexual facial expressions; implied group sex; nude-colured suits; faux-lesbianism (which bestows dignity on being gay like nothing else); stilettoed legs; the faint, phantasmal memory of a forbidden Oedipal-like desire. All that remained to be shown was simulated fellatio and camel toe, putting Kylie right up there with Robin #Thicke (Perhaps the greatest I-have-no-idea-how-to-spell-my-name success story), Miley Cyrus, and Lady Gaga. In a survey of horny teenage boys, 92% said they would totally chug one out over the video. "Did you crack one out yourself over the video, bro?", I hear you ask. "No, I didn't, bro.", I reply and wonder why I don't have the confidence to refrain from using the trite gym handle 'bro'. The use of the largely redundant gym balls was off-putting, and I was distracted by how hazardous squatting is in stilettos. Worst of all, one part of the video, where Kylie and her uniformed friends are kicking their legs back, reminds me of my mother's aerobics classes in the eighties. Now, you must excuse me, for I need to shift through another bunch of trashy, obvious videos to further my research.