I must away now and forever lay down the burden of producing eight to twenty-four blog posts per year for a non-existent audience. I am several chapters into Rapshaldeo: The Untarnished Beauty of the Unbridled Soul, and a venture of such terrifying egotism requires all my time and attention. Having sojourned here for a decade, I will now down my last drink and depart from The Fair Observations. At the door, looking back, I feel I could indulge in the bitter-sweet, but there is little more for me to say. I have seen it all. This past decade has born witness to an abundance of historical events: Gangnam Style, Kony 2012, Harlem Shake, Pokemon Go, the disappointing ending of Game of Thrones, that time Jennifer Lawrence's iCloud account got hacked, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, the dress colour controversy, Caitlyn Jenner winning woman of the year, #harambe, planking, the ice bucket challenge, that meme with the six panels that explained what various people think your job is, 50 Shades of Grey (the book and film), #releasethesnydercut, Fortnite, Heelys, The Mannequin Challenge, fidget spinners, dyed grey hair, twerking, Farmville requests, Neknominate, and a clinically obsessive fascination Millennials.
There's always room for one more post or comment, I hear you say. One more belligerent episode with a working-class iconoclast; one last reference to the literary snot in you; one last chapter in the worst coming of age novel ever written; one last inappropriate reference to testes or wanking; one more stretching interpretation of Irish history; or one more unsolicited invocation of Tubbercurry, county Sligo. Of course, there always will be opportunity for one more, but as I always say, with the greatest solemnity, echoing the sage words passed down through the ages — it is what it is (unless and until it isn't). I have done my time. No longer will I cast my seed onto the hardened, barren soil of Twitter or try set up home in the pointless wasteland of Facebook.
What does the horizon hold for me then? There might be a Fair Observation Christmas special, or maybe even an ill-considered revival. A Netflix special twenty years from now perhaps, assuming Netflix is still a thing. Nigel may be gone, but, fear not, the Observations will live on forever. How I will accomplish this still proves to be a challenge. Digital publication is too precarious a means for preservation. Time or circumstance could easily erase the electronic hosts of the texts. Time alone will leave the formatting obsolete if not irretrievable, and the words will not make sense in a few short, ever-accelerating generations. Nobody will be reading my blog in one hundred years from now, never mind in ten thousand years. However, I find this to be comforting as, while the texts themselves will certainly vanish from history, my current status of virtual anonymity will be eternally preserved. Obscure beyond all the eyeballs of the world the blog will forever be, similar to how it is now, lost in the enormity of the internet. Highly literate people of the distant future will observe a fair flower undistracted by the reminder of my surname, in the same way as my contemporaries do. Readers nowadays (thankfully) do not think of me when they hear the name Nigel Farage in the same way the denizens of future ages will not think of me when they hear the name of another wanker called Nigel.
The timeless status and lack of popularity of the blog now safely preserved, what now for the one Nigel who isn't a wanker? My next project is completing my Rapshaldeo novel. As my primary writing tool is procrastination, this may take some time. I could try to just sit down and write and regular intervals, but a less daunting and more prudent approach is to keep my fragile human body animated forever. It is an enormous ask, but I will try. Most likely, it will involve some genetic modification, cybernetic implants, consciousness transplanted into a computer, 3D-printed flesh, colonisation of new planets, backing-up my memories onto advanced cloud storage, cloning, an indestructible robotic body, or a mixture of these. I haven't figured out how to survive the universe plummeting to absolute zero and all atomic motion ceasing. Then again, only the foolish believe that there is an impediment that innovation cannot overcome. The human spirit and technology combined cannot be dominated. Of this I am certain (I heard somebody say it at the end of a TED talk), and I will live on into the boundless eons. I hope you too live to see the day, so I will have someone to purchase my self-published novel.
There's always room for one more post or comment, I hear you say. One more belligerent episode with a working-class iconoclast; one last reference to the literary snot in you; one last chapter in the worst coming of age novel ever written; one last inappropriate reference to testes or wanking; one more stretching interpretation of Irish history; or one more unsolicited invocation of Tubbercurry, county Sligo. Of course, there always will be opportunity for one more, but as I always say, with the greatest solemnity, echoing the sage words passed down through the ages — it is what it is (unless and until it isn't). I have done my time. No longer will I cast my seed onto the hardened, barren soil of Twitter or try set up home in the pointless wasteland of Facebook.
What does the horizon hold for me then? There might be a Fair Observation Christmas special, or maybe even an ill-considered revival. A Netflix special twenty years from now perhaps, assuming Netflix is still a thing. Nigel may be gone, but, fear not, the Observations will live on forever. How I will accomplish this still proves to be a challenge. Digital publication is too precarious a means for preservation. Time or circumstance could easily erase the electronic hosts of the texts. Time alone will leave the formatting obsolete if not irretrievable, and the words will not make sense in a few short, ever-accelerating generations. Nobody will be reading my blog in one hundred years from now, never mind in ten thousand years. However, I find this to be comforting as, while the texts themselves will certainly vanish from history, my current status of virtual anonymity will be eternally preserved. Obscure beyond all the eyeballs of the world the blog will forever be, similar to how it is now, lost in the enormity of the internet. Highly literate people of the distant future will observe a fair flower undistracted by the reminder of my surname, in the same way as my contemporaries do. Readers nowadays (thankfully) do not think of me when they hear the name Nigel Farage in the same way the denizens of future ages will not think of me when they hear the name of another wanker called Nigel.
The timeless status and lack of popularity of the blog now safely preserved, what now for the one Nigel who isn't a wanker? My next project is completing my Rapshaldeo novel. As my primary writing tool is procrastination, this may take some time. I could try to just sit down and write and regular intervals, but a less daunting and more prudent approach is to keep my fragile human body animated forever. It is an enormous ask, but I will try. Most likely, it will involve some genetic modification, cybernetic implants, consciousness transplanted into a computer, 3D-printed flesh, colonisation of new planets, backing-up my memories onto advanced cloud storage, cloning, an indestructible robotic body, or a mixture of these. I haven't figured out how to survive the universe plummeting to absolute zero and all atomic motion ceasing. Then again, only the foolish believe that there is an impediment that innovation cannot overcome. The human spirit and technology combined cannot be dominated. Of this I am certain (I heard somebody say it at the end of a TED talk), and I will live on into the boundless eons. I hope you too live to see the day, so I will have someone to purchase my self-published novel.
 |
| I'll see you then. |
No comments:
Post a Comment