Mercifully Short

Forgive me if I begin to sound like a self-aggrandising, incumbent president, but I have excellent concentration. I can happily put my phone away for hours at a time, breeze through some meditation, listen intently, read continuously without moving, or drive forward into my work without the urge to chat or browse the internet. Concentration is something I am good at. People say I'm the greatest at concentration. I've all the best concentration. However, last week, when I finally managed to sit down and start watching Stranger Things (season 1, for the first time), I found myself reaching for my phone on more than one occasion, without any prompting from the device itself. One episode and 15 minutes in, I turned it off, never to set eyes on it again. My review: it's boring — a boring and pointless show.

Someone thought this was a clever idea.

I saw everything they were trying to affect: the nostalgia grab (which was as sentimental as the faux antique realia that sometimes decorates pubs); the forced, tiresome allusions to E.T., The Goonies, and Stand by Me; the young facsimile 1980s movie stars; the eighties movie darling cameo; the suburban setting; the props and the decor. It seems to me that a calculated piece of craftsmanship such as this was green-lit by a committee of producers, who cynically pursue means of bottling your memories and feelings of childhood excitement so they can sell them back to you. Consume through television serials and films the feelings you felt while you consumed television serials and films long ago. All I felt was how pointless watching endless hours of meaningless stories was then and still is. Thankfully, they are mercifully shorter than before, but one cannot help wonder if that is born from better taste or the inviability of being the prime distraction for so many hours. Who has time for all this? All these hours in front of the TV? There are TV shows that discuss episodes of Stranger Things with the gravity of something real or important. There are Youtube channels that review it in great banality. There are blog posts and probably — God forgive us — boring academic papers of no value harping on about its cultural significance, and disclosing predictable observations about how nostalgia stems from a fear of the future or death or something else as boring and commonplace as those things. Jesus Christ, it's only a bit of dread about death.

What curiosity stirs within so many people for such stories? How do they become invested in such foregttable characters? Just look, for example, at the current Star Wars trilogy. Who cares about Po Damaran or Finn or Captain Phasma? "I can't wait to ride along on their fascinating story arc", said some dullard oblivious to the idea that it is a film series that is trying to replicate another film series. People scream at the film's trailers, which are comparable to advertisements for supermarket level products. The current run of films will all eventually get lost in many series of trilogies and solo films, where characters will continually get killed off and batons will be passed down. So many batons and so much death. Like existence itself, it is a stream of waste that never ends.

Where to next then? There's no easy answer, and it's hard to think with all the noise that is the entertainment industry. My advice? Just part ways with your fear about death and loss, and everything will be fine. You can let go and avoid putting yourself through another Netflix original show. Or, you know, just do the opposite. Enjoy it, if that's your thing, I suppose. But it's boring. Admit it, it's boring!

Or at least as boring as this video of Gwendoline Christie talking about playing Captain Phasma:

Who Saves Time by Daylight Saving Time?

And so, winter has officially come to visit us again. Its dark reign ascends until the new year, whence its icy grip will slowly loosen. The sun-god Re will make progressively less impressive treks across our sky until his paltry appearances will not bring awe to even the most impressionable. Like everything else in nature, it is not something that cannot be made worse by human artifice. I speak now, explicitly, of daylight saving time (or daylight's savings's time as we say here in Ireland). We feign control over time every six months by moving the hands of our chronometers back or forth. It is a concept utterly bereft of logic and utility. I once spent twenty bemused minutes trying to explain it to a Korean colleague, who may well have thought me a liar or an idiot. 

Resistance is futile. 

We have all heard the stories of why daylight saving exists: the farmer needed the extra hour with his sons before school in the morning to ensure he could get all the work done before sundown (or some such variation of this idea). Aside from daylight saving being redundant now, in this time of hydroponics, flood lights, and advanced farming machinery, it has allowed the greatest scourge ever to visit mankind to endure for millennia: farming itself. Yes, dear reader, I attest to the inescapable reality that farming has held us back, leading us away from the righteous paleo diet we were always supposed to have. The ultra-ancient wisdom of our pre-historic ancestors has been lost. Were they able to transmit their insights into the future in a more reliable form than the primordial grunts they used as language, they would have undoubtedly educated us on the value of ketosis, foraging, and the many ills of dairy and gluten. Instead, their beautiful knowledge and lifestyle were paved over by the mammoth terror we now call agriculture. 

Like a plague of organised, productive locusts, agrarian societies supplanted the bounty of nature with the toilsome utilitarianism of farming. These harbingers of obesity and diabetes poisoned humanity with wheat, barley, and animal produce. How many barely discernible, minor allergies and intolerances do we have to witness to acknowledge that farming is a curse? And what has farming actually brought us? Obesity? Societies crammed with far too many bodies? How many fat people filing up crowded places do we need to experience before we realise that foraging for nuts and berries is the pinnacle of humanity? We can no longer afford to deny our very particular dietary needs. I say that if you wish to uncover the roots of our dystopia, look no further than the roots of our dyspepsia. Throwing shit we gather from animals asses unto the tossed and turned soil has produced the results you would expect from such activities. Prior to the Neolithic Revolution, we stood over 190cm tall and usually lived for over a century. Now we look shrivelled and pale in comparison, unable to breeze through daily ultra-marathons like our pre-historic ancestors did. 

The darkness descends once more and we believe we can mitigate it with artifice. We need, as humans, to put down the foolish slice of bread and the bowl of rice hubris. Nature stands immutable; in the power scheme, we are not the ones in control. Only when we accept the light of this truth can we hope for a brighter day. 

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