MTWTFSS
Welcome to my week as a talking head.
Monday: It's Monday as I write this and may well still be Monday when you read it, but hopefully of some future week. I must confess at the outset that I've never been a man of strong convictions. Off the top of my head there are about a handful of hills I'd be willing to die on and the sea can take the rest for all I care. However, in the age of the hot take this is no way to live. So I figured I'd give it a whirl and join the hot take bonanza by coming up with some hot takes of my own. Here goes nothing.
Humans have an unhelpful belief that big problems require big solutions. We still don't know much about COVID but we do know how it spreads: via air. According to CDC, surface transmission "isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads". Yet in the face of the pandemic the actors of the hygiene theatre have been working over time to make as public a display as possible of drowning every surface in disinfectant. Not only is it ineffective at addressing the spread of the virus, it is actually harmful. It actively detracts resources and attention from effective messages and strategies. We know how to slow down the virus now: wear a mask and social distance. All hygiene theatre does is ease people's concern about congregating in close spaces where social distancing is impossible. No wonder we are staring in the face of the second wave.
Tuesday: A few weeks into lockdown I've decided that if I was to make it past this veil of tears I'd need to introduce a bit more va-va-voom into my day, if that is the word I'm after. This resolution replaced a previously long-held resolution that there will be no drinking of alcoholic beverages while on home soil, for fear that I may not be able remain above said soil if left without a drink for too long.
Presently, going through the Nth glass of what Sunday Times Wine Club unkindly, though not inaccurately, advertises as lip smacking, it strikes me that I really do not like wine. Not just the present vintage, but all wines in general. Back in university days I wrote an essay expressing my outrage regarding wine's oppressive choice hacking. Echoing Kingsley Amis' famous proclamation that "Red or White" are three most depressing words in English language. If that outrage was theoretical, this one is purely visceral. The barely drinkable piss has all the gastronomical nuance of fresh sick in your mouth. Late gastronome Julia Child was onto something when upon a request to name her favourite wine she replied "gin". And so it must be for me, back to the gin I go.
Wednesday: Property agents of the world, I take an issue with your use of the word ‘luxurious’. Having spent last two months looking for a place to rent, I can confirm that while rental prices are luxurious, the properties certainly aren't. Presence of a bed and a bog in a vomit-inducing proximity no more represents luxury than a bag of crisps represent a three-course meal. What these terms do is mistake for prestige a standard of living that well should be basic.
Thursday: There's a lot of advice floating around these days of the 'Be Yourself', 'Live in the Present' variety and I can't for the life of me figure out how it is supposed to help or how to go about implementing it. For starters, be yourself? What does that even mean!? What other 'be' would I even begin to be? And how? And live in the present? As transient places to live go, present is the only product on offer. What other produce are you seeing?
The world is full of old men yelling at the clouds. I know. I'm one of them. And as clouds go this one is of the wispier sort but it still irks me to no end. Not so much because they represent cheap, mindless, contextually-uninhibited propagation of bumper sticker ideology - that I can live with - but because they make evident the belief of their progenitors that they are somehow more alive to the realities of the world; whatever those may be. The audacity.
Friday: I was being unkind yesterday. The progenitors mean well, and I guess there is some sense in the 'Be Yourself's of this world. Viewed through a more generous lens there are positive meanings and profound depths to them if one is only willing to wade through their stupendous shallows. But I didn't feel like it yesterday, I was feeling like being disagreeable.
On reflection, when it comes to propagation of bumper sticker ideology, I live in the glassiest of all glass houses. So it shouldn't be for me to throw rocks at others. In my defence, if they wanted to share their opinions without an opportunity for challenge, learning or growth, they could do what I do and start a blog.
Saturday: Speaking of yelling at the clouds. If say you wanted to stop Instagram from showing you TikTok videos because you weren't, hypothetically speaking, interested in seeing the same dance over and over again, how would you go about it? Instagram's algorithm can recognise in seconds that I like pictures of dogs but my insistent pleas to stop showing me TikTok videos are landing on deaf unsympathetic ears.
Sunday: I started this piece 6 days ago and I've never had an easier week writing. I see now why the epidemic of talking heads has taken hold. It takes so very little effort to be snarky, disparaging, or mean. There's no requirement for authenticity, enquiry, or forethought. I believed in all those things in the moment that I wrote them and never again. None of it offers any help or resolution because I took no effort to understand or give space to an opposing view. It was lazy and it shows.
'Never,' said my aunt, 'be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.'
Oh what I wouldn't give for Betsey Trotwood to be hopeful of me now.