Evening everyone. How was your weekend? Promising? Enlightening? The sudden realisation that everything is the same as it was ten years ago? That’s what I experienced anyway. When I returned home from a weekend in vernal Berkshire, I was summoned into the position of ‘domestic IT support technician’ (I’m sure all of you are called into this role by at least one parent, at least once a week). After a day of sorting out old paperwork and files, my rather archaic father asked me to install a 3.5” floppy disk drive into his computer. *Raises eyebrow*. The moment of holding a piece of blast-from-the-past technology wasn’t the thing that nostalgia’ed me; it was what followed.
Errors, not responding screens, cursors remaining stationary whilst the mouse is shaken like a pepper-mill. These were the things which brought me back to the earlier days of computing. I mean, seriously; the average PC is now about 24 times faster than they were a decade ago, but Mr Microsoft still asks you to do unpaid overtime whilst repeatedly punching you in the head. The problem isn’t that computers are worse, the problem is that all the programs that used to be so basic, are now so bloody media and HD-happy, that they suck the life of your poor little lappy like a Dementor touching your face.
So....proportionally, computers haven’t actually become any faster, nor has TV become any better. The propagation of 24-hour journalism has replaced concise, well-documented, professionally-delivered facts, with continuous chattering and ad hoc reckonings from some reporter standing outside a closed building, or the thoughts of James, 12 from Solihull. FFS, no one cares! If I wanted ‘public opinion’, I’d ask my mates at work, or down the pub....oh wait....I’m human and vaguely social - I already do media-world! Leave me alone! Stop trying to replace my friends with these wannabe-journalists who broke into media purely to do Strictly or meet Dermot O’ Leary.
I’m not going to apologise for the above, cos you know, and I know, that you agree at least to some extent. Also, because the daily grind is sucking the life out of my creativity, or the creativity out of my life; I’m not sure which yet. This is reason why this series of unfortunate writings are under the title of The Daily Grind. Not because because they’re daily (they were meant to be, but I’m just not self-disciplined enough, and for that I will apologise) but because the daily life we are all exposed to moulds us, makes us, breaks us is often bleak and that in these five-hundred or so words, I can try and eek out my own existence, to let the world know that I am here...and hopefully to give you readers some sort of enjoyment from my rants and personal anecdotes.
So there we have it. The tenth post lists the raison d’etre but is also the worst in terms of content. Ironic non? For a greater example of this, see The Godfather Part III.
Take care everyone.
