Futility disability

Do you ever sit at your desk, or behind the wheel, or on the phone, or behind the till (The list is endless) and think to yourself…….”This is completely and utterly bloody pointless” I am sure you do from time to time, I know I do. As Henry Garvie from ‘Ultimate force’ once said, “There are only three things that are necessary for human existence, fighting, shagging, and eating.” And do you know what, he is bloody well right.

What we need is a bloody good world war! It’s true, we all pontificate about how terrible war is blah blah blah, but the stark truth of it is, is that a great many of us, especially in the Western world, have had it far too cushy, for far too long. Instead of spending our time striving for survival, we spend it lolling around on buy now pay later sofas, watching absolute mindless and pointless drivel, eating too much (because we haven’t got to get off of our fat arses and actually catch it) and generally filling our lives with absolutely meaningless tosh. A good world war would act like a cull, and blow away the cobwebs.

Human beings are at their best when their backs are against the wall. Invention and innovation flourish in times of turmoil and hardship, because it is necessary for our survival. During times of crisis, camaraderie increases, people start to pull together, help each other out, look out for each other. I am naturally and predominantly anti-social! I don’t know why, I just am (Serial killer in the making perhaps!) but I am sure I would be much more “People friendly” if I actually needed to be.

The trouble is you see, is that we have all become insular and self absorbed; there is no direct threat to most of us, so we don’t need to watch out for each other.

I avidly watch the Ross Kemp programs, where he shadows our troops in Afghanistan. Evan though war is terrible, and killing people is bad (despite what I said earlier!) I do in a way envy those soldiers out on the front line.

“Are you bloody mad?” I hear you shout (Probably not, I just think too much) but I think that the only time a human being truly feels “Alive” is when their life is in peril. People jump out of aeroplanes, throw themselves down the sides of mountains, tie elastic bands around their ankles and jump off bridges. Why do they do it, (apart from there being a small amount of showing off going on), it’s because as they are hurtling towards the earth at terminal velocity, they feel “Alive” because they know they could very soon be dead. The body seems to compensate for the fact that you may not have long left, by giving you a shot of adrenaline, and making your potentially last moments all whizzy and WOW!

What has prompted the rather strange direction for this latest Mule lecture? I don’t totally know. I am rather bored today, and when the boredom sets in, the old brain starts analyzing, and when the brain starts analyzing, the depression starts to knock on the door, and when the depression is “in da house” Mr apathy takes root, and Mr apathy opens the door to boredom, and …….

I, like many others I am sure, am afflicted by a disease called ‘Bullshit intoleranceitus’ I absolutely can’t stand cobblers, nonsense, trivia, nif naf, codswallop etc etc. Unfortunately the world is drowning in it. This does not bode well for a happy existence. I sometimes hear people standing around water coolers at work or whatever, rattling on about some work related shit, and I can’t believe how much onus they are bestowing upon it. People who think that their job is of absolute vital importance to the continual existence of this planet, (They procure condiments or something for a living!) are rife.

It’s terrible really how we all get completely wrapped up in our own little lives. Sitting on our own moons, orbiting planet 'ME'. What’s worse than living this completely and utterly self absorbed kind of life?.......telling every other poor sod about it, that’s what!

Oh god, how many times a day do most of us have to listen to Mr or Mrs 'ME' tell us all about Mr and Mrs 'me’s' planet, and all that goes on there. They seem completely oblivious to the fact that nobody is in the slightest bit interested. (There is a soul crushing irony here somewhere, but I think I might have missed it…….no it’s gone, now, where was I?)

What really gets me about somebody telling you one of their ‘stories’, is the amount of inconsequential detail that they feel they need to add. You know, we have all suffered it.

“I was taking aunty Beryl to the doctors last Wednesday…….hang on wait, or was it last Tuesday? No it must have been Wednesday because her dustmen come on a Wednesday. Unless it is bank holiday of course, then they come a day earlier, hang on a minute…….(Actually gets diary out to check if it was a bank holiday!)…….No it was Wednesday……."
And so on, and on it goes. I wish I had the balls to say…….”Look, quite frankly I couldn’t really give a flying monkey's pissing pot about your auntie Beryl’s trip to the doctors, unless of course something highly amusing or entertaining took place, and you can relay that to me in a particularly amusing and engaging fashion, which I doubt. So I especially don’t need to know what fucking day of the week it happened on…….OK”

But no, I dutifully stand there and suck it all up, and then go and take it out on someone who failed to indicate at a roundabout!
I always remember the wonderful Dave Allen talking about new years resolutions. He was saying that this person was going to stop smoking, that person was going to stop eating! This one was stopping whatever etc etc etc. He said he was going to stop accommodating bores! I think this is a great idea. I am going to come up with some sort of traffic light system that hangs around my neck. I will call it something like the ‘Bore-o-meter’ or whatever. It will work in a not dissimilar fashion to those lights they have at party conferences. But these won’t be to indicate time limits, they will be to indicate bore levels.

Green
You’re doing ok, but to be fair you have only just started, so…….

Amber
Come on, come on, you are going off on a tangent a bit, and you are definitely
beginning to ramble. Make it amusing or Interesting…….quick.

Red
Shut the fuck up, I’m off!

I am going to take it on to dragon’s den and team up with the chirpy little kebab seller bloke (Racist?) Don’t want the woman, I reckon she could be bossy.

We are all the same though really aren’t we? No matter how different or radical we think we are, we can’t help being bound together by the same little social foibles etc. I am going to stop shy of saying that I “Pride” myself on being unsociable, but let’s just say with age, I have become comfortable with it.
I often proclaim that I don’t give two hoots what people think of me, but even I can’t escape the inbuilt social necessities that are intrinsic to us all. My favourite two examples of this are:-

1. You’re walking down the street. All of a sudden you realize that you have forgotten something. You need to turn around and go back in the direction form which you came. Nothing wrong with that, but that isn’t what our little brains tell us is it? Oh no. Brain say’s

“If you just suddenly and for no apparent reason turn around, and start walking back that way, every set of eyes on this street are going to notice, and they are all going to think that you are a mentalist that doesn’t know what he is doing. There he goes they will say, pacing up and down the street aimlessly, they will think you have escaped from somewhere won’t they?”

So how do we get over this? We make bold and exaggerated movements to indicate that we have forgotten something, and to try and reassure everybody that we are not mad. We will do that clicking our fingers thing as we tut. We will sigh and playfully bang ourselves on the head, raise our eyebrows, maybe even try to make eye contact with someone, and tut and grin whilst shaking our heads, to let everyone know that we are a forgetful klutz, but definitely NOT a nutter.

2. My favourite of the two is this one. Again this involves just innocently walking down the street. This time you trip and start to tumble forwards. There is nothing wrong with that, but old brainy tells you different…….

“You clumsy bastard. Everybody saw that you know, you look like a complete idiot. What the hell did you trip over anyway? Is there a piece of paving slab protruding from the pavement? or a pot hole? no, there is nothing there. You have basically just tripped over nothing, and everybody saw you. You are an embarrassment to mankind."

So how do we deal with this situation? I have done it, and I am sure most other people have too. As we trip, we naturally start to run forward to try and stop ourselves landing flat on our faces. We can’t leave it at that though can we? Oh no, we can’t have people thinking that we are a clumsy sod that needs to pick their feet up.

We should just accept that we have made a minor arse of ourselves, and treat the whole thing with a wry smile. But no, we embark on an elaborate charade, trying to make out that we did it on purpose. We are actually out having a run. In fact what I am going to do is run for a short distance, and then at the end do a little bit of shadow boxing to finish it off. Yes that’s it, I am a boxer, a prize winning one at that, and I am out training for my next bout at 'Madison square gardens.' That is why I am out running and shadow boxing in the street…….wearing a suit!

Can I just apologize on two counts. Number one, there didn’t really seem to be any real definite direction to this, and secondly, I feel that I have used far too many brackets in this one (A habit that I don’t want to get in to) so sorry.

Well I think my red light is most definitely throbbing, so I will depart. I am going to jump off of the shed, using a bin liner as a makeshift parachute, so that I feel alive!