Unrequited

Have you ever tried to win back a love, friendship or affection that was lost somewhere along the way? Have you ever attempted to revive a love that is waning, strengthen a friendship that is languishing, or rekindle an affection that has all but wasted away? Does it seem that you are forever struggling to maintain the affection of certain others who are important pillars in your life and give meaning to it, be they family, friends or romantic liaisons? If you have, and maybe you still do, then you will know what I'm talking about and will identify with some of the feelings I describe and the views I express in this post.

Throughout our lives we strive to win and keep the favour of those who mean something to us, whatever their relationship. We endeavour to maintain a circle of people that gives meaning to our existence, that makes us feel safe and wanted on life's journey from the cradle to the grave. The knowledge that a number of people out there care about us, think about us, like or love us, makes us feel good and is important to our self-esteem and well-being in general. Acceptance or approval of our views, actions and behaviour, not to mention praise, reassures us that we're normal, that we're okay, that our life is on the right path. The tolerance or endorsement of others boosts our self-confidence and belief in ourselves.

But it is not enough to have the affection and approval of people who mean very little to us. The whole point is that this should come from those we ourselves like or love or have special feelings towards, that is family and friends, and often certain family members and certain friends. We need the right responses from the right people. The opinions that really matter to us are of the folks who really matter to us, though we might welcome the friendship of people in general. Those who say the do not care are either lying to us or even worse lying to themselves. The dictum that no man is an island is very true, witness the online social networking sites that have sprung up over the past few years thanks to the Internet.

But what if no matter how much we try to gain and maintain the affection and approval of certain people who are important to us we remain out in the cold or their conduct to us is at best lukewarm? What if we simply cannot win them over and they remain aloof and on the margins of our life? What if in trying to win their affections, to bring them closer to us, to play a bigger part in our lives, we just end up hurting ourselves time and again? Does there not come a time when we should stop to think and consider whether the effort and the pain involved are worth it? Because for every possible gain, there's a price to pay, and where the possible gain is remote or unlikely it may be that the price one pays in emotional or psychological hurt is too high. This of course is always a personal decision.

The fact is that sometimes we just have to accept defeat and simply let go. We have to face up to the fact that the person we are trying to get closer to just does not feel the same way about us. This may be for all sorts of reasons, some of which may have nothing to do with us personally but rather with their way of life and with the people around them who may already be providing all the emotional attention and affection they need. It may also be partly due to location and practical considerations. But whatever it is, if we have tried our damnedest to gain the interest and affection of that person and they have not reciprocated, perhaps the time has come to throw in the towel and get on with our lives with the people that are interested in us and that do care about us. We need not break off relations with the object of our endeavours, just accept that our relationship will never be more than what it already is. Some things are not meant to be and, unless we are happy to risk blighting our lives with constant disappointment and rejection, we should be able to recognise this, let go, and move on.

The Computer and Us

The computer. Few if any modern inventions could define our world of today more precisely than this marriage of electronic software and hardware. And few areas in the scientific and tecnological evolution of human society, have elicited more comment, more sould-searching and more equivocation than this. But like the motor-car, which still has its many detractors, the computer is here to stay, for good or evil. Hopefully it is for the former, it all depends on how we use it. After all, we still have not learnt how best to live with the motor-car which is arguably much more capable of harming our environment than the computer and perhaps, although it may not seem so at present, less useful and revolutionary than the computer, not to mention its more powerful and all-pervasive younger sibling, the Internet. But, notwithstanding the indisputable significance of the Internet, which is still growing, I will be restricting my comments in this blog to the computer per se, the Internet will be the subject of a future blog. After all, it deserves a whole blog to itself!

I'm old enough to recall a time when the manual typewriter was the order of the day and the last word in office equipment, along with the xerox photocopier - and the only electrical device on my desk was the telephone! Then came the electric typewriter, which represented a modest leap forward, after which it was not long before the electronic typewriter arrived on the scene. The electronic typewriter often came fitted with a short narrow strip of LCD screen on which appeared the words that you typed, though as yet there was no way of making integrated corrections other than by using the correction track of a combined typing and correction ribbon, itself a great improvement on the hand-applied snopake/tippex correction fluid or correction paper strip. By now some large companies had set up so-called computer rooms where rows of grey cabinets whirred away with the sound of rotating spools of data tape which impressed by their sheer bulk and number than by their computing ability. It was not in fact until the arrival of the first batch of machines which ran on elaborated programs and had decent-sized text display screens that the modern-day computer was born in any real sense of the word. And with the computer it was recognised that some sort of printer was needed to produce hard copy. We were now in the 1990s and the home computer age had truly arrived, having grown out of the computer developed for business and industrial needs. The next few years would see constant improvement of the software and hardware that would turn these rudimentary electronic machines into powerful, flexible and ever more capable computers that would proliferate in the office environment as a multi-use tool.

My first computer was the humble Amstrad model which came packaged with a separate keyboard and printer. The software was basic, the monitor was small, and the printer, fitted with a daisy-wheel printing component, was about as noisy as the old golf-ball typewriter, as it too was based on the percussion principle. But it was a start and the price was reasonable for the time, which is why the Amstrad computer became so popular in its first years. Later on, as more capable computers came on stream and were made available at competitive prices, the Amstrad, which could not compete in terms of capability, began to lose ground and eventually disappeared. But it had introduced many thousands of people to the principle of the computer and now the market was ready for a whole host of different makes and models, sporting new and attractive refinements. As I began to lose patience with my noisy and very limited daisy-wheel printer and the equally limited software which ran it, I realised it was time to throw it out and acquire one of the new crop of computers running on Windows 98 and using the quiet ink-jet printers. I was ready for the next step up in the computer ladder.

Since then and several models on, the computer has become an integral part of my life, both for work and for leisure, as it has for millions and millions of people worldwide, and its appeal has of course been enormously boosted by the Internet. Indeed for many people who do not use the computer for work purposes, the Internet and all its trappings - e-mail, games, networking, social encounter sites, and other online applications - are the sole reason for its appeal and this has fuelled an exponential growth in its take-up, going into many millions of homes and being duplicated inside each home as each member of the household feels the need to have his own exclusive machine, often within a network and sharing a common signal from a device known as a router. The computer, whether a desktop or a laptop or indeed both, is a familiar piece of furniture in every household. Even the common television set has now been recruited to double up as a computer terminal!

The computer has truly come of age, going from being a purely practical and rather limited industrial machine to a powerful must-have multimedia device in every home, as numerous as the tv set and with much greater potential. It is not for nothing that the times we are now living in have been christened the Computer Age and this is just the beginning. Our lives now are influenced and shaped by the computer and our living habits are fast changing as a consequence of our changing relationship with this ever-more powerful and capable piece of machinery . There is hardly a field of human activity that has not been affected by the computer as it spreads its tentacles into every aspect of human existence. But this brings us on to the other aspect of computing, a veritable revolution in itself with unimaginable ramifications and implication - the Internet - and that is something I will be looking at in another post.

Valentine's Day - Do we need it?

Well here we are again, at another Saint Valentine's Day, a holiday named after an early Christian martyr by the name of Valentine, though we do now know which one exactly, and we have the usual crop of Valentine cards, flowers, gifts and chocolates being sent or given to a whole variety of people, not necessarily all lovers, boy-/girl-friends, fiancé(e)s, or spouses. It is one of a whole host of special commemorative days, usually with no holiday attached (that is time off from work) and probably has more legitimacy than most in historical terms, e.g. Mother's Day, Father's Day, Grandparents' Day, Friend's Day (or International Friendship Day) and all the other Someone's Day (not to mention Something's Day) which have come into being over the centuries, some with purely commercial motives. It would seem that it isn't enough that we have birthdays, name-days, Christmas and Easter (though neither cards nor gifts are usually exchanged on the last of these). At this rate, every day will be Someone's or Something's Day and then we'll never get any peace or surcease! It will be a constant orgy of card-, flower- and gift-buying, to the great delight of traders and shopkeepers who are the only ones who will really profit from it.

Although I am not intrinsically opposed to such special days, as long as they are kept down to a manageable number, do we really need them in order to express love or affection for someone? Can we not do this unprompted and unbidden? Must we have someone telling us to do it and when to do it? Must a demonstration of one's love involve purchases? Is affection only of any value when it involves spending money? Is this stipulation of special days of demonstration of affection not just another manifestation of an intrusive dirigiste society that feels the need to dictate to people when they must do what and how? It would seem so, judging by how readily we take to such commemorations and all the trimmings that accompany them, inevitably involving trips to the shops (or online shopping sites) for the indispensable (so we are made to believe) purchases, without which our professions of affection or love would not be believed or accepted, it would appear.

In the end, all things considered, does a manifestation of some affection towards a number of people simultaneously on Valentine's Day really carry much weight as compared to the same thing done on a day like any other because one is thinking of that person or those persons and wishes to express their love or affection without the prompting of a particular day which is meant to incite people en masse to manifest affection? Is it not infinitely more valuable and meaningful when one makes such a gesture of affection on an ordinary day of the year, unprompted and unbidden, and with no pressure exerted by reason of a commemorative day on which everyone is doing the selfsame thing and buying the selfsame articles for presentation to a loved one? Do we always need to be regimented and pressured into doing something which should come naturally to us if the emotion expressed is a true and genuine one?

As I said, I am not in principle too bothered about Valentine's Day or, come to that, any other commemorative day, but I sometimes think that with this ever-growing number of special commemorative days, some of which are most worthy (as, for instance those to do with wars and conflicts where we honour the fallen) and some of which are rather silly and unnecessary, are we not in danger of losing our spontaneity and our sincerity when we go along with the herd and of being criticised and rebuked if we do not? For my part, I have this odd feeling that when things are done en masse they are less sincere and less meaningful than when they are done individually and free of crowd pressure, but perhaps I'm mistaken and looking at it all from the wrong perspective. After all, I am a man of a certain age and have seen many changes in my life, some of which I deem good and desirable and some of which I deem bad and undesirable.

Unfortunately, it is not always the bad ways that are discarded in time and the good ways that are adopted. One only has to study history to see this. And one of the prime motivators and persuaders to take one course of action in preference to another is 'Mammon', better known as 'money'. The profit motive is one of the strongest incentives in our modern society and governs both individuals, companies, organisations, and governments, to name but a few. If we now relate this to the subject of this blog, it is clear to see that in monetary terms Valentine's Day benefits all those who sell anything to do with such a day: greetings cards, flowers, chocolates, cuddly toys, heart-shaped trinkets and cushions, and generally anything that can be associated with love and affection. It would be a daring politician who would attempt to banish such a day!

Grammar Grumbles and Language Lapses

My subject this time round is my pet hate of pet hates, namely that of our increasingly grammarless society which must surely have come about because English grammar has for the most part long since ceased to be taught in our schools and colleges and so all those rules and guidelines which were inculcated into children of my generation and before are no longer familiar to people in general, sadly not even to many teachers of English, and so they are prone to make the simplest and silliest of mistakes through sheer ignorance, often of the most basic grammatical rules. In addition, I will highlight modes of speech which demonstrate how restricted is our independence of thought in respect of our speech patterns and how like sheep we are in repeating a word or phrase ad nauseam until it loses its force and becomes almost meaningless. Below I give an example of some of these speech patterns and grammatical mistakes, but there will be many more than the few I cite.

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'Reduce'

The English language seems to have been reduced to this one word to express the lessening of something. Where we once varied our vocabulary and used in addition to this synonym other words such as decrease, decline, diminish, fall, drop, restrict, limit, we now seem to have only this word to express this concept of making less. And it is used transitively and intransitively indiscriminately. It started life off as a transitive verb, e.g. to reduce the number of workers. Now one is just as likely to find it used as an intransitive verb, e.g. the supply of food reduced considerably.

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Vast majority

Every majority nowadays is nothing if not a vast majority. It cannot be just a majority or a small majority or a great majority or large majority or a considerable majority or even a huge majority. No, the majority is always vast. And so the expression vast majority has now ended up completely emasculated and makes little impression, since any majority which is not vast must be trifling and hardly worth considering. This is a prime example of the close association of an adjective with a certain noun to such a degree that the noun on its own almost becomes meaningless or appears wanting or at the very least is weak and makes little impression on the listener.

Hello/Hullo/Hallo

There was a time that this word in England was usually spelt hullo. This accurately represented how British people for the most part pronounce the word, as in hug, hunt, hut, hurry, hush, hussy, to name a few. Sometimes the word might be spelt hallo, which was also very close to the way it was pronounced in this land of Shakespeare, as in hat, hand, happy, harry, happen. But no, all this no longer mattered a jot when all of a sudden we noticed that the Americans were writing it as hello which, may it be said, seems to represent fairly accurately the way this word comes out of their mouths but not out of ours. But, hey buddy, what did such a detail matter when the Yanks were writing it as hello. So we too, almost overnight, changed over to hello. And now, practically everyone (except me of course!), be he wordsmith or word-illiterate, is writing it this way. The criterion nowadays is how our American friends are spelling it. Never mind how we here pronounce it or how we have spelt it over hundreds of years for good reason.

Honour/Honor

The above argument of course does not apply to instances where it makes good sense to effect a change bringing us into line with the Americans both in terms of grammar, history, and reason. The superfluous 'u' in words such as honour, favour, labour, savour, etc. is religiously observed in Britain even though it is an intruder who has no business being there and is not even pronounced (though it may have been centuries ago). If one refers to Latin, from which such words originate, there is no 'u' to be seen and it there is no defensible reason why it should be there. But, by some sort of perverted sense of humour (now there's another one!), we insist on hanging on to it even though it long ceased to serve any practical purpose and still doesn't and never will again. We cling to it desperately, much as we do to the 'me' on the end of 'programme' (though it is not in 'kilogram' or 'telegram'), in contrast to the very sensible American spelling 'program' - short and sweet! But, I suppose logic never was a powerful force when it comes to English spelling, only some outdated crusty old tradition that lingers on long after it has ceased to serve any useful purpose.

I, Me

Although there are cases of legitimate use of the object pronoun me where in purely grammatical terms the text would dictate the use of I - because constant use of it in this way has established it as the norm and now the correct grammatical use of I sounds odd to our ears - there are other examples where in an attempt to right the balance an even more ridiculous error is made in reverse, e.g. between you and I, instead of the grammatically correct between you and me, by reason of the fact that prepositions govern the objective case of a pronoun and I is a subject pronoun. Another example of this error is He spoke to my mother and I, where one should say He spoke to my mother and me, since me is just as much the object of the verb spoke as is mother (though the noun does not undergo any change). Of course the persons who fall into this error would not dream of saying He spoke to I, but as soon as another word is interposed between the verb and the pronoun, in this case mother, we somehow lose sight of the grammatical sequence and lose our way.

Where more is less

There is an even more pernicious development which has taken place in modern-day speech and this relates to the decline in the formation of the comparative of adjectives by adding the appropriate suffix and instead tagging the augmentative more at the beginning of adjectives whose comparative mood should be formed by the suffix er or equivalent, e.g. she was more lovely than I have ever seen her instead of she was lovelier than I have ever seen her; he was more scary than his enemy in place of he was scarier than his enemy; they are more safe at home than on the street instead of they are safer at home than in the street; this species of bird is more rare than many instead of this species of bird is rarer than many. The general rule about the comparative of adjectives is that, barring certain exceptions, which are very few in number, adjectives of less than tree syllables take the augmentative suffix. Thus we would say she is more beautiful than her friend, but she is prettier than her friend. Beautiful has three syllables whereas pretty has only two, so the former takes the suffix and the latter the stand-alone augmentative more. Unfortunately, this rule is more and more ignored nowadays, mainly because in most cases it is not even known about any more and so the language is being gradually corrupted in this way and not for the better, I think, as it adds nothing to the language but rather impoverishes its structure. One day we may even see the total disappearance of this suffix followed in due course by the superlative st and est, as in biggest, tallest, loveliest, a far neater (not more neat) and more effective means of expressing the superlative than with the detached word more.

Different than/Different from

It is an unfortunate truism that our speech habits and patterns nowadays seem to be dictated from across the Pond, that is from America. And it is more usually the bad speech habits that we adopt than the good ones. A breach of basic grammar in America today becomes the breach of basic grammar in Britain tomorrow. That is the direction in which habits and customs are flowing in this brave new world. And so it is with the phrase different than. This, for anyone who has any inkling of grammatical correctness, is a horrible and pointless aberration based on a mistaken comparison with the use of than after the comparative of adjectives. The thing is that the word different is not in the comparative, it is merely in its simple form. It just happens to make a comparison through its actual intrinsic meaning and not by virtue of being in the comparative. And so the correct link after this adjective is from (or even to at a stretch), not than. Tom's views are different from those of his family and Emily's picture is very different from those of her classmates. Than is used after the comparative of an adjective, e.g. Tom's car is bigger than that of his friends and Emily's painting is more skilful than that of her classmates.

Good/Well

Once upon a time, if we were asked how we were, we would reply more often than not that we were well. Sometimes that we were fine or alright. After all, the question implies that the asker is enquiring about your health first and foremost and perhaps also of your life in general. Now if we are asked how we are, the reflex unthinking reply is good. Yet how can this be? First of all, good is an adjective, not an adverb. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it does not really answer the question asked. And this is because good really means well-behaved, correct in one's conduct. It does not refer to our state of health or our general state of existence. That function is performed by well. "I'm well in health. I'm doing well in general. Things are going well." But that has all gone down the toilet now. All that matters is that our American cousins are now universally using that word, be it ever so ungrammatical and incorrect, and so we too must use it. And so it's farewell to well and welcome to good. Out with the good and in with the bad, the bad in this case being good and the good being bad, if you see what I mean!

Lie/Lay

One of the worst offenders and therefore best example of incorrect grammar is the use of lay, a transitive verb, in place of lie, an intransitive verb. Once again this incorrect usage has come to us from across the Atlantic and is beginning to take firm hold, melding two distinct verbs into one, since lie is tending to disappear as lay takes over a double role. The proper use of lay is when one 'lays something or someone', e.g. 'lay a book down', 'lay evidence before a court', 'lay a tray on a table', 'lay a body in a coffin'. In other words when the action of the verb is done to something or someone. When the action of the verb stays with the subject, lie is the correct verb form, e.g. 'he lies in bed all day', 'they lie in the cemetery undisturbed', 'she lies awake at night', 'the fallen lie here in this field'. The main tense forms of lay are 'lay, laid, laying', those of lie are 'lie, lay, lain', but now, thanks to widespread American misuse, the latter has all but disappeared, its role having been abusively usurped by lay. And so it is that this ungrammatical use is spreading like wildfire and is now heard more and more on this side of the ocean, starting with the uneducated and moving up into educated circles, as is the case with the other examples here. The snowball is growing and as it grows it is becoming unstoppable.

The worst thing about all this is that these grammatical mistakes and lazy linguistic habits are not just the prerogative of the sort of people you might expect to be the culprits, they are committed by those who should know better, that is by the educated and the highly placed, by politicians, lawyers, teachers, and other professionals and well-read individuals, and it is clear that for all their education and professional stature they simply do not know their grammar and therefore have no standard yardstick or measure to help them avoid grammatical errors and ugly speech habits tending to corrupt and pervert the English language and create confusion where there was none before. Unable to recognise, let alone name, the various parts of speech or grammatical constructions, the uninitiated and untutored are easy enlistments for those who would debase and degrade language to its lowest common denominator. And this cannot be good, for careless, sloppy, disordered speech habits do not make for effective communication unless all that is required is a handful of basic words and vulgar expletives enhanced by bodily gestures and grunts. That may be enough for some individuals but it should not be the standard to which we all aspire and it is certainly not enough for those of us who wish to express more than just the most basic ideas.

Misguided Exhibitionists or Innocent Victims?

WHY is it that today's western society is unhealthily fascinated by the private lives of private individuals who usually have nothing special about them and do not lead even mildly interesting lives? I refer to our television culture and specifically to the growing number of programmes that see fit to go into people's homes or workplaces or wherever and follow them around as they live out their everyday lives and go about their everyday business and who would not normally warrant filming in any shape or form simply because there is really nothing of real interest in their lives any more than there is in the ordinary day-to-day humdrum existence of Joe and Jill Bloggs or even John and Jane Dow - that's you and me! After all, what is it exactly that we gain from this prurient eavesdropping on ordinary people’s lives? Do we actually learn anything? Is there a point to be made? Is it more than an unhealthy and overblown curiosity to pry into other people’s lives, especially when these other people are more often than not vacuous and annoying individuals who are elevated to a status they seldom deserve? And, though we might be entertained in some way – indeed there are those of us who would be entertained by watching paint dry – is there nothing worthier that could be broadcast which would require a little more creativity and artistic skill than just pointing a tv camera at a moving subject and which would entertain us in a more legitimate and rewarding manner?

AND talking of vacuous and annoying individuals, let's visit the natural habitat of such a person. It's bad enough when we are filming some particular nobody going about their daily life but it gets decidedly worse when it is one of these “problem-airing” chat shows that pretend to solve family and social problems for the great unwashed of our society. On they come in a never-ending procession of fat (oops, sorry, 'overweight') ugly misfits (or even skinny ugly misfits), speaking their appallingly bad English, wearing their unbelievably bad-taste clothes, ill-fitting and ill-matching, that usually hang off them like so many rags, the men parading their beer-guts before our jaded eyes and the women their overgrown rumps, and straight off they begin spitting venom from their foul mouths and making threatening gestures in each other’s angry faces with their intrusive limbs.
 

And these are the creatures we’re meant to feel sorry for and make every attempt to assist through such programmes with their panoply of DNA paternity tests, lie-detector tests, and their stand-by army of counsellors, therapists and body-language experts. Do me a favour!

ONE can surely not fail to notice that the overwhelming majority, over 90% I would say, of the individuals who come on these shows to wash their dirty laundry in public are from the same type of background, social class and educational and cultural level, wherever they hail from in this hallowed land. Most of them are uneducated, uncultured, uncouth and undignified in the extreme, a really nasty piece of work, one might say. Many of them are part of the loutish yob culture, rough and ready, kitted out in shell-suits, jogging gear, filthy crumpled jeans, shapeless sack-like jumpers and sweaters or clinging little belly-exposing blouse tops in the case of the women or tasteless loose-fitting shirts that dangle outside their trousers almost down to their knees like night-shirts in the case of the men. They make their angry entrances, wagging a finger at their adversary, mouthing oaths and obscenities, lungeing at their perceived opponent and, unable to do lay in to them because of the hired bodyguards who hold them back, having to settle for a verbal attack of a stream of ignorant and offensive invective. And these are the oafish louts that populate daytime tv and provide entertainment for the masses who have nothing else to occupy their time, it would seem, and we’re meant to take their troubles (mostly self-inflicted) seriously and bend over backwards to succour them. No way!

WHAT is it about folk like that who think nothing of coming on television and exposing their tacky tasteless lives to hundreds of thousands if not millions of viewers? What do they hope to gain by it? Is it money? It surely cannot be that, as they are paid relatively very little if anything at all, as I understand it (though I stand to be corrected). Is it fame? Because if it’s this, then it’s not the type of fame or notoriety that any person with an ounce of dignity and self-pride would wish. And this is because the crushing majority of them are shown to be the pathetic clueless individuals that they are and by the time they have given vent to their bile and had their 10-15 minutes of air-time, we are glad to be rid of them and never want to see their ugly mugs or hear their rough voices again. Many of us, who tuned in in the first place, hoping to derive some sinful pleasure from the trials and tribulations of society’s hoi-polloi, learn our lesson and resolve never to view such programmes again.

Those, however, who have not yet learnt their lesson and do not desist, would do better to sign up for regular psychotherapy sessions and cure themselves of their ugly habit of slumming it with the manky masses who think the sun shines out of their arse!

ONE of the stupidest things that guests are wont to say when they are being put upon or booed by their audience is: “This ain’t got nuffink to do with you. Why don’t you mind your own fuckin’ business?!” If they would pause for one moment and realise how ridiculous such a comment is they might not say such a thing again. Here they are, after having applied to come on a tv programme whose principal if not sole aim is to show people washing their dirty laundry in front of the public at home and in the studio and these brainless idiots respond to an unwelcome comment by telling the offender to mind his own business. You might think that if they did not want anyone to meddle in their business they would not have volunteered to come on a show whose aim is to do just that. But no, the paradoxical nature of their stance never seems to occur to them. They want to have their cake and eat it. It’s all fine and dandy to parade themselves and their squalid feuds on mainstream television, but as soon as they get adverse comments and stern criticism from their audience they hit back with the ludicrous remark that the sordid problem they have just aired in front of zillions of people is none of anyone else’s business! Don’t these individuals ever stop to think? 

QUITE frankly it is enough to watch a few of these tv spectacles with their loutish ego-inflated dull-eyed denizens, to make one despair of humanity. They give the expressions “the good people of this country” and “people are not stupid, you know” an ironic twist and leave a bad taste in one’s mouth. No doubt there are millions of people who would not be seen dead on one of these problem-airing chat shows and to them I would apologise if I have appeared to lump them in the same sack. There is some hope on the horizon, small though it is. But one thing’s for sure, and that is that if I were attempting to discourage aliens from adopting the Earth as their new home I would sit them down in front of a giant tv screen and let them watch several hours of these ridiculous shows with their line-up of circus freaks ranting on about their seedy aimless lives and rowdy infighting and see if that did not deter them for good! I would bet you any money they would high-tail it back into space and never return to this conflict-ridden fucked-up planet of ours!

P.S. - ALTHOUGH I've included pictures of well-known tv shows here, they merely serve to illustrate my post. The nasty and venomous comments made by me here and the sweeping generalisations slandering (not to say libelling) a whole host of people, people who are basically good and decent and an example to us all, do not necessarily relate to anyone in these shows.