joe bloggs

One of these days, I'm going to get back to making the kinds of vacuous, pointless, or otherwise dozy observations I used to enjoy posting so much.

But before I do that, let me put forward one more theory of the eerie kind that has been blowing around in the cavernous recesses of my mind.

The theory of which I have been consumed for many moons, on and off over the years, goes like this:

Have you ever considered your existence to be so busy, or so tired, or so careworn, or so sidetracked ... that you gaze back on one point in your life where all seemed serene; or had a since-lost great sense of purpose or ambition; or was somehow more significant for you in some strange way - and you currently regard your life's purpose as to return to that high point in your life.

Now. I ask the question. And do not laugh. Yet.

Is it remotely possible that when you die, your mind lives on (as many already believe) - and carries on in its own mental approximation of your life's progression?

And actually imagines everything that has happened since that far off day when you thought your life was perfect?

And that all the people and events around you are your mind's construct based on who and what were in your life?

And that, by implication, all those imagined people and events might or might no longer exist?

And that there is a parallel universe - the real world that you departed - existing somewhere else ... without you?

If not, then how do we prove it?



is it time for a nap yet? i think so

Remember when you only had to go to the mailbox (the real one, by the gatepost outside your house or in your door) once a day, and if the old telephone rang and you weren't home, there was no, like, message bank, THEY JUST CALLED BACK LATER!

Oh my. How good were the good old days.

Now, you check your email six times a day, right? Oh, check your emails six times a day. Who has one email address?

Then, if you have a blog, you check all your posts for comments.

And, I have been told, some bloggers have more than one blog.

Imagine all the checking you would need to do, all that going back and forth between blogs.

That would be like running from room to room in a big old house to see if anyone were there. Most of the rooms would be empty for days on end, then finally you open a door and find six people all talking at once.




is it time for a nap yet? i think so

Lying awake in our beds on hot summer nights, my older brother and I used to frighten ourselves with physics.

We would imagine the biggest thing in existence - like maybe the universe - and then imagine something twice that size, or ten or a hundred times that size. My god, where would you put a hundred universes? One takes up all the space already. So you end up with infinity.

Then, the reverse. Half of the smallest atomic particle, then half again until infinity.

So, because there was no beginning and end, and therefore no real relativity or comparison point, we decided nothing could really exist.

Then we would try to sleep.




is it time for a nap yet? i think so

Of all my many dreams (real ones, not aspirations - I don't have any of those) I have frequent eerie ones.

Last night I dreamt I was at a house party somewhere in the country. The party went for some days and I was a guest.

The other guests were unknown to me and appeared slightly stilted in manner; stiffly formal; pleasant but a little aloof you might say.

What was odd was the topic of many conversations. A little unpleasant, out of keeping with the generally formal tone of the party.

They kept talking about macabre things and events.

By the third morning I noticed something unnatural. The other guests had not changed their clothes and by this time I realised they had not been to bed.

They were dead people.

I was at a party of ghosts.







is it time for a nap yet? i think so

I'm lazy and sleepy, so I get to post something someone else wrote about being idle!

It's my favourite writer again, Jerome K. Jerome. (Some think he's twee, but they just don't get him. His style is perfect parody of a particular nineteenth century mindset, if mindset is a word you would have used in the nineteenth century. No, of course you wouldn't have.)

ON BEING IDLE.

Now, this is a subject on which I flatter myself I really am _au
fait_. The gentleman who, when I was young, bathed me at wisdom's
font for nine guineas a term--no extras--used to say he never knew a
boy who could do less work in more time; and I remember my poor
grandmother once incidentally observing, in the course of an
instruction upon the use of the Prayer-book, that it was highly
improbable that I should ever do much that I ought not to do, but that
she felt convinced beyond a doubt that I should leave undone pretty
well everything that I ought to do.

I am afraid I have somewhat belied half the dear old lady's prophecy.
Heaven help me! I have done a good many things that I ought not to
have done, in spite of my laziness. But I have fully confirmed the
accuracy of her judgment so far as neglecting much that I ought not to
have neglected is concerned. Idling always has been my strong point.
I take no credit to myself in the matter--it is a gift. Few possess
it. There are plenty of lazy people and plenty of slow-coaches, but a
genuine idler is a rarity. He is not a man who slouches about with
his hands in his pockets. On the contrary, his most startling
characteristic is that he is always intensely busy.

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of
work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to
do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting
one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.

Many years ago, when I was a young man, I was taken very ill--I never
could see myself that much was the matter with me, except that I had a
beastly cold. But I suppose it was something very serious, for the
doctor said that I ought to have come to him a month before, and that
if it (whatever it was) had gone on for another week he would not have
answered for the consequences. It is an extraordinary thing, but I
never knew a doctor called into any case yet but what it transpired
that another day's delay would have rendered cure hopeless. Our
medical guide, philosopher, and friend is like the hero in a
melodrama--he always comes upon the scene just, and only just, in the
nick of time. It is Providence, that is what it is.

Well, as I was saying, I was very ill and was ordered to Buxton for a
month, with strict injunctions to do nothing whatever all the while
that I was there. "Rest is what you require," said the doctor,
"perfect rest."

It seemed a delightful prospect. "This man evidently understands my
complaint," said I, and I pictured to myself a glorious time--a four
weeks' _dolce far niente_ with a dash of illness in it. Not too much
illness, but just illness enough--just sufficient to give it the
flavor of suffering and make it poetical. I should get up late, sip
chocolate, and have my breakfast in slippers and a dressing-gown. I
should lie out in the garden in a hammock and read sentimental novels
with a melancholy ending, until the books should fall from my listless
hand, and I should recline there, dreamily gazing into the deep blue
of the firmament, watching the fleecy clouds floating like
white-sailed ships across its depths, and listening to the joyous song
of the birds and the low rustling of the trees. Or, on becoming too
weak to go out of doors, I should sit propped up with pillows at the
open window of the ground-floor front, and look wasted and
interesting, so that all the pretty girls would sigh as they passed
by.

And twice a day I should go down in a Bath chair to the Colonnade to
drink the waters. Oh, those waters! I knew nothing about them then,
and was rather taken with the idea. "Drinking the waters" sounded
fashionable and Queen Anne-fied, and I thought I should like them.
But, ugh! after the first three or four mornings! Sam Weller's
description of them as "having a taste of warm flat-irons" conveys
only a faint idea of their hideous nauseousness. If anything could
make a sick man get well quickly, it would be the knowledge that he
must drink a glassful of them every day until he was recovered. I
drank them neat for six consecutive days, and they nearly killed me;
but after then I adopted the plan of taking a stiff glass of
brandy-and-water immediately on the top of them, and found much relief
thereby. I have been informed since, by various eminent medical
gentlemen, that the alcohol must have entirely counteracted the
effects of the chalybeate properties contained in the water. I am
glad I was lucky enough to hit upon the right thing.

But "drinking the waters" was only a small portion of the torture I
experienced during that memorable month--a month which was, without
exception, the most miserable I have ever spent. During the best part
of it I religiously followed the doctor's mandate and did nothing
whatever, except moon about the house and garden and go out for two
hours a day in a Bath chair. That did break the monotony to a certain
extent. There is more excitement about Bath-chairing--especially if
you are not used to the exhilarating exercise--than might appear to
the casual observer. A sense of danger, such as a mere outsider might
not understand, is ever present to the mind of the occupant. He feels
convinced every minute that the whole concern is going over, a
conviction which becomes especially lively whenever a ditch or a
stretch of newly macadamized road comes in sight. Every vehicle that
passes he expects is going to run into him; and he never finds himself
ascending or descending a hill without immediately beginning to
speculate upon his chances, supposing--as seems extremely
probable--that the weak-kneed controller of his destiny should let go.

But even this diversion failed to enliven after awhile, and the
_ennui_ became perfectly unbearable. I felt my mind giving way under
it. It is not a strong mind, and I thought it would be unwise to tax
it too far. So somewhere about the twentieth morning I got up early,
had a good breakfast, and walked straight off to Hayfield, at the foot
of the Kinder Scout--a pleasant, busy little town, reached through a
lovely valley, and with two sweetly pretty women in it. At least they
were sweetly pretty then; one passed me on the bridge and, I think,
smiled; and the other was standing at an open door, making an
unremunerative investment of kisses upon a red-faced baby. But it is
years ago, and I dare say they have both grown stout and snappish
since that time. Coming back, I saw an old man breaking stones, and
it roused such strong longing in me to use my arms that I offered him
a drink to let me take his place. He was a kindly old man and he
humored me. I went for those stones with the accumulated energy of
three weeks, and did more work in half an hour than he had done all
day. But it did not make him jealous.

Having taken the plunge, I went further and further into dissipation,
going out for a long walk every morning and listening to the band in
the pavilion every evening. But the days still passed slowly
notwithstanding, and I was heartily glad when the last one came and I
was being whirled away from gouty, consumptive Buxton to London with
its stern work and life. I looked out of the carriage as we rushed
through Hendon in the evening. The lurid glare overhanging the mighty
city seemed to warm my heart, and when, later on, my cab rattled out
of St. Pancras' station, the old familiar roar that came swelling up
around me sounded the sweetest music I had heard for many a long day.

I certainly did not enjoy that month's idling. I like idling when I
ought not to be idling; not when it is the only thing I have to do.
That is my pig-headed nature. The time when I like best to stand with
my back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when my desk is
heaped highest with letters that must be answered by the next post.
When I like to dawdle longest over my dinner is when I have a heavy
evening's work before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to
be up particularly early in the morning, it is then, more than at any
other time, that I love to lie an extra half-hour in bed.

Ah! how delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again: "just for
five minutes." Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the hero
of a Sunday-school "tale for boys," who ever gets up willingly? There
are some men to whom getting up at the proper time is an utter
impossibility. If eight o'clock happens to be the time that they
should turn out, then they lie till half-past. If circumstances
change and half-past eight becomes early enough for them, then it is
nine before they can rise. They are like the statesman of whom it was
said that he was always punctually half an hour late. They try all
manner of schemes. They buy alarm-clocks (artful contrivances that go
off at the wrong time and alarm the wrong people). They tell Sarah
Jane to knock at the door and call them, and Sarah Jane does knock at
the door and does call them, and they grunt back "awri" and then go
comfortably to sleep again. I knew one man who would actually get out
and have a cold bath; and even that was of no use, for afterward he
would jump into bed again to warm himself.

I think myself that I could keep out of bed all right if I once got
out. It is the wrenching away of the head from the pillow that I find
so hard, and no amount of over-night determination makes it easier. I
say to myself, after having wasted the whole evening, "Well, I won't
do any more work to-night; I'll get up early to-morrow morning;" and I
am thoroughly resolved to do so--then. In the morning, however, I
feel less enthusiastic about the idea, and reflect that it would have
been much better if I had stopped up last night. And then there is
the trouble of dressing, and the more one thinks about that the more
one wants to put it off.

It is a strange thing this bed, this mimic grave, where we stretch our
tired limbs and sink away so quietly into the silence and rest. "O
bed, O bed, delicious bed, that heaven on earth to the weary head," as
sang poor Hood, you are a kind old nurse to us fretful boys and girls.
Clever and foolish, naughty and good, you take us all in your motherly
lap and hush our wayward crying. The strong man full of care--the
sick man full of pain--the little maiden sobbing for her faithless
lover--like children we lay our aching heads on your white bosom, and
you gently soothe us off to by-by.

Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not comfort us.
How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep! Oh! those
hideous nights when we toss and turn in fever and pain, when we lie,
like living men among the dead, staring out into the dark hours that
drift so slowly between us and the light. And oh! those still more
hideous nights when we sit by another in pain, when the low fire
startles us every now and then with a falling cinder, and the tick of
the clock seems a hammer beating out the life that we are watching.

But enough of beds and bedrooms. I have kept to them too long, even
for an idle fellow. Let us come out and have a smoke. That wastes
time just as well and does not look so bad. Tobacco has been a
blessing to us idlers. What the civil-service clerk before Sir
Walter's time found to occupy their minds with it is hard to imagine.
I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men
entirely to the want of the soothing weed. They had no work to do and
could not smoke, and the consequence was they were forever fighting
and rowing. If, by any extraordinary chance, there was no war going,
then they got up a deadly family feud with the next-door neighbor, and
if, in spite of this, they still had a few spare moments on their
hands, they occupied them with discussions as to whose sweetheart was
the best looking, the arguments employed on both sides being
battle-axes, clubs, etc. Questions of taste were soon decided in
those days. When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not take
three paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was too
beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see about it.
And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head--the other
man's head, I mean--then that proved that his--the first
fellow's--girl was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke _his_
head--not his own, you know, but the other fellow's--the other fellow
to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow
would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who--well,
if he broke his head, then _his_ girl--not the other fellow's, but the
fellow who _was_ the-- Look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girl
was a pretty girl; but if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a
pretty girl, but B's girl was. That was their method of conducting
art criticism.

Nowadays we light a pipe and let the girls fight it out among
themselves.

They do it very well. They are getting to do all our work. They are
doctors, and barristers, and artists. They manage theaters, and
promote swindles, and edit newspapers. I am looking forward to the
time when we men shall have nothing to do but lie in bed till twelve,
read two novels a day, have nice little five-o'clock teas all to
ourselves, and tax our brains with nothing more trying than
discussions upon the latest patterns in trousers and arguments as to
what Mr. Jones' coat was made of and whether it fitted him. It is a
glorious prospect--for idle fellows.






is it time for a nap yet? i think so

That's because you have to pay for your online subscription. And THAT means my last post is inaccessible to my thousands of readers unless they subscribe to the Financial Review.

DON'T!

It's not worth it, even for Peter Ruehl columns.





is it time for a nap yet? i think so

Read him now.

And I bet 'spam' crap 'poetry' has had another hundred stupid goddam idiot loser comments.

Losers.

Comment away, blogosphere.

Don't be shy.



is it time for a nap yet? i think so

Yet this crap gets how many comments?

And me quoting Shakespeare gets how many?







is it time for a nap yet? i think so

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.






is it time for a nap yet? i think so