I went to Edward Boyle library today.
I was truly believing that considering my complete lack of productivity when at home, largely due to…Snacks, the vacuous, time stealing void that is the internet, Neighbours, excessively long lunch preparation time, my phone, this book called ‘Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?’ – No man, it’s not just you, and other innocuous distractions littering my room that do not fall into the category of work…I might find some solace in the oasis of calm that is that time-honoured institute of academia, the Library. Alas, I thought I was going to the esteemed location of brain-improvement, but I must be mistaken, for I found myself in a wooden cage, gazing desperately out of the window as they construct a noisy, modern monstrosity outside. I do not object to building new facilities, anyone who has been skewered between the library stacks that move would agree that more space can be a good thing. But why oh why must luminous men cut metal in my cochlea when I am trying to absorb the mine field that is media law? Obviously I missed the e-mail saying “Miss Dixon, we know how much you want to royally cock-up your finals, so we have decided to build new stuff in the vicinity of your studies for the duration of that period.” Cheers.
I am easily distracted and I wager that I am not alone in this. Seriously, Edward Boyle desk scribes, a poll on whether fat or thin girls are better in bed? As if the moron writing that crap is ever going to convince anyone to have sex with him. Anyway, I digress. According to an American survey the average worker admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per 8-hour workday, excluding lunch and scheduled break-time. When employers determine your pay they take this fact into consideration. Taking their greedy capitalist logic into consideration, I guess that means we are never required to be diligent and efficient because they are paying us wages that reflect the assumption that we won’t be.
Anyone who has ever seen the film Office Space – join me now! Take a bat to the photocopiers! Slash the tyres of the noisy trucks! Or, non-incitement to violence suggestions could include making work spaces less bloody dull. The hum of air conditioning, the tap-tapping of a woman’s manicured nails on a desk, the mind-numbing boredom of looking at a computer screen all day, these things are desired to send you slowly to madness. This can be the only explanation for women like
To go off on a minor tangent, I came up with a hypothesis today which should explain patterns in our behaviour. ‘Adults’, which I am surely not, often complain about how young people are becoming less intelligent and academic life is consequently becoming easier to tailor to this new generation of idiots. I propose this; The Internet is to blame. Theoretically it should be a positive force, an educative tool which democratises social and class structures. We have been granted a role in shaping what we watch, what makes us laugh, influencing how politicians should behave and so on. These are powerful suggestions, except there is one problem, that being that the internet is full of shit. I clicked and entered the World Wide Web with good intentions this sunny afternoon. I had a cup of tea to the left of me and my notebook to the right. I just attempted to read Baudrillard, an insane yet pretty amazing cultural theorist. I think to myself that I would like to know more about this man, so I go to the number one democratic knowledge site, Wikipedia. Within twenty minutes I am on a page telling me things like: “The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 calibre machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards.” I don’t know how I got here. One minute I was filling my brain with knowledge, reaching to the utopian ideal of intelligence and happiness, expanding my horizons, yaddi yaddi yadda. The next I know, I am filling my brain with junk and texting my friends things like, “No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple” and “The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.”
Don’t even get me started on Facebook.
Or Myspace.
Get back to work.
