HEAD

“I am the warm little centre that the life of the universe crowds around”

 – Chuck Palahniuk

Fight Club

This is fantastic! Why did nobody tell me?!

Technology delivers on paradise promise.

Early adopter I am not. If not Luddite, suspicious and nostalgic. Wary eyes in undergrowth. Let others eat the berries. No need iron, still have plenty stones . . .

Have a laptop these days. Mobile phone (Nokia 5110) inserted in typewriter wouldn’t connect to interweb. Made typing hard.

Have smart phone too now. Smarter than me. Nokia second hand. Nicely three years ago.

Touch screen no. But . . .

iPod!

iPod iPod! iPod! (Microsoft spell-check recognises not)

Used to have walkman. Discman. Clunky. Junky. Battery eating unwieldy drop and break it chew cassettes and scratch CDs. Bleh. Leave at home.

Left at mercy of world. Had to pay attention.

iPod. Fits right in pocket. Own little world next to house keys. Music best injected straight in head and mixed in brain. Outside a vague hum between tracks. Everything bliss.

Street life glides by a mime removed.

What’s that, man at bus stop, whisper lips and charades? You like to kiss your fingertips? Oh, you’d like me to kiss your fingertips? No, thank you. I’ll just walk over here and finish my cigarette.

Yes, woman outside train station, that is a nice palm. You should be proud of it. I’ll be here again tomorrow. Maybe you can show me the other one . . .

Supermarket scrum. All out of courtesy, so everyone wants that last mango. Escalator dominoes. Sonically beta-blocked flat line bp. A sweet smile and fuck off outta my way. Machine gun Zen.

Phone rings out in pocket vacuum.

Autistic Valhalla.

Untouchable.

Uh-oh, bus.

IT'S LIKE . . . .

Funny. Baby Boomers hate like.

Everywhere, cafes and pubs, restaurants, buses and trains, newspaper tweets-and-letters (ha ha) pages, late night talk radio and early morning breakfast TV, Baby Boomers hating like. Hating like in bottle shops and newsagents, supermarkets and cinema queues.

Funny.

It, like, wasn’t invented last week.

It, like, didn’t spring into the vernacular when twelve year-olds noticed it – like – on facebook.

Like? It was punctuation long before Boomers began bemoaning the death of language.

It was, sort of (like), prefigured in nadsat, the argot of Anthony Burgess’ novel about a bright but self-absorbed kid whose priorities get all fucked up.

In the sixties.

Funny.

Like. It passed into popular use via the post-war generation in America.

Middle class white kids seeking place.

Trying to sound like the Beats but lacking their ideas or vocabulary.

Wanting to sound like urban blacks but bereft of their playful inventiveness.

Bereft of imagination.

Take drugs and say things like like instead. Like. Groovy.

Hatching, the like grew up and gave us weasel words and management-speak.

Boomers hate like love weasel words.

Cuckoo.