Oases

The internet is down. I can’t work and I can’t not work.

So I’m writing this, which falls somewhere in between the two.

Today has been disgustingly Monday.

None of the cash machines near work were giving out money, so Lucy and I will have to have a lunch of half a rice cake each. Or we could use our debit cards.

I think the cash machine problem is the same as the internet problem. We’re going to be cut off from the world.

I watched the film Dredd last night. It’s pretty good (and very violent), but it’s making me think in terms of a dystopian nightmare state. Art imitates life. A pseudo-fascist police force administer brutal justice in the one, and cash machines stop working in the other.

I’m going to buy myself a helmet.

In between connectivity problems, I was able to open the Guardian’s Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend's action column. I’ve read it twice. Sadly, the comments didn’t load. If they had done, I would be perfectly content right now. They can keep me going for the whole morning.

I like reading that column. I always scan to see if there’s a Saints-related talking point. There usually isn’t. It’s often about our opponents. I don’t think many journalists know much about Southampton, and they don’t want to rehash the same two talking points every week:

1.  We have a lot of young, English players who have come through our academy
2. Our team hasn’t been officially canonised, so when’s the Pope going to pull his holy finger out?

Sometimes, there are two talking points about the same match, and other matches are ignored completely. I can’t begin to tell you how angry that makes me.

But I haven’t got anything else to do, so I’m going to try.

It makes me SO ANGRY that

Hang on!

The internet is working again!

AAHAHAHA! I feel like a dehydrated desert nomad splashing through a fountain!

Hehehehe! *splash* Look! Coins! Ahahahaha!

I’ll never take this for granted again.

***

Oh. It’s stopped working again.

I feel like a dehydrated desert nomad whose fountain has just run dry. I was too busy skipping around and laughing that I forgot to drink anything. I really wish I hadn’t eaten all those coins.

I suppose this has taught me a lesson about desire and reward.

You don’t have to be careful what you wish for, because you’re never going to get it, whatever happens.

You’ll just die like everyone else: thirsty, alone, spread-eagled on the hollow hump of a desiccated camel.

I don’t know if “desiccated” is the right word to use there. I can’t look it up.

Hang on – I can use Outlook’s thesaurus.

Yes! I was right!

The human brain is a marvellous thing. And mine is, also.

***

Time has passed. Things are still not working properly. I did manage to get to the AV Club’s classic Simpsons review (Bart Sells His Soul – a good late-golden era episode) together with the comments. I also got the first page of the Guardian football comments too. So it hasn’t been too bad.

But now I’ve run out of comments to read. I’m stuck with my own thoughts, rather than the thoughts of assorted nerds and football fans. I’m a nerd and a football fan, but it’s not fun to read my thoughts.

As you’re aware.

***

This is getting silly now.

No internet makes life a disgrace.

My productivity has grinded (ground?) to a halt.

I mean, it’s usually at a halt. But it’s a halt of my own choosing. I dictate when my halts begin and end. I don’t want my halts to be determined by some outside agent.

It’s like being soaking wet. If you choose to be soaking wet - in a swimming pool or a bath, for example - then it’s fine. But if you’re made involuntarily soaking, by a sudden rain storm or a water balloon bombardment, you are inevitably going to be quite put out.

If I’m doing nothing, I want to be doing it on my own terms. I don’t like being at the beck and call of Monsieur Technologie.

We were better off in the old days. We didn’t have to worry about broadband speed or spyware. We were totally free to succumb to disease at twenty-five and stone blondes to death.

If I was a caveman, I wouldn’t even notice that the internet wasn’t working. I’d be writing this on a cave wall, and then going for a jog. Did cavemen jog? Probably not voluntarily.

Jogging is OK if you choose to do it, but if you’re forced (by a sabretooth tiger, for example), it’s less fun.

It’s just like the rain and the internet.

I suppose things aren’t really so different after all.

I’d like to do a chart that traces the quality of this blog post. There are peaks and troughs. The longer I go, the worse it gets.

I bet the chart will be too long to fit on the page properly.

***

It’s after lunch now. Things are slightly improving. I may be able to do some actual work. I may be able to post this online.

It’s strange to think about it. If I was just writing this to myself, in a place where nobody would ever see it, I would be thought of as an idiot, a psychopath and a loser.

But if I post it on my blog – even though nobody will read it there either – I’m part of a thriving online community, and will be lauded for my creative multimedia acumen.

I will.

I will be lauded.

I suppose I should tie up this sprawling mess with a clever conclusion, knitting together the various conceptual strands into a glove or a small blanket.

Today’s theme has been connection.

Not just technological connection, but interpersonal connection, temporal connection and woollen connection. The nomad, the caveman, and the internet commenter exist in a world of interconnectivity. No man is an island. No nomad is an island. Wherever and whenever we are, we strive to find a way to reach beyond ourselves. This may entail painting a buffalo on a cave wall or criticising David Moyes’s substitutions. It may be attempting to draw a literal line, tracing the flow of time.

Life is made up of an infinite number of individual moments. But through thought and graft and language and technology, we can bring these individual elements to create a whole.

We can unite the things into an everything. A beautiful, complex, exasperating, difficult, messy, exciting, liberating everything.

We can all conclude our blog posts in a way that makes us sound thoughtful.

We all have the power to produce a profound final sentence, and this power is what unites us.

I had a pie for lunch. We paid by card.