More of the Same.

I have just bought a garden shredder from Screwfix. I will now be inundated with adverts for them on Facebook, Amazon, ebay etc, and get emails from shredder manufacturers of their full range of shredders for all my requirements. Sophisticated algorithms and lucrative backdoor information sharing doesn’t really amount to much when I’ve either bought one or decided not to. It’d be far better to insert a five-year time delay for when this one’s worn out and I need a new one. And every click on Youtube elicits a sidebar of variations of what I’ve just chosen. Remember ‘Pop will Eat Itself’ from the eighties, a rare future glimpse of our present where everything is a re-hash of everything smeared into oblivion by electronic machines, where a pop career is fifteen minutes of fame? Eating one’s own excrement may seem like a jolly good perpetual motion idea but it’s hardly a healthy life style. It may be getting faster and busier but only, like a diet of salt and vinegar crisps, because it has minimal sustenance. My guess is when we get to iPhone17 with 3D graphics, everything you might ever want to know and its own friendly personality we’ll have forgotten what its primary use is. Music will be self-generated by trend analysis and we’ll all be buying garden shredders weekly. Don’t laugh, I’ve already bought three cordless electric drills. So there you have it, we’re all going to get more of the same, because it appears that’s what we want. 

Football Emotionally.

A player for Salford FC kicked a goal from near the centre line that won them the match causing huge emotion. When interviewed he said, “I could have done it a hundred times and missed but today it went in.” Equally there are a hundred small mistakes per match that cause supporters much negative emotion over a player’s ‘stupidity.’ Add to that dubious ref decisions and the result is a 90 minutes chaotic emotional journey that over a million fans pay for a ticket to every week. And basically the winners, like Salford FC, are just the ones with more lucky moments. Being brought up on motorcycle sports this emotional roller coaster passes me by. I enjoy football for the skill, bravery and physical fitness just as I would a race. So there seems something about the structure of football that plays out like a procedural crime drama with numerous unforeseen plot twists leading to a simple win or lose. The ones that went in are remembered and revered, the ones that just missed soon forgotten though the difference in skill is minimal. When the goal difference is rarely more than two, though highly skilful and athletic, it’s basically a game of chance hinging on a few throws of a dice. So it seems its appeal is the emotional ride hence the highs and lows of being a fan. One might describe it as a form of surrogate gambling. Nevertheless it’s the greatest of games.