Dark tidings and babble from one of the devolving generation...
Everyone was setting these things up. Usually I don't follow trends. Not because I'm some kind of true individual, but rather because I'm one of those people who says things like "Well it's totally commercialised now" or "It has become something of a cliche". I can't remember a time when I uttered the phrase "Well, I was into them/it before everybody else, but I won't put it past me.
Anyway, I set this up out of frustration. My friend Gav, a rugby player with a raging ginger beard that makes him look like some kind of 18th century fisherman, told me a tale about some Muslim guy he met in a bar. He believed that Darwin was sort of right, he just had it the wrong way round. People didn't evolve from apes, rather apes devolved from people. Gav, who isn't tolerant of other peoples views at the best of times, spent hours arguing with him, however Aqhmed could not be swayed.
So he told me the story and I laughed. We'd been drinking cheap lager all day, but I found the whole notion so patently ridiculous I think I would have laughed had I been sober. On the way home that night I encountered some horrible night creatures riding along on a slick of vomit and verbal abuse. Their incoherent anger was directed at the invisible phantoms that surrounded them as well as each other. They were totally incapable of violence yet seemed to crave it. It all made no sense, but it was typical of the scenes you see at closing time in Middlesbrough.
I woke up the next day, had my usual morning potter about (this may well be some kind of polite euphanism for wank) and tried to go about my day. Working as a call centre manager. At 25. Surrounded by people, in some cases my superiors, who were barely literate. I sat at my desk drinking the sump that passes for coffee from our vending machine - after a few uses the coffee, chocolate drinks and tea end up coming out as one brown sludge - and I started to think maybe Aqhmed was on to something. These people around me are devolving. Perhaps at a more alarming speed than people in other geographical regions...
Couldn't shake this thought for the rest of the day. Didn't want the staff in the canteen to touch my food in case I caught his devolution bug... Was it airborn? Just how contagious was it? Maybe it was too late even for me...
And just maybe it was and is. Seems my entire life has started to run backwards. After leaving university I ended up straight back in a call centre. After that I managed to get work, in another call centre - in fact the same fucking call centre I had worked in at 17. Not to worry, I had an "adult" life and some aspirations that would surely see the doom and gloom of call centre hell a far and distant memory. Turns out, that adult life had been eroding slowly without me even realising it. My behaviour was becoming increasingly juvenile, possibly a cause or result of - it's too far gone now to tell - my girlfriend leaving. The knock on effect was having to move out of my house as I could no longer afford the upkeep.
I had to shack up again with my parents, for me an utter defeat. Even more so when I realised that one of the reasons everyone else of my age who I knew had been doing it for years and that was why they appeared to be more affluent than me. They make no bones of it. It just seems people of my generation have to rely more on their parents than perhaps any other generation ever. Fitting for a devolving generation and, I suppose, amusing given that our parents lived in a time of full employement, only a subtle undercurrent of AIDS and crime that can be romanticised by historians, novelists and pub bores.
I spent the first few days alternating between refurnishing my old childhood bedroom, one I hadn't stayed in since I was 16, and reading rejection letters from the many newspapers I had applied to. Those applications are part of my "adult" life, those aspiration things... Despite my qualifications and experience (Fair enough - not that much, but I can write, edited the university magazine, got a vaguely linked qualification and actually want to do it) not one has come up with even an offer of interview. Does it not say something that I would be taking a 9k paycut? No, three lines on a sheet of cheap bargain basement laser printer paper tells you that you're not made of the right stuff.
Another reason to hate the previous generations - opportunity. You read about a icon. Turns out he just walked into the job, got it through luck, someone gave them a break. My generation will never be afforded that luxury. It is all about standardised forms and meeting percentages. Who wanted a meritocracy anyway? Don't give us a break - we're devolving. It would only be a waste when you walked into work to see we had smeared shit up the walls and were trying to mate with your desk.
Just how much had I done to get out of or prevent my situation? Less and less as I settled into a sweaty, sticky comfort zone. My efforts, had been perfunctory at best. It only adds fuel to the fire when I realise that I am part to blame for this horrible lack of evolution and development that is weighing down on me like wet sandbags.
So I have made some resolutions to myself about how I'm going to get out of this. The outlook is bleak. This is at least something that isn't typing up another covering letter, only to be told to fill in a form. It's all there on my CV and covering letter, why the form? We wouldn't want to judge candidates as individuals... Standardised forms are where it's at...It is something to do that doesn't involve me having to go out and face the horror that lurks around every corner. Maybe it might be a way of makig contact with other people that can feel this terrible prophecy being fulfilled for us all.
Or maybe I am taking another step towards becoming some horrible, shambling shut-in that will be reduced to being unable to communicate without a keyboard and monitor in front of them. You can tell who they are you know. Their fingers twitch seconds before they start to mumble.
Whatever the path in front of me, there will be articles posted up on here as well as stuff like this, that may very well get re-read and deleted when I've had some sleep and I realise it is awful gibberish.
Anyway, I set this up out of frustration. My friend Gav, a rugby player with a raging ginger beard that makes him look like some kind of 18th century fisherman, told me a tale about some Muslim guy he met in a bar. He believed that Darwin was sort of right, he just had it the wrong way round. People didn't evolve from apes, rather apes devolved from people. Gav, who isn't tolerant of other peoples views at the best of times, spent hours arguing with him, however Aqhmed could not be swayed.
So he told me the story and I laughed. We'd been drinking cheap lager all day, but I found the whole notion so patently ridiculous I think I would have laughed had I been sober. On the way home that night I encountered some horrible night creatures riding along on a slick of vomit and verbal abuse. Their incoherent anger was directed at the invisible phantoms that surrounded them as well as each other. They were totally incapable of violence yet seemed to crave it. It all made no sense, but it was typical of the scenes you see at closing time in Middlesbrough.
I woke up the next day, had my usual morning potter about (this may well be some kind of polite euphanism for wank) and tried to go about my day. Working as a call centre manager. At 25. Surrounded by people, in some cases my superiors, who were barely literate. I sat at my desk drinking the sump that passes for coffee from our vending machine - after a few uses the coffee, chocolate drinks and tea end up coming out as one brown sludge - and I started to think maybe Aqhmed was on to something. These people around me are devolving. Perhaps at a more alarming speed than people in other geographical regions...
Couldn't shake this thought for the rest of the day. Didn't want the staff in the canteen to touch my food in case I caught his devolution bug... Was it airborn? Just how contagious was it? Maybe it was too late even for me...
And just maybe it was and is. Seems my entire life has started to run backwards. After leaving university I ended up straight back in a call centre. After that I managed to get work, in another call centre - in fact the same fucking call centre I had worked in at 17. Not to worry, I had an "adult" life and some aspirations that would surely see the doom and gloom of call centre hell a far and distant memory. Turns out, that adult life had been eroding slowly without me even realising it. My behaviour was becoming increasingly juvenile, possibly a cause or result of - it's too far gone now to tell - my girlfriend leaving. The knock on effect was having to move out of my house as I could no longer afford the upkeep.
I had to shack up again with my parents, for me an utter defeat. Even more so when I realised that one of the reasons everyone else of my age who I knew had been doing it for years and that was why they appeared to be more affluent than me. They make no bones of it. It just seems people of my generation have to rely more on their parents than perhaps any other generation ever. Fitting for a devolving generation and, I suppose, amusing given that our parents lived in a time of full employement, only a subtle undercurrent of AIDS and crime that can be romanticised by historians, novelists and pub bores.
I spent the first few days alternating between refurnishing my old childhood bedroom, one I hadn't stayed in since I was 16, and reading rejection letters from the many newspapers I had applied to. Those applications are part of my "adult" life, those aspiration things... Despite my qualifications and experience (Fair enough - not that much, but I can write, edited the university magazine, got a vaguely linked qualification and actually want to do it) not one has come up with even an offer of interview. Does it not say something that I would be taking a 9k paycut? No, three lines on a sheet of cheap bargain basement laser printer paper tells you that you're not made of the right stuff.
Another reason to hate the previous generations - opportunity. You read about a icon. Turns out he just walked into the job, got it through luck, someone gave them a break. My generation will never be afforded that luxury. It is all about standardised forms and meeting percentages. Who wanted a meritocracy anyway? Don't give us a break - we're devolving. It would only be a waste when you walked into work to see we had smeared shit up the walls and were trying to mate with your desk.
Just how much had I done to get out of or prevent my situation? Less and less as I settled into a sweaty, sticky comfort zone. My efforts, had been perfunctory at best. It only adds fuel to the fire when I realise that I am part to blame for this horrible lack of evolution and development that is weighing down on me like wet sandbags.
So I have made some resolutions to myself about how I'm going to get out of this. The outlook is bleak. This is at least something that isn't typing up another covering letter, only to be told to fill in a form. It's all there on my CV and covering letter, why the form? We wouldn't want to judge candidates as individuals... Standardised forms are where it's at...It is something to do that doesn't involve me having to go out and face the horror that lurks around every corner. Maybe it might be a way of makig contact with other people that can feel this terrible prophecy being fulfilled for us all.
Or maybe I am taking another step towards becoming some horrible, shambling shut-in that will be reduced to being unable to communicate without a keyboard and monitor in front of them. You can tell who they are you know. Their fingers twitch seconds before they start to mumble.
Whatever the path in front of me, there will be articles posted up on here as well as stuff like this, that may very well get re-read and deleted when I've had some sleep and I realise it is awful gibberish.
posted by Richard Lewis at 3:30 AM
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