All this talk about society, existence, life and living and I’ve gone and forgotten about myself

HAR. HAR. WE SUCK.

"It all keeps adding up,
I think I'm cracking up,
Am I just paranoid?
Am I just stoned?"

-Green Day

At the end of this series, I can’t help but to feel pretty sorry and rather pessimistic about the current state of affairs of the ‘civilised’ Western world and just civilization in general. People are angry, the news media is ravenous, we’re tiny and stupid, and I’m losing my mind. I think a nice way to round off the series is to satisfy my ego and to simply ramble incoherently about topics which seem to have something to do with me on a slightly more personal level. Do not worry weary reader, I shall attempt to make this interesting… errrr I shall try my best anyway.

What I say may sound poignantly melodramatic, like an attention deficient teenager crying out for help, praying or hoping for intervention. So instead, let’s hang on to that hope, it is an excellent abstract. Oh the cruel, cold, cankerous irony. I wrote about depression being sold to us sheep… and in the process went and created my own pit of despair. At least mine is home-made, it has that personal feel to it. I don’t need to buy mine from Sky News, The Sun or CNN. In this way, am I a hypocrite? Or is that a bit extreme? Perhaps not knowing the answer to that question adds to the confusing depression. If I knew that I had spiralled out of control and lost it, then at least I could find some solace in the fact that I knew I was a depressed hypocrite. Not knowing is a terrible thing, we always want to know, even if it is just the illusion of ‘knowing’. “NO DO NOT TELL ME IT’S A LIE. I WAS HAPPY THE WAY IT WAS!” . Ignorance really can be bliss at times - clichés are clichés for a reason.

It is hard to actually be sure of anything anymore. All of life’s prior notions and perspectives are slowly being exterminated. The Dalek of age is patrolling the labyrinth of life and exterminating any childhood notion it can find. What is there left to cling to? Nothing is forever. Everything in life is transient, including life itself.

We can be certain that death and taxes are going to pounce on us sooner or later (thank ye Benjamin Franklin), and it makes you think. We know not when it will be our time. Death is an equal opportunities man, he doesn’t discriminate. Neither does the tax man for that matter, at the end of the day he just wants your money. Do I fear death? I do not know. I think I fear that I simply do not know what death holds for me (or anybody else now that I mention it). It will come sooner or later, and that will be that. I won’t be able to stop it and neither will Barack Obama. For shame.

In the short stay on Hotel Earth we start off with the hopeful ‘we’ll get the good stuff to your room once it arrives here’ treatment, only to find that it never comes. Yes, dreams rarely come true. The world isn’t the magical place that it was as a child. You learn there are responsibilities that come with growing up. All of your childhood dreams are dashed, spat upon, stomped, set alight and thrown off the edge of a cliff onto sharp rocks below. You realise that growing up is not such a big deal and that you were better off as a child, You learn that the grass is always greener on the other side somehow, simply because it is the other side. It probably is no better than where you already are, but you like to think that it is better over there. Hope is a wonderful thing - such a happy feeling that is borne of sadness, rising from the smouldering ashes of misery like a phoenix. We need to settle with what we have, and be grateful that we at least have that. That’s another thing which just adds to my chronic confusion. I’m here rambling about my madness and my so called ‘depression’ (which is really just a dramatisation of ‘pissed off with life’- I’m a moody hypochondriac) when there are people out there who have lost everything, their families, their livelihood and pretty anything else that made life worth living. My qualms with the world are mainly philosophical… theirs are as hard as stone.

Over the course of this piece of writing I have alleviated my depression somewhat by putting my troubles into perspective. The greater picture says it all. War torn lives, natural disasters, political injustices, dictatorships, genocides, domestic violence, animal cruelty and disease are out there, in whatever abundance or rarity and they are personifying the struggle of life. Here’s me with a stubbed toe and a formerly runny nose. Woe is me (!).

However, it isn’t all bad. I keep mentioning Hope. Hope is a wonderful thing. Faith can also be pretty decent; it seems to work for me. It doesn’t need to be faith in God or anything. We humans have an innate instinct to have faith in something, an innate feeling to believe. It’s there in all of us, genetically hardwired into our being. It is a cold, lonely existence when you have nothing to believe in, nothing to hold on to in the turmoil of the struggle for existence. If you can’t find your purpose, you might as well create your own.

Captain Nitrogen out.

Depression is the New Happy

Why So Serious?

There are a great many items for sale in shops which are wanted by the consumer - basically everyone. Who wouldn’t want an Iphone or a Pagani Zonda? You do not need to be a materialist obsessed with possessions to desire these items. They are pretty good. If they were being offered for free, I would first ask if there was a catch and then I would say ‘yes’ (you can never be sure these days, with loopholes and whatnot, ‘free’ could mean ‘extremely costly in some other undignified way – grrr marketing).



There is a peculiar item being sold to us currently and has probably been sold to us since we were children. It is being sold to us without us specifically asking for it yet we accept it without question in the most part. Depression is being packaged and sold to us continuously by the mass news media. Rupert Murdoch is perhaps the leading retailer of depression, or at least he comes to mind when I think of discount depression. The next news headline might as well be ‘Go kill yourself’ and it wouldn’t be much of a deviation from the current trend. If it isn’t a news item about the terrible state of the world, it is a news article which just puts the state of society into perspective. It is probably inadvertently achieved as a large amount of energy is dedicated to celebrity news and gossip. Hmmm. I’m sure a bit of this news can’t be a harmful thing but it sells better than hot cakes, I wouldn’t be surprised if people were shovelling pages of previous Heat magazine issues into their mouths for their tea. It is unfair to judge everyone based on their interest in celebrity gossip, they’re not bad people or dumb people; it can make you feel better about yourself when things aren’t going according to plan in your life (‘tee hee, she’s gone potty, all I’ve got is redundancy’), and also, it’s usually the only alternative the mass media provides to its sledgehammer of bad news.



Furthermore, I think it is worth pointing out that bad news just sticks in our minds and stands out more than good news does. Somebody could go their entire life as a saint and then slip up once, and that is all you will remember them for. Such a shame indeed. History is thrown away in favour of disgrace. It is very easy to dislike, to ignore, to shun, to prejudice, to complain, to be discontent and unhappy. This has led me to believe that happiness is a high energy state whereas unhappiness is a low energy state, therefore is an energetically favourable state, which is why we reside in unhappy form for most of the time. It’s just a theory; perhaps I could study it later in my studies… hmmm.



The news is very good at causing the disillusionment of a nation. Seemingly credible ‘facts’ are churned out, bombarding you at light speed (quite literally in the case of the images). At the end of the day, who else do you have to turn to if something major happens somewhere in the world? It is understandable. It’s not as if the news jumps up and down screaming its’ dishonesty at you. The best you can do is analyse the news item (perhaps CRAVEN it while you’re at it) and make your own decision. Or even better, go to different news sources independent from each other, which is probably a challenge seeing as Rupert Murdoch has recently acquired Planet Earth media, but if you find the corroborating pieces of information, you can be a bit more sure that at least those facts are truthful.



Every now and then the news finds a particular person or people to victimise. They don’t victimise them for the sole intention of victimisation. It’s more of a commercial victimisation (a victimisation without intent) – ‘give the people what they want’ news. Allow me to present an untrue, hypothetical news piece. The first news piece will be detailing that an Estonian individual went and molested a stick insect. Fair enough, an Estonian individual did indeed molest a stick insect, shame on him. All of a sudden, people are aware of Estonians. It’s similar to when you hear a distinct word on the radio (or read it in a book)and all of a sudden you’re identifying that word everywhere. It probably isn’t being mentioned any more than usual, but you are aware of it (I remember the word ‘exacerbate’ was mentioned in The Apprentice once and since then I haven’t been able to get rid of it). As is the same with the prior Estonian individual. Now the news knows that it will grab the attention of the consumer by emphasising Estonians in its news items wherever they’re involved, no matter how big or small – and if it is unclear who is involved in the next stick insect abuse case, just suggest that Estonians could have been involved. Darn Estonians. Why can’t they leave the stick insects alone? Anyway, the news provider will, in most cases, want to attract viewers, or readership, so it can gain more sponsors in order to ‘earn’ more money. Eventually, the news providers will have all realised that news about Estonians (particularly bad news) is money, and every news provider is bleating about Estonian Phasmatodeaphiles and before you know it, it feels as if most Estonians are involved in a Phasmatodeaphile conspiracy. The media can change public opinion in the matter of a few years. Governments are aware of this, and try to utilise the media whenever they can, though in the modern consumer driven societies of Britain and America, it is harder to do so as the media answers to no-one and will attack anybody it sees fit. Governments included. With the exception of the Grey suited men and women in the boardroom on the top floor in the news corporation building, pretty much everybody is a loser in the media game.



The late great Michael Jackson said, “In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.”



Yes, we do indeed live in a world filled with hate, anger, despair and distrust – and we are all ultimately boned as a result. But don’t lose hope. Why? Just don’t; the hope you feel may be true or false, but hope can be the greatest feeling in the world and is the best antidote to the discount poisonous depression being sold to us.