And so, with a million fireworks bombing their shimmering brilliance out upon a dark, winter's sky, we slid through the portals of 2017. And with half of January already drained away, the sands of time are slip-slip-slipping away through our clutching fingers! And our life energies alongside them!
But we shall not trouble deaf heaven with our bootless cries here. For January is a month for Resolution. No doubt many have already wavered or cracked regarding what they promised themselves on January 1st but, even as I write, there is, no doubt, some smug bastard foregoing the, admittedly ephemeral, pleasures afforded by a pistachio macaroon or coffee mousse encased in a velvety chocolate shell. Some other steely-hearted individual is, right now, making the most of his new gym membership and sweating profusely on some apparatus akin to a medieval instrument of torture. I will be fitter. I will be slimmer. I shall succeed - These are the mantras oft repeated as we stare at ourselves in January's unforgiving mirror. The S T o n E d H o L Y B L o G G e r , however, when countenancing his blasted features, says bollocks to faux asceticism, bollocks to ersatz sackcloth & ashes and bollocks too to counterfeit self denial and sham stoicism!
Ours is an age of bogus Puritanism as product. Buy the self help manual, buy the work-out DVD, buy into the latest fad dieting regimen. Fear envelops our lives. If it's not fear of obesity or ill health then it's fear of losing our jobs, our homes, our sanity that eats up the precious seconds of living. Is this why we meekly accept the austerity programme administered to us by our great elected leaders? So now, even as our waistlines expand due to our addiction to junk food, even as we're sent the credit cards enabling us to consume, we are told to tighten our belts!
It is against this backdrop we can discern one of the major problems facing humanity today - Joylessness! Why are there so many joyless turds ; mostly, it must be noted, skulking along the corridors of power. Those people we let away with 'running' the whole sorry charade are, indeed, a weird little coterie of dreary, joyless cunts, devoid of imagination....and don't they take it all so seriously.
Isn't that the reason we find ourselves in the 21st Century but still, weighing us down and holding us back are the stunted scrag ends and ossified remains, the accumulated nefarious junk of ages past with all the ridiculous prejudices, snobberies and hierarchies, all the outdated injustices and all the obsolete delineations of class & caste like links in a heavy chain being dragged behind us as we advance at a snail's pace into the future, consigning yet more generations to lives of unending toil, misery and want!....and Joylessness!
Why after 10,000 years of something laughingly called civilisation isn't there free food in the streets? Why aren't there giant psychedelic lollipops in all our public parks and green spaces? Why aren't their trees and shrubs and flowers of every description all around us, enthralling & entrancing us, binding us to Nature within our own urban environments? Why aren't our cities home to, not only us, but a myriad of our fellow creatures? Why isn't there free art on every wall in every city? Why are there, STILL, hungry, homeless, illiterate people in this world??? Do you seriously think that the world as is is the best we can do?!?!
Who is responsible? I charge the pragmatists and their dreary concerns! I indict the serious-minded who ponder and pontificate! I accuse the humourless who reduce all to monetary value! I impeach the broken & jaded whose heart isn't in it! I revile the pusillanimous drones sweating on their treadmills and little wheels! I curse the cowardly and resigned ones for their practicality!
But surely, one could counter, only chaos could result if the world was left in the hands of idlers and dreamers such as the S t O n E d h O L y B L O g g e R ? But look you now upon this globe of ours and you must see the irony - Chaos Reins Regardless!!
So, no to those who deny pleasure. No to the prudent and their judicious orthodoxies ; No to the conservative fussbudgets; No to the bourgeois fuddy-duddies; No to the straight-laced and stolid stuffed shirts.....and no, no, no, a thousand times NO, to New Year's Resolutions!!
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