Thoughts from the Gap: Manners, Politeness and the "Upward Nod of Acknowledgement"

It's been just over a week since I finished my first year of university and came back to chill out in Devon for a few months, and I realised I had forsaken my beloved Avid Readers for far too long. Especially since I left you with that terrible post about 'Converged Media Texts.'

I'm afraid I have to admit that I have been slipping in as far as actually reading newspapers and generally having an understanding of what is going on in the world. As such, this is going to be another in a series (that I have decided to do) of musings that leak out of the many perforations in my brain.

This post is about manners. Manners are the sort of thing that are ingrained in us from a young age and tend to define us as people. The English are stereotyped to be incredibly polite, and indeed it is an old English tradition to intensely avoid embarrassment, for oneself, but much more for the benefit of others.

In an attempt to think of an example of politeness, the first thing to come to mind is (to quote the Internet) that awkward moment when two people are walking towards each other along a path, or pavement. They are both desperately trying not to meet each others gaze. Yet at the same time, they sneak furtive glances at one another the closer they come, until, crescendo! each person realises that whilst they do not want to insinuate themselves into their counterparts day uninvited, it would be far too rude not to acknowledge them, culminating in a slightly hoarse, and generally very short, exchange that will more often than not, leave them both relieved to be done with it, and wishing that they had had something better to say than:

"Hello"
"Hi"
"Alright"
"Afternoon"
"Evening"
"Lovely weather for it..."

Or of course, the popularly neutral "upward nod of acknowledgement."

I discovered something interesting the other week. This is my own personal experience, but I find that I'm more likely to receive a positive response from the above situation if I'm doing some form of exercise i.e. running, cycling. I can only think that this is because I represent the vitality of youth (he says with a sideways smile) as opposed to the lurkers, the smokers, the HOODIES that plague the younger generations.

Of course, maybe I've grown too used to Hampshire and people down here in Devon people are just nicer.

Thanks for reading this pointlessly meandering message from beyond the boundaries of space and time. With any luck I'll get back into the habit of decently written nonsense in the near future.

Remember Avid Readers, manners cost nothing, and as always,

Much Love.

Thoughts from the Gap

Well the weather I so enjoyed the other week has disappeared, I was going to go for a run but the rain shoved a spanner in that. And so I find myself stuck inside, watching my cat show off his ability to sleep whenever he pleases. So I thought I'd write a blog post.

Most of you probably know my drill by now: search through the BBC's website, maybe the guardian or some other papers, and find a couple of stories I can playfully mock. But today, for some reason, I came up empty. Maybe there is simply nothing interesting, maybe the rain has made me apathetic. Either way I'm doing nothing more productive than spinning round on my chair and looking aimlessly around my clutter-ridden room, with the urge to play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time becoming more pronounced by the second.

Tthis got me to thinking. Not about Zelda, but about my clutter. The vast majority of the mess in my room is made up of DVDs, books, CDs and video games. Not to mention all the controllers and dust jackets that come with them. Now, technology is becoming more and more sophisticated, that's a given, and this essentially means we are needing less "stuff." e.g. Current gen. consoles allow you to download games directly onto their hard drives, you can download or stream movies directly onto your computer without the need of a hard copy, and tablets like the iPad and the Kindle (does the Kindle count as a tablet?) make buying individual books almost obsolete.

The point I am trying to make is that pretty soon, my clutter wont exist in a physical form, it will all be a part of the ether. Think of it like this. it's 100 years from now, there are flying cars, clothes come in pill form, and everyone has been gene-spliced into atanomical perfection (Except for the poor, they will still be smelly and ugly). What is going to be in their houses? digital picture frames maybe, a pair of sunglasses that allow you to play games and watch television on them. Hell maybe they'll wear those things all the time and it'll be like the matrix whilst everyone is  really asleep in a pod filled with the liquefied dead!

Perhaps the occasional 'eccentric' will own some of the 'quaint' prehistoric technology like an iPod or a mammogram machine. but otherwise, any music they could want can live in an earpiece, movies can live in specs, and, if games involving the future are anything to go by, everything will be white (I'm not being racist by the way, I'm thinking along the lines of Mirror's Edge). So what will make their homes untidy? NickNacks? Dirty plates won't exist because everyone subsists on that Willy Wonka gum that contains a three course meal. All I can think of is furniture. From the meanest beggar to the grandest monarch, everyone enjoys a good sit.

I've forgotten the point of this post but I think it had something to do with the evolution of technology, and how pretty soon, there'll be much more space for me to spin round on my chair without bashing my knee against my chest-of -drawers.