mechanized world

"Mechanism! Everywhere -- mechanism! Devices for getting away from life so complete that there seemed no life to get away from." Galsworthy, A Modern Comedy (134)

I'm feeling a bit anxious today, and head-achy, and just a general sense of having nothing to look forward to. I should have gone somewhere today.

Instead, I stayed at home and mucked about on the Internet for much longer than should be humanly possible. Watched EastEnders, a trashy British soap that I originally hated -- poor acting, poor quality in every respect -- but that I kept watching as it is the highest rated soap and I wanted to know what the fuss was all about. Now I'm obsessed with it, and, luckily (?) for me, can watch it on youtube. This would not have been possible even 3 years before now. I can watch many British shows on youtube. The BBC often takes them down, but someone else puts them up. Do I feel bad about this? Not nearly as much as I probably should. But the "age" is changing. Soon everything will be online, and we'll probably have to pay to watch telly online instead of or along with a monthly cable bill. Of course, what is worse about watching British T.V. online on youtube for free is that even to watch television in Britain you have to pay a standard television license fee. This is not a cable bill. This is a, rather hefty, fee one must pay each year in order to even hook up ones television to a cable line, or to watch real live television on the computer. Although, I suspect that it is less than what we Americans pay, in total, a year for cable. So, now, anyone in Britain can catch their shows for free on youtube. This is bad, yeah? I'm more a "power to the people" sort of girl. I'm sure the wonderful corporate world of television will find some way to squeeze money from our pockets.

Watched a great many other things on youtube, played poker, listened to British radio shows.

I feel that I should feel bad for not having a job, but I am completely immune to people's insistence that I have a job. I choose this pleasurable break from the social mechanical life I have lived and will at some point need to live again. School. That's your whole life when you are young. What a fucking waste too, to learn about the ways of this horrible world we are forced to live in. Oh, watch out, a little pessimistic are we? Yeah. A late adolescent phase is what I am going through right now.

I prefer the pleasurable side of this mechanical world we live in, television, arts transmitted on screen; rather than the solidifying, automaton existence of the 9-5, week-day world.