Chilling Facts

I am so very sick of this weather. (I’m so very sick of being sick, too, and in this horrid, torrid weather – I think I got over my last cold just as I was getting a new one!) Melbourne used to have pretty good weather – excellent, in fact, with coldly crisp winters, regular, if shallow, rainfall throughout the year, and the summers, while occasionally providing very hot days, were never humid and relentlessly sweltering like nowadays. Apparently last night was almost the hottest March night in Melbourne on record. And that is chilling news. Hurumph! Shantoozy & I simply must move to somewhere in the world where the weather is not going to become unreasonable despite old man Global Warming. But who knows when that will be possible? Hopefully someday in the not to distant future.

One can reason that 'twas, therefore, unseasonably hot at 12AM this morning when a new playing-station games console thing-um went on sale, so I hear. I also hear that the reception of the thing was lukewarm, yet, still, can you believe this?: a big deal is made (concocted, that is, by the company’s marketing division gits) whenever a new version of this machine is released, as though it were something really worthwhile. I don’t know for sure, but I doubt any new book release by Kurt Vonnegut has ever had a midnight launch anywhere in Australia, if even the world. It doesn’t make sense to me. Don’t get me wrong, I think the occasional computer-game playing is a fair enough diversion but there are people who will spend time at this entertainment preclusive to ever experiencing an Ibsen or Chekhov play in their lives! (And it seems to me a problem endemic to most computer-games that the player must spend a long, rather than a short, time in order to master but one of the blasted things.)

Now, if this sounds pretentious, well, then valuing depth and wisdom over flippant self-indulgence is pretentious – which it isn’t, and so there! Not that I mind flippant self-indulgence – au contraire, I cherish it like a googly-eyed pet, such as those rocks that were once such a fad – but all things in healthy balance, y’know, what-ho! And, frankly, if people spent more time developing their minds and hearts and less time fiddling with their joysticks then I hassit that there wouldn’t even be such problems as Global Warming.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t help that computer-games are something I, personally, get bored over after a mere few hours’ indulgence at, yet even regardless of this I find it rather sad and a bit irritating that so much cruciality is placed on something so ultimately insubstantial, over something that can prove enlightening, like a good book. …Or, just as good, if not better: a substantial, ‘real-life’ experience.

Anyways, enough bitchin' for me (but only for the moment - mahaHA!). There'll be information in my next post about what I've actually (not merely virtually) been up to of late, ol' beans, so hold onto your throttle-jostlers!