Leisure — The First 40,000 Years

Forget the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, The Age of Enlightenment, The Space Age and even The Post-Industrial Age: all human history can be divided into two distinct periods — The Age of Work and the Age of Leisure. Our great-great-great-grandparents lived in the Age of Work; we live in The Age of Leisure. And that, in a nutshell, is why Western Society is speeding towards the Abyss of Hell like a runaway stagecoach full of passengers shouting “WTF happened?”

Let me explain.

Give or take a day or two, human history is really only about 40,000 years long. (Before that, it’s kinda iffy — unless you’re specifically trained to spot the difference between a stone used as an axe and an axe made out of a stone. Even mega-smart anthropologists argue about that one.) Anyway, for the first 39,750 years of understandable history humans worked … dawn to dusk, every day … like … endlessly. That’s what they did and they did it because there was only one alternative. Oops, sorry: you’re dead. They had a purpose — work your ass off and improve your lot in life, or face the alternative. Things was simple in those days.

Then, about 250 years ago, a guy by the name of James Watt showed up. History tells us that Watt invented the steam engine. (He didn’t actually, but that’s a different tale.) What history doesn’t tell us is that Watt, by setting off the Industrial Revolution, inadvertently created leisure.

There are all kinds of myths about the brutality of the Industrial Revolution, but the reality is machines started doing our work for us. People, therefore, didn’t have to spend all their waking hours just trying to survive anymore. They started doing other things — leisure activities. (It’s no coincidence that book, magazine and newspaper sales went through the stratosphere in the 19th century.) Slowly at first, but steadily, leisure (an unknown term before 1836) became an essential component of our modern world. But now — in the 21st century — it has turned into a monster.

We spend millions on young people who kick, hit and throw a variety of balls around — and billions more to watch them do it. We spend millions on people who sing to us, tells us stories or tell us what to wear. We spend so much money on the film industry and spend so much time watching television that even Stephen Hawking can’t imagine the numbers. We have created celebrities who literally have no redeeming qualities; they just exist, and we worship them. We spend more time and energy playing video games than we do deciding who will govern us. My God! Has our world gone crazy?

For the vast majority of human history, leisure was an occasional activity that took us away from the soul-eating brutality of endless toil. However, these days, leisure has become the reason we exist, and we’re so addicted to relentless entertainment we can’t see beyond binge-watching Full House reruns.

See you at the abyss!

Hell-o Spring

Okay, Spring! Winter and I have been living together for months now; don’t think you can come along and just break us up. I’ll always love Winter: we’re cuddling and cozy, and she’s my soulmate. You think you’re something special, but you’re still only the third best season. You might be better than Summer, but that ain’t sayin’ much.

It’s common knowledge that, ever since our Cro-Magnon ancestors decided to take up home decorating in the south of France, Spring has been working overtime to convince us that she is the best season on the calendar. Crap! I like Spring as well as the next guy, but here are a couple of little items that prove she’s wrong.

First of all, Spring is sneaky. She tempts us with sunshine and warm weather, saying things like, “Come out and play!” and “You don’t need a jacket.” Then, the minute we get 10 metres out the door, she hits us with rain, wind, hail — that’s big enough to hurt — and that frozen sleety stuff that can actually tear your clothes. How many times have you gone to work on a gorgeous spring morning and come home that night, soaked through to your underwear with your shoes full of mud? In my country, I’ve seen beautiful April days turn into debilitating snowstorms in less than hour and more than a few crops of innocent little vegetables murdered overnight by a killer frost in May. Spring is the original Femme Fatale.

Second, Spring means work. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Spring’s always talking about what a wonderful time she has with love and sex and “The Birds And The Bees.” But good luck with that. Once things start blooming, the only al fresco activity anybody with a back garden ever gets is “Work Your Ass Off!” And we better do it, too, or Spring will turn our homes into overgrown holiday camps for badgers, wolves and crack addicts. So, we plant, we water, we weed, we water some more — oh, yeah, and cut the grass. Then there’s more weeding. Cut the grass, again. And WTF, it’s time to repaint the fence or rebuild the garden wall. By the time there is a moonlight evening worth sitting under, most of us are too exhausted to do anything but snore. Spring could give lessons to Lady Macbeth.

And finally …. Wait a minute! What’s that smell? OMG, that’s incredible! I didn’t know air could smell that good. And listen to the birds! It’s like a symphony. And there’s daffodils! Crocuses! I don’t even know what those pretty little pink things are. Fantastic! Feel that sun! My God, it’s great to be alive!

“Well, hi there Spring. How ya doin? No, Winter and I’ve decided to give each other some space. Uh — ya think maybe you and I could hang out for a while….?”

Phone Apps We Actually Need

Apple Unveils 4-inch Phone

Sweet Jesus! If you have any mercy in your soul, please save us from yet another piece of useless electronic crap. How many different phones do we need? Enough is enough already! Look, it doesn’t matter whether the iPhone SuperGalaxy S9 is two millimetres shorter than the SuperGalaxy S iPhone 17 or not. It’s the same damn phone! It runs the same Apps, streams the same brain-chewing videos and posts the same stupid bathroom mirror selfie to Instagram. Newsflash! Size doesn’t matter: it’s the same technology! It’s time the scientific community pulled their thumbs out of their collective orifices and developed some Phone Apps that we, the people, actually need.

For example:

We need a Phone App that automatically calculates the calories in the Double Mountain Chocolate Mocha-Mocha Cake-a-Thon we just ordered for lunch. It needs to sound an alarm, flash, buzz and in the voice of our hottest ex-girlfriend shout, “Put the fork down, you fat bastard! No wonder I left you!” over and over again — until we leave the restaurant.

Or an App that remembers how many drinks we’ve had and, somewhere in the middle of four, automatically telephones our mother, our sister, both our grandmothers, our boss, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Alcoholics Anonymous — not necessarily in that order.

Or perhaps an App that measures the ass groove we’re binge-watching into the sofa and automatically shuts down Netflix until either the groove or our asses lose a couple of centimetres.

Or maybe an App that can analyze the guest lists of dinner and cocktail parties, calculate the exact moment we’re going to be bored out of our minds, and automatically phone the police to report a kidnapping.

And finally, the very best for last:

What about a Fitbit bracelet that not only programs our daily “Fitness Goals” but monitors our progress and, when we don’t achieve them, activates a Taser that zaps the shit out of us until we do?

These are things the world needs — not more pixels on itty bitty screens.

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