Modern Life Is Shit

When Was the Last Time You Used a Pen?

I was writing a birthday card for my aunt’s seventieth a few days ago. After I’d signed it, I passed the pen to my brother.

‘God,’ he exclaimed as he scrawled his name. ‘I can barely remember how to write.’

It showed. His signature looked like the poorly stitched brand lettering you get on cheap underwear. Boxer shorts labelled Zappz, Jockz, or Crapzz. The sort that disintegrates after one wash.

I asked my brother when was the last time he wrote with a pen. ‘Couple of years ago,’ he confessed. ‘Probably Dad’s seventieth.’

I only use a pen these days to jot down ideas. These pearls of wisdom you might read here on Medium are conceived as I’m about to serve dinner. And as my hands are normally caked in the hot curry I force my family to eat every night, I grab something from the bin to write on.

This was last night’s idea scrawled on the back of an Amazon packet.

You’re reading the first bit. But what’s the second scribble.

— think (thick) Hard

— Some (Same) as last time you did nothing?

Anyone?

I asked my wife if she could remember what I was chuntering on about last night over dinner.

She shrugged. ‘God knows. We were all heading for the fire door after eating your curry. But I did find another of your ideas written on the back of this important receipt of mine. Why don’t you buy a notebook?’

That’s it!

My idea was to shoehorn ‘Why we don’t use pens any longer,’ into a piece about ‘How we can’t sit still these days and do nothing!’

It was going to be one of my brilliant observational pieces in which I end up contradicting myself by the time I’ve finished.

I recently wrote a piece about recycling and climate meltdown. Yet by the end of it, I’d convinced myself that the best solution for humanity was to burn all our garbage at home.

It went down quite well — 300 reads.

So when was the last time you did nothing? And when I mean nothing, I mean no scrolling, no writing, no music, no talking, no films, no sex, no stretching, no bloody yoga, no eating, no sleeping, no drinking, no smoking, no chewing — no thinking.

‘Err, yeah, Phil, that’s called meditation…folk do it all the time. There are loads of Medium posts on it.’

Really? I must get filtered out. I write satire you see, and banal comedy. And occasional pieces on Armageddon. Meditation isn’t my strong point.

It used to be. I used to be able to sit for hours doing nothing. Sitting on a patch of grass daydreaming. Or writing ridiculous stories or puerile poems in a notebook.

Now I’m too fucked up from too much online use to sit still. I tried to sit in the garden yesterday and read a book, but couldn’t help thinking of all the Medium posts I could be writing instead of sitting here.

Do you get that?

Everything is great, and then you think of an idea, and you’re desperately rummaging through the recycling to find a scrap of cardboard.

It’s a sad state of affairs. And I'm thinking of quitting while I’m ahead.

But what if my next post goes viral. Or the one after that.

Better keep writing. Better keep on scrawling down those dumb ideas. Keep writing virtually free content for every fucker out there. You never know who’s going to read it.

Here’s tomorrow’s piece:

Thanks for reading his pseudo-meditative piece. For more trash, see below: