Brenda's Unfortunate Record: Alex Cameron - Happy Ending

Music

Damn this is the illness that just keeps on giving. Last week’s vicious cold transformed into stomach bug and now it’s my glands that are up. The throat’s killing me but at this point I’m somewhat resigned to suffer through it. What are Bank Holidays for, right?!

I thought I knew what to write about this week. Yesterday, running around the marshes (yes yes, lack of rest might have a thing of two to do with persistent illness) my mind was awash with clever anecdotes and ideas. This happens all the time. Oxygen pumping, out in the fresh air – it’s when i’m at my best. But of course all the inspiration vanishes by the time I get home, mind shifted instead to the 100 sit-ups I force myself through, sucked back into the distractions of technology.

I’ve been minding a couple kids over Easter break & they have subjected me to all sorts of dreary telly. At 10 and 12, they’re particular fans of this asinine show ‘Victorious’. You have the all-American girl next door, Tori (get it? Vic-TORI-ous?!), who attends Hollywood Arts High School and with her friends, gets up to all sorts of mishaps. I learn on the internet she’s some sort of singing star but swear it’s the same plot as this shit programme I used to watch at their age, Saved By The Bell. It has the same characters only the genders are reversed and now they all have smartphones. There’s the hunk, the geek, the mean one, the thick one, the friendly hippy teacher (like seriously still wearing beads and leather vests?!) and the token black one (who in one episode is involved in some sort of ‘Hammertime’ prank, where mean-girl shows up playing said 90’s hit and he has to stop whatever he’s doing and launch into some stupid dance). I find it disheartening that nothing’s changed in 20 plus years of youth entertainment. The kids love it though. Vacuously offensive & dare I say dangerous when it comes to shaping tomorrow’s minds.

I’m also going through one of those ‘I really hate social media’ spurts. The worst thing is, I find I’m still compelled to pick up the phone and trawl through Instagram at least once an hour. It winds the fuck out of me! Like what am I doing here? I can’t even come up with anything good to post. Everything just seems so … irrelevant.

Adding to general chagrin, Donald Trump’s dropped the ‘mother of all bombs’ on Afghanistan and I’ve been listening to S-Town (currently at the start of Episode III – walking down the street I was choked up to the point I had to switch it off). You’d think that combination alone would have me seeking out richer sources of knowledge. But no, much to my annoyance Brenda’s intelligence relies heavily on experience, somehow managing to quench the thirst through observation & what ever’s going on between these two ears. Kind of limiting, right? I wish I was more like S-Town John, with his sundials & mathematics (and I say this despite the podcast I’ve just heard, *scratch chin*).

‘WELL READ SOME FUCKING BOOKS, MISS HARLOW!’ hehehehehe

Yes yes I’ve been hearing it my whole life, most loudly from myself and yet …

So let’s blame ‘Saved By The Bell’. And of course social media for polluting the mind even more. Conditioned to be such a nihilist I can’t even be bothered to *fill in the fucking blanks*.

Imagine, it’s the end of the world & we’re all about to go out to the ring of tinned laughter & notification pings. Pah. At least we get some puppy pictures and a happy ending. 😉