Glitches and a Dubious Celebration.

It began when I woke up this morning. I looked at the clock and saw that it was forty minutes later than the time I’d set on my phone alarm for a wake up call. My alarm has always been reliable, and quite loud. And if I don’t silence it in the correct manner it goes off again ten minutes later, so either I was sleeping too heavily or the phone had a glitch. And that was only the start.

Next up was the computer behaving like a right ne’er-do-well, and then the car exhibited a few glitches, and when I attempted to pay for my groceries in Sainsbury’s, their computer system was faulty and it took six attempts before the transaction was complete. ‘It’s like this all over the country,’ said the cashier. And then there were other misfortunes which I won’t bother to relate. (Although I might the mention the pigeon which had become trapped in one of the charity shops and appeared most distraught, poor lady.) It was that sort of day.

It really makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Is this all just coincidence, or is it the configuration of the heavenly bodies, or is there something up with what we generally rely on as reality? I’ve been surprised over the last few years by how many people I’ve heard say ‘I think the matrix is crumbling’ and I’m quite sure that some of them weren’t joking. I used to think that only strange people like me said things like that.

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Today, November 5^th, is Bonfire Night in the UK. It’s a celebration remembering the day in 1605 when a group of Catholic activists planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament with thirty six kegs of gunpowder, with the intention of killing the King and many other notable personages. They failed because somebody snitched on them anonymously, and the man designated to light the fuses – one Guy Fawkes Esq – was caught. He was subsequently executed most horribly and now we celebrate his failure by lighting bonfires, setting off fireworks, and burning effigies of Mr Fawkes himself. (They’re simply known as ‘guys’, as in ‘penny for the guy, mister.’) For my part, I’m inclined to investigate the cost of having a T shirt printed with Guy Fawkes for Prime Minister.

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The fakery, the naked lies, the disinformation, the persistent irrationality, and the sheer preponderance of half-baked trivia which now constitutes a large percentage of YouTube’s output are getting on my nerves. I’m seriously considering giving it up.