Dreams, Importance, and Drunk History

So, I started writing about this whole weird social disconnect where we're all supposed to have some sort of thing where we'd secretly like to be a star of some kind. You know, if you're "unintellectual" you want to be a singer or an actor or just sort of famous for being famous, I dunno, maybe a model or sport-type dude? And if you're "intellectual" you want to be a comedian or a writer or... I'm not sure what else you're supposed to want to do, actually, it's pretty much just that, isn't it? Maybe win a Nobel prize or something?

Like, "Hi kids! Everyone is special and unique, in either one of two special and unique ways! Do you want to be famous for your body/physical whatsit, or brain/mental whatsit? Pick one!" Which is a bit balls, because we aren't all the best at anything, frankly, and even if we are, no-one is ever going to make me famous for "being the best at constructing a comfy nest out of chairs, cushions, blankets, etc. and reading/messing about on my laptop in that nest while drinking tea and eating Nutella out of a jar". I mean, they might, but it'll be "woman has to be removed from couch with crane" fame, not "wow, you're so wonderful, tell me what brand of shampoo you use, I'll give you $100000 to say Pantene" fame. (Also, no, Pantene people, stop calling me, your shampoo is terrible and I would only accept that sort of endorsement deal from Clairol, and even then, only if they bring back that Herbal Essences flavour they used to have with rosemary in it, the stuff in the green bottles. Why did they bring back all the other "Classics" ranges except the one I love? Presumably the answer is: CONSPIRACY. Possibly they are afraid that that shampoo would make me so lustrous and good-smelling that I'd use my powers for evil rather than good?)

Anyway, then I totally derailed myself into thinking about how, mysteriously, no-one seems to aspire to way more important jobs like sewage treatment or garbage collecting, and I think maybe I'm going to roll with that instead, because, man, this blog has both Been There and Done That, when it comes to "live your dreams" stuff. (I'd put a link here to that post in case you're insterested, but (a) I have no idea how to do that any more, and (b) then I'd have to, like, trawl through the archives myself, and nuts to that).

So the thing is, to some considerable extent, it seems like how important a job is and how important it looks are inverse. Like, singers are totally unnecessary (look, yes they are. I like Florence Welch as much as the next person, but neither she, nor Nicki Minaj nor Skrillex (who I guess doesn't so much sing as just sort of go bzzzzt) nor Justin Bieber or Adele is actually necessary), and that's glamourous and they're applauded, but while the dude who fixes leaks in the big sewage treatment plants stops us backsliding into the 16th century, no-one wants to take heavily shopped photos of them. Do you reckon that this is deliberate in some way? Like, people who have important stuff to do are way too busy to be giving exclusive interviews all the time, so we interview people who genuinely don't have anything better to do? Or maybe there are just too many people doing small but vitally important jobs to laud all of them?

I wonder if this is like that thing where thin is beautiful in societies where food is plentiful, and fat is hot in societies where food is scarce? That's totally an established thing. They even did studies which showed it was true on a ridiculously individual level. So, obviously if, at a a society-wide level, you're starving, curvaceous ladies must be rich or miscellaneously well-fed (which is hot) and if you have heaps of food, slender chicks... aren't too heavy to pick up? Have iron self-control? Won't eat the last biscuit in the packet? I actually don't know what the go is there, but obviously you and I live in a plentiful society, and thin people are attractive people, so even though it doesn't make sense, it's obviously happening at that level. Anyway, it turns out if you make a lone guy feel poor, or hungry, and then ask him which chick is hotter, he'll pick the bigger one, but when he feels rich or full, dude wants him some Bon Iver style Skinny Love. I'm prettttty sure that they checked that the hungry dudes weren't planning to eat the ladies (plus they weren't THAT hungry), so they ruled out the most obvious confounding factor. Which is fascinating.

So I mean there's that. People are just contrary. Maybe if we were stranded on a desert island with a bunch of useless vacuous types (which, in fairness, on a desert island, would probably include you and I, unless your coconut-harvesting and raft-building talents are a well of untapped potential. I mean, I'd probably just be lying around trying not to get sunburned, occasionally going for a swim and complaining that I desperately needed some lip balm and a caffeinated beverage or something), then the useful folk who can build huts out of palm branches and what have you would be the new celebrities. It'd be like The Admirable Crichton, I'm thinking.

Anyway, so the more I waxed lyrical about how useful garbage collectors are and how gratful I am that they save us on a day to day basis from a grisy choleric-or-something death, the more I wondered: what would actually happen? What would we get, hepatitis A maybe? I feel like I should really know what it is that we'd die of if the streets were lined with rotting garbage. Definitely it'd mess up the water supply, and we'd get rats and what have you, so maybe the plague (comfortingly, we totally have antibiotics that'll knock out plague bacteria these days, but I guess we'd get resistant strains and so on soon) and perhaps liver disease from having to drink alcohol rather than water? Also, I like to think that this goes a long way toward explaining a lot of history.

Up until ridiculously recently, right, most people didn't have a reliable source of clean water (and indeed a lot of people still don't, which sucks a lot more than globalisation and "westernization", whatever that's meant to be, do. Like, by all means let us respect ancient cultures and accept that our own is as deeply flawed as any other, but let us perhaps share those aspects of our deplorably decadent over-medicalised whatever which allow us to drink water from the tap without keeling over with acute parasitaemia, surely?). Anyway, until recently, that was EVERYONE. The whole world looking like a World Vision ad kid, looking forlornly at a rusty water pump and wishing that the water to scorpions and miscellaneous deadly things ratio was a bit more favourable.

So what everyone did, of course, was drink alcohol, because fermentation killed a bunch of the stuff before it could kill you. I love this, mainly because if you read history, a lot of the time is spent going "what? Why... why would you do that, historical dude? Maybe you should take a deep breath and then a nap and then revisit your decision-making process, hmm?" and I really feel that if you bear in mind that basically everyone was a bit drunk all the time, suddenly a lot of stuff falls into place. I mean, even as recently as the 19th century, people used the phrase "one over the eight" to mean drunk, and what that means is that someone had drunk one more than the usual eight drinks in the day. (Turns out that if you space them correctly, about eight 19th century style standard drinks is the number your liver can handle in a day before you start waking up drunker each morning than you were yesterday morning and before you know it, bam, you're Amy Winehouse age 27). Eight! That's a lot to be drinking as a standard day! Eight drinks in and I personally lose all sense of personal space and start telling inappropriate jokes at an inappropriate volume (actually, that's probably six. By eight I'm almost certainly past that territory, but let us let bygones be bygones, etc). Anyway, I reckon if I had 8 standard drinks every day, I too would be crossing Rubicons, crucifying dudes who I didn't like the look of, making gladiators fight bears, etc.

Somewhere in there was the briefest glint of something I reckon would make a fascinating basis for a novel, or a really rambly post, but last year an American Friend of mine told me that he really liked this blog (or had done back when I used to post a lot) but could never finish a post, so I'm going to wrap up now, in keeping with my goal of writing things that are short enough that one person could deliberately read the entire thing in one sitting without being trapped under something heavy and thus unable to avoid it.

Other goals include: one day I will figure out how to finish posts super smoothly. One day, my friends.