Thursday 20 June 2013

6: Footnote* - Mr Flash365









*Taken from Steven Briers’ monograph, The World in the Twenty First Century (Bitterne University Press, 1978). Though, to be honest, it’s all a bit like that Tomorrow’s World, isn’t it? I mean, they were predicting protein pills and jetpacks, weren’t they? Not once did they say we’d all have smart phones and tiny skinny tellys and no money. It’s a hilarious book, you really ought to read it. If you can find it, that is. I couldn’t find it in the library, and inter-library loans were no use. I mean, who do you have to sleep with to get one of those? I’m serious. You tell me who exactly it is who needs that particular blowjob and I’ll be on my knees with my mouth gaped in a heartbeat. I tried getting it from Amazon. No joy. Ebay: similar. In the end I tracked it down in a book warehouse which smelt worse than the Vice Chancellor’s armpit juice. But, no, it’s really funny. He makes all these predictions about the economy, and they’re all based on unions and the three day week. To him, Thatcher was just a funny woman who liked ice cream. He knew nothing. But he had one useful quote, and I stuck it in here because my supervisor told me I should consult the book, and she probably hasn’t read it since it was published. She looks back, through gin-tinted glasses, to a time when she was thrusting and energetic and studying everything she could find, then going out on the beers and having a knee-trembler round the back of the union. It’s all tied up in her mind: dirty, panting,  back-alley orgasms and Steven Briers’ masterpiece. Still, if it gets me through this bloody thesis, that’s good enough for me. So, yeah, this was taken from a 40 year old book by a man writing about his future – our present – who managed to get almost everything exactly wrong. And yet, here it is. Welcome to bloody academia. Where’s my jetpack?

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