The Hooverville Hexagon: Time Travel for Dummies and Other Free-Time Activities

 

We follow our noses a lot. Sometimes it's because it's hard to see the road ahead.

 

What Mist Can Do

by SashaQ

 

The Anthropology of the 21st Century:

The 'Actually' Generation

by DG

As MacLaren says in Travelers: Welcome to the 21st. It's where it all happens.

I am a native of the mid-20th century: my black-and-white Cold War childhood was followed by a psychedelic adolescence. Unlike Slartibartfast, I know way too much about early Sixties sitcoms. I also attended university during the great age of the hippie anthropologist. You know - no, you probably don't - the era when Carlos Castaneda and Kurt Vonnegut were both awarded degrees in this science.

 

'Take Anthro!' a friend crowed. 'It will change your life!' I didn't – schedule too full of labs and languages – but I read all the books: Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches; Rats, Lice, and History; Cat's Cradle (which was what the University of Chicago accepted in lieu of Vonnegut's thesis); and, eventually, every single one of Castaneda's Don Juan books.

 

So, in the spirit of that kind of anthropology, I proceed to study the state of human behaviour in the post-post-postmodern age of Now. Do I have a grant for this? Er, does being on Social Security count? I have always regarded being an old-age pensioner as a sort of academic fellowship entitling one to be tale-teller-in-residence for the young'uns.

 

The most basic thing I have discovered in my study of Homo postmodernicus is that they have an unquenchable thirst for explanations – the more plodding and basic, the better. Take Youtube, please (a reference nobody is going to get): the pattern is to utter a provocative question, followed by the announcement that this 'will change everything', and then cut to a plea for contributions. After the due admonition to 'like and subscribe, and visit my Patreon,' the explanation can begin.

 

Usually about twenty nanoseconds after the Big Bang. If you're remotely familiar with the subject matter and don't really want to watch the speaker reinvent the wheel from first principles, you would be wise to avail yourself of the fast-forward button: they'll get to the subject at hand about ten minutes or so before the end, or about 45 minutes from where you are currently listening.

 

The 21st century likes to hear itself talk. It also, apparently, likes to listen, judging from the incredible number of likes on these Youtubes. If likes and follows are anything to go by, the ability to bore other people stiff seems to be a recipe for howling success these days.

 

The trick isn't to be original: snapping up a topic that has already worked for your competitors is a tried-and-true method. Go steal some ideas from Simon Whistler. Or the h2g2 Edited Guide, if it's ever online again. I swear the Whistler oeuvre has cribbed off some of my own entry topics. (Mine are better. Maybe they'll reappear someday.)

 

It is also not necessary to be accurate. Don't do your own research. Nobody's going to fact-check you, as long as you say things that everyone believes anyway. It doesn't matter if your jokes are lame. The key is in simplification.

 

Explain everything at least three times. Repetition is the ticket. Slow down every process. Explain every factoid. Is your story about people? Tell us what they were thinking and feeling – in excruciating detail. If you don't know, make it up.

 

Tell us what happened. Then tell us again. In the end, it doesn't even matter that you forgot to answer the burning question you led with, or that the everything-changing factoid you teased the listener with never materialised.

 

It doesn't matter because by now, your audience's brains are almost completely numb. They don't care what you're talking about, only that you are nearly finished and they can go to Tiktok and look at memes for awhile. The relief at the end of one of these Youtubes is palpable. Even the speaker seems happier that it's all over.

 

The uninformative informational video is one of the 21st century's most creative inventions. It is designed to combat the besetting mental malaise of the time: information overload. IO is the curse my generation saddled you all with. On behalf of them all, I apologise. We were too curious. Now you need to shut off the flow before your heads explode.

 

A nice, soothing video purporting to explain all about some absolutely unimportant factoid is just what the witch doctor ordered. I'm sure I read this in one of Marvin Harris's anthropology essays.

 

Next time I'll try to explain something easier, like telling Europeans why the Three Stooges are funny. The resulting hour-long video will change everything!

 

(The following video-explainer has an AI voiceover. It is intended ironically. Don't cancel me.)

 

Quote of the Day

Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,

Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows

Siegfried Sassoon, 'Dreamers'

War Memorial #5:

St Nicholas-in-Castro

by Bluebottle

Every day until the day I still call Armistice Day, Bluebottle will be presenting a war memorial from somewhere. Today he takes us to Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight.

The Church of St Nicholas-in-Castro is a chapel in Carisbrooke Castle. While

the first chapel was built in 1070, the current chapel was rebuilt in 1904 using 13th Century elements by Percy Stone for Princess Beatrice, the last Governor of the Isle of Wight to reside in Carisbrooke Castle. She wanted the chapel to be a national monument to King Charles I, who was her Great-Great- Great-Great-Great-Great-Uncle. Charles had been imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle before his execution and the castle is where his daughter, Princess Elizabeth died at the age of 14.

In 1929 the chapel was rededicated as the Isle of Wight County War Memorial.

Despite the chapel's plain exterior appearance, inside it is incredibly beautiful with finely-carved details. The altar painting was commissioned by Princess Beatrice in memory of her youngest son Prince Maurice of Battenberg, who was killed in Ypres in 1914.

Petting a Scorpion

(I didn't, the zoo lady did.)

by DG

TTFN,

 Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor