London Calling: Part IV

-The fourth in an esteemed series by the even more esteemed Mr. Eugenides. Did I mention it's all very esteemed? Enjoy.-


What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish?

T.S Eliot, The Waste Land

There are many known evils in the world today; an Axis of Evils if you’ll allow me to paraphrase. Those presently in our collective consciousness include John Thain, Nouriel Roubini, everyone at Davos (including those on skiing holidays because who has that kind of money now?) and most of the Wells Far(ra)go ‘what-happens-in-Vegas-stays-in-Vegas’ bankers.

There are also many darker, Rumsfeldian ‘unknown’ evils. Evils which hang like soiled laundry in our mind’s backyard. Once revealed, these prove to be every bit as heinous as the known evils. Along this sub-axis I suggest you’d find John Thain’s wastepaper basket, everyone else on Wall Street who wasn’t at Davos and, crowning this cast of miscreants, anyone who updates a Facebook status message.

Full disclosure: Mrs Eugenides uses Facebook and I’ve often joked with her about the merits of the site. I refer to it as ‘Fakebook’ and highlight that uploading photographs in order to elicit insipid comments (Loving your hair!) is proof of a level of onanism that will be talked about as a nadir of the human condition by sane people for many years to come.

She counters with the view that in a dispersed society, networking sites allow us to keep fragmented friendships alive, but I know she only says this because she publishes approximately 400 images of our new baby on her profile page every three hours. It’s essentially the digital equivalent of the ‘one-upmanship Christmas card insert’. ‘Look at us! Look at our kids! We’re beautiful, we’re incredibly shiny, successful and we literally twinkle with sure-footed confidence’.

This isn’t a polemic against social networking sites - I’m not that stupid - but have you ever taken a few minutes to look at the status strap-lines? I have. Mrs Eugenides claims I’m a tad obsessed with them, but in truth, words like ‘mortified’, ‘disturbed’ or ‘mentally scarred’ would be more accurate.

To me the Facebook status message is a self-populated waste land, a desiccated moonscape of stony rubbish. It’s a perfect vacuum of humanity. It puts the ‘trite’ in ‘detritus’. It may well be the death of love. Am I going too far? Here are a few recent examples:

X is dividing by zero!

X is God's second cousin, twice removed, on his mother's side. He's the demigod. He tries.

X is engineering the electricals.

X is gathering rocks to throw at you.

X is changing their status to "drinking beer in the shower."

X is having sex, he hopes.

X is a thinking of lamb for dinner.

X is happy in the snug, taking a break.

X is filmed before a live studio audience.

X is harvesting paperclips from work.

X is literally angry with rage!

X is giving big love to her girlies!

X is returning some videotapes.

X is right behind you.

X is hiding under your bed.

X is taking over the world.

As you peruse the above I’ll let you formulate your own opinion. I’ll let you decide what kind of solipsistic terror campaign these people are waging against each other. But in all honesty, that last one might be unknowingly prophetic; Facebookers are taking over the world and they’re bringing their acerbic wit and mellifluous turn of phrase to a status message near you.


Happy Social Networking!


Mr Eugenides (is eating a lot more cheese than he used to!!)