Today I went to Alton Towers, the major theme park tourist attraction, to experience some of them ‘white-knuckle rides’. These are rarely ever as scary as they look. In fact, as my sister observed, the most daunting moment is getting on them. You’re sitting in the seat and have pulled the restrainer over your head and across your chest, but you never feel satisfied until you’ve given it a little tug upwards again; y’know, just to check it’s locked properly. I reckon everyone does that.
This compulsion derives from those urban myths you hear about restrainers and seat belts coming loose whilst some poor sod is halfway round some terrifying rollercoaster, leaving them hanging on for dear life by a thread and a firm grip. I reckon everyone’s heard a story like that.
Rationally speaking, you know this is the sort of thing that only ever seems to happened to ‘a friend of a friend’ rather than anyone you’ve actually met, and you can’t help silently questioning why you never hear of any stress related / neglect-of-duty lawsuits being imposed on theme park operators. But you also simultaneously recognise that if YOU were one of the operators, probably from or near Stoke, having to confront the faces of grinning and screaming buffoons all day for a living, whilst trying to endure that same looping tape of atmosphere-building soundtracks (probably Swan Lake) - then would (or indeed should) customer welfare really be topping your agenda of priorities? Actually – given such a hellish existence, how long would it be until YOUR OWN welfare would willingly slip down your agenda of priorities? Forget questioning public safety; I ask how many bodies of suicide-driven theme park ride operatives are fished out the waters of the canyon-rapid ride each year?
As a means of ringing more tourist money from you, the theme parks often take photographs of you at the scariest point of their rides. The second time you go on any particular ride, you become savvy to the point where the camera is about to take its flash photo, so you consciously try and make your face a bit more deadpan and non-plussed; because those action-shots are never particularly flattering portraits are they? If a local paper were to report on my untimely and tragic death, I would not be too chuffed to think of one of those rollercoaster photos to be used to accompany it. I suppose most of the trade must come from friends who find amusement from seeing you looking vulnerable.
Humiliation-wise, those galleries of gurns at the end of rides are a modern day equivalent of the public stocks. You’ve never seen your face contorting in such a way. Your mates always seem to gawp at your photo, pointing and saying ‘hilarious’ thing like “Is that the same face you pull as when you’re ejaculating?” while they all have a good laugh. And even though your mates’ ribbing seems like a joke, you can’t help but feel secretly worried that the face you witnessed on that screen MIGHT REALLY BE the same one you pull when you’re ejaculating, because who are you to tell the difference?
Or maybe the last of these theme-park neuroses solely applies to me?
Mon 1st June 2009
Saw an old friend today. We had a nice chat. We averted the issue that he recently tried to delete me from his list of friends on Facebook, by both choosing not to make reference to it at all. He is probably a little embarrassed because I had discovered his online snub. And in hindsight I am slightly embarrassed by the numerous desperate messages I sent in response, which begged and pleaded to know the reasons I had been so cruelly rejected this way, when we had never even had so much as a crossed word (although he did eventually concede to my seemingly emotionally-unstable harassment and reinstated me).
But this highlights a fundamental problem with Facebook relationships. If friends in real life drift away, it’s never really an issue. You might bump into one another and maybe you’ll sacrifice a couple of minutes to indulge polite conversation, or you might both avert your eyes and mutually pretend not to have noticed one another - no harm done, life goes on. But to actually ‘delete’ a friend seems like a rather bold statement. You’re basically telling the ‘deleted’ that, “I have such little regard for you I can’t even stand to see your name in a big list with a postage stamp-sized photo next to it.”
What’s the matter with these people? Do they go through their own phonebook with a pair of scissors, mercilessly cutting people out until it resembles some weird origami snowflake? I mean, to be honest I can’t stand half the fuckers in my ‘Friend List’ either. In fact the thought of them all gathering in one room together chills me to the core. It’d be too much of a juxtaposition, all those old school friends, colleagues, business contacts, distant acquaintances, family members, drinking buddies, ex-girlfriends, ex-housemates all being together, each with different memories of my personal failings and embarrassments from over the years, all on hand and ready to share. But even so, do I go round eliminating people from a list, like some sadistic Nazi general in a Jewish concentration camp? No I don’t - cos that’d just be rude!
But this highlights a fundamental problem with Facebook relationships. If friends in real life drift away, it’s never really an issue. You might bump into one another and maybe you’ll sacrifice a couple of minutes to indulge polite conversation, or you might both avert your eyes and mutually pretend not to have noticed one another - no harm done, life goes on. But to actually ‘delete’ a friend seems like a rather bold statement. You’re basically telling the ‘deleted’ that, “I have such little regard for you I can’t even stand to see your name in a big list with a postage stamp-sized photo next to it.”
What’s the matter with these people? Do they go through their own phonebook with a pair of scissors, mercilessly cutting people out until it resembles some weird origami snowflake? I mean, to be honest I can’t stand half the fuckers in my ‘Friend List’ either. In fact the thought of them all gathering in one room together chills me to the core. It’d be too much of a juxtaposition, all those old school friends, colleagues, business contacts, distant acquaintances, family members, drinking buddies, ex-girlfriends, ex-housemates all being together, each with different memories of my personal failings and embarrassments from over the years, all on hand and ready to share. But even so, do I go round eliminating people from a list, like some sadistic Nazi general in a Jewish concentration camp? No I don’t - cos that’d just be rude!
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