h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Even though I'm a pacifist - well, no, let's not talk in absolutes, I'm maybe 85% of a pacifist - I still find myself saying "It's a good kick up the arse he needs" quite frequently.

B. Johnson: It's a good kick up the arse he needs!
Tony Blair: It's a good kick up the arse he needs*!
Yer man outta Reservoir Dogs: It's a good kick up the arse he needs!





*This one actually needs two or three good kicks up the arse.

Well....the older I get, the more resigned I am to watching the rest of the world go about its business while I reckon which things I wish to get involved in. When you're at the point where you lack the stamina to dance every dance, choosing one or two that you can do well looks more attractive.

I've been against the death penalty for many years. At this point, I find it too exhausting to worry about every case where someone was executed. It's not something I have control over. I can even see where some especially tricky serial killers who prove adept at escaping from the securest prisons to kill again are best put underground where they can at least nourish grass and flowers. I'm a soft, squishy bleeding heart who is morphing into an occasionally
laissez faire type. SEP fields look better every day.

Well I wouldn't call myself 'old', but maybe I've got to the age where I've realised that there are so many arses that need kicked, but only two feet to kick them with.

No, objectively speaking I'm not old at all. I'm probably still on the bottom half of the world's population pyramid.

Although, some time in the past couple of years, it seems like I crossed a bit of a Rubicon. I'm more conscious that I'm getting older, and that's cool. I'm more aware of the future, and more conscious of the past, too. And the thought of my own mortality no longer freaks me out the way it would have done when I was younger.

And, when I comb my hair, I see so many wee whites now that I can't pretend it's just a trick of the light any more. But again, it doesn't faze me. I've gone from "oh shit, is that a white hair?" to "oh look, another one! You're very welcome in this house, make yourself at home."

Age can, in certain circumstances, be a very liberating thing. It brings with it the confidence to no longer give a fiddler's feck about things, if you don't want to. Maybe it's just that I've belatedly become an adult.

Nahhh, I may be gullible but I'm not buying that.

You don't have to buy anything. The suckers who were born a minute ago will gladly buy whatever you don't.