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This won't have a happy ending. It is, indeed, unendingly unhappy, and I don't just mean the essay.
You see...
You see...
You see I've just realised the woeful extent to which Spite is really, really, underrated as a driving force in society.
This thought leapt into my head, like the goddess Athena leaping fully formed from Zeus' (though in the opposite direction), when I was driving home the other day through the interminable roadworks that constitute Plano's sole contribution to the nation's transportation, and as yet again all the traffic was squeezed from three lanes to one by those cone thingies they put there for no apparent reason: or rather they put there for no apparent and non-spiteful reason. I mean there weren't even any roadworkers standing idly by to smirk at us, and so I immediately realised that the infrastructure of this constant infrastructure construction is constituted as follows: 50% spite; 30% randomness; and if you are lucky 20% improvement---these figures no doubt being subject to change---yes your mileage may vary, but the principle always remains the same. And what should in turn squeeze you from one lane to almost none? Some bloody great gas guzzling, weight-around-throwing SUV, an SUV that we now realize stands for Spiteful Unfriendly Vehicle.
Then there is that other contribution to speedy and efficient transportation, airline security. Though it may have some useful function, since far too many people want to spend their flights trimming their fingernails (or in extreme cases their toenails) to the consternation and imminent eye damage of their fellows, why if not for spite would they always make sure to keep all the eating places well inside their cordons so that no one can have a last (or at least, in a best case scenario, parting) meal with their loved ones? It can only be because they hate us for our penchant for trimming our nails and our smelly shoe-deprived feet and for having luggage and computers and, sometimes, even holidays; and so they'll teach us!
And if you try to escape all this more-or-less mobile spite by staying home and, say, watching a DVD, you quickly discover that the whole entertainment industry is predicated on spite; from the packaging of that DVD; and if anyone can give me a reason why it is necessary to have a plastic wrapping (sometimes layered with yet another one inside it) and three security seals, each of which is more than adequate to the task of making your life a misery; a reason that doesn't include a spiteful "We hate our customers" in it, or perhaps merely a desire to make those hated security guys up at the airport feel jealous and inadequate, I'd love to hear it; and then, once you've struggled for twenty minutes to get the damn thing open and wrestled it into your player, and suffered through the Federal Bloody Idiot warnings that they love to rub right into your face at every opportunity, and that vile lawyerrights stuff that lies behind it; only to discover it's merely lawyer-cats who create the movies. Sorry I got a bit carried away in that last bit I meant copyrights and copy-cats and I don't know where I got those thoughts of lawyers from.
Then when disgust at that horrible lawyered-up movie drives you from your seat and from your house and one look at your car and at the road and all its works is quite enough; what can you do but take a walk under the weather and then you realise at this last gasp that global warming is little more that humanity being spiteful towards Nature which is then spitefully getting its own back--it's like two kids in the back seat of an SUV on a long, long journey "Waaaa! Johnny's emissions messed up my CO2 balance! And he won't keep on his side of the car!""
Cheerio for now... and, Oh! and I just thought that, actually, I lied at the beginning when I said this won't have a happy ending, you see when I finish an essay there is actually about a ten minute window of pleasure when I'm happy to have my final redaction and all my recording done, that's before I start cursing the spiteful way in which my brain made me think that I'd finally got it right, but remember even If I don't get much happiness out of it, you can be happy that this whole spite filled moment is now really over Oh! Oh How I hate you for that
...from Richard Howland-Bolton.
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