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Elwin Chaelim is an in-patient of Broadmoor and former journalist. He has agreed to write a regular article for TVBOMB, giving a fascinating insight into the mind of someone suffering from criminal insanity when confronted with today's society. In this first article, he responds to a recent media feature and ponders eloquently on the miracle of TXT and dangers posed by the young and the Scottish.  In my capacity as a hack, people often say to me: “Hack, hack, on the floor, please leave this establishment as we are closing now and must mop up this mess.”
It is at such times that I am invariably reminded of one of the many great sayings by my mentor, the late Gore Vidal – or possibly Tom Wolfe, who sadly is no longer with us: “RESPECT MY WORK FOR IT BETTERS YOU!”
Allow me to illustrate this noble sentiment, which despite it’s grandeur I hope you can grasp, with an anecdote from my own tireless crusade against sobriety.
For the last month I have been baffling my friends and colleagues by inserting into my speech the parlance of technologically-enabled youth. “TXTSPK” is the brutal name given it by some; others prefer the less-refined “LOLcats-ography”.
In erudite speech, often in debate about such lofty notions as the future of the Union and its essence, or the glorious use of the em dash in the works of H. P. Lovecraft, associates have been irritated – imagine it! Irritated! – when I counter their point with a devastating “OMFG, like srsly, you think that? wtf?”
Is this not profound? Is this not in the very spirit of the dearly departed Christopher Hitchens’s compliment to the now-incarcerated George Galloway: “You, sir, are a SCOT!” Only through the elevation of external discourses in the most lofty circumstance might we negate disenfranchisement of those alien cultures who threaten our piece, stability, and right to drink – the threat posed by the young and the Scottish.
Is there not, in any case, an argument to be made for first understanding, then respecting and finally revering the proud and impressive traditions of these two reviled peoples? I truly believe that when I display my hard won appreciation of these pariahs by adopting their argot in my work, the disdain I am treated with by my contemporaries – the great Max Hastings and, of course, evergreen Alison Pearson – is proof of their philistinism and the nobility of my endeavours. Am I not the champion of engagement? Is it not by understanding and following my work that we shall finally put to bed the menace of the young, the scots and, that creature of unimaginable ill, the Young Scot?!
I am here to tell you of the beauty that lurks beneath their barbarism. Consider: the sheer audacity of taking the grandest nexus of meaning, the very first word, that idea that began all – GOD – and then abbreviating it! The utter flagrancy of being too indolent to grant that word its brief, full glory! It is unimaginable to us – and yet, when one embraces it, one achieves such freedom!
And furthermore – consider taking this concise statement of derision, OMG, then emphasising its contempt by rendering it absurd: ZOMG. This is sublime. To type this is to embrace the redundancy of existence and of meaning: to type first that unused, maligned consonant, shoved blithely to the bottom left of the keyboard, all but forgotten. The least considered position on the keyboard, on the weakest (and let us not forget – evil!) hand. To fully comprehend is to know more than is contained in the works of Kafka, Sartre and McEwan combined.
Then, their greatest savagery: to render improvised absurdity with grand meaning. Asdafdsafsdadsa. Asdfgdgfdghsdfsdafghsd. ASDASDFAFGSADAG. All these and more. Whatever the arbitrary combination: it perfectly replicates the senseless disbelief when confronted with an occurrence at once both extraordinarily mundane yet mind-bogglingly idiotic. Performing this gawking disbelief on the keyboard, one is reminded of the shattering piano cadenza in the midst of Messiaen’s Turangalila, perhaps coming close to that rupturing dissonance the pianist feels as his hands scurry across the ivory.
I have borne witness to all this vile inhumanity and more, and I have seen – not a heart of darkness, but great beauty. Yet still, my colleagues – figures as illustrious as Marina Hyde! – will scoff. “A man of such great learning as yourself reduced to the vapid mooings of the illiterate, brutal young? A man schooled between 1994 and 1999 at St Leonard’s Technology and Community College? A man considered a permanent feature in the ‘faculty’ at the Broadmoor ‘Institute’?”
Yes. They malign my work. But they do not see what I see. They do not comprehend the beauty of the Young. They have not descended to youth’s level so that they might “possess” the Young like I have. And for this they would lock me up?!! AFTER ALL THE GREAT WORK I HAVE DONE FOR THE SAKE OF OUR CULTURE?
The next time you pass me, drunk amidst my urine on the floor, you will say to yourself: “there lies a Hack, in all his greatness.”
READ MORE: ‘The Joy of Text ’ |
