Hating People

Not specific individuals, per se - although sometimes that does actually take place - but hating people inter alia. I believe it's called misanthropy, from the Greek misein meaning 'to hate' and anthropos meaning 'mankind'. It's not something I suffer from.

No, I positively enjoy it.

I am beginning to hate every single aspect of this country (the UK). I previously used to just hate most of it, but now, I'm hard pushed to think of a single thing I actually like about the place. There are some people I actually like a great deal who live here. Not very many of them, obviously (I could probably hold a meeting of all of them in a phone box if I stacked them properly) but there are a few.

Other than that, nothing. Not one single thing inspires me or gives me a feeling of fondness for this country.

The Olympics should have given me something - even jingoism for beating Australia in the medals table - but no. I was pretty much unmoved by all of it, though having the London 2012 section have as its core a bus that resembled all too eerily the one blown apart on 7/7 did raise some bile. How the newspapers and the Government can call professional athletes who have won a medal 'heroes' is beyond me, surely they're just doing their job? How Gordon Brown can welcome *them* home, but not watch a single body of a fallen soldier return to the UK leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

The football season? Well we're three games into the Premier League season, NUFC have won one, drawn one and lost one, and I think that's probably the best our record will look all season. There's not a great deal about sport that interests me at the minute. I can't even remember, through a lack of caring, who won Euro 2008. Stupidly well paid people who can't actually do anything other than kick/throw/hit a ball in a better than average fashion doesn't automatically garner my support purely because of the team shirt they're wearing.

Fashion is recycling the eighties, so even walking through city centres is depressing. I lived through the 80s, it was hideous to look at then, and it's even more hideous to look at now: Day-glo orange Reebok trainers will never be a look you can carry off, even ironically. Music too has 'rediscovered' the 80s with the shrill casio tones and repetitive sounds of blandness. Where is the new punk? Where's the feeling of barely repressed anarchy?

The other thing the 80s brought us was rampant Thatcherism - the Tories having surged into power on the back of a failed Labour government that couldn't keep inflation or unemployment under control. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar. Expect us to be involved in a war soon, in a place we'd previously never heard of, for reasons obscure. Oh wait.

I'm reliving the past like a waking nightmare. Does no-one else remember this shit happening before? Was no-one taking notes?