FriendsReunited and the Ridiculous
In which Mike ponders the nature of public
truth
Browsing idly on FriendsReunited (is there any other
way to browse?) I came across a name I barely remembered. The member notes
associated?
Left school with
no examinations and got into trouble with the Police soon after. Fortunately I
was befriended by a reformed lesbian biker and we are now happily married with
five children.
I discovered thr
Lord a few years ago and I am now a trainee priest in ------------. Would love
to hear from friends at school - You won't believe how much I've changed!
Now, I know my notes for a while said I
was herding spleen whales in Fiji, but that's just harmless fun. This is much
nearer the edge -- it's just possible that this chap is absolutely dead serious.
My inclination is always to laugh amusedly at this kind of thing, but so often I
end up finding that I'm just laughing at what genuinely occurred, which is a
much less comfortable moment than a self-congratulatory cackle at the pinnacle
of normality I have attained compared to the various freaks the world has to
offer; besides which it often offends, and that's only rarely my
intent.
So how far should I believe this?
Details of place, as omitted above, seem to lend an air of credibility - fakes
are never specific, it's always "someone's friend" and so on -- but I can't help
but think that the school I was at scarcely equipped one for the company of
'reformed' lesbian bikers. Depends, I suppose, exactly how one means 'reformed'.
Besides which, they'd have had to start breeding pretty swiftly to get the count
up to five, unless there're multiple births involved. Oh, all is
confusion!
... which was probably the
intent, in which case it's succeeded. But
maybe....
If everyone had an
easily-locatable internet presence, this sort of thing would be easy to
authenticate. And humorous though those "I am now a fish in Botswana" entries on
FR are, I can't help but think about how far they rely on you already knowing
the person as a bit of a joker, or someone on the edge likely to convert to a
monotheistic religion overnight, in order to know how they're to be read. I'm
not sure whether this proves that the Author isn't really Dead at all, or
whether it demonstrates that s(he) has never really been around in the first
place.
... and another thing, why don't
my puzzlements get more profound than this? I've had a good night's sleep and
some healthful tidying and pottering, and feel mildly
cheated.
Back to Lethem.
Posted: Sun - September 28, 2003 at 06:02