Post Christmas Doom and Gloom

We're back!  I know, I've taken a longer than usual break from posting after Christmas, but the festivities left me exhausted.  Or rather the run-up to Christmas left me feeling tired: the inability to deliver stuff in person, the hassles in getting my car back from the garage and my last minute rush to buy my own festive supplies made for a frantic four days before Christmas itself.  To be honest, the imposition of 'Tier 4' (of a three tier system - but what else do we expect from this government?), came as a relief, removing any last chance of being forced to socialise, having unexpected visitors or having to navigate the post-Christmas sales crowds just to do normal shopping.  Consequently, I've spent a lot of time snoozing, surfacing every so often to snack on sausage rolls and catch off-beat movies on the streaming channels (it was Bloody Birthday and The Incredible Melting Man this afternoon).  I've started to lose track of what day of the week it is - apparently, today is Monday.  Anyway, I'm back and we're currently in that post-Christmas, pre-New Year no-man's land, where everything seems to stand still and the papers struggle to find copy to fill their pages.  Which is probably why this is the time of year when they start printing all those 'prophecies' from so called 'seers' and 'prophets'.  You know, the usual culprits like Nostradamus, Old Mother Shipton and the like.  

Now, leaving aside the fact that these 'predictions' are all couched in such a form that considerable 'interpretation' is required on the part of journalists and the like to turn them into anything that sounds remotely comprehensible, let alone relevant to actual events, have you ever noticed that they are always about impending deaths, disasters and cataclysms?  They never predict anything good, like world peace, universal love or the second coming of Christ.  Which probably tells us more about ourselves than it does the people who make these 'predictions' in the first place.  The fact is that doom and gloom sells.  It is the excitement of potential catastrophe I suppose - it brings a bit of drama into our lives and, in a world where we spend so much time consuming media which constantly tells us that life is a series of dramatic incidents with an underlying narrative, it is hardly surprising that we want our real lives to be the same.  Jut look at the way predictions of the imminent end of the world are lapped up by the media and public, whether they are based upon the misinterpretation of ancient texts, the ravings of religious nutters or are derived from bad pseudo-science, (whenever an asteroid passes within a billion miles of earth we get doomsday headlines in the tabloids).  It isn't just natural disaster either - the Daily Express website keeps throwing up headlines about WORLD WAR THREE (in caps) every time there is any international tension in the Middle East or South China Seas.  Clearly, the threat of our imminent demise, no matter how idiotic the source, gives us a thrill.  Which is why bloody Nostradamus and his incomprehensible gibberings keep coming around every year at about this time...