Just now, thinking of how rotten that movie was last night, how entirely forgettable despite being charming and entertaining and at times funny [The Ladykillers]- makes me aware of living in 2004 – the same sick ennui of a decade still figuring itself out, as in 1994, when Forrest Gump came out, and that stupid movie Speed which inspired men’s haircuts. (And the real influence on hair styles for the past ten years, Friends began). It is an utterly miserable time to be alive and intelligent, just as it was then. Only now I am 29 and not 19.

The sickest TV show was on tonight – The Swan – where they give some plain person plastic surgery and a new wardrobe and then humiliate them by keeping their new attractive appearance from them until the dramatic unveiling of the mirror. It’s a nightmare of exploited self-loathing and the propaganda of physical beauty over intellectual development (which almost always leads one to an attractive appearance in spite of physique) … and what I just wrote there can be critiqued by saying that nowadays, one decides to look good not only through grooming and fashion – available to all since time began – but is now accessible through the reshaping available through the surgeon’s knife. So be it … I don’t really have that much of a problem with plastic surgery – but I do have a problem with indulging in people’s self-loathing in order to sell cars and whatever other shit was on between the dramatic scenes.

Glimpsing the end of that show was like seeing the disturbing parodies of television shows that one used to see in dystopian movies set in the 21st Century. This is what we’ve come too … it’s not enough that the graduates of art schools – supposed artists every one – have traded in their talent and vision for useless products and bags of cocaine.