Some days blogging comes less easily than others. The
words are slow to arrive at Typing Central and only sluggishly imprint
themselves on the page. It’s as if the tunnels in my brain that get the
thoughts and memories and vocabulary from one place to another are obstructed
in some way, like those underground waste channels that can’t flow because of the
years of accretion of tons of solidified fats. Yes, I guess I’m saying my mind
is like a sewer. A fatty sewer.
Where to start? And more importantly, where will it end
up? All it takes is the merest nugget of a notion, a gobbet of gossip to get you
going, then the snowball starts rolling and you’re away, mixing metaphors like
a grain of sand in an oyster that gradually ends up a pearl one, knit one. But
not today; it’s like the barricades in my bonce are impeding the ideas and
clotting up the creative flow. If only there was term for this… this mental blockage
that affects writers. Damn this writer’s block. Hmm… ‘block’… I wonder?
I got blocked by Owen Jones ages ago simply for re-tweeting
a challenge to his pontifications on class, poverty, the role of government and
the nasty, nasty Tories. Most of the people I know on Twitter have been blocked
by Owen; he blocks so often, so readily and on such flimsy grounds that he
probably employs a school-leaver on sub-minimum wages to do his menial blocking
duties for him, leaving Owen free to wring his hands in despair at the cruel
plight of his fellows in the downtrodden working class. Just like his Aunty
Polly no doubt rails against the pitiful wages she pays her Tuscan pool boy.
So it’s little wonder that when Dan Hodges had the
effrontery to express surprise at @OwenJOnes84 outing himself as probably middle class,
the self-proclaimed champion of the oppressed immediately blocked him.
Blocking, on Twitter, simply means you no longer see that person’s tweets and
they can no longer follow yours, but there are plenty of simple ways around it.
It’s like turning your back on somebody in the middle of an argument, but not
as bold as actually walking away. Owen Jones loves to denounce people as being unable
to debate but every time I’ve ever seen him encounter dissent, as he refuses to
deviate from his well-worn script, he reaches for the Block button without
breaking his stride.
He just doesn’t want to hear anything that detracts from
his entrenched ideas about the nobility of the people who made him a
best-selling author and launched his no doubt lucrative career on television
and in print. Fortunately he’s chosen his ideology wisely: as a lefty he can
employ doublethink and ignore all the evidence to carve out success while
decrying those who do likewise. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s planning
on buying shares in Twitter’s IPO with a view to making big bucks now, rather
than waiting for his reward in the socialist utopia he hopes to one day bring
about.
That’s the problem with ideology and shit – it’s a lot like
religion. With no apparent benefits but plenty of opportunities to donate, you illogically
deprive yourself of various pleasures in the hope that you will get your reward
in the fullness of time, i.e. when you’re dead. Whether your fantasy reward is a
stash of sultanas, a gaggle of giggling virgins, a diet of milk and honey or
peace on earth and goodwill to all men it isn’t going to happen any time soon,
so you have to go out and grab it while you can in the here and now. Owen’s
great hero, Karl Marx, must spin nightly in his grave as he waits for eternity
for Marxism to one day NOT create destitution.
If you REALLY loved me, Owen, you'd grow a beard.
I mentioned there were ways around blocking? One way is
to get somebody else to re-tweet your message to the blocker. Another is to generate
a hashtag that trends. So if you get a chance, have a gander at the hashtag
#OwenJonesSongs originated yesterday by @nby83 to see the imaginative ways in
which Twitter's many OJ blockees can still get their point across. Yes, when
you’re stuck for a blog subject, Owen Jones is the gift that keeps on blocking
giving.
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