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Mar. 31, 2005 Americans are sometimes accused by us Europeans (and you know those Frenchies and their cousins…) of lacking a sense of irony. I have always felt that this is not the case. They simply slot Irony into place alongside Iraq, Iran and I-pod as the small towns in Iowa that form the Sun-I triangle. The late-night arrival of an intriguing e-mail from over the water causes me to question this, since the Editor of useless-knowledge.com (That’s a thankless job-title if ever I saw one) wonders if I’d like to contribute something? It seems ironic that my own countrymen think I am truly a purveyor of information so useless that it isn’t worth publishing, yet here is a person who evidently likes the look of my profile on writers.net (I always worried if that was actually my best side) and wants to hear more. My U.S. agent in Michigan (that’s U.S. and not U/S, I hope) will be delighted. She may have to run off some extra photocopies and send me the bill. I visualise my runaway success in the Land of the Free: book-signings at the museum in Pahrump, Nevada, a spot on Leno, ordering my theme Chopper from the OCC boys…I could call it ‘The Useless Bike’, since they wouldn’t have finished it yet. Then it hits me, I might get a rejection! Maybe what I know isn’t quite the right kind of useless for the Yankee market. What happens if people say ‘actually, that’s really rather useful!’ Maybe the very fact of being published, the information actually reaches the one person to whom it is useful and then has to be removed because it is no longer useless! I suppose that there cannot ever be an item of entirely useless knowledge, since knowledge is always power and we are ultimately at fault if we fail to see a use for it. We should see people in exactly the same light. I have been guilty in the past of thinking that a particularly ineffective colleague was ‘useless’ but that was more my fault for not seeing their skills (The highly developed ability to ‘lose’ the only copy of my unique and exciting manuscript for a self-help book being prime amongst them) Years of our lives are wasted in the wrong job, with the wrong person but mostly with the wrong impression of ourselves. We constantly try to fulfil the expectations of everyone else rather than find balance and happiness in ourselves. And that applies to countries, too. Goodnight. ------------ About the author: My name is Martin Webster and I am short, fat, divorced, depressive middle-aged man who has had 12 jobs since leaving school, only one of which lasted longer than 2 years. I have written a book which will change your life so its better than mine! I have a US agent but no publisher as yet. Email: sales@kayprint.fsnet.co.uk Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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