Triumph of Indifference

I made my peace with young Ivana today, dear reader. It could not be helped, for remorse was eating away at me; without provocation I had treated her brutally; and it does not do to censor the young for their honest and valuable opinions. Also, I stood in some need of her assistance because neither I nor that little brat of her brother managed to make heads or tails of the stats that came out of our experiment with Random Terms of Good and Evil.

Fortunately, sweet, sharp-witted Ivana is a merciful girl of impeccable character, who does not deem it below her dignity to forgive a grumpy old fool for his inexcusable rudeness. In exchange for a firm promise, which I herewith publicize for the whole world to witness, never again to insult, belittle, humiliate, affront, offend, abuse or edit her, she has agreed to study the stat numbers and enlighten me with her incomparable interpretation. To that purpose, I gratefully received the following break-down from her yesterday midnight (which I translate integrally from her most elegant Portuguese).

Mr Mittington,

At your request I scrutinized the statistical returns of your sorry blog for 5 and 6 March last. It needs no saying that We Are Not Impressed. It is obvious that the entire exercise was futile, and the scientific method only slightly less pathetic than the final outcome.

On March 5 last you published on your sorry blog 50 ‘random terms’ of a positive nature, such as love, peace, modesty and more such expressions with which you are barely familiar. During the subsequent 24-hour period, a mere 36 internauts (out of roughly 1 billion digitally active worldwide) took a pageview. No more than 6 of these cared to peruse your Random Terms of Good and Beauty.   

You may yelp, in anguish, that that is a miserable return. And you are right. However, it is not HALF as miserable as the returns for the 50 random terms of Evil and Ugliness which you posted the following day, March 6. Only 20 people of bad taste and vulgarity wasted their quality time on your sorry blog that day, of which NOT A SINGLE ONE (zilch, niente, nada) took a look at your rambling collection of preferred expressions.

I do not need to say more. But I chose to do so, adding some personal thoughts. It may be obvious, Mr Mittington, that you totally fail to strike a chord – or even a single string – on that grand resonant harp that is modern artistically proficient Youth. This cannot be helped. You are ancient, outmoded and vengeful of character. As such there is no hope for you or your sorry blog.

If, however, you persist in your forlorn attempts to make a name in the modern world (through fame, not infamy, I can only hope against my better judgement!) then you will have to mend your ways. This of course starts with a Positive Attitude and the intake of herbal tea instead of crude liquor (as I know you indulge in immodestly every night from 11 a.m. onward).

Beyond that, I would suggest you shorten the length of your interminable postings, find more popular themes than greasy sauces, sick humour and slanders regarding the fine Brussels men and women who are trying to save our continent from the International Monetary Complex, and promote yourself through the Social Media such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+. As you will have noticed from your dismally failed experiment: hoping to attract readers by offering rude language to their search machines generates no response at all. Only recommendation on interactive websites by friends (if you have any) can do that. But then, such friends must be pleased to be associated with you and your sorry blog; they should not feel embarrassed by it.

I wish you good luck in your further endeavours.

Ivana Velikovna

P.S. May I suggest you repair one more of your mistakes? My father Igor wants to know where he can get a “Sutra Waterbed”. The other day he caught my brattish brother Hannibal, not so much red-handed as wet-handed, with that dirty book you lend him. The little imp babbled his way out of it (I wonder who he learned that from…?), and made papa believe that the “Kama” in the title is actually modern texting for “Cama” (as in Bed) and that the smut guide was a dormitory prospectus. Now he wants to buy one for mama’s birthday. I will not allow your lack of scruples to disrupt our family! So the red-hot potato is in your court!

So there you have it, reader! Good won, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Evil lost, but there is no cause to cheer. In the end, the true victor was Indifference; that ‘strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn,’ as wise Elie Wiesel once spoke. Indifference, which is ‘not only a sin, but a punishment.’ 


You can say that again!