OMG! Weirdo child-people enjoy their jobs!
Hurrah for Laura Howell, the first woman to draw a weekly cartoon for the Beano! She's been included in a cheery series of BBC articles about kids' dream jobs, along with a chocolate taster, a video game designer and the chief model-maker at Legoland.
No hurrahs for whoever linked it from the BBC front page with the title "The jobs that mean you don't have to grow up." Shto? Do Legoland managers spike the tea urn with hormone antagonists so their employees grow no body hair? Are chocolate tasters exempt from council tax? Can't Laura wash her own clothes and stay up after 8.30pm if she likes?
No, no, I understand. They're using "grow up" to mean "resign yourself to pointless drudgery for most of your waking hours for most of your life."
I once heard on the radio about a Nigerian village in which river blindness was so common that the inhabitants believed losing one's sight was a natural part of growing up. Losing one's sense of fun and purpose isn't natural either, and we've got less excuse for believing it.
No hurrahs for whoever linked it from the BBC front page with the title "The jobs that mean you don't have to grow up." Shto? Do Legoland managers spike the tea urn with hormone antagonists so their employees grow no body hair? Are chocolate tasters exempt from council tax? Can't Laura wash her own clothes and stay up after 8.30pm if she likes?
No, no, I understand. They're using "grow up" to mean "resign yourself to pointless drudgery for most of your waking hours for most of your life."
I once heard on the radio about a Nigerian village in which river blindness was so common that the inhabitants believed losing one's sight was a natural part of growing up. Losing one's sense of fun and purpose isn't natural either, and we've got less excuse for believing it.
Labels: Biting Satire, Things I Like
posted by MissPrism at 9:08 am
5 Comments:
Well said. I'm not sure "sense of purpose" isn't part of the problem, though.
Hear hear. The words 'childish' and 'childlike' are thrown around far too much. I think people are what they are; children are just smaller, less experienced, less embittered versions. :-)
You two have really missed the whole point. Getting old is a state of mind. If you have lost the ability to learn something new and adapt to change, then you are old, no matter what your age.
http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-does-it-mean-to-be-old.html
Geez, I didn't start climbing trees till I was 40. I still miss that job.
In The Road to Wigan Pier Orwell describes mining villages whose inhabitants routinely had all their teeth pulled in early adulthood. "Teeth is just a misery, anyway," one of them explained to him.
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