WASTED WORDS: Six Years of Fugger!

Fugger first blogged on this day, six years ago. That's six years of words arranged in grammatically dodgy order for reasons best known to absolutely no one, least of all me. All I know is that six years is a lot of words. Too many words. But what the Hell, it's Fugger's birthday so here are some more...

For this anniversary post, I thought I'd do something special and let you know about the word quota. Everyone has a certain amount of words assigned to them for use in their lifetime. Did you know that? Yeah, there's a word depot that stores a limited amount of words for each person's use. Once you use up your words, you can no longer speak or write. You are struck dumb. You never get to communicate again - beyond pointing and waving or using facial expressions or nodding and shaking your head. Consider that next time you waste a load of words complaining about the shite on telly. You might run out of words before you've said what you really want to say. It happens. Having said that, I'm not sure if running out of words is a bad thing at all.

Words drain life of value. Honestly. When you recount an experience in words you reduce that experience to just words. You even start to consider the experience as a story that you tell and forget the actual sensation of the experience itself. Emotions become syntax. Then you start to embellish things, to add a bit of sparkle to what inevitably becomes a jaded narrative. You might even discard reality completely and make something up. I'm not sure if anyone knows for certain why we do this. Maybe we do it to entertain others so they'll like us. Being liked feels good. Being liked makes us feel safe. Being liked sometimes brings rewards or gives us a chance to procreate. Or maybe it's not about being liked at all. Maybe we exaggerate just because, you know, because. For reasons we can't put it into words. We're a funny species, sometimes on purpose.

To keep experience authentic, the less you say the better. The only way you can properly convey an experience is through telepathy and we can't do that, yet. Once we master telepathy, we'll consider words as insufficient and rudimentary a means of communication as smoke signals. Dishonest smoke signals at that. With telepathy we'll know exactly how each other feel and we'll understand each other's motivations and no longer have a clutter of words clouding our mutual comprehension. Despite the odd embarrassment, this will be for the best. There'll be a certain amount of awkwardness because people you dislike will know that you dislike them and, worse still, people you love will know that you love them. Your silly preoccupations and insecurities will be on show for all to see, but then so will everyone's. This will probably lead to a lot of empathy in the end. We'll all see how silly we are and have a good laugh. You might even stop disliking those you dislike and come to love them, now that you've come to truly understand them.

(This post isn't very good is it? I should be putting a narrative on all this and packaging these concepts in some kind of amusing scenario, with a set up and a pay off. There'll be a funny bit at the end, I promise, but it should be less of a slog getting there shouldn't it? I should try harder to hold your interest. Holding your interest is my aim I suppose because, you know, just because. For reasons I can't put it into words.)

But where was I, oh yes, the word quota. Some people, those who talk too much or write a lot, like yours truly, often exhaust their word supply before death. If you keep an eye out, you sometimes see these wordless people around the place. You might see them paying for items at a checkout and smiling politely but saying nothing when they are handed their change. Most are elderly, but some are younger, living out decades incommunicado. I've a theory about these people. I reckon they find it liberating to be without words. I can't say for certain of course because wordless people aren't able to confirm it, but their knowing smiles and zen demeanours could well be down to their word lack. They look free to me, whenever I see them. They seem unburdened. I say 'hello' and they just nod sagely.

Anyway, this brings me to the funny part of this sixth anniversary post. 'At last,' says you. OK, so, there was this fella right, and he was always going on about this and that and whatever and never shutting his yap and it's his first day at work in a new place and he really needs a shite. He's busting to go, absolutely dying, but the building is huge and he can't find the jax so he goes to ask where it is, but then he finds that he's run out of