In Robert Musil's novel The Man Without Qualities the anti-hero Ulrich abandons his ambitions
of becoming a great man upon reading a newspaper article referring to 'A Racehorse of Genius'. Why,
he reasons, strive to achieve greatness, in a world where even a horse can attain it? (Was there
really, one wonders, a racehorse of genius in turn-of-the-century Vienna? And if so, did Alma
Mahler shag it?)
In a similar way I have been laid low by a little furry four-legged bastard named
Frank, whom I can only salute as a Cat of Genius. Those who have been bemoaning the lack of
updates on this site can blame him.
There I was on top of the world. The pirated e-mail version of the 'French
Intellectuals in Afghanistan' thing had spread like Herpes in a hippy commune and visited
more countries than Tony Blair avoiding a transport crisis.
True, I wasn't credited and it was dispiriting to see unscrupulous plagiarists posting it
in newsgroups and weblogs as though it was their own work, but enough people made the effort
to trace the thing back to its source to give a nice little fillip to the site traffic and
my self-esteem. Then I was linked by Andrew Sullivan, bagging the vast gay Republican
demographic in one fell swoop -
12,000 hits, actually, in about a week. There was then a hiccup in the course of my triumph
when Aaron Brown of CNN trifled with me, promising me fame and fortune and a mention on his
show, only to ditch me in favour of some piffling little famine or bombing, but he got his
comeuppance, and I quickly
put it behind me and moved on, a stronger, wiser person for the disappointment and my
subsequent hysterical suicide threats.*
The hits kept coming, often as many as 200 a day, and some very nice e-mails from
kindly persons all over the world, many of which caused me to blush and giggle and skip around
the garden with gratified vanity. I was interviewed by a St. Louis newspaper and printed by a
Canadian one. The site counter reached the 40,000 mark, almost double the total of a couple
of months before. I was still stuck in my horrible job, but I was turning up for work with a
definite swagger, conscious that my workmates, who knew me only as a morose and
rather incompetent filing clerk, were completely oblivious of my secret identity as a puckish
internet satirist. Indeed, they would have been very surprised, I think, to learn that I even knew
the alphabet. Little did they suspect! I had a double life, like Bruce Wayne and Batman, or
Henry the Mild-Mannered Janitor and Hong Kong Phooey. I fancied my every word hung on by a
global network of devotees (despite the fact that only three people urged me not to make good
on my hysterical suicide threats, against one telling me to go for it. It seems this site inspires
either love, hate, or slack-jawed bloody apathy.) Grateful to my adoring legions, and
despite the constraints of time imposed by my crappy job and efforts to write something more
enduring, I made notes for a couple of strident
editorials and various new comic bagatelles.
Then I was hit by Frank the Bastard Cat.
'Frank's the darling of the internet,' said the free paper I picked up on the
bus on my way home from another eight hours non-existence. 'Stupid furry fleabag who wouldn't
know a good joke if it stuck a grenade-launcher in his mouth and blew his stupid moth-eaten head
off is the king of the web.' In short, a cat named Frank which has a broken hip had
its own
web-cam site which had received a quarter of a million hits in the past six weeks.
Yes, I am jealous of a sick pet.
Why strive for renown on the internet when a cat, and a broken cat at that, can get
a quarter of a million hits just by existing?
There will be no more updates on this site.** Instead, this is now a webcam shrine
to my own cat, Wellington.
__________
*My suicide threats were rather tasteless and of course completely
empty. You were right to ignore them, you heartless bastards. In case I ever stoop
to it again in the future, please be assured that any suicide attempt I might make would
only be a cry for help and entirely half-hearted - throwing myself out of a ground-floor
window, hurling myself in front of a parked car, or lying down on railway tracks when a
Virgin Train was due (although I suppose I might die of starvation in the latter case.)
**This is a slight exaggeration, but future updates will be sporadic and as the spirit moves me - which has been the case for some time. Thankyou to those who have nagged me, though.
***So lovely lovely lovely, yet so greedy greedy greedy! Have you noticed that whenever her children are on screen they are always running past at high speed? They know that if they slowed down Mummy would put them in a pot and eat them. The cameraman, too, is careful to keep constantly on the move.