National Boredom Month, aka August, is almost over, but it’s not too late to wake up and browse The Oxford Book of Boredom.
In recent years, boredom has become a topic of discussion, debate and daily dullness. Boredom-filled books such as “The Boredom Bedtime Companion, “Monotony for Dummies” and “Middlemarch” have climbed onto the best-seller lists, while summer movies have taken tedium to higher and higher levels. Seems we can’t get enough boredom, as (insert the name of any talk-show host) proves. But now, as the new Oxford book shows, boredom has entered the academy.
Boredom is now a topic for study on campus instead of just a constant presence in lecture halls. Boredom Scholars are combing the stacks to find out what the sages, ancient and modern, thought of everyday ennui. What did Aristotle do when his in-laws stayed a week? How did Wittgenstein cope when stuck in a beach house until Labor Day? Where did Einstein go when a friend started showing vacation slides?
Boredom, scholars say, is not a post-modern human condition brought on by gender studies and 24/7 cable news. In fact, until the invention of the smartphone, boredom was the most common sensation in life, edging out lust, greed and envy. (These three, disgusted at losing out to boredom, jumped the list and joined the Seven Deadly Sins, which earned them a fortune on the lecture circuit.)
So regardless of how you celebrate National Boredom Month — nodding off at the office, picking sand at the Cape, watching re-runs of “Friends” — it’s time to educate yourself about everyday ennui. Here are a few entries from The Oxford Book of Boredom.
COUNTRY MUSIC: While once a vibrant form of American cultural expression, country music has morphed into one continuous song whose lyrics are legally required to mention Mama, a dog, a train and divorce. [See “GARTH BROOKS,” but don’t listen to him.]
GOLF ON TV: Boredom Studies pioneer Jean Beaucoup, after falling off his chair while watching the 1993 Bob Hope Desert Classic, devoted the next several years to studying golf on TV. His conclusion: “What a waste of seven years! I could have been watching ‘Friends’!”
CANADA: Canadian-born Marshall McLuhan once claimed that “Canada is more a state of mind than a sovereign nation.” That state of mind, McLuhan noted, sets in whenever one is “forced to spend a week or more in a city or town whose most distinguishing feature is a statue of a moose.” Canada, other scholars have noted, does its best, but that’s just not good enough.
ELEVATORS: “Still nothing happening in elevators,” notes the noted elevator scholar Bram Grixon of the University of Brexit. Despite efforts to enliven elevator conversation and add rhythm and melody to elevator music, elevators remain vertical shafts of pure dullness. Take the stairs when possible.
TREES: According to Professor Louise Sherpa, Alex Trebek Scholar of Boredom at Ohio State, “Trees don’t say diddley. They’re stuck in one place. They grow at a snail’s pace. They just sit there. I ask you.”
ASTROLOGY: It’s 2017. Do you know what your sign is and why you would spend three seconds consulting, let alone believing, this ancient pile of raw nonsense?
KALE: “This whole kale thing has gotten way out of hand,” noted a Food Trend scholar who found the leafy green so boring — and tasteless — that she refused to sign her study. “Next person who serves me kale had better have a rear exit in the kitchen.”
AUGUST: President Bill Clinton did boredom a great service by declaring August National Boredom Month. Do your part again this year. Fall off a chair.
Longtime Gazette columnist Bruce Watson is the author of five books. His blog theattic.space features a kinder, cooler America.