There's a difference between ennui and boredom.

 I know what boredom is.

 Ennui I'm not so sure about.

 Ennui is supposed to be that feeling of 'I've seen it all, nothing surprises me, in fact, I can hardly care'. Some online dictionaries [1, 2] define ennui as annoyance [ennui = annoy, geddit?], particularly an annoyance with tedium. This is an unsatisfactory definition, as it leaves out the quality of world-wearniess. The way these dictionaries have it, an assembly-line worker can feel ennui at seeing yet another piece of dough heading for the oven, another circuit board waiting to be stuffed, another car body awaiting seats and interior trim. A novice in the back room at Gregg's or Dunkin' Donuts can feel ennui on the basis of an extremely narrow experience. Hardly the kind of thing that exemplifies my understanding of the word.


 Since the dictionary is not particularly helpful, one must turn either to experience or to the imaginative renderings of novelists. Since I hardly ever see a novel, and have no basis for referring to Paul Bowles' description of John Malkovich and Debra Winger as they wander round North Africa, I cannot say that the characters express a sense of ennui any more clearly than I already have. However, they have a better shot at it than the doughnut maker.



 ^{Next:world-weariness}

Doing The Round

 Things need a bit of livening up around here! Plus, I'm bored.


 So what am I doing about it? I am searching for local blogs, first of all. I found one by restricting google to the blogspot domain, and searching on Brum, the nickname of this fair town. Oddly enough, there are people out there with the name Brum, so the results aren't as local as I'd like, and I'm going to try again with a more refined search.


 The first decent hit was this blog written by an academic from the US who has taken a job at one of the local universities. I could write an entry commenting on that blog, but that's a pretty lame thing to do when I could be making up my own, far more creative content. Suffice to say that the bit about plumbing raised a couple of laughs, because I too curse the stuckism of Brits as regards domestic improvements.



 On to the next find.



 Going back to Google and using Birmingham UK as search terms, top of the list is a blog by an academic - from New Zealand - who has taken a job at one of the other local universities. Going one step further than the American, this blog is also an audio feed from a New Zealand webcaster. Not that the link to the feed worked, mind you, so in the end, nothing of substance came of it. So, aside from the fact that this guy also has complaints about life in Britain - this time about the lack of responsible service provision, there isn't a whole lot of interesting stuff happening in my neighbour's lives.



 Further browsing turned up no items of interest.

Some People Know More Than Me

  I have forgotten what I was going to say about that. Within a space of ten seconds.

 I do recall that I was going to counterpoise the title with a somewhat contradictory statement in the opening paragraph. But the content escapes me. I have not been able to reconstruct it by methodical means: negation, substitution, non sequitur. None of these techniques help me remember what the next sentence was going to be.


 So, in stead of saying that some people know more than me, I should be asserting that I do not even know what I am talking about.