Me? Bored?
It's Monday morning, which means...
"Recently, on holiday, I visited some ancient ruins, to shuffle around alongside some other random tourists. Everyone was being quiet and reverential, because that's what's expected of you by the International Thought Police. It's quite stressful and eerie. Say you find yourself staring at an old pot. Your brain, being an incredibly sophisticated computer, immediately assesses that it's an old pot, and that old pots are boring. It's not going to dance, or sing heartbreaking songs of yesteryear. It won't even rock gently in the breeze. It's just going to sit there being a pot. Probably a broken one at that. If it was on television, they'd at least have the decency to back it with some upbeat techno while zooming in and out, and even then you'd immediately switch over. But instead, because you've got the misfortune of actually being there in front of it, surrounded by other people, you have to stand and look at the poxy thing for a minimum of 30 seconds before moving on to gawp at the next bit of old shit, or everyone's going to think you're a philistine. The same principle applies in art galleries and museums. They're full of secretly bored people pulling falsely knowing faces. It's a weird mass public mime.
Obviously I'm not saying all history and culture is rubbish, or indeed that everyone's as shallow as me. But I strongly suspect that unless you're a hobbyist or expert - and most of the visitors won't be - then the average museum or gallery probably contains four or five fascinating items sprinkled among a whole lot of filler. In other words, you'll spend 10 minutes being interested for every 50 minutes of boredom. Yet if you dare shrug or yawn, everyone'll call you a bastard. To your face. Or at least that's how it feels."