I am a sound guy. I'm sure you've seen (or, more likely, heard) us around. We make noise. We plug things into things that make noise, in order to make more or "better" noise. We capture that noise, so that we might share it with other people who might like that noise. Also, I'm a sound guy starting a blog, so it got me wondering what I might have to say on the matter. Then I thought about what it is that I do, like, really. Which got me thinking about arks. Huh?
In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (the second of five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy trilogy), Douglas Adams describes a world called Golgafrincham, inhabited by a humanoid people, in which two-thirds of the population decides that the other third-
...consisting ofhairdressers , tiredTV producers ,insurance salesmen ,personnel officers ,security guards ,management consultants ,telephone sanitisers and the like...
- can simply be done without, and load them all onto a spaceship, "Golgafrinchan Ark B", tell them not to worry, that everyone else will be along shortly, and send them on a collision course with a far-away yet inhabitable planet (which turns out to be prehistoric Earth), and simply bid them good riddance.*
Sometimes I find myself pondering the nature of my work - which I quite enjoy, most of the time - and I inevitably wonder to myself, Am I on Ark B? Naturally, I reassure myself that someone working in the performing arts (theater) and entertainment (film and television), that surely those remaining on Golgafrincham would keep some of us around to work on their films, television programs, and theatrical events, right?
Naturally.
Of course, right now I'm working in "reality" TV. Hm. Not so fast, my friend...
Then again, I don't live on Golgafrincham, and I'm reasonably confident the upper crust of Western society isn't about to load a third of the population of Earth onto a spaceship and launch us into space (but if they did, wouldn't that be awesome?!?). So, I think my position in society is safe for now. Reality TV doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
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*it should be noted that, in the book, the remaining two-thirds of the population of Golgafrincham is "suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone." So there's that.