Ground Bogo

Banned in over nine thousand countries

It was a month ago, but I still have those photos scattered around, so I figured I’d just share them here. Anyway, it was some unusually warm day, so I decided to go down to the Portobello beach in Edinburgh. It’s just sand and water, no more than any other beach out there in the world. I’d been there before, so I knew not to expect much. Well, I damn well did not expect to find this shit going on, but then again, if I said that I did, would you believe me?

For all of you Doubting Thomas peeps out there, those are actual slot machines laying on the sand. There’s no shooping, and there’s no magic, it’s just the way it was. The arcades were not functional since the buttons were glued, but the weird thing was that they were powered. All the lights were flashing and shit; no music though.

Well, my initial thought of some drunk-as-fuck idiots carrying those machines out on the beach was quickly renounced by the observation that the slots found themselves on heavy-duty concrete blocks. This in turn would mean that:

• (a) Arnold Schwarzenegger left California to govern itself, flew to Scotland, got piss-drunk one night, and in his alcoholic delirium carried 12 at-least-half-a-ton arcade machines on his back from the nearby casinos to the sand bank.
• (b) Jesus Christ descended from Heaven once again right onto the chav-infested beach of the capital of Scotland and brought with him 12 slot machines instead of 12 disciples this time but kind of overlook a little ground-mobility issue and decided to fuck this shit up and go for a beer. Then he went back home because obviously things were not working out that great, and his council tax was too high anyway.
• (c) The slot machines were deliberately positioned on the sand as part of some obscure and supposedly artistic unsupervised and suspiciously unannounced and unadvertised exhibition or simply a human experiment.

Now, I ain’t much of a gambler, but I’d put my money on (c). I still consider this one of the most unusual and surreal experiences I’ve had for some time now. In fact, the photographs that are provided in this post are a direct result of my sheer disbelief that what I saw that day was not a product of my imagination, resulting in me going back a couple of days later armed with a camera and a grip on reality tighter than the screws in a railway track sleepers.

Bottom line is, if I was dreaming, then so are you. Which is not necessarily a bad thing after all…

Everywhere I turn I keep seeing something alarming growing in the world around me. An army of disillusioned people is slowly making its way into society, creeping like the first stages of cancer. It’s hard to notice these people unless you are one of them. I’m walking down the street, and I see dozens of shadows walking beside me. They aren’t mine, but they might as well be. Empty shells, held down on the sidewalk under the very weight of their disappointment and their quiet reconciliation with reality. The remnants of thousands of birds that used to soar and dream when they were children but whose wings were fiercely torn apart feather by feather by the greyness that surrounds us. People with no purpose, no motivation, no meaning, and no reason.

Everyone has dreams. Not everyone allows themselves to dream. Somewhere in this mysterious fog called life, people start getting lost. They lose interest in trying to get out. They lose purpose in their lives. You wake up, but do you actually have a reason to wake up? Is it Tuesday or Wednesday, and more important, does it matter? Is there something significant that makes your Tuesday different than your Wednesday? You fall asleep. Was your day worth it? If you had actually kept your eyes closed for the past 12 hours, would it be any different? You don’t have to be in a coma to be in a coma. All it takes is but a slip into the pit of apathy, and you’re already there.

So many people today have been infected. Like the molecules in a glass of water, they move back and forth in random motion, no purpose, no goal. What they don’t realise is that they pull others as well. It is very easy to lose reason and become a part of a grand routine if the monotony is already around you. And there is all this incredible potential that lies dormant in the endless grey mass. Nobody cares about these people, but someone ought to. Someone has to stand up and give this army of non-lovers something to love, something to pursue. I do believe one day this will happen, not because I’m optimistic, but simply because it is the logical course of action. It is a very powerful idea, and one day someone will adopt it.

And here’s something to think about, my disillusioned, illusioned, or imaginary readers. There is no need to wait for someone to come up and give purpose to the masses. You, me, we can all make our own purpose in life. And no, I don’t mean some naive scheme where all of us aspire to be something that we never will be. It is as simple as making your Tuesday different than your Wednesday. Even better…find someone that’s worth the effort and make every one of their days special. Then you will truly be alive.