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Fear the ennui, a new breed of person that is equal parts lazy, bored and indifferent.

We all have those lazy days where we sort of meld into the couch and watch programs chronicling the rise of aliens in ancient Mesopotamia while ignoring the Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on our door, even though they can see us through the towel that we use as a curtain. Lazy is a pile of dishes so high that you bring them into the shower with you. Lazy is eating Zoodles out of the can. (Five of you just said, "That's not lazy, I love Zoodles out of the can.") Lazy is wearing a hat instead of combing your hair or driving thru instead of walking in. Our whole society is quickly changing to accommodate and profit from 'lazy.'

There is another more destructive form of laziness that seems to be enveloping an evergrowing segment of today's society: ennui. Ennui is lazy mixed with boredom, but it is more than that; it is a lack of interest, a complacency and weariness with life. It's a societal and personal stagnation. Perhaps we have over-stimulated ourselves into a state of complete indifference?

I was passing through the parking lot of that mall on Oxford and Highbury the other day. You know the one, it's the place where it seems that if you buy a full load of groceries you get a free shopping cart to take them home in. Wheel-flipping shopping carts squeaking their way down Mornington Avenue, pushed by mumbling, tattered, pasty men and women who need to hurry home to watch another episode of Judge Judy. "Oh dear," they say to themselves, "I am out of mayonnaise and Diet Coke. I better grab the shopping cart and head up to the mall."

So I was at that mall when I saw a couple of dudes in a pickup truck outside of Burger King. They must have just finished eating their Tuesday King Deal special. One guy crumpled up his garbage and dropped it out of the window, lit a smoke, wiped the grease from his hands through his thinning hair, put his baseball hat back on backwards and drove off, a newly pasted "Out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign!" bumper sticker fading from sight as he sped away.

In my guilt for not saying anything to this guy, I went over and picked up his garbage. I felt a momentary wave of righteousness, which quickly digressed to a personal disappointment at my fear of confrontation. Ennui combined with fear, oh man, we are in trouble!

Wading through our daily routines, we encounter continual examples of our social decay: garbage tossed out of car windows, shopping carts left in the middle of parking lots, pissing on toilet seats, gum stuck to the bottom of chairs (have you ever been tempted to pop it in your mouth?), and putting the dog in the backyard instead of walking him. Lazy is about you, ennui is about us. Ennui, the grand evasion, the global turning of a collective eye as we reason to ourselves that someone else will do it.

Are you sitting in D caf right now? Reading this while quaffing a piece of greasy triangular baked dough with rounded foodlike particles on it? Look to your left — you notice the remnants of someone else's lunch sitting at an empty table? Are you inclined to clean it up, ignore it, or to leave your garbage because "everyone else is doing it"?

Are you a thrower, a picker, a watcher or a confronter? What one person finds ridiculous, the next accepts and the third shudders when he looks back on what the first did.

I suppose we are inclined to be indifferent to those around us. In the end, when we lie on our deathbeds and reflect, we may find that our conscience keeps us more awake than squeaky wheels, mayonnaise and Diet Coke.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.