The Timewaster Diaries
category: humour, author:Robert Popper (as Robin Cooper)
book 3 of Timewasteroriginal copyright 2007,
read in December 2010
Agamedes' opinion: 5 out of 10
Take a lot of lightweight cliches. Mix with cliche characters. Believe that the cliche stupid hero is actually funny. Serve as a Timewaster.The hero invents all sorts of things. These could be cliche clever and working, a la Doc in Back to the Future. Or they could be ridiculous and not working, a la Timewaster. I find that this perpetual and unadmitted failure is sad rather than funny.
The hero fails to fix the bathroom door. Until the day when he is trapped in the bathroom so finally gets round to it. Sad and thoughtless. And cliched.
The hero lies to his wife about his efforts to clear a bird from the attic. Sad and thoughtless and stupid. And cliched. Seinfeld, for example, is about people whose first and automatic response to trouble is to lie about it.
The hero has been fired for writing thousands of letters using employer resources during work time. Sad and thoughtless and stupid and dishonest.
Then there's the Simpsons cliche: The hero is sad, stupid, mean, thoughtless and dishonest -- but his wife loves him, despite all his faults.
It's an easy book to read. It provides lightweight entertainment. Just don't think to closely about the underlying pathos.
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