Is there anything more pointless than a rhetorical question?

Or is this a rhetorical question?  Go on think about it?  Who answered no?  Wrong.  Today I shall be considering the pointless, naturally one's definition of pointless will vary on a number of factors; age, interests and general grumpiness to name a few.  So shall we begin?

1. Facebook.  Oooh controversial this one as I'm sure many readers (assuming there are many) will have come across this blog via Facebook.  Now, please don't get me wrong, Facebook isn't all pointless.  It isn't a bad way of keeping in touch and finding people you haven't seen for ages.  Now add on all those statuses (stati?) that say stuff like "didn't want to write anything", "good morning" and other meaningless, pointless stuff.  Even worse are the damned games, that isn't social networking, that's a games site, pointless on Facebook.  Although I'm quite chuffed with myself, I've managed to work out how to turn off the news feed entries that say somebody has done something pointless in another pointless game.
Finally, for Facebook anyway, is the whole I'm a fan of thing.  I understand being a fan of a sportsman, real cause, music/musician/band, celebrity and similar, in fact I have subscribed to a couple of these.  What I don't understand, and these are genuine, are the likes of '63 Notifications Later and I regret Liking Your Status', 'Laughing When You Shouldn't', 'What Goes Around Comes Around', 'I Hate Getting Texts That Only Say "k'.  Unless someone can correct me, they are completely pointless.

2. Reality Television.  Maybe not pointless if you are a Z list celebrity desperate for publicity.  However the pointless point I wish to make is that it is far from reality.  Whose rather warped idea of reality is it to be locked away in a large house with a dozen hand picked irritants or to be apparently stranded in the Australian jungle or whisked away to a relatively genuine celebrity's house to sing until the general public get pi**ed off with you?  Has anyone seen the Trueman show?  One of the worst (and most pointless) ever pieces of cinematography ever but, if I understand the plot correctly, the main character spends a chunk of his life unknowingly being filmed.  Do it for real to real people and that's reality TV.  No, I don't mean CCTV which, isn't like Orwell's Big Brother, anyone who uses the line has, quite obviously never read the book.

3. The Gym.  It is completely pointless.  It is a well known proven (although possibly completely made up) fact that 99.9% of gym memberships are used no more than about 10% of their true value.  Save your gym membership for about 3 hours and buy a bike, go ride it.  Jog, Swim, do press ups, join a sports club, don't put yourself through the pain and cost.  Do you think I got my svelte racing snake figure by slogging my guts out on a treadmill or weight machine?  I really don't see the point of static bikes or treadmills where you put in all that effort and go nowhere.  That being said, I do rather like the Concept II rowers.

4. Blogs and blogging.  Quite frankly, blogging is akin to masturbation.  Pleasure largely only for the person doing the blogging.  Who really wants to read the irrelevant, pointless ramblings of a middle aged man?  After all, if that's your particular bag then you would be reading my brother's blog.  Mine is, of course, completely not pointless.  Very pointy in fact.

So to a completely non pointless event.  It is very exciting, we saw Father Christmas turn the lights on in Gloucester last night.  Yes, he is real.  He must be, he had real reindeer and everything (sorry, don't know who the kid is).  So it is officially nearly Christmas and I am, rarely, getting excited.  God help you all.