Dalrymple’s wife recently bought him a couple of notebooks, which included some advice from the manufacturer about “journaling”:

‘There are many ways to journal,’ continues the advice, which is impersonal in the sense that no one has affixed his or her name to it. ‘One way is to write down your thoughts and feelings about what’s happening in your life.’ One wonders whether this is a thought that will illuminate any potential keepers of a diary: apparently the world’s appetite for soothing banality is as great, and perhaps dialectically related to, its appetite for apocalyptic visions.

It gets funnier