A Parody of People

I'm feeling a lot at the moment that I'm too blank to talk.  I've been a buzzing live wire, a vibrant and kicking person today, but settling back into the environment of home has somehow managed to drain every drop of vivacity from my veins.  I can hardly feel my legs, but that might be more about how I'm sitting on  them. 

Anyway, because anything I am likely to say in my current state will be highly unentertaining and possibly sarcastic, I thought it would be better to time travel back to the 7th of July this year, when I read a single sentence that I found very interesting. 

...that distant shape, higher than the trees or chuch towers inland, and advancing with a leisurely parody of a human stride.

Part 1, Chapter 17, The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, published 1898. 

This does, I'm sure you deduced, refer to one of the Martian machines.  What made this line stand out like a pop-up illustration was how big the idea of 'parody' was.  For me, saying that the stride of the Martian machine was a "parody of a human stride" paints it in a ghastly and even grotesque light for me.  As though they are so superior and patronising of our entire sepcies that their every movement is a mockery of something ingrained in us like breathing or walking.  One sentence, but that one sentence made the chapter for me. 

I am waiting, waiting waiting on my glasses, and complacently contemplating reading or writing or web-surfing as my method of whiling away the evening, but it's just occured to me that the only thing I feel like doing is being with people.  My personality type, I think you could safely say, is composed of two opposites.  I am an extremely sanguine person by nature, who is also majorly melancholy.  This means that I am someone who delights in the company of people and can be very bright and social, but can also be satisfied with, and even desperate for, solitude - a person who enjoys their quality time with themselves.  Everyone has these qualities to an extent, even if its only a little layer.  Right now, the end of the week has forced me tuck-and-rolling into solitude when I feel a lot more like being surrounded by conversation.  The people who are home, I can think of nothing to say to.  Besides, they are watching reality TV shows.  It looks like a long and uneventful weekend.