Dear ballot blog,
Good evening my dears. Tonight is a night loaded with significance. A night that is crucial to the whole ruddy country. A night so exciting and thrilling that at least 12 percent of you will have the first clue what the devil I'm talking about. No, it's not all you can eat rib and taco night at TGI Heart Disease, it's the first meaningful political debate on these shores since Pitt the Younger offered Henry Addington out onto the cobbles for 'cocking a snook' in his general direction and they had a jolly good dust up.
It may not be the only form of political debate in this country (the entertainment o'rama otherwise known as PM's questions isn't exactly engaging, but, I swear it does actually happen. Actually, for all I know it could be hosted by Simon Cowell and takes place on the back of a live horse, but I've looked it up on Wikipedia, so it must be real), but tonight will be the first televised debate of it's kind in the history of this country, so it's importance in rescuing the country from the collective political malaise we're in, simply can't be overstated.... but dear Lord, I'm going to try.
As the debate is going on right now, I will refrain from commenting on it for now (it'll give my bile duct 24 hours to recover from the amount it had to pipe up to my throat to spew at the telly in furious, spine shattering rage). But as it's on ITV, I'm just pleased it wasn't interspersed with clips of Ant and Dec standing backstage and gurning at the camera the second Gordon Brown opened his hideous mouth only to discover he actually has a reasonable speaking voice.
For only the second time in my life, there is the real possibility of a change of government in this country, which fills me with a mixture of warm nostalgia for the last time and a blood thirsty, gurgling rage at what a wasted opportunity it was. The more I think about it, I lurch between these two conflicting ideologies like a pixel in a game of Pong, until I become a slobbering, gibbering mentalist, rocking backwards and forwards in my bath chair whispering something about being 'tough on crime...'
Actually, looking back at the above paragraph (I don't recommend it) it's actually the third time I can remember a 'very real chance' of a change in government. The first time, it was a fresh faced, ginger hued, Neil Kinnock who was challenging the ash faced, hair lipped, John Major in what was surely about to become a landslide victory for Labour. They were finally securing the advantage by means of harnessing the nation's collective exasperation over the Thatcher years and our desire to take it out on the whole bloody lot of them. It seemed like the tide had finally turned against the Tories, until Labour snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and lost in what was the finest hour of Major's career, just beating the day Norma put an extra Dairylea triangle into his lunchbox into second place.
In terms of unexpected victories, it was pretty well up there with the time David spotted Goliath off his line and chipped him from the halfway line. What seemed to swing the vote in Major's direction was the nation's collective fear to hand over the reigns to an un-tested, un-known opposition party and joy for the fact that he wasn't Margret Thatcher. The 'bounce' in popularity that the party experienced due to a change of leader was certainly similar to the one that Gordon Brown's takeover had on the Labour party, when he very nearly called a snap election within months of taking office and the Tories struggled to find their voice (As good decisions go, it was right up there with Hitler saying to Goering: "Let's have a pop at these Russians then...").
As a leader, Major seemed to bring a kind of post-apocalyptic serenity to the country, which quickly turned to numb acceptance, apathy, then ridicule. He was the last of the 'Spitting Image' generation, brought down by his depiction as a grey robot, obsessed by the quality of his peas, rather than an empowered world leader taking the country through the end of a dismal recession. The country had been ready for change, but bottled it at the last minute when Thatcher refused to lose an election to the nation, instead resigning to the will of her own party after they saw the writing on the wall. The Major years actually saw improvements - the inequalities gap reduced for the first time in a generation (and the last), inflation began to reduce, making business more competitive and Take That were only taking a minute, girl, to fall in love. To fall in luuu-uuve.
However, after years of greedy feeding at the trough of government and with a leader who didn't actually seem to have the fight to lead the party, the Tories began to tear themselves apart. The old dragons refused to leave behind the fun fair that Thatcher had bought them free candy floss at for two decades, so decided to stand by the tea cups, stomping their feet and making a spectacle of themselves. Infighting, backstabbing, undermining and a series of ridiculous sex scandals would dissect the party. It was to be a grizzly climbdown that would leave them unelectable for nearly 20 years leaving a political vacuum that was ready to be filled by two blokes with faces resembling the Joker and a wooden oar, who had a few beers in the pub and wrote 'New' in front of their party logo, eventually deciding to divide up power between them for a hundred glorious years.
Yes, 1997 was a glorious time. A time where left wing politically active singers larked about sipping champagne in Downing Street, where politics fell behind personality in the pecking order and the power of the media grew into a huge monster, threatening to swallow the system whole. The Sun won Blair an election, and we all rode off into the 'boom' years with a credit card in our pockets, listening to Mini-Disks and eating Sushi. People's lifestyles became more liberal and we became a generation of better educated, better travelled and ethnically aware gap year students. In the post Tory hype, we were distracted just long enough by suddenly having enough credit to make us happy, fat and bored.
I remember feeling, during my student years, that we didn't really have any great struggle to mobilise us. I wanted to be engaged, but felt less and less so. Tragedy in 2001 sparked a series of events which would lead us into a war we didn't want or need. I was afraid. I'm sure everyone was. I was affraid this could be a war on our doorsteps, fought by terrorist groups who's motivation I couldn't possibly understand from my own little white, middle class shell. So Tony and George took the war away from our shores and put it on theirs. It seemed like a clever political move, fighting "terror" and turning the whole thing into an insane, Orwellian perma-war movie broadcast from 'foreignland', keeping us afraid enough to stay politically immobile, without actually having to fight another country. A war against a noun can never be won. The adjectives are pushovers though. No spine.
It kind of backfired though, didn't it. We finally lost faith, and Blair himself found himself, like
Thatcher before him, essentially forced out of his own party rather than lose them an election. The Tories had bumbled from Dracula, to a Tax inspector, to a balding gnome in search of a leader who could unite them. One ring to unite them. One Camering.
So we get pretty much to where we are now. Apathetic, screwed over by a politics concerned by lining it's pockets, keeping us afraid, or pandering to our desire to spend money on crap, even when there's none of it about. Cameron hardly appears to be the 'new broom', with his sub-Blair smooching and terrifying face leering at us from posters. Brown might actually be gong insane, driven to grinning awkwardly from the corner of his mouth and dying behind the eyes. All he wanted was to lead us away from Tony's personality and drivel based politics. Now he finds himself appearing on Penis Morgan's chat show rambling on about his bizarre life while a confused public wonders when Ant and Dec got so old.
What to do about this bothersome election then? For years I was an advocate of spoiling your ballot if you hated all the candidates, if only to register your displeasure. The problem with that is the rise of far right, pork chop faced, Question Time celebrities, who prey on our apathy. There's got to be someone better than them to vote for... anyone... a piece of cheese... Boris Johnson... anyone.
Are politicians more or less competent than in previous years? Are they more or less trustworthy? Are any of them worthy of your vote? Probably not, but give it to them anyway. If nothing else, you could watch the debate and pick the one you'd least like to hit with a broom. It's only action that will get us out of this mess. Either that or a bloody big cloud of ash bringing an apocalypse. Sorry... that's obviously an insane fiction. It could never happen.
Screamifyouwanttogofasterxxxx
Thursday, 15 April 2010
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Blog... blog changes everything
All aboard the Blogstar Galactica,
I feel I owe you all an apology. No sooner had I found an outlet to give my spleen a proper airing, namely on this blog, then I go get all philosophical and preachy on you. Suddenly I have shifted from an armchair enthusiast (hobbies include: flower arranging, bell ringing and hitting people wearing skinny jeans on the head with a brick) into a black eyeballed, brow furrowed, hand ringing demagogue rattling my fist at you from my electricotronical pulpit and threatening you with a broom whenever any one of you so much as upgrades a phone, gets slightly older or watches Glee. Go ahead, watch it... if prescribed medicine doesn't cure your insomnia then surely a gaggle of festering, white toothed Yankee doodle, post-ironic, yodeling Dawsonites will do the job, without the added burden to the NHS.
There I go again, getting agitated by the prospect of someone doing something slightly different, then getting all giddy about it. No wonder tension knots up my back and curves my spine like an alcoholic street clown twisting a balloon into the shape of a puppy. This week I am determined to look towards the cheerful and the mundane rather than literally everything else. The fact that I equate cheerful with mundane says it all really. Yet, I persist.
Sometimes it's the small and beautiful things that brighten my day - a child giggling uncontrollably when hearing the word 'poo', Back in Black coming on the radio unexpectedly, putting a spoon through the foil on an unopened jar of coffee, those bits where the telly goes wrong and a continuity announcer has to step in and apologise. Those are the things that brighten my day when prescribed and obvious joys stop taking you by surprise. Of course, the real and lasting pleasures in life are expected and grow over time; you seek them out, you crave them, you adore them. But it's those added extras that can really make you smile, the little bits you didn't expect, or that awaken a forgotten memory. Like an elderly relative at a wedding, they're unexpected, they're bizarre, they're delightful and we forget them almost as soon as they're gone.
One day, I think I'd love to watch a highlight reel of everything I did that day so I can relive some of those little forgotten moments like, say, when I get to drive unobstructed on a fast bit of road, or I get an email from someone I didn't expect (and it's not an opportunity to invest in a Nigerian gold mining corporation) or the notice from the Police informing me that they couldn't identify the smell in my basement, leaving me free to go back and dig up the corpse at a later date.
I can't say I always go after those moments of thrill seeking pleasure. Some people are like that, constantly 'hanging ten' on murderous, expensive water skiing gadgets, or shuffling cards around a dimly lit table for hundreds of pounds at a time. Some people like to live on the edge of a precipice, finding their kicks from not knowing, and then telling you at great length over dinner all about how cheap thrills have become part of their daily routine, as you try to stave off the boredom by picking the meniscus from your eyeball with a fork.
I guess I'm jealous of people with the energy to push the boundaries of enjoyment, but sometimes I do wonder if they find no pleasure at all in the smaller things. To me, what would be a fun break from the eyebrow crinkling monotony of life may, for someone constantly gadding about with their party pants on, be normal, tedious, even pitiful. I don't know what to make of it. The cynic sits at home writing a blog, whilst the person who embraces life becomes the cynic. Oh irony, you are such a cad.
I always find it's best to stay out of such affairs, my good man, and let people get their kicks how and when they please; 'I want to go to an all night rave inside a tiger enclosure and get high, sniffing toilet duck?' Go for it. 'I want to tease an owl?' Sure thing. 'I want to bury cheeses in a wood?' Of course. 'I want pudding.' No. No more pudding. That would be disgusting, fatso. Now go get me an after dinner mint and stop being weird.
In the meantime, I'll stick to my own little heavens; finding pound coins, having a bath and listening to the nasal voiced man reading football results, watching people who look confused trying to find their way round a busy town centre while a gaggle of chavs eye them up for sellable kidneys and, of course, rum.
Ahh. Rum. A worthy alternative to thinking since 1846.
So, there you go. I think I've turned a corner. Suddenly I feel at peace with the world, and I really feel I've touched my inner pleasures (don't worry, I washed my hands afterwards). Perhaps writing this little missive every week is one of those pleasures? Or perhaps I should stop thinking about it and get back to eye gouging fury. Now that is something that always makes me happy.
Dontforgetyourbootiescusitscoldoutside. xx
I feel I owe you all an apology. No sooner had I found an outlet to give my spleen a proper airing, namely on this blog, then I go get all philosophical and preachy on you. Suddenly I have shifted from an armchair enthusiast (hobbies include: flower arranging, bell ringing and hitting people wearing skinny jeans on the head with a brick) into a black eyeballed, brow furrowed, hand ringing demagogue rattling my fist at you from my electricotronical pulpit and threatening you with a broom whenever any one of you so much as upgrades a phone, gets slightly older or watches Glee. Go ahead, watch it... if prescribed medicine doesn't cure your insomnia then surely a gaggle of festering, white toothed Yankee doodle, post-ironic, yodeling Dawsonites will do the job, without the added burden to the NHS.
There I go again, getting agitated by the prospect of someone doing something slightly different, then getting all giddy about it. No wonder tension knots up my back and curves my spine like an alcoholic street clown twisting a balloon into the shape of a puppy. This week I am determined to look towards the cheerful and the mundane rather than literally everything else. The fact that I equate cheerful with mundane says it all really. Yet, I persist.
Sometimes it's the small and beautiful things that brighten my day - a child giggling uncontrollably when hearing the word 'poo', Back in Black coming on the radio unexpectedly, putting a spoon through the foil on an unopened jar of coffee, those bits where the telly goes wrong and a continuity announcer has to step in and apologise. Those are the things that brighten my day when prescribed and obvious joys stop taking you by surprise. Of course, the real and lasting pleasures in life are expected and grow over time; you seek them out, you crave them, you adore them. But it's those added extras that can really make you smile, the little bits you didn't expect, or that awaken a forgotten memory. Like an elderly relative at a wedding, they're unexpected, they're bizarre, they're delightful and we forget them almost as soon as they're gone.
One day, I think I'd love to watch a highlight reel of everything I did that day so I can relive some of those little forgotten moments like, say, when I get to drive unobstructed on a fast bit of road, or I get an email from someone I didn't expect (and it's not an opportunity to invest in a Nigerian gold mining corporation) or the notice from the Police informing me that they couldn't identify the smell in my basement, leaving me free to go back and dig up the corpse at a later date.
I can't say I always go after those moments of thrill seeking pleasure. Some people are like that, constantly 'hanging ten' on murderous, expensive water skiing gadgets, or shuffling cards around a dimly lit table for hundreds of pounds at a time. Some people like to live on the edge of a precipice, finding their kicks from not knowing, and then telling you at great length over dinner all about how cheap thrills have become part of their daily routine, as you try to stave off the boredom by picking the meniscus from your eyeball with a fork.
I guess I'm jealous of people with the energy to push the boundaries of enjoyment, but sometimes I do wonder if they find no pleasure at all in the smaller things. To me, what would be a fun break from the eyebrow crinkling monotony of life may, for someone constantly gadding about with their party pants on, be normal, tedious, even pitiful. I don't know what to make of it. The cynic sits at home writing a blog, whilst the person who embraces life becomes the cynic. Oh irony, you are such a cad.
I always find it's best to stay out of such affairs, my good man, and let people get their kicks how and when they please; 'I want to go to an all night rave inside a tiger enclosure and get high, sniffing toilet duck?' Go for it. 'I want to tease an owl?' Sure thing. 'I want to bury cheeses in a wood?' Of course. 'I want pudding.' No. No more pudding. That would be disgusting, fatso. Now go get me an after dinner mint and stop being weird.
In the meantime, I'll stick to my own little heavens; finding pound coins, having a bath and listening to the nasal voiced man reading football results, watching people who look confused trying to find their way round a busy town centre while a gaggle of chavs eye them up for sellable kidneys and, of course, rum.
Ahh. Rum. A worthy alternative to thinking since 1846.
So, there you go. I think I've turned a corner. Suddenly I feel at peace with the world, and I really feel I've touched my inner pleasures (don't worry, I washed my hands afterwards). Perhaps writing this little missive every week is one of those pleasures? Or perhaps I should stop thinking about it and get back to eye gouging fury. Now that is something that always makes me happy.
Dontforgetyourbootiescusitscoldoutside. xx
Thursday, 18 March 2010
iPoop, youPoop, he/shePoops
Blog in the USSR
So I'm sitting, typing away on my little electronic notebook, looking out the window of my basement at the flying cars, robot donkeys and Teflon airships in the sky. There's a beeping behind me as my Autogutenlarger 4000 prepares the tablet sized, nutritionally balanced, 8,000,000 calorie meal of chicken flavored Angel Delight micro-pill, that will be my supper. Susan (the dead hooker who I 'found') isn't having any. She's right off her food today, which is a shame. She's been so listless lately I'm starting to worry she's going off me. She could sort out her appearance a bit too.
In reality, of course, there are no flying airships, no robots and absolutely no way she's going off me. At some point in the last 20 years, the future really downsized it's expectations. Perhaps it was the decade of decadence that preceded the credit crunch, but, what happened? Did we all get so bloated and satisfied with our enlarging credit card bills and shrinking mobiles and blueteeth that we stopped caring? There was a time, when predicting the future meant imagining the scale of our success - the more sophisticated a computer got, the bigger it would have to be, until the most powerful computer ever (the one Richard Pryor builds in Superman 3) took up the entire floor space of the Grand Canyon. Once, the vision of the future was shimmering blue headlights in the sky, telescopes for eyes, platinum kneecaps, CDs - the future was so bright, it wasn't even sponsored.
We were sold on the promise that, just around the corner, the product to beat all products would soon arrive, like an event horizon of shiny bits and dodgy wiring. We were seduced by the eighties, of the premise technology replacing taste. There would be no need to worry about class, no need to keep up with the Joneses, because Mr and Mrs. Jones would have the same amazing flying train as you. Frankly, when you've got a flying train, you couldn't give a flying truck what anyone else has got.
It all changed though, and rather than wonder and awe, we have been left with the era of technology as commodity. It seems, whatever we have, we will have to buy again and again and again as one by one each older version is superseded. No innovation is decisive or definitive, because the companies cottoned on that the fallibility of their product means a lifetime of zombies enslaved to upgrading precisely twenty seconds after they figure out how to get it out of the box. The second your brand new, life affirming, electronic wonder box arrives, it fades into obscurity as Version 2.0 immediately supersedes it. By comparison your own tawdry purchase looks more outdated than a Rick Astley 'Hits' video found in a bin in a Cancer Research shop.
It's not restricted to mobiles and music boxes. The Internet age means that every time I turn on my computer to check the news, catch up on celebrity gossip or get directions to the nearest Council Dump with a 'no questions asked' policy on incinerator use, I find myself having to go through a twenty minute ritual of 'locating updates'. After the seventh merry go round of uploading and restarting, the rage bubbles up behind my eyeballs until they pop like slugs under a bicycle wheel and I reprogramme it with a hammer.
I've got an iPod. So do you (I know you do). But there's a shelf life to it - one second you're looking super cool, like a gadgety Pharaoh, until you stop to tie your shoes and by the time you lift your head, everyone's got a better one; one that plays movies, or can contact the dead, or holds your hair back when you're throwing up into a bin. It's not just that it's outdated either. It feels like there is a shelf life to them. Call me paranoid (you are already, aren't you... aren't you???) but I have a suspicion that there's a built in auto destruct, perhaps in the form of a little internal clock, ticking down to the time when the thumbwheel stops thumbing and it gets stuck on 'random'.
We need to take a stand people, or this will go on indefinitely, or at least until Steve Jobs finally breaks Apple by risking the company's entire profit margin on development of the iPoop self cleaning toilet bowl that texts free music into your skull whenever you drop your guts; after selling three of them (all to the Beckhams) he will be last seen trying to flog second hand Nintendos to Gerald Ratner. Until that glorious day, are we doomed to a life watching over our shoulders for our hard bought commodities to become worthless as the spectre of the upgrade lurks?
There is another way, of course. We can scrimp. We can save. We can aspire. Then we can gather up all that cash, the sum of the greatest of our endeavours, and rather than upgrading to a slightly less terrible level of existence, buy ourselves a holiday and bloody well stop worrying. Wont be able to listen to music on the beach though - might have to read a book. Or upgrade to a Kindle at least... they're cool...
Ilikeyourtrouserssexyxxxx
So I'm sitting, typing away on my little electronic notebook, looking out the window of my basement at the flying cars, robot donkeys and Teflon airships in the sky. There's a beeping behind me as my Autogutenlarger 4000 prepares the tablet sized, nutritionally balanced, 8,000,000 calorie meal of chicken flavored Angel Delight micro-pill, that will be my supper. Susan (the dead hooker who I 'found') isn't having any. She's right off her food today, which is a shame. She's been so listless lately I'm starting to worry she's going off me. She could sort out her appearance a bit too.
In reality, of course, there are no flying airships, no robots and absolutely no way she's going off me. At some point in the last 20 years, the future really downsized it's expectations. Perhaps it was the decade of decadence that preceded the credit crunch, but, what happened? Did we all get so bloated and satisfied with our enlarging credit card bills and shrinking mobiles and blueteeth that we stopped caring? There was a time, when predicting the future meant imagining the scale of our success - the more sophisticated a computer got, the bigger it would have to be, until the most powerful computer ever (the one Richard Pryor builds in Superman 3) took up the entire floor space of the Grand Canyon. Once, the vision of the future was shimmering blue headlights in the sky, telescopes for eyes, platinum kneecaps, CDs - the future was so bright, it wasn't even sponsored.
We were sold on the promise that, just around the corner, the product to beat all products would soon arrive, like an event horizon of shiny bits and dodgy wiring. We were seduced by the eighties, of the premise technology replacing taste. There would be no need to worry about class, no need to keep up with the Joneses, because Mr and Mrs. Jones would have the same amazing flying train as you. Frankly, when you've got a flying train, you couldn't give a flying truck what anyone else has got.
It all changed though, and rather than wonder and awe, we have been left with the era of technology as commodity. It seems, whatever we have, we will have to buy again and again and again as one by one each older version is superseded. No innovation is decisive or definitive, because the companies cottoned on that the fallibility of their product means a lifetime of zombies enslaved to upgrading precisely twenty seconds after they figure out how to get it out of the box. The second your brand new, life affirming, electronic wonder box arrives, it fades into obscurity as Version 2.0 immediately supersedes it. By comparison your own tawdry purchase looks more outdated than a Rick Astley 'Hits' video found in a bin in a Cancer Research shop.
It's not restricted to mobiles and music boxes. The Internet age means that every time I turn on my computer to check the news, catch up on celebrity gossip or get directions to the nearest Council Dump with a 'no questions asked' policy on incinerator use, I find myself having to go through a twenty minute ritual of 'locating updates'. After the seventh merry go round of uploading and restarting, the rage bubbles up behind my eyeballs until they pop like slugs under a bicycle wheel and I reprogramme it with a hammer.
I've got an iPod. So do you (I know you do). But there's a shelf life to it - one second you're looking super cool, like a gadgety Pharaoh, until you stop to tie your shoes and by the time you lift your head, everyone's got a better one; one that plays movies, or can contact the dead, or holds your hair back when you're throwing up into a bin. It's not just that it's outdated either. It feels like there is a shelf life to them. Call me paranoid (you are already, aren't you... aren't you???) but I have a suspicion that there's a built in auto destruct, perhaps in the form of a little internal clock, ticking down to the time when the thumbwheel stops thumbing and it gets stuck on 'random'.
We need to take a stand people, or this will go on indefinitely, or at least until Steve Jobs finally breaks Apple by risking the company's entire profit margin on development of the iPoop self cleaning toilet bowl that texts free music into your skull whenever you drop your guts; after selling three of them (all to the Beckhams) he will be last seen trying to flog second hand Nintendos to Gerald Ratner. Until that glorious day, are we doomed to a life watching over our shoulders for our hard bought commodities to become worthless as the spectre of the upgrade lurks?
There is another way, of course. We can scrimp. We can save. We can aspire. Then we can gather up all that cash, the sum of the greatest of our endeavours, and rather than upgrading to a slightly less terrible level of existence, buy ourselves a holiday and bloody well stop worrying. Wont be able to listen to music on the beach though - might have to read a book. Or upgrade to a Kindle at least... they're cool...
Ilikeyourtrouserssexyxxxx
Thursday, 4 March 2010
Day 4: Cashback
There Will be Blog
Since leaving school, there has been many occasions where I've acted as though I've had it all. Want a new shirt? Go buy it. Want some new DVDs? Sure. Fancy a gold plated statue of Godzilla to take pride of place in the drawing room? Of course I do. I can't imagine the volumes of sweaty pennies have been pushed into sweatier palms for all manner of tat that I didn't need at the time and in the end had to leave in the basement flat that Susan and I were hiding out in because the smell got so bad, I had to bag her up in a Louis Vutton suitcase and pull her up the fire escape before the council kicked the door in.
There's only one thing that stopped me becoming a preening little toss bucket, wearing jaunty scarfs at 'interesting' angles, wafting my iPhone under the noses of homeless people begging for change, while grinning inanely and pissing into their hat. It's the thing that separates regular people from evil little advertising agency types who think milk is a 'specialist dietary supplement' and that Northerners are an ethnic minority. It's the thing that keeps the human psyche just paranoid enough to want pretty things but resist because you recognise their pointlessness (like novelty key rings or Katie Price). It's the concept of shame.
Shame vs. Avarice is the eternal struggle between a love of shiny bric-a-brac to decorate your house, your shed or yourself with and the desire to avoid looking a little bit tacky. It's not really a class debate any more, because it's just as possible to be poor and have lots of expensive things, just as it is to have money (or the means to borrow large amounts of it from Molly Mastercard and Vernon Visa) and not regurgitate your own spleen in excitement over some flip flops and fancy hair gel.
But it's an easy trap to fall into, especially when we let pride get in the way of our natural sense of perspective. We've all been in Selfridges (or the like) where, from the second you walk in you feel the eyes of the assistant on you, trying to peer into your soul. You can hear their thoughts turning in their head as they examine your life in an instant and conclude 'there's no way he can afford anything in here..' looking so far down their nose at you, their eyes are practically on the moon. That is, they are thinking that right up until they become too busy trying to stop me from hammering a hockey stick into their toilet parts with a camping mallet. Now that's what I call a sense of perspective.
We've been here before, in the eighties, when everyone larked about on immensely powerful BBC Basic computers, had robot butlers and ate gold bars and dolphin eyes, served to us on the back of a starving African. Twenty or so years later we did the same, just moved forward with the times. In the 2000's we frittered our money away on ebay Turin Shrouds, downloaded sushi, our own Hadron Collider or on paying an embryo in a tutu 300 quid to cut our fringe at a slightly different angle to the one we had before, hoping that it caught the light in such a way that it briefly illuminated the dead space behind our eyes where dreams and love and happiness used to be. Good times.
But now, the good times have ended. Happiness comes, still from buying, but from buying the same stuff slightly cheaper than before. You still eat beans, but you get them from Aldi. You still buy jumpers, but you get them from H&M. You still burgle the elderly for kicks, but I guess that was always free (ahhh, the best things...).
As for me, well I scaled back my hopes years ago. Nowadays, I know the price of what I want and the price of what I need. When it comes right down to it, you can buy an X-box, you can buy some sweet looking new boots, you can buys a genetically modified calf that can be milked for whisky and coughs up coins into the feed bucket. But would you really be happy? Would you? Really?
Oh. Sorry. Of course you would. Sell it you for a tenner...?
Sweetdreamslittleones. xx
Since leaving school, there has been many occasions where I've acted as though I've had it all. Want a new shirt? Go buy it. Want some new DVDs? Sure. Fancy a gold plated statue of Godzilla to take pride of place in the drawing room? Of course I do. I can't imagine the volumes of sweaty pennies have been pushed into sweatier palms for all manner of tat that I didn't need at the time and in the end had to leave in the basement flat that Susan and I were hiding out in because the smell got so bad, I had to bag her up in a Louis Vutton suitcase and pull her up the fire escape before the council kicked the door in.
There's only one thing that stopped me becoming a preening little toss bucket, wearing jaunty scarfs at 'interesting' angles, wafting my iPhone under the noses of homeless people begging for change, while grinning inanely and pissing into their hat. It's the thing that separates regular people from evil little advertising agency types who think milk is a 'specialist dietary supplement' and that Northerners are an ethnic minority. It's the thing that keeps the human psyche just paranoid enough to want pretty things but resist because you recognise their pointlessness (like novelty key rings or Katie Price). It's the concept of shame.
Shame vs. Avarice is the eternal struggle between a love of shiny bric-a-brac to decorate your house, your shed or yourself with and the desire to avoid looking a little bit tacky. It's not really a class debate any more, because it's just as possible to be poor and have lots of expensive things, just as it is to have money (or the means to borrow large amounts of it from Molly Mastercard and Vernon Visa) and not regurgitate your own spleen in excitement over some flip flops and fancy hair gel.
But it's an easy trap to fall into, especially when we let pride get in the way of our natural sense of perspective. We've all been in Selfridges (or the like) where, from the second you walk in you feel the eyes of the assistant on you, trying to peer into your soul. You can hear their thoughts turning in their head as they examine your life in an instant and conclude 'there's no way he can afford anything in here..' looking so far down their nose at you, their eyes are practically on the moon. That is, they are thinking that right up until they become too busy trying to stop me from hammering a hockey stick into their toilet parts with a camping mallet. Now that's what I call a sense of perspective.
We've been here before, in the eighties, when everyone larked about on immensely powerful BBC Basic computers, had robot butlers and ate gold bars and dolphin eyes, served to us on the back of a starving African. Twenty or so years later we did the same, just moved forward with the times. In the 2000's we frittered our money away on ebay Turin Shrouds, downloaded sushi, our own Hadron Collider or on paying an embryo in a tutu 300 quid to cut our fringe at a slightly different angle to the one we had before, hoping that it caught the light in such a way that it briefly illuminated the dead space behind our eyes where dreams and love and happiness used to be. Good times.
But now, the good times have ended. Happiness comes, still from buying, but from buying the same stuff slightly cheaper than before. You still eat beans, but you get them from Aldi. You still buy jumpers, but you get them from H&M. You still burgle the elderly for kicks, but I guess that was always free (ahhh, the best things...).
As for me, well I scaled back my hopes years ago. Nowadays, I know the price of what I want and the price of what I need. When it comes right down to it, you can buy an X-box, you can buy some sweet looking new boots, you can buys a genetically modified calf that can be milked for whisky and coughs up coins into the feed bucket. But would you really be happy? Would you? Really?
Oh. Sorry. Of course you would. Sell it you for a tenner...?
Sweetdreamslittleones. xx
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Day 3: Richard 'likes' this post
The Evil Blog 2: Dead by Dawn
Sometimes when I'm trying to think of the best time to dump a dead hooker over the wall of the pub across the road, I prefer to remain anonymous. It's pretty easy, if you get the timing right and make sure the skip is open before you lift her up. Last week, I had to drag 'Susan' back into the house when the cleaner caught sight of me from behind the net curtains, but usually I find it's pretty easy to retain some level of privacy.
But lately, it has begun to feel that our privacy is not only under threat, but looked at suspiciously. Tell someone on Twatter that you've just evacuated your bowels after a particularly fragrant curry the night before, and you may get the odd 'retwat' or find someone as written "@savagereservation: you are lol funny, squeeze another nugget out for me". But if you so much as hint to anyone under the age of 30 that you don't update your Facebook status more often than you hug your own children, they begin to wonder exactly what it is you have to hide.
About a million years ago, social networking started with 'Friends Reunited' a quaint little website that might as well be from the middle ages. It let you connect with old school pals that you were so desperate to stay in touch with you didn't speak to them for twelve years. It was really only a success because you wanted to check that your own miserable life wasn't as bad as theirs. Funny that everyone I ever knew was either a pilot or had just been promoted to marketing manager for the Universe, while I was still stuck shovelling poo from the basement of a poo making factory run by Satan, Iain Duncan Smith and Danny Dyer (still, they had a good benefits package and free poo).
None of that is strictly accurate - if I was really honest I would accept that social networking similar to how we do it now, really began much earlier, even though it wasn't technology based. In Victorian times, mounted dispatch riders would send secretive letters to every corner of the county, especially when you had your eye on the old Colonels daughter because she waved a fan at you from the other side of a dinner party, before becoming overcome with the vapours and swooning at your impertinence when you tried to touch her quill.
When the Internet came into our homes, the way we socialised would change forever. It started as a bit of fun; meet some old pals, stay in touch with new ones and it's cheaper than texting. It was fun. We were young. We were foolish. But somewhere along the line it became a monster. It eats into your working day like an evil goat that feasts on time. You check it in the morning, you check it at lunch, you check it on the toilet, you tell people that you are in bed. I'm sure that by the time i'm an old man, there will be an in utero iPhone for up to the minute 'foetus updates'. I DON'T WANT TO KNOW. Go wash your hands.
Where did it all go wrong? When did it become the greatest insult you could ever give anyone to 'unfriend' them on Facebook? When did it become acceptable to write 'unfriend' unless you're a five year old practicing learning to spell by pushing brightly coloured letter magnets around a fridge door?
It's all over now though. It has us in it's grip, gently soothing us and whispering how much it loves us while squeezing our frail bodies until our eyes pop out of our heads and our brains are pushed out of our ears like Play-Doh. You can't stop using it - if you do, people Tweet directly to you. You can't ignore it - Facebook suggests people you need to get in touch with. It knows you better than you do, and it knows what you like... go on, try it... you'll like it... go on.... that's it.... there, there... mmmm.
We could do something to free us from this tyranny. If we could only get together to defeat our common enemy, we could get on with our lives. We'd be in a Utopia where the only people we talk to are our friends (real ones). People would have to search the Internet for interesting and exciting new links, blogs, chat, rather than suckling at the fat feted pig of the Twitterbook. I know we can do it people.
I'll get right on it. Better start by making a new group on Facebook. That'll show 'em.
Sometimes when I'm trying to think of the best time to dump a dead hooker over the wall of the pub across the road, I prefer to remain anonymous. It's pretty easy, if you get the timing right and make sure the skip is open before you lift her up. Last week, I had to drag 'Susan' back into the house when the cleaner caught sight of me from behind the net curtains, but usually I find it's pretty easy to retain some level of privacy.
But lately, it has begun to feel that our privacy is not only under threat, but looked at suspiciously. Tell someone on Twatter that you've just evacuated your bowels after a particularly fragrant curry the night before, and you may get the odd 'retwat' or find someone as written "@savagereservation: you are lol funny, squeeze another nugget out for me". But if you so much as hint to anyone under the age of 30 that you don't update your Facebook status more often than you hug your own children, they begin to wonder exactly what it is you have to hide.
About a million years ago, social networking started with 'Friends Reunited' a quaint little website that might as well be from the middle ages. It let you connect with old school pals that you were so desperate to stay in touch with you didn't speak to them for twelve years. It was really only a success because you wanted to check that your own miserable life wasn't as bad as theirs. Funny that everyone I ever knew was either a pilot or had just been promoted to marketing manager for the Universe, while I was still stuck shovelling poo from the basement of a poo making factory run by Satan, Iain Duncan Smith and Danny Dyer (still, they had a good benefits package and free poo).
None of that is strictly accurate - if I was really honest I would accept that social networking similar to how we do it now, really began much earlier, even though it wasn't technology based. In Victorian times, mounted dispatch riders would send secretive letters to every corner of the county, especially when you had your eye on the old Colonels daughter because she waved a fan at you from the other side of a dinner party, before becoming overcome with the vapours and swooning at your impertinence when you tried to touch her quill.
When the Internet came into our homes, the way we socialised would change forever. It started as a bit of fun; meet some old pals, stay in touch with new ones and it's cheaper than texting. It was fun. We were young. We were foolish. But somewhere along the line it became a monster. It eats into your working day like an evil goat that feasts on time. You check it in the morning, you check it at lunch, you check it on the toilet, you tell people that you are in bed. I'm sure that by the time i'm an old man, there will be an in utero iPhone for up to the minute 'foetus updates'. I DON'T WANT TO KNOW. Go wash your hands.
Where did it all go wrong? When did it become the greatest insult you could ever give anyone to 'unfriend' them on Facebook? When did it become acceptable to write 'unfriend' unless you're a five year old practicing learning to spell by pushing brightly coloured letter magnets around a fridge door?
It's all over now though. It has us in it's grip, gently soothing us and whispering how much it loves us while squeezing our frail bodies until our eyes pop out of our heads and our brains are pushed out of our ears like Play-Doh. You can't stop using it - if you do, people Tweet directly to you. You can't ignore it - Facebook suggests people you need to get in touch with. It knows you better than you do, and it knows what you like... go on, try it... you'll like it... go on.... that's it.... there, there... mmmm.
We could do something to free us from this tyranny. If we could only get together to defeat our common enemy, we could get on with our lives. We'd be in a Utopia where the only people we talk to are our friends (real ones). People would have to search the Internet for interesting and exciting new links, blogs, chat, rather than suckling at the fat feted pig of the Twitterbook. I know we can do it people.
I'll get right on it. Better start by making a new group on Facebook. That'll show 'em.
Seeyouonthereintenseconds. xxx
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Day 2: Anger management
We are the blogs, we are the blogs, we are the, we are the, we are the blogs.
Terror washes over me like the smell from an old man's knickers. Fear tweaks at my nipples. Trepidation calls me from my comfortable existence and shakes me to attention like a baby left with an English nanny. Today has been a stay of execution as I trawl nervously from thought to thought hoping to stumble, like a dog walker finding a corpse, upon something interesting to write about. I seek high and low for a worthy topic to act as the pale, youthful (sexy?) virgin to throw at the feet of the dragon. Of you. Of the blog.
Or at least I would have been afraid, I had a second to set aside wondering about inventive ways to be cynical on demand or a new way to refer to my privates rather than working my arse off getting many, many things accomplished. Pressure can sometimes drive me down the path of stultifying fear, but there is another way. Furious, nut crunching, bowel herniating, thrombosis boiling rage. Pure, beautiful anger.
If fear is a prison, then anger is standing on the other side of the walls licking it's lips and passing cheap snout through the gaps in the fence. If you stand near another person venting their anger it can be a beautiful thing to witness. Today, I was sitting idly at my computer, trying to imagine time doubling in speed without having to get up to 88 miles per hour, when I began to listen to the phone conversation happening on the other side of the room.
As with most frustrating conversations, the topic was petty, but despite my boss slowing his speech to a speed so deliberate that a six year old might have been able to grasp his point and knock up a spreadsheet for him on a Speak and Spell, the tree headed porridge brain down the other end of the line seemed barely able to grasp that you can't eat the handset of a telephone and that the mystical noise wasn't coming from inside his own head, let alone put together a suitable package of figures.
The less the anonymous ninny down the line understood, the more the vein in the side of my manager's head threatened to split open like a geyser and redecorate the room, before the optic nerves in his eyes pushed through his iris's, run down the phone line and seize whoever was on the other end, wrap themselves around their neck and repeatedly pound their face into the desk. It was a joy to behold.
For my own part, managing my anger has been difficult to sustain. I console myself with the thought that it's not a losing battle if you never even put up a fight, so I regularly settle into a warm and comforting evening of rage. However, just recently, I've found myself contented with my lot, mellow, warm, cosy, snug... bored.
Luckily, that changed as I left the opening paragraphs of this blog to attend to my dinner, which was warming nicely in the oven. The smell of delicious sausages coming from the kitchen made me reflect on the wonders of pork, but also wander how I could write about witnessing the rage of others, while cooking up a porcine feast and feeling drowsy.
I wondered over to the oven and noticed they were getting a little brown. No matter, as there is surely still time for the beans. Lovely beans. Nice natural colour too, orange. Now, all I need to do is get the tin opener... oops, no need, it's got one of those useful ring pulls. So handy now. So handy that you don't need openers or... wait... ow.... God I wish I had longer nails. Here it comes... Any second.... oh. Shit. OK, so what happens when the ring comes off? Shit. Tin opener, oh, how you save me in my hour of need. Here we go... hmmm, doesn't seem to fit into these ring pull ones properly. It's already pre-cut. Maybe if I just bash it gently with the end of tin opener it will... COCK IT. Bean juice is a bugger to get out... oh shit, the sausages, quick... OWWW. DAMNFUCKINGCOCKHOLES. That oil is red hot. Oh, yeah, I forgot the eggs. Now where's the pan?... THE PAN? THE ONE FOR THE EGGS? COME HERE. Get in there, you dead chicken shell face ring licker. BROKEN YOLK!!!!DAMNYOUANDTHEHORSEYOURODEINTOTOWNON. Shit, the microwave is beeping now. FUCK. Who put that bean juice on the floor? Come here sausage. Damn you egg... RIGHTTHATSITWHERESMYCHAINSAWYOU'REGOINGTOMAKEMEBRINGTHEPAINCOMEONSAUSGEDOYOUWANTSOMEOFTHIS?DOYOU?FEELTHEBURNFEELTHEBUUUURRRRRRNN.
Seriously, it was as if the Chuckle Brothers were auditioning for Master Chef but had been possessed by Roy Chubby Brown. It was like a hastily constructed episode of Come Dine with Me starring Robocop, Ian Paisley, Ren Hoek, Nick Griffin and a live tiger. But after the dust had settled and with supper in me belly, I felt a warm glow. It was as if releasing all that rage was actually worth it. It felt really, really good.
Perhaps the best way to manage your anger, is not to manage it at all. Occasionally it's good to let it out. I find that it's best to let it out into the face of someone you hate. Ha.
Loveyouallsomuchitsometimesmakesmedribble.xx
Terror washes over me like the smell from an old man's knickers. Fear tweaks at my nipples. Trepidation calls me from my comfortable existence and shakes me to attention like a baby left with an English nanny. Today has been a stay of execution as I trawl nervously from thought to thought hoping to stumble, like a dog walker finding a corpse, upon something interesting to write about. I seek high and low for a worthy topic to act as the pale, youthful (sexy?) virgin to throw at the feet of the dragon. Of you. Of the blog.
Or at least I would have been afraid, I had a second to set aside wondering about inventive ways to be cynical on demand or a new way to refer to my privates rather than working my arse off getting many, many things accomplished. Pressure can sometimes drive me down the path of stultifying fear, but there is another way. Furious, nut crunching, bowel herniating, thrombosis boiling rage. Pure, beautiful anger.
If fear is a prison, then anger is standing on the other side of the walls licking it's lips and passing cheap snout through the gaps in the fence. If you stand near another person venting their anger it can be a beautiful thing to witness. Today, I was sitting idly at my computer, trying to imagine time doubling in speed without having to get up to 88 miles per hour, when I began to listen to the phone conversation happening on the other side of the room.
As with most frustrating conversations, the topic was petty, but despite my boss slowing his speech to a speed so deliberate that a six year old might have been able to grasp his point and knock up a spreadsheet for him on a Speak and Spell, the tree headed porridge brain down the other end of the line seemed barely able to grasp that you can't eat the handset of a telephone and that the mystical noise wasn't coming from inside his own head, let alone put together a suitable package of figures.
The less the anonymous ninny down the line understood, the more the vein in the side of my manager's head threatened to split open like a geyser and redecorate the room, before the optic nerves in his eyes pushed through his iris's, run down the phone line and seize whoever was on the other end, wrap themselves around their neck and repeatedly pound their face into the desk. It was a joy to behold.
For my own part, managing my anger has been difficult to sustain. I console myself with the thought that it's not a losing battle if you never even put up a fight, so I regularly settle into a warm and comforting evening of rage. However, just recently, I've found myself contented with my lot, mellow, warm, cosy, snug... bored.
Luckily, that changed as I left the opening paragraphs of this blog to attend to my dinner, which was warming nicely in the oven. The smell of delicious sausages coming from the kitchen made me reflect on the wonders of pork, but also wander how I could write about witnessing the rage of others, while cooking up a porcine feast and feeling drowsy.
I wondered over to the oven and noticed they were getting a little brown. No matter, as there is surely still time for the beans. Lovely beans. Nice natural colour too, orange. Now, all I need to do is get the tin opener... oops, no need, it's got one of those useful ring pulls. So handy now. So handy that you don't need openers or... wait... ow.... God I wish I had longer nails. Here it comes... Any second.... oh. Shit. OK, so what happens when the ring comes off? Shit. Tin opener, oh, how you save me in my hour of need. Here we go... hmmm, doesn't seem to fit into these ring pull ones properly. It's already pre-cut. Maybe if I just bash it gently with the end of tin opener it will... COCK IT. Bean juice is a bugger to get out... oh shit, the sausages, quick... OWWW. DAMNFUCKINGCOCKHOLES. That oil is red hot. Oh, yeah, I forgot the eggs. Now where's the pan?... THE PAN? THE ONE FOR THE EGGS? COME HERE. Get in there, you dead chicken shell face ring licker. BROKEN YOLK!!!!DAMNYOUANDTHEHORSEYOURODEINTOTOWNON. Shit, the microwave is beeping now. FUCK. Who put that bean juice on the floor? Come here sausage. Damn you egg... RIGHTTHATSITWHERESMYCHAINSAWYOU'REGOINGTOMAKEMEBRINGTHEPAINCOMEONSAUSGEDOYOUWANTSOMEOFTHIS?DOYOU?FEELTHEBURNFEELTHEBUUUURRRRRRNN.
Seriously, it was as if the Chuckle Brothers were auditioning for Master Chef but had been possessed by Roy Chubby Brown. It was like a hastily constructed episode of Come Dine with Me starring Robocop, Ian Paisley, Ren Hoek, Nick Griffin and a live tiger. But after the dust had settled and with supper in me belly, I felt a warm glow. It was as if releasing all that rage was actually worth it. It felt really, really good.
Perhaps the best way to manage your anger, is not to manage it at all. Occasionally it's good to let it out. I find that it's best to let it out into the face of someone you hate. Ha.
Loveyouallsomuchitsometimesmakesmedribble.xx
Monday, 1 March 2010
Day 1: The task at hand
Evening Captain Blogheart,
I'm definitely not a man who likes to set himself challenges, finding instead that true happiness comes not from climbing mountains, but paying a Sherpa to carry the bags, while I enjoy a cocktail and the sunset. It's not just the disdain for physical and mental labor that dissuades me from self-improvement, but I find that my concentration span lapses before I get....
..oh yeah. Concentration. Indeed. Sometimes my concentration is so poor I regularly struggle to remember to drink a whole cup of tea before the bottom bit gets all tepid and murky, with bits of Hobnob swirling around, so that by the time I come back to it, it looks less like a delicious and refreshing beverage and more like week old sick congealing in a tramps hat.
I am allergic to the concept of gyms, I despise self improvement and feel a retching disdain for 'joiny in' type people telling me how great they feel because they managed to cut the crusts off their Mighty White three days in a row, thus managing to see over the top of their stinking, obese and hairy gut for the first time since the late eighties, and how bloody marvelous they feeeeeel about it. Their cheery, toothy eyed grin wavering only as I remove the tea spoon from their half eaten pot of Activia and jab the thin end into their tear duct, leaving them floundering round the office like a bleeding unicorn on ice.
I'm exaggerating of course (I go for the nostril, not the tear duct. I'm no monster) but I find that nothing saps the energy out of a mighty endeavour more than hearing lots of people around you bark unselfconsciously about their own smug tribulations. A good intention to do something becomes a millstone around your neck. And not even a useful millstone, like the one I tied around that dead hooker's neck before I threw her over the bridge. Oh no.
Say you want to do something straight forward, like giving up drinking for lent. This statement of intent is often met by the noise of at least three other do-gooders all embarking on their own mission of self discovery, each of which is ten times better than the last: "Oh, you're giving up drinking. That's great. I tried that, and achieved my goals, so I'm working towards giving up oxygen. It's really super, I feel so much better now. I feel so free.." If only they would.
The sickening thing is that everyone else's effort sounds so 'worthy' that your own good intention to cut down on the sauce turns that evening into a drinking spree so intense that your brain senses the danger early and gets a taxi home 3 hours before you do so that you stagger home to find your own brain sitting on the sofa, tutting like an elderly relative at the sight of you whirling around the living room with half a kebab in your gut and the remainder in your hair. Or down your trousers.
Simple acts of self improvement are quickly announced among friends and relations - you want to go for a run every day, you want to read a book a week, you want to go big game hunting, you want to practice voodoo, you want to try heroin.... the kind of easy, bettering tasks that humans have been doing and making themselves sound cool with for hundreds of years. Obviously the thinking may be that members of the opposite sex will notice your efforts and declare you irresistible now that you have managed to eat less spicy food. There's an implied vanity in all exercises of self help which is commendable. Unless you are so vain that you disdain every effort of everyone in the world and cynically hurl verbal rocks at anyone who dare improve their lot. God, it would be awful to be like that.
So, I hear you ask, "OK Rich, you're a lazy, evil spirited cock sampler. We know. We can deal with it. What, dear lord, is the point of this diatribe? Will it ever end? And, can you sign this for me?"
Well, to you, my readers I say two things. Firstly, it is my, now stated, intention to write every single day this week, to give you an even greater insight into my world. Think of it a bit like that 'Live' episode of Eastenders, hopefully without the weird pauses at the end of each scene and the rank tedium, but definitely with the overwhelming sense of it being so similar to the regular output, that you might just have been conned.
Secondly, who would you like me to make it out to...? Susan? Great. Ten pounds please.
This is an undertaking of no small measure for a regular person, but for a man who's idea of 'climbing a mountain' is combing his hair, it should be a mighty effort indeed. I am, indeed, so lazy that I'm sitting alone in my room on a laptop and not watching pornography and touching myself. Now that, my friends, is dedication.
See you tomorrow, you poor, poor people.
Loveyoubutjustnotinthatway. xx
I'm definitely not a man who likes to set himself challenges, finding instead that true happiness comes not from climbing mountains, but paying a Sherpa to carry the bags, while I enjoy a cocktail and the sunset. It's not just the disdain for physical and mental labor that dissuades me from self-improvement, but I find that my concentration span lapses before I get....
..oh yeah. Concentration. Indeed. Sometimes my concentration is so poor I regularly struggle to remember to drink a whole cup of tea before the bottom bit gets all tepid and murky, with bits of Hobnob swirling around, so that by the time I come back to it, it looks less like a delicious and refreshing beverage and more like week old sick congealing in a tramps hat.
I am allergic to the concept of gyms, I despise self improvement and feel a retching disdain for 'joiny in' type people telling me how great they feel because they managed to cut the crusts off their Mighty White three days in a row, thus managing to see over the top of their stinking, obese and hairy gut for the first time since the late eighties, and how bloody marvelous they feeeeeel about it. Their cheery, toothy eyed grin wavering only as I remove the tea spoon from their half eaten pot of Activia and jab the thin end into their tear duct, leaving them floundering round the office like a bleeding unicorn on ice.
I'm exaggerating of course (I go for the nostril, not the tear duct. I'm no monster) but I find that nothing saps the energy out of a mighty endeavour more than hearing lots of people around you bark unselfconsciously about their own smug tribulations. A good intention to do something becomes a millstone around your neck. And not even a useful millstone, like the one I tied around that dead hooker's neck before I threw her over the bridge. Oh no.
Say you want to do something straight forward, like giving up drinking for lent. This statement of intent is often met by the noise of at least three other do-gooders all embarking on their own mission of self discovery, each of which is ten times better than the last: "Oh, you're giving up drinking. That's great. I tried that, and achieved my goals, so I'm working towards giving up oxygen. It's really super, I feel so much better now. I feel so free.." If only they would.
The sickening thing is that everyone else's effort sounds so 'worthy' that your own good intention to cut down on the sauce turns that evening into a drinking spree so intense that your brain senses the danger early and gets a taxi home 3 hours before you do so that you stagger home to find your own brain sitting on the sofa, tutting like an elderly relative at the sight of you whirling around the living room with half a kebab in your gut and the remainder in your hair. Or down your trousers.
Simple acts of self improvement are quickly announced among friends and relations - you want to go for a run every day, you want to read a book a week, you want to go big game hunting, you want to practice voodoo, you want to try heroin.... the kind of easy, bettering tasks that humans have been doing and making themselves sound cool with for hundreds of years. Obviously the thinking may be that members of the opposite sex will notice your efforts and declare you irresistible now that you have managed to eat less spicy food. There's an implied vanity in all exercises of self help which is commendable. Unless you are so vain that you disdain every effort of everyone in the world and cynically hurl verbal rocks at anyone who dare improve their lot. God, it would be awful to be like that.
So, I hear you ask, "OK Rich, you're a lazy, evil spirited cock sampler. We know. We can deal with it. What, dear lord, is the point of this diatribe? Will it ever end? And, can you sign this for me?"
Well, to you, my readers I say two things. Firstly, it is my, now stated, intention to write every single day this week, to give you an even greater insight into my world. Think of it a bit like that 'Live' episode of Eastenders, hopefully without the weird pauses at the end of each scene and the rank tedium, but definitely with the overwhelming sense of it being so similar to the regular output, that you might just have been conned.
Secondly, who would you like me to make it out to...? Susan? Great. Ten pounds please.
This is an undertaking of no small measure for a regular person, but for a man who's idea of 'climbing a mountain' is combing his hair, it should be a mighty effort indeed. I am, indeed, so lazy that I'm sitting alone in my room on a laptop and not watching pornography and touching myself. Now that, my friends, is dedication.
See you tomorrow, you poor, poor people.
Loveyoubutjustnotinthatway. xx
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