This will be me on my way to the airport (Minus the stetson hat): Two summers ago, I went to Ibiza for my first time. Although some good times were had, some of the residual memories I have are not the best. In hindsight, it's obvious the experience merely accentuated some some underlying mental delicacies. These first world problem "issues" duly came under the microscope, brought on by the sudden on-rush of drugs, alcohol, partying, superficial hedonism, lack of sleep, and various episodes of accompanying friends behaving like dicks. It all took its toll, eventually. Ibiza is a weird mixture of beautiful scenery and drunken debauchery. By the eighth night of my being there, I had been punched in the face by some gypsy from Belfast at seven o'clock in the morning by the beach; I'd been scammed by the "lookie-lookie" outfit who sold me some 'ecstacy pills' for 20 euro which in actual fact was just food colouring; and I visited several massive dance clubs listening to the likes of Carl Cox, Paul Kalkbrenner, Eddie Halliwell and other big DJ groups like Swedish House Mafia. At all of these events I had a great time, some more blurred than others. I made passing friendships with various English people, talking a lot of shite in the process. I also fell out with friends whose miserable and petty behaviour was bringing me down. In between the flippant moments of euphoria and great enjoyment from the music, I had pangs of inexplicable sadness, scathing self-loathing, paranoia and the like. By the eighth night I had a break-down of sorts, walking along the streets of Ibiza crying my eyes out for absolutely no reason at all. It's ridiculous now even mentioning that. During these stupid couple of hours when I went full potato, I met two random people who noticed me crying. Me, completely off my head on drink, said that I didn't give a fuck any more and didn't care whether I died or not. (I was very serious about this at the time.) I invited to take them to an ATM machine where I said I'd clear out every penny I had and give it to them because, after all, I intended to die and wasn't going to need the money. I remember them being somewhat perplexed at first, and there was a certain sinister side to them which said "okay" and off we went to the ATM machine. I was so drunk I couldn't remember my pin which held all my money on a travel card. After this, they were trying to take me down some alley away from the crowds for God knows what, when we came across a group of girls who stopped and took me away from those people. I was sobbing a lot like a ridiculous, blubbering drunk. Thankfully those group of girls put me in a taxi straight to my hotel. Looking back now, I probably dodged a bullet there. I haven't the faintest idea regarding the underlying factors of my psychology which brought all this crap out from the woodwork. I know it wasn't helped in any way shape or form by the over-indulgence of drink and alcohol, where it's safe to say I went a tad overboard over the course of ten days. What I do know is the majority of all that nonsense is behind me now. Now I'm in a much better frame of mind, comfortable within myself, content in a way. I feel as if I've learned from the mistakes of the last holiday, in two years finishing my degree, devoting myself to football and channelling my energies into more positive things. I've tried to grow a certain contentment and happiness within myself by doing the best I can to change the things I have the power to change, and to ignore all the other irrelevancies. This includes superficial comparisons with other people, recognising negative attitudes and nipping them in the bud, and in the broadest, most general sense trying to find a balance in my life between mental stability and fun. Roll on the 31st July
"Craic", Irish umbrella term defined by the Urban Dictionary as anything resembling fun or general banter. Craic is visually represented by the people in the video below: It is highly recommended that all human beings should try it at least once a week; it's good for the blood pressure. Engineering stalwarts need not apply, for the enjoyment of craic is not mutually complementary to things like calculations or equations. 2+2= potato. Observe the specimens in the video above throwing peculiar shapes for no overriding purpose, and in particular utilising unusual centres of gravity in tandem with the beat. I will say one thing. I don’t have the measuring instruments but the music in my bedroom has reached environmentally dangerous levels. Any minute now and we shall breach the sound barrier and break on through to that mythical other side. So let’s pretend I’m in a decommissioned Concorde plane and the terrorists are in the cargo section, and Indiana Jones who's driving a ford fiesta is firing harpoons at the back of the plane. It’s all systems go and I’ve put the accelerating fiddly-device full speed ahead. The engine is roaring and the back of our heads are pasted against the seats as we make headway for the moon. WHAT IS LOVE? Baby don’t hurt me. . . The neighbour who has been banging on my front door tells me some anonymous baby is trying to sleep. I presume he claims ownership to this miniature human; but if he thinks that his fertility and natural ability to get someone up the spout gives him added leverage or credibility in this situation, then he is very much mistaken. I’m going into involuntary spasms with my hands spiking in opposite directions, head fluidly bopping back and forth like an oul clucking rave-hen at Creamfields. And after a while a sheen of sweat develops on my chest which makes my T-shirt stick to my body, and my hair clump to my head. I have two drinks in my hands full of ice cubes which have stayed intact despite the upheaval that is predictably caused by the human body metamorphosing into shapes it’s not supposed to. MAMA TOLD ME NOT TO COME I don’t really care about the thumps on the door because I’m...how you say...“lost in the moment.” A lot of preparation has gone into this one-man party. There’s the light system, okay, that’s the first thing, and it beams strobes everywhere in fluctuating frequencies like schizoid black and white buzz-bombs. Then there’s the graphics, all right, that’s number two, on my meticulously-prepared Powerpoint presentation which depicts all sorts of absurd montages of swiveling eyes, menacing mouths which open and close, and shape-shifting birds of craziness into crocodiles, like a twisted evolution of animals, and I’m head-butting the air as if I’m trying to knock all the oxygen away so I suffocate.
I remember queuing up for hours with all these presents: six bikinis, a new Samsung Galaxy mobile phone, some jewellery. The memory of it now brings back the sweltering California heat, and there was me in my cargo slacks and flip-flops - a pasty-faced Casper unaccustomed to the heat. I had all these things in my hands which I was struggling to carry and my internal compass was sort of fucked as I ambled up all twisted and struggling trying not to drop any of the items I had bought. -Hi, she smiled. It could have been projected professionalism, her chirpiness. Whatever happened I was nervous and sweaty; my articulation skills seemed to fuck off to God knows where and I was sort of stuttering as I scrambled into a plastic bag at my feet that contained all her DVDs, which I had the hope of obtaining autographs for. -How are you? She asked. What an angel, I was thinking. She wore a low-cut top, and I couldn’t help but sneak the odd lecherous look in the general direction of her cleavage as she signed my DVDs, so much so I almost forgot the art of conversation. -Eh, I’m very well, eh, thanks, I spluttered. She handed my DVDs back to me. At that moment I felt like lifting her up and taking her swiftly out of the room in my arms like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman. My presents sat on the table and she merely scanned through them with quick, cursory glances. The most she could say to each of them was “Aww these are all really great presents, thanks!”, in a facetious sort of way, oblivious to the fact I’d spent the majority of my wages on them. I felt a blush come to my face. She was probably well used to be being pampered and spoiled; money being no object. In any case I had hoped to spend the rest of the day at her stall, having waited so long, if only to get my money’s worth, but instead I was politely ushered away by her handlers. Behind me was the pressure of a growing queue, a bunch of eager beavers not dissimilar to yours truly who were waiting on the sidelines for their brush with the star. And I got up with some nervous smiles and goodbyes and moved awkwardly to sulk in the foyer not far away. I suppose this was a symbolic signification to me that my day was over. The porn convention had on show a vast array of other talent, but it paled in comparison to what had just preceded it. I visited some of the other stalls out of a vague sense of curiosity, but to me my personal porn convention was over, at least until some other time I hoped to meet her. # Gauge, the woman I am in love with. Light-skinned, creamy complexion, dark raven hair. Amazing. This girl, you know, I'd never seen anything like her before. She caught my Jap's eye straight away, and it's not even that she was exceptionally good-looking. It was more her attitude and application to her job which impressed me the most, which to this day is unmatched in the industry. The most I can say was that I was struck by her insatiable sexual appetite that made me quiver like some weak, pathetic beta-male. She is a petite young woman of 5'4. I started watching her when she was a novice in the industry at nineteen, and now she's in her mid-twenties. We're both the same age, so in a way I can relate to some of the bumps she may have went through; the track of her progress has mirrored aspects of my own life, in a way. It's like she's my girlfriend, which is weird to think about. Her mischievous face, paradoxically angelic, and when she gets into her work with such youthful abandon my heart quickens as if being injected with some pure liquid cocaine. Whatever she represents in her job is transcendental to me. To say it’s sinful sounds inherently wrong. I would disagree with the religionists and feminists. For me, it’s a strangely spiritual experience, blessed and wholesome despite it being driven by physical—some would say violent—acts. I didn’t know people could perform like that, to complete such feats, and even at that young age I felt we should always appreciate the people who push the boat out like that. I began visiting Twitter to get some updates on her daily life. It was primarily to find out what type of person she truly was, out of curiosity. It didn't matter that I'd seen all her videos; this was, like the film industry, looking behind the facade of the performer to get a "behind the scenes" look at their real personality. Over the years I'd safely say I've spent an inordinate amount of time on her twitter feed. I wouldn't like to quantify it, and a doctor would probably tell you it's not healthy, but I'm addicted. I’m a loyal follower now, visiting daily. Most of the time her profile is simply an innocuous drivel of advertisements, promotions, fawning from her fans on her latest productions. She often breaks the tedium up with teasing instagrams of her lying on the beach, for example, or in her car driving along freeways, or, my own personal favourite, a tirade of luscious selfies in mirrors. I often find I cannot resist a gush that’s embarrassing for its lack of dignity that it’s more akin to keyboard word-vomit. I'd say you can easily tell I'm an adoring fan. Like the other day she posted up a picture of her in a convertible Mercedes Benz SLR and a message that said “Going shopping, so excited xx” and I told her to be careful because that was an extremely fast car and there’d no doubt be lots of traffic. She didn't reply, but that's okay. I'm fine with that. She has a lot of followers. # For a number of years now I've worked as an Accountant at a place called Direct IT services, and the less particulars that are said about that, the better. The only thing I would say is that no one knows me in the work sphere. Well, they know me but not in the true sense. It's funny how you spend all this time with people in the workplace yet no one has the faintest idea of what anyone else is truly like. In essence, we're all strangers. I've made a living disguising my true feelings on certain questionable or taboo subjects – all I have to do is put on a certain glazed over expression so people think I have no thoughts in my head, or any thoughts worth sharing. And after a while no one really does any investigating, about who I am, what I do etc., either because they genuinely don't care or because they're too wrapped up in their own little bubbles. One day in work startled me and was the first real sign something was wrong. Anyway, I think it was a Monday. I don't know what it was but there was something wrong with me. From initial boredom in the office, I began to dream about the weekend which, in opening a kind of doorway, it then fostered a certain inner excitement within me about other inappropriate things, not suited for the workplace. People in the office were talking a load of oul shite about what they did at the weekend, which mostly, as far as I could gather, consisted of a bottle of wine and a ganders at The X Factor; and I found myself dealing with emotions I couldn't control. At my desk it soon transpired I was befuddled with wild fantasies which I won't describe – entering intrusively at the mere slightest initiation, that is, by thinking of the weekend– and it was there and then that it struck me that the whole business with this girl over time had clearly scrambled my brains, hindering my functionality in the nine to five sphere. It was twelve in the afternoon. I was at the photocopier printing something out, a quiet hum of chatter in the office, and all I could think of was her, her scenes, her career, and my desires. I got very aroused, I have to say, which I tried to hide. Can you imagine the embarrassment of sharing a photocopier with something between your legs that would cripple a donkey, me keeled over at almost a ninety degree angle and still trying to convey a sense of normality? I thought, “My God. My obsession is my addiction”, an addiction which started as a harmless but flirtatious pre-occupation and then somewhat mushroomed through the years to become more a problem than a hobby. These were obviously “first-world problems” of a twenty-first century deviant. Absurdly, I imagined myself on the beaches of Normandy—D-day—a rifle in my hand, and I contemplated the distinct possibility it was my last day on earth. The internet wasn’t even invented in 1943. Pornography came in black and white stills and had poor sound quality (if not an entirely silent production.) Hairiness was rampant and waxing was something you only knew of in candles. Any depraved ideas I might have had in 1943 came entirely from reading the works of grossly-libertine French writers like Marquis De Sade who hailed from hundreds of years previous. And, apart from that, everything else is left to the imagination. So at that moment beside the copier, I was on the beach. I was scared to death. I felt the urge to masturbate at the moment of truth when my brothers-in-arms needed me. Imagine that? The conflict, tearing me apart. I was crying on the beach, my belt lying open, me trying to complete my act of selfishness but I can’t because German bullets are raining down around my head. My buddies were perplexed. They were screaming at me, dragging me along and telling me to “man the fuck up” because that is what soldiers do in the heat of battle. I tell them I’m in love with a girl who I can’t specify, because she doesn’t exist yet. They think I’ve gone mad. But they pull me up. They help their mates, they believe in camaraderie. I do nothing in return. I was a historically-imagined, sexually dysfunctional Oppum from Saving Private Ryan. -Is there something wrong with the machine? My middle-aged female boss, Karen, asked me. I was still bent over the side of the photocopier as if it was malfunctioning, so I could bend over with a feasible reason, thinking about porno and war intermeshed. -No, it's fine, thanks I said. I felt like telling her it was more likely ME...
Monday morning Board meeting – 9:00am - Chaired by Mr. Stig Bubblecard. Number one on our agenda today, ladies and gents, is the rather pertinent issue of primary and secondary issues, and in particular whether they are one and the same. Now according to this memo: “The words ‘Primary’ and ‘Secondary’ are primarily used to diversify the English language, which in terms of issues enables the issue-solvers to accord varying significance to issues through their own interpretive prisms as they see fit” I draw your attention to this unholy cluster of syllables and, in particular, the fact the author concerned uses the adverb ‘primarily’ in his own description of a ‘primary’ issue. . .We could perhaps venture to say this is an unabashed attempt by the author to “blow your mind”, so to speak, through the utilisation of the very subject he hopes to define being used in the definition which, being a definition tends to lay the foundation of the issue which you are subsequently invited to discuss. But we think, if the subject is an issue but there is an issue in the issue, why did he tie us up in knots before we even started? Is the author merely trying to confuse the issue? We ask these sorts of questions, and we come to the realisation that the author is possibly a mischievous little devil, certainly one not to be trusted unconditionally like the mother-son paradigm, but rather one who is to be approached with the same suspicion and cold-hearted analysis as a detective when engaging in any further fleshing out of, well, the issues... All right, any questions? I trust this was a simple introduction. The author of this memo says those concerned can accord significance to issues “as they see fit”, and within this my own theory is that we are presented with a situation of the utmost unfettered freedom. By this I mean we can say what we want in straight lines, tangents and random perpendiculars. For instance, say we roguishly depart from the traditional meaning of ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’, or whatever the case may be, flip it around to map out a new world where 'primary' is 'secondary', 'secondary' is 'primary' and issues are not exactly issues but are, instead, a kind of implacable fluffy notion that only mad and ridiculous spiritualists are concerned with. You can hold it in your hands like putty but when you try to grasp it with any real firmness, it slips through. Now what would you say about that? So what you're saying is there is no issue Mr Bubblecard? In a sense...Yes. Well...Yes and no. What I will say is that we will work very hard to overcome the issues yes and no, like binary politicians. May I ask why are we here then, Mr Bubblecard? Well it's very difficult to explain in-depth our timeless existential dilemma, Oswald, within the short space of time afforded to us in this meeting. As a company there is always issues at hand to discuss, but so little time. At this moment it is the issue of primary and secondary issues which we are worried about which we must deal with before there is to be any progression. But what has this got to do with retail sales of high street clothes, Mr Bubblecard? Nothing...Absolutely nothing. That comes after, good sir. I mean, how can you expect us to deal with the substantive issues without dealing with first with the preliminaries? You wouldn't want to jump to conclusions now, would you, good sir? You’re a man of infinite wisdom, Mr Bubblecard. Why thank you, Oswald. I'm flattered at your flattery. But! And this is a big ‘but.’ I don’t want to rain on this little parade of consensus. I want to return to the matters at hand. Right...Suppose I present to you here and now a humble confession, a confession which confesses to you all here and now I wrote the memo myself…Eh, what ramifications would that have for our debate? Umm...It would mean quite a lot, sir. It would foster the intrigue, Mr Bubblecard. Increase the mystery of this meeting. Yes, it would. And what about the uncertainty of what we're talking about? It would shoot through the roof, sir! Indeed. What about the circularity? Swings and roundabouts... Brilliant. Just what I thought. I'm glad we're all on the same page. What’s more, let me pick your brain more in-depth. What if I were to say the elements of uncertainty surrounding the words’ construction nullifies, to an extent, my own personal ownership? ...What if I were to say for construction purposes the words in question were considered in isolation. The singular meaning was sought from the dictionary and once ascertained was promptly printed out in amplified lettering. I then ritualistically put them into test tubes while blindfolded and asked my secretary to attach them to a centrifuge, where they spun for forty five minutes. Alas! Their re-emergence into this peculiar passage that you see now before you was, in a way, precipitated or 'written' by me, if you like, but is also, by its very nature, cloaked in mystery. Why are you haranguing yourself over its meaning then, sir? That's the bloody point! This is precisely what I'm getting at. A conundrum which has to be solved come rain, hail or sunshine. At the same time, I welcome your critical scrutiny, Hulga, I want to make that point. I trust that you welcome my welcome? Yes? Excellent, thank you. To return to the salient topic at hand it's quite clear we need to get to the bottom of this, but our task is shrouded in blackness. For again in terms of the memo “Interpretive prisms” are paramount, you will see, along with the overarching prerogative that we do as we “see fit”. Of course I could go on to comment on the farcical nature of sense as I understand it in this instance, and then I’d be hooked too into the quagmire of diversionary debate. I call this profound state of confusion the “The Uncertainty Principle”, and if you examine its nature with the utmost precision the more imprecise the components become; you will find the presence of uncertainty is everywhere, sort of like dark matter or racism – invisible yet in existence, known about but, yet, importantly, understood and misunderstood...all at the same time. Okay, primary and secondary…Does anyone have any primary or secondary thoughts on the issue primary or secondary before we continue our strange progression? It is possible, I surmise, to widen the discussion even further, should we so wish, by not only focusing on 'primary' and 'secondary' but, furthermore, 'tertiary', 'quaternary', 'quinary', 'senary', 'septenary', 'octonary','nonary' and...'denary' issues. If memory serves me correctly I don’t believe there is the consequential description of an ‘eleventh’ term, for some reason, but I do know there exists in a similar fashion a ‘twelfth’ known as ‘duodenary’…But I think there are rather perilous dangers at this moment here of biting off more than we can chew, and I think that is possibly the reason why these terms are either intentionally or inadvertently excluded in the initial definition, which was and wasn't written by me, you might recall, and I think that is sufficient reason for ignoring them unless we get bogged down in the detail ad infinitum...The devil for any company is in the detail, of course. You notice my penchant for creative 3D perspectives? If you raise no objections I hope you'll allow me to continue to use analogies and metaphor at will for the purposes of elucidation and confusion; a story-teller and a disorienting oracle, if you will. This is all so that you may all gain a better but at the same time cloudier and more ambiguous understanding in the final analysis...The bottom line, so to speak...Now I hate to perpetually return to the memo but like the bible it is the starting-point by which our discussion is based. And I ask you this: if 'primary' and 'secondary' can be anything we want it to be, essentially, (a la primary is secondary, and secondary is primary), through force of will and whimsy, it is possible, I would argue, that primary and secondary are not adjectives but are actually in one second, premium insurance policies, in another, abnormal cell division, and even at another infinitesimal point physical propellants or missiles which we can launch indiscriminately around the room. If you can imagine the “Interpretive prism” as a hula hoop and as a sort of game you get ten points if you can successfully Frisbee 'primary' and 'secondary' through the hoop then I'm sure you can all agree there is a lot of fun to be had which is great for general morale and mental health. Would this be compatible with the health and safety regulations of the company? Urm...Well. I haven't thought much about that actually. Probably not, but please conduct a comprehensive review of it for me please at once, and take your time while you're at it. We're in no rush. Forgive this frivolousness. Having examined this memo with a scrutiny that would be a credit to the most conscientious coroner conducting a cross-examination of a corpse, I can assure you that perhaps I've been over-thinking the issue. This sometimes happens when dealing with the common thread of diversification which in its broad scope can lead one into dodgy never-ending tangents. Without doubt the world of primary is a hungrier place without the twin accompaniment of secondary, and vice versa. It could be fair to say that the two issues need each other and mutually complement one another like salt and pepper, whereby, the symbiotic paradigm becomes an indifferent, ambivalent one when one pillar of the community—either primary or secondary—disintegrates or falls victim to neglect, starving the former of the latter or the latter from the former. If you starve one of oxygen the other turns into a shallow, benign substance who goes through a grieving period but then settles its own personal issues or demons and does not do anything to the collective detriment of language and thus to the detriment of our business activities....
Reading Henry Miller's Tropic of cancer is like a breath of fresh air. It's good to know that there was someone who lived. It's not often you discover such an irreverence in writing, a fluidity, a passion. An honesty. Henry Miller may not have had any money in his time but by Jaysus he didn't let it get him down. He wasn't racked with the limiting pretence of what others may say about his writing, which would then cause him to adjust himself with self-censorship, and write accordingly. He wrote. In all that he wrote he did his level-best not exclude the warts, the flaws which may have cast an unfavourable shadow- “I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions...There is only one thing that interests me vitally, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books” A laudable motive if you ask me; an acknowledgement of the imperfections in us all, the attempt to describe what it means to be human. This is what it comes down to, doesn't it? How does an artist, a writer of books, capture something intangible that pulses deep within his chest? His tools are the armoury of his words, his array of vocabulary, strung together through patchy or perfect sentences meshed together to convey more abstract ideas, emotions or moods. The writer may come to the realisation his words are flawed, his style is flawed but still he strives to communicate, to capture in black and white that rawness of experience which he then can give to the world so that it fills all who read it with soul, love, beauty, art, whatever... Apologies for using the masculine "his" and "him"...I'm rambling a bit. But this is what art is all about. I suspect a couple of well known posters on this website would criticise Miller for one, having a looseness of form; two, indulging in crudeness of language, and even perhaps three, having no traditional story arc where a main protagonist goes on some journey of personal fulfilment...Or something... I'm sick of reading pieces of writing that are developed around some dodgy contrivance. Pieces of writing like that to me do not even begin to capture the essence of our experiences. They barely scratch the surface of social reality. The dialogue rings hollow, the setting wooden. This is all that is sacrificed in the name of a rigid plot and hence, a good story. Miller wrote about his time as an impoverished artist in Paris in the 1930s. He describes tales with prostitutes (Lots of them) and meandering ruminations on the beauty of the river Seine, the parallel trees, the winds in his hair. He shocks you with his pornographic language and his questionable morals. His lyrical descriptions are an assault on the senses, as he as a writer uses his own senses to describe his experience and then project them on to you. Some thoughts don't go anywhere, and that's the precise point. Imagine the temerity of a writer who sat down to write what it means to be bored? How does he capture that essence? If you can contemplate the time scales involved. Boredom by its nature can go on for hours; whoever happens to be suffering from it will indulge in whatever means necessary to try to alleviate it – that is to say they'll daydream, be whimsical, think of being somewhere else. In terms of setting, this person or character never leaves the room, the four walls of a mundane setting. A prison, in a way. How would you feel about reading this? You might be bored yourself, but the point is boredom is a reality of our experience. The real trick here is how to make such a setting interesting for a reader. If what it means to be a writer today is to re-hash snippets of old plots into “new” conglomerates; to borrow from films, to conjure up silly scenarios in the name of a story, to put characters within a basic conflict setting, to offer word-porn for a reader who wants to be immediately titillated with action and a clear message, then the reality is I probably don't wish to be a writer. That may sound a tad melodramatic, but if nothing new is being done, if writing as an art has stagnated to an extent that we churn books out on a conveyor belt, then what is the over-riding point of the effort? ...To get something published? ...To make money? I'd honestly rather give up writing than compromise a piece to placate a publisher or an agent. This is not arrogance. This is rejection of the idea of writing by established, stringent criteria. Of pandering to a "market" or an "audience". This is rejecting the soullnessness of writing as a mass-produced capitalist commodity. One thing for sure is that if the world was populated with seven billion Henry Millers, it wouldn't be a very productive place. But for every unique artist who captured something no on else did, there are thousands of businessmen and thousands of commercial writers content with the status quo.
Kangaroo moods, do you know what you need in your life? A bit of bloody stability. You ever think about getting yourself a girlfriend? If anything that would probably make me even less stable. Women are utterly mental man , I’m tellin’ ye. What do you mean? On the surface there’s this picture of normality, but if you scratch below that outer hardness more often than not you’ll find a world of shit sleeping underneath. Sweeping generalisations! Not all women are like that. Yea but a lot of them are, that’s the thing. So you see this girl, right, and she’s nicely dressed: stylish clothes, nice make-up, hair straightened. And you start a conversation with her. Just a superficial one about the weather or some shit, nothing serious. All superficial. Do you see anything wrong with her? Of course you don’t. It’s during the day for fuck’s sake. They know how to hide. They’re self-conscious about what others think so they keep this screen up. But they’re more convoluted than men. Find her on a bad night with a bottle of vodka in her hand, hormones raging, and what will you see? An emotional wreck, that’s what you’ll see. If I were a woman I’d probably slap you in the face See what I mean!? Women think they can just go around slapping people in the face because they’re so sensitive about this whole sexism thing. Let’s face it, we’re different. It’s not fair that a woman can just take advantage of her sexuality at every turn but then complain about inequalities of the sexes. You play the game you deal with the repercussions. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Women use their sexuality all the time to manipulate men’s naivety. Picture the scene. There’s that flirty girl sitting in the corner batting her eyelids at every lad who’s stupid enough to give her the attention. Men think with their penises, you know that. All a woman has to do is throw out an ambiguous flirty remark and they have the upper hand. If she’s attractive, the deal is done. Any red-blooded male laps it up. Even if he’s privy to the game and he knows she’s just being a tease, there’s a small part of him that clings to a ridiculous hope that something might materialise at a later stage. Sounds like you might have gotten a bit of rejection in your time, my friend. Any truth in that? I may have fell victim to a few scorpion women but who hasn’t? Here’s what I think: All sexists are sexual failures. Excuse me, I’m not a failure. Their beliefs are driven by fear, whether of rejection or intimidation. It kind of reminds me of the racist scenario. You tar a whole race or group according to the actions of a few who do indulge in the stereotypes. You see a young black man behaving disgracefully on a bus, and you’re stewing near the front while he’s jumping ‘round the back making a scene. And you use that bitterness to base your opinion on his whole race. It’s not really fair is it? At the end of the day you’re condemning a whole group of people who’re not here to defend themselves. It’s broader than that though. Women have a different make-up altogether. They have this extra card that they were born with. You can’t blame them for using it to their advantage. But sometimes it makes me sick to my stomach. There’s a certain crude element to it, because the poor naïve simpleton’s heart quickens at the brush of his thigh, and he acts accordingly to the flutters of his heart and or his penis. That poor naïve simpleton being you? I speak for all the simpletons of the world. So what do you propose then? Ignore all females? I’m not saying that. I’ll still engage in the game. It’s just I’m saying I’m above the pettiness of it. I see that kind of frivolous behaviour a mile away and I’m not fooled by it. I see it as the utter manifestation of vanity and it’s disgusting. Women might think they’re playing me like a fiddle, but in reality, it’s me who’s playing them. Complaining about frivolity while admitting to your own frivolousness. How ironic! But what I won’t do is take it to the next level. That next level being a long-term relationship. Fuck that shit. If you’re one of them unfortunate little souls to have become entangled in one such state of affairs, then I say good luck to you. You’ll be dealing with an unstable schizophrenic who’s main personalities are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. More often than not, Mr.Hyde will reveal himself to be the dominant one and you’ll be lying in bed at night thinking to yourself, ‘Where was that lovely person called Dr. Jekyll who I first knew and first fell in love with? The bubbly, easy going one with a good sense of humour, where the hell did he go?’ And the answer is, he’s gone sonny jim. He was never there in the first place. She just used that personality to hook you in and gain your favour and love. That’s outrageous. It’s true though! It’ll be a constant battle with insecurity, jealousy, mood-swings, manipulation, emotional blackmail and guilt trips. She has you by the testicles and there’s no getting away… A year into the relationship this is what happens: ‘Honey, I was thinking about heading out for a few beers with the lads tonight. You don’t mind, do you?’ She looks at you for a second, a crazed look in her eye and the thrust of her argument is like, ‘But what about me!?’ she’s saying to you. ‘Why do you never give ME any attention? Why can’t you just stay in tonight with ME and we can watch The Notebook for about the 100th time?’ Haha, that’s absolutely ridiculous! No women are like that. So you persevere and you say to her, ‘Look, I haven’t been out with the lads in ages and I’m going for a few beers no matter what you say’. Your stubbornness has caused her to use her last defence. She’s saying to herself, ‘That’s it. He’s not getting anymore sex from me.’ And she stays true to her word and you don’t get any sex for weeks! You’d nearly be better off just watching porn. And then if she ever catches you watching porn, she feels inadequate! But what the hell do you expect if she isn’t giving you any sex!? I feel sorry for you… Then if she’s not as vocal about it, she could be that other type. The silent treatment type. You say to her, ‘Honey, I’m going out tonight for a few beers with the lads.’ And she’s putting away the washing without saying anything for a few seconds, and then she says, ‘That’s okay’. But she doesn’t say it with any conviction, it’s like, ‘I’m saying this but there’s actually a whole subtext to what I’m saying. What I’m really saying is the opposite to what I’m actually saying, and if you don’t notice this you’ll not be getting any sex for weeks.’ I feel exhausted just listening to you. It’s plainly obvious she doesn’t want you to go as she wants you to stay in with her to watch The Notebook. You don’t want to cause an argument so you go on ahead, but lying there at the back of your mind is your sulking wife who wants you to feel guilty for going out and having a few beers. You come back that night and you get the cold shoulder. In the morning, there’s no breakfast, and she’s acting snappy and cold, and with a hangover that’s just even worse. So the moral of the story is, you don’t want a girlfriend then? No what I'm really saying is, I want a girlfriend. Everything I just said there, I didn't mean. I'm now like a woman, I say things but I mean the opposite of what I say... You're crazy...
All life is a series of putting forward shite theories, including this one, which lie in various stages of shite development. This one came to fruition, coincidentally, while sitting on the bowl but bear with me. I recommend you take what I’m about to tell you with a pinch of shite, but also to go away reflect pensively on a world of shittiness. A case in point: On the television this morning there were four people on the BBC breakfast programme. Two were the presenters who worked like diligent scientists in politely extracting the shite from their two guests who sat, predictably, on opposite sides of the shite spectrum. One believed that shite was a positive thing and thus was an instrumental part of life that existed in many different forms. Both creamy and turgid. Whereas the other took a negative view, saying that not only was shite non-existent, but was rather a propaganda piece from the government who sought to erect a shite smokescreen to detract from their failed, shitty economic policies. The presenters, at pains to remain objective, inadvertently stirred further the cauldron of shite that was their debate; and as humans inevitably couldn’t refrain from holding back even smidgeons of their own shite opinions. ‘But don’t you think…’ was a common deflective phrase, which ostensibly gave rise to devil’s advocate, but in reality represented what the common man, a person who shites regularly, might think as the viewer. Eventually after their frenzy of shite, where shite was batted back and forth like a tennis rally, the presenters through their skill and experience came to a shitty compromise which left you, the audience, to either accept the shite which was just spewed, or brew your own shite based on a combination of other, eclectic shittiness. ` When I teach my son, I seek to pass on the baton of shite like the Olympic torch so that he can develop out of what is admittedly a simplistic view of shite. Despite my efforts, I imagine as he develops into a teenager he will do an angst-ridden shite while contemplating his shitty, pointless existence. I will direct him towards people like Nietschze and Stephen King who are prolific shitters, but he will still be confused about shite and will have to strive to achieve his own brand of shite through a trial and error process. As an adult he will go to his job and live, breath and talk shite to his fellow peers who will thus reciprocate their own peculiar shite in the form of talking about the weather (Which predicts a shitty couple of days), the shite football match which was played at the weekend, and the shitty state of politics. For now though I want him to block out the cacophony of shite until he is better equipped to deal with the shite onslaught; so this weekend I will take him to the cinema to see a film about shite which I will, I expect, decide is shittier than the last shite film that I took my son to see. If you disagree, feel free to impart your own shitty theory which I’m sure will amuse me (By the way my son, who is non-existent, is a convenient purveyor of my ideas)
First world problems, you know? On Saturday past I cut my lawn because the grass was growing to a frankly unacceptable threshold length. I went to the dump and put all the grass in a big compost heap. I then clipped my hedges when I got back. I suppose when I was in the region of one third of the way through this endeavour, I was struck with what people commonly term an epiphany. The clouds spread apart like a great big blasphemous woman spreading her legs, with the sun coming cascading down to penetrate into the very depths of my meagre soul and it carried a message. The message said: -You’re clueless, aren’t you? And normally with epiphanies helpful knowledge is bestowed on the recipient, who leaves feeling enriched and fulfilled at the experience. On reflection this message didn’t really tell me anything, it just pointed something out. I don’t even know if it’s an epiphany then. Like the message said: I’m clueless. # Bernie Morgan decided early-on she wasn’t going to embark on a redemptive ‘journey’ across fabled lands. She was happy enough where she was, in her mortgaged semi-detached cocoon. She lived in a street of fifteen semi-detached houses, on the edge of a dead industrial town. She decided to create her own quest of human fulfilment, on her own terms. She would reach the front gate of her house, survey both ends of the street, feel flummoxed, and go back indoors. See, her life was complex: plagued by depression and the lack of energy brought on by its treatment, it was tough sustaining a forty year determination to stay out of a job. Filling in the forms for her disability living allowance was causing her great disquiet, given the government’s renewed commitment to rooting out benefit cheats. Bernie was forced to up the stakes and one day went into the doctors wearing nothing but a bathrobe and slippers, with the sole aim of pissing herself in front of the doctor to maximise the shock value. It worked. To say she was ‘happy enough’ was perhaps a bit misleading. She was quite obviously a disturbed individual whose depths of depravity knew no bounds. She was in the process of building an animal refuge centre based in her own home in response to regular menopausal twinges. With every hot flush, she would buy a new dog. She had so far procured six fluffy little balls of joy that would run around her house, shitting all over the place, barking at neighbours, and those balls of fluff would give her strength, despite one being terribly obese with heart problems. # Human beings are attracted to symmetry; symmetry of their cars, their faces, their houses. I share this ideal with my fellow man. We should not tolerate that which veers off to the left on a person's face, and if we do we should at least make it the subject of ridicule. Look at that snout of mine...What genetics spawned this monstrosity? I telescope in on it in the mirror; the pores look like strawberry seeds. Mmm, that would be nice with a bit of cream. Strawberry and double-whipped sugary freshness. Now I'm self-conscious. There's people in the world starving and I'm worrying about the symmetry of my nostrils. How mad is that? First-world problems...If you don't like something about yourself you should get it hacked off. Me me me, my chronic pursuit of individualism which is symbolic of Satan. SPANK ME YOUR MAJESTY, I'VE MISBEHAVED # There was a guy with a big nose who got on the bus the other day and he sat down to the right of me. I had to get off my seat. I was like a zombie. I tapped him on the shoulder. -Yes? He asked. I looked at him with intense curiosity and tenderly placed my hand on his cheek. He had a severe look of worry on his face. I rubbed the whole way down the side of his head until I reached the offending nostril and pinched it for inspection. My brow condensed and with both hands I gripped the outer edges of it with my face gravitating towards his face. When my head was directly opposite the nostril, I tried to wear it like a swimming cap, tunnelling my own head right up inside the thing like an Alice in Wonderland-inspired coal miner. My legs were still connected to the aisle of the bus and with some concerted effort I managed to get both of my arms in one after the other, and then one leg at a time with my right foot using the edge of a seat for leverage. I moved through his nasal cavity into another world. At the end of this tunnel I was greeted by strange and fantastical creatures who worshipped this statuesque artefact day and night which resembled a large penis; they would bemoan its ambivalence; that is of course until I showed up and directed them the light at the end of the nose-tunnel. I told them that if they followed me they’d be on the road to reality. Fetching a flashlight out of my pocket on my way back they stood behind hoking in and around the mucus and finding all sorts of little treasures like lost watches and paper clips. I was swinging from the mucus-infused cilia like Tarzan, embracing the adventure, occasionally letting out a good yodel just to experience the spacious effects of echo in action. At the end we crawled out frantically and dropped down, like soldiers rappelling into a war zone, the fantastic little creatures bombing down the aisle of the bus, taking cover behind parallel seats on either side so they could attack the bus driver. With a blink of an eye I was back to where I was, looking at the guy. Maybe I shouldn’t be so judgmental, I thought. # If you purge your thoughts of all impurities, what do ye get? An empty house. Think of it like removing all the furniture, the rooms are gutted out and what now lies is a shell of a building. But where's the estate agent? The floor's been brushed, the fireplace has been given a good wipe. Then the trash is put in the bin. If all that is left is cleanliness and the absence of visible “things”, what is there? I'll tell ye. Bacteria. Dust and stale air which festers over time. And grows. The purged thoughts grow back, slow and insidious. So's you won't straight away notice it. But where's the estate agent? He's having trouble forcing through the sale. Couples usher in and out, misty-eyed about their new domesticated adventure. The couple are newly-married, and the woman heavily-pregnant. They don't like the look of the house, it doesn't inspire them, so they leave and look at other ones.
I had been going to therapy for 10 years and now they say I can't be helped. I'm FUBAR, a failure and always have been. Now I'm close to the end of my tether. What would Hitler say? In my spare time I do a lot moping within the arduous prison of my mind, whose bars drawn across my consciousness restrict me the freedom to achieve my objectives, and whose innate poison has spread throughout the rest of my body and diseased my soul. The symptoms of this disease manifests itself in the things that I say and think, which to an outsider who does not understand the illness can sometimes be categorised as an array of self-absorption, self-defeating statements, self-pity or anything inward that can be prefixed with a 'self.' Much of my thinking is characterised by lamentations about how the world never does me any favours, because for some reason which I am not explicitly aware of I feel a sense of entitlement. I do not have the confidence to go outside of my house, therefore much of my time is spent sitting on the laptop and the internet, writing my short stories concerning death and poison. The internet is my one true solace for it has enabled me to communicate my pain in a much more effective fashion whereby in less technologically-advanced times of the past I would never have been able to do so; my voice would've gotten left by the wayside in a vacuum. What would Hitler say? Hitler would probably say something Darwinistic because thanks to the internet which has given me freedom to express my pain, I have happened to discover some Hitler quotes. Mein Fuhrer was once quoted as saying: “Since the inferior always outnumber the superior, the former would always increase more rapidly if they possessed the same capacities for survival and for the procreation of their kind; and the final consequence would be that the best in quality would be forced to recede into the background. Therefore a corrective measure in favour of the better quality must intervene. Nature supplies this by establishing rigorous conditions of life to which the weaker will have to submit and will thereby be numerically restricted; but even that portion which survives cannot indiscriminately multiply, for here a new and rigorous selection takes place, according to strength and health.” I know that Hitler was fond of saying stuff about the strong overcoming the weak, and I hear the words but they are floating over the top of my head...Something or other about the inferior being numerically restricted...All I ever wanted to do was be a writer who got published and got recognition for all the hard work I do at my laptop. All I want is a little pat on the top of the head that says, “There's a good little boy, now keep up the hard work”. Now that my life is persistently signified by failure in everything I do my whole raison d'etre has disintegrated, and now I feel like ending all the pain, escaping from the arduous prison of my mind. Today I plucked up the courage to wander about the streets of my city kicking litter and all I can see is the cruelty of the world in all its uncaring ambivalence; this would be a great and deep subject to write about and I have been working on a novel to this effect. I think about how my life has progressed from point A to B, which is a relatively short space of time when you consider the great expanses of time and human history that has come before, and which will surely come after. At some point during this journey of mine I have been led to believe that I am a unique and special individual who should celebrate my talents wherever they can be found, even if these talents are ordinary and my writing conventional. Somewhere along the line I have picked up the impression that I deserve at least a modicum of triumph in what I do, because I have spent a lot of time on my laptop practising and working very hard. I never knew much about failure until I failed, although I'm now told by my good internet friends that failure is very prominent in this world and that I should just deal with it but I can't. What would Hitler say? Hitler elaborated on many things in his big book Mein Kampf, and I see here that he says “ The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all.” I don't know about you but I think it is very cruel that Hitler says these things about born weaklings. I have been told for many years that what I have is an illness for which there may be no cure depending on my determination to better it; and if you look at the literature which is scientific this will prove the point about my suffering which is undoubtedly now classified as an illness. Hitler would not have known much about this because this is a relatively new development that has arisen through the progress of research and changing societal attitudes. What I say and do from the point following my diagnosis then is to an extent validated and tolerated by empathetic individuals; and when I say something that is full of self-pity they do not judge me for they know that it is an illness and I am therefore absolved of much of my responsibility when I say and do the wrong things. There are so many things in this life that I do not understand, such as how my depressive attitude eventually becomes a mindset which is embedded and over which I have no control. Like I said before my mind is a prison and in a prison you have no independence to do as you please; I reflect on my life and how it got to this point, and if I go back early enough then inevitably I will find instances of hardship, throughout my childhood to adult life, episodes of negativity and trauma which shapes me into who I am today. I've been told many times that everybody has problems but some people deal with problems in different ways, or perhaps not at all. What would Hitler say? Hitler would say “Among the most primitive organisms the instinct for self-preservation does not extend beyond the care of the individual ego. Egotism, as we call this passion, is so predominant that it includes even the time element; which means that the present moment is deemed the most important and that nothing is left to the future. The animal lives only for itself, searching for food only when it feels hunger and fighting only for the preservation of its own life. As long as the instinct for self-preservation manifests itself exclusively in such a way, there is no basis for the establishment of a community; not even the most primitive form of all.” Hitler may be right. I haven't been feeling much community lately, only the self-preservation of myself and my fiction which I hope to publish some day; but there is a problem for this self-preservation of mine is on the verge of blowing out like a candle due to my concussive failures and growing thoughts of suicide. Far from feeling any sense of community these days rather I have been feeling somewhat disconnected from the rest of society, which is exacerbated by my burrowing into the depths of my stories which include my own personal pain, and they thus reflect my lack of personal experience which is borne out of rarely leaving the house, my world-view being based upon my streams of first person sentences where one seems to follow another until I am finished or tired. I do not like to look at this as a form of self-indulgence but more as a system of anecdotal understanding, and the burgeoning of my writing talent. I can't say categorically why this is so, why this is the way that I think, but I suspect this has something to do with my illness because my illness is at fault for many things but it may also be something to do with the internet which has given me freedom to express my pain but also maintains it in perpetuity. In any case I will continue as I do, and think as I do, until the day that I finally feel like I don't want to do, that I've had enough and I decide to end it. However, at this moment I shall pay no attention to Hitler and the tenets of what he had to say because he was an evil bastard who killed a lot of Jews.
There are so many things about this dynamic scene that makes it rank among my favourite in all the films I have ever viewed. Here the villain of the film Nurse Ratched begins a discussion that is of absolutely no value to any of the patients in the group whatsoever, and it concerns one of the patients, Mr Harding's estranged wife. She initiates a talk whose subject matter has been covered many times, as is clearly evident by the reactions of the other patients. Harding, who is clearly mentally ill, utters some rather vague and completely contradictory phrases which, in his mind, are an expression of his own intelligent and considered opinion when in fact he makes no sense at all. I love how the scene quickly escalates into an argument, with bully-boy tactics from the character Taber and others, the well-meaning but misguided and naive Cheswick who tries to stick up for Harding, the cold and distant gaze of Nurse Ratched (Who watches stony-faced and does nothing to control the patients.) Then, as a kind of vessel of sanity, you have Jack Nicholson who sits and watches curiously this whole scene, going from benign curiosity to being entertained by the drama, at one point making a hilarious mimicking gesture of Harding who is arguing with the rest of the group, particularly Taber. A great scene. A classic. They don't make films like this any more. And if they do, I have yet to see them... Here is what Harding says during the scene: Later: Harding's dialogue is fantastic, not because of what it axiomatically reveals in the words themselves, i.e. in the normal sense what it might offer the viewer, such as an interesting or impressive philosophical insight but rather in the subtext of how Harding views himself, and what this says implicitly about his mental illness. Like all good dialogue it is very revealing of Harding's characterisation. He is articulate in the way that he uses some words, even though the context of their usage is nonsense. (For example, what does he mean by 'form' and 'content' ...These words give the impression of being analytical) In my opinion it indicates a man who perhaps at one point was quite intelligent, perhaps even holding a decent job in a decent profession. Now his thinking is completely nonsensical and disorganized which we as viewers assume is brought on by his illness.
I'm a firm believer in the need to transcend. Forget about measured opinions, it doesn't matter if you're black, white or lizard. We're all cut from the same cloth, bounding towards the same common objectives. Sitting on the toilet I put tissue paper in my ears to drown out the sound of my Ma's phone calls. Like drink driving, there should be laws against using the phone when you're unsteady in your mind. All I can hear occasionally is “Em...Appointment...My appointment?”, the inflection on the last utterance a slight realisation that maybe she's unsure of herself, clearly forgetting the nuances of what she wants to say. She knows she has an appointment maybe today or next month, or maybe she's trying to make an appointment for a new complaint which she can't articulate. My Ma used to be an intelligent woman before medication turned her brain to mushy peas. Delirium, in all its various verbal forms, upsets me. When she gets off the phone I shout out to her to “Ma, do me a favour will you?”, the favour being a damage limitation exercise in the form of, 1.) Taking the phone out from the wall, and 2.) throwing it across the road and over the sizeable hedge which affords privacy to our street. It's such a shame she's hard of hearing and can't hear me through the bathroom door. In reality I'm just talking to myself. It's what seeps out of your head that you never knew was there in the first place is what's of value. How do you know you're making sense? You don't. You speak it anyway and then trawl through the scrap yard of your thoughts: something is bound to be salvageable sooner or later, right? Reflect on the past, present and future and be honest. That's the most important thing. If you're honest then you can never go too far wrong, or so they allude to in sugary Rom-Coms. A recollection of a past experience from a disembodied source: Do ye remember that house party you were at when you were nineteen? You entered the somewhat drab council house after a night out and the first thing that hit you was the smell, like a load of old smelly chemical socks. The house was peopled with people of dubious character, and there was you trying to fit in...And you sat down on the couch in the living room with the dodgy springs, hands pursed together, and the plate full of mephedrone being passed around, a great display of communal solidarity wasn't it, of sharing and friendliness. Not that this was all as edgy as it seems, mind, even though that's the likely impression of such a described scene, embellished with the little details that comes through the flawed process of remembering. Safe to say it wasn't an occasion for over-thinking matters, was it, waxing lyrical or getting all philosophical. And you sniffed that stuff up your nose and then you were on the bouffant cloud of euphoria for a while, weren't you, with melted bones and a rabid heart. Trying to fit in. A great wee day and night but you couldn't tell the difference which was which, hazarding a hazy guess it was morning with the translucent curtains seeping light. Sitting there on that couch like a scared little lemur, anybody asks you any risque questions you see nothing, you know nothing. Remember what happened to Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine? Yes, butchered for having big mouths, so you smiled and were sycophantic. After all, couldn't take chances could you. You sniffed more of that stuff on that plate and had a wee pre-prepared purple capsule of God knows what, and after a while it hit you: “How did I get here?” Not that it mattered, not that it mattered...An occasion for the memories, wasn't it, one to think back on in years gone by, like now, funnily enough, going over the conversations and the banter, not that you can remember the specifics to any great extent. But sure if in doubt you can always embellish it with more little details. “Where are you from, then?” The reprobate to the left asked you, looking at you curiously like you're some kind of alien. In the living room, the tissue papers are still sticking out of my ears like little white, waxy antennae as I watch TV. Why do we always have to find reasoning in the things that we do? Yes, I put the tissue paper in my ears to drown out the sound of a certain phone call but their continued purpose is questionable since my Ma is long off the phone. Some things don't lend themselves very well to strict rational analysis. In the broadest sense, searching for simple structured causes and effects could feasibly be a futile pursuit, like “Would you classify your life as a success?”, which then initiates a methodical but fruitless trawl through childhood experiences, educational achievement, social interactions, the linear A to Bs which all offer convenient understanding but how much truth? My refusal to remove these tissues was borne out of laziness so there is at least a snippet of reasoning there, if not some wider profound motive to do as I do. I go out into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea because, well, I felt like having a cup of tea. A rumination on the future from a disembodied source: Where do you see yourself in five years? Do you envisage the successful career, the financial comfort, the multi-layered lifestyle? To propel yourself into such a position, well that would require a deeply embedded understanding of what's considered to be a 'success' and what's of 'value', wouldn't it. That is to say you should first investigate the conventional understanding of success, which could be a combination of social, professional and material well-being, involving the comfort to do as you please; the freedom to visit places you wanted to visit; the ability to buy the things you wanted to buy. This is all underpinned by the ubiquitous trappings of money, which is traditionally gained by, first of all the professional success that is an absolute necessity which unlocks many of the social and all of the material benefits which come after. You should think long and hard about this pursuit. If you do not consider money to be 'valuable', and by implication the closely tied benefits of a rampant materialism, in the sense that money and material goods are the be-all and end-all of what drives your life, you should think of other areas unneeded by money, but what of independence? Money and all the trappings of it is that which affords the degree of freedom and control and without it you'll still be living with your parents, like the adult man-child you are. You must think long and hard and act accordingly, ideally with an element of urgency...Out of some misguided naivety you may not value money as much as you value your adulthood and independence, so you must contemplate whether a compromise is needed, which is to say you should do what all other grown-ups maturely do and that is to submit to employment, whatever its form, and this may require a surrendering of any lofty ambitions in favour of a simple pragmatism; or you may hold on to both ideal and objective, should you wish, for the retention of hope may do some good for your short-term mental health and long-term outlook, and the submission to employment will simultaneously maintain some essential practicalities. And if all else fails you could always contemplate suicide. I go on to my lap top to do some job searching. I think about the abstract criteria employers want from me, and in my mind I envisage these imaginary bullshit qualities and, like a chameleon, try to mirror them in my applications.
I love anybody who smashes social boundaries, directs two brazen fingers towards established "norms". There was a woman who got on the bus one Friday evening when I was heading home from work, up the M1 from Belfast to Dungannon. She was mad as a brush, in her mid-thirties I guessed. I can say she was mad as a brush because, in my idealistic world with no boundaries, you can say someone is mad without offending the PC brigade...I hiss like a cobra at anybody who uses words like "inappropriate"...She was 'mad' in a good way; eccentric even. My new soul mate trudged down the aisle of the bus with not a care in the world. "SOME DAY ISN'T IT?" She exclaimed to no one in particular, trailing her handbag and a couple of shopping bags. I smirked to myself. It was indeed, a nice day. What made this comment so brilliant was that the bus was icy-silent and no one responded, apart from an amused smile from me. I guessed she was something of a character. Anyway I forgot about her and started reading the newspaper, me sitting at the back of the bus and she was about two rows in front, to the left. She befriended a young student-like girl and talked loudly to her about her studies and about how she couldn't wait to get home, it being Friday evening. After about ten minutes or so up the motorway her phone began ringing. This was her ringtone: I found it funny that this was her ringtone and had another chuckle to myself. "HELLO!?" she answered. "Jist comin up the motorway here now, will be in Enniskillen in about an hour and a half. Aye not too bad, we went for a few drinks but then we fell out and I told him to fuck aff" Turns out she was meeting somebody in Belfast. A man, unnamed, romantically-linked in some way I gathered. They were having drinks of some kind and then it all went awry. Normally I wouldn't eavesdrop on things like this but the whole bus could hear it. No one else was talking. She hung up to her companion and began talking to her student friend again, launching into a spiel about this guy and what he'd done and what he'd said, and all the bastards under the sun that he was, too. By now the hairs on the backs of some passengers' necks started to prick. There were a couple of people, middle-aged, sitting at the back of the bus along with me...They weren't amused. Her phone rang again, the brilliant rendition of Countryroads' "Almost Heaven, West Virginia", booming proudly through the bus again. "HELLO!?" she answered. Turns out her phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing the whole way up the road, I'd hazard a conservative guess of about ten times at least. It must have been her botched 'date' because some sort of a row ensued, all sorts of expletives and threats of litigation and "You're dead when I see you" shouted down the phone. Once she'd finished that conversation she'd ring her friend on the phone and recount what had just been said during the other conversation, along with furious fiddling with texts and the occasional opinionated update to her student-friend beside her on the bus, in case she didn't already know. I looked at all this with great amusement, thanking her for providing me with entertainment after a long boring day at work. We were nearing Dungannon now and it was almost my time to get off. The middle-aged people beside me, one of them bald-headed, had had enough. Sitting in the seat in front, they tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention. "Excuse me, can you stop using your phone like that? It's very rude and annoying" The woman looked taken aback, mildly shocked at the prude behind. She turned round in a rather dramatic fashion and pointedly sulked while staring serenely at the seat in front. Her phone rang again. Countryroads. She answered. "HERE, I CAN'T TALK TO YOU NOW BECAUSE SOMEONE ON THE BUS DOESN'T WANT ME TO" His red-faced scowl was priceless, like a well-smacked baboon's arse. Sarcastic, audacious, a brilliant retort. "What a bitch" I was thinking, but in a funny way. "Why couldn't she have sat beside me?" I thought. To see the effect of her poison spread throughout the bus like an infectious disease, driving a horse and cart driven through the tranquility, made my day. To many casual observers she was obnoxious, a few too many beers perhaps, but I liked the fact more than anything that she didn't give two fucks. The world can do with a few people like that every now and again.
I, good sir, am in an advanced stage of intoxication. I think it was Matilda Wormwood's father who once said that the only people he knew who went to college were hippies and cesspool salesmen. I can't help but shake this notion. They’re the fabric of this society I think, set apart from the majority by an entirely different attitude…Yes, an entirely different attitude…As for me personally I’m merely an observer. I take a slurp of my drink. No. A stain. A stain on the fabric that can only be seen in a UV light, like disintegrating sperm. And listen here now. The hippies are the ones who go to festivals, ye know, enjoying themselves and whatnot. And the cesspool salesmen are the ones engaged in economic activity. They're the entrepreneurial light at the end of our dark tunnel—that is, if you feel a strong compulsion to view life in terms of tunnels. And so I feel, in life, you mostly either fall into these two categories. You can’t be a hippy and a cesspool salesman at the same time, because of the conflicting priorities. Three minutes later Steve Jobs was a hippy who went on to become a successful businessman. I've therefore come to the conclusion that my previous argument about hippies and cesspool salesmen is questionable...Actually it's invalid...Forgive me I'm quite drunk. You'll notice that my near-perfect spelling is at odds with this previously-stated state of inebriation, but if you can envision a screw-balled face on my part, and a squinted right eye staring at the screen, I am the dreaded nemesis of grammatical mistakes. My concentration, second to none, I feel a strange sense of pride at this didactic process I am engaged in, unappreciated by peers, continuing the dreamy yet important work of such titanic figures as Newton and Galileo. I will pontificate on such a diversity of subjects until the drink in my hand is no more, journeying down alleys and side-streets, and back again. It takes a big man to own up to his mistakes, you know, to set aside one's ego which inflates one's head like a hot air balloon. What matters is that I dreamed up a theory and debunked it myself. A man of genius makes no mistakes, so said some reputable man at one time or another, whose name escapes me. A man of genius makes no mistakes, no, his errors are said to be the “portals of discovery” but they are also, I surmise, grounds for dismissal in his entry-level nine to five job. “You're a genius my friend but you're absolutely useless” the manager says to the genius, who is sitting obediently in his office. “You keep making too many mistakes. We're gonna have to let you go, I'm afraid.” The man of genius walks away with the tail between his legs, but he'll soon have the last laugh when he goes on to become a world famous intellectual, with an oeuvre bigger than your mum's plump derriere. 2 hours later The two large mirrors in my room give an unexpected view of my smug face. I stare at myself. “You beaut.” I say. “Mon cher, Mon bambino, Mon ami” I shift into a practiced battle stance—Southpaw—and do head-butts towards the mirror. “Come on then, let’s have ye, you think you’re a machine?” And I really don’t know what the hell is going on but I’ve quite obviously worked myself into a terrible frenzy. “I’M ALEXANDER, HE'S NO ALEXANDER!” I got my war face on, gobs of spittle running down my chin. I take a big swig of a can of Carlsberg while looking out my back window and am struck by this glorious feeling of importance, with this extremely powerful sense that I’m going to fashion a successful niche in life in spite of all the haters. Thing is, and I hate to say this but it's the utmost truth...Okay...The haters don’t exist..In fact, come to think of it, nobody knows me. If Facebook was to act as any kind of social barometer I've got thirty friends and most of them are family. And while the haters are imaginary they still serve to fuel my pointless intransigence and, make no mistake about it, I’m going to prove every.single.one of them wrong.
Benny Gervais never went to Specsavers. After years of abusing his eyes he found himself being laboured with a squint from which he would never recover. While walking down the street his screwed-up face saw an obscure figure fast approaching him on the pavement. The face was devoid of all detail, to Benny like a blob of pink fleshy paint. He strained to see if he knew this person. Sadly, it was only when the man concerned was firmly inside his personal space that he could ascertain his identity with any real certainty. That person was Johnny Stokes, who grabbed Benny roughly by the scruff of the neck and proceeded to give him a bit of a pasting all over the street. Obstructed cars tooted their horns as both men flopped around in a mish-mash of grunts, windmill fists and bad centres of gravity. Benny looked goofily as he made the effort to untwist his large green coat which was placed over his head in a strategic move by his assailant. His eyebrows arched upwards in a look of pure misunderstanding and injustice, half-tripping over the kerb before Johnny Stokes pelted him with a couple of stones which bounced off the ground in front of him, only for Benny to skip out of the way on one foot as though dancing from bullets like in a Western. “Wanker. Where’s my twenty quid?” asked Johnny. Benny walked on. He couldn’t spare twenty quid in these recession-hit times. Now he had a black eye. Every person he passed on the street he looked at with this intense suspicion. He went into the bookies and his eye was the most conspicuous thing among all the blaring TVs. It shined like a plump, over-ripe piece of fruit. The man behind the counter, Raymie, he noticed it right away. “You’ve got a black eye Benny” he said. “I know” “Jesus what happened your eye?” Another man said. Benny gravitated right into his personal space. “Any chance ye’ll sub me a score?” “Fuck off” Benny always asked people for a ‘sub’ of money. The legacy of Johnny Stokes clearly didn’t have the intended disciplinary effect. The man in question turned towards the TV with his hand placed on his chin, a symbolic gesture for Benny to take his reprehensible personage elsewhere. Down, but not defeated, he headed into the pub next door. His eye was the subject of conversation everywhere he went. “What happened your eye? It looks like a Cadbury’s cream egg” “Jesus who done that to ye?” As hours passed the portfolio of Benny’s story had swelled into a complete fiction. He told a couple of real scorchers to people that he’d prevented a mugging; some woman with a child in tow who had almost gotten her handbag snatched. This got him a pint or two from people unfamiliar with common sentiments shared by those-in-the-know that Benny was a social scrotum of the highest order. To be avoided at all costs. When he grew tired of his first fairy tale, he began to tell different people it was to do with a burglar who broke into his house. He added all sorts of minute details into the story to suit his fluctuating mood. “So, picture this: I catch him red-handed with the toaster in his hand, and him sat there with the gawpin head on him, fer fuck sake…The toaster wasn't worth much like, only a tenner out of Tesco’s. And it so close to Christmas, too, that's the worst of it. I went to wrestle it off him and the wee fucker dropped the toaster and then chopped me in the eye before I could react. He was quicker than me, I’ll admit that. So I ran into the living room to get the poker and I says to him: ‘Hi boy. You better get the fuck outta here before I do ye in…Then the hard man…or the so-called hard man, should I say, shat himself and ran out the door with the tail between his legs…What do ye think a that?” “Eh…aye” “Any chance ye’ll sub me a score?” At the end of the Saturday night Benny found himself at a poker machine. He was completely blind drunk: literally. He couldn’t see a bloody thing. He’s pushing random buttons on the machine in the hope that he presses the right one. Pounds are being instinctively slipped into the slots as its position has been mapped through the touch of his grimy fingertips. He takes several slurps of his pint. He’s reached the stage now where the heart burn will put him on the verge of hospitalization the next day: Rennie’s to the rescue. For a man with no money he did pretty well for himself. Many people in the town had fallen foul of Benny’s money extortion racket. At the present time he couldn’t fuckin’ work the poker machine, though, which was all he cared about. “I can’t see” he said to the wall beside him.
I’m determined not to look out the window and describe the weather. All avenues about it have been exhausted. Basically there’s nothing one can say that would add any further vitality to the lexicon of descriptions about “the weather.” So...my blinds are closed. It could be sunny or cloudy, all I know is light is sifting through the blinds and I’m bathed in a brown sort of twilight, feeling content. I’m staring at my ceiling with the curious thought that I inhabit something of a shoebox. A cuboid four walls, floor and a ceiling, with the carpet stripped back to reveal nutty, time-tested strips of wood. I'm in an enclosure yet I feel free. How absurd. Something is out of place. Why am I so content? For instance my wallpaper. Look at it. It's dead, lifeless, lacking in...zest. By all means it should be a source of discontent. For if you stare at the ridiculous sky-blue abyss for long enough as Nietzsche said the abyss might stare back at you. But this is not always a bad thing. I pick at the wallpaper, and fashion little white balls, rolling the bits of paper between the index and thumb where I then flick it across the room. I’m content because I’ve no job to do today, no stress levels cranked to the rafters, or power dynamics in place which places me at the bottom of a hierarchical ladder with no authority or respect. No ambition, no drive. I am the happiest man alive. Pick a label. Call me lazy, a dreamer. Whatever. I close my eyes and on the back of the lids are plasma TV screens. It beams an image right across the horizon of my brain, which due to a lack of imagination is a virtual reality of the room I am sitting in. So what's the point? I open them. I see my curtains. For some reason I’m pre-occupied with them to an obsessive degree which unsettles me, if only for a moment. Those yellow monstrosities, complete with heinous blotches of blue, are designed in such a way as to crudely match the wallpaper. Looking in detail at the curtains reveals a sort of fine interweaving fabric, the same way if you suddenly look closely at your thumb a unique fingerprint is slowly revealed as the eye focuses. Wallpaper, curtains, abyss, fabric, lots of time to reflect...what’s it all about, eh? I remember watching Eraserhead one time, and one thing that struck me was the lady inside the radiator. She was perfectly happy doing a quirky little horizontal dance from one side of a stage to the other, to chirpy organ music on a loop. The repetitive music and dance routine suggested never-ending, cyclical eternity, but she looked so satisfied and content, and you were left in doubt she enjoyed her job as a vocation rather than a duty. And who’s to castigate her for not conforming to expectations? If, of her own free will that is, she wants to dance inside a radiator without anyone watching...Why would anyone burst her bubble?