Cold Blue Post Boxes

(Why is that the title? Because why the fuck not. Write your own bloody stories you judgmental prick)

I awoke, as usual, to the sounds hard rock, today in the form of Somebody Got Murdered by one of my favourite bands, The Clash. I slowly rose, brushed my teeth, put on deodorant, and got dressed. I decided to wear a blue shirt with a hexagon pattern, grey trousers, a tan cardigan, and tan argyle socks. I rushed down the stairs to my front door with my phone, oddly heavy  briefcase, and my black overcoat with a The Who Union Flag pin on the lapel. I walked onto the deck. The only three things on the deck were a propane grill, a table wrapped up for protection from the harsh North American elements, and a copper alloy frog with a sundial on it’s back. I climbed down the set of stairs maneuvered over a path made mostly of ice, and went down the hill that made up our drive. I took a left and then crossed a perpendicular street and taking a right up an even greater hill, passing a blue American post box. I waited for the bus to arrive. I had gotten there earlier than my usual and it was fairly chilly. The bus came and the usual bollocks of an average day in the life of an expat in American high school began. I was feeling rather well that day too.

I stayed after a while longer for an academic extracurricular event and was on my way home at around four in the afternoon. It was sometime between talking to an eleven year old Brazilian about football and Gareth Bale and getting off the bus that I realised I hadn’t had my keys on me that day. I left them on the table next to the door and had forgotten them in my haste.

“No matter”, I thought. I had forgotten my keys loads of times and had always found a way in. I climbed the hill up the drive that lead to the garage and leaped over the icy path, jogged up the stairs, and placed my briefcase next to the door. I checked to insure I was indeed locked out. I was. Then I moved to the sliding door that had worked so well in the past.  I pulled at it quite a while before realising that it too was locked. I examined the frame to see if I could pull it out without much trouble. I couldn’t. I texted my mum to see what time she would arrive back from work and decided that with the right tools I could pick the lock.

I’ve picked a few locks in my time, some padlocks, a fireproof strong box even. I was relatively confident that with a few paperclips I could pick this house lock. I left my briefcase next to the door and ran down the stairs, over the familiar ice, and down the hill. I passed the blue post box, but this time went down the hill. The wind was strong and I buttoned the four buttons on my overcoat. I complained about how I detested wind and the cold. I found my way to a hardware store that was just a carpark away from the hill. I imagine I was out of place and after milling around a bit I bought a set of hobbyist files that looked narrow enough to pick a lock for about twenty dollars. Luckily, I had forty on my person, since I went out a few days previous to that. I crossed the busy road to the neighbourhood supermarket.

“Hey, Nate”, I heard with the sun in my eyes.

I replied, “Hello, Sheldon”. I didn’t see him, but I knew he was the only person I knew working there and I recognised the Canadian accent. He was collecting the trolleys in the carpark.”I got locked out of my house, I just picked these up” showing him my impromptu lockpicking kit. “I was wondering, if you had paperclips”.

The Canadian said “I can get you one, if you like”.

“That’d be great, two would be ideal”, I said as we entered the blissful warmth of the market.

“I’ll get you three, if you want”.

“Are you sure, mate? I don’t want to put you out of your way”, I say with a laugh. He hands me the the three paperclips, I thank him, he says he’ll see me to-more-o, and I leave. I think about buying something to eat, but I figure I’ll be home soon enough to eat there. I climb up the hill, past the post box, up the other hill , and I’m back on the deck.

I got to work, my hands were cold and I was losing dexterity by the minute. The paperclips were utterly ineffective and I couldn’t maneuver the picks to push in any of the pins. I took a picture of my lockpicking efforts and made a note to make fun of it later on Twitter. I moped around for a few minutes and went back to the market. I was a bit peckish and decided to buy a loaf of cheap bread, Goldfish crackers, two small bottles of orange juice, a Hershey bar, and a pack of gum. I was purchasing my goods and bantering to Sheldon who was tending the counter behind me. In the span of an hour, he had been promoted from trolley fetcher to bagger (never underestimate the work ethic of the Canadian race). I left the market again, vowing to never return.

I got a call from mum, who said her last patient had canceled and she was coming home “early”. I ran up the hill and eating Goldfish to avoid both hunger and the cold. I got home. Rather, I got to my deck. I dumped out the contents of my bag and looked them over and decided this was the time to tweet cleverly. I made a joke about my lockpicking inability and the very unhealthy nature of my emergency picnic. I was scrolling through Twitter, my back on the house, and my knees bent skyward. I would have scrolled more, but my hands had become cold and I was losing feeling in them. I ate my Goldfish, until I was too cold for that. My legs were cold in the air and I laid down, as I’d seen the homeless on at least two continents do. My side ached until I found a way to be comfortable. I was on my side, my legs curled into my chest. I put my hands into my jacket and placed them promptly under my armpits. I had lost feeling in them and they were a pretty unappealing colour by this time. Instead of eating it, I found the loaf of bread to be a useful pillow.  I lay trying to think about anything, but the cold. Love, life, the Universe, and everything. I thought about the work I had to do, my blog, everything. After a while, I could only think of the cold. The shivers started. Sporadically at first, but they became more frequent and more prolonged. I tried sleeping, it was worse than trying to rise from and then promptly trying to sleep in vain. When my lack of consciousness overpowered the cold, it became a sort of waking dream. I saw the sun set behind a tree that looked as if it were a painting with long, stretching, leafless branches. A single star in the sky, as it changed from pale blue to dark Van Gogh like swirls. The stars multiplied as the hour grew later and later. Slipping back into a cognitive state was far worse. My mind told me to get up and move to warm up. I did so and getting back down was pain in itself. My legs touched the chill borders of my trousers, my hands were re-exposed, and it took ages to get comfortable again. I turned to face the wall of the house, unlike before. I tried to help myself to a piece of gum, but my hands were too cold to fiddle about with the packaging. The shivers began again and I entered the frozen sort of half sleep once more. This time I thought of all the rough sleepers, homeless, and other tramps in all the relatively cold countries and looked at society with disgust. I tried to get my mind off it and the cold by thinking warm thoughts, of hugs and love, and childhood winters spent at my gran’s. I thought of laughing with friends and kisses from strangers and the nirvana found in listening the perfect piece of music or staring at something just long enough for it to be beautiful or long enough to recognise the beauty that was in front of you the whole time. I removed my hand from my cardigan and overcoat surrounded armpit and reach for my phone. I begin to type to my mum. “Very cold. ETA?” I hear a car pull up and see the light flash about. I don’t get up. The last few times I had gotten up and it was a major disappointment and physically draining. I hear the garage door open and it takes a few minutes to sink in. I rise to my feet, which I realise were nearly as cold as my hands. Sprint down the stairs, leaving the deck strewn with my picnic and other supplies. I vault over the ice and sprint like a madman into the garage before mum gets a chance to say a word or pull in. I feel the heat upon entering the garage and throw open the door. I bounded up the stairs to my room. I strip. First my overcoat flies off. Then I pull my cardigan over my head and unbutton my shirt for what seemed like ages, but was probably ten seconds. Next is the black undershirt. I pull off my trouser and pants in one swoop, after unbuckling my belt. I throw off my glasses, rip off my watch, and take my pewter necklace off and throw it to the ground clattering. I enter the shower that has been running since I made it up the stairs. It is now near boiling. I enter the stream and all I feel are my hands and feet burn as each nerve cell in them fires a jolt to reestablish feeling in the area. The rest of my body feels cold as my extremities burn with a napalm like intensity. I move my fingers and toes to regain dexterity. Then my muscles tensed, as the shock from one extreme to another. My arms and legs were sore. My digits felt arthritic I realise I forgot I had a nose and ears for some time. As the pain left, I began to think.

I returned to thinking of the poor, homeless, rough sleepers, and those who must go without heat to get by. These people go through tenfold what I did and they do it everyday for a good portion of their lives. I find that any government that so allows such destitution to go on is no government at all. I had food, I had more or less decent clothes. I was only out there three or so hours. There are people starving, ill equipped, and cold out there and nobody is coming up a hill, past a blue post box, up the drive, to open the garage for
them. They only have us and governments more focused on blowing up civilians in third world countries, monitoring their own law abiding citizens, and getting reelected.

Image Credit: http://www.longisland.com/news/01-09-14/purchase-forever-stamps-before-price-of-stamps-increase-on-jan-26.html

Daleks: Post-Extermination

(Possible spoilers, if you’re REALLY behind, have just started watching, or are interested in watching Classic Who) Episodes 12 and 13 of Series 4 of the reboot shows mark the return of Davros and his Dalek creations.

On the planet Skaro, two species were at war for control of the planet. The Kaleds and the Thals were pitched in a millennium long struggle. The Kaleds lived under an oppressive totalitarian military regime. Not dissimilar to Nazis with identical jingoistic and racially motivated intent. The Kaled and Thal struggle also resembles the predicted culmination of the Cold War, where forces of  Capitalism and Communism would struggle for World domination. A Kaled scientist, Davros, created the ultimate weapon. He manipulated the radioactive fallout affected Kaleds to create a cyborg warrior class known as the Daleks, see what he did there. His creations were even more bent on racial purity and world conquering than their creator. They eventually usurped the Kaleds and later Davros himself and created several Civil Wars between Davros’ forces, the Imperials, and the Renegades and then later the Time War, with the Time Lords. Both factions sought Universal domination and the extermination of all other inferior species. Daleks also see other mutated or diluted Daleks as inferior and have been known to kill their inferiors on numerous occasions.

Now just a bit more  background. In episodes 12 and 13, the Daleks, with the aid of Davros and Dalek Caan, have assembled a Reality Bomb in order to destroy all matter in the universe, which will be relayed via the Medusa Cascade across all other parallel universes and dimensions and the Void. Thus killing all other organisms in all of existence. Ok. Now what? Of course the Doctor and friends will stop them, but what if they didn’t? What if Davros succeeded in destroying the whole of reality, leaving only the Imperial Dalek fleet? What would they do? Rebuild? They are infertile. This sect of Imperials is  created out of Davros’ own cells ripped from his own chest. They are obsessed with the extermination of all other species, but unlike the Nazis they have no endgame. The Nazi’s would unite all Germanic and Scandinavian civilisations. Then they would kill the Slavs, the Jews, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the gays, and probably everybody else if they won the war, after putting them into slavery first. They would achieve Lebensraum, or living space, they would spread out conquer the world betray their allies eventually. Creating a unified, totalitarian, batshit insane world government. It’s sick and disturbing, but you can rationalise it. It might make you a bit sick inside, but you can rationalise it. Why destroy the Universe? You have no resources. Maybe they have the 27 planets, that are acting as the bomb’s conduit across the Medusa Cascade. They haven’t reached a post scarcity economy, I don’t think so anyway. So they have a finite amount of resources. Can they go on indefinitely or will they slowly die out. Their life support is a mystery and they will be left with only 27 planets for millions, if not billions of Daleks and Davros. What kind of life is that? I know they’re Daleks. Their quality of life is pretty shit and they’re programmed to accept that. They don’t get depressed, but they don’t get happy either. They have some sense of pride, but how long will that last. All of reality destroyed, except for  loads of spaceships and maybe a few planets. They’d get bored with nothing to destroy. Davros is human. Well, Kaled anyway and sort of… He’s on a spaceship full of Daleks that think they are vastly superior to him and he only has a demented Dalek Caan for any real company. What could they do?

So what’s their endgame? What’s the point? Would they found New Skaro? Would they revert back into their humanoid forms? Would they fragement into different factions and go back to Civil War, but what would they fight over?  It’s just a pile of cosmic dirt and scrap metal. What do you think?  I’d really appreciate your thoughts. Thanks for your patronage and if I got something wrong please correct me, so I can edit this and look less like an idiot.

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Cognitive Behavioural Bullshit

It has always seemed my life has been broken into two parts. Those of intense interest, characterised by childlike wonder and a sense of immersion, and those of extreme boredom, characterised by a blasé attitude to just about everything. I typically spend the time I spent in the latter trying to find something that brings me into the former. Anyway, it was during my horribly existentialist period when I did little or nothing, unless I found it appropriately amusing. Teachers would say,  “write this essay”‘and I would respond “well, what’s bloody the point? Life’s inherently meaningless and I could be watching films or walking and writing poetry”. This was a problem apparently. So they sent me off to a therapist, I think this was the first of them. We were talking and I said I was unhappy because people always told me what to do and I had no actual freedom to do anything that actually meant something to me. They asked “well, what would make you happy?”. I explained that I either wanted to be abandoned in a foreign country to my own devices or I wanted to just walk cross-country/hitchhike/backpack to everyplace of interest and I would take my trumpet and harmonica, use my comedy routine at art festivals in Edinburgh and other such places, and generally just peddle for money. They said that this was a highly improbable career path for an eleven year old and, most likely, unsafe. I said “Well, you told me to find something that’d make me happy and I did. The improbability and security aspects of it are entirely meaningless to the overall goal and the predictability and security of my life’s current set of affairs may very well be what makes it so dull”. Essentially what cognitive behavioural therapists try to do is they precede you down a very narrow path through specifically vague questions. These questions are intended to create an appropriate response and result in a state of realisation in which the patient (or client as the medical industry believes is less “offensive”) jumps off the chaise longue (For the spellingly sceptic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaise_longue ), exclaims”eureka”, firmly shakes the therapist’s hand, and runs out of the office a changed man. When you are clever, or crazy, enough to observe the faulty parameters of their logic, they then attempt to throw you out. being as kind as possible to avoid altercation. Another such instance of mine at a therapist’s demonstrates this perfectly.

There I was. A thirteen year old with a motivational problem sitting in a chair counting the tiles in the ceiling once again. What really irritated me was how the tiles met the wall. Not quite half a tile on the far side of the room. I never quite knew how to count those. I still don’t. I try to round it to an appropriate fraction, but I’m never quite content with it. Every once in a while I looked down to make eye contact with the therapist, trying to time it to when he looked up from his note taking. “So when you have one of these anxiety attacks, what are you so worried about?”, he asked, looking over his glasses. “Well, besides society and the basic human condition, I’m just worried about some personal stuff and I’m just, sort of, afraid”, I say rather sardonically. My attempt at humour had failed, but my careful word choice led him away from my interpersonal relations. He asked, “What are you afraid of?”. “I’m just afraid I’ll get worse. That I’ll wake up one day and not be me. I’m afraid I’ll be cruel and hurt people. I’m afraid I’ll snap and become a sadistic sociopath or a suffering schizophrenic”. “Ah, a problem”, thought the therapist, “a perfect opportunity to use a cognitive behavioural strategy, so much better than psychoanalysis”. He asked “How worried does the thought of getting worse make you, on a scale of 1-100?”. “I don’t know, about 85”, I really despise how subjective these scales are and it showed in my tone. “Now, what evidence do you have of getting worse do you have?”. “Well”, I paused, “none I suppose”. “Now how does it make you feel, having realised that you have no evidence to support your fear?” I snapper, not only had he forced me to use a scale, but he asked me “How does that make you feel?”. I calmly begin my rant, “No change”, I swallow, “It’s a fear. By the very definition, it’s irrational. All you’re doing is trying to use a lack of evidence to prove a point. At least, Creationists have creation to go off of. My fear is also about the future. Just because I have no evidence now, it doesn’t mean I will have no evidence in the future. I have no evidence to suggest I’m getting any better. I realise my fear is irrational, but the whole point of fear is to keep you alert. If being afraid of getting worse keeps me acutely aware of getting worse than that could mean a world of difference and that’s enough of a reason for me”. The tables had turned. Usually the clock works in my favour, now it was in his. “Well, it’s getting close to the end of our session. I feel you may want to come back again in a couple of weeks, but if you don’t want to that’s perfectly acceptable”. “Same time two weeks from now should work”, I say, while raising from the uncomfortably comfy chair. I walk out, wondering if I should have told him I wanted to stop coming as much as he wanted me to stop coming.

They asked me the same question, about what I should do to be happy, again rather recently and I told them more or less the same thing I told them the first time round. About wanting to just go mobile and go wherever I fancy by whatever means necessary. They told me it still wouldn’t work and I’d just be running away from my problems and so on. Then they told me I didn’t get the point of the exercise (if I haven’t made this clear already a therapist’s child is a therapist’s worst nightmare) and I pulled a loose paraphrasing of the above John Lennon quote  out of my arse and told them they didn’t get the point of life.

Gender Role Reversal

Gender Role Reversal

Really powerful, informative piece on what it’s like to be a woman in society and what it would like like if the roles were reversed.

Clubbing and Associated Misadventures

After a night of loud music, sweaty people, and shoddy dancing (among other things), I want to clean my mind out. So I’m just going to write things and hope it’s art/artlike/resembling something that someone somewhere at sometime has called art/ amusing. 

A pitiful mess in a volcanic dress with the desire to find the one and escape the mire. To find love and from clubbing retire. Yet there is the pretender, whom we all remember as the unlucky lad who thought he had had the girl of his dreams back at his pad. A silent flat he awakes to and unhappily finds the girl of his dreams has changed with the times. He went to go out, to erase his pout with cheap alcohol and associated gall to find a girl and not always feel sick. Tear stains down her eyes because her boyfriend’s a dick. She intends to go and she intends to go quick. When a friend comes along, whose life’s put together and there for her regardless of weather. A trip to the washroom became for like a posh room for when they came out they left no doubt that to see the girl in the red was worth dropping dead. The unlucky lad, the insufferable cad, had one too many a drink and had become slow to think. He stood rather stoic, but before he would know it, he saw the formerly hot mess in the volcanically hot dress. His drunken attempt to forget with contempt had been harshly uprooted as the thought intruded. That his thoughts which made him randy had turned far more dandy. The unfortunate pulling of his heart strings, the pounding background noise that made his ears ring conspired against him and added to anxiety, barely aided by his current insobriety. Though she was scared and afraid, her face was determined and brave. She still wanted to leave, but her friend would not believe any excuse or take verbal abuse. She was then pushed by miss Brutus to the  habitually clueless unlucky lad who may have been sad. They danced rather poorly, but with foolish grins, and surely, but slowly, events proceeded uncontrollably. One ran from love, the other from sorrow. They had a tomorrow and the truth of the matter was in the clubbing clatter of mindless chatter in the depths of two hearts shattered, something did live and that thing did grow, though not without woe.The exact end is impossible to know. Others say lust, more still say lies, others shout it’s a must that one of them dies. In those moment of life, of petty strife, of dramatic romantics wielding a knife, there are times where two mistakes can lead to a right and in the debauched sense of that night, good things could happen and now then… Goodnight.

Then it occurred that I really did write that. Nonsensical drivel, not fit for an epitaph. The whole thing is not what I now speak of, just the sappy bit at the end, not the possibility of some meek love. That just makes me sick, so intolerably queasy. Parodying cliches is remarkably cheesy and incredibly easy. It’s a cheap trick and if you read this, you deserve better. The length of this, my mind did fetter. I humbly beg thee for thanks, I’ll say goodnight now before my mind…. blanks.

Timey Wimey Gendery Rendery Racial Spacial Stuff

I am a lifelong Whovian, even before the rebirth of the popular television series back in 2005. It’s just something I’ve grown up with and have learned to love it, as only a nerd can. For those who don’t know, Doctor Who is the quintessentially British science fiction show. It started in 1963 and is one of the longest running television programmes of all time. It follows the travels in time and space of the Doctor, a seemingly human alien with two hearts, and the human companions he chooses to accompany him. The Doctor is a Time Lord. This species has incredibly long life spans and the ability to avoid death by regenerating in a different form with an almost entirely different personality (each Doctor being played by a different actor. This ability of regeneration has caused some controversial (and basically wrong) statements to be made on the subject.

Some people say that the Doctor has to be a white, British man. I’ll tackle the cultural and ethnic part of this first. This is bullshit from the perspective of DW canon. It is possible for Time Lords to regenerate from black to white, as evident in Mels’ transformation into River Song in the episode Let’s Kill Hitler. From a moral perspective this is blatantly racist. Recently actor, Idris Elba was considered for an incarnation of the Doctor and that would have been pretty awesome, though unorthodox. As Jingoistic as it is to say, I personally believe the actor who plays the Doctor should be British. The show is British. It is an element of British culture. Just imagine James Bond being an American and working for the CIA instead of MI6. Imagine Burt Reynolds instead of Roger Moore in that role, it’s a vomit worthy notion. I’ll cite Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, as an example of what happens when a British role goes to an American. The film’s redeeming qualities are Alan Rickman being the most badass Sheriff of Nottingham ever and Morgan Freeman, obviously. However, Kevin Costner’s portrayal of an American Robin Hood, or at least a Robin Hood with an American accent, is laughable at best. Even other nationalities wouldn’t quite fill the role. As much as I was entertained by an Aussie friend of mine’s portrayal of the Doctor as an Australian… But still,it just isn’t right any other way and loses that sense of quintessential Britishness…

Now to sex… People who would be accepting of a black or Asian Doctor say that the Doctor could not possibly be a woman. This is based on fallacies like he can’t regenerate as a woman, which is wrong on so many levels it isn’t even worth going over it, that he would lose the essential elements of Doctor-ness, and sexist stuff, which is also too stupid to illicit a proper response. What makes the Doctor the Doctor is different to everybody who watches the show. There are certain elements that connect each of the Doctors together like a responsibility to save innocence, general curiosity, encyclopedia like knowledge, and a general hatred against the stupid/ignorant, who muck nearly everything up anyway. A woman could very easily have all of these traits and would just bring her own perspective to it like any male actor would. The Fifth Doctor had to deal with people complaining that the Doctor couldn’t be a young man. The Tenth, David Tennant, had to put up with some naysayer’s complaining that a Scot couldn’t be the Doctor. These Doctors have become some of the most popular. A woman actor could very easily pull it off. Also if I were to ever to play the Doctor, I think I would prefer to be the Doctor after a woman because then I could be wondering where my breasts have gone when I regenerate and show surprise in having a penis again. It sounds stupid, but I think it could work. Fish fingers and custard sounds pretty stupid too, but they’ve become symbols of idolatry to the fandom. So yeah, a black British woman Doctor is perfectly acceptable, but PLEASE no Americans!!!! or the French for that matter….

 

Bit of a shout out to Mike Rugnetta at PBS Idea Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/pbsideachannel?feature=watch ) and his video on What Does The Doctor Mean to You http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-WtqAD6kMU 

No Prospect of Progress Part 1

Will Simpson sat disappointingly in his arm chair. Laptop on (quite appropriately) his lap, knowing full well that his mother, or other authority figures, would point out the likelihood of it giving him some manner of crouch specific cancer or render him, at the very least, infertile. He stared blankly at his screen, waiting in the hope that something will happen. Anything really, so that it would provide the slightest bit of entertainment or amusement into his boredom. Perhaps, a friend would tweet a witty insight that he could reply to that would make him look clever or a politician he disliked would do something stupid, so he could rage about that. Alas, his friends proved remarkably dull and granted him no epiphany worthy thoughts and, for the first time in recorded history, a politician had not had a publicised affair.

In his pondering into the utmost rarity of these events, his screen went black. The light was just so that he saw his reflection. His black hair and pale features accentuating his blue eyes, which were barely visible in the dark surface. Them being his eyes however, he was relatively certain they were blue. Looking at his reflection, he reflected over the time spent staring into mirrors spiking his black hair, applying eyeliner, and painting his nails the darkest and most soulless colour of black he could possibly procure. He wasn’t a Goth, so much as an existentialist academic with a taste for loud music and a flair for dramatic dress. He owned, or only wore, four colours of shirt. Black, grey, blood red, and any combinations of the three. He took great delight in looking like a stylish corpse with a makeup artist and generally disappointing his family. He was relatively certain, even to this day, that his “difficult” childhood was the major reason his Aunt Rose never had children or perhaps it was because she was a lesbian. Granted: we have the technology to make that work and there’s adoption and the like, but Will recognised there was a strong correlation between being homosexual and not having children. He knew homosexual parents were out there, and good for them and all that, but there are proportionately less of them than the breeding hetero-class of parents.

His early childhood was charecterised by imagining himself in a red uniform battling hordes of Zulus or sinking fleet after fleet of Napoleon’s finest officers. It was at about age thirteen, that a young William Simpson realised that the Zulus were defending their homeland from forces of Imperialist profiteering scoundrels and, although finding no cultural or moral obligation against warring with the French, he learned that he became sea sick with a remarkable level of ease.

He stood, placing his portable sterilisation machine on his desk, strewn with papers, pens, several wires of unknown origin, and a book or two. He went to the loo to stand in front of a mirror with the tap running. He wet his face to insure that the current reality he was indeed the realest reality he could be inhabiting. He looked back into the mirror and imagined the aneurysm his teen self would have had, if the moody sod had seen him now. He looked like the epitome of a punk teens broken dreams. The top of his white shirt was unbuttoned and his shirt was untucked out of exhaustion from a long day at an office and not to make a statement of any kind. His hair was remarkably unspectacular, his eyes completely unaccentuated, and his nails a biological skin tone. He then made his way to his bed to lay down on his back and stare at the ceiling. He was somewhere in between just looking at the ceiling and staring into the wondrous infinity of the universe, when his phone vibrated twice.

Two vibrations means a text. A text means some blessed individual has taken time out of their busy schedule to bless him with their wisdom and be the subject of their thoughts. The anticipation of who it was and what it could be about. He calmed himself and took a few deep breaths to satisfy the racing thoughts. To avoid looking too desperate he slowly reached down into his pocket. And pulled it out. He looked at his screen and was immediately disappointed. It read: “Mum: How you been? Haven’t heard from you in a bit. Your brother’s home from uni. Come by and say hello?” He threw his phone on his bed and thought “Fuck off mum. I’m extraordinarily busy”. He reclined back onto his bed to place the wretchedness of his life with the wretchedness of others. He was feeling particularly wretched when something that was probably positive happened. His phone buzzed twice. He reasoned that his mother, though annoying, is hardly repetitive. That left only one possible option it was somebody else. It couldn’t be dad. His father ignored him most days. His brother resented that Will’s theatrical childhood overshadowed, his brother, Stephen’s glowing abilities. So that meant it had to be somebody else. He fumbled through his sheets looking for his phone. He searched frantically, then realised that he was acting too excited and changed to a more nonchalant manner to appear cool to his empty room. He found his mobile and read the message from…

I appreciate your patronage in reading this. I’ll be sure to keep you posted. 

Gaining Notoriety through Rampant Impropriety Caused by Anxiety over General Society

You know that general rotting stomach feeling? It’s the combined feelings of apprehension, nervousness, disappointment, fear, anxiety, overwhelming dread,  panic, and general unease. It is the feeling of having eaten several large stones that are now contorting and re-positioning themselves, placing enough heat and pressure to create diamonds and other precious and semiprecious stones. It’s a feeling that most people get before talking to somebody they fancy or a boss or disappointed parent (is there any other kind?) and under circumstances of questionable moral, ethical, or other social decisions. Other people. including myself, suffer from this feeling nearly constantly. Either because we are experiencing any of those actual problems or thinking about any of those problems. Usually, it’s a combination of those problems or, under extreme circumstances, all of the problems. I am puzzle oriented. I need near constant things to think about in order to keep myself generally amused and sane. I have this symptom of “hyper-focus”, which sounds really cool and somewhat like a superpower.  It is not. It’s generally associated with attention deficit disorders and the like. It means, I have the skill to become intensely focused on nearly anything and the ability to stare at walls for abnormal lengths of time. This is really great for my puzzle solving and, when used properly, can be moderately beneficial. It provides a rush to be able to pour all of your energy into one subject and achieve some end. This is where my endless supply of useless information comes in (much to the chagrin of those who have to play Trivial Pursuit with me). However when I’m lacking a puzzle or any subject of interest around, it turns internally and feeds all of my preexisting anxiety. The general advice to avoid this is to not focus internally or on any of the colossal fuck ups of my social, public, or personal lives. My perfunctory knowledge of human behaviour, micro-expressions (google this, they are pretty cool), psychology, and word choice can create may different problems for me. My “hyper-focus” can turn its attention to those around me and that’s not very good at all. Being able to, or at least trying to, interpret human expression or word choice and applying that to human behaviourism and psychology is pretty mindnumbingly anxiety provoking. It essentially leads to an obsession with the minute actions of others. Interestingly enough, this obsession is caused by a compulsion of my own random thoughts because the attention can snap off and be turned into something productive,  like the political system of Venice in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. This focus can be turned to nearly anything and can run rampant at times. Bouncing from topic to topic, as sporadically as Robin Williams… Well, him doing anything really… Anyway, the subject can change from sociology, to philosophy, to logic, to particle physics, to history, to human behaviour, to my friends, to life, to existentialism, to theology, to humour, to just about anything. It follows a very thin thread connecting all of them together and bringing them all back to eventual sanity being restored. This thing can fluctuate from brief periods of complete and utter brilliance (that is my mind doing what I actually want it to or, at least, need it to) to hours of intense research or reflection. Most of the time, the short spurts of creativity outweigh the crippling state of the zealous persecution of my own mind and soul… Alas, one must take the good with the bad. One mildly self-destructive behaviour I have adopted is quite stupid and well worth making fun  of to the Internet. I say stupid things (also known, in most cases, as the truth) to people or, at least things that lead people to discover the truth with the right questions. By creating this anxiety for myself, I avoid having to think of my actual problems. In this way, I can guess how the stress will make me feel, so it isn’t as bad as it would be if my mind wandered down a bunch of random paths. In short, anxiety kind of sucks… Yet, I am practically defined by my anxiety. I worry (oh the irony! How very meta?) that as I seek medicinal remedy to this anxious problem, the solution could change me. Alter my cognitive or, worst yet, my creative processes. If the whole bloody point is to make me “normal” then sod it all. If I could be better, but not be me, as it were, I certainly don’t want it. Unless it could, perhaps, make me into one of my idols, like Graham Chapman, Douglas Adams, or Cicero. That would be rather cool, but STILL I feel there is something worth worrying about. If the medications for the anxiety, and whatever else they shove down my throat, work than I will greet the pseudo-psycho-pharmaceutical industry with open arms. Until then, I’ll just have to be anxious about it and write ill conceived and poorly delivered blog posts about it.