In Bed

According to Horoscopes, it's currently the lunar high. Basically what that means is that the moon is presently in a position in its orbit that, from an Earthly viewpoint, makes it correspond with other stars in the sky in such a way that it casts positive feelings upon the peoples of this planet, and it also proves why I'm somewhat sceptical of astrology. I'm not feeling such positivity. I'm far from feeling high. The only thing high about me is my hair which, due to excessive sleeping and lack of hair washes, is stuck in an upright position one could easily assume to be a "bed-head" look or possibly an audition for Jedward.

With that in mind, I wouldn't so much say I'm depressed. However, with Winter very much here, that ol' Seasonal Affective Disorder has managed to kick in again (and for the record, whoever came up with the name of a mood-affecting mental problem which can be condensed into the anachronism SAD clearly shows severe signs of sarcasmic bastardery). Okay, I've never been officially diagnosed with what is essentially wintery depression, but I'm not denying that every end-of-year for the last six I've managed to (for no reason other than because I feel like it) not eat, think about how little money I have, and stay in bed for large portions of the day. Hell, I awoke at 11:30 this morning desperately needing to pee and it took me until after 1pm to actually get up and go. And what did I do for that hour-and-a-half of lying perfectly still? Why, a conversation with the self about... something... or something else, I can't remember which. Either way, it wasn't important enough for me to remember. Coming back to the present time as I type this, I'm back in bed and it's at this time I'm thankful that I'm a complete douche with a laptop as a well as a desktop.

Part of the reason for a poo-poo mood at this present time stems from my frustration at the University; my reasoning for this taking us back to the days of High School. Initially, we're told to prepare ourselves for deadlines so far in advance we could take the next two years off if we get a move on. That's why at this level of education I've fully expected to have preparations for assignment work (due in during the first week of December) drilled into me from day one. It's now two or three weeks before deadline and I still have nary an idea of how I'm supposed to approach such work. It's got to the point where I'm fully believing that the University is worse at keeping track of assignments than I am, and now we're at this point, I'm reluctant to even do them if it means I have to move at least three inches from this bed.

There was probably going to be more to this, but since it's taken me over an hour to get through that much it's quite clear I'm not even up to tapping away at this thing any more. Or using my brain to come up with more words. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a whole lot of nothing else to do today.

Showers

I've arrived here with a brain all of a mess, with nothing in particular to focus on, with a cup of tea I somehow forgot to put the teaspoon-and-a-half of sugar in but have been drinking it anyway because I simply can't be bothered going back to the kitchen.

I'm cold, so much so that I'm still shivering under three layers of clothing and a double duvet next to a radiator set to 22°C.

It's dark. The kind of "Winter's coming", four-in-the-afternoon dark where it's barely actually dark outside, but dull - the sun's on its way back under the horizon; a horizon blocked by the row of terraced house outside my window (which has the blinds shut, mind). I don't have the room light on, meaning that the only way I can see this keyboard as I type stuff on it is by crouching over it with screwed up eyes next to the fluorescent white currently projected from this monitor.

I need to pee, but I'm hellbent on finishing this first, even though I don't know where it's going or how long it will end up being. Incidentally, I just farted.

I have other work to be doing; work I should've been doing earlier in the week, or even late last week, but I haven't. Naturally you may think I've been leading an unbelievably interesting life in the time that's passed. I haven't. I've arsed about mostly, and when I haven't arsed about, I've been thinking of arsing about (is that how you spell "arsing", or does it have an 'e' in it?), and when I haven't been thinking of ars...thating about, I've been asleep, and when I haven't been any of the above, I've been so bored I've resorted to taking a shower because just sitting there makes me feel like I'm collecting dust, or germs, or procrastination mildew. I've been so bored I've showered an awful lot. I've had more showers this week than I have since April 2006... probably.

I'm currently down to one meal a day through current eating habits; two if you count a packet of instant noodles as a bona fide meal. I don't feel undernourished. I don't feel hungry at all. I could probably pass for anorexic if I didn't live so close to an onslaught of takeaways and kebab houses.

I keep thinking "there's got to be some story to this", but there isn't, and probably never will be. This is not a narrative. This is not a sharing of my opinion over a certain matter. This is an assortment of last minute, here-and-now observations I've decided to note down in a desperate attempt to force myself to fill this space up a bit more of a Wednesday.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off for a shower.

The Chilli/Chocolate Combination

 So here it is, as an 89th episode spectacular (and mostly because I can't be bothered tocome up with anything new today but want to stick to my once-a-week, doing-one-of-these-every-Wednesday kinda thing), my first (and so far only) published bit of rambling. Huzzah and joy and such. You can see the original broadcast of this one courtesy of those lovely people at Gumbo Press who make Word Gumbo, free and online. Based on its second-issue-from-August theme of "Opposites", this little bit goes on in very much the same way as the rest of my bollocks, in the way that I have a boring life which I attempt to make more interesting by using long words. And now that my back-up option is gone, it means from now on I'll have to actually write something every single week. Enjoy a wee slice of my typings past.

Have you ever tried chilli and chocolate? I haven't, but I imagine it to be absolutely awful. Although, having said that I don't really like chilli, so the fact that I'm using it in an argument seems somewhat redundant. It's not the chilli per se, but all hot and spicy food in general. Evidently, my tongue lacks the capacity it would normally need to have what you could call an "extensive palette", and instead decides to ignore any taste provided by such spices in lieu of screaming out 'Oh, my God, why? WHY?! The pain! Seven-thousand fire-tipped needles of pain, na na na, na na na, no we don't like vindaloo'. Fortunately, my tongue doesn't have a mouth of its own thus can't verbalise such exclamatory-ness whenever faced with such a situation at a formal dinner party (although, the idea of a formal dinner party that serves vindaloo as its main course seems a whole other situation altogether). But I digress...

I could've said "Have you ever tried cheese and chocolate?" since I can cope with cheese. I quite like cheese. In fact, half the time I order a pizza in, I'm a little tempted to leave all the extra toppings, ask them to hold the tomato sauce, and just forget the bread while they're at it in the hope that they'd be so kind as to just bring me a box of melted cheese, but I'm getting away from myself again here. I can't imagine cheese and chocolate being too complimentary. I mean for one thing, they both start with "ch" and end with "e"; it's a marriage made in Hell. (Moments after typing that, I noticed that "chilli" also starts with "ch" so had to add the thing about the "e" at the end too to make my point somehow appear valid.)

But I suppose the reason people like the chilli/chocolate combination comes down to their apparent oppositeness. Things just tend to work well together when accompanied by something on the other end of the scale: light and shade, sweet and sour, Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, they all manage to not overpower the other one. There's even more, an almost endless list of opposites that attract (which I won't go into on account of the fact that I'm already about 400 words into this and the fact that I'd like to go to bed sometime tonight), so why did I open with the food one?

Well it would be a bit rubbish if I didn't answer that question considering (a) the question has now been imposed unto the world, and (b) you didn't actually ask it, dear reader, but are now filled with moderate intrigue as to why I posed the question in the first place in the vague hope you get an answer to satisfy the aforementioned intrigue, meaning that I must now (a) come up with something which I suppose could validly be considered an appropriate answer, and (b) not go to bed.

Umm...

Ahh...

Oh, OK, how's this for ya? I've very recently become somewhat addicted to culinary ventures. I suppose (in my head) that's a fancy way of saying 'I like cooking', but of course it gets pretty tough trying to cook something exquisite when you're a student and you're essentially living off beans, mouldy bread and half an onion. Also I have a not-so-broad palette, did I mention? Therefore, I get my cookery fix from the magic picture-emitting machine in the corner of the room. I suppose I like to think that if this whole University course ends up falling through, or leaving me with no options, or Deal Or No Deal doesn't accept my application, or it does but when I get there I don't get my hundred grand, then at least I could try my hand at cooking.

Maybe not professionally, mind. That whole 'yes chef, no chef, three haggises full chef' malarkey, where Gordon Ramsay ends up saying the f word just because he fuckin' feels like it would probably get me down after a short while. But if I managed to end up in a Greasy Spoon somewhere, making tried-and-tested breakfasts for construction workers, et cetera, it wouldn't be the most terrible thing to me. Because right now, I know terrible. Terrible is sitting in front of the TV, watching people making the perfect duck à l'orange with glazed carrots and dauphinoise potatoes and other such things that sound really fancy while I'm chowing down on my third packet of Super Noodles of the day (and my sixteenth packet of the week).

So there. There's opposites. There's me, sat in a pokey little flat boiling a kettle for a living, versus the chefs working some amazing culinary processes on the best cuts of meat imaginable. I guess you could say that's more juxtaposition, or contrasting, but for the purposes of this little (well, I say 'little') rant about nothing in particular, I'm going to call it opposites. So there we have it. Opposites like chilli and chocolate complement each other, opposites like braised beef and wafer-thin ham make you feel terrible.

I suppose you could say they're opposites.