The Corridor

Hi there. You know, we've had a lot of fun over here and we've touched on quite a few important topics - procrastination, boredom, weather - and they've all been a approached with an air of witticism and whimsy you probably wouldn't normally waste on a dog with cataracts. But now, we here at this blog (by which I mean "me here at this computer") have decided to focus on some of the bigger things in life. Bigger things like houses, trees, erm... what else? Statues, they're pretty big too.

Okay, there probably won't be much of a focus on statues. Or trees. Or physically large things. Or anything of importance, really. I feel like the need to reinvent the whole nature of the meaning of this place but I just know I'll only end up reverting and defaulting to mundane stuff, like the fact that my new bedroom is significantly smaller than my old one. Furthermore, this bedroom is situated adjecent to next-door's bathroom which seems to be perpetually inhabited by a bloke with irremovable phlegm in his throat, not matter how often and constantly he makes that throaty HHWWKKKH noise. He's even doing it now. Twenty-three times, in fact, during this paragraph.

Ever since my initial moaning about not having work, I've been thrust into two potential lines of work, allowing me to keep a metaphorical foot in the present day whilst also symbolically stepping into a potential future career. Going along with that metaphorical image there you've got in your head just now, I want you to imagine life as one big corridor that starts a birth and pretty much just forms an extention of a birth canal. Actually, yeah, there's an idea. Picture your mum's gateway to the world forming the entire wall at the end of a corridor. Don't worry, it's not naughty, it's natural. We all came from there. Well, no, we didn't all come from your mum. We came from our own mums, respectively. Where the hell am I going with this? Now turn around. No, not physically you idiot, now you can't read this.

Turn back.

Good.

Hi again. Now turn around in the corridor in your head and stop looking at your mum there. At the other end of that corridor is a bright light that people in movies are told not to go towards when they're lying in a pool of their own innards and feebly reaching upwards. Whatever that light is, that's the end. And along the way, the life corridor is lined with many, many doors. And behind each of these doors is some kind of opportunity like a job or the ownership of property or a bikini-clad woman on a motorbike (or if she's not your thing, a charcoal dusted bloke holding a fire-hose near to his groin as some kind of sexual metaphor). Many of these doors remain closed to us but if you get to the right place at the right time, and occasionally talk your way past the bouncers well enough, you're granted access to whatever opportunity lies within.

Great. Now that we've established that metaphor I can explain the related image that's in my head. Basically, after months (or what seems like months) of nothing, two doors have decided to open for me around the same time and I'm essentially stretching across the length of the corridor trying to prop both opposing doors open with a foot each. Okay, I pretty much nailed it already with the foot metaphor earlier, but I like the corridor one better. Plus I just made you imagine a lot of images with words, which is the thing I like most about writing, really.

In the meantime, when I'm not worrying about leading a future double life like some lame superhero who's a checkout assistant by day, but by night puts his underwear on last and goes by the name of Freelance Copywriter Boy, I'm playing old video games, watching American sitcoms and kidding myself into being more cultured by reading novels very, very slowly. Also I seem to be perpetually cleaning a house that's just completely out to get me - mentally - because it like gathering mess whenever I'm not looking. Speaking of which, since moving here, I've designated Wednesday as "Cleaning Day" and I'm not about to go throwing away some weekly tradition by neglecting it, thus leaving it for another entire week like it's some kind of mindless blog.

Complaining

A lot of the time, I find I'm never happy with anything. Case in point: I've just spent the best part of the last 40 minutes typing up post completely different to this, only to completely delete the lot and start on this instead. See, I can tell when it's a rubbish topic and that I'm not actually interested in what I'm writing when the paragraphs are short and take forever to come up with because I keep stopping mid-sentence to check the dirt under my fingernails. In hindsight, it's really not all that good anyway when the post essentially talks about swearing toddlers and the fact that babies - just like the rest of us - defecate.

Since my last moan-fest on here about how I have no means of financial support, two job offers have found their ways into my inbox, causing me to stop blaming the virtual postmen for losing my stuff in the vast ether and actually realising that I'm able to receive messages just fine. Furthermore, the fact that two of my conquests managed to get back in touch with me, that means that the other 37 people and places I've politely asked for employment have all ignored me and that they're obviously bastards.

The two respondents - whom I'd like to stress are definitely not bad at all - cover bother short- and long-term bases for me; one could potentially help to kickstart a career in writing whilst the other is what could be classed as "the day job" people are often advised not to give up. So soon, I could have regular access to money and stop complaining about how I'm never happy. Actually, that's a point. Since I complained about it so much in my last post, only for job-related advances to occur in my life, I could use this bit of web space to my advantage and moan about more things I'm not happy about. Then over the course of the coming week I can expect my luck to turn.

At the risk of sounding topical, I'd like to end by moaning about the latest monarchistic birth and how nobody cares what name he'll be given. At least I don't anyway. It's not like I've put a bet on what the kid's name will be that I'm not going to win. Stupid baby. Anyway, if you're reading this in 2089, Your Majesty, with your brain linked up to the Ultra-Hyper-Inter-Highway from your throne in the floating palace of the sky metropolis of New Londinium, I'm turning 100 years old around now. If you weren't offended by that "stupid baby" remark and you can find it in your heart to not execute me, I'd very much like a congratulatory birthday telegram or whatever it is you get when you're 100 now. If I don't get it soon, I'll only write a blog post (or think it, or however we put stuff on here now) complaining about it, meaning I'll definitely get it within the next week.

What am I doing?

Okay, erm. Well at the moment I don't really have anything else to complain about. If anything comes up though, I'll be in touch. Thanks Universe.

Limbo

Life, I've discovered, is made up of all those engagements, appointments and important adult-related things that occur in between sparsely posted blog entries. After a quick look back, the last time I came here I was in the midst of packing up an old dwelling and reminiscing about a long gone childhood. In the time that's passed since then, I've moved from one house to another, organised the ensuing clutter, attempted to find work, spent sweltering nights wishing I could sleep in a cooler environment, got a stye on my eye, got rid of a stye on my eye, attempted to find work, thrown an academic cap in the air, added another annual notch to my future gravestone and attempted to find work. A lot of this I've done without regular access to the internet in the middle of a housing tranfer, so I've not really been able to document it at all here, really. Sorry.

There's an overwhelming sense of self-worthlessness that comes with existence. Days get spent in a zombified state on the couch, staring vacantly at moving images supposed to entertain you. There's an underlying context to any piece of TV or film which essentially just screams out "What is your meaning/purpose/existence worth when this is the most you're doing?" The fact that you've attempted to hunt down collaborative things to do with your time/means of monetary support, yet yeilding no response doesn't help matters. Eventually, you realise your proudest achievement of the last few weeks is that you've managed to reach a 79% completion rate on the first Crash Bandicoot game, which is brilliant considering it's a challenging piece of interactive entertainment and you never got past the first couple of levels when you were younger anyway.

At the moment, I'm somewhere in that horribly grey intersection of a Venn diagram, stuck inbetween the segments of "no longer studying" and "technically still a student". As the kind fellow at my local JobCentre Plus pointed out to me, I'm currently unable to claim Jobseeker's Allowance as the institution I've attended for the last three years is still clinging onto me until the end of August, despite the fact that it just kicked me away with a "Good luck and all that" two days ago. I even have a photo taken to prove it. In the picture, I'm dressed like a cross between a Hogwarts student and Dickensian headmaster whilst smiling vaguely and holding a piece of plastic drainpipe, thus officially certifying me "clever". My current stint in limbo, therefore, means I have to seek jobs and not get paid for it by the country, which is fair enough, I suppose. I've pretty much been brought on making a living out of actually doing something other than watching the same two episodes of Scrubs three times a day.

It is said that struggling through hardship makes us stronger. A butterfly cannot fly without battling its way through the cocoon and so on. And when the day comes when I lie in bed, dilapidated and ravaged by Father Time and I reminisce on a life gone by, I cannot help but feel this period will be regarded as one of great complexity; as a period of academic success and no money; as one of sunshine and friendship and no money; as one of new beginnings and no money. And maybe, just maybe, that reminiscing will be better than sorting through dusty videos of rapping mathematicians.

How A Videotape Improved My Maths Skills

Imagine, if you will, a warm afternoon in early June. Then imagine a stuffy room full of dusty boxes. Then, if you haven't already, read How A PlayStation Ruined My Life before you carry on with this any further.

As my childhood home was in the process of being sold, all of my earthly possessions since birth either lived in the attic or in plain sight in my bedroom. I'll spare you the monotonous details of packing boxes. Anyone who's ever had to transport several items across a significant distance - which is pretty much anyone - already understands this. Being a somewhat sentimental creature, I resorted to packing up virtually everything I had accumulated over the course of my existence and throwing away next to nothing. The fact that I'm stupidly indecisive about a lot of things also helped along with that.

Making a hasty exit from that house, I, along with a lot of material possessions, made it to the house I'm currently residing in. Whilst my opinion of the dwelling is that it's purely a university house, it's nevertheless served as my home for a good year and a half whilst my parents have made separate living arrangements for themselves. Through this, I pretty much got it into my 22-year-old head that I couldn't rely on them for storage space and that I needed to grow up - a sentiment I still hold to this day. As I approach the 24th anniversary of me being alive, I still feel the need to grow up, yet feel more grown up than I did some two years ago. I don't know how this happened exactly, I'm just glad it did. But it has meant that over the last week or so I've needed to confront my indecisive demons and force them to decide things. Mostly over what I should or shouldn't throw away.

My uni house, a.k.a. my current house, is a four-bedroomed piece of architecture shared by three people. The reasons for this are many, but essentially boil down to the fact that we were a group of three looking for anywhere to live independently. The four-bedrooms of the one place we looked at, a.k.a. my current house, a.k.a. my uni house, essentially boiled down to three decent sized bedrooms and a biscuit tin. That fourth room, whilst spare, was sort of adopted by me as an easy-access attic space. It was there that my boxes of an accumulated childhood stayed... and stayed... and accumulated filth. By "filth" I mean dust, by the way. I felt like I should clarify that considering that this house has been known to get filthy every once in a while (read "once in a while" as "day"). My old possessions gathered dust though, not filth. I feel like I could've just written that and saved us a whole explanation but oh well.

Anyway, recently that dust was wiped away and those boxes have been delved into for probably the first time since they were packed. Using a new method of deciding if I needed it or not, I began to throw virtually everything into several black bin bags. Such items have ranged from school, college and uni notes I don't need any more, board games with missing pieces I haven't thought about for years and a plethora of wires, cables and electrical plugs I've convinced myself will "probably come in handy one day". I have finally resorted to the fact that if one will "probably come in handy one day", I'll probably be able to fucking buy it somewhere.

In amongst all my crap, however, it seems that in the break-up with my old house, I got to keep the VHS tapes. As a young adult of the Digital Age, I prefer everything modern. See, you'd know this if you actually read all of How A PlayStation Ruined My Life like I told you to at the start of this thing. I've not had a need for VHS tapes for years and neither have my immediate family members. For the most part, in my infinite wisdom of deciding what is and isn't necessary, a large chunk of these tapes have been disposed of (or rather, will be disposed of once I find a big enough outlet). I have made sure to hang onto precious and indispensible memories; home videos of my sister and me as younglings and the like. The large chunk, however, consisted of the occasional rubbish movie, TV recordings of unsequenced Simpsons episodes and an oddly charming yet retrospectively disturbing manifestation of how a videotape improved my maths skills as a child. Thanks to the gods of YouTube, I don't need to rely on that dusty VHS any more since the whole thing exists virtually. If, by any chance, you have an hour to spare, I strongly recommend that you waste it on this, just to see how incredibly ridiculous, patronising and dated the whole thing is. WARNING: Contains Carol Vorderman.

Needless to say, being able to rap the two times table and only reciting multiples of ten whilst wearing sunglasses and ripped leggings are not skills that have stayed with me to this day. However, like a lot of those boxed away possessions, the mere sight of the tape allowed me to reminisce over a childhood gone by. High school photographs and yearbooks put me in mind of a time of bad handwriting and when having a buzz cut was cool. A box of Tri-ominos has reminded me of how I've never actually played Tri-ominos. Small black T-shirts and studded belts are soaked in the memories of an ill-fated attempt at a teenage emo phase. And what I once referred to as a "big fucking grey behemoth box" is nay but a gatherer of big fucking grey dust.

I've not used the Sony PlayStation for a good number of years to be totally honest; any old game I own that is actually worth playing over and over has the ability to be used on a PS2. As sad as it sounds, my newfound decisive attitude told me that the era was over and that, after fourteen-and-a-half years in my possession, the PlayStation had to go. On the other hand, I know the mindset of a geek and what it means to be "retro". I couldn't just throw this piece of late 20th century machinery away willy-nilly; I needed to find it a home, like a puppy I can no longer afford to feed. Modern technology came to the rescue, like the good friend it is to me now. Apple-brand iPad takes digital photo, digital photo gets uploaded to Facebook, Facebook shows everyone I've probably ever met (and maybe one or two I haven't) that I want to offer my PlayStation-shaped puppy to a good home. I want to know that my puppy will be well kept, played with on a regular basis and generally not mistreated. Enter the buyer.

The thing with Facebook is that even if you've met a person once for a total of three minutes and had some form of verbal exchange with them, chances are you'll be connected for life on that social platform. Oftentimes, you'll generally never speak to them ever again, becoming increasingly infuriated by their frequent status updates because you figure that if you don't care, nobody else does. Occasionally, they'll float in and out of your life for moments at a time, making those odd moments fairly entertaining, but not too much that you curl up into a ball and cry hysterically once they've gone. And sometimes, just sometimes, they'll be the kind of people who you come to realise your life would just be totally incomplete without and that if not for one fleeting moment in time, you might never have known this person at all and you feel extremely lucky that you happened to be in the right place at just the right time. My buyer actually belongs the second group.

Meeting a friend of a friend is often awkward in the beginning; you're never quite sure what to expect. I mean, sure, if your friend thinks they're great then they must be great, but there's always a little nagging sensation in the back of the brain that wonders "actually... what if they're not?" Fortunately, after spending several minutes with this guy I figured "eh, you know what, he's not so bad" and during our fleeting real-life encounters we've managed to share deep meaningful conversations about cake icing and discuss at length a dance move known as "The Handlebars". These are just two of (I'm sure) several topics of discussion which my dust-filled brain can't think of right now. But the fact that, while my contact with him may be rare, I know can trust him with looking after my puppy and I know he'll get a lot of joy from playing with my puppy and now I just feel very disturbed by the unintentional beastialic innuendo I just made.

Go, my young old games console. Go and live a new life away from me and my neglectful ways... for now I understand the true value of such retro gaming machinery, which, quite frankly, is one thing that Carol Vorderman never taught me in a video.

Crap

I'm moving out of this house in less than three weeks. I own a lot of crap. I have a roll of black bin bags, dismantled cardboard boxes that need to be re-mantled and a mild hangover.

You're On Your Own, Kid

As a teenager, I used to act very young for my age. So much so that by the time I was 18 I felt like most 16-year-olds do. I carried this with me to the age of 21 when I started Uni, like most 18-year-olds do. Right now, I'm staring 24 in the face and often congregate with peers who are, naturally, younger than I am. But the difference there is only a fact of chronology. Inside, I feel 21 and that "life begins now" and other such uplifting ideologies of the young-adult.

During my time of living, I've come across people from all walks of life, including those who understand the concept of egotism without understanding the concept of subtlety, and those so timid and insecure in their own beings that they make 16-year-old me look like that twonk from One Direction who sleeps around with old people. Nevertheless, I embrace these humans with personalities of all shapes and forms. Then I apparently smear them on the internet, but I digress. Growing up is kind of an art form. Some manage to do it earlier than others but when it does happen, it's almost like taking that first leap into the unknown. Actually, forget the "almost"; it's exactly like taking a first leap into the unknown.

The point I'm struggling to make here is that, yes it's scary and yes it's terrifying and yes you don't want to do it alone, but unfortunately that's how it's done. The problem with life is that it doesn't come with an instruction manual. As a result, things just have to be "picked up", learned by experience and put into practice by oneself who must, somehow, learn the art of discipline in which to do it. For the first time in today's ramble o' crap, I turn to author Dean Koontz and his bestselling novel Odd Thomas:

Keep busy [...] because idleness will get you in worse trouble

Doing nothing leads to nothing. Doing something leads to something. Life's mad like that. Sorry if this seems like I'm simply stating the obvious, I haven't just happened upon this philosophy like some grand awakening or owt. I'm saying this because I've known several people in my life, and probably will come into contact with more in the future, who don't realise this. The harshness of life is that everyone is alone.

Completely.

Alone.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm perpetually single. I have friends. My friends have friends. Some friends have boyfriends or girlfriends, and some friends have friends who aren't really friends but still clog up space on your Facebook feed because you met them that one time, remember? And they said that thing about the thing that you laughed at, remember? And now they just spend their existence posting maudlin song lyrics and cat videos every seven-and-a-half minutes, right?

But the thing is, friend or lover, superman or cat-lady, not one of these other people you know in your life can live yours for you. Your life is yours alone and what you choose to do with it is your choice alone. If you want to climb a skyscraper using only toilet plungers for grip, go and do it! If you want to stay inside all day and watch the same DVD boxset you've watched every day for the last three months, go and do it! But if you lose your hold on those plungers and plummet to the ground, you're on your own, kid. And if that DVD gets jammed and you can't progress to Disc 4 to resolve the cliffhanger you already know the ending to, you're on your own, kid.

Selfishness is an art. I know I said earlier that growing up was an art, but selfishness is a part of that and contributes a great deal to the artisticness of life and that. But especially for those who don't want to tread on any toes, make any enemies or cause upset to someone, selfishness is an art, and a tricky one to get right at that. Once again, I refer you to the novel I just finished reading two days ago:

Being polite is not only the right way to respond to people but also the easiest. Life is so filled with unavoidable conflict that I see no reason to promote more confrontations

I hate confrontation at the best of times and, quite frankly, I find the idea of provoking conflict moronic and somewhat suicidal. Politeness is good. Conflict is bad. I learned that in fucking school. But unfortunately, selfishness, one of the staples of life, is a big contributor to the progression of arguments. One person has a problem and expresses it, the other person has no problem and doesn't understand why the first person does, mutual disagreement happens, CONFLICT!

Because I view myself as such a "nice" person, I find it difficult to point out flaws in others, or points at which I may disagree with them. I notice all of these things, sure, but articulating them in such a way that doesn't create some kind of verbal explosion between the involved parties worries me. So I hold my tongue, let things build up inside me, make myself feel bitter and mumble and grumble at myself about how such-and-such-a-person needs to take notice of themselves and grow up and et cetera and all that.

And I store it up to the point of breaking, where I eventually snap and hammer away at a keyboard to make my brain-thoughts known to the entire world (read "nobody at all", unless they happen to be actively seeking this out which, given the number of people occupying the planet, is more unlikely than likely) and go about my day silently cursing everyone I walk past because they're not me. Because, obviously, I'm right and I've got this whole existentialism stuff cracked and nobody else has at all. Well, maybe a few others have, but a fair few haven't and that makes me angry at their stupidity.

I promised I wouldn't write bad things about people on the internet because, obviously, that's where the future lives. But I guess rules are made to be broken. And if this all comes back to bite me in the ass, I've only got myself to blame. Nobody else. Just me. Alone. Call it life experience.

Ginger Vampires

My face is terribly red. I suppose you might be wondering what embarrassing feat could've gotten my physical appearance to such a state. The simple answer to that is more embarrassing than embarrassment itself. Instead, I have to confess that I've spent time outdoors, basking in sunlight.

Normally, I'm not this bad. Normally, I can last in the warmth of the outdoors in spring for hours without any sign of passive injury. I'm suddenly overcome with fear nowadays, though. Simply being outside on a sunny day for two hours now has the same effect that two weeks in Mexico had on me in 2005. As one with ginger hair, I can naturally blame my lack of skin pigment, but I'm becoming more inclined to blame the climate and global warming and all that.

Our winters are harsher now, and our summers sunnier. The idea of setting foot outside in the colder months is nothing but laughable to me; the only reason that's made me want to go outside is the idea that I've needed to attend certain classes to keep up with this degree what it is I'm, like, studying for, innit? Being a hermit all this time leads me to believe - in a totally non-scientific way - that I'm not used to any natural sunlight at all. Therefore, cometh the days of sunshine, warmth and social merriment, the surface of my very body sizzles and smokes in a way akin to the portrayal of vampires in Buffy.

As a result of, you know, being outside/getting fresh air/existing like what normal people do, I now find it painful to raise my eyebrows - thus crinkling my forehead - or honk myself on the nose as I occasionally like to do from time to time. On the plus side, I have a very honkable nose in a "stereotypical circus clown slash Rudolph" kind of way. Actually touching it and making a sound actually hurts a lot, though. Well, the making a sound bit doesn't really hurt, just the touching my nose bit.

The whole affair puts me in a rather sympathetic mind towards ginger vampires. After all, it's awful being out in strong sunlight for gingers; even worse for vampires. Ginger vampires probably explode upon impact with "the outside". But then again, fuck 'em. Vampires aren't real. Besides, have you ever seen a ginger one in a film or cult TV show? No, because they're all moody and dark haired in an attempt to be more appealing to lonely women and 13-year-olds. In real life, I've never seen a bloke with black hair and stupidly pale skin. Pale skin belongs to gingers and albinos. (I have no idea how I've managed to wriggle people with albinism into this blog for the second post running. I'm not doing it for a bet, I promise.) Anyway, I was slagging off vampires. Where was I? Yeah, you never see a ginger vampire. At least not a male one. Who'd want to fantasise about that. A female ginger vampire, sure, but a male?

So yeah, fuck vampires. Not just hypothetical ginger ones, but all of them in general. It's alright for people watching or reading fantasy stories to see a vampire burn when he or she stays outdoors for more than five seconds. The real-world equivalent of that is ginger people. People who carry umbrellas around on dry days and slather on Factor 50 like it's a rain mac. People who sizzle as soon as the sun's rays hit them. People with enough skin-speck to look like they've got uncontrollable acne that can tan better than they themselves. Do you still want to fantasise now?

Forgive me my ramblings. I'm very lonely and burnt.

Squinting On Sunny Days

There's something oddly unsettling about people wearing sunglasses. It is commonly spoken that one's eyes are the windows to the soul, and I quite like looking someone in the windows when I speak to them. But in the summertime when the weather is high, and you can stretch right up and touch the sky, the barriers of tinted lenses show up and adorn the faces of millions. The only problem with the content of that paragraph is that this isn't summer, just a very sunny spring.

Harsh cold weather lasts longer than it's supposed to now, meaning that any nanosecond where the sun shines is an excuse to crack out the deck chairs and disposable barbecues. Personally, I find that slapping on some Factor 50 and listening to Spanish folk-pop is a much more appropriate way to celebrate the advent of warmth, provided I can also include deck chairs and disposable barbecues. For the many, however, sunglasses are donned as well, which I find not so much scary as I find it bizarre.

As I mentioned earlier and am lazily trying to connect back to here, it's natural to look a person in the eyes when engaged in one-on-one chatter whilst the rest of the face is relegated to peripheral vision. However, when the eyes are covered up by your conversational adversary (purely out of selfishness, like their viewing receptacles need to be protected from the harsh light rays or whatever), you're suddenly locked in communication with two large, dark brown squares, rectangles or ovals depending on their preferred style of frame. Oh crap, that was really long. Basically, what I'm saying is "you can't see the eyes anymore". Instead, that rest-of-the-face bit that was once just an additional part of them is now all you have to go on.

Ever heard the phrase "their eyes were smiling"? Well as far as I know, eyes aren't crescent-shaped, nor do they have the ability to grow mouths of their own to use for the purposes of displaying amusement or happiness. It's difficult to describe, but there's a certain look in the eyes that just tells us when somebody is happy, sad, thinking, relaxed or albino. If the rest of the face was to be completely covered, as opposed to being simply peripheral, we'd instantly be able to determine if a person was smiling or not. Bringing shades into the equation just reverses the functions or the variables or whatever and I start misusing mathematical terminology. Suddenly, the eyes become static sheets of (usually) plastic and the rest of the face's features twist and contort into various shapes to denote how amused or bemused or angry or bangry a person is. Unless, of course, they're albino, in which case they wouldn't be out in strong sunlight in the first place.

I've not worn sunglasses for years, despite owning a prescription pair. That probably can't be good for me. I have no working knowledge of how corrective lenses actually function, other than the fact that without them I can't see nearly as well as I can when I do wear them. In any situation, I'd proclaim they function correctly based on nothing but pure magic. But in actuality, my ignorant mind thinks that there's got to be some kind of "magnifying glass"-like aspects going on there. This essentially means that when I wear normal glasses in strong sunlight, the light is magnified in my eyes, burning out my corneas and - slowly but surely - blinding me, and no amount of squinting on sunny days is ever going to stop that. Essentially, I should really wear the tinted pair that I own. But like I said, it's been years since I've worn sunglasses. My natural eyesight is much worse these days, possibly because of too much sunlight, too much squinting or not enough magic. My sunglasses were made according to a previous prescription some years ago, meaning that when I put them over my eyes, not only does everything go darker than I'm used too, but also slightly blurrier than I'm used to.

Is there really a point to all this? Well, no, really. Other than the observation that people sort of look alien-like when wearing shades (especially ladies who wear those giant ones that look like dinner plates on the eyes that wrap around the sides of the face and forces them to do pouty lips, I mean what the hell, humanity? Come on, you're better than this). To be honest, I suppose I could've just written that last line and not bothered with the rest of the babble prior to it. But screw you, I want to feel like I've done something worthy and lengthy and that before I go outside and squint the day away.