Progress

After wasting three years of my time in the pursuit of progress, I've finally managed to fall back into my old routine of going nowhere slowly. Whilst the two month gap between entries here might be enough evidence for any doped-up monkey with an axe through its head to come to that conclusion, it only occurred to me two days ago whilst I was in the middle of boiling pasta and realising I can't quite master the subtle art of incorporating metaphors into blocks of prose like I used to.

Over the last however long it's been since I last cared about the progession of time, I've been reacquainting myself with my old friend television. I've caught up with programmes old and new that I've either been meaning to watch for some time (Firefly, Happy Endings) or haven't seen in some time (Fawlty Towers, Friends), or have seen fairly recently but due to the sheer scale and complexity of the plot I've had to rewatch a couple of times whilst reading complete episode synopses just to make sure I can actually follow what's going on (Game Of Thrones).

It was during a recent rewatch of several Simpsons episodes, however, where the point of this ramble originated. Of course, it could be said that The Simpsons is a show that has stood the test of time, but all that really means is that its audience still finds the older episodes amusing. The thing is that as the show has gotten older, the audience has gotten older too, and "standing the test of time" is really just a fancy way of saying "I remembered this then and I remember it now" as some faint form of nostalgia. Essentially, the point that I'm dragging these words towards is one that struck me when laughing at minor gags that involved outdated technology; primarily video tapes and audio cassettes.

As much as I hate using other people's children as examples, I often find myself imagining how my young niece and nephew might hypothetically react to such comic gems of the 90s if they were to be subjected to these old cartoons at some point over the coming decades, which - to be fair - they probably will be... by me.

"Hey kids, come watch this animated show about a funny yellow family and all their friends and the super-hilarious situations and mishaps they get involved in."
          "But we already told you," they cry in unison, "we've had enough of you trying to relive your teenage years through our eyes, uncle. For Christ's sake, you're forty-two! Leave us alone!"
          "But this is a funny one, guys," I retort as I navigate the endless DVD menus to play one single episode without Spanish subtitles or a hidden audio commentary track. "Homer sings in a barbershop quartet and they put their songs on vinyl records. Meanwhile, Marge distracts the kids with Homer's voice on an audio cassette which gets garbled up and freaks them out."
          I can barely contain my amusement, speaking through gasps of breath and tear-filled eyes as I slap my knee at the joviality of it all.
          "We don't care about any of that," they still seem to speak in unison since my brain can't decide between them over which one I like more in this hypothetical fantasy. "We just want to read our laser-vision books in three seconds and go hoverboarding down by the grand carbon fibre statue of the almighty Global Lord Bieber."

The rest of the vision becomes hazy at that point, although I do know that the kids foolishly neglect to take their protective shin guards with them and that I cry into my palms watching that Simpsons episode whilst still being able to sing along with every word of "Baby On Board".

The reasons I default to using those kids in this hypothetical situation come down to a) familial proximity and mutual knowledge of each other's existence, b) the idea that they simply weren't around throughout the 1990s, and c) the fact that they're currently being raised in a world of iPads and high definition. At some point towards the end of my shared generation, those quaint notions of obsoleteness will themselves become obsolete, as the next lot of humans after us will fondly reminisce about mobile phone recycling and physical screens that were only confined to a 16:9 aspect ratio. And as they slowly say their goodbyes to our dying generation, they'll take comfort in the shared virtual world as operated by an imbedded brain chip.

So really, what point was there in me trying to progress anyway?

Priority

My dreams aren't entirely dead yet, but I often fear that they've been coffin shopping behind my back recently. This week's morbid musing stems from the fact, just as with the case of Christmas, I have taken time away from my normal work/sleep routine to visit the ever-presents of my life. Just as with the case of Christmas, my thoughts have wandered in the direction of "no direction" and how, for possibly the billionth time in my life, I realise I have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going. Furthermore, for possibly the only time in my life, I realise that such a thought is crippling me. Not physically. That would be impossible. I mean psychologically. But you got that; you're clever, you understand hyperbole.

In an attempt to force myself out of mental cripple-dom, I've had the epiphany to start approaching life with a new mindset. One which says that I am an adult, I can do whatever I want, wherever I want, for I have no ties to any people or place. That probably sounds like a linguistic slap in the face to the people who know me, but trust me, I have reasons to justify my words. And they are reasons that I've had to keep telling myself in order, as I opened this paragraph with, stop being mentally tied down.

Over the last three years or so, I've come into contact with various people by way of university study. Some of those people have proven themselves to be smart, open-minded intellectuals. Some of them proved to be alcoholics-in-waiting. Some proved to be warm and caring, and some proved that simply opening their mouths was more than I could handle. On the other side, I've come away with, what many ex-students call, friends for life. The only issue here is that life gets in the way, as do the lives of all those other people. But still, Facebook friends for life is better than nought.

Meanwhile, back from whence I came, all the old friends I had have also sprouted lives and seem to have peeled away one by one until the only "old friends" left are few and far between. Returning to my origins would feel like taking a step back career-wise whilst not broadening my social circles. Basically, the point I'm labouring towards here is that whilst I've met, befriended and am determined to stay in contact with several people from on my travels, none of them are realistically a strong enough reason to keep me around, and ultimately, what I'm going to do for a living is my number one priority. So yeah, all point and sneer at the guy over there typing this shit. Point and sneer at his selfishness.

On that mental note of not being tied down by personal human connections, my mind is free to explore career-oriented possibilities wherever I actually want and doing whatever I want. My main problem here is that I've always been indecisive. Hell, I've stopped writing this particular load of babble three times up to now because I wasn't sure if I could be bothered with carrying on.

And that's not just a recent thing. I studied Art at school, segued into Graphic Design at university, abandoned that for retail work, found myself again with Film Production, somehow spun that into Creative Writing and have now wound up back in retail. I've enjoyed aspects of all of them, but I still don't know how I want a further career to pan out like. Over the last few days, I've even dug into mental lists of stuff I am still yet to explore. Needless to say, my browser currently has multiple tabs open that relate to the basics of Flash animation, computer coding and interactive game design and development. Evidently, I'm never satisfied.

I still have avenues I want to trundle down but somewhere along the way I need to make a living. And while making that living along the way I need somewhere to live. Before me is a vast freedom to seek out roles related to what I'm capable of right now coupled with the freedom of being able to travel wherever those roles may take me. My biggest stumbling block right now, though, is the fact that I'm a fairly social creature and would be abandoning every aspect of social life I know and have currently. Once I get over that and feel able to loosen those people ties (I would never want to cut them completely), I'll be able to embrace that freedom and that sense of the unknown in a slightly more positive light once more.

By the way, I apologise if all of that made absolutely no sense, but like I said, brain's a bit crippled right now.

Explaining Religion

Sometimes my mind drifts off. When this happens, the brain follows one particular thought train, but doesn't stick with it for very long. Soon after disembarking, my mindstuff suddenly regales itself with "Let's Go To The Mall", the song from the Robin Sparkles episode of How I Met Your Mother. That's probably because I've been watching endless repeats of those episodes in a similar fashion to the way E4 treated Friends for years. In light of this recent lifestyle, meaningful thoughts and thoughts in which I search for any meaning have been abruptly halted by twee bubblegum pop songs that proclaim how cool it is to go to an indoor shopping centre with friends.

I've recently conducted fabricated conversations between myself and my young nephew set in the future. Here, he plays the role of himself as a young teenager - his mind brimming with questions about life, the universe and everything - whilst I play the all-knowledgeable, wise, advice-giving uncle I keep kidding myself I'll one day be to him. In these hypothetical conversations, he's asked me about a multitude of topics: history, relationships, politics, religion. However, simply because of the fact that at this precise moment he is still actually a toddler, my way of speaking to him in the future in my head borders on patronising baby-speak. Yeah, that's right, you try explaining the concept of religion to a four-year-old whilst trying not to forget to take your robot pal with you when we go to the mall, today. Now tell me you don't have a massive headache.

Forget the toddler bit though. Imagine a human being, any human being. Actually no, better yet, an alien. An alien just about clever enough to understand our language, cultural practices and able to survive in the environment of our planet, yet not informed enough to know a single thing about the concept of religion. Now try explaining religion, without implicating anybody or any belief system as good or bad, right or wrong, and without causing offense to anybody or any belief system through any prejudices or scepticisms brought on by personal viewpoint. Explain religion. And you're not allowed to get a headache or to be sidetracked by the jingles in your head that keep vying for your attention.

I've found that the only way to describe religion comes down to two words: essentially stories. But you can't boil religion down to just two words when it just produces another mesh of thought-lines on top of that, and then another one on top of that. In its simplest terms, one group of people have a set of stories with morals and meanings, meanwhile another group of people have another set of stories with morals and meanings. Then another, then another, then some other ones after that, but by that point you're straying far from the realms of religion and slipping down the scale towards Tumblr-based fan-fiction. Seriously, if Christianity was a modern-day anime series, there'd be a plethora of tales and fan art depicting the on-again, off-again made-up relationship between Jesus and Moses, despite the fact that they lived in entirely different centuries. How the fuck did I get here?

With many different religions floating about and many different stories relating to each one, that well-educated alien or teenage toddler nephew in the future in my head who doesn't even exist yet but still totally exists will start to wonder something along the lines of "why don't we all just believe the same stories then?" or even the much more likely "so which religion is the right one?" And that's where we, as humans - as utterly stupid, simpleton humans - fall down. There is no right answer as far as we can ever be concerned. Even if there is a right answer there's no possible way that we moronic, Earth-bound, thick as absolute pig-shit humans could ever find out, or even come up with the means to find out. We humans have done some wondrous, genius things with our time here. Medical advancements, technological progression, intricate storytelling; they're all grand achievements from our fellow kind, but there's only so far we can go, and proving religion is well out of our puny, pathetic reach.

Since we have no way to prove our religious ideals, we then have to resort to convincing each other that we're right and everyone else is wrong. Humans are stubborn and fickle like that and it's at this point I start to blame the kettle. I was in the kitchen at the time I had this imaginary nephew conversation. This stubbornness and borderline ego-centricity that we are right sometimes overspills, and depending on your viewpoint of your religion - whether the stories are a set of metaphorical and symbolic messages to stick by for harmonious living with your fellow man, or a set of literal instructions to be fundamentally stuck by to the letter - this overspilling of righteousness manifests itself as conflict. And boy, do we clever, stupid, genius low-life humans know how to do conflict?

You then have to inform your alien or made-up teenager about "the bad man" and "the good guys" in your most patronising toddler-talker-toer voice. But wait, didn't I tell you you can't use terms like "good" and "bad"? Look at it from the opposite side. Sure, for some, religion leads people to acts of public atrocity, but as far as they're concerned, they're doing right by their stories. Who is anyone else to tell them they're the bad guys. Nobody's right or wrong, or good or bad here. Everyone follows morals and ideals for harmonious living, but they also have conflicting ideas about the stories and are too stupid enough to realise that's why they hate each other. And absolutely none of this can be described easily or effectively to any child. Each person has to grow up in the world, follow whatever's taught to them and - providing they can keep their mind open a sliver - discover the bigger picture as a young adult and try, feebly, to get their head around it without causing themselves any undue stress. Fucking sink.

Hopefully, the kids will see the beauty of life and that, ultimately, religion shouldn't matter. That's not to say religion is stupid and I absolutely hate it and everyone in the world is wrong except me. Religion is extremely important in the ways that it keeps people together and gives them a sense of purpose and a set of codes and ethics to live by so that they can treat people as actual people without pissing everyone off too much. But religion isn't the be-all and end-all of us. Or at least it shouldn't be. The most important thing is people and the sense of goodness that they share with each other; sharing good times with good company, having fun in a wide variety of places and situations, whether at home or at a popular hang-out spot.

Because, at the mall, having fun is what it's all aboot.

...And A Crappy New Year

Two years ago now-ish (during that period of New Year where it's technically 2012 but still feels like yesterday night), a friend of mine in touch with their spiritual side told me I'd find love very soon, offering the only timeframe of "before 2015". Please bear in mind my brain was still swimming in Jack Daniel's and there's a very good chance I've simply invented this portion of the night just to give myself some delusional sense of security. In fact, I brought this event up with that same anonymous friend some time later and was met with denial of such a conversation ever taking place. My friend then went on to blame the consumption of alcohol for the fickleness of memory, and considering we were the only sentient beings present at the time of the supposed conversation, I think I can say with all certainty that there can be absolutely no certainty as to what actually happened that night. Hell, we could've rented unicycles, thrown them into a shark-infested river and sang long lost hits of the Spice Girls at the top of our lungs whilst spinning around uncontrollably for all I know. In my version of events though, I was prophesised to be single for no longer than three more years, and despite the fact that I'm far more sceptical of divination and psychic predictions now than I ever have been, I've found that I still seem to be clinging onto that thought for dear life. And it seems I'm clinging onto that vague sense of optimism quite simply because the alternative is, frankly, rather embarrassing.

I've never been in a serious relationship, or any relationship. Well, there was that one time when I was seventeen where I met someone, asked her out (to which she reluctantly accepted) and spent two weeks chatting with online, never really seeing face-to-face. Ultimately, the whole thing ended when she informed me of how she didn't really feel like she wanted to be in a relationship right now. I accepted her request for termination and went about my days as I had done before I met her. We've never spoken since, but I hear that she and the guy she got together with a week later are still going strong.

Since then, I've breezed through life lonely as the day ma birthed me, never having much of a chance to lay with somebody in the dark. The only opportunities for bedroom activity that ever presented themselves occurred in that period of late-teenage sexual frustration, confusion and sense if experimentation wherein some blokes also seemed physically appealing considering they had a pulse. A small number of homoerotic encounters ensued, both with extremely limited degrees of intimacy that they might as well not have happened at all. Needless to say, alcohol was a significant influence there.

It's at this point in the tale, one might wonder if any of this is true at all since it seems horribly unfeasible that someone could make it to 24 having never had a lasting, functional relationship with another similarly aged person or any naughty bedroom activity that could actually be considered naughty bedroom activity. The thing one needs to bear in mind here, in that case, is that the message I'm conveying is that I'm a perpetually single, emotionally retarded, sexually inexperienced male in his mid-20s. Nobody would make that up. Heck, if anything, I should be lying by trying to convince you that I'm an extremely virile character who got laid every night he spent throughout his time at University and bragging about how many bitches I've intercoursed and how many fingers I've pussied.

According to the initial New Year prophecy I got given, two full years have now passed meaning that the love of my life that was most definitely promised to me will appear at some point over the next twelve months. With chaos now playing a much more significant role in causality than fate ever did, one could understand my scepticism here. If not, go back and read that last paragraph. Done? Good. Now do you believe me, or do I have to spell it out for you? *sigh* Fine. I'm fucking lonely. And the only thing that's kept me trundling on this long is sheer faith in the fact that things will eventually work out "one day", both in love and career. Each day, however, has presented more of a struggle than the last with what little faith and optimism I have being cut down further and further. And I feel that if I have to keep up with that spiritual struggling for another 364 days, only to see that it's kept me in that very same physically and emotionally virginic state, there may well just be no faith left to diminish.

That's why I say a massive "screw you" to any notions of a predetermined destiny and consider the possible ramifications of extending that "find a girlfriend" deadline. Over this seasonal period, a recently engaged relative (of a similar age to me, just to kick me in the balls while I'm already down with no indication of ever getting up any time soon) announced the time and place of the upcoming nuptials. A wedding in mid-2016 taking place abroad means that those who wish to attend -slash- spend a week in New York City will need to start saving around about now to get that two-and-a-half year head start as far as finances go. Don't get me wrong, I know there's a lot of cynicism in my tone today but I'm very much looking forward to such a trip. However, at the same time, I need to digress back to an extended "soulmate finding" deadline.

If I extend that deadline, that gives me two-and-a-half years to become enamoured with somebody, instead of just the one remaining year I have left under the current delusion. Takes the pressure off a bit really and means that I don't necessarily need to enter 2015 with a raucous "...and a crappy New Year" when I inevitably reach next January alone; after all, I'll still have time left before I feel like a total failure. The flip side of all this, though, is that if I do reach the late Spring of 2016 and still haven't managed to convince somebody, anybody, to spend a veritable chunk of their own personal time with me, then I'll be forced to conclude that something is most definitely wrong with me.

But still, New York though!

Very Shitness...

The notion of a forward moving career trajectory right now feels as pointless and non-existent as a vigorously sandpapered unicorn horn. I only bring this up again because of recent events relating to the actions of others in the world of Facebook and because working in retail over the Christmas period is enough to send even the most optimistic person on a ride in a one-horse open sleigh off a cliff made of discounted spirits, pigs in blankets and mass avarice.

Let's go back to Facebook for a moment and leave the clumsy, rambling, overly-elaborate similes to one side. My own personal ventures into 'the book' lately have resulted in shared YouTube videos and anecdotal asides that could only be collectively described as "shit my 4-year-old nephew says". Meanwhile, others have used the medium to point out good things that have occurred in their respective existences. Okay people post bad stuff too, but screw the bad stuff. It's not that time of year. It should more "Merry Christmas" and less Very Shitness.

People post the positive developments in love, career and wealth; that's the Tarot card holy trinity right there. Anyway, as is human nature, when I become aware of someone else's good news, I feel something akin to happiness for their cause. Unfortunately, such a feeling lasts for much less time than an ice cube does in an oven, before it's taken over by a mix of jealousy, selfishness and the need to continually come up with rubbish bits of rhetorical extravagance like a vomiting dictionary. I start to examine my own current state of being and compare my relatively crap lifestyle to that of those others who actually have exciting news to share.

As it stands, I live away from family, with a select few friends in a fairly dilapidated portion of the country. My current financial stature has me now in a position where I'm earning enough to live comfortably, but still dealing with the spectre of outstanding, backdated rent, thus forcing me to stay in a co-dependent situation without the freedom to go it alone. Regarding freedom, I lack mobility in terms of long distances. I'm unable to drive an actual vehicle and thus rely on others to move me across vast spaces, namely railway companies. The full-time retail work I'm currently associated with seems to hold a kind of monopoly on my life since it's my only source of steady income but restricts me to one particular place. The problem here is that any future career prospects are most likely going to require me to relocate, which is something I simply can't afford to do since without my current job and steady income, I'm kind of screwed.

Back in the virtual realm, my escapades in the written word - mostly coming from this perpetually stagnating blog - have attracted the attention of a former college tutor of mine from way back. When I say "way back" I really mean 2008, but a fair bit's happened to me over the last five years, meaning that a sudden inbox message from someone I knew for one term and have kept on the periphery of my digital contacts ever since actually took me by surprise.

"Hey," said he. Well probably not really, I'm just paraphrasing to give you the general impression of the message I received. "How's it going? I see you've graduated. I see you write a fair bit. What kind of forward moving career trajectory have you got going on now?" It was as if he knew misery and wanted to caption it for me. However, he works in the field of creative arts where work is never easy to get into and never stable enough to cling onto. I felt the warmth of his sympathetic sentiments as he offered a few words of encouragement in the form of handy job-recruitment websites. I told him I'd have a look at them and then went and did the exact opposite.

I suppose I have to cling onto the hope that time will solve everything and I'll get to a more comfortable career-wise position eventually. The only problem I'm facing right now is that time seems to be moving so slowly, yet it's constantly racing away; every day that I'm not thinking about where I'm going to end up or how I'm going to get there is just another day wasted in the grand scheme of things. Part of the problem is I don't even know exactly what kind of career I want to pursue and haven't quite taken the time, courage or initiative to consider it. That's why, after typing all of this, I'm going to dig out that list of handy websites, take comfort in the fact that figures from my past still have some shred of faith in me, and start exploring where and how that career trajectory can actually start hurtling forwards for once.

To put it in simpler, and more seasonally appropriate terms:

Dear Santa, I have been a good boy this year getting my degree and not murdering anyone, so pretty please can I have a new job for Christmas? Well, not a new job for Christmas, but can you at least give me the strength and encouragement and enlightenment as to what it is I want to do with the rest of my life, because I sometimes worry that if I stay working in retail over festive periods, I'll turn even more and more bitter towards life and all its human inhabitants and I'll end up on the naughty list. Oh, and a clockwork train too. Cheers mate.

P.S. Forget the train. Even though it's clockwork, it probably won't run according to schedule anyway.

Spent More Than Enough

Money-wise, I'm on my last ass right now. I would say I'm on my last legs but my bank balance is far too low now that not even metaphorical legs can save it. And as far as figures of speech go, the last ass seems more fitting. According to Andy Williams, it's the most wonderful time of the year, although sadly, I'm forced to disagree with the late crooner on that. Daylight hours are shorter, gas consumption is larger and retail establishments are crammed to the rafters with people throwing money about in exchange for pieces of tat they're not even buying for themselves, all because social and cultural protocol says so. Season's greetings.

Anyway I'm not being bitter about the festive period or retail, or indeed the festive period in retail. I've actually managed to reach a point where I'm fairly comfortable about the impending holiday, and to be even more accurate, I reached that point on Sunday night. All of my gift shopping for other people is done and all of those bits have been draped in colourful paper and shiny ribbons. I'm actually done with it early this year, or at least earlier than normal. Last year I did virtually all of my shopping on December 21st then spent a solid evening wrapping the heck out of it. The fact that this year I've managed to get everything finished whilst the month was still in single digits (i.e. the 8th). Go me!

In order to complete the task at hand, though, I've had to go a bit spend happy. In fact, over the last four days my debit card's seen more action than I have over the last twenty-four years. Slutty little bit of plastic; inserting itself into every slot it sees, ejaculating money like nobody's business. There's a mild chance I'm sexually frustrated right now, but then again that's nothing new. And as much as you probably don't want to be reading about such a topic... well... to be honest that's really what the internet's for now. Quite frankly, if you didn't want any of that, you shouldn't have come online in the first place. Weirdo.

Having such low funds right now means that I can't really splurge (which still hasn't stopped me from buying presents for myself alongside presents for others). Having to live on bread and water seems to be the order of business up until Christmas though now. Okay, it's not as drastic as that, but I think I'm allowed to exaggerate a fair bit if I want to continue utilising words in my life as some sort of career path. As it stands, though, my current working lifestyle is getting in the way. In fact, I'm probably supposed to be doing that right now. You know what, forget "probably". That is actually what I'm supposed to be doing right now. Besides, I've spent more than enough words today. Any more and I'll surely be facing some kind of word debt very soon. I should stop before I fall into any overdraft.

Bye.

Still Here

When Internet historians in the distant 45th century take off their headsets, disable their brain chips and discover our primitive mesh of information transfer, they'll probably wonder how we managed. They'll marvel at how people had to use their fingers to manually input individual characters to spread the word. They'll wonder how a static, two-dimensional 100x100 pixels thumbnail could possibly be used to represent a person's entire personality. And when they find millions upon zillions of homebrew blogs, they be astonished at how so many people seemingly dropped dead immediately after their first and, tragically, only entry.

Back in the now-most times, however, we understand that people create blogs and neglect them very quickly when they run out of either stuff to say, energy to say it, or memory to stop and go "shit, I've still got that blog somewhere in the technological ether". I have - at one point or another - done all three. Not all at the same time, that would be ludicrous, illogical, contradictory and possibly lead to the explosion of brain matter. But at various times, I've done each of the three. As it happens, I've not been here for a while, not written for a while and if I hadn't started typing this one, those 45th century historians might've looked back at this time when I roamed the planet and naturally assume I ceased to exist at some point in early November. I didn't though, I'm still here. These words prove it. Furthermore, my brain matter is still intact as far as I can tell.

I wish I could inform the great wide everywhere that the last few months have been filled with numerous wild adventures that have prohibited me from heading over this way and actually bothering to make words about it. I wish I could tell you that I've traversed dangerous mountainsides, swam long and winding rivers, and collected all kinds of exotic treasures along the way. To be honest, I kind of have been doing that whenever dipping in and out of brand new The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. The real world truth, however, is that my wild adventures have amounted to nothing more than working, sleeping, occasionally eating, farting, and trying to come up with another thing to make me sound moderately interesting, but failing. This, evidently, is a feeling that has plagued my entire existence over the last however long or so.

My enthusiasm for writing something, anything in this space has waned due to a lack of exciting things to mention in the here and now, alongside a strong sense of fatigue that comes from picking up extra hours in convenience retail. In future, I may well have to rely on my past. The problem with the past is that I can barely remember it well. Hell, I don't even remember what I wrote two sentences ago, but it probably had something to do with hypothetical historians of the future or the existence of a fickle attention span. It's apparent now, though, that I'm going to have to have a sit down and good long think about things that have unfolded before my eyes over the last 24 years and pick out the interesting ones. At the risk of turning this webspace into a bad sitcom-style clip-show episode of my life, I regret to inform you that the more exciting stories aren't really happening this season. Maybe a look back into the past will remind me of how the show used to be back in its heyday whilst also attempting to improve those sinking ratings and angering the critics at the same time.

Hey, at least I've written something here this time. Don't cry to me if you find it crap. I know it's crap. This is my personal crap space where I come to write crap. My theory is that I have a certain amount of crap within me, so if I write out all the crap first, that'll only leave good stuff left to write about later. Meanwhile, all this talk about getting the crap out has made me notice that shifting sensation in my bowels so away I go now. I hope that, as you're reading this, you're now imagining me sitting on the toilet doing some natural - if a little bit icky - business, because that's actually probably where I actually am right now.

Weird And Wonderful People

So yeah, October can bugger off. The whole month has skipped by without me getting much of a chance to input words into this 'ere white space via the data highway. Well, I say that. Actually, I don't say that; I'm not sitting here talking to a keyboard. What I mean is: Well, I type that, but the truth is I've had a couple of chances to update over the last four weeks but the working lifestyle thrust upon me lately makes me want to spend every free moment I have sleeping. The problem I face with this is that falling into such a work/sleep routine makes me loathe the other people who live in my house for the fact that they get to actually live in the house, whilst I treat the place like a very personalised hotel with albeit pretty shit cleaning staff. What follows here, therefore, is a brief list of things I've managed to get done over the last month that I can vaguely remember. My apologies in advance for the amount of shitness to come in this post.

The childish side of me has reared its ugly freckled face over the last few weeks following the release of Pokémon X and Y, rendering a lot of my designated sleeping time moot and causing me to fall victim to addiction like countless alcoholics and smokers before me. I blame Uni - more specifically the people at Uni - for making me this way. Up until about a year ago, the last time I'd so much as thought or even cared about the Japanese gaming franchise was, as far as I can remember, in the pre-Internet era for me. This is the best recollection I can make considering my memory in times without Internet is rather sketchy. I also feel I should point out that I first gained access to the online realm in 2002, so we're going back at least eleven years here. However, Uni does weird things to people, forcing you to mingle with a multitude of weird and wonderful people with one collective like-minded childhood.

Somewhere in the mire of young adults who seem to have shared cultural aspects of my youth, stories and jokes have been shared creating an air of nostalgia. This fond nostalgia has convinced me to revisit older aspects of my childhood in a move generally labelled in the geek community as "retro". However, when the good people of Japan announced they were continuing the seemingly never-ending franchise with yet another game with the same premise in which the same sequence of events occurs but now with updated graphics and shit, I just knew I'd have to honour this collision of a long forgotten childhood and updated technologies by spending 35 quid and countless hours of life on it. The inner child has now taken over and takes pride in the accomplishments achieved in the game despite the fact that the difficulty level of the whole thing is so considerably low, not even an ant could limbo under that stick.

I mentioned smokers earlier in this and that reminded me of something else that's occurred in my life-sphere lately, thus making a seamless transition from the last paragraph to this. No, I'm not suddenly smoking now: it still smells like the dust from behind a long-standing pile of bricks being burnt and I don't quite fancy the idea of standing outside for ten minutes at a time whilst winter approaches. My smoking story emanates from the fact that a large portion of my work time is spent behind a kiosk counter meaning that I can now identify most brands of cigarettes or loose rolling tobacco by the design of the packaging, despite never touching the contents myself. It also means I can hum the little jingle produced by the National Lottery machine whenever a winning ticket or scratchcard is rewarded at will.

In a twist of events, though, a considerable portion of the locals in my area come from one of three groups: Polish migrants, Spanish/Portuguese/possibly Latin-American migrants, and native English locals probably inwardly complaining about the number of foreigners 'round 'ere. In my embracing of all the peoples of this world, I don't differentiate between people who originate from elsewhere, just as long as nobody's rude to me I'm happy to serve the human race in all its forms. Unfortunately, however, there comes a point where a certain amount of basic English-language skills may be necessary to partake in a transaction involving what variety of tobacco-related product one would like to purchase. Usually the name of the brand is enough but one of my most recent customers was unable to produce such a name for me to look for, providing me with only the description "Smoking Kills" in spite of the fact that virtually every type of tobacco is brandished with "Smoking Kills" as a kind of standard issue governmental warning.

Never a dull moment there really. And before the whole Internet descends on me to jump down my throat becoz I is bein' a racist, I'd like to point out that as a worker in the retail sector, my only gripe with humanity is rude people. As a matter of pure fact, I've dealt with several native English people who gruffly grunt as a form of communication and several non-native English folks who are just peachy and pleasant regardless of their level of speaking the lingo. Now that I've dug myself out of that hole, you bunch of web-space dwelling, accusing bastards can jog on.