gerardmccaul

Ambition

2008-01-22T17:51:07Z

Before I begin, I should say that my sleeping patterns of late have been truly fucked up, and this could all be a direct result of that. Could be.

When I started this blog, it was a conscious attempt to avoid talking about my life proper, and all the conceited and self obsessive talk that would inevitably come with it. I wanted to write something from an unusual perspective that was very definitely disconnected from reality, one which relied on as few “real life” details as possible. Thus far I have succeeded, but in true accordance with Sod’s law, the more I try to avoid the real world, the more inextricably it becomes entangled in my life. I am, by all accounts, conceited and arrogant. I try to counter balance this by making my arrogance as ironic as possible, and resorting to self depreciation at every turn, but it’s still there. I’m also lazy, and undeniably gifted. The combination of the three has long bestowed me with an attitude of casual distain both for working and the opinion of others. I am smarter than you, no matter what the exam result is, because I didn’t have to work. This reasoning is of course defunct- it’s like saying that you’re stronger than the body builder because even though you can’t lift as much, you didn’t go to the gym. I know this in my heart, but the balance between apathy and work still weighs heavily on the former. This was the attitude I have always had, and it provided me with a perfectly acceptable set of GCSE’s.

What’s my point though? Why am I talking about this? That is something not so easily explained. I have, as inexplicably as I’ve thought myself superior, believed I’m capable of doing whatever I set my mind to (mostly because I’m far too lazy to actually set my mind to anything). Now it seems I’m finally drawing close to a stage in my life where things can’t simply be deferred in my own mind to “the next exam”. The mystical and world changing force I am speaking is of course university, and the arcane knowledge that it potentially holds. I have for as long as I can remember held the unconscious supposition that I would go to Oxbridge, and I would do physics. This was not something I imagined could ever be called into question.

And yet...

Today in physics, we were asked by our teacher if any of us were considering applying for Oxbridge. There was a general mutter, no one wanting to put themselves forward at risk of sounding like the arrogant and self important twat that I, at the very least, undoubtedly am. Now comes the troubling part, when said teacher also mentioned that applicants should have about 7 A* grades at GCSE. This was a metaphysical slap in the face that may as well have been delivered from the Almighty Himself. Gnawing doubts were laid bare as the situation became clear to me. I was, and continue to be, quite privately shaken. Had “the next exam” already come and gone? Had I missed my chance to work? I didn’t know, and I still don’t now.

This incident typifies what I can only describe as a passive insanity, a rising tide of doubt and solipsism that has come in ebbs and flows since September. The world is falling apart around me, and the closer I come to the time for those often imagined and unspeakably distant fantasies, the more they slip from my grasp. I have drawn back in my mind’s eye to such an extreme degree that all of humanity seems little more than a grain of dust. My foundation for arrogance is crumbling, and the less realistic my dreams seem to be, the more strongly some core of desire burns.

I can feel it now. Something buried deep; too deep to touch or even to see. I can’t help but feel that deep down, there is a Great and Worthy thing within me, and everything I write or calculate is another desperate attempt to grasp it. Every blog post, I set out to finally reach it, to create something that will finally end this fruitless excavation. Some piece of exquisite penmanship which will finally draw out my very essence, will finally externalise the raw will and passion that burns for the world around me, and all its improbability. Searching desperately for some method to make the infinitely heavy thoughts that dwell within reverberate and carry the same weight in the hearts of others. So far I have been incapable of achieving this in even the meanest sense; words simply incapable of carrying the depth and strength of feeling, and it will be years before my mathematics can even come close to expressing anything than what I have been instructed to show. I have a message, but until I can decode it for myself, I have no hope of propagating it in something so crude and shallow as language.

There is always a silver lining though. This internal tempest of desperation and expectation is producing a motivation, no matter how tiny, to work. Slowly- oh so slowly- the scales are tipping towards work instead of apathy. I can only hope that the tipping point will come before my hamartia destroys whatever potential I might have. I also promise that normal, tongue-in-cheek, equally meaningless drivel will resume its near uninterrupted flow next post. If you’ve read this to the end, I applaud your patience, and beg you to comment. Ego needs feeding.

moaning and whining: an addendum

2008-01-20T20:03:48Z

Actually, all things considered, things aren't so bad. I say this mostly in light of the fact that I managed to have a nap, and when I woke up I got a phone call from my sister. This was nice, and then after dinner there were birthday candles, and cake, and COKE. It may be then that I'm jumped up on caffeine and sugar, but not even the relentless jibes of my siblings put a dent in my mood at that point. It was all a fuss over nothing.

Could be better.

2008-01-20T16:55:40Z

Five posts in and I’ve already broken my golden rule of not talking about the real world. Ho-hum. I feel too starved of attention to care at this point, so I’ll plough on regardless:

I’m now seventeen, and feeling really rather annoyed by the whole affair. Annoyed at how it has transpired so far, annoyed at my parents (and family in general), but most of all annoyed at myself. Permit me, if you will, to explain:

I wake up at about ten past seven, wondering why I haven’t slept in until three pm, as I normally seem to at weekends. I’ve mostly grown out of my pre-christmas and birthday insomnia, but only because it’s been replaced by a general all purpose insomnia. With this in mind, I amble over to the computer, wearily waiting to pass the time until the movement downstairs is finished. It would be a shame to spoil my own surprise.

At seven thirty my sister barges into my room, and demands to know what I’m doing up. No congratulations, no insincere wish of happy birthday, just a barked request to borrow my headphones while she went on her paper round. I oblige, and about ten minutes later decide to go downstairs, now the miscellaneous sounds have ceased to eminate upwards. Trundling downstairs I see my mother working on the mac, labouring over word as she creates a worksheet painfully slowly. A perfunctory happy birthday follows, with instructions that my presents are in the kitchen. Hoorah, presents. Bear in mind I’m not expecting much, because I seem to have a strange metaphysical system of gift deferring. Let me go on a tangent and explain this to you now. The easiest way to do this would be in the form of a chat log with the ever present Josh, in response to his question as to what I’m getting.

								Gerard: ah ha, probably nothing
								I'm really completely apathetic
								and there's the florida trip in a few weeks
								which is, y'know, expensive :P
								Josh: :P
								Gerard: I dunno, still on hold for a wii I should have gotten last year :P
								but they're all sold out, so nothing it is :P
								I'm sure I'll find myself in possession of a few bits and pieces though
								Josh: did you ask for the wii?
								Gerard: hmm?
								yarr :P
								actually, I have to be honest, my christmas' and birthdays are a little weird
								I've always wanted to try and "save them up" ready for something good, like a new console
								which inevitably get delayed for years or sell out mega quick
								Josh: :/
								Gerard: so for the last five or six years, I've sort of strung my potential gift days along, deferring some kind of metaphysical credit
								although last year I got my pc

								which was pretty awesome



								me and my sister are essentially polar opposites when it comes to things like this
								I'm always mindful and realistic, terrified of mythical finances and costs
								whereas my sister demands everything all the time
								she starts asking for stuff for her birthday generally about a week before I have mine
								(hers is on march the 5th btw :P )
								I'm still just as greedy and self centred though
								just a more realistic one
								I don't make requests two months beforehand for a laptop and two hundred pounds for clothes and make up
								Josh: idealism would probably get more results

Now with this in mind, read on to hear about my wonderful gifts. First of all I open up my card, which is... a cartoon of a child playing computer games. It reminds me of the card I got from my aunt, which was the most bland pirate-related card I’d ever seen. Somehow it managed to make pirates and pirate related things not cool. The only reason I mention this is because while buying cards, everyone seems to think I’m turning seven, not seventeen. With the card out of the way, I find I have $300 (£160) in cash, presumably for the aforementioned school trip to florida that has been six months in the making. This is good! This is nice! This is useful! I walk back to thank my mother, and end up having to spend about fifteen minutes fruitlessly trying to help her make word do what she wants. It would take me five minutes to do it, but she insists on seeing what I’m doing, so she can “do it herself”.

Eventually, I’m able to extricate myself and return to the presents. They were significantly more underwhelming. I received, in order of unwrapping, a bag of mints, a driving instruction CD (I think wtf is an appropriate term here), some coco pops straws (by this point I’m 90% certain these presents were acquired fairly late last night when my parents went to Tesco .) and a calendar (make that 98% certain). The money is good, I’m left a little nonplussed by the other presents, and wondered why anyone bothered to buy them in the first place. Time to trudge back up to my room, where I pass my mother on the stairs. She asks, in a matter-of-fact manner, whether I’d mind cleaning the toilet later, because she wants some jobs doing today. I’m not sure about any of you, but I’m not generally accustomed to become indentured in order to perform manual labour on what is supposedly a special day. I swear to God, this is how the conversation went:

“Would you mind doing the toilet for me?”

*blank stare* “...Can’t you get Mary to do it?”

“Why should Mary have to do it?”

I placate my mother with vague half hearted assertions I may or may not clean the toilet later, and return to my room, passing my brother, who only has a disparaging remark to spare. I spend about twenty minutes in my room, feeling increasingly lonely and depressed. I can’t help but feel disappointed by the array of gifts, and as a result have to keep reminding myself how spoilt I’m being. It’s just there’s nothing I can’t instantly set up and abuse, so I’m failing to appreciate the money. What I really need is a friend to tell me to stop whinging, but unfortunately no one is around, and the internet chooses this moment to die. No sooner has it died, that my mother bursts in, demanding I clean my room up. In fairness, it is pretty messy, and I fully intended to do it at some point anyway, but equally, I resent being forced to do something like this today of all days.

In all, it takes about forty five minutes to clean the room, and I do secretly quite enjoy it. It’s cathartic, see? In fact, I decide to use the camera, to show my seventeenth birthday in pictures. The only thing I’ve gotten out of it so far is pictures of my room in various states of messiness, and a snap of my sister just before she demands I give back “her” camera. Just for the record, it’s not her camera at all, the bitch. Anyway, eventually, after several sweepings, and more than one argument, I lie on my bed and try to watch the death note director’s cut two months after I download it. I don’t get very far, and now it’s time for lunch. It’s just me, my brother, and my sister at the table, so I eat as quickly as possible. You might think they’d be nice today, or at least I did, but it turned out to be wishful thinking. I finish as quickly as possible and return to my room, only to be press-ganged by both of them ten minutes later. It looks like giving them the windows XP installation CD wasn’t enough, and my brother tries to coerce me into spending an hour trying to get the serial key to work (my sister’s pc is broken, which is why an illegal copy of windows is being installed on it). I refuse, and have to listen to a few more insults being hurled at me before pushing them both out. Apparently because I don’t cackle like a hyena every time I get called names, I don’t have a sense of humour about myself. Later my brother will come in again because he is “bored and wants antagonise me”.

The only good thing about all this is it makes me realise I’m disappointed not because I’m materialistic and wanted much more than I got (although it still pisses me off that my sister will almost certainly ask for something ridiculous and get it, while I go another year deferring my requests), but because this doesn’t feel at all like a birthday. I should be seeing some friends, or at least be enjoying myself. Has it really become too much to expect that on this one day people would just leave me alone? I suppose the other problem is that all my friends live in London, and that just compounds the feeling of being left out. I’d hesitate to use the term “worst birthday ever”, because it can always get worse. I’m not looking forward to telling those overly nosey people that I actually spent today cleaning my room.

Bleurgh, at this rate I’m going to be feeling pre-Chekhov before the evening is out. No one tell Stevie, ‘kay? :P

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5751.jpg

Look, presents!

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5752.jpg

Floor is cleared and ready for some hardcore relentless sweeping.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5753.jpg

Lolita is a pretty good book.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5754.jpg

It’s HER camera. ¬_¬

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5755.jpg

I hope he electrocutes himself.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5759.jpg

I need a new bookcase.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5762.jpg

Some of you will perhaps appreciate the appropriateness of the film the calendar is copying :p

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5765.jpg

I like my folders.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5766.jpg

I swear Vienna, I’ll read it eventually.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5769.jpg

Another Nabakov book, this one about a chap called Pnin. Oh, and tennis racket.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5770.jpg

My collection of beano comics is EPIC.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5771.jpg

Just in case you’ve never seen the two best things in my room before.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5772.jpg

Yes, I run a drug lab out of my bedroom.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5773.jpg

Just in case the cops show.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a39/technovirus/DSCF5774.jpg

Clean as a whistle.

...For a given value of “clean”.

Superpowers or brain tumours by seventeen

2008-01-19T01:40:45Z

I’m seventeen on Sunday. An unfortunate piece of real world information I know, but bear with me, it’s necessary exposition that my whole piece hinges upon. It could be construed as egotistic and fishing for compliments (and on one level it probably is), but there’s another purpose here. I’m telling you that I’m seventeen on Sunday because I’ve managed to convince myself that on that day I’m either going to get superpowers or a fatal brain tumour. Frankly, I’d be delighted with either.

Okay, so there’s the hook for this post- which hopefully has you intrigued and perhaps even a little annoyed at my tastelessness on the subject of brain tumours ( get used to it, I make nothing but tasteless jokes about fatal disease, genocide, and just about anything else that appals any right thinking person ). So I have you, the hapless reader, caught on my post like a fish on a line. Now in order to reel you in, let you suffocate, cut you open and burn you until you’re edible, I need to explain myself. I think I’ll start with superpowers, because everyone wishes they have superpowers. I think mine have already manifested, in the form of being able to summon anyone onto MSN if I will them to hard enough. More than likely it’s just that I and everyone else I know are all creatures of habit. I am however occasionally possessed to abandon my precious logic and empirical reasoning in favour of an altogether more romantic vision of the world. This is why Josh called me a “superstitious atheist”. (And who is this mysterious Josh, this short, unshaven voice of reason? He is for the purposes of this blog, a literary device.) I really should learn to try and control this obvious hypocrisy, but sometimes... When you’re alone, outside in the wind and the rain. It’s the dead of winter, but it feels neither hot nor cold. You let the breeze catch you, and for a moment, just one moment, the great wall between you and everything else feel like it might simply dissolve. It never does though, and a second later you get hit by a cricket ball. That’ll teach me for getting metaphysical on a football pitch.

“But what about the Brain tumour!?” I hear you, the reader, cry! Well, the truth is that I have nothing to say on that. I mean, what sounds better- “Superpowers by seventeen” or “superpowers or brain tumours by seventeen”? I think we all know the answer to that.

What does AM stand for anyway?

2008-01-15T22:50:15Z

“This data shows that while the values obtained in my experimental data were universally larger than textbook values, they continued to follow the trend of larger molecules releasing larger amounts of energy. The reason for this is because in any combustion reaction, energy is released when bonds are broken, and is reclaimed when bonds are formed again. In any combustion reaction water and carbon dioxide is produced, and the reaction is always highly exothermic, meaning the enthalpy value is always negative. With a larger molecule, there will be more bonds in a single mole of the substance, and therefore more energy. As well as this, the propan-2-ol has a greater amount of energy released per mole than propan-1-ol. This is because of the position of the hydroxyl group.”

It’s four o’clock in the morning and I’m attempting to explain why it is so vitally important that any prospective deity place his hydroxyl groups at the end of hydrocarbons.
...Just what the fuck am I doing?
Actually, in fairness to the chemistry coursework (for that is how I started this blog post, in medias res, because I am a clever and awfully pretentious twat), it is being worked through exceptionally slowly at this time for no reason but my own laziness. It’s not even laziness, because in all honestly I’d probably be up and staring at this screen anyway. Is it healthy to spend most of the time I am not obligated to invest in education and sleep at this seat? Is it right that I’m slumped back having some indefinable wall of sound pumped into my ears, clashing with the rhythmic tap of the keys? Probably not, but that’s the life I’m leading, and might be what’s sending me ever so slowly insane. I’m addicted, not to games, or YouTube, or forums, or even Sinéad and the indefinably wonderful conversations I’ve shared with her.
It’s information, gloriously useless, endlessly interesting knowledge. A.M. stands for Anno Mundi, “before noon”- Wikipedia is fantastic. That’s the problem. If you value knowledge more than anything else, why should you ever leave when the culmination of all human experiment and thought lies a keystroke away? The simple answer is that you shouldn’t, and I don’t. I’d like to inject a joke in here, to prevent this from becoming altogether too solipsistic, but I can’t think of anything funny to say, and my left eye is twitching. That wasn’t a joke, and I hope it’s just the sleep deprivation doing that. I’ll come back and finish this later.

…

…

That was supposed to represent the passage of time. Obviously for you, my almost certainly unwilling reader, no time at all has passed (that is unless you’re a particularly slow reader). I’m struggling to think of anything else to say, and quite pleased with the fact that I managed to make a funny, no matter how intolerably weak it is.
I’ll talk more when my eyes aren’t trying to perform a coup de grace and my nose doesn’t look like the victim of a biological weapon. One detonated my terrorists probably. Terrorists who are also immigrants, if you believe the Daily Mail.

Oh, quick update now I'm finally getting around to post this, and some advice- if you wake up at 3pm the previous day, this does not mean pulling an all nighter will be any less tiring. An addendum to this new law on the science of sleep deprivation (oh yeah, it's a science), is that if you then go to sleep after you get home, YOU WILL SLEEP UNTIL HALF PAST TEN.

Check the timestamp.

Live on the internet.

2008-01-09T00:44:38Z

New Year’s Eve 2007

Compared to the others, the central line is deafeningly loud. It’s hot and crowded inside, and I’m itching in the same clothes I’ve worn for the past two days. It doesn’t matter though, because it’s New Year’s Eve and I’m happy- I think. Actually, I’m aching too (shouldn’t have tried to sleep sitting up), and this isn’t how I’d like to be spending my day. I’m alone again, and like an alcoholic waking up with a hangover, I realise that I’ve acted like an idiot. Again. What would Josh say?

Josh- I pissed on Heijbroek’s Bassoon says:

Sigh.

Yeah. That’s exactly what Josh would say. I worry sometimes that he secretly hates me, but I’m fairly sure everyone hates me secretly, so it’s not a problem. I just wish he’d retaliate to the short jokes occasionally, because it just makes me feel like a dick otherwise. He is very short though- I half expect him to start singing like an oompa-loompa every time I see him... Josh definitely hates me secretly.

This journey is taking longer than I’d like, and I’m up against the doors. I dig out the silver brick that I call a phone and hit the power button. The aerial and monochrome screen makes Josh call it retro, while the scratched surface and electrical tape holding it together makes Stevie suspect it came from a cereal box. To me this phone is a novelty, and now I only keep it as a reminder of those cherished moments; moments of the most perfect and blissful thoughtlessness. I don’t think there’s really any other justifiable reason for owning a phone where the time taken for the address book to load can be measured with a calendar. Fortunately (or perhaps worryingly), I’ve phoned Stevie so many times that I now know the number off by heart. Stevie is just about the only person I ever need to phone, so it’s more like a direct line to a very personal help line than anything else ( just to avoid confusion later, Stevie is a girl. No, I don’t think it’s a contraction of Stephanie; yes, I think that is the name on the birth certificate. Stop asking).

No service on the tube. I should really learn to remember that, instead of once again looking like a fool in front of the intimidating strangers. I’m assured that no one talks in London, apart from the nutters. Provided I have people to embarrass, I am one of those nutters. Most of the time any stab at conversation will just result in an awkward stand off that lasts until one of us gets off, but occasionally you’ll get a lovely Nigerian called Gilbert. This is I think, an apt metaphor for life.

Time passes. What happens next isn’t important, because it concerns another person. I resurface later, by the fountains near the tube station. It’s ten to eight, and I’m freezing. I’m sitting on the low wall that makes up the side of the fountains, my back to the railings, watching the people swarm through. I’m alone now, exactly as I always think I want to be. My neurosis demands I find meaning in this, so I start a tally. I greet everyone I can, with a nod or a wave, and see how many respond. Nothing can destroy your faith in basic human decency like New Year’s Eve in central London. Being alone gives me a depressingly honest view of my situation; I become solipsism incarnate. In case you haven’t noticed, I have quite a romantic vision of my own psyche- this however does not protect you from an hour and a half of cold weather, bad music and abuse. I ride it out, knowing that I would have wimped out if I’d had anywhere else to go.

Eventually it’s late enough for me to justify taking the same train back to Mile End. This time I find a seat, only to find myself in a perverse staring contest with two Goths. Until I saw it for myself, it was impossible to imagine a cowboy hat and eyeliner on the same man. It looked like he had some kind of wasting disease he was trying to hide. Badly. Soon enough, the train pulls into Mile End, and I hop off it, eager to get back outside. Climbing the steps, the slow and insidious chill of the last night of 2007 creeps up on me, snaking up my spine and numbing my fingers. It’s nice.

Finally coming up to ground level, I find the tiled cave that is the entrance to the station crowded with people, most of them drunk. Being the easily intimidated sort, I went to the least threatening person there- the monstrously inebriated tramp. Contrary to popular belief, tramps will not slit your throat with a rusty knife if you go near them. This one mumbles incoherently for a few minutes and offers me a drink from his bottle of Jack Daniels and something delightful that I christen a “floor fag-end”. I decline both, and in an attempt to feel like a superior human being, I go to the halal fast food shop nearby and buy him some chips and chicken. The obstinate bastard refuses, and I give him a pound out of sheer awkwardness and put the chicken down beside him. Crossing the street, I attempt to phone Stevie and Josh. I get the ominous reply that they “will be there soon.” Once again I’m waiting in the cold, feeling for all the world like Raskolnikov in Petersburg.

The aforementioned couple are as good as their word walking down the darkened street towards me like the title sequence of a “heart warming romantic comedy”. One set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future by the looks of things. So now there are three of us, and I’m laughing again. Stevie dyed her hair pink recently, but now most of it has turned blonde, making her look like a walking advertisement for battenburgs. Josh is still short, and I make the fatal error of mocking shariyah law’s unfair treatment of blind people in an area mostly populated by Muslims. I don’t think anyone heard it, but accidental racism costs lives. If I never post here again, it’s either because I don’t have the dedication to blog, or far more likely, I have been kidnapped by extremists who want to cut off my head streaming live to youtube. (That would be quite cool actually. I should add it to my list of things I want terrorists to do to me. ...No, I don’t want any of them to do anything like that.)

Skip forward, and we’re all back at Mile End, getting on the train. Josh, Stevie, Stevie’s many friends, and me. It’s slightly awkward having only tenuous links to everyone but Josh and Stevie, but entertaining nonetheless. Once on the train, I pitch my new concept for a hard hitting drama to Sinéad, a crime serial revolving around a private investigator called Square. It’s set in St Petersburg, where the misanthropic and jaded Square solves crime while trying to stop his raging alcoholism tear his personal life apart. This drama belongs to the family of shows which use the name of their protagonist as the title of the show, where aforementioned name also happens to be an ambiguous name. The hook in Square is that not only is he the best Private investigator in Moscow, he’s also a dancing bear. Yeah, I bet you weren’t expecting that, were you!?

...

... Well Sinéad likes it. Then again, I’d spent the last week talking to her about paedophiles, revengecest (A contraction of revenge incest. If you haven’t seen Oldboy, go watch it), the merits of genocide as an art form, and gameshows which invariably featured all three of the above. All of this was facilitated by the wonderful, wonderful internet. I’d like to take a moment to thank the internet, facilitator of the most twisted and extravagant malevolence known to man. Thank you internet!

Where was I? Oh yeah, a train. Again. Real life should have scowling emoticons, just so I can somehow express my discontent about taking the same journey for the umpteenth time today. Maybe... I dunno, something expressive that looks like an emoticon, with a nose and eyes and ears, but it wouldn’t be a fixed expression, it could change shape to suit your mood. Ah well, I’m sure something will be invented at some point. Before my thoughts can come to their logical conclusion, Stevie grabs me by the sleeve and drags me off the train along with everyone else. It’s dark and wet outside, but no one cares. I’m being led along a dark street in a city I barely know by people who are, for the most part, complete strangers to me. Is this a situation normal people allow themselves to get into? If it’s not, they’re missing out. Reaching the millennium bridge we make the singular discovery that the rain has made it possible to slide along the bridge like you were skating. Walking becomes skating, skating becomes race skating, and before we’ve reached the other side, Josh and me are in direct competition to see how far we can slide with a run and jump. Given the choice, I would spend New Year here on the bridge. Instead, we all end up on the south bank, pushing through the crowds to try and get a better view for when the fireworks come. As the clock drags closer to midnight, it gets more and more crowded. Eventually it becomes so packed there’s barely room to move, but this doesn’t stop a massive black man and his girlfriend shunting through the crowds, coming to rest in front of me and Josh. It’s funny, and I decide to make it known to Josh. I lean over to him, putting on my best “offended daily mail reader” voice and whisper to him how rude it was of that man. Unfortunately, what was intended as a whisper must be yelled out above the noise of the crowd, and instantly this massive, tough man is staring at me, and he has the eye of a killer. I hastily shout, in a higher pitch, that it was just a joke. Later Josh will inform me that if he’d had a knife, he’d have stabbed me himself. Ho Hum.

There’s something singularly peculiar about being in a city on New Year’s Day, when the fireworks have gone off and people are looking to make their way home. It’s a bit like a cross between a final fantasy game and the apocalypse. Let me explain- it’s like a final fantasy game because you have to go everywhere by foot, and you get occasional random encounters with drunken mobs. It’s like the apocalypse because there are absolute throngs of people taking to the street, people scream to be let off the crowded busses at their stop, and because IT’S LIKE BEING IN A FUCKING FINAL FANTASY GAME. At one point we actually have to run beneath a makeshift tunnel formed of scaffolding to avoid a massive fight moving slowly up the street. I half expected a timer to appear in the top right of my vision. Eventually, after crossing the barren wastes of Midga- I mean, after crossing the barren wastes of London, we make it to Liverpool Street. Why are we at Liverpool Street? To get “Beigels” of course. Stop looking at me like that, it’s how the shop sells bagels, and it’s a perfectly reasonable proposition to spend an hour and a half on packed busses that swerve desperately through the chaotic streets. I should be terrified, the closest I’ve come to this before is a sleepover in Slough. I’m not though… I’ve fallen off the cliff and I’m flying. Caught in the stairs up to the top deck, above me a man speaks Russian into a phone rapidly, and I delight in recognising the occasional word or phrase. Hooray for Pimsleur teach yourself Russian and all five lessons I could be bothered to take. I’m flying, but one stray glance at Stevie brings me crashing down. I’m reminded for a moment of reality, of what an idiot I am. When I’m alone I’m introverted and depressed. Can’t talk. I love being around these friends, in the time I have, but I act like such an idiot. It’s like everything all the thoughts I have when I’m alone, all the connections, they come tumbling out when there’s actually someone to talk to, and it doesn’t matter if it’s my friends, or total strangers I talk to. I get loud and obnoxious and over-bearing and self obsessed (honestly, I’m always self obsessed, but when there’s no one to talk to, it doesn’t show) and worst of all, selfish. It might not seem like a sin to talk to strangers, but when I do it, I embarrass Stevie. It’s not just thoughtless, it’s diabolical after she’s done so much for me. Sad as it may sound, she is my best friend, a rare star in an otherwise black and empty night. I need to do better, for her and everyone else foolish enough to associate with me.

All that’s forgotten when we get back and Josh makes himself a bowler hat out of bread. Midgets in pastry headwear are something everyone should experience at least once. Once per week if at all possible.

And that’s it! That is, kind and patient reader, my first “proper” blog post. It’s a far easier way for me to introduce myself by telling you a quaint little story about my New Year, than tell you who I am. My name doesn’t matter; no one really wants to hear my ambitions; my hobbies are not worth the hard disk space they’re written on. Only people who operate who live in the real world deserve to talk about that. I exist there, but I live on the internet. Live on the internet... Wouldn’t be a bad name for a blog.

Fuck! I'm posting in a BLOG!

2007-07-09T02:32:34Z

First of all, let me say I have a particular loathing for blogs, on the grounds that they are almost always angsty, attention seeking, and pathetic. Fortunately, I'm a terrible hypocrite, and not above it for the purposes of making fun of it. If I post in this blog, it will be the opposite of what you expect- witty, intelligent, and even spellchecked! (ironically, "spellchecked" is apparently not a real word). So, bearing this in mind (and the fact that's two am), I shall start as I mean to go on!

...

Which is where we encounter our first problem. After spending altogether too much time with the angsty teenage girls who post the aforementioned blogs, I have been convinced to post, in one giant opus magnum, the story of my twisted and tortured existence, stemming from my brutal treatment in the distant past.

Yeah, right.

I'm the one writing it and even I think it'sstupid and pathetic and a waste of electricity etc. etc. BUT, I have an excuse. If anyone asks I was forced to write this, and even if the subject is stupid, my excuse is that people wanted to hear it. In the spirit to compromise however, even if I despise the subject matter, it's execution will be as fluid and as staggeringly entertaining as I am capable of making it at this late hour.

Before we begin, I'll just say I'm using an awful lot of paragraphs. Bad habit that I must stop.

One more.

Now I'm ready! Our Dickensian tale of woe begins with the relatively blissful life of a seven year old living in Wales. He used to live in England, but he doesn't any more... Oh wait, now he's moving back again. My mistake.
That's the backstory out of the way. When I moved back to England, I found a new and special form of suffering in my primary school. I entered year two, ready to show the whole world how... uh... I dunno, how cool my Teenage mutant ninja turtle sword was (The nursery group teacher tried to confiscate it! The WHORE! >_<). Anyway, enough of that. Back in year two, I picked my nose, ergo my classmates hated me. It was beautiful really, the way a whole class can maintain such antipathy for a person. This was how my life as someone who does something other than eat insects and cry began. Great.
Throughout primary school, I was always at odds with the people around me, and very much separate to them. It began in year two (as I just said), because I picked my nose. Nasty habit, but there was a reason for it (besides the snot being delicious ;) ). That's not important though, because I'm allowing myself to get sidetracked! It started that way in year two, but I made myself deliberately different to everyone else in my class, and I suffered for it. There were upsides and downsides to that (mostly downsides), but looking back, it was at least partially self inflicted.

Let me clarify, I hated my classmates, with a passion rarely seen outside religious fundamentalism. I had periods of friendliness with them, but for the most part I stayed separate to most of them. Looking back, this did two things for me. It let me try to write, and it cultivated my desire for attention. Being the middle child, I was sandwiched between older siblings going through their GCSE's and A-levels, and a younger sister starting in reception. Both my parents worked full time, so I must have felt somewhat neglected, although I may not even have realised it at the time. It might seem counter intuitive then, deliberately remaining apart from the people in my class, torturing myself by being at odds with them. It did something though- it let me store up this well of sadness and hatred, and in those outbursts (normally me just crying in the corner), I got the attention I wanted. It didn't matter why, I just got it. At first I'd wanted to make friends at first (and I made one or two, although one moved away, the bastard), I found it easier and easier to slip into the role of class pariah, and to be able to look down upon, and hate the people I was forced to learn with.
It did do one very good thing for me though- I realised that I could impress everyone and feel important by showing off. I started to write, almost obsessively, with the subject of "creative writing" being the thing I looked forward to the most. I outstripped my classmates, and could grip them with one of my stories. I liked being intelligent, and I pushed myself towards it. If I'd just been part of the group... I probably wouldn't be me.

And had it just been like this, I would have been fine (moving to secondary school was great). I would stop being an arrogant prick that hated other people but craves their approval, because I'm sure that's what half the kids who are bullied are like, even if outwardly they're incredibly withdrawn (I was). Unfortunately, this story has a twist, and that twists name is TEH INTERNETZ0RZZZZ!!!!ONE!8EY834Y6!. That means the internet if you're not 1337.
Those of you who are familiar with runescape will understand the terrible grip it can hold on the mind of a ten year old. It was everything I'd ever wanted to do on a computer, and was introduced to be by a friend from outside school. This was a terrible and deadly weapon, for I was the first in my school to know of it. I told it to my one friend, and it spread. Soon the whole class was gripped, and it was all anyone talked about. It should be said at this point, that I was capable of being manipulation beyond my years, especially with such dull witted classmates (case in point is where I convinced my teacher I was emotionally traumatised by my brother after being told off for talking in class). Being naturally lazy, I was rubbish at runescape, and decided to make a new account. I messaged my one friend from this new account, saying "hi, this is gerard lol." His next message was asking who I was (he wasn't very observant), and inspiration struck me.
I said I was a friend of Gerard's, and he asked who I was. I told him I was Paul Gower (one of the people who created runescape). It may well have been the most significant lie in my life, because out of it sprung one of the grandest deceptions known to man. My whole class ended up in awe of this "technovirus" (the name I had chosen for this new account), offering him everything they had in order to get on his good side so he would make a village and name it after them in the game. I was technovirus' only link to the class, and for a few scant weeks I enjoyed universal fame and adoration. On the internet, I could achieve anything. (Remember this mentality, it's important for later!)

Unfortunately, I was gradually found out, managing to alienate even my one friend (he was rather short, and technovirus insisted on calling him "Sir Half Pint"). Even there it might have ended, had things not gone to shit in my final year at primary school. The animosity between myself and the other children deepened- They were talking about willies and fannies, so I didn't "get" what they were going on about. I wouldn't for some time, and still fail to see what's funny about the word rubber being synonymous with bum. I guess I'm just not cultured enough.
Besides that, at some intedeterminate point in the term, we all had the obligatory trip to Kingswood- which was five days stuck in accomodation with the rest of my class. When they mentioned archery and laser tag I was convinced it would be fun.

I can confidently say that hell holds nothing that can scare me after Kingswood, It was absolute hell. They were all so... so... juvenile! It sounds a terrible thing to say, but even if I was hyperbolic, whiny, and arrogant, I was still a damn sight smarter than that lot. I couldn't stand the constant torment, to the extent that (and I laugh remembering this), I ended up, after one particularly stringent fall out with my room mates, I wrote a suicide note proclaiming how I was going to throw myself off the rock wall, and made sure it was going to be found. Besides my naivety at how secure those harnesses are, I didn't get the sympathy I so craved. I was still allowed to go on it though- good old fashioned teacher laziness.
After that... things became a war of attrition between me and everything else at that school. A few weeks after getting back from Kingswood, a letter arrived detailing that I had behaved awfully at Kingswood ( I probably had to some extent), but the reasons it gave were what really got me. Most of them were exaggerations, if not outright lies. I never saw the letter, but got second hand information about it. I don't like telling anyone anything, so being forced to admit to my mother that I wrote a suicide note was like torture. Until this point it had just been my classmates I despised, but then I felt like that whole school hated me (It probably did, but I can't explain everything, especially from my stunted eleven year old view, in a single blog post). As a result, I started doing violent things against random people, just to satisfy how angry I was. The two examples I could think of were grabbing someone by the throat in the cloakroom after some git walked by and smirked at me, and trying to attack someone who was taunting me. Attacking them with a compass.

You may think I'm exaggerating, but (and I never though about any of the stuff I've been talking about until a month or two ago) it turns out than towards the end of year six, I was actually being taken out of school to have psychological councilling. Remembering it, I actually asked my mother, and she said it was because "the school thought I was mad". Nice. I remember being asked by the counciller (after I'd said that I thought the class was like a hierarchy), whether I thought I was better than them. I said no, because it was the right answer. I wanted to say yes.

What was the point of this convoluted, self indulgent whine? It's an explanation. In secondary school I grew out of all this. I became relatively normal, albeit a bit weird. I'm friendly with everyone now, and unless i devote time to thinking about this, it doesn't even cross my mind. On the other hand, when I'm on the internet, when I employ my alias of "lord of the toenails", I become exactly who I was five or six years ago. It's the internet, and I found solice in the internet, and never grew out of it. I've accumulated a lot of knowledge, but I'm still stuck somewhat in the mentality of an eleven year old who hates people, who thinks, who knows he's better than the people around him, and believes himself to have unquestionable moral authority. It's an amateur attempt to psychoanalyse myself, but I'm recognising it, so maybe I can work of changing it?

That doesn't matter though. I don't intend to let anyone read this, so I can say with total impugnity, that if I've ever hurt any of you, I'm sorry, because it's all my fault. It seems like a plea for forgiveness, writing all this, but it's catharsis, and no one will read it anyway. ^_^

Finally, just WTF IS QUIXOTIC!? I bet there are about three people that use LiveJournal who are even remotely qualified to tell me what that is, if it is indeed a real word. I wouldn't be surprised if the programmers put it in the system just to see if anyone would use it.

Really, I can imagine people up and down the globe cursing their inability to describe their mood as quixotic.

Oh wait, now they're angry about it, so they just set that as their mood! Problem Solved!