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[screamhole]

MY DATE WITH DEATH: A TRUE MEMORY & STORY

Did I ever tell you about my date with Death? Well, it’s a pretty horrible day where I’m at, so what better way to kill it than by spinning up one of my famous stories? And let me tell you, this one spins like a Beyblade in Hell on acid! 

Folks, let me tell you about the time I died, and all the fun I had along the way.

1. 

It all started in the bathroom, as so many classics do. I was brushing my teeth in the shower, as I am wont to do (note to reader: this means ‘as I want to do’; it looks dumb written out, but it’s actually smart as hell). Shower-brushing is a small time-saving trick of mine, which I never fail to apply on the daily. This day was no exception. I was all over those holy molars of mine when suddenly, I lost my footing on a bar of soap that I stand on (another of my time-saving manoeuvres) and I came tumbling down onto the slip mat. Slip is right, I thought, and would have made a note of that zinger had the toothbrush not become stuck in my windpipe. Choking, as I recall, I scrambled out of the tub and, knowing the house was empty because my wife Angie was at work, I rushed over to the neighbours’ apartment. Maybe they had air at their place, I thought. Sadly, I wasn’t quick enough; I was inches from their door when my body just couldn’t go anymore, and I collapsed on the landing floor. Luckily, I wasn’t naked; I had paused on the way to put on several pairs of pants. 

So that was it. Dead. Me. Me = Dead. Except it wasn’t how I expected. I mean, I wasn’t seeing all-nothing, or even all-black. In fact, I got up and saw myself, lying there, all-dead-and-all-soapy. “Ghost!”, I said. And I was right. I was a ghost. A ghost who got to hang around and see it all, as it unfolded over the next few hours: the neighbours finding me, the two police officers standing over my stiff, sud-ridden corpse. “What do you think, Sarge?” said the young one. “Another shower-sex hallway suicide?” “Don’t be stupid, kid” said the sergeant. “This guy’s wearing pants. I think we can chalk it up to a classic toothbrush-in-the-neck life hack gone wrong.”  “Good think I put on all those pants” I quipped, realising immediately that it was pointless because they couldn’t hear me. They couldn’t hear me! Damn, that was the deal, wasn’t it? You have to get all of the talking out of the way while you’re livin’. But there was so much I still needed to say about dyin’! This chin could be wagging forever, let me tell you. That’s some deal, huh? The one thing we all want to know about and here I am in the middle of it, with lips too stiff and dead to flap about it. How’s that for ass blastwards? So there I was, with a hell of a story to tell. And I knew there was only one person I’d be able to tell it to. 

Whoopi Goldberg. 

2. 

My grandma was dead. Is dead. She was dead, and now she is dead... again. Am I making sense here? She told me about the first time she died, back in the 90s. She was sucking on a Werther’s Original when it went down the wrong way and got stuck in her toaster and burned her house down. Lying on that hospital bed, she was legally dead for a good 27 minutes before they realised and resuscitated her (I think they were too busy watching some dumb Patrick Swayze movie on the communal television to notice). Thinking back, we all felt like she had gone crazy while she was dead, but now it seems there might have been some true-speak in all that wack-talk of hers. “If you ever die,” she once said to me as a kid, “If you die and you have to say something to a loved one, go to Whoopi Goldberg. I saw it. She helped me tell your grandfather he had soup on his good pants in the hospital, it was driving me crazy and was probably what set me off dying in the first place. I know it will work, son. If you need her, she’ll be there for you”. With those words in my ear, I packed a bag and headed out in search of Whoopi. 

I made it to the airport, and was having trouble scanning my passport with no corporeal form, when out of nowhere the whole room grew dim. People froze in motion, and there was an icy chill which took over the whole space. And then, a small light, like from the end of a tunnel, grew from behind the baggage claim. A screeching whistle came with it, before a train of bones roared past my face. The brakes braked, and as the bones ground to a halt out stepped a cloaked figure from the carriage. 

“Hello” he said. “You’re dead”. 

“I’m dead?” I asked. 

“You’re dead” he said. “And I’m Death.”

“You’re dead too?” I asked. 

“That’s right, I am Death” he said.

“Me too” I said. 

“I doubt it, kid” he said. “Anyway, sorry I’m late. There was some protest at Limbo station. All the staff walked out right after this demon... you know what? Not important. What is important is that you kicked your bucket. So hop on in, pup, next stop is your new forever home: Hell. OH. OH! That is, unless you want to play chess?” 

I turned away from the stranger. “Sorry, I don’t play that game… not anymore, that is.” I was kind of hoping that he would dig into my deep dark past relationship with the game of kings. 

“Suit yourself, friend” said Death. “Half the pieces are missing anyway. The one chess set on this hell train, you think these devil freaks are gonna put it back neatly? Fat chance. Anyhoodle, let’s get moving, up you come”. 

“I’m really going to Hell?”

“Yeah” said Death. “Frickin’ Hell City, USA. And unless you wanna effin’ play chess, kid, I don’t wanna hear any more fuckin’ back talk. Hop the eff on”. 

I couldn’t believe it. I had to escape; to re-live, and tell the tale of what death is like, and also what Death is like (note: make clear very handsome in second draft). A plan formed in my head, just like the plan to do a checkmate on the other guy forms in the head of a grand master chess player. “Oh, but Death,” I said “I really do want to play, but like you said we can’t play on that old set. It has no bishops”.  “That’s how we like it in Hell,” said Death, “it’s really more of a drinking game. Anyway, I take your point, kid; this chess board sucks. But where do you suggest we find a decent travel chess set at this hour, in this realm of existence? You got one in your great coat?” 

“No” I said. “But I think I have an idea. Let’s make a stop in… New York (maybe?)” 

3. 

Luckily, my plan worked out. I had managed to guess Whoopi Goldberg’s exact location: a Starbucks on 6th Avenue (note: check real place). I had also tricked Death into taking us there on the promise there’d be chess, and also he wanted a coffee. The train of bones crunched through the coffee shop window, shattering the glass and grinding the tables beneath it. Thankfully, this all played out in the dead dimension so it was totally fine. No one noticed. No one, that is, except Whoopi. 

“What the hell?!” she cried, jumping back from her table. 

“Whoopi,” I said climbing down, from the bone train, “you’ve got to help me. I’m dead and I know for an absolute fact you can send messages to the living.” 

“Oh I get it,” said Whoopi, “you think just because I played a medium in that movie that I can really talk to dead people?”

“Listen Whoopi, I’ve never even seen Sister Act, so please don’t assume I would be so irrational and quick to judge people like that. Instead of accusing me of stuff, how about you accept that you’re talking to a real ghost right now, and so therefore I am right.”

“Oh my God” said Whoopi. “I guess I can speak to ghosts. I guess all my years on The View have made me capable of speaking to anyone”. 

“Yeah: you, Jimmy Kimmel, Graham Norton… all supremely cursed folks. Talk-show hosting is a real double-edged sword. Back to me, though. Whoopi: can you call my wife and tell her I loved her? Oh, and also I won’t be able to make it to our Saturday UNO game for obvious reasons. Oh, oh, and that the obvious reasons are that I’m going to Hell on the bone train with Death. Sorry, so much has happened today, I forget to bring people up to speed.”

“I guess I don’t have much of a choice” said Whoopi. She closed her script for Sister Act 3 and opened up Skype, making a call to the account details I gave her. The little jingle played before a familiar voice answered. 

“Angie?” said Whoopi. “This is Whoopi Goldberg”

“And?” said my wife. 

“Angie, I’m calling on behalf of your departed husband.”

“Oh my god,” Angie said. “What has he done now?”

“He’s dead, actually,” explained Whoopi, “choked on a toothbrush before you got home. The police must have taken him away but stopped for lunch, so they’ve not gotten a chance to let you know about it. He wants you to know that he loves you, Angie. You were the best thing in his life. Doesn’t sound like tough competition for a man who loved toothbrushes and chess, but all the same, he wanted you to know.” 

“Cool, good to know” said Angie. “Hey, one second: does this mean that he’s talking with you right now?”

“Yeah,” said Whoopi “his spirit is here. Right now he’s looking at his hair in the window, even though he’s literally invisible.” 

“Well, if he’s really there,” said Angie, “I’ll ask him something only he would know and that will prove ghosts are real. What’s my favourite colour?” “Shit…” I said. “Uh, I dunno, green maybe”. 

“Uh, I dunno, green maybe” said Whoopi. 

“Wow, that’s spooky”, said Angie. “It’s actually purple, but that idiot always thinks it’s green. He even painted the house green for our anniversary. What a dunce. Ok, cool, tell him no worries. If he can make it home tonight for UNO, great, but I’ll not be holding my breath.” 

“Don’t worry, my wife,” I said. I have a plan”

“Don’t worry, his wife, he has a plan,” said Whoopi. 

“I’ll definitely not wait up then. Thanks Whoopi. We loved you in Sister Act by the way” said Angie, and hung up. 

“Ah, guess I have seen it,” I told Whoopi. “Well, thanks for your help. I guess there’s only one option left: I’m gonna have to kidnap and murder Death”. 

“Why don’t you just beat him at chess and win your life back, like in that movie?” asked Whoopi. 

“For the last time, Whoopi, I don’t remember Sister Act at all!” I said. “More to the point, I don’t play chess. Not after… that night.” I was kind of really hoping someone was gonna ask about the deep dark past thing. It’s not often I get to tell these stories. 

“Suit yourself, kid” said Whoopi. “I guess you’re going to Hell, then”. 

4. 

The bone train door slammed open. 

“Ok kid,” said Death, “it’s been 50 minutes now. Do they have my mocha frapp or what? Are we gonna play chess now, or what? Honestly? I kind of feel like you’re using me for some kind of plot thing that’s going on for too long, and I just want to play some games to take my mind off the fact that my job sucks forever. You + Me = Hell, RIGHT NOW.” 

Think fast, I thought, at a normal thought-speed. Suddenly, it hit me. 

“Alright, Death. Time to play, for my very soul.” 

“Sweet,” said Death. 

“But not at chess.” 

“Ah, Jeez!” Death groaned.

“No, I could never play chess again. It’s actually a really cool and dark story that I haven’t had a chance to tell, but maybe I could tell it if…” “Yeah, yeah, what’s the game, kid?” said Death, doing the wrap-up-the-story hand gesture with his bone-fingers. 

I pulled a pack of cards from my great coat pocket (as in, the coat pocket is really great, it’s just a regular modern fashionable coat). 

“UNO?!” cried Death. “Kid, you really are going to Hell.” 

“Not if I can help it,” I said. “I was taught by the best: my wife. She made me the player I am today. And she takes no prisoners. So yes, Death. I’d wager my life on the back of her teaching”. 

Death pulled up a table, and leaned his scythe against the coat rack.

“Whatever, dude. Just deal ‘em out.” 

I played Death best of three. Best of three is right, I thought. More like the best three games of my life, let me tell you. They had to be, given what was at stake. We tied one-to-one. Death learned the game so fast, and he was soon a worthy competitor. It was down to the knuckle, which was unfair given his were so much more visible. We were down to two cards each, and it was his turn. I had to pull it out, but these last two cards were the worst I could have had. He slammed down a green 3. 

“This is it, kid. This next card’s a ticket to Satan’s ass. STANDARD CLASS.” 

I flipped a yellow 3. 

“UNO,” I declared, “and guess what, Death? You were so busy sassing me, you forgot to say UNO yourself, so you have to PICK UP.” 

Death shuddered realising his mistake. 

“What?! No!” he cried. “Ah, fuck this game! Why couldn’t we have played Demon Party Drunk Chess anyway. Oh my god, these cards suuuuuck!” 

The last card was one of those wild cards you can write on. “I’m done, Death. And my custom rule is that you have to give me my soul and my life back.” 

“The game’s over kid. Also, I don’t think that’s a real rule you can make anyway. But a bet is a bet.” He waved his hand, doing cool Death magic or something. “Now get back to living before I do something I regret”. 

I felt my spirit form fading as I regained my life inside my body. It looked kind of like that scene with Marty McFly in Back To The Future where he’s almost erased from existence. 

“Wow,” I said. “This is just like that movie”. 

“Yep.” said Death, walking away sulkily. “Just like Sister Act.” 

“Thanks for everything” I said. “So long.”

“You know, it is a shame. I would have liked to play with you again. But I don’t have friends much anymore. Things have been a little tough since the whole… incident.” 

“Suit yourself, kid" I said, vanishing into the air. 

“Oh well I guess I could stop by now that you mention it, ok thanks, see you and your wife tonight at 8??” 

Damn, I thought. My body had left that realm, but his words followed me. I guess it wouldn’t be the worst date I had in my life! I thought (man I gotta write these zingers down). “See you then, Death” I whispered, my voice going all ethereal. “See you then.” 

5. 

I woke up in the ground, soil trickling onto a cheap coffin the cops had stuffed me in. Weeping, some folks were throwing handfulls of dirt into the hole where I was lying. I didn’t recognise them, I think they just wanted a day out at the graves. I bust through the lid of that thing like it was cardboard, and climbed out. “Come on guys” I said, pushing off the coffin lid. “You gotta throw more dirt on than that, I haven’t got all day. If you give me a shovel I’ll get it done much faster.” And I did. And when I was done filling my own grave, I walked home, knocked on my door, and was met by my beautiful Angie. “Boy, did I miss you” I said, shaking her hand in a friendly manner. 

“You have soap in your hair” she said. 

“I know. And soil in my shoes babe, it’s a weird combination. But there’s also love in my heart. And if you’ll have me, I am ready for UNO. Speaking of which, I may have invited a friend along…” 

So there you have it. That’s how me and my wife Angie got ourselves a weekly dinner date with Death, of underworld fame. And you know what? It’s a lot of fun having him round. It can be hard to make friends as a couple, and he’s a good guy. Even though I sometimes worry a little too much about our fate beyond this lifetime, every time I hear that screechin’ bone-train a-comin’, I smile knowing it will all be ok. In fact, I think I hear it coming now…

…ok never mind, it was just my wife screamin’ at me again. 

[screamhole]

HEADHOLE: A MINDFULNESS MEDITATION PROGRAMME

For the past year I have been studying the practices of mindfulness meditation from ancient Buddhist texts and also Youtube. As such, I am no longer the wrathful fool you once knew, and I would like to share with you my new five-day programme for the low price of £8.  Please pay me and enjoy Headhole: a quiet place to let your thoughts die. Available on Soundcloud or Youtube. 

[screamhole]

I WRITE FOR THIS NOW

So you can read my stuff over on that site.  

Links: 

Five Christmas Traditions That Make St. Andrews The Best University  Top 5 Perfect Songs Ruined By Awful Cover Versions Yes, Freshers: Dundee Is Real (And It’s Cursed!) Top 6 Dinner Date Ideas that are The Rule  PhD Student A Fucking Idiot Postgraduate Thesis Descends Into Twin Peaks Fan Theory Taste Planning To Downscale

[screamhole]

MY DREAMS ARE JUST TERRIBLE IMPROV

Louis CK recently made a joke on The Tonight Show about how naps are better than sex ‘because a nap is always 100% successful’. I don’t know what kind of rich-guy bullshit naps he’s taking in ‘New York’ (America), but personally I wake up from every nap like I’m in the hospital. That would be the only explanation for the pain and confusion I’m feeling. Every time I nap, the Inner Me, the part of me that hates me, must see my guard is down and Freddy-Krueger-throw me around the room. When I properly fall asleep at night, he’s like “shit, he has his guard up. Guess I’ll only be able to hurt him emotionally”. Cue the dreams about every friend I’ve ever known calling me a dick at max volume. 

I wonder sometimes if God is real, and he’s just passing time by making absurdist films and broadcasting them into our heads. If so, I can’t blame him. If I was alive forever, I’d probably have a go at an Oscar. I also think when you die, God starts putting you in the films. That’s what’s in store for us in the afterlife: being in God’s films, for him to broadcast into our still-living minds while we sleep. It’s like Netflix, but you’re thinking “I don’t remember being in this” during every single scene. But we were. We’re dead then. For eternity. Somewhere out there it’s Day #1098 of shooting for God’s five-second art film, “The Skeleton Jumps Out And Scares Bobby”…  

I’ve started to notice a lazy quality to my dreams. Particular items and thoughts from the day have started to appear in them, and not in a subtle way where you need to read a book by a doctor of good-vibes to work out what it definitely didn’t mean. They appear more like an improv troupe trying to tie everything together at the end of a bad night. Improv is a great metaphor for nightmares, actually. It’s like playing those warm-up games with the part of myself that hates me, and he doesn’t understand “Yes! And…” The scene is: two friends at a high school reunion. 

ME:                Wow, so great to be back here at our old high school, right? INNER ME:  Yes! And… you’re in a cave now. A demon bites your dick off. ME:                Huh, ok. Bit of a wild turn… well I’m sure someone back the *high school reunion* can help? INNER ME:  Yes! And… no. Just the cave now. Forever the cave.  ME:                Great.  SKELETON: [blood pouring from mouth, jazz hands] And SCEEENE!

[screamhole]

VISITING HOME HAS HELPED ME BETTER UNDERSTAND MY ENEMY, ‘THE CUNT’

I’ve just come back from home. I didn’t miss it. Things haven’t changed - I don’t think they ever have, or ever could. The whole town reminds me of one of those Facebook games where you have to either wait 8 hours or pay £30 to do more than two things in one day. Also, if you try to get your friends to come and visit, their response is similarly “DON’T INVITE ME TO THIS SHIT” before they cut you out of their life. 

My hometown is one of the places in the north of England that voted Conservative in the past election. As such, it seems to hoard traditions, a lot of which aren’t even very good, like punching people, kicking people, assaulting people, shouting racial abuse at people, football, stabbing people, blaming things on immigrants, Wetherspoons, etc. It’s also the kind of small town where people spend their entire lives, from birth to death (with maybe a pint in-between, if they can get the day off from pretending to do their job). This might be quite a shrewd move - if time flies when you’re having fun, a lifetime in that place must feel close to achieving immortality. Of course, it’s very beautiful in parts, but there is truly nothing to do. Except drink. In fact, any relaxing walk in the countryside is usually interrupted by falling over a group of sixth-formers drinking cider with their vicious, shitting dog. Oh, perhaps there is one small change - the people in charge have relented, and they’ve recently added a Starbucks. So now have a pint OR a coffee (if you’re some kind of ‘veganist-specky-cunt’, like my birth certificate says I am). 

I rarely choose the pint, because these pubs are the worst places to be. They’re full of barely-recognisable swastikas. Whole rows of them, gradually getting worse and more disturbing, like a child’s handwriting practice in reverse, or like the scribbling of an old man gradually losing his mind (that last one probably doesn’t need to be a simile). The strange thing, though, is who you find talking to one another. It’s common to see an 18-year-old with a full-face iron cross downing Fosters with a man who was quite possibly in the army during WWII. This the insanity of the small-town right-wing - drawing swastikas on everything, and also thinking Churchill was the shit for getting rid of Hitler. I guess it can only be that they like the idea of Nazism, just not that fucking foreign Nazism. Thinking about it now, I suppose that’s probably why they keep mangling the swastikas; they’re not idiots, they’re just trying to make everything a bit more ‘English’...

[screamhole]

GET OUT OF THE CAFE

For a few months in early 2016 I worked in the cafe of a supermarket chain. I won’t say which one, out of politeness. Also, if you really want to know, you can probably still find me in their car park at 3:00 am every night, eating a £3 falafel wrap like that’s a day’s work to be proud of. ‘Wow’, you might be thinking, ‘a part-time, minimum-wage, after-school job? You seem a little bit overqualified and 25 for that’. Yes, that’s right. I was working mostly with sixth-formers who took 15 cigarette breaks and stole their weight in sausage sandwiches every day. But it was enough to prevent my family looking at me like there was a video of me eating shit on Youtube. It also meant I didn’t have to actually internalise any of the values of Tesc- I mean A General Supermarket. Fuck, how do I edit that out wait SHIT this isn’t Google...  It’s fine, they can’t get upset at me anyway because most of this is made up. In fact, I’ll present it to you like I’m recalling a past life, so it’s even less convincing (don’t worry, I’ll let you know the real bits by kicking you under the table). Ok here I go, back to that dark, dark place in my past: It’s the past. It’s horrible. It’s a cafe. Coffee and shit, you get the idea. The customers are approaching. None of them knows what they’re ordering. I suppose it doesn’t matter; I struggle to make everything equally. They’re angry at me. I’m slow, and my hat makes my head look weird. More of them are coming, literally in coachloads. An endless stream of them. 60 year-old couples. They all approach the 3-column coffee menu and ask for ‘a coffee’, then act confused when I tell them that we don’t sell that, and they’ll have to be more specific. I feel myself ageing as they look upsettingly-closely at the menu again.  ‘Could I have an Americana, please?’  I wince visibly at this, and have to scald my hand with hot milk for an excuse.  ‘An Americana?’, I repeat.  ‘Yes’, she nods. ‘Two please’ The customer is always right, they told me. You need this job. Give them what they want.    ‘Fucking, hold on...’ I say, pulling on a pair of Levi jeans, tuning my Fender Telecaster, and trying to find the lyrics for ‘I’m on Fire’ and ‘Dancing in the Dark’.  There’s this (I’m not doing the dumb italics past life shit anymore, by the way) to be said for cafe work: it’s a great way to lose any attachment you have to humanity. Nothing highlights how long we have left as a species more clearly than the waste that comes out of a supermarket cafe - it’s a model for the fall of mankind. You look at tables and think, ‘They only had a tea and a newspaper. Why does this look like a crime scene?’ No one can just put their cups away neatly. Or do nothing to them. They always feel like they’re helping out by packing the latte glasses so tightly with tissues and crisp packets that you could shoot it like a musket, or a septic party popper. Most of my job was disarming these without blowing my head off with phlegm and beans.   More than upsetting, though, it was aggressively tedious. Some days never seemed to end. There was always one person between me and closing on time. Some man would decide to sit for hours, without an iPhone or laptop; just three losing scratch-cards and a tap water, looking out wistfully onto the car-park for 30 minutes like they’ve finished a novel. I could at least relate to them if they had a book. I can imagine sitting there after turning the final page and wondering ‘oh, I wonder what she meant when she told him ‘not too soon’...’. But what’s the scratch-card equivalent? ‘Oh, I wish I won that money. I wonder what it meant that I didn’t win that money’. Fucking ‘go home now’, that’s what it means. Go home, and let me go home, to the slightly different flavour of shit I have there.  Don’t work in a cafe, that was my point. It’s like shop-work on hard mode, and all you end up with is too much empathy for the people who work in them. I remember how visibly mentally ill I was every second I was behind that counter, so now I fear for my life every time I ask a barista for something unreasonable like a cup or my correct change. Stay ignorant, keep ordering your ‘a coffee’, and never get a job. So happy I solved that for you. 

[screamhole]

THIS CINEMA IS ALL I HAVE

There’s not a lot to do in this city. You can have a coffee, or you can throw yourself in the sea. That’s about it, really. Getting angry at some bagpipes might take up a bonus 5 minutes (if you’re lucky) but overall it’s hard to keep busy. To try and keep myself sane, I’ve been seeing a lot of old films at the cinema. “This is seeing movies as they’re supposed to be seen”, said the man in the cinema queue. I spent two hours sat behind his massive head and missed a literal quarter of the film. Is that really what the director had in mind? Are they editing in the fucker’s massive head on the director’s cut of the DVD? Was Woody Allen or whoever going “make sure you stand over there, Diane, because that’s where the man’s massive head will be, oh - and make sure to speak very quietly because he has a giant bag of M&Ms that will last the whole film”?   I sometimes even go to the cinema to see theatre. That shouldn’t work, but it does. And whenever I go to the theatre broadcasts, I am the only 20-year-old in the audience. I look out onto a sea of silver hair, and every elderly couple that comes in after me sees looks over at me disgusted, like they came here to get away from me. I want to explain to them, ‘you don’t understand: my soul looks like you. I was never young’. But I don’t. I just cry for the whole thing. I’ll cry at anything if it’s in the play... An old man coughing all over me. The broadcast saying ‘welcome to the play’. The usher screaming at me to sit down. I’ll be crying, whispering ‘it’s true, it’s so true, it’s life’.  As you might imagine, I rarely have an enjoyable time at the cinema, because I make it far more difficult than it needs to be. I don’t ‘marathon’ films so much as ‘endure’ them. I won’t settle for films like ‘Finding Dory’ or ‘Logan’. The films I see have to have names like ‘Vicious Polyamory’ or ‘The Sanguine Moon Wore My Father’s Boots’. Difficult, difficult films. Films made as a joke, probably. Films I go to to confuse myself, after drinking far too much Beavertown Gammy Ray, which I’m convinced is not just beer. I have two pints of that and I feel like I’ve downed a sack of peyote and have gone to meet my spirit guide in the desert of the mind. This will be an arduous journey. Good, £15 well spent then. All that is will also not be, he whispers, as I’m trying to learn Russian fast enough to translate the subtitles. Is this really a good weekend? I don’t even know any more... 

[screamhole]

SICK OF YOUR DEADJUDICE

People are fucking idiots when it comes to making you feel better.

“Why don’t you just stop feeling sad?” Holy shit dude, another problem solved by you.

“Look on the bright side.” This coming from the same kind of person who tells me to ‘watch where I’m going’. It’s a dim, dim road ahead of me, stupid. I can’t do both.   “It could be worse...” It is worse, because you’re still talking to me. “It could be worse. You could be dead.” Frankly, I don’t see how me being dead could make things worse. When you die, someone does your makeup and your outfit, then you go underground forever. I’d probably get a lot more done and I’d appreciate the alone time...   The more I think about it, the more I believe my life would actually make more sense if I was dead. For one, the dead have always been my favourite social group. Largely because we have a lot in common: introversion, time spent lying down, failure to keep up with fashion and social trends. To me, they’re an ideal fit. “Could be worse, you could be dead?” I basically am. Why do you never like my friends? I’m sick of people’s shitty opinions about dead people: ‘oh, the dead, they’re so cold.’ Maybe they have trouble showing their emotions. Or, ‘oh, the dead people, they’re all just ghosts, aren’t they?’ Not all dead people are ghosts, mate, I don’t care what the EDL people tell you. Not even most of them are. In fact, all of my favourite people were dead. Samuel Beckett. Others, I’m sure. The only thing I don’t like about the dead is that they don’t vote, but you can’t really blame them for that because when they do vote, people count them again. I though I would give it a try, and add ‘deceased’ to my Twitter bio. See how I felt before going full-time. It was 15 seconds before someone tried to shame me for it: “You can’t go around saying you’re dead. It’s outrageous”. “Look, @ cuckslayer27, don’t you think I’ve suffered enough?. This Twitter harassment is just adding insult to injury. Adding insult to death, the worst injury. Unfollow.”  

Fuck this. I wish I was dead. No wait, not dead. Happy. That’s it.

[screamhole]

PLEASE, ANYTHING BUT ANOTHER TRAIN

I love trains. I love paying £90 to stand on a Cross Country train that smells of shit because a football cunt and 10 of his friends are sat in my seat. There they are, singing songs about bombing the Germans (who they weren’t even playing) in WWII, while stacked on each other's laps like a totem pole made of chips and Lynx. It’s times like this I wish I was on one of those murder trains from olden times, where the lights go out eerily and then when they come back on the whole pile of them has been battered to death with a lead pipe. I don’t think anyone would bat an eyelid in this scenario, though. The murderer could probably get off at Carlisle. Unfortunately, it’s never the murder mystery experience that will put me out of my misery. The lights going out usually just means the train has crashed into a stick so we’ll have to wait another two hours. Now that the carriage has gone quiet we can hear the pain of the twats all the more clearly. “CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT SLUT THOUGHT I HAD AN ANGER PROBLEM?” one of them screams, trying to speak over the noise which he doesn’t realise is his own voice. “Hold on I’m being sick again”. I also get to enjoy 35 minutes of one of them trying to make eye contact with me so they can ask what I’m fucking looking at, before they give up and punch their friend instead. 

I don’t understand why English trains have so many problems. Scottish trains in my experience aren’t so tense and Pinteresque, probably because of a few sensible ground-rules like “no vodka allowed on at 7:00am obviously”. Scotland’s anger is still there though, and it comes out in odd ways, like the placenames you hear over the PA system: “…calling at Kildavid, Staballen, Maimsteven, Hangburtrum, and Haymarket”. Scottish trains are also generally on time. More-so than those in England. Surely we can’t be that much behind other countries? Why are our trains so slow? I think it’s because we want it to be a part of our identity. The trains are always late because we expect it of ourselves, as English people, to be lazy and incompetent, but also to have zero tolerance for any of our massive flaws. It’s simply another thing we have to have to feel English. I think if a train looks like it’s going on time, a man dressed as a St. George’s Cross comes over and kicks the wheels off it. 

When I was younger, I used to find these same journeys a bit romantic. I suppose because I never really travelled in my life, so going 3 hours to Manchester felt like a Kerouac novel. I’d listen to my favourite Gaslight Anthem song (“A List of Women I Think Owe Me Something”) on repeat, and I made believe I was a Beat Poet, instead of whatever I am writing this. An Anger Rambler. Available for after-dinner speaking, if you want the place emptied. 

[screamhole]

THIS IS THE SHIT HOUSE I DESERVE

I moved into my current flat in 2015. When I went to view it, the door to the building was hanging open, releasing the smell of 800 cigarettes and an angry wet dog. Going inside was like the start of a David Lynch film. A cold, dark stone hallway led to a garden thick with weeds, and what I assume were bits of the house that had fallen off. The letting agent hurried me up the stairs, through cobwebs and flakes of old paint, to the flat itself. It hadn’t been prepared either, and was covered in empty crisp packets and baby wipes. None of the doors seemed to fit. I felt like I was walking around at a 20 degree tilt. The carpets were (and still are) held down by screws, and the curtains were held up (into slots where blinds should have been) by what appeared to be rings of lead solder. I remember the letting agent closing the door with a sigh of defeat, and I thought, ‘yeah. I can see myself living here’. It’s better now obviously, I wiped it a bit with my sleeve. But God, living alone is still awful. The house is a constant state. Down from a complete wreck, granted. But a state, and there’s no one I can blame it on. It doesn't stop me trying, of course. I’m stood every night, over a mound of burnt korma sauce screaming “WHO THE FUCK’S RESPONSIBLE?”. It’s very lonely, as well. To cope with the loneliness of living alone, I’ve turned myself into two annoying people. One is always late getting up, and will kick an entire yogurt over the living room floor if it means getting out of the house a second faster. The other one is permanently too tired to even try to clean it up; if anything he rubs it in more by collapsing asleep on the carpet at 6pm. 

I sometimes think about living with other people again, but I was never good at it. I have the opposite problem when living with others. I have an urge to fiddle with their stuff and put it in strange places to make the house more presentable. It’s an instinct I get from my mother, I think, but unlike me, she actually acts on it. The amount of times I’d ask after my Nintendo and she’d reply “Oh, was that not just rubbish?” I can see why that’s confusing. Rubbish often has matching power cables, controllers, and software. But at least if it was in the bin, I knew where it was. The other common response “Oh, God knows”. Yes, I imagine he does know. That said, we’re the only people who live here, so I imagine you probably know as well. Given that you’re a) less busy and b) easier to contact that The Lord of All Creation, maybe this video game location issue is better delegated to you. It’s one of my mother’s infuriating qualities: she doesn’t respect the chain of command. Anyway, what was I saying before she ruined things as usual?  

Oh yes. So I’ve been trying to make things more presentable. I find myself in furniture stores now thinking “maybe this lamp would make everything look better”. Well, maybe if the lamp did some washing while I was out, but otherwise it’s just going to stand out, like a Van Gogh in a skip. I’ve also been trying to address the smell. It’s probably related to the full cup of coffee I spill into the carpet every day. Downstairs’ ceiling must look like an inkblot test by now. I got myself some scented candles to try and make everything more unlike shit. I had two going, mango and cherry, and after a while everything was great. Then I blew them out, and now the entire fucking house smells like burning. Less like stale cappuccino, true, but more like an old man falling on a bonfire. I have to have seven scented candles going at once to cover the smell, even when I’m at work. It’s a constant fire hazard. I have to keep all of my clothes and valuables in my car. Scented candles: the shit’s a con, I’m telling you...

[screamhole]

I'VE BEEN IN THIS CRAFT BEER QUEUE FOR DAYS NOW

Please, fuck, please send help, I’m trapped behind a man in a straw hat with mutton-chops who’s insisting on trying every beer. The barman is dressed in tight black everything, he looks drawn entirely with straight lines, and he puts out a new glass for every fucking teaspoonful of beer the man demands. I’m sure he's had about 5 pints free at this point. The dishwasher's been on 3 times. I have no idea how the owner is being so calm about this, he just keeps saying words like ‘hoppy’ and ‘fruity notes’ to encourage him. Shit, now he’s picked one, but the barman’s gone to change the barrel because it was coming out all weird. But wait! Apparently, that’s actually what it is. And, oh God, he’s trying to ring it up on the till, except it’s not a till, it’s an antique typewriter to total the receipts by hand, only the owner seems to have not googled ‘ink-ribbon’, so he’s just smacking each letter trying to make something happen. He’s resorting to embossing the price out (or whatever the reverse of embossing is, I’d look it up but my phone died hours ago when the queue was young). I think he wants to pay by card as well. Pretty sure typewriters don't have contactless, so I have no idea how this will play out. There’s 4 of us stood here waiting like dicks. Why are we collectively accepting this shit? Why don’t we admit that all beer is 95% the same ‘beer flavour’ at the centre of a flavour spectrum you can nudge only slightly towards ‘more lemon’ or ‘more bin-fire’? Why can’t the man pick a beer at random, like you’re obviously meant to, by throwing a dart at the menu: “MONTY’S ASSWATER (10%)”. Get 7 to save joining the queue again. All I came in for was a Kronenbourg.  I can’t do that any more. I’m stuck playing this game. I haven’t even worked out what I want, in all this time. I’ll never be ready, the commitment is beyond me. They’re all £8 and there’s better artwork on the cans than the beer could ever live up to. What do I want? What does this want? What is this, any of this? Oh Christ, now he’s seen the range of vodkas...

[screamhole]

FOOD PACKAGING HAS CLEARER GOALS THAN  ME

I’ve started reading the packets of everything that I buy, because it occurred to me that I pay for all those words. To do anything else would just be throwing money in the bin, which I’ve only recently learned not to do. It turns out everything I buy has writing on it. Go and look for yourself. Every morning I wake up and look at the cereal box, and every morning I’m surprised by it. I still don’t know what any of it says, the confusion from it simply being there puts me in a catatonic state. My girlfriend will be trying to speak to me and I’m just sat going ‘hold on, some dick’s written on this’. 

It’s on all the food packaging. They all have blurbs, summaries, or worse, philosophies: 

‘Our business believes in hard work and quality ingredients...’  Great. Don’t give a fuck, though. 

‘We believe our product should reach you in perfect condition...’ Well, you say that, biscuit packet or whatever, but I can only imagine these have been made on a rusty 1930s conveyor belt where a robot end ups flinging them into a box like a tennis ball launcher. I tried to pick one out, and it was like watching sand go through an hourglass. 

My biscuit money allowed that company to hire someone to write that, and then print it on the box, in an expensive font, for no-one’s benefit. Now here I am, writing something even worse, scooping cookie-dust into my mouth and reading about how someone values my customer satisfaction more than his own life. That said, I did find an interesting one, where the business’s philosophy seemed to approach academic philosophy. Here’s the gist of what it said (and I’m paraphrasing of course, because it’s not real):   

Wow, that one really ‘takes the biscuit’, huh*? Haha, ha. *I ate a biscuit and winked as I said that, in case you didn’t see it. 

[screamhole]

DRIVING IS HELL, BUT WHATEVER

Most people feel a sense of freedom when they first get a car, like the world has been opened up to them and it’s full of possibilities. Nah, man. To me, a car is a prison that I have to steer. I drive it to and from work, exclusively, and try not to collapse from the stress of that.

My first thought on receiving it was that I should gently crash it into a wall. That would have been best for everyone, because I shouldn’t have it. I’m not cut out for driving; it’s draining to pay so much attention. Plus, you can’t take breaks, like with walking, by driving on top of a bench for a second. You just have to be 100% alert, all of the time. ‘Don’t worry’, people said when I explained this to them for the first time, ‘it will become automatic’. It didn’t. I still have to do it. That’s stupid advice and lies. And even if I don’t deliberately misinterpret what they meant by that, I only have room in my head for one automatic thought, and I don’t want to have to pull into services all the time because I forget to breathe. 

Mostly I hate driving for the fear of being beeped, and I get beeped quite a lot because I will insist on things like not endangering cyclists and going the speed limit. It’s always men doing the beeping. Even when it looks like a woman, I’m sure it’s a 40-year-old man doing it from the boot with an app. ‘You’re not going fast enough’, they scream, before running over the child they’re supposed to be picking up. In some cases, I did probably deserve the beep. I learned to drive a long time ago and I’ve only recently come back to it, so I’m not exactly a smooth driver. It’s not fresh in my memory. ‘It’s fine, it’s like riding a bike’, people reassured me. Is it? Is it not a bit more like driving a car? ‘No, cunt’, they said, ‘I mean you never forget’. Yeah, sure. Maybe under fucking hypnosis I can recover some of my lost memories of how to drive, like a past life. But in reality (where I live), I felt like I’ve had to read a lot of books again just to be able to open the door or stop the heater burning my eyes.

It’s not all bad, I suppose. The car is the one place I can be truly mentally ill, and no one has to be bothered by me. Also, I don’t mind driving at night. At night, the streetlights make you colourblind, so I don’t have to have any arguments with people about whether my car is a phlegm-y green or a rotting yellow. In the daytime, it’s always trapped there between two terrible colour alternatives. So not only is it awful to look at, it’s confusing as well. I seem to have this debate a lot with my dad, who is wrong:  “It’s yellow, I’m telling you”, he’ll say. “I should know, I bought it” “So you admit that you knowingly bought this car?” I’ll say, smug-shit-faced. “Yeah, for you to drive”.   Touché. 

[screamhole]

GOD’S ‘THE SKY’ IS A NIGHTMARE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

If there is a God (and in addition to that, a God that takes questions), the first thing I would ask is “what the fuck is up with the sky?” What could he possibly have been thinking when he designed this visual monstrosity?  I mean... for fuck’s sake, hold on, let me get the....

Right, this one’s alright, I suppose. It’s mostly all the same colour, but it’s got a weird gradient with random fog effects, and it looks like he’s accidentally given the river the same texture (I don’t know if it’s a mistake with a Green Screen or something). The rest of the time, though, it seems like he’s deliberately trying to disgust people, Like here... 

Why is there suddenly a load more fog on it now? It’s making it really hard to see anything. And more to the point: top right. What the fuck is that? It actually fucking hurts. Was he sat with the angels making the sky (I don’t know if angels were invented yet) and he said:

‘It still needs something. Oh, I know. What do you call that pattern where it’s loads of dots?’ ‘Polka dots?’ ‘YES, but just ONE. One massive dot, that actually makes you blind if you forget not to look at it’

What kind of psychopath would- oh, and also...

It just goes red for no reason? It’s like: ‘What colour goes with blue? Ah yes, red. That’s a universal law of fashion and design.’ 

And the best bit: you get to a certain point in the day, when you’ve finished work and you’re ready to relax, and then... 

He straight-up TURNS THE CUNT OFF. Am I walking on grass or am I drowning? I don’t know, I can’t see a thing. And now, there’s a weird, different orb. It’s like low-power energy-saver version of the painful orb, that doesn’t blind you to look near it but it has kind of a screaming face on it that follows you wherever you go. Thanks God, that’ll help me get to sleep, I’m sure.  If you’re lucky and you do manage drift off during the night, you wake up to find the same pink-blue Powerpoint disaster back again. How can it have taken up to seven days to make that? I’ve done it in seven minutes, here:

Seriously, if there’s a Q&A in Heaven, like “Prime Minister’s Questions” but it’s God doing it, I’m asking what this is all about. I mean, I will also ask why he hates gay people and women, and why children are born to suffer. Obviously. But after the thing about the sky... 

[screamhole]

EVENING ART CLASS HAS PUSHED MY INCOMPETENCE IN EXCITING NEW DIRECTIONS

“You’re never too old to learn,” they say. That’s certainly true. By attending an evening art class, for instance, I’ve learned about loads of exciting new methods I never would have known I was shit at otherwise.  “Mistakes are an essential part of the course”, said my instructor. “Because you learn through your mistakes.” That’s also true. I’ve learned that 1) I fucking hate making mistakes, and 2) I make mistakes all the fucking time. In truth, I think the only things I’ve actually learned from my mistakes are the most efficient ways to break all the expensive pieces of equipment in the room, how to scoop an entire tub of ink off the floor, and how to deal with frustrated instructors (the trick here is to become so frustrated yourself that you cause a scene and you don’t go back for a while because you’re ashamed). 

In the final session, we could print whatever we want: “an apple, a football, anything you can imagine”. I then spent 120 of the 150 minute session trying to imagine anything that wasn’t a football or an apple. Eventually I just drew around my own face, which had left a clear impression after I slammed it into the table.

This is not to say it was a complete waste of my time (though that would be accurate). I now have a lovely print of my disfigured face (in ‘Mistake Green’) on an uneven brown background that hasn’t even dried yet. I’m sure it’ll be a great conversation starter at the next party I’m not actually having, ever: 

“What the fuck is that?” “It’s me. I made it.” “Oh, I’m so sorry.”  That’s a conversation, isn’t it?

[screamhole]

LA LA LAND: EXQUISITE CINEMA BUT I BROKE MY LEGS (1*)

Damien Chazelle’s ‘La La Land’ is an exquisite homage to Hollywood’s musical era, but sadly after breaking both my legs falling down the cinema stairs I feel in good conscience I can only give it one star.

The critically-acclaimed movie follows Mia and Sebastian as they struggle to keep their dreams alive, much like I struggled to stay awake in the hospital with a suspected concussion. Not to forget the struggle of having two broken legs after trying to pull off a slick Gene Kelly style stunt. It seems that Chazelle, who previously delivered the 2014 film ‘Whiplash’, has a real knack for storytelling, but clearly no regard for the health and safety of dicks like me who imitate anything they see in a film that might make them look impressive for a second.

After La La Land, I now understand that musicals belonged to a time when people went around dancing, having skills and being happy because there was nothing else to do. Now that we have Youtube, there are safer ways to shovel the best years of your life into the void. Kinds of fun that don’t fill you with a dangerous zest for life and lead you to forget your lack of formal dance training. Notably, I almost had this problem in 2016, after watching the ‘No Dames’ scene in ‘Hail, Caesar!’, but the directors of that film were clever enough to balance it out with a lack of clear plot or memorable characters. By the end of it, I was too baffled by the rave reviews to set my neck tap dancing around in the dark.

I’m sorry it had to come to this, and I’m sure that someday I’ll hear a lovely jazz number in a cafe and I’ll want to reconsider my professional opinion on this film, but I know I’ll also pause and remember: ‘no idiot, you totally ate shit on those stairs’.