Topic Due 29/04: The Seven Deadly Sins

The topic this time around is a nice one to get our collective teeth into. I would ask of you to choose the deadly sin that rankles the most and vent bile with an excessive quota of rancour.

I don't believe there is any need to elucidate further, so let it be done in no more than 800 words and submitted by April 29th.

A Hearse, a Hearse; My Boredom For a Hearse

05:45. An old mobile phone I now use as an alarm clock kicks into life with that annoying monotone bleep. The snooze button is instantly pressed and I claw back another 5 minutes from the rest of my day. Repeat until 6:20 – any later and I miss my window of opportunity for the bathroom and, subsequently, the bus.

The short walk to the bus stop at the top of my street is uneventful save for dodging the frequent smears of excrement that adorn the pavement. I notice how the pavement immediately outside the houses of dog owners is spotless, gleaming almost. I shake my head and continue to the bus stop.

Ever noticed how people sit in the same seat every day on the bus? That’s what the 345 is like for pretty much the whole of my half hour journey to the second leg of my commute. The 10A is different; no hard and fast seating rules and aside from irritating school children and the smoker who is incapable of understanding that no smoking signs generally mean not to smoke, the journey is, again, uneventful.

08:30. I arrive in work. I fire up some music from an internet radio station, “Classic hits from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s” is the jingle that greets me. Great stuff. I check personal emails, a music forum, Word War and then move on to checking work emails. Then I prioritise my task list according to the deadlines that have to be met.

Clients consistently call throughout the day with idiotic queries. Most of them are incapable of digesting the tax effects of their enquiry and simply feign understanding. There are a choice few who want to hear my explanation said in as many different ways as an hour on the telephone will allow. It’s not like I’m busy and have more pressing matters to attend; a manual corporation tax estimate for a client that provided nothing but VAT return workings (no bank statements, no invoices, no receipts; nothing) and the payment of which is already overdue, for instance.

I moan about clients. Then I moan about Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. Useless cretins. I moan some more about clients as one particular client complains that we didn’t include a particular detail on his tax return which means he will now have more tax to pay. While he complained and demanded compensation, I had a copy of the tax return that he signed and authorised us to submit sitting in front of me. Who didn’t read the cover letter, which sets out client responsibilities, we sent out with it then, eh? I apologise and knock 10% off next year’s fee as a gesture of goodwill.

That annoyed me.

17:00. Work is over for another day and I may begin my arduous journey home. The 10A is full of college students. Slipknot and Iron Maiden t-shirts are abundant, the wearers proud of displaying how “underground” they are. Due to not meeting face-to-face with clients very often, I can wear jeans and smart polo shirts to work and so many of the “moshers”, as they are known, look at me and assess my “trendy” appearance with elitist disdain. I take a seat behind one of them, although not the corresponding seat I sat in earlier. “Anal Skewer” by Gorgasm is currently raging from my mp3 player at an unspeakable level of volume and I revel in asinine one-upmanship. Ridiculous, I know, but one can’t help but feel satisfied with oneself for being more “underground” than these gimps.

Then, just as I’m feeling at my smuggest and most l33t, Cutting Crew’s “I Just Died in Your Arms” is the next random song up. Bugger.

Two hours later I get home, sit myself down to read the newspaper, have some dinner and then crack on with studying. Last night was a question re the tax implications of selling the shares in a business versus selling the trade and assets of said business, and a second question re the financial reporting and tax implications of the mid-year disposal of a subsidiary with brought forward and current year losses to another subsidiary.

Lovely.

Two hours from the moment I opened the text book later and I’m just about ready to hit the sack.

I watch an old episode of the X-Files in my bedroom, set my old mobile phone to annoyingly beep at me in the morning, and close my eyes.

05:45. “I got you babe/I got you babe.”

Hostility for Fun and Profit

...I hate dreaming. My dreams are altogether too obvious in their meaning. Insight I don’t need.

...Recently, I walked past a group of four plastic whores on the pavement near a dirty city warehouse. They were posing for a photograph, right in the middle of the path. I had to walk through. One said "Wait, don't get that ugly guy in the picture." The others laughed. I spat very carefully and deliberately in the gutter next to them as I passed, something I often do in these situations, kept walking. Their attendant male-friend started doing the "Guido Falcon" behind me, the flapping-arms come-on procedure that is the prelude to any fight of no consequence. He hit me in the back of the head. I arm-lock him, snap kick him in the guts, and start twisting his fingers back the wrong way as he falls forward. Suddenly, I notice there is a questionnaire on his head, running down his back. It has questions like:

"How often do you engage in physical confrontation? a) Often b) Regularly c) Infrequently d) Never"

"Does the presence of women in or near physical confrontation... a) inspire your macho silliness? b) make you wish they were absent? c) become nervous for their safety? d) not concern you at all?”

I fill out the survey on his head with a Sharpie. He thanks me and walks away, unhurt...

Jung would have booted me out for being too obvious.

There is a fist-shaped indentation in the top of my alarm clock. I made it. That hole prevents the strident, urgent klaxon tone I hated... the one which used to bring the first fist of the day down on it... now the device sounds more like an air raid siren through thick fog, I can turn it off without inflicting violence.

Very strong coffee - clear unbreakable Pyrex mug. Porcelain doesn't last long when flung. Computer, morning reading - journal feeds, science blogs, pop sci sites, emails and music goof. I gave up reading newspapers closely a while ago. They are drab and pointless. Breakfast - protein + milk, oatmeal, fruit, solid food if hungry, supplements if necessary. If drastically hung over, beer. The tyranny of 5pm does not hold at Casa Satanica.

What follows this is the trip into my research office, complete with empty beer bottles, kettlebells and bent pieces of steel. As a counterpoint, I put up a picture of a duckling. Somehow this seems to make things worse, not better.

I detest commuting and avoid it at all times unless strictly necessary. If teaching, I will have to commute surrounded by soul-drones. In these cases, I read research or something noticably violent. It's surprising how few financial analysts will sit next to you when you are bald, 95kgs, wearing a Malevolent Creation shirt and reading a book called "On Killing". Teaching I enjoy very much, and I am good at it. I entertain the somewhat vapid fantasy that some of the undergraduates in my classes will actually learn things about science in general and psychology in particular. At the very least, I can stare at undergraduate flesh and get paid nigh-$100 an hour for it.

If not required to teach, I will structure my day around avoiding the close company of commuters. I leave the house when I can see the trains out the window becoming progressively more empty as the day wears on.

Research is an unremarkable activity, which needs no description. Much of my day is this - reading, writing and avoiding the company of the women I work with. For 'intelligent' people, they grate my nerves. I am not sure if the best solution of dealing with them, still. If I growl at them, they forgive me. If I ignore them, they invade my space. They do not appreciate distance.

The next activity of importance is the gym. Lifting weights is good. Lifting heavy weights is better. Lifting heavy weights a lot in a manner which causes blackouts, nosebleeds and ringworm is best.

My gym has some good equipment, some bad equipment, and the worst people in the world. They are usually athletes - big, puffy, self-absorbed meat sculptures with overhanging cranial globes like a garbage-bags full of hairy abortions. I resent the way they train, which is with indifference. Their lack of interest/testes sets the tone for the gym, and it is full of utter faggots. While this makes me angry (and that is conducive to training), it would be infinitely better to be surrounded by the angry.

Eventually, I go home. I have no set time to come in, or to leave, unless I have appointments. I can leave at 3, or at 9. No-one asks any questions, points any fingers or fingers any crevices. I remain entirely unmolested. At home, I drink. It helps me sleep. If I do not sleep, I think of how to reconcile my programs for humanity (the idea) with the reality of humanity (the failed flesh-experiment) . No answers are forthcoming.

It summarises quite well - my life revolves around the production and consumption of meat and text.

Hangover days

Light pouring in through the window always wakes me up. Granted, it’s been pouring in for about five hours now, but it takes a while for my reptilian brain to really notice anything quickly. Especially when I’ve been out drinking.

I try desperately not to have to wake up. Even the most vicious of drinkenings doesn’t leave me with much of a hangover, but what there is frightens me. I have half an hour or so to kill before I can safely open my eyes and that feeling of breathing through an atmosphere of grease leaves me.

While waiting I try to piece together the happenings of last night, usually a futile effort but one that keeps me occupied. Eventually I feel sane enough to open my eyes and arise from my razor-thin foam mattress.

There’s never much food around so I settle for a glass of water and watch some cartoon I’ve seen a hundred thousand times already. Having done that I try desperately to wash some of the feck off and hit the road.

My usual routine is at this point to go to the house of a man called The Reverend and try to draw some comics, but sometimes I wander further afield. In all cases this involves a fairly substantial amount of walking along train lines and other kinds of government infrastructure. I stop to watch trains go past.

On a good day it’s about two in the afternoon by the time I’m walking. On a bad day it’s much earlier. But we’ll stick to the good day. Often on my hikes I encounter other weirdos who don’t own cars. These people are often good for conversation if they happen to be heading in the direction I’m going, and sometimes for impromptu drinkenings if they happen to be alcoholics also. These people are a rich source of data, especially as I don’t spend any time at all talking to any other people who I’ve known for less than five years.

When I eventually get to where I’m going, there’s usually some comic drawing and a lot of swearing. We work on the comic for a few hours, watch another cartoon or show for the hundredth time and I walk back to where I come from. By this time the sun has set, which makes walking a lot easier as I move faster in the cold.

Back at the abode, I roll out my mattress in the room I occupy and try to get some reading done. This doesn’t usually work, so I get up, put on some music and ride the Internets for a while. Usually one of my friends wants to bounce emails back and forwards, so I indulge her. This is usually when I draw something or paint nerd miniatures. At some point I get up and cook some two minute noodles.

After a couple of hours of this, I usually get a call or text message informing me of doings transpiring somewhere or other. I wash the paint off my hands and hit the road for some more drinking. If this doesn’t happen I’ll sit on the computer for most of the night, drinking beer and water to cut down the hunger. Sometimes I’m out of food, but I’m always too lazy to cook it anyway. Anything much harder than two-minute noodles and I won’t bother to make it just for myself.

I’ll either stumble back from where I was drinking, following the train lines as usual, or my head thumps onto the back of the chair I just fell asleep in. These are clear signs that it is nearly time to go to bed. I put on a Japanese cartoon or read a chunk of a reasonably silly book to take the edge off my alertness, and pass out on the mattress in the corner of the study ready for another important and fulfilling hangover.

Groundhog's Day

twelve, and I'm still drinking. The scenery changes but doesn't, the people do but don't, it's all the same with superficial differences. This bar might be watering down its whisky, but I can usually find one that doesn't. It might be a beer night instead. A lot of meetings regarding film projects take place in these bars, or else at an apartment under similar circumstances. If so, I try to buck people up and get them in line for whatever I'm going to ask of them, discussing conceptual details as well as very concrete ones. If not, I usually spit cryptic nonsense and mean-spirited quips; I'm a barroom poet and comedian. On an average day, this ends around two in the morning, so I'll ignore the many exceptions to this rule and say it ends there. I walk home if possible, drive if necessary.

When I get home I'm usually sober enough to get some writing done. Lately this is a screenplay, since my last project fell through and I don't want to sit around with no project. It might be any number of things, however. If I don't write, I watch a movie or read. Nothing too interesting here. Usually asleep by four.

At around eight in the morning, I'm woken by the sound of construction and aimless black people. The sun shines through my curtainless windows, directly onto my head and into my face, so that even if the noises didn't wake me, I'd have to do something now. The sun moves slowly and won't shine elsewhere for another hour and a half. Usually I spend this time thinking of how to kill somebody and trying to find a position in which I can sleep. Four hours, with your body processing alcohol, is not enough. I get some sleep around 9:30, though it's no longer solid.

Around noon I decide I'm not going to be able to get any sleep and start getting up. When I have class, I get ready and go to class. When I don't, I spend several hours writing, reading, watching movies, listening to music, or, alternately, go out and do something. Sometimes this isn't much more interesting; I spend a lot of free days in the basement of a building, editing. But sometimes I go out and start drinking after an hour or two of reading. Sometimes I actually have something interesting to look forward to doing. On an average day, though, I probably read, write, or edit.

My classes this quarter are light and uninteresting, and I'm really just passing time until I graduate. What I read, write, and do movie stuff with is more interesting, but I don't think that's the purpose of this exercise.

Around seven I usually start thinking about eating, though I might not get around to it until eleven. I tend to eat out because I don't like going home for anything but sleeping, and because I live fairly far away from where I do virtually anything else. I try to eat with something alcoholic but often don't have the opportunity. In any case, I do some reading or watch a movie during this period.

By nine or ten I'm almost always drinking somewhere. Somebody or other calls me up and I go to meet them somewhere and we start drinking. Or somebody doesn't call and I feel like drinking anyway. These hours pass slowly, unfortunately, and consist of a lot of silences over beer and whisky interspersed with clever bullshit of some sort or other, progressively either less and less or more or more clever, depending on the company and day. Still, the time does pass, and eventually the clock strikes

Topic: A Day In The Life, 750 words, due 10 April

This week's topic is "A Day in the Life", starring you.

In 750 words or less, run us through a day in your existence. As this is a general summary of what being you is like, there's no need to be too accurate. Lie, embellish or do whatever you have to do, but keep it in the general spirit of what a couple of dozen miles in your shoes is like.

750 words for easy reading, a week for easy writing. Commence.