Thursday 23 February 2012

The Future Will Be Amazing

Julie, as requested, please find attached a fucking terrible screenplay about robots returning a kettle. With, like, a week to spare.
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FADE IN: INT SUPERMARKET - NIGHT

An almost entirely windowless joy void, glowing yellow-green with fluorescent misery.

PAN TO A number of stanley-knife wielding people, wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the legend "Work Experiencee", shuffle around the seasonal goods aisle, slicing mirthlessly at cardboard boxes & the occasional carotid artery. (Oh yeah, & also it's like the future & shit. So maybe the stanley-knives are, like, made of lasers or something, yeah? And the t-shirts are, like, all silver and have an inbuilt speaker system that, like, brays out stuff like "Join a union? What are you, an illegal immigrant?" & "If you worked harder maybe you'd be getting paid for doing this job". Inspirational stuff like that.)

EXTREME CLOSE UP on the under-clad hind quarters of a young lady who is making her way through this hapless crowd, swinging her hips with such wild abandon they render several onlookers unconscious.

CUT TO the front wall of the supermarket exploding inwards in a rainbow of breeze blocks, asbestos & sonic booms.

EXTREME CLOSE UP on lady arse again. A hand comes into shot briefly to fiddle with a gusset.

CUT TO the decimated shop front. ROBOT 1 & ROBOT 2, two enormous, poorly CGI'd robots, enter through the gaping maw & punch their way, through the bodies of around 100 dead & dying security guards, towards the customer service desk. ROBOT 1 is clutching a carrier bag in it's blood & brain spattered fist.

ZOOM IN on LATE NIGHT, a lady employee who inexplicably receives a wage for being no fucking help to anyone at all.

SUBLIMINAL FLASH of Coca-Cola logo projected onto an underclad bum.

LATE NIGHT (not looking up from magazine article about a woman who married her Dad who was also a convicted murderer & a ghost):
Yeah?

ROBOT 1: KETTLE BROKE.

ROBOT 2 (addressing ROBOT 1): The cigarette kiosk is closed.

ROBOT 1 (ignoring ROBOT 2): KETTLE BROKE. MONEY BACK. QUICK. WANT FUCK OFF HOME. EAT BISCUITS.

ROBOT 2 (addressing ROBOT 1): Mate, you said we would be able to get some Rizlas, yeah? But look mate, the kiosk.....it's all closed up or something, yeah?

LATE NIGHT (looking up from an article about twins separated at death): Yeah?

ROBOT 1 (smashing his human-pulping fist down on the counter): KETTLE. LEAKING. RECEIPT HERE.

(ROBOT 1 opens his brain matter flecked hand metal hand to reveal a tiny slip of paper. Made of lasers or something. It's the future)

ROBOT 2 (clawing at ROBOT 1's arm): Ask her about the Rizlas yeah?

LATE NIGHT (sighing her lungs up out of her body): safter6oclockeveryonegonehomecantdorefund.

ROBOT 1: RECEIPT. IN HUMAN PULPING FIST. MONEY BACK.

LATE NIGHT (her eyes slowly drifting down to gawk at photos of Kerry Katona's preserved head wearing a jar that makes her look fat): safter6oclockeveryonegonehomecantdorefundanywaythiskettlesbeenusedso nowayyougettinganymoneybackanywaysorry.

ROBOT 1: LAW SAY RETURN FAULTY PRODUCT WITH PACKAGING AND PROOF OF PURCHASE GET MONEY BACK. HERE IS PROOF OF PURCHASE. MONEY BACK.

ROBOT 2: Mate. Mate. MATE. Rizlas. Mate.

LATE NIGHT: safter6oclocknocustomerserviceeveryonegonehome....

ROBOT 1 (collapses across counter, weeping. His sobs sound like someone typing the word 'CRY' repeatedly into a Speak & Spell): CRY CRY CRY. JUST WANT FUCK OFF HOME. EAT BISCUITS. CRY CRY CRY.

(LATE NIGHT continues reading magazine. CLOSE UP on horoscope. "Libra. There is a very good chance that you will die at the human pulping hands of a stoned robot. Call in sick")

ROBOT 2 (leaping across the sobbing frame of ROBOT 1 towards LATE NIGHT): Riiiiiiiiiizzzzzzzzlaaaaaaas!

EXTREME CLOSE UP of LATE NIGHT'S face being pulped to meat paste by a giant robot fist forever & ever & ever & ever....

CUT TO the still sobbing body of ROBOT 1 exploding all over the place for some reason.

JUMP CUT to underclad lady backside for no discernible reason.

FADE TO BLACK.

FADE UP to lady bum.

FADE BACK TO BLACK.

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Cut. Print. Shit.

Tuesday 7 February 2012

Shut Up A Minute

I am not what you could call a "people person".
In actual fact I believe I was born coated, not in your usual womb juices, but in actual people repellent.
I have the social skills of a damp face-cloth. Actually, a damp face-cloth quite probably has better social skills, evidenced by its occasional contact with an actual human face.
Small talk is beyond me. I'm not baffled by it or anything like that, I just can't do it. I can never think of a single thing to say. Nothing. This is particularly strange to me as my brain usually teems with the sort of inconsequential nonsense perfect for such situations all the live long day. In fact, my mind probably most closely resembles a busy ring-road heaving with tiny inanity & trivia stuffed vehicles going about their idiotic business. This road is so horrendously jammed with this flow of stupid traffic that any possibly intelligent or deep thoughts that may also come into being lie trapped beyond it, with no way out other than to chuck themselves in front of the juggernauts of dumb. And that is where nosebleeds come from. Or something. What am I? A fucking doctor?

What were we talking about?

Oh yes. I can't talk to people. So I don't have any friends. Oh, I managed to snag me a boyfriend some 126 years ago and it was such a relief to have done so that I have doggedly held onto him despite...well...let's just leave it at despite. Mostly my hanging on for dear life meant I didn't have to go through that whole awful meeting-and-talking-to-lots-of-different-people-until-you-find-someone-with-whom-you-think-you-could-discuss-mortgages-without-wanting-to-weep-at-the-loss-of-your-youth-before-turning-the-gun-on-yourself. Because that's a thing people look for in potential partners isn't it? But he is a rare exception. Mostly I have passed through life making no impression on anyone. If, for example, I was the focus of It's a Wonderful Life, Clarence would amble up to me as I clung on to the bridge, simply shrug and say "s'up to you mate".

And I have been at peace with this for quite some time.

But recently...I don't know. Not so much.

It's not that I'm lonely as such, more, soul-blackeningly bored and, thanks to that terrible, beautiful thing known as the internet, more aware than ever of how utterly without merit my existence is.

I may have mentioned that thing called the twitter? And that people go on there and they type out the contents of their heads and their stomachs and, quite often, their underwear? And that I have gone on there and tried to do the same? And because that's what everyone's doing, it should be a total piece of piss to join in and witter endlessly on about tits and ConDems fucking everything up and how much you hate the tv show you're watching? And that people will just read whatever shit your fingers fart out via the medium of keyboard and think you are awesome and chat to you and all that?

Except.

Except I go on that there twitter and am still somehow identifiably covered in people repellent.
I try being funny. I try being weird. I try being melancholy. I try listing stuff I like. I generously retweet other peoples' opinions that I think I would quite like to have had myself (if I could be remotely arsed to form opinions on anything whatsoever anymore. But that's a whole other load of old wank). And am pretty roundly ignored.

And I have stared to realize that the reason why, in the offline world, no one has ever really liked me or wished to be seen in public with me, the reason why people turn off the lights and pretend to be dead when I drop by isn't that I am some uniquely 'ungettable' specimen of humanity, that I am a dodecahedron of awesomeness forced into the round hole of humdrum existence. No. It is simply this.

I am a boring twat with nothing to say.
I am a boring twat with absolutely nothing to offer the universe.
I am a boring twat who lacks even the merest hint of a talent or skill.
I am a boring twat who has made it a point never to try because that way I can never, ever fail.
I am a boring twat who is paralyzed with terror at the thought of someone seeing me for who I am or, even worse, who I fervently dream of being.
I am a boring twat who has no idea who they actually are, other than being a boring twat.
I am a boring twat who writes interminable, self-pitying, blog posts analyzing all the reasons why I am a boring, friendless, twat.
I am a boring twat who can't even furnish their blog post with a conclusion.

And you realise your plan is a not good one but carry on regardless

I am no longer afraid of dying.
And I am afraid of that.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Apropos Of Nothing

Hundreds of years ago, when the this here internet was all just fields, I used to work in a d.i.y. store. It was...let me see...hmmm...yes....the worst fucking job I ever had. You know, except for aaaaaall the others.

I hadn't been working there very long when one day a man came in & hung about the aisle with all the white spirit in it. He seemed quite sweet, in his clean if shabby tweed jacket and red bow tie. He walked straight up to me and began chatting.

He twinkled away to me about the weather and what promising adventures I might have lined up for the weekend, and as he did so he nonchalantly picked up a 2 large bottles of methylated spirit and put them in his trolley. He smiled and chuckled his way through a little more small talk before wending his merry way off to the checkouts.

And I said to myself, there goes the jolliest old soul I have ever encountered.

And later that afternoon, I passed by that same old man sprawled across a flowerbed near the store, shitfaced, with a half empty meths bottle under his arm.

I mention this for no special reason other than it is a memory that has been keeping me awake a bit lately. And I'm not really sure why.