Goodbye Sunshine, the Night is Mine

Sleeping.

What's that all about eh? Do you ever do that? Sleep? Do that, do you? Lie down in the dark, approximating the resting pose of a corpse, feeling your heartbeat slowing, slowing, every breath becoming shallower, until, eventually, everything fades to black as your consciousness ebbs away, and you gradually disappear into the waiting nothingness, not knowing whether you will see another dawn?...That? Do you do that? Do you? Shit isn't it?

Yeah. Lovely, lovely sleep.

So, sleeping is something I have never had an aptitude for. As a baby I slept for no more than 4 hours a night, which is all I apparently required to be fully recharged for a heavy day of screaming & screaming & screaming & screaming (because, I clearly had the world sussed for a terrifying pisspool even at that young age. I was a very smart baby). For some reason though, my parents seemed to be of the opinion that 4 hours sleep a night was, like, half of what they needed to be able to function in a way that didn't make them want to kill me. I mean, we la-ha-ha-ha-ugh about it now...

So I got off to kind of a bad start with sleep from the very beginning and it only got worse from there.

I mean, as a kid I would sit up into the early hours reading. My mum cottoned on pretty fast that you can't yell a kid to sleep, so to save herself the stress of fighting me into my bed every evening, she'd rather let me get on with doing something vaguely constructive with my nights. Sadly, however, what I was actually doing a lot of the time was something not all that constructive. Like, instead of reading some improving tome, I'd be sitting with my copy of What?Where?How?WhY? on my lap, staring at a drawing of a policeman trying to rescue a boy from quicksand and freaking the fuck out. Or reading that copy of Jaws I pinched from Louise Austin's house and freaking the fuck out. Or reading the bit in my book about space that covered the big bang & wondering what existed before anything existed and FREAKING. THE. FUCK. OUT (or sometimes I'd just pretend the periodic table in my Junior Pear's Encyclopaedia was a computer...You know...like Penny from Inspector Gadget had ah forget it).
So, when I did finally fall asleep it was frequently into that uneasy, vaguely sweaty, twilight place of anxiety dreams & existential nightmares that I, being like 8 or whatever, was not equipped to deal with. All of which meant I was never all that keen to go back & visit the world of sleep & I'd try that bit harder to stay awake the next night.

As a teenager, my brain tended to sulk all night & refuse to let me go to sleep because that's what they want you to do, those bastards or whatever. Plus, you know, the angst & the hormones. Oh my aching parts, the hormones! And by the time I was a student (hoho) I found I could only sleep, entirely coincidentally of course, during those parts of the day when I was supposed to be attending a lecture or a seminar. Or sometimes an exam. In fact the only way I ever got to sleep at night was with a heady mix of John Peel, Happy Shopper wine & cheap, incomprehensibly subtitled Bollywood films. My dreams, though, were fucking magnificent.

For me, being up all night though is like getting to have a 2nd, secret life. Nowadays my daytime existence is pretty much empty & entirely without purpose or direction. But at night, I feel a bit more me. As though after dark I can relax, stop pretending to people that I am in any way not full to the brim with crazy & just get on with stuff. Especially what with that internet. And especially on the twitter there. Where once I'd have to lie in bed with a walkman tuned to whatever poor bastard had the radio 1 graveyard shift to feel less alone, now I can watch all those others who are unconsciously challenged tweet their strange thoughts & bizarre Star Trek episode recaps...no that's me isn't it? In a way, though, it's also worse, having an audience for your insomnia. Because in the olden days of no internet & television close downs there really wasn't much else to do at night except try to sleep. So I'd try really bloody hard, out of pure fucking boredom if nothing else. But now, I get into bed, lean back slightly, decide it's not worth lying the full way down because I'm clearly not tired & get back to tweeting shit about how Sleep is a total bastard & one time I touched Robbie Williams.

These days I feel as though not sleeping has more to do with wanting to wring as much time out of each day as I can, in case something happens & I miss it by being asleep (that & wanting to avoid the hours of quiet panic that lying alone in the dark with just my brain to talk to causes. My brain is a complete shit most of the time). Like I am choosing not to sleep.
It's as though by going to sleep I am admitting defeat somehow, that I have lost at...something. Life, possibly. When I go to sleep at night I am admitting that today was yet another day like all the others, a day where I haven't achieved anything. A day where I've moved a bit closer to death by forgetting to do any living. A day where I have sat & waited, instead of getting up & doing. And so long as I'm still awake, there's still a chance...

And, yes, I may hallucinate terrifying black shades trying to grab me from time to time. And, yes, the headaches after a prolonged period of no sleep are quite the motherfucker. But being bad at sleep can have it's advantages. I mean, there are things that you only know about if you don't/can't sleep at night. Sometimes, I like to open a window around 4am & listen to the outside. Because 4am is the moment when the world seems to slow to almost nothing (well obviously not the whole world, I mean, I have heard of time zones, I'm not a monster). 4am is the day at it's magical best. It's generally too late for people to be coming home from anywhere & still too early for them to be going out anywhere. Even the birds, who seem to worship, via the medium of shrieking, the streetlights in my road as some weirdly uniform pantheon of gods every other hour of the night, even they knock it off for a few moments.
And the quiet lasts barely any time at all but sometimes it's so still you can feel the silence settling on your skin.
And then the Lord Chief Rabbi of the birds starts squawking that it's time to get back to shouting praise at the streetlights & the moment fades. The traffic picks up, lights go on & the whole, terrible business of another day on earth starts over again.

But you won't know about that, you sleepers. That's just for us night people.

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.

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.

Converses With Idiots

A Screenplay. Based on events that happened and which were recounted in a furiously early in the morning phone-call to the writer who wasn't really awake yet.
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FADE IN: INT. A SUPERMARKET - DAY

A strip-lit headache in chrome & despair.

People from every walk of life episode of Jeremy Kyle you've ever seen mill about by the fag counter which also doubles as the customer service desk (probably so you can buy cigarettes with which to hasten your death after being on the receiving end of a customer service).

We PAN ALONG the huddle of people who apparently believe they are forming a queue and ZOOM IN on SOME WOMAN, a customer whose only desire is to return a cd, then fuck off home to eat biscuits.

SOME WOMAN (stepping up to the counter):
Hello there SATURDAY EMPLOYEE! Good to see you.

CLOSE UP of the blank face of SATURDAY EMPLOYEE who remains silent.
CUT TO face of SOME WOMAN who has just finished rolling her eyes.

SOME WOMAN: I would totally like to return this cd of Shrieking Harpy & The Steampunks please. And look, here is my receipt so there should be absolutely no problem here yeah?

CUT TO the blank face of SATURDAY EMPLOYEE

SATURDAY: Can't....Becaaaaaause...errrrrrrmmmm... Copyright law? Yeah. Copyright law.

CUT TO SOME WOMAN. Her face shows that she is trying to decide between laughing and killing herself, right there, by the Kit Kats.

SOME WOMAN: Er....lolwut?

SATURDAY (mercifully off-screen): Copyright law. Can't return CDs.

(turning to address MONDAY TUESDAY THURSDAY SATURDAY & SUNDAY EMPLOYEE who is pretending to count boxes of Silk Cut and studiously ignoring the bellowing mass of increasingly irritated lottery ticket purchasees waiting to throw their pounds into the void)

Because of Somali pirates?

MONDAY TUESDAY THURSDAY SATURDAY & SUNDAY (nodding as though her neck muscles know no fear): The copyright law.

SOME WOMAN: I don't believe you know what you are talking about. Did I mention my receipt?

SATURDAY: Copyright law. Illegal to refund cds because it...funds.....terrorism. You know, cuz of the...the....the pirates.

MONDAY TUESDAY THURSDAY SATURDAY & SUNDAY (still nodding): Pirates.

SOME WOMAN (attempting to use humour to prevent herself from pelting SATURDAY with tic-tacs): Maybe I should've left the parrot at home today then! A Ha hahaha ha...ha ha......cough.

TRACKING SHOT of a tumbleweed rolling along the top of the counter separating SOME WOMAN from SATURDAY & MONDAY TUESDAY THURSDAY SATURDAY & SUNDAY.

SOME WOMAN: So, listen. IANAL but AFAIK...

SATURDAY: You talk like an internet.

SOME WOMAN: Yes. I can sometimes pass as a kidz. Anyway, copyright law has nothing to do with anything. Copyright law is all sorts of crazy about who is able to collect royalties on creative works, where and when stuff can be sold and how much they should get paid and junk. Copyright law has nothing to say on the matter of refunding CDs. It is not relevant. What is relevant though is the Sale of Goods Act which does not in any way exempt retailers from refunding CDs. I do understand that you do not have to offer me a refund or an exchange, even with a receipt, unless the product is faulty which this is not. Except if you count the singing of Shrieking Harpy which most definitely is faulty. It is, however, generally viewed as good practice to offer refunds in other circumstances, especially if the customer is returning a quite clearly unused product in the state in which it was purchased accompanied by a BASTARD BLOODY RECEIPT LIKE THIS ONE!

SOME WOMAN holds receipt up to camera.

SATURDAY: Copyright law.

MONDAY TUESDAY THURSDAY SATURDAY & SUNDAY (now nodding so viciously her head has become little more that a yellow/blue blur of perm & eyeshadow): Pirates. Pirates opened the packaging.

SOME WOMAN: YOU SOLD IT TO ME LIKE THIS!

MONDAY TUESDAY THURSDAY SATURDAY & SUNDAY (her head now moving so fast it's addressing SATURDAY from another dimension): Look! You can see the hook marks on the box!

SOME WOMAN (weeping): All I wanted was to be able to fuck off home and eat biscuits!

SOME WOMAN throws herself across the counter where she lays sobbing loudly.

FADE TO BLACK
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The most important thing to note here is that this screenplay passes the Bechdel Test. I expect the offers to direct to come pouring in any day now. Any day now.

Be Like The Others

What up.
Look, look, 2 in a row! I'm totally getting the hang of this blogging lark.
This is just to say that 2011 is already looking to be a bit less of an arse than it's predecessor 'cos I got me an x-box, all the better to be fleeced to the scalp by Microsoft with...by....something. Hooray for capitalism and in your face 2010. In your ugly face.

Also, it is with absolute ambivalence that I bid farewell to my Nintendo Wii which will soon be winging it's way across the country to disappoint then utterly bore some other human being. We had some good times, the Wii and me...I'm sure......there was that one game that time...Okami? That was ok. I mean, the controls were terrible and OH MY ACHING BUTTON MASHING THUMB the unskippable cut scenes of event horizon proportions. You know, but otherwise a...fine...game.......hmmm....oh there was that other.....No. No there wasn't. No, in my experience, Wii games are mostly terrible.

See, I am a PC gamer at heart. I just can't get enough of those 15 hour installation times for games that inexplicably also require Steam to download files that should be on the disc sitting in your disc drive, that you forked over many, many pennies for. Or the scratting around the internet looking for player made patches that actually fix the 5 hundred million things that are broken in a game that you have forked over many, many pennies for. As far as I'm concerned, it's just not fun if you can pop a disc in and get on with playing a game straight away. Besides once all the pain, sobbing and extravagant swearing involved in getting the stupid bloody game to run is over, you are left not only with a sense of accomplishment but also with, most of the time, an excellent game to play. The Wii lets you pop in Alone in the Dark and get going in moments. But, you know, in the end, you're playing Alone in the Dark.

Ah, but that's how the X-box works sonofajoiner. Plug in and play. Easy and, therefore, by your logic ultimately boring. HA! Not if you want to play the copy of Fable 3 that came bundled with your shiny new console. Or anything else. Nope. You need to set up your console, spend 48 minutes trying to make X-Box live understand that the email address you are using is actually yours, then faff around with your tv and x-box settings over several hours in the hopes that you can make the stupid bloody console play your copy of Fable 2 at the 60hz the game requires, then trawl the internet for over an hour trying to avoid the creeping sense of dread that the problem will turn out to be with your needlessly expensive telly, then discovering that Microsoft have started selling their shiny x-boxes with cables that are inferior to the ones they used to use and blah and blah and blah. It took 24 hours (including 18 hours sleep) to get to a point where I could actually play anything. But you know what? Fable 2 is pretty good so far. So for me, initial hassle seems to equal ultimate happiness. My name is sonofajoiner, and I am a gaming masochist.

So farewell little Wii. You made, and I'm sure will continue to make, an excellent door stop.

If A Tree Falls In The Forest...

So.

This year, I ha' been mostly, eating taramasalata trying to sort myself out. And, let me tell you reader (ha ha, just my little joke) that is proving to be no mean feat. This is largely because I have spent the last 8 years living in a bubble of total loser oblivion. It's been sucky and has caused me and many, many others untold grief.

One day, however, out of sheer loserly clumsiness, I smacked myself in the face with a Henry Hoover and, as I sat there, cursing and kicking that red bastard in it's eyes, I realised that I Had To Do Something. I was suddenly sick to my very core with my life. Sick of being so pathetic that even electrical appliances felt obliged to give me a good beating. And so a sort of plan began to form. I was going to start putting right the things that once went wrong and hoping each time that the next leap... Nope, that's not it. I've really got to stop watching so much SyFy. The point is, I was left all aflame with purpose and, yes, even a little bit of hope for the future. For all I know that evil vacuuming git has left me with life altering brain damage, but if that's the case, I welcome my new ovanbfdjjjjjgf...

Thing one what I done was I went and got me a swanky haircut that costs a ridiculous amount of time, effort and money to maintain. Next, I lost approximately 75 stone in weight (please note that if anyone does find my lost weight someplace, it's yours to keep. I mean, you could take it down the scuffer shop, fill out the forms and wait two weeks for my weight to become yours legally, but I won't tell anyone if you don't. I would quite like you to waste the peelers time with handing it in though. That would amuse me.)
...Wandered off there...Oh look, a bee....

Right. Thing 3 is the part where I thought, on a whim, that I would apply for a position writing for a videogames website. Ah. I can see you're confused. Ah. I can see now that you're startled that I can see you. Ah. I can see now that you've closed the tab and gone off to the bright, reassuring lights of Boing Boing or Gawker, or some other well-populated area. Good for you.
Yes. The, and I'm being incredibly generous to myself here, 'writer' of this blog thought they had a shot at writing stuff that people might actually see for a website that people actually read.

I'll give you a moment to compose yourself.

Now, obviously, in real life, it takes more than an awesomely trendy haircut and some bingo wing reduction to land you your dream job.

Or does it?

Yes. Yes, it takes loads more than that. It takes stuff like, being bothered to maintain the blog you started, or at the very least being able to recall exactly what you named it without trawling through your unsorted bookmarks looking for something that seems vaguely familiar. It takes even more basic things such as, remembering to cobble together a CV out of the shambles that has been your employment history and sending that along with your cheery email.

And, of course, being real life, I didn't get the gig. The fine folks at Ready Up are obviously in possession of their full faculties and will plump for someone who at the very least knows how to strikethrough words in their blog post without having to google it first.
But you know what? They sent the nicest, most encouraging rejection email I have ever had in my life. And I have had well over 8 rejection emails (mostly, the companies I write to ignore me entirely. Or only contact me via restraining order.) It was so positive, that I organised my bookmarks, wrote down the name of my blog so's I'd remember it, and came back here to write this post.
It was so positive in fact, that I actually feel like making an effort to keep this blog going. Even if no one ever reads a single word of it.

Nothing To Fear

A month or so ago I planned on travelling into London to catch the end of the Taking Liberties exhibition at the British Library. I'd suddenly got it into my head that I just had to have a look at the Magna Carta before it got chucked into a furnace or wherever it is the government plans on taking it to be destroyed. I'd even talked my mum into coming with me and before I knew it a day out had been planned.
The day I intended to go was the day after the Convention On Modern Liberty and it was partly that event that had inspired me to attend the exhibition in the first place. It was also indirectly responsible for me abandoning all my plans and going to a craft fair instead.
A couple of nights before we were due to go, and after having read some of the articles and blog posts folks had written in the lead up to the convention, I suddenly became frightened about going to London. It wasn't a sudden horror of being blown up by terrorists on the underground that got my stomach churning. It wasn't the prospect of aggressive beggars that sent my heart into palpitations. Nope. I was terrified of being stopped and searched by the police.
Initially this fear seemed absolutely irrational. After all, I've nothing to hide, right? I don't have a beard. I prefer a small shoulder bag to a gigantic rucksack. I carry a mobile only under duress. Why on earth would the police be remotely interested in me?
But the thing that kept gnawing at me was that I do not own anything even vaguely resembling i.d. If I was stopped and searched at the train station, as I believe the scuffers now like to do I couldn't produce i.d. even if I wanted to. And I gradually convinced myself that the simple fact I wouldn't be carrying any identifying information would be enough to get me carted off to Paddington Green.
Of course, I was being ridiculous. Right? There's no law that actually compels me to carry i.d. whilst travelling (YET)But there's also no law against photographing drain covers and that still gets a fella arrested. There's also no law against lighting a fag near a police van but that apparently get's you smacked with a big stick, knocked to the ground and denied appropriate medical assistance.
The point is that the prospect of an unlikely, but still entirely possible encounter with the police, no matter how minor, left me feeling so fearful that I abandoned my plans. The possibility of not being able to defend perfectly run-of-the-mill aspects of my life in the event of police questioning worried me so much that I chose to avoid London altogether.
And if I could be put off simply travelling into London to go to a museum based on a few Henry Porter articles and youtube videos of people being threatened with arrest for asking questions, then imagine how much easier it will be to frighten people out of attending protests or other high profile events if you face the prospect of kettling, being arrested on spurious terrorism charges and "polite, proportionate and pragmatic" policing in the form of a baton in the back of the legs and a hard shove to the floor.