Shallow, moi?

What’s that word, the one you would use to describe the feeling of reassurance you get from seeing others not do too well at things? It’s not shallow, it’s not really cruel as you don’t wish it on the other person nor are you glad that it’s happening to them – just glad it’s not happening to you. If only there was a thesaurus of vagueness I could use to look it up.

At present I am reassured that although I don’t think I’m doing very well with my money I am at least ticking over and standing still, unlike certain people of my acquaintance. It is always unfortunate when a rent cheque bounces but in this case the person will be able to cover it with a little rejigging of accounts. The idea of not having my rent makes me very sad in a nauseous way, and I hope it does not become a concern in the future when budgeting for a higher rent in the new house may be tricky.

What I find highly irritating in terms of financial failures is Housefolk Epsilon’s failure to pay the bills. All the other housefolks gave him the money a month ago, when the bill came, and now we are getting red letters. He said he was waiting until he got paid, but I think he already has been. And now he’s gone home – presumably to beg the money from his mum. Because he spent his on more computers. I kind of hope we get cut off – even though it will cause huge disruptions and loss to all of us – so I can justify my anger towards him for this, for putting us all at risk and impacting all our credit histories and being so drastically irresponsible. I even wonder if he spent our bill money, if maybe that is the reason he needs to beg a buy out.

Oh the shame

After my last post complaining about the terrible food smells from someone else’s cooking I am deeply ashamed to say my food last night was awful. At first it didn’t smell so bad, just a bit ripe, but it remained until the spices were added and tasted a little rancid. I am amazed we didn’t get ill from it. My stomach has superhero levels of indestructibility – its only nemesis is milk.

Generally I don’t have to much to be ashamed of or embarrassed by. I was a little embarrassed when reading Anais Nin on the train. I was a little embarrassed by the sound of the vibrator so we put the TV on. I realised I would be embarrassed wearing a bikini in front of my mum, but I checked and I don’t have to do that. I find cooking for people intimidating.

I think I must be losing my mind – for an entire 45 seconds I considered moving to Milton Keynes.

The delicious scent of roadkill

As I do not drive I’m not talking about actual roadkill. I am glad of this, as corpses make me sad.

I am of course referring to Housemate Epsilon’s culinery exploits which smelled suspiciously like roadkill. Usually a bad smell is a sign that you should not eat something, but I guess you never can be sure where canned meat comes from. I may not have the best diet but I would put money on me living longer than him. Also: spicy bean burgers for the nom – I don’t understand why some people willfully ingest gross things that give them heartburn and constipation. Bizarre self-destructive behaviour.

I was also upset last night when after watching pointless violent britflick Outlaw conversation drifted from comedy violence to sharing mugging stories, of which some people seem to be proud. I do not like to think about the time I was attacked. I do not like to consider what my reaction would be if I was attacked again – probably the same uncontrollable screaming. I do not like to be reminded that more than half the people I pass in the street could overpower me if they wanted to.

I am glad that I have a lovely man who gave me hugs after this conversation, and stroked my hair and made me laugh.

Jargon-tastic

It’s a popular thing to hate, but what can I say? I just don’t have the time to be interesting today. Along with the usual gumph I’ve come to expect (future proof? As in ‘you can’t get me now, future!#manic laughter#) I came across one I hadn’t seen before: sunsetting. As in ‘to sunset’ as in ‘I’m going to sunset your ass if you don’t stop pissing on my language’ which puts me in mind of cowboys. Apparently sunsetting is a prettier way of saying decommissioning. Obviously you can’t talk about something ugly and potentially damaging to the bottom line in business so you have to make up an obscure metaphor by brutalising an existing word into a different part of speach. I’m all for language evolution but this is just ridiculous.

I also fell out with the cat. She refused to come in last night because there was something killable under a bush so I left her out all night. She was very whiny in the morning but also grateful that she still owns my love so I think we’re cool.

So much fail

Ok, so I didn’t greet the dawn. After having been awake since 6am I crashed out around half twelve after watching White Men Can’t Jump, which I’d never seen before but was rather entertaining. Chances are dawn was clouded over anyway so there wouldn’t have been much to see. Having felt like a freak for having made the suggestion (probably why I gave in without much fight) I later saw a news report showing thousands greeting the dawn at Stone Henge. At least dawn wasn’t alone.

The rest of the weekend was relatively fail-free, apart from forgetting to buy worcester sauce. What will we do without it? I sense a multitude of potential culinery crises. And financial crises: after deciding I should make more effort to save money I bought a load of DVDs and ate out (again) on saturday. So not entirely without fails.

Today was quite a tragic fail which I only realised at lunchtime. In my early morning groggyblindness I have managed to put on odd shoes. They are very similar looking shoes but if you look at them for more than a glance it is clear that they don’t match. Goddamn monday.

Six hours of night

It sounds dramatic, like the title of a novel. Perhaps one day I will write ‘Six Hours of Night’ – the day I get my head out of my arse and stop being like all the other wannabes. Wanting to be is essentially meaningless as there is no real process that takes you from not being to being. Wanting to be a winner won’t help you unless you start the race. Wanting to be a writer won’t even begin to happen until I take pen to paper.

The idea of midsummer night is timelessly romantic (not in the sexual sense) and I have a small portion of desire to stay up through the 6 dark hours and wait for dawn. What I would do in those hours I’m not sure, probably cross stitch and watch the idiot box. Have people stopped using the phrase ‘idiot box’ since tvs became flat screen? I’ll have to do a survey.

Decisions

I have decided to open a second blog called Parody of Virtue for better thought out pieces of writing. This is after reading the comment I got about my ‘personal beliefs’ entry which made me realise that yes, this is a largely pointless and meandery blog, written for myself to clarify my thoughts in an attempt to maintain sanity and improve my mental agility. And vent, but that’s so obvious a thing to do with a blog it’s barely worth mentioning. On the one hand it’s my personal blog and although I am happy for people to read it I don’t write with an audience in mind. On the other hand I’m not helping myself as a writer if all I do is spaff out a train of thought every day. Writing quality reviews and opinion pieces will serve me much better and provide a better product should anyone happen to read it. Whether it will actually be any good or not I don’t know. It will probably begin somewhat subparr and improve with time.

This is breaking my brain somewhat as my motivation is being diverted from work ie the things I actually get paid to do. It doesn’t help that I find it harder to concentrate with menstruating but that’s usually fixed with a cup of coffee. Sidenote (and further indication of my hormone driven ADD) I discovered last night where I can buy frozen pig’s uterus. After all those stories you here about people chowing down on pig’s penis and it never once occured to me that pig’s uterus would be just as tasty. I wonder if it tastes different if the pig has had a litter?

What does the z in zomg stand for?

I’m not sure if it’s for emphasis or if it means something specific. What you might call a headscratcher.

Zomg! No post yesterday due to unprecidented busyness. A cackload of work made its way to my inbox and I barely had time to compose a thought of my own, so busy was I expressing the will of others. It saddens me because I had promised to read something for a dear friend, which I now aim to finish this afternoon.

Zomg! Housefolk did not pass the army fitness test as he injured himself half way through. They have invited him back to try again later. This does mean he no longer has anywhere to go – an important factor in the housing debate. He has made many suggestions of friends and family who may be able to put him up and get him jobs. This is his pattern, to not do anything himself but depend on the kindness of others. I think he would be ideally suited to a corporate environment but after living in London for a year he didn’t get anywhere near an office job. Where is his motivation? His desire for personal improvement?

Zomg! My partner got his results yesterday and is now the proud achiever of a first class degree. He now has Bsc hons after his name. I am very proud. Tomorrow he will get his mark for his dissertation which I am very interested in as I read all sixty pages of it to check spellings etc. Nothing quite like having a professional spellchecker on hand. He is pleased and it has given him the confidence to apply for better jobs. I hope he gets a job soon – we will feel tremendously rich with two incomes and it will help when house hunting.

An Adventuresome Weekend

Is what I have just finished having. I am quite sad it’s over, it was going well for a while there and the discovery of elderflower liqueur was a great one. The other great discovery was that there is a reason for the new series of Gladiators: it makes a fantastic drinking game. The rules were to drink when someone strikes a pose, says something cheesy or fails utterly. It was phenomenal.

I have not seen the Hulk movie that came out a few years back because I was busy inhaling paint thinner but did tag along with the gang to see this new one. I think you would get a similar experience if you went to see a cage fight while listening to a premium rate chat line. The movie is literally all fight/chase/fight scenes interspersed with moments of breathy dialoge from Liv Tyler who sounds like she’s been bricked in the face. As much as she sounded like a retard it also bugged me that soldiers were constantly moving her round calling her ‘miss’ when as daughter of the general they would all have known that her name was DR Ross. Nothing like respect in the army…

After the weekend’s overly full house (in which I was seventh in line for the throne, godsdamnit) we are now down to a more reasonable number, in exchange for a guest we have lost one of the housefolks who has run away to join the army. Whether he’ll come back in one piece or not is unknown – I’m not sure if he is adequately prepared for the rigours of the marines’ fitness test so I hope he doesn’t die. Before he left he played me a recording of a poem called ‘You can’t’ by someone who I think spells her name Salena Duggens. It’s a fantastic poem expressing distain for the widespread apathy infecting the nation. I loved it muchly but I don’t know where it came from and my very basic websearches have yielded nothing.

I am feeling poor at the moment. I must do things to improve my situation – all I’ve managed in the last year is to take about 700 off my overdraft which isn’t very much and it is almost the birthingsday of significant other and in order to make a fitting tribute I may have to dent that again. I hate to have to be concerned with money. The lowest point of my poverty when I was a student without loan money and hadn’t landed a summer job yet (which had to start in april I was that poor) was when I realised I had almost worn through the ass of my trousers and it was really cold (too cold for skirts, of which I had two) but couldn’t afford to buy new trousers, even primark trousers, because I had only just enough money for modest food. It sounds daft, oh no, no trousers for me today, I was hardly homeless or without support if I’d needed it, but the first time you look at your budget and think wow, I do kinda need this but if I got it I can’t have food, it really freaks you out and gives you a little taste of what it’s like to really be poor. Now I know I spend a little too much on what I like, particularly in the supermarket, because I hated the feeling of restriction. I could be creating savings but instead I am eating my money as a reassurance that I can afford that luxury. It’s probably time I got over that feeling, at least to make my use of food more efficient.

Decaff

The thing I like about Zelda Fitzgerald is that she is totally jaded but, unlike her husband, she isn’t bitter. She’s like the decaffeinated version, and as a big advocate of decaff coffee that is in no way an insult. In Scott’s writing you can feel the niggling tension headache of withdrawal (from all kinds of substances I don’t doubt) the lack of appetite from dry nausea and an undercurrent of misanthropy that has yet to find a target worthy of trying to muster up some bile. Zelda, on the other hand, loves humanity; she loves the naivity of youth with all its melodrama and foibles and the jadedness of adulthood where there is no point in making a fuss about anything for what good would it do? You might as well make the best of the situation, and it’s not even such a bad situation when you remember you’re still young, insanely rich and a member of American high society. Where Scott saw the poiniency of the lifestyle Zelda laughed at how ridiculous it was – and I imagine that this irritated Scott but I love her for it.