Osama’s sound, snottery beaks, and poofy scholars.

I’m in a pisser of a mood. I’m choked up with the cunt-faced cold and the snotters are blinding me. In a few hours I’ll have worn off the first couple of layers of skin on my beak and it’ll be this time next week before I stop looking like Rudolph. In short: I’m not a happy chappy.

Bonfire Night was last night, which is one of my favourite nights of the year, if for no other reason that colourful explosives are going off left right and center and there’s usually a decent party atmosphere going on. There’s a reason for all of this happening of course, but I seem to have misunderstood the finer details of the day when I was growing up. See, a couple of hundred years ago there was a man named Guy Fawkes, he had a blocked nose and the snotters were blinding him too. But in those days they didn’t have any Vicks, and you didn’t know if you had a mild cold or a terminal disease. So he went to his doctor and got given a prescription, but before he could get to the chemist he was arrested for breach of the peace. He’d wiped his nose on his sleeve and flicked a bogie into the middle of the street, then told the PCSO to fuck off when they tried giving him a fixed penalty notice. This mightily vexed young Mr Fawkes, as all the polis were Rangers fans, and they slapped him all night long until each and every one of them sported their very own Red Hand of Ulster. Being the trendsetter he was, this bodacious young Catholic decided that the IPCC weren’t going to be of much use, and that his complaints would be far better addressed directly to the House of Lords with 36 barrels of gunpowder. And he nearly got away with it, if only someone hadn’t sent an anonymous letter spilling the beans about the plan for avenging Fawkes’ well skelped arse. He was caught literally sitting on the evidence, and hanged not long after for taking the piss out of a fuckton of health and safety laws.

All that is fact, backed up by irrefutable proof. Problem is, I got the wrong end of the stick as to just what it was we were all celebrating. It seems that people are setting off fireworks over the fact that he was caught before he blew up parliament. But ever since I was a child I always thought we were remembering about how a man almost blew up the parliament. For me Fawkes was the hero, not the villain, and burning effigies of him was just a ritual rather than the people, y’know, throwing a terrorist on a bonfire. The historical and political side of things were never that big of a deal, it’s not treated along the same lines of Remembrance Day, it’s just something that happened nearly half a millennium ago and it’s tradition. Maybe being from Scotland had something to do with it. In school I can only remember being given just the facts, never the teacher’s opinion on anything. With the lovely sectarianism we have here (no racism, everyone turns grey in a fortnight mind) it may have something to do with a Catholic trying to blow up a Protestant government. The IRA were still setting off the odd bomb at this point, so they might have tread on eggshells around it. Or it might’ve been an already deep-seated mistrust of authority figures that I had when my age was still in single figures. I mean, surely the government must have done something wrong if a man’s going to all that effort to blow them up? Those gunpowder barrels are heavy after all. In the end though it’s about bright lights and bigger explosions.

Not that I seen any of them, that’s what I meant to moan about in the first place. I’ve got the cold, and it was absolutely freezing last night. The parents were away to a family party for just the old ones, Goggles was off out trying to get drunk enough to enjoy himself but no so much that it was blatantly obvious, and Thickness played games and watched TV as usual. I spent most of the night in a warm bath reading, wishing that my leaky beak would vanish so I could try to salvage an extremely casual date/meet I had arranged with a lady friend who was there with her pals. I don’t know if I’ll mention any more of that kind of thing, I’ve mostly kept quiet as “so I got a bit of nookie” isn’t that interesting. Tonight though it was a girl who seemed quite promising in regards to going out with her rather than a drunken fumble. Another day another chance.

I had another meeting at the work programme, which turned out to be as soul destroying as I expected it to be. They had taken my CV from me a couple of weeks ago, said they’d make it better and handed me out a few copies of it on Friday. It was filled with spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. This is meant to be the shit that they fire off to everywhere with an opening as well. Useless cunts. I’m getting more and more exasperated at having to attend this shit. “Do I really want a job?” Why are you even fucking asking me that? Aye! Ya shower of fucking spastics. The new advisor had the cheek to make me wait for twenty minutes then whinge because I arrived bang on time instead of early, which then kept me late for getting across town to actually sign on. I’m getting at least an interview by next friday, I’ve had enough of this shit, I’m going to annoy, harass, impress, threaten, cajole, intimidate, blackmail, or steal a fucking job by this time next week.

NaNoWriMo is going as shit as expected, I’ve got a lot of planning done, but I’ve still to make a start. Part of me doesn’t want to rush it, another just doesn’t want to even begin. I will though. Quantity over quality, any monkey can drag a piece of shit out to 50,000 words. If I make it incomprehensible enough and tell everyone I’ve got a drug habit I might even be able to go full circle and proclaim it as proper art. There’s also the small fact that I let slip to Hans that I was doing it, she with the English teacher boyfriend, he the English teacher boyfriend with Doctors of Words and Saying Stuff Dead Good for friends. Her reading it means he might read it, and it might end up as a literary Goatse for a bunch of scholars. Altogether now, after three: “But they’re just posh cunts, who gie’s a flyin’ fuck whit they ‘hink anyway!” I’m sounding more self-conscious than I feel, but then it is something that you’ve crafted and put effort into creating being grilled. I’m running low on don’t-give-a-fuck, I’ve been up for more than a day again. Yet I’m not that tired, and I’ve gotten myself into the groove of sitting and typing. I might just go and make a start at this thing. Only six days down after all.