Over and Out.

This blog originally began as a thread over at forum.preys-world.com that ran for a couple of years until the folder in which it resided was populated by only me, and was eventually closed down as part of the admin there tidying things up. I popped on over here and have used it as my hollering point for another couple of years, and it’s served me well. I never had a huge amount of traffic (though I was surprisingly popular in Brazil) and never got into the whole “community” aspect of it with linking to other people’s posts and tagging things and putting up pictures and all that shit. I posted here because it was faster and more anonymous than leave handwritten psychotic scrawlings everywhere and I couldn’t afford an old-fashioned typewriter. The posts on here encompass my life mainly in the seven or eight months after finishing college before dwindling to a few moans and rants about my still current job.

A few days ago the fine deviants of Preys World had a little State of the Forum talk and decided that the blog folder should be reopened, so I’ve got my old avenue of blogging back. I’ve decided to discontinue this blog and head on over back there purely because I’m more likely to post there and I’m on it every day anyway. It also allows me to talk more easily to a bunch of freaks I’ve known for years rather than the sporadic and anonymous people on here.

You’re all more than welcome to check out the new blog, Another Reminder Of Fatness, at http://forum.preys-world.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=30112. I should give a heads up that the only way to view that particular folder is to actually sign up, just for the privacy of other members. I know nobody will, but you’re welcome to all the same.

Peace out,

Johny.

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My cousin died.

Things have been a bit fucked up over the past week or two, my cousin died a couple of days ago after a heart attack brought on by a life of good booze and presumably better drugs. One of the paramedics at the scene wanted to pronounce him dead there and then but the other fought against it. After a few days in a medically induced coma they took him off the ventilator and he had what I’ve been told was a peaceful death.

I didn’t really know him at all, being a fair bit older than me and normally not present at any family get togethers. It was strange, being at a rosary for someone who was largely a stranger yet most of the people there were family. Between my uncle dying a few months ago (suicide, which I don’t think I mentioned, mostly due to lacking either the time or the inclination) and now this it’s been a rough patch for everyone. Mostly it’s made me aware that time is slipping by, that the people I grew up with as a child and whom I considered more or less immortal because they could never be anything but were slowly but surely getting older. Eventually it’s not going to be the fringes of my large extended family that will bite the dust, eventually it’s going to be someone who’s house I slept over at as a child, who told me stories and whose kids I played with at parties and the like. One day I’m going to have to carry the coffin of someone I well and truly care about, and they’re not all going to be afforded the choice of suicide or relative quickness of a heart attack, there’ll be illness and wastage instead. Far too soon my family is going to shrink, and we’ll ask less how people are and talk more about how they were.

My cousin leaves behind more than a half dozen kids, with five mothers to look after them. He’s lying in a coffin right now with a Celtic strip emblazoned with the names of all his children. He’s wearing jeans, Timberland boots, and a pair of Family Guy boxers with “womaniser” ön the waistband. He was in his thirties. I should have known him better.

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Dream a little dream

Has it been nearly ten days already since my last post? Time seems to fly by when you’ve been stuck on never-ending backshifts for over a week with a single day off, and still another two more days to go! That sums up pretty much everything I’ve been doing, with the addition of more seems as I get home when everyone else starts to go to bed and I’ve developed an aversion to staying up until five in the morning (today being an exception) downstairs in the living room watching movies or whatever.

One thing that has happened due to getting in a few more hours sleep is that I now have a lot more semi-lucid dreams, including an unfortunate one where I was driving around and got lost at night in a town that seemed quite nice and seaside-y but I had no idea how to navigate. On this rainy evening I pull into a parking space behind some a block of flats and two guys try to steal my car, a scuffle occurs, and one of them gets a kicking while the other gets run over as I make good on my getaway. Another involved an old flame making an unwanted visit culminating in me realising that I was dreaming, saying “fuck you” in the dream and deliberately waking myself up. The longer I try to sleep the more likely it is the dream will eventually turn to shit.

I’ll leave you to interpret that, I’m off to bed.

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Back once again!

A rather belated hello to 2013, I know I’ve not been around in a while. I start a post, get distracted, leave it for days or weeks at a time then wipe the slate clean and repeat. That’s been going on since my last post. Read through the last few post I’d made dating back nearly a year, I’m treading over the same ground each time, and probably would be again today, so I’ve decided to keep the catchup as short possible…

Things wot is the same:

Still in the same job, finding an easy groove where I mostly get peace and half-consciously think about getting myself sacked so I’d need to find a new one. Same car. Same room in the same house. Same glasses. Same weight. Same mattress. Same shit haircut. Same relationship status: single, happily, but needs more shagging. Probably the same jeans. Same boots. Same cycle of getting high for a while then being sober for a while. Same procrastination and tomorrow attitude day after day. Same kind of bleak mindset.

Things wot is diff’rint:

Marsha had a baby! A beautiful little girl who popped into the planet back in October and who has had enough pictures of her appearing on Facebook every day that you could easily make one of those time-lapse videos you find plastered all over YouTube. Um… That’s the biggie I guess. Another one of my friends had a baby too, sadly not nearly as cute but as it’s a big strapping laddie you don’t want him looking like a wee poof eh? Both my little brothers have been in for operations, one due to a fractured eye socket because he picked a fight with a sink, the other for a hernia that he didn’t tell anyone about until two days before he was scheduled to get it done. And that’s about it, it’s been a miserably static few months where I haven’t done anything remotely constructive and have in many ways gotten worse in most respects. Go me!

I think that’ll be enough for now, just dipping my toe in the water and getting used to hitting the publish button and setting this shite out onto the internet again. I’m going to make a more concerted effort to not only post more here but actually do more worth posting about, not that you haven’t all heard that before. Expect moans about the public, you all love them!

Night night, sweet dreams!

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Blergh. That is all.

Yeah yeah so I done it again, said I’d update more often than not bothered my arse doing so. I’ve been meaning to, but time seems to just keep on running away from me, or at least smudges into one indistinct blob well enough that I’m not able to differentiate time beyond “Work / No Work” and “Sleep / Wake Up.” That, and I’ve been so bored that I can’t even be bothered to think and have lost interest in pretty much everything. The only thing that’s managed to raise me above tepid disinterest has been Breaking Bad, and even that was fleeting and is now over until next summer. Woe is me.

Got bored with weed again too, seems to crop up every four or five months as a passing fancy then buggers of again until I take the notion to pretend that I’m a hippy and hope to have a nice wee stereotypical experience of serenity and finding inner peace or some bollocks. Even that is incapable of breaking through the boredom these days. Suppose I’d better go fully through the gateway and develop an honest heroin addiction.

Looking back at my previous few posts this seems to be a recurring theme, and one I’m getting bor- tired of. My routine is coming in from work and then sitting on a computer, but being amused by the games I used to play or websites I’d once visit. I’ve just spent £30 on more maps for a computer game (and the promise of more as well) yet haven’t been able to bring myself to actually play any of them. Facebook doesn’t hold the same kind of allure as everyone is now leading mundane lives and those I’m most interested in I’m no longer a part of. The fact that I’m typing this at all is pure chance, given that I’d bounced around a load of articles on TV Tropes (time sink if ever there was one) when I saw one about NaNoWriMo, which then of course lead me to think about writing, and rather than get up off my fat arse and pick up a pen and paper I figured it’d be easier to just type some bollocks on here instead.

I’m going to go get a drink then actually sit down and either read a book or write some proper shit. Failing that I’ll see how much music I can download, because I’ll need a backing track of course. Not even going to pretend I’m going to get myself psyched up, I’m just going to arse around till midnight then convince myself that tomorrow’s a new day. Peace.

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Breaking your fast.

It begins, I suppose, with a certain distaste in the mouth. Soon, a possibly alarming raising of the heartbeat, followed by a flushing of the face quickly followed by the sensation that all blood is running out of your head and the idea that ice cubes have been placed on your cheeks. You begin to notice the flatness of your footsteps, and the way gravity makes all the matter in your arms go downwards.

Before long the air will start to move slowly over your face, and without doubt those arms you thought about earlier with resemble pendulums pulling down on your shoulders. You’ll walk up the driveway and when you go to open the gate will notice all the parts that make up the latch and wonder how on earth anyone came up with it. Maybe it was the same guy who found out how to carve the stone the steps you’re walking down. You open the back door and go to lock it behind you but the key chain somehow ended up being balanced on top of the key rather than swinging below it, a flare for anyone’s deductive abilities to pick up on. In the kitchen you’ll notice how much you love things made of wood, before being reminded of that nasty taste in the mouth you had earlier, so it’s time to fetch yourself a drink. Drink. “Driiiin-ck” What a weird fuckin’ word. There’s nothing to have but water and diluting orange, double strength of course. The water will be run for a few minutes, to make it as cold as possible. You pour the juice, dilute with water. It’s weak but there’s a definite sense that this isn’t whole. It’s water with something in it, not flavoured water. Still, it’s better than nothing. And you feel happy about that.

There’s a sitcom just started on TV, it’s about IT workers, you relate with them and feel the closest thing you can to hatred right now as a result. God damn though, every movement is simply perfection of comedy in every frame. But you can’t stay here, the an upstairs to be seen. How close the wall is in the hallway after you open the door is remarkable. It’s amazing you could even turn the corner to go upstairs. You wonder how long it took someone to invent them. Probably that guy who first carved them, you remember. For some reason you still have on all the things you wore at work, now you’ll have to dismantle yourself. You detach the lanyard with the name badge from around your neck, take out the phone, then the belt, the card and cash, then the change hanging down the bottom. The hoodie flies off next, and you notice how tight and hot you boots are, so one leg goes up on the foot bar of the bed, the laces undone and the boots pulled apart, followed by the other. You take the boots off and feel how nice it is to have your feet on a cold floor. Jeans soon followed, naturally.

You debate what you should go and enjoy the shit out of now. Bursts of creativity race through your mind, and you go decide to write a blog post, your mind outpacing your fingers tenfold, all the best words and idea screaming up before falling back into the either, what you soon realise as more mundane fare reigning supreme. There are sausages in the fridge having said that.

 

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An update.

I’m still alive, I’ve just been busy doing boring shit and finding excuses not to sit down and type up a blog post despite spending all day and night in front of a PC. Things have been going alright, spent a month off the phones getting training up on customer services and faults for both the TV and phone side of things, so work was mildly more interesting than it was before. Biggest benefit of it though was getting to actually have a bit of fun and be on the same shifts as the people I’m working with. Suppose if you wanted to get a wee bit poofy you could say that we bonded. Work itself is also a bit easier, most of the time we’re dealing with more recent customers who haven’t yet grown to hate the service or rack up any long running problems, they do generally seem to be a nicer bunch than before. The (now downright obvious to me) call diversions to specific parts of the call floor no longer apply, so I can sit down at the start of my shift and not silently cry to myself in the knowledge that half my calls are going to be from Birmingham or Bradford, or if they are they’ve at least got a decent phone line.

The start of training also precipitated a Facebook adding frenzy where everyone decided they now wanted to be aware of each other’s existence at all hours of the day. My manager appears to have been the one who kickstarted it, and I was initially hesitant to accept due to wanting to keep work and life separate. Then two things happened: I realised that I was in a go-nowhere job that wasn’t exactly shirt and tie just yet, and also we all got drunk on a night out at the end of training and I found myself with a hand down my manager’s bra, breaking down a little bit of that former formality. Like I said, the team bonded.

Other than that, not much has happened on my side of things: quietly saving up money, getting to the gym when I can, reminding myself not to eat constant shite when I’m not, and generally wishing I was a bit more disciplined in everything I do. Still living with my parents, driving the same car, and wearing the same pair of jeans. With other people? Marsha is thankfully still pregnant and beginning to show more each day, and she’s moved into a new house with her now fiance. Hans and the couple of other girls I went to college with have finished their access courses and are now going onto uni proper, and 28F has been off the map since january, but word on the grapevine is that she’s also out of the nest and into a flat with her long-haired pain in the arse boyfriend. The girl I had that slight dalliance with is still working in the same place, both of us successfully ignoring each other like pros.

And that’s about that, everyone’s growing up and moving on, but I’m not going to get all Bridget Jones about it just yet, I’ll give that another… year? Fuck knows. But for now it’s my day off, it’s getting dark, and I’m tired of sitting in front of a PC. Now that I’ve broken my renewed blogging virginity I’ll try (once again) to update a bit more often.

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The Lasts

You’ve got a vice, oh yes you do. It’s something that you need/want to give up for the sake of your health, wealth, or just general wellbeing. Maybe it’s some minor OCD thing you picked up years ago, like unconsciously dry humping your bed covers as you fall asleep every night. Maybe it’s that you’ve gotten over the good bit of the heroin habit we all develop at some point in our lives and you think it’s time to kick it, who knows? Whatever it is, it’s something you do all the time and you want to stop it, so you set yourself a deadline. Sensible right? But it’s really not, because if you think that you’re absolutely guaranteed go through a big dose of The Lasts.

How formal and intentional The Lasts are varies from person to person and what they’re doing, but it’ll happen nonetheless. You’ll set yourself a deadline, let’s say next monday. That’s a few days away, and you’re absolutely definitely going to do it, so seen as it’s the last time you’ll get to enjoy your little vice for a while you’ll merrily indulge in it guilt-free. You don’t need that huge bar of chocolate, but as you’ll be giving it all up in a couple of days where’s the harm in enjoying everything one last time?

You’ll put this planned new beginning on something halfway significant, it’ll be the start of a week or month, but especially the new year. You’ll chose to finally get that weird lump in your balls looked at on the anniversary of the day your curious aunt died of prostate cancer, but you won’t quit smoking on a thursday because only perverts stop doing things part-way through the week. You know it to be true, it’s an unspoken and instinctual part of us all to delay things and even them up to make it all tidy.

I’m not innocent in it, I’ve done it for as long as I can remember, whether it was school projects or working out (which since 13 I’d promised to do every summer so I’d return to school six weeks later a bit closer to being an Adonis) we’ve all put off giving something up under the rational that it wasn’t the right time to do it, or that a couple more days would make sense, or after you’ve gotten the right amount of money or fulfilled some other bollocks objective before you could get started on this one.

Truth is there’s no reason why you can’t just start/stop right now, and it took me a while to realise that myself. This entry is sounding like some sort of shitey self-help guide, but if you’ve read this blog at any length at all you’ll know that I don’t believe in the golden light inside or the happiness of the universe. I much prefer to go with the tried and tested “fuck you” miserable attitude to sorting things out. It’s a nice nihilistic elitism that states the idea that inanimate objects can hold sway over you is fucking retarded, and that I’m far too above that shit to allow it to happen. Trying to quit smoking? Fuck you cigarettes. Going on a diet? Fuck you creamcakes.

And that’s all there is to it, besides practicalities like willpower and the fact you really want some of that damn delicious heroin. But I can’t be fucked going into all that, that’s for you to figure out. Me? I’m busy telling loaves of bread and ounces of weed to go fuck themselves.

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Budgeting for excess, and my motivation’s triggered once more.

I’m going through one of those horrible phases where things aren’t half bad. I have a bit more money in the bank than I used to, my car is running, I don’t own anyone anything, work is trundling along without incident. Nothing is happening. I’m bored senseless. Right now my life is comfortable and uneventful, which is a bit pathetic all things considered.

I did some maths too, and figured if I saved just £2 a day, I’d save what scientists call a metric fuckton of money. See, that’s actually less than what I’m paying getting my lunch from the work cafeteria, because I was lazy and didn’t make myself anything to eat before I left the house. Now, over the course of a five day week, that’s a tenner. Over a month, forty quid. Over a year, £480. Holy fuck man, I’m spending nearly half a grand on shit processed tepid food I don’t even like! That’s a few ounces of weed, nearly a ton of tabs of acid, 190 or pints of beer, a rollicking good evening with a lady (or two) of the night, or enough petrol to drive through France to Zürich, down to Monaco, and drive the coast to Malaga, with enough left over for a celebratory drink once you got there. Or the gym membership that I was actually trying to budget for in the first place.

As you might be able to tell, things have fallen by the wayside fitness-wise over the past three months or so. Still not having bread, but that’s been replaced with whatever shit is on offer at work that day, normally meat wrapped in pastry with a side of mediocre chips. It doesn’t taste that good, but it fills a hole well enough that I’m not more grumpy with hunger. My shifts have been straddling that line between starting too early to do anything, and finishing too late to do anything. By which I mean I can’t go walking in the woods with my dog in the dark without seeming like a nutter. Though now I think of it, wouldn’t that make the people judging me nutters too? In either case, I’ve fell off the wagon, and I’m wanting to get back on it. Already the diet has improved, I’ve got a couple of joints worth of weed left then I’m done with that (and subsequently smoking altogether) until at least a hot summer’s day months from now, and I’m already feeling a bit lighter and better as a result.

Two big things have triggered this: firstly, the people I work with. Not the stereotypical shut-ins you might think work in tech, but not exactly a crowd of Olympians either. They’ve got what I’ve come to think of as the “IT Physique.” Few are obese, but most are walking around with soft, shapeless bodies, with little pot bellies and ridiculously skinny arms because that’s the only part of their body that moves with any frequency. Some have really bad hunches from using computers for so long, and I’ve started to notice myself slouching in my seat, my spine all curved, and I really don’t want to end up like them. Secondly, Phill, the big fat guy I used to go to college with, has started losing the beef at a rate of knots, and annoys me that I haven’t been the one to do it first. Given he’d always been that way and I used to play sports six days out of seven, I kinda have to belittle his achievement by going one better, and beating him at every possible thing in the world. Infantile I know, but it has to be done man.

Nanu nanu.

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Hi money! Bye money!

Got paid a couple of days ago, big chunk of it is already marked out to be spent. £100 on digs, £60 for that fine, £100 (minimum, unless I’m wanting a truly awful pair) for glasses, £30 at least to replace my boots which are falling apart, another £30 again on jeans as I only have the one pair, £60 at least for petrol money, and £30 for my phone bill. Still to get a new mattress and the car in for a service. To top it all off my MP3 player seems to have given up the ghost, so unless I can recover all the data from the hard drive I’ve lost pretty much all of the music I’ve gotten over the past ten years and all of the films. It’s the music I’m most bothered about to be honest, as it was the closest thing I had to any sort of “collection,” and it had a lot of songs in there that I knew mainly by sound rather than name so I doubt I’ll ever properly find again. Woe is me. If I can’t get it working again then that’ll be another three figures to replace it.

Having said all that, that is a month’s worth of spending, and a lot of it I know I’ll put off. Glasses? Pah, even if they are rusted and leave marks on either side of my forehead, I’ll be in hospital with metal poisoning before I need a new pair. And shoes? I’ll swagger more and call it the grunge look, which will go in perfectly with my washed out torn jeans! And do I really need a mattress? All the springs have flattened out sure, but I definitely read somewhere that a soft mattress is actually bad for you. Plus until I can verify that those definitely are bedbug bites, I don’t see any reason to fork over hard-earned cash. Petrol? All I need is 99p masking tape and I can drive away without paying each and every time!

In all seriousness though, the only extravagance so far this year has been a Zippo lighter I ordered off of Amazon for less than a tenner, and a little bit of weed, which I haven’t and won’t be getting in every week. All in all I’m saving up quite well, considering getting a motorbike, but I’m going to see if it’ll still save me money, or to stick with a car alone. Trying not to let the money burn a hole in my pocket, but also not work and save up as much as I can only to go and spend the lot of it on entirely mundane things.

Also, I’m in the process of setting up a twitter account, as I feel the need to spout shit in short little bursts from time to time. I’ll post up the details once I’ve made it, figured out how to work it, and perhaps find a decent widget for the sidebar on here to save you all the trouble of having to travel over there to see anything.

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