When gummy bears attack!

Now I'm sure most people have had the odd close call with death, I know i certainly have. Usually we pay no lasting attention to the bus that almost hit us, the fall from the tree that could have gone badly wrong but didn't.

In my life I have fallen from trees, been attacked by birds and had to leap from the roof I happened to be standing on at the time. Almighty D has contrived to blow me up in several interesting ways with fireworks and American muscle cars and many other near misses. Today, however, Death himself looked me square in the eyes and just took the piss. Most people, if given the choice, would opt for a heroic death. Hypothermia on top of Everest, fighting terrorists, pushing a child out of the way of a speeding car or ever saving kittens from a malicious ball of wool.

Being a bit of a romantic, I would happily settle for any of the above......but choking on a fucking gummy bear is just plain pathetic.

It was my own fault really, it was Raspberry flavour and I know the evil ways of Raspberry. I should have rejected the temptations of it's sumptuous red colour. I should have remembered that it is the darkness to Strawberry's light. But no. Like all children everywhere and disgusting objects, I popped it in my mouth and hoped for the best.

Will I ever learn?

Eventually I managed to cough up the confectionery assassin and gasped the air like my life depended on it, which as it turns out it did. Finally able to breath again, I looked down at the half chewed gummy bastard. He looked up at me with his one remaining eye and a smirk on his gummy face which said "You're my bitch and you know it."

Moral of the story: If something wants to kill you, don't put it in your mouth.

Batshit crazy

I think the headline says it all.
Some poor kid gets in a bad situation and gets shot by the police, next thing chaos. The streets of London, Birmingham and Manchester are now on fire and looters are everywhere.

What I want to know is how does a call for justice turn into looting and riots? Do these people honestly think that acting like this helps? Or are they just scum looking for a fight regardless of the reason?

I strongly suspect it's the latter, especially considering the looting started before the rioting.

If this is the way the world is going, then injury compensation adverts are going to very different in the near future.

Had a trip or fall? Been in an accident that wasn't your fault? looking for compensation you rightly deserve? Then set your neighbours car on fire and go on a shoplifting spree.

Seriously, what the fuck? These people obviously can't be trusted in modern society. Are they such lemmings that one person happened to be stealing something at a stressful time and they couldn't help but join in?

In my humble opinion, when all this lunacy calms down and most of them have been caught, they should be court ordered to wear adult nappies and a jacket which says "Fuck-tard" on the back.

When you look at all the good in the world, you see how much life is worth living. Then you realize all the good is a grain of sand to the planet sized bad in the world and you start thinking "Roll on the Apocalypse".

While reading the news reports, and writing this, I had an interesting idea. We should take the worst criminals (rapists and murderers etc) as well as continuous repeat offenders, and give them all lobotomies. Then make them clean streets or whatever. We're always hearing about prisoner rights, which I find a bit odd. I've always had, and always will have, the belief that if you choose to break the law then you're choosing to give up any and all rights. Make prison a punishment like it should be. Make them shit in a bucket, force them to work and force them to watch the tellitubbies if that's what it takes.

Show me the money

So lets sum up the state of the world finances at the moment.
We're boned.

Greece is as good as bankrupt, shortly followed by the Republic of Ireland. The UK's debt is so huge they're having to invent new words to describe it. The USA isn't doing so well either. Japan at least has a reason for being strapped for cash, earthquakes are expensive messes to clean up.

Ireland owes billions to the UK. The UK owes billions to the USA and God only knows who they owe money to. Greece just owes money to everyone. So where exactly did all the worlds money go?

I have a few theories.
First is that several countries have been quietly printing extra bank notes to patch the financial hole. This of course would normally lead to the currency being slightly devalued, unless the government in question simply didn't tell anyone. Which is international monetary fraud.

Secondly it's possible that certain third world countries, who have been begging for aid for the last 30 something years, have simply been stockpiling wealth. This theory would mean that the starving millions in Africa are faking it.

Third on the list are celebrities. It's no secret that they are overpaid, but think about this. If Paul McCartney, Tom Cruise, Bill Gates etc gave up HALF their wealth then there would be no world debt. Paul McCartney would save the world and still be a billionaire.

The fourth theory is simple. Aliens did it.

Realistically speaking, the real reason is probably a combination of the first three, though never rule out aliens. EVER.

As the saying goes "Money makes the world go round", so maybe global finance will completely collapse and the world will indeed end in 2012. Who-ever's to blame, rich people, poor people, stupid people or fucking bankers, we can at least laugh at them when their billions are only good for toilet paper.

What to do?

Man I have a huge to-do list, and it gets bigger every day.

Now I have some fairly reasonable excuses for not doing a few of the listed chores, but my main problem is my own mind.

Of the many things I should be doing, the main one I really ought to be cracking on with is a one act play I'm supposed to be writing.

Well to be exact, I've already written it. In my head. The problem is my imagination. Every time I sit down to type, my imagination fucks off and does it's own thing. Which is a bit of a pain in the bum. So instead of typing out a play that I'm supposed to be working on, my imagination distracts me with a whole new idea. Not helpful at all.

You could say it's a disability. Hyper-active imagination syndrome. I strongly suspect many people, who struggle to finish things, also suffer from this disorder. It's not a lack of skill or motivation, our minds simply jump from one idea to another until we can't focus on the job at hand.

For example, right now I should be sleeping, but I started thinking about the play. Then out of no-where my imagination pops up and says

"I've got a really cool idea for a one man show", which i have to admit was a really cool idea indeed. Then i couldn't concentrate on the play and got completely sidetracked by an unwelcome but really cool idea. Next I made a rookie mistake. I turned to the Internet to do some light research for "project really cool idea". Giving it a name like that should have set of alarm bells and the safest thing to do would be switch off the computer and go to sleep, but noooooo.

Anyone who has ever used the Internet knows, that when you put in a word or phrase into a search engine, you get a whole bunch of results that have absolutely nothing to do with the original word or phrase. Somehow I was still surprised, and more than a little curious, when I typed in "Graffiti history" and came across a page containing a recipe for french toast.

A normal, run of the mill, over-active imagination would have paused........said

"Huh? Weird." wondered what possible link graffiti and french toast had, and gone back to the research.

Hyper-active imaginations are like Duracell bunnies, they just keep going and going.

I spent the next 20 minutes constructing the perfect french toast sandwich in my mind and decided I had to have one. After writing, what is probably, a really bad blog post about my evening. I now can't remember what I was going to write down for the play, Project really cool idea is now on my to-do list and I'm really quite hungry.

Moral of the story?

Everything can be solved with french toast.

Ying and Yang

I had a thought yesterday.

According to Newton every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I wonder if this applies to more than physics. What I'm getting at is the idea of perfect opposites.

Yes is the perfect opposite of No.

Day is the perfect opposite of Night.

You get the idea. However when we come to more complex objects and ideas things get...well complicated. What's the perfect opposite of a hammer? The easy answer would be a nail, but it's not that easy. Both hammers and nails are used to make things, and so cannot be perfect opposites.

Then I thought about words. Words are simple.

Yes/No

Right/Wrong

But what about a whole sentence, or an Idiom?

One immediately jumped into my mind.

The glass is half full/The glass is half empty

Simply by changing one word you get a change from optimist to pessimist. A perfect opposite. It didn't feel right though. Only one word was changed, and changed into it's own perfect opposite. It seemed like cheating.

OK so next step is to take a saying, make it's exact opposite and use a whole bunch of different words. To answer the unspoken question some of you may have swishing around in your head, yes I was bored.....very bored. Surprisingly though it was mildly entertaining and produced a few giggles.

If you have nothing better to do, I highly recommend doing some yourself. Below are a few I came up with, just to give you an idea of how it works. Once you've got the hang of it, challenge a friend and see who comes up with the best one (bonus points for doing actions and making said friend snort while laughing)

"Look before you leap."

has the perfect opposite of

"Fuck it! Weeeeeeeeeeee!"

"The grass is always greener on the other side."

is the exact opposite of

"The secret to a nice garden is to paint your lawn twice a week."

"Aim for the moon, and even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."

is the flip side of

"Aim for the balls, you'll get whatever you want then."

OK so that last one was stretching it a bit, but fuck it. My game my rules.

I'm finding it hard to stay mildly enthusiastic about anything these days. I can't be arsed with social networking sites, games, TV, movies or even breathing any more. I've talked about depression before, and I know that's all it is....but it feels different. I feel a level of apathy towards everything that feels sensible, logical even.

The country is going down the pan, and we send billions out to other countries only for another disaster to happen. Hospitals can't afford staff or medication. Schools can't afford teachers, and I can't afford fuel to get anywhere to cheer myself up...including the doctors. So what's the fucking point?

I've been fighting an enormous urge to blow every penny I have and just fuck off into the sunset, never to be heard of again. We delude ourselves about life and freedom. How many of us can truly do what we want when we want? Ever missed a party because you had work the next morning? Can't sod off for the weekend because there's no-one to walk the dog? Sorry can't go to that festival, have to pay the mortgage?

In a way it makes sense that we romanticise cowboys, Victorian explorers, Alexander Supertramp and Dr Geebers (if you've never heard of the last two I strongly suggest looking them up). They had adventures and weren't tied down by Ikea and managers. They had the freedom that is yearned for in all our psyches.

Maybe that's what's really wrong with me. I'm a caged animal. A dolphin in a fish tank. I need some space to run around and frolic for a while, perhaps we all do. So I guess it comes down to blowing my brains out or breaking out of my rusty cage. I know what sounds more fun. Somewhere out there is a beach, and a sunrise, with my name on it.

If only.

Bang goes that theory

Well it's been a while, and for good reason.

Firstly Almighty D and Mrs D renewed their vows in spectacular fashion. Medieval theme and shit loads of snow. Half the guests couldn't make it, and those that did had trouble thawing out our huskies for the trip home.

Then the old git kicked the bucket. It was hard to be suitable mournful and interested at the funeral, which was also held during the blizzards. I had expected to feel something, not loss or sadness of course, but something. Nada. I must say he led one hell of a life, one which ordinarily would inspire admiration if it hadn't involved him. Since the snow my Gran has been alive for the first time in my eyes. I had glimpse her true self once before, drunk and dancing on the table to South African songs....on a school night! I've never seen her happier, which is sad really in a way.

Shit comes and shit goes, another year passes and another birthday is morned. I've definitely had good birthdays before, I remember them. In general though the whole January/February period is one of melancholy and depression. Helped along by bad health, I pulled back under my blanket and pretended the world didn't exist. Unfortunately this gets on certain peoples nerves, and rightly so. It's selfish and self indulgent crap. My friends, or should I say those that know me the best, accept this as a personality quirk. They know I'll be back. They shouldn't have to wait, and wonder, but the odd absence has got to be better than just blowing my brains out.

Finally some good news turns up. The Boy moves North to live with Almighty D (his Dad) for a while. The story there is long, complicated and none of your fucking business anyway. Lets just say it's a good thing. The Boy turns out to be a really cool guy to hang around with and all are happy, as they should be. Except Almighty D who now lives in paranoid fear that The Boy doesn't like him. I think I'm going to start carrying around a large damp trout to slap people with when they're being daft. Almighty D will be smelling of trout 24/7.

All in all, I thought 2011 was going to be a good year. Now I know we're not even half way through yet, and some good stuff has happened, but it ain't looking good on the whole. My recovering finances took a kick in the crotch when my car and laptop broke at the same time, health is as shitty as ever and future prospects of every kind are quickly disappearing.

Sometimes life just sucks, but that's OK because sometimes it doesn't. You just have to wait for it to stop sucking.