Anywhere I Lay My Head

I was bored enough just now to play 'stream of conciousness weblinking'. This is a game that, well isn't really much of a game, in that there's no competitive element, and isn't actually much fun, and only serves you a reminder that your time on earth is wasted, but it's a game that everybody plays, knowingly or not. Basically, you follow links on the internet, clicking from person to person, without pressing 'back' or having to type an address in, or to enter a search term. Nothing but clicking. The top site for this is, of course, IMDB, but Facebook has it's uses too, although when you try and stalk people you don't know, you sometimes have to use 'back' so it doesn't count. Anyway, the point of the above is that during the game I'd just finished playing, I came across a Facebook tribute page in which loads of photographs of some dead teenager were put up, with a quote from some terrible song or other there (possible Snow Patrol, I forget), and there were several pages of vomworthy outpourings from his friends either too grief-stricken to too cretinous to tribute their friend with the correct use of English. It was a horrible experience. But the part that really got me interested was the fact that all the messages were directed towards him. For the sake of decency, let's not use his real name, let's pretend he was Mummra. The messages would be things like "Oh mummra, u wer taken from us to soon" or "m8 i think of u every nite u were such a laugh gonna muss u mummra" and so forth. I think the fact that they think that mummra is, as his first act in the spirit world, is going to go on Facebook to see what his illiterate friends have to say.about the situation. Although, considering how vain, vacuous and pathetically self-obsessed the world is, that probably IS what happens now when you die. It's certainly what I'd do.
This, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg, the tip of an iceberg lettuce on the tip of an iceberg, of the stupid, total fucking idiocy of my surroundings. To clarify, I'm not suggesting in any way whatsoever that I'm superior to any of the people I'm discussing, although your surely know that already. Anyway, apart from asshole students in their pyjamas in Tesco, mini supermarkets are a breeding chamber, a fucking boiler room for nurturing anger. Today I saw someone knock a jar of coffee off the shelf and it smashed into a mess of glass and brown sludge in the aisle. The Tesco worker saw it happen, and looked enquringly. I've reached the point where expecting basic manners from lank-haired fucks is an utter waste of effort, but this doofus not only didn't apologise, but actually blamed the way the jars had been stacked on the shelf, which was a ludicrous claim. He then didn't offer to help clear up, and mumbled along into the queue and started talking on his phone. This especially bothered me because at some point in my life I'm probably going to have this clown defending me in a murder trial, or shoving a rectal thermometer up my ass, or flying my to Hawaii, and I'll panic. The other main source of hatred experienced in Tesco, (apart from for myself today when I went in unwashes, and bought loads of shit food like tinned chilli and multbuy turgid pizza and then encounter the girl my housemates and I are obsessed with, restocking the orange juice in the freezer ) are students who try to go against the 'student stereotype' of buying pot noodles and beans, and instead think they're not stereotyping themselves because they buy couscous and strawberries and low fat stir fry in a plastic pot, and houmous. All the while wearing flower patterned shorts, sandles, their university hoodie and a necklace made of solid twat. Think again.


Most of the things I really hate, or really get my angry, are so because they're amusingly hypocritical, or annoy me because the situation is essentially a massive mirror held up against my face and a speech bubble saying "this is what YOU'RE like John, aren't you a wonderful human being. Massively hypocritical, and usually I can't even think of a reason why. I got really hacked off at a gig the other week because someone there was wearing a Fuck Buttons T shirt, and I like Fuck Buttons, and went to see Fuck Buttons on Valentine's Day. I get annoyed when people buy books at work that cost £1.99 rather than £8.99 because I think they're cheap, and then I always buy my shoes in shoe zone, which in actuality makes me far worse because at least they don't have blotchy, blistering stinking feet with cramp. Or maybe they do. I get pissed off when people say "yeah, that's a really good pop song" or "that might just be the best pop album of the last five years" as if to say "well I like it, but I'm not supposed to because I've still got my head up the 'alternative' area of my own asshole, so I'm going to damn it with faint praise". It's like say "this is probably the best posioned cabbage I've eaten this year" or "it's a good marzipan cabbage". As far as DIY music shit-crit, my least favourite phrase used to be "hmm yeah, people should listen to more REAL music", or "Why do people listen to Girls Aloud? They don't even write their own songs! Rubbish! People should listen to real music" and then offer an example like Paul Weller, or Feeder, as if Feeder and Paul Weller are factually superior to Girl Aloud. These sorts of comments used to crop up on Teletext soapboxes like The Void and The Vibe, Todays equivalent, the Drowned in Sound messageboards, which I've no doubt mentioned before, is also a breeding ground for dickless fuckfaces with too much time on their hands and filesharing equipment. But I could start writing about what annoys me about the patrons of that website in a size 5 font on a toilet roll, and I'd still need to go and buy another Andrex to finish the list.


This ones pretty hilarious, but I really get annoyed with people who self harm. This defies initial logic because I self harm. It's also not because I think they shouldn't do it, because everyone has the right to look like an idiot if they want to and it's not my business. But the more times I see people who have done it, the less I understand it, them, and myself. It's maddening, and it's a good example of realising how little you know about something you do a lot. I look at people with cuts and plasters and I think "fool", and then I look at myself and think the same. It's frustrating. Then I think about how little I care and how little I want to bring the subject to the dinner table, and realise that's what everyone probably thinks about me. One time when I was in hospital, a psychiatrist suggested I went to some self harm support groups to hang out with other psychopaths, a la Fight Club. If this isn't the most ridiculous suggestion ever, I don't know what is. A couple of years ago, I did go an online forum for self harmers and realised exactly how little I was like any of the people there. It's very carefully monitored, but tt's not a good place to go. For one thing, everyone used a bunch of internet lingo or slang that didn't make any fucking sense whatsoever, and it ends up with a similar playground social situation as any other website, where it's impossible to intigrate because you've only got 5 posts and someone else has 15,000. Likewise, if you have a problem, or a worry, or a fear, very few people respond unless they know who you are, or you've offered your help to someone else first. They present themselves as a very altruistic community, but it couldn't be further from the truth. The other reason I felt completely isolated from them, is that half of them were predictably angst-ridden Lacuna Coil fans who make their own dresses, and the other half were the hardcore terrifying self harmers for whom it had consumed their entire lives, and who spoke almost entirely in three letter medical acronyms, and always had their posts edited for 'graphic content'. This is because, I kid you not, people go on their website as they slash their wrists, and type things like "Oh fuck, there's blood all over the keyboard, I can't see if this is a b or a v. I can see veins hanging out" or "I know how you feel, I tried to slice my knob off with an egg slicer and now it's gone all pussy where the muscle meets my piss-tube and the stitches are falling off" or whatever. This is supposed to help, but it's like a macho competition, and you're still only on your forearms, then you've got no chance of sympathy. So would I like to go out and 'hang' with these people in real life? I'd rather slit my wrists, thanks.


Similarly to the Fuck Buttons anger above, I've found myself getting annoyed with people who like exactly the same things as I do. Now, if I find people who like Raymond Carver, or Bruce Springsteen, or used to watch The Kypton Factor with Gordon Burns, then I make a mental note and then never discuss it again. It's phenomenally boring, and makes me think I'm boring. You don't discover anything new or exciting about the world by having similar interests to other people.That's why I like talking about things I know nothing about, like football, and cars, and being successful. I think my problem has been that through the desire to eradicate all commitments, and having failry loose ties with friends, housemates and workmates, I've created myself the freedom I've always craved to be exactly who I want to be. And now I don't know who I want to be.


Last night I started a conversation with a girl in a nightclub for the first time in probably, or what seemed like, forever. She sneezed so I said 'bless you' she said 'thanks' then we talked about hay fever and how it's good to live in a city because you don't get hay fever and I'm all for cutting down the rainforests because it means I won't sneeze as much. She bought a drink and had to show her NUS card. Then I said I had to go, even thought I didn't, but it was uncomfortable, and I said I'd see her later, but then it was so uncomfortable that I decided to go home, and it was only on the way home that I remembered it was a NUS card from a university in Derby and that I'll never see her again.