Category Life

May 30 2013

Still Alive; Doing Well

I’ve been intending to write this for about two weeks, but simply couldn’t be arsed. Truthfully, I’m probably only being arsed today as I’m procrastinating – this, whilst an intended exercise, is in many ways an attempt at avoidance of putting a pitch together. Ideas surge through my brain cells like a bullets through air, but unfortunately those brain cells don’t send those same neural signals to my fingertips.

To be frank, money issues aside, I don’t care that much at the minute. Insofar as I believe in the concept – which is actually not very, but whatever – I’m quite happy at the minute. Such an admission must come as an utter shock to those of you that have known me in the long-term, particularly in the days before I started writing here and was blathering a constant stream of negativity via a typographical fog horn elsewhere. It comes as a shock to me, probably most of all. My absence from this blog is symptomatic of not being at the soul-suckingly low points of the past – it was rare for me to not blog for more than a few days back then. Now though, rather than writing about life…well, I am living it.

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Dec 22 2012

Wishing You a Most Pleasant…

I’ve been horrifically remiss about posting lately (and, in particular, about responding to comments). If you have any sense, you don’t give a damn, but since I do have some readers, and since I’ve been a non-existent twat on Twitter for ages, I wanted to wish you all a very happy Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukkah/Saint Nicholas Day/Epiphany/Diwali/[insert festival of your persuasion here.]

I will update properly soon.

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Nov 22 2012

10,593

This post is a pity-party of misery. You probably don’t want to read it, particularly if you’re feeling low yourself.

As of 8.15pm yesterday evening, I have existed on this planet for 10,593 days.

It means I’m now 29.

I remember once as a child, a friend and I talking about blokes we fancied. I genuinely don’t remember who I referenced in the conversation, but it was someone over 30 (I’ve always been attracted to older men. Indeed, The Man is 10 years older than me.) My friend posited that “30 [was] really old,” was I mad?! (Quite probably, but for entirely different reasons.)

I didn’t see being 30 as “old.” Much as still do as an adult, I’d sit there and imagine myself at the age I now find myself as someone successful, happy, witty, everything going for her.

Not as an overweight Venlafaxine addict with no career struggling with bills and state benefits and bi-fucking-polar disorder.

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May 31 2012

The Secret is That There is No Secret

I recently read We Need to Talk About Kevin. If you’re unfamiliar with the text, it is written from the perspective of a mother whose always-peculiar son – the eponymous Kevin – goes into school one day and massacres a number of fellow pupils, a teacher and a canteen worker caught in the cross-fire.

We Need to Talk About KevinSo far, so ordinary. Whilst tragic in every conceivable way, and whilst highlighting wider social issues such as the taboos and stereotypes that society pretends don’t exist, explorations of high school massacres have been…well, they’ve been done, you know? I’ve seen countless documentaries and a few films on the subject (the most high-profile of which is Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, which really worth watching if you’ve not yet done so, even if you’re of the view that Mr Moore is something of a twat), and of course there are many books, songs, and even a game (!) on the topic.

But Kevin is different. Without rehearsing the entire text, it examines Kevin’s psychology, and that of his mother Eva, from every angle you can imagine. Was Kevin born ‘bad’? Was Eva’s lack of emotional attachment to her son from day one a catalyst for an inevitably sociopathic character? Is such a character genuinely incapable of feeling normal human affects? Nature vs nurture. The way the concept of parental love has been become so innately woven into the threads of Western society that no one talks about the fact that sometimes it just doesn’t exist. The impact of all-consuming grief on those left behind. And so much more.

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