Bitter are the fluids of one P. D. Greenaway

Lord have mercy on this weary soul, for I have had a rough week. That's right, sympathy should be laid directly at my feet and scores of red roses showered upon me, because I've been feeling a little blue and self-pitying whilst living in what is one of the richest and most provident countries in the totality of history.

Cherish my face; cherish it, and cradle my fertile pain.

I'd like to bring up something that has affected me a great deal these past few years, because it's only really become relevant again recently, and that is Depression. I've had it, I believe it's more or less resolved now, however I still find myself slipping into bad habits. To combat these bad habits, such as moping, weeping, and tearfully clutching a picture of a sad clown in a run-down former victorian linen mill wearing a leather trenchcoat, the nice doctor I spoke to gave me something called Citalopram to take.

Only a little dose, once per day, nothing to worry about. I declined them the first time, and that was probably my biggest mistake; I was, and still am, a fervent believer in the fact that I should not have to rely (that looks like it's spelt wrong, but it isn't.) on medication to be happy. This said, I have always found the idea of conciousness having a chemical componant facinating, and after the second trip to the doctors, thought it would be an idea to give it a shot and make a note of how I was feeling as I took them (thought I must admit, the choice of taking them was not mine at all; doctors can be very direct if you resist for too long). One of the main symptoms of my burgeoning psychosis was that of extremely vivid nightmares about nothing in particular, followed by long periods of sleeplessness, which in turn made me ineffective (well, less effective) at work, which caused worry, which caused nightmares, which caused and on and on and on.

I have the notes here with me, and I found reading through them very interesting. Take a look; I've abridged it slightly, but you get the idea.

Day 1: Taken at night. I didn't want the effects of the drug to be in full swing whilst I am at work. I felt no different from normal, which was pretty rough. The nightmares still happen.


Day 4: I have had a brain-splitting headache for 2 days now. The world seems slightly out of focus; like if the lense of the camera hasn't been screwed on properly, and walking seems to make my eyeballs shake. Very annoying. Dreams are not so much bad now but weird: I remember being laughed at by a fireman for not having my radio with me. A lady in a dress walked by and I thought I knew her, but when I turned to look there was just a flock of seagulls. Everything was also on fire. Very vivid. 


Day 12: I have not pooped in 12 days. I am in no discomfort at all, but regardless, it's worrys me. Shouldn't I be rolling about in agony? Will buy something to help. The headache is still there. Dreams are vivid at the time, but I do not remember them. I just remember bright colours and the sense of movement.

Day 20: I will now take a quick inventory of what I am taking daily:
1 Citalopram - The Mother of the Beast
8 Paracetemol (2 every 4 hours) - Headaches
1-2 Senokot tablets - Constipation
2 Herbal Nytol - Sleeplessness caused by random bursts of energy: Didn't work, because herbal sleeping pills are snake-oil peddled by greasy carteers.
2 Zopiclone: Knockout pills - These things have not so much as brushed past a natural ingredient. 
1 Multivitimin: dietry supplement as all I am eating are Tesco's own Onion Rings and whatever bumper-sized chocolate is on offer.

It goes on. After about 2 months of taking them I began to feel better. I slept more, I could wake up when I did sleep and everything became a lot easier. I spoke to several kind people holding clip boards whilst I sat on a comfortable chair and I felt great. After just under a year of taking Citalopram I felt I was ready to come off them; after the cravings, mood swings, headaches, periods of mind bending confusion and forgetfulness, I felt awesome.

I bring this all up now because I have been off Citalopram for four months. What concerns me now is that I appear to be suffering from bouts of irritibility, sleeplessness and all of the above. It could just be a result from a bad week but I also feel that this lack of control has been it's cause. I don't want to admit that perhaps I really do need a little white pill to feel normal, but maybe. I will have to see how the next week turns out.

No luke-warm humour and trite, blinkered observations tonight I'm afraid, my heart is laid bare.

G'night.

I live in a box.

I have returned to the house today and worryingly, nothing has attacked me. I shall bolt my door in case they are saving up for a night ambush in which I will be left dangling, skinless ala Predator from the porch.

I have opened the box to type into, and yet I type something and end up deleting it, which is becoming quite annoying; throughout my entire life I have been fairly good at talking utter trash but when it comes to writing it down it seems to fall apart. Perhaps this is a part of my mind that simply doesn't want any evidence of how my brain works to appear outside of my head for anyone to read. In my mind I imagine a 50 year old man sat at his ebony desk, the reflection of the monitor scrolling up across his Pince-nez glasses. A well worked hand grasps his chin as he frowns. He has seen this before. A phone somewhere is picked up by a black-gloved hand, the answerer glances out of shot and nods.
Ten minutes later I lay stripped bare in the street, a heavy boot clamped on my throat and a 9 millimeter pistol pressed to my forehead.
The camera flicks between us.
The balaclava'd eyes.
A bead of sweat dripping down my temple.
The pistol pointing at my terrified face.
The eyes.
My eyes.
The pistol.
The sweat.
The man closes his eyes and looks away.
Cut to a tree, all the birds therein exploding from it in fright.

A funeral. Noone is there. Heavy rain falls onto the lid of a coffin, an empty can of strongbow resting on it. A clod of earth is thrown down. The camera pans up and meets some pince-nex glasses looking down.
He smiles.

Or does he?

Furries and Nytol.

I have taken two Nytol. It says it takes effect in twenty minutes, so we'll see how coherant I get toward the end.

I've been pretty busy these past few days, driving to two corners of the country to see certain people and filling my time at work with patrolling to the furthest-flung storm blasted wastelands that Surrey can offer.

Hang on a second, I need to brush my teeth, back in a sec.

There we are, much better. You know that furry feeling you get sometimes? I had that, rough as all hell. Anyway. On the way to the downstairs bathroom, which is seven feet door to door, the following things happened:

• I was accosted by a small patterdale terrier called Hollie, who only wants me for the beef jerky I keep in my room
• I fell over a Tortoise called Harry, who wasn't after jerky but was causing tailbacks as far as the front door
• Mr. Whiskers, thankfully, was not around, otherwise I don't know what would have happened

This is more or less business as usual for this house, any normal, mundane activity is 'enhanced' by a small animal diving under your legs in a desperate bid to make you paraplegic.

It's been twenty five minutes and the Nytol has seemed to have brought up strange memories and thoughts about Furries. Now, to those people who don't know about them (for example, normal people) I will explain: A person whom the idea of an anthropomorphic animal, be it wolf, fox, cheetah, panda, fish, dragon, earthworm, whatever, is part of an alter-ego or 'true form' that they identify themselves with, like the native america spirit animal idea, except that it wears jeans and sandals, and is more likely than not called Stormreach, Lunarknight, or Lighteninghorsefoxbestfighter. Those guys seem harmless enough, but worry begins to take route when combined with outlandish fetishes, expansion/inflation, vore and nappies. Or some, or all.

I guess it's like ice cream and pizza: on their own, you can see why some people enjoy the stranger flavours more than others, but combine them and you've made a huge revolting mess and you're getting shocked looks from the people seated acoss from you at the restaurant.

I think I've brought this up (It has become quite difficult to type; so bear with me) because every time I browse DeviantArt I find at least two pictures of either A: A wolf/fox/cheetah with a japanese hair style and massive jugs or B: A dragon/lizard/pokemon with a japanese haircut with massive jugs shows up, bits dangling everywhere and generally raising questions on ethics, deviancy and the future of genetic technology. I'm onto you genome scientists, you rascally devils. Could we one day have a winged hermaphrodite tundra wolf with blue hair? Who are we to play God?

I wish this was exaggerating, but a small part of me wonder why I look at DeviantArt; is it for the art..

Or is it for the cow girl with a staff?.
Shine on, you crazy diamonds, if it wasn't for these pioneers, we would surely not have experienced the Cadbury Bunny. You know the one I mean.

It seems that Nytol has destroyed my brain.I am off to bed before I type even more strange things, such as the practicality of making phone cases from walnut, you know, like what they have on the dashboards in old Jaguars. That would be as classy as heck.

School and Sleep: Hell's Reach

Hello blog, I am tired.

So damn tired. But it's okay; I've been tired before, and as tradition dictates, I will be again some day. The adjustment from going from my king-size divan in a room the size of a tennis court to a double futon in a home, that albeit lovely, is pretty tough. Having worked late shifts these past couple of days only to be woken up at 6am by the drum-kit-being-thrown-down-stairs routine of those guys getting ready for school, arguing with each other and generally rolling marble-filled barrels around outside my room door has had me weeping salty, salty tears of desperation.
This, you might say, is self-inflicted; to that I reply: screw off, chump, I can complain if I want to. I think what has been strangest of all is that when all this goes on around me, to my half sleeping mind I am once again in year 7, being harassed by my mother (who shouted) or my father (who just threw water over me) to get out of bed. It's been more than once the icy cold hand of dread gripped my heart at the thought of forgotten homework, that God-forsaken she-devil Spanish teacher Mrs. Lopez, and the crazy yo-yo-ing of my adolescent hormones and lusting after my school crush Kate, poor girl. Thankfully for me, pepper spray wasn't so easily sourced back then and my sight and general face area remains unaffected.

They say it's the best years of your life, and people are actually foolish enough to believe this flagrant lie. You exist in a state of constant fear of social reprisal, punishment and embarrassment with no legal access to alcohol, sex, nice restaurants, violent movies with real naked boobies in them, and cars that go really fast and make 'squeeee' noises on corners. So no. Just no. Never again.

The Morning After.

I have just moved house.

I am now in a room in a family home, living as the resident gremlin under the stairs; with a fridge next my PC. It was mildly depressing to think the sum total of every single thing I own managed to fit into one Toyota Aygo with room for the driver, however that doesn't count the divan bed I spent two hours angrily demolishing in front of the house before taking it's splintered and be-nailed corpse to the tip.

Everything was set up and the internet working (???) within two hours of my arrival, and today I plan on doing a little exploring for local supermarkets, as I am informed that I cannot live off Bulmers alone, and to find a local swimming pool. My rock and roll lifestyle just doesn't let up here, I'm not sure how I can survive with all this excitement in one day.

I'd like to have a shower at some point, but I don't actually know where the bathroom is in this house; I mean, I could just wander upstairs and start opening doors but for some reason a live-in stranger breaking into children's bedrooms in nothing but a towel won't look good, whatever way you swing it. In fact, 'whatever way you swing it' doesn't sound good either. In fact, I'm just going to stop typing in case I end up on some kind of register for the rest of my life.


Right, off I jolly well go.

Oh, my bum.

These past few posts have been written, nay, forged, from atop my scabby old desk and faux-leather office chair, a strongbow in one hand, another strongbow in the other; but no more. Luxury without doubt, you would think. I type this now from the floor of our former IT suite and recording studio, my monitor balanced precariously on top of the PC case, my aforementioned bum placed roughly on the short-pile and suspiciously brown carpet. It is so damn uncomfortable; why the hell did I sell my chair, destroy my desk and simultaneously sell/destroy my bed two days before I move house?
What the hell was I thinking? For the next two nights I've got to sleep on the floor amid coat hangers, empty bottles of L'Oreal it's-for-men-actually deodorant  sawdust and crumpled beer cans. I could clear this up, but there is pride at stake here people. My poor bum.

I shouldn't really be typing this, however an exploratory feel of the 'valley' as it were, yielded a sensation not unlike touching a dead person.

This, worryingly, reminds me of how this all came to be (not the bum part, thought that does feature prominently . When I lived in the west country, I used to travel on the weekends to the affluent south east to drink and be merry with my now-flatmate and his former flatmate. This erstwhile flatmate was facinating: if you imagine a white, bespectacled Dutch Shaq who owned a computer mouse that changed colour, you're nearly there. We would sit, myself in a position much like I am sat now, and play World of Warcraft until the wee hours, getting progressively more sozzled and generally yucking it up. When we awoke, bleary eyed at our desks (or in my case, the crimson carpet), tradition dictated we would attend the nearest off license for more booze, and about a hundred cans of cola to quell the shakes, which would prepare us for the trip to the nearest McDonalds for sustenance. Myself and my now-flatmate would clamber into my awesome but incredibly dangerous 1994 burgundy VW Golf and weave dreamily through mid-morning traffic to our destination; pick up said food, somehow manage to survive long enough back to the flat, and do the whole thing all over again.

Magic.

Sadly, come Sunday afternoon/early evening, my back and crack would be so sore I would have to walk like a hungover Tin-man for the next three days. "Never again" my brain would say in a scholarly tone, then the tiny, horrible part of my brain that wears a hoody with matching jogging trousers, busy scrawling crude penises on the skull walls, gives it the finger when Friday rolls around. You would think that my body would attempt to adapt, perhaps adding an extra six inches of flab to my already laden wag'n I'm drag'n, but no; I am forced to feel like my pelvis is slashing machete-like through my central mass.

Here's to you, bed; I hardly knew ye, and now someone else is sleeping on 3 years' worth of me farting like a navvy in my deep REM cycles.

One of these days, I am going to look at what I've written when I'm sober.

And then I'll throw myself of a motorway bridge.

This is the sound of an electric guitar.

Oh Carter: Ultimate Sex Machine, how the hell did I hear of you again?

Oh yeah.

When in primary school (this would be around 1993ish), I took walks around the playground during breaks, as the monkey-bars were always thronged with the grossest little oiks on the planet and the sporty year 6's wouldn't let me play football with them. On one of these many travels across the netball court, passed the Activity Wall, onto and around the wood-chip path, through the bantam aviary, and back onto the 6 year old equivilent of Skid Row, where weird kids would play Pogs for Keeps (something which I was never hardcore enough to do), I met a boy a little older than me by the name of Harrison Carter.
From the age of 6, with no real concept of alcohol, I knew at a bone-deep level that this person would be a booze-fuelled party animal who had not a fuck to give about any damn thing. And Lo, It Was Done.

I used to go to his giant victorian house after school and on Saturdays to read his 2000 AD comics and play X-COM: Terror from the Deep and Command & Conquer on his state-of-the-art Pentium 166 MMX; you knew it was futuristic because it had a little LCD display that displayed how fast it was (it was pretty fast). Whilst we were there his older brother, who by now, following the standard rate of progression of a punk, has a railroad spike embedded in his forehead and a chainsaw for a right hand, came into the same room and put on 101 Damnations on the huge, fantastic hi-fi (upon which a candle in the shape of a cobra sat), and as the years rolled on through Heroes of Might and Magic, the first Quake (!) and on and on and on, the same album was thrummed into my brain, and hasn't left.
In fact, having drunkenly slept there recently, that same room where we discussed the fundamental rules of creation (I think) in slurred whispers until God Knows o'clock, that cobra-candle is still there, and for some reason is as nostalgic as all hell. As a quick aside, I also had my bike stolen out of his garden.

God speed Harrison Carter, Drunken Emperor. The man is at least partially responsible for the drunken lout that types this now.

P.S: I'm a little spry on Strongbow just now. Hello

Beards: A moral minefield

Beards:

I woke up at God-awful o'clock so I could make it to Thorpe Park before the end of time (the M3 and M25 at rush hour is a just a little better than pounding carpet tacks into your testicles) and, God help me, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I was hungover, haggard looking, as if I've stumbled out of a forgotten wood after a ten year absence, reeking of fox piss and half-crazed with lice and rabies. To complete this enchanting ensemble, a rough and uneven stubble coated the bottom half of my head.
You see, I have been known to sport beards in the past, each one more horrible than the last; from the wispy 'MyFirst' (tm) pre-pubescent moustache, to a moustacheless goatee which made me look like a oil-coated goblin in a leather trenchcoat, to a 'My Razor Broke, I Will Not Buy Another One For 6 Months' beard, all the way to an Abraham Lincoln. I have not been known for my common sense, but whenever I looked in the mirror, I thought yes, this will do, you rampaging stallion.

I've been clean shaven for over a year now, and though I'm starting to get used to seeing my chin, though I prefer a bit of stubble (if I could get an even coat) I feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot, beard-wise. There are people who cannot grow beards (women feature prodominantly, but not exclusively), or they grow beards that end up like a pubic equivilent of Saturno, I cannot help but feel I'm letting the side down by shaving it all off; it's like a great painter breaking his hands over and over, saying to everyone else look at me, I cannot paint either, I am mundane, just like you.

Perhaps being able to grow a beard a curse that must be shaved off, lest people think me as a guy who wears a faded white Motorhead vest and listens to same to relax, and pounds cans of Crunk Juice at 10am at his job guiding theme park goers into parking spaces whilst smoking a rizla rollup with a twist. 

So what is the correct decorum for beards? My father has a beard, would it make him proud if I followed in his footsteps? Do I continue to shave, essentially rubbing the noses of everyone who can't grow one, or do I go clean shaven, and use a Groucho Marx glasses set when visiting family?

It truly is this age's Great Question.

The Sweeney it Ain't

I drank coffee.

I was stern with people.

I spent a majority of my afternoon doodling breasts and tiny, angry men onto my notepad, and staring blankly at a monitor until dusk, at which point I drove around the borough, poking my nose in where it wasn't wanted until I went off duty. I went from outright disgust to just involuntarily hitching my top lip up into a grimace as I hear the suffix 'it was one of them coloureds I bet' pinned to every sentence spoken at me, the sound rolling out on a tide of gin and weed scented breath. Descriptions given to you as 'tall, but not that tall, like my brother tall' .
  
Hm.

I just had this thought: who's more stupid? The stupid man or the man listening to the stupid man? Two tarnished souls chasing eachother's stupid problems down the same drain. I will think on this.

As my flatmate is in another room, I am listening to Armin Van Buuren, something that I am too ashamed to listen to with company but something that makes me feel all modern, like one of those swedish arcitects with feather-weight rimless glasses and a white Saab on their crushed slate driveway in the hills above Stockholm. I would rise from my tempered glass desk (Which I would refer to as my 'inspiration platform') and clasp my hands behind my turtlenecked back and gaze out across a world so distant from mine that I smirk, as if at some unheard barb against the government. A Creme-de-menthe frappe sits with a sprig of mint (what else?) would wait for me on a table in the shape of a rounded cube next to my gloss black egg-chair as I let the soothing waves of electronic sound wash over my wonderfully toned and waxed body.

As it happens, I am sat typing this, eating chocolate digestives and drinking Strongbow, whilst thinking about breasts. A £3.50 t-shirt from a supermarket drapes my corpulent frame, and the desk at which I sit is teeming with bacteria, many unknown to science but forming their own football team as I type.
 
If my flatmate were to come in just now, I would start guiltily, and say much more loudly than necessary "God damn web-pages with music!" Sweep the mouse of my desk in an effort to close the window, and stick on some Metallica, some of the older stuff, to show that I'm still cool. He would never know. 

Efffff

Sort of created this on a whim, and at an effort to be informative and witty I will give you following recipe:

Poor Man's Chilli:
Ingredients:

• 1/2 bag of frozen beef mince
• 1-2 tin of unbranded baked beans (depending on how poor you currently are; more beans = longer lasting!)
• Beef gravy granules
• 3 red or green chiles, chopped and seeded
• Chile powder (medium or hot, to taste)

And go: Brown off mince in large frying pan until juices fall out, just as the mince looks like it's not raw and will shotgun it's way out of your intestines from both exits, stir in gravy granules to help the mince not taste like farted-in garbage.
Add baked beans, stir in on low heat, and add chiles, chile powder and whatever inventive things you have gathering dust in your pantry. Stir frequently until piping hot, serve with value rice, on buttered store-own Longer Lasting toast, or with nothing, in a bowl, dipping out of date Cool Original Dorito's into it and wondering where it went so wrong.

This serving will last you a week in the fridge, and cost in total about £4. One recommendation is that it is also served with one (1) Senokot tablet. You'll thank me in the morning.

I am now off to work, on a Saturday, where I will be required to drink coffee, and be stern with people.