This year had the usual challenges, family, cabin fever etc mixed in with me being just a little sick and thus more irritable. New challenges made themselves known, fewer movies that I recognised were on tv. The last shreds of Christmas spirit are intrinsically tied to seeing the Back to the Future trilogy but it wasn't on. Indiana Jones was but the only thing that Indiana Jones can't save is my Christmas cheer. The kids are taking over with their pixar animated things. My nostalgia is being upgraded for theirs.
I got no presents this year. Not a bad thing, I dread getting stuck in one of those adult relationships where exchanging presents of approximately the same value is how you express your affection. The thing is that when selecting a gift I'm held to a budget and I don't know as much about this stuff as the person I'm buying for. How then could I be expected to pick up the right gift? I'll go for the cheaper one in the shinier box. I'll give you that and now that you have one of these that isn't good enough you're denied the pleasure of buying yourself the right one. I've ruined this gift and your chance of getting yourself something decent. It's supposed to be the thought that counts but in most cases that thought is "this'll do right? and it's cheaper than that other one". My brother got gifts from his girlfriend's parents and his little face sank. Poor bastard never saw it coming.
New Year's is just around the corner now. I've come to hate New Year's. I've touched on why I hate going out. The forced joviality, the way each night is a little like Groundhog Day. New Year's is the worst of these. It even has its own timetable built in. Everybody is expected to be out and celebrating. The pressure is really something. Then the night falls and worse than any other night out places are packed, people are drunker, taxis are harder to get, and someone gets glassed because the pressure has to escape somehow.
I'll be working. Cleaning up this fucking mess, invariably with people wanting me to smile in photos. "go on smile for the photo" translates as "pretend you're happy". Then when I gently try to slip away and not get into the hand shaking and pleasantry exchanging at midnight I'm the kill joy. I ruined the fantasy that this night was different and special and that this coming year will be better. I'll care about less of the Christmas films next year
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Monday, December 21, 2009
Strangely Numb of Late
Not that the usual business of getting knocked around and pissed off by it hasn't been occurring, I've just been a bit numb to the effects of it all. I get to thinking that I could write a blog about it all and then I come to realise I just don't give enough of a damn to write it down. My fire is slowly burning out.
The plan here is to give a quick recap of the last while, see if anything takes my fancy and if I get to writing then all well and good. I think I'll start by topic and work from there.
Work:
I've become less idealistic. Truth be told, I've been becoming less idealistic since day two when the cold started to set in. I've stopped believing that a group of like minded people prepared to fight the good fight and be the best we can be is what I want. I want to be surrounded by fuck ups. Their litany of sins and precedents set insulate me from the high standards that should be set. I may be alone in feeling safe and comforted knowing that I'm in the company of quite a few terminal fuck ups (who I might point out, do not as far as I know know of this blog). Comedy could only ensue if they did.
Love Life:
It is not a train wreck. Train wrecks get media attention, they are of general interest. Mine is pretty much just an empty train track stretching off in either directions in the dying light of a long day. In an effort to resolve this I've attempted to be more social of late. I hate going out, I hate noise and I hate drunken idiots. I figure I feel about going out how most people feel about pull ups. They're not good at them, they hurt and if anyone is about they embarrass you as you hang limply from the bar trying to understand how your genetics have been thwarted by you. Conversely, while not being world class or anything I quite enjoy pull ups. I can do them with no warm up or real consideration. I do them for fun and if people are ever to be impressed by me this is the time. Also, Fuck Coppers!
Training:
The war on muscular atrophy continues. It's more of a guerrilla war, with no planning and sporadic attacks with wildly different strategies and success rates. It's madness but I can feel the enemy weakening. Why can't I deadlift worth shit though? I've built a new pulling platform. Surely that will help? That's weight lifted anyway, I'm starting to get fat and I need to pay a closer eye to that. Jitz has suffered. A victim of an unforgiving working week and if I can't crush people what's the point?
Thoughts and Conjecture:
As a child I used to pray, I think I did anyway. I'd lie in bed and think on the things that I wanted or was worried by and I'd drift off. I've a fairly narrative style of thinking. Nothing would change but it was reflective and sometimes cathartic. Now I just think what would make a good blog and work on the phrasing. It's more or less the same. More or less.
I've been involved in two car accidents the last three days. Neither were serious and I had at least a second or two to see each of them coming. Nothing occurred to me. I fear that in the moments before my untimely death I won't have the presence of mind to utter a laconic last sentiment. That said, laughed my ass off after each collision. Genuinely funny.
At a wedding recently. Started planning my own. The food choices will be either a fillet steak or a ribeye. Fillet for the ladies and the vegetarians. Music will be entirely made up of songs that people invited by my parents won't know and will find difficult to dance along to. It will be a viciously secular ceremony. Speeches will be uncharacteristically honest and as a result of the above the bride will most likely spend the day crying and lamenting agreeing to marry me. It will be the most memorable wedding of the year but that may not be a good thing.
I feel the dark clouds of Christmas gathering. Having to play nice with extended family galls me. It bothers me that outside of the issues of consanguinity and the propagation to the species people assume a blood tie means I have to listen to them prattle on and respond in kind. I'll just get some training in. More amusingly, we received our yearly letter from the "American relatives", they send it every year despite not once receiving a reply. It tries to cover their trials and successes with an upbeat and thankful tone. Stuff like John and Kerry's baby Jennifer starting Montessori and how even at this young age we can see she's destined for greatness. Fuck sake. My favourite is the negative shit, divorces and the loss of loved ones. Not that I take more than a normal amount of joy in the suffering of others but seeing the mental gymnastics required to phrase this dark material in a way that makes it seem like God's will for his idiot children is something very special indeed.
There's a line from Inglourious Basterds that's stuck in my head, as Col Landa tells Aldo Raine he'll be shot for killing his driver and maiming him - "Nah. I don't think so. More like chewed out. I've been chewed out before."
The plan here is to give a quick recap of the last while, see if anything takes my fancy and if I get to writing then all well and good. I think I'll start by topic and work from there.
Work:
I've become less idealistic. Truth be told, I've been becoming less idealistic since day two when the cold started to set in. I've stopped believing that a group of like minded people prepared to fight the good fight and be the best we can be is what I want. I want to be surrounded by fuck ups. Their litany of sins and precedents set insulate me from the high standards that should be set. I may be alone in feeling safe and comforted knowing that I'm in the company of quite a few terminal fuck ups (who I might point out, do not as far as I know know of this blog). Comedy could only ensue if they did.
Love Life:
It is not a train wreck. Train wrecks get media attention, they are of general interest. Mine is pretty much just an empty train track stretching off in either directions in the dying light of a long day. In an effort to resolve this I've attempted to be more social of late. I hate going out, I hate noise and I hate drunken idiots. I figure I feel about going out how most people feel about pull ups. They're not good at them, they hurt and if anyone is about they embarrass you as you hang limply from the bar trying to understand how your genetics have been thwarted by you. Conversely, while not being world class or anything I quite enjoy pull ups. I can do them with no warm up or real consideration. I do them for fun and if people are ever to be impressed by me this is the time. Also, Fuck Coppers!
Training:
The war on muscular atrophy continues. It's more of a guerrilla war, with no planning and sporadic attacks with wildly different strategies and success rates. It's madness but I can feel the enemy weakening. Why can't I deadlift worth shit though? I've built a new pulling platform. Surely that will help? That's weight lifted anyway, I'm starting to get fat and I need to pay a closer eye to that. Jitz has suffered. A victim of an unforgiving working week and if I can't crush people what's the point?
Thoughts and Conjecture:
As a child I used to pray, I think I did anyway. I'd lie in bed and think on the things that I wanted or was worried by and I'd drift off. I've a fairly narrative style of thinking. Nothing would change but it was reflective and sometimes cathartic. Now I just think what would make a good blog and work on the phrasing. It's more or less the same. More or less.
I've been involved in two car accidents the last three days. Neither were serious and I had at least a second or two to see each of them coming. Nothing occurred to me. I fear that in the moments before my untimely death I won't have the presence of mind to utter a laconic last sentiment. That said, laughed my ass off after each collision. Genuinely funny.
At a wedding recently. Started planning my own. The food choices will be either a fillet steak or a ribeye. Fillet for the ladies and the vegetarians. Music will be entirely made up of songs that people invited by my parents won't know and will find difficult to dance along to. It will be a viciously secular ceremony. Speeches will be uncharacteristically honest and as a result of the above the bride will most likely spend the day crying and lamenting agreeing to marry me. It will be the most memorable wedding of the year but that may not be a good thing.
I feel the dark clouds of Christmas gathering. Having to play nice with extended family galls me. It bothers me that outside of the issues of consanguinity and the propagation to the species people assume a blood tie means I have to listen to them prattle on and respond in kind. I'll just get some training in. More amusingly, we received our yearly letter from the "American relatives", they send it every year despite not once receiving a reply. It tries to cover their trials and successes with an upbeat and thankful tone. Stuff like John and Kerry's baby Jennifer starting Montessori and how even at this young age we can see she's destined for greatness. Fuck sake. My favourite is the negative shit, divorces and the loss of loved ones. Not that I take more than a normal amount of joy in the suffering of others but seeing the mental gymnastics required to phrase this dark material in a way that makes it seem like God's will for his idiot children is something very special indeed.
There's a line from Inglourious Basterds that's stuck in my head, as Col Landa tells Aldo Raine he'll be shot for killing his driver and maiming him - "Nah. I don't think so. More like chewed out. I've been chewed out before."
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