Cyber Hobo

I’ve been wondering something lately. To what degree have my experiences shaped me? If my mind was suddenly wiped clean, if I remembered nothing, not language, not memory, nothing, how much of me would still be me? Would my heart still be the same? Would my soul remain intact? Would I still feel the same way about certain things? Would my sense of justice still be as it is?

I suppose it all comes down to that age old question of nature versus nurture… that is the basis of my current musings but… that isn’t all it is. I wonder how much of who I am now is tied to my experiences, my memories, to my connections with other people. I’d like to think that, no matter how I was taught, or how I was raised, the core of who I am would remain intact. I hold my values, my sense of morality, my principals, very close to my heart… as… twisted and abnormal as they may be.

I don’t like the thought that if I somehow lost all of my memories, all of my past experiences, I would be a totally different person. At the same time though, I am somewhat envious of people who find themselves in that situation, terrible as it may be. There are certain traits, certain behaviors that I can identify in myself that deserve to be wiped out. I am not a happy person, not at all, and I wonder if that unhappiness stems from these traits that vex me so drastically.

It is difficult to erase or modify these behaviors, these traits at the moment. No doubt due to my age and the time they have had to establish themselves in my psyche… the time I have allowed them to run unchecked through my life. Overeating, pessimism, shyness, procrastination, laziness. These traits, these characteristics are ruining my life and I lack the ability to change them for the better. Or is it something other than a lack of ability? Is it perhaps that as I try to change one of these negative traits, the others hold me back, trip me up… I don’t know, I wish I did.

Perhaps some learned expert on the subject of human nature could enlighten me but for the moment, for now… all I have are my own musings on the matter. Heh, perhaps the fact that I allow my mind to wander so drastically, so deeply, is another of the traits that I need to address. Perhaps I think too much for my own damn good.

Going back to the original reason for this post. I am… afraid of losing myself but at the same time… I wish I could. I wish I could wake up with the slate wiped clean, with the ability to become a new person. Perhaps not completely different, but… better.

This desire to change myself is terrifying in a way. Am I truly that bad of a person, am I truly that much of a lost cause that I wish to be someone else? I’m not sure. There are a lot of aspects of myself that I like, but at the same time it they appear to repel people.  Am I looking in the wrong places for friends, for companions? Or am I simply so odd that the number of like minded individuals are so very rare?

I don’t know, I don’t know the answers to any of these questions that seem to plague me and this worries me, it worries me to my core. I am not nearly so arrogant as to think that I am the only one that has these thoughts, I just wish I could answer… one, two… I hate feeling like I don’t know anything, I hate being out of my depth like this. To be honest, I’ve never liked that feeling, but I doubt anyone does.

Why am I always in my head like this? Why can’t I just… live without questioning every single thing that happens to me until it becomes… yet another obsessive meandering of my stupid, overworked psyche. I could almost laugh about it if it wasn’t so damned sad. I am truly pathetic… well, pathetic or clinically insane, the coin is still up in the air on that one… and if I know my luck, it’s gonna come down on it’s edge.

Well, Christmas is here again and it’s prompted me to post once more. If you’re averse to melancholy, you might want to stop reading now.

What is it about this time of year that brings out both the best and the worst in people? It can be a time of great joy, of warmth, of sharing and caring, all that wonderful crap that people can find in their hearts. If you can’t tell by now, I’m not one of those people… well, at least I’m not this year. Last year was another matter entirely. I was happy, for the first time in remembrance I had a truly happy Christmas. There was someone out there that took notice, that cared about me, no matter how far away she was.

This year… well, this year is shaping up to be one of the worst. I’ve gotten over her… for the most part, I still care about her a lot, I still consider her to be one of my best friends, no matter how rarely I get to speak to her. Hells, I even made my piece with her current boyfriend. This melancholy bomb that has descended upon me isn’t related to her, or if it is, it’s only in the smallest sense possible.

No, this is about being alone during this time. It can break a person, quite easily, especially when all of your friends are in happy relationships, when everyone around you is joyfully celebrating the holidays with someone that is special to them. It’s about feeling completely and totally out of place when you’re surrounded by that. It’s not a pleasant feeling, especially when you can clearly remember how good you were feeling during the same time last year.

It’s no wonder that suicide rates climb through the roof during this time. Nobody likes feeling alone. The thing is… those same things that make this such a wonderful time of year for some, make it a terrible time for others. Everyone finds a little extra joy in their hearts, everyone finds it in themselves to express themselves more in that direction. Love and hope and joy… all those things gush to the surface… and for those of us that are alone, it just highlights how alone we are.

Is it jealousy? I suppose it is to a degree but, at least for me, I am truly happy for those of my friends that have that joy, that have someone that loves them, I really, truly am. I just wish with all of my grubby, broken, much duct taped heart that I had that too, that I had someone to heap love and cheer on during this time. Someone to… put up decorations with, someone to laugh with as I try to find that one burned out bulb on the lights.

I watched a scene the other day that made my heart swell and sink at the same time. I watched a friend of mine and his girlfriend playfully arguing about seeing her gifts. It was… very special and once again, I was so happy that they had found each other, that they had found someone to play with like that. He’s a damn good bloke and he truly deserves every happiness that the world can give him. At the same time, though, it reminded me of how alone I am.

This… melancholy can very easily turn into… hurt and anger at that hurt. Not at anyone in particular, or, if it is directed at anyone, then it’s at myself. What the hell is wrong with me? I ask that all the time of late, but more so now that the holidays have rolled around. Why am I alone? Why am I always alone? Do I have some major character defect that completely repels women? Or is it the most simple answer of all… because I’m overweight… yes, I think that is it. Or at least the main cause of why I seem to repel the opposite sex. I am… quite obviously not attractive.

*Rubs a hand over his face* I don’t think I have an… unlikable personality. I seem to make friends easily enough. I don’t think I’ve ever come across someone that just doesn’t like me… Of course, I tend to be quite dense as far as that goes. It’s entirely possible that I’ve met a lot of people that don’t like me and I just haven’t realised it.

Is it really possible that I am that… unwanted though? That all of me, every aspect of who and what I am is so completely unattractive as to actively repel the affections of women? It seems that way.

To be honest, if I was to disappear from the face of the planet, just… vanish, I’m not sure if anyone would even realise that I was gone. And that, above anything else, worries me greatly, that I am so ephemeral, so insubstantial that I could just drift away unnoticed.

Yes, I realise how “Emo” this post is. You’d think that they would steadily become less so as time went by, as I manage to get over the heartbreak of the past few months. I suppose it’s just unlucky that the holiday season blindsided me like this, bringing up all of these unpleasant emotions.

I suppose the fact that I am alone all the time is my own damn fault when it comes down to it. Every woman I fall for is… unavailable, uninterested, or on the other side of the world. Wonderful habit isn’t it? It seems that, as soon as I get even slightly interested in anyone, they either hook up with someone or are interested in someone else. That’s just the way my luck seems to run.

It’s times like this that I just think… “Fuck it… maybe I’ll become a monk or a hermit or something and just fucking give up.” Honestly, I couldn’t have any worse luck in the relationship department if I was miles away from anything or anyone.

Maybe that’s the thing to do. Not to that extreme maybe, but… just giving up. I’m never going to find someone that makes me happy, someone that I make happy, so why fucking put out all of this effort into finding someone like that? I get a lot of joy out of making people happy, out of making one… special person happy, I love making that special someone smile, but if nobody wants to give me the opportunity to do so then there’s really nothing I can do about it.

So, I’m just gonna get on with getting on, the business of living, of dying, it makes no difference to me right now.

Okay, I’m not sure how some of these slipped my mind when wrote out the first post on this topic, but anyhow.

Okay, back in the day there was a club that my little circle of friends used to frequent quite regularly. It was called… Tequila Rock. Nice enough place, had a little faux beach part… no pool though, and a little outside place where you could sit and trip balls if you so chose. (In all honesty it was quite nice to sit out there and stare at the stares regardless of how high and or drunk you were.) Anyway, one night we had all piled into Craig’s white Toyota, (As usual) and zooted off to this place. Fast Forward a few hours and there I am, drunk as all hell, stumbling out of the club to get some fresh air. I sat on the pavement outside for a little while until I felt well enough to go back in.

Unfortunately, the bouncers decided that I’d had a few too many and refused me access. Muttering curses under my breath I decided to go and sit by Craig’s car until I was either sober enough to go in or everyone came out. So, I stumble about and eventually find this old Toyota, right where I remember Craig parking it… or the general areas anyway. The grass around the car was wet with dew so I decided that I’d sleep on the bonnet of the car for a little while.

There I am, sleeping merrily, when I hear people approaching the car. I thought one of my friends would poke me and tell me it was time to go. Nothing happened for a little while so I opened my eyes… only two find four very confused strangers looking at my in horror, keys to their white Toyota in hand, clearly wondering if it was safe to approach me. After drunkenly apologising to them, I then remembered that Craig had left to pick someone up halfway through the evening and had obviously found a different parking spot. Sure enough, I found his car a few minutes later and then had to relay the entire embarrassing story to my laughing friends.

There is another story that involves that particular club but I’m hesitant to mention it since it involves projectile vomiting.

What else… Oh, right! When I was… much, much younger, my friend Vito and I had a… childish rebellious streak. We caused quite a lot of trouble around our neck of the woods. One time comes to mind quite clearly.

They were busy laying new pipelines or something around the neighbourhood so there were these huge trenches dug into the pavements. One of these trenches was directly in front of his house. So, one night while all this was going on, we cooked up this huge batch of luminous green slime by combining… all sorts of crap we found lying around, nothing dangerous, but it was gross as hell. We creeped out of his house in the dead of night and started… pouring this shit on postboxes and welcome mats and… just about anything we could get our hands on.

As we were doing this, a car came around the corner, a neighbourhood watch car, a cop car, something, I swear that I saw blue lights but he doesn’t remember that. Anyway, we bolted, scared out of our wits and just before this car’s headlights hit us, we dived in spectacular fashion, slid across the wet grass and popped into one of those holes. We slammed our backs to the side just as this car pulled into his driveway, a mere meter from the hole.

I can remember looking over and seeing terror in his eyes, something I’m sure he saw in mine too. After what seemed like hours, but was probably closer to two minutes, the car pulled out and drove away, after which we vaulted out of the hole and scarpered back into his house.

That was rather scary, but the worst one followed soon after. Having forgotten our recent close call, we stayed up quite late one night designing these… silly little notes. Drawings and such, “Smiley says fuck you” was a particularly funny one to our minds. This was… instigated by a previous attempt at the same thing but with nicer cards that we called “Hauxmark” (Very droll back then, I’m sure, but now it just seems silly).

Anyway, these… angrier cards were soon ready and we set off to deliver them all over the neighbourhood. I remember going down one street and posting a few. There was a car way down the road that, for all the world, looked like it was parked and empty. As this one note dropped out of my hand into the postbox, I swear, the exact moment it left my fingers, the headlights of the car blazed to life. I screamed something along the lines of “FUCK! RUN!” and bolted, keeping to the shadows as much as I could, Vito close behind me.

The car followed us for quite some time. We were sure it we had given it the slip by the time we got to my house but it roared around the corner soon after. I dived into some shadows, forgetting that I was wearing a white shirt. Vito, who had a black jacket on, had the foresight to jump in front of me in an attempt to hide us both. Well, it failed, the car stopped right in front of us, this huge bastard that looked like the bastard offspring of Chuck Norris and a packet of cocktail sausages just sat there glaring at us until we quickly ran past him and into my house.

Neighbourhood watch and with a shotgun on the seat next to him. Rarely have I been that terrified. Heh, in hindsight, I’m surprised he didn’t just shoot us then and there, South Africa being what it is. We got up to a lot of similar pranks, including, but not limited to, the classic Tok Tokkie, and wandering around the streets at all hours of the night for no damn reason, (One time stopping a woman from being dragged into the veld and raped, so it wasn’t all bad.)

I sometimes miss doing those things… but then I remember the fact that kids doing those things is kind of obnoxious but a grown man doing that is… well, creepy.

It’s very hard for me to wrap my head around the situation I currently find myself in. If I think about it, I’ve been unhappy for a significant portion of my life. I know why, obviously, I’ve got very poor self image and this colours all my life. The way I percieve myself is… very uncomplimentary. Because of this, I’ve been afraid to take chances that could lead to me getting hurt. Of course, this is mainly due to… years of people reacting poorly to my appearance. When you have something pounded into your head for years on end, it becomes quite hard to dispute those things, even in your own mind.

I’m not completely blaming “Society” for this, but it did play a significant role in my slow descent into this… very specialised form of madness. Yes, I said madness, for that is surely what this is. My rational mind comprehends that these things are wrong, that I am a fairly like-able person, but still I let these past encounters cloud my sense of self worth. Perhaps if I was a stronger person, I’d be able to ignore all of that, but I’m not and I can’t.

Back then… back when all this scar tissue was being built up, I learned how to do something to protect myself. I learned how to be empty, or at least fool myself so completely that I might as well have been empty. To, shield myself entirely from anything like hope or dreams. That way… that way you can protect yourself from disappointment, from pain.

I made a huge mistake though, I let someone in, I… allowed myself to think about the future, to hope… to dream. That was… stupid beyond belief. I should know by now that good things rarely happen to me. It was good for a while, but then… then I got another taste of why I let myself sink into that state in the first place. If you’ve read this silly little blog at all you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, then feel free to go back and familiarise yourself with the train wreck that is my life.

I’ve only laid out my thoughts on the matter so that you can understand the way my mind is working right at this second. I find myself… incapable of returning myself to that state. It came so easily before but now it’s like grasping at mist. Why can’t I get back to that? It’s a hopeless, pointless way to exist, but at least it’s safe.

Have I grown too much as a person to be able to do that to myself anymore? Have I… in being allowed a taste of how sweet life can be… made myself incapable of entering that state again? This scares me… badly… because… as unhappy as one is in that state, it’s infinitely preferable to this… constant, gnawing pain that assaults me again and again, just when I finally think I’m coming to terms with all this. It’s maddening.

Is this the price of personal growth? Is ignorance trulybliss? Or, if not bliss, perhaps something as simple as survival? Or is this simply a metamorphosis? Is this pain associated with the change? I wonder if the caterpillar in it’s cocoon suffers pain like this. I wouldn’t be so vain as to suggest that I will become something as beautiful as a butterfly, but perhaps a moth of some sort, drab and grey but… serving some purpose at least.

It seems that the more questions I ask the fewer answers I get. Maybe this… all of this… is just the price of knowledge. I didn’t know what life would be like with someone that loved me and I was… if not happy, then content with what I was. Now that I do know… now that I have some knowledge of this… everything is more difficult.

I know that I am moving on, I can feel… something happening… some change in myself. I hope that this feeling is associated with moving on and not some… further descent into madness. Once again, this feeling just brings on more questions.

What does my future hold? I know that… after this, there are certain things that I want. A wife, a family, children… I’m just not sure if I’m… worthy of these things. Heh, like I said, my self worth is down in the crapper, so how can I expect someone else to see any worth in me if there even is any.

I like making people happy. I truly enjoy seeing people’s faces light up when I do something for them. I’m under no illusion that this makes me a selfless person. I like seeing people happy, but do I only like making people happy because it makes me happy? I wonder if there’s even such a thing as a selfless act.

 Gods, how on earth did I become this jaded? I can see it in myself… like a corruption that has seeped into me over years… a corruption that is now so deeply ingrained that there’s no hope of removing it. It makes me sick. Am I too jaded to be worth anything to anyone? *Shakes head* I don’t know why I torment myself with questions like this. Once again we come to the price of knowledge. Or perhaps… I’m just too stupid to stop asking these questions. I doubt I’ll ever know for certain.

I really wish that I could stop. Things would certainly be a lot easier if I was able to that. I just keep seeking insight into my emotions, my mental state, and it’s destroying me. I believe that there is a fine line between intelligence and stupidity and I am constantly unsure of which side I fall to.

Perhaps I should just say “Screw it” and give up. I’m tired, exhausted and completely lost as to what to do. Why can’t the answers be simple, easy to understand?

In the mean time, while… whatever is happening to me happens, the only thing I can hope to do is to take my mind off of the crushing loneliness with whatever I can get my hands on, be it games or TV or what have you.

Well, enough of this, perhaps someone smarter than I can unravel my twisted thoughts… if anyone like that happens to read this crap, that is.

It’s been a while since I posted anything new. I guess I neglected this for a while as I slowly attempted to rebuild the tattered scraps of my heart.

I’ve got something to say now though so I might as well say it here. The decision about whether or not to talk to my ex was taken out of my hands it seems. It’s been… nearly two weeks since I’ve even said two words to her. On some levels, this makes me very sad, because I truly hoped to remain friends with her, she is a wonderful person and a hell of a lot of fun to hang out with. On another level, I feel… happy? No, that’s not the right word, because I’d never be happy that she’s not around but… relieved? Refreshed? I don’t know what it is exactly but it’s not a negative emotion.

I guess in some ways I should thank her for doing what she did. I’ve known a lot of heartache in my time, but this… this was the first time that something effected me this deeply, hurt me this badly. I know that sounds like a stupid thing to be thankful for, but it opened my eyes to a lot of things, made me do a lot of growing up, allowed me to make a lot of changes that I truly needed to make. Her and I… we had a pretty spectacular relationship, the good was spectacularly good and the bad was… spectacularly bad, like, explosion in a fireworks factory spectacular, you know, beautiful, stunning, breathtaking… if you can get past the screaming and the burning people running all over the place.

We had chemistry, a lot of it, but so does dynamite. I loved her like I’ve never loved anyone else, but we couldn’t work. Maybe we could now, now that I’ve changed, now that I’ve done all this soul searching, but that ship has sailed off into the horizon. Now, now I find myself single and I’m not really good at being single, despite a lot of practice. I’m good at being alone, sure, or… I was good at being alone. It’s very hard to truly understand how empty life can be when you’re alone if you’ve always been alone. Once you’ve known that simple, sweet joy though… well, it’s hard to get back to being happy by yourself.

It’s not impossible though, I will, eventually, make peace with what happened, I will move on, I will be okay. It’s taken a lot of crying and a lot of time curled into a ball in bed to realise that, but I have. I am going to make some lady very happy some day. I may be an ugly bastard, but I think I’m funny and smart and attentive enough to make up for that. I’m not a bad bloke, all in all and some day someone will see that. Until that happens though, my life isn’t that bad, I can deal with this for now.

Okay, prepare for another whine fest about my pathetic life, just skip it if you don’t care.

Okay, so, I was laying in bed this morning, watching the beam of light that had broken through my curtain as it made it’s way up the duvet towards my face. It was mesmerizing in a way, this intangible beam creeping up the bed, biding it’s time until it could blind me when I was too weak and lethargic to move my damn head. It made me realise something, I am so far beyond caring that it’s scary.

My life, while fairly comfortable, is completely devoid of anything that means anything. I had all these big dreams at one point. Grand visions of being some famous writer, sitting in cafe’s in Europe with my laptop in front of me, sipping on expensive coffee and smiling politely at all the people around me as my fingers tapped out a tale to enthrall minds and capture hearts. I imagined owning a big house full of bookshelves, bookshelves stuffed with expensive first edition books, a house that my dearest friends would visit all the time.

For the last two years there was someone else in that picture. An amazing woman that was my wife and confidant, a woman who shared all of my strange little ways. As you know, if you’ve read… any of my previous posts, I lost this woman recently… and my life came crashing down around me. That carefully woven lie I had told myself came crashing down around me, leaving me to pick through the broken shards of my dreams with my bare hands.

Still, while she was the catalyst for this… destruction, she is not the sole cause of it, as much as I would like to imagine otherwise. My life is empty… because I let it get like that, because I lived in my head for so long that I forgot to make an effort to change it into something I could be proud of. Now though, I’ve had my eyes forced open, whether I liked it or not… and I most assuredly didn’t like it. No, now that I’ve realised just how humdrum and boring real life is, I find that I can’t even manage to muster one iota of interest in it.

I used to be a lot of things. I used to be a dreamer, a hopeless romantic, and even, though this may come as a shock to those of you that knew me, an optimist. Yeah, I put on this… stupid facade of pessimism in order to avoid anyone seeing the soft squishy side of me sticking a knife in. I even managed to fool myself, but the fact remains, I was always optimistic, it’s a bit hard to be a dreamer and a hopeless romantic without being an optimist, quite frankly. I was always looking for some great love story to be a part of, always looking for some magical world that would let me in, always being… pretty damn sure that if I stuck with it long enough I’d get those things.

But the truth is… there are no happy endings, there are no real romances, there is no true love, there is no magic in the world. All of the things I always hoped for, dreamed about, wished for… none of it is real. Which… pretty much makes my entire life a lie, a horrible, deluded lie. I’m… not an attractive man, look at the photos to the right and you’ll see. All I’ve got to offer anyone is… a sense of humour (Dry), a… love of good movies and good books and… well, that’s about it really.

As you can see, I’ve got nothing to offer anyone. I’m sure that… for all the pretty people, the beautiful people, there are happy endings, there is magic, but not for people like me, not for ugly, boring men… without a lot of money. See, I realised early on that I was not “One of those people”. Or, rather, I had that fact ground into me ruthlessly by the ones that -were- those people. Hell, I wasn’t even really fat back then, just a bit chubby, puppy fat at the best, I’m sure you don’t believe me but… there it is.

Of course, kids are cruel little bastards and they never really let me forget that I wasn’t stick thin like them. It didn’t really phase me at first, I had some pretty amazing support at home, so I didn’t really care what the other kids said about me, that didn’t last though, not past the inevitable advent of the “Girls arn’t icky anymore” point. That’s when I really did start to eat, I suppose at some point I figured… If they already see me as fat, what’s the point of watching what I eat? And what was once puppy fat turned into… well, fat.

So, that’s the point where that horrible little “Play” began. I say play because it was all an act, it’s all just acting. You put on the unmovable mask of “The Jolly Fat Man” you make yourself funny, you make fun of yourself… it’s all a defensive measure of course, you pretend that none of the razor sharp little remarks don’t cut you to the bone, when they really do. At first, it’s just that… an act… but before you know it, it’s all too real.

You’ve changed, you’ve become the mask that you put on… except, you’re not really jolly, not deep down, you’re still acting but you can’t stop anymore. The really sad part though? Beneath that facade there’s a whole lot of construction going on, you’re building walls around your heart, propping up your emotions, trying your damnedest to make everything secure so that one day, you’ll be able to take off that mask… but you never do, by this point your self confidence is so low that you can’t find it with a big shovel and a lot of sweat and… you just don’t have it in you to slip it off anymore. Or, or… you somehow find out the courage to do it… I did… but that doesn’t make things any better… any better at all.

No, in actual fact, it makes things a lot worse. Cause now, you’re not the jolly fat man anymore, the one people can laugh at, the one that makes fun of himself in order to be liked. No, now you’re just… the fat man, usually surly, shy, awkward and… woefully jaded.

I built up so many walls around my heart that I just couldn’t function in normal society. It’s incredibly hard to open up to anyone at all when you’re scared stiff that you’re gonna be hurt. Under it all though, I was still that dreamer, that romantic, searching for someone to share my heart with. Inevitably though, I was shot down again and again, I was still naive, hopeful, I still believed that if I was persistent and showed people that I was friendly and a really nice guy, someone would look past the… fat.

It didn’t happen though, nobody could see past that. I… can’t even remember how many times I opened up a little crack in my heart and showed some girl… and then had her laugh and make a nice, deep slice before walking away. The worst though… was opening up quite fully and telling someone how I felt, having her accept, then… refusing to so much as hold my hand… only to find out that… the only reason she agreed to go out with me was because she was actually interested in one of my best friends and just… didn’t want to hurt my feelings… Yeah, because my feelings would be so much better off when I eventually found out. Well, I did… and it hurt even worse… So thanks for that.

Even after all that though, I was still that dreamer, that… hopeless romantic, that… optimist. Sure, I’d… developed a lot of resentment towards women as a whole, resentment that I buried pretty deep and forgot about, but I surfaced on the other side… beaten but… a lot more whole than I should have been.

It took… not a whole plethora of women,  not a whole slew of rejections to kill that side of me, it took… one woman… one mistake… one monumental fuckup to do that. It took… watching her walk away to do that. So, like I said, she wasn’t the one that caused this destruction, but… she was the catalyst for it. I did something I never should have done… I let her in, I believed her when she promised she’d never leave, I listened when she said she’d stick with me forever. I was a fool, I let my guard down… more fully than I’ve ever done before… and she didn’t just add another scar to my heart, she cut it out and showed it to me, Temple of Doom style.

So, there we go, the whole sad story of why I am… now… completely empty inside. Why I am no longer that dreamer, that… hopeless romantic, why I am dead inside. The funny thing though? Even though I realise all this, I can’t do a damned thing about it. I don’t know how, I don’t have the strength to change myself again… So what do I do?

*Shrugs* Fuck if I know. Maybe one of you does though, assuming that anyone actually reads this crap, so if you have any suggestions, let me have it.

Hey, look at that, a post that doesn’t involve my sad excuse for a life.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the games that I’m playing lately. Probably because I’ve been playing a lot more thanks to my sad excuse for a life. (Oops, okay, just one mention)

Anywho, it seems like they’re getting shorter and shorter lately and I’m having a hard time figuring out why this is. I thought that maybe it was because I’m getting older, more focused, better able to use my mind, or just plain more skilled but… the thing is, I tried to test this fact by playing an older game, namely Baldur’s Gate, one of my all time favourite games.

You know what I found? It took just as long as I remember it taking. Sure, the graphics are dated, but man, it was still as enjoyable as I remember it being too. That was when I realised why they were getting shorter, because game designers take a hell of a lot more time on the graphics than they used to.  Mainly because they’re ABLE to make the graphics better.

See, back when they made Baldur’s Gate, the graphics they used were pretty damn good. I remember marveling at them to be honest. How good the trees looked, how smoothly the characters moved, how shiny the magic effects were. When I replayed it recently, as much as I adore the game, I could see how wooden the movements were, how flat the terrain was, how “Shiny” the magic effects were. I was honestly pretty crushed during the first hour or so, I thought that my holy grail wasn’t as good as I had built it up to be.

After that initial hour had passed though, something strange happened. See, I was very aware of that first hour, painfully so, but once the story got going… the next thing I knew, it was six hours later… The story that the designers had crafted was so compelling, so engrossing, so utterly thrilling, that before I knew it, the graphics didn’t matter anymore. What I saw onscreen was far outclassed by the imagery that was suddenly brought to life in my mind. Black Isle (R.I.P) had created a story that sucked me in and whisked me away to the Forgotten Realms in my head.

Games like that… man, they don’t come along too often anymore. Sure, the graphics now are… utterly amazing, but… I can’t help but think that ten years down the line I’ll look at games like Mass Effect and Neverwinter Nights 2 and think the same thing I think about Baldur’s Gate now, that the graphics weren’t actually that good. The thing that sets the Baldur’s Gate series apart from Neverwinter Nights and Mass Effect, is how good the story was. The latter two had good stories, don’t get my wrong, they were really a lot of fun to play, but if they were books, it would be like comparing Lord of the Rings to… No, not Twilight, cause if Twilight was a game it would be… probably a flash game where you catch babies thrown by Michael Jackson or something…

Wait, where was I? Insulting the utter drivel that is Twilight derailed me, (Remember Kids, Vampire’s do not sparkle.) Oh, right. Comparing Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights 2. Now, Baldur’s Gate is obviously Lord of the Rings, whereas Neverwinter would be… The Sword of Truth series? Both are excellent, don’t get me wrong, I adore both of them, to a fault, but LotR is just on another level entirely. It has, like Baldur’s Gate, transcended the medium of words or code and become something… magical.

Anyway, now that I’ve gotten the fanboying out of my system… It seems that somewhere along the lines, game developers started taking their customers for granted. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated pretty graphics, I really do, there’s nothing wrong with a game that is good looking, but I really wish we, as gamers, didn’t have to sacrifice a good storyline for good graphics, or vice versa. It seems that that is inevitably the way it goes though, developers take forever and a day making their games pretty but then skimp on the storyline or craft an amazing story and forget that being able to distinguish a male character from a female character is important. That being said, I much prefer the latter.

And that’s the end of my rant for now. I’m working on something else game related too so watch this space.

That’s right, the time has come for me to write about all of the funny, strange, dangerous things my friends and I got up to when we were younger. It’s gonna be a long one. Oh, also, after reading this, you might find yourself wondering why we’re still alive, don’t worry, we ask ourselves that all the time.

The Fire Pit.
Lots of stories revolve around this fire pit that I dug in my old back garden. It took me a while, the ground was as hard as rock and I’ve never been the most fit person in the world. In case you’ve ever asked yourself how difficult it is to dig a hole in the ground, the answer is VERY. Anyway, back in the day, when we were still in school, a lot of our time was spent around this fire pit, we made fires in it, usually huge bonfire like things with huge masses of wood. We got drunk around that fire pit, we smoked pot around that fire pit, we had birthday parties and parties in general around that fire pit. We sat around that fire pit and talked shit until the sun actually came up. It was good times. We had plastic chairs and a hammock, that was about it, but man, good stories. See, Richard and I were going through a pyromaniac phase just then, so any time we found something even remotely flammable, into the fire it went. Sometimes it had less than exciting results, other times… it was like Armageddon.

We put everything into that damn fire. Petrol, cans of deodorant, methylated spirits, turpentine, most provided a nice big rush of flames, but the time that comes to mind in particular was when we found a bottle of some hair product my mother had lying around. It wasn’t a pressurised bottle. just an unassuming little plastic bottle with a twist off top. It didn’t say that it was flammable, but when we threw it onto the fire, this huge black mushroom cloud erupted, I shit you not, the flames were twenty feet high, more than high enough to set the tree above the fire pit ablaze. Should have thought about the time of year before experimenting like that. Massive Flames + Dry Leaves = Flaming Tree. We put it out, of course. That tree was important to us too, after all.

What else can I think of that happened around the fire pit? Oh, one time we had about twenty people over and sat around it listening to someone tell a story about Bluegum gum in an apricot jam bottle. It was fucking hilarious. Of course, it’s not funny if you’re sober, but when you’re high or drunk, man, what a story.

Another one was hearing a lot of very drunk voices raised in unison, or as close to unison as you can get when most of said voices are one drink away from alcohol poisoning. The song? What shall we do with a drunken sailor. I’ve never felt more like a pirate in all my life.

I had my first puff of really, really expensive weed around that fire pit.

The Tree
Ah, the tree. It was next to the fire pit. If that tree could talk it would probably sound like a crazy person. Some of the things that tree saw probably scarred it for life. We did a lot of things in that tree, from getting dressed in camo and scouting out the neighborhood for good houses to prank, hiding from irate residents we HAD pranked and the most memorable incident involving the tree (Apart from the fire incident) is the night Richard got stinking drunk and decided that he was going to climb right to the top. Of course, the rest of us being equally drunk, didn’t really pay much attention to him, we just went on drinking. Until we heard a drunken shout and the sound of a seven foot something man falling and hitting every branch on the way down. Not only that, but when he got close to the bottom, he hit our wall, fell off of that, and hit the yellow plastic water meter cover on the pavement outside. He was very angry when none of us rushed to his aid, but peered over the wall and laughed our arses off instead.

The Garage
The garage in my house at the time was a very poorly constructed affair. It was old, the plaster AND the bricks were crumbly and honestly, I’m surprised it never collapsed on anyone. Well, for one of my birthdays, it may have been my seventeenth or my eighteenth I’m not sure, we were given permission to spraypaint the walls with whatever we wanted as it was being repainted soon after.  So we did. Symbols, many of them highly offensive and crude, words, likewise highly offensive and crude and little crappy drawings. We did a passable job of making it look like a crack house. That party was… unbelievable. We got a keg, a big fucking one and set it up in the garage, then ensued a long night of drinking and debauchery. Someone had sex in my bed and it wasn’t me. I spent most of the later part of the evening firmly attached to a toilet. It went really well, everyone enjoyed themselves, of course, we found out the next morning that someone had enjoyed themself a little TOO much and had left the tap on the keg running, flooding the place with beer. It was terrible, what a bloody waste. For about six months after that incident the garage smelled like a brewery. Stale beer and crumbling, soggy bricks, not a good mixture.

My Sixteenth With Suzie
Ah yes, my sixteenth birthday, that one was a doozy. Now, apart from the usual suspects, my mother had this wonderful idea to invite some of her friends to the house. Her boss came, he’s filthy rich, he brought a metric fuckton of booze with him.  So, after getting thoroughly wasted, we were all sitting in a circle talking shit when the boss and his girlfriend (*Shudders* The things I imagined doing with her.) said they had gotten me a present. They whipped it out and watched me unwrap it. I held, in my very drunk hands, a blowup doll, for practice they said. Of course, I was far too drunk to be embarrassed at that point so I eagerly held aloft the gift and happily proclaimed that she was my bitch. They then decided to name her suzie and much laughter was had by all.

Now fast forward a few hours and a whole bottle of some purple booze that I can’t quite remember the name of right now and we find Nicholas, with his cock in one hand and Suzie in the other, trying to take a piss. I believe I asked Vito’s sister if she would like to give me head since my pants were down already. Then, with Richard laughing his arse off behind me, I proceeded to climb over my wall, still pissing, Suzie still under my arm and then ran down the street, my pants down and Suzie flapping in the wind, proclaimed for all the neighbors to hear, that Suzie was, in fact, my bitch and that I was going to fuck her. I woke up with Suzie next to me in the morning, to this day, I don’t remember if anything happened between the two of us, but breakfast was very awkward. I got a Playstation 2 aswell, good times. Suzie eventually ended up nailed to my wall, and it’s really not what you think, Richard and I actually nailed her to my wall, with a hammer, and nails. I was asked to take her down a few months later when my grandparents were coming for a visit.

Oh right, before the half naked run around the block, I also had the good sense to stand up and inform my mother that I smoked cigarettes, Hubbly, and pot too. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I remember the ringing silence that flowed out around me as I said that. It still makes me facepalm.

The Video
Okay, so Jackass was really, really big when we were in highschool, so naturally, we decided to make our own video. It was really all that bad, but there was some very memorable moments in it. I let Richard throw darts into my legs, several times, he missed one time and it hit my stomach, embedding itself quite deeply, not that the ones in my leg weren’t equally as deep, but I digress. We also playing with fire, using so much Ego Deodorant that my dining room was all but engulfed in a massive, barely visible fireball. I also whacked one of our friends in the testicles with a branch from our bottle bush. (The succulent aloe we used to hide all our booze bottles in.) We also have the delightful image of me sucking milk up into my nose and squirting it out of my eye. Gross, stupid, but so much fun at the time.

Random Events In My House
Yes, there are a lot of random events that don’t really fit into a larger grouping.

Like the time a bunch of us watched two of our friends hooking up on the grass outside of my mother’s bedroom window. It was hilarious from that position, watching that naked arse going up and down while we all tried to stifle our giggles and stop ourselves from shouting out advice and critique from the darkness of the window above.

Another fond memory was sitting in my room late into the night playing Tony Hawk’s Proskater (Yes, the very first one.) with Richard, smoking like chimneys and stupidly thinking that my mother wouldn’t realise that we were, even though it was actually hard to see through the fog wafting around the room. We did that a lot Skelm Smoking around corners, before heading out to paintball in the mornings. Thinking back on it now, it’s blatantly obvious to me how thick we really were. Anyone with half a brain could figure out that we were smoking, fortunately, my mother pretended that she didn’t know.

Breaking into my mother’s liquor cabinet when she wasn’t home. And by breaking in, I don’t mean finding the key and unlocking it, I mean literally breaking boards on the back of the drawer and sneaking out the booze that way.

Sitting around the diningroom table smoking hubbly. I once watched Richard blow 64 smoke rings in a row from one hubbly hit, it would have been much cooler if he’d gotten another five.

Sitting around the same table, getting two underclassmen so stinking drunk on cheep brandy that one’s mother thought he was high and sent him to rehab.

Watching Vito throw up in my garden and fart at the same time, something he still catches flak about.

Okay, so, we’ve gone over the fact that Richard and I REALLY liked fire, well, once day we were playing with deodorant in my postbox, spraying it full and then tossing a lit piece of tissue into it to make it go boom. Well, through some poor communication, or poor planning, Richard’s head was directly in line with it when it went off. I was standing to the side, watching Richard in profile and saw this massive fireball blow out of the postbox and utterly engulf his head. It lasted no more than a split second and when it was over he was rolling on the ground, his hair and eyebrows all singed and curly. He was very angry at me for laughing at him, but it was damn funny.

Shooting at the icecream men with my paintball gun, both the ones on the bikes and the ones in the trucks, good times, until one pulled out a shotgun and started looking for us, not fun then, but damn funny now… alright, still a little scary, I did tell you that it was a wonder we’re still alive.

During an afternoon of heaving drinking, finding Richard in his underwear in a full bath, asleep. On the same day, a very drunk Craig and Nicholas ran down the street exposing both our posteriors and our genitalia to the maids that were walking home. Yes, we were flashers for a brief hour. Not my finest moment.

So, one night, after getting back to my house in the wee hours of the morning, tripping balls and drunk as fuck, a few of us talked and talked, then when the drugs wore of, three of us, Craig, Toffee and I, decided we wanted some more, so into Craig’s car we got and off we went, finally locating a drug dealer at H2O. This is where it gets interesting, Richard had left his wallet in the car, and in the wallet he had two fake two hundred rand notes, and not counterfeit, no, no, nothing like that, these had been fucking photocopied, one side was completely blank. Now, high and drunk as we were, we decided to use them instead of real money, knowing full well that this dude was Nigerian drug dealer. So, we asked for four pills, which came to four hundred rand, Craig handed over the phony money, the guy spreads them between thumb and forefinger, white flashes in the moonlight, and at that moment, I though, “This is it, we’re going to be shot, he’s going to kill us.” But amazingly, he flips it back and gives us our pills, letting us go on our merry way. See! Why are we still alive!?

Craig’s House
Okay, so, like my house, Craig’s house was usually the place to go for a party and many a party we had there, many memorable events took place there.

On his eighteenth birthday, I witnessed Craig stumble out of the back of a Hyundai truck, leaving a girl inside, walk outside and attempt to throw a used condom onto the roof. Of course, in his drunken state, he missed, it was thrown all over the place for a while, but eventually landed in the fire. To this day, Craig claims that he was raped in the back of that truck, he seemed pretty happy when he came out though, so I’m conflicted as to whether I believe him or not.

One time, two of us decided that we were drinking Jedi and proclaimed that Craig was our Padawan. We mixed drinks for him and “Instructed” Him in the art of booze. This went on for a long, long time, until finally we left him to sleep it off in a caravan. Sometime later, while the rest of us were sitting around the fire talking crap, we saw Craig stumble out of the caravan to take a piss. He rounded the corner then we hear this almighty crash that shakes the whole caravan and watch Craig topple bonelessly back around the corner, we rush over to him and it soon becomes clear that he had walked right into the open window of the caravan, cutting his head very deeply. We got him back into the thing and decided that no, he doesn’t need a doctor, he just needs some booze to sterilise the wound. So you think, Vodka, Gin, some clear liquid, right? Nope, not use, we pour Spiced Gold over his head, making him howl and slap his hand to his head. We left him like that and the next morning his hand was stuck to his head with blood.

Another time, we stayed up really late on a Sunday night, really, really late. Eventually were were sitting in his living room making up new shots, mostly with heated up spices. They were all truly foul. And singing a song about “The Ganga Man” It was like, two hours long, just going around the room with people adding their own verses whenever they thought of some. Eventually his mother came and chased us to bed. I think most of us got about two hours sleep. In the morning, Craig was curled around the toilet, his cousin James was still singing, and I was delusional, apparently thinking I was in the army and ordering everyone to get into the tank. I don’t remember that at all. Of course, by this time I had already been kicked out of school so I went home and slept, Craig was sick so he stayed home too, only Richard and Toffee actually went to school, the poor bastards.

There are many, many more stories, I’m just having trouble thinking of them now, so I’ll make another post when I remember some. That’s all for now, folks, much love, hope you enjoyed the read!

You heard me. No season brings out as much contempt in me.

Sure, I like the fact that everything gets nice and green, flowers bloom, everything is alive and shit…But you’d think this could all happen without it getting so fucking hot.

For those of you who don’t know this, I’m a big guy, lots  of padding, as one comedian put it I’m Fluffy. So yeah, I can hear you thinking it, Lose some weight Nick. Well, I am, but that’s another story for another time, but, but, the fact is, I know of lots of guys that are as big, if not bigger than I am that have no problem with the heat. Due to this strange anomaly, I’m forced to conclude that I actually have a latent super power. I’m thinking, Human Torch-like power. Yeah, laugh it up, one day, POW Flame on mother fuckers, then we’ll see who’s laughing when I’m setting your shoes on fire. But, my… grand delusions aside, I do seem to have a higher body temperature than most of the general population.

Anyway, as I’m sure you can imagine, this abnormal body temperature makes summer a very uncomfortable time for me. I sweat like a stuck hog, and get pretty surly because of it. Of course, this leads me to keep the AC going on full blast most days. And the AC being on all the time leads my friends to bitch that it’s too cold in my room like little girly girls, you know who you are.

I LOVE the cold, I adore it, that crisp feeling in the air, like it’s made up of tiny icicles that you can’t see but you feel it when you breath in. Skies so blue they seem to go on forever. Watching everyone walk around wearing millions of layers of clothing and still being cold while you’re wearing a t-shirt and shorts and laughing your arse off. (That’s a personal pleasure, my little “Fuck You All” in payment for enduring summer’s vile wrath).

*Sighs pathetically and wipes sweat off of his brow*
While I’m writing this, Spring is on in full and it’s already too hot. This summer is going to be a bitch. I’m wondering if I shouldn’t become like an opposite bird or something, fly north, FOR the winter, see what I did there? That was comedy gold my friends. Well, maybe not gold… but a bronze at the very least. Okay, fine it was a shitty pun that hardly deserves your attention.

So, lets go over the finer points of this post. I hate summer. I am either a flame powered super hero, or somewhere in my family tree, someone got diddled by a crafty little in Inuit who then passed his love of the winter to me. If this is true it must skip several generations because my mother and my grandmother are both girly girls like Vito and Richard when it comes to the cold.

Summer does have one thing going for it though. Rain, man I love rain. All types of rain. Drizzles, sunny showers, full blown thunder storms, that kind of freezing rain that’s just short of hail. Storms are the best, the sky going black and dangerous, sometimes the clouds turn orange or purple for some reason, lightning arcing through the sky, thunder roaring so loudly that you can feel it in every cell of your body. Man, day or night, those are times I live for.

Sometimes the nicest thing in the world is standing out in the rain, letting those cold drops of water run over your body, like the world is crying on you. It’s a very cathartic experience and I recommend that this summer everyone try it at least once. If you’re too chicken to try that and risk and angry bolt of lightning from whatever god you’ve angered in the last few years, then the next best thing is to sit by a window and watch the rain pouring off of it, streaming down the glass (Did you know that glass isn’t actually considered a solid? Yeah, it’s really a supercooled liquid, over the years, panes of glass actually become thicker at the bottom than at the top because they gradually ooze downward, Fuck I love the Discovery Channel).

What else is good about summer? Not a lot… maybe I’m trying to build up a sufficiently large Pro list for summer not being that bad, for personal use, obviously. Hmm, Ah, Swimming! I love swimming. Well, I used to love swimming when I was a kind, couldn’t get me out of the water back then. These days… eh… I mean, unless you’ve got one of those fancy saltwater chlorinators, then you have to worry about red eye from the chemicals, which also makes your skin all manky eventually. Still, swimming can be pretty cool, but only if you have people to horse about with. Swimming by yourself isn’t really fun.

What else? Um, oooh, lovely ladies in bikinis. Yeah, that’s a perk and a half. Of course, I’m never really in a position to observe this fascinating behaviour… mainly because I don’t like the beach (Sharks, you understand, once, when I was young, I was snorkeling and came face to face with one of the fuckers, I turned into Jesus and ran out of that water, I shit you not. Also, I know that eventually the bastards are gonna develop either wings or legs and then the people on the beaches will be the first to go… *Shudders*).

Our water parks here are pretty grotty as a whole, I mean, back in the day The Lost City was fucking epic, but I went there a year or two ago and it was terrible, water was filthy and gross. Oh! And then Oprah Winfrey and Julia Roberts closed the entire Valley of Waves for some private party or something and kicked us poor regular folk out… That sucked and I’m still angry with them.

Ooh, Mozzies and flies definitely need to go on the cons list of summer. Now, I’m not really bothered by mosquitoes. I guess I don’t have sweet blood or something, either that or my room is too cold for them to survive. Anyway, Flies are the real pests, buzzing around, laying eggs on my food, annoying the crap out of people. Little flying disease factories.

Hmm, I think I’ve run out of stuff to talk about.

So, in closing, FUCK SUMMER! That is all.

Just a little update today. Added some pictures here, will be adding more as time goes by. Feel free to look through them. That’s about it for now. Maybe I’ll think of something more interesting to add later.