Sense falls out of my fingers, non?

I've stepped out of the kaleidoscope tunnel and into a wonderfully ornate hallway with a long mirror on one of the walls, and now everything just looks like a plain copy. My day started in confusion, and I've realised only just now that perhaps this confusion was a result of my change in location. The nonsense is now being masquerading as sense...

I'll start from the beginning, and I'll explain things this time, so that you feel ultra-comfortable. Treat this as an open letter to the one person who'll never read this, who cares so much for my sanity and who so enjoys reading sentences that run from left to right, from the top of the page to the bottom. This is an example of a genre that can only be described with the most hideously long title, whose punctuation creates headaches for anyone who wants to insert it in the middle of another paragraph. The genre is: "Hi, I'm normal. Look: this email smacks of normality, I do normal things and everything is fine. The 'i's are dotted and the 't's are crossed, the sentences have stops and there is a beginning and an end to all this. It's complete, just like me."

Understood? Stop reading here if you want the emotional excitement of the magical nonsense-producing machine, and continue if you think you can be entertained by something more straightforward.

- - - - -

I start my days these days by asking the coffee-master at the coffee-master's house in coffee-master-wannabe central for three shots of coffee in a large cup, with a little frothy hood that they call a 'cappuccino'. This is what I like. The coffee-master has worked hard at his art and, unlike in the amateur chain establishments, his three shots will not make a worried mind turn to insomnia and crime, but will merely sharpen the senses so that they are balanced with the nonsenses, putting the drinker of such coffee in the perfect frame of mind to carry out his day's business with good humour and calmness.

In the coffee house this morning, I pulled out my book with every intention of trying to read some more before work, but was distracted by a newspaper headline about Statins. This was not the article for me, nor were the others that I skimmed past: such stories tell me little that's worth brooding on, although they're worth scanning for the one or two useful points that they may raise. The article that made me stop and think that little bit more was one about a fictitious book that has become real. This may sound like the work of a Borgesian scholar, but it's actually the latest money-spinning idea to have been dreamed up by the marketing maniacs who will not rest until every last cent has been squeezed out of Sex and the City.

Out of the many thoughts that this commentary spawned, the one that I brooded on while walking from the cafe to the office was related to the admission: "I know a woman who won't date a man if he has an apostrophe in the wrong place". This made me laugh, because a few years ago I was having dinner with an educated and erudite female friend, and she told me that she didn't think she'd be able to go out with a guy if he didn't know how to use the possessive correctly. I laughed long and hard when she said that, and had she not had a boyfriend, I probably would've asked her out on the spot for being so passionate about the technical aspects of language. The comment stuck with me, and anything that sticks with me ends up being analysed and criticised until I understand why it's stuck with me...

Crimes against language take a bit of getting used to, but if the perpetrator of the crime is pretty enough and entertaining enough, then you start to look upon the crime in a different light. After being utterly horrified at first by just how appalling the grammar of one of my "pen-pals" was, and squirming as she used the occasional "clever" word in a very unusual context (like our beloved celebrities do) in an attempt to seem intelligent, I gradually warmed to her lack of knowledge of the finer points of language (yes, she was incredibly pretty, and very entertaining). In some cases, the dodgy punctuation would give the text a certain rhythm that I liked, or a certain cheekiness that I'd never seen conveyed by well-regimented language. I labelled the style "naked writing", and I've been obsessed with it ever since.

But, that said, I've had at least two pen pals tell me: "your lovely", and that will never look nice. The first time I read that, I expected more words to follow.  And then it just seemed awkward. To be fair, one of the nicest emails I've ever received was from potentially the most intelligent girl I know, who writes perfect English. But anyway, getting back to the point... This new Sex and the City spin-off book... Well, it's a load of shite, isn't it? That's the conclusion of the Independent columnist as well. I could say so much more, but I'm saying no more. If I see anyone reading that book on the train...

- - - - -

That little excursion took longer than I'd expected, and I've now led my thoughts so astray that I'm going to have to spend a little time here getting back to where I expected to be going...

Had the front page of The Independent not grabbed me so, I would've continued to read "Adriana Buenos Aires", which is a terrible book, but it's intentionally bad. Or so Macedonio Fernández would have us believe. Subtitled: "Última novela mala" ("The last bad novel"), it's about as interesting as this blog: mimetic and static, and just another love story. It's the counterpart to "Museo de la novela de la eterna", the "Primera novela buena" ("The first good novel"), which is an altogether different kettle of beans. 

I'm not mentioning these names to lose you or to elevate myself here, but to explain my next move, which baffled the recruitment consultant that phoned me up today. There reaches a point where you just have to laugh at these fools, and I reached that point a few weeks ago. Now, I'm having fun with them. The recruitment consultant will conquer or destroy. I can't speak to one without remembering the time when some dense lads at my table at the pub one night pulled out an email of laddish chat-up lines and their counter-lines: you know, the ones where you get knocked back but then retaliate immediately by insulting the girl you just hit on (i.e. the ones that probably work). If they sense that you're not interested, they'll go on to try and undermine you. But why would you want to try such a trick on me?

Anyway, the recruitment consultant... I said to him: "No, I'm not sticking around". And I'm saying this more frequently now, because my mind's made up: I'm going away next year. I've given myself the target of six months, or sooner if my current employer ceases to require my talents before then. I'm going to Argentina, and I'm going to become an even better plagiarist of Macedonio Fernández. This has always been the plan, as it goes. I always knew that writing the loveliest emails in the world wouldn't get me anywhere, and that Argentina would be my next destination. It's been on my destinations list since I read an article about the country one day when I was 17, and it was accompanied by a picture of a pretty blonde girl, and I thought, for no well thought-out reason: "I'm going to go there". But I didn't know at the time, and then had to stumble upon it again. And then again. And then again. And again. It's a recurring theme, and it can't be ignored, I'm going to move to Argentina next year, because it's been calling me for a long time.

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Working in Brighton is lovely, because on a day like today you can finish work and go down to the beach, sit on a deckchair and take off your shoes and socks, pull out a book, and sit and wonder what it is that makes everyone you ever meet seem to think that you're strange.

More from the doctor

The time is ticking slowly, but it's ticking faster than usual, and now the broken mirror in front of me looks ready to reflect a more complete picture in the near future. We could be friends, away from my heart. Away from this world and its filth, away from the lies and the illusions. There are no lies behind my mask, there is only the sickly grin of a lucky doctor.

The drugs haven't worked, and nothing can save me now. The clippings of your lives lie scattered around my room like a puzzle with only one obvious solution. I will be happy again. Doctor Happy has made too many people happy to feel so sad, and now it's time for him to be happy again. The clock ticks on, and the hands are pointing to a happier future: they're pointing towards you and they're pointing towards the future, and I'm looking at them from behind my mask and I know that what I'm seeing is the only true way to continue...

Introducing... Dr Happy!

I check your facebook profile more often than you do. Your pictures are saved on my hard drive, and some of them have been printed out and put in the book I've written about you. In some cases, the other people in the photos have been cut out deftly using a surgeon's knife, or disguised by a few messy strokes of the same pen that I use to scribble prescriptions for myself in times of dire need. I've never put myself in any of the photos. I prefer seeing you by yourself. I take the pills and look at the pictures, and they make me happy.

I am Dr Happy, the one that people turn to when they need cheering up. When my work is done, they forget about me. I have only words and pictures for company. They are as false as the smile on my mask. They are nothing but images, disconnected from the truth, from this reality in which I find myself. I hide behind the smiley face at night and try to hide the pain as I consider how easily my patients manage to hide behind forced feelings, hurling themselves into lie after lie. But their happiness is only ever short-lived, like the memory of a dream. And so the patients return...

I take the pills and write the books, and I stare at these walls and laugh. I wear my mask and I stare at the mirror, and the time has come. The time has been given to me, because I have a party to go to. Dr Happy has a party to go to, and it's time to find some new patients :-)

Song 2

Remember last year's song about the perils of having an email-based relationship with someone, "Your name is burnt into my eye"? That was such a hit that I've written another song that I'm going to give to you for free. This one's about the illusion of the social networking sites:

You ain't nothing but a URI

You ain't nothing but a URI

You said on my wall that I'm a really cool guy

But you ain't nothing but a URI

That one goes deep.

Automation

I don't write these blogs any more: I wrote a PHP class module the other day that produces nonsense of its own. There are methods and properties to my madness, didn't you know? Yes, there are, and they're what's stringing this blog together while I stand on the platform at Norwood Junction, watching a male pigeon chasing after a female pigeon. I'm not talking metaphorically here, either: he's chasing her round and round in circles, while another female ambles around aimlessly in the middle of the imaginary circle they're drawing.

Oh well, the female just flew away, and her friend went with her. Poor male. It's Friday night, so I'm off to have fun in town now... I'll leave the computer to continue.

Anyway, this blog is being constructed by a simple computer program that will write nonsense with less emotional noise to distort the flows, as I opted not to add a class for the emotions, nor to plug it into a database full of painful, embarrassing and self esteem-destroying memories which it might draw upon in the creation process. It just knows words and how to put them together. I just need to work on breaking the grammar rules that I've set up, and teach it how to convey pace and confusion instead of the terribly rigid and functional language that they teach you as a child. Grammar rules are a guideline, not iron laws, you bloody idiot.

This blog was created by collating text messages sent to it over the course of the day, and by stealing the odd word or two from online sources. The code was reading stories about queues outside stores that were full of computers that didn't work properly and phones that couldn't be activated, and commentators who were keen to point and laugh as they completely ignored the irrelevance of their entire existence. Excitement is the only reason we live. That's why pigeons run around on station platforms.

And what if the excitement is so great that after seeing the most beautiful female of the day you promptly fall asleep, and wake in a state of confusion at the same old place? If that's the case, then there's only one thing for it: lemon swiss roll and lemon curd. The label will be changed for a joke, but the contents will be eaten in all seriousness. Squeeze my lemon, bitch: rid me of this bitterness.

Vanilla and lime candle

I have highs that are too high, and lows that are too low. My  hopes swing to and fro, and my heart takes me places I shouldn't go. The candle in my room flickers to the electronic distortions of chaos and creation, the sound rushes from the speakers and fills my mind with wonder as I sit here tonight, typing my way through the images that form in parts of my brain I have no direct access to: there are parts that lead to other parts, and sometimes the doors between them are open, sometimes they're closed, sometimes I'm up and sometimes I'm down.

A naked display of the emotions that have grown from a barren existence. Small, weedy emotions that have fought against the odds to survive in the treacherous landscape, mutated species of emotion that survived because of their unusual nature and grew in spite of the lack of a place in the sun, of care and attention, of healthy nutrition. Broken paths of development and inadequate sentences. Words without consequence, after so many words with so many horrible consequences.

I can see the London Eye from my bedroom window, I look out across the city and I can see the wheel, and I want to be there in an instant. The wheel is being illuminated tonight, the colours are flashing along the rim, and I watch red turn to green, and the sky looks nice tonight. I was carried along by adrenaline all day and then dropped on my head, and I want to fly across the city and land on Waterloo Bridge, just like an alien. I couldn't eat a proper dinner and I feel too tired. The confusion tires me out and there is no respite, there is no escape, there is no warm place to rest my head, there is the only the sound that fills my room and the candle that flickers as the distortions rise and fall.