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.

Nothing ever happens on facebook

I have no energy and I have no idea where my energy has gone, I slept last night and I slept this morning and I slept on the train to work and I slept on the train home from work and I was in a daze on my way home. I bought a ticket to Sutton because I needed to do something. I bought a ticket to Sutton but the platform was too long, so I crossed to the other platform and went in the other direction and when the train started moving I thought I could get off a couple of stops early and just go home but then I remembered that the train was going in the other direction and for a moment I saw myself travelling in opposite directions, drifting apart. 

There were scenes in my head for the whole trip home, the cast had been gathered from a dream I had the other night, the dream was nice in a way but when I woke up I was confused and upset and the images didn't get washed down the dirty plughole as I showered in front of the spattered mirror and behind the grubby screen. Too much to clean, I'm tired of cleaning I'm the only one who cleans and they think it's a sign of madness of obsessiveness I don't see what's wrong with wanting to live a clean life but they think I'm mad. The images have stayed with me, I thought I'd lost them a long time ago but they're still here with me. The images of a dream I had the other night, of a night I had the other year, of a day I had the other summer, they had returned.

My mouth had lost its taste and the sweets weren't strong enough, I couldn't get enough taste in my mouth from the sweets and the bad thing about bon bons is that it's only the sweet dust and the hard shell that are worth eating and then you're left with hard caramel and the challenge of trying to find a way of softening it and saving your teeth. I sat on my bed and I didn't know what to do, music wasn't sounding the same way, the music wasn't strong enough either, there was no point, I sat on my bed and I thought about my ticket to Sutton. I'd bought a ticket to Sutton and I had to use it, I'd bought it because if I bought it I'd have to use it. I had to use it. I sat on my bed and didn't know how to proceed who to phone what to do whether to drink and smoke or just lie on my floor. It looked appealing. 

On my other bed and I had no energy. My top off and I had no energy. I had no belt, no top and no energy. I sat on my other bed and I eventually lay down. I couldn't lie down like that, I'd slept all day, I couldn't sit up, I was too tired, my arms are so thin, they've got no strength, my arms are thin like nothing else in the world, they're so thin they've got no power they can't save me I'm looking at my arms and I can't believe how thin they are why are they so thin and why am I so tired? I'm lying on the bed but I can see myself lying on the floor.

I have a ticket to Sutton and I have to use it. My tenses are jumbled and my arms are so thin, look at the tenses: they're all jumbled. My place in time is lost and the images from my dreams are all in my head and my body is vanishing I have no energy I don't know where it all went and I don't know why it went. I decide that the only thing to do is to use my ticket to Sutton and I talk to my friend but nothing seems to register and the night will have ended before I've even started, I'm now worried about what I'll see and what we'll do, and all I can think of is what she said and why she said it and what she did and why she did it and the images are all in my head and I wanted them to go away but they stayed with me long after everyone else left.

the jokes on me

I have no interest in talking to people other than the ones that interest me today, and I have no interest in ceasing my incessant note-taking. If I were to cease, then it wouldn't be incessant. So, maybe rather than having 'no interest', I should really just face facts and say that I have 'no ability'. The joke's on me. Oh, the jokes on me.

Internet forums are a good place to make bitter enemies, as the text flies from behind monitors and keyboards, between people who have no idea of how big or small the person they're arguing with is, and who have a clear opportunity to take their anger out on a complete stranger. Words are misinterpreted, tempers flare, apologies are non-existent, nobody backs down, and there's no pretty girl to step in with a stern look and say: "BOYS! STOP!"

Pussy control is what it's about. Without pussy control, the world would have ended millions of days ago.

I write all this after being inspired by a long rant from a friend who's just been caught up in an online war in which everybody momentarily lost sight of the fact that they were geeks arguing about technology and started to think that they were born to beat people up.

Listen, such shit is the last thing on my mind, even though that's clearly a falsity of some sort, as it's the first thing I've chosen to write about. Was I supposed to write about my three-course calm-down meal instead? The third course was a disappointment: the cheesecake tasted slightly strange and not nearly unhealthy enough. When I eat cheesecake, I expect to throw up.

And when I put a record on, I expect to dance. When I put Lykke Li on, I expect half the room to dance, and the other half to cry. And when I'm reminissin', nissin' you... that's why I'm playing the records in the first place.

When I type, my fingers find the rhythm before they find the keys, and they dance around gracefully, finding the words before my mind even finds them. It's a reflex now. All I have are the memories, and the broken dreams, and I sit here in my room, I'm reminissin' you. 

21 Jump Street

The nonsense flowed today, or maybe it flew, it flew with speed as the wind carried it down the seafront and into my face. Ladies held their skirts down as the wind tried desperately to raise them. The waves got excited.

And then I found myself trapped in a cafe with the most drab music, it was like something out of a terrible nightmare, stealing all of the energy that I'd built up over the course of the day. I had twenty minutes to spare. It didn't seem long enough at first, but then I realised that the dire music would dilate those twenty minutes and I'd have an hour or so to spare. 

The music stole the nonsense and suddenly sense started to fall out in the most boring and predictable manner. The dots started to find themselves arriving at the right time, and the commas appeared in the right place. Apostrophes are always placed correctly, as this is the difference between the average idiot and the above-average idiot, and nudity here is not stylish but just plain stupid and rude. These people claim to be artistic. My only wish is that "art" was a harder word to spell.

And I had no clue that when I imagined myself sitting here typing in Italian for no obvious reason that I'd actually have transferred the thought somehow into the drink I was consuming, leaving the text that I was producing to be consumed without the usual shouts of "Bastardo!" coming my way for choosing to write appalling phrases in languages that few people seem willing to learn.

But then, if you don't know how to use an apostrophe, then I couldn't possibly imagine how you'd go about learning another language.

- - - - -

So far this year, I've tried "Homemade Lemonade", "Authentic Indian Lemonade", "Sicilian Lemonade", and R White's Lemonade. Among other lemonades that I can't recall, or which lacked the "Lemonade" description in their name. And where has this got me?

There is no conclusion to be drawn here, only money.

- - - - -

Nonsense flew out of my fingers all day long, as a reaction to the diabolical state of my house and of my life at the moment. Likeyougiveafuck. I'm going to dinner and I'm going to eat three courses.