Monday, January 31, 2005

A case of the cunting Mondays

"I logged in to check on things on Saturday and…"

Hold on a moment. Why were you checking in on the weekend? You are off on Saturdays. You've got kids and a wife, have you no respect for them? Don't complain to me about your job when you won't take the weekend off. Maybe you're telling me this so I'll be impressed with your commitment, but you're wrong, its pathetic.

Look, here's the concept; these guys pay you too little to do too much work and if they were allowed they'd cut back the weekend to one day so that they could increase their already obscene profit margins without a single thought for you. You owe them NOTHING, just hang it up on a Friday and take a bloody break you prick.

A minute's peace

I was in the pub with my brother last week. I got my pint, he got his. There was only one other person in the pub except for the bar staff, this old man who was eating nuts, chain smoking and drinking from a back-washy looking glass, bits of nut floating. There was a laziness to him. Something that truly disgusted me. Something that said "I lived with my mother until she died when I was 52 and then moved out on my own, now look at me, I have no manners and can’t look after myself. I’m a fat old cunt but I don’t care how offensive I am". Like that cunt with the stool on the tube.

He was greasy, his nose hooked enough to almost touch the end of his cigarette, that he chewed mercilessly on between peanuts, soaking it like a tissue in water. I could hear him breathing through that gonzo proboscis and the laziness of his eating left his jaw swinging with each crunch, his tongue protruding and his lips smacking and hissing with each clearance of his gapped teeth. I flinched each time he reached for the crinkling bag. And soon my hands were hooked into claws on my legs and my head was itchy.

"There is no room for this man on my earth" I thought, "If this guy dies right here of a heart attack I think I would feel only relief. What’s another useless monkey?"

And me and my brother left the pub. Leaving our almost full pints and the old man, victorious in his four day old smalls in his smoky corner, lapping at the dust in his peanut bag and taking his stained glass for a refill, pulling up his pants as he walked. Swinging his hips.

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Hate Science

On weekends, many people experience a marked drop in levels of hatred. It is often thought that this sensation of relative calm is a psychological response to the various appealing aspects of the time off work. No rush-hour tube journeys, mongoloid colleagues or HR Department sub-humans ruining your fucking life every twenty minutes, for example.


In fact, this brief hiatus from a week full of the purifying holy rapture of caustic anger is due to the fact that the human body simply cannot maintain such levels of teeth-clenching fury for an entire week. In effect, the rage just boils right out of you, you fucking slut. In extreme cases, it can be observed with the naked eye, rising from the body as steam. The cycle then continues afresh on Monday morning, round about the time your boss asks you if you had a nice weekend.


Friday, January 28, 2005

How to hate

A man stood outside a chipper in Dublin last night, greasy brown bag in hand. He had his 4 year old son in tow and was talking on a mobile phone, into which he said...

"Listen to me you little prick, I'll have you shitting out of a bag. If I see you I'll fucking break your legs you cunt."

I think these things, but I could never say them.

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Home for Christmas

Yesterday I ended up going to the house of an old lady who had died four months ago to clear it of any valuables and make sure it was secure. Put the timer on the heating so the pipes don’t burst. That kind of thing. Part of my job.

The place was a mess. You couldn’t see the floor for all the paper and old tissues and condiments. There was rotten food in the kitchen, left there after the last meal she cooked. Breakfast it looked like…sausages and eggs. This lady was over eighty years old when she died. There were condiments by the stairs. A plate and a fork. The living room was such a mess that this woman had eaten some of her last few meals sitting on the stairs. Surrounded by dirt. The TV, however, was spotless, covered in a sheet.

Her husband died twenty years ago. Her brothers and sisters too. In her bedroom she had surrounded herself with old photographs, on her bedside table, beside her head, a framed picture of her wedding day. Her wedding album was on the counter in her living room.
Strewn about the floor, piled high against the walls and in every nook and cranny in the house were hundreds upon hundreds of books. This was no senile old lady. She was just frail and alone.
And here’s what really got me. Next to an armchair in the living room was a small table covered in paper, tissues and condiments like the floor. But one thing stood out. A half eaten bag of Starburst. Beside it, a hand written prayer: The 23 psalm. "The lord is my shepherd…"

So here’s why I’m recounting all this here in the department. I fucking hate people. People who could live beside this lady for 25 years and allow her to end up like that. Nieces and nephews who could neglect someone for so long that the next contact you get is a solicitor telling you they’d died of cancer alone in their freezing home, eating Starburst because they liked them, and writing prayers to god because they knew what was coming and god was the only person they had left.

I opened a Christmas card from what seemed a very elderly lady who lived a long way away. The writing was extremely shaky. "Happy Christmas" it said "I tried to phone but there was no answer. I trust you are ok. Lots of love."

I hope she’s ok. I hope her family are better to her. I hope her neighbour looks in on her from time to time just to see.

A normal person would feel sadness. I feel only rage.

Open Letter

Dear God Guy who accosted me on the Northern Line last night,

Fuck you, man. Interrupting my reading and then calling my book "sensationalist" in that condescending tone? Well let me ask you this, asshole. Which do you think is more "sensationalist"? A book where Jesus Christ gets married and has a few kids, or a book where J.C. is a fucking water-walking, miracle-sandwich-serving superhero who gets brutally and spectacularly murdered only to rise from the dead on a Sunday afternoon to ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of God, who, by the way, created all this Earth shit in six fucking days?

Normally I'd leave that hanging as a rhetorical question, but since I'm talking to someone who is engaging in a wilful suspension of rational thought, I'll spell it out for you: the Good Book has sensationalism all sewn up - it's a huge part of its fucking unfeasible success. To illustrate, let's re-imagine your boy Mel Gibson, pitching his Jesus flick:

- Yeah, so anyway it turns out that this Jesus guy is the son of God and shit
- I like it. What happens next?
- What? Oh, he gets married, has a few kids and, I dunno, moves to the countryside?


Next please! The crucifixion is the ultimate crowd-puller, man, and you knows it. My book is "sensationalist", is it now? You fucking snooty cunt, fuck you.

Man, why didn't you just piss off like I said? When you came over to me in that carriage with your bonehead sales pitch ("Do you believe God is relevant in today's society?" - what, you're giving me essay assignments all of a sudden? Who the fuck are you?) I told you I was getting off in two stops. I practically begged you to go pester somebody else, some soft-headed tit who might be receptive to your hocus-pocus bullshit. But no, you had to do your spiritual duty, or whatever, and now I have to do mine. That's right, now I have to fucking hate you. Sure, I hated you already, in the abstract. I hated you just like I hated every other cocksucker on that train. But you had to go and get yourself some specific hatred, didn't you?

Here's a thought for next time, though. I don't know how many tedious back and forths I've had with you crazy fucking voodoo idiots, but it's more than I care to remember. Every single goddamn time though, there's a moment that goes something like this:

-We must all think very hard before we decide that we will deny God
-Oh, is that so? How come?
-Because we will all have to face God, some day


Wow, so you're saying I should believe in God because, like, God exists? Oh well, since you put it that way, consider me converted, Padre!

Dickhead. This is my request: if you absolutely insist on this "witnessing" shit, and it appears that you do, then at least do me this one tiny favour. At least learn to engage with me in my language. What's that, you ask? Why, it's simple, really - it's the language of a fucking rational human being. And if you can't manage that, then fuck the fuck off.

Yours faithfully,

Snotty McShot

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Prayer to the Almighty

I want that little prick on the scooter to fall off outside my house. I want to see the tracksuit torn from his miserable, malnourished body and the flesh planed from his bones. He wears his helmet on top of his head, unbuckled to look cool. Well I want to see that cranium broken open, spilling that excuse for a brain down the bus-lane. I can smell the sweet, friction burned skin already.

The Zen of Hatred

Hi, my name is Snotty McShot and I've been hate-free for a year now.

I used to be a hater, make no mistake. The worst kind. I went through life from one volcanic outburst of fury to the next, the troughs in between not so much periods of calm as preparation for the next gut-busting personal-Pompeii. I'd be practically incapacitated with rage during these times, my eyeballs burning in their sockets, my brain spitting sonic thunder like a thousand sociopathic howler-monkeys. And by Christ it felt good. It felt real, vivid, life-affirming. When I wasn't angry I felt scooped out inside, and I craved that next delirious fit of apoplectic wrath. People, I was a hate-junky, and in this town the next fix was only ever just around the corner.

But anyway, like I say, that was then. I'm free of it now.

Or so I thought.

I admit that I haven't looked into the evolution of hatred much. I don't know much about what effects a lifetime of bowel-loosening anger might have on the average human being, for example. I can only tell you my story.

I think I first noticed it about around this time last year. I'd be on the tube or the bus, at work or at a public gathering - the sorts of places where any number of tiny incidents can induce in me veritable geysers of righteous, steaming bile. And inevitably, those incidents would occur - some shitsucking mutant bastard would climb onto the train before the disembarking passengers got off, for instance. And then ... and then nothing.

Huh. Where was that instant homicidal urge, that paralysing, caustic spasm? I'd look at my palms and I couldn't see the the little crescent moons of broken skin where my nails should have bore down. My teeth were not clenched, my right eye did not twitch. The moment had apparently not registered at all. It seems crazy now, but gradually I took these various phenomena to mean that I had been cured. It seemed that all of a sudden, and with neither warning nor explanation, I had become calm.

I guess that's sort of true. For you see, the reason I did not notice the sudden rushes of blood-boiling, hysterical frenzy was simply this: I was at least that fucking angry already. I was, and remain to this day, in a state of permanent, all-conquering hate. I wasn't missing those spikes of furious anger at all - I was missing the interim periods of relative tranquillity. After a while I just didn't notice it anymore, like the noise of a new apartment, but make no mistake, those howler-monkeys were still there and in rare form, all set to shake the whole fucking tree right out of its roots and fucking kill something with it.

I can't be sure what exactly occurred, but I can say this much with confidence: at some point a little over a year ago, the sheer inescapable mass of my anger attacks caused the whole yin/yang structure of my psyche to collapse in upon itself, causing a curious sort of stasis. I had become calm. But it was a calm unlike no other.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold. I am a fucking black-hole of fucking hatred.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Smile!

"Smile, it might never happen" some giggling orange ape says to me as I walk out of the Porter House in Covent Garden.

Aha! I think, wagging an imaginary finger in his retarded paralysed droop-face. My own lighting up for the briefest of moments through the thick and electric cloud of my hatred. Shows what you know, you fucking impacted colon.

It’s happening all the time.

Scrote Notes, vol. 1

Let me just say this now:

I hate my balls.

Yeah, that's right.

I'm not ashamed. There's no insecurity here, boy. I'm not your middle-aged insurance executive going tribal. I bang no drum and weep for no inner-child.

I'm not afraid of my manhood. I just fucking hate it.

Why? Here. Give me just one day where I'm not constantly shifting under my desk, taking wide strides and pocket-poking, doing anything, going to any length to keep my sweaty pouch from sticking to my inner thighs and I'll be a more contented man. I'm tired of goose-stepping down the boulevard. The way on a warm day your sac drips into the crevice of your leg. The way your little hairs get caught in flaps. Have you ever been comfortable? Guys? Your balls are obstructionists.

Your balls don't need to be there. And they leave us exposed. Our monarchs have no army. William and Mary are sitting in an empty court, and the castle walls are made of tissue. Would the Queen carry the crown jewels in a Tesco bag on the tube? Hardly. But you, sire, you carry yours inside your Wranglers. You sit on them. You let your bay city rollers wag like puppies over every wingtip and trainer. You're practically taunting people!

God, I feel so exposed. And God's to blame, of course. For all of this. Did He think about this at all- did he even make a sketch before He flipped the switch to start churning us out? Think about it: God gave Us the cradle of civilization. He dropped it in an intricate incubator, wired it so it's always warm and toasty. But does He put it in our throat? Our sternum? Our cavernous bellies? Nah. They're external. Our little victims, they hang low, dangling in striking distance, easily strikeable. What was He thinking? He may have made us in His image, but all His assholes are dressing up in Usher's. And J.Lo's. Didn't figure on that one, did ya G-man. Timberlands. Prada heels. Not quite the ol' tap with the sandals, is it?

Listen, G. You got great ideas, just shitty planning. When you took over from the Greek contingent, I understand you were a little pissed off. All those names and myths piss me off, too. But Jesus Christ, Man, have some compassion. You took Achilles heel and put it on our crotch! What an outrage. At least it took a bit of dexterity to take a swipe at Achilles. At least there was some guesswork. Any palsied, pretzel hand these days knows exactly where to aim. What an indignity.

Think of 10-pin bowling when they put the bumpers in the gutters so the kids are guaranteed to hit some pins. That's how I think of my balls.

I hate my balls.

I hate walking around with these scarlet letters in my jeans. And like Hester Prynne, they're clingy. I always know they're there. And so do you.

Just think about my words. Think about your balls. Discover your shame, and you'll find that they're pointless. It's O-K to hate your balls.

I hate mine.

Next time we'll discuss male skirts and the genius of the Scottish.

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Monday, January 24, 2005

Hope

I was at a gig recently. A kind of quiet band, no reason for dancing really. This one fat guy is dancing. But seeing as the music is so slow, he kind of bobs up and down very quickly in order to catch each beat in whatever way he can. He’s right beside me and I’m reaching up to take sip of my beer that’s in one of those all too squishy plastic cups. Guy knocks my elbow and the beer flops onto my wrist. I hold it out from myself to mitigate the damage and scuttle backwards so it doesn’t go on my legs. The guy has started bouncing his way through the crowd to the front. He is the only one moving like that. He’s alone. I hope he dies that way.

I pass my beer into my left hand and shake my right to remove the excess, becoming sticky, liquid. A teenage girl and her friend barge past with that "There’s a crisis/our friend needs us" look that teenage slits get on their wrecked faces and my beer inevitably hits the deck. Now it’s on my ankles. The girls head for the toilets, one cross armed, the other looking very concerned. They clearly haven’t seen those ads about looking both ways. I hope it comes back to cripple them both.

White Lines

Do people have nothing better to do, than go all out to try and look "cool" on the fucking tube?

1. "hey everyone, look at me! i've got white earphones on and you know what that means.....what, you dont? oh ok, let me get it out and play with it, so everyone on the the carriage knows that i have a twat-pod!" Is it about the music or is it about the player? Now, i dont agree with people getting mugged, but....

2. the latest in book to be seen reading on the tube is...some "bill bryson book", famous past culprits Harry Potter (come on grown-ups, there are far better books out there to read..oh sorry, is it "cool" to read it?...my apologies), white teeth, brick lane, lord of the rings (to coincide with the films) and more recently, The da vinci code (boy, i am so tempted to tell some twat the ending and just walk off!). i dont hate on readers, but can you really call an adult reading harry potter a 'serious' reader...dicks.

3. Im sitting on a train home and all i want to do is chill and read the paper. I have to be disturbed by some biatch, who talks deliberately loudly so everyone on the carriage knows that HER baby was on the "Baby left, baby right" competition on TFI Friday back in the day. Who cares woman, go home and look after that baby, instead of mouthing off some facts about how you used to work with Chris Evans...Does that make you slightly better than those who weren't as fortunate enough to have worked with the ginger alkie? No.

peace

Please

If you leave that mobile phone on your desk and piss off to a meeting once more, I'll stick it down your throat. At least have the decency to mute it so that I don't have to sit here listening to your hilarious ringtone, of which you're clearly proud, all fucking afternoon. Thanks.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Hate Haters

"My anger, I accept, is not really the fault of the bloke at the call centre: it's mine, for being too rushed, anxious and selfish."

Eh, no. FUCK THAT.

Call centres are an orgy of hatred. The call centre guy hates his job, I hate the call centre guy, and we both hate the entire shit-eating human race for evolving into a species that feels the need for fucking call centres in the first place.

So don't be cutting the call centre guy any slack, lady, because you know for damn sure that after he's through with your call he doesn't reprimand himself for his brusqueness, no sir. Maybe when he’s lying there dying an agonizing death from bowel cancer he might re-examine his rotten existence in a terrifying moment of completely unwelcome self-awareness, sure. But that probably won’t happen until many years after he places that black flag on your account and changes your address to 21 Cunt Street. Not because he didn’t have his coffee that morning. Not because he was feeling insecure or because his girlfriend left him.

No, it’s because he hates you. And with good fucking reason, too.

Corporation Speak

English is dead. Corporations have stolen and rebranded it.

He says, “Going forward we should sit down and review the ECDs.”

What the fuck are you talking about? Why can’t you just express yourself in plain English? Say what you think, don’t give me this garbage. You’re trying to make up for your shortcomings by inventing words, don’t talk like they do because you think it makes you smarter. Look at my blank face, you are not communicating with me, I’m rejecting you and your pitiful management drivel.

Friday, January 21, 2005

Don't ask, don't even open your mouth

Someone asks, "You busy?" because he feels like he has to as the lift descends and because he can't just keep his trap shut and appreciate silence and because he feels like he should be friendly or at least give the appearance and because he fills his voids with meaningless things and this is another one of those.

Mostly, though, because he has no clue how much I hate him.

How I learned to hate

One of the most profound cinematic experiences for me took place in a Death Star in a galaxy far, far away, but one not unlike our own rotten, ejaculate of stars and planets. It sounds insipid, but so does all attempted profundity. So do blogs and the self-absorbed spermatozoa who write them.

So I'm just gonna get on with it.

I'm 10 years old and I've got a gallon of icy Coke wedged between my legs, swishing and sloshing with each slash of light sabre. It's freezing my seminal vesicle, but I don't notice. I'm seeing the fucking last Star Wars for fuckingever. On a cinema screen. I hardly touch the Coke for fear I'll have to pee. My mom pulls out of her purse a paper grocery bag full of popcorn she made at home and puts it on my knee. She even brought the salt shaker. If you've ever seen a toddler grab his penis when he's excited, that's how I feel. Except I can't feel my penis.

I don't understand the Ewoks, but I'll tolerate them. Luke is fighting the good fight against his father, and this is what I've been waiting for. Their neon swashbuckling is making an awful mess of the place, and again I wonder, as I did two years ago, why would Luke's dad want to kill him so bad? And then the Emperor pulls back his hood, and his face looks like my scrotum probably does. I shift the Coke to the floor. Give in to your hate, give in to it, cries the Emperor. And then Darth Vader looks to Luke, Luke to Vader, Vader to the Emperor. I look to Vader, back to Luke, back to Vader, over to the Emperor who's screaming now about his dark side. Huh. And I get it now. Hate is all around me. My hate. And I can't escape it. Darth Vader wants to kill his son because he fucking hates him! He hates everything! And I'm just- Wow! I know! I totally know, man! And I'm bouncing in my seat like a toddler grabbing his penis.

I cannot wait 'til I get home and I can recreate this!

For a second I think Luke's totally gonna pick up that red sabre and go apeshit with his hate. But he doesn't. His dad kills the Emperor too soon and ruins any chance the world- a world- may have had at becoming honest and redefining its society with hate. That galaxy nearly had it together, and it's so amazingly clear to me now how ours- how we- we've lost our fucking milky way.

I ball my little fists as Luke sobs and whinnies and pleads and falls back on the mushy, gushy feelings that once made him kiss his fucking sister. There goes Vader, the coolest fucking nemesis ever created, dying like a slug in a bowl of beer. God, did you hear him breathe? He even breathed cool! Now he's wearing a bathrobe with his hands steepled, smiling at his kids. I hate him! And I can't tolerate those Ewoks anymore. Little, fucking bears! Who thought little, fucking bears was a good idea? And Han, holding hands with Leia, whining about his feelings. Woody Allen's on Screen 5, asshole. He was better when he was keeping Jabba's beer cold.

God, I hate this fucking movie. And there are no more. Ever. Unless George Lucas decides to cash in someday and make another lot of 'em. He's just the type of fucker who would. And I bet they'll all suck.

I hate my mom for bringing me here. And that guy's walking too slow. Move. Move! Why can't 40 people figure out how to get through a door wide enough for two? Is the concept of a line lost completely? Jesus. Look at all those Oldsmobiles. Those cars suck. People suck. They probably liked that ending. They were George's market. I hate markets. Why is everything marketed? Why am I no one's market? Why can't the bad guys ever win in the movies? Surely I'm not the only kid who wants to see that. Bad guys win in real life all the time, only the magazines call 'em heroes.

Great, now we're home. Mom's gonna make me go straight to bed 'cuz there's school tomorrow. Man. But I'm not gonna get started on that. My brain's wrung dry. But I feel good. Liberated? Yeah, maybe. I guess I don't hate everything. I quite like the catharsis hating's giving me. Except I'll probably hate it eventually, just like I hate everything else.

I wonder if we still hate when we're dead.


Thursday, January 20, 2005

Housework

When I do the dishes my head begins to itch. I get the sweats. And when the dishes clash together or fall over because they're stacked wrong I want to smash my own face off the sink. I normally settle for spitting on the floor after clamping my eyes shut and howling like an animal.

If the hoover flips over when I'm dragging it across the room I normally kick it, hoping to break a toe. And when I try to pick something up that's too large for the hoover to suck up and miss with three or four quick grabs I leave it and go to snarl at myself in the bathroom mirror. Tears of frustration stinging where I clawed at my own incompetent face.

Every morning I wish they were dead

I live in London. It’s a petri dish of petty hatred and niggling frustrations. They merge and begin to fester. And soon they are warm and smelly. After a while they begin to boil and bubble. But the bubbles never pop into an explosion of red-faced havoc because we’re all too fucking reserved. And I’m not even English. You just get infected with it. And you begin to hate yourself too.
Yesterday: A couple walking down a spiral staircase in the tube station near my house, 9am. Busy time of the morning. The escalator is broken. The sign says it will be back in April. Every morning I want to spit at the sign because my monthly pass for this ride places a large downer on my ability to do fun things like drink beer and try to forget my day.
The couple are holding hands! Fuckers! Jesus, it’s a spiral staircase, room for slow people on the left and quick people with some modicum of balance, a group I would consider myself to be a part of, on the right where the steps are thinner. And these fucks are holding hands and grinning at each other. There’s a queue all the way up behind them. I’m too far back to say anything, as if I would, and no-one else bothers. By the time I hit the bottom I’m fucking livid. Ruined my day.
Today: some witch has taken a fold up painter’s stool onto the tube. Rush hour. She takes up about 5 spaces just so she can sit down right in the centre of where every cunt stands and she clearly tries not to look up so she can avoid the squinting eyes and shaking heads of every uncomfortable commuter who’s leaning so as not to stand on her. She’s so fucking unapologetic about it too. When I do catch her eyes there’s a real "and what?" look in there past the vacant 1000 yard "I’ve no fucking idea how annoying I am" stare. I want to fucking cause her pain. I snap. "Sorry, are you injured?" I say expecting a "no" and I was going to say "Well then can you stand because people are really crammed in here…thanks"
Cunt ignores me. I want to kick her face clean off. And then she notices a fat man’s belly is really close to her face and she sighs and frowns because it’s him making her uncomfortable and moves ever so slightly closer to me and my nails are digging into my palms and my teeth are clenched and in my head I am screaming and crying with frustration. I hate her. Whoever she is. I hope she dies. I hope she breaks her back and needs that chair forever. I want to see her helpless in a motorised wheelchair on a platform and go up to her and say "Excuse me, are you injured?" then poke her dead eyes out and help her onto the train.
When I got to my station this morning some fucking whelp stops at the top of the stairs to decide which direction to go, his immense wheelie bag beside him. At the top of the fucking stairs! "MAKE A FUCKING DECISION OR MOVE THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY YOU FUCKING USELESS PRICK" I shout in my head and wait for him to move.

You're here

I hate that you're reading this.