Inhale, relax, repeat

Oh what would I do without you, you beautiful, pain-relieving opiate?

So today I got a package delivered to me. I had a couple of CDs I bought off Amazon still to come, so I assumed it was one of them…

Alas, it wasn’t. It was this. I’ve never even heard of the band before, and there was no receipt with it!

Maybe someone sent it to me as a gift? Who knows! Free CD anyway. YAY.

The book in question is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. I find autism fascinating, and out of everything I am interested in about the human mind, autism is right up at the top. When I come to doing the dissertation for my psychology degree, I am going to try my damnedest to get something relating to autism/social intelligence.

So yeah, this book should have been a real winner for me. But no! It got so much critical acclaim, but I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it for 2 reasons:

1. It’s horribly boring. There are so many parts with boring, detailed descriptions of maths problems and such, and I can’t bear to read it. I understand the author is trying to make his character seem more autistic in doing this, but there’s just so much of it.

2. The protagonist is painfully unrealistic. The book was praised for having a “realistic” portrayal of a teenage guy with autism…but I’m not seeing that realism at all. People with the form of autism he is supposed to have (Asperger’s syndrome) don’t say “and” constantly. The repetition of certain words is ridiculous, and although it’s not all unrealistic, enough is to seriously reduce my enjoyment of the book. With regard to the character’s personality, likes and dislikes…it’s as if the author just thought up some “obvious” autistic traits and decided to give him them all. A love of maths and physics, an obsession with counting, an obsession with listing things. I could go on (but I don’t have an obsession with listing things!).

I haven’t finished it yet, but I will, however…even though it’s boring as hell. I hate not finishing books. This book is most definitely proof to me that critics dunno WTF they’re talking about. Best not take their praise so seriously ever again.

BEST LIVE BAND EVER.

This is a post dedicated to their live performances. I wish my overpriced phone hadn’t had no memory on the night of this gig, because I’d have loved to have captured some of it for myself, but I didn’t, so here are a selection of random live performances. I hope at least someone watches a few of them…you will be impressed.

I can’t believe I have never paid this much attention. I simply just thought “Doctor Who spin-off? Whatever.”. My prejudice was wrong, and I now humbly apologise, because Torchwood is awesome!

So the current run of it is called Children of Earth and is about aliens who make every child on the planet “stop”, and eventually start talking through them/making demands etc. It’s silly, and I laughed at first, but it’s so oddly captivating that I’ve ended up transfixed on it.

I find myself feeling a whole variety of emotions while watching it. Amusement of course is one of them, but I’ve also experienced excitement (hey, aliens taking over the planet are exciting!), frustration, joy and I just shed a few tears at the end of the episode I just watched. This is good stuff, and I don’t care if the critics aren’t big on it. You should all watch it, I say! I think it’s even possible it will replace Heroes as my favorite TV show (though of course, Heroes got shit fast. I haven’t got past episode 3 or 4 of the latest season of it).

I just woke up from a horrific dream (well, 10 minutes ago now) and I’m still recovering from the terror phase. “Jesus Christ” was all I could think upon waking up, along with “fuck”.

At first I was in some ticket office looking to buy tickets to a theme park…then randomly I was walking along a country road brushing my teeth, thinking about how I’d love to live in the country (IRL I never would). Lots of people were passing me and my mouth started foaming over/when I tried to spit it just kept refilling, so they started insulting me and mocking me. Suddenly I kept thinking about a man who was part skeleton (only existed in the dream, thank God).

When I got to my destination, an old school, I went to go in a class and the man started attacking me. He was in the form on a skeletal arm stuck to the door, and his head was somewhere else. He was screaming at me, saying “DO YOU THINK IT’S FUNNY?” and he wouldn’t stop. …Then I woke up.

Scared. :””(

Seriously. I know it’s only 9.30, but they have some sort of toy they keep setting off and it’s so loud, and mixed with their hideously squeaky voices it just becomes super aggravating.

What puzzles me is that the kids next door are 13 and 15. Well, I say they are next door…their grandmother lives next door (the grandfather did too, but he died a few years ago. :”’() and the kids are always pushed onto her to look after. Their mother is a crazy bitch and enjoys parking her car in the way of our driveway. Maybe the annoying children drove her to this TOTAL INSANITY.

I’m not sure where this post is going, but I’ll just go with the flow. I’m starved for attention these days.

So yeah, back to discussing the neighbours. The woman next door has two children as far as I’m aware. One is the crazy bitch and one seems to be a 45 year old virgin. (I assume, I don’t know anything about him. Yes, I’m a bitch.) The children, therefore, are definitely not his, therefore must be the 13 and 15 year old. How many 13 and 15 year olds run about their grandparents’ gardens playing!? THIS MAKES ME EVEN ANGRIER. They should be getting high and having sex like the kids seem to enjoy doing these days. Or maybe they should be doing what I did when I was their age…playing with beanie babies and obsessing over Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast. ANYTHING. I just don’t want them screaming about the garden.

Of course, this makes me wonder just how deathly annoying I was when I was younger. I loved playing in the garden. We had a swing and a slide and a sandbox and a paddling pool (God, I’m sounding like the poorly characterised autistic guy from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night here) and lots of other stuff. I was in the garden constantly from as soon as Spring came ’til the end of Autumn. Being a child, naturally I wasn’t massively aware of the world around me…so I am sorry to say that I must have, therefore, created my fair share of noise. I had a cap gun I used to love playing with too (though I feared it and held it as far away from my face as possible, as my father told me I could deafen myself with it), which would have created a nice and horrifying din for our neighbours.

When I was a young child we had neighbours with “children” who were about the same age as I am now. Perhaps they sat in their rooms writing into their diaries (let’s remember, no blogs way back in those days!) about the fucking annoying brats next door. I’ll never know. I guess I’m a hypocrite either way.

I miss those days. Jumping into the range of a sprinkler these days just makes me cold and wet. Why wasn’t it cold when I was younger? Th same goes for the sea. I remember running into the sea as quick as possible as a child, never having to get used to the temperature. It takes me forever now. Maybe the unpleasant memories just fade faster with time.

It’s funny how much fun I had at the beach despite not being able to swim. I adored the beach. I also got emotionally attached to my airbeds. I cried one time when we had to throw one away because it wouldn’t deflate (therefore wouldn’t fit into the suitcase). That was probably the best holiday I ever had. It was only in Spain, but I had such an amazing amount of fun. After being at the beach all day I’d get something to eat then go to the hotel pool until it got dark. Everyone seemed to bore of the pool by about 5pm, so I had free roam of it.

The other thing about that particular holiday that stands out is the craze of the time…VIRTUAL PETS. When I went I already had one virtual pet. It was called Bobo and was a little anal dog that insisted on having it’s food exactly at 5pm every day and going to bed exactly at 11pm every day. Bobo liked schedule, and as fun as he was, I wanted something different…and I sure got that!

I remember buying three virtual pets during my stay, but I only recall details of two of them. The first was a total rip-off of the Nanopet, which was close behind the good old Tamagotchi in popularity. I enjoyed this one very much…until one day, during this holiday, I went to have a bath and told my sister to look after it. 20 minutes later she comes running to me showing me it had died. :”(

The second one I remember is the best. I got it at some odd market in the town. It was supposed to be a cat, but when I turned it on it seemed to be a hexagon with eyes. No matter…it would grow into a cat eventually.

The problem with the hexagon with eyes wasn’t it’s appearance…it was how to keep it alive. Every time you did something for it, it would go through an odd sequence of Chinese letters, and it would either change, stay the same or die. Thing was, deciding to clean up pee instead of poop would cause it to die. It got to the point where the thing horrified me. I kept it going, but I felt so nervous with it. I WAS A WREAK.

Virtual pets were hilarious come school time. By primary 6 I had about a dozen of them, as did my sister, and because we weren’t allowed them in school, we left them at home for our parents to look after. They knew we’d be way too upset if one died, so they got pretty stressed out looking after the 12 little bastards. They probably neglected our real live cat for them.

But I’m gibbering just a little, aren’t I? You know what though? THE CHILDREN NEXT DOOR HAVE SHUT UP. HALLELUJAH!!

This blog has been really boring recently. I have nothing to talk about and feel as uninspired as British food.

So yeah, SORRY FOR BEING DULL, folks.

Pretty much all I’ve ate over the past few days is senbei (Japanese rice crackers). I guess I have a thing for seaweed at the moment.

Still, a week ago I was going whole days on a smoothie or something. PROGRESS. Only a few weeks left on this drug now. I will welcome my appetite back with open arms.