Waking up the other day, I had a sudden feeling that the world didn’t make sense anymore; there was no structure, no meaning, I felt like I was inhabiting the physical manifestation of a sentence uttered by Donald Trump. I was dazed and confused, there was a pungency to the air, it was if I was inside the head of a mad man, and on top of the bed of someone who had given up on showering years ago. It was my bed, but I was proper perplexed.
It was Friday, I knew that for sure. I could feel it; I am extremely adept at telling when it’s a Friday. I’m known for it. Whenever two people are chatting away about their boring and inconsequential lives, and one says to the other, “ooh I tell you what, it feels like a Friday today”, the other will say “well call Eric and check, because he’ll know.”
There was something up, but I didn’t know what it was yet, I just had some sort of inkling. I thought if anything major had happened, it will be on twitter and that I should check my phone. Sometimes I think we under-appreciate the fact that we can use twitter instantly find out what’s happening in the world. I read recently that twitter is actually struggling to make money, and that’s because providing a platform for people to be mocked and abused, while exploiting their desperate desire to be heard and loved, only really becomes profitable when it’s fronted by Ant and Dec. But awkwardly crowbarred in jokes about social media aside, I decided to take a shower before I found out the source of this mysterious sense of dread. This was mainly because it had been a while since my last shower, and I was worried that I might bump into someone who didn’t know me very well – someone who hasn’t yet realised that my disgusting personality far outweighs the repulsive smell that emanates from my body.
I always spend exactly six minutes and forty-four seconds in the shower as that’s the precise length of the song Stan by Eminem, and I like to listen to it while I’m showering as I discovered a few years ago that I can only really clean my bum cheeks properly if I’m engrossed by a narrative that explores the destruction caused by fame and obsession.The song also has a very special place in my heart as it’s actually what inspired me to get some counselling, to help my ass from bouncin’ off the walls when I get down some.
So six minutes and forty-four seconds after entering the shower, I emerged as clean as a whistle – the kind of whistle that’s just showered with that cheap 2-in-1 shower gel and shampoo that you can buy from WIlko. Finally, bracing myself, I walked over to my phone and checked twitter. It was worse than I thought.
“LEICESTER CITY SACK CLAUDIO RANIERI”
“Football just died,” I dramatically said to the bus driver as I was about to begin my journey to university that day. I had been thinking about saying that line for the whole ten minutes I had spent waiting for the bus, so it really annoyed me that his only response was to ask to see my bus pass. Perhaps he hadn’t heard the news; perhaps he didn’t care. To make myself feel better I constructed a back story for him in my head that justified him being a prick: maybe he was having quite a hard time at home; he was stuck in a loveless marriage and his wife was angry with him because he didn’t buy the potatoes on the way back home last night even though she sent him two texts. So now after spending the night listening to passive aggressive comments and eating fish without chips, he didn’t really feel like making small talk with an absolute chump like me. Fair play.
“Get the potatoes next time mate then maybe you’ll be able to participate in semi-fictitious, humour-driven short stories more effectively,” I thought to myself as I took my seat on the bus.
“Football just died,” I said to the girl sat next to me, trying my luck with the line once more. Again, I received no response.
I lost it.
“What the hell is wrong with you people?! Leicester were 5000-1 to win the league last year. 5000 -1. How can we sit here and just pretend that the world makes any sense when the man who orchestrated the greatest sporting achievement of all time is sat at home watching the fucking Jeremy Kyle show all because the rich want to become even richer? It makes me sick, and I’ll tell you another thing…”
Suddenly I was interrupted by the sound of my phone ringing. I picked it up.
“YES MUM IT’S FRIDAY! NOW IS NOT THE TIME!”
I hung up, and continued my tirade.
“… nobody seems to even care that the world is falling apart. That’s the worst bit. We live in a world where hospitals are closing, the welfare state is being torn apart, people are losing their jobs; the government cuts – and the people bleed. But nah it’s alright for you, because you’ll be alright; it won’t affect you so you can just sit there, staring blankly.”
Finally, she piped up.
“I’m sorry I don’t speak English,” she said, excusing herself, while at the same time directly contradicting her excuse. I didn’t feel like arguing anymore though so I just sat there and watched celebrity lip sync battles on my phone to calm myself down.
When I got off the bus I felt better because I remembered that the reason people didn’t care about Leicester was because football doesn’t matter that much, and, at best, it’s just a little distraction from the fact that we’re all fundamentally alone.
Anyway, that’s about it.
Cya x
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