Land of Diskgrinder

Up the fucking motorway one two many times this month. Leave at shit o'clock in the morning in the polluter (new name for van) when it is dark and cold and cold and dark. Get there, then spend hours measured in least remembered minutes in a bright office. Looking at people. Wondering if they have an inner life (of course they do) or are they just wallpaper (of course they're not). I do the thing with work, one pointless thing after another, with both joy and dedication (who are sisters if you believe Christians). Then I eat stuff burnt in the subsidised canteen. Then I do more worky work. With diagrams . With bullet points. And I say some stuff which gets listened to ("I'm going to have a piss now") and other stuff that doesn't ("I hate you, I hate you, is that a doughnut?"). Then I'm back in the van, where first I smoke a cigarette, and then I turn the key in the ignition and the fucking oil light blinks, so I ignore that harbinger of ...

That's about it for me, I've done nearly 14,000 tweets on twitter since I joined in 2006, every one a finely sculpted insight into my inner turmoil (not interesting), love of wordage (slightly interesting), ability to swear and ANGER (interesting). Now I'm bored. I'm bored by the ironic hipster slant it's taken, bored by the "ho ho, I'm banal, did you get what I did there?" slackly sardonic schtick. There's some I'd like to keep in touch with, but most of them have graduated to long-form, realising the one shouting to many not listening protocol isn't great for correspondence that isn't designed for public consumption, and DM is just crap email. Also, I've run out of bon mots, the bon mot mine is tapped out, no longer a mot that's bon is to be found in the seam (in fact I may have cut a sewer whilst digging). So that's it bar the occasional "I've just ate a sandwich" tweet, or some 140 character diatribe o...

You'll think it's ok, and you'll smile a bit Then it'll turn out to be between the longwave stations on the dial Howling feedback saying this: Rockets were meant to be silver Jetpacks on jumpsuits for eveyone And it could have happened But for the (just as crap as you and I) investment fucks

See here: . See, I know it's fairly crap. But some of it is ok. And some of it I should delete immediately (and some wakes me up in the tiny hours, to flail down the stairs and delete, delete, like a psychopathic cyberman) But sometimes I'll just leave it, so when I am grey and old (now, really) I can look back at it and smile a bit (and wince, clearly). Still, fuck it, it's good enough for me, and that's enough.

That's a conundrum. I can't sit down for five minutes, but I can think for ten. I can't talk to anyone without getting irritated because my skin is hot and itchy. But I can say "hello" nicely. I can't make dinner, but I can make a cup of tea. I can't watch TV but I can read twitter. Seems this illness breaks time into small chunks; quanta of attention. If it takes longer than five minutes, I will have to stand up, frown, and walk around a bit. Took me an hour to write this. That's a symptom too.

They, in their suburban redoubt, tear strips off each other, and this is no good as it reduces both to stinging viscera exposed in the central heating. There's blood on the floor, and lung on the countertop (that's granite). There's little barbs that accumulate. There's snide asides that hide the welter of halted say that's not true, fuck you. And as the light is off, the bulb needs replacing, there's the click of cliché to say it's all true. And then there's nothing.

I'm 43, white, male. And yet still I come up against situations for which I have no easy answer. This is unfair. Surely all my hurdles should have been cleared by the age of 12? No, that's right, didn't go to public school, therefore don't have the cultural entitlement thing going on. Therefore explained. Sorry I wasted your time.

I am in the throes (and throws) of giving up smoking (again), and apart from occasional and avoidable relapses it's going ok. Probably the most difficult thing I'm going to do this year, except for the yoga (and that's only so I can learn to kiss my own elbows, nice elbows). So, there's not going to be much from me now for a while, until I get that more-oxygen-in-my-bloodstream buzz, so I'm practically levitating with energy. Plus, the ability to burn things at a distance with my eyes. Feel like I've got lasers in them already. I've been dribbling on twitter a bit, just to keep my finger in. And I'll be posing daily photo diary of my battle with the weed here . Enjoy! I know I won't.

There's this thing that Carlos Castenada would shit on about: self importance. It's where you think everything you hear, or read, or see, is somehow related to you. In this respect, it's a less fundamental reading of solipsism (in that it's not as up its own fundament). Unlike this post, this post is completely not about you. And there's the paradox (the soap powder that washes blacker), related to Epimenides' thing: what I just wrote was true; but reading it makes it false for the few that do. "You won't read this," is more true than it isn't for the majority. Really, this isn't about you, it's about seven o'clock.

I have this weapon of mass banjo.

Well fuck off, if you don't believe me, I have this hat to make out of tiny ants, so I can't be (any more) disturbed.

Private, but well-meant nonetheless. Worst moment - in the late seventies, whilst pulling weeds from a shit-leaved hedge I heard for the first time the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy . And I, impressionable youth, was ardently besotted. And then, 30 years later, I was in summer weed pulling mode in my fucked up garden and heard the R4 report of Douglas Adams' death. I was completely, and unexpectedly, undone. Hadn't realised how close I had followed my geek life with the continuing 42. Ah, me - as my great great aunt would say, so well and moving - that's me there, hanging on the minutes of someone else's idea.

If I get any balder, and if I get any bearder. But that day is not soon. I will not unconsciously grow beard one night whilst losing most head hair, like a balaclava with one too many holes in it. No! Instead I will have no hair above the collar, excluding eyebrows (else how can I scowl, at which I am good at)? This is what personal blogs is about: the searing introspection of personal dilemmas (two of them running off a cliff) writ little in Courier. Bald vs. Moustache without looking like a clone - I will return to this important topic once the presidential elections are done (as a democrat in the whitehouse affects face hair choice, as I think you all accept).

I am not happy with the turn of events. I get frustrated with stupidity (my own mainly, but other people's more). That's why I look like this: I am not meant to be easy-going.

Having looked at correspondence recorded, and remembering conversations unrecorded, and basically looking up my own arse from three years distant: I now realise 2005 was pretty much fucked from stem to stern. 2006 was less fucked, but still fucked. 2007 worked out ok, but in unexpected ways. 2008, what little grey of it has passed so far, is fairly ok; but in that inoffensive, piss poor way. I refer you to due recompense . Sometimes I think I should lay the blame squarely, as circularly is difficult to say, at me. Other times I think, no, fuck it, it's all your fault .

Growing up as a lower middle class thing in a town full of perfect-skinned public school boys and girls made me realise that I was a lesser being.

Just realised my blog (this one) has taken a rather dark turn. That's odd as I am mostly a person: if you saw me in a park, not at night, you might not hide your children. Diskgrinder will visit you one day, just turn up at your door, with wilted flowers and a sideways smile. I just ate your gardenias, but I'm still hungry.

I was in my big old T25 camper van with the mirrored windows, and I pulled into one of the reserved child bays, a place close to the entrance with yellow vector drawings of push chairs drawn on, and I had my three small boys in the back, variously shouting, grumping and crying. And as I put the hand brake on, and turned the engine off (the only example of male multitasking), I saw out of the corner of my eye, an angry shopper standing there. "You know this bay is reserved for cars with children, right?" he said. "You got me," I said, "these three back here are midgets."