Donkey Rhubarb

Bored.

Bored.

Boooooooored!!!!

Last year, when I was off work for 3 months (before, during and after my shoulder operation), I got really really bored. The main reason was that I couldn't sit and type for more than 10 minutes without it really hurting. So, subsequently, I ended up spending a lot of time fucking about on pointless Facebook applications. I became a dab hand at Texas Holdem Poker, Wordscraper and various other utterly life consuming pieces of shite. If there's one thing I like to do it's write and it was very frustrating because despite having a lot of inspiration, writing wasn't a realistic way of breaking up the boredom.

This current bout of back related shenanigans has the added wrinkle of not allowing me to sit for very long without intense pain. So, while I could quite easily sit at the keyboard (have I said how much I hate this new keyboard?) all day and all of the night and churn out reams of what I laughingly call my thoughts and opinions, I can't because... blah blah blah. Broken records; load of old bollocks, blah blah blah...

I'm not very happy either. Can you tell?

I decided the other day to watch some of the films I have on DVD. I figured the best place to start would be Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong. It has been 5 years since I saw it and I wanted some monster action. The film is 201 minutes long - or 3 hours and 21 minutes if you need it working out for you. It actually took me a little over 6 hours to watch it. That was because I had to pause the fucking thing every 30 minutes or so because it was getting too uncomfortable to sit and watch it.

I've been happily downloading Sci-Fi and monster movies from the last 60 years, to keep me occupied over the next four weeks. I have a cornucopia of shite to plough my way through. These include: When Worlds Collide, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, X the Unknown, Blood on Satan's Claw, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Them, Earth vs Flying Saucers, plus a couple of movies that I've hankered for nostalgically: Man of a Thousand Faces, Belleville Rendezvous, and Solaris; plus I've also downloaded Larry Clark's Kids and Harmony Korine's Gummo (mainly because I have this thing for Chloe Sevigny). So, as you can see, I have a fair bunch of stuff to work my way through. The problem is, I just can't face the prospect of it taking me best part of a day to watch each of them. I mean, some of them are likely to be a load of shit...

And that appears to be my problem at the moment. Without sounding like I'm fishing for sympathy, I think I'm hurtling towards a state of depression. The doctor said yesterday that having constant pain and getting no relief from it at all has a debilitating effect on the human psyche and by God wasn't she right.

Do you know, the only time in the last 3 weeks I haven't been hurting was on Tuesday night after the pub quiz - four pints of beer on top of opiate-stuffed painkillers and for the first time in what seems like a lifetime it stopped hurting. I even allowed myself a spark of optimism; could this be the end of my pain?

People wonder why I'm such a die hard pessimist. Well, this is the reason. That brief moment of joy I experienced was tempered last night by my complete inability to get to sleep because my hip and groin were screaming at me, in unison. I could not get comfortable; I could sleep. I couldn't think straight and I even contemplated taking more of my painkillers and downing the half bottle of Polish vodka I have in the shed... If I'd passed out or overdosed at least I would have escaped this for either a while or forever...

Anyhow, the doctor has upped my dosage of oxycodone; what were simple horse tranquillisers are now strong enough to make elephants party; but I have to wait for them. The chemist won't take delivery of them until tomorrow because I appear to be the only person in the country who has ever been prescribed them.

Is it possible that misery breeds misery? During my excursions away from the PC during the writing of this all I seem to be able to think about are events in my past where upset and grief have been at the forefront. I know the human mind has a habit of remembering shit far better than it does sugar, but it hardly seems fair.

I've considered changing the name of this blog to "A Glass Half Empty" or possibly, "The Diary of a Completely Miserable Bastard".

Also, don't be fooled by the new album by The Orb with David Gilmour. It is 90 minutes of music of which 87 of them could be flushed down the toilet and you'd never notice.

I can't even drive. I wouldn't mind so much if I could squeeze into the car and just go for a drive around the autumn countryside. I haven't driven for 3 weeks and I miss it.

A friend took me out to lunch on Tuesday and all I did was moan. I don't expect I'll be seeing that person again in a while; not unless they want to be dragged down to my current level of misery...

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