Friday, October 28, 2011

Crushed by Pig Farmers - A Cautionary Halloween Tale

Mr Squeamish here; the man who can't watch an operation and the discussion of women's problems has me running screaming from the room with his hands over his ears singing La-la-la-la-la-la-la, is something of an enigma.

I am, of course, talking about me and my love of real gore. So imagine this: the antithesis of Sweeney Todd standing with a sharp scalpel in my hand poised to mutilate my own body! It's unlikely, but it happened last night...

My finger woes are progressing. The thumb is fine now, if not a wee bit angular at the top; the wart appears to be succumbing to the delights of super glue, but the index finger with its almost microscopic slither of prickle has gone a bit yeeeeugh! On Wednesday, the wife got a needle out and pierced the most likely place on the end of the finger and nothing really happened; a bit of watery stuff popped out and we wrapped it up, hoping to draw anything out. The next day, as I said, it was a bit disappointing. I got a little splodge of pus and what I believed was the offending splinter. I wrapped it up again to be on the safe side and by Friday it had swollen up and looked like someone bigger and heavier than I had swapped forefingers with me. There seemed to be this odd coloured reservoir building under the dark spot where the wife had attacked it with a needle. But you see, the finger has been pulled, pushed, squeezed and generally manhandled for nearly a week, a lot of the pain might be from simple misuse. Nah!

Last night, after the wife went to bed, I decided that I'd check on the wart, so I took off the protective plaster, got the scalpel out and scraped all the dead skin off, looked at what used to be a wart and was satisfied that probably one, maybe two more applications and I'd have my old finger back. I then looked at my finger and got some bizarre idea in my head. I rummaged through a draw and found an old lighter, semi-sterilised the blade and decided that I was going to go in in the same spot as the wife, but this time with a very deadly weapon (I'd only swapped the blade a few days ago and it could cut through wood quite easily at the moment). Despite all my apprehensions, I scraped back the original tiny wound and ignorant of the pain - more from the finger than from the knife - I pierced my flesh in an altogether bigger and less user-friendly way than my dear wife.

Oh my sweet Jesus Hillman Imp Christ! Ever had your stomach do a back flip, turn itself inside out, perform Hamlet in Finnish and then appear on several consecutive episodes of Strictly? No neither has mine, but it did roll about a bit and threaten to give me a repeat performance of my dinner. If the first eruption had been disappointing, the second was infinitely more impressive; we're not talking Exorcist spectacular, but we are talking Monster Boil proportions!

Yellow and red sort of go together as a colour scheme; but there's something slightly unnerving about the combination...

Saturday morning and my index finger is several degrees warmer than rest of my body and it throbs. The new wound has almost disappeared, presumably from the pressure being exerted by the rancid reservoir of junk sitting atop my index finger and I expect that later on; after I've soaked it in the bath for 20 minutes that I will attack the finger again and this time I won't rest until I've fainted!

***

I've been considering a major face lift to my blogs. I'd like to do it now, but I figure as they are essentially diaries of my life then I should at least keep a style for a year; but the new ideas I have aren't astronomically different from the current stylings; I just have an inclination to get a bit retro.

All will be revealed and no one will care a hoot. Which is exactly how it should be.

***

The iron is back in the fire. I have a date with destiny next Wednesday morning. Fingers crossed peeps; I have a bigger test than normally. I have to try and temper my enthusiasm for just getting out and chatting to different people and channel that into something that sounds like I'm the best equipped person to do this job - and frankly, I think I am, but it's a gamble. More about this when and if and all that.

***

This 'thing' next week has come at a good time. the drugs are working fine and the flatulence has subsided to average levels. Even the wife commented on my seemingly new vigour, doing things (of a non-sexual nature I might add, you filthy minded people) I wouldn't have attempted three weeks ago.

However, with me feeling pretty good at the moment and possibilities on the horizon, the Glass Half Empty me rears his ugly head and says, "Yes, so something is bound to go wrong!"

The bastard!

***

Obviously, I've been skirting round the issue that has me foaming at the mouth more often than I eat vegetables. It is perfectly true that today is a sad day and that tomorrow will be the worst day of the year. Bollocks to this January 24th being the worst day of the year nonsense; tomorrow is the worst fucking day of the year, every year! In fact, this tends to be the worst week of the year; what with fucking GMT, Halloween and that utter cunt of a day/week for allowing people to use incendiary devices wherever and whenever they choose.

What a shit week? Easily solved by doing three things - abolishing GMT, banning anything but organised firework displays, and enforcing a law that if we're going to celebrate fucking Halloween it is not going to embrace the American model and will not become a bloody season like Christmas, Easter or BBQ.

What an utterly shit week.

And don't fucking tell me that the kids love the latter two. I don't care. If your kids want to have fun; have fun with them without disturbing me! I do not want my dogs petrified by loud bangs and I really don't want your fucking little brats knocking on my door and begging. I am not a freak because I didn't choose to have children, therefore I shouldn't be fucking subjected to it. I'm beginning to think that being vegetarian and childless has placed me in the freaks column in terms of my standing in society. We get no breaks, because we choose not to over populate the globe; we use less energy, and most kids love us because we're not like parents. We should be fucking sainted! I should get an extra £100 a week benefits for being such a shining example to saving the planet and acting selfless while others go out there and pop sprogs out like I take a shit! RAH!!!

And breath...

***

While I'm on one...

I was reading... hang on. I was looking at the stats for my blogs and I had a referral from a site I'd never seen before. Clicking on this led me to click on another link and then another and before you know it I was on the website for some County newspaper in Georgia or Minnesota. I really didn't take much notice because I was stunned by the article I'd stumbled upon. It was a newspaper column about anti-abortionists campaigning to have a 17 year old girl and her abortionist prosecuted. There had been picketing around the doctor's clinic, he has lost 40% of his patients, most leaving because of what he did, but many because he's suddenly become 'dangerous' to see.

The girl, who had been repeatedly raped by her grandfather since she was 13, finally fell pregnant to him and she went to the local doctor, who horrified, granted the girl's wish and terminated the pregnancy. A receptionist who belonged to the Loopy Jesus Army of Totally Moronic Opinions found out about it and spread the news, without the details - not that it mattered in the end - and soon the crazies were flocking to shout God sanctioned obscenities at the clinic and the terrified young girl.

The sole basis for these crazies argument is that the life inside the mother isn't responsible for the crimes or misdemeanours perpetrated against the mother, therefore whoever the father is the baby deserves its chance at life.

Do you know what's wrong with that argument? The fact that once she becomes pregnant a mother suddenly loses all of her human rights. She is nothing more than a big food bag for the creature inside her. She has no rights, because they've all been transferred to her inbred child in her stomach.

And we have the audacity to think Muslims are weird or dangerous?

***

I haven't burbled about TV for a while. This is down to the fact that I haven't really had much to moan about, relatively.

However, I will tell you this: don't, whatever you do, watch Once Upon A Time. The alarm bells were ringing immediately because it's made by ABC, who have the reputation once held by Fox in the USA, but I figured Robert Carlyle was in it, so it was worth 42 minutes of my time. Oh no it wasn't!

Let's be kind. Haven could teach it a thing or six about television making.

Fairy tales are simple ideas, yet this poor excuse for a show has made the premise deeply confusing and it's full of 'D'you know, I really couldn't give a shit' performances. They did a poor job of setting the scene, but don't actually tell you what it's going to be about, giving me reason to believe that it's going to be Fairy Tale of the Week, with a different fairy tale character taking centre stage and done in a decidedly un-post-modern way. The only character that comes out of it with any interest is the kid and you just know that by episode three you're going to want him dead and not just in the TV show.

In the end, I felt like I was watching an episode of Haven on some mildly hallucinogenic drugs. It even reminds me a little of Haven in that the lead female character's history is a mystery, which sounds like it could be a line from a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical number - My history is a mystery... cha cha cha.

So far, of the 8 new US shows that deemed worthy of repeat watching American Horror Story is the only guaranteed survivor (and the latest episode, weighing in at 38½ minutes must be the biggest cheat in cable TV history) and Person of Interest has been given a stay of execution on the basis of the first episode being mildly of interest. The rest have gone down the shitter.

Oh, we have Grimm #1 to watch tonight. The odds suggest we should like it. On what basis I'm making this calculation, I know not.

The Fades has been pretty interesting stuff. Roger reckons it goes up its own arse around episode 5, well we have that and the finale to watch tonight, so we'll see.

Switching to film for a bit. We watched Captain America last weekend and I hate to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's good fun and very faithful to a bad original story in a good way.

Back in the 70s, when I was young and little scared me I saw a film called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark with Kim Darby and Timothy Hutton's old man Jim. Watching it again a couple of months ago, I could see why it scared me (and others) first time round, but age had not been kind to it and by halfway through I wanted it to end. Last weekend we watched Guillermo Del Toro and Troy Nixey's remake with someone and Tom Cruise's wife. It looked great. Unfortunately the story is essentially the element that has aged the most. It was ... alright.

***

One of the musical highlights of the year for me has been The Horrors album Skying. It has impressed a lot of people and justifiably so. I'd heard the thing that made this album so good was the fact that the Horrors previous albums had all been shite. This morning I decided to put that to the test.

The answer is conclusive. The Horrors until Skying were worse than shite. It was like having my brain scraped by mutant spiders.

***

Karma only happens to people who look for it.

***

I was thrilled and proud of the fact that my potato snobbery is something that runs in the family. My eldest niece is like me, angry about the utterly shit spud offerings from our supermarkets.

It's your fault! If you were a bit choosier about your potatoes we wouldn't have to suffer bland rubbish white balls of cloth or soup. Try one of the heritage range on offer; see what a better spud tastes like. What we need in this time of strife and uncertainty is a campaign for better potatoes. Damn, I'm going to write to my MP. This is far more important than the fact I can't afford to buy any.

***

As you can probably tell, I'm a little bored. Since the wife started doing full days on Saturday, as overtime, I sort of treat it like a normal weekday, which means that I'm sort of stuck for things to do by the time chores are done. I know, I mentioned this yesterday and probably countless times before, but everything is blurring into one with me at times and the boredom is relentless. At least I'm allowing my brain to work even if it means telling you all about how interesting my boredom really is.

Back in the days when I smoked too much illegal substances, doing nothing was easy. I'd just do nothing. The 1980s were full of nothing with sporadic acts of less nothing. Now time, a thing I get obsessed with, is now, at times a vast chasm and all the things I used to wish I had the time for are hiding in the darkest crevices of my mind. Bloody hell, if I could earn money procrastinating I'd be a millionaire. But... I haven't got anything to do and I feel as though I shouldn't be frivolous yet I sit here and waffle away on a blog.

I'm going to start a small project on Monday, while the weather is still reasonable - by bonfire night it will be like standing under an elephant taking a piss - I'm going to do some border redesigning in the garden. Who says I'm not rock and roll?

Now, do and do something less boring and remember, be careful out there.

1 comment:

  1. I like Halloween, not so much the annoying-little-beggars-at-your-door bit that I could do without, but the have-everyone-round-for-pumpkin-soup-and-a-horror-film-marathon bit. That said, as a childless vegetarian, I'd be happy to take that extra £100 a week.

    Good luck on Wednesday!

    ReplyDelete

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