Send via SMS

29.1.05

Secrets Of Quitting Smoking...Revealed!

"Trailers for sale or rent. Rooms to let - fifty cents. No phone, no pool, no pets. I ain’t got no cigarettes."

That's right. I, Michael O'Mahony, am back to inform and entertain my readers with the second in an apparently infinite series of helpful and informative posts in which I share my many mighty achievements and explain how you, John (or Jenn, seeing as that's everybody's bloody name) Q. Blogsurfer, can follow my example to a rich and fulfilling lifestyle.

As the author of the well known NHS pamphlet That's Your Fucking LUNG? Jesus!, and a reformed smoker of some 40,320 minutes, I feel well qualified to share with you some of my insights on how the average person can sever the filthy, plague-ridden ties that bind them to the demon nicotine...FOREVER.

Go It Alone: Unfortunately, the government of the land where I make my home is not as serious about stamping out smoking as the speeches of its leaders would have us believe. If it was, I feel somehow sure that patches, gum, and inhalers would be readily available to the general populous at no cost. Of course, it is possible to obtain them at reduced cost, but only by attending one of the clinics that make up part of the government's anti-smoking initiative, where you can receive such helpful and encouraging advice as "stop smoking" and "it's bad for you".

Of course, any smoker whose brain hasn't completely DROWNED in TAR will know that the governments of most major western countries have strong connections to the fearsome beast known as Big Tobacco. They will also be aware that the monstrously high 'conscience' tax levied on cigarettes makes up a significant percentage of the money Tony and George spend on the Doom Machines they send to the other side of the world, where many people of Muslim extraction are crushed beneath their giant wheels because somebody looked at somebody else the wrong way about 400 years ago.

So it isn't just you you're killing with your habit, and it isn't just the people that have to pass through the mushroom cloud of yellow death that surrounds you at all times. No, you have also financed the murder of millions of innocent people and ruined the lives of many more. And on a personal note, I also blame you for Pop Idol.

Bottom line, the government doesn't really want you to quit smoking, and therefore the methods it promotes are highly suspect. Though going it alone is hard, I assure that all the statistics you have been fed are wrong. It's the only way.

The Turkey Of Icy Darkness: Aye, 'tis a cold and evil bird, for all its stumbling innocence and cunningly crafted association with Christmas. As you will discover when you attempt to quit smoking without assistance, the Turkey Of Icy Darkness preys on those of us with the strength to free ourselves from the bondage of addiction. You MUST fight, though, and with my help, you WILL win. I shall describe some of the the Turkey's most cunning tricks below, and then tell you how each may be counteracted.

Direct Your Cravings Elsewhere: The most important time in your new life as a non-smoker is the first few days. During these endless, agonising hours, your personal Turkey of Icy Darkness, or TID, will be sitting on your shoulder at all times, making harsh gobbling noises in your ear and occasionally pecking your skull. You must distract yourself from these assaults by steering your nicotine cravings in a new direction. Cadbury's Creme Eggs, pears, and PCP are all acceptable substitutes.

Unleash Hell: Before I quit smoking, many people told me that the process sometimes made one listless and cranky. This was untrue. Four days after my last cigarette, I had to flee the local authorities after a small boy asked me the time and I responded by punching him in the side of the head and then throwing him through the windshield of a parked car. Later that same week, I killed my neighbour's dog by hurling a sword at it from my bedroom window. These acts, though clearly illegal, temporarily alleviated the pressures of quitting, and lead me to recommend bad language, violence, and even murder throughout the early stages of your life without cigarettes.

Think Of The Children: When giving up smoking, you are giving birth to a new you. In fact, there are many things that quitting has in common with pregnancy; you'll develop odd cravings, a swollen belly, and moods that nobody understands. It is important that you take this metaphor seriously and think of the person you will be when you are free of your cravings as a kind of giant baby growing inside you. Your TID, somewhat obviously, is a backstreet abortionist wielding the twisted coathanger of relapse. It is your duty not to let it force your ankles into the stirrups of temptation.

Do Not Be A TID-Magnet: Your TID will be attracted by routine. In other words, your cravings will be strongest at those times when the old, rubbish you would always have had a cigarette. If your TID comes first thing in the morning, after meals, and when you finish masturbating over Lindsay Lohan, try sleeping in the daytime, not eating, and fantasising about Bono. Confuse and frighten your TID - it will soon be bothering some other poor fool.

Give Up Your Life: Now that you've overcome your cravings, it's time to start thinking long-term. You see, simply changing your routine isn't enough. It isn't even close. You must now look to eradicate nicotine from your life completely. That means ditching your friends, family, and job. After all, when it comes to addiction, you can never be too careful. I now live in a small warren on the outskirts of Somerset, have virtually no human contact, and subsist on a diet of worms and rabbit shit. I've never been happier.

The road to a new you is long and dark and sometimes frightening. There will be times when it seems as though you're stuck behind a tractor travelling at two miles an hour, and times when you feel like that hitch-hiker you just picked up has really strange, starey eyes. Some of you will make it, some of you won't. For those left by the wayside, I have one last piece of advice you'd do well to remember...

They don't tax Crack.

27.1.05

Curse You, Coffee Republic

"I like it when people use each other. It's one of the only instances they get to the truth for any sustained period of time."

Wednesday started badly. It started, in fact, at nearly two in the morning, when I found myself stomping around the kitchen, wrestling manfully with the childproof cap on a bottle of Night Nurse. I had to be up and at 'em by six, and sleep was not planning on paying me a friendly visit. It was frustration and desperation, the next best thing to simply lowering my head and charging at the nearest wall like an enraged bull. Yes, I was going to medicine myself into unconsciousness. But only if my tired mind could figure out how to open the cap on a bottle of medicine used so infrequently that the syrupy liquid within had congealed around the top, rendering it nigh on impossible to negotiate the childproofing.

I got there in the end. I got to sleep, too, but not until nearly three in the morning. Needless to say, I did not exactly spring from my bed like a gazelle when my alarm went off several hours later. No, my first movements were closer to those of an elderly slug on valium, and my first words like the wailing of the undead. I crawled across the landing to the bathroom and managed to get up onto my knees for long enough to switch on a harsh light that burned my eyes and set fire to the cobwebs that filled my mouth and lay like a shroud over my mind. Like Willem Defoe in Platoon, I raised my hands and face heavenward in a gesture of surrender and supplication. I may even have screamed in agony and horror. It was going to be another one of those days...

Right. And I have neither the time nor the patience to twist my entire Wednesday into another one of the strange tales I keep throwing up on here lately. It's too long and dull, and the only really entertaining part of the whole experience was when I scalded my tongue with a tall cappuccino from Coffee Republic. I still can't taste anything.

Anyway, the reason I was up at such a hideous hour was to travel across London in order to take part in an 'assessment day' for a fairly large company in the home entertainment business with a name I'm not going to mention for the time being. The idea was for them to learn a little bit about the candidates and vice versa. Amusingly, the 'assessment' consisted of a short written exercise demonstrating how we would prioritise tasks in a typical day spent managing a store for this company. This was followed by a group discussion in a sort of roleplaying scenario, where we had to pretend we were a committee responsible for rescuing a group of people in extreme peril from down a big hole. After that, your common or garden interview.

I think it went okay. Apart from having to demonstrate the hideousness that is my handwriting in part one, there was nothing that really troubled me. I quickly made myself chairperson in the group discussion (to the obvious horror of the other candidates), and I could do one-on-one interviews for a living. So here's hoping. I wouldn't say I have a burning desire to work for these people, and I wouldn't say it was a spectacularly good job, but if I get it I'll have a little more autonomy and a lot more money than I have had, and that's a good thing.

Not much else going on at the moment. Jennifer's gone home, which sucks, but she may be back sooner than I thought, which rules. I'm (hopefully) going to see Henry Rollins do spoken word in Hammersmith on Saturday. That particular evening will also mark the four week anniversary of the last time I smoked.

Now, if I can only free myself from the grip of this terrifying financial crisis, all will be well.

23.1.05

Departure

"Everybody is young forever. There's so much to tell you, so little time."

Goodbye should never leave such a sweet, clean taste in the mouth. All those movie kisses seem bitter and resentful by contrast, and that sunset doomed lovers walk into blood-red as the light washing up against frail, tender skin, trying to pry loose lashes locked like clutching fingers. Nothing so doomed here, nothing so desperate. He opens his eyes to see present and future, imagines these realities rippling the thin film stretched from upper to lower lid, piercing like a needle, injecting reality into the black centres of each glistening grey-blue pool. Colour swells and darkness recedes.

Nothing is so transient as a metropolitan airport. A disembodied voice, female in gender but empty of inflection, plays monotone solo over the humming, clattering nonsense of a rhythm section that changes by the minute. A man is agitated, a girl is laughing, a baby is screaming. A suitcase falls from a trolley as an electric cart whines by. Blink and the faces change. Where there is continuity, there is anonymity; uniforms and smooth, clear skin; taut, tied hair and blank smiles; that peculiar language where every sentence carries the can-I-help-you rhythm and timbre.

He feels stupid because he looked back and waved. She was elsewhere, thinking thoughts he no longer shared. The gesture passed her by, passed everyone by, lost all meaning. He'd pivoted a little, still moving away. He'd found her face in the crowd. He'd raised his arm, hand open, palm pushed outward. One, two, three seconds. It felt mechanical, forced, stupid. He was in a bad movie, being played by some washed-up child star.

Still the leading man, though. The fist in his gut is white-knuckled, squeezing out sighs and salt water. He moves against a tide of dead-eyed passengers, overtaking those standing motionless on walkways and escalators, treading carefully on tastefully marbled floors scuffed with age and liver-spotted with gum. He sees the adverts on the walls in his peripheral vision and his TV-conditioned memory fills in the blanks. Monotony in glorious widescreen.

So tired. So used to being asleep at this time of the day. Yesterday he'd turned over at almost exactly this moment, thrown an arm over her hip and felt her fingers slip between his like a reflex action, as though even in sleep she'd expected him. In her company, he craves intimacy.

He queues and buys a ticket, takes another escalator to another drab level of concrete and steel. These lights suck the life out of everything, dull these bright fashion colours and give a ghostly pallor to all but the most powdered of faces. Everybody looks for the emptiest carriage, the space they can have to themselves. Nobody smiles except when things go wrong, when they can turn to their neighbour and wordlessly wonder what the world is coming to. Eyes roll and thoughts come in the language of tabloid editorials. Yawns Mexican wave up and down the carriage, are carried out onto the platforms and stairs of each new station, to the street and city beyond, to the country and maybe the world.

It hurts to miss her, but he's glad of it. Too many times he has walked away and felt nothing but relief, anticipating the warmth and comfort of boredom as an old and trusted friend to be embraced and held until aches die and unseen bruises fade. He likes that not having her is an open wound. He likes to touch it to check the blood is still fresh.

He bites his nails and watches the scenery go by. He reads the graffiti and looks for familiar tags. He counts the minutes since and the minutes until.

19.1.05

Sun-Blind

"When all is said and done, monotony may after all be the best condition for creation."

Day breaks with violence
and the scream
of a fluorescent blue sky
drags fluid from the eyes,
in thin, trickling,
salty tides
that bring relief
to a beach of inflamed skin

Episodic gazing at the sun
gives the lie to blindness
expressing the wish
of oblivion only
as the psychadelic
imprint of a
white-hot tunnel
where everything ceases.

17.1.05

Correspondence

"She wrote me a letter from San Diego to qualify her luck. These flights connect through Arizona, but I think I'll stay stuck."

In my continuing absence, here's a letter I wrote to Great North Eastern Railways in early 2003. This was the follow-up to a missive I'd penned after losing my ticket on the way home from Whitby and being refused permission to travel on the train, despite the fact that I had proof I'd purchased a ticket and no money to go anywhere else. The first letter was really quite angry but - having received a considered reply from Sue Something-Or-Other in the Customer Service Department - I decided to be a little more subtle with the sequel.

24/4/03

re: Your correspondence of 16/4/03 (ref: 3-330021)

I have to tell you, Sue, I’m getting a little tired of public transport in general and trains specifically. I spent the best part of yesterday afternoon trapped on the Thameslink Thunderbolt from East Croydon to King’s Cross with several screaming children and it hasn’t improved my mood any. Not that this incident had anything to do with you, but it did have an effect on my state of mind when I came home and read your letter. You see, Sue, while I appreciate you taking the time to write to me and sending my letter on to the relevant management team (who, judging by my experience of them thus far, probably held some kind of ritual burning and then danced naked around the ashes), what I was really looking for was some kind of confirmation or clarification of GNER policy vis-à-vis my lost ticket. My experience with the customer service team at York was a bitch, but I got over it. What continues to irk me is the fact that I know there was some way that ticket could have been traced. I may not have had the relevant receipt, but I certainly could have proved both my identity and the fact that a transaction took place. Surely it would have been possible for the booking to be looked up and confirmed. Should you need further proof, I have the receipt that came in the mail with the tickets (ref: 18407410). Hell, if you want me to add the ticket I had to pay for from Newark, I’ll throw that in, too. I have all necessary documentation and won’t hesitate to use it.

But enough of this bickering. What I really wanted to do when I read the ‘further enquiries’ bit at the foot of your missive, was ask you for a copy of GNER’s customer charter. I believe there is one, and I’m sure you have a copy lying around, if only for a cheap laugh after a hard day’s work. Any other customer relations stuff that comes free and might make interesting reading for me would also be gratefully appreciated. I’m interested in this subject, Sue. Just between you and me, I might even write something about it. But don’t worry, I’ll keep your good name out of the papers.

Let me know if you want those receipts. In the meantime, I remain

Your Humble Servant,
Michael O’Mahony

15.1.05

The Teeth Room

"The dream that I had was a dream in a waking world, just a dream that I had in my dreaming world, that I had was a dream in a waking world, and it's a waking world."

No proper entry tonight, as Jennifer is arriving at Heathrow in the morning and I need to get some sleep. I've spent most of today clearing up, and I came across quite a few things that I haven't seen for a while, among them a floppy disk full of the things I wrote while I was in Gaddesden Row, which was where I lived before I came home and started the blog. In lieu of a story from the now, I've decided instead to give you an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my friend Daisy when I first arrived in the quiet, rural village of Gaddesden Row. It was composed on September 28th, 2003.

I chose this particular piece because it's characteristic of the letters I write to Daisy, which are usually rare, lengthy, and at least two parts fiction to one part fact. I don't know quite when this began to happen, but once it had, I was unable to stop one-upping myself, and each missive had to be stranger than the last. Anyway, here's the excerpt.

PS: Service will be sporadic until Sunday the 23rd.

Gaddesden Row sounds like the kind of name you might give a prison block, which is ironic given the general demeanour and habits of its populous. It occupies a short stretch of road between Redbourne and Studham, both of which are major towns by comparison. I walked its entire length the day after I arrived and was struck by the lack of civilisation. There are no streetlights here, and no markings on a road that only ever seems to be used by walkers and cyclists, horses and the occasional boar. At rush hour, it plays host to a procession of battered cars from the eighties.

Later, at the pub, Little Nev told me that only the locals know how to drive these roads properly. The secret, he said, was practice. “Everyone crashes the first time,” he told me, before bending his head to lap hungrily at some bitter he’d spilled on the bar.

Ordinarily I’d have doubted such an outrageous statistic, but something I’d seen on my wanderings seemed to confirm Nev’s claim.

The road down to Cupid Green is perhaps the most treacherous of all. It is barely wide enough for a single car, even a small one; an asphalt rollercoaster of twists and turns and sudden dips. I found myself on it by accident. I’d been walking through the fields that day, pretending to check out the local rambler’s paths while pursuing my secret agenda of boar-hunting, when a group of cows that had been grazing on the far side of a lush and bountiful field suddenly turned and began stumbling towards me. Disturbed by their uncommon state of arousal and unwilling to use the Magnum on creatures that may have belonged to some gin-crazed farmer with ballistic superiority, I decided to make a bid for safety, running swiftly towards a barbed wire fence, which I leapt with impressive agility, barely noticing the flashing lights until it was too late.

Landing amongst the emergency services with the mud of private property caking your trainers and a gun stuffed down the back of your combats is never a happy time, but on this occasion they were too distracted to take much notice of me. A bright green VW Beetle had gone straight on at a vicious and sudden left turn, barrelling straight into a tree that might have been placed with just such an eventuality in mind. You never can tell with the locals. They are old and strange, and I sometimes hear them screaming on the moors at night.

“I’ll go around,” I said to a policeman whose wandering eyes had registered my presence.

“It’s okay,” he replied, with a creepy smile. “Just walk on through. They won’t mind.” He stood aside as he said this, gesturing to the ambulance that stood beside him with its back doors wide open. I caught the briefest of glimpses of its interior; blood and shredded clothes and frantically working paramedics with eyes wild from panic or maybe amphetamines.

“Sweet baby Jesus!” I shrieked, and hurried quickly past, my face averted and my ears ringing with the laughter of the local constabulary.

-----

Most people in Gaddesden Row seem to have some kind of nickname that invariably involves simply prefixing their Christian name with a verb or adjective that sums up their existence in this awful, hopeless way that makes me worry about what they’ll end up calling me. It must be like having your epitaph composed by people who know nothing of you beyond the habits of your social existence. Bacardi Mick, Tandoori Neil, Limping Sid. In Gaddesden Row, and particularly within the confines of The Old Chequers, this is who you are. There is no need of surnames.

Little Nev is so named because he’s short and his name’s Neville. Which is hardly rocket science, but there you go. Personally, I’d have come up with something a wee bit more inventive, but that’s just because I think the man goes far beyond the nickname. Without Little Nev, I’d have never learned as much about the sewage works of the Gaddesden area and the intricacies of wearing false teeth as I ended up finding out on the first few days of my stay here. And believe me, shit like that can keep a man sane.

It started the way these things often do, with Nev having no understanding of my constitution when it comes to bourbon. We were having a male bonding session and the poor guy was sure he could match me drink for drink. Oh, Nev, I remember thinking, you have no idea what strangeness you are willingly allowing into your life.

We started at eight, and by ten he was swaying on his stool, talking gibberish and making lewd suggestions to the girl behind the bar. At half past, he suddenly lurched towards the bathroom, his face draining of colour and his throat working with the effort of keeping down a week’s worth of alcohol.

I have been in this situation many times, and I thought nothing of it until a little while later, when he staggered back with vomit-stained clothes and no teeth, trying desperately to explain what had happened while everyone in the immediate vicinity took cover and tried to hold on to their rising gorges.

False teeth, it turned out, can be something of a curse to the man who finds himself bent over the toilet, puking uncontrollably. Nev’s had quite literally been forced from his mouth and into the bowl, where they’d stayed until - not realising they were there - he’d flushed the mess away.

Which was how we ended up in the car park, crouched over an open manhole with a high-powered torch while the locals laughed at us from the warmth and safety of the pub.

“They’re gone, Nev,” I said finally. “And even if they were here, do you really want to be hauling them out of there? I mean, Christ, you may as well just go and take a bite out of a turd.”

Nev looked at me, said something unintelligible, and then ran for the toilets again.

-----

Officious Woman: "Good morning, Chiltern Sewage Company. Linda speaking."

Michael: "Hi there. I was wondering if you could help me. A friend of mine lost his
false teeth last night. They went into the sewer and we couldn’t find them. Do you have a lost property office or something?"

Linda: "Indeed we do, sir."

Michael: "It should be fairly easy then. I mean, Jesus, I bet you don’t have many sets of teeth there, right?"

Linda: "You’d be surprised, sir."

Michael: "Really?"

Linda: "Oh, yeah. People lose all kinds of weird things in the sink or the toilet."

Michael: "Like what?"

Linda: "Well, we get the usual things, jewellery mostly, weddings rings and the like. Then there’s the weird stuff. We get false teeth, gold teeth, clothes, wallets, mobile phones, personal organisers, butt plugs, dildos, money, drugs…all kinds of sh…stuff."

Michael: "Wow. I’d never even thought about that. Do you have many sets of false teeth?"

Linda: "About three hundred at the moment."

Michael: "How do people identify them?"

Linda: "Search me."

Michael: "Well, I need your address. My friend and I are going to stop by later to see if his teeth are there."

Linda: "No problem. I’ll be here. Its..."

-----

So Nev and I drove the treacherous roads to the Lost Property Office, where Linda, a large woman in her late twenties with huge, empty eyes, greeted us like old friends.

“The Teeth Room is this way,” she said, leading us through a labyrinth of intricate corridors.

“How many people claim things from here?” I asked.

“Not many. Most people simply don’t realise they’ve lost these things. Either that or they wanted to be rid of them.”

“So what happens to all this stuff?”

“We have an auction every three months, but hardly anybody knows about it. The staff come along, and a few members of the local council.”

“And illegal things?”

“We give them to the police or the staff take them,” she said, offering me a crooked smile. “I have quite the collection of Class A drugs and sex toys.”

I glanced at Nev, but he was staring at the plaque on the door Linda had led us to. This was the Teeth room.

“Come on in,” she said.

Teeth without mouths or faces are a worrying thing, as is anything organic and functional when witnessed without context. Just imagine walking into a room full of eyes or noses, or even genitalia.

“Can you see them?” I asked Nev, trying not to look at Linda, who was eyeing me with undisguised lust.

“Maybe,” he replied. But it was clear that he couldn’t. What Nev could see was an opportunity for some free teeth.

Linda and I stood in the doorway, watching as he scanned the shelves, occasionally trying on a set for size.

“Just take whatever feels right,” she said, and laughed loudly, making me jump. “They’ll only be sold on.”

“Who buys them?” I asked her.

“Orthodontists, mainly. But the manager occasionally needs his replacing.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve got a replica of this porn star’s cock. It’s twelve inches long. Cost me two pounds. There was a bidding war.”

I found myself nodding appreciatively. “Bargain,” I said.

So Nev got his teeth and a couple of spare sets and I got a moneybag full of uncut cocaine. I also got Linda’s number. I probably won’t call, but who knows? It’s dull out here in the sticks.

13.1.05

Glam Rock, Perfect Hair, One-Eyed John, And The Honey Monster

"Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly, The Spiders From Mars. He played it left hand, but made it too far, became the special man. Then we were Ziggy's band."

The first thing I see when I walk through the door of the hairdressers is my own face. Which isn't as bad as it could be. I'm still not sleeping very well, but not killing half a bottle of bourbon every night has definitely left me looking a little healthier.

"Are you having hair washed?" asks the foreign lady with the violent hands and the love of scalding hot water.

"I washed it at home," I reply.

I really like having my hair washed, but not Dominatrix-style. A few years back, this place had a girl of around my age who always ran the water at just the right temperature, had a wonderfully gentle touch, and took her sweet time. Now it's any one of a group of brusque, impatient women who order you around in halting, broken English and make sure that if they're not having fun then neither are you.

I give my jacket up to Violent Hands and she practically shoves me in the direction of an empty chair before stomping out of sight. As there's nothing else to look at, I study my reflection and wonder why my nose is a little crooked when I've never broken it, why one eye is slightly larger than the other. Strange how unfamiliar a face I've been wearing my whole life can seem.

The woman who cuts my hair is friendlier now than she used to be. Not friendly enough for me to know her name, but warmer than in the past, when this time we spend in each other's company often passed in sullen silence. That's at least partly my fault for two reasons. First, I'm not usually that chatty with strangers. Second, I didn't actually realise that it was customary to tip your hairdresser until about eight months ago. I'm not kidding. I just didn't know.

I've been having my hair cut here for around nine years. The woman has been here all that time, but she hasn't always been my hairdresser. At a guess, I'd say she's probably cut my hair about thirty times. Only on the last two occasions have we managed a decent conversation.

"How much are we taking off today then?" she asks, offering a smile an expert would probably just about pass as genuine.

"Not too much. Grade two at the sides and back and just tidied up on top." The words I've been saying to hairdressers since I was twenty, the last time I had a hair re-think.

She nods, goes to work. I watch her in the mirror because there's still nothing else to look at and she's more interesting than me. She's late thirties or early forties or maybe older and looking good for her age. Wears flattering clothes and not much make-up and it's a tidy combination, effortless. Her hair's fucking awful, though, a fluffy almost-mullet in shades of false blonde. But then all hairdressers have bad hair. It's written in stone somewhere.

She glances in the mirror and catches me smiling, takes it as a cue to strike up a conversation. We're getting better at this, me and the woman who cuts my hair. We talk about work and the weather and the tsunami and the annual invasion of gypsies our hometown is yet again experiencing. Then she says something that really surprises me.

"Didn't you grow your hair out once?"

I'm sort of surprised and horrified and amused all at the same time, because I did grow my hair out once. It was 1996 and I was singing lead vocals in a sixth form rock band called Agent Cooper. We'd been going a few years by then, and we'd progressed from Eric Clapton and Chuck Berry to Radiohead and Ash to our own compositions. I grew my hair because it seemed right. Like Jack Black but without the irony, I wanted to rock, and rock has long hair.

The fully-haired version of Agent Cooper only made the one appearance, at that year's school Variety Show, where they performed Aeroplane, by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and Perseverance, by Terrorvision. Halfway through the latter track, we added an impromptu version of Queen's We Will Rock You. It was better than it sounds.

That day, my hair was jaw-length. I wore black nail-varnish and lipstick, shades with the letters 'A' and 'C' painted on the lenses, and a half-open black shirt with the words 'Rock Star' scrawled across the front. There were photos taken, but I've no idea where they might be now.

The next day, I had my hair cropped very short. I've never grown it since.

"Yeah, I did," I say to the woman who cuts my hair. "It was awful. I just wanted to try something different. That was a long time ago. I can't believe you remember."

She laughs, genuinely entertained by my reaction. "Didn't you have it in curtains before that?"

"Oh, Christ. Why do you remember that? I had that hair right through my teens."

"It was fashionable at the time."

"I used to plaster my head with gel. There wouldn't be a hair out of place."

I did, too. I had perfect hair. The curtains were combed and styled to within an inch of their lives every morning before school. That was my first real hairstyle, my escape from whatever my mum thought looked good on me, which was usually something horrific and fluffy. I look back now, and I see a boy pouring half a pot of gel into cupped hands each morning as a reaction to a childhood of distressingly big hair. I wanted small hair, tiny hair, miniscule hair. I wanted hair so firm and flat that I could hit my head and not feel it.

One day, outside Chemistry, this girl called Lianne walked up to me and reached out towards my hair. I fancied Lianne like mad, and was starting to suspect that she might like me, too. That day, she didn't actually touch my perfect hair, to do so may have spoiled its beauty. But she let her hand hover close, and she said, "Your hair is always...just right. Never out of place."

And that, friends, was validation.

"I didn't get that done here," I tell the woman who cuts my hair. "That was when I lived in Burnt Oak."

"Did you go to The Clip Joint?"

I actually gasp. "Not for that, but I used to go there when I was a kid. And that guy..."

"...with one eye..."

"...John."

And we're both laughing and she has to take the clippers away from my hair for fear of causing me an injury.

John used to cut my hair when I was very young. He had a glass eye and hair like Peter Stringfellow. A few months ago, I was on a bus that passed through the town I grew up in. I remember passing the tube station and looking at the newsagents beside it and recognising the guy behind the counter. When my parents split up, before my mum remarried, my dad used to pay her maintenance. Every Saturday morning, mum would send me to that newsagents to pay for our week's papers with a fifty pound note. The same man that used to change those fifties, fifteen years ago, was still there. As if that wasn't weird enough, the bus passed The Clip Joint some ten seconds later. I looked out of the other window and there was One-Eyed John and his Peter Stringfellow hair. For a moment, it was like being back in my childhood.

"I had it cut at Michael's, on the broadway," I say.

"Oh, right, by the car place," she replies.

"That's the one. He was responsible for the curtains. It was a woman here who finally ended that nightmare."

But I'm thinking of Michael's, remembering knowing a girl at sixth form who was related to the guy that gave me the curtains, remembering her having this huge and very public break-up with her boyfriend in the common room. She was a pretty girl, a dark-skinned Cypriot who always wore expensive clothes and make-up. The other thing I remember only because of what happened in the common room that day. The Cypriot girl had a lot of facial hair that she disguised, somewhat unfortunately, by bleaching it. This might be effective for the pale-skinned, but her colouring made it look ridiculous. And they were arguing, and everyone was there, and it was getting more heated by the second...and then he said it. It was only two words, and it was one of the most childish insults he could possibly have dreamed up. But when you're sixteen, shit like that matters.

The two words were: "Honey Monster."

I remember silence. I remember a room full of people with dead straight faces. The Cypriot girl stormed out, and the silence continued as we listened to her footsteps clattering down the six flights of stairs and then the door that led outside being slammed closed. And then the room erupted.

Even then, though my lungs hurt from holding in hysterical laughter and my vision was watery with tears, I felt strangely proud of the people that were in the common room that day. Because maybe it wasn't that big of a deal, but I knew, we all knew, that if one person laughed we would all laugh, and if we all laughed, we'd never see her again.

I talk a little more with the woman who cuts my hair, but the conversation veers off in a new direction, leaving at least half of my mind trailing in its wake, a little stunned at just how many connections I can draw from a certain style or a certain hairdresser, making me recall things I hadn't thought about in years. It's the kind of stuff I feed off as a writer; characters like One-Eyed John, incidents like the dark-skinned girl with the bleached facial hair, memories of believing it was cool to look like I was in a T-Rex tribute band. Funny where inspiration comes from sometimes.

Feeling Human Again

"All I want is harmony, like some outmoded sixties throwback. I don’t feel no destiny, you make your own luck if you want it. Now I don’t regret a single day."

Ten days since resolutions, three until Jennifer. I crested the wave yesterday, and I've felt comfortable ever since. I'm not free of cigarettes, not by any means, but I'm definitely not feeling that awful physical pull anymore, that need. I've also stopped having to chew gum every hour of the day, and I am free from the tyranny of jaw-ache. Seriously, in ten days I got through exactly 108 pieces of Wrigley's Extra.

So stage one - the staying home, lying in bed chewing and moaning stage, is over. Stage two - the going cycling every day, exercising in the evening, and just generally being HEALTH MAN stage, began yesterday. It will not last forever. I am not built that way. But it'll last until I feel human again.

You know, I do feel different. Sure, quitting smoking and staying off the booze for a reasonable period of time has given me a little jump-start, but that's not all of it. I've been trying to find a way to put this into words that don't read like something from one of those self-help manuals, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do it, but I feel very calm. Ever since my twenty-fifth birthday, I've had this sense of impending doom, this feeling that I was in a rut only my writing could get me out of. I didn't want a secure job or the attentions of my family and friends, and I certainly didn't want a girlfriend. I wanted to be left alone to write.

And drink, and smoke.

My motivations for that are a little confusing, even to me. On the one hand, I enjoy my own company and I do need a little Michael-time for my writing. But on the other, I can be my own worst enemy. Left to my own devices, I'll eventually get to thinking too much and feeling too much and needing something to ease the pain a little, usually my old pals Mr. Marlboro and Mr. Jack. And the more time I spend by myself, the worse it tends to get. Between you guys and me, I was getting through 3-4 bottles of bourbon and something like 200 cigarettes a week after I quit my job at the carvery. Not the deepest trough of alcohol, nicotine, and frustration there's ever been, but not a Darkened Room full of joy either.

I found it near impossible to quit before because I didn't have any real reason to. I'm not what you'd call a suicide case, but I have a problem summoning up the necessary energy to care sometimes. So I never really gave a shit about the state of my body or the possibility of cancer, which, as I've mentioned, is not uncommon down one side of my family.

The slap to the face wasn't communicating with Jennifer and getting to know her, nor was it flying halfway across the world to meet her. No, the slap came a couple of weeks after I got back. I was lying on my bed, listening to my music as I often do. I think I was daydreaming about Jenn anyway, though I don't really remember. What I do recall is being very suddenly struck by possibility, by the sheer size of that one word. It was almost like realising there was another person I could be, another path I could take. Life's always about choices and about making your own way, but up until that point, I'd never come up against such a black-and-white decision. There was another future besides the one I'd been so content to brood on in my smoke-filled bedroom. This one would involve some work and some sacrifices, but at the end of the journey, I might actually have something to show for it other than bitter recrimination and words I write because I need to, because I can't not write them.

I'm not talking about destinies and happy endings. I'm both a realist and a terminal cynic, and I don't have time for 'life is what you make it'. That's bullshit. But I do believe that I can be who I choose to be, and I think I'll remember 2005 as the year I decided to be somebody else, somebody who, when confronted with living and dying, made a decisive choice instead of sitting around and waiting to see which happened first.

That's why I'm so confident that I won't be going to back to cigarettes and that I'll never sit in this room and drink by myself again. I'm aiming at something, and these are just the first few steps on what might be a long road. I don't intend to stumble, certainly not when I've barely started, and that perspective makes the whole issue of bringing change to my life seem all the easier. I can do this. I'm doing this.

And for that, for possibility, there's something I need to say.

Thank you, Jennifer.

10.1.05

Professional Cynic

"I was born as a pantomine horse, ugly as the sun when he falls to the floor. I was cut from the wreckage one day, this is what I get for being that way."

So I was filling out a survey at this community I'm a member of. It was a 'Best And Worst Of 2004' affair, and concerned movies, TV, and music. It got me thinking about how popular culture seems to be getting ever more shallow with each passing year, and I got to wondering if this was actually the case or whether I was just growing up and becoming even more cynical.

The most recent movie that I genuinely enjoyed and spent time thinking about after it was over was Igby Goes Down, which came out in 2002. There were a few films I saw last year that I liked, but nothing that'll stay with me, nothing that had any real impact. Music's the same. I happen to think the likes of The Killers and The Delays are just really, really average rock and roll bands with nothing distinctive or exciting about them whatsoever. They're just dull. As for TV, well, I was thinking about sharing some of my thoughts about that particular medium, but I decided it might be better to let one of my survey answers do it for me...

Which 2004 TV show are you most glad to see the back of?
Sex And The City. Bye bye, vapid thirty-something role models for a generation of fucking retards. Enjoy the rest of your career doing commercials for the menopause magazines. Sex And The City was not funny, meaningful, sexy, or interesting. It was hollow and empty, like Kim Cattrall's soul. See, this is what happens when people are starved of meaningful entertainment. They start out just making do, but then after a while, the standards start falling and you end up with trash like this being somehow important and influential. And when that happens, it has an impact on culture in general, magnifying the dull stereotypes portrayed in its badly-written, badly-acted, bland little commercial world. Believe me, stopping the show when they did saved lives, because if I'd had to bear witness to the utter nullity of the Sex And The City world one more time, even in an advert, I'd have hopped on a plane to the States and massacred the whores responsible with a big fucking sword.

7.1.05

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

"That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery."

Thinking about Thomas 'Tom' Jane in The Punisher got me thinking about the first time they tried to translate that particular anti-hero to the big screen. Remember? It was 1989, and somebody in a dimly-lit room in Hollywood said: "Hey, guys, how about Dolph Lundgren and Louis Gossett Jr. in a movie based on a comic about a sociopathic vigilante who thinks he's fighting a one-man war against crime and kills pretty much anybody who gets in his way? We'll make millions!"

He was very, very wrong, just like whoever pitched Wrong Turn to Fox some fifteen years later, saying something like: "Hey, guys, how about the bad slayer from Buffy and that guy from Riding In Cars With Boys in a teens-get-lost-in-dark-woods homage to Deliverance crossed with every aimless, soul-sucking horror movie released since Scream?"

Sounds like such fun, doesn't it?

That said, the first five minutes are actually quite promising. We kick off with a cliched but entertaining prologue featuring a boy and a girl being murdered by unseen baddies. This segues neatly into a genuinely creepy title sequence that mixes flashes of headlines past about mountain men, inbreeding, and folks disappearing with photos of disfigured faces and unnaturally sharp teeth. All this occasionally accompanied by background images of the girl we've just seen murdered being caressed by a dirty, clawed hand.

And that's the best bit of the film. Beyond the credits, I'm afraid it's an eighty minute vacation to Suckville. Let's go!

Desmond Harrington IS Chris Flynn, an unassuming twenty-something medical student on his way to some kind of interview. Unfortunately for Chris, he gets caught up in a traffic jam and, in looking for a shortcut, takes a WRONG TURN. See what they did there? So cool.

Funniest part of the whole movie was, for me, when Chris gets out of his car and goes up to the truck in front of him to ask what's going on and then whether there's some way around. The driver, a weasel-faced redneck, directs him to "go back to your car, adjust your hair about another thousand times..." and Chris has no response except to walk away. Yup, our hero has been wittily bested by a greasy trucker who is, frankly, absolutely right.

So Chris, looking like an arsehole, finds this 'shortcut'. Then he gets distracted by a dead deer and crashes into a camper van, totalling both vehicles. The van's occupants - Eliza Dushku, that guy who was in Six Feet Under, and some kids who were in stuff like The Skulls 2 and MVP: Most Valuable Primate - take this alarmingly well, and take Chris in like a long lost brother. The group then splits into two, with the main four characters going to find help and the other two remaining behind to spout shitty sub-Kevin Smith dialogue, smoke weed, fuck, and get torn apart by inbred mountain men.

So Chris, Jessie (Eliza), the guy from Six Feet Under, and some other girl find this house, and - OHMYGOD - it turns out to be the house of the inbred mountain men, with, like, ears in the fridge and stuff. And then - HEAVENFORBID - the inbred mountain men come home, and Chris and Jessie and the guy from Six Feet Under and the other girl have to hide in the house while the girl who got stoned and then fucked and then killed gets cut up with a hacksaw and eaten. Which she clearly deserved. She was annoying and she was in American Psycho II. With William Shatner.

Later, the mountain men go to sleep and the kids escape, only they make too much noise and wake up the mountain men, who chase them FOR THE REST OF THE FILM. Six Feet Under guy gets shot with arrows, the other girl takes an axe to the mouth (which I'll admit was somewhat cool. She was annoying, too. And she was in Snow Day), and then, just when you're sure that Chris will rescue Jessie from the hideous mountain men who for some reason have only kidnapped her when they immediately murdered everybody else, he does. Mountain men die, boy and girl escape, roll credits.

What a fucking waste of my life.

And there is NO character development or plot in this movie. None at all. There is absolutely no reason to give a shit about any of these people. In fact, I found myself rooting for Mountain Man #2, who had a bow and arrow and was fucking awesome. First he killed the Six Feet Under kid with three arrows to the back, all in the same spot, from about a hundred feet away, THEN he killed the park ranger with a single shot to the EYE from about two hundred feet away while standing on an incline. He was like the inbred redneck Robin Hood. See, while I wouldn't pay money to see Wrong Turn, I would definitely shell out the necessary green to see a prequel called Ain't No Mountain High Enough, about the adventures of Mountain Man #2, who was once an olympic archer but was hideously disfigured saving a kitten from a housefire. Unable to show his face, he fled to the mountains, where he was adopted by Cletus and Jethro, two really nice guys who were marginalised from society after Deliverance and The Hills Have Eyes came out. All Cletus and Jethro and MM #2 want is to be left alone to live their peaceful lives, but these vanloads of twenty-somethings keep turning up to TAUNT them with their vapid, Hollywood beauty. One day, something in MM #2 just snaps...

There we go. Just like that, I've made Wrong Turn into a fucking Shakespearean tragedy. Which is no reason for you to go and see it, by the way. It's still an insufferable pile of shit.

6.1.05

Gwendolyn Bitchfairy And The Flesh-Eating Worms

"People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy...and I keep it in a jar on my desk."

I've gone five days without a cigarette or a drink. I'm aware that doesn't sound like much to those of you who haven't been partaking of those particular vices pretty much every day for quite a few years now (five in the case of alcohol, eleven for cigarettes), but trust me, that's an achievement. I'm a long way from actually escaping the clutches of these vices, but I'm on the ladder and climbing. That's the one part of anything I truly struggle with. Once I've got my hands wrapped around those rungs, fucking death-grip, baby.

One thing that's come of trying to quit cigarettes, in terms of my reaction to my environment, is that I've become...how to put this...a clawing, snarling, sneering beast of rage, frustration, and withering sarcasm. And one of the things you should definitely not do when confronted by such a creature is to show it a bad movie. Because then things like this get written.

So I was bored the other night. This isn't usually a problem, but when you're trying to quit something you're addicted to, boredom is the last thing you need. If the mind isn't occupied, it gets to thinking about how great it would be to smoke a cigarette, to watch the cherry glow its beautiful red as you wrap your lips around that thin, perfect cylinder, inhaling that warm, soporific smoke, feeling it fill your lungs and then drift up into your head, leaving you just a little dizzy, a little high. Christ, there's no rush in the world like a nicotine rush.

But I digress. To cure my boredom, I decided to watch a movie. To this end, I made my way downstairs after my parents had gone to bed and checked out the satellite listings. There was nothing overly exciting in the offing, so I plumped for Dreamcatcher, being familiar with the book and noticing that the film featured both Jason Lee and Timothy Olyphant, two young actors I happen to think are pretty damned good.

Hah. Hahahahahahaha. AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Holy shit. Is this real? It is? I mean, they really made this movie? Like, they spent money? Hahahahahahahahaha! Awesome.

Dreamcatcher is the story of four childhood friends that rescue a mentally handicapped boy named Douglas (or 'Duddits', as he puts it) from being forced to eat what looks like a slug by some generic teenage bullies. They discover that he has STRANGE and UNCANNY mental abilities that he somehow passes onto them. Many years later, while going on their annual hunting trip to the middle of nowhere, the four find themselves in the middle of a CRISIS involving ALIENS, a VIRUS, and Morgan Freeman's FAKE EYEBROWS.

It's not quite that linear, but you get the idea.

First off, answer me this, moviegoers: If you start with main characters played by the actors Jason Lee (fantastic in anything by Kevin Smith except Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back), Timothy Olyphant (walked away with Doug Liman's Go in his back pocket a few years ago and is usually at least moderately entertaining), Thomas Jane (in quite a few decent movies, but tends to stink up the place when asked to emote), and Damian Lewis (uh...who?), which two would you kill off in the first half of the movie? If you answered Thomas and Damian, congratulations, you have a rudimentary knowledge of how to entertain people. If you answered Jason and Timothy, you probably liked or would like Dreamcatcher. In the best interests of evolution, you should immediately go to the hospital and get yourself sterilised. Thank you.

So Jason Lee gets his face ripped off by a flesh-eating worm that comes out of the toilet. The reason this happens is because he's sitting on the seat to keep the worm from getting out when he suddenly decides that he simply cannot do without a toothpick that's just out of his reach. A toothpick, ladies and gentlemen. Not a knife or a gun or maybe something necessary like...I don't know...HOW ABOUT A FUCKING INHALER? There you go. Add two more minutes to the film, make the character asthmatic, give him a credible reason to lift his arse off that toilet seat so that when the alien worm eats his hand and then his face the audience can at least feel a little bit sorry for the guy, rather than sitting there wondering just why in the blue fucking hell they used a frigging toothpick. A TOOTHPICK. A FUCKING TOOTHPICK.

And then Damian meets a giant alien. Which explodes for no reason. And he inhales it. And it takes over his mind.

Oh, the whole face-eating bit was preceded by another bit where Damian found this hunter guy lost in the woods and the guy kept farting and his stomach was all swollen and then...wouldn't you know it...he shat out an alien worm. And then died.

Meanwhile, Timothy and Thomas crash on their way to someplace in a car when they encounter a woman sitting in the middle of the road. Thomas goes to get help while Timothy, who has hurt his leg, stays to make sure the woman is okay. Of course, she's showing the same symptoms as the farting hunter guy, so we know it's only a matter of time before a worm eats its way out of her arse and starts sliming and chomping about the place. Which it does. Luckily, Timothy shows a little more intelligence than Jason, and he kills it with a chunk of burning wood.

THEN Damian finds Timothy and Thomas finds Jason. Damian is now half himself and half an alien called Mr. Grey. When he's Mr. Grey, he finds everything hilarious and speaks in an incredibly bad English accent. This was made even more amusing for me when I discovered that Lewis is actually from England. Fantastic, an actor so bad he can't even master his own accent.

So Mr. Grey turns into a giant worm and eats Timothy, which sort of makes you wonder what the point of having him survive that long in the first place was. Meanwhile, Thomas gets captured by the army, who are there because the EVIL ALIENS are trying to spread a virus that makes people shit flesh-eating worms. THOSE BASTARDS. Wonderfully, the army is under the stewardship of Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore. Somewhat less wonderfully, Freeman has big steely grey hair and truly terrifying eyebrows. He looks like a black J. Jonah Jameson. Sizemore, meanwhile, has clearly been taken ill and sneakily replaced by his brother Bill, who definitely wasn't in either True Romance or Bringing Out The Dead, but may have played - I don't know - one of Sarah Jessica Parker's 'sensitive' boyfriends in Sex And The City.

It only gets worse, folks. Thomas and Tom Sizemore's Sensitive Brother have a conversation, during which Thomas uses his psychic powers to convince Tom Sizemore's Sensitive Brother that Morgan J. Jonah Freeman is insane. It works, and they rush off in pursuit of Damien/Mr. Grey and the alsation he's IMPREGNATED WITH HIS FILTHY SEED and intends to drop into the water supply. The twisted FUCK. The maniacal alien FIEND.

But first they have to go see Duddits, who's played by...man, I'm really losing it here...DONNIE WAHLBERG. Yup, that's the same Donnie Wahlberg who used to be in New Kids On The Block, now playing a retarded manchild capable of controlling people's thoughts. Heh. Can you say 'typecasting'?

Anyway...Tom Sizemore's sensitive brother and Morgan J. Jonah Freeman kill each other, Duddits turns into an alien and kills Mr. Grey, Damien disappears back into British mini-series obscurity, and Thomas shortens his name to Tom and goes off to film The Punisher.

I found out that last little detail when I was walking past the video shop yesterday, by the way. I mean, I knew he was in The Punisher, but I didn't know he was credited as 'Tom Jane'. Fuck, dude, if you're gonna change your name, at least change it to something that better represents you, like Gwendolyn Bitchfairy.

In closing, I'd just like to say that Thomas/Tom/Gwendolyn and everybody else involved with this rotting corpse of a movie should be stabbed repeatedly in the face with a trowel.

And don't go anywhere, 'cause I'll be back later to tell you just exactly what I thought of Wrong Turn.

2.1.05

Early Days

"Fireflies and the stars in the sky, gentle glowing light from your cigarette, the breeze blowing softly on my face; reminds me of something else; something that in my memory has been misplaced. Suddenly it all comes back."

Everything makes me think of smoking. Everything. When I walked into my room and switched the light on just now, I was disappointed that I didn't get to experience the nicotine fog soft-focus effect that occurs when I'm chain-smoking at the computer with the window closed against winter. It's like the opposite of every tacky wedding photo you've ever seen, the anti-kitsch, a very stale, very male reality. When you're writing the kind of stuff I'm into at the moment, scenes like that can be inspiring.

It's been about six hours since my body realised that I wasn't planning on fulfilling the expected nicotine quota. This isn't my first time trying to quit cold, so I know that what I'm going through now is the absolute worst of it for me. All I have to do is survive these cold sweats and this awful craving until Tuesday, and then I should be fine.

Heh. It sounds like I'm trying to get off crack or something, I know. I really do suffer cold sweats for the first few days of not smoking, and a physical need for anything has me climbing the walls. I have a hell of a lot of willpower when I'm bothered enough to exercise it, but not so much as to be able to stop my hands shaking.

Still, I knew when I made my resolutions that smoking was going to be the bitch of the bunch. None of the others concern addiction, and they're really just a matter of choice. Keeping myself away from nicotine isn't going to be anything like as easy.

Anyway, for those of you who like to keep a mental image of the man typing at them, it's really just a few simple changes; remove the bottle of Jack, the glass, the pack of Marlboro Lights, the lighter, and the ashtray from the desk. Other than that, it's all the same. Oh...apart from the fact that I'm CHEWING GUM LIKE MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.

I WANT A FUCKING CIGARETTE!

Thank you. I feel better now.

Resolutions

"The future is dead. That's what you said. Its all in your head, you see. Not mine. I'm fine, I'm alive, I've arrived."

I don't, generally speaking, make New Year's Resolutions. I mean, I do, but I never bother with them. Last year I was going to quit smoking, but by 1am on January 1st, I was already lighting up. I made the resolution, but I didn't actually care that I'd made it. Not enough to honour it, anyway.

But 2005 is different. These last few years, I guess it's fair to say I've been drifting, at least in terms of the things I care about. I had an image of myself as Michael The Artist, sitting alone in my room with my cigarettes and my whiskey, writing the poison out of my soul. And I was comfortable with that. So comfortable that it was easier to simply romanticise such an idea of myself instead of making harder decisions that might have brought the changes I've been needing.

As I said in my previous post, 2004 was just blah to me until its final quarter. Then I met Jennifer, and then a lot of strange things happened to my family, things that got me thinking about my health and my future. Seems to me that, while those around me have been fucking up or being fucked up by the things they've spent their lives doing, I've stumbled upon somebody whose very existence has made me want to be a little more sure that I won't go the same way. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a reason to live, but it's certainly a reason to live for something other than these four walls and a dream that someday I'll be able to write things that people will read.

So...
1. I'm quitting smoking. No fucking around this time.
2. I'm only going to drink socially, never by myself.
3. I'm going to stop eating heart attack food.
4. I'm going to get back to the regular exercise I was doing so well at for a couple of months last year.
5. I'm going to write two novels before the end of 2005.
6. I'm going to do the things I need to do to make myself happy, no matter how distant and difficult they may seem.

I'd ask you to wish me luck, but I really don't think I'm going to be needing it. I feel strong, confident, and pretty good about things. I've no doubt that some of those resolutions are going to be a bitch to keep, especially for the next month or so. But that's cool. I feel up to it. In fact, I find myself almost looking forward to the challenge. As the song I quoted at the head of this post says: "I'm fine, I'm alive, I've arrived."