The Castrated Elixir

Work is getting in the way. I have turned into a morning writer. Not by choice, it’s just When I wake up all I want to do is spill words on to the page. It feels like there is an endless torrent of imagination waiting to reveal itself. But slowly, as the day drags on, this feeling dissipates. At 5am, when the alarm goes off, I am itching to throw in the towel, quit my job, and just sit in front of the page and shed some ink. But bills and rent force me into my work clothes. A coffee, half milk and two sugars, is downed. Teeth are brushed, keys are found, wallet and phone gathered, and by 5:15am I am on the road.

The ideas keep forming in my mind for the couple of hours drive each morning. The urge to turn around and write instead of work won’t leave me. Like some kind of wild beast chasing me down the motorway. Eventually the radio drowns out these thoughts and I focus on my pitiful job.

Who knows how many great words, unwritten chapters, new characters, witty lines, whole novels, have been lost to this godless pursuit of earnings. It depresses me. By the time I get home from work, hypnotised into a half coma by the never ending motorway and mentally stunted by a brainless job, I just can’t stir up the same feeling I wake up with.

I have no real interest in money but I sometimes dream of getting a decent advance for a novel, or a winning lottery ticket, just so I can wake up and write without the distraction that distracts us all from real life. I bought a scratch card yesterday. I won £2. A regular at the pub bought a scratch card last week and won £300,000. I guess I bought the wrong scratch card. I’ll try again tomorrow.

I used to write in the evenings. I didn’t have to be up early so my writing habits were forged from the writer stereotype. I drank whisky, smoked, and wrote. The whisky got the juices flowing. It felt like an endless elixir that could stimulate the strange part of the mind and release the angry and odd sentences from their cages. The reality of drinking to encourage writing is that the first two glasses get you going but by the third glass you’re not really making much sense. Letters and whole words appear to be missing from meaningless sentences when you revise what you’ve written the next day. But it’s fun though, drunken writing, when the drink seems endless and the characters seem charming and perfectly sardonic.

Anyway, this post has gone on for too long and I don’t really know what its point is. I just miss the freedom of writing whenever the hell I felt like and want to be released from the castration of sensible adulthood. Pah.

Beware the Korean Spies

This is a bit weird. I was on YouTube about 45 minutes ago, wisely debunking the crazy conspiracy theories of internet nutcases, when The Republic of Korea started spying on me.

I commented on a video called Alien Humanoids Attend Kim Jong Il’s Funeral? 2011. If you have a look at the video on YouTube my comment is the one at the top (Kassidy Andy is my YouTube name). You will notice that I clearly and rationally proved that tall people are not aliens and that camera crews are quite capable of walking out of shot. You see, I solved the case, disproved the conspiracy, the video can now be removed from the internet and this whole thing can be forgotten.

But now, as I mentioned, Korea appears to be watching me. (Maybe I’m making things worse by talking about this in the very place they are checking up on me?). About 10 minutes after I made that comment on YouTube my WordPress Blog got viewed by someone in the Republic of Korea…

You see, now I’m just sounding like a conspiracy nut.

Here is a picture of my WordPress stats page –

You see, I’m telling the truth. But what does it all mean? If the two things are connected, (it could just be a very fluky coincidence), how did they know about the blog? It is not connected in any way to my YouTube page. It must be a coincidence. For some reason someone in Korea just came across my blog just after I wrote about Korean Aliens on YouTube. Weird though. What do you think?

Don’t Sweat the Petty Things, and Don’t Pet the Sweaty Things

I have been forced to write in my underpants. I have no choice. It is either that or I sweat all over the keyboard. Which would you prefer? Both things are not particularly pleasing to imagine. But I have been forced to write in my underpants, so you have been forced to imagine it. It’s the heat you see, right now it is 32°C (or 89.6°F if you’re American) and as a British man I am simply not equipped to deal with that sort of thing.

I stood in front of the freezer for a while earlier, which gave some relief, but I had to stop because my laptop was beginning to freeze. I’ve started writing a children’s book called The Wonderbottom Family Animal Rescue Centre for Exotic and Unusual Pets (Book 1 – The Small Door) just because I was bored of reading kids stories with some kind of moral message at the centre of it. I want to write a book that is absurd and wonderful with the intention to make you laugh and nothing more. It is not deep and has no hidden lesson or moral backbone. But it’s hot damn it! (Not the book, the atmosphere). My eyebrows are failing me in their evolutionary role to protect my eyes from my forehead sweat! It is not the best condition to be writing humour!

So instead of marching forth with the odd tale about a curious boy and his pet platypus I have decided to order a kebab and have a glass of whisky and ice instead. I’m not suggesting the kebab will cool me down but if I’m going to be a sweaty mess anyway I might as well make the most of it. Soon I will be squelching on my leather couch with a spicy kebab, a glass of whisky and something exciting to watch on the telly.

God forbid I have unexpected visitors. Their dreams will be hellish for months to come.

Goodbye dear readers, drunken squalor awaits me.