I have been looking for a job for a while now, as, contrary to common belief, I do actually want to be employed. A little while back I applied for a position reviewing and writing guides for instant messaging applications at about.com. I forgot all about the fact that I had applied, and recently received a reply saying that I have been accepted on to the preparation course, which starts at the end of this week. If I get through that then I will hopefully be writing for them.

Other than that I went to an interview at a company called Integrity last week. I found out about the programmer/tech support position through an agency. Unfortunately I didn’t get the job, though. Also, another agency contacted me last night saying that they have a position avaible, but I was contacted this morning with apologies, saying that the position had already been filled. Oh well.

So, the job hunt continues, and I’m getting quite bored of it. I can’t bring myself to work in retail, unfortunately. It would stress me out too much, which would certainly lead to a lot of stress problems that I really don’t want to have to go through.

I’ve mentioned countless times that travelling on the bus without my MP3 player is a fantastic way to provoke a game of “ruthlessly stab the passengers” in my head. However, I really don’t think I’ve quite emphasised enough how much the general high-pitched rhetorical condescension that spews from the parent’s mouth to the child, who quite fucking obviously isn’t interested in the ducks that are swimming in the river, because they’re trying to avoid concussion caused by the bus driver driving like a hyperglycemic midget with PD. Oh yes I went there.

Another thing that really, really gets to me – and I realise that I’m just being pedantic – is the way that my doctor has to finish every sentence he bloody well says with a stupid informal, colloquial word:

“Hello, mate.”, “How are you, mate?”

The best one had to be:

“Hi, mate? How are you, mate? Mate, you look wet. Is it raining out there, ma-”
“YOU’RE SAT NEXT TO A FUCKING WINDOW. YOU CAN SEE IT’S FUCKING RAINING. STOP MAKING POINTLESS FUCKING SMALL-TALK WITH ME LIKE I’M YOUR AUTISTIC DAUGHTER AND TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME!”

Okay, so I didn’t reply with those exact words, but part of me wishes…

On a slightly fluffier, cute, yet still mildly annoying note, another cat seems to have moved in. This is the third time that a cat has moved in – although thanks to karma, or simply bad luck, one of them was run over. This one’s just plain stupid though. I’m going to conform to stereotype for one moment here and say it’s like the chaviest of chavs in the cat family. I put it in a sink full of water and held it there until I was content. I chased it with compressed air. I’ve pushed it through the cat flap. I’ve held it over the fence in a very elegant Lion King manner. Still it comes back. I swear it was bottle-fed White Lightning from birth, ‘innit blud?’

Blah blah blah.

My lovely girlfriend has given me the plague. When I say the plague, I mean manflu. And we all know that’s worse, right? It’s a medical fact. Sure it is. Anyway. Why are colds nocturnal? They’re the viruses that suffer insomnia, honestly. I don’t have the greatest sleep pattern in the world, but colds just take the biscuit and dunk it in a cup of hard-earned snot. Right now I’m looking forwards to regaining a sense of smell and being able to breathe without it feeling like there’s a feather vibrating next to my tonsils.

I’ve added a nice WYSIWYG editor to the comments so that you can do crazy things like format your text.

Yay!

This post is going to be a bit of a diary entry, but nevermind.

Ever since I was about 11 years old, I can remember my body completely negleting the standard sleeping pattern. I would be able to sleep normally, although for my whole life I have been terrible with mornings, and have only gotten worse with them through time. However, if I wanted to stay awake, I would quite easily be able to until 3 or 4 am, which is quite late for someone of that age.

As I got older I found myself staying up late more often. That might have had something to do with spending time with my Dad. My Dad being quite a creature of the night himself; he has always had the theory “what’s the point in lying there, staring at the ceiling, when you could be getting things done?”. I think I’ve followed those footsteps to some extent, but I don’t know if that is the cause of my sleeping issues.

Around this time two years ago I was just leaving college, and therefore I had nothing to commit myself to. I had a lot of goals, but for some reason I just wasn’t motivated to achieve them. Five years had passed since I first noticed my somewhat idiosyncratic sleeping pattern and it had somewhat developed in that time. Five years later I was in a position where I was rarely tired before 1am, regardless of the amount of sleep I had gotten the night before. I remember going through weeks of school, going to bed at 4am and getting up at 7am. Waking up was complete torture, but I have always been terrible at it. However, come 10 or 11 am I was wide awake, and I wouldn’t have been tired again until around 2 or 3 am the next day. It did catch up with me eventually, and that’s when I would sleep.

Naturally, with 5 years of irregular sleeping behind me, things certainly hadn’t improved. I didn’t really think it as strange. I always just said I enjoyed the night time. It never really seemed to have much of an effect on me, and I don’t think other people really noticed it much. Mum would tell me off for staying up so late on school nights, but most of the time I did get up and make it out of the door on time, so I don’t think she really minded. I was lucky enough to not have a ‘bed time’ when I was in my younger teenage years.

Now, 7 years later, things are even worse, and right now I really don’t feel like I get enough respect for my sleeping problems. I went to my doctor a few months ago because I was going through a rough time and was having a lot of anxiety attacks. During that time my sleeping was as regular for me as it ever was, however, I brought it up when I was in my appointment anyway. Curiously the doctor prescribed me with sleeping pills. Pretty strong sleeping pills actually. 20x weaker than your standard elephant tranqualiser, which is worrying when you think about it. Needless to say the sleeping pills did help me sleep, although I did suffer the side effects quite heavily. At the time I was working, so I did have to be up at 7am. This meant for me, trying to go to bed at a reasonable hour. However, I never seemed to find enough time in my day and rarely made it to bed before 1am. Most of the time I was fine with this, however there were days when it would take me hours and hours to sleep. On the odd occasion I actually didn’t sleep at all.

When I go to bed I am usually tired, which is why I go to bed. I don’t go to bed because it is a certain time and I think “I really should be in bed” because I know far too well that I will only be lying there for a long time. Yet, even when I am tired it takes me a long time to fall asleep unless I have been awake for a very long time. For the past seven years I have thought it only natural for it to take a long time to fall asleep. It usually takes me sometime around an hour, though often more. Apparently a lot of people fall asleep quite quickly though, which strikes me as bizarre. I have never really thought of my sleeping problems as something serious. In fact, a lot of the time I quite like the fact my body clock seems to be calibrated to an entirely different planet because it means I can enjoy staying up late.

As I mentioned before, this time two years ago I was at a stage when I didn’t have to commit myself to anything. I didn’t have to be up at a certain time and therefore I didn’t go to bed until I really was tired. Inevitably this resulted in me becoming quite nocturnal, and rather isolated too. I would often say goodnight to Mum and say good morning to her as well. Going to bed at around 9 or 10 in the morning and getting up at anywhere between 2 and 6 pm. This was one of the very few times in the past seven years that my sleeping pattern felt right. When I woke up, I woke up refreshed. I felt like I had slept, and had a good sleep. A lot of the time, as far as I can remember, I even had good dreams. During the time I was working, I hardly dreamt at all.

I’m in the same position now, two years later. I don’t have anything to commit myself to – although I should. And now that I am in this position, and reflecting upon my sleep, things are still getting noticably worse, and indeed I don’t feel as if I get enough respect for this problem. I remember the times when Mum was ill. When she couldn’t even leave the house and for the most part people respected that. I have never really understood mental problems in depth for the simple reason that, as far as I am aware, I have never suffered a mental problem. However, I respected the fact she was unable to leave the house sometimes, for whatever reason. So often do I get the “you should go to bed earlier” passing conversation, and it really irritates me. It feels as if people simply think that I choose to stay up late because I like it. That is kind of true, I do like staying up late. I love the night. But I really do wish that at least some of the time I could go to bed at 9 pm and actually get to sleep. Perhaps people just don’t appreciate what it is like to be able to sleep at more acceptable hours of the day, I don’t know.

Seven years on, things are getting worse all of the time. The quality of my thoughts and the mood I am in often depends on the sleep I have had, and even on the times I have slept from and to. I could easily stay up for a day or two now without even thinking about it. Yet, if I do that, my mind does slowly fade and I really don’t like that happening. I don’t have any sleeping pills right now and part of me wants to go back to the doctor and get some. Is it really a wise idea though? Do I really want to be on medication for the rest of my life because of a sleeping disorder? Do I really want to suffer the depression and laugh cynically to myself everytime I pick up the box and read “Warning, may cause drowsiness”?

I will never forget reading the news article about B-people that Ben put on his blog. I will never forget reading that and wishing it was a system that was in our society.

Will sleeping disorders ever be more recognised and appreciated? I hope so.

I hate figures of speech. They are the verbal bullet wounds that plague this world with their rhetorical inconsistency. They annoy me.

I was on the bus earlier and the idiots behind me were talking about what they had bought at the shop recently. One of them said:

“I bought 3 DVDs for a tenner. You can’t beat that.”

I must have been in a ‘great, let’s get irritated by someone who probably puts an apostrophe in the word “DVDs”‘ mood, because I got annoyed by it. I was so tempted to turn around and say:

“Well actually I could beat that. So there. That’s what you get for being an idiot and saying such a stupid thing”

Every time I’m on the bus without my headphones on I always get off at my stop with less respect and appreciation for the human race and more hatred for children and single parents.

I am going to make it a life goal to give a short yet witty reply to every figure of speech I hear that is aimed at me. The next person who says “I’ve told you a thousand times” will be punished.

Yes I like my italic formatting. It’s nice.

Well, another action-packed weekend is behind me, and I don’t really have much to rant about. Well nothing besides the fact that my camera seems to give the impression that everyone is horribly stoned. We’re not really. The lighting in most of the pictures was simply terrible, and hey, I’m not trying to be some professional photographer or anything.

On Friday Dissonance played the King’s Arms in St. Thomas, which was a pretty good gig. I’ve seen them play better, I’ve seen them play worse. At least they actually made it to the venue this time, so well done to them.

On Saturday we went to a party just outside of Totnes. Simon was supposed to travel with us on the train, but he was being a bit rude and decided to get the train before we got to the station. It came around and kicked him in the arse when we were sat at the train station though. He was already on his way to Totnes when the announcer’s voice proclaimed that Simon’s bike would be removed from the trolley rack by force if it wasn’t unlocked and taken somewhere else. That’s what he gets for not waiting for us at the train station though.

The party in Totnes was weird. It involved the parents being at home, young teenagers, nowhere near enough alcohol and a rather cool fire all stirred in with your typical annoying party drunk who was looking for Steve, his boyfriend, or something. Who cares?

Anyway, check the gallery for two new albums.

You know that feeling you get when you just come back from a holiday. You know, when you walk into the house and it’s almost as if the entire place seems so alien. You forget where things are and everything seems to be so grey and boring, and all you want is to be back at that other place where everything seemed so amazing, even though the hotel bed was hard and the person in the room next to you sounded like she was having some sort of fit every time she, well, you know.

Yeah, that’s how I’m feeling right now. I have got two more reviews to write. It has taken me three days to write the one I’ve just finished and I’m not even happy with it. There’s a website I’m working on that I’ve been putting off and doing little on for ages, and in honesty I’m about as motivated as a poodle with arthritis at the bottom of a hill to finish it.

I want a job but I can’t bring myself to work in retail or catering. I don’t want to go back to programming because I’m so fucking bored of it right now that I want to cut my tongue off and slap my hand with it and all in all I have that just back from holiday feeling.

This is lame. I hate it when I wish I could just do things, and do them very quickly, but can’t.

Damn you lethargic apathy.

It has come to my attention that I haven’t had a good rant for a long time. This obviously isn’t a good thing, because the internet clearly isn’t populated with enough consumers with accounts on third party websites babbling on about their lives. Obviously.

Before the rant

I haven’t actually done much in the way of using my PC for a few weeks actually, which probably has something to do with the fact I’ve met an amazing girl called Tallis. She lives in Exeter. We met on MySpace (yay, I hear you cry). Now that we’ve met it almost seems as if something has been stopping us from meeting; she lives on the same street as my Dad and we both know lots of people.

Here’s a picture of her with her awesomely-awesome red hair, doing some sort of martial arts or something. She plays the guitar beautifully and sings just as well. We are going to form a band called Smudge. Yes, we are.

Anyway, it has been nice to get outside a lot and have some fun with new people.

I said a while ago that I planned on taking more photos, and I have been doing so. Check out my gallery page for a link to my Picasa albums.

The rant

Despite the fact I had a really fun weekend, something that really got to me is the fact that people are continuing to conform to the human norm of being unreliable. Just about everything that was planned to happen was cancelled this weekend and it really irritated me. I was supposed to be going to a party on Friday, and after stupendous amounts of planning and story-telling to various people it was cancelled because the host was sick. I mean, come on, does she really need to be conscious for us to drink in her house? I think not.

Not only that but my friends were playing a gig at a pub a few miles from my house. Due to the awesome powers of communication (powers they’re clearly unaware of) a fair few people that Tallis knows were planning on going. When we got to the pub there were all of about five people there, four of which work behind the bar. It turns out they had to cancel the gig because the drummer had to play a show with his other band. Were we told about this? No we weren’t.

Needless to say we attempted to do something else involving pubs, but thanks to the fucking government and the speed at which humans age at, we couldn’t partake in any of that sort of activity. Simon waddled off home, and I felt quite bad for inviting him out and walking around with him only for him to walk home again. Mental note: buy Simon a drink.

Anyway, about an hour after finding out the gig had been cancelled, after going to the shop to buy alcohol, chocolate and make sly cock jokes with shop assistants, walking was brought to a standstill because of this train. This train was honestly out to get me. It was about four hundred thousand yards long and had lots of stones in it. Like ‘they’ needed that many. It screeched to a somewhat mocking halt about 50 feet shy of where it should have stopped, as you can see. Tallis and I must have stood waiting for it to move for about 10 minutes as I shouted ranty things.

Dan: “Nyyyyyuuuuuh! Why? Why!? Why me!?”
Dan: “Oh, just look at that. There’s a man in a suit walking down the platform. ‘Oh! Look at me! I’m a man in a suit! I’m not going to do ANYTHING FUCKING USEFUL’ … stupid people.”
Tallis: “Dan, calm down!”
Dan: “I AM CALM! THIS IS PERFECTLY CALM! IF I WASN’T CALM I’D BE SHAKING!”

We made it home eventually. Eventually.

Equal rights fanatics have been amusing me lately: “Women deserve the same rights as men.” “Oh, but it’s not right for men to hit women…” Hah!

Foreign people in customer service really piss me off. It’s not the fact that I hate foreign people or anything, I just think it’s very unfair to populate business’ customer relations department with people who don’t even speak the native language very well. Bus drivers and bar staff who speak English as a second language frequently make mistakes – unless I’m just cursed – and it just makes me think that there are probably perfectly well-spoken people out their doing jobs which hardly allow them to communicate them at all. Now, I’m not saying that all foreign people should be in careers where they don’t communicate with the public, but the world would certainly spin faster if A could understand B and B could understand A, you get me?

I learnt something this morning. I learnt a valuable lesson that I believe should be taught to everyone. Duvets should not come into contact with cups of hot chocolate when heads are near by. I won’t tell the whole story, but here’s a summary.

*russle*
*CLANK*
“Owwwww!”
“… WHY IS THERE CHOCOLATE IN MY HAIR!?”

Needles to say I was the subject of mockery for the rest of the morning. Go me.

Anyway, mediocre rant over. I’ve got things to write and candles to buy. Don’t forget to check the pictures.