The Post Before Christmas

I piss and moan on this blog. Piss and moan. Sometimes I moan and piss, just to spice things up.

I don’t think it is healthy to keep negative thoughts to yourself, you have to set them free like little angry sparrows. The Shaolin Monks keep their negativity to themselves, and live in some kind of inner calm world. But unbeknownst to most people they release all of their inner angers and anxieties through the ancient art of midnight tree raping. I saw it on a documentary once, frightful stuff. I guess what I’m trying to say is that People need to vent their frustrations.

Case in point: I was sitting with a mate outside his house one lazy Saturday and we were working our way through a cartoon of Tooheys (beer, n00bs). We had been spending our time watching this woman who was standing outside the Supermarket across the road. To be more exact, we were watching the woman’s baby, who had been screaming and squawking non stop for a good half hour. It was at about the 31st minute mark that my mate stood up, and with no warning at all, screamed at the top of his mildly drunk lungs: “SHUT THAT KID UP, OR I’LL DROWN IT!!”. The woman looked at us in shock, then wheeled the baby away to loiter somewhere else.

Was it an appropriate reaction? Probably not, but it amused me for the whole rest of that day. Fuck, it was four years ago and I’m still enjoying the moment.

The catharsis of an outburst is undeniable, but now I’m going to flip this post on it’s ear and go in the opposite direction. You have to acknowledge the bright side too. As much as I’d love to rant how the entire world’s fucked and the Apocalypse is less than a decade away (it is), I’m going to embrace the festive Spirit and make my last post before Christmas an uplifting and positive one. Allow me to soften your hearts with some life affirming information, read on gentle readers…

I’ve been told two mottos in my life of such uplifting value that the result were nothing short of epiphanic (cheers dictionary.com).

The first one I heard when I was just a young girl living on the streets of New York. It was around the Halloween Season, and I was standing on a street corner in the miserable weather holding onto my skateboard. I was feeling lonely, because the season marked the anniversary of my two closest friend’s murders. It was here when I was at my lowest that Brandon Lee appeared behind me and whispered the words that will stay with me forever:

“It can’t rain all the time.”

The second time occurred just over a week ago at a pub in Balham (now pay attention because this one’s actually true). I was sitting by myself at the bar sipping a Guiness and scowling (I am the fucking Pontiff of scowling these days - even for London, I’m good), dwelling on the various nut-kicks I had endured in the last few months. These included my obliterating job, my new exhausting travel schedule and my whore beast ex-landlady raping us on our bond money. Had I mentioned that our whore beast ex-landlady had raped us on our bond? No? Well, our whore beast ex-landlady has raped us on our bond. The bartender had noticed my scowl-face (I can’t blame him, it’s superb) and commented on my gloomy disposition. I told him I was having a rough week. He told me he also was having a rough week. Then he told me lots of things:

He told me it was his birthday last Friday, and that he had spent it at a bar run by his best mate. He told me he was asked to leave, because his girlfriend was too drunk. And then on the way out, and for no apparent reason, the girlfriend glassed the bouncer in the face. And then the bouncer, bloodied and infuriated, didn’t like the idea of accosting a female so threw my Balham bartender on the ground and stomped on his testicles. Six times. The Bartender made his way home to find his mother waiting for him furious (she had heard what had happened) and started abusing the girlfriend. So the girlfriend punched the Bartender’s Mother in the face. And knocked her out.

His story left me wide eyed (wide eyed and scowling), and he told me that the worst part of the whole ordeal was that he had to work five 16 hour days in a row this week - and his nuts were still black from the stomping (he referred to them as bollocks, coz he’s British) so the only way to move about was to walk as if he was riding a horse. He finished telling me this, then moved off to serve another customer. But before he left, he turned to me and said

“But you know what? It could be worse.”

Then limped away with a smile on his face. I was left sitting there with two bombshells in my lap:

1. London Pubs are hiring friendly chatty staff? When did this start happening??
2. His philosophy was entirely true.

I left the pub wiser, though still scowling (my scowl is damn near close to being perfected, I can’t turn my back on it now) and had found a new perspective on life. Who am I to complain about my problems when my local bartender has a ruptured nut-sack and a girlfriend hell bent on beating half of London to death?

And why should this bartender complain, when somewhere in Egypt there’s a bartender with no arms who has to stir the cocktails with his tongue and works 200 hours a week with his underpants full of Scorpions.

And surely he can’t complain, when there’s a small boy in the Sudan with no arms and legs whose only source of income is a local stage show where he’s raped in the mouth by a Doberman twice a day.

Nah kids, as bad as your life if is it could always be worse. So treat each problem as a character building exercise, and rise to the occasion each day.

And if you can’t be arsed doing that, piss and moan. That’s always worked for me.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FUCKERS.