I finally sold my MX-5.

I won't miss it. Like many a TV supervillain, I show little emotion towards objects or people that fail me; including ex-girlfriends, cars and the occasional attempt at sausage casserole.

The new car is only four years old and it's like driving a taxi. I can rev the engine to four thousand RPM and not notice the sound it is making. There's no sense of switching cogs when changing gear and the interior is laughably cheap (or as the manual describes: 'made with recycling in mind').

It is a luxury roadster convertible and I hate it.

Why build a car so smooth that you can't feel the road or hear the engine? Why detach the driver from the sensation of driving? What good does putting someone in a miniature living room do other than make them feel complacent?

Why buy it?

Because it was new. Because I didn't think. Because I didn't know it had a dodgy catalytic converter or air conditioning sensor. Because someone once told me that thinking obscured enjoying.

Goodbye, BMW.

Hello, Hyundai...

Posted at: 00:15

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack.
And you may find yourself in another part of the world.
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile.
You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife.
You may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

Aside from being one of Absolute Radio's most played song, Once in a lifetime raises one very interesting question: "If you were to awaken from the slumber of your life, what would you make of your circumstances?"

Were I to awaken from this heinous autopilot, I'd probably just want to take a large stack of papers, consign this life as a rather dismal waste of effort and re-engage autopilot without nary a second thought.

You may say to yourself, "My God! What have I done?"

Posted at: 00:40

I ceased blogging in 2005 after a particularly nasty break up. I found that I had to reprioritise my life, and I consequently swapped blogging for something more emotionally fulfilling. At the time I think it was weeping.

So recently, I have decided to look at more creative ways of imparting what little wisdom I have. There are tongue-in-cheek methods, the hipster's irony-is-cool method and my personal favourite; bile-fuelled-gonzo-journalism (yes, I have started reading Transmetropolitan).

And then I was struck by a rather terrible realisation: My life just isn't that interesting.

In 2004, life was very interesting indeed. Probes sent from Earth were reaching Saturn, allowing cynical office clerks to complain about rocks several million miles away. That, and I was in higher education, so I had plenty of people to insult.

Now, I am horribly bored with my 'career' (I have just heard my ex girlfriend's sarcastic tone in my head: "Selling toilets isn't a career, sweetie.") and only politics or unfettered hatred of Steve Jobs dominates the news.

I have become all that I ever will be. Henceforth I shall stagnate and become more cynical with each passing day.

Oh, and Hot Tub Time Machine, while enjoyable, is still a transparent variation on the unhilariously obviously plotted road trip movies that America keeps vomiting.

See?

Posted at: 23:22

I glanced at my phone during a brief re-reading of Call Centre Confidential to find the following text message:

Adam, thanks for choosing The Carphone Warehouse. A quick question: How likely are you to recommend us to a friend from 0 (low) to 10 (high)?

Thinking this was some joker (the text originated from a mobile number) I sent the following reply:

Aw, man, I hate random texts. They make my AIDS flare up.

Two seconds later:

That's very useful to know, thanks. Finally, could you tell us why you gave us that score? Please text your comments now.

My reply:

Because the HIV Monster just came over to borrow a cup of sugar. And I'm not talking about the cute blue chap from Monsters Inc.

Response:

Thank you for your feedback. Your comments continuously help us improve our stores and service. The Carphone Warehouse (Powered by Fizzback)

In case you were wondering, the text originated from 07786 200497.

Wonder if I just got anyone fired?

Posted at: 19:35

Hunting for Transmetropolitan issues can be a perilous endeavour at times. Take this afternoon, for instance. I found myself accosted by someone from a charity who wanted me to give them my bank details. Someone I'd met ten seconds earlier wanted me to recall my bank details off the top of my head. In St. Albans high street.

I lied to them.

What did they expect?

Posted at: 16:48

Recently, I've been exposed to a lot of online 'zines that use industry-standard blogging software to create rather swish wordpress-esque websites. It wasn't until I looked at my site that I realised that designing such can be deceptively easy, and that I could probably learn to toy with the proverbial backend in PHP (if I bothered to learn the language).

I used to dream of a career in web design, but that was until I decided to grow up a bit and subsequently became distracted by things like a job (which is different than a career in the same way mud is different to jam), MX-5 ownership and regular sex. At a previous stage in my life I was a prolific (if terrible) blogger and my thoughts and experiences littered the internet like colourful confetti, and after taking the time to design this site, I think it's time I actually used it and perhaps made a proper PHP backend and downloaded a decent gallery.

I used to love writing. Modern life interferes with this. Change that.

Posted at: 19:56

I am rapidly beginning to hate every single person in the world that isn't me.

From the gobby neighbour, to the utterly stupid old woman who nearly caused a pileup on the way home, and the guy who rode my bumper around a junction: I hope you all die.

Posted at: 23:09

Recently, I have taken up some marvellous new hobbies.

Hobby the first is Facebook. Specifically, finding people on Facebook that I went to school with and tacitly judging their fragile emotional states by counting the number of body piercings / tattoos / children they have. This makes me feel warm inside in the same narky way as rich people get when watching World Aid advertisements on television.

The second hobby is getting fat, with the third hobby complaining about how fat I'm getting without actually doing anything about it.

I'm getting old. Get off my lawn.

Posted at: 00:07

Christmas. Easter. Valentines. Mother's Day. Father's Day.

These three celebrations are regarded in one of two ways. The first way to define them is to go buy stuff. I could quite happily make poorly-based assumptions that by giving gifts at Christmas, we're assuming the roles of wise men in giving and Jesus in receiving, and as such people are blasphemous, or that we celebrate the death of Jesus by gorging ourselves on chocolate thereby committing the sin of gluttony.

But I'm not.

The second perspective is to hold yourself aloof and watch people buying things for loved ones and call them sheep for involving themselves in a capitalist supereconomy that will eat your first-born children and shit out a weird grey pulp which we'll all be eating by the year 2035 if we don't stop buying all the bloody time.

I happen to disagree with both views. You see. These celebrations are what you make of them.

For Christmas, there was an alleged giving of gifts, which has become a tradition throughout our little corner of the world. As such, people give gifts to one another and modern businesses thrive and capitalise upon this. To me, this seems perfectly reasonable. If I wanted to give the gift of gold and completely bypass the global baby-eating cash-converters juggernaught of Satan, then I'd have to go mine some gold. I can't be arsed to mine any gold, so I'd rather pay someone to do it for me. Similarly, if someone wanted a Playstation, I'm not going to build one myself. Because I can't.

This can be said of many days, and Valentine's is no different. I don't have time to grow my own roses or make my own cakes, and even if I did I would just end up cultivating something that looked like afterbirth anyway. Valentine's day is not an exercise in capitalism or corporate greed. It's a celebration of love that has existed for far longer than some nations on our planet. It is a tradition that is open to any translation you can conceive.

You can be told that you are loved, but it is better to be shown that you are loved rather than be told. And next week I will have something in front of me, so that when I'm playing Mass Effect 2 I can glance away from the screen and receive a reminder that I am loved.

And if you don't need reminding, then perhaps you're taking it for granted.

Posted at: 11:26

Hypocrisy abound this Christmas.

A woman powerslams The Pope this year and is described as mentally unstable by The Vatican. I'm fairly certain that adults with imaginary friends are just as unstable, but when you're vomiting tired rhetoric such as this, what can you do?

"Conflict and lack of reconciliation in the world stem from the fact that we are locked into our own interests and opinions, into our own little private world," so sayeth The Pope. Noble words there Benedict, but what else are you saying? That homosexual acts are evil? That a woman doesn't have the right to choose what happens to her own body?

Benny, boy! No! It sounds as though perhaps you're locked into your own little world. After all, I haven't seen much reconciliation between The Vatican and the homosexual community, or even between El Poperino and people who recognise that sex is perfectly natural and that contraception stops STIs. I suggest you follow your own advice before you try to instruct the world how to behave because God told you so. What were we saying about imaginary friends earlier?

Even The Queen doesn't escape this year. She quite happily tells the world that this year sucked ass financially (from a palace that I'm helping to pay for, no less) and that The Commonwealth is a marvellous force for good both in the international community and in Afghanistan. Well, that's just great, Lizzy, but have you bothered to focus on the country you live in? You know, us sixty million neighbours of yours who you don't give a shit about? Those of us who were fucked over by the economic crisis that you only read about in newspapers? The folks who bust their 'nads 9-5 to keep you in a shiny palace surrounded by guards, only to be too scared to leave their own homes because you can't be bothered to tell Gordon Brown that we have a serious fucking problem with crime and that if he doesn't do something about it, she could really make his life a grotty, shit-filled mess?

I try not to be a hypocrite, but when I am, at least I can admit it.

Posted at: 20:25