Goodbye Cruel World
by John Walker on Dec.07, 2005, under Rants
Only in this shithole country can it be this stupidly cold and still piss down torrential rain without a hint of snow.
And only in these weather conditions does the British public pull out all the stops of their fully extended idiocy. Not just being a bit dozy, but the sort of stupid that gains sentience and starts running around knocking things over.
Having hidden in a coffee shop for an hour and a half, struggling with some horrid GBA game I’m reviewing, and reading a relaxing chapter of a book about substance abuse, I thought the despicable weather must have calmed a little. I ventured outside, and while not pleasant in the least, it had at least slowed its fury. Until I stepped out of the doorway.
Now, this is probably just a me-thing, but when it’s raining droves of barely-thawed icicles, what I don’t want to do is stand around aimlessly on the pavement, staring into space. I’m a maverick. I live life on the edge. In fact, I live life just off the edge, with my feet perpetually in the skiddle-de-skiddle-de moment one adopts before plummeting to the bottom of the ravine. I want to, as strange as it must seem, go where I’m going.
But that’s just me. And I mean that literally. Every single person – EVERY SINGLE PERSON – in the whole of Bath, had slowed down to the most moronic trance-like stasis. Attempting to walk down the pavement was somewhat like running down a corridor in Tomb Raider, with the spinning blades, crumbling walkways and wall-fired spears replaced with slo-mo zombies. What I wanted to do was be over there, in the distance, very very soon. But I had to stop every two to three steps as yet another glacial cretin decided to grind to a complete halt in the middle of everything for no reason at all. I imagine if I were to wander back to the same place now, they’d still be there, just staring, all stopped. It was as if the mechanical cogworks of Bath’s dullards had collectively wound down all at once.
Getting inside Waitrose was no better. Now, supermarkets are the natural habitat of the phlegmatic, and one should never enter without being at least prepared to endure viscous inanity. As a guide, I find that the volume of stupidity is usually indirectly proportional to the price of cheese in the shop. Enter a fine cheese specialist, and you’ll meet only the most polite and intelligent clientele. Go to ASDA, and you can fully expect to need protective clothing and a weapon. Waitrose, being so ludicrously middle class and overpriced, should at least afford some sort of protection.
One man. ONE MAN, didn’t walk into me, step out in front of me, hit me with a basket, randomly stop in front of me, block all possible routes from the exact spot I was standing on, stand in front of the shelf I needed to get to, facing outward, as if dead and carefully propped up there… One man. And I remember, because it was while negotiating the route between about nine DNA-deficient shoppers who had parked their trollies, baskets and arses in a slalom positions down the aisle. I was already running this gauntlet, edging crabwise between their obstacles, and saw a man at the other end needing to get through. In every other circumstance in today’s delightful outing, that person’s response would be to march directly at me, until I had to lunge out of their way. This man saw the situation, assessed it in a split second, and stepped to the side so I’d be out of his way as quickly as possible, and he’d not be in mine. I thanked him with a look on my face that would have been fitting if he’d dived into a frozen lake to rescue my own child.
What scared me most was how, after enduring an endless barrage of this insanity for about ten minutes (I was only buying a couple of things – I can’t afford to shop at Waitrose – but that’s how incredibly slowly the whole bloody place was moving), my external tolerance snapped, and my arms began cartwheeling around in furious frustration with the 305th person to randomly stop and stare without giving a crap about a single other person near them. Out-stretched limbs of rage, waved IN THEIR FACES, and nothing. Not the angry glare you can normally expect from idiots like this, who when they ram their trolley into your legs (that are already pressed against the frozen items counter in ASDA with nowhere to go) for the THIRD TIME, look at you with indignant disbelief because you’d been so shockingly barbaric as to say “OW!” at them. But today, blank nothing. Not even the flicker of a pupil at the moving colours in front of them. Comas. It’s the only explanation. Some sort of motion-capable coma induced by cold rain.
When earlier attempting to cross the pavement (all six foot of it) to get to the Waitrose entrance, a clearly highly trained team of synchronised dipshits managed to arrange themselves into a horseshoe around me, meaning I had nowhere to go but back into the road I’d just stepped out of. Incredulous that so many people weren’t noticing how they were in the way of everyone else IN THE WORLD in that remarkably selfish crescent, my mouth fell agape, my arms flew into the air in complete disbelief. And over the other side of the pavement, a man, a different man which gives me some hope, saw my situation, and smiled a pitying smile of understanding and sorrow.
I now understand how God felt when he decided it was necessary to kill everyone in the world. Those two guys who offered me the slimmest glimmer of faith in the species shall be chosen, plus a couple of girls which I’ll trust them to pick themselves, and the rest of you will die. Just so you know.
December 7th, 2005 on 20:41
I haven’t read this blog post yet, but I will later. Looks good.
December 7th, 2005 on 20:46
I hate you Tom. You’ll die first.
December 7th, 2005 on 20:48
In your OPINION.
December 7th, 2005 on 22:00
John, you may be King of America, but you can’t kill everyone in the world…yet.
December 7th, 2005 on 22:31
We shall see when the great fires rage.
December 7th, 2005 on 22:46
Freak.
December 7th, 2005 on 22:48
Obviously the fire would be arranged in such a way that everyone would have a perfect chance of survival if they were to only stop and think and take their surroundings into consideration.
But instead they shall be like people in films who run away from cars by only running away from it in the exact direction it’s going, rather than to either side. And catch fire.
And it shall be just.
And then I shall show a rainbow in the sky, which shall act as a reminder to all people that they’ll burn in terrible fires if they don’t get a bloody move on.
December 7th, 2005 on 23:14
Freak!
December 8th, 2005 on 10:54
We’re well over due a decent purge I reckon.
The rapture cannot come soon enough.
December 8th, 2005 on 12:09
Ooh, Rapture would be brilliant. All the smug, self-satisfied fundamentalist idiots would be taken away at once. If only it wasn’t an entire theology based on a misunderstanding of the events of AD70.
December 8th, 2005 on 12:20
…
I’ll take your word for it Theology degree man.
December 8th, 2005 on 13:51
I find generally that there’s a link between oh-so-well-detailed-comas and the ever increasing *stuff stuff in your ears* generation. The more people stuff stuff in their ears, the more they reduce themselves to coma ridden zombies. Next time, simply pull the plugs out and screech harshly into the recepticle meant to do the listening.
[ in my dukedom, no stuffing of stuff in ears will be tolerated.]
December 8th, 2005 on 14:21
Your dukedom will look funny all on fire.
I stuff stuff in my ears as I walk, or I grow quickly very bored. Speech radio rather than music usually. This can be an issue when listening to something very funny, as I become the crazed lunatic laughing as I walk.
But no, it doesn’t distract me from my surroundings.
December 8th, 2005 on 16:44
I wonder what the ‘confederacy of dunces’ think of the flailing agitated feller laughing to himself and shouting “OW” in their faces, whilst they huddle themselves up and try keep warm in the rain.. If I saw a crazy person like that, I’d probably try and ignore him too! :)
December 8th, 2005 on 17:18
Do you understand “ignoring” to mean “doing everything possible to get in his way”?
If they’d ignore me, I’d be the happiest man in the world.
December 8th, 2005 on 17:19
But apart from that John, how’s life treating you?
December 8th, 2005 on 17:27
Awww….Ill bet you went home and cried…aw…. /cry
Grow a pair. Women = the weaker sex, simply shove them out of the way. Feminism is a two-way street.
December 8th, 2005 on 17:36
Germaine, I told you to stop commenting here.
December 8th, 2005 on 19:15
a few more posts like this and you will be asked to join the Triforce.
December 8th, 2005 on 20:31
I’m not entirely convinced that adding members to a ‘triforce’ is possible.
Of course, I could always replace someone. Dave’s mostly likely to die horribly, it seems.
December 9th, 2005 on 19:13
why isn’t adding members possible? isn’t Hitchhikker’s Guide a trilogy in FIVE parts?
December 11th, 2005 on 20:29
“I now understand how God felt when he decided it was necessary to kill everyone in the world.”
It always comes to this for you cult people.
To address your walking problems (for it takes two parties to haplessly, idiotically tango; you and “them”), I think you need to adopt a surlier disposition and, if possible, try to reek of booze.
I share your sentiments about the stalled bozos who regularly retard my progress down busy streets, but I still manage to move with great rapidity by at least sending off a vibe, stretching 12 metres ahead of me, that I may not be very good at avoiding oncomers but that I will blame “them” for that and shove something in their eye by way of a lesson about alertness if contact ensues.
I’ll even attack people who have the affrontery to be more rapid. A couple of months ago I was walking into the small entrance corridor of my GP’s surgery when this swerving little shit dodged around me (and I was going at a pace) to veer in front of me, knocking me back a human in the reception queue.
“For FUCK’s SAKE!” I hissed.
He’d installed himself kind of half-body out of line of the queue proper though still distinctly in front of me. But when it came time to be “served” he dawdled nervously and I took that as a sign of weakness and I staked my claim for the receptionist’s attention.
It’s a jungle out there.