15 August 2000 02:59:AM
Well, today has been marginally better than yesterday, but only, I suspect, because I haven’t dared to set foot beyond the confines of my own home - truth be known, I have taken it a little further and not left the kitchen apart from to answer the annoying holler of nature. Still, it seems to have worked for me, although I anticipate difficulties keeping it up. I am currently choking down a spectacularly tasteless version of a cheese sandwich, but as it is the only thing that stands between me and a slow and horrible death from starvation, I am forcing it down. However, the alternative becomes more desirable with every terrible mouthful and I may take my chances. I have probably ingested enough proteins from the despicable thing now, and continuing to force feed myself with such a clearly evil foodstuff can only be doing more harm than good. We have to consider the psychological effects of continuing with this torture - I may never be able to look a cheese sandwich in the face again, and I have always been fond of cheese. I may find that the most succulent and delicious cheese sandwich will never hold the same sway, and my life will become that little bit more empty for the lack of the ability to savour and enjoy a good cheese sandwich. The matter is settled then, clearly.
I have spent my day productively downloading useless odds and ends from the internet - always an enjoyable pastime, although every time I download a new program it attempts immediately to take over the world and I have to spend considerable amounts of time persuading it not to attempt such a daunting feat and to give it sufficient reasons to be content with being merely a dormant application until otherwise instructed. They seem to be taking their orders from a higher power and are reluctant to accept my authority in this matter. It tries my patience somewhat, I freely admit, although it has become a little bearable since I changed my error sound from a terrifying series of bell sounds that suggest the end of the world is upon us to a rather more amusing Southpark ’What the hell are you doing?!’ ’Nothing...it’s just...nothing...’ which makes me chuckle rather than run for cover.
I am now blessing the disk defragmenting program. It usually applies itself fairly randomly without waiting for instructions and generally makes me curse, because I am invariably deeply immersed in another program and therefore am taken by a great deal of surprise by its sudden commencement, generally having to pause to allow my heart rate to decrease from what would be considered, I should imagine, to be a life-threatening pace, but just a moment ago (having decided to write another couple of lines before saving) my program froze for reasons best known to itself, and upon emergency exit informed me that all unsaved work will be lost if I chose to continue in my attempt to exit the sulky program. So I resolved not to give in to that kind of bullying - it’s about time these applications learned who’s boss - and instead, I cursed and shook my head and may have begun to whimper just a little, when, out of nowhere in the middle of an unresponding program, the blessed randomness of the disk defragmenter finally proved its worth and defragmented for all it was worth, and it coaxed that unworthy program back to life! I don’t think I would be exaggerating to assign miracle status to this unlikely event, and I am sure, if one cared to ask, that the Vatican would be only too happy with the classification.

17 August 2000 01:18:AM
Today I went to the park to enjoy the sunshine and I am only now realising quite how sunburned I am. Sunbathing is clearly a foolhardy venture in climes such as ours, where the midday sun calls the inhabitants of an otherwise dull and cloudy city to various small areas of green with a voice too provocative to be ignored, and results in a reddened and pain-ridden populace for the following few days. I curse the sad fact that a pleasurable day in the park must invariably end in considerable amounts of pain.
A fair proportion of my time has, again, been spent on the internet looking for a call waiting program and finding (and downloading) completely unrelated and almost entirely useless bits and pieces, all of which make my desktop look cool, and none of which makes any appreciable difference to its performance - other than, I suspect, cluttering up the memory. I must be disciplined this evening and put myself to bed at a reasonable hour, and although the present hour is not generally considered to be terribly reasonable, it is considerably more reasonable than last night’s 5.30. I will bite the bullet and pray that my sunburned body succumbs to the spell of the Sandman.

18 August 2000 01:08:AM
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly... and I know why - because she left her mouth open when cycling at high speed in a balmy insect-infested evening. Stupid old lady.
There was I, cycling along, pondering upon great philosophical questions and plagued, as ever when cycling at night, by a vague concern for my safety and wellbeing fuelled, I suspect, by the distinct lack of any safety precautions whatsoever - even those required by law (ie helmet, lights...) and the speed at which I feel compelled to travel when confronted by an apparently empty stretch of road, when without warning an unidentified creature of the insect persuasion came hurtling out of the darkness, by chance my mouth directly coincided with its chosen flight path, and, in a tragic (for the insect) twist of fate, my untimely inhalation hurried it to its doom. I did my best to regurgitate the animal - any late-night revellers would testify to the retching and hacking - but to no avail. The insect was firmly entrenched in the depths of my oesophagus - I know because I could feel it there for the remainder of the journey. My only recourse was to swallow the thing and be done with it. I regret that course of action now. It did not easily slide down to be forgotten about in my stomach. It lies even now nestled in my throat exuding all manner of toxins, I have no doubt, and possibly, by the horrible feel of it, making a nest and having its babies in there. It is really remarkably unpleasant and the sooner I am sick the better.
Oh my lord but it has become extraordinarily cold all of a sudden. Shiver, shiver. Talking of cold...well, the opposite of cold, really, I discovered today that I had a patch of sunburn that had hitherto gone unnoticed - half of one ankle. For goodness sake. I can’t even begin to imagine how that happened. Perhaps the sudden drop in temperature is not external - perhaps it is the beginning of a slow and horrible death generated by the presence of a foreign body in my windpipe. In the event of my death, let the record show that my dying wish is for a bloody revenge to be wreaked upon the insect population.

18 August 2000 11:20:PM
Well, I’m still alive. My system has rallied magnificently against the insect invasion of last night. Well, perhaps not magnificently, but adequately, certainly. I think I will pull through. Phew.

20 August 2000 12:21:AM
Paf. My days are so full of nothing that I hardly have any time to get anything done. There is an awful lot of nothing I have left undone today, and even more nothing that I must do tomorrow because the nothing I neglected to do yesterday was put off until today to join the mounting queue of nothing that, in all probability, will remain undone until the end of time. I have had a bath, though. Hygiene is all important in the pursuit of nothing, in my opinion. Good grief. It grieves me to see what my life has become. It was a life with potential, the little successes and failures of the pursuit of excellence, and now a bath is the highlight of my day. Whatever happened, I wonder. Is it merely circumstance that has placed me in this unenviable position, or have I left undone a critical knot that weaves the threads of my hard work into a recognizably attainable goal. I don’t expect miracles. Just a life in which a bath is not the most important thing I have done today. Well, tomorrow I shall again join a queue of the similarly dysfunctional to receive payment from the government for remembering the location of the Jobcentre, knowing what a Thursday is, and for being able to write my name on demand.

27 August 2000 12:11:AM
So, it’s been a whole week. In that time my computer had a hissy fit of spectacular proportions for no apparent reason whatsoever. It remains a mystery. The result, however, is that I am now getting to know base unit number three (for crying out loud) and beginning to feel that electricity and microtechnology have no part to play in the successful operating of a computer, and that faith and fervent prayer are the essential components. In addition to backing up data every millisecond, one must form the circle of Zion with white candles around the machine and sacrifice a newborn goat at every new moon in order to keep the system operating smoothly. They should put that in the manual.
I went jet-skiing at the weekend. I had to put that in because of the cool factor. I won’t mention the 3rd degree UV burns, the swelling and blistering, the murky greying of damaged skin cells, the maddening itching and eventual horror of sheets of tissue-thin skin that now perpetually hang from my ravaged form. I must brace myself for a lukewarm bath tomorrow, as although I fear the potential pain that immersing myself in hot water will invariably cause, my dead and sloughing skin cells have gathered to the point of forming a new eco-system upon my body and have probably received enough UV radiation to mutate into intelligent life forms which if allowed to breed unchecked will most likely take over the planet. I cannot allow myself to be responsible. Of course, the mutated entities, if left to evolve, may well have the potential to save the world from it’s downward spiral, and by taking a bath, I may be destroying the chances of perpetuating life on this planet and perhaps even the universe. It is a quandary. Life is full of cruel and impossible decisions and I find myself stumbling from one to the other with my eyes squeezed shut lest I see the consequences.

©E Parker 2000