14/10/2002 - Entry #33
Alright then, best update, I suppose. I guess it has been over a month since the last one.
You'd think I'd have a lot to talk about, wouldn't you? Funny old world, cos I can't think of a damn thing. Well, no, that's not entirely true. I can think of several little things, but nothing of great importance.
The new house is nice enough. Potentially, it's brilliant. I mean, it's pretty big, and plenty roomy enough, and it feels fairly homey. There're a bunch of problems with it though. Firstly, the previous owners had something I like to call "anti-taste." It goes so far beyond simply 'bad taste', crashes right through 'no taste' and becomes something with the mindebending power to actually RUIN things that would otherwise have been tasteful. Apparently they went on their honeymoon to Egypt, and as a result had some kind of sentimental fetish for all things Egyptian. So what did they do to their house? You guessed it! They decorated it in an Egyptian stylee. Now believe me when I say these people were by no means artists. I don't know which parts of Egypt they actually visited, but wherever it was, it seems to have been excruciatingly brown. They painted the entire front room and dining room a kind of muddy terracotta colour, which gives everyone the distinct feeling they're living inside a very old plantpot. But that wasn't nearly enough. Oh no. They had to go one better. They stencilled heiroglyphics all over the walls! There's dozens of little pictures of Cleopatra-esque figures giving scarab beetles to snake-headed cats atop pyramids. Trust me, if you can think of a stereotypical image from ancient Egypt, it's almost certainly on the walls somewhere in our house. It's disgraceful.
The area is much worse, though. Even I can live with bad interior decorating, but the area we live in is pretty scummy. The day before I arrived up here, somebody put our front window through. Apparently they were just walking past and figured "Hey, I know, I'll punch this window!" So we had it boarded up, and now all the little scratter kids have started graffiti'ing it. That's the kind of area it is. I'm sure you know the kind. The other night we saw them set fire to a phone box, and last night they were throwing fireworks at cars. Little brats. With any luck, Ray Mallon will sort them all out. Bastard fucking screfters, I hope they all get put away forever. It's all just a self-perpetuating downward spiral. It's utterly senseless. It's not like they robbed us, they just felt like vandalising something. What did they set fire to the phone box for, some spare change? No, they're just filthy little fucking scumbags who should be shot. They'll only end up like their parents, breeding more little scumbags to go out burning cars out. Fucking shits. Kill them all and let God sort them out.
I'll have to look into the whole "Does poverty breed crime?" issue and come up with an opinion on it. I'm inclined to say yes, but I'll research it first.
What else is there? My housemates are fine. I've known them both for 2 years, but this is obviously the first time I've lived with them. Rich is pissing me off already, I must admit. Pete's sound, I get on fine with him, which is odd since I'm supposed to be mates with Rich. But I dunno, Rich is just an incredibly difficult person to live with. I'd call him idiosyncratic, but that paints too favourable an image. I really like idiosyncratic people, I'm always a big fan of their foibles. But Rich is just a man who's riddled with bad-habits. They're not foibles, they're fucking annoying. He's the kind of person who will tell you a story that you told him only two days previously, and completely make up extra details.
"Once, ages ago, one of my mates kicked down one of those lamp-posts on New Year's Eve. We were all pissed and it was snowing, and he just ran up to it and booted it over and over and-"
"Stop it!"
"What?"
"Look, I told you that story, and it wasn't fucking New Year's Eve.
"No, no, it was. He ran up to it-"
"IT WASN'T! I was there, Rich. His name was Dan Atkins. What kind of world do you live in?!"
And then he'll just walk off so nobody can carry on exposing him as a barefaced liar. He doesn't always lie, it's just that he has an addiction to telling people stories. Even if they're true, he'll just tell you the same story three or four times before you have to tell him you know it. I've got to the point now where I'll hear the opening three words of a sentence from him and I'll have to interject and tell him he's already told me it. Invariably, he'll sit silently for 10 seconds and then try tell me another story. Sometimes he'll just tell people patently odd things, simply cos he so enjoys being the one to enlighten people. Last night he was sitting next to his girlfriend, who's staying with us and who I'm a big fan of, and he turned to her and said "The new Xbox magazine comes out next week." She pulled the EXACT face I used to give my Grandad when he said things like "Back in my day, we had nothing but a spinning top to keep us entertained." The trademark 'I DON'T CARE you stupid, stupid man!!' face. I found it absolutely hilarious. But it's how Rich is. I remember last year, Mal lived with him, and the one thing he couldn't stand about Rich was how he used to show people things that he hadn't actually done, as if he deserved some credit for it. Best way I can explain that is with the most prolific example. See, Pete is Rich's younger brother, right? He came up to Teesside Uni at the start of last year, and started the same course Rich was doing (Animation). Pete is an extremely talented artist, and specialises in comic art. Think of your Spawn and Witchblade comics, and you have an idea of how Pete draws. He tends to sit on the sofa watching TV, just idly sketching stuff, and I've quite literally lost count of the number of times Rich has taken Pete's pad off him WHILE HE'S STILL DRAWING and said "Yeah, Dom, have you seen this?" and shown it to me. It really got on Mal's nerves, and I must admit, if he did it to me I'd go fucking spare. If I want people to see my work, I'll show them my work. If I don't want to show them my work, you'd best not fucking take my work off me and saying "Hey, dude, you seen this?" It's just odd. It's like he's Pete's agent or something, and somehow has ownership of the drawings. You could put it down to a kind of brotherly kinship or something, but he used to do it to another of our friends last year too. It's just plain wrong. I mean, he has a hell of a lot of other bad-habits, such as the fact that he's owed me £30 for over 2 years, but every time he gets any money, immediately spends it on fucking weed, which he then smokes downstairs in the front room, despite Pete and I asking him explicitly not to. But I'd say by far his most annoying bad-habit is the desire to tell or show people things, completely irrespective of their interest in it. Whenever we want to watch an American DVD, we have to hook one of the computer up to the TV, because the Xbox can't play American discs, and every single time we hook up Rich's, he'll subject us to a slideshow of pictures he's downloaded from the internet or something. Screenshots from upcoming games, or posters from famous films, or some 3D work that some random person he's never met has made and put on their site. At those times I just drift off into another world entirely, and pay no attention to what's going on.
For the record, he does have his plus sides. That rant there, that's mostly just getting things off my chest. It's untold amounts of pent up frustration at his irritating habits just bubbling over. Despite all of it, I do consider him a friend. An unreliable, undependable, incredibly jarring friend, but a friend nonetheless. I wouldn't have moved in with him if I didn't like him. He just gets my hackles up, that's all.
Meh, I think that'll do for now. The one thing I'll mentioned before I go is Slovakian striker Szilard Nemeth's wonderful comments in The Observer last week. When asked if he'd tip off the Slovakian national team ahead of the England match, due to his 'inside information' as a Middlesbrough forward, here's what he had to say:
"Are you joking? Everyone at home knows about English footballers. What would I tell them? Watch out for Michael Owen? David Beckham usually takes the free-kicks? Don't be so stupid."
Go on, Szilard! You tell 'em! Also, please note that all three goals in the game came from Michael Owen, a David Beckham freekick, and Szilard Nemeth himself. Spooky stuff.
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