chapter 14

Note to reader: The narrative of the adventures of Mr BooHoo is linear, despite the fact that each chapter is an individual story, so I would advice you-in order to make justice to this character- to start from chapter one. I would also like to mention that the thirteenth chapter has been temporarily hidden, not because I am some sort of superstitious freak but due to its spiteful content. Therefor I choose to keep it in place for my personal archive but make it unavailable to the general public.

Chapter!$ (14): science fiction

Mr BooHoo could not stop feeling disappointment for the world in which he was living in. The place was crowded with idiotic, immoral and bad people. Refusing to let himself "grow up"(or what was generally accepted as such, some characteristics of which state were a hardening of heart and lose of taste), he did not accept the disillusionment that this was just the way things were and there was nothing to be done about it. He did not want to kill anyone, although he wouldn't mind giving a good fright and maybe a better spanking to a few people, but the chances of him building up the proper musculature were lame. Thus he often fondled in the following idea:

Somebody, somewhere, would do something silly and release a toxin or a substance of some sort that would infect the majority of the human population, reducing their intelligence somehow. This "element" would have a strange side-effect to another population as well, that of the rabbits. Yes, we are referring to the popular small furry creatures, most often white with red eyes, famous for their dexterity with magic tricks, fond of lettuce and unfortunately considered a culinary delicacy. Now, rabbits have two great advantages in comparison to other species; they can jump really high in analogy to their size and they copulate and multiply in extreme rhythms. Rabbits would start growing until they reached human height.   Then they would jump to the upper floors of buildings and they would also adopt  human speech for the sole purpose of saying "Who's cute now?" while demonstrating their glistening, blade-sharp teeth...       

chapter 12

If this is the first time you are visiting, please do your self a favour and start from chapter one. If you are mentally challenged and don't understand how, find the list of posts and from there go to the oldest one.

charter !@(12): the days of the week

Mr BooHoo decided that the weekend was too short. Thus he took another decision, to add a second Saturday to each week and a special extra Sunday whenever he thought he needed one. He was not a bourgeois, to be able to do this. Just...problematic and since he worked mostly from home it was no biggy  to rearrange time. You see during the weekends public services and most shops were closed and this gave him a sense of freedom as if there were no obligations or consequencies. To name a weekday Saturday meant that he could go shopping etc in the morning but that he would go nowhere unpleasant and on his spare Sundays he would not leave the house at all. This way he could afford a three-day weekend every week and a day-in every now and then. Saturdays were to be on Mondays or Thursdays because he was working at a school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Fridays were usually tranquil enough as they were.

We can picture Mr BooHoo on a nice gloomy Monday morning, that he had just renamed Saturday, thinking of a past Thursday that had been transformed from a silly fourth into a lovely sixth day of the week.

He had opened his eyes at half past eleven. Outside a bright, sunny day was taking place, exactly a month before Christmas. He felt glad to have survived another week and that it was only two more days to the weekend truce.

In Mr BooHoo's perception to wake up after ten o'clock was late. He felt clearer during the day-time and therefor he tried to prolong it as much as possible. He liked sleep as much, though, and there was a conflict.

The previous day, Wednesday it was, he had decided that he would postpone every disagreeable errand until the following week. Specifically, he had to go to a public health institute for the poor, the disabled, the unemployed, the junkies and the artists, with two photographs (eventually they only needed one), his i.d. and a photocopy of a protocol form that was given to him the first time he went there, three months earlier, to collect his health benefits booklet. He did not really want that because he did not really plan to use it. He was terrified of public hospitals, despised queues and furthermore, when ever he went to one he was worried he would catch some new strange and maybe even lethal disease. In addition to the above he would have to go to a massive, ugly public building, wait in line for hours among the previously mentioned miserable social groups, get into a dingy room crowded with desks and talk to a despondent public servant that would hate his or her job along with the rest of the humanity and be in a constant search of an opportunity to spit his or her moodiness to the face of an innocent by-stander. The last time he was there a large, deranged blond woman who looked and acted like a pimp and might have been a prostitute had been blocking his way in for almost half an hour, until one of the people that worked there took pity of him and invited him in to get his last stamp and leave. The whole experience was rather unpleasant and he was not looking forward to repeating it.

Avoiding pain, both physical and mental, was instinctive for all living organisms. Mr BooHoo could tolerate physical pain but was very sensitive when it came to insults. As some would say, he tended to take everything way too personally. For example he would repeat random dialogues with total strangers that had been rude to him (and apparently had forgotten of him the very next second) for days on end, as if they had slapped him in the face and he had done nothing to avoid it, but in the meantime he was boiling inside. Not only he felt helpless and stunned at the moment when the incident took place but it haunted him for the rest of his life, like a misplaced scar. ( Well-placed physical scars can be sexy). He was also unlucky enough to live in a city where people were edgy and loud. This situation made his life difficult. An acquaintance had suggested that he managed his errands by doing one obligatory unpleasant thing every week. On that particular week he had gone to the bank to pay the rent and had made two unpleasant phone-calls. Enough is enough, he thought, and took the decision in question. He had been good enough to go to work, take care of the house, walk the dog two to three times per day (the night-walk was his partner's responsibility), so on that ex-Thursday, now Saturday, he could do nice stuff.

He combined the dog's walk with a cup of coffee by him self. He had found a nice cafe on a nice location, under a record-store. From his table he could see the passers-by and a dirty old building. The coffee was all right and cheap. The radio was playing"Heroes" by David Bowie. Then he went back home to make Christmas ornaments and experimented on a chicken-pie recipe (eventually it came out too dry but his next attempt was a success) Somedays, life could be all-right for anyone.    

chapter 11

Post Scriptum at the top of the page: Towards the bottom of the page there is a link-button to older posts. Feel free to start reading from chapter no 1. 

Chapter: !! (11): difference and public acceptance


Mr BooHoo was terribly off-put by another type of person (apart from bureaucrats, fascists, know-it-alls and all the other types mentioned in previous chapters). He was terribly annoyed by people who did not accept the fact that not all of us think the same, like the same or have the same aspirations and ambitions. Lucky for him he had been raised in  a tolerant family that had taught him that he shouldn't expect from others to have the same taste as him, neither should he try to force acceptance. To have an individual personality was more important than being part of a pact.

Being poor and closed as a person did not make him popular at primary school. His clothes were different from these of his classmates and he spent more time reading than socializing. If he had the money and the right influences (there was no internet back then) he would have been a first class traditional geek. Yet, he never wore braces (his teeth were everything but straight, still, as I said before he couldn't afford most things, let alone cosmetic procedures), his eyesight was perfect and he used too much foul language for a toddler. Of course back then he desperately wanted to fit in, to have friends and not to have the popular children of the school treat him like shit. This had as a result a lot of embarrassing memories because on occasion he did buy uninteresting magazines, wore the wrong clothes, sang ugly songs and watched silly sitcoms. When he went to high-school he made real friends and figured out that he was not an alien, he just happened to be in a really idiotic environment. He also thought that all this judgement upon the fact that he seemed to think in a different manner than the mass was a thing of the past. He knew that there would always be people whose narrow-mindedness would form the general opinion and the contemporary notion of "ordinariness" but he also thought that being considered different would not be an alienating factor because mature individuals know that diversity is not a synonym of wrongness.

Thus, for a few years, the world was a happy place where he could go round with his hair really long or really short, handmade clothes and odd make-up and not only have friends and partners but actually earn people's respect with his good manners and ethical behaviour. It always hurt him whenever he came across someone who rushed into conclusions or who considered that being odd was illicit.
Trying to find a job suggested to him that maybe he should work a bit more on making a good first impression. Yet, most restrictions included nudity and extreme make up and Mr BooHoo understood that and accepted it without boohooing.
The god of odd luck brought things that way, once, that he had to work with two nuns! This came as a shock initially but he rather enjoyed it as an opportunity for sociological research and again, his good manners and intense sense of morality helped him manage adequately.

And after all that he came upon a small group of people, a family to be more precise, that after knowing him for a few years still refused to accept him. Not only did they take advantage of every opportunity given to tell him off and alienate him but they also tried so hard to impose their lifestyle on him, repeating directly and indirectly that most of his decisions and manners were immature, inviting him again and again to do the same things they liked and making a huge fuss when he declined some of these suggestions.

To sum up, Mr BooHoo felt anger for another type of person: the ordinary one. The sort of people that will give you things regardless whether you like them or need them or not. The sort of people that believe that all boys should have nicely combed short hair and all the girls long, that all girls should like the color pink and take care of the house, while the boys should be out working in their properly ironed fashionable uniforms, that homosexuals should stay hidden in the cellars and that being part of a pact is the most important thing. The people that judge you from your clothes and not from your manners, the people that take a step back when you reach your hand out to them saying "my name is (your name here), nice to meet you" just because you happen to have a part of your hair shaved (this is a true story, an actual fact. It really did happen). The very same sort that slows the world down and for whom imagination is an admirable quality only when it belongs to someone from another country.  Such a sad affair...     

Chapter 10

Note to the uninitiated reader: See the number above? It says 10 (ten). This means two things: a) it is not chapter no 1(one). See the difference? It has an extra oval shape like this: 0. b) if there is a chapter no 10 there must also be nine more chapters.  Now scroll down and locate chapter no 1 like a good scholar.

Chapter @) (10): the fridge

Mr BooHoo was given a brand new fridge as a present from the parents of his partner. He gave away the old fridge, that he had since he was a student, that was somehow dysfunctional, mercilessly dirty and possibly infested by cockroaches and now he had one that was almost twice as high. He had to admit the new icebox was a beauty. It had two separate doors for the frizzer and the fridge compartments and multiple selves and drawers. It was fabricated so as to consume less energy and oh, so clean. It was so big Mr BooHoo never managed to fill it. As it has already been mentioned, a beauty for a fridge.

Yet, Mr BooHoo could not help feeling melancholic when he thought about it. The thing is that by having so big an object, and expensive and all, it became a symbol of stability. Now, Mr BooHoo liked the idea of stability. After moving around for almost ten years and changing houses almost every year he fondled with the idea of settling down. But he wanted it to be his own choice. He seriously disliked the idea of being chained by a fridge. And it was not only that! He new that soon the fridge would be followed by a nice library and a couch and even a new mattress was on its way (he was not happy about this because it felt evasive and further-on the previous mattress was just fine and he would have to find a place to store it).

 At this point a subject should be clarified: Mr BooHoo was clearly a "homo-collector". He hesitated a great deal to throw away stuff. He accumulated objects and materials for future use. His family, flatmates and partners found this to be a reason of distress from time to time. He was working on it, by forcing himself to leave things on the pavement when they were in a really bad shape, or to find "foster-homes" if he thought that they might get love from someone else, and by not acquiring new ones unless it was absolutely necessary. By transforming them frantically into new charming, and useful when possible, objects was his way of getting scolded less and gain the acceptance (not be considered mentally unstable or even worse an idiot  of the previously mentioned people.

It was not the same with living organisms. Someone could think that he would experience the dog as a more serious burden, and occasionally it was. It made moving around and travelling much more complicated. Yet he did not have that strong a psychologic reaction to it. Perhaps it was because stuff that breath have an apparent autonomy. Anyway, this subject will not be analysed neither here nor now.

Returning to the fridge, he hated the fact that he felt it as a ball and chain. He was not that fond of his apartment, he had become terribly bored of his neighbourhood, the city in which he lived made him unhappy and the country, well, he was never very glad of having been born and raised there. He had left it once but returned after a year with the perspective, though, of leaving again after a period of rest. The acquisition of the fridge made things seam oddly permanent.  And the word permanent was associated directly with the word stale in his mind, on the occasions that he felt low. How would he take the decision to move if he could not take the fridge with him? Generally, he hesitated to have things he could not carry on his own, or with a little bit of help. He had lots of things but they could all be put in small boxes he could handle by himself. The large, beautiful, expensive, new fridge was plainly over-whelming.

How jolly nice, another bloody issue he would have to solve.          

the bath

Mr BooHoo got out of the bathroom in his heavy brown bathrobe and walked, barefoot on the ice-cold floor, to the living room, where he found his silk, green slippers. On his way to the bedroom he saw the mist flowing slowly into the corridor and dissolving into the air. The light was still on. He walked through the steam. It smelled nice. He felt animated as he took a couple of steps in the bathroom this second time. The warmth and the cute smell of shampoo made him feel dreamy, as if walking into another persons private life, from a safe spot. He grinned.

chapter 9 : not for the squimish

In every post I suggest to the unaware reader to start from chapter (post) no 1. I also mention that it is all fictional, just to be on the safe side. I began writing this story last night on a notebook I found on the pavement outside of my house, in which I also wrote my shopping list for the supermarket. In this particular post I would like to say a couple more stuff: A) if you don't feel comfortable reading about blood, needles, hospitals and patients then please avoid this chapter and B) if you get sad easily, just keep in mind while reading this that Mr BooHoo does not have cancer and he is not going to die, at least not from that, at least not for now. Cheers! Share and enjoy!!!

Chapter ( (9): celebrating life

Mr BooHoo is a birthday person. This means that all year long he looks forward to his birthday. This is partly a result of arrogance, vanity and a deep-set belief that he is a gift to this world that is plainly too stupid to appreciate him- a theory that is greatly supported by his mother- and partly because he always aspires to fresh starts and the idea that his life might become less crappy. He also like new year's Eves, the first day of each month and most mornings (but not Mondays). These times fill him with optimism; they make him think that maybe he could draw a line on time and leave yesterdays jinxes and mistakes behind, perhaps even get new opportunities. Once he made an object he named "day-reboot pill: to be taken before midnight on a particularly bad day and provide your self with a second chance". No matter how great this idea was, Mr BooHoo is a craftsman and not a pharmaceutical genius, thus, the pill was not really functional. As a matter of fact it was neither made of chemicals nor time particles but a pink and a white sock, sewn together and stuffed with polystyrene balls. Further on, it was almost 30 cm wide, a thing that made it hardly swallow-able. To be perfectly honest, one could argue that the pill in question is just a representation and should have been named "a cuddly representation of the day-reboot pill" but this is not the subject of this text. Mr BooHoo's 28th birthday is.

Mr BooHoo likes to spend his birthday alone. No badly organized surprise parties and hastily bought presents (for Heaven's sake if you don't know what to get a person just buy flowers.They are nice, they make the place colorful and fresh and after a while they wilt and can be disposed off without guilt). The previously mentioned ordeals were the cases of his 23nd and 23rd birthdays, when after having spent a lovely day undisturbed he was invited to a house and had to act surprised and pretend he liked his presents etc. His 24th birthday must have been nice because he has photographs in which he doesn't look bored. Some of the presents were very much to his taste! The year after that he was abroad and he blew a single candle on a cupcake after having cooked musaka for a bunch of foreigners. Some of the presents were very nice and some  were totally bulky and useless and he had so many pints at the local pub! That day has a thumbs up in his mind. A day before his 26th birthday he came back home and met with his special friend. This way it became a double anniversary. He blew ample candles on a huge cake that his aunt, who is a pastry chef, made especially for him and a huge candle that looked and smelled like a cake made by his mother and reserved for the occasion. On the morning of the first day of his 27nth year he wrote a note to himself describing how bad the previous night had gone and that is was probably the worst birthday ever with the most unwelcome and annoying visitors. No friends were around but one, the same life-saver that had provided the cupcake two years before that. This account leads to the subject of this text: Mr BooHoo's 28th birthday.

He had let his 28th birthday pass almost unnoticed. He had received 28 (funny coincidence) wishes on an on-line social network, a few telephones, two more personal messages, a very nice specially made video that had touched his heart and no presents at all. (Candy and panacota don't count as birthday presents, not if the receiver get to consume less than a third). He had let it go like this because within a week he would go through another experience, after which he would celebrate being alive. So, a week after his birthday he filled a small suitcase with pajamas, towels and underwear, left the house very early in the morning and went to a hospital just a few metres from the one where he was born. After an x-ray, a urine sample and a blood sample he went into the operating room. There, nurses installed small tubes with cannulas inside his veins and he was laid spread eagle on the surgical table. His doctor was a very, very tall old man with thick spectacles who seamed to know well what he was doing. He helped Mr BooHoo feel safe. He could not stop shaking, in part because he was so afraid and up to a certain  point because it was freaking cold in there and he was naked. Soon he sunk into anesthesia.

Five hours later he woke up in the intensive care room. The door was open and there was a sign that said "first isolation room". Various cables were connected to patches stuck on his chest and various tubes directed liquids and blood into his veins. His blood pressure was measured every quarter of the hour. He could not breath well, so they installed another set of thin tubes to his nostrils. He was visited by his mother, his father, his sister and his friend. All were wearing silly transparent green robes. They were not allowed to stay there for long and he was soon left alone. Nurses would drop by quite often to check his vitals and change the little bags of liquids that went in and out of his body. They told him they had used a kind of anesthesia that would not allow him to feel any pain from the incision. His lower abdomen was covered with thick bandages. He got an allergic reaction from synthetics, but it soon went away, when they changed them with fabrics and paper. Towards dawn -he knew because he could see the clock of the central room from his bed- they informed him that they would help him get up and transfer him to his room. A nurse helped him but it hurt. As soon as he was standing he felt nauseous. A nurse held a tray under his chin and he puked green stuff.

They let him sit on a large hospital armchair and covered him with a sheet. From there he could see outside his room, as far as his post-surgical blurry vision allowed him. He saw a very old patient, with a complicated set of tubes around the face and shoulders. He could not understand if it was a man or a woman. Soon a male nurse helped him sit on a wheelchair and took him to an ordinary hospital room. He still had small cannulas attached to his veins but he was alive. In pain but alive. A metaphorical weight had left his chest and a literal weight had left his abdomen. Luckily there were pills, injections and suppositories to take away physical pain. He knew that within 20 days all this would be just a memory and who knows? perhaps his 28th year might turn out to be a little less harsh. Whatever he had left at the hospital should better stay there and he had ticked off one of his worries from the list. Soon he would even be able to sleep on his tummy, again.

chapter 8

In order to get properly acquainted to Mr BooHoo, I would suggest that you start from the beginning, in case you haven't been through the previous seven, plus a paragraph, chapters. Never you mind, none of them is too big. Don't be a lazy donkey, if you don't begin at the start you will not get the whole picture. Just scroll down and find chapter one. If, on the other hand, you are a familiar visitor, well then, cheers. Sorry for the spelling mistakes.

Chapter *(8): anger

Mr BooHoo was feeling angry. He filled his bathtub with hot water, added a handful of colourful plastic ducks and a clockwork turtle, of whom his friend was to get particularly fond of, and got inside. His bathtub was neither antique nor beautiful. In fact it did not even have a bathtub plug and he had to use the lid of a glass jar instead. still, as long as the lid fitted and stayed put it was no skin off his nose. The ducks kept flowing up-side-down with their heads in the water. No matter what he tried they seemed due to stay like this. He did not mind this either. He left some gas and watched it go up in bubbles. The smell reminded him faintly of cooked beetroot, not to mention cabbage or cauliflower. He occasionally took small sips from a rather small glass filled with a rather translucent liquid. He looked at an old envelope he had used as scrap paper and noticed that there were some funny stuff printed in a small square at the bottom right side of it, titled "return (in his language)/retour". Under this there were options with smaller boxes on their right side so as to tick in case you would like it unopened to the post office. One of these words, in his native language, meant "unacceptable", although the sense in which it was used there might be "unaccepted". It sounded rude and evasive and it almost amused him.

After he was half the way through his drink he felt the anger subsiding and numbness spreading from the back of his head to the rest of his body. His mind became misty- as the opposite of clear- that was a good thing because at that point, clarity of thought combined with the negative feelings invoked by dusk and tiresomeness would probably make him angrier and stressed. He thought shortly on another option from the small square; it said that the letter was undelivered because the person to whom it was addressed to had "left without leaving a forward address". Most likely, he would not become this person for multiple reasons, cowardice among them.

His mind returned to the feeling of anger. To the biggest part, it was other people's attitude that made him angry. Trusting people with jobs that never got done in time, having to ask people for favours, people that would only do him favours so as to ask for something in return, being in the need of people, loosing control over things and in the end he was the only one who got hurt. Perhaps he paid too much attention to what people thought of him. The worst part was to have to ask twice. Also, people who were loud and cocky made him vexed and people who thought they were brilliant just because they had once succeeded in academia but were bloody morons in real life situations, big people who took his turn in lines and the list could go on and on and on. (Bosses that refused to pay their employes, arrogant school-teachers, violent boyfriends and girlfriends, manipulators, spoiled single children,  political figures, narrow-minded people, new-hippies, new age religious freaks, in one word idiots. Bad guys).

Once, trying to asses his psychological drama, he read about a behavioral disorder that pretty much matched his then current condition. A specialist was giving some oversimplified examples of people who, on certain occasions, sunk into self-pity, where-as anger would have been a more appropriate and "normal" feeling. He remember thinking that it was a pile of literary dung he had come across, because self-pity can be a more dignified state of mind than anger. Definitely safer for the rest of the world. The feelings of self-pity and self-loathing can be irksome but in an explosion of anger there are bound to be innocent victims of violence. In addition, he could not figure out how he could ever look at himself in the mirror if he knew he had hurt somebody so much, physically or mentally. Not that he was a saint, he had sent plenty of people to s"d off, but this was as far as it went and it still bothered him from time to time. He was further annoyed when he thought of all the times he must have insulted or hurt people that had not brought it upon themselves and had forgotten all about it. At that period Mr BooHoo was sinking into crisis of self pity, during which he disliked himself so much that he almost turned to religion. He still carried fragments of this and always expected a new outburst.

As it has been mentioned, though, lately, he was getting angry. Of course, he would restrain from expressing himself verbally, but he spent so much time in his time re-fighting lost battles and telling people off. So much that he started finding it silly and mocking himself for transforming into a vengeful super hero, with abilities similar to Hulk's, in his imagination, while remaining a (not always so) silent mouse in real life.

Squick.

The small people shall rise (again).

After three miniature glasses of transparent liquid he was not angry at all. Slightly numb, perhaps, and ready to go hide under his new handmade quilt. He had made it almost 950 fabrics short to be enchanted and thus did not expect anything he would dream under it to come true. This was a soothing thought, especially since not all his dreams were soothing.            

Chapter 7

This is the seventh adventure of Mr BooHoo. I would suggest to any reader that is unfamiliar with his issues to start from chapter !(1). Scroll down, then!

Mr BooHoo, chapter&(7)

Mr BooHoo got up at half past eight. It was nice. The sky had the lovely blue colour it has sometimes after it has rained the previous night, and the day before it had rained for the first time after almost a month. Autumn had arrived, officially. He decided to watch television while having his morning cup of coffee. Television lately felt like a bearer of bad news, so he avoided it. The only safe programme was a telemarketing show about sneakers with curved soles that could lift your breasts and help you loose 2 kg per week. After looking at it numbly for approximatelly 20 minutes he realised it was playing on a loop and that he had already watched it two and a half times. Still, there was nothing better to watch, apart from a pre-school show with an ugly panda.

The rest of the channels had early morning talk shows, on which they debated if the country had been bankrupt and this was not being announced to the public, or if the economy would smash within a month. He pondered on the idea of finding imunity outside the economic system by moving to the countryside, as people do in case of war, and if there were the potential for dignified survival under the circumstances. First things first, though, and the first thing that Mr BooHoo needed to have done was to solve his physical health issues (the psycological would have to wait). Since he had had a couple of negative experiences from the public health system, he had resolved into going to a private clynic.

He thought that politicians should be forsed to go to local public hospitals. This should be their punishment for not providing the people with decent  public health care. It didn't feel right to need a loan so as to get well.

If he managed to get through all these he might reconsider leaving the city. There was warfair anyway. It just hadn't been "announced to the public", yet people were pushed to poverty and starvation. The funds on education and the arts were constantly dimimished. There was strong propaganda and people's mental safety was in peril.

Back from his thoughts on current affairs, he decided it was time to go to the loo. He brushed his teath, kissed his friend and dog goodbye and left for the bus station. He would go to the enemy's lair; the tax offices at his hometown. He would have to face the beast and get his things done. It was a bright, sunny day. He was feeling uncomfortable but he had started getting used to the feeling. 

Mr BooHoo, chapter 6

Mr BooHoo is an imaginary character and this is his imaginary diary, so if you are not familliar with him you'd better start from the start. Scroll down to find previous posts.

Chapter ^ (6): sleeping and baking

The alarm clock started making the usual, unfriendly, beeping sounds at half past eight in the morning. Mr BooHoo pressed down the snooze button. The sound would stop for just five minutes, a joke of a time that would be enough for a joke of a slumber. It went off again and Mr BooHoo thought of pushing the button again. He knew he was able to do this for a couple of hours, until he would have slept for approximately eight hours.

After having carefully observed pattern behaviors in canines, he had come to the conclusion that the only animals that liked to get up early in the morning are the ones that have to go to work. Further more, since the human kind had been given the gift of electricity and artificial light, it was nothing more than a silly, nasty, habit to have to get up so early in the morning. It also made him miserable and angry to be forced to wake up after less than eight hours of sleep, especially when the climate was not extremely dry.

As it has been mentioned before, Mr BooHoo is a day-person. Or, to be more accurate, he felt much better in his daily self. This doesn't mean that he didn't enjoy as much sleeping in the morning as well. It felt so good, to let the outside world happen and stay inside his safe, cosy bed.

Thus, on this particular morning he decided to do the small extra gesture that would ensure the alarm-clock's silence and he went back to sleep for another one and a half hour. He opened his eyes again at ten o'clock. It looked like a fairly nice autumn day, probably the first day of autumn, despite the fact that it was already the 20th of September. The sky had a bright white color and it looked gloomy. Mr BooHoo liked this sort of weather. He wished for a cup of coffee. His friend was in the loo already.

Mr BooHoo walked into the kitchen hoping that his coffee had not gone lukewarm yet. Alas, there was none. Just a half-cup of watery lukewarm cocoa. He put some water to boil and started doing the dishes. His friend was still in the loo, a place that Mr BooHoo was becoming desperate to visit, too, for he had drunk almost 750 ml of water before he had gone to bed and now it wanted to come out. For a little while he even flirted with the idea of urinating in the kitchen sink, but thought twice and decided against it.

The morning was going well. He had spent the last four days making a stupid (and somewhat ridiculous subject-matter-wise) painting with oil-colors that looked better than it did the previous night and therefor he declared it finished. As far as a work of art- to speak of-can be declared finished; to be honest it was more a "to hell with it" definition of finished than completed. He would not occupy himself with it any more, at least for now. He took his medium cup of steaming coffee and sat on the couch to doodle around the internet. After spending some unnervingly futile time on social networks he decided to do something more worthwhile. He had some cooked beetroot from the previous day in the fridge. He would make some cake!

At this point it should be mentioned that Mr BooHoo was a fairly good cook, but a not so proud pastry-chef. Unfortunately this was about to be confirmed. A friend of his that was an excellent cake-maker had explained to him once that the issue was the incompatibility between the intention to make something healthy and sweets that tasted good. In other words, that he should not expect to make a nice cake without thin all-purpose flour, sugar and lots of butter. He seemed a bit narrow-minded though and tried a healthy recipe with whole-grain flour and honey. He also did a mistake and put only one cup of honey instead of one and a half as indicated in the recipe.

All the ingredients were mixed, the baking trays were put in the preheated oven and he took the dog for a walk. It was remarkably hot outside for the gloominess of the day. This was a bad thing, for Mr BooHoo was fond of chilly weather. When he returned to his house he smelled burnt cake. His friend had forgot to check on it. It was not so badly burned though. The cooking was almost all right but the recipe sucked so badly! It was not sweet at all. It had a bread-like taste, almost salty. His friend told him it had too much soda or/and baking powder. Further more, it had a rather ordinary orangy colour while he had expected it to be pink. What a turn-off.

The bad results of his baking brought to his mind more thoughts about his unsuccessful living. He could not get a proper job or put his life in a straight line, totally unable to take decisions and feeling like the biggest talented looser in the world. His birthday was approaching. ""ollocks. He would wait for a little longer, so as to get the results for jobs he had applied for and then he would apply for some more. Wednesday, the day to come, would be a big day. He had lots of things to do. So, he might just as well take Tuesday easily. Anyway, there was still a meal to be prepared and it would go much better. Mushrooms was something he could control.  And the day was still gloomy. It made him sleepy but he liked it non-the less. Perhaps things would work out and someday, he might even bake a cake that would make his friends proud!   

M BooHoo, chapter 5

Mr BooHoo is an imaginary character and this is his imaginary diary, so if you are not familliar with him you'd better start from the start. Scroll down to find previous posts.

Chapter % (5): momentary lack of luck

Mr BooHoo has been doing very well. He's had his ups and downs and he has been to some scary places. (For example, on the previous day he went to take care of his insurance issues. The place where he went was totally miserable. Initially, a clerk told him that he should have an appointment and that this would be a whole month later. Then he probably pitied him and eventually they started the process. When he was about to see the last clerk, a large toothless blond woman was blocking the door  and she would not let him in before her for nothing. She wouldn't let anyone in. Thankfully, the first clerk came out and let him in. He was given a protocol number and was told to phone them at the end of the next month to go and pick up his official booklet. Then he could have insurance. Not that he planed to use it because public hospitals are miserable and dirty. Mr BooHoo has spent some time in them and has decided he never wants to go there ever again. This is rather improbable though. In addition to all the previously said, every time he is in a public hospital he thinks he will catch some new random disease, so he avoids them.)  

Apart from the above, as it has been mentioned he is doing well. He has found a new house and his friend and him are refurbishing it. At the time they are painting the walls and cupboards. Tomorrow they will finish painting and start cleaning and then they can move in. Painting today went well. The bedroom will be light mint green and the corridors will have the colour of the water-melon. The doors will be scarlet! This particular colour provides the basis of today's thrilling story of unsuccessful living.

Everybody knows that painting a house is not an easy task. Yet, Mr BooHoo did not complain one bit about this. When he had finished painting his part of the walls -he is a ... vertically challenged fellow and he is afraid of heights, so, since he does not have a steady ladder he painted the part of the walls he could easily reach while standing on the floor. The higher part were done by his friend.- he was feeling fairly tired and he knew that when he felt as tired as he did things usually start to go wrong. The only thing he could do was start painting the doors in the previously mentioned scarlet red. The paint he used was oil-based. He took a screw-driver and opened the can. The lid popped and landed first on his hand and then on the floor. At this point it should be mentioned that Mr BooHoo has sweaty hands and he managed to get a blister between his thumb and pointer. This blister had broken and this is exactly were the lid of the oil-based paint landed. Firstly he found it amusing. It looked like blood, so red that it was. Then he went to was it. He should have cleaned it with whiter spirit in order to get it properly clean, but that would hurt his blister a lot. So he tried washing it with with shampoo. It hurt a little but not really.

So, so far, most things were all right. After painting a few parts of the door with a brush, he decided to pour some colour on a tray and use a paint-roller to finish it. He tried hard not to spill any more paint on the floor and then.....he poured a tone of it on his hurt hand, again!! This was unfortunate. His hand was so sticky! He swore loudly, as he was ricing it unsuccessfully, it hurt more. What was worst was that he could not really clean it and he would have to stay with this sticky hand.

Eventually, it became too dark to continue working (there are no lamps in the house). He returned home, tired but sort of happy. Now, he would go out with friends for a couple of drinks. I think he deserves to relax for a little while, don't you?       

Mr BooHoo, chapter 4

If this is your first time here I would advise you to start from the beginning. This is not here. Here is the fourth chapter about Mr BooHoo, a disturbed but charming fellow. The original text is in my larger notebook.

Chapter $ (4): meaningless tasks

One of the things that make Mr BooHoo feel sincerely low is the heat. This particular summer, during which our story is taking place, was not so hot and his house was rather cool. Otherwise, Mr BooHoo felt ...ucked. This was because Mr BooHoo had so many things to do that were not fulfilling at all. If anything they were the complete opposite. All his energy was sucked from him as he was obliged to perform meaningless and not creative bureaucratic errands. As if this was not enough all these things stressed him to his limits. He was feeling that he was loosing his marbles. What was odd about Mr BooHoo and his marbles was that he had plenty of physical ones. People just gave him marbles. It might have been because he had an expression of great joy and admiration when he looked at these small orbs. Yet, it was his mental, or symbolic, or theoretical marbles he was getting worried about.

On a not so warm morning, and after he had just returned from a fairly nice weekend by the sea, he left the tranquility of his house to go out and get a few things done. First he had to go by a service where he would get a certificate about his family (marital) status. Most of the clerks were on vacation. Luckily there were not many people there waiting to be served, either. He took a ticket and waited. His turn came and after getting an official round stamp on a photocopy from one desk, he went to another one to take his certificate that should have been there on Thursday, but it wasn't and now it was Monday and it still wasn't there... He asked when he should expect it to arrive and a woman behind a glass window lifted her shoulders and prolonged her face instead of speaking like a civilized being that would say "this information is not available to me" or simply "I don't know".

Mr BooHoo left this place slightly annoyed. On his way to the next public service, his friend bought two kilos of honey! This was supper-cool! While waiting in line for the next bureaucrat his friend found out that the honey-seller had given him extra change. They considered for a little while to return and pay them back, but then they decided that they might as well try to repay them the next time they would be there to buy honey, if it was good enough.

The good friends returned to the house and relaxed for a little. Mr BooHoo was doing well and he was feeling proud of himself! He was not exactly cheerful, but he was not panicking and  neither did he found it hard to breath! After all, spending a weekend away had done him great good. Before leaving he had made an agreement with himself that he would seriously try to relax, stop thinking so much about ugly and harmful things, stop being under so many unnecessary self-imposed rules and in general to "stop worrying today about something he had to do tomorrow". He seemed to have brought all this "positive thinking" back with him, along with the nice little pebbles he had collected from the beach. He had really tried to reach this state of mind. He had taken with him only the absolutely essential and had not triple checked the kitchen and the boiler to make sure they were turned off, as he usually did before leaving the house. (This had caused him some trouble sleeping but it was still a small step towards improvement.) He told himself "I am leaving everything as it is and I shall expect them to be where I left them because this is how it usually goes for most people, most of the times". Now he was back and everything was all right. The black cloud that was usually above his head was further away.

And then his phone rung. It was his landlord. Mr BooHoo had decide to move to a new house. One that would be brighter, with less cockroaches an no mice at all, if possible. It had taken him a month to find one. This meant that since the new month had just started his rent was due. He would not be staying in this house for the whole month though, so Mr BooHoo did not appreciate the fact that he might have to pay the total sum of money and in addition to this, that he might not even get his deposit back. His landlord had been all right so far, so this story too might have a happy ending. He would just have to wait and see. Instead of getting all blue he decide to prepare a light meal and chill in the afternoon. He was determined to start feeling better. Things would just have to wait.            
 

Everybody deserves a happy weekend

Mr BooHoo's life was not constant boos and hoos. For example, during a dreadful summer he went on vacation, by the sea! He still had some trouble sleeping at night. The forest and the dark made him feel uncomfortable, but during the day he had left all his troubles away! His solemn worry was that the sea might take his flip-flops. Actually this was because on the first morning the sea took two forks, one tea-spoon and four peaches, while he was cleaning his breakfast cutlery. His friend managed to save a metallic cup and a small saucer, that were the most important things. He did not have any more forks or spoons, but he still had enough so as to manage. Being with friends, out in the open, listening to the cicadas and occasionally chatting with his temporary neighbors was adequate to keep him calm and happy.    

the continuous story of mister BooHoo, chapter 3

The third chapter of the story of Mister BooHoo was written this morning in the previously mentioned notebook. If it the first time you are visiting this blog I would advise you to scroll down and start from the beginning.

Chapter £ (3) Distress

Mr BooHoo was feeling uncomfortable. He had found himself in a tight spot. Something had gone further wrong. What was worst was that he was not sure if he could fix it and he didn't have anyone to ask either. He was sitting with a friend, taking small ships of some transparent liquid from a very small glass, when his phone rung. It was his father.

Like most creatures Mr BooHoo has a father. He is also a BooHoo. Sometimes Mr BooHoo wondered if he would be less of a BooHoo had his father been a different person. Mr BooHoo had grown to accept the fact that this was who his father was and there were little he could do about it. They did not talk or meet that often , anyway. So the opportunities offered to Mr BooHoo's father to make him feel like boohooing were, luckily, limited. Occasionally, Mr BooHoo would think of all the times he had felt that his father had lied to him, insulted him and caused him harm in various ways but he had made an agreement with himself not to get too beaten up over it, neither to think that this was the source of all his problems. Since he had come to this conclusion he was feeling slightly better.

Most of the times Mr BooHoo could tolerate his father all right. Also, he seldom shared his thoughts with him (his father had told him that he made him feel bored because he talked too much when he was little and after that Mr BooHoo kept all his thoughts for himself when he was around him. Now that he was a grown up he did speak a little bit more, though.) Yet, something came to him and he explained his situation. His father responded with vulgar language, telling Mr BooHoo that he was pretty much ....ucked.  This came as a surprise. Mr BooHoo had the tendency of thinking of the worst case scenario but being told the above without any further explanation of what would be the consequences and the course of action broke him. He thought things were about to get better, not worse. Big, salty tears filled his eyes and then they started running on his cheeks and he was ashamed to be crying among all those people and he made a nearby napkin soaking wet. He panicked. He did not breath properly or think clearly. He felt very much like looking for shelter in a closet.

When Mr BooHoo was small he had a brilliant idea. He wished he could shrink on demand. Then he would not need money, as his clothes and food would cost nothing and definitely somebody would like such a sophisticated pet. If only he could become small enough so as to fit in a pocket. But this was only wishful thinking...

Mr BooHoo experienced all these situations as personal failure. Apparently he had failed to fit in the grown up world. He kept changing. He constantly changed houses, friends, places, underwear (this was a good thing). Having spent the first seventeen years of his life in a more or less stable environment, the next ten years of constant flux had start getting on his nerves. A routine is what he looked for. A routine where the changes would come from inside, as choices, because it seemed that lately they were just imposed on him. Further on, whenever things did not go as smoothly as he would like them to, he felt like the biggest looser due to his incompetence to cope. It has been mentioned that Mr BooHoo was not stupid. It was confidence he lacked and not wit. So, panicking over things brought shame upon him. Mr BooHoo needed help. He wished he died and re-incarnated as a dog. Perhaps his dog-loving friend would adopt him.

Mr BooHoo stopped crying after some time. Discussing about his feelings had helped him slightly. Also the bottle that contained the transparent liquid had turned dry and he was slightly numb, that was an improvement. At home his nice bed would wait for him. A rather scary day had come to an end. He would be safe for a little while, he might even dream of something nice. His eyes eventually closed and the morning would be there in a few hours. Things always looked better in the morning.  

    

the story of Mr BooHoo, chapter 2

The second chapter of the sad but fictional story of Mr BooHoo was also written by me, today, on a page of a silly old generic nameless notebook (I have two of these, they have the same cover but one is bigger. I wrote it in the bigger because the smaller one is full).

Chapter @ (2) (the bureaucrats)

There were a few things that made Mr BooHoo feel....welllll, boohoo-er. For example bureaucrats had this effect on him. Perhaps this happened because Mr BooHoo was not particularly tall and their desks intimidated him by comparison. He felt even worst when the large desks were covered with paper, manuals, manuals on the manuals, manuals on how to rephrase the manuals, manual dictionaries and multiple addendums to all the above, stalked around circular official and rectangular semi-official stamps. Or, perhaps this was because they used words like "crime" and "fine" lightheartedly while staring at him with colourless unidentifiable eyes and a scolding expression. As if it was his fault that he wasn't constantly reading their latest manuals. In addition to that, they all seemed to be wearing glasses, even the ones that didn't. More specifically the kind of spectacles that fall to the end of a nose of a sort-sited person.

He was not excessively anti-social. He interacted with people, paid the bills and went to the post-office without any issues what-so-ever. It was the money related business he did not like. He never had much money anyway and he was not particularly fond of them. Yet, he had no issues with them either. He also like numbers, he found them relaxing and he often counted and listed his possessions. Yet, he experienced numbers in the world of bureaucracy quite differently. There, numbers replaced words and remembering meaningless codes is impossible and meaningless in every realm. Further on, there were all those theoretical sums of money that also made little sense to him. Also, Mr BooHoo estimated his time rather highly. He never felt there was enough of it and he didn't like spending it, unless he had it in abundance (like on Sunday afternoons, or when you arrive at the airport too early and you have enough time to look around, or on the bus). At that he resembled to the well-known rabbit that is always soooo late. He detested waiting rooms, and making him wait was the worst. There were times he felt he could not take the stress of waiting to see what would happen to his life and thought of ending it prematurely, so as to see what happens in the very end. Bureaucratic procedures always took too long. He would wait patiently, for the clerks to slowly stir their coffee, talk on the phone about vacation and gossip or re-arrange the manuals on their desks. Then they would type something and make a judgement. Mr BooHoo wanted to hit them on the head with a mallet, or just melt and escape through the sewage.

The story of Mr BooHoo, chapter 1

The first chapter of the story of Mr BooHoo was written today, by me on the last page of my 13nth sketchbook. I drew a picture of him a couple of days ago, on the 23rd of the 7nth month of the current year (2011). It's all fictional and any resemblance with real names, characters and situation is, I repeat, coincidental.


Chapter ! (1) (morning sadness)

Mr BooHoo opened his eyes. He looked at the clock and closed them, again. Usually, the morning was a good hour for Mr BooHoo. He was cheerful in the morning, relatively cheerful this is because his cheerfulness was the frailest thing, and thus tended to evaporate with the passage of time. Yet, lately he was not feeling so good, not even in the morning. As soon as he opened his eyes he thought of all the obligations he had for that day and hesitated to start it. Thus he closed his eyes once more.

He opened them again and rubbed them with his little hands, as if to smudge the tear-stains. Slowly he lowered one foot on the floor, subsequently the second one. He got up and walked to the kitchen. Having put the kettle on the stove he walked to the bathroom to rinse his face. Black shadows encircled his eyes, finishing in tear-like shapes on the top of his cheeks.

All dressed up and with his mask on he sat at the kitchen table to have his morning coffee. He enjoyed this moment. It made him feel less...BooHoo. Some times he took tea and some other days he took hot, sugarless cocoa. Coffee was his all time favorite though. Black aromatic thick coffee, like the one they drink in countries where the climate is warm. He found the smell invigorating and he also liked the shapes that were left on the cup. Meaningless landscapes and animals they were. Most often camels, giraffes and mountains. After taking a good dump (another aspect of life he considered positive) he would start another scary day.