Monday 26 September 2011

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.            

Wednesday 21 September 2011

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. 



Tuesday 20 September 2011

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!