Sunday 1 September 2013

Ghostwriter



There are only three things in the world that I hate, and here are three more of them.

3. My mum was telling me about her friend who sees ghosts - "She knew someone was going to die on a plane once." I challenged her use of the word "knew" from an epistemological standpoint, given that knowledge is a belief which is both true and justified. But intrigued by this obvious load of fucking nonsense, I asked what she meant. 

"She went on a plane and saw death, then later on the flight someone actually died." Apparently my mum's friend is the kid from Final Destination. So I asked what "death" looked like.

"Why does that matter?" my mum replied. Because she saw death! If someone told me they'd seen death, my first question would be, "oh really, what did it look like?" But obviously that hadn't occurred to my mum, whose first question had presumably been, "would you like another biscuit?"

2. Last night I was in a pub talking to a friend who happened to be wearing a hat. A girl came over and said, "can I wear your hat? It matches my dress!" It's always too late that you realise the perfect response, which would have been: "Can he wear your dress? It matches his hat!" or "No, go fuck yourself."

Anyway she proceeded to take the hat despite my friend's protests and put it on her head, at which point I snatched it off her. Why do idiots assume that a stranger wearing a hat is somehow an invitation to take it? It doesn't apply to other items of clothing, like socks or pants. And why do those same idiots assume that my having spiky hair is an invitation for them to touch it? And why do they take my being in a bar, or on a train, or on a bus, as an invitation for them to talk to me?

People moan about the rudeness of the English and their reluctance to talk to strangers but I completely embrace it. I don't want to talk to you unless I know you, and even then I'm not happy about it.

1. I was at the cinema (Only God Forgives, or as I call it, Only Interesting For About Half An Hour) and was constantly distracted by someone who was breathing so loudly that I could hear it from rows away. Breathing! The one thing we all absolutely have to do, all the time. If you can't manage breathing without it sounding like it's fucking killing you then how can you possibly handle life's tougher tasks, like eating or drinking.

Thanks for reading, here's the fantastic RJD2.