You know a lot of people say things like “The English Language is an Amazing Thing”… which, true, it is. I had a friend in college who was a Japanese playwright, meaning she was Japanese and wrote plays, not that she wrote Japanese plays… because, said she, she just couldn’t write good stuff in Japanese. Too structured. Too many rules. In English, you can just make shit up.

Which brings me to the point that although the English language IS an amazing thing, the people that speak it are just downright kooky, which I think counts for a lot more than the language itself. That’s like blaming the car for the accident and not the drunk who was driving it.

Here’s one example of said kooky behaviour: we say shit all the time that we have no clue what it actually means, or sometimes we know what it means, but don’t think about the words that make up the expression. A good example is “you can’t fool me… that’s the oldest trick in the book”. Unless you’re a whore, you probably don’t actually have a book of tricks, and even then I guess you’d have to be an old whore to have an old trick book, unless you inherited it from another old whore, in which case I guess you could be quite spritely. And even if you are an old whore with an old book with tricks in it, there’s really no accounting for why your old tricks would be fooling anyone. Except their wives, maybe.

Now let’s forget the whore for a second and assume there’s a book of dastardly tricks out there, designed for fooling people. Where the fuck is it and how do I get a copy? Because I’m telling you, I fool no one, and it’s starting to get on my nerves. Besides, the expression (that’s the oldest trick in the book) seems to imply that the oldest trick in this mystical trick book is somehow the worst, so I’d really love to get a hold of the methodology for some of the newer tricks…. some trick so tricky that no one has seen it before… except maybe the guy that wrote it in the book.

And who is the guy? The trick-collector-writer-downer-in-the-trick-booker. Because I’d like to find him, beat him up, and steal his job (and his book).

See… English speakers are a bunch of crack-heads.

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Last night hubby and I watched Stranger Than Fiction .  If you aren’t familiar with the plot, it’s about a guy who begins to hear a voice… narrating his life.  Turns out he’s a character in a novel, and with a few exceptions, she doesn’t tell him what is going to happen, but rather what has just happened or what he’s thinking, the way a good narrator would.  Then suddenly he hears “Little did he know, this would lead to his imminent death…”

Hubby rated the film somewhere between “watchable” and “compelling”, but not quite compelling, he was quick to add.  I suppose that falls in the category of “just a tad more than slightly interesting”.   (We use a complex scale in our house.)

Now I liked the idea behind the film, and have no trouble imagining this as possible, as ridiculous as it seems.  If it seems your life is too boring to be fictional, the “hero” in the film was a compulsive, awkward tax collector who counted how many steps it took to get everywhere and the brushstrokes he took when cleaning his teeth.  I’m boring, but at least my personality isn’t that painful.  So I qualify as character-worthy, at least on that front.

I think my problem is not my character, but my author.  She’s a real frickin slacker, and my life is probably stuck in the bottom drawer of her desk because she can’t decide where she wants the plot to go, so I’m not being properly narrated, which tells me why I don’t know what’s going on myself half the time.   Some people stress about wanting to know the future.  I’d be content to know what’s happening now.

My guess is, in fact, she’s probably taken some low-paying secretarial job where she ends up getting coffee for some overbearing, sweaty boss who doesn’t realise it’s not 1964 anymore.  She probably imagines writing plot notes that come to her in a flash of inspiration on cocktail napkins, and maybe even tells people that she does, and she probably carries a notebook with her for just such an occasion.  However… I think she’s deluding herself.  She hasn’t actually written a word in months, and doesn’t bother fantasizing about what she’ll wear for her jacket-cover photo anymore.

You’d assume that having created a character such as myself she’d be possessed with creative juices, or at least a nice mango squash.  However, she’s let herself get lonely and carved a rut, judging by the evidence at hand.

I’m not sure what one does to wake up their author, to say, “Pardon me, but life in your filing cabinet isn’t as stimulating as one might suppose.  Could we get some literary devices going please?”  Because I could use my narrator back, although I could gladly skip the the foreshadows.

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Ask anyone; I’ve done some dumbassed things in my time. Have been accused, at times, of being slick-as-a-weasel in explaining away heinous–albeit harmless and/or stupid–acts.  However, is it just me or does this guy take the Cake for Dumb-Assedness.

Darren Mack, 46, pleading guilty in Las Vegas in November to murdering his wife, and also accepting a judgment for attempting to kill the judge handling his divorce (after first insisting on his innocence): “I do understand … in my (current) state of mind that shooting at the judiciary is not a proper form of political redress.” [Las Vegas Review-Journal, 11-5-07]

What the HELL was he thinking? Does he mean, maybe, that being sorry should be enough for taking a shot at the Judge after he was found guilty of murdering his wife. instead of something reasonable like, oh, ”listening to his Higher Angels” and filing an Appeal to a higher court or, maybe, simply voting against hizonner when he next stands for re-election?

What do you think,  Bitter Readers?   Is it me? Or maybe this guy’s lock-and-load attitude reflects current stress management practices.  Nevermind! It’s prob’ly just me.

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Well thanks everyone for being so patient as I’ve coped with the increasing weirdness in my life. And a big thanks to Girl-Fren for filling in when I couldn’t be here. (She’s not lying… she does have great legs.)

I’ve been on a safari of sorts, gathering information of use to my bitter friends, as it is my life’s quest to bring all shades of usefulness and enlightenment everywhere I go.

As I didn’t take video of the event (not allowed, oddly), I’ll have to walk you through it. Imagine, if you will, a bus station. Not a truly awful bus station, but a moderately awful bus station. (I would have said airport, but the people in airports are often busy and important, and that really won’t do for this illustration.) Now imagine that the other persons in the bus station are all either sick or injured. Carry forward with the thought that you, also, are either sick or injured. (Getting uncomfortable yet?) Now for the final image… you get to sleep with a randomly chosen 5 of these people (in an “unconscious in the same room” sense, not in a red-hot-monkey-sex sense) for an indeterminate period of time. The rest of them are housed down the hall.

Welcome to an NHS hospital.

The only thing more depressing than this thought, I would think, is working in said hospital, because then even on the occasions you get to go home, you always know you’re coming back the next day. Much, I imagine, like being a prison officer doing his 25 to life.

Now, I’ve undergone this undercover undertaking for the express purpose of bringing back an account to the rest of the world. I should write a travel guide full of tidbits like what to take with you (disenfectant spray and snacks), what to order from the daily menu (nothing with meat… trust me), and what to wear (seems to be anything goes… fuzzy slippers are the current trend, along with worn terry robes and a vacant expression).

I will say that while it sounds pretty horrid, the worst part is being sick, obviously. Otherwise I think it would be a feast of humanity (so to speak… I wouldn’t recommend actually eating said roommates, as we don’t know what’s wrong with all of them) with which there really is no comparision. Sure you can people-watch in an airport, but until you’ve actually had a sleepover with someone, you don’t know them at all.

I should also report that it’s reaffirmed the fact that I really do like people. I know, I know… I’m supposed to be all bitter, and sometimes I can be, but how can you not like people after meeting dear Mrs. Boyd, who tickled the bottom of my foot with her cane as she walked by, having only spoken a couple of words in passing before that. And Anne, a 60 year old with an exploding spleen (at least that’s what I gathered through eavesdropping on her doctors) who, after a girl in her 20’s was introduced, and then forcibly removed from our room whispered, “My goodness that was dreadful, wasn’t it? I would imagine it was drugs-taking.” Then she flicked some dust off her bathrobe.

Mrs Ames seemed relatively nonplussed about the whole thing. When the doctor said “The nurse says you’re a bit confused about where you are,” she replied, “Well isn’t that impertinent!” I thought so too. Of all the nerve.

One woman spent the entire time knitting. I’m not sure she even realised she was in a hospital, as she looked exactly as I imagine she would have at home. Except at home she probably has a cat that chases her yarn as her needles clack clack clack away.

Another inmate woke me in the night to give me instructions on what to tell people if someone came looking for her. Which was sorta sweet, considering that no one had come looking for her in all the time we shared a room.

Hope is a beautiful thing, and the capacity for it is why I love people.

Look for a follow-up documentary called “Naps on a Train” to be airing on the BBC in March.

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