Superfluous Third Wheel

And Friday's Quote of the Day goes to:

"sometimes i think Ryan may be right." - Laura

I'm quite literally fighting back the tears :P

"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

One must profess to find such platitudes wholly objectionable, on principle: in accordance with this particular specimen of unashamedly bald rhetoric, it is concurrently 'better' to have seen and gone blind, than never to have seen at all; or to walk, and have been unceremoniously crippled. Perhaps such suffrage can be said to inculcate a perfunctory wisdom of the sort which arises only from experience. Nevertheless, what is bestowed with one hand, is just as swiftly taken away with the other: one is left consequently with a stain on one's memory; irrevocable as time itself, and certainly as deadly. 'Experience' is defined as a practical acquaintance with past facts or events; all one acquires from having 'loved', is the notion of an infinitely more fulfilling plane of existence to one's own, briefly realised, and then departed. One stagnates, residing in the past, constructing an existence from the past, resurrecting the past; entirely unable to let go and move on. This carries inherent psychological implications; implications with which I would claim to be somewhat familiar, having enjoyed but a brief flirtation with such experiences myself. I'm certain that Brendan knows too; that he is, if anything, far more keenly aware than I am, and that we are but two among the billions of other abandoned souls on this god-forsaken asteroid who also know, only too well, of the resonant repercussions of having 'lost'.

To cite a decidedly convoluted, albeit nonethless pertinent, analogy: when someone has succeeded in emblazoning their portrait onto the tapestry of one's heart; for that same person then to herald their own unmerciful departure, it is grudgingly accepted that aforementioned individual rarely sticks by to watch as you dejectedly and laboriously pick away at the double-stitch, even then leaving behind a pointillist visage of hollow perforations in your wake - tragic, but nevertheless, quite indelible in nature.

"Ryan smells of bum [sic]"

Well then, "Another Bournsider"; while we're being petty, you must possess a rather powerful sense of smell. Are you, perchance, a dog?

Silly question: you type rabidly enough.

Puerile children (such as yourself) have the innate tendency to inspire laughter and denigration on my part, particularly regarding your stereotypically ignorant delusions of grammar schools in general, and Pate's in particular; the most popular of which, to my knowledge, was that "Pate's is like a prison". Perhaps such an observation is deserving of some merit, but the apparent similarity is somewhat more ironic in its applications: you see, this is a secure compound of the kind designed to keep you out, as opposed to us in (note which way the spikes and barbed wire are facing, moron). Actually, Pate's is a great school, and managed to surpass expectation in virtually every conceivable capacity; one thing I found to be particularly mirthful, upon entering Pate's, was the revelation that intelligence and sporting prowess are NOT necessarily mutually exclusive: that is to say, not only do we get the grades, but we still find the time to kick your collective arses in rugby, hockey, football - you name it. Not that our morale is quite so dependent on such paltry successes; I'm sure that, once we're all graduating from University with our respective accolades in Law, Medicine, Accountancy, etc., such achievements, however innumerable, will doubtless appear trivial by comparison.

I, for one, haven't changed quite so much as you might think; my circumstances, on the other hand, have - same arse, different trousers, so to speak. Continue to pity me, if it serves to grant you some kind of momentary elevation; you warrant nothing but utter derision by carrying on in such a foolish and risible fashion - although, of course, you did exhibit an altogether impressive degree of foresight (given your all-too obvious cognitive impairment) in concealing your true identity beforehand, so as to preserve the enigma of your quite divine idiocy.

'Bravo', although perhaps not 'encore' ;)

Patrick, you fuck. When since did a playful mosh-pit gauntlet become the definitive proving ground of one's manly mettle? Or, if so, can it then have been around the same time that sporting effete, hippie locks became a symbol of masculine prowess? Oops; rhetorical question. I was not attempting to "prove" anything; I was merely being a good sport. As a matter of fact, I was having "fun" - heck, one might even go so far as to infer that I was "enjoying myself"! No, more than that: I was encouraging other people to enjoy themselves too. It may shock you to learn that there was absolutely nothing by way of either a subtext, or an ulterior motive, to my antics (a notion perhaps unfamiliar to yourself). Social events do to me what drugs do to people with friends. When in that sort of environment, I will often find that my inhibitions are discarded and I just act on whatever impulse surfaces naturally. I mean, after all, I've technically nothing to lose by doing so: I don't happen to give a flying fleck of mucus what our resident relapsed pubescent hormone repository may or may not think, and once you've graduated out of nappies and into the Sixth, you too will come to appreciate that. Take heed, turkey: when whatever little that remains of the disembowelled corpse of one's social life is dangling freely from a meathook somewhere amidst the annals of Patesian mythology, one may well find oneself taking greater pains than usual to garner the attention of others, without necessarily intending to do so. No, I don't suppose you would remember the last time that happened to you; or the time before that - would you?

And, do you know what else is "fun"?

Being bitter.

Just been casting a retrospective auspice over the grimey nether-regions of my previous sordid exploits, à la Blog. I sicken me.

Ground Zero by Ryan Meredith-Pullen

The landscape is a malformed coagulation of light and air, swollen and stale in the sunlit smoke. It languishes unceremoniously on passers-by; permutations of a sweaty breeze through which swim innumerable disparate forms. Automobile rooftops glance up like silver tiles upon the wake of a caustic backwash; the drivers, baked hard in their own residue: rage, fermenting and fulminating behind dagger-eyes; sharpened on blunt gall-stones.
Tension, compression; tension again. Acid reflex.
Soil, skin, sky; all is saturated: light pierces, permeates and peels it away like the flesh of an over-ripe orange. Matchstick monoliths perspire ragged splinters of forms once recognisably human: my epitaph, a mural; my photocopy, transposed from the human spectrum into its carbon constituents.

Bright, blight, blasted black-on-white. A stain on a wall; and thus concludes our plight.

I can't even begin to guess where that came from. I just... started typing. Neat, huh? :P