I’ll try to release a better one today to make up for yesterday’s disaster. Not sure which topic I want to do yet though.
Ok, so I’ve decided to do Alien for the next one. I’m already a few paragraphs in and it’s miles better than Inferno (this one has a few humourous instances), hopefully you guys will agree. I will have it out in the next few hours along with the next poll.
Entry 5 is ready, this one is called Alien and it’s about the joys of being tall-ish and left handed at the same time. This one came out miles better than Inferno, I reckon I’m back on track. Though in my defence, I’m an engineering student, not an author.
Entry 5: Alien
Entry 5: Alien
Some of you think me to be an indestructible robot from the future that enjoys the merciless slaughter of innocent people, but no. I’m actually an alien…at least according to the way the world is built. For you see, I’m tall and left handed. I’m only ~1.83m (or a fraction over 6’ for all the simpletons), which, according to the internet makes me taller than 81% of guys my age which means I’m tall apparently. Being either tall or left handed is bad enough. But can you imagine being both? Probably not. So, let me tell you exactly what it’s like. Welcome everyone, to entry 5.
Growing up, I didn’t experience too many height issues, at least not until I was about five years old. I mean, I was tall before that because people kept telling me, but it never really bothered me. Then came my first day in year 1. I had just come to the UK (I’d been here maybe two weeks tops), knew not a single word of English and was thrown straight into school. Suffice it to say I was terrified and I lasted maybe a couple of hours before I couldn’t take it and burst out crying as if my finger had just been sliced off with a blunt, rusty axe (hard to imagine, I know). That was the only time I ever cried in school, but, I digress.
In the couple of hours before my panicked screeching was echoing through the entire school and before I was drowning in my own snot and tears, they had paired me up with a guy in the class to show me around to the coat room and toilets. The whole situation was rather awkward as he was a fair bit shorter than me and they made us hold hands, that meant that I had to crane down to be able to reach his hand and had a sore back about 10 mins in. That was probably the first time I remember having height issues.
Then, over time came a medley of issues growing up, such as not being able to fit in those electric ride-on cars for kids and not being able to fit in those car shaped shopping trolleys at a much younger age than most of my peers. And one that annoyed me personally was that I couldn’t go down tube-slides that had bends in them because my legs were so long that my feet would rub along the outside wall of the bend and act as brakes, so I ended up jamming in them and usually causing a pile-up as the other kids behind me came down. However, the most annoying thing, by far, was finding shoes and trousers. Finding trousers that fit me was even more annoying than finding shoes. And the worst part is that I outgrew them very quickly at the age.
I remember having to spend a day with some random person’s trousers in year 6. They were too small and had a missing buckle, so the fly kept coming down and I had to keep pulling it up. The reason I was in them in the first place was because I was being stupid with my friend earlier that day. Our playground had patches of grass around the outside and on one of those patches of grass there used to be a ~1.5m x ~2m piece of carpet just laid out for no reason. It had been there so long that all the grass beneath it had died and it was just a mud rectangle. On the day that we were messing about it had rained, so that mud patch was essentially a mud bath (you can see where this is going already). So, my friend and I go up to the mud patch, and I challenge him to jump over its length, he manages, so them he tells me to do it. I line up for a running start, start my run, jump and put one foot back down on the grass as I land on the other side. My other foot also got onto the grass…except for my heel, which landed in the mud. I slipped and landed flat on my arse right in the mud bath. So, I had to go to the medical room to see what spare trousers the lady had from the lost property basket, turns out none of them would fit me so she gave me the closest pair she had. As I was waiting for her to find a pair of trousers, one of my teachers walked past and just gave me a look that said, “what the hell happened to you?”
Then came the age of 13, according to various family photos that I’ve seen, that’s about the age at which I became the tallest in my family (~1.75m). It wasn’t until I hit the ~1.8m mark that I started experiencing real problems. Problems such as not being able to comfortably fit in the back of most cars, not being able to sit down in a bus because my knees hit the seat in front of me before my arse touches my seat, not being able to stand up on the top floor of a double decker, not being able to sit in the front row of the lecture hall, not being able to go up or down the stairs in my house without scalping myself. My height is one of the many reasons why I’ve started to boycott buses. Even when they pull up to let me in, they nearly take my head off with the wing mirror, or when I’m trying to get off and the rear door mechanism smacks me in the head. Then there’s the fact that I can’t fit in most standard beds and have had to have my bed frame extended to 2m. Low sinks, low toilets and low mirrors are another set of problems that come with being tall. But by far, the worst problem is when someone makes a comment or asks me about my height. Luckily, I tend to surround myself with friends that are either taller than me or roughly the same height these days.
So far this sounds fairly annoying, right? Now, let me tell you what it’s like being left handed. Being left handed in some ways is even worse than being tall. Throughout history lefties have been a minority group that have been discriminated against, at one point we were on par with women accused of being witches. These days we are tormented by living in a world designed for right handed people. There’s a whole myriad of items that are designed strictly for right handed people. Items such as mugs with images on them, most scissors, keyboards with number pads, computer mice that don’t come in the standard symmetrical shape, can openers, ice cream scoops, guns, pens on strings, other gaming peripherals and tape measures to name a few.
Every single western language is designed to make us suffer when we write. There isn’t a single day in uni that I don’t get ink or pencil on the side of my little finger, this condition is often referred to as Silver Surfer Syndrome, perhaps I should have called this entry 50 shades of grey. Being left handed nearly got me into quite a bit of trouble earlier this year. I was sitting in one of my exams this year when I noticed that my left hand was covered in ink and pencil dust, so I started rubbing it off with my hand when I noticed an invigilator staring at me with a look cold enough to freeze water. I’m pretty sure he thought I was cheating for a moment. Luckily, he didn’t come over to me to kick me out of the exam hall. Being left handed means that you always have to plan where you sit at a table so that you’re not bonking elbows with the person next to you, or in my case, when I’m in uni, I always have to leave a one seat gap between me and the next person because the tables are so small. There aren’t any particularly funny anecdotes that I can share about being left handed, it’s mostly misery. And of course, the absolute most annoying thing ever is when somebody sees you writing with your left hand and asks you if you’re left handed.
If you were to ask me which is worse, being tall or being left handed, I’d probably give you a different answer on different days, but I can tell you one thing. It sucks being both at the same time. Perhaps I am an alien, kind of like how Mr. Bean was dropped on Earth with a beam of light, or perhaps I am indeed human, certainly doesn’t feel like that a lot of the time though.
I’ve now reached the halfway point, there are only 5 entries left to write.
- Paid self-sabotage for the lazy
- Collateral damage
- Excuses for misanthropy
- Petty grudge
- WARNING! Side effects include but are not limited to: crushing realisations.
0 voters
I really like this one I now fell pity for you lol
Agreed with @StephLP18 ! That’s my favourite so far! It’s well written from beginning to end and I like every lines there! also I laughed soundly from beginning to end… keep it going!!
I like them both- they are different from each other but made me both laughing out loud
I had a feeling the previously untitled one might clock the majority votes. The poll will close around the end of next week, probably Friday.
Because the title is so catchy! With the warning at beginning…
Well, if it does end up winning, it will probably be the most grim, it’ll be very tricky to put a funny spin on it, but I’ll try. It’s probably the entry that is the most personal / closest to where my heart would be out of all of them.
I’ll have to read this tommorow. Its almost midnight here
my fave line lmao do whores sweat?
oh yeah when they are doing their jobs LMAO
yaaaayyy ive got a brother i’m an alien
reminds me that ive got to finish that book
exactly just like for me people who meet me after several years and they say hey you’ve grown up or when they see me with mum they ask her is she your daughter?or even they might say you do resemble your mum a lot as if i had to resemble my neighbours
reminds me of a song “and it sucks to be you” im joking XD
same but im neither tall nor left handed
actually im the shortest of the family seeing tall punks make me feel sad though
I’ll be closing the poll tomorrow morning, now’s your chance to vote if you haven’t.
Entry 6 is ready. I’m really not sure how I feel about this one, it definitely has a different tone to all the other ones, but I think I’ve written it well enough for it to not be a disaster. Or I could be totally wrong and it’s another disaster like Inferno. lol
Entry 6: WARNING! Side effects include but are not limited to: crushing realisations.
Entry 6: WARNING! Side effects include but are not limited to: crushing realisations.
Those of you who know me will know that I suffer from chronic boredom, this entry is dedicated to that boredom. This entry is one that I’ve been putting off, because I’m not sure how to effectively convey what I want to say (rhyme not intended), hopefully I do it some justice as this one is probably closest to me. Over the past few years, boredom has taken me down various paths, some lighter than others, I’ll try to start with the funnier stuff, but this entry will take a darker turn at some point.
Boredom is something I face literally every day. A lot of the time I partially kill it with music and YouTube, but sometimes it isn’t enough. Such occasions have led to things like my personal projects or me doing something stupid just to keep myself entertained. For me there’s nothing that kills boredom like working on something practical with my hands. It’s why I chose to do engineering in uni (ironically, it’s a mostly theoretical course). And what better way to improve my practical skills and kill the boredom than working on my projects? Banshee and Hellhound were born of boredom. How can you tell? Well, Banshee is a 70-mph toy and Hellhound is a 30-mph flamethrower that works to a degree.
Boredom has also led me to a few odd hobbies such as people watching. When I’m doing the daily grind and travelling to uni, I’m not usually on my phone and I’m rarely listening to music. Instead what I do is I observe. I observe people’s behaviours, subtly listen to their not-so-quiet conversations, but there’s only so much to see before you realise that most people on the train are like a herd of braindead robots. So, obviously, I become bored, and then what? Then there’s just wallowing in my own misery. Of course, you do see and hear some funny things, such as the time I overheard a pair of stupid high schoolers bickering with each other like children on the bus. What was funny was the topic of their argument. They were arguing about geography, the highlight of the argument was when one of them said that Korea and Japan were the same thing, to which the other replied that they’re not and that Korea was in Africa. For a moment I thought they were American, my urge to just turn around and bitchslap some knowledge into them was immense, but I wanted to see how far the argument would deteriorate, unfortunately, they got off at the next stop.
Boredom is probably my biggest demon; my motivation has dropped off a cliff because of it. Sometimes I can’t even be bothered to get up and do something to entertain myself. I’ve reached the point where I need to be doing something new all the time to be happy. I experience something once or twice and then I get bored. Paintballing? Been three times, was bored halfway through the second. 73m roller coaster? Bored after three rides. Interesting place? Bored after going three or four times. Been to one concert, probably won’t go to another. I was a gamer of ten years, at one point it became an addiction. And you know what? I got bored of a fucking addiction.
Briefly to talk about theme park rides. I get so bored on those that I think of random things to do as I’m riding them, last time I was at a theme park, I was caught by several ride cameras looking at my watch as I was timing the rides for the table I was working on. The one guy on the ride, so bored that he’s looking at his watch while everyone else is having a blast. I was so bored that day that I had more fun coming up with a wait time / ride time table and calculating the ratios and averages in my head while on the ride, usually mid-loop. I’m that guy that stays completely silent and holds a neutral face for the entire ride while everyone else is screaming their heads off.
I have a thirst for novelty and adventure that I can never seem to quench, I love to travel and explore but I don’t exactly have the money, or the time. I also live in Greater London which is a totally boring place, there’s nothing interesting to do, though that could be said for pretty much the entire UK, excluding a few places in Scotland and Wales.
I sometimes get lost in thought when I’m bored, and my mind goes to places and comes back with some crushing realisations that I just end up not giving a fuck about, because that’s what boredom does. It makes me indifferent to everything, I just don’t fucking care. I say indifference is the key to inner peace and in a sense, it is, I am fairly at peace. I don’t even care about some things that I probably should care about. All this stems from my realisation that life is ultimately pointless.
We’re here, and for what? Just to be locked in a cycle of pointless monotony and call it a purpose because we know no better. We’re born, we grow up, as we grow up we learn so that we’re prepared for later life. Later life comes and then what? A new wave of monotony comes, where you work for money so that you can have a good life, but you keep working and don’t have time to do anything but work for the money. You retire, you might have some money left, and then what? You’re too old and senile to do jackshit, all you can realistically do is moan about your bad back and how you wasted your life. The only way you can really get around this is if you get lucky or if you’re smart or rich, but for the mass populace, that isn’t the case. And you know what? I don’t fucking care, it’s all a charade, a distraction until the time comes for us all to rot in a shallow grave.
This! agreed
This (2)
This time there was nothing to laugh about, but unlike Inferno, I like this piece, especially the last part and it’s well written!
Keep it going!
EDITED
Thanks, I said this one will most likely contain few to no jokes. And I think you mean ‘unlike’, not ‘unless’.
Ups yeah, lol going to edit, thanks!
I’ve been asking myself this question for a long time
This is what the world makes life feel like. I’ve also had serious boredom issues, and felt like life had no greater purpose than to just be another gear in the system of society. But now I feel that life is what we make it to be, and I choose live life free…anyway, a good read mate
Maybe it’s just a side effect of being an engineering student. I find that we tend to get bored because we usually understand things more easily.
Yeah thats true