Red Mist Resurrection

Back once again with the ill behaviour.

*cough*

*faint*

*purchase Benylin*

I am back once again. Unfortunately, the Renegade Master couldn't make it.

I asked him why not, and he said he was practising being a renegade.

I was confused. "But you're the Renegade Master", I said. "Why would you need to practise?"

He said, "I am only the Renegade Master because I practise".

Wise words indeed.

***

One of the main drawbacks of being a Ninja Turtle would be that you'd have to get your knuckledusters custom made.

Luckily www.knuckledustom.com has a sale on.

***

I've seen some films recently. I'm always very insightful when it comes to the old elephant's television (or "cinoma"). Sometimes, Mark Kermode calls me up to ask for advice or his car keys back.

So let's get down to business.

Before Sunrise

Nice.

The Fly

Less nice.

Spartacus

Long. This oysters and snails scene is good. (It was added to the restoration, but the original audio was lost. Anthony Hopkins does the voice of Laurence Olivier!)



Kick-Ass

No good. Not bad, but not good. I'm not sure what it was supposed to be, really. (By the way, though I'm a comic book nerd, I've never read the Kick-Ass comics, so I came to this fresh)

Not funny enough to be a comedy, not violent enough to be a gore-fest, not ironic enough to be interesting, not realistic enough to be... realistic. It felt a little bit confused and lacking in focus.

Maybe I was just in a weird mood when I watched it. I worry that my mindset may influence my judgement. I need to see films several times, in a variety of conditions, before proclaiming my verdict. Once when happy, once when angry, once when in an igloo, once at a funeral, once on an aeroplane and once whilst full of flan.

Then my star rating will be incontrovertible.

The most interesting thing about the film was that there was a character called Red Mist.

Remember "Red Mist"? Remember those blog posts where I talked about Red Mist?

What is it about that phrase? It's following me round like some kind of... crimson... haze...

In the IMBd trivia page for the film, it goes into more detail on the mist issue:

"Red Mist" is a term that has been used to refer to a bomb-disposal person who gets blown up by the bomb they were trying to defuse  It's not very specific about who has used it that way. It may have only been used that way once. In the IMDb trivia section.  (Incidentally, does my use of the lower-case 'b' in 'IMBd' mean that I'm kowtowing to the sick whims of marketing goons? If so, I'll stop. Same with the ipOd.)  That usage is quite similar to the one I used in my story recently. Then again, blood is probably the first red thing that we think of. It's a little-known fact that blood is the only red thing that occurs naturally on the planet. All other red things are just embarrassed.
I should probably go now. The Kermster is still on at me about his keys. I keep telling him to look inside his own hair, but he just does a really annoying sarcastic laugh and stubbornly refuses to move out of the door frame.

His loss.

His key loss.

For all I know, I may return for a third time later.

This day has been 90% full of surprises, and 10% full of the same old predictable false percentages.

RED MIST³

The great labelling experiment is over. I have read through all 733 Headscissors blog posts, and have assigned each of them categories.

As activities go, this must rank among the most self-indulgent ever attempted by a human. I've been reading my own words, which often refer to my own words (and in some cases refer to themselves referring to themselves). And now I'm writing about it.

It has taken about a month, and I'm now at the stage where I want myself to be punished for wasting my own time. I deserve a punch for every time I've hit the space bar over the past five years.

The idea was to label the posts, to make them easier to find. I was also hoping to rediscover some entries that would otherwise be forgotten.

I didn't do this for me, dear reader. I did it for you. Navigating the choppy waters of a long-running, little-read blog can be daunting for a new reader. I have provided you with a map. Or a compass. Or a parrot who seems to know what it's doing.

On the right-hand panel of this page, you'll find a long list of labels, demonstrating the scope of my writing. It's pretty exhaustive, except for all of the ones I've missed. As I went on, I wished I'd had certain labels from the beginning. "Time travel" never made it onto the list, but would probably apply to 20% of what I've written.

So, what conclusions can we draw from this study? I'm self-obsessed. That's the main one.

Another is that, despite my initial fears, the quality of my posts has remained reasonably constant. I have good spells and bad spells, but there was never a "golden age" of amazing writing.

What about the labels themselves? What can they teach us about the blog's author?

Let's have a look at the top twenty labels. The number in parentheses refers to the number of blog posts which have that label.

Good (196)
Solipsism (115)
Music (99)
Over-Analysis (77)
Stand-Up (73)
Writing (68)
Video (62)
Picture (58)
Social Skills (56)
Story (53)
Film (52)
Idioms (52)
Tweets (52)
Insanity (49)
Sketch (43)
Jokes (42)
Self-Reflexivity (41)
Books (40)
TV (38)
Internet (36)
Politics (36)
Serious (36)

(There's actually 22 here, but the last few are tied)

The number one label is "Good". This makes me seem arrogant. But keep in mind that I didn't bother with a "Bad" label, because I didn't want to crush my spirits in such concrete terms.

These aren't all actually good. I just wanted to mark out the better posts. These are the ones that require further study, possibly by a team of eager PhD students who committed horrible acts in a past life.

I might go through these, and upgrade some to "Actually Quite Good" when I get the chance. If you click on this label, you're viewing the cream of the crop. Admittedly, the crop is a disgusting barley, and the cream has turned, but still...

196 "Good" posts out of 733 in total. That's 26.74%.

So just over a quarter of what I write is worthwhile. I think we can consider that a triumph.

But "Good" isn't a real label. We can discount that. What's the topic which I deal with most?

In a healthy second place with 115 posts is "Solipsism". I don't think anyone (least of all me) will be surprised to see it high on the list. However, we might wonder why there aren't more posts with this label. This whole blog is basically an exercise in self-obsession. There's an undercurrent (or in some cases: an overcurrent) of solipsism in EVERY post. I suppose I just noted the ones where it was most pronounced. ("Self-Reflexivity" features with 41 entries, hammering this point home. [Isn't that right, Paul?"] And I've brilliantly written 11 posts containing significant "Arrogance")

"Music" is surprisingly high, mainly because of the various Youtube videos I've posted. I don't think I've written too much about it.

"Over-Analysis" is another strong, and expected, part of my arsenal.

You'll notice there are 49 posts that I've labelled as "Insanity". These aren't times where I've discussed insanity, but when what I've written could reasonably have been thought of as insane.

But for really extreme cases of this, there's the "Actual Insanity" label, which only has 3 posts. Click on these at your own risk.

The rest of the leaders are generally to be expected.

The real fun comes further down the list. Some of the most interesting include:

• Liquid (8)
• Salad Bar (8)
• Cereal (4)
• Smaste (4)
• Penny Crayon (2)
• Snikeblomming (2)
• Corn on the Cobs (1)
• Fetus Hummus (1)
• Neneh Cherry (1)

I don't know how I judged what did and didn't deserve a label, but I imagine it was fairly arbitrary.

Anyway, those are the labels. Fun labels. Everyone loves labels, right?

Having done the hard work, I might... you know.. do something with this, or whatever.

There were a couple of entries that really made me think I was a genius. And many more that made me think I was an idiot for thinking the first thing.

Oh well, doing this has wasted a large proportion of my life. That's some comfort.

***

To counterbalance all of these dry statistics, here's something wet and innumerate:

Fresh Content

"The house prices are dirt cheap here," said Lydia, over the sound of the guns. "Some people - picky people - don't like the idea of living right near a firing squad."

Through a chain-link fence, Kat saw a corpse being dragged by its feet.

"I don't see what the big deal is," continued Lydia. "I don't even notice it. We've got a lovely, cheap house with no drawbacks, as far as I'm concerned."

A priest was smoking a fag and looking over at them.

"So how often do they, you know..." Kat struggled to find the right words. "Do it. The firing squad."

"Depends on the time of year. It's not too busy round now. Maybe sixteen or seventeen a day?"

"Oh. Well, that's not too bad."

A loud wail came from the compound. The priest sighed irritably and stubbed out his cigarette. 

Another wail. 

"ALL RIGHT! I'M COMING!" He checked his phone twice and walked slowly back inside.

"I didn't even know they did firing squads anymore," said Kat, nursing a cup of low-calorie hot chocolate that that Lydia had made her without asking.

"It's the only sensible way really." Lydia checked her watch. "There'll be another one in a minute. If you wanna watch."

"Oh," said Kat. "Nah. I'm all right."

They were sitting on Lydia's brand new patio furniture. It was cold, and Kat wondered why they weren't inside.

"Sometimes you can see stuff. Afterwards, I mean. It's like a cloud of red mist."

"Cool. Cool."

There was a commotion from the compound. They could hear the sound of a scuffle, but then everything went quiet.

"Dirt cheap," repeated Lydia.

Kat had just got to the brown silt at the bottom of her mug when a man appeared at the fence. He wasn't the priest. He looked dirty and his hands were bound.

"Hi," said Kat.

Lydia looked over at him and scowled. "Are you supposed to be here?"

The man looked at Lydia. "No," he said. "I'm not supposed to be here. That's the point."

He waited for a few seconds, as though waiting to be invited in, and then started to scale the fence.

"What are you doing?!" asked Lydia, outraged. "You can't come in here!"

He clumsily negotiated his way over the top of the fence and dropped down onto the patio. He was barefoot.

"My name's Malcolm," he said. 

"I'm Kat," said Kat.

"Don't talk to him, for Christ's sake!" Lydia had stood up from her recliner, put her own (full fat) hot chocolate on the white plastic table, and stood poised. "Get out! This is my house!"

"I'm sorry to bother you," said Malcolm, ignoring Lydia and directing his attention to Kat. "Would you mind if I borrowed your phone?"

"Um... no. I suppose not." Kat got her phone out of her pocket, but Lydia slapped it to the ground.

"What are you doing?! He's a maniac!"

"I'm really not," said Malcolm, again only to Kat. "Honestly. I'd tell you if I was."

"Where are the guards?!" Lydia ran over to the chain-link fence and peered through.

"Listen, Kat. I know we've only just met. And I know you don't have any reason to trust me. And that's... totally understandable. It is. But I'm in a bit of a pickle here, and I was wondering if you could help me."

As he was saying this, Lydia had run over to the shed and picked up a rake. She returned, brandishing it.

"What do you need?" asked Kat, who was secretly quite pleased to be talking to someone other than Lydia.

"Have you got a car?" asked Malcolm. "Would you mind giving me a lift?"

An alarm klaxon blared from the compound, along with distant indignance and distant dogs.

"Um..." she looked over at Lydia, who looked back with a furious, incredulous look (also, her arms were getting tired from holding the rake). "Sure, why not?"

"Great!" said Malcolm. "We can get to know each other on the way."

Kat picked up her phone from the floor and got her car keys out of her pocket. Lydia was frozen in rake-laden horror. She couldn't speak.

The dogs got louder.

"Do you like millionaires' shortbread?" asked Malcolm, on the way to the car. "I found some in one of the kitchens."

Kat paused, open-mouthed. Eventually, she said "I love millionaires' shortbread".

Malcolm smiled. Kat smiled.

Over their shoulders, Lydia dropped the rake. A priest, holding his head, was frantically questioning her, as the dogs sniffed around for the source of the chocolate.

Red Mists

I'm doing stand-up on Friday. I don't want to give too much away here, so let's just say: I'm doing stand-up on Friday.

As usual, I'll be armed with untried and untested material. Every gig is a leap into the unknown. Or (if the venue doesn't have an unknown) the cigarette machine.

When the gig is over, there will be an after-party at Colin Dexter's house. He seems well up for it (his "Get out! I'm calling the police!" seemed sarcastic). I have it on good authority that he has a murder mystery hot tub, so make sure you bring some waterproof motives and an open mind. You can't spell "incrimination" without "rim nation".

This section of the blog seems to have come to a natural halt. So either we give it an unnatural jump-start (like Dr Frankenstein would), or we leave it to congeal on a slab as we move on to more mobile pastures.

When you think about it, I'm the Frankenstein of metaphors. I dig up remnants of symbolism that no-one else thought were of any use (correctly), and I stitch them together into something vaguely resembling a sentence.

In silhouette, it looks like a clever allegory, but when you hold your candle up to it, you can see that it's all black-bruised and stitched together with shaking hands. It's an abomination. Someone should kill it. Someone should burn it at the stake. But I've granted it safe haven in my Château du Blog, and won't let the hordes through the gates.

It may be a monster, but it's my monster.

Then I stick in a further simile, like Han Solo's waistcoat, and the creature wails and collapses in on itself.

Back to the drawing board.

***

Don't feel bad. I'd hate me too, if I was in your position. It's only natural.

I'll keep it simple from here on in.

I am Paul. I live in Oxford.

My hair is brown.

My eyes are brown.

My head is large.

I bite my fingernails.

I am tired.

I am always tired.

I am twenty-nine.

I like The Wire.

I like sandwiches.

I like coffee.

I hate coffee.

I like coffee.

I am tired.

I write a blog.

I bite my thumbnails.

Dogs.

There we go. Confusing imagery is a crutch I can discard at any time. I can also summon it back to me. Like Mjolnir.

***

I've realised that I've written two blog posts with almost identical titles. They weren't even that far apart. I wrote Red Mist on 24 July 2012, and The Red Mist on 21 September 2012.

Am I really that low on blog title ideas? At least they're on similar themes. Maybe I should re-title one or both of them. I can play up the first Red Mist as a prequel. Or the second Red Mist as a sequel. Or both of those things.

Maybe it can just be like Alien and Aliens. Or Final Destination and The Final Destination. Or Grease and The Grease.

People are good at differentiating between similar, but subtly different, products. That's why no-one ever buys carp insurance by mistake.

I've probably doubled-up on other post titles too. I could hilariously give this one a title I've already used before. That would be meta.

Everyone loves things that are meta nowadays. Life is a comment on itself. All human experience is an in-joke that we're all smug about understanding.

There are probably some people who don't "get" life. We pity them.

No, that's not right. We don't pity them.

We "pity" them.

Get it? ;-)

***

I wish I could stop making points. It's a real burden. Why can't my writing be meaningless?! WHY?!

I don't know. But it can't be.

The Red Mist

I've been angry and depressed this week, but I'm not feeling too bad now. That means I can write about it from an disinterested perch, occasionally nudging a falcon to brag about my neutrality.

I'm not usually depressed. I don't know if my depression is actual depression. I'm probably insulting people with actual depression by putting me in the same boat as them. Maybe my depression is small "d" depression, as opposed to the more legitimate big "D" Depression. (A bit like the distinction between small "c" and big "C" conservatism, both of which incidentally lead to depression of both cases)

Depression (and, having started the sentence with that word, you have no idea which version I'm talking about) is a dangerous adversary. It's self-sustaining and it spreads quickly. It's like a virus. It snowballs. It's like a snowball virus.

You don't just feel depressed about one thing. That would be understandable. If you'd broken up with your husband, or been called ugly by a parrot, being depressed would make sense. Those are bad things, and it's natural to feel bad about them. But depression isn't satisfied with that. It wants more things to consume with its blackness. Totally unrelated things become swallowed up by it.

It may start with the parrot insult, but it spreads to your whole life. Your job is awful. Your house is awful. Your relationships don't work, you're stupid, your DVD collection is full of rubbish films. All films are rubbish, in fact. All art is rubbish. The human race is an awful thing. The black tendrils of depression creep over everything.

Earlier this week, I was hating every single tweet and Facebook status I could see. Even if they were totally innocuous. I thought the sentiments were disgusting and the people spouting them were more so. (I tried to write that as "moreso", and the spell check appropriately wanted to correct it to "morose".)

I hated people for liking things or enjoying themselves, I hated photos of happy people with their families, I hated songs.

At one point, I was actively remembering things so I had more stuff to hate. That's what depression does.

I should say that, for me, depression doesn't usually have an identifiable cause. It's not always black and white like a parrot insult (though it usually is - I need to buy some beak tape for Polly...).

It starts from nothing, and takes over everything.

In tandem with this spread, depression uses the devastating tool of truth.

When we describe someone being angry, sometimes we use the expression "the red mist". It's used in football quite a lot. When a player does something indefensibly stupid and aggressive, they say that "the red mist descended". Anger is a corrupting force that descends from the heavens, or rises from the bowels of the Earth, which obscures the moral vision of a person. They can't see clearly.

But that's only what people say when they are not depressed, or when they're not angry.

When you're actually angry, it's not a red mist at all. You are the one who sees clearly. Everyone else are the ones blinded by mist (probably a happier colour - baby blue, perhaps).

When you're depressed, you think that you're finally aware of the truth. The depression and the hatred are correct. Your assessments of other people and the world are correct. The rest of the time, you've been brainwashed.

How can all these people not see how terrible the world is? The evidence is EVERYWHERE.

Depression doesn't just grab hold of us, it convinces us. It liberates us. It's like a totalitarian dictator, trying to give us freedom through terror, and righteousness through persecution. We're assaulted on all sides by the forces that tell us things are OK. If we concede to them, we're weak and we're being screwed over. (What was I saying about Conservatism again?)

When you're depressed, you're not just feeling it now. The anger can travel through time. It makes you think you were a fool for ever enjoying yourself. All past happy experiences were a sham. All future happy experiences are a lie that must be staved off for as long as possible!

The red mist is nothing of the sort. It's a magnifying glass. It's a microscope. It's tinted spectacles, which are the opposite of rose-tinted. It's those glasses in They Live that allow you to see aliens.

That's what makes it such a dangerous force. That's why people let depression ruin, or even end their lives. It's a terrifying enemy.

As I think about it now, not feeling depressed, trying to remember my anger and yet unable to understand it, I worry that I was right! Maybe the depressed me was right all along! I'm probably hornswoggled and bamboozled right now. I can't see the truth. The world seems like an OK place. My relationships and house and DVD collection seem fine. The human race seems fine.

But that's only because the baby blue mist has descended. In my next bad mood, I'll realise once again how wrong I'm been, and will cling onto the dark truth with my black fingernails: vindicated.

Pretty scary. But, even if my depression is on the same continuum as that of people with severe problems, I'm incredibly lucky. It's quite rare for me to fall victim to these moods. For some, the black fingers are a constant presence. For some, the darkness outweighs the light for the majority of their lives.

And we wonder why they don't listen when we tell them it will all be OK, there's nothing to worry about really. We are blind. They can see.

So... I dunno. Give to some anti-depression charity or something? I hadn't really thought of a conclusion for this. Yeah, give some money. That'll sort it all out.

(I may have lost some dramatic punch with that ending. But screw it. This ain't The New Yorker.)

Red Mist

Let's talk about the keys thing.

At the end of my first year of university, I was depressed. I was generally depressed throughout most of that year, but that doesn't have any bearing on this story.

I'd just finished my first year exams. You'd think that it would be a time for jubilation, celebration and various Animal House-style horse murders. But I must have had some kind of adrenaline dump, and the moment the exams were out of the way I wanted to sit in a dark-infested tank and grind my teeth.

This didn't really have anything to do with how well the exams had gone. I didn't know how they'd gone. (It turned out they had gone just well enough to pass. It was pretty close though.) I suppose the problem was just the general anticlimax that happens after any significant milestone. If you yearn for something so much, hoping and praying and willing it towards you, that when it finally arrives, it hits you in the face at a thousand miles an hour and you need a lie down.

So I was having a lie down. It was the afternoon, and I'd closed my curtains. My room was in a halls of residence, and was on the ground floor, right near the building entrance. This was not ideal for a life of peaceful study. Luckily, a life of study, peaceful or otherwise, was never on the agenda.

There I was, seething in the dark, when I heard the voice of Rob. I haven't changed his name to protect his identity - it was Rob. He was a fellow PPE student, was from Newcastle, and probably had other characteristics that I've either forgotten or never knew. He had come to ask me if I wanted to join the rest of the PPEists for a celebratory night of drinking and consolatory amnesia.

He knocked on my open window and asked if I was coming out. A friendly invitation, you might think. This made me angry. I ignored him.

He persisted. "Come on!" he might have said. "What are you moping around for?" This made me angrier.

I just wanted to ignore the world, and the world was shouting through my window. In a Geordie accent. Rage filled my soul and bed.

Then it happened. My keys were on my windowsill for some reason. Rob playfully reached through and grabbed them, and threw them towards me in a playful gesture. That was the idea at least.

But the keys hit me right in the face. Hard. They were really heavy. In those days, I had loads of keys (one for every door in Britain), several metal loops, four keyrings in the shape of anvils, a granite Ten Commandments fob...

Hard metal, hard in the face. Like getting punched by C3PO.

I totally flipped out. The post-exam depression, the invasion of my solace and the physical assault all added up. I lost, burned and buried my temper, and was out for blood. If he'd been in the room, I literally would have punched him.

But he was on the other side of the window. There was no way for me to hurt him physically. I could have tried throwing the keys back at him, but I would have lost the moral high ground and, more importantly, my keys.

In the end, the moral high ground was out the window, even if the keys weren't.

I swore at him, I insulted him. I was so desperate to hurt him like he'd hurt me that I tried every possible hurtful angle. But I didn't really know enough about him to be able to do that.

In the end, I resorted to insulting his dad by derisively referring to him as a miner.

I don't know if he was a miner. I think he might have been an old-school socialist. But why did I think that would be an effective insult? I like socialists and miners. I was just grasping at any hurtful straw I could find, but they were all made of soft plastic.

I think he just laughed.

It was scary though. If he hadn't been a white heterosexual male, would I have resorted to some kind of bigoted slur? Would I have insulted his country? Was I angry enough and impotent enough to resort to racism?

I really hope not. But at that moment, I was so angry that I might have used any weapon at my disposal.

I don't like to think that anger might make me stoop to such depths, but my rage was so visceral and overwhelming that rationality or compassion didn't come into it.

I don't tend to get angry about much, but when I do, you might want to stay away.

And, to recap, this anger came from a friend a) asking me if I was going to come out for a drink and then b) accidentally throwing some keys at my face. I don't think many courts would deem that sufficient provocation for anything beyond a polite rebuke.

I don't think the bad mood lasted too long. I'm sure Rob doesn't even remember this.

I've only been angry like that a couple of times since, and on neither occasion did I hurl any epithets at anyone.

I'm only human. I have a long fuse, but not an eternal one.

The moral of the story is:

DON'T TEST ME.

No, wait...

The moral of the story is:

If you're in a bad mood, don't leave keys on your windowsill.

It's a lesson worth learning.

My second year of university was much better. Though my rage issues might have manifested themselves in the Anger Monkey Chart I handed in that one time instead of doing an assignment.

I matured quickly, and continue to do so.

I don't have any problem with your dad being a miner.