Some Nazty Business

So, another blank page and another 1,000 words objective today. And, typically, I think I have nothing to relate, express, articulate or say. This must be some dangerous, jive psychological template I have been handed to me because in every other situation I have lots to say – just ask anyone I have bored to tears. Just ask Martha who despises anything I say so much that reverse psychology is ineffective and I have learnt to be Silent George. But now that I have to deliver, I go all shy and blank like a coy schoolgirl. Is this what a writer’s block is – or is this more Sloth? Either way, the debate fixes nothing and only serves to prolong the agony of what I must do. Well, I can at least write another diary entry.

No-one is going to read this stuff anyway.

Dear Internet,

This nasty business not writing every day makes me feel lazy and annoyingly dirty. It has been a long few weeks of emotional struggle with few rewards and I hate to have to admit that I do nothing when it is my own accomplishment at stake. I want to write every day, just like I want to complete my first Toastmaster certificate. So how big a task is this? Let me recount it.

I tried to overcome my paralyzing disempowerment with good, old-fashioned consumerism. Nothing can easily change my psychology of despair, in my experience, like the expectation from a shopping trip. I am not saying I like to leave my home but eBay is such a friend. Not only do I not have to leave my home, but the goods arrive at some half-expected near future time. Fuck this running to nowhere or eating a tub of ice cream to biologically change my psychology. Anyone who talks to me about those other remedies does not know me. And how odd can I be in this regard? Promise me the mere opportunity to get laid and I clean the whole house, quickly and efficiently. Am I the only man ever to find my second wind this way? What does the medical profession do to so emasculate a doctor’s thinking? Get out and run for an hour? Why? Where am I going? What’s chasing me? Of course, these days I need much more than the simple promise of something to get my juices flowing. And living with Martha means I have less juice to flow. So, making use of my resource, Martha is part of my solution here. I do not have much money to spend but if I find some I can spend it like I am living at home again.

I am the man searching for the boy inside to revive his own manhood. I suppose that is an elegant way to say mid-life crisis though I really do not connect Martha with my mid-life expect by chronology.

Shopping, like eating ice cream, does have its drawbacks. I have picked up some new DVDs:. Shogun: the mini-series, Masada, the complete epic mini-series, and The Seven Per Cent Solution. I prize these, especially as I turn my focus to writing. The writing in these films is quite good in my opinion though I watch them a little more critically than when I first watched them. But just watching them again and re-experiencing how they influenced my early creativity does restore a little bit of myself to me: like a vaccine’s booster shot re-immunizing me. What was it I wrote about writers being daydreamers? Yet I have to say that my plan has partially backfired. I am still awaiting two shipments and this is an added weight on my mind. Yay they finally arrive after I am plagued by the fermenting notion that my money is stolen for so long is a definite unnecessary burden on an already troubled mind. I waited for Dragon Age: Origins to arrive for so long that the great expectation to play it out before I started this Blog is now devolved into the fear of diversion and is a battle in its own right. The seller was in communication with me so I did not experience the problem of fear of loss, as I am doing with another merchant at present. This other merchant is long past due to send me 25 DVDs and CDs, which I bought for a great sum of money, and has sent me more troubles.

Martha is angry that I spent my money on myself, and she was an instrumental block to me in regards to this other merchant, which she secretly relishes while I anguish. To be fair to myself I did try to assuage her with some Christmas gifts I bought with this same money but she is insatiable. On one hand, she harbors an indignation any moron can understand while on the other hand she refuses any advice I can give to her to help her situation. Full steam ahead Martha, and I (and everyone else) can pay for it. Well, I do not feel too bad about shopping for myself, ungrateful though I may be.

Martha understands my shopping as self-medication for a broken spirit so problems with that medicine is an opportunity for her to lord it over me. I threw away money hurts me enough but that dagger goes with a twist for Martha! I disrespected her! She could have had that money instead! Now I am not eager for the countdown until my gifts arrive but anxiously counting the days since the gifts should have arrived but have not. Please hurt me. Here is the razor, and it is both arteries that get slashed: guilt and fear.

Did I really pay for this sadomasochism? I realise that the great many women enjoy exploiting these situations on men. Women are the worst emotional bullies by way of explanation of their ever-tragic her-story under the evil Patriarchy of Paters and Godlike Christ-figures. They share their endless suffering to make the world a more egalitarian hell. But I have to ask myself with this eBay purchase, did I really just accomplish the diametrical opposite of my objective to make myself feel better and pay out my own money for it too? It just adds to the negativity of my situation.

But the last few weeks have not been as easy on me as my eBay dilemma. That anxiety goes away if I can just lay down in bed and wait for the inevitable to pass like a kidney stone. The rest I have had to deal with does not allow me to rest from the recoil of my bleeding fear and guilt. And Martha is there to exploit this too. Martha gets her money’s worth from me.

Before I turned my focus onto writing as a last hope, I had created a group from about 100 business leaders from whom I hoped to find work. My thinking was to get a steady income started so I can leave Martha, and Martha knows this. So there is this stasis in our relationship between me not earning any money and my not providing any money. She can complain about it both ways while she subtly sabotages the equation. It is very rewarding for her to play the victim against me the failure. Maybe I do not seem so ungrateful and misogynic now as the underdog in this end game.

The best thing for her, she tells me, is that I leave her. And the best thing for me is to do the same. But I cannot. I think she truly believes I am too lazy and that the odds are too long for me to succeed as a writer. She must believe this because how she speaks to me about staying home all day and the constant telephone calls about nothing (I feel lonely, some asshole said something to me, I am tired) that punctuate the hours of my day like the shelling of Bagdad is tiring. Worse is that I fear she may be right.

I have thought about adopting her belief that someone else – a new woman for example – whisks me away to a utopia Neverland. I get a reality check when I hear this philosophy blatantly sold from Martha’s mouth, a Mouth of Sauron. Then I am snapped back to my center of consciousness, renewed like the Sword of Elendil slicing through the bullshit.



The Mouth Of Sauron Speaks To Me Daily

On personal reflection I am satisfied with myself. I can conclude that, before taking this perilous path of penmanship, I have tried everything other than becoming a writer first, and I do appreciate how much I have achieved before the results of my effort (in the direction I had aimed) revealed failure. How many abject failures surviving off the avails of a woman can claim they started a semi-successful non-profit association for CEOs? How many resigned to such a fate would even find the energy? My efforts have gathered a group of local business leaders around me to whom I have almost single-handedly fed 4-course dinners for the last 18-months, providing not only the food but also the venue and entertainment. Again, to succeed in such monumental tasks yet fail to find simple gainful employment from said tasks executed competently leaves me looking at the glaring snake-eyes of destiny manifest. It is possible to seek modest revenue from them in the form of an annual membership fee from their company. But to do that I need to establish this group as a legal non-profit entity and open a bank account. On this path I need a Board of Directors.

That is where the tale takes a turn for the worse. Maybe if I write it all down I will understand my role in this mess better. Martha feverishly portrays me as the victim – usually the first sign that I bear some responsibility that I can fix. Think about that sympathy for a moment and you will see why I want to look at this situation a little harder, though I believe it is as hopeless as a 3-Stooge movie. In fact, the whole 4-man Steering Committee needs to be sent to the lions, and this is my task next Thursday.



This disaster movie features Moe Hailstone playing the part of Nicholas “the stall it’s my fault” Lawyer. Field Marshal Curly Gallstone presents the role of Chris “the covert operations concrete” Mixer, and Larry Pebble is Ashim Numbers, fugitive from Russian prostitution mafia. Shemp makes a guest appearance too, in the person of Paul “I never got the memo” Membership. As ineffectual a group as you ever care to meet.

Except this is serious nazty business instigated by clever guys designed to hurt me. Recall I started this post about my psychology needing a boost? Well, to move this group into the status of a recognised non-profit association catering to senior executives is a pretty big accomplishment. I may be a total washout but, at least, I could hold my head up high as the founder of such an association while I write from home. No one will believe I could have gone so far in my current position, and I have a Steering Committee looking to block me.

With friends like these, who needs enemies? And, truly, I hand picked these guys. FAIL. It is moments like this I recall Dale Carnegie’s observation from How To Win Friends And Influence Others: Andrew Carnegie told him that his success was based upon the people whom he surrounded himself. Well, surround yourself with The Stooges and suffer the consequences. Of course, I thought they were friends at the time.

When the story began in mid-August 2009, a meeting was held with Moe, Curly and Larry in Moe’s offices. This meeting set the date for a founders meeting to occurr at 13:00 on 28 August and outlined the Letters of Association to be drawn up. I gathered the fifteen residents, important CEOs, to sign the Letters of Association, which Moe had not even written. In fact, Moe was completely unprepared and hid the majority of the time leaving me to chair an empty meeting. Hamish, you’re a comedy fuckmuppet if ever there was, school tie and all.

Between that time and October 2009, nothing was done. In October, I put on another quarterly dinner for the group providing the business address on branding myself. By this time I had also accomplished another major step forward by attracting the CEO of a website company to design and implement a website for the group. It was at this meeting I had planned/hoped to announce an annual membership fee for members charged to their companies, but nothing had been accomplished by Moe. As a result, no bank account existed.

Yes, that’s right. All these guys got jobs and I do not - going on 10-years.

The next dinner was set for last Tuesday , 16 February. In the interim, I organised the guest speaker for the dinner and found myself a piece of work – my only piece of work for the whole year – during 8 days in December. No doubt you were wondering the origin of my eBay money all this time. My health problems flared up and on Christmas Eve I found myself taken by ambulance to the hospital. About this incident I will say that I know beyond any doubt what real pain is now.

After Christmas and during the holiday, I asked the individuals of the Steering Committee for their help. We needed a venue and catering for the dinner. The speaker and presentation were a lock with that groundwork having been done in November. The Steering Committee would do nothing except tell me the dinner should be postponed indefinitely. So I went ahead and spent more of my eBay money at a member’s restaurant to buy the venue and catering. This means I put together the whole deal in a very short time and not in the best of health. As I was so busy it slipped my mind to invite the Steering Committee.

The dinner was not a roaring success but it got done. A small group under 10 had dinner together and the presentation was successful. Moreover the group has not missed one dinner since I founded it.