The Consumption of Alcohol in a Secretive Manner on New Years Eve

I am currently consuming alcohol, and not by drinking it, but by eating it. Though it tastes just as horrid as drinking alcohol, eating it differs in that nobody suspects a darned thing.

My alcohol, vodka, is tucked away in an ingenious visible and edible compartment that is not in the most suspicious. There are several of these compartments, and they are all hidden in a sealed container which, arguably can be excused by a reason which states that I choose to keep these individual compartments fresh, hence I shy them away in an airtight container in the fridge. But seeing as this post is about alcohol and how it is in these tucked away compartments then you and I both know that this is not true. Well, it is partially.

The truth is that the container is keeping my little alcoholic friends hidden from consumption by other people and keeping their vodka smell from giving their true forms away. They are mere gummy bears, and they have been soaked in vodka overnight. They have grown to double their size, but only I can be the judge and observer of that for I was the one who saw them in their natural state before they became inflated with Russian water. Nobody suspects a thing.

After four vodka gummy bears, vodka becomes distasteful as my tastebuds begin to crave only gummy bears, whereas my mind craves the weightlessness that the alcohol provides. It is a constant battle between flavour and feeling – the one that will prevail will be feeling, because as the world stupidly celebrates our constant ageing and the illusory chance to start anew, I must drown out most of my consciousness so that I can awaken the next day still grasping my sanity.

My sanity is standing on the edge of its version of Mount Everest and it is banging itself over its own forehead with a mace, thinking about why everyone thinks that they must wait for the New Year to attempt to wipe their slates clean. As one wise friend of mine puts it, today is merely an arbitrary day. Nothing crazy and dream-like will be granted to you. If you rob a bank, you will be caught. If you murder your ex’s new spouse, you will be caught. 2014 is not a magical year, it is like the other years of your existence and ultimately it is up to you to make it count. It does not arrive at your doorstep, take you for a ride of your lifetime and make all your dreams come true. It will, in three-hundred and sixty-five days disappear just like most boyfriends after they find out their girlfriends are pregnant. 2014 is not the Fairy Godmother. It has neither a large butt nor a magical wand. It is just another set of three-hundred and sixty-five days whereby you are exploited by the capitalist state in which you reside.

So, these gummy bears will hopefully assist me in blocking out the mindless chatter of the youth surrounding me. It is a false hope to assume that the next set of consecutive days will enhance your life. Only you are the mastermind behind your own enhancing. Only you can acquire Haribo gummy bears from your nearest petrol station and flood them in vodka overnight so that their consumption can assist you in flooding out useless and repetitive chatter.

Consuming alcohol in a secretive manner hides all of your bitter thoughts and words and drowns them with its own bitter taste. Be numb this holiday, because if you do not, you most likely will experience the same thing every year that you exist on this day, the constant false hopes of friends and strangers alike pretending to sit in the palms of their hands and then wasting away like their chances at achieving those hopes.

I am a realist and realistically speaking, gummy bears flooded in alcohol are my method of surviving through this. Apart from that, I am quite enjoying the secretive consumption of alcohol.

The Dread of the Absence of Noses

As we are well aware from the Harry Potter series, to live without a nose is to live a bitter life. Noses are instruments that compliment our faces. They sit between our cheeks and above our lips and underneath our forehead and they would not look better elsewhere. Why is it that we do not dread their potential absence?

Picture a human without a nose. It is almost as shocking as seeing one without any eyebrows. Over time, we have grown accustomed to the availability of a nose. We identify people firstly by looking at their eyes, and because of their long, vertical structures, we droop down along the nose and then back up at their eyes. Without the nose sitting in its place, our vision stays awkwardly focused on their eyes and we have to find ways in which we could remain calm as we think of what to stare at next. With a nose, one feels complacent. Its placement on our faces almost compliments us, and the varied ways in which they protrude allows others to distinguish between person to person.

The anatomy of a nose is interesting in itself – at the beginning of the nose, between your eyes, is the nasal bone, or the nasal bridge. It spreads down, and in Bruce Willis’ case it spreads out before it does this, to where the upper cartilage is, toward the middle, and it ends with the lower cartilage. The very side of the nostrils are the alar tissues. Place a finger on the tip of your nose, then stroke upwards. That flat area is the supratip break. Now, return to the tip and stroke downwards, and you will find another flat surface. This is called the infratip break. The next flat surface below that break is the nasobial angle. If you place your thumb and index finger onto the tip of your nose as though you are about to block your nostrils from the putrid smell of your uncle’s armpits, you will feel two dome-like humps. Those are called domes. That is probably the most blatantly obvious name for this part of your nose. Move your pinch-hold towards the back, and you are holding the supra alar crease. If you do not find this, please forward your queries or complaints to 1800-WTF-GOD.

You will notice that there are two holes on the bottom of your nose. If you cannot see them, place a finger on your nasal bridge, and when you reach the infratip break, move your finger to the left, then to the right, and you will find two holes. Just to be sure that they work place your finger inside each one and have a feel around. You will notice that they are warm, hairy and slightly moist and sticky cylinders, and if you have both fingers up both holes then be sure to leave your mouth open otherwise you may find it difficult to breathe. Great, now you have located and identified your nostrils. I hope for your sake that nobody was watching.

That narrow area between your nostrils is the columella. Enter your nostrils with your thumb and index finger. Go about five millimetres in, and pinch. You will find that there is a wall blocking one nostril from the other. This is the equivalent to the Berlin Wall. It is called the Septum, and as a form of punishment for blocking the direct communication between one nostril and the other, some people get it pierced. Now, remove your thumb and index finger from your nostrils, and notice this: if you pinch the tip above the top of your nostrils you will feel as though you are pinching a Frankfurt. These are your soft tissue triangles. They are two wondrous Bermuda triangles, in that when a fruit fly flies in that area, it falls out of your sight. Unless it flies up your nose, it vanishes.

And there you have it, my fellow reader. You now know the scientific means of the pointed thing in the middle of your face. That pointed sneezing and snorting thing that breathes warm air, that contains hairs that capture germs and transfers them with boogers that get picked at or eaten. That pointed thing that comes in different shapes and sizes, and flares when you sing. That pointy thing that is sometimes flattened by boxing mitts and spreads out of proportion like a squashed witchetty grub. You now know that pointy thing that shines after you shower and can be accessorised with piercings and jewelry to the extent where you can spend your family dinnertime explaining to your relatives the names of each part of your nose, so far as my knowledge spreads.

And now that you are familiarised totally with your nose, it will be seemingly difficult to imagine living without one. Do not attempt to, it will petrify your very soul. Appreciate your nose, because you would look funny if it ever decides to go.

The Necessity of Popcorn

Popcorn is the most ingenious invention introduced to mankind, from mankind. It is inevitable to view a movie without munching on some. 

It began with the Mexicans. They sacrificed it to their God as a form of delicious respect. Now, it has been adapted into our cinemas as a form of excessive money gain, and in our case, excessive money loss. Now, for almost the price of a movie ticket alone, you can indulge in a godly meal, accompanied by a nice watered down cola. And for a quarter of the price of these you can head down to the closest grocery store and buy a packet of preserved popcorn, assuming that the cinema ones are too preserved, and a cola. After this you can haul it in either secretly or openly and you can indulge in, instead of popcorn alone, the glares of onlookers as you crack open a noisy cheap packet of your rather ungodly pre-purchased of popcorn. And if you listen carefully you can hear their minds whispering about how horridly cheap you are. 

Despite the lengths one goes through for the successful acquisition of popped corn, and the amounts of money you spend, I deem it impossible to view a movie without constantly placing popcorn fragments in your mouth. I believe that people in the cinemas without popcorn spend most of their time imagining how much better their lives would be with popcorn while holding an image of those behind or in front of them eating popcorn instead of focussing on the movie itself. 

The next time you are watching a movie in the cinemas and you either choose not to buy popcorn because you ran out of time, ran out of money or did not feel as though you wanted to eat it, think of how unfortunate you feel about your decision not to purchase it. Popcorn is the best accompaniment to a movie viewing, and there you are, with no accompaniment beside a possible mere human which you cannot eat because cannibalism is illegal and does not provide you with the good crunch sensation that popcorn brings. 

Popcorn must be eaten for your movie experience to be better. Having said that, please eat and drink responsibly because popcorn can also be distracting to yourself or others. 

Falling in Like

To like someone is usually the beginning of loving someone. Like is the early stage of love, and the most difficult one as most who make it to this stage soon end up losing accessibility of the next stage with the intended person.

When you are in like with someone, chances are that they are in like with you too, and that both of you also have other people who you are in like with, even if the amount of like between each person one likes differs. Liking someone is seemingly difficult, as reaching this stage successfully requires the checking of all skills and qualities in potential spouse lists, and of course, the ignoring of some which remain hidden in the final stage of love, seeing as love is indeed blind.

Methods of contact between those in like tend to be repeated to allow for the sanity of both persons, depending on how extreme their levels of like towards one another are. To witness a person in like is to witness hours and consecutive days of thorough communication generally done with one method. This communication may tear one from their eating habits or breathing habits, again depending on the extremity of the like.

Following constant contact, the persons in like become heavily attached to one another. They begin to plot any mere journey or destination with one another and begin to spend more time with each other, at any chance that they may get. This attachment allows for the lessening of other possible people liked by either member’s imposing threats, and heightens the chance of the two persons in like ending up in a solidified relationship, one that once entered, cannot be broken, unless a mighty hungry dinosaur is involved.

A yearning for being with the person you are in like with begins to occur when they are not in your reach, because it becomes excruciating for your soul when their presence is not felt. The persons in like must feel the presence of each other constantly, whether it is by texting, telephone conversations or mere outages involving the two, otherwise a sense of aching begins and beckons both of the two to see each other for whatever reason, allowing their souls to continue their breathing patterns at a speed depicting normality.

Sometimes, both persons in like tend to go their separate ways at one stage. Either one of these persons may during this stage panic, however temporary separation and partnering with other like interests creates a sense of homesickness, and leads both persons back to one another, depending on the mutuality. If home is where the heart is then their home is in your hands, and vice versa. If your like interest goes astray, encourage their distance because it is only temporary and seeing as humans have a life span of an average of one-hundred years, it will not harm you spending a few of these years allowing a potential person of like to stray and find themselves in the world while in the meantime learning that they belong to the world but their heart belongs to you. Do not panic.

If you are suffering from any of the symptoms listed above, chances are that you have fallen in like. And if you have fallen in like, you have fallen in like because the love stage requires utter mutuality. Utter mutuality is met only when both persons in like are in like with each other to the extent where living becomes unbearable until they are by the other person’s side. Be mindful, though, for they could be in like with you too, but if neither of you are ready for any minor reason or circumstance, do not you dare for it for as of yet, it is not love. You are in a state of like and to liberate yourself from that state you must keep doing whatever it is that you are doing now. Because if these symptoms still persist then your stages are progressing towards love and soon you will feel the warm, comforting embrace of that individual which you have grown to love, and will love to grow old with.

Like a person, and love a person. Fall in like and enjoy every second because most people do not experience this lovely pre-state of love. Rushing into love does not allow the immense experiences of ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’ to thrive. Rushing eliminates excitement. Fall in like and love who you like, and who likes you back.

Snakes and Ladders and Life

One busy Friday evening, my mum, sister cousin and I went to Spotlight to purchase some material for a costume party we were to attend. We came upon a discount section after finding out desired material, and were carried away by the fact that Halloween items were all reduced to fifty cents. We grabbed all that we could want, and headed on our way to the counter.

I looked down at the rack beside me as we waited in line, and my eyes floated onto different trinkets and gadgets until I found something that would make me look at life in a different way: a game of Snakes and Ladders, for just three dollars. An entire game. A mat, six interlocking plastic checkers and a die. I thought it was ridiculously cheap, and thought of all the things I would do with it, so I made my sister purchase it for me. I did not think any more about it than the fact that we soon would indulge ourselves in going back to playing with things which did not have anything to do with pixels or technology, just mere good old fun.

Weeks went past, with this game in my possession. I took it with me on a road trip and holiday, lodging it into my almost-full bag of luggage in hopes that we would collectively sit and enjoy playing the game, just to see what it was like to live in a simple time where the most difficult thing that could happen to a child was landing on a number below three. We did not end up playing with it. In fact, this game had travelled with us for free without paying for petrol, and without paying for accommodation. It simply went on a holiday and returned home with me, and sat in varied places all over my study because of the lack of room we have.

It was not until this very moment in time that I came to a realization. I was sitting here, struggling to think of a topic to write about, and I looked over to my left and alas, there it was, staring right back at me as if to say that I should write about it. So, here I am, writing about the unopened and unused game of Snakes and Ladders. I stared at the numbers, the two shades of green acting as the checkers to land on, the bright yellow ladders and the colourful and daunting snakes. I stared at the large plastic checkers and the die and still thanked my wondering eyes for finding this bargain.

However, I soon thought of something – life is like a game of snakes and ladders. Think of a giant mat, numbered from one to three-hundred and sixty-five. Then think of hundreds of millions of plastic checkers representing every human on the planet. Think of the snakes as different hurdles humans encounter, and think of ladders as progression points. That is all life is about. We count our days up to a year, and no matter what hurdles or progression points we landed on, we start over anew in the next year. It is in our newfound nature to do so. Nobody can truly predict what can happen to one, or what one lands on when they roll the die. Will they face a hurdle? Or will they progress somehow? Perhaps a snake will literally harm them, or perhaps they will climb ladders throughout their lives as a part of their career. Regardless, though, life really is a game of Snakes and Ladders. We rise, we fall, but we still manage to make it through the year in hopes of the next year being a new, fresh start.

Staring at this miniscule version of human life, I now wonder if animals such as ants play this game too, but a much smaller version, as a way of keeping track of their days. Surely they do not spend all of their time only acquiring food.

On the Discussion of Saving Mr. Banks

Today I viewed a movie based on the author of Mary Poppins, Pamela L. Travers, and how she came to turn Mary Poppins into a feature film with the aid and attempted direction of Walt Disney himself.

I write today making claims based on the allegations of the film and its contents and the portrayal of Pamela and Walt’s handling of the Mary Poppins adaptation. For, seeing as I am an aspiring novelist, my potential to firstly write a novel, then to have it become popular enough for it to be adapted into a screenplay has driven me to express my feelings about my connection with each piece of writing I have created, and how highly I place them in contrast to how others see them.

The first story which comes to mind that I have written was when I was in sixth grade. I was asked to write a creative piece, so I wrote it about a young boy who was visited by a winged creature similar to a unicorn and would fly away with it on adventures, nightly, and would safely return the next morning. It was like the Harry Potter series, and I could not finish it in the duration that I was required to, so I had to end it abruptly. The second piece I recall came after that, and had a similar storyline to Pirates of the Caribbean, except it was not as dramatic. Both pieces I took seriously, and both pieces remain in my memory to this day. Even though they probably are not as great as my mind makes them out to be, I know that for a person of my age in that time, they were quite grand. From that point on, I kept on writing and drawing without keeping track because of all the reading that I prioritized and because of the overflowing of ideas I kept acquiring. The receiving of my first Game Boy Colour might have also contributed to this.

This Christmas, to avoid weeping from the loss of our things from a potential theft, seeing as though we celebrated Christmas at my grandmother’s home, my mum suggested that we all took our valuables with us. My sister brought her laptop, my dad brought the money and mum brought her jewelry. As for me, I grabbed my big box of writing ideas, contemplated taking along the rarest of my book collection, and brought my latest sketchbook and diary and poem book. Upon seeing what I had brought along, my mum projected a look on her face which questioned whether I was serious or not. And I was very, very serious. I told her that people, especially those who write, acquire their ideas from anywhere. This box, labeled ‘writing’, is the holy grail of ideas. It contains ideas which have sprung from my very mind, that I keep adding to depending on post formation ideas. I treasure this box because when the time comes where I will actually attempt, and finish writing my first novel, that box will be the feeder of my mind. It will be my muse, my motivation, and my fuel.

All of these things flung to my mind as I was watching Saving Mr. Banks, particularly when none of those who were assigned to work on different aspects of the Mary Poppins screenplay had taken Pamela seriously. She had rejected Walt’s proposal to go on with the screenplay several times, yet had finally accepted due to her need of money. Disregarding her dire need of it, she still cared deeply about each character in Mary Poppins, and how they dressed, how they acted, what they looked like, where they lived and how they spoke, to a point where she gave the crew working on it a horrible time. She rejected most things that they came up with, and whenever she did they thought horribly of her. My connection to this is that I can understand how she feels. If I had to sit down and watch other people interpret those who I had designed, I would be metaphorically pulling my hair out. I would not stand it, especially if these people continued veering away from the essential characters at hand.

People who do not write stories need to appreciate those who do. They need to appreciate the time and effort it takes to create these almost-beings, and how attached writers get to them. We writers conjure up these characters in our psyches and continue to develop them until they become more real to us than our realities. Their lives become our realities, and until you can appreciate that, you will never understand how deep of a connection we hold with our writing, no matter how small or lacking it sometimes may be. An idea is still an idea, nonetheless, whether it consists of one word or a million.