It's A Cold And It's A Broken Hallelujah

Once again it's been a quarter-moon since I last wrote anything here, but don't worry, you've not missed much. I've not really felt like blogging, taking the old adage "if you have nothing nice to say then don't say anything" to heart. This entry will probably be a long one, though, to make up for it, so grab a coffee...

Oh, there was the AmazonFail debacle at the weekend, and I did draft an angry and emotional entry slating them for what they'd done, and that how dare they decide to "protect" me from "undesirable" books without even having an option to switch the filtering off, like Google Safesearch, and that the books affected showed the policy up to be ham-fisted at best and downright homophobic and sex-negative at worst - but many more bloggers wrote pieces on the affair far better than I ever could. Anyway, I decided not to post it until I'd calmed down, and by then, apathy had set in, so we'll just leave it.

All I will say is that I will never shop there again (and you may notice my wishlist has gone from the sidebar). But I'm not going to demand that everyone else does the same thing. There's nothing worse than someone ramming an opinion down your throat, and I learned long ago that you can't control people like that - and nor would I want to. Read the coverage on the web and make up your own mind. End of.

An online friend of mine has given up cigarettes, alcohol and chasing boys - and she seems to be feeling a heck of a lot happier and more energized than she's felt in a long time, which is great and I'm really happy for her. I'm trying to get myself out of a rut as well - I've mentioned this earlier here - but it's difficult. I still seem to be slipping into the old habit of sleeping all afternoon and sitting randomly websurfing all evening, although I have made some changes - I've been snacking on strawberries a lot over the last couple of days for instance, and I'm now walking back home from work every day (although, in a job like mine, I do a lot of walking every day already) I'm also waking up at 05.00 and having something more substantial for breakfast than a Red Bull and a vitamin pill (I still have those, but with something else now), and I've actually been going to bed on the same day I wake up all this week as well!! So, little steps are being made.

And yet I still find myself making Twitter posts like this and feeling that there is absolutely no point in anything in life. To try and salvage one evening I went down to a bar which I enjoy going to, and I wore my Space Invaders T-Shirt and sat quietly in the corner drinking Guinness looking at the crowd and trying to spot look-alikes (Gok Wan and Mika were represented). But it didn't lift the mood, and when someone put Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" on the video jukebox I almost burst into tears there and then. Thankfully I managed to hold it in until I got home and had a listen to my own copy.

I had a dream this afternoon (yes, fell asleep again) and woke up feeling pretty sad and annoyed. In the dream I was walking back home from work and when I got to my house I noticed the curtains were open - I usually keep them shut all day - so I knew someone was in the house. And when I got in, I found everything tidy and clean. "My mother's here!" I angrily shouted, and went round to the back door. Sure enough, there she was, with the lawnmower in her hand. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I shouted. "NEVER - ever - do that again" and then, as I saw the hurt in her eyes, I lowered my voice and said "or at least, make sure you're gone before I get home. I really hate you doing this".

And it's true. I'd rather live in a bombsite than have my mum (or sister, or anyone) tidy the place up for me. Perhaps because I felt my mum was, shall we say, a little overprotective of me when I was growing up. She was a "helicopter parent" long before the term was invented. Not to mention continually rifling through my stuff when I was a teenager. The trouble is it's made me perhaps go too much the other way. Sometimes we can't do everything on our own - and yet instead of looking for help, I find myself getting overwhelmed by it all.

Maybe that's why I'm sitting here in a messy house still. But I will get my act together. Or lay down and die, and either way the problem won't be a problem anymore, will it?

This track has been featured here before - and I think this is the first time I've posted a song twice to this blog since I started, six months and 133 entries ago - but the visuals are different this time :)

JEFF BUCKLEY - HALLELUJAH
(from the album "Grace", 1994)