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The machine ate my card. I have no idea what bizarre reasoning lies
behind this, but the fucking cash machine ate my sodding bank card. What
the fuck is the deal with that? Yet another example of how life has
decided to dick me over. All I did was put my card into the damn
machine, and instead of offering me the usual "What language do you want
to be insuted in?" screen, it came up with some window containing a load
of babble I couldn't understand if I had lived here for the past two
years, let alone the past two months.
So, I have no card. I couldn't go in to the bank to complain, as it
wasn't open that early in the morning. It'll probably be closed by the
time I finish work. For the slow of thinking this is a bad thing. I have
no money. No cash, nothng. My usual strategy for a night is to grab
something on the way home, and I can't do that without my card to get
money. So I can't eat tonight. Instead, I have to make do with the
miscellaneous crap that they serve in the canteen, washed down with the
bitter knowledge that all I'm going to get to eat for the next few days
will be from there. Great. All I can eat is vaious shades of crap meat,
alongside mashed potatoes that bear a lot more in common with liquid
than anything solid. Hell, the river at home is more solid than these
potatoes. And that's what I'm going to eat, if I can eat at all, for the
next few days.
When I find whichever total dickhead programmed the machine to eat my
card no questions asked, I am going to kick the top off his skull and
pour battery acid onto his still living brain. Then, I'm going to drown
the fucker in a vat of the canteen's mashed potato. He has just fucked
me over for however long it takes to get my card back. And given the
hours that I work are longer than the bank's opening hors, that could be
a long time indeed. A long time with no money, being paid but being
unable to touch the cash, being unable to do anything vaguely relating
to money. Hell, I won't even be able to get a train ticket to get me
into work for next month. I really, really need to kill someone.
* * *
It's actually cold here for a change. The sun may be out, but that air's
just above the temperature where your breath frosts on the air. It's
nice, really. Much better than the oppressive heat we have had since I
arrived. For a change I find myself actually wanting to o outside, to
close my eyes and relax. Of course, that's just the four hours of sleep
talking. It reminds me of what life is like, how just when it seems like
there's not going to be a change, how everything will stay as hot as it
has been forever, things change in a day, and become refreshingly
diferrent. I can't wait for everything else to go the way of the
weather.
I stood outside for a good long time this morning, just being there.
Sure, it was on company time, but nothing went wrong. If it had, I would
have known. Instead, I just stood therejeans and a thin t-shirt against
a cold day. It was the nicest way I have spent ten minutes since I
arrived here. Autumn's coming, and with it comes change. With Autumn
comes Winter, and the knowledge that half of the year has gone, that
half a year of being here has flown by. But it's still too far away.
Sometimes, I can do nothing mut stand in constant winter, trying to
remember what life is like without all of this.
Yesterday. At least yesterday was diferrent. Yesterday was a trip to the
airport to collect the latecomers, the students that we will be working
with for the rest of the year. They start work next week, and only have
12 months in their contracts. The bastards actually got one summer
holiday in between their second and final years. They got to spend some
time doing whatever the hell they liked. And though they miss out on two
months pay and willbe paying more rent, it still doesn't seem fair, in a
way.
Fuck, what should I care? I had two weeks at home, that should be more
than enough, shouldn't it? Shut up and get back to work. No. Not a damn
chance. I know that the world isn't fair, but I'm fucked if I'm just
going to sit idly by and watch my tine get sucked in by working. My
plans are in motion. This time next year, I won't be here. I won't be in
this hemisphere. I will be in a place I want to be in, doing the thins
and people that I want to do. I'm just pissed off that the world has
decided I'm going to wait a year before getting any time off. Still...
Not like I can exactly get time off for good behavoiur. The new bastards
get it easy.
But as I stand in the closest I will get to the winter air, marvelling
at life, for a change it doesn't seem so bad. I'm in such a good mood I
might only hideously mutilate the next person that tells me their
account has been hacked. For a change, for a total bloody change, the
world doesn't seem as utterly fucked up as it usually is. And that is
what scares me the most. The world's not meant to be right. They must be
putting something in the air. It's the only answer.
A paranoid is someone in full posesion of the facts.
* * *
So I'm sat here at work typing this, trying to let my brain work on
something else. But the French git I'm supposed to be working under has
some crap blaring from his computer, and people keep bugging me because
the printers don't work even though I have proved that they are working
five times today and I can't think and I'm supposed to be cloning a
machine just without a file containing one string and I can't be
arsed...
Have you ever wanted to kick someone's head open and stamp on their
still living brain because they were too stupid for words? Have you ever
thought about making an entire convent go blind just by running inside
and kissing each and every nun in there? Have you ever come up with a
plan to make the perfect human by stitching together babies and bits of
cats?
If so, you're the bastard that's stolen my caffine for the past two
days. And I will track you down. Oh yes, I will.
* * *
Website? No, officer, I don't know anything about a website. Bugger off.
* * *
Stewart Wilson, the Digital Raven
Munich, 29th August 2001
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