Deadweight

Have you ever felt the weight of all your failures bearing down upon you? The Duff thinks it feels like a boxer who'd been knocked down upon the canvas, and while the referee is busy ogling the Fixer's wife, the opponent takes a step closer and kicks the loser in the balls.

And twists his foot.

Its true. The Duff had another one of those days, where the shit hit the fan at a diarrhetic ballet of equal consistency. The pile up was unsightly and his stress rose with it in a direct, voluminous ratio. Moments of sanity and laughter punctuated by more issues that had to be handled, managed, solved, and worst of all, put off for a later date.

And he doesn't have much time left on his favourite island in the world. He's leaving in a week's time, once again for that other island down under, where the water in the bowl spins in an unsightly direction and has a knack of producing surprisingly gorgeous people with amazing liver function.

All the crap did give him more impetus to work his ass off in the gym. It also galvanised his resolve to shoot the shit outta all the zombies. Nothing like a double tap to the head from distance. Bloody zombies. What would we do without them?

He wishes he has been able to throw his boomerang though (nope, no euphemisms here. Literally a boomerang. And yes, it does return). He hasn't had any practice in a long time. Somehow he felt that throwing a stick would help calm him down, or at least act as an avenue to vent.

He'll find more violent hobbies in the future. He has it all planned out. After the next 3 months down under, he'd return to begin the rest of his life. And oh, what an act it will be.

Project Phoenix to continue, in spite of the shit.Perhaps he should take up boxing after all.

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (1875)

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my SOUL.

Full Slate

The Duff is once again in a funk. He'd been staying on the path for the last 2 months, gently treading on the straight and clear, bathed in the euphoria of accomplishments that boosted his ego and self worth to a level he hadn't experienced in many a season.

He'd finally escaped from sleepytown. He misses the flying, but not the stagnant, putrid feeling of imprisonment. His return was almost akin to the proverbial hero's welcome. His parents, recently retired, were an instant source of comfort, satisfaction and anchor. Finally, something tangible to focus upon, for his efforts to be geared towards. The want to provide a stellar lifestyle for them is a major reminder to push himself.

An intense study course back at work occupied the first month. Constant meet ups with old friends were enjoyable, although the feeling of being so far behind them started being a point of contention in his soul. More than ever, the desire to excel is reignited to phosphorescence.

Now on the cusp of the next stage of his training, an intense review of his path is sorely required. Being told by the company that he isn't cut out for the job was a major bummer and buzzkill. Should that dull his drive, or push him to work harder? He found the wind taken out of his solar sails, feeling an animosity to the company which he was just starting to build some loyalty towards.

It was however, a great reminder of his initial decision to walk down this path. A simple plan to gain more ammo. He realised that what he was doing all along was steering away from the path, or rather, walking parallel to the original plan. He was letting vital skills he had attained atrophy.

Therefore, he has initiated Project Phoenix. A return to THE PLAN. It will be a shock and awe tactic, a multi-pronged return to the perpetual beta, to the way of the Truth.

14 Months

The Duff enters his fourteenth month of exile furtively, almost unknowingly. It crept up on him, clawing his back with its prong-shaped talons of hate, poisoning his soul with dejection and desolation. And thus he is nursing himself with a cup of warm green tea, soothing his itchy emphysemaic throat and firing up his fever. He thought he could make it through the tenure down under without a bout of sickness, but as many wise men had said before, "Shit Happens."

It must be the air on the ground, for he hasn't danced amongst the clouds for quite some days now. It also doesn't help that his room-mate had moved out, and in the process given new life to a year's worth of cosmic soot into the small room's aneurysmic circulation. It also followed a stretch of sloth where he stopped jogging for 4 days, and filled those 4 days with junk food, beer, sleep and facebook games. It was a perfect storm of sorts.

And all this free time stems from him waiting for his final flight test. A long queue, a smorgasboard of ridiculous reasons and of course the balmy weather that drifts away at the most inopportune time. His luck seems to have never clicked here. Could the magnetic difference with his yin and yang? Could his chinese compass needle have dipped?

The Duff tries to always look on the brighter side of things, that the glass is not half empty but full of dark matter *snigger*. He has finally resolved the issue of selling his car. While it worked perfectly before, now it practically drives itself. Again, a confluence of misfortune has perturbed him and his friends unendingly, with vehicle inspections (and exchanges with an obnoxious racist), trips to the mechanic(a friendly yet disappointingly careless operator) and a nail-scratching-on-blackboard level of experience when dealing with the new buyers. Never had The Duff met a more irritatingly penny-pinching excuse of a man. The whole experience left him with a tangy taste of bile in the mouth.

And thus, when he went out to the movies yesterday, he borrowed another car instead of using his (co-)owned mode of transport. This other car belonged to a friend, and it requires a push start everytime. While it started nicely twice during that evening, it refused to do so at a petrol station, the last start up that we required. The Duff, being the OX OF A MAN that he is volunteered to do the pushing instead. After 8 ATTEMPTS, his heart almost exploded. A better comedic act was never on display. 2 funny looking men pushing a car all around a petrol station. It finally started on a last ditch attempt. Boy was the Duff relieved, for his buttocks and thighs were aching like there's no tomorrow, and his heart was exploding in his chest. If he was to have flown the next day, he would surely have failed the sortie.

The Duff learnt today that his ex-boss has cancer and is closing down his company. While he was hardly in my good books, I found myself still managing to feel sad over this situation. As harsh an impression I had of him, no one should ever have to suffer this fate. The Duff wishes him all the best, and that his religious beliefs hold him over this predicament in as comfortable a manner as possible.

The Duff wonders if its this softness of heart that prevents him from leading the crowd. The apathy to the sometimes devious acts of others, the inability to crush others under his heel. While he understands that this is a large aspect of his personality, and he is rather comfortable, even satisfied at times, with his core values, is this empathy really worth having? Could the ultimate zen masters be the largest pussies?

What is the Truth?

Playlist: Cranberries, Damien Rice, Coldplay, Keane, Green Day
Movies: Closer, Public Enemies, My Sister's Keeper, Red Cliff

3 to goooooooo

The Duff has hopefully only 3 more flights before the big flight home. He has thoroughly enjoyed the last 13 months in flight school. Making great friends, exercising more often than ever, eating lots and some flying on the side is a very simple endeavour.

Sure there were times when he felt depressed or stressed due to his flying, or from situations arising from home, but they were always managed. Therein lies his strength, his ability to cope and analyse complications, coming up with solutions.

Sadly this comes far short from making up for his faults. His laziness, his lack of social skills, his 2 left feet and short attention spans for starters. Once again, the immediate gratification and payoff from his other silly activities contribute to most of these failings. Gaming, sleeping, hiding in the room and reading brings him much joy, but perhaps depriving him of other forms.

Some say knowing is half the battle. Well, the Duff then has started the other half of the battle. He has come up with a plan for the rest of his life using gaming principles. Certainly sounds silly, but he is from the apex of the gaming generation, and while he surely isn't as hardcore as some gamers are, he is hoping that he at least has enough ideas to push these plans through. His method is simple.

Set long term goals. Hard ones. Goals that if he was on his death-bed, he can say out loud with pride that he had accomplished them. Then, set intermediate goals that would help him reach the end goals. And then another layer back, and another and so on. The first goal though, would be so simple, its almost laughable. However, the entire aim is to get the journey started. To take the first step. Finishing will come in due course.

And with any game, there should be contingencies, and parallel avenues which make the entire plan interesting. His original plans from his adolescence have failed miserably for they came without contingencies. He's hoping that this time round, there is a way out, or at least around, insurmountable odds. Like his upcoming flight test. Everything for now hinges on this path being followed through. His starting token.

Problem solving. Character improvement. Obtaining loot and experience.
Game on!

Needsmoretvtoescapereality

So the Duff is almost done with his flight training. Almost being a subjective term. He's almost done with this part, but he has so much more to learn in the near future. However, the future seems ever more elusive as the terrible winter weather has arrived and he only gets to fly once a week. Seems he won't make it for his brother's birthday, and the great family event which is the Liverpool match back home. He's anxious to rediscover his family, and the new dynamics that exist now that his parents are back home and in retirement mode, with a fresh slant towards a new religion.

SO FUN!

For now he has nothing much to do other than focus on his preparations, having passed the last phase check and is now on the home stretch for the final flight test. He'd recently sold his car that he was sharing with 3 other buddies, and that sucks majorly for he is ever more shackled to the mental asylum that has been his prison for the last 13 months. The horrible weather doesn't allow him to keep up the mileage on his jogging shoes, and the gym is cold and strange without his usual gym-mates who had gone back before him.

And thus the escape that television programmes and books provide are so very vital for his sanity. He'd recently finished The Great Gatsby, the quintessential american novel apparently. He skipped the 50 page foreword for it was a deep analysis of the ENTIRE STORY, and went straight to the novel proper. It was approximately 150 pages long, of a bygone era and populated by fuckwits. He then returned to crawl through the foreword, and was vehemently reminded why he had dropped literature in high school. The way scholars analyse a piece of prose at times comes across as grasping at straws, straws with holes all along the shaft that makes sucking anything of substance out of it a royal pain in the butt, and utterly unsatisfying. Why did he pick the green pair of underpants? Because it matches the glistening grass in the country club that he is going to now to meet hte love of his life. Why the fuck must it be that? Why can't it be because he had a wet fart in the red one the day before and its in the washer due to the hot curry over lunch with the fiery redhead whom he's seeing on the side and is into BDSM?

Straws.

New shows he's catching. True Blood Season 2. Who would've known that the cute little girl from The Piano would one day flash her tits on HBO? Virtuality, a reality show staged on a space craft that is departing the solar system to the next nearest star that appears to be able to accomodate life on one of its planets, a new show from the collective geniuses behind the Battlestar Galactica relaunch. Things the duff thought of from catching this cliched yet fresh premise;

1. Every scientist on this mission should have their own fuck buddy/spouse.
2. Especially the highly stressed commander
3. Or better still, Scientists by day, Swingers by night.
4. And since the sun never rises in space..... HELL YEAH!!!!
5. All airlocks must be as fucking manual as fucking possible. Fuck's sakes people, how many have we lost from a fuckingly stupid airlock that blows unprotected scientists into the darkness of space.
6. And always not have an AI that seems suspicious.
7. The crew would be better served by having a prostitute than a shrink, no?
8. Wouldn't the multi-racial setting only create more avenues for conflict?
9. There should never be an old hard-ass geyser on board.
10. Or someone who had lost any children lately.

Playlist: Orbital, Dune, old Jap tunes from the 90s, lectures from The Teaching Company
Reads: Catch-22
Games followed closely on facebook: Mafia Wars, Airline Manager, Farmville, Mousehunt and Battlestations

Crack of Dawn

The Duff woke up early today. He'd gone to bed dead tired the night before, even though he hadn't been up to much before that.

At 5am, his eyes opened and his body didn't resist the call of consciousness. He felt refreshed, rejuvenated even. He enjoyed getting up early. This contradicts much as he had prided himself as not being a morning person. He had always struggled with school and lectures before 10. Or any time for that matter. Hmm....

He supposes that it might be that the accomodations are quiet at that hour. He had always enjoyed walking through his house when everyone else was asleep. He'd look at his dog snoozing under the moonlight in the backyard. Sometimes, the dog would be awake, and could somehow sense him in the kitchen. Much remains to be learnt on the acute senses of Man's Best Friend.

He had his usual breakfast of eggs (half boiled), cereal drowned in milk, and coffee. A mix of both the traditional and the modern, eastern and western. Eating alone in a quiet dining hall, reading more depressing news of the world on food encrusted week old newspapers, he was joined by 2 others who were older than most of the cohort here, being that they were previously from the Air Force. Perhaps only older fools leave the bed early.

He decided to walk through the open air quadrangle enroute to his room. He breathed in the fresh, crisp air, and was immediately brought to an earlier, simpler time when he was in the army, of mornings met with aching pains of sleeping in the great outdoors, squeezing the cold out of the joints, and yet feeling healthier with the clean, oxygen rich air that his lungs relished. Getting into his position while watching the fog rise out of the freshly minty dewey grass, he runs his tongue over the plaque coated teeth, awaiting to pour hot lead into the soft, weak flesh of his enemies. Surreal to say the least.

He cleaned up his room, made his bed and started preparing for his flight this evening. The weather spoke solemnly of the likelihood of going up for the sortie. Even with the wonderful morning, his nightmare continues. To alleviate his mood, he watches the last episode of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. 17 years on a programme, 5 nights a week. What an industrious personality. No matter what his life is like, every night he would appear in front of a worldwide audience and bring laughter and cheers into many a living room. What a professional. And you thought women were good at faking it.

He ended the show with a talk of his legacy. It all stems from his crew of wonderfully loyal participants, from the cameramen to publicists, writers to editors. Most had stayed for all 17 years, and during that time, there were many unions amongst them. His legacy thus was all the children borne of these unions. The curtains rose to show them, all 68 of them. Wonderful. And so appropriate for the Duff truly thinks that all children are our legacy. Every one of them. And thats the undeniable Truth.