Diary of an up and coming sociopath

So yesterday, Friday, I did work on my project. Learning Java while building a program seemed like a difficult taks but so far I’ve been doing it very well. I’ve never programmed anything totally OOP before, but this is. It’s easier than I expected.

Today was another of those pointless jaunts up to Temple Cowley. We spent some time in Matalan getting a refund on a cake tin which disintigrated the day after we bought it and while we were there a bunch of security guards falsely accused an old woman of stealing things. She no doubt felt violated. Cavity searches’ll do that to you.

After that we went to Woolworths. In the shop, a small child was erupting forth with the most bloody and hysterical screams because his parents wouldn’t buy him something, and then because his parents wouldn’t buy him something more expensive. We bought some chocolate and as we left the checkout operator asked us if we wanted a cut-price VHS of Home Alone or Pretty Woman. Ian replied “No, I don’t have a video.” and I thought that it was amusing that he bothered qualifying his denial, so when my chance arose I said “No thanks, my video player was recently stolen.” I later realised I should’ve further elaborated and added “by one of Oxford’s finest crack addicts.” He seemed pretty amused anyway.

We also went to Kwik Save. Ian had never been to a Kwik Save, so it was a real treat for him. I had previously told him of some Kwik Save based exploits of mine (in short, the shop and products were so covered in dirt and stickyness that I just gave up and left the basket of shopping on top of a Freezer, departing for greener pastures. Tescos Uber Alles. ) and he had also gained a passing familiarity from the Somerfield newsletter. Nothing prepared him for the reality though. Bare shelves stacked haphazardly with out of date goods, brands you’ve never heard of masquarading as quality merchandise. Prices that weren’t even especially cheap. Somerfield had a mission statement, Ian told us, so we hypothesised that Kwik Save’s must be “Get the customer what they want, at minimal cost or inconvenience to ourselves.”

We went to some place called the “Oxford Pram Centre” which actually sold toys, because I was wondering what Transformers they had. Unfortunately, when I got there an old woman in a wheelchair had been parked in front of the shelf and we couldn’t wait for her to be moved. It’s incredibly bleak, that situation, abandoned in a children’s toy shop with the last of your dignity failing. Sums up Cowley pretty well.

To round off the excursion to Oxford’s seedier suburbs, we went to the large Tescos. As we approached the underpass of the ring road, a sign attached to the traffic lights read “Judgement Day is Coming,” to which I can only say: Finally!

We bought ourselves some food for tonight. The place was pretty crowded, but it wasn’t until we got to the checkouts when things became worrying. As we sat in the queue waiting for our turn, Nikki pointed out that if you listened to the crowd noise underneath it all there was the constant wailing of children, punctuated by one or two breakout screams. It was like being in baby hell. Suddenly the stress of shopping all clicked for me and it seemed almost claustraphobic. I’m not going to go shoppng on Saturdays from now on, if I can help it.

When we got to the checkout Nikki told me to pack fruit and veg in one bag, dr stuff in another. I was doing well until I got to apple juice, which is clearly fruit, and not dry. Apparantly, though, it counts as dry. After that, I got given canned tomatoes and tomato purée, both of which were clearly fruit. Or so I thought. Wrong again, James. At this point the checkout operator was laughing ta my exasperation. Eventually I recategorised the three bags into “Fresh”, “Frozen” and “Processed” and that seemed to cover the right bases. Another strike for me. (extended metaphor, kids)

Later on, Rachel came over and we had dinner then watched “Being John Malkovich” which Nikki bought on DVD ages ago but we only just watched. It’s a pretty good film, it’s a bit philosophy-lite though. It kind of starts raising big social and philosophical questions but stops short of cutting into the meat of them and shifts the focus to how people ar affected by this weird concept. It’s well-made, due to the direction and acting, it just needed to be a little more challenging to push things over the edge, I would say. Some good jokes though, it’s let down by a pretty predictable ending, I think. Spoilers follow for the rest of this paragraph if you haven’t seen it: I mean, I guessed that the guy would leave John and end up “absorbed” in the new vessel watching his former wife unable to influence actions because they had to have some pretty heavy handed exposition to set it up. I was a little let down by the ending, to be honest, it was the only real bad point of the film.

After that Ian and I dropped Rachel back at her college and had a brief discussion about time travel. It’s not important.