I’m severely annoyed this week and I really have no clue why. I’m bored, lethargic, edgy, cranky, almost always in a foul mood and in a constant state of maniacal homicidal contemplation. The past few weeks have been totally brilliant and there’s no logical explanation for my about-turn change in emotional state. Well actually there might…

I’m burned out from golf, I know I’ve been on a rush lately and things have been really sliding into place but I think I just pushed a little too hard. I mean on one hand results are streaming in and I’m getting the feedback I’ve been searching for for so long so I try and work even harder to get them out faster. At the same time I’m trying to compete and validate my work with results, a mixed bag here but overall it’s on the right track. But an 83 on Sunday, not a great result by anyone’s standards, good God Stevie Wonder could have managed better around that track with nothing but a soup ladle and a crowbar, that was embarrassing. I’m not one to blame the uncontrollables in such a volatile sport like some of my salad tossing colleagues so I took it upon myself to take a few practice swings with my putter on my way home when I lamppost got in my way, go figure. But truth be told I was probably not in great shape to play, I was there technically and physically but mentally I was spent, the proposition of looming presentations, assessments and assignments the following week surely drained me even before I ventured out of bed.

Poker the night before also probably wasn’t the brightest of ideas, swamped and tired from the week I wasn’t really ready to break the game and really should have stayed at home doing the responsible thing for once and contributing to my management project. But no, I went anyway. I mean I had a wonderful time as always but sitting at a table with a cunt who thinks he plays like Hellmuth and looks like the bad end of a hemorrhoid ridden donkey really brightened my day. Dropped $10 to boot, card dead, dead tired.

Then I return home with the honest intention to work the night through until my share of work for the management project is complete only to find a nasty e-mail from my partner telling me to “quit the excuses” smoke billowed from my ears and I then proceeded to take out my rage on a passing noisy biker by stretching a piece of cheese wire across the road. After I dumped the body I resumed operation good intention then fell asleep at 3.

I wake up in the morning only to discover that I have a presentation due in 3 hours, so I scurry about like a beheaded chicken and work on it while packing for school. I manage to clumsily smoke and mirror my way through as always but the lack of effort and the absence of perfection annoys me greatly. I bang about some weights in the gym but its no use, my biceps don’t seem any bigger, my boobs any manlier and my legs still look like tree branches.

Night class did little to liven my mood; in fact it grossed me out so much I took a full 1 hour extra just to fall asleep. I mean try closing your eyes trying not to picture a female athlete who was so bent on getting stronger she injected herself with male hormones only to discover a few years later she couldn’t’ identify her sexuality anymore and decided to become a man named Harold. Or the woman who wanted to be a man, injected herself with manly hormones but accidentally forgot to alter the slight details of her genital group, a few years and an uncomfortable marriage later her, his…erm its partner inseminates it with sperm and this she-male becomes pregnant. I’ll spare you the details about the man who wanted masculinity so bad he injected fluids from animal and human testicles into himself, it made him buffer but personally I’ll just stick to the gym thanks. I’d rather have sore muscles than rat seamen coursing through my veins.

Who knew drugs had such drastically detrimental side effects, I mean seriously, on one hand they give you all these wonderful things, euphoria, increased focus, slower heart rate but conversely they also cause women to grow facial hair, men to grow boobs (don’t judge me), the ever popular death and even worse still, a shrinkage in the size of your gentleman vegetables. Steroids have therefore been struck off my birthday wish list.

Today I had more management project grinding with the odd uninterrupted intrusion from an uneducated, loud and rather odious soccer mutt every fucking 5 minutes. This is why I hate studying in the library.

I’ve also been roped into being an emcee for some stupid principal conference held in the school next week on the same day as my management test. Here’s the best part, its only going to be 15 minutes long and it’s basically a workout session to keep them entertained on break. Surely there’s some uber-enthusiastic crack high teacher with shrunken privates to do this. I’m un-flattered by the offer and am desperately trying to get out of it; I might even have to resort to staging my death in a horrible plumbing accident.

My day was so boring I actually slapped myself when I snapped out of my cyborg like suspended reality and found myself horizontally positioned on the couch watching darts. Embarrassed I went out in the pouring rain without an umbrella to punish myself by eating KFC, oh heaven forbid…saturated fat. My only meal of the day and it had to be that, God damn it.

Presentation tonight was more smoke and mirrors and I’ve still got a heap of things I’d rather not have to do this week. We’ll start with having to coach 22 secondary 1 neighborhood school girls for my coaching practical tomorrow, my assessor the ever boring Ms Mae. She’s so boring she could talk the paint off the wall and often I’d wish I was a goldfish in her class so I could fall asleep with my eyes open. For 30 minutes I’ll have to be enthused about spending time that I’d much rather be unconscious with 22 children. Happy birthday to me indeed

Let’s end with an appropriately themed sour note. One of the school’s adopted kittens Amber was found mutilated at the bottom of a staircase this morning, her precious little head smashed into mush, her fragile body broken and blood streaming out her bottom. Her brutal murder sent shockwaves through the school, all of us having grown accustomed to her were in shock and some tears were shed, most notably by the English teachers who had cared for them for the better part of the last couple of months.

That was just sick, cruel and un called for. Nothing should ever be treated like that and heaven help the S.O.B who did it when we find him. I personally would like to gorge his eyeballs out with barbeque skewers, stuff his nostrils with iron wool, stick his tongue to a cold lamppost, fry his nipples with jump leads, snip off his rod with garden shears then stuff an air hose up his jacksie where we’ll pump him full of air and watch him rise into the sky before gunning him down with a machine pistol before he wasted anymore of my precious oxygen with his pestilent existence.

Sure it’s extreme but it’ll be therapeutic. And God help me if my dorm mates don’t can it soon I’ll make a pipe bomb and shut their dirty loud mouths for good. I can’t stand Chinese but I hate it when it comes over the wall at a volume that will make my ear drums bleed, the fact that every sentence is punctuated by an expletive doesn’t make my life any easier.

So I can only pray that life as an 18 year old will be a little easier, a little brighter and a little quieter.

Hopefully I only have to wait 50 minutes to find out.

Spread the lovin’

Rob Valentine