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For peace, calm, and relaxation

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Alright? Welcome. 

Blogging... and blogging for calm, blogging for peace, blogging... for relaxation. 

I may blog about a dream (if I can remember one). Or I may blog about family! If I'm truly honest, I have no idea what I will blog about. 

I called the police on John the other week. The foolish drunk had knocked on my door at 2am on a Friday night, and stupid me only let him in. It was ten minutes before he had insulted me, insulted my mother, insulted my girlfriend, and insulted my work, and had thrown a washing hamper at the television. I asked him then politely to leave, then asked him angrily to leave, then fake phoned the police - (which nearly worked, but my neighbour is sensitive to lies) - and he wouldn't leave, so finally I actually called them, got through, and John heard and left because he is sensitive to being arrested. In fact, a great deal of other stuff happened before I called the police. I kissed John in exasperation, for I knew not if he was going to hit me or rape me, it was as tense. 

My father has the right idea. Having told my family about the altercation, they have taken my side. Anyway, dad dropped me home the other day: we were talking about John, and dad said, "That bloke's a waste of space." It's true, the truest! John really is a waste of space, and that approximation is about as factual as it can get. Two weeks ago I had hopes for the drunken fool: he had managed to sign himself up to a course at college - some construction ticket or other - and I was impressed. He even bought a cheap laptop, and I was able to help set it up, and show him a few things, and get him comfortable using Zoom. Anyway, the weekend came and he got on the beer, and called someone or messaged someone affiliated with the course, to tell them he would like to take them up the arse. Anyway, long story short, he got kicked off the course. Waste of space. 

John texted me today and said his ex-missus had died. He was very sad, and knocked on my door drunk. I ignored him. 

Tamsin visited today. She turned fifty on Thursday. For her birthday I purchased her some Vans trainers. It was quite funny: I told her at first I would spend fifty quid on her gift, and to come and choose a pair to order. She said, "I've chosen a pair. These are the ones I want. I don't know if you can stretch to seventy pounds." 

I said, "Well, you can owe me the twenty..."

"I haven't got the twenty to spare..." she said. 

I tutted and said, "Alright then. But you owe me one." 

Tamsin is apt to always be sending her orders back, and I said to her, "Are you sure you're a size seven? I don't wanna be sending things back, Tamsin." 

"No, I'm sure," she said. So I ordered the Vans. 

Anyway, next week they showed up, and Tamsin came over to try them on, and guess what? They were too big. She looked like a clown walking around in those things. So after she accepted they were too big, we decided to send them back. I sent them back. Anyway, here's the thing: After I sent them back, Tamsin changed her mind about the type of trainers she wanted, and said, "I've changed my mind, I want these other ones." In fact, she had gone to the Vans shop in town to try some on, to make sure they were the right size, and the ones she wanted were a hundred and five pounds. "I'll pay you the thirty five pounds," she said. 

Oh really, Tamsin? So you can afford to give me thirty five pounds, but you couldn't afford the twenty from the first purchase? 

I paid for the trainers, and she did pay me the thirty five pounds. And I promised myself I wouldn't talk about it, that I would let this one go, but I think that's typical behaviour and, honestly, I feel a little used. But that's women for you. They'll claim their different, and to the point that they won't accept the stereotype, but that's women, all about the money. I do feel used. I'm glad I said that. Maybe one day I'll bring that up with Tamsin. You imagine she's different. She's just the same. Well, hey. 

And blogging for calm, peace and relaxation. 

I don't know why I don't talk about consciousness and knowledge a bit more. I am after all conscious, and love knowledge. I posted on Facebook this evening, "Other than thinking, what do you use your brain for?" I think I broke the internet with that one. 

I finished a book by David Deutsch the other night, and thank God. It's so lovely to finish books, especially ones as hard and long as "The Fabric of Reality." David talked about how you can experimentally prove the existence of the multiverse, by the existence of "shadow photons", which are antithetical to ordinary photons - they are responsible for dark bands in two-slit experiments. He talks about the philosophy of knowledge, and the fallacy of inductivism, and champions Karl Popper's philosophy of science, and Darwin's (and also Dawkins' neo-evolutionism), and talks about the "four strands", which include evolution, quantum physics, and two others I forget now. He's very good at explanations, is Deutsch, and explains his approach to time and time travel, and many topics. In fact, so good is he at explaining, that it's quite abstruse to follow. 

I have been playing games - computer games! I have a little idea about buying consoles in bulk, and selling them on for profit. But mind you, I don't mind if I don't make anything - however, it would be a fine thing to break even at least. But the idea is to try my hand at sales. The internet is the future, if not the present already, and many a pound has been made by its employment. I am expecting to be paid for some work I've been commissioned for recently, and soon I hope, so I am thinking about investing in these little consoles. Please don't steal my idea. 

But computer gaming is such fun! I have spent a little money purchasing several games, and systems on which to play them, and I certainly wish there was time enough to play them. I'm focusing on the course, at present, so there isn't a great deal of time, but I get an hour in the evening. I was playing my Nintendo 3DS recently, and it's quite an underrated system. The three dimensional effect is genuinely amazing. Luigi's mansion is quite a stunner. 

Knowledge, consciousness, physics, time and mathematics. There was a Zoom group last night, and everything went swimmingly, and it's a fine thing to know there are others on the same ship as you are. You can, in spending your days alone and in books, get quite accustomed to the idea that you're the only one. But I'm just saying, it's nice to have a group to communicate with. It's nice. 

I might hit the hay. 

Thanks for reading. 

Dan

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My neighbour, John

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Edited by Daniel Frederick Best, Sunday, 27 Sep 2020, 21:30

Hello, 

Not good. It's that feeling again, where I've had a very nice day, and I've done something different, and the whole day has been turned upside down. 

Up until I made dinner at six o'clock everything was going fine. I made dinner, and now that my neighbour John has clocked on to the fact that I'm quite a good cook, he expects me to make him a prawn curry every Sunday. 

John is quite an unpleasant person. He's been inside several times, that is, inside prison. Today he was telling me about his conviction as a sex offender, how once several years ago, he was in an argument at the local shop, with a female who didn't like his dog, and he got angry and "flicked her boob". He was taken to court to get a sentence and they told him he had to go on the sex offenders register for five years. We were talking about if flicking someone's boob is a bad thing to do. Obviously it is. But he seems to think it's okay. 

He's this huge motherfucker, like a real dumb fucker, who can sometimes be tolerable. But today he outstayed his welcome. He really is an antisocial person, and has no idea whatever how to conduct himself in day to day living. The problem is, he's not a bad person really, but he believes things about himself that simply aren't true. I mean, I guess we all do, in a way, but to assume that somehow you are clever, or smart, or intelligent in one way or another, well that would entail that you have read a book or two, or know how to solve an equation or something. It's not that he is thick, but maybe, maybe I'm the one who is deluded there. He really is quite thick. 

He says that he's been to university, and i believe him, purely on the grounds that he claims to have done two years of a sports science degree, and never completed it. I do not know how he did that, it beggars belief. 

The man claims to be emotional. He is constantly being banned from facebook for his lewd conduct against women, and yes, he is not very nice to those. He has done time for assaulting a woman, during which time his mother died. I knew his mother. She was a small Irish lady who would walk her dog. I would sometimes talk to her. John thinks about his mother a lot, and he likes to sing songs, and he is very overbearing. He outstayed his welcome tonight. I made him curry, and he sat there in the front room drinking a beer and being belligerent, and obtuse. 

There's times when I can put up with John, and I don't mind him that much. But I have realised that he is partly to blame for the way I feel at the moment. And it's embarrassing for me, because I have to come online and spill my guts about things I would rather not face, and do so in public. John will never see this, so I could effectively say anything I liked about him. But in a way, I want to help him, although John is beyond help. He is an alcoholic, mildly. That is, he likes a drink and spends most of his free time watching television and drinking. He really is beyond help. He does nothing with his life. 

It's just so hard to communicate with stupid people. They're too thick to realise they can't communicate properly. John really has no brains, and nothing to say, and that's the worst combination with a guy like myself, who is patient and understanding, and quite naïve. He'll come in and be burly and obnoxious, and you just have to laugh. I laugh nervously, and I get put out of my rhythm and can't get it back. That's why I have to come here to complain. 

Some days are good. But I have a sensitive brain. What does John want from me? He wants people to be nice to him, but he's never nice to anybody. He really is an unpleasant person. It's hard to keep your distance from someone when they live within a stone's throw of you. I would have come to blows with him many times, for his meanness and obnoxiousness, and rudeness and obtuseness. But I have to live with him. 

I know why he comes round. He wants to make himself feel good, and this is the problem with people with no self esteem. They have to bully you and make a noise, and a loud noise, until you can't hear yourself think. 

John was laughing at an internet video, which is so base and irrelevant, where there's a naked woman in the bathroom, then a man's arse comes and farts, and he loves it. It's so frustrating. 

I wish he would read a book. If he could do that one thing, it would change his life forever. He would have something to say, and something to say that would compensate for the shit he talks, which is quite a lot. He will tell me what he saw on television, and claim to have something to say. He will claim to have an opinion about coronavirus, and the conspiracy theories, and I just haven't got it in me to engage him in a discussion about it. He is so obnoxious. 

And here I am wasting my time, trash-talking my obnoxious neighbour, because he's done something to my brain in the mode in which I have allowed him to believe himself my intellectual equal. He's not. But I have a way of making stupid people think they have a braincell rattling around in their brain. And I keep saying, I feel sorry for him, and I don't mind making him prawn curry. But for fuck sake, John! Lad, read a book, for fuck sake. Your brain is rotten from MTV, and being nasty to your girlfriend, who lives in Manchester, and who talks to you on the phone. God she must be as bad as you.  

You are not clever, John, I am sorry. You are just loud, obnoxious, abrasive, rude, and thoughtless. And I wish I didn't have to say this, but I do, I have to, because that's the way things are. 

I'm glad you're a sex offender, John, but sometimes, boy, I wish you were in prison. 

That's it, there's nothing more to say. 

Love from Daniel. 

x

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Hello, hello and hello. 

Yesterday, and from a little, tiny, kind of huge pig out the day before, I woke up and got straight out and went for a long walk around my town, that lasted for over an hour. It felt great, and by the end of it, as I neared my little area, I noticed that I was high as a mother, from the exercise and endorphins I had experienced. Then the day went on, and I was able to take a small rest in the mid-morning, and it was a fine nap from which I was awoken by a knock at the door, which was an Amazon delivery woman whom I mistook for a man, by calling her "Bro!" (this sort of felt good, for some unknown reason), and she had delivered an HDMI cable that I ordered so that I could connect up my SNES mini to the new box that I received from my neighbour. In fact, my neighbour was drunk in the afternoon, and making a nuisance of himself, by his own choice in the forecourt of my (relatively small) estate, and began the endeavour by picking on two council workers with a ladder, and they seemed to take this action with the correct amount of skepticism, and did their best to ignore his drunken japes. John is a great bloke. I have called the police on him twice. Once when he was insulting me in my apartment, the second when I opened my front door and he drunkenly barged in. We've had our ups and downs, but we can see eye to eye on most things and, in fact, despite his misgivings and the fact he has spent time as a prison inmate, John is harmless, and a lovely bloke. I don't even believe he is an alcoholic; he just likes a drink. What's the harm in that? In any case, I have some footage of his conduct, and it gives me a great deal of amusement to watch him in action. We are all slightly bored in this quarantine situation (which might I add is an unbelievable construct in an otherwise relatively boring life, and I think God must be a wonderful story teller to have written all this. Amen. ) 

But today, I went for no long walk around Mill Hill. However, I was awake at an early hour and chose to sign straight in on the PC to check emails and do some preliminary administerial work, and then immediately after got down to study. The day's engagements in this endeavour began with an attempt to compose myself in the manner of finishing off section 4 of Unit 22 - Bose gas and crystal structure. The entire lockdown and quarantine situation has seemed to have given us a chance to organise ourselves (at least it has done for myself) in our daily lives, and also given us a nice break from the rat-race that was becoming a terrible drain, you must surely admit. I found, in my endeavour to study, that I do tend to get distracted quite easily. I have, in this matter, a series of goals such as a long-term goal (attain a professional degree in my best subjects), an even longer-term goal (to gain a masters or yet higher level credential in my best subjects), and these finicky little short-term annoyances, that I find I must immediately attend to the very second they arise. They can become quite bothersome, but in fact they are quite necessary and, in fact, once they are done they are done and out of the way. These are menial tasks such as might be tending to a small piece of litter on the floor, or something similar, or brushing debris off the table, or making roll ups, or a cup of coffee. But once they are done, they are done, and there it is, and there you have it. However, such tasks as these are also invasive in the process of the course of my study. So the short-term goal of finishing to understand a paragraph from the university website, today, was inundated with all manner of distractions, in the manner of turning to Wikipedia to crystallise a concept, and then finding another concept and searching that one, and then another concept and then another. In the end the culmination was a web-browser complimented with a number of Wikipedia tabs connecting to a vast array of subjects and, in short, the endeavour was dappled with an intensity of learning which I found most illuminating and was both surprised and grateful at the things I was discovering. 

At around midday, having recently realised that my local hardware store was remaining open (we all love hardware stores), and wanting to replace a watch battery in my best watch that had recently run down, I chose to go to the local town to amend the situation, and went there, and by walking. I fixed the watch (it cost £6.99), and I went about to different stores -  the local Turkish one (bought vegetables for lunch - genius!) and the local Iceland (for rice and Chinese sauce, and also a box of mini savoury eggs for the local tramps lunch). As I sat waiting for a bus, I met a lovely man, an acquaintance who frequented the once-open coffee shops around Mill Hill reading books, and he sat at my bench and we were able to engage in a polite conversation. I realised afterwards how pleasant it was to finally talk to someone with a human face, which I did with relative alacrity, having not done so for over a month. Yes, I was most surprised to hear myself discussing the topics of my studies in quantum mechanics, and it was a great feeling - one that gave me a great deal of satisfaction and complacence in myself and things I have learned. Sometimes everything comes out. But then I did get a bus and went back hoe, and was pleased to continue the distracted work I was doing. But it was alright. 

I went out later, too. I went up to meet my parents at around six o'clock at their home, and spent some time in the garden talking to each of them. It was very lovely - my mum had borrowed a blood pressure measurement device from her auntie, which I needed to take note of my blood pressure, due to a recent change in medication. I spoke to my dadsie - he was talking about a science show he'd seen on box - and we were having a nice discussion. It's nice when you can get along with your folks. I'm so glad I'm in a continual state of awakening, in which I'm always and every time appreciative of their state of being still alive. They are still relatively young, and you hear of such terrible things when they eventually pass. I feel fortunate to still have them around; to still have the opportunity to get to know them better, and to share everything with them that goes on. So much happens. So much goes on. 

I walked home - it was slightly chilly. I jogged part of the way and, not wearing my glasses for whatever reasons, began to feel self conscious about my beard. When I was arrived back at home I was recipient to a call from Tamsin, the girl I claim is my girlfriend. She likes my beard apparently, but when we got off the line, I shaved it off. 

Anyway, there it is, and there you have it. 

Best wishes all, 

Dan


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