Relax

I read the last 200 pages of The Corner tonight. That was as cheery as one might expect. Unfortunately, I'd also been listening to the weepiest Rachael Yamagata songs I possess, so by 9.30 this evening I was utterly broken.


Eating all the food in the house had done nothing to lift my spirits, whether it was blue potato crisps or bitter chocolate coated ginger sweets. I wondered if I should engage in substance abuse to take my mind off The Corner. I doubt David Simon and Ed Burns were proselytising for the joys of heroin in their phonebook sized tome though.


The girlfriend returned home, aghast to find me slumped on the sofa, looking gloomy and fighting my way through the last pages. She told me to stop, so I hid in the toilet and tried to get through the last pages, but that was not going to work. Never argue with a woman who has access to a kitchen full of cutlery.

Still, it does make me feel rather fortunate, just as Simon and Burns point out, that I was born into suburban privilege, had access to a good education, wasn't shot at, sold vials of heroin or had to live in the basement of a house filled with dope fiends. To complain about work sometimes being a drudge or being tired is a small pain, compared to the utter bleak horrors of so many of the inhabitants of that book. You must always count your blessings.