So here’s the end reason

Hello. You’ve reached the blog of Jonathan Mercer. Jonathan Mercer is a twenty-something man who likes to write. At time of writing he has managed to complete one novel, dozens of short stories and three poems.

One poem describes flowers, but it is about his ex-girlfriend. It is not very good.

One of his stories is about a road trip through America. It features a character named Patience who resembles a woman that Jonathan fell in love with on the bus once. She got on a stop after he did and left two stops before he had to. She had four piercings in one ear.

Once, when he was looking at a girl bend over, he said “hot damn”. The people who he was with at the time laughed and made fun of him for using such a weird phrase. He still says it in his head, you can tell when he is because he has a little smile.

When he listens to songs he often mouths the words. He doesn’t care if people are watching; he likes it better that way. There are some songs that make him want to cry, because for a moment they are perfect. This has happened a few times, with Radiohead, Mars Volta, and Modest Mouse, to name a few.

Sometimes he has the power to be the worst person you’ll ever meet, but he’ll do it in such a way that it’ll be a while before you figure it out.

He left his job last week. After two and a half years of hating the place and everything in it he turned round and realised that he’d really miss hating that place.

He lives with his brother right now, but in a month or two he’ll be out. His life is going to start, and it’s going to be hard.

He falls in love with three people a day. Yesterday it was a girl who ended every sentence in a question, a girl with legs running on forever, and a girl who would be so beautiful if she weren’t ugly.

He has three best friends. One friend is endlessly interesting, one friend is scarily like him, and one friend he doesn’t talk to anymore. He regrets letting that happen.

He likes people that challenge him. This includes people who write better or more interesting stories than him, people who write better blogs than him, people who can do things he can’t and people who are smarter than him. He is never friends with anyone who he thinks is beneath him.

There are exceptions to this though. People below him tend to flatter than him and he likes thinking he’s an amazing person because no one tells him he is when it’s actually true.

He has fallen wholly in love with two people so far. He thinks he’ll take a break from it for a while.

If you don’t get to know him too well, he’s a nice guy.

I know all this because I created him.

My name is Joe, I’m a 19 year old writer from Scotland and I make people up for a living. Last year I was Jesse Sutherland. I don’t know who I’m going to be next year, but I can say that he won’t be Jonathan. Jonathan was a good guy. He was nice, simple, and just fun to write. But he became too much like me. I think it was my fault really. I put him up somewhere I couldn’t reach. I gave him attributes I didn’t have, I made him too funny, too whimsical. And now he’s dead. There’s a lesson here.

Surprise?

And goodbye!

Preemptive Retaliation (6)

I have decided to delete some things out of my life. I have so many plans for so many things, but I’ve grown wise to the idea that I don’t have enough time for these things. I am not sure if I’ve complained about this before, but my life – from here to February – has been fully booked. If my life was a restaurant and you came in with your partner or friends my Maître Dee would tilt his nose into the air and say that I am full. I am full to the brim. In fact, he would say, the fire marshal will probably show up any second to shut me down and there’s not even room for him.

From Monday to Sunday, every week, I am booked. I never used to be this way. I used to have more free time than I deemed necessary. People would phone me up out of the blue to invite me for a night out, and I would gladly accept. Now my nights out are planned two, three, four weeks in advance. I have people consecutively booking me at the same time every week. One of these I look forward to and enjoy immensely, the other I loath because he just won’t go away. He sits on my couch and plays Halo wrong.

Whenever I’ve not been booked by friends, I’ve been booked by work. Because of work three evenings a week are taken up (the other two being occupied by Writers Group and the friend that won’t go away) which means I can’t go into the library and write essays or I can’t get food or I can’t ask that really really cute girl if she wants to go for a coffee. God, I’ve missed my bus three times so I can walk that girl to her train.

Whenever I’m not in work I’m either traveling, sleeping or catching up on my reading. And everything else is taken up by everyone else. You have no idea how annoying it is when two people ask you to come out on the same day. And when I double book! Oh when I double book. Heads fly.

So I am going to delete things from my life. Deletion. I’m going to press a button and take away some things about my life. But what can I delete?

Friends.
Films.
Reading.
Writing.
Studying.
Work.
Recent History.
Internet.
Television.
Useless talents.
Driving Lessons.
Musical Instrument Learning.

Internet would be a good start, but I don’t actually spend much time on here. I read blogs, read comics, check out videos and that’s really it. Occasionally, once in a blue moon, I gorge myself on wikipedia or the entire archives of certain webcomics. This takes up a lot of time but I have an addictive personality. Televison is a negligable item too; I barely watch it and when i do it’s mostly films. But! It is the reason I stay up to 3am most days.

Driving lessons can be cut. Easily. When I move to the city centre I won’t need a car. Busses! they are the future of everything.

I refuse to give up reading and writing things. They are too much fun. Have I told you about the Kathy Acker book I’m reading? She makes me insane.

Studying I wish I could cut out. I had two essays, two projects and a presentation to give just for last week. I drank so much coffee that it’s a miracle I haven’t drowned and died.

Work has been cut down, to an extent. I worked 15 hours a week spread over 3 days in 5 hour shifts from 5 to 10. But, as of this week, I’m working different shifts in a different building! Now my 15 hours a week will be spread over four days, but most days I’m only in a few hours. I’m dreading my six hour shift of 9am to 3pm.

Musical instrument learning has be deleted for now. One day I will learn that precious saxaphone.

Useless talents? Gone.

Films? I’ll cut down, but never ever will I give them up. No matter what the expense. I love my paid escapism.

Delete delete delete.

And now I am left an empty shell of someone. Hooray for that friend that won’t leave and won’t play Halo properly!

Hmm

I have five days left. And I have written one-hundred-and-ninety-something posts! I can make it two-hundred if I want.

If I want.

I can’t believe I wrote this

“I’ll admit that writing about oneself is a strange kind of voyeurism, like by chronicling my thoughts and feelings into a thin whimsy plot I’m opening a trenchcoat and flashing the world. But the thing is that it feels too easy. All I have to do is find a trenchcoat and open it. It’s showing a personal part of myself in a blatant and easy way. Yes, some people may enjoy it, some people may recognise themselves in my naked body and feel different about the world, but ultimately it’s too easy. I don’t want to just be able to unbutton a coat, I want to strip fifty people without their consent and show the varied bodies we have.”

The Titanic sank at sea

It’s ok. It’s all ok. It’s not as if it can get any worse, right?

My mantra for god knows how long has been that worse things have happened at sea. Worse things have happened at sea. It’s true. People fucking die at sea. People freeze and drown and get eaten by octopus. Worse things happen at sea than 6000 words to be written in under a week. Oh, did I mention the lecture I have to give in three days? No? Well there we go.

Oh damn I’m having a freak out aren’t I? It’s angsty and it’s something a teenage girl would say but I’m having trouble breathing. Douglas Adams comes to mind with his everlasting advice of “DON’T PANIC” but I’m not panicking I’m just freaking the fuck out.

But worse things have happened at sea.

I am so very bored of writing reports

“The sole exception to this would be MacMillan speaking of a Muslim community being subjected to discrimination for their different practices (2000 in Devine, 2000).

This is a gross oversight by current social scientists, as it has left out so many things to research! Wooo research is fun fun fun, which is why we do it so much. But watch out! Our research pens could chafe!

Calamity!”

Packing things away, getting ready to go.

I have a lot of drafts. My blog is a drafty place. Here they are.

-Untitled
So you see there’s this guy, right, and he’s with his girlfriend on the bus (where I seem to encounter a few interesting people these days) and they’re having an argument or a discussion or something. I can’t tell from where I’m sitting. What I can tell, right, is that the girl’s mad at the guy or concerned at the guy or something. Basically she’s the one that’s in some form of distress. Now, this damsel is doing the works; concerned frown, short, quick gestures with her hands and a little bit of hope lingering on her lips. The guy though – this swooping knight in shining armour that’s supposed to rescue her or something – he’s just like sitting there confused. He’s got a little frown too, right, but it’s a frown like he doesn’t know what to do.

I can sympathise.

Anyway, so this girl who’s talking to him about her parents or her problems or her choices or whatever, she gets a little mad. Like, angry mad, right?

—

-Untitled
So, I’m a room. It’s a big room, a little too big for my

—

-Because anything else I write is riddled with too much feeling
Films! I’ve been holed up in the flat sick as a dog for the past few days so I thought I’d recount some of the films I’ve watched. And other things. Like TV.

First up is the much too short Afro Samurai which I will let people borrow as soon as I make my way through the special features. The only problem that I’ll highlight first would be the appalling lip-syncing. It’s as if Samuel L Jackson looked at his characters and said “Fuck it, I don’t want no mother fuckin’ restrictions on my mother fuckin’ lines” so there’s the occasional weird jarring when the character is shouting and good old Samuel is whispering something. Other than that everything was seamless. I watched it over two days and I really wished I could’ve watched it in one. The animation was seamless, the action was perfect, and I only saw a single example of a reused scene. And the teddy bear! I liked him better when he didn’t take off his mask but still he was awesome all the same. It was brilliant.

Another on the anime list would be the second series of The Big-O which I’ve laughed at so many times just because it’s slang for orgasm. It’s a classic series, made by the same people and (roughly) at the same time as Cowboy Bebop, and it’s occasionally very ridiculous. The age on it shows in its story and characters, but it’s made up for by the style and the overall feel. The main guy’s car is pretty awesome, and Big-O itself thankfully spirals away from the generic design of most mecha-suits. It’s surprisingly easy to get into for a second series. Usually shows require in depth knowledge of the previous series before moving on to a new one, but this one sits you right in without missing a beat. Though, saying that, I do wish I had seen the entirety of the first series; I have vague childhood memories of watching it and becoming perplexed at the surreal stage sets at the beginning and end. Still, it’s a good show.

Took another bash at Lucky Number Slevin the other day and by God I forget how much I love that film. I think it’s the amazing cast really (with the exception of Josh Hartnett, but he actually manages to pull off a good show this time round), but just the overall art nouveau style and Noir-ish sentiment going along with whip crack dialogue makes it phwoar. I know that previous sentence made no sense but hey ho.

—

-Untitled
Right now I’m a little annoyed and very tired but mostly just feeling annoyed at myself for making the silly promise of not stalking people. See if I stalk people then I can justify feeling sad right now, because then shadowy thoughts are confirmed and

—

-Untitled
I have a new bus now. It’s better than the old one, in that it’s ten minutes faster and doesn’t go through the area that makes me ashamed to be human.

The part I like most about this new bus route though would be the walk I get when I step off it. My old bus deposited me in the centre of Glasgow, right beside a newsagent that sold my brand and a cash machine if I was low on change. And a bakery. That was nice too I guess. But this new bus deposits me a good five minutes away from my old stop, right in the middle of the merchant city.

—

-You’re barred, mate
“That guy is a fucking wank!” he yells, slurring but eloquent. He takes a drink from his glass (his ninth pint that night, lying to his girlfriend beside him when he whispers it’s his third) and slams the bottom back down on the table. He’s a dick. He’s a complete and utter dick, but somehow I like him. He was at least more interesting than anyone else sitting at the table.

“Yeah, but why is he a wank?” I ask too flippantly, too casually, realising as soon as I said it that it was the wrong thing to say. I had mistaken him, just in that single moment, for someone else.

—

-Untitled
Lets take a second here, shall we? Just a second.

I had a good day yesterday (if you take away the sole reason which made it not a good day, but we won’t go into that)

—

-This post definitely isn’t about you
Unless you’ve found me somehow which I doubt

How do you do it? How do you creep under my skin so easily?

I’ve complained about my bad memory before. I’ve been so angry at myself for saying things and then forgetting them so I can’t apologise. In a sense it gives me the ultimate freedom, that I can say and do pretty much anything I like and within a week I’ll forget I ever thought about doing it. But it comes at such a cost when someone reminds you of you’ve said and done, when they tell you meaning to be a funny little anecdote and it sounds like something you would say and so it’s likely that you did say it (but sometimes you are reminded in hot headed revenge, which sucks really).

So I have a horrible memory. Truly horrible. But then why can’t I forget on command? No, lets be specific, why can’t I forget you on command? Yes you

—

-This post probably is about you
If you still read here

I’m gonna pull you in close,
Gonna wrap you up tight,
Gonna play with the braids
that you came in here with tonight.
I’m gonna hold your face,
and toast the snow that
fell.

I can’t remember the last time I got high. I just have this one memory of one fantastic time. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe from laughing. I danced and some people faced my selotape. I woke up with cotton mouth and a cut on my forehead.

—

-Tiredness kills
And maims and injures and hurts. But mainly it kills. It kills a lot of good people.

It’s worse than alcohol really. Alcohol is bad, I know, but it’s not as bad as being tired. When you’re drunk you’re loud and obnoxious and you do things you wouldn’t usually do, but when you’re tired your mind shuts down. Completely. The biggest regrets I can list in my life are things I’ve said or done when I’m tired.

But let me define this tiredness. It isn’t the eyes burning sluggish tired. It’s a whole different tiredness altogether. It’s a tiredness that takes hold when you’re about to fall asleep, or when you’ve just fallen asleep, and someone disturbs you. You say and do so many things because you are so tired. You can’t think. Images blur in lust.

—

-Untitled
Oh lord oh lord you’ve made it.

You wanna drag your hearse in? You wanna rush your-?

Be my fucking guest.

Kathy Acker, I love you

“‘I often dream I’m falling down from lofty rocks, my stomach goes, but I never touch the ground, and my fear changes to freedom. When I wake up, I see I’m covered with bruises.’ She again kicked the dog.

“The dog: ‘Such are the bruises of love.’”
from Don Quixote: which was a dream.

The beginning of a new novel

All in all, six of us survived. That’s, of course, unless you want to be picky. If you’re the type of person who believes that personality is all to do with nurture then you might say that all of us survived, in one form or another. Each individual personality honed and crafted through all the personalities met in our existence. But sadly I do not have the luxury of theorising whether my thoughts and words are based upon genetics or experience. I already know the truth. We were created on the side of nature; we are rigid, two-dimensional, and limited. But, luckily for you, this is the story of how we try and change that.

To begin at the beginning would be irresponsible of me, for most of the story would be consumed by detailed descriptions of people who only existed for the fleeting of moments. Their lives were like shadowy thoughts that play on your mind; fleeting images of smiles, speech inflections, and personality quirks. So instead I’m going to begin at what is probably nearer the end of the story. Don’t worry though, you’re not missing out on much. Think of it like a download from the internet. You wait so long for that little bar to inch its way across the screen so you can finally listen to that song or play that game or masturbate to that movie, but it’s in the final one-percent that it really counts. You know that that final one-percent is the percent that holds the most power. In that one-percent, you could tell a book’s worth of stories.

Here are things that you don’t want to know about me

I love the smell of my urine after I’ve had a few cups of coffee.

The thought of a girl having an orgasm makes my stomach twist and my mind cloud pink.

I once ripped my banjo string during sex. It hurt.

I can’t work a condom.

I often smell of shit.

The slightest thing can put me into a horny frenzy. An example of this would be glimpsing the top of some girls stockings.

I think about my ex’s when I masturbate. Sorry to any of them who read this.

I love the word cunt.

My Dad is ashamed of me, and I am ashamed of him.

I lie about things before I can stop myself.

I use people as a means to an end.

I learned how to do this from TV.

I know my dreams will come true.