Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Bad Vibrations in 67

Another pearl of wis­dom I wish I had been handed last year: enjoy hav­ing your own space while you have it. I wish I had appre­ci­ated it that bit more.

The close­ness of this house is start­ing to grate. No mat­ter how good your choice of house­mates, con­fine­ment in a com­pact space is bound to amp­lify ten­sions, espe­cially when you end up with crazy cari­ca­tures like mine. Today was not a good day. Possibly because I was hung over from another Halloween party, or because it was another dark and grey day — about to get darker as the clocks go back. But those were really only ancil­lary issues.

The crux of it was an argu­ment about pet­rol, as we arrived at Sainsburys for our week­end shop. I drive a Suzuki Vitara, the fuel tank of which tops off at just over £45, which gets you between 200 and 250 miles. I drive to cam­pus at least 3 times a week, and if any­one is around when I leave or set off to come back, I take them. This hap­pens at least twice a week, usu­ally more. So you can ima­gine my sur­prise when I gently announced that the tank was nearly empty and in need of a fill-up, and that I would appre­ci­ate a con­tri­bu­tion of, say, £8 each towards it, and was met with not a small amount of dis­quiet and deni­als from two of the three that they rode with me more than “once in the last month”. And this, not to put too fine a point on it, is a crock of shit.

I’m sure you can do the arith­metic here: three con­tri­bu­tions of £8 is £24, mak­ing my share of the fuel a tidy £21. I freely admit to using more fuel than any­one else, hence the uneven split. But no, even this was not enough for the lifts to cam­pus, into town, and to the super­mar­ket a dozen times a week. Sadly, I was so enraged I failed to point out the irony that, as they argued about how little they made use of the car, we were stand­ing in the car park of the super­mar­ket that I had just driven them to (for the second time in 24 hours).

On top of that I had to yet again face the issue of how to argue with a man who refuses to listen to any voice other than his own, or take into account the feel­ings or opin­ions of any­one other than him­self. This is a daily struggle, and at times I won­der why I bother speak­ing at all. An impossible conun­drum; a man who sets rules then breaks them, and won’t be told; a man who, des­pite hav­ing a very tenu­ous grip on real­ity, will not be swayed in any­thing he does by such trifles as com­mon sense or the con­cerns of oth­ers. A man who con­siders him­self to be above any other human being, and does not enter­tain the belief that any­one else could pos­sibly have any­thing of any worth to say. And I have to share a house with the fucker.

Nothing I have done before has ever felt so much like hit­ting my head against a wall, for all it can achieve, and today was one of those days. And I lost my rag, prop­erly, for only the second time with him, and imme­di­ately regret­ted it, for it can do noth­ing but fur­ther worsen his opin­ion of and atti­tude towards me. Any dis­senter is a dick, no mat­ter how right they are. But what can I do? Nothing I say will have any effect. I won­der what shock­ing cir­cum­stances of earlier life could lead to this ingrained, fas­cist self-assurance.