“Livin the dream man” he says and because he knows he’s on radio I suspect he’s dragging his words out slowly to sound like a stoned surfer living in a van with his pet kelpie. He sounds blissfully ignorant, or maybe just indifferent to the strife that is weathering so much of the free world. Like Bacchus on Olympus he couldn’t give a flying fig for the bounds of reality that bind mundane mortals like myself. What he’s really saying is “I chose a lifestyle that is better than yours.” How how I hate smug, happy and insanely content human beings. How dare they slip off the treadmill, follow their dreams and then rub our noses in it! I’m more frustrated at how in a moment he is undoing years of hard work trying to convince my 16 year old son to study hard, work hard, get a job and take his place beside all of the lobotomised men of his undistinguished family. Generations of us have been suffering like Sisyphus, casting aside the call for adventure to shuffle as slowly as we can from our mortal coils while wrapped up in our linen sacrcophagi, ready to buried, already dead. I’m shocked at how easy he makes happy sound, bastard!
So tell us mate, how are you living the dream? The disc jockey asks smiling (you can hear when people smile).
You’s guys are all stressed out about work and money and rushing here and there an i don’t have that man. Surfer dude says. I don’t got much but i got a lot, you know he continues. Oh someone please shoot him now. I switch off the radio.
I turn left instead of right at a critical juncture on my way to work. I stop and buy a ‘long mach, topped up’ and walk down to the beach where I sit for 10 minutes with a stupid grin on my face. Thanks surfer dude!
Suburban Leaves 
Good one Mike!
EXCERPT FROM: THE HANDCUFF KING
“Welcome aboard,” said the friendly young recruitment officer. He theatrically opened a door to reveal the bank of warmly humming computers for which I was now responsible, as if to say “all of this is yours”.
But I didn’t want it to be mine. I don’t care about computers, warmly humming or otherwise. I wanted to be a bohemian writer of unmarketable funnies like Myles na gCopaleen, or an outsider comedian like Simon Munnery, or a transvestite potter like Grayson Perry.
Puerile perhaps. Dreamy certainly. But Jesus Christ, look at the alternatives. Network Administrator. Outreach Officer. Teaching Assistant. Forever? With my remarkable mind? With two science degrees and a half-decent singing voice? It was too hideous to contemplate. I didn’t want to eat machine-vended sandwiches for lunch in the staff canteen of some concrete carbuncle: I wanted a rider in my dressing room, overflowing with exotic fruits and the undies of groupies.
I’m not an employee by nature. Nobody is.
On the other hand, if I was unable to cover the rent this month I’d be out on my arse. Hence this job. I was trapped. Trapped! Potentially for the next forty years, which was, so far as I was concerned, forever. The jail sentence for bank robbery is nowhere near that long. I know because I checked.
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