Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Intense Walking - The Consumer Cycle

I realised today that I can be a really intense walker when walking alone. Moving through the throngs of consumers (there are no "people" during Christmas, only the soulless creatures that crawl out of Hells hairy arse, the Consumers) on shop street in Galway today, I couldn't help but notice my intense walking affecting the lives of others around me. This intense walking is possibly the result of a mixture of things: I'm usually quite cold so I walk fast to make myself warm, I'm quite spaced out during these moments so I contain a certain soulessness to my facial expression and finally, I usually listen to music from the Silent Hill games. For those of you that don't know, Silent Hill is a videogame revolving around a town caught in a hell that depicts an industrial pseudo-sexual nightmare. Just think of the hottest girl or guy you know, castrate them, melt off their face and remove their clothes while some how nailing a rusty railway spike (or several) through some limb or appendage while they rot and you've got something that closely resembles the game. And then imagine how the music sounds to this picture.

"Your other half from Silent Hill, say hello to Betsy... or is it Alan?"

The walking which results creates a sort of hellish, depressing, unstoppable force of me hobbling towards you with a impenetrable sense of ungodliness. Reactions have been various, but I have always had consumers move with a polite "excuse me" and a smile which feels normal to me, but by the expression of Stranger A (and B,C,D,etc.), would make me imagine I have just shat on their face. They look unsettled, which at first used to kind of worry me, but now it's as normal to me as custard cream in a biscuit. However there are moments when it does get a bit awkward and it's usually when I walk behind two consumers (usually women) that are chatting away to each other and I am unable to pass them. They usually become aware of my unintentionally malevolent presence behind them as I speed up and fall behind, speed up and fall behind like some sort of demon yo-yo, because I keep thinking I have opportunities to pass them. Every time they turn around and look at me it probably appears something like this:


Their uneasiness excretes from their pores like sweat from that fat guy at the gym, and I become disdainfully aware as I now have to not only pass them, but do so before their uneasiness infects others around them. This creates a sort of panic between both parties that fuels my demon-train walk to an uncontrollable level. At this point time has become limited edition, I don't have many options so I purposefully subdue an oncoming walker with a glare:


This prompts the oncoming victim to stop dead in their tracks as I glide by the now two silent women. For a brief moment we connect as I pass them by. It feels feral, I am a predatory ostrich at a petting zoo and they are small children, time has stopped for them as they realised they had fed the wroooooong bird. They cower out of the rest of my way and then I pass while they nearly walk into my previous victim. As I walk away I can feel the tension subsiding like a landslide crap in the toilet yet still feel the eyes of the consumer locked onto me like some sort of awkward-inducing ballistic. But soon I am out of site. Rinse and repeat this situation a few times as I walk to HMV.

Then as I walk around the 2 for 1 priced DVD section of HMV I reflect on the several times this has happened and a thought hits me like I'd hit James Blunt if I ever met him. I HAVE BECOME CONSUMER! 

Irony, you son of a bitch.


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