I’ll admit, I’ve been known to be impulsive and make poor decisions at times. When returning home from a shopping trip with bags full of pretzels, I sometimes get a twinge of regret, as if some part of me knows that I’ve done a very foolish thing. Nothing, however, measures up to the sheer, soul-crushing remorse I feel after cooking up a batch of Tesco Macaroni Cheese Pasta. In my defense, I was really hungry — not just the regular sort of hungry; the kind where I’d gladly eat stale pizza, cold leftovers, anything with enough nutritional value to kick-start my digestive system. The kind of hunger experienced when one realizes that half the day has been frittered away without so much as a breakfast.

I like to think I was justified in my decision.

The first warning should have come when I opened not one, but two packets of the vile stuff — largely due to its seemingly small size, and my hunger which can only be described as “immense”. The whiff of the artificial cheese-like powder assaulted my nostrils like a legion of tiny trebuchets, the kind of vile stale-cheddar aroma that is reserved only for the most cheaply-made of cheesesque foodstuffs. Driven on by my terrible urge to feed, in went both packets to the requisite combination of milk, water and butter, in to the churning abyss which — while at once fairly tranquil — soon resembled a boiling pit of sulphur, threatening (and occasionally succeeding) to spill over and forever taint the surface of my oven. The aroma surrounding the pan was one I won’t soon forget, a sickening stench of stale cheddar, the vivid yellow colour — my phone camera hardly doing it justice — merely adding to the experience.

The real tragedy of the story is that a large portion of this disgusting maelstrom has ended up squarely in my stomach, through equal parts desperate hunger and a desire to avoid wasting money. The flavour is every bit as bad as I’d imagined, punctuated by the occasional, tiny nugget of dry cheese powder which managed to escape the moisture by hiding within one of the tiny pasta tubes, an experience not unlike realizing that raisin you just bit down on is actually a spider. While perhaps not my most harrowing mealtime experience, it ranks up in the top twenty or so.

And so, I must ask you all, for your own safety and mental wellbeing: don’t make the mistake I did. Don’t buy this terrible, terrible mixture. Please.

So this is it, I’m finally here, the last day of my beloved twenties; a decade which has been filled with both ups and downs, countless foolish chicanery, and plenty of life lessons which I’m surprised I’ve managed to get this far without learning sooner. I certainly don’t feel as old as I’d expect to at the doorstep of a new decade, but perhaps that’s due to the fact that I’m still going to be the same relentlessly irreverent, consistently absurd person I’ve always been — time be damned, I’m not about to grow up any time soon, though I’m most certainly grateful for the wisdom life’s taught me thus far.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an excellent new idea which involves an energy drink shot, some toast, and a few other ingredients.

This is going to be great, I just know it. :3

I’ve always had a strange fascination with the “breakfast” menus at popular fast-food joints, not least in part because my largely nocturnal and significantly apathetic lifestyle could never normally justify rousing from sleep at such an abhorrent hour. I suppose in part it was simply a case that we all feel at some point in our lives, wishing to attain the seemingly unattainable. Another part, perhaps, is that I have a great deal of love for many so-called “breakfast” foods: sausages, eggs, bacon, and their assorted kin. This combination, along with my apparent inability to reach such houses of cuisine at the necessary hours — a fact I’d frequently find vexing — elevated such things to an almost supernatural status.

Today, however, thanks to a severely defective sleep pattern and an ever-growing, ravenous hunger caused by sheer apathy towards preparing foodstuffs, I stumbled upon a solution of sorts: it seemed likely — probable, even — that I’d still be awake at the hallowed hour of “breakfast”, and that perhaps — finally — I could partake in this long-awaited dream which so long had evaded me. Being an occasional purveyor of and living close to a McDonalds (now, now, don’t look at me like that — their Chicken Selects are actually fantastic), I hurriedly opened their website and browsed through the selection of offerings, enthusiasm growing with each passing moment.

Finally, my will — or, perhaps more accurately, my stomach — had settled on the fabled Double Sausage & Egg McMuffin, which seemed to not only satisfy the urge to sample the unattained, but also combined two food products which rate high on my list, that being eggs and sausages. Truly, this was the Holy Grail and nothing could stand in the way of my hunger crusade. The hours ticked by until reaching a time when I was fairly certain the blessed establishment would open, and burrito’d up in layers of clothing and a scarf to ward off the icy weather, I embarked upon my journey with high spirits, soon arriving at my destination. Victory was in sight!

The first pang of disappointment was in the size of the package. Yes, yes, I’m sure we’ve all been there before, but in all seriousness it was only when I unwrapped the shapeless lump that I began to experience regret for the first time in days, the rather sorry-looking miscreant dripping swiftly-congealing grease onto the table, a shrivelled and pale shadow of the sacred manna my mind had envisaged. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but this adage was also proven wrong as I took that first, regretful bite, a flavour which scarce needs describing for I’m sure your imagination can fill in the blanks. This was the light at the end of the tunnel, the goal I had so long sought? This pathetic excuse for food, which I could finish only through sheer force of will?

The moral lesson of the day, then, is that the more unattainable something seems, the more our minds are wont to build grand visages of unreachable wonders. It’s easy to wish for that which we do not have, especially that which seems difficult or impossible to ever reach, while losing sight of the things we already have — and, often, turn out to be preferable. The same could be said for all things in life, both material possessions and even people (this moral tale could easily apply to one or two of my exes, though I shall speak no more on the matter). In a nutshell, don’t wish too hard for what you don’t have, because it’s probably terrible anyway. If you reach for the stars, you’ll only end up discovering them to be little more than burning balls of gas.

And then you’ll be burned to a cinder in the million-degree-hot inferno, you short-sighted dumbass.

Have. Have. It’s “could have,” not “could of.” God dammit, people.

Well, it seems that I don’t often write about life in general unless things are grim, so here’s a somewhat more upbeat summary of life as a whole lately:

Life’s been interesting, which is to say, it’s been up and down like a rollercoaster but never fails to beat the tedious drudgery that I’d experience without the chaos. My programming projects have been put on temporary hold lately as I’ve been focusing on World of Warcraft and my electronics project, suffering the relentless and thoroughly unwelcome, oppressive heat of the summer and other associated annoyances that come with this most loathesome of seasons, and both pondering and happily resolving a few confusions and points of contention regarding relationship-related matters. I don’t usually mention much related to my love-life on this blog for a number of reasons, but let me assure those of you who care about my mental stability that things could not be better right now on that front.

Oh, and I walked face-first into a street sign that was far too low yesterday, because the sun was in my eyes and making it hard to see where the hell I was going. Normally I wouldn’t admit this at all, but I know for a fact that people are going to ask what’s with the cuts and bruises, and I’m not nearly manly enough to be able to lie and say it was the result of a bar-fight, and you should have seen the other guy.

In conclusion: Life rocks, and my face is pretty much okay. That is all.