Time Of The Month… Again?!!!

Finally, I can empathize with women. Once a month, every month, I too feel your pain, we have it tough sisters! Roughly, around this time of the month, give or take a few days, I start to get headaches, feelings of anxiety, restless nights, sweaty palms, irritable, mood swings, the whole nine yards that girls go through. My diagnosis, however, is not related to the painters calling around, so to speak. My problem is linked more to the landlord, and when it is that he will call around. The symptoms I suffer from, are brought on by the impending and looming matter of rent, and payment there of.

These headaches have being getting even worse lately. This is directly related to me living the life of a pauper, a life which, I must admit, I am finding hard to cope with. Previous floundering of my money on luxury items, such as Red Bull and the Coffee Bean, has been seriously curtailed, cutting off my steady supply of caffeine. My head has been throbbing lately. Last night I got in a full blown fist fight, with a washing machine, for swallowing 5 of my precious quarters so that I could not dry my clothes. I put up a good (-ish) fight, but the machine easily won in the end, leaving me drained and close to tears. Great fun sleeping in damp sheets and on a damp pillow! Especially when it is that time of the month again!

Perhaps the worst part of all this, is that instead of trying to lessen my headaches, anxiety, cramps, bloating feeling etc brought on from rent, or lack of, by doing something productive, I still insist on doing jobs such as DJ’ing – a job that I do not, and will not, get paid for. Yesterday, I decided not to try and earn money, not to try and focus on my writing and the sitcom, not to do something that will help me on the acting side of things, but to go up to the gym and DJ. My payment being compliments only, majority of which would be from dudes, what kind of funking ape am I?!!! Why bother?

Firstly, I should clarify and reiterate the whole me being a DJ situation. Some people have taken this the wrong way (you’re not a DJ, don’t insult me, I am a DJ, you need to use vinyl to be a DJ) or have gotten the impression that I take credit for the remixes I play. I don’t. At all. When people ask me what song was that I played, did you mix it all together just now, I say no, it was X, Y or Z. I just played X’s song then mixed it with Y’s song followed by Z’s. Having never DJ’ed before though, I feel like I should do more than just stand up there and mix the two songs, so I fiddle around on my laptop and intensely look at it, giving the impression I am hard at work. I am not getting paid good money to just stand up there and do nothing. Oh right, forgot about the not getting paid part.

So, I will use another angle, or name if you like. I am not a DJ, as in I do not scratch, do not itch, do not make records bleed.  I merely pick, in my opinion, savage songs, which will make you dance, clap along, or sing… but I am not a DJ. I do not remix live, or MC, or mix songs while standing with one foot over my head. I merely mix songs with my software that, most of the time (but a few horrific other times it has been blatant), people do not notice the end of one song, and the start of the next… but I am not a DJ. You could say, it is like that application for iTunes, where you pick one great song, and a playlist is then made of other similar great songs, the difference being that I mix the songs together. So, if you like, I will instead use the name of that application for iTunes for what I do… choose and mix great songs. From now on, instead of saying I am a DJ, if I must, and you insist, I will just say that I am a human Genius. If you insist. 

As far as my Genius set went, it was fairly uneventful. Fairly. Except the time I went to the bathroom, playing a long song to give me time, standing in the bathroom bopping along to the song, then mid song, and mid stream, hearing the song cut out (laptop crashed). Having to change horses mid stream is never easy but I had to suck it up for the sake of being a Genius, and rush back out to see what was going on. Then, a few songs later, as all dumb Geniuses do I presume, I unknowingly hit the spacebar, paused the whole thing, and took long enough to figure out what was going on. I blamed my laptop crashing for that one too.

Finished off in a good way, some girls were singing Mr Sandman up to me from the stairs below (my final song) and I left the gym happy. Until the whole – why are you bothering, why don’t you use the time to write, what’s wrong with you, good work today trying to get some rent money together for yourself, even the washing machine thinks you’re an ape robbing your money, oh Jesus, here comes the hot flushes and headaches again – all kicked in. I decided the only/cheapest/free way to get rid of the headaches, was to go to the gym that night and work them out of me.

Again I felt like an ape going to the gym twice in one day, but still couldn’t figure out why. Until I bounded in the door, past the front desk, how’s it going receptionist, my iPod is on so can’t hear what you’re saying, yeah, I’m good? Bound up the stairs, start making a move for a bench, and see the place is dead. Receptionist has half followed me up the stairs “Merrick, we closed at 10 tonight, its 5 past now, you have to leave, sorry.” Oh, right, I knew that all along, I was testing you, shur don’t you know I’m a Genius! At least I knew for definite on the way home this time, why I felt like an ape for going twice to the gym that day.

Here’s part of that great song I had people jiving and singing to the other day… Mr Sandman (Squeak E Clean Remix) by The Chordettes.

Tags: Coffee Bean, DJ, Genius, iTunes, Mr Sandman, Red Bull, Squeak E Clean, The Chordettes