And Now I Must Go Off To The Shops.

I avoid high-conflict people when I'm like this. It's either a result of cowardice or a deep and excessive longing for calm. Whichever the case, I have chosen to use the self-service checkout at The Shops. There was a tension between the only free checkout assistant and I. This was a tension you could feel on your face and in your arms. Partly sexual, mostly active aggressive. I have come to expect this at The Shops.

The Machine poses its own kind of conflict, a more subtle kind that makes you look at yourself in the finger-smudged screen and confront your own inadequacy. 'Jesus Christ, why didn't I just go to the checkout assistant? Why do I sabotage myself like this again?'

I'll tell you why, you vomitous pig. It's because every single thing in your basket is either ramen noodles or some other kind of cheap and debased clone of an East-Asian delicacy. At least The Machine doesn't care how you live. The Machine is just a mirror, it calls it like it sees it. It won't make eye-contact with you as it scans the ten packets of miso ramen you spent close to five minutes staring at in a lonely aisle.

But let's not pretend this is all about the checkout assistant. She doesn't get to define you. She has her own problems at work and at home. She's been working here for four years to support an artist boyfriend who hasn't gone down on her since he started the Alex Jones podcasts. He just sits there now, plugged into his laptop, tongue thoroughly glazed with whatever shite the blogs are feeding him today.

BEEP! BEEP!

Let's cut off the grizzle and get to the lean meat of your problem.

You've been sleeping since November 13th, 2015. Just laying there on a loathsome bed, sweating out and soaking up all the vivid nastiness of an endless fever dream. Your almost Libertine consumption of ramen noodles is merely a manifestation of your true problem. The problem that does skitter in the shadows of your mind.

You're a shite hawk. It's that simple.

BEEP! BEEP!

Do I scan each packet separately or do I scan one of them ten times? Is anyone looking at me?

BEEP! BEEP!

You're a shite hawk, and that's what ails you. You've let the noise of the world in and it's too loud for you now. When was the last time you did something for yourself that didn't involve excessive and violent regurgitation later that evening? That kind of repetition nurtures a subconscious deadlock. Rise above it, you fucking hack.

PLEASE SCAN YOUR FIRST ITEM!

Incredible and crushing truth. BEEP! Deep longing. BEEP! Ten ramen noodle packets of the exact same unfamiliar flavour. BEEP!

I scan each packet of noodles separately. That's why they all have their own barcode.

UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA!

It's there. You love being busy. You were just deprived of a decent Protestant upbringing and the work ethic embedded in it. You should've been a Protestant, but here are noodles instead.

Self-love is the key to an ego that flies. Ego is something to be scorned in a self-flagellating world, but fuck them all arseways. Ego good. Ego saviour. Ego more real than god.

PLEASE TAKE YOUR CHANGE!

I've only gone and forgotten to bring a fucking bag with me again. And so it was time to reach down deep inside the charred corridors of my soul and find the rage and courage necessary to ask the checkout assistant for one of those expensive plastic bags. Or do I just carry the noodles in my arms? No, fuck off with that.

'Hey, can I get one of those bags?'

'Yeah, no bothers, that'll be 70 cent.'

'Ah, grand. Here you go.'

'And here's your change.'

'Cheers.'

And then I went off home with a bag of noodles. Stopping only once to tie my shoelaces when I was sure nobody was looking.