2002-09-22 - 3:07 p.m.

I stayed in on a Saturday night for the first time in a long time. And not even that, I couldn�t even afford wine and cigarettes, and had to make do with stolen peppermint tea and a vegetable samosa (unstolen). It was an interesting sociological experiment, no-one in the flat, just me and my thoughts. Which was fine for a while, but in the end you�re going to need some intelligent discourse, especially when you�re spending the time just worrying in bewilderment because you might have, with the best and most sincere intentions in the world, still managed to piss off someone you care about.

I was shocked, though not really, by the cerebral monkey jizz being spooned up for general consumption on TV, so I dusted off my Bill Hicks video and let reason wash over me like a big blue wave of shouty, cigarette-smoking humour.

"The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "hey - don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride...It's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice."

Now, I�m no philosopher, but (and stealing from ms centralred�s latest entry) what you got there is yer basic Sartre, innit? �The world is real. There is no other world that is more real than the one in which we live. Being is; how we respond to it is up to us. The only thing that limits freedom is freedom itself. Consciousness, or existence for itself, must choose, and by choosing limits itself. There is nothing outside us that can determine our choices and actions.�

Or something. Existentialism, or at least my pathetically ill-informed grasp on it, and Saturday nights just don�t mix. I stole more tea and sat through the entertainingly baffling film, �If��, which is a kind of anti-establishment, homoerotic public schoolery with murderous fantasy scenes and Malcolm McDowell in full effect. Think �A Clockwork Orange� meets �Dead Poets Society�. Kind of.

Then I thought a bit more, hoped something could be done, and went uneasily to sleep.

�Accidents will happen / We only hit and run / I don't want to hear it / 'Cause I know what I've done�And it's the damage that we do / And never know / It's the words that we don't say / That scare me so��