27th Birthday

In last year's birthday post I embarked upon a prodigiously depressive diatribe about how my life had become the equivalent of Apollo Creed's ill-fated comeback fight in Rocky IV, a harrowing and dishearteningly pathetic beatdown by glistening, puissant forces, and how I hoped that my 27th year might more closely resemble Rocky's eventual avenging triumph.

Well, shit, like Rocky IV I guess I would rate the last year a 6/10 (though sadly it was 63% less homoerotic). 

MY BOOK IS GETTING PUBLISHED. It is called 'Panther', it is out in May 2015, and if you don't each buy 10 copies upon release you will be doomed to interminable lugubrious blog posts about my dazzling failure as an author. Here is my author website, where you can find more information about the book of which you are soon to own 10 copies.

I went to South Korea to visit friends, where I discovered that quite literally everything in the ocean is edible if you want it to be, I wasn't shot by and/or exploded by North Koreans, and I drank the best damn milkshake of my life. I was also ignored by many cats.

I am seeing a girl who inexplicably finds me charming and attractive. At time of writing she hasn't realised her mistake.

I was shortlisted 3 times for the Games Journalism Prize. I didn't win. 

My face became host to what critics have hailed as 'a spectacular return to repugnant squalor.' In my infinite unemployed wisdom I set aside a couple of months to nurture a depression beard of the very highest calibre and, you'll be pleased to hear, documented its progress in selfies. Ladies and gentlemen, please be sure you have ready access to a change of underwear before you view the following photograph.

Of course, this being me, the year has also had its fair share of troughs. In May I reached the lowest point of my life and found myself, in a roundabout rather than resolute way, contemplating suicide. The reasons behind that persist - self-hatred, joblessness, the ever-presence of my gargantuan head - but, for now at least, I'm doing okay. 

So, here's to my 28th year, which will see the publication of my book, the flat indifference of critics and the UK's reading public, the bank's foreclosure on my brand new helicopter, my descent into Haagen Dazs and coprophagia addiction, and the eventual discovery of my bloated corpse beached in the bathtub with cats feasting on pickled rinds of my flesh.

BUY MY BOOK.