Everybody is always telling me how bloody clever I am. Friends, family, patronising teachers, patronising work-related superiors, girls who have just met me and so haven't yet worked out how overtly horrible I am, parents of friends who used to be special needs teachers at my secondary school and have therefore only ever spoken to me in 30 second bursts separated by 3 year gaps, fucking everybody. These accusations are not substantiated by my academic record, nor by any other of my 'achievements' - these people just "get that impression" and then refuse to be dissuaded despite the evidence I instantly hurl in front of them. My best guess is that I live in Essex, but began my life elsewhere, and so can't avoid being seen as intelligent by comparison.

Everybody is also always telling me how pessimistic I am. Personally, I see it more as just having some sort of grip on reality, based on constant reminders of how bad a place the world really is, but apparently this is not a healthy way to think. They question me about what's wrong and if they can help in any way, and when I point out why they can't they either get upset or resolve to say, "Hi Tom, how are you? Smile!", every time they clap eyes on me from that day forth. I feel like the guy from the Just video. For those of you who hadn't worked it out yet, he says words to the effect of "everything is crap", but in a spontaneous stroke of genius he manages to put it in such a way that the normal people understand him.

So, if I'm so fucking bright and yet, as these people have clearly observed, I hate the world and everything contained therein; should they not be able to put two and two together and realise that EVERYTHING IS CRAP...? If you like I can put it in larger lettering - would you like that? Fine:

Would it help more if I wrote it again with an MTV logo in the corner of the screen? Well fucking tough, you should have been able to work it out long before you met me anyway.