The Ravings of an Insurance Administrator

“We ourselves are a kind of chaos.”
- Nietzsche.
(Beyond good & evil, 1882)
I take pleasure in the physical act of excretion. An everyday function that the majority of people take satisfaction in, we do not talk about the motion but readily compare life to shit. I don’t mind talking about it because I find it a mostly pleasurable, sometimes painful and quite often an open experience to share with others. It is release of the physical, a moment to yourself; a time when you are calm and alone in this otherwise agitated world. It did take me some time to be comfortable enough with myself to be able to speak aloud about my delusions in the bathroom. Reader, I bare myself to you, yet again, I am now an administrator in insurance.
Early life to Administrator. In 1982 my head popped out of my mother in the Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Ireland, due to catholic restrictions at that time, a moment which my father did not witness. At age two I fell from the top floor of a two-story house to the bottom floor and as of yet I have not found any permanent damage….When I was three I flushed my cat down the toilet, I believed I was giving it a wash and well she never came near me again… At four, on a very frosty day, I remember walking though the old church to school and being fascinated that when II held one of my nostrils shut I could blow hard little balls of mucus out and land them on the leaves of bushes. At five and six I liked Ghost Busters, soft serve ice cream with strawberry syrup and crisps that were shaped like French fries. At age seven my family and I packed four suitcases and we went to America, they told me we were going on a holiday. Eight years later my family and I returned.
The eight years in America were hell for me. Laughing children pointing at me because I could not pronounce my “th’s” properly, of course American’s have such beautiful pronunciation (I’m not bitter – I swear). My hair was that of a buffoon, I had bad skin, braces and I spent most of my time in my bedroom believing that someone had put a videotape in there to make sure I was acting normal. Basically I never felt right there. So in 1998 we went back to Ireland, the Ireland of my dreams, where everything would be right; cucluan, Oisin & Niamh, Tristen & Isult, the land of fairies, and inwardly beautiful people. (The Irish fairy tales never included the fantastic powers of a knacker having the ability to stick anything up a person’s hole.) Now I want to go over my past life and try to figure out what exactly has made me an insurance administrator?
This is a work of that I like to fantasize as fiction, I may die at the end or be blissfully happy, or may lead you on a tale to never-never land with Michael Jackson softly taking your hand or possibly it is just words, words, words… (Reference to Hamlet, I’m really trying to pass this off as a work of substance.)
Excerpt 2
Yes “beautiful, beautiful” Ireland filled with innocence and kind strangers. It is the country of people who accomplished the turn of the head and wink phenomena. Filled with people who call out to you when you look down, “Ah sure, it may never happen”, when in most cases it already has.
Come back with me to a different time, back into history, an age that the historians named the industrial era. From what I have read it was a dusty abode where the landscape was shackled with cranes as far as the eye can see. The teenage boys were grubby and skinny, they worked all day in labouring jobs, and they drank their bitter at night and got rowdy. The teenage girls had disproportioned fat and carried around children, which were not their sisters. All faces were grotesquely distorted due to pollution that excreted itself from the dirty factories. Yellow teeth glared out from rain-slicked dark alleys; for the people became so used to the smoke that they were dependant on sucking more through papered filters. Course diction surrounded the streets which became more loud and vile as the night increased. People urinated on the streets and mutually masturbated each other in shadows of the pubs. The dirty drunken laughter became one with the smog. Now abruptly I pull you forward to a town in modern day Ireland, a town that disturbingly has not changed but remained the same since that era. This is the town where there are more shopping trolleys than water in the river. This is the town where brown swans slide through the sewerage consumed river, its odour coagulates with the sodden grease of the chip shops strangling the air in stagnation. This is Drogheda in the late nineties. This is Drogheda, may the locals welcome you with the hum of “how eiyis”. My “home town”.
In 1998 it wasn’t uncommon to walk down the street and meet only Irish people, and it was quite common to see sixteen year olds with babies. Please note at this stage Josephine is very innocent and does not know the difference between the Irish stereotypes of culchies, southsider's or the most important knackers/scangers.
Drogheda, the town full to the brim of knackers. Knackers: (for the ignorant and naive) grubby would be the main adjective following this they are smelly, mostly pregnant, abusive and not the most intelligent. I will an exaggerated but fair account of a knacker/scumbag (they have a variety of names). A knackers’ main dwelling, outside of the block of skag-filled flats, is on the back seat of the bus. When he is not selling phones, he takes his ‘lady’ on his lap, her red arse revealed to the bus. She leans down to his ear and says loud enough for the whole bus to hear, “I’m soaking for ya”.
Excerpt 3
I have come to love teenagers, I know it is an incredulous statement but I really do respect them, actually respect is too far fetched, I just like them. I see them on my way to work, hitched-up skirts, pouted lips, t-shirts untucked, not afraid to articulate the music they are listening to, so self-obsessed and passionate. Once you stop being a teenager you have to control such a range of feelings. They are so deep, in a very bizarre sense of the word, far better than the pretentiousness, know-all attitudes of adults. I am jealous, jealous of their non-cellulite bodies, of all the experiences awaiting them, of their estranged view of life. They are the hero’s of the modern day; they are the legends who have yet to be systemised. They don’t even look at me when I walk by, while I am intrigued by them, does that mean I am not in the vicinity of their world anymore, does that mean that I am an adult? They have exaggerated depression, paranoia, hedonism, imagination and the most emotional notions of love, what could be more exciting?
Excerpt 4
I glanced at some report in a Sunday paper that “scientists” proved that all the eccentricities of the teenager were due to hormones. So at the part in our lives when we believe that we are solely struggling in the maelstrom that is life and when all is a little too mad, it actually just comes down to a chemical imbalance. Chemical imbalance, more accurately the human being itself, is such a bizarre phenomenon, especially considering how we are created. Everything is here because of sex, it may be a flower shining up it’s pseudo-ass to be ravaged by the bee, worms sliding along their ‘other half’, or more close to home your father bending over your mother shouting “scream for me baby”. Creation is just beautiful. I want you all to cast your mind back to your first memory of sex, for me it was the shy, mysterious Christian Slater being all beautiful, mysterious and sexy in Untamed Heart. For my brother it was some dominatrix being dominated, he didn’t know her real name but he was definitely in love. Being honest, I’m sure all of us can say that the first physical memory of the sex game in which we fell into was not exactly what we expected. It is inevitable that it will be awful at best, involving awkward positioning, false screams and curious smells. It was only when one awakes that the understated awful reality sinks in. Ultimately there will be disappointment, terror, (girls due to pregnancy, boys due to performance) and that terrible uncomfortable ‘what next’ feeling. Pleasurable. So what do we do after one the most striking disillusionments in our lives? You can do what I did and lie about it, for the past seven years. Eventually I came out, I revealed all, and so did the rest. There were penises in the wrong places, sand in arses, and screams of horror at the bizarreness of cum faces. Strangely enough after the first time we are intrigued to know more, the need cannot be broken. Media and literature tell us that unbelievable sex is possible. So we reach out and grab, we don the leather and the lace, some sleep with all, some sleep with few, some sleep with goats. The point is though we don’t give up, we want our first mental perfect memory of sex, and we get through the most grotesque physical act of our lives with very little scaring. People have gone crazy for less. Or maybe we’re just worms, and all sex is beautiful, and maybe that randy excuse of a man who we lost it to will become a stunning doctor who also works for charity…..
Excerpt 5
How fickle the human being is, something that was once our whole life can be waived away as a passing silly notion in such a small matter of time. How can we trust anyone in this world, how can we trust our own minds, and what do we want when even our most important goals are transient? It can all get to you if you think too much upon it.
Excerpt 6
The fantastic idealism of youth, the amazing ceaseless flowing optimism and I am so annoyed. My depression is final and abrupt. I am sick in my soul and sick in my heart. Friends, yes now is the time, I have to admit to you my real reason for pushing this journal/novel out in to the world. I work for an insurance company. It is the “Nineteen Eighty-Four” hell, the sorrowful very demeaning ministry of insurance, with the god-like gamblers betting on the lives of those high-risk obese clients who are paying ridiculously for their sins. I am so lost. The beauty of language has been destroyed in 2005, all day I write CD IS ASAP AS PER P/C WITH FPC CANC APP IN DT ST 5YTA. We even talk in abbreviations, the first day I started there I was given a list of abbreviations that “we” use, the first one being ABRV = abbreviation. It is becoming the death of human ability and dreams as we live in this TV/DVD/ 3G/I-POD age where people are watching ordinary people do ordinary things on, and this really gets me, a show called “Big Brother”. I need to show something real, I need something that is concrete and candid to go out in to the world, for the pain in my head when thinking about the future has become too severe.
Excerpt 7
I had a great time at college, looking back now I can honestly say that they were the best years of my life, then again I’ve only been out of college for two or is it three years. Unfortunately I am twenty-three and there is nothing worse than being twenty-three. I am paying ridiculous money to live in Dublin and I am poorer than I was as a student. My life is the mundane in its entirety. I am part of that horrible new and ever-increasing term: The quarter-life crisis. It was amazing, college, all that knowledge along with all that hedonism, a perfect little society wherein we were all going to change the world, where sex was rampant and a pint of Fosters was £2 or was it £1, sometimes even free? Am I nostalgic already, have I surpassed my youth? Life begins to just shoot by after college, while in college the world never ends, god I am depressed. Forget about me!!!!
Excerpt 8
There is a show currently on television about a number of people are stuck on an island due to a bizarre plane crash. The island is strange and dangerous, weird occurrences happen frequently and one person dies almost every week. The show is not particularly that good but I am addicted to it. I am obsessed with it because I would much rather be there than stuck in my dank world of phone work. How fast the young move now compared to earlier generations, they are so full of freedom, yet so needy of everything. I don’t know what I need anymore – I need time, space and freedom, a game of impossibility anyone?
Excerpt 8
I do not like the rich of Dublin, I do not mind rich people but the rich of Dublin do not know how to utilize it, they are generated rich people, they all drive BMW’s live in either Dublin 4, Blackrock or Foxrock, they all shop in Brown Thomas and all go on skiing holidays. That is not living, that is disgusting competitiveness to the point where they are all identical. If I were rich, first of course give to charity, but then I would spend it properly, I would get a architect’s orgasmic delight apartment in Paris, wear flamboyant extravagant clothes (no suits please), invite my friends on all-expenses paid trips and just really live like normal people would do if they did not have the restrictions of money. The skint youth know how to spend money better than anyone; they spend their money on fun and pints for friends and are blood donors the next day.
Excerpt 9
Maybe all life is swallowing black holes. What if I can’t write, what if this does not become published, what will I do, if you don’t like this, what will I do, work in a video store?
Excerpt 10
I had my interim PPR report today; they said that I found the role a little tasking. I was going to butt in that I had only one week’s training instead of the normal three but my supervisor just kept her head down reading monotonously my report. I have to learn requests procedures and checking, develop relationships with team members, look at IP & R calls, log complaints, participate in team meetings, participate in projects, QFA, courses, special terms, underwriting and team goals. I cried, I outright cried in the meeting, supervisor didn’t know what to do. I wish I had some of Josephine’s strength.
Excerpt 11
What is disturbing me is that my mother and father got married at 24, had me at 25. I am 23 and at the moment I am drinking red wine, smoking cigarettes, reading On the Road, singing Jefferson Airplane tunes into the mirror, making crazy unreal faces as my mind thinks I am a fantastic legend and I’d be better to look at than any reality TV show. It’s insane how did we become so immature, I read the other day that 30 is the new 20, so does that mean that I am 13? I do not feel like I am 23, I still want to wake up in various places after an amazing night out, but I am too old. I don’t do that anymore but I want to, so does that put me into the stereotype of old and trying to be young. Where are the guidelines! I’m timing myself by the half hour to have a cigarette or otherwise my heart may leave with a bag on a stick. I can’t do it, I can’t, there is a reason some people look young it’s because they’re doing what they want. If you stifle any living thing obviously it will not reach it’s potential, that is science and fact, we are the human species, yes we are a species being stifled and yet we are helping some idiot animal that has weird eyes or something when we need help, I will not be boxed off, I will not allow anyone to be boxed off. I wonder the feasibility of “save humans”, no wait they do that already and that doesn’t work. The way things are going the majority of people are no better than lemmings – let that sink in. That means the rest of the animal kingdom have more freedom than us, great use of this brain we are having. Alcohol and the writer, why? The Beach boys are really terrific. But seriously I would really love kids and I’d teach them so much I may become mature then but how can I offer them anything when I can’t even afford my own house in this ridiculous country, c’mon people now. It pisses me off that we may have been different, the 60’s people really had an ideal but they fucked it all up on drugs. Jews. I just wish it didn’t happen, I’m using Vichy, La Roshe Possey, multi-vitamins, iron, fish-oil, vitamin B, vitamin E, porridge and hot lemon in the morning and still the wrinkles are coming. Eating sunflower seeds, other generations had it so much easier, sunflower seeds, they’d laugh and multivitamin tablets, ohhh. I don’t understand laws, they ban marijuana but allow damaging drugs in chickens, eggs and milk which lead to a rise in serotonin and therefore depression, surely this should be illegal, or maybe it’s the governments plan! It’s wrong though isn’t it, unless we grow our own shit we’ve no idea what we are eating, that is insanity. Sunflower seeds, €5 a carton and they don’t even get digested!
* Just for your information the passage above was written while I was drunk. I am not too sure what I meant by ‘Jews’, I presume I wanted to say that
I loved Larry David or something. Apologies.
Excerpt 12
I miss meeting new people and new friends; I really hoped I would in this job. On the second day I knew it was not meant to be. There is an obese girl “A” who sits behind me, who is allergic to all types of food including pasta, I had a Freudian slip and said “oh that glutton thing”. There is high-pitched girls “B” who sits to my left and bland “C” who sits at my right, they talk back and forth over my head about the latest celebrity gossip. There is boy “D” who sits in front of me wearing a gold chain who says that some men’s magazine is his “bible”. There is asexual supervisor “E”, who I have no idea what she talks about and finally manager “F”, who stomps around the office looking busy, the gold letters of Channel plastered across her chest, but she’s not actually doing anything.
I eat lunch by myself everyday, and pretend I’m on my phone if I see anyone from work pass me by, so I am not perceived as the loner I actually am. If I need to go for a shit I go down to the IT floor where there are less girls and therefore less fear of ridicule. I tried I really did try to be nice to this people, but they are from a different world to mine, they call themselves “Lifers” and cackle about the ugly sex they are having while calling each other “dirty girls”.
Excerpt 13
When I tell people that my work is the literal meaning of hell of being, a state of great suffering, and that the walk to it is worse that the green mile, they laugh and tell me to stop exaggerating. I tell you with my whole heart that I do not exaggerate one bit. I pass the same characters everyday, the fat tall red-head man who always checks me out and averts his eyes as we pass. The grey-coat spiky-haired pursed lip man who constantly changes his direction on the path causing me to do the same and the girl with the furry hat and pink lipstick who is obsessed with my forehead. I despise them all, the only piece of glee I get from them is perhaps meeting them later on the route looking all flustered and knowing they are late for work. How sad I have become. I hate them all, all these suit wearing nobodies who are fooled in to thinking that they are some bodies, and this is not an existence! Perhaps I may see my favourite homeless guy who natters about be-bop radio but alas I only see him once every couple of weeks, I think he recognises me now, I hope he does. I listen to Northern Soul on my way because if any music will get you happy it is that, but even that is like putting cake in front of mouse that has been frozen. The 500lb weight of utter dread in my stomach of going into work will not let my mind fly anywhere. Then the building, the grey brick with the buzz-in door, the walk up the dark green carpeted stairs where on each floor you see the pictures of various celebrities, politicians, athletes and Bono and you think “Why?” This is prison, this is forced labour camps, this is the destruction of the soul, this is unhealthy, I crave natural light, and the blinds are closed on all on the windows. The windows which let in a sparse amount of sickly air from their tops they can’t open them further for fear that people may fall/jump out of them. The fan above my head is covered in hair and fur and is blowing dust into my face. I am not traditionally a suicidal person, but here I look longingly at the window. Broken legs?
Oh my god, I’ve just been writing this in work and the computer has deleted the last page, this stupid inane place which has deleted my words, they are watching me, they are everywhere. We have become 1984, oh yes we have, we are no longer individuals, we are no longer happy. Where have the romantic and hedonistic parts of us disappeared? We have been formed, crushed and moulded into a tight form and fashion wherein if we dare not to work people are incredulous, “you must work” they shout, “you must experience” why experience this, it is the exact same as when someone tastes something awful and then they tell us to taste it – and we do?! As creatures, as animals, as human beings, why do we suffer this constant torture when we know in our souls it isn’t right, it doesn’t feel right? Today is Friday you can wear what you choose, well with restrictions, as in no comfortable clothes please! The impossible inanes of my work here, who are these people, what do they stand for, C.U.N.T.S! The take colour out of offices so to discourage any artistic freedom, be grey they cry, be grey and beige, wear stifling garments, be unified , get drunk together so that you can all support each other, the drug of drink.
How have we become like this, we can’t eat what we want, thanks nutritionists, but to eat right is an impossibility of time and money. We can’t drink, smoke, take drugs, thanks scientists, we can’t have the majority of our time, thanks capitalism, our weekends are spent foolishly killing our brain cell so we do not have to think about our awful lives, thanks publicans. We cannot have sex with who we want, thanks STD’s. Our food, drink, smoke, drugs, sex and above all our time has been taken away from us and given back when we are a rambling old person who can’t do anything except give out to ads on TV. I must do something.
Excerpt 14
I was travelling yesterday, from Dun Laoghaire into town, on the bus. If you want to see Dublin properly, get on a bus, it will be an emotional journey. Firstly you will be perplexed at the old ladies getting on the bus and asking their friend on the seats for the aged “Anything strange with you?”, not “how are you?” or, “how are john and the kids?”. Anything strange with you?!! What answer are they expecting “now you mention it Masey, I was talking to those ‘grey’ aliens last night.” From this wonder comes annoyance at the man in front of you reading some 60c paper and the part that he is reading is the ‘sexy’ naked comic strips saying things like “oh c’mon lick my nipples, Sally has cancer which isn’t much fun is it?”. From annoyance to laughter as you look out of the window at RTE and their black military-style security doors to protect to station, which are adjoined to a 3ft fence which circles the building and yep pretty much anyone can jump over. There are many more examples depending where you go, say a knacker selling mobile phone covers on the back of a double decker, real bargains there. Get your I-pod and stress ball hop on the number 10 and enjoy.

Excerpt 15
I see them all day computer men and woman walk past in uniformity, there are two faces they must wear, the stern “I am doing something” look, or the smile “I have no idea what you are saying and do not care about you but possibly this human curving of the lips will show I have a heart.” These computer people are not the most efficient, sooner or later the chip blows and they are transported to the recovery centre to pump in the pills so they can go back to the high-flying life. Will our brain be used to be the new wheel, cog or fuel? Will it be prescribed or will we get to choose? At the moment my brain is the cog. How terrifying that Orwell and Huxley predicted this, and we didn’t take heed. Where has our identity gone? Am I alone in noticing these computer people, or will that be my destiny, will the bangs fall out of my hair and my eyes loose their glisten. Am I part of this awful post-modernity and just reiterating the same old points? Ashamedly of course I am, just hoping someone will listen this time round. I often wonder if I got in a loudspeaker phone out and recited Shakespeare would they remember who they were, what they loved, what they exist for. Could poetry cure society?
Excerpt 16
Christmas in my modern Dublin. I was a little pleased with Dublin today. I was walking down Grafton St bowled over by all the wealthy, shiny blonde-haired, leather boots over jeans, MAC make-upped, carrying dozens of bags containing capitalist shit people there were around. Per usual I had the pissed off look on my face at this new Christmas in Dublin, where was the wrapping paper sold by knackers and the cheesy Lego castle? I tried my best not to get pulled down by the money manic maniacs as I made my way to Temple Bar to meet a friend. I leant against a pole in the square and within five minutes I saw a man dressed as a huge green bird for no apparent reason, another man was dressed in a red leotard with a dildo poking out of the crouch area, a homeless guy dancing around with yellow electric lights tied and blinking around his hat and a knacker shouting out “I’ll wank off in to yer mouth, posho scum”. This was Christmas in Dublin, the people being the greatest shining lights around, celebrate, we are still here!!
Excerpt 17
I was out last night with some friends, none of which had to work in the morning. I had to go home early and I for the first time in awhile was having fun and felt alive but no it couldn’t last, I had to work. I walked from Ranelagh, up Milltown road screaming at the wind, screaming at my work, things like “you scum motherfucking robbers of existence, you fucks, you evil sadistic motherfuckers” and so on. When I got home I could not stop crying. I found a piece of paper and on it I wrote “I am dead” I safety-pinned it to my dress and went to bed. This morning I got up, had porridge, had a shower, got dressed, went downstairs and looked out the window and I couldn’t open the door. I got back into bed fully-clothed. Two hours later I decided I should see a doctor. The doctor told me that he was experiencing many cases like mine, also many who were dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder. He gave me a prescription for Prozac. I do not know if I will get them, as I don’t know if it’s me or this life that has the problem. The film “Conan the Barbarian” started with a Nietzsche quote, I started this book with a Nietzsche quote, and I have no idea why I am still writing this.
Excerpt 18
My boss informed me that in two weeks I would be attending a one-day seminar on customer care. I obviously physically crumpled in front of her and she went on and on about what a fun day it was and how the day fly’s by because you are “so caught up in the fun, then at the end the trainer mentions something about customer service and you’re like ‘oh yeah that’s what we were doing here today’, trust me”. I have the misfortune of attending one too many of these courses and they are all mundanely the same. There is always a ball, paper to write your feelings on and a whiteboard with “crazy” pens. The four words: You, we, team and result are reiterated every second sentence and they always start the day with “This is not really a course, we’re not going to take things too seriously today, and we’re just going to have some fun out of the office!” – To make you believe that they are on your side when they are secretly jotting every abnormal thing about you. Oh the exasperation! I reluctantly attended this course, I was not given a choice, and pretended to look animated and to keep my mind focused on the free carvery lunch. The trainer started the usual way “this is not really a course…….. Etc, etc, etc” but he is actually different to other courses because he was a “life coach”. (How can anyone have the audacity to call himself a life coach?) He wanted to find out our personality types, to therefore help us to get on with other personality types. We answered a questionnaire, comprised of thirteen questions, concerned about likes, dislikes, etc. he made a chart of red, yellow, green and blue and we all shouted like primary school children about which personality came with each colour. The colours changed into animals, respectively panther, peacock, a dolphin and an Owl. We then totalled up our answers to find our personality type; I was between a panther and a peacock so I had a choice. Peacocks are supposed to be the out-going, bubbly and bright kind, this I am not and they are also annoying squawking creatures so I chose the panther. We had to separate into our animal groups to the four corners of the room, I was left in a corner on my own, and I was the only panther. I am a rational and reasonable person and I know that on the basis of thirteen questions you cannot figure out a person’s personality and more to the point you can definitely not fit them into four groups of “animals”. Despite this rationalisation and the voice in my head remarking on the stupidity of this exercise, I couldn’t help being proud, I got caught up in it. I was red, I was the panther and I was the only one in the room, I held the most power. For the rest of the day my confidence soared, I sat up with a straight back and voiced my opinion first on anything he asked. It was a mistake for the boss to put my on this course because I think it worked to well, I have gained back that confidence that they have sucked out of me these last couple of months. I am a modern writer providing you the voyeur with the ability to look through the telescope on to paper where there are no dazzling lights or offers of life-changing equipment what you can look upon. This is us and our society, our urban cultural dislocation.
I am panther.
Final Excerpt
Oh yes people, people, comrades, oh fucking yes! Go find fantabulism, go find yourselves! I handed in my notice to those vampires and if you are reading this right now, if your brain is taking in these words, you know that I have done it, I have pulled myself out! I have succeeded, rip off your tie, escape your black trousers with the button edging out and run, fucking run, run, run, throw your head back to our wide open sky. Oh yes Lou Reed, oh yes, “I saw my head laughing, rolling on the ground and now I’m set free, I’m set freeeee.”!!!