The city skyline is awash in the glow of fireworks, more this year than in any previous. Bangs and flashes, multicoloured sparkles. Some part of my subconscious, a distributed thought process that remembers random shit that I really want to be working on a faster processor than my brain, tells me that the first fireworks were used in Han-dynasty China to frighten off demons. Another part of me wonders if everyone has this semi-autonomous memetic agent relaying the same information, but without a developed metaconsciousness[0] they process that information in the only way they can: Fireworks make bad things go away. After this week, is it any wonder that the city sounds like heavy shelling? Racial memory, the earliest tools of sentient man applied to the greatest evil the world has seen in a long time.

In other news, family are annoying. Pointless naïve optimism[1] combined with what seems to be a subconscious drive to keep me around and shock&outrage when I point out basic facts about the area. And people wonder why they depress me so. Hull minds, the lot of them. Though part of my edge could have been the lack of fags today. Not a single cigarette. A cynic would point out that this is because I forgot my scarf while already ill and thus now have a throat cold that makes me hack and wheeze at a single drag of nicotine-laden smoke. The optimist within me wonders how long I'll make before falling back into the old habit. We shall see.

[0]: Most of the people around here are thick Chav cunts who think a McDonalds job is luxury. Most of them would be proud to be bicameral.
[1]: The mathematician in me detests the phrase "you never know". This is true. But when the odds are fifteen billion to one against you can have some fucking certainty.