Today should be a day of rejoicing, but I find it hard to raise a smile. Michael Jackson is a free man. The news I've waited to hear for the last 18 months, but I don't have the heart to celebrate it.

Malcolm Glazer owns 97.3% of my club.

For every piece of good news that enters my life, there is always a counter-acting piece of news to snuff out any joy that I might have been in danger of experiencing. This is the way of my existence. By co-incidence or fate, I am thus left to suffer this cruel equilibrium. I won't pretend, however, that I believe in fate. It's far too scary a concept to have any real credibility. Or maybe I just don't want to believe it. Maybe I want to believe that there is some level of choice in the events I must live through. Whatever the reason, I suppose I should discount fate as a player in my ever-bland tapestry of sempiternal mediocrity.

But co-incidence alone fails to account for the outrageous levels of cynicism I have displayed in recent years. It fails to account for the growing contempt I have for the bilious mass of human refuge that apathetically infests the planet like a disease.

What, then? Is this just the way of things? Perpetual disappointment, interspersed with astounding acts of human greed or stupidity to take the shine away from any positive thing life might happen to throw my way? Some people wake up to a new day to find they have won millions in a lottery they had forgotten they entered. I know that if I should wake to such news, I would feel little in the way of joy, as in my heart I would know that already in the post was a letter telling me that I had only weeks to live.

The world giveth, and the world taketh away. There is no greater truth defining this life.

Just once, I'd like a happy ending, without something to spoil it. It appears I may be asking for too much.

0 message(s) of denial

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