comedy – Kat Sadler

Carpet Diem

November 16, 2016November 16, 2016Kat Sadler2 Comments

I’m coping pretty well at the moment if by coping you mean playing Christina Aguilera’s ‘Fighter’ on full volume every hour of the day or I’ll have a full mental breakdown.

“Get ready for the apocalypse” A friend said yesterday. We’re all terrified. I don’t know how we’re going to break it to our kids that Donald Trump is now president of the United States.

nellie the elephant.png

I sat nodding pensively for a little bit too long and started to panic that she was expecting some sort of pithy response to ejaculate from my mouth. Pithy responses rarely do, but food often does. I’m very worried about making crunching noises in public too loudly, so often to bypass the chewing process I just wait for food to dissolve inside my mouth. This method is fundamentally flawed and can take hours because unfortunately its not socially acceptable to puke on it a bit first like a hungry fly.

The idea of an apocalypse isn’t too stressful for me. It’s more of a red-letter day on the social anxiety calendar, because after it happens I’ll be dead and then I don’t have to worry about any more plans being made. Better still, everyone will be dead so I won’t have to worry about missing out on any lifelong memories or inside jokes being made without me. These are two very real nightmares that very well could happen in my absence at any social gathering, and often specifically do. My friends love inside jokes. I think that’s why they all went camping without me.

The worst part about inside jokes it the fact that someone will have to explain them to me later. I have to pretend to laugh like I was there when I wasn’t – and even if I was, was I ever really there? – and smile jovially through an existential implosion that feels so physically real I am surprised blood doesn’t seep out of my ear.

But if the end of the world is nigh, I’m not too bothered because I have a feeling that I reached the peak of my potential at university; I think that’s why I can only afford off-peak train tickets. I’ve got nothing left. If I ever have a kid I’m going to get her one of those little road map carpets, but turn it over to show her how life is an unending black abyss.

roger and his plans.png

I’ve regressed back into a childlike state living at home. I’ve started acting sicker than I actually around my mum just in case she things I’m faking and makes me go to school despite the fact I’m 22 and unemployed. I like to think it’s because I’m young at heart. But I also like to think have wisdom beyond my years, and I reckon they cancel each other out so I experience neither. I just can’t seem to grow up. I’m so incompetent my mum still has to cut my nails, which I think explains why she always makes them so short and bloody.

I don’t know what my calling is in life. Even if it did call I’m too anxious to answer the phone, and I’ve got a feeling ambition doesn’t leave a voicemail. I’ve been considering getting into politics, it seems like the cusp of the apocalypse might be the right time. I’ve got lots of experience in the cabinet office, and by that I mean sometimes I get inside my cupboard to do admin and cry.

An uplifting note to end on about seizing the day. I was saving my FULL café stamp card in the British library for a rainy day, but I left it to long and the café changed hands and now my card is invalid, as are my reasons for living. So, reader, use your full stamp card when you get the chance. Turn over that children’s carpet. Carpet diem. And buy yourself a clock, because there’s no present like the time.

“Toughen Up, Princess.”

November 10, 2015November 29, 2015Kat SadlerLeave a comment

“Well, that depends. How big is it?”

I’m standing in the Apple store, cradling my dying laptop, asking a genius which external memory hard drive I should buy.

“I think its about seventeen inches” I say back.

I have never seen a man more erect with laughter. He laughed so hard he had to bring his co-worker over to carry out the purchase. I realise now he was asking about the capacity of my laptop, not its physical size.

The next day, I waited for four hours alone in Westfield for an emergency appointment in Apple.

“So there’s a hardware problem?” He asks. It’s the same guy.

I yank my laptop it out of its Hello Kitty case, along with several stale Frazzles and a tampon that’s come out of its packet. He puts his finger in the charger socket and pulls out a piece of pencil lead that was lodged inside.

There are no words.

I’m wet.

“I’m just going to do a restart on your laptop to make sure everything works now”

We wait a few minutes. I tell him he’s really good at technology. Several times.

“Sorry, these models keep freezing” He says.

“That’s ironic because of all the overheating they do” I say, excited for what potentially might have been the most cleverest collection words that have ever connected as an impulse inside my brain and then shortly afterwards ejaculated from my mouth.

“There are people waiting” He says.

It’s been 135 days since I graduated from university, and I’m starting to think that maybe unemployment might just be my “thing”. Everybody has to have “a thing”, and unfortunately “having a job” was already taken by, it seems, every other graduate.

Me, trying to fit in with other, more capable graduates

What’s your secret, graduates? Are you all saying no when they offer you a glass of water? Is that what you’re all doing? Is that some kind of test? If you say yes when they offer you water are you suggesting you’re not thirsty for a career with their company?

Every job application I do is like the start of a Tinder relationship. You start to get your hopes up, and then they decide to send you a picture of a massive, turgid, veiny penis. I start out with promise, get maybe a little overconfident, feel ready to send them my CV, and end up violating another human being. I have yet to entice one single employer with my dick pic of a CV.

How many stand up gigs have I done in those 135 days? One. Were the executives of the NBC sitting in the audience? Maybe, I don’t know what they look like.

I get up at about 10, ferment a teabag in a cup of sugar water, watch three episodes of Bojack Horseman, make another cup of sugar, open up a word document harbouring a number of shitty sitcom ideas that I’ll never pursue far enough to actually write, and bash my hairy forehead against the keys. If I’m feeling particularly brave, I’ll open Outlook and have a look at my emails. And then the junk folder. And then I check my drafts just in case I forgot to send any of my applications. And then my sent folder, just to check the applications did actually did send.

If my life were a movie, right about now the montage sequence would start.

I didn’t write a 5000 word essay on Battleship Potemkin for this shit. What the hell, Eistenstein?

I’m going stir crazy. I’m starting to have inside jokes with my cat. And I think he’s a little too into it.

Naturally, I turn to the comments section of my blog for encouragement.

Thank you, kind sir. I feel much better for your warm, nurturing words. You see, if you take the time to actually decode the multiple layers of his encrypted message, what he actually means to say is:

“Life is not yet begun its up. Even you, princess toughen; hard to fuck in the arse”

He’s right. Maybe I should be less frigid. But also, life might seem pretty shitty right now, but it will get better. Soon, it will begin its up. Maybe.

Goodbye Jekyll

October 12, 2015November 29, 2015Kat SadlerLeave a comment

Our cat died yesterday and it’s been pretty sad for my family, so naturally I’ve been trying to get some material out of it. The situation, I mean, not the carcass of my cat.

I’ve turned to literature to console me through the pain, so I’ve started off with classic children’s horror and traumatisation fest Goodbye Mog. It’s a book designed to give to kids to warn them about pet’s death. It’s a bit like The Fault in Our Stars, but instead of cancer it’s euthanasia, and instead of love-struck teenagers, its Debbie and Nicky; two children who manage to milk the death of their pet into over ten pages of literature. Milking the death, I mean, not their cat.

This was a bit like what happened to us, except my cat died at the vets under heavy sedatives, and not because he was quite nice. Also we don’t have a basket because he preferred to sleep in my dressing gown, usually after having vigorous, juicy sex with it.

Here, Judith Kerr is portraying Mog as a spirit hovering above the dead Mog, to further illustrate the inevitability of death looming over each and every one of us. Good one, Judith.

The book is about Mog’s spirit watching over the family, making sure they can cope without her now that she has gone. When she is satisfied that they will be alright, she then returns to space, like the little furry dead astronaut she always was.

I’m sure all these thoughts occurred to Jekyll at some point, but probably not before a massive blood clot dislodged itself in his spine and paralysed his back legs.

I have a pre-existing blood clot

We are all gutted, particularly George, who, in a grief-stricken state, hastily consumed a whole sachet of As Good as it Looks before almost immediately vomiting it back up again in Jekyll’s favourite spot on mum’s bed.

Much like most other cats, George actively chooses not to believe in the concept of an afterlife, as he feels that the idea of heaven is futile if man is predetermined to live their lives a certain way before finding out that way was potentially wrong and thus is forced to spend an eternity in hell.

You were more than just a cat, you were a puma.

A big, snuggly puma.

2008-2015

Am I tired? Yes. A latte.

September 1, 2015November 29, 2015Kat SadlerLeave a comment

So here’s a quick update on my first week working full time.

I am tired. I am really, really tired. I have friends in the real world who talk about how tired they are but I sort of only half believed them, thinking that a full time job can only be so draining. Is a 9-5 job really that tiring?

YES.

I get up at about 6am because I’m too tired to work out how the trains function to get to work. I just don’t know which one I need to take. Time is really hard to tell. My brain is to time as what Dali is to clocks; all melty and fucked up. Often, when I think about time, I feel like I’m still in year six as little ten year old me, equipped buckteeth like grapple hooks, desperately fumbling around for a remote foothold of comprehension. A frustrated tutor looming over me whilst a little bit of pee runs down my leg as I gaze blankly at the page, a melty mushy mess of numbers slowly rotating, mocking. Even time’s embarrassed about being time, coyly covering its face with its hands BE BRAVE TIME SHOW US WHO YOU ARE.

Anyway, so I end up several hours early for work. Obviously I don’t go in early like a fucking nark (I’m not a keen pleb, get a grip) so I’m in Starbucks, every morning, when it opens, ordering a full fat latte.

Also, things have gone downhill with Jennifer and Vince. They moved in together a few months ago when things were getting pretty serious. They were still quite cautious about the prospect, tentatively rubbing along together. But now they’ve begun to suffocate each other, and they’re desperately trying to push the other one out. There’s a part of me that feels trapped in the middle, that can’t breathe. Jennifer’s even thinking about moving back in with her parents, to get a healthy distance. Is there such thing as couples counselling for thighs?

No, I’m only kidding, my body has never looked better, spackled with reptile-like scales and white confetti cellulite, like an internal piñata exploded inside me, in celebration of the stress carnival I have every morning. My jeans barely aid in constricting even the suggestion of a leg-like shape, like little conjoined overstuffed cocktail sausages. My legs look like two desperate snakes, eating parallel swollen cacti, slowly dragging their engorged carcasses into work.

I’m thinking about linking this blog to my Tinder profile.

I think that if I were to die right now, they would be able to tell how much weight I’ve gained through the curvature of my belly button piercing; slowly bending under the pressure of my stomach, being forced out of my body and over my jeans. If that doesn’t make sense, its because I don’t know how belly button piercings work- I just know its infected.

My skin is really great at the moment too, kindly adopting the texture of all the muffins I’m eating.

(Sugar packets for scale)

It’s shit. Everything is absolute shit. I’m not even funny anymore, really, I’m just annoying. Annoying with a big stupid face and a silly voice and a tubby tummy and a unibrow because I cant even afford the £5 to get them threaded by a woman in Nike Airmax.

HOW CAN SHE AFFORD AIRMAX SHE PLUCKS HUMAN HAIRS FROM A FACE FOR A LIVING

Anyway, if I’ve gained anything aside from weight this week, it’s an immense respect for people who work in retail. The general human population has a profound absence of this. I get people come up to me and ask stuff like:

“Hi can you help me find a book? I don’t know the author. Or the name of the book. But I just know its got like a bunny that fights crime maybe or is it a goat I’m really not sure”

And I have to be like yeah, of course, let me just flip through the internal rolodex inside my brain to the section on small mammals, then to the employed civil service sector, and then combine the two to find the subsection about vigilante rabbits and maybe look in the kids section for twenty minutes before you suggest that it might have actually been Claude the Movie Star Dog.

I had one very small little girl come up to my till with her father to buy a miniature pony figurine (£5.96). She didn’t say ‘please’ when she handed it to me, and to be honest I wasn’t too fussed on the matter, but her father was furious and made me put the horse back. The little girl then threw the biggest tantrum I have ever seen in the store, at ME, screaming. I can’t describe it without getting a bit shaky but it was almost exactly like that moment in American Beauty when the mother tries to sell the house and then screams because she doesn’t like the blinds or something. But this little girl was filled with a real, crushing, trauma-fuelled suburban existential hysteria, because of me.

I would have fucking bought that pony right there if I could have done to make her stop; other employees are looking at me like I’ve just kicked a six year old girl in the vagina. But that pony is the same price as a pair of well-shaped eyebrows. Her father drags her out, and then returns to the shop ten minutes later with the little girl, in his arms, snot and tears streaming down her face. Holds her up so she’s face to face with me and she squeaks out a sorry. I tried to smile at her, but it was very difficult to, considering I had just spent the last ten minutes in the employee toilets, hysterically crying that I had ruined a little girl’s life and I am probably going to be a terrible mother and it’s probably because I’m stupid and fat and I can’t tell the time and I lied earlier and it was more like year nine.

In a job interview I had last week I actually used the phrase “I’m used to rejection” and I think it’s really working out well for me so far.