
Every month you read/looked-at my photo journal column, Cyber-X’s Top Night Out, in the pages of Total Toptop Games Top-Top Video Games Mega Top Monthly, detailing my wild and mentally ill exploits at some of North Bolton’s top nightclubs – clubs like Top Club, Club Top, and Clop Tub. Some nights I even wore a crazy top hat to really ram home the point. I also mostly only ate Pot Noodles – this is because the word ‘pot’ is ‘top’ backwards. It wasn’t easy, but for true authenticity I even ate the Pot Noodles in reverse; feeding them into my anus, and – usually the next day – excreting them out of my mouth.
Those were the days. The top days of my life (up until that point – more on this later: LOL… or should I say TOP…!? You see, TOP is an internet acronym I invented – it stands for ‘Total Overload of Phunn’). But then it all went wrong. Or as I like to say (‘cause I literally just don’t care what anyone thinks) - ‘tits up’.
FRIED (FIRED)
Total Toptop Games Top-Top Video Games Mega Top Monthly folded, and I got laid off (aka “FIRED” – little did I know then that the thing that was really being fired was a bullet being fired from the starting gun of a particular type of race – specifically, my race to the top). It happens. But without a job, my access to free review software dried up, so I had nothing to sell in Computer Exchange, so I couldn’t afford to get into clubs.
Worse still, most days I barely had enough money to buy drugs, and then my girlfriend left me, so I couldn’t even steal money from her to buy drugs. It was literally like being in a nightmare – a horrible, clubless, drugless, attentionless nightmare. I was trapped at a bottom of a pit, and there wasn’t even anybody who wanted to peer in at my brilliantly manic antics.
It felt like the whole world had it in for me.
Before long, I found myself living in a sewer. Not a metaphorical sewer – but an actual sewer. It was the top sewer in the country, but it was still a sewer. And even though I was sleeping on a big mound of top quality shit, which you probably could’ve sold as fertilizer to some of the country’s top farmers, nobody needs that as a bunk. Frankly, however you look at it, shit is still shit. It still stinks, it comes out of bums (except when it’s coming out of my mouth – see above) and is made from dirty brown germs. There’s a reason it’s called shit – and that’s because it IS shit. Literally.
LOWEST TOP POINT
But it was at my lowest point that everything changed for a second time. I had a revelation – I realised I was better than this. In fact, I deduced that I was better than everything and everyone – I was literally the best person alive on earth at that point. Why else would I have had my own monthly clubbing photo column in a games magazine, when nobody else did? Mother Theresa never had her own clubbing column in a games mag. Nelson Mandela didn’t.
Neither did his father, Admiral Nelson “Winnie” Mandela-Day – the only column he had was a stupid, boring one in Trafalgar Square made out of concrete, and surrounded by four black lions (the only lions I’m interested in are my loins – where my genitals live).
Who wants to look at that, when they could be reading about/looking-at me in a video games mag, hanging out in clubs, with dilated pupils and a bottle of beer in my hand? But I did/had my own photo column. Literally. I was, however you looked at it, better.
In that moment of profound self-awareness I was reborn – that sewer was my manger, and I was the infant Jesus, ready to bring my message to the world. I just needed a Star of Bethlehem to follow, same as Jesus did. And then I found one.
TOP HAMMER
As I stood there reeling from this cranial hammer blow by the Mallet of Enlightenment, I looked down at my feet and saw what I can only describe as a carrot, bobbing in the horrible brown water like a dead fish. And just like Jesus turned a fish into a load of bread, or whatever, I turned this fish/carrot into a big pile of hope/cash. Splashing around like a wailing lunatic, my fists hammering inexplicably at the sides of my head, I followed the carrot as it was carried along by the “carront” (current).
Eventually, it came to rest at the foot of a filthy old ladder, which was all rusted and that. To the average layman this was just a regular ladder, but to me it represented the difference between a life of hope, and a life of staying in a sewer, gnawing away at a dripping fatberg as my only source of supper.
Seeing it as a sign, I began to ascend, pushing my way up, up, up – and out, out, out through a manhole, in the middle of a street. To the layman, it was just a regular, every day street, but it was soon to become something more – a backdrop to my transformation into something else, something greater. Greater even than I already had been as one of the country’s top videogame journalists and clubbers.
As I knelt there in the warm sunlight, with no way to know whether the carrot had been real, or just a figment of my vibrant imagination, I realized that in front of me was a retailer specialising in self-help books. It was a sign within a sign (and the sign read “SELF HELP BOOKSHOP”). And in that moment I had my new direction. Everything I had been through – the sleeping in shit, the selling my crazy top hat to buy drugs, the fashioning a humanoid companion from wadded clumps of moist toilet wipes – had been just part of a journey, and here I was at the finish line.
I decided I would become the country’s top self-help guru and motivational speaker. I would help others whose lives were stranded in a rut. I would reach out to them, like that famous painting where the two hands are reaching out to one another (is one of the hands the hand of God? We can only assume). And that’s what I did. It didn’t exactly happen overnight, but let me tell you – it was well easy.
This is the Cyber-X that stands before you today (and I literally am standing as I type this – any idiot could tell you that standing is at least 100% more dynamic than rocking back and forth in a corner, or laying face down on the floor; try and picture it – me barking out instructions to my voice recognition software, as I march around my granddad’s garage with my thumbs hooked cockily into the belt loops of my fairly expensive jeans).
TOP LOSERS
These days I dedicate my time to helping losers like you (that’s right – I called you a loser – deal with it), from every race, creed and social background, out of their own pits. Some people have called me a genius (modesty precludes me from naming names – let’s just say one of them is a certain top TV street magician called “Bynamo” – wink wink). Others have called me a madman, or a prodigy, or an unnatural phenomenon, or a guru. Let’s just say I’m a bit of both.
But there was a certain other madman-cum-genius-stroke-guru born just over 2,000 years ago – and he didn’t do too bad (yeah, I know he got hung from a cross, but he also came back a couple of days later, so it must’ve just been some sort of magic trick or something: beat that, Dynamo – respect!).
This article is the culmination of my journey from video games journalist, to sewer dweller, to the country’s top motivational speaker and self-help guru. Every word on this page has my blood in it (literally – while typing this out I cut my thorax on my massive signet ring, and needed one stitch). Every paragraph is true. I swear.
Normally I charge about £450 (plus VAT) to allow access to my life-changing advice. I hold regular seminars (I call them “awesominars”) in top nightclubs across the country, where you can let me change your life to the relentless, undulating throb of post-garage Japanese techno, hardcore European house, or progressive 1,000bpm electrowave crabpulse (it’s the cutting edge of club culture: the sounds are filtered through a couple of old crabs strapped to a big broom). But today I’m going to share with you today my Top 5 Top Tips for Turning Your Life Around – TODAY!
BOOM! Come on, pigs – let’s make this happen:
1. JUST SAY NO! When bad stuff happens to you, look it straight in the eye and say “NO!”. Like, let’s say you’ve just been refused a bank loan – firmly lock gazes with the bank wanker (or bwanker), purse your lips, and hiss the word “NO!”, over and over and over, rising in pitch and intensity, until he either decides to give you the loan, or asks you to leave. This is even more effective if you don’t pause to breathe in between. If you pass out, he (or she – this is the 21st Century after all, guys!!!) might feel enough pity to give you the loan.
2. THE POWER OF NOW! They say there’s no time like the present – so most days I like to give myself little presents. If you’re a top genius like I am, this is a great way to reward yourself for being like that, thus encouraging you to be even more like that. Last week I bought myself a new watch. The week before it was a banjo. Maybe I’ll learn to play banjo, maybe I won’t – that’s not really the point.
3. HOW TO WIN FRIENDS! Nobody likes to be alone, and everybody likes getting presents (see Tip 2), so why not get more friends by buying presents for people you’ve just met? One of the most effective presents is a pint of beer, so I carry one around with me at all times, just in case I bump into someone I’d like to be friends with. Five times out of ten they’ll really appreciate it, and hopefully not find it too creepy, or ask too many awkward questions about the smell of the beer.
4. AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE! How can you make people do or say whatever you want? Unfortunately, you can’t – but you can make it more likely. Try sneaking into your target’s home while they’re sleeping, and write instructions on the insides of their eyelids, using henna. If they wake up while you’re there – just firmly put your hands over their eyes, mouth and nose until they fall asleep again.
5. STOP WORRYING! This one’s easy – grab a pen and a piece of paper, and write down everything that’s worrying you in life. Now work out who’s responsible for those worries, track those people down, and make them pay. It doesn’t have to be anything illegal – just damage their car in the middle of the night, or post a shredded bird through their letterbox. They’ll never know for sure that you’re responsible, but they’ll probably have an inkling…!!!! Maybe you could write your initials on an undamaged part of the bird, just to add an extra, subliminal message.
So there you have it – straight from the horse’s hay-hole, a few top tips you can use in your everyday life, starting today. Who knows? Now you’ve had just a taste of what Cyber-X can offer, maybe I’ll see you at one of my awesominars, where you can watch me enjoying plenty of attention, as I stomp around pointing aggressively, kicking at the walls, grabbing the back of my head, and barking light switches. Usually, people are too cowardly to ask for their money back – but that’s just how I like it. BOOM! I’m Cyber-X.