A Retraction

So most of you must have heard by now that my trip to Yankyville wasn’t nearly as depressing as it should have been. Turns out a social worker bitch is either incompetent or just mean and wanted my Dad turned off as he is a ‘drain on the community’. To be fair if you had met my dad you would know that is praise compared to what most people think of him, but still it wasn’t an opinion that his doctors shared so we didn’t have to switch him off. Phew.

While I’m retracting things, I got some post from the tax office telling me that I wouldn’t have to fill out a return next year. Thank fuck for that.

So in other news it was Christmas yesterday and my mega generous brother got me a 360! Woo motherfucking hoo!

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope all is well.

PS It occurred to me the other night that with all the physical activity that Wii users will go through, we might be about to enter a new rebalanced era of super strong nerds. Something to think about during the holiday season.

My 100th post is about ... you

When I was growing up, I didn’t really have a family, not like other people anyway. I don’t mean I was an orphan or any really tragic shit like that, I just mean… I was alone. An alcoholic father coupled with an over bearing mother and an older brother who was getting more fucked up by our situation that I was, but who was still trying to keep me in line was my lot. TV was my parents. It taught me love and life and right and wrong. But it never said my name, and it rarely listened.

So when I was 16 and I realised that this group of misfits I had been seeing a lot of actually meant something to me, it was a freaky fucking hallelujah moment. I mean, maybe you guys pick on me a little, because I seem like a victim. Maybe you laugh at me when you should be laughing with me, because you don’t get that I use myself as a joke. Maybe you don’t listen to me because you think I’m being ridiculous. Maybe you dismiss me because you don’t believe in me.

But when you see me you seem glad
And you give me a hug or shake my hand.
You buy me a beer or two when I’m broke.
You laugh even when you don’t get the joke.
You love the people I love, if I ask you to.
You smile at me, when I’m smiling at you.
You want me to get better when I’m sick.
You don’t stop talking to me when I’m being a prick.
You put my trousers over my shoes when I can’t move.
You aren’t freaked out when I tell you too much truth.
You listen to me even when I’m being boring.
You find me tea and aspirin when I’m hungover in the morning.
You call me even though I don’t call you.
You don’t abandon me when you meet someone new.
You don’t look away when you see me cry.
You’ll be at my funeral when I die.

That wasn’t supposed to rhyme, but you guys put poetry in my heart. Thanks.

Last Chance

I’ve just got home and I have to write this right now. I have to get it out of me before I puke it out. I need this moment to mean something because it just doesn’t mean enough to me.

My dad is dying. He has been dying for about 3 months now. He didn’t turn up to work for a couple days and one of his work friends stopped by to see how he was doing. It always amazes me that he has any friends considering what a bastard he is, but anyway, his friend found him in bed unable to move, so called an ambulance. The first I heard was a few days later, and it was that he was having his foot amputated because of his diabetes. I felt no sympathy or surprise at this as he had been a diabetic for a long time and he still drinks a lotta beer and eats a lot of ice cream. He has already lost a fair few toes to that half assed disease.

I ignored the email that told me - I didn’t think there was much I could do. But then a month or so ago, I got another one telling me that he was fucked. I mean really fucked. His organs were failing, he had water in his lungs and there was a lot of other shit I can’t remember. He was so fucked that they still hadn’t taken his foot as he wouldn’t have survived it. I went home from work the second I read that email after I left my boss a note. Kathy came and met and comforted me for a while, but it was only when my boss called to check if I was ok that I broke down. He was meant to have only a 15 percent chance of survival at that point, but that wasn’t even taking all of his ailments into account. It really cut me down. I’ve cried too much this year already.

Speaking of which, it just so happened that it was at exactly the time that I was having my final fight with Fred and Dee that I found this out. I had been waiting until I was entirely calm to email them and try to fix or end things and this news just made me not give so much of a fuck anymore so I just said what I had to say and boom it was over with them. Now that’s a fucking shame, but it is unrelated.

Anyway, my sister had asked me if I had anything to say to him, as it may be my last chance as he had an op in the morning. Fuck was that hard to come up with. Those last words. That summary of his life and what it meant to me. So I told her then held my breath until morning.

He survived and got moved to the long term ICU, which is where they put patients they don’t expect to get better. So we waited. And looked for a will. And waited.

And then he got better! All of a sudden he was a bit more coherent, and he was recovering from some of the many things killing him. I had made my peace with it, so when this news came it blew my motherfucking mind. Woo!

But then he got worse again. Awful in fact. Dying. My sister is all alone out there and the doctors make her make all the decisions, but there was one which she couldn’t make alone. Should we sign a Do Not Resuscitate order?

Thinking about this killed me. Well it should have, but in all honesty, I feel so removed from the man that I just didn’t want to make the decision. I mean who am I to decide the length of his life?

I’m his son. And that’s why the decision has got worse as he has. We’re past DNRs now. We have to decide if we should pull the plug. He’s in so much pain and there is so little of his mind left that its not a question really.

So back to today and this moment. Back to why it should be important. Today is the day that I have to phone my brother so that we can arrange a date to go half way round the world to help my sister kill my father. Today’s the day I have to agree to watch him die. I have no last words for him, no conversation that I wish we had. I just don’t think my sister should go through this alone, and I’m fairly sure my brother needs to have a few more moments with that old man.

So I have to watch my dad die.

I really don’t think that he deserves to have his kids around him weeping when he passes, but I also know that Gerry needs to see him one more time. He needs to say goodbye. again. He needs another chance.

Why I've got a cold heart

It’s cold outside, and I’m smiling. Maybe it’s my infinite love of Christmas that makes me think the air is all sparkly and magical as soon as it chills your bones.

I never liked that film The Snowman. Maybe it’s because I have never seen it, but something about it bothers me. I only saw It’s a Wonderful Life a few years ago, long after I began feeling the holiday spirit deep inside me every year. To me Christmas is more about the nice feeling you get in the air. The feeling that permeates everything because of the growing number of people who have spent their day buying things for other people.

I know lots of people find the process of Christmas shopping a chore, perhaps even most people, but they are still thinking of others when they buy all that stuff. Even the most mean spirited people must have a nice few moments thinking of how their friends will react to the shit they have bought them. It’s nice, and it’s everywhere all at once.

I don’t mind that the Christmas stock comes out earlier every year in shops. I don’t get sick of Christmas songs clogging the airwaves in every shop, pub and home. I have no problem with carollers. I can even forgive Neighbours being cancelled for a few days.

I love snow.

I love turkey.

I love presents.

And I love that it’s all on it’s way.

The Penthouse Blues

It’s dark and the night sky is glittering with stars and street lights, but I can’t see it because the wind keeps me blind.. I’m on top of a block of flats in front of London’s biggest police station and I’m not quite sober. My bones are creaking, my hands and muscles ache, and I’m shouting “We’re not going to be able to do it. I’m not joking. We’re going to drop it. Please listen to me”. Tiny amounts of rain speckle the air and I fear the worst, having realised that those below don’t care what I have to say anymore. I look at Kathy and shout over the short distance “You’re going to have to help too. Just try your hardest”. She nods gravely. I look at Saul. He is staring over the edge with exhausted determination.

And then the waiting is over and we hear them countdown. Saul reaches over the top trying to grab a rope and not be pulled over. Trying to be the hero, for he is trying to save all of those below. He gets it and pulls. Pulls like a buffalo pulling a train. Like a bear fishing for a pool table. I lunge over and get a grip. We pull. It comes up. “Stop” they cry. We are hooked on something. Those at the bottom rush up to help us. We lift it into the warmth and celebrate. There is still more work to do, but after the great battle of the stairs, this final victory feels like the sweetest and greatest.

When we’re done a few hours later, the champagne drowns out real pains and we settle down to a night of partying. We are no soldiers, but we feel like we had been in a war. If any of us had tried a bit less hard throughout that day, that pool table could have dropped and killed any of us. The movers even said it couldn’t be done, but we got it into that roof top sactuary for Mark. We saved each others lives that day. And for that, we get to play pool. Maybe now’s the time to get good.

TUNE!

Don’t you just love it how a single tune can just make you one happy motherfucker even if you is feeling like one big pile of crap? Maybe I’m more susceptible than most to this as apparently I am emotionally explosive, but I find more often than not, no matter how sorry I am feeling for myself, if I put on some funky shit I get all excited real easy.

It used to be TV that would be my crutch in times of not-so-great sorrow, but there is so much shit on these days that it’s often hard to find that smile from channel hopping. Flicking between tunes or listening to Radio 6 (which fucking rocks) though can just change my whole day. Hell yeah.

Or sometimes I’ll hear some song lyrics that I’ve heard a million times before and it’ll just be like “Woah! That is motherfucking profound. I’ve never thought of life like that before.” Or some similarly melodic eureka. This is typically from when you are newly in love, or newly fucked over by love and finally all the cheesy shit on the radio which you have ignored all your life makes sense. But it can be from other things too. Such as the Oasis pointless classic Wonderwall

“And all the roads we have to walk along are winding / And all the lights that lead us there are blinding / There are many things that I would / Like to say to you / I don't know how / Because maybe / You're gonna be the one who saves me ? / And after all / You're my wonderwall”

I used to think that this was a poignant yet vaguely meaningless ballad about how hard life is to get right, but now I realise that it’s just about being really mega fucked and not being able to walk straight, see straight (coz your pupils are dilated so the lights blind you) or really talk, so you need someone to direct you home. And how do you thank this saviour of yours? With meaningless gibberish (“Hey….. you know I fucking love you right…. You fucking saved my ass…. Thank you…. I would never have got home without you…. you’re my fucking saviour… my fucking wonder…wall…. bleugh”). Good old Gallagaher brothers. Go straight to the heart of the matter.

Post Boozing Depression

I don’t know why but recently, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being an asshole. I try to be nice all the time, but it just doesn’t seem to work. I keep finding myself giving me pep talks. Telling myself that I just need to get back to who I am. Who I really am. Or at least who I was. The guy who had a lot of friends. The guy who everyone thought was funny, and very few disliked. That guy went away a along time ago, but I remember being him, because he’s me.

Things have shaken me up recently. I’ve been a mess trying to get my head around all the little bits of shit that have been flung at me. So I try and go back to who I want to be, and sometimes I think I’m there, but then I talk to someone and almost instantly I think “Why the fuck did I say that?” and clam up. It may just be confidence based paranoia but often it is fully justified, as I say some mean motherfucking shit sometimes. So I guess maybe I am a bastard. Maybe. I hope not. I keep trying not to be.

I miss my friends. I can’t seem to connect with them anymore and I think that’s my main problem. I keep so much stuff inside these days that I feel a need to deflect all the time, so if someone asks me about something I don’t want to talk about, I just say something mean. And often I don’t even mind talking about it, it’s just because I haven’t up til now so I have subconsciously assigned it as a secret and so try to defend it, often by being a dickhead about someone else. And it makes me feel sick.

Bleugh. That’s me. Bleugh. And I don’t know how to get better. But I suppose tomorrow is another day, Nurofen Plus is on its way, and soon I probably won’t be so goddamned hungover.

I quit smoking a year ago today

With furious impertinence a man who looks just like me threw his girlfriends food on the floor and stormed out of the restaurant. “I’m sick of all you hypocrites” he screamed through the glass at the rest of the diners who were chewing on their grisly goods with glee. He dropped the Happy Meal box he still clutched and stomped it flat until it could be stomped no more. A small piece of plastic rolled out of the box corpse and a tear rolled down the man’s face. “You poor little toys. You’ll never know the evil this Clown puts you in the service of”.

The man had not been happy with his happy meal you see, because the McStaff had given him carrot sticks instead of chips. And I think we can all agree that for this they truly are bastards.

Death and ...

I just had to do my taxes. Man did that ever suck. Especially considering that the only reason I had to do them was due to a month long accidental stint of being self-employed brought upon me by the ‘benevolent’ creators of Teachers TV. Those self righteous bastards couldn’t be bothered to do the little bit of extra paperwork necessary to put me on PAYE so instead I am going to be quizzed about my financial habits yearly for the rest of my life.

Luckily I don’t really have any financial habits. I only had to fill in about 20 of the 2,000 questions so that was nice (well I haven’t heard back from them yet, so I assume I only had to fill in 20 of the 2,000). The thing is that even though I had to fill in only 20 questions, I still had to read the other 1,980 questions to check if I had to answer them. And oh boy is that a motherfucking chore. If you have ever done your own taxes then you’ll know. It basically involves trying to concentrate really hard, and then screaming “BUT WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN YOU BASTARDS?” every 20-30 seconds.

And they give you this booklet to help you fill in the form. Now, I don’t know if it’s just me, but every question I looked up in the booklet for some help was even worse than the question itself. At one point, when I was particularly frustrated, I found that the booklets helpful answer was “It’s not too late to do your taxes online”. Those bastards. Those evil son’s of bitches. If I was going to do it online, why the hell would I read all this shit? What if I didn’t want to do it online? What if I hated computers as much as taxes themselves? Why would they say that? Why won’t they just help me? WHY? YOU BASTARDS WHY? ALL I WANT IS TO GIVE YOU MONEY? WHY WON’T YOU HELP ME? WHY WON’T YOU LET ME GIVE YOU MONEY? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? WHAT ARE YOU GETTING OUT OF IT? CERTAINLY NOT MONEY AS I’M TRYING TO GIVE YOU SOME AND YOU’RE JUST MESSING WITH MY FUCKING BRAIN. TAKE IT YOU FUCKING BITCHES, JUST TAKE IT. AAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH. I HATE ALL YOU INLAND REVENUE BASTARDS. ALL OF YOU!

So you see, doing taxes is quite stressful. Try to avoid it if you can.

Terror

I was involved in a serious spider attack last night. It came out of nowhere and made me remember all my fears again. Once the screaming had died down I still felt freaked out. Stupid spiders.

I was sitting at my computer, reading an email when suddenly this little spider slowly lowered itself on its web right in front of me onto my keyboard. As it was only small, I didn't panic, but said "Hey little dude, I don't know where you think you are, but right here is death for you". I got up and walked calmly over to the tissue box and got one out, ready for the big squidge. The spider was still ambling about on my desk. I just happened to be watching Dominic Diamonds Channel 5 programme about religion, and all this talk of God made me stop for a second and think. "I shouldn't kill you little one." I said "you're quite pretty I suppose, with those black and yellow stripes, and that huge ass of yours sticking up in the air..." I paused for a second with the tissue (which of course I had kept poised over the thing this whole time) and slowly moved back. THEN IT FUCKING LEPT ONTO ME. It was a good foot that it jumped, right onto my trousers. All calmness left the room at that point. I ran out of the room, batting my legs with my hands as much as I could. I dashed into the bathroom and tore off my trousers and socks and kept batting myself at any tingle I felt, and checking for a spider in the mirror. I wanted to take a shower just to make sure, but I couldn't stop wriggling and screaming like a girl. After what felt like about 10 minutes I left the bathroom and my trousers and crept back into my room. I kicked anything it could be hiding under then leapt back. I kept looking around my computer, even though I knew that it had left with me. I couldn't go near my computer for the rest of the night for fear. I'm not sure when I'm next gonna wear those trousers.

Stupid spiders. Stupid Justin.

Happy Birthday

Dear Lady Batchelor,

I am very sorry for missing your birthday this weekend. If you recall, I came to your other birthday last weekend and had a really splendid time, so I am very sorry that I missed this second soiree. Your first birthday bash was such a delight, that I have no doubt that your second bash was an equally stunning success. Without the ducks I would suppose, but a delight nonetheless I must presume.

I hope that fun was had by all, and that there was a whole lot less feeling poorly than the previous week. It is such a shame when the youth of today lets themselves down by over indulging in beverages and then proclaiming things they would otherwise not proclaim, and regurgitating things they would otherwise not regurgitate.

Enough of this nasty chit chat, and back to the main. Katy, you are a year older, wiser and prettier now. I hope that you are also a year happier too.

Best wishes

Sir Justin Scraggybottom

What goes on tour, stays on tour

A few months ago, James came up to me and said “So man, you still up for that lads night out then?” and I was like “What lads night out?” And he said “On the 2^nd of September we’re having a lads night out. We’ve never had one before. Come on, it’ll be a laugh”. Of course I was up for it, but at the same time immediately suspicious, as I had heard nothing of this before that moment, and because it was so far in the future it felt like something must have been being planned. And of course because prankster Whiteboy was saying it to me.

Then a couple of weeks ago, a very drunken Nick let slip that it was going to be my stag do, and that I was supposed to be marrying “some chick named Belinda”. After we had had the “but Belinda’s my sister you sick fuck” conversation, I started to get worried. Even more so when it turned out to be true by all accounts. We were gonna have my stag do, even though I wasn’t getting married. A day that I had always feared coming of it’s own accord and for no reason. Oh shit.

I kept on whining to Kathy about it. I was afraid what they might do to me. That if they had just planned a day to pick on me, that was tantamount to bullying wasn’t it? She said “If you are so worried about it, then why don’t you just not go”.

Once when I was out of my mind many years ago, I came home at like 6 am and thought all I wanted to do was to watch cartoons. But it was fucking early and I didn’t want to wake anyone up, so I put the subtitles on and the volume down. It was some action cartoon or another, but I remember clearly the subtitles getting stuck after a while, but I kept watching for hours anyway. The thing is the subtitles got stuck on the line “What’s the point in a booby trap if you don’t set it off”. And to me at that time, that was the most profound thing I had ever heard.

And that’s why I had to go despite my massively unjustified fears. And it was a great day. Oh yes.

I was so drunk that day

I live a very insular life right now. What with Magnus and my new/old job, I spend a lot of time on my own staring at this screen. So it was a beautiful thing on Sunday to go to the Carnival for the first time. Not least of all because it was Tom’s birthday on the day after (HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAN!). It was great though, not because I hung out with thousands of people in a street party (I’m still too afraid to talk to strangers) but because I saw most of my friends smile that day and there were no bad feelings afterwards.

Dave wasn’t too happy. He doesn’t like strangers any more than me. Probably less. And it didn’t help that I treated him like a girl who I was trying to get to have a good time (I enlisted a drunken Nick’s help to grab Dave’s arms and make him dance down the street a little). I only stopped when he reminded me that I hated it when people did that to me. I’m sorry for that Dave. I’m especially sorry I tried to pinch your cheeks to force a smile. No man has the right to touch another’s beard growth area.

Apart from that though, it was great. I mean frickin’ awesome. I’m upset that I have never been before because it makes me see the magic in this city that I feel I have been missing all my life. So viva la carnival. And viva Mr Thomas William Excelsior Inwood. They both rock.

yeah.

Pacman

The King of Bad Ideas grew a little older on Friday. That’s right, it was Sauls 24^th Birthday. And a rave up time it was.

I have to be honest, I can’t remember much. I remember dancing for a long time, which means that I must have been exceptionally fucked, and I remember people giving me odd looks, but that’s about it. Oh except for all the people coming up to me and asking for drugs (that always happens to me though. I must be one drug dealing looking motherfucker). Kathy says that when we came and woke her up at 5 am, we all seemed pretty happy though, so I’m assuming it was a good night.

I’m still afraid though. I haven’t been out of the house in four days, except in my garden. I’ve got this feeling that something happened. That I did something. And although I can’t remember much about that night, I’m afraid that if I’m allowed to be around too many people too soon, that I might just do it again!

But anyway, enough about me. Let us all join together in praising the man of the week, Mr Saul Graff. A guy who has been there for me every time I’ve needed him to be. A man who makes me laugh every time I meet up with him. A legend.

Saul man, happy birthday. And many motherfucking happy returns.

A Little Bag Of Justin

I gave blood yesterday for the first time. I’ve always wanted to do it, but something has always stopped me. Also, strangely my mum has always been against it. She has always thought that I should save my blood for myself for some reason, so used to frequently rip up and throw away the letters from the blood donation people. They got so pissed off with me not coming to the sessions that eventually they sent me a letter saying “This is your final letter. We can’t afford to keep posting things to people like you who just won’t give blood no matter how many chances you are given”. Strong stuff. Trying to shame me into giving blood.

I still got another letter later from them saying “One final chance. Please, we need your blood. PLEASE.” After that it just descended into begging. So after this long build up, I was a bit disappointed when I did finally give blood. I have always thought it would be a wonderful and yet deeply gross experience; with blood pouring out of your arm while nurses are stuffing you with cookies and muffins and forcing money into your other hand. No money though. No muffins either. Just little packs of biscuits the nurses had stolen from hotel rooms. And I didn’t even feel all mega fucked up afterwards. I was hoping for a light inebriation, but all I got was a slight confusion, which didn’t really make much difference.

It wasn’t really gross either. And it only took like 5 minutes. So I guess my point is – give blood. You might as well. It’s not difficult, and it leaves you with a feeling that you may have helped save someone’s life. Unless some stupid nurse drops your blood and the bag bursts and so really you have just made some cleaning ladies day a bit worse. But either way, at least I know that there is a little bag of Justin out there somewhere, just waiting to fuck somebody up.

Hi Ho

I heard something on the radio the other week which seemed so self evident that I was surprised that I had never thought of it before. These two English guys were making fun of some American or other who had made stupid grand pronouncements about the social effect of Disney films.

Stupid American: “The film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” is really all about promoting a good work ethic. Here we have 7 physically challenged old men – we knew they were old because they had those long grey beards – who lived a bare existence in the forest, who had to work in a mine. And did they grumble about it? No. They went to work singing everyday. Hi Ho, It’s Off To Work We Go. Can you think of a more positive way to start a working day? I believe there was one fellow who was grumpy most of the time, but that was more of a plot device than to do with the work he was doing”

English Commentator: “So the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was about promoting a good work ethic then apparently. This guy seems to have missed out the fact that despite there bare existence, these 7 physically challenged old men had a monopoly on a diamond mine…”

I forget what he said next, because those words stuck with me. Monopoly on a diamond mine. Monopoly on a diamond mine! The fucking seven dwarfs had a monopoly on a diamond mine. Those little fuckers were rich. Puts the whole film in a new perspective. No wonder they weren’t too bothered that some white bitch came and brought loads of trouble down on them.

They knew they could buy their way out of trouble if they needed

Des précisions en Français.

I asked Nick to translate an email from a Magnus submitter the other day. His response made me truly believe that he should work to further international understanding, and break down the language barrier once and for all. Enjoy:

Cher Monsieur,
Je vous prie de bien vouloir m' excuser d'utiliser la traduction informatique, aléatoire, pour m' exprimer en Anglais, et vous remercie de me permettre des précisions en Français.

//Sorry to have used babelfish, but I never learnt your language because your ppl and your culture disgust me, thank you for letting me write to you in my native (and far more elegant) tongue. Such understanding is not what we expect from you pig-ignorant roast-beef enthusiasts.//

Je vous remercie pour toutes les peintures que vous avez placé dans votre magazine.

//Cheers for all the pretty pictures you done put in your mag, like.//

J' avais demandé à l' administrateur de ART actif un lien en direction de votre site, il vient juste d' être ajouté, toutefois cet administrateur exige de moi la réciprocité (un lien sur votre site), en compensation de la gratuité de son
intervention (la publication du lien sur la première page de mon portofolio).

//I had asked the acting manager of ART / the manager of ART active, to put in a link to your site, and he's only just gone and done it, would you believe. Now he wants you to return the favour, in compensation for his gratuity of his intervention [it strikes me that this gratuity is really a condition-laden demand for mutual back-scratching, but whatever]//

Pour avoir un lien sur votre site je n' ai pas utilisé le questionnaire que vous soumettez aux artistes, j' évite de donner des renseignements sur moi car je ne suis pas le sujet de mon art, donc pas de biographie ou informations autres que les sujets abordés en peinture, il vous est possible vérifier l' expression de
cette attitude à cette adresse: *****
cependant je vous prie de bien vouloir m' excuser et publier un lien
sur votre site en direction de www.artacti.com/ .

//In getting my link on your site, I did not fill in the questionnaire you give us artists, cos my art kinda speaks for itself like, so I don't like to give out info about me cos I am not its subject. Hence, no bio or subjects not pertaining directly to the painting. You can verify my position on this at the saatchi gallery address above. Hope this ain't a bother. So go on then, publish a link to the artacti.com address.//

Veuillez agréer, cher Monsieur, l' expression de mes meilleures salutations.

//Best regards,//


//PS I may have toned down the flamboyantly polite style in an attempt at mocking his not knowing English. Sorry.//

Why I don’t give a fuck about shit on the floor

I’m not for littering. Let me start by saying that. I have always thought that if there is a bin around then you should always put your litter in it. I mean, why not?

I have to admit though, that I’m not really that against littering either. Maybe it’s because I have always had a disgustingly high mess threshold so when I see rubbish on the streets I’m not really bothered in anyway. When we were in Amsterdam for the Queens birthday and the rubbish was piled higher than our heads I thought it was kinda amazing. Ditto for the aftermath of Reading festival. But I suppose both of those times were different to the norm as all that mess represented good times had, so the more there was the better the time it must have been.

I think my lack of caring about litter really just stems from living in Richmond. This place is fucking clean. So clean that I know that if I drop something on the floor, the likelihood is that tomorrow it won’t be there.

Which is why I had an argument with my friends tonight. We were on Richmond Green and there was a pile of empty beer cans abandoned near us, and I couldn’t see what the big deal was. Someone asked me if the rubbish bothered me. I said no. Because why would it? I know for a fact that regardless of whether or not people litter on the green that Richmond is so …well rich, that tomorrow undoubtedly there will be street cleaners coming by to clean it up. Caring about it is the equivalent of caring about cleaning your room before the cleaner does in a hotel. Why bother? It’s their job, and they are going to do it anyway.

Someone brought up the oh-so-clever point of, “Would you like it if the rubbish was up to here (points to a couple feet off the floor)? Because that is what would happen if everyone littered.” No, no it wouldn’t. I wouldn’t particularly care, as I have previously mentioned I have an incredibly high mess threshold, but more than that, would it really ever get that bad? Can anyone really actually believe that as humans we would ever let it get to the level where we were wading through our own rubbish? No. Certainly we would not. And definitely not in Richmond.

Someone else made the argument that if no one littered then we wouldn’t need so many street cleaners and so wouldn’t have to raise taxes to pay for them. I usually at that point would make the trite point that litterers keeping street cleaners in jobs, but I decided not to tonight, as I am a little older and wiser than last time I had this argument, and I know understand that no matter what happens we are still gonna employ the same amount of street cleaners. And even if we fire some, taxes will not go down as a result.

Can you seriously imagine any politician saying “and a special thanks to everyone for keeping the streets tidy. I’m not going to spend the money we saved on street cleaners on something else, instead I’m going to take it off your tax bills”. No? Because it’s a stupid fucking thing to say.

As I said at the start, I’m not for littering, but in Richmond, I don’t think it matters so much as elsewhere. I know England is filthy, but not this town.

Elspeth Driskill

So it's been about a month now since I last wrote anything. I didn't realise that I had been letting things slip so bad. Oh well, I'm sure almost no-one noticed.

And anyway, I've been busy busy busy these last couple of weeks. I've just got a new job, I've been editing my websites and also, I've been preparing (mentally at least) for my brothers wedding. Which was on Saturday by the way.

I've spent the last few months asking my brother over and over again, "So what is it exactly that I'll have to be doing as an usher?" and each time he told me that it wouldn't be much, that I just had to take care of the guests and the rest would be pretty straightforward.

I didn't believe him for a second, well not untill we actually got to the venue this weekend for the rehearsal and saw how shambolic everything was and was told by his other ushers that we'd just blag it basically. After that, I thought "phew so I can relax this weekend then".

Not so, from the moment I put on my monkey suit for the wedding until the moment I fell asleep that night I was constantly on edge. My brother was getting randomly stressed at things going right, and was taking it out on us. Not that things weren't really going right, but I think he enjoys being stressed out. The thing is, there really wasn't that much ushering to do, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that there were so many people to remember.

In my family, I am the figure of fun (as with my friends I suppose) so it doesn't suprise me that Gerry will have told his friends exaggerated tales about me. The problem was, that meant that lots and lots of people new who I was, and had that hopeful look in their eye that I knew them too. Add to that all of my new family in law, who I have met recently and cannot remember the names of, and the whole stag party who I do generally remember, but there are one or two names that slip by me. And then of course, all the random family friends who I haven't seen since I was tiny who think that somehow I will know who they are. Eventually, after using 'man' to address everyone for a few too many hours, I just starting acting as a bouncer and just shouted at people to do Gerry's bidding until they did it. Which was nice.

Anyway, the point of all this grumbling was really meant to be that now... I have a new sister. And her name is Elspeth (or Elle). And she is great. Oh yes.

Sleep... if you can get some

So it’s been a while since I wrote. What have you been up to? Nothing? Well anyway in the last couple of weeks there have been 5 parties which required my immediate attention, and I made it to four of them. Not bad hey? But then I feel like I probably missed out on the best one. Doh. I was incredibly hungover on the day of the missed party however and I think the fact that this snippet from Hollyoaks made me laugh more than anything has in a very long time, shows how drunk I was when I watched it (late the night before the missed party).

[Joe had just found out Louise has only asked him out to make her ex husband jealous]

Louise: When I asked you out, I meant just as friends

Joe: Friends?! You make me sick!

Just imagine that being said in real life. Trust me, it’s pretty funny.

Anyway, Happy Birthday to all relevant party throwers of late, and especially to Zoe, to whom I’ve very sorry I missed your party. Hope it was fun!

I'm didn't get naked.....oh there's photo's are there

I fire a shot at the man in black pointing a gun at me. He’s not very far away, but he’s half in shadow, so I can’t tell if I hit him or not. I raise my gun to fire again but when I pull the trigger nothing happens. Shit! Is the gun empty? What the fuck am I supposed to do now? I hold it up in front of me and try and tell what the hell is wrong with it. I start squeezing the trigger hoping it will fire. An old Slovakian appears from nowhere behind me and puts his hand on my gun and pushes it down and away from me. “Noooo…” he says gently as he takes it from me. Only then do I realise I was pointing the gun at my brother.

Exciting stuff hey. Well, I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you really, as apparently the stag do rule is “what goes on tour, stays on tour”. Needless to say, Gerry didn’t die, but he did get beaten up by two girls in bikini’s. And we did drink 91 pints between us in a five star hotel. And the majority of us threw up. A lot. Apart from that, I honestly don’t remember much except all my brother’s friends telling me on the way home that I could drink a lot as well as dance for hours, which as far as I’m concerned simply isn’t true.

But then again I do have another vague memory of deciding that my brother would have to drink as least as much as me, and then downing the rest of my pint. Maybe I took one for the boys hey. Because I fucking hate dancing. But I did love firing a gun.

I love you guys

This weekend was one of those times when lots of shit happens, but everyone is too drunk to be sure exactly what that shit was. Ignoring the shit for the moment, let’s focus on the hangover that comes the next day. Today. The hangover that makes you feel like you’re going to die and that you quite possibly want to kill the people who helped you get so fucked up too, only you feel too rough to do it.

Now I talk about hangovers a lot, about how sometimes they make the world seem beautiful, about how they can be kinda fun. But today’s hangover was not like that. It was like a never ending abyss of feeling like shit, and not being able to face making myself better. So I did the only thing I could, I sought help. I sought out one of my oldest friends, and luckily for me I got a bonus friend as well when I turned up at Tom’s house in the form of Susan.

I have known both of these people for a fucking long time. More than half my life. Tom is an almost Seinfeld shaped legend, and Susan is like my beautiful sister. And they made feel better. They reminded me that my life is pretty great, I just have to remember it. I mean, obviously my life is shit by most peoples standards, but the friends I have are so amazing that if I had a second mouth I would devote it solely to smiling all the time.

Susan really showed me why today though. She did the sweetest thing ever; she gave me a pencil holder. Now in itself that is a crappy present, but the fact that I had mentioned that I felt like I needed one for my business to her randomly at some point in the past and she had remembered, thought about it, about me, and got one is just… well it’s just perfect really isn’t it. So in honour of her, here is second limerick I ever wrote (I was going out with a girl called Carrie at the time)

There once was a girl that everyone knew as Susan
Who thought that it was her friendship I was abusin'
And although I'm not a poet you know
I just wrote this so I could show
That Carrie's friendship above hers, I'm not choosin'

I'm sorry this is poorly written...I'm a little hungover

So I discovered something weird last week, something that no-one is gonna care about, but something which I still feel like I should share. Where I live is under the flight path to Heathrow. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve gotten used to the planes. While I was at uni I forgot about them for a while, but now that I’m back I’m just used to them again. I often stare up at them when they go by, as they are filled with people who have just arrived from another country, and so I like to gaze up and wonder about all the stories that are inside that big tin can.

So after a lifetime of gazing it seems strange than neither me nor any one I know has ever noticed that where we live under the flight path, or more specifically the green where we have spent many a summer getting wrecked, is exactly where the planes put their wheels down in preparation to land.

See I told you that you wouldn’t care. But I thought I would share anyway.

Talking of flying things, some birds have nested on my roof just above my bedroom, and recently their eggs have hatched. Aww I hear you say. BUT NO! Not aww, AAAAAGGGGHHHH. These baby birds never shut up. From sun up to sun down they don’t stop chirping for a minute. And what’s more, they have nested right inside the guttering so I can in no way see the little birds for the limited aww factor they might provide. I’m thinking of getting a scarecrow and sticking it out my window, but we all know what happened to Homer when he turned on the birds.

The Real Lesson Of Time Travel

You know when you’re watching TV and in whatever TV series you happen to be watching, the characters for some reason go back in time? And when they’re actually in the past, one of them will say something like “Be very careful not to affect anything, as even the slightest change which you make could drastically alter the future”. Come on, you know what I’m talking about, just about every TV series does it. Even the fucking Simpsons has done it. Remember now? Good.

So I was thinking about this the other day, and it occurred to me, why does it only matter what we do in the past? I mean sure, they have future knowledge and whatnot so could intentionally change things, but usually they just step on a bug or save someone’s life to change the future irrevocably. And these things require no knowledge of the future at all. This basically means, what these sci-fi writers are trying to drum into us is that we do make a difference. That every action that each individual takes is in fact vital to the universe, and so we should all get out there and take action as our actions count.

Nice thought isn’t it. Makes sense too. It even makes sense that the sci-fi writers would want to tell us this message, as I assume that they are mainly nerds so spend most of their time indoors with delusions of grandeur.

The thing is though, that I thought it through a bit more, and if you think about it, every episode in every show in which they travel back in time, when they do return to the future it has never changed. I mean sometimes it has until they go back and fix it, but all those bugs they’ve squished and tea they’ve drunk and lasers they’ve fired and whatnot haven’t affected anything. So real the lesson we should learn from these shows is that nothing we do affects anything. We could blow up the white house, exterminate a species or give all our enemies the plague. And the future wouldn’t change.

So all our actions are pointless. That sounds more like the message sci-fi writers would want to give us. There is a bitterness inherent with being a geek with too much power. All that knowledge and bullying mixed together isn’t a good thing.

So basically what I’m saying is this weeks lesson is that you can do what you want, as ultimately there are no repercussions.

Happy 256 Day

Ha I fooled you there for a minute there didn't I? I'm not depressed, it's 256 day! If ever a day could be an equal to my birthday or Christmas without presents then this is it. I was just trying to add a cliffhanger into the proceedings.

I've come to the conclusion from this day that you should spend more time thinking about what you could have and less time thinking about what you used to have. I have nothing but potential right now, but on this day I did like 256 suggests and lived like I should. And so I spent my day as I hope you spend many of yours, in the way I like best. In my pants playing xbox on a projector. On a bed. With snacks. And pancakes. And my girlfriend. And oh boy was I not sober.

Happy 256 day everyone.

PS I love you guys

I feel sick

So it’s 256 day tomorrow. My lucky day. My luckiest day. Theoretically the best day of my entire life. Yet I’m fucking depressed about it because I’m gonna spend it alone.

Never before has something this good felt so bad.

A fat person in a steam room

4.16am Sunday February 5th 2005. An old man gets onto a night bus after his arduously long wait is finally over. Although drunk as usual at this hour he somehow spots the plastic sign on the bus driver door as his gaze floats up from the floor. “One twenty” he thought “Those fucking bastards have done it again. I’m fucking lucky I found that twenty pee just now I suppose”. He handed over the money grudgingly as he snatched the shitty paper ticket. “Not much to look at for £1.20” he mumbled as he got his lighter out and made the heat sensitive paper draw itself a little happy face. The man next to him was trying not to look at him by staring as some discarded chicken bones as if he was starving before getting off at the next stop. Some more skull eyed passengers climbed on board looking for a place to rest. The last was an old mum without the baby and she glimpsed at him as she passed before sitting down nearby.

“I suppose you know who I am?” the man said, taking out a bottle of gourmet bourbon and offering it to the lady. After her smallest gestured indicated no chance of acceptance he swigged on the bottle viciously, then fell back with the bus as it turned, almost as if he was falling down in triumph. The man moved in front of his chosen companion and once more implied that she must recognise him due to his notoriety but the lady, now wishing she’d stayed at home with her baby just stared blankly out the window. The old man desisted for a minute and joined her gaze at the real life TV scenes flowing by.

“Just look at me” he thought “please just look at me. Just for a bit. Come on”. However no matter what the old man said his words could not attract her attention, full or otherwise, and she got off the bus with her eyes firmly avoiding his. The bottle of bourbon half empty now, the drinking became slower but the talking was faster. It was always going to be one of those nights. The remaining passengers looked like they might not want attention or at least like they might fight anyone who gave it to them, so the man just swung with the rhythm of the bus. After they got off the man, who for arguments sake we’ll call James O’Drunken-Nobucks or Hobo Jim for short thought he would have easy pickings for conversation. But none came.

“Just look at me” he thought so began loudly claiming to be every celebrity under the sun his drunken stupor would allow him to remember. The stupor also allowed him to remember briefly that by saying more than one name to the same people he was making his whole case less credible. “Both the fucking Attenborough’s” he said finally as he reached for at least a chuckle from these night monkeys who were all doing their own bus routines, which didn’t involve looking at him.

“So celebrity curiosity won’t get ya? Well then maybe more of a train crash approach might work” he thought. Or at least he thought emotions and mumbles which closely represented that sentence. So Hobo Jim in desperation decided to start with the racist jokes he heard from an unfortunate element he was forced to socialise with. He didn’t feel it, but holding a bottle of bourbon to your lips can make you say these things like someone who does feel it if they were in your state.

“Blacks…I hate em….i mean they’re just not white are they…they fucking black. And jews…stupid bastaaards…I knew a jew once….niss fellow but I fucking tol him, I said to him once…..thas no fucking yours! Asianns…who do they think they’re foolind….they want to kill us….kill you…..the poor babies. And those other asianssss…..they kill their own babies….why…fucking foreigners…..fucking glasses wearing freaks fucking ginger glass wearing looking down your nose at me pricks who come from other fucking cities. Not English cities. Not English. I’m English. ENGLISH. I wanna keep England clean. I mean pure…fucking pure…b…n…p. B fucking NP. BNP BNP BNP!”.

Still no reaction came from Hobo Jim’s chosen audience. “Got to make it worse. You bastards why are you making me do this” his thoughts indicated but his words were “Hitler, Hitler Hitler was fuckin…” he hesitated before he could actually say it “….right. He was a clever man. Not a little fucking arsehole no. He thought of some things which should have been thought of. Fucking lazy bastard killing himself. Fucking cunts. Fucking KKK. I love the klan. I would have my own outfit if I could keep it clean”. At this Hobo Jim fell down in apparent pain but was actually a fit of drunken laughter trying to fight through his cough reflex whilst not disturbing his agitated puke reflex. Sitting on the floor he stared up at his companions on the bus and cursed their names silently, as he didn’t know what they were.

He got slowly to his feet with the same repetitive beat in his head “Look at me. Look at me you pricks. You fucking pricks. If I was you and I was hearing all this shit I would look at me. I would beat the life out of me for being such an arsehole. So look at me. LOOK AT ME. FUCKING LOOK AT ME, THEN YOU’LL SEE….” But his thoughts were stopped as he saw the restrained look of terror on the faces of the white late nighters as a young black kid got on the bus, said a friendly “hi” to him. The other passengers were looking at him now, but in the reflection in the windows or out of the corners of their eyes, their unwillingness to be involved in an ugly scene stopping their direct attention being given. The kid put on his headphones and stood right next to Hobo Jim swaying side by side with him to the rhythms of the night bus. “You might look at me” he thought as the bus ambled along through seemingly ridiculous side streets “that was the nicest hi I have heard since I was last sober…and who knows when that was. But I can almost feel all of those people’s attention right on me. And then they’ll all see. I’m too far along to stop now. I’m really sorry…..”. Once more his actual thought was more like that of a terrifying wordless flashback in a rubbish movie, but the ideas were always there.

“Oompa loompas” Hobo Jim said to the headphone noise next to him “ummm…I mean umbongo loompas”. He tried once more to say something racist but without the dumb feelings behind it he was unsure how to show his apparent disgust. Dancing around him might help in a kind of tribal mocking way, but as luck would have it the kid got off the bus. Whether he knew what Hobo Jim was doing or not, the whole scene smelled more disgusting than Hobo Jim himself.

“I’m special” Jim thought as he got off the bus. He had already shouted abuse at the passengers for being too pathetic to intervene, but they just ignored his abuse just like the rest of his words. You see hobo Jim was special and he knew that he had something amazing within him that he could never just show people. After a long hobo type life he had drunk enough to flood an apartment complex so his memories were thin on the ground. He could clearly remember more than once in his life looking up at someone and them telling him he was special. They were just random glimpses of his life though, many of which were clearly when he was young as they would add the word “boy” to their declaration of his specialness.

It was definitely more than one person who had told him this. That’s why he wanted people to look at him. Maybe if they just looked at him as those in his past had, they would see his specialness too. Then they wouldn’t ignore him. Then they would at least look and give that little nod that they seem to afford each other but not him. Hobo Jim fell into the gutter and stared up at the stars and for the first time in years he remembered why he was special just like everyone else.

When he was 14, he was in the upper classes for Science and Maths so he was taught Upper Level Gravity Abuse at a young age. The teacher had the largest mouth that he had ever seen. He began the very first lesson by opening up his gigantic gob and pointing with a very satisfied look to a glob of spit of above average size and telling the students that it was the most amazing thing they’d ever seen. Ever since mouth gravity had been realised, everything had ultimately been about spit.

See a science guy whilst taking pills once realised that within his mouth he could control the position of everything in it without using seemingly sufficient muscle movement to cause it. It was on this day that the idea of mouth gravity was created. Further study into the mouth showed that in fact millions of particles were kept floating within peoples mouths due to subconscious control of what was named the super eating gland. Whilst eating you see, the subconscious uses your control of gravity within your mouth to stop you from choking. However as there are very few people in the world who could claim that their subconscious is not without its hiccups, the subconscious also seemingly accidentally collects and stores particles in a random order within your mouth. It was discovered, after the craziest set of experiments took place, that with a little bit of mental discipline the matter stored in ones mouth could be manipulated. These are tiny little bitch particles and the manipulation is barely noticeable even under intense magnification, but it was still crazy shit.

Hobo Jim knew all this at 14, and this class was to take him into a weird elite which had sprung up since these discoveries. “This spit is amazing” the giant jawed freak barked “not because I can move it, but because of what that movement means”. The dull expression on Hobo Jim’s face would have been comparable to any of those at church, and he sat there waiting for a penny anywhere to drop. “You see the particles in our mouths it seems according to eminent astrologers are generally arranged like a miniature universe. By moving different parts astrophysicists can study our own universe in amazing ways. By simply opening and closing our mouths we move the whole thing except for the centre, but it is the centre which is the most amazing. By making it spin, we can bring the whole universe in our mouths alive as the smallest amount of energy to us provides abundant heat and light on their microcosmic scale. My spit is alive. Isn’t that the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen?” The teachers previously monsterific face somehow seemed softer and less repugnant after he made this last statement. It was that statement that made Hobo Jim special. Not because he spun the middle of his own universe, as he had given up long ago and there was life inside him no-more. It was because he had a whole universe inside him. And one day he would bring it to life again. But probably not today. “If only someone would look at me” he thought “then they’d see. Just look at me…”

Don't miss out

The beautiful thing about London is that there is always a million things to do. I know that this can be said of many capital cities, but London is my Capital, so I’m saying it.

Anytime of day or night, you can basically do whatever you want, if you just know how to find it. This is great for visitors, as they can come with their travel guides, find out where their preferential fun spots are and go. While they are here they can be entertained endlessly.

For people who come stay live here for a portion of a greater travelling experience however it seems to be a different matter. Even for people who just move here for a job, London becomes too much. It’s addictive, or so I hear. Every night that you stay at home for a quiet evening, it preys on your mind that you could (or even should) be doing a whole variety of unique events. Every night that you go out, you could be doing a whole load of other, possibly more exciting, things. And even if you do have a gap in your calendar and you stay in through choice, surely the number of friends you have made in London mean that you will be inundated with stress about who to see and who to ditch. I’ve been told that it’s just too much to take, but that’s it’s also too much too leave.

It’s different for Londoners though. I once went to a random house party whilst I was at university with my flatmates. All of my flatmates happened to be from London, but none of us knew each other before we went to Uni, so I found it very strange when a girl at this party asked us as soon as we sat down “Are you guys from London?” Now as I said, we all were, but all from different parts. When I asked her how she knew, she said “It’s just something in the way you move and present yourselves”. Now this was doubly strange, as apart from coming from different areas of London, my flatmates and I were all incredibly different types of people.

I think I understand now though. As much as all the events to attend in London freak out non locals, it builds a certain sense of fatalism into Londoners. We all know that there is a million things we could be doing each night, so we’re not worried about missing them. Because there will be a million more tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

A plea to a hero

There is a man. A man of danger and intrigue. A man of chalk. And he’s terrorising Richmond as we speak.

The man, who for arguments sake we’ll call Sir Chalkalot, has been waging a war of amusing chalky terror against the citizens of Richmond for about a week now, and I say God bless him. Although God himself probably won’t because one of Sir Chalkalot’s writing clearly designates a local church as a pub.

You see this man, well to be honest I assume it’s just a boy, has been labelling all sorts of minor landmarks throughout Richmond, as well as occasionally simply leaving his own point of view around. This point of view is generally about penguins or smurfs or somesuch frivolous matter, but I like it.

By a paper recycling bin it says “We like bikes. We cycle.” Genius.

He appears to have avoided any attention from local authorities, or anyone, so far as none of his scrawlings have been wiped off except by the scuffling of feet. Not even the one of his illustrated writings which proscribes the proprieter of a shop as a ‘nob’. He has not however avoided the evils of alcohol (or perhaps drugs) it seems as everyday his writings make less and less sense.

So my plea is this, Sir Chalkalot if you are reading this, please don’t give up. Sure some of the stuff you write is drivel, and sure a lot of it doesn’t make sense, but the people of Richmond need fucking with and I just can’t be bothered to go buy some chalk. Also, it seems fairly unlikely what you are doing is illegal due to the removable nature of chalk, so you may as well keep going until that packet of chalk I assume you found runs out.

Terrible Lizards

I had the most terrifying nightmare of my life last night. No giant or metal spiders this time though. No Freddy Krueger.

It was set in the future. We were doing some sort of experiment in my house, nothing major, just an experiment. When it suddenly blew up. Everyone else was wearing protective gear but me, so I had to run and wash off the stuff we were working on, but it was such dangerous stuff that I flushed the toilet and used that to wash my head instead of the sink.

Pretty scary huh. But wait, there’s more.

All the little bits of goop which had been flung around from the explosion were gone when I left the bathroom. No-one else had noticed but I started looking around for an explanation. After awhile I saw this little lizard. So I squished it. Then I saw some other little lizards. Except they weren’t so little. They grew pretty fucking quickly to small dog size. And they had razor fucking sharp teeth. And the clincher was that they could go through walls and whatnot (in a kinda osmosis kinda way), and they only ate human food. Also, when they got big enough they split into two tiny ones and then grew again.

I spent all night running around my house in hysterics trying to avoid these beasts. Also because they only ate human food, they were constantly after me, as for some reason I was serving up delicacies to everyone from our futuristic oven. No-one else was afraid of them. I think they only hated me because I squished one of them. It was fucking terrifying.

When I woke up this morning, it took me a good ten minutes to get out of bed. I was paralysed by fear, and only part of that fear was that I must have wet the bed after such a nightmare. Luckily I hadn’t, but I’m still feeling a bit on edge about those terrible lizards.

I hate bigots

What is the female version of misogynist? If you type misogynist into google the first answer is that exact question. And the answer is The equivalent is misandrist (a person who hates persons of the male sex), a rare word but seemingly much sought-after.

A rare word but much sought-after. That just demonstrates the whole point I’m about to make. Sexism is a two way street.

Now before I start complaining, don’t get me wrong, I know that men are sexist. In fact I think it would shock most women how sexist most men are, even the nice ones. But the thing is, the men who aren’t dickheads keep it to themselves. The thing about women is, they are proud. Hating men is like a higher calling for them. Feminism is like sainthood. I can’t be bothered to look up the male equivalent, but I’m sure it will be an equally rare word as misandrist.

And men, we’re afraid to stick up for ourselves. Women get badly treated in lots of places by lots of people, and that’s a bad thing. But I don’t do it personally, and neither does anyone (well pretty much anyone) who I choose to call my friend. So why then do we have to put up with women having a free reign in advertising and on television to slag us off as much as they want without anyone batting an eye-lid. In this day and age, if men on TV made such wide sweeping and frankly stupid comments about women, as women do about men in Sex and the City and other shit, then the shows would be banned. Women feel it is fine to call any man who stands up for themselves a misogynist whereas men don’t even know the retaliatory word.

Ann Summers is my case and point. I often say to my girlfriend that if I could be bothered I’d picket that place. Not because I think it’s wrong or dirty or whatnot, but just because it is porn. It sells dildos. A comparative shop for men would have to be behind closed doors and all hidden away, but Ann Summers just motherfucking flaunts it. And the desperate argument I have heard against this often is, “you love it really”. I fucking hate that. It’s the same as a women thinking that you will give her special treatment just because she’s pretty. I know that statistically men do do that, but still, pretty women should at least try to develop personalities. My girlfriend has.

Anyway to sum up, I want to say again that I realise that men are generally more sexist than women, and that men give women a lot more shit than women in a sexist way. I just am sick of the double standard which is in effect which makes nice guys have to apologise for dickheads, whereas bitches are publicly celebrated by women.

Pepe le peu

I would like to talk to you today about something which has annoyed me for a long time. Something which would have annoyed me for a much longer time, had I been older, as it happened long before I was born. Well I say happened, but it wasn’t an event really, just some stuff. I’m starting to annoy me with all this digression now.

I want to complain about Samuel Pepys. Now if you don’t know who I’m talking about then I’m not surprised, as I barely know. He was some guy who wrote a diary which survived the great fire of London. I think. I am no historian and know almost nothing about this man, except that in some circles his name has lasted through history. And it’s his name that annoys me.

Pepys. To start with it’s a plural, which is just stupid. But again I digress, as I really care not about that. Pepys. Should be pronounced pep – ees right? Would make sense. But no, it’s pronounced peeps. PEEPS! Who the fuck did this man think he was?

I can just imagine him now, swaggering through ye olde London with the plague, pulling a cart or persecuting someone for religious reasons when he see’s ye olde tavern and thinks “I’ll stop for ye olde ale”. He walks through the door and before you know it he’s like “PEEPS IS IN THE HOUSE” and everyone gives off a yanky “woo woo”. That damn bastard, who did he think he was? The father of hip hop? He had a pathetic girly name, and he tried to act all cool about it. And somehow it worked as his name lives on and on.

Some people have all the luck. History lesson over.

Should have been a yes man

I don’t say yes anymore, I just say maybe.

Like maybe I am crazy. Maybe I do hate you. Maybe those are my drugs, and maybe I did take some.

Or maybe I’ll come out tonight. Maybe I’ll see you later. Maybe I’ll give you a call sometime. Maybe I do like you.

It’s an impractical way to live. People say

“Do you want some of this?”

and I say “maybe”

and they say “well which is it? Yes or no”

so I say “well it’s not no”

so they say “so it’s yes then”

so I say “maybe”

Then usually the violence starts.

And then the police come. And the paramedics.

“Can you hear me?”

“Maybe”

“Do you know what year it is?”

“Maybe”

“Are these your drugs”

“Maybe”

“Do you understand your rights as I have read them to you?”

“Maybe”

Then contempt of court. Then jail.

Then maybe just maybe, when I get out, I can have some of whatever I was offered which caused all this trouble in the first place. Maybe.

A Fools Game

I played poker last night again and after 6 hours of intensity, I came second. Second! It’s a shame it wasn’t for money otherwise…. well I still would have gone home broke I suppose. But then at least when I told other people of my first loser status, I would have been able to embellish with the amount of money which I almost won. Maybe even I would have been able to talk about what I would have done with the money. Probably something concerned the eating of some sorta pie.

But pie’s aside, gambling really is fun. I mean in Australia they have a cuss word for a non-gambler as 70% of the population gamble regularly. That’s a fucking lot of aussies ready to kick the crap out of you for using their fruit machine when they’ve just gone to get some change.

So a life of chance it is for me then. I’m going to spend all my spare time gambling on the internet and seeing what comes of it. I made $3,600 into $3,600,000 on GTA on my x-box so clearly I have the gene. If I just give it 10 hours a day everyday then I’ll be rich within the month.

Although I suppose 10 hours a day is longer than a working day. It hardly seems worth it in terms of sleep…

I'm not growing up, I'm just burning out

So it’s the middle of Earth’s lifespan. That’s what I heard on TV today. 5 billion years gone, 5 billion to go. Somehow that makes a lot of sense to me.

We are all like Earth’s midlife crisis. Half way through sitting around, just being a big ball of mud, it thought

“Shit! I have to do something with my life. I've been wasting away just staring at the sun for too fucking long. I know, I’m gonna create life. Millions of types of life. And they're gonna be all interesting and pretty and clever and stuff. Yeah.”. And so here we are. Living away and fucking up this ball of mud. It doesn’t notice anyway. It’s too busy checkin out mars’ butt.

So what’s my point? I feel old I guess. I’ve said it many many times, but this last week I was working on a TV film set and I really noticed it more. All the people at an equivalent level of employment were years younger than me. All the actors were younger than me. Even the lady who owned the club we filmed in was younger than me. Doh. Maybe it’s time to grow up hey.

But probably not. What do you call an African American flying a plane?

A pilot you stupid racist.

I got that directly from the OC. Maybe I’m not as old as I look. Or maybe I’ve just got bad taste in TV. Hmm. Whatever. At least I’m not younger than I look. Being young sucked. I just remember all those sweeties to buy, and no money.

Crumbling into the ashtray

So there I was. Fucked off my nuts in a penthouse in Putney playing poker and winning. And spinning around on my chair as the room gets smokier and smokier. Pretty soon I start asking myself “How the fuck am I winning?”

I clearly have no idea, so I begin asking other people. Seems they don’t know either. But now they’ve all spotted that I’m wrecked, it becomes unlikely that I’ll be winning for long. Because then of course my next move did have to be the only thing that I never do, and that’s bluff. But when you’re in my state, you don’t exactly bluff, you kinda just give your money away. As I was thinking “Now these guys think I’m wrecked so I can do clever stuff and they’ll never guess it was intentional!” But of course I was discounting the fact I really was wrecked. So one ‘all in –> me out’ later, I started making like a ringmaster.

Now rolling takes me a really long time, so if I really was making like a ringmaster, the lions would have eaten me a long time ago for wasting their time. But anyway, while I was doing that, smoke was flying everywhere, so I continuously had to switch between multi-tasking rolling and dealing poker, and smoking and dealing poker. The thing is, I’ve never really had much of an attention span. Remembering what I’m doing one minute to the next seems like a novel waste of brain power to me, so of course eventually, I found myself crumbling straight into the ashtray. ‘Son of a bitch’ I thought, ‘Seems like such a waste’. Yet in the state I was in, the profound logic of what I was doing kept me doing it for a second longer.

The moral of the story is this: people aren’t gonna necessarily scream “stop you idiot” to stop you when you’re wasting an opportunity.

Ask me no questions….

Being unemployed sucks. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it has its high points such as the sleeping in and the playing of computer games when you want. Ok so I don’t play computer games during the day anyway, but I like the sleep.

Anyway, the worst bit about being unemployed is the looking for a job. The destruction of one’s own current state is always going to be arduous, but more so when you have to convince the destructor that you really want it to be done. I’m talking about job interviews.

Like the one I had yesterday. A group interview in which no questions were asked. We introduced ourselves, then they said any questions? And surprisingly for a dominantly British group, people were ready to just jump in. The problem was that they were intensely irrelevant questions which would obviously have really fucking long answers. So after about an hour of that, we were given a 5 minutes math test and then told we could leave.

I asked no questions as I wanted to get to the interview. So basically I wasn’t there as far as the interviewers would be concerned as they had to see dozens of people, and one guy sitting in the corner not saying anything isn’t really going to stick out. Doh. So I did something that I’ve never done before, and I’ll never do again. I complained to the interviewer by email about the interview.

Today I got a reply. You were the strongest candidate for one of the positions, we are sorry that you do not want to continue with the interview process. I protested my interest in the interview protest, but to no avail. Stupid interviews.

Stupid unemployment.

Stupid me.

Again!

I lost my ring last night. I was a little tipsy after watching "the big game" in the pub, so decided a bacon sandwich would be the best thing for my very slightly hungry stomach. My mum and step dad were up so after taking a bacon poll, I cooked some for them too. After I had made my mini feast I looked down at my hand and realised that my thumb was missing it's most important component - the ring! So I freaked out and looked through my pockets, through my jacket, through the fridge, through the bushes outside. And nothing. I decided that maybe I should wait til the cold light of day to look again. Depressed but full I went to bed.

The next day, well today I suppose, I rumbled out of bed and went straight to work. I searched and searched inside and out. No joy. And it was fucking cold outside in just my dressing gown and novelty shaped slippers. But damn it no ring. I’ve lost that little circular bastard too many times to just put it down to c'est la vie as it keeps coming back and then disappearing again to piss me off. It's like the one true ring in that gay midget film, except that it's got nowhere better to be, and nothing better to do than mess with me. Unless of course it considers me the giant eye, always looking for it, but in that case where are my armies, and why do I have eye-lids?

But anyway, today to cheer myself up I made another bacon sandwich. And guess what? When I unwrapped the cheese it was sitting there all cold and shit. That little bastard. I’m gonna throw it into a volcano one of these days.

The ugly potato

Once upon a time there was a little potato. He was so small in fact that the other potatoes used to bully him all the time and call him a potatini. He would jump up and down and say “I’m not a potatini, I’m a potato just like you” but the big potato’s would just laugh. “Potatoes are at least as big as us. You’re not a potato, you’re just a little potatini”. And the little potato would cry and scream and complain, but of course this only made the big potatoes laugh at him more and tease him harder. One day though, they pushed him too hard and he flew into a rage and attacked them all. He was so angry that he mashed them all into a fine paste, even though they were not boiled, as is traditional with such a venture. The next day was picking day and the farmer came along to inspect his crop. Although the little potato had felt bad about his actions almost as soon as he had committed them, he was happy now as he was the only potato left, so the farmer was sure to love him. But lo, when the farmer came over to him, he just picked him and kicked him into the distance, and then cried for his mashed potato crop. For you see, the little potato was not a potato at all, but a rock.

What does prego mean anyway?

I went to the Pope’s house this weekend. Ok, maybe not his actual house, but his office at least. In his very own city. It was beautiful.

But not as beautiful as my lovely lady. She took me to Rome for the weekend. Never has such a nice thing been done for me, it’s just a shame that we can never return. Not because of legal reasons or what not, but simply for fear of getting fat.

Unsurprisingly, almost everything we ate in Rome was the tastiest motherfucking shit ever. But vaguely surprisingly, the pistachio ice-cream had a strangely amazingly addictiveness about it, that meant we ate it twice daily. And an ice-cream based diet on top of the four or so courses that you are expected to eat for each meal does not equate to healthy bunnies. In fact, I have no-idea whatsoever how all Italians aren’t immobilised by their gigantic fat asses. If I lived there, I know I would be.

But anyway, it was amazing and pretty and warm (in February). And somewhat sad. I don’t know about anyone else, but I have never thought of the Colloseum as a depressing place before. I mean, I know that life was different then, so fighting to the death wouldn’t be so strange, but when we were there I couldn’t help imagining all of the people who had fought and died for no reason. Not even entertainment. Those who had cried, or run, or just wet their pants. Those poor bastards. A tour guide we were eaves dropping on said that they used to employ little kids to aggravate the animals with big sticks, as otherwise they wouldn’t put up a good fight. Just think how many of those kids would have died for just not running away quick enough.

Ok it wasn’t sad at all apart from that. I bought a snow globe from a nun on top of the Vatican. I ran around the chariot course pretending to ram into Kathy. And we got very, very drunk. Mamma mia.

Lobster rocks, oysters suck

I ate lobster and oysters for dinner the other night. Not bad for an un/self-employed bum like me. Just so you know, lobster rocks, and oysters suck.

I was having dinner with my estranged father in a fairly swanky restaurant in London, and call me petty if you will, but I thought the man owed me a lobster dinner. I was gonna get a steak too, but I was afraid that the old bastard might have been making my brother pay, so I held back. No champagne either. Doh. Shoulda gone with my first instincts.

The only question which I asked the old man of any personal nature was whether or not he supported George Bush Jnr. I assumed that no-one with any brains did, but my Dad is a Texan oil man so I thought I’d check. And he said he did. And then I asked him how he could considering how stupid George is, and listed dozens of stupid things he had said and done. And my dad said, “You have to consider that he makes at least three speeches a day, so of course sometimes he’s going to make mistakes”. Hmm. I would like to think that if I made 3 speeches a day, my stupid mistakes wouldn’t be as frequent and apparent as his.

Anyway, I was talking to my mum the other day, and she told me that her sister in Iran was being forced to demonstrate in favour of nuclear power. Now up to this point I had kinda believed that the images of Iranians on TV supporting their president had been true. It’s funny how badly I can misjudge the two nations that I am from. Or at least their support for their leaders.

I kinda wish that in this case I was right. Being forced to protest is terrible. Believing a moron is a good man is worse.

Easy thoughts

I always find it annoying when my best thoughts come to me in bed. Not when I’m in my own bed, as I have surrounded it with pens and paper for exactly such an occasion, but when I’m sleeping elsewhere. It really gets to me. Not the least because usually with one good thought, comes another, and the joy of the good thinking means that you don’t want to stop and save it for later. Because you know that it doesn’t work like that. If you stop thinking the good thought, and then miraculously somehow later remember what the hell you were thinking about, you are never able to regain the original good thought cycle. Like if you were thinking of new flavours for jelly beans, you may later be able to think of other good flavours, but the original possible good flavours you were inventing in your head are lost forever.

And to be clear, I’m not talking about morally good thoughts. I’m talking about brain waves. Eureka moments. The times when things become clear. Although I suppose the jelly beans example doesn’t exactly demonstrate that too well, as they are generally opaque.

But anyway, I suppose we can all take solace in the fact that with so many people on the planet, it is quite likely that someone else is having the same thoughts as you somewhere else, and for them it might be daytime. And they may have a pen.

So if you ever realise something vital and want to write it down but can’t for some reason, just say to yourself “Fuck it, someone else probably will”.

Vive la France

A great friend of mine once said “What you’re crying about this? There are people dying in Bosnia”. I was 17 years old and another friend of mine had allegedly just thrown me down some concrete stairs. Amidst all the blood and booze pouring out of my head, and the bloody hand prints that I spread liberally around, a girl was crying.

I was her first boyfriend. And she was watching me die. I don’t remember the incident. I don’t remember the paramedics. I don’t remember telling half the hospital ward and my mother what I wanted to do to my girlfriend. And I don’t remember how she was while this was all going on. But Anthony does, because he was looking after her. Or at least comparing my drunken fall to the deadly bullets fired in a far away land.

That’s what I love about that boy. He was always prepared to say the most offensive thing in a situation, just for a laugh. He didn’t mind how it reflected on him, as long as it was funny. He would make racist jokes all the time, because he knew that no-one else in England would, even though he hated La Penn and racists in general. That’s why I was so happy when I heard that he was moving here looking for a job. But today he told me that he’s going back to Paris for a fourth interview for a job which he never thought he’d get. It’s sad that he’s leaving, but good luck to the boy.

In honour of his brief life in England, here is a joke he once made up to offend me. “What do you do if you see 5 black guys in Harlem harassing a young girl?” “Throw them a basketball”.

Dog Days

So I woke up today and I was hungover. Again. Because I went to the Racing Page and then O’Neils. Again. And then I came home and ate haggis. Again. My life is getting strangely repetitive. Or at least strange and repetitive. Except that today was different than yesterday. Because it was a good hangover. Not the kind of hangover when you can barely move for fear of puke. Not the kind where you search the bed continuously for the cold spot to put your head on. Not the kind where you can’t face the prospect of eating, but you know that until you eat you are going to feel more and more fucked. Not the kind where the dread seeps through slowly from your subconscious and you know, you just know that you did something to regret the night before.

It was the kind where you wake up and everything feels beautiful. The kind where you want to get up because you’re happy to be alive and you want to see the world. I mean I still felt sick. And pretty stupid. In fact really fucking stupid. But when I opened my eyes this morning, I kept them open. And not to stop the world from spinning when I closed them. And it was nice. I even walked from my house to my girlfriends, which is something I have never even considered before. I even had a shower before anyone else in my house, which is something I have never bothered to attempt before.

I was confused why I felt this painful joy. But then I remembered (via someone on TV telling me). It’s Chinese New Year. It’s now the year of the Dog. My year. Our year. And it’s going to be fucking great. It’s just a shame I’m more of a cat person.

Sven

I’ve got this swan on my chest which will never go away. It’s made up of three numbers which have many meanings but which mean nothing. I can’t get rid of these things, and nor would I want to, but the way people talk to me about it I have to get rid of its meaning, because people don’t get why I did it.

It’s not for comedy. The reason I give for 256 being my lucky number is funny, but I didn’t get ink in my skin for a funny reason. It’s not because I think it’s a mystical symbol. True, when I thought of the number I was all fucked up and I was like “woah man, what does that mean?!”, but even when I’m fucked out of my skull I don’t really believe the shit that falls out of my mouth. I got it because I’m an idiot.

I don’t mean I’m stupid. Because maybe I am and maybe I’m not, but that’s what not what I mean. I mean that it reminds me that I’m an idiot. It reminds me of the things I’ve done. The really stupid, dangerous, unrepeatable, unforgettable yet forgotten things which make me who I am. And I’m not saying that I’m a stunt man or that my scarred skin is a sign of humility to remember that I’ve been a fool. It’s a mark of stupidity to remind me that I am a fool. That I don’t care about the worlds troubles and rules. That I’m not going to just give in and live an ordinary life. That I’ve chosen to be a fool, because it’s more fun. That I’m not going to go gentle into that good night. Because if I did, then I really would be an idiot, and the worst physical pain I’ve ever felt in my life would have been for nothing.

Teleholic

I wake up and something’s wrong. I feel funny. I open my eyes but my eyelids won’t go all the way up. I’m really fucking hot even though I’m fairly certain it’s really cold outside of my body. I hear the longest weirdest gurgling sound that has ever entered my ears and I look around for the freak that must have made it. The movement hurts my head. Shit I was drunk last night wasn’t I?

But I didn’t even drink that much. Maybe I’m just becoming a lightweight. Wait, think back, what’s the last thing you remember? Picking on some kids wearing stupid outfits because they claim that they’re classical music scholars. And then getting my ass kicked my Gene Simmons. Wait that can’t have really happened. Must have been a dream. Which must mean that I was asleep at some point. Well that explains why I’m in bed. Hangover. Hungover. Can’t think fully, so will have to make do with the brain of a monkey. Check my phone. Ok so I didn’t send any miscellaneous messages, that’s always nice to now. Here comes that gurgling again and this time I’m sure it’s from my belly. And it feels good. Oh yeah. Oh wait it feels like I’m gonna be sick. Ok, so that’s passed. Hmm. Gotta find some water. And a way out of this bed. Fuck it, I’m going back to sleep.

Headache. Can’t sleep. It’s too early to get up though. Maybe I’m still drunk. Maybe I’m still asleep. Maybe I should stop drinking. Nah. Just watch the TV. That can become my reality. Ahh that’s better.