Edge Trinkets

We need to Talk

2008-06-17T14:15:00.002Z

Listen it's me not you, you know i will always love you Blogger, but i'm not IN love with you.... I've found someone else. Things are ... better. I'm very sorry.

If you need me i'll be at Edgetrinkets.com and if you need to know how i'm doing my new feed is http://edgetrinkets.com/feed.

Lets not make a big deal about this, we both knew it was coming. good bye.

Where I'm from

2008-05-30T11:55:00.002Z

I have a special way of depressing my brother; sometimes, whenever we are walking past a particularly awful piece of humanity that seem populate our hometown, I whisper to him “you know wherever we go and no matter how much we achieve, we will always be FROM Northfield”.

This is what the toilets are like in Northfield; covered in blood and stolen clothes, those that are not are kicked in for giggles or shit smeared out of sheer malice. Notice the strange blue tinge in the picture? This is a blue light bulb put into all public toilets in Northfield to stop the floor from being littered with used needles and smack corpses. It also means every time you use a toilet it’s like walking into a David Lynch film.

We don’t shoot each other in Northfield, we cannot afford the bullets, knives are considered showing off, so we settle for pushing pint glasses into each other and carrying table-leg coshes like gentleman’s walking umbrellas.

This is where I will always be from.

Surface Unsigned are Evil (and other inflammatory comments intended to appear should anyone google them)

2008-05-18T21:47:00.003Z

Back in March I was invited to contribute to Created In Birmingham (or CrIB as all the cool kids are calling it), this being an award winning blog with a wide readership* I, naturally, shat myself, worried that I would either break it, drive readers away or get the place sued. I tried to be nice and honest and lovely, one of the first posts I wrote was a post about an event I was going to, the Surface Unsigned Festival. I in my youthful naivety liked the idea of the format and recommended it. Quite rightly I was soon took to task, some readers pointed out that Surface Unsigned were a symptom of what was wrong with the music industry and suggested I was an idiot for saying otherwise.

Feeling like a prize twat I decided to appease the readers by having a look into the “festival” and discovered the structure of it was shady to say the least. Having got hold of the Terms and Conditions given to the bands I found that amongst this shadiness was the minimum ticket condition; basically each band HAS to sell a minimum of 25 tickets to be eligible to qualify for the next round, regardless of the esoteric and frankly biased points system. The upshot of this rule is most bands have to eat shit and buy the surplus tickets themselves, with Surface leaving the bands doing nearly all the promotion themselves.

Here comes the maths now amended from my original estimation on the first on CrIB now tha the figure are in, this rule guarantees for a bill of, on average 6 act per night, for the first round of 36 nights, and each acts selling 25 tickets at £6 each, a total of £194,400. (I’m willing for someone to correct me on this, my maths is famously shite)

I illustrated the post on CrIB with quotes from this leaflet pointing out that although they say the moneys goes on essential crew and personnel; I saw little of that in evidence at the gig. Willing to admit I was wrong and doing such a extensive job of investigating, I hopefully saved some face and congratulated myself on a job well done.**

Nearly exactly two months later I received an e-mail from Surface, telling me that the Terms and Conditions pamphlet is copy written and threatening legal action if I don’t remove the quotes.

So basically if a big company doesn’t like what is written about them, they feel as if they can bully people into submission. FUCK THAT NOISE. You know at first I was angry, obviously, but now I’m more bemused, threatening me is just plain stupid, dinosaur stupid. For these reasons;

1. It’s not smart to piss of people that have; A) a public uncensored platform and B) a wide readership of your target audience
2. The grounds of your legal claim being dubious at best
3. Suing me would be a mistake, I have nothing to lose and notoriety to gain, if someone was to sue me for everything I own, I’m so poor they would end up owing me money.

The Surface Unsigned festival is basically a variation of an old hustle, exploiting young artists need to crack a difficult industry, taking their early fans for any money they can get in the guise of support and then leaving them on the side of the road like a Hell’s Angels’ rape victim.

If you don’t agree to Surface’s tactics or ethos let me know in the comments section – or, even better, write your own views in your own blog or website thus generating as much negative publicity for these fuckers that we can

*as compared to here that comprises of a few angry cultists, friends and a dog
**Indecently I still think the format of six or seven bands in one night for a nominal price still has legs, but that is entirely beside the point.

DONT

2008-05-12T16:55:00.002Z

Martin Mullaney likes, and even, encourages what he has decided is graffiti “art” but virulently campaigns against Tagging without ever realising that tagging and the more elaborate piece are part of the same movement. Doesn’t it seem weird that a person in power can pick and choose which parts of a culture are encouraged and which parts condemned? Granted, his opinion is tainted by advice given by now respectable Graff artists who, naturally, have to legitimise their position. I have no problem with these people, most are ex-taggers that now have developed their practice away from the baby steps of Tagging. What I do have a problem with is the condescending attitude and arrogance it takes to assume that a whole movement of Art needs or wants his regulation or encouragement; where just because you sees no aesthetic value in something you assume it has no value or purpose.

Lets call this what it is; a transparent attempt to appeal to the Boho/arty demographic in his chosen wards and an ugly meddling in a culture he has no part in. If you don’t like Tagging. GOOD, you’re not supposed to.

If I was the incendiary type I would encourage some sort of graffiti stencil campaign. But seeing as that is probably quite illegal I recommend that you defiantly DON’T click on this image until you can download the full A4 version and print it off, and ABSOLUTLY DON’T glue it to a piece of thin card, a cereal box for example, DON’T then get a sharp knife and cut out the black bits, and then whatever you do DON’T take the resulting stencil to somewhere public and spray those naughty spray cans pressing the edges of the stencil firmly against the wall.

if someone was to do that and send me an image i would probably post it here, as a warning of what you definatly shouldnt be doing.

Iron Man

2008-05-10T19:50:00.001Z

(obiglotory pun sub-heading coming up) You’d be STARK staring mad to miss it (kill me, please)

Being a comic book nerd rarely pays off, you never really get to smugly sit back with a big I-told you-so grin, until this film. Grittier than most comic adaptations Iron Man is a corker* of a film. Robert Downey Jnr charmingly steals every scene he is in with such likeable ease I’m not sure if I want to be him, be his mate or just plain fuck him with a geek het crush so strong I had to resist the urge to sigh every time he appeared on the screen. Other notable mentions go to The Dude for carrying of a believable but menacing bad guy, not just for a comic book movie but for any movie, and Gwyneth Paltrow for making red hair look attractive. At no point in this film was I impressed with the CGI, but this is not a bad thing - I never even noticed the CGI which is how it should be, the effects seamlessly intertwined with the live action in a way that makes Titanic look as convincing as a Punch and Judy show. Although I did find the thick vein of American jingoism that runs throughout distasteful, I suppose it could be argued that Iron Man isn’t necessarily patriotic, its just that he is the ultimate extension of capitalism, which is also happens to be the principle that America is founded on. Also in some uncomfortable scenes the conflict in Afghanistan is depicted, I’m not sure I was entirely comfortable that such scenes being used as entertainment, while the conflict is still going on. But with wry additions to the script to keep the fanboys happy, and enough emotional clout to make it engaging I heartily recommend you see this film (and stay after the credits for pure nerdgasm).

*so good it seems I can only use 1950’s schoolboy slang

Broad St

2008-04-21T19:18:00.000Z

Drink up you fucker; swill it down with Viking gusto. The bubbles in your glass are escaping pockets of pure fun, so get that mess down your neck. There’s no shame in being sick, only in slowing or stopping altogether. Punish yourself; it’s been a hard week, you deserve it. Smash those drinks into your gullet, rape your wallet and bloat your liver to the size of the Duff Blimp. Laugh through your blood matted hyena muzzle while you hunt in your tight fcukshirt pack. Throw the cash you hate to earn around like confetti, just to dull the pain of a whole week of your life wasted to earn it. Dance like EVERYBODY’S watching, octopus hands flailing and pawing any warmbody that stumbles near. Pure Id freed by cheap gaudy coloured alcoshots and preening ego alpha male atmosphere. Fuck everyone, tonight you are god, the hard man, a 12inched cock swaggering gold plated, card carrying, double hard, lady killing Geeza.

But tomorrow you will be a twat, with a job you hate, a mortgage, a headache and a girlfriend that sucks your best friend off when you go play golf.

Twitter meme?

2008-03-31T13:32:00.003Z

I have been thinking about Twitter a lot recently, well it’s hard not to when it has become a permanent background buzz. Tonight I will be at the Birmingham bloggers meet, I met most of the people there for the first time at the last one, but despite only meeting them once I feel as if I have known them longer. I think this is because of Ambient Intimacy, by sharing the little details of our lives, things that normally only people close to us get to find out, we ipso facto become close. It’s a little bit like the people-hacking trick where if you want someone to like you, you ask them a favour and because their mind will justify the process in retrospect they presume you’re a friend already.

But is the Twitter nonsense cloud more than that? I’m inclined to think that Twitter is becoming a shared subconscious. Like the personal Tweets we send, we are very much in control of the thoughts we have, what we are not in control of are the replies we get from the subconscious, sometimes they agree, sometimes they differ, sometimes they ignore the original thought and throw up something different entirely. Now I’m not saying that Twitter is our first baby steps towards a hive mind like that shared by the Borg (am I?), but the potential for the application, and those like it are massive.

One thing I have noticed so far is that while the practical elements and applications are still being discussed and discovered, the creative and fun aspects opportunities have not even started, witty banter aside of course. I suppose this is because the function and idea of it is still novel enough to be fun in themselves.

One idea I had originally started from the six word fiction project by Wired magazine and a developed into a internet meme, where you write a biography in six words. Six words fits the 140 character limit and I propose we start each Tweet participating with /bio/, which will make the results easier to find using Tweetscan.

34free and back

2008-03-31T12:49:00.006Z

Ok here's the traditional apology for not posting in while - Sorry, yadda yadda lots of things on my plate etc. Now I'm back and fully intend to update this place as regular as I used to, which is about once a week.

For those who don't know 34free is my choice of tracks you should be stealing from teh internets.

Goth Girls MC Fronalot

What: Nerdcore hip-hop ode to alt girls featuring live violin and lyrics that includes coding references, role-play slang and Internet pop culture galore. What we all really wanted Eminem to turn out like.

When: As an antidote to any “Fiddy Cent” that may accidentally fell in your ear

That’s Not My Name Ting Tings

What: As much as I hate to add to the hype, this sparse pop rock track is insanely catchy. Sounds like a new Sowf London reworking of “Hey Mickey”. The track is begging for a dance remix.

When: Giving mouth to mouth to a Labrador, who fell in a vat of blackcurrent jelly

Push Th’ Little Daisies Ween

What: Spangly guitar ditty from fifteen years ago, strained helium voice and repeated creepy refrain and underground classic that sounds like a corrupt midgets dream.

When: Trying to explain to your Nan why children freak you out on poppers

Hello

2008-03-18T21:33:00.004Z

Hello to all those joining me through my guest blogging stint at Created in Birmingham, relax, put your feet up and browse a while. 34Free are, basically, my music recommendations updated whenever the muse strikes, other interesting stuff includes my conversation with a cultist, and the epic New York saga. Or alternately you could follow me on Twitter which I haven't finished experimenting with yet.

In the meantime I present you with a picture of a statue of a lady for you to enjoy

Saturdays alright for sulking, and brain hurt

2008-03-15T16:51:00.000Z

I spent the morning with a thousand other moron zombies drifting around the city centre mistaking shopping for activity and mere distraction for meaningful experience. It seems that the only religion not bankrupted by its own hollow hypocrisy is the worship of Mammon.

I wasted a couple of hours in the routine browsing before I realised all I actually wanted was to write; to feel the words slip from my head onto the page like entrails wetly slapping to the ground after a samurai sword swipe to my brains midriff. Seeking solace from the overwhelming silence of the crowd in the darkest corner of a buried bar with music played at levels that may induce, not only deafness, but blindness as well. A few years ago this place would have been unbearably smoky but now the smokers have to hide in the toilets like the rest of us who want to take drugs they don’t sell over the bar.

Thanks to the enthusiastic covering of the SXSW festival I reached my text limit on Twitter yesterday, I’m feeling cut off from the yabber of background information, and it feels wrong like I’m missing out on something. Its weird how I had become so used to sifting through the cloud of chatter and how comforting it was.

Here is a piece of writing that I found in my notebook and thought I might as well put here for the record more than anything.

Migraine 26/2/08

I have a fucking migraine. It feels like a malevolent and sentient presence in my brain, a black jellyfish that swings his tendrils at the slightest jog of my head, the worst thing is that a second or two before the blinding pain there is a brief respite, a spilt second of dread for the pain to come. Sometimes the gods smile on you and other days the stars align just to fuck you over – today is one the second type of day. I’m sitting on a dingy, bumpy bus and because of the migraine every smell is sending waves of nausea rolling around my stomach and the jellyfish tendrils are strumming my optic nerves causing shooting pains in my eye and black spots floating in my peripheral vision, any trace amount of light shooting through my shades is causing the vile invertebrate to thrash around in a way that I suspect is causing permanent brain damage.

3(+1)4Free

2008-03-12T21:31:00.007Z

I've been busy and super tired, working with these kids will blow your mind daily but run you the fuck down. Luckily I'm prepared for this eventuality and have a preprepared post for you lucky people.

34Free is my continuing series of posts designed to help those of us who are decisively challenged by recommending songs and artists to *ahem* share from the internets, i recently had a little competition where you, my beautiful freaks, sent your own in here are my pick of them.

An Effort for a Translucent Globe Skytree

What: atmospheric electronica, lazy drum and bass and rotary guitar all tied up with a big melodic bow.

When: convincing yourself that winter is only a brief distraction between the colours of Autumn and the pallid flowers of spring becomes a full time occupation. Stare out the window, the rain can't fall forever.

thanks Iggy

Still in Hollywood Concrete Blonde

What- before the band went all gothic lullabies and sad songs that made me want to stab my legs with lead pencils, there was a happy lil diddy that made you want to run away to Hollywood, shop overpriced vintage on Melrose, and drunkenly stumble up the steps to your roach infested apartment/Travel lodge on the strip... Great garage band feel that instantly makes you want to bob your head, sport a sexy lil snarl, and twirl about as the chorus hits, "I'm Still in Hollywood, ohhh yeah thought I'd be out of here by now" and personal adobted "we've got nothing to gain and nothing to lose!" whoa, that sounds about right....

When- when you realize that you haven't made it yet.... pause deep breath, and repeat- yet..... when all your lil creative dreams and delusions of grandeur are only mocked poses in a dirty mirror and your headlines are the ones that no one sees.... yet....... so you twirl about a bit, sport that lil head bob, and sexy lil snarl and smile to yourself knowing it is only a matter of time....

thanks Shroom

The Rabbit 12 Stone Toddler

What:Like the bastard love-child of Mike Patton and Eighties Matchbox B-line Disaster that has been locked in the cellar and fed on fish heads for a decade, this track from Brighton band 12 Stone Toddler is the sort of music you might just hear at an old carnival – right before the machines come alive and eat you. This song bounces along like Monty Python’s killer bunny, smashing together huge riffs, funk, smooth jazz, hard rock and a xylophone, all with a wink and a grin.

When: When full of sugar and malevolence.

thanks Zombie

This is Hardcore Pulp

What: A tune which sums up the best talents of Pulp – namely making music that leaves you feeling as abused and sordid as a mid-teen rape victim. The James Bond style intro gives the illusion that maybe this time it’ll be different, before Cocker kicks in with trademark filthy lyrics wrapped in an almost paedophilic Sheffield twang. Best listened to while wearing a dirty mack and preparing to shock someone.

When: The moments after rolling off a girl, breathless and sweat-drenched, before throwing cab fair coins on the floor telling her to leave the god-dam house.

thanks String

good ain't they? if you still want to contribute send them to three4free (at) hotmail (dot) co (dot) uk I can't offer you a prize as such, maybe a pint if we ever meet.

I promise I will have a brand new 34free for y'all within the week and some more posts real soon x x x

"An Experiment In Microblogging" or "IS Twitter Useful For Anything Other Than Facilitating our Evolution?"

2008-02-27T21:07:00.005Z

The Von Bondies, Fight Like Apes, and The Sugars @Bar Acadamy 25.02.08

Click to embiggen

Wallpaper

2008-02-23T20:18:00.002Z

Here is a my first attempt at designing a desktop background, is very nice non? If for any reason you would like this very nice image as your desktop click to embiggen and left click on the resulting image. If you would like me to do some design work for YOU for FREE contact me at three4free (at) hotmail (dot) co (dot) uk to discuss it.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet St

2008-02-20T19:54:00.002Z

I knew Sweeney Todd was going to be a musical, I just wasn’t expecting it to be that musical, nearly every single word is sung, with a few exceptions – Alan Rickman I’m looking at you, oh forget it Alan I could never be mad at you. And the effect is disconcerting, I’m not the genres biggest fan and let’s face it; Musicals are weird, it’s the bewildering tendency to burst into song over the most inconsequential things, raining? Iconic song and dance number. Fond of hills? Feel good belter with sweeping cinematic shots of the Austrian countryside. The reason Sweeney Todd works, just, is that the subject matter isn’t only not what we would call inconsequential or fluffy, but is downright horrific, including; a song sung earnestly to his dangerous shaving equipment, a ditty about what different types of person would taste like in pies, and a moving ode to a daughter, sung, of course, while the protagonist casually slices men’s throats open and deposits the bodies, skull first, into the cellar.

Of course the real reason most people will go to see this, myself included, is the visuals, and yes, Tim Burton and his unique vision finally lives up to his promise and makes his first decent film since Batman Returns, showing a stylised London of opulent and decaying beauty, sumptuous costume and direction that, while visually interesting, doesn’t get in the way of the story. The predicable casting of Johnny Depp works, in so far as Depp (dodgy singing aside) is as watchable as ever and is never asked to do anything more than brood, really want to kill people, and then actually kill people. Equally as predicable but eminently more beneficial is Helena Bonham Carter, who simply acts rings round the rest of the cast as the pragmatic Mrs Lovett and gives several extra dimensions to a potentially flat character. Also notable is Alan Rickman, who can make any bad guy at least a little likable, and not despite their evil but because of it, and Sacha Baron Cohen in a swaggering scenery chewing bit part.

So in short a surprising film, the choices that were made during the making of the film may not of been all that of a shock (Johnny Depp! Helena Bonham Carter! Washed out palette with stylised visuals?!! Surely not?!!) But the fact that they work is the real surprise.

Note from the pub

2008-02-19T23:23:00.000Z

Decompressing after another day, the brightness of the sun tricking me into a buying a beer. The LED sign on the bar is telling me it was served at 2.9oC which is about the ambient temperature of the pub also. Summer is being a delicious flirt this year, teasing us with snatches of sun, showing us the light but making wait with throbbing hearts for the heat, slowly sliding up winters skirt before making us wait for her to roll down spring’s stockings.

My work days are not long but can be hard, today I have been spat at, headbutted and kicked in the shin; I have watched while, one child’s nose ran into his waiting mouth, another consumed fistfuls of sand and wash it down with soapy water and another cower away from my touch just because I was new. It’s hard but could be harder because I have also been giggled at, hugged, and as I was leaving, had my hand kissed. I think to enjoy the job I have all I have to do is love the kids and fortunately, despite the random violence and general grossness, they don’t make that part difficult at all.

How to waste more time on the internet

2008-02-12T23:13:00.001Z

Why not try twitter?

twitter is basically the best part of Facebbok, the status updates but stripped of the hundreds of photos of you looking drunk and fat, the constant badgering to become a zombie ninja or a Jedi werewolf, or the inane groups that despite the media attention has no political power or social pressure at all.

The premise is you update your status, and the people that follow yours updates get passed the message and you, in turn get passed on the status of the people you choose to “follow”, the coolest part of this is is that this can be done from your computer or direct via text message. Of course you can tweak it to only send updates to your phone from the people you really like or interested in. The Sidebar is my tweeter stream which I am trying to use a little creatively or at least get a couple of good turns of phrase now and again. Strangers can also follow you, which isn’t as creepy as it sounds it just means that they are getting your status in their update list. At the moment I have two followers who are perfectly delightful, one is a pregnant journalist and writer called Amp, and the other, as far as I can make out is and octopus called “Finsbury”, so it’s nice that twitterings have a little audience.

This of course has all sorts of potential, although at the moment the novelty of being able to update my blog from my bath is, to me, a clear sign we live in the future.

Sign up it free, twitter and you can find me HERE

34free results

2008-02-09T23:45:00.000Z

only five people entered the 34free competition, so rather than tell two people I liked theirs the least I have decided, being the generous guy that I am, to give everyone a prize. I really liked all the entries and will be using them at a later date. For now, heres a taste of what the covers will look like.

Click to embiggen.

Dog the bounty hunter NOT a drinking game

2008-02-02T20:00:00.000Z

Due to popularity of the Jeremy Kyle drinking game, which, for some reason, is the term most used to find this blog from search engines. For whatever reason Jeremy Kyle drinking games must be the meme du jour, so in the vain of exploitative reality television I want to talk about Dog the Bounty Hunter. Just to reiterate, this isn't a drinking game, drinking isn't a game, its a lifestyle decision and if you need a game to tell you how to drink, you probably shouldn't be allowed in the first place. - how come in drinking games, drinking is always a punishment? if you fancy having a booze or two while watching DTBH then by all means go ahead in fact, sir, I salute you. Just don't expect there to be any rules

For those of your who cant get past the screeching granddad metal of the opening titles, which is Ozzy Osborne’s phoned in effort of theme song, the show is a docu-soap following an ex-biker, reformed convict and owner of the worst white guy hair cut since the puddin’ bowl, while he polices his adopted home, Hawaii, as the islands premier bail bonds man and bounty hunter

Dog himself strides across Hawaii dressed like a post apocalyptic Native American from the Matrix, spouting garbled bible verse and cod-shit morality. One minute condemning violence and crime and the next clearly getting off on chasing down men and machismo of besting his targets.

His staff mainly consists of family members who dress in black and combat gear, like red-neck special forces, there is something clearly fetishistic about the gear they use with all the buckles, straps and weapons. This "strapping up" is lingered on in every episode with a montage of them putting their gear on everything gets strapped belted and buckled to them from bullet proof vests to the silly and frankly ineffective CS spray canisters that the team wield like guns. As they leave Dog and his incestuous band of weirdos are obviously aroused by the excitement and gung-ho slogans they shout at each other over the radios.

Beth: if you go over there to pick him up, the whole place will blow up
Dog: Don’t tell me that, or I’ll go

The real Spinal Tap-ness of the situation come from the disparity between their over the top combative attitude and the reality of tracking down what are normally frail looking meth addicts or slightly drunk women.

in one situation Dog heavy handed blunders into a group of men calling them drug addicts and bums, a large man, angery and not at all intimidated , calls Dog on this saying that was an unfair accusation

Dog: I’m sorry for saying those thing, that was unfair and I apologise
Man: good, you shouldn’t have been saying those thing and disrespecting us
Dog: yes and I’m sorry, but I don’t apologise twice so lets leave it there.

Recently I saw an episode where dog and his gang are "hunting down" a supposed "kingpin" figure, hunting down mostly consists of phoning his family and pleading them to let them know where the fugitive is. The call comes through that the man is visiting his house and has a gun. dog couldn’t look happier at the this and they speed off to the house, where they immediately launch themselves out the car and slam the 59 year old man wearing flip flops into the ground, the gun, turning out to be a drill he was returning and the offenses? Unpaid parking tickets.

Dog is car crash televisions at its best, dog himself, when not pontificating about god or drug abuse comes across as a genuinely nice guy, unfortunately sometimes his bad ass persona or his born again philosophy rear up and turn him into an insufferable bell-end.

after posting this, I found out about his recent tragedy. And as insufferable as he is I recognise that Dog is a real person and I genuinely wish him all the best in healing from the terrible ordeal of losing a loved one

----------------
Now playing: Stiltskin - Inside
http://foxytunes.com/artist/stiltskin/track/inside

Happy Birthday to Here!

2008-01-24T21:12:00.000Z

ok so this is going up a couple of days early, but i'm gonna be busy the next few days so enjoy

Between the boredom of unemployment and the flurries of paid work, between drinking energy drinks so I don’t feel like shit in the day and drinking booze to get me to something resembling sleep at night. I am not sleeping well is an understatement, through this during a early hours marathon Internet session I pretty much exhausted the web for things to read so was forced to vainly look at my own site at past posts, and i admit, with no little pride. My blog is now three years old and to celebrate I present the best of 2007

January – A tale from my youth

February – A tale from my present

March – Found art

April – because I’m just an ol’ romantic

May – they really shouldn’t let me drink and watch TV

June - Well, it’s the best one that month – because it’s the only one that month

July – He IS the Devil, I have proof, well – not ACTUAL proof, but a really strong suspicion

August – More musing from behind the foot of wood

September – Was a particulally good month, I couldn’t decide between this one Or this one

October – another slow month, this isn’t too bad though

November – the epic that was GIGBETH

December – Yours truly gets all misty eyed and glowing

Special mention to 34Free, still six days to the end date of the competition

First Day At School

2008-01-16T17:32:00.000Z

3.25 - I’ve finished my first day working with the least functioning autistic children in the school and like the alcohol of my congratulatory pint filtering into my blood the days events are slowly filtering into my memory.

I love my leaf- eating noise making arm-flailing kids. Each one, although clearly insular and unable to communicate in words, are able to shine with their own personality. I thought I would be amongst near absent vegetables, but that more was to do with ignorance, and prejudice than experience. They do have a day dreamy look sometimes, as if occupied by something far more interesting than what I see, and who’s to say their not.

The day went quickly as the activities changed often, the kids low boredom threshold fortunately covering mine. It was physical work too, not just taxing but tactile, another preconception was that autistic people don’t like contact but they will wrestle, hug, squirm and just plain sprawl all over you.

The school is staffed by almost exclusively women and contains an almost exclusive male student body, which is good because sometimes my blokes bass voice seems to get through when persuasion doesn’t.

I will be back tomorrow, and god damn me if I’m not looking forward to it.

Remember deadline for 34free is 1st of Feb, only one entry so far so if only two more people enter, YOU WILL DEFIANTLY WIN A PRIZE

2008-01-13T15:40:00.000Z

just a bit of tinternet magic for my friend

I designed this for String, I've been on a little coding/design kick recently, speaking of which, as you may have noticed i have tarted the place up a bit. What y'all think?

Don't forget the 34free competition is only running the 1st of feb, send to three4free (at) hotmail (dot) co (dot) uk

34free and competition

2008-01-11T00:14:00.000Z

As my birthday gift to y'all i give you more 34free, my music recommendations for you to mooch of the internets.

Jet Boy, Jet Girl The Dammed

What: Three and a half minutes of gay punk lament, while you simultaneously think to yourself “what advert was this on?” and “Jesus, did he really just sing that”. The answers are; Pepsi and yes, yes he really did. Driving guitars and just a hint of horn make the song more up-beat than the singer’s voice suggests.

When: You want an excuse to mention that the drummers name was Rat Scabies, who was not only one of the tightest drummers on the punk scene but also one of the competent musicians.

Mother we can’t get enough The New Radicals

What: Anthemic pop rock from the one hit wonders, never released as a single, this song reminds me of being a young and confident teenager unsullied by cynicism when everything was sincere and right, which is a massive achievement seeing as I was never like that. A tall funk, soul, pop and rock milkshake served on a sunny day of the best summer of your youth (that may or may not have ever happened).

When: Waking up on holiday and driving to the beach, high on life, and poppers.

Energy drink Ugly Duckling

What: Party hip-hop from the honour students of the Old School, as wired as the song title makes it sound, fun and as fresh a newly minted coin.

When: Trying to convince your brother that hip-hop isn’t about angst ridden white boys, bling, misogyny, exploitive producers who release unfinished material from now dead performers or meatheads that boast about the amount of times they’ve been shot.

Do you think you could do better? well heres your chance, send me YOUR favourite song using the same format (What - When) and the top three will win a handmade mix CD by me using all new songs and hand crafted art. I will be using the entries here as cheap filler, fully credited of course. Send entries to three4free (at) hotmail (dot) co (dot) uk. this could be cool or it could suck, i think i only have about six regular readers so odds are in your favour.

Deadline 1st of Feb

An open letter Esther and the Strong City cult

2008-01-08T20:16:00.000Z

following this post and comments

Hello Esther

I write this letter as a way of drawing a line underneath our interaction – I got the impression that your last reply was a final one unless I entertained the notion of Wayne Bent being the actual incarnation of god. As with all fundamentalists the issue is all or nothing and I’m afraid in this case, it’s nothing.

I am undecided about your living man-god, as I can’t decide if he is delusional or a balls-out charlatan. I have been offered no proof of his divinity apart from reported personal experience and mostly the experiences of the emotionally venerable such as yourself. Hearsay is not proof, thousands of people feel gods touch and some kill each other arguing about the specifics of worship, thousands more ingest chemicals which show god to be a giant green laser that descends over sweaty dance floors every weekend.

Wayne isn’t the only person to have god speak to him and tell him to do things that our so-called corrupt society would blanch at. Peter Sutcliffe, for instance, heard Jesus’ voice through some gravestones, this time the big J told him to brutally murder prostitutes. I may sound factious but I do it to make a point. What makes Wayne different from anyone else with a Messiah complex?
or any of these other crazy cats?

Wayne’s actions are compared to Abraham’s, both as tests of faith. I have a couple of problems with this, mainly the contradictory notion that an all powerful, all knowing god needs to test people, god offers no proof of his existence but we are supposed to prove ourselves to him? Especially as we have to assume he knows the outcome already being so all knowing and all. Secondly Abraham was stopped from sacrificing his son at the last minute; so he sent an angel down to stop Abraham but couldn’t stop Wayne from shagging his friend’s wives or acting inappropriately with underage girls.

So no I don’t believe in your god or even the bibles god and if I did I still wouldn’t want to worship an insecure god that has an almost pathetic need for worship, or throws wrathful tantrums when someone doesn’t follow his oblique and often contradictory orders, or only manifests himself through indifference, cruelty or inflammatory actions. Maybe your god needs a new book, the old one basically being Chinese whispers of folk stories and hearsay written hundreds of years after the fact, cynically edited by nonbelievers and poorly translated from several near dead languages. Even if by some “miracle” god’s flavour can be tasted through years of human dilution like cheap cordial it seems that his worshippers seem to interpret the words however they see fit anyway.

Your god gave man a basic desire and respect for freedom but expects blind obedience with the only other alternative being eternity in hell. It seems that the people that I see that really appreciate gods gift of life are the one that do not follow his guidebook.

But these are my problems with Christianity as a whole, views I didn’t want to involve but felt I had to due to the all or nothing nature of dealing with zealots. By now, I imagine none of these words are being engaged with, probably dismissed as the quarrels of a dammed soul much in same way the whole of society is dismissed by you guys.

Contacting me was part of a slick Web-wide PR campaign, and that is understandable as to prevent another David Koresh style siege. It seems the American government (headed, incidentally, by a follower of a slightly different Christ cult) doesn’t like religious dissent. Seeing as your web site and media blitz were just a way of stopping the FBI shooting fire through your windows I don’t feel bad about ending our communication.

If you find my words insulting, tough, I find your views patronizing at best and basically inhuman at worst. But despite my vitriol so far you are still a victim in this, one that can still find help.

“Christina - …There is no delicate way to ask this question, but is there any direction from God that you would find so heinously offensive that you would not agree to carry it out? If God put it on your heart to physically harm others or to commit suicide, would you feel that you had to do it?

Micheal - Just as with Jesus, I always follow the Father’s instructions in everything…”

Yours Danny

A, somewhat belated, christmas message

2007-12-23T23:34:00.000Z

I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do? They’re really saying, “I love you” Louis Armstrong

I’m on my own but not alone, soaking Christmas through my pores and drinking festive spirit over ice. Surrounded by humanity, flawed, sinning, and glorious humanity. The air is lousy with goodwill and celebration. It’s far from perfect but, to me, its flaws make it palatable. People around me are simply celebrating; the birth of an invisible big beard’s son may be the excuse but, as cheesy as it sounds, love and friendship are the true source, connecting with friends and enjoying their company is an older ritual as religion. Christmas is a festival of love and giving much older than the Jew King. A time, in the darkest part of the year, to let your loved ones know they are loved.

Goth classics bellow from the speakers and through this atmosphere they seem as seasonal and Christmassy as Cliff Richard. Even in a trendy pub in a fashionable nook of a big city, you can find a tone of unguarded friendship and goodwill.

Despite the outmoded religious nomenclature this time of year has the potential to be festival of family, friends, love and giving, so please surround yourself with these things and have a very merry Christmas.

All my love

Danny

C**T may be the worst word in the english language

2007-12-15T02:41:00.000Z

Cult that is

A big hello to Wayne Bent or, as he prefers to be called Michael Travesser, the Archangel Michael or even plain ol’ Jesus, if the followers of the wacky Strong City cult are to be believed. The cult are the focus of this excellent if somewhat chilling documentary. They also believe that today is the end of the world, so if you’re reading this guys OOPS, guess your infallible god fucked up again. Seeing as this is the third stab at predicting the apocalypse and the third time you were wrong it might worth questioning your source materiel. In this case the beardy pervert that slept with his son’s wife and fondled young naked children as they begged him to sleep with them.

I don’t know why cults offend me so profoundly, perhaps it’s the tape of the Jonestown mass suicide I heard a long time ago, a terrible ordeal of wailing and moaning with the echoing voice of the unhinged Jim Jones urging the mother to keep the children calm. Or the hijacking of a vulnerable person’s spiritual quest, which seems more like spiritual rape, an act I find fundamentally abhorrent. In Jungian psychology, there is a figure lurking in the subconscious Jung called “the shadow” this is all of your darker urges and weakness’ personified as a dark version of yourself. I think a more fundamental reason I get so offended is that I think recognise my shadow in both cult leaders and followers.

A total c**t

Merry Christmas (or die in the attempt)

2007-12-07T01:12:00.001Z

I love Christmas, or rather I really really want to. A for effort defiantly, but one of the many differences between school and reality is that no one give a tupenny fuck how hard you try.

I suppose what really don’t want is to end up looking like one of those Christmas miserablists, the type who doesn’t really dislike Christmas but thinks that a scrooge posture and cynics rhetoric will lend them a borrowed air of intellectualism, as if intelligence and excitement can’t exist at once, and their sneering commentary will lift them above the tinseled masses.

I refuse to become that person, even if the magic of Christmas seems to be more faded and tarnished the older I get. Lets face it, Christmas through the eyes of any half sentient adult is an easy target, it can be the crass commercial nightmare that people accuse it of being, used to sell anything from electric ovens to vibrating cock rings. Maybe its easy to dismiss as such, maybe for my Christmas to be magic I have to work at it being magic, putting every bit of energy that an excited ten year puts into it.

This year I promise to do that, to work at making it special. Force myself to look past its cosmetic flaws and see the magic underneath, the magic that kids have always been able to see.

Right, I’m off to think of some really good presents, fucking make them if I have to. Drink Bailys and watch Scrooged fifteen fucking times in a row.

Items we carry

2007-12-03T14:47:00.000Z

I have spent many an unemployed hours staring at my computer, this particular group is strangely fascinating. The appeal, I think, is the glimpse into the day to day minutiae of other peoples lives, this same could be said of most blogs.

mine-

click here to see it with the notes

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Now playing: Dead Kennedys - Let's Lynch the Landlord
via FoxyTunes

Why?

2007-12-01T01:44:00.000Z

Why do I keep coming back to this place? Why pick that scab? Why do I always return, just to be irritated and saddened? And more importantly where does such a fat person get trousers that baggy?

the fat man-child and his offending pantaloons are at the bar, he booms with undeserved authority about the iphone, unsupported DVX files and other such geek trivialities, clearly enjoying being the smartest person there, which isn’t much achievement considering the people he is surrounded by are either the nodding deaf, their hearing destroyed by years of speaker hugging gigs and random blows to the head. Or burnouts, wandering specters of the almost dead scene, haunting this same bar cave they’ve been going to for close to a couple of decades.

At least the rock cultures inclusive, more an enclave of the marginalised than a cultural elite, I suppose the rock scenes always been a great leveler, the uniform hides class and affluence much better than a school uniform ever did, music provides a common ground and focus, while the expected attitude and posturing is the reaction and vent at the position of outsider we found ourselves in and made our own. Where else can the unattractive and nerdy hold court like Robber Barons, the awkward hold themselves like warriors and the normal trappings of material wealth be dismissed as irrelevant?

I took this on a day trip to London, its not really relevant but i noticed that the place was a little text heavy of late

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Now playing: The Doors - Woman Is a Devil [*]
via FoxyTunes

Death, jobs and cider

2007-11-19T22:45:00.000Z

It’s eleven in the morning and I’m killing time before a job interview. I’m in a Wetherspoons under a loudly buzzing air conditioning unit, I have no idea why the air conditioning on because the day is a cold one and the air has that brittle crisp quality that seeps into the bones, looking around at the alcoholic corpse that occupy the place maybe its better that they’re not left to thaw. It’s bitterly cold in here and the situation isn’t helped by the mistake I made when I first walked in; instead of saying
“Nice big cup of coffee please” I accidentally said
“Pint of extra cold cider please”. Must be habit.

This place has all the atmosphere of a coach station waiting room, because of the lack of music the air is punctuated by mutters and grunts. Last night, however, in stark contrast, I was in a student pub, a social vampire leeching off the overabundance of enthusiasm and bonhomie. The contrast between the two makes this place seem all the more sad, as I look around I see battered creased faces that seem to be saying
“I would kill everyone in this room right now to be allowed to smoke” or simply waiting to die. The good thing about drinking by mistake is that you find yourself regretting it less the closer you get to finishing, and now I’ve finished my only regret is that I only have time for one more.

Seeing as I’m surrounded by the undead, or at very least, near dead. Its appropriate that my thought wander towards death. I’ve been to too many funerals in my short span on the earth and even more wakes; I hate the things and dread them more than the smiley specter of death itself. Terrible formulaic affairs with only names and dates changed, which is why I want mine to be a little different. I want a brummie Viking funeral.

First, take everything useful; any organ not ravished by self abuse. Next load up the useless bit of meat that used to be me (a vaguely useful bit of meat) into a shopping trolley. My body can be wearing anything really, but for preference I want to be wearing a tux with the bow tie undone ala Dean Martin. I also want two coins sellotaped to my eyes – I do hate the thought of being stranded on the shores of the river Styx for eternity, for the sake of four pence. After arranging my be-coined body into the shopping trolley in a sitting position I want all the thing I’m taking with me into the next life

- a walking brolly
- my manbag with its usual bits and bobs
- a bottle of Jack Daniels
- a six pack of beer
- a crate of cheap energy drink
- my Mp3 player
- some porn
- a claw hammer

Then set the whole lot on fire and push me down a slip road joining Spaghetti Junction. Go home and forget about it. I know I’ve mixed my ideologies a bit, but as a life time atheist, I like to hedge my bets.

This is all a joke of course, to be honest I don’t care what happens, funerals are for the living. My one true request is that I want Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones played, if it isn’t I’ll haunt the bloody lot of you.

PS, got the job, just gotta wait for CRB check

Meanwhile a year ago

2007-11-15T14:24:00.000Z

Gigbeth. Saturday

2007-11-08T18:15:00.000Z

So with bleary head and about five hours sleep under my belt I threw myself into Saturday with the weary conviction of a marathon runner with finish line in site.
“Funny story about this song, Steve” says the acoustic guitar strumming middle aged man with a dad hair cut and repertoire of samey melancholy acoustic music.
“Oh yeah?” replies the sound engineer and obvious friend to this folksy Bob Dylan wannabe. I’m at The Old Crown, feeling tired and wired.
“Yeah, it was written the day of 9/11, when we were recording that album” he says as he starts the next ballad. Nobody laughed, which had a little to do with the fact that there nothing funny about that particular story what so ever, it’s not even a story to be honest. I waited around for the chorus in case the song was called “Die Screaming in Flames Capitalist Devils” but left disappointed.

The first two Acts at the Kerrang! hosted Barfly gig were cookie cutter rock and roll Fratellis clones, the first band Oneyesblue only notable because the vocalists mad lunatic eyes and because they ripped through their set like they had a train to catch barely pausing for breath.

In a way it’s lucky they were disappointing because if I hadn’t escaped upstairs to the Sanctuary I would have missed Mistys Big Adventure, the unusual move to put out the headliners at eight thirty probably counted towards the less than spectacular turnout. Having never seen the band live before I was surprised to be confronted by a dancing red blob covered with blue gloves, this, I thought to myself, would explain why a warm can of larger had cost so much, because surely a high dose of hallucinogenic chemicals is the only way to justify a price so high. When I did realise that the guy was some sort of surreal Bez character and not a drug phantom I felt suitably ripped off again. But even the pocket rape at the bar couldn’t spoil my enjoyment, Grandmaster Gareth’s deep voice strangely reminiscent of Jim Morrison and intelligent funny lyrics complimenting the full dreamy sound while the red and blue hand jester attacked the crowd.

“We’ll get together and make babies. Space babies” screams a tiny man almost as soon as I walked through the door of The Rainbow, Cutting Pink With Knives are a screamcore electro screech rock band, that seem to start the next song just to stop the lead singers annoying babbling.

The funny thing about big hard doses of metal is, you never really know you need one until you get one. Plight are a terrifying onslaught of metal up your ass, with a beardy weirdly singer hitting all the right metal poses and an “Asschapel” t-shirt. Foot-on-monitor best -crotch-forward sort of stuff and a perfect set up for the next band, BeeStung Lips. You know a band are not going to take themselves seriously when the drummer appears on stage wearing a Jimmy Savile wig claiming,
“The singers head had exploded” although I had heard a buzz about the band, I had never heard the actual band, so I never knew they had a singer and thought they were just being flippant about their three piece status. The music was a pure assault of drum driven noise with chugging guitar. An amazing set that, too drag out a music cliché, blew me away. I’m not even a fan of bands without vocalists, but these guys were amazing. In the future this is the band your kids will play at volume 11 because they hate you.

Ears ringing and with more than a little booze under my belt, I stumbled up the road to see LTJ Bukem, but the steep ten pound surcharge to what had already been a pricey night was beyond my budget, rather helpfully we were directed up the road about a hundred yards to Heducation. I wasn’t going to bother, but my journalistic integrity to see the story through drove me on. And I’m glad I did. The Anomalies are my new favorite band; or rather my favorite new band, would be more accurate, their breed of fresh Rap/Indie/sheer enthusiasm blew me away. Gigbeth, to me, is about discovering new music, and although very entertained so far, there were only a couple of bands I would have made the effort to see again. Until this band, like the best period of the Beastie Boys they fuse Rap with a myriad of other genres and sense of fun with live drumming, samples and a the smilest lady singer you could wish to see. And even an impressive freestyle where they rapped about subjects thrown out from the audience (including clothes, belly’s, and they wasn’t even phased by my friends shouted suggestion of stem cell research).

Afterwards came the headliners DJ JFB vs. Beardyman, although I don’t know what the VS. was about they seemed to be getting on just fine as they whipped up an erratic mixture of mind blowing Beardyman's beatboxing, which my only other cultural reference is that black guy off the police academy movies (but with music), and DJ JFB's casually brilliant turntablism. At this point I have to admit I lost all journalistic integrity and danced like, what can only be described as, “a loon”.

Three days of live, new music, drink and general cavorting, the standard was high but while there were no really poor acts, there were quite a few bland ones. I have no doubts that those bands will do well because record companies hate to take chances so sign these seen it before bands and then drop them as soon as the cultural wind changes. So, therefore its good to know, through an event like Gigbeth, that not only are there new and interesting sounds out there; but that their finding audiences too.

Gigbeth. Friday

2007-11-05T20:39:00.000Z

Sadly Friday I was only able to catch a few bands, the first being Shoot Panda Liars Club, a band so bland that they haven’t even bothered with a website, tight and professional guitar music with a little swagger but so dull my note book is just a list of other bands that they sound like. No character, unlike The Getaways who had so much character they could have appeared in a Dickens novel. In the intimate back room of the Sanctuary, these balls out, sweat covered scamps were so charmingly roguish that I wanted to reach forward and scruff their hair. Next Jess James, a tiny wisp of a girl bravely took to the stage and performed the usual sensitive singer/songwriter material which no one paid a blind bit of notice because unfortunately the lyrics, which I have no doubt she agonized hours over, were rendered incomprehensible by the acoustics of the room. By then the momentum of the gig had been killed, but that didn’t stop The JD from doing their hardest to RAWK the dwindling crowd, overlong in places and struggling not to sound like a sixth-form band that got lucky, I did enjoy the use of guitar solos something I personally miss from contemporary music.

Gigbeth. Thurs opening cermony

2007-11-05T20:01:00.000Z

It’s the morning after the weekend before and I feel slightly sick, very tired, and for all intents and purposes, deaf. Gigbeth is a music festival that happens over three day days in and around the music venues in Digbeth, it has just finished its second year and I was there making notes and drinking drinks, so please excuse me while I try to decipher those notes and rummage clumsy through my memory.

There is a reason that festivals happen during the summer and sell booze, which I discovered last night when I arrived ten minutes early to the Gigbeth opening ceremony.

With no clear entrance I joined the crowd, waiting by one edge of the barricade. Well if you could call it a crowd, I’m not sure if twenty or so people, mainly made up of bored passing pedestrians and the mentally sub-normal, can be called a “crowd”. We were told that the event wouldn’t start until half past seven. At twenty to eight we were told we were queuing in the wrong place, and after climbing over a fence, let in.

We shouldn’t have rushed though, the first act wasn’t very good, his name was Pete and the Sound Engineers his songs were mainly cryptically called things like “channel 26”, “Still buzzing on the slave Amp” and who can forget the classic “I’m Gonna Have to put the Snare Through Mono”. And at 45 mins his was by far the longest set; unfortunately it only consisted of single instrument being half hearted played at varying levels of volume and static. Shambolic to say the least, but determined not to let the hour and a quarter I had stood in the cold, beerless reflect on the bands, the first band started.

Nizlopi are a two piece band, Gigbeth veterans that use a mixture of a beat-boxing double bass player and the standard singer/acoustic guitar front man who uses an endearing half singing half white boy rap hybrid. Their enthusiasm and cheerfulness couldn’t help but warm the crowd up and the mixture of approaches lift the duo beyond the tired singer – songwriter format. Unfortunately the left hand side speakers stopped working halfway through, and during the end song when they tried to bring in the drummers from Achanak their mikes only worked intermittently. The crowd didn’t care at this point and enthusiastically joined in, something more down too underdog rooting and blitz spirit than the cheesy uplifting political message of the song itself. Like all of the bands it would have been nice to see the full set, and I am really trying not to catalogue all the gaffs and technical difficulties, but its kinda hard not to.

Achanak were surprisingly good, I say surprising not because I expected them not to be very good, but because I never expected to enjoy a Bangra drum band so much. It’s hard not to be impressed by the sheer energy of the performance and speed of the drums, mixed with Rap samples, including a cheekily reclaimed Buster Rhymes excerpt. And again although beset with sound problems, the band soldiered on with smiles on their faces and even an embarrassing bit of dad dancing at the end.

Soweto Kinch started with his brand of jazz noddlings. This was made all the more disjointed by running the sax through an effects pedal, which, although confusing, was enjoyable and had the added bonus of making the crowd feel as cool and sophisticated as he was dressed. Soweto oozed charisma as he glided through some freestyle rap accompanied by slow bass. As the self proclaimed “Victor Meldrew of hip-hop” began his next song he explained it as an attack on hip-hop culture, the song “SO!”, he asks of the rap community “Can I have some Art please?” and I know from bitter experience that if you are going to start an argument like that, you had better be bloody good yourself, and fortunately for him, he is.

Speaking of talented people, Mr Hudson (and the Library) controlled the stage like a battle general, switching mic’s, gesturing to sound engineers and bring troops on and off the stage. The first song was a little weak with the guest rapper embarrassing himself by repeating the “free styling” he had just done with Soweto, and Mr Hudson reduced to live samples. Mr Hudson has a good voice, which is excellently harmonized by the backing singer, but for someone who played up his brummie roots when he sings he sounds more cockney than Danny Dyer at a chimneysweep convention. The bands sound defiantly benefits from the live performance, its multi-layered, melancholy reggae beat sounding a little flat on there debut CD.

The crowd, all 10 of us, defiantly enjoyed the gig. With a rousing and seemingly impromptu performance of “Pass the Duthcie” and a badly remembered version of “Rudy” that made up for enthusiasm that it lacked in accuracy. The technical difficulties endeared the musicians to us rather than alienating the crowd. It was sad to see the event woefully unattended but the smaller audience gave it a more personal feel, and maybe a larger crowd would have been less forgiving. Especially without any beer to placate them.

Rant and Liverpool

2007-10-27T11:37:00.000Z

“All natural ingredients” boasts the advertisements, this confuses me, since when has that been such a good thing? Do you know what’s natural? Piss, piss is about as natural as its gets but I wouldn’t want it in my chocolate bar. Earwax, goats’ spunk, cholera and earthquakes, all so natural you’ve got to wonder if god hates us. Washing machines, antibiotics, the Internet and vodka, none of these things occur unaided in the wild. Fuck natural. And fuck those stupid enough to think that natural means the same thing as healthy; they deserve piss in their food.

***
O.k. rant over, god knows where the vitriol came from I’m quite content. I have been reclining in a comfy chair reading in the creases of a back pub, comfortably hot next to a three bar heater. Only a couple of minutes ago I realised two things in succession; one, that the reassuring rattling feeling in my chest and bubbling over the bottom of my throat has been purring, an actual animal purring. And two, I haven’t spoken to a soul in four hours. Just a background ghost of a trendy pub.

I have to apologise about my absence, I’ve been in Liverpool visiting GF’s sister, I have to say I was treated so well I’m thinking of asking to be adopted

While I was there I nearly bought a house, well that’s not strictly true, my girlfriend nearly bought a house. Actually that’s only sort of true; my girlfriend nearly bought a house ON BEHALF of her sister at a house auction. Sorry about the string of exaggeration but a house auction isn’t that exciting. It mainly consists of sitting in a sports hall for five long hours listening to a man saying numbers while picture of near identical houses change on the large screen while you try not to fidget too much in fear of walking away legally bound to derelict semi-detached in Toxeth. But our time was more than adequately paid for with what early Beano comics would describe as a “slap up feed” unlike the comic counterpart it didn’t consist of a big pile of mash with sausages sticking out of it while a smiling cats looks on licking his lips, it was an amazing Mexican/Cajun restaurant near Penny lane (yes THE Penny Lanes, from the song).

But we deserved it, if only for surviving the perilous journey, I was worried as soon as the taxi driver talked to us in an accent so scouse it sounded like a baby’s gurgle, and with a spectacular view of the pint glass scars on the back of his head he pulled off at, what the geek in my, recognises as Warp speed. He flicked on the radio to cover the call he took on his mobile and the soothing sound of Bob Marley filled the cab, but its hard to believe that “everything is going to be alright” when your brute of a driver is swerving around at 70 mile an hour spitting “tell him I’m gonna smash his fucking head in” at his phone.

Of course like most scousers I have met, he ultimately proved to be utterly charming explaining that normally he drives quite sedately or “like Miss Daisy” as he put it, but his “Merc” had his “bird” and no one could trace the current “piece of shit” back to him. I really shouldn’t patronise really, with my accent and fairly cavalier approach to the rules and syntax of spoken English.

Mr Porkpie

As well as good company and really good food I formed a bond with “Mr Porkpie” a cat so named because of his predilection for sitting on people’s heads, and who thought it his duty to sleep between the faces of the house guests, occasionally meowing at them for good measure.

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Now playing: Prince - Sexy MF
via FoxyTunes

Another Regular

2007-10-11T19:37:00.000Z

Alcohol strips people raw and as a result of permanent exposure to a pure source, long term bartenders tend to be junkies for humanity. Craving a drug they mistrust, leaving them simultaneously some of the biggest misanthropes, but at the same time socially inclined people you will meet. Regulars are a particularly rich source of amusement and hatred. Here is the second in an occasional series of regulars I have had the mixed pleasure of having to serve.

Stan – Stan was a tanned tramp who never removed his reflective aviator shades, wore the same charity shop clothes everyday and carried a grey head size shoulder bag, a classic serial killer type. An overwhelming greasy musk followed Stan where ever he went and we hypothesized that the smell came from the bag, more accurately we thought it was his wife’s head IN his bag that stank. He drank the cheapest bitter available which he paid for with warm, slightly damp coins, he drank it silently and alone staring at the kids play area with piggy eyes from behind those creepy mirrored shades.

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Now playing: Jane's Addiction - Obvious
via FoxyTunes

A lesson in Leverage

2007-10-06T13:11:00.000Z

Blogs are at their best when being vaguely confessional or intensely private and we as readers are obsessed with personal details and real emotions, so with that in mind I present to you a story from my youth, a morality lesson involving YT and a bully

I was a bookish, arty and quiet kid when I was twelve. Never one of the popular kids at school but not one of the reviled or bullied kids up to that point. That changed when, in one geography class, the popular kids (there was no difference between popular and bully at my school) asked me for help with the conservation poster that was our task that particular hour, he was taken with a chrome lettering effect I was developing and asked me to title his poster for him, I was flattered and more importantly had finished my work and also eager to do a favor for someone higher up on the social food chain.

Unfortunately, because of my dyslexia, although beautifully drawn the “environmental” became “enviromenal” and because of its craftsmanship the effort was put up on a display for all to see bearing the bully’s name. For this transgression, bully logic meant that he could quite rightly demand money as payment, fifty pence, which was a fortune considering my first job was several years away and the only money I ever really saw was my bus fare left exactly each day in small fastidious piles every morning. That day also happened to be the day that some money for a school trip had to be handed in, so I opened the brown envelope up and took the money from that claiming later to the teacher that the rest would be in tomorrow.

I was sickened I was fifty pence in debt with no way of making up the shortfall. The next day because he had seen the amount of money I was carrying yesterday he demanded a further fifty pence by the end of the day, my head swam I had no way of paying him and the teacher.

I worried all day; a migraine was starting and had no one to back me up back then so when the bully charged over to have a private word to me I did the unthinkable, I threatened to tell. Now most reading this were probably thinking at this point why I didn’t tell before this but I was brought up in an environment where being that simply wasn’t done, grassing was such a foreign action, I could no more of ran to a teacher than grew wings and flew to one.

It wasn’t so much of a threat, I simply explained the situation; that I had no more money and the money he had took was in fact intended to pay for the school trip and any attempt to get any money would be futile and I would probably have to explain to Mr Adie why I was fifty pence short. When I saw his face go white I learnt a little lesson in Leverage that day. You see little bully had form for extortion and any other infraction could land him in some serious boiling trouble, he instantly showed his belly and gave me the fifty pence back, and over the next few weeks was pursuaded to part with several more fifty pences besides.

me, 16 years later, enjoying a book at a pub

34FREE

2007-10-05T13:40:00.000Z

More help with your crippling choice paralysis, too see more of these clickity on the link in the side bar.

The prayer Hadouken!

What: Uk Grime meets Nu-rave over Game boy samples and then rapes a Bloc Party favorite, manages to be refreshingly young without being juvenile, fun without being naff and lo-fi with out being cheap.

When: Trying to convince yourself you aren’t that old after finding your first grey pube

On call Kings of Leon

What: Southern indie from sons of a preacher, Slow burn bass with building scratchy guitars and whiskey blues voice which, while not technically brilliant, has something better; character

When: While waiting outside of a police station for your friends to be released from the drunk tank

Band aid covers a bullet hole Scarling

What: Bouncy, chunky Goth-influenced track sung by Betty Boop’s slutty sister, whose voice lands on the good side of the annoying threshold. Infused with spangly, noise distorted guitars that counter an almost subliminal driving bass.

When: Trying to cheer up the Goth your trapped in a lift with.

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Now playing: Silverchair - Straight Lines
via FoxyTunes

further proof that i am a man-child

2007-10-03T16:11:00.000Z

"draw me a nice tattoo" says my girlfriend playfully.

an hour later im still giggling and insist that photos be taken.

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Now playing: Iggy Pop & the Stooges - Search and Destroy
via FoxyTunes

Regulars (part one of an ocassional series)

2007-09-25T13:47:00.000Z

My body seems to purging itself of a viscous green liquid which looks more like Predator blood than anything a human produces. My nurse has fled my, admittedly somewhat shoddy care, as soon as my man-ingitis finished with me started with her. So I’m entrenched at a pub with a bad case of the slightlys; I’m slightly fluey, slightly headachy, slightly drunk and even though she has only been gone a couple of hours, slightly missing my girlfriend. Shut up, I’m ill.

I love an empty pub, its not that I don’t like people, I just enjoy relaxing in a public place with a degree of privacy, it could be the perverse pleasure of being alone somewhere that by its nature should be busy, imagining yesterdays ghosts and absorbing the residue of good times ingraining in the woodwork. The main problem with preferring empty pubs is when you find a really nice and empty one, it will inevitably close because pubs and bars need people and lots of them.

I am a nomadic drinker; I have no want for drifting familiarity or the comfort of the “Regular” status. I have worked in the pub trade for a decade and Regular in bar circles is normally another name for dipso or socially sub-normal. Let me tell you about one my most memorable regulars, Chris.

Chris looks like a smaller version of Blues manager Steve Bruce but with whiter hair and a more disfigured nose. Apparently Chris had mental issues before he caught the number 62 bus in his face. Twice. Tellingly each time making it down to the pub only to have the bar staff call him an ambulance. Some put it down to his Dad being part of the crew on one the ships closest to the first atomic bomb testing permanently screwing his DNA. Or it could be his faith and calling to seminary school that got slapped out of him by his atheist Dad, I suppose after watching a blast that could crack heaven in half with only a pair of darkened glasses to protect you, it becomes hard to believe in a benevolent god.

On his more coherent days he would regale you with stories of football violence and car chases, including the time he went to court for killing a Police Dog with his bare hands but got off with a self defense plea. But most of the time Chris could only communicate in highly repetitive and ritualized call and responses increasing in volume and almost Tourette’s like in timing.
“What am I like on the horse’s?” he would ejaculate while you would be engaged in conversation elsewhere (He’s an avid gambler whose fistful of bets would never exceed five pounds, in total).
“Shit hot Chris” would be the expected response, although this was not actually true, my friend made the mistake of thinking Chris some sort of idiot savant and gave him money to bet on his behalf. He lost. Of course after the ninth or tenth time of answering the affirmative becomes increasingly flippant.
“You’re a wizard, a sorcerer of the odds, Chris
“You’re like Rain Man Chris”
“You’re amazing, like fireworks”

In his cups he would talk of “the lady in white” an, and I’m only in the realms of hypothesis and presumption now, amalgamation of Lady Luck and the Virgin Mary, who he visited every morning on his epic morning walks.
“She’s beautiful” he’d whisper as he put his hands together in prayer and eyes rolled into the back of his head.

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Now playing: Silverchair - Straight Lines
via FoxyTunes

2007-09-22T22:34:00.000Z

Bad case of man-ingitis. I will write when i have done something other than potter round my house swearing at my nurse/girlfriend.

it burns, dear god it burns

2007-09-19T15:11:00.000Z

Some bastard came into my room last night and replaced my upper esophagus with burning sandpaper, every drop of phlegm that drips down the back of my throat burns like the time I snorted pepper vodka without the bonus of being fall-down-fight invisible-people drunk.

I’m writing this raw, normally most of my brain thoughts are originally written in one of my battered notebooks I carry with me, normally in a pub. But now I’m just writing to feel the keys under my fingers, to make myself feel useful, like I did something with my day – even if that something is whine on the Internet about my fire neck disease.

Last night I found out about this competition and dashed off 149 words, a whole one word under the required amount which I am pretty smug about.

Planetman are a band I consider myself lucky to know personally, a Ska dub infusion with a Punk edge so sharp the music is lifted out of the chilled mediocrity and plastic teenage angst. Self titled “kung-fu rock and roll”, I can’t think of a better way of describing being musically kicked in the balls and having the Dim-Mak pressure point for my dance gland jabbed.

I think the world lost a good drummer when Mother Nature chose not to bless me with even the most basic sense of rhythm. To make up for it I have always surrounded myself with musicians; acid trance techno shamans, humble singer songwriters, and even live dance scientists thrashing at their laptops. I love being round their spark, for me magic is defined as anything I will never understand, so by surrounding myself with musicians of Planetman’s calibre, I am always in wonder.

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Now playing: Elvis Costello - Pump It Up
via FoxyTunes

Pub Notes: waiting for the (northen) man

2007-09-17T13:10:00.000Z

The students are back and their youth disgusts me. Every pub for the next few weeks will be full of fumbling shy packs of “getting to know you” drinkers, the air thick with clumsy sexual tension, drinking game chants, and lynx deodorant. Again I feel like the oldest person in the pub, marked out by an air of disillusionment, rejection of company and a drink in front of me that isn’t a cheap Smirnoff ice clone or flat lager. The lack of space in the pub means I’m relegated outside to the newly opulent smoker’s area and, of course, it is empty, this generation of students doesn’t smoke, that is the addiction of their parents. Jokes on them when they find out the e-numbers and “Frankenstein” foods that their parents edited from their diet as kids, turn out to be an anti-cancer vaccine and they discover their degrees are worth less than politicians promise. Unless of course their degrees are in submarine building or breathing underwater because, if the papers are to be believed, the polar caps will be well and truly fucked by then and Birmingham will be a sea-side resort.

End of times are coming, other people know this, take for example the groups of estate kids setting fire to bins and huffing the noxious fumes, all for a few hours of unconscious vomiting and hallucinations. That kind of wanton self destructive anomie only comes from a deep and intimate sense of Nihilism and background doom.

Or not. It could be the drink mellowing me a little or the fact that the clouds have finally cracked and the tension headache that was building is suddenly relieved but I realize I was starting to sound like every other cynic soothsayer that inevitably turn out to be wrong. Northern Chris has arrived and suddenly I don’t hate the freshers as much.

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Now playing: T. Rex - Lady
via FoxyTunes

idle fluff on a darkening day

2007-09-16T16:43:00.000Z

Even though it looks and tastes like diabetic robot’s piss, I have been drinking a hell of a lot of Relentless. It’s an energy drink that has approximately the same go faster chemicals as its competitors, but is served in nearly pint size cans. I’ve been drinking so much in fact that over the past few days, when I haven’t drank any, my stomach feels decidedly weird and I’ve had to start drinking more booze to take the edge off the nervous energy that will appear and disappear at a moments notice; which is ironic because I only started drinking the energy drink to try and curb my beer intake in the first place.

It’s Sunday and I’m watching one of the last summer days be sullied by a huge swathe of black clouds swallowing the sun and draining the warmth out of the day. Winter seems less like the empty threat it did at the start of the summer and now a certainty. I’m not ready for Winter.

I’ve also been more than a little bit entertained by the MEEZ site, so I present for you, me, doing the robot, in an ally.

Manchester, Facebook and Mush

2007-09-13T22:40:00.000Z

Its early afternoon - what some people would call “broad daylight”, I am watching my one of my oldest friends, Phil
build a tower of garden furniture to reach a ludicrously high window while I try to get the phrase “spinal trauma” out of my head. I’ve only been in Manchester 24 hours and already I’m breaking into a house. Dramatic eh? Actually not that much, it’s my friend’s house and we locked ourselves out while on a mission to buy beer and pasta. Being the resourceful Englishmen that we are we put our heads together and come up with what I like to think is an elegant solution; we stash the shopping and go to the pub.

I find it interesting that I am only in Manchester visiting Phil because of Facebook. Facebook’s intention seems to be to keep people in touch with friends and help people get reacquainted with friends they perhaps they don’t see as much anymore, so far so fluffy. But I find it does this only cosmetically, sure I have exchanged a few cursory message with my supposed long lost friends; “wow great to hear from you etc…….what you up to blah…..me? I’m a weapons inspector for the UN now… blather” and yes of course I have trawled through their photos but once that is done the guilt is assuaged. And isn’t that a big part of this? To relieve the guilt? Tiny drips of pseudo-contact methadone to wean us off face to face crack.

Phil doesn’t have a Facebook account, and I’m glad of it. Otherwise I may have been happy to pass the odd quipy pleasantry, watch his status update and pat myself on the back rather than get off my arse and travel the few hours it takes to hug for real, eat his food and scare his neighbors. its Facebook's fault here, but only because i didn't want him to become just another square in my "friends" box.

On the coach home (I assure you no expense ~~spared~~ spent) I can see lilac and bruise purple clouds crowding an orange strip of skyline in an otherwise summer blue sky, a song on my MP3 player comes on and jangles my memory and reminds of friends gone, some by choice, some by circumstance, most by bloody bad luck and the vicious specter of fate. I suddenly feel very tired, the sky make me want to cry and writing in my battered leather notebook is a way of stopping it, a way of adding a layer of language in between my raw nerves and reality. I was once told that in life you will become friends with many people, some will stay forever, some will go, and some may even come back again. I was told its no use getting upset about the ones that leave, it’s only ever sad when you don’t learn the lessons they were sent to teach you.

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Now playing: Adam And The Ants - Ant Music
via FoxyTunes

Three for Free, back and bad

2007-09-12T14:31:00.000Z

I haven’t done one of these in a while, basically its music I recommend you should steal from teh internets.

We used to be friends Dandy Warhols

What: Electric bohemian decadence with a bouncy singalong chorus.

When: Drinking Vodka while getting ready to go out and even though you don’t really want to go you’ve decided to look slutty fantastic anyway.

Stop, im alredy dead Deadboys and the Elephantmen

What: Pared down southern stomprock with a jangly intro leading to a solid rock and fucking roll track. What the White Stripes might have sounded like if they had been able to get anymore band members.

When: For storming out of a strip club because you've just realized that the last lap dance you had was from your superhot underage cousin and you was too blitzed to notice.

In the sun Joseph Arthur

What: Ubiquitous sad song heard on a dozen American dramas, normally during a nostalgic montage. It’s still a bloody good, if somewhat emotive, song though. Melodic guitar and slightly altered vocals, hmmm uplifting.

When: Sitting alone on top of a hill watching a sunset reminiscing.

Goth barbecue

2007-09-08T16:25:00.000Z

Normally I agree with the general consensus that Goths are not scary, but as the aging transsexual brushes herself* against me unnecessarily close, I’ve got to admit I’m close to shitting myself, its not the excessive amount of make-up she’s wearing, and it is excessive, even for a Goth. Nor is it the scars I spy on her arm, lengthways which is the “proper” way apparently. What is terrifying me is the “welcome to my parlor” smile as she leers closer and closer. I guess I deserve it, I have accidentally crashed a Goth barbecue.

It’s Sunday and I had a few hours to kill before meeting my lovely girlfriend from the station so I head to the The Rainbow, I know a bit out of the way, but it’s a blazing hot day and the walk doesn’t seem much of a chore. When I do get to the pub the door is blocked by two moody Goths, one with a pork pie hat set at a jaunty angle, the other a skinhead with over dyed eyebrows plucked to meticulous points. I could feel their eyes on me, but I was a Goth for a few months and I was used to inverted sneering and inverted outsider snobbery. Flicking a whasup nod I drop a shoulder and bounce past them, not even bothering to take off my earbuds.

To find the place is dripping with Goths, a live band is setting up and a barbecue has been lit outside. It’s a weird sight to see so many supposed “Nightwalkers” in the day, let alone eating hummus salad trying not to smear their make-up. Goth is a hard look to pull off, to do so you have to commit 100% and look effortlessly comfortable while doing so, that’s why I quit the scene; everyone took themselves far to seriously, but they had too as soon as you don’t and drop character, say by eating a bloody salad and complaining about the heat when your dressed entirely in black, the illusion is shattered and you stop being a Goth and are just a chubby tit in fancy dress.

I get a table near the entrance and notice, rather guiltily, that they are charging to get in, the two at the door wasn’t being moody, I had just pushed passed them. This goes to show how far a little confidence and a bored expression can get you.

overheard at the bar from the bar staff “its like a Tim Burton film, without the stylishness and the cool”

The first band start, Adfinem, they seem to be of the New Wave Emontronica type of music, all sincere wailing and synths over an industrial beat. The vocalist is a young lad that seems younger between songs when the angst dissipates and the coy banter begins, he has a good voice which sounds strong and emotive even without reverb; but my attention is drawn to the keyboardist, he’s a blond Muscle Mary who is easy old enough to be the leads dad. I don’t know if it would be more creepy if he was or wasn’t.

I catch the manager as he is setting up a fan for the obviously uncomfortable clique of baroque Goths in the corner, looking in equal amounts amused and fed up.
“What is this, going on today?” I ask, he smiles
“It’s a Goth barbecue”
“Does this happen every Sunday?”
“Does it fuck” he laughs with a charming Irish brogue
“Was I supposed to pay to get in?” I venture, feeling a little bad.
“Probably, didn’t you?”
“Nah just walked straight past them, should I pay now?” he laughs again and says
“I fucking wouldn’t” as he disappears out back leaving me feeling like the last sane man in the world wandering why the fat Goths insist on wearing tight black latex on a bright august afternoon.

*the female pronoun being a generous concession to her chosen identifying gender

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Now playing: Shampoo - Uh Oh! Were In Trouble
via FoxyTunes

Diana who?

2007-08-31T11:24:00.000Z

Well it was ten years ago that all sense of perspective was tragically ripped from the nation and I had to pretend that a posh lady that took too many holidays dieing in a car accident was the most upsetting thing since I realized that Father Christmas had exactly the same hand writing as my mum, in fear of being strung up from the nearest lamppost should I voice my dissent. The sense of grief only equaled the horrible alienation felt by those who retained there senses and couldn’t give two shits, because we were there, for every 10 simpering tear-sacks and patriotic hand-wringers there was one slightly bemused and vaguely scared person not actually allowed to voice there opinion; it was like being in a secret club. I was eighteen at the time finally having sex and attempting to drink the bars of Birmingham dry, in short having a grand time.

One night, walking through the Cathedral Square we walked past the elaborate homage of flowers, hundreds and hundreds of floral tributes lay on the grass and lit by candle light it was quite a moving sight, if a little wasteful seeing as all that money could have been given to charity or spent on vodka. While looking at it a flicker of an idea tickled in my head and eventually spread to an almost overwhelming urge “jump in the flowers” said Evil Me “Do it, take a run up and do a flip”, I don’t know if it was that self destructive urge I live with taking a creative route, or just an expression of the frustration of not being allowed to express the views I knew to be sane and rational, or even have these views expressed in the media, because somehow, amazingly the English lost there sense of humor for a couple of months, and it was terrifying. I didn’t jump in the end my girlfriend of the time saw the glint in my eye I get when negotiating with Evil Me and dragged me away.

I have no idea what this guy is playing at, really I cannot even begin to put myself in the position where this would be a good idea. Do you think the princes will see him and think “that’s how our mom would have liked to be remembered, by having a simpleton get carried away and paint her name on his face” or do you think that it would take away from the notion that the nation actually cared that much and land the phenomenon in the mass hysteria category?

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Now playing: Betty Boo - Where Are You Baby
http://foxytunes.com/artist/betty+boo/track/where+are+you+baby

Dispatches from the Future (capital fuckin F)

2007-08-30T20:02:00.000Z

My new Mp3 player is the approximate size and shape as a child’s eraser, weighs significantly less than a paperclip and, if I had too, I think it is entirely possible that I could swallow it. God knows why I would have too though; maybe if I was cornered by a foreign acronym and it contain classified files or something. It doesn’t by the way, it contain stolen Mp3s, most of which sound like an electric guitar trying to have sex with some childrens toys and some Fleetwood Mac.

Its one of those nights where exactly the rights stars align, the right amount of; booze, whatever chemicals they are putting in energy drinks, swaggering guitar music, sleep, lack of sleep and sunshine happen together to make me feel unreal, like a character in a badly written but enormously fun book.

I’m in the Square Peg after doing the usual half an hour of wandering round trying to choose a pub, the trouble with choice is you will never be completely happy, the nagging sense of “what if” is often the only thing wrong with your final choice, and sometimes that’s enough to fuck it completely.

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Now playing: The White Stripes - The Denial Twist
http://foxytunes.com/artist/the+white+stripes/track/the+denial+twist

Photographs of Atleys penis are available on request

2007-08-26T20:46:00.000Z

here are my notes from a recent trip down to the coast, sorry about the gap between posting, something disrupted the delicate balance of whatever force is keeping my PC together, temperamental thing she is

Time: It’s two in the morning.I probably shouldn’t be mixing painkillers and sleeping tablets, and it probably a worse idea to be washing them down with a cheap energy drink. At very best they’ll cancel each other out and nothing will work. Worst case scenario, well I don’t want to think about it. I love my parent’s house but I could never live here again, the rhythm of it is all wrong, tiny reminders of powerlessness and having to sit through Eastenders would drive me out of small part of my mind I am still occupying.

Tomorrow I will be tagging along with my brother and his friends on a boys weekend down to Newquey and when I say tomorrow I mean in three hours because they have decided to leave at five in the morning, which my body sees more of a bedtime than a reasonable time to get up………

Time: Two in the morning next day. Tonight I had an epiphany; maybe it was because I had been drinking twelve hours solid, or maybe I had been awake for 24 hours straight or maybe it was just the disappointment of finding a place that I had idealized to be awash with aggressively drinking neandershirts, turning it from, what in my mind had been aa relaxing little surfing town, into Broadstreet-on-Sea*. But I had a epiphany none the less – I just didn’t feel like being at the club. It wasn’t the company, a nicer bunch of lads you couldn’t wish to meet. Its just at that moment I saw the pointlessness of constantly chasing those epic nights out, the ones that only really exist in your memory and then only because your memory has edited the event and then is rewritten anyway next day by the hungover accounts of friends and shaky camera phone footage. I despair at the amount of time and money wasted on lukewarm nights in bad clubs

I have been chasing Dionysus’s ghost when true hedonism means doing what really makes you happy.

Time: Three in the afternoon next day This is what makes me happy, today I have been on the beach, alternating between sun snoozing and body boarding, now I have retreated from the sun to write this tired and tanned. In fact I can be said to be tanned in exactly the same way the sea can be described as damp.

But I am tired and tanned and most importantly happy. Unlike my brother who not only got stung by a weaver fish but has had to spend the last twenty minutes digging, trying to find a pair of sandals he buried for a laugh.

not as many notes as i thought, hmmm may come back edit this lot into something more coherent

*Broad street is a street in Birmingham town center where heavily made up women in tiny clothes and louts in knock off designer shirts go to fight, fuck and listen to really poor music. Every city has got an equivalent.

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Now playing: The Candy Spooky Theater - Devilish Kidnapper
http://foxytunes.com/artist/the+candy+spooky+theater/track/devilish+kidnapper

the ghost of aussie past part 2

2007-08-09T10:54:00.000Z

This is the second, and final extract of the Australia thing, to be honest the writing in the rest of the sketchbook is largely second rate and depressing, skipping the good bits; it seems I only wrote when either bored or depressed. The picture is, again, a pencil drawing this time not a friend of mine, but a tramp.

24.9

Pints! They do pints ha! I don’t know why that makes me happy, but it does. It shouldn’t be questioned or over analyzed, it should just fucking be. The story of my life, if there is one thing that will be written, told or sung about my life; it is going to be “he never knew how stressful/depressing/good it was until it was gone”. Man, I never knew how much not having a job was fucking with my head until it was gone, well, possibly gone. I realized on the way to the pub tonight, that everyone has there safety net, the skanks have their jackal headed pimps loitering with hidden shivs, and even the dipso shoutys have their mumbling friends to nod along. It’s just that my safety net is a defeat, the words “back before Christmas”* rattling around my head.

I don’t know too much, well about stuff that counts, but life has taught me a few things so far. One of them is never presume a girl is going to be bad at pool. Take this chick at the table before she started, she projected an air of silly girlyness, now at the table the switch has been flicked from giggling girl to cold shark. All of a sudden she has the stance, the bridge and the cold, cold shark stare, which could be of concentration but is probably the impatient waiting for the fuck up, the smallest hint of chum on the table. Three things to look out for to spot if you are playing someone who plays a lot of pool. Frequent players have no fear of the rack, they won’t wait the nod or have to check the picture, the balls are in the triangle as soon as they are spat out of the table. Second, good players get low, hunched down across the table. Third regulars player bang their cues on the floor in recognition of a good shot instead the juggling act that’s required to applaud. The girl, now clearing up, did all three, I saw it, her boyfriend didn’t, but he’s now six balls down and his patronizing has stopped. Poor guy, the change on his face has been a clear and dramatic change, from condescending to grim realization, passing through disbelief and finally respect. Well she won and the guy looks like his very man essence has been drained, he’s probably going to have to start wearing moisturizer and remembering birthdays now.

*I was.

fooze ball gen

2007-08-07T22:41:00.000Z

The football season kicks off Saturday and I couldn’t be more Meh, I resent the pubs being took over by staring young men, pausing from their silent vigil to shout and gesticulate wildly or repeat exactly what the commentators just said, I hate having my manhood measured by how much or how little I care or know about any given team and that being the only way you are allowed to interact with other men your age is through the medium of the sport. I have never really understood why the pubs can’t play music at the same time as a match or why the game has to on so long. I already want my pubs back.

the ghost of aussie past

2007-08-06T22:44:00.000Z

I found the sketchbook that I took with me to Australia in 2003(?) I thought as a way of keeping you guys happy while I’m on my holibobs I will type up a couple of extracts and show you a couple of scans as way of filling the blog with lazy content. The picture is a pencil drawing I did of my friend Twon from a photograph.

22.9

Why does the first beer taste so good, even if I did have to walk through the sketchiest area to get to it? Past the skank haired street squawkers, dusty crumbled poor sitting on milk crates and the firm hands of greasy fat men pulling you into this dive or that. Why does the beer taste so good? Is it the sating of a need, the creep up the ladder of alcoholism, a ladder leading to a milk crate of my own, neon blind and mumbling?

You know the saying “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”? Well I have an interview tomorrow for a job that the optimist in me (yeah, that stupid prick) is nervously hopeful for, and the cynic in me is bristling waiting for the catch, ever waiting for the flaw.

My beer is now half empty, or is it half full? I dunno, I sincerely think that sometimes I have lost out on some opportunities because my inner cynic screams for me to cut my losses. I have been In Sydney a week and a half now, I’m rapidly spending money I don’t have and no luck on the job front, so what have I got to lose? Apart from a whole morning of vague wandering in the vain hope of coming cross the “FREE MONEY” basket that the delusional prick in me half expects to find.

The second beer is here and the song playing is reminding me of my family, not in any specific way, its slow and I feel I should be missing them by now so I do – maybe it’s the beer. What am I doing in Australia? And more importantly what would I do back home? What exactly am I going to do with the rest of my life? All these questions are jammed and locked straight back into the back of my mind as the barmaid uses a pool que to turn on the biggest disco ball I have ever seen, red and white spots swarm the room like Liverpool supporting locusts, gods fifth plague was disco.

Excuse the melancholy, long periods of not knowing anyone in the same hemisphere tend to lead quiet introspection. I’ve nearly finished beer number two now and I should go back and rustle up some noodles, but at time like these I always think W.W.J.M.D?* and, of course the answer is have another beer. Now many people would scoff at the wisdom of having Jim Morrision as a guiding influence, especially compared to Ol’ Jeesey. But its worth bearing in mind that J.C. died in horrible pain nailed to a cross, and J.M. deid in the bath having a nap, plus J.M had better hair, its close, but he did.

*What Would Jim Morrison Do

An excuse

2007-08-06T12:29:00.000Z

The bar person is a peculiar breed of creature, who craves human contact while simultaneously hating the general public. Being mainly nocturnal we have problems forming relationships due to the erratic nature of our migratory habits and shift patterns.

“Smile” reads a sign before enter the bar from the back “the customer is not the enemy”, which is a smart thing to remind staff because sometimes it is easy to slip into the “Us or Them” mindset, people don’t realize that bar staff are not deaf or blind, or that the three foot of wood between us is not enough distance to muffle the theatrical sighs, muttered threats, pouts and eye rolls. We notice every skipped please and thank you every time your coins are handed to us in a pool of bar gunk or even threw at us. Ok we don’t cry ourselves to sleep but it does chip at our good moods and indeed the blocks of our very good natures, delicately but persistently, until we are left eroded sculptors of surly hate, and animated golem of our misanthropy lumbering from customer expecting the worst, and normally getting it.

But then there are days when the bar is your stage, all bar staff, at least the good ones, are show offs at heart. We enjoy the attention, loud and gregarious, serving the customers is one skill but keeping the crowd happy is entirely another. Banter can be inclusive, smiles attract smiles and people are more willing to be served out of order or wait if they’re happy. That’s why I like to have a little drink myself before work, I just find it easier to make the transition from cynic to my usual swaggering bar persona with a little confidence juice.

a bad tempered misanthrope yesterday

Satans Glowbox

2007-07-20T13:16:00.000Z

Jerry Springer is the Devil, and if not the actual devil then I am certain he holds high office in hell. Of course it would be inaccurate and reactionary to hold him solely responsible for American culture degenerating into liquid batshit BUT he is riding that wave on a giant turd surfboard.

Excuse me for ranting but I just managed to catch some of the most recent Jerry Springer shows and I feel dirty, dirty and culpable. Dirty because just witnessing that debacle makes me want to scrub my frontal lobe clean with bleach and a metal scouring pad. And culpable because, if I’m completely honest, part of me enjoyed it

For those of you who may not have seen the show in a while there are a number of additions to the usual brain-dead low-rent shoutfest. For a start there is 30% more whooping, this, I suspect, has been achieved by dramatically lowering the mental age of the audience. Either the producers are recruiting the audience from the brain injuries clinic or they are spiking the complementary food with toxic metal like mercury. Either way the effect is the same; hollering drooling simpletons who clap whoop and jeer on cue.

The proceedings are given a vaguely silly air by some unseen force playing sound effects at seemingly random intervals; the weirdest of these is the “ding ding” of a boxing bell. I’m sure this started as a response to the inevitable violence inherent to the shows “I’ve got a shocking secret to tell you” format. But now, curiously, the participants on the show have become so accustomed to this that the bell is actually used as a catalyst, at any time the producers can decide that its going a bit slow, play that sound, and like Pavlov’s dogs the sideshow erupts into flailing limbs, flung wigs, and flying furniture. And nakedness, yes nakedness, the women who appear on the show use taking there clothes of as an act of aggression. Apparently now, in America, ladies during an argument will discard their tops and trousers at the slightest provocation to prove how much of a woman they are.*

”It’s good”, Jerry thinks to himself, alone reclined in his chair of bones sipping from his cut crystal glass of paupers tears and roasting his cloven feet in front of a roaring soul fire “but it could be nastier, more debasing, more – evil.” Then it occurs to him and a wide grin splits his face like cesarean gash.Pole dancers. For no real reason members of the public are allowed to come on the show and pole dance. What have pole dancers got to do with anything? Precisely nothing is the only answer I have.

With the dancing, the fighting, the sound effects, and the nudity its easy to forget that people are actually getting their hearts broken. I had to leave the room when a woman (well child, she was barely out of her teens) found out her childhood sweetheart husband of two years and father of their two year daughter, had been sleeping with her own sister. You could literately see her world collapsing, and Jerry’s response? Well Jerry stopped the action; he took control stop the shouting, calmed everyone down and got one of the security guards to swap glasses with her as a joke because he thought they looked similar.

The American empire has often been compared to the roman empire and now I can see why; its not a huge leap to give these fuckers tridents and nets and let them sort it out to the death.** It’s a shame that a country able to produce such sublime and intelligent entertainment is also able to produce such soul destroying shit

*Womanhood now being measured in folds of fat, bad skin and clumsy tattoos
**I’d watch it

Sex tips for the drunk and weird

2007-07-04T13:19:00.000Z

Five years ago if I would have told you I was sitting in a smoke free pub drinking a cider slush puppy you would have dismissed my rantings for that of a madman’s, and quite possibly punched me in my lunatic head for talking such nonsense.

It’s a strange and terrible world in which we have come to live, filled with both wonder and malevolence; in the same day I learn of fresh terror attacks and child murder, I also discover a drink that I hadn’t before dare dream of. The more worthy amongst you may be horrified at my consumer distraction from things of greater importance by a mere product and I offer no apology. I plan to fiddle while this whole world burns (or floods).

I moved house yesterday with all the inevitable stress and muscle strain that goes with it, a horrible day of negotiating, frayed tempers and lifting. It’s a relief not to be living out of a box any more though. The move had been looming in the near distance for a while like a heavy boat destroying wave waiting to break, and now to be on the other side is a strange light feeling. One aspect that I never planned on was letting my housemates see exactly how crazy I am, everything has to be in its place, I get very agitated when things aren’t in their place. Not quite OCD but enough that I am uncomfortable, as I type this I am nervously eyeing the newspaper that I bought into my bedroom, this make me uneasy because a newspaper, in my head, is a downstairs thing and downstairs things do NOT belong upstairs.

I am entrenched in a pub away from the torrential rain, which – I believe the scientific name for it – is shitting it down, which rather neatly brings to my next subject; bizarre sexual practices. For some week now I have been threatening to “Moose” my girlfriend while not telling her what moosing actually is. This means, because of her inquiries, most of the girls in my acquaintance are quite anxious to find out. So here is a list of sexual acts that may or may not be real and I may or may not have done.

Worming or Oculolinctus: The act of licking a partner's eyeball.

The Houdini: This almost mythic manoeuvre requires some planning and a great deal of luck, the man that actually pulls this off will carried on the shoulders of others men and proclaimed the winner. The gentleman in question must be taking his girlfriend (or boyfriend, it IS the 21 century after all) from behind with her looking out of window, he then stealthily swaps with a friend without the partner noticing and slips out of the room, he must then run outside and casually walk past the window waving at her (preferably at the point of climax).

Moosing: Again while enjoying the “doggy” position the gentleman places his outstretched hands, palms forward, either side of his partners head, so they look like antlers.

Next time – The German Snowplough, the Sloppy waffle, and the Screaming Seagull.

Back

2007-06-22T14:07:00.001Z

First of all a hello and thank you to all the regular readers of my little rant hole; I have been far too busy for the vaguely nihilistic self absorption that normally is the catalyst for writing and far too undisciplined to force myself to write when there are far more pressing issues like sleeping, eating, and making sure I will be doing neither permanently al fresco next year.

Secondly a big hello to all the new readers I may have gained from pimping my shit in the degree show catalogue. HELLO! I try to update the place about for times a month (although I have been a bit slack recently) if you wondering about the picture in the catalogue click here for the explanation. please feel free to look around the place, take your shoes off and mooch in the cupboards.

So now an update; since my last checked in with y’all I have; won one award, buried one relative, finished one degree, spent one small fortune on said degree, changed one job, caught one stomach bug, accidentally drank one crate of Budweiser, won one game of poker while being somewhere else, found one nice place to live.

As I write this I am invigilating the degree show, I find mild irony in me having to spend most of today, the longest day, in a completely blacked out room, I’m not even hungover *cue shocked gasp from anyone who knows me*, last night the drink:expense:fun ratio was far to low so I took my foot off the booze accelerator for once and watched the car crash of drunk emotional friends with the smugness of a tired paramedic who knows he’s going to be elbow deep in blood by the end of the night.

Last night was the final degree show private view, a culmination of three years hard work. OK not my hard work per say (although to stick doing anything for three years straight is hard work for me). And now I have to say its hard to feel anything, there is a kind of emptiness of not having anything to work towards, and I suppose if I really try there is pride in being part of the show, which many say has been the best in a few years. What I don’t feel is any sense of resolution, maybe when I get my marks it will feel finished. I don’t fell tired but I do feel drained, the last month has tested all my friendships to near breaking point, cleared me out financially and my niece can barely remember who I am.

2007-05-31T19:52:00.001Z

My grandfather was a giant, to me, as a child, he looked as big as a house. I remember his massive hands like spades and his equally big shaking laugh, he would love to laugh and it was so loud and funny you couldn’t help but laugh yourself, of course this would start him laughing until you was caught in a massive laugh feedback loop until your sides hurt. He was a generous man who kept his money in a sock and spent his life looking after my nan. Hugging him was like hugging a tree trunk.

and that’s how I choose to remember him.

Tv in hell

2007-05-30T19:33:00.000Z

The Buddhists believe that all desire leads to suffering, if this is true, then advertising therefore is just a vehicle for misery. From the terrifyingly aggressive Barry Scot who bellows his name like a cleaning obsessed crack head Tourette’s sufferer, to the painfully, to the painfully slowly narrated food porn of the Marks and Spencers campaign “this isn’t just food. It’s better described food”

The fact we perpetually allow this shit to be spewed into our brain astounds me. Now I’m no stranger at shouting at the television – the News, Wife Swap, Blue Peter, anything really will have me out of my chair turning the air blue with newly invented swear words. But advertisements push my “vent spleen button” more than most. The T.V’s in hell* only show Eastender re-runs and advertisments for heaven at a price you can never quite afford.

My most hated ad the moment is this one for Virgin money.

“Harold why are you pretending to listen to music when your headphones arnt plugged in?”

Hmmm let me think, maybe it’s because Harold would rather pretend to have a severe psychotic episode than be trapped in a lift with two wet and soulless suits banging endlessly on about their fucking credit cards, maybe he is sending you two a very clear message – he would rather act like a bit of an idiot than be a dull money obsessed drivel spouting corporate blank space.

The next is a Royal Navy advertisement where a medical officer says “in hospitals you tend to do the same things over and over until they become routine, I wanted something a little more challenging” (you can hunt around if you wish and find it at the website, but its not really worth it). So this woman wanted to get away from routine, doesn’t joining the armed forces seem like a massive mistake seeing as their day to day life if regimented down to the tinyist detail? And she wanted something “a little more challenging” what? like dealing with one of three things; sea sickness, alcohol poisoning and the Clap? Pull the other one its got bells on.

And thirdly, what kind of feekle munching child pervert gets off on seeing a oriental toddler on the toilet shouting “its all gone” at his mother because he is clearly disgusted by his own stench? I don’t need that in my life, its like a very very niche type of porn – cut to furtive looking man, nervously addressing a adult shop owner “excuse me do you have under-age Chinese boys pooing? They must be disgusted by their own smell and clearly adopted.”
“get out of my shop sicko”

*yes, I realise I've switched religious ideologies in the space of a paragraph, I'm post-modern, sue me.

Ahh ees alright, eh is tinhead

2007-05-10T15:55:00.000Z

Do you know who i am? i'm fucking Tin Tin.

i know i should be writing stuff instead of stealing links from BT3A, but writing my essay resubmits brokened my word brian for a bit so your going to have to make do.

muddy shoes with dirty souls

2007-04-27T12:44:00.000Z

I don’t know it, but it’s three in the afternoon. What I do know is that the chemically induced euphoria is wearing off and I am having to begin telling my body to stop dancing, as both my vision and hearing come back into focus I notice something strange; the “music” that me and my two best friends have been dancing too is becoming more and more discordant, then as my faculties fully return I realise the awful truth – the three of us have been standing in middle of a motionless but bemused crowd, dancing like loons to a folk band tuning their instruments for god knows how long.

Its becoming that season again folks, were ordinary, reasonable people go live in a field for a few days to watch the countries hottest bands from very far away, while they load their bodies with semi illegal consumables and forget to wash. Festival season is so close you can almost smell the hippies.

What follows is a basic festival survival guide submitted by my humble self, a veteran of two Glastonbury’s and numerous other grass roots and folk festivals.

The closest I have ever came to cooking at a festival is heating up instant noodles over a open fire in a opened water bottle and eating them with the only utensil at hand – a glow stick. If food is your thing then its probley a safer bet to buy on site, the larger festivals have a vast selection of catering trucks just itching to take your money, if not chuck some crackers in your bag. I guarantee that the times you actually remember to eat, you are going to be in no state to operate picnic stoves or do anything as complicated as cook, just bite the bullet and the take extra cash. And don’t eat anything that hasn’t been cooked well, because you in no way want to get yourself a dose of the squirts and deal with the dreaded Festival Toilets.

People often talk about Festival Toilets in the hushed tones of dread usually reserved for the truly despised and disgusting, but are they worthy of such of a reaction? In a word, Yes. In nine words, for the love of everything that is holy YES. The horror. If the smell hasn’t got you retching just standing outside then the huge pile of nasty inside will. Avoid. One year I remember seeing people doing their business inside plastic carrier bags, tying them up and leaving them or launching them. I’m not suggesting you go to that extreme, merely pointing out the lengths that people will go to to avoid the plastic huts of stank. Its probley worth packing some Immoduim or the equivalent.

And that leads me to the eternal problem of what to pack, generally never take anything that wouldn’t mind stolen, broken or losing, including; clothes (destroyed by mud, left in the wrong tent), your tent (sat on in the night by a stoned and drunk reveller wearing a funny hat) and, indeed your mind. Seriously I have never brought a tent back from a festival. Tent + Booze = useless broken ass giant kite. Don’t take your expensive digital camera, get a disposable, admittedly all your shots may be blurry out of focus messes, but so will your memory. Other useful things to Bring with you;
• Baby Wipes - to swab the crust from your face and bits if you do manage to pull, it’s the least you can do.
• Condoms – don’t be an idiot, protect yourself.
• Booze – I know you’re not supposed to, but if they ARE going to charge four pounds for a pint, they have to expect for most enterprising students to smuggle in a bottle of Tescos finest brand vodka, if found it will be confiscated though.
• A very open mind.
There is a universal piece of advice for packing that applies here – “half the clothes, twice the money”.

When you arrive and before you throw yourself into the unwashed Dionysian frenzy, take a few minutes to arrange a meeting point and time for when you inevitably get separated and are found terrified out of your mind, crying while watching Being John Malkavich in the cinema field (true story), your mobile will run out of juice. Also before you launch with unfettered abandon into the revelry, get hold of a programme and plan what you want to see, that way you won’t be sitting in a cabaret tent staring in disbelief as a seven foot transsexual sword-swallows a massive pair of scissors while the Chemical Brothers are playing a gig that will later be described by your friends as “epic” (sigh, another true story).

And as a parting piece of advice, make sure you have a couple of days after free too recover, I slept for a day after one Glastonbury, waking only to drink two pints of milk and eat an apple.

sun worship

2007-04-18T13:20:00.000Z

I love the sun, really, I can lose hours idly following shafts of sunlight across the living room floor, dozing or devouring books. Whole afternoons ticked of my life’s tally rolling around my quilt in the back garden. I don’t tan. I don’t burn, and my eyes are horribly sensitive to light. But after a day of sun induced lethargy I feel better than I do after a night of, what I laughingly refer to as, sleep.

The sun has gone in now and an afternoon breeze is making my girlfriends hair sway slightly as if she was on a photo shoot. She is reclined on our giant, furry, neon pink cushion reading The Wasp Factory (I am almost jealous that she gets to read it for the first time, I love that book). My too large sunglasses are hanging on her face making it seem even more delicate.

I’m writing now just to kill time while the BBQ warms and the beers cool. I’ve got to admit I am a bit spacey from the sun, its funny how bright sunshine turns the higher functions of the mind off for a bit. I’m not sure if I can get my people-head on in time, I may have to slip into some trousers and a tall gin and tonic before the guests arrive.

As the pedestrian patter of a forgettable DJ punctuates equally forgettable dance tracks, the smell of a whole nation of BBQs is mixing with the smells of curried meats and spiced rice that is unique to my neighbourhood at tea time. They say that smell is the biggest trigger to memory and smelling BBQ on a sunny its hard not to be nostalgic. Christ! I’m too young to be wistful. I’m getting another drink.

Welcome to summer everyone.

ps just a quick plug for a couple of blogs i havnt mentioned before.
first the reason i decided to start a blog in to begin with - the lovely Belle
and secondly my lovely GF who, i hate to say it, writes really well - Clumsy Bum

Two posts in as many days? i'm spoiling you lot

2007-04-07T23:20:00.000Z

I have just got back from what people in the pub trade call an A.F.D.* and before I slip into a bath hotter than the sun, three or four cold beers and unconsciousness, wanted to address something that appears to become a reoccurring theme in my blog; Pubs.

Last night Clumsy Arse asked me why pubs were so important to me, and it wasn’t a thinly veiled attempt to address my growing alcohol hobby, so it didn’t justify the flippant answer “because that’s where they sell the booze”. People tend to ask me this a lot.

The real answer requires some thought and this post is documentation of that thought train. I suppose foremost is that in the pub I feel as if I am participating in life, no matter how much I enjoy and obsess over it (damn you ANTM) watching T.V will always seem like killing time, entertaining myself until I die. In a pub, even on my own, I feel like part of the story, granted, maybe the background character of someone else’s story, but still part of the grand narrative.

As an avid people watcher, the pub is better than any soap the Devils ThoughtBox has to offer. There are not many things that modesty will allow me to admit to being good at, writing (maybe), and People Hacking** being two. A large part of PH is reading body language, something I enjoy a great deal.

Bars are where people’s lives overlap and in that overlap is where the fun stuff happens; nefarious items are bought or sold or swapped, causes are recruited for, allegiances made and ended and relationships begun (or, indeed, ended).

The pub feels comfortable to me; I have worked in bars and pubs since I came of age a decade ago. I understand the grammar of drinking and the syntax of serving. Being in pubs feels like home but only because they ARE home to me.

Anyway how many cool stories start with “I was sitting in my house”?

*All Fucking Day, a split shift, 10 hours or more
**The science of understanding human behaviour and using that knowledge to manipulate situations to your advantage.

Happy Dead Jesus Day

2007-04-06T22:03:00.000Z

My own pub has sent me home, a small mercy considering the size of my shifts this weekend – being a bartender means dreading major holidays as they inevitably mean monster shifts and amateur drinkers* - they have sent me home because it is dead, the majority of customers travelling away from the city home to their parents this weekend. So I have come to the Scuffed Wood pub (see here and here); rock pubs will still be busy this weekend because:
1. not many of the “alternative” scene are practicing Christians, and
2. Let’s face it; most of them still live at home.

As I walk in about a quarter of the people in here are mouthing the words from Rammenstiens Amerika and after a couple of seconds caught the impulse in myself. I think, to be able to comment with relevance, it is important for journalists to catch such impulses and examine them with the dispassion of an autistic scientist. I found myself mouthing the words, not as an indication of enjoyment, but more of a badge of belonging. Like the others, by singing along my intention was to announce my approval of the environment and immerse myself in it, by saying I know the words I was telling people I was like them, a password to a seemingly closed culture.

It troubles me that I always seem as if am berating this pub, its nominated subculture, and by extension my own past. The truth is, honesty is ugly and my roots go deep enough to owe it no lies. That said there is an amazing sense of community here, none of the meat market sensibility or barely contained aggression that is background noise to many of the city centre pubs on a Friday night. Just like-minded peoples lives overlapping and the discordant beauty of people waving their dysfunction as a flag. I have just seen one of college acquaintances, normally awkward and clunky in the presence of others, but here, smiling and natural.

And It saddens me sometimes conventional society has no room for accepting subcultures – tolerating them at best. But then I remember that it’s intolerance that drives the marginalised together and ties the comfortable bonds of this community together.

Under the alternatives label’s wing I have saw; the most shy flourish, the most unconventional blossom and some of the smartest people I have met be given room to develop. It doesn’t matter if “get it” in fact, mostly, it cooler if you don’t. just don’t presume its motives lie in teenage angst or stubborn rebellion.

* people who don’t go to pubs often, meaning they have no idea what drinks to have, how much they cost and, half the time, how to act like a civil fucking human being.

Clumsy sweet self

2007-04-04T19:07:00.000Z

I have never been a fan of being told what I can and can’t do. The most obvious example of this is my desire to be a writer only manifesting itself shortly after being told I am so very dyslexic. My own body even revolts against me; I tell myself that I have to be up early, so my brain, in a fit of pointless defiance, decides not to shut itself down until a couple of hours before I should be getting up. Maybe it’s an unconscious self destruction trip, a background desire to check out guns-a-blazin’ rather than quietly shrivel into a nursing home.

With that in mind it’s not surprising that while my brain constantly points out the girls who it is smart to start liking, and, more importantly, the ones I really shouldn’t, the ones I stand least chance with, the ones who deserve better and the ones who are, ultimately, a bad idea.

And, of course, it’s those girls my heart decides a suicidal running leap at.

This one was subtle, desire creeping up into me like an accent, unnoticed at first, but soon so thick that people can’t understand a word your saying. She ticks all the boxes of the ideal girl checklist and a few hidden on a second page that wasn’t even aware of.

Encased in a giggling storm of curly dark brown hair, her eyes are blue with pupils ringed with hazel and framed lightly with freckles, which continue over her eyelids. A button sweet nose and a mouth that permanently turns up at the sides and disappear with a charcoal smudge. I could spend hours staring at her face, and by now probably have, switching from seeing with artists eyes to writers eyes to boyfriends eyes (all of which I have dabbled with in the past).

She makes me happy, not necessarily by the things she says or does, but just by being around, by being her clumsy sweet self.

Ring a Ring of Roses

2007-03-30T14:05:00.000Z

I am diseased. I sit here chalky from the half a bottle of camomile lotion that has just been applied to my entire body by a very understanding girlfriend, I smell of babys and childhood measles. The rash is red, bumpy and insanely itchy at this point. The docters have told me, in their infinite wisdom, that it is an allergic reaction to something, although I haven't changed anything out of my routine (such as it is), no new; washing powders, shampoos, conditioners, animals, foods, drinks, deodorants, flora nor fauna. But apparently its an allergic reaction, one that doesn't respond to anti-histamines or go down after 48 hours, but still an allergic reaction. here is a picture of the rash:

the only parts of me to escape the blotches are the fella and boys, and my face. I have had to call in sick to work and will now spend the rest of the night petulantly sulking.

Uk grime

2007-03-26T13:55:00.000Z

Found on the floor by a bus stop (thank you louise), I like to think that this was a piece of homework about eating healthy or what-not; (sic)

Whos the fat sheep
yo, were not fat sheep
we keep in shape
eating healthy

Grease + fat aint my thing
so get your ass outa burger
king cummon!

This is the part where I break
it down, for all the fatties eatin
burgers at Mc Donalds. What
you should eat is fruit veg +
meat, if ya dont ya bellys
for keeps, veg goes in, veg
comes out, fat goes in and
dont come out. ya know

Here comes the 2 to the
3, to the 4, of(?) Kfc buckets
outside the door, then fatty
says he wants one more

OVER

I was about to kick is but
out the window

Here comes the 4 to the
5 to the 6, exercise is how
ya wanna grab a chick, its
also known as flab bustin
yeah.

Chorus

Hey, who ate my pies yall

possibly the best chorus to any song. ever.

Reflections on the outside, looking in

2007-03-19T22:58:00.000Z

this is me ten years ago, dont laugh, you was young once

I’m at the back of the scuffed wood pub, currently frequented by pea-cocked haired emo fasionistas looking gangly and uncomfortable in their skinny fit cardigans, the music is anonymous metal, just like the rest of the clientele.

Looking round I can see a cross section representation of this whole subculture. I admit since the nineties the lines are blurred, the edges of one group will nap overlap the others but one thing can be said to unite them; their otherness. This subcultures paradox can be summed up by the popular T-Shirt “You laugh because I am different, but I laugh because you are all the same.” The irony being the person wearing the t-shirt is probley a cookie cutter version of the person next to him and most others in their social conclave.

Next to me sit a group of regulars swapping stories of outrage and persecution; it seems weird to me how the rock community choose to belong to this oft sneered minority just to spend time railing against being treated different.

Which begs the question; do we really choose to join this subculture? And when I say we, I include myself, because I have aligned myself this way since school, I went right through the many shades of “rock” Goth, Punk, Hippy, Skater, Greebo and sometimes combinations of them all. Or is it not really a choice at all? Are we born with an inate desire to swim against the mainstream?

A lot us, bullied for petty differences, seek out the company of others, music fuelled by anger and angst become the perfect vent for assumed role of outsider. Others, victims of their own knee-jerk teenage rebellion, fall victim to a corporate constructed “alternative” buying the products, wearing the over priced clothes and drinking the cola that tells them they are “different” or “edgy”. Then there are the genuine freaks, sincere in every atom to the deviant ideals that go hand-in-hand with the dark imagery that most blindly wear as uniform, these fuckers are dangerous and charismatic because of their sincerity but end up mad, dead, or grey husks burnt out by excess. A lot are driven to find family away from their own broken past; they find a pub network of friendly face to replace their abusive and flawed history.

Or is it something simpler? Like the most basic human desire to belong? I grew up in bars like this one, I know the uniform, the dialect, and was even there for some of its history, I know some of the old guard well and even some of the more prominent characters too well. I’m comfortable amongst the freaks where others would be intimidated, and that makes me smile.

I think I was able to write this because I am outside looking in, but was inside looking out. Straddling the line that both sides think is thicker than it actually is.

Booze, love, men and trying not to sound like a twat

2007-03-16T04:13:00.000Z

The trouble with being in love is that movies have clichéd the emotion, and every expression of it, to the point of absurdity making any serious conversation an experiment in cringe making. So to talk about it you really only have several choices.

First you can ignore the problem entirely and end up talking like an over sincere early eighties Tom Cruise movie. This is problematic because serious moments can be ruined by the distraction of your partner wondering where she heard that before, eyebrows knit as your darlings eyes glaze as they stare at you, breathlessly they whisper.
“Was that in Cocktail or Top Gun, you know, the one in the cars?”
“Days of Thunder?”
“YES! That’s it; anyway, you love me or something?”

The second option is verbally dancing round the clichés. Of course you end up talking either like a bumbling Hugh Grant or a stuttering retard as you grope for the right word, and then its not guaranteed that you will FIND the right word, remember that: inclination, obsession and infatuation can all be synonyms for love but can mean wildly different, argument causing, things. I imagine all over the western world they’re men banging on bedroom doors shouting.
“Darling let me in please, it was a syntax error!”

Thirdly you can both acknowledge the cheesy lines by including them in air quotes, but this spoils the mood so much you might as well vomit on the table in front of you and draw “I heart you” in the mess, and, of course, there is the scientific fact that 97% of people that use air quotes are insufferable wankers (its science people, there’s no arguing with science)

I’m on my way to see one of my best friends, and one of the plethora of people I have managed to piss off in the pursuit of love. The stations rush past; Hinckley, Naurlbourgh, South Wigston and The Shire – it seems to get to Leicester you have to pass through middle earth first. Talking about love is doubly hard for men, recognising that you have any other emotion other than anger is like rolling on your back and bearing your throat. Luckily the exception to this rule is through the medium of booze, where, not only is it allowed, but actively encouraged to have the broadest spectrum of emotions – from love to hate to disgust to sympathy to despair and back again in the space of a minute and quite often over a bag of crisps. Again whatever problem that life throws at me, is answered by drink.

“It all comes out in the wash” is the received wisdom from our grandparents, which is good advice borne of years experience and worth ignoring the fact that most of that generation spend there days weeing themselves and watching Countdown.

tagging

2007-02-26T19:36:00.000Z

sorry no new words yet, heres an article i wrote for my uni magazine. i love you all

The question "is graffiti art?" has been asked now so many times now its almost a cliche, with the huge following and success of Bansky, and the midlands own Temper being the first graffiti artist to do a solo exhibition in a gallery, as well as graffiti motifs being used by graphic designers to sell everything from magazines to bland fizzy pop, whether it is art or not becomes a moot point.

Part of the resistance to the acceptance of graffiti art comes from the Graff artists themselves. The clandestine nature of the practice leading them to believe the "outlaw" fantasy they have become wrapped up in, or the deathly fear of not being cutting edge – these people don’t want fame, they want infamy.

Another reason for the general publics dislike for graffiti is - Tagging; its easy to look at a six colour Wildstyle "piece" (short for masterpiece) and see from its complexity the skill and flair required to make it. But what about the funny black squiggles that normally adorn bus stops, windows and other street furniture?

Tagging is the process of writing your name or "tag" as often and elaborately as possible, in fact they came first, "pieces" grew out of the desire to make the tag so large and elaborate that it would stand out from the rest. The desire to tag is a complex one to explain, and it's worth bearing in mind that names have been found on walls dating back to roman times.

Firstly people tag to grow a reputation, the more a person is "up", the more his name is recognised in the graff community, and let's face it who doesn't want the respect of their chosen peer group; the other reasons go a little deeper than this. Writing your name on something is a way of recording your presence, even the most restrained people will write there name at the top of a hill or mountain (or at least place a flag on it). It is not only is a recording of your presence not a demonstration of your mastery over it - we write our name on things we own. This is important in a large impersonal city where alienation and powerlessness is not only common in the young but considered normal, we often get little or no say in the way our landscape is grown, but it can be customised.

A tag is often a beautiful thing, something that the writer will spend hours practicing and developing. Tags have there own stylistic syntax and grammar a strict set of visual rules that take hours to master. Within these restrictions the writer is free to play with letter shapes and anti-form evolving the very building blocks of language and therefore by extension, thought. Now, as the viewers of tagging become more sophisticated at decoding there work the artist is also free from the burden of legibility and the tag becomes more an exercise of personal style than communication.

It's also worth noting that the chisel tip marker has the same writing edge as a calligraphy pen and I would argue that the practice of tagging has more in common with a monks illuminating script than petty vandalism. Will it ever be considered art? Probably not, but I don’t think its practitioners would have it any other way.

Why i was punched (not by mat - despite his moody look he loves it)

2007-02-13T03:55:00.000Z

Although I was expecting it, it still came as a shock - I've been punched harder but this was a sucker punch, so the fucker got a decent swing. One second sitting there, the next a shock of light. Quickly I was on my feet, but not quick enough, he had already run off, pushing through the shocked crowds and dumb struck bouncers.

As I said I had half expecting something to happen, it started, as the these things often do, over the pool table, I was waiting for a game, pound down as the universal laws of pool dictate, half drunk but lucid. From a small crowd of malevolent looking fuckers swan over two of the worst type of student - you know the type, drunk on the independence of being away from their mom but not far enough away from school to drop the same tired bully shit that will taint their karma for years to come. The night had been going well so far, celebrating Rich's birthday and I was with two of his uni friends when the fucktards come over. One of the them swiped the black ball, behind there jovial faces I could see this was classic bully, this pissed me off, school for me was a simple choice, predator or pray, after a year or so being a bully was a lot more attractive than the alternative (I'm not proud but still stand by my choice), I knew "Keepaway" when I saw it, fuck it, I could probley teach these fuckers more about bullying than they are ever going to bother learning at their parents expense.

Both of them were bigger than me by about six or so inches but I'm stocky and broad, granted my shocking pink eye-shadow would probley detract from how menacing I usually look, but I was hoping that my complete contempt would show through my fantastic make-up. Not playing the game is the only way to win that game, so I head for one them, he passes the ball behind him, but changing direction is playing the game, so I continue to walk towards him, his smile drops, asking for the ball is playing the game, so I ask him instead.
"Why would you want to start something?" the question is a deliberate veiled threat that implicates him as a cause and also the solution, he backs away a little looking for his friends. I, noticing the stools behind him, change direction a little, this time invading his personal space and I ask him again. This time he tries to take a step back but stumbles a little, he gets back up and, pride hurt, vaguely tried to push me, I out-weigh him by a few stone. He looks at his friends and his confidence grows a little, by now although I know a fight wont start adrenaline is still being squirted into my system, to me adrenaline feels like ice being dropped into my stomach and I secretly love it. Smug fucker realises that I'm surround by his friends and starts making out that he can't hear me, I get closer, and he kisses me, properly on the lips like I was his pouting girlfriend, so I did what anyone would have done.

I bit him, I bit his bottom lip between the sharp of my canines.

He staggered back and was forced to sit down on the stools, smugness well and truly wiped off his bewildered face, I am no homophobe, and in normal circumstances someone trying to kiss me is flattering whatever the gender, but this was different there was a sneer on his face, the kiss was mocking, a brag to swish about when next out with his idiot friends. Basically sexual assault in the crudest prison tradition; a display of power from another moron alpha male wannabe when faced with someone that doesn't fit into his idea of "man".

By then someone shouted my name and showed me the returned ball so I walked away pausing only to throw a little air kiss over my shoulder, I saw him touch his hand to his lip and there was a spot of blood when he took it away.

I sat down and forgot it happened, until he took that sucker punch and was away on his toes. There was a bit of a scene as my mates chased them but they was long gone, not to ruin the birthday I played it like it was nothing, I had a wicked headache, but as I said I've been hit harder by bigger and by people with the minerals to stick around afterwards.

The headache lingered all night but only hampered me having a good time, and that was the main thing, that Rich had a good birthday. And for the record when I finally got my game of pool, I lost, but that I put down to concussion.

Down but not out in a tiny city

2007-02-06T16:22:00.000Z

Three dog tired and regrouped in a relaxed bar at the centre of Leicester; the last two nights been filled with whiskey fueled sentiment and howling at the beer lit moon, three mornings in a row I have woken on the floor to the sound of the smug dawn chorus - my kidneys hurt and I feel every second of my age. About me my friend are flopped, draped over the sofas and arm chairs like an advertisement for decadence, barley exchanging words, we're sharing the same hangover and god knows we deserve it

My shades are on even though I'm indoors and its February, the world is a dark and confusing place and I need the layer of protection from it.
"What? By making it darker?" asks Rich, the blond well groomed one next to me, when I explain it to him.
"I just don't want to see it coming" I drawl, almost to lazy to form words, I think he mutters "wanker" but I'm too busy listening to Bob Marley sing "everything's going to be all right" over and over, urging my kidneys to believe him.

What's the difference between very relaxed and very very tired? I suppose the same as being asleep and dead. I mention to Rich that I have been sitting in the same seat for so long, I may technically be married to it, "Danny Comfychair" he settles to call me after deciding that if I was to marry a chair I would be the woman and have to change my name.

We're going out tonight but I'm halfway between drunk and hungover so it seems like a good idea.

****

A short walk, a nap and a shower later we are out and drinking again, abuse has taken its toll and although the idea of getting drunk is appealing the act of drinking anything disgusts me
"Why don't you get a bottle of wine?" someone suggests, I have to tell them truthfully; I can drink a bottle of wine in a ridiculously short amount of time, now I wasn't bragging, its just takes my about half an hour to finish one and is not really worth the money.
"Bollocks" comes the succinct reply, upon reflection my friends know a good way of getting me to do anything is to call my bluff, I knew I was being played but fifteen minutes later I was dramatically emptying the last drops from the bottle of wine onto my waiting tongue. Whoops.
"you do realise that in about half an hour your going to be shitfaced?" said the girl that, ironically, later on, had to sit in the house with no tights on because she drunkenly peed on them on the way home. I , however, never suffered to badly, sure I had a bit of a dance and, admittedly, talked some nonsense. But at least I never peed on my tights.

Next weekend it's Rich's birthday.

it'll never get better if you picket

2007-01-25T23:19:00.000Z

Sitting in the coffee shop window is the model of urban sophistication, to most people, to me its more often a pain in the arse, but at the moment though the amount of people I would like to meet far outweigh the amount I'm trying to avoid, and the pleasure of watching the assortment of winter faced freaks and strange shaped heads that share my dirty little city is entirely worth the risk.

Out of my window I can see a silly hat juggler taking a break from peddling his pointless anarchic skill to the uncaring crowd. I remember this guy from the only protest march I ever went on - same hat but he was topless and roaring against globalisation. Now he's drinking McDonalds hot chocolate outside a Tesco's juggling for pennies, and yes, I am aware of the hypocrisy of sitting in a Starbucks bemoaning the fall of an anti-globalisation protester, but in my defence I have to say I was only there to meet girls.

The night before you see, me and my good friend Twon were in a pub (surprise) for no real reason apart to celebrate a day of the week that ends in "Y" and we are approached by a very lovely but in retrospect, quite smelly lady. She basically told us there was a massive protest organised to coincide with the other May Day protests around the world, Twon feigned interest and I decided to go, based on the same reason I have seemed to do most things; it might be a bit of a laugh.

Next day at the crack of noon, me, my brother and Twon made our way into the city centre looking for hippies. I took my mammoth of a brother along for protection - you never know when a six foot man mountain will come in handy, to which there were about forty of us, embarrassingly for the protesters, we were outnumbered by the police 2:1, we were given a telling off and them "escorted" to the "allocated protest area" which was under a fly-over in the arse end of town, my brother caused some poor hippies to be arrested by pushing them into the police herding escort because they was pushing us, later on it turns out the poor bastards were only pushing us because the police was pushing them into us. My brother, the only guy ever to turn up to an anti-globalisation protest in a Nike t-shirt.

Some half hearted chanting and milling around later, we dispersed and after lying to the head hippy saying we would come back later, as a souvenir Twon and little brother took there placards, which wasn't a problem until Twon insisted he was hungry and decided that the only place to go was McDonalds. They immediately called the police, I, being the most rational and least giggling of the three of us, pointed out to the police officers that we wasn't actually protesting, merely hungry, and no we wasn't going to get rid off the placards because holding a placard isn't actually illegal yet. Logic coupled with the mumbling of my pacing brother about "trying to take it off him" convinced the police we weren't anarchists intent on bringing down the system and three weird men having a laugh.

Obviously somebody suggest a trip to the pub, unfortunately Twons and my brothers attention span are only marginally longer than mine and the novelty of the placards had worn off, soon a playful fight had broken out between them using the placards as weapons, because of there size it looked worse than it actually was, and the police were called for a second time, once again it fell to me to explain the commotion was all youthful hi-jinx and pleased that they never had to break up a nasty fight, the police went to leave.
"You might want to get rid of the placards though" said one police officer as he got into his car. At this my brother said.
"fair enough" and casually tossed it to one side, I have never worked out whether it was an final act of civil disobedience or just him not knowing his own strength because the offending item flew over a nearby wall and we heard a metallic *clang* and then a very loud car alarm going off. This time the police wasn't so forgiving.

It was serious this time, our names were taken. My brother, this being his first time encountering the police, gave a false name.
"John Brown" I'm not sure if the name could have sounded more false, but I stepped in and told him that he should give a real name because they check.
"***** Smith" he told them, of course this also sounded false but was in fact the truth, the curse of the family name Smith. The police reminded him how they ARE actually checking and did he want to change his mind, this confused him, and he hesitated, which was even more suspicious. They asked my name.
"Daniel Smith" that was it, I could see across they cops faces that any sense of humour they were harbouring, was now well and truly stripped away. Luckily Twon saw this too and gave his real name, unfortunately when asked the place of birth Twon had to answer truthfully.
"Perth, Australia" he said with a wide, shit eating grin spreading across his face in a fatalistic act of defiance. I expected any minute to feel the sting of CS spray and the sharp crack on the knee of a baton being drawn.

We got a warning. And a story to tell the kids. And I got a pint after all

Happy Birthday, and the BIG REVEAL

2007-01-23T15:50:00.000Z

The music is loud, full of bland guitar and anonymous angst; I'm in the darkest booth at the furthest end of the most obscure pub I could find. Alone, trying not to think of the dissertation I should be writing. I couldn't be giving off any more sitting-next-to-me-is-a-bad-idea vibes if I gained a three or four stone and put on a Star Trek uniform. So I was surprised to hear.
"I thought I would find you here" which is funny because I had chosen this place for exactly the opposite reason. I look up, she's changed, no longer fashionably edgy, in fact the edges had been rounded down to a smoother, more corporate look.
"You're The Internet, we met before. You look different" I say, trying to keep the accusation out of my voice.
"If I've changed that much how'd you know it was me?" a smile, Christ I hate games.
"Your smell" that was the truth; I knew it was her before I looked up, burnt vanilla and old leather. Her grin edges wider "What do you want?" I'm trying to sound angry but I fall short and end up sounding merely irritable.
"Don't start, Grumpy" she warns "you invited me here, remember?" she knows me well enough for that question not to be rhetorical, I hadn't forgot though, The Big Reveal. "Second thoughts?" she leans forward and her hand is on mine, it's cold and reminds me exactly who I'm talking to.
"Fetch me a drink and let's get this over with"

My name is Daniel Smith; I have been keeping this blog for exactly two years and I thought it was time I stopped hiding behind screen names and owned my own words.

ok apart from Puckjaded, any other nicknames?

Well a few people IRL know me as Puck, as I have been using it, or deviations of it for a few years now. It comes from my A-levels where I read as the character in "Midsummer Nights Dream".

any others?

Well I tag "BAR", which is short for "barninja" a fictional rank that was invented for me when my boss wanted to pay me more but couldn’t make me a supervisor.

Age

*sigh* twenty eight, but I act much younger and feel much older. I can pass for twenty which I put down partly to dodging responsibility and partly to drinking hooker's blood.

it says "Birminghell" in your profile, where are you really from?

I'm from a small town in Birmingham; although I hate the term, "chavvy" is the only way of describing it, capital of teenage pregnancy, spousal abuse and unemployment. Its full of under age mothers pushing red faced squalling children in pushchairs occasionally handing them sausage rolls that they smear over their fat kiddy mouth holes, accompanied by shaven headed thugs wearing track suits and for some reason Bluetooth earpieces for their overpriced mobile phones.

what do you do?

Drink, fuck, howl at the moon...

don't be difficult, you know what I mean

Yeah, yeah, I'm finishing an Art Degree, in which I could fluke a half decent grade, but all I've really learnt is that the art world is 50% bluff obfuscated by elitism, which means I'm a naturally talented artist or naturally talented bullshit artist

and plans for the future

Not sure to be honest, didn't really expect to make it past 27. Journalism I suppose, which may or may not mean moving to London.

Girlfriends...Boyfriends?

Neither, I just ended a messy two month relationship, I wont rule it out in the future though, like a retarded child with a Bunsen burner, no matter how many times I get burned I still keep playing. Why are you interested?

Don't smile at ME like that - we both know I'm not real anyway

Now who's being difficult?

I'm just a lazy literary devise that you're using to avoid writing a proper, interesting article

Ouch; you're hot when you're angry.

and you're trying to get off with a metaphor, that's a new low even for you

Ermm can we concentrate on the interview now

Certainly, so still a student at 28, why?

Well I've been about, and it normally takes me a couple of try's to stay and finish things, itchy travel feet you see.

And how did you pay for it all?

A patient family, and bar work since I was a shy 18 year old.

Any other jobs?

More than I can remember; bartender, security staff, door work, helpdesk monkey (for a year), warehouse staff, shop assistant, door to door salesman, building work, agricultural worker, removals. And that's just what I can remember. The worst was selling "a wide range of interactive learning materials" door to door in one of the remotest shit kicking towns in Western Australia, hard spiteful work.

you sound like your boasting now

You're damn skippy...

Ok I think that will do for now, see you around.. And Danny?

Yeah

if you need to call me again don't hesitate to fuck off

Ok then, that's it. ME. Laid bare and nailed to the web. I will briefly answer questions, contact me via e-mail and I will publicly post the replies.

Any of you that need more Danny goodness can download the articles that I have written for my uni magazine, (which I have been made the Arts and Entertainment editor)

here
here
and here

watch out though theyre PDF so might take a while to load.

Ahhthankyew

"photos of me and string" or "why people dont belive im not gay"

2007-01-16T00:32:00.000Z

ok as requested; me and String celabrating New Years Eve by painting our faces like Kiss and arsing about.

String

ME

sadley there are no photos of the hot boy on boy action that night but i do have one from the cat party

(sorry string mate, the public demanded it)

!0 things you never knew about Ray

2007-01-14T18:02:00.000Z

Sorry i have been negleting you guys. to ease the pain heres 10 facts about Ray Mears, a bit of a brit specific post im afraid. It came to me in a drunken dream, really i woke up half pissed, scrawled it in my notebook, and prontly passed back out.

1. Ray dream s of a nuclear Armageddon just so he can prove that his life spent learning pointless and outdated skills wasn't a massive waste of time.

2. When faced with modern technology, he appears confused and will poke it with a twig like a suspicious chimp

3. The sad thing is that it is all an act.

4. Ray used to have an imaginary pet dog called "Keith" but he had to pretend kill, skin and eat it one night when he was stuck in the woods and imagined he was hungry

5. Ray owns a computer but it is made of bracken and its CPU is a angry trapped squirrel.

6. Ray hates shoes

7. Rays favourite film is "Crocodile Dundee".

8. he once carved a knife out of some wood using only some other wood "its handy if your stuck without a knife and need to carve something" he said.

9. Ray has been to so many campfires that if he hears "yellow submarine" at any time he flies into an apocalyptic rage.

10. Ray cant swim, but in under five minutes he can fashion crude but working SCUBA gear out of leaves an that.

i am about half way through my essay, so more soon, exciting and intresting things you have my word.

2007-01-09T00:37:00.000Z

with the steel corridors of essay hell extending to infinity in front of me i wouldnt expect anything from me for a bit.

it will be my birthday on the 12th and this blogs on the 24th so check in then.

Technorati Profile

a quick and dirty new years post

2006-12-30T17:53:00.000Z

I'm sitting here, squatting at the end of the year tentatively looking over the precipice of 2006, trying to get ready for the freefall of 2007, my mouth is dry and my hands are shaking more than normal. 07 is going to be an exciting but ugly year for me, deadlines, decisions and not least a whole dissertation to write in about a fortnight.

The irony is not lost on me, that for someone who likes to call themselves a writer, I have a ball shrinking terror of this essay.

More in the new year

Have fun y'all, dance the edge, but don't fall off - jump

Karmic ball justice

2006-12-10T13:23:00.000Z

Today I had another man feel my balls, and the sensation is a weird one, not just the physical sensation of my doctors expert and tender fingers - which, despite rumours and photographic evidence, is not something I normally enjoy - but the feeling of something bad happening to me that I didn't actually cause myself.

This thought had occurred to me earlier when, the day before, I was surrounded by a snake pit of second years, a seething mass of unfamiliar rattles and hisses. I was there as a victim of my own ignorance, having to retake missed modules and meet over-procrastinated deadlines, I was jammed at the back of a room full of people I either didn't know, people I have no chance of remembering because I met them drunk, or (in a couple of instances) people I have woken up next to. Uncomfortable to say the least, but, I reflected, as ever self inflicted. The cause of most of my life's discomforts can be traced to one factor - me.

Which is why, when I found an extra lump in my bag of lumps, I was taken aback. I hadn't really done anything to cause it (unless you count karmicly), I always thought I kinda got what I deserved, awkward or uncomfortable situations caused by me, but ultimately suffered by me "a man more sinning, than sinned against" to paraphrase Billy Rattlesticks. But this was different, my first thought was to take a couple of painkillers and wait for it to go away, actually that's a lie, if I'm honest my first thought rather shallowly was "I hope its not cancer, its took me ages to grow my hair". Stupid me had to open my mouth, you would have thought living with four women, I would be reluctant to talk to them about bollocks, more specifically, my bollocks, but not at all. And of course they badgered me to get it checked out, all protest's shouted down and laughed at, it's hard to compare the discomfort of a stranger fiddling with your sack against a smear test.

So I made the appointment, man doctor or woman doctor was the dilemma, it's not as easy as you think. Of course being the red blooded, make-up wearing, testosterone producing manly man that I am, I would obviously prefer to be man-handled by a lady, but would I? What if I got interested as it were? And how would I explain finding the lump in the first place? "Checking myself" is so obviously "playing with myself" that I wasn't sure I could sit there and tell a lady that I was having an adjust and found something I didn't like. Best probley to forget the whole thing altogether.

However as the week wore on a soreness developed, and all sorts of doubts started creeping into my head, I have a history of testicular cancer on my fathers side, the thought of more pain and potential sterility, something that has never bothered me before - I've always joked that the amount of drugs I have took has probably permanently altered my DNA, so if I do have kids they will be blue with extra eyes or something - but the thought of actually never having kids of my own cut me deeper than I ever thought it would, and that bravado shit soon slips away. So fate dealt me a last minute male doctor.

Who, after a protracted and painful examination, told me that it "sometimes just happens, take some painkillers and it will go away on its own" I had to laugh, and not just from relief.

I need a holiday

2006-12-03T17:54:00.000Z

in the absence of any writing. too burned out, too fried to even think words.

i present a picture of me dressed as a cat

as you can probley tell, im a little worst for wear.

yes my lip IS still hurting

2006-11-27T19:05:00.000Z

"Do you want a fag?" I hear from behind me
"No thanks I've quit" comes the reply, with no small amount of self congratulation, I turn round and see a chubby with a beaming smirk and a baby "safe for work" Mohawk.
"I only have three vices" he smugs "sex, drugs and rock and roll". I audibly sigh and cant stop myself from muttering "twat" under my breath, he's wearing a t-shirt too small for him with a cute slogan on - "I may be fat but your ugly and I can diet" - typical victim behaviour, attack them before they attack me. I have gamblers blood, not in the bottle under my bed, that's hooker's blood, but in my veins. At least three members in my immediate family have a gambling compulsion, so I try to stay away from wagers of any kind but I AM willing to bet this guy was a victim from the start, another tired bit of bully meat re-inventing themselves as soon as they hit college and away from the flicked wet towels and being pushed down stairs.

Sex, drugs and rock and roll? I doubt whether he's been offered any, and would probably turn away red faced if even in the same room. Is it the empowerment of angry music and the scary demeanour that attracts the lame zebras to this particular sub-culture? Is it the community that comes from being in the minority? The tolerance of the fat, weird and socially backwards? Are our standards become so low that this fake ass posturing has become the norm instead of the minority? I know a little of my perception may be put down to nostalgia. An old man banging on about his "glory days" but there has been a definite shift in attitude from then to now

"they got the guns but we got the numbers" sang Jim Morrison, my friends we no longer have the numbers, banality and indifference won, and they did it without firing a shot. Our clubs are closing, our pubs are empty save for the old old timers and our ranks are made up from losers that think giving up smoking is "rock and roll".

I'm going to end on a quote from a friend:

"The purest, simplest and easiest form of rebellion is to simply get out there and start living the life you've always wanted to live, regardless of conventional logic or your personal comfort - when you are truly alive, you won't give a flying fuck about being tired or a bit hungry". - Johnny enigma

Now that's fucking rock and roll.

face mutliation and hot choclate

2006-11-21T23:04:00.000Z

Despite my protests, winter is good for a few things; expensive coco at chain coffee house, the pleasure of dry clothes after being caught in the rain and watching old people fall over.

Forgive me if I sound a bit scratchy - I got my lip pierced yesterday, damn this impulse control problem, and I am stuck with a swollen lip and a complete inability to eat, and more importantly, drink. And the worst thing is having no one to blame but myself.

Having to function with deadlines swinging over my head has become second nature by now, but doing it with the distraction of a sore lip and only able to communicate with people fluent in mumble has made my life a bit of a pain in the arse.

What I really want to do is curl up with one of the seven books I have bought in the last few days, but I suppose that one of the advantages of insomnia - at least you get some reading done.

Eddies RIP

2006-11-18T21:57:00.000Z

Standing in the rain and biting cold looking at the burnt shell of my childhood home, well, not actually the house I lived in as a child, but the place I considered home for the arse end of my teenage years. Edwards no8 burnt down last Saturday night and a week later you can still smell the soot. "Eddies" as it was affectionately known, was the only metal/alternative club left in Birmingham and I had been going since I was 16 (licensing laws be damned) and home to many firsts, my first fight, my first mushroom trip, and the first time I snorted vodka all happened under that roof, and now the roof isn't there, just charred black struts that look like the ribcage of a whale skeleton.

Next to Eddies sits The Gallows, relatively new sister pub to Eddies and also damaged in the fire. Identical in everyway to Edwards except the opening hours, same decor, same DJs playing the same limited rock palette, same customers, a big painted sign next to the door reads "Inferno thrash night" and I cant help but chuckle at the clumsy irony.

A short walk across town and I'm now sitting in Costermongers- the pub that's underneath Priory Square, nursing a diminishing hangover and my second beer, if you have never been here Costers is now one of the last "alternative" bars in Birmingham and by "alternative" I mean an alternative to the other bars in Birmingham where the music is bland and inaudible and the patrons wear something other than black, a place with, you know, character. Costers is an underground bar in the musical sense and also the very physical sense, it's a windowless barhole painted black. It calls itself "Birmingham's original rock pub" I don't know how true that is but it's certainly one of the last.

Ten years ago there were six or so places like this, an angry young man could go to be young and angry, but now there are only two and with the burning down of Eddies nightclub, before long there won't be any, they'll be replaced by minimal gastro pubs, bland artifice not designed to appeal just designed not to repel. Already I can feel this place dying, all the character being squeezed out of the place, It's even been given a non-smokers area! I'm not entirely sure that's supposed to work in what is, basically, a concrete bunker.

Although saddened I'm not entirely surprised by the decline of this sort of bar, it's partly due to the tightening of the drink laws. I started coming here (or places just like it) when I was an earnest sixteen year old and even then I was a late starter. Nailing your colour's to the mast and flying your freak flag is a young person's game, so pubs based around one type of music or attitude will obviously be more popular with the young and sincere.

Mostly Rock pits like Costers are doomed because the narrow market. The weird and wired make it very clear that if you don't belong, you're not welcome. This makes for a very loyal clientele, but also a very restricted one and in a culture of increased homogenisation, where kids don't claim allegiance to any particular style or attitude because there exposed to a bland mixture of them all, one that won't be replaced.
So come to Costers while you still can, you probley wont like the music, the gents toilets don't have doors, the seats aren't comfortable and unless your body has been modified in a interesting way, you wont be welcomed. But at least it won't be decorated like every bloody Wetherspoons you've ever been to.

Yet again, Three for Free

2006-11-13T11:20:00.000Z

Nothing will give music critics a six inch grubby hard-on like being able to recommend bands that people have never heard of, because if the band does get popular they get to oh-so-casually mention that they were listening to them ages ago thus making them twenty times cooler than anyone else (in there eyes), and if the band never becomes popular then the music journo's erection grows another inch and they get to call them "underground" and bemoan they state of the music industry they work for.

Myself, I tend to be quite the opposite; I don't enjoy new music, I have to hear a song over and over before I actually start to like it. This means by the time I start to like a "new" band, there moment in the sun is usually over and the press have moved on elsewhere.

Having said that I do occasionally seek out recommendations from friends or things I read in magazines. So here's three songs by bands you may or may not have heard of, that may or may not become popular, which has no direct bearing on how cool or clever or sexy I am:

Sunset pickups - Lazy eye

Already I miss the summer, winter means that most of my waking hours are spent in darkness and the cold bites through my clothes as if they were not there. Normally I'm ready for the season to change winter usually looms in the distance like a large duvet ready to envelop me, but this year I am not ready, I want more summer, I am greedy for it. Not that the summer hasn't left me with few things; a few perfect moments that stop the bad thoughts and lift from the fug of this time of year. I remember lying on a blanket with the girl I was secretly in love with napping with the local cats, playing football in a park drinking cold beer, and hungover mornings shared with friends laughing till I was sick.

This song reminds me of a perfect summer moment, a glimpse of sun warm guitar fuzz, light drenched beach music that owes a lot the Smashing Pumpkins, which isn't a bad thing.

Dresden Dolls - Coin Operated Boy

Both melodic and tender, but also quirky and disjointed in places, this song sounds like its from a dark adults only musical sung by either a beautiful genius or what sounds like innocent temptress. A theatrical number that changes pace and tone without being pretentious.

Zen Guerrilla - Evening sun

I wis i first heard this song while I was flicking around my parents old record collection and, as a laugh, I put on some random record, just because I liked the cover or found the name funny, then it turned out to be really fucking good, And I was like "why did you never tell me about these?!" to my dad and he looks at me all serious and says "because I didn't think you where ready". As i said that never actually happened, I just wish it did.

A relaxed lilting rock track was swinging balls, driving to a pub after being to the beach with hookers all day music.

back

2006-11-10T17:36:00.000Z

After my third coke I decided today was going to be a quick day. Tight. Plugged in. too much time in bed, in pyjamas, in pain, in my room, protecting my housemates from the vicious tongue that comes from my sore head. Out. About. Coffee. More coffee. Quick trip into town to prove I still exist, enjoy the crowds and bustle, spending money I don't have on things I want rather than need. More coffee? Another coke? Can I mix them? Add booze? On a bus, bladder itching, on the Bristol Road Birmingham's carotid link to the south, involved in the world again. Music. Skipping slow stuff and the classical, fast and loud, people looking at me. Fuck Em. Till deaf do us part, at least they can see me here, not ghosting in my room looking for painkillers.

Crashing now, shaky hands and slightly confused, way too irritable for work. Which I have to go do.

gah

sorry

2006-11-08T13:50:00.000Z

the past four days my brain has been fucking splitting, i have had my first proper migraine in three years, blurred vision, being sick, the full fucking painful monty.

i dont know how much longer it will last (or i can fucking take).

sorry about lack of phone calls, e-mails or commen civility.

im got to go now i have crying in my room to do

7inch cinema

2006-11-07T01:17:00.000Z

I am sitting on the cutting edge of Birmingham Arts culture - and I have to say it's a little uncomfortable. Maybe it's the hard stool, or the hunched position I have to stay in so not to obscure the view of the rather large crowd of fashionistas and culture groupies, but mostly the uncomfort, at the moment, derives from the jumble of beeps and squawks coming from the "band" calling themselves the ZX Spectrum orchestra.

Apparently its music, but obviously too avant-garde for me to get my boozy head round, all the sounds, according to the events programme, come from vintage Spectrum computers. That is not a surprise, I was a proud owner of a ZX in my youth, and all the "songs" so far sound like my old computer loading such classics as Dizzy Goes Swimming and Robocop that is to say; a baffling array of squeks and whistles. I know that the old ZX is capable of more than this - there was one tape I could load that would make it play a tinny but passable version of Love in an Elevator by Aerosmith accompanied by a saucy yet pixellated of a woman in a lift.

Nostalgia aside, it seemed that they opened with the abstract stuff first, and I have to admit to enjoying them now, when the songs do stray into the more structured less experimental type they are not only bearable but actually good. The two "out" geeks comprising the combo come across with such off-hand nerd charm it is hard not to enjoy the set

The best, and by best, I mean mainstream (which lets face it to my traditional ears, in this case, means the same thing), is Dollar Power, a thumping electro mash of ropey voice emulation and the basic shrill quacks inherent the ZX, kind of like what Stephan Hawkins would sound like if he blew off the science stuff and fronted an electro band.

I really got a kick out of the gig in the end and will probley even go out of my way to see them again (high praise indeed, I wouldn't normally cross the road to see the Second Coming, I am that jaded and lazy).

Upon reflection my original negativity towards them was probley more to do with the fact they was disturbing the lovely cosy feel of the video screening before them, there was a series of shorts films culled from the Slo-mo project plus a couple more, it was nice to walk into a busy yet silent pub of like minded people and watch a big screen that had something other than football on it.

The videos in general, were only a minute long, and vary in degrees of quality and success. This is meant that if you don't enjoy that particular short you didn't have to put up with it for long. The submission policy is very open ended and rather than give the night an amateurish feel, it gave the impression of a progressive and inclusive one.

The final band were, frankly, a bit shit. I wasn't really looking forward to them, the name was enough to put me off – Einstellung, that, coupled with the quote from Will Wenders they had included in the programme, about "perceiving the world" or some such. So when the DJ (VJ? MC?) said "the next band are only doing one song" I honestly thought it to be a top result, but then he finished "but its half an hour long" I knew I was in for exactly the sort of sonic landscape muse-esque noodlings that are both pretentious and tiresome, and I wasn't wrong. It was the same boring refrain repeated over and over, which, built to a equally dull crescendo. What I really resented was the fact the band looked terribly pleased with themselves, which they had no reason to.

Websites;

7inch cinema

ZX Spectrum Orchestra

Einstellung, if you can be arsed

dragon storys

2006-10-27T00:00:00.000Z

Don't ask how I landed there but read this;

i did'nt even know that dragons had vents

Note how the name is very similer to this guys name

"are you a dragon? I am"

After reading this with a couple of my housemates, one of them said
"I bet I could write one of them" my reaction was almost immediately
"No fucking way, that guy has some serious issues" but still she maintains that it is possible to write something as fucked as that. So gentle viewer,the challange has been set, impress me with deviancy.

I want the best dragon/gay/otherkin stories, the most disturbing wins a prize. A real one. remeber you will be marked higher if it sounds as if it was written by a sexually disfunctional uber nerd who has probley never seen a girl, let alone fucked a dragon. my email link is in the sidebar.

ok guys the links appear to be broken you going to have to copy and paste like old-school e-primatives

first - http://furry.de/tsa/misc/dragoninfineprint.html
and the next - http://www.draconic.com/fordragons/

its worth it and probably NSFW

add- i just finished mine and your going to have step up the weird if you want to compete

dark thoughts on a train and family hell

2006-10-26T21:04:00.000Z

I love travelling; even this simple journey to north Wales is a breath of fresh air, a break from my random routine. Ok the thought of spending a few days with all my family is not one I actually relish, but as I said: I love travelling. As much as I love travelling - I hate waiting; unfortunately a large portion of travelling IS waiting. One of the reasons for my distain of dead time are idle curious thoughts, these thoughts tend to meander down the wrong paths, dark corners of my synapses get explored. And, if particularly horrific, repeated.

At the moment, for reasons that are totally beyond me, I am imaging standing over my brothers prone body delivering punch after punch into his head and face, I don't want to think this but the more I rest, the vivid it gets, I am biting back tears on a full train, trying to exorcise the thoughts by pining them to the page.

I can smell the sticky copper scent of his blood and can feel the bones in his face each time I hit him, in my head he is not fighting back, my fantasy self remembers kicking each shoulder while he was down so he cant lift his arms.

Christ! this is elaborate, in real life this would never never happen, not only does my brother and me love each other dearly, but also he has about a foot in height and a couple of stone in weight on me and could probley beat me senseless without breaking sweat, but now, in my head, he's unconscious now and still I carry on, fantasy me is a sick son of a bitch, I can hear the sound of meat. I wish I could close my minds eye because I am disgusted with myself.

My idle thoughts have always trod down the wrong turnings normally I fill my life with spectacle, distraction and of course beloved booze, booze slows the thoughts down first to a dull plod and eventually a stop, coffee too, coffee does the opposite though, sharpening and speeding those bastards up so they never stay anywhere for long.

In the Australian fields with only the vines and a pair of pruning shears for distraction, I gave eulogies for everyone I knew, I planned every word, Mom, Dad, siblings, friends, everyone. Under the 40c sun, hot fat tears mixing with the sweat.

Escaping into a book now, my other distraction.

I'm in hell; this place is like Northfield-On-Sea, a dysfunctional families twisted theme park designed by a neon fetishist, I have momentarily escaped outside away from bickering family, bawdy man jokes and enough cigarette smoke to power a 1930's steam train, I need to get pissed to even consider surviving my family, I'm at a holiday camp making a cameo at a family holiday, guilt and plain curiosity forced me to attend. I need booze but have no money to buy it with, as I said - hell. I may even resort to stealing my Nan's heart medicine, this is not a joke.

Another roving pack of scouse kids has just bopped past, bored of the antiquated arcades five minutes distraction looking for something to stab, steal or fuck. I'm in the main hall or "Lunar bar" it is laughable referred to this is a large hall filled with tables and a stage, the place holds about 500 people but over half of these are kids on the dance floor, dancing, running round, skidding on their knee's and generally acting like children that have done nothing all day but suck down confectionery, which in all fairness is probably true. Sitting around the hall is dour looking builders in catalogue bought smart/casual sportswear itching to go to the bar, ignoring their whiny kids demanding pound coins and frozen sugar drinks. On stage is an impressionist that obviously hasn't changed his act since the very early nineties.

Morning now, I don't mind being hung-over after a good night out, after a really good booze I even enjoy my hangover, but after a spectacularly bad night out, a complete utter fuck up, a family Armageddon of a night out, the hangover I have is proof that not only is there not a god, but he hates me.

It's to many other peoples business for me to plaster over the interwub, but I will tell you that my glorious brother had another night in a police cell (undeservedly) and I spent the night mediating between drunk unreasonable people.

On a camp full of low rent chain smoking unclassy brawling proles, it turns out that my family are the most low rent chain smoking drunk unclassy brawling proles of all.

Room bastards

2006-10-24T13:17:00.000Z

The pile of washing in the corner was growing, and by that, I don't mean gradually getting bigger, I swear I saw the fucking thing move the other night, so yesterday I retreated to my old house before its starts becoming sentient.

So home again, home again (jiggity jig) to use the washer and dryer, and rape the food cuboards while my family are on holiday.

But because of my memory and lets be honest, laziness. I never lock my bedroom door, and guess what? While the house cat is away, the mice will play. about 11 at night I get a series of photo messages to my mobile phone of my house mates wearing my clothes, jumping around on my bed. Luckily being the internet genius that I am I can share these photos with you, the entire public.

a volia

oh and girls, in case everybody at university doesnt get to see these pictures, im going to post them on the uni's own message board.

Proper writing later, after the rant

2006-10-23T00:46:00.000Z

Ok i havnt written in a while but i will draw your attention to this

Wanker wanker wanker wanker wanker wanker wanker wanker

in a truly stunning move of rock star wankery, everybodys favorite tosser, Sting, realised an album of fucking LUTE music!

So not happy with owning a mountain of cash, mastering the art of screwing for 10 hours straight and single handedly saving an entire fucking rain forrest, Sting is so bored he's decided to take up an instrument last popular in the 16th century.

the world is a terrible and strange place and its our fault, we, as a public will buy this self indulngant travisty of an album, in our thousands. I hate us, we're morons

tagged

2006-10-12T22:42:00.000Z

The air was thick with smoke and noise and my unshaven face was pressed against the cool glass of the window over looking the sodden and bustling high street I was seeking solance from. My eyes were closed, savouring the chilly smooth texture as my hangover throbbed and stomach churned, so I smelt her before I saw her, the smell of burnt vanillia and old leather.

"Puck?" I carefully opened my eyes, even the dark bar I was in was too much this morning. I blearly made out a shape, then her figure "svelte" was the word that floated through my head, at that point, with such an obscure word, I knew brain damage was unlikley so I gave focusing a go. I was greeted with the figure of a boyish looking woman, dyed red hair short and scruffy and dressed fashionably edgy.

"Mr Puck?" her accent was nicly American with a hint of upstate Yankee, "christ" i thought "if she's perky I may puke". I forced a grin and took a long pull of the Hairy Dog in front of me

"I'm The Internet" she said "You've been tagged i'm afraid, i'm here to ask you some questions"

"Piss off" I said, "I never do those stupid self indulgant things, everyone knows that", unflapped, she took off her denim jaket and settled in next to me, ordered two Hairy Dogs from the bartender and said

"I was told to tell you "shroom-monkey sent me""she took out a battered looking notepad and I sighed

"order yourself a drink, get me some painkillers, and lets get this over with."

1) Would you bungee jump?
I would like to think that i would, but i guess you never know untill your at the top. if I DID over come my suspicion that the human body was never designed to decellerate that quickly, it would be a proffessional type affair from a bridge or something, as opposed to them dodgy looking crane situations ran by a bored looking simpleton and a greasy fat man in a vest in pub car parks at a car boot sale.

2) If you could do anything in the world for a living what would it be?
travel writer or journalist - not flippent enough? Fuck you

3) Your favorite fictional animal?
Hobbes from calvin and hobbes

4) One person who never fails to make you laugh?
Me, because if you can't laugh at yourself, you've got no right to laugh at anything else

5) When you were 12 years old what did you want to be when you grew up?
I honestly cant remember, probably a comic book artist

6) What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?
Go back to sleep untill the afternoon, im an art student bon vivant insomniac, I dont do mornings

7) Have you ever gone to therapy?
I'm English darling, I can call you darling, cant I? good. the English dont have thearpy, we have pubs, we dont have therapists, we have friends.

8) If you could have one super power what would it be?
teleportation, cos im both impatiant and lazy.

9) Your favorite cartoon character?
Bugs Bunny, an true icon and anarchist.

10) Do you go to church?
not since that deal with the red fella, not allowed.

11) What is your best childhood memory?
a bit of a cop out, but I cant really remember what happened last night, sorry darling.

12) Do you think marriage is an outdated ritual?
isnt that the point? of course its a ritual, and a very old one at that, no one can argue that. shouldnt the question be "do you think a legally binding monogamous relationships are still relevant, or practical?"?

and since you ask darling, yes to both

13) Do you own a gun?
As i mentioned earlier, im English darling, so no. But, on one of my few trips to the states, i did stay a few nights with an ex-intelligence officer who served in Nam, and he lets me shoot some of his guns. Apparantly I'm good with handguns but shit at the rifles

14) Have you ever hit someone of the opposite sex?
Are you coming on to me darling?

15) Have you ever sung in front of a large number of people?
a few times but i wasnt really singing as I am dreadful, I just kinda mouthed the words, once as "Thug Number One" in a production of OLIVER, and again at a Gang Show, where, in my only solo, I actually spoke the lines, which everyone admits, was funnier.

16) What is the first thing you notice about the opposite sex?
With you, your smell, normally, girls eyes.

17) What is your biggest mistake?
Abso-fucking-lutly non of your buisness

18) Say something totally random about yourself.
my tongue has been peirced for nine years

19) Has anyone ever said that you looked like a celebrity?
Yes but when pressed they can never remember his name, its always "whathisface from that thing, you know?", I also get a stupid amount of people I have never met insisting they know or recognise me, they dont, I've just got one of those faces.

20) What is the most romantic thing someone of the opposite sex has done for you?
Anal.

21) Do you actually read these when other people fill them out?
Depends on who they are.

its customary now to tag others, who do you tag?
String,
The Pope and
a frog I dont care which one

now buy me another drink or piss off

just passin' time

2006-10-07T17:33:00.000Z

I'm in my favourite hole, the remains of last nights tips sit half drunk in front of me, absent mindly staring at the wall using my teeth to pick out glass from the hard skin of my already scarred hands, this bar has no windows which suits me I'm hiding from autumns over-rated glamour.

I have work in exactly four hours and fifteen minutes, a thought that is becoming less daunting with every swallow. A parade of laughable rock poser clowns have just left the pub, kissing and backslapping their way up the stairs like the Z list celebrities they both hate and secretly long to be. It's sad to think that wearing black and having long hair is no longer shocking enough for these people, that they feel obliged to look as if a couler blind five year old was allowed to dress them. Or maybe I'm just getting old. Coming to this place is like taking a long relaxing bath in the past, safe and familiar, ok faces change but the arch-types don't, over there you have the fading poodle rockers, next to the fat kids turned Goths are the obligatory rich kids slumming it, and at the end wearing only tatty denim, leather waistcoat and very bad tattoos is the resident psychopath who likes to think of himself as a "character" but really just an annoying old rocker, far past his prime that took to many blows to the head stage diving to Megadeath.

There is a lot of pretension in here, but at least its honest pretension, a joke we're all in on.

catching the licorice train to Spacey Town

2006-10-04T14:40:00.000Z

The man-flu I have been stricken with seems to have develeped into Man-ingitis, which is probley why i absently mindedly drank far more cough syrup than I intended, the upshot being, during my first tutourial of the year with a new tutour, my head started spinning out, and why, halfway through, I forgot how to speak. Now my tutour must think i am a gibbering dullard. sorry, if your reading this by the way I'm NOT actually a moron

I staggard home in a cloud, now the cough syrup has been confiscated, although there is very little left, apparantly ignoring the dosage recomendation on expired medicine isnt too good of a idea, and when your pupils dilated to the size of pin holes thats a "bad thing" pfff

a quick clue

2006-09-30T13:47:00.000Z

how to tell if the hungover ADHD man-child your having lunch with is angry with you.

thats probley a dead give away

its that they all look so young

2006-09-29T18:08:00.000Z

The city feels full - everywhere you turn affluent,fresh faced students are throwing money about, shots down their throat and their dignity out of the window. Wandering round MY city wearing the clothes they picked out with their moms before they came. It's an uncomfortable time everything's full, buses, shops, and, my natural habitat, pubs. Not to worry though soon enough the loans will run out, the work will pile up and the students will settle into the city like coins down the back of a sofa.

Most of them will be ill from the drunk bland rutting and other depressing activites that pass on their regional specific germs, holed up in the solitary halls with "freshers flu", crying and looking at the "creative" picture montages they made on the walls, looking at all their old school friends sad and lonley.

ha, bastards.

ok, karma IS a bitch not twenty four hours after posting this i have come down with man-flu

im going to drink a bottle of cough medicine, crawl into my bed for a few days and try to forget this week ever happened

regrets, ive had a few. but then again...

2006-09-24T22:55:00.000Z

please note this will be the last of the Self Pity Epic I post here, im not fishing for "cheer up" messages and internet sympathy, writing helps me sort things out in my head and posting here is the final part of the process.

I got stung bad this time - I try to avoid using the word "hurt" when it come to feelings, I live in fear that this place will start looking like the worst kind of emo myspace whining nonsense, but that's exactly the word to use, it hurts, a lot.

It hurts to know the only way to make things better is to pretend it doesn't

It hurts to know the two people I normally rush too for hot tea and sympathy are the exact two I can't.

And it hurts because I have no one to blame but myself.

Already the dark part of me is whispering bad ideas - making them sound perfectly reasonable and in some cases downright attractive, finishing the bottle of scotch in my cupboard being the best bad idea.

I'm at work, its practically empty and the lights are low, but it still doesn't stop me from resenting every single person here, I can see them getting annoyed with the same three songs I've put in the sound system over and over and over, but fuck em misery loves company and if Jeff Buckley on repeat doesn't bring em down, I frankly don't know what will. I've just realised the only thing I have eaten in the last two days is a biscuit but I'm not at all hungry – my stomach does a three and a half pike with twist every time I think about how bad I hurt my friends. I don't want food. I not even that bothered about sleep. All I want is stop feeling like this and everything not to be royally fucked. Is that too much to ask?

I'm home now typing my scrawl out reflecting on the fight that happened shortly after I wrote the above, in fact it wasn't really a fight, it was an attack, a short ugly red faced man, for no real reason started punching a (equally ugly) complete stranger, the stranger was on his own enjoying a quite drink and about ten years his senior, Red Face then, as a finale, threw a few glasses at the other customers for "watching" in a "what you looking at?" moment, which, I couldn't help thinking, was a bit of a cliche, but who knows, it may have been a post-modern motivated attack. He did try and smash a glass to attack the fella with, but it exploded in his hand and got blood on his tight white shirt. The stranger was all right in the end, a bit shaken and had a cut on his chin that I would have gone to get stitched, but the guy was one the old school types who would no sooner set foot in hospital than fly to Rio and dance in a parade, he also had been in trouble with the police and didn't want to report it. So I spent the rest of the night a depressed little Puck, clearing blood and glass from everywhere I found it.

maybe moving in with girls wasn't that good of an idea after all

2006-09-23T14:38:00.000Z

My brain really does hate me, I mean of course I was going to fall in love with one of my housemates - apart from being stunningly pretty, funny, effortlessly cool (without pretension) and smart - it was inevitable because my brain hates me and spends most of its time devising ways of ruining whatever comfort I find and friendships I have.

My brain really really does hate me, I shouldn't have tried to kill it with pills and poison, and then maybe I wouldn't have seen what I saw. Of course she was going to pick him over me, my stupid brain fooled me otherwise, but hindsight is fucking twenty twenty, he's funny, smart and of most importantly not a stumbling drunk with no life plan apart from "see what happens". And unfortunately my best friend.

I didn't want this post to degenerate into a bitter tirade of self pity. Who am I kidding? That's exactly what I wanted.

"looking for a job" = "drinking cider until you cant talk"

2006-09-19T12:00:00.000Z

"You told my sister that I was a homosexual arms dealer last night" Chris shouts from the kitchen, I don't know why he's shouting; I'm only a few foot away. I think he may be a little bit cross with me. I don't really remember talking on the phone but I vaguely remember Chris apologising into one, and I have to admit that that sounds like something I would say.

The sounds of String vomiting (what must be his stomach lining and food he ate as a baby by now) are audible from the tiny bathroom, has they have been all night, he was so bombed last night I might start calling him "Dresden". Poor delicate String has been in Chris's bathroom all night calling god on the big white telephone and, strangely, at one point, showering. Bless his socks, he was drinking the wrong drinks (cider and cocktails) at the wrong speed (quick), it's his own fault though, he came to Liecester so he could "look for a job before term begins" but that was probably out the window as soon as he invited me, the closest he actually got to looking for a job is accidentally leaving the bag with his CV's in at the first pub we went in.

Myself, I am fine this morning, through more luck than judgement, and it may or may not have anything to do with the anti depressant I was dared to take before we left the house. I have managed to sidestep the hangover, although I am feeling a little tired because Strings wretched wrenching kept us up most of the night.

I'm sitting in the park now, enjoying Britain's final fling with his mistress summer before going back to its dowdy and miserable wife, winter. Waiting for String to sleep off his poisoning and Chris to come back from doing whatever those Northerners do when left alone (probably something to do with coal and/or whippets). I'm watching a wild haired drunk doing his own form of weird yoga – it mainly seems to be stretching your arms out and swaying, breaking occasionally to swig cider from a giant bottle. Even the squirrels look confused

Don't you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaut BITCH

2006-09-15T16:50:00.000Z

i will write more words soon i promise, in the mean time enjoy

purile and childish and brilliant

Three more for free

2006-09-13T15:49:00.000Z

Chelsea Dagger The Fratellis

if The Monkees had been taught to play their instruments by AC/DC I imagine this is what they would sound like. Steal this song before an advertising wanker hears it and its used for an advert for hair gel or something and is also played non stop on the radio. Pretty soon you will rather stick glass shards in your ears than listen to the DO DO DO chorus, so get it now.

Size of a cow The Wonderstuff

a tall glass of cheerfull early ninties indie with a creamy nostalgia head. In this song there is a line that goes "you know that ive been drunk a thousand times" and i always nodded my head and smiled at that bit, as if to say, yes, yes i have been drunk a thousand times, but having worked it out i dont think i have. Lets say for arguements sake. the amount of times i have been drunk is averages out to once a week since i was 15, so thats 12 years, 52 weeks in a year 52x12 = 624 times i have been drunk, so if i want the song to be relevent i need to be drunk 376 more times. Which easily could be done by my next birthday.

Spacelord Monster Magnet

Epic grinding rock, i have never seen this bands balls but i bet they are the size of space hoppers and they need small forign manservants to carry them about. Smell the testosterone.

ps. be nice to my pet, Sqeetlty Spooch or i will maul you. like a bear.