Dj Furry's Cavalcade of Whimsy

Boobs

2007-05-15T21:50:00.000Z

Check it out Now!

2007-05-14T17:28:00.001Z

Test 1 2

London, England

2006-11-15T17:47:00.000Z

London, England

2006-11-15T17:46:00.000Z

Grassman

2006-08-02T15:23:00.001Z

The Layers

2006-04-03T20:34:00.000Z

In the Riccall Regen Battle of the Bands Final on Saturday 8th April.

http://www.myspace.com/thelayersuk

2006-02-25T23:21:00.000Z

http://www.myspace.com/thelayersuk

funkypsychedelicrockextravaganza

2006-01-05T22:40:00.000Z

Monsters Caves

2006-01-04T17:17:00.000Z

This website now has one purpose: to promote the band whose logo you see above. If anyone i know is still reading this then Hello! nice of you to join me, sorry i haven't written anything for months.

I have a feeling, as i write this, that i might actually create a new blog and have that as my Layers Site. The definitive article is as-yet-undecided-upon. I like it in the logo but don't like the fact all bands are currently THE something or other, and always have been. The Verve were a better band when they were Verve. Mansun didn't need to be called The Mansun. Layers. Layers. Layers.

Or should we be called County Fair Explosion?

Testing... Testing...

2005-07-18T11:17:00.000Z

GTA: San Andreas, the new Harry Potter book are 2 of the things stopping me from writing on here. Now that i have started paying towards the internet again this means i am able to spend a bit of time updating this. It doesn't really matter that i should be working on the UAT report for Friday, as i am supposed to be "working from home" today, but of course this blog was started when i had plenty of work-time to spend on the internet.

This is just a hello! to test if there is anyone still out there and also to test Bloggers new phot loading thing. Is it as good as Hello?

Executive Lifestyle

2005-04-20T15:38:00.001Z

Hello! Is there anyone out there? Has anyone checked this page for any period of time? I know i haven't but that stems from not having access to the internet, and when i can access it not being bothered to write who i am or where i am or what i'm doing. It's all too much.

Currently i'm sat in the large offices of a large consultant firm who live just behind Victoria Train Station in London.

No Access

2005-02-25T20:46:00.000Z

Not able to use a computer much at the moment. Well, not one that goes on the internet anyway. Our computer has stopped working properly and our ISP runs out at the end of the month. Oh Well! Downloading stuff was good fun, and i miss new music. New music was good and i will eventually buy the stuff i keep, but i just can't throw money at CD's and records the way i have in the past. I spent £5 on 'media' at the weekend. That it was second-hand bothers me very little. At a car boot sale on Nottingham Racecourse i bought: A mint condition 7" of The Model by Kraftwerk, which has the greatest B-side, called Computer Love, A mint condition tape-cassette of Hatfull of Hollow by The Smiths, '77 & Remain in Light by Talking Heads on 12" and So Much Trouble in the World on 7" too. I finally got back to York and set about my record collection with some WD-40. (So called because it was the 40th formula for a Water Displacement product.) Kym and Aggie from TV told me to do this once. It worked a treat on all my shafted second hand vinyl.

I'd write more but i've got to go.

Email.

2005-01-26T11:37:00.000Z

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Fuck it all.

2005-01-18T18:58:00.000Z

Fuck housemates, fuck tidying up after them, fuck their selfish fucking attitudes towards the people they live with, fuck their stupid fucking apathy towards everything in the house, fuck their attitude to leaving their stuff all round the fucking house, fuck them having too much stuff and fuck them continuing to bring it all in to the fucking house, fuck pro evolution fucking soccer, fuck work colleagues and having to listen to their insignificant shit, fuck people who don't have to go to work and just do it for something to fucking do, fuck departments and their bitching about each other, fuck the dumb fucking little empires they build, fuck the prison service, fuck the civil service, fuck drugs, fuck weed, fuck it fucking all you stupid fucking fuckers.

Fuck supermarkets and their fucking stranglehold on the world, fuck corporations and their strangleholds on the world, fuck all the people who value money over the earth and other human beings, fuck it fucking all for fuck's fucking sake.

2005-01-02T16:22:00.000Z

Warm Reminiscence

2005-01-02T16:20:00.000Z

All Together Now...

(Adopt Noddy Holder voice) It's CHRISTMAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSS!

2004-12-08T16:16:00.001Z

How does one write a post nearly a month after last posting? Hang on... more than one month after ones last post?

Well first things first, i could tell you that i'm writing this sat at my desk in the prison i work in, but that would only be surprising if you understand the fact that we don't have internet access in prisons (well we do but you can only view .gov.uk and bbc websites). Subsequently i'm almost contravening Her Maj's Rules, as i now have one laptop on the Prison Service network, and because i'm travelling down to London tomorrow to stay over and give a presentation on Friday, i have another laptop which acts as a standalone server for the software i 'look after'. This second laptop can access the internet as well as being able to play DVD's, and as i found out last night, GTA 3. Now i've never seen a laptop running a game and i was mightily impressed particularly because it's not the newest of laptops, but also because it means i could, if i wanted, take it on the train and play GTA all the way down to London. I'd be surprised if the battery lasted that long so instead i shall make sure it's fully charged and watch a DVD with my headphones on.

Whilst the day to day of my job is still dull drudgery, it is at least getting a touch more exciting, and it is this excitement that i shall attempt to elaborate upon over the next few days.

Oh yes it's nearly Cristmas too...

2004-11-04T19:16:00.001Z

15 second exposure

2004-11-04T19:16:00.000Z

Rip it up and start again

2004-10-17T15:56:00.000Z

28 Days Later...

Music is The Light.

2004-09-24T20:05:00.000Z

Category VI - The Strange
Attractor

Though you're not quite sure why, people are drawn
to you like moths to a flame. You really
are too cool for words.

What Type of Social Entity are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Only three days til Kleptomania

2004-09-24T16:50:00.000Z

Another week has reached it's end, earlyish thankfully. So i'm sat listening to M83 whilst i'm writing this. I must say i like it a lot and this is just my first listen. I'd heard they were like My Bloody Valentine, and i'd agree from what i've heard so far. It sounds too, like Jean Michel Jarre and Sven Vath behind the warm distortion. I wish i could listen to music at work somehow.

Because i'm in the large, open-plan office, where there are no radios, i only hear distant or brief bits of music throughout the day. I f i could listen to music like this whilst at work, i probably wouldn't do a great deal. I'd just sit, staring at the sky through what classes as windows in an ex Naval base-entertainments hall, with 3 foot thick blast-proof walls. Or perhaps gaze at the plant i purloined from a corridor months ago. Hmm. Alternatively, use flexi-time and go home.

Had a pint of Guinness at lunchtime which was just lovely. Saying good bye to one of the Uniformed Caseworkers, which is to say a caseworker who is also a prison officer, leaving for a job, this one less than 4 miles, rather than Wetherby at 49 miles from his home. Didn't have anything to eat, one grazes all day in the Civil Service, so the Guinness sat nicely in me, but left me wanting more. Thus i didn't really get much done. Not that much gets done anyway, but...

I can't be bothered to Rant so i'll juts tell you that the picture above is from Calke Abbey, in the east midlands of England, out in their conservatory.

2004-09-19T17:49:00.000Z

Servants Tunnels

2004-09-19T17:48:00.001Z

Hold the Ladders Steady.

2004-09-19T17:48:00.000Z

Mashin' On the Motorway

2004-09-19T17:47:00.000Z

Run Amok...

2004-09-13T18:29:00.000Z

Run Christian Run!

2004-09-13T18:27:00.000Z

Garden of Earthly Delights

My Mate Ru.

2004-09-13T18:13:00.000Z

I spent time in this garden over the weekend. I feel like the luckiest guy alive whenever i visit my friend Rupert. Consider this: He lives there. Now i'm a big fan of the seaside and i'm a fan of impressive monuments, but i'm a country boy at heart and if i could die anywhere it would be in the village of King's Cliffe. The sun was shining and the skies were blue. The last six weekends or so we've been blessed in this country, the weather has been staggering. Not too hot and almost constantly sunny. I've returned to work every Monday with at least a little sunburn.

A Couple of Days Late.

2004-09-09T15:42:00.000Z

So my foray into working two jobs has ended already. I just couldn’t cope with being at work for another 12 hours a week. It was too much. I missed sitting down and immersing myself in a film for an hour and a half or so, or watching some mindless TV. The things I claimed to not care about are the things that I missed most. Shazbat.
My Monday evening is taken up with Band Practice, though we haven’t had one now for at least a month, the last one we had was when we were having torrential rain and it was leaking into the studio. My Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were spent at Tesco’s pleasure. Friday was the only evening of relaxation and the Weekend was spent with my lovely girlfriend, so not much time to myself really. I didn’t particularly notice that that was the problem, nor was I physically tired. It was just being knackered all the time and having to rush to and from my jobs that was taking the toll on me.
After a particularly heavy night on the beer I slept for 15 hours, this was perhaps the defining moment for me. I have never, except under really crazy circumstances slept for such a period of time and whilst it didn’t worry me it rather goes against my grain. I hate spending what little time I’m left from my job, sleeping. I want to spend every minute of my non-working days running around doing things, dancing naked down supermarket aisles, dancing naked round municipal parks or just plain dancing naked!
Whatever, it’s over and I feel defeated. But not as defeated as I felt by downloading an official music download. I spent 99 pence downloading Mansun’s last single Slipping Away. When it had downloaded I attempted to play it but then it kept trying to acquire a license, which it wouldn’t do. I was destroyed. The future of music eh? Paying to download things that then won’t work. How come I’ve downloaded hundred’s of Gb’s of films and music and TV and games, none of which are paid for and they work fine? Why doesn’t Windows complain that they need licenses? I was so fucked off I retired to my room and watched an episode of Jeeves & Wooster, which very nearly calmed me down.
Anyway, aren’t the photo’s I’ve posted lovely? They’re of Robin Hood’s Bay that is along the coast from Scarborough. Emily and I have been exploring the East Coast over the last few weekends. We visited Scarborough on the 14th August, where the beach was ram-jammed with people before making our way along the coast down to Filey, where the beach had disappeared beneath the waves and then to the lighthouse out at Flamborough Head, which doesn’t really have a beach. We came back to York and went for a mexican at the delightful Fiesta Mexicana that finished the day of brilliantly.
The following weekend we made our way to Robin Hood’s Bay, most of the recent photographs come from there. The weather was gorgeous, the traffic was awful and the company was the best. When we got down to the bay we started to walk out to the sea just as the rain started to come down. We were walking toward the sea as everyone else there was walking back. When we reached the sea it had started to drizzle, so we stood there for a while before walking back. As we returned the skies cleared again and it stopped raining! The drive back was lovely, if not a little cloudy.
Next was the Bank Holiday weekend. I’d booked the Friday off so as to enjoy a nice long weekend courtesy of Her Maj’s Bank Holiday and my brother and sister-in-law travelled up from Reading for the weekend. We drove over to Redcar in the morning, which is a lot further North than Scarborough and is where I have family. We strolled up and down the promenade, which just went to show how seaside towns are dying, and in today’s world, have little or nothing to offer visitors or residents, before travelling to our Auntie Dot’s for a lovely meal and a chat. Fully fed and happy we travelled slightly south down the coast to Saltburn-on-Sea, where there was still plenty of beach and a couple of pubs overlooking it. As it had been a sunny day and I’d been to the coast three weekends on the trot I figured I really should go in the sea. Utterly unprepared; trousers up to thighs, I staggered into the freezing water. Exhilarating isn’t quite the word. That people go and hurl themselves in, for charity granted, on New Years Day has always amazed me. It wasn’t enough though, so in returned to the shore and dropped my trousers. I went in wearing just my pants, and t-shirt. By ‘eck it were right cold. But it was good fun and a man gave me his towel (possibly from his boot used to dry his dog, but hey! nice gesture anyway) and I towelled myself off before going commando for the rest of the day. To celebrate the Madness of King Oll we went to one of the pubs that overlooked the beach and had a drink.

Thieving Cunts

2004-09-06T20:05:00.000Z

Just paid 99 pence for the new Mansun single and WMP will not play it because it can't download a fucking license and the huge corporate website that sold me it doesn't have any help file or any information about licenses. Fucking great...

2004-09-05T21:26:00.000Z

Fuck T**co's I got a life to live.

2004-09-05T21:00:00.001Z

Blue Skies in My Mind.

2004-09-05T21:00:00.000Z

What a beautiful place to live...

How to get rid of the midweek blues.

2004-08-03T23:15:00.000Z

The answer to all those mid-week, crap telly, boring sections of my life given away to entertainment from an entertainment box, is Simple. I have taken second employment, you see, in the services of a supermarket behemoth on three evenings in the week. It means that i'll actually be earning the amount my first job pays me before deductions. Which is still not really enough. I essentially work a 37 hr week with Her Majesty's plus 12 hours for the Universe Consolidators. It's like badly paid overtime. Hmm.

And you might wonder, particularly if you know me, why i should suddenly, age 25, start working hard and trying to improve my financial standing? I wonder too friend. Long and Hard i've Wondered. Many a night. Wondered. Fork knows...

But it isn't as tiring as you might think. Oddly it's not hard work, neither of my jobs involves the all out athleticism that harvesting the lettuce did. Which really was fun in it's own way. And good for me. Both of my current daytime pastimes are, as one of my University Tutors pointed out, Information Processing roles. Both too are jobs that have a limited lifespan in the whole running of the Universe type stakes. Computers will eventually do all our shopping for us and eventually they will also do all our administration too. So i'm not exactly gonna be remembered for my dashing filing and charming gait, and wonderful way with the middle aged ladies.

I went on W. I. Trips (or W. I. Trip according to my Mum who says she only ever took me on one) when i was younger and obviously when you're young and marginally cheeky, in a slightly less cute/actually funny way, older ladies take a shine to you. I suppose something rub offed. Or rubbed off. Or even rob a dob dob, Da^id Ha$$lehoff. Or not.

Yes, rub offed on me it did. I must smell of them, or smell of something they like. Or maybe i glow. Whatever it is, i'm a hit with the older lady in the workplace.

Sadly it's neither use nor ornament; won't earn me cash lest i become a male escort - anyone know how much you earn? - nor will it leave me well remembered for changing the world/universe/fishtank.

While you're not looking, supermarkets aisles and shelves continuously move like in the Magical Boy In the Film of Hollywood, where it's the stairs and corridors. So that is why things seem never to be where they are. This is NOT necessarily true of all supermarkets its only the one i work in that i know about. It's simple, it makes you stay longer than you have to.

2004-06-20T14:34:00.000Z

Proud to be English?

Love Will Tear Us Apart

2004-06-20T14:33:00.000Z

Driving Out of Manchester Towards The Dark Peaks

Bill Laswell, Jah Wobble and Dr. Alex Patterson have got it going on.

But at the moment i have not. I am unhappy with my little lot or my lot of very little. I'm 'going out'/'seeing'/'in a relationship with' or perhaps my favourite, 'courting' a girl who's job is in London. Likewise her career for the forseeable future, that too being forged, in London.

Now i'm not someone who thinks the streets are paved with gold down there. Being as I am, a country boy i have no such wish to seek my fame and fortune there. I don't think i'd like to live somewhere that made me feel so insignificant, but, maybe i'm just crazy. Post millenial paranoia and fear of the urban society, so pockmarked by it's environs and denizens. Not for me thanks.

I feel no romanticism about the city and it's years of history and i do not see it as the centre of the universe. Should I? Or do i sound like a thirteenth century peasant? Probably both. Manchester was pleasant on Saturday evening when we were there. Good stuff in a good space. Trousers arse feck.

The Magic is as the Magic does...

2004-06-12T23:11:00.000Z

It's F**king Great Fun though isn't it?

2004-06-12T23:07:00.000Z

How does this posting pictures thing work?

2004-06-12T23:06:00.000Z

Stretch Yer Arms Wrong...

GMT 23:00hrs ish May 28th 2004

2004-05-31T16:58:00.000Z

This is the date of the final occasion of my imbibing tobacco through my own choice. I will never smoke tobacco again. It is now 6pm on Monday 31st and i have not as yet, nor do i at the moment, crave a cigarette. I feel free from my self imposed slavery. Free from the brainwashing of society. (Granted , i feel a bit hooked on Alan Carr's Easyway to stop smoking, but that's good brainwashing, i hope.) Never again will i purposefully poison myself with a filth whose only effect is to make me want more.

Wednesday.

2004-05-19T19:40:00.000Z

Played cricket again at lunch time. Found out i'm quite the bowler, definately not the batsman and quite frankly, you'd be mad to let me play as a fielder. Bowling is the thing for me. We only play with a tennis ball and a faux cricket bat, i say faux, it's actually a piece of wood shaped a bit like a cricket bat, fashioned by one of the little 'cherubs' whom my job is created for and by. Whatever it is and whatever that might mean, i care not a jot. It hits balls and does the trick which is good enough for us.

As stumps we have one of the cardboard bins into which we civil servants put confidential information. I'd be surprised if they ever envisaged cricket stumps as a future use for them. Just outside the fire exit from the office, in a grass and concrete area we civilian-civil servants use to relax outside. Kinda dull.

Fizzy as Buck.

2004-05-16T11:22:00.000Z

Running here, running there, running every-muthaf**in where.

Busy weekend doing lots of s**gging, driving, gardening and washing. Fun, fun, fun.

Listening to: Jazzanova Remixes, Stoned Soul Picnic by Roy Ayers, some Boards of Canada i've never heard, Chris Morris' Radio 1 shows from 1994 and some Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Space Arkestra.

Also this downloading thing is a pain in the arse when the torrents you've been using are all gone, within days of being uploaded. Recently we were downloading The Tripods, the BBC series which replaced Doctor Who in 1984. The BBC only made 2 seasons of 13 episodes, covering the first 2 books of the trilogy. I remember it fairly clearly, certainly the first series, but what i'm really looking forward to seeing is the realisation of the second series which is mainly set in the Tripods huge cities. But the torrents from which we drew the video files have gone, the search engine for the torrent store has also gone and we are left at least 10 episodes from the full 26. K**aa claims that there are some users with the files but they don't seem to download. Grrrrrrr.

I'm back to explain my experience.

2004-05-03T12:35:00.000Z

Over the last month or so i've been, by turns: too busy to write on here, too lazy to write on here and too not fussed to write on here. I've also neglected the part of me that believes that what i write has some significance, some power or a need to be written. Does it matter?

I've been too busy wih band rehearsals, though not as busy as we should be. We still only practice once a week, which isn't enough. As every week has passed we've progressed comfortably on from the previous week. We can still just about count the number of practices on both hands that we've had so far. We are now playing together very well, we know the 7 songs we run through each week increasingly more and know ehn to change and snippets of how best to play sections. We are at the stage where we need some outside opinion on what we do, to pickup on the parts that sound good and the parts that don't. My confidence in playing the guitar and singing has increased, my proficiency though still leaves a lot to be desired. It's really quite difficult to be the only person holding the melody together. Both John and Luke have their work cut out for them playing the drums and the bass, but thats the rhythm section and the remainder of the tune is left to me. If i was playing either the guitar or singing seperately then it would be great and i could concentrate on making either one sound as good as it can. Doing both sadly ends up sounding like a clumsy shadow of that which i am capable of.

Talking of f**ked up emails.

2004-04-22T16:30:00.000Z

From: abuse@gov.us Add to Address Book
To: geofflove1@yahoo.co.uk
Subject: Illegal Website
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 13:42:56 +0100

I noticed that you have visited illegal websites.
See the name in the list!

+++ Attachment: No Virus found
+++ MessageLabs AntiVirus - www.messagelabs.com

It's a beauty.

I've Been Playing with Myself for Hours.

2004-04-16T17:58:00.000Z

Yes indeedy, fiddling royally. If you follow this link here:

You too can fiddle by yerself for hours.

Take That

2004-03-26T18:58:00.000Z

I was searching the internet, in a bid to prove it's existence, for sites about Take That the popular Mancunian beat combo from the early Nineties. I found this about four sites in...

Ananova:

Would-be robber attacked by customer with hammer

A masked gunman was hit on the head four times with a hammer after a customer intervened to stop an attempted robbery on a pizza shop.

The would-be robber had ordered everyone in Stoney's Pizza, Columbus, Ohio, to drop to the floor.

Witnesses said he searched an office for money, but when he couldn't open a till, he tried to get away.

But customer, JR Croy, used his truck to block the gunman's getaway and a sledgehammer to subdue him.

"I was sitting here with the hammer, and he pointed the gun up at me. After hitting him in the head with a hammer four times, he wouldn't go down."

The pizza shop has given Croy a $500 (£276) reward, which he plans to use to pay some bills. The weapon the man was carrying turned out to be a paintball gun.

Now where does it even have the phrase 'take that'?

That's some subtle search-engine action.

How can you really know?

2004-03-06T19:22:00.000Z

Without listening to every piece of music ever recorded, how can you know if your 'original' song isn't just a copy of someone elses?

Take this/these Franz Ferdinand chap/chappies do they realise that their song is just Trampled Under Foot by Led Zeppelin?

Last day as a temp.

2004-03-03T14:58:00.000Z

I thought i'd left myself a good few hours work to do today. I had left a reasonable amount of work to do but i just couldn't be arsed taking all day to do it. So i'm off work now til next Wednesday, When i start back there full-time for at least six months more. Hmm.

Broadband is, on closer inspection, quite fantabulous.

That HSBC earn more a second than billions of workers, myself included, world wide do in a week, most a month, is Just Wrong. This statistic (£244 a second) is proof that there is civilisation-destroying disparity between the rich and the poor on this earth.

Worse is the fact that we have the proof; and there is no one to show it to. The ageless creatures in this great universe have no interest in helping us off our dirty, sullied, broken-toy like usage of our planet. Who is there to tell this to? If i did find someone who could do something about it, what would we do? Write a letter of complaint? Plant an incendiary device? Scream and shout from atop a box on a high street? Commit suicide?

I'll just watch some television instead.

F**king Cars.

2004-02-27T08:44:00.000Z

Lights. Stereo. Flat Battery!

Well 've definitely left my lights on. So at 7.35 or so when i stepped out into the blue-skied, snow covered world that this morning was York, i discovered my car was not likely to be moving anywhere for a few hours. Not without waking Luke and asking him to get up and come and help me jumpstart my car. Which i really don't want to do. Therefore i am resigned to a day off work. Ho-hum, what a b**ger.

Rearranged the living room last night to accomodate the fact we will soon have broadband. Yay! So i'll be able to write this, download some films, use the phone and buy some things online, all at the same time. What wonderful, magical technology must this be? I've always wanted to do loads of things at once! Well, staying within my multi-tasking as a man boundaries, at least. Maybe thinking about sex, downloading some porn, watching some, listening to a dirty phoneline and cocking my shotgun of love. Who says men can't multi-task, eh?

I Waffle. Almost continuously. Broadband, Yay! Don't please i implore you if you plan to get it choose an Alcatel external modem, or certainly not the one that comes with Fre**erve broadband. The telephone connection to the modem is actually into the thick modem cable, but it's really clode to the usb end. Which means that unless you buy a long telephone cable then the computer has to be really close to the socket. (Now heres the really daft bit.) The modem itself has a really long cable, so you could put the modem itself as far away as you like. Hang it on the wall perhaps and show it off as the lovely aquamarine, rubbery 'alienspaceship'like abhorance it really is. If our computer baseunit was the same hideous turquoise, globular design then it'd fit right in. Question for Alcatel: How many of your (actually anybody's) customers have base units that match the design of your modems?

I'd bet 5 or 6 more than F**k all!

Sadly, because the majority of people wouldn't know how to open their computer, let alone actually get inside it and change things, all these companies supply you with external modems, which from my limited experience are pooh. What's wrong with an internal modem? Are they too expensive, or is it the reason i give above that prevents ISP's from giving the customer aesthetic satisfaction?

Who cares? Not me. I've got a day off.

I Zimbra

2004-02-25T16:47:00.000Z

I sat and read some of my book at work today. for a whole three quarters of an hour, Reading My Book. In what was the projectionists room in the old Naval Base hall, i sat and happily read a few chapters whilst being paid for 'working'.

The 'Fact Rap' in Crosseyed and Painless by Talking Heads has just distracted me. Remain In Light for those who haven't heard it yet. (Although if you read this and you aren't Nick and James, who are you? Do i know you? Listen to Talking Heads, you'll like it.)

Yes, paid for doing nothing. I'm at a loss to make myself useful for eight hours a day so i figure i'll do some reading because i don't feel like doing that in my spare time (Doesn't spare make you think of 'What's left over'? Hmm, does anyone in this day and age have spare time? Time has never felt spare to me. Spaced Apart and Rare perhaps? A combination of those produces Spare. Free time then. Time left over from work = Spare or Free(dom). Repression through words my friends.) Man, do i use brackets/parentheses a lot. (By the by can anyone tell me what Americans call brackets? Do they use them? I use them like afterthoughts because i don't actually know how to construct sentences properly.)

Anyway i'm talking cack. Pancake Day! Which was yesterday, was f**king great. I excelled myself in the creation and gluttonous consumption of pancakes yesterday. Delia's recipe...

4oz of plain flour
2 large eggs
200ml of milk
75ml of water
A chunk of melted butter
And a pinch of salt

...worked a treat. I made the above recipe but twice the amount at about four o'clock. Twice the amount made about 14. Of which Luke, when he arrived, consumed five, before returning to work, and Ian, when he returned from a whole day standing and smiling, had 3. I then made a second batter of twice the amount. This time showing Ian how to do it, from raw ingredients to plate. (Why must my talent be teaching? I don't want to be a teacher. Why can't i be good with ferrets instead. Maybe i am good with ferrets, i've just never spoken to any. Worse still, i enjoy teaching people things, it's really easy.)

Anyway. I ate another six. All with sugar and lemon or maple syrup. I haven't eaten that much sugar in years. Since my lunch at about 12 i didn't eat anything else yesterday apart from the flour, eggs, milk and sugar. It was ace. I was in a really good mood. Sugar, sugar, sugar, Pancake Day. Sugar, sugar, sugar, Pancake Day! Mmmmm. Only another 364 days til Pancake Day again.

I had the last two before going to work this morning. Pancake Day!

Happy Pancake Day to you, dear readers. I hope in your own way, you had a Happy Pancake Day. Let's not forget the religious significance of Pancake Day either. It's when they stopped spending money on food for 40 days, in order to pay for their holidays to Minehead or Rhyll once a year. What a way to celebrate! Getting f**ked on sugar. Rock on Jesus!

(You've) A Nerve Ending

2004-02-24T16:43:00.000Z

I've just read my good man in Japan's blog and it makes me miss him like a bugger-er, equally so with my prolific friend, Nick. I know you're both well and i hope you remain so.

I should really write angry things about the nature of the British Juvenile Criminal System of which i will soon be a much more important member. Particularly so, as i am currently a temp and not really bound by anything. But i don't think people would like to actually see how their tax money is spent. I know things that would make Newspaper Readers apopleptic (there's a word that does it for me, James) with rage and incredulity at the insane concepts which are in place to 'rehabilitate, educate and reform' our future criminals. Run by men with beards; Phil Wheatley, David Blunkett and others, who have absolutely no comprehension of the lives of every other person involved in the actual running of their precious, almost biblical, hierarchies. Like all bureaucrats they live the corporate life of smiling and sniffing. What i mean by sniffing is that they sample so little of the places they visit. Crap analogy i know but hey! i don't control the thoughts. F**kers the lot of em.

Yes. I'll soon be bound to a six month contract, where i'll be expected to input data about the Juvenile Criminals into a new computer system. It's a pilot project in that it is the first of it's kind (it's also a bit of a test, so on my head be it... Well not entirely.) I'm not expecting there to be a great deal to do, judging by the nature of everybody else's jobs in the Civil Service. And my what a 'Civil' service it is too. Tea all day long, chatting with everyone and anyone, interspersed with the eating of food, a nice meeting, plenty of bigoted (in so many ways) conjecture and some more tea. It's smashing.

What's even more smashing is it's PANCAKE DAY! Better even than my birthday nowadays. Oh Pancake Day, magical, mystical, Pancake Day. I've made the batter and am just waiting until i feel a few hunger pangs (that's another word i really like, but is it real? Or was it just invented by advert people? Answers on a postcard) which funnily enough now i'm thinking about; i'm having. Pancake Day!

My thoughts on the web.

2004-02-09T19:44:00.000Z

I haven't been thinking a lot recently. I've been very angry with my computer though and the whole blood-boiling thing gets in the way of rational thought. They're awful bloody things. Subject, like every man made thing, to entropy, wear and tear and obsolescence. They are the answer and the problem.

But on the thinking front, i just can't be arsed anymore. I miss talking absolute bollocks about theory and ideas, that was fun. Like the people on Newsnight Review talking about art, film and theatre. Ecstatic or critical, possibly both at the same time, drawing parallels, going off at tangents and most importantly; loving the exploration of expression and challenging the notions of what artists try to say to us. Asking: why? how? why not? wherefore? whom? etc.

I was told recently that i had ruined someone's enjoyment of TLOTR Part III. I took umbrage at this. I don't like to feel that i've done something like that. My Lady argued that people have a time after a film, say, when they are still caught up in it, and talking about it, particularly criticisms, can affect the overall view. Again this upset me.

My friend saw the film again. When i saw him last he said, that in hindsight it was the film, he had not enjoyed the film and my comments had just pointed a number of its flaws within seconds of leaving. TLOTR Part III is a prime example of how boring and twee cinema can be. How traditional and simple we humans must be to be entertained by such drabness. Don't get me wrong, TLOTR Part II, absolutely rocked. The battles were refreshing, different and exhilarating, the presence and realism of Gollum was a piece of cinematic history and it never stopped. From Gandalf and the Balrog opening the movie, all the way to the death of Boromir and the parting of the fellowship, action, excitement, SPECTACLE!

Jackson was onto a loser with the third film from the start. The book is mind-numbingly dull. The strength lies in the eking out of the journey the tension building through the minutiae of monotony, Sam and Frodo dripping towards their ultimate end. If Jackson had spent more time on the journey in the first film, he could have abridged the final film by about half an hour. If he had also missed out the pointless three quarter hour conclusion, we might have seen something worthwhile. The DVD release later this year of the extended version (all of which was filmed with us the 'dumb' consumer in mind) is reputed to be 4 hours 15 mins. Bear in mind that each previous release has had 4 commentaries each DVD has 12 hours of talking over it and the new one will have 16 hours of talking over it. WHO GIVES A FUCK?!? HOW FUCKING UNINTERESTING MUST YOUR LIFE BE IF YOU EVER SIT THROUGH IT ALL? 40 FUCKING HOURS OF PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING YOU WEREN'T A PART OF!! SELF CONGRATULATORY WANK!

That Jackson has borne the consumer in his mind throughout the entire process has turned it into artistic shit, dripping through his fingers onto his piles of money. He need never work again i'm sure, and i for one hope that he doesn't. Much like the Warchowski brothers. What a great piece of sci-fi cinema The Matrix is. New, different, exciting and visually without reference. But look at the following films created with the knowledge of its own 'cult' status, drab, boring and predictable. Peter Jackson knew what he was doing all along: visualising a franchise. Like the original 'toy-company funded' He-Man produced to sell toys. Jackson produced the film to sell the commodities associated with it.

But what do i matter? Who am i to request challenging, exciting, visually arresting cinema? Like Kill Bill or Lost in Translation. Cinema that makes you feel something different, exotic, unknown, and inexplicable. Peter Jackson has created a visual Exposition of JRR Tolkiens book. Not an expression, but a pedestrian, safe and mundane translation. His explanation of the book is like the book itself being written by John Grisham.

But maybe it's just my computer rage bubbling up again....

Would you credit it?

2004-01-23T15:34:00.000Z

Would you? I wouldn't and goddamn i am not going to.

As soon as it was signed and in my wallet the whispering began. Not unlike the way i imagine The Ring talking to Frodo(The way i imagined it long before Mr. P Jackson of Fat Beardsville N.Z. rendered it 60ft tall, drab, long and obvious), those malicious yet beautiful murmurings, screams of pain becoming screaming orgasms.

Adverts looked different because of my new friend. Oh the possibilities! The cashpoint outside T**co's actually spoke to me. It said: "You haven't used me yet, not with your new friend, slip him in. Let me feel his lovely matt finish caress my lips, slide past and fill my mechanical maw. I wanna suck his virgin chip." Or something like that, it manifested itself in an incredible desire to withdraw cash. Fortunately for me though, i think i might be getting the hang of this sense thing, so i didn't draw any money. Phew!

But, my next task was to go round T**co's. Every product i looked at glowed with an aura, an aura that made my lower jaw slack and caused dribble to well up and cascade down my chin.

It was as if every single thing was mine, every product whether it were female sanitary products, goats cheese or even Bovril. I had a shopping list with me but what use was that now? A shopping list is there to limit you to what you need (or thats what i use mine for). With a list you get what you've written down and out of the 'super'market as fast as possible.

What need had i for a list now? I could buy anything... F**k it. I could buy everything. No matter what i bought i felt like it would sustain me. A trolley full of shoes would feed me for a month, surely? Oh joy! Oh to be one of the few happy people who see the world like this all the time...

But it's all a sham...

All of it...

And sadly that's how it works. It felt magical; like the first touch in foreplay or the realisation those chords work with that vocal line. Beautiful. Somehow i managed to control it. I escaped unscathed, my finances struggling back to finding their feet rather than one more huge step toward the oblivion of destitution. Ever Upward Comrades!

...That feeling though, of having that which i do not, being able to be that which i am not, the invulnerability afforded me by a small piece of plastic...

Expression

2004-01-20T19:28:00.000Z

Music. Sweet music. You're the Queen of my Soul.

The Isley Brothers i think.
True though. The one thing that i am fucking great at. The one thing that makes me feel like no drug, no sex, no film, no book, like nothing else i have yet done, can.

We haven't practiced for a month or two now and i'm restless. New stuff is sadly not appearing the way it has done before, i'm not writing as many words, though i think my work environment doesn't help. My words, particularly, come from whilst i'm at work. I never wrote lyrics whilst i was cutting lettuce, the leaves had wilted and obscured my etchings by the time i got it home. But the music came out of me. Armed with a 20 yr old Ta**am 4 track tape recorder, a 10 yr old Effects pedal, a microphone and myself, i created the bases for what we're achieving on PC now. My (Our) first album, still a few months from completion, has taken a year and a half or so. Had we been handed £50,000 at the time and given an engineer, producer and access to musicians, we would have a lot of money by now. But...

...The music wouldn't have been as good. The process of recording and re-recording, writing whilst recording has produced some of my best songs so far. They are still not on the level they need to be, not to get me someone who'll pay to produce them and distribute them. I don't ask myself if my songs are any good anymore because the people who've heard the music so far are complimentary. I haven't played it to as many folk as Luke has so haven't seen as many reactions to it. I find myself, as expected, over critical (should that be hyphenated?) of my music, i can hear all the mistakes, which usually distracts from the great bits.
Also we now have a drummer, though only a night or two a week. We still need a guitarist of similar or more likely better skill than i, so i can concentrate on singing, making strange, beautiful noises with the guitar, making strange, usually frightening noises with my organ (ooh-er) and generally not having to play rhythm guitar. This is because i still have some difficulty singing whilst also making a guitar sound good.

This is the challenge i have to face. The outside world has distracted me long enough. I love to do something and i believe i have the ability to succeed. Don't think for a second i mean Fame Idol success, though i can hold a tune fairly well, so i'd easily get into the top 10 if i whored myself enough, i mean my idea of success. Enough money to be able to spend my days making music. Making records for people who like music like i do. (What a wonderfully ambiguous phrase) The truth is within the sentence though. The music i like has made the music i make, though i have never copied or tried to sound like anyone else. What goes in must, as they say, come out.
So in theory, someone who has similar taste in music as myself, might appreciate my filtered, expression of that music. Equally valid though is the statement that people who enjoy music for similar reasons to me, might also appreciate my interpretation of music, my idea of what it is.
People say music is mathematics, this is true. Humans construction/creation of numeracy can express the components of sound in many different forms; graphs, charts, algebra, silly questions about train journeys. Other people think God gives Human Beings life. You don't know who to believe.

I believe music is a collection of sound though, not numbers or letters, combinations of noises that evoke/provoke/emote/produce/affect feelings within us.

I also believe that my interpretation of music, what I think and feel it is, would be appreciated by enough people.

I really must try and control my fingers, they keep saying things...

Structure

2004-01-20T17:51:00.000Z

With my career constantly in the air, not that i have a career, and my finances in freefall i find myself surprisingly chipper. As indeed, i do now on a near daily basis. My change in temperament i attribute mainly to the small amount of caffiene i now consume. For the last five years i feel like i've been trapped in a mindset of cynicism and anger; both of which i still display, though more calmly and less severely respectively. My mood now seems lighter and more carefree, not that it hasn't taken hard work to achieve.
Giving up coffee was the easy part. Coping now, with the smell of real, caffienated coffee is what drives me crazy. The part they take out for decaf is the taste and the smell. If made in a cafetiere the texture is still the same, but there is still no coffee taste or aroma to be sensed. I'm past the stage now of having a cup of decaf then spending a minute or two contemplating, almost physically, on the fact i don't feel different. I just drink it. I don't know why. Just the waft of my housemate's cupboard door opening, pushing enough coffee molecules towards my smoke-riddled nose and palate, makes me shiver and long.
Yet i do feel different now, the fug seems to be lifting. I have things to look forward to, which is something i've seldom done due to my 'thought based' mode of existence. The trick i have learned, and cutting out caffiene has helped me to see it, is to use your thoughts to look forward to and imagine things, rather than concentrating on the freakish, unfair, harsh, dark and plain horrible world that surrounds us. The world of pop music, corporate entertainment, civil servants, non-existent gods and far too real monsters, shopping as leisure, constant mass production of non biodegradeable and/or recyclable objects, house prices, fashion, disposablility, drug companies, famine, horror...
So i suppose what i'm saying is: i have tapped into the great unconscious, the waking dream most humans choose. The choice of ignorance over intelligence, the narrow mind instead of the plasma, widescreen, have-it-on-the-ceiling mind, dream instead of reality.

Or am i just talking bollocks? No. Not on this occasion, though my words do little justice to the notion i'm attempting to express. I want to say that i'm cocooning myself in a 24 hour a day marathon of viewing my own life as good entertainment. But that doesn't say what i mean either, that sentence just came out of the end of my fingers.

Not Really, No.

2004-01-13T19:51:00.000Z

Hmm. I have done my work so hard, fast and well that i have essentially worked myself out of a job. Not very clever, huh? Well yes. I've shown myself to the people that matter that i am capable, willing and bursting to work at something complex, time-consuming and above all important. Important enough for me to be paid more than i am currently, which is not enough, to which my (f)ailing bank account would attest were it chipper enough to understand. So i've gone and got myself a credit card...

Actually i've had one for years, since University when it sat sucking money from me. A steady £10 a month dribbling away at £6 of interest per month. I cleared it when i got a job and cut the card up. Yet, they send me a statement telling me my balance is £zero and my credit limit is £750! Wow. It was £350 all the way through Uni, when i could have used it most!

So, that'll take the slack until my other credit card arrives. Accidently i applied online for an Egg card before finding out that i could use my existing one. Oh well, the terms are better on the Egg card so i'll just use that one.

How dull. Why must i be growning up?

Aaaah... Hello... Testing Testing... Is there anybody there?

2003-12-10T19:55:00.000Z

Blimey, I haven’t written on this blog for ages. It must be a month now at least. Reasons being; I’ve completely changed my job so I now have no internet access (well at home, but we’re always using a p2p program so the connection speed is arse, it’s like using the Macintosh that I set up in about 1996 for my dad.) Anyway life has, as ever, moved on in many ways.

Firstly, my new job, where I spend 8 hours a day in a Young Offenders Institution chasing paper round their offices. I’m a temp so I’m on better money than most of the people who work here, I can work as and when I choose (not totally; if I chose I wouldn’t) so I start at 8.20 and finish at 4.20. It’s great, so much better than my last job, as I have no pressure, no responsibility and no worries. Whilst the money isn’t great, it’s as good as what I was on and I’m not travelling as far.

It’s an open plan office, which is new to me, but is also a welcome change to my last office environment, me on my own in (granted, a very nice) office in charge of my own workload. Now I just do as I’m told and when I’ve done that I do what I like. In fact I think I’ll have this afternoon off. (See isn’t it great!)

So the new job has made me feel a great deal better about my prospects and myself. As has the lady who now enjoys spending time in my company (and my bed). On top of this I have given up drinking caffeinated coffee. Which, I feel, has a great deal to do with my less agitated, less tetchy and generally more positive outlook on life (that and the sex). I still get the odd bout of rage; when cables get tangled, changing my bedding, the state of my house, etc. But these things are perfectly understandable, apart from the cables. How do electric cables get tangled up so quickly and so well? You can put a cable in a draw for 5 minutes, get it out again and it’ll be wrapped round anything and everything else? Why has no one invented a cable that will not tangle? Perhaps using magnets?

So things are good. (To all those people who know me, yes I thoroughly agree that statement doesn’t sound like me, but hey! people change).

Or do they…?

My last day....

2003-10-31T16:35:00.000Z

Well, i'm here finally on my last day in this godawful job. And i'm elegiac. I'm sat twiddling my thumbs because even though i've only been given three days to get all the work done for the training programmes up to christmas, i've done it all anyway. The story is a long one....

I handed my notice in on Friday which went really well. I was thanked for my honesty in expressing that there was someone out there more capable at the telesales aspect of my job. On Monday i found out that they wanted me to get everything done and leave on November the 7th, they asked me if that was okay. Hmm... thought for all of a millisecond and said YEAH!!!

On Wednesday morning i left an answerphone message stating i would be an hour or so late as i was getting my haircut. (The MD does the same when getting his haircut and they call me senior management so i thought Hey!) When i arrived in work there was a letter on my desk telling me i was leaving this friday and that i would still be paid up to this Friday, even though i'd behaved impolitely and unprofessionally. Now anyone reading his knows me and thats like a red rag to a bull.

I wrote a letter to the old cunt who sent me that one. He's 66 claims to be a Film Director of international reputation (as in he once when he was younger worked with some famous people, i mean ever heard of John Sichel??? I doubt it.) but he's just a grumpy old cunt with an out of date TV and Theatre training centre on his doorstep. No one stands up to him, no one. So i did.

The letter merely apologised for my behaviour saying that i was acting as i had seen others behave, and that i recognised and accepted the new

Too much time to think about These Things.

2003-10-28T16:16:00.000Z

I'm not sure i can attribute my sudden well being to the act of sexual congress. Both Emily and myself have been wondering why we aren't changed, why we don't feel that different. Sex is one thing, caring about someone is something different, and we have a situation which makes us hunger for each other i.e. we work together and have to hide the fact. Plus we're both a few years out of the loop when it comes to intimate physical contact. My groin hurts like a motherfucker. We've used muscles that neither of us have used for a long time.

Perhaps the funniest thing is that last night i had a nosebleed whilst on the job. Is it a physical manifestation of my real fears and anxieties. I doubt it...

What still concerns me is the necessity of it. I enjoyed what we did on Sunday, though i enjoy certain aspects of making music a great deal more than a bit of animalistic rummaging.

I've always attributed my lack of sexual desire to:
A) Having spent time on Prozac; before which i was a horny and near unstoppable shagging machine.
B) My most serious relationship to date which i believe made me confuse sex with commitment and being loved.

I find being loved very hard, in the same way i find being praised hard. I worry that perhaps i don't like the girl as much as she likes me and that if i sleep with her, in the end, she'll fall in love with me and never want to split up. I suppose that makes me feel trapped. But why should i feel this way? Is it because i don't really fancy her? Is it because she's not the most attractive girl in the world? I've always found independence a turn on and i've always found that an independent girl will miraculously transform into one emotionally dependent on me and i don't like that. I am attracted to them as they are not how they've become because of me.

I find sex a messy and strangely uncomfortable affair, perhaps i'm too pragmatic and rational a person to cope with the notion of feeling horny. Yes i can be as stiff as the next man in seconds, but i feel detached from it. (Not literally) Yesterday i wrote that i think too much about everything and that really covers it, even when i'm concentrating on the job in hand i'm thinking about other things; thoughts, feelings, am i doing it right, what do i do next, what do you want me to do???? and this detracts from the all encompassing feeling of sexual pleasure thats meant to absorb me and make me a part of her.

Nick: whats the name of that book you had about sex?

Maybe i'm just not doing it right.

Why do i worry so much about emotionally hurting them?

Why can't i be like all the other men in the world and not care, just fuck em and dump em.

Move on to the next?

Music in my Mind: Pet Sounds. I can't imagine writing a song like ...Made For These Times even though it resonates within my life more than many songs. Ever since i first heard it, i heard my own life in it. Like my own confusion about the world around me and the way we're supposed to get through it. I'm 24 and i still feel as lost, submerged perhaps, in the world around us. Feelings and emotions do not make sense. Intellect and intuition don't make sense. You are nothing until someone tells you you are.

Four Years Later.

2003-10-27T12:12:00.000Z

(Firstly let me apologise for what i'm about to say) I had actual, physical, sexual intercourse this weekend. After about four years in the (pardon the pun) fucking wilderness, i have put my man bit inside a girls bit. And yes, it was fun.

Has it changed the person i am? Not really, i'm happier, i suppose and the road rage was utterly non-existent this morning.

My groin hurts. But it hasn't changed my world, except that all the expectation and angst, anxiety and nervousness thats prevented me from doing it before has gone. What the fuck was i so worried about?

But then we're very comfortable with each other and we could talk openly about it. I've been incapable of having sex within the last 4 relationships i've had, purely because of nerves and anxiety. The weight of my social conditioning and testosterone squashing me into a nervous wreck, too frightened to be 'impolite' with a girl. The expectation of males is to get in there and get on with the job, but that used to just make me more nervous. I don't understand where my new found confidence in this area came from.

The whole problem with sex and my life, before, during and after is that i think too much about everything.

Music in my Mind:The Last Broadcast by Doves. Listened to it coming back from Tamworth with Emily, sounded great. Listened to it on the way to work, sounded great.

It's my own music thats in my mind at the moment though, we haven't practiced for a month nearly and i'm busting to sing and play. I've got real feelings running through me and i want to fucking scream them out through my music, not only that but hopefully i'll be starting to have some singing lessons soon...

The End...?

2003-10-24T10:02:00.000Z

I left my letter of resignation on my Managing Director's desk this morning.

I have not felt so happy and full of life, as if the weight of the world has been lifted, since i found out i had been given the job.

The environs of the job have been the reason i have felt trapped, i am isolated physically by it's rural setting and alienated through my employers lack of interaction with the outsider world.

I feel happy.

I really, really fucking do.

How do you ignore being patronised?

2003-10-23T08:20:00.000Z

It's something i've always worried i do when i talk to other people. I know that i don't patronise or talk to people in a condescending (sp?) fashion, i have no arrogance in me to do so. The MD of the "company" i currently work for ignores everything i say, considers it irrelevant and doesn't believe me when i say things. He doesn't find any of my humourous comments funny, he just sighs and continues with what he's saying. It's killing me, becuase he's no better than i am at anything (apart from sucking cock). He is so fucking arrogant it's beyond belief.

Over a meal with Emily last night i realised why they treat me this way. It's because they see me solely as their telesales donkey, the reason they don't recognise my talents in other fields is because they see me solely as their telesales donkey. In them seeing me this way it crushes me even more that i can't do the job, don't want to do the job and will be leaving the job. It also reduces me to something i am not. My whole image and persona for them is built round this task i have to carry out for them. Yes! i realise i was employed to fulfil this role, but i can't and as soon as i tell them so i might as well hand my notice in. Which i want to do within a week or two. Well i'd walk out today if my social conditioning and awareness of how the world works stops me from doing so. but to what ends should we go to seek happiness?

2003-10-22T15:36:00.000Z

James: thank you for the emails, they made me feel better. Don't worry, this job will be over soon, i am facing up to the inevitable and looking at going into teaching. I think i'm going to do a post-compulsory PGCE in literacy (rather than numeracy, i can't teach what i don't know!). This job has clarified my hatred for the corporate/sales/cock-sucking environment. The people i work with are so uninterested in the people who work for them, they are only interested in this insignificant little company they've created over the years. It is so tired and staid it's beyond recognition. When i tell people i work for a video production company they go "Wow!". But they're shit, they produce wank corporate videos for wank backslapping companies. A day at work is like watching a mass fellatio session. Everyone backslapping and being smug about they're shit productions of theatre and video. They're caught up in their own little worlds and i hate them for it.

Nick: you know me well enough to know how i talk and feel about things. I am working on stopping it, i am working on getting myself out of this fucking awful mental state i'm in. I just feel trapped by the fact i can't do the one thing i have to as the main part of my job. I feel trapped by the necessity to start having a career (mainly because of the attitude all these cunts i work for have, positivity, drive, ambition, etfuckingcetera) but they're so positive with each other they just don't see that it's all shit. They have no creativity, yet they train these poor fuckers who've spent 10,500, to try to be creative, but then shit all over any ideas they may have, replacing them with their late 80's ideas of entertainment and art.

I love you both, and i'm starting to love myself again. I'd started to think iwas working towards something with this job but i'm not. The carrot at the end of the stick is corporate bullshit they wouldn't ever let me get involved in the aspects that i would want to be. I want to be creative, they don't want other people to be creative. I hate fucking writing and talking about it. As it doesn't make it any better. It just makes me angrier.

Never before have i felt like this...

2003-10-21T16:01:00.000Z

I cried at work today.

I tried my hardest not to.

I actually cried at work.

I have never had a job that made me this upset. Only once in my life have i felt this powerless, futile and out of control and i cried then.

I cried at work today

No matter how i say it, there has to be something wrong.

^{I cried at work today}

Looking at it now and feeling more numb than i did earlier, it doesn't seem to mean anything to me anymore. There are too many factors adding up at the moment. I have so many things that can make me happy in my life but there is one thing that is ruining it all.

I have a new female friend. We are a lot alike. We are getting on in ways i never saw myself ever doing again with another human being. We are being kept apart by my job. I am being made to feel wretched nearly every minute of every day by this job. Every aspect of it is killing me. I have gained all the experience it can give me, or rather all the experience i want to take from it. I could improve my sales technique, i could make my boss thousands of appointments but i can't. Because i don't want to.

I hate the people i work for, i hate everything they love, everything they work for, everything they believe in. I am not prepared to make myself like them. I am a funny, intelligent, creative, caring and loving human being. These people do not know this, they don't want to know it, they just want me to make appointments for my boss, who visits customers, who give money to the people i work for. I do not want to do this, they do not deserve me, they do not recognise or deserve my talents, i fucking hate them and their smug, self satisfied lives.

I...

Cried...

At...

Work...

Today............................................................................................................

Madness, madness they call it madness.

2003-10-15T16:29:00.000Z

As my friend James points out on his blog, he advert banner above changes to fit with what has been written. What scares me is there are no adverts above mine. It says this blank space brought to you by google Arf! Arf!

I had a lovely meal in a place called El Piano in York last night. One of my brothers friends, and in turn my friend is leaving (again) to live in the big smoke, so he'd organised a bit of a celebration. He'd booked the moroccan room, which was great. Cushions on the floor, low tables, musical instruments, those things over the window (carved wood flaps) whatever they are and a wonderful selection of vegetarian food. They'd provided forks but eating with fingers was better. I bought a bottle of wine for £6.99, i haven't paid that much for a bottle of wine for ages. Not that it's a lot of money, but more than i'd usually pay. It was a Shiraz Cabernet which was delicious and went with the food beautifully.

I had a really enjoyable time, it was a group of people who'd never (all) met each other, so the conversation was very good. But there was the part of me, before i left the house, that kept telling me to stay in and be bored. I am my own worst enemy. The walk to the restaurant was lovely there was a clear sky, the Minster standing tall on the skyline and a comfortable temperature for walking. Delightful.

Oh. It's time for me to go home. Thank f**k.

Bloody italics.

2003-10-10T08:46:00.000Z

I must apologise for this whole site being italicized. For some reason blogger has just made every one of my posts italic and if i go back, edit them and republish, they're still in italics. Hmmph.

Affected Youth

2003-10-07T18:13:00.000Z

If you read this then hey! hello and thanks. I would recommend though that you read my friend James' page. It's a lot more interesting and funny than mine. But then he has the pleasure of being in Japan at the moment, and he has an incredible way (much like (you) Nick) of picking up on the mundanities of life and making them intriguing and surreal.

I've had Freeview available to me for the last four months or so. For the very first time BBC 4 broadcast something that i watched. Moreover it had me spellbound for nearly an hour. Home was an hour long special written by J.G. Ballard, and starring Anthony Sher. Now Mr. Sher has had something to do with running the RSC and i think he's linked to the musical of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. That he has the ability to act as he did in Home, dwarfs any other profession he may choose. It was an incredible expression of how reality is the root of madness, shown through a man refusing to ever again interact with the world or to step outside of his front door.
He viewed it as an experiment, a great adventure to be had following his wife leaving him and a serious car accident. He took stock of the food, a fortnights worth at best although as a food technologist, he tells the camera, he can probably make it last longer. It doesn't last much longer sadly for our protagonist. From here on in, his meals start to become much more bizarre. Firstly there's the grass and leaves soup. Next, blendered garden worms, then the shampoo and ouzo cocktail.

" Because one of the main ingredients of this is Vitamin E." He tells us. Then proceeds to down it, gagging unpleasantly convincingly. I can't remember if thats before or after he pulls out one of his back teeth with pliers and the last of the brandy, it just underlines the hallucinatory feel of his world. His next meal, is i think, books. He happily tears the pages out and munches telling us they have no carbohydrate value, but they fill the void. After this it descends into chaos as he starts to eat the neighbours pets, caught in a basic animal trap of his own design. His madness is rooted in a belief that his house is a living, powerful entity. He observes a massive expansion of the upstairs, he sees a bright light forcing the house outwards in crazy geometric patterns. This is what his experiment has become, he has become a channel for the house's power to flow through and he loves it, his idea of reality is so twisted now that he has no qualms beating the bayliff to death with a video recorder, when the bayliff (played by Keith Allen, shallow grave anyone??) attempts to see what is going on upstairs.

It's f**ked up and my description is sadly doing it little or no justice. I recommend though that you see it. I now have it on VCR if anyone would like to borrow it.

Of great interest to me is the last blog i published. It's typical me: bitch and moan, the funny thing though is that after i published it i made two succesfull calls and two appointments. I just got on with it. Spoke to these chaps about their video needs/uses and convinced them both to meet with Lynsey. Unbelievable. Describing my issues and problems with it seemed to solidify my feelings about cold calling. I have a warm and friendly voice, i am well spoken and confident and so long as i remember these things i will succeed. I do not ring these people to make them have appointments i ring them to discuss the ways in which we could help them. This is how i need to see what i am doing. Not the whole pressure/sales thing. It is from my confidence and success that more confidence and success will flow.

My review/description of Home is neither long enough nor short enough. I begin to write but feel i'm weighing the reader down with boring exposition, but i wanted to show you this programme, to try and give you some idea of the crazy, surreal experience watching it was. But perhaps i fail. Through not wanting to write too much, from not having a belief in my own choice of words, whatever, i just hope it makes you try and find it to see it.

Music in my Mind: Eno - Atmospheres feat Ending (An Ascent) - a beautiful 4 minute riff which you've all heard (NSPCC adverts, 28 Days Later, etc.) Happily going to sleep of an evening with ambient soundscapes drifting me to the land of nod. Driving to & from work: Sasha & Digweed - Communications - mainly for Phaser by 16b, Waah by Pob and Enjoyed by the Chemical Brothers (basically an instrumental version of Out Of Control)

Another weekend spent Sleeping, Smoking and Washing...

2003-10-06T11:46:00.000Z

It’s all gone tits up. On Friday I spent the day shirking my telephone reponsibilities, finding anything and everything to do rather than phone loads of people I don’t know, who don’t know me, have better things to do with their time and who don’t want an appointment with one of our sales managers. But it is the main thrust of my job. Whereas the main thrust in my previous job was cutting lettuce and whilst I didn’t enjoy it, I did it (except of course for the mornings where I stayed in bed!). You got on with it because you had your boss breathing down your neck to get it done. If you weren’t cutting enough he’d happily tell you to get a move on. I don’t have this with my new job. There is the constant pressure to get appointments, but without the actual threat.

Although that threat reared it’s quite unattractive head on Friday. My boss Duncan wanted a word with me at the end of the day, so I went to see him and we had a discussion about appointments and sales calls. He said he wanted me to think about it over the weekend then have 10 minutes with him today explaining the situation. He either expected me to hand in my notice or to tell him that I do want to be good in that aspect of my work and that the future is bright.

Of course I went to him with the latter. There is a part of me that would love to hand my notice in and have done with the world of telesales, but the experience this workplace can give me is invaluable. Add to this the fact that I AM CAPABLE OF ANYTHING I TURN MY MIND TO and you have success. It’s just a real big hurdle I have to get over and whilst there is a whole load of helping hands ready to help me over this hurdle, there is only one person who can decide whether I make it or not and that person is me. The obstacle to my happiness, wellbeing, success and fortune is me or rather my mind.

I am uncharacteristically nervous when I sit down with the telephone, which doesn’t get me off to a good start. I am then thoroughly aware that I MUST make some appointments from the (let’s say) 40 calls I have to make. Then when I am on the phone to the person I am thoroughly aware that they don’t have time for me or what I have to say, they aren’t interested (but that’s because I don’t make it sound interesting). I then worry about not knowing the right thing to say, which makes me say the wrong thing, I panic in the gaps between either of us saying something which is when my mind makes those pauses in the conversation even longer and more painful than they are. When they say they’re not interested I accept that and put the phone down. I do not know how to convince someone of something, although I am incredibly good at explaining the way something works to somebody. I worry that I am saying too much, but feel uncomfortable with my smaller script. I feel uncomfortable using sayings and phrases that I would not normally use, they do not come out of my mouth comfortably, either to my ears or somebody elses. I am too preoccupied thinking about what the other person might be thinking about me to think clearly about the subject and conversation.

It’s just not me.

Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness...

2003-10-01T08:19:00.000Z

I had my first round of telesales training last night. I had an hour and a half of it before I went home. Now I accept it’s a part of my job that I need to conquer and I’m fully prepared to try. It’s just that it’s really hard. When I heard myself back on the recording I sounded awful: I spoke too fast, I sounded desperate and nervous and basically didn’t sound like me. It was hard. Give me a guitar and someone who wants to listen and I’ll change their world. Give me a telephone and someone who doesn’t want to listen and I’ll fail to do anything except f**k up. It ruined my day yesterday.

The drive home cheered me up a bit though. I was booting it round the back roads to work with a guy in a large, burgundy Nis**n behind me. He kept up and I was really enjoying the drive. He overtook me on a straight “Fair play” I thought to myself. I have no problem with people overtaking me. As we came into the village of Escrick though I took a left, which brings you out at a different bit of the A19. I sailed past where he was waiting to turn my way, so I rolled my window down and gave him a pleasant wave! I love having fun on the roads, it’s so much better than driving aggressively. He managed to get out only one car behind me, which he promptly overtook. As he caught up with me he flashed his lights, so I turned and gave him a little wave. He waved back! What fun.

This morning’s drive to work was beautiful. The shafts of sunlight beaming through the trees, a slight mist accentuating each separate shaft of light and the huge milky sea that was the sky. It helped that I had my minidisc of my mixing on. I’m not much of a beat mixer (not for a few years at least) but I know great music, and I also know how to put tracks together. I just can’t seem to find the time to practice. My decks are setup in the lounge so we’re usually watching TV. Which is the biggest waste of my life ever. As much as you can enjoy a TV programme, you can laugh, cry, be made to think (though not that often), it does not compare with experiences you have in your own life, communicating with others for example. It just sucks up your energy and thoughts, preventing you from doing anything. I think it was Hitchcock who said:

Television is known as a medium because it is neither rare nor well done.

I shall leave you with that thought as you sit down to stare at a screen.

Monday the 29th September

2003-09-30T14:19:00.000Z

I love my friend James so much. He spent the last year telling me to watch a film called “Waking Life” by Richard Linklater. I have now seen most of it and enjoyed it more than my limited vocabulary can express. It is animation over film. It is about philosophy and life. It is stunning. The world is in constant motion, the backgrounds shift, the foreground merges into shapes, people fly. I tried watching it with one of my friends, but bless him he didn’t understand much of it – how arrogant does that sound? But it is true, he didn’t.

Whereas I spent three years at Uni studying many of the ideas and issues that the characters talk about, so I was halfway there. To anyone not interested in philosophy or life or the human spirit this film will be lost, they’ll call it boring and just talking – “not very exciting is it”. These people though could never understand the feeling of knowing that other people think the same way as them.

Not enough hours in a day.

2003-09-25T15:46:00.000Z

There aren't enough hours in a day. Well, there are just not a day where one has to go to work. It's wrong. Totally wrong. Before my new boss came i was posting maybe once a day, it's been a week and a half since my last blog. What's happened? What's changed? What's new pussycat? I'd ordinarily say "Not much", but thats not strictly true. Much has happened, the world has turned, lives have ended, new ones begun.But has anything happened in your life, you fool!? This is after all meant to be about you...

Quite.

What i was meant to be saying was how i am now addicted to The Sims. What a game! Why bother getting on with your own life when you can control other peoples. All you do is make them eat, sleep, have fun, dance, use the toilet, but it is incredibly good fun. I have already wasted a few hours of my life staring at the screen giving them long lists of tasks to carry out. Top fun.

Yeah! I had a good weekend with my family. Spent the Friday evening in my old local. With my brother and his new wife. Had a few beers, then a few vodka's. Great fun. On Saturday we made our way over to my other brother's house in Knaresborough. We went out into Harrogate for the evening which again was very pleasant. But it's not saying anything about me is it? Does it have to?

The reason i'm writing today is because my boss is out at a meeting. I have the office to myself again, like i did before he came. I can look at porn, surf the net, basically do f**k all. The only problem though is that it just makes work for me, for myself. In shirking my responsibilities i am only disadvantaging one person, me. Well thats not strictly true. I disadvanage the company by wasting their money on doing nothing and through my inability to gain new contacts and appointments i also seem to be wasting their time. But telesales is neither easy nor fun.

I have started to enjoy it a bit more though, Eric (my nu boss) is motivating me, and his presence makes me react less emotionally to the calls than i used to.

Why are you talking about work, you don't care, so why should anyone else!?!

True.

Band practice tonight though!! Come on! Should just be the bassist, drummer and me as well which will be great. I know how to play the tunes, so does Luke (bass) and John holds it all together, i've just got to get sooo much better at playing and singing. It really is a f**king chore. All i want to do is play a bit of mad piano/organ and sing. I can sing so well when i try, it's just too much when i'm tw*tting a guitar at the same time. Get some beers down me, that'll fix it!!

If you haven't seen a film called Equilibrium, please do so. It's like a British version of The Matrix, perhaps a little too much like the Matrix. But, it is really, really good. It doesn't try to be something it's not, it doesn't base itself solely on clever camera techniques and the final fight is certainly one of the most interesting things i've ever seen done with guns. One particular moment pisses all over the Matrix. When you first see Christian Bale's character utilise his fighting skills - oh my word, it's great.

I'm not alone anymore...

2003-09-15T16:37:00.000Z

Oh well. It was never gonna last forever, this not having a boss thing. My new Sales Manager has started today so i have to make it look, not only like i know what i'm doing, but like i enjoy it and am good at it. He seems nice enough, enthusiastic, pleasant and confident, but the onus is now on me to be good at my job rather than just look like i am. I had my 3 month review last week, on the tuesday when i wrote my last entry. I was lavished with praise, but i think that was because i beat the MD to it.

He started by saying that he started all his staff reviews by asking them how they felt. (Now i'm quite proud of this) i said: "i'm doing better than i thought but not as well as i'd like" Which is perfectly true. I am doing much better than i thought i would be. i expected to be crap at this job, to never get appointments, to feel like a prat (one t or two?) talking to people who have n interest in hearing what i say, but it's all rubbish. I am good at my job.

My book "See You At The Top" by Zig Ziglar, is teaching me a lot. I've never been one for motivational/self help books - i mean self-help, how does a book written by somebody else help you...

Anyhoo, hometime!!! Yay!

It's gonna take time, a whole lot of Precious Time.

2003-09-09T18:06:00.000Z

I've just had an epiphany. Well, i had it whilst urinating at work. Not on my desk or in the office, in the toilet. I thought about the last girl i had been trying to impress. At some stage i ended up with a guitar in my hands. As is ever the way, people always say "Play something we can sing". And i always fail miserably to recall anything they'd know. Usually because i don't actually know what they know and people are oddly reticent to suggest.

What i did in front of one of my old school friends, whom i recently met up with - partly the thanks must go to Friends Reunited, but it was before i'd paid my fiver. So Hah! I put 2 and 2 together i.e. saw which company he worked for then checked their website for the way his company write their email address. Voila! Anyway, what i did was played his acoustic guitar, i played a couple of my own songs. He sat awestruck (maybe too strong a word, bemused maybe) he really dug it though. When his mate came round for a bit, he made me play it to him too.

My epiphany, you see. Is that i don't do it in front of the peole i really want to impress. Now, don't get me wrong, i was as keen to impress my old friend as i would be to impress you. (whoever you are) But i didn't do it in front of a girl.

I've heard people like Billy Joel talk about how he pulled women by playing the piano. I am an artist. People should only have to understand me through my art. Or rather, i think i'd prefer people to understand me through my music, instead of by talking to me. The more time i spend in the company of women, the more i talk. The more i talk, the less attractive i become. Whereas, the music i create is something people like. Some of my lyrics are as anti-capitalist ranty, as some of my thoughts and beliefs. Yet, these are conveyed with music and my voice's approximation of a tune. Perhaps they don't listen to what i say. I don't half the time.

Now what was i saying?

Bigmouth Strikes Again.

2003-09-09T10:33:00.000Z

Well i've put my foot all the way down my throat this morning and actually managed to kick my own arse. I received an email, which claimed to be from someone around the time of september the 11th 2001. It had not stopped in it's travels since then and was meant to be a eulogy to the great and the good who died. I have no problem with that. But it was badly written, didn't scan as a poem, was plagarised from many different sources and was mainly sent by some thicko somewhere to make other people weep and worry about something that did not affect them and could have been avoided. I responded, not wishing to break the chain, to all the people in my address book. I added this:

That date in the year 2001, that no one will ever let us forget does not make up for the years of repression, oppression, bombing, killing and slave labour that America still foists on us all. America kill people because they are different, they keep down people who don't want to be a part of their western world, who don't see the world the same way as them.

Our differences of culture, of background, upbringing and life experiences are what brings us together. We should unite in our differences not try and make everybody see things one way.

I am very sad for the people who lost their lives, i would be callous and in-human if i did not feel for my fellow man. But these events did not appear out of thin air.

Cultural domination, especially by such a shallow, materialist culture should not be allowed. Are you forced to work in a factory for the equivalent of a bowl of rice a day? Have America bombed your country near constantly for as long as you can remember? Does America hate you for your religious and political beliefs? No? Do you think if they had you'd view things the same way?

I love you all very much and i would hate to think anything would happen to any of you. But i cannot stand unnecessary sentiment, wallowing in pity, sentiment for sentiments sake, proving your worth through showing how much you care for people you don't know. Think of the uproar when Diana died. Do any of those thousands of people we saw on telly mourning, think about her at all anymore? The answer is no.

Love to you all.

Oliver R Tones
Resident Cynic & Reality Checker

Now, i received a reply from one person who merely said "The sense you speak boy.". Which justified to me what i had written. Yet when i arrived at work i found an email from another friend, condemning me for my comments due to a situation i was unaware of in their lives. I felt like a c**t.

So I responded:

If you believe in the human soul and anything afterwards you know that we'll all get to spend eternity in the company of the ones we love.

I'm sad to hear about your friends as i am sad to hear about the loss of life in any situation. If i'd known, do you think i would honestly have written the same email? I may be insensitive, selfish, opinionated, hypocritical but i am not knowingly callous and would never say anything to hurt or upset people i love and respect.

Life is a series of events, some good, most bad. The people who deserve to live, die young and the people who don't deserve to live, live long lives, causing suffering and unhappiness to everyone they meet. I am working my hardest to stop being the latter of the two.

This email is exact proof of how, through our actions we can cause pain and suffering. My email was not aimed at you, it was not aimed at your friends. I am sorry if i offended you and upset you through my insensitive rantings.

Sorry.

2003-09-05T10:30:00.000Z

Blogs..Huh..Good God! What are they good for....?

I spoke to my previous employer for the first time in 3 months, last night. He seemed tired. He mainly talked about how this would be the year he remembered as ‘the year people didn’t come to work’. It was like that when I was still there, over the 13 months I worked for him, my sick days must’ve averaged out at one a month, if not two. One of his workers got married last year after about 18 months of living together. Whilst I was there they essentially split up and we rarely saw him in work. I was told last night that in the last seven weeks he must’ve worked two.

Now you might think my old boss is stupid for letting his staff carry on like that, but what you perhaps don’t realise or know is that it’s incredibly difficult in this day and age to find people who want to work. Even more difficult is finding people who want to work and cut lettuce. It’s incredibly hard work. The only reason I’ve been happy doing it is because I accept work like that in my understanding of the world. Both my elder brothers worked on holdings at different times in their lives, so it was perfectly normal that my first summer jobs would be the same as theirs. I started at 15 making boxes for an hour or two. For every box I made I received a penny. I was making upward of 500 boxes of an evening though, so at 15 it was reasonable money. The next year when I left school I went to work full-time – until I started college in the September. It was f**king hard going, fortunately though I worked with a lad I’d been good friends through school with, and there were attractive young females there. It’s not like that anymore. One of the guys who works there is just over 30, maybe 33 or so. We went out nearly every Friday afternoon/evening when I worked there. He and I always got on very well, he introduced me to The Smiths and The Cure, and I introduced him to great, crazy music. I now love the two bands he played me; he was not so easily converted.

But he’s an alcoholic. One of three I’ve met in my life, each of whom I know well. It’s the most upsetting condition I’ve ever experienced. Each of these people have nothing better to do with their lives than drink as soon as they are able, to kill the pain, to alleviate the boredom of living, to make themselves more fun or to make other people more bearable, I don’t know. This is just me guessing at what drives them to drink. Perhaps these are the reasons I could become one if I chose. However I choose not to, in the same way I’ve chosen to never do heroin or ketamine or acid. Humans are weak willed by our very nature; it’s only things like self-respect and confidence that stop us all becoming addicts. Then again we can all be seen as addicts; the majority of us want nice clothes, nice cars, nice houses, nice jobs, nice friends and nice families. We are born with none of these things (except maybe the families) so we spend our lives chasing these things as if they’re round the next corner. Some people work hard for them, some are given them and some people never get them. I want these things as well, I’m as human as the next guy, but there are sacrifices I will not make, money I will not spend, and debts I will not incur.

I would love to find a drug that stills the constant whirl of thought and emotion occuring inside my head pretty much constantly, but that is life; it is the curse of sentience and being self aware. Prozac is a drug that prevents these thoughts, but it comes with too harsh side effects. Apathy, loss of libido, nausea and depression are the side effects that I remember. Whilst I don’t remember Prozac making me more depressed or particularly nauseaous, I must confess to it’s other side effects. The modern world aims to make us numb, Prozac is the ideal drug for that as it removes the analytical ability of the mind. A part of that then is an apathy toward everything which doesn’t concern you, things just wash blandly over you. You feel excited by the day to day, knowing you’re doing things, experiencing things, but it removes a point of perspective or a past or a future, you live solely in the now. Part of that apathy leads to a disinterest in almost everything including sex.

Now when in was on Prozac I had a girlfriend and suffice to say we had lots of sex, and in fact it helped me do so for longer periods than I’d usually been capable. Since that time though I have had little interest in sex other than the odd animalistic urge that bursts through my apathy and cyncism. I have never read Prozac Nation, and am not sure I ever will. American’s take drugs in a very different way to other people, prescription drug addiction I think was invented in America, not least because of the ready availability of habit forming substances. Read: Bret Easton Ellis, Hunter S Thomson, Armistead Maupin. Reading these books, particularly BEE’s, do something to me. I recently read The Rules of Attraction. Partly because I wanted to see the new film made of it (I haven’t as yet) and because I love BEE’s writing above all others. His characters are all cool to me, I want to be them, I want to experience their total lack of thoughts and cares. On coke behind sunglasses describes almost all his characters and whilst I don’t personally enjoy or agree with coke (perhaps it doesn’t agree with me?) the attitude’s of the characters toward life, the media, social lives and other humans touches me in a way these fictional people can never be. I want to care as little as them about everything, I want to waste my life strung out on mind-warping tranquilisers, motel rooms, dirty college sex and lusting after perfect women who don’t really exist. A woman who is perfect in my eyes can be a slut to others, a saint to their family. Who they are is utterly dependant on who’s looking at them.

But back to the alcoholics. I’ve had one living in my house for the last fortnight – granted I’ve not been there for the last week – I don’t mind, he’s homeless as well. He’s a very old, good friend. When I say old I mean it as well, he was forty this year. He taught me a lot of what I know about guitars and playing them he’s also always encouraged me to make music and inspired me to impress him. He will be one of the main beneficiaries of my eventual wealth, firstly through a good job in my studio then through alcoholics anonymous. He drinks if he’s able. Cheap cider, cheap lager, whatever is f**king cheap and in large quantities. Now our generation laugh about excess and damaging our bodies, but alcoholism will kill you. Spending time with someone whose breath constantly stinks of booze is horrible and upsetting. He doesn’t need it to enjoy time with us, but his life is so f**ked up that he has no choice. He doesn’t enjoy drinking, but he has to.

Perhaps in the same way I now feel compelled to write. This writing is for no one but myself, it is written as if there is a reader, but if I didn’t write it like that I wouldn’t write it. I’ve never known if writing is a cathartic experience for me or not, I feel better having written things and I sometimes feel better when I read it back. Does it allow me to analyse my own life the way I can others lives? I don’t think so. Even though I’m capable of viewing my life objectively, I cannot act on this perspective. I cannot make decisions about my own life the same way as advice so readily suggests itself to other’s predicaments. My life has seemed to me to be a search, for something better, something beautiful, something that is not the way my life has gone. As I grow older though it becomes clear that all the emotions that make me feel there is something else, are just distracting me from my life. Emotions seem to do that to me. Longings for girls who I’ve wasted every chance I’ve had with, retorts that come to me three seconds too late. I am too caught up in the emotional moment to control my thoughts and my actions. My thoughts spiral out of control as emotions charge round my body, my mind goes blank, is it chemicals rushing round me? Electrical charges? I do not know. Perhaps I never will.

2003-09-03T14:39:00.000Z

Tell Me Why I Don't Like Mondays... (Part2 - Wednesday)

As i was saying about pub etiquette: I kept me head down in a pub and watched the world go by. That's what i look for in a drinking establishment nowadays. The Charles Bradlaugh was aperfect example of the perfect pub. You got every type of person in it at all different times and it was light and airy and inviting and had interesting views and things to look at; all in all my (and probably Nick's) ideal pub. It fits the way i was brought up in pubs. I'm sure your local and formative drinking years have made you (the reader) behave a particular way in pubs.

I've lost my thought process for this one....

Anyway, the house sitting is still going well, apart from the fact i put all the neighbours wheelie-bins out last night! Doh! They don't need to go out til 2morro. Oh well, i'd been back in York picking up my phone charger and letting Luke have his cash card back - he'd left it at mine over the weekend. Sat down to say hello to my housemates, ended up sat watching Dr. Who till nearly 10, still left before the end as well. Tara my beautiful Siamese cat is no fun to look after whatsoever. When you walk in the house she just starts shouting at you, when you feed her she shouts at you, when she's eating she wolfs it down like there's no 2morro, then starts shouting at you. She is beautiful though. Her full Siamese pedigree name is.... wait for it... Adwuiam Sweet Satin....

Mmm, what a handle

Is anyone reading this?????

2003-09-01T08:48:00.000Z

Tell Me Why I Don't Like Mondays...

I'll tell you why. Because we've had two days away from work where we can be ourselves, spend our time the way we want to and enjoy life in the way we're supposed to. But then Monday is usually the day where that freedom is wrested off us for another five days. So we begrudge our lives, our boss, the place we work until Wednesday when we get used to it again, then back to Friday. Those of us who work with people their own age, with similar tastes and habits, who go to the same places, are so lucky. I don't, nobody i work with is under 35, they've all got partners, houses, cars, children, pets, holiday homes, caravans, etc. It doesn't mean anything to me. I wanna talk about films and TV and girls and music and getting wasted at the weekend, not holidays and moving house and D.I.Y. And i wonder why i feel i don't fit in....

Since Saturday morning i have been house-sitting for my parents. What fun, you might think?! But, not really, no. I'm even more paranoid about making a mess or ruining the furniture than i am about my own house, or indeed than when i lived at home. Hang on, is anyone actually reading this....? Because i'm certainly writing as if they were, what if no one ever reads it except me? Well at least it'll help me remember what i do in my life!

On Saturday i went shopping, (i can think of no more unhealthy way to spend ones leisure time) for some more trousers for work. I am wearing them now. They're very smart kinda ribbed black trousers, I'm not sure they 'go' with my shoes but then i've always been wary of Black clothes Brown shoes, Oh well! F**k It! After going shopping my friend (of many, many years) Simon and I got the bus into Selby. We went to a few of the pubs we usually do, had about four pints before getting back on the bus and heading back to my parents village. Where we set about getting some food. Whilst i was rooting fruitlessly in the freezer and fridge, Simon found a takeaway leaflet then found the set meal for two, i then found the phone...

They charged us delivery! Hah! My village is like two miles away, cheeky slags. It was very nice though. We then went to my lifetime local - The Forresters Arms. By any pub standards it's dire. But as i explained to my friend (and housemate) Luke, it's where i learnt the rules of getting wankered and pub etiquette. Now pub etiquette is a new thing t y'all i'm sure, it was to me until i gave it form and said the words (whilst drunk) on Saturday night. Where did you spend your formative years getting drunk? Clearly mine were spent in my local, which means i am a sad old git. Always have been always will be. (The way Freud believes we're formed by our formative experiences) Let me elaborate...

My early years in pubs were spent testing the water. (Not literally) You sat there quietly sipping your first/second/third pint, i didn't really like beer (still don't a great deal, except on hot days when the condensation's running down the side of the glass, mmm....), but you drank it all the same. Safe in the knowledge it would make you a man. You sat, scared to death of the bigger young people who you were scared of through school, but who look at you different now you're in a pub. You tried not to offend anyone, you didn't talk at the top of your voice about shagging and fighting, you didn't sit perched on a bar stool, getting slowly lower until the bar met your head or time was called. You just got drunk really, really fast.

Hang on. I really should do some work...

2003-08-29T08:37:00.000Z

A Good Good Morning to you All

Hello, i imagine you came here after following the link out of the email i sent you? I do hope so. There's not much here as yet, i only started it yesterday. But what there is please enjoy. If you know me, none of it will come as a surprise, except for the odd few sentences that still amaze me. The extract below will one day end up in a book, i intend to write one about the modern world and how it will be the death of the human race if we don't get our arses into gear. When i heard that in Britain alone we produce 50,000 new cars a year, i nearly died. What the F**k is the Point?

But thats by the by. I had my second band practice last night. It was great. Luke on Bass, John the drummer, me shouting and screaming and our friend Andy embarrasing me on the guitar. You'd be amazed, i know i was. I've actually found a really good reason for living, my new job bites, which is upsetting me a great deal, but playing music live is incredible. We could get on stage now and still wow people, but we're gonna jam a hell of a lot more before that! Though i will let you know when it's happening, so you can all come see me.

One particular song works so well, it will make you wanna dance, like Fool's Gold (yeah right...)

Here's the words:

The Cloudbank has no deposit to make today/The Sun tingles on my arms like it's been so long away
Do I miss the melancholy of all those rainy days/Or is it just your beauty, that keeps me in a daze

To want to give love
Is to want to keep on living
To get love back is why we're born

Never one to enjoy feeling without purpose/Freedom got to run deeper than the surface
The names we give things so untrue and unstable/The truth is something we can never ever label

To want to give love
Is to want to keep on living
To get love back is why we're born

2003-08-28T15:00:00.000Z

Here's a formless rant i wrote a few days into my new job (not that that has a great deal to do with it)....

Remember when you were young / You shone like the sun / Shine on you crazy diamond
Now there's a look in your eyes / Like black holes in the sky / Shine on you crazy diamond
Remember when you were young / We had so much fun / Shine on you crazy diamond

Perhaps it was just that you’re naïve and innocent outlook that left you unaware of responsibility, repercussion and retribution?
A perspective free from the evil and hatred, that exists deep within us. The evil that can take years to manifest, can take years of repression, and still not surface. Waiting for the one straw, slowly floating toward the earth, to fall effortlessly onto the dromedary of your personality.

Are humans naturally evil, or is it merely an invention of ours to help delineate the good from the bad, and from the ugly?

Humans are, under the surface mostly, animals; we eat, sleep, f**k and s**t. Any other activity is that which our civilization/culture has created to divert us from the truths: we eat, sleep, f**k, s**t then die. No other animals take the time out to consider these things, as they’re too busy doing them. Not attempting to analyse how they do it, or more importantly, why they do.
We’re told it’s because they don’t have the capacity for it, this is perhaps true, but is as verifiable as it is unverifiable. Who’s going to ask a sparrow whether it’s happy with its lot?

I think these thoughts at a million hertz per second, faster than any computer, emotions swirling around my opinions, forming them and shaping them, directing them to my mouth. Conviction forces my vocal intonation into patterns I can’t control, I sound angry or sad or ecstatic. I can control these things but that takes analysis, the ability to think as I speak, about what I am saying.

Put me in front of a girl who I find incredibly attractive and all that goes out the window. My analysis goes into overdrive, I start to doubt why anything I could say could really interest this girl, or how my life could appear exciting to them. I can analyse the way I say things, as clearly and carefully as I could before, I just can’t find the words to say nor the questions to ask.

I spent three years in the study of the Media and Culture. Over that time irrespective of what I was being taught, the Media started to gain a new prominence in our lives. It started to invade our newspapers, our local news shows, the internet, and our magazines. Magazines, which up until more recently catered for hobbies and interests and diverting activities that took us out of the drudgery of our day-to-day life. Now we’re supposed to believe that adoration of celebrity is a hobby, that it is an interest, which should free us from the mundanity of our lives. Yet it doesn’t, it merely serves to underline the difference between us all, those who have and those who have not. Those who want it and those who don’t.

Hollywood has always produced stars. The ones from the golden age of cinema, as in it’s beginning to the late sixties, were global names. People who you shared deep escapist fantasies with, sat in the darkness, watching them, feeling voyeuristic either consciously or not. Beautiful people in exquisite environs living dramatic lives, the like of which normal people could only dream. But that was the beauty of it, the lives the stars led were unattainable, the products they used, the places they ate, where they holidayed; all were too expensive for an average working person. Now though, through cheap sponsorship, clothing deals with high street stores, product placement, many of the stars connotations are available to buy into. To use the same hair product of your favourite star is to become them, feel closer to them, and try to see life from their point of view.

As humans we learn jealousy and desire very soon. As children there will always be the rich child, the one who’s parents unfailingly give them everything they could ever desire, except love. It is into this world of possessions that we are thrust, we are told to work our lives away in order to make the end of our lives more enjoyable. We work for 40 years so we can die comfortably in the last 20. When are faculties are going, our bodies complain at us, our feelings are desensitised by years of world famine and war; we are expected to holiday and gallivant as if we are young once again. We get to the end of our lives with only symbols to show for it. We own our houses, having enslaved ourselves just to say it is ours. We have a new car every few years, why don’t they build them to last? The same for computers, every day they increase in power and usefulness, but what does that help us to achieve, what more can we do simply because we can do it faster? Soon computers will be reaching speeds where every improvement is imperceptible to human eyes. What good will that do us, what purpose can it serve?

I have been alive now for 24 years. In the quarter century I have been alive the world has turned faster than ever before. Between 1970 and the end of the 80’s we achieved all we could hope to on this planet. Since that time, we have done nothing new. No massive leaps in healthcare have occurred, the reason being of course that Pharmaceutical companies seek only one thing: profit. They fund research into drugs they know they’ll be able to market, they control intellectual copyright on drugs that save lives, milking the needy for all they can. They force massive spending – in this country – by the NHS, who cannot afford the prices. When the health service cannot afford certain treatments, those who can go to private healthcare companies, thus undermining the whole public sector.

Which is of course a theme that began with Thatcher and Reagan. Their belief was that people should be able to do what they want; it is the right of the individual to make their own choices. It is the individuals right to die if they cannot afford healthcare. It is the individuals right to starve if they cannot work. It is the individuals right to be fired if they do not agree with their company’s ill treatment of their workers. It is the right of the individual to trample all over others on their way to the top.

Yet there is no progress. Companies only sell us what their research tells them we’ll buy. Where is the good in that? A company creates a great new product, but it still only does what its predecessor could do, it’s just in a more friendly box/case/chassis etc. 50,000 new cars are made in Britain every year, surely we should assume that 50,000 cars go off the road in the same year? We’d be wrong. At that rate, surely over 50 years, there would be more cars than people, more cars than roads, more cars than ground to cover. What is wrong with the world today? Whose logic dictates that we must constantly produce items for leisure, time saving, and transport. Does the amount of money made by car companies mirror the investment in Public transport, or do car companies have no interest in Public transportation? No because they seek only one thing: larger profits for their shareholders. Do these shareholders seek more money to plough into charities or public services? No they only need money to have more money, like power, money corrupts all those who it touches. People want to hoard it, to feel they’ve achieved something; money is a tangible measure, a simple system of tokens that show us how successful we are.

2003-08-28T12:59:00.000Z

The Discombobulation Strikes Back...

Never in all my life have i found technology so confusing. i've just been round and round and round and round in circles trying to find my way back to here. I went to go look for it when i'd published by first writing but couldn't find it. It's gonna take me a week or two to get used to this.

Anyway, here are some interesting words i've written down. Some rhyme some don't, if you read it a few times you'll see more rhyme than don't but in incredibly complex ways.

The God of Logic

It’s always the same when I get close to someone, they look at me that way and my heart just seems to melt,
I get obsessed, I give up thinking about anything else,
My whole being starts to centre around that person, when they’re not around I think about them,
When they are I don’t know what to think, I know that if I ring them I’ll come across as desperate,
I know that if I don’t they’ll think that I don’t care, when I text I feel like I’m a psycho,
That they don’t understand where I’m coming from, I think about it all too much, my animal instincts gone, as a man I’m supposed to lead with my dick, my body tries it’s hardest, my mind takes over, slows me down, makes me stop and think,
But it’s all about nothing, trying to break down my programming, stop me from failing or even from trying, the outcome is always the same.

I never bother but instead just seem bothered, I never worry but instead am just worried, I never love just feel like I’ve lost, I’ve never dreamt or wished just because of the cost of failure, repercussion, responsibility,
I never listen because I’ve heard it all before, I never talk because it’s saying it once more,
I never love just seem to obsess, I only hate because it’s easier in the end.

Before we’ve even met I’ve run the whole relationship round and round my head, it was good don’t get me wrong, but in my head it’s just too long, from when I last saw you, til I can touch you again.
Throughout the universe, in all animal lives, they don’t have to cope with neuroses, paranoia, the insides of their minds,
Animals could teach us more than we’ll ever know, we think we’re something special, or so we tell each other so.
When I look into your eyes, sentences won’t form, but my mouth continues motoring, throwing out bullshit I don’t mean, what I mean and what I say are totally unconnected.

What I mean cannot be described, what I say cannot be believed.

2003-08-28T12:43:00.000Z

...And you will know me by the trail of the depressed.

Welcome one and all to this my new weblog (or blog as all these techno-types like to call it!) I've never kept a diary, though i have tried on many occasions, i've never published my thoughts in this fashion, though i sing songs at people. It could be s**t, it could be great.

I'm only on here because my friend has one, and his is inspirational to me. I only hope when i'm getting going that i could bring something to other people the way he does through his writing.

If you end up here, then i am sorry there is not much to read follow this link until i get something written, worth reading.