F**king Cars.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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?

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....

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.

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.

(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...?

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?

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?

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...

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.

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.

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

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...

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.