WARPED NEON FLOOD

2005-02-05T02:42:00.000-08:00

Everytime I speak to her now I want to cry tears of joy. But I've forgotten how to cry, I only know how to suppress.

Her redemption may be complete, it may not be. It is impossible to say but wholly irrelevant! The fear that a state, in this case mental illness, may be transitory is a nonsensical approach. Every state is transitory, every human life is just as fragile as her state of mind; her well-being. She may be killed crossing the road just as her mind may wander back onto itself into the beguiling maze of psychiatric babble. The futile quest to uncover the mysteries of a mind with another mind, mindful that we don't know what a mind is.

This heightened time of hedonistic pleasure, wealth and luxury is a paradoxical, quixotic age. If you raise the bar then you have futher to fall. With so many possibilities it has become nigh on impossible to enjoy. Never has there been an age when it has been so abundantly clear that one life is not enough.

2004-12-12T16:41:00.000-08:00

The city gives off a sigh or perhaps a yawn. Industrial grey sits like a vast, immobile gloom; immovable even.

Fog rises and lifts, leaving silty smoke to be breathed in by joggers and those more pedestrian, more resigned to respiratory problems. They are dotted around snaking lines of traffic clogging arterial roads, slowly vapourising fossil fuel.

Everything happens ten minutes in advance on a Monday in the city but takes twice as long. Out of kilter thought processes and routines are numbed with faintly alcoholic breath and heavy, purpled eyelids. Desultory stares exchanged like change at the newsstand on a particularly unfriendly corner of the high street. There truly is a strong barrier to emotion and expression.

Against the odds, clutches of weeds force themselves through the cracks in the paving slabs, providing green against the grey. Along with the remaining detritus of the weekend, they are ceaselessly trampled underfoot.

Margaret observes this familiar scene from her balcony. She shudders, callously flicking her cigarette onto the street below. Her bare feet are cold and she withdraws inside to her bedroom, collapsing into the tangle of white sheets, pulling them over her head. This will be the third week that she has called in sick. With every passing day the chance of her return to work becomes increasingly remote.

2004-12-12T16:09:00.000-08:00

2004-12-12T14:05:00.000-08:00

2004-12-06T07:51:00.000-08:00

FRINGE BENEFITS

So I'm Jesse Spencer.

Does that mean I get to shag Anne?

2004-12-03T03:50:00.000-08:00

MY FAVOURITE TEN SINGLES OF 04

The Show - Girls Aloud
Take Me Out - FF
Toxic - Spears
Dry Your Eyes - Streets
Somewhere Only We Know - Keane
First Of The Gang To Die - Morrisey
Mary - Scissor Sisters
I'm a Cuckoo - Belle and Sebastian
Air Hostess - Busted
Leave (Get Out) - Jojo

2004-12-03T03:31:00.000-08:00

IT'S A GOOD POINT - Gerard Houllier, 2001

Is the continued prevalence of strong regional accents in the UK proof positive of the inward-looking, parochial attitudes of most of its residents?

2004-11-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

BEAUTY PAEGENT FOR A WALLET

Applause for random business people with silly job titles that are too long to fit on a business card or tattoo on a brain

“This is Chuck. He heads up our Retail Finance Division.”

BOTHERED

Applause for a showreel of international commercials for the bank. Yes, people applauding a projection of adverts.

*Applause*

Laughter at weak gags.

A high powered American woman with big hair telling everyone how much she appreciates their efforts. Like she knows or cares!

My lolling head and heavy eyelids.

T-BONE has a big grin on his face, like the time he smuggled a whole trolleyful of pastries into his office without his secretary noticing. Guilty pleasures. No disguising the irony that he is a big player in the CONSUMER market. Look at that gut! He is Mr Creosote. Don’t stand too close Von Small, you are an appetiser!

Exciting numbers, exciting opportunities, colourful pie charts.

Made-up words. In the vein of Iain Dowie’s bouncebackability but sillier, with more superfluous flourish.

A motown-flavoured soundtrack drowned by a buzz around the room. The buzz is distinctly similar to that experienced on a school trip. We are even transported by school buses, though no-one wets themselves from having too much Coke.

Fawning questions from the audience. This is by far the worst section. People spreading corporate horse manure with their naked hands while maniacally smiling and batting eyelids at their overlords.

***

No-one seems embarrassed or perturbed by this flagrant whoredom. By the open demonstration of power and cock wavery. It is simply pathetic and the whole charade makes me shift uncomfortably in my seat. The taste it leaves in everyone’s mouth is metallic and empty. Lick lips. Ignore. Drive car. Tea on table.

This cancerous spread of company ethos breeds drones and droids, happy in their sanitised ~~hives~~ lives.

“The toner is low on the printer”

“We are making big inroads in Poland.”

“I have hair nits and rabies”

“Our brand is strong”

“People don’t just shit in the toilets. They masturbate in there”

“We are expanding. These are exciting times.”

“The only way a business can survive is if it grows. We can get bigger. Sell more. Make more. And eventually we will rule the planet. MWUHAHAHA!!!”

Hmph

2004-11-29T02:23:00.000-08:00

YOU AND ME BABY AIN’T NOTHING BUT MAMMALS

So the surreality continues. I don’t even want to talk about the weekend before last, but I’ll say something of the one just passed.

Short of a bearded, former carpenter turning up, the one bottle of white wine was never going to satisfy nine people. But that is the predicament that one is put in when at half past two in the ay em you realise that you are hosting an impromptu party. Frantic attempts to hide dirty dishes before the girls arrive. Three blokes seemingly as desperate as me waiting around for this unexpected denouement to what had previously been the archetypal evening. Curry, beer, three way lesbian fuelled dance floor snog. Ok, so I don’t do manage that one every weekend. As Fingers remarked, we should have got them back to the flat for a floor show. Generic, idle laddish tropes. I am guilty but without the confession at times.

Duly, the girls turn up. She is there. I know I shouldn’t but... I know I will. I’ve thought about it recently. I had accepted that it was a virtual certainty and the sexual act was now in the when rather than if category. That didn’t stop the social foreplay generating at least a modicum of arousal and excitement. A virtual certainty still isn’t a certainty and I’ve messed up plenty of these chances before. I contemplated this while Marshall pretended that my post-modern bar stool was a motor vehicle. He knows all the moves that drive them wild. Drive that stool, Bitch.

As a concept, the thrill of the chase is still one that I’m still slowly getting used to. For so long I dreaded the anxiety of the chase. In fact, for so long I didn’t chase – I wasn’t that brave. It was more of an unsubtle, clumsy pursuit. The anxiety of the pursuit. Whether this was explained by me being a sensitive soul, lacking confidence or in fact is a common feeling amongst other blokes (who by the law of Lad just don’t admit this to one another) I truly don’t know. Similarly, the increase in the enjoyment of the chase could be categorised as an increase in confidence or simply an age thing. I’m just more laid back girls these days. Gone are the hours of lovesick longing that were pathetically adolescent and synonymous with a big ‘L’ shape.

So as I say, I had been thinking about this girl and her availability. It was becoming a barren spell – every striker needs to score - and so there was that element, but, no; the truth is I had thought about her and I did want to sleep with her.

I wouldn’t call it a fantasy as such. Fantasy is glorifying what is, in truth, an act of frighteningly banal proportions. Caving in to basic needs to produce what is at once satisfying, yet entirely unsatisfactory sex. Unsatisfactory because I finally have dropped off the cloud where I thought that every girl I slept with really felt something for me. That girls only let you in when you are special. This girl was on my wavelength – she just wanted a shag. Or three.

Ha ha.

The aftermath is so disappointing to me because there isn’t the closeness. And our incompatibility in those minutes afterwards became so gratingly clear.

“You’re always nice to me when you’re drunk”

Personally, I think this comment said it all.

2004-11-25T06:48:00.000-08:00

LCK F VOWEL CNTRL. IN FACT MAKE THAT INCONSONANTS...

I’ve been having a bit of a shitty time of it, so short on updates. E by gum, it’s been a poo week.

Enough of that.

I have four pictures on the left side of my blue partition now. I refuse to call it a ‘babe wall’ but the bulk of the pictures are beautiful, famous women ripped out of the metro.

Kirsty (Gallacher) was the first, soon joined by Catherine (Zeta-Jones) and recent addition Sarah (Michelle Gellar) has joined the fun. The other picture is of me driving a bus, drawn by a six year old boy named William. People at work used to ask:

Random colleague: “Oh, is that your nephew’s drawing”

HOLT: “Errr.. no.. it’s errrm.. the work of a... I used to go out with his mum... ages ago”

RC: “Oh”

Yes, oh indeed.

Of the pictures on the wall I probably spend 99% of my focus on SMG. She is beautiful, with her lip-glossed, bad picture proof smile and blonde ringlets. Maybe it is generic, lazy and pure bad taste but she is certainly in the higher echelons of my ~~wank bank~~ top 10.

The other 1% of the time is devoted to chuckling at the final item on the partition. It is a monochrome drawing of an early twentieth century man (think Noel Coward) smoking a pipe. It is set against a green speckled background (think 70’s wallpaper and Magic Eye books similtaneously) and bears the legend:

“That’s right bitch. Equality”

2004-11-18T09:34:00.000-08:00

POPPY

Blood red poppy in swathes of greyed
Crombie coats still tailor made
For shielding stress and cloaking pain
Of introspective island gain

A badge of death and remembrance
Purposively, simply not by chance
Dragging us back to wartime past
A vain hope that this spirit lasts

For TV pictures can’t convey
A generation wiped away
Rationing their food and hope
Now misunderstood by liberal trope?

Veterans dropping by the day
Confused, bewildered at modern ways
Remain entrenched in national pride
Cowering as race and creed collide

Archaic world-view symbolised
With brassy medals worn and prized
Comfort in collective masses
Not understood by chattering classes

Pause, reflect; put to one side
The generational divide
Admire them for their sacrifice
For with our freedom came a human price.

2004-11-18T08:53:00.000-08:00

ODE TO TWO SCOUSERS
(BOTH WITH A SIMILAR AILMENT)

Wayne, wayne will you grow a brayne
Or buy one from the stock exchange?
You are very good at football
But with your antics we are most appalled!

Crazy Horse watching from a cloud
Would have been amazed by the noise of the crowd
Though knowing his political view
He probably would have joined in too

For Emlyn is dead so we must praise him
While Wayne is a star so we must berate him
Polarised views are so passe
Lets out Matthew Upson for he is gay!!!

(With Will Young! Eek!)

xx

2004-11-12T01:42:00.000-08:00

LITTLE HITLER

Never has a man embodied this phrase more than Von Smallhausen.

The department was greeted this morning with a stern word on breach of the 'Clean Desk Policy'. At one point he muttered 'this is serious'. On what scale you fucking bald twat? Yasser Arafat's methods may have been questionable but at least his cause was based on a noble premise. Von Smallhausen slavishly and blindly devotes himself to a large corporation. Pathetic. Sad. Little. Man. Go fuck yourself.

Email conversation that followed the 'lecture':

-----Original Message-----
From: BARDER
Sent: 12 November 2004 09:16
To: HOLT
Subject:

It's Serious

-----Original Message-----
From: HOLT
Sent: 12 November 2004 09:23
To: BARDER
Subject: RE:

if you needed any further proof what an utter t1t VS is then there it was.

completely ridiculous overreaction. when was the last time we had a security breach? does he seriously believe that someone from *RIVAL BANK* is going to infiltrate building 8 to get the latest management accounts.

unnecessary lecture on how to observe the clean desk policy. we know how it works baldie WE JUST CANT BE FU(KED WITH IT

-----Original Message-----
From: BARDER
Sent: 12 November 2004 09:29
To: HOLT
Subject: RE:

Indeed - firm proof that he is an utter be11 end - *BANK* through and through. That makes me sick.

Bet any money he is doing the same thing in 3 months time when we have all forgotten about this "lecture"

My money is that around 8.30 last night, when he was the only idiot here, he did the full check after being disgusted at the state of someone's desk (most likely SOCKS). I would love to see hidden camera footage of the reaction - probably on his knees with his head in his hands shouting "Why?"

-----Original Message-----
From: HOLT
Sent: 12 November 2004 09:36
To: BARDER
Subject: RE:

my desk was in breach of policy as it had the following items on it:

two biros
a calculator
a birthday card
some pistachio nuts
a bog roll

imagine what *RIVAL BANK* could have achieved with that haul of booty.

total lack of humour. what always gets me is that he has a vague awareness for the necessity of humour. he, himself, doesn't see the need for it and hasnt got a sense of humour but he pathetically tries to be light hearted, not to be funny, just because it is the convention.

-----Original Message-----
From: BARDER
Sent: 12 November 2004 09:39
To: HOLT
Subject: RE:

I know - would you prefer to have a funny man or a good boss. With him they are very definitely not mutually exclusive - neither are attainable. Him at the Christmas do will be a joke - trying to crack gags and give free drinks tokens. Just stick to the drinks tokens VS.

*BIRD* had a look at what was on *ANOTHER BIRD'S* desk and just proclaimed - "What a w*nker"

2004-11-11T06:18:00.000-08:00

BACHELOR ON SNIFF: LIFE CYCLE

Pissed
Kissed
Blissed
Dissed
Missed
Wrist
Pissed
Kissed
Blissed
Dissed
Missed
Wrist
Pissed
Kissed
Blissed
Dissed
Missed
Wrist

Repeat to fade

2004-11-10T04:41:00.000-08:00

ROY THE BOY'S NOTE TO SANTA

One personalised T-shirt
A crate of Stella Artois
Motorised Goose Scissors
An X-Box
A funnel
A year's subscription to ~~FHM~~ Nuts
Calvin Klein underwear
An albino lettuce leaf
A personality

x

2004-11-05T05:53:00.000-08:00

BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH

My computer has had enough today. Like me.

Diagnosis: Sick and tired.

First hangover for months. I only had an Erdinger Fest, a Paulaner, a glass of red wine and two pints of ~~piss~~ Fosters. Wouldn’t it be good if Fosters was brewed at the London Tube stop Cockfosters? It would be decidedly appropriate, perhaps it could be pumped straight out of the urinals.

I have erected a full scale model of retired French tennis player Guy Forget. I have dressed him in tight white tennis shorts and am wheeling him around the office screeching:

"Penny for the Gee"

Everybody ignored me apart from one who gave me a full scale papier mache model of GMTV newsreader Penny Smith.

Pyromaniacs rejoice: Fire works.

2004-11-04T07:09:00.000-08:00

AVIDS

Are all people that STILL like Bo Selecta cunts?

Or just all of them?

x

2004-11-04T05:15:00.000-08:00

LET’S CHANGE THE WORLD

Easy targets
Shoot them down
Like tin cans
With an aging rifle

****

We can trace this from Titchmarsh. From the moment he made a good contact in the BBC and they let him present Pebble Mill. The moment that someone with significant influence in the making of television programmes made the fatal connection between gardeners and tv presenters.

You can think about it from every conceivable viewpoint but it is hard to fathom why on earth (ha ha) this is a good idea. They are everywhere now, these celebrity gardeners. A dab hand at fixing a shed? Have your own show then. Why not? If Alan can turn his hand to Mills and Boon why can’t Handy Andy have his own chat show/constituency/nuclear weaponry…

Titchmarsh epitomises almost everything I hate about this country. His anti-charisma – the deeply ingrained banality of the safe classes. Englishness - eugh. He makes housewives pulses race with his bowl HAIR, chequered SHIRTS and whiny VOICE. But the man has no style, he is utterly bereft of any cool whatsoever. He was a gardener – why isn’t he working in someone’s garden, simply being tolerated and brought cups of tea. How has he spawned this mini-race? Why is celeb-gardener not still the fantasy of Stefan Baczacki? And how come he missed out on the reality? How pissed must HE be?

He is responsible for Dimmock as well. Horrid horrid Dimmock, she in the Vorder-void of delusional sex symbol complex. She attracts the same smelly old men that still wank over Tina Turner. Somebody ought to tell her this.

The rotten disease of TV handymen lies deeper than Groundforce and Changing Rooms. There are whole televisual universes dedicated to making minor stars out of jobsworth builders and the like. Legions of parasitic warts sitting in their armchairs, catatonically transfixed as an Edwardian wardrobe is re-invigourated.

You have no intention of replicating this. You just want to watch it like a million Homer Simpsons. Why Don’t You turn off your TV sets and do something less boring instead?

Woss mentioned that his wife Jane Goldman had a theory about television of this ilk. This brain-rot . That it’s the sort of television that will continue to run long after the human race is extinct. Repeats of Fort Boyard and Blockbusters. A functioning skeleton of Bob Holness broadcasting to an empty planet assisted by a cyborg Andy Crane. You remember Andy Crane? He used to be the straight man to a yellow duck puppet.

Come on you fuckers. I have a plan. Let’s work harder. With the extra time working you will have to ditch that UK Style habit and fuck off the Home and Leisure channel.

Imagine if we up our ante by 10-15%; improve our efficacy, manage our perceptions. In this capitalist economy maybe this increase in your companies funds would translate to a 1-2% pay rise. Yes, you can then spend this money on handymen to do your shit for you. They are off the TV and doing what they should be doing; fixing, digging, mithering for cups of tea. In turn, there are gaps in the schedule for people to sing and dance and act and make merry. It’s a lovely little eco-system, everything finds its own level and the tyrannical rule of Alan Titchmarsh is broken.

2004-11-03T04:53:00.000-08:00

FALLING OFF THE WAGON?

I've been working hard lately.

The last two or three weeks (at least) I've arrived at work without the familiar feeling of dread that hung on me like a neck tie for the past two years. Considering the bile I have vented here and elsewhere over that time it seems difficult to reconcile for not an awful lot has changed.

Anyway, today is the first time I've had a recurrence of the sinking feeling. This feeling reminds me of what has gone before and why it has. It is the unavoidable WHY? that you can try to hide from, to surpress, to belittle but ultimately fail to evade.

The same old questions back on repeat as the needle gets stuck again. These same old questions that I still can't answer.

One thing is for sure - expect more frequent updates.

2004-10-29T01:36:00.000-07:00

DROPPING WATERFALLS INTO SNOOKER BALLS

My brother and I, when we weren’t dressing up in old discarded curtains or starting fires in other people’s garden sheds, used to invent shops.

The only rule in the creation of these shops was that they had to sell two distinct types of product, which would be used to create the name of the shop. These two product types also had to begin with the same letter, to give an alliterative ring to the title. Undoubtedly, the most successful chains would market two products bearing very little, if any relation to one another. That is not to say that the products would be antithetical – the challenge was simply to create the most arbitrary of selections.

Below were the most inspired choices. They must be as I still remember them after all this time.

Foxes and Flagpoles

Given the legislative change and acute pressure from lobbyist groupings, perhaps this shop could become a reality – targetting alienated toffs who have been forced to take their hunts ‘underground’.

Certainly at the time I never saw such a link between foxes and flagpoles, a store where it was possible to buy a pet fox and, at the very same time, satisfy all of your flagpole requirements.

Carrots and Calculators

If Foxes and Flagpoles bears Paul’s distinctive trademarks (a love of animals and the military) this superstore was the same for me. My incandescent passion for numbers dates back to round about my second birthday and though words have always vied for my affection as well, I did take special pride in my ability to deal with the 29 times table. I think it was at around 13 or 14 that I became disenchanted with mathematics when algebra was introduced.

"But I like numbers… what are all these LETTERS doing here? And why am I having to work out the volume of water necessary to fill this cylinder? 29 times 26 equals 754. Isn’t that enough goddamnyou???"

Anyway… why carrots? Well why not, I say. While Foxes and Flagpoles is targetting a specialist audience, my shop is aimed at the masses. We all need and use carrots and calculators, now I am giving you the opportunity to buy both at once, with the unique offer that for every new calculator you buy, I throw in a free half pound of carrots. If you buy a scientific carrot then I’ll throw in a free calculator. Don’t you see? Yes, yes. You do. I knew you would come around to my way of thinking.

There were more, I can’t remember them.

This is a broad church, please feel free to suggest your own.

2004-10-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

SILVER TONGUE

Girl that Sits Opposite: (returning to her seat) "Here’s your water."

HOLT: "You’re very obedient aren’t you? You remind me of a dog."

GTSO: "Right, that’s it…"

HOLT: (innocently) "What?"

GTSO: "You just called me a dog."

HOLT: "No, I compared your obedience to that of a dog’s. It was a compliment."

GTSO: "Thanks"

HOLT: "No problem"

2004-10-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

FATE UP AGAINST YOUR WILL, THROUGH THE THICK AND THIN

I’m feeling genuinely maudlin and sad about the passing of Peel. I never really liked him until yesterday when I stepped back and realised that he was a genuinely nice, idiosyncratic character who was universally loved by music lovers.

He had always irritated me.

It seems that whenever I inadvertently tuned into his show he was playing some ridiculous reggae dub funk and mumbling away in his sardonic, Liverpudlian tones. I was always of the opinion that in taking his scattergun approach to playing records you were bound to have one Smiths for every five hundred Mutant Arse Banjos (an experimental outfit that fused post-punk vitriol with muffled didgeridoo and bird song).

'Well i liked it, so there,' he would remark after another left field (not Leftfield) release was played. Resigned to a muted reaction from his listeners, but seemingly thoroughly indifferent. Perhaps this combination of his world-weary tone and haughtiness made him seem a little callous and unfeeling to me.

Not for the first time I think I missed the point. Entirely and by some great distance. This being the significance of the fact that nobody else in the mainstream media did what he did and was still doing.

Also, that many people are genuinely moved by his passing and not just trotting out the unfeeling cliches that you get when a politician carks it. He wasn't indifferent, just laid-back. He wasn't smug about his eclectic tastes, simply knowledgable and working within his own limitations. He couldn’t make people listen and neither, I suppose, would he have wanted to.

He died suddenly and probably relatively painlessly while with his wife. It makes me think of the end of American Beauty. OK, Peel wasn’t shot in the head by a deranged, gay, ex-US marine played by Chris Cooper but I like to think that he would have had a similarly laconic and accepting reaction to his fate.

"Fuck. I'm dead. So this is what’s it’s like, eh? I miss my wife. I wish i could still do my job. I wish... but... I did alright. Anyway this is called ‘Helium Cockring’, made by a bunch of goths from Finland and I liked it, so there."

2004-10-22T04:32:00.000-07:00

WHAT'S WORSE?

Pissy piss flaps or shitty shit flaps?

x

2004-10-21T04:54:00.000-07:00

JUST A LINK IN A CHAIN, JUST A PUPPET ON A STRING

Head hits the pillow, eyes begin to move rapidly.

Inside metal tubes mobilizing water supply. Californian dude needs to be surgically detached from his skateboard. Bearded men pressing tobacco into small wooden mouth furnaces and puffing away contentedly.

Reality?

Or are they only pipe dreams?

2004-10-20T05:31:00.000-07:00

DEAR MAVIS I'M COMPELLED TO WRITE THIS LETTER

A fractional change, an imperceptible movement, the minutia of re-calibration.

The unstoppable rolling of the waves, the way the pendulum swings in time.

***

"Small things can make a difference," said the actress to the bishop, smiling coyly.

The bishop was washing his robes and stood naked save for his once white sports socks, which were now the colour of nicotine, matching his mottled teeth.

He beamed brightly, like a neon light with a forty a day habit.

"They can. From little acorns, tall trees grow," said the bishop to the actress, optimistically stroking his unwilling member and taking in a gulp of air permeated by the smell of supermarket homebrand fabric softener.

"I’m beginning to see that," said the actress to the bishop, as she flopped out her once pert chebs.

The actress slowly and deliberately sucked on her fingers and playfully aroused her elongated nipple stalks.

Observing the transfixed leer of the bishop, the actress let out a hideous cackle combining the worst vocal features of Barbara Windsor and a truly original cackle monster.

"Glad to see you keeping abreast of the situation," said the actress to the bishop

The bishop could contain himself no longer and darted across the laundry room as if he was made of tungsten and had left the hand of Phil Taylor. He began to suckle on the now erect nipple stalks, which looked like the aerials that you get on walkie-talkies. Except they weren’t on walkie-talkies. They were on a pair of tits.

"You could say that you are stalking me," the actress said to the bishop as the dirty old goat began to feed the ponies.

"Fuck me," said the actress to the bishop

The bishop sighed, a sigh that seemed to deflate his own swollen love sausage.

"You always have to go too far, don’t you?" said the bishop to the actress, "you filthy bitch."

2004-10-20T04:44:00.000-07:00

interruption

synonyms: aperture, blank, breach, break, chasm, discontinuity, gap, interim, interval, lacuna, lapse, opening, rift, space

must re.. sist.. drone.. formula taking.. effect.. feel sleepy. very.. sleepy.

2004-10-15T05:14:00.000-07:00

LIKE ALL DANCING BEARS I NEED ROPE TO KEEP ME IN LINE

Creased with laughter roaming free from the smoke and people, swimming in delusional thought. Performing to a baying crowd – a different challenge to conforming for a paying crowd. Fear of failure drums a constant heart thud in chest.

Distracted by the cash machine, needing money for the weekend and go to withdraw. It all happened too quickly to formulate it in any logical order. She duped me and stole from me and now once again I am left with nothing but this shame and memory loss and the overbearing sense of foreboding that tomorrow’s lecture will be worse than it’s predecessor.

There is that smile again that is open and honest; an endearing charm bubbling over with a latent ability to be devotional. But less intense than you might imagine, as it makes other people smile and be happy. This indisciplined streak might suppress the promise though, as like all dancing bears I need rope to keep me in line.

Alcohol tears well in my eyes, as I put a hand down my throat. I pass out on the sofa because the bed is just out of reach. Like all the good decisions I nearly make.

2004-10-14T05:09:00.000-07:00

DRAWN FROM MEME-ORY

I'm a miserable cunt. I never join in with things because I'm always trying to be different - I'm obtuse like that. Is it a character flaw or a unique selling point? Don't know, don't care; I don't do it deliberately or for show it is just the way that the good Lord has made me. (Or the way that my social surroundings have moulded me. Nature. Nurture. Yawn.)

Anyway I'm joining in with this Albums You Should Listen To Before You Die because it is divertingly pointless and also I'm feeling too tired and contented today to order my own words.

I also feel embarrassed at the narrow range of my musical taste, at the films I haven't watched, of the books I didn't get round to reading and the words that I can't define. For every superior moment of intellectual smugness I have an equal and opposite reaction of utter inadequacy. Light and shade - it is important to keep this as an equilibrium, to challenge and re-assure oneself. Relativity dictates that we are all somewhere in the middle. Tom wishes he was taller, Brad wishes he had a bigger knob and for all her protestations I bet Germaine wishes she more men wanted to fuck her for her looks.

So a lot of albums will not be in bold because I HAVEN'T HAD TIME. Every time a friend recommends a book I mentally chalk off another one that I should read that I won't be able to. I'm embracing it now. Time running out is a good thing, it makes things seem more important. If my lifetime was infinite I'd achieve a lot less than I will in the time that I have been alotted by Fate and Genetics.

Here goes:

Copy the list on to your blog, put in bold the ones you have listened to (completely from beginning to end) and then add three more albums that you think people should have heard before they turn into their parents - remember, it isn't necessarily your most favourite albums but the ones you think people should listen to... and when we say listen we mean from track one through to the end... If you put a link to your follow-on post in the comments of the site where you found it, the chain will be trackable. From now on, you are also allowed to DELETE up to THREE albums on the existing list, if you feel a) that this is an album which should not reasonably be foisted upon anybody, or b) that one Steve Earle album is quite enough for one lifetime, thank you.

London Calling - The Clash
Think Tank - Blur
This Is Hardcore - Pulp
Moon Safari - Air
Never Mind The Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols - Sex Pistols
OK Computer - Radiohead
Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars - David Bowie
Setting Sons - The Jam
Come From The Shadows - Joan Baez
The River - Bruce Springsteen
The Very Best Of Joan Armatrading - Joan Armatrading
What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
Orbital #2 (The Brown Album) - Orbital
Apple Venus Vol. 1 - XTC
Marquee Moon - Televison
Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth
I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You) - Aretha Franklin
The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico
Appetite For Destruction - Guns N Roses
Talk Talk – Spirit Of Eden
Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP
Freddie Hubbard – Red Clay
Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
In Utero - Nirvana
Automatic For The People - REM

Deleted:

The Wall - Pink Floyd - When I was three I correctly answered a question on University Challenge - this was apropos of nothing but convinced my parents that I was some kind of child genius until I reached the age of about 7 and realised that the main advantage of being smart was that it is a lot easy to be lazy. As for this album I have only heard bits of it and I think its boring as shit.

Metal Box - Public Image Ltd - Never heard of it.. a slight lie, the name of the band rings a 1980's bell I think. Reason for exclusion: It's arbitrary really but I have a suspicion that it is bound to be wank.

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain - Pavement - I honestly don't think people need to listen to this. Those that have heard it will have sought it out, those that haven't are unlikely to revise their view on the sound of US art-garage indie music. So it doesn't belong on a canonised list imo.

My additions; they are albums that I will always listen to, they are ones that surpass anything else that the artists in question have done (imo of course). They each represent a soundscape or mood that I haven't heard replicated even nearly as well. Falling out of love (Mac), falling out of life (Kurt), both (REM). They are also three collections of outstanding and memorable pieces of songwriting.

Please feel free to tell me why I am wrong but at this moment in time AFTP is the best album I have ever heard; not my favourite, but the best.

2004-10-13T05:28:00.000-07:00

CAN YOU FRANCHISE APATHY?

So we are allowed to leave our cells a half-hour early to watch The Game.

It is a satellite TV only affair meaning that I have a limited choice of venues in town to watch the game. The bulk of these are places that I would never choose to visit due to the clientele, a clientele that becomes even more repellent when the England football theme is added to the mix.

And plus – I don’t give two shits.

It’s such a shame that it has come to this but the England team is made up of uncharismatic and unremarkable people. They are good at football but that is about all. Who can possibly be inspired by sullen drug cheat Rio or Auld Slapper-shagging shrek lookalike, wunderkid Rooney. They don’t anger me – I’m not appalled by the tales of roasting and drugs and drink (in fact I like too hear that stuff) its just that they don’t interest me. They are not my heroes. Gazza was an anti-hero, Michael Owen is just an insipid, cynical little creep who got a charisma by-pass.

I used to have an admiration for Beckham but I think that was on false grounds, I think I was buying into the PR and also sympathetically feeling that he wasn’t as thick as he was portrayed. That just because he has a silly voice does not make him more stupiderer than Funtime Frankie or Stevie or Dido-Sol. Now I just view him in the same way I do the rest of the team. They, the homogenous group of overpaid and overpowered men with FUCK ALL to say.

I think the one exception that I would make would be for Neville, G. Clearly less talented than his contemporaries but every bit as good a footballer despite this. As my good friend Nudger remarked at the Wales game we should admire him all the more just for being on the same pitch as Giggs and Rooney. He does this week in and week out (in the Premier League).

I paid £50 to get a great view of an England v Wales game but I don’t see that as value for money. I don’t *like* any of them. Why do I give a shit if they progress or not? Because I happened to be born in their country? Because you have to be seen to care? Do me a favour.

So I won’t watch the game. I’ll go to the gym instead. And I’ll hear the result and I’ll be vaguely interested and I might even seek out the highlights. But I refuse to be involuntarily moved to watch football. I will exercise my right of free choice and not be indoctrinated by car flag culture.

What gets me is that the people that follow it now, the office managers who grant their employees a half hour of holiday – they feel obliged. They don’t really care. When was the day that ‘watching the footy’ became a trope for the worst kind of ‘me too’ behaviour. Can we put a date on it? I reckon 1996 or maybe 1997, because Euro 1996 was the watershed of all this. Blame Baddiel and Skinner if you wish but it isn’t their fault. It isn’t ever anybody’s fault.

I long for the days that the only people interested in football that I mixed with were the ones who knew that Tony Naylor was 5 foot 6 and had played for Crewe, Port Vale and Cheltenham. That Torquay play at Plainmoor and that Dave Beasant once injured himself by dropping a bottle of salad cream on his foot. Because that is the good stuff. Not the faux-ced patriotic fervour and the need to fit in. Such pitiful try hards; sovereign rings and suits side-by-side. The girls in the England shirts screaming too loudly AT THE WRONG TIME because they haven’t done ten years hard labour on a terrace.

Because who really cares any more? Do *they* really care? The players. Or do they just make their perfunctory and professional moves. Does *he*? Yaffle, the manager. Does he really care about the English national team. And what about the boorish losers who shout at the screen, spilling beer and chanting obscene nationalistic ditties. Do we really care if they care? Can you align with a National Front Member?

I’m a snob. I lose. I know that but spare a thought for me when Rooney inevitably scores the winner tonight. Think of the embittered man on the treadmill who feels disenfranchised and has resigned his membership to a club he once loved.

2004-10-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

THE WITCH

Poisonous eyes narrow like arrow slits, the very same passive-aggressive intent. Her bow-legged stomp to the brew room is the epitome of scowl.

This creature is a joyless dearth of humanity, an obstructive force whose daily routine is punctuated by spiteful battle and pyrrhic victory. Petty, peevish and snide barely begin to explain how fundamentally flawed her approach to people is. She doesn't know how to enjoy, you see. She only knows how to stop others enjoying, and even that may rarely bring a sour smile to her venomous lips.

Her monotony never ceases to amaze me, her speaking voice untroubled by the need for pause and inflection. Perhaps she isn’t of this earth. Mumble, mumble, drone. It is an irritating buzz of cliche, meaningless vocal clutter surrounding her every move. An earache of meetings in her fully booked diary will yield poor results and underwhelmed audiences. Her delight in red tape and administration conjures forth the image of a pig in shit. And an ugly pig at that.

As I am rapidly coming to accept there is no way to breach her dictatorial defence. Those that are inferior learn to obey or flee and those who don’t have to listen learn to avoid.

Poison pen-letters sent by email, politically loaded and primed to cause the maximum irritation to the recipient. An ethical terrorist and moral tyrant, she is bad to the bone and beyond reform. Sink her in a lake with heavy stones and pronounce her a Witch. The pathetic little Witch with a blackened heart and funereal scent.

You belonged in Salem, Witch. Take flight on your broomstick and go directly to hell. In whatever form it appears it will be too good for you.

2004-10-11T01:23:00.000-07:00

FAST PACED IMPASSE

Hopelessly devoid of ideas.

Presently, the osp is like a holt magnet. From Old Trafford, in the swirls of beer throwing Henri’s and Lloyd’s it stood out like a beacon. I can see it from my flat, building one of the complex is the tallest finger of a skyward pointing clutch of buildings. A prime target for a 9/11 style attack such is its prominence on the Salford horizon so I am told though I still think that London, London and London remain the top three targets. Double jeopardy: Who is Salford?

Guilty pleasure of blogging. A well decorated dead end but a dead end all the same.

Fitter, happier, more productive.

Fatter, hipper, more selective.

2004-10-06T08:25:00.000-07:00

METAPHWOARS

This is doing the rounds again on the email. Tres amusant:

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a paper bag filled with vegetable soup.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the full stop after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The red brick wall was the colour of a brick-red crayon.

Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long that it had rusted shut.

The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of Family Fortunes.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

The plan was simple, like my brother Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter."

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.

It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a dustcart reversing.

She was as easy as the Daily Star crossword.

She walked in to my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened.

It hurt - the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

2004-10-06T05:02:00.000-07:00

IS IT WICKED NOT TO CARE?

The Stealthfox/King of Bling combo leaving the building. A truly ridiculous pairing.

The Stealthfox is as accountant as you can get without humanising a calculator. What common ground exists between her and the scaly wideboy is beyond me. He is Bobby George with less commitment. Remarkably there remains a subset of women who go for this roguish darts chic and charmless arrogance routine. Tired, so tired.

The Warden bringing up the rear in that 'North Face' coat, still clinging on to a semblence of middle-age cool despite the fact his wife has left him for a co-worker. He is like a diet-Eddie Izzard but without the post-modern range and in fact should just stick to a diet.

This may seem harsh but i have seen a different side to him since the Offsite. A lot of ginger jealousy and pent-up rage - I think he is turning to the dark side. Grecian 2000.

A bizarre dream last night involved HELLOO delivering the foreboding words that the osp is bound for collapse at the hands of the Japanese. Sparked by a rather caustic pep-talk he delivered to me yesterday and twisted into bleak and oppressive nonsense by my addled mind.

There is a wind of change blowing through the osp. I think there may be a storm brewing.

2004-10-05T05:43:00.000-07:00

TWAYBECKA

Bob: "So how are you feeling?"

Chip: "Oh not too bad I suppose. Well.. uh.. a little hoarse"

Bob (laughing): "No, not what, how!"

Chip: "No, that is how I’m feeling. Tell me you’re not still doing that bestial thing, Bob?"

Bob (pregnant pause, embarrassed): "Uh-huh. Now and again. I mean, only a little.."

Chip (glibly): "..horse?"

Bob (resigned): "Yeah."

Chip: "You’ve gotta leave that well alone. The authorities, man. They’re hot on that right now, y’know"

Bob: "But I am hot on it Chipper, that’s the issue. It’s those nosebands."

Chip (teasing): "Sheepskin, huh?"

Bob: "Oh hell yeah, boy."

Bob lets out a sigh.

Bob (deliberately): "Sheeeep-skin nooooose bands"

Chip: "You need a to get a goose"

Bob: "A goose?"

Chip: "Yup. Or a lizard."

Bob: "A lizard?"

Chip: "Yeah man, a goose or a lizard. Gotta wean yourself off them there horsies, brother"

Bob: (musing) "Hmmm.. you sure you scored a 3 at the 14th, man?"

Chip: "Sure Bob, I fired a 6 iron and then two putted from the foot of the ridge. Remember?"

Bob: "Uh-huh, shoot I really shouldda holed that putt for birdie"

Chip: "You want a beer, Bob?"

Bob: "Sure"

2004-10-04T06:40:00.000-07:00

JUST ANOTHER SEED

She so determined to break the mould that she ignores the ticking clock and continues to work.

"I could have given birth when I was 12! What’s fair about that?"

Like a handsome man can remain monogamous, so she can ride this wave of biological pressure but it takes a cast iron will. Especially with maternity benefits: six months. It’s almost as if an employer is sponsored by the Government to make corporate women more fertile.

She hides her problems away at the back of her head like bric-a-brac in an attic. She tells herself that they aren’t important – these trivial emotions. So every day is a dogged scrap against the stockpiling weight of emotional clutter, fit to burst out of every closet and from under every rug that it has been stashed. It’s like you can see her heaving against this door, holding it back when all it wants to do is open and pour.

The clock that ticks. The baby counter. She worked with it on, because she hadn’t found a way to turn it off and, anyway, after a while you can even get accustomed to it, she says. Like only being able to sleep with a gentle dirge of traffic washing into your right ear.

"Is it a clock or a time bomb?" she exasperatedly asked her mother "How did you make it stop?"

"I had you, dear."

Not her dying breath because life is rarely that dramatic but her mother had died soon after this exchange.

So it was.

She fell pregnant and her haphazard storage of dreams on hold was transferred into her belly. Due to come tumbling out in nine months time, by then there would be no stopping it.

Just as she caved in to her maternal inevitability, he had left to follow where his roving eye wandered. Or, that is to say, had been wandering. She recalled how she had always asked to be left alone. He had taken her at her word.

And now, nine months on, in the hospital where stretchers are arms and hands, she needed someone to understand.

2004-10-04T03:59:00.000-07:00

FOURSOMES

Match 1 - FINAL

C. DiMarco / J. Haas Wins 3 and 2
M. Jiménez / T. Levet

Match 2 - FINAL

D. Love / F. Funk
C. Montgomerie / P. Harrington Wins 4 and 2

Match 3 - FINAL

P. Mickelson / T. Woods
D. Clarke / L. Westwood Wins 1 Up

Match 4 - FINAL

K. Perry / S. Cink
S. Garcia / L. Donald Wins 2 and 1

in txtspk: OMGDTRHWTF!! hehehehe... :p

2004-10-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

WHERE IS CYBER CILLA WHEN I NEED HER MOST?

There is a bird I fancy at work. Let’s call her Bird X, shall we? It’s not very PC and is rather impersonal but in a parallel universe is probably the name of a chart-topping female solo act.

She isn’t new or anything, it’s just that I’ve suddenly realised that she is… nice. I think it's since she started straightening her hair. It looks really good and means we have something in common, though I dare say she has ceramic straighteners in comparison to my poxy, standard issue set.

She is definitely above sub-prime by a distance. Prominent and pert chebs, decent body all round and quite a cute face. All in all, she is firmly in the ‘would receive’ category.

Problem is – what do I do? I considered a cheeky chappie :P email but what if it backfires.. she ignores it, she tells people, people point and laugh in my general direction. Ok, so they already do that but what if they start DOING IT MORE FREQUENTLY?

Seriously, I composed an email earlier today and sent it but it went to someone abroad with the same name. A rogue namesake spanner in the works of true love. I got an out of office reply in French for fuck’s sake. This is a big bank, lest we not forget. A review of the email makes me thankful that it did go to a French speaker who is on vacation. I do hope she disregards it on her return to work.

I know what you’re thinking; I could talk to her…

I can’t TALK to her! I mean what do I lead with?

HOLT: "Hi there Bird X, we once spoke to each other and I now regret not trying to get into your pants. So.. errr.. how’s tricks"

Or maybe I should follow my little brother’s example:

Little Bro: "Hi – we’re looking for blow jobs"

This still makes me laugh. Delivered with an unabashed grin plastered over his drunken face, barely tempered by him steeling for the impending slap that astonishingly never came.

We talked once at a party did Bird X and I. I remember her being keen but I wasn’t then. I can’t remember what I said, I ignored her afterwards, maybe she is still pissed. Off, I mean, pissed off. She can’t still be pissed from the party as it was ages ago.

She is scouse. That is disadvantageous but for once doesn’t seem preclusive.

Maybe it is just a phase. Maybe I’ll come in on Monday and stop visualising her bent over my desk, skirt raised, sans knickers. I haven’t WAWed for a while… I wonder if this could be the root cause for this sudden outbreak of work lust?

2004-09-30T08:32:00.000-07:00

I'VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE...

http://www.coversproject.com/

My head is a spreadsheet
My heart is stone wall
In my eyes office drones that never smile
It's a good day to die..

to die..

to diiie..

to die

2004-09-29T09:24:00.000-07:00

SOUP BOWL

I could make excuses for her on account of her being just 18. That her self-obsessed insularity will peel away is possibly true but it won’t reveal a good soul. Her animation and noise are but a mask for her emptiness.

I could be wrong.

People change, I know that only too well. But for as long as she can trade on the fluttering of her eyelashes she’ll never have to earn. She’ll never fetch soup for anyone, ever truly love - just demand a lover with a spare plastic card and a frivolous lack of conscience and self-control. Finding someone is easy when you have tits and an ass. Keeping is a skill that she’ll never bother to learn and it will come at great cost unless the findee is stupid enough to let her walk down the aisle.

So it was that I burst her bubble with the rusty 2 a.m. breath of a drinker. Our eyes are sore and I’ll bet she never cried herself hoarse before. Dehydrated tear drops salt lake her face, make-up floods wandering off downstream. She looks like a million lira, my petty princess. Stripped of a sheen of vanity, left to wipe away smudged pride.

I surprise myself with how destructive and bitter I can be. Time stole my youth and I’ll wreak my revenge on those still blessed with cherubic verve.

A declining face stares back from deep within the mirror. Sunken eyes narrow in studied self-observation as acne-scarred cheeks sucked in and blown out in a forlorn battle to re-cast the dye. People say I see what I want to see so this is, apparently, to be the exception.

The stupid, illogical notion that things will improve in the future still swims around my mind. Stupid. I rebuke myself for this irrational optimism, a consequence of the hidden curse of aspiration. Like waking in a dream, unaware that the awakening was merely into a different dream.

I call her a taxi and send her home to her mother. I haven’t tired of her teenage shape - the elasticity of skin that is both springy and firm - but I can live without the moods. I can sleep without her once I’ve fucked her. That says it all.

****

Now I hear rasping breaths born of blocked sinus in early morning. I’m slavishly preparing soup, meticulously chopping vegetables. I’m carrying the tray, holding it out. Waiting expectantly for the spoon to meet your mouth and for you to not taste every last morsel of this fastidiously formed meal.

I wipe the dribble from your chin and allow myself a sad smile into your eyes and wonder if you know we’re still alive.

2004-09-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

OK THEN, FOOTBALL…

I think my views on the current state of the game are widely known to those who care. I find it difficult to motivate myself to write about football because a) far too many people write far too much about it these days, and b) at one time or another I have already written/spoken everything I could ever want to say about it. To crystallise and condense all these thoughts would be quite difficult but what is more difficult is to find something new to say about the game. Frankly, there is enough bullshit talked about the game to nourish the football pitches of the world many times over.

Like many, from a very young age football became a major part of my life. Whether it was playing on the spare land, collecting panini stickers, watching games on teletext, endlessly playing champ man there was always some way that I was feeding this obsession. My love of the game I have never questioned – it just exists. Like a fondness for yorkshire pudding, breasts and the sunshine, it is a constant in my life.

I am aware of other compulsive fans for whom, just like me, this love has been tainted by the over-exposure and nasty side-effects that seem to accompany any human pursuit driven by money and untamed capitalist greed.

Unbowed by this, my devotion to Huddersfield Town Association Football Club remains strong. To the extent that I considered making the trip across the Pennines to watch us play at home to Morecambe in the LDV Vans Trophy even though I am skint and even though we will field a weakened side in a meaningless first round fixture of a terrible competition.

But I decided against it so perhaps my devotion is not what I like to think it is.

At 27, I think that it would be unhealthy to be attending an LDV first round game. As Nick Hornby has written about at great length in the once critically acclaimed but now fashionably derided Fever Pitch, it is typical to lose interest in supporting your team during your twenties and thirties due to.. other stuff. Be it shagging, marrying, fathering, working, drinking or any other number of factors the need to consume oneself in a football club is less pronounced.

As I say, football is a tainted love. Though I don’t think that Marc Almond had football in mind when he sang ‘Tainted Love’, I think he was contemplating a very different kind of ball.

2004-09-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

REVENGE OF THE BITCH TITS

IN:

Crisps at lunch

Beer in any form

Late nights in midweek

Bad routine

OUT:

Gym

Salads

Water

Good routine

Fuck it!

2004-09-24T04:35:00.000-07:00

ATTACK OF THE BITCH TITS

Initially, I laughed off the Phillip Seymour Hoffman comparison but the emergence of new photographic evidence from the wedding reveals that my blasé attitude was misplaced.

HOLT: (screwing up face) "Who the fuck is that fat, minging, horrible creature staring at me. Oh, it is me."

OUT:

Crisps at lunch
Beer in any form
Late nights in midweek
Bad routine

IN:

Gym
Salads
Water
Good routine

It’s easy when you know how.

2004-09-23T04:57:00.000-07:00

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

I have lost my phone.. again. I am out of the cell loop. Sans phone. Blame the drink, blame the insufficient jean pocket space, blame the bar staff. Blame whoever the net net net is that I am incommunicado.

Please flood my work email with your phone numbers or we must forever hold a mutual peace. If you don't have my work email then please leave a corresponding email address for me to contact you.

This was a Public Service Announcement.

2004-09-21T07:17:00.000-07:00

DIRTY DENTIST

I am booked in for an emergency dental appointment. Part of my tooth has fallen off. With my tongue I can feel a space that shouldn't be there. A nothing where there should be a something. A cavity that needs to be filled before the rots sets in - though I think the rot has set in.

At least I've given up worrying so I am not worried about it. But its still a horrible feeling. Drills, bone, pain. Excessive saliva and pink dental rinse.

Eeugh.

2004-09-21T01:22:00.000-07:00

CHEBS

baps, buns, cushions, dirty pillows, bust, chest, bosoms, bouncy castles, puppies, funbags, shirt potatoes, chubbas and chebs.

2004-09-20T06:59:00.000-07:00

111 reasons to be ILL

What happens if a ferry tips over?

We didn’t know the answer but we were sure that we were soon going to find out. 45 degree tilts, as the wave tapers away you are effectively airborne. The crashing sound on impact as the boat re-enters the water is accompanied by breaking glass, shrieks and a hundred staff and crew trying to paint ‘DON’T PANIC’ smiles on their faces.

Vanessa gibbers in Spanish:

‘Da-veed, I don’t want to die in the sea in Ireland’

Sometimes she gets excitable, her eyes wild and childlike as her speech patterns spiral out of control. Once, I tell her that Dave is not Da-veed but is Dave. She disagrees and sticks out her tongue.

‘No, POUR FAVOUR, Da-VEED’

I roll over; prostrate, sweating, convulsing – every inch of my body is pulled apart as I crave to vomit and crave not to vomit. Sea sickness is loathsome for a variety of reasons but it is the lack of an escape route that is the cruelest misery. Yes, you can become man overboard BUT YOU WOULD STILL BE TRAPPED AT SEA IN YOUR OWN INADEQUATE BODY.

It did cross my mind that the boat might sink and that we might die but I wasn’t worried because I don’t see the point of worrying. I stopped worrying for good several months ago because worrying is always for bad. Ever since Andersen went bust while I was in their employ, reassured that they shouldn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t ever go bust, I have known that big ships can sink. If a giant financial business can crack under the strain of a man’s mistake then so this car ferry can be blown and battered by storm force winds, submitting to the tempestuous sea. But why worry?

A thunder crack. The hull has split. The cars are floating in the ocean. I am overwhelmed by hands and feet and watter watter watter. The sky opened up. Chicken Licken. It was my final thought.

"AHOY! AHOY! An iceberg me hearties. Come hither with your plastic parrot and dive deep into Davy Jones’ Locker you land lubbin’ sea queer"

****

Of course, I am here, typing this, so of course the boat didn’t sink. Building tension in a blog entry is hamstrung by the truth but the fun is guessing where the truth ends and the fiction begins.

We drove the remaining miles back to Manchester and discussed how much we would have to be paid to get back on *that* ferry. I suggested ten grand. Vanessa was horrified:

Vanessa: "No! *spanishLATINgesticulativehighspeedwords"

But I knew what she said. She said she wouldn’t get back on that boat for a million dollars - what is the point of a million dollars if you are dead? I am rapidly learning that Vanessa is usually right even if I am not rapidly learning Spanish.

The nightmare trip was worth it. This despite the fact it was to a wedding.

I am deeply sceptical about convention and marriage is about as conventional as you can get. Why shake hands? Why wear a suit? Why eat a sandwich for lunch? Why get married? I hate that many people don’t question the arbitrary things that they routinely do, that they do because everyone else does. This is never a good reason for doing anything and to my mind is often a much better reason to not do something.

There is always a fair smattering of smugness at weddings. There is often a serving of religion and the inevitable side plate of hypocrisy usually to be washed down with some patronising advice. There are a litany of awkward pauses, social faux-pas, forgotten names, remembered faces that you wish you had forgotten. And another sure-fire certainty is that I will be asked if I have imminent plans to settle down.

Settling down are words that shouldn’t be allowed in the same paragraph as one another let alone to sit together side by side. I think that separately these are words loaded with negative connotations but together they are unbearable. Settling down has a dowdy ring to it. It drums up the image of domesticity, school runs, dirty nappies and bad taste in internal décor.

The cynical idea that the marriage proposal comes in an interminable lull in conversation when both parties have run out of things to say to each other is neat but ultimately inconclusive. Regardless, there wasn’t a hint of settling down at this wedding. Instead, for me, there was the revelatory feeling of joy as I saw two people I care for a great deal make vows that really meant something. From a personal perspective it was the first wedding where I possessed the background and pretext to the event. I don’t think that most couples are even nearly as close, well-matched and just plain lucky as these two. But they know that they are lucky and that is enough.

As expected at a wedding, events did become somewhat comical and it was no surprise to me that Dave and Vanessa tended to be at the controversial hub. Vanessa likes to dance when she isn’t busily gibbering away in Spanish. I had never viewed air guitar as a sexy concept until I encountered Vanessa. The majority of male guests were quite openly gawping as she tried her hand (feet?) at some Irish dancing. One chap got rather carried away at this juncture and decided to join her on the dance floor. In fact he began to carry her away but no sooner had he whirled Vanessa through the air, his wife on the scene to carry him away, out of the main hall with a flea in his ear.

The mobile disco unit wasn’t the most powerful piece of kit. As Hoddo mentioned it was often drowned out my an ill-timed conversation. Under severe pressure the DJ cranked it up just that bit too far and blew a fuse. An a capella version of wedding fave ‘500 miles’ (Proclaimers) followed, my reading of the lyrics has always resided in the three-nippled Bond character:

"Scaramanger
Scaramanger

Dada dum dada dum dada dum dum dadada"

It could easily be:

"Pterodactyl
Pterodactyl

Dada dum dada dum dada dum dum dadada"

Though officially it is (somewhat disappointingly):

"Da da da da
Da da da da

Dada dum dada dum dada dum dum dadada"

On the way back to our rented cottage, Vanessa and Dave were having one of their ‘cracking rows’ as Dave calls them. She had already hit him with her camera when she opened the taxi door despite the fact the cab was shifting at a fair old rate over country lanes. I placated the taxi driver. (I can’t get over how nice Irish people are. It is a cliché, stereotype that they love the craic and all that but genuinely, I am taken aback by just how different they are from the English.)

The argument was in Spanish and neither party can really remember what was said. They both remember her barricading herself in their room and Dave using his shoulder as a makeshift battering ram. I am hoping that he is slightly more reserved in our own home!

The landlady wasn’t altogether pleased the next morning to find the splintered piece of wood hanging off it’s hinges. She shook her head, composed herself and then proceeded to lecture Dave on the need for fairness. She soon found a fair price of 100 euros to compensate for the damage, not to mention pointing out that criminal damage is possibly inadvisable while housing an illegal immigrant (Strictly, Vanessa wasn’t allowed in Ireland.)

So what else did I learn apart from ‘Marriage CAN be a beautiful thing’?

Well, I learned that I look like a mixture of Suggs, Bryan McFadden, He-Man and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Phillip sodding Seymour fucking Hoffman.

I ask you.

2004-09-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

AND YOUR HEART IS A FOOTBALL

I posted this to downatthemac. This is an HTAFC msgboard where cerebral function is practically a legal alien.

****

If there is one thing that winds me up more than any other on this forum it is the regular proclamation that Peter Jackson (white, male, humanoid aged 43 and a quarter) is God.

Yes indeedy, this, admittedly likeable, lower division football supremo is our Lord and Creator. He spent 6 days making the Earth and took the seventh as a rest (presumably to watch Kammy on 'Goals on Sunday' and listen to 'Songs Of Praise' in the evening).

The conventional image of God, traditionally seen as a white haired/bearded fella in similarly white robes has recently been challenged. Why should He necessarily be white? Perhaps He is, in fact, a She. I have heard these challenges but not once has the suggestion been raised that Our Father is a stocky bloke from Bradford with a penchant for Mafioso-esque suits and a veritable lake of hair gel at his disposal.

When David Icke infamously appeared on Wogan in the late 80's, resplendent in era-defining lime green shell suit, he informed the viewing public of a number of things of which they might not have previously been aware. After alerting us to the threat of a body-snatching race of clandestine lizards, co-existing amongst us humans, he confidently announced that he was the Son of God.

He must have felt somewhat undermined by one Mrs Icke's revelation that to her knowledge her son David had been born in Leicester General Maternity Unit some 40 years previously. And she should know - she was present at the birth after all.

I can't help but think that Jacko's birth certificate would suggest something similarly non-immaculate about his conception.

There are certainly other behavioural patterns that seem inconsistent with the holiest of beings. Some of the things he says to the fourth official are bordering on blasphemy - would the Good Lord really sully His own name? What of his regular breach of the boundaries of the 'Technical Area'? After all, as Jacko is purportedly God he must take the responsibility, indirectly at least, for the existence of this dominion.

It is on this basis that I hereby decree that JACKO IS MORTAL.

Although... they do say that the Lord moves in mysterious ways. Perhaps this would explain the deployment of Pav as a bench-sitter/auxiliary right winger from the end of March until recent times.

Maybe JACKO IS GOD after all...

****

It will get no response or, more likely, a Roy Race air-volley of abuse.

2004-09-14T06:20:00.000-07:00

FI-SCI POOFS

‘Surf’s up, xt67u!’

‘Maybe later,’ came the distinctly unenthused response.

The wind was whipping sharp grey shapes across the open dunes of the alphabet sands so that a2p3 had to shield his eye from the flying grains of letters.

‘Suit yourself,’ it winced

a2p3 promptly turned on its heel and ran at six nanomiles per gigatime toward the menacing, navy swell of the 578 sea. The thick, dark clouds rolled across the sky like visible arse gas.

‘Damn this dust’ muttered the cyclops as it charged toward the sea, one arm aloft to protect its solitary eye socket, the other windmilling at pace in the orthodox cyhumborg way.

As it approached the sea, a2p3 gazed down and marvelled, as it always did, at the mixture of letters and numbers as sea met shore. The intertwining beauty of science, nature, language and math in organic harmony, a2p3’s naked hooves creating an aerial shower of complex formulae as they danced betwixt the washed up typewriters and monkey corpses that littered the beach.

‘Ah!’

a2p3 dived into the fresh swell, plunging underneath the froth with total abandon and emerging like a rabid dog with 6 ‘4’s a 9 and a 3 bursting out of it's mouth.

Reclining backward and treading water-numbers, a2p3 scanned the shore for his doughty companion. xt67u was nowhere to be seen. a2p3 smelt a rat. And not just any rat.

This was the work of a fanny rat.

2004-09-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

THERE MAY BE TROUBLE AHEAD

My new flatmate is a drunken larrikin.

We inadvertently spent a quiet Sunday afternoon drinking with a homeless bloke called Matthew. He must have thought all his Christmas’ had come at once as he supped lager, smoked fags and played pool at Dave’s expense. I was worried for a moment or two that he might become resident on our sofa.

Dave then rolled in late last night having stayed in the god awful brain drain known as Walkabout, drinking with my brother until late evening, who was reported AWOL from home with his tea gone cold. Once my bro had fecked off home Dave decided to remain in Walkabout alone and eventually met with new acquaintances.
Making friends in Walkabout bar. That’s a bit like eating cereal without a spoon – achievable but harder work than it need be.

His Peruvian girlfriend arrives on Wednesday. She doesn’t speak a word of English, is here for two months and I have already been notified of the precise shagging itinerary that Dave has devised for while Maria is here. I think she is called Maria.. might be wrong.

Still, Dave is pretty pissed off that on Saturday night I won the race to get laid in the new flat. Ha! He thought he had that one in the bag – how wrong he was.

Today, I was called mid-afternoon to be informed that his trip to Sainsbury’s to buy food and cleaning products had culminated in a basket comprising wine, beer, gin, tonic and a mop. A trip to Ikea yesterday was just as unconventional.

Oh, and it was me eating cereal without a spoon. I used a George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine drip tray. So far new flats are all about improvisation and getting the concierge on side.

2004-09-10T04:40:00.000-07:00

WHAT'S THE POINT OF LIVING IF YOU DON'T HAVE A DICK

Facing a night of appalling terrestrial television, within minutes I found myself immersed in the director’s cut of Donnie Darko at the Cornerhouse. This is how city centre living justifies the astronomical rent it charges. A rent that I am due to start paying tonight.

Moving in to a large pine-floored, uber-modern city penthouse flat seems an incongruous choice given my ire toward the corporate world and perhaps it is folly. But I figure that it is worth a shot for six months. That it is a babe magnet batchelor pad par excellence just cannot be denied. That our first house guest will be the Peruvian post-student live-in lover of the lad I’m sharing with is perhaps testimony to that fact. That she has a penchant for wandering around her abode naked is getting no complaints from these quarters.

I haven’t watched much telly at all since returning from my holiday seven weeks ago. From what I saw last night, I conclude that it is a dying medium. There is an absolute dearth of quality programming, the bulk of the schedule containing more filler than a Saturday Night at the Palladium special. Having endured half an hour of whether I should ‘worry about my mobile phone’, I dozed off during the abject Eastenders. All soaps are trash of course but the accepted view seems to single out Eastenders and Corrie as the better ones. More money, a better quality of acting etc etc. It is all turd polishing. You can escape into anything if you put your mind to it. Whether you are hypnotised by the dangly Pat Butcher earrings, the grizzled stare of Dirty Den or, I don’t know, the bouncing breasts of a saddle-sore Pilar in Eldorado, it all amounts to the same mindless escape. My only problem is this: why escape to somewhere just as mundane as real life?

There is a great deal of conjecture about the link between the radio waves emitted from cellular phones and cancer. Clearly the level of this speculation will grow until ‘scientists’ come to a conclusion and can cry ye or nay. But what is the point of WORRYING? There is simply no point ever ‘worrying’ about anything. It achieves nothing. If phones turn out to be as dangerous cancer, when I say rythmn is a dancer, then the fact you have spent weeks worrying about it (possibly worrying over the phone to a fellow worrier) will be entirely irrelevant. You will probably have died of stress by then or become pre-occupied by excess salt in foods or farmed salmon or… the list is endless. The point is that worrying is just a waste of time. Listen to Bobby McFerrin if you don’t believe me.

This morbid fascination of the West; a futile attempt to quantify and assess every generic risk associated with our lives. What is the point? We are going to die of something. You want to use your phone but you don’t want cancer – make a fucking choice. Ditch the phone or don’t – it’s up to you.

So this programme did little to help. It just re-asserted the arguments that any moderately intelligent person could work out for themselves and filled half an hour of air time. It also provided a soapbox to an overly cheery former BBC radio jock to further his television career. Think a slightly more urbane Scott Mills in ten years time.

By eight o’clock I was immersed in a probing documentary into house buying abroad. This was a wonderful exercise in scaremongering and a revealing insight into the mentality of some of the dimwit Brit ex-pats who are chasing the sun.

Rather than explaining the process of buying property abroad and analysing the possible drawbacks and benefits of this investment, the programme took a far more tabloid focus and looked at three scenarios where everything had gone tits up.

Scenario 1: Stupid bird and her Shirley Valentine wannabe mum had bought a property on a cliff face without having a survey done. Idiots.

Scenario 2: Boring couple had hired cowboy building firm to renovate a shell property they had purchased. They paid them up front and the builders naffed off. Suckers.

Scenario 3: (I missed most of this) Dopey/ropy old bird bought a termite infested place in France.

I mean, really. What does this tell us. Get a survey done. Ensure that a proper contract is in place with builders. Get a survey done. Durrr… This is not helping anyone who is going to move abroad, it is merely giving the oxygen of publicity to a group of thick chavs who deserve everything they get. That is, apart from a programme devoted to their idiocy.

The pace of these programmes is infuriating as well. Padded out to span an hour and three commercial breaks with regular summaries for the goldfish viewers. There is about ten minutes substance in an hour of viewing.

I was glad to escape to watch Donnie, which I’d only previously seen on video. The director’s cut caters for the die-hard fanatic with its extra footage and for the casual who missed it in 2001 by featuring extra narrative to make the film somewhat less confusing. I enjoyed the extra footage but the original is far superior.

I think that the new version is self-defeating. The film should be difficult if not impossible to follow as this was part of its strength in the first place. Even at this more languid pace it retains the dreamlike charm and haunting atmosphere of the original and, in fact, if anything it seemed even funnier. I await Richard Kelly’s future work with some interest.

2004-09-10T01:13:00.000-07:00

BLOWING MY OWN TRUMPET

Please understand, I'm not usually one to do this but I am particularly proud of a couple of my quotes on Stylus today.

2004-09-09T06:51:00.000-07:00

THE DIG DIG

Chairman Maochell, as he was to become, had struck up on an idea that may well have turned out to be the best he ever had. A loose affiliation of individuals had been emailing each other, on and off, for several months. What Mao did was give this a focus. A structure and gimmick that would make these bonds stronger.

The core members of the group were working within the Corporate Tax department of Arthur Andersen, the now defunct Accountancy giant. It was by some absolute freak of chance that this group had been formed on Day One of their time at Andersens. Looking around the accounting fraternity holistically (rarely is this done, even the most extrovert members staring at another person’s shoes, as the old joke goes) you will not see the kind of fun-loving, intellectual, surrealist, cliquey, raucous group too often.

Life for me at this time was extreme in highs and lows, probably of a magnitude that I had not felt before but, despite this, nothing was taken seriously and the end had no end. That is to say that I was very much living for the moment, a philosophy in stark contrast to the existential plague that has since overcome me.

The ‘email loop’ as it became known, later shortened to the ‘loop’, was in itself a mockery of our corporate surrounds, taking its cue from "I’m just keeping you in the loop". This much maligned buzz phrase of US origin was one of the first to be integrated into our own curious vernacular and provided hysterical reactions when its non-ironic use continued to permeate into our everyday lives:

To: HOLT
From: ARMO

Subject: FW: DTR Treaty covenants

John,

FYI- Just keeping you in the Loop

Mark

As well as a love-hate of corporate doublesprechen, most shared a fervent passion for drinking, gambling and football as well as taking an interest in current affairs both internally and externally. But the crucial ingredients in this mix was the mutual reverie and bonhomie, coupled with a love and desire for self- expression. I suppose that these elements make up a good few blogging networks.

As the ‘loop’ became firmly established as a key component in my day it began to expand. Friends of friends became regular contributors as we discovered it wasn’t just the Andersen group that was happy to wile away the working day in a pseudo-chatroom. So add to the Manchester accountants, a Doctor of Maths his London-based chums, selected members of my university crowd and a sprinkling of Andersen alumni from around the country.

So, so far so what, I’m sure you are thinking. You talked to your mates on the email en masse. Well, it went a stage further and this is where Paul’s idea came in.

Over the period of a year or so the attraction towards betting and gambling of various forms had begun to grow. I can’t remember the exact time that casinos were first frequented or when Auntie Social’s SPIN account was opened but it was certainly around the same time that ‘Shindig’ was conceived.

The Guardian had been running a feature called ‘You Bet Your Life’. Put simply, teams led by Guardian journalists and made up of members of the public placed bets each week with fictional money, published on Friday and results dispatched on a Monday.

The object of the exercise was, I suppose, to record the relative success and failures of betting strategies while at the same time being amusing and distracting. The good doctor had chanced his way on to one of the teams and so we had followed it fairly closely.

And then Chairman Maochell had the lightbulb ting. Why don’t we do this?

I can’t remember exactly why our version became ‘You Bet Your Shindig’ (YBYS) but the use of the word shindig was a dig at the Chairman and his excessively flowery language. He does have a tendency to use slang that may well have been out of fashion when our parents were young.

Since the first Friday email went out we have had three seasons of YBYS or Shindig as it is affectionately known. We have invariably seen the folly of fixed odds gambling as the results filter in over the weekend whilst enjoying the peculiar Friday morning ramblings of the participants and the Monday summary of the results. It is a tonic to the ailments of office life: a good routine in a bad routine.

At the end of season 2 we arranged a get together which was in effect the ‘Shindig Shindig’ or ‘Dig Dig’ for short. The turnout was somewhat poor and the excuses poorer still. On Saturday though, barring three members and only two with lame excuses we had a full turnout.

We played football for two hours between 4p.m and 6p.m which was great fun. The man of the match performance from Haq somewhat overshadowed by the tightness of the Doctor’s shorts. After decamping to the god awful Sports Café on Quay Street to watch Calamity James do his thing we moved on to the Town Hall Tavern. This is the archetypal old man pub and was a fitting surround for the archetypal old man before his time, Smith, to collect the tankard and prize money.

That he decided to blow the vast majority of this money on drinks for his fellow diggers says something about the esteem in which he holds us. It also highlights that this Oxbridge Bachelor of Arts is a liability after a couple of beers.

In 42nd street I was able to derive vicarious pleasure from seeing the diggers interacting and reveling in each other’s company. I have wanted to be a member of a society or club for a while; I just had the feeling that it would be good but I didn’t know where I would find a suitable organisation. Well, it turns out I was in one after all.

I’m not exaggerating when I say it was one of the best nights I’ve had in years and for that I’d like to thank each of my fellow diggers. Long may the Dig continue and when it recommences later this month and culminates in the third Dig Dig in January I hope and wish and keep my fingers crossed for the magic words…

FULL TURNOUT.

2004-09-08T05:12:00.000-07:00

NEEDLE HITS THE GROOVE

Some more of my comments are here. As the article goes on I am more and more reliant on Mr Shoeheim. Stylus - it is a septic e-rag so, y'know, if you can't beat them steal their linguistic traits. That's what I say.

2004-09-07T05:40:00.000-07:00

MY WEEK SPENT IS NEARLY YOUR BUSINESS

Reflecting on last week, it genuinely was a unique experience. It is a time that will fasten itself to my memory and never leave. Of course, like many experiences it is easier to enjoy after the event. In reminiscing I will omit to remember the hours of travel and the shortage of sleep that made it hard work. But now it just seems like the best time ever.

It started on Sunday with a trip to Ratho in Scotland for SG#12 on the Bank Holiday weekend. Strange things stick with me. The view of the climbing wall in the Ratho Adventure Centre where the gig took place. The children I asked the way when hopelessly lost in Ratho itself. Jumping over a dry stone wall to take a piss by the side of the road. The fresh breeze brought to mind school cross-country tribulations and the walk to Sandbach Rugby Club from nearly 15 years ago. Living in a city and working in an office denies me the opportunity to wander green in green. The smell of cut grass, dew and sweat that permeated many a day spent playing football and cricket. Remembering this simpler existence of unabandoned freedom was a very nostalgic and unexpected emotion.

The gig itself was disappointing in certain senses. I had waited three or four years to see them play live again and perhaps this meant that the performance and occasion couldn’t possibly live up to the hype but the family atmosphere was a little cloying. My raffle win sparked mixed feelings too. Some other chap had just taken the signed bass guitar, which I’d viewed enviously before the gig. The other prizes seemed much of a muchness and so when my ticket was announced I was stricken with blind panic.

WTF do I choose??!!

I had to pick my way through the crowd, some of whom were seated, and it was school assembly again all of a sudden. I was dressed in a green blazer going to collect my Certificate of Merit. My awkward gait on the stage as my heroes confronted me was probably not too obvious though I just kept thinking "I look like a cunt – get me the fuck off this stage." I say stage when in fact it wasn’t really a stage.

Richard (guitarist, lovely chap – far less intense than Danny and rarely without a quick, cheeky line in gentle sarcasm) told me that ‘the test press is pretty cool’ and so test press it was. I became the proud owner of one of only two 7" test pressings of the Gravity single. "It’ll be on ebay tomorrow" joked Frazer though Richard was non-plussed "You paid your money, you takes your choice". Dougall managed to snap me while on stage and in addition to Frazer and Kate’s snaps we have some really good mementos of the night.

As I said the gig didn’t quite hit the heights. It was a case of ‘too many of the too few’ for me – as in the setlist was short and of that list there was a reliance on the ‘obvious’ tracks. I have become a bit of a set list snob, inevitable given the back catalogue I suppose.

A definite highlight was Rich belting out Hard Day’s Night with a Lennon-esque rasp but also the way that the band suddenly launched into Someday. From casual banter to full performance, effortlessly.

I followed Dougall’s car back to his parents’ house after the gig, out on the East Coast somewhere near Dundee (I think). On entering we aroused the family dog that was locked in a cage(!) Very odd but only on the same plain of oddness as being force fed homemade shortbread by his mum and then having breakfast with the Australian branch of the MacArthur clan. Despite precise instruction on how to get back home, I found myself in Kirkcaldy and lost within the hour. It is a miracle I made it back in time for the football in Doncaster, or should that be a miracle I wasn’t booked for speeding/banned from driving for life.

***
On returning to work on Tuesday the Preston gig was imminent. At this juncture I was starting to feel a little silly. Why on earth am I going to three gigs in a week and such ludicrous time and expense. The slight let down of sg#12 was plaguing me.

I shouldn’t have wasted the time worrying. The buzz and atmosphere in The Mill on arrival was the turning point. This was a proper for real gig; they were back.
The journey up was punctuated by a stop at a Garage where I purchased a miniature pork pie and sausage roll I would live to regret and stopping to ask a local man the way. This bloke looked like a real roughhouse type but was actually as gay as a Gordon.

The gig was terrific. Although opener Ashes didn’t quite take off and I only really got immersed from New Adam New Eve (which we used to cheekily push to the front) it was light years ahead of Sunday. Someday was mega, the spiraling guitar part and gospel climax hitting the spot. Crowds are still only interested in TWGO early tunes. This will change. Out of Nothing was black and haunting and the look in Danny’s eyes as he gripped on to the lighting rig and fought to hold his own against the audience was as wild as Mad Willy.

Ears ringing I entered work the next morning at about 8.30a.m. I was running through in my head the things that Mickey Dale (homo-keyboardist!) had said about the band and the last three years when the pork pie came back to haunt me. An evening to stew in the juices of 4 lagers had a devastating effect. I farted. It stank. So bad in fact that:

Heavily Pregnant Girl next to me: "It smells horrible in here today. Is it the air conditioning."

So pungent and powerful was this fart that it did not resemble naturally generated human gas. It is the pinnacle of my work in this field and as many will testify this is going some.

***

On Friday at half past six, I found myself in close proximity of the band stood in the blazing sunshine in a park singing along to the acoustic strum and surrounded by a group of people holding white balloons that were familiar despite the fact I had never met them. Including Nick who I had a quick word with in the pub, though I think he may well have been too drunk to remember. Despite his leatheredness he managed to take some great photos of the day. If you look really carefully in the top one, you will see me...

Put it down to the power of the internet, the will of the people, the omnipotence of the melody. This was SG#13 and it wasn’t a shiver down the spine moment. It was a Come On and Smile moment. It was warm and loving. It really was. The crowd carried the songs while Danny, as chief meercat, peered nervously over his shoulder looking for the old bill. He needn’t have worried. This was as far from rock and roll as you could get and all the more rock and roll for that fact.

We had spent the previous hour in O’Neill’s in Shepherd’s Bush. We encountered a very bizarre sight. This isn’t in the best possible taste as Kenny Everett would have said but it just has to be recounted. There was a wheelchair bound character in the pub. We paid him no real notice at first although I had noted that he looked the spit of the late Buster Merryfield (Uncle Albert from OFAH of course).

Rega then spotted that by some cruel twist of fate his pint was on the end of the bar seemingly out of his reach. Not only out of reach but due to the level of inebriation wholly out of range. Y’see Buster was not only legless in the physical sense (his stumps packed into some kind of sleeping bag/stump holding device) but he was also very much legless in the, more typically used, figurative sense. Arseholed and ratted beyond belief. He was at the stage of narcolepsy.

I suppose I’ve just never considered the idea of a disabled person going to the pub and getting mullered before. Of course, any reason why this punter shouldn't pop down to his (presumably) local pub and blow his disability allowance and pension on a skinful? None at all. Although having then seen him wheel himself over to a table and slither out on to it, assuming a Jabba the Hut pose, it became difficult to see how he would be able to leave at closing time. I felt a lot of sympathy for him but I also laughed a great deal as well. Does this make me a cold, heartless twat?

The gig at the Empire was triumphant. This time Ashes was the lean, propulsive, prizefighter of a tune that will make it a No.1. Looking As You Are was palpably honest and stirring. The whole goddamn set was full of maxed-out vocals, rock star poses, connection; the dynamic performance of the band fed by the energy of a responsive crowd fed by the dynamic performance of the band, repeat to symbiotic infinity. This response visibly surprised the band, drawing out a special performance. The setlist was cautious (SNOB) and omitted Keeping and Out of Nothing but once again we were treated to ‘Even Smaller Stones’. This isn’t on the next album, it’s on the one after that!

So the week that was…

So was it worth it? Yes. What did I learn from it? Loads. Does this week feel different as a result? Yes. Does it make you feel like you should make a change, take risks, go on an adventure? Yes. Are you going to stop asking yourself rhetorical questions, yer cunt? WILL DO.

2004-09-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

BADDER BING BADDER BONG

Badminton rocks. It is official. Other than a strained right bottom cheek and sore calves I have come out unscathed.

Long weekend ahoy! A trip to the smoke and a convention of the dig diggers. Oh-ho-ho yes indeedy.

Another day of meandering skive,
Soon to be curtailed at five,
Today I’m glad to be alive,
Got any more of them sandwiches, Clive?

2004-09-01T08:58:00.000-07:00

MUSIC MAKES THE BOURGEOISIE AND THE REBELS

I’m playing badminton tonight. I’m quite excited by this. Does this make me a loo-oo-ser?

I’m also getting very enthused about the music making process. I’ve written, let me see, 1,2,3,4….. about 10-12 songs worth recording and more are falling out of the acoustic guitar. In some ways I can’t believe that I am even at this stage. I remember formative attempts to write songs from 3 years back and I just didn’t know where to start. Of course I soon realised that the starting point was irrelevant; you have to go through months and months, and more crushingly, hour upon hour of producing bilge to stand any chance of getting to where you want to be.

Now I have some songs and feel like I will write more it is the process of realising them that is exciting. Coming up with riffs, guitar sounds, keyboard noise, drum patterns, basslines. Changing the tempo of songs. Re-working verses. Making songs sound angrier and faster and harder.

I never had the interest before in the sonic side of it. I just wanted to strum the acoustic and play maudlin ballads. That is changing now and I’m hoping my lyrics change with it. The introspection, I suppose, will always be there but it needs to drop out of the foreground. There are different and more interesting ways to express and emote than the soul-bearing MEMEME.

So, I need to buy an electric guitar and a digital 8-track. I think I’m going to sell my car. I don’t need it. I think maybe its symbolic.. of something.

We need to get a drummer and bassist as well. And learn to play keyboards. And get better at guitar. 27 is old for this stuff or in other words I’m:

Confronted by the obstacles in trying to recreate
The lost years in a life with more false starts than any race.

The support band at the Embrace gig last night were inspiring. Inspiring us to say ‘We could do that’. Inspiring us to believe that our songs were BETTER than theirs. It’s a long shot, yes, but it beats the sure fire certainty that I can’t do this office-drone-spreadsheet-prison for all that much longer without requiring regular therapy or medication.

2004-08-31T04:55:00.000-07:00

YOU COULDN’T ORGANISE A PISS UP IN A BREWERY

Or in this case, Manchester.

A large group of lads want to meet up, play football and get drunk. These activities and, indeed, this very combination of activities was pursued at Uni for three years. Why is it so hard to organise now?

Well, I suppose attitudes and behaviours have changed to the extent that there is greater concern over venues than there once was. The student union bar and club has been replaced by that most evil of things; a choice. This choice leads to divisiveness and dispute and just seems to become an obstacle to happiness and merry-making.

Anywhere that serves beer will do, pretty much. We know the places to avoid. The formula is simple. So lets do it.

2004-08-27T05:51:00.000-07:00

TRACK BY TRACK: OUT OF NOTHING

I am sure it will be of no great disappointment for most of the readers that I’m finishing this off in one go today. No more boring Embrace entries… for now.

SPELL IT OUT

Chiming, jagged guitar riff is joined by slightly off-kilter drumming and a slightly odd shouty-speaky verse melody. Instantly, it is apparent that this is the work of McNamara, R. Rich’s stuff is just that little bit more off the wall than Danny’s heartfelt, yearning balladeering.

It took me a while to get this one though I gather from most reactions it is immediately popular so it is just me being weird again.

It rumbles through yet another big, brash chorus but as it leads back into the second chorus run through there is a glorious swoosh of strings to take it to the next level. Not TGWO orchestral piece by numbers, this is far more natural and in keeping with the rest of the music. Talking of glorious…

GLORIOUS DAY

This will polarise people. Those who hate Embrace will hate it more than they’ve hated ‘em before. Those who love Embrace and Danny-ballads will be creaming their pants to it.

It includes a warbling ‘woah-a-woah-a-woah’ that will have the NME writers rolling in the aisles (worst vocal performance in twenty years, suck my cock you arrogant arseholes) but to my ear sounds just super. Strident, purposeful, rousing and uplifting. It sounds like a hymn. Noel Gallagher once said that if he’d been born a religious man he would have written some cracking hymns. So too Danny Mac.

NEAR LIFE

This is the departure. This doesn’t sound like Embrace. It sounds like the Verve or 13 by Blur. Basically it isn’t melody-driven. It has melody and verses and a chorus of sorts but it is the noise and explosion of the guitar twisted around the bassline that makes this song.

It is dark clouds, driving rain and atmosphere. It is oblique lyrics and spiraling, resonant, ethereal harmonies.

More like this please.

OUT OF NOTHING

The title track, again signalling a departure. The last two on this album should roadmark the route to Album 5. It starts as a ballad but shudders into life at around the two minute mark. The whole soundscape is dark and moody. The outro is a frightening cacophony of noise. Frightening as it highlights just how much more the band have to give when playing as an ensemble unit. No longer is it playing along with Danny’s melody. It is a five strong creative force.

More like this please.

2004-08-27T05:33:00.000-07:00

HAIR TODAY GONE TOMORROW

Caroline, my hairdresser for the last god knows how many years has gone. I rung to book an appointment for tomorrow morning and the bombshell was dropped.

Frank Clark lookalike Salon manager: "She’s gone… she went to Spain on her holiday and never came back"

No further detail. She has done a bunk. A Shirley Valentine. Good luck to her and good on her, I say. She lived a humdrum existence in the suburbs of a grimy northern city. At least when she cuts people’s hair now it will be done with the sun streaming through the windows and away from the FIRST ADVICE citeh scumbags that she doubtlessly would have ended up settling for.

Only problem is my barnet needs special care and attention. I have BIG hair and I just have to hope that the new incumbent, Karen, is up to the task of managing the Lion-O mane.

2004-08-26T05:16:00.000-07:00

KEEPING

"Keeping me up on my feet was a love so complete I have chased but never bettered
Everything seemed like it fell at our feet now she’s out of my reach and there forever..."

If Gravity managed to encompass the Embrace sound then I think Keeping pretty much captures the essence of the Embrace melody and lyric. Slow and pretty to begin with on which the melody just builds and builds to crescendo. The theme is lost love and it is captured poetically and beautifully. A chorus about tidal waves never breaking and ceaseless running sounds overblown and hyperbolic - well it is but the way that it is performed ensures that these sentiments remain fiercely personal.

So why is Keeping different? Why are they still banging on about love, loss and yet more love?

The difference, I suppose, is that Keeping is so realised and fully formed and it is relevant because it is still moving and powerful. Love, I suppose, is what drives them to perform in the first place.

By contrast, Make It Last sounds mawkish while Come Back To What You Know is clumsy and overbearing. Keeping manages to sound heartfelt yet it doesn’t lose any momentum or musical focus in making its point. That it is a Richard song perhaps explains why it feels so light, fresh and unburdened. That I like this song perhaps more than I Wouldn’t Wanna Happen To You is about as goddamn praiseworthy as I think I can be.

2004-08-25T06:05:00.000-07:00

WISH 'EM ALL

I get the feeling no-one gives a fanny rat about this track-by-track analysis but as so often in times of darkness I turn to the great Magnus Magnusson for advice and… I think we can see where this is going.

Wish 'Em All blew me away at the December Cockpit gig, given that Danny had learned the mouth organ and seamlessly slotted it into a new song, which had a chorus so immediate that I was singing it before the song had finished.

This is one that suffers a touch from repeated listens actually. You can OD on Wish Em All, partly as such immediacy obviously impairs longevity. I can’t see a way around this really. The first time I heard it post-Cockpit was on Radio 6, a rather ropy live version as it happens and so hearing the recorded version for the first time gave me goose pimples.

Incidentally, the first listen to the album was on my car stereo having met a vest attired, black BMW driver in a lay-by to receive the goods. This is surely as close as I’ll ever come to anything nefarious and to any innocent passer-by must have looked very suspect. I even frisked myself for drugs after the incident.

Anyway, hy-owge chorus causing goose pimples. CHECK. Good feeling era Travis sound. CHECK. (Soundcheck? Two…two… one.. two.) Vocal at cracking point. CHECK. Just ever so slightly clunky and formulaic. CHECK But loveable all the same? CHECK CHECKETY CHECK.

Oh and one final thing, I love the sentiment behind the song - 'wish 'em all away and everything will change'. One way to take it is that if you close your eyes and wish hard enough everything will be ok, which is patently daft unless you are an ostrich. But I don't think Danny means this. I think he is referring to personal demons that can be defeated by searching for some inner strength. That often the answer lies within, implying the need for personal responsibility and that such effort and determination will bring the best rewards.

That in the case of an alcoholic, the application of this belief being the only hope when other avenues turned to cul de sacs. When it means that two dry weeks follow and a lifetime of opportunities that seemed to be lost can open up again. Fingers crossed anyway.

2004-08-25T05:42:00.000-07:00

GERRUP UR’ RAITE

As the Grauniad notes ‘to the casual observer it may have appeared a parochial affair’, but within West Yorkshire last night’s game was very much the event everybody had been waiting for.

It was 17 years since we last played Leeds United competitively, traditionally our fiercest rivals, and it came as little surprise to sense the tension of the home side and support. After the ignominy of near bankruptcy, relegation and the defection of prodigal son ‘Smithy’ to their greatest rivals ManYoo, defeat to us would have been a further twist of the knife.

Even up until about two years ago I no longer considered us to inhabit the same footballing universe. In fact to a degree I had even become something of a Leeds fan. The swift, counter-attacking side under O’Leary that reached the Champions League semi-finals (Martyn, Mills, Woodgate, Radebe, Harte, Bowyer, Bakke, Batty, Kewell, Viduka, Smith) was great to watch.

Of course, that didn’t stop last season being enjoyable. The stories of Ridsdale, private jets, expensive fish tanks, fleets of cars, Seth Johnson’s wages; the list is endless. They didn’t get off lightly last night. The very fact that we were their house guests must have been galling and we were never going to be anything other than badly behaved.

Last season we were in old money division 4 and they were still in the Premiership. This time around there genuinely isn’t that much in it. Julian Joachim and Michael Ricketts? BOTHERED. And so:

‘Where’s your Ridsdale gone? Where’s your Ridsdale gone? Where’s your Smithy gone? Where’s your Smithy gone? Crying on the Telly. Crying on the Telly. We saw you crying on the telly’

The Leeds fans must be so worn down from the last 12 months that this baiting has a reduced effect. They appeared to be too depressed to fight back or perhaps too fearful of the unthinkable – defeat.

Apparently there was a bit of bother in the town centre in some wine bars. This is a shame as for the most part the rivalry was reasonably good-natured. I say for the most part because I still cringe whenever the word ‘Yid’ is used in reference to Leeds Football Club which, in honesty, is still fairly frequent on the terrace. This is just not acceptable but… what can you do?

There are some who would like you to believe that sanitising language solves all social evils but that approach still seems like a self-righteous technique of the self-appointed thought police to me. By this I mean that there is a reason for the archaic language and attitudes of a group of people who must feel to some extent disenfranchised and at odds with society. Being coerced into integrating with people that they haven’t traditionally mixed with and told what they can and can’t say by a social group of relative privilege is surely never going to work.

Well, I don’t see it as the solution and I just grin and bear the idiocy and ignorance emanating from the pond scum that I had to sit amongst last night. You have to try to see it from their side, I suppose. Anyway, I always chuckle at the juxtaposition of football fans and wine bars. Who could have conceived that the defining symbol of 80’s yuppiedom (aside perhaps for unfathomably gigantic mobile phones) would become the battle ground for the tribal hordes.

So to the game: we lost 1-0. That doesn’t tell the whole story, of course. There were eleven heroes out there for us, who, as they have done ever since Jacko took over last year, gave everything. I just wish we could get the ball in the bloody goal. 6 hours of football viewed now without seeing us score, not to mention the many additional hours of travelling either side. I remain convinced that we are just lacking a bit of rub at the moment and we are a safe bet for mid-table. That would do just fine thank you very much.

Funniest moment for me is the utterance that forms the title of this post. Crainey the Leeds left-back took the ball full in the face from point blank range. This has only happened to me a couple of times and doubtless without the ferocity that occurred here, and it bloody hurt. No sympathy from the Town faithful though!

"GERRUP UR’RAITE!"
(Get up, you are alright.)

2004-08-24T05:26:00.000-07:00

LOOKING AS YOU ARE

More Edge guitar jangling but this time it drops out and is replaced by a falsetto. It is a Danny falsetto in so much as it is as falsetto as he can get. Slower paced, mid-paced I suppose, this straight forward, direct ballad is perfectly realised and must be a contender as a future single.

I don’t have a great deal else to say about it apart from noting that the lyrics are the type that he is so good at writing. Nothing clever or fancy, just simple words expressing deep emotions and cleverly avoiding or twisting away from the well-hackneyed phrase.

‘Love enters and leaves you through your eyes’ is neat though David Blunkett’s recent exploits do suggest that there are exceptions to this hard and fast couplet. I also think Borat would suggest that love leaves you via a liquid sex explosion through your cock but this doesn’t scan quite so well.

He said that the album lacked a love song before Gravity’s inclusion but this is as plaintive a love song as any you’ll find. The oddity being that it is sung by a shaggy-haired Yorkshireman, baring heart and soul. It is a hurdle that some just can't get over; this criticism of his voice, the lazy Oasis comparisons, accusations of bombast… it is all an irrelevant footnote in the moment you hear just how much he means it.

"He can’t sing properly"

No, you aren’t hearing properly.

2004-08-24T03:31:00.000-07:00

SHITTLECACK

I have an overwhelming urge to play Badminton. I last played when I was about 17. I will probably be rubbish at it.

Mentadent- can you bring the fabled Yonex home with you this weekend?

2004-08-23T08:16:00.000-07:00

Unrequited (The Lost Chorus)

Thoughts of you, the very thought of you
Feel like I’m on fire
Unrequited loving is as raw desire
Late at night when I think of you
I take you all the way
Thoughts of you, the very thought of you
Feel like I’m on...

I make it up
As I go along
Thinking of things that we could’ve done
(x2)

All the time I was looking through
Rose-tinted glasses
Unrequited love is less
As the time passes
When I’m down I convince myself
I took you all the way
Thoughts of you, the very thought of you
As I drift away

I’ve been up
I’ve been down
Having a blast
(x2)

Cos you don’t mean the world to me
There’s no reason anymore
For you to mean the world to me anymore

2004-08-23T06:30:00.000-07:00

SOMEDAY

My good friend Mr T has listened to the whole album and his favourite song is Gravity as it is more restrained than the other tracks: ‘I wish they would hold something back’.

I think that is a fundamental barrier to appreciating Embrace. They don’t really do restraint as well as they do the balls-out, anthemic stuff. I suppose that IYNB was the more restrained album in its production and in the scope of the songs, and in producing this it was apparent that a crucial element had been lost. There is at least one point during OON when you might be able to hear the sound of a kitchen sink in the mix.

Someday is entirely unrestrained in both its lyrical content and arrangement. Like many Embrace songs it builds and builds towards a crescendo. In this case the crescendo involves a huge chorus, a Love It Takes-style noise explosion in the middle and climaxes with a gospel choir belting out the postivist sentiment that ‘A light is going to shine on you and I’. Even by Embrace’s standards this is ambitious. It would be so easy for it to fall flat and fall short, the margins between success and failure being so tight when attempting something of this magnitude. (x-ref Paula Radcliffe, Athens 2004).

To my mind they pull this off here and crucially pull it off an awful lot better than they were capable of doing in 1997, when I believe this song was written. The music has caught up with the songs, perhaps the songs whirling around Danny’s imagination are much closer to being realised now.

In Someday, Danny and the band are holding nothing back. The screeching guitar part audible over layers and layers of sound is unabashed. So too the barrel load of drum fills while the lyric itself is similarly over the top. Lines like ‘for every stone you throw you’ll carry a million more’ verges on cliché in cold print but when sung these words become almost spiritual.

In wishing they would hold something back, I realise that Mr T and I are opposed; I am still celebrating the fact that they haven’t held back.

2004-08-20T08:18:00.000-07:00

OUT OF NOTHING: TRACK BY TRACK

GRAVITY

The Trojan Horse. I’m not sure who first made the comparison but it is so true. This single has whipped up inordinate amounts of coverage, column inches and hype that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. Chris Martin – love or loathe has gone from gorky styoudent to world famous rock star and him giving his buddy a song is big news.

All in all the media/PR thing has been handled fantastically and its just fingers crossed now for chart position and all that follows.

It is a strong track, most identifiable with Wonder, the lead single from IYNB. It really does shit all over Wonder from a great height as well. Wonder is light, fluffy and almost wimpy in comparison to the fleshed out, muscular sound of Gravity. The strident piano line and chunky, clunky feel to the melody is trademark Coldplay but the sound of the record is pure Embrace. It starts as Fireworks and then builds and builds to a fabulous crescendo.

I think that in a certain sense it is a pedestrian piece of songwriting. In comparison to the song structures elsewhere on the album it is quite leaden and heavy but it appears to have done its job. Oh, and Danny’s vocal is lovely; warm, heartfelt and strong. That this is the weakest track on the album (and I think it just about is) speaks volumes for the record as a whole.

2004-08-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

OUT OF NOTHING: TRACK BY TRACK

I’ve put this off because what is the point? Because you can just go here and read it anyway. Because ordering a bunch of words to describe noise is silly. Because I’m fearful that I won’t be very good at doing it.

It’s Embrace, Jim but not as we know them. Or not as you know them.

And this is wanking without the cock and clean up. But what the hell...

ASHES

Album opener is where they start and where I’ll start. Best track on’t album is where I’ll start. Single of the Year (and no messing, you just watch) is where I'll start.

This is the Streets Have No Name to the power of Pounding. That is to say that it is very good indeed. The drums propel it forward and it sounds incredibly assured and mature without being old. Embrace have never made anything like this before and probably won’t again. The guitar signature for the record is all over it; clean, simple, chiming riffs which drip with colour. The bass chugs along as well. What has happened?

And then the first two words ‘I’ve waited..’. Fucking hell Danny – you are not the only one, son! Three years of nothing. Three years of checking the messageboard for not so much as a snippet. Three years of thinking that it would all come to booger all. But it has been worth the wait, of that there is no doubt.

The chorus to this tune is massive of course, but not in a blaring, bombastic way. There isn’t a big sign saying ‘HERE IS THE CHORUS. QUICK! SOMEONE CALL FOR THE PHILAMONIC’. The Good Will Out had choruses as good as this, but this one glides from verse to chorus and back out to verse seamlessly and with the minimum of fuss. However there is no doubt that the template of TGWO is there; in a delineated form the weakest of Embrace’s album is here. The spirit and message of TGWO is triumphantly delivered within the opening few minutes of Ashes, albeit six years late. There is hope for us all.

The elements of Embrace that previously dragged them down have been cast aside. Where once their desire to make BIG music seemed clumsy and pompous, it now seems necessary, essential and important. I liked the clumsiness and the pomposity and part of me listens to Ashes and thinks ‘this isn’t my Embrace’.

It is somehow an uneasy feeling to realise that they have fled the nest. But of course that is overridden by the excitement of not knowing just how high and how far they may fly…

2004-08-19T04:35:00.000-07:00

SHARRON DAVIES’ NIPPLES ARE GOING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!

Camera pans to Ian Wright after little Shaun scores.

Lawro: (camper than ever): 'I think he's trying to text him'

Lameness of the comment aside, the very idea of Lawro texting someone or simply his awareness of the texting facility of a mobile phone is somehow deeply scary.

I wasn’t actually going to watch the game last night. International friendlies are such a non-event but as it turned out I was so knackered that it became the path of least resistance and a perfect way to drift off to sleep.

The way that the BBC cover any footballing occasion, I like. Somehow the feeling is that you are watching the official coverage. The length of time spent before and after a game is just enough to set the mood, discuss the major talking points and then allow post-match interviews and a modicum of analysis. They don’t fall foul of Sky’s overkill (Yes Andy, you have pinpointed 10 defensive mistakes in slow motion, well done. Now go and shave Keysie’s back) or ITV’s.. well incompetence.

By employing a series of imbecile pundits, tabloid tactics and a doddery Des, ITV coverage is doomed to rubbishness. And no Big Ron any more (sob). I still miss him.

The BBC are anchored by Gary who is self-deprecating enough to offset his inherent safeness. His awful puns are soaked in irony and his gentle sarcasm keeps things ticking over nicely. Last night he was joined by Alan, who is an institution. Also present was Alan. This is where we start to run into problems.

Alan Shearer as pundit - it just isn’t ever going to work. Not only has he had a charisma bypass, he just doesn’t have anything to offer. There is a lot of heresay that Shearer is a practical joker par excellance and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on his ‘creosoting the fence’ line being a good gag. What I don’t understand is how that translates into his on-screen persona.

He is a dreadful pundit. Prone to cliché and stating the obvious, he just goes through the motions and picks up his cheque. There is no emotion or apparent love for the game. The earnestness in the commentary box sits uneasily with his steely front. It makes me suspect that wor Al is actually a fairly disingenuous, duplicitous character. He is so self-assured that I can’t believe that he can be so bland. I respect the player and the man; he has made the best of himself. That is something few of us can boast. As a person… the jury is out.

All this aside, he speaks in the ruddybloody footballer’s tense! Old friend footballer’s tense, first observed by Baddiel in 1995. This is the mental struggle suffered by the not overly bright footballing fraternity, caused by seeing something in real time replay that has only just happened. The resultant synapsal lapse prevents either the past or present tense being used; instead an amalgam of the two is formed. To exacerbate matters further, the footballer’s tense is also almost exclusively used as part of a narrative style. The simple recital of what has happened or ‘is’ happening courtesy of the tv replay is the norm. Often this is in the form of one enormous, jumbled sentence. This is especially so if the perpetrator is Dave ‘Harry’ Bassett.

Wor Al: "Becks has got (has got!!) the ball here and he’s cut inside (and he’s cut inside!! – not ‘he cut inside’ past tense or ‘here we see him cutting inside’ present tense. Ooh no no no) and he’s stuck it on Michael’s head and Michael doesn’t miss from there."

Well done Al. You can watch the replay and describe the pictures. The best bit was his analysis of Beckham’s goal.

Wor Al: "Well Terry’s come a long way here and he’s went (and he’s went – beautiful) to cross it in and as you can see the ball has picked up pace off the grass(!!!) and becks has been brave there."

The ultimate nonsense cliché uttered! The ball ‘picking up pace off the wet turf’. I don’t think so Al, unless it has defied physics. The momentum of the ball, having traveled thirty yards, suddenly increasing as a result of the water particles on the grass. My grasp of science is shoddy at best but surely the ball is simply NOT SLOWING DOWN AS QUICKLY AS IT WOULD DO WITH MORE FRICTION PRESENT. Picking up pace off the grass. Jesus H.

I think Al should be banned from doing TV work. I think Motty has long since had his day as well. It leads to this irresistible conclusion: bring back Ron.

2004-08-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

MONEY FO' BLIND

How do blind people use the interweb?

It's a serious question.

Answers on an e-braille to the usual address..

2004-08-18T00:29:00.000-07:00

THE CORONATION STREET FILES

I am being hounded by the cast of Corrie. I can't shake them. It was bad enough being stalked by Cold Feet star John Thompson but at least it was easy to see him coming.

Agent: Mike Baldwin alias Johnny Briggs
Date: Tuesday August 3
Time: 1pm
Location: White Lion Pub, Liverpool Road, Castlefield

I first realised that I was being stalked by the cast of Coronation Street when I noticed cheeky Cockney sparrow Johnny lingering suspiciously outside the boozer glued to his mobile phone. He was pacing up and down while talking on the phone - no doubt informing whoever about my choice of steak sandwich and pint of Stella. Agent Baldwin can't be more than 5 foot 6 and didn't seem to be distracted by a plethora of people double-taking, openly gawping and even pointing in his general direction.

Agent: Peter Baldwin alias Chris Gascoyne
Date: Thursday August 5
Time: 11pm
Location: Pure Space Cafe Bar

They are all there! I just want to get into a late bar for a quiet drink and.. what's this? No entry. Private party. A horde of photographers outside, the north-west paparazzi. The pitch balck sky is illuminated by the spark of SLR activity as Agent Baldwin swaggers through.

Peter Barlow:(smooth) 'Evening lads'

What a star. Big Man Rock Star.

But why is he following me? Who is paying him?

Agent: Sarah Louise Platt and Jason Grimshaw alias Tina O'Brien and Ryan Thomas
Date: Sunday August 8
Time: 2pm
Location: Sainsbury, Regent Road, Salford

Eek! They have sent a double team. Check trolley for suspicious items - will my midi cucumber arouse suspicion..? What do they want with me?

She is beautiful and tiny, like a china doll in cork heels. Then she spoils it a bit by letting out a proper wolf whistle and screeching at her boyf who is looking proper bo-scally in his vest and cap. He too is very small. I'm beginning to think the corrie cast are an assortment of bohemian midgets.

Agent: Todd Grimshaw alias Bruno Langley
Date: Saturday August 14
Time: 2pm
Location: Bottom of Deansgate

A week's respite and then bam! Another one. They've sent Jason's brother this time. Black jacket, jeans, baseball cap but this canny disguise ain't fooling me. They know I'm headed to the gym. I check the treadmill for concealed bombs but find nothing. I only drink branded water and ensure my locker is padlocked at all times.

Agents: Steve MacDonald, Tyrone Dobbs, Ashley Peacock alias Simon Gregson, Alan Halsall, Steven Arnold
Date: Last night/This morning
Time: 1am
Location: Deansgate, opposite 42nd Street

A crack squad. I run like a maniac in front of two cars and escape just. I see them walking down Quay Street. They are talking about me.

What does it all mean? How long until they put Roy and Hayley on my ass?

2004-08-17T06:18:00.000-07:00

THE PROBLEM IS THAT THERE IS NO PROBLEM (THE REMIX)

A problem has to originate from somewhere. There is no finality in life, only in death and it is apparent that as one problem is solved there must be a new problem to address and if you think for long enough you are sure to find it. The problem can emerge from its own lack of existence.

Just the other day I found myself thinking about thinking about thinking about things too much. No, that isn’t a typo – it is a welcome to procrastination central.

I think about things too much. Many people have said it to me. I can’t just put on the blinkers and perform the task in hand. I can’t just DO. I need to think for ages about it first and then and only then is there a chance that I will DO (Though I will probably think about it for a while longer first).

So what does this mean: I am naturally prone to bouts of illogical stress. Most of the time my chest is as tight as a drum skin and a full lungful of air is nothing but a pipe dream.

Example, I notice that I have bought too much bread and I realise that I won’t be able to eat all of it. Ridiculous stress ensues. Deep breaths. Count to ten. THE BREAD IS GOING MOULDY! IT COST ABOUT 23p! Wandering around the supermarket my head will be spinning, trying to work out the exact number of meals I am buying for. Yet, just hours ago I was quite happily blowing £60 on four gig tickets despite not knowing who will take them off me. Or reflecting on the £200 I blew in the casino on blackjack while I was drunk on Saturday night.

The two patterns of behaviour don’t reconcile.

I fret for five minutes in the sandwich shop over whether I should buy a packet of crisps for lunch:

Voice in head 1: "Do it, they taste nice"
Voice in head 2: "No think of the gym, the regime, the weight gain"
Voice in head 1: "Worcestershire Sauce…Mmmm"
Voice in head 2: "Sugars, E no’s, fat, bad"
Voice in head 3: "Get a move on you’re holding up the queue"
Voice in head 1: "Who asked you?"
Voice in head 3: "I’m just saying.."
Voice in head 2: "Yes too late, lets go"
Voice in head 3: "No, I didn’t mean.."
Voice in head 1: "Buy the mother fucking crisps. Look Sweet Thai Chilli’
Voice in head 2: "No. Don’t do it"
Voice in head 1: "Do it"
Voice in head 3: "Erm.. we are getting funny looks"

It is just a packet of crisps, for god’s sake.

So, I think about whether I think about things too much. I try to procrastinate less, to live in the moment. But it is hard to change behavioural patterns that are deeply ingrained. And so I think about whether I can stop thinking about things too much.

It was the other night that I caught myself thinking about the fact that I have wasted time thinking about thinking about things too much.

Enough, already.

I think most people that start a blog are a bit like this. In fact, the very reason that their blog didn’t start sooner was because they were thinking about starting a blog. Or thinking about thinking about starting a blog.

Is there any solution? The only one I have found is that eventually the worry, stress and procrastination levels max out and one of two things happen. Either a) your head implodes and you collapse from nervous exhaustion (and an imploded head) or b) you realise that nothing matters and the problems magically vanish.

When b) happens it is like a tropical storm clearing the stickiness of the heat. You feel like you are cheating at the game of life (no not the boardgame, Robert before you start..). Where as the night before buying the requisite numbers of potatoes and carrots had almost sent you under now it is easy. Look I can buy 10 carrots and throw them in the bin – it doesn’t matter! I can thrust the carrot up the bottom of a passing woman. Yes, I will receive a jail sentence – but does it matter. Really? In the grand scheme of things? No, of course not.

I don’t want to be facetious (especially when retracting the carrot from said woman’s buttocks, that would be unwelcome) but our concerns are daft, trifling and inconsequential - just like us.

But like the tropical climate after a storm, the air soon starts to heat up again. The stress levels rise, the procrastination builds as the emotional boom and bust economy to which I am aligned rumbles on. I want out but there is seemingly little I can do. Is it a genetic disposition? Well, I never used to be such a moody cunt. Or is it a response to a boring job? Or perhaps the intrinsic design flaw of being the product of an aspirational generation of never-satisfieds whose desire for greener grass and greener dollars is rooted in the lack of any kind of struggle faced in their lifetime…

I accept that I will probably never be happy (if I knew how to I would rule through the word ‘happy’ at this point and replace it with ‘content’). We just aren’t programmed to be content. But when we aren’t programmed to be ambitious either, this seesaw between happy and sad, up and down is seemingly interminable.

So, end it all now? Of course not. When you realise that nothing matters, when you REALLY realise that nothing matters, life goes from seeming impossible to being suddenly infinitely possible.

2004-08-17T01:10:00.000-07:00

OLD MACALPINE HAD A (GAL)PHARM EE AYE EE AYE OH

Drove through a flash flood on my way back to the newly christened Galpharm last night. In fact I am going to be (maybe) the first person to call it the Farm from now on. The spray flying up and the size and ferocity of the raindrops almost looked computer generated. So I found myself slewing round the round like I was driving in Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge. I soon tired of this when I nearly lost the back end when braking rather too sharply in the fast lane. Silly.

To the match, then. A loss and a disappointing display in the sense that Hartlepool outclassed us. However some amusing terrace wit:

Firstly, on the messageboard before the game. Dan Eggen, a Bradford fan, regularly infiltrates and I have to admit he makes me laugh. In response to a Town fan describing a timeline of the day in prospect, y'know:

6pm Pub. Drink, drink, drink.
6.45pm A different pub. Drink, drink
8pm-9.45pm Watch the lads dick all over Hartlepool
10pm Pub, drink, etc

He posted this:

8.00-6.00 'Work'
7.00 Get home
8.00 Switch Down vs. Hartlepool on
8.02 Make 'wanker' sign at Jackson, laugh at Boothy's face.
8.05 Forced to watch changing rooms or something instead.
9.45 Catch last two minutes, IF hartlepool win allow self small chuckle and repeat hand sign at Jackson IF Down win swear at Telly and turn over to something else.

I love this for several reasons. The main one being the way that certain football fans take more delight in baiting the opposition and celebrating the opposition's woes, than they do in celebrating the success of their own team. I'm not really that way inclined for whatever reason. (I shouldn't admit it but I was chuffed the year Sadford stayed in the Prem on the last day vs Liverpool and enjoyed Leeds under O'Leary.) In some ways I wish I was that well tuned in to the
schadenfreude.

But I also love the way that this guy just accepts his lot. Purely from the inverted commas around the word 'work' I deduce that Dan doesn't have a great love for his job or aspirations of a career. From here he moves to the sofa and is similarly resigned to his missus force feeding him some reality TV that he doesn't want to watch.

His solitary pleasure is waving a rude hand gesture at an image of our manager on the telly, oh and of course laughing at Boothy's face, which I admit is behaviour that even Boothy's wife is probably prone to lapse into on occasion.

Just recently I have worried about my descent/(ascent?) into yuppiedom. Allied with my singledom it makes me feel that my existence has something of an emptiness lying at its core. Is my aversion to conventional behaviour, to house-buying, to domesticity, to 'settling down' a childish whim? Who/what/why am I doing all this for? Doing all this representing existing/being.

Much as I laughed at Dan's comments, it is a reminder that I probably would be even less happy shacked up with a couch potato 'missus', watching crap telly all the time. So I'll just keep on keeping on.

On to the match. The blokes behind me are a constant source of irritation most of the time; repetitive catchphrase humour.

Bloke behind me: 'Use your pace Boothy. Huh huh huh.'

Yes, mate. He is slow. Weddone, great observation but do you need to make it EVERY FUCKING WEEK?

Anyway, they were on better form last night.

Ball is delivered long down the channel, our young centre back Dave Mirfin aka 'The Ox' heads it clear. The referee somewhat dubiously calls it a foul.

Bloke Behind Me: (naturally loud voice) 'RUBBISH... in fact no...'

(slight pause)

BBM: (unnaturally loud voice) 'BOLLOCKS!!'

(another slight pause)

BBM: 'I revised my opinion.'

A few minutes later the Hartlepool manager wandered to the edge of the technical area and started having a go at something, arms frantically windmilling. He looks a bit like darts player Keith Monk, or at a push a nightclub bouncer with his sharp suit, shiny pate and intrinsic hardness.

BBM(pointing at the hard looking manager): 'Hey look - keeper's on't halfway.'

I turned to look at their keeper who was indeed the spit of the manager. Very good but only the assist for the killer finish...

Different bloke: 'At least they've got a keeper. We've got ballboy in't net'

Our keeper Phil Senior is about 3 foot 6. D'yer see what he's done there?

2004-08-15T04:35:00.000-07:00

KENNY JACKETT

The fresh breeze smacking me full in the face was just what the doctor would have ordered had he been aboard the rollercoaster ferry bound for Riga from Stockholm. The morning light signalled the end of a turbulent evening in which I had been horrendously travel sick and regressed to my six-year old self. The industrial backdrop of cranes, ports and all manner of shipping related materials a welcome sight as I am a landlubber with sea legs made of glutinous jelly.

It had all started so promisingly. As we bounded aboard the much-vaunted fun time ferry and located our cabin, I genuinely felt a naïve kind of excitement about the impending voyage. It was perhaps the intoxicating effect of these high spirits that led to the wearing of Kenny’s jacket.

Dr T had spied a jacket on the bottom bunk. Our cabin was a four-berth and our numbers had been cut to three following the AV guy’s trip to Hong Kong. Despite this knowledge the assumption made was that a previous passenger had left the jacket. In an instant the nasty, royal blue Eastern European jacket was mine. Finder keepers. Is possession still 9/10ths of the law at sea?

With the jacket matching my blue jeans I had a full denim suit on (not dissimilar to the look favoured by a certain rugby fan for many a month). Further treats were in store. Shades were in the left top pocket; tastefully tasteless with large rims and a poo-brown colouring. Fags in the top right pocket. I have never smoked a cigarette in my life but I am more than happy to put one between my teeth in a ‘Hannibal from the A-team pose’ for a photograph.

So, yeah, here I was cigarette between teeth, shades and jacket on, posing in front of the mirror while posturing as a Latvian townie. (n.b the key to a good townie impression is in the teeth. Stick the teeth out, just the head back and constantly look quizzically and doubtingly at the person you are addressing. Clipped yet deliberate speech must be addressed. Never look or act surprised. You are the townie. You are one step ahead, like.)

It was King Rollo, who having previously been busy scrabbling around for his camera, suggested that perhaps the jacket belonged to someone who was sharing with us.

King: ‘Only three keys here, lads. How would they have known that there were only three of us?’

Shit. An instant rush to remove jacket; a desperation to recall to which pocket the shades and fags belong. A sinking feeling that we would be sharing a small cabin with an unknown man. A smoker, with appalling taste in jackets and sunglasses. That was all we had to work on. Oh, and that he was sharing with three Englishman with a penchant for dressing up in other men’s clothes. Oops.

Kenny as he quickly became known (in homage to 1980’s Watford footballer Kenny Jackett) was alive and well and living on this boat. We sidled out into the corridor and moved into the bar. The aim of the game was simple. We had to identify Kenny.

A sweaty, fat, bald drunk staggered by, a blue denim shirt opened to reveal a stained white vest. His hands were large and pudgy; each finger a fat, pork sausage.

Me: ‘If that’s Kenny, I’m sleeping in the bar’

Dr T: ‘Nah, that’s not Kenny’

I remained unconvinced. I saw the hulking figure banging on a cabin door an hour or so later but still had a nightmare vision of him being our houseguest.

After a quick beer in the bar area we began to search out the options for food. The fast food looked particularly poor and I think it was on my suggestion that we wandered into to the ‘A La Carte’ restaurant. Early portents of doom were there. As I left the bar I remember my stomach lurching, this mirroring the increasing tendency of the vessel, as we moved into the open sea.

We were somewhat underdressed for a proper restaurant and certainly more casual than the other patrons. I almost clattered in to a table as the choppiness of the sea continued an upward trend. I was nauseous by this stage, saliva spraying into my mouth though I chose to ignore the warning, convincing myself that it was acute hunger pains. I just needed the bread basket to arrive. The bread basket duly arrived; I departed. A staggering, leaning hurried exit across the moving floor followed by a mad dash for the toilets.

Me: ‘Hewwwwwwwwwwvvvvvvvvveeeee’

Sick everywhere.
I sheepishly returned to the table.

Me: ‘I’ve been sick. Did you order me the Greek salad?’

As the starters arrived, I was feeling much recovered and looking forward to my meal. The Greek salad had indeed been ordered and the King and I tucked into our salads whilst Dr T suspiciously eyed his cheese dish. A look of ponderous resignation in his eyes as he picked up a cocktail stick that skewered a grape, a strawberry and a hunk of soft cheese.

Dr T: (a visible film of sweat on his forhead) ‘I can’t eat this. I feel sick.’

Dr T takes the same route that I had just taken. In the five minutes that he is gone, I haven’t stopped laughing. I am such a cunt.

On his return Dr T still isn’t feeling the best. I am now paying for my laughter. Rushing past the startled waiter and again nearly clearing a neighbouring table of its accoutrements I already have a full mouthful of sick in my hamster cheeks.

The Greek salad in the toilet pan looks just as it did on the plate. I feel worse.

The waiter is serving the main courses. King Rollo’s salmon arrives. I exit. The disgruntled, rather feminine waiter sighs as we try to explain in our best Latvian that doggy bags will be required. Rollo serenely eats his meal while T and I return to the cabin. T is sick again. He doesn’t much fancy his plate of Pork Puff. His sick noises make me feel sicker. The cabin is full of his sick smell. I can’t move. If I move I will be sick. I don’t move for about 3 hours in which I feel like I am going to be sick.

Kenny entered the room at some point and lay on his bunk below mine. T is sick again and I hear him apologising to Kenny for the.. sick. I get up and am sick again. The boat is rocking back and forth like the Pirate Ship in a theme park. I have no escape from my own body. All my body can offer me is bile but my mind still shouts ‘Sick’ at me. I am fevered and my sheets are warm and wet. I fear for our lives. The boat is going to crash. Something is wrong. The boat is going to crash. The boat is going to crash. The boat…

****

It is morning. I’m hungry. Kenny has gone and taken his jacket with him this time. I reach down and notice Dr T’s Pork Puff. He still doesn’t want it. We are alive. I laugh.

2004-08-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

SPAM FILTER

YNMUMLS

If you cannot see the word, Click here to listen to it.

Fuck me, I don't think I could say that word let alone listen to it.

Random as a Roger.

2004-08-13T06:07:00.000-07:00

THE PROBLEM IS…

there is no problem.
The problem is there is no problem the problem is there is no problem the problem is there is no problem the problem is there is no problem THE problem IS there IS no problem the PROBLEM IS there is no problem.

problemproblemproblem

solvedsolvedsolved

2004-08-12T05:25:00.000-07:00

CUMABUNDANCE

Jo Brand giving genial Irishman and former Catchphrase presenter Roy Walker a titwank.

It's good, but it's not right.

2004-08-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

OSP ROUND-UP

Do you remember News In Brief on Ceefax page 312?

Y'know:

Spurs are being linked with an audacious move to bring former Gladiator's champion and trainer Eunice Hutheart to North London. Hutheart has just completed a three month loan spell at St Mirren and would welcome the step up from Third Division York City.

Rushden & Diamonds veteran Trevor Ehiogu, 33, has completed a free transfer move to Stone Dominoes

West Brom manager Gordon Burns has hit out at referee Floella Benjamin for her decision to send off striker Bob Goalscorer in the derby match with local rivals Wolves. Burns said 'She's a fucking disgrace, the blind bitch.'

Well... anyway. Here is a similar thematic for the osp over the last month

Medusa has completed a permanent signing to the osp following a successful trial. Medusa was initially a good laugh but has become increasingly annoying since the move. heonlylivestwice is regretting the schoolboy error of mentioning the blog to her during her loan spell thinking that she was fucking off back to Ireland. No such luck.

Data entry clerk Moonface is heavily getting on heonlylivestwice's rather ample man tits. 'Why won't birds with minging feet steer clear of flip flops' pondered heonlylivestwice 'Plus she is an annoying, humourless drain on my day and insists on talking to the Girl Who Sits Opposite for far too long.'

Macdonald is increasingly figuring as the osp's main source of eye candy. Size of chebs previously noted but she also has a great dash too. A winning combination that is sure to attract attention from a number of clubs when she goes on a Bosman in the summer.

German international Von Smallhausen continues to boss midfield with ruthless efficiency and attention to detail. His little and large combination with the powerhouse WHITCOMBE, is sure to reap rewards in the 04/05 season.

The Bird From Accounts Who Fancies Me is going to India for a few weeks. She is holding a buffet lunch farewell tomorrow. I have been invited but haven't yet committed. I probably should do as she is quite nice. At least a 6 on the Widdicks (tm) scale.

2004-08-10T05:01:00.000-07:00

BILBO

The misery of two weeks hard work has been too much to take. Perhaps it is because I haven't had to pull my finger out of my ass in 6 months that the business plan for Marketing is causing untold headaches. Perhaps it is that or no... maybe not. Maybe it is the sheer incompetence of BILBO, the man charged with the responsibility of acquiring new customers.

Before I begin to make the usual range of sweeping generalisations about marketeers I think I should preface this by saying that, yes, some of that lot are ok. My knowledge of marketing people is based on being exposed to the osp's department over the last 20 months (TWO OH T-W-E-N-T-Y OMG).

A septic has just taken charge of the Marketing team and also has assumed P/L responsibility too. She is clearly competent, rather scary but also with a slightly vulnerable side that I haven't often witnessed in over-achieving, power crazed US she-devils. I like but she doesn't have an osp name yet.

Next in command is a likeable fella by the name of COOL. COOL is a Tranmere fan and so the bond of lower division football ensures a camaraderie between the two of us. This thankfully overcomes the fact he thinks I'm a smart-alec cunt. (It's a fair cop guv). COOL is a very nice bloke but cool he ain't. This fact is accentuated by liberal smatterings of the word 'cool' dropped into his sentences. Similarly see use of the words 'bud' and 'man'. At first it made me wince but now it makes me smile and is a constant reminder to me to never use the word 'cool', 'bud' or 'man' while I am wearing a suit and discussing finance.

Now we hit a problem. Other than high-powered Aussie bird who has just started and a genial welshman named Jones, we have reached the end of the competent marketeers. The remainder of the department is a homogenous mess of mancunian layman and dimwitted birds who struggle to differentiate betwixt their arse and their elbow. The levels of stupidity at times defy belief and I am forced to Airplane style ask someone to pinch me to ensure I've not just sleep-walked into an asylum of the grossly retarded.

BILBO is the very model of modern major marketeer. He talks the talk and spins the spin quite beautifully. His public school education has grounded him well in the art of the specious deflection and gross delegation of duty. I doth protest for he knows not what he is on about, squire.

Appearance-wise he has something of the middle-earth about him. Also something gnomic - I have a mental image of him perched on the edge of a pond with a fishing rod. BILBO likes to tell me that he has some directional information, that the 'Gold copy' is in progress. He doesn't MENTION things he REFERENCES them. He asks me to sense check his documents.

BILBO: 'Can you sense check this deck for me, heonlylivestwice?'

heonlylivestwice: 'Yes - I can confirm that there is no sense in there whatsoever, BILBO. Next.'

He changes his numbers daily and saves over the old copies. He lies but in such a way that the lie is just a half-truth with a glossy undercoat of bullshit to put the dogs off the scent. He refuses to talk to his team and so they talk to me. At me. They always talk at me and I don't understand the language but I think it's the ancient dialect of bollocks.

He is an imbecile. I wish he would bugger off and leave me in peace. Or do his job properly. On second thoughts, that would be enough.

2004-08-09T06:04:00.000-07:00

BAD MOOD BURGERS

Following a lunch hour spent queuing in the DVLA local office with a bunch of smelly scrotes my mood is very far from fucking ok. And all to spend £139 on car tax. GOOD.

Travel stories to come including the Kenny Jackett saga. For now go here for the latest installment of I Love The 90’s.

2004-08-06T03:59:00.000-07:00

BLOG ROCKIN BEATS

Finally a mate has started a blog: http://www.20six.co.uk/marshall

I'm sure it will be worth a read.

That will be all. Move along now.

2004-08-06T03:10:00.000-07:00

BREAKING DISTANCE

How far do you go?

You are on a crowded tram, the boundaries of personal space are restricted to the inside of your own body. You now know that the man next to you devoured a curry (Lamb Pasanda) last night and washed it down with two pints of Cobra, and that the woman under your left armpit wears too much perfume. You are closer to these people than you have been to your girlfriend for the past week.

Young, nubile blonde jumps on board and squeezes through two bodies and into your world, her breath resting on your cheek. She grips the pole for balance, her hand above your hand and flashes an instant smile; flirtatious yet non-committal. All of a sudden the pole is your cock and you marvel at her long, manicured nails that grasp it. A jolt in the track and you feel a brush of her pert yet ample breasts, separated and accentuated by the leather strap of her purse. She tastes her lip gloss with a furtive tongue and smells like a four poster bed. You really want to fuck her now and are concious that you are inadvertently trying to burst through your trousers.

* * * * *

I leave the tram a stop early. I can’t take it anymore. I walk the remaining distance to work and arrive late, a cacophony of guitar noise fuzzing through my headphones. A million thoughts cycling my mind; they always run away when I’m scared.

2004-08-03T05:29:00.000-07:00

LOG

Ah, the mystery of the floater.

Trap 3. 1.17p.m. Access denied. Reason: Floater.

How do they float, what gives them their buoyancy? Do they take their 10 metre badge as they push out of the poo pipe?

Still no words written. The severity of today’s post birthday hangover is surprisingly slight. So I will write 2NITE.

Still chuckling to myself about the behaviour of the enraged lunatic stood outside the restaurant last night. He busied himself by dismantling a series of roadworks, culminating in hurling a metal sheet at the revolving doors. Very very scary man but also very laughable once the restaurant doors had been locked.

Out until 2.30a.m on a Monday. This musn’t become habitual.

2004-08-02T05:57:00.000-07:00

TWENTY SEVEN

Today is my birthday.

Some facts:

I received two cards. One from my mum and one from my gran
My gran's was better as it had 5 crisp tenners in it.
I am twenty seven. I think that means that I have left my mid-twenties behind.
I received one birthday cake and one rendition of Happy Birthday. (Thank you to Claire and also the backing chorus)
I am now older than my dad was when he got married.
I share a birthday with Ronan Keating (I think) and the philosophy that life is indeed a rollercoaster and you 'just have to ride it'.

Some opinions:

I don't know what being 27 feels like. I am now detached from my age, beyond my natural age and generally bewildered by the whole concept of age. I don't need the label, I'll just use what's in my name, thank you very much.
I look a bit younger than my age I think. I reckon I could still pass for 21 or 22. This looking young thing is certainly more advantageous now than it was as a 17 year old who looked 12.
I am expected to buy everybody else in the osp cakes because it is my birthday. How odd.
I have lots of work to do and have to stop writing now.

I conclude that birthdays just don't have the same clout that they used to have...

To follow this week:

Some more travel stories twisted into weird passages of nonsense

AND

A track-by-track guide to the Embrace album. Fuck me sidewards with a hobby horse, if its not the best thing they have ever done by a mile.

2004-07-30T06:02:00.000-07:00

DEAR CATASTROPHE WAITRESS, VILNIUS

It’s in a haze of drunken afterthought that my best ideas are formulated. It is this huge, ebbing low of shivers, sweats and headpain that drives the subconcious to the fore and takes your mind to places that it has always wanted to visit but never dared. That the suffering necessary for your higher thoughts exists within the hangover is a mixed blessing as you can’t focus or be logical but you can suddenly realise the absurdity of the human condition, for example. It is only from these swooping lows that the relative highs can be achieved in my life; but that the low is a mere prelude to the reality of hard work has been enough to send me under until now. The low isn’t enough to achieve the high. The low is significant but more significant still is the graft. That graft x inspiration = satisfaction.

The Vilnius cathedral and square is a vast expanse of white space. It is a major city and yet there is so much space here. So much vantage. Points to watch people, or to wander between and around people. It is easier to breathe here than in London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham. Big lungfuls of air pour into my lungs, with the iron weights of stress and discontentment lifted off my chest.

The boys kick the football and ride on skateboards, while the girls amble in pairs, arm-in-arm. These beautiful girls with their slender bodies have a natural ease; a sense of fun, enjoyment and contentment that simply radiates. They don’t have much and that is clear. The curator of a local museum confided that he earns 700 litas per month, that is £140 pounds. A month. Lord knows what they are paying the waitresses who giggle and smile and serve us our food. They window-shop and natter in their inpenetrable tongue, never once do you feel they complain.

It is only a decade or so since the Soviet Union collapsed and freed the Lithuanians. So much must have changed since then and the city already has a western feel; the people have an eye on the west but we are an oddity in this city. Four English men who still think that they are boys.

Awaking from a night of depravity I can’t lie still without pain. The worst hangover of the two weeks unquestionably and one that would have to be borne and suffered for the remainder of the day. King and T are elsewhere as Bosscat and I roam the main street searching for Avalis, the microbrewery of much renown. I confuse passers-by with touchline football gestures. My half closed eyes see that I hold out the back of one hand and draw the back of the other hand closer. "Tighter, Barnesy. Get tighter.’ I am always a weirdo, but when I am hungover I have a form of Tourettes. Please ignore me when I am like this, I am just glaze-eyed, harmless and excitable.

Avalis has gone for now, invisible to our faulty eyes so we go to Svenska. She serves us beer and cider and something green and rum-based. We peck at steak and chicken and salad. She stands awkwardly, with a sheepish gait, on the fringe of our discussion. She grasps words as nettles and laughs as our faces contort. Her friend forgot to lay the table for us the night before and this is hilarious to her. This dreadful level of service as she sees it, makes her cover her face in mock shame.

"Perhaps if not for the knifes we might never have met:)" she might later write.

Looking at the cathedral and across the square and back at her, I feel my brain bulging out of my skull. The dehydration can only be reversed over a long period. Bosscat smokes too much but he wouldn’t be himself without a cigarette. No-one I have ever encountered has the disarming charisma of BC. I shall stop as I don’t want to blow the cigarette smoke up his ass.

Looking at the cathedral and across the square and back at her again; it was at this point that the big invisible lightbulb went ‘Ting!’ and I worked out what I needed to do. And suddenly the spectre of work fell away. And the sun came out.

2004-07-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE: FILMED

VISUALISE

VISUALISE

Visualise punching someone full in the face. A random stranger walking down the street, passing you by and

POW! WHAM! WEBWEBWEB!

Webbage. You web the fucker full in the face. You strike him down with all your might and his defenceless, brittle cheekbone crumbles against your clenched knuckles. Silent assassin scarpers leaving the scene of the accident and blends into modern city life, leaving a stunned, bruised adult male gasping and clawing. For some kind of justice.

The silent assassin.

His mates are sat nearby in a roadside café, drinking beer and filming the event. Filming the brutality – is this crueler than the act itself?

Fast forward to an hour from then, in a dark kellar of smoke and hops. Re-united, the group, the silent assassin has cloth round his fragile, triumphant hand and the others pore over the videotape with gleeful expressions and much high-fivage. You’ve been framed. You’ve been fucked over. It’s the jackass fist without the velvet glove. It’s raw. It’s not credit card theft or petty theft (where have all the cat burglars gone? where are their calling cards? where is the nobility in the artform and the honour amongst thieves?) or a speeding fine or a restraining order. Its fucking GBH with intent with self-created evidence. It’s a big FUCK YOU to society.

You can do whatever you want in this anthill existence. Who is the arbiter of ants? Only the AntGod can judge ants yet I don’t think he will. Pause. Stop. Rewind. Play. Fast Forward. Impact. Laugh. Rewind. Fast forward. Play. Impact. Pause. Rewind. Play. Laugh.

He has health insurance. And a scar. And a story to tell. And a wake up call. You’re on an anthill. Shit can hit.

2004-07-29T06:11:00.000-07:00

REMEMBER THE OSP?

In the first of series of retrospectives, I recall the posts from the OSP that weren’t completely shit. (New material forthcoming but for now this’ll have to bloody well do…)

#1: MOVING THE GAOLPOSTS: Re-writing the corporate phrasebook

When one door opens the other slammer's shut

Authority often leads to a gross delegation of duties

The when-when situation: When I spend company money on lap dancers it is ok, when you send an unsolicited email you are behaving unprofessionally and I can still take the moral high ground when I discipline you, you smelly little oik.

Climbing the greasy pole is out: sexual discrimination. (Like, Don't you even watch Ally McBeal? Hey...its.. its finished?? Yeah, yeah I thought it was shit too. I so didn't like it. I meant Sex and the City. I said Sex and the City.)

The annual bonus here is called the year end kicker. The year end kicker in the teeth.

To earn your stripes you must think outside the box. If you are successful then in years to come you will become a lot richer and mysteriously able to slink inside the box, trade up and divorce your wife. 'We just don't communicate any more. Cindy and I have so-oo much in common. I'm buying her some tits for Christmas'

Going forward is only possible having spent an afternoon going round in circles in meeting rooms eating miniature pork-pies.

In Corporate Street Jive, 'logging off' is the hip way to take a dump. That's one for when you're riffing with the new set of grads, Partner X. 'Hey kids, I just logged off. All gone - one flush. I'm one mother frickin' ho shagging mofe. Let's go to All Bar One and get blotto... er, I mean wasted, smashed yeah. Thats what you say isnt it? I knew that.

'This is an equal opportunity employer. Lunch hours are prone to downsizing too.'

Do rocket scientists have a well-hackneyed phrase to explain to each other that something is easy? When the situation is normal in the sphere of Rocket Science and, obviously, a task is extremely difficult the following conversation usually ensues:

Rocket Scientist A: 'Blimey, come on Rocket Scientist B, you are going have to concentrate, this isn't an office job you know. Ho-ho.

'Rocket Scientist B: 'Oh fuck off Rocket Scientist A you fucking cunt and pass me the spanner.'

2004-07-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

STOP… CARRY ON

I have so much to write about but the presence of BALD at my desk for much of the day is hindering progress. My frustration at this needless layer of authority inserted over my head (why didn’t they just give me some work to do in the first place?) is nothing compared to my stunted urge to talk about Eastern Europe. And I don’t mean:

‘On Wednesday I got really drunk and felt someone’s boobs and on Thursday I saw the Reichstag and on…’

I mean that I really am viewing everything differently, including the very concept of an osp and what it means. I feel differently to how I felt after two weeks in South America in February. That trip was pure escapism and appropriately with it came the escapist osp blog.

This latest trip was defined by its realism and on my return to Manchester I suddenly possess the kind of clear perspective and emotional 20-20 that I have yo-yoed above and below since I started work five years ago. (FIVE FUCKING YEARS. I will be 83 next week at this rate.) I have to add that as well as being defined by its realism, the holiday was one long stomach-aching laugh and the soul-searching bits just filtered through my subconcious… no group therapy here, just piss-take and observation and drunken moments of clarity.

More as and when. Just blame it on the BALDie.

2004-07-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

PAIN IN THE DECK

Today I have mostly been listening to septics use the noun ‘deck’ due to it being budget time here in the osp. A page full of figures = a deck.

The last time I heard this word oft repeated was at school was as a verb.

"Come here and I’ll fu(king deck yer..."

Thus far in my corporate life this is the only commonality I have discovered between Sandbachian scrubsmiths and high-powered, corporate American businesswomen. Well, that and a tendency toward bullying.

2004-07-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

P.O.W CAMP DAY TRADER ON A RANCID TROLLEY BUS. I NEED AN ANIMA.

Black suit matches my funereal mood.

Ah, my colleagues. Warmth of the clammy kind. Like kissing your grandmother's well worn lip - a thankless task. Hello, old buddies. I went here and there and everywhere and now I'm here again.

"Listen carefully for I shall say this only vonce"

"It wasn't me - it was the one-armed man"

Numbers are like raindrops, keep falling through my head. I have no memory, just this sieve. All I want is another baby.

Waiting is over and the walls are smaller. Whyiseveryonehere? Why are lasers shooting out of their eyes into their monitors. It's not their monitor. It's Wernam Hogg's. Ha!

Peel off my eyelids
Spoon feed me with work
Placate me with chocolate
Just like chocolate balls

Fuck me over
For you might as well know
That my living hell isn't hell isn't hell
Because heaven doesn't exist
And relativity brings together extremes
And catharsis doesn't work it just digs you deeper.

Where is my mind?
Bring me my mind
The one baking in an oven
Oven baked ready brain

I'm back and I have space to fill. I just need the time.

2004-07-12T07:46:00.000-07:00

DO YOU HEAR MY HEART BEATING? CAN YOU HEAR THAT SOUND?

I am in Riga, listening to this. Go listen to this immediately. It is grandiose yet beautiful and shimmering and lovely and warm. Like a soundtrack, the filmic feel that they have strived for. I think other songs will have more DEPTH but this strides along; it's so bold and self-assured. It is making me close my eyes and sway my head from side to side and drift into my subconcious. It starts at Fireworks and ends around Satellites.

Yeah

Anyway

Go listen, I'll see you later...

2004-07-08T12:03:00.000-07:00

SIGNING OFF

Two weeks out of the osp... hurrah!

Next stop Stockholm, then Riga, then Palanga, then Vilnius, then Gdansk, then Berlin, then.... back to the osp.

I always cry at endings.

2004-07-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

SCATMAN

Things are looking up would you believe. No more miserablism here as BALD and I are seemingly best buddies. Yes, technically he is my boss but in effect I don’t take no shit from nobody…

I’ve not talked much before about the Scatman. This is strange on account of him being one of the most colourful and caricaturable people in the osp but I suppose there are two major reasons that I’ve avoided the topic.

Number 1. The Scatman name is due to his stammer. I am a touch embarrassed to admit that but I feel duty bound to be honest and up front with you, the loyal readership.

Number 2. He hasn’t been around much of late for various reasons. But he was back with a bang at the work do on Friday, I can tell you.

So, I feel it is time for me to give you a look into the *ahem* Scatman’s World.

The Scatman is in his early thirties, single and is on the sniff 24/7. He is the antithesis of Sade’s ‘Smooth Operator’ looking, as he does, like the archetypal ogre figure from illustrated children’s literature. He marauds around the office like the proverbial dog on heat, on the look out for scandal, gossip and banter. Despite his stammer and the way it naturally impedes upon conversation, he is garrulous - unafraid to launch into gags and anecdotal oddity. He is certainly bracketed within the Colin Hunt office loon character – a little bit wooh, a little waay. Clearly, and perhaps this is not his fault, his comic timing sucks. Even if he was stammer free his banter would be atrocious. I think you need hard evidence:

To: The Department
From: SCATMAN
Subject: pointless survey for no reason

a quick survey - which is the worse Revel !!!! (Count those exclamation marks. I’m a big believer in excessive exclamation being an indicator of bad e-jokes) please vote

Coffeecreams get my vote

Some voting buttons were attached and we got a round-up of the results about an hour later. What a cock. Rubbish rubbish rubbish punctuation and grammar to add to the utterly inane inquiry. This really is the thin end of the wedge as well. The thick end of the wedge is aka his enormous beer gut, a truly beautiful thing, which was on show at the work do. Two lower shirt buttons under massive strain, Scatman leaning back against the door frame, leering unashamedly at anything with two legs, was addressed by the German thus:

German: (drunk and therefore exactly like normal (think David from Cold Feet) but about a million decibels louder) “Jesus, Scatman you fat bar steward, I almost tripped over that gut.”

Barder and I laughed raucously, the Scatman looked at the German but clearly failing to register the comment began dancing/swaying with his arms waving in the air, moronic grin from ear to ear. The Girl Who Sits Opposite Me was pinned against the wall, sick of her arse being once-overed. Others were hurriedly moving away from the slobbering monster and I can’t say I blamed them. There is a photograph from the work do on the shared drive of the Scatman which captures him perfectly. I only wish I could share it with you.

Ski-bi-dibi-doo ba ba ba da bo ba ba dah-bo
Ski-bi-dibi-doo ba ba ba da bo ba ba dah-bo
He’s the Scatman.

2004-07-06T02:28:00.000-07:00

PRISON TRANSFER: ACCESS DENIED

My position here is becoming increasingly untenable. I suspect strongly that von Smallhausen and Helloo simply don’t know how or where to deploy me. That I am a loose cannon is undeniable but a loose cannon that doesn’t fire is something of an irrelevance. How can I retain my dignity if I am reporting into BALD? Though, in the grand scheme of things this stay of execution doesn’t matter one jot, on a day-to-day basis it is difficult to remain positive with such a shredded self-respect and lack of purpose.

Another jolt to the ego came in the form of an unsuccessful second interview at another faceless company. That the move would have been a disastrous and contradictory action is cold comfort in the face of a rejection. Rejection is a negative no matter how you dress it. With the blocked escape route more prevalent in my thoughts than the denial of a new challenge, it is apparent that I am trying to mug suits down blind alleys.

For today, I am flat and fed up. I felt like crying last night at the hopelessness of it all but I couldn’t remember how to and so watched “Hollyoaks: Late” instead, laughing at the cheap porn gimmicks and constipated dialogue. But the laughter subsided as I crawled to bed knowing that in several hours I would be sat in traffic again on a road to nowhere. This metaphor wraps its hands around my fucking throat, choking me with its irony.

The odd thing is that I feel caught in the middle. I would rather work for an absolute cunt doing impossible tasks for imaginary deadlines with the promise of rapid elevation than this. This stagnation. This virtual life. This world of false connections with people that may as well be animals to me. Whether this is a form of masochism is moot, the other side of this dichotomy being that I would rather live on a shoestring, reading library books and hiding from the world than make these conventional moves. All or nothing because the slow torture of stagnating at this desk and being a mediocre, middleman loser is just too depressing to play out.

2004-07-05T05:42:00.000-07:00

PORTUGESE JACKASS

So Eur’04 was a bit of a damp squib? The best teams underperformed, their stars tired and disinterested perrhaps - international football merely a lower quality form of the game now dominated by the super clubs resident in Serie A, La Liga and the Premiership.

But despite the disappointment of the main event, the saviour arrived in the 86th minute. We had a glimpse of the invader as he rushed toward the centre circle. The camera panned away but Motty was quickly onto his high horse decrying the actions of the evil interloper.

Motty: “There really is no place for this etc etc..”

Thank God Barry Davies wasn’t in the commentary position – he wouldn’t have been able to leave it alone for the rest of the transmission. Anyway, the silver lining of the local footage cloud (the low point surely being missing Maniche’s goal versus Holland because they were replaying YET ANOTHER foul) was that the camera stayed trained on the invader. He was now unraveling his Barca banner, though a quicky shufty to his right revealed that about a million stewards were about to end his five seconds of fame. Or so they thought.

A neat sidestep and he was away, charging for the goal mouth in his beenie hat, having launched a scarf at the craggy-faced Luis Figo. In one of the great unplanned actions of human history, the Spaniard launched himself Jackass-style at the goal net. Johnny Knoxville would surely have had a tear in his eye, had he witnessed this empirical proof of the cultural impact of his show. Gloriously, we were treated to three different slow motion angles of the bloke hitting the Greek net. A couple of thoughts: It must have fucking hurt and as Motty pointed out probably would be the only thing to hit the back of the net for the rest of the game, such was resolute strength of the Greek rearguard.

It took about five minutes and ten stewards to remove the prostrate figure from the playing surface and after giving the net the quick once over (germanic efficiency) Marcus Merk re-started the game and tedium was born again for five final minutes.

Fantastic stuff. My brother and I were able to cut away from the final itself to watch the incident ad infinitum; surely just what Sky+ was designed for. It is certainly up there with:

- The fan man; interrupting a Tyson fight by flying a glider into the ring
- A streaker at the World Snooker Championships. Three pink balls.
- Statto interrupting a Test Match in 1981 to bring Chris Tavare a stool
- Anything done by ‘wacky’ ‘prankster’ Karl Power. Scroty manc, think he is doing bird now.

Any more for any more?

2004-07-01T06:08:00.000-07:00

THE RIBALD TALES OF THE OSP

The end of an era. The OSP had been a release, three months or so of blissful release from tortuous boredom and frustration. It all came to a bizarre and untimely end on Tuesday. Hear how an anonymous prisoner tipped off the warden, how I thought I was going to see my career go up in smoke, how I came face to face with the rat and felt… humbled.

Tuesday 3pm (ish)

*Phone rings*

RHODES (ominously): “heonlylivestwice, can you come to the boardroom please?”

Rhodes used to be my direct line manager until he was summoned to the Super Team. He looks a bit like cheesy celeb chef Gary Rhodes. There was something in his voice that sounded uncomfortable, I could detect that he felt awkward and to me that meant only one thing: redundancy. Or, at the least, some bad job-related news.

RHODES: “I’m not going to beat around the bush. It’s about your website O****e S****d P****n”

Heonlylivestwice: “Oh”

The world fell through my arse. Subconciously, I had been expecting it. I must have been because I wasn’t struck by the numbness of surprise or shock; I was unexpectedly ready to deal with the situation. IT must have alerted Rhodes to it. They would have records of my internet usage, ergo I’m fucked.

RHODES: “Someone has made a complaint about it”

Hmmm… mind racing now. Who? Who? Who?

RHODES: “It’s about the office isn’t it. We really need to talk about it.”

I can barely paraphrase this – it is as if the following few minutes belong to a different dimension entirely.

RHODES: “Someone approached me on Monday about it and so I read it. (smiling) Its very good… Very… well written”

Heonlylivestwice: (bashful and confused) “Errr… thanks”

RHODES: “Some of the times… it would be remiss of me not to mention that some of the times..”

Heonlylivestwice: “It’s the US servers. I only write entries before or after work or at lunch.”

RHODES: “Ok. I will approach the person and perhaps see if you can resolve it between yourselves.”

RHODES wanted to believe me. He also liked the site, agreed with a lot of what was written or at least empathised and…y’know… got it. He really got it.

RHODES “I went on for a cursory look at it and I ended up on there for hours. I understand why you do it. Its just a different forum than the rest of us use”

He pronounced ‘forum’ like an australian says ‘forehead’. Strange emphasis placed on the first syllable to make it sound like ‘foh-rum’. This stuck in my mind and made me smile inside. It seemed to represent how far removed RHODES and, to be fair, most normal people are from bloggage.

I came out of the room in a daze. It seemed clear to me that IT weren’t involved, that RHODES didn’t want to take it any further. Now it was about damage limitation. If SOCKS was the person who had read it, for I still didn’t know who it was, I was very liable to be dead meat.

Of course, I didn’t suspect SOCKS because he wouldn’t have informed RHODES. As I said on the day, I would have already been killed for it, had it been SOCKS, or at least the rat poison would have been in my system by that point.

The chief suspect was LEEDS, though I knew that it could also be BALD or The Girl That I Used To Snog – potentially.

LEEDS was being particularly surly and I made him the short odds favourite. Of course there was a chance that many people had read it. I needed to nip things in the bud, so I began reading about Robots, Caches, Spiders and all manner of technological jargon quite beyond me. In the end I took the Luddite approach. Shifted it all onto word and then hit ‘delete’… its gone now.

Or so I thought, the google search had cached screens of damning evidence and life ruining potential. I recreated the address and now thankfully the salacious detail is out of the public domain.

So to yesterday.

I sneaked out of work at just past nine a.m. to attend an interview at a new prison. I think with all of the stress of the blog-goes-public scenario, the normally stressful interview scenario paled into insignificance. I got offered a second interview there and then. Whether it is a frying pan into the fire move I’m not entirely sure. Certainly on Wednesday morning getting the hell out of dodge seemed a good idea, I think I would have been prepared to go anywhere.

The rest of Wednesday passed as uneventfully as any day in the OSP but with the knowledge that a confrontation of some kind was in the offing.

I was still convinced that it was LEEDS that read it and that scared me. He potentially could be very bitter and twisted about finding out that I had caricatured him as a crashing bore. I say caricatured when ‘accurately portrayed’ is perhaps more apt.

And then…*DAH DAH DAH* the mystery person stepped forward. It wasn’t Old Man Withers and it certainly wasn’t the butler that did it. I’ve actually already told you. (The clue being in the third syllable of the title to this post).

The stomach lurch that I got as I turned to see BALD mouthing the words ‘heonlylivestwice – have you got 5 minutes’ was of cartoon proportions. I trooped over to meeting room 3 for an excruciating discussion about the website and the comments I made about BALD.

Firstly, he told me that he had calmed down about it. That he, too, found the website funny and only became angry when he read the bits about him. He was remarkably good-humoured about the monicker, BALD. What he didn’t take kindly too were the sweeping judgements I had made about him, his relationship and his persona.

I have to say that out of everyone portrayed in the osp and everything written, the one passage that is perhaps COMPLETELY unfair is this one:

Yes, ladies and gents, here we have a man who believes that three years of getting pissed and living in a shitpit justifies the seven year stretch in the corporate labour camp. The crazy memories of road cone theft, loud insular bus conversations, weed smoking (but I didn't inhale) are enough to get him through Shawshank, like his Raquel Welch on the wall (with a distinct lack of any chess pieces in view). He is a bald, boring zealot. He would hate his job if he was capable of an emotion so strong, instead it is a minor irritant - something that hasn't worked out as hoped but he is stuck with, like his fallible follicles.

The student stereotypes I list above aren't chosen without reason because I give cast iron guarantee that he will have indulged in such behaviour. Now he is fond but not in love and this it seems is enough. He will turn down the diminishing opportunities he gets to screw around. Not through loyalty or lack of desire but through fear. I have a lot of respect for those whose monogamy is maintained through love and respect for their partner, I think that these reasons are hugely honourable but surprisingly rare.

BALD isn’t a bad bloke. I think nice but square sums the punter up but of course he could have hidden depths. Even if he doesn’t there isn’t much wrong with being square. The horrible pop psychology and arrogance that I have used in the offending paragraph makes me wince. I don’t know his bird. I don’t really know how he behaved at Uni (and for godsake I was an absolute arsehole for three years at Uni) and I suppose what I was doing was creating a sterotyped, generic person to use as a way of making me feel less insecure.

I tried to explain this to BALD and he was painfully nice about it. I have come to realise that he actually seems to care what I think about him – I don’t really know why but that is the way things are.

The heavily ironic twist in the tale is that, should I stay at the osp, I would possibly be reporting into BALD.

A previous post (of course read by BALD) went thus:

“LEEDS told me that I am going to be in his new team called the 'Grey Area' team and that I will be reporting into BALD. He is full of it but it is still having the desired effect, as the idea of reporting into BALD is enough to drive me to acupuncturing my own eyeballs.”

Hmmm.. I can’t see the ‘Grey Area’ team having a positive group dynamic. Can you?

After several minutes, which felt like eons, we realised that we were talking around a topic that just needed to be buried. American culture seems to have moved so far towards counseling that even in the UK we seem to be under the misguided notion that any problem can be resolved by talking it to death. Well, my life experience suggests the opposite.

A shake of the hand and that was that. I toyed with an email to follow up but sticking to my guns that it would just make the situation worse I thought again.

The lyrics to ‘Enjoy the Silence’ by Depeche Mode are on repeat in my brain:

Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world
Painful to me
Pierce right through me
Can’t you understand
Oh my little girl

All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm

Vows are spoken
To be broken
Feelings are intense
Words are trivial
Pleasures remain
So does the pain
Words are meaningless
And forgettable

All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm

Enjoy the silence

Fucking amen to that Mr Gahan, amen to that.

2004-07-01T01:51:00.000-07:00

ERASE/REWIND

At the moment three months worth of entries are sitting in a word document on my desktop. Seems a shame. I think I will be safe to publish these again, with a touch of editing.

For now though, this poem penned by 'Dark Warrior' appeared in my comments page and rather unfortunately wasn't available to read for very long, so here it is again:

Escape the OSP

Fly from the physical,
construct the electronic manifest
product of incarcerated thoughts.
Chains change, provide the key:
Be free

What of The Prying Fan?
Seething.
Boiled you back, ulcerated, surprised you...
Choosing to tread long mortared water
wet pyjamas on the skin didn’t sink but
into the fire,
cooled.

I am also getting a bit of shit about the new name from certain quarters. The suggestions that it is generic and unoriginal are bugging me, so I might try to think of a different name.

2004-07-01T01:40:00.000-07:00

GOOD MORNING CAMPERS

After a tumultuous 24 hour period, things appear to be settling back to normal. When I have the chance later I will explain the whole sorry episode, for now please feel free to link to this new page.

We are dropping from DEFCON 5 down to about DEFCON 1 or 2.

2004-06-30T04:42:00.000-07:00

THE OLD ARCHIVE IS STILL VISIBLE ON GOOGLE

Can I make it go away? Or do I have to wait until the hits subside?

It is making me uneasy.

I don't think this place will be as easy to find. I suppose the only way I can be found is if the person has a record of other linked sites and I get re-linked. Seems unlikely though...

May I also point out that those of you saying that it was inevitable that I would get caught:

"Bollocks!"

Loads of people write work blogs, the bloke from Call Centre Confidential is still going and he gets a million squillion hits a day. I was scuppered (I think) by my fantasy football team from last season of the same name. How on earth that led to someone typing it into google etc etc I don't know. I suppose there is a chance that the person simply saw me typing into Blogger and made the connection that way.

So where does that leave me?

Well, business as usual, I think, other than modifications to nicknames and increased security. This is going to be one mother fucking high level security detention centre!
The internet is a big place I'm sure that my makeshift underground lair is under the radar for now...

I think I may be in the clear as regards disciplinary action (he says touching wood - no.. not in that sense).