Saturday, August 13, 2005
Seven days in sunnyish Aug
The new Jamiroquai single is shamelessly, shamelessly manipulative. It just runs some hokey programme with all the right boxes ticked - whiff of Isley Bros, nice acoustic guitar, nicey nice piano, 'summery' chord combination that's like someone smearing a Cornetto across your cheeks - and sits back smugly and waits for you to sigh and feel all poignant and summery. And, blast him, it works. What a fucker. Now playing it to death in the knowledge that eventually I'll see/hear past its superficial emotional-button-pressing charms and dismiss it from my mind. At least the lyrics are even worse than Charlotte Church's (I don't mind liking that song quite so much though, and I admire her greatly for her genuine actual surfeit of proper spirit and womanliness. And she just looks so. . . rude. The Ricci lip-curl is present but her eyes are just brimming with proper grown-up happy all-for-me filth. Most famous women seem either vulnerable or hardened or both but she just seems totally self-possessed and knows exactly what she's about. She Is Great. Anyway.)
Really, pleasant as it is I resent my enjoyment of it. Hee hee. It's just like walking past some unspeakable little burglar in a Burberry cap, getting a whiff of some really nice scent and then that 'ding! dinner is served' thing goes and all the hormones rush to the table. How awful. What slaves we are to our reptile brain stems. It's actually just as well that our sense of smell is rubbish, because scents make our brains go aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa and if we were able to develop too many associations then we'd never get a moment's peace.
More citronella definitely needed around here, although hopefully the worst of the annual insect onslaught has passed now. The fuckers all have one last fling in autumn though, so I'll have to bandage myself from head to foot in a few weeks. Most of the ones I've got now I got camping and weddinging last weekend. They're quite impressive. My skin seems to have a fit over bug spit. Epidermis tantrumis. The dog and I have been bonding, sitting on the floor together scratching rhythmically for minutes on end. The best thing is that I have one bite on each leg with a small bruise right next to it, as if the midge had bitten me and then given me a good punch before fucking off. And there's a perfect row of four small bites on the back of one thigh too. Is there some significance in this, I wonder? (No.)
I'll be glad to see the back of this week. It's been an unhappy one. Not for me in particular although I've had better ones - people I know and people they know have had varying degress of shit happen. Not about to extend this to bloggers but Dooce posted this the other day, from inside some fresh new-medication hell:
Today is a better day, and that’s how I’m going to measure things for the next little while. It’s how a lot of us who suffer through this have to measure our entire lives.
This among other things makes me realise that things could be so much worse. I just get distressed, and pissed off, when I recognise that not everything can be changed or worked on, it just has to be managed and navigated and withstood. I can't bear people who excuse away their appalling behaviour by shrugging that it's just the way they am, but then you can't perpetually apologise for the things you can't help either. And I suppose you have to find a way to not be angry about them, either, even though it's like constantly forgetting that you can't run to the shops on your broken ankle. It's like "oh yeah - that". But I've done about all I can for the time being, more than some would be prepared to do, and after that I've just got to suck it up. And - and! - keep reminding myself that my personal vanilla shitshake is far more sugary than most people's.
Last weekend was good. As I suspected, the forum thing was more than pleasant and I was genuinely chuffed to meet all these people with whom I trade insults on a daily basis. I thought I'd just feel terribly affectionate towards them, the real people behind the postings, and I did. So much for the persona. Heh heh. But the persona is real enough too, it's not really contrived, just a streak that needs the opportunity to. . .streak. Suspect that's true for most of them. Although most of them, being well-adjusted types, don't have one. Brave souls.
It was nice also to realise that I've got colleagues again, proper colleagues who do words. I might feel like I'm dithering around like some terrible yeppie heh heh half the time, but when I think about it for more than a second I know what I'm supposed to be doing. More or less. It's not a matter of what feels best, it's what feels natural and settles in without any discomfort. If I'm doing anything else it's like being poked, constantly, with little sticks. Pokey pokey pokey. Don't stand at that photocopier. Poke. Away with you, falseness. Of course in many ways media is the last place for such a sensitive flower (I suppose I could adopt the defensive mannerisms of a gangsta flowa, dog), and I doubt I'll find anywhere I can sit without fidgeting and frowning, but y'know, at least there I have a chair instead of a spike.
"In our house Nathaniel sits on a SPIKE."
"A-and yourself?"
"I sit on Nathaniel. Two spikes would be an EXTRAVAGANCE."
I fell over on the tube afterwards. I found the floor relatively comfortable, but I was beyond slotting that into any sort of career-life analogy by then.
The wedding was beautiful. Rolling fields, happy people. The groom cried, the bride cried, everyone present cried. It's almost too awesome a thing to contemplate. I went about smiling like a fool, and later after half a something, went about fretting like a fool. But at least I had my wellies on which saved me from cold and from insects and thistles. Sadly even my wellies couldn't protect me from the inevitable Person who started berating me about the nature of God at 3am - I suppose they could have done, but I didn't quite hate him enough to use his own lurching momentum to trip him into the fire. Our eyes did meet at one point during a lull in his rant, and we exchanged a look of pure mutual dislike. It was great, actually. Invigorating.
Other than that I met many adorable individuals. A large Hackney contingent had decamped to the South Downs to celebrate - very warm, positive, inclusive people. Ahhhh. I'm very grateful that among my multifarious hindrances to contentment, I don't have to count shyness. It's very handy, and leads to all sorts of good things, to be able to go and bellow something introductory at total strangers and go on from there. I'm not great at it but I can muddle through, and am glad not to be stuck behind a fence the way a lot of people are.
Went to bed in a tent soaking with mist, had barmy disquieting dreams, woke to a whole herd of cows arguing with a flock of sheep (the cows were more belligerent, but the sheep had the superior debating tactics) and fried egg sandwiches and tea and equilibrium restoring itself like a slow but determined child doing Lego. We eventually hauled ass back to London behind the most fascinatingly silly van (the feet! check the feet!):
and Chinese and some shite on Channel 5 about inadequate wives which was summarily dissected and left on the side of the plate like psuedo-sociological bones.
And then I came back here, stretching the elastic band from my back up north, to a warm-to-hot welcome from the two individuals worth upping sticks for.
Really, pleasant as it is I resent my enjoyment of it. Hee hee. It's just like walking past some unspeakable little burglar in a Burberry cap, getting a whiff of some really nice scent and then that 'ding! dinner is served' thing goes and all the hormones rush to the table. How awful. What slaves we are to our reptile brain stems. It's actually just as well that our sense of smell is rubbish, because scents make our brains go aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa and if we were able to develop too many associations then we'd never get a moment's peace.
More citronella definitely needed around here, although hopefully the worst of the annual insect onslaught has passed now. The fuckers all have one last fling in autumn though, so I'll have to bandage myself from head to foot in a few weeks. Most of the ones I've got now I got camping and weddinging last weekend. They're quite impressive. My skin seems to have a fit over bug spit. Epidermis tantrumis. The dog and I have been bonding, sitting on the floor together scratching rhythmically for minutes on end. The best thing is that I have one bite on each leg with a small bruise right next to it, as if the midge had bitten me and then given me a good punch before fucking off. And there's a perfect row of four small bites on the back of one thigh too. Is there some significance in this, I wonder? (No.)
I'll be glad to see the back of this week. It's been an unhappy one. Not for me in particular although I've had better ones - people I know and people they know have had varying degress of shit happen. Not about to extend this to bloggers but Dooce posted this the other day, from inside some fresh new-medication hell:
Today is a better day, and that’s how I’m going to measure things for the next little while. It’s how a lot of us who suffer through this have to measure our entire lives.
This among other things makes me realise that things could be so much worse. I just get distressed, and pissed off, when I recognise that not everything can be changed or worked on, it just has to be managed and navigated and withstood. I can't bear people who excuse away their appalling behaviour by shrugging that it's just the way they am, but then you can't perpetually apologise for the things you can't help either. And I suppose you have to find a way to not be angry about them, either, even though it's like constantly forgetting that you can't run to the shops on your broken ankle. It's like "oh yeah - that". But I've done about all I can for the time being, more than some would be prepared to do, and after that I've just got to suck it up. And - and! - keep reminding myself that my personal vanilla shitshake is far more sugary than most people's.
Last weekend was good. As I suspected, the forum thing was more than pleasant and I was genuinely chuffed to meet all these people with whom I trade insults on a daily basis. I thought I'd just feel terribly affectionate towards them, the real people behind the postings, and I did. So much for the persona. Heh heh. But the persona is real enough too, it's not really contrived, just a streak that needs the opportunity to. . .streak. Suspect that's true for most of them. Although most of them, being well-adjusted types, don't have one. Brave souls.
It was nice also to realise that I've got colleagues again, proper colleagues who do words. I might feel like I'm dithering around like some terrible yeppie heh heh half the time, but when I think about it for more than a second I know what I'm supposed to be doing. More or less. It's not a matter of what feels best, it's what feels natural and settles in without any discomfort. If I'm doing anything else it's like being poked, constantly, with little sticks. Pokey pokey pokey. Don't stand at that photocopier. Poke. Away with you, falseness. Of course in many ways media is the last place for such a sensitive flower (I suppose I could adopt the defensive mannerisms of a gangsta flowa, dog), and I doubt I'll find anywhere I can sit without fidgeting and frowning, but y'know, at least there I have a chair instead of a spike.
"In our house Nathaniel sits on a SPIKE."
"A-and yourself?"
"I sit on Nathaniel. Two spikes would be an EXTRAVAGANCE."
I fell over on the tube afterwards. I found the floor relatively comfortable, but I was beyond slotting that into any sort of career-life analogy by then.
The wedding was beautiful. Rolling fields, happy people. The groom cried, the bride cried, everyone present cried. It's almost too awesome a thing to contemplate. I went about smiling like a fool, and later after half a something, went about fretting like a fool. But at least I had my wellies on which saved me from cold and from insects and thistles. Sadly even my wellies couldn't protect me from the inevitable Person who started berating me about the nature of God at 3am - I suppose they could have done, but I didn't quite hate him enough to use his own lurching momentum to trip him into the fire. Our eyes did meet at one point during a lull in his rant, and we exchanged a look of pure mutual dislike. It was great, actually. Invigorating.
Other than that I met many adorable individuals. A large Hackney contingent had decamped to the South Downs to celebrate - very warm, positive, inclusive people. Ahhhh. I'm very grateful that among my multifarious hindrances to contentment, I don't have to count shyness. It's very handy, and leads to all sorts of good things, to be able to go and bellow something introductory at total strangers and go on from there. I'm not great at it but I can muddle through, and am glad not to be stuck behind a fence the way a lot of people are.
Went to bed in a tent soaking with mist, had barmy disquieting dreams, woke to a whole herd of cows arguing with a flock of sheep (the cows were more belligerent, but the sheep had the superior debating tactics) and fried egg sandwiches and tea and equilibrium restoring itself like a slow but determined child doing Lego. We eventually hauled ass back to London behind the most fascinatingly silly van (the feet! check the feet!):
and Chinese and some shite on Channel 5 about inadequate wives which was summarily dissected and left on the side of the plate like psuedo-sociological bones.
And then I came back here, stretching the elastic band from my back up north, to a warm-to-hot welcome from the two individuals worth upping sticks for.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Don't need a shrink but an exorcist, sha la la la laa
Gah. Gah, I say. Still readjusting to normality after weekend. I really ought to do more as in a larger amount of drugs when I have the opportunity, given how lousy I tend to feel after such a small quantity. I'd probably feel less bad, proportionately, if I took more. (This makes perfect aquiline Sense in my head but I don't have the right mathematical burble blarb. So get stuffed. Heh.)
But yes, for some reason I seem to require a few days of nothing-much-ness to realign myself with. . .myself. My poor brain. I do still figure that my dabbling daintily in narcotics is roughly equivalent to shunting one more box of temporary junk into an attic groaning with miscellaneous crap - boring possible long-term effects aside yawn stretch, it makes very very little difference. I'm perfectly capable of being insufferable to myself and others when straight, thanks, so it's nice to hand the reins to something else once in a while. It's like a little holiday. Only cheaper.
I wanna be straight, I wanna be straight
I'm sick and tired of taking drugs and staying up late
I wanna confirm
I wanna conform
I wanna be safe and I wanna be snug and I wanna be warm. . .
I wanna be straight, I wanna be straight
Come out of the cold and do what I'm told and don't deviate
I wanna give I wanna give I wanna give my consent
I'm learning to hate all the things that were great when I used to be. . .BENT
My first London flatmate fucked someone from Ian Dury's record company. I really should have wangled an interview. But now I can't. Cos he's dead. Oh well.
She was an interesting person. It was an interesting time. I could slouch to the Astoria in my fuck-off boots in about twenty minutes, and return to a tiny orange room with a futon that might as well have just been some crates with a bit of tissue paper on top as a gesture towards mattressness. (But at least it didn't creak.) The mice didn't come in my room, but they weren't scared of the semi-fossilised Siamese that used to howl and scream agonisingly at all hours. It was a dump. Have I blo - no, refuse to use that newly-minted verb, have I written here on this online outlet of the locked bedroom and the mad Danish harridan and me and my pet rat fleeing across London in a cab from her wrath and the thing with the washing machine flooding and the scary guy from downstairs going mad and having to break into the room and finding it full of two decades of mouse-enticing, fire-hazardy, serious-psychological-disturbance-indicating crap? Probably.
Hey, oi, nothing wrong with my long-term memory. I still know the whole of my opening speech in the school play when I was seven. (I was Tempus the Witch. They did my hair all big with green sparkly bits in it and when we were waiting to go onstage someone walked past and yanked it cos they thought it was a wig. I suspect I cried, but not as much as on the second night when I got booed. Hehheheheh. I think my mum killed about twelve people that night, injured eight.)
People I don't know are reading my blog, apparently. For, like, minutes at a time. For over an hour. Don't they have better things to do? Don't you? No no no. I'm glad to have you. It really is a pleasant feeling. Leave a comment. Send an email. Develop an unhealthy attachment. I'm only sorry I'm disappointing the people who are arriving here in their furtive search for 'fuck feast' ('fest', I'm sure you mean 'fest', although a 'fuck feast' does sound deliciously Dionysian, sort of an orgiastic finger-buffet) or my current favourite, 'sharking knickers japanese'.
When I worked at The Dodgy Search Engine Place Now Defunct Ha Ha, I used to encounter quite a few sites who would drop all sorts of laughably relevance-free key phrases into their lists. Most people would be honest, and if they sold teapots they would have a list limited to mentions of tea and pots. Others clearly thought with breathtaking short-sightedness that they'd throw a few genitals into the list, imagining that internet users browsing for porn would type in 'hot spanking sex' and, when finding themselves at a site selling stationery, would suddenly pull up their pants and go 'oooh j'know I could do with some new box files'. Actually most of the sites that would do this were big directory ones, the kind that supposedly offer a vast variety of stuff but only really point you to other, crapulous sites.
They were pains, anyway, and I'd do my best when writing the copy - which was to be tucked away in the back end for spiders to tickle, not to be seen by anyone looking at the site in question - to extract all the rudeness and be infuriatingly clean. 'Wet pussies' obviously got the 'hairdryers for cats' treatment. Well, really. They'd get cross, but then I did have a twenty-minute debate with one client who insisted that I and not he had spelt Moulinex wrong. It was that kind of place. They were those kinds of clients. The customer service guy used to amuse himself by working archaic words into his sarcastically-grovelling correspondence. "The refund will be with you eftsoons."
I'm afraid it is easy to fall into that mindset. Even as I know that someone looking for a 'fuck feast' will scurry away from here double-quick like (and I probably wouldn't want their sticky fingers on my virgin pages anyway) I find it hard, knowing that this is how people find me, not to drop the words 'fuck feast' into the text as often as possible, fuck feast.
I suppose I should be less concerned with the people I don't know who read this, and more concerned with the ones I do, who do. But ach. Transparency has served me well enough to date. It shouldn't, but glass is surprisingly tough shit on occasion. And besides, there's only ever about 35% of the truth here. And no one knows about the anonymous blog I've started. (That bit was a lie. Or was it? Hahahah. No, really. It'd be too obvious it was me, even with a new blog being started every second. It's a minor miracle 27 people visit here a day with so many million others. It really is. And I don't have the time. Or the bile, frankly. I forget sometimes that all the snarling vitriol directed at foals and bells and people asking me for work is as a toy gun in the paws of a lop-eared dwarf rabbit in a primary school classroom. Or is it? Etc.)
I have got a weekend to document. But not right now. Although there can be pictures, with the minimum of fannying about.
More in the usual place.
But yes, for some reason I seem to require a few days of nothing-much-ness to realign myself with. . .myself. My poor brain. I do still figure that my dabbling daintily in narcotics is roughly equivalent to shunting one more box of temporary junk into an attic groaning with miscellaneous crap - boring possible long-term effects aside yawn stretch, it makes very very little difference. I'm perfectly capable of being insufferable to myself and others when straight, thanks, so it's nice to hand the reins to something else once in a while. It's like a little holiday. Only cheaper.
I wanna be straight, I wanna be straight
I'm sick and tired of taking drugs and staying up late
I wanna confirm
I wanna conform
I wanna be safe and I wanna be snug and I wanna be warm. . .
I wanna be straight, I wanna be straight
Come out of the cold and do what I'm told and don't deviate
I wanna give I wanna give I wanna give my consent
I'm learning to hate all the things that were great when I used to be. . .BENT
My first London flatmate fucked someone from Ian Dury's record company. I really should have wangled an interview. But now I can't. Cos he's dead. Oh well.
She was an interesting person. It was an interesting time. I could slouch to the Astoria in my fuck-off boots in about twenty minutes, and return to a tiny orange room with a futon that might as well have just been some crates with a bit of tissue paper on top as a gesture towards mattressness. (But at least it didn't creak.) The mice didn't come in my room, but they weren't scared of the semi-fossilised Siamese that used to howl and scream agonisingly at all hours. It was a dump. Have I blo - no, refuse to use that newly-minted verb, have I written here on this online outlet of the locked bedroom and the mad Danish harridan and me and my pet rat fleeing across London in a cab from her wrath and the thing with the washing machine flooding and the scary guy from downstairs going mad and having to break into the room and finding it full of two decades of mouse-enticing, fire-hazardy, serious-psychological-disturbance-indicating crap? Probably.
Hey, oi, nothing wrong with my long-term memory. I still know the whole of my opening speech in the school play when I was seven. (I was Tempus the Witch. They did my hair all big with green sparkly bits in it and when we were waiting to go onstage someone walked past and yanked it cos they thought it was a wig. I suspect I cried, but not as much as on the second night when I got booed. Hehheheheh. I think my mum killed about twelve people that night, injured eight.)
People I don't know are reading my blog, apparently. For, like, minutes at a time. For over an hour. Don't they have better things to do? Don't you? No no no. I'm glad to have you. It really is a pleasant feeling. Leave a comment. Send an email. Develop an unhealthy attachment. I'm only sorry I'm disappointing the people who are arriving here in their furtive search for 'fuck feast' ('fest', I'm sure you mean 'fest', although a 'fuck feast' does sound deliciously Dionysian, sort of an orgiastic finger-buffet) or my current favourite, 'sharking knickers japanese'.
When I worked at The Dodgy Search Engine Place Now Defunct Ha Ha, I used to encounter quite a few sites who would drop all sorts of laughably relevance-free key phrases into their lists. Most people would be honest, and if they sold teapots they would have a list limited to mentions of tea and pots. Others clearly thought with breathtaking short-sightedness that they'd throw a few genitals into the list, imagining that internet users browsing for porn would type in 'hot spanking sex' and, when finding themselves at a site selling stationery, would suddenly pull up their pants and go 'oooh j'know I could do with some new box files'. Actually most of the sites that would do this were big directory ones, the kind that supposedly offer a vast variety of stuff but only really point you to other, crapulous sites.
They were pains, anyway, and I'd do my best when writing the copy - which was to be tucked away in the back end for spiders to tickle, not to be seen by anyone looking at the site in question - to extract all the rudeness and be infuriatingly clean. 'Wet pussies' obviously got the 'hairdryers for cats' treatment. Well, really. They'd get cross, but then I did have a twenty-minute debate with one client who insisted that I and not he had spelt Moulinex wrong. It was that kind of place. They were those kinds of clients. The customer service guy used to amuse himself by working archaic words into his sarcastically-grovelling correspondence. "The refund will be with you eftsoons."
I'm afraid it is easy to fall into that mindset. Even as I know that someone looking for a 'fuck feast' will scurry away from here double-quick like (and I probably wouldn't want their sticky fingers on my virgin pages anyway) I find it hard, knowing that this is how people find me, not to drop the words 'fuck feast' into the text as often as possible, fuck feast.
I suppose I should be less concerned with the people I don't know who read this, and more concerned with the ones I do, who do. But ach. Transparency has served me well enough to date. It shouldn't, but glass is surprisingly tough shit on occasion. And besides, there's only ever about 35% of the truth here. And no one knows about the anonymous blog I've started. (That bit was a lie. Or was it? Hahahah. No, really. It'd be too obvious it was me, even with a new blog being started every second. It's a minor miracle 27 people visit here a day with so many million others. It really is. And I don't have the time. Or the bile, frankly. I forget sometimes that all the snarling vitriol directed at foals and bells and people asking me for work is as a toy gun in the paws of a lop-eared dwarf rabbit in a primary school classroom. Or is it? Etc.)
I have got a weekend to document. But not right now. Although there can be pictures, with the minimum of fannying about.
More in the usual place.
