i'm bursting for a wii

ah, mii

well, thanks to a lovely couple of days at Troubadour Mansions i have sustained my first injurwii.
mr. troubadour has recently purchased that new-fangled technology known as THE NINTENDO WII!

it's a little white plastic work of japanese genius. at last, a games console that everyone can join in with. no longer will games machines be limited to geeky boys with muscular thumbs. everyone can play this thing, everyone. in fact, my sister and troubadours grandfather have turned out to be the ultimate wii bowling warriors.
but i've destroyed my right arm.
because the wii controls utilise ACTUAL BODILY MOVEMENT instead of the thumb twiddling we're used to, after two days of bowling, tennis, baseball and golf i've pulled my bicep, shoulder and the right hand side of my back.

so this is exercise.

but its so much fun, i will have to get one.
wiiiiii!!!!!

i'm terribly rude

oh, my mother would be so proud...

please forgive me; i'm about to get all giggly for a bit. this evening I sat down with The Shoelace to indulge in a bit of viewing of the new Mighty Boosh Live DVD. you may be a fan of the show. you may never have heard of it.

i fall into the previous category.

so we decided to watch the behind-the-scenes documentary on the disc. about ten minutes in i realised that much of the footage was taken at Brixton Academy on the night i was there. 'Hurrah,' thought i, isn't it nice to see something you were at; on screen at a later date. you, like, get a little insight as to what was going on backstage and stuff.
how lovely.
then the camera swoops out over the audience.. and there i am in all my Plain Lazy-hoodied glory.
ah-ha!
what a thrill.
me, on a dvd.
lovely.

so that was nice. but it didn't end there. that same evening, the performance was riddled with what can only be descibed as an idiot-fuckwit who thought he was funny, heckling... badly, and generally getting on everyone's tits. especially Noel & Julian, the mighty boosh themselves.
i'll cut a long story a bit shorter. noel, so irritated by this idiot encouraged the audience to shout 'shut the fuck up' at him.

i didn't think this quite enough
i thought he deserved more
and at the very tippetty-top of my voice
for all to hear
added the words
'YOU CUNT'

a little event that made it onto the DVD.
also, cut to backstage later where the guys are talking about the twat heckler
and they mention someone shouting 'you cunt' at him.
and they liked it.

and part of me is sorry for shouting that word.
but a bigger part of me is quite smug that the boosh said i have "really good comic timing."

and it IS only a word.

hey, some people I know sell cunt colouring books in their shop.

anyway, i don't care, Noel Fielding said i was cool on a top-selling dvd.

awesome in a tin.

i'm pc

if you're reading this blog on a mac or through firefox it'll probably look all shitted up.

sorry about that. the code was written for internet explorer, i'm not sure why it looks so bad on the others.

okay bye.

i'm goose-stepping to freedom & unity

What a shocker. The irony is it started from a queen's speech that reflected on the broad differences between age groups and ethnic and religious faiths.

Now I don't really watch the queen's speech normally. I can't imagine she has anything particularly interesting or useful to say. I'm sure her speech has been exstensively and expertly prepared by a team of PR twats and spin doctors anyway. I watch The West Wing, I know how it works.

But I was in the lounge when my grandparents gazed admiringly at the loveable old dear in her flourescant green two-piece and matching hat, and my siblings gazed pleadingly at me; asking for help with only the moisture around their eyes. I was taking a drinks order, you see.

So the Queen's speech this xmas day was orchestrated from a school. Hard done by and - to be honest - bored looking children were scattered nonchalantly about, working on collages and other such christmassy art. And there was the teacher overseeing (causing me to question the suggestion that its a live broadcast as I feel it should be*). A teacher of African origin dressed in traditional Ghanian style 'sunday best' brightly coloured and garishly patterned robe and head-dress.
To which my wonderful good christian grandma exclaimed, 'ugh, why did they have to let the blacks on it?!'

Holy.
Shit.

Did she really just say that?

Yes. She did.

The royal old dear's speech went on to talk about the growing divide between religious beliefs. Cut to some stock footage of some praying muslims.
'Oh for goodness sake!' came the little voice from the armchair in the corner of the lounge.

Disbelief flushed over the faces of my siblings and I. The room momentarily blurred. What. The. Fuck?

I don't ever remember my grandma being quite so racist before. There were always elements of it, but never loud, brash exclamations. I'm still a bit dumbfounded. Especially when you add the following:

Later that evening the entire family sat round and added ourselves to the nationwide list of families sitting around watching shite christmas TV. Hurrah!
The Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special! (though Emma Bunton is welcome to... ahem... anyway...)

'where's he from?' questioned my granny about a sprightly young italian ballroom dancer.
'italy,' we replied.
'wop.'

... Silence

...

'what's a wop?' asked my brother's girlfriend.
'a racist term for italian.' says I.
'it's not racist,' explained nan, 'they are wops. theres nothing wrong with them as long as they stay in their own country. like the other foreigners.'

And so the evening went on. There were many more similar conversations. I couldn't quite believe a lot of what I was hearing. Especially as Shoelace sat next to me, my sister's husband, a notable fraction of whom is of Indian descent.

And my other grandma told of when she recently 'went down the paki shop.'

!

Seriously. I know.

It's lucky we have the older generations to pass down their wisdom isn't it? Today I also learned that Germans are untrustworthy and learning a foreign language is pointless.

We did agree on one thing though; Eastenders is pathetic.
They still watched it all the way through, though. The whole hour.

Oh well. Let the oldies be nutters I say.

Auf wiedersehen,
Dos vedenya,
Au revoir,
Bye bye.

[* she doesn't appear to do an awful lot the rest of the year unless someone dies.]

i'm handling santa's bulging sack

merry christmas everybody

merry. frickin. christmas.

(woo-yeah!)

i'm here

so the year draws to its inevitable close
the time when we all look back over the past 12 months and say things like "wasn't it traumatic" and "i hope next year will be better" and other very british ways of putting our lives down and conveying to the world that we're not very content without actually saying we're not very content.

cheer that shit up, i say.

i have nothing to complain about. not even subtley.
this year i have replenished relationships with some very dear people, i have won a court case, a friend paid for me to go to new york, i have been promoted at work, i have discovered the fun of dating, i vision-mixed the live stage-show of dick an dom in da bungalow, i did a musical in a professional london theatre, i survived a bike crash, i sound engineered the royal philharmonic orchestra, i've nearly filled an 80gb iPod... big stuff.

i also fired myself into a project with my nearest and dearest which has been, and looks like it might continue to be the most rewarding chapter of my life.

there was also going to be a list of people i've met completely new this year that improved on what was before: lois, rachel, space-cat, anisa, sarah-louise, red, amy, golbey, gus, amish, warren, lizzy... but it's not exhaustive and i know if i try to complete it i'll leave people out. if i met you this year, consider yourself on the list.

and, 'hi'

i'm in quite a contemplative mood, but i also have to be up early to go to work. yeah. bummer.

i'll just leave it with:
well done 2006, you knocked it up a notch

and i go to mongolia next year! aiight.

i'm about to broaden your horizon

i've just discovered that another of my loved ones has been writing a blog.
a new link hath appeared to your left entitled "the music"

read and enjoy.

i'm spiralling in and out

or christmas one comes but once every three years

it's funny how your emotive response can still catch you off your guard and take you by surprise. i've had 26 years of first-hand experience with my neurological reflexes, so i thought i would pretty much be able able to predict how my mind would react to certain events.
turns out, you can't always know where your emotions are going to take you.

christmas one happened yesterday. it travelled light, but it did bring with it a beautifully leather-bound volume of nostalgia, a huge ladle-full of laughter and a bucket of contentment. strangely though, it added a little pinch of frustrating salt. it added flavour, but it was unnecessary.

two salty emotive responses. two steps back. two deep breaths of stale history.

but believe me, not enough to ruin the day. and to prove it i will tell you about the day, and how much i loved it. and how i wish these people hadn't disappeared for 4 years. and how every moment relaxed and entertained and enriched. and how a smile appears from the dark and a happy tear falls.

like returning to the womb. like pulling in the blankets. like stretching open welcoming arms.

like i had been for a long long walk during which i'd forgotten what home looked like, only to return to it years later. it was the same home, but older. and wiser. evolved. with a rich, sweet life of it's own. but with the same sofa, and the same smell. and the same heat of the open fire that never went out.


i love these people. an elastic bond has been stretched in many directions. so thin in places that it's almost invisible. microscopic. but reel that bond in, relax the tension time brings, and that elastic returns to its original breadth. sorry about the fucking cheesey metaphor. i'll leave it there and won't mention it again.

i love these people. there is a chapter of my life that is almost without blemish. not so much as a crease. these people are largely responsible for it. six irreplaceable loved ones. people who enrich the world with all their faults and triumphs.

a feast.

just a shame about the two unexpected reflex actions. but they'll disappear with time.

i expect.

i'm in need of some rest

i just found a grey hair.

i'm effortless

yesterday I was asked the strangest of strange questions.
it went like this little morsel of buttock clenching drama:

FROGLOVER: Jon, can I ask you a strange question?
COWBOY: Is that the question? [I always say that, I’m not sorry]
FROGLOVER: Um….?
COWBOY: Always.
FROGLOVER: Okay, er… is your cheeriness natural and effortless, or is it quite hard work keeping it up?
COWBOY: …….

oh, there are so many threads I can go down from that.
1stly; yes this did actually happen. The Whackwit was there and I’m sure he’ll testify.
2ndly; it’s not a question I’ve ever had to think about answering (see thread 3) so I was a little stumped to say the least.
3rdly; it wasn’t too long ago that I was repeatedly referred to as the grumpy old man who hated everything and everyone that wasn’t me. This was only partly true and was more of an act than my real feelings.
4thly; am I really terrible at putting on my grumpy old man act?
5thly; am I actually a really cheery person? I didn’t know that.
6rdly; what a weird question to ask someone.
7thly; but actually quite a nice thing to say all things considered, I guess, I s’pose… is it? I don’t know really. Um… yeah.
8thstly; I suppose if I didn’t realise I was doing it, that means it comes under the effortless/natural realm of answers.
monthly; I now have this strange feeling of pressure that I have to remain cheery all the time, from now on. This is quite easy at the moment as I’m pretty content and am looking forward to a lovely lovely festive weekend with a selection of the finest people in existence.
tree; but what about when something bad happens?
thee-ly; it’s only the opinion of one person. I’m sure everyone else thinks I’m a grumpy old man.
1.1enthly; I’m more comfortable with that so we’ll leave it there.

just thought it was odd, in a confusingly nice way so I though i’d share it.

i'm animated

thought i'd do one as the others have. baaa!

i'm philharmonic

well, there you go. i done-did sound-engineered my first solo music gig. a little bit of being thrown in at the deep end, yuh. that be the royal philharmonic orchestra. indeed. and the choir of london.

admittedly they didn't need much in the way of engineering, but the soloist's did. so i had to balance soloists against the might of the 'phil.'
i had a smashing time, what.
most proud moment would have been clara sanabras (the spanish soprano soloist) who played a beautifully hand-carved baroque guitar - the quietest of instruments.. well, her manager came over to me and said how impressed he was how good she sounded.

*quiet little victory dance*

so, yeah... i wanna do more music. maybe i will, but i think i should probably get the mongolia trip out of the way before i look for a new job, yeah?

(woo!)

i'm backward

look-see
a countdown to when i return to return to the forbidden planet

(available at the top)

i'm soon to be another embarrassing memory

it's an exciting time. this weekend i travel off to mummy and daddy cowboy's eastern town-house to take part in that event that we all know and cherish... the official family photograph.

i'm so happy.

actually it'll be quite fun... compared to the last one, which was taken about 15 years ago. back when mr. & mrs. cowboy decided on what clothing the little cowboys and girl should wear. ah, those were the days.

back when paisley patterns were the norm.
back when trousers weren't meant to hang below the ankles.
back when side-parted hair prevented the grandparents getting too confused.
back when skin was afresh and lacked experience.
back when i had no more influences or life experiences than your average mop.
back when my waist was still waist high.

but at least i won't look back on this one and think i looked like a twat.

unless i pull a funny face.

i'm gooding you bid-day

it has come to my attention that someone from my past is a regular reader of this 'ere blog.
tish, if you happen to read this:
hello!
hope you are well and good and content and all sorts of nice and lovely things. i hear on the grapevine you're doing rather well for yourself, so that's spiffing.

whenever i correct people on saying 'could of' instead of 'could have' i always think of you. and i've yet to encounter a girl who can do a better irish accent. remember that thing you, mead and i did on the internet? that was funny. disturbing, but funny. imagine the filth there would be on the web world wide if there weren't any internet angels spreading the good word...! uh-huh.

maybe i'll see you sometime when gaffertape goes all charity on us.
that'll be dandy.

anyway, there... g'bye now. x

i'm back, and bigger than before

i'm lucky. i happen to know a small proportion of some of the greatest people on the planet. very surprising to me is this group of people includes a sub-section of teenagers; kids that i choose to call my friends. (this is a big deal for someone who is almost completely predjudiced against this age group). within this select group i know people who improve the world around them on a daily basis.
they do this both effortlessly and unconsciously. most of them do it completely obliviously. a lot of them will never accept the fact that they are anything more than just another person in a long queue of persons.
but this is not true.
i'm not going to get all embarrassing and point out specific individuals, that would be wrong. but the above photo includes at least 3 of them.
and there are more besides.

i'm in a particularly heightened mood at the moment. yep, beneath this tired, tectonic exterior you will find me content that this is the best i've been.
it's nice, it is.

and it means i get to dress as a wrestler.

left to right: uncle mead, s'mad, aunt mead, little miss raunch, red, troubadour, shoelace, don-juan, urban cowboy

i'm lagging, jet-wise

New york hath happened...
crazy 3-hour transfer bus to hotel on times square because the driver's radio didn't work so he didn't know where he was going.
But,.. a room on 39th floor overlooking the neon lights of Times Square. Which itself is a bit of a sight to be beheld. Literally it's as bright as day, 24 hours a day. Not great for global warming admittedly, but quite pretty.
Drank cocktails til 6am english time woke up to applause... so...
went downstairs and was suddenly on TV - ABC's Good Morning America - shouting for the Wolverines cause i was wearing blue. (a football team, I guess)
did some shopping went on a tour Of NBC studios (all the best stuff comes out of NBC)
watched Saturday Night Live with Ludacris presenting.
ate and drank at 'cafe wha?' - some Wine and live Salsa and
Will Ferrell was there... uh-huh

> saw a guy punch a taxi and shout "hey I'm walkin' here!" (my Back to the Future moment)
> saw an old guy dancing like a demon on skates
> saw a girl destroy a mouse
> saw ben folds live at the hammerstein ballrooms on West 34th & 8th.
> saw a grounded aircraft carrier
> saw the new James bond film (bob-shat)


walked the length of central park bought an ipod from the coolest apple store in the world ate at Applebees - all food in america tastes like it's been processed, reprocessed and then put through some sort of process.

Went up the empire state building of course.





Ate at Bubba Gumps (got all the questions right on their Forrest Gump quiz despite being filled with margharitas)

went to the museum of sex and had my eyes both willingly opened and forcably shut.














met Hiro Nakamura and Peter Petrelli from Heroes I am a geek and comfortable with it.

became a solo barfly in a hispanic bar, everyone eyed me up and talked in hushed spanish tones

got the hotel limousine back to JFK airport driven by a man who i shall name Captain Speedy.

Ash Atalla producer of The Office was on my flight
and I sat next to Megan Dodds from Spooks and Not Going Out

slept a little.
spent a lot.
drank a little.
ate a lot.
ache and smile all over.
New York is fucking insane.

And I landed at 6:30 this morning and came straight to work so now i'm sleepy tired like a little baby girl. Will never commute 4000 miles again.

i'm a helluva town

i'm going to new york new york tomorrow.

i'm not going for the original reason any more.

i feel better about myself.

i'm predicting some future

so, i reckon niki sanders is a supervillain

i'm offering this to you, as a friend

this is mainly for the troubadour's benefit

i'm a bit taken aback to be honest

i had an odd thing today. it was an experience of regret and sadness. if i hadn't been so busy and it hadn't have been in such an open environment i think it would've really caught me off guard. as it happens it sort of went unnoticed for a while until i had a chance to recollect it.

i was chatting to one of the security guards at work today. now, when i say security guards i'm sure you immediately think of a large rock-structure of a man in a bomber jacket with a menacing stare in his eye. well, thats not the sort of thing we've got in my building. to be honest, if i described our security team as 'dad's army' i think i'd be doing them a favour. a few of them have teeth missing, but not from being hard-ass and having a few fights under their belts... generally it's because that's what happens when you reach a certain age. bless them.

but this isn't the point of my entry. as i say, i was chatting to one of them, an old scottish guy called (amusingly) harry potter. at the moment we've got a conference in of the international maritime organisation who basically are the people who decide the laws of shipping around the world. somewhat dull i'm sure you'll guess, except the main focus of this particular conference is to decide what to start doing with old ships when they die. currently a lot of them are grounded on the shores of india and sri-lanka and the like; and left to rot... not the very best of environmentally sound disposal methods.

so me 'n harry were chatting about the environment and that a bit and he turned to me and said in one of those heartbreakingly tender voices that only the scottish can do, "i'm reaching the end of my life, and you're just starting yours. i'm really sorry about the state my generation is leaving this world in, it never occurred to us the damage we were doing."

there was that slightly strange moment that you always get when the older generation nonchalantly refers to their morbidity; a weird mix of respect and vulnerability. the moment hung there for a beat, then he got a call on his radio and had to wander off to check a stair-lift or something.

retrospectively it was a pretty touching moment. there was a really tangible aura of apology; regret that he couldn't do enough with the years he had left... but a real hope that it wasn't too late.

i think there's a certain cross section of society, specifically my generation that think it's not their fault the world is a bit messy, so why should they do anything about it. i can sort of see their point, it's like being handed a jigsaw with some pieces missing and being expected to enjoy finishing it. unfortunately, that's our charge and there's nowt we can do about it except try and make some new pieces. it's that or we'll be pretty empty handed when the next lot of kids look up at you hoping for a puzzle.

i promise my next post will be more funny than this one.

i'm a human vector diagram

this internet thing... y'know how people say things 'bout the modern world and how science and technological advances are sterilizing our society and breaking down the personal/social interaction that developed us as human beings and advanced our race, and stuff like that?

y'know how people say that sort of thing?

don't they (rhetorical).

well it's a pile of tassocks. not one to advertise particular incarnations of the media, i've got a 'space' on a well-known web site. through it i've met some people that under any other circumstances than the security of t'internet i may not have even considered as an aquaintance.

it equalises us you see. i'm lucky enough to be in contact with some spectacularly interesting people, people that grace utterly different social circles. over there and beyond. our paths would never have crossed except for the web wide world. and one of them is really hot. i mean, to a ridiculous level. and it's thouroughly pleasant to make their aquaintance.


hello you.

i'm all about the b&w birdies

i just saw these folks


like a 3-mile-thick wall of orchestral noise
like standing in a wind tunnel filled with penguins
like oscillating tone with a horn section
like spacing out inside a jet engine
like wrestling a folk-dancing grizzly bear
like, y'know, stuff

and, yes... the double bass player is wonderful

i'm well aware of the risks of bottle tops

here's a problem: the quality of the air on earth is getting worse and worse and worse and not a lot is being done to make it better. some luffly fluffly people are designing cars that run on electricity and some others are putting old paper in green bins and thats making a tiny wee difference.

when you finish a bottle of drink, or milk, or a jar of marmalade or suffink, do you absent-mindedly screw the lid back on and shove it in a bin and walk off merrily whistling luck be a lady?
i bet you do sometimes.
i'm gonna be a bit generous with figures in a minute:
let's say that the average household has one person a week who screws the lid back on the equivalent of a bottle of milk, bins it and walks away, whistling.
there's something like 60 million official people living in this country, plus an estimated minimum million unofficial. lets say for arguements sake; the average household has five people in it.
so every week, 12,000,000 milk bottles - thats 48 million pints of air - are screwed up into an airtight container and sent off to lie on a dump somewhere.
and they're made of plastic, so thats it. it's the equivalent of packaging up oxygen and sended it shooting off into outer space never to be seen, smelled or sucked again. a lot of it.
if we've been doing that for ten years or so, we've packaged up 24,960,000,000 pints of air and put into indefinite storage.

and that's just by people who live in britain. admittedly thats just working out a bit of maths in five minutes and i haven't gone into micro-calculation or anything, but i reckon i can't be far enough off to let you all relax.

just leave the lid off, okay.

Biodegrade Rate
Cotton rags 1-5 months
Paper 2-5 months
Rope 3-14 months
Orange peels 6 months
Wool socks 1 to 5 years
Cigarette butts 1 to 12 years
Plastic coated paper milk cartons 5 years
Leather shoes 25 to 40 years
Nylon fabric 30 to 40 years
Tin cans 50 to 100 years
Aluminum cans 80 to 100 years
Plastic 6-pack holder rings 450 years
Glass bottles 1 million years
Plastic bottles Forever

i'm dr. frankenstein

goodness me, off we go into a world of delight.
delight i tells ye.

i learnt how to electrocute people back into life. it was at work, we was trained we was. you know those defribillater thingamajigs? do you? they're always in movies or tv or whatever and someone goes into cardiac arrest and they get these paddle thingies and twazap their heart with electrocity and say stuff like "clear" and everyone steps back and there's like this "wwwhhhooooooeeooeoeoeoeoe" noise while it charges up and then they electricise the person and suddenly they perk up and it's like, "i was totally dead, right, and now i'm happy and lively and that." well, now i can use one of those defibrillater things and save someone's life if they happen to go into cardiac arrest in front of me.
so if you're going to go into cardiac arrest, make sure it's near me and also we are both near a defib (AED) machine. and we're not outside when it's raining ('coz i won't twazap you then because i would kill myself). also if would be best if your arrest puts your heart in a shockable rhythm, if not, i can't twazap you then either.

i put an alarm on my bike yesterday. i was so out of my depth. i had to hack into the electronics of the ignition system and connect a load of wires and stuff in. this would've been okay if A/ i had any knowledge of motorcycle ignition systems, B/ the instructions were written in english.
instead they were written in that chinglish language that foreign imported goods have. it had sentences like:
"connects wire to positive ignotion on more than 10 volt when ingintion is on." i shit you not.
in fact the only bit that was written in good, understandable english was "never use the trial and error method to identify connections, failure to do so will damage the unit and the vehicle."
brilliant.
i managed it though. it is here that i pause for a satisfactory smug-face. mmm.

that defibrillater thing, it always makes me think:

man 1: aarrgh, shite-heart... i've only bloody gone into cardiac arrest, somebody help me i'm gonna die. i should barely be able to speak really, but my heart has stopped working proper. it is in a shockable rhythm, if only someone could stick some thingies to me chest and twazap me.
[man walks nearby]
hey you! won't you grab that nearby AED machine and twazap me?

man 2: i'm so busy, old biscuit, i'll defib-u-later.

defib you later get it?
like defibrillater.
...
i can't help it, it's not a decision.

i'm angry by proxy

if you see this car, knock its bumper off.

i'm noisy, but clean

"Stunning doesn’t even come close.."
- (March '05)

we've just got a new sound system to listen to in our office.

it costed £1500.

we got reference quality studio monitors.

yum.

i'm going to cry myself to sleep tonight

i'm somewhere in between

i'd like to share this photo with you. last night i went to an electro-punk gig in a seedy back room in young, hip and trendy chalk farm. right in the midst of semi-naked lesbian debauchery and skinny whiteboys with cocker-spaniel hair was this little old man quietly puffing away and reading his paper, seemingly oblivious to the sweaty writhing around him.

i wanted to talk to him and get him to tell me stories of the war, but his silence was frightening.

i'm a boy, i'm a boy, but dr. marten won't admit it

two thousand woman and me two thousand women and me two thousand women and me and me and two thousand women and me. and two thousand women.
sometimes there are very unique perks to my job. yesterday we had the london women's convention going on all day. there was a band which makes my job 100 times more interesting anyway, and there were some people speaking about womanhood, and an audience of two thousand. ladies. the place reeked of oestrogen. it dripped off the walls.
not that they were all fit, mind. i don't want to give the impression that being a single man i want to get all cosy/sweaty with any double-x chromosome holder. (i'm sure most of them are beautiful on the inside, before you get all "ain't he so superficial, like" on my arse.)
i was expecting a big old women's lib type thing; lots of feminists with those angry attitudes that do more harm than good, all that "we women can survive without men, we don't need them, aren't they crap, i want cake." it turned out to be nothing like that. thankfully the main speaker, carrie, is an equalist. i've always thought this was a much better word to use and implies an infinitely better doctrine. there's been none of the "hurumpf, it's such a man's world, we're so downtrodden" stuff, but more of an acceptance that men and women are different, none is better than the other, we fit together nicely like a jigsaw which feels all tingly and stuff, and don't we complement eachother quite well?" which is a much nicer attitude.
she does have a slightly dubious attitude towards homosexuality which i will try to ignore, maybe if she was a bit more accepting she wouldn't be 42 and still single. not that i'm casting any aspertions on her genetic makeup.

i'm an equalist, i always have been. i believe in chivalry and i think its nice to pay for a dinner, but i'll hold a door open for a bloke too. i used to go out with a girl who was a bit of a raging feminist. it got old. she was once offended because i went to look at a broken window that she'd already looked at. she seemed to think that i wanted to check it with my 'man eyes' and that i thought that her 'pretty lady one's' lacked the technical skills to grasp cracked glass. or something. it was a weird arguement, i didn't really know what was going on for a while.
i was once moaned at because i suggested i change a lightbulb for someone because she could do it she's a woman, not an idiot and within a week she had asked me to fix a shelf. truth is i would've offered to fix the lightbulb if she was a guy, i just like to be helpful. i did suggest that there was no reason she couldn't fix the shelf herself, it's not like she's an idiot.

i know plenty of guys that are absolutley shite at DIY.

the fact is that men are better than women at some things. women are better than men at some things too. it's not always a choice of society, although a long history of defined sociological roles has carved the thoughts of generations and still leaves an imprint on even our liberal generation. it's scientifically proven that girls and boys have different brains. most girls genetic make-up gives them a generally more emotional and empathetic mindset. they connect with other people better, they make friends quicker, they're better at reading people. men have systematic brains. they can build and repair and look at things from a distance without getting emotionally involved.

generally.

that's why generally social workers are women and mechanics are men. all this government crap about 50% quotas is a terrible idea. yes, there are women who will make fantastic sound engineers and men who would rock at nursing, but why don't we allow the people who are good at certain jobs do them instead of creating a false demographic of unskilled people who might fuck it up more often.

i'm not a scientist. i just have lots to say and a modocum of science to back it up; but i'm bored of myself now.

i'm big

there's a big internet thing happening today where everyone is invited to blog about their day & all the contributions will be held in the british library. what a lovely idea. so here's my lovely day...

I don't normally watch Eastenders because I actively avoid unnecessary misery, but it appears to be on the telly-box so I have some brain time to commit my day to text. So that's nice.
Well, to betray my normal blognique and use a standard bloginning: my day began at half past three when I awoke with a rather gooey dry-mouth. Rather than climb from my bed and disturb my brother-in-law who was a-kip on my floor, I thought of hoverbikes until I slept again.
I was rudely awakened again by radio 4 seeping from my clock-radio at six. In one motion I oozed out of my bed, through the shower and onto my bike. Off we sped to Westminster where I work as a sound engineer in a large conference venue. So that was nice wasn't it?
Yes.
There wasn't much going on today, only one conference for team leaders of the DfES. Yawn. I did get a proper lunchbreak though which is unusual. During our lunches, my boss and I have been watching episodes of Monkey Dust in our office. We've just started series 2. Its funnier than season one, but I do miss Ivor Dobbski the Meatsafe Murderer (only he never done it, he only said he did so the police would sew his testicles back on).
I had a email conversation with a few of my friends. Ellen wants to bring her new doggy 'Jack' to Christmas One. I decided he should be renamed Scamp. Ellen did not agree and threatened to eat me. I should explain what Christmas One is; my friends like to have it a few weeks before christmas actually happens. It means we get to have a fun christmas, one to remember when we all travel back to our hometowns to
the inevitable dull celebrations with our families.
..
I'm now writing this a couple of hours on. The suicidle soap opera has been replaced with a DVD of highlights of Dick & Dom in da Bungalow. My housemate and longest standing friend worked on it. We loved it, but our new housemate never saw it, so we're educating her.
My trusty computer is upstairs downloading the latest episode of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip for us to watch later.
Who knows what else might happen today, but a forage into YouTube has led us to a clip descibed as 'Gizmodo hooks up four GPS devices at the same time and ends up with a maelstrom of voices leading to a nightmarish conclusion.'
A wonderful thing the internet.
I enjoyed my day, but now I need a weewee. Which I plan on enjoying.
I hope you enjoyed your day too.
Okaybye.
With love from the Urban Cowboy.

i'm speedy

my bike. it looks like this:


but it goes like this:

her name is jojo.

some geeky facts if you're interested

she is a honda deauville. she has a 650cc v-twin water-cooled engine,
but with some cheeky modifications to make her faster than factory-spec.
she has a stereo. (i put it in)
she has heated handlebars. (cos i'm a winter wimp)
she weighs 250 kilos. (i like them fast and fat)


okay bye.

i'm one, are you?

i'm a moron

i just turned down sound-engineering front-of-house for the scissor sisters and i don't know why.

please re-read this blog's title... repeatedly.

i'm not going back

out of the neon sun ~ chapter seven

i embark on many things. i'm sure its a common habit amongst dreamers and imaginers and thinkers, those that spend their waking and sleeping moments pondering the world and the flow around them. an idea comes to us:
"i will make a film!"i will write a book!"i will travel forth to a distant land without a second thought!"i will break someone's heart!"i will quit my job for one short adrenaline shot!"i will run naked through the streets of london!"

and you say you'll do it.

and you'll really mean it.

and every part of you, every atom of your neurology, every speck of blood in your capillaries, every blink of your eyelids... means it. for that moment, your idea is immortal and nothing and no-one stands in the way of it's fruition.

but weeks later you're sitting on a sofa in front of the current best comedy on bbc2 and you remember that you'd forgotten all about it.

things fizzle out. not always from 'chickening out' or being too lazy to finish what you started, but because life happens around your idea and shunts it and closes in on it and muffles it and presses a pillow over its breath until it dies peacefully and silently.

or you just can't afford it.

and its a shame. because that idea was the best you ever had. and if it had happened; you would have something to hold onto. something mentally tangible. a life-changing experience, a period of awe, a moment of genius, a feeling of completion, a yardstick that you measure the rest of your life by. one story that you tell over and over and over again and bore no-one, for you tell it with such joy and love that all around you cheer and believe that they were there too.



we booked our plane tickets yesterday.

fruit plan! fruit!

i'm in front

my buddies and i have a bit of a knack of liking something long before the rest of the country catch on. i'm sure we aren't the only ones, there are probably pockets of tasteful people around britain. maybe. hopefully. anyone?

i write here in order to provide proof that we have already discovered studio 60 on the sunset strip. and we love it.
it'll probably come over here in a year or so. but we're taking it now. we're claiming it as our own. the british flag hath been stuck (but as i'm pretty un-patriotic i've drawn a big swastika over it).

it's awesome... the show and the flag.


in a world where tv is clearly dumbing down, it's a welcome relief when the odd show lets us dumb up.

and it has a christian character that isn't an utter freak of nature... notable rarity and worth a commendation.

wish i had this blog back when mighty boosh, spaced, mini-scooters, natalie portman (hubba hubba), family guy, reel big fish, gogol bordello etc. etc. etc. first came out. not that i want praise, it just makes me feel better about myself.

praise is welcome.

admittedly we missed the office first time round though. shame on us.

i'm bored of searching

does anyone know any good, but cheap hotels in new york?
on the upper west side preferably.

i'm renovated

what do you think?

too white?

i'm singing and i reign

ah! pretty evening of delight
red's party saturday night
yon karaoke bar we doth gone
had mighty solid fun
and all sung single and as one
cocktails and computers and ultraviolet
kate bush the cream, by the lady of scarlett
umbrella solo and we joint lose our voice
two hours too short to complete our due choices
and i sung the bad touch and some song about war
and troubadour sang on knees from the floor
the serenade of laces and new people duet
then high as kites a red bus we did get
to london west-south a jamaican named town
and laid heads down and the rain came down
but nowhere a frown
cos it was nice
at lucky voice

i'm all clear

out of the neon sun ~ chapter six

it took them long enough, but my silly length of holiday in the busiest part of the year has been cleared by work. all the way up the proverbial ladder. i currently celebrate within my head. whoopee.
just waiting for the official document to come through, but man-in-charge he say "i can't see any obstacles." unfortunately i have to take half of it unpaid so they can pay for a freelancer to cover me while i'm away. but that's okay, i reckon it'll be totally worth it. they could've just said no.
here we go, here we go, here we here we go, yo.

there are three things i need to condition myself for:
1: get off my ass and learn some mongolian.
2: deal with the fact that i might not get within 100 miles of a shower for the month we're away. yeugkh.
3: drinking neat vodka. (the rumours of russia/siberia/mongolia are apparently true)

i'm questioning 2b or not 2b

i like doing my blog. though i seem to have dried up a bit lately and only managed dull and short entries, for me this is okay. i'm enjoying the process of writing. i like thinking about the words, the phrases, the patterns.

i thinking i've developed a certain taste and style of ebb.

and flow.

i may not be the most erudite of chaps, i'd never even venture near the lyrical battlefield, i'll leave the literary martial-arts to the troubadour. but it seems i have discovered a little creative outlet in my otherwise (often) objective weekday life. i don't even mind if noone reads it. i'm doing it for the pleasure of me. if someone else fancies a read then bully for them, hopefully it'll provide them with the occasional giggle or thought-provoking-head-thought.

it's like a diary that i won't lose.

i'm extra specially looking forward to my trip next year when i plan to regularly write in a journal using one of those pen thingies and my hand. don't worry, i will promptly enter it all into 'the neon sun' on my return. i fear the combination of the movement of a charging steam-train and my years of neglected penmanship would result in illegible scrawl, save for my scrawl-friendly eye. i'll type it for you; mark my words.

but the heart will remain in the leather-bound hardback, alongside the inky heiroglyphics and badly pasted ticket stubs. it will be a nice thing. if i can find a leather-bound hardback. it might just be a whsmith jotter. meh.

there's a soul in writing. there are a hundred billion souls in the words within. i'm far from prophesing to be a master of them - i'm more of a jack of all trade/master of none kinda guy - but an enjoyer, i am. words are as good as music. combine the two and you have heart-wrenching beauty. sometimes. i disclude more than i can list, and yes, blazin' squad is on that list.

and most hip-hop. shizzle.

we edge slowly and with purpose toward the subject on my mind. i have come to realise in recent times just how irritated i am by the decline of language. particularly written. now, i haven't blogged a rant about anything in quite a while (generally because i'm quite content) but this has been getting my goat. getting my goat and poking it repeatedly with a stick while singing the american national anthem in a boyband stylee.

people (some) have lost the ability to speak properly. fuck this fucking fucker fuck yeah, fuck? etc. i'm not completely adverse to the odd fucking swear word, but there are other fucking adjectives, you fuckers.

bu' dis ain't ma greivance, man.

i emplore you to join me in a movement against text message and webspeak abreviations. shortening words to their consonent parts to fit more in a 160 character msg pisses me right off. okay, so sometimes there's a lot to be said, more than 160 nuggets will allow. if it's one time in twenty then... y'know... okay. but limited to mobile phone messages. when you're typing, you've got the entire alphabet in front of you, a button for each letter. is it really too much to ask for your fingers to spell out a whole word instead of creating indecipherable code?

now i'm not one for being patriotic. far from it. i think this country's easily done enough damage to earth and its history to counterract the good that pockets of do-gooders have managed. we are, though, a nation with a past reputation for our skillful and cultured use of the spoken and written word. shakespeare pretty much wins it every time in poet top trumps, to name-drop but one. did you know that the english language has more words in it than any other language that has ever existed? this is in a world where a language becomes extinct every two weeks.

yep. i done did research.

i know language does naturally evolve over time. i'm sure if anyone from billy shakespeare's time were to hear us now they would lament the loss of a country who constantly spoke in iambic pentameter. (he might also be sad about the fact that noone wears ruffs any more, but this blog is about wordplay, not elizabethan fashion). (maybe later). let's not let it evolve in such a way that we stop writing vowels. especially when there are chavs out there who can't manage to say consonents out loud.

just, y'know, like this language that we've got. it's a good one.

bad things that have squeezed my scrote recently:

wernt
incase
ppl
lol
thnk u
ur gr8

i'm lost

lost finale

series 2

hilarious

i'm loving the music of the world

here are my top five albums:

rockin' the suburbs - ben folds five
the dance - fleetwood mac
underdog world strike - gogol bordello
turn the radio off - reel big fish
i, lucifer - the real tuesday weld

had a date today with a lovely young lady.

i will tell you about it another day.

i'm htmling it right up

you may notice some pictures beside the blog, to your left.

and also to the right.

it is an ongoing project now for me to make my blog page a little more personal. this is currently not a finished design. i think its quite messy isn't it? oh well.

feel free to appreciate the photos while they are there. they are some of the very many wonderful and/or life-changing people i have encountered along the years. it will be constantly added to (or taken away if someone is a poo). there are many more people too. if you are not there, do not take offence. maybe send me a nice photo and i'll decide if you deserve to be included.

please especially send a photo if you are a hot girl that i may or may not have met once. or not.

oh crap. i need to work out html code.

i'm king of wishful filling

out of the neon sun ~ chapter five

filled out my holiday form today. i am a legend.

also decided to go to new york for the weekend in november. filled out a form for that too. go on, admit it, you're impressed.

i don't think going to new york constitutes leaving the neon sun. think it's a little brighter over there, expecially that section in vanilla sky when everyone leaves. times square, that's what i'm thinking of. ah yes.

woo!

i'm hopeful

the best thing about this post is the comments section.

readers, make it happen ...

i'm out of my head

need something-" to keep me awake. Teching at a conference about
dentistry. It.-s going on three days
Long day it Was yes.terday. Struggling to keep My eyes
open today.
Put up a big screen. I'll put a photo of it on here at Some point.

dentists doing presentations about operations. Now I know about drilling
massive metal into your mouth.

Try to imagine a 9 metre wide high-def image of a live feed from a
dentist's operating table. Not good.

Horrible.

not wanting to see these nightmares In this state of sleepiness.
i should be concentrating more at Work
--) they showed a photo of a Jaw rebuild after a destructive bone
disease. It was a photo of a man with his face, off._having 40% of his
Jaw removed. - one side of his face essentially a big flap of meat
resting beside him. . -Even the dentist audience gasped. i WaS nearly
re-aquainted with lunch. I'm So sleeps. WAkE ME up!
One (1) of the other technicians did a conference like this recently
but a gynaecology one. Apparently one techie fainted.
that"s some specific porn ography.

Yawn.
(concentrate.
: i wish they taught dentistS how to be good public
speakers. Oh that last slide was gross.

Oh.. -... ! God.

this is it. i made it. look how big it is.

i'm saggy

i started work at 5:30 this morn.
i have just got home from work 'n it is now 11:15 this eve.
'n i have been rigging constantly that whole time. phew!
i did hang a 9 metre x 5 metre screen from the dome though. i am amazing.

i perhaps should not have gone out last night before a 17 hour shift. this time last night i was just walking into a vodka bar thinking "this is a bad idea."

but i was with a pretty girl so i reckon it's okay.

go to bed, me.
okay then.

i'm a stubbled little girl

out of the neon sun ~ part four

may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th may 19th...

the nineteenth day of may, the year of 2007.

we have a date. locked, cocked and ready to rock. short of sticking a pin in a calendar we've pretty much aimed for the general time of year and whacked it into our diaries. we leave england on saturday may 19th. 7 months away. ya-zoikes! that doesn't seem far.

look, i've put a countdown clock at the top of this webpage. currently 250 days. oh my.

gotta clear the exact dates with work. that would be the next step. part of me wants to book the flights today, but mustn't get ahead of ourselves. i'm reading a book called the great railway bazaar by paul theroux. he upped and went out of his front door leaving wife and kids behind to travel by train to japan and back. for the sake of traveling. it's whetting my appetite like pork-pies to grandads.

this journey has turned into magic in my head. it's not just sitting on a train for 4 weeks. it's a voyage of self discovery, an exploration of landscapes, an insight to people, a connection with humanity. and those are the things that are real, things that i will be able to touch while i'm there and describe when i'm back. there's this other element.

for me russia, siberia, lake baikal, mongolia and china are a whirlwind of shapes and colours and feelings; completely alien. they're not real. yet. they are cave paintings. they are ancient mosaics. they are television documentaries. they are mirages of rock and dust and wave and snow and leaf. i am alice in wonderland crossed with indiana jones, about to step into a vast expanse of dreamscape.

got to take the first intrepid step, though.

got to fill in a holiday form.

i'm maths

i'm torn between the environment and fun use of batteries

my mind wanders. i sit at work, in splendour, surrounded by aged antique wood and freshly polished brass. the old pipe organ sets itself in the room like a retired ogre made of stone finally able to rest. i despise organ music. in their silence, the towering pipes warn of impending noise.

i type on my pda. oh god, i'm sorry.

today i 'babysit' as another company set equipment in my great hall. it's the peace time that my job occasionally involves. today i am paid to watch over a team of technicians to check they are doing their job properly. i'm to offer advice. i get the same result as most of my days but with no heavy lifting. they all have much longer teeth than me and have been operating since before i was even thought of.

shit, i'm verging on management.

so i stare at the second largest unsupported concrete dome in the world. it sways menacingly above me at geological speeds. i know this building is splitting slowly in half. in a hundred and fourteen years the dome will open, a scream to the sky, showers of grey meteors will rain on whatever audience are in that day.

strong men in black combat gear march around me, purposefully.

we technical crew think of ourselves as warriors. trained with knowledge. some of us know we are ultimate geeks. i do and i am. i am not ashamed or dissatisfied.

we are those cogs behind the stainless steel fascia that make your meaningless conferences writhe with technology. tomorrow a major international bank arrive to tell themselves how rich they are. they will brag about figures bigger than your mobile phone number while plucking invisible fluff from their priceless suits. they will talk of motivation and ponder how to make more money next quarter. then in the afternoon they will praise the god of interest while employees fight off post-lunch winks. it is the same as all business conferences are.

"hello, my name is jonathan and i am an audio-visual technician."

believe that i enjoy my job. daily i witness the latest technological advances. i play with expensive toys that you can only begin to imagine even exist.

you love listening to music on your 150 watt home stereo speakers that cost you two weeks salary. i go to work and play my music on a 15,000 watt system that costs more than your parent's house.

you love movies on your 42" hd-ready plasma screen. i stopped using screens that small years ago. before me today rises a screen twenty feet wide and lit by a projecter the size of your hatchback.

you like your mood enhancing halogen downlighting that makes your lounge oh so modern. i have lights that move to any angle on any given axis and change colour, brightness and shape at a moments command from my fingertips.

i love my job. it fulfils many of the boyish tendencies that drive me. it would be perfection if it involved lego.

lights spin, subs woof, images roar. big boy's big toys.

just wish it was a bit more worthy. can I swap glaxo smith-kline, hsbc and the labour party for the terrence higgins trust, christian aid and the carbon project? i make your conference bigger, better, awesomer... and contribute nothing to the beauty and maintenance of our world. but

believe that i'd never want to sit behind a desktop for any length of time. ye office workers lament playtime! i may work an extra 15 or 20 hours every week on you, but i stimulate all my senses in each hour.

i currently eat a cadbury's fruit & nut paid for by my employer. it is a small but pleasant detail.

i am not bored. today i can tell a man to build a cool thing and then read about the gobi desert while he does it.

i am disappointed that some do not enjoy the hours they spend at work. it is a big part of your week. change to something you love. go on.

i make this.

majestic. pointless. remarkable. wasteful.

i'm not at all surprised

i saw the west-end musical based on the songs of queen; we will rock you today.

the irony is that it's written as a protest against the sterilization of creativity for financial reward.

i had fun though. i saw it with good people and they also saw the funny side. there were many quotes posted around the venue. the most accurate one was:

"the massive plasma screens were killer-diller"
- the guardian

there weren't any plasma screens.


reel big fish wrote a song called "sell out." don't know why i thought of it.

i'm totally going now

out of the neon sun ~ part 3

(and some other stuff)

today my boss told me i could have a month off during the company's busiest period of the year. we're one step closer to moscow. holy shit.

i do have to take two weeks of it off unpaid though. shame, but it does mean i will have lots of holiday left over for the year so it looks like i might be able to spend an entire week with faith, hope & gaffertape, something i had previously resigned myself to not being able to do. hurrah!

while i'm on the subject of gaffertape; in my previous blog about it i failed to mention some of the really important people that make it the brilliant experience it is: my friends that run it. they are gorramn geniuses. i'm so proud to know them.

liv, sparrow, troubadour and mf.

these four people had a vision to create something. they started from scratch. they built it up with only the very minimum of support. they battled against a sore few who thought it was a bad idea. they have truly brought an idea to life and made it their own thing, despite anything similar that preceded it.

and now, their actions have brought together a whole bunch of fabulous people and i know that spirit has improved the lives of most of the people it has touched. i'll stop harping on about it now.

they are awesome.

that is all.

i'm looking for a difference

hmmmm. if you can find any, please let me know.





beyonce & tina turner... bandy legged and noisy.

i'm full of content

it's been a few days. "why?" i hear you mutter. i've been away from mr. computer for a few days.

i have had a totally awesome week.

my friend 'xany' came to visit. i haven't seen her in 4 years. it will be safer for everyone if i don't go into any detail about what happened while she stayed over, suffice to say it was amazing to see her again and she was and still is one of my favourite people on the planet.

speaking of my favourite people on the planet (this works on so many levels that you will never know) i have a whole load of new names to add to my "best people list."

i've spent the last 5 days working as a youth leader for a theatre group that my friends set up to provide fun events and activities for young people around the country. the main event that the faith, hope and gaffertape theatre company do is musical in a week where the young people arrive at a residential centre on a sunday, audition for parts that evening and then work their socks off until friday when they then put on a musical. this year they got given a little grant and were asked to put on last years show, godspell, on at greenbelt this year. so we met together on wednesday and tried to put together everything that they did 13 months ago. in two days.

i just wanted to give you a brief history of why i spent a third of my well-earned holiday hanging out with 14-19 year olds. what i really wanted to say was what an amazing bunch of people they all are.

guys, if any of you read this (i should say i hope you don't 'cause my blog sometimes has naughty words... but secretly i hope you do) i'd just like to say that you all kick ass and i can't wait to see you all again. i'll miss you all and would gladly swap my regular shower facilities for more time spent with you. i'm so proud of you all for what you acheived this week, you blew my socks off with how talented and funny and welcoming and energetic and trustworthy and positive and open and compassionate and sweet and mature and smelly you all are.

thanks guys.

i love you all.

as someone who generally thinks that adolescents are filthy and rude, i'm so glad that i have been proved wrong by a group of incredible young people who i've quickly become very fond of.

and i went camping. which was nice.


  

i'm about to reveal a hollywood secret

perhaps the biggest discovery of last millennia was the R.D.G.U. it was discovered in approximately 1996 by three young explorers: the urban cowboy, wide-eyed troubadour and whackwit, although it had been working of it's own accord for many years previous to this.

the R.D.G.U. was spotted whilst a scientific experiment was taking place in the arizona desert. it was an experiment to learn more of the ecosystems of the world and increase the longevity of foreseeable human existence on this earth. an enormous dome-like structure was built, in it were various sections simulating each of the earth's main climatic environments: woodland, rainforest, desert, swamplands etc. certain mistakes were made during the experiment that led to the R.D.G.U's first spotting. the biodome was due to be sealed for a year with 6 highly decorated scientists inside, each a leading expert in their field. they would live inside the airtight dome and survive only on the faculties that nature gave them for those 365 days, running various tests along the way.

unfortunately the experiment was comprimised by two unplanned foreign bodies, two surfus moronicus got into the dome and were trapped inside for the full 365 days. while this was eventually utilised and allowed scientific research into chaos theory, out of the chaos came the R.D.G.U. into the public eye.

the R.D.G.U. (Random Dwarf Generation Unit) appeared from nowhere, without warning. it is not yet known who (or what) designed and built it. perhaps the ghosts of long dead film directors. perhaps martian film-buffs. the theories are infinite.

the R.D.G.U. is - in layman's terms - a machine to make any film/movie amazing, regardless of it's content, storyline, actors, director and so on. it does this by inserting a dwarf at a completely chance point of the film. the dwarf may be dancing, standing still, wiggling or any number of other actions. the one rule is that they must not have anything to do with the film itself. if said dwarf has a character name, a spoken line integral to the plot, a story changing presence in any way shape or form then it has not been created by the R.D.G.U. on 'pure' setting.

if a film includes a purebreed random dwarf then it is automatically a work of filmic genius. it can be used by simply placing the machine within a mile radius of a film-set. it must be fed with meat and dice. to add a random dwarf in post-production you simply add a copy of the final edit to the ingredients. (click on below diagram)

have you witnessed a random dwarf?
documented sightings include:

billy madison (1995)
biodome (1996)
love & sex (2000)
stander (2003) .. though it is a long distance shot & could be a child

i have seen others but have long forgotten them. i will update this list constantly


if you think you have seen random dwarf, please let me know. i am compiling the first official list.

i'm dis-popular

big brother is over again and off our televisions for another couple of months. i'm so pleased. it went well this year, i thought. normally, by process of osmosis and the sheer flooding of the media by BB, BBBM, BBLB, BBBB, FOBB and whatever other acronyms they clutch at to swarm like typeface ants over my tv guide and into teletext, i end up knowing some of their names, which ones are slappers, how many are "nice" people etc. etc. etc.

i try to avoid it, but the saturation of conversation topics of twenty-somethings by this demonic televisual entity forcefeed my memory banks. its annoying, it interrupts trying to learn mongolian and keeping my balance and uses up valuable frontal lobe space. i assume it has the same effect on the fans of the 'show' but they welcome it because they don't know who mongolia is and lack the ambition required to stand up.

this year was different though, it pleases me to say. this year i managed to avoid nearly all knowledge of any bb factoids. it was a welcome release.

i know that there was someone called nicky. i know that some housemates went back into the house. i know that a load of vacant morons demanded their voting money back. i believe it was won by a noisy wannabe with stupid hair.

and that's it. sigh of relief.

i've never watched big brother. it seemed like a weird idea the first time round, so i didn't bother. and haven't since. i don't feel i've missed out on anything.

an additional perk is of course not having frickin' russell brand infecting my telly-box. how are people like him allowed in mainstream media? him and all the other t4 presenters? (disregard simon amstell from this remark)

just because the tv says these people are funny, doesn't mean they actually are. certain characteristics give away the secret that they aren't really cut out for the job. for example:

• when her voice sounds like scratching your nails down a blackboard while coughing like a disease-ridden smoker.
  
• when the furniture around her has more screen presence.
  
• when he has to read from an autocue to appear witty.
  
• when they look dumbstruck by a band who they clearly haven't heard of before.
  
• when their wardrobe looks like it was designed by a topshop store-cupboard cleaner.
  
• when his hair has more personality than him, and it's the personality of that shouty-guy from the later police academy films.
  
• when their facial expression is either "smug" or "bewildered."
  
  

jesus, while searching for the above picture i discovered one of some hollyoaks cast members winning some kind of award. i assume it was for "undeservedly highest tv ratings without decent script/director/actors/camera work/storyline" or something.

i'm irritable

aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh.

like... like running your hands through muddy water and finding a pretty little gemstone that cuts your knuckles and stains your clothing.

i'm in the dry

its pouring outside. absolutely lashing it down.

well, day 3 of the holiday. i'm down at my mum and dad's. it's thundering and it's lightening, very very frightening me, galileo galileo figaro.

i hope jojo is okay in the rain. poor thing.

it was wonderful earlier though. a perfect summer evening for a stroll down to the beach to watch the fireworks. what is it about fireworks? they just make me feel nostalgic.

secret outlet of frustration for a thing:
,KJMZXFDJRFD,KJMXFDXFDXFD,
KJMEJE,KJED,KJM,JMZXFD,JMZXFD,
JMXFD,KJMMMNXFD,KJMXRFD,
KJMXRFD,KJMXRFD,KJM,KJXRFD,
KJMXRFD,KJMXTRFDXTFD,KJM

i'm relaxing against my will

today marks the second day of two weeks of 'freedom.' my workplace hath encouraged me to take 2 weeks off because i'm owed so much time off and the year is slipping away from us.

it's nice, this being single lark. 6 months ago if i were to have taken 2 weeks, i know that it would have been spent completely in the warm and loving arms of my missus. except without the warm and loving bit. and possibly not the arms.
but it definitely would have been entirely with her.
i'm sure it would have been a perfect week of sun, sea, anger, discomfort and sand.
and arguments.
but i'm single now. so what can i possibly do on my own for 14 days? how can i fill the time? what time is it anyway?
it's 9.22am.
well here's the plan... (if you're a stalker please do not read the rest of this blog. it would make your life easier, but less of a challenge)

stay with my brother in sunny cambridge, stay with my parents in sunny margate, my friend 'xany' stays with me in sunny london, go to sunny cheltenham to assist running a sunny youth camp/event type thing, go to sunny music festival in sunny cheltenham racecourse, stay with my sunny friend 'ned' on her sunny boat in the sun.

not all at the same time. that would be silly. but clever.

i'm planning on enjoying the sun quite a bit.

my biggest excitement is fitting a weeks worth of luggage, tent, spare helmet, camping equipment and a recently finished canvas, on my bike.
it will be fun.

she is a big bike. i have faith.
her name is jojo. i will introduce her to you soon.

right, better go and buy a weeks worth of luggage, tent, spare helmet, and some camping equipment.

i'm a cheerful one

that last blog was a bit heavy wasn't it? i'm sorry about that. i'm afraid that within this cheery golightly exterior there lies an angry little activist trying to right the world. i'd like to be able to clear third world debt or catch the american bombs before they hit some little kids house. most of my friends are working on those things for their jobs. i'm immensely proud of them. it's like i have a social group of real life superheroes. sometimes i feel a little in-adequate when they have dedicated their entire career to it and i have spent moments of mine actually being polite to tony "warmonger" blair.

i won't spend this blog moaning about my inadequacies as a political pressuriser. i want to moan today about tracksuits. now i'm not for a moment suggesting that i know much about fashion. yes, i used to run a highly regarded fashionable clothes shop but now i'm a sound engineer so i only know about black jeans and t-shirts with def leppard on them. at least, though, when i'm not wearing my work clothes i like to think about what i'm wearing and try and look presentable to the rest of the human race. but whats this thing about tracksuits, eh? what could be a more lazy and unflattering outfit to wear in public? yes fine, if you're at home doing the laundry or - god forbid - TRAINING, this would be ideal, but i see people out on an evening wearing them. isn't a tracksuit the sort of thing you dress a disabled guy in so he doesn't hurt himself his own zip?

(too far?)

people in tracksuits: you don't look good. you look like toddlers. this is not helped by having tweety-pie printed on the back.

what annoys me even more is when spotty little teenaged white-boys with grubby fingernails and shitty little scooters wear them thinking they look "so hip-hop." you don't look hip hop, you look like cunts. and putting noisy exhaust pipes on your bikes doesn't make people think they are really cool sports bikes. it makes people think you are cunts.

i hate you chavvy tracksuit wearing, noisy scooter riding shit demons.
i hate you.

i'm thinking about god

it's a biggun and no mistake.

two things happened this week that made me think about god and stuff. firstly, i was at the fruitstock festival in regent's park on sunday. it was busy. very busy. a beautiful day, the sun was pouring down on our shoulders, cider was flowing like the danube and from the smells i'm guessing a few were partaking in a bit of 'homegrown smoking.'

needless to say it was a merry merry occasion, and because it was a free festival a hearty cross-section of demographics were in attendance and creating a relaxed chilled-out atmosphere that was really rather pleasant. (that, or passive "smoking" had mellowed me beyond my senses)

something a bit surprising happened though, when the london community gospel choir came on to main stage. from about 50,000 people sitting on rugs in the sun, very suddenly there were 30,000 sitting on rugs and about 20,000 standing up and clambering toward the stage, many with their hands in the air. now i don't know what the statistic of the amount of christians there are in london, but i bet it's not 40%. so i'm quite intrigued as to what went through the minds of those who suddenly wanted to be close to the front of an evangelistic performance such as this.

yes, many of you probably are christians and wanted to get into the worship side of it.
yes, the LCGC are incredible performers and entertainers, i don't want to take this away from them, but there were other great acts too, with hardly a comparible reaction.
yes, many people just thought it was a bit funny and wanted other people to see them take the piss. i saw you, you're not as funny as you thought.
yes, there is a certain amount of in-built emotive response to the chords and harmonies of gospel music, especially over a big fat PA system.

but i'm not entirely sure if that covers everyone who had this reaction. it was literally an exodus, a wave of people from all over the park that was rolling stageward.

if you were there, i'd love to know your thoughts and whether you were one in that wave and why. i'm not naive to think that 'the Power of God' compelled you all. it may have done a few. if it was responsible for your movement then congratulations, i hope you see life with new, refreshed eyes and a big cheeky smile.

the second god-thought was inspired by a very old and dear friend getting in contact almost completely out of the blue. i have tried to contact her many a time in the last 4-5 years and our correspondance has never amounted to any longevity. while i won't go into very much detail it turns out that she has become pretty much a recluse, away from her long list of friends and ended up halfway around the globe in a far off but well-nourished land. this had been largely due to pressure from her family and 'friends' to marry quickly and settle down in the 'loving and supportive' environment of a religious community which i will leave unspecified.

now she is (quote) "fucking miserable... jaded... [and] without hope."

it's not god who made this happen. i'm fed up with people blaming religion for much of the shit that goes on in this world. it's not religion; religion is a basic human need, it's genetic. every human age in any part of the world, no matter how remote, has a history of worship or praise or god-fearing or at the very very least a belief that there is something bigger.

don't try and tell me religion is to blame. if that was the truth then your local vicar and his aged choir must be the most dangerous and fearful people in your community.

it's people. people unfortunately are the most dangerous additions to any situation. people are greedy. people get delusions of grandeur. people think they are infallible. people get allowed into positions of power and far too often they are the wrong choice. bush, bin laden, hitler, prescott, you know the list. they shouldn't ever have been in a position of that much power and they certainly should never be in a position where they make decisions about how other people's lives should be.

someone decided that my friend would be 'better off' in this fanatical, narrow-minded, racist, selfish, deluded, arrogant community. she's not. she's sad. she shouldn't be wasting precious moments of her life without a smile splattered over her face, she should be free to experience the pleasures this life can give.

same goes for everyone. there's enough food, water, justice, wealth, freedom, comfort and beauty in this world for every single person to have a feast for life. unfortunately there are a few people that think different. and we listen to them.

it doesn't matter if you're jewish, muslim, christian, buddhist, hindu, whatever. your god doesn't want you to spend your life in fear, ruining the lives of others. he/she/they didn't create a planet to punish a race that didn't yet exist. this planet is here to enjoy, those people around you are to be nice to, and - if you believe in a god of any kind - it's there to respect.

now stop fucking about.

abode with me - ROOM FOR RENT

as from 5th september there is a room free in my house.
its a lovely room. and a lovely house.
and i am lovely. and so is my house mate.

medium-sized fully-furnished room with double bed and plenty of storage, in a modern house on a quiet terraced street. 5-10 mins walk from wood green tube station (zone 3). comfy lounge, large kitchen/diner, monitored burglar alarm, wireless broadband, washing machine, cheap bills, indoor toilet, outdoor garden.
and a roof that covers the entire building.

we are two well-presented, easy-going, house-trained chaps who enjoy films, music, gigs, comedy, the odd pint, the odd worker's breakfast, odd things. he likes football, i like motorbikes.
£365pm or thereabouts, council tax included.

we're looking for someone aged 23-33, male or female, non-smoker preferred, trustworthy and pleasant with it.
if you know anyone, please get in contact.

(we don't want nutters or people who like blazin' squad)

i'm hungry...

...and i just caught 2 massive moths in my bedroom.

hmmm.

is that okay? i guess not. but i thought i'd ask. yeah? no. no, i shouldn't.

hmm.

no. no i really shouldn't.

no?

no.

i'm pushing one out

i'm bad-ass

i found this while i was going through old stuff. it's a letter of resignation to my last company. i worked for a great company that got bought out by an idiot company.
i didn't like the new one. it was shit.

Dear Person,

It is with great relief that I am finally able to hand in this, my letter of resignation.

I will work my months notice period if required, and will leave on 19th September.

Despite spending many months enjoying my job at *old company*; feeling challenged, enthused, respected and in a company that had a clear idea of what they were doing and how they were going to get there, I am glad to say that I am finally able to leave a job where the exact opposite is true.

From the day that we moved from *old location* to *new location* it has been a constant downward spiral. I have spent these past months feeling completely bored. When I first started at *old company*, as any of my *old company* peers that are left will testify, I had a huge enthusiasm for the job and worked my hardest in all parts. This was easy to do in an environment where I was constantly being encouraged to do so: treated like an adult, given hope of prospects, paid on time with no problems, surrounded by people who knew what they were doing and above all, in a company that was transparent, successful and stable.

Since the move it has been consistent that every day something happens that has sapped further enthusiasm or left me dumbstruck that a company could mess up so much and treat its workers with so little respect. I have reached a point now where little could surprise me in the day-to-day operations of this company.

It is a place geared only towards cutting corners and apologising to disappointed customers; excited by high financial turnover (regardless of profit) and quantity of staff (regardless of quality).

When you bought *old company*, did you hope to be taking on the profit that it made as well as the staff and assets without raising yourselves to the *old company* standard? Did you consider that if you treated the new guys like idiots that they would stay, knowing that with their skills they could get new jobs within a few months? Were you even aware that most people left before the move even happened? Is it beginning to look like you have spent a load of money on some second-hand equipment?

I stayed with the company to give it the benefit of the doubt. While all reports suggested that *new company* was a cowboy company, it was promised that they were trying to improve and were looking to take on the successful knowledge and working practice standard that they could gain by merging with *old company*. With that in mind I thought that it might be worth ‘sticking it out’ and seeing if we all couldn’t make something of some quality. Sadly we were lied to. You didn’t listen to any suggestions that we had. Instead, you assumed that we would just fit in, work in the way you are used to and success would easily follow.

All of the above will, I’m sure, mean that your company will continue to have to survive on uninteresting work involving a laptop and screen and having to discount the charge because you were late.

I could go on, but I should think (whoever you are, I’ve never experienced the common courtesy of an introduction) you have stopped reading by now, knowing that your way is best and you don’t need to listen to anyone below you. And frankly, I only want to use one sheet of my paper.

I have no personal ill will towards any one person in particular, but absolutely no commitment to *new company* itself and will be glad to move on to where I can begin thinking about having a career again.

Thank you for the money you managed to pay me.

Lots of love and kisses, Me

(i changed that last bit to protect my secret identity.)
needless to say they told me not to come in on monday.
4 weeks off.
paid.
result.

amusingly, the idiot company have gone bust and into liquidation twice since then, and about 3 buyers pull out of buy-out deals. they've also lost most of their venue contracts and my new company has won them all!

i feel bad about using the word cowboy though. cowboys are cool.

i'm re-aligning my brain

out of the neon sun ~ chapter 2

the planning hath officially begun. decisions hath been made. a step hath been taken. it's becoming slightly real. yep, i'm definitely going to mongolia.

matt and i have chosen to travel 2nd class in 4-berth cabins so we get to meet lots of people on the way. we currently have our fingers crossed that on one of the legs of the journey those two people turn out to be 18 year-old swedish professional dancers with a healthy attitude to nudity and experimentation.

we're aiming to go sometime during may/june. we'll miss out on the naadar festival which is a shame, but during july/august it gets very busy tourist-wise and temperatures range from 35-45C. bloomin' nora. well it is desert.

and there are mosquitoes. a lot of them. the size of your fist.

my favourite decision though, is that we're going to wing it. completely. all we'll know beforehand are our flight time into moscow and our flight time out of beijing. the rest we'll make up as we go along. scared? excited? yup. i get a little burst of adrenalin every time i think about it. op! theres one.

but here's the thing that has really made me think its real. i've started the slippery treacherous task of learning mongolian. so i don't appear a total retard ->

i was terrible at languages at school. i learned french for a bit and forgot it all. i learned german for a bit longer and now all i can do is ask where the nearest train station is; not that much use. especially not in the middle of the gobi desert.

a stroke of luck though. a girl at work is a mongol (don't laugh) and she's teaching me how to speak khalkha. bonus. apparently my accent is very good. she got this far away dreamy look in her eye when i spoke, although that could just be my spankingly delightful face. bayartai!

i'm hoping this will work

because if you can read this; it means i can remote blog from my mobile phone..
oh yeah, i'm that geeky.

i'm all alone, all alone am i. weeee!

my boss has gone on holiday for two weeks leaving me in charge. in charge i tell thee.
yup.
i have one major task while he's away and thank god it's not one littered with peril and galactic responsibility.
heck.
it is isn't it?

this is where i work. i know, "isn't it grand," "isn't it beautiful," "isn't it big," and other gasps of amazement similar (but opposite) to the sorts of things i hear in the bedroom.

my task in the next couple of weeks is to get a company in to rip up all that nice antique wood, fill it with cables, drill a few holes here and there, sink some speakers into some big holes and then put it all back together again. without leaving so much as a pile of sawdust.

oh fuck.

this ain't scrapheap challenge any more. this could go very wrong. wish me luck.
if it does go tits-up, read up on my blog while you can... i don't think i'll be able to add to it much with broken fingers and my teeth punched through my arsehole.