My mother?

"Imagine the greatest hits of Bobby Darin without Mack the Knife. That's what my life would be like without you." -- Haruki Murakami

What an amazing quote! I think it has to be my favourite of all time... A friend of mine recently did magic for Hampton Fancher!!! [pause] What do you mean who is he? Only the guy who wrote the Bladerunner screenplay! He must be a little annoyed actually, because all everyone remembers from that film is the Rutger Hauer 'tears in rain' speech, which Hauer came up with himself. Gutting. Reminds me of that scene in Chasing Amy, where Jason Lee's character gets called a 'tracer' as Affleck get's the glory. Anyway I gotta go because my cat wants to be stroked and won't leave me alone. I can't work out whether she's being incredibly affectionate or she's just got fleas.

The Club

I am part of the daytime crowd now. Inhabiting coffee bars, fast food stops and train stations; we are the time-passers. Filling and padding our moments, idling away the hours, all struggling to reach the next appointment in our ever decreasing schedules. I sit in the MacHouse opposite a bag lady in an aqua blue hat, carriers stuffed with papers, magazines and dead weight. I drink my purified water characterised by it's lightness and composition. She sips her tea. All walks of life walk by as I look on and lack.

Insomnia

can't sleep. it's daytime and i can't sleep. wanna sleepy sleep all through the sleepless week. so tired and eyes open. not closed. lie down they wake up. they stare and stare no time off just stare. shh quiet helps. no music. no noise. no talk. no wait. not helping. look at clock. got to get up in an hour again. must sleep faster. got to work in an hour must be awake for work and not sleep. sleep for the weak. week has blended into blurry blendy blur of blended blurriness. everyone is tired like me they just pretend.
shh everybody sleep sleep.

High rule

I don't play many games these days. I used to be a bit of an old skool gamer, but over recent years I've lost the love. The exception will always be Zelda, which has cemented a very special place in my stony heart. With Zelda, you're not just playing a computer game, oh no! you're Saving the Princess! Protecting the Ancients! Redeeming a Kingdom! Last year I got stuck in hospital for a couple of weeks, and after a few days, pushed for space, they shipped me down to one of those death wards; a room full of patients queueing to die. People were dropping like flies, flies were flourishing in the filth, and I was wilting like the cheap garage flowers at every bed. Each night the guy to my left would strip his clothes off and assault my bed, the guy to the right would defecate and produce the most awful stench, and the nurses would look on in disdain. Through all this however, my one true companion was always there for me: Link, the hero of a golden age. We sailed the ocean, found the treasure, caught the fish, fought the Ganon, and screamed through Windwaker in a week. My schedule was thus:

7am: Woken with a blood test
7.02am: Play Zelda
12.30pm: Play Zelda left handed while eating lunch
2-4pm: Play Zelda while half talking to visitors
8pm: Play Zelda right handed while eating tea
4am: Fall asleep while Playing Zelda
7am: See above

And the happiest memory of the week is the small litlle ray of hope that game used to give me at regular intervals. You see, when you collect 5 rupees (the Hyrulian unit of currency) the game cries "You found 5 rupees! Not too shabby!". What a beautiful, uplifting, and delicate little outlook on life: "Not too shabby!"

Question

If you milk a dead cow, do you get yoghurt?

Does this help?

It's tough being a magician; people think it's easy, but it's tough. For a start, just like comedians and singers, people think that the person that appears on stage is the person that comes off it. The 'me' in lights may be based on aspects of myself, but it is always an exaggerated, director's cut version of the actual me. I remember a girlfriend finding it very difficult to cope with the difference a deck of cards would make to my personality. At the flick of a switch I'd go from a shy and retiring quiet little boy, to the wonderkid centre of attention. And the thing I found, and still find, most difficult about it is that when the cards go away people still look at me with that horrible expectancy: Dance for us little Monkey, dance! The reason I mention all this is that the previous post mentioned my deliberations about the future of the blog, which, you'll be pleased to know, I've reconciled by thinking of the blog in the same way as my aforementioned stage work. Although this blog is about my experiences, feelings and outlook on life, it is all filtered through a lens to sharpen and brighten it up. I weed out the mundane, the daytime tv and the paperwork and leave you with the slightly more leftfield areas; those moments with a bit of an edge. I'm not trying to preach here, I'm just trying to say, friends, groupies, countrymen, please, I'm a normal guy really! I don't actually stalk every girl I see on the tube! I'm not really this shallow! So relax, set your mind at rest, and pretend I'm not the one following you home at night.

Dishonesty the best policy

Over the last few days I have been pondering as to whether I should continue to write this blog as candidly as I have been. I had a conversation with a good friend who mentioned some people were a little concerned with a letter I wrote when I was under the influence of a rather large amount of prescription drugs. Apparently they didn't quite see the funny side of it. I guess my answer would be that although the letter's content is amusing, it's not supposed to be just a funny letter. It's fair to say I was in a pretty dark place when I wrote it; on the verge of a morphine addiction and topping it up with sleeping tablets, anti-sickness tablets and even anti-depressants, I was hallucinating regularly, losing control of my thought processes and acting on some very strange ideas. When comedy comes from those lonely and painful dark places it adds a little poignancy and becomes so much more interesting and involving. Who wants to know how many giraffes it takes to change a light bulb, when you could be identifying and empathising with another human being. And if you want to know the real reason for all this soul-searching, a girl who I was getting on quite well with suddenly declined an invitation, despite her initial enthusiasm. Now she may have declined for any number of reasons of course, and probably did, but I couldn't quite shake the suspicion that she had taken one look online and begun to fear for the safety of her bunny.

Down with the Clown

When I was smaller, well younger anyway, on very rare occasions before school, my father used to take me to Ronald McDonald's for a Big Breakfast. Nothing could be bigger I thought! As I have grown older and wiser I have realised one dreadful thing: the clown lies! To me, to you, to us, he lies! That is no big breakfast! Sure you had your muffins, eggs, hash browns, sausage and a drink. That's a lot of food, no doubt. But what comes in the Sausage and Egg McMuffin meal eh? You've got your two muffins, sausage and hash browns in both deals, granted. And egg, some may say. Whoa there puppy! The Big Breakfast provides a filthy, weak, dirty grey scrambled egg, whereas a S & E McMuffin comes with a succulently poached egg; a quivering centerpiece. No contest. But wait a minute, there's more! The McMuffin quite blatantly has an ADDITIONAL SLICE OF CHEESE! Where's the cheese in a Big Breakfast hey?? Oh sure, the Big Breakfast meal comes with jam and butter, but you can request that free of charge if need be. Where's my additional source of protein, calcium, zinc, and vitamin B12? It's in the McMuffin meal, that's where!! I put it to you my reader, and the whole of mankind, that the Big Breakfast meal is smaller, less value, and downright infinitely more immoral than the wonder of a Sausage and Egg McMuffin meal. With Cheese.

Commutism

Late night and sober. I watch the drunks dance with the street punks. I'm on a bus, staring at the glaring sweaty people, crowding in, on and out. A pretty girl talks loudly to an old man about her night. He sits, drawn in, huddled on the seat, clutching a plastic bag. I get off and walk to the train station. I step neatly in and out of the wanderers, avoiding the cold shoulders and darkened eyes. At the far end of the platform I get on the front carraige and try to shut down. All around me the coach fills with people of all states and sizes. A couple opposite me cuddle up close to each other, the girl meets my eye and I look away. A few seats down a drunken woman is having a loud argument on her mobile phone. She shouts one last insult, hangs up and starts sobbing. Her friend puts an arm around her shoulders. I find a brochure for kitchenware under my seat and flick through it. I see a penguin shaped steam cleaning kit for £15. I rub my eyes and try to pretend life is ok.

apology: An Apology

Last night my brother and I went to a small theatre in Greenwich to watch a strange piece of English/Japanese fusion theatre. The first half had it's good points and bad, but generally we managed to get through it and make it back to the bar with enough resolve to stick the evening out. However I had noticed that one of the women in the play had a voice identical, and I mean precisely exactly unmistakeably identical, to Dexter from Dexter's Lab. Now for the unitiated, this is one screwed up, strangled, weird-ass voice. If you've never seen this work of Genius, well click here and here for a sample. And sadly I had decided to share this information with Michael moments before we went back in. The second half starts and within five minutes we are both crying with laughter. Tears and tears are gushing and pouring from our eyes, breath is no longer accessible, suffocation is the only fair punishment. To make matters worse, we are on the back row, just behind the front row; the theatre is two seats deep. And there is no escape, everytime we look away, all we can hear is the voice of Dexter. Just when we begin to regain some small semblance of control, one actor with a Goatee decides to treat the play as an audition for the World's Greatest Shakespearean Actooor, two girls are fresh out of Musical Theatre!, the guy from the opening act has just become uber-camp, and the remaining girl is now dressed, moving and shouting exactly like Tetsuo from Akira. It wasn't pretty. We missed thirty of the forty minutes, offended everyone around us, and became dangerously dehydrated. Oh, and it was the press night. We are both truly, madly, deeply sorry.

All in the Delivery

Woman: You don't even know me.
Man: So? I like you. I know you as well as I'll need to.
Woman: We've only met three times!
Man: That's not important. Nobody knows anyone anyway. Not really...
Woman: What's that supposed to mean?
Man: ...I don't even know myself! And I've been together 24 years.
Woman: But, but, you don't even know my middle name!
Man: Ah, you want me to learn about you. Well that's different. Sure, we'll do one of those email quizzes my friends send; we'll swap unusual facts and figures like when did you first ride a pony, and what kind of ice cream you would rather be suffocated with etcetera.
Woman: Are you for real?
Man: Come on, who really knows you? All they know is the assumptions and conclusions they have, probably falsely, drawn from the words, smiles and experiences you've exchanged. It's all in their heads; they've made it up. The opinions you are forming right now of me; they're not real, I'm not actually this crazy. But after you've formed them, that's it, nothing matters anymore.
Woman: So are we done here?
Man: Sure, sure, we're done. Pizza'll be with you in twenty minutes.

This Function

"Writers are extremely ruthless. They don't go crazy the way other people go crazy. They might be behaving badly, but they're also observing, observing, observing." -- David Denby

A good writer has an individual voice they say. In other words focus on your dysfunctions, on how you don't fit in, on why you're different. That's what people tend to find interesting. Ha ha look at him, they say, look what he did, look how stupid or crazy or romantic he is. So I'm trapped in a world where the more dysfunctional I am, the more creative I become, the more the world laughs and encourages me. More and more I find myself sitting in a cafe making notes on some anonymous stranger that caught my eye, then taking notes on why I make notes. I catch myself aimlessly plodding around the west end, with no purpose other than to maybe find a good sandwich. I mimic the people I pass, copying facial expressions, body language, posture, repeating any quirky small phrases they come out with and writing everything down. I observe myself as I blow the chances of yet another relationship by being too intense, too distant, too funny, too serious, too outgoing, too introspective. And you know? I don't know whether it's worth it. Wouldn't it just be nicer to go out and not worry about all this; to not always be on the observe at the expense of others? Probably. But then you wouldn't be reading this would you? So please, if not for me, for all the others, laugh it up.

Sign on and on and on...

What's the unemployment rate at the moment? 5.5 percent. 8 million people. I just looked it up. Today I go to the Job Centre to join their ranks. Here's the score: in order to get a Good Deal on a debt-4-life Career Development Loan I need to prove I've been an unemployed bum, without a name, a taxless wonder for the past three months. I have, so no problem there. I just gotta prove it. To do this? I just gotta sign on. How hard can it be?

3pm - arrive and join a queue for enquiries
3.15 - at enquiries told to sign in cleverly concealed "signing in" book before joining queue
3.40 - seen by enquiries
3.55 - enquiries reveal i'm on wrong floor
3.56 - redirected upstairs through hitherto unnoticed small inconspicuous door hidden around a corner
4pm - arrive upstairs and join queue
4.15 - told to sign in book
4.30 - handed 40 page job seekers allowance form, 10 page job seeking jobby form, 3 page bank details detail
5.30 - complete forms hand them over for "checking"
5.45 - told my introductory interview can now be arranged
5.47 - when arranging a suitable date, asked what type of job i would be seeking
5.48 - i reply "no job, as i need to be unemployed for three months"
5.49 - long pause
5.50 - handed sealed plastic wrapped incapacity benefit novella to be completed and posted in.
5.51 - told to leave
5.52 to present - still attempting to open sealed wrapping of aforementioned form
Some time in between - read Kafka's The Trial and cry tears of jealous longing for his fictionalised bureaucracy.

Life's a Beach

I am stranded among the beach monkeys. Watching as they skip over the sun-drenched sand with their long sandy hair, tanned sandy skin, hand in sandy hand. I'm feeling a little outta place. True my hair is long, but it's dyed blond rather than the real deal. I order a beer and end up with a coke. We talk to two preteen wannabes about nightlife on the Newquay. The wind's dead and the surf's flat. As it's day four of a very highly corporate endorsed international surf competition this is not the ideal. Perhaps in a more laid back sunshine state the kids would laugh it off, throw a frisbee and build a fire. In Newquay they set off to vandalise a local golf course and leave their lobster pink parents to whinge and singe in the sunshine. The organisers gaze on in horror, having realised the collosal disadvantage of staging a surf event in England is the possibility of the English turning up.

Nice weather for ducks

Holidays. Not much to do. Not a care in the world. Except... I've got to raise a significant chunk of green, and soon. I mean, to those that have a reasonable flow of the dollar, it's not a large amount really. I have friends who gamble that much away in a night, some friends who'd pay that for a meal, or a good bottle of wine. And then there are others who could feed their family for the next twelve years on the funds I seek purely for self-enhancing reasons. So yeah, I feel kinda bad about this. Middle-class guilt I guess. Anyone have a solution for this? Sell my possesions and become a monk? I'm considering it...

the chips are down

Apart from the noise, there is silence. Forty five minutes he sits there, never taking a sip from his coffee which is probably long since finished; from where I sit I cannot tell. His legs are crossed, and he holds his glasses in his hand. Waiting? Maybe. He’s married, a ring on each third finger tells me so, and I don’t have to worry about telling left from right. He is perhaps 40 years old, black skin, wearing a black coat, well jacket really, with a grey stripe down the sleeves, black trousers and scuffed white trainers. On the seat to his left he has a cheap carrier bag with a tube of ready salted Pringles inside. He taps his finger on the table in no particular rhythm. A man asks if he can join him, our guy nods and says yes. Neither of them attempt to strike up a conversation. Second man pulls out a book. First man continues to stare into space. A smile plays over his lips, wistful and weak. Revisiting a memory perhaps, a day spent with a loved one, playing with his son that morning. But there is also a frown forming on his brow, some tension appearing, clouding his complexion. He shakes his head. Is he trying to remember or forget? He continues to stare. Is he watching the door? Waiting for someone to come in? Or just counting down the time until he can leave. The more I watch, the more attached I become and decide it’s only right he has a name. I settle on the name Samson and let my mind drift. He shuffles his feet. He has done this a few times now, it is the only movement he makes. He carefully repositions each foot, moving first the left foot, then the right, then the left again. There is a carefully measured approach to this, and the gesture seems to speak of his intense thoughtfulness. A thought occurs to me, and I begin to write it down in my notepad. I pen two sentences and by the time I look up he has gone. The Pringles have gone with him. He has vanished, like an elephant, and I shall never see him again.