A few of my favourite things include packets of jelly babies, listening to passing trains, bourbon and photographs. A few years ago I spent a day routing around the garage to drop a suitcase at my feet and it to split open which was full of old black and white photos of my family. They all stared back and smiled at the camera without the knowledge and history which surrounds all of them.
I have a wry smile about it all but I realise that for every picture a story told, the pains, the problems and all the other things which we quickly forget are never caught. I remember them and tie my own stories around it, but I know that when I'm gone the photos mean nothing. Maybe they will end up on someone's wall as a calender of old immigrant families. I try to rewind into the past and I quietly rack my brains, finally remember it was 10 years ago and I’m playing Famicom with my uncle. I don’t remember anything else, just playing Famicom for the first time in my life thinking why I never had one at home in England. I never had that in a picture.
We fast forward into the present and the opposite is true of the world now. We are under a deluge of cheap pictures streamed from peoples digital cameras and mobile phones. They take so many pictures in an effort to capture the moment of all the happiness, the emotion, even the sadness. And really it’s the same, it captures nothing, people smiling inanely, drunken moments of people pulling faces. I wonder how we will all feel this generation for all the millions upon millions of bytes of photographic data, when they look back on it all. I'm as guilty as anyone of it so maybe this is the future or maybe I’m just playing at being nostalgic.
Those pictures from the past were something, I hope to bring you some new pictures without the drunken escapades over the next few weeks my beautiful eggs.
I looked through the window pane and could only think of one person. If someone gave you a boarding pass like this, would you let them fly?
musik
Titanic Vandalism- The Go Team!
Crosstown Traffic- Jimi Hendrix
A Thousand Apologies- Lost Prophets
Revol- Manic Street Preachers
How Could I Just Kill A Man- Rage Against The Machine
Knights of Cydonia- Muse
風の谷のナウシカ- 君をのせて
夢中人- 王菲
kino
Chungking Express- Wong Kar Wai
vershieden
Learning White Boards do indeed fight back,
Navy nurses that can't do slings.
Goetz for being a drunken loon with the policeman's helmet.
Finding random curry houses with Mr Baker even when he should be playing football.
Drinking with Oldlady and seeing him dance in front of me.
I always thought it would be my heart breaking in two before anything else, instead it's wiping the sweat from my brow and shouting obscenities at myself. I spent a late Saturday afternoon nursing the ache which was running up from the tip of my right toe all the way up to my throwing arm. Ultimate Frisbee is one of the hardest games/sports I have participated in my life.
People talk about learning lessons the hard way and with a bunch of friends/ colleagues we showed we had the enthusiasm and the passion, sure we were missing a lot of major ingredients. But, the most important thing is we learnt, we changed our play, we started to ingrain into our minds how to play the damn game. And play it properly we did by the end of it all.
But for now I'm going to nurse my aching legs so I'm ready for footie on Tuesday.
Miss you all my beautiful eggs.
I knew my parents inside loved me loads, but they showed it by press ganging me into being their cheap slave for long summers working in the takeaway, but that was ending. We had unpacked everything from the car and I bid my father farewell and gave him a hug which was never something we felt comfortable doing, I was missing him scolding me already. Having settled into my routine of nothingness over the summer, the boredom setting in and all I wanted to do was learn something. I was still staring at my computer screen and changed my desktop background for the 50th time as if I mattered if I had a picture of a naked girl or a picture of a car. Corduroy came back an hour later with food and alcohol, but we still went out and got takeaway. He ordered a burger with chips and I ate my first kebab in the city. It tasted of honey and grease with the tang of chilli sauce on my lips. I wanted to throw up afterwards but we went back up and shared a bottle of whiskey I had brought with me from home. The halls were an awful place at night, it was too dark and I always had to light some candles only for the hall monitors to come flying up the stairs and give me good bollocking. The other people living in our block sat with us to share the drink, Corduroy opened his bottle of vodka for the girls that hated the taste of whiskey, I hated the taste of vodka, it reminded me of cheap nights out listening to indie music.
musik
Kiss and Make Up- Funeral for a Friend
1045 Amsterdam Conversation- Funeral for a Friend
Wake Up- Rage Against the Machine
Prelude to War- BSG OST
I Don't Want to Die (In The Hospital)- Conor Obrest
NYC Gone Gone- Conor Obrest
Heart Shaped Box- Nirvana
The Most Beautiful Girl (In The Room)- Flight of the Conchords
You Could Be Mine- Guns and Roses
Rise Up With Fists- Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
Superman- Goldfinger
All is Full of Love- Bjork
Venus As A Boy- Bjork
videospiel
Pro Evolution Soccer 2009- Seabass
Valkyrie Chronicles Demo
vershieden
impromptu frisbee tournos, where when marking I accidentally stare at the no.85 girls chest so she won't get away.
catching Casey online and for her to say I should be with someone.
Feeling something I haven't felt in such a long time and collapsing in bed
losing badly but not feeling bad about it (losing isn't learning to be lost, it's knowing when you're lost)
randoms catching me to join their footie nights
seeing Monsiuer Scott for his 'surprise' birthday not organised by Françoise but not introducing his brother,
Jose being President and thinking I accused him of being drunk,
Gotz and Jose touching each other up in a really wrong way,
watching Spurs lose to 'lowly' Stoke,
and the fact that some people do read these words,
Lily for organising this weekends exertions- Captain Fantastic!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Subtle change in my dress but more importantly my work. You feel at a crossroads where from being a child you're now treated like an adult. It's a perception even some of your friends change to.
And the truth is I love it. Tailored shirt, matching tie, good trousers, pair of Italian leather shoes and a beautiful duffel coat. I just pass the time listening to music with my pearl white cans.
A proper post later in the week my beautiful eggs.
Having settled into my routine of nothingness over the summer, the boredom setting in and all I wanted to do was learn something. Corduroy and I went to the first week of fresher with much haste. We already had a tally of which girls numbers we could get, the ugly ones and the hot ones. The first few days were the sexcapades extravaganza. I learnt a lot in that week, what I learnt most was that I wasn’t as unattractive as I thought, but I also learnt my standards went down.
I thought Corduroy wouldn’t have been as up for the things we got up to, it was a cliché hidden inside some treaties written to stop the cold war. Rats were crawling around my head and my feet were starting to stink. I took a long cold shower after I had sex with the last student girl. The marks on my chest from her nail my ripped shirt in the bin, I really needed to leave and get some fresh air.
musik
One More Notch- Murder By Death
If you Find Yourself Caught in Love- Belle & Sebastian
Lithium- Nirvana
Bizarre Love Triangle- New Order
True Faith- New Order
kino
Screamers
Road to Perdition
vershieden
realising Bekah although I love her, she thinks she makes me sick from the colour of her hair
chocolate cake with soya based cups of tea with Mr Leslie and Miss Dryden (the sexy pair)
my German friend sticking his tongue into my ear
Artan's beautiful baby
'cliched' pics into the sun, cliché is never a bad thing when done well
getting drunk with Baker, him to always ask about my sex life (why he is so interested I do not know), meeting Pedro's gf and then spending an hour trying to walk home from the station
Lily's shoe laces and stretches
telling Rich how we can save the company with my ideas skillz
A song taught me to never regret anything in life, but another song tells me I should think about the girl from the north country. I'm inclined to think more about the girl from the southern state.
It's easy to strain your thoughts over someone you fall in love with, how much you want to be with them, except maybe you hate each other, the distance is too long or simply that the world moved on and one of you stood still. I find it's harder to live with the pain of what ifs and wherefores, a click of the finger the choices in front of you are lost.
Rewind a year and maybe life would be different. Regret makes you think like that, I'm glad for all the things that happened the way they did this year. Hope makes you stronger.
Love you all.
The kindness of our proprietor
I pulled it into my lungs and it stroked me all the way down patting me on the back. Nicotine chocolate tasting smoke, a coffee was what I really needed to keep me warm. The smoke danced in the light as if it was some Japanese kabuki play in the middle New York on a mid fall day. I left the cigarette in my mouth and reset my tie pin. My tie was a dark blue; it should have matched my suit, but in my morning rush I ran out of the front door without thinking maybe I should have gone for the other tie pin to the left. My finger nails were yellowed and untidy, I looked up hoping for someone to drop a pound coin into my hat. I put it on instead and walked along the embankment against the Thames water.
I finished my cigarette and threw the stub into the water; the short sizzle as it hit the surface to die out, was drowned out by the police man murmuring to himself. I smiled at him and he walked off when his partner had arrived. They marched like courting geese towards Waterloo Station.
musik
Superman- Goldfinger
99 Red Balloons- Goldfinger
Shiola- Murder By Death
School- Nirvana
Drain You- Nirvana
Hiphopopotamus Vs. Rhymenoceros- Flight of the Conchords
The Most Beautiful Girl (In The Room)- Flight of the Conchords
The Boy With The Arab Strap- Belle & Sebastian
Art Bitch- CSS
kino
The Grudge
buch
Old Kyoto
Dragon Syndicates
videospiel
Gran Turismo 5: Prologue spec III
vershieden
oi resh accents, especially if girls have them, Colin Farell can go feck himself and his commands
windy walks with multiple people this week
messing Faye up with my ideas of how I fall in love
getting invited to curry nights with people from work I've borrowed equipment off
surprising Lily on the phone about how quick I can answer it
Imagine locked in a room with 5 other people, the gentle hum of the fan keeping you cool. The computer consoles to your left glow a cold blue in the shallow lighting. You breath in a little to save the o2, it tastes of the sweat 5 others in the room and a the clinical flavour you remember when you were a kid waiting with your mother at the hospital. Instead of waiting for a check up, you're waiting to save the world, if only I had the courage to do that.
It snowed the other day, some time I was thinking it was May, But the ground was cocaine white covering the modelling clay, The window steamed underneath my girlfriend’s breath, I wanted to steal it from her, so no one could take what was left,
Taking pictures of the moment, had them developed, Old faced and wrinkled caustic soda all over my eyes, Sort of show that time works on your soul, to envelope the difference between truth and lies,
It snowed the next day, this year colder than the one before, Flat cardboard boxes full of clothes pegs and washing lines, We wrap up tight together try to keep in the warm, The fire place awakes and dances a burning light,
musik
Sliver-Nirvana
Big Guns- Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
Rush Hour- Jane Wiedlin
Don't you Forget About Me- Simple Minds
Robot Song- The Flight of the Conchords
Thou Shalt Always Kill- Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip
kino
Sunshine
schwarzwiessfernsehen
The Flight Of The Conchords
videospiel
Pro Evo 2009
sport
Portsmouth Vs Stoke City
vershieden
the friendly taiwanese girls selling me postcards of hope (http://www.tpcat.net/)
talking to Baker about social engineering/politics/comics/life/friends/politics/saving the world
shaking the hand that drew Watchman
listening to geeks pitch really shit ideas for comics
realising I was a fool to let that one slip
stacking it on a Birmingham escalator and not breaking my camera
It seems I'm stuck being serious over Bob Dylan or Wong Kar Wai films, clearly an obsession so I need to lighten up a bit more, take a day off and have a good Thai massage or take a flight to the Bahamas to drink a nice cocktail. The closest I have come is lazing in the garden reading the newspaper, I suppose that's not a bad thing.
A favourite columnist of mine and personal hero, Toshihiro Nagoshi, one time wrote a simple equation for success. It went along the lines of (Talent x Hard Work = Success), which I agree to a certain extent, but as a way of describing life I think it misses a few parts. I think he misses the insanity of what should be done in a real office, I can't speak for peculiarities of a Japanese softco but I can for the ones flying around in my mind.
Things to try at work 1.run into a meeting while it is in progress and try and steal the cans of Sprite. 2.stick random pictures of Chinese medicine man onto peoples desks. 3.attempt to trick the project manager into signing an agreement that the project will pay for a box at the new stadium. 4.chasing someone with a pair of novelty scissors across each office you have access to. 5.locking up all the stationery and open up a shop from your email in box in an attempt to earn some bonus cash while you open up excel for the 20th time of the day.
If that made any sense may Baltar save you.
Nite children.
If life is making mistakes and learning from them, surely death is knowing that you can be content in not making them any more. My legs give way in front of me and I collapsed onto the floor in a fit of coughs and saliva covering my face. I clutch at my chest trying to breathe a bit better but to no avail. My heart was pounding harder and harder and that was the last of what I remember.
Waking in a mild cold shiver, a tube is stuck in my arm and the bright light above my head, it feels like it's swinging back and forth. There's a strained muffled noise coming from my left hand side, I try to stand up. My legs give way in front of me and I collapse onto the floor in a barrage of kicks to the side.
I made another mistake and it crept up on me to give me one more kick in the side.
musik
If You Ever Find Yourself Caught In Love- Belle & Sebastian
The Getaway Plan- Funeral For A Friend
All In The Family- Korn
Fake Sound Of Progress- Lost Prophets
Anneurysm- Nirvana
Stars- Dubstar
Angkor Wat Theme- In The Mood For Love OST
Kid A- Radiohead
Dancing In The Dark- Bruce Springsteen
Born to Run- Bruce Springsteen
Renegades of Funk- Rage Against The Machine
How I Could Just Kill A Man- Rage Against The Machine
The Shape Of Punk To Come- Refused
He's On The Phone- St Etienne
kino
Master & Commander
buch
Japan- Lonely Planet
vershieden
Talking to old primary school friends about heroes and blatent capitalism.
Chatting to Nikki and offering her a can of Healy stolen Sprite, what a super hero (Nikki not the Sprite).
Pedro owing me money, which I intend to get back without the need to break his fingers and jam his head in a vice.
The jetlag afflicting Tuckers face.
Patrick MacGoohan.
Being all dressed up with no where to go.
Hair putty unused in my desk drawer, the wilder my hair gets at work.
Finding this years Xmas album by accident as always.
