Friendships aren’t rational. It’s like when you’re a football manager and your star Ivorian Coast striker blatantly dives and you claim not to have seen the play and will have to see the video. You have to take your friends side no matter what. If you are shown the replay at a later stage then you best be good at bullshitting.

The next part was written last weekend before I actually looked at Squires’ blog to find him updating now more than ever.  Guess I don’t really need to post it…

My internet usage has just been dealt another blow. Squires has escaped from this issue-ridden cul-de-sac of the world to hopefully greener pastures. What does this mean? One less person to talk bollocks about music too, one less person who would agree to go to 3 Kings to watch psychobilly garage folk experimental Scandinavian gypsy bands on little or no notice, and one less dedicated Puts Marie fan! But as previously mentioned it may be my internet usage that suffers the most from this. See when i log on in the mornings and evenings i have a very set routine. I turn on my computer and go and poo. This is generally enough time for Zone Alarm and whatever other assorted crap i have on my computer to fully load. Then i open outlook to check my mail. Invariably this is an email from Facebook updating me on what my friends have voted me…currently:

Your friends have voted on your strengths and weaknesses:

STRENGTHS:
person who can drink the most
best dinner companion
best singer

WEAKNESSES:
most likely to succeed
toughest

It’s very informative and does wonders for my self esteem.

I open up Firefox which starts with the football page of the beeb. Quick scan of the headlines to see if anything new has happened. Not much seeing as i was looking at it 5 or 6 hours ago before i went to bed. Open a new tab to load wastebook. Yes i know i can pre-save all my tabs so that they all load when i open up but then my morning routine is too streamlined. I have a scan to see what’s been happening. Again not much due to me having read it some hours previously. Open up a new tab and bring up Squires’ blog. Not much happening here either seeing as he updates almost as infrequently as me. Gone are the days of the blog wars and trading comments and the wittiest of witty banter, the in-jokes and the just bizarre observations and critiques. Yet i am content. I have my pattern and it was what i expected. I can start my day as normal.

But now he’s going to some little backwater town that may or may not have telephone lines and tinterweb hooked up, and he’ll be hovering round a candle or some sort of gas lantern typing on his laptop plugged into his donkey-powered generator about a bunch of Italian people who i don’t know and have no connection with – who i probably dislike (given). It’s a sad day for all of us.

In summary, you will be missed mate =)

Given that this financial crisis seems to be prolonged and seems to have coincided nicely with the point in my life i chose to enter into the finance industry, i think it might be best if i have a back-up plan so to speak. Depending how successfully received this first ‘future career’ entry is i may or may not continue this idea. Such is my style of writing. No real boundaries or limitations, but no real goals either.

So without further ado, here is my audition if you like, of me as a music reviewer.

Vanilla Ice is Back! Hip Hop Classics (2008)

There is a reason why this album was made. I don’t know what it is, but i’m sure somebody out there does. Vanilla Ice himself may not know, but i bet he didn’t balk at the opportunity. There will be somebody who knows, and hopefully they are tied up in a basement somewhere being severely flagellated for allowing this to be burnt to CD. Well i assume it was released on CD (it is available on Amazon – a veritable steal at £11.98), but i wouldn’t know because i would never pay for this dribble. I ‘came across’ a copy of what can only be described as an exercise in humiliation.

Firstly, to announce to the world that ‘Ice is Back’ reeks more of defiance than a celebratory announcement. No one was waiting for this for ten years a la Chinese Democracy…i think you would find it hard to locate anyone who was eagerly anticipating the next Vanilla Ice release…except maybe his agent. No, he is defying the laws of nature in reigniting a career that Darwinian principles had raised to the very pinnacle of the ‘unfittest’. This is not a Tom Cruise movie. Vanilla Ice was not a good pool player / barman / jet fighter pilot / nascar driver / samurai / spy, who became disenchanted with his craft till he met a girl and fell in love and became the best of the best. Vanilla Ice’s career died because he was no good to begin with.

Don’t get me wrong, i know every word to Ice Ice baby and was one of the first ‘cassingles’ i ever bought. It was yellow. Perhaps i should have realised it was a sign of things to come when the B-side was a cover of Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music. Hum the rest of the chorus to see just how much Vanilla was playing up the white boy image for his maiden release. As fond a memory as this song brings back, i don’t particularly think it required 4 different re-workings on a ‘Hip Hop Classics’ compilation. Queen may or may not have minded the Ice man using their bass riff for his apparent 4-time classic moneyspinner, but i am wondering what Public Enemy did to deserve his version of Fight The Power? Perhaps Flavor Flav turned down his white trash sister (or Mum) on Flavor of Love. I can see the white boy rapper connection with House of Pain – pretty much the only track which he has slightly altered from the original – the heavy guitar riffs alluding to his moonlit career in a thrash metal band. Evidently Ice felt the same connection to Cypress Hill and put out a carbon copy of Insane In The Brain complete with bong sound intro for that added street cred. All that’s missing now is the ‘Fight for your Right to Party’ Beasties cover to embed him in the white-rap frat boy hierarchy. (A cover of Snow’s informer would be a bit too close to home i suspect.)

As obviously out of place and useless as tits on a bull is his cover of Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldier. All jokes aside, there has not been such a criminal cover-version atrocity committed since the personally offensive American pie by Madonna. Sure there have been some terrible covers but this just hurts. I don’t agree with libellous practices in general but if i was any sort of relative of Bob marley i would take this as far as i could possibly go. I’m sure Vanilla Ice is just what Bob had in mind as a musical ally and contemporary and would gladly have collaborated to pool their immense talents together. After painting himself into the white-rap upper echelons with the subtlety of someone laughing at a joke told in another language of which they have no comprehension, Ice inexplicably lunges forth into the struggle for black rights and resistance. Combined with the aforementioned fight the power, Ice is clearly taking it to the man! Seriously, what man is keeping you down Ice? Gas prices hindering you from rolling in your 5.0? Lord knows what he is trying to insinuate by throwing in a loose cover of Baby got back, but i’m not going anywhere near that. Dave Chappelles’ next ‘Trading Spouses’ sketch will hopefully have someone kicking Vanilla Ice, not out of a car, but out of the whole music industry – Ge, ge, ge, ge, ge, goodbye!

I would describe myself as apathetic, except that i don’t possess the incline to subscribe to a doctrine.

Normally this doesn’t cause an issue…except in relationships…however i can see it getting me into trouble. Take the other day for example, when i was pretty much bullied on a train. It could have ended worse i guess.

So i was on the train to Sam’s to watch some football, and sitting in a 4-seater section by myself with my headphones on – think it was Dave Matthews which may have made me even more pacifist at the time. These two lads come on and sit down, one to my left and the other directly across from me. As the lad directly across from me sits down his puma bag nudges my leg so i look away from the window to see what it was, then look back to the window. Next his leg sort of bumps into mine. I didn’t even bother looking. Dave is singing about rolling one and smoking his mind for a short time. Keep in mind this is like 7:30 at night, the train is fairly crowded. We get to the next stop and the fella in front of me takes of his scarf which also manages to brush against me. All of this could be interpreted one way or the other. But then he grabs one end and proceeds to flick me with his scarf like you would expect to see in some showerroom scene from revenge of the nerds. I was gobsmacked. I just looked him directly in the eyes with a look of amazement. Did he really just do that? He was too busy laughing like a 12 year old school girl at a drawing of a penis with his mate. So instead of looking back out the window i now rest my head back on the seat and just look straight ahead above this tool’s greasy hair. Then he proceeds to flick some orange peel at me. I am still in shock that these people exist. This prick was older than me. So again i look him in the eye, havent taken my headphones out cause i really don’t even know where to begin in english let alone German. Bist du ok? In der kopf? So then he points to my jacket…there is nothing on there. Then he takes his friends phone to take a picture of my jacket with nothing on there. Seriously i have no idea what to do, this is so incredibly retarded i just keep staring at him. Finally, it seems my lack of reaction has left them with no alternative but to sit there in silence for the remainder of the trip. I don’t even acknowledge their presence when i get off the train, except to push past their exagerrated leg spread.

Lesson for today kiddies…don’t give a fuck about anything, and do so in a way where people can see it in your face and you won’t get bullied for long…

While i’m on the topic of train journeys…

Some may label me a revolutionary for what i am about to say. It’s not mean’t to be a revelation though in this part of the world it seems it just may be. Allow me if you will, Germany, to introduce you to the concept of ‘personal space’. I’ll give you a minute to absorb this ideal. I don’t want to scare you so i will just ease you into it to begin with.

This doesn’t refer to those alloted spaces for Gardening i see as i catch the train out of Frankfurt. I’m sure you have a polysyllabic word for these containing all of the letters of the alphabet twice and their umlauted cousins…no this is more an imaginary boundary surrounding ourselves.

You see in other parts of the world it is not very common – or indeed well received – to encroach upon someone else’s personal space. It differs in every culture, studies having shown that people living in more populous cultures have a smaller space requirement than those in sparser environments, (i remember seeing some stop motion animation at uni of a social gathering with Japanese people speaking to American’s which almost resembled a dance as the Japanese looked to get closer while the American’s looked to maintain a distance between them) yet here in Germany there doesn’t appear to be a distance at all.

This is not fiction peoples…Wikipedia even has a page on it so it must be true!

What part of your psyche thinks that by rubbing up against the person in front of you will make the line go faster? Don’t be fooled by me moving as close as humanly possible to the person in front of me without actually touching them when you do this to me, as the line getting shorter. It’s not. You are just making everyone uncomfortable.

What part of you thinks it is ok to touch a stranger?

Seriously, just once i would like to catch a train without someone touching me. I don’t think this is being unreasonable. I used to have a goal of walking from one end of the zeil to the other without someone touching me but now realise i might have more luck gettting a tune out of one of the other pussycat sluts – excluding the bint fucking Lewis Hamilton. Seriously, what do the other one’s do?

Do you have assault charges in Germany? Ahh excuse me your honour this man touched my private bits. Not guilty he was just checking his mail and happened to reach out 4 or 5 metres as you were crossing the road. He is German after-all…ahh ach so.

And this whole non-chalance of your bag draping over my lap when we’re on the train. Do you think because it is not part of your body that that is ok? Because it is just hanging off you, it is out of your control and therefore responsibility? Try that reasoning with me when i carry my baseball bat on a string…

And what is with the obtuse angles for guys legs on trains? I’m not entering into a size contest here…i don’t think i am particularly small, but i have no need to spread my legs at 90 degrees or more…what the fuck do you have down there?

And seriously, If wearing an entire bottle of perfume is the lesser of two evils perhaps you should not venture out in public.

Very cathartic.

So a few months back i went to a Ben Folds gig and didn’t invite the lads. This comes back to haunt me once a week or so when they bring it up. I won’t be doing that again. It was a band anyway…not like a party at someone’s house or something…

Throw up a catchphrase, drop the cliche, you’ve got nothing to say, so you can tell someone else.

John Frusciante dated Milla Jovovich….gutted

Think i might go cull some people from facebook…oh wait i’m not 30…