It’s true, when i don’t sleep it turns into Squires’ blog. Random inside jokes. One-liners that probably require explanation even for the people involved. Huge chunks cut and pasted from another website. Unexplained and un-related lyrics to songs nobody else knows or even cares about… it’s great, at least you know you can have a day off at some day mate and i can cover for you!

Before i start my latest series of rants, this is not my fabled ‘next blog entry’. That would require time, patience and dedication of which i have next to none of at the moment.

I found my songbook! I do not have any word in the English language to describe how happy and relieved I am not to have lost it. It is over 10 years in the making now.

Every day i take my earring out to go and work at the bank and every day i have to pierce it again when i get home. Completely covered over. I think that i am an X-man. Is that how you say it? I don’t want to offend any geeks. Ok i think i am one of the X-Men? How’s that? My eyebrow ring was even worse. If i took it out to play basketball for an hour i would have to re-pierce that one, and that one bled.

I used to think that i was hyper-observant, perceptive, even the ability to pre-empt the future – a soothsayer perhaps – because i always knew when a street person was going to talk to me….then i figured out that street people talk to anyone and everyone. They really are prejudice free. They are role models for the future.

Actually i think i just wanted to be a soothsayer because it is something that the kids of today aren’t really interested in, so i would face less competition in going for jobs. Maybe a candlestick maker…or something that still requires the use of an anvil. For CJ and red a soothsayer is ein Wahrsager oder einer Wahrsagerin. I don’t imagine the word Soothsayer would come up in too many English text books…unless you learn’t by reading Asterix.

Is there anything more annoying of a morning than someone walking behind you in high heels at a slightly faster rate than you? It sounds so panicked. Is someone chasing them? I don’t particulalry want to look around because if there is someone chasing them i may have to play Johnny hero. I hate Johnny Hero. He’s a cunt.

Why do high-heels have to make so much noise? Can they not put some rubber thingies on the bottom? Or is that one of the features of high-heels that is attractive to women? The ability to piss people off at a mass level.

60 year old woman: Hmmm what am i doing today again? That’s right i’m overseeing some examinations at the local school. Where are the exams again? The basketball court? Hmmm better take these comfortable rubber-soled loafers off that i have been wearing for the past 20 years and better put on some ridiculous heels while im walking in between rows on a wooden floor. That should help them concentrate.

Paraphrasing Catharine’s text: “I just went home to read a book, then a friend rang me to sing to me how much she loves me, so that cheered me up”

Matt’s witty reply: “Your friend’s call you to say how much they love you? Who do you hang out with, Lionel Ritchie?”

Would have been sooo much funnier had i remembered that it was Stevie Wonder.

So Coheed and Cambria were awesome. He had all the moves including singing into his pickups and some sort of weird instrument that Phil assures me Jimmy Page also once used. He’s too fat to use it now. I still managed to get sufficiently annoyed by the people around me. I really have to come up with a new strategy for concerts.

I learn’t a new word during the week. Well first of all i didn’t believe that it was actually a word, but then i looked it up and it is. I don’t normally plug any kind of products or what-have-you but i will tell you if you are looking for a Dictionary, go no further than Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law. Dictionary.com was trying to explain my new word to me when i stumbled on Merriam’s contribution.

Main Entry: fungible
Function: noun
: something that is fungible

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.

I wonder what their definition of a lawyer is: someone who lawyers stuff?

A person who turned out to be a surprising fountain of wisdom once said to me, everyone has issues – it’s just that some people let their issues get the better of them leaving the rest of us just deal with the pieces that remain.

I said this 10 years ago, then i didn’t have to repeat it until about 5 years later, then a few years ago, and now. Seems the intervals are getting shorter – who needs enemies when you have got ‘friends’ like mine?

People who can not stand their own company should probably not burn all of their bridges…

Xavier’s latest offering…

I recently bought some flowers for some different people. I’m hoping it might make at least one of the recipients happy. Anyway, now the flower company is sending me emails about their specials and seasonal offers etc. Yesterday i got one titled “Admire your fiery Arian loved ones” …Arian flowers…you’d really want to make sure your audience knows how to spell and the difference between the two words. How many of those gift cards have been addressed to ‘my blue-eyed girl’…

You know how people are glad when you get Chicken pox as a kid, cause it’s so much worse when your an adult? Well you know what else sucks donkey balls as an adult?

Squires.

Just kidding…no you know what else sucks? For want of a better phrase, a broken heart. Every parent or guardian counsels their distraught offspring following a breakup that they weren’t really in love and that the feeling will pass and all that sugar coated stuff…but the kid still feels like his heart is going to burst out of his chest and kick the living shit out of him and so believes it to be love. See that’s the thing, I know my heart wasn’t broken and i wasn’t in love, i’m far too rational for that, but it still fucking hurts…a lot. And i think i know what is to blame…it’s 12 years of all-boy schooling.

Stay with me…this my take a while to get to the point.

This never happened to me when i was younger so i never built up my immunity. I tell a lie anyway…it wasn’t all 12 years of schooling that was void of girls. I did have chicks in my class up until year 4, which would have made me 9 or something i guess. You know, before you really knew they were ‘chicks’. When you played catch and kiss and they grabbed you and pulled you into the girls toilets to kiss you and you actually put up a struggle to get away… So by the time i realised that that was actually what i wanted to do it was too late and i was several years into my all-boy schooling.

Fast forward another few years and you get the uncomfortable situation where you ask a girl on your train to school who you’ve never spoken to before, to the end of year formal (prom) purely because the only other girls you know are friends of your sister, the girls at Basketball, or three or four (hopefully) girls you know on the internet…

A quick jump forward in time till you finish school and head to schoolies (Spring Break) and you find that the time that you really, really want to talk to girls also coincides with the first time you are really attempting to do so, and the first time you realise you have no idea how to.

Here’s where you falter about a bit in pubs trying to figure out just what you’re supposed to do. This is what most people learn when they are 12. Christ girls could have spoken another language for all i knew. Like Seth Efrican or something. Could you imagine? If all girls were Saffas? I would have become a priest.

Scoot forward a little to Uni (college – see how i keep Squires informed during this) and i’m being asked to concentrate in a first year Psych lecture as one of only 70 or 80 guys in a room of 400 girls. No chance. But this is what your normal teen gets to find out in primary school, so that by the time they get into secondary school they are used to it and can easily juggle both, girls and grades. That requirement was taken away from me…i suppose that’s why i got good grades.

So by the time Uni had come around, i had bypassed all of the crawling stages and was in the track team. Great on the one hand yet always missing something. The dating stage. People learn from dating. They have crushes, and then it develops into more than that and they have their heart broken and they get over it and they go through it again and they learn from their mistakes and they learn how to react and they see things coming and they can judge how well they like someone in comparison to those that have fallen by the wayside before them. Not me. I get a crush on someone and i’m picturing how the meeting will go with my parents and what she will sound like with my surname and if she’ll let me brainwash my kids into being United supporters. I missed several stages in the dating evolution. The process is now somewhat streamlined…

I want to be able to like someone…see if it works out, and if not just say, oh well there was no real spark between us. I seem to be subconsciously unwilling to get into anything with a girl before i’m sure that i think it can work. It’s like the only two scenarios available are together forever or not at all. So now when i break up with someone or become magical bestest ‘friends’ forever, the casual observer in the guise of a concerned parent will dismiss it as a passing fancy, yet for me it feels like that 12 year old kid and my world is going to end. My social retardedness is unbridled.

Thanks catholic school system!

Reasons to contact a friend with bad news. The survey says:

1. You are running late
2. You forgot their birthday
3. You’re cancelling a date
4. You’re cancelling a holiday
5. You are breaking up with them
6. You’re getting a divorce
7. Somebody close to them has died
8. You have died (from beyond the grave of course)

How many answers did Family Feud generally have? It’s been a while. Anyway, i’d say you would even struggle – depending on the friend of course – to get away with a text message for the first two…a forgotten birthday is ok if the people aren’t that close…but if you choose a text message to deliver any of the news from 3 onwards you’re taking the fucking piss! Even this social retard knows that…

Screw you Jack White…you’re not the only person who can make an instrument out of spare parts…I give you the Berger…

and for those of you not on wastebook…the object that will now receive all of my wasted affection…

I’ll make it to Bumbershoot one day…

“and i got more rhymes than the beasties got songs about having more rhymes than other people, places and things”

So Australia, or as we were affectionately nicknamed, the dirty south, reclaimed the Ashes on the weekend. Called into the squad despite injury i was happy with my half hour spell as substitute fielder in short mid-wicket – the most boring of all places to field. I got whiplash from watching balls go past out of reach to my left and my right. Slightly odd though to see some Oirish playing on the England team…what the hell are the Irish doing fighting with the English?

Things that annoy me today:

Eier in Senfsoße … Eggs in Mustard?!?!? Are you shitting me?!?!? Here’s a picture from the canteen at work if you don’t believe me.

Shoutouts to peeps on the train:

The fat cunt who pretty much sat on my bung knee yesterday with no acknowledgement whatsoever of body contact…seriously, boundaries. He was a habitual linestepper! Cheers cunt!

The pre-pubescent bint who walked around a blind corner with her mate as i walked from the opposite direction around said blind corner and clicked her tongue at having to move slightly. I hope that cigarette stunts your growth, it will complete the picture with your sunbed orange skin you fucking oompa loompah!

The woman at the ticket office that kind of looks like Serbian Alex with blonde hair who apparently thought my German was good enough in asking for a new monthly ticket starting tomorrow that she could then have an entire conversation in German with me. Like i said this morning, “uh huh, ok,*nod*, ja, *smile*, uh huh, ok, dann schönen tag noch und vielen dank. Tschüß!” I got you in here! *thumps chest*

I’m going to turn 30 soon. Sad. I have been away from home for most of my 20’s, almost a quarter of my life. Now i’m getting old. But i’ve decided i’m going to fight it. I don’t like the concept of getting old and what it does to you. I’m not talking about the physical aspects – like i could really give two shits about that. I’ve been bald since i was 20 and am odds-on to get diabetes at some point in time so i’m aware of what i have to look forward to. It’s not like anyone ever dies of old age anymore, it’s always cancer or some other bundle of joy taking people against their will so we just have to wait our turns. No the physical things i can deal with. It’s the other things i have noticed in older people. Priorities change. Friendships are everything when you are younger. Later on you seem to only see friends at their weddings, then the weddings of their children, and then at funerals, always with the same promise – we should do this more often, yeah let’s keep in touch a bit better.

It’s all too familiar. Friendships become superficial as eyes glaze over for what was previously important while the mind wanders towards IKEA catalogues and investment opportunities and when would be the right time to pop the question and could i afford to bring a child into this world. I’m not saying that these things aren’t important, don’t get me wrong, but they can wait until someone is not talking to you. It’s a bit like those retards you see around the street with headphones on in one or both ears while they are walking with their friends. I LOVE music, but there is no song or tune so important that i need to listen to it while my friend is talking, that’s just fucking rude. Similarly i don’t think there is anything life can throw at me that takes precedence over a friend trying to tell me something. That’s the part I’ll fight till my death.

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!

You see, i had for some years now held on to some fictional sense of fate that i would one day end up marrying this person. She still is to this day the only girl I have ever cold-approached. I think most people who know me, knew of this, so this is nothing new to you – nor is my infamous declaration that i would leave any relationship i was in, in a heart-beat were she to take a change of heart and fancy. Just reeks of longevity doesn’t it? So why write about it if you all know? On the off-chance that she’ll read it? Not likely. She is too busy changing the world. No, this is a cathartic process.

With the relief of the crush gone i can now objectively assess the situation and its inherent irrationality. What was my plan? Apparently it was to sit back and watch her date and see whoever, and just be there in case she ever changes her mind. Yes it was the socially retarded tortoise plan.

The Socially retarded tortoise plan is not really a viable option children. Its success rate, it’s fair to say, is miniscule. It is only just above the pity relationship. It is relying on the person to suffer so many relationships with fuckups and tools that you start to look like a good option, and whatever the reasons for you not being a good option in the first place begin to be excused. It takes dedication and a certain sense of blindness to reality. It also takes a very long time. So you flirt with the idea of seeing other people, but you never really throw yourself totally into the game, just in case the hare trips up or something and you have a chance to catch up. All in all it is not a very good plan, and was unfortunately the one i chose.

But with the crush gone and the plan gone, the last stabling influence i had let into my life vanishes also. It’s not that i don’t know the difference between right and wrong any more in what i can and can’t say or do, i just don’t care. I mean, as Rivers wrote, why bother?

You could say my hatred for others has had it’s bridle removed…

In response to the age old adage ‘who needs enemies with friends like mine’ i once wrote that i was not taking on any new friendships, only acquaintances from now on, in a vain attempt to reduce the amount of shit that was raining down on me from great heights. Recent times suggest that this was not enough as apparently existing friends can reduce you to nothingness in the silence of a Spanish siesta.

Chris can say it better than me…you can’t change me…