So my parents now officially know the address of my website. Scary. I guess this is like the first time Marilyn Manson’s parents went to see him perform live…hmmm do i wear the black crotchless corset or the red one… Still i’d rather be Marilyn Manson’s parents than say the Pussycat sluts or Christina Aguilera or some other vacuous husk.

Mr Manson: Not counting the millions of dollars he has, my son (sic) believes he’s the antichrist, but is reasonably intelligent and has multiple degrees.
Mr Pussycat Slut: Oh we’re a….we’re not counting the money then? ah….ok….well….My daughter’s a ah….no….talent….trollop….

Not that i would ever try to justify the ‘acquiring’ of music in any way shape or form or by any means other than purchasing it at your local music store or through the iTunes that these kids are playing with today…but i kind of had a thought today that regular concert-goers are far more beneficial to the artists themselves than their loyal catalogue-hungry fan base. I have no viable statistics whatsoever here and Phil may need to back me up/contradict me but the more biographies and autobiographies that i read of people in the ‘scene’ it seems like the percentage from each record sale actually lining the pocket of the artist is miniscule at best. Yet when i think about it – particularly after me and Silk were trying to work out how much Mudhoney were pulling from their recent tour – it seems the best way to show appreciation both physically and fiscally is to show up at the gig. I don’t know if the old songwriters breakdown happens when performing live in terms of splitting up the kitty, but once the venue and promo people are paid the rest must go to the band and roadies right? That’s got to be a bigger percentage than off a CD and playing to a packed venue is more easily assessed as to the progress of the band than a top 250 charting single in Denmark…

If that is the case then i can rest a hell of a lot easier.

I have tried to change my ways but the simple fact is i will only buy copious amounts of CD’s when i get back to Oz. It’s not something you can easily travel with. I have been fairly selective in purchasing cd’s while abroad and still have a good 100 or so to lug around with me. I set myself a goal where i was going to spend 50€ a month in this cd store in Sachsenhausen thinking i was contributing something back. It’s a fucking second-hand store! The artist gets nothing from me anyway. Last time i went in i came out with 3 Bob Dylan CD’s, Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town and the best of the Small Faces. I don’t think any of these people are seeing a dime of my 30 odd euros. Is it better to line the pockets of some re-sellers or keep my money to buy the proper cd’s at a later date? Ponderous.

I’m wondering how long i can maintain this facade and not talk about poo…

I’ve been noticing that German women, or should i say women in Germany, seem to have no qualms at all about wearing fur. There is not even the slightest bit of embarrassment or uncertainty about how they will be received…no it is with utmost pride that they bandy about their minks and ferret(?) coats (please note i have no idea what furs are made of and can only guess here). I don’t really have a problem with this either, it’s just curious to me. It’s like that whole PETA furore never happened over here.

You’d probably get lynched for wearing real fur in the UK or the US i’d imagine. At least drenched in paint by a plastic punk. This woman sat next to me on the train and absolutely reeked of perfume like she had been swimming in it. I couldn’t breathe properly. As i was feeling feint and slowly passing out i caught a glimpse of her fur coat out of the corner of my eye and for some reason all i could imagine was that she was the old woman from 101 Dalmatians. I wasn’t sure if i should look at her on my way out and ruin my dream or just duck her and keep the dream alive…

Today i sat next to the old woman from 101 Dalmatians on the train…and she stank…

I think i am the only person in the bank wearing rubber-soled hush-puppies…i.e. the only person not wearing proper leather shoes. I only realise this when i have to go to the bathroom. There are these two corridors i must walk down which are quite narrow so everything reverberates. You can hear my shoes squelching away and then the clippity-clop of leather soles behind me that sounds like even the guys are wearing high heels. To compensate i drag my shoes a little bit and slide…cue internal monologue “i don’t even walk i slide motherfucker!”

(note my use of onomatopoeia in the previous paragraph. There is not enough onomatopoeia used today. I think three mentions of onomatopoeia justifies me tagging the word right?)

While i’m at it, i really fucking hate the phrase “Pick up your feet”. It’s just idiotic. How can one even do that? It’s not like it’s the total opposite of what you want, a la “Break a leg”…it’s pretty fucking directional.

I digress. I don’t think i have them fooled though. Probably the fact that my trousers are baggy and not tailored at all doesn’t lend itself to my decreasing professional image. I’m never going to be one of them.

I’m not going to lose too much sleep over that either just quietly.

“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.

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…