Not The Royal Wedding

I couldn’t decide on a George dress from Asda or a charity shop jobbie. There was nothing in the local donation bins, and the Cancer Research shop had closed down. I haven’t seen an Oxfam on the high street since I was a kid. Garden hopping in Alderley Edge for a burst of washing line snatching didn’t even enter my mind, honest. I gave a smackhead a tenner to rob one from Debenhams.

I managed to book the ceremony in the local bingo hall. The cleaners there are a joke. The floor is stickier than the back of the 14 bus. It’s like a cave in there. We’ll have to leave the fire escape open to let some light in.

You can bring your embarrassing uncle if you want, the one who buys his tracksuits from TJ Hughes, & I’ll let our nobhead pop along so he can talk about himself all night. I’ve arranged a special invite for Keith Lemon. He said he was going to arrive by helicopter in a mankini for no fee but I think he might be blagging me. I tried to book Borat and Keith Chegwin but no success.

Don’t forget to invite your old man too so he can throw some wild robotic shapes on the dance floor. We’ll spike his lagers with vodkas and pro plus. There’s nothing funnier than watching somebody else’s dad dance.

We have malt loaf, sponge puddings we boil in a tin, or swiss roll for the wedding cake. I considered making my own with flapjack and whipped cream so I could bung in a handful of green hash to make everyone happy, but in that dark bingo hall they would probably go paranoid and start seeing bats.

I bought a ring from a traveller in the pub but it melted in my pocket when I sat against the radiator. The smackhead said he will sort me a smash n grab jobbie from Warren James the jeweller’s window. If all else fails, it’ll have to be a St George’s medallion from Argos for £38.99. Don’t worry I can get my cash back on the 28 day money back guarantee.

I’m shaving my muzzy especially for when the priest says you may now kiss the bride. I might even go for a fondle and quick dry hump. How far are we allowed to go? I mean, it’s not church is it? There’s a thought – will it even be a priest? We’ll have to get Dogshit Barry to do it.

Our souvenirs should include toasters, alarm clocks, and gift vouchers for Cash Converters. Our stag do is in the Dog n Duck pub. We’re going on the bus.

Gregg Valentino: The Rambling Freak

I started with FLEX. It was something to look forward to in the month. At times, I would walk out of the shop with 2 issues to catch up on. I wonder who it is the kids look up to today. Kai Green is pretty lumpy.

For me, several years back, Dennis James, Nasser El Sonbatty, Markus Ruhl and Orville Burke spring to mind. Orville Burke had the highest & widest lats known to man. Get ready for his nickname – The Walking Eclipse. I think I heard that he passed away (or, as Clive Barker would put it, turned a corner up ahead of us to be out of sight for a while) but a quick Google search has failed to conclude this avenue of presumption.

No matter. Past or present tense, he was, or is, a FREAKAZOID. In the bodybuilding community, this is a term of endearment. Which leads me to my next point – MD magazine.

If FLEX is a comic, MD magazine is a scientific journal. I flicked through it for years before deciding to buy it. I thought only FLEX existed. I was wrong. Once I went MD, I never went back. MD stands for muscular development. It’s a monthly bible for serious iron shifters. They don’t brush stuff under the carpet. Other magazines won’t even mention the word steroids. In MD, Dave Jumbo Palumbo gave you cycle advice.

It was there where I encountered GREGG VALENTINO, aka THE RAMBLING FREAK. Aw man, this guy. I gotta tell ya. He’s like an explosion of personality and mind. He says what he thinks and he thinks what he says. There’s no messing about with him. He’s blunt. He’s honest. He’s improperly jocular. He’s that guy at the party making everyone laugh. That guy who doesn’t take life too seriously. That guy with the biggest arms in the world.

You’ll never see a column like his. HE WRITES IN COLOURFUL BOLD CAPS AND ITALICS. You can all too easily imagine a stereotypical meathead banging his keyboard with his too-big forefinger, but like Stephen King, the best-selling author of modern times says, writing is emotional, not technical.

I cherished Gregg’s column. I incorporated it into my own writing style whenever I could, and like the old dogs say, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Then, when his documentary aired over here, THE MAN WHOSE ARMS EXPLODED, everyone was raving about him but I was like wow, I’ve already adored this dude for years, get with the program already...

Ba-Bam!

Big Dollops

I dropped out of the size game eons ago and I haven’t trained in months so it was to my surprise when I made an impulse buy in the health store earlier. The thing is, I suddenly did a midnight workout last night, out of the blue. I was sat back on the sofa listening to this awesome German band I’ve just discovered and I thought that this kind of music is so good I can’t just sit still and listen to it, I have to drive off a cliff to it or at least work out to it or something. So I digs out the barbell and EZ bar from the bedroom, dusts them off, opens the patio, and gets down with it right there in the living room with the television on mute.

You can never beat the gym, everyone knows that, the smell of sweat and the sounds of clanking, clanging metal...but unless you are fortunate to have a 24/7 gym, then your body is used to being taxed at predictable times of the day. Hit it at midnight and see what it thinks. Seated shoulder presses on your couch when you are ready for bed should shock it into growth.

I might not ever go the gym again, but I will ALWAYS, ALWAYS have the occasional home workout, and for when I do, this health store shiz will come in handy. Big heaped dollops of each, shook in a empty milk carton and downed in a plastic tumbler.

Size on. Do it like a brother, do it like a dude.

By the way, whey is going up like petrol and everything else, but I still do my work out routines and meal plans for just £20 each to friends and acquaintances. You know the drill, do curls for your biceps and eat beans for your chest. Don’t be shy, give me your cash.

Escaping Edale

I was in Edale in the Peak District walking when Hazel revealed herself on the horizon. NOT A WORD IN 14 DAYS, she said, WHAT’S HAPPENED TO US?

I told her not to worry. I was surprised myself by how suddenly the word count had dried up but Chapter 3 would be coming along in the next couple of weeks. The important thing is that the first 2 are done and there are only 7. It’s not like Harper Collins are on my case.

YOU CAN’T RUN, she said, I DEMAND TO LIVE IN INK AS WELL AS IN HOLOGRAM.

I told her that I thought she was confusing me with the actual character in the story, Sadler, who is so entwined with her. Making fiction up doesn’t always feel so important, I explained, whether you are in it or not. It’s only a by-product of my life. A drug, granted, but not my one of choice.

PLEASE, I REALLY WANT THIS, she said. Smooth-as-oil voice.

Oh go away, I replied. You don’t even know who I am. This is me with 2 heads. I’m not getting paid. I think all writers are geeks and introverts. I’m ashamed of it and I’m ashamed of you.

SADLER ISN’T! WE BOTH CARE FOR HIM...ALL I ASK IS THAT YOU START TO THINK ABOUT ME AGAIN. I KNOW THE NEXT SCENE IS GOING TO BE SO ROMANTIC. YOU DREAMT IT EASTER SUNDAY. WE WERE IN THE BIN TOGETHER...ha

The world didn’t need any more authors blowing their own trumpets about their most meaningful, self-defining tales. I told her this. Any old bohemian on hallucinogenic drugs could find genuine creative inspiration in the advertisements between a children’s animation on Channel 5. Talent was as common as table salt. The real world consisted of logging, oil, energy, sweat...problem solving, mass production, logistical distribution, making things work. I didn’t fit in, and at 6 foot 3 inches tall, I was like a sore thumb. Still, that didn’t mean I had to like the alternative.

OTHER PEOPLE HAVE TO KNOW. YOU NEED TO PASS ME ON. LIFE IS ALL ABOUT PASSING OUR EXPERIENCES ON, NO MATTER HOW TRAGIC OR MERRY. IT’S HOW WE COPE WITHIN OURSELVES...THERE IS SOMEONE OUT THERE WHO...

If Hazel wasn’t so bad, I’d find it hard to believe that she could be good. There is some faith involved here. Faith = reason for hope. To the naked eye, she IS bad, like King Kong, but beneath...underneath...me trust

When I got back I told my doctor about Hazel appearing in the sky but she blamed the heat and told me to get out, and said if I was mad, then she was mad. Huh! I tipped her desk over and took her printer. It was a Kodak though, so dumped it in the Staples.

Keyboard Tune

a hypnogogic texture

Declaration

My Name was Michael Rodney Bohemian, and this was my Favourite Song.

Rob Bell

Went to see Rob Bell at Liverpool Cathedral last night. Rob is a celebrity pastor from the states (easiest way of putting it) but he is quite unlike the usual perception of the preacher evangelist types who love the sound of their own voice on the God Channel.

He is young and full of questions. He is not afraid to answer questions too.

A man recently nabbed me in a cafe and gave me a bashing from his bible for ten minutes. It was in one ear and out the other. When it was over – mercy from above – I had no idea about the personality behind this makeshift sermon. He could have been Dan the Dagger man from Dagenham. The point is that too many people spout the bible like robots without offering any of their own opinions to substantiate it. And then there are those with testimonies that are difficult to grasp because they are 100% certain of some miracle or other which doesn't even qualify as a miracle to you.

Rob Bell knows the bible backward, but he writes his own books too. He’s got his own mind. It’s not a bad one. He was raising similar doubts to the ones I have. He suggested that if a 17 year old does not accept Jesus (or indeed never heard of him, or lived before Jesus’ time) then is he still being eternally punished 17,000 years later? He shed some light on the concept of eternity in as much as it is relative, like a weekend of bowls with nothing to drink compared to a weekend sampling Paris restaurants with Winona Ryder. FOREVER could be a mere 3 days, if you are buried alive.

Which got me thinking about TIME and SPACE, and my recent understanding that they are BEYOND our understanding.

He touched upon his future works involving QUANTUM PHYSICS. I have bookmarked that area myself and wonder if the quantum level is the next logical rung on the ladder for anyone searching for answers in general. There is only so much to measure in the top veneer of the world we have already mapped so well, and things behave so differently beneath the surface that defining the miraculous becomes that much easier.

So he’s a clever dude with faith, although at one point it was uncertain whose side he was on! But what gets me is his following. The turnout was great. They say the church is big business. This guy signed 500 books at the end in a blink. The queue stretched away like only a handful of authors can dream of. Hmm.

The cathedral is astoundingly magnificent inside; a shrine for a giant with no budget spared. Bit chilly though.

And Christians are NICE people. Everyone was smiling. Everyone looked trustworthy. If we all had been naked except for rucksacks full of liquor, soft drugs, and refrigerated Galaxy Caramels, it might have been Heaven right there and then.

THINGS LEARNED ABOUT LIFE LATELY: There is no D in refrigerated. Peas and Beans taste nice together. God hates me. And oh yeah...

You're gunna burn in Hell!

New Termite Piece

I’m delighted and thrilled to welcome another addition to the Termite family! It’s smashing to see a familiar face and he will be much loved of course, what with him being the cutest and all!

This white clay is best for sculpting because it is very soft and malleable. Not the best for threading though! Trying to sew the worms through the holes with this stuff was like trying to play pool with a rope, or have sex while rotten-eyed drunk! It was like knitting fog, I tell thee! Of the thirteen coils you can see on the front, there were at least fifty on the waste pile! All buzzin’ now however!

The rear side is so messy that it would take a perfectionist to even try and tidy it up. It’s best accepting the messiness as a design in and of itself.

And as for me, well, you know, I’m just spinning along on this wheel of life like everyone else, unable to get off, pause it for breath, or speed the damn thing up. Still learning from the same old mistakes, still shouting at pigeons, and still feeling occasionally hopeful despite being vaguely dissatisfied but uncertain why. Ya heard. Over and out. Roger that. Yup. Yippee. Hooray. Laters.

Dark Venus

I visited Dark Venus last week. Nothing’s been the same since. It was so hard to drag myself out of there. Maybe I should be done with it and move in with him? More TV than I need, and still the music I love. That's all that really matters, right? I made Dark Venus, but now he’s making me.

no need to knock just walk straight in

he knows you're coming and he's always waiting

Photographs

Sarah Connor: thru generations, space and time.

"Excuse me, have you got another bun please?"

Check below for what are quite rightly labelled as 'unexplainable'. http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/50-unexplainable-black-white-photos

Coral and Coils

CORAL TORCH...for showing the light, putting in fish tanks, or tooling yourself up with on the streets of Cameron's Britain.
IMPROMPTU PIECE...purpose undefined
COILS...for hanging up

Soundbites

‘Writing is not something you go to school to learn, it’s something you drop out of school to do.” Ray Garton

"Tom Lyons is a bacon." Graffiti, meaning Tom Lyons is a copper.

"The slower it takes you to make it the more you learn along the way." Anon

"4 grand mcguskins." My boy Stephen Farnham's way of saying she's had a four thousand pound boob job

“They can suck my d*ck while I’m puking.” Eminem

"I'm suffering from female addiction." Anon

"There was a massive and huge domestic rabbit loose on the pavement today. I actually crossed over to avoid it." Myself

"It's all senseless articulation in a howling void: you see cars and trains, I see shapes and forms." Tommy Lee Jones

"Suffer the pain of discipline today, or suffer the pain of regret tomorrow." Anon

* * *

I must say, this Google blogger is a proper ball-ache. I've never known anything to have such a mind of it's own. I have to alternate between two separate browsers just to do the simplest operation. It's preposterous. The effort and time it takes to publish anything that doesn't look an absolute mess is a joke. If it were up to Google, there would be no colour or line breaks in the text at all, and the pictures would be all over the place. It keeps changing as well, and getting worse. Doing random things I'm not asking of it, for no reason than to do my nut in. Becoming more hassle than it's worth now. No wonder so many other blogs look like a bag of shite. What a load of poppycock. Posting this way feels like doing the washing with a mangle and one arm tied behind my back. You wouldn't believe. Seriously, I'm not sure I can do this much longer. The goal was always a year, and that got done. A few weeks back, it almost got sacked off. Unless someone takes over...(hint-hint)

My pal David Lamont was dead right in saying: "Facebook, Twitter, Blogging...it's all a step too far."

Dre vs Tempah

Never been a Dre fan. Haven’t seen him for years, and never in a music vid, so this for me is a comeback. It’s an awesome comeback. He is still around, doing what he loves, and looking hench in the bargain. Eminem, despite been the best lyrical genius rapper ever, has corny verses in I Need A Doctor. The tune has a catchy keyboard effect all the way through his bits though. Dre comes in on the very last chorus, which the radio doesn’t always play, and if the weight training sequence doesn’t inspire, then maybe the flashbacks of his privileged career might touch you. The floating transparent spectre woman completes the package. The special effects on her are truly impressive. I can’t believe her. I’m struck by her image. It doesn’t look like much, but believe me someone worked their ass off on a computer making her look so ghostly and graceful. She’d make the perfect Hazel in Escaping Hazel!

When I first saw Tinie’s training sequence in Wonderman I laughed aloud because I saw it coming. It wasn’t until the vid had finished when I realised he was taking the piss. So instead of me laughing at him, I understood that he was laughing at the likes of Dre. Some may perceive his treadmill form to be a direct insult on the Dolph Lundgren bit in Rocky 4. James Bond is parodied too. I have to say that as long as the quality is this high, he can feel free to rip off and mock anyone he wants. Every shot in this vid is like a movie set up! The one where he is superimposed in front of Ellie Goulding’s face with a heads-up display is simply as good as it gets! I’m tellin’! The electronic element absolutely pings as well.

VERDICT: Close, but Tempah, because I ca’nae get it outta me head.

More on Writing

^^^DIGITAL POTTERY^^^

Termite Citadel flanked by Termite Monastery in front of unnamed slab.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~So Chapter 2 of a probable 7 in Escaping Hazel is almost done, and Chapter 3 is taken care of in terms of what happens where. For a day or two I had to really concentrate on what would happen because I was in Beginner’s Limbo but now it has gotten into a little flow I can relax some. It’s good to have it on the mind though. After doing nothing but short-short stories for 4 years, it’s a nice change to get into something longer. The start, with slow movers, can be boring and challenging, but soon the scenes become so interesting that they are almost like mini short stories in themselves, and little unscripted incidents which you don’t expect then grow bigger than anything else.

Lee Child said he likes to be as ‘in the dark’ as the reader about what happens next, when he’s doing a yearly bestseller starring Jack Reacher. I was surprised by that. He was fired from his job in TV as a forty-something and decided to write a novel. Supposedly, someone buys a Lee Child book every single second. Yeah, and Sandra Bullock is a munter.

Jack Reacher (6"5, body to die for, women wanna be with him, men wanna be him) is an ace character, and the one book I’ve read was high octane stuff. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that those kind of commercial novels in general come at little cost to the author. John Grisham, former top attorney and fellow career-switcher, is another example. So is Jeffrey Deaver (who outlines and plots his novels vigorously).

Thinking back, my own personal writing history has come out of big sacrifices. Or was born out of big problems. Or something like that.

A Writer's Life

Like A Cold You Came In...An illusion

Your Voice, Your Memory...All Inside My Head

Melting Into You...Destiny So Cruel

Story is ticking along nicely. Things falling into place slowly. Not the whole thing. Never the whole thing. Where’s the fun in that? Just enough to know what the next few scenes are about. So far, only an hour of TV a day and no radio outside of the bathroom. Even though I may only sit down to write for an hour throughout the whole day, that hour will have been thought about a lot. It’s far-fetched to think that after watching Graham Norton, or listening to Pete Price, or being brainwashed by trashy but excellently done music videos, I can expect to sit down and flow straight into an uninterrupted page of fluent script. Not happening.

To anyone who has ever spent a day or two in police cells, they will know that you only have your own mind for entertainment. Imagine how much ‘deep thinking’ Charles Bronson has done. I’ve never freely meditated this much before, out of choice. It’s because I don’t want to write any old bollocks. I want to know what’s coming next. I want to figure it out. And that requires thought. Typing this blog passage with some tunes on is bliss, all of a sudden! I am rich. If you have access to a tap, so are you. Figuratively speaking.

I’m writing bits n bobs on a table squeezed in the kitchen, in the library, in the cafe, and the pub’s next (although I better be careful because it’s 53 days without a tipple). This’ll be done within a few months. I’m living this one. Knowing it’s coming, later, even if only a couple of paragraphs, is comforting. I’d rather be doing something else, to be honest, but this is the way it is. I’m not too distant from a police cell, in a sense. I can’t do what I want, anyway, so I’m far from free. Not in the truest meaning of the word. Who is though?

_________________________________________________________

Enough. Did you hear about that 10 year old boy in the news who hung himself? They’re blaming the anti-depressants he was on. Even I know not to prescribe drugs to a boy of that age! That G.P takes the expression ‘Dr Feelgood’ to a whole new sinister level! What a tragedy. I didn’t know I was BORN, aged 10. Seriously. My consciousness hadn’t kicked in yet. To not only want to die, but go ahead and swing, at that age? WOW.

And what about the 18 year old who stabbed the 14 year old girl? See the picture of her? Who in their right mind would want to repeatedly stab a pretty young thing like that? I bet it was over something stupid.

"To all my niggas and my boys, my hoes and my tricks and my pimps, I bid you a jolly Sabbath."