Ego-Maniacal Self-Obsession

Chewed Up, Spat Out. You ever felt this way? I didn’t have the words for this emotion until recently, but they’re perfect. Chewed up, and spat out. Ha. Awesome.

You ever get sick of I? I did this and I did that? It’s so obvious sometimes it’s painful. It’s that guy who spends an hour giving you a personal tour of his mansion and insisting you sit in his hummer without a single HOW ARE YOU DOING? I myself am guilty by association. Guilty of trying to shout from the highest hilltop LOOK AT HOW F*CKING GOOD I AM. JUST LOOK AT HOW F*CKING GOOD I AM.

The “stars” in pop music videos are the worst perpetrators of this (fine if they can actually walk the walk), but the tinterweb is also rife with twits clambering over each other for attention. Be damned if I’m another. If you are selling something, which really is f*cking good, then you may be excused, but otherwise, what’s the point, what’s the message, apart impressing upon me how f*cking good you are? Change the record why don’t’cha? You’re not good, as a matter of fact. You’re NO good. You’re bum.

Twitter is best for blowing your own trumpet. Facebook is best for stalking and slobbering over your friends. This blogging concept is headed for a brick wall. It’d be best suited for journalistic reporting. Otherwise, it’s the epitome of solitary self-expression for any berk with an IP address, and the standards are so low they’re bottomless.

Where do you draw the line at what you think might be interesting, without crawling so far up your own ass pipe that you need a flashlight to find your way back out? The impulse to take a picture of everything and share everything and give a title to everything...aw hell, enough. You just know that someone somewhere (Ron Todd) is posting pictures of their turds in the bog – maybe even a thumbs-up beside their own bonk-on. Always someone, somewhere...

Forget cleanliness: It is consistency that is next to godliness. One slip and it’s over. Finito. Gone.

Bin Dipper

So I know this wasteman guy for a few years, right? I mean he’s been through something, it’s obvious, he’s down on his luck like. He’s seen better days, if you get me. The prime’s behind him. But his head is held high. He’s well mannered, he’s politely conversational, he’s smart. A real endearing character. He speaks of his past, when he was in a prominent position, and I believe him. I’m not totally sure, because I’m thinking what did this dude do to wind up on this kind of path, but on the other hand I’m wondering if that’s just me, searching for blame, being suspicious and distrustful. How else do you judge character?

Then one day I hear him talking on the phone to his kids and I give him the benefit of the doubt. This was a genuine stand-up guy. But what’s with the wasteman look? (I first heard the term WASTEMAN in a cockney drug dealer movie a year or so ago, and laughed when someone said it on the streets of Widnes who I know doesn’t watch movies.) It’s urban lingo and refers to any scruffy person who doesn’t look the part: a bum, a tramp, or whatever. This guy fits the bill and then some. I’ve seen him off and on over the last few years and never in anything new. Old stuff is one thing, but dirty stuff is another. I’ve seen him in dirty stuff too. The same old dirty stuff. I think that anyone could buy a few items from a charity shop for buttons if they were ever so desperate. Any new cheap look beats any well-worn-in-need-of-a-wash-wardrobe.

So times are tight. Don’t some of us agree. But how can someone look so bad and yet be so charming, upbeat, chatty, and apparently happy? He always says hello in the same way – as if he just won the lottery. Maybe he spends every penny on booze, I’ve wondered, which keeps him in a cheery mood. Or maybe it’s an elaborate act, a benefit scam. Who knows.

He always has a bag for life with him. A bag is essential for any hustling hoarder. Tonight I saw him at a bin before nightfall on a moderately busy road, possibly transferring the contents of the bin into his own bag for life. I couldn’t be certain, because I didn’t want to look too closely. It was wholly uncomfortable. Is he, I thought, is he really? I didn’t want to believe it, but he sure as hell wasn’t working for the council.

When you’re flying, and you see people sinking, you feel as if you’re separated by a thousand miles in the sky. When you’re in the troughs yourself, and you see people sinking, it feels like you are sinking with them.

Random Piks

Ride those pearly waves...

...an oil change of the brain

I was just thinking about Richard Branson’s island pad. I’m sure I seen it on MTV Cribs one time. Necker Island, it’s called. It’s all open plan. And I mean open as in no walls or doors. As in THINGS CAN FLY IN. Now I’m sorry, and I don’t know about you, but that is NOT for me. Just the idea of a gull landing on my bed makes me fidgety. Lord only knows what specimens of frog, bat, lizard or bird might invite itself in. I’m reminded of some mundane factory work I did some years ago. There were areas of the open warehouse where people claimed to have seen rats. It always tickles me how people exaggerate the size of rats when estimating the size with their hands. These rats, supposedly, were the size of dogs. There were also cats hanging around the area, and bats too, high up in the rafters. I distinctly recall one fellow listing the creatures he’d seen (rats, cats and bats), then reaching the conclusion that if it ends in a T, it’s in ‘ere. They were his actual words. If it ends in a T, it’s in ‘ere. Elephant, then? Pink one, maybe...

Tony Soprano

Despite all the critical acclaim, popularity, success, and every plus point I could mention about it, it boils down to this: If Tony Soprano wasn’t in it, I don’t think I would give a damn. In fact, I know for sure I wouldn’t. That’s the one key element about The Sopranos – Tony Soprano. The second factor about the show is that he regularly sees a female therapist. Doctor/patient relationships, when loaded with underlying sexual tension, are always a winner. Third would have to be his loose cannon nephew.

I remember seeing the show during the summer of 2003, on one night in particular which stands out from all the rest. That was my best summer. Do you have a best summer, or one summer evening which stands apart in your memories from others for no particular reason? On mine, it happened to be the night when I really took in The Sopranos for the first time. I was eating, near midnight, because I was bang into the gym and near my all time heaviest. Life is a breeze for any hard gainer when he is near his heaviest. Know this.

The show is so masculine. It’s a man’s world. Their gangster life is appealing, with its adrenalin, its comradeship, it’s hard cash 'n' boobs, bodies in boots, its comforts so taken for granted. Respect and fear from your peeps, honour and loyalty, rats and rank...a far cry from gossipy soaps set in pubs.

I’ve just killed the first season in a couple of days, none of which I’ve seen before, but it all started with a movie recommended by a teacher, back in school, called TRUE ROMANCE. I stayed up after my mum’s bedtime to watch this (life marker occasion). Tony Soprano was in just one of the many awesome scenes in the movie (although his stands out as perhaps the most pivotal and best). We called him The Dirty B*stard, because of his ruthless beating of Patrica Arquette. He was sooo convincing as a hit man in touch with his sensitive side, having a kind of running commentary breakdown as he did his nasty work, it was unreal. Then, when I saw The Dirty B*stard with his own drama years down the line, you bet I was gripped!

That’s why to me, the show means a lot more than it oughta. I can’t go into it here. It’s almost like the real James Gandolfini doesn’t even exist. Please don't show me his bloopers. I'd choke on his gag reel.

On just once a week, late at night however, you’d have to be dedicated to watch it religiously. Now, with box sets, internet and Sky+, it’s perfectly possible to start smashing all your fav shows in a matter of days (hey, why not on your i-phone?). There’s that many decent Americana dramas, it can sometimes feel impossible to do anything else...

Animal Rights

Is it to our ultimate shame, that, as a species, besides slaughtering one another over peanuts, we’ve allowed Tigers and the Great Apes to become all but extinct? At the day of our judgement, what are we going to say? How will it feel standing before Jehovah in a fur jacket when he gets his notebook out to check how many burgers you ate and how many spiders you squashed? Ah don’t sweat it, at least you are not in a culture where they dice up puppies on the chopping board.

Is it possible that on another world somewhere, like, say for example, THE PLANET OF THE APES, we humans are clustered in pens like cattle, being led out to be stunned and slit and bled? Is Bernard Mathews currently flapping in Turkey Hell?

Funny how that stun gun they use on pigs is supposed to kill them. They’re wriggling like mad and to the farmer it’s just a case of nerves. Yeah, sure, it looks dead mate. If I was a pig I would want that stun to kill me FLAT dead, not just dead. There's a huge difference between being dead but not lying down and being flat dead.

Shooting an elephant just for its tusks is like shooting David Hasslehoff for his two front teeth. And whosever idea it was to kill a Tiger to make a nice rug is an absolute...oh I don’t know...an absolute selfish greedy arse hole?

LEAVE THEM THE F*CK ALONE! What chance have they all got, stuck on Earth with us? No wonder they ravage us whenever they get a chance! Being locked up in cages is the best it ever gets for them. We skin dogs alive, boil lobsters alive, force feed geese until they can't believe it, stick fish in tanks hardly big enough to turn around in, harpoon the living daylights out of whales, and club little cute innocent baby white seals so that their red blood stains the ice (it was either you or him eh?). C’mon, that’s just tight...

I wanna see an ostrich or an orangutan being interviewed in the House of Lords. Only then will I be convinced that animals have rights.

Aristotle called them the brutes (chuckle), but what does that make us?

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