601: GO!

It's like I'm new to blogging, like I've never done it before, tentatively taking my first steps into a world of writing about whatever in the vain hope that someone reads it, while simultaneously hoping no one does. Wanting to write something, and being so self absorbed as to write almost entirely about oneself, but so unconvinced of ones own worth that can't think of anything more tedious than ones own thoughts and activities. God, blogging is boring. I'm unofficially considering myself on a wee bit of a hiatus.

It's times like this when I really ought to be working hard to find my own unique take on the Queen's diamond jubilee or the relay of the Olympic torch, but I honestly couldn't give two flying gibbering jabbering moulting leaping squawking squatting wanking fucks about either of the tedious fucking things. I'm hostile to them both. But neither particularly knowledgeable nor hostile enough to be able to string together coherent rants or arguments. So the easier option is just to act like neither of them are happening. Which is lucky, cos neither of them are happening. They are just a collective delusion, the madness of crowds, the flag-waving of the rank and file, the sycophancy of the enslaved.

Other subjects or recent personal experience any writer worth his salt would be using and abusing for source of copy are the awesome ring I now must wear as a 'keep off' sign to all the billions of the world's women who happen not to be my wife; the experience of delivering a speech and the surprising relaxed ease in which it was done; the weird, fucking weird, experience of being a customer in an Apple store (which could not be more weird, fucking weird, if it were staffed by the suicides manning the desks in Beetlejuice's afterlife bureaucracy); having a massage for the first, and so far only, time. And all the others. Breathing in and out and catching a bus. Oh, and I saw my first Orange marches in Belfast, immediately followed by (in a different part of the city centre, not as part of the same cultural event) capoeiristas, drummers and berimbau players presenting a display of Brazilian music and martial arts.

Stuff to write about, I'm just well wound down and finding it difficult to return to the same level of urgency. …..GO! ….....GO! I'm trying to get myself going, and this fairly pointless post about nothing is my way of encouraging myself.

593: Blue

This bird has very blue eyes. Very blue indeed. That's the extent of all I wanted to say, but it doesn't seem enough really, does it. I just can't bring myself to say "look at this" and leave it at that. And so begins the padding, the waffle, the nonsense, the inane and obsessive word-count building. The least I could do is try and make it remotely about the picture.

It's not just any bird. It's a bowerbird. It's evolved into a collector of brightly coloured objects, with which it decorates its own carefully curated mating-ground, in a desperate struggle to attract the fussy female of its species. It's the result of sexual selection, the process in which over a long time species develop seemingly wasteful behaviour or traits, such as the beautiful but ridiculous tail of the peacock. Blame those fussy peahens. Thousands or millions of years ago a peahen had a preference for a slightly fancy tail on her peacocks. Some of her daughters inherited that preference and some of her sons inherited a fancy tail.

Over many many generations the lust for decorative tails got stronger and stronger, and an arms race developed between peacocks, the current state of which is that large colourful feathery fan. It might get bigger, brasher and sillier, but it probably wont. At least not via sexual selection. Evolution has probably struck a balance between the need to attract a female, and the need to evade predators. If it does get more ornate and impractical it will be the result of artificial selection; humans selectively breeding for certain characteristics that nature would not (or at least, has not) favour. That's where we get all breeds of domestic cats and dogs, spherical cows, and the chicken.

There, that was good wasn't it? You got a little educational lecture; I got a little delusional. And together we both passed a little time. Learnt a little; played a little. Had some fun. Reading, writing, evolution; these are a few of my favourite things. I think it's about time I wrapped up this post. I only wanted to put that picture of the bowerbird here. OK.

586: Primula Burger Cheese

Primula Burger Cheese is a thing. A thing made by the people that brought you Primula Cheese, Primula Cheese Light, and Primula Cheese Prawns. Yes. Primula Cheese Prawns is a thing too. Inexplicable. Primula Burger Cheese. A cheese-like goo-gloop that plops 49% wet cheese snot onto your hot meat sandwich, for a limited time only this summer. Now that we are into the barbeque season. Now we're there.

I'm convinced. The advert has got me. Cheese, made into a slow sticky liquid by mixing it with concentrated milk/whey and emulsifying salts specifically to accompany one food type, dispensed from a tube, like acrylic paint or Anusol, is self-evidently such a wonderful idea. More foods in tubes please. I'm putting in my official request to the manufacturers of the things what I eat in my mouth and tummy. Tube food now please.

I want burger meat in a tube. Squeeze a circle of squishy meat paste straight out of the tube and into the pan for an instant burger. 49% stuff, straight outta the tube. Squeeze it into a sausage. A smiley face. Write a happy breakfast-in-bed message to your lover. Write it in meat paste. Cook it in the pan and serve it on the pillow at the break of dawn. Happy Sunday, Sexy! Let's celebrate in style with meat paste and Primula Burger Cheese. Pack it in your suitcase and take it on holiday. Remember not to pack it in hand luggage. It must go in the hold with all the other liquids.

When I think of food in tubes, I think of feeding tubes. Primula Burger Cheese squeezed directly into the stomach by means of medical intervention. Protect against malnutrition with creepy cringeworthy pipes penetrating stomach lining or pushed up nostril and down the back of the throat. Mmm, yes, yummy. Pass me the Primula. Squeeze that sumbitch straight down my gargling gob 'n' gullet. Pass me the pipe. Feed me the feeding tube.

Primula Cheese Prawns. I just wanted to type those three little words again. Next time I'm in a screen cliche of a romantic situation and my partner asks to hear those three little words, I'll look her deep and longingly into those beautiful brown eyes. I'll gently but firmly grasp her shoulders in my strong rugged hands. I'll lean towards her, unblinking, as her chest heaves and her heart beats. I'll stroke her hair, gently kiss her lips and say those three little words. Primula Cheese Prawns. The words she loves to hear. Primula Cheese Prawns, and Primula Burger Cheese too.

boke

563: Hold the front page

Things happen. Stuff. There's a world that we live in, this one here (do you see it?), and there are things happening all over it all of the time. Some of them are interesting; in fact, they are probably all interesting if looked at from an original perspective. There are the things that bloggers are supposed to talk about, which is basically anything that trends on twitter. Technically I should have offered my commentary and analysis on the NHS, the budget, #Kony2012, George Galloway and Samantha Brick. Every internet obsessive, aspiring writer, and inane hipster just has to say the same things about the same things. Rehashing the twitter top trends, any old stuff from BoingBoing and retronaut (where the stuff comes from). Cos that's what we do.

But I don't have a thing to say about everything, or anything. I wish I did, but I don't. It's not for want of trying. I used to think it was a positive to pretend to have an opinion on everything. But there's just too many things that I am utterly unqualified to have a valid opinion on. The budget, for example. I just don't get it. I don't get if the economy is fucked up because the people in charge are so shit and corrupt, or if their inherent shittiness and corruption is just being highlighted by a struggling economy they have no real control over. I don't get it.

All I've learnt this week is a lesson from the Samantha Brick thing. (If you don't know what that is read this, then this, then this.) Samantha Brick has taught me that there are occasions when it just may be ill advised to pour out ones every idiotic thought into a blog post (or email to Daily Mail editor). It's also probably a lesson that if the Daily Mail wants to offer you a regular job you just may be a self-satisfied prick of magnificent proportions. So far I haven't heard a peep from the Daily Mail headhunters so I must be ok so far. If they ever do come knocking I'll know I really am the total prick I always feared I might be.

But anyway, when stuff happens in the world, don't come looking to me to tell you about it. I would love to be able to write knowledgeably on current affairs but I don't think I've got it in me. I'm just not clever enough, quick enough, or beautiful enough.

532: Beating a Bin with a Stick

There was a repetitive banging noise in the street outside my flat. It carried on in the background gradually drifting to the foreground of my consciousness until after about five minutes I decided to look out the window to see what in blimey was going on. A small child, about two and a half feet tall in his woolly bobble-hat, was beating on the side of a wheely bin with a stick. He seemed disinterested, as though it were a tedious but necessary task, like doing the washing up, changing a bicycle tire, or rooting around in the dirt for hidden caches of squirrel nuts. Gradually his enjoyment picked up, then cycled back down into it's a dull job, but someone's gotta do it.

Before you could say beating a bin with a stick I grabbed my favourite bin-beating stick out of the rack (the number 12a, I find it to be the most versatile), pulled on my bin-beating gloves, belt and boots, and high-tailed it out the door and down the stairs. I burst out through the front door and said that's my bin, step away. But in the time it had taken me to get together all my professional bin-beating gear and make my way down the stairs and out the door, it seems the little bin-beating junior amateur had lost interest and wandered off. No discipline, that's his problem. So I got in a good bit of bin-beating with a stick practise before retiring to my quarters. True story.

There was a repetitive banging noise in the street outside my flat. It carried on for quite sometime before I noticed it consciously. As soon as I became aware of it I grabbed my binoculars with the creepy night vision attachment, ran to the window tripping and stumbling over all the chicken carcasses and traffic cones, and sat in my peeping seat. At first I couldn't locate the sound. I scanned the gardens, rooftops and the road, eventually settling on a scene in the branches of a tree. Two squirrels dressed in spandex fought each other in a theatrical athletic spectacle; one adopted a clear role as protagonist (or babyface) while the other was a clear antagonist (or heel). A crowd of bloodthirsty pigeons responded to the roles and bayed for the blood of the despicable heel. It was good. I'm glad I was there to witness it.

470: Bus Station Observations

A group of people – two women and a man – stand around a pram containing the babiest fourth member of their group. One of the women held a lit cigarette directly over the infant as she yammered on about whatever crap such morons talk about. She took occasional drags, moving the cigarette to her own face, but always returning it to its position above the baby. Not once did she look in the direction of the hot smouldering fire in order to check it wasn't raining down on that innocent wee head. The man took out his own cigarette and, finding himself want of a lighter asked to borrow her cigarette for lighting off. She passed directly over the baby and he lit his from hers over the pram, leaning over with both cigarettes as he passed hers back. Two lit cigarettes waving blindly about above a pram, as the unbelievably selfish idiots gab gibberish blindly.

A black-skinned lady wanders through the large crowds of rush-hour bus-waitingers seeking out other black people. When she finds them she hands them a little leaflet; it looks to me like one of those little churchy 'remember Jesus this xmas' type things. She approaches a group of friends, one who is black and the other two are white. She hands one to the black man and he accepts it; the other two, a man and a woman, hold their hands out and she says, "No, not for you". "Sorry," says the man, and she walks off. I lose her in the crowd, plus my bus arrives and I am about to fall asleep.

The biggest recovery/breakdown vehicle ever created by man or by god is pulling a sad kaput double-decker bus up on its back two wheels. For buses to get out of the station in Piccadilly Garden they have to double back in a u-turn and head off the way they came; it's the only way out due to tram lines and one-way systems. As the breakdown truck tries to tow the double-decker around this tight hairpin-ish corner it becomes jammed in. It can't reverse and it has only inches in front before it hits the barrier. It inches hither and thither for five or ten minutes, with an ever-growing queue of buses running far behind it. Eventually it escapes, moves forward a few metres then has to stop at a zebra crossing... eventually it moves forward a few metres, then has to stop at a red light...

467: ahh errr um?

Recently I've wanted so much to give up blogging. The whole every day thing is not appealing at the moment; I'm tired and stressed and finding it hard to pull together the energy or inclination. The only thing that's stopping me from giving up is the thought that I'm just hitting a wall, reaching a steep hill, and at the other side is easy and fun writing again. That's actually not the only reason; if I was to suggest giving up my wonderful and encouraging partner would certainly not allow it. It doesn't help that we have well and truly entered winter. The darkness as fallen, summer died fast, and every morning I awake in the dark; walk to work in the gloom, under clouds and in chill winds. In the evening I leave work in similar conditions. The occasions I leave the building, or catch sight of a window I see the cold flood waters, wash away us all, take us with the floods; the rash of negativity, is seen one-sidedly, burn away the day; the nervous, the drifting, the heaving; wash away us all, take us with the floods.

If I keep up this grimly depressing cloudhead I'll soon be preferring Eastenders to Coronation Street; god forbid. Instead of seasonal snow floating and settling, the sky fights back with heavy-hearted pelting hailstones, rattling the windowpanes and biting uncovered skin. Caught between the warring fronts of ice age and global warming with only a tiny flat in a damp old terrace in Old Trafford for protection. Armed only with a nice warm new coat; last years supply of cheap new gloves has predictably vanished so now my little fingers are chilly, woe.

Got a week and a bit off work at Christmas and I intend to come back rested and feeling as though time was well spent. For that I am going to need a Christmas cardigan and novelty bowtie (preferably musical and with a flashing LED), mulled wine, a few days with the inlaws and a few days with the blood-rellies, slippers, socks, slipper-socks, flip-flops, strike that, brussels sprouts, white wine in the sun, etc. So, yeah. Snow please.

454: blog recommendation refute.me.uk by @pearce_

I'd like to recommend another blog to you all. Find it at refute.me.uk. It's written by Matthew Pearce, my university bestie who I don't see nearly enough. He holds the distinction of being among the smartest people I know and the only person who reads things properly properly. As a result of that there are posts in his blog about things that fly over my head. His blog is considered and researched, and although it doesn't have enough attribution links to papers and articles (hint, hint, Mat), and contains come technical posts clearly not aimed at me. You'll get no bullshit on refute.me.uk, but you will get factual articles rooted in the real world, and thought experiments designed to illuminate, with a weight towards economics as real-world phenomena. You know... numbers n that.

A recent post discusses the impact of a sudden influx of Star Trek technology dropped, deus ex machina, from the sky by a passing mischievous alien or time-traveller. It would improve our lives immeasurably (or is it measurably...) yet it would send many systems and structures we rely on into chaos and collapse. Useful? I don't know, perhaps. Interesting? Definitely. Numbers are another language; an almost incomprehensible barely forgotten second language from primary school. But that's my fault and my problem.

Numbers and statistics are the language of the way the world works. To understand anything true one must necessarily deal with the difficult, the obscure and the counter-intuitive. Statistics and the results of the scientific method can often produce results we wouldn't have expected, and that's the exact reason we need them. Throughout history the things we have imagined or wished to be true have mostly turned out to be myth and misconception. Then we got scientific method and the mass collection of statistics, and we finally started doing stuff right.

Damn, I'm so annoyed at myself for ignoring mathematics when I was young, for frying my brain with youthful indulgence and arrogant laziness. Now numbers make my eyes hurt. But everything in this life worth having, seeing, doing, knowing, is worth working for. Worth putting in the effort for. I want to understand the world around me; the way it really is, not the way is most comforting or the most convenient. I must remember not to confuse that which I'd like to be true, with that which is actually true. Difficult, but absolutely essential.

What was I talking about? I suspect when Matthew is writing his posts for refute.me.uk he remembers what the first paragraph was about by the time he gets to the fifth; he looks back at what he has written, rewriting and redrafting in order to achieve the clear objective he was aiming for. Good work if you can get it, but not for me. I'm not ready for that yet: further study is needed.

429:

Limited or no internet connectivity, disabling wireless connectivity, resetting wireless, renewing IP address, limited or no internet connectivity, contact administrator. No thanks; instead I'll take this brief opportunity in the fresh air of offline to write a few words about something, as yet to be determined. Even though I am fuming that the drop in connection has interrupted my streaming of series four episode three of The Museum of Curiousity on BBC iPlayer just as the editor from New Scientist magazine has finished wondering about the future developments in invisibility technology based on the sudden and massive advances in the field that have occured in the last ten years. I want to know what Robin Ince will be introducing into the museum.

Speaking of museums, I'm leaving Belfast today to return to Manchester, and yet again have failed to visit any cultural institutions of Belfast – art galleries, museums, and the like. Last time I visited the old university, but there's nothing to see except a cloister and a gift shop selling pencil cases and postcards. What makes my missing cultural excursions event more pathetic is that we are currently smackbang in the middle of the Belfast Festival, the cities major international arts festival. I'm raging; I didn't even know it was on until I looked in Flybe's inflight magazine on the return journey. Looking at the website I realise I have missed a whole pile of interesting looking art exhibitions focusing on Ulster, Irish and international art/artists. In two nights Tinariwen are playing, who are on my must-see list. Ahh well, such is life.

Our return to Manchester coincides with the potential of civil war as the taxi driver informs me that City have beat United 6-1, United's worst home defeat since February 1955 (when they lost 5-0 also against City). I'd like to think that United fans will be sanguine about it and not resort to name calling and destruction; after all it's only a game. And a fucking boring one at that, stat nerds. For some reason it's considered normal and acceptable to know vast swathes of pointless facts about football (names of managers and footballers, scores, titles, records), but sad and geeky to know the same stuff about prog rock, contemporary art, science fiction literature, computing, musical theatre, trains, or astronomy. I postulate that the majority of people aren't really in to football; they just want this common language to use as small talk with other blokes. That would be useful.

Great week in Belfast with the in-laws; now I'm tired phew and back to work tomorrow – the holiday is over and the drinking must stop, sad face. Played Sonic 2 on the Wii; that was a blast from the past. Return home to tidying, cooking, and the temperamental FreeSat box that hates us and wont let me watch Fry's English thing on BBC 2. Guten tag.

344: Pulpo, postcards and Powers

On the hunt for tourist tat of a certain satisfied quality – an intangible enjoyment in the crap yet strangely appropriate ; postcards and fridge magnets are my too main joys. From a nearby extremely Englishified seafrontah I obtained a choice selection of this and that, tit and tat : postcards ; an image of sardines skewered on spikes and barbequing in white ashes, an uncalledfor caption reads Torremolinos transforming a beautiful picture into pure tat ; two dramatic black and white postcards, one showing the extreme Spanish masculinity of a bullfighting matador cooly sweeping aside a goring bull, the second is of Spanish femininity, a flamenco dancer with arms held high and dress spinning widely ; a third in black and white is an 'ilarious image of a painted wall indictating the directions to male and female servicios, while in the foreground a dog marks his servicios by pissing on a wall ; in the 1800's three hatted ladies in sepia tip-toe out of the sea while holding up their long dresses to knee-level , but in the 2000's three topless touchy-feely thong-wedgied women gaze toward the horizon ; in Costa del Sol a shivering man on a sunny beach shits in a fridge ; and evolution becomes mainly about the importat developments of tits, long hair, and high heels.

In other places, whose names have temporarily escaped me, along the Costa del Sol I have aquired a Spanish style fan which partially fell apart after less than one hour, some Gibraltar postcards and a fridge magnet (more about that later), a bottle opener/sardine barbeque fridge magnet, a fantastic white sun hat with a black band, and two new octopuses for my collection (both cuddly, three euro each from Carrefour, one is named Pulpo Paul and has the look of Zig and Zag about it). Aside from all that crap I have one bottle of Powers, bought in Gibraltar, as my duty-free allowance.

Imagine you were in Spain, perhaps visiting the country for the first time – maybe even it is your first visit abroad. You are looking for that one idea souvenier of your brave voyage - hurled hundreds of miles through the air in a gigantic steel bird, immersed in a strangly familiar, yet disturbingly different culture – what single item could you take home to best remember your times abroad? You trawl the countless souvenire shops stocked largely with the same stuff – postcards, paper-weights, snow globes, plaques, bells, Haribo, international newspapers, t-shirts...

You stop at the t-shirts... What a great idea ; with a t-shirt you could both remember your travels and advertise to strangers that you have been somewhere. Maybe the strangers haven't been there, and they might experience jealousy. You look through the racks of Spanish bull t-shirts, someone went to Spain and all I got was this lousy t-shirt t-shirts, beach babes, place names, local symbols, sun, sea and sand – all emblazoned on t-shirts. And then you come across one grander than them all – what better way to remember those blissfull few days spent in the sun of Southern Spain than a t-shirt baring the image of a squidgy alien smoking a joint next to a pot leaf. Yes, this must be the ideal souvenir – unless you buy this you will entirely forget every enjoyable moment abroad. I didn't buy it.

285: In which 00:00 becomes 24:00

The clock on my oven says 24:00 to signify midnight instead of the customary 00:00; nack!  (Don’t worry about me writing nack there.  That’s a little insider joke I included; only one or two people will get it.  Don’t think you’re missing anything; it’s not even funny.)  After displaying 24:00, like some kind of secret hidden level, half programmed then blocked off and forgotten about in an 8bit computer game, I am disappointed to see if flick to 00:01.  What a letdown; surely a more exciting finale would be 24:01, and then we really would be heading down the rabbit hole.  After the giddy thrill of 24:00 it is hard not to be let down by anything so mundane as 00:01.

(not my actual oven)

But what if I were to see 24:01 (after 24:00) instead of 00:001 (after 24:00, instead of 00:00)?  What indeed; the build-up, the hype, the mounting excitement.  But imagine the crashing, devastating disappointment of seeing 00:02 after 24:01, when I had been biting my cheeks in anticipation of 24:02.  I don’t even want to think about it.  That’s too much disappointment for one little boy to contemplate.  The endless possibilities of a world in which the confines of the 24-hour clock broke down spontaneously at the whim of an oven craving cleaning, are the things fantasies and belief systems are built upon.

Twice now I have noticed the 24:00 on my oven (where one would normally expect to see 00:00 to numerically donate the concept of midnight).  Twice I have felt that nervous tingle.  This is unusual because I have been intimately acquainted with said oven for almost two years now.  I thought we knew each other inside and out; perhaps I was wrong.  Could it be that my little oven has always chosen 24:00, over what I considered the correct 00:00?  I always thought my little oven was happy.  Now I have reason to believe it is a pessimist at heart; depressed, moribund, alone in a sea of Maldon sea salt flakes and freshly ground black peppercorns.

My oven has chosen 24:00 over 00:00.  My oven prefers to think of midnight as the end of the day; the termination – the death – of another day; one more spin of the earth closer to the day when it spins no more.  Oh how I want to help.  Why can’t it see things the other way around?  Why not does it see the birth of a new day; the possibility of turning the forthcoming dawn into whatever it wills it to be?  The time does not have to be 24:00, my friend.  It can be 00:00 if you want it to be.

So, my little oven friend, dry your eyes mate; I’ll make us a cup of tea.  And together we will face the day.  A day where five past midnight is 00:05, and not 24:05 (encroaching on the previous days afterlife; let it sleep the eternal sleep undisturbed) as you would have it.  A day where eleven forty seven AM is 35:47?  No.  We will wake up tomorrow at nine AM, and it will be 09:00, won’t it?  Yes.  Get it? Got it? Good.

The first time I noticed 24:00, as opposed to 00:00, on the clock face on the oven (in my kitchen)  I excited skipped into the bedroom yelping “fiancée, fiancée, [for that is what I call her] you’ll never guess what I’ve just seen”.  After several unenthused guesses (“erm... a spider and a wasp grimly dancing a fandango... a cherry tomato that’s so shiny you could squeak it... your fingers...?”) I caved in and told her – the clock on the oven, in the kitchen in our flat, says 24:00 at midnight instead of 00:00 as you may expect to see, I am surprised and confounded and more than a little excited.  We both agreed this was a monumental even.   She shared my excitement more than I could have ever expected.  “That’s nice, Kevin,” she ejaculated.

I’m sad to say that she is asleep now, so she will have to wait until the morning to hear the exciting news.  The news that for the second time I have seen the clock on the oven in the kitchen reading 24:00, instead of the customary 00:00 as I might have expected to see.  It reads 24:00, and I read it.

258: procrastinating and drinking @ BLANKSPACE

A quick post today even though I am playing catch-up again.  Saturday will get me back on track; Thursday night, flowing freely and copiously (both literally) with beer and wine at BLANKSPACE is what has set me back.  I done blog late cos i wuz dranken hevy lots.  So last night was the opening of No Such Thing Collective’s show entitled Perception/Deception which I thoroughly enjoyed both as an artist and an alcoholic.  This is not the post about the art and the opening; that will come when I source some photos from the event.  In the meantime, we’ll all have to make do with whatever is coming next >>>>>

Besides all the wine and beer (did I mention the wine and beer; I like wine and beer) there was postcards and ephemera for my massing collection, which I will draw from copiously (second use of that word) to illustrate tha blgpst wot ii z ritin nw.  Chatted shit with interesting, amusing and entertaining people; discussed the 1995 King of the Deathmatch final between Cactus Jack and Terry Funk with Michael Thorp; walking and cobblestones with Steph Graham; Tom Waits and Teletubbies with Mark Devereux, and a bunch of other stuff I dimly recollect.  I actually have more memories of my bizarre and vivid dreams from last night, than I do of any realities.

Stumbled around bad-temperedly at work for a few short hours.  Popped into BLANKSPACE this morning (with my new set of keys, huzzah), ate a sausage sandwich, and let some artists from our next exhibition in to drop off some work.  They left lots of paintings, some of which were massive with a capital fucking.  If it wasn’t rude, and not the done thing, I would start lifting them and moving them to get a better look.  I’ll just have to wait a week for the install (nearly two for the opening of the next exhibition).  Also met Liz West for the first time today.  She is a very talent artist who has worked with Blank Media Collective before.  Her work is extremely colourful and has always stood out to me as being worth attention.  I also learned she is the owner of the world’s largest collection of Spice Girls memorabilia, and hopefully will v soon be awarded a Guinness World Record.  Good luck to her.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have some photos of Perception/Deception to build a blog post around, otherwise I might have to resort to writing about the can of Grass Jelly drink I tried today: mmm chunks.


The images on today's post are scanned from postcards I picked up yesterday.  They depict scenes from Dean Kelland's performance and installation art.  The images are all created by, owned by and copywrite of Dean Kelland (click on each image for details).  Followed by a related video for your enjoyment.

230: obsessive album list thing for the day, today

First thought of the day was what are the top ten British albums of all time?  I think I was dreaming about the Sex Pistols; something to do with the no future refrain from God Save the Queen being used in an advert for toys or something.  Bit weird.  When I say top ten, it doesn't have to be 10; it could be four, or eight, or 19.  And I’m not talking most influential, or most popular, or any of that rubbish.  This is just an arbitrary list of a few albums I like, tenuously linked by being released by British musicians.  And here they are, pulled from my hat and plonked splat flat on the table.

In no particular order:

Tricky, Pre-Millennium Tension;

Judas Priest, Painkiller;

Sex Pistols, Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s the...;

Massive Attack, Blue Lines;

The Prodigy, Music for the Jilted Generation;

Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon;

Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works 85-92;

Aphex Twin, Richard D James Album;

M.I.A., Arular, and;

Gorillaz, Demon Days.

Unexpectedly that turned out actually to be ten.  Don’t blame me that there are no Beatles albums; that’s just me.  And don’t blame me that there is no Oasis or Radiohead.  That is their fault for being unbearably shit.  Obviously Never Mind the Bollocks is the best British album.  It exploded in the most ridiculous fashion, and despite all the hype, negative publicity and self-destruction it is still the most perfect punk, rock, or just straight-up rock n roll album ever.  Perfect catchy songs, the purest sneering screams, hugely underrated musicianship, and not only is it the best punk album – it is the only punk album.  Sorry, the Clash, the Buzzcocks, but you are little baby girls compared to the Sex Pistols.

I almost left Pink Floyd off the list cos I struggled to choose, but eventually I supplied the correct answer.  As great as Piper at the Gates of Dawn and The Wall are (and as wank as The Division Bell is), they belong to Syd Barrett, Roger Waters (and David Gilmour) respectively.  Dark Side of the Moon belongs to Pink Floyd as a whole (sorry Syd), before the epic battle of the egos kicked off proper.  Keen eyes will have noticed that I couldn’t make the same tough decision with regards to Aphex Twin, and kept two of his albums in the list.  It just had to be done. Two words, 4 and Ageispolis.

Tricky, Pre-Millenium Tension: heavy, tense, quiet, disturbing.  Judas Priest, Painkiller; best metal album ever, puts all these wimpy little emo-metal kids to shame; as perfect as it’s possible to be.  And something something something about the others on the list.  Something something something.  Ok, we all get the idea now.  This one is perfect; that one is the best.  Etcetera, etc, &c...

Just time for a brief builder update before bed.  They came in through the roof.  Swarms of them beating on the beams and sweeping in the attic.  I felt besieged like Robert Neville in I Am Legend, but don't worry, I'm Ok.  They are gone now, but will be back by dawn.  They are reverse vampires. 

172: hats and crack and toys and hats

I used to pride myself on my wide range of hats.  Quirky ones, warm ones, twattish ones and cool ones.  I had a cream-coloured Technics visor but I spilt red wine on it; I had a purple fleece pork pie hat, but it was so ridiculous I chucked it; there were many others, but time has reduced them until the nadir of last month.  I had a gigantic Russiany brown one twice the size of my head and with great big ear flaps.  A year ago I left it at my future in-laws house in Northern Ireland.  They posted it back and I proceeded to lose it again.  I had a nice simple grey beanie with a tiny peak, but I lost that too.  Many others came and went, until the cold snap in December saw me with just an ancient thin flimsy blue beanie; no use for keeping warm at all.

In Belfast a couple of days before Christmas I picked up a fantastic flappy hat, with warm furry bits, a sort of dogtooth/zigzag patten, and a subtly branded Guinness (Dublin Ireland 1759 Trademark) logo over one of the ears.  I got it in a Irish tourist tat shop full of shamrock this, bodhrán that, and cèilidh the other; lots of fridge magnets of leprechauns and mock o’olde plaques full of mock Irish bollocks about the craic (read here for why the craic is a load of bollocks).  My shopping bag was also leaden with NI fridge magnets, a Giants Causeway mug, a tiny Belfast t-shirt for my godson, Guinness playing cards and a load of Titanic/Belfast docks postcards.  Good crack.

Then on Christmas day I unwrapped an awesome matching hat and scarf set (given to me by my very generous future mother-in-law).  They are black and grey chequered, and the hat proudly balances a large bobble.  Suddenly my hat levels were climbing back up to acceptable levels.  I pulled out my hat-dipstick, gave it a wipe, popped it back in, and when I drew it out again it indicated a health amount of headgear.

At my own parents for New Year and they returned to me my lost grey beanie, meaning I was peaking dangerously; top-heavy and topple-prone.  And just ten minutes ago, the event that prompted today’s blog post.  I yawned and stretched from my desk, leaned back in my chair with eyes closed, and when I opened them I saw across the room my big brown Russiany flap-hat.  It sits atop a cuddly toy banana with an angry face and hands that look like kidneys (an unlikely souvenir from an Osakan fish market).  It’s part of my oh-look-I’m-quirky-and-interesting collection of crap that is a substitute for actually having a personality, which includes a great pile of toy octopuses, Peruvian masks, children’s drawings, two toy TNT lorries (still in the packets), and a stylophone with Rolf’s smiley face on the box.

Hats, hats, hats.  And Japanese stuff, and octopuses, and books.  That is all.  Thank you and goodnight.

171: Spesh in my pocket, plastic bags in my shoes

Round the corner from the flat earlier this evening, the road was blocked by police cars and vans with tape blocking off the whole street and two fire engines in the centre of it.  We drove down towards it on the way home and had to turn around and go back.  I strained my neck trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on.  I saw someone stood in the street wrapped in a blanket, and thought I saw someone being carried or wheeled out on a gurney, but I only snatched the briefest view and it was further obscured by the flashing lights causing glare on the window.  We drove the long way around in order to see the scene from the other side on the way home.  We saw nothing except a jumble of police vans and a few gawkers.  I stopped short of joining them (mainly because of the freezing wind) and now the curiosity is eating me up.

I can’t seem to find anything online about what might have happened.  Searching for news relating to Old Moat Lane, Manchester brings up a load of random unconnected nonsense and a community update page on the Greater Manchester Police website.  Apparently there is a problem with underage drinking.  Might be a bit of money to be made getting down there and offering to go to the off-license and buy bottles of White Lightning and vodka, for a small fee.  There’s also a priority problem with begging and vagrancy on Old Moat Lane.  I’m fed up with being moved on from there.  A man has got to make a living.  You might make yours from working in an office whilst wearing a business suit, but I make mine leaning semiconscious against a wall outside the corner shop, wearing a brown coat with a can of spesh in the pocket and plastic bags in my shoes.  There’s also a problem with youth related anti-social behaviour on Butron Road (presumably a misspelt Burton Road), but that’s got nowt to do with me.

Whatever caused the collection of emergency vehicles on Old Moat Lane will probably pop up in the local free paper, so I’ll let you all know what happened when I find out.  Join me in hoping no one was harmed.  Thank you, kind people.  Might be more interesting if someone got hurt though.  Or maybe a fire has begun that will sweep across Manchester, like London 1666, leaving very few deaths (recorded ones at least; who cares how many poor people’s deaths went unreported) but a hell of a good story.  We can only hope.  Good night.

160: The inevitable conclusion here >

My invisible brain slug has again eaten the juices from the portion of my head usually charged with remembering to write the blog, so I best just wing it and hope I can get to the end on the last dregs of fuel.  Along the route I will leave a trail of mixed metaphors, broken promises, empty McDonald’s boxes and ugly chunky overlong sentences that seem to have completely changed the topic of discussion at some point between the beginning and the end.  Whatever happens, don’t you worry your pretty little head; I’m wearing goggles (for gogging), rubberised booties and a big purple helmet.  I’m fully protected against any danger or accidental indiscretion.

And now we begin a gentle roll over the crest of the hill before gathering speed, hitting bumps, wobbling slightly before losing our balance and disgracefully arse over tit over ankle over elbow, crashing and falling down and down and down.  Eventually we come to a rest, broken battered and bruised, but where we want to be at the bottom of the hill.  We try to stand but the loose wobbly and crunchy sacks that used to be our legs are no longer viable as transport.  All we can do is curl into a ball and hope the breakages heal before infection or starvation claims us for the Grim Reaper.

But on the bright side, it might all turn out jolly.  I or we might finish this blog without tragedy or idiocy or offensive jabbering nonsense, and then we can all just get along with our lives splashing and flapping in a happy stream of peace.  Wouldn’t it be lovely?  Aye, t’would that, t’would that.  You’re not wrong there.

Sometimes exhaustion and that desperate need for sleep cannot be fought any longer.  My shitty fucking day job has one of these employee handbooks full of the tedious and the bleeding obvious.  One of the rules forbids falling asleep at work.  It warrants immediate dismissal.  I’ve never fallen asleep at work before, but I expect it would be a sign of something going wrong in my life, physically or psychologically.  I’m not at work now, and can barely string a thought together.  In fact I can barely lift my head above keyboard-level and my eyelids above pupil-level.

In summation today’s blog started off pretending not to be about being tired, but hiding the fact poorly.  Continued with a oddly depressing little story about falling down a hill and injuring oneself, made even more confusing by the first-person plural pronoun.  Then there was another bit, and then it sort of dragged on until the inevitable conclusion here.

150: Ticky Tacky

Just one more day at work, stretching out further ahead than I care to contemplate, and then I’m away for Christmas.  Two long weeks of alcoholic inactivity, festivity and holly and ivy, and stuff.  It feels like weeks since I last wrote a blog post but it’s actually just one long day stretching behind me further than I can remember.  I can barely remember how to write; the basics of sentence structure, syntax, punctuation...  I’ve heard those words before, I think, but what do they mean?  Critical error, restart, sleep.  Can’t think cos I just have the refrain from Little Boxes going around and around in my head.  It’s a super smashing great old folk song I loved as a kid.  I never paid any attention to the words back then, but hearing it now the words are fantastic.

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky...

And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.

And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same...

I wasn’t going to print that all, but decided I might as well stick it in.  It has a hint of cloying cuteness, but it coyly masks a face twisted with rage against mediocrity.  Listen to the original (with spotify) by Malvina Reynolds here, and the fantastic cover by Devendra Banhart here.  PS Spotify Open is available again for free users; if you don’t have it get it here.  I think this song has leapt back into my mind, from the depths of my childhood, in response to the waves of identical over-privileged families that make up my customers... but enough about that...

So anyway what can I say that isn’t about work, the customers, my lack of brain activity, or sleep?  Shouldn’t talk about Christmas too much otherwise what would I write about on Christmas day?  I’ll just line up the American classics of folk and country on spotify and let my imagination take me to a time and place I know nothing about.   If I get to far away with my imagination there are always the adverts for Barclaycard and Wilkinson’s to remind me where I am and who I am.

Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos), Committed to Parkview, American Remains, Born and Raised in Black and White, Angels Love Bad Men, Desperados Waiting for a Train, Highwayman.  I don’t care what idiotic negative preconceptions you have about Country and Western; if you don’t love these songs your opinion on everything, from politics to food to your own family, is worthless.  I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard people say ‘I love all kinds of music, except Country and Western’.  Yeah, and I love all kinds of people, except you.  Country isn’t some bland uniform blob that can be entirely tarnished with the same crap.  It is massive, complicated, brilliant, rubbish, simplistic, varied and evolving.  If you say ‘I don’t like Country,’ what I hear is ‘I am entirely unable to make differentiations between good and bad in a genre I am unfamiliar with, and as a result must make a sweeping negative stereotype in an quivering cowering attempt to push my own inadequacies away from myself’.  Word for word; that is what I hear.  Word?

What was I talking about before that digression in defence of Country?  Oh yeah, nothing much.  Anyway, Country doesn’t need defending.  It can stand up for itself.  It’s not one of those weak house-of-card concepts that need defending by rabid fanatics terrified of dissidents and critics.  You know like religion or god.  Night.

146: Treachery and self-delusion (and not forgetting all kinds of pretensions and affectations)

Is honesty the best policy?  Does it make any difference if the only person who cares about your lie is yourself (or in this case me and myself).  “BRADSHAW, WHY DIDN’T YOU HAND IN YOUR BLOGWORK ON TIME YESTERDAY?”  

   “Well, Sir... I, erm, you see I was going to do it, but I erm, well first I missed the bus.  No, I mean I got home really late.  Why?  Oh, because I set off really late, and it snowed and the traffic was bad and there was salt on the track.  I mean snow.  And leaves.  So the bus, I mean train, had to stop for, like, hours and I was going to do my blog on the train, cos I really really wanted to do it, but there was a fat man sitting next to me and I didn’t want him to read my blog before it was finished in case he laughed at a spelling mistake or erroneous word.  

   "Then the fat man went to the toilet for ages, so I tried to write a bit then but my laptop needed charging and the only plug socket was on one of those tables with four seats around it and it was all occupied by self-absorbed self-satisfied middle-class work-shy mums cooing over and kissing their runty livestock offspring.  I begged them to let me use the plug socket, but they were just too obsessed with their haircuts and 4x4s and jewellery and their holidays and the academic and/or sporting tricks their disgusting litter can perform.  It was like they were in a bubble of privilege where the thoughts, opinions and needs of their fellow humans cannot penetrate.  

   "Eventually the train, I mean bus, set off and when I got to the station I couldn’t get out because there was an impromptu recital of the Imperial Taiko Ensemble, and I tried to get out but there was such a crowd and it’s also physically impossible to walk passed big drums without stopping to gawp.  They played through the night, working shifts so they could keep on and on; it was as though they knew I had a blog to write and were forcing me into a catch 22 where they were providing me with material, while at the same time preventing me from committing the experience to the written word.  

   "And then as soon as the drumming stopped and I left the bus station, I mean train station, I slipped on some sick, I mean some snow, and a big dog ate my foot.  I’m OK now, but at the time it looked as though I had no foot.  It turns out I did have a foot, two feet to be precise, but for a while it was touch and go.  So like I said, I’m OK now, but they had to do all tests n that, and that, and I was pretty worried, and I had to phone my mum and she was all worried.  

   "I was able to walk home eventually, but when I got home my key wouldn’t work in the lock.  I fiddled with it for about fifteen or sixteen seconds before realising my key was in my pocket, and I had just been blindly jabbing my index finger at the lock.  Then I got in but the heating was off and the house was cold so I had to have a cup of tea and let the radiators warm up, and I couldn’t find a plug socket cos the Christmas lights were all plugged in, but I improvised a small generator out of an ironing board and an egg cup that created just enough power to turn the laptop on.  

   "I couldn’t remember the password, and the internet wasn’t working properly, and I had forgotten what words and pictures were, and I couldn’t think of anything interesting that had happened that day, and I was tired after all the excitement, and I had lots of other important blogwork to do for my other classes, and I had to eat some egg and chips, and I forgot what I was supposed to be doing, and I’m really really really sorry n that.  Yeah?”

And that is all the honest and true excuse, I mean genuine reason, why I’m handing in yesterday’s blog late.

131: 2012, toe death, REM sleep, xmas, crap, and wall-to-wall other stuff

Let’s keep it short tonight as I have some important sleeping to do.  Each eyelid races the other to be the first to come to a complete shuteyed rest.  Then which eye will start REMing up first.  Don’t know, don’t care; all I know is I want sleep.  More than sleep though, I want to stay asleep for the entire of tomorrow.  No chance of that happening.  “I’ve got to write my stupid blog thing,”  “It’s not stupid Kevin, it’s a very good idea and very important,” “No, it’s stupid”.

I’ll mention Richard Herring’s blog Warming Up possibly for the last time, as it doesn’t do to keep reminding my paltry readership that I’ve copied the idea off someone else.  Anyway, Herring’s blog celebrated its eighth year on 25^th Nov 2010 and he began looking forward to 2012 when it reaches its tenth birthday.  To mark the occasion he asked his readers to email him stating where they would like their lives to be on 25^th Nov 2012.  He says he will check back to see how people are doing by then.  I decided to email him with my goals; he seems like a jolly nice man, so I thought “ok, let’s”.  My contribution can be found somewhere near the bottom (as KB) here.  You’ll know it’s mine cos it mentions Japan and my blog.  I could ask you what you want to be doing in 2 years time, but it’s probably not advisable to be copying another of Mr. Herring’s ideas.  “In two years time I want to be acting out my own ideas, not appropriating other people’s”.

But for today we’ll all have to settle for my word-count wasting.  My mind is a complete blank.  A blank canvas is a good thing, but a blank mind is a problem.  Waiting for any idea to form; still waiting.  I am breathing heavily.  Had a bewildering array of colds coming and going for at least a month now.  On the verge of a hypochondriac break-down.  Is my immune system compromised?  Is that ache in my toe the same thing that killed Bruce Lee, or was it Bob Marley; I don’t know.  But this is no good; a blank mind was marginally better than a paranoid one.  Let’s go back to empty-headedness and see where we end up.  Most likely right back where we started.  Where we started?  Huh?  I’m also trying not to think too much.  If I do accidentally think I might wake up and that won’t do at all, what with the early start and the arduous day I have ahead of me.  This is one of those not worth reading blog posts; exercise for my fingers and nothing else.  Nothing.  Sorry if you are a regular reader bored shirtless by today’s post; even sorrier if you are a first time reader put off by this...  But you know, it can’t all be gold.  It can’t even all be soil, or dustbin smell, or pube in the soap.  Some of it isn’t even good enough to be called crap.  What’s worse than being crap?  Being boring.  Or being crap and boring.  Just realised I’m typing with one eye fully closed and the other a tiny slit, the screen is completely out of focus and all that good stuff.

Maybe I could create a ‘blog quality’ graph to chart my ups and downs.  Yes that is definitely not a pointless exercise.  Challenge accepted.

P.S. Christmas decorations went up today in our flat :)

104: bags, flys, stuff and alveoli

Right, let’s get this over and done with.  There is a rucksack across the room, that has been to Japan and back and waited for hours at Kuala Lumpur airport with me, and now it sits unused on the top shelf of the wardrobe.  In this light and from this angle it looks like a gigantic bluebottle.  The bottom bulges like the boggly compound eyes, and the straps hand in just the places to be mistaken for legs and feelers or antennae or whatever they are called.  It even appears to have wings.  Fortunately they are not too scale so it doesn’t appear too intimidating.  They are more like primitive stumps; evolving knobbles taking early steps up the gradual slopes of Mount Improbable, to paraphrase Richard Dawkins.

Nothing else in the room exactly resembles real things on an entirely unlikely scale.  Except my fingers which are the spitting likeness of microscopic cnidocyte cells of the box jellyfish.  And the bedroom door which viewed from this approach bears a distinct similarity to a satellite photograph of the Amazon delta.  The foot of the bed is a ten inch scale model of the Bradshaw Mountains in Arizona.  The piles of moisturiser and ‘product’ my girlfriend has amassed are a partially dissected frog beginning to recover from its anaesthetic.  The bedside table is a torn out page from the Argos catalogue featuring tents and tenting equipment, screwed up and left on a Subbuteo box.  The curtains are sheets of sandpaper and the window is like a box of chocolates...

Besides these recognisable likenesses there is little of interest.  I could lie on the lawn and stare at the clouds searching for unusual shapes; and I would if it wasn’t covered in cat shit, freezing cold and pitch black.  As it goes I will just have to make do with my giant Calliphora vomitoria.  It waits for me to sleep, disguised as a mostly harmless rucksack.  When I finally drift off she will feed on my decaying meat, leaving her monstrous maggots to gorge their fat wiggly bodies on my decomposing matter.

And this is what I get for watching David Attenborough’s Life in the Undergrowth through the confused fug of a bad cold and a couple of mugs of hot toddy.  A toddy is recommended for anybody experiencing the creeping frost of autumn, but the common cold is so... common.  Blah.  I began this post by saying right, let’s get this over with and the time is upon us.  I ran out of steam at least a paragraph ago, and am now waiting for the word count to catch up.  Unfortunately I have to stop typing every few moments to cough another alveoli into my mouth.  And on that note; bye.