the blog goes on

hello brothers and sisters
i'm back. this time it really has been ages.lots has happened. not all of it good. some of it hideously fucking awful, to be honest. but some of it has been good. all of it has taught me something. consciously or otherwise.
can't remember the date of my last post but i have a feeling it was early '07. i remember mentioning paul smith aftershave, which i bought in the sales last year. cheap bastard? probably. but what's the point of a sale, if not to encourage people to buy stuff they can't normally afford.so, here i am, a year or so older. wiser perhaps in some ways. but wisdom is a work-in-progress, it doesn't end, you can have awakenings and see things clearly. happened to me once when i was walking home and no one was around. it was about 6am, and i was looking at trees and clouds and grass and i realised that everything is absolutely connected. i know it sounds a bit hippyish but it was so clear to me that we just think in terms of separation or separateness (if that's a word). and it's the thinking that is the separation, everything else just gets on with it. obviously in the animal kingdom there is some separation and it's probably similar to us in terms of it being a means of survival, but human beings don't just see ourselves as individuals trying to survive, often we actually think we're not part of everything else. like we're aliens. though there may be something in that also. perhaps we are. for discussion later perhaps.some big stuff happened this year, one part very horrible, not gonna discuss that now. perhaps later, but all i will say is enjoy your folks while they're around. make the best of them and talk to them, because when they're gone, they're gone. don't leave things hanging. but at the same time, if you have people in your family who treat you like crap, over and over, and don't respond when you reach out, let them go. hard as it may be. don't close the door totally, be ready to be the bigger man (or woman...) but don't waste time hurting yourself with people who haven't got the emotional intelligence to see what's going on. but parents and grandparents, tell them that you love them, if you do. think about whether you do, chances are you do a bit at least. and tell them. because sometimes they go in a flash. ok, enough depressing stuff.
what else is going on? still no wife. been running around with various women (women? girls? ladies? laydeez?) since last time. but still officially on my own. one thing i've learned. don't try to work it out with people who are much younger than you. it's fun in a way but ultimately it's going nowhere fast. the person can be really nice, of course, and that makes it more difficult. but if they're significantly younger, it ain't happening. i can't be discussing the finer points of britney spears career, no way jose. celebrities are a bunch of meaningless cunts. it's a game to stop you from thinking about the real world. when benazir bhutto gets blown up and you're seeing someone who's discussing britney's sisters pregnancy like it's actual news, it's time to hit the ejector seat. or the panic button. probably the ejector seat. your own ejector seat, of course.
so, yeah, the world is still a pretty messed up place. thanks to backward, religious people and mean, power-hungry politicians. they keep things as they are while the rest of us try to develop. but that doesn't mean we should give up. but in a world where even one person takes george bush seriously, never mind a whole country, it's a struggle. keep it up though, brothers and sisters.
so, anyway, that's about all for me right now. i'm gonna eat something and maybe try and get to yoga later. i'm not a hippy, honestly. but i'm trying to be more healthy. easier said than done.

ok, rock on, people.

love...

been a while

so it has.
a long, long time. the beard grows curly, the toenails harden, the eyes wrinkle ever more.
yet here we are again, re-convening, catching up.
i have a job now, i am a grown-up person. i have responsibilities. i get up in the mornings. i drink coffee all day. i have expensive lunches. i buy cereals twice the price i did two months ago. i can buy conditioner as well as shampoo now, though i rarely use either.
and i use my brain at work. and i have challenges. and people are impressed by my efforts. sometimes at least.and it's about something. i know i'm not saving the world or curing cancer but i'm into something. i'm learning. it's useful, and will be more useful.
and sometimes i'm still dj'ing. played last thursday but i was on the graveyard shift of dj's, 9-11 in a nightclub. no one was there, practically. and then some breakdancers came in so no one went on the dancefloor, partly in shame, partly in fear of being kicked in the head by someone doing a windmill. later on alex gopher came in. it got better. i think these guys must find it a bit weird when they come to stockholm and the dancefloor is half-empty whilst everyone hovers around the bar. if you're used to playing in france and england and those sorts of places it must be a bit weird to see so many people not giving a toss, other than wanting to say they'd been there.
what do i know?
so what else is new? i've been ostracised by my brothers. and i'm not the only one. they're into a movement, which i won't name here, but which certainly doesn't seem to be spreading much harmony in the wider world.
i don't get it.
what else? i recently saw, for the third time, i think, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia. One of my all-time favourite movies. To which i was introduced by my older brother, before he got religious and stopped talking to me.
I've been listening to bowie's 'low' album. absolutely f@+_ing incredible music. rediscovered that. bit of neil young, happy mondays, francoise hardy, etc.
football- liverpool 2-0 chelsea. that's all she wrote.
shall i be shallow and talk about vain things like what after shave i'm wearing? paul smith, is nice, i like, high-five.

well, that's all for now i guess.

stay beautiful, people.

zany

hey.
i've been away.
in kent, visiting relatives.
the weather was warm.
the relatives were lovely.
i was there.and now i'm back, in london, doing not much of anything.
the weather is still warm. kind of nice but it makes you sweaty and that means you have to wash your clothes more often. and everyone always wants to get drunk, and then you're hot and hung-over the next day.
and i haven't been paid. for two weeks, it's not difficult to pay someone, they do the work and then you give them money. last week they paid someone else. this week's reason/excuse has not been made known as yet. the truth will out.

i watched crimewatch last night, my aunt making the observation that a lot of the criminals were foreigners and immigrants (but there were also a lot of british criminals...). it is true. and there are various issues bound up in that. but robbing a bookmakers shop is still not something acceptable( if you ask me owning a bookmakers shop is also unacceptable) but raping the cleaner of the bookmakers shop is repellent. they showed another guy who is eastern european and gets on buses at night looking for single women, sometimes who are in obvious distress, so that he can rape them.
so you have to say, surely there has to be something done about this. for me you can have a one strike and you're out situation, if you come to this country supposedly for a better life and you then go ahead and f_ck it up, for whatever reason, then i think your permission to stay should be immediately revoked. we send our own people to trial in america these days without batting an eyelid so why can't we send people home who commit crimes? we've got enough of our own criminals to deal with so i don't see why we need anyone else's. and they're not doing any favours for all the people who genuinely come here to work and behave like useful citizens.
i don't know, it's a tricky one, i don't want to get all right-wing about this but i just don't see what we get out of keeping those people here. and we'd have a lot more time and resources to sort out our own problems if we sent all foreign-criminals back to their country of origin. if sweden or any other country did that to me i couldn't complain. i wouldn't be in that situation if i hadn't committed the crime in the first place.
it's a strange world we live in, many parts of it are quite sick and horrible, but in these cases one has to be bold enough to stand up and say 'no more'. poverty may lead to crime but rape is not about how much money you have.
things have to change.
and don't think im blaming all crime on foreigners, but the fact is this country can't even look after its own people, and more poverty means more crime. i'm seriously leaning towards the policies coming in in many european countries where you lock the doors and say enough is enough. i just don't think we can cope. england used to be a country of tolerance but i think nowadays that is being abused. we need to make useful people feel welcome here. but we need to see where we are going and if that means not letting in any more people for a while then so be it. i'm not sure how many of them are really being dealt a good hand taking shitty jobs and living in crime-ridden estates anyway. and this makes it worse for the people who've already emigrated and those who've been here for generations. it becomes an us-and-them situation and at some point the lines will be drawn. i hope this doesn't happen. but the only way i can see is if we close the doors and sit down and talk and find out exactly who we are and what we're about. it's not good extending help indefinitely and not checking to see what kind of position we're in to be offering that help in the first place.

wow, i feel a bit like enoch powell but i'm not saying what he said, i'm saying let's appreciate our diversity, let's work together and let's try to make a better society. we're not going to fix the world's problems by immigration to britain anyway, we will only do that by actively helping the rest of the world to adequately take care of its own affairs.

ok, i'm gonna stop now. glad i got that off my chest.

random events in a dying universe... (burroughs)

i am in london. it is another of my trips. with more bizarre and seemingly-unconnected-and-meaningless-but-actually-totally-connected-and-meaningful events.
tomorrow i start a course. and i feel ok about it. i shall learn the art of copywriting and all that it entails. tonight i watched the world cup final and drank red wine, having made myself a fairly respectable risotto, yes, i was supporting italy but the food was coincidental. if there are any coincidences.
i got to london on thursday, almost missing my plane but being saved by those who decide what becomes of us... that night i went out for an adequate italian meal with my dear friend johnnie 'polyester'. we then went to clapham, thinking shoreditch could get messy. but clapham was dull, and surprisingly empty, johnnie started to go to the dark side, and then we left.
friday i went to portobello market to see my friend 'steve'. we hung out and talked of many things and plans and told jokes and stories. did you hear about the wooden car? it had wooden wheels, wooden, doors, wooden engine. it wooden go.
boom boom. yeah, bad i guess. maybe you had to be there. or maybe not.
then we ate moroccan and drank portuguese coffee and eventually i split and played music you-know-where. perhaps you don't know where, and perhaps it's better that way. probably, in fact. though steve maybe can fix me up with more interesting possibilities. he knows people, which is a very important quality. he has talent too, but even a man with no talent can do ok if he knows people.
and saturday... well, saturday, interesting, i was at home doing nothing for hours, not at home exactly, but where i'm staying. eventually i persuaded myself to leave the house and head out, possibly to steve's stall at portobello yet again. but first i decided i would go to camden, and there i went, shopping for women's gear to sell at the stall. was gonna get discount from a friend but the boss arrive so that went out of the window. these things happen. but, as one door closes, another one opens... whilst in the shop i spoke briefly to an incredible looking girl, and when i arrived at the till she was just before me, and as she paid for her item it turned out she was a pound short, and being a nice guy, i stepped in to save her in her hour of need, i'd like to think i would have done the same for anybody, perhaps for an old lady i would have done, but maybe not for a guy, unless he seemed like an honest person, which too few people do these days. and she was very thankful. and i was happy to help. and she was beautiful and smiled and we spoke for a second. my transaction took a long time. or perhaps it just seemed long as i was desperate to get out and catch up with this lovely woman. and when eventually i did get out she was in the next shop, but we didn't talk there, or the next shop, i think, but eventually we spoke again, and it was good to talk to her, even though she seemed a little bit hidden behind her sunglasses. she had a lovely personality as well as looking amazing. and i was enjoying it, and we walked around together a while, and all was well with the world. then she stopped to talk to a finnish guy, oh yeah, i forgot to say she was finnish, anyway, she talked to this guy and his girlfriend. i didn't introduce myself, just stayed in the shadows... it was her ex, anyway, and after they left she was a bit shaken up. so we talked a bit more, but i was getting the impression maybe i could be bugging her if i stayed around longer so as she went into the next shop i decided i should move on, and she offered me her number, which i gladly took. and off i went, kissing her on the cheek and thinking, yeah, sometimes things are good...
so then i went to portobello and sold nothing. then i played my records you-know-where again.
and that was that.
but i know there are lessons in all this. i'm just fitting them together. i'll take whatever life wants to throw at me. but a date with that girl would have been a nice thing to throw at me. a walk along the river, maybe an exhibition, an evening meal and a drink, followed by a walk beneath the stars. but no, not yet, life seems to have decided i should walk my lonely walk, trotting to my course and back and playing my records at the weekend. for now at least. i know life can surprise me though.
take care
mr w
x

p.s. by the way, in case you all think i'm a bad guy, i'm single these days, for a couple of weeks now.

hanging on

hey there, you crazy kids.
been missing me? of course you have, i just needed to hear you say it, that was all.
been gone, gone, gone. for various reasons. i went away for a while, can't remember if i posted during my trip. but then since returning i have been taken ill. not straight away, but the first few days i was getting acclimatised. and also moving room. i had moved room before going away, only to find out that i needn't have and thus i had to move everything back upon my return. i still haven't finished doing it. so i'm in some kind of limbo for precisely that reason. couple with this illness. it's quite a weird experience being ill, i find, it's quite easy to think you don't deserve it. and i ahve to say i don't know where i picked up this cough as i don't smoke and i am in sweden where smoking is banned in all civilised places. but somehow i have picked up this cough, and, amazingly, i have managed to do it when the weather has been great. so while everyone else has been tanning themselves i have been in bed rolling around with an eyemask on feeling dreadful. but you have to be philosophical about it. people get ill. it's my turn this time.
i'm debating whether or not to go to croatia for a week. there's a reasonably priced flight going out there on saturday. i have the money, though i probably need it for other things. but it might do me good. though last time i was there i came back with a disgusting cough from passive smoking. god i wish people would realise how knobbish smoking is. there is no reason for it. just admit you're unhappy and do something about it.
so what's been going on in the matrix of madness?
the whaling commission is being taken over by sick fucks who've been paid by japan and other psychotic barbaric nations to sign up. so our more intelligent friends in the sea will be dropping in numbers. and all thanks to our more stupid friends on the land. here's something. find out more, google it.
what else? zarqawi got deaded. no great loss there then. a few less beheadings in the world won't worry me unduly. some new guy's in, forget his name, but he's promised war on the coalition and shias. now, i may be wrong in this, but i think people might have a bit more sympathy for the islamic cause if a, they stopped blowing up western civilians, and b, stopped also blowing each other up. it's a bit of a double standard to expect us to hear your pleas for peace when you're intent on blowing each other up. this is the problem. too many offshoots and too many self-appointed preachers praising psychomurderbastards as martyrs. show the 'religion of peace' side and people may be more prepared to listen. the coalition wouldn't look very convincing if they were deliberately targeting their own people, would they? (apart from the occasional american 'friendly fire' incident) .
what else? the world cup's on. england didn't play particularly convincingly at the weekend. but they still managed to win, somehow. so if they do the same tonight, i.e win, not play unconvincingly, then they'll be through to the next round. a bit of luck on our side and you never know. why eriksson took theo walcott is beyond me as he seems to have no desire to play him. why not give that place to someone who can replace owen or rooney? i.e. jermaine defoe.
anyway...
thought croatia looked good and on another night could have had brazil.
we shall see...
well, can't think of any other news with which to enlighten you at this particular moment.
but i send you all my love and hope that you realise your true worth and the beauty of this world.
peace
mr w
x

hugh, manatee

hi, i've been in france.
i love france. a weird mixture of northern and southern europe. the people also.
a cool, bricolage, throw-what-you-like-into-the-mix kind of vibe over there.
a delight in their own culture, despite sometimes borrowing from others. how different from britain where we don't even know what our culture is anymore. it's all done differently, i.e. well.
obviously the weather helps. but we have this weird thing going on in britain. we don't take an active part in our culture, not very often anyway, but we defend it like psychos if anyone dares to criticise it. very strange. i think we're just a bit unhappy and don't want to admit it.
anyway, it was very nice over there, but holidays almost always are.
just a short blog this time, busy busy, you see.
but you must read this article.
it is sickening. japan using its dirty money to buy favour from small countries at the international whaling commission and these poor little shits are condemning the whale populations to death as a result. sickening. please read it and get active.
message me for more details if necessary.
F_CK!
peace and love, my dears

w

making sense

hail. well met.
been gone a while again. gettting slack with my blogs. been neglecting my diarist's duties.
so here i am again. with some self-deprecating badinage about my shortcomings (or other people's, depending) and some knowing barbs about the activities of politicians. throw in a few desperate pleas for humanity to remember itself and you've got one of my blogs.
you may not even need to read on if you're an imaginative, caring person in your thirties. you may know what i'm going to say already. or you may be a bit of a dick in your thirties who no one really likes but you haven't noticed yet. i hope you don't know exactly what i'm going to say. then i would have to re-examine my life. but, since i'm not sure anyone actually reads this page, i shall begin.
i'm moving rooms over the next couple of days. this may sound completely uninspiring to you. perhaps it is. but... the point of it is... that i shall be sharing a room. at 36 years of age. that will be weird. it may well end up being horrible. or it may be great. or perhaps it will just be bearable. it remains to be seen. it may be only temporary anyway. the guy from whom we rent our apartment needs to move back in for 3 days a week as he needs to give his wife some space. perhaps, hopefully (for both groups), they will work everything out fairly soon. if not i guess i can stick it out for the summer and then try to find something else. but it does feel weird. a bit like being a kid again. the last time i shared a room was with my brother when he was homeless. he ended up staying a year and driving me to distraction. but such is life. and now another challenge comes. i'm not going to stress too much. i always do that only ot find things weren't so bad after all. but if it goes badly you can be sure it will be recorded for posterity in this very journal.
what else? i'm broke. i'm tempted to borrow money from the bank. i may well do so. perhaps even tomorrow, depending on the alacrity of a payment upon which i wait. did that make sense? it was meant to sound a bit archaic but may have just been a bit crap.
thursday i go to london. monday i go to france. for a week. on the riviera no less. i shall doubtless spend some time drinking red wine on the veranda and watching the sun set over the mediterranean. but afterwards back to normal. 'for these few weeks the cherry trees are in blossom. longer and we should not prize them so'. japanese. think about it. it means something.
and what is happening in this rather bizarre, sometimes frightening, sometimes exquisite world we inhabit?
they've released footage of the pentagon attack on sept 11th 2001. now, i'm not one to go for conspiracies. oh, sorry, yes i am, but i'm struggling to see the plane on that footage. surely there was more than one camera outside the heart of america's defence system? but the only one we have pictures from just shows a thin white line above the lawn and then an explosion. looked more like a missile to me. but it couldn't be, could it? hmmm. then we'd have to smell a rat and think the whole thing might not be what it seems. that might lead us to think that politcians lie to us to keep us down and keep themselves in control. it might make us think citizens could die so that powerful scammers can carry on playing their bloodthirsty games around the world. we couldn't think that. but maybe i'm wrong. about the plane, i mean, not the politicians.
but what are we ordinary people doing whilst our governments lie to us? we're using our time productively. we're doing things like this. i mean, this is civilisation. we go on about how the afghans treated the lion in kabul zoo but then this is what goes on at home. is it any less bad? ok, a lion's bigger and there aren't so many of them. but the people who do this are a product of the mighty machine we call western civilisation. so is this guy. now i know plenty of people in the developing world get up to bad things. but we call ourselves civilised. we are the 'developed' world. fuck that then. please do not develop into us. save yourselves now.
blair's talking shit again. actually i've just realised the word shit was redundant in that sentence. like a lot of people since bliar took over. he really is a smarmy worm. he's trying to hawk nuclear power again. this is while they stop iran from having it of course. i mean, why aren't we seeing this? we don't make the link. our brain's are so inactive, or obsessed with cheap tv. if blair was any kind of leader he'd be hooking up bio-ethanol plants. he'd be into some tesla stuff. but he isn't. he's too busy invading places and having holidays and juggling the careers of various fraudsters, philanderers and liars. he said this today - It would be damaging to this government's credibility if it were to pre-empt the conclusions of its own energy review, by making premature and insufficiently considered announcements on nuclear power - isn't it damaging to this government's credibility to pre-empt the findings of hans blix in iraq, making premature and insufficiently considered announcements on wmd's? oh, wait a minute, that would only make sense if the government had any credibility. there's four nice links for you there.
we are bored. we are too rich. even if we're not rich. that's why we get fat. that's why we take drugs. why we spend more on booze than we would need to feed the starving. that's why we beat each other up at football matches. it's why we need immigrant workers to do all the shitty jobs. we're dying inside. but we don't know what to do about it. we don't even know we're unhappy most of the time. we just think it's our natural state. we complain about immigration but we have a country with lots of money floating around and plenty of jobs if you're not too snobby about dirty work. but we'd rather fanny about on the dole having kids who sniff glue than get off our arse and make the world a better place. we have too much. i'd love to go on holiday to spain and see an indian family there, or some people from tanzania, or anywhere. not just fat lazy white europeans. no offence, i'm a slightly chubby white european myself. i just wonder how long we can maintain this house of cards we're living in. i don't mind roughing it a bit if it means we live in a more just world. and it is ending.
because we keep this system of voting for c_nts to rule us. instead of trying to find someone who's going to really give us some meaningful hope and show us how the world could be. but we'll probably find out the hard way. make hay while the sun shines.
stay beautiful
mr w

X