blogging

okay. yet again it is late. in a way it is always late. and early. work that out for yourselves.
what i mean is that i very often blog late. by which point i am too tired to put the required amount of energy into the job in hand. i could do it in the morning. but mornings are blurred. to me anyway, and i can't remember what happened the day before. later on perhaps i can, but then i am trying to summarise the next day's events. you see? always too late, always too early.
so now it is 03.25am and i have been out drinking with my ex. it was actually surprisingly easy. it could have been a lot worse. but the best thing is not to imagine how it will be, but hopefully to be in a situation of understanding in which you can say you need to go. because it's awful. you wouldn't say it that way because it wouldn't be awful with someone with whom you could speak that openly. so there you go. it was surprisingly pleasant considering the huge tides under the imaginary bridges. but we were out and if you're out the last friday before christmas it's never going to be free of 'characters'. at least not in london. i can't speak for many other places.
and so now, i am about to lay my weary head to rest and sleep my dreamy sleep until tomorrow when i board the national express up north. i may not have internet access for a few days so i will bid you a hearty adieu, my friends, and hope we reconvene somewhere suitable in the not-too-distant future.
be well. and merry christmas one and all.

if you like that art wot you see above click here. and tell them i sent you and i want my commission. rock on, people.

greetings from england

hello universe. i am in london which is the capital of england. and great britain. welcome welsh and scots and northern irish. this is your spiritual home. apparently. or not. i don't know. but come here anyway. come drink up this heady brew, this bubbling concoction of traffic and noise and off-beat characters and litter and red buses and music and business and fear and joy. come imbibe of this elixir and let us be as one...
right. so here i am. i have left the quiet streets of sweden and headed to the noise of london for the christmas holidays. christmas is weird here. nobody gets it. ok, not nobody but many people don't get it. it's the one time of year that you are more likely to be barged out of the way than any other. today i saw a guy pushing a woman out of the way because it was a squeeze to get off the tube. he pushed her twice. he'd made his point. she wasn't trying to be in the way, she couldn't move either. i saw an androgynous woman (i think, very masculine) a few years ago attack a woman in front of her family on the escalator in hamley's toyshop because she couldn't get past. then the husband of the attacked woman joined in, thinking the assailant was a man. what kind of way is this to behave? weird.... "i'm out buying presents for children to make it a magical, special christmas and you're in my way, therefore i must batter you to the floor".
but i think many people buying presents are doing it because they believe they have to and because they think they'll look stingy if they don't go mental and spend ridiculous amounts of money on useless things for ungrateful materialistic children. it's so ridiculous. what about not spending as much money and actually doing stuff with the kids? no wonder the world is in such a state when kids judge a parent's worth on how much they spend on presents.
and this year... the christmas lights are called 'winter lights' so as not to cause offence. won't be long before they call it 'mas so as not to offend. but 'mas sounds like mass and that will offend non-christians, too. they can call it 'winter expensive-crap-giving'. that's more like it.

late

hi, sorry. it's late and i'm ready for bed.
is it possible that life would curse a music lover by hooking them up with someone who likes usher? surely the universe in all it's ancient mystery couldn't be that sick, could it? i don't think i'm that anal in my view of music but on top of everything if i have to get my head around the idea that usher's music is somehow 'good' and contains some kind of 'goodness' i think i may have to sell my stereo. it's that serious. i can only assume that someone would like usher because they haven't heard enough good music to know how bad it is. either that or they're not passionate about music. or they have appallingly dreadful taste (is it called taste when you like usher?) . man, this universe never fails to surprise me with the seemingly random events it throws up like metal ducks at a rifle range. how on earth is a dj and music lover ever supposed to reconcile his musical tastes with someone who likes music that gives blandness a bad name? it's not even wallpaper music. wallpaper music is charismatic by comparison. anyone who takes his shirt off that often has nothing to say. and they're calling him the successor to michael jackson. sacrilege. thank god they didn't call him prince's successor. that would be fatwa time over here at west manor.
well, i'm sure god/fate/the universe etc knows what it's doing.
and so to bed...

life

not much has happened today. to me, that is. not much blog-worthy anyway. is it ok to write about what you ate and general day-to-day nonsense like that? i suppose it's ok, as in not unacceptable, but i wouldn't expect most people to be interested in it.
anyway, i saw a movie today, 'the constant gardener'. which i thought was quite interesting subject matter even if i wasn't mad about the movie itself. there were some poetic images in it though. i especially liked the image of the flamingos flying across the lake. there really is some amazing scenery in africa. some of it looks as though it could be on another planet. something to see one day, perhaps. anyway, it had some interesting things to say about the state of the world. go and see it.
so, what else has been happening? i check the bbc webpage every day to see what's going on in great britain. the other day some thieves stole a henry moore sculpture. the worry is that they will melt it down for scrap metal. this is worse than stealing it, i think. if you steal it and sell it then yes it's unfair on others who might like to see it, the same if you steal it and keep it, but melting it down just seems unnecessary to me. but then today i read that thieves have stolen a baby penguin from a zoo. what on earth is the thinking (sic) behind that? this penguin can't even feed itself and will die after 5 days unless it is fed by one of its parents. so another waste, this time of a life, unless the thieves return it. it's just this moronic needless crime that baffles me. robin hood stuff i can understand in a way. but this sort of meaningless crime that does nothing really for anyone is beyond my understanding. and if they get caught they don't really care. going to prison is often no worse or maybe even better than life in some areas of britain. you can hang out with your mates, make new ones, get drugs, learn new skills. how do people get so bored and have so little interest in their own or other people's well-being and freedom that they throw it away with this petty, ten-a-penny nonsense? how does it arise? there are plenty of people much worse off in the world but they don't steal from people in the same position. why do we care so little? i really wonder what we can do about it. watch less tv perhaps. talk to our families. get happy about ourselves. it hurts me to know that people are quite content to go and do a stretch in jail instead of being free to walk and see the world. i remember being in court over my tv licence, many years ago (of course), and there were these young kids comparing jail sentences, as if they were playing top trumps.
people, we need to wake up fast. let's empty the jails by not playing their silly games any more. hold your head up and walk tall. they want you to be a snivelling little nobody with no hope for a better life. don't play that game. you're better than that. you're beautiful.

and if by any chance you're reading this... give the fucking penguin back.

relationships

hmmm.... do they always have to be difficult? i guess they almost always have to contain some level of difficulties, like anything in life. but it seems like just when you think things are getting ok, suddenly they say 'oh no, he's getting comfortable' and turn the opposite way.
i don't know. 'opposites attract' they say. but perhaps if you go against type and go for someone who you don't have so much in common with then you're more likely to pick up on their pecadillos than you would do with someone more akin to your own personality. hmmm... i don't know. maybe it just doesn't work but it has to get to crisis point before you realise it. we shall see.

moral dilemma news... what happens if you are fairly skint (penniless for you non-brits) and you get offered a job working for a company you cannot abide? what should one do in this situation? i'm pretty much broke right now, but i've been offered a casting for a part in a mcdonald's commercial. i was planning on going to it but now i just don't feel right about it. i haven't got a good word to say about mcdonald's and would rather eat my own toenails, given the choice, than eat there. unless i was very drunk or very hungry and in a strange town which had no other nearby option. so what should i do? i'm not famous so i wouldn't be using my influence to make people go to mcdonald's, and i'm broke so i could use the money. BUT... life will take care of me anyway. i really believe this was a choice thrown up by life to see what i would do. i'm going to stand up and be counted. the only thing i feel bad about is letting the casting agents down as they will have been expecting me. i'll call them of course but i feel bad about messing them around. but i really feel i have to stand up for what i believe in. it could turn out that i'm totally wrong about this. i am quite sure it won't. i won't starve. and i will have stamped my foot like a precocious child and said 'NO! I WILL NOT DO IT!'. and so it must be. i don't want to speak empty words and say i care about things and then go ahead and do the opposite. even if my principles bring me bad luck it will only be temporary. and i'm pretty sure ultimately good things will come of it. even if not for me. i feel i want to get deeper into this subject but my brain begins to drift like snow across the tundra, the clock moves on and drags me with it. i surrender and offer my mind to the gods of slumber.
good night, my brothers and sisters.
here's a nice funny story which even manages to throw in a compliment for the english... such a rare thing in these strange days...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4539688.stm

le weekend

hello everybody
welcome to my world. i say everybody but i wonder if anyone actually reads this blog. don't they know what they're missing?
anyway, such is life.
i'm feeling somewhat jaded from last night's festivities. a 30th birthday party. tried to sleep a bit this afternoon to recharge my batteries but i may as well not have bothered. what did work however was a shower. does it make you old if you can remember when showers were a rarity? i used to love having a bath. can't remember the last time i've had one.
so i'm pottering about now sort of getting ready for tonight, playing records to people. hopefully they'll enjoy it, or at least be nice to me if they don't.
so what's going on in the news?
bush has said he authorised the spying on u.s. citizens after 9/11. things seem to be getting worse for bush. but that only makes sense if you truly believe it's just bush, or just the republicans. i can't help thinking that the puppet-master has decided the public fancy a change so they'll appear to heap pressure on so you watch the other puppet do his thing. it's an idea i got from bill hicks, the two puppets. he said someone must wonder why it's the same puppet master despite the choice of puppets. i see it like that. you have the happy puppet and the angry puppet. the happy puppet is in for a while and then things get a bit sloppy and out-of-hand and maybe even the poor start feeling slightly better about themselves so then people think it's time for a return to old-fashioned values. then you bring in the angry puppet and do away with a few inalienable rights and stamp out a few things and make a few enemies and get puritan on our collective asses. but then after a while the children start crying so they bring out the happy puppet again. and everything's ok. and the cycle re-commences.
we remain spectators. we think we rule the world, if not the universe, yet we can't even govern ourselves. we let liars do it. we care so little about it that we hand over our whole lives and societies and money to these liars. an election after all is just a lying competition.

"who tells the best lies? you decide!"

you couldn't make it up.
we've got to get ourselves together, people. connect with others. don't just stick to your own troubled group, reach out to others. there's fucking billions of us out there. they can't kill all of us. they need us to keep the machine running.

REVOLUTION TIME, PEOPLE! START WITH YOURSELF, FROM THE INSIDE!

misery

misery hits me like a medicine ball in the belly. only briefly but when you get that miserable time, no matter how short it is, everything feels like pure unadulterated shit. there is nothing to be happy about. i know this is untrue. i know there is plenty to smile about. but you cannot argue with this misery. maybe it is a minor depression, fleeting and short-lived. but it takes its effect and even after it passes it leaves some bit of itself behind.





there is plenty of stuff to depress you if you look for it. the point, i suppose, is at least not to look for it... but perhaps the key is to stay above it. not to pretend to be happy when you're not but to know that most stuff gets blown out of proportion. we in the west generally just tend to feel a bit crap about ourselves, how we look, what job we have, how successful we are. we don't worry about whether we can eat, or give our kids clothes, most of us at least. so we find other things to be miserable about. cellulite or sagging bosoms. this sort of banality.








so much of this world depends on competition. being better and richer and more beautiful. you could say it's a competition to be happy. but that happiness is largely based on these things, for many people at least. we need to somehow learn that if we love ourselves and see our own innocence, then in turn we'll see that in others. but since so many of us can't stand ourselves, we project that onto others and make people treat us like dogmuck on their shoes. it's up to us individually to make things better for all of us.




before i get too self-righteous, which i hope i wasn't, i'll end today's sermon.

in the news...

bush admits the iraq invasion was based on false intelligence. it's hard to say bush and intelligence in the same sentence without laughing. anyway, because saddam was a bad guy things are much better. and he wasn't trying to develop weapons, but george says he would have. he was also working on a time machine, a portable sex-pest, an anabolic steroid that just made your head grow, a formula for making cheese that plays music, and an enormous radio controlled baby that puked fire across the baghdad sky to the sounds of cheesy music thereby creating a massive mess of fondue in the streets. bollocks, george. your dad liked him and so did all his cronies, see rumsfeld thumb wrestling with his chum in the picture. he just took his oily toys away one day. anyway... the world's supposed to be a better place now. i would think that's news to anyone of the thousands of people in iraq who've lost loved ones. or even to those from over here whose kids have been sent on this operation and never returned. some consolation that bush is now admitting it was bad information. i think we call it lies. and we hopefully don't blame others for it.

questions

stanley 'tookie' williams was put to death.

we've got to move on. anti- or pro-death penalty. we're still here so we need to be here, not wishing things had been otherwise. we can try to make the future otherwise but let the past be as it is.




in england... there will be no inquiry into the 7th july bombings. not because there shouldn't be one or there is no need. but because the government prefers that we have a 'straight narrative'. like in a story, fiction etc. what are they worried about finding? they know it all already one presumes. it's what they worry about us finding, i think which is more of a problem.
but don't think i'm all one-sided about this. i have no time for the government but i also have no time for people who think it's ok to go and blow people up on their way to work. we're all suffering under their lies. ok, perhaps 99% of us don't realise that but it's still true. and yeah we vote for them, some of us at least, but that's because we think we're supposed to, that doesn't mean we should be killed. and if you've got kids of your own, leaving them without a dad because you've got some misguided version of religion is not going to do them any good, it's not going to do the people suffering in iraq any good, in palestine or afghanistan the same applies, even in britain you're only making things worse for other muslims. what you need to be doing is making more friends. beat the government at their own game. get popular. we're all getting disappointed and turning away from governments but it won't stay that way if we're on your side and then you blow us up. make us like you, tell us good things, make speeches, get us up for the cause, the more of us there are the less power the government has to defeat us.
anyway...
yeah, so i'm not really on either side. they're all extremists and terrorists. but some are in power.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4526604.stm



akira the don's blog mentions something about moby vs eminem. moby criticised eminem because a crazy guy in britain killed a girl. he was a big eminem fan and was apparently influenced by some of eminem's lyrics about killing his ex-wife. now, this guy was obviously crazy. not just because he listened to eminem. you could say he would have killed someone anyway. maybe so. it's hard to say. living in the world that we do it's quite possible that this guy was more likely to kill someone because we seem so divorced from our natural selves, i.e. peace-loving and wise (hopefully...). and he was definitely a product of his environment. and it is silly to suggest that it is all eminem's fault. but it's also silly to suggest that there is anything worthwhile about eminem making money out of selling songs about killing women. eminem is as much a product of this topsy turvy world as the killer was. we live in world where people think it's ok to sing songs about killing each other. but they express surprise and feign innocence when people go ahead and do it. 50 cent says his 'character' is like a character in a movie, such as al pacino as 'tony montana' in scarface. and nobody complains about him. though many people have complained and campaigned against violence in movies. but then he also calls his music 'reality'. so which is it? the truth or the excuse? it can't be both. the censorship issue is tricky, but it wouldn't be if you could rely on people to make great art without lowering the standard. ok, people see strife and want to talk/sing/rap etc about it. but hasn't it been done before (and better)? isn't it time to add some sort of message of 'can't we try to sort it out?'? when liam and noel gallagher were doing their laddish thing it was quite ok to say that people were influenced by that and went out drinking more beer and watching more football and shagging more women etc. but to say that 50 cent, eminem, etc influence people to resort to violence is somehow wrong... how can that be? music only influences you as long as it isn't music about being violent? if you're a kid growing up in a tough environment and your hero is a guy telling you that if you have a problem with someone you should shoot them what are you likely to do? why can't we admit that some people are influenced by this? is it because in our nice, safe, white middle-class world such things don't exist? maybe not, but maybe we need to start caring about other people's environments. i know violence has existed for as long as man can remember etc etc and genghis khan never listened to gangster rap. but it's the level of casual, mindless unnnecessary violence that scares me and makes me think as a society we need to look at what we choose to watch/listen to/tolerate.

www.akirathedon.com

'good' 'versus' 'evil'

arnie has refused clemency to stanley 'tookie' williams. it's his decision i guess. but people weren't asking for him to be set free. just not to be put to death by lethal injection. he was convicted of killing four people and also was the leader and founder of the crips gang. so you could say he was not a very nice guy. once upon a time at least. since being incarcerated he has seemed to turn his life around, becoming an author and trying to turn people away from gang culture. he has received nobel prize nominations for his work. religious and political leaders as well as actors and musicians have spoken up for him. well, some actors, obviously one famously didn't.
but it's a very thorny issue and concerns redemption. surely anyone can turn their life into a force for good, despite having caused untold problems previously. but it seems weird to me that people who call themselves christians (i'm not sure of arnie's religious leanings but most politicians call themselves christians-they need those votes) should be putting people to death. we see bush and blair hanging out at church and they tell us they pray together. who or what they're praying to i'm not quite sure but i can imagine it has horns and a long beard. but here are these guys sending people to the gallows. what happened to forgiveness?

here's something from the n.y. times-

"In his five years as governor, Mr. Bush has presided over the executions of 111 men and 1 woman, far more than any other governor in any other state since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed reinstatement of the death penalty. Texas leads the nation in putting inmates to death; in 1997 it executed 4 inmates in one week, 8 in one month and 37 for the year, all modern records."

i mean how bloodthirsty is he? and when it's not at home they're sending kids off to kill and be killed in whichever backwater they fancy the assets of this week. blair doesn't use the death penalty for criminals at home but he's quite happy to see thousands of iraqis and afghans get killed and for what reason? oh, yes, they're stopping terror. you stop terror by not encouraging it in the first place. not by killing even more people to clean up your mess... saddam, propped up and armed by the west. same with the taleban. the powers-that-be in the west knew what these people were up to, if they even cared. it's just when they want something you're not prepared to give up that they decide you're doing wrong. stay onside and you can do whatever you like. human rights only become a problem if you don't give us our oil supplies. they think they're pretty slick.
so... i don't know. i think they could leave 'tookie' in jail. he won't do any harm in there and in recent years he seems to have done a lot of good. i don't see bush, blair, or arnie winning any nobel prizes. and as mad as this world seems to be getting i can't see that changing. but i'd be prepared to forgive them if they came out and said 'i'm sorry. i lied. i'm a blooodthirsty, oil-thirsty, megalomaniac liar who walked all over your human rights and screwed you over left, right and centre for as long as possible but now i've seen the light. i'll stop lying to you. i'll do my best to create a world based on honesty and love and try to support you all to make the world a harmonious place in which to live, rather than a precarious prison of power games'.
if that happened, i'd even give them a second chance.
i know arnie only killed people in the movies. but just think how many people have died because of bush and blair's deceitful actions. a lot more than stanley 'tookie' williams ever killed.

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/010700wh-gop-bush.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection

http://www.tookie.com/

how much longer?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4520104.stm

beautiful day

a clear, pale, blue sky awaits me as i awaken today. i'm still somewhat troubled by my thoughts of yesterday. the same thoughts as every day. but ultimately, at the back of my mind, i know everything happens for a purpose. i'm not missing things. i am doing what i have to do. and perhaps i am learning more by inactivity than by trying to distract myself and fill up my days. there is a plan at work here.

more later. here's tom with the weather.

meanwhile... back at the ranch 

today

wake up late. is this a problem? do i suffer? should i be busy doing stuff? or is everything already mapped out?
either way it's been a long weekend, one way or another. so i can sleep in. it's sunday after all.