Day 30: The Final Day (Or, The explanation for this cavalcade of inanity)

Well.. It's the last day of September, and so it's the last day of the experiments...

I managed to not have any caffeine for a whole month...
That started off very bad, but very quickly became normal. Decaff Tea and Coffee are pretty good these days and the only difficult bit was remembering not to have any rum and coke while I was out, and being boozy... I managed it though...

I managed to not go on Facebook at all, despite the desperate pleading emails the website sent me, or the alluring notifications that popped up on my phone every so often. The trick is to get rid of any shortcut that leads to it. You find if you have to type the word in, it is rarely worth the effort. I've enjoyed the additional free-time this has given me, and although I will go back on there, I have no desperation. I won't be 'racing' back. I feel I have re-calibrated my relationship to a s lightly more healthy and balanced level and will no longer feel the urge to trawl through it endlessly, succeeding only in getting agitated by distant relatives unknowingly racist/sexist/homophobic 'shares'.

The third one will become obvious if you have looked over this Blog at any time over the past month. It was the most tricky one, and the one I was least confident in being able to achieve, and so I haven't mentioned it until now... (Although it really is terribly self-evident)
Yes I committed to write a blog a day. No matter what was happening, no matter how little I felt like it, in fact no matter how little I had to say. I decided I had to do it.

Why? Well, I had been neglecting it quite badly since I had a whole load of real life and could no longer trawl Twitter for days looking for Trends and Rumours and weird political bits and bobs.. It's like a complicated US TV show, miss it for a bit and it takes a while to pick up the rhythm, so I hadn't been putting anything on here at all...

Also because of that real life stuff, I wanted to do deep and meaningful writing. But A blog simply isn't the place for that, by forcing myself to write every day It meant I had to keep hopping from subject to subject and would have to be, essentially shallow... which is a good thing.. I needed to break out from my self imposed seriousness and embrace frivolity.. so apologies if this seems even more inane that usual, believe me.. it was supposed to...

Mainly I did it because I never thought I'd be able to. To just write and publish a short piece every day amongst all the other things that go on when you've started a new job that is ludicrously stressful, and having moved to a city on your own, seemed a ridiculous feat. I did it mainly because I thought I couldn't... But I did....

So what now?

Well I won't be bound into blogging every day. It was a good exercise and I've felt the benefit, but I've got different things to start this month...
I will Blog more often though.. I still have a few ideas that I didn't use, and I think I've successfully re-modeled what I want this Blog to be... just cheeky little observation pieces, fluff that I put out while I pour the blood and tears into the real writing...

So yes. First month of experimentation complete, and I'm happy with what I've done...

Role on October.

Day 29: Any old Iron, Any old Iron, Any any any old Irony... (Or, Please, Younglings, we've already made these mistakes.. save yourselves...)

A change of pace from the last two Blogs which painted me as some kind of arrested development mankid... now one that will sketch me as a curmudgeonly old bugger grumbling about 'The Kids Today'

Well kind of... I'm going to be complaining about their music. Well, not their music.. it was our music actually.. but anyway I'm getting ahead of myself and overcomplicating things... So I'll leap back to the start.

Since I couldn't go to the Sleepover at the Natural History Museum (A friend did offer me a lend of their child, but sadly it was too late for me to do anything about it) I decided to find a club night. Something light hearted. Somewhere I'd never been. I settled upon one, and made my way down to East London to attend it.

It was quite fun. Much like the 'Preacherman' episode of Nathan Barley, but with more drag queens. So Far so much fun, but the problem soon became clear, in a crushing attempt to lay irony on with a trowel they had seemingly restricted their record box into novelty Hell...

Confession time: I am an Ex-Music Snob. Yes I was one of the worst. One of those annoying douchebags who has a narrow idea of what music actually 'is'.. and therefore anything that doesn't match that, therefore, SIMPLY Cannot be music. I was wrong of course. Music is simply noise designed to elicit an emotion, and that can be a Symphony, a Jazz Solo, Children Singing or the fucking We Buy Any Car Jingle... You may not like it, but it's all music isn't it...

Anyway, I'm much better now. I have grown up and loosened up. I have 99 Red Balloons and Luft Balon on my ipod, I very publicly requested Toxic by Britney on a 6music show about Pop that Stands up (Many friends contacted me within 45 seconds of my name being mentioned), I actually like the song 'Wired for Sound' and I have been known 'throw shapes' to some of the cheapest pop there is.

So that's the context, Reformed Music Snob goes to Irony heavy club night. And soon enough I was getting irked. Yes Yes, it's all very well to do 'Cheesy Pop' and 'Retro Classics', but at least keep it consistent. I mean, there were plenty of good tunes from the 80s and 70s, Prince, New Order, Go West, Duran Duran, Technotronic, Inner City... sounds lovely doesn't it. It was, they were the diamonds sparkling away.

Sadly though, the vast bulk was pop from the 90s and 2000s, basically from my era. This selection represented us. All these kids (And I use that term advisedly, as many of them were younger than my vinyl copies of the records we were listening to) were going wild, but to what tunes?.. Well we had Everybody (Backstreet's Back).. Not once, but 3 times. We had 'I just can't get you out of my head', a nice enough little pop tune, but we had it 4 times over the course of the night... The Mashup with new order twice, the original twice.

...and this was common incidentally. Many of the songs were repeated, and often the worse ones. It seemed, that because they were trying so hard to be quirky and funny they seemed to be desperately avoiding anything that could be even remotely be construed as serious (from which the older songs are immune, cos 'They're like.. retro yeah?'... By doing this they had closed the box on all the best pop of the period.

We didn't get Missy Elliot doing 'Get Ur Freak on', which would have torn the roof of the place, we got the fucking Vengabus for some sub-Butlin's arm waving, we didn't get Timbers doing 'Sexy Back', we got Reach for the Stars... and they did. They reached. I've already used Sub Butlin's. This was Sub Pontins.

I just wanted them to try harder. You can be poppy without being repetitive. You can be Ironic without just slinging The worst on Offer, you can be 'Camp' without being Shrill... I wanted to tell them that these are all mistakes I've made earlier in my clubbing life. We went through this so you don't have to.

Mostly I was just embarrassed that they will now think that's all the 90s/2000 pop acts were. They weren't. even for the snob I was at the time, I heard a few Bangers.

But I didn't let it spoil my night. I would just smile to myself and walk through the crowds of happy young people Reaching for The Stars like a playmobil version of Rave Culture and look in the other room to see what music was on in there...

Usually it was Everybody (Backstreet's Back....)
Alright?

Day 28: Carefree Tax (Or, Why YOUR Child means I can't sleep with a Dinosaur Tonight)

Now, anyone who has read yesterday's post will probably imagine me an emotionally maladjusted 'child man' who giggles inanely at clouds and wants only to eat sweets and draw with crayons.

If that is this the case, I'm afraid this post will do nothing to disabuse of that Incorrect Notion. Sure, I do want to do those things, but I do grown up things as well, just that they aren't suitable for this Blog.

I have no children. Again the people who have read this blog before are probably relieved. I don't seem the type to be able to handle having an utterly dependent, (Near Parasitic maybe) organ attached to me, sucking away my life force in order to live. Of course they are right, and that unpleasantly skewed description of being a parent I just wrote proves that. I probably would be a rotten father. I don't know though, and the only evidence I have for this is based upon my perception of YOUR children

Yes Yours. Anyone who has children.
Frankly I resent them.

I don't hate them, or dislike them personally. I just resent what they mean to my life.

I don't mind that you get free money and tax breaks to help raise them. It's clearly a costly job and will last until you die, and since the whole make up of the world is dependent on you doing it correctly, I'm happy for any assistance that stops future generations from turning into mewling, self important douchebags. I'm happy to have a monetary Tax on my 'wonderfully selfish' carefree life. It's worth it frankly.

So it isn't that. What I resent is when they directly impact on my life. Ie. When some idiot wants to ban a game/film/book/comic/decorative fez/series of saucy etchings etc that is clearly marketed to adults because some dumb ass parent has let their over sensitive groundrat get traumatized by it.

'Oh, but we must think of the Children' was the cry that made the Texas Chainsaw Massacre ILLEGAL for so many years, and if you're a parent who looked at that film and got it confused with the Rainbow Bright Christmas Special, it is you they should come for, not my video...

So, keep the kids out of adult entertainment if you're worried. But equally pernicious to me and my Joyful/Child-Man Mindset (Delete as you see fit) is when it works the other way. Some wonderful entertainments are deemed just for children, or (and this is the unfair bit) to any adult who happens to have a clutch of these gurgling bed-moisteners to hand.

The fact that I don't have children is what is preventing me from going to a sleepover at the national history museum tonight.
Yes.. a FUCKING Sleepover at the National History Museum. And yes, you sleep in the shadow of the giant dinosaur skeleton.
(Incidentally if that doesn't sound like an amazing way to spend the saturday night that I'd usually spend in a club, please leave this blog now and have a cardiac specialist xray the lump of cold, dead carbon in your chest)
I can't do that because you need to have a group of kids with you. Now I don't particularly want to go there because I deal kids pretty much how a rational person deals with wasps. If they aren't in my face I ignore them. If they get in my face I try and shoo them away, but if they are on mass I get the fuck out of there.

Sadly, for some reason, they don't see this as an activity that requires an 'adults' night... so I would have just plugged in my earphones to drown out the amassed child-babble and fallen into a smiling sleep whilst focusing on the dinosaur bones and feeling that I was somehow fulfilling an ambition from when I was an equally nauseating brat. This is happening at other museums too, and Kew gardens and the like... all with the additional fee on top of the ticket price, of spending some time looking after a smaller person who might urinate on themselves.

This has impacted on my life before. At one of the last Big Chill festivals, before that once mighty gathering reached its sad and ignoble end (Which I attended, and wept) they advertised a petting zoo. My Then Girlfriend was particularly thrilled by this idea, and while there was no music on we decided to venture towards the 'kids field' an expanse that took up a third of the entire site, and was incredibly sparsely populated. When we arrived we were told we couldn't come in, because we hadn't decided to jumble our DNA together, squirt it into a skin sack and carry it around with us for the rest of our natural lives.

Funnily enough, I don't remember the one third discount from the ticket price for not being able to use that proportion of the field. I also don't remember that the tickets for 'non-breeders' were exclusively made available to 'rampant child-abductors who desperately want the sod of smug little sod-child who would be at the Big Chill' or that kind of 'Giant from Jack and The Beanstalk who Grinds Kids Bones to make their bread'

Ok, Rant over.
I don't begrudge you your child. Just don't expect me to share your delight in them and definitely don't expect me to give enough of a shit to want to harm them in any way.

I agree to not swear in their presence, or watch Hardcore porn where they might see, or watch Driller Killer in a nursery, and you can agree to keep them well out of my life.

Oh, and don't let them stand between me and having some quality time with a dinosaur... Deal?

Day 27: Quirksome (Or, it was a duck made out of Balloons... What would you expect me to do?)

I have been having a busy and utterly stressful week at work. When I'm having a busy and utterly stressful week at work I like to do something that I wouldn't do under other circumstances. I eat a lunch.

To that end I went to the delightfully run down Elephant and castle Shopping centre, they have a cafe there that does good decaff tea, and sells samosas that taste wonderful but always have me feeling sick and regretful within 20 minutes.

On my way into the centre I saw a small lady dressed as a clown. Normally anything clownlike immediately incites my most primitive flight or fight instincts, and because she was so small, what she was doing was all that saved her from being the victim of a good ol' fashioned darwinian clown stomping...

She was making Balloon animals... and she made me this.

Isn't she adorable?
She's a duck made of Balloons... a combination of two of the greatest things in this universe.
So I bought it and took it to lunch with me. How could I, or anyone, walk past it?

As I walked around the centre I had great fun subtly moving it so it had the appearance of watching people as they passed (A trick I perfected when carrying a puppet around a festival for a whole weekend). The technique is to make sure it doesn't look like you're looking, but then appear to notice that the duck is staring at someone. They Smile, I smile and everyone has a slightly more fun day... Then we sat and had lunch together, as the picture shows (It's a lady-duck incidentally, the mascara is a dead giveaway). She was delightful company and judging by her happy expression, she enjoyed it too...

When I got back  to the office I was questioned. 'Were they giving those out for free?' Who did you get that for?', 'Why did you buy it?' You know, the usual thing you'd ask a grown man without a child who had bought a balloon animal... and then someone suggested that it proved I was 'one of them'. I had done it to fit in because they're all 'so crazy' in that office.

I smiled politely, but what I should have said was:

"Fuck fucking off you bloody fool. I am not 'crazy' (which in reality isn't a very fun thing at all) I'm not Zany or madcap or quirky, I didn't do it to fit in with anyone. In fact I didn't buy it for any other reason than I simply couldn't ignore something that would give me that much simple joy...  I don't act any way for any effect, but for my own amusement. It's a duck made of balloons. Were I to walk past that a small part of me would have died forever... I could no more have walked past that than I could a low wall without wanting to jump up and 'tightrope' along it, or smile at someone eating an ice cream..."

Does that make me childish?
Perhaps... But I'm not fucking Zany.. or Quirky...
But I will be taking my duck friend out nightclubbing tomorrow...

So... There.

Day 26: The once yearly Internet Ticket Scrum (or, Why do I put myself through this every year.. oh that's why.. because the result is fucking awesome...)

It's nearly that time again.

Nearly time for the Glastonbury ticket sale... that time where anyone with any sense is clicking on a mouse until they get a crippling repetitive strain injury, with a phone pressed to the ear so hard that it burrows through to the centre of your skull and deep into your brain meat...

I take this kind of thing seriously...
Ever since I saw the David Bowie set where he performed heroes and I wanted to fucking cry until my eyes popped at having missed it I've fought like a fucking cornered and pissed of lion to get tickets.

I've not missed one in over ten years. I'd love there to be a kind of season ticket arrangement, but since there isn't I really put the effort in. My longest stint was 12 straight hours. I had meals brought to me, and tea. I only stopped for toilet breaks. Other than that I hit redial and pressed refresh the whole time. I failed. But only until the festival started when I managed to use subterfuge to get in, a matter of great pride since it possibly the last year that was possible since they began giving photo ID's to all of the workers... I got in AFTER the 'superfence'...

I wouldn't try that now, I'm too old to be sneaking miles out of my way in a field at night, with half a ton of goods on my back and pretending to be someone else...

No, I have to get those tickets legit. And so I'm putting everything in place.
I'm going to the ol' family home, because they have a more stable internet connection. I will take a laptop, because I usually do this with at least 2 computers and a phone. I set up several browsers on a one second refresh and then set them going...

...and I must succeed. Not because Fleetwood Mac might be playing, (Because I hate them), Not because the Rolling Stones were so amazing last year (I saw them, they weren't, I left and went to see Public Enemy instead... now they WERE Amazing) Not even because the rumour that Prince might be playing (Which comes around every year and is almost certainly wrong).

No I have to get tickets because I love it. I wish I could buy a 'life ticket'. If I won the lottery I'd donate a ludicrous amount to whatever charity Eavis wanted in order to get one... It's the greatest festival in the world... in fact it's the greatest thing in the world...

...and I WILL be going!

(This will have a very tearful and enraged update if I fail...)

Day 25: The feeling of inevitable Failure (Or, Brinksmanship? Pah!)

I recently got a job. I was brought into a university to assist with the implementation of a large scale I.T project.

Now don't worry, I won't give all the boring details, suffice to say that they'd tried it before and it didn't work... so they got me.

I'm good at this kind of thing incidentally. I can't really make computers do anything they weren't doing already, but I'm quite good at figuring out how best to use systems, and pretty good at getting other people to use them properly as well... I've done it in a number of jobs, always leading to a degree of success varying from 'partial' to 'dance in the street you've fucking nailed this one boy'

I have never failed at this kind of thing. Well not completely...
But then again I've never been brought in to get something working that just.. well.. doesn't...

yes. It's not working. The system itself is not designed to do what we want it to do. The other University faculties who claim they are using it aren't really.. and now I'm beginning to get pitying looks from my colleagues. When I joke that I have been parachuted in to the Titanic to look after the 'Iceberg' bit, they laugh.. but in a sympathetic way, not because it's a lame joke (It's pretty much a banger for our office) but because it's right on the money.

The IT department have refused to meet with me since I started, now they refuse to even take my calls. It's almost as if they knew it wasn't going to work when they bounced the project out of their hands like the hottest of hot potatoes, with a filling of grief and human excrement. I call and they howl 'It isn't our project, the registry is looking after it' before slamming the phone down so fast I can here the sonic boom of collapsing air in it's wake...

So how do I feel about it?
Strangely energised, excited even.. certainly not despondent (Although I do put it on at work a bit, otherwise they might think I was playing to lose). Despite the fact that I will box this one out to the end, the idea of it fucking up so royally has a curious fascination for me. I literally have no idea what will happen if the whole thing, and I'm afraid I may have to use a technical term here, 'Goes Tits'

I've failed at other things of course, but never something at work, something this big, something that literally has no alternative. If this doesn't work, there is no 'Plan B', no Deus Ex Machina will arrive to lift me out of harms way in a ludicrous contrivance. No I will be left 'naked' in the office, holding the Metaphorical equivalent of amy flaccid cock in my hand...

If you think the feeling of brinksmanship is exciting, of staying on the cusp of the whirlpool, just out of range of the fatal drag, is exhilarating, imagine what the heart rate does when your swirling into it's eye...

...and that's what I'm doing at the moment.

Of course I could still clutch a glorious victory from the jaws of this particularly large and hulking defeat. Sadly this is less likely that the next Pope being selected from the 'Mr Gay UK' finalists, no I may manage to clutch a slightly less overwhelming defeat from the jaws of annihilation... but for me that will be enough... If I end up with one shell shocked soldier, stemming the wounds on the bloody hamburger that used to be his legs, but alive enough to roll his eyes I will consider this one a triumph of bloody-mindedness over adversity...

Or More Literally, a triumph of me over an IT department who are the dictionary definition of the phrase 'Clutch of useless mimsy douchepumps'

Day 24: Sickies! (Or, why Man Flu is worse than face aids)

Today I woke up 'Mildly Ill'
The worst kind of ill... at least for me*.

When I get proper ill, I usually go all out... I once left a sore throat long enough that I ended up in hospital, with my throat closed and suffering hallucinations. I once had a flu that ended up with three days of bed sweating and hallucinations.. when I.. well.. basically, you can guess where this is going when I get badly ill I usually hallucinate... and of course you get a few days off work to pretend it's a day off school... you can watch rubbish TV and generally feel really really really sorry for yourself...

But Mildly Ill is terrible. It doesn't stop you going to work, so you go, all snuffly and fed up.. and if you work in an office that is majority women, like mine, woe betide you if you so much as mention that you are feeling under the weather... The shriek goes up from all corners of the room. 'Man Flu'...

Ok, I understand there is some science about Male and female immune systems at play here, but I've had girlfriends. I know the Advert stereotype where the 'can-do' lady does all the jobs while her loser husband slopes around red faced, huffing lines of beechams powder are pretty much bollocks... Go on, try it.. You're both ill.. try putting all the jobs on your partner, whatever their sex.. you won't be ill soon... you'll be dead... and single... but most importantly, dead...

But I digress. I don't want sympathy, or even empathy.. I just don't want that 'mockery'. They have been given a license to laugh at my watery eyes and sneezing, knowing that I have no equivalent. If they're ill I can't shout, hahaha, Girl Sick.. or if it's the Time when Ladies are at their most fragile, I can't prod them with implications that they are somehow 'faking it'.. mainly because I wouldn't dare.. I've seen how quickly 'Fragile' can turn to 'Terrifying'

So it's an early night tonight, and plenty of fruit. But If I'm still feeling ill tomorrow. Well. Then it's hankyless sneezing time. If it's so funny this 'Man-Flu' they won't mind me sharing it...

(*Yeah Yeah, I know... I'll This excludes almost all illness more serious than colds or flu which I have never had, and hopefully never will, I genuinely do feel sorry for anyone struggling with real stuff and I'm a total baby when it comes to doctors and all that.. although my ear did close over once and I had to have a new auditory canal drilled through my skull... Cool eh?)

Day 23: Best Blog EVER, 5 stars! (Or, The law finally discovers that reviews aren't always trustworthy online, also that Pope appears Catholic and that bears.. oh you know the rest...)

Something beautiful is happening in internet-world.
Something that has been a long time coming.
Something that could finally bring peace to large sections of this war-torn land, whilst decimating acres of free and useless 'content'

Yes, people are finally getting 'Tough' on people who post fake reviews. And by Tough, I mean taking them to court for hundreds of thousands of dollars.. Hurrah!

Yes in New York, generally known for being a 'Don't fuck around' kind of town the dagger is finally being put to companies that supply those fake reviews as well as their clients. Of course it's about time, and for the good of the universe it would be lovely if it was successful...

But there are some fun game to be had with fake reviews. Firstly the obvious spot the fake.
This can be great because they range from the blindingly obvious ones (usually containing the words: For the Record, I am not an employee). These are usually found on a host of rubbish restaurants, after 30 1 star reviews a whole raft of top mark reviews flow in to attempt to balance them up, saying things like 'I don't know what the other reviewers are thinking' or my favourite ever, a Dodgy Landlord who attacked reviewers of his shifty practices and counter-reviewed them, their clothes, their hair-style, their hygiene and claiming they worked for other landlords... he was later caught out posting hooky reviews of other landlords...

Which brings us on to the second fun game, which is based on the legendary Internet Game: 'Fake!' If you don't know Fake it simply involves finding a picture, youtube Video, or anything upon which you can comment, the more innocuous the better, and leaving one word 'Fake!' and then watching the poster tie themselves in knots of apoplectic fury explaining exactly why it couldn't be a fake. This variant works on the same premise, you find the most reasonable, balanced and downright fair review you can, and simply reply 'Well anyone who works for the company would say that'.. and then sit back and watch the mayhem...

The strange thing about this is that it's news at all.. Firstly this is totally illegal anyway. Fraud is still fraud, even on the internet.. That's why those 'This can enlarge your penis' emails go in the spam filters. They aren't legal advertising (Believe me, if anything other than painful surgery could genuinely enlarge a penis, most men would be carrying theirs in a wheelbarrow by now). It's fraud, you get caught, you get busted. So why has fraudulent impersonation taken so long to be taken seriously, particularly when most long time users can spot them a mile off. (Not that means they are ineffective, do you read all the reviews, or just look at the average star rating?)

At least it's a step in the right direction. And it has led to one of the most amusing piece of pure 'Meta' I have read in a long time. One of the 'Astroturfers' caught up in the New York 'Cease and Desist' writ had their internet presence announced by a glowing review, containing those immortal lines "For the Record, I am not an employee"

You can guess the rest...

Day 22: A Night Bus with 'Doctor Hemp' (Or, As soon as 'Alt-Med' starts working consistently they drop the 'Alt')

When in London you may find yourself on a night Bus. The temptation is always to put in earphones and doze away the creeping hangover and/or party induced nausea that is almost certainly occurring if you're on that bus in the first place.

This can be a mistake, because you rarely get as strange a conversation as you might overhear

For example, as I was trundling towards Oxford Circus after a pretty boozy night, a couple got on. They were in the middle of a heated debate. Well, he sounded 'heated' she was obviously just getting a bit bored with continuing this conversation. I tuned in, because they were right behind me and tried to figure out what the cause of contention was...

I have to say, it surprised me. It wasn't the usual Saturday night relationship fall out. No, he was trying to get her to 'Promise to never get chemotherapy'. Yes. Never. No matter what the condition, or the prognosis. She quite reasonably, but certainly wearily, responded. 'Well, it's not part of my life.. so I don't really want to think about it now'. Now, a more subtle student of the feminine mind (Such as my good self) might have read the slight double use of words in that sentence, where 'think' also stands for 'talk'. 

But he continued, explaining all about cellular damage and how it never worked, painting a lurid picture of tubes and lost hair. She again said 'Well, it's not really part of my life, so I can't really commit to that decision'. A very sensible position to take. It isn't in her life and so she doesn't have any evidence as to it's necessity in the future, therefore a promise to her jackass boyfriend would be ludicrous. But still he persisted, going on about how there was a new extract from hemp that could.. blah blah blee blah...

Now I know hemp and it's extracts does have many useful medicinal properties and furthermore is great for almost everything and if we committed solely to just using that then the 60s utopia would spring from the concrete and we'd all join hands and sing 'Let the Sunshine in' naked, but this is the point where I snapped... I turned round and bellowed into his face

"Wow, you must really love that girl... trying to protect her from a treatment to an illness that she doesn't have and hopefully never will.. it really shows your caring side that you are at 5am browbeating her into giving a potentially fatal promise... and I know that a 20-young man in skinny jeans and a t-shirt on a nightbus at 5am probably does have the medical credentials necessary to diagnose hemp for an illness that hasn't even happened yet, but in the future, if something terrible did happen she might decide she wants a second opinion from someone who has done some training, perhaps even actually has a job doing this kind of thing, has an actual condition to diagnose, rather than a hypothetical one and has the most resources to make it a reality rather than sucking on a hemp bag for the extracts... and then if that happened, and they chose targeted chemotherapy, which has saved the lives of people in my own family, she would be torn between surviving, albeit with possible side effects, or keeping a promise to a douchebag flash-in-the-pan ex-boyfriend that she, hopefully, split up with on a night bus on the morning of the 22nd September 2013 for being an utter utter utter bellend."

Of course, I didn't say that. I put in my earphones so I didn't have to.

They got off at the next stop. I'd like to think they are spending today apart. I also really hope that neither of them ever have to choose between chemo and hemp.

(Yeah Yeah I know, Big Pharma Shill blah blah blee... Of course not. Big Pharma USE Hemp by the way, where it's benefit has been established. They aren't perfect by any stretch, and should be constantly questioned and challenged, but that doesn't mean that something is bad just because they use it.. oh and they DEFINITELY save more lives than you ever will)

Day 21 Why so Serious? (Or, U-Kip if you like, I'm staying awake and vigilant against Migrants Puffs and Wimmen!)

Oh it's an interesting time to be driving the Ukip bus.
Once it was all so easy, you just had to pretend to not be too much of a posho and spout rhetoric that you think your imaginary audience of 'common men' (Who drive a white Van, reads the Sun and hates 'Puffs') might like and try not to let it slip that your interest is actually a mix of establishment conservatism, xenophobia and business interests...

The trick was to not look too serious, not too slick. You could fall over in an amusing way (learnt, of course, from Boris) you could say risque cliches, you could always be photographed holding a pint of lager with all the natural ease of someone holding a pot of live snakes and as long as you didn't say anything overtly racist that might get wide interest, you could imply things that were...

Now it's all gone a bit serious though, with a member having the whip withdrawn just for the tiny misstep of calling all of the women in a room at the Ukip Party conference 'Action for Women' type thing; 'Sluts'. Why, because they didn't clean behind the fridge... or something.

Now he says it's a joke. You know what, I'm pretty sure it is... and to be honest they probably did laugh. They're at a Ukip thing... chuckles must be hard to come by.  But what it indicates to me is how much the rules have changed. Farage has his deep set eyes on some glittery prize somewhere down the line now... a pact with Tories in marginals perhaps, or even the prospect of replacing the Lib Dems as the traditional protest vote for people who can't be arsed to find out about politics...

So Farage is cleaning house, but some of the members don't seem to have got the memo.. they think it's just the same ol' ragtag of elite pub-bore Poshos, who think Jeremy Clarkson isn't acting and like the idea of bossing about real working people who they have essentially conned into believing they work in their interests (Little Heads up. Nobody is working in your interest, that's not the way to look at politics folks.. pick a side and get with it, but never be fooled into thinking they're looking out for you)

So what could a slick Ukip do?

Actually less, they are essentially the 'Boris' party. People trust them because they appear to be a shambles. The moment they start getting slick and polished, getting rid of the ludicrous 'Poundland' style logo perhaps, or ironing out Farage's perpetually pub-crumpled face on billboards they will lose the one trick that holds them together.. The idea that this lot are too dumb to be conning us...

I'm not a fan of them Ukipers... they seem to have a bad attitude to Women and Homosexuals as well as Migrants... I mainly feel sorry for them though, they are a party based on fear and neophobia... and one thing you can never hold back is the 'new'

Interesting side point. I've heard on the ol' grapevine that BNP and Ukip have a fundamental disagreement. Apparently The BNP don't like the Ukip policy on migration from Eastern Europe, because although they are migrants and thus less than a British born man with more Bulldogs carved into his flesh than battersea dogs home 3 days after christmas, but at least they are 'White' people who are less than a British born etc etc etc...

If anyone can confirm this I would be grateful, because despite being ignorant and bizarre, the fact that at some point a group of morons might have had that discussion with another group of morons is somehow delightful...

Day 20: The Worst Nurse? (Or why why why do parents hand certain labels around their baby's neck when they are too young to defend themselves)

Please note: All names in this following piece have been mildly fictionalised in order to not break any Data protection laws at the place I work. Also out of common decency, because I'm about to offer some juvenile sniggering about them...

I think we'd all agree that there are few crimes as unthinkable as matricide or patricide. Not only is it murder, it's also staggeringly ungrateful and show's that worse than being a mere psychotic, you're also incredibly rude. There are however exceptions to this, the Fritzel's would probably have been applauded, or perhaps that kid who was put on Wogan as a Hooky Antique expert who then lost the plot a bit... but none more than those poor sods who have been given an utterly ridiculous name...

Now I have an unusual name. I really don't mind it, and due to nomenclative determinism it has led me to be an unusual person, at least I hope it's that... I can't really imagine that my parents were sat around looking at my pudgy face and goggling eyes and thought 'Oooh he looks a but of a rum 'un... better make sure the branding matches the style'. But at least my name is a name. Well, my first name is a name... a Surname perhaps, but a name and my second is a barnyard fowl, but family name's are really nobody's fault except history. What I'm saying is, I don't judge people for having odd names.. I can sympathise.

Nowadays I work with huge lists of prospective employees for Healthcare providers and therefore I get to see a whole lot of names. There are a surprising amount of girls named 'Precious', 'Princess' or 'Queen'.. I even had a 'Beautiful' yesterday. Sadly these names sometimes seem to have been attached based on the emotion of having a child you love, rather than with any descriptive intent.. it would have been like me being called 'Butch' or 'Rambo'.. at worst it can seem sarcastic...

This is all understandable though. Everyone's child is beautiful to themselves, and so your biased eyes will see the reality behind the fiction of the name. It is more unusual when seeming to imply other talents like the honest to goodness (But still slightly fictionalised) Lyrical Jones. Yes. That is a name. That is a name given to a child for whom the parents had a dream of one day being a rapper, but that dream became the less moniker specific, but more socially useful placement as a health visitor.

The fact that I deal mainly with health leads to some particularly interesting combinations.

A Student specialising in Geriatric care called Marcus Death.
A Trauma Ward specialist called Annette Raper.

But my favourite at the moment... and the perfect argument for nomenclature Determinism is a lady called Isabelle Nurse.
Yes a Nurse 'Nurse'

Now if I was to make up* that name in a book I'd be roundly mocked, but the universe seems to do this all the time...
(*of course I did slightly make it up... Blah blah blee blah law and decency)

It is these kinds of things that get me through the day while I steer a massive and leaky IT project through a gauntlet of Icebergs and dodgy metaphors...

Day 19: It's international Let everyone know you're a Douchebag who works in a design Company Day (Or, Why is everyone talking Somali?)

It's international 'Talk Like a Pirate Day'... celebrated only by self employed design types, the odd celebrity on Youtube, most of Camden and Brian Blessed*

(*Brian Blessed is of course the only person in that list who isn't a Total Douchepump)

Does anyone ever observe this? I mean, really.. are you that keen to show that you have a job that is of no importance, or are unemployed... do you really need to pretend so hard that work in the entertainment industry?

Of course we have no idea how Pirates talked in real life, our conception is entirely based on Robert Newton and a handful of other performers who made it up for films. Newton's performance is a particular joy, a alcoholic mumble with a side order of bulging-eyed insanity that has done more to cement 'Yarrrrgggghh' as the call of the pirate than anything else...

Now, of course, the poster Boy for the eye-patch and parrot brigade is Johnny Depp and his impression of someone doing an impression of David Bowie doing an impression of The Fraggle from the Rolling Stones doing an impression of David Frost doing an impression of Johnny Depp playing Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing.

Initially the idea of Talk Like a Pirate day was a bit of a laugh.. but the joke really is over now... it only exists so that people on Twitter can pretend they are doing it... But they aren't really..

Which is good. Do you want to go to a vet and them bray that 'This Mangy Curr be heading to meet Davey Jones' or visit a Doctor and have them snarl a 'Yarrr' at you before delivering your H.I.V results, all the while referring to the killer condition as 'Scurvy'

But it will go away again for another year, and that's the only good thing about this sort of nonsense...
Oh.. and it gives me something to write about when I'm REALLY struggling to find a subject...

Day 18: The only Gamer not Playing Grand Theft Auto 5... (Or, Why it takes something entirely non Televisual to Make me miss my Telly)

I have been having very vivid and violent dreams recently.
Incredibly violent.
One recently involved me running around with a large circular saw doing antisocial things. It was all very cartoony and slapstick and jolly good fun... and it is just one of many similar dreams I've been having in the past week... (albeit with the usual Odd Dream Logic, even in the Saw Dream I spent a long time looking for loose cables in room as they were a trip hazard that would reflect badly on the Health And Safety Audit I was having that day, before getting back to running around with a saw so big I couldn't even lift it in real life...)

This could be a sign of many things.
It could be that my clean living (Except Weekends) Lifestyle, with a solid sleeping pattern and no caffeine or nicotine is causing me to have vivid dreams in which I lash out. It could be a reaction to the stress of my job, which I have to feign reaction to in the office so nobody can tell how little I actually care. It could just be that I have deep seated psychological issues that can only be worked out with power tools and a shrieking crowd.

But it isn't any of that. It's just that I'm the only male Gamer who isn't playing Grand Theft Auto 5, and my brain is trying to cushion that blow by putting on it's own show of immersive, 'sandbox' ultra violence...

Yes, that Game came out, and whereas a few years ago I would be at the stores waiting for that midnight sale, I was actually in bed dreaming of Saws...

But why not?

Well I could go all beard-strokey and say it's blah blah bleeh blah glamourisation of violence and misogyny and that's why.. but it isn't.. I could try and act all alt-dot and claim I prefer Saints Row, which nobody really does... I could pretend I am too grown up and the activity shames me, which it doesn't... Believe me, I have a strong shame threshold... I could even moan about the price...

But it's none of this. I love the GTA series, have done for years. It was the game I dreamed of having when I used to play Werewolves of London on the old Spectrum.. a city at your command, where you can do anything.. Oh yes. Sign me in. I have GTA3 on my phone, and entertain myself on teh tube by racing around and trying to find all the jumps in Vice City.. I love it utterly, and it really is only getting better...

So why aren't I playing it?

Because I don't have a fucking TV!

I Have a TV license now, because of constant threats from 'The Man'... but No TV to plug my Xbox 360 into...

I was close to buying all 3 items this week, just so I could play. A TV, a new console (Which I already have one of, elsewhere) and the game itself. In fact, it is only the fact that the local shops had sold out of the game that prevented this ludicrous outlay of rent money... TV's, it seems are commonplace. GTA 5, is a rarity...

It will no doubt be the most lucrative entertainment product ever released, and good on it. People get so up in arms about what can be done in it's world.. but so what, even a copy of 'Miracle on 34th Street' can be put to ignoble use if you say... jam it into somebody's anus or something...

So I will soon be going back to the family home and getting out the ol' Xbox. And then I'll be investing in a little TV...

And then.. well and then I'll have to find someone with considerably more patience than me to go through the actual missions and unlock everything...

Any takers?

Day 17: All my readers are Vampires! (Or, That surge of hope when you se that someone arrived via Google Search)

Any Bloggers read this?

That is a moot question.. a set up really, like a comedian saying, 'People come up to me...' Which of course they don't. I've never gone up to anyone and said/did anything remotely amusing... and neither have you... and likewise you haven't read this Blog...

That is the great statistical probability. You haven't read this, none of you.. and even if you are reading this, statistically you actually haven't.. you can argue, but statistics are mighty, and they say you don't exist.. so you don't. If you divide 'Zero' into Bloggers and Non-Bloggers you get.. Well you get a confused Zero that doesn't know which column to get into, but you get the answer to my question.

Bloggers don't read this because people don't read this.

But a Blogger who did read this, if they existed, which they don't, would immediately understand the odd sensation that I am about to describe....
You have written a blog, like normal... You have published it and promptly forgot about it, because you aren't an internet obsessed lunatic (Any more). The next day you look at your 'Stats' and they've suddenly spiked. A whole bunch of clicks on your recent posting... Suddenly your heart leaps. There's loads of them. Probably each and every one is a Hollywood exec or a leading publisher looking for lazy novelists... You scramble to click to find out the more in depth stats.. where do my adoring fans come from, How did they get here...

Then the despair sets in... The list is full of referral sites with names like:
Vampirestat
Secretsearch
adsensewatch
...or just a strings of weird number/letter combos, that you just know hide anonymous links.

And where do all these take you.. why to clickbait sites of course. When you as a real person click to find out what these sites mean, you are registered as a hit on that site.. which means.. well I don't know.. I'm sure there's some money in it somewhere, but it seems a very long way round getting it, a sneaky, snidey, unpleasant and douchebaggy waste of space way of funding yourself... but I digress...

The disappointment you feel when you see this is horrible.. That big figure is worthless, in fact worse than worthless, it is a sign that a computer algorithm has designated you exactly the kind of little read sad-sack who would have the time and inclination to click on any link that come there way to chase down those oh so elusive readers...

Now, I have had posts on here do well... My most read post hit 6500, not much, but for a small unaffiliated wiffle blog, not bad... I have to say, that experience terrified me... Genuinely. I put a note down about a chap who had been unfairly dismissed for depression and it became part of the 'viral' story.. it was easier to post a link to my blog than explain the context in 140 characters.. so they did... and it flew... and I panicked...

But I would certainly trade that 'Sorcerer's apprentice and the Marching Brooms feeling' for the 'glance and shake head sadly feeling' that bumpirates such as Vampirestat and their ilk give you...

So hurrah for those days when you see that people used honest to goodness human search terms to find your blog.. even if they are odd combinations like (Genuinely) 'George Osborne Piss Bukkake'... and I  sincerely hope that after the disappointment of this blog, whoever that reader is, found exactly what they are looking for... they may be a pervert.. a genuinely disgusting one, but they are an honest to goodness, genuinely disgusting, human pervert

And for the rest of you Vampire Bots... you can give up now.. I won't be clicking on your link... I'd rather see no hits than your forgery...
*Waits*
*Sees 'no Hits'*
*Weeps*

Day 16: Same Sex Marriage? Bah, Science says NO! (Or, what happens when the Godly get to play with magnets and call it physics)

Same Sex marriage is a political Hot Potato... a real mouth burner... one with a Tangy filling that turns the stomach of some, but is utterly delicious to others.. like blue cheese and Marmite.

Of course, most people who have thought about it for anything longer than say, a nano-second have just shrugged and said; "Sure, why not it literally doesn't effect me one jot".. in fact the only person who could possibly have a coherent argument against it, is someone who is in a same sex relationship with a pushy partner who is now looking at catalogues of expensive abbeys and constantly watching 'Here comes the Bride' whilst throwing meaningful glances at them across a frosty sofa that used to be full of free-wheelin', non legally-bound, lovin'...

But those people are WRONG.
But who says so, why it's 'Science' of course...

Step forward the hero of the piece: Chibuihem Amalaha, a Post Grad at Lagos University who has decided to prove, with honest to goodness 'Science', that Gay Marriage is utterly utterly utterly wrong.

As it says in this AWESOME article

“God gave me the wisdom to use science as a scientist to prove gay marriage is wrong.”

“In the area of physics, I used physics with experiments, I used chemistry with experiments, I used biology with experiments and I used mathematics to prove gay marriage [is] wrong.”

Here is Chibuihem.. see he wears a lab coat and brandishes a conical flask. How could he NOT be legit...

If you are averse to clicking, or worried that 'silly' might somehow be catching I can summarise:

1. Magnets don't attract at the same pole, Hence Same Sex People don't attract.

2. Mathematics shows that Gay Marriage is wrong, just because it does.

3. Electrolysis shows Negative and Positive Ions attracting, not positive and positive, hence 'Eww Gays!'

There is some other 'Science flavoured' jibber before he finishes with a flourish with the not at all biased and nutty soundbite.

"In General, Same Sex is Evil"

Ok dealing with those one at a time.

1 People are Really not much like magnets, and same sex people certainly attract, I mean, some of them attract like crazy... Have you ever been to a gay bar, some you couldn't prize apart save with a fulcrum and a VERY Long Lever (Science!)

2 Mathematics proves nothing about any human relationship. If you were so inclined you could 'prove': '1 & 1 are the same number but added together they make 2 so that proves there should ONLY be same sex marriage', or you could perhaps argue: '1 & 2 makes three which is the number of people in a family with one child and the same in the trinity so yah boo, boys kissing is nasty...'

3 He's kind of covered this with the magnet one hasn't he? His only material is that things that repel, repel and things that attract, attract and so  God really doesn't like Gays...

Yeah that's the problem here. It's god talk holding a beaker and wearing a knock off Bunsen Honeydew costume. Which is fine, if you want to say that you can't marry someone of the same gender because the bronze age rule book demands it, go ahead, fill ya boots chappy.. but really.. don't try and inflict that idea on someone else, it's not up to you.. and if your God really had a dog in this fight, he could sort it himself... Either he's quite ambivalent about the whole 'Gay Bit', or he's a weakling who can't control his own creation, but for some reason decided to make same sex attraction a reality... or.. most likely of all... He was never there in the first place.. Yeah, My Money is on that one... and not just my money, I'm risking the prospect of spending a whole eternity being tortured in a pit of endless fire for my beliefs... and you think YOU have convictions...

Oh.. and if you do want to put this idea about. Don't dress it up in a lab-coat and call it science, ok? 

1) Real Scientists will come out and trounce you, your methods and your results. That's what Science is, which is why they call is the Scientific method...

2) You'll look just as foolish as the man in the photo up there... How foolish is that? All the foolish.

In fairness to his vaulting ambition though, I will give him the last word:

“My ambition is to go beyond the sky... I want to reach the level God has destined me to reach. I want to be the first African to win Nobel Prize in science "

Day 15: Those poor poor poor poor Lib Dem Members (Or, why This Party Conference is like attending A mass parents evening for a changeling)

Wooo.. It's Lib Dem Party Conference. Lolz! Awesome...
yo! #ldconf #SadlyNotEvenTrending

The Put the Party in Party, and they kinda dropped a fair bit of 'Con' into conference... and they put all of 'Quisling' into Disappointing Quisling Douchepump liars...

I nearly voted Lib Dem once. It was at the last election, like many I was fooled by Nick Clegg's 'Human Mask'... or perhaps he was one of us, and they have some sort of lizard-innard replacer machine they use whenever somebody achieves high office*. He rocked it in the televised debates, made the Tony Blair Hand gestures seem fresh and even answered some questions rather than just flapping his mouth hole and making 'politician' noises... Yes, he looked like he could actually not only challenge the other two party leaders, but might also have some useful input into the political process...
(*I don't believe in Lizard People incidentally... Because that's what THEY would expect me to do.. ahem)

Hahahaha!
Still gives me a chuckle to think of that, and they wonder why people don't engage with politics. We all know the story since then, betrayal after betrayal of his members and supporters, capitulation after capitulation and those Tony Blair gestures now just look tworn and false, and so, in a way are more authentic.

So now it's the Lib Dem Conference, and sadly for them, Labour is trending on Twitter. They aren't. Kind of says it all. Even if it does say it all, I will plough on ahead, because.. well.. because I'm bloody minded and I still find the Lib Dems a crushing disappointment. They were packaged as the party for me, centrist but essentially good. A Library club kind of party... and now look at them...

You have all the members around the giant media exercise that is 'conference', and to the ground level members, it must feel like the worst parent's evening in history (Extended metaphor from Title Line alert!).

-So.. erm, how is little Libby doing?
-Oooh well.. she's.... she's.. erm...
-Come on.. tell it to me straight...
-Well.. not so good, all of her achievement pledges.. well.. she's.. she's failed all of them...
-All of them She hasn't done.. what.. any?
-No, in fact she seems to have done exactly the opposite in some cases..
-What.. well.. that's very difficult to understand.. how can something like that happen?
-Yes.. but.. well.. there are mitigating circumstances...
-Ok, tell...
-She's being bullied... all of the other kids pick on her...
-All of them? Even the weird niche ones...
-I'm afraid so.. they call her Useless and ineffectual and a waste of space and 'one up from Ukip' and
-Yes Yes, I get it...
-.. and bumbling and a pushover and a tart and...
-A tart? What...
-Well... it's a good thing she was born in 1988, because it seems that every time 'Tori' says anything she immediately drops her knickers...
-Oh...

Their faces crumble into despair.. what has happened to 'their Angel', that beautiful child full of hope and optimism. So they turn, and they look... and it isn't even their child any more... it's literally someone else. It's some grinning demon who is bullied, but also runs with the bullies in the mistaken belief that it gives them power and credibility....
You scream, but you can never wake up...
You are a Lib Dem Member...

Someone has posted an amusing metaphor on Twitter, which is one of the few mentions of them that doesn't directly call them douchebags, they say as far as the coalition goes they are "No longer in the Honeymoon Suite, but in a nice twin room and it's all very Stable"

Awww... How Cosy.
What they don't mention is the stirrups and the ceiling hooks and the butt plugs and the whips and gimp masks...
Because this relationship is less a marriage, and more the set up for some political based S&M slash fiction... and it's easy to see which party plays 'the sub'...

Which I will now do you the great service of not describing any further... You are Welcome...

Day 14: Facebook FAST! (Or, why an artifice of social circles might not help you with your real ones)

As I'm nearly half way through, and of course it looks like this one will also be a successful, I feel I can now shed light on one of my other September experiments.

This one actually started a bit earlier, but I wasn't particularly confident in my ability to achieve it, which will kind of give you an idea of how large this habit loomed in my life.

Yes, I decided not to use Facebook. No more reading updates, checking friends profiles, 'Liking Pictures' or anything of that nature. As it is, it's not as hard as I thought it would be, although it was an automatic reflex for so long. Mouse goes to Email, Email read, Goes to Twitter, Scans Twitter, Finally to Facebook... the Unholy Trinity.

So why stop? Well other than the habit-breakingness of it I wanted to see how it would alter my own social relations. I have quite recently moved back to London. I know few people here, save a few old friends who have rather busy lives. I wondered if the cosy illusion of a close social circle that Facebook conjures might be allowing me to sit back, preventing me from making the effort at finding more real human beings to converse with (An inevitably, eventually add into my digital world)

I can't report back on that as yet, but I can say a few other interesting things that leaving Facebook throws up.

Firstly I am more keen to contact my existing friends, when on the site, reading the things they do definitely fools the brain, or my brain at least, into imagining there has been some contact, whereas nothing more personal than reading a post it note has taken place. (Of course there are message exchanges, but that's not really what I'm talking about here). Now I am off it, I want to talk to them, there is more mystery there, and as a pattern seeking creature, it means there are alluring gaps in the narrative I want to fill.

Secondly, Nobody notices. Seriously. If you are ever thinking of taking a break, even from a site that pays lip service to emulating social functions, nobody has ever asked me why I stopped broadcasting. Maybe in earlier days when it was just you and your actual friends who are a bit tech savvy... but now it's your mum and your aunty and that racist cousin who 'shares' things from the EDL quicker than you can hammer the 'Hide' button... Amidst all that, the sudden dearth of your transmissions will not even register. Unlike a party, you can just slip out quietly, without a word and nobody will wonder where you've gone. The only person who has expressed any disappointment is my mum, who enjoys reading the less sweary of my updates, but she already knew I was going...

Thirdly, Facebook REALLY want you back. I have been getting emails with increasing frequency and plaintiveness, like the 'How you doing' Texts from an ex (Not that I'd know anything about those). The amusing thing about this is the format obviously hasn't changed for some time, and so it keeps telling me about all the unacknowledged 'Pokes' I've had, many of them from years and years ago when people still used that odd, and double entendre filled, feature of the site. I now get at least three of these emails a week, and it would be more if I had more activity, but I'm not a teenager, so I get very few 'OMFG' messages these days...

Now there are things I have missed out on. Pictures of my nephews first day of school are up there. Luckily they will still be up there when I get back. I've also missed out on ignorant opinions from some long forgotten cousin you've forgotten to hide from your timeline, status updates from incredibly happy, holidaying, people that seem insufferably smug at 6:30 in the morning when you're getting up to get a tube, the same joke shared a thousand times, pictures of people's children you aren't blood related to (Who are therefore, less interesting than a tea cup ring on a sideboard) and sponsered links to things that have so little relation to you that it gives the impression that the algorithm is either broken or batshit insane..

I've also missed out on wasted hours trawling through looking for something of informational or humorous content... and I am particularly ruthless with my hide button.
(And don't worry, I'm not being smug here.. I know that I contribute more drone to the ongoing fridge-buzz of online discourse than just about anyone)

So I will almost certainly make it to the end. Subsequent to this I doubt it will ever become as automatic again. I will look, and hopefully I'll enjoy it more as I visit less.

And when I return and note that I haven't been online for a whole months, I will be slightly, shamefully, disappointed that nobody has noticed.

Day 13: The really really really really unlucky one. (Or, a lens to focus on all the shitty things that happen in an entirely normal day)

It's Friday the 13th!

Hurrah for irrational numerology and superstitious hokum peripherally connected with Christian Mythology.

Now, if you've ever read any of these you will probably guess that I don't really believe in the concept of luck. There's just stuff that happens. And so you will guess I don't believe in a day that is particularly unlucky... and you'd be right.

That's not to say that the concept of Friday the 13th doesn't throw up some interesting ideas. Firstly it's a great way of focusing your attention on the negative. How many more missed busses, stubbed toes and lost keys are obsessed over because it's 'typical' of the day. Anything you focus on instantly gains importance, as importance is essentially... well... 'focus'. Add that all together and you have a genuinely shitty day.

Also, Did you know that there is a small statistical spike in accidents on any given Friday the 13th? There are three possible reasons for this.

Firstly, it could be expectation confirmation. People who think they might fall off the ladder are more likely to fall off the ladder, and they fall off the ladder.

Secondly, it could be over caution. People who are worried about it being Friday the 13th might be paying so much attention that they essentially sabotage the automatic processes that normally carry them up and down the ladder safely, then they fall off the ladder.

Thirdly, They might just fall off the ladder. It might just be a massive coincidence.

I've had exceedingly bad Friday the 13th's in the past. Breaking up from a rather important relationship on one took some beating, but I still can't blame the day for that. There are many things I can blame, but not the day itself, mores the pity. I've tried.

Other than that it's just an excuse to roll your eyes at the person when you miss the lift and say something like 'Typical Friday the 13th'... you can start a conversation. Meet someone new, perhaps get in a relationship... but they might be crazy.. they might go full psychopath on a romantic trip to Camp Crystal lake and chop your arms and legs off whilst wearing a hockey mask...

...and why, because you met them on Friday the 13th.

Bad luck!

Day 12: Can I get a man who preaches 'morality' to spontaneously attack me? (Or, Hands off Zombie Night you Pious Bitches!)

I am doing a bad thing most days on my way to work...
It's not entirely on purpose... Like yesterday's blog it's a spontaneous reaction to stimulus, but I have to say I am making a big show of it, and in fact broadcasting it at somebody... and I'm hoping to get a reaction...

To paint you a lovely picture, outside my local tube station there are a set of evangelical religious types.. I'm not 100% sure of their particular brand of mystical bunk, but they are of the super conservative ilk who feel the need to give out pamphlets warning you about how whatever you happen to be doing, that isn't something that they do, is going to send you to hell...

Today was a good one, it loudly proclaimed to tell 'The Evil Truth behind Halloween'.
Now I would have thought they'd like Halloween, because if there's one thing that religion benefits from, it's a willingness to believe in spirits and ghosts and the undead and all sorts of other things that make a good story, but have no bearing on the actual, honest to goodness world of realness and matter that I (or anyone) lives in...

So i did what I always do. I stopped. and I laughed. I laughed heartily, standing right in front of them. Then I wiped my eyes and moved on.

Do I feel bad about laughing in the faces of these, probably well-intentioned, but overly pious and misguided people?
No. Not a bit. Here's why.

A) Killjoys having a go at things like that might make Gullible parents stop their kids from joining in on something that is 100% harmless fun... I like Halloween, they show Horror movies.. and even if they don't, I'll be getting my Night of the Living Dead box set and watching 'the canonical 3' as I do every year (even without my Zombuddy). So leave HAlloween alone.

2) They are actually funny. They are a couple and they cut such a forlorn figure. And it's their job.. I can't help but laugh.. and then the look I get in return just cracks me up even more. It's like a cartoon where they literally look daggers, only his would be composed of hellfire.

D) They are not just expressing their beliefs, they are trying to change the beliefs of others. They are advertising. They are putting their ideas about religion into the public realm and making them a part of the public discourse, but with ideas as flimsy as theirs (Witches are REAL and Halloween helps them in some way) the only correct response is laughter. Not Argument, debate or even mockery. It's funny enough as it is.

I used to be worse than this. I have a strong feeling about Religion since the fundamentalist upbringing of one of my schoolfriends led to his eventual suicide in his early twenties. I used to go out of my way to get in discussions with religious people, and like most atheists of that type I would read more religious texts than all but the most committed believers. I would know everything required to Judo throw them with the weight of their own convictions. I could quote chapter and verse of each and every contradiction and morally reprehensible statement and I would be disappointed when my reason didn't alter their opinion one iota...

Now I don't worry. If you aren't using your belief to get me to change mine, I'll just smile, nod and remember not to ask you any science questions.

If you are standing outside a train station with a sign proclaiming that a fairly innocent holiday, that stems from one of your OWN SAINTS Festivals is evil.. well I'll keep laughing in your face until, hopefully, you lose it and chase me down the street... and I'll laugh all the way.

And then I'll stop, and face you, and continue laughing.. and then what will you do?

Day 11: The ancient art of pretending you're doing something (Or, I might well laugh myself out of my job and into an early grave full of ineffectual needles)

I work in a Medical Education. Real Medical Education, Doctors and nurses and all that...
The post I am about to type could well get me fired, even though it seems to me possibly the least controversial thought I've ever expressed in here.. yes even less controversial than the universally held idea that Keith Lemon is in no way funny...

I mainly deal with nurses. Genuine medical type nurses. I help them not get kicked out when they've messed up a few times and missed a few too many lectures (Sometimes I help them get kicked out when they've missed way too many lectures as well, but that doesn't seem quite as pleasant). In our faculty we deal with Nurses, Health Visitors, Occupational therapists, Mental Health Professionals, Radiographers and Acupuncturists....

What.. yes.. I did a double take when I saw that one on the list as well.. In a campus of genuine, utterly not made up, scientifically approved therapies we have a bunch of people learning how sticking needles in certain places can cure all manner of illnesses that sticking needles in you cannot do, unless of course they are hypodermic needles that are full of medicine...

Now I am not doubting the barrels of anecdotal evidence supplied by people that they have received therapeutic benefits from people putting needles in just the right places... in fact we even have a name for that benefit. It's called the Placebo effect.

Placebos administered by needle (Ie a saline solution) are measurably more effective than when administered by tablet at killing pain. The body responds to needles, it knows what they are, they have a demonstrable effect that's very hard for the nervous system to ignore. It also responds to theatrical prancing and ritual. Acupuncture has both of these by the syringe-load...

What it doesn't have sadly is 'Qi'.. the mystical energy... because of course, such things are nonsense. As soon as the word 'Mystical' is applied to something it ceases to be science. Sorry that's just facts. It is also a fact that the body heals itself, and it heals itself better when someone does something to convince it that it should be healing... this is the very epitome of the Placebo effect...

But it's being taught right there, on the same list as Children's nursing... thankfully it's a tiny course and it's tucked away from the real medical people and all the people who are on it are jolly nice, middle class types who probably half believe in it and half don't and won't really get to the level of charlatanism that exponents of other hideous sham (or 'Alternative') Medicines do.
(I have genuinely seen a Herbalist offering  to 'Help Beat Cancer'.. When I asked them, reminding them of the law about false advertising of such things and with the entire rage of thinking about my Mother's battle with cancer behind me, they claimed they meant it was to help with the well being of a patient after beating Cancer and promised to change the sign)

Luckily for me, I don't have much dealings with the Acupuncture lot, but every time I walk past the plaque proudly proclaiming that our Acupuncture course is affiliated with the Confucius Institute, (which is of course, based in London) I start laughing. I mean really laughing.... and one day I'm very afraid that someone will ask me why I'm stood in the foyer of their little magic den, doubled over laughing... Then I'll have to either come up with something pretty convincing... because when it comes to people peddling this kind of thing, I am VERY bad at keeping my mouth shut...

Day 10: That Golden moment of Immaculate Conception (Or, what it feels like to spawn a years worth of hard work and eventual disappointment.)

I had one of my favourite ever experiences the other day.

Not my favourite, I haven't had that for some time and don't ever really expect to fully have it again for a longer time, if at all (No, it's not a sex thing.. this is something you can't buy, booze, charm or trick your way into...)

This experience is the thunderbolt of inspiration. That moment when the idea for an entire project forms in your mind, fully formed and glistening like a jewell. For me it was the idea for a new book. For some people it will be a song, or a poem, or the way they want to build their new shed, or how well theyu could restore that car... but for me it's a book.

I've written a few of these incidentally, and the reason you've never read them, or indeed heard of them is because as yet, nobody has ever wanted to publish one...
(Quick run down:
1 - Too weird, too personal, and too dependent on reading a load of Franz Kafka for a fairly important plot point. It also started somewhere in the middle of the story because I was an awkward young man at the time.
2 - REALLY WEIRD. I would like to try and re-write this sometime, with the benefit of a much clearer mind, but at the moment I would be scared to let anyone read it, because they'd be worried about me.. and those around me.
3 - Too personal and quite clunky in the old writing. I utterly understand why nobody would publish this, it being a Zombie Novel that was actually about a man's fear of Pregnancy... I enjoyed writing it though, because it finally purged all the weird writing tics I'd picked up while Writing Book 2...
4/5 Didn't really finish redrafting these, but who knows... I might retrieve them from the trunk and submit them to someone) They will get finished one day, but to me the subtext is so glaring that I can't see past it to do the story.. at the moment... when I get some distance from that aspect I'll probably be able to finish them.

So Now I'm on number six. And it arrived in a whole, like a brain jolt. I sat on my bed grinning, then laughing out loud. I fell back and threw my hands above my head and simply beamed. This is probably an inappropriate reaction, to be honest, as this story is based around a tragic premature death of someone's cherished friend, and their ruminations on that. Yes I'm taking a step outside my comfort zone and doing a weepy. A weepy with only real human characters and no unusual plot contrivances. Just a guy and his story.

Ah.. sounds lovely and refreshing...

The problem is the idea will very likely never be that beautiful again.
The first draft process is always difficult, like an excavation. You dig it out of your brain, but it's surrounded by soil and rocks and bones. It doesn't look anything like the sleek beast you had in mind. (Yes, I'm switching metaphors now)

So on the second draft you get to work. Chiseling, drilling, polishing.. paring it down to gleaming bone. It's death head grin shines at you. But it still isn't the animal you had.

The next drafts are putting on layers of fat and muscle.. maybe fur if it's that kind of beast. You put in a heart to beat the stories rhythm and some eyes so it can see where it's going and some guts.

And eventually, although it rarely looks exactly how you originally pictured it, you still love it, like the badly stuffed Gorilla in Wollaton Hall (And the story of it's capture on the sign next to it that always makes you want to cry)

Then you take it out for a few walks.

Your friends will want to be nice. They'll coo and pat it and maybe even take it for a walk themselves.

But it isn't them you want to impress. You need to get it out there. Into the races. It needs to compete. If you give it to a pro they may have someone who will give you a few ideas of how to make it leaner, more aggressive, more of a fighter.

Or they might just take one look at it and decide to kill it with the sharp edge of a shovel. As has happened to my plethora of poor malformed chimera.

This is the process I am at the start of. Why do I do it?

Well.. the fantasy of being a 'big shot' writer is quite fun and keeps me entertained in the office when the 100th Student has come in to have their documents checked. But that doesn't cover it, if it was I could just buy a lottery ticket each week, have a more lucrative fantasy and save myself a lot of effort and heartache.

I don't even do it as a 'compulsion'. It was like that when I was younger. I would write constantly. Mainly short pieces that were impenetrable and full of 'writery tricks'. I don't feel that now, I get irritable and feel disappointed in myself when I haven't written anything for a while.. but that's about it...

I don't even do it because I feel I have something so earth-shattering to say that the world simply must pay attention. (To Clarify, I think it would if it knew what was good for it, but I am too old and cynical to believe the world would even care what was good for it)

No I do it for the same reason I do the music.. and the image manipulation stuff.. and the silly jokes and the other thing...

I do it because I do it
I do it because I enjoy it.
I do it because I couldn't imagine not having those moments.
... and that's worth the heartache...

(And what a metaphor for life.. see kids.. I'm good at this writer bit, tune in next time for more heavy handed subtext and clues to the plot of an unwritten novel!)

Day 9: Witless 'Banter' in Both Directions... 'Arf' (Or, why a Pop Boy Getting clonked lead to the most death threats ever sent in a single evening)

Oh a choice, and what a gift...

Do we go for David Cameron leaving his box behind on a train, obviously mistaking it for something less crucial to him. like his child...

Or,

Gabriel Agbonlahor (A footballer) getting death threats after tackling a 1Direction chap (Also A footballer) in a game of Football.

Box or Chop? 
The Foibles of Our Dozy remiss Leader or our psychotic  hormonal teens?

Well, since the CAmeron story is inevitably going to get even funnier as people dive on it to score points, I'm going to stick with the hilarity that ensued after a footballer tackled another Footballer.

Before we start, I have no dog in this particular hunt. I don't care for football that much, but have no particular aversion to it, but really wonder why people are so psychotically attached to it. as for 1 Direction, I would have to say 'Ditto'. 

Anyway, a young man called Louis Tomlinson, got a start  for a Celtic team in a charity match. He got tackled, he went down, he was sick and he asked to be taken off. So far so-so... Particularly if the word 'Celtic' is involved. But the numeric word combo: '1direction' was also involved, and so we got a wonderful moment on Twitter where two 'fandoms', equally devoted in their own way, but also rarely in contact with each other, decided to face off.

On one side we got the 'Directioners' who are colourful with their threats and occasionally poor with grammar (Oh and of course the odd sensible one, who rightfully says, 'This makes us look like Silly Teens') On the other side we get Football Fans, with worse grammar and less colourful with their threats, but to be fair, Football does tend to get a bit more fighty and stabby than a 1d show... (in the real world that is)

Tiny Teeny girls threatening a huge man who could kick their body clean in half if challenged and Footballers descending gleefully down to their level. Of course there were some pearls, only if you waded through the mire of homophobic and misogynistic stuff from 'the guys', with the fans bringing together the wit they usually only display in the best chants to bear on the task of knocking down those uppity children from their high horse of liking a band a little too much and not really understanding what football is...

Oh and their were no 'amusing' pearls from the 'directioners', but it was more fascinating  in a 'psychology study' kind of way. Each tweet seeming to actually be written in the shrill and overwrought tone usually used to deliver the line 'You've Ruined my life' to a doting parent. Luckily though, they have an excuse for their grammar, having had to fight to see through the kaleidoscope of hysterical tears in order to type their missive with trembling fingers

But of course all fandoms benefit from this, be they grown up ones, or youthful ones... Everyone loves an external enemy, Directioners are very adept in creating big tizzy's over nothing, in order to weld themselves into a more terrifying wave  of neoteric oestrogen, and football clubs are entirely built on it..it is by their enemy that they define themselves. 

This was such fun though that the kinship went beyond the usual club/tribe mentality, yesterday they banded together under the 'Banner' of Football fans, to courageously call a young popstar in a charity match a 'Puff'.

.. I guess that's the only problem here though, because for all the many hours it was trending on Twitter it was all 'Don't hurt my Louie' or, 'That Girl who got tackled threw up'.. and nobody really mentioned the fact that it was a charity match...

If only they'd thought to have the tackle done on a phone-in bidding basis, if the Directioners win, Louie is allowed to score a goal unscathed (And with his shirt off), if all of football raise more then he gets a scything tackle... with a scyth. 

Hang on, I may have just cured world poverty...

Day 8: Instant Political Knowledge, Just add soundbite.. (Or, why the 'Don't Knows' should rule the day)

This weekend is a very special weekend in the U.K. It is this weekend that suddenly, everyone in the country instantly knew everything there is to know about Australian politics.

It's amazing how it happens. Up until a few weeks ago, few people knew anything about the Australian political machine, save for the fact that there seemed to be some fairly underhand dealing going on and a lot of behind the scenes kingmaking.. now, well.. everyone knows simply everything... Oh and it's just a coincidence that it follows a high profile election...

Maybe I'm just unlucky here. Maybe there was some kind of software upgrade that included the 'Everything about The Australian Political Machine' datapack that was uploaded last night and I missed it because I was at a particularly grim nightclub, almost bereft of any human hope despite flirting with a rather attractive lady... Maybe I'm just dumb.

Incidentally I know the guy seems a douchebag... and I don't agree with what his 'reported' policies are.. but let's be honest, world leaders are a weird breed anyway. They're either cartoon Supervillans like Putin or The North Korean Holy Trinity, Shifty Salesmen/Marketing types like our lot, or just grey Management types... even Obama, who let's face it IS sexy, well, his record hasn't been quite as christ-like as we'd all hoped.

So yeah, New Australian leader is a douche, and there's some amazing Youtube footage of him proving it, but I know even less about their power struggles than our own. That said he is supported by both Murdoch and Cameron, so he probably isn't going to do much I can really get behind.. but still.. I'm in the 'don't know category'.. like nearly everyone else.

This happened with Syria. Now this is a lot less frivolous than the simple changing of a state figure-head. This is thousands of people dying. The Assad regime is murderous scum, they are also being backed and supplied by dodgy regimes, like us. The rebels are a band of various disparate groups who we know little about. Some may be shadowy and backed/sponsored by dodgy regimes... like us. 

So do we go in there, and on whose side. Or do we just stand between them and try and stop the slaughter.

I don't know.

I'm not an expert in the region, I'm not a military strategist, I'm not an expert in Civil wars. Some people are citing clauses and sub-clauses in international laws and treaties to push opinions towards their preference. I am not a working lawyer... And neither are they, for the most part they are recycling the sound-bites of others.

So, should I just be a passive observer?

No of course not. The worlds political process falls apart without engagement. But there are actual real experts on all of these things, they aren't infallible by any means, but they have the base knowledge. If I want to get involved I would try and apply some loose scientific method of gathering evidence. If it goes against one of my own beliefs, that's too bad.. you have to go where the evidence leads you (I used to be a strictly non-interventionist pacifist, which I've had to compromise several times)

Unfortunately I don't have evidence to form my own directed opinion for either of the two political situations detailed above. I just can't form that instant opinion and tout it around. I might make a gag or two, but that's it... I wouldn't protest Syria in the same way as I might, Russia's LGBT thing.. which seems fairly cut and dried on a 'Human' level, but is probably acres more complicated on a political level...

I know it sounds elitist, and everyone hates that because 'balance' or something and you have to give a Hippy GM agitator equal time to a Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Science on news shows, but, there are people who have spent lifetimes studying something... they are a literal elite in that field... which is FINE by the way.  'Elites' are a good thing in specialised fields. I'm sorry for saying this, but it happens to be true.

And if the pursuit of balance means that my blithering content free brain burp about Syria being stacked against the opinion of someone who has studied the culture/politics/military history of the area, then I'm quite happy to withdraw it completely...

Sometime saying I don't know is a strong and noble opinion. It's almost certainly an honest one.

(Postscript: Yeah.. I KNOW I am guilty of doing exactly this on any number of occasions. But I do try and point out constantly and consistently that I am 'Stultifyingly Ill-Informed')

Day 7: Are Clickbait Tweets, ruining your finances, marrying a celebrity in secret or stalking your children?. (Or,... Arrrrgggghhhh you utter utter utter utter fucking universe-ruining TWATS)

Dear All news agencies on the internet.
Yes All of you.

I wish to warn you about the spread of something nasty. A disease. A disease that degenerates the art of journalism even further than hackery and blag-facing. It can turn even a well researched, interesting and insightful story into a one word mumbled question and answer session. And it isn't even the writer's fault...

I first noticed it.. mmm.. let me see, probably the first day I went on Twitter and started following news agencies. I followed one in particular, the 'Patient X*' of this phenomena... and that was when I first encountered a Tweet like this: Why are these two Hip Hop Titans Feuding?
(*For Reasons of Medical ethics I will not name this Typhoid Mary of internet News, suffice to say that if Scooby Doo tried to say it, he would probably pronounce it as 'Ruffington Roast').

Now if you analyse that Tweet it the exact opposite of a headline. Instead of packing in the most amount of information into a punchy and pithy strap-line that entices you to read the story, it is more like a riddle, something an ancient and wizened might say before allowing you to cross a rickety rope bridge to continue your quest to rescue some dragon or princess or something... So I clicked, thinking something along the lines of: 'Jesus.. Chuck D and KRS One have got into a beef... I wonder what it could be about'

The story is actually that Jay Z and Kanye West made announcements on the same day and there may or may not be a feud, but essentially we don't know.
(Chances are they aren't incidentally, both are far more Titans of Marketing than Hip Hop, and know that nothing shifts units better than a 'tribal' loyalty... Look at the Beliebers... best way to create a fanbase? Create an external threat... anyway... a Blog for another day...)

Of course using rubbish questions in reporting isn't a new thing, headlines have done it for years in an attempt to get you to buy the paper, even spawning 'Betteridge's Law', in which it is stated, any Headline which ends with a question mark, the answer is usually 'No'.. Examples of this are manifold, particularly in health reporting, where headlines like this are plentiful: 'Is your morning Commute Giving You Cancer?' (Answer: No, although some obscure experiment has shown that cells in a dish are producing cancer effects when exposed to certain carcinogens) Is your Morning Coffee Giving you Cancer: (Answer: No, although some obscure experiment has shown that cells in a dish are producing cancer effects when exposed to certain extracts from raw coffee beans), Is your Morning Coffee Protecting you from Cancer? (Answer: No, although some obscure experiment has shown that cells in a dish are combatting cancer effects when exposed to certain extracts from Raw Coffee Beans)
Basically if the Story is about Cancer there is a chance that the headline will be phrased in this way...

What this particular 'Monkey From Outbreak*' has managed to do however is further strip out informational content. Rephrasing of the above Headlines could go as far as. 'Can Morning Commutes Kill you?', 'Is a Fatal disease hiding in Your Cup of Joe?', 'Which Morning Ritual might be saving your life?'
They don't even have to directly push the 'Cancer' button anymore. Simply by stripping out the information, they don't only tickle the fear sensors, they also have a tweak at the puzzle centres of our confused and Twitter Addled Brains. We're a pattern seeking animal, we want to put the pieces together, so we click on the link... and we find exactly the same article we would have never been fooled into reading under the old method.

All this would be fine, if a mite annoying had it have remained confined to what a Gruffalow might refer to as 'The Gruffington Post', but it is obviously a successful method, and so it is spreading. Now you get 'respected' Music Magazines getting in on the act, with Tweets like 'Which 3 legends set to play Glastonbury 2014?" (Which links to an article that basically poses the same question, as Michael Eavis is famously tight-lipped about it until the ticket sales have been completed).

Luckily there are some warriors against this, the mighty HuffPoSpoilers on Twitter, who try and give the salient points to as many dispatches from that mighty news source (Who I totally HAVE NOT referred to in this Blog post up until now) as possible, so you can make an informed decision before you click and drive advertising revenue their way.
An example from this very day reads:

HuffPo Spoilers ‏@HuffPoSpoilers5h

Kim Gordon (@KimletGordon) RT @HuffPostEnt: Surprising guest star heading to @girlsHBO in Season 3 http://huff.to/1fHvvnp 

Thanks Huff Post Spoilers! I might have clicked that BEFORE finding out I didn't care a row of buttons about ANY of it...

So what's the harm.. why not hand over your media strategy to the journalistic equivalent of 'The Riddler' from the old Campy Batman Cartoon?

Well.. Where does it End?

Well Here:
@StuffPost: Catastrophic Nuclear Meltdown, But Where?

Or simply here:

@StuffPost: ?
@StuffPost: ?
@StuffPost: ?

... and that's EVEN worse than a British Tabloid running endless XFactor Exposes...