Valentine's Super Hell Misery Fest

Well, fuck. Alas! It is that time, day, of year again.

Just as you were finally contemplating your rise from beneath the wretched metaphysical duvet of seasonal affective disorder (which isn’t even a real thing anyway) and general existential despair, ready at last to point yourself like a tremulous squinting flower towards the approaching sunshine of spring; over the hill comes striding, with obvious prejudice and malice of aforethought, the behemoth annual horror of duty-bound romance and whining solitary misery that is Valentine’s day.

That’s right. It’s a bad thing. As if you didn’t know. It is the day when the cultural vulgarity under which we constantly strive is led with a cloying forlorn corporate grasp, constructed of all our most squidgy and piglety little feelings, to reach into our chests with horrid clammy fingers and brutally pull out our souls. Formed, of course, as the treacherous shards of ice we have long taken them for, they are then thrust back and forth all day under the banner of soppy wuv, in and out of our chests lacerating the black voids where our hearts used to live.

I'm just kidding of course! We’ve never had hearts. (wink smiley)

Whether you are bonded tightly by your own wilfully unsighted sense of preservation into a crumbling relationship that would fail under inspection even to comprise an honest husk, or are simply embarrassingly, tragically and pathetically lonely as usual, the day offers a species of misery to everyone. It’s nice like that. Even those happy lovers in the first flushes of lust and love have the pleasure of anxiety attacks over what level of gesture to make and how much is indecent to under or over-spend. Cool.

Be it a regime of mutual disappointment and horrible forced crow-footed smiles or simply that so-charming experience of every half-an-hour or so reflecting with the semi-emotional mind’s hucksterish idiocy that ‘Oh! It’s Valentine’s Day!’, as though you’d forgotten, and enjoying the immediate association and reflection toward tonight’s plans for boxed solo-spaghetti and copious perverse masturbation that it kindly brings.

Perhaps this is all saying more about the author than anything, though my tongue is a little in my cheek (masturbation aside) though it is far from original or unique to voice these sentiments about pre-packaged, bartered notions of romance and a long-ago contrived day to sell greetings cards and teddies, any more than it is to criticise the daily mail for being disgusting and secretly fascist. Both matters have long been an open secret anyway. 

So do I, we, need to take a long hard look at my/ourself? Do we need to have a good strong word? Perhaps, just perhaps, even to the jaded, the day doesn’t have to represent a long litany of subtle agonies. There are two positives for the day that must be confessed if the subject is to be treated at all fairly. The author reserves the right to previous paroxysms of imagery, whatever conclusions may follow to be contrarily drawn.

1. The New Relationship - These lucky couples of wet-behind-the-ear romance, be they young or old, no doubt for the most part receive upon Valentine’s Day a resurrection of the intended spirit (panic and anxiety aside) and for this we may simultaneously bless their little cotton’s and spit upon them with outraged and infinitely jealous contempt and longing. The point being, they have done alright out of it and probably had a lovely time. Good on them. Anxiety about form and performance isn't so bad, it's a nice kind of anxiety. Sort of. At least there's a pay off, hopefully a revoltingly sweaty one.

1. This is the real one, the idea that Valentine’s Day may serve as a reminder to us of the possibility of Romance. The idea is sound, just not the application of a day in it’s dedication. May it be a reminder to what romance is not... expectation is anathema to romance and we all fucking know it. So just... store it up, make a mental note. Not two weeks before (expectation) nor two weeks after (the Valentine’s wake will spoil it)... um so basically just not the month of February except for the perfunctory in the middle. Let it inspire you for another occasion, honest and true, that otherwise you may never have slow-wittedly come to conceive. You big softy.

So there we have it, not all bad in the end. But if you are in one of those fortunate scenarios, where all the unwieldy explicit bitterness of prior strikes you as rather pathetic, and you are perhaps even further gladdened at your own fortune as you set off to spend a wonderful evening of genuine candlelight romance, flickering-flame-light-framed(tm) lovemaking, and as myriad delicate shades of joy as the lonely could yearningly conceive... well... enjoy it, I suppose. You damned swine.

Spare a thought for the loveless, I might say, but I think they might best spare a thought for  themselves and perhaps follow edict two from above. Make a little romance in your life, you can do it. Go on. You have a whole year until this appalling day comes around and gives you a vicious slap round your porky chops again. Be you boy, girl, man or woman, get in there quick. Doooo it. Maybe it is easier said than done, Lord knows, but otherwise we both know this is precisely who’ll be sinking back beneath the blue depths of their duvet cover-coloured dreams and waiting for the season to change, not the elder states-person couples, whatever barren repetition of trite affections we may uncharitably wish upon them. 


So in your case, get on it, stupid!

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Thank love for friends! And too my Nan, who often sends me a card. Respect where it is due, ardently filling in those yawning gaps between Love’s more fantastical failings and fancies.

Dead Tyrants

So Colonel Qaddafi is dead. He is one dead tyrant. The image of his beaten, broken self has been plastered across the internet. His brains have been plastered across the libyan sand, after his discovery, like all good fleeing tyrants these days hiding in an ignoble bolt-hole. This one was a set of industrial measure pipes. He joins Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein on the list of terrifying bogeymen now despatched by the gallant lads of the Western World. Kim Jong Ill must be rather quacking in his jackboots.

How did you feel with the news Osama had been snuffed and then thrown into the sea? Belief? Relief? Incredulity? What does it mean these days, when the Sheriff gets his man? Is it redundant to rant on about the nature of our media and the lies we are apparently told? It's all too confused and confusing. We don't know if it was right or wrong. We might firm up an argument, were we a publishable journalist, yay or nay, but we would still only be arguing from the parapet of our prejudices. Good old us and our kangaroo courts, God Bless Nato. I say this with due deference to the fact that Qaddafi was done by a young rebel of his own country, so perhaps we should feel no sufferance of guilt on that count.

Not that we do. Why should we care? If you stopped to consider whether the man's fate was vulgarly contrived by duplicitous politics or not you might have noticed the demerit of the Lockerbie bombing marked against him. Perhaps that was just cause. Funny how he had become a more cuddly figure of late, a deranged gigolo feasibly on political par with Silvio Berlusconi, just before crisis came to a head in his nation and the West stepped in with political and military force. There is always the factor of the insurgency of the people, too, and we all (us liberal types) turn a little bloodthirsty when the sexy rebels and revolutionaries have their way. Perhaps we are living vicariously, stable democracy that we so enjoy or not.

Why am I writing about this at 2am in the morning? Why not research it and write something more credible? Well it doesn't matter it's only a blog innit. It just occurred to me how I used to worry with genuine fear about these figures. Saddam Hussein was a nightmare demon to me as a child, armed to the teeth with nuclear muscle and the capacity to land a bomb at my infant door, should the whim and inclination take him. I remember being unreasonably scared by the Kosovo 'incident', having not enough understanding not to fear a World War. This is the effect the ignorant combination of basic history (yes, WW2) and media frenzy had upon my child brain. Worry and petrification. These dead tyrants that we are having these days would have caused a sigh of relief in me in my younger more naive incarnation, and I just wonder what we are supposed to feel now, when those wet-nursed illusions have been stripped away.

Now With 100% Less Stupid Hair!

Honestly, what the fuck was I thinking?

I received a photo from my Uncle B, of myself holding my nephew, Elliott. The patent charm of the moment and the little chap himself aside, the overpowering motif of the image was just how fabulously ridiculous the haircut I have been sporting was.

This is what happens when you and friends have a pair of clippers and an attitude that roughly translates like so: 'Hairdressing? I can do as good a job I'm sure, after all I have a degree in Theology'. One ill-advised idea, formulated after watching too much Boardwalk Empire, and poor application later. Et voila. In a positive spin, as it was known to be awkward before it was also discovered as absurd, I really got into wearing hats, which is fun.

Oh and also, of course, in years to come I will be claiming that 'everyone had haircuts like that', 'it was a different time' etc, as the family gathers round the photographs to laugh at our past follies. Oh well, star of the show and all that.

Anyway, a swift trip to the barbers later and I now have recaptured my masculinity. Do please everyone tell me in future, for Christ's sake. Regards, Gavin.

The Word I Made Up

Incrambrience adj. (i think) inf. (doesn't make sense, it's not a verb) - the state of feeling incrambrient - 'I cannot give an account of my crimes, for I feel rather incrambrient today Your Honour'

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In using a word in conversation with a friend recently, it was found that I had totally made it up. 'I'm just feeling a little incrambrient' said I to Chris, whereupon he said 'what the hell does that mean?' or words something similar to that effect.

'It means groggy headed', I responded - 'unable to stick to task, mindlessness where one would like to be mindful'
'Never heard of it', said he.

At that we stole to the dictionary like the avid and curious etymologists that we are. Aghast I found it wasn't in there. The slow smile spread across my friend's face. Dim memory and realization dawned, slowly.

I'd made it up in a dream, long ago. Somehow, upon waking I'd failed to distinguish the difference between the contents of the Oxford English dictionary and the contents of my head, and it had smoothly slipped into my vocabulary undetected. Not being a simple word of common parlance, my understanding of this Dr Johnson-approved signifier assured me, it was to be saved like all other fruity language for tremendously special occasions.

Like the one where you are arguing with an equally word-lovingly pedantic friend over rhyme, reason and other types of nothing and you want to explain something succinctly whilst demonstrating prowess - in hope they will defer to your superiority and back down, their tail between their skinny legs (never happens.)

A grave error in this instance. I may as well have said Bobbins.

But here you have it - Incrambrience. On the strength of another friend, Alex, enjoying it's sound and signification tremendously (or at least well enough to be complimentary of it's chances) when the incident was mentioned to him, I'd like to propose it's approval for the common English tongue. Or the uncommon English tongue, whichever you prefer to ascribe yourself to. Propose it here, in this pinprick corner of cyberspace. Incrambrience. Go on, try it next time you can't be bothered to finish your studies, projects, or feel stoned even if you aren't.

Incrambrience. Also, as this electronic missive has warped slightly into an exercise in... well... hifalutin language in itself and general thinly veiled pomposity, please to be, if you like, imagining that a character of less eminently detestable linguistic peacockishness (also not a word) has recommended it to you. I hope to see it in all good Dictionaries in all average bookshops (slash coffee shops) sometime in the rapidly encroaching future.

Next stop - the Urban Dictionary. I wonder if it'll fit in amongst all the ridiculous memes and guttersnipe colloquialisms. I expect it'll look positively crambrient by comparison.

Lazy Blogger Par Excellence

Whoops I'm letting this drop off. We cannot allow that to happen. No.

Note on the below draft - The dramatic end of 'who gives a fuck'... please read this under the terms of the outlined context, a script for performance. Looking at it transposed here as a blog it seems dreadfully nihilistic. It wouldn't in the original of course, I'd carry on to wax lyrical about various other things and all dispassionate wretched flourishes would be glossed over with a thick gooey layer of... well happy lyricism I suppose.

As heard on shameless - you just have to stand up there and be a bastard.

So what's going on in the world today? I have no idea, again. Ok wait a tic I'm going to the guardian website where I promise to read one article.

Ok I'm back. I'm not writing about current events today, even if it is more accessible, even if I could demonstrate my own witty slant while remaining relevant to things that you might have recently been considering. I'll do that later.

Instead, as usual, I will ramble on about my idiosyncrasies and what I think they mean...

Let's try, for example, waking up. Have you ever suffered from depression? I think I have, though it is difficult to realize when you are locked in it's cloying grip. A hallmark of this for me is finding it difficult to wake up and face the day. Why? Because it sometimes seemed like there was nothing worth doing. Note the past tense - here comes the positive bent.

I blame the organizational side of my brain (by the way, I resent the Americanized spell check on here... all these words coming up with a red line beneath as though it is spelt wrong... I can't stand that bloody line. No one likes to be corrected when they are right and if you are anything like me this is all the time. Anyway, I defer to it because although I resent it indicating I should Americanize every word I hate the red squiggle more. Although I only will defer about changing S's to Z's. Not omitting U's. God no. That'd be a step far too far.)

Shit where was I? Well perhaps it proves a point. Don't allow the organizational side of your brain to get lazy. I managed to fool it into getting up for a less compelling reason than the sheer exciting possibility of life's gaping yaw, for a while... in that salt of the earth postie way, where you get to enjoy the sun rising on the way to work and scoff contempt on the once a week occasion when the Friday weekend spills into Saturday morning... I didn't find myself wishing it were me looking a state amongst the seagull-pecked trash spilling across the pavement, the town, the world... Just a little arrogant self-congratulation on the way to work helped the day go round. Though in a way it was fun talking to pill-heads who were flabbergasted at the premise you had just got up. But not drunks. No. Yuck.

I love tangents.

Anyway, yes it was slimly satisfied by getting up for my job and I enjoyed the early mornings once I'd bolted myself firmly into hyperactive reality with five coffees, or as I say if it were summer and the sun were rising majestically (etc) in the blue sky. But it didn't address the root of the problem - worthy activity is what was needed. Being a postman was never going to satisfy me forever, much as I enjoyed it for it's multitude of merits.

So now I'm cracking it. Worthwhile plans for the day, not too grand, ease yourself in. This blog is part of that, when the mood takes, and the mood takes quite well if I start the day with a book rather than the internet or the Jeremy Kyle show.

Rambling Blog For The Day - Achieved. Excellent. On to the other stuff. You too, go on. Off you go. Turn your mind to the worthwhile - if it all seems to much simplify, work out the path of least resistance and ease yourself in. Train that lazy organizational side of your brain into life.

You know why it's been so tricky? Because if you start with a lazy left brain (which not everyone does of course... ah how I envy and aspire to your efficiency and success...) then you are left with a situation where the right-hand brain, the creative, is supposed to be in charge of sorting it out. What's more they are at odds - right-hand brain has an idea, lazy left-brain says 'nah, fuck that for a lark' in it's best dissolute attitude and most persuasive gutteral Brighton drawl.

The right-hand brain, really being more of an ideas type, not known for rigidity and insistence, responds: 'oh ok, good idea, lets think about bobbins for two hours, pick our nose and maybe have a nap.'

Tut. But here we are and I've outlined the plan, again largely speaking to myself but I may as well lend it to whatever posterity accounts for barely read rambling blogs.

Off you go then, think of something else to do and finish that project for once before starting a new one, for heaven's sake.

I'll Just Slip This In Under The Radar Then

Not exactly written for blog format. Probably too 'concept album' for it's original imagining. See if you can spot the stage direction (it's not very hard)

It’s hard trying to write comedy you know. I thought i’d try a different style - a bit of Frankie Boyle. Lay into the people I saw on the street and in disabled homes and that. You know. It was 8am. What I was doing up at that time - I don’t know. I saw a woman on her way to work in co-op fatigues. I saw her clearly. Eyed her with malice of aforethought... Fat arse? Yes, but obvious. Mundane. Lot’s of people have fat arses. Bad trousers? Yes, flared, vaguely bell-bottom vibe, potentially by george at asda. But again, the same, lots of people from low-income areas have bad fitting unfashionable trousers. And she was in work gear so... you know, can’t really tear into her that much eh. Overall? Commonplace. Not funny. Sad little life, crawling to work at Asda in the morning? Maybe but I’m pretty sad so I gave up with that one. I got to the bus stop. An enormously fat man waddles out of the bookies. Been done! You can’t just say some people are fat, smell terrible and are in the bookies at the minute it opens in the morning and expect a laugh (wait for laugh) Do you think that’s what got him out of bed? Maybe he was collecting winnings, which lends a little glory to an otherwise powerfully inglorious figure. So I’m at a loss, though it was certainly a morning devoid of sanctimony, and for that I was grateful. Had a bit of a breakdown at 21 or so (it’s true, I did) and I seem to have cultivated from that point this false impression of myself - like this: ‘i’m so nice, i’m good and positive, jesus best watch out’, and so on. When in fact I’m a... expletive deleted. Always have been. So have you. It was nice to get back in touch and have a mind filled with bile again. Forsaking it was a silly move. There is a frothing hatred just under the surface in all of us... presumably. Not just being nice, that’s fine, that’s the discipline, but thinking nice, trying to think nice all the time! Trying to subvert negative thoughts of which i felt too aware into saccharine nonsense, in a misguided attempt to be good... well it’s a fucking pain. Almost literally in fact. Mentally. Man wasn’t meant to be good and holy, he was meant to be a cunt. Like I mentioned - like Frankie. He is the everyman superman. Frankie Boyle - ‘also thus sprake zarathustra’... plus jokes about spastics. Glad I don’t work at co-op though. Been there, done that. This was before the days of the ad and jingle. I could have got her on that I suppose. ‘Oi! Love! Du du du du, du der!’ But then, I’ve been a postie - and postman pat, postman pat say the mong children, thinking for all the world they are being original. So perhaps that says something about this particular spiteful comedy mode... There are greater peaks. But will I ever scale them? Who gives a fuck.

Confession Time and Other Mediums

I used to read poetry like a Philistine. I've just realised. It is blazingly apparent to me, all of a sudden. I opened an old book from University and... saw the horror of my annotations. I observed my mark left. These were notes made in pen - an utter crisis of poor form. I saw at last the reality. I had been un-reading it in that time, before. Hardly bothered since. Non-reading. Never had I sat down and read the stuff properly.

It was introduced by syllabus and never my own industry. For shame! My plea to the honorable jury is that nowhere in the syllabus did it explicitly state that I had to grow as a person, and a man, in order to actually understand the material. That seems a bit of cheap shot to me in retrospect, I don't know about you. How are your studies doing by the way? I hope they are going well.

It seems that I made a slow transition as a thinker. Like the lumbering laborious about-face of a tremendous rusting cargo ship... I was slow to turn. HOONK! The matter studied like a slim rock pool full of crabs rather than the wider ocean. It's been a scandal. See the fishwives leer something awful as I wander back to town waving my soggy GCSE with ill-considered optimism. You should join the Navy, see the world, son. Much more reputable.

Now steady with the words of congratulation and matey slaps on the back. Hold your praise, contain your joy. I only managed to get about 12 stanzas and a half through the dedication of the poem I was reading before my mind started to confuddle with it's usual obsfucatory tricks. A sly combination of mounting wonder and criticism mingled glutinously to slow the pace of reading, before bringing it to a ponderous halt. With a face - a mooey - no doubt mounting with near intolerable gloom I find myself here at the internet, telling you what I saw there when I arrived there, clear as bell.

A side note: why is a bell clear? lazy language that, cliche. Doesn't mean anything no more.

Anyway:

Byron was really laying into a newly appointed Poet Laureate with gusto. Almost savage he was, apparently Tory was a comprehensive insult back then too. With aplomb, I tell you, he began then tearing some other bloke a new arsehole over Ireland. What can I say? Inspiring. Incidentally, see minute 7 and a half or so on Funny House Of Commons Moments on youtube, for William Hague giving Blair a 'how is this allowed?' personal-political nailing. See my fb page for a quick link. Also very good.

So, 12 stanzas of his dedication down - this was enough to prompt enough musing to meet myself here. This surely means I was enjoying it. Excellent. But I definitely need to get back to it, finish what I began. The spurious moment of enlightenment has been enjoyed and extended far beyond it's remit. Good though. Time to fire up the old brain and sharpen it a little more, on the whetstone of time and all that other stuff.