I like lame stuff & I cannot lie

It's that time of year isn't it? You know, when people start telling you all the stuff they liked about the last 12 months?
They make lists of all the awesome music they've listened to, ranked according to how cool it makes them sound. Or they outline all the films they've inexplicably been able to afford to go to the cinema to watch in these new dogfood-for-dinner times (I mean, it's like, what, at least £500 a ticket these days. Some people. Cuh.)
And you read the lists and think about your own year & go, "what in buggery fuck have I been doing with my life"? And then, in your 1st world despair, you drink all the advocaat and eat all the cheese footballs you possess and after the extravagant vomiting has ended you say, "Fuck it. Imma make my own list. With blackjack & hookers". And then you just make some lists because you wouldn't know where to start with the casino/brothel portion of the project.

I like making lists.

Here is a needlessly aggressive list.

TOP TEN SONGS MY IPOD SAYS I HAVE LISTENED TO THE MOST THIS YEAR

According to the playcount in i-tunes these are the songs my ipod claims I have listened to more than any other this year. Pencils ready.

1. Saro - Samamidon (82 plays)

The. Most. Beautiful. Song. Ever. I cried a little when I first heard it because I had no other way of articulating the happysadterror it made me feel for which there is probably a German word. You can stick your Robbie Williams Angels balls up your clearly demented backside.

2. Hold Yuh (Major Lazer Remix) - Gyptian (79 plays)

Yeah, so, I sometimes like to jerk about to terrible dance music when everyone's gone to bed. What of it?

3. Days Of Our Lives - Restless People (72 plays)
See point 2. Shut up.

4. Nellie The Elephant - Mandy Miller (63 plays)

Now. You may be expecting some sort of explanation at this point. But that would only encourage you.

5. Generator 1st Floor - Freelance Whales (62 plays)

It must be obvious to you at this juncture that I get all my music recommendations from Hype Machine.

6. Strictly Game - Harlem Shakes (60 plays)

"This will be a better year" they said. No. No it won't.

7. Big Casino - Jimmy Eat World (60 plays)

I am as baffled as you are.

8. BTSTU - Jai Paul (57 plays)

Just leave it, yeah?

9. Stop The Cavalry - Jona Lewie (54 plays)

And it's not even fucking christmas. Sarah Palin aint got nothing on my maverickicity.

10. Bye Bye Bye - School Of Seven Bells (48 plays)

Listen carefully and you'll notice that there are actually 4 'Byes' used in the song chorus itself. What's that all about?

Now. I'm not saying my i-pod's a lying scumbag or anything like that. Except my i-pod is quite obviously a lying scumbag. Which will bring us to another list any minute day now. Soon. Possibly. Definitely before 2012 the heat death of the universe. If I have time.

Bitter

Fleeting sun
spurs on winter,
drawing in it's carriage of
silver.

Stinging air whistles
the same repetitive music,
weaving thin strands
of sugar-white through
naked trees.

Songless skies,
no longer drone
with lazy warmth,
and echo emptiness

as the frozen sun

shrinks

with every

shrinking day,

a sponge
drawing the light away.

I'm Making A Note Here, Huge Success

Still alive.*
Just.

Now where were we?
When we left our hero she was hanging off Big Bens' minute hand with the stolen microfilm stuffed into her bra. The Nazi spy pursuing her had put away his Luger and was simply waiting for the clock to tick its way from the horizontal safety of quarter to the hour and towards the certain vertical death of midnight...

No. No, wait...No, I remember now. That was a dream. I was the Nazi. The part of me was played by Russ Abbot, the part of Big Ben was played by the talking clock from Beauty & the Beast.

No. When we last spoke I was whinging on about showing myself up for a shallow, callous, moron on Twitter.

Yeah. So.

You know that episode of Futurama where Bender starts going out with Planet Express Ship? Yeah, you do. And there's this montage of Bender singing Daisy Daisy to it. Her. Whatever. Here it is.

http://youtu.be/mu_9gADvmyg (Can't embed for some reason)

And then Bender walks into a room and is all

"Well, I'm sick of her"

Yeah. That's pretty much me and Twitter.

Actually, that's pretty much me and being alive at the minute.

End of Act II

*I haven't, however, been doing any science. Except for not tidying the bathroom to see how long it'll take for someone else to clean it. That's like an experiment or something isn't it? In which case, I've totally been doing science.

Walking In On Yourself - A Poorly Written Morality Play

...wherein a disembodied Twitter voice rightfully pegs me as an idiot.

WARNING - This is all a SPECTACULARLY wanky load of drivel written in order to make myself feel a bit better as well as being some sort of vague apology to nobody in particular. If you are in the middle of growing fingernails, I'd recommend you get on with keeping an eye on that unfolding situation rather than wade through this badly written, mostly unintelligible, crapple.

Contains frequent references to Twitter and mild peril.

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Cast your minds back, if you will, to those heady days of the Saturday just gone. Sun was shining and weather was inclement and windy. Some of the country were waiting with baited breath; would JLS hang on at the top of the hit parade, or, would Cher Lloyd reign victorious? Another, mostly older portion of the country also waited with baited breath; would someone please explain what is a JLS or a Cher Lloyd? Whatever happened to that nice Mark Goodyear? He done the charts back in the olden days when lady popstars were still allowed to wear trousers and we had proper music, you know, the Roxette & the Vanilla Ice and all them, the proper, old bands that wrote some of their own songs....

No? Not ringing a bell? Surely you remember how I'd been up the Asian supermarket to stock up on brightly coloured packaging with unidentifiable contents with which to stuff my kitchen cupboards in such a way as to ensure that said coloured packaging falls out of said cupboards at unexpected moments and nearly kills me, like a sort of kitchen Russian roulette?

Still nothing huh?

Oh, and there was this riot going on in Tottenham. Got it? Yeah. Those were some ker-razy days.

So now, forget most of that stuff because it's not relevant. Forget it all except the bit about the Asian supermarket & the rioting. Then forget about the supermarket as well.

And even nower, picture this scene. It is some time mid that Saturday evening. A lady is sitting in bright pink pyjamas which feature a recurring monkey motif. She is not visibly ashamed of this fact. She is staring, slack-jawed, at a computer monitor, browsing banana cake recipes and tapping out inanities on a keyboard and hurling them at an indifferent universe of Twitterers. She is seated with her back to the TV and is listening to a repeat of Marple through earphones that, frankly, are not up to the job. Occasionally, she pauses to shovel baked beans into her yap. She is also a bit pissed on a little bottle of Sake she bought from the ASIAN SUPERMARKET that then fell out of a cupboard & almost killed her.

Reader, would it surprise you to learn that I was that tipsy, baked bean guzzling, monkey-pyjamad, slack-jaw? S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y-NIGHTS! I KNOW how to live!

So. I'm on the Twitter, via the medium of Tweetdeck, which, it goes without saying, was being a tweet hoarding bastard, holding on to dozens of messages then suddenly belching them out in one sudden, violent, extrusion making reading any of said tweets a bit of an ordeal requiring the eye muscles of an Olympic Speed-Reading Champion.
News of the trouble in Tottenham starts filtering into my time-line. I am already in the midst of a drunken twittersation (not a real word) with my cousin, moaning on about being old & not knowing what a jaegerbomb is. I am interspersing these complaints with my usual pointless observations about adverts being a bit shit & offering unsolicited advice re not mixing Sake with chewing gum. I intersperse those interspersations with retweets of the wisdom/rambling/comedy stylings of other people. Some of these retweets concern the riot unfolding in London.

But, as with most things internet, I am not giving any part of twitter my full attention. Ive got Miss Marple knitting in my ear 'oles and pictures of cake clogging up my eye 'oles and a medium amount of strong liquor making me even more moronically stupid and, as it's tweeting rather than speaking we're...er..talking about here, carelessly loud-fingered, than usual.

At some point I notice a tweet directed at me & another person from someone who, I was astounded to discover, not only followed me but actually seemed to be reading the bullshit I pumped into the virtual ether every 15 seconds or so.

This tweet bore the simple legend:

IDIOTS

I am confused. I read it 3 or 4 times. I am still confused. A tiny portion of my brain, which is apparently indifferent to alcohol, and is also, for some reason impersonating Homer Simpson, stage whispers

"I think she means you".

This only further complicates things. Why am I being called an idiot by somebody who, to the best of my knowledge, has never acknowledged my online presence in any fashion before this point?

I re-read the tweet 7 or 8 more times just to be sure. I notice the other named idiot. A-HA! A CLUE!

I trawl back through my own mindless out-pourings. Even in my thick-headed state I start to realise that my own time-line resembles the ravings of a crazy person. One moment I'm offering complete strangers Google+ invites because I, you will be amazed to discover, do not have 150 friends, acquaintances or even enemies to offer them to, then, seconds later, farting out a stream of terrible puns as part of some hashtag game I have clearly misunderstood the premise for. And, mixed in with all this garbage, are retweets which alternate between making light of people burning down their own neighbourhoods and forwarding bits of information about it. And, when viewed in chronological order, well, it makes me look like a bit of a dick. I mean, if I stood outside bellowing stuff like

"I'm sorry Hazelnut Mikado but today I met Green Tea Pocky & we are very much in love. Ive left your stuff by the front door."

followed up with

"A-HA! Ive got it. That annoying divey boy thats all up in the adverts? Spencer fucking Moon. It's been bugging me for ooh minutes at least."

and

"I Dram The Walrus #weightsandmeasuresmusic"

at passers-by I'd be, like, put on an ASBO at the very least. Or given a spot on Michael McIntyre's roadshow.

I locate a retweet in my own time-line that I don't remember seeing before. The gist of it seemed to be about not bragging about what an awesome time you had burning down that carpet shop in case the Metropolitan scuffers get to hear about it. It doesn't reflect my feelings about the situation & I'm momentarily perplexed as to why I'd have sent it out. I attempt many, many bloody times over to delete the thing but Tweetdeck decides to be a knob about it and not co-operate. I consider appealing to my accuser on the grounds that "Honestly I have No Idea How That Got In There Guv" but realise that that's exactly the kind of thing someone who's been caught out being a bit of a dick would say.
I look back through the timeline of people I'm following to see if I can find out whose words I meant to steal & pass off as my own promote. I locate the offending tweet & immediately below it is the thing I remember wanting to forward on to the world just as Tweetdeck vomited up another chunk of...chunks & evidently distracted me; a joke about Gazza, a fishing rod and some chicken.

"Oh, Hi there @twitterperson who thought me a callous idiot for retweeting dubious advice regarding not blabbing your criminal exploits round the pubs of London. Nah mate. You got me all wrong. I'm an entirely different type of callous idiot who apparently intended to retweet a joke about a mentally ill footballer who...wait...why are you blocking me? Hello? Hello?"

And I, metaphorically, look at myself and go

"What you doing? What the FUCK. Are. You. Doing?"

End OF Act I

Increasing The Amount Of Nothingness

I have no idea what the fuck's gone wrong with me lately. I mean, I was fairly wrong to start with, what with the chronic misanthropy, my crippling lifelong terror at being alive and my shocking ability to not only miss, but actively destroy opportunities. But, recently, I've started to feel, well, even more wronger.

Sadly, for me at least, being the inarticulate, talent-free, borderline moron that I am, I can't really put these odd feelings of 'more wrongity' into proper, recognizably English, words. The weirdness I'm experiencing is, at least in part, an actual physical sensation; a sort of tense, ticklish feeling at the front of my brain, the sort of feeling you get when you're sure you've forgotten something important. I've been living with this for months. So either I have forgotten something SUPREMELY important, or, I've got a brain tumour. Maybe I've forgotten that I have a brain tumour.

Aside from that it's all boredom, ennui, tedium and 'mono no aware' (I just put that last one in to look smart. I've been reading me some Murakami lately). I'm not sure if this is some sort of new variant on the vague feelings of sadness I've lived with since the age of, ooh, 4 or if this is an entirely new not quite mental illness I'm now experiencing. To be honest, I don't have the energy to find out.

In other news: I am on the Twitter. I have become one of the sickening, brevity indulging tweeters I previously claimed to despise. Turns out that, like the internet generally, Twitter is both terrible and awesome and that the average of these two things equals 'ok' (maths is hard). So, you know, fuck you old (by which I mean slightly younger) sonofajoiner, you square.

Sad Birthday

And the rant begins.

I'm a Tarvuist. There I've said it. I follow the teachings of the prophet Tarvu & the Tarvunty is my bible Tarvunty. I prize orange food highly & enjoy reading about irrigation. The Tarvunty wisely tells us that there are two universes; Universe A &, the rather bafflingly monikered, Universe B. We, of course, live in Universe B.
Except today. Despite definitely going to bed in Universe B, today I appear to have woken up inside Universe A. It's the only thing I can think of that explains the bizarre place I find myself in. See, rather disappointingly, Universe A appears to be stuffed to bursting with forelock tugging mentals who believe it to be both wise & appropriate to throw union flag decked parties to 'celebrate' the marriage of 2 total strangers who think nothing of taking your money to pay for their gaudy extravaganza but will have the police shoot you dead if you come anywhere near them (although the source for that whole 'police shoot-to-kill' policy is The Express. So. You know. Use your own judgment there).
I literally do not have the words to describe the bewilderment I feel at the complete lack of any sense of proportion on the part of the media who have gone on & on & on about a couple of people getting married in the breathlessly excited tones of a telephone sex pest, (whilst studiously ignoring a riot going on in Bristol) as well as at the apparent lack of any intelligence on the part of vast swathes of the UK population.
And whilst the weirdos in Universe A are waving their flags and dressing their infant daughters as Disney princesses (& I could spit a gallon of bile on that subject alone), the British police are jollying about the place pre-emptively arresting people deemed to have 'subversive' political opinions. And then there's the whole 'we're-totally-in-this-together-we-promise-heh-heh-heh' austerity bullshit where the poorest British children of Universe B must forgo a couple of free books because the Britain of Universe B is stony broke. But a few million quid for a couple of rich kids to yoke themselves together til the inevitable phone sex scandal for life could be found down the back of the governments sofa, no problem.

I'm almost as angrily incoherent about it all as this guy.

Oh, & today was my birthday. And a fairly miserable one it was too. Thanks Universe A. I'll be choosing my novelty religions with more care in future.

Be Like The Others

What up.
Look, look, 2 in a row! I'm totally getting the hang of this blogging lark.
This is just to say that 2011 is already looking to be a bit less of an arse than it's predecessor 'cos I got me an x-box, all the better to be fleeced to the scalp by Microsoft with...by....something. Hooray for capitalism and in your face 2010. In your ugly face.

Also, it is with absolute ambivalence that I bid farewell to my Nintendo Wii which will soon be winging it's way across the country to disappoint then utterly bore some other human being. We had some good times, the Wii and me...I'm sure......there was that one game that time...Okami? That was ok. I mean, the controls were terrible and OH MY ACHING BUTTON MASHING THUMB the unskippable cut scenes of event horizon proportions. You know, but otherwise a...fine...game.......hmmm....oh there was that other.....No. No there wasn't. No, in my experience, Wii games are mostly terrible.

See, I am a PC gamer at heart. I just can't get enough of those 15 hour installation times for games that inexplicably also require Steam to download files that should be on the disc sitting in your disc drive, that you forked over many, many pennies for. Or the scratting around the internet looking for player made patches that actually fix the 5 hundred million things that are broken in a game that you have forked over many, many pennies for. As far as I'm concerned, it's just not fun if you can pop a disc in and get on with playing a game straight away. Besides once all the pain, sobbing and extravagant swearing involved in getting the stupid bloody game to run is over, you are left not only with a sense of accomplishment but also with, most of the time, an excellent game to play. The Wii lets you pop in Alone in the Dark and get going in moments. But, you know, in the end, you're playing Alone in the Dark.

Ah, but that's how the X-box works sonofajoiner. Plug in and play. Easy and, therefore, by your logic ultimately boring. HA! Not if you want to play the copy of Fable 3 that came bundled with your shiny new console. Or anything else. Nope. You need to set up your console, spend 48 minutes trying to make X-Box live understand that the email address you are using is actually yours, then faff around with your tv and x-box settings over several hours in the hopes that you can make the stupid bloody console play your copy of Fable 2 at the 60hz the game requires, then trawl the internet for over an hour trying to avoid the creeping sense of dread that the problem will turn out to be with your needlessly expensive telly, then discovering that Microsoft have started selling their shiny x-boxes with cables that are inferior to the ones they used to use and blah and blah and blah. It took 24 hours (including 18 hours sleep) to get to a point where I could actually play anything. But you know what? Fable 2 is pretty good so far. So for me, initial hassle seems to equal ultimate happiness. My name is sonofajoiner, and I am a gaming masochist.

So farewell little Wii. You made, and I'm sure will continue to make, an excellent door stop.

Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What? It could be New Year somewhere. China? Venus, maybe. What are you, racist against Venusians?

So, as I say, Happy New Year. And fuck you 2010. You were a truly psychotic prick of a year. Who knew, for example, the earth could quake so much, and so often? Or that Iceland, ironically, had quite so much fire underneath it. 2010, that's who. And 2010 just couldn't keep it to himself could he? The bastard.
And there were the government decimating plane crashes, and some explosions, and more explosions, and more explosions, and the bloody old man pope popped in to moan on about the sort of things old men tend to moan about, and Ireland started giving away all it's cheese, and Greece something something the euro and Germany was all like, Oi Greece something something don't make me come over there, and some Israeli soldiers went sailing, and there was all the usual flood, famine, war and disease but turned up to eleven. Oh, and of course, 2010 allowed the fucking Tories, and their airbrushed overlord, to win the general election despite the fact that more people voted against them than for them, and have set about selling off the country with unabandoned glee. And everywhere you looked, 2010 kept shoving footage and pictures of a creepy Australian egomaniac in front of you until you just wished Flanders was dead 2010 would hurry up, finish the job and wipe every last one of us out in a quick and legally binding fashion. That'd have been one in the eye for the Mayans!

But also, 2010 seemed to have it in for me personally. Well, not exactly 'have it in for me personally'. More sort of 'seemed determined to annoy, inconvenience, impoverish and upset me and those dear to me for no damn good reason, and at every opportunity because 2010 was a complete, ball-aching, bastard'.
2010 had it all, from repeated expensive car repairs, to making all our hot water piss out of an overflow pipe for 2 weeks before anybody noticed resulting in huge water and energy bills. It featured death, and near death. It doled out illness in quantities the likes of which I had never seen before. It dished out accidents and serious falls, divorces and job losses, nervous breakdowns and paralyzing depression.
So, yeah. I'm not sorry to see the back of that massive turd.

And 2011? I'm onto you mate.