crisp

'Hi, how are you?'
'Yeah, good, how's it going?'
'Well thanks.'
'Good.'

A pretty ordinary exchange, codified and nearly meaningless. We've said it to people we don't know, people we don't like, people we know aren't well, and people who know we aren't well. But just now it was deeply satisfying. Before that I took a long-cut through the gardens along an un-mowed path. I stood on the edge of an artificial pond and watched the goldfish, hanging motionless in the flow of scummy bubbles from the inlet. At lunch my salad was speckled with nested drops of soy, lemon and oil. The two lowest strings of my guitar, plucked together, resonate on the edge of hearing with a deeper ghost note.

These things happen all the time, but today it seems sharper, closer, and - this sounds pretentious but for better or worse I'm not pretending - more meaningful. Nothing much has happened, there's still the usual to be done, but life is running more smoothly and at higher resolution.

A few years ago I was on a walk with my family, just talking and looking around. We tried to work out why it was so pleasurable. Our conclusion: because we had realized we were happy. We've so many needs to be satisfied daily, so perhaps the key is to be able to stop and recognize when everything is, well, alright.

da nu roseta stone

Our knowledge of certain classical languages is due entirely to the Rosetta Stone, an ancient rock crib sheet which has the same passage translated into several languages. Here, perhaps for the first time, I will endeavor to provide the same service for certain oral dialects of the English language, which may otherwise be lost to us once their supporting cultures subside. I hope this will be both informative and entertaining.

London street:
Blood dju fink cos your up in my face I won't step to, dough? You get me? Brrap. Na man I will shank you, yeah, cos you ain't never giving props to me and my family, but cos we were like this yeah you getta walk. Today, dough, you get me? Pssh.


Mexican holmes:
Hey holmes you wanna stop dat? You know me, ey, you know my people, you don' wanna ride with me, cos I will go loco, I will go loco, and you don' wan' see me stepping, holmes. My moms, she's no happy, you need to show that woman some care, yeah? Carnalito we used to roll, so you live today. Today, ey?

London irish:
Now hold on dare a minute lad. I tink you'd better get yerself a drink or something, because, and I'll be honest with you, you're really starting to get on me tits. Don't make me take you outside cos mother of Mary I will and you saw what happened to the Flannigan lad. Now why'd you have to go and be so rude about me ma? You get off today, ye cheeky git, because of how's we used to be alright and that, but you'd better not try me if I've had a rough day, alright now? Jaysus.

London gentleman's club:
My dear fellow, please don't think for one moment that simply because you are deporting yourself in an insufferably aggressive manner you will be able to intimidate me - do you understand? Quite the opposite: I am perfectly prepared to defend myself by whatever means necessary, should the occasion arise, especially in the light of the disrespectful remarks you recently directed towards my relations. Yet I shall refrain from escalation as a mark of consideration towards our formerly cordial acquaintance. I can only hope that you will not be so bold as to test my reserve in future, by golly.


Sorry to any Mexicans, Irish, or Londoners reading this post.

wake up Mr West

So I have a rehearsal at ten. Two alarms were set, there was no way I could miss it. But at twelve I was being shouted awake by my organ scholar - how had I managed to miss so much of it? Heart pounding I shot up in bed, looked at the clock. It was twenty to six. I woke up maybe seven more times until, thank God, the alarm went off just now.

Why do dreams have to be so tricksy? The worst so far, which I've had for years, is the girlfriend. When I was thirteen I had an epic dream about the best date ever, which culminated in us riding the top deck of a London bus, at the front, pretending to be flying. I didn't really have a girlfriend, but I missed her so much when I woke up that I nearly cried.

But feel free to try the superman thing.

appologies, a whinge, and some americans

Did I expend all my blogging energies over a few meager posts, having enticed you with promises of 'updates' and 'news'? No, still here, but my computer has bitten the dust. It has a very bright virus which is invisible to scanners and tries to take over my email every two seconds. It has a slightly dimmer friend, following it around like a short kid behind a bully, which screams 'You have a virus, let me clean it now!' I'm told that the program, once bought, installs several fake viruses on your system then proudly removes them. These clever resourceful bastards have pretty much earned my pc.

So, I'm back to the flack of university, with a borrowed computer and a caffeine habit that now costs 75p a day. For some reason, late nights, early mornings, dehydration, whatever, waking up is always painful (physically) and getting up requires nearly more willpower than I have. The work is looming as high as usual, all time is double booked, the food is either rubbish or prohibitively expensive, and watching tv has been upgraded from pleasurable to guiltily pleasurable.

But on my first day back I had the pleasure to sing with Tufts sQ!, who are a very talented a cappella group on tour from Tufts University, Boston. The recordings online aren't great, this should give you an idea. Banter was similarly high class, and most of the guys had learned their British accents from Jeremy Clarkson, so anything good was the best ... 'in the WORLD'.

Anyway, that's it for now, hopefully the water is working again or it's going to be another bad hair day.

klunk...

... goes the coffee mug on my desk. It is huge, and still half full of the good stuff. The froth keeps it hot, makes it seem less dense and damps the klunks as my still uncoordinated arm tries to lower the mug through the wood.

It's a funny situation I find myself in today. Time for me is like a weekly calendar in which appointments pleasurable and mundane are clearly pencilled in. Not so precisely as to make me punctual, that's what the computer's for, but I have a good grasp of what's to be looked forward to. This is the fuel I need for the dull days, or the hard days: something good around the corner. And when that's gone, something else. So the really trying times are not so much due to the present, but an eventless horizon.

What's curious is the horizon is looking pretty featureless at the moment: a couple of good gigs, return to uni, some interesting work, I think I've spotted the twist in my novel - but nothing to wish a day away for or to trouble my sleep. Nevertheless, instead of the usual uninspired blankness I have an undefinable hope, not rooted in anything I can think of. It's like the key of my life has been transposed up a fraction of a tone or some dilute pink dye's been slipped into my contact solution.

Speaking of which, off to the opticians. Hopefully I need a top up and distant trees will be crisp again.

even facebook wants me to work

An ad just told me to stop procrastinating. God. Isn't that going to lose facebook a lot of money? So today is the day of work which will solve all my problems. A mere 3000 words should cover it, despite having no idea how to connect them. Right now is the happiest bit of a day like this: a big coffee, drunk slowly, and the earnest checking of the many ways people can contact me. They haven't, not even my abuser, which is sad as they are almost certainly the only person outside of my family to have read this. Perhaps I shouldn't have been rude.

I did some exercise yesterday, and through some miracle don't hurt today. It's for the usual health/vanity reasons, but I like to think I have it harder than other people. My bones are slim and not very dense, with no effect other than to make me look skinnier than I am. Wine bottles have a dome of glass at the bottom to make them seem more voluminous than they are - this is what I'm missing, metaphorically. But being ripped would put me at the epicentre of a lot of swooning, which would be inconvenient.

Right, here goes.

my first feedback

Hello again dear reader. An email bingleboop has just informed me that I have my very first comment. Avid readers will have noticed it under my first post, but I reprint it for your convenience:

Anonymous:
you have dog s*** tastes.

It's flattering that this person feels so comfortable with me that they are able to be this honest. It reminds me a little of my favourite YouTube comment of all time, left on a cleverly staged spoof video of a paddling pool accident. A few people are incredulous, a few people are taken in by the cgi, but one genius comes up with: 'If you think this is real I hope a dog licks your b***s'

Amazing: people are happy to publish these opinions to the world, even under the cloak of anonymity. Okay, we don't know who you are, but you do - doesn't it make you a little less happy to be you? It would almost make sense if my tastes were controversial, but photography? Stand up? Okay, classical music is asking for it and a cappella isn't 'hip hop' or whatever you kids are listening to these days, but why does it bother you? I suppose the serious point here is that anonymity and lightening fast communication mean it is easier than ever to say whatever you want to whoever you want, and its both a boon and a curse. The advice used to be to sleep on a letter, but there's no button for that on MSN. The facelessness of it makes it easy to say things which would be regrettable in a letter, embarrassing over the phone and dangerous face to face.

In other news, I discovered that shopping isn't always ghastly and that glass is not a liquid - just an 'amorphous solid'. Old window panes are thicker at the bottom because they were bad at making glass, and putting them the other way up would've been silly.

laugh and the world looks at you funny

I spent most of my formative years trying to be funny, and was very successful. Either the joke was funny, and people laughed (often indulgently, as if I had crafted the joke from pasta tubes and asked that it be stuck on the fridge) or it fell flat and they had the opportunity to respond with their own joke, such as miming the phone call 'taxi for Don' or by standing very still and making tumbleweed noises. Dogs howling, church bells ringing. This would go on for some time, and people would go away amused.

Perhaps I should have cared more for the difference between 'laughing at' and 'laughing with', but as far as I was concerned if there was laughter then the job was done. Perhaps with more discretion would have come the state of 'cool', in which people are admired and respected for doing very little. When I do very little I am told to get on with something, usually tidying.

The inspiration for this blog came from Stephen Fry's podcasts, which are even more witty and interesting than me. It's all good, but two particular thoughts seem appropriate for this post. First, he considers whether comedy should be considered the highest of the arts for its ability to unite regardless of class, gender, race, and so forth; its capacity to bring good cheer no matter how little the world affords; its potential to subtly (or crudly) lampoon that which should change. Second, he laments from personal experience how easy it is for a pubblished journalist, or by extension blogger, to believe that what they have to say matters and should be read by other people.

This is the reason you won't find much current affairs here: I know very little, have very little to add, and almost no power to change almost every issue brought to light in the news. Further, so little of what makes the news is representative or informative - informative in the sense that it is data which can be of use to us. For example, I live in a city where children have been reported to stab each other. What has not been reported is the million children going out and getting on with stab-free living and returning completely unscathed. I'm not saying that the victim's death is not a tragedy, but its prominence risks making victims of all of us. Quivering, over-informed, vacillating blobs of fear.

Here ends the diatribe. For your patience, here are two of my favourite stand-up quotes:

'I recently read an interview in Rolling Stone, where he advocated that people should not do drugs, KEITH RICHARDS said that we should not do drugs. Keith, we can't do any more drugs, BECAUSE YOU ALREADY DID THEM ALL! There's none left, we have to wait until you die so we can smoke your ashes, alright?' - Denis Leary

'I don't kill flies but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell, 'Whoa, I'm way too high!'' - Bruce Baum

Progress

Me (confused): 'Are you editing HTML?'
Mum (triumphant): 'Of course.'

Hello, welcome, and goodbye.

'flim-flam, v

trans. a. To humbug, to beguile into (something). b. U.S. To cheat (a person) out of (money) ‘while he is making change for a bill, by distracting or confusing him, so that he pays out more than the proper sum’ (Stand. Dict.).
[...]
Hence flim-flammer U.S. So flim-flammery.'

Hello and welcome to my blog, soon-to-be-home to my thoughts on anything I think you might find mildly diverting. Spurred by the encouragement of my family - 'Do not start a blog, you have better things to do' - I hope to hide from more edifying activities by offering a viewpoint on the things, people, places, music, films and books that make me happy. I promise not to cheat you out of money, and I ask that in return you won't steal my identity.

Perhaps one day writing will be my job, in which case you have the dubious privilege of being amongst my first readers. So your feedback is very welcome. Did I split an infinitive? Mis-quote a lyric, use an unnecessary hyphen? Hooray, educate me. But please don't be mean or filthy in a YouTube comment manner, or I'll give your email address to the kind foreign bankers.

To get things rolling, here is a e-Smorgasbord of my tastes:

A cappella and beatboxing,

Choral music,

Stand up comedy,

Photography