GATHER IT GENTLY

my friend asked me today what kids are into nowadays. and I said that I have less than the foggiest.

well.

I shouted Justin Bieber?!?!!?! a few times. And Miley Cyrus.
I'm never around children, so I don't know. and I don't care. I know what they should be into and that's all that matters. They should be interested in Daniel Defoe, inheriting my debt and living with the SUPERCANCER that's going to kill everyone come 2070 (my ETA in maggotville)
that and decent music. god knows what music's going to sound like in 2070. hopefully white noise. or they'll have properly developed that high pitch noise that adults can't hear into proper music

god I hate that noise
I can't wait until I don't have to hate that noise, before missing that noise before remembering that, fuck, I can grow a proper beard now so who really gives a shit?

So. This thought got me thinking RIGHT NOW NOW NOW about kids over the ages, when childhood was so romanticised and
SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO MUCH BETTER THAN ANY CHILDHOOD YOU EVER HAD, FOOL
and music. of course. So, here follows a collection of songs that make me feel nostalgic for a childhood I never had.

because I was pre-foetal.

happy, happy pre-foetus.


PAUL ROBESON- MA CURLY HEADED BABY. fruiting obsessed with this song at the moment. SO GOOD. I wish this was number 1 right now and forever. Deep.


DINAH WASHINGTON- THIS BITTER EARTH. I wish that my mum vaccumed around the house when I was a toddler singing this beautifully. and the carpet was dirty anyway and no-one cared because, fuck, we had soul. and we were happy.

we had a cleaner.
and a nanny.

and, that's great and all. but. it ain't bitter. and, well, bitter's better than our spotless carpets.


CONNIE FRANCIS- LIPSTICK ON YOUR COLLAR. I used to work with a woman called Wendy and we'd dance around our candle shop to this song with all of the elderly customers. then she'd tell me about spending her afternoons in the record shops, listening to music in booths. and rollerskating up and down the pier. they were all poor, but they had the record halls. my grandparents met each other before they knew each other rollerskating up and down weston-super-mare sea front. I love seeing old people dance. This makes them dance. It makes me smile.


PETER GABRIEL- SLEDGEHAMMER. And my mum dances to this. And she's happy. It's like her spice girls. I'm pretty convinced that if I was a child when Peter Gabriel was around I'd be John Conner from the Terminator and life would be soooo fucking exciting. You just try to kill me, machines...


IMAGINATION- JUST AN ILLUSION. before everyone knew about AIDS, everything looks like so much fun.

Also. That Imagination video is officially my favourite music video ever. Just FYI.
I feel like one of those creepy old men now. Like someone who's always reaching into the past and discovering that -goshdamned it- everything used to be so innocent. and we were happy.

which is, of course, a crock of shite.
but at least children were happy. children are far too sexualised now. that's a topic for another blog post. I'll do it tomorrow, promise. PREPARE FOR A RANT. OF EPIC PROPORTIONS. WELL. ACTUALLY MORE A LAMENT THAN A  RANT, BUT I'LL LEAVE YOU WITH THIS CROCK OF SHITE TO ILLUSTRATE MY FORTHCOMING LAMENT, ARE YOU READY? GOOD. ok then.




JUST SAYIN'

TAKE A DIRTY PICTURE

So I feel really weird when I think that someone finds me attractive. I always have. I kind of see myself as a weird gangly ragdoll, not something that's physical
or, you know,
physical to other people.

on the bus today there was this one guy who kept staring at me and

I'm probably being vain/paranoid

but I felt really really weird. not uncomfortable. more human. I forget that I have a body far too often for my own good.
I opened up my moleskine, wrote twattish things and tried to not make eye contact.

always, always on trains as well. 14 year old girls have some sort of magnetic attraction to me. They're always giggling and not in an -OHMYGOD HE'S SO TRAGICALLY EMBARRASSING I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M SHARING THE CARRIAGE WITH HIM FMLFMLFMLFML- kind of way, but in an omg he just looked my way omgomg my hormones What Am I Going To Do With All Of My Fucking Hormones...

...baby?

kind of way. which I find kind of sweet, actually.

sidenote: I sound like a cunt. I realise this. I'm happy that i'm happy enough for this trivial shite to seem like something to me: sidenote over

not that I would ever reciprocate it. but still, it's weird. I prefer being something without a body
I mean, fuck. I've got a blog. I live on Facebook. I live through my sims. It's not that I don't like being with people all the frigging time and being sociable, but. I never think about actually being with them. To you I'm just words and weird pictures and



it was nothing perverse, just eyes. on me. eyes.



i'm not used to that much intimacy with strangers. sure, in my single days I was all to happy to swap fluids with any twat without knowing their name/age/species, but that was...it was different. it wasn't intimate. I was using them

not being objectified
(without my consent)
(I've got a boyfriend to whom I consent)

not that I had a flip out. or anything. I opened up my moleskine, wrote twattish things, tried not to make eye contact and bought myself a pot of strawberry hot chocolate.

fuck, that's good hot chocolate.

BUT OUR LOVE CAN BE THE MOAT

I went into a Dr. Martens shop once because it was raining. Me and my friend tried on these ridiculous pair of UK Print DMs and the salesman gave us the side eye


the thing is
I kind of wanted a safety pin through my ear
and rips in my underwear
and something that made a noise when I stomped.


Anyway. As you can tell from the purply button thing at the bottom of this site, I'm kind of affiliated with VICE and they just invited me/everyone who reads this blog to a free party where they celebrate all of the lesbians and teen punks who've been wrecking puddles in their DMs for 50 years.
Go.


http://viceland.com/drmartens50th/

HIGH, LIKE THE 4TH JULY

I kind of wish I was more european sometimes. Then I'd understand the signs in Polish supermarkets. Or at least give them some custom.

One just opened down the road. I've never seen anyone in it apart from the owner who stands at the back of his shop looking wistfully out of the window. There was a woman in there once. I imagine that it was his wife. And they spoke, in Polish

her-you need to sell some more food. we need more blankets and key rings. I only have the one key-ring.
him-it's hard to sell stuff to people who don't care. there's an established supermarket down the road and, well. it's hard. I can whittle you a key-ring from my old teeth. they're all dropping out, you know.
her- I know. it's impossible to kiss you. i taste old potatoes and suet.
him- what's wrong with suet? suet's the foundation of many many nice puddings.
her- they're fatty. you're getting fat. you were never this fat in Poland. also, your mother is fat. you know that your mother is fat. do you want to look like your mother?
him- my mother's pregnant.
her- your mother's not pregnant, she's seventy five.
him- she is pregnant.
her- unless your mother's pregnant with key-rings i don't give a damn. i want the metal ones. not rotten teeth.
him- fine. you see how easy it is. come work one day in the shop. one day.
her- fine

and still. No customers. but but but. They have this fantastic energy drink thing which has a picture of the most Eastern European looking muscle-man ever clutching a can. And I would like to be that man. Also, I want to wear garish sunglasses and bright pink t-shirts and be really pervy and inappropriate but heck. that's ok. I'm danish. or swedish.
FFFFUCK I LOVE SWEDES.  Without reason. Pure, adulterated love.
Europeans, in general. This is of course all in general. Europeans in general give less of a shit than most other people. They're born with ire in their eyes. And they love the best music ever. And they're extreme.

Us Brits. We're just angst. We're bones and guilt and
it all seems so false.

Next year I might do the shitty Brit thing and EXPLAW EURUP.
Maybe I'll go here. It's totally Europe. The other parts are on VBS.tv. search for Groezrock if you want to see the rest of it.

HE MADE ME A TAPE OF JOY DIVISION, AND TOLD ME THERE WAS A PART OF HIM MISSING

So, I'm a little bit obsessed with Perfume Genius' album, Learning. If you haven't listened to it yet, DO IT NOW. If I knew how to link it on Spotify, I would, but I clearly don't. I am a little bit technologically retarded at the best of times. I'm on my fifth iPod.

I lost the first one.
The second one never woke up.
The third one was dropped from the top of a tall building, wind in my eyes.
I accidentally drowned my last one in Apple Juice. The irony was not lost on me at the time. For lack of wanting to express myself in a better way, I lol'd.

and now I'm poor. I'm actually eating rice every night. no money for lunch. just my iPod, typewriter and lots and lots of bunting for company.
don't tell me I wasted my immense wealth on crap. my gold-winged plastic pig watering can begs to differ.
(give me money?)

god. that's so fucking internet of me.

anyway, I'm back at university now. If you read my blog a fair while ago you may remember that I mentioned dropping out. Well. I didn't. I decided to grow the fuck up and carry on with my life of reading and writing prett looking story books.

and being back, I feel like I have to dive the fuck back into writing on this thing because it's about the only thing that keeps me from working now. And, shit. Work's a drag. Not that I need to tell you that.


All of the freshers have been running around campus. I hate them. I was sat in the piazza-

(Warwick has a piazza. It's like a council estate amphitheatre)

-with my copy of Robinson Crusoe and there were these two guys performing some sort of weird capoeira. Weird in the sense that they'd probably been doing it for about a year and were falling over. But they were doing it for ages, and it was kind of entrancing. I'm stuck on page thirteen of Robinson Crusoe now because I was staring at their awkward contortions for ages

until I got distracted by these freshers who were typically flouting their virginity by talking about their mates who got some 'gash'

so, where has all the beauty gone?

It was raining. I enjoyed the rain. My copy of Robinson Crusoe has crinkled pages, and my iPod ran out of battery (it didn't die, this time) stuck on Perfume Genius' 'You Won't B Here'.

I forgot about it. I went to my lectures, came back home, charged and Perfume came sparkling through the headphones

'they won't be here tomorrow. they won't be here tomorrow.'

an empty piazza. a sky full of rain. a copy of Robinson Crusoe melting in my hands.

imagining the perfect day.

here's 'You Won't B Here'.
It was first posted in 2007. I feel behind the times.

SHE CAN ALWAYS BE REPLACED, SHE CAN ALWAYS BE REPLACED

I remember how much I love writing now that I'm doing it again. I'm going to crack out some words this afternoon. Bleeding hearts, you've got competition because I'm on the poetry stroll. I suppose I've been feeling a bit lost recently. If lost = terrified.

I graduate in less than a year's time.

And I need to find a job/something to do/something that will mean I don't have to come back to somerset to live and walk and while away time and money

and I need money. I took out my first ever credit card the other day just so I can pay for the rent of a house that I'm not even staying in yet. I'm proud that I'm finally doing what everyone else my age was doing a couple of years ago. I think I'm proud. I'm more proud that I've managed to resist it up until now without a job/regard for what I'm spending.

so I'm going to have to get a part time job, which will be glorious. I've always wanted to be a waiter/barkeep/I've already worked in a shop but heck, shops are fun.

but THE FUTURE. I didn't realize how expensive it was to get a Masters. I've been toying with the idea of going for one ever since all of my friends who have graduated have been complaining all over facebook about being unemployed and depressed and poor. But I think that taking a masters would leave me more depressed, more unemployed and more poor than if I just went out, rented a shitty apartment in London and worked in KFC for my whole life. 'Writing on the side', of course. And when one of my poems is published, we'll see who's laughing then! That's right! You.

I've always said 'I'M MOVING TO NEW YORK', but realistically New York's not going to want a recently graduated delusional with no idea what he's going to do, just that he wants to be able to write and watch crap reality tv and be a hermit while contributing anything to THE CITY.

besides, a masters degree in New York would cost me over £50,000. I don't have £50,000. If I went on Total Wipeout, 101 Ways To Leave a Gameshow and Deal or No Deal, I might be able to scratch together £50,000. Furthermore, I don't really want to pay someone £50,000 to tell me how to write. I'm far too obstinate for that.

so, well. if someone out there is reading this and wants to give a hardworking, keen, spirited, intelligent boy a job anytime soon...let me know! I will be ever so grateful.

well. It's worth a shot...

ALL THINGS GO, ALL THINGS GO

We all know that it is/was Summer and there's more sun than usual and

well

it's time to talk music. FUCK actually, I'll do a fashion post first. FUCK. prepare yourself for a fashion+music mash-up. This post is going to be like a catwalk.

bam bam bam bam WURQ

This is what I think you should be wearing/listening to at the same time.

1. anything JWoww wears and Requiem by Kashiwa Daisuke

JWoww's style is determined by how much flesh she can get away with legally showing while somehow maintaining an air of don't-fuck-with-me-or-I'll-turn-your-dick-inside-out. She basically grabs whatever scraps of material she can gather from the numerous bitch-downs she has outside of dirty nightclubs. It's spectacular. Now, imagine that you're menopausal and listen to Kashiwa Daisuke. Her Requiem is stunning. It's a song that catharts fear without falling into depression. It isn't a cookies and cream song that says 'hey, it's ok to be afraid. it's ok that everything's shit. You'll get through it...' nor is it a death metal anthem about how EVERYTHING'S SHIT DIEDIEDIE. It's pain and breath. It's saying that everything's shit, but fuck. we'll dance anyway. and we'll breathe. and everything's shit. but fuck. let's get fucked. And there's nothing more 'getting fucked' in my mind than a menopausal woman in rag-whore clothes dancing to weird electro on the sunny beaches of the craggy British coast line. There's nothing more Summery than that.

2. velvet slippers (monogrammed) and Love Lust by King Charles

Summer's also about being fucking decadent for a while, being romantic and feeling glorious about everything. There's no item of clothing more glorious than monogrammed, velvet slippers. You can't get a decent pair for under £70. I want a pair. Summer's about being outside in the garden, BBQ on in the day. Haze in the early evening, chairs still outside. Blankets around shoulders, wearing slippers and smoking cigars. Velvet slippers and cigars and tilting the head back slightly with a small chortle, subtle flirts and happy love for a while. And finding chirpy songs like 'Love Lust' to impress your friends with and say- yeah, I saw him in Brixton like five years ago. He's gone downhill, but what can you expect?- before someone on spotify interrupts you and it's gone. And the song's over and you're left outside cold, wearing silly slippers. And there are bills to pay, and you spent £70 on slippers which won't even keep you warm...not such a good idea any more. And the head tilt, small chortle, subtle flirts girl never fucked you. But still.

3. animal masks and The Ritz by Realboy

All of the hipsters are wearing animal masks, which makes sense. They need to look like they're hiding something. Hipsters want everyone to think that they could/should be spending all of their time shooting up in loft flats decorated with blood paintings by some tragic dead/dying poet. The half-animal masks hide the spots where their blood-shot eyes and two ton eye bags should be hanging over their razor sharp cheekbones. Besides, animal masks are twee and makes them look like they couldn't give a fuck. The truth is that they give a fuck more than everyone else. That they live with their parents and don't have razor sharp cheekbones because mummy makes too many nice home cooked meals. The animal mask hipster has posters of Pete Doherty in his/her room and plays Mumford and Sons in the privacy of his/her 'ironically decorated' (ie. unchanged since their pre-puberty days) bedroom. These people are twats. They own ukuleles. Heck, I don't want to go off on a tangent here, but I really really hate hipster types. They're so frigging desperate. There's one girl at university who wears vintage etc., has her close circle of 'in' girl friends etc., is butt ugly but ooh that's alright because aesthetics don't matter etc., but she is about the most vile girl that you can ever come across. Unless you're with one of her ugly girl friends she'll ignore you completely. Unless you're talking about Kierkegaard or Jay Jay Pistolet she'll think that you're retarded because she twitches her retarded frog features on her pancake face. She's the girl in school who no-one liked because she smelt of grape juice and now she's discovered that it's cool to shop in charity shops so she has a HUGE sense of entitlement. There's another girl who did some mephodrone once and dates a guy who's involved with the one nightclub in town. Big deal. People think that she cums diamonds. Hipsters dirty themselves with the misplaced notion that they're entitled to everyone's adoration because they look like fucking arsewipes wearing whatever kitsch and ohsocool thing that they decide to wear. Which, for now, is animal masks. So, fuck. Let's mock them and let's dance while doing it. There's nothing contrived about Realboy's The Ritz. It's a really really fun tune. Dance like a mother fucker, wearing an animal mask...then take it off and piss on it.

4. AA see thru short sleeve t-shirt and Shadows by Au Revoir Simone

OK. I won't shout any more. This is my Summer. Genuinely. And I would probably hate it if everyone did the same as me/wore the same shirt but...it's the best shirt ever. British Summers are never all that hot but it's good to get a bit naked. This shirt allows for semi nude moments. It's really soft. It's huge. It drapes more beautifully than anything EVER. It saved my life at Glastonbury...I had awful hayfever and I used this shirt as a gauze around my face. I looked like a terrorist, but it worked beautifully. Also, it grows and I've got into the habit of wearing it like a dress shirt around the house with just my boxers on underneath. And why not? Heck, if it weren't for indecency laws I'd go out wearing just the shirt. And why not? Au Revoir Simone are the most beautiful girls with the most beautiful voices. I listened to Shadows in the woodland behind my house the other day, wearing my favourite shirt. Crunching leaves with sunlight peaking through the branches. Birds and a carton of melting ice cream. That's Summer.