Random shit

So, music! That’s a nice neutral topic to focus on for the time being while I work through what needs to be worked through. Here’s what I’m listening to and why:

The Postal Service with their one and only album, Give Up. Headed by the floppy haired, thick glassed lyrical manipulator from Death Cab for Cutie, it’s got a lot of weirdly intriguing pull. I first got put on to them by Charlotte after she showed me that they were indeed the original band behind Such Great Heights a song I fell in love with when covered by Iron and Wine in the Gardenstate Soundtrack (I’m tired of italicizing everything). When i started listening to them I did the whole predictable listening to that song over and over and disregarding the rest of the album. But I forced myself to listen to it and, funnily enough, the album has grown on me. But the thing is, it’s grown on me the same way that Death Cab’s newest album grew on me; there are some songs I thoroughly like and sometimes flick back to listen to again, but most of them are just listenable. I guess that’s pretty much the same with most albums but these songs just seem to filter out into background noise a lot more than they should.

Currently on my most listened to list is Omar Rodriguez and Lopez on their album Calibration. The only reason I picked out this album to listen to is because of my strange obsession with the Mars Volta and At the Drive-In. Those two bands are also the reason that I picked up a few old Red Hot Chili Pepper albums and gave them another whirl, discovering the strange sense of nostalgia and happiness as I rediscovered that they were actually good. Anyway, the collaboration between Rodriguez and Lopez is a match made by Salvador Dali. They way the sounds meld and fold is just so bizarre that on first listening I had to turn it off because it was making my head hurt. Wikipedia informs me that the album was influenced by electronic music and acid-jazz, which explains the bewildering headaches. Still, after a few listens I find myself hooked and wishing there were more lyrics in the album so I could sing along more.

Another album on my MP3 player is Elbow with their latest album Seldom Seen kid. It was recommended to me by an old friend who swore by its excellence, and I had to reply to him with a solid ‘meh’. They’re not bad. I can listen to them, but it’s only for a few songs before I get completely bored and want to move on. The only exception to this is the well played Grounds for Divorce and god I wish there really was a cocktail called that.

Besides those it’s smae old same old playing in my ears. I had a hit of nostalgia the other week and listened through Placebo’s greatest hits CD, and was completely not disappointed. I remember almost all the words to every song too, so I can mime along when no one’s looking on the bus.

there is one band that I’m looking more into as we speak though. I was watching late night music channels and Last Day of Magic by The Kills and I was going to flip the channel over to something new, but one of the first images is of the lead singer, a really cute girl with long black hair, sporting a black eye. And by god it’s as if they knew my soft spot for girls with split lips. I grinned and beared and funnily enough the song was actually good. It’s got a good beat and good a sound and the girl is oh so very cute. She looks cuter with the cuts and bruises but I guess I can’t complain.

The simplicity of a sunny day

There are some things that make you happy, and there are some things that make you sad. Some things make you both. And there is the rising sadness of a realisation. Why now? Why now?

Maybe this is just today. Maybe this is just my mood today and that’s it. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and none of this will be relevant. I’ll go and drink myself to oblivion tonight and wake up tomorrow sick and heavy with forgetfulness. I’ll read this and dismiss myself with a wave of a hand and lie with my head in the freezer. Maybe.

And maybe not. And if that’s the case then I’ll sit and laugh and scream to the mother fucking night WHY FUCKING NOW YOU CALLOUS WHORE?

Page 3

It took me four hours to draw this scene. I think it’d be awesome to include a graphic novel chapter within the book. But the difficulty of the drawings and the practicality of the story is niggling at me. Is it worth it to continue? I feel like I should focus on the actual book, then release this as a secret extra chapter on the internet afterwards (assuming I ever get published oh ho ho).

Still, it’s fun for now.

She looked younger, but I felt she wouldn’t lie to me

There were dozens of people in my room. But it wasn’t really my room. It would’ve been my room if it was one floor up and in a different building, but it was kinda my room nonetheless. The place was a mess. People sat in the bookshelf and over the desk like clutter, but the bed was the only thing clear with the exception of the two hookers. They sat there playing with each other, one with dirty blonde hair and stretch marks round her thighs and the other with red auburn hair and bright blue eyes that smiled at me. She looked like someone I know. No, I knew. I know this person in present day, but the girl lying on my bed was from years ago. She looked sweet and innocent even as the other hooker liked her burgundy nipples.

“Eighty bucks my good friend!” a voice called from somewhere in the crowd, “enjoy!”

I climbed into the bed and they removed my clothes piece by piece, discarding them out of sight. They clambered all over me, a mass of flesh that licked and nibbled and grabbed.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“I’m twenty-three,” the blonde replies, giving me a toothy grin framed with cheap red lips.

“No. You. How old are you.”

Little Red looks at me, her cheeks blush. “Sixteen,” she says, and wraps her lips round the blondes toes, “I’m a little young.”

“You’re legal, so it’s fine by me.”

“Only the best for you my friend!” The voice calls again.

It’s then that I become aware of the people in the room, watching and gawking and salivating and masturbating into darkness. I gather my clothes and the clothes of the hookers and lead them to the door. The door was covered by an ornate grill, and that swung aside ominously to a destitute stairwell. A bat flew at me and gnawed at the air as I held it back. The blonde watched on, unamused. Little Red look worried but had to express a giggle. I eventually fought the bat off and it spiraled up a ladder and into the blinding sun.

“So do you need the money?”

“No,” Little Red replies, “you friend paid us earlier.”

“Oh.”

They start walking off down the steps and I wait a moment before calling out. “Wait!”

“What?” the blonde answers.

“No you. Never you. Little Red, would it be possible for me to have your phone number? You remind me of someone.”

“Why can’t you talk to this person herself?”

“I can’t. It’s complicated. I can talk to her, but not in the way I want to, of you get me.”

She looked flattered but sad. Her hair fell around her face as she looked down at her breasts. “I thought you might do this. I left my number on a piece of paper. It’s in your room.”

And she span on her heel and walked away, heels clicking down the echoed steps. I walked back to my room and a huge black man handed me a sheaf of paper. “She told me to give this to you.” And with that, he disappeared. I opened the thin paper and looked over the words. She had used red ink, and most of the words were indecipherable, but I could catch a few.

“Sorry” it began “I need to… i hope that one… I can have someone….. fucking cunt fucking fucking cunt…. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry… nice… sweet… hooker like me.

-Little Red”

I knew it was a dream, or I suspected at least. I spent the rest of the night or day or something thinking about everything. When I woke up I practically forgot about it all until I looked in my drawer and found a pair of red boxers. It all rushed back to me and now I feel so strange.

Excerpt from Imagination Machine [Unedited]

You know what? Sometimes I make myself so damn excited it’s untrue.

Anticlimax!

Well that was fucking boring.

There’s this long rushing feeling in my chest, and I know where it came from because I looked somewhere that I shouldn’t look at. I’ve looked at the past in its present form and the best and worst feeling is coursing through me and instead of sitting here and watching Dawn of the Dead like I was going to ten minutes ago I’m going to go out and wander round the dark.

I realise I’m I’m going to be late for work because of this post.

It’s been a while since I told a real story on this, so I thought I’d tell you the epic journey of my notebook.

To set the scene for this story, I feel that I must confess my fetish with notebooks. There are many tales of me walking innocently into a book store and exiting with a leather bound beauty under my arm and a desperate flurry of thoughts of what to write in it. There’s the famous case of a tanned leather notebook with soft beige pages that’s been sitting in my bookshelf for over two years because I can’t bring myself to write in it. It looks too good. It’s a good weight, a good size, and I know if I write on it I’ll just foul it up. Along side the infamous notebook stands seven other notebooks and sketch books. With one sole exception, none of them are finished. I just like having them. A lot. Hence the fetish.

(When asked what my top three things were in sex, I replied lacy lingerie, mild bondage, and notebooks. If they were ever combined I wouldn’t know what to do)

But there’s this one moleskin notebook I have that’s always kept in the right inside breast pocket of my leather jacket. It was given to me as a present on my trip to Norway a year and a half ago, and now it’s almost finished. I’ve budgeted in it and noted conversations down, observations, some private thoughts, and now it’s four pages to go.

I had a plan for this notebook. I was going to write in it and complete it on the very day that I started it a year before. But then, something happened. I lost it. Sadly. It fell out of jacket pocket during a lecture and I spent three days hiking round campus and asking anyone I could if they had it. I got a few strange looks from unwary students, but that was all I found. I resigned the loss of my precious notebook and started another one, one that a good friend had given my for a birthday or christmas (they’re so close that the memories mingle, I can’t tell the difference). I set out with this new notebook and grew fond of it with every nonsensical page that I wrote in it. There’s even a section where I compare a random man walking by to a walking sun for his yellowness. My old notebook was gone, lost, mourned, and then practically forgotten.

And then I got it back through the door. With a note.

Apparently a man named Stewie had found it in the lecture hall after I left and decided to keep it for himself (despite my name and address emblazoned on the first page). He had had this book for roughly four months, probably reading it and rereading it and learning all its contents. At first I felt slightly violated at someone reading my thoughts and knowing how much I earn/spend every month, but then I felt disappointed. This man, this Stewie, whoever he is, did not write a single thing within the notebook. Not one. There wasn’t even a score that a pen might have left from hovering too close to the page. The book was returned in its immaculate, somewhat battered condition.

So here’s my message to all you notebook finders out there. Please write something within the pages. It doesn’t matter if it’s stupid or nonsensical or even midly threatening, just make it memorable. Otherwise the sotry of losing a notebook and finding it again will just turn into a long, boring, pointless blog entry. Much like this one.

Preemptive Retaliation (5)…

Sometimes I swear I can hear you, in the wrinkles of clothes, in the hum of toasters, in the mold slowly forming in tea. I swear it. It’s there in my battered, torn, stinking shoes on the balcony. It’s in my camera and my computer. It’s in the scented pages of old books and in empty deodorant cans and contact fluid bottles. I hear you most when I climb into an unmade bed and feel the hairs on the sheets. It’s when I sort the duvet into the right position and in the soft, sagging folds I can hear “It’s wrong! It’s all wrong!” in that naturally cute voice of distress. And I use my feet and my hands to turn the duvet, button side down and the warmth of your arm is draped across my chest and the exhaling sigh of an injustice righted. It’s in the cigarettes over coffee and in the mirror where your grumpy face lingers in a shadow before realising your feelings and casting aside all maladies in a damp, naked hug against the door. It’s in a denim skirt not yours that rides higher than it should and in the sheets upon sheets of paper folded neatly in their envelopes hidden in my drawers. The chirrup of a phone. The pixels of an image. I hear it everywhere and nowhere. But especially in bed. That’s when I hear it the most with phantom kisses of thanks on my cheek and my hand grazing the tiny, imperceptible hairs on your thigh. My head on your belly with a hand running through what’s left of my hair and my fingers pressing hard, needed dimples into your back, shoulders, neck and breasts. Your nose piercing aching against the press of my cheek and my lips running a course round your chin, throat, chest and stomach. I can hear your voice in all these things but what I want is to hear your voice in my ear as I fall asleep and come home from work and sit hunched over this keyboard with fingers whirring at useless, random thoughts and in my bed telling me that it’s wrong, it’s all wrong until I make it right again and you fall asleep and grind your teeth at dreams to come.

Lists, glorious lists

To read, I have:

The Colour of a Dog Running Away – Richard Gwyn
The Kitty Killer Cult – Nick Smith
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath (over halfway through and killing myself with boredom. HA! Get it?)
The Outsider – Albert Camus
Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
Seymour – J.D.Salinger
Of Mice and Men – John Steinback
Insomnia – Stephen King
American Gods – Neil Gaiman
Down and Out in Shoreditch and Horton – Stewart Home (may give that one a miss)
Today has Never Happened – Catherine Smith
Ghost in the Shell (1, 1.5 and 2) – Shirow Masamune
I Can’t Wait on God – Albert French
As Time Goes By – Michael Walsh
Snuff – Chuck Palahniuk (when I get my hands on/all over/in it)
Pocket Penguin Collection – Various
Long Walk to Freedom – Nelson Mandela (it must be a long walk for such a bloody long book)

To watch, I have:

City of Men
Coffee and Cigarettes
Forbidden Planet
Vanishing Point
Heroes – Season 1
House – Season 3
Cowboy Bebop (I’ve seen it too many times but I just can’t stop)

To do, I have:

Meet with friends old and new
Survive the whitewash picket fence inanities of office chatter
Wake up on time
Not smoke all my cigarettes before dawn (dammit)
Survive financial crippling
Send letters to various acquaintances

To write, I have:

Everything