Taking Stock

It would appear that I've been in Liverpool for a month. The fact that I can say that - and with a roof over my head, which will be paid for tomorrow, honest - comes as a nice surprise. I still have yet to hear a decent band, although happening upon this fella in a dingy basement full of Englanders glistening with sweat slightly less alcoholic than things I've paid good money for at the bar was a welcome diversion. Bartenders in this country don't seem to know the difference between vodka and water. And with the spirit measures being quite a bit smaller on this side of the Channel, drinks have a nasty habit of sneaking up on a body.
Now to teach my self how to drink vodka and coke, a skill that for one reason and another I never learned in Ireland. There's a time for everything I suppose, and the time when the offy's run out of everything else is better than most. I'll keep you posted.

The Town Where Rock is Dead

And as if by magic...

Liverpool! Made it easily enough, although I now owe every bank in Belfast money. Fuckit, clearly a problem for Future Jim. The mug.

I've been here for three weeks, during which time I've drank pretty much nothing but under-priced, watered down vodka and listened to nothing but remixes of dance and r&b numbers no-one particularly liked to begin with. Turns out the English can only dance to music they recognise. May have been the same in Belfast too, but Buckfast and incisive social commentary aren't easy bedfellows.
Speaking of, while meandering around looking for a pizza that doesn't taste like an inferior Pizza Hut (exactly as good as it sounds), I happened upon an off licence. In itself, quite unusual, because anyone who doesn't but their vodka at one of the sixty million Tescos, Tesco Expresses, Tesco Metros, Tesco Alfrescos or Tesco Putanescos, or else Sainsbury's, Asda slash Walmarts or Aldis or any of their bastard offshoots, is a fool. But being slightly twisted, I found myself drawn through the door into a massive perspex box with an off-licence scrunched in round the outside. Kind of felt like a guinea pig in a Scottish guy's flat.
And lo and behold, jemmied in on the right-hand side- Buckfast, several bottles of, price six round pounds apiece. So two bottles I lift. I've been forcing it down me; tastes wrong here for some reason, even wronger than it tasted in Belfast. I always maintained that a bottle drunk anywhere but the walls in Derry in anything other than darkness with dirty orange light pollution bouncing off clouds that mean business, is an inferior bottle. But as with them all, you stop caring after two mouthfuls.
So I regained a familiar state of mind at least. You know where you are with a Buckfast hangover. A bottle also forms a perfect base for a load of vodka when you intend to have a boogie. Disjoints the mind nicely, and gives a nicely twisted perspective, perfect for the appreciation of dubstep, which is something that never made a lick of sense to me in Belfast, but now strangely does. Anyways, my brain's starting to fall apart round the flu-ridden edges and my head's about to pop, so I think some more Generic Lemsip Substitute, a rum-based digestif, and an attempt at sleep. As you were...

-Jim

Quick Fix

Had to fiddle with the colours on this thing; it's started fucking with my eyes. I'm just taking some time out of my busy schedule of scamming bank managers out of 0% overdrafts (three new accounts opened, and counting), which I swear to James Mason I'll stop doing when I've funded whatever rent I owe. And a bus slash flight slash RIB to Liverpool. And an Electric Picnic ticknick. And a drink of some kind.
Well at least the Taste of the Summer 2009 (as coined by Stone Cold Steve Shipman- Jacques; the red stuff, I'm not a complete fruit) has started to get sickening. This is the appellation Steve places on a beverage, generally a sugary refreshing fruit-based one, at the start of every summer. Last summer (such as it was) my drink was Tesco own-brand 4% lager, which isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. The summer before it was snakebite, the summer before that it was Kopparberg, before it became as riotously expensive as it now is. Every year we drink these things til our kidneys fall out with us, and you can tell when the summer's on its way out because the drink becomes sickly and does nothing but give you a headache. This has now happened with Jacques. Just as well, because I was just starting to fear for my eye-teeth.
So what now? The landlord is still clamped to my back like someone else's shirt on a muggy day, and the bank managers may start talking to each other at any moment. Only one course of action remains- switch to dark rum for the autumn, polish the brass on my neck, and get up them stairs. Word to your mother...

Derry Is An Odd Place

Another town, another hangover, and another library. I've been out of The Town I Recognise So Easily (there's a tune Phil Coulter never wrote) for so long things keep jarring with me every time I'm back.
For example: I had to carry a guitar and a bass to the Dungloe for a gig we're doing tonight. It's a fundraiser for Rich Coast, a film being shot in Derry as I type - upstairs Dungloe, stacksabands, land if you're about. Now for anyone not acquainted with the Walled City, the distance from the depot to the Dungloe is a couple of hundred yards, five minutes' walk uphill. I was stopped three times, by three separate old men, who used to play in bands, and wanted to talk the ear off me about them. Apparently everybody who was young in Derry in the seventies was in a band, and also probably the Ra. Derry's a very strange place to be at half six on a Thursday in August. There's kids up to the age of eighteen, then nobody else younger than 30, except the occasional flock of foreigners swaddled in clothes that would boil my blood if I wore them in the Alps. Prime tourist season this, so they tell me. Must be a very sad place to visit. "Vere are all ze yunk peepil? Vere is all ze laife?" I know from experience, Herr Schneider- they've fucked off to Belfast and England and Scotland and generally have neither the bus fare nor the inclination to get back. You'll see a strange class of individuals come out after dark, fellas and fillies just about to fuck off to uni in the autumn, or reprobates back for a sesh, or the people who found a paying gig and never left. But we don't talk about them.
Anyway, before I get any more on my own nerves.... I dumped my various crap up the stairs in the Dungloe, which brought up some very unusual memories. I was never out of the joint before I fucked off to the West Glasgow that is Belfast. but that's another set of anecdotes to tell in my anec-dotage. I'm off to work on another hangover, and fund a film while I'm at it. Where else would ye get it? To the Walls, and don't spare the Buck...

I Fucked Up

Turns out Gogol Bordello are quite good. Maybe a bottle of gin and a bottle of dark rum were a factor. Who knows? Sorry Laurence, chalk it up as one-all...

Torn Again

Another hangover this time the result of a going-away party for the Cov Beetle, during which we kicked the shit out of his house and tried to make a zombie film on his mobile phone. Upshot is, I lengthened a worrying trend I've been noticing recently, in that I ripped a fuck-off hole in the crotch of my trousers while performing my own stunts in said film. Not as dirty as it sounds. Anyway, partly because I'm off Liverpool at the end of September (they let me in to study Law, the fools) and didn't want to be burdened with unnecessary shit to move over, and partly because I was too damned lazy to carry all the shite from Delhi Street to my current abode round the corner, I chucked out the majority of my trousers and jeans - they hadn't been worn in donkeys, so I figured fuck them. Now the downside to this comes during the move, when I tear a frayed gash in the fork of my jeans trying to pick up a box, thereby leaving me with two other functional pairs of trousers. One bit the dust when I drunkenly tried to wrest my guitar from the mount of shit it was under in my room, the other in the filming of the aforementioned short.
This led to my having to make a bad choice between waddling to Botanic without a gusset in my trousers, or dandering up with a massy hole in the front, and hoping to Hell my boxers did their job,. I chose Boxer Roulette, and set off for a charity shop to replenish the stocks.

A few things I pondered on the way:
- Having a haircut is an expensive and bothersome hobby, not unlike windsurfing, but far less fun - complicated apparatus, dependence of wind conditions etc. Why does everyone look this way if it's so much hassle?
- But then when has that ever mattered to people who worry about the fashion of the day? Botox? Arsenic? Belladonna?
- There was a lot more scope to get off your kite if you were wealthy before Wall Street crashed the first time. It must have been a lot easier to get on with drug stores, rather than shitty Numark chemists, on the corner. That is until the economy went splat, then another World War happened, making the rich poor and the poor dead. And we're still squabbling over who's who today.
- That odd time of day, round about five, when the bakeries and charity shops are closed or closing, but before decent bars or take-aways open properly- what to do if you've £3 in your pocket? Nothing to do really, unless you count going to Witherspoon's for three pints of pish ale, which just about gives you a thirst, and is therefore counter-productive.
So I fucked off here to the old faithful library, to vent some spleen and kick my brain into order again. This weekend will be messy. The one fucker I know in Liverpool's coming back over for his 21st, so we're going to say goodbye to Belfast. You have been warned.

The King is Dead, Long Live the Republic

Library's about to close, so I'll keep this brief. Michael Jackson, the last true globally successful pop star, is dead. Some good tunes, pity about the going mental and subsequent kiddy trouble. Now cue the era, already well-underway despite what Time-Warner-AOL-Behemoth says, of small-time hustlers in the music business, with loads of people bringing the margins down, and far less people making ridiculous money. More will probably come on this subject. One thing though- when did Peter Pan become a euphemism for child molester?

Well that's torn it

It's that time again. What time, you ask? Well, it's that peculiar time where it doesn't matter what time it is. For I, dear reader, am unemployed again. I've made my share of fuckups over the last four years of drug-sprinkled poverty in Belfast, and by and large I like to think I've learned something from them. These things are best handled with a sense of humour, and humour works best when it has a point. But then I do something so staggeringly fucking daft I feel like I've been kicked in the back of my head by my own drunken spastic self.
This something happened (probably the wrong word; 'happened' sounds like it could be someone else's fault) on the 15th of this month. I'd been drinking the night before, not caning it you understand, but because I was working the next afternoon and didn't want to inadvertantly shout at anyone, had drunk sensibly and gone home at some point. Now up I get at one-ish, and out I dash to take calls from people picking bones with Vodafone. Dandy I thought. So down I sit, ten mintues early for my shift, and down I settle to read the BBC website through again. Well at least I thought I was early.
I checked my online worky schedule-checky thing, and found to my bewilderment that I was supposed to be in from 9 that morning, and since there were no managers in the shithole they'd marked me down as AWOL. Again. Then I recalled that I'd made a note of the shifts I was supposed to have been working about three weeks in advance, and not bothered my balls checking it over the last week for any changes. Then, even more bedevillingly, I remembered that because I'd done this sort of thing a couple of times before, and was on a final written warning for this other similar silly-buggery, I was sacked. And I had a cunt of a hangover.
So I decided to cut my losses, and fucked off for a Snickers.
Two plus sides: one, I was paid the Monday after that, and so was able to square up my current landlord for the last of the months' rent I'd not paid the last time I was habitually bothering librarians, and b) I managed to get an interview with Abbey the day I got fired, and as such have only two weeks or so to kill while very skint. An an eye over my shoulder in fear of a Richard Hammond-esque jinx, how hard can it be?

Dylan and the Provincial Craic Vacuum

Been meaning to update this for a while, but what with not being unemployed anymore - although that might not be the case for too much longer - I can't laze about in the library or up in Queen's titting around on a publicly-owned computer. But this morning I find myself in Terry's living room, with lots of sun happening outside, and I wouldn't mind delaying walking home and getting the fuck fried out of me.
's been an odd month, this one. Strange being able to afford to do things again. Even went down to the Dublin to see the Dylan on the 5th there. Although apparently I saw him on the wrong night (bastard typical) because the next night was the end of his tour or some such guff.
I went down with my brother, whose student loan had just come in, the lucky prick, and so was bankrolling the expedition. We got off the bus at four or so, and stationed ourselves in the first bar with an offy attached. Drinking in the street in central Dublin is a lot easier than I thought it would be. Then to the O2 for a bit of Bob.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised; he played with two guitarists, a bassist and drummer, and a mentalist who switched between lap steel, banjo, guitar and I believe accordion at one point. The man himself was mostly on organ with occasional harmonica, and picked up a guitar for Don't Think Twice, It's Alright. Now I'd heard he sits at the side now, facing the band and hiding behind an organ (Zimmerman-frame?), but I didn't really expect to enjoy it. Which I did. Hugely. It was as organised and regimented a set as you'd expect from a man who's been touring solid for forty-odd years, treading the knife-edge between trying to affect people and make a statement, and just knocking it out, going through the motions. I was standing somewhere near this guy, and it sounded great. The major letdown of the evening was the crowd. Of course you're not going to see the same angry young man as you would have in the sixties or even the seventies. But for God's sake, try to enjoy the spectacle when one of the best songwriters ever gives a performance, and appreciate it for what it is. Don't fucking talk over it, maybe dance a little, and for crying out loud TURN ROUND AND WATCH THE STAGE. At times I felt like I was the only one paying attention. And I wouldn't call myself a big fan.
That may have been it though- I went in with pretty low expectations and enjoyed myself more than I thought I would, with a very danceable bluesy set with some well-worked versions of classics and, I'm told, the live debut of a track from the new album. It would have been easy to be disillusioned if you went in with high hopes. For one, he was doing a very good club singer impression. Two, he finished at about 10PM, and that's after three encore tunes. But anyone who goes to see Dylan for his vocal gymnastics is a spoon, and although he probably should have had a support act, I thought a two-hour set of that standard was good value.
After the man himself me and the brother cleared off to a slightly sweaty bar which had rock on the jukebox and a decent stout, and got quietly twatted in a corner. Then we hopped in a taxi to Rathmines, where the rich fuckers live, and snuck into Trinity's halls, which were fucking palatial compared to the borstal I stayed in on the Malone Road. But I suppose at five grand a year it'd need to be. There we drank Bavaria with Scruff (Derry fella who's down there getting a proper education), and I slept on a busted airbed. Dublin's an incredibly nice town if you have money in your pocket. I was only there for a day, but it convinced me I'm going to have to live there at some point. It struck me when I was there that I'd never lived in a properly big city; Belfast may be self-contained and horribly full of its own importance, but a big city it isn't. Johnny Tiernan played And So I Watch You From Afar in Lavery's the other night, and I've never seen a more smug self-congratulatory circle jerk in my life. I think that typified Belfast for me. I'm certainly not alone in the view that nine out of ten bands here are pointless. I know we shouldn't slate local talent, that we should give it the help and the props it deserves, but people here have a very skewed view of what's talent and what's dross. I'd love to say that's the last time I'll be in Lav's, but I'd be lying. Because that's where the tail is. And that's what really matters, after all.

Hair and Soup

Just realised how inaccurate my profile picture yoke is. I got blocked a couple of Saturdays ago (nothing unusual there), and being as it's more clement in Belfast than it's been in a while, and I had a kid sister to christen the next day, I got all my hair sliced off by a Turk with limited English. I now have a hairdo. It stands up by itself. Probably the result of years of yanking my locks out of my face, and shovelling hair out of the way of food or drink intake. Very unsettling, I can tell you. Haven't got a more acurate photo though. I dodge cameras quite well.
Now to go back to work, with a big wobbly belly full of tomato soup, and a big muzzy hangover head that won't go away. A banana, a banana, my kingdom for a banana...

Fuckit

Just found out you can't draft posts on this cunting work computer. I'll be back when I have a full-formed thought. Wouldn't mind venting some things...

Caliban Again

Finished it, to an extent. It's up on Bibiofaction, an online yoke with loads of short stories on. There are several of these about, but this is the only one that:
a) doesn't have a shit name like Booksie, and
2) works. Nearly.
Main problem with it is that you can't edit your story after it's gone live, so if like many of us you're a spoon who can't spell his titles and doesn't bother proofreading, you're stuffed.
Still, fairly pleased with how it turned out- never written a story about nothing before, and I think it went well. Give it a glance, tell us what you think.

'Party Down and Go Fuck Yourself' indeed...

I'd forgotten how horrible call centre work is when you're overhung. It's just as bad when you're learning how to do it, as I am now. At FirstSource there's one computer you can use teh Innernetz on, and Facebook doesn't work, so I might as well try to bash my brain into order by writing something. Tried to read some of Heart of Darkness there. I could feel grey matter dripping onto my shirt, so I called a halt to that. And I took all the skin off the middle knuckle of my middle finger playing an air conditioner like a reco-reco in Lavery's. Helluvan enyjoyable though.
I've been thinking about this- the last time I bothered my arse dancing on a night out for any more than thirty seconds at a stretch. Time was me and Laughlin would pull outlandish shapes until one of us got hit for spilling someone's drink or girlfriend or something. Wonder why I stopped? But the point is I bothered my arse making a tit of myself, rather than working on getting as blocked as possible in as comfortable a fashion as possible. And it was great craic. I remember the buzz now, of actually having to sit down for a while and take stock, pick things out of the blur of stuff happening, and not just sitting on my hands and then wondering why I've got no money left and naught but frown lines to show for it. Someone remarked last night than I've become awful quiet recently. Self-consciousness seems to have snuck up and bike-locked itself round my neck without my noticing it. Must try and do something about this.

I do WHAT now?!

Finanlly recovered from Friday. Turns out I've worked a whole week in a call centre without realising it. I feel strange. Now to go finish Caliban before the odd weasrs off. Back in a minute...

Early Doors

Today is the pagan festival of Good Friday. Or something to that effect. This means that bars close early; no-one knows why this is, but it seems to be a law of nature. As such, me and the fellas (the Brothers Bacchus) and some other fellas (Sang By Fire and Connor Hutcheon) will be playing some tunes upstairs in Lavery's, then clearing off somewhere else where we can drink without fat bald men in black jackets telling us to go home at some daft hour. Land down. Should be fun.

Crossbows?!

Very well done to the XKCD man. It would appear he's got half the internet asking what the fuck a Higgs excitation is. The internet is a horrible place. And here are some reasons why.

Caliban

No point going round calling myself a writer if I'm not doing anything with it. Easy trap to fall into, that one. Like calling yourself a sculptor or a doctor of philosophy or something. Very difficult to disprove. I know a fella claimed to be the spider monkey handler at Belfast Zoo, and he got away with that. I suppose you're not going to get asked to demonstrate your technique unless you're in the bar, making this claim, and someone runs up to you wide-eyed and shaking and says "Oh thank God you're here! There's a rabid spider monkey scampering around the place, biting and dry-riding all and sundry!" You'd have to come clean at that point.
The same with literature. You're not going to have someone come running up with pen and paper and implore you for a couple of chapters about the Spanish Civil War. But fuckit, I start the nine to five again next week, so I've a week to batter out at least a short story. It'll be about a man and his mirror. I'll tell you how I get on.

Earth Hour

Apparently the good, if rather hairy, people at the WWF are organising an hour of darkness and leckylessness. At half 8 of your local time, they would like you to turn off all your lights and things. Might as well I suppose. Whether you're paying for your electricity or not. Take a gander here. Or slag the whole idea here. Although that guy looks like the type I drunkenly bullied at school. Not proud of it, but clearing off to the bar seemed a helluva better idea than double German, and I like to shout at people after a bottle of Buck. Some of my fellow students didn't join me in seeing the funny side.

Bollocks to this, I'm off for a job

In celebration of Tuesday Kid's 46th day off the pipe (tenuous I know, but fuckit, it got me writing), I decided that doing bugger all is more difficult than working by some distance, and got meself an interview for some pishy call centre work like they do so well here. Think I nailed it too, but you always say that when you've made a cunt of yourself in an interview. I don't know how people sit on the dole for any longer than a couple of months. At least in a job, you've something to complain about all the time - boss, incompetent colleagues, how the hot girl's fucking some idiot and won't give you the time of day - and isn't that what the vast majority of us want out of life? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick again? When I'm on the dole I always end up doing far less writing, tunes or otherwise, than when I'm doing it to distract myself some fat co-workers shooting banal shite about Saturday night TV any straight man would be embarrassed to flick past, let alone actively watch and talk about. That and any time I've tried to get money out of the government I've managed to get a job before they see fit to give me a full Giro. I find it a damn sight easier showing up, switching off and blethering at English types ovet the phone than I do running round Belfast from one jobsworth civil servant to another, compiling their fragments of knowledge to find out who to tap for an application form, to find I'm not eligible because the month has an E in its name or something.
Fuck that. Back to the drudgery I think. The pay's marginally better, and my colleagues will probably be better looking than my housemates. No offence Paul.

Madness

Just got informed I've got a new kid sister. Madness indeed. Fair fucks the folks, but that's going to be the gingerest kid in the history of ginger kids. Now to Starbucks, where they're giving away free coffee if you ask them nicely. Sticks in my throat a bit, but needs must when the devil farts in your kettle...

Waste Of Time

Turns out I'm far worse than I rememeber at the first Metal Gear Solid. I decided to have a crack at it, being as I'm doing bugger all else at the minute other than alternating between twenty cups of coffee a day and none to see what happens - a very saggy face apparently. I distinctly remember being able to batter through both discs in one sitting at one point. Not so now. And now today, after spending four hours fighting Metal Gear and that blond wank Liquid, and dealing with Otacon driving like a paraplegic in a horse and trap, the game goes and crashes on me, for no apparent reason. The disc's grand, the Playstation's in fairly good nick. I think the message in this one's fairly clear- Stop fucking repeating yourself. You'll only end up frustrated, with a banging headache, and with far less wine than you started.
Now to go and take the Movie House up on their offer of Kerrrrrrrazy Tuesday and see Watchmen for three ding. I have it on good authority it'll make me so angry I'll immediately go out and write a classic death metal album. Or kick someone in the face (finally, something in this blog about kicking things). I've discovered also that I couldn't give a tuppenny fuck if Liverpool win anything this year, which is nice to know. It's not healthy that a group of wealthy men I've never met have an effect on my moods at all. Makes far more sense supporting your local side if you're going to watch football. I'd probably follow Linfield, if they were any fun to watch, but I'd probably have more fun watching the mouldy pot in the living room in its slow quest for civilisation. It doesn't bother me particularly that all their fans' songs are bigoted dirges, but it does make for an interesting game when they play Derry City - one crowd of balding hallions screaming themselves hoarse about how they all live in the randy Brandwell (hoo ha), and the other keeping schtum for fear they'll get arrested. Very odd country, this.

Hibernating Again

It's getting that way anyhow. Last night I lay about smoking some very stale grass I had left over from my last visit to Cork, and playing Forza, which is a racing game. I hate racing games. But I also hate sucking at things. So I lay about, smoked, and played it till I could drive round in the big complicated circley thing without writing myself off too badly.
So today, when I had stuff to do, like scour Belfast for a job, then fuck off to Derry to beg more money out of the Credit Union, I was incapable of rousing myself till gone 4, which is less than no use to anyone. Just enough time to roll into some kind of clothes and dash off up the town for a pointless walk which was essentially a cold shower. The only thing of any use I managed to do was direct a lovely French woman with a silly long cardigan and an enormous nose to that Victoria Square joint. Don't trust that place. Is it outside or inside? If it's inside, why's it so cold? And if it's outside, why do they stop you smoking?
But none of this matters. The fact is I'm sitting in Queen's library again, mostly hiding from the landlady, who's probably beating the door down about now looking for two months' rent. The internet isn't the nicest place to be relegated to. So far I've applied for every job in Belfast where they let you sit down, and looked up everyting from the Ibanez Roadster series guitar to Jimmy Krankee, the scary little fucker. I've even applied to take online surveys, because they apparently pay quite well, and I've a bank account I'm using for nothing else. It's not as if they can scam money out of me, is it? And did you know, it takes at least two weeks before the dole will give you money, after you first apply? I mean, what if I was really in the shit? With kids to feed, bills piling up, mortgage and whatnot? It's a good thing I'm a radge, with no needs other than the occasional drink and the odd bowl of stodge, dodging the landlady and the electricity people (who, I'm reliably informed, couldn't catch AIDS in a Malawian whorehouse), because if I'd a lifestyle to support I'd be fucked. As me granny used to say, "Thank God for nothin', fer there's no bother with it." Must be a full-time occupation holding onto money.

...Or not

It turns out hangovers don't help when you have to audition for shite U2 ripoff ballbag bands either. I intentionally stopped drinking at the perfectly reasonable hour of half 5 in the morning on Monday night, so as to be perfectly rested for the audition with the Beat Poets in Warrenpoint at half 11. Imagine my surprise when I'm woken at half 12 by the singer of said cunts, asking where I was, and not to bother showing. They'd found their bassist, and would be holding no more auditions.
Fair enough I suppose. Punctuality is an important trait in the world of professional rock and roll. It may just be sour grapes that I didn't show enough self-control to at least land out to the audition, that makes me feel just a leetle irked that these cunts are having any kind of success at all. Have you heard the pricks? This is precisely the gutless, soulless, pointless shite that made me pick up a bass and an overdrive pedal in the first place. Why even bother writing songs, if this is all they amount to? I applied to play with them for two reasons. One, as Graham Chapman put it, there's no laugh as good as a supressed one. Imagine playing to hundreds of screaming fans every night, when you know they're wrong and they've wasted their money to see a nonentity of a band. Second, they're looking to tour fairly extensively during spring and summer of this year. I thought it'd be quite a nice way to waste a cpuple of months, then jump ship to clear off to Edinburgh and do something enjoyable. Like study Law for 6 years.
Still, this episode has taught me something. Never deny something you write because you think it's not good enough. Get it out of your system, and move on. There are enough people in the world with godawful taste that some schmuck's going to like it.

Note To Self...

...Hangovers help neither the ability to blog (hate using that as a verb) nor to fill out application forms. And Colm lied, the eggs did nothing. Never liked him anyway.

Jesus, these mornings are getting addictive...

Look at this shit! It's daytime, for the second day in a row, and I am not only vertical, but fully-clothed, have fed myself, and can type out sentences and that! I like it a lot.
Turns out yesterday evening, before falling asleep at a computer in the library (I woke up about a minute and a half later with a snort, and made an old lady soil herself and have to leave), I went on Fastfude, where all the Belfast tuney-makey people go for a good old-fashioned virtual circle jerk. Anyway it would appear I replied to an ad in which an apparently established band requested a bassist with a degree of flexibility for practicing, and especially flexibility for touring Ireland, the UK and the Yankee Places. Looks like the fuckers are positively crying out for an unemployed ginger bastard to swan into their ranks for a spot of world domination. The only thing left to do is to to find out if they're any good, and indeed who they are, then meet them and convince them I'm indispensable. Shouldn't be too hard; they're only musicians after all.
That said, the last time I replied to one of these types of ads, I ended up in Ballymacash in the flat of an obese ex-drummer who can neither sing nor play the guitar, who I still owe money, and who now wants me to shell out £200-odd quid towards recording his bullshit songs. And the fat prick's got me bass.
Still though, I've always quite liked the idea of hijacking another cunt's musical dreams and making a mint out of them by going "dumdy dum bum bum" when he asks me to. 'S why I picked up the bass in the first place.
The lad wants an audition at the start of next week. That gives me this week to find the bus fare to Warrenpoint and back. Expect more on this subject.

New Year, or so people tell me

I really should do this more often. Being awake in daylight I mean. At the minute I'm in Queen's library, which unlike my house has heating, blinds on the windows, working chairs, a floor that wouldn't get you drunk (and very, very sick) if you walked on it without footwear of some kind, and computer-type facilities. Nice of them to have kept my computer accounts open, despite my getting heaved out last year. I think I owe them money too. Lovely people, these academics, I've always said so; must be nice having an attention span that can encompass a three-year degree. As always, I blame my sleep patterns.
See, when it comes to about the end of October, start of November, my brain apparently notices that the days are becoming shorter than the nights, and I start waking up when it gets dark, around 5 or 6 in the evening, and crashing again when it's light, about 9 in the morning. Now this isn't much of a problem when I've still money in my pocket to afford the essentials of such a lifestyle, namely Buckfast and the occasional dose of pills. But the rub lies in the fact that I always but always get fired from whatever I'm working at, usually mongrel reading-out-loud duties at Teletech, because I'm pissed/pilled/asleep/not there, so the money dries up, so I'm dodging landlords full-time for the first two months of the new year.
At the minute I'm in a period of very sober limbo, while I wake up at about 1 in the morning, stay up for about 30 hours, then collapse for about 16, as my body and brain have conflicting ideas on how to wake up at a reasonable time. Not too conducive to getting a wage out of somebody. So now the plan is get hold of the bastard layabouts at the Revenue and Customs and find out why they haven't employed me yet, then go home and kill all the lights in the house so the landlady thinks no-one's in if she calls about the two rubber rent cheques I gave her for December and January, while I waste the batteries in Rodgers' Wiimote playing Mario Galaxy over a couple of bifties. And who knows, maybe I'll make a start on this book... Probably not, but what's life without a good lie to yourself once in a while?

Stay sharp, peace to your kid brother