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