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.