ex-

On the way in this morning I briefly thought about Jax. Has it been 18 months yet? Getting close to that, but still, must cast such things away.

The legion grows longer.

No change here, save the bitterness, cynicism and occasional bouts of misery.

Misery

Have lost my mojo, sliding down a slope to depression (the emotion, not the serious mental illness). Waited patiently last night until Rosie showed up on MSN before verbalising it and even then, badly.

Craving company, but at the same time hiding indoors, not doing owt, apart from feebly sketching pics, and getting hurt when no one links to them. Still trundling along getting lots of hits, 2300 yesterday, but it no longer gives me the buzz that it used to. The line ain't going up, just bumpily trundling along horizontally, even as I try harder and harder. I fear this has reached the end of its run for good, rather than just me pulling it myself.

Gig tonight, some bands at The Enterprise I've never really paid much attention to, or maybe if I get a better offer, the cinema for Indiana Jones.

Tomorrow brings me to a Dr Sketchy session in Holloway, then rumbling round the river and the East end for birthday drinks. I have to get my car tax sorted and stop off at B&Q too.

Next week, more of the same, but with a clearly insane trip to Glasgow on Friday, coffee with the photographer, photo exhibition at the college of whatever it was, and Plimpto gig on Saturday night. I'm going to be stinking.

Gotta find something happening on Friday night, otherwise it'll be bullying folk to go to the pub.

See there are plans for the future, but it does nowt for my mood right now, or the other feelings in my head, for that I need a distraction and a hug.

Pah

One handed origami once again

With right hand...



With left hand (from last year)...

Things and stuff

Wee a slightly unnatural yellow colour, and pain in my stomache where I think my liver or kidneys are. It could just all be in my head.

Got a mention on Sparky's Magic Piano's Facebook

One handed origami video that I haven't posted here before:-


Plimptons gig on the seventh, expect more spam closer to the time

The one thats shameless, shameless

Went to London Bloggers Meetup.

Arrived on my own without usual meetup companion Aref-Adib and as a result sat on my own in a corner for the first half hour or so, scribbling notes about the sponsored goodie bag.

Berocca make vitamin drinks and engery tablets, the goodie bag contain a fine branded glass (about 400ml), one branded biro, a tube of the Berocca effervescent tablets (orange flavour) and a pad of branded post-it notes.

I'm sceptical about the effervescent tablets, one side of the pack says "Taking more than your recommended daily intake may be harmful", the other side of the pack says each tablet contains 860% of your recommended daily allowance of some of the vitamins.

It is a fine branded glass they provide and the branded post-it notes make my mind boggle at the possibilities. But the warnings and information on the packaging are a bit ambiguous. Its like if a pack of razor blades says how sharp the blades are and then warns you against cutting yourself.

Anyhoo, Jaz and Lisa both recommended taking the stuff, so I have done. The fizzy bubbly goodness has burnt my lip, but I think the goodness will do as a surrogate breakfast for me tomorrow morning. It is orange flavour so I think it counts as one of my five daily portions (along with two cups of coffee, bacon roll and microwave meal).

I am well healthy me.

Met the following bloggers:-

Andy from the marketing blagger
Chris from qwghlm
Andy from Distributed Research
Jure from Zemanta
Lisa from u-handbag
Krista from Londelicious
Julius he's an event manager
Jaz from ShinyRed
Tom the Flashboy from The Metro

Also I think I glanced at:-

Carmen from Green is Not a Colour
Annie from the Going Underground
Peter Marshall from My London Diary

Back to work

Have not been to any gigs in a long time and Rosie's cutting down on her MSN time so I'm going to try to re-ignite the blogosphere with Last Night From Glasgow Indie Eyespy once more, but this time without it being such a money pit.

Need to persuade promotery friends and naive bands to put me on their guestlists and persuade hott single friends to accompany me.

Ooh, London Blogger meetup tonight, back at the Camel and Artichoke. Its almost like having a social life, but without people from Bowlie. I know, I know, its weird and un-natural, but they are nice people.

Currently the 47th most popular video in its category today on YouTube

Bow

This neatly summarises how discussions I get involved with on Bowlie end up

I can has world donimation?

Ill Theatre strip from several months back


Today's XKCD


What do I win? C'm'ere girl, we got drinkin' and DVDin' to do.

Mouth

Still in agony, woke up twice last night in pain after turning on the wrong side.

Work is okay, but i did get overcome with emotion and had to go and cry in a quiet corner after we managed to get some stuff done on time.

Over on Facebook, Rosie reckons if I change my profile picture I won't remain single for much longer, suggesting first I use a photo of me and my niece, and then an arty black and white one of me playing guitar.

Four hours later and it hasn't had any effect on my singularity, but I do become sad reading facebook.

Over on the nuddy chicks site, after the phenomenal success of my first venture, I'm looking around at work to find a post-it pad to do a quick "YOUR ADVERT HERE $2/week" image of the side column. If you know of anyone who'd want to advertise their wares to around 14,000 people all over the world every week, email me.

Went out last night to meet Rowan and Mark and go on the London Eye, the damned thing closes at 8pm at this time of year so we went to a pub, watched the football and I drank that Fruli's strawberry beer. Its like CAMRA alcopop.

Success and agony

eeep, With google adsense abandoning me when I was barely up to $60, they only pay out at $100 intervals, so I had to seek other sources of revenue. By selling ad space directly to the selling folk, I can make $1/week, or if I up my prices who knows. Got the first payment yesterday. Skipping round my room think who I could spend the naked chick millions on.

Injured cheek is getting annoying. Depending on which side I lie on when I'm in bed, woke up in howling agony several times. Face is now hideously disfigured and my speech has been affected, sounds like I'm trying to chaw a whole pack of gum when I talk.

Sleep also disrupted by early morning text messages, but hey ho, I guess it comes with the territory of being the sort of person folk call in times of need and loneliness.

Still craving company and afflicted by crippling loneliness. Possibly going on the London Eye this evening with Rowan Just Joan and boyf. Would prefer warm hug and someone to tell me that beans on toast ought not be the best meal of yer week.

Malaise

Illnesses and troubles for the day include:-

Hurty bit inside my mouth from where I bit my cheek eating Ben and Jerrys at the weekend. There's a bit of swelling and it feels weird.

Sore ass, possibly my tail bone from falling, but I don't remember when, or could be piles, but I'm not sure what that feels like.

Hangover and dizzy spells. Its almost like I'm not here. I'm sat typing and every so often I'll realise I'm tilted to the side.

In other news... trying to sell advertising space on the nuddy site, but have had no interest yet. ooh dizzy spell. Also, trying to find politicy news stories and links to sling on the nuddy site, I've got two, Devils Kitchen moaning about QUANGOS and the new EU Council President and foreign minister. I just need one more link and I can post it

Milk

Every time I buy milk from our corner shop, its curdled in the first cup of tea I make, even when its got days and days to go before its use by date.

Could it be that my Belle and Sebastian Sinister mug, somehow has a magical curdling power? And if so is there any way I could use it to make cheese?

Also, google have dizzied me for adsense on my nuddy blog, where can I easily solicit other advertisers?

Furthermore, in addition to the mysterious people who read this blog every day whether I update it or not (clearly haven't heard of rss feeds) someone looked at all of my flickr photies yesterday, all eight hundred or so of them, it must have taken hours.

I have a great deal of respect for anyone who puts in that much time to surfing. Ooh, maybe it was the young girl in Glasgow.

Object

There was a debate/discussion/bickering episode on Bowlie the other week about the nature of wealth, some parties had it that wealth was finite and could only be acquired by taking it from other people. I objected. Wealth is something you create. But was shouted down before the discussion returned to whether Boris Johnson should or should not enact his manifesto committments.

A month or so ago, the artist Andy Hart got me reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Its a hella long book, one of the longest, but after sinking to the depths of despair earlier today, I picked it up and continued readin from where I left off.

Francisco d'Anconia, at Jim Taggard's wedding, just overheard someone saying "money is the root of all evil - and he's the typical product if money..."

"So, you think money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of excahnge, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce..."

Which far more eloquently puts the point I was trying to get across on Bowlie. But I'd been reduced to defending my view, that it was a valid position, and I wasn't a crank in economical philosopher, just adding the view as a footnote to wikipedia to give it authority.

If only I'd looked up Ayn Rand's Objectivism.

It even ties up the naked chicks on post-it notes philosophy

the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and respond to.

And so with that I skip blissfully into the living room to watch TV and read newspapers.

Crippling despair and despression (the emotion, not the serious mental disorder) at HDIF last night. It was crap, and lonely.

Well, I was there with Holly and Adam Plimp turned up later, but it was embarrasing, I'd been talking it up to him for ages, and it was pants.

My head hurt, a headache? a migrane? who knows.

We left around 1am, heading seperate ways, pissed off and a lonely. Our lives several hours shorter than before we'd gone.

Whatever I'm searching for wasn't there.

There was a birthday thread for me on Bowlie, well, Dirty Vicar hunting for a KLF thread and finding me and the passage of time the closest thing. Oh god, I'm going to be thirty soon. All I have to show for it is bitterness and crushing loneliness.

Oh and the long snail trail of sites on t'internet and successful career in British hi-fi manufacturing. But alas, no girl, no soulmate, no family house kids and confidence.

Damn you,

Damn you all.

I need a hug with potential.

Fire

Good morning Glasgow.

Here in Brent its all go go go. Weather's overcast, misjudging how warm it is in the office and so, its a bit chilly now.

Looking forward to The Jingle Jangle Country night in town tonight, but not sure if I'm going with anyone or who'll be there, actually, on reflection I might go for ten minutes, sup a pint, get scared and go home. Such is life.

Saturday brings some relaxing cake making during the day, possibly a hangover earlier on, and then in the evening its HDIF at The Phoenix, which is always alark, Adam Smith should be in attendance and crazy Holly too.

Just need to survive today, and stop feeling so awkward talking to people outside of work.

Game raising

Do I raise my game?

On places like the nuddy chicks site, in addition to the handful of pics a day, I also post about politics and random ranting and gig reviews and music and stuff, just keep pushing and pushing. Getting more traffic from more different quarters rather than just the youporn and sex blogger sectors?

The shyness that dogs me in real life, I'd never quite noticed it online, but its there just the same. Whilst I can just about handle getting on stage, standing on a table, waving my arms about and talking any old shit to an audience of thousands, sharing my innermost privacies with half a million net surfers. I can't just chat to folk.

There's a threshold to cross, at NPL or HDIF or Spiral Scratch. I stand in the shadows or sit in a corner, gazing at my pint or stabbing at my phone, until at some point someone says hi, or sense takes over and I get up. This threshold, this threshold.

Its the same online in MSN, Twitter, Facebook et al. I bubble in the corner, distracting myself with the internet, creating and racing, until the threshold gets unbearable and I step over to speak to the folk who've popped up in the bottom right. Other people's comments and links become too ubiquitous and I feel left out to the point of fixing it. The tangible threshold.

IP addresses to, on the statcounter logs, the familiar ones from one day to the next, glancing over whilst I stare at my pint and stab fixedly at my keyboard.

Sunshine and showers loomin'

I wish folk would leave comments on this blog. Its not like a goldfish bowl, folk looking in watching me flapping around, looking out right back at you. Our membrane is porous.

Unless, of course, its an invisible hand which moves the playing pieces. Shadowy figures from the past, seeking an angle, a weak spot.

Its crazy paranoid ramblings.

Outside the sun shines brightly. Cold beers and exciting company awaits.

HDIF this Saturday and cake-making earlier in the day. The weekend after involves baby-sitting and driving north and picnicing in parks.

Maybe it is my hand that is invisible, no one even an inkling of the machinations I have constructed, the power at my disposal, to use as is my want, for good or ill.

Crikey, I'm hungry, I ought to eat more food, have breakfast and the like.

Internal and naked debates

Life post-naked chicks on post-it notes ain't so good.

The sun shines brightly outside, and I'm unfamiliar with lying in bed in the morning and it being too hot, well, kind of unfamiliar, it reminds me of 2006 which I ought to not think about. There are some ex-girlfriends you can send dirty sex messages to and some you can't.

Entertaining Friday night, cinema and drinking and talking and stuff, but the next day mild feelings depression (the emotion, not the serious mental illness), wandering round town at the mercy of obligations, gigs and clubs and picnics.

So, with nothing else fulfilling my creative urges, do I restart the naked chicks site?

Sure, it would keep me busy in the evenings, I've been drunk every day for the past eleven days, and its mighty pleasing to get thousands of hits a day, several hundred souls clicking on a link to my work.

I keep reading news stories and politics and feeling the urge to tell people, but with no clear avenue of doing so. I keep going to gigs and seeing bands, and feeling the urge to tell people about what I've seen and heard, but again, no clear avenue.

I could use the naked chicks site for it, for anything.

But like before, and like with every other blog on the entire internet, its not going to bring me happiness, or get me the girl. It make me more powerful, and provides a might club to swing, but the girl remains elusive. Too far away, too hard to talk to, unable to touch.

Where ever I'm supposed to go in the pursuit of happiness, the path isn't naked chicks on post-it notes.

Suspect that the path involves a scattergun approach of sms, twitter, facebook, email and talking to everyone.

Terror bubbles up.

Blog entry

Crikey, its been months and months since I wrote a proper diaryish blog entry to keep everyone up to date on what I'm up to, so I might as well make a start now when we're really busy at work.

Blazing hot sunshine outside, and I'm indoors procrastinating. Its what I did all Bank Holiday Monday, apart from when I was escaping from flats and moving my car out of restricted parking zones and sat in Borders scribbling pictures and reading to stem the existential anxiety. Who would have thought after all this time an ex-girlfriend could have that affect? Well, according to the spreadsheet, it happens all the time.

Still going to lots of gigs, but with the huge rent of my new flat I'm thinking I ought to cut down on that sort of thing. However, in an effort to bond with my flatmates, me and Alec went out to a comedy club thing last night, sadly there were only six people there so it was abandoned, with the promoter urging us to come and see Richard Herring and a few weeks time.

On Friday I'm going to the cinema with a girl wot I met recently in real life, rather than folk who I've know for years off of the internet/Glasgow/British live music scene. It is possible.

A bit of a rock n roll weekend in a few week's time, I gotta baby sit the wean on the Friday, then drive up north on Saturday for a photo shoot, then back to London on Sunday for a picnic. Its the way summer's supposed to be.

So I finished up the nuddy site on the internet, rather proud of the final hit count, peaking above Devil's Kitchen (mainly cos he'd been distracted) and roughly above Bowlie, in terms of reach, cos Bowlie's slowly winding down. The self-moderation thing that got me back onboard, doesn't seem to be suiting everyone as some folk aren't able to moderate their own posts. I guess DK hasn't the time and the inclination to keep us from bickering, so he's closing of bits and pieces, comments and pm mailboxes. We only have a few weeks left of holding each other tightly and noting down contact details.

It was weird for the last few weeks of nuddy drawings, comments and coverage from other sources and some degree of legitimacy. If only I'd embraced the porous membrane earlierI could have skipped to another square of the chessboard. Life's like that.

Boris Johnson won the mayoral election, but it seems most of the people I associate wth socially are strictly anti-Boris. Fifteen years back, at school my nickname was Boris, after Boris Karloff, even the teachers used to call me it, so it makes me feel really uncomfortable when folk bicker about the mayor. I didn't even vote for him. I briefly thought about emailing Zee, seeking someone who might remember or understand my plight. But the smacks of desperation kept me away.

Does that cover everything? Who are these people searching google for my blog? What are they seeking, re-affirming their insecurities, or a shadowy discussion in a chat far away, safe in the knowledge that without a direct link I can only speculate.

My heart is pure and I'm seeking only love and to spread the wee bit of happiness as I can. I have nothing to fear, apart from failure.

In lieu of Bowlie

The behemoth lies sleeping, but the internet, like its policy towards censorship, it routes round damage.

Bowlie

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Sunday morning

Thinking this could be a bad bad idea, but when has that ever stopped me before?

Is this what I look like

A London Blogger called Cristiano Betta too my photie at the Meet Up the other day

Do I actually look like this?

My first bowlie death threat