Unhinged and Unnecessary

I think it is a combination of sheer shamelessness and the need for attention which has made me so proud of the never-ending fall-out from any party I have ever been to. I never tire of hearing stories about my actions after losing consciousness and/or memory at parties. Here’s a quick round up from a party last Wednesday, of things I shouldn’t have done; but did anyway:

Threw a glass of red wine over my boss. He was wearing his favourite shirt. RED WINE. The walls were formerly whitewashed. RED WINE. My glass, now empty, essentially gets me caught red-handed.

Ran around naked. This I can only guess at, since I woke up wearing a puked-on cardi, when previously I was wearing a puked-on t-shirt and a puked-on cardi. My t-shirt, I later discovered, was in a pile of puke in the corridor. I also puked on my jeans.

Choked on my own vomit. One of the girls from work informed me that she had to hold me up while I threw up all over myself. The phrase she used was “helped you spew”, which I thought was cute.

Flashed people because they asked me to. Just like when I was two years old. Some things never change.

Performed oral sex on my boss. There was a video of this happening. Thankfully – contrary to what said video may suggest – I know that we were both fully clothed and it only looked like a sex act. Needless to say, the video has been disseminated quite widely at work. Equally needless to say, I am quite happy to have people watch the video, as long as they are rightly disgusted and ask follow-up questions. What is it with me and negative attention!?

Created a major fire hazard by passing out in a hallway. Yup.

Speaking of work – I genuinely feel hatred for some of my customers. Some, on the basis that they are stuck up millionaire wankers, some on the basis that they drink too much and – hypocritically of me – I disagree with their staggering drinking habits. However, last week, one such regular (he is in both the drinks-too-much and has-more-money-than-common-sense categories) put the rest to shame. I noticed that he was wearing a thong. Yes, bluntly, the man was wearing a thong. I am still disgusted by the sight. The man was wearing a thong. The man was wearing a thong, at my bar! The man was wearing a thong! I dropped the screw in the tuna! I dropped the screw in the tuna!!

I was wandering aimlessly around uni yesterday, dressed as some sort of indie-goth-transvestite (I was listening to Radio One while I got dressed) when I SAW him! THONG MAN! IN MY UNI!! Nothing is sacred anymore. He looked at me. With his eyes. His THONG eyes. All I could see around me were thongs. Big, black thongs; worn by a grown, unattractive man. I think I had a mild panic attack. I stopped in the middle of the corridor. Tried to “Act Natural”… THONG!!! Oh God, Dear Lord in Heaven, it was too much. It was too THONG! I skulked slowly, distracting my eyes from his beer belly and peering, thong-like eyes, nearly tripping up over my high heeled boots and paint-on jeans (not a good combination for running in, so running away was not an option at this point). Finally, he left, with other people he was inexplicably with in a board room IN MY UNI.

I have been genuinely disturbed by this man. Lastnight, he was even in my dream,
standing in places I frequent where he should absolutely, definitely not have been. Then today, I went into work and he had upped the ante, so to speak. Or dropped the thong to be literal about it: his trousers slipped down as he sat on one of the high bar-stools – revealing that Thong-man had decided to go commando!!!

No wonder I drink.

REVIEW: Whitesnake and Def Leppard at Glasgow SECC

June 17th saw Whitesnake and Def Leppard kick off a joint tour of the UK, and both bands rocked the Glasgow crowd in the city’s SECC venue.

After support band Black Stone Cherry warmed up the audience with nostalgic hard rock, Whitesnake took to the stage. Having seen Whitesnake play in two different venues in the city previously, I was not looking forward to the band struggling to contend with the massive conference centre’s bad acoustics. My fears were justified. Singer David Coverdale’s voice was not at all suited to venue. Familiar screeches of “Here’s a song for ya!” did not come over the PA with the usual clarity. Compared to previous shows in the Carling and Armadillo, this venue is the worst place to hear even the best of singers. That said, guitars and keyboards were loud and fantastic. However, for future reference, the SECC is not the place to see the hair metal band fronted by one of rock’s greatest blues singers.

Whitesnake’s set was short and sweet. Unlike previous outings, Chris Frazier’s drum solo was not as long and arduous as that of previous drummer Tommy Aldridge; and guitar solos were relevant and short. The band played a different set than that which I had seen twice on two separate tours (the set which was included on the band’s live DVD). To the concert’s detriment, there was no acapella singing by the ‘Ol Cov, but they played a good set. They have definitely upped their game since the last tour.

Of course there was an element of mysogyny – David Coverdale is a dirty old man, commenting on the “fantastic chests” of the front row. The SECC did have one good point for Coverdale – the big screens showing live footage of the band and vanity-stricken singer was a bonus. Coverdale was playing to camera as if Tawny Kitaen was still dancing on his hood.

Def Leppard came onstage very promptly after Whitesnake. The short waiting time for both bands was possibly the biggest surprise of the night, and certainly the most welcome!

Leppard’s reputation preceeds them: as legendary stadium rockers, it should come as no surprise that the band are more suited to a stadium sound than Whitesnake. The band played some of their huge hits with a great sound in the SECC.

Whitesnake would be far more suited more to a pub: this is evident even on the albums; particularly old songs with Jon Lord on piano such as “Black and Blue” and “Wine, Women and Song”.

Both bands definitely appreciated the Scottish fans. The city is renowned as a good host, and Joe Elliot announcing that his hometown of Sheffield would have to try hard to be a better audience than Glasgow certainly proved as much.

In all, a fantasic concert by two bands who are clearly at the top of their game more than 20 years after peaking. Both sets were far too short for bands with such vast back catalogues, but time was used professionally, packing as many songs in as possible and not having the crowd wait on primadonna musicians.

One big improvement could potentially make this tour unmissable – along with Coverdale’s acapella singing, some duets between bands would go down an absoulte treat – can you imagine David Coverdale’s masterful snake tounge wrapped around “Love Bites” or “Bringing On The Heartbreak”?

In other Glasgow-rock-fan related news, the best heavy metal bar in the city – The Crow Bar on Hope Street – has closed down. This fantastic and increasingly popular venue is now gone because the owners didn’t want to renew the lease.

We’re Going To Sail To The Hinterland!

I read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby recently. I bought the substantial looking Penguin Modern Classics paperback edition (2000) because it was printed on half-decent paper and had a pretty picture on the front. Essentially, I judged a book by its cover.

My initial complaint about this edition was that although it looked thick, there was a 50-page introduction to pad it out, which was duly skipped. However, after reading the novel, I went back; and the essay introduction by Tony Tanner is actually very worthwhile.

On one level, yes, it gives a far deeper insight into Fitzgerald’s most famous novel; but what he talks about somehow managed to reach me on a far more profound level than the content I bought the book for.

One of the most poignant themes of the novel is the idea of one character (Gatsby) pining for a lost love (Daisy) for years, loving her over a long period of time without any contact. When they get back together, circumstances have drastically changed and the love he once felt – and had built up in his own head – had diminished. This sticks out for me. I share this trait with Gatsby (probably along with some of his other qualities: the delusions of grandeur; the denial of a past; the being weird at parties; and following the homely moral of, as Henry James noted in The American Scene “When you haven’t what you like you must perforce like, and above all misrepresent what you have”).

Anyway, the introductory essay makes a great deal of Gatsby’s habit of staring over the bay to Daisy’s house, marked out by a green light. As Tanner says: “Gatsby comes to orient his life in relation to… a green light. ‘You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock,’ he says to Daisy. Seen from across the water – and everything else – that separates him from Daisy, the green light offers Gatsby a suitably inaccessible focus for his yearning, something to give definition to desire while indefinitely deferring consummation, something to stretch his arms towards, as he does, rather than circle his arms around, as he tries to. The fragile magic of the game depends on keeping the green light at a distance… lights too closely approached may well lose their supernal lustre and revert to unarousing ordinariness. You can wish only on the star you can’t reach.”

Essentially, building someone up in your head can lead to a fall when one is faced with reality. I know that fall well. Oh look! Yet again, this blog has returned to the theme of its writer being unable to handle reality. How passé.

Tanner’s introduction gives a really interesting history of Fitzgerald’s development of the novel, referring back to older works by the author and other novels which influenced him. One of the older works included is Fitzgerald’s 1922 story Winter Dreams, which includes a character Tanner refers to as an “embryonic Gatsby”. The character, Dexter Green, is haunted by this same obsessive trait I share with Gatsby.

Tanner writes: “The story concludes with an incident that occurs many years after Dexter has resigned himself to the fact that Judy has disappeared from his life. From a chance encounter, Dexter learns that Judy has married a boor who ‘drinks and runs around’ – shades, or rather imitations, of Tom Buchannan [Daisy's husband in The Great Gatsby] – that she probably loves him and that her looks have gone: squalor and degredation all round in other words.”

Fitzgerald, through this embryonic Gatsby, has managed to articulate my own problems. That is the real beauty of Literature, I think: that it affects the reader so deeply that they can understand their own lives better. At least I know that’s why I read!

Fitzgerald writes: “The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him. In a sort of panic he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on Sherry Island and the moonlit veranda, and gingham on the golf-links and the dry sun and the gold color of her neck’s soft down. And her mouth damp to his kisses and her eyes plaintive with the melancholy and her freshness like new fine linen in the morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world! They had existed and they existed no longer.

“For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the grey beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.

“‘long ago,’ he said, ‘long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will never come back no more.”

Isn’t that heavy? I think it’s heavy. I never meant for this blog to be so long, and I think I should end here. I apologise for being so candid, but if I do not end here, I will just continue giving evidence of depression and come to no positive conclusion. The problem with my (and Gatsby’s and Dexter Green’s) trait of all-in-the-mind intimacy is that there can be no positive conclusions; and the problem with real life, away from the pages of a book, is that there are never any conclusions – as they say, life goes on. Life goes on regardless of how heartbroken one gets; and every time one remembers someone they love who has disappeared from their life, the conclusion to a relationship is delayed just a little longer until both parties completely and permenantly forget about each other.

Right up until this moment, I thought “life goes on” was one of the most positive sentences in the English language.

The Little Green Cameras Are Following Me

I have always wanted to be a Big Brother contestant. I am not really interested in the plastic fame that comes with a little TV exposure; nor am I interested in the money at the end (I’m too weird to win Big Brother, so that was never an issue). Actually, both of these reasons – the exposure and the harrowing experience of not winning – are the reasons I would never apply. That, and my general complacency. Anyway, the single reason I would go on Big Brother is because at the end of it, I would have zillions of hours of video footage of myself acting and reacting with other people. I would see how well I mix with others, have an accurate idea of what I look and sound like – as opposed to the distorted impressions one gets from mirrors and the echoes inside your head when one speaks – and essentially, I would have a greater self-awareness.

You may think that watching several days’ or weeks’ worth of footage (in one long, hazy sitting, reminiscent of the Bowie song Sound And Vision) of oneself – doing pretty much what one should have been doing during those lost days spent behind the pale blinds that have been drawn all day, saying and doing nothing in a dark room lit to electric blue as the television brings its audiovisual gifts – is pretty perverse. Well let me tell you – it bloody well is! But can you think of a better way to learn about yourself? Humans learn about our appearance by looking at a mirror image. The mirror is backwards, and distorted. Look at a photo of yourself, it is different to your self-perception because the mirror is wrong! Similarly, the way humans have traditionally learned about their own personalities is by reflecting off other people. And, similarly, the impression we get is distorted! People are conservative when it comes to feedback about personalities. Reactions are planned out and cushioned as opposed to raw and true (because most people think if they tell the truth, they will cause upset). Ask an aquaintance about your personal qualities – good and bad – and you will receive an ego massage as opposed to a photo-realistic idea of your character.

So if a person gets all their feedback from machiavellian yes-men, how can they improve their character? There’s really no way to make such personal improvements unless you have primary sources. Footage from Big Brother would make some fantastic primary source material.

Big Brother comes with so much baggage though, as I mentioned. So, recently, I did the next best thing. At a party, I set up my digi-cam in my friend’s kitchen secretly on a shelf and wandered nonchalantly into the frame. The results were pretty good, for what it was worth. Ten minutes of swigging beer and chatting about music-and-junk with an old friend later – with extraneous voices booming over that of the primary target – but I found that the exercise did not really live up to my expectations. And how could it? Ten minutes of footage, conversation with a select group of friends, nothing new to react to, legs not even nearly in the shot – Big Brother was watching, but he only saw a brief vignette. Still, I genuinely think that a need for self-awareness/-improvement could be fulfilled by watching hours upon hours of footage of oneself in different situations.

However, I do not think that the majority of contestants – if any – are interested in anything beyond the scant fortune and even more elusive fame. Thus, I implore you to saturate the letterbox of any contestant in the upcoming Big Brother series whom you find to be particularly deplorable, with fair and balanced commentary on their personality defects. Otherwise known as hate mail.

Speaking of hate mail, I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but for those who do not know, the MySpace page of one of my all-time favourite bloggers (or bLaAgUrZz) has been deleted. Yes, Hyphy Ghetto Mami has sadly left said internet community. Her departure has left a massive hole in the illegible and illiterate myspace-blogosquare (not blogosphere – have you read a myspace blog before?!). Who will fill Hyphy’s massive hole? Apparently noone, since MySpace is on the decline. Then again, Hyphy Ghetto Mami’s page was, from the beginning, just a big advert to get her hole filled; but we won’t go into that…

For those who do not know, Hyphy Ghetto Mami was a little-known internet phenomenon. Essentially, it was the page of a “tHyCk bYtCh” – fat white trash – who posted email correspondence with people who refused her friend requests as blogs, written in her own, totally original, uP aNd DoWn StYlE WrItIng (it takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master!). Such blogs caught the attention of “HaTaZ” worldwide, and soon, the beast herself was subject to abuse from overzealous MySpacers. Including me.

This is not the first time I have mentioned her in a blog, and you can check out the fake profile someone has made for her – minus the blogs, sadly, but worth it for the pictures.

If you’re reading this, hYpHy GhEtTo MaMi, please come back to the internet! We need you! Join WordPress!! Or, go on Big Brother – you’re about the only person I’d watch more closely than myself…

Any news on Mami would be very much appreciated, from any source. Please let me know where she is today if you have any leads.*

*McDonalds does not count as a lead.

A Blog By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet

Although I have already mentioned in this blog that I am the sort of person who dwells on a problem instead of ignoring it, I think it is perhaps best that I do not indulge in personal-diary type material today. Frankly, the complicated things going around my head lack mass appeal, so where’s the point? I’m too much of an attention seeker to waste valuable blog-space on something that noone wants to read, so here’s some lightweight stuff!

I would like to point out that pressbot (?) wordbot (??) WordPress (!) is the best blog site ever – regardless of my inability to recall the name at will – and I recommend it to anyone. This site is the absolute best because not only do I get hits from Google, I can see what people entered into the search engine to find me! This is not only informative, but can be incredibly entertaining – regarde!

Yesterday, I got one hit from someone searching for “Josef Fritzl”. Lightweight stuff there, I agree (unless you’re one of his kids, yeesh!); but I think I have found a kindred in whoever it was who found me by typing in “stop reading self-help books”.

Genuinely though, I laughed when the mysterious “looks like cabbage” search appeared; and to the person who searched for “psychological theory and diy”, I think you need to just get on with the job…

Anyway, maybe it’s just me who finds these funny, because they relate back to me and my self-obsession. This self-obsession is well known. Regular-reader-uni-friends are familiar with my (totally accidental) way of manipulating a conversation so that it revolves around myself; and for Christ’s sake, I keep a blog which has no point and no substance because I can talk about myself, how great I am, how much I want to be a journalist/rockstar/polo player etc, my mum’s HRT experiments and how they affect ME, who I want to sleep with, who wants to sleep with ME, me, me, me, ME!

Yet something is missing. I feel a little bit lost in the absolute vastness of the universal blogosphere. In fact, recently I have been looking at other blogs and academic articles about blogs (diz shit is serious, yo!), and I think the thing that stops this blog being really great is the complete lack of focus or context. I just ramble. About anything. Other, more successful blogs tend to focus on one miniscule area, and not concentrate solely on the banalities of the author’s life. Some even qualify as real journalism or academia. I recently based a seminar paper around the latter type of blog (See? It’s all about me!).

Then again, the reason I started blogging in the first place – and decided to go into journalism – was Mimi Smartypants, and I’m damned if she gets away with populist diary-style blogs and I don’t!

So, I propose this: not to be given any ideas about areas I should focus on instead of a diary – I can think of enough myself.

Scottish politics?
One problem, where’s the ME factor?

Music?
Who cares, unless it’s my own music?

Private Eye style fake news?
Why bother? It’s not even real!

No, my proposition is for WordPress.com to feature my blogs on their front page. Maybe leave them up there for a week or so after they’ve been posted. Why not? It’ll totally pick up. You can move Mr Blobby out the way – especially if he causes some sort of copyright infringement – and put adverts in the banner. Of course, you’ll have to pay me like 67% of the ad revenue, but you’ll be so loaded from the number of clicks I get that you won’t even notice two thirds of the money is in my pocket. And it doesn’t stop there! I’ll soon have enough money to quit my job and become a full time blogger – then the money will be flooding in like National Lottery funding. You’ll just squeal! And I’ll have more free time, thus more bollocks to blog about, thus more money, thus more squealing! It’s like a vicious cycle in reverse.

Just sign on the dotted line: ………………………………………………………………………….

Cheers. And for your co-operation, here’s some pictures I made of myself earlier on.