Stealing Maxwell’s USP

A truly wonderful thing happened tonight in the world of television: the return of Skins for a third series.

I am not a big TV-watcher. In fact, the only thing I devote any time to on TV beyond the news and Panorama (mainly to look wistfully into the trustworthy eyes of Jon Snow in terms of the former; and to angry up my inner Conservative by noisily disagreeing with the overtly left-wing bias of the latter) is Hollyoaks. I have been addicted for years now.

Hollyoaks, though tackling some of the most serious issues is not always grounded in reality – who would actually sleep with their own sister, never mind marry her?? The characters are dull and unable to swear/commit sexual acts/do anything even nearly racy onscreen. Everything is done through implication.

Skins, on the other hand, was the antithesis of Hollyoaks – far more reality based, with drug taking, smoking and strong language seemingly encouraged. Skins was always a bad influence, precedent and excuse rolled into one hour long joint.

The first two series revolved around a tight cast of disparate individual characters, each one built up over a single episode. The third series, in a strange about-turn has found a whole new cast, referring only to series one and two characters in jokes and seemingly tongue-in-cheek references.

I was not impressed with the first episode of Skins series 3. Not the first 15 minute segment anyway. The main character was introduced to us skating down a street like Bart Simpson, narrowly missing a bus in First livery; the image suggesting the bus which knocked down the protagonist of series 1 and 2 in most dramatic fashion. This scene came like a slap in the face.

I can see the executive meeting right now: “Tony Stonem was hit by a bus, right? How about we take  this NEW protagonist *still anonymous to me – give it about four episodes* and throw him in front of one too – to show how AMAZING he is! UNTOUCHABLE! INVINCIBLE! BETTER!!!”

No.

I also hated his two pals who don’t deserve any attention beyond this paragraph.

Other main characters, introduced later – and exclusively female – were far more interesting.

There was the KateNash-a-like. She seemed interesting – though not psychologically damaged enough to escape a really dodgy storyline created solely to give her some edge.

Then there was CyndiLauper-a-like. She seemed interesting too – there was a scene with her crying in the shower, and anyone who has ever seen Carrie knows that always leads somewhere good.

I also like EasyRealism-a-like Effy Stonem; mainly as a result of having passed over from the previous two series and having done more drugs than any other character in the first episode.

There was also a (sadly) minor character who seemed to me a reflection of real life. When a hungover/still drunk lecturer played by Father Ted’s Ardal O’Hanlon (Blast! I told myself I wouldn’t give any actors’ names in this piece!) stood up and announced “My name is Keiran and I hate being a fuckin’ teacher”, I saw legendary journalism lecturer Ken Pratt in his eyes. Either that or I was seeing Father Ted’s Frank Kelly reprising his role as Father Jack. I’m never sure.

As with most things – TV shows, films, albums, people – I didn’t like it at first, but after that first quarter, things really picked up. By the end of the first episode of Skins series 3, I know I am already hooked.

Thankfully I never have anything interesting to do on a Thursday night. Fills a gap, don’t it?

And then there were 359

It is pure crap being a blogging professional.

Here at the Easy Realism offices, we have always been honest about our identity, brushing off any offers of anonymity – or even pseudonymity.

This blog, even in its early stages on MySpace was written exclusively and faithfully by myself, under no pretences or false names. The blog has always been linked to a profile of its author, and Easy Realism has always prided itself on just that – being grounded in reality. Most of the time, anyway.

This does pose its own limitations: I am accountable for any glaring errors of accuracy and defamatory statements I produce here, which is never good for a fledgling journalist; and any pisomojadoic bile I wish to bring up from my visceral depths must be swallowed back down, regardless of how acidic.

I am not allowed the catharsis of the anonymous prostitute blog, where every sucked cock is laid bare online; and on a more savoury note, I never write about my tumultuous love life*.

*actually, not that interesting at all, but it would be nice to let it all spill out.

Therefore, I propose to start writing an anonymous dirty blog. Really, really dirty. Really.

And I’m not going to link to it, because that defeats the purpose.

It is just a shame that blogs allow one facet of a person’s life to be explored (or exposed) in an online setting; but for so many other areas to be left out of the picture.

I am currently writing my dissertation on blogs written by MPs (research for which has left me no time to blog – a strange paradox indeed) which has brought out this idea of online exposure and the details which must be left out for personal security and privacy reasons.

We live at a time when we expect every detail to come out in the media, including a person’s blog – maybe even moreso than in the papers – so I think that because so much must be left out of blogs, even the most personal of diaries will give a skewed picture of what is really going on inside a person’s head and in their life. 

Just a thought!

Ouch! My Power Hole!

I am in Pure. Actual. Stress. mode right now.

I decided belatedly – about 40 hours ago, to be prescise – that my PROPER New Years resoultion must be, and always should have been: to get more organised.

I have made an entire lifestyle out of not organising. I have built my entire life around not making any plans and just seeing where the wind takes me. I have spent days on end acting like I was feeling around a dark room, deprived of all senses except touch.

And why not? This loosely strung plan has got me on some semblance of a career path; decreasingly strung out psychologically; and goddamn eloquent to boot.

However, the other day, when Regular Reader (RR) Angela and I were wandering around with Potential RR Bannister; none of us could come up with a plan of where to eat, which led to much blind wandering: the kind of blind wandering Easy Realism readers will be familiar with.

In our collective defence, all of us were hungover (on account of getting collectively, accidentally piso mojado the previous night); and Bannister being unfamiliar with the city gives her a pretty solid excuse.

Angela managed to take direction and guide us to a greasy spoon oasis, but it left me feeling like the proverbial fanny.

Then, the same Angela managed to compound my fears expressed elsewhere in this blog (possibly the last post, I’m too disorganised to check) about not knowing where I am going to be in six months time by calling me up lastnight, all emotions and abstractions, because she was accepted into a postgrad for next year. (Well done!)

This more than provided the stimulus for change.

I decided to take head-on action. My immediate problem is my dissertation and the fact that it is not doing itself.

Yesterday, I made some serious headway in it. Lots of writing, lots of scanning around blogs, lots of laptop work.

Until the laptop stopped working.

I had to phone Probably Occasional, Objectionable Reader (POOR) Rab for technical support. He’s not actually any better than I am at this stuff, though he thinks he is. I just needed his technical definitions of the things I KNOW are the cause of the problem. Turns out I was having problems with my “AC socket” as opposed to what I thought it was called.

I still don’t know why he kept laughing when I referred to it as a “power hole”.

Anyway, I need to take the laptop into the shop or whatever to fix its power hole, and until then, I am flitting between other peoples computers which do not appear to understand Windows Vista and/or Microsoft Office. How am I supposed to commit to my New Years resolution under these circumstances!?

I just want to shoot myself in the eye.

Oh, and if you were wondering, I wrote and published this via my mum’s inferior laptop – mainly for cathartic purposes since it was refusing to save anything to my USB pen because “the media is write protected”. What media!? What is write protection!? Why won’t you die!?!?

If this isn’t bear baiting, I don’t know what is…

Reader, I mugged him!

I was on the train on Tuesday night and a girl who looked just like Grace Slick got on my carriage somewhere around Anderston. I mean she REALLY looked like Grace Slick. I could hear White Rabbit starting to play in my head. The weirdest thing was, though, was when I saw what she was reading: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I wonder how conscious she was of this consonance.

Life is getting back on track after the nice honeymoon period that followed new year. Honeymoon period referring to, specifically, the fact that instead of sleeping or working, I drank. It was my birthday on January 2nd, I worked the 3rd and 4th, passed out for almost the entirety of the 5th and visited the Irn Bru Carnival on the 6th.

My birthday was a huge success. I decided against planning it, because I hate planning. The only thing I had loosely suggested was that we go to Curious Curious at Stereo – the idea being that it would piss off Martin and Rab, who had pissed me off by spending their respective birthdays in Bennets and the Cathouse. Stereo was, of course, shut; the single planned part of my evening a complete failure. Instead, we went to Buff Club, which ended up better than I could have asked for.

Turning up with my party were the usual suspects – along with Rab and Martin, there were regular readers Angela and Chris; from high school, Drew, Dani-Su and Nichola Gallacher – the latter two total wildcards. Sandy the teuchter turned up as well – as ever, minus ID; but thankfully it wasn’t a hindrance. Scott and Ross left early, but I am still laughing at their card. I quote: “One year older, one year closer to drag”.

I love Buff Club, and I was Piso Mojado – pretty evident when I met some of the guys I used to be in the band with. I didn’t know they were going to be out, so it was a nice surprise. I jumped on former Midnight Wildcat Andy twice – once over a couch, the second time, landing on his hand. I may have broken him, I have not heard anything back from him. Maybe he’s unable to text.

A couple of the guys I know from work turned up as well, so there were representatives from all different areas of my life. The most noticable unrepresented area – thankfully – was that of people I have been in love with at some stage; even those I have loved pejoratively.

The alcoholism was through the roof. At some point in the night, I stole a very attractive scarf from a stranger; and Dani-Su got in some sort of fight, breaking her elbow. I didn’t even know you could break your elbow! Live and learn.

Drew drove everyone home, with four of us crammed in the back of the car – me minus a seat, of course. At that point in my life I genuinely thought I knew what it meant to fear for my life.

The Irn Bru Carnival made me realise this was just a superficial notion. Drew can drive better than anyone I know, and I trust him with my drunken life. However, whoever created the Stargaze ride at this carnival gains neither respect nor trust; only fear. While the other rides were entertaining at best, the Stargaze left me feeling like I understood 9/11 first hand. I could not stop thinking about how people had the choice of either jumping from hundreds of feet in the air or burning to death. I was unable to breathe because my lungs were under so much pressure. It was horrible. When we came off, Angela eloquently noted that she was “out of service,” because her “vagina feels like it has collapsed in on itself”.

Collectively, we spent about £8 on those rigged claw machines where you have to grab prizes, then watch in horror as your stuffed animal or whatever falls from the weak grip of the tampered claw. I did manage to win Angela a rainbow pony called Princess. She made that weird noise she makes when I did.

That weird noise, by the way, is all over the unpublishable videos I made on New Years Eve and the morning after. My favourite part is where Angie says:

“I look like a tranny!”

In her party-ruined outfit and yesterday’s make-up, I couldn’t disagree. Robert then asserts:

“I smell like a tranny!”

Then I join in:

“I smelt a tranny and I liked it!”

Katy Perry, eat your heart out.

DIY Culture – and how it doesn’t work.

I just found – and stole – a nice skin on Bebo with old, broken piano keys as the main design. I was reminded of this is a poem I wrote maybe six months ago and thought I’d post it. I think it is pretty good – better than a lot of the other pieces I’ve written anyway!

Don’t worry, I don’t plan to post any more poetry on this blog! More confused ranting soon.

The Wooden Box.

Two hundred and thirty strings,
some rusted, some snapped,
are decaying and are never struck;
an upright upturned.

The wooden box, increasingly silent,
I nursed into its own wooden box,
where, as far as I knew,
it would never hammer
and vibrate into tuneful life again.

But after three winters
and three springs
of decay and silence
the funeral ivy has edged its way
into the coffin’s coffin.

The mausoleum is green
outside and in.
Buzzing with life,
the old body;
from somewhere within.

A constant hum
of low A
spreads through the
inverted jungle,
and with it,
the eyes pick up on
fleeting black
and yellow
over the failing brown
and rotted white.

The old body winks a reproachful
new-born eye;
for once more,
from her tomb
the old instrument
can make music
of her own.

A hive of chewed wood nests
among the resting strings.
Life darts in and out
like the pulse
of the wrongly presumed dead.

As an old friend, I know
that look she gives me,
as she lounges in dusky glamour,
the perched winks,
are to let me know
“it’s not over yet”;
as two hundred and thirty wasps
tune their wings
to her deepest bass string.

The Desire For Spare Change

One really great thing about getting piso mojado at a party or wherever – beyond banterously passing out in a hall and screaming “AH TELT YE! NAE ANGLES!!” at everyone who passes, a vain attempt to line up every one of my friends in efficient, linear patterns – is the sense of freedom from being boxed in.

I feel boxed in, specifically, by paranoia explored in the last blog I posted. I feel a need to change major things in my life, turning this blog into some retro Me-Decade soapbox; but getting piso mojado offers a solution. That’s right – this is yet another epiphany-hangover blog.

I was at Px’s place lastnight for New Years, with a massive bottle of gin, two semi-frozen bottles of tonic water and a bottle of cheap cava (which apparently tasted like cat pee, but half a litre of gin has left me only with the memory of opening the bottle), and left this afternoon with Drew, Robert and Angela. I woke up in bed between the latter two of my taxi accompaniers, with no memory of actually getting there. Wonderful.

When we got back to Angela’s and split off home, I went to sit at the bus stop to smoke. Obviously no buses today and I wasn’t going anywhere, I just didn’t want to go home yet.

As a coda to yesterday’s paranoia blog, the piso mojado epiphany-hangover solution presented itself in my MP3 player’s random song function. I decided the first song I heard would set the tone for 2009, while sitting at the bus stop with my Marlboros staring at looming “TWENTY’S PLENTY” road signs. Pretty ominous considering this is the last day I will spend at the age of twenty.

But twenty is not plenty, goddamnit! The songs that played, to set the tone for 2009 said so!

1. Take It Easy by The Eagles.

This song really sets up the whole ideal world I proposed in the previous blog – I need to stop analysing everything until it becomes meaningless and painful, otherwise I will not get anywhere at all and probably lead myself into a completely pointless mental breakdown.

2. Something In The Way She Moves by James Taylor.

I never really explored this in the previous blog, but 2008 was blighted for me by a couple of rounds in the ring with unrequited love. It would be nice to find someone this year like James has in this song, to focus my thoughts on in a more tangiable and less damaging way than I did in 2008 – otherwise, again, I’ll be heading for a pointless nervous breakdown.

3. White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane.

This was another point not really mentioned in the previous blog – but touched upon in The Desire For Change: getting really trashed. This whole blog is based on the facilitating use of alcohol and whatever, and to get through this year’s proposed ups and downs, I am pretty sure I will need one pill to make me larger and one pill to make me small – at the very least.

These were followed by another couple of ominous songs – Going To California by Led Zeppelin and Close Your Eyes by James Taylor (again! What is with that random function Taylor bias!?). Taylor’s song was written for Joni Mitchell, and Zeppelin’s was written about her. I think it is pretty safe to say that 2009 playlists – when not on the random function – will be dominated yet again by Joni. I honestly believe that her music has made me a deeper person, for good or for bad; and one song of hers – which did not play at the bus stop today – contains some lines I will have to take to heart even more seriously than I have done in the past: Refuge of the Roads. The whole poem is an incredible, lengthy and encompassing piece of advice, but I will just highlight the verses relevant to me right now.

“Heart and humor and humility”
He said “Will lighten up your heavy load”

There was spring along the ditches
There were good times in the cities
Oh, radiant happiness
It was all so light and easy
Till I started analyzing
And I brought on my old ways

A thunderhead of judgment was
Gathering in my gaze

In a highway service station
Over the month of June
Was a photograph of the earth
Taken coming back from the moon
And you couldn’t see a city
On that marbled bowling ball
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here least of all
You couldn’t see these cold water restrooms
Or this baggage overload
Westbound and rolling taking refuge in the roads

The whole point of this poem is that all people are insignificant – but painfully intelligent – beings who make something out of nothing. The thing that damages us most, psychologically, is overanalysis of every little detail and being unable to focus on properly living life to the full. Mitchell’s entire Hejira album is about depression through loneliness and overanalysis. This song gives a true – if impractical – cure to depression: true, because this solution would work, but impractical as it is so hard to override the program of overanalysis drilled into our brains.

If nothing else comes from 2009, I endeavour to push out the overanalysis and just get on with getting on. In the Refuge of the Roads, I will find freedom from being boxed in by my own fruitless analysis.