#273 The abbreviation BFB must always be taken to mean Better From Behind. Never should it be taken to mean Big Friendly Behind, Big Fat Buttocks, Built For Bumming or Backside-Fixated Barsteward…etc

#272 When your first glance of a seemingly attractive woman is from her posterior aspect, presume the BFB principle. When she turns around, this will certainly avoid crushing disappointment, or may even bring a day-making bonus if you find out the principle does not in fact apply.

My old associate Green coined the phrase plumbait, explaining to me that if you were a plum – an idiot so to speak – and were bait – liable to be caught for whatever indiscretions you were up to – you were a plumbait. For him, it was pretty much the worse insult he could confer on someone, because in his line of work being liable to be caught was at best extremely worrying and at worst likely to lead both the person in question and himself directly to jail, and well, being an idiot is pretty much a universal theme.

I feel like a bit of a plumbait this week, for a collection of reasons. One of the main ones is that I keep coming writing stuff for bolo on scraps of paper and files because I’ve lost my connection at home and then I leave it at home. It sits there going out of date, while this site gets increasingly jaded. My only solution seems to be to gradually release these back posts in the next week, but I don’t like doing things out of order. It bothers my obsessive compulsive side stepping out of chronology and it bothers my mission for bolo, which I think for me was to try to capture my thoughts as I had them and to reflect on today. But then again, I think even worryng about this kind of stuff probably makes me a plumbait as well.

Another reason is that I’m trying to get some hosting space working and it’s bloody hard. Actually scratch that, it’s nearly impossible. The guidance on pointing dns, moving domains, fiddling with IPs and glue domains (what the f?) is all written in Greek and besides even these terms are things I don’t understand. I never wanted to have anything to do with that geek shit and looking at these manuals and trying to squeeze my brain makes me feel like a plumbait. A plumbait for bothering and a plumbait for not being able to do it. The bait part is that if I fail, my hosting and hence my lovely websites (which I actually do care about) are liable to collapse like the chicken pie Crimp inadvertently threw on the floor the other day (Crimp – you too are a plumbait). I am likely to be caught for the geek fraud I am perpetrating and shown for what I am – a layman with delusions of technical grandeur.

And I suppose that’s about it given that I can’t now be bothered to outline the other five or so reasons that come to mine. Nothing really to worry about, but a collection of stuff that is itching my brain and making me stare off into space thinking when I should be dealing with the business of being a fully functioning human being. Such is life, I suppose, but at least after my holiday I seem to be sleeping again. Roll on being able to speak in full sentences and open my eyes beyond a milimetre before 11:00 am. Ya.

Actually scratch all the above, to give a little context, I’m on a Virgin tilt-train (god knows how they’ve managed to blag that a train that leans is a good thing – it’s like being on a very long and boring rollercoater – constant feeling of sickness or like taking a long and uncomfortable shit) and I’ve just looked to my right at the seats over the aisle to see this girl reading an article ‘I was born with no vagina’. Assuming that the article is from the point of view of a girl (after all I could write that article from my point of view too) This is clear proof that truth is stranger than fiction and that in comparison with the poor unfortunate retching their horror story in the pages of ‘Look again’ or ‘Quim monthly’ I am no plumbait. I am Graver superlean, blessed of arms legs and other useful appendages. Nothing can stand in my way.

My shoe comes apart -
The sole becomes detached
From the upper.
I walk with a slap
“Like a penguin on crack”.
Why that simile seemed appropriate
Is now beyond me, baby.
All I know is that water from the puddle I so childishly just walked through is seeping slowly into my sock.
Reminding me that no matter where I live, how much money I earn or whatever sex I end up as, I will never be able to tolerate wet underwear or write poems that adequately express the misery it brings.

Well, I suppose the day had to come. The neighbours after months of contant unvigilance appear to have finally noticed that a large proportion of their bandwidth was being siphoned off by their near neighbours for the purposes of web creation and other subterfuge. It’s a shame and it puts an end to these late nights of thought gathering and is going to require an even more fiendish level of organisation. Write the code at home, do some other tasks and then zip off to Crimp’s house to upload them over a zoot or two thanks to the slow joys of dial up. Not such a bad discipline in a way though and to be honest I can’t really begrudge the neighbours for wanting to keep their connection to themselves. Still, where is the love these days?

On other matters, I suppose burdens like these are more easily brushed off after a weekend of wandering the countryside, staying away from plans of world domination and dealing with countryfolk with a smile on their face and a spring in their step. I suspect part of this cheerfulness may be down to their propensity to charge as much as they can in that part of the world for tea, cake and small museums last updated in the 1970. Still the few days was much joy, most of which I’m not going to chat about here, but suffice to say the Groover feels rested and ready to fight the good fight again. Thanks N.

Only other turd in the ointments to report are a parking ticket for drinking too much tea, a further bank fine tacked on to the one I paid for two months ago, presumably for my bank’s own amusement. Had to shout a bit about “how would you feel if I came round to your house and took your tv?” to get the guy on the phone to cancel that one. Jokers. Also work tomorrow. Clearly crack infested and a good chance of having to go to the North East this week, which lets face it is like being sent to prison. After a week off and a new mindset, strongly feel like telling these pokers where to push it, but then again one week to go now and then down to part time. At last you bastards at last.

Halfway through I started to feel air on my scalp once more and with the renewed acquaintance of head and atmosphere, a new connection with the wisdom of the cosmos – what the fuck did I look like? An involuntary grin spread across my chops as I felt the total relief from the escape from looking-like-a-twat-and trying-to-justify-it-dom spread throughout my ravaged soul. However,as with any decision I make, my tiny mind made a token effort at turmoil. Part of me felt like the whole of the last follicularly-indulgant fifteen months was a complete pretence: an experiment with denial and manipulation of my self-image; but the rest was swinging between feeling smugly self congratulatory over the brave journey into the unknown I took despite the sniggers of little girls, and regretful that I hadn’t the balls to carry on. Still, whatever else I or others think, I can now say “shut it you slag” with conviction, and my eyes will be bloodshot from drink and lack of sleep rather than a Dougal fringe blowing in them thirty times a minute. I must leave you now, however, as I’ve just seen some dodgy lookin’ geezer  marfin’ off in my manor. Oi! Shut it!

Just a quick note to observe that I will be away from bolo for the next couple of days escaping plumbaits, ambitious young executives, computers and the chance of impending website based doom, by ducking to the countryside.

A few walks on a surface other than tarmac and the chance to perhaps get bitten by a wild pony or stung by wasps seems so appealing now that if I can just rustle up enough strength to get some dinner, pack some bags and get over to Tootania, I might just make it. Blessed be the chilled for they shall inherit the park.

I’m all for this internet banking thing. Mainly because as I have a job, it is actually impossible to get to the bank at any time (lets face it I’m never going to get up early on a Saturday morning) without defrauding my employer or spending my lunch time queue shuffling with the other poor saps.

Doing your finances on the magic screen seems the perfect solution and in fact on the most part I have found it to run that way. You log in, do your stuff, log out again all with the feeling of efficiency which banks should give you, but so rarely do. It feels right to see your overdraft marked up in a nice little helvetica font, pointing out to you without the condescension of a human face, that you have absolutely no money.

But recently, it’s all gone wrong on the internet banking front: I managed to lose £40 through an innopportune lean click of a drop down box a month or so ago and then today I tried to set up my online account with HSBC. In what is presumably a bid to stay one step ahead of the thieves, when you set up an account with them they give you about 10 increasingly arcane and difficult to key in (forget remember) codes which you need to get the thing working. Fine. But, how come then half an hour later and a number of attempts (including the usual comical variants of upper and lower case, numbers and guesswork) I’m still sitting here being told my entries generate a 3100 error. What the f is a 3100 error. Is it too much for you halfwits to explain what has caused my entry to jar so badly with your gateway police rather than throwing numerical abasements at me? Is it too much to supply 26 figure codes that work. Give me back the callow youth with acne who always pretends he can’t hear what I’m saying behind his glass screen and his refusal to give me money when I have no id despite the fact that he knows me from school. All is almost forgiven.

A few years ago if you told me I’d have spent a lean hour on a Saturday afternoon, setting up a new domain and preparing to establish a hosting account it would have resulted in two reactions. 1) I would have not understood a word you had said and in an attempt to hide my ignorance would either have attacked you, or would have openly mocked you and 2) once I did understand, I would have met your words with total disbelief. I did not see that one coming.

Which just goes to show, you can’t predict the strange and varied path that life can take. You also can’t predict the movement of factors outside of your control. I couldn’t have seen that a) the internet would be such an amazing thing to be involved with by this point in the turbulent year of 2006 or b) that my never ending will to do something better than the daily 9-5 grind would push me at this point into a new venture. The launch of a new company possibly allowing me to spend my time creating things and working in my garden or plunging me into bankruptcy and hopeless oblivion. Either way, it’s good to shuffle the deck from time to time and this path at least seems to point the way towards joke, late-nights and more swearing and that can surely only be a good thing.

Oh yes. Thursday finally came after nearly a week of waiting, and with it the start of a run of seven straight days off work. I always say that the value of vegetative time is overlooked: a decent time to get in order the thoughts that keep you awake that extra hour; a chance to catch up with Fern Britton’s battle against health, Kate Humble/Ben Fogle’s battle against intelligence and Lorraine Kelly’s brave fight against feminine itching and the dogs of menopause; and the opportunity to shout “Nnnng…Bagra..Chumley…Fucking…PloppyJelly” within office hours. The added bonus is that at the end of it all I’m so bored that there is almost a positive side to getting back to mingling with the office benthos once again. Lunch is in 26.2 minutes: I fancy cheese on toast…….

Recently have taken to eating my lunch at my desk in the manner of fraught workaholics the world over. The upsides of this are that I get to do a bit of design stuff over lunch rather than talking to a load of degenerates about stuff that’s being covered before. The downsides are that my keyboard is becoming gunked with grumbs, mayonnaise and small chips of well-cooked bacon. I may eventually be able to wrap it in a baguette and attempt to donate it to a) a small child, b) a wandering beggar or c) a collector of gourmet computer peripherals.

Fortunately my company pays a guy to come in once every 6 months to scour our keyboards to a state of perfection. He has the tools for the job, makes a lot of money and is very glad of the fact that people eat at their desks.

So in an effort to close down last week’s week of whinging I would like to proclaim that I spent pretty much the whole of yesterday sleeping, resting my head or moving slowly between bed and kitchen for drink and snacks. As a result I have emerged as a new man, ready once more to stay up late, fight the forces of darkness and generally be capable of speaking in words that go beyond a grunt. Praise be. To those involved in Friday night’s late night music inspired shenanigans I can only say, amusing times and positive thoughts sometimes come out of bad ideas. That’s pretty much as far as I’m prepared to go.

Lots of people looking scrubbed up today. Friday night looms and trying to juggle in my head whether a) I should get bevved up in an effort to forget the pains of the working week, catch joke and wind up a few shirt boys or b) accept that this week has shown impending signs of illness and financial destruction and spend the evening chilling in castle chandos. It’s hard to make these decisions sometimes.

“Eee luv, so they ‘ad to doo a bit’er explorat’ry rand ‘is gall bladder, an’ that’s none too pleasant, boot at least it wern’t the ‘Big C’, know wot I mean?” I felt for the bloke at first, but imagine the collective exhalation of relief and mopping of fast-dampening brows on the learning of my fellow commuters and I of the poor unfortunate’s avoidance of the ‘Big C’. How grateful were we that an attack of self-consciousness had not prevented the surprisingly young and pretty looking northern scullery lass-cum-office worker from bawling the final words of her phone conversation to every cubic nanometre of a packed carriage on entering. I felt such gratitude that I almost offered to pay for the repair of the botched procedure that had left a five-inch gangrenous gash, spurting foul emissions, across her face.

I got on the bus today and instantly recognised a feeling of nagging irritation in the unrested Bennie mindset. Looking around and searching my thoughts for the source of the irritation, it didn’t take me long to locate the source of my problem – some over confident little hood rat oik wielding his weapon of choice – the mobile phone with music playing facility. French hip hop was his ammunition – a totally charmless bastardisation of a perfectly valid genre with broad predictable beats and whiny ghetto pretensions.
Feeling not at all rested and unable even to listen to my own music or concentrate on my book, i knew action had to be taken. It started with a lingering look over my shoulder to ascertain the exact source of the social blasphemer and check how many were in the group. Hurrah! A lone soldier. Feeling slightly appeased by the fact that I needn’t be intimidated by a lone adolescent gimp, I tried to go back to my book. No joy though, and the rage was creeping back. I looked around for support, to try and make eye contact with some fellow passengers and see who might support any verbal request for common sense on my part. Nothing doing. Well, I had to do something, so I stood up and changed seats, much to the confusion of the down’s syndrome girl on the opposite seat, who started looking around anxiously as if she might have missed her stop….
Having acquired a seat of relative tranquillity and having read a page of my book without having to re-read every other sentence, I was surprised and increasingly glad to note that some of my fellow passengers from the back of the bus had followed my lead. A minute later, the back section of the bus was more or less empty and knowing looks and nods of understanding were being exchanged freely between the self-evicted commuters. This level of communication was unheard of! Soon, there was a consented drift towards the lone wanker and his ridiculously ill-conceived device. Without conflict, a spokesperson stepped forward and asked the questions that needed to be asked and made the demands that had been scrolling across the platforms of our minds since we’d left the depot; “Why do you think we would possible ALL want to listen to your particular brand of appalling music?” “Please could you turn it off?”.
This kid was so sure of himself, and so concerned with his own space, that he apparently hadn’t noticed any of this building. Either that, or he wanted us to think that he hadn’t noticed. I’m not sure which is worse.
In any case, he said no, go fuck yourselves, and in another instant we had him. A bloke on each arm, forcing his head downwards so his arse stuck up in the air like a poodle. A sinister acceptance passed over me as I foresaw my inevitable role in the scene. A lady had picked up the offending phone and yanked our hood rat’s trousers and briefs (yes, briefs) clean off. Soon the phone was in position and so was I, having already tied a plastic bag over my shoe in readiness. With an almighty wind up, I booted the phone deep up inside the poor bastard’s intestines and then, as if preordained, the bus doors opened and we chucked him and his muffled beats out onto the street.
We returned to our seats with the collective understanding that nothing need ever be the same again, especially for the down’s syndrome girl whose understanding of acceptable norms on public transport had been irrevocably shattered…

Sometimes you reckon you are good for another few hours activity when you’re not. You don’t feel it at the time, but it gets you the next day. That was the story of today for me. Too little sleep after the aftermath weekend and then hit with tube delays. Turned up bleery eyed and with new found cold, to spend the day struggling with the little details. No sir we can’t give you money without photo id at the bank and then trouble in the form of projects not worth going for. Some days you have to realise you’re not going to get anywhere and once I did that things chilled out. A restful evening, a bit of light filmage, and then the unavoidable reasoning that early to bed can repair you for the morning. Rest, sleep, move again.

Just wanted to add as an additional “turned out nice again” George Formby style addition to the progress relayed below, that bolo.org.uk is now on the first page if you search ‘bolo’ on google uk and at the start of the second if you search google us style. Like the bit of graffiti on the garage next to where I used to live I can only proclaim – Coolio.

On the down side, I’ve noticed of late (perhaps as a result of the above news) some pikey type casino spam monkeys have decided that their best method of advertising is to leave their sordid links as comments on the posts in bolo. Fortunately, my inbuilt boloist protection has so far spotted them coming from a mile off and posted their offerings directly into a small container marked ‘poo’. However, it may only be a matter of time….. Get back you swine, get back.

Yeah so it’s been a few days of ups and downs, hard work, triumph, plum-baits and the usual routine of trying to move ever upwards through the forces of inertia.

What can I say about the plum baits? The ex-girlfriend who popped up to tell me that a substantial amound of the straight set at uni were meeting for the weekend for a reunion. Momentary sharp pang of indignation, for where was my embossed invitation? Nowhere blad, too many harsh recriminations for that and a case of delegating a set of friends to one party when two people split up. Still, why did she tell me that and why did she pop up that precise moment as I sweated it across London on an early morning Northern Line train? A sure sign that I should leave the early mornings well alone.

But why was I sweating it across London and why was I up so early. It was because this week saw the emergence of two polar opposites as deadlines came down and the weasels jumped ship, hopefully for their strength to fail somewhere 200 yards off the shore. One opposite, the person I had hired to deliver some work, to provide programming nous that I lacked. Where was he when the chips came down, and the client popped up insisting that Monday was the day for me to finish a giant and noticeably incomplete project? Nowhere, that’s where. Not contactable by phone, email, blog or smoke signal. A real fucking letdown. But no matter because into the fray stepped his opposite, legendary programming genius Kuga Flak to dispense his own brand of high speed coding solution, to scoop me and my design pal out of the doldrums and deliver us with a chance of making the deadline again. Words can’t sum up how much I appreciate this help from a good friend.

So we had a chance again. Not much chance, but at least used to that I suppose. Work through the night, work through the day, stop for maroot, get going again.
It looks like we might just make it, but perhaps I won’t speak too soon. Just check out this website if you want to see the focus of our endeavours, nearly turned round and gleaming.
And what else? What else happened today? Well I guess this part’s the light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps the proof that the pudding’s worth making (or baking?). More work on the horizon and therefore the imminent possibility that the first three months of the soon to be realised part-time dream are paid for, possible, and spent with head held high.

Apologies for the slight break in communication. Oddly at a time when I find myself a little too busy to write up what’s happening, I find it’s a time when I have most to say. Suffice to say that the last few days have been pretty eventful and if I get the chance, which I might just do soon, I will have some stuff to write about, fools to lampoon, heroes to celebrate and another few grey hairs. Ya