I just logged into bolo for the first time in a week or so and was somewhat surprised to find that the spam collector had managed to pick up 3,400 spam comments in the week. Makes you wonder how much filth, (I’m not saying the ‘p’ word because I don’t want to encourage these ingrates through using words that make them think this site is worth advertising on), used cars, man extenders, lack of potence curing, degree giving, church of scientology (quite agree with Breakingstein), monkey chimp baiting activity there is out there. Almost like the whole internet is just one giant huge rotating nipple on the back of a fat three headed man, one smoking a pipe, one biting the leg of a baby and the other one lecturing you about the values of open source software and tax rebates through the use of patent pending productivity maximisers. Incidentally, I think a lot of it may be to do with swearing, so there’s an interesting and new reason for encouraging fucking censorship.
Well yes, hit the ‘delete’ key and that stuff’s all gone. Out the proverbial window to go wherever unwanted data streams go. Perhaps to a cyberspace version of Neasden or a Northern club on the grim North Western Coast on a Wednesday evening. Incidentally remember that poor chap that died on the way back on the bus one night in Freshers week? What a way to go.
But once again I digress and what I really wanted to talk about was things that probably will stay with me. Memories that have that tendency to dig deep, to pop up in the head during a moment of silence with mates at some imagined point in the future and you go ‘oh yeah I remember that’.
I wanted to talk about finally finishing work and moving onto the world of full time design company running and freelance ambling shambling consultancy. Yes, finally it is here. The last few months racing through like they were vexed just being here and suddenly I was walking home on Thursday night and thinking: ‘Oh my word, tomorrow I leave work’.
Friday morning I was as usual into the office tired and bleary eyed. Missing my ipod because I couldn’t afford to take it in on a day when I knew I’d be consuming a few beverages. I got to my desk without incident, fired up my computer and prepared for a day of idle email traffic and japery. At some point later on having consumed my first cup of coffee, my senses cleared and I suddenly realised that a good proportion of the company’s workforce were wearing the tshirts that Crimpanort designed last year for the awayday to Paris. It was an epic tribute and I felt highly amused, even putting aside my usual hatred of fancy dress to don my own version of the shirt.
Later on, I was lucky in that the speech I had been failing to conjure up in my head during the quarterly company meeting for the last couple of hours, somehow fell perfectly into place as I stood up to the humiliating demands of the obligatory circle of fear. That task over it was off to Bar Music for a few drinks to celebrate the moment of escape.
The night itself is a bit blurry towards the end, but began distinct. A sea of faces old and new raising glasses, impromptu outbreaks of dancing and frenzied photography. Doing the rounds to grab moments of conversation, explain future plans for the thousandth time and laugh at old reminiscences. Just about hold politeness in check for the most part, least till near the end, when the loss of cigarettes and the combination of pints plus cheerily profferred shots of sambuca had me potentially raging. Ah the joys of memory loss, but no creeping fear this time and mainly the feeling of happiness as I bopped onto the dance floor to spill my own pints and throw some shapes into the air.
Least till the morning, when I awoke on a friend’s floor in Bow, sickened, staggering out onto the blazing hot street and buying up a milkshake, a Dr whatserface smoothie, and two cans of cream soda. Observe the regeneration money spent on the area and the zero danger of a beating when looking like a crazy man and sucking volubly from a giant carton of banana milkshake. Onto the train to sweat it out with the weekend travellers, through the drinks collection by home, to spend the rest of the day vegetating out at my friend’s barbecue, aching limbs portending of creeping doom.
Suddenly the implications of what I had done sunk in. It all seemed a bit more epic than it had been before. It was no longer pretend. I’m still not sure I fully comprehend it, but it certainly appears real. Fortunately no real time to over-think. Today spent getting an events board ready for a client and processing the last few day’s amusements. Not too bad and starting to calm down, as the afternoon went by and jobs sailed out of my fingers into the keyboard into the programmes and up into the big nipple in the sky to be picked up by satellites, passing ufos, wireless connection stealers, credit card readers and more importantly, their intended targets. When the jobs were done I felt better, so I wrote a list of the jobs to do the next day, and then I remembered I hadn’t written anything on bolo for far too long. So I wrote this. After that I felt on top of my game again, so I went to sleep to dream of leopards and alligators and the impossibility of being able to fly for a consistent length of time.
What the fuck is scientology?
From what I can tell it involves cosmic battles and aliens and millions of tiny souls buried in your body, and strange handshakes and other weird shit… or is that freemasonry?
I’m sorry boloists, but I’m all het up again, and this time I’m feeling vulgar.
Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Beck. Scientologists. I like scientology, but that’s because I don’t really know what it is (I don’t think you are allowed to know until you have invested your life in it anyway) and I like science fiction books. Especially the crazy Philip K Dick ones about drugs and psychosis, and the Arthur C Clarke ones about octospiders.
But shit. Tom Cruise is an actor. He’s famous. He’s rich. Lots of normal people look at his picture and care about his shitty pointless life every day, wasting their time ‘reading’ Heat magazine/picture book. Why? What does he do? Oh yes… Now I see… he’s famous because he memorises (or attempts to memorise) words from a sheet of paper and pretends to be the people that are portrayed on those pieces of paper.
Well “Whoopee-the-fucking-doo-dah-shit-fuck!” isn’t that a worthwhile pursuit!
Shit.
I hate the way we think we’re so clever and so many of us so obviously are not.
Fucking shitty society of ants.
For a long time now (I can’t really remember for how long, but I reckon at least 9 years), I have held an opinion that now seems as clear to me as day, although when I used to irritatingly and repeatedly spout it to friends and any other unfortunates in my near vicinity, trying to sound clever, I thought it was an amazing piece of thinking, imbued with golden clarity like the first piss of the morning.
The probable reason for coming up with this series of thoughts was having to go to a school which regarded itself as elite and which I both loathed and refused to integrate into. I was always highly attuned to the unspoken happenings of that school, where rumors ran riot and teachers did very naughty things: particular episodes such as the sub-warden of the school being done for child-porn and the head of geography giving blowjobs to a string of leavers at the leavers’ ball, spring to mind. Some of these were probably partly a result of it being a semi-boarding school, but also a result of the usual human misjudgements.
The problem is this: if you are in a position of responsibility where your actions impact greatly on others, you must be responsible.
This is where the hypocrisy comes in, because as you can imagine, at a strict private school, they don’t mince their words when telling their ‘top 2% in the country’ pupils about all of the responsibilities that rest on their shoulders.
You must not bully.
You must not swear.
You must not graff.
You must not steal.
You must not tease.
You must not be aggressive.
You must not be violent.
You must be kind.
You must be considerate.
You must be reasonable.
You must be responsible.
You must treat people with respect.
You must discuss disagreements calmly.
You must try to be moral and ethical.
As you can probably expect, we didn’t stringently follow these guidelines. Firstly, they were imposed on us by the school rulers, which isn’t a good way to get ‘buy-in’. Secondly, the caveat to all of them is that putting on the appearance of following them, in the presence of the school rulers, is as good, if not better, than actually following them all the time (thus, the young boys become very good actors and liars under pressure). But, most importantly, they were insanely hypocritical. We knew all the shit that went on in the school, and we knew the teachers bullied kids in class (generally the weak and unpopular ones). If you argued with teachers they would often default to the “I’m the teacher, shut up.” position of debate, and if you pushed it, would throw a board rubber at you. This worked very well as advertising for how to get ahead in life.
How are you meant to teach children to be good people if you do not lead by example? Humans are very good at seeing what works in a social context, and learn quickly.
The problem is ingrained in our society. The strange thing is that if you swap the pupils for citizens, and the teachers for politicians, you get pretty much the same dynamics. However, if your school is a country, you tend to demonstrate your power over your rival schools not on the football pitch and in the league tables, but with GDP and invasions.
I was walking home friday clutching a kebab house cheeseburger in my left hand, when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a figure in a stripy top running for his life. He glanced quickly over his shoulder as he pounded down the pavement before reaching the junction which I was approaching from another way. Then disaster, for as he reached the kerb, his relentless pace became too much, his left leg stumping on a dip in the ground and he began the inevitable route towards hitting the floor. Arms pinwheeling, legs still running hard in an attempt to rebalance the critical head forward angle you are fast approaching, but it’s too much and he went down flat, sliding along the road a little way.
We had to pick him up off the ground and call him a cab home, try to get some sense out of his incoherrent ramblings and dust off the open wounds in his arms and legs and face. We still don’t know what he was running from, but he stacked as hard as I’ve seen. (Actually no, I can think of an even more frightening example) When we first approached him, he was as scared of us as the people he was supposedly running from, but by then desparation had kicked in, he was winded and luckily for him our karma was well in need of a top up.
Yes, yes, the French have gone election mad. At least the media insist that’s the case anyway, with their more or less constant bleeting by every available medium. It’s possible that most people are as sick of the constant poles and bullshit as I am. The French system is quite egalitarian in a sense, as all the Presidential candidates who have succeeded in obtaining the necessary 500 signatures of local Mayors (oh yes, those wise folk, the town Mayors – organisers of raffles and choosers of political destiny) are in theory obliged to have the same amount of TV and radio coverage. This means that as well as the watching the standard Right, Left and Middle drivel, we are also furnished with such delights as the Hunting and Fishing candidate. As you would expect, this fuckwit’s campaign is fairly hunting and fishing orientated, but he does throw in the odd well considered political strategy, like coming out of Europe and going back to the French Franc. Oh, the glory days before Europe and the French Franc. What’s he on? The French don’t pay any attention to European law anyway.
Then there is the alarming popularity of the National Front candidate, Jean-Marie “I admire Hitler” Le Pen. You may recall he reached the second round in 2002. I didn’t realise it at the time, but this means he was the second most popular candidate in the first round (oddly only two go through). You don’t need to be a political animal to realise that the popularity of the far right is bad news in any country, and it seems possible that it could happen again this year. Opinion polls give him about 12% at the moment, but there are a lot of people who are (quite rightly) ashamed of their intention to vote for a Nazi in disguise and so the data can be trusted even less than normal. Add to this the fact that many French who vote Le Pen justify it by calling it a ‘protest vote’ and it is possible the little sack of fascist cathetar juice may get though again. I mean, come on, a protest vote is a vote for the Monster Raving Loonies or taking the trouble to vote then voiding your ballot paper by drawing a big cock on it or something, isn’t it? And if you think that the system is so far wrong that you need to make a ‘protest vote’, why the extreme right? Surely that just makes you an obvious closet bigot doesn’t it?
The last of my semi-interesting political newsflash for you – Le Pen has secured 8% of the Muslim vote, it is estimated, because of his commitment to ‘traditional values’. The interview I read referred to a family who were ‘disturbed to turn on the TV in the evening and find two men kissing’. The solution? Stop watching gay porn you twats, and don’t vote Le Pen as he may well banish you from the land. Still, he’s an anti-semite, so I suppose that may appeal to certain Muslim folk. Loosely veiled prejudices account for more than you would like to think in this campaign it seems. Still, as long as our right to hunt and fish is protected, everything will be ok. Of that, I am sure.
“I feel like shit… I hope you’re satisfied”, said yours truly only a short while ago.
But times change and now, I think, I am over the worst of the brain draining, seratonin sapping downer of illness and claustrophobia that I had suffered. The weather is better, the brain clearer, people look happier, and the milk carton has recently opened without covering my crotch in the creamy white fluid contained therein. Things are looking up.
And what better way to enter the new world than with a big fat invoice sent to my first clients in my new entrepreneurial freelancing life of freedom and promise. The trailblazer I follow is our very own Groover, and I would like to join the revolution, slapping the fat-cat enslavers in the face with a large halibut-shaped baseball bat that says “fuck you – I know how good I am, you ain’t going to live off my efforts any more you management-speak talking, irritating suited monkeys!” Because frankly, the risk is what makes it interesting, makes you feel alive and happy to work your arse off. Because every single piece of effort, every night spent tapping away, every bit of creative genius is yours! All of it is going to you! And it makes you proud, happy, and keen to do all the things that you previously felt like a whore doing.
Bolo could even become a new hub for a network of mutually supportive geniuses, trailblazing the path to ethically sound, collectively beneficial services for those who really need a hand… a hand that does not rinse them.
I was up early this morning, splashing hot water on a pasty face and trying to prise eyelids open to enable putting on of trousers. Not easy.
Quick dose of training and then on to Moorgate for a branding meeting. Trepidation of a sort because we were armed only with expertly presented designs mounted on nice black card. Fortunately however, they received this offering in good spirits and we emerged, relieved and celebrating once again that the good train looked like it might just keep rolling.
Now, slumped over the keyboard again, long past when I should have been thinking human and decent thoughts like ‘quick bowl of cereal then off to bed eh chaps?’, but instead I was planning the beginnings of a novel, the ends of an email and thinking about my place in the universe again. Not really that helpful, but it kills the time.
Well, I’m assuming someone under the broad guise of ‘consultant’ must be responsible for this ridiculous slice of shit.
My uncle is a care worker and he is currently in charge of a facility which looks after mentally disabled adults, mainly down syndrome. It’s a kind of half-way house – the people that live there can look after themselves to an extent, but they’re not quite equipped to deal with the full whack. They tend to work part time jobs, production lines and box stuffing, that sort of thing. They aren’t paid a full wage as they don’t work as fast as non-handicapped people. This works out quite well apparently as many of them need to rest regularly and it also allows time for activities that don’t centre around putting five screws in every box. They have their own football team, for example.
However, their routine is set to be upset after a report found that the residents weren’t working to full capacity. My uncle has been tasked with finding them all full time, minimum wage jobs…For fuck’s sake! You can just imagine the report. “Whilst we respect the good work you do with the downies and other miscellaneous window lickers (and lickerettes), we believe that your profit per downie ratio is well below what it could be. If you were to set them all to work in, say, a steel works or an illegal cock-fighting ring, you could increase the profitability of the centre by 68% over a five year period. Then you might have enough money to pay my fee, you chuppa chup sucking chumps.”
Groover – you’ve recently given up a life in consultancy – so any input as to the viability of this one would be appreciated. There’s a home for the blind next door to me, and I’m thinking about putting them forward for an advanced mine-sweeping mission in the middle east. The bleeting blind bastards. Boom!
I was plunged into horror after I realised that I had misplaced my camera. Out for the usual round of beverages and maroot action last night, I seemed to have lost the thing. I thought at first it was round the Crimpanort’s house, but a detailed search came up dry. Home was empty of camera looking items. A call to the cab office revealed that they too had seen nothing of the small shiny object.
I bopped upstairs to sulk for a few hours and forget about it by ploughing through some long overdue work. Then, just after consuming my curry and cursing myself for my inability to look after my precious possessions, the phone started ringing. It was Checkers, Pinner’s most legendary cab company. One of their drivers had handed in my belonging and all was well again. The relief was intense, not least because earlier on I had promised my mates that if I couldn’t find it, I was fully prepared to set myself on fire and run around screaming. Instead I was running round, thanking the gods that my drunken ineptitude had for once gone unpunished, and I haven’t come down since.
In other matters, I have to report that I think this is one of the most animal stories I have ever read. Good work crazy Slovenian swimming chappy.
Apparently, Erykah Badu “picks her friends like she picks her fruit”. Does this mean she turns them upside down and sniffs their rear ends? Or does she just prod them a bit, then tut and put them in a massive woven basket anyway?
Life continues as normal, monumental deadlines sweeping by, late nights and feverish days up at the computernator, trying to hold off destruction. Putting new clothing and new haircut to paper over the cracks of sleeplessness, the impending onset of madness, paranoia or at least hypochondria. The great fear that any moment one piece of the puzzle, one cog in the great machine, will fall, sending the whole pack of the cards down, with Groover trapped underneath, screaming about the council taxes and the plumbaits. Then switch moods to derive endless exultation at glimpsed possibilities and through celebration of the fact that there are four (yes count them) more days of employed life ahead, and beyond that lie at last, the great open hills of self-employment and the chance to really see something new. Indestructible confidence: Lets push things forward, or at the very least, catch some amusement in the attempt.
I just logged into bolo for the first time in a week or so and was somewhat surprised to find that the spam collector had managed to pick up 3,400 spam comments in the week. Makes you wonder how much filth, (I’m not saying the ‘p’ word because I don’t want to encourage these ingrates through using words that make them think this site is worth advertising on), used cars, man extenders, lack of potence curing, degree giving, church of scientology (quite agree with Breakingstein), monkey chimp baiting activity there is out there. Almost like the whole internet is just one giant huge rotating nipple on the back of a fat three headed man, one smoking a pipe, one biting the leg of a baby and the other one lecturing you about the values of open source software and tax rebates through the use of patent pending productivity maximisers. Incidentally, I think a lot of it may be to do with swearing, so there’s an interesting and new reason for encouraging fucking censorship.
“I feel like shit… I hope you’re satisfied”, said yours truly only a short while ago.
I was up early this morning, splashing hot water on a pasty face and trying to prise eyelids open to enable putting on of trousers. Not easy.
I was plunged into horror after I realised that I had misplaced my camera. Out for the usual round of beverages and maroot action last night, I seemed to have lost the thing. I thought at first it was round the Crimpanort’s house, but a detailed search came up dry. Home was empty of camera looking items. A call to the cab office revealed that they too had seen nothing of the small shiny object.
Life continues as normal, monumental deadlines sweeping by, late nights and feverish days up at the computernator, trying to hold off destruction. Putting new clothing and new haircut to paper over the cracks of sleeplessness, the impending onset of madness, paranoia or at least hypochondria. The great fear that any moment one piece of the puzzle, one cog in the great machine, will fall, sending the whole pack of the cards down, with Groover trapped underneath, screaming about the council taxes and the plumbaits. Then switch moods to derive endless exultation at glimpsed possibilities and through