For all you boloists out there who are either enslaved by other halves on a completely corporation-abused day or those that are thinking of killing themselves as yet another day passes to commemorate another year of loneliness, Charlie Brooker has written eloquently on the proposal for an anti-v day… http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/11/charliebrooker.relationships

Disillusionment hits with the world we appear in,
Or is this just the path to earning certification?
How is it possible to effect change
Whilst ensuring that change is good?

There are no answers;
Just void where you want answers to appear.
When there is no inherent meaning but that which you create
Life’s mobius strip entangles itself.

Well. How to broach a new subject after an onslaught of quite stunning reports from the front of insanity, after an apparently barbarous trip to the ‘dam. I, being a stranger to that collective experience will simply raise my current glass of scotch (am doing so now) and finish off the rest of the bottle in homage to these warriors of fortune.

My own personal trip is waning to a close and I can foresee several conclusions galloping from the horizon. I have been in Madrid on and off during the last year and have enjoyed it. I do, however, suffer the niggling feeling that I haven’t quite made enough of the experience. Responsibilities back home, working to survive, a troubled past and personality defects have probably all conspired against me.

But I shall not be the Forgotten Knight.

If there is a useful thing I seem to have learned in the past 27.8 years of life, it is that nothing worthwhile is ever finished, or even has a possible end. To finish something renders it part of the past and not worth thinking about anymore. Passe, old-hat, defunct. Desires, generally, are a fool’s mirage. This must be the point of all those muff-headed surfer monkeys constantly squealing “live in the NOW!” at anyone that will listen.

But that can be taken several ways. Living every moment in a hedonistic salubriousness surely will result in a Vanilla Ice-like nose-dive, the likes of which we can probably glimpse from the brief examples of all-out episodes described in the posts below. But perhaps there is another way… altogether more zen-like.

And that is what I may have learned on this voyage. The continuous drone of marketing, PR, hype and product placement that has assailed my ears since London sprogdom has ceased while I have been here. The materialistic and short-lived desires that characterise the capitalistic way of life have lost their power – and I am left, savouring the most normal and oft-repeated moments of friends, beer, smiles and laughter… each one perfectly formed and untouchable.

Hi boloists,

I tend to go through spurts of writing on this fine beast of a blog due to the inconsistency of material and opinion in my little head. However, today I have been spurred into action by the news sources of the interweb.

The girl with the purity ring who has been banned from wearing it by her school is just the kind of story that gives me an indignant burst of vitriol to the irritation zone in my frontal cortex. If you haven’t already read this, it is a story about a girl who has chosen to take part in the “Silver Ring Thing” commonly associated with the american evangelical movement. It is a public display of one’s commitment to not have sex until after marriage, and is supposedly a sign of purity.

Two things:

Firstly – why has the school banned it? Who really gives a shit. It is a ring. Now she has gone to the press and it will be blown up out of all proportion. I could wear a ring today if I really wanted that I could tell everyone indicated my commitment to monkey face only after I had had my balls removed – I doubt people would be offended, they’d just think I was a total knob (and that I probably wouldn’t manage to keep the promise).

Secondly – I wonder if the school banned it because of the implication that this girl is pure for doing so, i.e. kids that don’t stay or aren’t virgins are automatically branded impure or dirty? This is a serious point, as it is insulting if that is the point of the whole ring thing. SEX IS NOT IMPURE (well… perhaps monkey facing is a tad weird, but that’s another matter). I wish that religions would stop regarding all the most enjoyable and natural things that nature has given us and made us desire as dirty. Disease is bad, yes. Responsibility (family planning) is good, yes. But sex is just sex. Why demonise it? Why make people guilty for their natural (some might say God given) desires?

If having sex is dirty then so is breathing. See how long the little girl lasts abstaining from that.

What a phrase!
Normally only meriting a snicker as the testosterone riddled youths point toward the girl who hath fallen bodily and impendingly from the ‘ugly tree’, hitting all of the branches on the way down… not to mention knocking herself out with a good nutting of the trunk on terrestrial impact.

But no, this is not of what I speak. I think this phrase needs a more positive spin. Take the beautiful girl – more often than not, amazing beauty can indicate amazing lack of faculty. But frankly, and I believe I speak for many in saying this, there is a certain level of beauty that is just right for a man. A little less and the lady may not be appealing; a little more and the possibility of having a thought more structured than that of a pidgeon in the instant of copulation becomes unlikely. I don’t wish to say that this is it, done and dusted, or that this ‘certain level’ is set in stone. Far from it…

What I am getting at, in a manner that is increasingly circular and possibly more irritating, is that that ancient phrase can be so wrong. Every so often one can find oneself in deep conversation. Then you realise it… it hits you round the face like a giant iced haddock. You not only are interested and enjoying yourself – lost in a moment, buried in thought – but in fact you realise that you are attracted to the girl with which you are speaking. This is not some attraction solely created through the workings of the testes, but is something more: an entire cranial throbbing of delta waves hitting some kind of harmonic. And in that moment, the mild attraction can somehow take on a totally new dimension. The promise of partnership in a life which in reality is fundamentally solitary… Descartes was certainly not barking up the ugly tree all those years ago.

And so to my conclusion. There is more to beauty than skin. It helps, but I certainly wouldn’t say beauty is only so deep – it reaches far deeper: savour those moments and you are taunting Descartes, my dear boloists!

A conversation I had with a friend using GMail:
——————————————–

R:…facebook is shit and now i am sucked into it, I keep getting ‘news’ about people now i am best friends with [name deleted]

me: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO that sounds like hell

R: it’s not that bad. i just will disable emails i think, i don’t know why i do it really. i have a myspace too.

me: why?

R: i don’t know everybody’s doing it i thought it was cool and then one day i just realised it wasn’t fun anymore you know…

me: it’s not as if you have anything to add to the bollox that is the internet, and you don’t have any friends either except [name deleted]

R: [name deleted] IS my friend, maybe i will send him a little icon of a cake as a ‘gift’, it let’s you do that, facebook

me: can you actually do that?

R: cool.

me: how sad… I’m amazed

R: it is amazing.

me: that is a new level of pointless wankery in my book

R: [name deleted] has far more friends than me

me: [name deleted] doesn’t really have friends, he has social associates, business partners in life

R: have you met my associates?

me: what? no

R: i have none.

me: well that’s why then

R: hum.

Just thought I would write and wish all boloists a good weekend.
For some unfathomable reason, I am having one of those days where I am calm, relaxed and undeniably happy.
The sun is shining, it’s nice and warm and there is an evening of beers and chatting with nice people ahead.

One day I’ll figure out how to make myself have more of these days. Until then, I’ll just try to enjoy the ones I have.

This is pretty interesting so I thought I would post it. I wonder how easy it would be to get a self-deceiver to realise how deceptive they were being? Would Tony Blair’s mind ever be able to cope with accepting that going to war was not “the right thing to do”???

When Seeing Is Disbelieving
by Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post
Reposted from:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901152.html?referrer=delicious

Four years ago tomorrow, President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and dramatically strode onto the deck in a flight suit, a crash helmet tucked under one arm. Even without the giant banner that hung from the ship’s tower, the president’s message about the progress of the war in Iraq was unmistakable: mission accomplished.

Bush is not the first president to have convinced himself that something he wanted to believe was, in fact, true. As Columbia University political scientist Robert Jervis once noted, Ronald Reagan convinced himself that he was not trading arms for hostages in Iran, Bill Clinton convinced himself that the donors he had invited to stay overnight at the White House were really his friends, and Richard M. Nixon sincerely believed that his version of Watergate events was accurate.

Harry S. Truman apparently convinced himself that the use of the atomic bomb against Japan in the fading days of World War II could spare women and children: “I have told Sec. of War to use [the atomic bomb] so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children,” Truman noted in his diary.

Nor are U.S. presidents alone when it comes to deluding themselves: Successful politicians may just be more skilled at self-deception than the rest of us. Most people, perhaps all, seem hard-wired to be able to interpret reality to suit their ends.

Self-deception has been uncovered in a wide range of situations, says Robert L. Trivers, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University who has studied the phenomenon. Before the Challenger explosion, for example, NASA engineers noticed that one of the O-rings on the space shuttle had been eaten a third of the way through. Since the shuttle had flown and returned to Earth, the engineers concluded that it was not a problem. Surveys show that four in five high school seniors believe they have exceptional leadership ability, and nearly every single professor in the country believes he or she is above average.

During Colonial times, there were even people who managed to convince themselves that slavery was in the best interest of slaves; later on, some maintained that colonialism was in the best interest of poor countries.

War provides especially fertile soil for self-deception. Societies at war do not look kindly at derogatory assessments of their own fighting ability and motives, and they do not encourage talking up an enemy’s strengths. This explains why both sides in many conflicts believe they are morally and militarily superior. (Each believes the other is deluding itself.)

Self-deception seems to be a universal trait, which presents an interesting problem for science, especially for scientists who study behavior from an evolutionary perspective. It makes sense for deception to abound in nature — viruses find ways to sneak into our bodies, predators stealthily stalk prey, and countless species use camouflage to hide themselves from their attackers. But why would nature, after spending millennia evolving highly sophisticated senses to perceive the world, build in a psychological capacity that allows us to ignore what is right in front of our eyes?

Trivers says the primary use of self-deception appears to be that it aids people in deceiving others.

“Self-deception evolves in the service of deceit for two reasons,” he said. “It improves your ability to fool others and, second, it reduces the cognitive costs of deception.”

The thing to keep in mind, Trivers says, is that even as evolution rewarded deceivers, it also punished deceivers who got caught. (The ability to spot deception evolves along with the ability to deceive.)

Deliberate deception among humans, furthermore, requires effort. It requires you to hold both the truth and the untruth in your mind, and consciously suppress the truth. This is why the stereotype of liars depicts them with sweaty palms, croaking voices and shifty eyes — lying can be hard work, and liars are often nervous about getting caught.

Self-deception, said Trivers, who has studied the phenomenon in contexts ranging from the Challenger explosion to a plane crash in Florida, offers a way around this psychological hurdle. If you can make yourself believe the untruth, for example, by marshaling evidence that supports your view and ignoring evidence that contradicts your position, it becomes that much easier to persuade others.

Like many other aspects of brain functioning, self-deception does not require people to sit down and decide they are going to lie to themselves. (That would actually defeat the point of self-deception.) No, it usually happens subtly, without the person even being aware of it.

“The costs of deception are being detected and punished,” Trivers said. “There is definitely a downside to self-deception, and that is you are putting yourself out of touch with reality, but it cuts down the risk of getting caught.”

Lyn Nofziger, a longtime adviser to Ronald Reagan, once said the same thing about his boss — and about the utility of self-deception in politics: He could “convince himself that the truth is what he wants it to be. Most politicians are unable to do this, but they would give their eyeteeth if they could.”

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.

Rant over.

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 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.

Previously:
————————-
I was just thinking, what actually are the odds of being born??? I am going to work this out, and then get back to you, dearest bolo.
————————-
I’m back, and it has only taken me a month! I have pondered this and come up with the table below (click it to see in detail), complete with reference addresses. It’s not exactly the Lancet, but fuck it, I throw it open to mighty bolo for peer review. Now I just have to decide whether to post it on the office intranet at work.

That makes the chance of being born (without considering the probability of your parents meeting and having children) 3.5 thousand millionths of a percent. It is probably also worth noting that to do a real calculation, you would not only have to work out the chances of your parents meeting and having you, but you would also have to work out the chances of their parents having them and so on, ad infinitum, back in time to the birth of life on Earth around 2 billion years ago (or even the birth of the universe?)
——————————
Update:
I now make it 2 hundred billionths of a percent, as I hadn’t taken into account the number of combinations of sperm and egg. Obviously though, this method is still severly flawed, but it is better than saying the odds are ‘pretty slim’ with no qualification of how stupidly slim they are!

I just thought it was worth mentioning an appreciative mental relief and approval at Tony Blair’s apparent failure (at time of writing) to cave-in to the pressure from the Catholic and Anglican churches, that famed Opus Dei member Ruth Kelly and his wife on the subject of gay anti-discrimination law.

Ultimately, it is discrimination. Get over it. You are fools to blindly follow some old book rather than simply being decent and respectful to people equally. I think Christians that believe this shit really need to get a grip on reality and stop losing their rag over matters of ‘faith’. Good decision, bad decision. Head in the sand, head out of the sand. Condoms, abstinence. Homosexual parents, closed adoption agency.

It really is a no-brainer.

The Earth is the centre of the universe and the universe is built for humans! http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-3974466981713172831&q=uk Wicked little animation.

I feel like leading on from Bennie’s post to do with the video ‘fish’… I will approach from the opposite angle – self-doubt.

The strange ways in which a semi-deranged mind attempts to convince itself of it’s lucidity is a constant in my life. I have no idea if I am madder than is required to be certified, but I would be happy to take the test (and suppose that really it depends on the power-wielding gimp politicians of the time anyway).

I am a quiet lunatic, with most of my unnerving thought processes invisible to the outside world, and hidden through years of childhood necessity and training. Only now, at the tender age of 27, and with the help of some time and space (and British Airways flights) do I feel that I am becoming self-assured in any way, but it is a fragile state.

One thing is for certain, my family, at least some of the time, is probably collectably certifiable. This baseline marker is the reason for my lack of trust in the temporary feelings of rock-like zen understanding I am increasingly experiencing.

The problems this zen feeling causes are normally associated with and dampened by work. My particular offices are filled with astonishingly enthusiastic, motivated, and (at least outwardly) happy and successful, intelligent people. The kind of people that may very well take a motivational video seriously. This can lead to feelings of claustrophobia for someone who is prone to uncontrolled outbursts of harsh honesty, built on cynicism and incredulity and bouts of supreme, albeit temporary, confidence.

But am I right? That’s what I ask myself. Should I play along with the script? Or should I take every opportunity to say exactly what I think? If I do, I would still be more than happy to be humbled by reasonable argument and sincere response… but do I not risk turning myself into an arse?

Am I really confused, or just viewing the confusion of human societal reality?

When I see in those closest to me the terrible reality and scale of unfairness dealt by fate and genetics, and in the same day see rich and successful intellectual monsters moaning about their comfortable, secure, well-paid and respected careers, I feel torn between incapacitating anger, and feeble impotence.

I am digressing, but the crux of the matter is this…
When you feel you are winning the fight against the shit, but your comrade is not, what do you do if you can’t help?

I beg all boloists: take the shit to beat the system, but always remember what shit it is. And if you can use it to make the system fall like a fuckwit, show no mercy.

…Rant Ends…

I have recently read the book written by Richard Dawkins entitled ‘The God Delusion’, and must admit that although it contained many arguments I have already encountered, I certainly found the explanations from this enlightened ‘brain on a stick’ much better conveyed than my measly pustule of a narcotics-damaged cabbage of a head could probably ever elicit.

Ever since the attempted indoctrination by my school at the age of 7 (and in fact, before then through prayers at infants’ school from the age of 5), I have always held a rather sceptical mindset and found the whole culture of Christianity (and other religions) very confusing, and easily treated as quaint and occasionally amusing. Indeed, the main reason my peers chose to celebrate Ash Wednesday was to evade a whole hour of teaching in chapel and drink a pitiful amount of red wine in the hope of getting pissed.

Now, however, my mindset has been changed. I think it changed a long time ago, but one point Dawkins makes that really resonates with me is the exceptionally privileged place a person’s religious beliefs hold. Whereas all other points of view are open to debate, religion is the one aspect of culture that advocates unwavering, unquestioning and ignorant belief. It is apparently a virtue to believe in the teachings of your religion. And the more you believe it, and the less evidence there is to back it, the more virtuous you are. Unfortunately, in our society this also means that people respect a pious person’s beliefs, even if they are absolutely ludicrous, detrimental to others, and can easily be blown out of the water.

An old example, a boy of Quaker parentage in the first world war could happily evade conscription citing religious belief, whereas an atheist pacifist could not, and would be tried and imprisoned for desertion of duty. A more up to date example is demonstrated by the current controversy surrounding the wearing of veils or burqas when teaching children, recently added to by the Dutch cabinet, which has backed a proposal by the country’s immigration minister to ban Muslim women from wearing the burqa in public places.

Another aspect I am worried about is the prescription of children to religious beliefs. I don’t know what may have happened to my views if my parents were not the unconcerned heathen that they are, but bringing up a child as a Jew or a Christian seems comic considering the child’s understanding of such matters. You don’t tend to see Socialist or Conservative children.

Despite the barriers to integration and a world view of humanity that this culture introduces (from the moment of birth), even more scary is the total incompatibility of all these faiths and the ultimate conclusion that ‘I am right and everyone else is wrong’. As I have said before, how can you argue against a religion whose virtues are based on unquestioning, blind faith.

And so, I have decided to become an activist of sorts. I would never insult people’s beliefs, of course, but I will question them, and often have done. And probably the biggest question, as always, is at home – my nephews’ likely entry into an exclusively Jewish school.

Tell us more Oh Mighty Groovertron! You cannot leave us hanging on the edge of expectation like that!

I need some advice. I feel that my time in Spain is not going exactly according to plan, and I feel some rather strong swift action is needed. If anyone feels they are in a position to offer a comment, please feel free.

The whole point of me being here is to learn Spanish. However, although I am improving, I feel it is going far too slowly and that I will not be fluent if I continue to improve at this rate, within a year, my deadline. I work 4 days a week in English, pretty much the whole day, and the other three I have free. I am living with people who can speak English. I need to do something to improve quickly, unfortunately, going to parties often does not help, as often I can’t understand anything – too fast. I need patience.

I feel I have several options:
Leave Madrid – there are lots of people who speak English here.
Leave my current flat – same reason.
Spend more on lessons – private conversational lessons to get up to speed.
Take almost my entire allowance of holiday in one go – and spend all the time engrossing myself in Spanish.

I just need to make that jump from knowing the theory and grammar to being quick enough to understand and speak at the same time.

Any suggestions, votes for options, etc. welcome.

This kind of negative posting is getting me down. I feel it’s time for a Mr.Dopemeyer’s Magic Pill. It may just be a placebo, but that makes it one of the strongest drugs out there, universally functioning and very unlikely to lead to overdose or anaphylaxis (if that is indeed how you spell it). When I’m feeling the strange lucidity that occassionally soothes my mind, I often find myself thinking how great it is to be alive. Really, we have very few limits but those we impose upon ourselves and have imposed upon us externally by persuasion. Unfortunately, those limits are often the most limiting, and can lead us to not grab the metaphorical bitch by the tail and swing it about our heads crying: “Dance bitch! Dance!” whilst hooting ecstatically. A shame, I posit. And so I would like you all to think in terms of what this life effectively is to many of us… one big game ending in death. I am not being negative, I am just saying that we all die, and that’s the most amazing thing for levelling the playing field. It’s honest, and fair… and nobody knows if it’s bad or good (even if they think they do).

Don’t dwell on the bad things that happen along the way. More often than not, you’ll forget about them pretty soon and realise that they never mattered anyway. People that are famous are worse off than those who aren’t. People who are amazingly rich, again, are also worse off. If you have some serious hurdles that, as hurdles tend to do, keep hitting you squarely in the shins and causing you to scream with an ungainly, twisted facial expression when you try to leap them, take a step back, give yourself room, and see if they need jumping in the first place, or whether it’s just a matter of perspective and a change in direction.

I am happy. I certainly have hurdles, but I think I know how high they are and have an idea that they are not infinitely wide, and that, at least, is knowing more than I used to. Perhaps one day I will jump, or even, just step around them. I hope you can learn more about your hurdles and realise that they are silly objects that the athletic amongst us strain to jump over, often for no reason at all.

The power of ten, my friends!

I found this rather amusing, maybe you will too. It seems like rather than an anti-muslim sentiment in this country, we should all be watching out for the religious hoards ganging up on the more secular amongst us.

“I walked out of work today.. so pissed off. Had a christian and a muslim in
the office practically shouting at me because I don’t believe in heaven…
Fucking hell. I’m talking total abuse. Questions like ” So what is the
point of your life?” Every time I get confronted with this crap I go to pieces.
Anyway just so annoying.. if I disrespected their “beliefs” I would be out
on my ear (Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad) However they are allowed to
openly say whatever the fuck they want about what I think. Muther fuckers.
Rant RANT RANT
love from Pinster”

One thing the natives are sure to say when you arrive in Madrid: “watch out for pickpockets!” Not a particularly inviting prospect to be strolling around, one hand on your wallet, scanning the crowd for possible undesirables, paranoid, tense… However, they have a point. I’m not one to blanket criticise a population (a very large population at that), but migrants do tend to invite the bad rap on this one. Two experiences now: a group of young girls of an amero-hispanic appearance in the park, and a group of rather scarey looking east europeans. The madrileños do not generally take the sun, even when it’s really nice. The only people in the park sunbathing are… yes… TOURISTS! DUH-DUH-DUUUUUUUUHHHHH!!! The naughty girls tend to stroll along offering newspapers to the unsuspecting loungers, who often have their bags lying down beside them. These newspapers make a surprisingly good shield to protect against a tourist’s eyes from seeing the hand entering their bag and looking for their wallet!

My own recent experience is with my parents who visited last week (they haven’t turned to pickpocketing themselves, by the way). Coming from the airport to my flat by Metro, I spotted a couple of fingers investigating the insides of my father’s pocket like a small rodent investigates a burrow it has happened upon. I watched for a couple of seconds, just out of interest more than anything else, AND THEN TOOK ACTION. I smacked the hand away from my father’s pocket, scowled at the east european and then said something loudly in spanish like “What a thief! You bastard! I should call the police! You should be in a prison! What a bastard!” so that all the passengers could hear me. Then for good measure in english I said “pickpockets… he was trying to pickpocket you” loudly, and I’m sure most people got the picture. We checked for anything missing (nothing was) and they left the train pleading their innocence at the next stop.

They were a team of three. All I now wonder is, what is their story?

Well, what better way to start the week than with some bolo-aided cyber-flirting (check out the comments to ‘Moody Face’) and two of my three flatmates at each other’s throats. Being the diplomatic tolerator that I am, I have tried to keep things chilled and at the relevant level (they have escalated from theft of butter) but soon I may just let them go all out, and enjoy the spectacle with my bucket of popcorn. In the blue corner, I give you, Ignacio! A firey spaniard from the bowels of the basque region, normally so chilled out he is horizontal, but prone to boughts of paranoia and anxiety (he blazes like an olympic champion). And in the red corner, we have Sebastien! The most french frenchman I have ever encountered. This man is french, stringent in order, and precise. Like a good Fromage de Chèvre au Miel. As you can imagine, they rub each other up entirely the wrong way, and it has now reached the point where they communicate formal matters by email. Only time will tell what will happen. But I’m keeping my options open, and if necessary will plan for a hasty escape. I will keep bolo informed.

I went to a party last night. There was

absinthe

I got home at 7.30am. Nice.

‘la noche en blanca’ is a large cultural event in madrid which occurred last saturday. there was free entry to museums and parties and concerts in the streets, plazas and parks. Of course, being the culture vulture that I am, I decided to take full advantage of this, and so I stayed in bed until 3pm, dossed around a bit and then went out when it was suitably late to get drunk. Indeed, I have never seen such culture. The bars were 50m long in the middle of the trendiest streets (closed to traffic for safety reasons), there were the craziest of punk/techno fusion bands playing on huge stages at a level of volume that caused small children to cry, and of course people pissing in the shop doorways. By the end of the initial festivities at 12, the streets absolutely shimmered with the vapour and nasal burning effect of people’s uria, flowing freely down the gutters. Also, the ground was stickier than you tend to find it in the most classy of London’s clubs, due to spilt booze.

I feel like I have arrived, and am slowly experiencing the real culture of Madrid. ¡Me gustaría estar borracho otra vez en esas calles!

we are but specks of dust on the surface of a sand grain’s vector
no meaning to our lives but that we give it, without this we are but spectres

perspective is a great thing, reject god, embrace the truth with the power of ten!