New Year Promises, New Year Lumps

In an effort to regulate my sleeping patterns and the order of my day, I’m trying to break myself into some good habits, which of course everyone’s always trying to do. But, I have a powerful weapon on my side, a tool of great power used for decades by self-congratulating self-help gurus. I have a list.

The list is the key to harnessing the power of our own guilt, look at those bulleted points there, each unaccomplished goal a sneering attack on your character, your own ambition mocking you in a booming voice, holding a knife to your throat and threatening to rape your self worth.

Ahem. So, yeah, a list, the same sort everyone makes at the beginning of the new year, full to the brim with hungover repentance and promises to the almighty Me of a better tomorrow. I have a slight advantage though, for starters it’s not New Year’s Day and I’m not hungover and I haven’t been hungover for a few days now. Which is where my list begins.

1. Drink less. Now listen up Davies as I’m only going to say this once, drinking every night no matter if it is just one or two jars, is totally unacceptable. You can feel your body working a whole lot smoother today after a few days off, can’t you? Right, there you are then. So, from now on you drink only a few times a week, and if you like you can go apeshit on those days, get so ballsed that you try to seduce streetlamps by crooning Lady in Red whilst wearing nothing but your mother’s underwear. Just have a couple of nights off a week so you can wake up in the morning and feel fresh, instead of being eaten inside out by the black hole of memory from the previous night.

2. Food. More of it. Better quality. I’m not succumbing to whims of Jamie Oliver here, but I truly think I was eating better in Comprehensive school, when the only crap they served was pizza comprising of 80% olive oil and sausages comprised of 40% expelled fellow pupils. At least 2 meals a day, at least one of which is lovingly crafted with your own hands. And no Davies, lifting the plastic film off the shit storm stroganoff, stirring it and putting it back in the microwave is not lovingly crafting it.

3. Books. Read at least 30 of them this year. You know all that time you spend constantly refreshing the pages of websites that only update twice a day? Well you can cut that right out now and go pick up book instead, you’ve got a pile of them to your right that you haven’t even touched yet, despite spending 2 quid on them and I will not have you wasting money young man. The 30 is just an arbitrary number and not that important, it’s just a goal to work towards, the important part is just getting some regular reading in. Before bed would be a good idea too, remember we discussed having a more regular routine earlier? Well this’ll help out with that.

4. Writing. Go back to all those half finished pieces and have a good crack at finishing them. Don’t criticise or over think them until you get to the end, that’s what redrafts are for. Don’t cut yourself down until you’ve finished. Get back to writing something everyday, write about how many tiny dead flies there are in the store room, write about the intricacies of clipping your toe nails, write about knocking one out to an episode of Thundercats. Write anything, you don’t even have to bother with sentences if you don’t fancy it, try just an endless stream of imaginary curse words, it’ll pick up your spirits if nothing else, you pansy ass fromelinger.

5. Exercise. Hmm, not so sure about this one. No in fact, sod that, I like my beer belly just the way it is, in fact this year I think I’ll attempt to join a heavier division. Right, so no exercise and more fags, got that?

There are more here on this bit of paper but I’m fed up of talking to myself in a condescending voice, I’d rather just get on with it now.

For the record, the growth in my armpit that has been expanding and contracting for the last 4 months has turn into a boil, complete with three massive puking yellow heads on it. Either that or a boil has grown over the top of it, there’s no way to be sure yet but I promise to keep you posted.

Update: Boil is popped and leaking like your momma’s minge when I saunter in wearing her negligee, suckers. Whether the boil is a seperate entity to the lump is still unknown.

Right then, let’s have some MF Doom and Tubeway Army to celebrate.

Faceless Music - Radio is the way forward

I’ve come to the conclusion that most mainstream indie bands want me to hate them despite trying as hard as I have to like them.

Whilst staring daily into Microsoft Word’s frighteningly white screen, I habitually listen to BBC 6Music hoping for a flash of inspiration but usually have to satisfy myself with bobbing my head to the latest indie hits and the occaisional obscure gem of a record (These beauties are in plentiful supply on Stuart Mackonie’s Freak Zone, 6pm Sundays). The nature of the radio playlist leads the catchier numbers to stick in your head and the quality songs to eventually win you over and become cherished tunes. With stations such as this, the playlist is one of it’s greatest assets, but with others it becomes their greatest burden. This of course is a simple matter of personal taste.

Recently I’ve introduced a new distraction to my morning routine, the double bill sitcoms on the Paramount Comedy Channel. Slap bang it’s 9 am, there I am watching Two and a Half Men, relishing the innuendo and the stolen guffaws from the forbidden low-brow humour. But alas, their ad breaks are lengthy and plentiful and one can only make so many cups of coffee and smoke so many cigarettes in the period of an hour. Whatever is a boy to do?

The answer comes to me as I recall my channel hopping infested, early teenhood amd gadzooks! How could I forget the default starting position for the short attenion span endowed - the music channels!

Right, so the canned laughter has subsided and some weasly geezer-prick is trying to sell me cheaper insurance for my imaginary car, let the flicking commence before starving child deserving of my money forces me to send him money monthly from my imaginary bank account. Ooh, I know this one, it’s got that clicky drum beat and ace bass riff! Cor, the drummer looks like a bit of a plonker with that silly scarf and horrible hair, though I suppose it’s a drummer’s perogative to be a bit kooky, how else are they going to get noticed? Saying that, Christ, look at the singer - why’s he moving like that? Ohh, this must be the band I heard someone talking about with the singer with the muscles disease or the spazzy nerves or something. Look, there are guys doing it in the audience too and women are actually dancing with them! Hang on a minute, perhaps it’s been too long since I’ve been to an indie club and this is what they do now. The answer to that one is no, it hasn’t been too long, I don’t think I could handle being surrounded by this level of twatishness.

After an hour of ad breaks this inner monologue turns from the surprised whelping seen above to the silent raging and ranting that until now I had reserved for the Sunday Mail.

Oh mainstream indie, why do you do this to me? Just as I was about to embrace you once more as something fun and enjoyable you show me what you really are. It’s like meeting that fittie off Myspace that you’ve been exchanging dirty messages and pictures with for months and finding out that she’s not hot, just a wizard with photoshop. Watch out for those photos taken from above fellas (Yes, I do enjoy being a shallow git, hating makes the days seem shorter).

But as with internet dating, it’s all my own fault really and I know it. I know I’m a pretentious, judgemental prick and I also know that the mainstream indie is based on image as much as talent, yet I let myself mix the two together and now it’s just turned into something hateful and dirty, like punishment wanking in your sister’s bed.

While I’m not going to completely immerse myself in bands who’ve barely had a photograph taken of them, let alone a record pressed I do feel like I should go skulking back off to the weblogs to find something obscure and faceless, I know I’ll miss the banter and the intimacy of the radio.

So I just have to take away with me this lesson that I thought I had learnt in 2002 : Do not watch music channels and do not read popular music magazines, music should be heard and not seen. Oh, with the exception of being at a gig of course. Or a recording. Or unless you’re reading it off a sheet in order to play it. Hmm, I think I should’ve made the last half of that rule broader.

Regardless, I’m sure I’ll have forgotten this again in another 5 years time, but with any luck I’ll just stick to Kerrang!TV, I can handle Linkin Park looking like wallies and sounding like the weedy kid in the Under 14s Football Club.