Pine no more..

Dear Diary, sorry it's been so long since I kissed you with my pen, my virtual pen, six weeks to the day since my virtual pen slapped you round the digital face; see I've been moving, been conned, been robbed, then actually moved to an actual house that existed, and having been robbed felt the financial pinch that disinclined me to waste time on a blog that garners no financial reward - forgetting the spiritual recompense - instead I've been applying for office jobs, attending an interview for the role of corporate scum, being rejected for not being scummy enough, but I've just about reached an impasse with CV library, there's not many office jobs there that I haven't now applied for, so I took this as an opportunity to write something, anything, just so long as it all fitted into one bad sentence, there it went.

Leaving the conservative club means I'm no longer exposed to the sort of bad examples of what a man should be that first inspired these writings.  Instead I find myself in a bigger smoggier city, in a run-down area that reminds me of Sparkbrook. From our kitchen window you can see an always-open McDonalds, which of any evening provides some variety of urban theatre; drunks and loons, hordes of teens demonstrative of black and immigrant futures, whether cackling or screaming, punching or rutting, it's a patch that never sleeps. CCTV cameras keep any alleged roughness off of the High St, forcing me to counter such suggestion with the point that Elephant and Castle is merely impoverished, not sinister; like Sparkbrook became once I ingratiated myself there, the dirty aesthetics only depress the tourists rolling through, it is alive and it loves you back, if you'll love it first. 

A Romanian man is to stand in the Crown Court tomorrow, charged with counterfeiting passports, fraud, theft, honestly I don't know what he's being charged with; but a Romanian passport with my name and his face on it was seized, and though it may only have been thirteen-hundred or so pounds, he has made me distrust and he has made me wish death on a man I have never met in the flesh.  I never gave this man money, but unbeknownst to me I showed him enough information for him to pose as me and rob me.  If he is as Romanian as I have been informed, no doubt he needed it more than I did, but it was mine, and the faith that I showed in him shall never be rekindled.  I felt humiliation and rage like I hadn't felt for a solid two years, and for that I hope he rots. 

But this is all very off topic, not that my previous posts have ever remained on-track for long, but this space was meant to be left for the advocating of a more feminist-male in society, yet all I seem to do is to wish plagues on people, a type of militancy that I discourage in political movements as it scares the average Joe off.

I'm disappointed that I missed Valentines Day on here, I had a sweeping rant planned that would curse all material possessions, and for tweeting what he bought his girlfriend for the occasion swipe at Carlton Cole for being as big a pig as one might expect from a footballer.  So count yourself lucky, Mr Cole, tens of people might have read what I thought at the time, TENS!! 

Normal service should soon be restored, whatever normality was about here.

I, object.

Reviewing the last post, which - you'll recall - ended with me killing all rapists as you do, I wondered why I was writing about something I state detachment from - something I'm not explicitly guilty of when I should be addressing the root problems of gender roles, masculinity and the objectification of women. A subject that shall surely prove more convoluted than before as I try to argue both sides of my primordial human biology and my civilized human decency. I didn't make concessions to the guilty men in the last post, perhaps because my revulsion makes me not want to see another side to it, because it seems so abhorrently wrong. With the more everyday matter of sexually objectifying women, well, I do it on the daily - every time button gets changed.

I was going to try and argue that I wasn't guilty of objectifying women, if that's viewing someone purely as a depersonalised object of desire* because even when I've bust a nut over a magazine or ogled a perfect stranger; I know there's a human on the inside.  That might be true but it's not enough.  If I'm looking, I'm rarely thinking about their loved ones and their childhood, their dreams and desires - unless theirs might align with my own current desires *wink-wink*. More likely I'm thinking about my long suffering button and how the pair might look together, and then if button might really be game - if she's said what I've chosen to hear her say then it's definitely on the cards - but then how awful I have made her feel upon two occasions - both on that lecher's paradise Newland Avenue - making eyes with students, while button's eyes have welled. I blame absent-mindedness, animal-nature, but I can be better than that.

Being aware that there is some soul where you, the man, only care for the hole isn't enough.  It's that point that you only care about anatomical aspect of a far more complex animal that is the problem, it is that reducing them down in your estimations to what you are interested in that makes it objectification.  Right?  I'm not claiming expert knowledge, I'd invite anyone with a better definition to call me on it. 

*Defined in this how-to-objectify tutorial, I keep seeing about the interweb.

I'm not the best advocate of laddish harassings of the opposite sex, it's true. Because I'm mannerful, faithful to my partner, and frankly I'm classier than that shit.  Pack-mentality encourages morons to wolf-whistle, "civilizations" rancid hypocrisies have permitted rear-fondling, fucking business interests directed who gets hitched to who for centuries - in some parts of the world - and in western societies "upper-class" circles it still does, a sexist notion that men have all the answers and women don't get 'it' lets two pissheads decide "what she really needs" when she sucks her teeth at their come-on's, so they follow her to a blind-spot on her way home...

(Having written this mostly last Saturday, returning to it is proving a challenge. I think the point of joining the topics of sexual violence and masculinity has been achieved.  Next on the agenda: I want to dissect concepts of manhood as discussed in a BBC article recently, perhaps explore the other-to-self-salience spectrum and no doubt conclude the greatest man of all time is some awkward asexual.)

Guilt

So I've been thinking about the depraved minor celebrities that are currently in docks pretending that they didn't know what they were doing was rape, maybe because it was the seventies or something; then - on the motorway last night - I heard a Radio 1 report on sexual violence in contemporary gang culture, which made me feel sick. There is no excuse, if you were 5th in line in a gang bang and you didn't want to because the girl was already distraught but you had to because you're in the gang and you gotta keep up appearances, that's not good enough; if you fondled your way through a Top of the Pops audience because the era's idea of sexual assault differed to today's, well thank day's we're in the here and now and can tell you you're a lecherous old man that should be castrated for your indecencies.  The one legal defense would be if there was a gun to your head, as did seem the case in an example of boy-on-boy rape, both were victims there.  Listening to this show last night I'd have preferred to bury my head,  the channel would disclaim depictions of an unpleasant violent nature and I felt like I knew enough already - some of the excuses were new, but there were no sufficient excuses.   It left me distressed to be human, ashamed to be male.

But what can I do? I'm just [counts: one..,] one man.

Some years ago now I remember hearing stories from a friend, about her mother and about her best friend, that left me teary-eyed but ready to do something about sexual violence towards women, but knew not how to help; paranoid that I'd try and martyr myself and end up a laughing stock I did nothing - our friendship dissipated, and I distracted myself from the problem, as cowardly as the guilty.

Cowardice again, when a good friend discussed his ongoing court case involving two of his team mates and one loose woman - who allegedly 'played the rape-card' to keep her boyfriend from leaving her - I think at the time I wanted justice to be served, my heart definitely wanted my friend to be innocent. When he was cleared, I believe for a lack of incriminating evidence (ie. 3 against 1), I was happy to nod along and believe that the ruling represented the truth and my friend had nothing to apologise for.

Personally, after watching Richard Linklater's Tape, I spoke to an ex-lover about the time I took her - alleged (she had a propensity for bullshit) - virginity, asked her if she felt coerced into giving it up. As goes in the film, me and Robert Sean Leonard - that's right, Wilson! - were worried about nothing, both women in question shrugged off 'not getting full and clear verbal permission to land' as the youthful eagerness of adolescent boy's, and assured that them not saying yes did not mean they were quietly saying no, I felt relieved about something that honestly I don't think I'd have been accusing myself of had it not been for that flim. So the actual, personal guilt - on this topic, at least - is minimal; where I feel sickly and dirty is adopted on behalf of my neanderthal gender en masse.

During this radio show last night one of the musical interludes was Lana Del Rey's Born to Die, ironic on a show that touched on the sexual objectification of women because her's is a career so much defined by conforming to the aestehtic-demands of contemporary pop music. Lana might not be as pliable a puppet as Miley or Britney, but do you think any record exec would of gone along with all that melancholy if they didn't have gratuitous lines about the taste of Miss Del Rey's pussy to reel in the less socially-conscious listener. Tethered to the point that her career only took off after she got some blowjob-lips, I don't think Lana would have got as far growing out her armpit hair or fronting a femme-punk band. 

My button's a big Gaga fan, and demonstrated with lyrics how she is, while perhaps not every feminist's choice-feminist, trying to make a positive impact with empowering lyrics, topics of sex and sexuality meant to make young listeners aware that anything they might want to do is up to them and no one else. But the politics don't have major-label money pumped into them, I foresee no lecture-circuit, and I don't believe this global star would have been given the support she has been were it not for her lyrics being as sexually-provocative as they are thought-provoking.

I'm comfortable, at least, with my own awareness of the wrongfulness and the sin of all this rape and misogyny; I may not do a great deal to end it, but - through awareness and getting on my high horse whenever I can - I certainly won't perpetuate the problem. Not like pop music does, not like 'lad' culture and banter and binge drinking does. The crime's of man do make me see the attraction of tyrannical power-holding though, purging all the rapey manly-men might not prove a smart military tactic, but to hell I'll purge them anyway - theoretical bastards.

Mission statement, another one.

I'm in a perpetual state of worry. That I come off as pretentiously as I take myself to be; I guess I'm proud of who I am and shouldn't apologise for sticking my neck out, but words hurt, ya know. But worse still, I worry that I'm not as smart as all these condescending facial expressions suggest [wiggles eyebrows; smarms a smarmy smarm]. I feel like I have something to say, it might not be an entirely original thought - but given those who have now come before us, is there an original thought yet to be thunked? I was pondering the whole anti-establishment garb of the last post before I put on the TV and realised that I'm just trying to be Charlie Brooker; and then I go to write some ridiculous fiction, and on proofing my prose I find a failed attempt at impersonating Vonnegut. But I shall resist. I sat through this mornings rush-hour in a Pret-a-Manger, reading and enjoying Morrissey - repeating to myself that I must not mimic Morrissey when I get to writing today. The suits, the financiers, the paper-pushers, hell; conforming to the concept of professional attire, slogging through nine to five to pay for their semi-detached kingdom, for their spoiled shit's gadgets and fabrics, for their red wine and V+ box.

I've pushed paper, but I knew it to be temporary; and the salary was revelatory. Longer still I worked the 9 to 5 in a bank for eight months, and found silver linings where I sold my soul to afford to fly over the Atlantic. Working towards the goal of figuring out a way to not have to do what it was I was, then, doing forever more. Encouraged by a mother who, if not blaming her children - at least blames herself for ever having had children, never escaped the glut of scraping by on a civil servant salary and working tax credits; we know not where I will land, but we both know I must leap. The figuring out led to ambitions in publishing, that's still the goal; but the ambition seems to morph day-by-day, do I want Irreverence Inc. to be a social enterprise encouraging amateur writing and book binding - a resounding no, if they've written it: they can blog it; if they can't blog it: then they probably can't spell - or do I want this to be the beginning of my own publishing house - championing me, me, me and anyone who thinks like me but writes not so well as to show me up, me? The second option (but not the 'me' bit) gives me more control, and might one day see me making a valuable contribution to civilization by championing and mass producing something of great worth, should some bright spark ever choose to write it. The name details the mission, and I liked to think I might write something of the purest irreverence, but my grammar schooling has left me - hopefully not robotic - but a touch more proper than irreverence permits.

One things for sure, this blog thing is falling way short of what I said it would be in that first entry. I think every entry so far has just been preamble.

"Woo-ah, he must say something about something sometime soon.. no.. no.. still just talking about what this blog is and isn't, lord."

I'd like to think it's revealing, not in a tabloid fashion, but in a psychiatric training way. (If you're interested in studying I, provided I is the centre of attention, I will continue to expose myself.)

From what I was saying, then, to what I am saying now.

If this were a soap opera - my life, not this blog of which I am done trying to address what it is or isn't - Procrastination would be the seedy crime lord that blackmails his way through life, and I'm the penniless single mother he pays to shed a tear during birds and bees type guff that I understand little of because it's a soap and you never get to see anything of raunch in soaps, so all you know is something depraved has gone down and I'm a little upset about it.

I'm ignoring the red squiggle under raunch, Shakespeare would have. Between humoring a drunk with his Bard-based advices, for this blossoming young whatever, and churning through Morrissey's recollection of the court proceedings where ex-Smith drummer Joyce claimed assumption of 25%, when reality was 10%, the issue by then was 13; but Joyce won because Morrissey didn't like the institutions or Mrs. Thatcher and so even though he was right and had proof, a more respected man decided that he was wrong. So, err, yeah.. between those two anecdotal's I've been considering convention, institutionalism, "law" and "order", and figuring out how to go about undoing them. We could ask TV, look at how Sherlock brought down that Murdoch-type the other night - should we kill our enemies, the champions of the current? No. I don't think I'm of the shape or size that'd do well locked up in Winson Green, Birmingham's foremost crime school. Ridicule doesn't work, because only one end of any spectrum will join in the mirth and the other end will just blush and tell the other end to grow up. I say this after last nights Weekly Wipe (for those reading this outside of the UK; it's a TV show about TV shows and news and how we're all morons) where I laughed with tears and cried with laughter at Diane Morgan's thought-provoking piss-up of what the police stand for, in her guise as Philomena Cunk. It's all well and good me, the concurring, laughing at the stupidities of our society, but the conservative amongst the population must either turn the channel since this Cunk character is making a mockery of all that we hold dear, Britannia and the Waves and junk, or nod along - not realising that they're being made fun of.

We must stand up, let ourselves be laughed at for attempting to orchestrate change - they don't laugh at the mission, they laugh that there is a mission; when we could just go home and eat beans on toast and watch the one show (this monotony, my idea of death through existence). Last week I nearly came to blows with a scumbag on the #18 bus, after I called him a cunt during an argument regarding him watching porn, noisily, on a public vehicle. I really had no choice when I used that word that you may not like repeating; for my suggestion that he bottle up his filth with headphones or solitude, he cackled and called me a "hippy do-gooder", I scoffed at the use of a positive trait as a negative trait as proof that some of us evolve and some remain cretinous apes, and that he should feel more shame for being such a.. y'know.. I've said it once already. Two old ladies jumped to my defense when he jumped for me, he was put to shame when a motherly voice said what I had said in layman's terms, and went back to his seat. I, too, was scolded for my use of such a profanity, as I should have know better - normally I'd argue that profanity is a prime way of demonstrating emotion and opinion, subscribing to Vonnegut's opinion on the matter, an opinion I'll dig out later - but these old girls had just kept my ass on the bus with their pacifying tones, so.

Back to the point at hand, orchestrating change.. no.. procrastination was our topic, well never mind that now, change is in the air. At this point in time, there isn't - for me, at least - an argument to further, I lust after equality across gender lines, racial lines, I'd say blurred lines but then I'd have to wash my mouth out with soap, but I'm not well read enough to join in with the high brow debates on the matter. I doubt it would be very well received anyway, of these causes there's too often a militant end of the spectrum that wants more than equality, want scum like me - me having been on top for millennia now - subjugated. The issue isn't the conversation, it's the masses that don't know of or care for the conversation. I see a lot of it because of my worklife, at a conny club. For those of you reading outside of the UK, a conservative club is where the salt of the British earth get together to agree on prejudices against women, homosexuals, "coloured" people, and even white people if they don't see eye-to-eye or speak English very well. You'll hear sentences start like this:

"I'm not being racist or nothin', but all these Paki's/Muzzy's/wog's..."

I know I'm serving a dying minority of idiots, but constant exposure to these cretins makes me want to do something drastic to ensure they cease reproducing and brainwashing their spawn with hate-speech and fascist theory.

________________________________________________________________________________

Wo there - quite the high horse I was riding when I wrote this. But thinking more in terms of convention, I've been considering conformity. During the weekend that has passed since I started writing this entry (before the line: 17/01/14; hereafter: 20/01) a pisshead at my club - my club, ha, like I belong - challenged me on my untamed beard. I tried to shrug it off, joking that if I pruned it I might no longer appear homeless (I made the same joke last week to a more preferable punter and 'banter' was achieved) but this tool had drank himself into a cantankerous state (if the lad bible hasn't already formulated the term 'bantankerous' - it's because it has too many syllables) and quite aggressively threatened to remove it for me, should I not. It is not his face, his spawns whimsical whiskers and clueless expressions, and though I may be but staff at a club where he is a member, he has no dominion over me and never will; I know some intelligent and noble 'gardeners', but here is a man who never could make a living, legally, were it not for lawn-mowing. I don't think he could appreciate that I willfully try and differentiate myself from them, and anyone, because 'normality' is tedium, conformity is materialism, making yourself look nice is just falling in line with the age-old idea of what it is to look nice, "baaaaah, baaaaah, baaaaah". Christina Aguilera was, like, sooooooo right in that god-awful song that made her famous: I am beautiful, disheveled, hairy, human, fit as fuck. I'd like to say words can't bring me down (nooo, no, no, no) but here I am in a funk: wanting to tame my beard, because it needs taming - I keep getting moustache in my meals, but not wanting to give said scumbag the satisfaction.

Were I to bring my soapbox to work, well I'd probably get sacked/get my head kicked in/all of the above, I would make the point that my hair grows long - everywhere - because I have grown up being told that my hair should be short. Especially there, in da club, but seemingly across the binge-drinking nation, of louts and ladettes, the idea of what a man should be is a feral concept. Drink this drink and you're a puff, but eat McCoys and you're a maaaaan; a real geezer, a pleb if ever there was one. It is a masculinity of high-octane conversation, where differences of opinions are settled with fists, because agreeing to disagree is too civilized. Testosterone-fuelled, people are afraid to make eye-contact as they pass one-another on the street, nods and how-do-you-do's make you look mental.

A sharp contrast from my sidewalk days in Alabama, where those not safely locked in their SUV's would step with springs on their way to nowhere fast, doffing caps and winking at strangers, with "howdy"'s and "how ya doin?"'s rolling freely. Ok, so a lot of Alabama's sidewalkers probably were mental, or impoverished, making friends so they might ask a favour, but this good-christian spirit extended itself throughout the state - seemingly. At college, there, I did meet some cynics and haters - and my English-reserve led me to befriend a more monotonous ilk of man - children of the grunge-era, raised on Daria maybe. The holier than wholesome deep South isn't without it's christian-inspired prejudices, but misogyny there is an expression of pity or charity - "bless your sweet soul" - here it seems vengeful. The same applies, I feel, towards race and sexuality - though it's safe to say we are ahead of Alabama in terms of welcoming homosexuals - there any difference is an incurable ailment; on our grey streets, you are not like me because you are willfully trying to piss me off, how dare you [grabs brick and charges at brown person].

It's an issue I've heard raised at the bar where I stand staring at emptying glasses, and though it mightn't be the speakers fault, our members or like-for-like clones of them are partially to blame. They who spit bile at those of colour, pinch asses and use the fear of being considered a faggot should you not drink your pint of Carling fast enough. Arson is certainly an option.

Soldiering

Firstly, of no value to the context of this post, I'd like to note that I'm in a corner of the new library - opened last summer - here in Birmingham. Specifically the only corner where you can glimpse on the backstage access to the International Convention Centre, and simultaneously spy on those lolling around a little patch of green - hidden amongst our concrete "central business district" - known as the Flapper Gardens, named for it's proximity to the Flapper, one of the cities finest public houses. There, one might catch a shoddily engineered musical performance; smoke a joint in one of it's many dark corners; even test your hand on two different Star Trek-themed pinball machines (who would you rather fling your balls at, Patrick Stewart or Zachary Quinto?). There have been some good times there, but the gardens carry more sentiment for me; as before you could get into the pub, teen-age and baby-faced, you could get your oldest looking friend to buy booze and take it to the gardens and so it is that this is where I first got drunk. The ICC makes me smile at my own childishness as, on that same day, I would also be found attempting to urinate (apparently, I wasn't there, only my body was) in the foyer there. And this, here and now, in a library that was not here or there, then, is sobering. Ba-dum-tschhhh!

The gardens were also the setting for my first toke, and my first brush with the law, for toking.

(T'internet only saved this much before t'internet died last night, erasing two pages worth of babble about cheats and cheaters and at least three well constructed sentences among them. I could have cried. Instead I took my anger out on a fundraiser who wanted me to give a shit about children, I asked why they're allowed to beg, but the police usher along buskers and bums from the same busy walkway that often serves as a dodge-the-canvasser gauntlet. Anyway.. I'll try and recall what was typed on Friday.)

Every beginning has a beginning

This is terrifying. I've written web-based-content with my own name before, but somewhere between my pubescent music blog Terrorists Love Carbombs and today, I've lost the eagerness I once possessed for people to read my work. It must, then, seem a little odd to find yourself reading something that the author has just said he doesn't want you reading, like I just left my TOTALLY TOP SECRET DIARY open on a table in front, and you try not to look but you just glanced and the subject matter is premature ejaculation and, really, who could resist. For the past few months I've been writing fiction, submitting it to a tumblr, not telling anyone, and hoping a fanclub would blossom out of thin air. I'm keeping the fiction a secret, it's out there to find but I won't point you there, but I need to have you - you, people scum - read something, because what is writership without a readership?

I know it's easy to look back on the past and think that who you were before was naive and deluded, and you can understand why you were teased and why you never got pussy, and now that you've got a bit more sussed and can confirm that you minus six years was a fucktard, but does comprehension spawn extermination? Am I somehow less of a fucktard, knowing that I always used to be one. I don't know where I was going with this sentence. Oh that's it, self confidence was the point, and my lack of it, though clearly not lacking enough to think that I shouldn't be a writer and that you shouldn't be thoroughly entertained by this self-centred guff (the plan for this blog is social commentary, but I've been reading High Fidelity and it's a very self-interested narrative so far, so it's rubbing off on me, or maybe I'm rubbing off on it - projecting my own foibles onto the protagonist so that I feel better about myself - either/or this isn't the point; someone's rubbed someone off), and when did this self-confidence, or lack thereof, become an issue? It wasn't at school, there I was disliked for a lack of conformity - whether they knew it or not - looking like a girl in an all-boy's school, speaking up in class rather than sulking that school ain't cool - my rose-coloured retrospection suggests I welcomed all the bad will that came my way there, whether that really was the case or not - my memory is hazy.

Maybe the self-confidence is Cooper's fault, or Rains' fault - it's definitely my own fault, maybe a natural development. Certainly my own concept of what I was like - back when the boys called me Britney but I didn't care because I had a blog championing alternative music and believed my facebook friends gave a hoot about my musical opinion - has grown cynical over the past six years. Which is for the best, I was heavily deluded by my mother into thinking that I was the sun, not just her son, so why wouldn't a post on the new Interpol album peak absolutely everyone's interests? When I blame the prior mentioned ex's, I'm not trying to blame them as much as pay homage to the depressing state of affairs I succumbed to in the wake of these relationships. I'm terrified this attempt at some Hornsby-esque blame-gaming will be misconstrued as a hang up. Shit I'm worried this whole blog will be considered the rupturing of a whole aneurysm of hang up's. The past is the past, this won't be High Fidelity, I shan't let it; but the past does leak into the present - call it "baggage", call it "not having as hazy a memory as you say you have", I'm not raking up the past to say woe is me - but I may rake it up to discursively unravel puzzles and perplexities, that I seek to understand so as to better know who I am, and what I stand for. Surprisingly enough, this isn't about you, it's mine dammit!

"I think they get it, sir."

It's all so terrifying because I'm just as self-involved as I ever was, but I'm now aware of it. But beyond self-involved, I'm self-congratulating. By the end of this entries' second sentence I've assumed that no one could resist the pull of me writing about my own ejaculate. I amaze myself.

There was also the travel blog I started when I moved to Alabama, but that was more to keep my family and friends informed as to what I was up to, across a pond - there I could smarm away, uncensored, since they all knew I was a smarmy shit but they loved me anyway. I can't do that here - if I'm to end up as some columnist for a sunday supplement, then I need to be more likeable. That blog quickly fell into abandonment when I used the excuse that university in America isn't vastly different from university in England, obscuring the truth that a month in to my time there I'd ingratiated myself firmly into two social circles - once again feeling like the centre of the universe, and now with a noticeable accent to boot, also: class and junk. Shit.. I was on top of worlds when I used to write those blogs - maybe it really was all Cooper and Rains' fault... no.. that's unfair and untrue - hell some of this doesn't even make chronological sense, well you don't know that so fuck it, I'm embellishing my tits off - it's my own stupidity (admittedly stirred with a spoon made of other people's shit), it has to be because I've always been too self-involved to.. wait.. I was going to say 'too self-involved to let other people affect me' but that would be bull, too.

I've always been quite sensitive to the opinions others have of me, that's part of my own self-involvement - demonstrating that my internal minister of external propaganda was never as good at his job as the internal minister for internal propaganda, who just left 'Walking on Sunshine' on repeat and stepped out years ago. Planet-Alex, that's how I described it to a friend one-teary night way down in Dixie; she missed her boyfriend back in Germany, I missed the days when I was less aware of how self-centred I was. I'm still as self-centred, but now half the time I spend on myself is telling myself to stop being so selfish, leaving me less time to make it with my reflection. Which is a shame, I miss him. Again I've lost my trail of thought, I'm trying to splurge out as much about us as I can as a form of introduction, I'm hoping by now that you've got that I'm a touch self-centred, and maybe you've picked up on a contradiction already. No doubt there is one, my memory is hazy and I'm not the kind to stay stubborn. I don't see contradicting yourself as such a bad thing, most of the time. Often it's because the context that invited an opinion has changed, and I'm not a yes-or-no sort of guy, I'm much more about meddling in the grey area (see: any conclusion I've ever written to a history paper) and it's this opinion on changing opinions that I lean on when I muffle that 'meat is murder', I'm muffling because there is a wedge of steak in my mouth.

So I was going to say I'm fearful that people that know me, but maybe don't like me, will see this and take it as proof that I am as as they always believed I was. But now that I've exemplified how I am the worst thing I consider myself to be - bar the obvious straight-white-male-destroyer-of-worlds - I feel like I should feel liberated. Do I? Maybe when I publish it I will, but hell no one will read this thing anyway and I'll just refer back to feeling useless again. I've been in a pretty useless funk ever since I graduated in the summer, with a Desmond in that most useful of degrees 'American Studies'. I hope to vindicate my degree choice by putting my extended knowledge and outlook on Western culture and society to use in written form. There are other reasons: the sanctimonious idea that I might alter opinions and make the world a better place, because I first got laid by telling Cooper that I was a writer, because my dad fears I will fall into the same nine-to-five monotony that kills spirits and nearly drove him mad if I don't do something more worthwhile (and dad was doing something worthwhile, but got no enjoyment out of his social work, and rarely any grattitude), and because I want a legacy without the responsibility of possessing offspring (a more honest answer than citing overpopulation and earth resources and such and such: watch Doug Stanhope stand-up if you're looking to be made to feel bad for wanting a little you running around). When I say Western culture and society, the society is the impetus - cuz I ain't gonna get into the observer talking 'bout sports anytime soon - and all this introductory self-appraisal bullshit is intended to set the scene, as I will be using my own body to exemplify problems and conflicts I experience growing up as that smuggest of all predators, the straight white male, wrestling with the morality of equality, fighting my natural bigotries and hoping not to come off as a guy who enjoys the smell of his own farts.. too much.

I had begun trying to write this guff down on paper, the idea being that I'd edit it and publish it when I'd matured further still, but it's been brought to my attention that I keep too much of my own work for myself and a portfolio of redactions won't get me far. I asked Cooper about this, partly I was seeking permission, partly seeking the advice of someone who for years wrote brutally honest diary entries and who got very upset when I once tried to read them. Given our archived closeness, the subject matter we talked about was less to do with self-involvement, or Western society, more to do with the point that at-times in the blogs to follow, I will be going into cringe-worthy detail about my love life. It shouldn't be as scathing as it was when I spoke to a close friend in a private conversation, but Cooper identified that the emphasis of dissecting past relationships to make conclusions of the present as, basically, ripping off High Fidelity. For fear of being sued, I'm writing this autobiographically rather than changing my name to Kenneth; since I fear being sued, I probably shouldn't have started reading the bastard book. But hell, if it ends up mirroring that text, consider it homage, an artistic experiment; please. don't. sue.

The original idea stems from reading another piece of anti-romantic fiction, The Good Soldier, which I read soon after starting my relationship with the previously unmentioned Button and nearly left me in a state of baffled paranoia that she, this sweet thing I barely knew, would at some time in our proceeding lives succumb to the call of nature and cheat on my ass. Paired with a viewing of Chasing Amy and a history of being jilted by cheaters, I found it hard not to think about being cheated on, past, present and future, but this can be properly examined in another entry. Scratch that, it will be the focus of our next entry. She deserves a proper introduction, and so does Ford Madox Ford and Kevin Smith, it's about time this place respected it's peers. This next entry will be written on Tuesday, there shall be an entry written every Tuesday, forever and ever and ever. Now that I've said it, I can't take it back. And since it's on the internet, it has to come true. ABRUPT EXIT.

So they know what you're currently reading right?

Check.

Even if they missed that subtle musical reference from the novel and screen adaptation?

Oh yes.

And you've explained, clearly and succinctly, what you're doing here?

Ummmmm.. kinda.. sure!

And they'll like you, won't they Al? You haven't spent the whole time telling them how you're a tool, right?