Bleep Bleep

The other day, I turned on the television and as I was surfing the channels, I eventually lighted on one of those reality shows that give us a glimpse of how other people live their lives. Some guy was on and we were regaled with a sneak peek into his his experiences at what I presumed was an Army bootcamp. Boy was he a potty mouth! The guy swore at everything and I do mean everything.

5.30 am: Oh (bleep) I can’t believe it’s (bleep) morning already
6.00 am: (bleep) oatmeal again? I can’t stand this (bleep) anymore
6.30 am: Physical Training: * Puff Pant (bleep) (bleep) my (bleep) legs. Oh this (bleep) (bleep) hurts
Sometime later on Vehicle Maneuvers: (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) (bleep)
At weapons Practice: (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) take that you (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) come get some more (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) (bleep) aaaaaaarrrghhhhh!!!!!!!!! the (bleep) (bleep) jammed. Stinking piece of (bleep)
Lunch time: Meatloaf? (bleep) Where’s the (bleep) Ketchup?
Interrogation class: * Screaming Where’s the (bleep) bomb you (bleep) you’d better tell me or I’ll chop off your (bleep) (bleep)
10.00 pm: Lights out – Good(bleep)night, tomorrow’s another (bleep) day

Is this really reality or are these producers pulling fast one on us? I have a theory: The reality television industry is where guys (& gals ) who flunked filmaking class wind up. The cameras hardly ever give us any good shots, the dialogue & scripts (if any) suck. Lightings poor and casting’s worse. Production’s cheap and Direction’s crappy (there, I said it). The people who are profiled on these programmes are no better, they probably never even made the cut in their kindergarten recitals.

I found it hilarious that half of the dialogue was censored and less hilarious that I was paying for mediocre programming.

Ladies & Gentlemen; Penelope

Penelope, say hi to everyone.

She’s a late ‘97 Subaru Impreza Turbo. Goes like stink; 275 horses under the hood have her galloping from 0 – 60 in about 5 seconds. Top speed of about 160mph. Stable as your granny’s teapot and nimble as her Siamese cat. She’s really great for zipping in & out of traffic as her engine was mapped to deliver more torque at lower revs.

The custom body kit with two-tone leather upholstery and dragon decal was done by a buddy of mine who runs a customs auto shop. She straps on 16″ speedline alloys (these are to rims what Christian Louboutin is to women’s shoes) on 205 Potenza’s to wrap her up. I removed the stock exhaust she came with and fitted a quiet one. It reined her in somewhat but now she’s fast and virtually silent. Most people admit to seeing only a blue blur as she whips past.

See ya later?

Seeing in the Dark

I have been addicted to the BBC world service ever since my dad taught me how to tune his little shortwave radio. Back in those days things were a little tense in our country and shortwave radios were considered to be some sort of contraband or other. The government then had this thing about controlling the media and allowing only the state broadcaster to air anything. Well, as most of the country asphyxiated in the communication vacuum, my dad snuck in his little radio from an official trip abroad and opened the world to me. We’d spend time patiently turning the little knobs, searching patiently for the frequencies that seemed to always keep changing, our ears tuned to the whining and droning and screeching of foreign stations as we surfed the bandwidths. Then, we’d hear it. A scratchy voice in a faraway place, the familiar plummy tones of newscasters in faraway Bush House, London and after a bit of fiddling with the telescopic aerial, extending it and turning it this way and that, taking up all sorts of awkward positions, we’d have the signal locked in and we’d settle in to listen to the programmes on air.

And what programmes they were; news about exotic lands – nearly all of them in conflict (I liked news of Lebanon, Palestine & Israel, Iran & Iraq the most and……a bit of apartheid South Africa too), Music – British music charts and some classical concerts too, Sport and so on but what we liked most though was hearing news of our country from a different perspective; a change from the self congratulatory tripe that we were force-fed by the state broadcaster that inevitably begun with an update on the movements (including of the bowel) of His Excellency the President – the only thing he excelled at was taking us to the brink.

It kind of felt naughty and nice that my dad took the time to induct me into what I then thought was a world of crime. I’d go to school in the mornings and secretly smile at my ‘felonies’, scorning the mundane lives of the other kids’. I reveled in my rap sheet, savouring how good it felt to be bad.

Well time have changed and so has our country (for the better), one can now have a blog, let alone a shortwave radio and the BBC’s World service (for the worse) there’s not much that’s distinct about it anymore; it’s almost all news now with a sprinkling of sports, documentaries and cultural programming. Still, I tune in fairly frequently if not for the guilty pleasures then in honour of my dad who passed away all too soon. For from time to time on the rare occasion, the world service still can serve up a gem.

I sleep best with my radio on tuned to the world service at low volume. I find the low tones of the presenters comforting and sometimes boring enough to induce sleep. I also think that I can also get myself updated on events around the world subliminally and on the odd occasion, the programming does make its way into my dreams. Anyway, on Sunday morning 4^th November 2007 at 0100 GMT, I found myself awake just in time for the world drama programme and what I heard blew me away.

It was a radio play called “Seeing in the Dark” by a Canadian called Gordon Pengilly and though the story itself was nothing unique, (it had hints of Tarantino’s circular storylines, a protagonist who like Michael Corleone, cannot escape a world of violence, seedy needy sex to spice thing up a bit, a world that’s moved on since he went to prison and so on…..) the writing was absolutely phenomenal. Mr. Pengilly characters slung words together in unhappy harmony to paint virtual canvasses that became masterpieces in my mind. Descriptions so laconic yet overwhelming in colour and texture and atmosphere. I could smell the sweat on the woman on the bus ride from the prison.

I couldn’t sleep afterwards and I listened in again at 0800H GMT for the re-run.

I wasn’t disappointed.

I looked for the script on the internet, just to read it again for myself and I couldn’t find anything other than a blog entry from a gentleman called roGER in Ipswich, UK http://rogers-rants.blogspot.com/ who was experiencing more or less the same thing I was……at the same time.

The world service still does connect people apparently, after all roGER and I did see the same thing……………in the dark.

MoodBuster

It’s Tuesday and it’s wet. I decided to come in early today since I didn’t feel hungry when I woke up and that shortened my morning routine somewhat. The commute was a little hairy due to the slippery roads and various maniacs behind the wheel, at 6.30am no less. So much for a nice quiet drive in. Got to the office in one piece in spite of Penelope acting up. I’m in a good mood though, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that everyone else at the office is so dour.

*Calvin – Nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around .

*7.17 am: Phone call from someone I really like! At least she’s not gloomy.
She reminds me that even though it’s cold & grey outside, I don’t have to be the same on the inside.

That girl should put her sunshine in jars and sell it. Then again, maybe it’s better that she spreads it around for free.

Paradise Regained

Here’s somewhere my girlfriend and I went on holiday. We were virtually all alone. We liked it alot. Can’t wait to go back. No, I’m not telling where it is.

Ps. Sorry the photos are so low-res, I forgot my camera and had to use the dinky one on the mobile phone.

Cold Turkey

As soon as the plane touched down, I realised why my Mediterranean holiday had come so cheap. Istanbul was unseasonably frigid. I had decided to take a vacation to escape the stresses of my emotionally draining occupation as a skiing equipment salesman in the sahara.
My little firm has a staff of one; me and like many small organisations, the working environment can get crushingly intimate. Being both boss and employee has forced the firm into a truncated corporate structure which makes dealing with conflicts of interest something of a challenge. Recently there was what would be modestly described as a mutiny at the office. The boss was making unrealistic demands on his employee, expecting him to single-handedly improve turnover in the next quarter for the first time in the company’s six-month existence and return a profit no less. The employee upon whom these demands were made just happens to be a cynical slacker whose apathy is legendary.
There was no way the CEO’s rabid realism could share a room with the staff’s mulish realism. There was a falling out and no matter how hard I tried to bring them together (literally) I’m ashamed to say I failed. Things came to a head one fine Friday in Timbuktu the employee quit just as the boss was preparing to fire him. Then they simultaneously booked a vacation in turkey with different travel agents (the twits!) and here we are, I playing the reluctant diplomat to a family feud.
Istanbul was freezing just as tempers were flaring.
It didn’t help that labour had packed suitable clothing whilst management had brought only swim wear along. One was too proud to ask whilst the other was too stingy to offer and don’t get me started on the credit cards and traveller’s cheques they had brought with them but were constantly bickering on what to spend the money on.
Coincidence? had it that we were all booked in the same hotel room at the Istanbul Orient. we too our baggage off the carousel and boarded the same taxicab. The animosity was so palpable in the rear that the initially chatty cabdriver hunkered down in his seat and turned the volume way up on his tinny radio. We rode int town to the sound of Arabic music; ‘ride of the dervishes’ would be a more appropriate term for that incident. checking in was like a waking nightmare, Management wanted to leave the doorman and porter a tip but labour was having none of it – at least not until he got a raise.

 

We are still in the lobby now, More updates as events warrant.

Nursery Rhymes

Ladybird ladybird
fly away home
your house is afire
and the brigade say they’re tired
your children are all gone
sold abroad for a song
all except one
and her name is Anne
she runs guns and peddles drugs
and is queen of a biker gang

Prodigal Prose

With that remark I realised she was about as sharp as a butterknife and I settled in for the long afternoon that lay ahead.
Most of the girls I knew could barely hold a glass of water. Eileen however, could hold an entire conversation.

She only had eyes for him and would gaze at him longingly, adoringly, unendingly. Her eyes forever sought his silent reassurance that he was different, not like the others before him, that he would not break her heart.
She found it. I knew it wasn’t there
She flung her trust at him, desperately hoping it would find something, anything to cling onto for to doubt him meant to be alone and that was something she could not bear.

She knew he was drawn to her beauty. She was breathtakingly beautiful and maybe that was all he was drawn to in her, she wasn’t sure. All she was certain of was that he wanted her to be his, to own her. She was afraid his desire would not last and so every day she dressed herself up for maximum effect then go out and tease him, mock him and provoke him with her body.
He was consumed by her. she filled his thoughts, his dreams, his prayers. He’d rather have been shot than ever let her know. It was a game they played, one which they hoped the other would lose.
She had to win before she became old and ugly and undesirable.
He had to win if only to remain sane.

I was bored and cold and lonely. I supposed she had been fucked by many men before and idly wondered if she would like to get fucked by one more. Would it make a difference to her ……………to me?

Ode to a fallen soldier:
They sent me to a foreign land
To deliver death to a foreign man

Afterglow

Hey! I have a real blog now. I was so terrified about posting stuff on it but it’s not too bad……….so far at least. Maybe it’s because no one’s found out about it yet (ha ha). Maybe I’ll just sit back and enjoy my quiet little corner of the net before the screaming hordes (you wish!) come barging in. I wonder what rules to apply to it now that I’ve started; should I write about people I know, maybe even mention them by name? Should I fling the (trap?)door to my innermost thoughts wide open or just a little crack? (posting this makes that one rather moot). Anyway, I’m really excited in a weird kinda way (like a closet exhibitionist?) to think aloud like this. Someday in future someone, perhaps me will read this and think what a complete greenhorn I was but for now I’ll just revel in the insane urgency, feral fervour and warm glow of taking on a new lover for in time, she and I will become accustomed to each other’s company where easy familiarity will eventually temper our raging passion.

Come my dear, ’tis time to dance.

Teenage Pensioner

Friday

She wants to go dancing tonight but I’m not up for it.

These days I don’t seem to be up for much; TV remote, bag of chips, comfy pillow, a duvet and Robert’s your father’s brother. She says I’m ‘old’ and (yikes!) boring, which is the way I feel sometimes. I’m really trying to figure out why I’m feeling so disaffected by the entire concept of Joie de’ vivre, especially when she’s so full of boundless energy……….hmmmm…..(maybe she’s wearing you out is the obvious answer). No, that’s not it. Even when I’m bouncing off the walls I don’t want to do those things I consider to be passe for a Friday/ Saturday night.

(sigh) Maaaaybe I AM getting along a bit. Then again, I do tend to get bored rather easily, I’ll give tripping the light fantastic a try and that way know for sure if it’s time to punch out of the party scene.

Monday

You don’t even want to know what happened, trust me.