4 days

... of smoking. Who came up with that crap?

observed

Mum was right, the girls have long teeth.

I am a miserable git.

I like the word git.

It's very old and almost antique.

Just because it's theirs won't make their teeth any shorter.

longest day

I have not forgotten.

Two years ago, we were sitting on the patio under a sky lit by stars so bright and clear it could have been deemed tacky, pure kitsch, to be there and slowly get drunk on red wine and memories. We sat and chewed the fat as if we'd reached the end of a story that had finally turned out well - the banquet in a small village somewhere in the prefecture of Gaul; just who was the bard?

I did not feel distressed at all. It was a peaceful day, a warm day, sunlight until late into the night. A long day - the longest day for most of us. If anything, peace and quiet (forgotten, unattainable) seemed close enough at the time. I remember feeling guilty for thinking that at long last something real had happened. A sense of certainty: Here we know where we stand. Here we can but accept. Here no well-meaning voices urging us to overcome (by sheer determination, will power and faith) the obstacles (mere stumbling blocks, you ungrateful git) that life has so generously strewn on our paths. Finally, there was no chance left for me to fail. The relief. Drowned out everything. I might have. Felt.

Tranquility.

Excitement. (A little.)

The rest comes later.

This is going slow. From the other room comes the whisper of a conversation on the phone (Skype me, hype me) and I wonder whether there are really so many secrets too dark to speak out loud. Less inhibition, less judgment - it all seems like a good plan until you wade into the murky waters of truth (often more hurtful, more obscure than any lie could ever be; the novels about conspiracy and deceit where the love-lorn heroine longs for truthfulness and fights treachery and trickery surrounding her are fictional - fiction being the opposite of fact). Why is there no plural of truth? Will honesty and virtue save us? I think not. Save us from what?

This is not a fucking love story (Yes, it is!), this is family business. Is it?

I remember sitting on the train, watching the fields of the flat and boring heart of the country zip past while I mulled over the sentences in my brain: It was the longest day of the year, it was the shortest day for you. It was the longest day of the year, but the shortest one for you. It was the longest day of the year and the shortest one of your life. (Not perfect, but better.)

The words wanted out; Give me a pen, bring me some paper! then my phone went and all that came out was: Really, I think this is a most inopportune moment for you to be calling. I am sorry.

Sorry indeed. In the evening, I thought that maybe I should have been calling more often; I was thinking of someone and no one in particular - the act of getting and staying in touch as an end in itself. What for, though, what for? Talk is cheap, it will cost us dear: Can I be bothered, the way I am now? Or rather, could I be bothered, the way I was then? I think not. The utter absurdity of those months strikes me as funny now. (It all seems like a first try at Dada. In hindsight. Which always leads one to feel more intellectually or artistically than one really is. Truth being said: Too numb to seriously suffer, too dumb to complain.)

To cut a potentially long story short: I've remembered. There you go.

disconnected

My internet connection is volatile, to say the least.
Whosoever feels like getting in touch: Emails and comments I can read from work. A few selected people are in possession of my phone number - they may use them. As for those who feel too illiterate to write and too skint to call: Tough luck, luv.
(Not that there was anything newsworthy, anyway.)

the good life

So I finally find the time for an update. The irony is: The only time that I feel I have the opportunity to write is at work. It’s not as if I was just faffing about and not doing anything; it’s more like it’s my job to faff about and not do anything.

Alright, so I’ve prepared and initiated the media contacts for the Dublin event, I’ve done the odd bits and bobs, and now everyone has miraculously disappeared and I sit here and got nothing to do. Oh dear, even sorting invoices by date seems an inspiring activity now.

I am eating a cheese sandwich.

To recap shortly what’s happened over the past two weeks: Nothing. Well, ok, my boyfriend was here and someone else is coming over today, but hell – you can’t even go dancing in this city.

Last Saturday we ended up in 5th Avenue, a nightclub which would easily win a prize in the category Ugliest Venue North of Nuneaton. It’s advertised as “Your No.1 Indie Experience” – and a No.1 experience it was indeed. Just what it was to do with Indie music I didn’t quite understand. The DJs clearly didn’t have the time to pack their CD case and had hurriedly grabbed Crossing All Over compilations no. 1 to 45. They ended up playing everything from ‘this one song by Nirvana’ (i.e. Smells Like Teen Spirit) via Linking We’re-Oh-So-Fucking- Depressed-Kids-And-Have-No-Future-But-Just-Can’t-Resolve-To-Draw-
The-Right-Consequences Park and 2003 Kerrang singalongs to ‘this other song by Nirvana’ (i.e. Come As You Are). The kids (aka the clubbers) were having fun, but I guess that was more because of the alcohol.

I felt too old and out of place and the music reminded me of my dreadful teenage days. It left me wondering what it made them feel like – most of them were a little too young to remember the Stone Roses and Oasis songs they were shouting. They probably still watched Batman and sang the Ninja Turtles Title Theme. (Not that I had my head screwed on the right way when the Stone Roses where still around.) What can I say? It was embarrassing and dreadful at the same time. The fact that I paid four quid to get in didn’t make it any better.

What else? In a few weeks time, the good times will be over. No more smoking indoors, no more flicking your butts carelessly on the streets. Cigarettes will once and for all become associated with the cold and a slight drizzle, with getting up, leaving your drink behind (at least no one will want to drug-rape me, I guess) and being – quite literally – an outsider. Ok, so cigarette smoke smells and damages your health. But people, let me tell you: This fricking health craze, this overbearing nanny attitude and this sense of smug non-smoking superiority are so the antithesis to cool that I’ll rather be wet and cold and have my drink spiked.

I wouldn’t mind giving up – if I could, that is – but all this hoo-ha has really put me off. I know well enough that I am damaging both my purse and my health (and yours, but who says I care?), but so far that’s never deterred me. The only reason for giving up is the knowledge and very real experience of actually being hooked on the stuff. In the face of all this anti-smoker talk, however, I am beginning to take pride in it.

Talking health and smugness, by the way, I’d like to suggest that the next thing the state should be cracking down is Muesli. The shit is full of sugar and fat but people still think it’s not only not damaging their bodies and fostering obesity, but believe it’s actually doing them good. Still, there no high taxes on Muesli. There’s no legal age. Heavens, people are feeding it to their kids! Every day. Give or take a few years, the little’uns won’t want to live without the stuff. Oh, and greenhouse-grown lamb’s lettuce. Could someone please pass a law requiring me to carry a voucher with enables to obtain that only once a year?

Yes, I know – it’s not about cracking down on the smokers. It’s about the smoke. Because it’s damaging. To others. My environment. My loved ones. Or whatever.

It’s like not poisoning the pigeons but simply forbidding them to shit on the monuments. By decree. Good job.

I try my best to look busy. I think I manage well enough. No one’s paying me any attention. Monk is preaching on the phone. Flower is.. well, wherever he is now. One never knows. Kasparov is contemplating studying in Germany, for fun, not for a degree – but doesn’t speak any German. Blue is surfing on myspace, or summink like that.

By the way, I don’t mean to sound disdainful. I love the work (if there is any) and I quite like this lot. They’re fun and generally good and welcoming people. To be frank, if I had the choice I’d just stay here and work. We might need to put on a few more festivals in order for me not to be bored, or I might do three days a week and some freelancing (Me, Shakespeare) or washing the dishes (Me, Rig to Ratches) – anything really. Just no more German universities. It is hard to be loyal and enthusiastic, it is hard to stay motivated when every time you go abroad you’re being reminded that in your own country you’re but a parasite stealing the taxpayer’s money. A lazy leech clinging to the hydrocephalic head of the administration, sucking them out, sucking them off, sucking up. A fly living off the by-products of the cerebral digestion process of your professors – they eat knowledge and sometimes they discharge the unnecessary remnants and then we feast on them. Feast on the dumbed-down version of Foucault – with the ‘ouc’ still in their bellies.

Fucking Shakespeare Me. Twenty minutes and I’ll call it a day.

at work, and yet...

I know I shouldn't even be reading this now, let alone write about it, but anyway. Just to bore you some more: The British and their alcohol - A love story. A few quotations from an article on reuters.com.

"'We want to talk to people to find out why it is they feel they have to drink to get drunk,' Coaker said."

Well, Mr Coaker, that indeed is a valid question. Why use alcohol? Only the British feel the need to drink in order to get drunk. The rest of European nations are either drunk by default or they resort to the consumption of cannabis.

"It is unacceptable for people to use alcohol as an excuse to urinate, vomit (in the street) and carry on in some of the ways they are carrying on." Again, Mr Coaker. And again, I feel I have to acquiesce: Drinking is really no excuse for urinating and vomiting in the street. The British had better look for something a little more credible. Like football, punk or politics.

What would Peanut say? Oh, gosh.

an aside straight from the devil's dictionary

"God invented war so that Americans can learn geography."
(Iranian blogger, name not known to me)