In search of Robbie Howett

Epilogue

2006-07-29T10:30:00.000+02:00

Look like nothing's gonna change,
Everything still remains the same,
I can't do what ten people tell me to do,
So I guess I'll remain the same.

- Otis Redding -

My mission has failed and nothing has changed.
I have the same frustrations, the same hatreds and the same sense of loss. I just know something better was happening somewhere else, while I've been writing these pages. I just know it!

Not only has nothing changed in my mind, I now no longer have a well paid job, a nice car or a girlfriend. One could, I presume, reason that things have actually taken a slight turn for the worse!
I sometimes don't know what I'm thinking about. Perhaps people who say I've lost track of reality are actually right (God forbid).

The only conclusion that I can draw from the whole experience is...
Well...
To be quite honest... I conclude that I may have been searching for the wrong person entirely.
How could finding Robbie ever bring peace of mind? How could finding a friend I've not seen for 25 years ever relieve the manic tendencies of ADHD?

And as I'm sitting here, the night creeping in and the candles twinkling gently in the summer breeze, I can only shake my head, wipe away a tear and ponder the small things in life. I don't want to get all melancholic on you, but sometimes I wish I was in bed with my ex, the sweetest girl in the world, sipping freshly squeezed orange juice and watching Star Wars.
Maybe the simple things in life are best. And maybe, just maybe they should be cherished instead of being cast aside.

Not to worry though. This morning I had an apo.. appa...apiro... a revelation!
I was strolling along the road, past the neo-classical library, when a bright yellow Lotus sports car ripped up the road; it's engine screaming like only a 3.-whatever engine can. And I remembered my first girlfriend. Her name was Lotus as well.

We were both 13 and we nearly went to bed together (which was quite surprising, because I was still playing with Star Wars figures). We were naked in bed, our young bodies pressed up against each other (but I won't go into details, because paedophilia is frowned upon), I was "up" and ready to go and Lotus suggested: "Let's kiss." And that sounded good to me!
And then she stuck her tongue in my mouth.
Needless to say I screamed like a Lotus (car Lotus, not girl Lotus...or perhaps she does scream? I wouldn't know...more's the pity) and ran into the toilet to wash my mouth out.
I continued to play with Star Wars figures until I was 17 after that little incident.

Anyways, I was thinking about Lotus and it dawned on me...She's the one I'm supposed to find! She is the unfinished business that will bring peace of mind; my first love, my first kiss! How could I have been so blind?
So, as of tomorrow, I'm going off in search of Lotus S.

But first I think I'll have a small vacation.
Obviously I'll need to save up for it and equally obviously I'll need to buy a computer to keep myself entertained while saving up for it. But Lotus shall be found and a vacation shall be had!

And Mongolia looks quite promising...

------
On a side note:
I'd like to thank you all for commenting and keeping me motivated!
As for the moment, I'm working 9 hours a day in a call centre, which is probably the most tedious job ever invented; indeed, it's the sweatshop scenario of the new century. I work in credit control and will be spending the coming months asking businesses to pay their telephone bills. Oh the joy of it!
I don't have a computer at home and the work's computers aren't allowed to be used for private use (not even during breaks), so my internet time, until I buy a computer in September, will be severely limited.

Enjoy yourselves!

The merry-go-round

2006-07-25T12:15:00.000+02:00

I wish, I really, really wish, that I could end my tale on a more positive note.
Alas, that is not going to happen.
I guess it's one of those things when you start off on a project without knowing how it will finish, that the ending may well not be to one's liking.

Obviously me finding Robbie and having a picture of us as we now are, 35 years old, balding, standing together with Edinburgh castle (or York minster or the Eiffel tower) as the backdrop would have been the icing on the cake, the bubbles in the beer and the fairy tale ending to my search.

Alas, true Disney-esque endings are as sparse as honest politicians. So there will be no shaking of hands to close my story, no tears of friendship lost and then found to trickle down our cheeks and no soppy chick-flick ending to make us want to hug in relief.
No.
That's not how life really is. It would be nice, but it just ain't gonna happen!

I've scoured telephone books, I've had the electoral role searched, I've contacted my old school, I've looked on Friendsreunited.com, I've phoned and I've written.
Even the man in the grey overcoat with the Tom Waits like voice phoned up and said: "Unfindable."
And that's it. The options have run dry. The search is stranded in the Sahara of information.

Perhaps Robbie is dead, perhaps he lives in a different country altogether or maybe he just doesn't want to be found. It's not for me to judge and it's certainly out of my financial capabilities to continue.
And that's the truth and the end of it.

Okay, I didn't find Robbie, but did I find anything else?
Well, I don't know if "find" is the appropriate term to use, but I have a skanky foot left over from India, an increased balance disorder from Thailand and fleas from England. It seems that every country I visit feels a horrid desire to rub something off on me.

I'm working again, I'm living in a house again, I'm getting laid again.
Well, two of the three are true anyways...

I'm back where I started. Except all my friends and family now live in a different country, I'm working longer hours for less wages and I don't have a flashy sports car.

Sometimes it just makes me wonder what the hell it's all about.

Passing by the gates of Eden

2006-07-22T10:44:00.000+02:00

Workin' 9 to 5,
What a way to make a livin'
Barely gettin' by
It's all takin' and no givin'
They just use your mind
And they never give you credit
It's enough to drive you crazy

- Dolly Parton -

Isn't it funny?
Well no, it's not really.
But six months ago I quit work because it's a drag.
I mean: You get up in the morning to work eight hours a day to make someone else richer than yourself, come home, watch shite on the television, listen to some CD's, chat online to people you're glad you don't have to smell, go to bed and then get up the next morning to do exactly the same just to keep this life-style up and running!

(Well, don't you know)
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang

- Sam Cooke -

It's boring and it's mundane!
And, now, after giving everything I owned away to various lost causes, I'm now back in work again.
It's like I've come full circle or something. It seems I'm caught in a loophole of vicious circleness and no matter what I try I'm doomed to slave labour for the rest of eternity!
Needless to say, but I'll say it anyways, IT SUCKS!

I knew I would have to work, but I just wanted to work three days a week and get by. But nobody wants to employ a 35 year old for three days a week.
Bookshops, cinemas, restaurants, pubs...they all find excuses for turning you down. It's unhealthy for a man to work less than 40 hours a week! They don't want you having time to spare!
Hell no! That would give you too much time on your hands to get up to mischieve like writing a story, doing something creative, starting a revolution or masturbating.
THAT WILL NEVER DO!!

You have to work five days a week! It's a must! If you don't then you're an out-cast...and our employers want as few of these degenerates around as possible.
You just go out and work, be a good boy and buy a fucking Dolby Surround system!!! That is OBVIOUSLY what life is all about. Isn't it? Isn't it?

Bring me little water, Sylvie
Bring me little water now
Bring me little water, Sylvie
Every little once in a while

Don't you hear me callin'
Don't you hear me now
Don't you hear me callin'
Every little once in a while

- Leadbelly -

So, am I back to square one?
Hell no I'm not!
I'm now working longer hours for less money! How's that for progression?
I'm not even working 9 to 5 as Dolly suggests, I'm officially working 9 to 6 with two hours a day public transport added on...making it a grand total of 11 hours of hell a day!!! To do what? Fuck only knows.

At least I'll be able to buy a car, buy a stereo, buy a computer, buy a shirt, buy CD's, buy DVD's, buy a TV, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy and buy!

And then die.

Early in the morning factory whistle blows,
Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes,
Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning light,
It's the working, the working, just the working life.

Through the mansions of fear, through the mansions of pain,
I see my daddy walking through them factory gates in the rain,
Factory takes his hearing, factory gives him life,
The working, the working, just the working life.

End of the day, factory whistle cries,
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes.
And you just better believe, boy,somebody's gonna get hurt tonight,
It's the working, the working, just the working life.

- Bruce Springsteen -

In the neighbourhood

2006-07-19T14:18:00.000+02:00

The Curry 'slightly more than' 500 meters', bus drivers who don't speak English (I think they're speaking Polish, but Sophie's not popped by to verify it yet), 14 year olds with three babies (I walk by singing: "Every sperm is sacred...la die laaaa"), gangs of youths with caps on, trucks full of unemployed, Carribbean and Islamic fast food bars on every corner (but not a spare rib in sight), Fish and chip shops that don't sell fish and chips (and when you ask what they do actually sell they answer: "Warm food love.") and meetings with strange men in long coats in bushes...
Welcome to my residence. Welcome to the hood!

Yesterday morning I was sitting on my bed at about 10 O'clock in the morning. I had thirty minutes to go before I would be meeting the man with the whiskey voice.
As per usual when I get nervous, I start fantasising about beautiful things, envisioning lustful thoughts and quite generally avoiding anything which might be important...that's right... I was playing with my star wars figures!

This is the bloody re-enactment of the duel between Kenobi and Grievius, just after order 66 was given.

Eventually I dragged myself away from the battle at hand (Kenobi was just about to slaughter the evil traitor who was accused of stealing a sock. A blue sock I might add, which has mysteriously disappeared after yesterday's washing) and stepped out into the warm summer morning's sun.

This is the street I live in. You can't see it very well, but right at the end there, there's a pub. In the Beehive (that's the name), you will find garlic smelling Muslims, sweaty smelling unemployed people, fried chicken reeking Afro-Carribbeans, fat chain smoking white birds and prams filled with babies and cheap booze. Who says multi-culturism is dead? In poverty we all drink at the same watering hole.

Walking from my house to the park always reminds me of a book I wanted to write when I was a teenager. In it a mad scientist brings the garbage cans to life and a war between humanity (The Hellevoetsluis rebellion) and the dustbins commences. I was going to call it "The annals of Hellevoet: The first garbage war".
Naturally I ended up day dreaming about women instead and the story of backstreet clashes with filth-containers was forever doomed to the...well, to the garbage can, I suppose.

Just imagine a loan garbage can on the prowl...
Yes, It's terrifying. I know!

Or a pack of Triffid-esque dustbins innocently hanging around the backstreets, just waiting for an innocent virgin to come skipping by.

Anyways, the walk to the park is quite interesting from an odd point of view. There are many interesting things I could point out, but if I pointed out everything that was pointedoutable you wouldn't be able to keep track of this complicated plot-line.
But here are a few:

Only the in-crowd will get this one, but it's suffice to say that one of my best friends; my drinking buddy; my partner in booze; my compadre d'vin came all the way over to England, 100 meters from where I live, hung up expensive looking graffitti and didn't even pop by to visit me!

This is a travel agency. But take a closer look at the sign above the door:

Yes! A travel agency and a circumcision clinic.
Now, I don't know about you, but if I decided to chop a piece of my penis, I certainly wouldn't have it done in a travel agency backroom!

Yes, Rusholme is a wonderful place.
I live on the border between Rusholme and the Moss side. As tranquil as Beirut on a bad day.

When you walk along Claremont road towards Wilmslow road; which is better known as the Curry mile, you pass the Claremont primary school. I was going to take a photo of it, but then I thought that it's probably, considering the current climate, best not to be seen as a 35 year old in shorts which are too small taking photos of a kiddie's school.

And then I saw the park!

Somewhere in those trees would be the man from the mysterious phone call. How did this man know my number? How did he know my name?? How did he know I'm looking for someone???

* insert nerve racking climatic music!!! *

I peeked over the bushes and through the fence before entering, but I couldn't see anyone. It was nearly 10:30.
Taking a deep breath I walked into the park.
Well, I say park, but it's basically half a football field with some bushes around the edges and a couple of trees. I decided to go and stand by the goalpost.
I checked my telephone, it was 10:34 and as patient as I am, I started thinking it was a prank call and was about to leave when I heard a "Pssst" from behind me.
Either someone was urinating, a bike tyre had punctured or someone was luring me to the bushes.
I'm no coward! I walked towards the bushes.

"Anyone there?" I asked, my voice breaking like it used to do when I was 14. So it sounded more like: "Any n ere?" and I got irritated, because it didn't sound very man-like, cool and unscared.
"Stand at the tree-line and turn your back to the bushes." A rough voice said. "Don't look around". He really sounded like he smoked too much weed.
I did as I was told, the sweat dripping down my back. NOT, I feel I must add, sweat from fear, but sweat because it's a heatwave!

"Who are you?" I asked.
"None of your business!" the voice rasped.
"Well, technically, seeing I'm here and you're there and you know me and have my telephone number...it could be construed as being somewhat of my busi..."
"Enough!" It could have been polite or irritated, but with so much gruffy distortion it was hard to tell.
"What's the name of this friend you're looking for?"
"Robbie. Robbie Howett." I said.
"Is that Howett with E.T.T. or Howett with I.T.T."
"I...uh...don't know..."
"You're a dunce van der Born. A complete dunce!"
"Well, it was long ago an..."
"Enough!" It seems the coarse voice from the bushes has a stop-word.
He continued: "This may take a little longer then. I have your address, you'll be hearing from me!"
I turned around and I'm sure I saw a long grey overcoat disappear behind the tree line.

Various questions came to mind as I made my way into town.
How did this person recognise me? And Who on earth wears a long grey overcoat in the middle of a heatwave?
After drinking a few pints to calm my nerves which didn't need calming because I'm not a coward and a long bout of internetting I decided to pop by the games shop I've been frequenting the last couple of weeks. I play the Star Wars game there and as of yesterday I also will be playing Magic (a fantasy card game) there too.
I bought my usual diet coke, although admittadly, Coke Zero is truly scrumpious and is slowly becoming my beverage of choice, and sat down to shuffle my cards and moisten my pallet.

And what should I see draped over a chair in the backroom? A long grey overcoat!
Coincidence?
I shuffled my cards slowly like Maverick in an important showdown poker game aboard a Mississippi boat with a big paddle wheel... and watched and waited.
Eventually a spotty teenager with a problem d'body odour picked up the long grey overcoat, said: "Talk to you later then." to the shopkeeper, in voice sounding much like Macaulay Culkin in 'Home Alone' and walked out the door, coat flapping in the hot summer breeze.
"No way!" I shouted to no one in particular, although a few people in the shop looked like they were in the company of the insane.
No way could that teenage kid have produced that jagged sounding cigar voice! No way!

But at least I know who wears such garnments in the middle of a heat wave!

Well Big Mambo's kicking
his old grey hound
and the kids can't get ice cream
'cause the market burned down
and the newspaper sleeping bags
blow down the lane
and that goddamn flatbed's
got me pinned in again

- Tom Waits -

The mysterious phone call

2006-07-16T11:52:00.000+02:00

All things considered, this phoning business isn't turning out to be very succesful.

Me: "Hi, I'm Mark van der Born. I'm looking for a Robbie Howett..."
Man: "YOU LOST THE WAR. STOP HARASSING ME!"
Click.

I swear to Callsheva (The Indian demi-God of tele-communications) that there are a lot of strange people out there. I'm sure most of them are perfectly harmless, but I do question the success of 'Care in the community' as a whole.

Another phone call I made Friday morning:

Man on phone: "Robert speaking."
Me: "Hi, my name is Mark van der Born, am I speaking to Robbie Howett?"
Man on phone: "Yes. What can I do for you."
Me: "Well, I went to school with a lad from Penicuik called Robbie and I was wondering if that was you."
Man on phone: "I've never been to Penicuik. Sorry."
Me: "Oh well. Sorry to have bothered you."
Man on phone: "That's all right. Why are you looking for this school friend?"
Me: "I'm writing about it. You know..."
Man on Phone: "Do you live in Scotland then?"
Me: "No, I'm down in Manchester."
Man on phone: "Manchester! That's quite close by. Do you want to meet up sometime?"
Me: "Uhhh... well...."
Man on phone: "You seem quite sympathetic, I'm sure we'll get on fine..."
Click.

And anyways, what the hell was he doing at home instead of at work??

I went off to the library to do some online job searches, etc. and as I'm walking past the town hall, my telephone rings.
"Ah..." thought I, "that will be the sandwich shop offering me a job as a toilet cleaner or the Ikea turning me down because I'm not qualified enough to sell office desks... and probably mentioning child labour and the fact that I despise the quality of their products didn't help too much either..."

"Hi, Mark speaking." I say in my professional and highly ADHD friendly manner, like a dog wagging its tail when its owner comes home.
"Mark van der Born, is it?" replied a dark and husky male voice. A voice that sounded like it drank too much whiskey.
"Yessssss..." I answered, it didn't sound like a blonde haired, happy-go-lucky-human-resource-girl-from-Ikea.
"I've, *cough*, heard that you are *cough* *cough* looking for..."
There was a hesitation which I've cleverly portraid with the triple dots...
"a missing 'friend'..." The man sounded like he smoked too many cigars and he lingered on the word friend as if he didn't quite believe that it was a friend I was looking for.
"Well, yes. As a matter of fact..."
He wasn't going to let me finish my sentence and rudely interrupted with a voice that sounded like Tom Waits' after a night of binge drinking and opium inhaling:
"I can help you."
"You can?"
"Meet me Tuesday 10:30am in the park in front of Claremont primary school. Be there and come alone."
Click.

How bizar is that?
I'm well chuffed! At least someone is wanting to help me!

And the first job offer is in!

2006-07-13T11:49:00.000+02:00

Yes.
Finally someone does not find me too dirty to serve food, too ugly to sell beer or too stupid to park FUCKING CARS...
Obviously I turned the job down. Hell, I ain't no slut. I don't bed the first guy to offer me a job. Fuck that.

Obviously there are real reasons for turning down a job, but they are both boring and mundane. Needless to say though, to cut a long story short, I can no longer prance about on bare feet, I'm not fit enough to do a Kata and a job which only offers commission is too much of a risk. And I'm not in the business of taking risks.

Well, I want to waste a few seconds and point my finger at Israel and shout: "YOU BUNCH OF FUCKING U.S. PAID AND SPONSORED TOSSERS!"
It is probably true that oppression doesn't make one more humanitarian, just better at oppressing, but I believe it also seems to defecate on rationality and force governments to make stupid decisions which inevevitably will only make matters worse.
And obviously it's the poor, the meek and the children who suffer.

This afternoon I have a job interview at Subway's. It's a sandwich restuarant.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm sure making sandwiches is a difficult enough job as it is, and I'm equally sure that it's made even harder because you have to talk to customers (and handle money!) at the same time...but...but, I really, really feel I have the skills and requirements to make those fucking sandwiches work! I seriously do. No, I don't have motivational issues on the subject of food preperation.

I'd like to take a moment to congradulate Zidane, the French footballer. He is an artist on the field and even his headbutt was beautiful and gracious in a slightly deserved sort of a way. He's now officially, by my reckoning, up there with the best of them: God (although some call him Maradona) and Pele.

The search for Robbie continues and I have a gutsy feeling that this phoning malarky is getting me nowhere and delivering me there fast. Nothing really much to write about, besides this one lady (the same one as in the last post) threatening to call the police if I kept stalking her.
I did tell her it wasn't her I was after, but her husband. That didn't go down as I intended either and I hung up before things got well out of hand.

And I'd like to thank my sister and her boyfriend who sent me a giant cuddly rat to catch fleas with. A financial donation would have been more appreciated, but hey, beggers can't be choosers. Naturally I will return the giant rat once its stuffed insides are crawling with critters.

I guess the last thing on todays agenda is my weight.
Holy fuck, I swear to God (could be Maradona, could be Jesus...one can never be too sure with these heavenly creatures) that for someone who's running out of money I do seem to be getting rather fat.
And I know what it is!
Cheap food makes you fat.
So, it's alright to consume steak, salmon pate and Bordeaux. It's not okay, though, to stuff your face with chips, crisps and McDonalds super-sized meals.

Funny how expensive fat is good for you and cheap fat is not. One could, however, argue that the cheaper fat is a better investment for when my bank account gasps its dying breath, for then I will have more reserves to live off...

Robbies here, Robbies there, bloody Robbies everywhere!

2006-07-09T17:36:00.000+02:00

As poverty creeps up on me like a bad hangover on New Year's day, as my world slowly crumbles around me and all I'm left with is a vivid imagination and a dulled sense of reality, as my sex life is comparable to a dead nun's; who's been buried, cremated and sealed in a vault, as hot-dog food poisoning sets in and I delicately place my sore-to-be arse over the toilet bowl, as my splitting headache resounds in unison with the pains of ten sore stomach ulcers in a hellish cacaphony of bubbling burning turmoil...
...I decided to focus my attention on the mission at hand, I started phoning the Robbies.

Yes. Plural. There are many Robbies in Britain.
In fact, so many that I decided to start with Robbies who had Howett as a surname.
In fact, there are so many of them as well, that I decided to phone the Robbie Howetts in Scotland first.
In fact, there are so many of them too, that I decided to stick, for the time being, to Robbie Howetts on the Scottish East coast.

If you hear a vague plopping sound as you read this, it's probably just another stress ulcer evolving or, if I'm lucky, it's my brain blowing out my ears.

Let me share a couple of example phone calls:

Phone call nr. 2
Robbie: "Hello."
Me: "Yeah. Hi, Mark van der Born here, is this Robbie I'm speaking to?"
Robbie: "Hello?"
Me: "Hello?"
Robbie: "Hello?"
Me: "Hell..."
Click.

Phone call nr. 3
Me: "Hi, this is Mark van der Born speaking. Am I speaking to Robbie Howett?"
Robbie: "You sure are love."
Me: "Excuse me, but you are a woman."
Robbie: "Last time I looked love."
Me: "Yeah...but...okay..."
Robbie: "My name's Roberta."

Phone call nr. 6
Robbie: "Robert Howett speaking."
Me: "Hello. My name is Mark van der Born."
Silence
Me: "I'm looking for an old school pal..."
Robbie: "You're looking for an old school pal?"
Me: "Yeah. Could you be him?"
Robbie: "I probably could. Your name, Mark is it, doesn't ring a bell though."
Me: "Penicuik?"
Robbie: "Been there, aye."
Me: "Did you go to school there?"
Robbie: "No, I was stationed there in World War two."

Phone call nr. 8
Lady: "Hello."
Me: "Hi, my name is Mark van der Born, I'm looking for Robbie. Robbie Howett, an old school friend."
Lady: "Why?"
Me: "I'm writing a novel and it's about finding him."
Lady: "Why would you want to find him?"
Me: "Well...for the book."
Lady: "What book?"
Me: "My book. Well novel. Well blog."
Lady: "Who did you say you were?"
Me: "Mark. Mark van der Born."
Lady: "I've never heard of you."
Me: "No...but Robbie may have."
Lady: "Robbie?"
Me: "Yes. Robbie."
Lady: "How do I know you are who you say you are?"
Me: "....uh... well, if you could put Rob..."
Click.

Out of the first eleven phone calls number 8 has been the most promising. I'll wait a couple of days and phone her back.
A lot of Robbies weren't in or just didn't want to speak at all. Quite strange, you'd think they'd be glad that someone was phoning them. Me? I just hang around all day waiting for the fucking phone to ring. A job, a friend, a family member... But no! Nobody ever fucking phones me, do they? Bastards, the lot of the...

Anyways, as I was saying, I've had little succes so far, but I've got another 70 odd Robbies to engage (like captain Picard engages the Borg... although slightly less spectacular) and then I'm going to have to expand the search.

One day at a time sweet Jesus, that's all I'm asking from you... la die laaa die laaaa

Marijohn Wilkins / Kris Kristofferson

I think I've caught fleas

2006-07-04T14:21:00.000+02:00

How does one get flead? Is that even the proper term?

I woke up this morning, put my feet on the carpet (my arse still on the bed) and phoned some job interviewer who, needless to say, was about to turn me down...
And I looked down and lots of little black beasties were crawling over my ankles!

Maybe I would have gotten the job if I hadn't screamed: "HOLY FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE!!!???" But as things went, I did shout that and didn't get the job (who wants to train as a bunion specialist anyways?).

I tried brushing them aside, but they jumped away at incredible speed. Fleas! In my bedroom!
This can't be good.

I've travelled around Indian slums, across rivers of mud and up through jungles of horrors and never, NEVER, have I been savaged by little black beasties before.
I'm sitting in the library typing away, and I swear to God I feel little creatures crawling over me and biting me.
Now, it may be just my imagination here, but so what? If I mentally believe I'm carrying the critters around on me, that's surely just as bad as actually having them on me!

Now I'm going to have to spend even more hard earned cash (well... cash anyways, I don't actually know who earned it, but it sure as fuck wasn't me) combatting an infestation!
And weren't fleas responsible for the Black Plague? Holy Hell! I swear to God I'm going to die in this job-forsaken country.

Talking about jobs (a subject which, much like fleas and diarrohea, hangs around me with an ever-present stench of foulness, defeat and self-pity), I got turned down as a parking attendant today. I wasn't qualified enough! How fucking ironic is that then?
"So," asks I, "What qualifications do you need to become a parking attendant then?"
"Well," answers she, "You need to be able to park cars professionally and talk to customers."

Yeah. Well that REALLY fucking rules me out then, doesn't it!
Holy hell, I am being bitten, I swear to the great horned one!

Yeah, so, yeah. Well it's just as well the interview was over the phone, because I would have dragged the stupid bitch over the desk and smacked her silly with my sandal.

Losing the plot? Me? Na. Never.
I'm contemplating trying to get a job at the McDonalds. The obvious problem is that if they turn me down, then my life really is worth less than the vitamins in a big Mac.
Good grief.
But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

One of the jobs I've applied to is for a big warehouse-like-store-chain, much along the lines of Ikea. The actual job I've applied for is called: "Financial control expert", which basically means that I work the till. Oh the joy of it all.
This coming Thursday there's a three hour assessment...
Let me repeat that, just in case you thought I wrote something else: A 3 hour assessment!
Three hours I'll be grilled like an Al Qaeda suspect, questioned like a Scientology target and bossed around like an unemployed bum.
Three God damned hours, just to see if I'm capable of scanning a product, smiling and asking: "Will that be all then?"
And get this. They want you to dress smart for this arsessment.
"What," asked I, "do you mean by smart?"
"Well," answered she, "we mean shirt, tie and trousers."

And that really rules me fucking out doesn't it? I DON'T WEAR TROUSERS!
No. I mean, I don't wear ties. I don't do ties!
There's not a tendon in my body, not a ligament in a limb and certainly not a sinew in... what the fuck is sinew anyways? I've never even heard of the bloody word!
Anyhow... there's not a bone in my body that even contemplates putting a string around my own neck. Hell no. I'm not gonna walk around like some bitter fruit that's pulling a Triffid-esque dance of death. Or whatever... see if I care...

And what's the point of dressing smart when fleas are bungy jumping off you?
See what I'm up against? See?

God damn it.

If not slain, at least brought to its knees!

2006-07-01T14:05:00.000+02:00

There is a party on the streets!
No cloud can constrain the rays of the sun as she shines like never before!
Water is turning to wine and beer doesn't give you hangovers (I hope)!
Yes. Today is a great day. A day for celebrating, a day for making merry (or love, if you're luckier than me)!

Now, it may be true that I still don't have a job. And it is equally true that my money is running low. In fact, it's probably quite honest and realistic to say that if things don't change soon, I'll be eating peanut butter sandwiches morn', noon and night!
But I'm not gonna let that little dilemma piss in the proverbial beer today. Oh no. Today is for rejoicing, and rejoice I shall.

This isn't a football thing, this isn't a Star Wars thing and no, I've not even found Robbie yet either.
No, today news has reached these far and distant shores (well, 'far and distant' being relative to where you're reading...) of one of the great beasts of our time being netted and dragged to the floor, screaming and kicking, hollering and wailing. Yes! The Dutch government has imploded!

Let me give you a few dots silence so you can regain your composure.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Regained it yet? Okay, I'll give you a few more...
.
.
.
.
.

Yes! D66, one of the three Dutch coalition parties (and reknown for having only one policy: beheading the monarchy) has stabbed the Dutch government in the back, and a-fallin' it is! Oh joy! Oh Celebration! One right-wing spreader of evil less on our little planet!

D66 (God bless their little souls) finally had enough of the immigration minister Rita (spit on the floor) Verdonk, the most Right-wing, Randian imbecil to curse the streets of Europe since Satan's shite stain (or Thatcher as she's sometimes called) exploded on the scene. And not a moment too soon... in fact, I'd dare say about three years too late... but as the saying goes: Better late than fucking never!
Rita just deported one child too many, lied one whopper of a fib too habitually, sent way too many dossiers off to the Congo and tripped over her own bloopers too often to bother mentioning.
D66 stabbed her as the Beelzebub spawn that she is over something quite trivial (compared to the attrocities she's continued); poetic in a Capone sort of a way.

From the BBC:
The Dutch government has resigned because of an internal dispute about the Immigration Minister, Rita Verdonk.

Hahahaha
Hahahaha
Haha cough

From the same BBC:
A junior partner in the coalition, the centrist D-66 party, walked out after failing to get Mrs Verdonk sacked. It objected to the way she had handled the citizenship case of a Somali-born Dutch MP, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Oh the irony! Hirsi Ali being as right-wing and nausiating as Rita (spit on the floor) Verdonk!
Hahahaha

And this too is from the BBC:
Mrs Verdonk is known as "Iron Rita" for her tough stance on immigration issues.

Yes. Let's melt her down and re-mould her into something useful. A metal latrine or something.

I can just see her crawling on the floor towards Balkenende, the Dutch prime-minister... oh sorry, I mean EX-DUTCH PRIME-MINISTER hahahaha... her green blood dripping behind her making little bubbly noises as it seeps into the cracks on the floor. I can hear her whining and moaning; screaming and screeching like a banshee. Squirming and gargling like Gollum on an Orc torture rack...
Balkenende bubbling like her blood, tears flowing down his face in a John Majoresque fashion: "Oh Rita... what will become of us?" He'll wail in self pity. And I can just about hear Rita (spit on the floor) Verdonk's last words: "...you'll have to go and live with your mum again... I'm just gonna get pissed on..."

Hahahaha

Life is good and it is now time for beer!

The BBC website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5132832.stm

Just another job interview

2006-06-29T15:36:00.000+02:00

"Good morning! I'm glad so many of you came!"

I do so like cheerful people in the morning. Obviously I started sniggering at the choice of words and was frowned upon for doing so by many of the other job-combatants.
I don't use the word combatant lightly either. Hell no, it's a dog-eat-dog world out here and one must use one's claws and teeth if one wishes to work!

The job interview was for a vacancy in a restaurant. Or a pub. Or a bus station; it wasn't too clear from the start.
I'm sure I read on the application form that it was for a restaurant, but the interviews were going to be held in a pub and 80% of the gathered looked like they were bus drivers. It was all terribly confusing, so I was improvising from the start.

"Why do you specifically want to work for us?"

What can one answer when one doesn't actually know what one is applying for. I used the old Viet Cong manoeuvre of keeping quiet until the time to strike is at hand.
One of the combatants raised a hand and meekly answered: "I love serving drinks."
"Aha!" escaped my lips like Frank Lee Morris from Alcatraz. Again a couple of warmongers were giving me the evil eye. But, at least I could scrap bus station from the list!

The intervieweress (sort of like a Mistress in a bondage film, dressed slightly different, but still entitled to whip you into submission) was asking everyone this question and soon my time would come. I nearly panicked, but then I remembered the wise words I'd heard once in a documentary about hitchhiking: "Don't panic." And so my mind wandered to fields of roses and the soothing sounds of waterfalls.

"Mark?"
"42."
"What?"
"Oh yes. Well. I love serving drinks as well!"
A crafty improvisation, I'm sure you'll agree.

As the interview progressed I began to realise that not all was as well as it seemed. Somehow my wittisms and giggling were not achieving the reaction I expected. The intervieweress wasn't throwing herself at my feet and saying: "Take me like a big horny sex machine!"
Indeed, I got the distinct impression she was snarling like Gollum when she spoke to me. I decided to take that as a good thing anyways, no need to be negative. Is there?

"I think you're over-qualified for the job."
"mhmmmm... yah. I've heard that before yes."
"I don't think you're the sort of person we're looking for."
"Now look here!" I demanded, "Just because I'm not a complete imbecil like the rest of the bus-driver's association here," I said, sweeping my arm around the room at the people gaping at me in disrespect, "doesn't mean to say that I'm too over-qualified to serve fucking drinks. Alright!"
"I think you have anger problems as well." She said defiantly, but I sensed her falling for my charms, so since I was on a roll I decided to continue:
"I don't have fucking anger problems!" Then I took a deep breath and continued in a lower tone of voice: "Ofcourse, if you don't give me the job I'll probably rip your head off and shite down your neck. Let's not go there okay? You power hungry fucking freak!"

I don't know if I got the job or not, because I woke up.
But let me ask you this: "Is it healthy to have nightmares about job interviews?"
I think not.
It's clearly a sign of me losing the plot, cracking up and about to do something horribly drastic.

Oh well. Best fill in another application form then.

Talking application form blues in D minor

2006-06-26T14:11:00.000+02:00

Holy sweet Jesus, Mary mother of fucking God and Tetragrammaton of the Jews,
I'm talkin' about the application form blues!

Thirty such forms have I filled in within the space of ten days of job searching. You know you've done one too many when you start remembering things like your national insurance number and which date you left Holland for the twelfth time.

I'd rather watch Mission impossible two with Tom Cruise,
But I is talkin' about the application form blues!

I really don't know what's so important about what I was doing on March the 26th 1994, nor why a job should care about what I was doing in France in 1996. I mean, for fuck's sake, it's more than ten years ago! The next thing you know they'll be wanting to know which brand of diet coke I like to drink and what the average length of my penis is.

It's a beaurocratic jungle out there; paper work zoos,
I'm talkin' about the application form blues!

One security job application form wanted a tracable history for ten years. I wrote: "You can't fuckin' trace me back two months, so what ya gonna do about it then? Sucker!"
They didn't reply.

From tramping to the post office, I need brand new shoes,
I'm payin' the application form blues!

Every single detail going back to 16 years of age. That's what most employers want. It's madness. Sheer and utter bollocks as well!
How the hell are they going to trace what I was doing when I was 17? Huh? No fucking way. Are they really going to phone up a kibbutz (which probably no longer exists; sunk with every other communist value worth mentioning) to see if I was really cleaning tables there? Like fuck they can or will.

My fingers are hurtin', they're throbbin' by twos,
That's from writing the application form blues!

Now, I'm a reasonable guy. Sure, I get my knickers in a twist about various things, but generally I'm easy going. I even wrote a CV.
They (sick, demented and twisted organisations, companies and people who think they are bosses) don't want CV's anymore. No, they want you to fill out their proffesional looking appli-fucking-cation forms. Every single application form asks basically the same questions and because it's on paper you can't copy and paste your CV on to it.
My easy-goingness is fading. Hell yes it is. I'm losing the plot and slowly but surely I feel a final act of desperation creeping up on me. Yes. I think I'm going to join Al Qaeda.

I'm getting enangered, I'm blowing a fuse,
I'm talkin' about the application form blues!

Yup. Join a terrorist cell and blow up beaurocracies. Kill them. Kill them all. Fuck fuck FUCKITY FUCK. They don't deserve to live with their pretentious and feeble little tricksies to make my life a living hell. They deliberately want me to stress. The mother fucking, good for nothing, brainless masses. Fuck them. Fuck them all to hell!
Let them fill in their little forms and dance their little rituals. I'm above that. I'm a fucking JEDI. I'm GOD. I don't...

I need some drugs, that's one of many truths,
I is sufferin' the application form blues!

And with song writing skills like mine, I should be a rock & roll fucking star too!

Sobriety sucks

2006-06-23T12:26:00.000+02:00

I really do not know, understand or comprehend how people can go through life not using drugs or alcohol. Really, it baffles me just like Bush's re-election baffled me and New Labour's undying support, from the people who are constantly getting fucked over by them, baffles me.

All day long I tramp around the streets of Manchester looking for a job; a fake smile upon my face; filling out form after application form with idiotic questions like: "What attracts you to work here?" and "What qualification do you have?" and "Please supply us with full details from the time you left college/school/university". Most of these applications come with pre-printed-fill-it-in-forms, just to force you to continuously write the same bullshit over and over again. It's like high-school punishment!
I just know that one day, and believe me... that will be one day soon, I'm gonna snap like a finger at an ABBA concert, throw the application form on the table and scream: "IT'S A FUCKING BAR JOB!!! I'M ONLY GOING TO BE SERVING FUCKING BEER! YOU PRETENTIOUS SCUMFUCK!" Or something along those lines.

I mean, come off it, they want to know everything from my reasons for travelling around to why I quit working for the Dutch refugee organisation. "Oh, general boredom, politics, ethics, morality...you know, that sort of thing. YOU FUCKING WAITER!!!".

Where's the valium when you fucking need it? See, I'd be a lot happier going to one of these most tedious of occasions (job interviews) if I was stoned out of my skull.
Talking of which, where does one score hashish in Manchester? Fuck, do I ever need to get stoned.

Then at night I stand around doing nothing. I can't go to a pub. Oh God no. Entering a pub would definately break my vow of sobriety faster than a job interview gets on my tits. And that's saying something.
Where the fuck do these arrogant pricks come from anyways? "Oh, you're not what we're looking for...blah blah blah."
How justified are you, after two weeks of listening to this fucking crap, to drag the person interviewing you over the table and to smack him around like a dead fish?

And the days last so looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong...
I go to bed at 12, I fall asleep at 2 and I'm awake at 7. Every day: 19 hours of sobriety. Just standing around, doing things I don't want to be doing and not even getting fucked out of my skull for the trouble.

It sucks I tells ya, it sucks.
Rik Mayell (from the Young Ones) wasn't as funny as usual. Or maybe it was because I was sober.
Watching the world cup is boring. When you are sober. Football and sobriety go together like Bush and intelligence. In fact, when I'm sober, watching football digresses into nothing more than watching 22 millionaires running around a field kicking an inflated piece of cow about.

Masturbation loses its edge (which isn't all that it's cracked up to be anyways) when you're not stoned. You don't even get hangover hots when you're sober...

How do people do it?
They must live hella interesting lives to be able to suffer it without beer. Or wine. Or whiskey. Or marijuana. Or valium. Or...or...or any old drug.

When asked if I'm an alcoholic or a druggy, I generally say: "No. Not that I'm aware of." But to be quite honest, I sometimes doubt my answer.
On the other hand, something's gonna kill you at one point, and I'd rather be killed by an expensive glass of Bordeaux than by boredom.

Hell yeah!

And on a side note:
Harriet the tortoise has died. Age 175.
And do you know what her keepers said? "Her longetivity was due to a stress free life".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/5109342.stm

A stress free fucking life! No way am I gonna make it at this rate. I'll probably die at 40 with all the stress and bull-crap I have to endure.

M'city: 24 hour party people!

2006-06-21T14:32:00.000+02:00

Manchester; England's second city after London and Birmingham.
The Roman's called it Mamuciam which basically means "Breast-like hill camp", or abbreviated: "Tittytown".
And that's what it is. A city full of tits. And my eyes do feast...oh hell yeah.
A recent European study found the English to have the largest breasts in Europe. The men and the women!

Anyways, I was pleased to have built my camp d'Campaign in a suitably named ville (hell, if the World Cup can throw in the odd French word to liven things up, then I sure as hell want a piece of that action too).
You will be pleased to know that I have a short list of Robbie's I have to phone, visit and freak-out; as soon as I have found myself a reliable source of income (preferably a rich femme) I will continue my primary mission.
In the meantime, let me show you around Manchester; the town which gave us The Buzzcocks, Joy division, the Smiths and lots more of that cheerful sort of musique...

The cars in England drive on the left. At one job (spit in bucket) interview I was asked if I had a car. I explained that I won't be getting a car until I've worked out which way to look first when crossing the road.
"But surely they drive on the left in India!" stated the young, pretty, big bossomed smart-arse on the other side of the desk.
This is a bogus misconception, as anyone who's ever been in India will tell you.
Yes. They are supposed to drive on the left. No. You do not cross the road before you've looked both ways...wherever you are.
Basically in India, people drive wherever the hell they feel like it.

This is the famous Mancurian (that's what somebody or something from Manchester is called. Although I actually think it's derived from the Latin name for Manchester, I've not had that verified by a native yet. Or maybe I have, I can't understand a fucking word of what they're saying most of the time) Catholic church. If you look closely you can see that the top is a different colour to the bottom. Seemingly a Junkers JU290 (which was a German proto-type long-range bomber) smashed into it during World War 2 and cut the top clean off and decapitated a nun called Ellie. I don't know her breast size.

Manchester's university is very clean. Infact, I've been told that the students go out every Sunday and polish it for a free lunch.
The town is infested with students. Which is a bonne infestation. They are all quite young, pretty and big bossomed. I've not talked to one yet though.

Next door to the university is Manchester museum. They have an exhibition on about T-rex, so I went in to see if they actually did have Marc Bolan's remains on display...or at the very least, some vintage footage of him making love to his guitar.

See the purple door? That's the coolest place in town, or so I'm told. That's where all the fashionable people and students hang out to see the newest local bands who are going to make it big.

Obviously I'm not hippity hop enough to get in, but once I've bought my racy lacy red bra and flairs, I'll be in there like a rabbit in Spring. Although technically it will probably be more like Autumn by the time I'm hip.

Some of the architecture in Manchester is astounding. And some of it is quite shite.
This is the library where I've been typing the last two weeks. When I asked directions to Rik Mayell's "Alan B'stard" show which was playing at the opera (thank fuck he wasn't singing...) some doorman said: "Walk past the big oval neo-classical building..." so, when I tell you it's a neo-classical building; a remnant of the Roman occupation, ask yourself: "what did the Romans ever do for us", and blame the answer on the doorman.

Son, I'm 30
I only went with your mother 'cause she's dirty
And I don't have a decent bone in me
What you get is just what you see yeah
I see it so I take it freely
And all the bad piss ugly things i feed me
I never help or give to the needy Come on and see me

Yippee-ippee-ey-ey-ay-yey-yey
I had to crucify some brother today
And I don't dig what you gotta say
So come on and say it
Come on and tell me twice

- The Happy Mondays -

Casual sex in the cineplex

2006-06-18T12:27:00.000+02:00

Nope. There's gonna be nothing casual about this post.
Nope. There's gonna be no sex in this post (and if there was it probably wouldn't involve me anyways... *insert weeping*)
Nope. I didn't invent the title. It's an album by "The sultans of swing FC", but it just sounded too good not to use.

Don't put talcum powder in your shoes before a job interview!
I noticed, the other day, that my shoes were getting a little smelly. So, I gave them a going over with Jean Paul Gautier, but that didn't seem to work.
I bought myself some talcum powder and poured it into my socks, on my feet and a little in the shoes.
What I didn't realise is that there are air holes in my shoes and that as I was skipping (or staggering... I believe this issue is up for debate) down the street, white puffs of cocaine like significance were mushrooming out of these small holes; mini-Nagasaki toadstools, if you will.
Later someone said that my stride reminded them of the IRA bomb blast in Manchester's town centre, 10 years and 3 days ago!
Needless to say, I entered the cinema looking like I'd jumped up and down in a sack full of heroin.

Don't get too cocky during your job interview!
"What makes you want to work in a cinema?" the lovely blonde haired chief executive of development and career planning asked me.
"The money." I said giving her a big cheesy grin.
It was obviously a joke. The cinema only pays minimum wage and you don't get extra for working weekends.
"Is that your only motivation?" the equally lovely brown haired sub-chief of resources and floor management asked, adding depth to the interrogation.
I gave her a wink and said: "Free admission to films is a plus."
The blonde went in for the kill: "Do you like films?"

I licked my lips in a professional way, tossed my hair back (well, I made the movement, there is obviously very little hair there to toss about in the first place), put one arm over the back of the chair and bombastically announced: "I starred as an extra in a Bollywood production!"

I could see the Brunette was lapping it up. Oh yes, she was well impressed at being in the same room as a bonafide star.
The Blonde however seemed a little less impressed: "What was the name of the film?" she queried.
"Welcome." I answered with a John Wayne like swagger in my voice.
Both women turned around to see who'd entered the door.
"Er... no. The film is called Welcome."
Both of the women turned back to face me.
The Blonde asked: "Was it a speaking role?"
I looked at her with shock splattered all over my face: "Of course it was! It will get dubbed over in Hindi though, but hell, yeah. Fuck did I ever speak. They even took 8 takes of it."
The Blonde concluded: "That's not a particularly good thing though, is it?"

Don't paraphrase characters during a job interview!
"We have a small problem concerning your motivations for wanting to work here." Said the sexy Blonde animal with slightly pouting lips.
"We can't imagine why it would interest you." added the Brunette with the sparkling eyes, so deep one could drown in them.
I stuck my tongue deep into my cheek, puffing it out like the witty person I am: "I am looking for a long lost childhood friend and seek but meager wages to sustain myself in this long and tedious search. That I have a chance to work in or near the industry that makes my heart pound faster than a hummingbird's wings, is but a pleasantry to me. A pleasantry that would serve to keep me happy, none the less."

I thought they'd bought this bull crap, but then the Blonde decided to probe a little deeper yet, I bet she's had CIA training or something: "You seem, to us, a little over-qualified."
I leaned back and sighed, drew a stupid face and said in a slow and drawn out fake American accent: "Over-qualified is as over-qualified does, Ma'am."

I don't think my Forrest Gump impersonation went down too well.

Don't do job interviews with a hangover!
I really, honest to God, planned to stay sober the night before my job interview. I really, really did.
But Holland was playing football in the 2006 world cup and I just had to have one beer while it was on.
They were playing the Ivory coast, which for some odd reason gets called Cote d'Ivory. I have no problems with using alternative French spelling, but then surely Germany should be called Allemagne (or whatever...) and Holland Le pays bas. Is a little consitency too much to ask?

Well yeah, so, one beer accidently ended up four beers. Had this been the end, then I guess nothing would really have been problematic. But I was invited out to a comedy night.
And, by the looks of my wallet, four beers ended up twelve pints and I had a steaming headache the next morning.

Now, as I've grown older I have noticed that I stink like a beer keg when I'm hungover. I can't remember the stench of alcohol sticking to me, like sleaze sticks to Archer, when I was younger. I can only imagine that as you get older your body has more trouble breaking down smelly substances.
For example: How many babies suffer from garlic breath compared to the amount of old people who do? See? It makes perfect sense.

I don't think shakey hands, cold sweat and smelling like Shane McGowan after a concert did much for the impression I made on the interview.
So yeah, the cinema turned me down.
Obviously this is horrendous for my self-esteem! It's like a 90 year old with dementia beating me in a Star Wars trivia quiz. Truly, do I not suffer enough in my life as it is?

Now I really have to go and try to find a job.
Ohhhh... the motivational problems I encounter.
You see, to me, trying to find a job is much like trying to catch leprosy; A long and dreary proces of mingling with the diseased only to end up equally sick and dying at the end of it.

As cash funds dwindle and there seems to be an utter lack of sponsors wishing to finance me (yes... you!) I've had to come up with something to get me out and about on the job scene... and I've come up with the most horrific of motivators: I will not drink another drop of alcohol until I have a job!

Yes. I've embarked on Mission Impossible IV!

Miles of curry and mobile phones

2006-06-16T11:38:00.000+02:00

Isn't it amusing how as fund levels lower, stress levels seem to act like global warming?

I'm not stressed as such yet, but there is a distinct odour d'rush creeping over my once so clean and perfumed body.
Not all is like a sauna though!

I have found a new home. It will serve as a base while I try to find my long lost childhood friend... and a job.
The mere use of the word sends shivers running up and down my spine.
To tell you the god's honest truth, some of us are made to work and other's are more suited to spending... and I sure as hell don't fit into the former catagory. Since I stopped working my dandruff has cleared up! If that's not a sure sign that I'm allergic to commitment, I don't know what is!

But now I have a base, so nothing's holding me back. I've decided on a two-track approach to deal with my dual missions in life (finding Robbie and getting a job). Yes, I'm going to attempt to do both at the same time in a juggling act which may (but probably won't), eventually, get me a high paid job in a circus.

Manchester is divided into different neighbourhoods, the new neighbourhood I'm living in is called Rusholme. It's pleasant in a working-class sort of a way and it's multi-cultural in a sort of "hood" like way.
I live next to what is known as "The curry mile".

I can hear you thinking: "Why the hell is it called the curry mile?"
So, let me explain...
First, I don't really hear you thinking. That would not be a good sign of fine mental health.
Secondly, it's not really a mile, it's more like half a mile. A mile is a distance, not unlike a kilometer, but slightly longer. Or something like that. So it's basically "The Curry slightly more than 500 meters."
It's so called because every restaurant in it sells curries. It's like "little Bombay."

No. The irony of it all hasn't escaped me either. Maybe my destiny is linked to Indian food and I will meet a nice little Indian girl who'll cook me curries and vindaloos for the rest of my life; which will be spent on a squat bog as fire shoots forth from my burning and tattered anus.

Everywhere I go, I get asked the same question: "What's your telephone number?"
At the jobcentre (or "hell" as I refer to it as), at the bank when you want to open a bank account (which is another little bureaucratic nightmare just waiting to snap at my ankles or sour my wine, although probably both), at the library, etc. etc.
So, I caved in and bought myself a mobile.

It cost ten pounds and comes with thirty pounds worth of phone-minutes (or whatever they're called) and another thirty pounds worth of equipment (that's me joking about the money and the weight system being the same...just in case you didn't get it).
What it seemingly doesn't come with is a telephone number.

I'm going to have to spend some of my phone-minute pound thingies to call someone and ask them what my number is. How daft is this?
Hell, the bank and the library (and the etc. etc.'s) will just have to wait a little longer. In the meantime I'm off for a curry and some vaseline.

Life is like a box of chocolates

2006-06-12T11:07:00.000+02:00

The inevitable happened last night.
Of course I was sitting in a bar and naturally I was getting drunk, so obviously I started talking to people.
"Yir Scotch thin?" they enquired.
"Well, technically I'm more like Guiness at this moment in time..."
"Na, a min, yir Scottish thin?"

One can only do so much to disguise one's accent, so eventually I agreed that I was Scottish, although technically, ofcourse, I'm not. But when drunk, one's usually best leaving the semantics out of things.

"And who yir gonna sipport thin?"
"I don't really care about football." I lied.
"I bit yir sipportin' anyone bit us!" they provoked
"Well, now you mention it. Yes." Lying is not my strongest point.

There's a moment when one really should say something and there's a moment when one would be best just shutting up. I really haven't mastered this thinnest of lines though.

"And I'll be supporting the French and the Germans too." I added, for no reason in particular.
To cut a long and tedious story short I eventually decided it was probably better for the peace between our two (or in my case three) lovely nations if I should vacate the bar...

It turned out, the next day, that the pub wasn't the only place I was going to have to vacate pre-maturely.
The girl who was putting me up asked if I could leave and stay in a youth hostel until I arranged my house.
Now, it struck me as rather weird; the day before I was still being encouraged to act like I was at home and use the computer to steal music...
Well, maybe she realised that I'm a drunk, or perhaps I smell too much. Or it could even be the fact that I was going to introduce her six year old son to the world of "The big Lebowski" and "Full Metal Jacket"...
Who knows? And I was too hungover to ask.

And off to Manchester I went to look for a hostel.
It's funny, but when you're looking for something you tend to go places you would never normally go.
I strolled all around the city centre where a mere sandwich will set you back about three pounds.
I wandered around the Arndale centre where the only toys you will see are pink and fashionable.
I ramble... on and on and on....

Well, to cut another tedious story short, I ended up wandering out of the actual centre to the sub centre (two blocks away, I have to be quite honest, but honestly I would normally have never walked that way) and I stumbled across a sandwich bar which sells fresh rolls at one pound a piece!
Not only that, but I tripped over a Gaming shop / club...and there's this great Star Wars fantasy battle game out here!

Karma is what karma does and eventually Forrest Gump is proven right. Life is like a box of chocolates.
But if that said box was in the Big Lebowski, it would have been:
The dude: "Fucking, hey man, life is like a box of fucking chocolates."
Walter: "Yeah. But they're your fucking chocolates dude..."

or if those chocolates were in Full Metal Jacket:
Gunnery seargent Hartman: "Get those fucking chocolates off my god damned gaming board Twinkle toes!"

Or if they were in Star Wars...etc. etc. etc.

Chavs and basket cases

2006-06-09T00:19:00.000+02:00

I was sitting beside a pub drinking a beer (as per usual), congratulating myself on a productive morning (I spent 5 hours looking for jobs and housing), forgetting the embarrassing affair in Boots and reading Boris Johnsson’s “Friends, countrymen, voters” and having a right old giggle to myself when…

No, let me start in Boots.
I needed nail clippers.
At the entrance to Boots it states, quite clearly and certainly undoubtedly, that I should, must and would take a basket with me. So, hoping to avoid authority, I did.

I picked up my nail clippers (ranging from 1.99 pounds to 6.99 pounds…who in hell would pay 7 pounds for nail clippers, just because they have a brightly coloured plastic coating…who in hell would subsidize such extravagance? I bought the 1.99 pound pair, which inevitably will be blunt, dangerous, or Health and Safety failed…) and marched off to pay-booth nr. 8; with the clippers in one hand and my basket in the other.

“You didn’t need the basket then?” asked the spotty faced girl from behind her desk.
“Oh yes, it says so at the entrance.” I replied, surprised she didn’t know the rules.
“Does it?” she answered.
“Yes…” I slowly said, my eyes narrowing like Yoda’s listening to a Palpatine speech.
“’Ere you go.” She eventually said after she’d stuck my 10 pound note away and given me coinage change.
“Oh…”, said I confidently, “I won’t need the slip.” And I handed her the blue “paid” slip back.

How wrong one is. Sometimes, obviously.
I was stopped before leaving and asked to show the receipt.
Eventually the girl from pay-booth nr. 8 verified my story and I was allowed on my way. But the embarrassment of suggested theft clung like the sweaty odour of forgotten deodorant… all completely coincidental, I’m sure you’ll understand…

But as I was suggesting, I was sitting at a pub; in the sun, giggling to myself and this lad with long curly hair said: “So, yir a frikkin’ tory thin…” or something along those lines.
“Pardon?” I replied, not entirely sure what he was on about, or to be quite truthful, what he was saying at all.
“Yir frickin’ laughin’ at Boris, ye mist be a tory thin!”
“Oh Lord no!” I laughed, “the man is full of shite.”

“So, yir a frickin’ communistic environmentalist then!” he concluded, his mates nodded their long curly heads in agreement.
One part of me wanted to imply that I used to have long curly hair as well, but that would only have led to more complications…
“Well…”, I said, “just because I believe in the equal distribution of wealth, doesn’t mean to say that I’m an environmentalist.”

“Whit?” the lad answered.
“I don’t give a fuck about the environment.” I concluded. “The faster the ice-caps melt and we all perish in a ball of hazy fire of doom, the better!”

There was a bit of a muddled silence as I put Boris’ book away.
Eventually one of the long, curly haired boys replied: “Whit the frick does that min.” or something along those lines.
“Well,” I said as smartly and as wisely as I could, “the sooner London drowns in a puddle of Thames filth, the sooner the Brits will have to have a new capitol. And what better place than Manchester! I mean, Birmingham…hahahaha.,”

It turned out I was the only person laughing.
“We’re frim Liverpool, we are.” The lad said.
How is one supposed to diagnose accents, when one hardly understands what anyone is saying anyways?

On the positive side of matters though, I do have a job interview lined up…
In a business I’ve already had loads of experience in…
Yes…I’m applying for a job in the movie business!

It might just be selling tickets in a cinema, but hey, I starred in a Bollywood production, what are the chances of being turned down with that kind of relevance!

Loose screws and a meal

2006-06-06T13:40:00.000+02:00

The cheap flight, which turned out to be more expensive than first promoted, lived up to its name, to a degree that was slightly disturbing...

The Boeing (if it actually was a Boeing) 737 was the oldest looking aeroplane I've ever had the oppertunity to board. It was so old, I kid you not, that the paint was peeling from the fusilage and the ceiling (or roof... I don't know what the top of the inside of a plane is called) was coming undone.
The seats were skanky false leather which was fraying at the edges and the trays kept falling down.

Basically it looked like the cheapo flight was in a plane the cheapo company had bought from Air Kandahar. A quick dash of cheap paint and voila!... a new business was created.

I'm not a fussy person. Truly, I am not and normally I wouldn't waste a stewardess' time, but as I was sitting plucking at the fraying false leather and looking at the fantasy-like realm of clouds floating beneath me (and presumably above some picturesque English village) I saw something move.
I took a closer look (well, I pushed my face up against the window) and saw little creatures trapped between the inside and the outside window. I first of all thought that it was one of these little beasties which had moved. But it wasn't. They were all dead.

It was then that I noticed that something was moving on the wing and as I sat pondering how aircraft stay in the air at an upwards angle (when moving at a steady speed) I saw a screw come undone and whizz off earthbound at a screw-shattering speed.
I can't be sure, but I reckon my eyes opened slightly wider.

Obviously I wasn't bothered about who the screw might hit, I mean it's only the English down there after all, but I did get slightly worried that the wings were seemingly screwed together (rather than bolted, welded and glued) and that the screws were equally seemingly coming undone.
And thus for the first time in my flying history I pressed the "call stewardess button". Amazingly quickly a beautiful young women was standing at my side.
"How may I be of assistence?" she asked in a friendly tone.
"I think your wings may be coming undone." I answered, trying not to look at her breasts, a problem that has been reoccuring since I left India.
"Pardon me?" she asked in a friendly tone.
"One of the screws just departed in a frenzy." I answered looking at her feet.
"Oh, don't worry about that," she answered in a friendly tone, "that happens all the time." and she walked away to the next customer, who, I suppose, had less interesting questions to ask.

And so I took a closer look at the wing. And sure enough, some of the screws were painted in cheapo grey, but about half of them were bright and shiny metallic of nature.
And there were a couple of holes, were I imagine the mechanics still had to replace the lost screws.

Well, if the stewardess wasn't going to be worried about a loose screw, then I sure as hell wasn't going to worry about it either.
I can only guess that it was an unimportant part of the wing or something.

Anyways, the plane landed safe and soundly and I've had my first of many helpings of fish 'n' chips.
Tomorrow I'm going to look for a national security number. Seemingly they float around the beaurocratic windmill of Britain and they are needed for that dirtiest of words: work.

Corny Crotch and the bicyle incident

2006-06-04T11:45:00.000+02:00

I was sat in the pub, waiting for my brother and sister to show up…
Just kidding Su…

I was sitting in the pub; having a pint of prime Heinken lager; waiting for my brother and sister to appear, when I started chatting with a lad from England.
He’d worked in Hellevoetsluis last year and his boss had failed to pay him the finest of sums of 2.000 pounds!
“So, you’ve come back to get your money?” I asked, slightly worried that he’d waited a year. I mean, 2.000 pounds is a three month stay in Bangkok.
“Na,” he answered, “I don’t care about the money anymore, I just want to beat him up.”
I raised my eyebrows slightly: “You’ve come all the way over from England just to beat someone up?”
“Yeah. If I can find him.”
Yes. There was a bit of bonding going on by now.
“Oh. You’re looking for someone! So am I!” I said, hoping he would ask about my writing ambitions and my blog.
“Yeah. And then when I find him, I’m gonna beat the crap outta him and go home.”
He didn’t appear to interested in my search.

Before I could return to the more important subjects at hand: like why on earth he’d want to beat the man up instead of trying to retrieve his 2.000 pounds, or my blog, my brother and sister showed up with lovers and we retreated to a corner of the pub to discuss the merits of the A-team. My sister’s boyfriend showed his total lack of understanding of any serious subject by suggesting that the whole A-team were gay and that was why BA kept saying: “Sucker.”

Anyways, to get to one of the points at hand, at a certain point friends of my brother turned up. One of them was new to me and he introduced himself as such: “Hi, I’m Corny Crotch.”
I looked at my sister, who’s very sharp on certain subjects (she doesn’t believe the A-team were gay) to make sure I’d heard correctly. Her eyes narrowed into what can only be called ‘inquisitorial position’ and I turned back to Corny and said: “Pardon?”
“My name is Corny Crotch.” He repeated.
It’s not like me to be rude and I’m sure the fourth pint of prime Heineken lager had something to do with it, but I burst out laughing. “You’re pulling my leg!”
But he wasn’t. His name was Corny Crotch and there was not a thing in the world he, me or the inquisition could do about it.
His parents should probably be reprimanded or something though.

After another couple of pints my brother, sister and their lovers retreated to their separate abodes; They are far more calculous than I when it comes to matters of future importance. I decided to join Corny Crotch and my brother’s friends as they wondered off to another pub, for another couple of beers.
Once I was suitably drunk, I said my goodbyes, wrote down Corny Crotch’s name on my hand (for I have a habit of forgetting things and this was one name that I did not want to forget) and headed off to my sister’s bicycle, which I had lent for the occasion. It saves having to take a taxi home, or a long, long walk.

Far be it for me to lose my temper, but for some reason I just couldn’t open the bloody lock. I’m sure someone had tampered with it. So with much cursing and muttering I decided to kick the bike and shout at it. I have a history of talking to bicycles and dustbins, they just tend to piss me off, and sometimes need a bloody good seeing to! That’s my opinion on the matter anyway.

I tried to get the lock open for a full ten minutes and eventually gave up. Either I was so drunk I could no longer open a bike lock (some of them can be quite dodgy, it’s not the first time I’ve not been able to open a lock. One time one of my ex’s told me to use the proper key instead of kicking the door…) or someone had tried to steal the bike and had buggered up the lock.

I didn’t want to leave the bike in the town centre though, because theft is always on the increase (Holland has one of the highest theft rates in Europe, because of stolen bicycles) and luckily my brother lives in the town centre, so I lifted the bike over my shoulder and carted it to his backyard. And took a taxi home…

The next day I phoned up my sister and told her of the lock tragedy and she came and picked me up to drive me to my brother’s. I was pretty hungover by now; sweaty, smelly and unshaven. And my sister was not amused. I was receiving her cold Gestapo like treatment, which she reserves for various occasions, most of which have to do with me, drugs and broken things.

And so we arrived at my brother’s house and went to the backyard.
Her bike wasn’t there!
I swear to God that sweat comes in various amounts and I was sweating like a Scotsman in Hampi.

There was a purple bike there though.
“So who’s bike’s that then?” asked my sister.
“Huh?” I’m not very articulate when hungover.
“Well it’s not your brother’s. It’s not his lover’s. Do you think it is the cook’s or the thief’s?”
“Well…”
“Mark,” she said, sounding awfully like Herr Flick, “That’s not my bike. My bike is white. You’ve taken someone else’s bike.”
“Yah…”

I was ordered to carry the purple bike back through the town centre (in the middle of the day…can you believe the embarassement I suffered? All the fingers pointing at me and people whispering to each other: “He’s stealing that bike in broad daylight”).
It did, however, explain why the lock wouldn’t open.
I replaced the bike where I reckon I’d found it and cycled away on my sister’s. Her lock wasn’t tampered with after all.

Rest assured, I will no longer be going to the town centre, it’s joined the list of other embarassing places I have to avoid.

Weightless shit

2006-06-03T16:43:00.000+02:00

I undressed down to my undies this morning and stood on the scales.
In one week’s time I’ve gained 3 of the 10 kilos I lost in 4 months of India.
At this rate, in a month I’ll be fatter than I ever was, and that is not a good thing.

But, it is not this matter which truly worries me.

After I weighed myself, I went to the toilet and layed down a log.
Now, I’m talking substantial shit here. It wasn’t runny Indian poo, no, this was half a bowl full of prime quality ex-steak. By the time I’d wiped my arse, it took two flushes to get rid of it all. I seriously think that there’s a chance of the Rotterdam Delta works getting clogged up.

But then I went and weighed myself again.
Just to see exactly how much this poo of mine actually weighed.
I was exactly the same weight as before!

How baffling is this?
This means that this log I layed weighed absolutely nothing!
It’s not possible.
I swear to God, if I’d taken a photo of it, I’d have had to stand outside the bog to get it all in the picture. And it didn’t weigh a gram.

There’s always the possibility that my Mum’s scales are a bit wonky, but what are the chances of the wonkiness (yes, that is actually a word) being ascew within 10 minutes (or roughly ten minutes, as I said, it was quite a big one and there was quite some wiping as well)?

This interested me so much, I did some research for you:

¾ of poo is made up of water.
The brown colour is biliruben, which is created by the breaking down of red blood cells.
You can get ill from eating poop (so be careful you scat-munchers out there).
Most people wipe their bums sitting down.
Sometimes a shit will float. This is due to gas in the poop.
Roughly 1/3 of what you eat comes out as poop. My steak yesterday was at least 400 grams, the potatoes…God knows, then the lunch, the breakfast and the crisps.

There is no way that my shit could have weighed nothing!

Strange things are afloat…and they’re smelly!

Desolation row

2006-06-02T19:07:00.000+02:00

Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says," You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

I guess everyone who is on a mission should have a mission statement. Most corporations do, and most are crap. So, mine will probably be no different.

“Preserve me from boredom and keep me from straying too far from Desolation row.”

How’s that?
Now, obviously the questions to be begged are “What is my description of boredom?” and “What was Dylan’s Desolation row?”.
And I just know you’re gagging to find out.

Now, I know Yoda told me not to focus on myself, I remember how Sophie screamed that my problems were minute compared to other people’s problems and I accept Yossarian’s reasoning for there being no easy way out of it all.
But that’s where it all seems to strand. By focussing on what I’m doing, not right here and right now, but generally when I’m not doing what I’m doing right now (which is writing) I get bored.

And not only do I get bored when I’m not doing anything, I get bored watching people shop, listening to lover’s talking to each other (fuck, do they ever spout some shite) and watching football supporters get excited at a couple of millionaires running around a field, kicking a piece of cow about.

Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They're spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get Outa Here If You Don't Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row"

Politics bore me.
This whole neo-liberal movement is weighing so heavily upon my mammary protruberances that I’m starting to look like a Pygmy.
The “Just sell everything ‘we’ own off to some wanker who’ll make millions out of creating a beaurocratic nightmare of it” attitude bores me.
Individualism my arse. We are all supposed to be nice little worker clones. That’s what they want and that’s what we do. Most of us that is.

I get bored being bored. I get even more bored by drinking to relieve myself from being bored of being bored. Hell, I’m so fucking bored sometimes that I wish I had a job to go to just to scream at some big-headed beaurocrat who thinks he’s a boss.

And so I guess life is just boring. All of life? No, obviously not.
There are some things which are not boring, they generally though, are expensive.
Sometimes I think that perhaps all I need to do is fall in love again and become one of the masses of people who no longer go out and party. Just stay at home, rub her feet and get my cock sucked once every month. Hoorah! It sounds like a fucking party to me!

Maybe boredom has to do with repetition?
Mhmmmm…Yes, repetition sounds about right.

Some people like repetition.
Some people like repetition.
Some people like repetition.

They fucking bore me too.

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go to
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

Everyone knows you have to work to live. Everyone knows you have to be insured. Everyone knows…they know fuck all. FUCK ALL!
They’re living in the world that’s been created for them and if they dare to look any further than their front doors they get dragged back in by thought-police, family members and institutions. Institionalised fucking boredom.
This world that’s been created. This “get up and go out to make someone else rich”, bores me. I don’t want money. I don’t want a house. I don’t even want to watch the news anymore! It’s all so fucking boring.

If you don’t fit, you’re either insane or a criminal. So you’re either boring, mad or fucking dangerous. What great choices. What great lives we live. How creative we all still are.

And I am now on Dylan’s Desolation row. The place they don’t want you to be. The place that is dangerous because it is different.
It’s not better, it’s just different.
I’ll either die of boredom, die of drugs, die of drink or end up locked up. These are my choices and boy, do they ever look promising from where I’m standing right now!

And that’s why I’m going to find Robbie Howett. Not because it will make one bit of difference to anything in the universe or my grande finale from Desolation row, but it’s just something I haven’t done yet.
Now, I might find him, I might not. He might be a figment of my imagination. Hell, he could even be a projection of myself on the wall of time.

And that’s why my mission statement is so crap.
It could be Desolation row that’s boring me and that would make my statement a contradiction. And if Desolation row is not boring me, then the second part is just duplicating what the first part is saying… a tautology, if you will.

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

Yup. That was some heavy shit today!
Nope. My mood was not the finest.

The history of European immigration

2006-05-31T20:07:00.000+02:00

Well, I was going to serve you a dish of 20.000 words of history stooped in left-wing rhetoric and smothered in sarcastic hatred of the pettiness of the so called fortress our greatest of leaders would wish to embrace us in, to keep us safe from the ravaging hordes of islamo-fascists and thieving niggers.

But, alas, I was in the pub, drinking beer that evening (for a change) and was disturbingly unamused at a set of circumstances I’m sure many a person will recognise!

What?
Let me repeat that, just to make it very clear: What on earth makes people think that their mobile telephone is more fucking interesting than me?

Now, I know that I don’t write as profoundly as Eco or as surprisingly as Brown and I know I don’t speak as wisely as Chef or as funny as Hicks, but at which point have I become so discerningly boring that a beep is enough to divert attention from me to something, most likely, just as tedious?

“Oh. I just have to answer this.” And he walks out of the pub. 25 seconds later he comes back in.
“Oh. Who was it?” I ask, pretending that I’m in the least interested.
“James wants to know if I’m coming to dinner next week.”
What a fucking great answer. What a fucking great message. How fucking important was that?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have absolutely nothing against modern technology. I love mobile telephones! Seriously, I do.
If you’re stuck in a car and you need to phone the AA (which in my case could be the American or the British AA…) a mobile phone is heaven sent!
If your Dad is on the brink of death and you want to know when to arrive at the hospital to watch the priest give the last rights…hell…by all means, the mobile (it’s pointless to use telephone, because everyone knows it’s just “mobile” now) is at the least hell sent.

But, when there’s nothing happening in your life (which is generally the case, I mean…we can’t all be unemployed writers and ex-Bollywood stars) and you’re sat in a pub talking to someone you’ve not seen for 5 months, turn the fucking thing off.
How difficult can it be to be unreachable for 2 hours?

Why do people feel so obliged to answer (you don’t pick a mobile up, you answer it…) a mobile when it rings? Why not just let it go off and wait until I’m in the toilet (which is far less frequent than a month or so ago, by the way) to see who phoned them?
How fucking difficult can that be???

“Beep.”
“I’ve got a text message. I’ll quickly read it.”
“No you fucking won’t.”
A look of surprise.
“You are talking to me. Whatever that text message is saying is less important than sitting here with me. You will wait until I go to the toilet before you look at your telephone.”
I still use telephone. Mobile to me is either driving very fast or a place in Alabama.

You should see the sweat drip from the face.
The look of deep distress.
How dare someone tell “him” not to look at the text message.
“But I just have to see who sent it.”
“Why?”
“It could be important.”

Yes. I agree. It could be important. But then again, if someone’s got something important to tell you, don’t you think they would phone? Or pop by and tell you personally?

“How many important text messages have you received then?” I asked, taking a large gulp of beer.
“Well…”
“No, I mean it,” I continued, “How many deaths have been texted to you? How many road accident incidents have you received through your telephone’s text service?”
“Well...”

It’s not fucking important. It’s fucking rude.
That’s what it is.
If you’re talking with someone and your telephone goes, let it go or switch it off. Look at it later
(Unless you’ve specifically mentioned you might be phoned about something important like a death, a birth or a publishing deal).

And yes. I’m talking about you!

Espresso and slootwater

2006-05-29T18:32:00.000+02:00

The Netherlands is full of little canals and rivers. The smallest of these are called sloots. The double O is pronounced as the OA in boat.
The Dutch word for water is water, but instead of being pronounced as woter (or woti if you're from the South of England), the A is pronounced as the A in tap.

So, basically the title of this article should be pronounced as: Espresso and sloat w(t)a(p)ter.
The Dutch also like to join words up together. They're cosy in that way, that's why the two obviously separate words are joined together in the title.

Sloots (or sloats, if you so prefer) are always slow moving, quite often full of alga and regularly so filthy that should you fall in you'll catch a rash which can only be described as an outbreak of urticarian proportions probably leading to anaphylactic shock.

Some of the murkiest of Dutch sloots can't even be seen properly with digital photo enhancing...

The sloots or also one of the reason so many young refugees drown in the Netherlands.
They can't swim.
Now, I generally don't generalise, but for once indulge me...there are a hell of a lot of Zimbabweans and Sudanese who can't swim. There may be reasons for this, don't ask me, I'm not a geographical expert, but it's the god-damned truth of the matter.
The Dutch government probably could teach these young refugees to swim, but every drowned child is one less they have to deport at a later stage. Call it water-management, if you will.

That's the lesson in Dutch for today. Now I understand you want to know what the connection is between this most romantic of coffees and disturbingly awful puddle filth.

Well, I was sat with a friend and her child at a yacht harbour in the centre of the Netherlands (a province called Brabant...should anyone really care, which, no doubted they do) and I ordered an espresso.
The first thing wrong with this said beverage was that it was served in a coffee mug.

Now, this might seem like a small thing to most people, but... well, call me pretentious if you must, but I have a well developed sense for detail and serving espresso in a coffee mug is like eating a steak which is well done. It's not done! It's just not, and my displeasure at the size of the mug was instantly recognisable on my fair features.

The second thing wrong with my espresso was that it wasn't espresso. I swear to Bacchus (one of my favourite deities of the moment...and since there doesn't seem to be a God of coffees, this one will have to do in his' or her's place) that they'd dipped the mug in the sloot and heated it.

And there you go. It took me 446 words (2004 letters) to say I didn't like the espresso they served me. Join me next time when I discuss European immigration laws, their histories and the several possibilities that the future might hold in store.

Fake smiling and smirking

2006-05-26T14:33:00.000+02:00

I met my old lover on the street last night,
She seemed so glad to see me I just smiled
- Paul Simon -

I went shopping today.
Sponging off my family and friends is okay as far as I'm concerned, but I thought: "Hey! I'll have a go at cookin' again..."

The first thing I noticed as I stepped outside was that a T-shirt was not gonna do the trick. Neither was my jumper. So, I had to add a leather coat to the assembly of clothing clinging to my back.
The second thing I noticed was the wind. It was cold and wet. And so was the bike saddle.
I've quickly come to the conclusion that life in Europe is going to be unpleasantly like a cold shower in Darjeeling.

There are bicycle stands near the shopping centre in downtown Hellevoetsluis. Well, I say downtown, but that's just to make it sound interesting. But the bike stands are made for bikes with big fat tyres and my sister's bike has small thin tyres. So, I reckoned it would be safer to park the bike beside the bike stands, instead of in them.
This old woman rolled up in one of those automatic wheelchair things and said: "You shouldn't do that. The bike stand's aren't there for nothing."
"Neither are geriatric homes." I replied and strolled off, leather coat and all.

In the shopping centre, which has as a logo a dolphin (although what dolphins actually have to do with anything in Hellevoetsluis, Holland or Northern Europe infact, is beyond me) and bumped into an old lover.
"Hi Mark," she said smiling, "You're looking brown. But you've lost a lot of hair."
I immediately had a suspicion that this conversation was going to be either short or unpleasant.
"Nice to see you too Femke," I replied "are you pregnant?"
"Yes! 5 months." she answered.

You know, sometimes sarcasm just doesn't work out.

"So, what are you up to nowadays?" she asked pouting her lips in the manner which years before had irritated me to the extent to fleeing off to Israel.
"You know. The usual. I act in Bollywood films, write novels. That sort of thing."
She smiled. Not a genuine "That's nice!" sort of a smile, it was more of a "Stop bull-shitting me." sort of a smile.

Actually, I don't think smile is the proper word for it at all. Let me grasp my trusted thesaurus (so greatly missed these previous months) and see what it has to say...
This is too weird to be true, but the word "Smile" doesn't appear to be in my thesaurus. Sure, it's in the dictionary part, but seemingly there is no other word for smile.
So she did smile at me after all.
Smirk?
I don't know, and anyways, it has nothing to do with the tale of shopping at hand...

"No, seriously. I'm a Bollywood star. Of sorts. And I'm a writer of sorts."
And then she asked the question which so pisses me off: "Have you been published yet?"
Not: "Oh really! What do you write?"
No. Straight to the point: "Are you making a living out of it."

"Yes, I've been published in various magazines." I said. Not lying. After all, when I worked for the refugee organisation quite a few of my articles were used in internal papers.
Well, okay, I lied. But who cares?

"What do you do now?" I asked with the air of someone who has more pressing engagements to go to (like the grocery store).
"Oh. I stay at home and make sure things run smoothly."
I nodded. She obviously did more than me.
"Well, gotta run. Got a deadline to meet." I prevaricated (the word 'lie' can obviously be found in my thesaurus).
We wished each other well and went on our seperate ways. She to buy pre-baby clothing and me to buy chicken, mushrooms, salad and wine. Lovely wine.

Booking flight LS946

2006-05-23T15:16:00.000+02:00

21 Euros!
21 bloody Euros was all it was going to cost to fly from Amsterdam to Manchester! If I booked it on Monday.

By Tuesday however it was 36 euros.
36 bloody euros.
Not a lot. But still 12 more (or there abouts, as if counting is my strong point) than yesterday.

Now, I'm nosey. I wanted to wait 'till Wednesday to see how much it would cost to get to Manchester. But I'm also half Dutch and half Scottish, which makes me a cross-breed of the two stingiest nationalities in the world. So I booked on Tuesday.

Airport tax.
I have no idea, what-so-ever, what airport tax is, what it's for or who put it there.
So, let's google it and find out...
Nothing.
Wikipedia...
Nothing.

Nowhere can you find out what airport tax actually is, what it's for or who put it there.
Or why some airports have a higher airport tax than other airports. Does this mean that their runways are safer?
If Liverpool's airport tax is higher than Manchester's does that mean that I've got a greater chance of surviving the flight (although Liverpool's airport is called "John Lennon international airport" and considering how he ended up, I don't think I'll take the chance no matter what the tax charges are)?

Mastercard booking charges.
Let's get this straight. I'm booking online which means there's no way I can pay in cash and I have to use a credit card. All credit cards having booking charges. Some of them higher than others...
Again the fucking question: Does this mean that certain credit card companies promise safer journeys? I think not.

So, the final price from Amsterdam to Manchester is 72 euros and 17 cents.
(gets out calculator)
DOUBLE the price (+ 17 cents) from what the price promised to be online.

Now, I don't lose my temper at airports, but someone surely has got to point this out to these people?
Someone has got to lose their temper, promise to rip out intestines and get proper prices up on these fucking websites.

Please Ganesh, let it not be me...

The small problem of spelling

2006-05-22T13:02:00.000+02:00

Well, I made it out!
Escorted by drab men with moustaches and machine guns, but I got on the plane and was flying over the Arabian sea at three in the morning, only 24 hours later than planned.
Imagine my indignation when the airport manager said to me: "Sir, I think you're drunk and on drugs."

Pffffft.... as if!

Anyways, with my holiday over, I've started work on the second stage of my mission. Finding Robbie.
And this is where the problems really start creeping in (as if continual diarreah and anger fits weren't problems, but that's all besides the point): How on earth do you find someone after 25 years?

And have I spelled his name right. I mean, the blog suggests I'm looking for Robbie Howett, but I could actually be looking for a Robbie Howitt, a Robbie Howet or even a Stephen McGregor. How the hell am I supposed to remember these things after 25 years, when I can't even remember the name of one of the bars I was, unrightfully!, barred from, just one week ago!

Any suggestions are welcome. Here are some of the things I've tried so far:

- I've contacted the school we went to
- I've tried to find an internet phone book
- I've asked someone to do something illegal (which obviously I can't discuss here)
- I've thought about giving up.

In two weeks time I fly off to Britain, where I presume I'll have a higher chance of finding him, rather than sitting here sipping whiskey, smoking marijuana and munching valium.

Still in fucking Mumbai

2006-05-18T06:27:00.000+02:00

Everything was going well until they refused my ticket.
"No sir. Your ticket is for the 10th of June."
"Yes," I replied happily, "but it's been changed to today."
"That's not possible sir. See. It says here 10th of June."

I took a deep breathe.

"Yes. I know that's what it says, but it has been changed. Two weeks ago, and the BMI (British Midlands) office here verified it this afternoon."
"No. Sir. That's not possible."

Do you know that nagging feeling you sometimes get when you feel a slight rage coming on?
I stormed off to the BMI office, got another verification and went back in line.
Now somebody was trying to rip off the white chord they'd tied around my luggage.
I pulled the bag from them and said: "Touch it and die sonny boy." He left my bag alone.

"No sir. It definately states the 10th of June."
Exasperated I said: "I KNOW WHAT IT BLOODY SAYS. IT'S BEEN CHANGED THOUGH!"
And then the attendent did something that you shouldn't do to someone who's in the beginning stages of rage. He pointed a finger at me and touched my chest.
"Touch me again and I'll rip your head off and shit down your neck." was my curtious reply.

"Sir, if you do not leave the line I'll be forced to get security." He said as boldly as someone who's just been threatened with neck faeces can.
"GET YOUR FUCKING SECURITY THEN!" I shouted.
Then some other attendent tried to pull me out of the que.
"Leave me alone. I'll rip your fucking limbs off and stuff them up his arse!" I said, pushing the puller off me and pointing to the man who's neck's well being was in doubt.
"But sir. Your ticket sa...."
"I KNOW WHAT IT FUCKING SAYS. IT'S BEEN CHANGED AND I'M GETTIN' ON THIS FUCKING PLANE!."

Then the security arrived. Four men in drab grey with machine guns.
"Oh. It's the fucking cavalry is it?"
"Please come with us sir."
"Fuck you and your sister."

It may be obvious at this moment in time that I'd somewhat lost all control, patience and a Darth-like dark-side was creeping into my well being.

"Sir, don't speak to me like that."
"I'll speak to whoever, whenever and however I like. So fuck your mother too."
This, I have to admit, did not go down too well and two machine guns were pointed at me.
"Come with us."
What does one do in a situation like that? All I could do really: "Go fuck yourself. I'm gettin' on this plane."
"Sir, the airport manager would like to speak to you."

See. This was a very smart move. Calming me down and getting me to talk to the man in charge.
So, I followed them to the managers office and a short, plump man sat down opposite me and said: "We don't like your behaviour."
"I don't like you. You're security and your fucking bureaucracy. Do you hear me complain?"
(If he read my blog, which is highly unlikely, he probably would have).

"Now sir, I've checked your ticket and you are right. You have a right to board this plane."
"Told you I was fucking right."
"But the captain of the plane refuses to take you on board."
I just stared.
"Your behaviour is too violent. You will have to wait until tomorrow and arrange a new ticket."

End of discussion. Machine guns were put away and I was cast out into the airport like Tom Hanks in a bad movie.

My last act of defiance though was to lay down my bags in the middle of the airport's main hall, unroll my blanket and go to sleep.
Some security guard woke me up during the night saying: "You can't sleep here sir."
And I answered: "I can if you don't want me to rip your testicles off."
Nobody troubled me again that night.

Hopefully I'll get on a plane tonight.

And in case anybody is interested in yesterday's joke of a post (but probably not), all the songs mentioned were sung by people who died in plane crashes and all the names mentioned died in plane crashes too.

Sittin' on the dock of the bay...

2006-05-17T08:54:00.000+02:00

"I'm leavin' on a jetplane..."
- John Denver -

My new found Bollywood stardom did not get off to a good start today.
My limousine didn't turn up and I had to take a Bumble bee to the airport.

A bumble bee is a black and yellow Bombay taxi. Slightly more sturdy than a rickshaw and generally fitted with a better stereo. We zoomed through the traffic to tunes like "Peggy Sue" and "Linda". The driver was into the old stuff. I couldn't really care too much for it though, but it was better than the usual Hindi yodeling you have to put up with.

At the airport, you guessed it, there was no red carpet. Glen Miller's "In the mood" was playing in the hall though, so I guessed it was time for 30mg's of valium and my first beer of the day.

Today is a wonderful day you see! Not only am I flying home to fresh fruit salads, stews and steaks....but....there is an above average chance of me getting to see the European cup final before I get on the plane!
A funny thing happened whilst I was getting my beer though, this guy came up to me and said: "You look a lot like Geoff Bent."
Not knowing what the man was babbling on about, I went on my merry way.

Bombay airport is a little boring, but with songs like "Texas flood" and "La Bamba" playing in the hall and a great book like "Danger trails in Africa" to read...I'm well sorted.

Until the football starts in 10 hours time!

Banned, banned and banned again!

2006-05-15T06:46:00.000+02:00

There's nothin' wrong with a lady drinkin' alone in a room...
- Tom Waits -

I know I wasn't going to post from India anymore, but this is just too weird to withhold from y's all...

It started the day before last, I was sat, as per usual, in Leopold's having a beer (on my own...I only drink on my own here). Now, even in the evening it gets pretty darned hot and sweaty and Leopold's has an upstairs, airconditioned bar, to which, usually around the hour of 20:00, I retire to. It's cooler, the music's better and it's darker, so I don't feel so alone in my alcoholism (which I may add, I've added a healthy valium addiction to as well).
On this said evening however (it was a Saturday night), only couples were allowed up the stairs together. This to minimize the amount of, what the Indians call, stags. Presumably with a capitol S in stag, I'm not quite sure.
"But I'm on my own.!" I said.
"Then you can't go up!" the bouncer replied.
"But I always go up!" I interrupted.
"Not tonight you ain't."

So, I wondered over to the owner and said: "Hey buddy, I spend thousands of rupees in here each week and I want to go upstairs. The bouncer won't let me."
"That's because you're single." He answered.
"Well of course I'm bloody single, otherwise I wouldn't be drinking down here on my own, would I?"
"You can't go up!"
And then I lost my cool. All my Yoda-ness left me and I threw my bottle of beer over him. He was not amused.
I was banned from Leopold's for life.

Next day, I was wondering along in a fine old foul mood, when I took the fancy of eating an ice-cream. So, I bought an ice-cream and started munching away.
"Sorry sir. You can't eat that here." A security guard said.
"But....but...but I bought it here!" I stammered.
"You still can't eat it here though."
I pointed to some Indians who were eating their ice-creams in exactly the same place as I was: "They are."
"They're not allowed to either."
Again the force left me. All Kenobi-ness abandoned me like quality abandoned "Poseidon" (the remake of the Poseidon adventure) and I threw my ice-cream at the guard and marched off.
Obviously this doesn't actually count as a ban, but needless to say the ice-cream parlour can stick their fucking ice-creams up where the sun don't shine.

In the mood I was in there was only three things to do:
1. Down 30mg's of valium
2. Get drunk
3. Go to the only cool bar that would still let me in (which has a jukebox, by the way).
Considering the options, I chose all three and marched into Mardy's and ordered a foot-long Fosters (not that I particularly like Foster's beer, but I particularly do not like King Fisher's).

So, I sit at a table, put some money in the jukebox and sit enjoying my beer.
A waiter comes along and says: "Sir, this table is for four, would you mind relocating to that table over there."
He pointed to a two person's table.
Hey! I ain't the worst of guys, so I do so.
As I'm sat there drinking my third or fourth beer another waiter comes along and says: "There's two people we need to seat, would you be so kind as to move to that table over there." And he pointed to what looked like a dustbin in the corner of the room.
"Errrr...no." I said. "I'm sat here fine."
"Please sir."
"No. Go fuck yourself."
He went to get the manager.
I felt all Windu-ism leave me at this point. I'm not proud of it and I sometimes wonder If I'm not teetering on the brink of the darkside....

The manager comes up and says: "Sir, we really need to sit more people, now would you be so ki...."
He didn't finish his sentence, because I poured my beer over his head. And walked out.
Needless to say I'm no longer welcome at Mardy's either.

So, with no watering holes left to fill my needs, I'm off for a walk along Chowpatti beach and I swear to God (any old God), the first person that dares defy me ANYTHING, is going to have their head ripped off and my shit slung down their fucking necks.

Now, where's my fucking valium when I need it?

The queen's neckless

2006-05-13T14:56:00.000+02:00

Did you know that Bombay duck is actually dried fish?
I found out the hard way.

In one way this is a sad post for me. It's the last post I'll be doing from my holiday resort of India. Yet, in another wah it's a happy post for me, because I'm sick to death of people coming up to me on the streets and trying to sell me large balloons.

"You Friend! You Finnish? You want balloon?"
"No you fucking freak. I'm Scottish and I don't want a fucking balloon."
"English people always nice. They always buy things."

Deep breath
"I'M FUCKING SCOTTISH AND I'M NOT A NICE FUCKING GUY!"
Technically, of course, I'm Dutch. But that's way too hard to explain.

Another item I will sorely not be missing are the begging women. Nowadays when they hold out their hand and say: "Money please..."
I answer: "Go on. Get your tits out. I'll pay for that."
See. I'm not a nice person.

If you look at Bombay from the sky, it's like one massive bay (a half moon, if you will). One part of the bay leads from what I presume is uptown Bombay (the women dress in Western clothing) down and around to Chowpatti beach. This stretch is known as the Queen's neckless, for when it's dark and the street lights are on it looks like a stretch of road with lights on.

I'd just left the Bollywood sound studio (where I'd done a sound-over for some B-actor who's English was worse than my Hindi) and was sitting on, what I presume one could call, the dock of the bay watching the sun go down over the Bombay skyline, as it drooped below the buildings on the other side of the bay.

The stretch of "dock" that I was sat on fairly filled up as the sun disappeared with lovers secretly holding hands, sitting close beside each other and whispering sweet nothings in each other's ears. Well, I presume they were, they may well have been planning a terrorist attack for all I know, but it looked like sweet nothings from where I was sitting.

And I felt a pang of jealousy and sadness.
All these beautiful people, happy in little couples, and me sat there in my tacky clothes, all alone.

The lecture

2006-05-08T10:14:00.000+02:00

I was lying in bed staring up at the whirling fan. The heat was immense and only the lowly stirring of the fan was giving me any relief.
On the bed beside me sat the shrink.

I presume he was a shrink, he was a smoking a pipe. When I looked over at him however, he was small and green, garbed in grey and he had long pointy ears.
"Your problems, solve them we shall." He said.
When someone looks like Yoda, dresses like Yoda and speaks like Yoda, who am I to presume that I am in the presence of anyone but the great Jedi master himself.

"I'm bored. Constantly." I shrugged.
"Too focussed you are." Yoda replied.

How on earth can one be too focussed? Surely, that only means increased concentration.
"On what do you brood?" The jedi master asked.
I shrugged again.
Like a true psychiatrist he waited patiently for me to continue.
"It's like..."
Where does one start?
"It's like...", I repeated, "that no matter where I go, what I do, I'm always bored. There is always something better happening somewhere else."
"Mhmmm...recognise the problem, I do." Yoda nodded.
I looked over to him as he was sat, cross-legged on the other bed, slowly smoking his pipe. A smile upon his ancient and crooked face.

I decided it was more relaxing to watch the fan do it's whirling. There's something disconcerting about watching a Jedi master smoke a pipe on the bed next to you.

"What's it got to do with focussing?" I asked eventually.
"Not focussing, but on what you focus." Yoda casually replied.
"I focus on writing. I focus on travelling. I focus on sex...or I want to, anyways..."
Yoda sighed. It was one of those weighty Jedi sighs that only he, Ben or Mace could muster.
"What?" I snapped.

Perhaps it's best not to snap in front of a Jedi master, but I did it all the same. Showing some balls, you must agree.

"Always focussed on yourself you are, Mark. Always about you. Not what you are doing. Not where you are. Not what you are saying. But always focussed on you; where you want to be going, what you want to be doing, what you want to be saying. Your focus is recomandable, but misguided it is."

It sounded like critisism, I don't handle critisism too well, but how does one say that to a Jedi master of the likes of Yoda?
"But...it's...so...boring...here..." I tried.
"No!" It was Yoda's turn to snap, and believe me, when a Jedi master snaps, you sit up and prey to Shiva that the swirling fan's not too low.
"Boring it seems, because your thoughts dwell in the future, on other places, concepts and problems. Focus on the present you must."

I thought about it for a while.
"But surely you must make plans?" It seemed so logical.
"mhmmmm. Yes," Yoda answered, "plans you must make. And once made, focus on the present you must. Live the plan, dream not about the future of the plan."

"What about Robbie Howett then? Shall I find him? Should I?"
Yoda puffed out some smoke and thought for a second: "Find him you may, change nothing it will."

Yoda sighed again as I lay back down and stared up at my fan; my only true comfort on my journey and yet the source of so much wasted energy.
"Mark, the answer to boredom and restlessness is to stop thinking about yourself and your situation. Accept the situation as it is. Live your plan by living now. Think not of your capabilities, but of the capabilities of everything around you."

"You mean lie in the sand and enjoy the sound of the sea?"
"If that's the situation you are in. Then yes."
"Sounds like fun." There was a certain amount of sarcasm in my voice.
Yoda gave a final sigh. "See the fan as it swirls?" He asked.
"Yes. I look at it a great deal." I nodded.
Yoda said: "If the individual blades you wish to see, just turn it off."

It wasn't until Yoda had left, leaving a faint scent of a psychiatrist's smokey aroma behind, that I realised that I'd forgotten to ask what the 011 means on the back of a stormtroopers uniform.

Goa, going, gone

2006-05-05T11:51:00.000+02:00

I guess to all good things there comes an end.
But luckily, most crappy things come to and end as well.
So, life is fairly balanced, most of the time.

As I stroll along the deserted streets of downtown Baga, or uptown Calangute, or somewhere in between which has no name and out-of-season has no right to have a name either, I kick an empty beer can across the dry and rocky road.

The only people on the street are lonely taxi drivers who call out: "Friend...Friend...Taxi?"
To which I wittely reply: "No dumb fuck, if I wanted a taxi I'd come to you, wouldn't I?"

I stumble from beach to swimming pool complaining about all the walking I have to do. And then disaster upon disaster hits!
First my local shop has run out of diet coke and then my local barbers (I don't shave in India, I have myself shaved, it's cheap and saves me the hassle) has shut shop because the season has ended!!!
Don't taxi drivers need shaved too?

See! The amount of problems are just mounting and mounting here. If the problems mount any higher I'll be able to para-glide to Bombay.

On a positive note, I nearly had sex last night! But I just couldn't be arsed using my hand to that extent. And believe me, when I get to lazy to wank, that's when the time is nigh to pack the rucksack and head off to the swamps of diet coke, the streets of barber shops and the refreshing beers of Leopold's cafe in Bombay!

Tomorrow I'll book my bus trip (they only do night bus trips for some reason, which is beyond comprehension, but such is the way of things) and I'll have lobster Thermadore as a last night treat.

Mhmmmmm.... lobster....

Wet feet and cloudy mountains

2006-05-02T09:05:00.000+02:00

This is one of the vultures hovering above me this morning when I woke up.
Okay, I admit, it's more like a crow than a vulture, but hey! Who's countin'???

I woke up this morning with wet feet.
In fact, to be more precise, I woke up with wet feet, wet legs and a wet arse.

My first thought was that I pissed myself. It happens sometimes at my age, but if this was urine, then it was one hell of a slash.
Then I felt the first rippling of water wash over me. With an almighty swoosh.

One of the almighty swooshes of water baptising me like John on a bender.

It was about then, but perhaps after the wave had soaked my upper torso, that I lifted my head and discovered I was lying face down on the beach, in the early morning sun.
Sand stuck to my face like maggots to rotten roadkill and I was still removing grains of smashed rock from my nostrils and ears three hours later.

Groggily I got to my knees and looked around.

I told you the beaches were empty!

There was no one in sight and I felt like someone had hit me with 12 pints of beer and an overdosis of valium. Which, let's be honest, is quit likely the case.

To cut a short story even shorter, I stumbled back to my hostel, downed 20mg's of sleeping tablets and woke up feeling like a new man. Still hung-over, still tired and my hair still filled with sand. But, a new man all the same. And so, I crawled to this cyber joint to show you the pictures I promised of my stay up in freezing Darjeeling.

This may look dangerous, but a goat moves faster than the average Indian train.

A view from my hostel room in Darjeeling.

The Mount! In the 30 minute span I had to admire it, this was probably the best picture I got of it.

And this is close up of it.

------------
Edit: I'm sorry the pictures are so small, but I am once again stuck in the outskirts of civilisation, and getting anything done with a little flair is like trying to get a can of diet coke which hasn't been boiled.

Sophie's rant

2006-04-30T13:09:00.000+02:00

She was lying in the bed beside me. I think she was just wearing underwear, I couldn't be sure though, because she was under the thin bed sheets. Thin though they were, they were still thick enough to blanket any sign of nudity... or clothing.

"You're a fucking junky Mark." She said, spitting venemously at me.
"Charming." I replied.
"No, seriously, you think you have all these fucking problems, you think you need psycho-fucking-analysis and you think your problems are fucking special. Well let me tell you, they're fucking not. You're a lazy cunt and you are just as tragic as all those fucking jews who go to their shrinks and whine about their fucking ego problems."

I lay still for a minute studying the fan. I wasn't sure if it was her language which was upsetting or her anti-semitism.

"I've got tough choices to make, you know."
"Tough? Fuck you, you whining maggot. I've had to make fucking choices so fucking hard you couldn't comprehend them. You miserable, pathetic excuse for a fucking human being."

I got the idea she wasn't going to let up.

"Choices? You mean if you want to leave early? If you want to fucking swallow 30 milligrams of valium or 60? You call that fucking choices? You're just as big a fucking junky as Nathan!"

"Who's Nathan?" I asked, trying to change the subject, it was making me uncomfortable.
"Nathan's fucking dead."
"Dead?"
"Yes. Cyanide. He killed us."

Sophie certainly didn't sound dead to me. Perhaps the "us" was referring to someone else, some place else?

"You just lie there in bed looking up at that fucking fan, all fucking day. Why? Do you think it will bring you fucking salvation?"

I gave the slightest of shrugs.
"Don't fucking shrug at me, you useless fucking worm. I've seen things you couldn't dream of and I've done things that make any guilt you have seem pointless to the brink of fucking comical!"
"How do you know I have guilt?" I asked, a little peeved off.
"Everyone has guilt. But guilt has fucking degrees Mark," I'm sure there was something Polish in her accent. Polish with a touch of American, "and your degrees of guilt are shit. Utter fucking shit."

I didn't dare shrug again.

"So take your fucking valium. Lie on your fucking beach. Drink your fucking espresso and never, never, complain to me about your fucking guilt and choices again!"

I got up and left my own room.

The Costa Del Ghost town

2006-04-28T07:03:00.000+02:00

Picture, if you will, one of the coastal towns in Spain. It could be the Costa Brava or it could be the Costa Del Sol.
Baga, for such is the name of the village I'm residing in at the moment, has one main street and loads of little side streets darting off towards the golden coloured beach.

The main street is like every other main street in India; vendors are trying to sell you things, there are a few restaurants selling you exactly the same foods and there's the contant scurrying of taxis, cars and mopeds.

The side streets, however, are full of picturesque little restaurants, bars, nightclubs, art shops and bakeries. These side streets, like I mentioned, lead straight up to one of the most beautiful beaches you've ever seen.
The beach itself has umpteem beach shacks scattered across it selling beers, freshly caught fish and hiring out deck chairs and beds to sunbathe on.

It's a sunny 31 degrees, not a cloud in the sky and everything is perfect.
But there's one thing missing.
People.

It's empty. There is no one.
It's like the coastal town version of the Mary Celeste.

There I was standing, on the beach, light whisps of sand swirling around my feet as a late afternoon breeze started to pick up. A couple of beach shack vendors were stacking their empty sun beds together and I stared out at the gorgeous Arabian sea.
Large waves were pounding in. The sort of waves you really want to jump in and get splattered by (something I did earlier that day, but the elastic in my shorts just wasn't up to the occasion) and away in the distance I could see the ghostly shadowy shapes of large tankers on the horizon, sailing to destinations unknown, but quite probably far away.

A five minute walk brought me back to my hostel. A hostel with a swimming pool no less!
And there, sitting under the large palm trees, shaded from the sun, I opened a bottle of Kingfisher beer and let out a melancholic sigh.
Looking up from "Sophie's choice", the book I'm reading at the moment, I took a moment to stare up at the palm trees and listen.

The palm trees have large ripe coconuts (well, I presume they're ripe), bulging like large testicles just waiting to drop (sweet Jesus what a metaphor) and I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if one of them was to drop on my head with a crack.

I mean, with me unconcious and nobody else in the whole town, would it actually make a sound?
--------------

EDIT: sorry...that last joke was crap.

A gassy dilemma of lust

2006-04-26T13:00:00.000+02:00

It's hard to describe what travelling in India is like.
The overwhelming noise and heat, which is contant, can either throw you into fits of rage; making you scream at the slightest annoyance, or it can drag you into a state of solitary staring, where everything just becomes a blur around you.

Normally I travel "Sleeper class", which is basically a semi-compartment of three beds bunked opposite another three bunked beds and two bunk beds on the "side" wall of the compartment, the passage way dividing the two from the six. It's cooled by nothing other than fans.

Due to the oppressive heat and noise and my inability to remain in a state of 'blissful solitary staring'; meaning I started telling beggers, bumpers (people who accidently bump into you), coolies (bag carriers who harass you) and taxi drivers (who harass you too) to: "FUCK OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE!!!", I decided to travel in style: Third class A/C!

When you travel by sleeper train in India there are a few differences between "sleeper class" and "3 tier AC sleeper class". The noticable distinctions being airco, blankets, pillow and a small mirror hanging above the (sealed) window, between the two rows of bunk beds.

The bunks are stacked three high and I was sleeping on a central one, eye height, just below the mirror. And when I awoke, a lady was combing her hair as she looked in the mirror. Her sari falling loosely around her (as sari's do), showing just enough bare stomach to arouse an early morning desire.
To make matters worse, this woman was about 50 or something, but when your sex life has plummeted to the depths mine has (there are dead nuns buried beneath St. Peter's with chastity belts on who have more sex than me), a little flesh goes a long way...

Then she burped.

I don't mean one of those lady like burps which are quaint and generally followed by a giggle. I mean one of those burps of which sailors boast of when they're on shore leave. A loud and thunderous roaring surge of wind. And she continued to comb her long black hair as if nothing was wrong.

I lay there watching her, expecting to be fully disgusted. But I wasn't!
Let's be honest, everyone burps every now and again, and everyone must be forgiven for their little mishaps.

Then she burped again.

I don't mean one of those "Ooops, I've drunk too much coke" burps, followed by the rolling of eyes. No, this was definately along the lines of "I've just eaten 5 garlic pizzas and 3 liters of beer" burps. And the only thing rolling afterwards was me on the bed, turning my face from the on-gushing wind and smell.

Yet I was intrigued.
This woman, who was still baring a bit of tummy flab, was still combing her hair (she had a lot of it) and in my present state it was surely going to take more than 2 burps and a gust of garlic to destabalize my early morning arousel.

Then she farted.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not easily shocked or overwhelmed. But...
No, let me accenturate that a little...

...BUT when you can stand in the middle of a train and burp and fart away like you're alone on the moon, not batting an eye-lid and slowly combing your hair...

I'm impressed!

Veni Vedi and got the fuck out of there!

2006-04-22T08:14:00.000+02:00

Have you ever experienced a situation which would be hilarious if only you weren't the centre point of hilarity?

Well...

I got the train up to Darjeeling.
No, let me rephrase that:
I got the train up to a point 90km's from Darjeeling and then crammed into a tiny jeep with 10 others and onwards we went.

In Darjeeling we all piled out of the jeep. And there I was stood: T-shirt, flipflops and shorts. And everyone around me (in Darjeeling) was dressed in Northern-face mountain gear, Tibeten winter clothes or furry Mammoth coats.
The second thing I noticed was that my nipples were starting to ache.

My friends, Darjeeling is fucking freezing!
However...it is also extremely beautiful...well, it would be if it wasn't cloudy most of the time. Which it is.

Last night I was so cold I had to take 3 glasses of Bagpiper whiskey and 20mg's of valium, crawl under 2 duvet's and my blanket...with my clothes on...to get to sleep.

When I got up this morning the sun was shining, there was no wind and I went for a little stroll.
And guess what I stumbled upon?

The Mount.

Obviously I didn't actually trip over the upper ledge of it or something, but I sat down on a bench and was staring out at the mountains. Darjeeling is roughly 2200 meters above sea-level and it's higher than the hills around it.
What you see (I can't get my photos published yet, but when I do, you'll see what I mean, if I'm not clear) are green hills and mountains rolling away from you, getting ever darker, and suddenly there are massive white peaks stretching upwards into the clouds. A wall of them!

And there I sat staring at the mountains and thinking: "Wow...that's a pretty impressive backdrop. I'll need to get a diet coke and a bag of chips." when this old man sat down beside me.
"Hello." I said.
He pointed his walking cane towards the mountains and asked: "Do you know what you are looking at?"
"Yeah. Mountains."
He smiled. "That, my young friend, is the highest peak in the world. That's Mount Everest!"

How cool is that?
Yup. It's cool, but not quite as cool as the temperature here.

This, by the way, is what the warzone in Bangkok looked like during their new year.

Anyways, I've decided to stop travelling.
Well, not entirely, obviously. But since it doesn't seem to matter where I am, I've come to the conclusion that I may as well be in one place, instead of bumming around sub-continents, red-light districts and coral reefs.

There's the small matter of finding Robbie to resolve though. I presume he will probably be in Scotland, a country I won't reach until the end of June. So until I pick up my search for him, I'm going to retreat to the beaches of Goa and hibernate in a flurry of sunshine, cheap beer and BBQ'd fish for 6 weeks.
It's a four day trip from Darjeeling to Baga beach, so all going well, I hope to be sunbathing by Thursday (leaving here on Sunday...use your fingers...it makes sense).

I hope to bring you blogs about great parties and excellent sex in the near future. However, history dictates that you're more likely to suffer prose on foot growths, sonnets on sunburn and Haikus on watery-poo.

Yossarian and me in the 4077th

2006-04-19T17:20:00.000+02:00

Suicide is painless,
It brings on many changes,
and I can take or leave it if I please.

- Mike Altman -

My invisible friend visited me last night.
I'm not sure if he really is invisible or not, I'm just not sure if anyone else can see him though.
I can't touch him. I can't smell him. He can't put a hand on me.

"I'm proud of you Mark!" Yossarian stated. And like a Northern American he added my name to nearly every sentence, I'm not sure why they do that.
"Thank you." I answered.
I looked up at the ceiling fan as it whirred. It's always sticky and hot, and there's always a ceiling fan whirring above me.

I looked back at Yossarian and asked why.
"Well, Mark, because you've realised that a location is not going to make a difference to your happiness."
I was quite thirsty.
"If any location isn't going to make me happier, that means I've got a choice between being restless and depressed....or dead. Doesn't it?"
Yossarian thought for a moment and said: "Yes. That's a quite a Catch 22 you've got there."

"Are you suggesting I should kill myself?"
"Don't be silly Mark, I can't ask you to commit suicide."
"And why on earth not?"
"There's a catch." He said.
"There's always a catch." I replied.
Yossarian nodded: "I know a lot about catches."

I'm sure I heard helicopters whirring about. I expected loudspeakers to blare out: "Incoming. Incoming." any moment soon. The heat was stifling.

"So what's the catch this time, Yossarian...?"
He gave a little shrug and smiled. I just kept looking at him until he answered.
"F and Fing F." He finally stated.
"That makes a lot of sense." I rolled my eyes. I'm sure I saw something move in the corner of the room.
"Family and fucking friends Mark. That's what I'm talking about."
I frowned: "That's the catch?"
"Yes. "
"So," I slowly continued, "You're saying I can't kill myself because of family and fucking friends."
"That's right Mark. That's the catch."

I lay back down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling fan. I could still hear helicopters, but the "Incoming. Incoming" call hadn't happened yet.

"That's quite a catch."
"It's one of the best Mark."
I sat up again. I tried looking at him, but he was lurking in the shadows, small splinters of light which filtered through man made holes in top of the wall flickered about him, shattered by the swirling fan.
"So happiness can't be found in any location and no location isn't an option." I think I sighed as I said it.
"That's right Mark. Catch 22."
"That is quite a catch. Yossarian."

After a long silence I think he stood up. He definately said: "I think you should go for a walk."
"I went for a walk." I snapped back, this whole catch malarky was pissing me off.
"You've been staring at the fan for 48 hours Mark."
I shook my head. "No I haven't. I bought a bottle of water."
"The water is stale Mark. It's putrid."
And with that he faded away. Maybe through the door, maybe there was another way into my room.

I picked up the book I was reading: "The Celestine prophecy". I tried reading another half a page of it. But it is utter shite. If ever I should write such humourless and conceited tripe, I want to be tortured. I chucked it a scurrying cockroach in the corner of the room. I wouldn't pick it up again.

Flipping over on to my back I stared up at the whirring fan again. The "Incoming. Incoming" call still hadn't happened. Maybe I'd falled asleep and missed it.

One day I'll manage to look up at the ceiling fan and distinguish the single blades without the aid of my camera's flash.

"So, you did Vietnam, did you?"

2006-04-17T06:19:00.000+02:00

I was going to go out to the weekend market today to take some photos and show another side of Bangkok other than sex, alcohol and my bowel movements.
However...

Two things made me change my mind.
The first being the tropical rain storm. It's not raining; it's just plain buckets of water coming down; constantly.
Basically, if the Thai people aren't throwing buckets of water at you here in Bangkok, then it's the bloody Gods.
Secondly, and probably most importantly, it's Monday. There are no weekend markets on Monday.
Don't argue. That's just the way things are.

So, I thought I'd settle for a good old fashioned bitch session instead. You see, no matter how grand buildings are, how charming people are or how good you are feeling, there are always a few matters which get on my mammary protruberances (Yes...Dude...that's how it's spelled) and make my nipples droop in exasperation.

Here's the first one:

This picture is taken from the BBC, because I don't want Satan's fucking face clogging up my photobucket space.
She is evil. She is nasty and I hope she drowns in pig fucking shit.

Another matter close to my heart is travellers.
Some travellers are quite nice, a few are quite positively charming, yet most are the most tediously pretentious people I've ever had the misfortune to meet in my life.
From the: "Isn't it spiritual" types I've already mentioned, through the: "Wasn't it just awsome!" sort who come from England, but have picked up Australian accents, to the: "Yes, I did India." types.

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN "YOU DID INDIA."???
"Did" as in a maffia film? You went and "did" India. India is now swimming with the fucking fishes?
"Did" as in sex? You shagged the whole fucking sub-continent.
Ooooohhhh... you mean "You travelled through India" or "You went to India" or "You've been to India."

"Did" my fat fucking arse.

Another thing that really pisses me off about travellers is the derogatory way they speak about tourists.
You see, tourists visit places, but travellers "do" places. There's a big fucking difference and you'd be a moron or a communist not to see this.
Tourists just follow the beaten track, sit down for weeks on end, get drunk and visit a couple of temples.
Travellers on the other hand "Do" the beaten track, travel about for weeks seeing the scenery pass by and visit a couple of temples.
IT'S A BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE!!!
IT IS...
*Cough*

Traveller: "Tourists come to Thailand and they go to Phuket and wallow on the Costa del Chips".
Me: "So what did you do?"
Traveller: "I did Chiang Mai and did a jungle trek."
Me: "Up the steep jungle hill, slept in 2 different villages, then went for an elephant ride and white water rafting?"
Traveller: "Yeah. It was totally cool, you know."
Me: "Yeah. You and 2.000.000 other fucking tourists a fucking year. You moron!"

And that's the basics of speaking with travellers. They all go to the same places in the same countries and do exactly the same thing. And when they're together...they do nothing but talk about it. THE WHOLE FUCKING TIME!

"You were in New Zealand?"
"Yeah...wasn't the bungie jump just excellent?"

"I worked picking fruit in Australia."
"So did I! Wasn't it great. I did the swimming with dolphins thing."
"So did I!" Wasn't it awsome!"

YEAH! THROW ANOTHER SHRIMP ON THE FUCKING BARBIE WILL YA!

Well...
My mood is obviously one of such discontent, I fear I'm going to have to retreat to a McDonalds, eat NON-FUCKING NOODLES AND RICE SHITE and read "The beach."

All travellers in Thailand "Do" The beach, you know.

Ping pong in Pat Pong

2006-04-14T12:19:00.000+02:00

After suffering two incredibly expensive hangovers in as many days, I've decided to take a break from drinking, eating and sexual debauchery and chill out in front of a monitor.

Thai people are skinny, yet they eat the same amounts as us Europeans and they drink like fish too. Thai Chang beer is laced with amphetimines. And so is Thai red bull.
Now, I don't want to sound like a mathematician, but adding one and one together, it's no fucking wonder they're all so bloody skinny.

Are they all dead skinny? No.
I saw a nice plump Thai lady the other evening. She was sticking a table tennis ball up her vagina.
I know, I know. This sounds like the classy ping pong act they promise in the brochure, but I have to admit to a certain amount of disappointment.
First of all, it's quite difficult to actually watch the show. Flocks of prostitutes are crawling all over you promising you everything and anything so long as you buy them a drink, pay them 1000 bhats and rent a hotel room. Not one actually even said: "Sucky sucky 5$".
So, You're fighting off whores and trying to witness the plump Thai woman attempting to entertain and astonish you and you notice that's she's not actually shaved herself.
I don't want to be picky here, you know I'm not, but when participating in a sex show, have at least the decency to wax your bikini line! Come on... is a little style too much to ask for?

And so the ill-fated ping pong ball gets shoved into the orifice and it plops back out. Just sort of drops out and bounces on the floor. That's it!
I turned to the girl I was with (who was having considerably less problems combatting the flurry of skinny prossies) and said: "I could do a better show with that ping pong ball and my arse."
I won't go into other parts of the show, it's suffice to say that pencils, cigars and razor blades all suffered the same fate as the ping pong ball.

They have all sorts of strange flavoured crisps over here. Salmon Teriyaki, BBQ'd frog and this...
No Salt 'n' Vinegar though!

We decided to take a stroll down the gay street. This is easily recognisable because of the clusters of men kissing and hordes of lady boys trying to grope your arse.
The "show" we went to wasn't really a show at all. Basically young men are paraded around a dance floor in nothing but very revealing underwear and fat, middle-aged men, pick a number and hook up with one of the young lads. I'm sure I saw some fumbling around going on beneath the benches.
We didn't stay long though, because when the owner of the "Show" tried to slip me some tongue, we slipped out of there like two little Smeagols slipping out of Mordor.

I dropped the girl off at the hostel and went out for more beer (as if I really needed more beer at that point...) on Kho San road. There's an Irish bar that sells Guiness. Well, they say it's Guiness, I say it's salty tasting black fluid...but hey! It's Thailand, they've probably jizzed in the juice.
I think I remember the band being quite good and I'm sure some Thai girl wanted to come back to my room, but, luckily for my campaign-d'no sex, the hostel I'm staying at doesn't allow Thai guests.

Tomorrow a certain amount of normality should prevail though. The Thai new-year festival ends tonight and I'll be able to walk around without getting soaked, painted or assaulted.
I reckon I'll have recovered enough to have a few beers and go to the sex show called: "Football in Pat Pong."

It just sounds too intriguing to miss!

Back in Bangkok

2006-04-12T05:39:00.000+02:00

[THE AMERICAN]
Bangkok, Oriental setting
And the city don't know that the city is getting
The creme de la creme of the chess world in a
Show with everything but Yul Brynner
Time flies -- doesn't seem a minute
Since the Tirolean spa had the chess boys in it
All change -- don't you know that when you
Play at this level there's no ordinary venueIt's Iceland -- or the Philippines -- or Hastings -- or --or this place!

Well.
The diving went well in Kho Pan Ngang. I didn't drown, I didn't swallow more than a liter of sea water and I was equalising more than a DJ in Amster-fucking-dam.

After walking up steep jungle mountains for four hours, this was the view. The view would have been equally beautiful if we'd taken the road and went up by 4x4's.

Seemingly the ocean magnifies things under water by 33%. Obviously I tried to get a look at my penis, just to see what that would look like, but I only got it jammed between my boxer shorts and my wetsuit. Not an experience I'll be attempting on future dives.

A wee waterfall.

The sea is full of fish; corals and fish. And water.
The largest fish I saw was a school of Barracuda, I still smell like a fish though, and I'm way bigger than the average Sphyyranea.

[COMPANY]
One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free
You'll find a god in every golden cloister
And if you're lucky then the god's a she
I can feel an angel sliding up to me

Anyways, something reasonably interesting occured on the trip back up to Bangkok.
One of the girls I was travelling with and I were sat with three others at the back of the bus. The lad beside me got out his camera and showed us a video of his girlfriend (who was sat beside him) "helping" a randy dog. I wrote a post on this behaviour called "Bestiality's best boys, bestiality's best" back in December.
The girlfriend was well pleased and kept saying: "Twice. I did the dog twice." And the lad seemed well proud of his girlfriend's achievements.
Not wanting to be rude I muttered: "Yes, she seems to have the strokes down to a tea. Do you practice often?"
"Oh yes." She answered, "I practice lots of times."

Just one of the reassuring information posters at Chang Mai airport.

Without wanting to sound like a prude: I'm not really bothered what people get up to at their Neverland ranches, but surely somethings are best not shared? mhmmm...

[THE AMERICAN]
One town's very like another
When your head's down over your pieces, brother

[COMPANY]
It's a drag, it's a bore, it's really such a pity
To be looking at the board, not looking at the city

[THE AMERICAN]
Whaddya mean? Ya seen one crowded, polluted, stinking town --

[COMPANY]
Tea, girls, warm, sweet
Some are set up in the Somerset Maugham suite

I fly back to Calcutta on the 18th. I could however book a horribly long bus trip to Cambodia to see Ank Por, Angkor or Por-Kang-what-ever. Seemingly it's really beautiful and full of ruins. A contradiction in terms, if you ask me. But equally seemingly, it's where the first Indiana Jones movie was filmed. If I did this however, I'd have to postpone my trip back to India. Choices. Urggghhhh...

[THE AMERICAN]
Get Thai'd!
You're talking to a tourist
Whose every move's among the purest
I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine

[COMPANY]
One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble
Can't be too careful with your company
I can feel the devil walking next to me

The Thai new year is starting today. It's much like Holi in that everyone throws water and paint at each other, but a quick look on Kha San road quickly made me realise this is turning into a wild-west scenario. There is no other choice but to buy a pump action water gun and go out with my guns blaring like Butch Cassidy in Bolivia.

The beach where I was staying for my diving course. Well out of the way of civilisation, yet charming in a sort of a PP sort of a way.

Tonight I'll (water) fight my way into Pat Pong to watch Ping Pong over a game of chess in some seedy bar.

[THE AMERICAN]
Siam's gonna be the witness
To the ultimate test of cerebral fitness
This grips me more than would a
Muddy old river or reclining Buddha
And thank God I'm only watching the game -- controlling it --
I don't see you guys rating
The kind of mate I'm contemplating
I'd let you watch, I would invite you
But the queens we use would not excite you

So you better go back to your bars, your temples, your massageparlours --

[COMPANY]
One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free
You'll find a god in every golden cloister
A little flesh, a little history
I can feel an angel sliding up to me
One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble
Can't be too careful with your companyI can feel the devil walking next to me

- lyrics by Murrayhead -

Sexy Sade and the bubbles

2006-04-09T05:45:00.000+02:00

She was lying down on my matras. Her dark brown hair flowed under her head and her dark eye lashes batted ever so softly in the warm evening air.

She was naked. Her body lightly tanned in the right places and angelic white where it counts. She beckoned me to approach her. What else could I do?

I lay down beside her and she kissed me passionately. I felt her move beside me and I had the uncontrollable urge to slap her arse. So I did. What else could I do?

"Hit me Mark. Hit me hard." She squealed, rubbing herself up against me.
Who could resist such temptation? I smacked her silly, picked her up and threw her out the window...

...And then I woke up.
This is probably the moral to the story: Don't read "Juliette, or Vice Amply Rewarded" before you go to bed.

Anyways, my non-existent sex-life aside, I'm on an island with a beach. It's a beautiful beach full of dead squid, hooks and... well... sand... basically...
There is, however, a distinct lack of internet, TV, toilet paper and noodleless food.

Not to worry though! I'm under water most of the time anyway. I've gone back to the womb and am enjoying the bubbles.
Today I practice some more skills like neutral boyancy, mask snorting and flipper flapping.
Yesterday I did a practice dive (9 meters) and saw some fish. Today I do another practice dive (9 or 10 meters deep) , I've been told there will be some fish and coral to see then too!

Tomorrow I do two real dives (18 meters) and I've been assured that the fish and coral will be in abundance once again.
Fish, coral, divers...who cares? Everyone knows the real interesting thing about diving is the bubbles.

An ode to bubbles
Oh gently,
Oh quickly,
But not too quickly,
Like bells of air heaven sends,

Going up,
Little bubs,
But not too quickly,
Or you'll get the fucking bends

The Freudian solution

2006-04-02T04:48:00.000+02:00

It's been exactly two months to the day since I left Holland and went off to India to find Robbie Howett. So I thought it appropriate to stop for a second and ponder my findings so far...

The constant and nagging feeling that something better is happening somewhere else remains a persistent problem. Not only am I now in Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) thinking that Bangkok is probably a better place to be, I also imagine everyone at home having continual parties and massive orgies.

Obviously open-street-love-sessions are going to break out here in Chiang Mia as soon as I head down south back to Bangkok. I just know that's what's going to happen. It's very displeasing that everyone is having so much fun without me.

On the other side of the spectrum, the constant running around; like a dog chasing its tail, is very tiring and I don't seem to be getting very far.
A train trip in Holland is basically the same as a train trip in India or a train trip in England.
A horse, camel, elephant or motorbike ride is basically all the same as well. I'm sure I can find a fucking giraffe to ride around on somewhere if I really wanted to. But I ask you: is that going to make any difference what-so-ever?

Hot weather is the same everywhere. It's sweaty.
The shits is the same everywhere. It's crap.
Sex is the same on every continent. It's not anywhere fucking near me.

So I go to a cyber cafe and do some writing. I go to Starbucks to drink espresso. I go to the bar to look at the women. I go to a restaurant to read a book.
Every day the same.
And if I wasn't, I'd be working. Staring over the computer screen at the women, going to the coffee machine for an espresso and hiding in the toilet to read a book.

The settings may change, but the knowledge that something better is happening somewhere else is just the same.
And I guess that's one of my conclusions after two months of travelling.

Slowly takes a sip of diet coke...

Something else which is starting to get on my tits is loneliness.
Not that I am actually lonely. I just feel lonely. Like I do back home.
Yes, I travel around in groups.
Yes, I can steal the show at any party.
Yes, I make friends easily.
But no matter what I do or where I am, I end up in bed feeling sad and lonely. It's quite pathetic really.
It's quite hard to describe and it probably sounds like a drunken rant by a fat fuck who's forever dwelling in the deep end of self-pity, but everything just seems like a pointless story.
Do I actually enjoy myself? Or am I just positioning myself like a pawn on a chess board; moving myself in and out of situations just to see what happens? And are they mutually exclusive?

Can you really experience something, when all you are actually doing is making mental notes on how to describe something to other people? Wouldn't it just be cheaper and easier to sit at home and make situations up?

Seemingly changing the setting isn't going to bring me any peace of mind. And it certainly doesn't seem to be taking me any closer to finding Robbie either.

I think I'll treat myself to a massage and a steak today.
Fuck it!
I'm gonna get drunk too.

Drum rolls with fingers on desk...

You know?
Sometimes it's like I have a feeling of "not belonging". As if I'm not really here or, at the least, not supposed to be here anyway.
Not just here in Thailand, I mean anywhere.
Maybe I was born too soon into this nightmarish world of greed and boredom? Is that possible?

Perhaps it would be best to unborn myself (what an excellent pun of my name, by the way...applausic donations welcome). You know, go back to the womb.
Now, I appreciate that this is not going to happen due to my size.
But, I got to thinking about how best to achieve this goal whilst I lay in bed this morning. And like an epita.. apatho... epothe... like a vision... it came to me. I need to submerge!

That's right!
I'm going under. It seems so simple, it's no wonder I didn't think of it before. I need to go back to from where I came. I need to re-womb myself. And the only way of doing this is by diving.
And it's all happening under water, isn't it?
I mean, even Luca Brasi swims with the fucking fishes. It's well sorted.

Just think of the great titles I'll have for posting in my blog: 'The jolly jellyfish surprise' and 'Shipwrecks, sharks and suffering'...

So, I'll book a flight to the islands and a diving course, then have a massage and then get drunk!

Shrugs and heads off for an espresso in the early morning sunshine...

Dances with elephants (an ode to Walt)

2006-03-29T11:30:00.000+02:00

Crow 1: "Well...I've seen a wall of paint run..."

There's a lot of things I could tell about the trek through the jungle.
I could tell of the white water rafting, me falling overboard and getting splattered on the rocks like the clothes Indian women wash.

...and here's something completely different: an Indian woman splattering clothes on rocks to get them clean...

I could tell about the water snake climbing on board the bamboo boat as we gently sailed down a somewhat quieter part of whatever river we were on. I could even try to convince you I wasn't screaming like Donald in a water-fowl trap.

I won't however. Let me tell you about the Colonel and me instead.

Crow 2: "And I'm sure I've seen a gun run..."

One part of the trek is a 2 hour elephant ride.
I was looking forward to the ride, because ever since Kerala I've had a soft spot for elephants; they look so silly and dopey; they bring a tear of joy to my eyes.
Anyway, the guide led us up the grass covered pathway, which wound its way through the dense jungle, up to the elephant camp. I heard the screeching sounds of monkeys in the trees and the buzz of a 100 different types of mosquitos all around me.
So obviously I was looking up and not down when I felt the warm spludge of something warm and steamy come up over the edge of my flip flops and squelch around my toes.

Looking down, I wasn't surprised to find that I'd stepped in a huge pile of elephant dung. I wasn't happy about it, but I wasn't surprised; if any one word keeps popping up on my trip so far, the word "Shit" probably comes closest...

I licked my lips and looked up. And took a step backwards. There, in front of me, towered an elephant.
He looked at me and I looked at him. And I swear to Ganesh that this beast was smiling. He was looking down and grinning at me.
"Oh," I hissed at him, "you think that's funny do you?"
I slipped off my flip flop and wiped my feet on its leg.
I looked at him and he looked at me. And I swear to Bacchus that I was smiling at him.

Crow 3: "Yeah...and I've seen a house run!"
Crow 2: "That's a home-run, you dunce..."
Crow 3: "Oh. Yeah...hihihi...I've seen a home run."

"Mr. Mark. Mr. Mark." The guide came strolling up, giving me the usual Thai smile (which is the same as the Indian smile, but without the head-bob).
"This is your elephant."
"What?"
"This is your elephant. I'll help you on."
The elephant lowered itself by sagging through its knees.
"Can I have an other one?"
"No, Mr. Mark. This is a good elephant. We call him Colonel. Colonel Hathi."
"Bad vibes my man, bad vibes."
"Colonel good elephant Mr. Mark...you see!"

And onto the colonel I climbed...

The colonel, although not as large as an African elephant, is a large mother fucker. My vertigo bells started ringing, but before I knew it, the Colonel was up and we were stromping off in single file and I couldn't help but hum "Nellie the elephant." Within minutes I was at ease. Well, I was still holding on for dear life, but I was reasonably at ease. Reasonably.

Crow 4: "Man...I've even seen an anus run..." (sorry, I just couldn't resist. I was going to write "Nose run", but considering the last few weeks...well...forgive me...I just had to!)

Now, we marched through the dense jungle...
No, let me rephrase that.
Now, we marched over the well trodden path which wound its way through the dense jungle...
There, that sounds more like it was.

So, we marched for about 45 minutes before the colonel decided to break ranks and do a Colonel Kurtz on me.
I don't know what startled him. It could have been a mouse. It could have been a mozzie in his ear. Hell, the elephant behind him may well have stuck her trunk up his arse for all I know. But the colonel decided it was safer (whatever the reason), to sprint off in his own direction.

All the crows: "...But I think I will have seen everything, when I see an elephant run..."

The colonel has big ears. Not as big as African elephant ears, but they're pretty big. But even as big as they were, he still couldn't or wouldn't listen to me.
"Stop." I demanded.
"Stooooooooooop." I pleaded.
No. He was on a bender and he charged straight off the trail and into the jungle.
Now I know why elephants sometimes have chains around their feet.

I don't know if you've ever crashed through a jungle on top of an elephant before, but it's not as uplifting a notion as it may appear.
There's branches and twigs and leaves, spiders and snakes...man, I swear to God I heard King Louie calling out my name.

I crouched in the basket as far as possible trying to calm the colonel down; patting him on the head and telling him what a nice elephant he really is. It didn't work.

I looked up to see if I could grab on to a branch and lift myself out of the basket; out of harms way. A sort of an Indiana Jones sort of a move. But for some reason, I ended up slapping the colonel on his head instead. I don't know, it just seemed... well... safer really.
He stopped.

I peeked up over the basket. The sounds of the jungle were quieter and I had a horrible feeling that a tiger or something must be creeping up on us.
I seriously gazed around, waiting for Kaa to grab me and drag me off to some remote pythonesque reality where I'd be hypnotised and devoured like a fat, juicy, well fed tourist...
Then one of the guides came up behind us and led us back to the que.

I guess most behaviourisms are understandable through experience.

A collection of photos

2006-03-25T01:15:00.000+01:00

Well, since the medication seems to be kicking in (again), and I'm feeling fine (again), I've decided to display some photos that haven't made it on to the "regular" blog.

This is me standing in front of Skull temple in Varanasi. Skull temple is so called because it has loads of fake painted skulls around it.
Note the Indian scarf wrapped around my waist? Well, I went into a shop because my trousers kept falling down (I've been losing some weight you see). This is the conversation:
"Do you have a belt?"
Indian head-bob.
"No...belt?"
Indian head-bob. Smile.
"Yes. Belt?"
"Belt." Smile.
Nod.
"Indian head-bob.
And I walked out with a scarf to hold my trousers up.

So... Is this ice-cream?
Nope. This is an egg yoke. One of the Canadian Lawyers-to-be only ate the whites of the egg.
Weird? Naaaaa...

In Varanasi loads of little street kids come running up to you, as you stroll along the Ghats, offering to light candles for your family and friends. Normally you light a candle for each person you want to make a happy wish for. But being as stingy as I am, I lit one candle for the lot of you.

While I was temple strolling with the Tamil temptress (and some other people who were obviously far less attractive), we bumped into a shit farm. Basically what they do is dry shit and use it for fuel or insolation. The cow shit is sometimes used to keep insects out of the home as well.

This is the Victoria memorial in Calcutta.

What a surprise! A photo from the plane (or so I presume, considering the packages of food). Do note that they actually use metal cutlery on Air India flights!

This is a big Booda. Buhda? Bhuda? Budda? Whatever...it was big anyways.

You really, really, really don't want to fall into the rivers in Bangkok. I don't know what the hell this was, but it was massive. And there was some crocodile like creature swimming near that open sewer as well!

And this, finally, is for doubting Tom.
See? There's no need to go tracing my e-mails...

pfffft... ;)

Bumrungrad

2006-03-24T12:49:00.000+01:00

My health has consistantly been deteriorating the last couple of days.
So much so that I had to go back to a hospital, this time in Bangkok.

My lower intestines are not absorbing any fluid, I'm constatly thirsty, I need the toilet every 20 minutes and since last night I've been shooting a fever. Not for the first time this trip, I've not been able to rehydrate myself. At all.

Just to make it clear: This is not a good thing.

So, off to the hospital I went. And lo! and behold!, the name of the 5 star hospital in Bangkok is "Bumrungrad".
Well...if that's not a promising name, I really don't know what is.
It's called a 5 star hospital because it's where all the rich Americans and so go for top-notch treatment and lower than US and European prices.
Seriously, the hospital has a Starbucks, a McDonalds, perfume stores and a magnificant lobby. It's like a glorious hotel...

Well, just to keep you all up to date:
I'm on two sorts of anti-biotics now. One against virusses and one against parasites. They took a poop sample (which was a very unpleasant and embarrassing experience) and I have to phone back tomorrow for the prelimenary results and in five days for the end results. If the anti-biotics haven't killed whatevers trying to kill me, then I have to go back to hospital.

Obviously there is a problem. In five days time I'll be in the jungle. I've booked an elephant / boat ride / wild water rafting trip up in the North of Thailand.
But if I'm not dead by then, two extra days won't finish me off either!

When I feel better I'll get some photos of me eating insects.

A surprising twist to the plot

2006-03-21T09:27:00.000+01:00

I woke up this morning, opened the curtains and nearly had a heart-attack!

It all started yesterday afternoon in Dublin's Irish pub
I went for lunch and looked at the clock. It was midday and thought: "You know what? I'll have a beer."
Well, that beer soon enough became "a couple of beers".
Nothing surprising there!

A couple of Spanish girls joined my table and we got talking about my drive, last summer, through the heartland of Spain. They drank some red wine and my couple of beers soon enough became "some beers".
I think it was about four PM when I last looked at the clock and noted the time. Some part of me remembers eating some Paella and a small remnant of my mind remembers switching beer for Tequila. After that, I have a complete blackout until this morning.
Again, nothing really surprising here...

And so I woke this morning, flat on my stomach, my nose in the soiled carpet, naked and hungover like someone had laced my tequila with vodka. I was nausiated to the max, my head was pounding like I'd been smacked about in Arthur Road Prison* and my mouth tasted like a rat had died in it.
I crawled to the toilet, held onto the bowl and puked my guts out.
Nothing very surprising here either!

What was slightly surprising though was the fact that there was a toilet bowl in my hotel room. Yesterday, you see, there wasn't. There was a squat bog.

"Mhmmmm..." I pondered, amongst bouts of rancid puking and continuous diarreah.

Eventually there was nothing left in me and I wondered back into the hotel room. It definately wasn't my hotel room, but my bags and bodypouch were there...
Intrigued (and slightly dehydrated) I stumbled over to the window and opened the curtains.
A busy street was sprawled two or three stories beneath me and across the road I saw the sign which read: "Khao San rd."

And that was surprising!

For you see, Khao San road is nowhere near Sudder street (where I was sleeping and eating just yesterday). In fact, Khao San road isn't even in Calcutta. In fact, Khao San road isn't even in India.
Khao San road is the mainstreet in downtown Bangkok. Which is in Thailand!

So, surpressing my eventual heartattack and shrugging, I wondered off to find a nice cold bottle of beer and this cyber cafe...

* Bombay's prison.

Chillin' on Park Street

2006-03-18T09:00:00.000+01:00

Ahhh...
The warm sun ricochettes through the slow ventilator, splashing the pages of the book in front of me with undulating light and shadow.
The fruit salad on the saloon table in front of me consists of banana, orange, pommegranate and mango.
The large diet coke filled to the brim with mineral water ice-cubes sizzles slowly in its own bubbles.

A mix of touts and tourists stroll past the markets and the taxis busy themselves driving West before 2pm and East after 2pm... on the same stretch of road. Needless to say 2pm is a fascinating time of day here in Calcutta; Kolkata as it is now called. Maybe I'm not even on Park Street, Roadsheva only knows...

A far cry from the Ghats of the Ganges.
Varanasi now seems like a horrid fetid nightmare of sorts.

People bathing in the Ganges, next to an open sewer.

Sure, I met lovely people. In fact, I have to admit to having met the most beautiful woman on the planet (besides my Mum, sis, ex's and friends...obviously)!
Her eyes were like dark pools of Pandora-esque chocolates, her Tamil Sari was matt green and creme, so much more classy than the bright yellows and reds of Indian women. Her hair glowed deep black, like the enticing cave entrance leading to Aladdin's treasures...

But, I digress...

The Lonely Planet guide explains that the Ghats are the main tourist attraction in Varanasi, the holy city of India.
It doesn't mention the shite, the piss, the spitting (and the deep gargling noises of Indian men trying to bring up their bile), the wild animals, the smell of garbage, the smell of human urine, the smell of the open sewers, the smell of sweat or the smell of the dead bodies being burned.

These are the stacks of wood used to burn the dead. A small stack (which doesn't burn the full body) is for lower caste customers, a higher stack (which still doesn't burn the shoulders of men or the hips of women) is for higher caste customers. Left over bones are scooped into the river, along with lepers, pregnant women and children...they don't need cleansing by fire!

But, as I said, Varanasi had some beautiful attractions as well. This one woman I met, for instance, was more beautiful than a silk shawl in a field of cheap cotton. The fragrance and sexuality than oozed from her pores as she lent her head backwards and softly exhaled the smoke from her scented cigaratte was... sorry, I should stick to the plot...

The two Canadian lawyers-to-be and me in front of a temple. The photo is squished for some reason and doesn't do our dehydrated bodies justice...

Some of the buildings in Varanasi were reminicant of the buildings you'd imagine to find in India. Small balconies, lovely art work and fine detail.
However, the stench of decay and the stains of shite, exhaust fumes and the scars of fires all but distract the most dedicated site-spotter.

A balcony in one of the hostels I stayed in.

Look at the quality of the photos I've managed to shrink for the blog in Varanasi. They are the visualisation of the town itself: utter crap. Everything in that God-endowed town had the decrepid stench of shit hanging to it.

And even as I stared in awe at the beauty of the Tamil temptress at my hostel, I was paralized. Not by fear of failure, but with doubts if it is aesthetically possible to try to kiss a girl, when every time you blow your nose the ash of dead people comes gurgling out.

I'm glad I'm out of there.
Two more days of diet coke, strawberry milkshakes and anti-biotics and I'm gonna hit the nightlife of Calcutta like an alcohol starved Indian hits Holi.

Holi day! Celebrate!

2006-03-15T16:12:00.000+01:00

It was the Holi festival in Varanasi today.
Tourists are warned not to go out until well after 2PM, because it all gets a bit rowdy.

For days street venders have been selling paint powder and for days the locals have been buying it.
This morning all hell broke loose.
Everyone was covered in paint, people were throwing painted eggs at each other and cyclists were being dragged from their bikes and thrown in heaps of cow shit.

In fact, it even had a nasty scent to it at one point as the Indians all got drunk and started slapping each other, throwing the cow shit at lost tourists and chasing passerbys up the small alleys to do...God only knows what.

And did I participate in the merriment?
Did I fuck!

I was sat in the toilet for 20 hours with incredible stomach cramps (the worst yet) and anus destroying diarreah. No amount of water and ORS (Oral Rehydration Salts) could stop the dehydration. So much so I ended up going to hospital (everything else was closed for the Holi day) for anti-biotics.
My arse is like Baghdad and I look as pale as a whale.

You'll be glad to know, however, that I've started the "Plug Mark's Arse Foundation".
As chairman of the PMAF, I solemnly swear that if I collect 200 rupees (4 euros) in donations and a tube of vaseline, I will never mention my bowel movements on my blog again!

Woe my skanky feet

2006-03-13T00:10:00.000+01:00

Everything in this country seems to fall apart: the buildings, the streets, the animals and the people.

Now, obviously I couldn't care less about the buildings crumbling around me.
My dreamy visions of beautiful palaces with silk clad prostitutes waving at me fell shattered at my feet as soon as I landed in Bombay. So, to see another ancient building crumble to dust or see another lop-sided temple slowly sink into the Ganges, doesn't bother me at all.

Equally obviously, I couldn't care less about the streets crumbling beneath my tootsie toes.
It's not nice to wade through knee deep shite, urine, puke and sickening red coloured spit (betel juice from chewing paan), I'll give you that.
And it's not nice to have your flip-flops catch in a crack, tumble forward and slide with your nose along the shit-stained pavement either.
But, so long as it's other people tripping up, cursing and licking cow puke, I'm as happy as a fat Scot eating a Whopper.

Trudging through the slime and the muck in downtown Varanasi

The animals do slightly disturb me though. One horned cows. Three legged chickens. Goats screaming in agony. Sheep, elephants, cows, monkeys fleeing men who are beating them with sticks...
Every animal you see has something wrong with it. From fetid patches to pink eye to bleeding arses. It's pitiful, it's painful...but...hey! That's life!

I guess the really disturbing fact of matters falling apart are the humans. The amount of one-eyed, one-limbed, blind, feetless and headless people roaming around this country is bloody ridiculous. If you saw it in a film you wouldn't believe it.
But when you start travelling around India, you do start to believe it, for you, yourself, start falling apart at the seams as well!

I've seen an English man with a wound so deep in his foot you could see his bone.
I've had a comrade whine out in self-pity as pus dripped out his leg.
Everyone has been ill, is ill or has stomach cramps promising an anal burning to come...

And now it's my foot's turn... Just look at this attrocity:

I cleaned my feet up for this photo.
Now, as all my ex-lovers and Sauer will testify, I have absolutely soft and gorgeous feet. Smooth and silky, clean and beautiful. In fact, if anybody's feet were lickable, then they were mine!
Just look at the state of them now.

And take special note of the left foot, where the big toe bends into the inner curve of the sole. It's sticking out! It's like a fucking lighthouse; a freakshow! I am not impressed.
Seriously... take a closer look:

See!

Where normally you'd find the soft padding of my wonderfully sexy pedi, you now find it caved in, rotting and eaten away!
What the hell is wrong with it??

Just before the Canadian lawyers-to-be departed, one of them said: "That looks like leprosy to me Mark."
And it does.
My nose is blocked, my big toe on the left foot is numb and my fucking foot is being eaten away as I type!!!

All I need now is every orifice in my body to start bleeding and I'll know I've either caught faecal leprocy or god-damned ebola.

To state the blatantly obvious: "Mark is not a happy man with this nasty turn of events!"
I'm off to find a guru and hope he's the new fucking messiah.

Of fans and French girls

2006-03-10T07:06:00.000+01:00

Once upon an afternoon in Cochin I lay staring up at the fan on the ceiling. I noticed how, as it was turning, that instead of being four individual blades, it blended into one giant, rotating circle.

I did have a photo of it for you, but my CD cracked in half... The Ghandi's have more luck at not being assissinated, than I'm having with my camera on this trip...

As the ventilator rotated, I tried my best to see the individual blades.
Basically there are two ways of attempting this: Move your head around in the same direction as the fan or swivel your eyes around at the same speed as the fan. Both methods, however, are equally unsuccesful.

I did find a way of doing it though! And funnily enough it only works at night.
All you need is total darkness and one of those long lights that flicker a couple of times before they turn on and luminate the room with their office-like quality (No, I do not know what those sort of lights are called, otherwise that sentence would have been way shorter...).
When they flicker, you see, for a moment, the individual blades, even though the fan is rotating at full speed.

This is the inside of my shack in Goa. It had a fan as well, but not the sort of lighting which seperates individuality from motion.

Once upon a night in Bombay I crawled back to the Salvation army youth hostel.
Ruben was sat outside our room talking to two French girls.
"Why are we sitting here?" I slurred in an alcoholic haze of King Fisher beer.
"AJ and the lawyer-to-be have the keys." He replied in his excellent English.

The French girls were telling Ruben about their trip to India and all the spiritual things that had happened to them. I don't know why, but for some odd reason my eyes rolled about in their sockets. This was probably due to drunkeness, but the French girls thought I was mocking them.
"Et qui, so why are you doing ici?" One of them asked.
I shrugged: "I tossed a coin on to a map of Asia and it landed on India." I answered.
"Et? Have you found what you're looking for?"
I don't know, it sounded like a U2 song to me.
"Moi?" I said in my best French.
The girls nodded.
I shrugged again. What on earth was I supposed to say.
"You've not had a spiritual experience in lovely India?" They were obviously wanting an answer.
I gave them the Indian head-bob and smiled:
"Yes. I've noticed that the sum of motion can only be broken down into pieces once it's too dark to actually see the motion in the first place."

They looked at me in various shades of awe. One ventured: "You don't think India is a spiritual place then?"
"Should I?"
They obviously did, and so I responded:
"I don't like their food. I don't like their music, I don't like their fake fucking gurus who are trying to fuck young girls, I don't like their tacky art and I sure as hell don't find the fucking slums of Bombay with it's fucking poverty and it's fucking millions of starving people fucking spiritual.
"And no. I don't think their fucking religion is fucking spiritual either. It only serves to make the poor accept their fucking dire poverty with fake fucking promises of better fucking lives in fucking non-existent fucking after-lives. Reincarnation my fucking arse. It's a farce, they're duped and you're too fucking stupid to waste my fucking breath on."

Much to Ruben's dismay they French girls seemed to disagree and showed this by standing up, stating something spiritual in some foreign language and going off to bed.

Young AJ, who seduces more women than James Bond on a good day, and the Canadian lawyer-to-be found me sprawled out on the hostel floor a couple of hours later.
"You'd best get to bed." AJ said, waking me up after they'd taken a load of very embarrassing photos.
"Oooooohhh...my head."

The room spun around like a ventilator and I grabbed a wall to keep myself steady. AJ turned the light on, but as it sputtered and flickered into luminous life, the room didn't stop rotating. Not even for a micro-second.

Jana Gana Mana

2006-03-06T14:30:00.000+01:00

Well the cinema is an interesting experience.

We went to see "Crash" and "Walk the line" today. "Crash" wasn't as good as I was led to believe. The first half was good, don't get me wrong, but there was just one coincidence too many near the end.
"Walk the line" however was classic. And considering all I do all day is listen to Johnny Cash songs and drink beer, it was poetically enjoyab...

Okay...
Here's a photo of someone climbing up a coconut tree:

However... more interesting than the films themselves is the cinema experience.
They actually play the national anthem before the film starts.
Not only do they play the national anthem, but they show a short film of the Indian flag waving gently in, what I suppose is, a warm summer breeze.
And not only this, but you're requested to stand up in honour of the Jana Gana Mana while you're at it!

Okay...
Here's a photo taken on a coconut farm. The coconut juice is used for cooking oil and the shells are dried and used as fuel.

When the film ends, you have to leave the cinema via a special door. This door leads you straight out, no toilets, nothing. Straight out into a backstreet with beggers and urine stains splashed out on display.

Now...
To get into the cinema you have to arrive 30 minutes early. But, you can't actually enter the cinema until 15 minutes before your films starts. Do the maths...
And...
You get strip searched, your bags get turned upside down and you have to pass through two metal detectors...

Okay...
Here's a picture of the shack I inhabited when I was in Goa:

The toilets were good though!

Jana Gana Mana
Jana-Gana-Mana-Adhinayaka,
Jaya HeBharata-Bhagya-VidhataPunjab-
Sindhu-Gujarata-Maratha Dravida-
Utkala-BangaVindhya-Himachala-
Yamuna-GangaUchchhala-Jaladhi
TarangaTava Subha Name
JageTava Subha Ashisa MageGahe
Tava Jaya Gatha.Jana-Gana-Mangala Dayaka,
Jaya HeBharata-Bhagya-Vidhata,Jaya He,
Jaya He, Jaya He,Jaya Jaya Jaya, Jaya He

The Indian head-bob

2006-03-05T05:41:00.000+01:00

*coughs*
Jesus...My head...

Anyways...
In my travels here in India, in my never ending quest to find Robbie Howett, I've stumbled across a few glitches in the time-space continium...
Without wanting to get too Star Trekky on you, let me tackle two subjects by the horns, twist them around and make a few things clear... (more bloody dots...that's beer for you...)

The closest thing to a female body I've seen in a long bloody time...

When you go to a chemist here in India and say: "Do you have something for my arse, it's red raw?" Not only do they say: "No, but we do have great toe bandages for you.", but they also give you the Indian head-bob.
It's not a nod and it's not a shake. Basically, it is a nod, but it's a nod from side to side, instead of up and down. It's a mutated cross between shaking and nodding and quite often is accompanied by an: "Okay."
Move your head from right ear-to-right-shoulder to left ear-to-left-shoulder, repeat, smile and say: "Okay." and you've basically got it.
It's very difficult to actually get to the bottom of it though.

"Do you sell diet coke."
Indian head-bob, smile: "Okay."
"Coke."
"Smile, Indian head-bob: "Okay." Lifts out a bottle of 7-up.
"No. Coke."
"Coca cola. Pepsi cola." Smile.
"Yes. But diet. "
"Okay." Smile, Indian head-bob. Hands you the 7-up.

"Is there an internet cafe close by?"
Smile, Indian head-bob: "Okay."
"Internet?"
"Good shoes sir." head-bob, smile.

The Dutch James Bond trying to pick up women...

Right. So it must now be obvious where the Indian infrastructure is breaking down. Corruption my arse, it's the Indian head-bob which is basically ruining society...

Another matter, close to my heart, is the food here.
It's fucking attrocious.
Every restaurant (viral dating center, whatever you want to call it) sells exactly the same food.
EXACTLY.
It's unbelievable.
Dahl, rice, finger chips (french fries, freedom fries, the French were bloody right fries, whatever you want to call it), vegetarian curries and stomach cramps. Every bloody time.

It did get me thinking about back home though. Most restaurants there tend to offer the exact same things too: Steak, pork steak, chicken steak and chips.
Basically it's the same deal over here, but the taste is shite and you get "the shits" into the bargain (they don't charge you for them though...they just smile and bob their fucking heads).

Photos from a train ride...

We went up to a tea-plantation for a hike yesterday (or the day before...God knows...the days here are like the food...all the same and smelling of bowel movement).
It turned out that it was rather steep, and me and my vertigo decided that it was probably prudent to retreat to the jeep and sit in the sun. It's not like walking is my thing anyways.

However, as I sat contemplating heights, anxiety and the complete lack of sex in my life, I got the munchies. Hell, did I ever need some good old fashioned Indian food.
So, I got up and walked to the nearest town and had myself a lovely vegetarian spring roll and a bottle of Bagpiper soda water with fresh lime juice.
On my return though, the jeep was gone.
I stood there checking my options. I was in the middle of God-knows-where, I was staying at a hotel I didn't know the name of in a town I didn't know the name of.
It was 35 degrees and the veg-roll was already in close combat with my lower intestines. I didn't really have any options.

This is the hotel room the English hooligan wrecked...

What could I do?
I flagged down a rickshaw (a sort of an open-air taxi) , sat in it and smiled.
"Where to sir?" The driver asked.
I smiled and gave him the Indian head-bob.
"Hotel sir?"
"Okay." Indian head-bob.
"Into town sir?"
Smile. Indian head-bob.

Revenge is so fucking sweet...
He did, however, manage to get me back to my hotel. Which, in the long run, may prove that this glitch in the time-space continium is not the the real cause of the disasterous infrastructure here in India after all...it's probably just a legacy the English left behind.

Just another freak...

Well I feel sorry for the elephant

2006-02-27T07:01:00.000+01:00

Don't you think it's strange how Ben Elton; the writer of such classics as "The young ones" and "Slackbladder"; the champion against conservativism and Thatcherism, has sold out the morals he fought for and has become a staunch New Labour supporter and a whore of the mainstream media?
No doubt his argumentation will be along the lines of: "Eventually you realise that you must make concessions, and you must opt for the best available choice."
Surely, however, this is the exact attitude that stagnates change and leads to the impoverished cycle of emotional deprivation to which humanity is seemingly forever condemned?

We went to Vishnu's birthday party yesterday. Vishnu is the Hindu God of preservation. Krishna and Buddha are incarnations of him (her?). At the party we saw the giant Elephant!
It was seriously the largest elephant I've ever seen. He was way bigger than the African elephants I've seen in Rotterdam zoo, although judging by his ears, this one was Indian, which makes his size even more impressive.
He was chained at his ankles and he was dressed up all colourful and pretty as he was paraded around the festival.

The Canadian lawyer-to-be and me followed the Elephant to the temple where his chains were fastened to the wall for the night. Little children came to look at the Elephant and if he didn't stant to attention for them, his owner whacked him with a cain until he obliged.

"That's just not right," the Canadian lawyer-to-be explained, "it's better to have three seconds of freedom than to live an eternity in captivity."

I thought about this. It does seem so very true. But I seriously doubt I'd be man enough, that if I was given the choice between three minutes of pure freedom and then death or a life time in prison, I'd be able to make the "Oh so true" decision.
I could probably get into the temple at night and let the Elephant loose. It wouldn't be that difficult!
But anguish of the consequences for me and visions of John Irving's "Setting free the bears" make me wonder if freeing the Elephant would actually be better for him in the long run.

Anyways, I walked up to this Colossus of an Elephant, inside the temple, and looked up at him.
The owner gave him a whack to get him to stand to attention for me.
I gazed up at this magnificant beast and he stared down at me. A large tear welled up in his eye and it slowly flowed down the creases of his cheek.

I don't know if the Elephant was crying for his own captivity or if he was weeping for my inability to change things, but it sure as hell made me feel like a Ben Elton...

One night in Bangalore

2006-02-23T07:11:00.000+01:00

Well, the tranquility of four days of soothing constipation came to an abrupt end this morning in a burning and awfully shocking manner...

I know you would all like to hear the details of hellish fire and anal tatters blowing in the gentle rancid air, whipped up by the hotel's fan. But...

As I lay in bed this morning praying to Bumsherva (the demi-God of Vasaline), I contemplated what on earth could have caused such bowel movements of Tsunami-like proportions. Because I heard my fellow travellers screaming from the toilet amidst plunges of water, the rolling of toilet paper and the multiple flushing of the bog (a proper toilet, thank Vishnu) I have narrowed the cause of "the flow" down to three possible culprits:

Culprit nr. 1: Dodgy rice
Opposite the Kentucky Fried Chicken in downtown Bangalore there is an upmarket Indian restuarant. Although I pleaded with the group like a begger on the streets of Bombay, to pop into the KFC, the vegetarians (females...obviously) won the argument and we decided on the Indian restuarant. Hell! Why on earth not? It's not like we generally eat Indian fucking food, is it?
I ate Chicken Shanghai fried rice with noodles. If that title doesn't fill you with fears of anal retribution, I don't know what will. Many of us ate the rice.
I remember thinking: "There's something fishy about my rice this evening..."

Culprit nr. 2: Dodgy beer at NASA
Near the Indian restuarant there's a bar called NASA. Inside it looks like a space ship, the servents are dressed like the crew of the Titanic (which at first I thought was rather silly, they should have been dressed as Trekkies, but it was soon to become apparant that they were willing to go down with their beer) and on the wall there's a large text stating that this bar is dedicated to the brave men who push the bounderies of human development, risking their lives to better this world. If I had known it was referring to their patrons, I would have fled like a drowning rat.
Only the English hooligan managed to finish his pint (and considering he was screaming the loudest this morning, it does tend to lend weight to this being the main cause of everything evil). Most of us stopped after a third of a glass. The beer tasted like unwashed feet and it had a sharp garlic after taste.
Most disturbing, when I think back...

Culprit nr. 3: Dodgy vodka
All bars close in Bangalore at 11 PM. The English hooligan whined and complained until we pointed out that it was the same time as the pubs close in England. The evening had come to and end.
"Not so!" Shouted one of the Dutch lads who jumped in a Ricshaw and sped off like James Bond in Octopussy.
We went back to the hotel to watch Barcelona thrash Chelsea (which started at 01:45 over here) and the Dutch lad duly returned with two bottles of very cheap looking vodka and an opened bottle of 7-up.
Everyone drank some vodka, A few of the group left during the match (a bit too much European style shouting going on, especially after Chelsea scored the opening goal) and the English hooligan trashed the hotelroom to the tune of "Honky Tonk Woman".

If I was to place a bet, I'd bet on culprit nr. 2. But you never can tell.

As things stand I'm having myself a diet coke and a KFC for lunch. I mean, if it's gonna hurt comin' out, it may as well be enjoyable goin' in! Eh?

Of giant mosquitos and wild pigs

2006-02-20T13:51:00.000+01:00

The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito
- Benito Mussolini -

The Lonely plant is the bible for travellers, although I have read "The rough guide to..." as well, and as far as I can tell they're both the same.
Both state that Hampi is a place not to be missed.
Either these books are sponsored by the Hampi tourist authority or there must be another Hampi somewhere else!

The place is knee deep in cow shit (and that just clashes with my sandals), there are wild cows, monkees, dogs, cats, rodents and cockroaches storming all over the place and the hostel is like the holes in the ground one must shite in. A squat-bog of a dive, if you will.

The mosquitos are something else too...
Some of them are as big as sparrows, you can hear them from 20 meters distance and they sting right through the soles of your sandals if you step on one.

All through the night you hear the yelping of travellers as some mosquito rips a hole in their net and stabs them in their arse. I swear to Budha that I've seen mosquitos swoop at small dogs and carry them off to their lairs.

Hampi has some good points to:
They sell bang-lassi. This is a sort of banana flavoured buttermilk drink...laced with marijuana. Bang-lassi is a good thing. Oh yes...

Amongst the garbage, in the mud pools and strolling around the general stores, you see wild boar.
I swear to Kryshna that I've spent whole fucking nights up "Hochsitzen" in the German forests trying to spot wild pigs...I never seen one. Not one. I picked up flees, I caught lice and I spotted spiders, but I never, ever, ever seen a wild boar.
Here? Here you just step outside, avoid some cow shite and trip over a sow.

Oh yeah, there's some temples and ruins and things here too, but they're guarded by rabid monkees and monster mosquitos. I certainly will be avoiding anything cultural in Hampi.

Bits and bobs

2006-02-18T04:50:00.000+01:00

The curse of the condoms
I tried to kiss the Iraquee/Israeli girl last night.
She's got these really big, Bambi-like, eyes and she keeps staring at me.
So, I launched myself at her like a torpedo (as one does after 6 long island ice teas and 10 bottles of beer).
She shouted something along the lines of: "Ai Chonni Shabbath ol Ichti, no Shalom, Shacchata.", which roughly translates as: "Die at the stake, you pig of a heretic." And she marched off to bed.

I knew as soon as my collegues gave me 88 condoms to take with me on my travels, that my sex life was forever to be jinxed...

Hungover
Everyone's quite hungover this morning. That's what 6 long island ice teas and 10 bottles of beer does to you.
I would really enjoy everyone being hungover, but I'm hungover myself and it sucks. It really, really, really sucks.
We did manage to buy/steal I-pod albums by Billy Joel, The Who and Frank Zappa though. So, there is a light at the end of the tunnel...so to speak.

My valentines present
On the 14th we were sat in the bar watching "My best friend's wedding" and feeling all soppy. So the Canadian girl treated us to a bar of chocolate for valentines. How sweet is that?
I love chocolate.

Departure time: 06:00 hours
The group, consisting of 2 Dutch lads (one who's English is only equalled by that of Weijers), 1 Canadian lad, 1 English hooligan and myself are leaving for Kerala tomorrow. That's down South (or so I believe).
We're meeting up with the two Canadian girls (one of them bought the valentine's chocolates for us...so there was actually a point to the previous paragraph...ye of little faith!) to go kayaking or floating or something.

We're going via Hampi which is an abandoned city. According to the Iraqee/Israeli girl it's mosquito hell and they're big enough to pierce your clothing over there. She showed me the scars on her bum to prove it (and yet she wouldn't kiss me...mhmmmmm...).

And we're going via Bangalore. Just for a quick beverage. Seemingly it has an excellent night life.

One night in Bangalore and the world's your oyster. The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free
- Murryhead -

After Kerala we're going to some waterfall somewhere (God only knows where), then some other town (God only knows where) and then we're off to Varanasi to watch corpses being burned on the Gangis (God only knows why).

I'm off to the barbers for a shave now, then a shower and yes...I will probably conclude the 3 S's, just for trinity's sake.

The infinite loneliness

2006-02-17T04:38:00.000+01:00

Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens

Have you ever sat around the campfire, listening to someone playing the guitar, wondering if another campfire, somewhere else, has better tunes going?

When you stand at a bar and everyone is chatting away and you, yourself, become gradually more detached from it all; introvert; uninterested.

I can be in my lover's arms knowing that there's something great going on in the Irish pub down the road. I'll just know it! So much so, that I'll leave the warmth of her arms and go and have a look. Of course there's nothing going on, but as soon as I realise this, I just know that there's something else going on at the gym. So that's where I'll have to head off to next!

There is a party
Everyone is there

It can happen in large groups; at concerts and at bars, but sometimes it happens during a film (like this evening) or during a song. Sometimes it happens after sex. In fact, when it did happen after having sex, it would happen after weeks, then days and eventually after only hours...
No matter, but sometimes it happens: the rush in my head stops and I'm shrouded in silence.

And it's in these silences that I understand that there is no great party going on. Well, there is, but they're all the same.
I realise that running from situation to situation is not going to me me any happier.
I comprehend that life is about enjoying the moment; here; now.

In these silences I usually withdraw from everyone and everything. I'll sit and stare at the sea or I'll hide under a blanket.
The silences frighten me, because they make me fully aware that my loneliness is detached from places, lovers and friends; it's my loneliness and all I can ever do is run from it.
To the next bar...to the next gym...to the next country...
And it will always be there.

When this party's over
It will start again
Won't be any different
Will be exactly the same

Every so often, when I take time to contemplate the vicious circle of loneliness; running away from it which only results in more of that exact same loneliness, I recognise the futility of love.
Loving family, friends, lovers and belongings is pointless when you know there's something better down the road. And so I run...and this only serves to make me even lonelier.

However, every so often, when I contemplate loneliness, I get sweeped away in dramatic melancholy...like I am this evening...

Well anyways, I'd love to stay here all evening depressing the hell out of you, but I'm sure there's a party at cafe Le Mar. And everyone who is anyone is bound to be there!

Who could imagine
That nothing at all
Could be so exciting
Could be so much fun

On a side note:
When I stepped out, bare-footed, on to the beach this morning, I accidently kicked a dead rat that was lying on it's back. And then I, equally accidently, stepped on the mid-section of what I presume was once an eel.

Lyrics by the Talking Heads

Delhi belly and Bombay bum

2006-02-14T10:56:00.000+01:00

Well, after 10 days of continual diarreah it was to be expected. And last night, like some cataclysmic anal armageddon it was upon me...

It started right before dinner. A distinct rumbling in the lower intestines and, honest to God, I couldn't even eat two slices of toast. So, to cut my losses (before they spewed forth in uninterrupted waves of hellish burning) I went to bed. The time was no later than 20:00 hours.

It was horrible.

The projectile vomit was in such quantities that one of the Canadian girls said, whilst averting her eyes: "It's like back home at the Niagra falls..."

I was literally pissing fiery water out my bum. So much so that if King George had been in the vicinity he would surely have slain my arse.

This went on all bloody night! I couldn't hold anything in, so I just slumbered to the toilet every half an hour and other than that I lay in bed dehydrating.
I did contemplate going to hospital (which lots of people do), but after the tales of blood-stained beds and giant rats running through the wards, I decided to die in dignity.

Things are slightly better now. The cramps have gone, I've taken more ORS (rehydration salts) than...than...than something which takes lots and lots of ORS and I'm not puking any more.

Thanks for the concern. Also thanks for all the valentines cards (not one!)...

Beach Life

2006-02-12T14:29:00.000+01:00

It's not about you joggers who go round and round and round...
- Blur -

It would be fair to say that living on a beach has good points and bad points. Continual diarrhea and squat bogs (holes in the ground) are not quite enjoyable, continual drugs and booze are...

Dulfoooooon tourists on the move!

It's really hot during the day, but at night it really cools down. The first night I found myself lying in my cotton-thin sleeping bag shivering. Of course I woke Peter up in the bed next to mine to tell him it was bloody freezing.

The beach dusting ladies...dusting the beach...Don't ask...just don't...

As you know I'm somewhat of an insomniac, and now I have to admit that it sometimes really pays off. The other night the couple in the shack next to ours were having sex (or they were doing some obscure satanic ritual; one can never be too sure). So the girl starts to clima...

No wait. Let me first tell you about the packs of dogs that roam the beach at night.

I don't have a picture of the dogs, so here's an elephant instead.

During the day the dogs, and there are literally hundreds of them, tend to lie in the shade in their own little places. At night, however, they roam about the beach in packs. When another dog comes anywhere near their territory, they go ape-shit. It's like dances with wolves, except most of these dogs don't look like wolves. Some do look positively rabid though.
Needless to say, I keep my distance.

This is the main street leading away from the beach. As soon as you near it people start shouting "Taxi!" and "Motorbike" at you. Even when you're walking towards the beach...

Right, so back to the neighbours. They were doing some chicken slaying ritual (or they were having sex, one really never can be too certain of these matters) and the girl starts climaxing going: "oh oh oh oooooooooooooohhhhhhh..." then the packs of beach dogs decided to participate in her evident enjoyment, together forming one massive, orgasmic, orchestra of wailing and barking.

People play sports like frisbee and what-not on the beach when the sun loses it's midday heat. They sometimes play games like cricket too.

During the afternoon the beach fills up with the most gorgeously tanned individuals, the fittest couples and loads and loads of really beautiful people. I tend to keep my pink Scottish arse well out of the pageant and hide in the shade reading a book.

Children come by and perform tricks like little monkeys or circus acrobats. Then they demand money for the privilage of watching them. I generally hide behind my book; secretly photographing them like some depraved pervert...For the blog...obviously.

I wasn't expecting so many well trained individuals. I thought the beach was going to be full of hairy hippies, dirty backpackers and over-weight semi-travellers like myself. How wrong I was. I look like a giant white walrus in a sea of shiny, sun tanned, herring.

One of the little stalls where toilet paper (which I use frequently in abundence) is the same price as an evening meal.
At one of these stalls I went to get diarreah medication.
"Sorry sir," said the stall owner in near perfect Hinglish, "I don't have stomach medicine. I do have a good cough syrup for you though."

As soon as the sun sets, the beer comes out. We get together, have a meal and get drunk. Sometimes we go to a pub-like thing called "La Mer", which is vaguely similar to anything you'll find on the Costa Brava, and sometimes we'll go to live music or play games.

During one of the games (tell three facts about yourself; two false and one true, and everyone has to guess which one is true) we were visited by a German lad who looked awfully like Lestat the vampire. When it was his turn these were his choices:

1. I just went to the toilet for a wank.
2. I just bit someone's penis.
3. Someone pissed on my face today.

Just before sunset

And there are a lot of joggers. But the less said about such people, the better.

Flipper Dick

2006-02-09T13:46:00.000+01:00

"By heavens man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and fate is the handspike. "
- Herman Melville-

Peter, a couple of Swiss Kryshnas and I decided to go dolphin spotting today.
Thinking back to the wise words the English lads gave us ("Bunch of lying cunts" - ad nauseum- ) we thought we had about as much chance of sighting a dolphin as rich American tourists have of spotting the Loch Ness monster. And besides, if we did see a dolphin, we presumed it would either be in an aquarium, a tuna net or on a dinner table.

We climbed aboard the 150 rupie (3 euro) catamaran and set sail with the two Indian guides. Well...not really sail, it didn't actually have a sail, but it did have a motor.

Insert lovely photo of the fleet of dolphin watchers

We all chattered to each other in English, German and in what Peter calls "Hinglish"; unrecognisable English spoken with an Indian accent. We all laughed at each other's jokes, not really understanding what anybody was actually saying.

Suddenly one of our Indian guides shouted in Hinglish, something which sounded like: "Dulffoooooons". And the whole fleet sped off in a random direction. This happened a couple of times and then...

Insert dramatic picture of a dolphin raising its head above the water

I swear to God that at that instance I turned into Captain Ahab. I started shouting:
"Harpoon it! Harpoon it!"
One of the Swiss Kryshnas retaliated: "But it's a living animal!"
"It's my fucking supper!" I screamed in ecstasy.
"We are all God's creatures." The other Swiss Kryshna stammered.
"Yo Flippa! Yo ass is mine!" I shrilled in delight at my own wit (I seriously do know that you're not allowed to eat dolphins...)

Insert best action picture you've ever seen of a real dolphin jumping clear of the water in the Arabian sea

And this just goes to prove that the English lads were wrong. Not all Indians are lying cunts! And I felt I had to share this with you.
For we are all one nerve of the great God above. We are all equal and in God's eyes we are all loved.
In fact, we are all part of one universa...

Oh. You are more interested in why I've substituted the photos with yellow wording?
Well.
You see.
Just like saying that all Indians are lying cunts is a gross generalisation, saying that all Indians are not lying cunts is too.

When I went to get my photos uploaded to the disc, the little shop owner said: "Of course we can upload from your memory stick." THEY PROMISED I TELLS YA!
But they couldn't. Oh no...how they couldn't...
They could, however, format my memory stick, which they did do.

They didn't charge me for it though. That was quite nice of them...

Side note:
This is the third time I've written this post. The first failed because I selected it all to copy and paste it into a word document to print...the "Control" button didn't work and I substituted my entire post for the letter C.
The second time someone switched on a light as I was nearly finishing and the computer turned off.

I swear to God they all backed away as I rose from my seat. The sweat dripping off my forehead and the glare of the devil in my eye...
However, I'm pleasntly drunk now and all thoughts of skull fucking every internet cafe owner from here to Avignon and back has subsided...

The sleeper bus blues

2006-02-07T00:14:00.000+01:00

I have bought a gun with two bullets in it. The second of these bullets is for me.

You see, the way I figure it is that eventually I might not die in India after all. I've not had food poisoning yet, I've not been bitten by the multitudes of rabid dogs yet and I've not been dragged into the slums by sex hungry begger-nymphs yet either...
Which means, eventually, I might...have to...go...back...to work...
And as most of you know, work is not my strongest point.
Anyone who knows me will testify to my complete incompetence in all matters, and hence, it is probably not worth my while turning up to a job just to be unappreciated.

This is Chowpatti beach in what the government of India now calls Mumbai, but the locals still refer to as Bombay.

The second bullet is for the inventor of the sleeper bus.
Now at first this my sound like a great idea: 12 hours in a bus and now you can lie down and sleep in it!

Yes...
However the beds are for two people and I've slept on park benches in Rotterdam and Compiegne which were wider. Equally, if the road would be straight it might be do-able if you double book, just for yourself.
The roads are not straight in India though. Oh no... I've seen straighter roads in Cairo and less bumpy roads in earthquake zones.

These are two children begging on the streets of Bombay. Most of them don't ask for money, but want you to buy milk.

Now, don't get me wrong, Peter from Austria is a great guy. But he looks like Schwarzenegger, sounds like Schwarzenegger (qua voice) and is the same size as Schwarzenegger. And I'm not the slightest built person either.
Every bump meant either my legs folding around one of the bars that protects you from falling out the bus-bed (top bunk...obviously) or me bouncing up and then down on top of Arnie. Sorry, I mean Peter.
Every corner (and there are many corners from Bombay to Goa) meant I either rolled over Peter or smacked my back against the same bars my legs would sometimes wrap around.

Two English lads were lying in the top bunk opposite us. They'd been in India for two months already and kept telling us: "India's lovely man, but the people are a bunch of lying cunts."
Every so often one of them would get out of bed and tell the driver to slow down. That really pissed me off. The last thing I needed was the bus trip lasting even longer!

Lads playing cricket. I seriously don't think there are any rules to that game. Just throw a ball and shout a lot.

This is the beach in Goa (Palolem) I'll be hiding in for the next two weeks...at least.

This is the view from my 3 euro a night beach hut.

A few notes on this post:
It took me 1 hour yesterday to get my photos burned onto a CD.
It took me 2 hours today to resize the photos I needed and upload them to photobucket.
It took me another 2 hours to actually write, insert the photos and edit this post.

And I still can't view it on the normal blog list. Other people obviously can though...and it's doing my head in.
I presume I'll just have to have BBQ'd crab for lunch to ease my tension and a couple of cocktails as the sun goes down to ease my stress.

I also should add (since I'm back re-editing again, because I really can't see this post unless I look under the posts for the whole of February) that I can't share the opinion of the two English lads. I've only met pleasant people. And who wouldn't try to sucker the rich, if they got the chance?

The hanging gardens

2006-02-05T09:59:00.000+01:00

After smacking my way through a crowd of begging children and shaking off a couple of touts who were so resistent to my evil eye, the shaking of my head and the "FUCK OFF YOU SCUM!" of my voice, that they can only be described as "Clingons", I arrived at the the Taj Mahal...

To my great astonishment it wasn't the Taj Mahal that you see on postcards. Nope. This was a hotel. But, it turned out to be one of the top ten hotels in the world, so I went in for a breakfast of steak, bacon and fresh fruit salad.
Afterwards I felt a little guilty and gave one of the begging children a rupie (which is worth about 0.0005 euro cents).

And so after clearing my conscience, I headed off to the Hanging gardens of Bombay.
If one wonder of the world was sure to live up to its reputation (which the Taj Mahal obviously didn't), it would have to be the Hanging gardens.

To my even greater astonishment the hanging gardens (note that I've stopped using a capital in the name...) don't even hang. In fact, the hanging gardens would be better off called: "The hill-top park."
But, I guess "The hill-top park" just wouldn't sound as good as "the Pyramids" and "the Colossus of Rhodes".

Later I was sitting in Leopold's cafe drinking soda water and talking to a couple of Australian neo-hippies about my trip to the hanging gardens.
"Yes," they explained, "but we feel that you are actually referring to the Hanging gardens of Babylon. And that's not in India..."
"Yes," I nodded, pretending that I knew that all along , "but at least I'm not dressed like fucking 1960's hippie Hindu wanna-be's!"

They didn't want to talk to me after that.

Planet of the apes

2006-02-03T17:31:00.000+01:00

Obviously I could start with a post on how uncomfortable an eight hour plane journey is.
Equally obviously, I could comment on how uncomfortable and eight hour plane journey is with someone puking their guts out in the row behind you: "The smell...Oh the smell..." (to paraphrase colonel Kurtz).
However, the chicken in lemon sauce was delicious and the diet coke was abundent. So...I won't.

I could introduce you to Peter from Austria.
Actually, I should. But I won't. He knows less about India than I do and we're sharing a room in Mumbai (formally known as Bombay) together for a couple of days. That we haven't died of food poisoning is thanks to Susan.

And equally, I could introduce you to Susan from Germany. She's from a place near Heidelberg, near Pforzheim (which incidently is a place I had a god-awful experience with absinthe, my penis and someone's Granddad).
Susan is the sort of person who comes to live with a family in India and lies to hide the fact that she doesn't trust the meat. Three months long this family held the best smelling pork, chicken and lamb dishes in front of her nose...and three months long she said she was a vegetarian.
I felt that I should indulge in this sad tale of woe and torture ironic.

But I won't.

No, I felt I should spend my time talking about Elephant mountain. Or maybe it was Elephant & Castle, Elephantitis or Elephant island...fuck knows...Like I really care?

Anyways, Peter and I met Susan on the trip to Elephant-whatever and went up the pass.
Now. There are no elephants on Elephant-whatever, but there is a very steep and fucking terrible climb to reach the top.
So steep is this climb that little, skinny and obviously fit young men were offering to carry you up the hill in chairs (like the sort used by King Mubumba or Queen Cleopatra). Being as sturdy, sober and healthy as I am, I convinced the others that we should walk to the top.

Sometimes...sometimes...even Gurus like myself make mistakes...this was one of them.

And we reached the top. There's nothing to do at the top but go and frequent some caves. And look at the monkeys standing in front of the caves.
I've had bad experiences with monkeys before, I won't go into them, but needless to say, when I placed my water bottle on the bench to lift my arms abouve my head to get some air into my lungs, I was a little...well...weary...

One of the monkeys grabbed my fucking water bottle.
I say monkey, but let's be perfectly honest here: there are silver back gorillas in Kenya who are smaller and less fierce!
It grabbed my water bottle and starved of oxygen and H2O as I was, I grabbed it too! No way was some hairy arsed bipodel gonna steal my fucking (and well earned) fluid!

As you can guess, this affair only went downhills from there. That monkey was screeching, I was screaming and little brown Indian people were getting well out of the way of the battle which was quite surely about to unfold.
I tugged. It hauled.
I pulled. It bared its teeth.
I showed my pearly-whites. It started drooling...or salivating...or FOAMING...

Hell knows!
The last thing I know Peter, Susan and I were running down the fucking pass with a pack of screeching gorillas chasing after us and me screaming at the top of my lungs: "Hold them you fuckers!!! You've had your fucking rabies shots!!!"

42

2006-01-30T23:44:00.000+01:00

Who knows?
Although I'm setting off to search for my long lost childhood friend, there is just a chance I may stumble upon the answer to God, the universe and everything.

I mean...
The chances that I will find myself hallucinating on the beaches of Goa along with tree hugging hippies is mentionable.
The chances that I'll be stuck in an Ashram praying to some fake deity who thinks he can heal your chakras by fucking you (physically and financially) is reasonably likely.
And the chances of me dehydrating due to excessive diahorrea is at the very least 99% probable...and fuck knows what one will find in such a state!?!

Ironically, the chances of actually completing my quest in India are actually very small.
I mean...
How bloody likely is it that my friend Robbie; who was Scottish; who I last seen in Scotland 24 years ago, will be staying in India (another continent) at exactly the same time I'm there to find him?

But you know, as Bertrand Russel once wrote:
"It's not achieving the goal that's important. Enjoying trying to achieve it, is what it's really all about!"

Robbies on the left, I'm on the right.

Nothing can go wrong! cough

2006-01-29T20:46:00.000+01:00

"All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go..."
- John Denver -

17:30 hours yesterday:
Four days to go.
I have, amongst other items: sun screen, anti-mosquito stuff, sleeping tablets (get ready to be phoned), knife, sleeping bag and and a Lonely Planet guide to India (which is just as well, because a guide to South Africa would be pretty pointless, considering my destination).
Nothing can go wrong.

Aha...
Never say: "Nothing can go wrong."
Obviously it's up to you, but, believe me...it's safer to avoid this term.

Yesterday I was hungover and decided that a wee beer would probably lighten my headache. Six beers later my room-mate and I headed into the Hague to get the last items on my list (DEET, torch, Elven-rope and flip flops).
Then we headed to the Fiddler (English) pub for a late lunch (and a beer).
After the Chicken kebabs, she dropped me off at the house and went on her merry way.

It was then I noticed that I had my shopping stuff, my leather coat (which obviously I won't be taking to India, because I'll either be worshipped as a cow or beaten to death for wearing a holy animal), beer...but that I did not have my shoulder bag.

"Who cares about shoulder bags?" I hear you mutter.
Well, this particular shoulder bag had my passport in it!

No shoulder bag, no passport. No passport, no fucking trip anywhere!
As you probably realise...it was a bit of a bummer...

I phoned the pub, but they hadn't found it and it was too late to phone the shop. The shop opened today at 13:00 hours (that's one O'clock in the afternoon, by the way).
That means that I had to wait 17 hours to know if they'd found my passport or not.
I realised, last night, that 17 hours is a god-damned awfully long fucking time!

If they didn't have my bag, that would mean that I'd have to get a new passport and a new visa.
That would include, but not exclusively, re-joining a Dutch council, waiting for hours in a visa office and paying more than 200 euros. And... AND... there would be a reasonable chance of not getting it in time.

So I thought up an alternative plan: I'd skip the flight to India, take the train via Moscow to Beijing and then hitch-hike via Bhutan to Bangladesh and then take a bus to Calcutta.
Needless to say it sounded like a fucking nightmare to me too.

13:00 hours today:
"Track & Trail" opens and I run in like a starving Ethiopian runs into UN food storage fascility.
The guy in the shop says: "Sorry. We didn't find your bag."
I swear to God, any fucking God going, that my heart stopped for 11.3 seconds and my anal muscle spasmed like a spastic on speed.
"Have a look around the shop..." He added.

I don't often swear in public, but a depressed, acquiescent and resigned: "Oh fuck." did escape my lips.

And there, lazying with the flip flops, unaware of the stench of my sweaty stress, my bag did lie.
I ran to it like Forrest Gump in Vietnam and raised it into the air like Maradona did the world cup in 1986...

22:45 hours today:
I've stapled my passport to my nipple

The farewell party photo report

2006-01-28T13:58:00.000+01:00

Jacky comes from the islands. They have an inbreeding problem.
Should my blog ever be published, this photo will be the cover picture.

Look at this lamp. It's a one in a million lamp. And there's a wee leprechaun beside it!
Yes, even the little people came to the party!

These two people are worshipping the great god "Marith of Leidschendam". Every week they pop by to hold hands under the deity's picture. Praying to Marith brings good health and sticky chocolate fingers.

Some people just demand attention. I could point out the teeth, but the nose in the background is far more interesting. That's a real Kurdish nose. And Kurdish noses demand more attention than a dying grandma who wants to explain the meaning of life...
This particular Kurdish nose is clean.

Satan popped by as well. She said she was Dirk's girlfriend, but I wasn't born yesterday. She has the eyes...and eyes are like noses...very telling!

This is one of my house-mate's brothers. He thought I was going to shoot him. So, he leaned in real close and said: "Kill me you may, but you will only make me stronger."
I took the photo and he sighed deeply: "Oh. I thought you were Darth Vader there."
I giggled and then he asked: "What does the 011 on the back of the Stormtrooper's uniform mean?"
Very scary stuff

David is a martial arts expert. He likes to practice on me. "Look Mark," he will say, "Just lean on in, and look! See, if I lean forward I'll snap your arm off."
He's broken my wrist twice.

Many things sum Ray up: Best mate, Drinking partner supreme and Karaoke king.
But nothing sums him up better than Agatha, Bjorn, Benni and Anni-Frid:

You are the dancing queen,
young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen,
feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive,
having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene,
dig in the dancing queen

I was stood on the balcony (much like I'm quite often sat at a bar...which is proper English...) watching the sun come up. It was cold and I was hungover. And they came.
Some people complain of bats and other's complain of tramps.
I have nothing to complain about really.
But they came none-the-less.

The scavengers. Picking at the corpses and the rests of the party.

And my car sped off into the sunset...

2006-01-26T11:31:00.000+01:00

"You ain't got no wheels, you ain't no man!"
- Willie Brown in the film Crossroads (1986) -

Obviously it wasn't a visual sunset my car drove off into. I sold it this morning at 10:30 for 250 euros.
It was a metaphorical sunset it metaphorically sped off into.

This is the first time since 1999 (when I finally achieved the status of: "Driver") I've been without a car. Since everyone so loved my nostalgic post on Death (the card...not the state of being...), let me take you by the steering wheel and drive you through the country lanes of speed limits past... (good grief...)

My first car was a 1984 Opel Corsa. There are two note worthy points to be made about this vehicle. The first being that the car sales man said: "You test drive it, you buy it." Tracy said: "Mark...do you think that's a good idea?"
Of course it was a good idea. I needed a car, didn't I?
The second interesting fact about this tank coloured car was that the distribution cable (That's a direct translation from Dutch, by the way. I've not been able to find the proper translation anywhere!) snapped. In a tunnel. Since then I've been distribution-cable-paranoid.

The second car was my beloved Ford Escort (last model) with a sunroof. God, sunroofs are good! It was fast, it was beautiful and it had a sunroof. Sunroofs are good. I may have mentioned that before though...
I had an accident in it in the French Alps. I was driving down this very steep mountain and some old French geezer was driving up (I was listening to "Sun machine" by Bowie. Yes! The very same song that you should be listening to when you're drinking rose and reading my blog) and he smacked into the side of my car, above the rear wheel.

We both got out and looked at my car. Then at his. "Je ne Parlez vous Francais." I said in a broad Scottish accent. "Je ne parlez vous Anglais." He said in a slightly better French accent. We looked at each other. I shrugged and muttered: "Voila!" He shrugged and wisely added: "C'est la vie." We shook hands and went our own ways.

Now, back at the campsite Miranda and Ray (Ray's the guy from the karaoke bar, by the way) said: "We can't hear anything." Noooooo....of course not. Only the backwheel falling off...

My third car was the ultimately cool and Winslet-like sexy Renault Megane 1.6 16v sports coupe... *insert manly grunting*.
I surely must have mentioned Stuttgart to Utrecht (600 km's) in 4 hours...
The fact of the matter is it was actually my ex's. Riding in the Megane with her at my side was like a manage-a-trois. Her, me and Megane. *insert more manly grunting*.
When we split up we had to sell it. Two friends bought it who later turned out to be neo-nazis...
I can but hope that Megane chews them up and spits them out her exhaust pipe!

My fourth car was my Alfa Romeo 33. Eiffel Tower grey...and rough.
If driving a car ever felt like a three hour session on the tower of power...this car was that experience!
I swear to Bob (Dylan) that shifting gears on that thing was like changing gears in a Tiger tank.

And now I'm carless.
So I think I'll take the tram into the Hague and get myself a Guiness. A Guiness and some salt 'n' vinegar crisps!

You were cryin' in your pretzels when I met you
You were washing All the salt away from the dough
You were cryin' in your pretzels
And I'll never forget you
But, baby, just why, I'll ever know

- Soggy pretzels: Neil Diamond -

And now you know! She'd sold her bloody car.

My vision of death

2006-01-24T05:36:00.000+01:00

I drove out to the Dam today. That's where I used to go when I needed to get away from the busy bustle of everyday teenage life. I hadn't been up there for a while, but I couldn't sleep and I needed some fresh air. It's funny how you often return to places which make you feel comfortable.

It was too cold to sit down like I used to, so I strolled around the dam, looking out to the boats fishing for mackerel and the broken nets near the beach, of which the purpose still eludes me today.
My mind wandered and I found myself lost in dreams of times past and memories vague, yet reassuring.

The look on the face of my ex when our kitten returned after being gone for ten days. Her tears of joy and my delight in seeing her so happy. Just thinking about it makes me all fuzzy.

Annette's love of birds of prey and the way she would get all excited when she saw a hawk flying overhead.

I remember going fishing on one of the boats, together with my brother and father. I caught the largest cod. David puked his guts out. He wasn't sea-sick though, he was just hungover.

Jantine's dad showing me around the cucumber farm up in Groningen: "These are cucumbers lad! They're not vegetables...they're fruits!"
I recall wondering what else would secretly turn out to be a fruit in disguise. Tomatoes for sure...

This is the Haringvliet dam, part of the Delta works, near Hellevoetsluis

My lesbian roommate who strolled into my bedroom and said: "I've put a plant on top of the fridge."
It was two in the morning.
"Uh....okay..."
"I don't want it damaged!"
Although half asleep, I still managed a: "Why put it on the fridge then, the door keeps opening and closing?"
"Plants use oxygen at night," she explained, "I don't want to suffocate. So it can't stay in my bedroom."

My little Canadian friend and I used to build lego space ships. He came to my door, I opened it and his space ship (probably 5 hours of work) broke in half. The whole front section fell to the floor and smashed into pieces. I laughed so much I was crying for hours.

Singing "Wild Thing" with my best friend in a disco in Wakefield. A pint in one hand, a cocktail in the other. We won a prize that night. I can't remember what though.

Boney M, the brown colours of the 70's, the snow in Penicuik. Man! Did they ever have snow there.
"Sonny...yesterday my life was so complete..."

Moving from Cumbernauld to Penicuik, to Eaglesham, to Hellevoetsluis (and the dam), to Muckwonago, to Hellevoetsluis (and the dam), to Rotterdam or was it Berney Riviere first?, to Wakefield, to Hellvoetsluis (back to the dam), to Kryat Shmona, to Ein Gedi, back to Kfar Blum (which is near Kryat Shmona) to Hellevoetsluis (back to the dam again), to Crawley, to Hellevoet, to Utrecht, to Leidschendam...

The racing in my head and the constant creativity. Why sleep? Why bother?
I remember Bruno, our dog, sliding off the couch to meet me. He was sedated.
I still see Tracy coming towards me, shocked at my sudden return (God knows from where)...brandishing a kitchen knife...

Lots of memories flashed by this day. And I knew that if I was to draw a tarot card, I would draw Death.

Many people fear death. I do not.
I've lived a good and full life. A life full of memories. Good memories. Even the bad recollections have an amusing taint to them. If you can't laugh at yourself, what on earth can you laugh at?

Death is not the end of life. The card signifies the end of a cycle. And when each cycle ends, a new one begins.
Which place could be more fitting to accept this, than my refuge in so many years gone by?

"I love you..." Part 2 (by Liam)

2006-01-23T17:13:00.000+01:00

Liam is one of the people I phoned last night.
He wrote a piece on RHP (the chess site) for all to see, so I've asked his permission to display it here as well.
This is his recollection of what happened last night:

So, there I was, Sunday night; I'd just finished boring myself to sleep with Blade 2 (I won't bore you by telling you anything about this film other than that it is balls from start to finish) and was about to head off to bed when my phone rang. I looked at the caller display and it was an international code which I didn't recognise. At first I thought it might be my stepfather, who lives in Antwerp and who has a tendency to phone me once in a blue moon when he has been drinking. I consider leaving it, it's late and I'm not really in the mood, but some part of me thinks I'll just have to call him back tomorrow and so I take the call. What follows is a transcript from memory of the call, my thoughts as I was talking are in italics. Enjoy:

Me: Hello
Caller: Hello?
Me: Hello? Is that my stepfather? Itsounds deep enough, but not Canadian
Caller: Hello?
Me: Who is it? I hate when people just expect you to know who they are
Caller: It's Mark Mark? Do I know a Mark?...Oh right! Shavixmir from RHP
Me: Oh hi, how are you?
Mark: I'm [censored] drunk and I've taken a [censored] load of tamazepam. Oh [censored] he's [censored] fucking overdosed, I'm going to have to find an ambulance in Holland. How the hell do I do that?
Me: Why?
Mark: For my insomnia, but I think that alcohol and sleeping pills don't mix No... really? I'd never have guessed it. Why is he calling me? At 12 o'clock? On a Sunday?
Me: So, what's up? This better be good

Mark: Oh I just wanted to speak to you and say hi before I go off to India Ahh, okay, not sooooo bad, at least you're not ringing me to tell me you're dying
Me: Oh right, so, when are you off? It must be like tomorrow, he's celebrating
Mark: Oh the first Thursday in February
Me: That's in nearly two weeks He's not leaving tomorrow
Mark: Yeah, so I thought I'd call you to say hi before I go

So at this point I have learnt two things: 1)Alcohol and Tamazepam do not mix 2)Alcohol and Tamazepam destory chronological importance, both in time of using phone and in proximity to urgent dates.

Me: Okay, cool. I hope you have a good time.
Mark: Yeah I will, just have to say goodbye to everyone before I go. At 12 o'clock on a Sunday night?.
Me; So who else do you have to say goodbye to?
Mark: Oh, your girlfriend and the singer in your band, she's seriously gorgeous Liam.
Me: I'm sure she'll be flattered, I'll pass on your good wishes to both of them I can see this isn't going to end here...
Mark: I wish I could take her with me
Me: Hmmm... I'm not sure she'd want to accompany you for a 6 month trip to foreign lands, she hardly knows you.
Mark: Yeah, man... Perhaps I could take a keepsake with me to remind me of her
Me: Right.... like what?
Mark: Well, if you could get her to give you a pair of her panties that would be cool.
Me: Right....
Mark: Used of course
Me: ...of course...
Mark: Thanks Liam, you're great You really think I'm going to ask me friend for a pair of her used panties to send to you in India don't you?
Me: I'll see what I can do...
Mark: Yeah, well I better go Go where? You're going to get some tissue paper aren't you?

Me: Okay, well nice talking to you, have a nice time in India
Mark: Cheers, you're a really nice guy, I love you man
I knew that was coming somewhere. Oh well, at least he doesn't want a pair of my panties I suppose...

Me: Take care buddy
Mark: Say hi to the gorgeous Catherine for me
Me: I will, adios muchacho
Mark: Bye

And so it is that I went to bed with the lingering nausea that accompanies the thought of Mark's, tissues and mental imagery of my singer... *shudder*
Needless to say I didn't sleep well. This morning Shav signs in to messenger and needless to say has absolutely no idea of what he's done. Apperently after checking his phone to make sure I'm not making it up he realises that he has phoned others... I do hope sooooo much that they will elaborate on what words of wisdom he imparted on them too.... Please....

Thank you Liam.

*sigh*

There is just no end to my embarrassment....no end what-so-ever...

"I love you..."

2006-01-23T13:16:00.000+01:00

Do you ever have black-outs when you drink?
I do.

When I was living in Israel I drank a liter of vodka every day and I had a black-out every night. I can't remember half the things I done there. I remember waking up in enough compromising positions though:

Ted: "Hi. I'm Ted."
Me: "Uhhhh..."
Ted: "No, we didn't do anything."
Me: "....Good..."
Ted: "Have you seen my underwear?"

Me: "Lucy, what are you doing in my bed?"
Jane: "Pardon?"
Me: "What are you doing in my bed?"
Jane: "We shagged."
Me: "But you're John's girlfriend."
Jane: "No, Lucy is."
Me: "Who the hell are you then?"

As I've grown older my compromising positions have become steadily more long-distance.
The mobile phone has become the bane of my existence.
When I'm drunk I seemingly keep phoning people up to tell them I love them. It's all quite embarrassing really.

Last night I wasn't only drunk, but I'd taken 20mg's of Tamazapam as well; to help me sleep.
So this morning I'm typing away as happily as can be and Liam, a friend in England, comes on the MSN and asks if I'd sobered up yet.
Me: "How do you know I was drunk?" (I was at a friend's house last night and had no internet connection).
Liam: "You phoned me."
Me: "Grrrroooooaaaaaan."

So I checked my phone...
Liam is not the only person I seemingly phoned last night.
I've not yet been able to get verification about what I've been saying to people, but needless to say it will all be things like:

"I love you soooo much...."
"I miss you, I really do...."
"You're one of the best people I've ever known..."

Sweet Jesus....let it end.

"Oohhh ohhhh Growin' up..."

2006-01-21T22:55:00.000+01:00

Somethings don't seem to change.
Whether I'm stuck in a bathtub in a poverty stricken council house in Glasgow, or whether I'm being bombed by the Hezbollah in Kryat Shmona, I seem to be able to laugh.

I presume this is a good thing.

This is me when I still had hair...look at the smile! Notice the curly hair! Take a close look at the box beside me...was my mother trying to sell me?

I've noticed, however, that somethings do seem to change as you grow older.
Hair leaves your head. It doesn't disappear though, it just re-appears in other places. I have a funny hair growing out the top of my left ear as I type!

Old women come up to you when you're young and say: "Och...isn't he good looking!" And they coochy coo in front of you.
Now these old women come up to you and smack you with their handbags shouting: "Don't use that language in here young man!"

And when you were younger your mum's friends would say: "Ooooh look....he's all wet. Isn't that cute. And doesn't he smell nice!"

This is a picture of me in a boat in Italy. Notice nobody leaning over and and telling me how nice I smell? No, smelling when you're older is no longer cute.

Another thing I notice is the hair. I used to be blonde and curly. Now I'm bald.
I presume, although I can't be certain, that I didn't have a tropical rainforest growing from my knees up in the baby photo.
In the first photo I'm the star of the object d'art and in the second photo I'm obscuring that which is interesting.

Could it be that young people are more important than the surroundings and that the older you get, the more you fade into infinity.
No longer something desirable, but more something avoidable?

But look at that smile!

I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere
and you know it's really hard to hold your breath.
I swear I lost everything I ever loved or feared,
I was the cosmic kid in full costume dress,
Well, my feet they finally took root in the earth
but I got me a nice little place in the stars
And I swear I found the key to the universe
in the engine of an old parked car

I hid in the mother breast of the crowd
but when they said, "Pull down," I pulled up
Ooh... growin' up. Ooh... growin' up

- Bruce Springsteen -

Tripping the light fantastic

2006-01-20T23:26:00.000+01:00

Do you ever get a shudder down your spine, go back to look at what you've written and think to yourself: "Holy hell...that's utter shite!"?

I thought I was going to do that, but the post wasn't there. So I looked up the edit-function and the post was there.
Feeling slightly strange, I reposted it and it appeared like it should have.
Then I remembered it was utter shite and deleted it and posted this instead.

whoosh

I know what you're thinking: "No matter what it was, it surely couldn't have been worse than this!"
But I have an excuse. I haven't been sleeping well.
In fact, I'm so tired that I'm dreaming with my eyes open as I type.

It's really quite strange how colours flow and the dots blink on and off. Sometimes the odd letter will drift away to the side of my view; even leaving the screen to float out the window.

I have a masterplan though! Yes. I've just taken 20mg's of tamazapam. I'll soon be tucked up in bed with visions of sugar plums, sexy women and bottles of ice cold beer dancing around my head.

Whoosh

I can feel the drug slowly creeping into my brain, right here; right now. My eyes are heavy and my breathing has become extremely regular. The whooshing feeling of losing conciousness actually feels quite alright now. It's like my head dips and comes up and I get a pleasant wee rush of adrenaline. Are you ever aware of your tongue? I am.

Good night.

Whoosh
Whoosh

School's out for summer!

2006-01-19T17:32:00.000+01:00

Do you remember that feeling of joy, excitement and expectation you had when that last school bell rang at the start of your summer holidays?

Remember that electrifying sensation earlier that day when you went to school, knowing that you could do whatever you wanted, because you were soon going to be away and free?

Can you recall the thrill of saying "goodbye" and "...'till we meet again" to everyone. Not that you didn't expect to see them again, but the time in between would be so long....man, anything could happen?

Well my friends, that's the state of ecstasy I'm in.
There's nothing more for me to do but celebrate the coming six months of holidays.
Nothing less to do than avoid hangovers.
Nothing other to do than hang around smiling at passerby's.
Nothing more serious to do than find Robbie Howett.

NO MORE WORK

34 years old.
A return ticket to India.
Enough money to not have to work for at least six months!
My only belongings are a backpack, clothes and some DEET.
A childhood friend to locate...

I feel as free as the Blues Brothers, I'm as happy as Jim Carrey on crack and I feel so unbelievably sexy even nuns would want to grope me.

The shackles of society have fallen from me, I am no longer responsible and every aspect of my life is my own.

School's out for summer,
School's out forever,
my school's been blown to pieces,
No more pencils,
no more books,
no more teacher's dirty looks,
Out for summer, out till fall,
we might not come back at all.

- Alice Cooper -

Soundtrack d'Blog

2006-01-18T22:52:00.000+01:00

Amazingly enough nobody has come up to me on the street yet and asked: "Mark...what sort of music should I listen to when I'm reading your blog."

Baffling though it may be, I just know that deep down in everyone's sub-concious, the question is nagging away at them. I see it in their eyes, I see it the way they turn their heads when I walk by and I notice it by the way they scurry away when I shout at them: "I KNOW YOU WANT TO KNOW. I KNOW YOU DO!!!"

You can't imagine watching Star Wars with a Spice Girls soundtrack (at least you shouldn't, anyway) and you can't imagine watching Nabucco with Verdi playing in the background.*
So, you don't want to be reading my blog and imagining Metallica whining you to sleep on the stereo either!

Here's a list of songs which support the reading enjoyment of my tale of sorrow, sex and adventure:

- Sun machine is going down David Bowie
- Watching the wheels John Lennon
- She bangs the drums The Stone Roses
- Waterfall The Stone Roses
- Catch the wind Donovan
- Captain Jim’s drunken dream James Taylor
- A little rain Tom Waits
- Tower of song Leonard Cohen
- Suzanne Nina Simone
- Two of us Aimee Man
- I can’t forget The Pixies
- Bend and break Keane
- I predict a riot The Kaiser Chiefs
- Carolina on my mind James Taylor
- Desolation row Bob Dylan
- Babe Rainbow Melanie

If you plan on eating, whilst reading (not that I condone it, but it is up to you), may I suggest a starter of escargots in garlic butter with a side dish of mushrooms in garlic sauce.
A main course should consist of good meat (preferably pheasant, when the season is right) in a wild mushroom and truffel sauce.
A dame blanche is a good dessert, but Belgian bon bons of excellent quality is equally admirable.

My blog reads best with rose or beer.

* Yes. It was a joke. You may laugh.

Indian visa requirements

2006-01-17T18:30:00.000+01:00

It would be easy to say: "All you need to get into India is a plane ticket, buckets full of money and enough training in patience to arrive as a fucking guru."

50 euros a visa costs. 50 fucking euros.
But not only money.
No, you have to spend hours in line amongst smelly tree-hugging hippies, unwashed women and garlic drenched bearded men. I despair, I truly do!

Then you get to pay 50 euros to be interrogated by the dodgiest looking official I've seen since I saw footage of Hess landing in Eaglesham and saying: "Ve are zi vriends."
That could be Eagles ham or Eagle SHAM, by the way...

"Why are you going to India?"
"Excuse me, are you talking to me?
Angry look.
"Well speak up then, there's a WIN DOW PANE..."
"Why are you going to India?"
"Dunno."
"Pardon?"
"DUNNO."
"HOW LONG?"
"DUNNO!"

And do they stamp your passport? Do they fuck!
You have to come back at 15:30 in the afternoon.

So, I come back at 15:30 in the afternoon. It's so crowded there are smelly people bulging out of doorways and hanging with their fat, sagging arses out of windows.
As you stand in line brown people are plucked from the queues (I say queues, but that's really giving the unfolding drama too much credit... I think we should leave it at "Swarming mass", but only for diplomatic reasons) by plain clothes policemen and dragged off into small cubicles. At least three people were dragged away crying and whining as I stood being swarmed about.

Obviously I grunted and snorted like a pig everytime a policeman came near me. But I don't they they noticed. It smelled like a pig sty anyways. The odd oink wouldn't be that out of place.

50 euros...
Fifty fucking euros.
It's a self-sufficient beaurocratic entity...

Catching a cold

2006-01-16T19:28:00.000+01:00

You want a rant? I'll give you a bloody rant.

It's about diseases...and two in particular.
The first one is the common cold. Well, maybe influenza, but basically the common cold. And it's not even the common cold that bothers me all that much (may every bloody republican catch it), but about people who say stupid things like: "Don't sit in the draft. You'll catch a cold".
NO YOU WON'T!

"If you go outside without a coat on...you'll catch a cold."
NO YOU BLOODY WON'T!

"Wrap up. You'll catch a cold. Close the window, you'll catch a cold..."
NO YOU WON'T. YOU BLOODY WON'T.
It's bullshit and I seriously think that anybody who is so bloody stupid as to assume that a a cool breeze is going to infect you with a virus or bacterial infection....is an arsehole.
SO STOP BOTHERING ME.

The second part of my rant on diseases is about computer viruses.WHY and WHO THE HELL MAKES THEM????
I can understand some lonely, spotty, smelly teenager somewhere (probably Japan), locked in his room, his blankets rancid and crusty from masturbation, thinking up a deadly computer virus to irritate all the people in the whole wide world who are procreating happily at his expense....Maybe two of them.

Okay...three. BUT. BBBBBBBBBB UUUUUUUUUUUU T...Where the hell are the rest of all these spurts of computer ebola coming from?
WHY?
Why on earth (or cyber space for all I care) would someone design something which is going to affect people they don't even know? And why are there so many of them? Can't they get normal bloody day jobs or something?

Now, I'm all for the great revolution and everything. I don't even have problems with people carting around photos of chairman bloody Mao. That's up to them.But if these ass-wipes want to stop microsoft....HURT BLOODY MICROSOFT. STOPPING CLOGGING UP MY BLOODY COMPUTER WITH YOUR DAMNED GOOD INTENTIONS.

And talking about clogging up my computer....SPYWARE? Shouldn't this be illegal? Shouldn't spyware manufacturers be carted off to Guatanamo bay or something and systematically tortured. Hell...I'd even force them listen to constant Rush Limbaugh crap just to fuck them up.

WHY on earth would someone want to spy on my computer anyway? It's not like I do anything but play chess, stare at warhammer sites and drool over jiggling mammary protruberances.
HOW BLOODY INTERESTING.

Jesus. Sweet JC superstar strung up on a big chunk of bloody wood... I seriously wish all these people would go and stand outside on a winter's day to catch pneumonia and die!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOU BUM WIPE. YOU DON'T CATCH PNEUMONIA FROM THE COLD EITHER. IT WAS BLOODY IRONY. BASTARDS!!!!

And the person who gave me this flu is in for it too. Bastards...

An oration of sorts on oculophilia

2006-01-15T10:07:00.000+01:00

When exactly, during one's sexual fruition, does one think to one's self: "Hey...I'd like to lick her eyeballs."?

I was going to do another extremely long (and according to some friends "extremely boring") political post today, but I accidently stumbled across the cute, yet modest, word oculophilia.
Now, don't get me wrong, I've heard of some classic little fetishisms in my time:

Saddle sniffing
In Rotterdam a man was arrested because he was going around sniffing saddles of bicycles people had just locked and left.

Coprophagy
I once saw this on a video on this wierd subject. The guy's lying on his back, some girl is balancing precariously above him and he sticks his finger up her bum until she poos. Then he eats it.
Yes. That was my reaction too.

Axillism
This is having sex with a partner's armpit. Believe me, it does happen.
I really don't know why, but it really, really does. Perhaps if one's penis is too small or one's vagina is too large?

Now, for most fetishes I can understand where they roughly come from. For instance: a foot fetish.
That's probably due to someone having been in love and the girl only wanting to massage his feet. So he's grown used to being turned on by feet.
Yes. I'd make an excellent psychologist, I know.

But licking eyeballs?
And how do you tell a partner this? And when?

Is it just before she climaxes, you whisper: "Darling, I love you so much...can I lick your cornea?"
Or over dinner you start hinting, ever so slowly: "Sugar-pie... You do have the most beautiful eyes... I'd kiss your iris if I could!"

Don't get me wrong though, I can quite appreciate a coprophagriast's dilemma as well. I mean, not every girl is going to take it equally well when you suggest: "Baby...I love you so much I want to shit in your mouth." is she?

I actually feel quite sorry for fetishists (or whatever they are called). Can you imagine the stick they get on dating sites?

wvw.meet-a-partner.com
Introduce yourself:

Hi, I'm Mark. I'm clean, healthy, funny and I sport a lot (this is what everybody writes on dating sites, by the way...).
I'm looking for a girl who's fit, single, employed and likes to have her eyeballs licked.

See?
I think we should sympathise with the oculophiliasts amongst us. They have a hard enough time as it is!

Join me tomorrow when I explore the mucky, messy world of mucophagy. When I'll be asking such questions as:
Do you like your nose big? and Does a common flu add to the experience?

Regime change in the USA

2006-01-14T09:25:00.000+01:00

Regime change in the USA

Introduction:
There's a lot of discussion, particularly in the US administration about changing the regimes in various countries, as if it's a God given right or something, to do so.
As I’ve listened and watched over the last few years, it seems to me that if any country needs a regime change, it’s the “Good ole” US of A.
Obviously it has the mightiest army in the world, the largest nuclear arsenal and quite probably the greatest naval fleet. So the chances of regime change being forced upon the US by foreign nations using violence is extremely small. Regime change will, therefore, probably have to come from within US society.

Now, when you read what I’ve read it is very hard to imagine that the average citizen in the US actually knows what their own consecutive governments are up to. Indeed, the same can probably be said about most nations; think of the vicious, yet coordinated, media assault on Arthur Scargill; the leader of the NUM (mining trade union), the human rights abuses committed in Israel by the Israeli government or the handling of dossiers about refugees by the Dutch government. You would presume if people knew what was happening they would protest against it.

So, why am I targeting the US and her citizens?
A majority of what’s happening in the world today is happening directly or indirectly because of US policies! I’m a great believer of looking at a problem, discovering the cause of the problem and working to solve that. In this respect I believe the US is one of the great causes of suffering (if you wish to call that a problem) in the world today. By tackling the greatest cause first, maybe there’s a chance the smaller causes will follow like dominos.

There are many examples of US policy, both covert and otherwise, which I could have used for this article. The mass murder of civilians in Japan in 1945 (Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki) comes to mind. But so does the arming of the Mujahadin, the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war and the invasion of Panama.
What I’ve done is chosen 4 examples of US policy which are easily traceable on the internet, so that everyone can see the documentation for themselves.

WHIMSC:
The US administration’s attitude towards terrorism has always carried a hypocritical air of: “Our enemy’s enemies are our friends” and the old Jesuit attitude of “Exitus acta probat (the aim justifies the means)” about it.
Some terrorists seem “good” like the right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia (1), some terrorists seem “evil” like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (2) and some terrorists seem to change spots as the occasion permits like the Mujahadin (“Good” when fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and “Bad” when fighting Western imperialism).
But all forms of hypocrisy on this issue fall into oblivion in comparison with the glaring two-facedness of the US’s war on terrorism.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union the US has had to seek a new enemy. Not because the US people want a new foe, but without a new adversary the general public would not accept a large chunk of their tax revenue being spent on weapons (one of the most powerful of all lobby groups in the US) (3). And the policy makers have come up with the ultimate enemy; the opponent, which by definition can’t be defeated: Terrorism.
Communism cannot be defeated, but when no more countries practice a communist doctrine, one can assume that the war against communism will no longer need pursuing. Terrorism however is a method of combat, and the stronger the US becomes qua military, the more enemies who will have to resort to terrorism to fight it. This in turn leads to more spending on weapons, which makes the US stronger, etc. The weapon industry is laughing all the way to the next third world country that needs invading.

The hypocrisy however is not in this self perpetuating industry, it is in the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHIMSC for short. WHIMSC, formally known as the School of the Americas (SOA…which incidentally is the Dutch abbreviation for a venereal disease) is a training ground for terrorists; in the State of Georgia, USA.
Not only does this “School” teach such subjects as: torture, execution, blackmail, and the arresting of relatives of those being questioned (4), not only does it have an impressive list of former students: Gen. Hernan Jose Guzman Rodriguez, Gen. Hector Gramajo, General Rios Montt and Manuel Noriega, but WHIMSC costs millions of dollars each year and is funded by the US tax payer.
Not only is US tax revenue being spent on fighting terrorists, it is at the same time being used to create terrorists.

The Khmer Rouge:
Pol Pot swept to power in Cambodia in 1975. His Khmer Rouge or “communist party of Cambodia (later the Democratic party of Kampuchea)” reportedly slaughtered 1.7 million civilians during their four year reign.
The Vietnamese army liberated Cambodia from Pol Pot’s reign in 1979. (5)
When they chased DPK (Pol Pot’s party) out, they quickly realised that there was no way they could help the people themselves (Vietnam being under a heavy US embargo), so naturally they turned to the UN. The UN said: “No can do.”
So, what on earth was going on there?

To start with, when the Khmer Rouge was ousted, a new government was installed in Phnom Penh, the US and China (6) blocked the new government from the UN and made sure that Pol Pot’s man retained his UN seat. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were already known, world wide, for the atrocities they committed, thanks to the John Pilger film “Year zero”, which he filmed in 1979.
The US financed the Khmer Rouge rebels (terrorists anyone?) for the grand sum of 80 million dollars over a 6 year period (1980 to 1986). These rebels were training in secret on the Thai border. To make matters even more cynical, the US government the World Food Program to hand over 12 million dollars worth of food to the Khmer Rouge rebels.
Okay. Let me up the stakes on this some more for you: The CIA was training the rebels and helping to carry out missions against the sitting government in Phnom Penh.

One can obviously only speculate on the reasons for the US doing this. But it seems fairly obvious that by dragging Vietnam into its own “Vietnam war”, the hope was to destabilise Vietnam so the US would extract its revenge and gain a firm foothold in the region.

This is one example of manipulation of the UN to serve US purposes. Here’s another classic example:

UN sanctions on Iraq:
After the first gulf war, severe sanctions were put in place on Iraq. It started with a complete trade embargo and after a year was “mellowed” down, so that the Iraqi regime could sell oil for food. (7)
During the gulf war however the US forces used massive quantities of depleted uranium on Iraq. Arguably, Iraq in the 90’s was more radioactive than Hiroshima after the nuclear explosion (9). This led to massive increases in the child cancer rate (8) in Iraq. Hospitals were full of sick and dying children and there was not enough medication to treat them. Doctors, UN officials, various journalists and experts from various other fields called out to the UN to either ease the trade embargo or to let in various cancer-treating drugs (like morphine for pain, etc.).
The US and Britain vetoed each attempt to get the medication through (10). This led to an increase in child mortality. 500.000 more children died of cancer from 1990 to 2000 than did in the 10 years previously (8).
The US and British governments knew that this was happening, yet they continued to deny help.

From Wikipedia:
Genocide is defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) article 2 "as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:" Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; [b]Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part[/b] (Bold letters by me); Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. The most widely known example is the Holocaust (the genocide of Jews and various other groups during World War II by Third Reich and its collaborators).

Outsourcing the US car industry:
The US is famous for its cars. Ford, DaimlerChrysler and General Motors, for example. Literally thousands of men and women depend on the car industry for their livelihood. But since the 1990’s the industry has seen cutback after cutback and workforce layoffs are the nightmare of the day. This is especially true in the Midwest, where the auto industry was largest (11).

So, have Americans stopped buying cars? No. The average sale of cars in the US has went up over the years, even in spite of ever increasing oil prices. The cars are just no longer being made in the US.
The global market has made it possible to produce cars wherever the multi-national wants. Why on earth (how appropriate) make a car in the US where the average wage in the car-making industry is 25 dollars an hour, when the same car can be made in China, where the average car-making wage is 50 US cents (12)?

Americans are now expected to buy US cars, drive US cars, repair US cars and stick “made in the USA” stickers on US cars, they’re just not allowed to make them anymore. How ironic that the global expansion of the beloved capitalism (after the defeat of communism) can make such large profits for the multi-nationals; the average price of a car has not dropped in the US due to the cheaper labour costs, yet undermine the people who are supposed to benefit; whole communities have become unemployed due to their bosses drive for profit.
And will it end when the Chinese catch up? No. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, both basically run by the US administration, are busy ensuring that countries that loan money do as they are told (13). They must privatise and open their internal markets up to multi-nationals. This will ensure cheap labour for decades to come!

Conclusion:
It would be simple enough to state my own conclusions here. They must be pretty obvious. Equally obvious is that some of the facts I’ve presented could be questioned using other resources. However, I’m sure that per subject I’ve touched upon, that if you look objectively and hard enough you will find enough material to substantiate (or in the least justify) my claims.

It is, though, up to you to draw your own conclusions. And remember the conclusions of the Nuremberg trials whilst you’re doing this: Standing by and watching is a form of guilt and “just obeying orders” is no longer and excuse!

(1) http://www.narconews.com/Issue37/article1281.html
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1430305,00.html
(3) http://www.themoderntribune.com/weapon_industry_influence_on_policy.htm
(4) http://www.soawne.org/SOAFacts.html
(5) http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/pilger4.html
(6) http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/UncleSam_PolPot.html
(7) http://www.un.org/News/ossg/iraq.htm
(8) http://www.casi.org.uk/
(9) http://www.greens.org/s-r/20/20-12.html
(10) ttp://www.geocities.com/iraqinfo/sanctions/holocaust.html
(11) http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jan2001/auto-j16.shtml
(12) http://www.detnews.com/specialreports/2004/driven
(13) http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051121/timerman

Bullshit

2006-01-13T01:49:00.000+01:00

As I was sat in a pub I was suggeting that I wasn't ugly. I was stating that I wasn't hideous. I was contemplating my awfulness in comparison with such monstrosities as Hiroshima, the war on Iraq and the Bush administration....

And Mimi said: "Mark. You're very attractive. I'm sure some skanky, unwashed and blind character with mental disabilities will fall for you sooner or later..."
Such are the compliments I must endure.

Do you know what this is?
It might remind you of Spain. It might be large and mighty in its imagery. Hell, it might even be considered art by some sad people with failing eyesights.

But no. It's advertising. Blatant, tower sized advertising and it's fucking up the countryside.
Only in Spain?

No. Every-bloody-where. Billboards here, billboards there. All of them selling more and more crap which we don't or shouldn't need!

Yes. There's nothing like a giant billboard to really give me gut-wrenching throes of hatred when I'm suffering an early morning hangover.

BASTARDS

Dog masks and plastic crowns

2006-01-11T22:26:00.000+01:00

BOOM BOOM BOOM
BOOM BOOM BOOM
Monday night...to the club
Tuesday night...to the club
Wednesday night, didn't want to go, but my friend Michelle phoned, so I went....

Can you guess where these lyrics are headed?
Yes. To the bloody club.
Day in and day bloody out. IT'S DOING MY HEAD IN!!!
As I stand sweating on the treadmill fitness machine I have to suffer the most monotonous beats with the daftest lyrics imaginable. Day in and day out. Every single day the same songs, the same beats, the same lyrics.

Dancing queen, young and sweet
And just when you think you're in for a sweet little ABBA number:
BOOM BOOM BOOM
BOOM BOOM BOOM
Nope. No such luck! It's another pathetic dance beat raping another perfectly healthy specimen of music-history-past.

But to ease matters slightly the fitness club has TV screens. TV screens without sound, because they obviously presume that we don't want to miss the brilliant sountrack they're sharing with us.
So, one might be tempted to think: "Well, if there's no sound, they'll be showing programmes with subtitles, so people can follow what's going on!"
HAHAHAHA You ignoramus! How foolish of you to assume so quickly...

They could put CNN on so that the Fuglies feel better about themselves when they see ultra fat Americans suing McDonald's over weight gain (suing instead of cutting down on their own digusting pork lives).
They could put on Discovery so that the Bastards can go home and discuss the latest assumptions on the history of the holy grail (yes...it's Jesus' bloodline...there...don't waste your time reading the Davinci code.).

But no. They have Eurosport on. All day, every day. What more could a man want than to spend 60 minutes a day watching ugly, boring men leaning over green tables and knocking balls about. The pink ball is worth more than the green ball. HELL YES...KEEP ME INTERESTED BABY!

But yesterday...
God yesterday....
It was too much.

Really.

Darts.

What sort of diabolical strategy of boring people to death is this then? Only Satan himself could be responsible for such wicked craftiness; such hellish torture; such...such...such....

Good grief.

A fat man (probably a fugly with an above average aim....yes, everybody is good at something) is throwing arrows at a board. The camera keeps showing some chain smoking wretch of a wench with sagging tits jumping up and down everytime he pulls his arrows out the board. I presume it is his wife.
Every so often he'll get all the arrows into the same slot on the board and the camera will show his wife's tits bouncing out of their skimpy sack of a dress and the crowd cheering along with her.

And then I noticed that the whole crowd were wearing gold-coloured, tacky plastic crowns.
I must be missing something.

Subsequently today...
God today...
I seriously thought my head was going to explode in disillusionment with mankind.

Another fat bloke is throwing arrows at the board.
He's either borrowed the other fat guy's wife or there are lots of skanky dart groupies doing the rounds. And everytime the lights start swirling and the fat bloke is grunting, she starts jumping up and down with a fag in one hand and a glass of some red substance in the other.

And soon I noticed that the whole crowd were wearing dog masks.
DOG BLOODY MASKS.
I am missing something.

So I went home and watched Cujo.
Consequently I remembered that I didn't take the rabies shots.

Man...sometimes it's like coincindence is lurking under the bed, just waiting to bite my bloody ankles.

The head in the wardrobe

2006-01-10T15:37:00.000+01:00

I accidentally left the wardrobe open when I went to bed last night.

Nothing spectacular, nothing inherently amusing...I know.

My bed's head faces the window and the foot of the bed faces the wardrobe, which is beside the door. This way I can see who or what is coming into my bedroom as I dose, ponder and do what other single men in bed do at night.
And so, when I awoke around three (my usual time of starting to wake) I could look straight into the wardrobe. And Lo! And behold! What should I see lurking in the shadows? A head. A severed head. That's right.

Two things interest me at night: Everything is colourless (only shades of grey) and everything sounds louder. But last night a third "Interest" sprung to mind: rationality doesn't exist!

So, I'm lying there and trying to figure out which piece of clothing looked like a head. I closed my eyes, re-opened them...nope...it was still a head.

I turned on my side and tried to forget about the head. I knew it had to be clothing, my mind was just playing tricksies on me. But could I forget it? Hell no. That head was looking at me and I knew it. And when I turned back onto my back and looked...the head was still there. Eyes, mouth and all.

As I shifted position in the bed, it's a double bed, to see if I could figure out the guilty clothing, I muttered: "I'll be buggered if I'm getting out of bed. I know it's clothing."
I knew if I got out of bed to look I'd be angry at falling for my brain's own wee hoax.

I sat up in bed and I swear I saw the head move. It didn't. It couldn't, it was only clothing, but I swear to God it looked like it moved; sort of slowly shaking its evil head; mocking me for my stupidity.

"I'm not getting out to have a bloody look. It's embarrassing." I said.

The head just kept looking at me.
What if it really was a head though? Someone must have placed it there. That meant that this 'somebody' could well still be lurking in the other shadows of the bedroom.
Or behind the open door of the wardrobe.
I stretched up a bit to see if I could see toes peeking out from under the wardrobe door.
"Don't be bloody silly." I told myself.

I lay back down and closed my eyes, but even thinking about the Swedish bikini team couldn't get my mind off that head... or the may-be-lurker somewhere in the room. I sat back up quite quickly.
To get to the light switch, I'd have to get out of bed. The light switch is beside the door, beside the wardrobe...beside the head and the toes.
"There are no bloody toes or heads!"

I knew I had to go and have a look. But what if the lurker was lurking under the bed. I wouldn't be able to see under the bed without putting the light on first. And to put the light on I had to get out of bed. I could feel my heart start racing and a horrible dry sweat started covering my body.
"Stop it! Bloody stop it!" I whispered to myself. But that god-awful head was still staring at me.

You know those moments in your life when you just take a deep breath and take the plunge? I remember that moment best when I jumped out of a plane, 4 km's high. I remember that moment when I quit my job. And now I was experiencing it because of an open bloody wardrobe.

I jumped out of bed, dove at the light switch, sank to the ground and peered under the bed for any sign of the lurker. Opening your eyes in bright light after you've been staring in the dark for 30 minutes isn't wise. It was like I was Lex Luthor trying to escape Alcatraz and the wardens had found me. So squinting and backing up against the door I opened it and threw myself into the hallway. Just in case the lurker was coming for me.

There was no lurker, there were no toes and there certainly wasn't any head; just a pair of trousers, two t-shirts and a towel.
The funny thing was that I didn't get angry with myself! No, I went back to bed feeling like Indiana Jones. It was like I'd just survived one of the greatest adventures of my life.
Now, if a wardrobe can get me that worked up, what on earth is a real adventure going to do???
Man...do I ever need Valium.

The sports car and me

2006-01-08T23:53:00.000+01:00

My ex (the sweetest girl in the world) and me owned a dark blue Renault Megane 1.6 16v sport coupe.
Actually, when you mention that car out loud you have to finish with manly grunting and equally manly chimpansee like movements. That's how cool that car was.

That car was so sexy I wanted to make love to it. That car was so cool I wanted to live in it. Seriously, I never go to McDrives, but when I had that car...I just didn't want to get out of it.

I once did Stuttgart to Utrecht (600 km's) in 5 hours and that's including a 25 minute lunch break and a petrol stop.

When we split up we sold the car and I bought my Alfa Romeo 33.
This car is not sexy. The passenger door doesn't open, it steers like a tank, it shifts gear like an oil tanker, it turns corners like a bus and when you drive over 170 km's an hour in it, it sounds and feels like a Spitfire.

A friend asked me the other day: "Do you miss the Megane?"
"Hell yeah I miss it." I replied.
"Do you regret not having it anymore?" He continued.
I thought about it for a minute and answered: "No."

In answer to his puzzled demeanour, I can only explain it as such:
There's nothing wrong with missing the car. If I didn't miss it, that would only mean that I never really cared about it in the first place. Missing something is just a way of remembering how much you really did enjoy it.

And I don't regret not having it anymore. It was great having had it. I'm glad I was privilaged enough to enjoy the experience. It was good while it lasted.
Nothing lasts forever; not even sports cars.
And so as I drive around in my Eiffel-tower-grey-coloured monstrosity, I can honestly say I loved driving that Megane, I remember it fondly and it's a memory that will always bring me joy and remind me of a good period in my life.

Female ejaculation

2006-01-08T10:57:00.000+01:00

Often when I'm sitting in restaurants, young women will come up to me and ask: "Mark...is it possible to learn how to ejaculate?"
Because I don't feel comfortable discussing Dr. Grafenberg, bodily fluids and cunnilingus whilst I'm pampering myself on pheasant in wild mushroom sauce with a hint of truffle added for taste, I wrote FEM-ORG (Female Ejaculation Manual: the Orgasm Realignment Guide). Here are a few excerpts from it:

Fear
Isn't it amusing how many problems in humanity in general and in people specifically all come down to fear? And the fear in question is two fold:
The fear of one's own bodily fluids.
The fear that one's partner might not enjoy one's own bodily fluids.

Here's a little tantra I think you should say ten times a day:
There is nothing wrong with menstruation blood! Just don't use it as a steak sauce.
There is nothing wrong with urine. Just don't get it mixed up with Belgian white beer.

Do this tantra for a month and you'll be tasting everything in delight. If your partner says it for a month, he will no longer need the obligatory 5 day-lick-break.

Orgasms
As a rule of thumb there are two cosmic laws to orgasming:
The strength of an orgasm is relative to the length of arousal.
The strength of an orgasm is relative to the state of relaxation within arousal.

Basically this means the longer you are aroused, the better the orgasm. The more relaxed you are just before and during your orgasm, the better the orgasm too.
That's why orgasming on marijuana is so god-damned good!

The fear of bodily fluids makes many women tense during orgasming. Do the tantra!!

The G-spot
The G-spot has been around since we crawled out of the muddy ooze of creation (or since man donated a rib for God to create woman...take your pick). It's been known for a good many years too! Ancient Chinese documentation (as far back as the 4th century BC) mention: "Where the bloody hell is it?" and "Buggered if I know."
It was Dr. Grafenberg, a German specialist in female speleology, who first actually put his finger on it and said: "Is that a gland bulging with fluid or are you just pleased to see me?"

Like all glands, the longer it is stimulated, the more fluid it will hold (this differs per gland, obviously... I don't think stimulating the thyroid actually builds up any fluid at all, but I could be wrong. We're talking about fluid holding glands here though...).

Now this is important for a female ejaculation! That G-spot needs stimulating! Hell, does it ever.
It needs stimulating and she needs to relax! Do the tantra!

So, where does one find this elusive gland?
2 - 3 cm's (roughly 1 inch) into the vagina, on the outer wall (facing towards the stomach). Feel around. You'll notice an area of the inner tubing is slightly rougher to the touch than the rest. That, my friends, is the G-spot. The longer you rub it, the more fluid will build up.

Putting it all together
Right. So you've relaxed, you've found the G-spot and you've stimulated it until you presume there's enough fluid in it to hide a nuclear submarine. Now all you have to do is orgasm and keep your muscles relaxed.
It's that simple! It's that bloody simple.

Like most good things it takes a bit of practice. And like most sexual acts, it's best to practice on your own until you know what you're doing and what to expect.

Should you surprise an unexpecting partner and should said unexpecting partner be less than thrilled, just ask him: "So...do you spit or fucking swallow then?"

------------
On a side note, I'd just like to mention that I did get some sleep last night! And to celebrate this, here's a photo from Spain:

Running to stand still

2006-01-07T11:43:00.000+01:00

I thought I was in a zoo.
I'm sure we were eating giraffe. It tasted good, albeit it a little stringy.
Then we climbed up the string and found ourselves in pasta heaven with an Italian chef who reminded me of the chef in the Muppet show.

That's today in a nutshell. It's not a bad day, it's just a dream that passes from one bizarre moment to the next.

When I turn my head it takes my vision a few seconds to adjust.
And Whoosh.
Whoosh
Whoosh.
It's like I keep losing conciousness.

There's a bird on the table.
No. I'm the bird. I fly off the table and go soaring over the edge of the house. I can see the rocks and beaches below the white cliffs of Dover as I soar and take a sip of diet coke.

Maybe I need an espresso. One of those tiny little Italian coffees with half the fluid in them and twice the coffee. But surely I'd drop like a sack of stones from a builders ladder.

Whoosh

And there's something in the sun as I look out the window. It's Robbie. He's waving at me. I wave back and think how strange it is that I'm 34 and he still looks 7. It's like he's not aged a bit. Why does he still look like a young kid in that school photograph?
Perhaps I'm still young and am sat beneath a tree day-dreaming about being older.
How on earth can one tell?
What if Robbie's actually stood there, looking at me and fearing for my sanity as he sees my eyes roll back and lose focus.

I'm a bird. I'm running over the dry grass. I think it's the Sevanna. Maybe I'm an emu, but surely they don't inhabit Africa?

I'm taking off.
Whoosh
Whoosh

You got to cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice
You know I took the poison
From the poison stream
Then I floated out of here
Singing...ha la la la de day
Ha la la la de day
Ha la la de day

- U2 -

I.N.S.O.M.N.I.A.

2006-01-06T19:45:00.000+01:00

Do you know what it's like?

Right.
I don't want to get out of the bed in the morning. I'm too tired, but duty calls and I have to go to the toilet.
The rest of the day is spent in a semi-state of awakeness. I can't focus. I can't think. And I can't follow any conversations.

Do you know that feeling when you're really tired and you get that whoosh inside your head? You know, it's like you fall asleep for a second; your head bobs and you startle straight up? Well I get that feeling three or four times a minute. And like today, it costs me all my energy just to stare at an REM concert on TV.

My brain tends to wander more than usual as well. One minute I'll be thinking about what to write on this blog and the next minute I'll be thinking about fishing (which I haven't done since I was 14 or something). And in between these minutes I'll have thought about busses, beer and a girl who didn't enjoy my post on staring at tits.

People will be talking to me like: "So, the the Israeli prime-minister is criti..." and I'll be away thinking about car brakes and what on earth the 011 was on the back of stormtrooper outfits. "What's your opinion about it?" they'll finish. And I'll just say: "Yeah. I've never really known. Neither did Robbie."

Evenings are a hell. Especially when sober. They drag on and I just have to stay awake as long as possible, for if I don't then matters will only get worse. I'll be nearly catatonic when I get to bed.
In bed I'll lie awake for up to an hour, sleep three hours and spend the rest of the night half-awake looking at the clock and wondering why time is so fucking slow.

Time is funny. When you're having fun it goes past so quickly and when you just want to sleep every minute lasts an hour.

This week lasted a month.

Dog, shit and insomnia

2006-01-05T17:27:00.000+01:00

I haven't had a proper night's sleep for more than a week now (altogether: "awwwww") and when I stumbled to the car this morning I wasn't feeling quite myself; slightly day-dreamerish, one could say.

The day-dream came to an abrubt end when I reached my car. A dog had shit on the windscreen.

Now. I contemplated how this could have happened, as I stepped into my car, and I came up with two basic theories:

Theory 1: It was a massive fucking dog.
It cocked its leg and shat on my window. A dog that size would be HUMUNGOUS! In fact, it may well have been a giraffe-sized dog. Not the sort of dog one would want to bump into on a dark night in a skanky alley...

Theory 2: It was a flying dog.
No. Hear me out on this one.
My car was parked near some flats. It could be the dog accidently jumped off the 6th floor balcony. Realising its mistake it shit its pants on top of my car and fell to an untimely end.
The lack of dead dog behind my car could be due to the owner running down to scrape it off the ground.
The owner would have had other things on his mind, other than searching my car for traces of fear.

And so I found myself in my car wondering what to do. I mean, there was no way in hell I was going to drive around town with a dog turd on my windscreen. That would look really silly.
I basically had two options open to me:

Option 1: Scrape it off with a CD cover.
The mere thought of going anywhere near it with my fingers turned my stomach though. So I opted for:

Option 2: Use the wind shield wipers
This turned out to be not quite an as excellent idea as I had hoped.
Instead of removing the dog turd, it just smeared it all over the windscreen. It was then I remembered that my windscreen spray doesn't work.
Needless to say, there was quite a bit of embarrassment and giggling at the petrol station as I cleaned my fucking windscreen.

At work I was telling folks about the god awful start to my day and someone said: "Maybe the owner lifted the dog onto the car."
Who on earth would do such a thing??? And how did he know his dog needed to poo???
And another collegue hinted: "How do you know it was dog shite?"

And that's basically where today's drama ends. It looks like someone took the trouble to climb onto my car, pull down his (or her) pants and shit on my wind screen.
There are some seriously disturbed folks out there...I tells ya!

The circle of loopholian viciousness

2006-01-04T13:25:00.000+01:00

I feel like I've caught the bubonic plague.
I'm getting cold shivers up and down my spine, I can't focus and I have a dry cough which reminds me of leprosy for some reason.

I swear to God (anyone's, I'm not picky) that my body is falling apart at the seams. And to make matters worse, there's even more bad news coming my way about leaving the bloody country!

Yes. Seemingly, you can't have your car insured if you're not a Dutch inhabitant, which means that I can't drive my car once I've removed myself from townhall hell.
This creates various problems:

Without a car I can't get about. But without the slip saying I'm not living anywhere I can't get my travel insurance, ECI, telephone or internet account arranged. But getting these things arranged means I can't have a bank account...

I believe I've stumbled into a beaurocratic circle of loopholian viciousness. It's like a creepy episode from 'The twilight zone' or some or other Stephen King novel.

WHY do things have to be so complicated?? I thought the Dutch government was actively trying to deport as many people as possible?
It could be one big, giant, complex conspiracy theory! They're saying they want rid of people, but secretly they're drawing us in like moths to a lightbulb.

Yes. I can see it. I've seen the light! We are Soilent Green and now we all know what they put in fastfood.

Fascinating vaccinations

2006-01-03T18:00:00.000+01:00

People who tell you vaccinations don't hurt are the same sort of people who tell you that circumcision isn't painful. They are scoundrels and blatant liars.
Not that I want to compare having your foreskin sliced off with being repeatedly jabbed like a pin cushion, but I am suffering as I type. If you wish to pity me, now is the time to do so.

Seemingly India has more diseases than Einstein had braincells and for a good many of them you need to be vaccinated. I didn't take them all...it was too expensive.
Okay. I'm the first to admit that it may sound like I'm gambling with my life, but let's be honest...how bloody dangerous can these diseases be???

Dengue fever
A mosquito disease. No known vaccination or cure. It can't kill you though, it just gives you the jitters and using aspirine increases the chances of haemorrhaging.

Hepatitis A
Yeah. I took this one. I think my liver suffers enough as it is.

Hepatitis B
I didn't take this one. Not because of the price, but because it's a venerial disease. With the state my sex-life is in, taking it would just be tempting providence. Should I get so lucky, I'll use a condom (and make sure they're not drooling or anything).

Japanese B Encephalitis
Another mosquito disease. This one either kills you are gives you brain damage. No known vaccine or cure.
Bets are on that this is the one that's gonna slay me.

Malaria
Yet another mosquito disease. It could be me, but it seems that mosquito extermination should be an Indian priority.

TB, Diptheria, Tetanus and Typhoid
Horrible, horrible diseases. I'm sure. I did get vaccinated for them though. Coming from Glasgow, I've already been vaccinated for TB though. I'm not worried!

Rabies
I didn't take this one either. It was very expensive.
Now, I know with my history of being attacked by anything with more than 2 legs on a regular basis, that this probably isn't wise. But I looked at it like this: What are the statistical chances of me being mauled by rodents, parrots, dogs and monkeys two years in a row?
See. It makes sense!

Amoebic dysentery and Giardiasis just sound too bloody dreadful to read up on...

2006: The year of the dog

2006-01-02T15:14:00.000+01:00

“Happy New Year.” I muttered to Ray, who was sprawled out on the floor, as I crawled from the couch to the toilet.

This was basically the story of 2005. Booze and drugs replaced sex, rationality faded from view and the foul smell of hangovers hung around me like grapes hang around French vineyards.

“No more!” I tells ya!

So I have a few New Year’s resolutions:

No more complaining about hangovers
This may seem easy, but not for me. I chronically complain in a habitually moanful manner and I’m a hypochondriac to boot.
I can’t say I function better when I’m drunk and I can’t say that getting drunk gets me laid either. So, putting one and one together, I presume I’m best off not drinking altogether.

However, how on earth can one stay sober when one’s sex life is worse than a nun in a chastity belt’s???
Which leads me onto my second resolution:

Have loads of sex
This may be problematic. I mean, the succes of this resolution is partially out-of-my-hands.
Unless you count masturbation, which makes it more of an in-my-hands sort of a problem.

Do as little work as possible
Work is for horses and slaves. Obviously I don’t have enough money to live an endless life of laziness and debauchery, but I do want to keep labour down to a minimum. Perhaps parasite off some unsuspecting benefit system or sell a kidney or something.

Get published
Okay. I admit it. Before I get an article published, I’m going to have to write an article. Then find out how the publishing business works and then promote myself.
It does reek a little like work though. So, I’d preferably get something published without actually having to write it or anything.

Oh well!
I guess the year of the rabbit would have made me feel more confident...

The art of seduction

2005-12-31T11:54:00.000+01:00

Young men constantly come up to me on the streets and ask: "Mark...how can I best seduce the Ladies?"

As luck would have it, I wrote an article on this very subject for the RHP chess site a year or so ago!
So, to save me constantly e-mailing it around to all these sad and lonely individuals, I'm posting it here for everyone to learn from...

Have a happy new year, and enjoy yourself in 2006!

How to impress girls

Introduction:
Often as I read the forums (or fora as they may happen to be called), in between bouts of serious chess playing, I stumble across the occasional plea for help. Many along the lines of: “Is dating good?” and “How should I behave when…”. So, being the proper little behavioural expert I am, I’ve written a manual for all you young men (obviously a lot of you older boys need a helping hand as well, for surely your own hand is by now tiring…from all the mouse-action on the chessboard…I’m sure) on how to behave from the first date onwards. You can mail me your thanks in 200$ checks. No refunds available, I’m afraid.

Hygiene:
I once held a job interview and the character sitting opposite me had snot dripping down his face. This is not how you go about selling yourself.

Men often underestimate the importance of hygiene to women. Let me prove it: Do women fancy Aragorn or Legolas?
There you go! They fancy Legolas, I’ll let you in on a wee secret: It’s not because of his pointy ears. No! It’s because he has clean finger nails.
SHOWER. Yes, you do smell after 24 hours if you don’t shower.

Brush your teeth. Your breath does smell like a dog’s arse. Seriously, it does. Brush ‘m. Spend at least 3 minutes brushing them and your tongue. Brushing your tongue gets rid of bad breath.

Just in case you do get lucky, and believe me: if you have to rely on my help then the chances are not in your favour, wash your privates. There’s nothing like an unhealthy dose of smegma to ruin a party.

Clothing:
As a cross-over from hygiene to clothing, let me just mention underwear. Yes. Your underpants smell if you’ve worn them the previous day. Change your underwear every day. Even if you don’t think it smells! Change it.

Right. First a very simple fact:
Men do not look better naked. You certainly don’t. Unless you have an ass like a Chippendale (which you don’t) or an arse like Mel Gibson (which you don’t) avoid nakedness until the very last moment.

Do not wear white socks. Seriously…just don’t.
If you are going to be naked (like when having sex) remove your socks. If there’s one thing less attractive than a naked man, it’s a naked man with socks on. Woman can have sex with just their bobby socks on.
Men can’t wear bobby socks, so take them off.

Do not wear underwear with a string up your arse. No tangas, no strings and NO LEATHER underwear. 99% of women find men wearing strings seriously off-putting. If you’ve managed to hook up with that 1%, you’ve hooked up to someone you really don’t want to be with.
Wear boxer shorts. That’s safe. Don’t wear boxer shorts with funny images or texts like: “I like big boobies” on them. Just plain, black boxer shorts.
The rest of your clothing should make you feel relaxed. It doesn’t really matter what you wear, as long as it’s clean and you feel comfortable wearing it.

Body odour:
You don’t want to smell. That’s why you take a shower. You do want to enhance your natural smell (everyone has one, it’s what attracts the opposite sex), that’s why you wear aftershave. You want to protect yourself from starting to smell because of sweating, that’s why you wear deodorant.
Roll on deodorant is the best. It doesn’t mingle with the smell of your aftershave in your clothes. Obviously if you’re really cool you may have matching deodorant and aftershave. Generally though, a roll on 24-hour protection deodorant will last longer.
Men can wear two sorts of ‘aftershave’. Aftershave or eau de toilet. Aftershave is fresher but doesn’t last as long as eau de toilet. Eau de toilet does not mean Toilet odour.
DO NOT OVER-DO YOUR EAU DE TOILET! You do not want to go to the pub, restaurant or cinema smelling like a Taiwanese brothel. It should enhance your natural smell, not smother it.

Watch what your date is eating, drinking etc. If she doesn’t smoke, you don’t smoke. If she doesn’t drink alcohol, you don’t drink alcohol and if she doesn’t eat garlic, you don’t eat garlic. Repeat that sentence once or twice!
There’s nothing worse than snogging someone who tastes like a beer filled ashtray the day after a party when you’ve got a hang-over.
Beer makes your breath smell. One beer is excusable, but when the alcohol stench starts-a-reeking you really need peppermints.
Don’t use chewing gum. You’re not a cow, you don’t want to chew like one.

Behaviour:
I’ve divided this part in three segments: Meeting a girl, going out on the first date and first sex. Please don’t skip the first two parts…

Meeting a girl:
Everybody is insecure. Well, obviously not everybody is insecure, but the majority of people who are not should be and generally they are men who wear strings or are women who fancy men in leather underwear.
But, as a good rule-of-fist, most girls think they are too fat, most are obsessed about how they appear and most don’t find themselves interesting.
This is not good for them…but, it is good for you!

You are insecure as well (especially if you’ve bothered to read this all the way through…). That’s why you should shower, that’s why you shouldn’t drown yourself in aftershave and that’s why I’ve told you to wear clothes you feel comfortable in. You need to build up your self-confidence.
Everybody thinks self-confident people are attractive. Insecurity is not attractive and unless you are justifiably good at something, then being arrogant about it is not attractive either (this means that you can be attractively arrogant, but you need to be as good as you boast to pull it off…so…basically…don’t go there! You’re just not that good. Accept it).

So there’s a thin line to wander along here. Acceptance is the key. No. Don’t question me. Accept yourself. Your zits. Your glasses. Your belly. Just accept them.
Self confidence expresses itself by being able to laugh at your own ineptness.
It’s not bad to be fat. It’s bad to be so serious about it that you become unconfident about it.
It’s not bad to have crooked teeth. It’s sad if you can’t laugh at them.
Accept yourself and laugh at yourself.

Failure is not bad. Failure is experience. Every experience should have its funny sides. Accept failure and laugh about it. Don’t fail slightly. Fail grandly.
If you fail by 0.5 of a point people will call it tragic. If you fail by 10 points and you lift your eyebrows and say: “Holy macaroni…am I really that crap?” People will admire you. Your greatest failures should become your best anecdotes in life! People connect with grand failure in ways they can’t with equally grand successes.

Oh. Don’t constantly point out your own weaknesses! It’s best to wait for other people to pick up on them. Then you laugh at them. If you’re pointing them out, they are no longer weaknesses and it may look as if you’re manipulating the situation…

Be honest. If you think someone looks good. Tell them. If you think someone has lovely eyes…tell them (do for god’s sake make sure you know which colour they are though!). If you think someone’s hair is lovely, compliment them.
If someone looks you in the eye, smile at them and then look away. Don’t look away at nothing, look away at something or somebody.
If you are all alone somewhere, don’t fidget. Read a book.
Don’t be afraid to touch someone. Don’t be too willing either.
Don’t use chat-up lines. If you have nothing interesting to say, don’t say anything. Observe what’s happening. Comment on that. There’s always something happening.

Don’t look at her mammary protuberances (that’s her tits by the way)! Yes. She is showing cleavage on purpose, but don’t look at them. Think of looking at her breasts as a sort of venus-fly-trap. She wants you to look at them, but by looking at them you’re throwing everything away.
Don’t question it, just do as I instruct and you’ll be fine.

Don’t ask girls out to dinner. Don’t invite them back to your house. Don’t take them to concerts and don’t invite them to parties unless you are inviting a group at the same time. Once you’ve met a girl, and you think you like her, ask if she wants to meet up (at least 2 days later, 5 at the most though) and have lunch (middle of the day) or a donut (end of the day, still during daylight though).
If she asks if you’ll phone, phone her the next day. Never phone more than once. If you get an answering machine say who you are and what your phone number is. Don’t phone a second time.

The first date:
You are all ready for your first date. Basically everything above is what you need to know. If everything goes well, then you can invite her out to do whatever you both find interesting. A couple of pointers do come to mind though:
Be interested in her. Let her do most of the talking. Girls like to talk about themselves, it makes them think they’re important (is that sexist? Well…just to be fair…men are exactly the same, but since this is a guide for men, let the woman talk!).
If you are going to initialise the goodbye kiss (which is quite alright to do). Make sure she knows you are aiming for her cheek for a quick peck. If she wants more, she’ll turn her head. Your kiss on her cheek should not be soggy. Once you’ve kissed her cheek smile at her and say your goodbye, turn and walk away. It generally is best if you’ve already picked a next date by this time though…

First sex:
There are proper ways to kiss. Move your lips when you are kissing; your mouth is not a suction pad. Your tongue is not a cement mixer.
Touch her face when you are kissing… not constantly though.

Right. No matter what your older brother or your best friend has told you: Women do not want to be spanked on a first date and they really don’t want to hear you whisper in a hoarse voice: “Who’s your daddy?”

REMOVE YOUR SOCKS.

Don’t rip clothing. You’re not in a Hollywood B-film. You don’t want to appear to know but one position, but you don’t want to seem to be trying out the whole Kama Sutra either. 2 or 3 positions is quite fine. No, not the Lotus position. Not the one where she’s on her head and you are balancing on the wardrobe either.
Missionary is good. You can look at each other with that one. It’s good for going slow. A great starter and a great finisher.
Doggy style is good too. It’s another sensation for her. No, I wasn’t joking…don’t spank her. And equally (or probably more so) don’t stick your fingers up any extra holes whilst in this position on a first date either.
Her on top.
There you go. 3 very basic positions. All three give different sensations and all three are perfectly normal and most people do them.

An old cliché, but perfectly true: She should orgasm first.
If it’s going to be a one night stand (like if she’s a total skank or something), don’t worry about it. But, if you really like her, you are probably aiming for a follow up…so you want to impress her.
Most girls don’t orgasm during copulation! So that means you have to do other things as well. The clitoris is not the arc of the covenant and your tongue is not Indiana Jones though. Don’t dive in there like you’re Tarzan trying to save his monkey! Slowly work your way to where you want to be.

If you don’t know what the clitoris is or where you can find it, look it up in an encyclopaedia. That’s one of those big books full of information. You can find them in most libraries (big building full of books). If you feel uncomfortable asking the ageing lady behind the desk which volume you need, ask for the volume with ‘clique’ in it. Say that you are interested in group behaviour or something.

If you are not sure what she thinks of something you are doing…ask. It’s better to be sure she’s enjoying herself rather than her suffering as you do sexual suicide.

To sum it all up:
You are now all ready to go out and enjoy yourself. You know everything you need to.
Make a few more chess moves.
Do a couple of relaxing shoulder exercises.

Clean yourself!
Accept failure!
Wear a condom!

Party on!

Anybody notice the blatant hypocrisy between this post and yesterday's?

I stare at tits

2005-12-30T16:14:00.000+01:00

I’ve noticed, as I try to become ever more self-conscious, that I’m one of those people who stare at women’s breasts.
Really stare.
Okay, I admit, I don’t only stare at women’s breasts, I stare at nearly anything as my mind wanders along paths of memories and meadows of vague connections.

But it seems especially prevailing when I’m bored. Boredom leads my mind to places no other state-of-mind can. And when I’m on the cross-trainer at the gym, I’m bored. Very bored.
And at the gym there’s precious little to look at.

Other than breasts. The women at the gym, as I have mentioned, fall into two categories: the bastards (the beautiful thin people) and the fuglies (the not quite so beautiful and not quite so thin people). However, both categories have one thing in common: body tight lycra. It’s really dreadfully easy to get caught up in the wobbly action and pre-dominant nipples.

And so you’ll find me langlaufing along, staring at one or other woman’s breasts. I’ll be studying the curves and focussing on the nipples (which tend to get harder the longer she’s training). And I’ll think back to breasts and nipples I once knew.
Maybe it will be an ex of mine who had breasts of roughly the same dimensions. I’ll see her in her dress and I’ll remember her on stage killing a song in front of 500 people.
Amazingly enough, I was once on that very same stage killing a play in front of 500 people as well. It is stage made for killing. In Rotterdam.
I’ll consider the college I was at, through which I was placed on that said stage. The pupils, friends and the teachers. One of the teachers said that I wasn’t appropriate for social work. I wonder about what sort of work he would have thought me suitable for…

And then I’ll notice the woman noticing me noticing her mammary protruberances.
I could look up and give her a thoughtful smile, but I’m so lost in the roller-coaster ride of my recollection and imagination that I just lazily drift my gaze off to someone else.

A man with a bulging crotch.
How on earth can someone have an erection on a training-bike? After 15 minutes on one of them I’m suffering from severe penis shrinkage as the blood’s rushed off to keep my vital organs functioning.
Isn’t the penis a vital organ? It should be.
Imagine going into shock and the ambulance crew saying: “His heart packed it in, but he had a stiffy ‘till the moment he died…”

The problematic predicament of processing peregrination papers

2005-12-29T13:00:00.000+01:00

Good grief.
That's all I basically have to say today.

Good fucking grief.

All I want is to leave Holland on the 2nd of February and go and live elsewhere. Where, I do not know yet.

So, off to the townhall I went roamin'.
"What's your forward address going to be sir?"
"Don't have one."
"That's problematic sir."
"Yes. But it is your problem, isn't it?"
"Well, yes. You can 'write yourself out of the council', but you can only do that one week before you leave. Sir."

And off to the bank I went strollin'.
"You need an address sir."
"But I won't have one."
"Then you can't have a bank account. Sir."

And off to the health insurance people I went walkin'.
"By the new Dutch law, if you have an address you must have a basic health insurance sir."
"But I don't want a basic health insurance, do I? I want a global travelling insurance."
"Yes. I understand. But that is your problem, isn't it? Sir."

There's a triangular beauty to Dutch bureaucracy which transpires rationality like a religion and logic like Ayn Rand.

Now, I also have various pay-per-month "engagements" to sort out, like my mobile telephone. I can only sort that out...once I have the proof I'm not longer living in Holland. And this I need to receive from the townhall, who won't write me out before I'm about to leave...and then there's the bank and the insurance.
It's fiendish to the max.

Sigh....