Tuesday 18 October 2011

What I _____ about when I ______ about _____ing

  Prologue

Now I just want to make sure everyone here is still vaguely aware of what’s going on.
I’m just checking, because I know some of you need a little help with these kinds of things and I don’t want anyone telling me later that they hadn’t been fully apprised of the situation, y'know just as we're about to catch the ONE train that leaves from the station every hour to get to that place that only opens for thirty minutes every Tuesday, except it's two minutes until the train comes and you haven't had a wee or bought your ticket or remembered your sandwiches or your anorak or asked permission and now you want me to hold you over the platform so you can take a piss with my one arm wrapped around your waist  so you don't fall over and the other arm holding an umbrella over you 'cos it's whazzing with rain, whilst cradling a mobile to my ear so I can call your mum and check it's all okay. That would be a bit annoying, as I don’t have much time to keep re-capping and explaining everything, even though the Primary School metaphor is just yet another self-indulgently Primary School metaphor that's wearing a bit thin and you're all wondering when I might use some of my "better" school-based jokes, at least the ones that involve Show & Tell or are totally made up like the one about the Vietnamese boy with special needs and lactose intolerance but in actual fact although I'm  unemployed, my schedule is so ram-packed with eating jam on toast and staring into space, I'm still too busy for you.
So in case you weren’t following here’s a recap:
·      This is a blog that is essentially an infrequent record of the tangential ramblings of my mind. I like to keep you on your toes by using things you might not be familiar with, like “footnotes”, y’know just to sorta show off and be all literary and Jorge Louis Borges on your asses (yeah, how d'you like those Forking Babels?) but then I’ll analyse the footnotes themselves so excessively and self-consciously that I’ll make you feel a little uncomfortable for even daring to think I was a pretentious knob. Which you are still in your rights to feel. If there was a face that was all like "sad-face" but like, self-pitying sad-face I could maybe use it now but essentially I don't really care what you think so just like stop tabbing between Facebook and some random google-searches you've got open and concentrate.
·      Sometimes I might throw all of the above right back atcha all in your faces, like, and just put up something literary but again, it’ll probably be so horrifically pretentiously literary and long you won’t want to read it, so feel free to ignore those too.
·      Ultimately, if I had to hard-boil my remit (no one’s making me do this but it’s been a few days since the prolific bi-posting which occurred on the 11th October and I feel the dizzying popularity of those posts- I do check the stats y’know- just left me reeling like some sort of crazed child star Drew Barrymore post E.T. Or something. Emphasis on the ‘or something’), anyway, footnotes, brackets, wedgies, cold-weather, neuroses, spell-checks, unsettling neutrino-news aside, I guess I’m trying, tentatively to be a little funny or at least a little interesting. So just be patient with me.
·      If you don’t ever, ever, ever find my posts remotely amusing that’s fine. Whatever you do, though (this is where the re-cap is most important), WHATEVER YOU DO, don’t you ever, EVER, ever, DARE, to ‘LOL’ on my blog. Because if you do, I’ll ensure you never use the Internet again. Probably by maiming you with a copy of Borges' 'Labyrinths' or something. *Ways and means- I’ve got ‘em.*
If you’re still not following very well I would advise you to attend one of my surgeries, which are open by public demand. Entry is free provided you bring Supermalt and don't question my choice of Motown or Electroey-Indie. To conclude, I was going to mention here a quote from Stewart Lee but instead I thought I might finish off with two companion quotes/pieces of advice:
The first I overheard from an elderly man at The Alexandra public house on Friday: “I won’t hear a word said against Ray Mears because that would be blasphemy”.
The second is from a Lee “Scratch” Perry song and I think it goes some way to put two fingers up at anyone who tries to say he’s losing the plot: “Curly Locks/your father is a pork chop.”
 Ray Mears + Lee "Scratch" Perry= [Insert your answers here]
Right so, we’re all up to speed.

Chapter 1
So I actually began keeping a blog four years ago as I thought it might help me as a way back into Creative Writing after the horrific demoralising experience of having to share my work with Chemistry Undergrads with no writing experience whatsoever who for some… reason.... ($$$?$$$/////bhjghjg) had been allowed onto a so-called pr&st!gious writing course at a well-known Un!versity in the East of England, but I could never actually bring myself to make any of my blog posts public. After moving to Norfolk in July this year I realised I had a choice. Either keep busy by any means possible, even if it meant forcing the chaotic ramblings of my mind onto anyone who was reading (there in lies the beauty of the Internet… the most consensual of all the media… no one’s really forcing you to read my drivel, there are no ad-breaks, no pop-corn investment, no voice of Liz Kershaw unless you actually want it, and so as long as you allow me to keep taking advantage of your minds, I think I will), OR just give in and join the gang of ex Blue Peter presenters that like to hang around outside the Wild Man. It was *literally* (never use that word lightly), as simple as that. Now, for the discipline element. That’s the real problem. However, there are three things I have discovered which have been helping to motivate me:
1. Running (See Murakami - if you’re interested that is. I’m not implying that you don’t understand what running actually is, I'm just saying that there's a correlation between being focused for a creative activity and taking exercise. Geddit? There's nothing to get.)
2. Knowing that people are reading. It doesn’t matter if they aren’t commenting or enjoying but as long as they are reading I will continue to be motivated. (There aren’t any direct references for this, other than that I am vain and enjoy attention). The profligacy of the 11th October and resulting reaction had me so excited I was awake until five in the morning listening to the three songs by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros that I like on repeat. I was feeling so confident I perhaps sold-out too soon and have now allowed Ad-Sense (here’s hoping none of my three followers take umbongo with this) to post ads on my blog. Who knows but in a year's time I may have made 20p from these drunken (more often not, drunken, to my chagrin) ramblings.
3. As above, but specifically: PEER PRESSURE, (thanks Finnginn). As I said above, being as I am now a highly successful blogger with a high number of (three) followers and an approximate number of 350 hits to my blog, so it has been difficult at times to keep up with demand but basically that's why I'm writing this nonsense.
Right, all of that being said, I’ll move on to writing my next post as I’ve got a lot to catch up on and that post about the representation of ‘Shawty’, in Hip-Hop and R&B and my philosophical piece entitled “What you sayin, Bertrand?” aren’t going to write themselves.
*Oh, and in case I misfired the proverbial love custard with my picture of Fassbanger (sic) in my previous post, here are two pictures which I believe we can ALL enjoy (yes, they are the thinking-human's-totty Lord Byron and Stewart Lee! ... Unfortunately I've scoured Plenty of Fish and OkCupid and no such 21st century amalgamation seems to exist in East Anglia, or if they do, they don't want to reply to my propositions). 


4 comments:

  1. Your links are ugly, but your prose is beautiful. Also, what is "running"? Is this some new meme of which I am unaware? I'd click the Murakami link but I can't bring myself to click on anything that ugly.

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  2. -thanks
    -links: fixed
    -things that motivate me:- running (the act of terrestrial locomotion allowing humans and other animals to move rapidly on foot)

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  3. I suppose in the case of humans (and, er, chickens?) that would be bipedal locomotion.

    Google "Umbrance" - this word causes a schism in humanity that makes the Israeli/Palestinian conflict pale into insignificance.

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  4. i almost wrote bipedal locomotion but couldn't quite bring myself to. then, funnily dallied over umbrance, thinking is that a word? googled it and when it came up in a sentence similar to mine, thought it must be fine. maybe i'll make my next post about UMBRAGE. except i've got three other things i need to finish writing about so maybe it'll have to join a queue. i could perhaps do a post on malapropisms entitled, "you'll get your curmuffins"

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