Single-Digit/Secretarial

"Hi, how are you? My name's Elliot, and I'm with the Cub Scouts of America. We're...we're selling uncut cocaine to get to the jamboree."

If this were a movie, it would be Michael: The Home Entertainment Years, and it would open on a shot of two hands with dirty fingernails typing in a lunatic hybrid of single-digit and secretarial styles. There would be no sound save the clackety-clack rhythm of the keys. It would be dark. That would be your second clue, after the dirty fingernails, that this is now.

Then is me standing ten feet behind a lonely bus stop on the last morning of February. I'm incongruous in a black leather overcoat in the middle of a picture that appears lightly bleached due to the fine layer of frost that covers everything. From my vantage point, I can see all the way down the main road to the railway station. There are no buses in the near future.

If you look closely at the bus stop, you can see that the glass is all smashed and the timetables are gone. There is a woman standing there smoking a cigarette. A few minutes later, another woman comes along, followed shortly thereafter by a couple. They all smile and exchange greetings. There is no subtlety in the comparison between plural and singular. You can't hear me laughing, but if you're really paying attention, you might notice the condensation rising from my mouth in irregular bursts.

My thought, the punchline of my private joke, it's three words: Sexual Harassment Panda. You either get that reference or you don't.

Eventually, we get on the bus and the bus drives away. It is not particulary sweeping or epic.

A short while later, I'm standing outside the home entertainment store with Claire. We are co-workers who have yet to hold a meaningful conversation. We smile and mutter greetings and exchange awkward banter. I'm funny, but not that funny. The manager, who has the keys, is late. How funny I am is inversely proportional to how late he is. It's very cold.

Later still, the manager shows me how to count money in an office that really isn't any warmer than the last morning in February. There are no chairs. For some reason, the Home Entertainment People are not fans of sitting down. I'm wearing my best blank face. Matt, the manager, says to me: "If I'm saying anything you already know, just tell me and we'll move on."

And you don't hear me say it, but if you're good at reading facial expressions, you might translate mine as being roughly equivalent to the sentence: "I believe I recall the basic arithmetic of my childhood."

Even later, in a coffee shop, the woman behind the counter asks me if I want a small or a large cappuccino. When I say I want a large, she laughs as though I have just said the funniest thing she has ever heard in her entire life. For a moment there is silence and everybody looks up at us. The old man closest to me looks expectant, as though I might share my magical formula for instant laughter. I frown at him and he smiles. He has no teeth. I take my hilarious beverage to a table and drink it, glancing at my watch now and then because I only have twenty minutes. Nobody pays any more attention to me except a girl whose eyes cut sideways as she goes by. It's a look that says she might fuck me, but she'd be gone in the morning. Actually it's not, but Monday afternoons are so empty that sometimes it's all I can do to fill them with idle fantasy.

Back amongst the Home Entertainment People, I am the only one without a uniform. They are Corporate Blue, whilst I am Nihilist Black. If you're looking closely, you might detect a hint of smugness in my slight smile. They are babbling about nothing, like the adults who "wah wah wah" in Charlie Brown cartoons, until they start talking, for some reason, about how many letters there are in the alphabet. Matt says: "Twenty-two."

I say: "Tell me you're joking."

And Dan says: "How many is there? Thirty-six?"

And I look at them and I'm actually a bit horrified. Claire finishes serving her customer, and I say: "Claire, how many letters are there in the alphabet?"

And she says: "I don't know, thirty-two?" and laughs.

I say: "There are twenty-six," and they all look at me. I say: "I'm the freak," and I'm actually a little bit surprised.

The end would be like the beginning. It would be now again. It would be the fingers with the dirty nails typing single-digit/secretarial in the room with the light off and the door and the curtains closed. It would not be particularly sweeping or epic. If it were a movie, I mean.

The Oscars Are Stupid

"Are you one of the beautiful people? Am I on the wrong track? Sometimes it feels like I'm made of eggshells, and it feels like I'm gonna crack."

They are. I mean, who in the fuck would want to watch a bunch of egomaniacal shitwits mincing about as though what they do is somehow important? And if you thought The Oscars were important, well, I'm here to set you straight. It is, in fact, an event at which a large amount of people who do small amounts of work for unspeakable amounts of money get together to share the orgasm that must surely arrive at the end of yet another year of furious masturbation. And no doubt some fucker will, at some point, stride out onto the stage and announce a wonderful initiative that will raise money for the victims of the Tsunami. This announcement will receive feelgood applause from a hall full of people who make more in a year than you'll make in a lifetime wearing outfits with a combined value somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.

I'm sitting here laughing because I type shit like this and I always end up wondering if it's just me. I mean, am I being incredibly naive? Am I missing some small and vital point that somehow makes this an acceptable way to behave? I must be, because I don't see anybody else complaining.

Fuck The Oscars. And if you indulge these hypocritical pricks, then fuck you too.

One Of God's Own Prototypes

"Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time."

It was August of 1999, and I had just woken up with both the mother of all headaches and a stomach that felt as hollow and dry as the tongue that was glued to the roof of my mouth. It was ten-thirty in the morning, and I had gone to bed less than three hours before. I rolled over and snatched up my phone.

"'Lur?"

"C."

"Murk? He coughed and then spat away from the phone, though not so far as to prevent me from suppressing a dry heave. "Mike?"

"Yeah. Me."

"The last thing I remember about last night was leaving the Long Island Iced Tea Shop."

"Never mind that. We're going to Chessington."

A beat of silence, and then: "Right. See you in ten minutes."

Seven minutes later I was out of the front door and falling into his car, sucking at the first cigarette of the day and gurning as its harsh flavour mingled with the Colgate I hadn't quite washed out of my mouth, making me feel sicker than ever. C, half-drunk and manic, was hunched over the steering wheel. With his eyes hidden behind shades, his teeth clamped around a cigarette holder, and a hat pulled down over his head, he looked the spitting image of Raoul Duke. Without saying a word, he leaned over and popped open the glove compartment. I reached inside and pulled out an oversized pair of aviator shades. C smiled and started the car, and Johnny Depp's voice exploded from the speakers at a quite incredible volume.

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert," he said, "when the drugs began to take hold."

In the summer of 1999, C and I had been acquaintances for around six months. That week, we forged a bond that will last until one of us dies. Why or how it happened is difficult to recall now, but we decided to take a week's holiday from work at the same time, and we decided to spend it getting out of our heads and charging around the country in C's knackered old Peugeot. Those days run into one another in my memory, but I'll always remember the spirit of that week, and the feeling we shared that we were a lunatic partnership walking in the footsteps of the characters from films like Withnail And I, Fight Club, and especially Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.

Funny to think of it now, but I started out roleplaying Dr. Gonzo to C's Raoul Duke because we got incredibly drunk one night and watched Terry Gilliam's adaptation of a Hunter S. Thompson novel neither of us had actually read. We didn't care for the era the story was set in or the protagonist's search for the American Dream. What we cared about was the idea of two complete maniacs with 'two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of uppers, downers, screamers, laughers...and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls'. It didn't really matter to us that Depp and Del Toro as Duke and Gonzo had been on the way to Vegas in a red Chevy convertible while we were generally on our way to the West End on the Northern Line. It was the principal of the thing. We were losing our minds and tempting our demons and it was all okay because we were riding for the Gonzo brand.

Except we weren't. Like a lot of people, we grasped the salient points of Thompson's journey into Fear And Loathing without ever considering context or attempting to read between lines that, after all, were covered with beer, vomit, and a fine dusting of cocaine. No, we bought into the 'violent iconoclast' vision of Hunter Thompson that is even now the most common definition, and we - like many before us and many after - considered him a peerless superman whose special power was his craving for illegal substances, a guy that snorted and smoked and drank and ran wild without fear of the consequences.

I finally sat down and read Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas about a month later. By the end of the year, I'd read everything Thompson had ever written, and I'd quit pretending to be Dr. Gonzo except when I was really drunk.

Since then, I've referenced HST more often than I care to remember. He's been a powerful influence on my prose, my politics, and my worldview. I've riffed on his style and tempo more than a few times, and I've quoted him where I felt my own words were less than adequate. If you're familiar with Thompson's adventures in Aspen politics and the pieces he wrote regarding the Freak Power movement, then you might have seen very definite echoes of the views he espoused in my essays on the current political climate. All this is not to say that I've emulated or plan to emulate Hunter. I just feel that reading his work gave me a sense of hope that the gap between the music I hear in my head and the words I eventually use to describe it could be bridged. That isn't something you learn at school, and it certainly isn't something that people who claim they know the rights and wrongs of writing prose really understand.

There's a lot about Thompson that people will never really understand. He wouldn't have been the celebrity he was were it not for his hard-earned Outlaw and Iconoclast badges, but by the same token, it was descriptions like those that coloured any reading of his work and meant that a descent into self-parody was almost inevitable.

Thompson and his alter ego Raoul Duke were creatures of the sixties and seventies. His natural allies were guys like Ken Kesey, and his natural enemy was Richard Nixon. That era's atmosphere of opposition and upheaval was the perfect springboard for Hunter's cutting opinions and graphic, lyrical prose. He was never better than when he was allowed to run free amongst the straight media and the politicians, reporting back with a sort of weary naivety interspersed with brutal trips into crazed fantasy that were frequently bought to hideous life by illustrator Ralph Steadman. This partnership arguably peaked with the seminal novel Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and then Fear And Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72, in which Thompson follows George McGovern and Richard Nixon to the dark heart of the American Dream and comes back with what I think is the funniest, truest, most tragic chronicle of modern day politics you will ever read.

Then came Watergate. Nixon limped away to San Clemente and a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter passed the time until Ronald Reagan stomped into office and a lot of people got fat and rich. The story of what changed between the limp climax of Watergate and the election of Ronald Reagan is a novel in itself, but it's fair to say that there wasn't much room for a man like Hunter S. Thompson in this brave new world. He went on writing throughout the eighties, nineties, and even the noughties, but while the style, the outrage, the wry humour, and the talent for lunatic parody were all present and correct, you can't read some of that work without a feeling that Hunter was becoming increasingly irrelevant. His time had passed, and it was senseless for him to cover what had always been his beat - the death of the American Dream - because it was too late. As Thompson himself admitted, the dark tale of the American Dream died with Nixon.

I was up in Bedford, at N's, when my phone buzzed and I looked down at the screen and saw the words 'Hunter Thompson has died'. I said "Oh," and that was all. I sat down and stared at nothing, feeling hollow and slightly breathless. I was thinking of Jenn and I and our pilgrimage to Vegas, of C and I and our seven day drunken rampage, of the first time I read Midnight On The Coast Highway (from Hell's Angels) and realised I'd finally found a writer with the words to reach inside me and twist my heart.

All the obituaries, it seems, are mentioning the same books and the same quotes, using the same adjectives they always use when it comes to Hunter S. Thompson. Seeing that press-pack approach used for a writer so talented, influential, and unique just about broke my heart. Hunter once wrote of his friend Oscar Acosta: '[he] was one of God's own prototypes - a high powered mutant of some kind who was never even considered for mass production. He was too weird to live and too rare to die'. He could, I'm sure, have just as easily been writing about himself. There will be greater writers and there will be lesser writers, but there will never be another Hunter S. Thompson. It's only when you lose such a beautifully discordant note that you realise how much everything else sounds the same.

Res Ipsa Loquitor. Rest In Peace, Hunter.

Resident Evil

"I can't help it. I was dragged up. My favourite park's a car park, grass is something you smoke, birds are something you shag. Take your year in Provence and shove it up your arse."

Other than bills, junk, and the odd proposal of marriage, I don't get an awful lot of snail-mail. So imagine my surprise this morning when I discovered that those kindly folks from my local Conservative Party had chosen me, John Q. Cynical Bastard, to give my views on some extremely pressing local matters. The questions they asked came in the form of a Residents survey, and because I'm a beautiful person, I'm going to share it with you.

Boreham Wood Conservatives Working For You All Year Around screamed the little catchphrase at the top, presumably taking some kind of pop at the Labour Party. You have to admit, that's slightly hypocritical coming from people who have decided to ask for my opinion now, when we're two months off a General Election. But hey, it's politics, I guess. Let's do the survey.

1. Issues - Which 3 local issues most concern you (please number 1, 2, 3 in order of priority).
a) Flytipping
b) Speeding
c) Vandalism
d) Parking
e) Road repairs
f) Crime
g) Protecting Green Belt

Uh, how come there isn't a 'none of the above' option? And why is it all pissy stuff that only little old ladies give a fuck about? I appreciate that local politics is dull as fuck, but golly, I'm sure glad we've got our priorities straight enough to understand that the ever-growing gap between haves and have-nots and the fact that our elected representatives seem to neither understand nor care about the state of our town is nothing compared to the life-threatening menace of parking.

Which 3 national issues most concern you (please number 1, 2, 3 in order of priority).
a) Health
b) Education
c) Pensions
d) Environment
e) Illegal immigration
f) Referendum on European Constitution
g) Taxation

This is the Conservative Party, right? The policies are pretty clear cut. If I say health or education or pensions are priorities, you'll presume I mean they need privatising. If I mention illegal immigration or the European Constitution, you'll know that of course I mean that all foreigners are evil fuckers that only come over here to steal our jobs while those bastarding bureaucrats in Brussels legislate the shape of vegetables and come out with mealy-mouthed concepts I don't understand, like 'human rights', whatever the hell that is. I don't need to mention taxation, because we all vote with our wallets. As for the environment, well, pay it the usual lip service and we'll all nod and agree that we're terrible people and really need to improve.

2. Trust In Government - The government has recently been attacked for being untrustworthy. Do you trust Tony Blair's government?

I trust Tony Blair about as far as I could throw him. By the same token, I trust you about as far as I could throw you. Right now, I'm guessing I could probably throw Tony slightly further. Not that it matters. I use my ballot paper to write poetry and draw stick figures queueing up at the job centre and crying because they can't get a mortgage.

3. Roads And Pavements - Are there any road or pavement problems you would like to see repaired? (please give details)?

I'm going to assume you're joking and move on.

4. Environment - Are there are any litter hotspots, badly weeded roads, or other enviromental problems that you think should be cleaned up (please give details)?

You weren't joking. Okay, there are some garages just down the road from my house and if you walk past them you'll see used needles and condoms and occasionally a dead person. Litter hotspot? I think so.

5. Law And Order - Should Boreham Wood have more Bobbies on the beat?

Sorry about snorting lemonade all over your survey, but the only time I've heard the phrase 'Bobbies on the beat' from anyone that hadn't lived through two world wars, they were an American tourist putting on a fake English accent and thinking those ridiculous fucking hats our 'Bobbies' wear were 'kinda neat'. Really, I appreciate that you're the Conservatives and all that, but Christ, it's 2005. Should Borehamwood have more POLICE OFFICERS ON DUTY? Yes. Those badly weeded roads are just completely out of control.

6. About You - Which party did you vote for at the last General Election?

I put a large cross through my ballot paper. Twice.

Which party would you vote for if there was a Council Election tomorrow?

Clue: Not yours.

Which Party would you vote for if there was a General Election tomorrow?

Poetry and stick figures, dude. It's all planned out.

Another Glamorous Martyr

"How does it feel? How should I feel? Tell me, how does it feel to treat me like you do?"

There are no fans of The Libertines in the Darkened Room, and there are certainly no fans of 'rock bad boy' Pete Doherty, or the saga of his drug addiction, ridiculous behaviour, and on/off relationship with professional twiglet Kate Moss. Of course, the fools that make up the British media never listen to the likes of me, and so the last month or so has seen story after endless story about the boy Doherty not turning up for gigs, turning up for gigs looking like a zombie, being photographed injecting heroin, telling a notorious tabloid he's in love with the twiglet and sharing his photos of her, being dumped by the twiglet for sharing his photos of her with a notorious tabloid, and worrying his poor mother sick.

I happen to think there's nothing at all exciting about yet another dull British band, yet another supposed bad boy, yet another fuckwit supermodel, and yet another carefully constructed media myth that'll probably make Doherty yet another glamorous martyr when he finally drowns in his own vomit.

Today's Pete story concerned last night's NME Awards, where he was scheduled to perform an acoustic set and meet up with ex-bandmate Carl Barat, who kicked him out of The Libertines last year. Young Mr. Doherty ended up pulling a no-show after a heart-to-heart with his mum (I am not making any of this up), prompting such rock luminaries as Noel Gallagher and Paul McCartney to pay tribute to him in his absence.

"He's got spirit and I like that," said Gallagher. "I'm disappointed he's not at the show. He's an anti-hero and we need more of them."

Wanker.

Thankfully, New Order legend Peter Hook was on hand to prick the bubble of hype in his usual subtle fashion. When asked about Doherty and the drugs, Hook was heard to reply: "He just needs a slap."

Peter Hook, one quarter of the team that came up with Blue Monday and a man capable of making an entire nation's media look foolish with a single sentence, the Darkened Room salutes you.

Such Great Heights

“Excuse me. Too busy writing your tragedy. These mishaps you bubble-wrap when you've no idea what you're like.”

I felt like a corpse this morning. Today was third interview day, and I needed to be in St. Albans for eleven o'clock. This necessitated an eight-thirty alarm that seemed to go off about five minutes after I finally got to sleep. Like everything else in these dead times I seem to fall into, it reminded me of the past.

I don't mean to opt out. It isn't a conscious decision. Mostly it's just something that happens. I fall into some job I don't really want and then do it for as long as I can stand to. Eventually, there comes a point when I get tired of all the square peg, round hole baggage that makes itself apparent almost every time I find full-time employment. And when that happens, I usually just drop everything and walk away.

Of course it's dumb. It's dumb like wanting to write fiction for a living or getting into a serious relationship with someone that lives eight timezones away. It's dumb like jumping naked into an abandoned quarry full of freezing water in the middle of February. I have done all of these things, and as long as they feel right, I will continue to do them. Dumb is the substitute word for brave when you forget that you only have one life or start believing in heaven. Dumb, in this instance, is the opposite of safe. If you leave a job without having another to go to, try to make other people understand the things in your head without studying for some kind of security, take the girl that isn't going to leave you with all this distance and heartache, or stand pale and shivering on the banks 'cause you don't know how cold it is or if there are rocks down there or what, then you'll be okay. Dull, bitter, and full of regret...but okay. Secure. Safe. The only thing you'll have to fear are the times you're going to wake up at 3am feeling hollow and ashamed because you took the blue pill.

The past was the cinema offices and the business side of bars and even the cafeteria in the 24 hour supermarket. The past was exhaustion. The past was a folder kept in my rucksack or paper ripped from the waitress's notepad, pens stolen from the boss's drawer or the pint glass by the till where we kept our tips. Seems strange to be nostalgic for that, but maybe that sense of urgency is what I've been missing; the energy I had when my lunchbreak was at two in the morning and I drank three cups of coffee and smoked three cigarettes and wrote three pages before trudging back to the shelf-stacking; the inspiration I had when I could watch a couple hitting the peak of a domestic dispute before falling in love again, right there in the middle of the pub with everyone staring, and make a queue of customers wait while I took notes.

The present was scraping my sandpaper face with a razor and trying to remember how to knot a tie, was slipping into the black leather overcoat I painted with scuff cover before I went to my first interview because it's the only coat I own, was walking these same streets and getting on that same train and meeting the same guy I met ten days ago to talk about the same things. But my New Year's resolutions have become the basis of a plan for the near future, and that plan requires me to be doing a job I can do with the wages and prospects I require.

Six weeks ago, you may remember me making some promises about 2005. Since then, I've quit smoking, massively reduced my alcohol intake, made major inroads into improving my health and general well-being, and started working harder than I can demonstrate towards making myself happy.

You're damn fucking right I got the job.

Avril, Fido, And The Little Brown Book

"I am fairly sure that if they took porn off the internet, there would only be one website left, and it would be called 'bring back the porn'."

I had an extremely strange dream last night. It started with me sitting in a re-arranged version of my living room. There were several other people with me that I didn't recognise. We were watching TV. Presently, Avril Lavigne walked in and sat down on the sofa beside me. We talked for a while, and it became apparent that I was blatantly chatting her up. She was amenable to this, and before too long we were snuggled up and holding hands.

Then Andrew, a guy I know from websites past that I haven't spoken to in nearly eighteen months, walked into the room. I said my goodbyes to Avril, and Andrew and I left the room, walking out through the door that would usually lead to my hallway. In this case, it lead to an urban wasteland on a freezing winter's night. There were perhaps ten of us, and we were going to see some men to buy weapons from them. I wasn't really sure why, but Andrew was angry with somebody, and in order to even the score, he needed a great deal of weaponry.

We eventually arrived at the foot of a tall building in the centre of a square. Its walls were covered with graffiti, and its windows were shattered. Leaving the others outside, Andrew and I made our way up several flights of stairs to a room that was filled with several large groups of boisterous young men dressed for an evening on the town. Lending credence to this impression was the fact that the room was almost a makeshift pub, with sofas pushed up against the walls and one side given over to a well-stocked bar. Andrew nodded at me and went through a set of double doors opposite those we had entered through. I sat down on one of the sofas.

The next thing that happened was that there was some kind of argument at the bar. The barman began yelling at the participants. At that moment, the double doors burst open and a slim, dark-skinned man with a beard strode through. He was wearing some kind of military uniform and a turban. I knew him, and like everybody else in the room, I was terrified of him. A deathly silence fell.

Fido (in my mind, that was his name) stood there a moment, then said: "Who made a down payment with a card issued in 1994?"

Nobody moved or spoke for several seconds. Then, slowly, a young man seated on the couch beside mine raised his hand. Fido saw the gesture, and his eyes widened.

"Oh shit," someone murmured. "Non-verbal gesture."

Fido reached down into a crate that had suddenly appeared beside him and came up holding a machine gun. Everyone hurled themselves to the ground except for me and the young man with his hand raised. Fido pulled the trigger, and I found myself transfixed by the muzzle-flash that danced at the end of the gun, only peripherally aware of the spastic dance of death the young man beside me was doing as the bullets smashed into his body.

Finally, he stopped firing. The young man slumped slowly to the floor as Fido turned the gun on me.

"The boy upstairs, he is your friend?" he asked.

"Associate," I replied.

"Your associate is dead," he said.

I nodded, and then, remembering the horror in the voice that had mentioned non-verbal gestures, said: "Yes."

"Do you want to complete the transaction?"

"I can't afford to."

"We have taken the payment from your associate."

"Then consider it a gift. I was only along for the ride."

Fido smiled, letting his gaze flicker briefly to the barrel of the gun. "An intelligent boy. Are you afraid?"

"No," I said, aware that all eyes were on us, that there was an air of expectation in the air. Expectation, I realised, of my violent death.

"You believe you'll go to heaven," Fido sneered.

"I don't believe in heaven."

His eyes widened, and I heard several suppressed gasps.

"I'm godless," I said.

His smile widened and he lowered the gun. He reached inside his jacket with his free hand and pulled out a small, brown book. There was no title that I could see.

"Will you read this?" he asked.

We stared at each other for a long, long moment. The tension in the room was palpable.

"No," I said.

"Very intelligent boy!" Fido yelled, and everyone jumped. "We could use a very intelligent boy here. Come back and see me soon."

I nodded. Fido indicated that I should leave with a sweep of his arm. I walked steadily to the door knowing that I was about to be shot in the back.

Then I woke up.

Deliver Me From Swedish Furniture

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole cover and die."

The BBC News page is currently offering a gem of a story about 'several people' being hurt as rabid bargain-hunters ran wild at the opening of a new Ikea store in Edmonton, North London (just down the road from the Darkened Room). Apparently underestimating the eldritch powers of cheap Scandinavian coffee tables, the company were slightly taken aback when some 5,000 people turned up to their grand opening and then - following several incidences of queue-jumping - went nuts.

Local MP David Lammy was scandalised, and he more or less accused the sinister Swedes of doing the whole thing on purpose, as a part of their plan to take over the civilised world.

"Ikea must have known that in opening the store next to the second most deprived constituency in London and by leafleting the area about knock down bargains for those who arrived first, people would flock to their store in large numbers," he roared. "They did not put in place a garrison of Aryan warriors with cobalt blue eyes and batons made from freshly-stripped oak saplings, and they have reaped the whirlwind."

The furniture riot apparently started when the queue jumpers caused the front doors to be closed to people who had been waiting for some time. The crowd became agitated and - like sheep in heat - they charged the main entrance, snorting and uttering high-pitched mating cries. Many were shoved to the ground and brutally stamped on, while others were thrust face-first into the plate glass doors, suffering horrific and permanent injuries.

"They were like beasts of the wild," said passer-by Jackie Maydup. "Like lions. Lions wearing coats. And shopping."

Those who survived the stampede got themselves some "right tasty bargains," an Ikea spokesman said earlier this evening. He then held his little finger up to his mouth like Dr. Evil before laughing and running away.

Stop-Start Insecurities

“Lady, people aren't chocolates. Do you know what they are mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard fillings. But I don't find them half as annoying as I find naive bubble-headed optimists who walk around vomiting sunshine.”

At the moment, trying to write is, for me, like watching a magician in some cheap club where the wallpaper is peeling in strips and nobody ever applauds. Not even sarcastically. The magician's skin is coloured dull orange and his desperate, hopeful smile reveals teeth so white they look painted on. He removes his hat, puts his hand inside, and then...and then nothing. He just stands there with his fake smile and the light beginning to catch the perspiration at his hairline and the audience exchanging glances.

I haven't been able to work on Welcome To Forever in any detail for months now. In fact, I've barely worked on it at all. Other than that, my only works of any significance were Lanterns And Shades and my Trip Diary. I'm proud of the latter, but to be honest, Lanterns... was just a fluff piece, something I did for the blog readers and as an exercise in writing a lengthier piece of fiction. The rest was all random journal entries and erotic fiction that I've never felt was worth all that much, though I know there are those that disagree. Since New Year, nothing at all. The creative well is apparently dry.

I don't crave cigarettes or alcohol particularly, but I am harbouring a perverse desire to be back where I was just a couple of months ago, typing like a lunatic with a half-empty bottle on one side and an overflowing ashtray on the other, that burning in my stomach and the loss of inhibition that seemed to steal the stop-start insecurities out of my writing and let it flow till it felt like music. I'd write pages on that high, then stop for a cigarette to breathe the tension out of my system, pour myself another drink, and throw myself right back after whatever idea I was chasing...

I shouldn't let myself romanticise it that way. You and I both know that it's a matter of routine and habit, something that can be overcome with concentration and discipline. I freely admit that these are two virtues I do not possess in abundance, and that's probably what's making it so hard for me to get at a certain part of my brain right now. I have maybe eleven short stories in my head and as notes scribbled on various sheets of paper or entered into the message box of my mobile phone. Every time I come to write one, though, I find myself unable to begin. I type a few words, maybe get as far as a couple of sentences, then delete and start again, repeating until I lose interest and find something else to occupy me. I have to after a while, because I get to tapping my toes and my fingers, to chewing my nails and grinding my teeth, to tasting bourbon I haven't drunk and remembering how good a cigarette can taste when you haven't had one in a while.

I'm slightly less prolific in the blog than I was before, but at least I can still sit down and write a post. Same with the various forums and communities I visit. It's fiction that's the bitch. It's telling a story. When Welcome To Forever wasn't happening, I tried short stories in various genres. When that didn't work, I tried going back and doing some much-needed editing on older work. Nothing. Finally, I decided the other night that I was going to write a basic, blatant story about Romero-esque zombies. It wasn't going to be a tale I'd do anything with, just something simple and fun to get me back into the groove.

Two days I've been working at it now, and I don't even have a sentence.

Still, I'm sure I'll hit on something sooner or later. It's just that this is the first time I can recall being genuinely afflicted with a block I can't write my way around. At this point, I'd be happy if the magician lifted a handful of dry rabbit turds out of the hat, so long as I knew there was something in there.

False Advertising

"Make your enemies, make your moves, make your critics fumble through, make it smart, and make it schmooze. Make it look easy."

Programme Management Capability Development Officer
The Programme Management Office (PMO) is a new strategic-level team within Transport for London (TfL). Embedding a new PM methodology and approach with TfL, this role will be responsible for the long term visioning and development of a Project Management capability. Working in close liaison with recognised expert organisations (e.g. TfL Centre of Excellence, OGC) you will be expected to enhance existing PM methodologies and organise staff capability/training initiatives.

The role will involve a large degree of relationship management and facilitation, so the ability to liaise with and manage contractors/consultants and non-direct staff reports is important.

Educated to degree level, ideally with Prince 2 or a recognised PM qualification, you will have at least three years experience of managing a virtual project-based team to deliver to schedule, cost and quality.

Excellent communications skills and the ability to influence others at a senior level is an essential requirement for this post, as are report writing and IT skills.

Translation
The Programme Management Office (PMO) is a new level of bureaucracy established within the Transport for London (TfL) hierarchy so as to make it even harder for anybody to establish just who exactly is to blame for the capital's outdated and unreliable public transport. Descending to hitherto undiscovered extremes of wanky, meaningless language and empty job titles, this role will be responsible for clouding people's minds by using words that don't actually exist, such as 'visioning'. Meeting in your office with people who have the exact same job as you under a different name, you will be expected to scratch your arse and drink a lot of coffee.

This role will involve a significant degree of stalling, avoiding the issue, and outright lying, so the ability to smile like you're actually looking forward to your appointment in the deepest pits of Hades is essential.

Educated to pretentious twat level, ideally with a piece of paper that says 'degree' on it somewhere, you will have at least three years experience of suppressing feelings of guilt and moral obligation, as well as practical experience of projects where it takes seventy-six people from twenty-two different offices with very long names several years to, say, make a paper airplane.

Convincing claims of innocence and the ability to point the finger are essential requirements for this post, as are illegible handwriting and a talent for finding pictures of tits on the internet.

The Man Comes Around

"Fuck what you know. You need to forget about what you know, that's your problem. Forget about what you think you know about life, about friendship, and especially about you and me."

Hey, look! I finally wrote something about films that I LIKE. This was going to be a part one rather than a stand-alone post, but seeing as it took me a week to write this entry, I think I'll just leave it alone until the next time I feel like it. Needless to say, these are not the only three films I have ever liked, more the beginning of a much longer list.

La Haine (1995)
Starring: Vincent Kassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui, Abdel Ahmed Ghili. Director: Mathieu Kassovitz.

La What?
La Haine. It means 'Hate'. Like the rest of the film, it's French.

Oh no. Subtitles?
I'm afraid so. It's black and white, too.

Way to start the list with some intellectual 'art' movie, dumbass.
It's not an art movie. It's a simple yet hard-hitting tale about racism and poverty, and the hatred and violence they breed. It just happens to be low-budget and French.

Will I know anyone in it?
Vincent Kassel's been in lots of things. He was the voice of Monsieur Hood in Shrek. Mathieu Kassovitz is probably more famous as an actor than a writer/director. He was in The Fifth Element and Amelie.

Rate this Kassovitz fella, do you?
On the basis of this film, yes. La Haine is built around the very slim premise of three friends finding a gun. This event occurs in the wake of a sixteen-year-old boy being beaten almost to death by police. The estate the three come from is on the brink of a riot, and tensions are high. The film simply follows their journey through the shabbier parts of Paris and their confrontations with the police, skinheads, and the middle class. The lack of colour and the raw, natural performances of the leads give the impression that the viewer is only one step removed from watching a documentary. You will be drawn quickly and powerfully into their lives, and when the film's shocking denouement comes, you will feel it.

Feel it?
I cried the first time. I really cried. The closing monologue will haunt you.

Anything else we need to know?
Nope. Just track it down.

---

Fight Club (1999)
Starring: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter. Director: David Fincher.

But EVERYONE's seen this, and EVERYONE likes it.
So? It's good.

What makes it good?
Well, the screenplay is an extremely underrated adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's second best novel. I'm of the opinion that screenwriter Jim Uhls did an absolutely fantastic job making Palahniuk's black humour just that little bit more accessible and quotable. Fincher's direction just fills in the blanks. What you end up with is a mainstream film with its roots very much planted in somewhat darker territory. It's extremely subversive, but that aspect is somewhat counteracted by the spirit of the age, which leans towards irony and knowing humour.

Oh.
I forgive Fight Club for several instances of that because it's done in an intelligent and subtle fashion, unlike, say, the Charlie's Angels movies, which are 'knowing' in the same sense that if someone points a gun at you and pulls the trigger, you know you're going to get shot. McG knows how to make a really long advert, but he's clearly lost when it comes to things like structure and characterisation, never mind more complex concepts like irony and satire. And what kind of FUCKING PRICK has a three letter name that features no vowels and both begins and ends with a capital letter anyway? What the fuck is going on with this fucking guy?

Uh...Michael? No more ranting?
BUT HE'S REMAKING REVENGE OF THE NERDS!

You're joking.
I'm not.

Motherfucker.
Told you. But anyway, Fight Club...

You like the original novel, the adaptation, and the direction. How about the performances?
Edward Norton is awesome as always. Ed can pretty much do no wrong. And what's this? Fincher squeezes another decent performance out of the mannequin that is Brad Pitt. Two in one lifetime must have been too much for the poor guy. He's hasn't lifted his head from the ocean of suck he inhabits for a long while. The rest do okay. I like Helena Bonham Carter, but her part was a difficult one.

How so?
It's a male movie. There's just nothing feminine there. It's about a kind of anomie that's almost exclusively male. I know plenty of females that like this film, but then I quite liked The Bell Jar. Doesn't mean I identified with it. Bonham Carter is a good actress, but the character of Marla is even weaker than in the novel. She seems like an afterthought.

Anything else?
Yes. The soundtrack is fantastic.

If you could fight any celebrity, who would you fight?
Avril Lavigne.

---

Dawn Of The Dead (1978)
Starring: David Emgee, Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger, Gaylen Ross. Director: George A. Romero.

Ooh, I've seen this.
You've seen the remake.

Whatever. Best use of Johnny Cash in a movie ever.
Agreed, but that's the only thing it has over the original.

What's the difference?
How long do you have?

As long as you need, Michael. You made me up as a device to get around the fact that you were having problems writing straight reviews.
Oh...right. Well, firstly, you should know that I am a leading authority on zombies. In fact, my very next 'Secrets Of...' post may very well concern the undead. The remake of DOTD broke a lot of rules as far as reanimated corpse behaviour is concerned, and that didn't sit well with a traditionalist like me. For example, zombies do NOT run.

They don't?
Of course not. They shamble. And they moan. And they bump into stuff. How they get you is not by being faster, it's by sheer weight of numbers. Sure, the 2004 zombies might have been able to deliver those quick shocks that seem to drive horror movies along these days, but they were nothing like as unsettling as Romero's. And Romero's zombies had...well...personality.

Personality.
Right. You could watch the '78 Dawn Of The Dead and then we could have a conversation in which I could refer to individual zombies. You would know what I meant when I mentioned the Hare Krishna zombie or the gun-stealing zombie. In the 2004 version, they're just a horde of bodies. They're also mostly computer-generated. That's a metaphor for something, but I can't be bothered to shape it into the sledgehammer I've been attempting to beat people about the head with for the last six years.

The remake has Ving Rhames, though.
Hey, I'm all for Ving Rhames, but he doesn't even get close to Ken Foree. Rhames is almost certainly the better actor, but Foree, as Peter, had a great character and a great script to play with. The original DOTD centres around only four characters, all of whom you get to know intimately over the course of the film. You care about them and you want to know how things turn out. Romero takes his time getting there, too. It's not about snappy cuts and one-liners and shots where you can't tell what's CGI and what isn't. It's telling a story.

But it's pretty low budget, right? And it's nearly twenty seven years old.
Yes, and it looks both. It's a cult movie for a reason, and I think that's the odd mixture of what it does well (the story, the characters, the direction), and what it doesn't (handmade special effects, poor picture and sound, occasionally horrendous editing, incidences of very bad acting, particularly from David Emge as Stephen). There's also some criminal hair. But if the downside of low budget film making is going to turn you away, then you may as well go watch Mean Girls and get the fuck out of my face. There's nothing for you here.

Okay. How about the soundtrack?
Magnificently strange, mixing tracks by Italian prog rockers Goblin with creepy seventies mall muzak. It's not something you'd ever sit and listen to, but it's unique to say the least, and it fits the film perfectly. I'd buy it, but then I'm a total nerd for this flick, as I'm sure you've noticed.

God. Collectors editions and everything?
Damn straight. I have the collectors editions of all three 'dead' movies, as well as the two accompanying documentaries.

You sad, sad man. So it's a trilogy. If we're gonna watch this one, should we watch the rest, too? And why is this the best?
It is a trilogy, yes. Dawn... is essentially the filling in the sandwich, with the EXTREMELY low budget Night Of The Living Dead (1968) preceding and the rather graphic Day Of The Dead (1985) following. To get Romero's apocalyptic fantasy in its entirety, you should watch all three. I strongly recommend the whole trilogy to anybody who likes a good story and isn't put off by gore. Dawn Of The Dead is the best of the three because it's the most complete, I think. I love the characters, the setting, the story...everything. And there are days when I am quite sure that it's my favourite movie of all time. I can't wait for Land Of The Dead.

Porn 'Tache

"Time and time again, translation seems to sabotage the words. You know, what is said is not what is heard."

So I sat down about an hour ago to write a short piece of prose that fit the strange criteria I was given by my sister yesterday. This is the unedited result. It contains one or two references that you'll find deeply obscure if you're an American.

“Jesus,” I muttered. “Look at that.”

“What?”

“That.”

James finally focussed on the object of my horror. “Jesus,” he said. “That’s a porn moustache if ever I saw one.”

I began to nod, then paused. “Define ’porn moustache’,” I said.

James shrugged. “Bushy,” he replied. “Full. Possibly patchy. Obviously grown purely to tickle the clitori of orange women with enormous plastic tits.”

“Clitori?”

“Like cacti. Less spiky. Harder to find.”

It was ten-to-twelve. We were sitting on the bench outside The Black Dragon, watching the morning shoppers. As the man on whose upper lip this monstrosity lay wandered past unawares, I found my eyes drawn to its uneven bristles. I calculated and compared. Finally, I spoke.

“That moustache,” I said, “had more in common with Bob Carolgees than John Holmes.”

“How can you say that?”

“It was too thick.”

“For porn?”

“Yup. It was a Carolgees, no doubt about it. Maybe a Burt Reynolds, possibly a Tom Selleck. Definitely not a porn ‘tache.”

“The Selleck moustache was not a static entity, Colin. It’s shape changed many times throughout the nineteen eighties.”

“But it’s most famous configuration was in Magnum; straight across the upper lip, no shaping or curling to speak of, quite full, and no sign of patchiness.”

“And he wouldn’t have looked out of place in Cock Craving Nuns.”

“No way. That was a sophisticated moustache, James. Dapper, even. And his hair was way too stylish. Not that I've seen Cock Craving Nuns.”

“You’re talking about Tom Selleck, Col. Style? Class? It’s a porn ‘tache. Besides, Magnum was porn. How many fast cars and big guns do you need?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t porn.”

“And the Burt moustache was far bigger than the Selleck. I wouldn’t have been able to walk up to the Burt of the Smokey And The Bandit years for fear that it might leap off his face and attack me. That’s a ‘tache too big for porn. Christ, can you imagine trying to rub one out with that thing jumping and twitching in front of you? Might as well have a tommy over American Werewolf In London.”

“So a porn ‘tache is a ‘tache that can safely be onscreen when one is masturbating?”

“You know, that isn’t a bad definition. The John Holmes is tacky but inoffensive, much like the Selleck.”

“What about the Charles Bronson?”

“I never liked that one. There was always something evil about it, especially when it started greying.”

“Bruce Grobbelaar?”

“Porn.”

“Why?”

“It was always so neatly trimmed.”

“Gay porn then.”

“Shit.”

“What?”

“There’s an exception to the rule.”

“There is?”

“Ian Beale out of Eastenders. It looked like he’d taken a bite out of a ferret.”

“Offensive then.”

“Without question, Colin, without question. But it was a porn ‘tache. I mean, substitute the scrawny little body of Adam whatsisface for a six pack and a ten inch cock and you’re there, aren’t you?”

I nodded, staring wistfully into the middle distance. “It’s an art, isn’t it? I mean, you can’t fake a proper porn star moustache. You can’t make it happen.”

“Unless you’re a porn star.”

“Or Tom Selleck.”

“Woodyatt. That was his name. Adam Woodyatt.”

“Best moustache ever.”

“Second best.”

“What?”

“Terry Thomas had the best moustache ever. If there was a ‘tache top trumps, he‘d be Galactus.”

“Could Terry Thomas have done porn?”

“With that moustache, Terry Thomas was like Sampson. He could have done anything.”

“Even come up with a strict definition of the porn ‘tache?”

“Even that.”

I smiled. “That’s ten minutes,” I said.

“Thank Christ. It’s your round.”

Close Encounters Of The Third (Interview) Kind

"Spent some time in stormy weather, under clouds of my dilemma. Now there's nothing much to do but sit and rot in front of televisions staring back at me. I'm just waiting for the microwaves to wash me to the sea."

Ordinarily, you go to a maximum of two interviews before they let you know if you've got the job or not. Most times it's only one. Unless you're travelling a huge distance to this job, you can be fairly sure that the interview will take only a few hours out of your day. Yup, applying for a new job is not a process you should expect to massively disrupt your life.

Unless you're me.

I was up at quarter past ten this morning. Quarter past TEN! That's obscene! Now, I know most of you are rolling your eyes and thinking something along the lines of, 'You lazy fucker! I get up at four', but I think it's fair to say that most of you aren't ordinarily awake until five or six in the morning (especially not if you had to be up at four), so spare me a little pity here, okay? I am a creature of the night, and I have little understanding of this thing you call 'daylight'.

So I was up early, mainly because I had to travel to another _______ store, this one roughly the same distance in the opposite direction to the place where I had my assessment. Because I don't drive, though, and because there's no direct transport, I had to get a train into London before getting another one back out again. This meant that it was well after lunchtime when I finally got where I needed to be, just in time for the strangest interview I've ever taken part in.

Normally, one would feel slightly annoyed with oneself if one were to use the word 'piss' during a second interview with a home entertainment company that has a very pronounced leaning towards the family. Me, I felt fine, mainly because the Area Manager had already hurled many curses into the air-conditioned emptiness of the store we'd been wondering around for the past forty-five minutes. I'm not familiar with this method of interviewing potential candidates for a management post, but after today, I'm convinced that it's rather effective. After the bland PR of the Human Resources guys that ran the assessment, I found my second interviewer blunt, honest, and more than a little amusing. I think he liked me too, as he's invited me back for ANOTHER interview some time in the next ten days. In the intervening time, I have been set a task. I must go to one of the competition's stores, make some notes, and then write an incredibly snide report stating how and why the home entertainment company looking ever more likely to employ me is better.

I got home at half past five, which means I have now lost two days to these people. Two WHOLE days that I can never get back. With the possibility of a third looming, and further hours to spend in unpaid industrial espionage, you'd have to think a job was on the cards now...

...wouldn't you?

Uninspired

"Lover, lover, let's pretend we're born as innocents, cast into the world with apple eyes to wish, wish dangerous. My dear delirious to try and leave the rest of us behind. Shot full of diamonds and a million years, the disappointed disappear like they were never here."

Back from a mini-holiday in Bedford with little to report save a second interview with the home entertainment company. That'll happen on Friday, and I'm more than a little confident of them offering me a half-decent position, as the HR guy on the phone today pronounced himself 'extremely impressed' with the way I presented and carried myself during last week's assessment. I'm really hoping so at this point. I just want something I can do without too much stress that actually earns me some money. That said, even if I was still doing an absolutely rubbish job, the fact that I'm not drinking or smoking is saving me somewhere in the region of £200 a month.

That financial benefit is easily the most influential of the secondary reasons for my sudden and violent departure from the world of booze and cigarettes. At this point, I'm looking to basically live at an absolute financial minimum so that I can blow off all my debts and cut ties to whatever companies and state institutions currently have a hold over me. I'm completely sick of writing letters and juggling accounts and lying to people on the phone. I want out of that, and I want out of it soon. Without going into the details of my debts, which are a bunch of little small ones rather than anything major, I reckon I could be looking at a balance sheet coloured a healthy green by September if I followed through with the commitment to making changes I've demonstrated in January.

And I'm blogging about debt. Jesus, I suck. The absence of entries is down to the search for a job crowding out much of my free time. What little I do get is generally eaten up by the worryingly addictive Football Manager '05 and the wonderfully addictive Jennifer. I've been working on a post about movies I like, though, and I should get that up tomorrow. Beyond that, I have no clue what's coming, but I'm sure I'll think of something. Hell, I'll even open it up to you guys. Got something you want me to blog about? E-mail me. If anybody comes up with something that seems like fun, I'll do it. And hey, you'll get a mention on a blog read by approximately eighteen people. How can you resist?