The Realignment Of Keith And Beef

Search volumes for beef have recently passed that for Keith. This may be a seasonal trend such as the recent comeback of Jesus searches over pirates. I'm beginning to suspect that Jesus is a pirate.

2016

I had always suspected that the year is arbitrary and according to historians it is highly likely that it is somewhere between 2014 and 2018. I'm again being arbitrary and choosing 2016. You see our year is based on the Christian calender and was calculated many years after Jesus' birth by a monk tasked to do so by the Romans. This level of incompetence has us entering 2010. Really it is just another day.

The astrological clock I can trust, but the actual year number is a load of shite - a reference point for us to track the last couple of thousand years since it was counted. Surely we couldn't have miscounted a whole year since that year zero was set? I've confidence in that. All I know is that I'm still 27. Take it this way, The Earth has orbited The Sun 27 and a bit times since I was born. I've been keeping a close eye on it. Happy 2016.

Sprite

Does anyone remember the advertisement where a guy goes to a drinks vending machine and buys a Sprite and instead he gets a little goblin like thing? Presumably a sprite is a baby goblin. The advert goes on to try and say something along the lines of 'wouldn't you rather have had a Sprite?'. Well no. If I had put fifty pence in a machine and received a goblin sprite instead of the lite refreshment drink I'd have been well chuffed.

It's A Wonderful Life

I thought I would write a review of Christmas. Normally this would be the perfect opportunity to reaffirm my place as the favourite Son of Satan, but I have decided to buck the trend of this blog and give you a few reasons to be hopeful this year. There were no three ghosts for me, but I realised that Scrooge was actually a good man. I had my apparitions in three other ways and here they are...


Spend Spend Spend
Buying Christmas presents is a typically indecisive and frustrating chore. How do I decide which shitty gift pack out of Boots would suit a particularly difficult grandparent? This year I have adapted the 'that'll do' method. It's quite simple. Basically you just look at something, say 'that'll do', and put it in the basket. It could be anything as long as 'that'll do'. My grandmother loved the Black and Decker handy-screw. Quick and efficient and you can afford to leave buying gifts until the last minute as it can all be done in half a day.

The Machine Rages On
The arch capitalist Simon Cowell's pop machine has had a proverbial spanner thrown in the works. Rage Against The Machine are Christmas number one over the pretty Joe something. The effect may be temporary but taken as it is, a fluttering comment rubbishing the charts, it shows that we are not merely a nation of consuming zombies (ironic by the methods by which it was achieved - so we're still suckers).
I fear that Simon Cowell actually believes that he is good for music. Untrue. Being good for music does not mean standing by with a cheque book ready to back the latest soulless puppet singing an existing sure fire ballad, but being good for music means nurturing talent and giving it time to mature. Like a good cheese it will be more expensive. There is a difference between venture capitalism and nurturing talent and making cheese, although realism states that the three must meet somewhere. Simon Cowell does not meet even near the middle. He uses people to sing other peoples songs to be good for his bank balance and in a way that represents the maximum return on investment. This is fine but I feel it unfair to claim otherwise. Rage on!

Che Who?
I'm not sure why but there was a Che Guevara documentary presented by Nick Hancock on TV on Christmas morning. The place of this program on the schedule, when I was expecting a tirade of stale Christmas themed programs was a surprise as was the host whom I hadn't associated with The Revolution. Now I know a little more about the man famed for his t-shirt enterprise - but not enough to wear said t-shirt. This Christmas twist keeps the Red Flag flying inappropriately at the heart of the capitalist wet dream of Christmas. I might have smiled.

These are my reasons why Christmas 2009 was not so bad.

End Of The Line

I was at the end of line last weekend. Well not quite but Tranent. Seton Sands is the end of the line. This might have been a significant point in my life or at least just a bus stop. 'You Are Here'->. I certainly was. At least there was a chance to get back and have another go. That chance happened to be a ride on a bus.

For a moment I thought of being a lonely wanderer, staying out there in the wilderness and making my way where life is slowed to the infra-red spectrum. I'd see your brain make a thought before you made it. Then I realised that that would be faster and I boarded the bus. Ridacard... beep. The journey didn't take me back through my life so much as through some peculiar Scottish villages. I tried and failed to link them.

It's the week after now and I'm waiting on my Beetlejuice costume for an 80s party this weekend. On Sunday I will open my eyes and as the blurry image of a sign fades into my consciousness I hear a voice. It's the bus driver and with a grimace Beetlejuice turns and softly announces 'End Of The Line'. Seton Sands.

Join The Space Race

It is my opinion that we are never going to save the planet. At 20 billion to 30 billion years, The Sun will expand into a red ball and die, overwhelming Earth with the heat. Oceans will boil and evaporate, and other planets near The Sun also will burn, leaving nothing but orbiting chunks of barren rock.


Why are we worrying about global warming, the destruction of the rainforest or the depletion of the planet's limited resources?

Countries that have signed the Kyoto Protocol have agreed to an average reduction of greenhouse gases of 5.2% from 1990 levels by the year 2012. I have other plans. If we all stop for a minute, dissolve society as it is, and agree to build hundreds of thousands of spaceships, I believe that we will sustain the human race on Earth for about another ten generations.

There will be jobs for everyone, from mining raw materials to manufacture and design. That is only to mention the development of the crafts themselves and subsidiary jobs would be created in ensuring the craft workforce well-being such as housing, agriculture, mining ecstasy and drilling the Buckfast fields. I have envisaged a fully employed planet with a happy workforce who will also be free to have casual sex with each other.

Once the spaceships are complete The Earth will have been stripped of all of the necessary elements for human survival except that we will have stock piled fuel sources of all forms. It will be a little like Battle Royale. Some ships will have kerosene, others wood, and some sunflower oil. Every human would have a cabin on the spaceship, two by two, and all crafts would take off in different directions at various locations around the world. You see what I'm getting at here? Let's escape this exploding fucking fireball. Chances are that one of the spaceships will happen across a habitable planet where we can work out the new rules of physics, apply them to great benefit of everyone, and then pass control to the New Earth banks.

Fanta$tic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox. On the 22 bus I passed a poster for the upcoming screen version of the classic Roald Dahl book. Roald, is that a name? Anyway, what I saw was so off the point I must comment. Mr. Fox is a story about poverty and the need to forage for whatever he can to feed his family. He was not a suave gangster. In the movie he demands his gang wear hoods on their missions. They have taken the title 'fantastic' and completely misinterpreted it. To me, and I may be wrong, the story is about greed and poverty. Relevant? Yes.

I love the book. Fantastic Mr. Fox was scavenging for what food he could using his cunning to outwit a bunch of oafs. In the book we are also made to feel sorry for the bad guys. They have been personalised and their existence itself is sad. The movie does not convey this or the plight of those living in poverty. The film makers have also signed a deal with McDonalds for promotions. Surely KFC if anything?

Edit: I assumed all of this without watching the movie.

Edinburgh Tramps Works

Part time traffic lights. What do they do the rest of the time? Do traffic lights have other commitments? Maybe a gap year traffic light working to get a big job in the city. Temporary traffic lights too. "I'm only temping as a traffic light, looking for something a little more permanent." Temporary traffic lights do look amateur to be fair. This particular one has character though.

Plenty of temporary positions around Edinburgh at the moment. The market is pretty saturated and most will be redundant in a few years. Sadly, there will always be some other detached city council ready to cut the arterial artery of another fine city.

"MONORAIL! MONORAIL! MONORAIL!".

Dirty Money

When I was a kid I accidentally swallowed a pound and as nature goes I shat it out. I was 8 so my granny made me shit in a bucket and she fished it out. It was meant to be a memento but I spent it on sweets. What I'm trying to say is somewhere out there is a pound that has been right through me.

Lonely, Crying Only

I turn the key and with a creek the door slowly opens. The flat that once welcomed after work is an eerie wasteland of emotions. Something is missing, but I haven't been burgled. Today I didn't need a daily anecdote, such as the photocopier jam. The post skidded across the floor as I stepped in. Someone usually lifts the post and places it thoughtfully on my bed, or even more knowingly, on my part of the sofa.

Nachy, my flatmate, is away home for a week. A sudden fear clouded my thoughts. I need someone around, and then it hit me... I will make my flatmate. Time is short so I can't make it talk or do anything. That is not important, but as long as I sit on my sofa and can see something resembling Nachy in the corner of my eye I might make it through the week without heroin.

I begin to move him about when I leave the room. Before I know it this is part of my life and I love him. Then I hear a key turn in the door and Nachy is soon undressing his work trousers from my creation and I go to bed confused and in tears again. The photocopier jam was delicious by the way.

Signs

Signs are everywhere in western culture. I think we might just like printing out instructions, or coming up with inventive stick man situations. If something can have a sign associated, it probably will. Signs that tell you to do something, or not do something, like 'Push' when I'm going to pull first anyway. Sometimes the signs lie, like when I walked back and forth in front of an 'Automatic Door' that didn't open, and then the man said go around, meaning come through this open door that you aren't usually allowed to enter. 'No Entry' is says, but on that day I think we all proved that to be wrong.

Signs can also be confusing. Like when I was walking through the airport and there was a sign that said 'Left Luggage' but it was on my right hand side. Then I thought I must have been walking in the wrong direction. I continued walking despite my temporary confusion. Then I thought, maybe the other side says 'Right Luggage' and it's one of those infinite loops. I could have ended walking back and forth past the sign forever.

Yes, it is important which signs you read, though the important ones are rarely obvious, or even considered a sign at all. Most official signs blur the minds sight to meaningful signs.

Watercolour Challenge

Watercolour Challenge - now that was a TV show. Three amateur artists would have four hours to paint the same scene. The beauty was that the celebrity judge always found something good to say about even the bloodiest massacre of canvas. TV was nice and we applauded effort. This is added to my list of programs that I would like to appear on. I imagine being presented with a picturesque view of mountains sweeping to the sea and producing something resembling Hades, the gateway to Hell in reds and purples. Over to you celebrity judge…

Cooking For One

I bought a book recently called 'Cooking for One' thus reinforcing my single status. Imagine the scene in the corner of my kitchen. A table set for one with a dying flower in a vase whose water has turned green. A burnt out candle looking sad - a missed warning of a long darkness.



My new found passion for cooking (for one) is thankfully helped along by Leith FM - "Looking back over my shoulder, I can see the look in your eyes, I never dreamed it could..." - FUCK, there I am thinking again.

Where's The Beef?

OK, so I decided to start a blog. This is where I drink the piss of society and piss it out again all over pages of the internet. And so it begins before I started with Where's The Beef? - a rhetorical question signifying my quest for substance.

At the time of writing I'm 27 and sitting in a cupboard with a bottle of red wine. 27 years have cumulated to this point. I think you get the point. I need to find the beef.