Shut Up Keith - KFTea

It was teatime and time to do a deal with the Devil, or KFC. Hell's outlet. Consuming KFC was a necessary evil in approaching my inhibitions and not ducking out by ordering a takeaway online. I could have gone elsewhere, but there is a particular system of ordering, and set of questions, and so I could prepare answer cards.

It was kind of like that Bob Dylan video, only that he was singing about disillusioned 1960s American youths, while I was Keith ordering some fried chicken from a questionable fast food machination using a series of logical cue cards.

I did however realise as I walked into KFC with my hood up, it being a particularly rainy day, that handing a note over the counter could raise suspicion. Now my decision not to cop out may well have the cops out and I may be exercising my right to remain silent legally. Thankfully my action was not construed in this way and I left with a sense of success but also shame.

I will leave the fight for Animal Rights for another weekend where I live my entire life before slaughter with 30 other engineers in a cage of just a few square feet only to be eaten by a higher and morally evolved and hence culpable being.

Shut Up Keith - Work

My morning routine began as normal – I’m awoken by my flatmate’s alarm (he sets several alarms of a different tone that build to a crescendo and me crashing through his door to stop this endless ringing and wake him up with a violent shake). For my troubles I get to use the bathroom first where I look into my eyes and think that these used to be atoms of something else, sometime, somewhere.

A nod to my flatmate as I left began my journey into silence and metaphors. I thought about this and then stopped. It was just me versus my mind until I can cancel out thoughts with mindless talking.

The bus journey to work was covered as I own a Ridacard and so another nod was appropriate recognition for the driver. Thumbs up as I alighted and no suspicions were aroused so far. Thumbs up began to set the tone of my day.


I had decided that I would try not to alter my routine and so there was no covert tactic of heading to my desk through the laboratory as if I were some sort of Batman villain. My first encounters with colleagues were a mixture of more nods, thumbs up and people acting strangely. It became apparent that everyone was more uncomfortable than me as they had to conduct a one-way conversation with a nodding Norn Irishman, or citizen of Earth as I prefer.

I had a 09:30 meeting via Lync that I decided to attend such is my duty. I think this picture pretty much sums it up as I explained to a colleague in Toulouse that I did not have duck-tape over my mouth as in picture on my charity page.

Just Giving - Keith Harland

At the Deli was where I got to make the first practical use of signs, with one as a serious aside about the reasons for all of this – to raise awareness of mental health issues – and the other that juxtaposed perfectly – ‘Special please’. I also discovered that a few select phrases could get a man by – ‘Thank you’ and ‘I don’t know’. I find not knowing makes me want to find out and combined with manners will get you far in life.

Now it was time for a walk. So I walk through Saughten Park where there is a surreal tree of hanging shoes. There are a lot of missing kids somewhere.

The afternoon shift was much easier. It is amazing what can be achieved when you stop talking in circles and shut up. I was more inclined to agree and so force myself into completing tasks I never would have otherwise (thumbs up is easier and feels better than thumbs down – try it).

Thumbs up and the ‘Careful Now’ sign at my desk had done its job –

– I’d stayed silent and I was on my way home.

Silence in Motion
__________________________________________

Get on bus,

Ridacard – “Beep”,

Nod,

Get off bus,

Thumbs up.
__________________________________________

Rockmess

A poem from Rockness 2010.

Next time, Haikus:

There's Buckfast in the tent,
I get in the tent,
There's me and Buckfast in the tent.

Recycling Romance

It has now been over two years since we began recycling our flat-hold waste – everything from bottles, beer cans and cardboard. Of course most of this comes from our weekly binges, but we feel we are doing our bit. The recycling bank used to be a lot closer. I would load a couple of bags-for-life with an array of bottles from Kopperberg to Buckfast, and feel the weight of the world on my shoulders as I hoisted them down to the bottle bank behind B&Q.

This is where I imagined meeting the love of my life - at the bottle bank as I discarded the shame of the lonely into the appropriate bin. I rarely saw anyone. Once there was a guy putting cardboard onto a trolley – but this wasn’t for me. He was a cardboard type of guy, whilst I was a bottle. As a bottle of Buckfast slid from my hand into the green section I looked and thought “See you, I could have had you.” Bottled.

I bottled it.

Now that the bottle bank is much further, my flatmate Nachy drives the bottles in his van. My time had come and passed. At present our recycling cupboard is beginning to look like Britain’s shameful and useless plutonium stockpiles. I’m no nuclear scientist but even I know plutonium is useless… except maybe to terrorists.

Note:
I have garnered a lot of my knowledge from Back to the Future.

Nature - Britain's Plutonium

iDead - RIpod

As the modern electro-mechanical juggernaut continues on it's journey, even parts of it fall off to the junkyard like all of those 80s robots. We have a new kind of death to mourn in this age – our electronic devices. I’m not giving much away here, but everyone knows that these are put together in a just-in-time fashion, with competition and Christmas timing in mind, resulting in less than perfect and under tested products.

This is the heart-breaking truth kids. Even Santa is running a 2-bit knock-a-job operation. I was particularly saddened by the death of my iPod, Charles. This was my fourth iPod. Cause of death: drowning. Before it had been had falls, or just pure worn out.


I decided to give Charles a proper send off and organised this personal funeral in my room. Coffin cut out of black card and a green picturesque t-shirt with blue carpet forming the perfect scene he would have wanted. As David Bowie sang Ashes to Ashes. Everyone should name their iPods. My new one is Johnny 5, being my fifth (and bringing back the forgotten 80s robots!).
In memory of Charles here is his favourite song.

Sunflower

We are growing a sunflower at work in memory of the late pioneer of computer science Alan Turing, a man instrumental in cracking the Enigma code, and cruelly treated by the British government thereafter. A free thinker and revolutionary, and that a gay man could also be a good man threatened the establishment because they were lesser men. 

This is part of an experiment to test his theory on the Fibonacci sequence, which he never got to complete. If you can’t be bothered with the maths just grow a fucking sunflower.
They’re beautiful.

The Guardian - Alan Turing Sunflower

100% All New Beef - Same Old Shit

Where the bloody hell was the Beef? Consistency is the refuge of the unimaginative. I'd been on a long train journey and came off the rails. The Big Man collared me aff. Luckily I jumped a passing wagon only to promptly fall off. So now I'm just kicking stones up a dusty road. If you don't know where you're going any direction will do - but I'm a clever fellow. Roads go somewhere.

Take the yellow brick road. I'd like to meet the scarecrow and torch the fucker. He was a tout. Farewell yellow brick road and welcome back to my journey. To make it home you need to click your red heels while repeating "There's no place like home." So true.

However, I use real technology. With a little help from the Buckfast GPS I was back in the beautiful city of Edinburgh only to be horrified by what I saw.

What the hell happened here? Is this the fall of Rome? No. Some detached city council took a big fucking knife, and left a rotting bleeding torso in the bushes.

Now we commute on buses via the dismembered limbs of our city on an inflated fare and painfully slow service. Now I know the difference between fare and fair. Grant Stott has done well out of it as he's still the face of Ridacard. For those who don't know, Grant Stott is the big faced brother of John Lesley. Similarly to the city, the advertisement no longer shows his body. It must have cost extra.


It is also more confusing to use these buses of rage. So I need to be in the yellow zone, stop YG then race across town in GTA fashion to the next stop, red faced zone stop FOAD. I can only move in eight directions as this is the first GTA. I'm nearly out of time. Fuck I've missed it. Fuck this I'm taking this bus. Get out. Now I'm driving in the rush hour...