Freq like V

Turns out radio doesnt have to be shit after all. (You know Im not talking about you Radio4, you'll always be my honeybaby. Dont ever change you sexy! xxx)

http://www.viva-radio.com/

Product Review: Baxters Cream of Tomato Soup

For Flickmyankle zine.

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I’m striding painfully quickly away from the train station. There’s a twinge where my right leg joins the underside of my body next to my nuts and I can feel sweat breaking out on my forehead.

I’m doing that annoying walking-down-a-dark-alley-behind-a-woman walk that tries to communicate that No I’m not a mugger (scuff the floor, jangle the change) but I am in a hurry and will be coming up behind her and passing her soon. Problem is the bitch has long legs and so in order to pass her I have to walk like those idiots on the Olympics who compete in the… fast walking race...do and for some mysterious reason she keeps going faster still. “What’s your fucking problem?” I want to shriek at her, “I’m not a mental!”

Of course, I can’t just slow down and walk normally because then I would definitely feel like a mugger. Given that I don’t have a pot to piss in right now I’d probably just end up rolling her for her change. In fact I’d probably get back really quickly what with running from the cops and all.

So I’m pounding over this footbridge above the river, looking like fast-forwarded Nazi on a taped episode of the World at War when I look upstream and stop in my step. There in the water…?

Since my girl popped down the road to Ecuador for 8 months I’ve been mooching around in a fog of horny self-pity searching for a symbol to satisfactorily represent my predicament. (You might remember I was going on about how clever and thoughtful she was a few weeks ago; well that fucked me right in the face because now she’s gone to help reading kids be more street, or street kids to read, or something like that in the markets of Quito. How dare she? Can’t she see I can barely dress myself without her help? And who the FUCK is going to read to me when I’m ill? Some people just don’t think. About me) Aaaanyway. So, self image. I like to carry a sort of mental picture of myself at any point in the day in order to blot out the frankly scary-looking mess that glares at me over the sink every morning. It should generally have an air of casual seedy glamour, sort of like Bogey at his best, or bogies at theirs. Other days might require a heroic Captain Scott-like figure struggling unbent through raging weather and hangovers to get to work roughly on time, or at least on the correct days. But recently I’ve been floating aimlessly, eyes down, thinking about the kind words or gentle thighs or perceptive put-downs I won’t hear till the corn is high as an elephant’s jap-eye.

The little river conveyor-belts a swell of creamy brown froth on mahogany water under the foot bridge. I can hear it gurgling and plopping around the stanchions of the bridge and low hanging branches in its stream. And I can see him, a shape made of total blackness standing out against a rippling amber column of reflected light from a building further upstream. At first I think my eyes are fucking with me but as I stared he moved his paddle and I could hear the soft slipping sound as he manoeuvred his little canoe into the deeper velvety shadow of a willow. At first I couldn’t figure why a guy would sit alone in almost total darkness like that, and went back to my tiny dimly lit flat to think about it. What was he waiting for? The river would likely rise soon ahead of the latest load of fresh rain; was he hoping to making it all the way to the Severn Estuary, and the radioactive sea beyond? Was he a troll on his way home from work? It did occur to me briefly that his situation might bare a neat metaphorical resemblance to my own, drifting pointlessly in chilly darkness, waiting for forces beyond my control to sweep me into something new, but then decided he was just a fucking weirdo and I’d rather be mistaken for a rapist bureaucrat from the department of silly walks instead.

By the way the soup was thick and acrid and made my throat hurt. I will never eat it again til the next time I'm skint.

Climate Change

My buddy Matt is setting himself up to be a video games designer and so quite rightly called for my help in coming up with some game ideas. What do you mean why? You ever play a game called Motorstorm? Me neither it looks awful, but Im ashamed to say I hand a hand in that. I accpeted a load of money to design the some of the vehicles. If it makes it ok I did a very shoddy job. Look I needed the money ok, you think weed grows on trees?

It’s pretty obvious to anyone by now that video games are for retarded children and nerdish child-men and will never make any real money, but Matty thinks I’m wrong on that score and so requested I help him come up with dynamite pitch for a game to be played on the Nintendo Wee. For everyone over the age of 15 this is a device with two remote controllers which each contain a gyroscope and a radio transmitter and therefore know their position and orientation relative to the base station. This opens up loads of potential for annoying new games, but here’s the one I came up with that I think you’ll agree is fucking awesome and will take games to a new level of audience participation. It would be called ‘Dinner With Ainslie’, and basically what you do is use the controller to manipulate the ingredients and utensils in a virtual kitchen, chopping courgettes and flipping pancakes and knocking back cheap red wine and stuff like that against a clock. When the time runs out you hear a knock at the door and Baron Samedy would arrive and critique your efforts. It wouldn’t really be a scary voodoo priest of course, it would be Ainslie Herriot, but you never see them cunts in the same room do you? (Sort of like how you never see Elton John and Elton John in the same room either. There’s definitely something going on there.) At this point the real game begins; you jam your virtual hand into a drawer full of utensils and randomly pull out a griddle pan or a cleaver and fly at him. It would be a game of luck and skill- learning how to screw a seemingly innocuous mini-whisk deep into his eye socket would keep me amused for hours.

This evening I came home from the pub and found a bleak metal expanse in my kitchen where I normally store all my disgusting plates and sauce-clogged cutlery. Seems my girlfriend had taken it upon herself to wash up. I was distraught; I mean think of all the unique species unknown to science that will now never be studied! For all I know there was a cure for AIDS in there. The shock and trauma at witnessing terrible desolation where once stood a lush and vibrant swamp has really turned me onto environmental issues in a big way. For example, the other day I very nearly went to a climate change rally. I was in London with my lady, who as I may have explained before is in addition to being stupidly foxy inexplicably really kind and genuinely cares about others. Unlike me she doesn’t hate people for no reason and plot their downfall or anything! She was keen on going to this march, so I planned to buy some card and markers and make up some big signs with pithy slogans like “DOWN WITH CLIMATE CHANGE!” and “MAKE GLOBAL WARMING ILLEGAL” which I reckon would have totally inspired everyone. The King and Queen would have probably come out of Buckingham Palace and joined in and the whole thing would have made the papers and I’d be hailed as the guy who finally made Britain and the West sit up and take notice of the impending disaster! In the end we got shitfaced and stayed in bed till midday when the march was due to kick off, but it gave me an idea for a cool video game. Its called SimClimate Protestor and basically you get to design your own outfit from items in a virtual vintage clothing shop and write your own signs and march down a simulated high street while depressed Christmas shoppers shout things at you like “We know! But China is going to kill us all anyway so why bother!?”, dodging realistic falling masonry weakened by the freezing acidic rain falling on your despairing upturned face. It would be intellectually engaging, topical and save you getting up early to trek accross wintry London, which frankly is more than can be said for virtually any other entertainment on the market save ketamine mixed with MDMA.
And can you imagine all the trees you’d save by not making actual cardboard signs?

Fuck, did I just solve climate change AND invent not one but two bestselling video games?
How productive am I? I must not be smoking enough. I’d better skin up, and sod the atmosphere.

PS If anyone wants to make these awesome ideas in the money spinners they clearly have the potential to be email me for the address to send cheques and/or drugs to.

PPS I’ve got my first sparring session tomorrow. I’m shitting it but I do get to punch a big fat guy in the face which is always going to be a plus.

PPPS Fuck you

PPPPS Only joking!

Late

Are you a punctual person? I bet you arnt. I bet you wake up 8 seconds before your alarm goes off, shut your eyes for 2 seconds and suddenly without any time passing its half an hour later and you skip your shower. Thats fucking gross. Im not being harsh, Im telling you this as a friend. I mean, we all do it some times. I did it between the ages of 17 and 24 but recently Ive got a really nice power shower and generally have to limit myself to only singing three songs all the way through at the top of my voice and then jumping out otherwise Id be in there all day. Thats discipline, and thats what I was getting at when I asked if you were a punctual person. See, I am. I bounce out of bed every morning ready to face the challenges of the new day with bright eyes and a bushy tail! It seems unfair therefore, being as punctual as I undenyably am, that Im always fucking late.
I noticed that if I leave my house at 7am I will get to work at 7:15. If I leave at 7:15 Ill get there at 7:45. And If I leave at 7:30 Ill get there t 8:30. Im due at 8, so its obvious that there is a moment between a quarter and half-past eight leaving before which means Ill be really early. Then Ill have to sit around eating donuts and watching Mighty Boosh and that sounds an awful lot like unpaid work to me so thats out.
And after that nanosecond period some critical car will pull out ahead of me meaning I take slightly longer to get up the high street which will mean the queue at the roadworks is a little longer which means the queue at the next lights is a lot longer and before you know it Im composing angry poetry about my situation. Here's one Ive been working on:

FFFFFFFFFUUUCCCCCKKKKK! FUCK FUCK FUCK! I'm trapped I am trapped! In a freezing screaming high-velocity hell, lit by infernal brakelight red and brimstone sodium yellow and doppler siren blue and Im trapped Im trapped and Im going to be late again and I'M TRAPPED YEAH!

Pretty nice huh? Its not one of those rhyming poems, obviously. The ones that dont rhyme are better- they make you sem more intelligent and poetic I find.
I was two hours late twice last week but people didn't seem to mind too much. They knew Id met a new girl and she was rediculously pretty so they understood. Funny thing is The Man seems to prefer that youre two hours late than 28 minutes. What the fuck is that about? I mean, I think its a very enlightened attitude but I dont understand it.
Shit Ive lost my train of thought now. See what you made me do? Flattering me about my poem, you know what Im like! What was I talking about? Oh yeah being late. So like I was saying, Im very punctual but Im always late. This is a startling example of the non-linear dynamics that operates behind the scenes of every event in the universe. You know, the butterfly effect, two initially similar points in phase space diverging exponetially as a function of time? You know what Im on about, like that shit Jeff Goldblum was babbling in Jurassic Park while theyre waiting for the goat to get chomped.
So you see, my being late is not actually my fault, its a mathematical law.
Now, if you'll excuse me, Im going to give my boss a maths lesson, wish me luck!

Personality

Apparently there are two basic types of people in the world. No, not normal humans and vampires you joker! Two basic kinds of person. You might say “that’s crazy people’s personalities are all different and there’s no way you could reduce them to even fifty distinct types let alone just two. There must be something wrong with your brain!” To which I’d say “You’re something wrong with my brain! Ha HA!” and you’d say “that doesn’t make sense” and Id say ok well check this out:
Hans Eysencks, the most widely quoted psychologist in the world at the time of his death, did research that suggested there the degree of energy with which people approach life is a key determining factor in personality. At the high end of his scale are extroverts; people who are happy, impulsive, have a wide circle of friends, enjoy company, are optimistic and are more likely to cheat on you. They are immune to sunlight.
At the other end are introverts, who have a small circle of close friends, are more controlled, and enjoy a night with a good book to one on the tiles. Eysencks found most people fall in clusters between these two extremes. I can personally attest to this- my TV doesnt work because I tossed my useless Freeview box into the street when it crapped out so I like nothing more that getting hammered drunk reading for hours in bars then buying a gram of coke to share with hot university students.
Anyway, you’re thinking, ‘hang on, sometimes you get happy vampires, and sometimes, rarely, normal humans get depressed. You’re missing something out!’
Id be tempted to say ‘no you’re missing something out; your brain!” or something equally ribald but Id have to back down and put the knife away this time because you’re totally right.
The other axis along which people were graded was Neuroses. High neurotics are more likely to worry and set themselves unrealistic goals, and are more prone to feeling envy or hostility. Low scorers are more stable and resilient, and work better under pressure.
High scorers are funnier, but low scorers make better drummers. Probably. Well name me two funny drummers. And don’t say Moon (God rest him) because he died 400 years ago and doesn’t count. I’ll give you Phil Collins for one, but that’s pretty much it.
So you see, there are actually just two different kinds of archetypal personality in the world. The science was fair and unbiased and that’s what it said. Each occupies a particular area on a graph of neuroses vs. extrovertism and I’ve given them some scientific-sounding names so you can have fun quoting them and telling your friends how shallow and predictable they are.
On the one hand you’ve got what I call the Vampire Woody Allen From His Annie Hall Days, and on the other you’ve got Hyacinth Bucket. Hey by the way did you hear that Hyacinth Bucket likes to lez it up? Not in the program but in reality? I’m not sure what I think about that. I mean, if she had a hot 19 year-old girlfriend then- no. No. I mean whatever Hyacinth Bucket gets up to in her own home is fine me, but she doesn’t have to do it right in front of my minds eye does she? Every time I go to bed? Does she?
Either way, that show is better than Partridge and in the future will be recognised as a milestone of British comedy. You wait.

Actually the results said low scorers were better at using humour to cope with stress, but anyone who’s worked- anywhere really knows, humour and being intentionally funny are sometimes wildly different concepts. My buddy McSteve sent hate mail to all his colleagues and poured soup in his computer when his quit his job which bizarrely they didn’t find funny at all.

Thrills

Once, when I was a student, in order to fund my already extravagant drug habits I took a job as a surveyor and CAD planner at the local civic council. I lied smoothly through the interview and my new boss spotted within 15 minutes I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. However he was the sort of kindly man, well liked by the guys under him and constantly belittled by his bosses, who makes large organisations run despite the best efforts of management cunts. His quick movements twitching scalp and rapid-fire chuckling always reminded me of one of those little desert foxes with the giant ears that only come out at night, and he was a prince among men. Allen, for that was his name, gave me a week to learn the ropes. Let me tell you something about drawing building floor plans in CAD. I’m sure at the top end it’s an immensely difficult and exacting job that requires years of training and an able and disciplined mind, but at the level I was working at… put it this way if you can use an Etch-A-Sketch you are ridiculously overqualified. As you know I’m not the sharpest needle in the smackhead and yet in time I ended up teaching CAD skills to the other far older and less well paid guys, each a master with a Rotring pen and a straight-edge and who viewed me as a young, red-eyed antichrist. That will teach them for being old I suppose- they wont do that again if they have any sense.

It’s the sort of job that becomes easier the more stoned one is, which made it ideal for my needs, and paid well enough that I could buy a big black Alfa Romeo for my 22^nd birthday that looked just like a drug dealer’s car, a fact that made dealing drugs considerably easier. Moreover, after a few months Allen and I were moved out of the open plan cubicle hell we started in and into our own little office in what used to be the benefit fraud interview room. Often he would go out on jobs and I would be left to construct my little linear designs under the blind eye of the disconnected infrared camera (installed so if a fraudster got violent and knocked out the lights the guards outside could watch the melee in perfect green-screen clarity, and perhaps cheer her on. I don’t know who they thought might be scamming on their benefits, a velociraptor or the Predator maybe.) Anyway, Allen used to be out a lot, so I liked to have my then girlfriend come round and be my ass-istant and go into the little galley at the back and take my dimensions, or get my friends to come in and hang out. One time he came back to find me and my buddy ploughing through a sixer and he just smiled and asked if Id done all my work, which I had, and said ‘carry on lads!’ Like I say, a great man.

But the office was pretty dull mostly and the real fun was out on the job. After a while I’d become quite independent and often went out in the Alfa with my laser and clipboard and pre-rolls to offices around the city that needed measuring and their floor plans recording. A fun game was to see how far round a building you could get without anyone asking who the hell you were; it was quite straightforward to visit every single room in a packed office block and never once be asked for ID of any kind. A tip for burglars, stop fucking with our TVs, we’re skint, just buy a clipboard and a cheap suit and walk into any council office you like and calmly remove some electronics. Sadly paedos, I can’t help you, schools these days are like Fort Knox and every corridor is blocked by a terrifying matriarch who scans your badge and even when you check out glares at you as if you might already have several stolen kids in your basement. I didn’t even have a fucking basement!

I never took anything like that, but I did make a point of taking a souvenir from the more interesting places. I stole a thick shard of glass from the window of the cell below the spectacular and decrepit courtroom where one of the last public hangings was handed down.

I stole a Bacardi bottle from a heap hidden behind the cistern in the gents in a derelict bus station, and rather a nice LED sign and keyboard. My sisters will confirm these things make excellent Christmas presents by the way, at least in terms of (me) saving (my) money for drinking. I was disappointed the drivers hadn’t been turned on to the Havana Club tip, but maybe the Bacardi helped them remember the way. I mean, no matter how shitfaced I get I still wake up in or around my apartment.

One time I had to survey the dry, black velvet-silent catacombs beneath an old Drapers meeting hall that was due to be renovated. Accessed through the huge, ancient, collapsing kitchen the dust-smelling tunnels spread out for tens of metres in every direction, low sterile brick vaults, structural spaces not meant for people and uninhabitable even by insects due to the extreme dryness. I was smitten, and promptly memorised the code on the door lock, and the following day checked out for a few hours, went to Poundland and bought a torch, a load of chalk and a some gold-wrapped chocolate coins. To be fair, I surveyed those black, secret spaces particularly thoroughly and marked my way with chalk because I didn’t want to miss spotting what was my primary motivator for being there; treasure! Allen had been to the catacombs in the 70s during the previous electrical refit as an apprentice and had said they had discovered a haul of old pottery, paintings, and glassware some of which is still on show in the local art gallery. My mouth watered at the prize. I love eating old pottery you see. I found in a tiny black room with the names of some long-dead sparkies from the ‘20s written huge in candle soot on the ceiling, a little wooden chair sitting alone like the relic of some terrible questioning, with “Allen T was Eya ‘73” written on it.

And in another long low room, filled to within 3 feet of the vaulted brick roof with loose dirt, I began to dig. This seemed the likeliest place to find my treasure. The gold-lust was in me and I dug for a long time with my hands and excavated a large crater, but all I found was dirt and more desiccated dirt. By this point I was filthy and had been gone some hours so figured it was time to go back. Before I left, I buried a load of the chocolate coins in the dirt, with a few bright golden edges protruding where they sparkled in the beam of my torch, and then crawled out and went back to the office clothes caked with salt and white with asbestos dust and took a bollocking from my bosses boss who was there on a visit. It was worth it for the moment of heart-pounding excitement I’ve hopefully given to the next intruder into those dark inhuman spaces.

All of which is a roundabout way of bringing me to the actual topic of this one-sided conversation. I told you I’d met a girl the other day didn’t I? Can there be anything more exquisitely thrilling than hanging out with a really hot girl who doesn’t yet know how much of a dick you are? Perhaps finding treasure, or watching people you dislike fail, or seeing your wife give birth to a child made entirely of 24 carat gold might beat it, but it’s a pretty close to the top of the list. A good example of this happened today. I mentioned a while back that to kill time between work and boxing training I sit in a large bookshop nursing someone else’s empty coffee cup reading the comics. I explained how this cheap entertainment was undermined by the fact that I often walk out with a glossy new book (see The New Erotic Photography review a bit further down this page). There’s a cute Bettie Paige-type girl on the desk, not really my type, all glass-sharp fringe and Mitch O’Connell tattoos (ok kinda my type) and today I walk up with my new American Splendor story collection and she remarked that she liked the strip and for one perfect moment we agreed deeply and completely. Her golden lip ring glittered at me. Off course the ways in which a woman comes to see your true nature makes for much funnier stories, and we’ll likely come to explore those in time. I was thinking of showing my girl how I can projectile puke tequila on cue next weekend, so I’ll keep you posted.

Dreams

So it turns out I cant have kids. I found out yesterday. Tough break I know, but I'll come back to that later, because today Id like to talk about dreams. There are some things that are more boring than listening to someone going on about their dreams- spending a billion years in a grey concrete room watching Auction TV, listening to Chris Moyles, reading about someone going on about their dreams are three examples, but thats all I could think of.
My brain is a bit of a mess but even so I reckon thee's only about 6 things more boring than listening to someone going on about their dreams. Its the sort of weapons-grade tedium that makes you want to pull your own face off to relieve the monotony and that Charley Brooker said should be classified as (or at least legal justification for) GBH.
So youre thinking, if this is such a boring subject, why go on and on about it like stupid cunt?
Well, I know you should be working right now, so I figured I'd do you a favour and motivate you get back to whatever it is your boss thinks youre doing! Clever huh? I love helping people. The trouble is I give so much to others I sometimes neglect myself. Often for example I'll be entertaining my friends with funny stories and Ill completely forget to buy a round! I think sometimes however that my brain is a bit ungrateful for all the fun I provide it with and all the awesome sights I show it. Im seriously thinking about cutting the fucker loose for a while , Ive done all I can and I think I should wash my hands of it so it learns what its like to be by itself and have to take some responsibility. I bet it comes crawling back, you wait and see.
It'll be nice and quiet when its gone though. Ill be able to kick back and stretch out in the space inside my skull, like when you have a load of people over and they all finally fuck off home and you can put your feet up and have a nice long ralaxing wank.
I found my girl on Facebook the other day and looked through all her photos and stuff. Is that creepy? If you think thats bad wait till I tell you about what I did when I broke into her- actually I think I'll leave that story for another day. But talking about friends, the girl's got about 180 of them! One hundred and eighty friends. Thats more people than Ive met in my entire life, and by met I mean spoken to, sworn at from my car, lived near, the lot. The strangest thing is she seems genuinely and enthusiastically interested in them all. I cant get my head round it. I view it with the same mixture of pride and bafflement that a mad scientist must feel when his beloved mutant genius child shows him the owrkings of its new antigravity generator.
One thing standing in my way of having 180 friends is that I absolutely cant stand other people, theyre aweful creatures, dont you think?
And theres too fucking many of them. It turns out that the population of the UK is set to double in the next twelfty years and apparently there are whole other 'countries' out there full to the brim with people. Its a nutty situation.
If you're still reading this point you must be A] a masochist and B] really bored at work so as a way of saying thanks I might as well make good on my promise and tell you about how I personally cant have kids. As Ive already said, there are more than enough people in the world as it is so Im looking on the bright side of it. Its probably for the best. I mean, I did ask the doc if there was anything she could do to remedy the situation but she just shook her head sadly and explained that I didnt have a womb and would never have children.
I tell you what though, I fucking wish I was infertile aswell as wombless- I found out a few years back Im definitely shooting live ammo and I could do without that shit again.
I envy the pandas in that regard , and think we should take a leaf out of their book. I once entered a cartoon competition with a picture of distressed-looking male panda sitting forlornly against the bars of his cage with an agry female galring at him, and the caption "Its not you its me."
Personally Id be delighted in his place.
I just realised I totally forgot to talk about dreams didnt I? Sorry you guys! I hope you didnt get fired for reading this! You should get a job like mine- I sit around drawing cars all day and eating and watching porn and get paid great piles of money. As you can probably tell it takes a specially talented individual to do such a high-pressure job. You think you could do this? Psh, in your dreams!