She was nineteen, I was twenty. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever met. It took me months of self-doubt and anguish to get the nerve to ask her out. I said I’d always wanted to ballroom dance in a fountain. Turns out she had too. I showed up in a limo six days later. I was in a hired tux, she in an incredible green strapless. We had champagne and strawberries on the way. We drove to the Hamilton fountains and I escorted her nervously to the waters edge. The night air was cool- the water freezing. We danced to Gertrude’s Dream Waltz. She was shivering. I laid my head on her shoulder. She was warm. I was happy. At the time I thought I was in love.
A week later fucking Mike fucking Lee crawled through her window drunk and they began a month long fuckathon. I bought a huge bottle of Vodka and went round to Fran’s. He opened the door, and I said we were going to drink a vodka shot every 60 seconds until the bottle was empty. He lasted about ten minutes. I think I drank solidly for an hour. Then I vomited on everything, and I do mean everything. Fran’s bed, Fran’s desk, Fran’s floor, Fran’s bathroom, Fran’s couch, Fran. Then I fell over. I was sick for the next week. I couldn’t even smell vodka for the next year without wanting to retch.
So tonight, I’ve lined up fifteen shots of loverly vodka, for I’m sure that was the drunkest I’ve ever been. I’m keeping the bottle at the end of bar for Doctor Pockless to hook into at his leisure.
Mixed shots await for Estee– I’ve purchased her this excellent Shot Glass Chess Set– vodka for my side, random coloured goodness for her side- each time a piece is taken, we have to shoot it. We’ll be playing that for the next hour or so in the corner, discussing the temporal conciousness illusion with theories that get more ridiclous the more we drink.
Absinthe for Not That Adrian. There’s a special recipe I picked up from the Notting Hill Arts Bar, they call it a Bloody Nose (why? Because if you drink it, you get a bloody nose). Dash of tomato juice, shitload of tabsco, and absinthe. Lovely stuff, I would join you (I am a huge absinthe fan), but you shouldn’t mix (first thing my dad ever taught me!).
Angel gets a Jim Beam and Soda, presumably because we’re out of coke, and my gracious hostess Karen gets a bottle of sparkling wine to share with her sweetheart and her memories. Spengy, presumably afraid of all these spirits flying around, gets a frosty mug of beerski. Master of Dan’s Destiny Dragon gets two of `em, Heineken-flavoured.
May I make a toast to my blogging partner in absentia, currently watching her invigilators play tag, I gather. I put a Long-Island Iced Tea in front of her empty barstool, in the hope that she may show up later to claim it.
Thanks for letting me shout from your soap-box for a few days, `borkas, it was fun. I learned that no-one knows why they `blog, Vaughn likes vicars, Jack’s a virgin (once again), and when given the opportunity to direct the course of a young man’s life, Uborkites will…..ask his opinion?!? Good luck taking over the world with that attitude!
Over & out,
d

Time for a bit of role-playing:
Your character is a single male New Zealander, just turned 27. You live in London, and have done so for three years. Education-wise, you have a degree in English Studies and another in Film Studies, plus a diploma in teaching. Relationship-wise, you’ve had one four-year long one and a bunch of few-monthers. Job-wise, you work in an uninspired office job that you don’t loathe but certainly don’t care for- essentially brainless, but it pays enough to have a nice flat, a decent amount of alcomahol, and the occasional holiday. You’re definitely not the greatest looking guy in the world, but you’re probably not out-and-out ugly (it’s tough to tell, no-one is ever up-front with you on this one).
You’re a fairly happy guy, you go out a lot, you have a lot of friends in the city (though none particularly close) who you enjoy spending time with, you have all your teeth and pretty much could continue along as you are indefinitely with not a lot of complaints. But every morning on the train you can’t help but feel that your life is in a holding pattern, and has been for the last two years. You feel full of potential for….something, but you have no idea what. You’re not attached to any job, any person, any mode of life. If disaster were to befall you, your family is sufficiently caring and wealthy to bail you out of ever being homeless or trapped.
You are free! You can go anywhere, try anything, be anything.
But you don’t know what to do with that freedom. You desperately want to do that nagging something that you feel is inside you, but despite spending literally hours a day pondering it, you have no idea what it is you are retroactively destined to do with yourself.
What do you do?
Ladies and gentlemen, forget reality TV, arbitrary situations forced on wannabe attention seekers! I am offering you the chance to participate in a once-in-a-lifetime reality experience! For I am that man who’s treading water, waiting fruitlessly for life to wash him in a certain direction. And, much as hippies give themselves over to the directions of stars and zodiacs, I am giving myself over, puppet-like, to your control. I have fifteen short years to make or break my existence, and I need suggestions: Your suggestions. You have a human being in your absolute power- feel that rush to the head? Tell me what to do! Tell me what to be! Short term, long term, I don’t care!
Winners of the ‘Direct Dan’s Existence’ competition (best suggestion is the victor, and I will follow their suggestion to the letter) will receive the satisfaction of knowing they turned a young man’s life around, and set it on the path of their dictates- better than winning a fridge, eh?
d

I picked up A Grand Don’t Come For Free (from Asda!) yesterday, and just finished listening to it (`bout three minutes ago). The Streets are a strange enough sound as it is, but this album is additionally atypical in that it is one of the only albums I’ve ever heard that’s more than the sum of its parts. Most albums have a handful of good (or even great) tracks, and then the rest is filler- the whole is less valuable than some of the individual songs. A few rare albums just have one great song after another (there are only six of these in existence).
This album is neither of those things- in fact, taken individually, there is no single song that I would put above, say, the best five or so tracks on Original Pirate Material. Its individual parts simply aren’t that good. However, the album is very obviously designed to be listened to in sequential order, and each song tells a part of a story that builds on the previous song- so that by the time you get to the final triumvirate, you’re actually quite invested in the story and the character narrating the events. This means that the emotional wallop (and it is a wallop) delivered at the end of the album -with each track adding a little bit to the climax- is something quite different from anything you would normally get from any one song.
In the same way that you wouldn’t (generally) point to a book you enjoyed and say: “Oh, read chapter 11, it’s great.”, I can’t choose an individual track and say: “This is the best track on the album.”, because it’s the album synoptic that’s good- not the individual parts. I’m tempted to say it’s like the soundtrack to a musical, but it’s actually more like an audiobook on life in London- set to music.
So while I can’t really recommend this album on the basis of having a lot of decent songs that you’ll want to add to your track rotation- I can recommend it as an interesting audio experience- if you’re willing to lay aside an hour and listen to a good story, well told.
d

There’s a scene in Good Will Hunting in which Robin Williams asks Matt Damon: “What’s a good book?”
and he replies: “Whatever blows your hair back.”
What’s blowing my hair back at the moment is this book called ‘The User Illusion’ (yeah, people ask what I’m reading, and I say: “The User Illusion” and they think I’m reading some kind of Guns `N Roses biography), which is one of those books that everyone should read, because it really does blow my hair back quite regularly. Every now and then I have to stop and stare into the distance and just process the implications of what the book is saying.
It’s a study of everything humanity has learned about consciousness, starting with philosophy, then sociology, psychology, biology, and eventually quantum physics (and back to philosophy). So a lot of it is history and experimentation, but it’s written in an accessible way that is also quite fascinating.
One bit I really enjoyed was that apparently we consciously perceive the world at a rate of about 16 ‘moments’ every second. If something occurs faster than that rate, we don’t perceive it. The frightening thing is that this rate goes down as we get older- we perceive less ‘moments’ every second. This may explain the phenomenon everyone experiences when each year seems to be going faster than the other- you’re actually experiencing less of it.
Did you know they believe that our conscious mind only processes information at 40 bits per second? 40 bits! Think about that: A crappy dial-up modem transfers information at 56,000 bits per second. Yet our minds, despite taking in over a million bps through our various senses, can only think at a speed of 40bps. If that doesn’t blow your hair back, try this:
They reckon that your consciousness has a lag time of about half a second- which means that whenever you think about things consciously, you’re actually running half a second behind reality. More frighteningly, your unconscious makes decisions ahead of your conscious mind. Follow this to its natural conclusion, and it sounds awfully like our conscious mind doesn’t control any of our decisions at all! It just tries to keep up with decisions that have already been made.
Anyway, I’m only halfway through, so I’m looking forward to see if it answers the two big questions that have always bugged me:
What’s the point of consciousness?
and:
Why did my consciousness end up in my body and not someone else’s?
I’ll be finished by the end of the week, so if anyone’s interested in getting their own hair blown back, please do get in touch. But one way or another, you should definitely read this book.
d