The Latest Social Media

Woo hoo! I've found inspiration to rant once more to nobody. I was just thinking about creative media social networking sites and how as soon as I catch up with one it all moves onto another. I took the time to complete a profile on myspace, then I found reverbnation which allowed me in turn to move onto a facebook music page just as I saw people posting things from soundcloud, it's probably moved on from there as i can't really be bothered to go through the registration and profile padding phase. It's like talking bullshit to strangers at a party, you have to do it time and again, I don't enjoy it, I'm not good at it and sometimes during, I want to stop and laugh and say 'who the hell am I kidding?!'

I know that sooner or later to keep up with the tide I'll have to carry on and find the latest platform but I'm leaving a cyberspace trail of outdated profiles which I'm fairly sure if they stay active will start to look like embarrassing photographs you'd forgotten about from ten years ago, this blog even hasn't seen any activity from me since 2008 and I'm quite worried about reading back to where I was at last time i typed in this field. I know for sure that my biography is out of date now.

Where to spread your inane chatter next then? "I'll post on blogger, I'll move my blog to my myspace, I'll transfer it to unsigned chart so i have something interesting to say, oh I'll carry on to twitter, wait! how many characters do I get to express myself ? I have never been so monosyllabic!"

Google has a social media platform now? I'm already with Gmail so I should just be able to log in via that surely and then there's linkedin, which is for businesses? I'm not a business, I doubt a business person would want to hire me for my personal information, I'm assuming you don't enter hobbies or favourite music or movies and I just don't have the patience to flesh out another profile today.

You even have to search for the friends you have on other social networking sites on the next social networking sites as they've moved on or deleted their profiles on the decidedly passe platform, right enough of this let's get this published so I can share it on facebook.

2nd June 2008

Dear Mr Masters,

Thank you for your reminder. My name will not be unknown to you as I used to work in your office until January this year. I would like to take this opportunity to extend my salutations to my former colleagues.

I must apologise for my continued difficulty to pay my Council Tax instalments on time. This is largely down to a cash flow difficulty, the factors of which are somewhat beyond my control and I have tried in vain to rectify them. After my contract with your office was terminated I spent a very short period seeking work with no income. Due to my undergraduate training hampering my national insurance contributions and my partner's modest earnings (most of which accounts for our already overpriced rent), I found I was entitled to no help whatsoever. In order for us to survive during this period I had to borrow against my already considerable debt forcing my long-term monthly payments even higher.

I am pleased to say that I quite quickly found temporary employment with a different agency. Whilst in your employ, I was working for the Brighton branch of Manpower and due to their constant assurances they would find me a more stable situation and more generous hourly rate, they failed to surrender my p45. This meant that my entire earnings for this period were subject to emergency tax, which greatly depleted my already slim incomings. Once again in order to supplement this income and continue paying bills, I had to borrow.

True to their word, Manpower eventually did find a more suitable position for me with a more realistic hourly rate and I am glad to say in the long term this will be a more stable and suitable situation. I had thought that my hardships were coming to an end. Unfortunately, the Brighton branch of Manpower were not handling my payments and thus I was still subject to emergency tax. The Branch of Manpower that I currently find myself working for have repeatedly failed to return my attempts to contact them and are showing no urgency in addressing my issues, therefore despite my efforts, my hardship continues unabated.

In summary, I have found myself in a dire financial situation. The factors for this include not being paid a full wage since January which in turn has exacerbated my ongoing debt issues, the recent unprecedented cost of living increases and not to mention the two recent bank holidays for which casual or temporary staff are neither paid nor given the option to work.

Before your reminder arrived I had resolved to clear my arrears with you in the coming fortnight which would already stretch me beyond the means of reasonable living expenses, however to ask me to pay £190 in less than one week, more than the net amount I am currently receiving per week, is not possible. Furthermore to ask me to pay the full years amount when I cannot keep up with monthly payments is beyond impossible for me at this time and the logic of which escapes me.

In closing I would like to add the emotional strain placed on my partner and I over the last few months. As you are aware, my partner recently lost her father, a tragedy, which has had repercussions for us both. My continuing financial difficulties have also done nothing to ease the diagnosed severe anxiety and clinical depression I have been suffering in the last few years.

I hope that you can find it within yourself to reconsider my situation and come to a satisfactory compromise without needing to resort to legal proceedings. I am fully compliant in paying off my arrears and in the face of my difficulties, would ask for the time to do so.

Yours Faithfully




Adrian Harper

The pisstake is this has been going on for six months, yesterday because I mentioned this situation and bullied a few people a bit (reluctantly) I got it sorted in about 20 minutes!!! (the p45 thing, not the summons thing)

Emma Harold gets me out of trouble once again, thanks Emma.

Gripes about fitness bores, musical disappointments and the difference a day made.

Ok, so recently once again I started the whole fitness thing again. It's something I really have to throw myself into in order to keep it up, diet, regular exercise the whole thing. It's great for me it limits my attacks of acid reflux and helps me manage my depression (sometimes). A lot of people do this and there are plenty of people who are just as enthusiastic as I am and it's very tempting to talk to these people about it. DONT! Nobody wants to hear how many minutes you do on a treadmill everyday or what seeds you've been eating this week. Very interesting for yourself and sometimes interesting to others to a limit but essentially you're just validating your own efforts and showing off, NOBODY CARES! I think that if two people talk about this it becomes less of a conversation and more two people talking and not really listening. (I'm having a lot of these conversations recently; 'what have you been doing?' - 'oh well this and that and it doesn't matter because you're making small talk and not really listening why don't you crow at me for a bit now',- 'OK so I've been doing blah blah blah'.

Before my next comment I feel the need to say that the last few days have been greatly improved as far as diversity goes and generally I think the BBC's music programming is of a very high standard, but.....

Edith Bowman on radio one doing topical track, it happens to be on the radio when I'm getting to the end of my lunch break in the car. The idea is that people suggest songs to relate to a talking point that has come up during the show. Most of the suggestions are quite relevant, witty and for some really good music, but on the whole recently they only seem to play quasi-cool songs from about the last five years. I'm not sure who has the final decision of which track to play or even if it's been suggested by anyone other than the powers that be. Sometimes the links are so flimsy that it should be part of Chris Moyles' programme (tedious link). This has never happened but and Ms. Bowman would never be this shit (hopefully) but - (Lots of suggestions today, seems like a type of special club all these listeners and I'm loving it, you could say I'm lovin' this club so here's Usher with Love in this club). Is there some kind of cool membrane keeping the masses entertained? Would playing anything older than 1995 on Radio one would suddenly enrage and break the collective conscious and cause a full scale breakdown of society to ensue or is it another case of Radio ONEplaylist? You can tune in during an average workday and hear the same song about five or six times, yes it needs to be played so often so that it's heard by everyone and gains in popluarity, I get that, Radio one has a target audience fair enough but such features might give an opportunity to move away from playing the Kaiser Chiefs for the fourteenth time today. Please use it.

Does anyone remember Re-covered? the BBC programme in which contemporary artists are featured performing a track of their own and arrange a cover in their style, a very interesting premise. (quite similar to what happens in the live lounge but with the added bonus of being a visual platform too) It could have been extended slightly to show the artists arranging and rehearsing the chosen song, perhaps even an interview to demonstrate why they'd chosen it and any difficulties they encountered in arrangement. It sounds a bit 'Let it be' I know and I'm sure, like the early scenes in Let it Be, the BBC would have failed to provide an adequate setting for any creative leaps to take place. Not that it matters because the concept was once again ruined by artists coming on and doing one original song and that original song's double a side which happens to be a cover. (arrrghh I don't want to hear it I can hear it on TOTP or something, or you could've at the time, it's not interesting it's not creative!)

When you're 29, the world is still your oyster you have your whole life ahead of you and you're free to explore. Once you turn 30, it seems to me in my experience so far that you pass a point in people's heads like a rollercoaster going up an incline on one of those things that clacks behind you, there's no going back. All of a sudden the attitude isn't 'the world is your oyster' but 'well that's it you've had a bit of time to see the world now take stock, make the best of your choices and get ready for the harsh winter ahead'. HOLD ON!! Statistically I still have over half my time left (the average life span is what 75-80 nowadays? if you don't run into any problems) for most of that time I was confined by being legally a child and for the rest of it, struggling with financial problems what have I seen other than the inevitability of death and taxes? Rob Newman once spoke about the disillusionment of getting to around 30 having seen what the world has to offer and having to just sigh and carry on living for four or five decades, apparently the next four or five decades are just that, cleaning the house (that you've bought apparently) and having obligatory sex with the person you're maybe not that attracted to anymore (I'm speaking hypothetically). I'm still excited about exploring, creating and learning new skills, essentially 'the journey' as it's called and next thing I know one of my friends (who is only 21) is sitting me down talking about my pension! I've only aged a few months since being 29! What is the point anyway? I've come to the conclusion that after death as far as I'm concerned I never existed and existence itself never existed the only people with any comprehension of those who have lived are the living so why should I spend half my time (again not knowing how much time any of us has) going through the motions because it's a social convention or saving up for a time in the future I might not even live to see!

Mind you on the other hand, have you been in a pub recently and seen the unfortunate characters who are still trying to live as a 20 year old despite being much older. Not sure I want to do that and it's going to be difficult to avoid I think.

My mind is running out of faces

I began a new job today. A fairly boring job for a very basic wage. The person training me however is a dead ringer for someone in my past who through the magic of facebook I have found myself reunited with. With this in mind I know full well the person I have been sitting with is not said person from my past but (probably to do with aforementioned problems with sleep) I have spent the whole day thinking 'oh ****! what are you doing here teaching me this stuff?' I know now how the various tales of vampires reunited with long dead people from their lives must have come about. There are obviously a finite number of facial combinations and probably in your subconscious, your mind must fill in the blanks and I've noticed more and more that my mind is running out. unfortunately exactly the same can be said of personalities. Very often I am sat with a new person for a few days and I know I've met them before albeit with a different id, memories, bodies etc but I know exactly what I'm getting. Experience perhaps? Why old people claim to be a 'good judge of character' and why young people so often feel unfairly judged by old people.
Crap! I just called myself old didn't I? ah well you know what they say (they talk a lot don't they) if the cap fits, fuck it!

Beta Days

I wrote this late saturday night and.......... I dunno it's just how I was feeling. It's shit and it's whiny

I'm attached to existence. It could be said it's something I can't live without but right now I'm feeling more than a little indifferent. I may have another thirty or forty years of existence or I may have another thirty or forty days or even thirty or forty hours if how I feel right now is any indication. For those with a morbid curiosity in existential anxiety (which I suffer violent attacks of every single night)/general anxiety/ mild whiny emo-depression or any healthcare professionals willing to listen to me again, here it is mind and body.
I'm having continuing issues with sleep patterns and daily panic attacks, I've been feeling the cold a lot more recently than usual and I keep feeling unsteady and dizzy like I don't understand how my body can stand and remain vertical on muscled stalky stilts. As I write this I have a burning tainted feeling in the pit of my stomach kind of how I'd imagine feeling if I had some kind of sinister poison like an overdose of a prescription drug or something contaminating my system like oil accidentally ingested in some innocent way (not based on any medical research or experience just perception. In fact when I was younger I used to get terrible stomach cramps and as I didn't know what they were I used to call it oily stomach or something)
What to do in waiting to expire, since existence is ultimately pointless I may as well just do exactly what I feel like. Not sure I feel like I can be bothered right now. Perhaps this is just a bracket of dead time until the next thing comes along to excite or inspire me. The most insignificant setbacks of the most rudimentary tasks make me sigh and stop in my tracks. Sometimes such distractions or the most elementary of interactions with other people make me want to burst into tears (not for any dark or ominous reason, it just happens). I could wax lyrical about my current inability to maintain eye contact or detail every insecurity in my head right now but I'm not sure that's what I want to express. I don't know right now what I want to express it all just seems so pointless but nature forces me to breathe and my heart to beat and with it my eyes see, my ears hear etc etc despite how I try to will them to stop. I guess that makes me lucky. In fact I know that makes me lucky there are people who would happily trade. So I am lucky, at least for today.

The Decreasing Median

I have started to believe that despite our current culture of self improvement and lifelong learning, we are becoming less intelligent and certainly less cultured.

James, our singer, in a text message, intimated to me that he wishes to discuss Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. The prospect of a challenging heated 'hero-off' (James has recently been reading a Hughes biog and I have been a self proclaimed fan of the former for some time) really doesn't appeal to me as my identification/admiration of Sylvia Plath is something quite introspective and personal and does not require validation however never wanting to be underprepared, I took some time to revise my knowledge just in case. Whilst reading from Hughes' book, 'Birthday Letters', I read a piece called 'Wuthering Heights' which through my interpretation speaks about them visiting the Bronte's home in North Yorkshire, not too far from Heptonstall where the Hughes family live(d). Also from my interpretation, Hughes seems to question how Emliy Bronte would have viewed Plath and implies in the negative calling Bronte something like austere.(I really wanted to include a quote to back this up but as the internet is being stingy today that would mean going all the way downstairs to find a copy of 'Birthday Letters'. Not today)A feeling I am not unfamiliar with despite not being an accomplished author or anyone who can rightly judge such as a peer. (in the wider sense I have acheived nothing in life) Is this just an intrinsic quality in the psyche of an artist to feel inadequate to those who have gone before (I'm reminded of Homer Simpson and Thomas Edison) or is it that for me to feel inadequate next to someone who had suggested inadequacy is a slowly decreasing line (I'm making no sense I know, people are getting stupider. let me put it another way)

Television I think is a factor and an indicator of the stupidity of the general population if average intelligence is anything to go by. I recently took an online IQ test and got just above 'average' intelligence. However if average intelligence is having to have Philip and Fern on 'This Morning' trying to simplify an already simple concept like the tv programmes 'Echo Beach/Moving Wallpaper' or the online virtual social networking/game site 'Second Life' then I despair. It could be argued that the average target audience for 'This Morning' are not as moderately tech savvy as I (with regard to Second Life) and someone like me should be using this moderate tech savvyness (it is a word!!) to go out and earn some money instead of watching daytime tv and drinking endless tea (I'm trying).

I don't want to bang on like a petulant teenager saying (be who you want to be) but another example is the apparent digestion of programmes like 'Ladette to Lady'. Blatantly an attempt at propaganda which would assume that progression from boorish immoral working class to refined immoral upper class is a positive thing. It is clear that the higher classes can be just as immoral and unpleasant as the working class and the comparison of equally flawed human beings placed into brackets defined by largely inherited socio economic factors is at best subjective. The show is also obviously engineered to cause conflicts which apparently make 'good tv'

I'm such a geek. Also I'm aware of the irony that a blog which attributes television as a factor/indication of stupidity also references television quite regularly ha ha ha
Also I'm talking about general intelligence across the popluation not individuals (which matter more). Put people in a large group and they start to resemble cattle, anyone who has worked in a customer focussed role will know what I mean.

Letters I've written never meaning to send

Dear Buz,
I think I've just written a large portion of your next play. I've just been watching Superman II and after the inital guilty one liners about Chritopher Reeve or Margot Kidder that regrettably pop into your consciousness (Or the further guilty musings that 'that's not the last time a fine snow of rubble fell over the streets of New York City' or 'That's not the last time a flying object ripped through several floors of the World Trade Centre'. America please forgive my poisonous mind that chats like the insane deformed cousin locked in the cellar like I forgive your right wing establishment or your biggoted boorish nature, I love you I'm going to hell!)
I Digress,
after all that it occurred to me that thanks to the unconscious education we as children received from these films, there is no wonder that for some of my generation, the apple never totally cleared the canopy of the tree. Here's a quick reminder of the plot and you'll get the point.
Superman gives up his power for the love of a woman despite the warnings of his parents that 'once it is done there is no going back'. One timely ass kicking later, he returns bloody and beaten to discover that indeed there is no going back. OH! except for that convenient escape clause we neglected to tell you about. No wonder some of us are full of bargaining against circumstance and unable to accept consequence and in the face of a bad decision choose to run back to our parents in search of a positive resolution.
I think that a more mature resolution to the film and a far less '80s blockbuster' angle would be ok Clark Kent gives up power gets ass kicking and killer line from Lois about 'where's the man I fell in love with' (ouch!) and the rest of his emotional journey is spent learning to deal with the fact he can't do what he did before. He can't be everyone's saviour or the toughest guy in the room, sometimes you have to be the bigger man and walk away from the dickhead who took your seat in a diner and possibly accepting that the woman he fell for is a fickle two bit skank who basically did fall for the hardest guy in the room. I think that our new humbled protagonist should spend the rest of his days in a Manhattan studio apartment writing a column filled with semetically sharp observations about life and his new found method of adaptablitiy. Sadly the film wasn't made this way and for some of us emerging from the ABC cinema, blurry eyed from the sun we'd been starved of for the past two hours or so, filled with the blind (no pun intended) optimism of one part youth two parts Hollywood razmatazz, being taught there was no such thing as absolute consequence if you bargain enough and that no one really needs to take responsibility for their bad decisions became the rule.
Remember that mother, next time I need money for Car Insurance