With A Beak

(another maybe for RDDC)

It's a bonny night to be a penguin
Dancing and a-surfing all day long
They don't have to do
Any performance reviews
We've got our way of being all a-wrong

I want to have myself some breakfast
I want to have a tattie scone
I want to have myself some breakfast
And eat 'til all the pain is gone

To be a thing with a beak
I want to be a thing with a beak

It's a bonny night to be a starling
In your murmuration way up high
No ifs and no buts
No education cuts
You can't be austere with the sky

I want to have myself a pub quiz
I want to have myself a try
I want to have myself a pub quiz
And maybe even win first prize

To be a thing with a beak
I want to be a thing with a beak

It's a bonny night to be a bastard
It's a bonny night to be a cad
We are all encouraged
To steal sandwiches
And rain a rain of shit upon the land

I want to have myself some whisky
I want to have a single malt
I want to have myself some whisky
We know that it's the government's fault

To be a thing with a beak
I want to be a thing with a beak

Lakeside World Darts Championship

(If RDDC can accept this song then the music world is in serious trouble)

You seemed so unimpressed
With our first date at Laserquest
The sweat and pre-pubescents
A mixture you found unpleasant
(You must get enough of that as a maths teacher)
I will appeal to your romantic side
And promise you a walk to the Lakeside
What could be more romantic
Than athletes and mathematics?

Lakeside World Darts Championship
Cupid's arrows never miss
Lakeside World Darts Championship
Oh those arrows are going to hit

Thought about the Amex, thought about bingo
All the exciting places that other people go

I know you like numbers and I like sport
This is the ideal place to court

There are 180 ways
To say “I Love You” to your face

But a trip to Frimley for you and I
Is the best way for me to hit the bullseye

I'm going to step up to the oche
Hoping for a little bit of tonsil hockey

Lakeside World Darts Championship
Cupid's arrows never miss
Lakeside World Darts Championship
Oh those arrows are going to hit

The first thing that you're going to do
When you go back to school
Is begin this little mission;
Hand over a home-made petition

To the head-teacher

In an attempt to beseech her

To install darts as part of
the Maths and PE syllabuses
And if that fails then at least
There's wrestling at Hove Town Hall in two weeks

Lakeside World Darts Championship
Cupid's arrows never miss
Lakeside World Darts Championship
Oh those arrows are going to hit

"The Fluidity of language" - draft 1

“Sticks and stones may break my bones

But names will never hurt me,”

Cool story, bro,
No one ever bled from being called a bastard,

But consider

the fluidity of language:

Throwing a glass full of words into someone's face

May annoy or upset at the most,

But words fired from high-powered cannon,

200 gallons of words a minute by

Men in protective clothing

Can knock down and injure.

Throwing words about casually in the back-garden

On a warm summer's evening

Can make a mess, ruin clothing at the most,

(It's all laughter amongst friends)

But words poured over a cloth covering

The victim's face and

Blocking the breathing passages

Can cause

Physical damage
And

Psychological damage
And

Death.

Words erode,

They drag and tear,

Coastlines collapse into swirling crumbs,

Dripping syllables onto the forehead

Bore a hole into the brain,

Words have a weight

As heavy as history,

And if enough are amassed upon you then

This weight drowns and suffocates

Leaving a body on the ocean floor,

Rusting disintegrating sediment.

Beware;

Lips are floodgates,

Letting loose fifty metre high torrents

Crashing onto foreign shores

Destroying homes and lives and

Those things that have taken years

Of careful nurturing and cultivation

To grow into beauty.

Sticks and stones may break my bones

But waves break me completely.

Collaboration #1

Sunrise like a cabbage,
Cliff Richard reaching a fab age,
He stretched and called Morrissey
Who was visiting Battersea,
Enquiring about a rakish boxer,
And people thought him a cat lover!
"Steve," trilled Cliff, "what are you up to?
Anything fun? And can I come to?"
"Mr. Richard," Moz said, "what joy it would be,
If you would join me at the Ritz for tea."
So Cliff threw on a salmon suit
With a cool mustard necktie to boot,
And dashed along to catch the next train,
Hoping Morrissey's ardour hadn't waned.
But lo! Fickle Steven disapproved
Of the way the garments' colours moved.
He took his leave abruptly like a full stop,
Leaving Cliff, with the boxer in a strop,
Outside a poorly-stocked HMV,
Mourning the tragic passing of humanity.

C. Sissons & J. McIntosh

Wrestling - a defence

"There are people that think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of Suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque." - Roland Barthes

The other week, me and my housemate Matt decided to watch some wrestling. It's not something that either of us regularly do, and it's not something that I've done regularly since I was at secondary school. It's generally regarded as something a little immature to do, I guess largely because it's all overwhelmingly fake, and also because it's by and large a bit silly.

But should these be reasons to look down upon wrestling? There are plenty of other cultural forms that are both silly and fake, and yet are perceived as being more respectable and valid forms of entertainment, at least in the UK. Two of my favourite TV shows, Lost and Twin Peaks, were both at times absolutely ridiculous, and it was eventually obvious that the events of both series could not transpire in reality. Yet both were critically acclaimed, and the reaction I would get if I was to introduce myself to someone as a fan of Twin Peaks would be guaranteed to be more positive than if I was to announce myself as a follower of WWE.

Agent Cooper is felled by a chokeslam in this Falls Count Anywhere match

Watching the wrestling was as gloriously silly as I thought it would be. There is something very cathartic about watching overly muscly men with ridiculous names (Randy Orton? Dolph Ziggler? Fandango?) wearing glorious costume slapping each other silly. We especially enjoyed the dwarf dressed as a bull who managed to throw a dancing wrestler three times his size over the top rope. But was surprised me was that there was a match that I thought was actually awesome.

The match opened the show, and pitted fan-favourite Daniel Bryan against the relative newcomer Bray Wyatt. Bryan plays the perennial underdog, hard-working and technically gifted, who is constantly undermined by the wrestling powers that be for not fitting the traditional poster boy champion image. He has a large beard. Wyatt heads a sinister backwoods cult, with him stylised as the charismatic demagogue. He too has a large beard. Prior to this match, Bryan appeared to have been recruited to Wyatt's family, only to turn his back on him in spectacular fashion. This set them up for their clash. Below is a link to the promo puff to the fight:

So yes, it's very similar to the ridiculousness of the serial drama, or soap, only with a bit more poetic license for the characters. It's hard to see a cult being formed in Eastenders, though it would certainly make for more exciting story lines. The acting out of the story though is also coupled with impressive athleticism. Sure, it's not proper fighting, but it takes a lot of physical exertion in the same way that acrobatics and dancing do. I was ill last week and decided to rewatch a particularly memorable match from my teenhood on Youtube which you can view here should you be this way inclined. There's a lot of elaborate jumping off of things and into things. The violence is gloriously nonsensical, but the level of both the choreographing and improvisation has to be admired. The level of beardage isn't great, but a lot of the other hair is long.

Another thing that surprised me when me and Matt watched the wrestling was how the audience reacted to what it was watching. I've often considered the typical US wrestling fan to be quite the fool, being taken in completely by the spectacle and not recognising it as such. The audience that we witnessed was much more self-aware than that. On several occasions the audience would jeer a wrestler who was being portrayed as a good character, whilst cheering and getting behind wrestlers that were obviously intended to be bad guys. They would support whoever was embodying their character best and was engaging in the most exciting moves. This independence of thought was fascinating to observe, adding an entirely new slant to the action, and providing another element for the combatants to contend with and react to. From what I've read, the WWE have had to work their storylines around fan opinion, especially with the Internet as a platform for alternative ideas, with a great capacity for discussion.

Barthes was very interested in the workings of symbol within professional wrestling, and it is interesting to look at it as a gauge of US society. The cheering of the wrong wrestler, the establishment of the anti-hero, the true and criminal anti-hero is opposed to the workings of the ruling power that controls the stage he performs upon, could illustrate some degree of dissatisfaction with the workings of the ruling powers in society away from the performance. Indeed, the character of the criminal anti-hero is one that has grown in fascination for people significantly over the last couple of decades. You only have to look at the popularity of TV such as Dexter and video games such as Grand Theft Auto to see the magnetism that the criminal anti-hero possesses for the consumer. Contemporary trends in wrestling could be another example of this.

Alternatively, it could just be bad script-writing on the part of WWE, failing to create compelling morally good characters. In the end it doesn't really matter too much, so long as some elements of the spectacle remain exciting, because there's enjoyment to be had on many different levels with wrestling; the symbolism, the stories, the athleticism, and the violence. At the next event, the bearded cultists will be doing battle with a group of morally dubious vigilante types wearing security armour. Both groups have been characterised as bad guys. It sounds exciting, in the same way that a fight between Darth Vader and Darth Maul would be infinitely more exciting than a fight between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. I think we'll be tuning in again.

Beards and animal masks - what's not to like?

My Fat Life

(for RDDC, perhaps)


I am well-educated
But not intelligent
I am adipose
I am indolent
I like writing
But I am infrequent
Too busy having a nice time
to have a great time

Fuck my fat life.

I used to be super fitttt
My looks were ahead of the time
People asked me for indecencies
When kisses still gave me goosebumps
I've become so familiar
With my sofa
That it's started finishing my...

"...sentences for me."

Fuck my fat life

I'll go I'll go I'm running
I'll go I'll go I'm running
With you and you and you and you and
Like a broken winged phoenix
Like a broken winged phoenix
Like a broken winged phoenix
I'll burn and burn and burn and burn and
I'll seize the day tomorrow

I'll seize the day tomorrow

Goodbye 2013

"It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment."

The above quotation is from The Great Gatsby, a book which I decided to give another go after first reading it in my first year at uni and not enjoying it. Giving it time and space to whirl around in my head, I found it a greatly enthralling experience; rich and vibrant and haunting. 2013 was a year of reflection, but also a time for pushing on from the base of reflection. Something that Gatsby and his acquaintances should have done themselves.

Here are the simple resolutions I made last time round:

1. Just keep swimming.
2. Start on that bloody breakfast eating next week.


I think I achieved these. The breakfast blog has been the primary reason that this blog has remained dormant for the last few months, with all of my writing energies being invested there. You can read that output if you have yet to do so by clicking here. I also made more of an effort to document books, films, and gigs, which has made compiling this review a much easier task than last time. It's also made re-reading my wee diary a bit more interesting.

So far, so successful. Now for the most fun bit; the lists. I didn't really make the same kind of culinary discoveries this past year, but I did continue to try listening to new music.

January: Passenger
February: Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
March: Tori Amos
April: John Grant
May: Kate Bush
June: Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard
July: Ibrahim Ferrer
August: The Magnetic Fields
September: 10cc / Goat
October: TV on the Radio
November: Iron Maiden
December: Public Service Broadcasting

A good mix of older classic artists I should have been aware of much earlier, and newer prospects with plenty of opportunities to catch live in the future. Here now are my songs of the year:


Best tracks:
1. Arcade Fire - Reflektor
2. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Jubilee Street
3. John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts
4. Pixies - Bagboy
5. Leona Lewis - One More Sleep
6. The National - I Need My Girl
7. Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know?
8. Electric Six - The New Shampoo
9. Janelle Monae - Dance Apocalyptic
10. Kanye West - I Am A God

It felt like 2013 was a year full of big exciting musical returns; David Bowie, Nick Cave, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, Queens of the Stone Age, The National; the list goes on. I was surprised to find myself most captivated though by Arctic Monkey's album, AM, having dismissed them a long time ago. It was an album where all of the praise and hype seemed to finally fall into place for me, and I now view Alex Turner with some of the regard that critics have lavished on him since their first album. No matter what big new releases came out, this was the album I was constantly coming back to.


Best films...well...to be honest these are the only new films I saw:
Rush (4.5/5)
Gravity (4.5/5)
The World's End (4/5)
Les Miserables (4/5)
Sunshine on Leith (2.5/5 or 3/5, depending on whether you're a Proclaimers fan)
Escape Plan (2)

I generally lacked the get-up-and-go to see new films last year. There were one or two that I regretted not seeing, so this is something I need to work on for 2014. 


Best gigs:
Passenger @ Concorde 2
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds @ Brighton Dome
The National @ Alexandra Palace
Franz Ferdinand @ Electric Brixton
Youngfathers @ Brighthelm Centre (Great Escape)

Hopefully this represents a nice mix of gig experiences; in genre, scale, prestige, and mood. It was a good year for gigging for me, and I even ended the year having attended more gigs than I watched films (old and new). I would like to repeat this in 2014 as well, and have already got John Grant, Youngfathers, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, and Manic Street Preachers lined up.


Best books read:
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
Nick Cave - The Death of Bunny Munro
Mervyn Peake - Titus Groan
Margaret Attwood - The Year of the Flood
Jamie Doran & Piers Bizoni - Starman

I was much better at recording the books that I read, as well as reading in general. 2013 marked the first year in a long time where I would actively seek out spare moments to read, and relish spending an hour or two after getting in from work to plough into a novel, whereas before I would be more inclined to play video games or just faff around on the Internet. The Secret History was one of the most tantalising novels I have ever read, conjuring up a world that is at once both glamorous and sickening; a car-crash that you just can't help but be transfixed by. It shares quite a bit of ground with The Great Gatsby; perhaps you could describe it as a cross between that novel and American Psycho.
Honourable mentions must also go to Edward Knight and Denny Ledger, two friends whose debut novels I also read over the course of the year. Both were greatly enjoyable, and I would recommend them fans of post-modern literature and Bukowski respectively.


Achievements:
Obviously the breakfast blog is the major thing I set out to do last year, so that is an achievement I am proud of. I also finally completed NaNoWriMo after several years of trying (more of that in a sec). Another thing was playing a part in my friends Mike and Rosie's wedding. Both the run-up and the day itself took a lot of work, but the results of which were brilliant. Overall, it was a very happy year, and I'm looking forward to more of the same.


New Year's Resolutions:
 
I want to get back to using this blog more. I think the most practical thing will be to use it, as well as to record thoughts and lyrics and poems, is to chronicle my efforts at writing my novel, Captain Iguanodon, a fantasy-sci-fi tale involving steampunk dinosaur pirates and the incoming meteor. It's going nicely thus far, and I managed to lay down over 50,000 words for it this year spurred on by NaNoWriMo. I will use the blog to lay my thoughts out from time to time, to help me keep control of where it's going. I would like to finish a first draft of the story by the end of the year at least, and hopefully using this blog will also help to create some kind of routine for me to stick to.

Myself and Claire will also travel to as many Kingstons in the UK as we can (as long as she's still up for the challenge!). There are at least 20, including the wonderfully named Kingston Bagpuize. This may be another thing to document here on the blog.

2014 feels like it's going to be a good year. 2013 served to create a strong foundation, now let's see how these seeds grow.