shining star

get your shades out... these are bright. dopey's inner beauty shining through...

on target (08.12.06 - 09.12.06)

last weekend target and belinda were bound in holy matrimony. it was a really happy occasion. the weather was great and the setting beautiful. the gods must have been smiling that day because the sky was as blue, and the grass as green, and the air as crisp, as i had ever seen it. bee sure did look beautiful in her emerald green dress and target radiant in his open collared bohemian 60's silk shirt. i hope they have a long and happy life together.

but enough of the pleasantries - what about the bulls party??? although it was on the friday night before the wedding, we sure did have a good time. we went to the roadhouse in covent garden. we drank beer. we smoked authentic cuban cigars (courtesy of buffy's recent trip to cuba). we talked about the good old days when we were single (for most of the guys - a few years ago; for me - a living reality). we danced. we talked to mr t: sucker fool. we missed pedro biggs. hobson counted rounds. bruce got left behind after foolishly stopping for a kebab - a schoolboy error. we celebrated target's last night of freedom. you may take our lives... but you may never take our freedom!!!

anyway... that's all i can say. what happens on the bulls, stays on the bulls. that's the way it's always been. that's the way it always will be. not that much else happened though... so there's not much else to say... except that that is the rule... so i thought i'd just state it here... not because there is anything i'm trying to hide... but because it is the rule... honestly.

winter sunsets

took these pics from out of my window at work last week... yes, i am bored and have nothing to do. these crisp, cold, blue winter days sure do make for some good sunsets though.

london life

dog days

“when you stop to consider
the days spent dreaming of a future
and say then, that was my life.”

for the days are long –
from the first milk van
to the last shout in the night,
an eternity. but the weeks go by
like birds; and the years, the years
fly past anti-clockwise
like clock hands in a bar mirror.

- derek mahon

i love poetry. i love the way you can look at a bunch of words and it feels like you are holding a mirror to your soul. when the words describe exactly how you feel before you even know that you felt that way.

anyway, so i stumbled across this poem when i first arrived in london and latched onto the first stanza. this is because at the time, i felt that i was living only for some future goal - you know the thought process: just wait till i finish studying, just wait till i get overseas, just wait till i get a job, just wait till i go travelling, and on and on, etc. always grasping for the future and never quite getting there.

however whilst having dinner with mates last night and reminiscing about the last few years in london this poem popped into my head again and the second stanza took on new significance – for although the hours and days in my mundane office job drag by like there's gonna be no tomorrow, the weeks and months and years have flown past and i’m at a loss as to where they have gone. life sure does seem to rush by these days.

brixton (25.11.06)

a couple of weeks ago four of us attended helder and leanne's birthday bash in clapham and eventually landed up in brixton. despite what i wrote earlier, i don't recall being that drunk and thought that it was quite a sensible decision to head down to brixton in the early hours of the morning - after all we just wanted to dance. to tell you the truth, when i woke up in the morning i was totally perplexed as to how we had landed up in brixton in our sober state.

however, upon seeing the following pictures (kindly sent around by spanky), i have now revised my opinion and i'm pretty sure that i was super rocked. ahhh... the beauty of photographic evidence... it always explains a whole lot.

iceland

this is a picture of a few mates from a recent trip to iceland. looks pretty awesome - jacuzzi-ing in a snow storm. am super sad that i had to miss it, but will def make it to scandoland one day (is iceland part of scandanavia?)

ps. porto - nice beenie dude... oh and the gym looks like it is def paying off!!!

tagged

i've just been tagged by fisher to write five things you don't know about me. this is a new experience for me. i'm not used to mainstream blogging and i'm not sure if i'm ready for it. i'm nervous. i'm warm and snug on my underground blog page, happily racking up my two hits a day (thanks mom... and dopey).

anyway, i'm not one to shirk a challenge... so here goes:

1. i recently began trimming my pubic hair. no particular style - just short front and sides. neat and tidy. i have not progressed to clippers or a razor yet. one step at a time. i'm not sure if it will make any difference or how much effect it will have on my sex life (it can't get any worse) - but figured i'm a considerate guy and i know what i'd prefer. i haven't pulled for ages so have no feedback as yet, but i fingers crossed i'll get the thumbs up.
   
   
2. sometimes when i get home early from work and my housemates aren't in, i get my best of andrew lloyd webber cd out. i play it really loud and sing along. i know the words to most of the songs but generally play tracks 8 and 10 over and over again because they are my favourites.
   
   
3. i love romantic comedies (romcom's). my favourite is wimbledon with kirsten dunst. i like them because it gives me hope - the nerdy dude always ends up with the sexy girl. actually to tell you the truth, i'm a sucker for any romantic movie - i really enjoyed brokeback mountain and am super bummed (excuse the pun) that i missed the end.
   
   
4. i can hold my breath under water for approximately 36 seconds. i know this because i tried it in the spa at the gym last sunday.
   
   
5. unlike fisher, i do believe in fate and destiny and karma. i have this belief because no person deserves to have such bad luck without having done something really bad in a previous life. my bad luck or karma applies mainly to sport and girls. the two most important things in life. no sports team that i support ever wins anything. they may flatter to deceive on occasions and win the odd game. but that is just to increase my agony when they ultimately fail. even my mates beg me not to support their team. girls... errr... the less said the better.

hmmm... hope that was okay. that's my life. use it... don't use it.

apparently i need to tag someone else. i'm pretty sheltered and don't really know any other bloggers so i'll tag the three folks i do know and if one of them reads this... well then you're tagged:

frank

donaldson

kam

go on... you know you want to.

if you could rewind your time
would you change your life?

the church of reason

i talked about phaedrus' lateral drift, which ended with entry into the discipline of philosophy. he saw philosophy as the highest echelon of the entire hierarchy of knowledge. among philosophers this is so widely believed it's almost a platitude, but for him it's a revelation. he discovered that the science he'd once thought of as the whole world of knowledge is only a branch of philosophy, which is far broader and far more general. the questions he had asked about infinite hypotheses hadn't been of interest to science because they weren't scientific questions. science cannot study scientific method without getting into a bootstrap problem that destroys the validity of it's answers. the questions he'd asked were at a higher level than science goes. and so phaedrus found in philosophy a natural continuation of the question that brought him to science in the first place, what does it all mean? what's the purpose of all this?

i have recently revisted zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. i love this book. it's not easy reading and i don't understand it. but i love the train of thought. and it contains numerous little isolated pearls of wisdom.

anyway i've been a bit of a mental mess recently. i've been all over the show. last friday evening i was killing time in a coffeeshop trying to decipher the zen text when the above paragraph in italics popped up. it suddenly occurred to me that i needed to sort my shit out. i needed a plan. a blueprint for life. something that would get to the source of my current disharmony.

i’ve often thought "there must be something more than this" and have looked to science and basic philosophy and religion and enlightened people for advice...

one of my mates has the most fantastic analytical mind. he has a theory for everything and anything. ask him for advice on a problem and he will mentally refer back to a book he read or something he heard. relationship problems. money problems. work problems. anything. yet if you ask him about his biggest passion, the thing that drives his life: christianity - he can't explain it. it's just faith. blind faith. and yet it's more real to him than anything his theories can explain.

this bothered me as i looked to him for answers and being a child of western society i needed an explanation. i didn't want to rely on a feeling. to many people, religion and the concept of god and fate and destiny don't make sense. according to zen however, it's not the religion or faith or feeling that is bad, it's the "sense" that is bad. it is “sense” that needs reworking.

apparently a logic based system of thinking was fine when the primary objective in life was surviving. food. housing. protection. now that surviving is not our primary objective, this logic based system has become inadequate. or hollow. people are starting to wonder how long they are going to have to exist in this system that is spiritually shallow. people have become disillusioned and don't really know why. technology and industry is often blamed for this disillusionment, but it is the structure of our system of thought that has us trapped.

have you ever heard of someone refering to "the system"? or someone who's trying to get away from "it all"? ever wondered what "it all" is? "it all" is reason. or logic. or rhetoric. the building blocks of western society. the tool that has been handed down from generation to generation over thousands of years, eliminating almost every predator known to man, and enabling mankind (no... not the wwf wrestling dude) to rule the planet. the only problem is that reason has become so entrenched in our thinking that it has come to dominate the human race itself. to think outside of the system is to be insane.

zen attempts to rework the current western system of thought to incorporate more "feeling". to bridge the gap between classical and romantic thinking. reconcile square and hip. to understand the gateway to the soul. and it sure is interesting. although i have no idea what he is on about most of the time. in fact i don’t even know what i am on about most of the time. i don’t even know why i wrote this. oh well, whatever, nevermind.

i love this song - the video doesn't make much sense, but it sure does have some romantic appeal.

getting old

the thing that disturbed me most was that i really didn't want to go to south america. i didn't want to go anywhere. yet, when yeamen talked about moving on, i felt the excitement anyway. i could see myself getting off a boat in martinique and ambling into town to look for a cheap hotel. i could see myself in caracas and bogota and rio, wheeling and dealing through a world i had never seen but knew i could handle because i was a champ.

but it was pure masturbation, because down in my gut i wanted nothing more than a clean bed and a bright room and something solid to call my own at least until i got tired of it. there was an awful suspicion in my mind that i'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that i didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detached.

hst
the rum diary

a joke

i love this joke... it's one of my best in the whole world ever.

A young courting couple are out for a romantic walk along a country lane. They walk hand in hand and as they stroll his lustful desire rises to a peak. He is just about to get frisky when she says, "I hope you don't mind but I really do need to have a piss".

Slightly taken aback by this vulgarity he replies, "OK why don't you go behind this hedge". She nods in agreement and disappears behind the hedge.

As he waits he can hear the sound of nylon knickers rolling down her voluptuous legs and imagines what is being exposed. Unable to contain his animal thoughts a moment longer he reaches through a gap in the foliage, his hand touching her leg. He quickly brings his hand further up her thigh until suddenly and with great astonishment finds himself gripping a long, thick appendage hanging between her legs. He shouts in horror "My God Mary have you changed your sex!".

"No" she replies, "I've changed my mind, I'm having a sh*t instead".

gracelands

she comes back to tell me she's gone
as if i didn't know that
as if i didn't know my own bed
as if i'd never noticed
the way she brushed her hair from her forehead
and she said losing love
is like a window in your heart
everybody sees you're blown apart
everybody sees the wind blow

cyber celebrities??? (01.12.06)

myself and dopey rocked up at waxy's in leicester square on friday night. we were there for miki's bday (i sure have been to a lot of bday parties lately). miki is an irishman of japanese decent. he is also a rockstar and once had his cd on sale in hmv. he also has a bunch of irish friends. i love the irish lilt (thank god for word of the week).

as per normal we were only there for a few quiet ones... "i'm def not gonna miss the last train" were my exact words i think. we had a few beers and met a few irish dudes and a few beautiful irish girls with lovely accents. and we had a few more beers... those irish folk can drink.

anyway... so at some stage we were cruising through waxy's when some star-struck lady jumps in front of us and yells: "hey you're the guys from that website!!!". we looked around sheepishly not wishing to attract any further attention from other would-be-celebrity-spotters. but there was nothing we could do... soon enough we were surrounded by crazed fans and desparate groupies.

now i love groupies as much as the next guy... so we decided to take advantage. we were loud and brash. and the swarms of beautiful young birds were loving it. we were indulging in the good life.

soon though tensions began to rise... what can you expect when the focus of all the girls in the place is on us cyber celebrities. so a massive brawl erupted and culminated with some dude getting glassed and leaking loads of blood all over the floor. eventually the police arrived and order was restored.

at about this time we decided to head out to party. we cruised off to borderline in covent garden - a cool indie type place where we jammed to some wicked tunes. we were so engrossed in the tunes that we discarded our groupie clan (they become boring once you've had them all) and totally rocked the dancefloor. our night ended at approx 4.30am. my ears are still ringing. and my ego is still raging.

bollywood (20.11.06 - 26.11.06)

this is a two week catch up - apologies but i had some pretty cool encounters...

two tuesday's ago myself and stupac met up with scott - an american dude we met hiking in bolivia. he's been travelling for 18 months straight and has no plans to start work anytime soon - he's hired a villa in barca for december and then is off to morroco for a few months. we sure did have some crazy nights in south america - but the craziest night was def with the american boys in lima. you can read the two-part story here:

part 1

part 2

scott travelled south america for ten months. you can read his travel blog here.

two wednesday's ago i slept.

two thursday's ago all the boys caught up at the firestation in waterloo. it sure was a good night, although i did feel a bit ruff the next morning despite only having a quiet ten beers. the dudes sure have been off to some wild and exotic places recently and we heard some great stories - buffy with his castro guevara conspiracy theory in cuba, spanky and mountain island steam baths in japan, grat's off to the holy land, stupac's just arrived in the 1st world, and hobson has become a bollywood model in india.

two friday's ago i watched borat with spanky. spanky nearly split his sides laughing. it was super funny... and extra cringeworthy. it's been banned in russia... which is a shame because it is really targeting the states and showing how narrow minded some of the folks in the "greatest nation in the world" are. you should watch it. is nice.

myself, dopey, porto and ryan headed off to clapham two saturdays ago... not because we felt like it... but because it was helder and leanne's birthday combined 60th birthday. it was at the popular posh club lost society. we made a pact to only buy one round each... that equates to four beers each... that's because if you multiply four by four you get sixteen... then divide by four and you get four. anyway... when ryan came back with eight beers on the second round that plan was blown out the water. we got smashed. we mingled. we sweet talked. we danced. we oggled. we broke hearts. we ended up in at amss brixton jamming to angry hip hop house music with drugged up dreadlocked fellows. we left. we ate hot dogs. dopey had a goat curry...

two sunday's ago spurs beat wigan.