Musical Monday #28

Last week, I described Kate Nash as polarising opinion on the scale of Marmite -- in that one tends to fall into a love or hate category, with very little room for a middle ground. And for the record, I hate Marmite.

It seems, though, that the powers that be in this mysterious and expanding universe have been pointing me towards a MM post on Ani DiFranco. It's long overdue, Ani is one of my favourite artists, but I've struggled whenever I have tried to verbalise what I love about her music. Part of the trouble has been that one of my favourite songs is "You Had Time" -- but I only loved this song after I read Nick Hornby's essay on it in 31 Songs. Unfortunately, his writing was so incredibly good about such an amazing song that I could think of nothing original to add. But on the plus side, he only writes about the song, and not Ms DiFranco's music in general. Unlike this post.

Those of you who know me at all will know that there will often come a time when I start making you compilation CDs.

I still sort of miss making compilation tapes, -- of working out what tracks should open side A and side B, but a CD is far more practical and actually allows for a little more creativity as there can be the option of creating album artwork for the CD. The good thing about making a tape was that there was more space (usually 90 minutes, compared to 80 for a CD) and there was two sides -- so there were various techniques to employ when putting together the tracklisting.

The point is, that making these CDs is more or less a certainty in most contexts that you will know me. Following a recent compilation CD, a friend revealed to me that she didn't really like Ani DiFranco very much. Of course, there is never going to be a compilation where someone likes every single track by every single artist, but I was still surprised. I haven't played Ani to a lot of people -- I know some of my friends like Jon have probably heard her when I've played some in the car or something, but have never expressed any liking for it. I think they were probably just being polite. I started to think that maybe more than Kate Nash, Ani could be an aural equivalent of Marmite.

Then when Mez commented on last week's post that Kate Nash reminded her of Ani DiFranco, I knew this post had to be written.

Ani DiFranco was an artist I probably wouldn't have come into contact with, had it not been for Rie. I don't remember what the first song I heard was, or when it was -- often when Matt was at work on a Saturday, Rie and I would hang out and draw and listen to music or whatever. It would have been one of those random Saturday afternoons with Rie playing old personal compilation tapes that I would have heard Ani, and so these two women will always be linked. It's odd, because Rie was a huge fan of Tori Amos, but I have never got into her music.

I think first and foremost for me, Ani is a poet -- she is reminiscent of the poetry slams I used to go to in Utah coffee shops, something I had never experienced in the back rooms of pubs in Derby where we used to read our poems. I enjoy the pictures she paints with her words, the stories she tells with her songs -- the complex and imperfect relationships she describes.

One of my favourite songs is Gravel, where the protagonist of the song wants to be mad at this guy who clearly doesn't treat her very well -- but also stumbles on her feelings for him. She's "thinking 'fight fight fight' at all costs/but instead I sat you down and offered you a beer". Although he's clearly an arsehole, and has "come crawling back" after two-timing her, she still loves him and can count the ways she adores him. Maybe it's meant to be sad, about how some people will keep taking back or going back to a partner who is abusive or just no good because they are charming or charismatic and can convince them they "want to make good, in the end". Just the same, I like it because it's not cut and dry -- it's not a simple reaction to a complicated situation. You don't suddenly stop caring about someone when they hurt you.

She lists all the ways in which he was a disappointment -- he wasn't a good lay, or a good friend, and consistently let her down. But somehow there is still a wry sense of humour when she asks "But what can I say? I adore you."

Ani's voice and guitar playing in the song have a very staccato feel -- jerky, and brash, and yet somehow it works for me. It was pointed out to me that Ani very rarely sings, at least in her verses, and it's this that reinforces for me the impression of her as a poet -- when I listen to male singers, it's often for me about the range and passion and power of their voices, the Eddie Vedders, Chris Cornells and Jeff Buckleys of this world, or the intense, husky drawls of the Mark Lanegans. But Ani changes all that -- she is soft spoken and often half-narrating, before bursting into an impassioned chorus of her own.

You had Time is very different, instead a very quiet and sad song -- again about a relationship that's broken down. Nick Hornby said something to the effect of this is how you fantasise all lesbian relationships are when they break up -- still so gentle and loving and tender. It could be autobiographical, I don't know, but the protagonist has returned from tour to her lover and is expected to know what they are doing with their relationship. Her partner says to her "You said you needed time; you had time". It's the metaphors that really appealed to Nick Hornby -- the beauty of phrases like "You are a china shop, and I am a bull. You are really good food, and I am full" -- it's the same way of saying "it's not you, it's me", but who wouldn't rather hear it this way? Sometimes hearing it like that can give us an insight into previous break ups of our own maybe -- an unfortunate situation, where it just wasn't working.

I could write for days about Ani's songs -- songs like Napoleon, or Little Plastic Castle, mixing the angry with the more tender. Or Ani's angry and bitingly political Self Evident that I find so difficult to listen to because of the sheer emotion in it. Instead I will include As Is -- a kind of love song.

But I can't write for days or explore every song's stories and stanzas. I can't even urge everyone to go and listen to her music, because I can't be sure you won't outright hate it. And it's not because it's all that challenging or different as music goes, but because it's such a specific approach -- one of those combinations where you have to really like the poetry, and like the rough approach to the guitar and voice. But she is one of my favourites -- the quirky, silly, funny, angry, passionate Ani.

As Is

28

28 Weeks Later has to be one of the worst and most ill-conceived sequels to any film I've seen. The sequels to Bring It On and Cruel Intentions might have been both pointless and terrible films in their own right, but it's the strength and power of the original film that makes 28 Weeks such a let down.

28 Days Later was so much more than just a zombie film.

The film followed the aftermath from the outbreak of a destructive virus that infected the blood and within seconds turned the infected into a rage-filled 'zombie'. Unlike most zombie films, the infected weren't the dead returning to life -- and that's partly where the film took a more meaningful turn.

It's significant that the virus was referred to as 'rage', in that it was a metaphor for a wider condition. The film opens with shots of violence from around the world, riots, wars, protests -- and the shot pans out to a monkey strapped to a table, being forced to watch. When animal rights activists break in to rescue the chimps they are warned that the are infected. With what, they demand to know. The scientist tells them to treat something you must first understand it. And tells them the monkey is infected with "rage".

Jim -- a bicycle courier -- wakes up alone in a hospital four weeks after being hit by a car, his confusion and disorientation mirrors the audiences as we don't know what happened after a misguided activist was attacked by an infected monkey. When Jim is rescued by two survivors it's explained to him:

"It started as rioting. But right from the beginning you knew this was different. Because it was happening in small villages, market towns. And then it wasn't on the TV any more. It was in the street outside. It was coming in through your windows. It was a virus. An infection. You didn't need a doctor to tell you that. It was the blood. It was something in the blood. By the time they tried to evacuate the cities it was already too late. Army blockades were overrun. And that's when the exodus started. Before the TV and radio stopped broadcasting there were reports of infection in Paris and New York. We didn't hear anything more after that."

The 'rage' virus can be seen as a metaphor for what is wrong with humanity -- what William Golding referred to as "the darkness of man's heart".

Alex Garland -- author of The Beach as well as 28 Days Later and Sunshine, among other notable works -- doesn't seem to have a very rosy outlook on humanity. The Beach starts almost idyllic, but not altogether unlike the events on Golding's own desert island, it seems flawed human nature spoils everything. The virus in 28 Days literally represents what's wrong with mankind -- it's something inherent, "in the blood". The only lines spoken by an infected person in film comes from a boy, found in an abandoned roadside cafe. It's significant that he growls the words "I hate you".

The film's unlikely survivors find an army base near Manchester -- and it's here that the dark heart of human nature is made clear. The soldiers are almost worse than the infected, perhaps showing what happens to humanity when civilisation breaks down.

Unfortunately, the subtlety and thought of the original is completely lost in the gratuitous sequel. 28 Weeks Later takes place, obviously, six months after the first film. The infected have now starved to death and England is quarantined, being marshalled by US troops.

Naturally, it all goes wrong and the infection starts up again -- a survivor is brought into quarantine who although she appears uninfected, is actually a "carrier" of the virus. The result is lots of blood and gore and death and not a whole lot else. There is no longer any exploration of what the virus "is", there's no ambiguity to it. There's no examination of the darkness of our heart, or human nature -- it's just a big budget horror flick that completely forgets everything that came before it.

Perhaps, as a film in its own right -- if you knew nothing of what had come before it, it would be passable. But to follow up something so haunting and thought-provoking, yet genuinely frightening with such... Hollywood garbage? It's almost heart breaking.

Hayduke Lives!

The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey

I've been a fan of Edward Abbey since I read Desert Solitaire in the summer of 2001, and partly based by dissertation on his perceptions of the wilderness. But while Solitaire is (largely) non-fiction, an autobiographical account of a season Abbey spent living in "the wilderness" of Arches National Park, Utah, The Monkey Wrench Gang is quite different.

The novel follows the adventures of four individuals who band together to take a stand against the establishment -- and are probably the first accounts of eco-sabotage in fiction. In 1975 when it was published it was shocking enough -- in today's political climate, the book would probably never get published. Gary Snyder once said that Hollywood had no problems showing blood, gore and mass murder but that "the gleeful destruction of private property" seemed dangerous un-American. It's no surprise that although rights to the book were bought, no film was ever made.

The prologue to The Monkey Wrench Gang opens with the "gleeful destruction" of a bridge linking Utah to Arizona, and the book then follows events leading towards the act.

Throughout the book, the unlikely misfits together undertake increasingly larger and more ambitious acts of sabotage. Starting with Abbey's own hobby of destroying billboards -- either by arson or with a chainsaw, they upgrade to sabotaging bulldozers, and on to attempting to destroy strip mining operations and later the bridges spanning White Canyon, Narrow Canyon and Dirty Devil Canyon. Their ultimate goal is one that many people -- then and now -- could agree with: the destruction of the Glen Canyon dam.

Abbey wrote at length elsewhere about the "damnation" of the Colorado river, which flooded some of the most beautiful canyons in the US and replaced them with a large, stagnant and increasingly polluted lake. The saboteurs dream of bringing down the dam, and of returning the country to the way it used to be.

Edward Abbey's books have inspired radical environmentalists, like Earth First! -- who following Abbey's anarchist influence insist they are not a group, but individuals following common goals. Similarly, there is the Earth Liberation Front who over the years have taken responsibility for defacing SUVs, destroyed construction equipment, vandalised fast food outlets, burned down apartment complexes before they were built -- and even more, even more extreme acts. The ELF are officially designated a terrorist organisation, and have been know to leave behind the tag "Hayduke Lives!" (after George Washington Hayduke, the protagonist of The Monkey Wrench Gang.

The book makes for slightly uneasy reading today -- even those who feel the text's anti-establishment rallying cry can't help but feel that what happens is perhaps a too close to terrorism. Although the "gang" have a very strict policy of not hurting anyone, in recent years we've all been witness to the actions of extreme groups of people who wish to change the world and influence people through the use of violence. Some of these people are parts of terror organisations, and some are our politicians -- sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between them. Just the same, it is hard to wholeheartedly support the acts in the book. But it raises the question; what else can be done? What should be done?

Abbey said that sabotage and subversion should be a last resort "when political means fail", but just the same -- he considered it a valid option, and the novel opens with a statement that although the book is "fictional in form" everything in it really happened.

The novel is compelling reading even if it isn't necessarily well-written. Abbey lacked the poetry of Gary Snyder or the style of Thoreau -- but The Monkey Wrench Gang captures a moment in time, and it remains just as relevant today.

Musical Monday #27

Kate Nash is still a new artist, and debate rages about if she will still be remembered a year from now -- let alone 10 years on or more. Nash polarises popular opinion almost as strongly as marmite, her first single -- Foundations -- was largely ignored by commercial radio, until it went to the top of the charts in the first week of release. Naturally, after that it started getting added to playlists. The Independent newspaper described Nash's debut album asbeing in "pole position for worst album of the year" -- but it still went to number one.

All in all, I quite like her.

Nash is similar to Lily Allen in a lot of ways -- both launched their "careers" largely though MySpace, both went to performing arts school but make out that they aren't posh (Kate Nash is accused of playing up her North London accent), and both are just a tiny bit chavvy. Musically the similarities are there, too, with their simple songs and storytelling lyrics. Kate Nash owes much of her popularity directly to Lily Allen noticing her on MySpace and proclaiming her to be the next big thing -- which seems more than a little bit vain, given how similar their style of music is.

Kate Nash amuses me -- perhaps unintentionally on her part, but I think she does have a very dry sense of humour of her own, and while her songs might not be the most polished, I think she has a particular charm.

There are a couple of parts of her songs that stand out for me that I want to look at in more detail. A characteristic of the likes of Kate Nash and Lily Allen is their chavtastic syntax -- coming from Essex, how they speak is very familiar to me, and without being a snob it tends to make you sound very thick. Kate Nash overuses the word "well", as in with the song Birds "they almost fly into your eye and make you feel well scared". The first time she sings that line she says "so scared" and that sounds fine, so I don't get why she changes it.

The song Birds is a deceptively sweet tale of an inept boy trying to express his feelings to a girl, the couple seem very chav in their described anti-social behaviour -- like not buying a ticket on the train, and then drinking on the bus -- but I feel a certain affection for them, like Nash herself. One part in the song in particular always confuses me when I hear it. I'll post the lines below, then discuss it, so you can see what I mean.

"the ticket inspector saw him rushin` through he said, girl you don't know how much I missed you
but...we better run
cause I havent got the funds to pay this...fine"

. I know I'm being picky, but the way it's phrased makes it sound like the ticket inspector is saying he misses her. I get that she says the ticket inspector saw him rushing through -- and then cuts to what "he" says, and it might be sexist to assume the ticket inspector is a man, but just the same I thought at first the girl ran off with the ticket inspector. Which was odd.

Another part that amuses me unintentionally goes like this:

"...he said you look well nice.
well she was wearin a skirt
and he thought she looked nice and
yeah she didn't really care about
anything else because she only
wanted him to think that she looked nice
and he did"

Aside from that she overuses the word "nice" (like she overuses "well"), I like how disjointed and almost pointless it is -- it makes me smile, even if it makes the couple (and Nash herself) seem a tiny bit thick.

The boy tries to tell the girl how much he likes her by way of elaborate metaphors -- particularly one including birds which are scary but beautiful, even though they can "shit on your head". The girl's reaction is a spectacularly chavvy "Wot?" followed by "What are you talking about?". If there had been a third time she had to ask, she probably would have just bottled him.

Foundations is another boy/girl song -- but instead about a dysfunctional relationship. It's almost refreshing in a way -- after songs like Hey There Delilah to see the other side of the coin, not a sad song about an unhappy break up, but instead a frank look at a couple who really just aren't getting along any more. The song/story starts with the couple in the pub with their friends, and the girl notices he has a look in his eye that he's bored with what she's saying. Naturally, it escalates -- he says something to humiliate her, so in her best chav voice she replies with "yeah, intelligent input, darlin', why don't you just have another beer then?" and it descends into an argument in front of their friends.

What I find interesting with the song is that it's not just that they hate each other -- part of her does still care about the boy, on some level. The chorus says "My finger tips are holding on to the cracks in our foundation, and I know that I should let go, but I can't" -- maybe I'm a sap, but I find this a little sad. She knows their relationship is over, but quite bring herself to "let go".

The song has other little chav culture references -- the boy gets drunk and gets sick over her new trainers (and while, yeah, it's pretty awful, you can just imagine that being the worst crime for a chav, getting their prison-white trainers spoiled), or how she winds him up telling him "I'd rather be with your friends, mate, 'cause they are much fitter". That line doesn't work if you don't quote it exactly -- you've got to have the mate in there, but still you have to hear it, just for the accent.

But at the same time as knowing she should let go and not being able to face it, there is a moment -- when she's left the boy to sleep it off on the couch and deliberately not turned the heating on -- she says "Dear god, I hope I'm not stuck with this one". She almost feels trapped.

Foundations
Birds

19/10/2007

Copied from my paper journal:

Friday, October 19
[bookshop] staff room.

Yesterday, I had to fill out various forms -- tax forms and the like -- and sign copies of my temporary contract. I noticed under the forms that I was leaning on a copy of my original cover letter that I sent in with my CV -- and written on the top of the letter was the phrase "Alien Boy Next Door!".

I can't help but wonder if that is a comment about me, and if so, what it means.

"Boy next door" is fairly neutral. It tends to mean wholeseome, clean cut -- although to me that can also can suggest dull, or unremarkable. It's like how Patrick Bateman is teased with that phrase in Brett Easton Ellis' book American Psycho -- "Patrick's the boy next door, aren't you Patrick" "No, I'm not, I'm a fucking evil psycopath". Whether Patrick actually was a serial killer or just fantasised about it is not the point. He's good-naturedly teased with the phrase by his girlfriend, but he resents it.

But what about "alien", then? Literally it means foreign, different -- strange. It also means extraterrestrial. And the boy next door -- if the boy next door was an alien? What does that mean?

It might be code for something -- or it might not even be about me.

Day 1

Before I go any further, I want to make one thing clear -- as much for myself, as for the benefit of anyone else. Working in a bookshop, and probably in retail generally, is never going to be a career for me, for a variety of reasons.

However, day one went well.

As first days tend to go, there was a lot to take it. Most of it being where all the different book sections are, how they are arranged, and how to work the tills/look to see if a book is in stock.

I remember today why I enjoyed being a bar tender -- although I can be shy as a person, I am also very personable, and I can do customer service well. I liked being able to be myself in work today. Also, obviously, I like books -- and like working with people who like books. In the pub I worked with people who admitted to never having read a book, ever.

It sucks that the pay is quite poor, and that I only work 30 hours a week -- but the short days and a far shorter commute (since I'm not going into London now) also have their good points. For now, it's just a job I can do and prove to myself a few things until the new year, when I can again start looking at office jobs in the big city -- and if I might ever be able to afford to work in another country instead.

More postcard porn for my wanderlust (updated)

I can't believe it's been two months since I last blogged about any postcrossing cards I'd received. Now I have a bunch to all put up at once, though -- so I think I can be forgiven.

This first card marks the shortest distance travelled for a postcard to me -- having travelled allllllllllll the way from Germany, a hop, skip and a jump of 469 KM from a place called Wuppertal. The sender, Sille, tells me that more than 50 years ago a director of a circus wanted to advertise his circus -- and so he thought he would put a little elephant into the overhead monorail which goes through the city. But oh no! Tuffi the elephant didn't like this -- so she jumped through the door and fell into the river Wupper below. There was a happy ending though, as Tuffi the elephant was miraculously uninjured and is now -- like the monorail -- a symbol of the city of Wuppertal. I have no idea if this story is true, or if it is an example of the famous German sense of humour. Either way, it's an interesting looking card; you can see the elephant falling from the monorail in the main picture, and some slightly freakish people in the bottom-left picture.

The second card has travelled slightly further -- in this case having made the journey from Osaka, Japan. The sender Yukiko is a 23-year-old woman and tells me that "In Japan the intense heat day passed and goes from now in Autumn". In her poetic way, I think what Yukiko is telling me that now summer is passing the days are less hot as they go into Autumn.

I'm not entirely clear what the picture shows -- since the card is captioned only "ATC & WTC, Osaka" so if anybody can shed light on these initials, I'd be interested to hear it. Either way, it's a a stunning picture -- I love the reflections of the lights and the boat in the water. It's scenes like this that make me want to travel -- although it probably doesn't look so different to Portsmouth at night, or London's Docklands.

Hanna from Tampere Suomi marks my fourth postcard from Finland. Hanna informs me that she was shortly to be moving from the beautiful city (which doesn't look all that from the postcard) to South Finland. The caption on the back of the card tells me the city's cathedral was built in 1907, which is more information than Hanna gives me about her city -- but she said she was happy to be moving so maybe she doesn't care.

Contrasting with my barely-travelled postcard from Germany, it's clear this is one of my farthest-travelled, although it still comes second to my card from Dunedin, New Zealand. Of all the cards I have received, I'm sorry to say this is maybe my least favourite to date. The sender Jean (at least from her handwriting I think that's her name), tells me she lives in Central Queensland, about 3 hours from the sea, and breeds beef cattle. She then goes on to tell me that in Australia it is now spring and already warm. I don't mind that the text might not have been the most interesting of all cards -- when you're writing a short card to a complete stranger it can be difficult to think of something to say -- but I'm a little disappointed with the picture. I feel that a country as vast and fascinating as Australia could be better represented than this.

Today I wasn't even expecting a postcard -- according to the postcrossing site, I had sent and received an equal number of cards. Either way, this beautiful piece of art was sent from Miyuki in Japan -- although where in Japan she never mentions. Miyuki tells me she is a Japanese woman who likes handicraft, and chose this card for me because I like art. See? Much better than the last sender who sent me a rubbish picture. Miyuki also tells me it is Autumn in Japan -- which funnily enough it is also in England -- and that she and her daughter both have a cold.

I really like the mental image of the everyday life of this Japanese woman and her daughter, who today (or a week ago when the card was sent) is suffering a little with a cold. I expect they're wearing those freaky-looking facemasks.

It's a week of surprise postcards -- today I received another postcard from Japan. This makes it two postcards from Japan in one week, and three in total. Today's card comes from a young lady named Saori in Kyoto, who tells me it is "cool and comfortable" in Japan and "The leaves are going to change yellow and red". She also has gone to the trouble of sticking tiny red leaves on the reverse of the card. I think the Japanese have to be my favourite postcard writers, for the poetry of their descriptions. It also puts me to shame, not being able to say much more than "Where is the shoe store?" in Spanish and "My grandmother is on fire" in French.



And I know what you're all thinking right now. I can just see now in your eyes, you're all looking at me with that same curious blogger expression, saying:
Jay, what has this done to the graph?

I, on the other hand find myself thinking, what graph? Why would there be a graph? Why would you all get together and expect a stranger on the internet to give you trivial details about his life in graph form? How would that help us understand this any more? That seems a little bit sad. You don't need a graph, it doesn't help us in any way. There is no graph.







No. You need a pie chart for that kind of thing. And here it is:


To date, postcards received by country. Notice the disproportionate number of cards from Finland. According to Postcrossing, there are 32,945 people taking part worldwide -- 19,903 of them hailing from Finland. That means 60% of all users on Postcrossing are from the Republic of Finland, a country of 5.3 million people in Northern Europe. For anyone interested, the next most popular country is Germany with 38% of the users, closely followed by the USA with 33%. I have yet to receive any postcrossing from the USA. The Netherlands creep into the top five at number four, and Japan take fifth place.

Cross-country road trippin' work stuff

Last week I took myself on a little cross-country roadtrip to Bristol. From where I am in Essex, that was 175 miles and a three-hour drive. For some of you, three hours, near enough right the way across the country from East to West must seem incredible -- or comical. To people around here, it solicits the question "You're going there and back in a day?". What the hell else did I have to do with my day?

I'd never driven that far before, and certainly not on my own -- as you can see from the illustration, Portsmouth is slightly closer (by about 50 miles, and forty minutes or so) and Brighton is closer still. I didn't take my Dad's car this time -- which I have been driving a lot when I have to go out of town, and especially when I'm delivering meals, because it has so much boot space, but luckily I am now in possession of a TomTom and was eager for the opportunity to use it.

I first set it up with an American female voice. I forget the 'name' of the voice, but I think it gets slightly weird when you're referring to your satnav by name. I chose the voice purely on the strength of liking how it sounded, but quickly once on the road I found there were other differences. Like how on approach to a roundabout, it starts to tell me "At the rotary, turn left..." and I'm wondering what the fuck is a rotary?". Obviously, it must be a roundabout using my superior powers of deduction -- but I'd never seen a roundabout during my time in the US. There were other disagreements between us, like how the satnav character insisted on giving me distances in fractions of a mile. "In two-eights of a mile..." what? What kind of a distance is that?

I actually made it to Bristol with about an hour to spare, when my arrival at the destination was announced with much-trumpeting. With no sign of the actual destination, I simply carried on down the road I was on -- since it was the right road -- and figured either I would find it, or would find a pub to ask directions in. 20 minutes later on down the road I was worried I was going to end up in Cardiff -- and toying with the idea of actually visiting Cardiff after the interview, since I've never been there -- I turned around and made my way back to the original supposed site of my destination. I found that I really had been at my destination to begin with, I just hadn't noticed it.

The interview itself was for a copywriter job. I'd submitted the best damn cover letter I could think of, using confident phrases like "I am the copywriter you are looking for" and "I understand that there will be a lot of interest in this position, but I do not believe you need to look any further than my own abilities", and made it through a telephone interview before they invited me for the face-to-face meeting. I knew afterwards -- and probably halfway through -- it was never going to go down in history as one of the best interviews ever. I just hadn't felt confident enough, although I lied through my teeth about how wonderfully organised I am, I knew that without direct copywriter experience they weren't going to go for it. I was just too damn PR for them.

Today -- almost a week later -- I get a message on my voicemail from someone in HR at the company, asking me to call them back as they had feedback for me. I'm only too aware of the words and phrases people use, and sometimes I read too much into it -- but in situations like this, it's all too clear. If someone is leaving giving a message with good news, they want to associate themselves with the good news so that you will feel positively towards them. If they have bad news, they will want to disassociate themselves so that you don't connect them, and don't shoot the messenger. So whenever I get a message saying they have "feedback" or want to talk to me, I know it's not good news -- otherwise they would say they have good news.

And I was right, I didn't get the job. Apparently I answered their questions very well in theory, and they said I was clearly confident, but that they didn't feel I was experienced enough for the job. A little unfair for what as far as I could tell was a fairly junior position, but I think the lack of copywriter experience and the background in PR did count against me. They thought I was confident though? That's strange.

An interview I had on Friday in London for a freelance contract similarly didn't lead anywhere. Although in this interview I did feel confident and reasonably relaxed, the feedback was that they wanted someone more senior (I thought they would before I even met them, the job description had been asking for someone more of an account manager level) and that I didn't seem confident enough. Who knows about them -- but this agency in the past have refused to interview me for a permanent job because my grades haven't been good enough, ignoring my media experience and my post-grad. So they're obviously bastards.

Yesterday I got a phone call. Following my interview with the bookshop last week they would like to offer me one of their Christmas temp positions. I think I might have intimidated them slightly with how damn pleased and enthusiastic I was about being an offered a temporary job in a bookshop doing only 30 hours a week, but this is great news. For a start, this is the only time I have been offered a job after an interview. Yeah, I know, it's a temp job -- just how rubbish would you have to be? But that doesn't matter. They liked me. They didn't think I was over-qualified or under-qualified, or not "the right fit" for their team, or not the right gender or anything else. I am *employable*. I start training next week, and work the week after. Since it's only 6 hours a day, I also intend to try and fit in a second job around it, too.

I got an email yesterday afternoon following from where I sent my CV out to two agencies, a few weeks back. We should all remember my fictional girlfriend interview? This was the other agency, who didn't respond at the time. Turns out they want a freelancer about my level to help out for a while, even if they don't have anything permanent. So I quoted them £110 a day for my services (ha -- and you thought my art was over-priced) and met them today for an interview and a test. The interview was fine -- short, but I felt confident enough. The test was in three parts; write a press release, craft an itinerary for this celebrity to promote their item the press release was for, and answer 10 "pop quiz" questions on the entertainment side of the media.

The questions at first stumped me; then I noticed the laptop I had been given to work on had a working internet connection. It's not cheating, it's being resourceful. The press release I wrote I thought was good, but it seemed a little short and a bit too much like writing a news story from a press release, which naturally is where the bulk of my experience is. The important thing is I can write well, even if I need a tiny bit of guidance or training. I must have taken too long on the other parts as I had barely begun the itinerary before my time was up. If they offer me this position -- which will probably be until mid-December, if not longer -- I'll have to regretfully tell the bookshop I can't take their job after all. If they don't want me, fine -- I have something to fall back on.

I want to write a different post about work and my life and feelings about them both -- but this is long enough for today. The main thing is, for now I have a job in a bookshop and I am pleased about that.

I love this *so* much

I have absolutely no clue what they are singing about, except obviously something "surf rider" which is evident from the title, the kind of Polynesian surfy sound that's folded in there -- and whole look with the shirts and the boards. It's insane, but so damn catchy.

Musical Monday #26

Hey There, Delilah

This song arouses several complex emotions in me. I figured I'd write about it and we'll see where it goes from there.

First of all, I like the song. It's straight forward -- it's simple, heartfelt, romantic and idealistic. A story of a boy and his guitar, missing his girlfriend who's 1,000 miles away -- and he just wants to tell her he misses her and loves her.

Next I think the predominant emotion I feel is sadness. Perhaps it's empathy for this young couple apart -- I assume they're a young couple anyway, and she's at university since he says "A couple of years and you'll be done with school". On the other hand, he might literally mean "school", and that would be a bit wrong. But anyway, maybe it makes me sad because I can empathise with the loneliness and longing of when you can't be with the person you want to be. But I think there is more to it -- I think there's a sort of melancholy jealousy too. It's pretty strange to feel jealous towards a song -- but some emo part of me feels sad that I don't feel that love, there's nobody here in my life evoking such emotions. And there's nobody to sing that song about me, either. And part of me is jealous because I don't think I've ever felt that -- not like it's described. Even when I've been longing for someone, even when I have been apart from someone I care deeply about -- there's not been the unfailing optimism of this song. I feel jealous I don't have that optimism.

Instead, I feel something else: cynicism. I imagine that while he's a starving musician, writing songs about his love for the girl, she's probably cheating on him while she's away. I've not known a long distance relationship to last -- either mine or someone else's, and I don't believe they do. I think it's a more likely scenario that by the time Delilah is "done with school" she will have moved on, or she will want someone who can provide better. I guess he probably he is keeping his word where he says "believe me, girl, someday I'll pay the bills with this guitar" -- I expect he is probably raking it in with this song alone....

The P Party

For months, we've been talking about the upcoming "P Party", hosted by some of our friends we know mostly from camping at Reading. The party had one rule: you must dress up as something beginning with P, and there were to be no police or pirates. It has been one of our sole topics of conversation when we're down the pub -- what were various people going to dress as? Nick had even developed the annoying habit of asking people who weren't even invited what they were going to dress as. Nick had also been insisting our friend Owain (one of the part hosts) was going to be dressing as "pancreatic cancer", and that he himself planned to be "polio". Of course, neither was true, big surprise there.

I have already mentioned that my own "P" was a no-brainer. As the amazing Peter Parker (I thought I should get extra points for having both names as P) I bought a black Spiderman suit from ebay and black liquid eyeliner. It wasn't quite complete as I decided buying an emo wig wasn't worth the expense, but just the same -- I rocked that look. With my black spidey suit under an undone white shirt and a pair of normal black trousers, I got a mixed reaction. Some people got it immediately -- and were so taken that they would come up and shake my hand, or tell me how much they love Spiderman in general. One guy had me cornered for a while talking about The Incredible Hulk and a rumoured homoerotic Thundercats movie starring Wesley Snipes. Other people would just look at me in confusion, or ask me "Who are you?". I guess they hadn't seen the movie, and didn't understand why I was "Spiderman" and didn't get the eyeliner.

Jon showed his talent for being so indecisive and disorganised that on the day of the party, he still hadn't made up his mind. We'd been trying to convince him that he should be a Playboy Bunny, or another popular vote was Pat Butcher from Eastenders -- a reference that will mean nothing to 99% of my readers here. On Friday night he said he had chosen the Phantom of the Opera, since he'd seen the appropriate mask on the website of our local fancy dress shop. But on Saturday when we got there, he saw that it was poor quality and dismissed the idea. Instead, he decided he would go with Papa Lazarou.

A little more complicated, this led to aimless wandering of the shop looking for inspiration, before we decided it would be best if we went home and looked for pictures, before going back. Jon again discarded this idea as well, when in a conversation with his friend Luke, Luke said he'd never heard of the character. Jon went home to try and think of something else. I turned on the TV to find I had missed all of the rugby. Still, it was a good

Eventually, Jon did decide. He would be a punk. He couldn't be bothered to buy a punk wig, although I tried to encourage him to stick safety pins through his ears -- his ears were pierced to begin with, I should make clear, although he hasn't worn any piercings in years. I also lent him my black leather jacket with its various silver zips and buckles and he made do with lots of hairspray.

The party was in full swing when we got there. Of our friends from Reading, Tom was a Panda -- although specifically I think he was Vince Noir in the Mighty Boosh episode where he dresses like a panda, to flirt with a panda's wife. Owain was a Playboy Bunny -- and had gone to such lengths as shaving all over for the look, while Rich was Pythagoras. Rob was Parsley the Lion , and his girlfriend Amy was Penny Crayon.


A bit of a disappointment was Luke, his girlfriend Carly and her sister Laura -- I had been told they were going to be the Powerpuff Girls. Instead, Luke was a prostitute, Carly his pimp and Laura was a Pussycat. It took me half the night to work out that their friend Claire was Pebbles from the Flintstones (I had been puzzling over caveman, or maybe something to do with "prehistoric").

The party itself was a great time -- there was a two-hour playlist of music they'd called "Hap-P Hour" featuring only artists or song titles starting with the letter P. And I can honestly say, it was the only time I have ever seen a panda fight a penguin. If I had ever wondered what would happen if you put a bowl of ice cream in a microwave with an egg and some bourbon biscuits, I now am enlightened. They say they will be throwing away the microwave.

Sometimes I think it would be great to throw a party like that...and then you hear about things like the microwave, or the state of the carpet -- or when you open the wrong door when looking for the bathroom and see something you weren't meant to... And I think nah, I'll stick with being a guest. And I'll save my costume for fighting crime...

On sexuality continued

Please read the previous post before this one.

"...A person's sexual orientation is a little more fixed than their taste in end-of-the-day pick-me-ups.

Frankly, I don't trust a man who says he swings both ways, unless he is a spotty teenager who hasn't sorted himself out yet. Oaten is 41 and Hughes is 54. If they think they are old enough to run the country then surely they are old enough to work out which gender they fancy?"

This is how I ended previously and the jumping off point for this. As far as I am concerned, sexuality is not fixed, and should not be considered as such. This is not a new idea -- the famous psychologist Alfred Kinsey was discussing this back in the 1930s, and yet many people seem ignorant of the Kinsey Scale, which plots sexuality on a scale of 1 - 6. You are not either straight or gay, as Ms Turner suggested in her article. The fact that you don't often hear of gay men having mistresses on the side is neither here nor there when it comes to sexuality. But not only are there not only two options, but where one appears on the scale is fluid. It can and does change -- how much it does, how much we are aware of it, and sometimes how much we perhaps want to admit it are all open to debate and most likely dependant wholly on the individual.

The label bisexual has always bothered me, and has been a source of argument between me and other people. For a start, traditionally it suggests that one is equally attracted to men and women -- this is not the case for me, only that I am potentially attracted to either. Where I appear on the scale on Monday might differ to Friday, and I like to believe attraction is based entirely on individual merit rather than gender. I don't feel comfortable discussing these things in great detail here, but this article looks at another scale and discusses the complications of the issue intelligently and in more depth.

The prejudice of Ms Turner in her article is not new to me -- the idea that bisexuality doesn't exist, or that after one's experimental teenage years, one should grow up and "pick a side". It's not limited to her, when I was in my final year at university I started spending time with the "Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual" group -- except that I was the only one who identified as being bisexual, and was told on more than one occasion that I was secretly Gay but hadn't met the right man yet. If I had dared suggest to any of the girls there that they just needed the right man I probably wouldn't have got out alive. I've also had straight friends claim that I am just trying to be "fashionable", or that I am just pretending.

I don't talk about this to my closest friends. Many of my friends have no idea I am anything but straight, because however much I might like them I don't trust them not to treat me differently. I wouldn't be one of the boys any more. I feel like there would be concerns about if we went swimming together if I might be "looking" at them in a certain way. Or when someone starts getting anonymous and pornographic text messages -- as has happened before -- I would be considered a suspect.

The fact is that a person's sexual orientation is not fixed. It might be fixed where it is today, it might be fixed where it is for 20 years, but it can just as easily change. It is never set in stone.

To my mind we are all just people, and distinctions between straight and gay and bi and whatever are mostly fictional and entirely unhelpful.

I'm reminded of this song -- funnily enough, it raises some points not unlike the academic article linked to above.

On children and sexuality in politics

A friend posted this link online today, how she found it I don't know. But either way, it has prompted me into a post that is long-overdue and much-promised. Ok, I will concede the story is old -- but I somehow doubt if the author has changed her opinions in the meantime. This might need to be two posts to really tackle the issues for me.

I think the title "However much I love my gay friends, I don't want them running the country" is a pretty good place to start with it. The author's general argument can be summarised quite neatly in her own words "Their [the gays] lifestyles are too divorced from the norm. They are not better or worse, but they are different". The delightful Ms Turner goes on to explain that because men are unable to give birth and gay men are somewhat unlikely to be in a relationship with a woman, they are incapable of understanding "normal" people. She uses the age-old argument "I'm not a homophobe, I have gay friends", then goes on to make vast, sweeping and quite insulting judgements. She says her gay friends face troubles no more complex than deciding on a colour of sofa.

Using this argument of lifestyle, are we to assume also that other childless people are also incapable of making "good party leaders or Prime Ministers"? Must one mindlessly contribute to the cancerous growth of the human race in order to truly understand "normal" people? Apparently if you don't have children your life is one big stress-free party.

Ms Turner seems to completely miss the idiocy of what she is saying. She says she has lots of gay friends because she works in the media, and appears oblivious to the fact that the sample size she is basing her conclusions on are both minuscule and completely biased. One could just as easily say that all people who work in the media are shallow and purely self-interested, or just that gay men who work in the media are like this -- but you can't draw any wider conclusions than this.

Aside from a wholly unrepresentative sample on which the author bases her misguided opinions, she completely ignores the idea of adoption (which I suspect she is against for gay men, because as she believes they are too self absorbed) and conveniently doesn't look at straight people without children. It's idiotic, a gay couple can raise a child perfectly well -- and then her points about them never having to take a child to the hospital or make a decision on childhood vaccinations are no long relevant. How she believes a gay couple with an adopted child would compare to a straight but childless couple is never addressed.

So how does this relate to politics? Again, her argument is fundamentally flawed by the people she singles out. A politician disgraced after it turns out he has been cheating on his wife with a rent boy. His sexuality to my mind has absolutely nothing to do with the matter whatsoever. The man is clearly a twat for cheating on his wife, the gender of the sex worker I don't think is relevant. He is a liar and a cheat -- but this is hardly surprising from a politician. Another she criticises for not saying he is gay but that he has previously had homosexual relationships. Again, a bit of a bastard since he previously campaigned on the strength of being heterosexual and therefore better than a homosexual opponent. But once again, no real surprises there. We can draw any number of conclusions from this -- all men are bastards, all politicians lie, or that people who are inclined to lie and cheat are particularly drawn to politics.

Where I end this post and begin my own personal rant is with this little gem:

"...A person's sexual orientation is a little more fixed than their taste in end-of-the-day pick-me-ups.

Frankly, I don't trust a man who says he swings both ways, unless he is a spotty teenager who hasn't sorted himself out yet. Oaten is 41 and Hughes is 54. If they think they are old enough to run the country then surely they are old enough to work out which gender they fancy?"

A week's too long not to ring

Forgive me, readers, it's been a week since my last post. It's hard to believe that it's been a whole week since I last wrote anything, but it just goes to show how little is going on in my life that is worth writing about.

I have registered with a temp agency to find some admin/office work -- and despite excelling in my tests, there has been no work, so far. I also met with a new recruitment consultant and similarly impressed him with my mad admin skillz. He put me forward for a job he thought I'd be "perfect" for, and almost immediately they were inviting me in for an interview.

The interesting thing with this one was that he said I didn't exactly look like the consumer PR type. It was a bit of a strange remark to my mind, since we were meeting in a professional context and it was unlikely I'd be wearing designer jeans and the like -- but it did make me wonder if I'm just not cool enough. He made another similar remark later when confirming my interview -- he asked me if the suit I had was "stylish". When I said it was a decent, smart suit he said to make sure I wore a stylish shirt in that case.

When an interviewer makes a decision on you based on first impressions in the initial 90 seconds or whatever, it's almost frightening to think that after all these interviews perhaps I just haven't looked the part. Either way, on Friday afternoon I looked very sharp in my stylish new suit. But on Monday morning I got a phone call to say that I didn't get the job. They were apparently meeting several people, and so by my calculations they must have decided before they even met me who they were going to hire. Clearly they couln't have seen anyone else after me in that time.

Yesterday I met a contact from the agency I interned with last year -- although I never worked with him directly, he's become a kind of mentor for me now, and as deputy CEO of the company he's a good person to have on my side. We met for lunch and I discussed with him my work since I left his place last November, and my increasing frustrations. The reassuring thing was he thinks I should continue with what I am doing, that I am clearly passionate about it and good at what I do -- and it's just a matter of luck to find the right agency.

I'm going on a one-man roadtrip to Bristol on Thursday for another job interview -- this time it's for a copywriter position, so I am keeping all fingers and toes crossed on that one. I also had an interview today for a Christmas temp job in a book shop. I figure if I can combine two jobs -- like working in a book shop and evenings in a bar -- I might just be able to make enough money to live on. The interview seemed to go well, they were very casual and informal and liked my experience, background and attitude to customer service. I liked that they seemed to enjoy working there.

I've been reading a book this week called "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion". I figured it would be relevant to almost all areas of my life -- from interpersonal relationships, to working in marketing, to selling my art and even getting that damned elusive first permanent job I need so much. I read an anecdote about how one person was having trouble selling some turquoise jewellery until they accidentally doubled the price, rather than halving it. The result was that with things of this nature, when there is no objective definition for what something is "worth", people will use the old "you get what you pay for" adage to equate expensive with good.
Similar comments I remember were made after my unsuccessful attempt to auction one of my pictures on ebay.

So inspired, I started listing more canvas prints on my Etsy page, and increased some of the original prices. Within minutes of listing one of my pictures, I got an email that I had just made a sale, and the buyer would be sending payment via Paypal. I emailed the buyer to thank them for their purchase and to check their address, and was a little perturbed when they didn't respond. After all, they were clearly online in the first place to buy it. I just felt uneasy about it. A couple of days pass, no payment, no reply to my message. I send another trying to be breezy, mentioning their lack of response and highlighting I needed payment before I sent the canvas. The terms under Etsy are that buyers must make payment within three days, or else in the case of sending a cheque they should have despatched it within this time. It has now been five days, and it seems now they were just a time-waster. I wouldn't mind if they were paying by money order, or if they had just responded to any of my messages -- but the total silence suggests to me they never had any intention of buying it.

I'm particularly annoyed at myself, since in the excitement of making a sale and anticipating payment via Paypal, I ordered the canvas from the printer -- and now will be footing the bill myself. I'm proud of all of my work, so I will be pleased to have something of my own actually on display at home -- but now was not the best of times.