Tonight it’s the worst it’s been for a very long time.  Usually I can distract it with films, or books, or a merry dance. Or even simply drink enough till the fog descends right into the heart of my head and I fall asleep.   The dreams have been worse too, death and dying all over and over and a vacant lot the following day where I try to take stock of any of it and I just draw blanks.

Apparently I have to ‘take the power back’.  I don’t think my shrink meant this in the same way that Rage Against the Machine meant it when they sung their song of the same title; nor do I think that my middle-aged mother of .. probably two kids, I’d conservatively say, had that in mind when she suggested that ‘taking the power back’ is of paramount importance to my survival here.

I’m growing very weary of the lack of choices in my life.  As I unpick the last ten years, I’m finding, or at least it’s being suggested to me, that appeasing people or ‘doing anything for them’ has become a blessing and a curse for me, as I forsake my own identity or sense of self by trying to ensure that the other people in my life are happy and well.

This has had its fair share of problems. There has been infidelity, as a means of inclusion into one group, as well as feeling abandoned by another. And there is the problem that I’m currently facing in almost every aspect of my life:

unfulfilment.

Once you give up your original set of values, or make that first significant step in the wrong direction in your life, not through any real sense of what ‘you’ want, rather a general feeling of not doing what other people want which in itself directly combats a third set of ideas – feeling happy in my personal life, rather than setting a direction for myself through education – which in turn leads to better professional prospects, etc.
Once you’ve given that up, it’s rather like leaving your flashlight in a cave, and wandering off in the dark to explore a tunnel system that you’ve no real business in (and, let’s be honest, why the fuck have you left your torch?).  The further you go, the dimmer the light becomes until you realise you’re completely and utterly lost.

The last year of my life has been a wonderful, at times; and shocking, at others period.  I am starting to wonder about the things that I could have, or take, from life; even if those desires seem selfish or inconsiderate of other people and their feelings and their influence in my life.  But even during this time, I’ve allowed other people to determine my actions and direct me down certain paths – none of which have had any positive outcome for me and sitting here now at 3am with a relationship hanging by a thread, renting a room in a house I do not own, with a car in the garage that I cannot afford to repair, debt that I am just managing to overcome and having just finished a 16 hour work day that if I started to change one thing, just one, then everything else might start to change.

So tomorrow, I will be enquiring upon the skills of someone who can help me write a good CV.  Someone who can quickly look at my experience and my skills and help me write them clearly and concisely onto said document and change that one controllable element of my life – and maybe once I’ve positioned myself in a better paying job with a salary I should be earning, rather than accepting the dross I have in front of me:

I’ll be able to start taking the power back.

Until then. Here are the full Rage Against the Machine lyrics for you to read.  I find it most amusing to read rap-metal and keep in mind a nice jazz number, apply a little tempo, sing it in the style of Sinatra as you jive: http://bit.ly/gYjLd

Dear Big Issue Magazine,

RE: Chris Sullivan Movie Review of ‘Sherlock Holmes’
It’s not often that I raise myself somewhere above apathy to warrant
me writing an angry letter to anyone other than my local council, but
after reading Chris Sullivan’s movie review in last week’s BI (south
west, at any rate); I felt rather like I had to pick up my.. err..
laptop, and send you this little ditty. Whether you reserve it for
editorial purposes, or even pass it on to Mr. Sullivan himself (feel
free) I’d like to express my (unpublished) opinion thus:

I read with some disdain Mr Sullivan’s review of Sherlock Holmes in
your paper last week and was more and more irritated by every word he
seemed to angrily scribble down on the back of his Ex girlfriends
photograph using a scalpel and his own blood as ink.  I can understand
his reservations about coming all out and saying that Sherlock Holmes
is a rip roaring just-above mediocre, somewhere below good tallyhoe of
a movie, but to give it such a beating I felt was quite unfair.  It is
certainly a BIG STUPID Victorian ‘action movie’ (so clearly he paid
enough attention to notice some action), but I’m not sure it ever
advertised itself as more than that. To cite Joel Silvers (producer)
lesser works as evidence of what a horrible movie it clearly must be
was clearly railed off imdb.com like it was amateur hour and he fails
to mention, of course, that it was Silver that pretty much brought
Warner Brothers to the attention of a crap little movie back in 1999
called.. The Matrix, as well as other perfectly credible production
credits on movies like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (also starring RDj) and two
other BIG STUPID action movies called Predator and Die Hard.
Further, what right does he have to comment that Downey’s unsuitable
as a “quintessential English gent” when he did a pretty solid job of
that other English Gent – one Mr. Charles Chaplin in the movie..
errr.. Chaplin.  and to harp on about what I can only suggest are
unfounded rumours about Downey being a health freak and wanting a
healthy chip for little under half his piece, is as much an affront to
your paper as it is to good journalism.
Do I even need to mention his condescending and judgemental tone in
regards to Downeys previous trouble with drug addiction? Hardly seems
the right kind of stage to be holier than thou’ about NOT FORGETTING EITHER that Holmes himself was painted as a drug addict in most of Doyle’s books.

Sherlock Holmes was never going to be a wonderful true-to-the-book
movie in the hands of Guy Ritchie, but perhaps you could choose
someone more suitable to lambast half-decent movies – maybe the
shithead that is Cosmo Landesman from The Times? He’s usually fairly
off the mark too.

Hope you’re all doing fab

tAJ

Nothing I say or do matters. Only what I’ve done and is written down. Therefore by tomorrow, what’s written here has to be black-and-white based on that logic.

my friend @rich_w says there’s a meme going around where people are writing to their 16 year old selves. As I’ve heard this rumour from someone, I guess this must be true.

Here’s my letter,

Dear Corcoran,

The only way to truly opt out of the system is to get to the very top of it; then, and only then, can you reject it and sit around complaining for the rest of your life. Until then – take every bit of education you can get.

Best,

Angry Jew.

I’ve been accused of a great many atrocities in my life. Some have to do with raping and pillaging villages and such like (which can mostly be attributed to my French ancestry) but more recently, I’ve started to develop a real sense of — discomfort as clearly I’m subverting The Youth.

Not all the youth obviously, but with the ‘invention’ of twitter (or rather the extension of multicast text messaging) and the ability for the masses (currently 730 of you) to hang on every ridiculous sentiment that flows up to the 140 character limit; it seems that whilst some of you are able to put me on your ‘noisy twats’ column within your Tweetdeck software, some of you are, at the very least, falling into the pattern of my speech.

This, it is definitely true to say, is not a good thing. For the most part, most of the junk that spills out of my brain is absolute nonsense. Some of it is downright offensive. But the really clever stuff seeps into your subconscious and whilst you may not notice it, you start to talk like I talk, write like I write.

For the almighty record of the Internet – of which there is no escape, can I just say that I am not someone to be followed, admired, or emulated. Copying, approval or general inquisitiveness about who I am and how I roll often leaves people with not only a sense of unease, but a general feeling of being quite let down.

Twitter is all about the facade. When I joined (yes, before Stephen Fry himself hopped onto the bandwagon), no-one else was on there. No-one knew who I was or what I did or who or why – and that allowed me the freedom to write and spew forth horrible sentiments and anger and self-loathing.

But now I have responsibilities – not just to myself, or my therapist; but to my girlfriend, who’s also a regular user of Twitter and ‘enjoys’ seeing what I’m up to and what I’m saying.  Hell now I’ve even been out on man-dates with some of my twitter followers/follower..followings? And even recognised in the street as the Angry Jew that lurks and sulks along.

I am not a sage or a seer. If you want actual advice – good, healthy advice, then ask me properly; but don’t take what I talk about on the web as the gospel of anything other than the empty vacuous noise of my brain seeping out onto a service that, from what I can tell, is full of self-promoters and idiots.

Do not be led astray by me. Who I am here is, mostly, not who I am when I’m in front of a board of directors or deciding what people should spend their fiscal budgets on. I am not a hedonistic free-for-all-things kind of guy.

I’ve made some bad choices, following my lead might likely lead you down a road from which there is no backing out of and trust me when you’re lying on the bathroom floor throwing up for hours, you’ll wonder how you ended up there.

Don’t make that mistake.

Good afternoon, people of the local council.

I moved to Bristol in April last year, finding an adorable room to
rent in a gorgeous 19th Century building on the corner of Redland Road
and Chapel Green lane.  It’s a pleasent, and convenient location for
my work, and both a gym and a wonderful church is a mere stones throw
(if you’re a young person) away.

I believe that within the first few weeks of me moving here, you
decided to block off a part of Grove Road, making it one-way for
vehicles coming up Elm Lane and Whiteladies Road – a truly sensible
move, given how narrow the bottom of Grove Road is, and how many
people would have been using it to avoid that god-awful excuse for a
roundabout that still seems to be in operation at the top of the
Bristol Downs.  This has had limited success – I believe if you spend
any time policing this No Entry road, you’d probably make a few quid
fining the legion of BMW, Mercedes and Porsche drivers who don’t think
this applies to.

The knock-on effect of this, of course, is rather like water running
along a drainage system (a very good friend of mine is a wonderful
flood modeller so I’ve learned about these kinds of things) and
traffic is rather the same – now, instead of people re-connecting with
Whiteladies Road along Blackboy hill, making only a small diversion,
they now trickle — well it’s more than a trickle — Redland Road has
that glorious old bouvelvard feel to it so people rather treat it like
a racetrack, travelling of speeds well in excess of 40 mph both up and
down the hill — they now race down Redland Road, and the majority of
drivers now use Chapel Green Lane to turn right onto and in actual
fact – rather than opt to rejoin Whiteladies Road — which I think we
can reasonably consider a major route into the city center – they now
opt to wind down Chapel Green lane — which is made very dangerous
because of its bends – which people don’t really seem to care too much
about – and people trying to cross this once quiet road — now have to
do so on the apex of the bends – lest they get hit and killed by mummy
in her 3 series rushing to get little Michael and Richard to school on
time ..

So yes – they zip down Chapel Green lane (or, if they can’t be
bothered to join the long queue turning right – continue down Redland
Road and use either Lower Redland Road, or Clyde Road) in order to
connect with Elgin Park//Hampton Road and rather than join Whiteladies
- continue all the way up to UniversityBristol, then cutting down
Tyndells Park Road in order to rejoin Whiteladies there.

All in order – it’s rather a lot of water travelling at breakneck
speeds through a delightfully quiet part of Bristol where we don’t
have too much crime or revoltingly racist thugs – as pointed out on
BBC’s Panorama only last week.

As a part-time pedestrian (don’t even get me started on cyclists -
loathsome creatures), I often marvel at the stupidity of people as
they blast their horns at one another when trying to make right-hand
turns off Redland Road into Chapel Green lane and the other way -
trying to turn right out of Elgin Park onto Lower Redland Road –
these two T-Junctions alone are invariably going to get some rich
student killed – or worse – a smartly dress middle-class preppy fellow
like myself.

I don’t advocate a 20 mph speed limit here, not at all; honestly
bloody hippies trying to either save the planet in the name of road
safety, or worse – the other way around; but what we actually need
here is a lovely chap from the council to sit at these two locations
AT LEAST, during peak times, and observe how horrendous they are.  I’d
consider at the very least getting these junctions marked more clearly
- and perhaps one or two of those trendy road-signs encouraging people
to SLOW DOWN as they approach the brow of the hill on Redland Road at
40mph and have to use their horn to scare some poor old dear who can
barely use the clutch on her 1993 Nissan Micra to pull out of Chapel
Green lane, let alone drive the car.

Moving on from that too, there needs to be a turn-right lane for
Chapel Green lane – which can narrow the oncoming lane – so people can
both turn right safely – but the other mum’s and dad’s in their X5’s
who are heading down to Redland High School for girls, can drive past
these people without causing the entire upper Redland area to come to
a complete standstill.

As for the top of Elgin Park, much as it pains me to say it, but you
may have to slap out some of that yellow paint and draw up some
double-yellow lines so people can see up and around Lower Redland Road
both ways – again for the grannies, but also for the lower IQ drivers
who are trying to get out of Bristol safely.

I believe that is all for now, I’ve spoken at length about the
seagulls in previous emails to yourselves, and at least for now, they
have travelled south for the winter.  My new bins are also quite
lovely, and we’re using 1 per flat now too, which is wonderful – no
expense spared there, thank you so much.

I trust you are all well, and now that half-term has started, at least
the more serious workers are in the office and will at least consider
a little jaunt up here to see just how bad it’s gotten.

Sincerely,

taj

too tired to twist the words in my head into something more meaningful than a platitude

My girlfriend (if I can call her that) loves The Labour Party. I think this shocked her parents more than her coming out as a lesbian in her early 20’s.  On the other side of the picket, I’m a Toryboy, and straight, and in my very late 20’s. We are opposites, but I think that’s OK.  If nothing else, it means we can tick all kinds of boxes at census time.

Lately I’ve been getting more and more agitated by the country going to the dogs. Not the same dogs it was going to in the 60’s, or the dogs of the 80’s – hell or even the 90’s.  These are proper dogs. Dogs well and truly off the fucking lead and running full tilt across the park to rip off toddlers faces.  Proper dogs.

When we shuffle Reds and Blues, it’s the same old shit.  The new team reminds us all how awful the old team were and how they’re mopping up and yaddy yadda. Fine, I have no problem with that when it’s true. Thatcher was so blinded by Regan’s economic policies in the late 70’s that when she tried to apply them to our economy, she totally shot it up.

Blair, so blinded by being American, led our country into a war that has lasted us nearly 10 years. The cost, year on year, escalates.  This year alone I think we’re spending 4.5 billion GBP on fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, an increase of 50% on last year – how much will it be next year?

I’m not right-wing. I’m passively rascist, which I enjoy quite a lot with an Franco-Irish mother and a Polish-Jewish father; and right-wing’edness is directly associated with a more Conservative government. Again, no problem with that; conservatism in the United States is one step away from utter moral bankruptcy in my view (yes yes, they argue it’s all ABOUT the morality whilst they bash you with their Bibles), and here, Conservatives are blamed for their stance on immigration, closing the borders and providing for an elite few, whilst the poor and the illegals rot, destitute, in a gutter somewhere, where we don’t have to look at them – disgusting creatures.

All very well, so we continue to fight Islamic Fundamentalism abroad under a Labour Government, in a media-branded war,  instigated by Republican Government, calling for the lapdog that is Britain to jump up on its knee and walk, without body armour, in front of its tanks.

It doesn’t all quite add up.

You would be prosecuted now, I suspect, for echoing the words of one Mr. W. Churchill to state, “We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills”.

But if we were truly led by a group of people who believe in social justice, equality, the NHS and free textbooks for all children.. (up to university age (sorry you university elite)), surely we should be considering the long term impacts of these campaigns on our society, here, in Britain – on healthcare, and welfare, and tax and education and not in defending American oil interests overseas?

Or is that too Tory an ideal?

PS: I have no idea what heroin tastes like, I take my title from David Fords excellent, “State of the Union”.

Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day:

I remember Withnail and I from my youth.  I remember watching it and being very bored, but the more I watched it, he funnier I realised it was.  At the time, I believe I was 15 or 16, it made little sense to me.  Two grown up men in their 30’s, so fucked off with their lives and so hard-up one of them has rubbed lard onto his skin to keep warm; that they decide to go on holiday to some rundown shack in the country — a sequence of events I just don’t follow at all.

But I think as you get older and you experience some of the disappointment and ugliness from pub patrons, (“what’s your name, McFuck?”), you realise how blissful take a break is, regardless of whether there’s running water, or that homosexual uncles might visit unexpectedly.

Lately, I’ve been considering Withnail (and I) and how they end up. Withnail, drunk in the rain, hating at the world; and the more demure and optimistic i, with his big break.  I wonder what seperates the two men. Withnail, much funnier, but i, with his good looks and intelligence – perhaps it all comes down to attitude.

I never gives up.

It’s been occuring to me to be less like Withnail, and more like the I.

A friend of mine says that for all my acerbic commentary on life, underneath is a real goodness. This site will be a lot like me ranting with all the sound and fury of Withnail, but hopefully with all the underlying goodness of Paul McGann.

At least, that’s the idea.