The Anti-Chugger

Urban dictonary defines a Chugger as:

Paid "charity" street worker (read: student) who has been trained to believe that they are carrying out a worthy task, improving peoples' lives by conning Joe Public out of their money for this week's Good Cause. Usually an agency worker where the agency takes a hefty cut of the hourly rate that the charity in question has paid for, whilst at the same time increasing profits by selling on details of those foolish enough to actually stop and sign up to said Good Cause.


Now, crassness aside, it makes a valid point. My personal gripe goes deeper than the 'they get paid commission' ickiness of it all, its the phony sincerity of the social exchange that gets my dander vibrating. Truth be told, I am an anxious, socially awkward person, tis the fashion of the early 21st century after all. False smiles and promises of hugs from bearded strangers in bright red tabbards is enough to put the fear in you. And it does, there is a sadness to it all, that we meander up and down high-streets, not saying 'tickety boo' to one another, yet we have these specters haunting the concourses to Tesco's, Maplins, HMV an the like. Think of all the amazing conversations we could have which each other instead. 

So, instead of just ranting, I've become an ANTI-CHUGGER; Well I'm performing the role of an Anti-Chugger and I want to have a laugh with you next Saturday. We can talk about why you never need to give money to someone in the street again AND to get more out of the high-street escapade than loneliness and guilt. It's an experience designed to lighten your day rather than hamper it, but all I ask is that you pass it on. 

So for your chance to encounter such a thing, a genuine chance of social interaction and an opportunity to redefine your world view come along to Bermondsey Street Festival on 24th September 2011, from 11am. I shall be tottering about. 

quote me no quotes

As I was walking past The British Library yesterday, I was stopped and taken aback by the quote you see in the  picture, attributed to Madame Curie, and although it's a rather balming, balmy quote, I don't know if it rang true for the Curester when she was laid flat out feverish, brainfucked and full of radiation, the slow horrible death, asphyxiating inside your own rotten mush of a body.... hmmmm?

absorb this quote! It'll stand you in good stead (probably). 

Do It Properly...

Being very fond of the Guerrilla movement in all its forms (bar warfare), happening upon the Guerrilla Gardeners  filled me with that fuzzy warm joy; it is a brilliant, kind and wholesomely good idea, to brighten up the concrete nightmare of the urban sprawl with pretty flowers, added to which Richard Reynolds is a dish, but that is by the by. It is one thing to appreciate a good deed done by others and to promote it positively in any way is a wonderful thing, by waffling on in exclusive bars whilst supping some horrible martini made from fly-sick and orange pen-ink.... but it isn't getting your hands dirty is it?

So I have done (got my hands dirty that is), and will continue to for this rather nifty organization. Today, as you'll all probably aware is INTERNATIONAL SUNFLOWER PLANTING DAY, and as a dutiful little bunnikin, I took to the streets of Wimbledon.

Blame my anxiety, but something as innocent and simple as planning to plant some seeds in a public area, filled me with a vague sense of worry. Although I was all ready to confront any nay-sayers. Given my general dementedness, I didn't plan this activity in any way, nor did I make a day of it with friends. I just nervously shuffled up to Super-drugs to get my bits. Sunflower seed-pack and pencil in pocket.

My first attempt was a concrete border opposite the bank where lots of bushy, hard-wearing plants have been...er..planted in that nasty weird mulch of wood-chippings and cork, (and doubtless lots of cigarette-butts and used needles), I jabbed my pencil in as my cheeks blushed and tried to squeeze two of the little seedlets in but I doubt given the non-existent soil that anything will grow there.

On the way home, I got some water with the shopping, and proceeded to water a patch of soil outside a condemned area that's overgrown with weeds.... my worry was, have I planted it deep enough.

Literally nowhere else on m y walk was there any soil, I traipsed up a back-road too... but in the end, the road opposite the flat where I currently reside, is where I planted the bulk of it, no longer caring what people thought as they walked by. Got a real dirty look from some senile old man, and in the back of my head, I get that sense that although its' a lovely thing to do, so many people are grubby, angry people who despise the seed-planters... why? :( - Well that's partly rhetorical.

But yes, most enjoyable, I am glad I have planted them, and hope they grow, and the fact that there are nearby where I walk and such, it will be a nice little touch of brightness :D

Now I have the Guerrilla Gardening bug, Viva la Revolution!

Some of my closest friends are Scriptwriters...

...I just don't want them living next door to me, the old saying goes. It is one of those sickly truisms that they say 'writers write more about the process of writing than actually writing', and ever since George Orwell's 'Why I Write' we've all had a tipple of it, haven't we?

Well I have been reluctant, much as I am reluctant to most things, but it has been a growing trend amongst acquaintances to blog about their craft. They read up on their Little Miss Moffat and St. Tony of Jordan, and the occasional Matryr La Plante, and the others, too too many to mention, and they just gobble it up, delicious sustenance, all in the quest to get better at the type type, space, space, delete, delete.

I don't want to run that odious risk of sounding like some Sunday Tabloid Columnist that have regular opinion pieces, and when they are asked to write on subjects they don't care about, they trot of witticisms and cynical twat-tropes galore.... and I shan't, it just feels like it from where I am sitting, but hopefully I can mould this clay, some other way... and the cut of my jib Isssss..... well its rather simple....

To me, there seem to be two schools of thought, both valid, 1. The technical script-writer; this breed hones scripts based on a formula of what works and invest in stories that enthrall and capture the imagination on a limitless scope, providing it is commercial, viable and appeals to a mainstream audience; they can write sports-management epics even though there background is computer engineering in New Delhi. 2. The vocational scriptwriter - feels they have a self-righteous scribe, this mode is highly laughed at by the former school for fact that writers whose backgrounds are computer engineering in New Delhi will more likely focus their narratives on computers, engineering and um... New Delhi... their work builds into an oeuvre, in an almost literary fervor, with motifs, preoccupations about class or personal narratives, autobiography, they don't conform to the mainstream, they break conventions, they behave erratically...  and so it goes on...

The two schools of thought can overlap, but where was I going with this? I was pointing something out, yes, ironically for scriptwriters they cease to function as happy consumers of others work, they become critics of it, analyzers and they'll pontificate on a particular scripts merits and pit-falls, without a hint of irony, that even though they may be aware of the studio systems ability to piss all over work, directors realize scripts badly or are hacked up in the editing room or countless focus rooms and test screenings, they'll go head-first into a locked-horned battle of scripty supremacy....

For my own sake I did a Scriptwriting course on a whim, I do have writing coursing through my veins, but I learnt from the master in this field that words belong to everybody, we don't get to decide where they have been, we just try to steer them into some sort of cohesive direction.... and it's rather difficult because words never behave the way you want them to, they are the bastard ADHD children of our thought....

The problem (and delight) is that writers think they are special, and they are, they all are, when it goes wrong is that one writer may go 'well I am better than this writer' which isn't playing the game, as is my mantra anything creative isn't bad even at its worse its better than destruction and the detracting of things. The cynicism and cruelty of writers is silly but sometimes fair, the Wildean idea of criticism 'I see for others to see' can be justified if you've been in the bizz 20, 30 , 40 years... but you can tell when it is borne out of jealousy that so and so got the BBC1 Primetime series and you didn't.

Lastly, no matter what happens, there will be the inexorable passing of time, and when we are in our thirties, fourties, fifties, sixties, you will look back at your younger self, full of self-righteousness, and go pink in the cheeks and your throat will go croaky and you will see the utter contemptible O.T.T., sometimes unpleasant shit you used to come out with, 'the lording it over' tosh and you'll think, what an insufferable oaf I once was....

...Oh shit! Hello Simon in thirty years time, at least your still fit ;) x

POSTSCRIPT: (the irony) Just to say, I don't know if I agree with half the stuff I have written, so if you don't we're in the same boat, secondly I know I am not really helping in that spirit of script blogging, where scripters blog about the construction of scripts, which is really rather top-notch, and yes, oh these industry vultures that jump on internet opinioning... ugh, I shall have no part of it, here is hoping this blog entry is consigned to oblivion like the rest :D

HOW TO MAKE THE MUNDANE MOMENTS OF YOUR DAY FEEL MORE SIGNIFICANT

An Instruction Manual

For the everyday person wishing to add a dash of the bohemian into their lives.

Why YOU Cannot Be Without This Manual               ^!

No matter how significant a person you feel you are, you will undoubtedly be pedestrian. It is a statistical fact that at any one moment, even if you project the most fantastical of personas, you run the hazardous risk of mundanity.

 No-one wants to get caught looking mundane, believe you me, and they will always catch a glimpse and will be cast asunder.

Mundanity is an action, more specifically a dull or anaesthetically pleasing one.

For example sleeping in peculiarly unseemly, the laying on the back, the amplification of your gurgling mucous through the nostrils. Activities in the lavatory is another.

Shopping!

Shopping is the sterilized conclusion of the hunter-gatherer.

Ladies and gentlemen your fabulousness has been castrated by a clawed, winged and fanged beast SOCIETY! But you can be saved, saved from this, if you heed the words of this instruction manual closely.

Original thought has never been fashionable, emulating others that have gone before you is the key, they are the tried and tested method, the theorem.

MORNING ARRANGEMENTS

The morning routine has become a chore. One that is rushed in favour of more lack of consciousness,

Socrates Saw the benefits of cheated the world of giving himself to it exclusively, in his prime, he managed to sleep twenty hours a day. In the modern world we oversleep on a regular basis, 

but how did this great thinker overcome the mundane aspect of his persona to the outside world.

THE SOCRATIC SLEEP FUNNEL[1]

For the ones that like to sleep more than their fair share, it is immediately important to say you are not oversleeping, you are to say you are part of an open consciousness, sometimes one desires no consciousness for a time. One can have one’s Madera cake and eat it by not being conscious and still contributing to the outside world. The Socratic Sleep Funnel is a plastic sleep-aid cone developed from the conch-shell Socrates held over his face whilst sleeping, his breathing would ‘aggravate’ the holes of the conch-shell and discordant sounds would emit, sometimes forming a pattern. Early dream analysis formed when the differing pitches of sounds or in the Latin: EX DUMO ES SNORPO; a primitive Morse-code, the sub-conscious communicating with the conscious world.  No longer screaming or drowning in its own face.

To create your own Sleep Funnel you will need

1.                A Hard Plastic Sheet. (^A4)

2.                A Hole-Punch

3.                String.

1.                TAKE THE HARD PLASTIC SHEET AND MAKE 16 HOLES IN THIS PATTERN:

2.    WRAP IT UP LIKE A CONE

3.ADD STRINGS

4. ATTACH IT TO YOUR FACE 

5.  SLEEP  AND YOUR SNOOZE-NOISES WILL BECOME EX DUMO

THERE ARE TWO DISTINCT SOUNDS YOUR SLEEPING FACE MAKES WHEN TRANMITTED THROUGH THE PLASTIC-CONCH. WHICH WILL BE REFERRED TO AS SYMBOLS IN THIS MANUAL[2]

   

    f g

 A CONVERSATION BETWEEN Two Subconscious.... JUNGS COLLECTIVE  UNCONSIOUS TO THE ‘WORLD-MIND’ OF FRENCH.... THE SOCRATIC FUNNEL MAY LEAD TO MASS COMMICATION OF THE SLEEPING WORLD. ORANGE AND T-MOBILE HAVE BEEN IN TALKS TO CREATE THE FIRST MOBILE PHONE YOU CAN USE IN YOUR SLEEP.

                               ^Joan Of Arc’s  

MORNING ROUTINE

Imagine what it is like to have the voice of God in your head as you do your morning routine, for this we acquire the use of tape-recorder. An actor of some gravitas to orate and narrate your morning process. this brings an element of urgency and divine importance to the proceedings. When in a loud booming voice comes “LET THERE BE LIGHT” as sun-rises, “GO FORTH NIGEL FROM STOCKPORT, TAKE THOSE HALLOWED FEET ACROSS THE SHAG-CARPETTING, TO THE BATHROOM. WASH YOUR SINS CLEAN, EMERGE RENEWED. PERFORM THE SACRIFICE OF THE MONOBROW AND THE SLOOSH OF THE INCISOR. PREPARE FOR THE FEAST OF THE RICE KRISPIE AND THE EUROSHOPPERCOFFEE AND THE GONE-OFF SKIMMED MILK’  (All Eyes on Joan (!946) by Meyrick Stapleglass) 

AFTERNOON ARRANGEMENTS

Consumerism has become the most mundane activity for the everyday person, that, and idle conversation this is how a majority of peoples existences are wasted, here is how to cure the two:

CONSUMERISM

                             FALLS INTO

      TWO CATEGORIES, OUTLINED

  BELOW

                        SHOPPING

                        EATING

                        (There is no third category)

  Samuel Pepys

With a novel way of getting the shopping done...

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAHH here is a new found fragment from Pepys’s London Diary.

Went out early, for the absence of my wife, by no instruction of leaving for that of maid, nor, servant, nor housekeep, nor Cook, it was I to London, to abate the supplication of the larder for the first in many a year. In my way met with Jennings, at an alehouse, where he showed me the device of a stick that cooled the brows of Poxy children, and indeed it was most fascinating. Jennings provided an admirable discourse on the problem of paying for the scullery. He posited slugs of drink to numb the process and render it a pleasure. Betimes came pints of wine then tinctures of a viscous balm, its derivation we knew not of, that made our heels light, we did float upon them to Market. Our hexed countenance took us along, all manner of vegetable, cheese, mineral, herbs were purchased no mind given to purported their purpose. Our curious manner overwhelmed patrons with our tempered ways. Thence we feasted upon onions from the boxes of goods as the cart took us to Westminster cooing the fermented songbirds we were.

You feel that the preceding text was mere frippery but I assure you that if you follow this manual in thought and spirit, that you unleash your minds to the restorative power of imagination you will find that you will transcend mundanity

F

[1] See video projection of ‘The Leamington Spa Solution’ where the Socratic Funnel was tested on Narcoleptics around the county in 2006

[2] Play recording of different noises the Socratic Funnel transmits whilst sleeping. Note that noises from infants and Welsh can vary hugely.

A twitter version of THE LADY OF SHALLOT

A poem I wrote for an exhibition that's going on next year apparently more details about it here

And for anyone not familiar with the original poem that I am 'making a mockery of' it is here

@The_Lady (location: Shallot) #dontyouhateitwhen

By Alfred Lord Tennyson & lovingly bastardized by Simon Jay

a high tower on an island, by the field and barley places that go on their way toward camelot, d'ya know where I mean http://bit.ly/cIHOt3


Trapped between four grey walls, lies me, @The_Lady atop the tallest tower, in this silent isle....


IF YOU EVER RODE ON THE WAY T CAMELOT WOULD YOU SEE ME WAVE MY HAND OR ANTHING!!!! NO YOU WOULDN'T #SOFUCKEDOFFRIGHTNOW

@Death would whisper stuff to me like 'I'm a fairy' #thingsyoushouldn'ttellyourpsychiatrist

knitting #cursed


coz of the curse I can only look through a mirror to see stuff outside, shadows an
girls go past the window sometimes, big groups of em, sometimes fit guys, although there is no fit 
guy for me


'I am sick of shadows'.

WOW! @Sir_Lancelot has come come riding by amongst the golden field #OMFG


i can tell from his girdle and armour and sacks that are hanfging from him that he is well mint, as it were #commonvernacular


, sky is purple, then blue then cloudy, meteor showers, flickering seeing the stars then oh there gone #theressomethingwrongwiththeweatherg


hes got really, really nice eyebrows and black curly hair #swoon


gave up the knitting and ran to my fit fit boy, but accidentally smashed the mirror on the way.... #whatwasthataboutamysteriouscurseagain???


fuck, the curse is upon me!


found a boat, wrote 'THE LADY WAS HERE' with my sharpie inside it... coughing loadsa blood

dizzy in my white dress, i wonder what the people of #camelot will make of my dead face.

dizzy in my white dress, i wonder what the people of #camelot will make of my dead face


@The_Lady how we all mourn her passing we read her name in the prow of her boat and such


RT: a high tower on an island, by the field and barley places that go on their way toward camelot, d'ya know where I mean http://bit.ly/cIHOt3

A Universal Truth

Guest Blogger: Ben Nardone 

Imagine: It’s Sunday evening. You’re a science geek. At 9pm you arm yourself with a steaming mug of coffee and curl up in front of the telly in time to see Professor Brian Cox on “Wonders of the Universe.” Why? What is it about learning the secrets of something so big you need never seriously concern yourself with it that grips you?

This week, Mr. Universe extended the tale of Gravity: the very thing that shapes and governs our universe; the Ghost in the Machine. From fighter jets to black holes, the high-cheeked host successfully packed a ton of superficial physics into an hour, as with every other week.

Indeed, it is captivating. One becomes lost in wonder, in awe, in questions. . .but, again, why?! What is the point in knowing so much about things we simply cannot change, and the majority of which does not affect our daily lives?

There are, of course, a multitude of answers - the thrilling CGI galactic scenarios; the ingenious relation to ordinary people; the highly stylised escapism from daily life; the burning need to know as much about the grand scheme of things as possible. . .

Whichever of these answers one may place oneself under, there is a clear, definitive element in each: you are interested! If you weren’t, you wouldn’t watch (unless there is some other convoluted reason which, for purposes of this passage, we shall ignore the possibility of). In fact, Professor Cox himself has stated that he simply thinks “people are interested.” And indeed, some of us are.

So there we have it: occassionally one may indulge in the enthralling exploration of extra-terrestrial excavation, then descend back into “real life,” a life inside society, politics, economy, and various other superstructures of humanity.

However, it is my personal perspective on the matter, that skewes the above notion.

I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent and fair-minded chap who examines things as objectively as possible (most of the time), and is able to overcome most troubles of life through reasoned thinking. However, amongst other things, I am regularly disturbed and upset by the superstructures I have been born into. They cause me to feel lost, bewildered, and depressed. Fortunately, though, there is a range of potential temporary escapism routes provided for a creative-minded individual such as myself - the media. Furthermore, a little strum on the ukulele and a verse or two of something, and I can be right as rain.

What this solution does not cater for, however, is something I have carried since birth, a silent concern that many carry: the fear of death. It is this inescapable fate that cannot be cured - only soothed. That said, many find peace of mind in the arts or other hobbies and interests. I, however, overcome the fear of my consciousness ending in learning about the universe.

By concerning myself with the things that are vastly more mature and bigger than I am, I am immediately calmed. Simply being a part of the most incredibly complex, powerful, rich structure in existence gives me strength to live each day in an almost-totally-peaceful-type state. For many, considering the universe implies their personal meaninglessness. For me, it is the greatest meaning one can have, and in accepting it, you become immortal.

To use words similar to those of the good professor, every atom in my body came from the same place as every other atom in the universe, and ultimately, they are all part of the same thing.

Herein, I believe, lies the true, perhaps sub-conscious answer as to why some people are so interested in the universe. We are each a tiny manifested piece of it, and thus have the right to know and the right to want to know.