Stuff

Bring on the redheads…

~ monkeywithgun ~ Leave a comment

It’s taken 42 years, but I’ve finally got a hammock slung in my yard; a cool and comfortable one, under a tree, where I can kick back, have a beer and ruminate / sleep / watch porn and play games on my mobile phone…whatever blows my receding hairline back. The point is it’s my space (until the kids invade).

Since getting this little luxury sorted I’ve spent some time reflecting on life, as you do with a two beer glow and some time on your hands. I’ve been checking off my history of loves, hates and vices through my life – everything from women, food, booze and narcotics to music, fashion and my on and off again flirtations with olives and anchovies.

It seems I’ve lived my life in 5 year chunks, and when slipping from one chunk to the next some or all of the loves, hates and vices flick over to a new set.

The summary goes something like:

15 – 20: It was blondes, spirits, dope and ecstasy, house music and trance, and I wouldn’t touch an olive or anchovies if my life depended on it.

20 – 25: blondes and brunettes, and to be honest any university chick that would fall for the lines, started drinking beer (mass market and cheap), ecstacy and the odd bit of coke and acid, house more than trance and still a violent dislike of olives and anchovies.

25 – 40: a whirlwind of change and stagnation which I won’t bore you with but on the female front it must have been brunettes as I came out of this period in love with and married to one…and able to nail a bowl of olives mixed with anchovies in 30 seconds.

But now I’m in the thick of the 40 – 47 episode of my life and things have swung. I can handle most of the upheaval but the one that’s thrown me is ‘out of nowhere, totally uncontrollable ‘thing’ for redheads. And I’m not only talking about the dark skinned, green-eyed type, it flows to the ghostly pale, freckled sorts and the skinny vegan ones who look like they’ve grown on a willow tree by a fast flowing stream…you know the type…very strange.

There’s more to come…I’m sure.

Farewell old friend / rogue

~ monkeywithgun ~ Leave a comment

It’s not what I expected. I knew you had to go and go for good, but I hadn’t grasped how I would feel. It’s bitter sweet, like losing an arm, but realizing you’ve still got two perfectly good legs.

Old rogues. They’re the most fun and engaging. All my good friends are ‘rogues’ in one sense or another and that’s why we got on. So when it comes time to cut one from your life it sucks but you know it’s for the best.

Friends come and go. Our friendship dates back over 20 years. There were good times, bad times and times when we didn’t see each other for a year or two.

In those 20 years I’ve moved countries several times, lost a parent, been married twice and now have two wonderful daughters. My second wife has never really liked you. She’s felt threatened. Has felt that you changed me. Did not want you over when the kids were awake, and I got that. She spent a couple of nights with us, but it was always strained.

So now you’re gone, and let’s be clear I didn’t really have a choice, It was you or them, and I love them and they’re what I live for, so it had to happen. I know that, but what I didn’t know was that I would suddenly feel alone. You see, nobody to pick me up when I’d been kicked down, shouted down, argued with. Nobody to hang with on sunny afternoons when the family were away. Nobody to listen to music and chat harmlessly to women with. I’m going to miss all of that. Each time I argue with the ‘other half’ and storm out of the house, which doesn’t happen all that often, I’ll expect to find you waiting. Whenever there’re are old friends in town they’ll want to know where you are…and ‘what? Fuck off, what d’you mean you don’t know him anymore.’ And each of these times is going to be hard, but I hope, I really sincerely hope that we don’t meet again. I need to get on with my life and to do that we can’t be friends. That said there will always be a dull gap which you used to fill that is going to remain…dull for awhile at least.

Flinging of virtual faeces

~ monkeywithgun ~ Leave a comment

‘They’ say that the only thing you can be sure of is your own mortality. It’s coming. Like it or not, you’re going to die (as is everyone else by the way). That’s what ‘They’ say.

But I have another. I can, with as much certainty as I’m going to shake off this mortal coil, predict which of my Facebook friends will pounce at my posts. This is my new sport. I am the zoo keeper dragging my cane across the bars of their virtual cages.

For example I recently posted some quote by a dead Irish poet about ‘exploring the dark corners of your soul and so on’…I hit the post button, placed by bet and waited. It took a little longer than I expected (probably due to the recent change in time difference), but with pin point accuracy the flinging of digital faeces commenced from the predicted cage…this faeces was flung with such abandon and relentless vigor that contagion occurred…cages up and down the row began to vibrate, howling and barking erupted. More bits and bytes of faecal matter hit my screen and then peace and silence ensued. It was awesome. If I’d quoted that dead Irishman to the same people in a physical space – a bar for example – it would have gone unnoticed…

…and so I posit thus; humans are both more extreme and more predictable in their reactions when reacting from behind the screens of their devices…but I’m not sure what that implies. Do we feel more free to be extreme if we’re not face-to-face? Does the physical world dull our natural selves? Are we too afraid to be us in public, but totally happy to let it all hang out in full force when we’re operating in the virtual?

And in case you think I’m being unfairly judgmental, I’ll let let you in on a little secret. I too used to punch holes in my keyboard and let it all hang out over the dumbest of shit….sarcasm and dismissive ‘humor’ were my weapons of choice…this was until I caught myself in my own game.

All of the above is simply an observation…but 10 bucks says your keyboards have taken a bashing at things you wouldn’t have given a flying monkey’s about in the real world.

PS

For anyone looking to find a virtual predictor of future anti-social / deviant behavior, my theory (untested) is that the number of ‘I haven’t got a clue who they are’s as a percentage of one’s full set of Facebook connections would be a good place to start.

Cocaine, dwarfs and business associates

~ monkeywithgun ~ Leave a comment

Last weekend I find myself standing, swaying ever so slightly, in a throng of party people I didn’t really know. It was a 40th. I get a perverse pleasure welcoming others to this decade, so make a point of going to them. They go one of two ways. You get the ‘I’m 40 now, so I’ll throw a pseudo-sophisticated dinner party to show I’m grown up’…these either end bloody early as they’re boring as, or wind up slightly later with people throwing up in plant pots and arguing with their wives. The other way they go, which is the way this one certainly looked to be going was ‘I’m fucking 40 and I’m going to party like it’s my last day alive…mutha funkstas!’…my favorite of the two options, but that’s an aside.

I’m bouncing from one knot of people to the next and relaxing into the night. The little trip to the powder room has imparted a comfortable buzz. The night moves on and all things ratchet up a few notches. I’ve just extracted myself from the rant of some ex-architect who now makes leather bikes seats and my god had I seen his wife? Isn’t she wonderful and did you know she was black, you couldn’t tell by looking at her and look at those legs. Did I tell you I made a bike saddle for so and so and etc etc, and am taking a private moment when my focus pulls in on a short (ish) woman standing in front of me. She’s just called me by my name. My memory banks come up empty. I mentally scramble through recent occasions and events – still blank. I therefore assume we must’ve met in the desert recently…at that bastion of madness, Afrikaburn. That would make sense. Similar people. Similar vibe. That must’ve been it…but it wasn’t.

‘It’s me, X, we met at your office last week.’

I feel myself draw up straight and move into auto-pilot. The scrambled synapses find their sequence and we chat. When I say chat, we danced. We conversationally tangoed each looking for the opening to broach the ‘are you high?’ question. Neither of us allowing that opening to occur. Neither wanting to be the first to drop the pretense. How ridiculous, and I remember thinking this at the time, that two adults were struggling to be adults on their own time because of a link to their grindstones. This continues for a while until some guy (who turns out to be her husband) sidles up and offers us both some MDMA, and the faking and parrying ends and we have a blast and uncovered a whole lot of shared history.

As fun as it was this little encounter got me thinking: is there an etiquette in these situations? And if so what is it and what drives it? Surely as two functioning adults, what you get up to on your own clock is your business and not something that you need to hide? Is it though? I’ve tried to project our next ‘work’ meeting and wonder how it will pan out with the knowledge we each have about it each other. I’d like to think it will be more open. That we’ll each understand where the other’s coming from and that the level of professionalism will remain intact and be more authentic for no longer being clouded in fake funk. Has my view of her changed knowing that she tucks into the same recreationals as I do? It would be more than hypocritical if it has. I wonder if I’ll take her as seriously? We’ll see…

Anyhow, the night moved on to include a woman jumping out of a cake, a bunch of grumpy little Playboy bunny waitresses getting grumpier and the smallest dwarf I’ve ever tripped over wondering around, dressed in a ring master’s coat, with beer and cocaine on a plate for the party boy…but that’s another story right there, which I may, may not get around to writing. If I do I’ll call ‘Who’s exploiting who: the ethics of dwarf hiring’, or something similar, but right now it’s time for a swim. Over and out.

Watching death rain down…from your sofa.

~ monkeywithgun ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been toying with this post, trying not to take sides and wondering if I should even publish. It feels raw and unpolished but it’s a dirty topic…so have hit the button regardless

—-

This is not about politics. This is not about history. This is not about religion. This is about is ‘how do humans get to the point where they will drag and set up furniture outside at vantage points to watch death rain down on their neighbours?’ Forget ‘neighbours’, substitute this with ‘other humans’, or even ‘enemies’…at what point do you get to thinking that this is OK?

The Romans used to do it in the name of sport. Get a few slaves and throw them to the gladiators and / or lions, and that ladies and gentlemen was entertainment and it was nearly 2,000 years ago. Surely nearly 20 centuries worth of civilisation should have bred that blood lust out of us? I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think in either of the World Wars that people at any point took it upon themselves to seek out front row seats to watch massacres unfold. It wasn’t done. And keep in mind we are discussing civilians here and not active soldiers. No matter how much you might have been told that the Germans / Brits / Americans / Japanese were the devil coming for you, there was still the understanding that there were German / British / American / Japanese soldiers and that yes they were sent to kill your soldiers, and that as civilians you might very well end up dying. But was it only inconvenient geography that prevented groups of English pulling their sofas out, getting tea and scones served whilst they watched bombs drop on German civilians, in the hope that some soldiers would die too? I might be wrong, but it seems improbable. 

The recent pictures beamed round the world of Israelis chatting, laughing, cheering and kicking back watching missiles pummel Gaza shocked and disgusted the world. They shocked and disgusted me…but then it got me thinking, the only real difference between what the Israelis have been doing and what the world at large did when the Americans went in and bombed the shit out of Bagdad, is that they don’t have a screen between them and the action. With Gaza being a stone’s throw away maybe they figured a TV wasn’t required.

You could argue that watching it on the news at least kept you informed…but it only gave you a single view and hand on heart would you have listened to it if there weren’t any pictures?

When the campaign kicked off and Bagdad lit up like some ‘goddamn 4th of July show’ we were all glued to our screens. We all watched 1,000s of innocent Iraqis get blown apart (collateral damage) in the shock and awe blitz. We weren’t outside on a hill, we were in the warmth of our lounges and we watched and watched and watched until it got a little boring. Some morons probably cheered, got a little rowdy and felt a swell of pride…who knows, but what’s the difference? Is there one? I don’t know. Does dragging yourself out into the action vs having the action beamed into your environment change anything?

There’s no judgement here on race or religion, all I’m pointing out is that as human beings we’re in a pretty sorry place right now. Tit-for-tat wars all over the planet, generally to do with defending one improbable god over another, or this bit of dirt from those people over there on that bit of dirt. We seem to be regressing on all fronts. If we spent a 1/10th of the time and effort and money on trying to feed the world, rather than trying to wipe each other out the world would be a very different place, but I don’t think that it is in our nature to do so. Or it could be in our personal nature but that counts for little when it’s governments and corporations calling the shots.