A Little Piece Of Something Not From Me

Here is something that I have just read, and as I'm being lazy today.
A little segment from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

She leaned over the hole. It was extremely deep. She dropped in the flower. It sailed down to the coffin in graceful somersaults. In Bohemia the graves were not so deep. In Paris the graves were deeper, just as the buildings were taller. It chilled her, and she hurried home.

She thought about that stone all day. Why had it horrified her so?

She answered herself: When graves are covered in stones, the dead can no longer get out.

But the dead can't get out anyway! What difference does it make whether they're covered with soil or stones?

The difference is that if a grave is covered with a stone it means we don't want the deceased to come back. The heavy stone tells the deceased, 'Stay where you are!'

The Fast And Not So Furious

So people, I shall discus a topic close to many a heart. Food. You just can't live without it, and let's be honest if we could all eat as much as we like and not gain a pound, the world would be full of food junkies overdosing on the gluttonous drippings of desire.

Hey! Not so fast!

Well I am a man who is not the most portly of gentlemen, however, inside lurks the obese man craving to escape which has riddled my life for the previous years of my gormandizing life. So in perhaps a drastic step, I have eaten nothing today, on one of my 'fast' days. I am currently subscribed to the 5:2 diet, and today is the beginning of fast. To try and settle my nerves I amply prepared, for the protection of my ample rump and gut, an emergency plum.

Yes, you heard me right, an emergency plum. A plum which I would digest in case things took a drastic turn and my stomach was crumbling in on itself.

But success fellow digitals, the emergency plum is still here. There was no emergency, no need for the plum to be released, no gut-wrenching pain in needed of the plummy goodness of the sweet, price-reduced, plum. The plum is still in its protective freezer bag, ready in case of a future night time emergency.

Now a bigger man than I would make a joke about plums and gentlemens areas. I however, assume that readers may have already twigged onto such possible innuendos, so I will just say that you need some plums in your life.

But, all in all, today (thus far) has been void of food, but full of water and caffeine, and there are of course other ways to avoid thinking about food and distracting yourself. Like the possibility of double breakfast tomorrow.

Kiss Off Rock and Roll Nerd

So fellow interested people, this one is about music. For those out there for whom music is not the most attractive fondant fancie in the box, I do not apologise, because music is one of my ultimate passions in life.

Anyway, I was listening to some music today (not really a world-ending admission to be honest) and two songs seemed to reach out to me and link in a way I never thought was possible, neigh probable.

These two magnificent songs are Kiss Off by the Violent Femmes and Rock and Roll Nerd by Tim Minchin. Now the eagle eared music people out there may be wondering what connects the cult, retrospective pioneer of post-punk, the Violent Femmes, and the incredibly Australian, bohemian pioneer of abstract comedic song writing. To me the theme is rebellion, or maybe perhaps the total lack of it.

Femmes Violents?

The Violent Femmes and the post-punk movement moved beyond the ear rendering apocalyptic drowning of noise that punk typified. Punk, to me, is more of a mentality than a music genre. Yes, punk was supposed to be anarchic, absent from rules and a blatant balls-out spit in the face of rules and structure. That was the whole premise of the movement, but musically it was about as comforting to the musical god as having ones family jewels dangling in the protective sphere of a porcupines nest.
However, the Violent Femmes moved beyond the unflattering punk scene and created something better, in a musical sense, but still maintaining some of the rebellious streak. The bridge of Kiss Off tells about the singer taking drugs for the rebellious nature of it and the emotional responses these invoke, telling everyone else to Kiss off into the air.

The Australian Minchin 

Now Rock and Roll Nerd  by Mr. Minchin is a song which really appeals to me personally, because it highlights the personal absence and aching for a rebellion, something else than what I am.

I'm not saying I haven't done things which would cause me to be dethroned from the seat of an MP if it were to be discovered, but there has never been that recurring 'Rock 'n' Roll' attitude which encapsulates the inner-most dreams of teenagers alike, thronging to be the next Axl Rose, Mick Jagger or Lemmy.

The world of Rock and Roll is infinitely alluring, mostly due to its absence of rules, its anarchic nature, its "Fuck You! I'll do what I want" rhetoric. But, for the vast majority of us Mr Tim and his Australian comedic ways, hit the nail on the head and the dream of rock and roll super-stardom is just a pipe-dream, which has probably exploded into a pipebomb of relinquishment and emptiness. I'll leave tonight with the words which encapsulate the downtrodden nature of my own desire to be part of that sub-cutaneous world of anarchism and rebellion, which the Violent Femmes saw the beginning of the end and the push towards conformity. Tim sings:

While his mates all go out late
Popping pills and having fun
He goes home and showers
And gets a good eight hours
He gets his thrills from his morning run
And while his mates all go on dates
Taking speed and drinking cans of Jim Bean
He stays home and cooks
Curls up with a book
With the girl he's had since he was seventeen

Cos he's never really been part of the scene
Give him guns 'n' roses, he'll take Queen
He's more into Beatles than The Stones
He's more Stevie Wonder than Ramones

Graduation

Who needs adult life?

Well, second post and second attempt at being vaguely interesting. As I seem to be basing my blog on the implication that I will be detailing the bone-achingly banality of a recent university graduate, I should probably begin with my recent graduation.

Beneath the heat of the midday sun and the pompously expensive rental robes and ceremonial head-ware stood a clammy, nervous and admittedly quite damp 22 year old male accompanied by his immediate family, waiting for the time to come when he would enter the characteristically concrete 1970s building of the union. The building transformed with the supposedly elegant velure carpet, ceremonial drapes and endless chairs; surrounded by the wallpaper of chuffingly proud parents of the graduands.

Parents or children?

But who is all this ceremony and pomposity for?

• The Student? Well all I was thinking whilst I was in my heat emitting robes and suit, waiting for my piece of paper and 10 seconds on the plinth, was that I have now done what today's society needs. I am now a university graduate. A man of education. 3 years of work to finally be shot of educational facilities. I was just happy to have a certificate which could in prospect enable to have any job I desired.
• The University? These people are happy. They have my £9,000 plus maintenance grants and loans, and all they give me in exchange is a plethora of comments and constructive criticism and a piece of A4 paper with a computerised name typed on. 
• The Parents? This is the demographic for whom the graduation ceremony was designed. The people who weren't there for the highs and the lows, and there were plenty of lows. This is their day. All the pomposity, the ceremony are there for the sake of the people who weren't there in the first place. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but if the culmination of the 3 or more years that a student spends at university, is just a grandiose 80 minutes for the sake of the parents. It just seems starkly anti-climactic.

So graduation ceremonies are only for the parents., Underneath the sweltering warmth of the solar orb and the expectation of ready-to-be-proud onlookers, the culmination of 3 sweltering years had passed and my time as a student was eclipsed by the ever depressing loom of financially independent adult life.

The dusk had come for the protective bubble of student life and the dawn was approaching for independent adult life. How daunting and shockingly realistic.

photo credit: www.lumaxart.com/

The Beginning

Hello All - The First Post Is Calling 

(Maybe with Premonitions Of The Last Post Too)

Well, the time has finally come where I will be sharing my inane and insignificant thoughts with the wider, more socially applicable audience of the internet.

I am expecting this little saunter into the fields of blogging will result in endless refreshing and head in hands grimacing at the lack of visitors to this page. But underlying all that non-reciprocated hope and expectation, lies a tool in which I can vent my feelings and ideas about the world around us and the things that generally inspire me or infuriate me to an extent never thought humanly possible.

I will try and make this blog as humorous as I can whilst dealing with the issues that approach me throughout the following days and weeks and hopefully longer. Everything from news stories, local events and musical extravaganzas will hopefully feature at some point during this blogging experience. This experience will hopefully continue the dwindling embers of my creative writing and intellectual thought, which has hitherto become an addition to my daily life since the bubble shattering grounding of life which typically befalls a recent university graduate. Education and strict rules and deadlines were the intrinsic dogma-based rituals of the months and years recently passed, but has now been eclipsed by the banality of work of the daily tedium and humdrumming of monotonous experiences. 

But that is the past, the future is very much ahead of us and shall be until we tread into the veil of uncertainty and not knowing. This blog will attempt to by a source of light on the past and the future of my life by being an output for somewhat creative thought into the digital lithosphere of these here internets and the ilk of what this future may bring.

Anyways, I believe I have dawdled too long on the road of description and banal repetitiveness, and will  progress now into hitting the post button and sending this tedium fueled, nonsensical gibberish into the digital world.

Goodbye first post, and hopefully hello to many a future one.