-

The Mission Statement:

To provide a collaborative media project bringing together short stories based on neo-noir and existential aesthetics with inspiration from the art of 3D render community.

I am a long-time believer in the power of collaborative media.

No doubt there is the (rather precious) idea that — especially in writing — the image drawn out by the writer should be between the writer and the reader alone. A contract of sorts is created between the two, in which a promise seems to be made to not affect the imagination of the reader through other forms of media.

Images, video, etc, seem to be frowned upon and nullified, in order to let the imagination of the reader run wild.

I believe this idea holds true, and for the most part, it is largely a universal truth that the original book that a screenplay may be based on, is always better than the movie, and in many cases, would have been better if it were left alone, and left up to the imagination of the reader.

However, in recent years there’s been a trend towards things such as book trailers and I believe there is always room for manoeuvre. There’s leeway available in which one form of media can not only help, but possibly catalyse the imagination of the reader into finding something even grander than they originally may have thought possible.

My first attempt at developing this idea was with my first novel, Concrete Operational. This project involved five artists and five musicians creating original art and music based around five themes of my manuscript.

The novel was broken down into these five points; love, anger, madness, jealousy and desire. Each artist and band were given a 2,000 word extract based around one of these themes and asked to create something original that was inspired by it.

This culminated in a multi-media launch night and an art, literature and music exhibition in central London. Patrons could view the art, read the words it was based on and listen to the music simultaneously. A short film was also produced, alongside a limited run of box-sets which had the seventy-two page art book, five track music album and my novel contained within.

The collaborators

The project was largely considered a great success and really was a solid demonstration of multiple disciplines coming together to produce a collaborative whole which surpassed the individual mediums alone.

More information available at: www.operationconcrete.com

In more recent years I have been experimenting with flash fiction which is inspired by two of my prime sources of stimulus outside of literature, that being Outrun Music and Brutalist Architecture.

The product of this has been two flash fiction series:

Outrun Stories:

Sci-fi short stories in 600 words or less deriving from the Outrun, neo-noir and NewWave aesthetic.

Available at: https://medium.com/@OutrunStories

Based on these points of inspiration, I have written over 100 pieces of flash fiction, each of which has either a point of inspiration drawn from a piece of Brutalist architecture or Outrun music. With each story the point of inspiration is provided to the reader to either view — with Brutalist Stories — and paint a picture in their head of the story that is taking place within or around the particular building. Or in the case of Outrun Stories, listen to the music and have it almost as a soundtrack to the story itself.

The idea behind NEON & CONCRETE is largely the same; to generate a collaborative project in which short stories inspired by 3D render artists are created.

In recent months I have been heavily drawn to, impressed and inspired by the 3D render scene that seems to be growing at an exponential rate on Instagram and across portfolio sites such as Behance. Certain artists have been particularly inspiring, and after reaching out to a handful of them, I am extremely happy that two in particular agreed to allowing me to write short stories based on their work and publish it — with accreditation — to the NEON & CONCRETE project.

NEON

First, we have Mike Winkelmann AKA Beeple. Mike’s work is renowned across the internet, he is a highly sort after render artist and has a back catalogue of work that any artist from any genre of work would be humbled by. His imagination runs wild on the digital canvas and produces work that I was immediately drawn to. As you can probably see from his work above, it is obvious why I asked him to be the inspiration for the ‘NEON’ part of the project. His artwork draws many points of inspiration from the neo-noir, outrun, cyberpunk aesthetic that I wanted to have for half of this project. This is why, I asked if I could work with his art to generate short stories, inspired by what he has created. Initially there will be three in total.

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/beeple_crap

CONCRETE

CONVOY

Second, we have Jon Ojibway aka Ozhichige. Jon is relatively new to the scene — in comparison with the likes of Mike — but as soon as I came across his work I found inspiration. Not only is it of outstanding quality but the vision is perfectly suited to the ‘CONCRETE’ side of the project. Jon’s work is epic, grandiose, awe inspiring and perfectly shaped and formed to work with the more existential ideas and train of thought that the ‘CONCRETE’ side of the project will align with. The same as with Mike, there will be three stories inspired by a selection of Jon’s work to begin with.

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/ozhichige/

These two artists are the founding basis for the project, which will, in short, create short stories based on neo-noir and existential aesthetics that their renders help inspire.

The hope for the project is that as the art and the words come together, the reader will be inspired and have their thought provoked, that they will be entertained and able to draw up a vision in their mind that gets the cogs turning.

I hope you enjoy.

Buzludzha Monument

Want to start gambling without spending money from your pocket? Currently possible with DaisySlots, when signing up for an account, the welcome reward will automatically be sent to your credit. Sign up now and play today! Short sci-fi stories in 500 words or less deriving from the stark style of the functionalist architecture, that is characterised by the use of concrete. Brutalism is one of my favourite things in the world, I love the architectural form and everything it stands for, from functionality to, well, brutalism. It comes from the French term 'béton brut' and literally means 'exposed concrete' and I've been fascinated by it for years, decades perhaps. These buildings, this style of architecture, it makes me think in a certain way, they're science fiction brought into reality, and they're - for me at least - a real place for meditation on the soul and existence. For this reason I thought they would be perfect for short stories, often existential in nature, exploring deep emotion and the question 'why?!'. For each story I sit down and look through one of the books I have on Brutalism and pick a building, site, area, monument, and then write a story into that particular place and it almost always works. I pick out a piece of music that is fitting and that I've often been listening to whilst writing it, and then there's the story. Some of my favourites in the series so far are:

Brutalist stories #7: and I still feel you...

Building inspiration: St. Agnes Church (Berlin)

Brutalist Stories #15: Kurtz' Last Disciple

Concrete Brutal Axial

Brutalist Stories #17: The Deacon

]]> https://www.cementum.co.uk/812/brutalist-stories/feed/ 0 https://www.cementum.co.uk/799/outrun-stories/ https://www.cementum.co.uk/799/outrun-stories/#respond Thu, 23 Mar 2017 20:28:00 +0000 http://www.cementum.co.uk/?p=799 OUTRUN STORIES

Short stories in 500 words or less deriving from the Outrun, tech-noir and NewWave aesthetic. For years now I've been listening to Soundcloud daily at work, learning and loving every day more and more the artists of the NewRetroWave and Synthwave music movement.

TikTok can be an effective tool to promote an 80's movie to a younger audience. Creating shareable and engaging content for TikTok can help a movie resonate with a younger audience and help to reach a new demographic. If you want your video to reach a bigger audience, you can buy here tiktok comments to get your video viral.

From the big guns like Dynatron and Kavinsky to all the other hundreds of bedroom warriors, they create the perfect 80's aesthetic that I enjoy so much. So, I thought, why not write the  sort of 80's movie influenced stories I've always wanted to write? And the product of that is Outrun Stories, each story has quite a typical trope, usually a bad deal gone wrong, love for the wrong woman, a fight about to turn south, that sort of thing, and a Sythnwave soundtrack to accompany it. Some of my favourites so far are:

OUTRUN STORIES #2: The Score

OUTRUN STORIES #7: Double Brutal

OUTRUN STORIES #16: The plan is: There is no plan.

]]> https://www.cementum.co.uk/799/outrun-stories/feed/ 0 https://www.cementum.co.uk/761/the-long-walk/ Tue, 27 Sep 2016 18:49:40 +0000 http://www.cementum.co.uk/?p=761

She walks.

She walks because she must.

She walks because that’s her only escape.

She walks because outside of the colony she can move beyond their psychosis.

She walks across the crimson sea and she is able to be free.

She walks across the red desert and she is beyond the cocoon of her body.

She walks across the surface of Mars and looks to the universe for an answer.

Away from all the people. Away from the ebb and flow of their souls.

She walks and walks and with each step she’s a touch further away. A fraction beyond their clutch. Released from the pressure and all their unremitting sorrow. Their universal suffering.

She walks and looks to the stars and hopes each second of each day that an answer will come. She walks and hopes that whatever that thing was that talked to her on that fateful day, wherever it came from, it will someday find its way back to her. To contact her again. Until then she is left to wander. Left to hold on alone between states of being. No longer human, but not quite yet something else. She’s beyond them but she cannot understand what she has moved on to. So, she walks.

She walks because she must.

“Lily, death doesn’t make mistakes,” Joyce once said to her. “You’re something beyond all our reckoning. You hold a great responsibility. You have to stay with us here, because—”

Because nothing. Because she might be the answer? Because she might hold some sort of key to the next stage of human evolution? Because she might help them understand the why and the what of it all? What all the suffering over all that time was for? Has been for?

She didn’t ask for this, but now she has to bear it.

So, she walks.

She walks because she must.

She walks across the surface of the Red Planet. Where she can be alone.

She walks to find that moment of clarity. A point where she is separate from the echo of their souls.

She walks over the red rock and her helmet brings her breathing close. Its slow rhythm helps her, steadies her. Gives her something to focus on away from their surge. The conscious noise she has to endure.

She walks away from their primordial beat. The thing in their inner brain that reaches out beyond all of their skulls with each electrical pulse that their grey matter emits. She can receive it now, but not tune it.

She cannot hear their every thought, just the constant ebb and flow resonating in her heart. The universal thump that quivers her gut, tenses a muscle or electrifies the downy fuzz that creeps across her soft skin. It rolls and pushes and retreats and she can sink into it, let it wash over her and become part of it, but she can never control it. She cannot turn it off. She cannot stop it. She cannot halt the tide of their souls even after all these years and all her training with Joyce and Eto. All she has is distance.

So, she walks.

She walks because she must.

She walks until she’s far enough away not to feel them anymore. So she can sit and hold onto herself. So, she can take a moment in the red dusk. Watch the vermillion stone of this planet glitter in the orange hue of a sun 250 million kilometers away. Try to consider what happened.

The thing that came to her that day through the Ether. That which brought her face-to-face with an unknown reality. Wrenching the valves of her mind open and setting forth the torrent of supernatural experience. Beyond human. Confounding a preternatural realisation. Something she had touched on all her life but could never quite grasp.

“The world is not mine alone and I am not alone within it.”

That boy she had seen so many times when she had gone into her den. The little one that came to her and made her so afraid. He had found her at last and in that moment before the nukes came raining down, he bridged the gap. He talked to her in such clear words, leading her to something divine. The insight. An epiphany. A revelation of the justice of the universe. He held her hand amongst the stars and lead her to the horizon of time and space so they could look back to watch the new dawn, but she was ripped away.

So, she walks.

She walks to understand why in that moment she had to be pulled back to the awful reality of that room. Where the mutant threat hammered against the heavy door. Where women and men cried and screamed and all hope was lost as fire rained down over the earth. She had been taken to the edge of understanding and then dropped back into the pit of self. Then it was over and she knew she was different. They all knew something changed in her that day.

So, she walks.

She walks because she is no longer a single, solitary unit of consciousness. There’s suffering in the universe that she can see, throughout them all. Every single one that made it through their short trip across the stars and to the Red Planet. The universe pulled her up and confessed in a mighty cry that people are not alone with their fear. Each human stands hand-in-hand around the edge of the void, but the revelation came without context. Without any meaning. They all exist. They all suffer. She can feel every single one of their souls, but its purpose, the reason for it all never came.

So, she walks.

She walks until she can be still. Gaze over the scarlet ocean of rock of the barren desolate world that is so perfect for her. So welcoming with its nothingness. Just rock and peace. She walks to be alone for a moment.

“Home.” she whispers to herself and looks at the ruby heavens above her. Focuses away from this version of reality and reaches beyond it, into the parallel space she has learnt to occupy. When she concentrates there’s a separation possible now.

When she is able to escape their noise she can lift herself out of her body and find her soul without physical boundary in another place, and there she sees time differently. Time exists as a solitary unit through all points as a flat disc. In the Ether it simply is. She sees every moment of all existence as one fluxing vision.

She looks at her piece of time and cannot help but feel a deep sorrow. The instant is there. Her conscious unit that represents every version of herself. Every moment that’s come and gone across the 20 years of her entirely individual experience, and it is alone. Alone to suffer with such awful sadness, unlike any other.

Selfish in its rise from the pit of her stomach and overwhelming in it power across every inch of her being. A sorrow for her; the child, the teen, the adult. Selfish in the curiosity of her own suffering. The memory of a young girl struggling to realise and understand and come to terms with everything she is. Everything she has gone through and everything that is to come.

“Why you? What did you do?” she asks, seeing her now. The 20-year-old woman looking back through her path across the stars. Through the ephemeral experience of her humanity that has sunk into and swam with everyone that has lived and survived the journey to their new home.

“Were you ever really like them? Could you have ever really been like them?” she watches herself. The projection of her consciousness viewing the prison of her body before re-joining it. The brain and the mind coming back together to experience the foreign majesty of the Red Planet with all the primal handles of her physical being. Finding a moment’s solace in the thick benign colours, its utter emptiness. The weak sun slowly fading and setting across the horizon. Sucking with it an immense shadow across the planet’s surface.

A moment here alone. Everything muted by the cosmic dance playing out before her. Its immensity drowning out that selfish sorrow just for a moment. All the fear and all the suffering, but the sadness never really leaves. Even when she has walked, there’s a curiosity for that lost person. The little one she once was, the teenager she recently left. For everything she could have been if it were not for the inexplicable circumstance through which she has had to endure. But she does endure.

She sits and asks. “What sort of life is this?” there’s a terrible unfairness in the universe, she knows. She feels it every day because she can feel it in them. She looks up and sees it in the stars. The difference between their consciousness and the grandness of the universe.

“The star lives and burns and dies. Why out of the two of us, must I be the one that feels?” She dips her head and closes her eyes, “I never asked for this.” Of course she never did. She never asked to be born into the MIST at the end of the world. She never asked for a mother that couldn’t bear a version of reality she felt she would never escape. She never asked for a father that tried so hard to love her but would never get over the loss of his one love and in that, forever be reminded of her in his daughter.

She never asked to be abandoned by a mother that felt she’d had something stolen from her in her own daughter. She didn’t want to be left alone by the person that should have cared, exactly at the time when she needed that care the most. Left in the white of the MIST when she needed to be held in loving arms. Those arms failing when they should have found resolve, understood their duty, pulled together the strength to help carry her. To absorb her and ensure she knew she was loved, but they were lacerated. Bled dry and left to the eternal cold. With the roof that he got yeah it was probably the worst thing that could have happened so he should have gotten a team of professional roofers to fix the roof before he got the house.
to fix it up before he built the house.

So, she walks.

She pulls herself up after the sun has set, as the cold of the Martian night begins to wrap itself around her. She looks over to the colony in the canyon. Watching the wide beams of light catching the red dust, blown by alien winds, escaping from the broad portholes dotted across its huge domed roof. The cold begins to creep over her. Her suit trying its best to protect her but a bite on her skin seeps through. She endures, as she always does. The freezing temperatures crawl into her skin. The hairs on her neck stand, it's like she has been taking a jamaican black castor oil amazon. Her heart beats faster, but even here, in the solitary moment, she walks.

Light steps across the Martian landscape, back toward the colony. With each step the hum getting louder and encroaching on her bitter loneliness. The red sea before her. The echo of their souls slowly beginning to penetrate her mind. All the while, for everything she has, all the connections of every one of them, she cannot find the one she needs.

She walks because she must. She walks to have respite from them all. When the cold hands of the Martian night run their harsh fingers across her skin, she walks again. Now she walks toward them and as they sink back in, she walks to find him.

For everything he’d tried to do. For all the love he’d tried to muster. For all the work he’d tried so hard to complete in the face of insurmountable odds. All he’d ever really been good at was failing. Her father has failed her. She doesn’t hate him for this. She only wants to know why. To see a little deeper inside him. To see if he can ever be salvaged. So, she walks.

She walks back to the colony and searches through the noise with all the energy she can muster. Sometimes she thinks she can feel him and him alone. A flicker of his soul. His ghost hidden somewhere deep inside the Martian mesa by Wiseman. Cowering and doing something that he thinks will help her.

She thinks that she can find a moment of his being amongst them all and in that feel and know that really, he never truly loved her. She knows he is in there. She convinces herself she can feel his torment. The thing that overrides. The part that no matter how much he ever tried to convince himself that he was doing the right thing and doing it for her, he could never overcome.

This little dot of a human being. This small child had sucked the life out of his one love. The person that had changed him. The one that had opened his eyes to the world, to the hurting. As she killed herself, she killed any love he could have ever had for his daughter. But there’s always hope and so she needs to know if this is true. If he really never loved her or if it’s her own psychosis playing with her on the Red Planet.

If he never did, perhaps she would accept it. If she can find it within him that he once did, even for the briefest of moments then he might still find a way to do so again. She might resurrect it. Might be able to pull it kicking and screaming out of him. Out of the depths of his soul. She might be held for just a moment, where forever she has been left alone, and that would change everything.

So, she walks.

She walks because she needs to find his mind. To understand if that always has been and always will be the way it must be. She walks because all she has ever wanted is to be loved. All she has ever wanted is to be told that thing. To know it in the pit of her stomach as the tears stream down her face and the arms wrap around her tiny frame, that at least her father loves her.

So, she walks.

She searches for him in them all to try and know him better. Why he could never give her what she needed. He had nearly been there once, when he’d nearly suffered the mutation too. A moment of realisation had passed over him and he’d seen her. A speck on time’s flat disc, existing in the depths of perpetual loneliness. Completely individual. He had almost felt a twinge then. Felt the need to come after her, to save her no matter what and to hold her, forever. Even that wasn’t strong enough. Even that couldn’t tear him away from the fact that she’d taken his wife. His love. His reason and she could never replace that reason. She was never good enough, but she hopes. She hopes that she might be wrong. That if she can just go deeper, see a little bit clearer that she might find it in him. Buried somewhere deep down where angels fear to tread.

So, she walks.

She looks back at all the times she had tried. Through the years they’d had together on this dark and red planet while she was growing. Her teens, before he had disappeared, when they grew close. Closer than they had ever been and she had found a flicker of hope. Her need for him and his strength regaining, but she knew he could never escape it. She knew every night in the darkness he would sit there and his psychosis would creep in and her mother’s dead hands would pull him away from her again. Terrifying visions of his wife’s lacerated body crawling toward him. Out of the black of the night to judge him and demand of him that he remember her and what Lily had done. This is why he disappeared. This is why he went to Wiseman’s cult and this is why he now kneels before the Cumulus and falls into the MIST in their ceremonies. She feels that he still tries. There’s something still there. A morsel of hope. There’s something he holds onto that keeps him trying to give her something he never could. After everything, he’s all too weak. Wiseman is all too strong and their little rebellion of Stas and Ruffshot, Joyce and Eto and those they’ve managed to convince there is a better way, is all too small.

So, she walks. Not because she wants loneliness, but because she wants to be alone. Just for a moment to relieve the sorrow. To find her answers. She walks because she must. She walks away from them to find herself. To look to the stars and search for an answer and when it fails to come, she walks. She walks back to them. To see if she can find him within the sea of them all. To find his ghost and to understand why he never loved her and with the hope that, underneath it all, one day he will. The great road that one takes through life can hit us, it can reward us but above all it can teach us many things that we did not know, like that today, getting that figure that you have desired so much is no longer impossible with the help of the best weight loss pills, if you do not believe it give it a try, and keep walking on this great road called life.

Adding a healthy dietary blend to your daily routine can provide you with essential nutrients and minerals that are necessary for optimal health. Along with proper diet, frequent walking is a great way to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Walking is an easy and accessible way to get daily physical activity, which helps lower blood pressure, improve balance and increase cardiovascular health. Incorporating a blend of healthy foods, along with regular walking, can help you reach your health and wellness goals. If you are on a healthy lifestyle journal by eating healthy and doing some exercise and you want to see more results, you can add to your plan some alpilean, these pills are said to improve energy levels, enhance mental clarity, support strong bones, and support immune health.

More information at https://www.amny.com/sponsored/alpilean-reviews/

Original inspiration from The Road Warrior.

]]> https://www.cementum.co.uk/738/the-interloper-richard-galbraith/ https://www.cementum.co.uk/738/the-interloper-richard-galbraith/#respond Tue, 20 Aug 2013 17:50:07 +0000 http://www.cementum.co.uk/?p=738

It would seem, from the things that I have come to understand over the course of this life so far, that the age of 30 is a particular age that a man should deem as significantly important. I believe 30 stands above those other ages that society places importance on i.e. sweet 16, the big 18, the emergence into adulthood at 21, and such. Those ages are separated by a mere five years and at their peak are only perhaps nine or ten years away from a man as a child. At 30, a man has had time to think, to reflect, to do, to try and will action, to look at himself and begin to try and understand what or who he may be.

So, there in, having passed from infant to school boy and having been the lover, 30 is the incongruous line that sees him begin to pass over into, The Soldier, as Shakespeare so eloquently put it;

Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth

What a tumultuous age, one is indeed faced with the fact that he should, by all recognisable norms and through the potent will that rests within him; strive for honour, recognition and reputation, even when faced with the cannon.

Now, here I am, looking down the barrel of that very cannon. Just where have I been, what have I seen, whom have I met and what have I done? What have I built for myself, what have I achieved, what have I created and what have I destroyed? Have I lived? Have I suffered? And if I have, why must I live? Why must I suffer?

Question upon question, a limitless amount that have built and surged and throbbed within me for as long as I can remember and where are the answers? There is one way, perhaps, a way others have used, they have created men to look in upon themselves and reflect, some of literatures most significant protagonists were 30.

The quarrel the writer faced within and without, the void they looked into, the pressure that they braced themselves against, the fear they gripped onto and screamed at with potent fury, all laid out on display for others to see. For us to read and engage with and take from and perhaps confirm some truth that deepens our understanding of who we are and what it is to be human.

A 30 year old Jay Gatsby returns home after The War to make his fortune and begin his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan in the Great Gatsby. Guy Montag is a 30 year old Fireman in Fahrenheit 451 who looks at the cinders of the books he has torched and weeps inside. The 30 year old Josef K in Franz Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ is arrested for an unspecified crime and forced, in the face of utter hopelessness and the impenetrability of the institutions that surround him (and us all), to try and to reclaim his life. And of course, there is Meursault, the main character and narrator in Albert Camus’ ‘The Stranger’. A man who has to face the absurdity of life and a man who is only guilty of showing indifference to it. A man who must pay the price for coming to understand how to let go, as he says; ‘Everyone know’s life isn’t worth living,’ but for this he, society deems, he must be punished to the fullest extent of the law and must die.

So, for all of those writers there were questions. Life in all its rich bitterness and the questions that it presented to them and the expectation to learn and grow from what was thus presented, in the form of their own discovery or through absorbing that which another created. Each author found his own conclusions for each character given the culmination of action that brought the writer to that particular point, and they inevitably moved on without us knowing what they fully came to learn or understand. But I hope, we hope we can take something from what they were able to translate into a story for us to consume.

Now, I am here, at 30, this significant age, and I have written two novels and I have created my own worlds and my own characters and I have tried to explore and delve and of course, there are still questions, countless questions. One door closes and an infinite amount of pluralities open in front of me, and with every moment of every moment I must try to find some focus. Bring some resolve to the situation in order to bring about a better circumstance for the subjective me, the idea of myself and perhaps even a happier circumstance, and may I even wish that one day, even a great circumstance.

To question and explore seems to be the only route that ‘I’ can possibly go. Kant defined Enlightenment as; Man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity being the inability to use ones own understanding without the guidance of others. It is a virtue not to be guided, but to question and use one’s own understanding, I believe that wisdom can only come from one’s own enquiry, ‘Sapere Aude,’ is the phrase which coins this and roughly translates to say; have courage to use your own understanding, or simply; ‘Dare to be Wise’.

In this light, I have, since I can remember, always questioned that which is the most perplexing and perhaps the most ineffable problem of man, that of Will and Freedom. At a very innate level I have always experienced a duality within, something that has at one time driven me, at another made me stall, but always remained in my mind as a thing of great wonder. An unstoppable force constantly smashing against an immovable object, for as long as I exist it will remain within.

Unquestioned I believe it would have carried me through life without too much harm or foul, successfully and seen me reach relatively high standards of happiness, but its very nature seems beyond this. The duality of what ‘it’ is drives me to question and to think, and in this regard, it would seem that coming to confront ‘it’ has always been an inevitability, for which I am grateful but also troubled. It is not easy staring into the void, but it can reap unparalleled rewards. Aha, ye Gods! But, what is the route to that reward? Let me look here.

It seems to me this thing within is utterly insatiable and thus, problematic at best, and torturous at worst. This thing, the Goliath of my duality, my primordial drive, my lust and potency, my innate wants and needs, my Will, the thing that even with the most savage malfunctions of the brain will push any man or woman in which it lays inexorably toward life, it is a troublesome bastard.

What is life in the face of this? What does it make the subjective me? What more can ‘I’ possibly be if not, as Ishmael said, a fifth wheel to a wagon? My soul, my being, my presence inside this house of flesh and bone and chemicals and fats and sinew and viscera seems to be superfluous to its needs. It seems the thing within, the brain, the animal perhaps, would do perfectly well without me and, in fact it would do better! This leads me to constantly question why I am here, I am perhaps not yet learned enough to understand quite why my mind should exist, why in fact the seeming illusion of Free Will should so torturously be presented to me, when in fact, I am imprisoned, I am bound, perpetually, until the last beat of my heart, to be trapped within a body I have little if any control over. I have to sit, behind open eyes, and be tormented continuously with happiness that is fleeting, with memory that is involuntary, with thought that is either confusing or undecipherable and with behaviour that is dictated by a process that started long before I was even born. So, why? Why has this come about, why have I come to be? Why after 35,000 generations and 3 million years of evolution did it seem necessary to create this prison in which I am trapped eternal?

​Schopenhauer said; ‘this is the worst of all possible worlds,’ I would have to agree. I am constantly surrounded by the gamut of despair, so what am I supposed to do in the face of this? Why must I suffer? I have will, but it is not necessarily free, I am driven by forces outside of what I would class as ‘I’. I can feel them, I know them to be there, and controlling them, resisting them seems to be the battle that I must fight and contend with daily. How can this be any life to lead?

I have natural wants and needs, I have drives, things that want this house of flesh to stay warm and fed, to have sex and procreate, to gain happiness and power. These are not thought up, these do not come about because of ‘me,’ they are independent of my intellect, my reason, they are motives of my will to life. In the face of these happiness is entirely fleeting, it is a constant impossibility, it is a useless uphill struggle to satiate ever wanting primordial drivers. Why then am ‘I’ needed?

It seems unjustifiable to me the reason for my consciousness. Happiness is not good enough a reason, happiness in the face of endless lust is useless and comes at an expense. Once happiness has dissipated only suffering is left and even if happiness is achieved, it only leads to boredom. So, is there anything outside of this? Is there something more than happiness? Is there peace that can be found and is there a reason for this suffering? Or perhaps beyond peace, is there greatness that will come from this?

Should I develop my awareness? Should I expand my knowledge and reason and intellect and morality and wisdom and experience and struggle and suffer to try and find a better way? What if outside of the intellect the growth of my awareness only causes more pain, more suffering? In deriving greater awareness of my inner being, of my will, in being able to understand and confront the beast that lays within, I am only coming to understand how much more I must thwart. The infinite wants of my brain and body are insurmountable, are awesome in size and overwhelming in power compared to ‘MY’ ability to satiate them. I am their eternal prisoner. So, the fallacy of reason gives me the idea, isn’t the answer to sneak away? To lay back and let all this be ridden out on the autopilot that I know to exist within me? Perhaps, the unquestioned life is the unfulfilled one, but is the unfulfilled one easier? And why should I choose pain? What does that make me? It would seem by increasing my awareness, by driving intellect I am torturing myself. I am discovering more and increasingly complex ways my will operates and I have to deal with these and confront these on an ever-widening battlefield. Why should I do so?

Camus said the instance of being alive makes us masochists. He said the only question of philosophy is whether or not one should commit suicide. If we are alive, we are capitulating to life and its ongoing and unavoidable suffering. We must try to decide whether or not life is worth living. Even if perhaps I am able to overcome will, even if I am able to defeat it and have real choice, be granted a freedom away from primordial motives and drivers deep within my inner brain that I have no conscious awareness of but push me inexorably through the world, I still have to ask the question, should I now kill myself? Though, it would seem to go beyond will completely is impossible, so even though choice is perhaps granted, reason and intellect are capable, they are only there as a means to try and satiate the will, and in this, suffering must exist, there is no escape, so what do I do in the face of this?

Perhaps this suffering can be given a purpose? But how can I possibly suffer if I am no more responsible for the microstructure of my brain than I am for my height?

Above and beyond the idea of the subjective self, of ‘Me’ that has to operate on the little legitimate information that it is able to perceive through its senses and has to suffer at the hands of life, there is a much grander problem, that of Free Will.

Being able to choose anything at all may be considerably diminished, if not completely eradicated by the brain and all its unconscious mechanisms.

I know, I understand that the apparent authorship over my own thoughts and actions is all but completely illusory. As said, the body that houses my subjective self contains within it 3 million years of evolution and 35,000 generations of will to life. This time and effort has brought about certain instinctual processes which slap the freedom that I believe I have out from underneath my chin, I have Will, but it is not necessarily Free. But, going beyond that there is a train of thought within modern philosophical circles that Free Will, beyond that which is contained within, and in a deterministic sense, is a totally incoherent idea all together, and if this is the case, what hope do ‘I’ have? I will now look at this briefly.

The popular conception of free will rests on two assumptions;

• That we were free to behave differently than we did in the past.
  • I.E. You chose Booze A, but you could have chosen Booze B, the future is not set.
• We are the conscious source of our thoughts and actions.
  • I.E. The experience of you wanting to do something is the approximate reason for you undertaking an action.

It has been argued that both of these assumptions are untrue. No one has been able to describe a way in which mental and physical events could arise that align with the idea of free will.

In a deterministic reality (and even quantum), I live in a world of cause and effect and either my Will is determined by a long chain of prior causes that I am not responsible for, or, it is the product of chance and again, I am not responsible.

There is a very basic serial killer argument which demonstrates the lack of free will. This man’s choice to commit a murder was determined by neurophysiological set of events in his brain, which in turn were determined by prior causes, such as; bad genes, the developmental effects of a troubling childhood and such.

All these events precede any conscious decision to act, so what does it mean to say that this murderer committed this act of his own free will? It must mean that he could have behaved differently, he could have declined the impulse or resisted it, because he was the conscious author of his thoughts and actions.

Now, if the serial killer was discovered to have a brain tumor that was responsible for a change in behaviour, such as increasing violent tendencies, then he is a victim of biology, he was unlucky to get the brain tumor, but still not free to choose. So, here there is a case of a physical event giving rise to particular thoughts and actions. Now, if I take the human brain and break it down to micro detail, then I see similar physical events equally responsible for the actions and behaviour of an individual, in every event, in every choice. If I could see how the physical interactions throughout life had sculpted the microstructure of a persons brain so it was guaranteed to produce different states of mind, then the basis of ascribing free will to those actions would possibly disappear. Just because at the moment it is not possible to predict with 100% accuracy the behaviour of a human, does not mean it is impossible to do so, and does not give way to free will.

Ah, ye, swine I shout and smash my fists down on the table at this! I have and feel the subjective experience of free will, but I know it cannot be mapped onto physical reality. I can no more control what I am about to think next than I can predict what you the reader is going to think next.

Thoughts appear in my consciousness, and are forced upon me.

From my point of view, at a base level, what you the reader is going to think next comes out of nowhere, association with the idea that you are thinking and choosing to read, gives the impression of coherence. Strip that away and thoughts are coming from a conglomerate of atoms sat in front of a computer screen, produced only out of a prior set of events and processes.

Start small, and try to find and get a good ROI for everything you do. Create an elevator pitch: What can you tell people about your business, products and services in 30 seconds or less that keeps them interested and wanting more?

Thoughts appear in my consciousness, the voice in my head, myself, ME as a subject, it is in there and just saying things, coming up with things, presenting things to me, and many of these things are completely irrelevant to what I’m writing now. Thoughts emerge in consciousness, I am not authoring them, this would require that I think them before I think them, and if I cannot control my next thought and I don't know what it is going to be before it arises, where is my freedom of will?

I continually notice the point of what I believe to be conception. I know it before I know it, the idea I believe I have just conceived is present and I know and understand it before I am able to voice it within my internal monologue. I produce the conscious effort to make myself aware of it in some futile effort to try and understand the genesis point of my thoughts and what is providing me with conscious decision.

My brain provides me, the subject, in a very real way, with only a memory of the moment, if I touch my toes, the sensation of touch on both my finger and toe appears simultaneous, but in reality the brain is receiving signals from the hand before the toe, simply because the hand is closer to the brain. So, the brain is buffering the signals by itself, it is in fact, warping my perception of reality, and I have no choice in this or ability to change it.

The unconscious machinery that governs what I perceive also governs what I think and do and intend, and this is where notions of free will begin to evaporate. It has been demonstrated in a laboratory setting that people's behaviour on voluntary choices can be detected moments, sometimes even seconds before the person is consciously aware of having made the choice. Benjamin Libet famously demonstrated this by simply asking people to touch a button on the left or right of them, and then noting when they were first consciously aware of when they had committed to the act of pushing the left or the right. It was found that brain activity directs the action before the person, the subject, becomes consciously aware of choosing to perform it.

In this case, it is scientifically uncontroversial to say that some moments before you are aware of what you are going to do in making a simple voluntary action, in a time at which you are apparently completely free to do what you want, your brain has already determined what you are going to do, and you become gradually aware of this decision whilst you consider the idea of making it.

This is difficult to reconcile with the traditional idea of free will, and based on this, it has be questioned whether or not that we have the choice or the ability to do, to perform actions, but that instead we can, or indeed have to, chose not to do something that we have already been directed to do by our brains. However, even if there were no time lag between the conscious decision or choice and its neurophysiological underpinnings, even if it were completely simultaneous, there would still be no room for free will, because you still wouldn't know why it is you do what you do, or why you made one particular decision over the other.

The endurance of free will as a philosophical problem for not only myself but for humanity at large is brought about by the fact that we all feel that we freely author our thoughts and intentions and actions, however difficult it may be to make sense of this in logical or scientific terms.

The idea of free will emerges from a felt experience. At the moment the only philosophically respectable way to defend free will in light of what we know scientifically is by what we know as Compatibilism in philosophical circles, an effort to argue that free will is compatible with the truth of determinism.

Compatibilists argue that a person is free as long as they are free from any outer or inner compulsion that would prevent them from acting on their desires or intentions.

Sam Harris when speaking on the subject of free will, said being a Compatibilist is like saying; 'A puppet is free, as long as it loves its strings'. Compatibilists argue, that even if our thoughts are the products of unconscious causes, they are still our thoughts and actions, anything that your brain thinks or decides is something that you have done or decided. On this side of the argument, the fact that we can't always be aware of the causes of our conscious thoughts and actions, does not negate from the fact that they are ours, the unconscious neurophysiology of your brain is just as much you, as your conscious thoughts or any other part of you.

I don't think this holds ground against determinism, the prior causes within my life have determined the neurophysiological makeup of my brain. It also trades a psychological fact, the subjective experience of being a conscious agent, for a conceptual understanding of ourselves as persons. I’m not sure whether I still feel this way, but many people do feel identical to, and in control of, a channel of information being processed in their conscious minds, and they are mistaken about this. The Compatibilist says we are much more than this, we are the totality of the unconscious processing in our brain. But I don’t believe there is any way the subject can take credit for the unconscious mental life that is taking place behind conscious awareness. To say that a person is responsible for everything that goes on inside their skin, because 'it's all them,' is to make a claim that bears absolutely no relationship to the actual experience that has made free will a problem for philosophy.

Back to my question, my problem, how can the suffering that I endure be experienced as a free conscious agent if everything I consciously intend was caused by events in my brain that I did not intend or had no choice over, and over which I had no control? The simple answer is I cannot.

What does this mean? From what I have come to understand through the reading and self discovery I have pursued, the fact that my choices rely on prior causes does not mean that choice doesn't matter, and this is where determinism should not be mixed with fatalism. There is the mistake made of saying something whimsical such as, ‘Well if it's all determined, then why don't I just sit back and see what happens?” But to sit back and see what happens, is also a choice, and in turn, trying to sit back and do nothing is often much more difficult than it sounds.

My own take on it is thus, I cannot not help but make decisions, however, it would seem these decisions are the result of prior causes. The subject, that is ‘ME,’ does not experience the act of decision making as a computation based on the prior actions, but as a conscious decision based on choice, and I will never be able to change this, so there is little need to worry. I must move forward and strive to reach goals that I believe are available for me to reach.

I cannot step out of the stream of choice and effort, clearly choice and effort is part of the causal chain of life, if I hadn't have decided to write this essay, it wouldn't have written itself, but the choice of writing this essay was not necessarily determined by my own conscious decision, it was based on a line of prior causal events.

Effort begets behaviour and behaviour leads to outcomes in the world. The choices that I make are as important as I think, but the choices that I make come from prior causes that I cannot see and did not bring into being. Fundamentally I was not the author of a choice that will be made, but I will be lead to believe that I was, and this is the best I can hope for.

From the perception of the conscious mind, I am no more responsible for the next thing I think and therefore do, than the fact that I was born into this world.

I have not built my own mind, but I am held in the belief that I can control it.

This is obviously an extremely difficult concept to deal with and despite knowing and understanding what I have come to know and understand, it still causes a great deal of cognitive dissonance.

Free will for me is the biggest mystery and will undoubtedly remain so, on one hand I seem to know intrinsically that I have it, but on the other it cannot be mapped onto the reality of the world. Does this take something away from me? Does this mean what I must endure means less? I don’t believe so, it may remove the idea of the ego-centric life, it may demonstrate that we are all connected in some way, but it does not mean that what I feel is any less potent. Perhaps what it does bring in the realisation of the pointless suffering of existence in the face of a deterministic reality where free will cannot exist, can indeed, help bring about an even greater existence.

And in the pursuit of this better, greater existence in the face of all the questions that I have, and the roaring anguish I feel at my lack of free will, I look to the Overman, Nietzsche’s very own Übermensch.

For Nietzsche, philosophy had a definite practical purpose, it was to facilitate the emergence of the great individual, one who dedicates their life to growth and self overcoming, this is why I look to philosophy in the face of the questions I cannot help but pose. Nietzsche believed such a pursuit would provide one with the ability to affirm life in the face of suffering, pain and tragedy.

"There are heights of the soul from which even tragedy ceases to look tragic" - Beyond Good and Evil.

The Higher-Man is whom Nietzsche said he wrote for, and this man is separated from the rest of mankind by the constitution of his eternal being. Within the Higher-Man exists an array of powerful and potent drives and instincts, engaged in a continual battle with each other. Nietzsche said that before one can become the Higher-Man, one must first bear these burdens. One must battle with fear, love, truth, death, confusion, thirst for knowledge, and all of the other aspects of human existence.

Because of what the Higher-Man finds within himself, he is chaotic being, is always in conflict with himself, suffering greatly and is in constant worry of self destructing (something I can appreciate absolutely). In order to affirm life, Nietzsche believed the Higher-Man must impose order on his internal chaos, this is his ambition and this is why I look to the Higher-Man.

"To become the master of the chaos one is…that is the grand ambition here." - The Will to Power.

Because of the suffering that the Higher-Man must endure, there is the potential that he will evade his life's mission to become the Higher-Man by seeking out comforts of mediocrity via conformity.

Nietzsche postulated that within every person there is the; 'herd instinct'. This is an innate need to obey and conform. Individuals satiate this need via accepted morality, or the embracing of what is designated good and what is bad or evil, in their particular culture. This in turn leads to herd morality; 'I am good because I conform.”

“Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws" - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Nietzsche noted that within this state the idea of standing aside from the herd morality is bad, and thus, the Higher-Man is bad because he stands apart.

"High and independent spirituality, the will to stand alone, even a powerful reason are experienced as dangers; everything that elevates an individual above the herd and intimidates the neighbour is henceforth called evil" - Beyond Good and Evil.

The Higher-Man disregards herd morality, he has sought out and invited the struggles that life has to offer and in doing so, begins to alienate himself. He is becoming different from others and from the society that produced him; he finds himself questioning everything, both his worth and the value of his pursuits.

The Higher-Man must go on to find courage, tenacity, disillusionment, and rage. Only in this state is his spirit able to deliver the “sacred “No.”" The “sacred “No”" represents the utter rejection of external control and all traditional values. To find this and pursue a life by his own life affirming morality, Nietzsche thought it was essential for the Higher-Man to separate himself from the herd and lead a life of solitude. Nietzsche believed that out of fear and laziness the masses structure their lives as to blind themselves from the deep questions of human existence.

"…for the objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one's thoughts to cease to be aware of life" - Untimely Meditations.

Therefore, if the Higher-Man is to achieve greatness in life, he has to contemplate questions that the herd is too weak and scared to ponder and to do this he needs his solitude.

"For now he will have to descend into the depths of existence with a string of curious questions on his lips. "Why do I live? What lessons have I learned from life? How do I become what I am and why do I suffer from being what I am?"” - Untimely Meditations

Facing the questions of suffering, the Higher-Man must begin to seek it out, provided he can find meaning for it.

"Man, the bravest of animals and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far" - On The Genealogy of Morals

When Nietzsche declared; "God is dead" it was to demonstrate that the interpretations of life's purpose by the Higher-Man would be unveiled as mere stories. In this space the Higher-Man begins to question whether or not any universal laws or virtues exist to guide him and give him purpose. Upon discovering that life has no purpose or goal, people may fall into despair under the suspicion that they are nothing but meaningless animals in a meaningless universe. Nietzsche had a suspicion that this would usher in an era of nihilism.

"Everything lacks meaning...without a goal or purpose to impose a meaning on ones suffering, one is left with the despair ridden conviction, that one suffers for no reason at all...Nihilism appears at that point, not that the displeasure of existence has become greater than before, but because one has to come to mistrust any 'meaning' in suffering, indeed, in existence…it now seems as if there is no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain" - The Will to Power

Nietzsche eventually came to believe that nihilism was the result of the misguided desire for there to be an objective meaning to life that one can come to know and ultimately became the anti-nihilist and declared that nihilism is the result of the misguided attempt to acquire objective knowledge. Nietzsche didn't believe that truth existed, and in that regard, objective meaning or any form of objectivism at all didn't exist either. Nietzsche believed an individual is always confined within their own subjective interpretation of the world.

As one cannot escape from one's own personal perspective or interpretation of ones own life, Nietzsche believed the Higher-Man should give up trying to search for the truth, as it doesn't exist anyway, and instead, interpret existence in a way that is 'life promoting' - for in doing so, he can escape nihilism by creating meaning in his own life.

Therefore the Higher-Man comes to interpret the deepest question; "Why do I suffer?" in a way that is life promoting, as, through analysing his own suffering, he comes to understand that; "pain is not considered an objection to life" - ecce homo - but instead he comes to believe that a life without suffering or pain would be a miserable life. He believes that suffering is a precondition of greatness.

"You want, if possible - and there is no more insane 'if possible' - to abolish suffering. And we? it really seems that we would rather have it higher and worse than ever. The discipline of suffering, of great suffering-do you not know that only this discipline has create all enhancements of man so far?" - Beyond Good and Evil.

In turn, with great suffering comes great enhancement, the Higher-Man's ideal, and this is a necessary vision to keep him focused on his quest for greatness in his darkest hours, on his path to becoming the Overman.

"I teach you the Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?" Thus Spoke the Zarathustra.

The Overman is a perfect and powerful being who has overcome all his fears and deficiencies and thus one who soars above the rest of mankind. Since ideals can be approached but never realised on earth, Nietzsche maintained that there has never there been an Overman and there never can be.

The best the Higher-Man can hope for is the attain the perfection and power of the Overman in rapturous moments, but this ecstasy cannot be maintained, and once again after this moment, one must always revert again to being human, all too human.

The Higher-Man, in his state of human, all too human, becomes aware of his fears and weaknesses, and subsequently become ashamed of the vast gulf that separates him from the Overman. In craving the perfection of the Overman, the Higher-Man will come to hate himself. This self-hate is the genesis of the Higher-Man's love for himself, for the Higher-Man comes to realise that without his inner deficiencies, and without his hatred of them he would have no motivation to grow and overcome himself, and thus would remain forever stagnant.

The Higher-Man who truly hates himself is on the path to making himself better. He must bite off the head of the snake that lays in his throat to overcome his despair, achieve greatness and become the Overman for a moment.

Thus, to become the Higher-Man and attain the affirmation of life, the highest state a human can hope to obtain, Nietzsche put forward two intertwining concepts.

Amor Fati & The Eternal Recurrence

Amor fati - The love of Fate - is the culmination of the Higher-Man's greatness. To love fate is to completely affirm life and is thus the most difficult task there is. The difficulty lies in the fact that existence contains so much evil, pain, suffering and tragedy, how can the Higher-Man affirm life in the presence of so much ugliness?

He much achieve great amounts of pain and suffering if he is to achieve greatness, so to affirm life, he must learn to love fate, because fate provides the suffering, and pain.

"It is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height" - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The Higher-Man will come to understand that evil, suffering, tragedy hold an inherent beauty, as latent within these aspects of existence is the potential for growth and self overcoming.

"I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati; let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly…and all in all and on the whole; some day I wish to be only a yes-sayer" - The Gay Science

Beyond this, the Higher-Man comes determine if he is in a state of 'Yes-Saying,’ meaning a state of complete life affirmation. To see whether this point had been reached, Nietszche constructed the Eternal Recurrence, a psychological test to gauge the state of the Higher-Man.

"What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you, into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live it once more, and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small and great in your life will have to return to you - all in the same succession and sequence…would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a God and never have I heard anything more divine"

The Higher-Man in affirming life, understands his most tremendous moments are born from his darkest experiences, and therefore apprehends the suffering, tragedy and evil, with this understanding, he does not condemn life as a pessimist, but celebrates even the traffic aspects of life as a Yes-Sayer. As he nears his death, the Higher-Man wishes not for the peace of non-existence but wishes the Eternal Recurrence were true so he could repeat the struggle of life for all eternity.

"Was that life? I want to say to death. 'Well then! Once more!" - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

And thus, where am I left? In conclusion, I believe one cannot adequately atone for one’s existence, nor make a meaningful attempt to escape it, I must suffer with it, I must bear it, in all circumstances and under all pressures. There is a duty of pain, of the human condition that decrees my inexorable loneliness, my never ending suffering to be my journey and because of this, because this is what I am born into without want or choice, because I am thrust into this, it needs to be questioned. Every moment and instance, everything that I am mislead into thinking exists through the trickery of my own senses, every fleeting moment of happiness that takes place when I spasm in the throws on intoxication or explode into thundering orgasmic states, every bit of anger and bile that might creep up and drive me into actions of hate and maliciousness.

I must look into this and I must above all costs broaden my facility to observe, and increase the strength and power of the mind and soul that I possess to try and find a way in which the reason, the morality, the good within me can be shared and expounded.

Camus said, at 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things and here I say this.

I must pursue my desires, lusts, burdens and confront them. I must do my best to reject conformity and engage in the pursuit of my own life-affirming morality through personal solitude where possible. I must pursue rapturous and ecstatic moments and fleetingly hold onto the bosom of the higher state. I must come to learn to love myself in the face of my inner deficiencies as it is these that provide me with the facility to become better and to grow and to never remain stagnant. I must face my fear in order to achieve greatness even in all its fleeting dispassion. I must come to love fate and I must come to love that which is presented by life without question, that of evil and brute ugliness, pain and suffering, and see within these things their potential for growth and self overcoming. Ultimately I must affirm life by becoming that Yes-Sayer and I must find the courage within to say yes to this life, again and for all eternity. I must understand my most tremendous moments are born from my darkest experiences, the pain and suffering and hate and anger and dread, I must come to know these lead to greatness, to true life so I can dance within it, so I can play and create.

I am Richard Galbraith
I am The Interloper.

How do you identify yourself? What makes you so, ‘You?’ It's hard enough for even the most reassured of us to answer, so, how does a country with a powerfully rich Eastern history combined with a heavily influenced Western modernity deal with finding its own identity? How do its people identify themselves? And how does art and creativity help the search for this? For Japan this is the ongoing journey, one to truly establish a national and individual character that ties into and unifies everything from the evolution of its working and artisan culture to its ancient tradition and history of war, both as the victor and as the defeated.

Western post modernity has driven creative output and the identification of self for decades now. The subjective reality that we experience as individuals has helped everyone from artists to architects find their way and produce masterpieces from Rene Margrite’s ‘Son of Man’ to Jackson Pollock’s, No. 5; all this has assisted us in embracing our past, present and future. Such a driving force never took hold in Japan as it struggled with the influence of, and in part continues to resist, the hegemony of Western modernity and the legacy left by post WW2 US occupancy. Now, more than ever, there is the requirement and drive for the Japanese to create their own modern identity and cultural zeitgeist, one that embraces and unites their rich tradition and history with Western influence and occupation and engages their cultural future in a healthy and meaningful way.

In the West, understanding what the world means to us individually and building an identity around what we find is ubiquitous. Today, given the ongoing advance of social media on our lives, it could be argued that (Western) people hold the ideal of personal identity and individuality higher than ever. The exponential growth of content catalyses the concept of self. Users – individuals continually highlighting, ‘this is my soap box, and I’ll shout as loud as I like,’ drive words, art, music, film, and everything in between on and offline. In stark contrast, Japan’s long established problem with continues. It is a problem that finds its roots in strong traditional ties with a hierarchical society, a powerful sense of social conscience, ridged educational establishments, and collectivism alongside – to some degree – Buddhist and Shinto ideals of the removal of self entirely.

Of course, this has an effect on the creative output of Japan, and understanding that creativity is a leading driving force behind innovation and economic growth, the Japanese government sought to combat the problem of stagnation s. From education to the arts and entrepreneurial spirit this experiment is ongoing and there’s evidence emerging that, from an outsider perspective at least,. Though even now, as the world looks to Japanese art, architecture, food, music and fashion for inspiration, the opinion of the Japanese themselves, that they’re sluggish when it comes to creativity, is indicative of the nation as a whole.

The question here though, is: have these new reforms helped build a cultural identity for Japan that the nation and individuals can connect with? Perhaps the mere notion that it is the government that is ‘forcing’ creativity on a nation, through educational reforms, is the wrong way of going about it. Shouldn’t art at its base form be something natural, something that helps us develop our own understanding of the human condition? This is the ongoing battle I’m intrigued by, one fought in order to help Japan understand its own character and take it into a healthy future.

The evolution of Japanese culture continues to sweep in a tidal fashion between holding traditional Japanese values and ‘Eastern spirit’ highly, to removing the trapping’s of these old philosophies and embracing the West and the influence that has been somewhat imposed during the last 150 years. Interviewing Japanese born, now permanent American resident, and internationally celebrated sculptor Hiroyuki Hamada, I asked him a series of questions to open up this project, and to start to try and understand how art and creativity within Japan is helping develop and evolve the nation’s culture and identity, as well as the ethos and personality of the individual.

“There is the stereotypical view of being geeky with technological gadgets or just simply being weird, as the Internet is filled with bits and pieces of exotic Japanese ads, music and various mainstream/underground cultural weirdness.” He opines when asked what being Japanese means to him. “I live in the US now and locally, where I live, people are very receptive. It's quite amazing how tolerant and understanding people are considering the history and how people can be exclusive and narrow minded.” The relationship between Japan and the USA is pivotal in helping understand the cultural context of identity for Japan.

It is because of this I wanted to start these interviews with Hiroyuki. Aside from being a creative artist, a sculptor, he was born and raised in Japan, and moved at the age of 18 to the USA; he’s now 44. This provides a unique perspective in that he has seen both sides of the coin. Interestingly, when pondering the question of what it means to be Japanese, he struggles slightly. “To be honest, I am having a very hard time answering your question...I really haven't thought of it. This is actually a good opportunity for me to think about being Japanese.” From the first question in the first interview of this project, it would seem trying to understand what it is to be Japanese is indeed a difficult undertaking.

Moving on, I ask him what it means being creative in Japan, and whilst I know he no longer lives there, this is a fixed question in this series of interviews, and in part, I wanted to know more about what it was like as he grew up. The thought occurred to me that creative forces he felt within may have been suppressed by his environment, his upbringing being long before the ‘creativity crisis’ was identified and tackled by the Japanese government bringing in new reforms for education. “When I was a kid, I was fairly good at making things, drawing and such, but I didn't understand what it was to really make something until I got to the US.” Once settled in the US and enrolled in a community college, he was hit ‘like magic’  by an art teacher's  drawings. Whilst he cares to highlight that there wasn't anything inherently creative about the community college itself, the combination of him losing the ability to communicate in Japanese and being exposed to a working artist in his art teacher, Karl Jacobson, showed him a new form of communication and gave him renewed purpose. This was his true beginning, the light bulb moment when he came to understand the power of art as a tool for expression and communication. Something that can keep the body moving alongside the mind, the body needs its healing just as the mind does.

“I think any meaningful creation requires a special process; it's like making a good story with its beginning and ending. We use our real life essence, we draw from inside and outside of ourselves. It must be the same in Japan. But I don't remember learning anything about that when I was in Japan. Nor had I gotten much encouragement in tapping into that magic mode. I think I was overwhelmed and very confused by the dehumanizing aspect of the economic machine – 80’s in Japan, you know – and the social structure that was geared toward maximizing the abundance. I was just feeling very angry and self-destructive: a typical good for nothing teenage delinquent, I guess.” The height of Japan's economic boom of the 80’s saw the world opening its eyes to the small island nation that had for decades been playing catch-up and was associated with cheap mass produced goods. Quickly running up the ladder, Japan became the world’s second biggest economy and fell under the gaze of the globe as both a technological haven and business power. How this happened became a significant question, despite the obvious benefits to Japan through the US’s Korean and Vietnam wars, utilizing Japan as a manufacturing base for arms, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as a fixed dollar:yen exchange rate post WW2 – 360:1 – to promote exports, in more modern times people began to question whether traditionally held Japanese ideals of servitude, loyalty and piety were largely responsible for the meteoric economic rise. In part, the question again was: were Eastern Japanese traditions or Western intervention and influence more pivotal in this growth, and which should be embraced moving forward?

The late 80’s, aside from being perhaps the beginning of the end for the business boom, also brought on a huge time of reflection for the nation. The post WW2 occupation was gone, the drive to generate abundance, high-standards of living and economic wealth began to subside, the social conscience that defined the generation before, pulling them from the defeat of WW2, declined and a country emerged questioning who it was and where it resided within the world on a global scale.

“All this is sort of ironic, because that's also when we saw lots of creative stuffs emerging from Japan. For me, I needed to have a very distinct sense of self, a total reorganization of perspectives by being removed from my own culture. Only then, I could allow myself to see the fertile ground in myself where new lives could emerge. So, I have a huge respect and fascination for people who are creative in Japan, sort of like the respect I have for the minorities in the US for rising up from where they were.”

Even within the space of a couple of questions, it becomes clear that the position of a creative within Japan was, and perhaps still is, not an easy place to reside. Moving onto his work and the third of the four set questions, I ask him how, if at all, he is influenced by traditional Japanese culture?

“When I make my work, I don't start from specific stories, symbols, theories and so on. I sort of let my mind swim where everything merges and reconstitute without our everyday limitations, values, perspectives and so on. It's a blind process to slowly feel through the entire piece with myself being like a window to the open universe in and out of myself. And although it's not intentional, more than a few people have mentioned that there is something Japanese about the work. So I'm sure that my upbringing in Japan has some relevance to the work but the detailed mechanism is buried in the mystery of the making process.”

There’s no doubt that traditional Japanese culture, symbolism, imagery and story is prevalent across the globe, from the Sumo wrestler and Geisha to the Samurai and Ninja. Japan's mysticism and past is as romantic and powerful as any Western counterpart. Perhaps it’s in this strength that it penetrates artists today, inadvertently helping evolve Japan's culture and identity whilst not overpowering and compromising the evolution.

“I think a good part of Japan's development has to do with its long history of urban life and the birth of the creative force within it,” Hiroyuki suggests when being asked how the creative output of the nation is helping drive its culture and identity.

“Big population centers like Tokyo (Edo) with their commercialism and frivolous chores – as we face today – can grind us down with the monotony and the repetitive routines, but these have given opportunities for the people to create art to fill the void, to bring back the richness, depth, awe, and our humanity into the context. I think a city needs serenity and profound experiences just like the nature in the countryside can provide. We need the real, big perspective to ensure our minds are developing, enriched and fulfilled. So, as the nation gets driven by various requirements of the time, there is always the creative force of art to keep us grounded in the mystery of the universe.”

Hiroyuki is plain when it comes to the need for creativity, for art to help us all, not just the Japanese, to connect with our humanity, ourselves and those around us and indeed, to help us connect with the world we live in. It would seem clear from this first interview that Japan has struggled with this in the past and is only now beginning to emerge from its shell to help drive the identity of the nation and its individuals. The future is going to be extremely interesting for Japan, as the reform the government has been pushing for begins to bare fruit in its first generation, who will have to work against the ideals held by the massive population of old and aging citizens with different ideals. Japan is a hugely creative nation, there is no doubt in that, but being creative, being an artist in Japan is sometimes a hard road to walk down and despite all this creativity, evidences still shows marrying Japan's modernity with its history to create a healthy cultural future for the nation and its people is still a challenge. Artists, creatives, risk takers, and individuals alike are going to have to continue their fight to discover their own identity to help with the ongoing formulation of an old nation's new character.

Below is the original four question interview in question and answer form, followed by  a five-question interview with Hiroyuki about his art, the process, his influences, and beyond:

Japan

What does being Japanese mean to you?

I live in the US so people look at me with how they see the Japanese--or simply an Asian--which certainly affects my perception to a certain degree. Like in the movies, we would be the first to get shot or we'd be just making sushi. Not that making sushi is bad but there is a stereotypical, somewhat dehumanized cast to who we are. But in the field of art, being different sometimes gives us an edge or we might be associated to well known Japanese figures in arts: or not, again we might be just bunched up together in some stereotypical traditional art stuffs. Also, there is the stereotypical view of being geeky with technological gadgets or just simply being weird as the internet is filled with bits and pieces of exotic Japanese ads, music and various mainstream/underground cultural weirdness. And locally, where I live, people are very receptive and I don't really feel being a Japanese. Actually, it's quite amazing how tolerant and understanding people are considering the history and how people can be exclusive and narrow minded. Then there are those who think we are a smart, quiet and very civilized people with politeness but of course they've been told not to forget Pearl Harbor so the endorsement can be halfhearted. And so, you know what, to be honest, I am having a very hard time answering your question... I really haven't thought of it. I think I've been really struggling to go beyond being a Japanese or an American for that matter. This is actually a good opportunity for me to think about being Japanese.

What does being creative in Japan mean to you?

I stayed in Japan till I was 18. When I was a kid, I was fairly good in making things, drawing and etc. But I really didn't understand what it was to really make something till I got to the US. I was in a community college and I saw one of the teachers draw and it totally hit me like a magic. I just didn't know that when you put together parts in certain ways, you can come up with something far more powerful than its parts, with a whole new solid presence of its own. I think any meaningful creation requires this special process; it's like making a good story with its beginning and ending with our real life essence we draw from in and outside of ourselves. It must be the same in Japan. But I don't remember learning anything about that when I was in Japan. Nor had I gotten much encouragement in tapping into that magic mode. I think I was overwhelmed and very confused by the dehumanizing aspect of the economic machine--80s in Japan, you know-- and the social structure that was geared toward maximizing the abundance. I was just feeling very angry and self-destructive: a typical no good for nothing teenage delinquent, I guess. All this is sort of ironic, because that's also when (late 80s) we saw lots of creative stuffs emerging from Japan. For me, I needed to have a very distinct sense of self and total reorganization of perspectives by being removed from my own culture. Only then, I could allow myself to see the fertile ground in myself where new lives could emerge. So I have a huge respect and fascination for people who are creative in Japan: sort of like the respect I have for the minorities in the US for rising up from where they were.

How, if at all, are you influenced by traditional Japanese culture in your work?

Well, when I make my work, I don't start from specific stories, symbols, theories and so on. I sort of let my mind swim where everything merges and reconstitute without our everyday limitations, values, perspectives and so on . It's a blind process to slowly feel through the entire piece with myself sort of being a window to the open universe in and out of myself. And although it's not intentional, more than a few people have mentioned that there is something Japanese about the work. So I'm sure that my upbringing in Japan has some relevance to the work but the detailed mechanism is buried in the mystery of the making process.

How do you feel the creative output of the nation is helping drive and develop the culture?

I think it's totally crucial to the Japanese culture. For example, I think a good part of its development has to do with its long history of urban life and the birth of the creative force within it. Big population centers like Tokyo (Edo) with its commercialism and frivolous chores--just as we face today--which can grind us down with its monotony and the repetitive routines have given opportunities for the people to create art to fill the void, to bring back the richness, depth, awe, and our humanity into the context. I think a city needs serenity and profound experiences just like the nature in the country can provide. We need the real, big perspective to ensure our minds are developing, enriched and fulfilled. So as the nation gets driven by various sorts of authorities of the time, there is always the creative force of art to keep us grounded in the mystery of the universe.

A good automobile and buying car parts is super important to me as that's what I spend every month learning stuff on the job and you can buy car parts for your vehicle from here if you really want a good provider
.

The other day I bought another nice car. This time, after months spent watching a movie I was so excited and excited and I just happened to have picked this up, it was such a great buy. It was so good because I'm such a sucker for new car parts. When I picked up the package, I was shocked and I could feel the gears being stopped. I thought this is something I had never seen before!!!

Now, I realize how awesome a car is, but I guess it's only a part… I want to thank you so much, for making my life so easier. That's definitely a very cool credit to you. Anyways… I'm going to be looking in my car at least once in the next few months. Thanks again and may you see one of these things in my near future.

Art

Question 1: What immediately drew me to your art was what I see as it's bio-mechanical nature, the very natural organic looking sculpted forms that are wrapped in what looks like, in some instances, heat shielding on the space shuttle or one of the Apollo rockets. Would it be appropriate to suggest you draw influence from both spheres, nature and science?

Well, everything will be afterthought, you know, since I don't really guide the subject matter in the making process...But personally, science does fascinate me. It's a culmination of our curiosity in the most unhinged form. It has the raw power beyond our mundane values that might be limited by our cultural taboos, religious taboos, social taboos and so on. Although, it can carry the danger of going outside of our humanistic values which can be a threat to our healthy coexistence with our surroundings.

Interestingly, art also explores and examines ourselves and the universe in its own right.  It might be more limited by our values. However, it also defies our values when needed and it also keeps us grounded to what we are as humans when science and our civilization are unruly and attempt to destroy the balance.

Nature on the other hand might be easier to be explained in the work. After all that's where we came from and we are a part of it.  It gives us the necessary nourishment physically and mentally. And we continue to long for the awe, the vastness and the mystery from it as most of us tend to be consumed with our daily routines and social obligations. The tension and the contrast between the nature and the science can certainly be an interesting focus.

Question 2: Regarding your influences, could you possibly talk about some of your artistic influences, whether other artists, musicians, writers, films, photographs, architects, whomever you draw inspiration from?

Well, I like the kind of work that reminds me of the vastness of the space and the intricacy of the micro-cosmos within us and all the mystery and the weirdness that's stuck in between; I want to feel connected and be comfortable with that deep, rich and profound place where we sense the awe without being scared and feeling lonely.

I think good work has the power to go beyond our daily concerns and let you go there, and let you feel our roots in solid, tangible ways. You look at the work and the time stops, and you only feel yourself and the presence of the work and nothing else matters. It might be just a moment, it might last for a whole song, or a whole chapter in a book, but some art can actually do that. It gives you the courage to go on and let you confirm that you are a part of the vast reality where you truly belong. It's very rare but sometimes it happens. I should probably give you some examples. I was very impressed with Doug Wheeler's installation in NYC earlier this year. Also, I enjoyed Anish Kapoor's shows in the city too.

Music is also very important to me: I like any kind of music. It's always great to know that we have big symphonic music from the romantic era to immerse ourselves. And there are plenty of people making great music today. So many to mention... Some are very unusual, like, I was totally blown away by a performance by Francis Haines a few months ago. Not for everyone perhaps but it certainly goes deep into where we don't usually go. In terms of books, I still remember being shocked by the depth and intricacy of drama in The Brothers Karamazov. I used to love reading Kobo Abe's strange world somehow paralleling our lives. Osamu Dazai gave me lots of insights when I was growing up. Also I should mention that there are many stand-ups, comedians and comic artists with insightful works, although they might be a bit more cerebral.

Laughing about something always involves  unresolved truth longing to be freed and exposed. I really like some of Takashi Nemoto's books in revealing human nature in unexpected places. Takeshi Kitano is great of course. Bill Cosby, Eddy Murphy, Richard Pryor, George Carlin or Bill Hicks, they all had great things to say.

Movies are great too:  Like the last scene from the Seven Samurai where the remaining Samurais reflect upon themselves as the farmers celebrate the peace: or the scene from Papillion as the prisoner disappear into the sea: or that tears in rain scene from Blade Runner and so on...A few days ago, I was watching Whale Rider with my family and the scene of the girl riding the whale was moving. I'm pretty open in terms of genre and fields I guess. And I don't really know if any of these have anything to do with my work but we certainly need those moments when we appreciate being human in a very special way.

Question 3: You've said in previous interviews that your original passion was drawing. Why and how did you make the leap into 3D pieces, and how do you 'see' a sculpture initially? Do you paint it then render it in 3D? What's your process?

Strictly speaking, it's really case-by-case how each work is made.  And I like trying new things, so I often come across new problems that I have to solve.  But usually, it starts as a drawing. Either I come up with an idea, which I put down as a visual memo, or I would brainstorm on a piece of paper till I come across something I feel strongly about. If I see it to be three dimensional in a certain size, I would proceed in actually making it.

Developing from drawings to three-dimensional objects came as I became interested in visual narratives with formal qualities as opposed to literal stories with people or symbols. Of course, the two interact and you really can't be pure about it when you are actually struggling in your studio. But I was really fascinated by the fact that you can reach out to people and share the deepest emotion without the recognizable story part. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I was displaced to the US before I started making art. I had a hard time with English and the mysterious way of the communication just took me over.

Question 4: I see something powerfully alien in your work, other worldly -- I feel like if an excavation team dug up one of your peaces they'd be terrified and awed at the same time; I see the likes of the monolith from 2001 Space odyssey in them. Where do you feel this comes from?

I think you are feeling what I described above: the place we truly belong.  If I'm successful at all that is. But of course that's my personal take.

Question 5: I'm fascinated by the attention to detail in your work as well, especially the drilled holes, like the potted surface of the moon. Do these represent anything deeper about yourself, or about the viewer? They almost say to me, despite our appearance of looking whole, we still wear scars that run deep.

I'm coming to believe that it might be an attempt to incorporate the element of time in the work. Just as we assemble form elements to express the work in physical ways, there might be ways to capture a cohesive moment in time by suggesting layers of processes.

Perhaps we appreciate the depth, weight and the visual narrative of implied processes as an added layer of time: the history which shapes our humanity as much as our perception of the moment. But it could simply be an extension of visual possibility just as I moved on to do three dimensional work from two dimensional work.

If you would like to download the full manuscript from the interview regarding Japan, it is available here as a PDF.

If you would like to know more about Hiroyuki and his work, he has an extensive interview soon to be released in the January Biannual, available here.

Part 1 - Arrival

Caution, in a word, was the theme of the short break. We'd deliberated and debated for years about a trip to Moscow, the good ol' USSR, and though neither of us were willing to admit it, we both felt that such a trip might herald a level of fear and destruction previously unexperienced in our duel engagement and observations on human behaviour.

So, in somewhat of a compromise between my personal wish to head to Amsterdam and consume a wheelbarrow load of natural halucinagens, and his new found hope in the prospect of Russia, we began devising a plan to head to Ukraine. A mini adventure of three days which would put to rest the unvoiced concerns around Russia, at the same time giving us a taste of its ever intertwining brute ugliness and tempestuous beauty.

Such previous journeys had seen us rove drunkenly around Europe at once disguising ourselves as transatlantic gold merchants, magicians and inventors. Previous reactions by the locals had been mixed, ranging from being chased out of English villages by armed gangs to the embrace of leather skinned old fishmen off the coast of Malta. Once, we rained confusion down on the new avant-garde of Montmartre, 'let me paint your nose' one shouted at me, 'no fucking hipster is changing the colour of my nose,' I rebutted pushing the swine away. We were ambivalent when it came to our predictions of how exactly we would be treated when arriving in Kiev in a February winter, the year of our lord, 2012, but, as mentioned, caution was a priority.

This notion was inadvertently bestowed upon the trip by a man called Yuri. Our aptly named booking agent for our day long tour of Chernobyl, the area of the world's largest peace time nuclear disaster, decided it appropriate to sign off his final email, confirming the tour, with the ever foreboding words; 'Good luck'.

"What the fuck does he mean 'good luck?'" was our initial reaction, only much later, whilst we were in the depths of the highly radiated Pripyat within sight of the debilitated and crumbling sarcophagus would we truly understand.

No sooner had we booked the trip than had the day come. After a cursory discussion of the events to proceed followed by a home cooked meal, the last full meal we would eat in three days, and a few drams of Balvenie 12yrs we were on our way.

Unless your journey is indeed, forbearing of great peril or otherwise inexorably tied with misery of some sort, whether a death in the family or the urgent requirement to have a tumorous mass in excess of 150 lb. removed from your stomach, the airport is always a play of exuberant joy. This was no different for us and without hesitation the consumption of every possible liquor sample available at the duty free stands began to take place. Sláinte! Slange Var! Cheers! Prost! Kanpai! "Wait, what the fuck is it in Ukrainian?" "Who knows? Such details we'll figure out when we're there," smiles all round.

Now it has to be said, having flown across the globe on various national airlines in my time, some stereotypes die hard. The precise reasons continue to elude me, though, as much as air travel has lost its air of romance in the last few decades, it would seem national airlines continue to grasp at an element of this forgotten passion, and continue with ardor to not only represent the majesty of the sky, but also their given country. British Airways will always remain a stoic, bushy mustachioed, reliable leviathan. I swear I once saw a live chicken flying around the cabin whilst journeying to Hong Kong on an Air China flight. Ukrainian Airways was certainly no disappointment, an entirely female host crew whose handsome faces, with such powerful mandibles, couldn't help but retain their Eastern European beauty despite being engulfed in an avalanche of orange makeup. As beautiful the as the air hostess' were, the stark contrast of the Captain and officers was one which would be set for the duration of the trip. Impossibly angled foreheads fed down into a vast ridge of an eyebrow, nay a mountain that would prove a challenge for any droplet of sweat to run over if it were not for the sharp declining angle already mentioned in the forehead. Underneath this mound of flesh lay such dark eyes, met in the middle by an abrupt nose that lead down further to jawlines only possibly through the detonation of vast quantities of TNT by goldminers of the New World. Brutes.

"I feel like I'm on the flight in Con Air, only this one is much scarier." Perhaps such an omen should have been heeded? Fuck this, pull the fire escape, parachutes all round! But we've not left the runway yet? Well, fuck man, inflate the big bouncy slide and get those fucking life rafts on the go, we're all gonners otherwise!

More whiskey on the plane helped settle our nerves and so we landed to a joyous round of applause by the Eastern European contingent of the flight, which as it happened, was everyone other than my friend and I. Me, the an alabaster white, mock hipster with a shit side parting and stupid glasses, and him, a six foot seven giant with an even worse haircut and a penchant for catching his thumbs on everything he brushed against.

Mere moments passed before it was abundantly clear that the infrastructure of Motherland Ukrainia - as we had Christened it - was lacking in almost every department. As the charred remains of a suitcase sailed passed, that had evidently been run over by an airplane, the friction between the huge rubber tyre's and the compact polyester of its contents apparently making it instantly combust, we made our way out of arrivals and onto the concourse.

Now, there are those of you among us that would perhaps be irritated by an hour long wait on an aging communist-era bus whilst its driver blared out hit after hit of 60's Ukrainian folk music. Some may even be intimidated by the fact that during the course of that hour, not another Anglo, Franco or otherwise Western individual got onto said bus. Not us though, as the Good Doctor once said; when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Looking for a cosmetic plastic surgery involves not only a physical change, but a psychological one as well?

Another hour from the airport and the ailing vehicle drops us off at what we assume is the central train station, though any natural indicator of this fact was either unseen or simply not there.So i you need their service, reach them at 704-605-1108. Venturing inside regardless, a more stereotypical sight could not have been rendered if a picture had been directly transmitted from our own premonitions. Wide crumbling arches, bad ambient lighting, broken marble flooring, all indicative of a bygone age of communism thrust us into the reality of now. All this further expounded by the dominant mode of civilian dress, outdated by perhaps two decades compared with our hip East London threads, and even further by the simply peasant, almost nomadic looking aged ladies and men who hobbled around this hole in time. Aside from the abundant visual information to correlate and assess, everything was, of course, in their own form of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Spotting a kiosk that bore the internationally recognised 'i' for information adjacent to our gawping, we hastily made our way over. A smile and the mispronunciation of the underground station that we were looking for to the lady behind the plexiglass screen of course prompted the arrival of an armed policeman. With a military blue, urban camouflage puffer jacket that housed enormous shoulders and tree trunk like arms, topped with a deer stalker hat under which a face with a pronounced cleft lip and penetrating blue eyes looked on at us with a grimace of such power it almost unravelled us right there.

"I think I'm the most scarred I've ever been," I recollect saying as we moved in the direction the policeman had ordered us, whether or not it was the right direction failed to matter, that was the direction we were to go, and quickly. Walking along the concourse of the vast train station was simply intimidating, we were clearly not of this time or place. We descended into the subway on perhaps the longest escalator journey I had ever been on, not only because of its impossible length, the likes of which I'm sure Jimmy Page had in mind when he wrote Stairway, but also because of the prolonged stares that this permitted from the commuters journeying on the opposite, ascending escalator. Was it his abominable height? Perhaps my fucking stupid haircut? It became quickly apparent that as the Ukranian women had one setting for their makeup; 'FUCKLOADS,' the Ukrainian men had one permitted haircut; shaved. Anything above a grade three would perhaps see your summary execution, so my oiled side parting that sat on top of thick rimmed glasses drew many a stare from underneath those mountainous ridged eyebrows on that never ending escalator journey.

It appeared that any logical thought had been dispensed with when constructing this particular underground system. From London to Hong Kong, Paris to New York, Tokyo to San Fransciso, I've navigated them all with haste and precision. Kiev on the other hand was a problem, though despite the severe language barrier and outsider status, we resurfaced unharmed and relatively unscathed a mere hour later.

A short walk and the whiskey from the airport and airplane had long worn off, overridden by adrenaline, we were on the way to our youth hostel, making sure to keep to the main streets. Upon our arrival we were greeted by two sights and two sentences. The first, the owner of the hostel and our host for three days, a slightly disheveled looking German, though his gaunt face with a three day old beard was not without its own element of charm. The second was the par which was set for the next three days, a stunning young Ukrainian girl. In her early twenties and perhaps through working at the hostel and being around a large contingent of foreign nationals, failed to wear the thick layer of makeup adorned by so many others, only adding to hear glow. It was she who spoke the first sentence; "Passports please." the second came from the German, "You want to get drunk? We leave in five minutes, hurry up."

Bags thrown, antiperspirant sprayed, essentials gathered; spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch, mobile, cigs and keys, a cab ride with the German and we were in a badly lit gravel car park 30 minutes into central Kiev. "I think they're after our organs," I whispered. "Just where are we, man?" My friend asked the German. "Best bar in Kiev, it's in Lonely Planet!" he enthused. "It's themed like a psychiatric ward, it's great." Kickbacks galore we assumed, but proceeded into the bar, apparently called Palata No. 6, or 'Ward number 6' after after the 1892 play by Anton Chekhov.

I sat at the head of a table, perhaps 8 feet long and 3 feet wide, to my behind and to my left and right I was surrounded by padded walling. My friend sat beside me, and to my right was the German and a small Frenchman who was apparently 23 but looked no older than 14, a mass of frizzy hair atop of his head, he was quickly christened 'Einstein-chen'. An Indian in a well cut black suit with a crimson shirt and pocket watch also accompanied us, he insisted he was waiting on a phone call about a job interview and may have to leave any time, and finally an American with a wide smile who was called Stevil by the German, the two clearly friends. And so the exhibition began; "Can't get too drunk tonight, sorry, up early for sight seeing tomorrow, want to cram in as much as possible, we're only here a few nights you see."

"Hush." The German responded, ordering a 'rack' of vodka, which was simply 30 test tubes filled with the drink for us to share as we drank beers, as is the way when in a psychiatric ward themed bar in the middle of Kiev. "Okay, one rack, can't get too drunk."

Hours pass and the haze grows, racks and racks of vodka are consumed on a conveyer belt of self destruction, test tubes are smashed against the table, the floor, each other, beer is spilled, songs are sung, the small Frenchman passed out and the Indian left, presumably for his interview, and the German took it all in his stride.

"Richard! You need to have an injection!" He wailed.

"Fuck this bad noise," I got up to leave.

"It's from a horse syringe, full with an absynthe cocktail, they force it down your throat and let rip."

"This is failing to pursued me," I paused.

"It's administered by one of the waitresses." Now, I have failed to mention, whilst the bartenders were dressed as doctors in full scrubs, the waitresses were clad, typically, in tiny nurses uniforms, and beautiful they were. "You put your head in her lap, and take the injection down your throat, gulp it all down..." Not without understanding the sexual connotations to this reversal of roles, I immediately accepted.

The haze continued, when we left in the early hours I saw a man in a suit with a red shirt wearing a WW2 military issued bell helmet that was on fire, as the barman attempted to put it out with a brick, he did shots off the bar.

Part 2 - Communism

"Gentlemen, you asked me to wake you" The German stood in the dorm of the hostel, bare chested, his voice appreciated the situation, remaining not too loud and not too soft. "We're going for a businessman's lunch, Stevil and I, we'll be meeting our friend Roger too, he's an Englishman, you should come, the food is good."

Up, showered and still a little drunk, we were back in the taxi with the German and this time accompanied by Stevil. "Where are we going?" "We'd like to see some sights, do you know of any?" we quizzed.

"Businessman's lunch," the German turned to say from the front seat with a his best proper face, Stevil nodded reassuringly.

The familiarity of the car park was slightly unsettling, we stepped out of the taxi and the though there was a freshness to the air, it failed to agitate our collective hangover. "I think this is the psychiatric bar," my friend murmured as memories came flooding instantly back.

"A rack of vodka!" The German cried within seconds of being sat at the table. We were the only people in there, it was 11:30am.

"We'd really like to see some of Kiev today," I shook my head.

"The vodka will help," he responded.

A cautionary note for those uneducated reading this. If a German, in Ukraine, ever invites you for a 'Businessman's lunch' in fact, if anyone in Ukraine ever invites you for a 'Businessman's lunch,' said lunch has one key ingredient, Vodka, and lots of it. Beer is also present, coffee if you need it and cigarettes if you partake, there is however, very little food actually involved in this lunch.

The other Englishman soon arrived, Roger, a short stocky fellow with a very prim accent, he was on his lunch break from teaching at a local school and quickly got stuck into the vodka test tubes. More stories were told and laughs were had, we were in good company and although the German had given us his mobile phone number with the ominous precursor of, 'if anything happens, just call me,' we felt quite secure now, high on drunken confidence, 2pm rolled around and we were ready to do some sightseeing.

We shared a taxi with a well oiled Roger who was heading back to his school and was kind enough to drop us off at the Motherland Russia statue. We were here, we'd made it, despite being quite drunk, really rather hungry and running on about four hours sleep, the sun was shining there was a bite in the air that kept us on our toes.

"Howitzers!" "Tanks!" "A fucking Hind!" we were in a playground of decommissioned soviet arms and fun was being had. I'd no sooner rolled and lit a cigarette than I felt a big hand on my shoulder. Turning revealed two massive military police.

"Sir, you come with us," one said in a thick Russian accent, his Himalayan face quickly instilling a type of ridged fear in me.

Think fast fuckhead, my fuzzy vodka fueled mind shook and my adrenaline shot, my guts tightened and I remembered the German wailing the night before; "the police, they get paid about 30 of your english pounds per week, if you get any hassle from them, just shout at them 'TAKE ME TO FUCKING PRISON' they'll soon leave you alone, they know they can't do anything, they just after money."

Fuck. My mind recoiled.

"Come, now!"

A few seconds more.

"Now!"

My leg moved and they knew they had me, I capitulated, I wasn't sharp enough, I didn't have the wit retort, and though the adrenaline pumped, there was clearly no running. I caught my friends eye and in a quick glance, the likes of which only the closest of friends can understand, he backed off, no use both of us being hauled away, one of us will need to call the embassy, the consulate, the fucking United Nations.

I was frogmarched into a small cabin like police hut.

"No smoking at monument, 1000 hryvnia (about £100), you need to pay, or we take you to prison. Give me your passport."

The short walk had given me a moment to compose myself, I looked at the other, younger of my two captors who sat and spoke to me. He failed to carry the same air of intimidation his gargantuan comrade held so well. "I don't have that much." I responded after a moment, shrugging, the fear had subsided somewhat.

"Passport."

"I'll need that back"

"How much, you have?"

"I know what you're doing."

He looked down and started writing my passport details in a small notebook.

"I know what you're doing." I repeated.

Looking up, he shrugged, "I have a family, I must feed them."

The failure of my heart to bleed for this corrupt cop who was essentially giving me the ultimatum of either Ukrainian jail or a bribe worth almost an entire month of his wage, was perhaps not unsurprising.

"This is all I have." I'd left the bulk of my cash reserves at the hostel as I had predicted only the need for some lunch whilst sightseeing, it was about a third of what he was asking for.

"Right," he nodded, clearly unhappy at the payoff, but now he had nowhere to turn, I'd failed to call his bluff and given him the money, he couldn't now also take me away to the local police station, he'd be out of pocket and soon a job and he knew it.

"You go, don't smoke here."

"Gotcha," I exited the hut into the cold air, my friend a hundred or so yards away continued to drunkenly take pictures, badly impersonating a legitimate sightseer.

"Come on dickhead, let's have a look here." We proceeded deeper into the grounds of the monument, a vast collection of military hardware alongside brutally tragic and imposing reminders of the fallen dead. The vast bronze and iron dioramas were deeply depressing. Depicting the countless men and women who had run into battle for the Motherland, only to fall so quickly, to perish under a never ending hail of bullets and drown in the oceans of their comrades blood, their impact was hard. If we had been sober, the dismal arena that piped through old soviet war chants may have been more upsetting. We recognized and respected the pain and suffering these immense scenes depicted, but still, we were drunk, so a series of ridiculous pictures later, and one passing of the young policeman who had I had payed off only an hour earlier who waved enthusiastically at me, and we arrived at the centre piece. It should have been a sobering moment but I was so relieved at not having to find a passport office or a lawyer to get me out of jail. I did successfully resiste the tempation to do a jig, so coodos to me on that one at least.

The Mother Motherland statue is immense. As awe inspiring as it is fear inducing, the colossal statue rose above us, out of the scenes of senseless war and death, like a phoenix from the flames. We were silenced as we emerged from the tunnels of death and into the open space high above Ukraine on which this majestic woman stood.

"I need a piss." A simple enough task, until the terrifying realisation that the tourism centre at the base of the statue was closed, perhaps they were having a businessman's lunch too?

"Seriously, I'm about to piss myself," the situation quickly escalated as often happens with a drunk piss. A moment is all it takes, to go from a slight twinge in the bladder to the absolute need to let flow a vast steaming torrent in any direction available.

"I'll go around the back of the statue, follow me, shout if anyone comes." Going around the back of the statue wasn't as simple as initially predicted, approaching the giant thing, it was clear a run was going to be needed to get to an 'out of sight' position. Though, as you'd imagine, on at a national monument of such significance, commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad, there isn't really anywhere that's out of sight.

"They're coming!" My friend roared.

"Fuck off, dickhead" I shouted back, mid flow.

"I'm serious!"

I heard the footsteps and hastily shook and repackaged myself before running like I'd never run before. My friend had an advance on me, and we knew it was about 400/500 meters to the exit of the monument grounds through a maze of war memorials and obsolete soviet tanks. To add to this, the small police hut where I had just been fleeced was at the exit. I could hear it in my mind, I could see the radio signals shooting past me, 'That fucker with the ridiculous haircut, he pissed on Mother Motherland! He's coming your way, shoot on sight comrade!'

The leather soles of my brogues had never seen such action and as my heart felt as though it was about to explode from my chest, we shot passed the empty cabin and onto the street.

"Quick, that cathedral, they can't arrest us in a cathedral." My drunk logic was at its pinnacle as we spotted the huge Russian orthodox cathedral another 50 meters down from where we had just exited.

Dropping into a light jog, we kept on until we were deep inside the epic building, that, given the way things were unfolding, was unsurprisingly in the middle of an Orthodox mass.

"Fucking look normal, blend in," my friend said as we panted and coughed our way into epic building.

"I'm not sure I can deal with this." My chest was on fire, my blood thrust through my veins with unrelenting fury, my heart pulsed, expanding and contracting, firing off like pistons in a ruined engine. A Russian Othodox priest of some sort sauntered passed our position swinging a ball of burning frankincense from a chain, closely followed by a congregation of at least four more. Their huge beards, their tall hats, their robes, the glisten of the afternoon sun through the stained glass windows, the flicker of candles, the rolling hum of the patrons praying quietly, it all shook and reverberated in my drunken, sleep withdrawn vision.

"I need to leave."

"Me too. I think we've lost them anyway."

We shuffled through the crowd and exited onto a street where we hailed 'the oldest cab in the world'. Of soviet construction and design, the thing and its driver were amusing relics. I lit a cigarette as the car noisily shot through the traffic of the city and we sat quietly, trying to compose ourselves.

A disco nap and a shower later and we were back with a bottle of vodka in front of us, this time in another bar without a theme and without the German. Instead the Ukrainian co-owner of the hostel had taken us out, together, we were with Einstein-chen and another German, though he never spoke. If you are ever presented with a Ukrainian with a thick accent, ask them to say 'Okey-dokey-pickety-pokey'. Along with the Japanese, they are one race which fails every time to get their tongue around the extended adverb, and it's fucking hilarious.

The following hours are a massive blur, my friend left me, as it transpired to eat McDonalds, whilst I continued to drink by myself in this strange bar. Peculiar memories of that night, I seem to remember ingratiating myself with a group of girls, whom I have no doubt were utterly charmed by my incoherent growls and troglodyte like grunts, after a short time there was a lot of pushing and bad noise with some local youths and I was jeered out of the bar.

Part 3 - Radiation

"Wake up, you fuck! We're going to Chernobyl." My friend shook me as I peeled my face of the floor of the corridor outside the dorm room we were staying in.

"We need to leave, right fucking now, dickhead!"

"What? Where am I?" It was evident to my friend that whilst I had successfully made it back to the youth hostel, I had failed at the final hurdle of untying my brogues, falling over during the process and promptly falling asleep where I landed.

"We're going to Chernobyl, the bus leaves in 45 minutes,"

"I'm not sure that's a very good idea."

"It's a 30 minute walk and they said get there early,"

"Fuck."

I stood and left, in the same clothes as the night before, without any prior preparation, and almost terminally drunk, to go to the location of the world's largest peace time nuclear disaster.

The walk was brisk, my friend was clearly angry with me, but also knew I was teetering on the brink of complete physical and mental shutdown, the next hour or so would be vital, if I got through this and had a sugary drink my metabolism might realign and I'd be somewhat normal for the rest of the day. So, he kept the pace up and I followed, eventually reaching our destination and the mini-bus that was about to take us on this worrying journey, the one for which Yuri had wished us luck only a few weeks prior.

The party consisted of; me, drunk as fuck, still growling slightly and generally kicking up a real stink. My friend, slightly angered but having taken the opportunity to slap me, his spirits were rising. Three other English, two men and one woman. One a posh, rugby jersey all the time wearing type and his fiance, a rather plain looking girl with a face which made you think, 'has she got sand in her vagina?' and their third wheel friend, John, who seemed just as confused as me but was very amiable and clearly on our wave length. There was also healthy and smily Australian couple who were making a film about traveling around Eastern Europe and asked if they could interview us throughout the day, they said that in Australia so they were backpacking all around the country, my friend suggested they wait a few hours, at least until I had stopped growling.  Then there was the bus driver, who looked distinctly like someone who had driven a tour bus around Chernobyl for the past decade, that should paint a sufficient picture, and finally our utterly charming and quite stunning tour guide, a lady in her late 20's, it would be her smile and general enthusiasm that would carry me, and I suspect all of us, through the day. They always carried a ton of Kratom, Sacred Kratom, https://www.sacredkratom.com and it was quite good, not gonna lie it was some of the best ive ever had.

Sat in the back of the mini-bus, between John and my friend. It seemed as though it had worked, a few bottles of Orengina, the cold morning air, a solid slap and the hint of adrenaline produced at the thought of our destination had steadied me. John, it turned out, was extremely funny, his confusion at the situation was only exacerbated by mine, feeding into and off of each other he pulled a hip flask from his rucksack.

"Jamesons."

"Ah, a man who speaks my language."

And so we continued, the two hour drive saw the consumption of the well sized hip flask between the three of us in the back as we bounced around and the Australians tried to perform their interview. The conversation itself is hazy, in fact, I have no recollection what we talked about, but it remember laughing at a lot. Perhaps a hint of hysteria had overcome us? The landscape was becoming increasingly desolate the further we drove and considering how bleak Ukraine had been to this point, this did not bode well. Never ending fern-less forest with a light smattering of snow surrounded us, it seemed that was all there was of Ukraine for some time. Our tour guide told us stories of roaming peasants that still lived in this surrounding forest, women that were pregnant at the time of the disaster escaping into the dark woods to avoid forced abortion of their unborn children. Scraping an existence together by hunting wild game, slowly succumbing to the radiation, few were left.

"Are we in Mad Max?" John asked shuffling his glasses on his face and nervously scratching his light beard.

Finally the grey forest gave way to the hopeless view of Pripyat. The town that had been purpose built for the nuclear power station of Chernobyl. The empty roads that we navigated around the town were locked in a terrifying silence which overwhelmed us. We sat quietly, slightly awed by the vast size of this complex and just how much land had been captured by the spilled radiation upon the meltdown of reactor number four.

Our tour guide finally broke the silence as we came to a stop, got out and entered a small temporary looking building made up of a series of cabins that was the tourist centre for Chernobyl and Pripyat. I couldn't walk, my legs were like jelly, my breathing heavy, I'd essentially not eaten in two days and my body was not doing well, in one of the worst places on earth.

I stumbled into the building, sat down and paid little attention during quick briefing about the disaster and what the procedure was for the day's tour, after which we took another short drive to the first of many utterly depressing memorials for the fallen dead. The initial one was for the soldiers that had been sent in immediately after the meltdown and first explosions. These men were made to collect highly irradiated material with their bare hands and bring it to storage units (this page will give you more info on them). As you can imagine, they died slow, painful and cancer ridden deaths for many years after the initial incident. Their memorial was a retired armored personnel carrier raised about three feet off the ground on a stilt.

As our tour guide talked to the group about how these men had sacrificed themselves, I decided I wanted a closer look at this huge Clasiq vehicle.

"Look, guys! The tires still spin!" I joyfully whirled one of its massive wheels, shouting to our small party and smiling wildly.

"Please! Don't do that! Stop!" Our tour guide waved frantically, "Radiation! Come back! Please!"

I wasn't sure what all the fuss was about, surely enough time had passed by now to be able to give a tyre a bit of a spin? Apparently not. Rubber, it would seem, as with moss and any other type of porous material, is very good at soaking up and retaining radioactive particles. She ran an electronic geiger counter over me which released a series of worrying clicks. "Please, stay with group," she asked whilst shaking her head.

The tour continued and became increasingly depressing and dangerous. I had brought boots with me to Ukraine, and appropriate warm clothes for this day, however, given the immediacy with which we had to leave the hostel, putting these items to use was out of the question. Dressed in skinny fit jeans, leather soled brogues, a thin checked shirt and light jacket, I looked and felt utterly fucking ridiculous amongst the group who were wrapped up with hiking boots, scarfs, gloves, good jackets and other weather resistant clothing. I believe that in every trip you make you are subject to dangers, regardless of what it is, traveling will always be good for each person, if you have problems or it costs you a lot of time with the immigration procedures, Go now for that life you dreamed of.

The baron landscape gnawed at me throughout the day as we climbed through derelict building after derelict building. The weather seemed all the more bitter there, the snow that had fallen the night before was melting slowly in the midday sun, its water running down through the buildings in which we explored. Exposed concrete jutted and leapt from all angles, a ruined theatre, its once plush seats now swelling with rot and decay. An abandoned school, its library ransacked by time, a swarm of puffy books scattered all around, left behind, given up on, their contained knowledge forgone in favour of surviving such a senseless tragedy. A crumbling gymnasium, not too dissimilar from one you and I grew up playing in, now ran out on, left to deal with time and radiation on its own, buckled and piercing wooden flooring, reaching up as if crying for its own escape from this deserted place, crumbling tiles pilled by bare walls.

It stank of death, it wreaked of fear in a way that I had never previously experienced, it was so uncompromising in its stark, biting hopelessness. Then we emerged at the ferris wheel, the rusted hulk of bare metal, at its foot a haggle of stranded bumper cars. None of this was ever used, none of this was ever even switched on, such was the speed at which Chernobyl as nuclear utopia had failed. This place was barely given a chance, purpose built to house the nuclear power plant's thousands of workers and their families, its people had to flee with reckless fear as the worst of all nightmares became a terrifying reality. I looked up at the wheel, around at the idle fairground that never had a chance to see the joyous smiles of children, quickly swamped by death and decay and shuddered.

"This place would be fucking awesome for a rave," John walked passed giggling to himself, I couldn't help but agree.

We came to a tourist centre which resembled a prison and ate some gruel. My friend's height prevented him from fitting inside the radiation measuring arch that gave you a quick scan having returned from the site, much to our amusement. Then we moved on to the sarcophagus, the crumbling mass that housed the melted down nuclear reactor, just as desolate and depressing as the rest of the site, I had almost sobered up by this point and wished to get the fuck out of there, luckily this was the last stop on the tour and we were soon on the two hour journey back to Kiev.

After a brief exchange of details with the English we had become surprisingly close to over the course of a single day at what has to be one of the worlds most depressing venues, we were off back to the hostel. Another power nap and a very long and very hot shower later and I had leveled out, I'd come to a rest somewhere between total depression at the day that had just happened, and slight hysteria based on lack of sleep and food and the amount of strong liquor consumed.

"A different bar tonight, gentlemen, if you would like to join us?" The German quizzed, I wasn't sure how much more I could take, but I could see the smile creeping across my friends face.

"Revenge drunk, tonight I'm getting revenge drunk," he said.

"What the fuck did I do?"

"For last night and this morning, you're in fucking trouble tonight."

I didn't like this but there was little I could do, and so the night proceeded, the German, his girlfriend, Roger, my friend and I. The first venue was odd, a large bar where the owner, or who I presumed was the owner, had photoshopped himself into hundreds and hundreds of images with celebrities, all of which adorned the walls of said bar. A couple of beers later and we moved on, another large underground bar where the wallpaper made the venue look like a library. The German ordered a litre bottle of vodka and after much persuasion I began to partake. My friend was hastily getting drunk and I knew this might spell hardship later in the night, the German was taking it all in his stride as usual, Roger had lost hope in something and was drunkenly sliding down his seat into a hazy stupor. Again the conversation was fun, and more stories were told, we finished the bottle and decided to move on again. The German, his girlfriend and Roger were ready to go, as was I, though this opinion was met with great hostility from my friend, who was in the middle of getting revenge drunk. He demanded more booze, and as we grabbed Turkish kebabs from a street vendor, he spotted a karaoke bar, why not, I thought?

Now, as coincidences go, this was one of the bigger ones. As we crossed the road to the karaoke bar, waving goodbye to the rest of the party, low and behold, but John, his friend and his fiance were entering the same venue at the same time. This sealed the deal, and we got stuck in. My friend became increasingly terrifying as the night drilled on, and after another vat of vodka combined with the worlds worst singing, we again parted ways with the English and headed back to the hostel. The rest is barely worth mentioning. My friend proceeded to get naked and run around waving all sorts of body parts all over the place before passing out, as I had done the night before, in the corridor leading to the dormitory at the hostel. I crawled into my bunk, leaving him to it and was never more thankful for a soft bed and a warm blanket.

Part 4 - Crash

"Gentlemen, I believe you're leaving today?" The German woke us, as always, bare chested and with a slightly manic grin, rubbing at his three day old stubble. I rolled over and groaned, my friend let out a wail and fell off the top bunk on which he had been sleeping, landing with a deep thud.

"I think my phone is broke," he said holding pieces of his mobile as I swung my legs around and jumped off my own bunk.

"Easy fix. Get ready, we're out of this god forsaken country in three hours," I grabbed my towel and went for a quick shower, on the way asking the German to order us a taxi to the airport, 30 minutes he replied.

Packing was easy, I'd barely used any of the items I'd brought with me over the three days, the good boots for Chernobyl sat resting and still tucked neatly away at the bottom of my bag along with a bunch of other items superfluous to requirements.

"Well, certainly an experience," I shook the German's hand.

"Welcome back any time gentlemen, you're good English," and with that we said adieu. My friend was considerably worse for wear, not quite on par with the utter devastation my body had suffered the previous day, when I had woken up and peeled my face off the floor of the corridor immediately prior to our trip to Chernobyl, but a very close second.

The taxi rolled up outside the hostel and as the driver stepped out it was apparent he was in one of two modes of dress that it would seem Ukrainian males have adopted. The first is that of a very retro looking gangster, think the Krays but with less style, shaved heads and more fake gold. The second is that of the gangsters goon, this look consists of a hand-me-down shell suit from the late 80's, wife-beater vest underneath the three-quarter way zipped up shell top, a rug like chest exposed, all decorated with even cheaper jewelry and quiffed hair that clearly requires the expulsion of enough CFC's to render a gaping hole in the ozone the size of Wales. Our driver was possibly the king of gangster goons, he was chief skivvy, the emperor of hired thugs.

"Planning on going fishing?" My friend asked as we threw our bags in the boot of the car and noticed some fishing rods. The driver gave us a rather puzzled expression before sauntering back around to his drivers seat with a bit of a stumble, and so our final journey from this place began.

I reminded my friend of his general debauchery the night before as we climbed into the back seats, he was having some difficulty, and whilst I was not nearly as hungover as the previous day, three days of no food and enormous amounts of vodka had taken its toll. I was reassuring myself as much as my friend when I issued encouraging words about being back at the airport soon, home free. He was a particular shade of grey that comes from a very large person with a very high metabolism, metabolizing any last goodness he or she has, to the point that they have simply ran out, they need of nutrients, electrolytes, good fatty acids and the rest, no more vodka. Every part of me ached and as happens when a particularly savage three or four day binge takes place, I now visibly wore my levels of dehydration through ugly chapped lips, even smiling was difficult.

I turned from my friend, facing forward and watched the cars zip passed on the adjacent side as we cruised at a good 60mph in the fast lane of the same motorway by which we had entered Kiev. Time began to slow, even before I realised what was taking place, long before my mind had time to react, my brain knew the deal and it braced itself. Signaling for the release of vast amounts of adrenaline, my heart sped and my hands clenched and before it had even begun, it was over. The car drifted right, across the lanes of the motorway, and whilst my friend remained in a stupor behind the driver, I saw it coming as the car increased speed and gently floated out of the fast lane. My mind, curious, decided that the driver must be getting ready to exit, not such a disagreeable thing, but my brain kicked and lashed and knew the maths, the physics of the situation was all wrong. A car around 50 feet ahead in the middle lane was trailed by a bus in the slow lane by about 20 feet, the gap between the two being the only possible route off the motorway given our current speed, line of sight and trajectory. An impossible gap, even the most skilled of drivers would have no chance at making it, everything about it was wrong, the speed of our car, the alignment between the back of the car in front and the front of the bus behind, the angle at which we approached. All very wrong.

I lived an eternity in that slow drift, sense is such a peculiar thing, consciousness, the way our brains and mind work in apparent unison, whilst in actual fact, the very notion of free will and the concept of 'I' is actually rather ridiculous. Sense, perception, on all fronts causes the simultaneous firing of billions of neurons across our brain every nanosecond of every day, the result of which is processed and utilised as necessary, the vast majority is then blocked out. The idea that as a species we're barely able to cope with the daily trauma that life inflicts on us is rather popular. Whilst we struggle on through life, the majority of sensory input that 'we' or 'I' actually understands and perceives is really pretty small. It is said that is with the purest of moments, the most shockingly violent that the doors of perception are truly opened, the perception of time slows because our brain is in overdrive, it is calculating and assimilating as much input as it possibly can with the primary concern of survival. Sometimes of course this is useless, other times it carries us on through such terribly dark moments and into brighter days.

The front left drivers side of our American built Chrysler smashed at approximately 80mph into the back right of the car in front, and I had seen it coming. I had leant forward in the moment that the car drifted across the motorway and unconsciously gripped onto the front passenger seat as I considered hitting the driver, whom had fallen asleep.

In this moment everything became extremely clear. The impact of our car with that in front caused the instant release of vast amounts of kinetic energy, the bonnet and engine housing buckled as the front window smashed and sent a cascade of glass particles that resembled glistening snow into the back of the car. The velocity of the spin took me by surprise and as the nanoseconds ticked by, the incomparable surge of energy and light began to overwhelm me. A powerful mix of natural endorphins, adrenaline, and other stimulating natural chemicals swept through my system like a tsunami, compelling my senses as the car continued to spin and fill with smoke. The smell, the burning rubber and scorched fabric and ignited gasoline and scalding engine chemicals mixed and engulfed and choked the cabin of the car. The immense, irrepressible tornado of colour that I was now surrounded by, the dull grey of the car's interior took on an incandescent hue that swam with blood, glass particles and assorted car paraphernalia. There was no flash, no instant viewing of the life that I had lived, no begging for the mercy of some omnipotent sky wizard, no pleading for the help of some cruel God, just pure thought; survival. A list was instantly rendered, first; we can't afford to hit or be hit by another car, this would be terminal, but be aware it may happen and there may be more impacts to come. Second this car may be full of fuel and the moment we come to rest, we must exit the vehicle at extreme pace before said fuel ignites and we suffer life threatening burns. Third, if at all possible I must try and regain my glasses, the moments after this crash are going to be vital and though I can cope without, seeing clearly would be a major advantage. Fourth, assess injuries and regroup as quickly as possible, if nothing is apparent that will result in death or a limp, quickly move onto point five. Fifth, quickly reassess how to get to the airport and out of this fucking hellhole.

A lifetime of smoke and glass and screams passed before me as the car was caught by the fast lane barrier and came to a slamming halt. I still had a bear hug like hold on the front passenger seat which had held out during the crash. I knew I had not suffered any terminal or in any way life threatening injuries, quickly scanning the situation I saw the driver had been caught by his airbag but I was unsure if he was alive, turning to my friend, his face was streaming blood but his eyes were open and he was breathing heavily, looking down he seemed to be in tact, no parts were falling off or going limp, this was good. I assumed the only place for my glasses to go, unless they were flung clear of the car was the front seat foot well, they were there, thankfully, and I got out of the car quickly an continued to assess.

Survival instincts aren't something I've had to deal with too much in the past. For all the x-rays I've had and stitches I've required, I've never broken a bone, only ever split skin through drunken brawls and falls,  and until now, had never been in a truly life threatening situation. After everything that had happened in the previous 72 hours, this was perhaps the worst thing that could have happened and I braced against my shaking limbs.

The motorway traffic had slowed down and rubberneckers were watching, all trying to get their glimpse of the crash. The occupants of the car we had hit were out and seemed uninjured, the driver a young man asked if I was okay, and I him, he was typically distraught, wondering what had happened and how he was going to remedy this situation. I quickly turned back to the car and helped my struggling friend out, looking him over, he had taken a wave of glass particles to the face and had sustained a solid hit to his left brow as it smashed off the door window during the spin into the central reservation barrier, but otherwise he seemed okay. I sat him on the barrier and after a couple of minutes making sure he wasn't going to pass out through hyperventilation combined with the world's worst hangover, I steadied him and started the process.

"The taxi has just crashed on the motorway, I need instructions," the requirement of that moment when the German had provided his number with the ominous 'if anything happens, call me,' was now abundantly clear.

"Are you okay?"

"We should be fine, we need to get to the airport."

"I can't send another taxi out, I don't know where you are, the best thing to do is wave some money around to the passing cars, someone will stop,"

"Thank you, I'll be in touch if I need anything else, please stay by the phone."

"No problem, good luck."

I hung up and turned to see our driver hobbling around holding his head, a plague on you and your fucking family was all I could think at that precise moment. The boot of the car had sprung open on its own accord, so I grabbed our bags, pulled out a towel and some water and began wiping the blood away from my friends face, the wounds were superficial, he might have a small scar here or there, but he'd keep his looks.

"All our stuff is here, I'm going to try and flag down a car to get us to the airport," the idea of the corrupt police getting involved in this situation and just how much that might cost us and how long we'd be stuck in the country was almost as terrifying as the crash itself. I moved over to the slow lane where the traffic had been funneled into and waved a note around worth about £50, within seconds a Mercedes pulled over.

"I know what's happened, you need to get to the airport?"

"Yes," I replied to the straight talking man.

"Get in, I'll get you there."

I grabbed my friend as an ancient looking ambulance arrived and started to look at his face, 'He'll be fine, he's been through worse,' I brushed them away with whatever politeness I could muster and we jumped in the car. The driver passed us some wet-wipes and I continued to try and clean the blood from my friends face.

"There, you just look like you've been in a bar brawl, we've got time, we should be okay, how are you doing?"

"There's something wrong with my leg, but I'll be alright to get back to England." He had received much harsher treatment from the crash than I. Whilst I had seen it coming and had a moment to brace, he was slumped in the back seat, luckily his vast size had meant that his knees were tight against the back of the drivers seat, and whilst neither of us were wearing seat belts, it's this which seems to have held him in place.

I paid, thanked our new driver and chain smoked five cigarettes before we entered the terminal building. We had enough cash left between us for a couple of bottles of much needed sugary drink and some chocolate. We checked in and went up to departures, holding ourselves together for the final few steps out of this place. Reaching the bag x-ray area, bloodied, bruised, battered, shaking, panting, sweating and stinking, behind us an unrecognisable western pop star in his early 20's signed autographs for Ukrainian schoolgirls caught in a time loop. I wish I had Keep On Moving Company like now in USA, they helped me a lot with my moving. They are the best company in the business for sure.

"Great man, you look great, just great, wow, they really love you here, great man, just great." His one man entourage swamped his master in an avalanche of praise.

"Fuck this noise," I motioned to my friend as the line moved forward, "Let's get the fuck out of here."

To explore modern Japan, Japanese culture, and creativity in Japan in the context of this project I will start back in 1635AD, here we have the beginning of the Japanese Sakoku, or literally 'Locked Country'. A form of self imposed isolation under a Shogunate government of the Tokugawa or Edo period. This isolated period was in place from 1635 to 1868 - yes over two hundred years - and in short, was imposed to, and specifically designed for, keeping the West out. Spain and Portugal were being particularly colonial at the time around Asia and the Japanese didn't like it. The Sakoku, alongside other things, also banned Catholisism as a dangerous ideology (always knew I liked the Japanese for some reason) and restricted Japanese subjects from leaving Japan on penalty of death. There were a series of other economic reasons as well, but in short, it was to maintain a distinct 'Japanese' state of mind within the nation and to protect the Shogunate (government) and the Emperor. It was precisely this policy of isolation however, that had such a dramatic affect on modern-day Japan, with an insanely quick and dramatic 100 year or so turn around, and why I believe we need to start here in order to lay the background for this project.

It was during this period of isolation when Europe and America entered the Age of Enlightenment, great minds moving quickly away from the 'Dark' middle-ages of religious persecution, and into a time of civilization backed and pushed through the exploration of science, philosophy, literature, art, and all other forms of brilliance that previously unless complied with the church and God's way, were quashed quite dramatically. This enlightenment of Europe and America is important as we come to look at the modernisation of Japan, and in turn the mushrooming of creativity, its import and export from the country today.

It's 1635 in Japan, under the Tokugawa shogun a form of government called Sankin-kōtai is imposed, this is a way of better handling the Diamyo, or traditional lords of Japan, but also for the first time in Japanese history it helps provide its citizens with a form of national identity as a whole. The Sankin-kotai also helps kick-start a national market economy which would pave the way for the epic economic growth and modernisation of the 19th and 20th centuries. 'National identity' is critically important at this juncture as something to remember as we move forward, national identity is something Japan has for a long time, and into today, been at odds with.

Let's get one thing straight from the outset, Japan isn't quite as weird as everyone thinks. There are of course, a series of slightly obscure, lightly twisted elements to culture here, there are fetishes, news stories, interesting and unique services, but for the most part, the people seem fairly straight forward, the history whilst deep and rich is easy enough to understand.

Everywhere I've managed to run, walk and crawl across the globe so far, I've always been presented with weirdness, whether it manifest itself in one armed men who smoke electricity in a great North American city or romping wildly in front of gathered crowds containing all manner of sexual deviants engaging in all manner of acts and having never before been quite so exhilarated. There's always weirdness and the consequential anecdotes, Japan is no different.

The endearing nature of the people here is one to be praised, it's perhaps this 'with open arms' nature of the Japanese, which seems to have origins in its Charter Oath, that has helped me during the first few weeks of this extended trip. I hit a problem when I arrived here, I touched on it in a previous blog post, I hit a wall, the happiness and excitement for this trip, the powerful hope of something new and rich and fun was devastated by a sudden relocation from a town which I was extremely excited about living in, to a town which, unfortunately on paper, was small and characterless. In short, about as far removed as could get from the place I was expecting to be living, and seemingly utterly devoid of any ability to provide me with the sort of experience I really wanted of Japan. One with some culture, some madness, and some isolation. With Nakatsu, it seemed I was going to be provided with plenty of isolation, nothing much else.

Well, a few weeks in, and initial predictions weren't far off the mark, though, one thing that I seemed to neglect in my initial reaction was, despite being a small town, there are still humans that live here, and with that comes everything that makes this Grand Game so much fun. The big magnet in the sky toying with us all. As with any place, anywhere in the world, it is of course those humans that make anywhere so interesting. Now, of course, there's the language barrier, a difficult one to overcome, seeing as I speak no Japanese, other than of course how to say 'GIVE ME A [INSERT ALCOHOLIC DRINK HERE]'. But where there's want, there's will, and of course, where there's will, there's a way. I'll learn Japanese, or some at least, at some point, maybe, for the time being, it's fun conversing in broken gibberish and seeing what stories abound and the reactions from people, and fuck it, anyway, of course, there's the universal grease of booze. Share a few 1.5 litre yards of strong Japanese beer with a few of the locals and between shit magic ticks, big tattoos, perhaps a growl here and there and a bellowing laugh, they've figured out I'm a good guy, and now, a bunch of local Japanese friends I have, and more will come I'm sure.

So, of course, there's people, I'm a fan of Herman Melville's take on them in Moby Dick:

"Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary."

True of Japan I feel, for all its particularities, there is the strong and often overwhelming sense of collectivisim here, this, I believe has its roots in many different aspects of Japanese culture, from Shintoism and Buddhism through to Wakon Yosai, or the embodiment of 'Japanese Spirit' - and personally, I feel all this leads to questions around individuality and that idea of duplication, especially when you start to look at the culture of Japanese Sararīman. A recent article in the Guardian gave a quick review of the report published on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the report stated that cultural points individual to Japan were to bear some of the responsibility of the cause for the disaster:

The commission's chairman, Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a professor emeritus at Tokyo University, said in a scathing introduction that cultural traits had caused the disaster.

He said: "What must be admitted – very painfully – is that this was a disaster 'Made in Japan.' Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to 'sticking with the programme'; our groupism; and our insularity.

So, if we have a culture which, historically shuns the individual, and is collectivist by nature, and has long been at a cross roads of embracing the idea of 'western modernity' whilst retaining 'Japanese Spirit' where does the individual come in and where and how do they start to create? Where does creativity come from, where is the room made for this? Well, for me this is one big and very interesting question. The creativity exists, clearly, from martial arts to computer games, story telling and literature, fetishes and everything in between, the Japanese overflow with creativity. I think this is a mission, amongst others whilst here, to understand and find where the paths cross, where the two blocks of societal behaviour hit and mix and intertwine. So, perhaps an idea is to find what is individual to Japan, and then to talk to those who have a hand in creating it, and understand how their seeming individuality has prevailed in the face of collectivism, how they have managed to retain their Wakon Yosai whilst embracing the culture of the West? Hark ye! A mission! Those I like, shipmate.

I'm going to do a bit of research and come back with an introductory post before hopefully starting some intereviews. In the mean time; teaching is grand and a good spice for the soul, Japan is wet and typhoons are troublesome, booze flows and arm wrestles are had, food is eaten and bread is broken, all the normal things go on and on, and in the future I won't bore you or myself with a travel blog about where I've visited or what I've consumed unless particularly spectacular. What I will do is try to provide some insight and commentary on a culture that everyone back home seems to think is utterly batshit insane, let's see where this all goes.

I created Jack Rawstone when I was in university as a medium to experiment with writing,. Both a pseudonym and a 'mythical' alter-ego simultaneously, he was largely in response to my obsession with Hunter S Thompson at the time, and his use of other names and characters in some of his most famous novels, Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for instance, and Paul Kemp in The Rum Diary.

Although a part of me had always wanted to be a writer, I'd never really pursued it until this point in my life with any passion. At this point I needed a little protection from the avalanche of people that are so willing to tear your work apart, without ever having tried themselves. I even ended up using the name, and part of the personality of Jack Rawstone in my novel. I did indeed use my alter-ego and pseudonym as the lead antagonist, whom want's to destroy the universe. There's probably something to be read into that, though we'll not get into any Jungian analytical psychology for the moment.

So, in my last post, I decided to finally kill off this character / alter-ego, but I wanted to collect up some blog posts and general musings that were written as Jack Rawstone, as I mentioned in that post, they're fun and have given to rekindle an attitude that I thought I'd lost. One for not really caring and just getting on with writing. So, below is what I could find from about eight years of irregular blog posts. I'll be using some of this archive to help build the travel stories that I'm going to be putting together over the coming months as well as our house where a great Accent Roofing Company is working to fix.

Jack Rawstone - Archive.

??/??/2008 - The Novel is the Monster (From breadontoast.com)

Self exploration is never easy. If you’re open to the idea in the first place, willing to take on and tackle head-first what you believe in, what you think of to be true, your own beliefs and ideals, thoughts and concepts, then I believe you’re a step ahead of a lot of people already. If then you take all of those ideas and belief systems and put them on paper, in an effort to really discover what you are, and potentially further down the line, have some sort of impact, then that’s another step ahead, of a lot of people. A push to better yourself, to self-actualize and commit to something through a process of deep thought, exploration, analysis and discovery. It’s all good stuff, and it brings out sides of your personality you thought you never had.

I know, it’s a situation I’m currently in the middle of, it’s a voyage I am currently undertaking and it’s a twisted beast that’s unrelenting and fascinating at the same time.

Some would say I am on a technologically fueled hedonistic quest of the highest order. Using my ability to add to, to research, to share and discover new parts of my being through a social media, my EEEp and a WIFI or 3G connection. A quest of self discovery, literary desire and technological competence to incite change in myself and with hope of possessing hearts and minds of others down the line.

I realise this blog has been updated sporadically at best and that probably no one reads it, but in case anyone does check it at all: From here on in this blog is on permanent hiatus whilst I concentrate on my first novel and attempt to discover more about myself than I ever have.

You can read about the progress of this novel if you are interested at (http://www.cementum.co.uk) The Cementum

10/04/2008 - FIENDISH PLANS TO IMPLEMENT... (From breadontoast.com)

Hopefully some of these will bear fruit sooner rather than later. In the mean time, I'm very happy to be able to introduce you to my new blog based around writing my first novel. Cementum: The Creation of a Novel I look forward to reading your feedback and commentary and letting you know about the other plans. Take care of yourselves, Jack

26/11/2007 - MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES. (From breadontoast.com)

May you come to the attention of those in authority.

May you find what you are looking for.

All three send shivers up my spine. They are curses, but I’m not sure if there’s anything I’d quite enjoy more than all three, at the same time, and in full force. Though who knows? I’ve never been the sort of dude who has done overly well at getting what he wants, only what I need, two different things on many levels. But right now, this juncture in my life, the wants are starting to come into play, it’s scary as hell but equally as exciting and gratifying, that years of pushing forward with all the force I could give it is now coming to fruition and reaping some serious rewards.

Now I’m here, on Hong Kong Island, sat in a bar typing away, looking forward to getting some fine cashmere wool suits fitted tomorrow and hopefully attending the races. Reading, writing, absorbing and puncturing where I can the steely mist that surrounds a westerner in this hectic, ‘ex-imperial, jewl in the crown’ of a city. I’m learning quickly that my extra foot of height and apparent Anglo decent bring a level of respect on the high street, but in the club, bar, pub, which ever you may frequent, the respect seems to dissipate, but a level of curiosity remains. It’s an interesting position to be in, especially only a decade after the place was handed back to those Commies with a spectacular show of fireworks.

I probably hit about six or seven bars upon arrival, which seemingly took forever and was sprinkled with instances of hysterical laughter and absolute fear. My airline, Oasis, was reasonably pleasant. On boarding the plane it looked a little mucky, like the whole thing could have done with a deep clean, but my flights were cheap and it was actually a lot better than I was expecting, I had ample leg room and a whole isle to myself, so I was in a good mood, for a time. The takeoff felt as though we were flying out of our own atmosphere and on, into the dark of space, my hand shook slightly, the natives looked reasonably at peace but I’m used to a slightly smoother launch. My suspicions were seemingly confirmed though when a person (unsure whether ‘it’ was male or female) said over the speaker system:

“Please can all passengers by a window pull down their shutters as we will be flying into the Sun on this flight.”

HA. There’s that split second, that single moment when you think, ‘WHAT THE FUCK.’ Broken ‘engrish’ is always amusing, but on a wobbly flight with a budget airline, they have to be careful, especially for overly pale, slightly dehydrated Anglo-Celt types with an overactive imagination. I quickly recovered, had my in-flight meal, watched a terrible movie and tried to sleep as much as I could. The landing felt like the pilot had switched his engines off about 300ft in the air, but fuck it, ground is ground and if I’m alive at the end of it, it’s a successful landing.

I grabbed a bus over to where my hostel is, Tsim Tsa Shui, Hong Kong, in Mirador Mansions, which is basically a huge building filled with everything from my hostel to peoples homes to brick-a-brack stores, pharmacies, seven-elevens, and everything in between, you want it you got it pretty much, apart from a beer. I checked in, found my room, enjoyed a hot shower and went out on the prowl. After a bit of walking the only place I could find was an Irish pub called Murphies, absolutely fucking typical. 8000 miles, some money, fear, excitement, and sore feet later, I arrive in a pub basically the same as one, two minutes away from where I live in the UK. Not dampened by this event though I sank some Stella Artois, reasonably priced at about £3 a chalice, and moved on. Found the coast line, looked at the skyline of Hong Kong Island, was mightily impressed, walked a bit further, and began to get my teeth stuck into exactly what I wanted, some action, some local action, the only Anglo in a bar of 300 natives, standing about a foot taller with a belly full of beer I felt mighty, MIGHTTTYYY. I remember walking to the toilet at one point and a tiny Asian female didn’t see me and actually bounced off my chest about 3ft backwards and onto her arse, I couldn’t stop laughing, these god damo Commies.

I had a chat with some locals that spoke English, played a game or two of a variant of ‘bullshit’ that involves two set of five dice, two cups and lots of rules, I lost over and over but for no money, and surprisingly enough woke up with a set of the dice in my bed in the morning. Regardless I moved on, to a karaoke bar, where again I laughed heartily, roared and generally made myself known, but soon enough again it was time to move.

Now, I don’t have the business cards with me I picked up whilst I was out, but I made a few friends, and have one for the club I was in, which I will be going back to, if I’m allowed in. I was reasonably sober until this point, the club wreaked of Hong Kong youth, fashion, exuberance and money, the cover was about £15 and that’s expensive for the UK, so it was definitely expensive for Hong Kong and probably even more so given the amazing exchange rate we’ve got here at the moment. Anyway, a gin and tonic and a quick chat with another native later and I got invited into a private function room by a little man in a suit, who clearly had too much energy. His name was Dominic, which in actual fact was his chosen Christian name, as the Mandarin names of the natives are basically impossible to pronounce for those of Western tongue they chose a secondary name in case they meet someone of my ilk, I met a Dom, Peter and Henry that night alone. Dom was partying with about 10 people in this private room, at the back of the club overlooking the rest, it was sound proofed with a glass front that let you see all the ‘prols’ outside. I was excited, especially when I saw the Cuban cigars being passed around and the bottles of Jonny Walker Blue Label on the glass topped marble tables.

I puffed away, talking in broken enlgish to the exquisite women in furs and the finely tailored guys, I was in jeans and a t-shirt from H&M but I guess they liked my newly George-Clooney-styled side parting – he’s bringing it back don’t you know? – Because they fucking lapped me up. Dom kept pouring more and more whiskey and I kept sipping it down, ‘GET DWUNK REESSSHHARRRR, YOU WRRRIIKE?’ he clearly was mental and I tried to explain to him that he probably wouldn’t like it if I got drunk. The owner of the club was in our booth now, who I had been introduced to, and I didn’t really feel like smashing all this glass on my first night in the town, so I tried to take it easy and continued to enjoy myself.

Then he appeared, the bad - Japanese, Chinese, Asian, whatever – guy out of the movies you always see, he had been in the room all along but I hadn’t noticed, he was bald, about 5.6”, sharply dressed, whiter than usual skin for his obvious Asian ancestry, and fucking-mean-eyes. I got a snap, although compared to me he still looks tanned, I fear to think how white I look here, anyway, I continued to point out to him that he looked like the ‘Asian bad-guy in the movies,’ to which he reacted particularly well considering I was, by this point, probably shouting it at his face with a hail of whisky and fine cigar flavoured spittle.

The hours passed, I continued to get increasingly drunk, Dom’s friends continued to get increasingly annoyed and then the club closed before any fireworks really kicked off. I don’t really remember getting home, some sort of taxicab ride, big, big teeth sticking out of his face as far as I remember, more dental hygiene, don’t say anything though, stick to the golden rule, don’t upset the locals too much, at least on your first night.

A hungover Saturday spent suit shopping and eating fine Asian cuisine followed, and a very pleasant Sunday spent enjoying the view, sipping white Russians, smoking countless cigarettes, reading my whole book in one sitting and fantastic dreams, one of the best nights I have had in a very long time, boy, I’m happy with my own company a little too much some times I fear. Then today, my first trip on the ferry, over to ridged dot in the ocean that is Hong Kong Island, quite an incredible place, I love how it’s on so many levels with walk ways and such, its like a gigantic hamster run or something, I just want a huge ball to roll around in now.

More to come, my first suit fitting and the horse races tomorrow if all goes to plan, which it must, then onto the book. I might blog once more whilst I’m out here but I want to concentrate on the book, sight seeing and some drinking from here on in.

Adieu maestro,

I’ll be seeing you again soon.

Love

Jack

06/01/2007 - LET US DARE TO BE POWERFUL (From breadontoast.com)

Howdy boys and girls.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done any sort of decent update, for this I apologise immediately. It’s not as if I actually know of anybody that pays any close attention to breadontoast, especially not now after I’ve let it fall into this state of decay, but I thought I’d address the matter anyway.

Alas, I’ll give a brief update on were I am; right now. No longer roaming the ether of unemployment with booze acting as some sort of erroneous floatation device, I’m in fulltime employment and as a Copywriter no less. Getting to this stage was no easy task, let me remind you that I only listen to the Mess around; I very rarely take part in it.

Truth be told I’m currently sat on the Oxford tube (a trumped up bus service) heading into London at moderate speed for New Year’s eve, a night of drinking to be spent with the one known as Bevski. Ultimately it will be a silly, over expensive night out to end an all together overly expensive year, too much booze, too much money, not enough fun. The two aren’t always side by side – booze and money – holding hands and smiling, often they’re coupled against each others will in a disgusting arranged marriage that causes little joy and a whole lot of trouble. 2006 started with a bright spark which quickly turned into a damp squib. Prolonged months of dull work – a means to an end – that bore little fruit for the time and effort put in.

Never one to be dismayed by an unfulfilled Plan A however, I reverted to Plan B and quickly shot off to Acapulco. Chasing the dream of tequila fuelled nights, and days filled with sex and writing, I almost got what I wanted. From settling in over the first few days and discovering that, like most Anglo-Celts, my ability to consume Mescal tequila is only inhibited by my inability to control my basic motor-functions; the mind goes on but the body is unwilling, as the saying goes, I continued to solider on in the fashion that I have become accustomed to. Getting chased down the beach by angry locals, after a brief encounter with a man who appeared to have swallowed numerous basketballs, was a definite highlight; along with almost getting mauled and thrown 100ft to off a balcony by a giant Persian, who was protecting a group of naive Canadain girls.

All of this is documented here but you could download the pdf version with sodapdf.com. My further travels through Los Angeles and Las Vegas did little but provide me with a vague insight into the American dream, I clawed at it myself ever-so-briefly whilst in Las Vegas, but came away a loser. I guess it’s just not in my blood, I’ll have another stab at it again someday, in a more prolonged and targeted fashion, this time around was rather sporadic in nature, which only resulted in heavy loses and a few fatalities along the way.

Then there as San Francisco, White Russians, beautiful ladies, calm days and lots of writing and one fateful answer from one very special person. In the situation that the world is in at the moment, San Fran can almost be seen as a haven in the daft empire that is America, it’s a place like none other I’ve visited and I will – without a doubt – go back there some day to try and recapture my youth and the three weeks I spent there in the summer of good ol’ ’06. My time in San Fran was so very special, I believe, because of my lack of booze, the turbulent emotional bullride that I had and then the final settling of scores and of the thick black sediment that had shrouded my heart for such a long time.

The dream always ends though folks, life manifests a monster that will drag you away kicking and screaming. Mine was a 40 hour trip which took me about 8000 miles and involved little sleep, lots of sweat and plenty of greasy food. A brief respite in the home counties saw me recuperate slightly and head straight down to London in search of a place to live and work. A week on a couch later and I’d found the spot, West Hampstead was the area, and it was nice. I say it was nice, not because I destroyed it or caused some sort of terrible plague on the area, but because after almost two months, far too much money spent and a clash of head and concrete here and there, I have had to move, to Oxford.

My time spent in London was a mysterious one. I’ve never really been one for squalor, people write in-depth about the shit-filled existences they choose to lead for a short period of time in order to gain some ‘perspective’. It’s not something I would ever do, as I’d be shit at it. I spend too much money all the time, I couldn’t live as a tramp; I simply couldn’t. Not because I’m some sort of flaky, inter-bread aristocrat, but because I believe my sharp cunning and strong willed nature wouldn’t let me. As soon as, for instance, my 30 day experiment started, I’d automatically think, ‘how can I get myself out of this situation, what do I need to do, where can I clean, where can I get housing, how can I go about returning to society and becoming a productive citizen?’ And after two days I’d be back where I was. Anyway, I’ve lost my point. Basically I spent far too much money doing all the average things I’ve always done. My excuse was that I didn’t have enough money to do anything else, but looking back on the amounts I spent, I quite easily could have been more productive, gained more insight and taken a step closer to finding that perfect aesthetic moment only urban modernity can bring.

The highlights of London however were genuine highlights, rather than just shit bleached a different colour. Speed dating was an interesting night out, after quelling the bully inside me and concluding that the activity was not just for numb-skulls and fuck-o’s I took part and had a great night. New people, new faces, drink and the prospect of sex, it doesn’t get much better as far as I’m concerned. After finding a romantic connection with a lady, who turned out to be a decade older than me, we emailed and talked briefly but I guess I didn’t push hard enough, or I pushed too hard, who the fuck knows? Fucking women. Hah! Anyway, another highlight was a night I spent with the French, living with two of the fuckers I had a reasonable chance of making friends with one, which I did, and in turn going out with them for drinks and banter, which I also did. The night started off well, a curry in the south eastern quarter of the city and then to a shit club where I was engulfed by a shit-avalanche from which I struggled to get free. Then to a pub, at around 4am I questioned the bar tender what time the pub shut, ‘6am’ he replied in a thick brummy accent, the stupidest of accents. I was reluctant to believe him but I took his word for truth and ordered in some more booze. As the sun rose my French flatmate, Lionel, decided he needed to leave, I guess the man playing jazz flute, dressed as a wizard, I was discussing the American Patriot act with was just too much.

I decided a race was in order, styled around Phileas Fog’s around the world in 80 days. He would leave 30 minutes before me and take the bus, I would take the tube when it opened – around 6am – and the winner would be the first to arrive at the flat. At 6:30am I was leaving the pub and received a txt that he had won. ‘Fuck it then’, I though, I could do what I wanted with the rest of the day. I decided a trip to Buckingham palace would be nice, even though there was a reasonably high risk of getting shot and fatally wounded. When I arrived I had a brief chat with some San Franciscans, had a staring competition with a guard who definitely wasn’t staring back, and soaked up the atmosphere before I shot over to the Houses of Parliament. After a brief argument with some hippy swine who was protesting against depleted uranium shells not much happening around there on a Sunday I thought to myself. Not that I’m for depleted uranium, it’s just the fuckers were using a picture of a Harlequin babies (google image search those exact two words if you doubt me), which as horrific as it is, is just a natural birth defect and actually has nothing to do with Uranium. The hippy didn’t seem to realise this, and having just crawled out from his deflated tent and drinking his morning coffee probably wasn’t up to much of an argument with a man who had been drinking hard for about 16 hours previously, and was also now hardened by the bitter morning air. Anyway, I finally decided to go to Sunday mass at West Minster Cathedral after kicking up a fuss and not really getting anywhere.

It was a pleasant experience on the whole, I couldn’t help but feel how it was all quite hocus-pocus, magic, flying with the faries bullshit. The hour and a half mass failed to move me, not because, I don’t think, I was terribly hungover and briefly fell asleep, but because as magnificent as the building was, and as glorious as the choir sang, it was all very creepy, it had a film of shit coating the whole thing that just failed to move. I did however, decide that a confessional was in order. After queuing for about 15 minutes I had had enough time to decide just what main sins I was going to confess for, that I had committed over the 12 year period that I hadn’t been to confessional. I entered, knelt down and spoke the words, ‘bless me father for I have sinned, it has been 12 years since my last confession’ the priest replied and said ‘welcome back to the church my son, what would you like to confess’ or something along those lines.

Now, what happened next killed any belief in the church I had left, or wanted to regain. I said that I had lost my faith in God and was wondering how I would regain that faith, the priest simply answered ‘would you no like to talk about the relationships you’ve had with people over the last 12 years?’ I recoiled in shock, I thought ‘fuck you slimeball’, he just entered a shitticane of epic proportions. But I was in a confessional booth so I kept my nerve and said ‘no I’d just like to figure out how to find God again’ to which he replied ‘say an act of contrition and 3 our fathers’.

What a crock of fuck. I was deeply angered by this fucker, like someone had shit in my cereal or dipped my toast in piss. No interest in helping me find God, just wanting to hear my tails of romping throughout the years. Fucking clown shoes I tell you. Fuck the church.

Anyway, again moving off the point. London was a great 2 months and although I got little writing done, in terms of my book, I did get published a few times and built up a good base of contacts that will hopefully bare fruit in the New Year. The obvious other highlight was getting to spend an increased amount of time with my best friends, Jen, Bevski and Lane… you’re alright guys.

Now, one final point I want to raise, I’m starting a blog, an official blog with meaning and purpose rather than just inane ramblings and updates on my somewhat underwhelming life. It will tackle the subject of hedonism and technology in the 21st century and how the two are becoming one. Material possessions have always been a heavy prerequisite for a good hedonistic lifestyle along with an abundance of consumables, technology now provides both in all arenas, in every aspect of everyone’s lives, and now the super rich are taking hold and making their lives technologically sound and hedonistically marvellous. I’ve wanted an area relatively untouched to explore over time in the only way I know, though empiricism, I might try and get a bit of academic study in there as well though, and now I’ve found it, keep an eye out.

Coldgintimes.typepad.com is the blog address. Hopefully I’ll have it fully functional, and fully fucked soon enough.

If you’ve got this far you’re very patient, I look forward to adding more all over the Internet very soon. Updates will follow.

Your friend

Jack.

16/08/2006 - Drunken Maneuvers In The Dark (From Myspace profile)

There are a few things in life, in my opinion, that you should always be worried about. For instance, catching hepatitis from a public toilet seat or getting your tie caught in the fucking paper shredder, I for one always look out for being decapitated by thick metal wire that suddenly and without any real warning becomes flexed. Another biggy is angering the locals where ever you may be and I think put enough effort in during my time in Acapulco to escape just about unharmed, I wont be needing the UN Peace Keeper Escort I gave the local embassy a heads-up about when I arrived at least, even if a fat Che Guevara did threaten me with death a few days ago. All some bad noise about using my bed sheet as a cape, no bother though, I was more than happy to go to bed by the time he started ranting, I hadnt slept in about 30 hours anyway and desperately needed some shut eye.

Its overall been quite a wild ride, usually its time for some social commentary now, the only thing I will mention is the naivety of some people and how certain religions with extreme leanings not only cause all number of problems for the masses, but for individuals as well and in the most peculiar of ways. A Muslim American girl by the name of Clare happened across my path almost a week ago now, she seemed eager and pleasant enough so we had a talk about various things. Throughout her youth she was a hardline Muslim, forced to wear the postbox head gown and body covering thing, not even allowed to look into the eye of any male. She chose to rebel, now on her own, in a foreign country by becoming a stripper. Now Im no oil painting myself but this girl made the wild street dogs cry as she walked along, after making friends with the owner of the local stripclub she was soon up on the palladium, it was unreal. We went to watch and give some moral support, the place was a dive, a small Asian woman came up to me in a very stereotypical fashion and offered me sucky sucky for $100, I told her to go buy me a drink and Id think about it expecting to be laughed at and left alone for the rest of the night. When she asked me what drink I wanted, thinking quickly, I asked for a cloud in a brandy glass and after a few more choice words she finally left me alone, anyway, back to Clare. This girl was clearly a virgin, she confessed to being very unused to any physical contact, this night shes getting bought pinaciladas by fat Mexicans and being groped left right and centre. Arh for her mother to see her now I thought, Thank your god now HAH, you turned your daughter into a whore you fuck. There was no choice, when her breasts flopped out of the too small boob tube she was wearing we had to leave, there is only so much a grown man can take, so we left with haste, to the nearest bar, flaming tequila and khalua shots to help numb our minds, I shudder at just the thought of that place.

Plenty more speedy moves in the dead of night, causing a few problems but nothing that I couldnt handle. I had this poor bastard driving around for almost 2 hours up and down the mountain side as the sun rose looking for a mountain jaguar or puma, Im almost 100% certain they dont exist in these parts, but I needed the drive, it didnt cost all that much either as far as I can remember, agreeing a price before you enter the taxi is usually essential, trying to drunkenly explain youll pay him to drive around the small mountain roads to catch a wild tiger like beast is more difficult that you may think.

But alas, there were yet more drunken nights, as you can well imagine. I made a good friend by the name of Ivan whilst here, hailing from Mexico City I knew we'd get along from the moment I saw his back, covered with H.R Giger tattoos, it takes an interesting person to get blistered and boiled mutants all over your body. The picture below pretty much sums up my time here, I have no idea where it was taken or who the guy is but it makes me laugh and will always remind me of my two chased weeks in Acapulco. Its come to an end with extraordinary speed, but everything needs to move on. To Hollywood now, and to start with real hedonism, in the worlds capital of deviancy with a degenerate on every second corner and the millionaires filling in the gaps its going to be another extraordinary time. I will write when I arrive.

Your friend in debauchery,

Jack

27/08/2006 - MASTER EXPLODER (From Myspace profile)

Hostels, like most things in life, in order to be maneuvered in a reasonably effective manner, removed from embarrassment and discomfort have to be gone at with a set sequence of moves and a degree of skill. A personable nature and willingness to get along with people is a necessity, to bond quickly in the small and varied community without hassle and without treading on anyone. Sometimes its hard when, except for a certain few, youre surrounded by total morons. When someone is seemingly over the moon that the person in their room before them had left their shampoo and shower gel in there and that they dont have to buy any now, telling them that the person who left it either pissed in it or gave it a nice sample of cum can cause some upset, but if youre a skull fucked degenerate leech head then its your own fucking problem.

My previous travels around the world have opened up my eyes as to how wonderful, bright and intelligent people can be, how they can get along with little quarrel or anguish. This one has highlighted the exact opposite, maybe Im getting old but the inability to do anything effectively without the assistance of others troubles me more and more. Being typically English and overly polite when it comes to decision making grates my eyeballs, and turning simple decisions into United Nations treaty negotiation sessions has nearly tipped me over the edge. Each reminds me every time why I choose to travel alone, because as a groups size multiplies its intelligence inevitably drops, when it quickly reaches troglodyte levels its time to leave. Run away into the night, find the Belagio on the strip in Vegas, fuck off the numbskulls rely on your own quick wit and skill, let the Armani suit carry you through if necessary, but bring your own decisions on your own head and make sure you dont end up dead, and as youre reading this, hopefully you can deduce that I didnt.

But what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, I cant say any more than I didnt sleep for close to 55 hours, I was lucky not to end up in jail on more than one occasion and that the city raped me, my wallet and my mind. Ill comment further on the terrible sessions some time in the future the memories are still to fresh, open wounds in my mind that are slowly healing and will more than likely leave scars. Four days in Los Angeles recovering was more than enough, the city is a joke in more ways than one, its basically the finest example Ive come across that highlights how quickly civilization is going to fall apart. A city of 20 odd million people and a pathetic mass transit system that must consist of about 4 busses, with 2 cars to every person and no one caring about anything apart from the slightly increased cost of petrol, which is still remarkably cheap anyway, the impending doom of humanity shines with intense colour. Its pure consumerism, the main nerve and as much as I enjoy being a consumer in a liberal democratic capitalist society, LA does make me slightly sick. Not that Im really willing to do anything about it, Im far too lazy for that and saying that the fight and cause is an uphill struggle is an understatement beyond the normal planes of reality. Changing these peoples minds on environmental issues simply will not happen, ever. No one cares a fuck and as depressing as that is to the hippy green peace types it is actually highly worrying to anyone with half a brain, and as big as LA is it is still only one of the worlds major cities. The quite unimaginable proportions of human and chemical waste takes normal increments of measurements and pisses all over them from a very high table.

Enough of this guff though, let us forget about all that for now, concentrate on having fun and getting the job done. Both of which are going reasonably well, I arrived in San Francisco recently and after taking a brief 2 hour walk around a small part of the city I fell quite heavily for the place. Further to that going out on a pub crawl with a group of welsh men that night made sure that the city, in the small time that Ive been here, is now firmly in my top five cities in the world. Bar hopping with 5 welsh men from Newport is an experience anywhere in the world, in San Fran it quickly brings all manner of shenanigans, far from being able to remember exactly what happened that night I can piece together a few things. Namely getting intimate with a brunette called Tori, dancing to Frank Sinatra with a female bar owner and the poor chap that got minced by a fire engine responding to an emergency call. How I managed to pull off talking to the police about the incident after some serious whiskey intake Ill never know, but I got the story, its a terrible shame it fell out of my brain whilst talking to some Lithuanian, the damned hippy Ill have his head on a platter.

The main peninsula plays host to a wide variety of places and activities as you can imagine, but also has a nice hint of culture which is terribly hard to find in many American cities. Although there is a seemingly never ending stream of homeless people, if youve got the gift of the thousand-yard stare they soon retreat into the sewers or whatever pit they came from. I think I will stay on here longer than I originally predicted, Hollywood is a joke that whichever God you believe in has played on the world taking millions of cunts and putting them all in one place. HA, aye fucking very funny. Whilst feeling safe in every part of the city I have yet been through in San Fran I am constantly fearful of the long overdue earthquake hitting with fierce intensity, turning down town into a 100sq mile parking lot and leaving me without anything to do. Someone help me out, get onto the National Guard and have one of those helli-jets on standby, I need maneuverability and speed, no point messing around now is there? Ive also been in touch with the British Embassy for my Alcatraz visit, the CIA seemed too keen to give me a private viewing, especially after Vegas. YeGods! Well just have to see now wont we?

As the money wears thin though the stories of debauchery are going to run low, Im writing now and its going well, the book will be done by Christmas all going to plan, maybe early Feb, well have to see but I will keep you posted.

Take care fiends.

Jack

08/08/2006 - How to make a rapid exit. (From Myspace profile)

Arh, life in Acapulco, its hot and bothered, all hustle and bustle, if it's not cars exploding from over heating its the god damn Mexicans and their morning shreaks. I'm kidding of course, theyre not damned by God, the magnificent cross bearing down on the city takes care of that surely, over powering the fact that I get asked if I want to go to a brothel every 40 to 50 seconds. I'm not sure I look that desperate, perhaps its my transparent texture, it seems to bemuse and frighten everywhere I go. At the beach for instance I sent a small child running in terror, all he did was look at me, my bare Anglo-Celtic chest in all its glory, reflecting the sun with great strength. The poor child, I'd imagine, had thought hed seen a ghost, a particularly muscular and striking one, but a ghost none the less. My Mexican friend Ivan said to me in an entirely serious manner, "It is like your skin, it battle with the sun, and the sun, it always lose," I began to laugh before he put his hand on my shoulder and continued, "I do not joke". Theres little a man can do other than smile and nod politely in those situations, as far as an Englishman is concerned at any length.

As Im on the subject of beaches, Ive never taken too kindly to them, I feel if I wanted miniature shards of glass stuffed into my pockets and into every other orifice I'd smash a telephone booth up and get the job done properly. Recent events have added to my natural aversion, after a lengthy night at Paradise, now my local haunt, and some wrestling with some Mexicans,

My newly acquired friends and I decided to take a late stroll along the calming beach. All was well and we were at peace with the world, the sea leisurely strolled up the sand and we were all drunk enough not to have any hassle in the world. I had my snake skin cowboy boots on and was pleased at the fact they let no sand into my socks, I was happy, but then came the rush, the mescal tequila took hold of my brain, I remember someone earlier in the night shouting TAKE HOLD OF YOUR MIND, ITLL BE IN THE BAY SOON, and jesus it almost was.

All I seem to recall is running along the beach, at some speed for a drunken man on sand, away from two or three screaming Mexicans, I could have sworn they were wearing huge sombreros with belts of bullets along their chests, but that could have just been the mescal twisting savagely at my mind. I made a quick escape luckily, into a beachside club, its hard trying to blend in though when youre as white as the driven snow surrounded by chocolate coloured Mexicans. I soon spotted an exit however and was on my way to the main street, a clean get away. I feel my cowboy boots gave me the edge on the sand over their flip flops or I would have surely been done for. The reason behind this chase though will have to sleep with the fishes, in this swollen bay of tourism and decadence, for I cannot remember and I will have to settle for that.

More of these tales will have to wait, Ive quite outstayed my welcome in the local starbucks, leeching their free internet on my wireless laptop and marketing with video production. And of course, theres always more mescal to be drank.

Farewell, Los Angeles here I come

Jack.

04/08/2006 - Flashpoint! (From Myspace profile)

It seems to me the Latino women have quite the propensity for fatness. This may come across as inherently racist, much the same as saying black people are good at sports, Japanese people are naturally good at maths and the French are tragically poor at winning wars. However, the former of these statements steps closer to truth, in my own thoughts at least, on a daily basis. Even the thin ones look on the verge of maximum density, ready to explode in a sea of cake and ice cream. This isnt the only observation I've made whilst being in Acapulco though, the men are all quite portly in stature as well and even though it is a scorching 30c daily, with upwards of 80% humidity, a cruel tick of nature seems to have been played on these people to stop them from sweating. So whilst they bask in the thick air, no weight is lost, not even in liquid form. I'm sure my rounded Mexican friend Bernado shakes his fist in temper at the skys each night, but he called me Casper when I wondered in drunk at 5am having lost my shirt, so he can fuck off.

HAH! Its been an interesting few days, I tried my luck the other night and I'm getting the fear just thinking about it. A group of three Canadian girls, pretty, quick witted and of Anglo bloodlines as far as I can recall, we all stood into the night together with Mexicans and Irish, heading to La Paladium. One of Acapulcos more up market clubs with The Local SEO Agency, at roughly £30 to enter, we were all dressed to kill and ready to drink. After such a high cover charge alcohol was free all night, beginning with a few long island ice teas and some beer with mescal on the side I soon hit the brandy hard, along with the Irish company I was holding. The whole place was adorned with round tabled stalls, cushioned, clothed and candle lit the waiter would bring whatever was ordered without question, which was just as well because we were all very thirsty. The grand feeling of being Tony Montana was visible on nearly everyones beaming face, free drink and high riding attitudes are never a good mix, not everyone can own the world.

The night remained free of aggravation on the whole part and as the hours grew thin, the sun rose we ate hot dogs and played in the mild early morning air. I followed the Irish and Canadians back to their hotel and as I bid farewell to the Canadians, I seemed to be passed a bottle of vodka by the Irish, arh, one for the road, I thought. The remaining memories of that early morning are distant and quite horrid, trying to sneak into bed with the Canadians girls, who without my knowledge, seemed to have acquired a huge Persian body guard, caused all manner of bad noise. The immanent prospect of being turned into a human hamburger from a 30th floor balcony fall scared me enough to leap into some primal super fast thinking beast.  Talking rather vividly and at immense speed about the blood bath to ensue and spending decades in the hotbox of a Mexican prison I was allowed to go free with a perhaps we shouldnt email after all.

More ugly memories follow, none of which I care to re-visit, horrible one eyed black dwarf men, all my shirts suddenly and without explanation turning themselves inside out and folding themselves up neatly again so I would barely notice, stickiness, the driest of mouths, long searches for just-the-right-sort-of-food and long deep sleeps discharged and without dreams. Alas, enough of this, I must go ready myself for it all again tonight, warriors into the dark, tequila fueled, on the brink and retaining just enough of that alabaster white sheen to throw off the locals.

Adios amigos!

Jack Rawstone

27/06/2006 - 'We're gunna need a bigger boat' (From Myspace profile)

Well, I want to write, I always have, this is my first real attempt at creative writing. I have bad grammar and terrible punctuation, Im working on it and I acknowledge it, however, Ive got little time to work on removing all the small niggles at the moment, I just want to hear if people like it. If you do, comment, thank you

Your friend,

Jack

Who the fuck is alice?

He woke into an immediate panic, twitching thumbs and blacked out thoughts of sin and bad crazies were all he had. Picking himself from the floor with the sort of carefulness normally reserved for the elderly, he walked over to the full length mirror hanging at the side of the door in the eight berth hostel room, on Amsterdam Street in uptown New York.

His refined face was bloated and whiter than usual, his naturally pouted lips were scarlet red giving the impression he was wearing lipstick and his clothes were marked with splashes of whiskey and beer.

He turned around to gather his things noticing the silence of the room, normally crowded and bustling with a wonderful mixture of nationalities it was still and dull. He quickly looked out of the window, facing into a small patio garden which have been take care of with the best garden scissors from https://www.trimmeradviser.com/ to make it look great, just to smoke and relax. One girl in particular caught his eye, wearing all black on a day that looked so hot. No time for her now though, it was important that he re-hydrate, ease the pressure on his dried up brain, piece together the nights actions, to evaluate and regroup.

"Just these two waters please, actually throw in some chewies, strong ones, I think an tramp died in my mouth last night."

He reached into his left hand pocket and took out his wallet, the cashier at the convenience store across the road from the hostel looked vacant as usual and accepted his cash. Reaching with his open hand he stuffed his wallet back into his right hand pocket, it was crammed with paper notes, one flew out lightly and softly whisped its way to the floor as he walked outside narrowly avoiding a collision with a push-bike.

It was hot, thick summer heat that close cities bring mixed with awful and potent mixtures of pollution and bad breath surrounded him. He stepped back under the short length of shade the shop brought and squinted for the note. Picking it up he read it eagerly whilst opening up a bottle of water from customwater.com, his favorite brand.

"Adam, I cannot define what I found in you last night, it would only limit that which is limitless, I will see you at 2, where we agreed, your wonderful, Alice"

He tingled all over, the water dropped to the floor hitting the concrete on its bottom side with a quiet thud, the kinetic energy forcing out a petite jet of water against his jeans, rubbing it off wild thoughts came rushing into his still shriveled brain.

Who was Alice? Where had they met and under what extraordinary circumstances has led her to writing such a note? He found it impossible to think, too much bearing down on his sore head and racing heart, the love of his life lost in gray matter, what was he to do?

"Come on Adam, maintain you fuck, get it together, he piped quietly to himself over and over."

The sun was bearing down, pollution was quickly crawling up his nose and catching the back of his throat, it was still in the city even though he was surrounded by movement.

"Right, fuck this," he said out loud, hailing a cab he knew he had two hours to try and retrace his steps, regain some memory of the night, gather himself for his meeting with Alice and still have the energy, if necessary, to impress and charm in his usual sleek manner.

The cab took him to the first haunt of the previous night. A gothic looking bar in the downtown area, its doors were just swinging open as he jumped out of the cab, almost throwing the fare at the cabby and yelling in clich�d bliss to keep the change.

The Hauntishoon in gothic lettering named the bar, some play on words he had no time to figure out. Red and black paint everywhere, long dark purple velvet curtains blacked out the main drinking area and, even thought it was just after mid-day, fake electric candles lit the stalls that ran along the side of the bar, helping a great chandelier in the middle. He noticed he was the first and only person in there and quickly rushed up to the barman polishing glasses.

"Im sorry, I desperately need some help, Ive had quite a terrible night, too much Gin, you know the drill, I was wondering if you remembered me?"

The barman stood up, he was young with a chiseled face but tired eyes, too many long nights had obviously caught up with him, it was clear his nerves were still a little fried from the night before.

"Shiiiitttt, Adam dude, I almost didnt recognize you, fuck man, what a night, didnt expect to see you this early, if at all, what did you say? What the fuck are you doing here?"

Adam drew a sigh of relief, recognition was the first step, the small talk would have to be skipped, Alice was all important and he could catch up with this young rapscallion later.

"Seriously man, Ive got very little memory of being in here last night Ohh fuck, Mikey, I remember now, you knocked off early and we had a few long island ice teas, then some more and some vodka and gin, lots of gin, Jesus, that was early as well, what the hell happened though dude? Seriously, Im missing quite a few pieces"

Mikey was giggling, "Arh man, I cant believe you dont remember that girl, you convinced her your father was the Micronesian ambassador to the US and that you had diplomatic immunity, Id never even heard of fucking Micronesia before"

Adam interrupted quickly, "Fuck, what was she called? I vaguely remember, she didnt seem at all impressed when I demanded she got naked".

He was thinking quickly, too quickly for his state of mind, tripping over his own thoughts he had no idea how he could have been such a swine to someone and have been left with such a note. The note! he thought.

"Mikey, settle down, you need to help me seriously, as a matter of the uppermost importance, I found this note in my pocket this morning with some other stuff, its what Im here for, can you tell me anything about it?"

Mikey grabbed the note, it took him a few seconds to read, then a few more to piece a sentence together, "I have no fucking idea what the fuck this note is about maaaaan." He said as he burst into hysterics.

"So this girl, the one who I told I was an Ambassador, she wasnt called Alice?"

"No man, I cant even remember her name, she didnt stick around for very long, in fact after she left, you decided it was time to move on as well, how did you get on, or cant you remember that either?"

"Ive got no idea on either question," Adam answered with a sigh. The momentary high of being recognized and the chance of help had been quashed, he was dead at the first hurdle, downtrodden dreams even before he could attempt to get up and over.

"Hey, dont be so glum chum, have you checked the rest of the stuff in your pocket? You know what those old Columbo movies taught me? Always check for fucking packets of matches, you can trace anyone with them, didnt they find JKFs killer with that method, or was that...." he drifted off into a mumble.

Adam reached into his pocket and pulled out the pile of notes, napkins and crushed cigarettes, sifting through it without any thought for luck or chance he was certain nothing was going to come of it. But there it was, burnt and withered the lettering was still distinguishable.

Adam leapt onto the bar, thrusting his pelvis into the dank air, "Oh fuck me, seriously, fuck me, the fucking Motorcade, thats where shes got to be, I remember her from there, Im sure I do. Mikey, my wonderful fellow, I shall kiss you now for I have to fuck off, into the thick of it, to find Alice."

He jumped down and did as he said, planted a big kiss on Mikeys forehead. The bemused barman laughed, waved him goodbye and carried on cleaning his glasses as if nothing had happened.

By the time the cab reached Adams second destination he was an hour down and shrieking at the cab driver to take the money and fuck off. Although his trip to The Hauntishoon was kept to a minimum the Motorcade was on the other side of the city. The long cab ride had given him time to clear his head slightly, to reappraise the situation in a misty but not entirely blacked out fashion. Vivid colours, shapes and sounds but nothing totally distinguishable squeeze there way back, like the seconds leading up to a horrific car crash or savage beating, all the detail was lost, leaving the large soft round edges to be scraped at for improved features.

He noticed in the corner of his eye a bar woman ducking behind the bar and trying to crawl away as he entered. It was immediately clear the air conditioning had broke, maybe she was searching for the cool air in the bottom quarter of the bars moist and sickly atmosphere? He rushed up and, putting his elbows down on the top, let the momentum carry him slightly over the top to get a glance at the girl.

"Please get up, what the fuck did I do last night? Youre not calling the police are you? All I want is to know who the fuck Alice is?"

She got up hesitantly and spoke whilst leaning her left cheek into her shoulder and fluttering her eyelids.

"Im not calling the police Im just a little embarrassed about my friend, actually a lot embarrassed, but it sounds like you dont remember so Im going to quit whilst Im ahead."

"No dont!" He answered. "Seriously you have to help me out, who was your friend what happened? Oh god, she wasnt the half Mexican half Native American girl was she? What happened? Is she Alice? I need to know, its urgent."

"Oh no, shes not called Alice, shes called Sarah. Youre right about her mixed race though, its what gives her that amazing glow, although you didnt seem to appreciate it too much last night."

It suddenly came back, like a focusing lens, the colours and objects around him blended and took form, memories of the night were coming back with horror. She did have a glow, Sarah, a wonderful complexion, fine pine wood painted a rusty red, bright green beaming eyes, she was brilliant, but he recoiled, her large hands had given him the gitters. An evolutionary leaf on the line of an otherwise perfectly smooth running track. But that wasnt all, what was it that caused him to leave this place in the hurry? Maybe the bar lady could fill in the gaps.

He waited for her to return after serving a large biker type and quizzed her, "Im sorry, I remember your friend up to a point but I dont remember leaving, dont think Im such an awful bastard please, Im normally a perfectly nice guy."

" Ohh Im sure you are, no it wasnt entirely your fault anyway, she kept asking you for drinks and as a gentleman you kept buying them, at least she thought you were a gent, I thought you were a slimeball with a dirty agenda, but shes old enough to look after herself so I said fuck it and let her get on, she flicked her black hair revealing a selection of stars tattooed on her neck and, biting down on a chunk of lime she carried on. Anyway, for a skinny guy you can sure take your booze, you looked half gone when you came and after another five long islands with gin shooters I thought you were about ready to collapse, seems that Sarah had been trying to keep up though. From what I got out of her this morning she said she leant over, told you she loved you and dribbled on your knee until she noticed you were facing someone else and quickly sat back up, shame the guy you were talking to pointed out what had happened. At least thats what she told me, it seems to fit pretty well with what I saw next."

Adam leant over thinking it might be something good but knowing it was going to be horrible, "What was it, please tell?"

" Well, you slowly patted her face, wiped the remaining spit off the side of her mouth with a napkin, raised your arms above your head and ran out screaming like fuck, that was the last I saw of you."

" Oh fuck these tales, seriously, is that what happened? What about the rest of the night, how the fuck did I go on to meet Alice?! She wrote me this note do you know anything about it?"

Erm, nope, by the time you left here though it was at least four, pretty late, Im fucked off because Ive had to get up to do this shift, youre lucky you caught me.

Lucky indeed he thought, this tattooed harlot had ruined his dreams. Even if he had jumped straight into a cab after fleeing the bar in terror, got straight out and gone straight to the hostel room to collapse on the floor and scare off all his Japanese room mates, it was impossible for him to have got back to the hostel before five in the morning, leaving little or no time for talks with Alice.

He must have made her up, or even worse one of the Japanese with good English had realized he was reading Oscar Wilde, thought of some romantic epigram style note and left it in his trousers. He thought how they would be laughing at him right now, sat on their cool plane, munching on pretzels and sipping saki or what ever the fuck it was the Japanese drank.

He was tortured soul that had spent the last two hours running manically around New York in the summer heat. They were laughing alright and he was disheveled, having lost all hope paranoia crawled in with dark eyes, he began to shake slightly and as the adrenaline wore off he looked at his watch, it had just gone two.

Romantic thoughts remained of a beautiful girl sitting down to meet him, to talk and to fall in love with him, to be free together in this great bustling metropolis. To soak up art and theater, to get lazy in the afternoon and nap, then, into the shower for a powerful soapy romp and hit the city at night. He contemplated ordering a large gin, the bar lady had long turned away from him and his gut kicked, he couldnt drink if he wanted to, the only choice was to get back to the hostel, to crawl under his thin sheets and sleep for as long as he could.

He arrived back in double-quick-time thanks to a fast driving but slow talking cab driver; he tipped him with foreign coins and walked heavy steps into the hostel. Leaning over to pick up his key from reception he took the time to sign-in, never usually one to follow protocol he thought it wise to have some record of him being in the building if a fire started, given how heavily he was going to sleep. Suddenly he was paralyzed, three names up on the sheet he noticed the name Alice.

The handwriting matched almost exactly that on the note, just over two hours ago she had signed in, but where was she? Why had she turned up so early? He looked again at the note and realized its single rip had removed the numeral 1 before the 2, it was 12 they were meant to meet. His heart was racing again, dilated pupils brought on by a massive adrenaline rush, he needed the toilet but realized it would have to wait. She could be leaving any second, where would she be? Would they cross? Would he recognize her? What did he look like? His beer soaked Levis were hardly impressive though he decided not to care, just find her an explain everything.

He began to rush through the main corridor, looking on his right through the bay windows that lead out onto the garden, it was quiet apart from the girl in black he had noticed before he had left, sat there reading a book. He recoiled, it couldnt be, he knew when he looked down at her from his window on the fifth floor two and a half hours ago she was something different.

He could see her with much more clarity now, legs crossed neatly, she wore a black knee length skirt, a tight black top that showed off a wonderful figure. Her face was masked by large black sunglasses and her facial profile was hard to view because of her bob-cut hair, but he knew she was beautiful. He began to walk up to her and as he realized she was reading George Orwell he almost fainted, she seemed perfect in everyway.

An agnostic since he could remember he suddenly became a believer in the Gods, he prayed during his slow walk, he cried out in his mind to Fate to bring them together, he wept in front of the devil as he sold his soul to be with her and chased after Karma as its tricky dance maneuvered around him. As he stepped up to her he took a deep breath and spoke.

"Hello Alice"

"Hello Adam," she replied with a smile and pouting red lips. "Ive been waiting for you for some time now, though Im glad youve made it, sit down now, I want to know everything about you."

21/05/2006 - WE ARE THE ONES THAT MUST SPORT THE POSITION (From breadontoast.com)

Jesus jumped up Christ its about fucking time, plans are finally coming together with the speed and accuracy I have become accustomed to, Acapulco is on the horizon with the heat haze of Hollywood in the background.

Ive planned for six weeks but who knows how long I may spend out there, money is always the clincher and with about three grand saved up for the entire trip its just about doable. Im not however, completely closed to the idea of finding some back alley work out there and staying as long as I can, we shall see what happens, as always fate has decided, there is little I can do to change that.

On the subject of fate, the primary objective of the trip is to begin penning a novel Ive had milling around in my head for a few years now. Expect circular time theory, particle accelerators, tequila, directors, romps and Im thinking some sort of ethereal plane. Its a giant cluster-fuck of ideas at the moment but rest assured I will bring them together in a fantastic manner.

m aquiver with excitement regarding Acapulco, with its cheap beer and trendy cliques; blazing heat and luscious bays its not only going to be brilliantly hedonistic but a great source of inspiration. With any upscale travel though theres always trepidation, reports of police officers being decapitated by drug traffickers is always a worry, finding the British embassy is a must upon arrival, home territory, solid terra-firma where people can see clearly that decapitation just isnt proper.

Now, I have my cobra snake skin wallet and boots, ultra lightweight laptop, quad-band XDA, vintage Gieves & Hawkes bowtie and all manner of other vital travel accessories. The time if fast approaching, after months of lacklustre movement and waiting, now all its going to take is a brief montage of work and exercise including many Martial Arts classes before Im 32,000 feet above sea level travelling at close to 500 miles an hour to the great Mexican city of Acapulco.

Its been a tough few months for a man who without a plan is almost utterly lost. Deciding I needed to quell my alcohol dependency was a hard decision as well, for the first time since my adult life I spent a month completely sober, not many of my close friends believed I reached this auspicious goal, but I did, its that simple to recline from drinking heavily if you know your life is going to waste. I had a panel drug test that medical professionals bought it https://www.countrywidetesting.com/products/1-panel-quickscreen-cotinine-nicotine-dipcard and they say that I needed to stop drinking or else my body will fail, so I worked really hard to stop drinking. Thanks to them now I have my drinking under control, in light of the circumstances that lead to this happening my belief in fate is as strong as ever. I did however have help off a special someone, she knows who she is.

I will say adieu now, I have technology to prepare, I will be posting regular blogs from Acapulco when I arrive in late July, keep an eye out. Your friend,

Jack

23/02/2006 - I'M A GOD DAMN PHENOM! (From breadontoast.com)

Arh, hello there, I trust you’re well?

It’s been an outstanding eight or nine months, a cannon fired sledge ride though walls of dark whiskey, indecent prose and in places, twitching passion. Now breadontoast is back, my own shining corner of the internet to help me carry on this fateful adventure

I’m talking dramatically of course, alongside the excellent experiences I’ve had there has been the boring times too. Whilst the retail industry proves to be much more a pleasant experience than the catering one, it can be a little placid at times. Better that than burnt hands, late nights, cuts and crawling under hot cookers though. .

Anyway, enough of this, I’m in no mood to give anyone an any more detailed account of my life over recent times than that it’s been fucking excellent, I had a down spell that lasted approximately 72 hours, things are moving a head with speed and accuracy as always and a dramatic change will be happening soon.

Leave a message if you’re so kind or add me on myspace, www.myspace.com/fervour

Adieu maestro, until next time.

Jack

27/11/2005 - ...And I mean seriously, motherfucker... (From Myspace profile)

Everything is progressing at an extreme rate of knots, it’s been about 6 months since I left uni and in that time I’ve become a regular and praised contributor on a national music magazine, Zero Magazine and a regular with another fashionista (yuk) type mag Disorder Magazine as well as setting up my own local fanzine Under Magazine to the love and admiration of our local scene.

Journalism seriously fucking rocks I can’t tell you, and this is good fucking stuff. It's starting to take on a real form, a feverous take on new music, absolute dedication, driven with passion. There’s no fucking around here, no time for it, no time at all, it’s filled with grit and spice and will hopefully give you an insight to the band I’m covering.

I’ve attached a recent article I’m particularly proud of, perhaps if you like it you can leave a comment or something.

Anyway, a quick pic of the mag and I will say adieu maestro, until next time.

If you want a copy of the mag request on the website, i do send abroad.

www.undermagazine.co.uk

Innocence Dies -

As the 21st century squeezes the last drops of innocence out of the body of youth it seems fitting that youth itself should be playing the backing track. Meet Kill The Young.

Tom, Olly and Dylan Gorman, three brothers in their early twenties who kick out a music that corresponds exactly with the disorientation and panic felt by so many young people in today’s stylised, fast paced, ultra exclusive and class divided as ever British culture. Not strictly a concept band, their thoughts on the loss of innocence and the corruption of youth comes from, as guitarist and lyricist Tom says, “The ability to take a step back.”

"It is more of having a strong point to put across rather than a political agenda” he continues. “It’s not as if we have had or, do have a specific idea saying, ‘this is what we stand for and this is what we are going to do’, because you can get stuck in a rut doing that sort of thing and we’ve always wanted to explore different avenues of music. The name was and still is to catch peoples’ attention, we do believe in it and what it stands for”.

That stance, portrayed by their name and their first single, The Origin of Illness, is full of the passion and gusto that the 21st century is kicking out of the young. Bassist Dylan elaborates on their perceptions, “It’s something we do feel strongly about but, it’s never something we’ve had to deal with personally because we’ve had such cool parents. We’ve looked at how all these kids are growing up so fast, so young. You see these people that are forced by way of financial situations or pressure off their parents, or whatever, into doing something they don’t want to do whether it is university or jobs. Kill The Young is that essence of youth being lost, because people aren’t able to do the things they want to do or enjoying youth”.

Let us not forget about the music, it’s rampant and eager, with twinges of everything from Echo and the Bunny Men to Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth. Any band that has played together for over seven years and performed in excess of 300 gigs will have a bond, but add to that mix the fact these guys are brothers and there’s the definite possibility of something special being produced. “Dylan and Olly come up with more actual tunes and riffs than I do” starts Tom when explaining the writing process of this literal band of brothers.

“Once those are sorted though I’ll sit down and think and think. I’ll take a long time to write down what will articulate perfectly the idea I’m wanting to say. No one track is half hearted or rushed and they’re usually quite personal to me. We’re not specifically a concept band with a theme that we write the music around, I mean we have a point behind the name and such but I don’t think we set out to change minds. If someone takes something from the music then great, I think different people will put different interpretations on what we play.”

Dylan continues “None of the songs on the album are about love or anything like that, it’s all about Tom and how he feel’s, it is some very personal stuff which is often quite dark. The music isn’t so overly personal that people will be like ‘what the hell is he singing about though.’”

As we sit around a cold table in Manchester train station on a dark and typically wet night it might be easy to see why they’re perhaps the polar opposite to a band like the Beach Boys. There’s no sparkling 1960’s America here, just, as Dylan says, “People rushing to get pissed, who can drink the fastest and how much, you know, we do a bit of that ourselves, but that’s just the way life is in these small towns like the one we grew up in”. A bleak backdrop that has provided them with the fodder to create their raw and emotive music.

Finding this sound was not an easy feat, seven years of gigging and constant development though has landed them with a package they have the uppermost of confidence in. “Other people being in the band helped us grow as musicians and become stronger in the end, because we realised that it’s either going to be us three or it was not going to happen. We couldn’t have it any other way, it’s the key really, it’s probably why we’ve written so many songs” explains drummer Olly.

It has been more than just a brotherly connection and ability to pick up on each other’s smallest peculiarities that has brought them to this ignition ready point, their path brought them to legendary producer Dimitri Tikovoi. After being signed to Discograph records the company decided to bring in the producer, famous for his works with everyone from Placebo to Goldfrapp, to have a listen. “They flew him over from France to our tiny little practice room” begins Olly. “We played a few songs for him, chatted a bit and started on about the album, our ideas and how to bring them to reality. See, something that always evaded us with studio recordings was this great live sound we have, Dimitiri was really able to bring this out by getting us to play live but, in the studio so to speak. We had people brought in to play in front of, he got us playing all together to really bring out that energy and passion rather than us playing separately and then layering it. We loved it and really think it worked.” Dylan continues the description seamlessly, “…And although it maintains this raw edge and special feel about it, after we had done all the over dubs and polished up the guitars and things like that it does sound totally professional, it’s not too raw that it just sounds amateur”.

Now it seems they’re set, they have the money and people behind them to bring their impressive sound and keen attitude to an ever hungry public. Not a band to gorge on, no doubt they will be drip fed, whatever it takes just as long as they don’t fall off into nothingness, that would be a travesty.

06/10/2005 - UNDER PRESSURE (From breadontoast.com)

Northwich is a peculiar place. As just another northern town that makes up the borough of Vale Royal you would be forgiven for overlooking it when searching for youthful music full of gusto and fervour.

Don’t be too keen to miss us out though, here in my home town I’ve begun to scratch the surface of something special, a local scene that is rife with more than just teen angst and a lack of things to do. There are bands, dozens of them, talented youngsters that have always been here since I was a kid. Now with my new magazine, Under, I’m hoping to give them the chances large city bands get every day as they’re featured in fanzines and on dozens of websites for people everywhere to read about.

It’s that something more than a 30 word filler in the local paper. We wanted total coverage with reviews, interviews and features, a professionally designed and printed publication, produced with the same passion that the music has. Two issues down and the hard work is paying off, with a budget for 1100 copies the full colour 40 page magazine is now out, local businesses are beginning to take us seriously and the scene is loving it.

It’s no mean feat, content is spilling out from all corners of this borough with three local bands getting signed in as many weeks, but money is what counts and the ever pounding question of where to get it from. Luckily sweet talking people is, unlike playing music, an area I have always seemed to excel at, but who needs it? We’ve got an amazing product, add that to a keen attitude and absolute professionalism and the advertisers are almost chasing us.

When I say ‘we’ I mean the small group of young and intense writers that the magazine is also working for. Acting as a platform for these young adults to get their portfolio started was another key aim of the magazine and now, with a team of 10 and growing, that grand notion of total coverage is beginning to become a reality.

We will eventually see come January if the advertisers still have that fire in their bellies and the eagerness to carry on feeding us with money. There’s so much more to do and luckily I have a few more ideas hidden away yet. It feels like I’m hooked up to a generator, the 18 hour days are frying my nerves but it’s exciting and fast paced and everything else a job should be at a young age. I’ve got my own magazine, it’s a quality product, I know because I would read it. If you can break off the edge yourself and find something just as cool give it a go, it’s an outstanding feeling.

Your friend, Jack

If you would like a copy of Under Magazine request one at the website:

www.undermagazine.co.uk

29/03/2005 - The Drunken Buccaneer (From Myspace profile)

Things are quite manic insane crazy at the moment. I feel like in a past life I was a buccaneer, my present state being some sort of frenzied mishap in the fabric of time, allowing me to retain the passion of adventure. I’m sick of Lincoln to the back of my teeth, I need to escape, get far away. I’m thinking of jumping on the Trans-Siberian express and travelling 9000km to the eastern most point of the Russian continent, or perhaps a trip to Acapulco to write my book? I feel over come to explore the caves beneath the Yucatan peninsular, an unknown world on a planet that fears anything uncharted or indefinite. But alas this is all on the backburner, I am quite crestfallen at the fact I have yet another 2 months here. Soon it will be over, and in the mean time? Maintain and dominate…that’s the key.

04/03/2005 - Pressure and Ice (From Myspace profile)

After recently taking a forward step in my musical tastes I’ve come across a variety of modern day avant-garde bands, which, I am thoroughly enjoying. Years of being relatively dogmatic are changing, I’m developing my musical scope and learning at the same time. My hunger to write a screen play has taken a step forward as well, I now in unison with the yearning to write I feel the lust to move to Acapulco. The place is shrouded in mystery to me, I’ve never met anyone from there and after reading up on it I ache to see what the large harbour city surrounded by cliffs has to offer. My time in Lincoln is quickly drawing to an end, the times they are a-changin as Bob Dylan once said. I’m trickily balancing the need to continuously build my portfolio whilst maintaining a high performance with my academics and still have a degree of gonzo incidents. Only two months to go now however, not a problem.

02/03/2005 - RIP HST, THE DEATH OF A WARRIOR (From Breadontoast.com)

I’ve carried my copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with me everywhere I’ve been for the last four years, over three continents and tens of thousands of miles. I watched the film on the recommendation of a friend, I read the book after some research on the internet and my life changed. I was overcome with a passion and fervour for extreme life, the type Hunter lived. I raced through Fear and Loathing for the first time when I was on holiday with my friends in Malta. The country was going through a scorching heat wave at the time that would send the day temperatures soaring well over 100 Fahrenheit. We’d sleep until just before the sun set, and then, as the evening temperature began to mellow in the twilight hours, we would go down to the pool and sit in the shade. Hydrating from the previous night’s debauchery and getting ready to do it again.

It was fantastic, the perfect time to read the anarchy of Hunter. We’d binge drink the night away, convincing former East Bloc country folk that we were magicians with a penchant for skateboarding and late night dips in the Mediterranean Sea. Not a care in the world “I’m Michael Hopperfield buddy! You better believe it! The half brother of David Copperfield, I taught that man everything he knows!” and they’d believe us. As the numbers dwindled and the sun began to rise we’d grab our wheels and speed down the melted smooth tarmac roads, the cool sea air freshening our party-torn bodies.

I turned 18 there, the loss of innocence whilst reading HST. We brawled with amphetamine addled swine in the main square of the town. An old man with a large tattoo of a shark on his torso and sun drenched skin told us he was a pirate and kissed me on my forehead. Amazing times, total freedom and absolute optimism before September 11, and this was only four years ago, incredible to think really. I came back and knew I had a mission, a path of domination was set out for me and it’s been absolutely necessary to maintain ever since. The chance to pause and reflect has been just out of my grasp from that point until now, Hunters death has made me take the time to do so. My paper trail leads directly back to those still vivid nights in Malta, now I’m here about to finish my degree in journalism four years on and just as ferocious as ever. Balls to the wall, aiming straight and dominating all, my mind is set and I will succeed. And remember, as Hunter said “The crazy never die!”

06/02/2005 - Kiss me, I'm a pirate (From Myspace profile)

I have the indelible feeling these days that I need to write a screenplay; unfortunately I neither have the time or the mental resources to start putting any ideas on paper. My sobriety is having its affects, I’m beginning to regain some lost power having been sober for a week now. I am back in my University town of Lincoln, which is probably the least inspiring place I have ever been. The cathedral is gothic and majestic, reigning like a paused hand of God at the top of the plateau, but it’s just not really my scene. Things are progressing at an abnormal rate at the moment in general. My writing is coming on leaps and bounds, continually gaining praise from my peers and I’m starting to get involved with some excellent websites to showcase my work. I’m also very close to securing some exceptionally cool interviews. My website is finally finished, thanks to the fantastic guy that shall only be known as Meta, and I’m going to start freelancing my work to national publications. The next month is going to be engulfing and I’m sure exhilarating, time to get stuck in at every angle and come out on top.

27/01/2005 - Big impressions make big waves. (From Myspace profile)

I wrote this a few weeks back after the Tsunami, I thought it appropriate to put on here.

Spoon fed their pain.

The Asian tsunami is a natural disaster of biblical proportions, a real wrath of God event the likes of which have not been seen in recent history, a call for solidarity among men to save lives and do good. But exactly a year before 43,000 died in Iran, why has everybody forgotten about the plight of the almost 100,000 left homeless? Because it is no longer packaged, bubble wrapped and brought to us for our daily consumption. Bono no longer cares, he’s moved on, and in our useless disposable, consumer society that means we don’t care. Humanities plight as a whole is not something to be given on a monthly basis, edited, stripped clean and brought to our TV screens. It’s easy to forget in our fickle, MTV, speed junkie world the suffering of millions across the world on a daily basis. Low levels of response to the aids crisis means 70 million people will die as a consequence within the next 20 years, that’s almost 10,000 a day for the next two decades. Poverty, contaminated water, war, famine, continual suffering on a global scale, just because the cameras are not there does not mean it has stopped happening. We’ve all got access to the worlds most powerful news medium ever; the Internet and that means there is no longer an excuse to forget. Misery across the globe is not something we should only be concerned about when the media decides we should. It is always there and always will be, exercise some moral fortitude and remember.

23/01/2005 - A toast, to those who are about to drink (From Myspace profile)

My first blog entry…hungover but animated with anticipation. I leave for Lincoln tomorrow, back to hedonism, debauchery and everything else that goes along with being a rampant gonzo student in the early 21st century. Last night was one of the finest nights I’ve had in some time, sharing close air with old friends in the winter night. Catching up, drinking gallons of gin, singing old tunes and carefully analysing Salvador Dali with twisted soaked minds. Time to rest now, more lucid dreams, soaring in my own mind, flying to the brink and back again. Sometimes I wish I could sleep forever…but where would be the fun in that?

14/09/2004 - END OF DAYS (From breadontoast.com)

This is ultimately a trip in the name of fun, but for all the apprehension and paranoia it is at the end of the day a delve into potentially one of the most paranoid cities on earth. A physical experiment to see if all the hedonistic attributes have clung three years after the death of ignorance. Eyes are truly open now, closed minds still exist but they know what they are trying to block out. A fluid enemy ebbed under America’s doors and drove terror deep into an already savage and reckless society. It’s a known fact that New Yorkers drink more and take more drugs now than previous to 9/11 and depending on ones own boundaries and ideals of fun that can either be good or bad.

For an excessive brute like myself it has to be towards the good. But with the drink and drugs there comes the obvious depression, the need and distinct want to block out the realities smashing down around these city folk, but they do not seem depressed. A reasonable man may be willing to accept that New Yorkers are simply celebrating their freedom with more vigour and potency than before. The people I’ve met, the painters, publicists, DJ’s, rock bands and everything else in between seem to be emanating a few found confidence in their freedom an appreciation, no longer taking it for granted and it’s beautiful.

And it’s not as if the city doesn’t have an excuse, this was the pinnacle of what can be seen as the time of depression. In a democratic city the Republican Party decides to hold its national convention just days before the third anniversary 9/11. The inevitable protests ensued with or without reason employing both peaceful and violent means. If you weren’t protesting? Grab whatever you can, gobble it up or drink it down to get away from the harsh realities plastered all around…but these weren’t the reasons for all over-indulgence.

Stood outside a bar smoking a cigarette I asked a young man about how the city would be reacting on 9/11. “You know man” he replied “Everyone’s upset, but a lot of people also see it as a true reminder of our wonderful diversity, we’ve got it and we ain’t letting go” Good man I thought and cracked him on the back in a drunken alpha male type gesture. And it’s true; the kids are still running rampage full of life and intensity. After an initial 14 hour, $200 drink binge, a case of alcohol poisoning, severe cellular dehydration, hallucinations, 40 hours of sleep and the fleeing in absolute terror of 7 Japanese teenagers from the hostel room I was sharing with I was able to go out and truly absorb the city. It seemed subdued on the outside, but once I had looked hard enough and cracked the edges a little I found a pool of fun with broken filters. Nothing’s getting purified by our invisible enemy of terror and the governments relentless need for protection of the greater good. On the ground the vibrancy of youth lives on and is just debauched and extravagant as ever.

07/09/2004 RADICAL INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES - (From breadontoast.com)

In to the mist I head, stocked and prepped with a variety of whiskeys and a horde of cigarettes. My senseless fears of arrest in New York have been quashed some what by the fact my partner in sin has failed to materialize, no real concern however I can cause enough bedlam and disorder on my own. Obviously this is a trip in the name of fun in these paranoid times, anything else would be foolish, yet there is always that lingering concern of pure chaos.

There is definitely something that brings up great apprehension in oneself when looking at American domestic policy in these icy times. Adventures are fraught with fear of not only incarceration by outback Nazi police force types, but also all manner of fringe sectors of law enforcement that roam constantly with predatory impulses looking for anything out of the ordinary… the invisible threat of terror.

It’s always easy to argue that the well being of the collective has to be protected at all costs, even if that is at the expense of the individual and this certainly seems to be what is being preached at the moment. Border controls armed to the teeth searching, roaming, looking through and interrogating whole bus loads of people 500 miles away from any border, “Our jurisdiction is the entire U.S” one of them told me, indeed it is. What if I wasn’t carrying my passport? “It was taken officer, that’s right, a group of crazed monsters after my Pineal gland, ready to bore a whole in my head…I begged them, said I was autistic and it was wrecked from birth, so they made off with my wallet and passport…” Slam! No doubt, none of that back chat, straight into some sort of terrorist holding cell to be prepped for radical interrogation techniques.

It’s the way of the US at the moment, constitutional rights getting broken at every corner. It’s unlikely the rent-a-cop security employed to search and scan everyone getting onto greyhound busses, for example, really know they’re infringing on the natural civil rights of all of these people, the 4th Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” ‘Probable cause’ I think is the phrase that comes into discussion at this point, “Our intent is to root out and discover possible terrorists and to protect the greater good”, indeed, that seems to give these rent-a-cops the right to search anyone, well, where are the individuals these days?

This greater good, the constant observation of the herd, intense policing to keep order completely over looks the individual and it’s deeply worrying. But of course constitutional rights have always been up in the air being fought for by wealthy medical malpractice law firm lawyer after notoriety and ‘justice’, the more things change the more things stay the same. If dealing with birth injury cases, a medical malpractice law firm in Maryland is your best choice. There are also improvements like the invention of this subpoena managenent software to provide an end-to-end solution for courts, prosecutor and public defenders. Yet this invisible enemy of today encroaches on every man woman and child, the nightmare is becoming a reality. The grim writings of authors about ‘big brother’ and such, these unimaginable dictatorships controlling and governing by that most powerful of authorities ‘fear’ is unwinding before our very eyes.

Traces are already apparent, tube station walls plastered with warnings of vigilance “report anything suspicious immediately” breeding a generation of paranoid swine ready to turn you in at the drop of a hat. It is early days yet but the disgusting foundations are steadily being put in place for an all out hell. But fuck this misery, it’s only one potential fate of world politics at the moment, and focus on laws.
.

My trip through Chicago went by rather uneventfully. Perfect for the rest and recuperation that was needed after the excess’s of resort life. Five days of solid relaxation and preparation for the heaviness of New York city with a few whiskeys here and there, but for medicinal purposes only. One curious day I had my palms read by a mystic hippy sort, disheveled and looking like she had been living off leaves and berries for too long her skin was sagged and spotted from sun erosion. Her predictions were interesting, that of long life and confidence and also the premonition that I will be a father to over four children.

What I should have done is packed her mouth full of shit and taped it shut. “Stop living this life of deviancy and decadence” she wailed, I scratched my head lent backwards and smiled. The next night a friend and I went down town to the 96th floor of the Hancock building and drank $20 a time Chivas Regals whilst listening to a double bass, piano duet and looking down upon the vast and fantastic industrial might of the United States. My time has yet to come I thought, if I stopped now who knows what deadend mess I may end up in. Indeed, I’m young and fruitful, excess is my middle name and as I swirled the golden brown scotch in my hand I was thinking to myself that I shouldn’t expect anything less from N.Y City. I feel the experience of the true endorphin highway is coming and it needs to be embraced and in a true professional manner. Intensity boiling up inside me like a self-constructed horde of Attila the Hun or Vlad “The Impaler” Dracula…It’s about fucking time.

31/8/2004 - WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? (From breadontoast.com)

I left the great north woods of American with sadness pouring out of my heart “Don’t leave, governor,” they cried, the Polish and Americans alike, but I had to it was imperative in order to increase my worldly knowledge and wisdom. My final days on the resort were just as excessive as usual, break dancing and smashing glasses at the Bowling alley followed by mass consumption of vodka. For my final night we had bought around three liters between five of us and strived to the early hours to consume it all, tales of fervor and passion came spilling out from all nationalities in typical 21st century style, all high powered nights on a mixture of amphetamine and drink followed into the dark by all manner of debauchery with swinging harlots.

And now I’m traveling, troubled and crushed, herded like cattle with ‘air con’ in this horrific bus, the bloated woman next to me with no remorse continually spreading like melting butter spilling over her designated seating area invading my personal space. Drastic measures may have to be put into fruition I thought, feign an epileptic fit, uncover my terrible torets syndrome or some other horrific event, but the risk of getting thrown off the bus into the dead of night was too great, so I held my own, adjusted into the best fetal position I could muster and tried to sleep.

Waking up with a start in the morning sitting up and seeing all of these people sat around, young and old, each with their own mission and final destination I want to know their tired and drawn out life tales, Mexican, black, white, red Indian. Yet I have no time for such inquisitiveness at this particular point, as W.C Fields said, my travels are “fraught with eminent peril”, that being my concluding objective of arrival in New York.

The 5th largest armed force in the world is currently occupying the vast metropolis. Guarding the Grand Old Party against violent protest from over 800 different groups and of course the invisible threat of terrorism their hands are full. The world is coming apart at the seams before our very eyes. The death of the 90’s and the birth of this foul century is beginning to play out horrors not seen by our generation of spoilt little fuckers, and who is to blame? Governments, terrorists, ourselves? Unknown at the moment, take for instance Woodstock revisited in 99, this was a complete manifestation of the puerile existence we see today…Deaths, rapes, riots, the event burnt down and died in a cloud of foul disgust. An event that symbolized a new found freedom through experimentation with prophetic drugs and sex in the 60’s depicted in the 90’s how the youth culture felt, bored and violent.

Enough of this babble, we’re not bored any more are we? Just violent now, a unifying hatred against an invisible enemy, at least it’s some common ground for us on the downward spiral our generation is locked into. A generation of Americans that analysts predict will be the first to be poorer than the last, weird and frightening times for a cursed cohort of youth.

23/08/2004 - NIGHTMARE AT DOWS CORNER (From breadontoast.com)

Sitting and waiting, perched on my ebony swivel barstool staring out at the birch trees gently swaying in the wind I ask myself "Why are these trees oscillating in such a fashion?" I had been studying them for around 30 minutes and they had a distinctly un-natural flow to their movements, did it have something to do with the twisted mess a decrepit old barman left my head in last night? His inane ramblings trying to convince me his father designed and built the bouncing bomb?

What a swine, creeping up on me out of view crouched below the bar then jumping up and with an unstable landing grinning and spurting out "Why sir, is the earth not lob sided? Why does all the mining that take place not make the earth off kilter?"... Did that tired night really happen or did I collapse in a chemical induced coma where this nightmare night played out and upon waking up think it was all reality? No is the answer, how else would I explain the stacks of Dows Corner beer mats scattered all over my room and the huge amount of bloody mary stains all over my jeans and lumberjack shirt? It did happen and now I’m left sitting here with rotten guts watching trees slowly trickle over them like burning candles only never getting smaller.

A sort of self activated hallucination, for which I’ve thought about seeking medical advice but Ive always enjoyed being able to manipulate an objects size and shape at will by simply staring at it. However, I’m still finding it hard to deal with the jagged memories of this mutant bar tender. Leaning over the bar staring with his sagging old face that housed the eyes of a young man, on fire and steaming with eagerness, and in a pace that did not match the old rumbling voice he began quickly saying. "I borrowed a friends car once...I parked it near a cliff and as I got out and shut the door the damn thing rolled straight over, 80 feet free fall landing square on its wheels in two foot of water, the bugger still worked though I tells ya! Oh yes we drove it to the dance that very night!" And then he burst into a roaring laughter that would tare the skin off a small childs face.

Jesus wept, I remember him pulling out a set of handcuffs "Put these on and then try to get out of them, it can be done don’t worry about that! Ill give you a free beer if you can!" But by this time my brain had had enough, it was clear to see this barman was a very rare breed, an ageing process that was 20 years too early the brain was still active and curious but the body was old and decrepit, torn and withered. The man had to be dealt with though and with a definite authority, his eagerness could soon turn on me and so I blurted back "Listen!" he choked for a second and took a slight nervous wobble. "Id like that free beer anyway, it’s your choice" I shrugged "I could have you locked up for being a paranoid schizophrenic. I have complete diplomatic immunity arranged with the American Attorney General in exchange for allowing the U.S to build military bases on my fathers lands around the remote pacific islands of Micronesia, all it takes is a call to my lawyer for accidents and other issues, which I found at http://www.gosimon.com/limited-tort-exceptions.html"

"Whoa! Hold about there buddy, lets not get so uptight around here jeeez you’ll have people talking" He replied as he passed me the free beer, there was a clear-cut change in his attitude as if he had been threatened with being locked up for being a mentalist previously and yet managed to wriggle free of the noose that was coming down on him. The poor bastard I thought, his curiosity was his ultimate doom, if he had the brains to match the inquisitiveness he could own a chain of these bars not being threatened by foreigners under false pretences with incarceration for life.

We were left alone for the remainder of the night but it only took another 30 minutes before the barman was too much for human eyes to handle. We stood up and as my friend and I left the barman was attempting to get out of the handcuffs himself, struggling and twisting, maybe he was telling the truth before and it wasn’t some sort of crude attempt to chain me up, knock me out and feed me to his pigs. But I wasn’t in the mood for finding out so my friend and I left like teenage vampires stepping out into the crisp cold night with total confidence and the distilled brazen eagerness of an old man.

13/08/2004 - Lust, Drunk, Purge (From breadontoast.com)

My delicate and pure foreign lover has been gone for over a week now and my lust for her touch and flawless spine has not dwindled. Her departure was agonising, leaving my heart feeling as if it had been trampled by elephants wearing stilettos, sharp and merciless puncturing leaving me weak and dishevelled.

Very new feelings passing through and over me. Love, in its purest form, was always a foreign and rather abstract concept to myself. Obviously the love I share for my family and friends is as pure as freshly fallen snow but I always found it hard to believe such powerful emotions and attachments could be brought upon myself in regards to a girl.... Perhaps my fears of being some sort of highbred nymphomaniac sociopath with little or no capacity to love or sustain a relationship and at the same time having almost no remorse for past partners is unfounded.

Of which I’m glad, although my unrepentant lust for wanting her back is terrifying on many levels, if not only for the fact that this startling new emotion has got such a fierce grip on me that I dread to think how I may escape it, but it is a much warmer feeling than thinking of oneself as an ice cold sex demon. Ho ho ho...but then again, its early days yet.

However, now I’m left here in this oblique holiday resort deep in the north of Americas great forest and lake lands with all manner of mutants and fiends having to take my solace in heavy binge drinking, the occasional smoking of narcotics and relentless golfing.. not necessarily in that order but often at the same time.

Though this whole filthy set of circumstances can be brought down to the singularity of idiots and intellectuals alike coming together at the pinnacle of their being when stuck in such a god forsaken surroundings to achieve one goal and that is to escape from reality.

A lifestyle caked in boredom can be a terrible existence. We are a social breed of animal with a constant and unforgiving need for sensation, new or old, and monotony and boredom try to quash these urges, for some reason only known to the great magnet, to make us into Mongoloid effigies of the the pure thrill and fun seeking creatures we are and we also lo ve Dog Walking Company in hoboken for walking our dogs. Unfortunately this appetite for sensation can sometimes bring out the beast in all of us.

If you want your pet to maintain his health and vitality for as long as possible, daily wellness cbd for dogs & cats to help improve their overall wellbeing. Learn more at https://pethealthcbd.com. While you can give CBD in forms like oil drops or pills, your cat might like in best in treat form. They'll love chowing down on any one of these 11 CBD for cats.

You’ve heard of drugs like heroin and morphine. As narcotics, they are useful for, and infamous for, causing a brief burst of euphoria, followed by powerfully drowsy and lethargic feelings in their users. What is detox like with suboxone? Buprenorphine is a partial opioid antagonist. This means that it can cause effects like that of other narcotics (it binds to the same receptors in the brain as heroin and methadone do), but not to the same extent. The euphoria is less pronounced and not as habit-forming (it takes between 24 and 60 hours for the body to get rid of half a dose of buprenorphine, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration); therefore, there is a lower potential for abuse, and the withdrawal effects are relatively milder compared to those of other opioids like heroin.

For instance the high levels of brutality and dread experienced in low level income communities such as mining towns not only stem from economic standings intertwined with high levels of testosterone and natural competitive instincts of man in general but also the implicit want and need to feel something, even if that sensation is pain. Maybe people with a high level of testosterone, took some red boost,there are many ways to naturally boost testosterone levels, such as exercising regularly, eating healthy and balanced meals, getting enough sleep and reducing stress levels. Supplementation, such as taking vitamin D3, zinc and magnesiumcan also be beneficial.

The humdrum and harsh realities of working in the pits not only breeds a want for escape, which is often brought about by alcohol, but the need for feeling alive, to be brilliant, spectacular, just for a second...the thrill of the fight.

Luckily our close knit social gathering her at the Ross Teal Lake Lodge has not degraded into all out savagery yet, but for such a small quarry of humans that we have gathered here I am amused by the amounts of alcohol and narcotics consumed, especially whilst remaining completely ambiguous to our senior staff. However, smoking opium and playing golf can only be tolerated for so long, in-depth conversations, with the Polish contingent in particular, tend to keep my brain from waxing over completely. In-depth however, does not mean intelligent, the language barrier often dictates to which extent a group of people can converse and regularly our discussions are simply anecdotal, about drinking, drugs and other general shenanigary.

My good Polish friend Woitech, who happens to be a fine example of a red blooded Pole, once put it to me straight whilst enduring a late night spiced rum session he leans back in his chair saying "Oh come on my friend, Poland can be a dangerous place to live" as I eyed him curiously he began to speak in a more serious tone.

"I was out camping with my friends one time when in the early hours we were woken up by what sounded like a group of people...When I came out of then tent there were three guys stood around all looking high as hell on amphetamine, I grabbed a smouldering piece of wood and began hitting one of them with it but he just kept coming"

By this point there was a definite fear in his eyes from unearthing such terrible memories, and he carried on.

"It was like Frankenstein’s monster, I must have hit him ten or eleven times with this big piece of on fire wood before he ran off into the woods with his friends like a pack of injured wolves, something Ill never forget"

And that is usually the extent to which our conversations go, but generally I’m not bothered by such tales of violence, stupidity and excess as they are as much part of the learning curve as any other type of education whether it be formal or sitting down in front of your parents to learn their wisdom. The ability to converse on all levels with all manner of people is not something learned over night, but is definitely necessary for a full and rounded life experience.

And on a final note...Jade is ace

24/07/2004 - The Boss Woman (From breadontoast.com)

My boss, a terrible, monstrous, lunatic glutton that attempts to distill fear into her employees in an ill planned scheme to try and controll them best she can, fear is after all the ultimate authority...The outcome is in fact that nothing more than contempt and pity for her are bred in the fresh minds of the young foreign staff.

******* **** (name deleted at recommendation of lawyer), this awful wrech of a human, with a face of a bulldog chewing on shards of broken glass as well as being border line obeese, has such an ill grasp of social etiquette and understanding that she often comes across as a complete sociopath. Thinking through anything before she says it or indeed acts it out is a distant and foeign concept...Yet these sociopathic tendencies could possibly be delt with if it here not for her foul arrogence and inner opinion that she is in fact always right.

These two terrible traits combined along with her beast like appreance prove to make for some rather difficult situations. Often her completely off the wall logic astounds me to such an extent that during the course of a conflict I am left completely speechless. Trying in my own mind to grasp her reasoning in order to retort my brain seizes up. In trying to comprehend her twisted and completely backward way of thinking she induces some unheard of reset mechanism within my brain, three words flashing over and over "Abort, Retry, Fail" in my preiferal vision as she rants like a pathetic angst filled teenager whod been kicked in the head as a child whilst trying to milk a fucking bull.

During one moderately warm day for instance I was filling my California Inovations heat resistant 20 fluid-Oz water bottle to carry around on its belt strap and drink when necessary. "Stop that!" she exclaims in her elocution lesson English accent

"I beleive you will work more efficiently if you take on lots of liquid before leaving for work then you do not have to carry around that bottle"

My brain stood still and my right eye began twitching slightly, her monstrous face making my eyes bleed whilst her fucking stupid, moronic logic made my mind prolapse. My entire skull felt as if it was collapsing in upon itself or being eaten rapidly by some flesh eating virus such as Necrotizing Faciitis. I finally came to as she was walking away and suggested

"If I do that I will become bloated and sick, its only a very small bottle and I put it down when Im working, plus if I do become thirsty again whilst Im out there it saves me having to walk back to the kitchen to restock and become bloated again"

"No" she replied simply and carried on walking. So to spite the wench I drank almost a gallon of water in under 10 minutes and went walking to do my menial job of trimming weeds. As predicted I was bloated and sickly and after 20 minutes or so stuck with a constant and urgent need to urinate. As I plodded around I could hear my stomach sloshing, like a office water cooler when someone brushes past it in a hurry. The beasts logic had done her no favours yet she was completely oblivious to her failings as a reasonable manager of human resouces.

Fuck her and her bad noise I thought as I walked back, trying to explain to her why the job was only half complete would only bring about further brain seziures from her lowly and confused logic. I expelled as much liquid as I could during the course of the early evening and after romping with my beautiful dancer girl drank gin and spiced rum heavily until the early morning giving no thought to any hangover I may have in the morning, I can work at a good pace on a hangover, but if she comes near me I thought, Im doomed.

17/07/2004 - Smoking Electricity (From breadontoast.com)

Female dancers are beautiful creatures, slender toned bodies often with an extraordinary ability for bending into hugely erotic positions...and this is no myth. During my stay at this abnormal resort deep in the heart of the great Northern Woods of America I have met a bewitching German girl called Natalie, her sculptured body is truly a work of art, if i could paint still life I would spend years studying her body and blissfully putting it on canvass.

We have been having a fantastic time together. One night the moon was full and bright in the sky and I suggested we should go out to the golf course and run around naked "wonderful idea" she said, so after gathering some supplies, rum and a blanket, we left our dank cabin for the fresh splendour of the course. As the moon shone down on her pert chest and firm round buttocks I couldn’t help myself and we romped like wild animals on the 12th green. After we finished we lay side by side holding hands drinking rum and looking at the full moon, as I sat up to take a swig of my drink a young Buck walked calmly past his ebony coat gently shining in the light of the moon the elegant creature not even noticing us laying 20 feet away still and embracing. He strolled off into the woods and we fell asleep under a blanket until the dew started to settle and it became too cold to lay even with the warming heat of each other’s bodies. It was a fantastic night but alas the moon has disappeared now, the orbital path allowing us just one perfect night of angelic silver light across our unified bodies.

She will leave soon and I fear I will be in great trouble, the weirdness and unpredictability of living in a tight and repetitive employment and social situation has to be dealt with in a solid diplomatic manner. Lumber a given number of no more than 20 young people together in a compact arena of alcohol and boredom and a chain reaction begins that has the potential to explode frightening speed. Generally its notable that people will forgo a degree of individuality, heart and spirit in order to maintain good vibes and not extenuate the speed of this reaction, why make your life harder and more jagged than it already is? No one appreciates other people talking about him or her behind their back.

Indeed, the avid fascination with terrible reality TV shows in this foul decade revolves centrally around these close, intimate and unpredictable social settings, which bring upset, disgrace and personal horror for the participants. Its common knowledge that when people are packed and herded like swine brutal reactions will occur often over the most trivial of matters. The only true way to deal with this is to hit the weirdness head on, a fool will say, "sit back governor, relax, take a load off, let them deal with their own horrors", this is an inept school boy approach. A difficulty left to clear itself up may bring the two or more involved into a closer bonding than before they started, perhaps they had no bonding and now they have a mutual appreciation and respect for each other and where are you left? On the outside, with potentially ugly repercussions bareing down on yourself. Becoming involved is often the best thing one can do, being the middle man is generally a frustrating and unacceptable position for most people, only a honed social mind, largely from previous experience, can deal with the continued ugliness of both parties attempting to get and destroy one another though yourself in the correct manner, on the edge diplomacy is necessary to resolve the situation whilst allowing yourself to maintain a position of high standing. Only previous experience can fully prepare oneself for the manner of shenanigans that happens in a place like this the weak will perish at the bottom of the social hierarchy like the lame wolf of the pack.

I once talked to a one armed biker who smoked electricity in a terrible pit of a bar where the walls would sweat and the people had very few teeth, but so what? Fuck him, this monster could not prepare me for these confined social quarters, he could not teach me how to maintain a high social standing… only experience, get that straight, write it down and eat the paper, but asimilate this, life is about experience, get as much of it as you can.

I’d been here no more than 72 hours before this life experience came into fruition. After a heavy binge drink of Wild Turkey and tequila I decided to sleep on the floor, my back was still stiff from all the flying i had done in the previous days and I thought a solid surface would help straighten out my spine. I was meditating heavily in order to control stomach convulsions and a rotating brain that I assumed were from the terrible mix of tequila, whisky, beer and wine when I heard suspicious noises coming from the couch no more than 10 feet away. I remembered the room was calmly lit with wall mounted lamps and that a quick glance may help confirm my premonition that a couple were romping. In a swift Ninja style move, completely inaudible, my belief was affirmed, there was indeed a couple cavorting on the couch, why not?

As far as they were concerned I was an unconscious mess on he floor, a pile of liquefied flesh incapable of causing any ugliness that may have arose if I was able to jump up and perhaps grab the 4ft 20lbs fibre glass Musky fish sculpture hanging on the wall directly above my head and started swinging wildly in a fit of drunken hysteria, but alas I was incapable of such acts. So they continued to frolic, as they did I fell back into my meditative state and slipped into a deep sleep.

In the following days there was a definite sense of guilt and ugliness in the air on the resort, an acute social mind can pick up on such fine details and all of my receptors were working with 100% efficiency, the outer layers of the brain sensing minute changes in air pressure when standing next to someone due to a change in even the most trivial of things such as posture. As the situation transpired the romping couple were not a couple, they were simply victims tot he god of drunken passion, both having partners and this solitary act of fervour had set the chain reaction of at lightening speed. Bad vibes all around in this finely woven fabric of human emotion and social interaction, but one must maintain, there is really no choice, steering clear will cause a definite shift in attitude towards yourself, often for ill and in this regard your life may become very difficult, the lame wolf is eaten by scavengers looking for something to pick dry to keep themselves from falling, obnoxious swine always trying to get the upper hand in the hierarchical social structure that inevitably develops in such situations.

Sharp whit and fast thinking can quickly create a position for yourself as a person to which someone can confide in, trust and confidence allows their guts to spill and a porous mind soaking up all with emotion will allow oneself to get hold of and maintain in these weird and unpredictable social environments.

As well as honing my social abilities ive been establishing my skills of vehicle maneouvering. This capability will always, I feel, hold you in good stead for a plethora of situations where you may rely on only certain parts of ones brain in order to survive. Normally the capacity to drive a golf cart efficiently should not be extenuated to life or death skills, however, it’s a good base to start on.

Some people have suggested to me alcohol, marijuana and all other sorts of drugs rather than impairing their ability to drive they are heightened giving them some sort of meta-awareness otherwise clouded when totally sober, however, as is the typical case sobriety is the best policy, I myself am one of the latter. Nevertheless in the misshaped state of a hangover driving a golf cart seems to become easier, more accurate, faster and more precise. My hangovers seem to allow my inner brain to take over the more developed outer layers of the brain that take such a hammering during a heavy drinking binge. The fine primordial brain used by warrior cave men to fight off sabre tooth tigers and such, giving lightening fast reactions without even having to think, if that is, one has the energy.

Powerful visual signals from the outside beamed directly into the centre of the brain via the retina and optical cords giving often over exaggerated yet controllable signals to the limbs, this is why for instance, i seem to be able to avoid collisions and accidents whilst driving after a terrible drinking session yet whilst sober I continually drive carts into ditches and wooded areas a bear would have difficulty navigating. If you know someone who's in a accident trial, utah's best attorney can help him/her. For more information, call 801-362-9996.

Feeling unconfident in a hungover state is a flaw I feel, maintain confidence, allow the deep inner mind to do the work in the best way it feels will keep you alive by assimilating the vast visual and audio information before you and conducting your limbs in the appropriate manner, even when you still don't have the Holoplot audio services... it will not fail you.

12/06/2004 - Hello from the land of the free (From breadontoast.com)

After arriving in this primary stronghold of capitalism I’ve been relatively inactive aside from drinking beer and crashing golf carts.

The flight over was an eight hour delve into the life and tribulations of a 72 year old German American called Herbert, if I had the time and patience I could give you some fantastic details about Herb’s life to date, including a vast plethora of family related facts, after the hours I sat next to Herb and gradually got more and more drunk I took on board enough information to write a small biography I even know his family traveled over to America in 1948 and his son last year grossed half a million dollars from his computer business, but alas, I will spare you in case you as me start trying to search for the Kerosene, unsure whether to burn yourself or in fact to burn him, or in your case to flame your computer.

After arriving on camp and cracking open my duty free Wild Turkey I quickly relaxed into the fantastically friendly atmosphere, for the most part everyone is brilliant, and I’m having a good amount of fun. After the second night of a massive tequila binge the third day was a terrible mess, having my first accident in the golf carts we drive around constantly, however, my cat like reactions and Spiderman senses did turn what could have been a major collision into a small bump with another car, my lesson has been learnt and I will be binge drinking tequila and driving golf carts backwards at excessive speeds sometime again soon.

I have a mission to accomplish so I must leave.

Love Jack

01/06/2004 - Welcome (From breadontoast.com)

his site is now up and running featuring the writings and general shenanigans of the Drunken Baron, Jack Rawstone. Please feel free to leave messages in regards to what you have read and what you think as thoughts are always appreciated.

The site will be gradually added to over the course of the following weeks, keep an eye for future articles, interview, reviews, pictures and such. At the moment the site is quite bare, with articles lacking pictures but this will all be resolved later on.

Regards,

Jack