SHE'S GONNA BLOW!

FUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!

Some people. Jesus. Fucking Energy Vampires who just want to drain me dry of every last scrap of soul and spirit. I'm sure it isn't aimed at me, directly, but I feel I'm getting drained nonetheless.

See, this all goes to Facebook.com. I use it to keep up with friends, perve over girls' profiles and all the other things that Facebook is useful for. It's a handy little window on the world.

 Now, Things aren't amazing for me. I have it worse than some, but far better than others. I shan't go into this here. I used to post the occasional emo status, as everyone else does around the place. Then I decided to challenge myself. Instead of the rut I was in, I would just post neutral to positive statuses. If i ever felt the need to have a moan about things, I'd just post something ridiculous - A daft random movie quote, some quippy one-liner or just what the Met Office says the weather will be. If I couldn't think of anything nice to say, I just didn't say anything and logged off Facebook. This has been going extraordinarily well for me and by forcing myself to be happy, well, I've actually had some fun and started enjoying life.

BUT the Energy vampires are lurking in the shadows...



The main one, whom we shall call "The Queen Of The Damned Depressing", is an old friend. Sure, she's not having a good time of it lately. BUT, Every Single Fucking Time I log into FB, there it is, her latest status update, Bitching and moaning about fuck my lifey type nonsense. About fifty times a fucking day. Moaning about how nobody will ever love her and how she may as well be dead. JESUS! Nobody wants to talk to you on facebook chat, my dear, is because you're so bloody morose and emo that they don't want to be your psychologist. Nobody will ever want to talk to you until you cheer the fuck up or at least don't attempt to suck everyone around you into this bottomless pit of despair that you've dug YOURSELF into. Harsh? Maybe, but it's the truth.

Our boat, a Princess 33 MK1 was stolen from the Thames in the summer last year. A lot of to-ing and fro-ing later with the police and still no sign of her.

The theory is that other P33 owners would immediately recognise one if they saw one, and especially on the thames, they're pretty unusual. We believe that it may well have been moved from the Thames onto the medway, up a canal (unlikely, I know) or possibly taken over the channel. Plus, if I was looking to buy a boat, the first thing I do is try to find information on them- Forums are a natural place to start. Hopefully, it'd give a heads up to anyone who might fall into the trap of buying a stolen boat, and make it all the more difficult to sell.

The boat is a 1979(ish) MK1 with fly. Possibly named "My Phoebe" (we're told it was reregistered after it was stolen)

Externally:
It has red antifoul, the twin outdrives and trim tabs have been painted grey.
We believe the wheelhouse windows have been tinted dark and has a new light blue canopy fitted.

The radio mast has a Status "UFO" style TV aerial on.
It has white fixed davitts. One of them is bent inward slightly. Pretty distinctive.

Deck gear
The handrails around the decksides are the wire type. It has a manual windlass and a hole in the deck on the port side at the stern (where a deck fitting was, but was removed). The deck treads are in grey.

It has a Danforth which just sort of lies on the foredeck. It's not in any kind of special holders or anything.

There is an escape hatch on the front deck. I don't know exactly how standard these are.

It has white fixed davitts. One of them is bent inward slightly. Pretty distinctive.

Condition
The flybridge gelcoat is looking a bit tired and has gone a bit matte and it doesn't quite match the rest of the boat, which is still shiny.

There's a white double bench up there with a white leatherette seat, which has had the stitching split down both ends. This may have been repaired or replaced and really, it's not unique, but it is a bit distinguishing.

Interior
It has a single sliding door into the wheelhouse on the port side and the standard ladder on the starboard.

Inside, the headlining, dash and companionway overhead padding is all brand new in white pleather. There is a Nasa battery meter fitted to the helm on the right hand side access hatch of the console. The engine lift switches are on the left hatch. There are Clipper Duet speed log/depth thingies on both helms but upstairs doesn't work (never got around to wiring it up!)

It has a port-side helm and starboard galley with a forward Vee twin, Convertor U-shaped settee/dinette and a standard pullout double/sofa in the wheelhouse.

The shower is fairly unusual. It has a large fixed overhead rosette and a handheld head with a mixer tap. Not the standard beige plastic ones. The shower was done out in grey/silver plastic tiling to a high spec, so there's no reason for it to have been removed (but it may well have been). Trust me, it looked a lot nicer than it sounds!

Mostly, the layout was untouched by us and original, but I dread to think what's been done to it!

The boat was my mother's retirement, so obviously, we're VERY keen to see the thieves brought to justice.

Interior of wheelhouse. The white headlining on the companionway padding and console are brand new, changed from the original beige.

The canopy has since been replaced for a light blue one.

The perspex sprey screen on the top of the fly was replaced for a dark-tinted one.

Note that the MKI has the large cabin windows forward, and the dark grey decks. It also has the wire deck rails as opposed to solid chrome ones seen on some examples.

External view.

I've not had a proper full time job in ten years and have absolutely nothing to lose and yet I still have enough self respect not to go looting, and find the people who did to be utterly disgusting. That's how low they are. Worse than dog shit.

 

Don't blame unemployment. Hell, at least they're on the dole.. I've got too much pride for that! I make do with what money I have coming in from freelancing work and the Pit to see me through the week. I don't have an XBox or £100 Reeboks. I don't want them. But if I did, I'd save up all my pennies and get the satisfaction out of knowing that I've earned them.

This is not about the gutter classes rebelling against the Government not caring about them or anything... It's Greed and peer pressure and a sign of weakness.

Interesting to note, they were interviewing a group of these so-called-people on Sky earlier, and they insisted on having their faces covered with bandanas and hoods. Now, Why would that be? Let's analyse this?

They don't want to be identified. Because they are fully aware that they know that they are criminals. They fear the retribution that identification may bring, either from the Police or vigilantes.

This suggests that they know the difference between right and wrong, but they seem to have drawn a vague line between Laful and societally Moral.

They know they have broken laws, criminal damage, theft, assaults. And they know this to the extent that they fear the consequences. They do not however appear to have any morals whatsoever. they think they're lashing out at the government when instead they're lashing out at members of their own community, but blinded by sheer greed and adrenaline.

One particularly steamy lump of shit in a red bandana claims to have written a CV, got suited and booted and gone for job interviews, but was overlooked. This has happened to me countless times. Countless. I shrug it off as tehy found someone more suitable for the job. You do not try and make the government sit up and take note by destroying potential employers. Have they ever applied at Currys? They might have had a chance there, earned some money and bought a television with their hard-earned wages. Probably with a staff discount on top.. and they could then appear on television as a proud member of the community without hiding behind a bandana.

Another claims that he was "providing for his family" by stealing nappies. I shan't go into that one.

One thing that has actually surprised me, is that in all the looting, rioting, muggings and murders, I've not heard one single report of a rape. This is very good, but I wonder why that is? They'll stoop low enough to beat someone to death for trying to put out a fire, but not so low as to satisfy one of the basic primal urges. Food, warmth and sex. They're stealing food, lighting fires.. Again.. Is this just a glimour of morality showing in these animals... Or are the media glossing over sexual attacks?

Gawpfishing. A fun game for all ages.

If you are unfamiliar with Gawpfishing, which you probably will be, since I invented it, I shall forthwith offer an explanation of gameplay:

The game is played in an arena comprising any form of public transport with London Underground being the favoured. Play commences at or after 

sunset. No sooner. This is a sport for two players. One may play alone.

 

Powdered Wigs not compusory

  

Described here are THE LAWS for a two-competitor tournament.

The Anglers locate themselves in the middle of the arena and sit facing eachother. The direction of travel is "upstream". The player facing upstream takes first honour.

 

The "Angler With Honour" casts his Seeding gawp (the gawpcast). This is done by yawning- The second most contageous bodily function the human body is capable of, second only to vomiting, which is a completely different sport alltogether. After the Gawpcast, the Angler in play then "Retreats",or, sits back and waits for either a "nibble" or a bite. If before the next station, his Seeding Gawp is taken and reciprocated by any other passenger seated in "his" end of the playing field, it is counted as "One bite" Subsequent passengers who then yawn as a result of the bite score one point each. A Bite constitutes a full on yawn. A "Nibble" is defined as any detectable sigh. Nibbles count as half a point each.

For any bite or nibble that travels into the "downstream" end counts as two or one points respectively. When the round has finished, ie, anyone who was going to gawp has gawped and it is agreed by both parties, The Angler sitting downstream then has the honour, fishing upstream.

After both Anglers have played one gawpcast each, they must leave at the next stop and move to the next carriage. They then must take their positions opposite to the previous (Previous upstream Angler sits downstream etc) and play resumes.

AT NO POINT does a gawp committed by either angler score any points.

In the event of a scoring dispute, you're obviously taking it all a bit too seriously and need to chill out.

Got all that?

Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be an emo and have a fucking almighty rant.

Yeah.

Before I begin typing, I should mention:

•  I have not thought about this. I had a thought earlier which was the seed.
• The following is merely a stream of conciousness and follows no structure
• as such, my grammar and factual accuracy may well be somewhat fucked.
• This is a rant. Don't take it too literally. Don't worry about me if I start getting too down. I'm fine.

I made a concious decision a while back that I would not post anything in the style of the typical moany bitching onto Facebook. Everyone does that and it's possibly the single most irritating thing to do. I find it obnoxious, especially if the frequency of such whinges is sufficient. See, whatever you post on FB immediately gets propogated to your entire friend list's wall and all of them have no choice but to have to read it... Unless they delete you as a friend, of course, ehich, until it starts getting you labeled as a psyvamp is a tad extreme. Oh, I've had energy vampires on there as friends. In cases, they've been very very old friends who it has pained me to get shot of them, but when you can't log into FB and get more than two statuses down your wall before the inevitable "woe is me", Every single time you log in, regardless of the time of day... Well, they have to go, I'm, afraid. With this blog, you can always just stop reading it and go and find someone else's - Or one of my more lighthearted posts, or go and see what's happening on Facebook.

Anyway, I made a decision as a New Year's Resolution to only ever post happy fluffy stuff. If I was in a blue mood, I would rather than say so, simply post something ridiculous, or if I couldn't think of anything ridiculous, just log out. For the most part, I've stuck to it and it's been a successful little experiment. By only "having happy thoughts", I've found that I am indeed, happier and I at least hope that it has had some knock on effect to people who have been reading my statuses on there. Sure, I've slipped a couple of times. Who doesn't? I've simply tried to consider that no matter how shitty things get, there's always going to be someone who is much worse off.

The fact of the matter is that this approack does indeed work fine and as an experiment, has broucht about some interesting revelations. Because I've pretty much kept my inner emo locked away in its gimp mask, there's seven months' worth of ranting, however. And I'm going to have to spill my mind onto the blog.. And subsequently, through your eyes, and my emo mind will meld with your own... Funky.

So, yeah. Pramble done with, Shit's been pretty fucking low for me the last couple of years and by some strange virtue, I'm still around to blog about it. Yes, I appreciate that I'm relatively doing alright and you probably have it twice as bad as me.

So what's so imperfect about my life then, as far as I'm concerned?

Well, Firstly, the main problem. Chronic Insomnia. This has been going on since Summer 2009 now, with maybe a maximum of ten proper night's sleep in that time. Right now, it's 03:45am on a Wednesday morning. I'll be awake until maybe 6am and then go and crash out from pure boredom. This is not some sort of stubborness, where I deliberately sit up all night on Facebook and watching telly.. Or simply a matter of a screwed up sleeping pattern. If I were to go to bed now, I'll lie in bed, wide awake.. Moreso than awake. You have probably experienced insomnia yourself.. Transient or maybe acute as the huge majority of people do at some point. Perhaps you are chronic and know exactly what I mean. Basically, what will happen is that I will lie in bed, in the dark and my mind will switch on. I will think about everything at once. Sometimes I will be able to devise an entire scheme.. maybe sometimes there'll be flashes of concepts firing that don't form anything coherent at all. There are pictures, words, basic emotions. Memories from my childhood. Everything. But, all of this stuff being like watching some dream sequence in a 1970's horror flick, whilst my body is screaming out for me to get up and go for a long walk or to cook something. This is now two years of it.

The insomnia, I can handle now. Indeed, I've come up with some pretty cool stuff from these little sessions of cerebral superactivity. What I'm suffering with is how it's knocking me for six during the day. I'll eventually pass out at sunrise and get a few hours' sleep. Unfortuantely, this whole thing is a vicious cycle:

I don't sleep because my brain is going mad, mostly worrying about the state of the union. Because it's kept me up all night, I'm having major problems finding work and so on, which is the main factor in these brainfarts.. keeping me awake... and so on. Of course, it used to be much much worse. I was once so depressed that I didn't have this rock video from hell playing in my head every night. In fact, all I had were thoughts about how should I not wake up at all, whould it be such a great loss? What was the point? You get the picture. Pretty dark shit. That's all mostly behind me now though (only occasionally do those nights happen now.. Maybe once or twice a month).

Then of course, there is my employment.. Or hideous lack thereof.

I am currently pretty much unemployable. I don't mean this in a woe is me kind of way. I mean it in a I can't get a job unless it involves below the minimum wage kind of way.

I have academic qualifications. A handfull of computing NVQs, half a degree and some other bits. Unforunately, these are all worth bollocks-all. They're computing qualifications, which, as we all know, might as well be a certificate with a picture of Postman Pat, a gold star and a smiley face and "V.Good" handwritten next to them. The sort of thing your nursery teacher gave you for gluing pasta to a bit of card and writing "mum" below it in crayon.

Computing qualifications are bullshit. Computing degrees, however are what employers like to see. It would have been lovely if before doing these courses if they'd told me that no matter how well I did, I'd still not claw up the UCAS points to get onto a degree course, and when I did get one, I turned up one Monday morning to be told that they'd stopped running the fucking course. Besides which, I absolutely loathe computers wth every last cell in my body. Well, the concept of computers, I like. The endless stream of information on the internet, the great and cool things you can do with graphics and music and so on. As a tool, computers are fantastic things. It's everything else about them that I hate.

I also have City and Guilds in traditional signwriting techniques, business ownership and management, electronics servicing and a couple of others... however, these are very outdated and useless to me now as I've not practiced in years and have forgotten most of it.

Experience-wise, well, this is mostly in the entertainments industry. 15 years of it. I've worked in some of the biggest events to have hit the UK as well as some of the smallest, shittiest little holes. This is what I do. It's what I'm fucking good at, frankly. By no means am I the best.. but I'm certainly not below average... However, I seem to have "MUG" etched into my forehead which only employers can read. I've been desperate to get as far away from the industry as possible for a while now because I'm sick of getting fucked over, screwed out of work and lied out of money. It's endemic to the industry, apparently. I'm not saying it because he's my current and only employer, but Nick's the only one who hasn't tried too hard to piss me off yet.

I've been turning down work lately. Work from those fucking crooks at G F**** (censored because I don't want a libel case). Basically, They've offered me two jobs this year. One was in January. The other, I told them I was already working elsewhere. As it happened, I was working at the museum, voluntarily. See, I'd rather work at KBSM for free for a day than for a vague "promise" that if I sent in an invoice for a day's work, I might just be lucky and get a cheque for £30-odd quid at some point around the next blue moon. At KBSM, I do get a sense of satisfaction, even if I'm just putting flatpack furniture together or polishing a lump of brass. Unfortunately, I need to really work out how to do something equally satisfying AND get paid for it!

So, employers like Experience and Qualifications. I have both... neither are relevant to eachother. I could go and do a proper uni course to do with technical theatre or something, but I don't have that sort of money and it isn't an industry I intend to remain in for much longer. I'm going to need a complete career change.

Now, my sex life.
What fucking sex life? I haven't had that pleasure in about five years. The problem here is that my ex was a fucking WHORE, who, whilst we were together, she was (unbeknownst to me) still married, AND fucking some dude behind my back (to be fair on him, he had no idea about me. We met at a party once and had a Loooooooooooooonnnngg conversation). Then, when she'd decided who she'd rather fuck and ditched me, whe then proceeded to go and fuck no fewer than eleven of my closest mates in the following two months.

She was the third consecutive (that I know of) girlfriend to have been shagging around behind my back.

This kind of left me with a couple of niggling issues to do with selfconfidence and trust. Niggling issues roughly equates to absolutely fucking decimated. I decided after that to take thirty months of celibacy. The way I saw it, this was so that I could clear my head and sort my life out. It wouldn't have been fair to have bounced straight into another relationship from that and try and split my attention between myself and silly personal problems and a girlfriend. In my opinion, a relationship requires 100% attention and I couldn't give that. Anyway, after those thirty months, I was in kind of a worse state than I was anticipating and took an extension to fifty months.

After things began to improve, I realised that I'd been in such a state that I'd kind of let myself go a bit. I'd lost two dental crowns (Purely down to shoddy dentistry) that I couldn't be bothered to go and get re fitted, so I'm left with half a head full of teeth. I have long since forgotten how to speak to a female other than purely "friend zone" and to be honest, I'm certain that I still have pretty enormous trust issues if there was anything even remotely deeper than that. So, I'm hideously ugly both inside and out. Splendid.

Health... This is where I've been lucky. Aside from the insomnia and what I believe to be some form of arthritis-y type of thing in my knees which varies between nothing at all to being unable to stand up, depending on the temperature (Come the beginning of winter, when the temperature begins to fall is worst), I haven't had any great issues health-wise. I know people who have spent more time in hospitals than out of them. I know people who by rights, should be dead by now but aren't and I know others who sometimes are so ill that sometimes they wish they were dead, I'm an olympic athlete in comparison to some.

So, yeah. I'm pretty fucking fed up right now, if I'm honest. I'm treating this blog post as some form of free therapy. I'm not expecting anyone to read it. In fact, it's pretty personal shit and I might delete it tomorrow anyway, but I've said what I felt that I wanted to say and in half an hour's time, I'll either remember something else to add, or start feeling a little better.

We'll see.

Your friend, P.v.G.

Leopards. They can fix the unfixable.

I hereby present a short list of things that can be fixed by Leopards. Sometimes, something is so terrifyingly poor that it might at first seem to be broken forever. But when you bring Leopards into the picture, well, redemption is but a spotty apocalypse away.

1) Terrible movies. Take, for instance, The Davinci Code. The second worst film* I've ever seen. The plot is so far fetched that it should have been billed as a comedy/fantasy, yet everyone took it so seriously. The acting.. Well, Ian McKellan and Tom Hanks working as a double act couldn't do anything for the film.. It was that poor.

Kitty makes it all better.

So, the whole thing would have made more sense and have at least had some sort of action in it, should the final scene featured a marauding leap of Leopards who turn up and eat everyone. I watched the movie to the end in the vain hope that this would happen. It didn't. Instead, the ending was a limp wristed as the rest of the film.

2) The London 2012 Olympics. As I've already said, I don't see it going so well and London will, in a little over a year, become the biggest laughing stock on the planet. HOWEVER, Should they scrap the format of the games and move back to a far more entertaining theme of Roman Gladiatorial combat, make Steve Fucking Redgrave and Philips Oduwu fighting to the death (except that Philips would be armed to the teeth). And of course, we can throw Johnathon Edwards, the world's most boring christian (worse than Ned Flanders), to a baying pack of Leopards.

3) The SODDING Royal Wedding. The idea is to release a huge pack of leopards halfway through the service upon the congregation. All they have to do is to stay alive for twenty minutes, after which time, the doors will be unlocked. Anyone still alive can then freely run screaming into the street where the Cheetahs will be loosed to pick them off. I would quite happily pay towards that and it might even make me want to watch it.


So that's the general theme of my point. Leopards can improve absolutely any overhyped piece of shit.

*Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind was the first worst.. I couldn't sleep in the cinema so I had to walk out. I'm not going to use it as an example, because for all I know, It could well have been salvaged by a Leopard ending.

The Supermarket Game

This isn't my idea. I'm just joining in.

The originator of TSG is Cubinoid. Here's his introduction to the game and subsequent efforts.
Photographs are judged marks out of ten in two categories: COMPOSITION - Camerawork, scene set up etc. and POSE.

View his original blog post, rules and his own entries here:
http://supermarketgame.blogspot.com/2011/02/supermarket-game-welcome.html

From Cubinoid's own blog, here are the laws of the game as written by the grand Master himself:
 +++++++++++++++++
"The game is simple: Whilst your spouse or partner is busy shopping "hands free", leaving you to push the trolley, you reach into your pocket and whip out your trusty camera-phone device.

Wait until they are looking at the object of desire, wait...wait...until their eyes gleam with wanting to touch the object of desire...wait until the magic moment and SNAP!

Take a photo of them. It's that simple".
++++++++++++++++++



And here is my first entry into what will surely become a future Olympic Sport (but not next year, as they're.. rant rant rant...)

So, she isn't my partner, she's Tigger, my sister, but I'm quite sure it still counts. Here she is looking for some cosmetics. Also, Superdrug is not really a supermarket either. In fact, I don't think this is a valid entry at all.

COMPOSITION: Well, Considering it contravenes most of the laws of the game (subject is not my partner, location is not a supermarket), I don't think the photo's too bad. There's an annoying black spot on the tile by her foot, but I do like the way the floor tiles and the line of the shelves run off into the distance, drawing the viewer's eye up the aisle. The lighting isn't too bad and for a camera phone, the shot actually came out okay.

I'm going to give this ●●●●●●○○○○ (6/10)

POSE: Great pose. I call it "Crouching Tigger, Hidden Nailfile". She's cradling the febreeze as Indiana Jones would cradle solid gold Sun God Idols whilst tinkering with some unseen boobytrap in a wall. Speaking of which, Stop looking at my sister's boobies.

I think for pose, this gets a ●●●●●●●○○○ (7/10).

I'm being really generous with this, but for a first attempt, I'm rather pleased. I am of course, very open to criticique and will adjust the score accordingly.