Brwm, brwm; beep, beep.

Communication is important.  Thought I’d start with a concise statement there so as not to be misconstrued.  Since communication is important it is equally important that the communication that you are undertaking is clear, or as clear as you can make it, so as not to be misconstrued.  Repetition can achieve this, although it can also make you look simple, and bore anyone reading, which is bad for communication.

Being misunderstood is one thing which frustrates me.  It frustrates me even more so if the person doing the misunderstanding is doing it wilfully.  There’s nothing which annoys me quite as much as someone trying to annoy me.  Which, in and of itself, is annoying.

Having been ‘the loud one’ for a portion of my life, I have been purposefully attempting to be softer and quieter when speaking, so as to salvage some dignity for myself, in the lieu of my childhood which I spent headbutting tables and dribbling water down myself for laughs (my own).  Rather than seeming dignified and considered, I come across as timid and people often can’t hear.  This is frustrating.

After spending time attempting to develop a more restrained and considered pattern of speaking and an, often needlessly, colourful way of writing, it is testing to be in a position where communication is in some way hampered.

Driving to work every day, there is an awkward junction which, since a new bypass was completed, has become a sticking point.  There are two sets of traffic lights side by side, one which directs traffic straight on and to the right, and another which directs traffic to the left.  I take the left, and often the left turn is green whilst the other is red, no problem.  However, the lights are situated on the crest of a hill, and so at the time of day I drive in, the sun is directly behind them, blinding sight and obscuring the colours from view.  Also, when the straight on light turns green, the light on the other set disappears completely.  These events mean that often someone stops at the lights when they should be driving on, causing a queue on a very steep hill, usually involving a bus, or a number of buses (the bus, of course, my nemesis).

I did this once, soon after the road had been completed, and when I stopped, uncertain as to whether or not I would be ploughed into should I drive on, a man I would describe as ‘very angry’ started beeping repeatedly and furiously at me, gurning like a beleaguered lobster, or a put-upon bichon frise.  I was quite stressed out by his aural attack, and decided that I wouldn’t subject someone to such a thing myself.

For three days in a row this week I have had to stop behind people who aren’t familiar with the quirks of the lights.  It is at that point that I realised fully just how limited the options available to car-based interaction are.  A beep of ‘hey, you can go’ is the exact same beep of ‘come on you tool, go!’  I feel bad after beeping, so I force myself to smile demurely afterwards, so at the very least any rear-view mirror interaction will dispel any suspicions of dickishness.

Recently, I had cause to remove some children from the premises where I work, and when challenged for a reason, I explained they were being punished for being “obnoxious”.  Now, with the information offered to me by 21^st Century super-magic ‘the internet’, I can offer that this word means ‘extremely unpleasant, very annoying or objectionable; offensive or odious’.  All that took was typing the word ‘obnoxious’ into a search bar embedded in an internet browser.  Children, however, are tediously devoid of resourcefulness when they decide to be.  They declared, as a group, that they didn’t understand the word ‘obnoxious’.  Given that I had invested quite a lot of my initial reasoning on the word ‘obnoxious’, I found their lack of vocabulambition, ironically, obnoxious.  Throwing them out for being ‘rude’ doesn’t have quite the same impact.  Makes me look like a screeching oldyn tymes Governess.  ‘Bad attitude’ makes them into Fonz-like dudes who are fighting the man.  My ad-libabilities are lacking still, I could only stretch to “whatever, just get out”.

Kids and cars.  Bastards.

I've Been Remembering

I remembered, in the week, a thing I and my friends used to do in primary school. When it happened I wondered to myself whether or not the remembering process was the same one that Peter Kay goes through when he unearths his gold from the gas-filled mine of his memory. It occurred to me as I saw kids engaging in an activity that was needlessly foolish, not naughty or dangerous, just slightly annoying in a "WHY!?" sort of way. I can't remember what exactly they were doing which triggered my recollection, which is partly why I am unable to engage in observational comedy, I am too ignorant.

During playtime, when we'd got to the age where we were taking our own bottles of pop (fizz/soda/etc) in our bags, we'd all gather round and conduct what seems now to have been some sort of communistic experiment. Between us we would have amassed quite an array of various pops, from the simplistic blank sheet of lemonade, to the refined dandelion and burdock, to the more extreme limeade, the absinthe of the ffisibop world.

A huddle would occur, where the bottles were opened, and the tops traded around chaotically, before we began the haphazard, messy experiment. A dash of limeade would turn the lemonade a weak green, raspberry and strawberry would combine without changing colour, but making both flavours bizarre. The frantic yet meticulous exchange of liquid from differently sized bottles through dissimilar necks would ensure that most bottles were inevitably covered in the sticky sheen of spilt pop. The thoughtless, joyous experimentation would end with the floor awash with spilt specks, the bottles drained from wastage, and the remaining pop in every bottle reduced to a vague, mucky brown, regardless of the original base content. Simple fun.

Perhaps tellingly, the only other time in my life where reckless mixing of drinks was involved heavily in fun was during University, where an ill-advised punch often coagulated in an ad-hoc manner. This potent brew also invariably ended up a fetid brown colour. This is probably down to the marketing genius of Ian Coca-Cola, leading to the drink being unavoidable in daily life.

This fluid-mixing-based memory led me on to another similar remembrance. As far as I can remember I have always loved bathing. I use the time primarily to read, with having a wash becoming a handy side-effect of the process. As technology advanced and I became more reckless with it, I began factoring gameboys (that is the handheld gaming console, not young males who were up for it) into the bathing experience. This morphed into the DS and PSP, which I occasionally take in, should I be addicted to a game, to the chagrin and frustration of people who understand the cost of a pound. In all my years of taking things into the bath, I have only ever dropped something in once, it was a book. Someone else's. I put it on the radiator afterwards and it dried out (badly). Apologies can be worth $7.99RRP between siblings. I used to have a more expensive bathtime hobby, though I couldn't have realised it at the time.
I used to use shower gels, shampoos and whichever other lotions live on the bathroom shelves as the ingredients for my amateur bathtime alchemy. I very much enjoyed mixing the clear green of Timotei with the reluctant viscosity of conditioner. I probably wasted a hell of a lot of product. And, of course, I never discovered gold or the secret of eternal life. But my hands were always soft and clean.

A friend of mine came home briefly as he had finished his Uni course, and I went to visit him, in the process taking a walk I took often a number of years ago. It was easy, on autopilot, to regress to feeling like the jittery teenager I had been when we used to hang out most of the time. I was delightfully brought up to date by a trampolining child at the end of my street. The pavement goes right past a garden, which the trampolining child, and the trampoline, were in. Not taking a gap from his bouncing, the small boy, possibly around 6, piped up; "Hello". "Hello", I replied. "Hello, old man", spake the child.


Now, a jittery teenager I may no longer be, but I would like to this that my occasionally haggard and bearded visage still holds the glow of youth. I suppose to a child of 6 I might have looked like an ancient giant of olde, traipsing the land in search of the bloode of an Englisheman. Either that or he was a little shit.

Either way, I was amused and gently smiling to myself as I went on my way.

The path that leads to my friends house is overhung with trees, and was heavily overgrown in the olde days whither I did wander to his abode, overgrown both with the trees and with the pickies and stingies. The council have, in the intervening time, laid a wider concrete path there, and trim the encroaching growth back from time to time. I vaguely remember hearing that something dreadful happened to someone in there (some form of assault probably) and so they took steps to make the path less dreadful in the night. It hasn't really worked. The path is devoid of electric lighting, and so if it is nay a night where the moon is fat then it is in complete darkness. 'Mor tywyll a glo' (as dark as coal), we would've written in Welsh, as we lazily avoided using our imaginations to concoct fresh similes. You genuinely cannot see your hand if you hold it up to your face in such circumstances, which I delight in telling people.

The path overlooks a park, which has had most of its appendages switches since I yobbed around there as a vagrant teen. Gone are the simplistic features; the slide, the swings, the roundabout, the see-saw and the frankly dangerous rocket ship which a bigger kid pushed back and forth and the little kids flew backwards and forwards in the middle crushing themselves against the dividing bars and sustaining severe rib injuries. In place of these classics there are shiny multifaceted items, colourful pieces which are a slide, swings and monkey bars all in one, and as fun as none of them by themselves. If you take out the classic, simple, plain swings, then where oh where are nervous teenagers going to hang around in the night and have their first clueless cackhanded pseudo-sexual experiences? SELFISH COUNCIL! Just because the kids don't have a vote! It's immoral etc.

Behind another, larger, fence, there is an outdoor swimming pool, which I think actually does open during the summer, but to me will always be an empty circle filled with discarded strongbow cans (not mine, I hasten to add). I have a hazy memory of a time where, after a day spent playing football in the adjoining rugby field, a group of us spent the night in our pants playing water polo in the pool after hours. I was fairly certain of this, as I walked the path, but the memory is distant, and my first thought was of how cold is must have been, which in my sensible jumper, seemed an insurmountable issue with late-night water polo.

There is no place in my memory of that night for the cold, only the irreverent fun of the moment, and the probable bollocking I received when I got home. And yet as I walked and remembered, my first thought was for the cold, focusing on the reasons against, rather than the reasons for, getting involved in such a silly thing.

"Hello, old man", indeed.

Weekend Round-Up

From this weekend's experience it seems that only doing a Saturday show is a very good decision. We were really up for it, and I think it was one of the most solid shows we've done for ages.

Similarly, having the Sunday completely free to loll around being lazy and spending the entire day simply reading was an immensely enjoyable thing.

Last Friday there were several odd events that I didn't write about as I was planning on talking about them on the radio, so I'll do a quick recap of them now.

I have a standup routine about how I am unable to deal with kids, and given that I work in a room full of them everyday, its probably surprising how seldom new bits get added to that routine. The routine is set up as combating the 'kids say the funniest things' attitude, as in my experience their utterances tend to be on the highly annoying/brain numbing spectrum. Last Friday, however, I witnessed a kid saying something which amused me, and I decided I would commandeer this comment for my own comedic ends. When I actually got on stage, however, I forgot to add it in, so I'll tell it here instead.

I was in the toilet, washing my hands (in the sink hur hur hur), and a kid came in and asked me whether I had seen his friend. I indicated to him that I was in the toilet, and therefore had seen no one. He quickly understood his foolishness, but decided to awkwardly stay in the toilet regardless. He stood right up against the sink, staying there even when I moved away to dry my hands, so I commented that he must be very fond of the sink. He replied: "Yeah, it's my brother-in-law". While this isn't incisively hilarious, it was quite the surreal swerve ball, and I was quite amused. And then I kicked him out. Kicking out is the only language they understand. Apart from English. And some of them speak Welsh as well.

It was a fairly unconventional gig for me on Friday, I was originally meant to be compering a music gig, but it panned out so that I was actually doing two five-minute spots in between the bands. It went quite well, although the second set suffered because of the drunkenness of the audience and the state of shouty-excitement they had been whipped into in the meantime. It is possibly my failing that I couldn't win them around the second time, but instead I opted to call my set short and bring on the last band early. I think it was a correct decision.

After the first bit I fled the room. I was there completely on my own, so I figured it would be slightly weird to tag on to the end of a table after having just been on, so I escaped to the main bar. Whilst I thought I had secluded myself in an alcove, I had in fact sat myself right in front of the main door, so every single smoker in the crowd filed past me during this time. Most just passed through, though some stopped briefly and said "that was funny", which was really nice. I think it's probably par for the course that the comments I will remember will either be the negative or the boggling ones. Luckily I've not had any explicitly negative comments as of yet, and one of Friday's feedbacks is easily the most boggling.

A slight man, probably in his late teens, came up to me, looking slightly bedraggled and bemused. I haven't much experience of conversation with people on drugs, so this was quite easily the most stoned I have ever seen a person, but I would hazard a guess that he was very fucking stoned indeed. His opening gambit was: "Heeeeeeeeeeey! Mister Comedian!". It was an example of, literally, high camp, and I really wasn't expecting it as I attempted to cool down with a glass of water. I laughed in his face, which he seemed to enjoy. He followed this up with: "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeey! Bill Hicks!". As I look back on it, I wish I'd replied: "I think you've mistaken me for somebody else", but in the moment I replied: "Yes, he is a comedian". He then asked me about Ricky Gervais and the IT Crowd, before admitting that he would say something about the set I had just done, but that he was so stoned it went over his head. I think I like the fact that he didn't engage in any way with the act, but felt it was necessary to come up and talk to me. I say 'I think I like it', because I am not really sure. It did amuse me. If I shamelessly morphed comments that people had given me after gigs together, I could describe my act as being 'a borderline surreal, byzantine and labyrinthine Bill Hicks'. Which sounds amazing, and anyone who'd want to see my act on the strength of that description would be incredibly disappointed.

I was very pleased after the gig, and this carried over into Saturday, and hopefully into the shows. The show after ours (3-5pm) is presented by a group known facetiously as ACRE Jr, made up as it is of younger siblings of 2 of the ACREs. BUT WHICH ONES!?

It was the birthday of one of the ACRE Jrs, so I celebrated by manhandling him off the windowsill (but what was he doing there!?) carrying him on my shoulders in a reverse torture rack position, before 'eliminating' him over the top of a settee. I did this not by, as is conventional, dumping him off my shoulders, but by throwing myself bodily over the settee, still carrying him there. We ended in a crumpled explosion on the floor, stuck upside down because our arms were entangled. I then later forced him to play an Arthur Isherwood track, the medley 'Happy Birthday/One Year Closer (To the Grave)'. The track begins as a grizzled tearjerker over the top of plinky old-school piano, complete with buzzing vinyl pops, but then morphs into contemporary death metal, eventually including more experimental death-ska. It is painfully disparate and chaotic, especially at the ridiculous volume we played it in the studio. I capped this off by climbing on the desk, and adding the the screamed vocals 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY!' in studio. I felt it was appreciated. And just hated in general. (Appreci-hated, hahahaha, I got paid to tell jokes last week so shut up). That track can be downloaded from our website.

Here ends the entry.

Throw Your Hatred Down

Yes, throw your hatred down. It is more likely to hit a child.

Why do they always sit next to me? Is it because I work in a child-intensive environment? Yes, it is. This in no way changes the fact that I am incredibly enfuried with their behaviour.

Sat in front of a computer screen like chittering gibberlings cheeping at a YouTube video, a video with no sound, as though a chubby woman falling off a table is the funniest thing they could possibly encounter in their idiotic, childish life.

"Oh god like, it's the funniest thing even like, god. When I saw it the first time I was laughing like, so funny, god."

"She's going to fall off the table I can tell. She's going to fall off the table isn't she? I just know she's going to fall off the table. Fall off the table. Off the table."

"Just watch it"

"Table, off of the fall, like, god, falling off the, she is going to isn't she? She is, I can tell"

"AHHAHAHAHAAHHAAHHAHAHAHAH SHE FELL OFF THE TABEL!"

So I hung my head in shame, cast my notepad of comedy ideas into the fireplace, stood up on a table and fell off.

But the kids, they could tell my heart wasn't in it. They saw me as a doppelganger johnny-come-lately, attempting to cash in on the new 'chubby people falling off a table' rage that is sweeping the nation. I was just jumping on the bandwagon, which backfired as there was a table on there, which I promptly fell off.

Of course, what these kids don't realise is that we are just going through a 'chubby people falling off a table' revival, they have no knowledge of it as they weren't alive to catch the craze the first time around. And even the first wave of 'chubby people falling off a table' was highly derivative of their predecessors, drawing heavily from such genres as 'skinny people falling off a table' and 'old people falling off a table'. Of course it's spawned many splinter sub-genres including 'drunk people falling off a table' and even 'chubby people falling off a chair'. I suppose I am too jaded and too much of a 'falling off a table' elitist to enjoy this new wave of light-hearted schadenfreudenanigans.

And thus I lost my faith in youth.

Later on though, I had to rid the room of a group of children who were loitering around the top end of the room not actually using a computer and just looking slightly shifty, which was setting the aged on edge. I asked them to leave and they did, leaving their chairs scattered haphazardly as they went. My heart sank further, thinking to myself; what cost is there on neatness?

One of the shaven chimpanzees caught my gaze, understood his mistake and sheathed the chairs underneath their respective desks. He cast his eyes at me, like a puppy awaiting a treat having pissed in an appropriate location. I smiled at him wanly.

"Cheers, butt" I said.

He smiled, nodded his head and bowed out of the double doors graciously.

I still don't like kids though.

@adamgilder

www.theacre.net

I Hate Hiatus

I have been shanghaied into a routine that sees me outside and active, which means that my agreed upon schedule for blogging has been vaporised. Any move away from the plan in terms of writing, in my case, means nothing gets done. Hence I am late in breaking out a September blog.

I have decided to stop criticising the top ten every Sunday, as this allows me to not listen to music I know I won’t enjoy. There is also enough bile on the internet without me needlessly, and feebly, adding to it for no reason. Should an appropriately evil song appear, I will mercilessly spear it.

My unplanned hiatus from blogging occurred because I have been busy starting a new job. Despite having been offered the job in the spring, administrative bumph has ensured that it is only now I can begin, to be fair I am just glad to be starting. Most everyone there seems glad to have my post filled, as various people had to multitask and take on the responsibilities of my job on top of their own. I am glad to be of use, and needless to say, but I will regardless: the money is also welcome.

My role is, largely, to make sure children playing on computers behave themselves. For the most part this is an easy enough task, though I was forced to be stern/firm with a group of potential miscreants who were attempting to act out a moribund “Outside, then” scenario, with another young sir who clearly wasn’t interested. Children should just grow up.

It is odd how little changes from generation to generation, the same kids wanting to fight, the same other kids getting dragged into it. Cyclical, repetitive and pointless, though sometimes amusing. However, I mostly find the behaviour of the children distracting and abrasive. I’m sure you are thinking that it was necessary to apply a significant amount of tongue-biting in the interview for this job, there wasn't I promise, I’m not actually as distant and disjointed as this blog perhaps suggests.

What is particularly weird about this job is that I get to see the sort of activities the computer-friendly youth of today partake in. The biggest surprise for me whilst observing was that very little has changed since I was their age (roughly 10 years ago). The appearance of YouTube is the only huge change, allowing cackling kiddos to huddle together suspiciously to electronically watch people falling over ad infinitum. Aside from that, it is flash and browser-based games that still rule the internet-use sweepstakes when it comes to children. The only major changes in those fields are graphics and connection speed.

Direction-button games involving BMX tricks and just rag-dolling a hapless, faceless blob around the screen abound, as well as an extremely basic and ugly first person shooter involving what looks like Lego men that have been pimped with steroids and a neon trim. Amazingly, though, Runescape is still being played. It has undergone huge graphical changes since I used to play it, but it is very much the same grind-happy rubbish MMORPG. I am mostly annoyed that most of the kids have characters of a higher level than any of mine ever achieved, though that only proves they are dorks. Take that lame-Os! Shaaaa~

Since I now have to travel to daily, I am driving again. I am very glad to be back behind the wheel of a car, I feel like Hercules at the end of Hercules (the Disney one, yeah) where he has got his immortality and power all back up on it. Podcasts are best enjoyed behind the wheel of a car leisurely doing 30, with the easy banter summoning Jon Richardson into the passenger seat, and Tim Key and Fordey in the back. This doesn’t mean that I am not paying attention to the road though, so calm down, anyway you are not my mother, unless of course you are.

I have a meeting for a community radio station tomorrow, as do you Dafydd, which I am looking forward to as I am itching to receive training and get some radio done. It’s an early one though, which will make the driving experience unpredictable, I am a much bigger fan of late night driving, when the roads are empty and dark. Tranquillity is hard to achieve when other human beings are out and about. Similarly, my job would be so much easier were there less humans to bother about. Human beings are so inconsiderate.

I have been broadening my musical horizons this weekend, with a foray into jazz (Duke Ellington) and ambient indie (The Mercury Program) resulting in enjoyment. I have also taken a stroll down movie soundtrack avenue, listening to the works of Ryuichi Sakamoto and also of Joe Hisaishi. Hisaishi’s live orchestra concert showcasing his Ghibli tracks is breathtaking, I’ll probably be partaking of more orchestral scores in the near future. The Cribs new album is out, I believe as of today, and I have been enjoying that, though their track referencing ‘Hari Kari’ annoys me, partly because I’m not sure the mistake is purposeful (it should be hara-kiri). The opening track ‘We Were Aborted’ is a particular personal highlight.

I will bring this entry to an abrupt end, as I must away to enjoy Andrew Collins and Robin Ince on the iPlayer, eat and following these two activities I will bathe and read more of ‘Kafka by the Shore’. I can only undertake activities in twos. Whilst writing this I have been listening to the music described above. Who says its only women that can multitask? Eh? Whoever they are, find them and tell them to stop lazily conforming to stereotypical trains of thought.