Third Article In A Row! Ouch.
Posted: April 18, 2017 Filed under: Brief...therefore witty., writing | Tags: discipline, Humour, writing Leave a commentThird article in a row.
Third article in a row hurts.
With the get-go of the first and second I was enthused with such an efficient tempest of productivity, less than 24 hours ago, that now I gaze back upon it wistfully.
To begin, after an efficient cup of tea, I exercised in the manliest of manly ways.
That’s not to say I lifted the weightiest (owing to being medically buxom) femme fatal I could rescue and kicked in bolted dungeon door after bolted high-tower door whilst cloaked in a sexy sheen of man sweat and musk that made me both glow like a golden god and reek like the best bits of a bear. I did however, do some push-ups and then acted like I wasn’t breathing at all heavily – no big deal (I did 15 and 1 for luck; I promise).
To follow I made some notes, something I can reassuringly ignore later, like a comfort blanket in the form of a sheet of words that I can tug over my guilt of not wanting to write at that time.
This can be a pickle as time passes. And not a good pickle, like a summer’s day pass-me-the-pickle-jar-darling kind of pickle. Rather more the bad kind, is-it-a-pickle is-it-a-Victorian-baby-with-too-many-noses-and-not-enough-heads kind of pickle.
You might know it as a gherkin (oh the joys of language!).
Then I travelled by Greyhound bus from Byron Bay to Brisbane.
This is normally a tremendous chance to begin ignoring my notes, and I indulged heftily, though my ignoring was interrupted by the need to I wiped the drool from my wife’s chin, blouse, and allocated seating area (when the drool flowed out of this area; I considered it free to roam).
I then finished reading my book, a galant little number about a cheeky doctor and his silky ilk, before beginning a comic-tragedy the Jehovah’s Witnesses had whipped up (featuring some worryingly enthused illustrations, such as a reanimated-to-life woman who appears so jolly at what has befallen her she just might bite every living motherfucker out there).
Briefly Brisbaned Brisbane and bought the brand of noodles that taste just swell out of the sheer knowledge you’re saving money by having a mediocre time. The joys of discipline (feeling good about a bad time) are a treat we’re having to rely on these days.
I don’t care how, but I feel we should also say “noodles” more frequently.
It’s bound to help somehow, unless the osmosis effect is of people becoming more ‘noodley’ and that’s all too easy to envisage. The prospect of shaking hands with a ‘noodley’ man upsets me and my digits. Let’s cease this noodleyness.
Ate the noodles and spent the next hour wallowing in the few cents I’d saved in an attempt to stave off the oncoming nervousness I could feel in my thankfully ‘not-noodley’ bones.
Why was I feeling so? Noodles? Was I not feeling good enough about my bad time?
So I charged away and fled back again; meaning I exercised back and thither, hither and there across the apartment floor, waiting for the good feeling of discipline to take hold.
I would begin writing any second now.
There’s a tarnishing habit in myself and others in which we swerve in attempts to begin work by assuring ourselves we’d be far more productive at a more inconvenient time; translating to “we’ll wait till midnight to panic, by which time we’ll be far too slumberous to give the panic the performance it deserves so…might as well ‘beddiebyes’ it”.
Midnight was still a way away and so I tuned my efficiency once more, as a means of procrastination.
I washed my body and washed my clothes, became diligent in both, to the point of folding my socks and working out the creases by my eyes.
Currently…too much coffee, perhaps the inner conflict of procrastination against a righteous little hobby, or maybe the noodles let me down; in any case I’m beginning to find all actions and choices to be a slope well buttered and I’m sliding.
And now it’s tomorrow.
I’ve slept, awoken, watered and walked, before chasing my bed all the way home upon the discovery of my being unhealthy and not fit for public consumption.
And following a day in bed, I am exhausted, tired and getting the knack of being knackered (testicles are also commonly referred to in the British Isles as “knackers” and this is funny, if a tad tricky to work into this tale…goodness knows why but my testicles were not of tremendous feature this day).
Now my lass is home with me, drooling and occasionally sleeping, whilst I type this out to you feeling sad.
Aw.
Third article this year and it’s a sick note from my self-created inner-mother (whom I’m finding worryingly attractive…hopefully due to her looking like me) excusing me from my tardiness and signed with an adorably audacious yet shaky signature.
I’ll write two now to make amends.
Consider it as writing lines.
Cheerio.
Sam
Vinyl or Digital? Hmmm.
Posted: April 13, 2017 Filed under: culture, Uncategorized, writing | Tags: digital, Humour, Music, technology, Vinyl, writing Leave a commentIt’s got to be vinyl.
Because we don’t need the Earth as much as we once so crucially depended on it.
I was very intellectually viewing a Vice video recently, in which the news was studied that Jack White (once a White Stripe) has purchased a vinyl record factory in Detroit, wherein he has a workforce devoted to bringing back about the tradition of music being heavier in the hand.
Throughout the interview, White gave his reasons for this endeavour, citing the enormous sales of vinyl in the UK and how music audiences have tired of the “invisibility” of music.
White also mentioned that folk liked moving mechanical parts to their music; which is nice.
I can see the appreciation of vinyl being a visible pleasure, for it was the same when I first purchased my first cd; Blood Sugar Sex Magic by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The album art system is lost, with the purchased song now having the visible identity of a postage-stamp sized irrelevance in the corner of your screen.
Whilst one could claim that this gives the audience no illusions other than the sheer product of music itself; album art was and can be tremendous.
With Warhol and The Velvet Underground having the audacity to bend minds with a banana, the ludicrously luscious lips (even the tongue is still swaggering) of the Rolling Stones and world starting Big Bang of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (by the Beatles; a local Liverpool based group); these album covers gave an added appropriate kick in the teeth to authority and kick in the arses to those young folk whose attention had yet to be garnered.
Memorable to the mind, and our first contact with the album; the cover art mattered and it still can as it gives the artist another dimension the express and the audience an added bud to with which to taste.
The theme of dimensions plays again when regarding the idea of making music “heavier in the hand”.
The song you’ve downloaded from ITunes, is THE song. You’ve got it and so do your companions.
With the vinyl album, just as it was for me when I bought my first cd; what you hold in your hand is now YOURS.
That’s YOUR Appetite for Destruction. That’s MY Are You Experienced.
Of course, one’s chums had it too, only theirs was theirs, whilst yours was yours.
The album would be clenched to the strangling point of anticipation whilst you listened for the first time, studied diligently and blindly stared at as it revolved in ones hands as you felt what the songs gave you to feel or found a feeling within you.
YOURS.
MINE.
I can tell because it’s in my hand. Yours is in yours.
As well as this, there is the factor of also listening to this music, should you care to.
“Crisp”, “clear”, “acute”, “sharp”, “sterile”, “cutting” – All words describing why you should purchase the latest model of audio technology.
“Cold” is another and is, for me, the definition of digital sound in so far as a pleasure.
It has a place, of course, with Metal and certain Dance and Techno tunes, but people are drifting towards the future of vinyl for the welcoming, wistful “warmth” that it breathes.
A pleasing, deep groove of a song comes from the speaker of a turntable. The familiarity of sound that resonates like that of ones father coming home from work whilst your mother was reading and you were really rather busy in the womb.
The sound of ‘next door underwater’ has, in my thoughts, a direct link to our first hearings from within mum’s tum; a resonance from before you were born.
That’s quite a selling point.
Why choose vinyl?
Because of this, that, and the other; especially those last three.
It’s also tall and wide and round and it spins, all highly pleasing attributes to most physical things and a record is no exception.
The flaw in the proud procession along the groove of vinyl’s victory parade over digital music is that leads to the inevitable and irreversible end of the Earth.
It is a physical thing, and physical things take up space about the planet.
They require a great deal of energy to create and distribute, both of which cause ice shelves to melt as quickly as teenage hearts to a sweet pop melody.
A vinyl record can be found lodged in the corpse of a once highly determined and regrettably dense seagull or tortoise, who took to biting and swallowing once the young chap on the brow of the boat impressed everyone immensely by demonstrating just how well a vinyl record could fly with the correction application of “spin”.
Sharpened well, a vinyl record could be the weapon of choice; whilst the digitally downloaded song is notably omitted from current editions of Cluedo as a method of murder.
And so the Earth will close for business and eternity; awash in seas of plastic discs and enormous and quality album art.
It’s a good thing Mars has all but invited us to call in soon.
I’ll pack in advance I think…must remember to bring my IPod.
Sam.
The Lateral Column
Posted: April 11, 2017 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentThe Lateral Column.
Good title.
That’s about all there is to this.
I’ve a title, better than a peer’s Lord or Highness, but with the downside that I have no friends; what with my not being a peer to anyone.
The Lateral Column.
Oooh, just HIRE me why don’t’cha?
Travelling has hit this website hard, unlike me or you, both of whom haven’t hit it in the slightest.
These four months of travelling, with six remaining (new kangaroo-skin wallet permitting), have gifted me an appreciated banged-about-brain within which all I’ve seen and pondered is stored, in glaring contrast to my notepad, which lists items of shopping, the names of several Asian chaps whose names it seemed vital to recall, and the title of this column (The Lateral Column…..hire me).
Once I had intentions of being the famed writer that history’s greats would reanimate themselves purely to get their remaining fingers on the my latest epic (the kind of book that’d causes birth rates to drop…if it weren’t for the ultra-arousing prose of my shopping list and the authentically phallic font I’ve in mind for using), shortly before re-popping their pre-popped clogs at their sheer sight and humiliation that they never thought of a title that darn emotive and marketable.
My ego has taken, shall we say, a hearty heaving over the shoulders of humanity’s more subtle waves and been dashed most enlightening upon a humble shore.
I deserve nothing.
I deserve nothing more than you, actually, and it took some time to note that this was inherent and is ever onward.
It shall take some mighty doing to appreciate that the ego that came to this realisation at first saw humbleness as an audacious affront. There is no doubt that ego is fun and it shall have its place; as a humble tool of a meek man.
All there is to do is practice something I enjoy doing; here – writing.
Once a day, for as little as one half to one hour, I will be expressing myself all over Dear Reader, in as enigmatically and preposterously prosperous a manner as I can conjure…for that would appear to be my style.
And I like it.
One can tell from the website’s former name: Alternative Literary Output for the Soul.
And now; The Lateral Column.
I’ve a great deal to story to you in our little I’ll-write-you-read establishment, but those tales will wait till impatiently till a later article and an earlier hour, since I’ve only a few hours till hostel checkout and I’ve not slept yet.
It’s worth it all though, even through the moped-crashes, drag queen molestations, monkey attacks, waterfall blindness, hotel manager fights and cuddles and the time I discovered the third best feeling in the world is to hand puppy so cute that I’d both gobble it up and die for it to a pair of highly attractive and even higherly flirtatious german twins whilst laying/dangling from a hammock whilst a rather dopey grin dangles all the more danglier from my face.
The second best feeling?
This.
The greatest feeling I’ve felt?
Coming soon.
Sam
Who to Vote For; Clinton or Trump?
Posted: November 6, 2016 Filed under: Matters that Matter, writing | Tags: Clinton, politics, Trump, us election, usa Leave a commentClinton.
Vote for the same ol’ shtick; Mrs Hillary Clinton.
Whilst once there was a time in which politicians were acceptably immoral and had private agendas for which presidential powers were sought to necessitate; we are now in the perilous epoch of activism and public power.
The sway of the influence no longer is cast by those climbing by ambitious claw and tooth to the top of the perpetual foothills; for the era of personal politics is upon us.
People looking to gain an attribute beyond power are named upon the ballot slot.
Whilst we have Clinton; from the elderly school of dangerous dogs ready to bark and bite a jaw-shaped hole through their enemies in vainglorious effort of keeping the course, we also have Donald Trump – the irrelevant.
Trump has travelled through 7 decades without experiencing negative consequence, living on the accumulations of Trump the Greater and Senior – a Republican and a businessman. The father, one of the potent individual by which the United States came into fruitful fruition, died with an empire ready only to crumble.
From a 7 billion dollar legacy of concrete and formidable zeros, we look into a future of rubble and a single zero.
With Father’s empire to cushion his every failure, Donald has only one successful promotion throughout his life and this is fact that he inherited his name and fortune.
“My name is Donald Trump and I am extremely wealthy” is the successful fact; compounded by his repetition into being something he himself conjured.
And with this being his only success; Donald seeks to push the saturating idea to the hilt; “My name is Donald Trump and I am so extremely wealthy that I became President of the USA”.
A lonely failure, prisoned by his father’s success, the fortune that should have blown doors from hinges before him has constricted him to having one single phrase and one simple point: “My name is Donald Trump and I happen to be wealthy”.
For an individual without the backbone of solid achievement, and with only one thing to say, we now have the ambition that goes beyond seeking power and focuses its aim directly at legacy: Donald Trump wants to be more successful than his incredible father.
Donald wants approval that he has done something without his father, independent from the legacy that shackles him and free from the burden of his own mediocre 70 years.
Upon victory, Donald will seek another – now an international appeal, once more without substance and with the style of an ill-educated celebrity; whereupon he will be met and matched by the world of rabid politicians ferocious in their attacks to gain ground and influence.
A legacy of rubble comes tumbling towards us now, of which Donald Trump will insist on being voted most popular by those who remain.
Clinton is the antithesis of this.
For those denouncing her successes as being a matter of inheritance from her husband’s career, we should remember that she became a Senator and Secretary of State despite her husband writing her off as a figure he sought alternative company from; orally.
Hillary Clinton inherited high intelligence, few sociopathic tendencies and a moral upbringing from her parents.
With so adept a brain and education (in career as well as through a high-standard of schooling) saw her to the role of Senator and White House Secretary of State.
Her femininity, husband’s adultery and the portrayal of her as a frigid career woman caused Hillary to sharpen the teeth and strengthen the grip to hold fast until the ambition was met with completion and another challenge.
Hillary is an old-school politician with the evident will to surpass the standards tossed at her feet by challenges throughout her life; she has made selfish actions and thoughtless mistakes and these in her past are astoundingly rare and accounted for.
Clinton is spectacularly qualified as a politician and leader, whilst that sharpened ruthless edge makes for a President the nation and world is in need of.
And above all; she is a good person. Seeking changes in the world that are essential, though not easy, and changes that are right, though unpopular.
With Hillary Clinton as President of the USA, the world would have a typical leader, more of the same, spouting the day-to-day jargon we’ve come to expect and that many are revolting against.
She would do the job and well.
Donald Trump as President will be the result of a popularity contest with such self-absorbed fear that it shall supersede the point of the entire electoral process; to anoint a leader to do right by the United States of America.
Clinton now portrays what people most want changed: a removal of the jargon, of the old elite, of the dynasty, of the nepotism.
And I expect the removal of this to come profoundly so; following the defeat of Donald Trump in November.
But this depends on the will of the people.
Some vote for Hillary against Trump and vice versa.
Some vote for Hillary because of her policies and the high probability of her proficiency in the role.
Some who vote for Trump are not voting for policies or his qualifications for the role; they are voting for his personality.
And this is weak.
And for a comment on fear; I am afraid that the people of the United States are becoming beyond holding aloft as an example of how to lead the world.
I fear the United States is about to finally disappoint the world beyond reconsideration or forgiveness.
So in aggressive Western response to the economic and expansive rise of China, Brazil, Russia and China, aligned with the decline of the USA and the European Union; I’ll be keeping my chin up and sense of humour alight…I hear Canada’s popular as of late.
Thanks,
Sam
Donald Trump; On His Level
Posted: November 6, 2016 Filed under: Donald Trump; On His Level Leave a commentDonald. Why are you such a pussy that you only molest women? Molest a 200 pound 27 year old chap like me if want to get some street credibility. Like a real sex offender.
Donald Trump; On His Level
Posted: November 6, 2016 Filed under: Donald Trump; On His Level Leave a commentDonald. Have you noticed how all you Trumps look suspiciously Russian?
Why are you communist?
Stop being communist.
Donald Trump; On His Level
Posted: November 6, 2016 Filed under: Donald Trump; On His Level Leave a commentDonald. Why do you keep failing? Big failure; huge. Confirmed failure.
Donald Trump; On His Level
Posted: November 6, 2016 Filed under: Donald Trump; On His Level | Tags: donald trump, us election Leave a commentDonald. The adoration of 100 million sign-waving, gleefully racist, proudly dense Americans, jiggling their chins in anticipation of your next sassy comment doesn’t amount to your daddy’s love.
My Name’s Samuel Wood and I’m a Monarchist
Posted: November 6, 2016 Filed under: Brief...therefore witty., writing | Tags: congress, grandmother, loyality, monarchy, republicanism, senate, stiff, the queen Leave a commentI suppose now I’ll need to carry a show-handkerchief and sprout a moustache for folk to tell whether they should respect me or not.
That way I’ll have two things to weep into as I think of the Queen.
I was enjoying a five pound note on Bonfire Night and came away from the experience a Monarchist.
There are only a few years left of the goodest girl, so why not be a Monarchist for the remainder?
If we were to take up republican arms and cast her out onto the Mall, I’d feel wretched.
It seems too easy to picture; the Queen dazed and confused and wondering where to make her way to now she’s without a household to come thither with a blanket and tuck her in…somewhere.
I’d have to relieve her; scoop her up in my messianic middle-class arms and take her home to meet my children. Put her in a shoe box beneath the bed where she’ll eventually die because we miss-fed her dog food.
She may be largely redundant; but it is the strict cohesion of everyone taking this redundancy too seriously that makes her too vital for the nation for us to permit her to pass away.
This being said, I also feel the rise in me of the notion that she has the will for survival as such the daughter-of-mother-nature it becomes macabre.
Butlers, maids and chauffeurs must know they are useful in their current application though also qualify too easily as eventual arrow-fodder and food source. Matter and masses; as it were.
The sensation I’m suffering in two-way tides is that of a masculine/gentleman’s urge to protect the Queen with my English manhood, and to allow her to lead me to my death in use as a barricade and elevenses’.
I’m an individual sort of chap but I’m happy to dive my head into some of that “Dear Leader” complex and feel like I’ve achieved something because I have a Queen.
I’ve got a Queen; what’ve you got?
A senate?
Pfft. Don’t make me laugh inside (I’d never denote external emotion beyond “ooh what a lovely bouquet of flowers. My house is simply desolate of posies; thank you so awfully much for standing in line today”).
Democracy is for pussies and men who don’t love their grandmother enough.
Let’s talk in terms of granite here.
At war, your senate will discuss which of each of them gains possession of the fallen’s body parts, so as to knaw upon in their final few cannibalistic moments, whilst MY Queen will be standing on the beaches; with crown askew and rabid corgi by her side in delicious anticipation of being used as a by-the-tail-club-to-be-swung, sharpening her own knuckles and daring ISIS to take another step towards her.
She’s MINE.
I’ve got a Queen.
And I’ll apply her to the affected area liberally.
Why do this? What is she good for, sir?
To become a tad more staunch, perhaps sir?
The Queen makes me stiff, not only in my upper lip, but in every appropriate body part that could do with a wee bit of starching, as well as subjugately flaccid in the single area of pride and shame and irreverence to both penile emotions.
She makes me stiff like a patriot should be; stiff for my country and stiff for my Queen.
Stiffer than a millennial knows how.
The Queen is one of those few things I’ll someday cry about, simply because…she won’t cry in return.
Much like how she wept a sturdy gallon of tears for her retired battleship; she wouldn’t do that for me and I love her for it.
I know that, deep in the belly of Buckingham and Balmoral, she will let loose a lonely droplet for a corgi and she’ll never do that in front of me; and that makes me want to blubber into my stiff moustache.
The Queen is a battleship and I adore her because she sank Nazis and kept us buoyant.
What did your congress do?
Did they gather?
I’ll tell you what the nation’s ‘MRS’ did; she continued as she was bound to.
So quietly dignified that everyone knew about it.
She would wail a piece of aristocratic pottery deep into the noggin of a petulant and “awfully presumptuous” intruder and then proceed to not understand why the nation’s papers are making such a fuss.
Don’t intrude upon my Queen.
She’s mine.
And I’ll let her loose on you if you don’t staunch up.
Come be stiff with me.
Oh well chaps. All in good spirits; I’m sure your senate and congress are a charming collection when only one gets to know them.
Here’s a scheme; how about the matinee of Comus at the Globe next Saturday?
You bribe and collect the Senate and Congress to be there for 14:30. They can each have a cushion.
I’ll bring the Queen and her throne; you fucking loser.
Queendom; bitch.
Sharks? Not in my Fucking Tree!
Posted: October 28, 2016 Filed under: Brief...therefore witty., writing | Tags: eagles, food chain, humans, hunting, land lubbers for life, sharks Leave a commentI can’t think of a worse way to depart.
Head first down a shark, with the smell of distinctly unbrushed shark breath, rotting fish, blood and sea water, as well as digestive juices, seeing fellow prongees: fish that are also pronged upon a miserable shark tooth and give you a look which you return; the realisation that you are both in the same situation and your future isn’t as brief as you suddenly wish it would be.
Imagine sharing a petrified glance (whilst the rest of you flails in appreciation for the final few minutes you inhabit) with a fish.
Imagine being in the same situation as a fish.
The food chain is a horrible thing not to be paramount of.
This is why we should eat lions and sharks; so they know and there’s no confusion.
All sharks should find themselves tinned at some juncture.
And don’t animal rights me, oh reader darling.
You must understand that if we weren’t land lubbers (ohhhhhhhhh watch me lubber you cunt of the ocean) then those dim-eyed bastards would be the center of our nightmares, waking or a’slumber.
Here’s a challenge.
Watch someone being eaten by a shark next to you and then proceed to relax.
I double dare you to enjoy your day following the toothing of the neighbour you once neighboured in the water.
I avoid the neck-deep ocean, but I do have a contingency plan for the event of a shark assault (probably a sexual assault at that; with the wandering teeth).
Should I see the faintest suggestion of a protruding fin or flipper in my own personal piece of ocean, I will calmly wind my way back to shore (at a leisurely speed of sound) and proceed to kiss the first grain of sand I encounter and then climb the nearest sturdy tree, clutching a collection of carefully sharpened berries.
It has to end with a tree well climbed as that way, in the off-chance of any sudden evolutionary advancements in sharks being able to walk, I’ll at least have a few million years of life to enjoy before the flippers become proficient tree climbers.
And when they shake my fruit from their branch, we’ll have a discussion-most-stabby with these sharks of the tree.
Not in my fucking tree mate.
A man’s tree is like his body; keep sharks out of it.
Not only are they the greatest threat to humanity, aside from our own propensity to procreate ourselves into to starved, traffic-tired and generally pissed off people, but they’re a tad dainty in the ole’ dramatics.
Have you seen the way they leap out of the water?
“Ooh la la, feel my splash!”
Fuck them for that too.
They do in the wild what orcas are trained to do at Sea World.
It feels as though they’re attempting to merge their way in and amongst us, slowly enjoying the privilege of being inland rather than outfield in the wetter world, just biding their time until the chance to bite our species, figuratively and literally, in half…you’ll find me in my tree.
They say you should punch them in the nose if they dare to get too curious in the chewiest sense of the word.
I’d prefer to be eaten by them on the grounds of it being a somewhat less fucking stupid idea.
That being so, I still appreciate the fuck-you-final-fight of the fighting/deceased.
You have to kick and thrive in the mouth because there’s not much else to do at this juncture.
Less so kill or be killed, more so kick ‘em in the tonsils as they seek to swallow.
I could go on by I’ve an overwhelming urge to make clear this following position, though I may already have:
Fuck you sharks.
Fuck you all.
Here’s to Japan, go get’em.
Land Lubbers for Life…although I also feel comfortable taking to the air as I feel I could fuck up an eagle (ruffle its feathers and cute little talons).
Sam
