my life as a artist
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why tv
Tuesday 21st October 2008 10:02 PM
I was scanning the TV programmes for Friday night, and the first thing that caught my eye, like a splash of hot fat from a chip-pan, was that at 10:35, on BBC 1, if I wanted to, I could watch the Jonathon Ross Show with Ricky Gervais and Gordon Ramsay. I then go on to find out that between the hours of ten and eleven, across all the main channels, excepting Channel 5, I could choose to be in the company of either Frank Skinner, Al Murray, pub landlord, Alan Carr or Jeremy Clarkson.
Ah, winter draws on! We watch the TV instead of the fire, and the flames of these particular flickering numpkins don't give out any heat at all, and they leave a lot of clinker. They remind me of the very expensive bags of coal that you can buy at service stations, that turn out to be lumps of concrete painted black. I've told a couple of producers from Yorkshire TV that I burn sweet and hot like seasoned hawthorn, but they haven't got back to me yet.
When I've got a bucket of bile, brimming with rancour, freshly-drawn from my deep well of bitterness, I know that I should really drive to Bridlington, bless it, and pour it into the sea, but sometimes I find it easier to throw it over other entertainers, who've got more work than I have. Rather than give in to an unseeing cloud of prejudice, jealousy and impotent rage, I thought it my duty to transcend such base emotion, and try and offer some sort of rational critique, so I tried to watch a bit of the Jonathon Ross show for research purposes. However, after two minutes of toe-curling cheese, ironically spread on a cheap corn-cracker of excruciating insincerity, I had to turn it off and go back to the blind, judgemental approach. Sometimes it can be a real time-saver.
Like Wayne Rooney, like gold, like virtue, time is becoming increasingly precious, and yet people so often just waste it. We live in a time of massive time-debt, because for hundreds of years, there's been people out there who'll steal a couple of minutes, and then lend it out as though it was half an hour. The time I saved on Friday night, by not watching the Jonathon Ross show, was saved in a fair-trade, special high-interest, personal account, which I cashed in at my local Bank of Eternity, and spent on doing a poster for an upcoming gig with the Travelling Libraries.
The gig will be at the Winning Post on the 7th November, and I'll tell you more about it soon, but because I really splashed out on the poster, I'm afraid I've run out of time.
Posted 10:02 PM | 5 Comments | Permalink
feed the birds
Monday 13th October 2008 11:21 PM
.According to James 'really' Naughtie, speaking today on Radio 4's ironically titled 'World at One', £9,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's nine bilious godzillions) worth of stocks and shares had been 'lost-in-action' on the stock exchange that morning, wiped out, apparently, in one brutal cut-blood-spurt-artery slash. They weren't wiped out, of course, because they weren't there in the first place, but nevertheless, James painted a picture, (in words, because quick pencil sketches don't work on radio) describing the trading floor as being awash with bloodied bankers, mired in the red, with no futures and no options, paying the price of the past, with interest.
To matters financial,
My resistance is substantial,
And the tedium's not a medium amount,
When money talks I'm snoring,
I think interest is boring,
It's an overdrawn and very dull account
I wrote that a few years ago, and I don't feel quite the same now. I find it heartening that common or garden-of-eden people are talking about the banking sytem on their local omnibus, because it won't take much inquiry to reveal the whole thing for the pernicious scam it is. A few days ago, on a radio 4 phone in, I was delighted to hear a call from a gently -spoken old lady who said. 'We've heard a lot from politicians and bankers about the financial crisis, but do you think it might be worthwhile to hear the opinion of say, an anarchist or someone like that?'
Last week, due to temporary financial difficulties, I had a cheque bounce and failed to meet two standing orders, despite having uncleared cheques in the system that would have covered the amounts. Understanding the problem as only a bank can, my caring, sharing Co-op decided to take £90 out of my account in mysterious charges, which of course didn't really help matters. This morning I went into the bank, and after scouring the inside back pages of the Yorkshire Post for free Huddersfield Town news, told the assembled staff that if they persisted in their materialistic view of life, they would be in great danger of immunising themselves from their own radiance, which could ultimately lead to complete isolation from the miraculous. After getting one of the bank-tellers, a pleasant young woman, (I don't know her name was but she had a badge called Janet), to agree with me that there was a place for unarmed truth and unconditional love in the modern banking world, I managed to get a £60 refund. At tuppence a bag, that's a lot of bird food.
Posted 11:21 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
paper ghosts
Tuesday 7th October 2008 7:30 PM
I see that a three-hundred-year old pyramid-selling scheme, commonly known as the banking system, is finally collapsing under the weight of its own delusional greed. My schadenfreude is tempered by the fact that I am fully implicated, having taken out an £8,000 loan with the co-operative bank in 2004, either to buy a boat, or two kilos of hand-rubbed Manali charas, I can't remember which. Because there's always a pay-back with this sort of thing, I've been paying it back, at £125 a month, and after four years I think I owe them about £9,000. Their advertising claim of 'ethical banking' is obviously an oxymoron, whereas I'm just a moron.
Although my gut instinct tells me that it's all a massive scam, the actual mechanics of it all are fiendishly complicated. Henry Ford once said 'It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
Much earlier, the Rothschild Brothers of London noted, "The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from its profits or so dependant on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class."
Paper money will soon be the ghost of money, and once more, gold and other precious metals will re-assert themselves as the true measure of wealth. As the top scorer for York Corinthians last season, I'm the holder of the 'golden boot' award, a solid platinum football boot with gold studs, mounted on an obsidian plinth. I'm so desperate to retain it, that yesterday I played two games, one for the morning team and one for the afternoon team, in an attempt to get on the score-sheet. However, my ability to hit cow's arses with banjoes seems to have deserted me for the moment, and I fear that at the end of May my hope of future security will go the way of my strike-partner, the fabulous Bustling Brian.
My Mum says that I ought to melt the boot down and make a copy of it in cheap plastic, and although this is not the way of the immaculate warrior, it is an option. I don't think anyone would notice, and at the end of the day the 'golden boot' is all about honour and glory, not financial security. It's either that or getting a bigger banjo.
Posted 7:30 PM | 3 Comments | Permalink
