Life is a Photoshop Toolbox in a Raincoat, Blowing Candles... or Something.

So no one told you life was gonna be this waaaayyyy

 *clap-clap-clap-clap*

If you're somewhat the age of your writer here or a little older, you'll know that song, and its depressingly true lyrics about the bleakness of life (and how friends may help overcome the overbearing hardships of it).

So you're in your early twenties. Or you're not, but you may be soon enough, or remember that decade about three decades ago? So, suddenly, and most of all disappointingly you find your head occupied with super lame boring stuff like: do I need international health insurance, I wonder if I'm paying too much tax, God I've been only getting tubbier I swear I'll stop eating carbs. 

You can sort of recollect when that happened and what steps you took to get there. Some of those steps were probably tempting, like sex, but now that you're taking that for granted, or not getting any anyway, you're running out of things to enjoy as an adult. Alcohol? Cigarettes. You know you shouldn't be doing that anyway, so there's guilt. Oooh, the guilt! As a child you had the boredom, the jealousy, the unexplained grouchies; as a teenager - the never ending angst, the LUST for everything that's human shaped; and as an adult you have your guilt, and anxiety.

Actually, thinking about it... adulthood encompasses heavy doses of all those emotions and experiences. But it's okay, because we can take it. Most of the time. We have a brain that hasn't yet propelled into deteriorating too fast, yet already it has reached its near maximum complexity as a bodily organ. Which means it's probably not too easy to wield it. It's like you've been using MS Paint for as long as you can remember, happily scribbling pixelated nonsense for your own pleasure, and now you find yourself staring dumbfounded at the toolbox panel of Adobe Photoshop, wondering how to at least simulate competence to open up a new plain sheet of workspace there. And because we're such wonderfully social animals, you get to watch online someone else subtly highlighting the upper right corner of an iris of a majestic unicorn someone's concocted on their screen, also using magical electronic pad and pencil instead of a mouse, that you didn't even know existed.

In The Sims your ageing is accompanied by spinning, sparkles, and a jolly jingle.
Real life birthdays sound more like your overweight and slightly ominous uncle barfing in the corner of the living room, his wife and your cousins are fighting over who let the baby play with the cat that scratched its face, and you're trying to wish yourself out of society before blowing out your candles. Or is that just me?

Oh, and then your peers start pairing up and spawning the result of their careless misuse of contraceptives. Coaxing you into doing the same, just so they don't have to suffer alone.

Meanwhile you are desperately lonely, completely inadequate career-wise, and generally just as clueless about decision making and direction in life as when you were choosing what to do after school.

It's like you're always stuck in the second geeeaaaar!

Oh well it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your yeeeeaaar

Everyone seems to be doing much better than you. But you know well and dandy it's just a transparent polyester laminate-covered raincoat of bullshit, and we're all together stuck in the swirling swooshing chaotic nonsense that we quasi-omnisciently like to sum up as life. And, you know, it is bizarrely comforting to see things that way. Whether we want it or not, as long as we're alive at all, we're in this together and should cling to each other, and let others cling to us too. Since we're going to be doing this life thing and all. It's kinda trendy I hear.

You will now also be humming that song to yourself for the rest of the day. But it's okay, 'cause hey

I'll be there for you.

Hampster Dam

Anyone I'd mentioned to that I would be visiting Amsterdam had unanimously cheered at this choice for a mini getaway weekend vacation, that me and several university friends had decided upon. Most people would go onto an extended description of Amsterdam as a kind of a European Vegas where everything is allowed and where no one comes to stay longer than for a few heavily drug-ridden weeks.

TO THE WINDOOOOOW, TO THE WAAAAALL!!!
The Dutch be so rowdy they're well known for their museums, and their ubiquitous use of bycicles!

What I expected: 

• hookers on every corner. Having in mind a cartoonish sort of prostitute, eager beyond belief to snatch all the cash from their easily persuaded clientèle here. We were warned beforehand that if you try and take pictures of the women, they throw bottles of piss at you;
• droves of hopelessly inebriated youths screaming a European equivalent of "SPRING BREAAAK!" like in those dumb American frat comedies.
• dealers on every street and nook. I was told I would get offered all sorts of substances of dubious quality and warned not to buy it! Also that everyone is high and off their tits on Ecstasy, or Speed, or LSD or newfangled fancy stuff no one's yet heard about like dried rabbit nail dust mixed with toothpaste, and you're supposed to rub it into your scalp, and it totes chills your brains, yo, like spaced out and like cool and all. Yo. I'd call it Ruthmeric. Because I'm just so random, and besides that was the name of the first rabbit that lost its nails to the commencement of all this imaginary production so... in its honour really. Or Tuptoosh. That sounds like a nice name for a rabbit.

Anyway.

What we actually saw:

• A few discreet streets with curtained floor-to-ceiling windows, with a few ladies in bikinis in some of them, smiling awkwardly and looking like they might just be trying out some new public tanning facility booth where people get to see if you like it or not. Most passers by were politely looking around, moving along, and didn't stare. No one took pictures though either, so the piss cannot be confirmed or disproved; case deemed an X file.

30% more lamps for that perfect chocolate skin tone, with new generation UVA and UVB lights!*
*No tanning lotion, but a shiny swimsuit and an apathetic countenance are required.

• Tourists, some self-sedated locals, more tourists, staff in catering spots who were either overly stressed or much too relaxed for their line of work, yet more tourists, and Carl Barât from the Libertines (and later Dirty Pretty Things) - so that was quite an exciting exhibit, and felt really local and belonging to the environment.
• A few coffee shops, and several "coffee" shops - where you can't even get a cup of coffee - that sell marijuana. That's pretty much it. Nothing shocking or intriguing at all except for the sensationally overpriced soft beverages in said places. Yes, you have the sloppy bracelet abusing tattoo addicts drowning in reefer smoke in dim-lit bars and such, what's the big difference in terms of chasing simple pleasures between them and Englishmen clutching their 6th?... pint that day, guffawing at how great that last pool shot was just then, before they have to head back to work after lunch, haha.

Yeah, of course we smoked the weed. And had the Space Cake, and the Space Cookies, and even some really mild herbal pills, which did the work of a half a can of an energy drink. Disappointing if anything. What all the marijuana did was make us all seem like a bunch of bored overfed hampsters, half-laying around our table some place, or strolling the city like it's just a bad habit at this point, you know, to want to move around and see things. Luckily, all that in a truly wonderful light-breezed, blossom-snowing and sunny Spring weather. Never have I felt 68 years old more than in Amsterdam. 

Sooo lazy, kind of sleepy, but generally just, really kind of... "meh". No one even got the munchies, let alone saw, heard, or otherwise experienced anything unusual. Say, I would love to have hallucinated some magic over my reality, like me and Tuptush, or Rutpickins, or what's-its-name my best friend's pet bunny rabbit, flying over the canals of Hampsterdam, floating solely on clouds of spliff smoke, and partly maybe on expectations a little too high.

Hihi.

[Picture sources:
http://www.caedes.net/Zephir.cgi?lib=Caedes::Infopage&image=Paul_Gerritsen-1185207602.jpg
http://www.apalog.com/asahina/monthly/201308/]

Your Music, Nose, and Space Whales

For some reason I have never been capable of concentrating while listening to music. Tv is fine, unless something like breaking bad is on. Even radio is okay as working background, if just generally irritating - increasingly, depending on the volume. Someone else talking? If I k ow them, they'll need go shut up, or ill have to...leave the room. Anyone else - fine, blabber to your health. Unless, like, it's one of those, like super slutty sounding valley girl diva types, who would, like, drive a deaf man insane!

But anyway, why does that happen? Naturally, our senses bombard our brains with myriads of visual details and colours, smells, information about our physical comfort, continuing breathing and heartbeat, and so on. And oh, you're actually always looking at the tip of your nose, but choose not to notice it. Ain't that sum'. Try not noticing it now, that pink transparent looking knob just there at the bottom. And your breathing in, and out, don't notice that for a second now. And how often you need to blink - man, your eyes are dry today, aren't they! 

And swallow that saliva in your mouth, there's too much already. 

If you're actively trying to see your nose right now, make sure there's no one around, okay? Take care there.

So what does the brain not block out? Obviously the sensation of cotton against my feet is not crucial for my survival at this moment, but then why hearing music that I enjoy interferes entirely with my mind process? It is not threatening - in fact, it should be comforting to me, and should help propel my mind into a relaxed and playful trance like a child in a kitchen cupboard, figuring out how matches work.

Is my brain drawn to pleasure so much that it cannot help but halt all other CPU* processes and dedicate its energy to re-recognizing this particular set of sounds? 

What if I set my phone to play only instrumental, vocal-less versions of my whole playlist? Although that might just spiral down into a one-man karaoke night, or even worse if I'm in public: a quiet whisper-singing, combined with actively miming out the lyrics, whilst sitting in a Starbucks or something. Not that I go to Starbucks. What about just drum parts? Would it just be weird then? Maybe I'd discover a new hobby, sitting over a clean white sheet, pen in hand and looking into deep space, trying to figure out whether those kick-kick-snare syncopes are from the second verse of that song by that band?

Meanwhile this is being scribbled to the tune of the whining of the ancient mechanical space whales that is the London underground trains. Swayed side to side, my nose wrinkled by that breathy charcoal smell. Although this doesn't bother me at all. This, apparently, my brain is used to, this is fine.


*CPU - [according to Wikipedia because I don't have time for a proper dictionary search] - is a central processing unit, the hardware within a computer that carries out the instructions of a computer program. Pretty much the brain of your computer. Or not. I'm not a specialist.


[Picture source: http://imgur.com/gallery/oDhSy6s]

Looking For a Yob

In desperate need of a laugh, my fellow bartenders and I to this day try and incorporate the word 'yob' into daily speech, and then pretend we're trying not to laugh. It came about when one late afternoon this young feller walked in, his hand clutching a newly baked A4 CV sheet, and timidly approached the bar. I happened to be on call behind the wooden plank whence drinks are served, so when asked if he could be helped, the gentleman kindly told me: "I'm looking for a yob". 

We'd barely had any other guests in at that point, but I'd presumed this Rob must be here somewhere. I looked around, as if Rob would maybe notice this and come to meet this young lad himself. 

"A... job?", the guy hesitantly corrected himself. "Kenn I leave thees?" - [at this point I just need to let you in on how hard it was to actually comprehend his words; he turned out to be a recent undergraduate Italian] - handing me a single white sheet. 

See, in some languages the letter 'J' is more often than not, or exclusively, pronounced as a 'ye' sound, say, Jacob might get pronounced as 'Ya-kohb' or similarly. Also, oddly enough, I have had to correct people saying 'joga', referring to yoga. Jogurt. Anyway. 

I returned to my mind-numbing and comfortably lulling menial tasks with my colleagues, and casually retold the story. Collectively, we immediately found it hilarious how someone so illiterate in the local language would apply for such a difficult and eloquence requiring position as a bartender. I'm not kidding, we laughed hysterically at this, but like I said, there do come desperate times. 

I suppose I felt so great laughing at the poor lad because I knew I was at least better than him. At doing what he wanted to be doing, anyway. 

Wait, I think I know that guy. Sasha?... It IS you! So how did that scamming business back in Lithuania turn out for you?

Last year, 155,000 people from the EU arrived into the UK, according to the government statistics website. One of them was this Antonio, or Ricardo - no, that's a Spanish name - this poor dude. Oh, 74,000 left, but here on the website they even give you reduction so you don't worry your noodle too much: +82,000. Imagine all of those people fitting in one annual boat. Someone magically gathers them from all nooks and corners, and just for the effect of our imaginations, stuffs a floating arc with eighty two thousand maybe-English-speaking-maybe-not immigrants who are staying. Granted, most of them will eventually find jobs, learn the language, muck into all the easily available drugs recreationally, and adapt in every other way that is to do with our daily routines here, I'm sure.

I guess more than anything this constant overturn of citizens teaches people to try and see things through others' boots. And walk in their point of view.
I wonder what he ended up doing, that Italian.

Well, welcome to London, kiddo. 

[Picture from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8935943/Gap-between-rich-and-poor-growing-fastest-in-Britain.html]