Goulden Moments

Posted 10:18 AM by Gobbler
Double Bloggy

I know, I know, I posted 4000 words yesterday, you might think that I would shut up for a while. But at least 3 people read at least some of those 4000 words and talked back, which is nice.

When The Darkness Blogs Them

Now, the most esplendido thing aboput where I am staying is that it is smack bang in the middle of the old town, Barrio Santa Cruz, or Holy Cross for all you non spanishios out there which is is one huge pile of yum vis a vis architecture. (speaking of huge piles of yum i got a parcel from my parents today which is i suspect full of Fray Bentos pies) Unfortunately they are doing three of these houses up right outside my large and non sound proofed window. Spanish builders pride themselves on being able to break things very loudly and hit every thing with big heavy hammers and drill and saw and plane and throw things about from dawn until dusk. this has meant that i have tended to work late at night, which may explain such blogs as yesterdays. Anyhow, today i decided to go to a park i visited briefly a few days ago and see what happened there. I told the frenchies of this plan and they suggested i instead came with them to their school where there was a roof terrace and I might be able to sit there at a table. This seemed like a reasonable plan and I agreed to go, but as we walked there Florian further enlightened me that the terrace had a swimming pool and was full of pretty girls, and he wanted me to get him five names and telephone numbers for florian. "Yeah, I can try wiz zem." This might have proved a little distracting and i wasnt very confident about the plan. Fortunately, the pool is of paddling pool dimensions and pretty girls were low on the ground, as in there werent many about not as in they were sunbathing, so I got a few things doen and I'll be back tomorrow. With my bottle of vodka filled with water, which makes me look a little dodgy.

Ze Movies

In order to get out of the house for a bit I went with the frenchies last night to watch a silent movie. The movie was indeed silent as it was some German black and white boredom from the twenties and it lasted two hours. The 'tuneful' electro dance beats that the dj slammed out as 'background music' to the film were anything but silent, however, and i have no wish of repeating the experience any time soon.

Now its time for our feature presentation, which many of you amy remember in part. Dr O...

DR. OCTAGON

Dear Paul, June 16th

What do you mean, who is Dr. Octagon? It seems extraordinary to me that I have never mentioned him before. Let me tell you about him.

Dr. Octagon is big and dirty and octagonal and he is out to get you. He used to be a friend of mine and a good man, before his octagonal days, but he turned to Octagonalism and now he is dirty and evil. It was a terrible thing, how it happened. He was studying to be a doctor at university and he was going to be the best doctor there ever was. But one day, as he was riding home from class on his bicycle, he was hit on the head by an octagonal frisbee, knocking him off his bike and nearly killing him. He spent many weeks in hospital, but when he came out he was not the same man. On the wall in his hospital ward was a large octagonal clock that went tick tick tick and it slowly drove him mad. Mad, I tell you, quite mad.

And so Doctor Octagon turned away from the path of goodness; he turned into a mad, twisted genius intent on turning everything in the world octagonal. He actually wants the world to be octagonal, and then it won’t be called The Globe any more but The Octagon. Imagine that! He lives in the Icy Core, which he created, in the very heart of his secret underground base, Polygon City. The main entrance to Polygon City is in a building called Trapezium Towers, but no-one knows where this building is.

Doctor Octagon works in his laboratory deep in the Icy Core, trying to build a Dirty Bomb. Not your average Dirty Bomb, the sort you read about in the papers, this Dirty Bomb is pure filth and it is octagonal. It is a Weapon of Ass Destruction.

Doctor Octagon also carries a blunderbuss around with him, loaded with filth. If he shoots you with his blunderbuss you will become big and dirty and octagonal like him, and I should hate to see that happen to you. Dr Octagon has an extensive underground monorail network (a bit like Belgium) and is very active in South East Asia.

Why am I telling you this? As I said, Doctor Octagon used to be a friend of mine, before he turned to Octagonalism. On the eighth of June I received this message from him:

"My plans for world domination are on hold at the moment due to an intervening pressing engagement. However, as well as this pressing engagment I am planning to move the location of Trapezium Towers and hence change the access to the Icy Core. Then I will be extending the monorail for the rest of the summer. Cigar anyone??"

It was the first communication I had received from him for some time, and hoped that it had nothing to do with your trip. However, I still have the octo-communicator he gave me many years ago and used it to ask him about his ‘intervening pressing engagement.’ On the eleventh of June I received this communication from him:

"Ha! My pressing engagement? Typical, you will never understand. That is why you will never rule the world you fool. Ha. Haha. Hahaha. hahahaha.
"I, the evil Doctor O, have decided that there is someone ripe for octagonalisation and that someone is your nephew. He is dangerously close to Trapezium Towers but he will never find it because I am moving it and because I will get him with my blunderbuss and octagonalise him first! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Well now, got to dash, I’m off to do research on a new breed of pig in Suffolk which I will breed as super pigs to carry the Dirty Bomb. Hahahaahahahaaa."

You see how evil he is Paul? Imagine a whole fleet of super pigs! I have been doing some research trying to track down exactly where he is and have received satellite pictures which indicate a big round thing with blue and green bits. Unless Dr Octagon has changed colour, become spherical and is now the size of a planet I don’t think it’s him.

In short, I believe Doctor Octagon has a base in Angkor Wat and if you go there you may perish. Angkor Wat is rubbish anyway, I saw it in a book once.

Don’t perish,

Uncle

***

Florian speech of the week: "Yeah, you get me an english girl. I do what I can. I am not a pretty man and I am not very strong so I cannot do very much, but I will do what I can."

Quality.

Rich: dirty. She sounds like a prime target for octagonalisation.

Cheesm: doesnt matter, thats the way it goes. Im not suggesting that there is only one such person for each of us, that would be silly. There are many. You haint gonna get them all. mayent get any...

And i never meant to suggest the perfect girl wasnt in england or was on the continent. And dont try and dupe me into coming home with your english rose stuff. I am here, my friend, for the oranges. And you think continental girls go a bit rotund once they pop a few sprogs. Look at the russians! Never seen anything like it! They quadruple in bodyweight! sometimes more. ITs incredible.

Kat: I know you havent written anything but read what i said to what you said when you last said something. if you see what im saying.

Posted 9:54 AM by Gobbler
Marmalade

EXAMINATIONS

Things continue in Seville. The frenchies have got three exams this week, which is causing them severe headaches. Florian was complaining last night that as they didn't have the textbook or any notes they couldnt study. i suggested that they might try contacting someone on their course. Florian says "Oh no, i dont sink we can do zat. Nooo, dont worry, we must just cheat very well." They seemed quite pleased today, presumably operation 'Cheating B**tard' went quite well.

PIMPING IT UP

Ben, the 19 year old semi-alcoholic (i say semi because i dont see how you can be a full blown alcoholic at 19, but he is certainly very thirsty) had a couple of his school friends over five days or so to, and I quote 'Pimp it up with the ladies.' This apparently involves wearing cricket hats and jackets to look smart (not my personal angle but you never know) and getting exceedingly pissed and then going up to girls and blow them away with some irresistable lines. I can't help but think that it was a wrong move to allow themselves to choose each otehrs chat up lines. The only one i can remember, which they all had to use, was "Look into my eyes and tell me you haven't shat yourself."

Surprisingly they didn't end up with flocks of girls following them around, they only managed to get into arguements and annoy people. they came round my flat a few days ago at 5:40. I was just going to bed (I had been working, its quietest at night and when you get stuck in, you know.) (I was working!) (Shut up, I so was working) and thought that opne of them wanted to sleep on thecouch so io let them in. turned out ben thought he had broken his finger after christian had punched him because ben had asked to be punched, or something like that, it was all a bit vague. Anyhow, had to chuck em out in the end, they were doing my nut in.

MADAME PALM AND HER FIVE LOVELY DAUGHTERS

I dont know how this has come about, but the frenchies keep starting up deep and meaningful conversations about who is masturbating where and when. perhaps its because they are both extremely anxious to get girlfriends and theyre, ah, letting off steam, and perhaps its got something to do with their french friend who, when he gets dtrunk, has a bad habit of whiping down his trousers and showing everyone a) that he has a hjairy arse and b) that he is the proud member of what they call a 'willy'. Anyway i find it quite upsetting. More upsetting for our cleaning lady, who is paul the dutch flatmate, who does a diligent job of cleaning the floors and surfaces. He's the cleanign lady, I'm head chef, and the frenchies, um, eat pizza and talk about wanking. nah, they're alrioght really.

And our Feature Presentation

WARNING: If your depressed or have a heart condition or are on the edge of suicide, it may be better not to read this. its not the biggest barrell of laughs that was ever written.

Gremlins

Hoi An, Vietnam

Thursday July 3

Paul had gone out again. He met his new friends, they went to a bar, they had laughed and joked together, had got drunk together and had had a good time. Then Paul, like everyone else, had stumbled back to his hotel. As it was five in the morning he had had to wake the night porter whose job it was to sleep in a makeshift tent by the door, keep anyone bad out and let anyone good in. The tired man let Paul pass and he returned to his room. Inside his room Paul turned on the air conditioning to rid the room of the still oppressive humid heat and then sat down on the bed. He looked at the white, bare wall and sighed. Half an hour ago he had been laughing; now he was deeply unhappy.
It was his fourth night in Hoi An. He was supposed to be in Hanoi by now but it is difficult to get up for 10 am buses if you are out and drinking until five. There was another bus at ten the next morning and he had asked the reception to wake him but he was not confident he would make it. "That’s alright," you might say, "that’s cool! Out partying until five am, give that man a pat on the back! That’s what I’d like to do, if only I could do it more often." That’s what Paul had thought an hour earlier as he bought himself another Jack Daniels, played another game of pool and chatted more shit to friends he had never heard of four days before and would probably never see again after he left Hoi An, and smiled and laughed and drank and joked. That was the life, it seemed. But even then, in the middle of the party, through the haze, he had known that the gremlins were waiting to strike. They usually were. You could almost drown them with alcohol, but they would always come back. Now, back at the hotel as Paul sat on the bed and stared at the wall, his gremlins came out and talked to him. These weren’t the sort of gremlins you see on t.v. or in computer games, these were real gremlins; they were in his head. Real gremlins live in your head. They tell you things that you don’t want to hear, ask you questions that you don’t want to answer. You don’t want to hear these things because they are unpleasant and true. The gremlins told Paul that even though he had been out and had had a good time, something was very wrong. If he had been the sort he would have started to cry, but he wasn’t. Instead he got up from the bed, took a beer from the mini-fridge, sat down again and looked at the wall slowly drinking, thinking about what to do with his gremlins, who told him that he was lonely and unhappy.

Everybody who thinks has gremlins. The more you think the more gremlins you have, and the more you think about them the more powerful they get. Sometimes, if you think about them too much, they can take control of you and drive you mad. Simpletons don’t go mad, they can’t think very much so the gremlins never get powerful enough, only in intelligent people can the gremlins prosper. Some of the worlds greatest minds have gone mad; Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, went mad, as did Nietzche, and many others. They could not satiate their gremlins and were eventually consumed by them. Paul wasn’t in any danger of going mad, all he had done was to start to think and that had let the gremlins loose.

Most of us find a way of dealing with our gremlins. There are four ways. The first is to keep your mind busy. Let me give you an example.

There was a man once, named Nick; a good, clever man, who tried to do his best when he had the chance. He worked in an office, as most Englishmen do; it was a pleasant office and he had a good job. He was quite a quiet man because he was always working hard. It was Tuesday the 30th of September. An ordinary day for most of us, but for Nick it was a special day: it was his birthday, his 27th. As is the custom, he brought in cakes for everyone so that they could thankfully ruin another diet and wish him a happy birthday. He did not say, gayly, what everyone usually says in the office on their birthday after someone asks how old they are and then remarks that they are getting old. People normally say, "I’m still young! I’m still young!", and then have a good hearty laugh and start poking fun at all the older people. People do that until the age of about 35 when they start pretending that they don’t actually have a birthday. But Nick did not say "I’m still young!" when his friend commented on his age. Instead he stood up and looked around him, his face a picture of amazement as if he had just realised something for the first time, and said slowly, "I’m 27… I’ve been here since I was 22… I’ve spent my 20’s in this office… I’ve done nothing else…" It looked for an extraordinary instant as if he was going to announce that he was leaving the office and was never going to come back. A couple of people looked at him suspiciously through narrow eyes, as if he had just said something sacreligious, as if he had just come very close to blowing the lid off some unadmittable dark secret that was harboured in each breast in that corner of the office. There was a short, awkward silence; it was crunch time. Nick looked about him again for a moment, as if looking for support, then shrugged his shoulders sadly, muttered an "Oh well," sat down and set about his work, pushing that particular gremlin back into its secret harbour.

If you work hard enough then you don’t have time to think. That is one way of stopping the gremlins. You keep yourself so busy with life that you don’t have time to think and the gremlins don’t have a chance to talk to you. There, at the office, on 30 September and at the age of 27, Nick had let his guard down and the gremlins had broken out. As is usually the case he had been able to quickly stifle them. When you’re 27 you still have your youth and so you announce defiantly "I’m still young!" and carry on working without thinking. Those particular gremlins aren’t supposed to erupt until you get to about 40 when you have your scheduled mid-life crisis. During your mid-life crisis you look at all the things you haven’t done and wonder where it has all gone, what happened to your youth. Then, usually, you reluctantly accept that your youth is dead and with it your youthful desires and dreams; you make your peace and those particular gremlins are laid to rest.

Another way of beating the gremlins is to cheat them. You can work hard all week and keep yourself occupied in all your waking hours, but that won’t stop them completely. When you lie in bed at night, for example, they can creep up on you, niggle at your brain, ask you all sorts of questions. Why are you doing what you don’t want to do? Why aren’t you doing what you do want to do? Or, in Paul’s case, in Hoi An, why exactly did you go out and get drunk again? You can cheat these gremlins by deciding that they are very important things to consider, but things to be considered another time. Tomorrow, next week, next year, just not now. I don’t want to think now.

Often, these two ways of beating the gremlins are not enough, even when used both together. Sometimes the gremlins scream at you at a volume you can’t ignore, saying ‘Think!’. Fortunately there is a third way of silencing the gremlins and that is to get outside help. Drink is a good option. While Paul was out with his friends getting drunk he didn’t have time to think and if he had drunk more he would have collapsed unconscious onto the bed gremlin free rather than perching on the side of it as he was now, his head full of them. Of course, alcohol isn’t the only drug you can take to silence the gremlins, it’s just the most popular. After all, it’s legal and reasonably civilised; but there are plenty of other drugs and better ones for the job, they’re just illegal and, in some cases, utter filth. Hell, with some drugs you can blow not just gremlins but the whole world away for a while; leave earth and reality on a crazy trip where either everything is great or nothing matters. Maybe, as an upstanding and law abiding member of your society, you don’t approve of such illegal substances. But you’ve still got your gremlins. Perhaps you’ve got them pretty bad, they shout at you all day. So what do you do? You can’t smoke hash let alone tuck into the ecstasy tablets or pump your veins full of heroin, whatever would your friends say? Don’t worry, dear, help is at hand; there are plenty of legal alternatives other than alcohol. Sleeping pills, prozac, valium and the rest. They’ll all keep the gremlins at bay, put a shine on your day.

The fourth way of dealing with the gremlins is by far the hardest and best; it is to confront them. Gremlins are in our heads, they are our own creations and we put them there ourselves. If we try to ignore the gremlins it is because we are afraid of them, afraid that we are not strong enough to confront them or afraid there is nothing to be done about them. If we think about what our gremlins are saying we can become very miserable. Most people spend their whole lives running from their gremlins, a lifelong crusade to not think about the questions that really matter and the truths that really hurt. There are no gremlins about trivial things. Not everyone has the same gremlins but no-one has a gremlin that asks you why you prefer orange juice to apple juice, no gremlin ever hits you in the face and tells you that you are slow at tying your shoelaces. At least I hope not. Gremlins are there for important reasons. Nick had told everyone that he had spent his twenties in the office because there were gremlins within him hammering away, telling him that he wanted to be somewhere else, only Nick was trying desperately to not listen. And now the gremlins were asking Paul why he was drunk again. And as he sat there drinking his beer, sad and lonely, Paul had a revelation. And, perhaps because it made him feel a little less lonely, he put down this revelation in a letter to his uncle.

Dear Uncle, July 3 2003

It’s late and I am drunk. I hope you don’t mind too much. I have no-one else to tell this to.
I’m drunk. I mean, I know, I’m really drunk. And when I’m six feet under what’ll I have? I’ll be a dead bunny in the dead earth. Fuck it. Fuck it all. What do I live for?

I’ve not said it before, perhaps I’ve not been drunk enough; but that’s bull shit. I’ve been worse, only now I’m going to tell you about it. Tonight, like so many other nights, like so many other people, I got very drunk. It’s not because I wanted to get drunk, although it feels quite good at the moment. No, that’s not why. Bollocks, I need to go to bed. Sorry Unc, I’ve got to say something else.

I’ve not said it before, but on this trip I’m looking for something. The perfect woman. The one who will make me better than I can ever be alone. I am drunk, I know. But isn’t that what every man is looking for, Unc? I am drunk. I need the perfect woman. I’m not wrong, it’s what we all need. And if I look back at these words and laugh or cry, then I will have failed, my life incomplete. Words easily spoken, not so easy to live up to. And if I fail, if I never find this woman, then all this is gobshite, a naïve dream. And if I win, what then, what then?

And what do I do? What would you do? I have another drink. Not quite drunk enough yet it seems. Oh well. Another little drink seems appropriate. Why? What end do you forsee? Still drinkin’? Excuses. So why? Because I have no balance, no lady. No lady. I need the good woman. I was stirf, I nedrddddd, he new which batalliop he had frvrd in. Just gremlions

I’n sorrrrt,

Yoooir Unmvle,

Paaaaaaaaul.

You know what the perfect ending to a night out is? It’s not collapsing in a gutter very ill. It’s not going home and making friends with the toilet. It’s not passing out somewhere. It’s not even going home with your mates laughing all the way. That’s good but it’s not the perfect end to an evening. It’s not even meeting a girl or a boy and going home with them and shagging them all night, although that is very nice too. The perfect ending to a night is meeting someone who you think is amazing, who you connect with, who you want to be with, who has drilled a message into your brain that says ‘This person I have met is bloody marvellous. I have been looking for a person like this.’ You go home with them in your arms, and nothing else matters. That is the perfect end to a night, don’t you think? It is. You’re not looking to just get pissed unless you’re running from your gremlins. You don’t go to a club to shout in peoples ears and listen to the music, that just comes with it. You aren’t just looking for a snog, or a grope, or a fuck; you take them as they come of course, that’s life, isn’t it? You go there to meet someone and have the perfect evening. You’re looking for someone. You don’t find them very often, Paul certainly didn’t, which was why he had been out getting trolleyed again. You are really looking for a communion with somebody else, someone whose eyes you can look into and feel all the good things of this world; be happy. Who doesn’t want to be happy?

I do not believe that Paul knew that night that he had made the breakthrough he had in fact made, but he would work it out later. He had gone out to the bar to meet his friends because he knew that if he spent the evening sitting alone in his hotel room with nothing to do except watch t.v. he would have been bored and lonely; everybody knows that. He had gone out because he had nothing better to do. Then at the end of the night he had come home and he was still sitting alone in his hotel room with none but his gremlins to keep him company. So he had another beer and thought about things. All he wanted at that moment was to have somebody to hold, someone who would make everything worthwhile, make everything alright, give him a reason to do something other than get hammered in the bar. Paul needed that good woman. And he was right, it is what we all need, that good someone. That was precisely what he didn’t have, and the reason why he sat there unhappy and lonely. It didn’t seem to matter so much now though, because he had, at least, silenced one of his gremlins, answered one of his questions. It seemed so simple, now that he had worked it out, even written it down. Why hadn’t he realised it before? Why doesn’t everyone realise it? The reason is the same as the reason why we try to ignore all the other things our gremlins are saying to us: it is a very dangerous thing to admit. Think at your peril, listen to your gremlins at your peril, the truth is hard to live with. Now that Paul had admitted to himself that he was looking for this good woman and believed he needed to find her, he would have to go out and find her, he had no choice, or else he would know he was selling himself short and perhaps never find the happiness he, like everyone else, so desperately sought.

Paul finished his beer and sleep took him. He missed his bus the next morning, and didn’t leave until the day after.

***

Dear Paul, July 5 2003

Ye gods man, whatever next? What kind of incoherent drivel are you sending me now? However, despite the fact that you seem to be coming out with the sort of claptrap more befitting a man of the cloth than a sex hungry youth, I’m glad you’re beginning to be honest, unlike the boring ‘Hello Uncle I’m having a lovely time and the weather is lovely’ codshit you’ve been sending me before. Every time I get a postcard from someone and they write on it ‘I am having a lovely time and the weather is lovely, wish you were here bla bla’ do you know what I do? I eat the fucking thing, that’s what I do, wash it down with a bottle of beaujolais. They wrote nothing better than turd in the first place so I just help it along. Better than clogging up my walls with it. So, even if what you wrote made me vomit I am glad we have passed this important threshold because it’s time I told you something sonny: you’re talking a right load of old bollocks, that’s what you’re doing.

What’s wrong with sexy sally the communal blow up from the factory in Gosport? Not to mention those lovely new versions that are coming in from China nowadays. The buck no longer has to stop at your traditional two holer, oh no. Why settle for two when for just a few quid more you can have six? Answer me that! And have you not heard of Chiu Mi, the lovely asian model that is actually edible? Strawberry flavour, quite delicious. And you can get a wide variety of blow up animals as well. Did I say wide? I meant collosal! Not just sheep, no, but all farm animals and a wide variety of mystical creatures such as dragons and koala bears and even yellow, blue and orange alien women from the planet orgasmo, which go ‘Ka-ching!’ when you put your chap to work. And these delights are not just restricted to men, not a bit of it.

Perfect woman my arse.

***

END

Darn it, just realised that i brought the wrong one so this isnt finished. the finished one has got some lovely stuff about platinum version rampant rabbits. Don't ask me how ui know about these things, I just do.

Quick talk backs, but about to be evicted again.

Evil Uncle: Save some coke foer me! Any good pictures?

Vinny Boy: I met a girl from essex once. Very chip.

Kat: Now, did you mean verbose as in 'writes a lot' or verbose as in 'writes a lot without saying a lot'? Makes a big difference you see. I dont think it actually can mean the first definition but i shall be awfully hurt if you emant the second. but i suppose if you did mean it then someones got to say it.
Semana Santa been and gone, was indeed very good. when were you there?

Mumaloids: got the e i hope

Chees'm: Chew on this MR CHEESE.

Saint semen: A Av escepped

Evil Uncle: U fer koffee

Greg: Thing is mate, between you and me, its a lotwarmer here and there are more oranges. I was home for six months but didnt blog much because I was working hard most of the time and it sucked all the juices from me. Note to self: do not spend all money on orange trees; have some money left over for festival

Ciao all, hope to see you tomorrow