His and hers shopping

There were three kinds of muzak in the high street whorehouses I was dragged into today: Background bar funky house, G-A-Y mega anthems and lift muzak.

I ate in a ‘food court’ for the first time. There wasn’t a judge or king in sight but plenty of fast food. I’m not a massive fan of fast food. I’ll occasionally eat a chicken burger from a reputable restaurant the likes of Chicken cottage and Dixie Chicken (when severely inebriated) but today I settled for a dirty, dirty, Pizza Hut, Chicken Supreme. There was nothing supreme about it. Food for kings, food for rtards, you decide.


Again I experienced the P.O.W camp style waiting game outside the female changing rooms. Its horrible, I felt like waving around the shopping that had already attached itself to me, like parasites from early outlets, just to prove I wasn’t, in fact, a pervert waiting outside the changing rooms for a curtain to flap.

High street shops should really make more of an effort for the millions of us who are forced to stand around looking morkish and not even making eye contact, even though we’re in the exact same situation!

And lo, when it was my turn the whole venture took less than ten minutes. Who would have thought?

Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman and Ben Oliver

I feel like Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation. For those of you unfamiliar with the film’s premise, Charlie Kaufman is a real life screenwriter who wrote the surreal being John Malkovich. Adaptation is a post, post, post, so post in fact it can just about make out the ‘m’ in modern, film. It tells the story of Charlie as himself or at least a parody of himself. He’s finished writing Being John Malkovich and has been approached to write the screenplay for a recently published book, The Orchid Thief.

Charlie Kaufman being a perfectionist when it comes to conveying ‘the truth’ of any written piece finds it increasingly difficult to tackle the screenplay as he desperately tries to veer away from what he sees as the everyday mediocrity of most Hollywood scripts. His brother who has recently become a scriptwriter and has attended ‘screen writers’ conferences, with ‘Ten commandment’ style lists, compounds the problem. As Charlie struggles, trying to make something original, his brother’s paint by numbers script is instantly picked up.


What’s this got to do with me? Well, throughout the film Charlie is constantly struggling with, apart from his own neurosis, bewilderment and downright despair at the seemingly endless success of those who are obviously not very bright. This is likely to resonate with people in a multitude of professions.

It seems like a maxim that the majority of your immediate superiors will be mentally inept in someway. I’m not saying their bad people, just a bit thick. But it’s not just the bosses it can be colleagues of even complete strangers that ignite this feeling. You need only watch any of the various MTV, E-entertainment, and Living channels to see the proof of morons with success in practice.

This might all be thinly disguised jealously though. Like the sense of superiority that Charlie Kaufman feels towards his brother’s cliché writing style or the mainstream taste his agent champions, ultimately Larry learns the biggest lesson from his seemingly stupid brother. It wouldn’t be a compelling film or script if the lesson didn’t come too late.

“Education, education, education"

That was Tony (I’m leaving now, byeee) Blair’s big thing in his first term. Even I remember it despite being a mere amoeba at the time. I was slap bang in the middle of my education about to embark on the, supposedly, most formative years of my life.


I felt it then and I feel it now, I was shafted. Even before being submerged in a world of SATs, GCSE and A-level exams, I was labelled. It’s a strange experience being labelled anything when your very young. It wasn’t that I was a hyperactive or disruptive pupil, I just tended to daydream, a lot. This, I imagine, was seen as an affront to my teachers who mistook my wondering mind for a lack of cognitive ability. There were other ‘tell tell’ signs too. I didn’t have much interest in reading, my handwriting was very bad, and I didn’t do very well in class exams. ‘Ah ha,’ they concluded, this is obviously a sign of learning difficulties. I remember being taken out of class at least twice a week and being brought to a small room. Luckily, there was no chair with straps, electrodes or surgical equipment. There were however, bored games, picture cards and marbles. The horror!


The teacher who, I’ve either forgotten her name or erased it, would sit me down and we’d read books that consisted of, ‘Tim has a red hat and likes to sit on a matt.’ Even at a young age I knew I wasn’t stupid. I had discussions with teachers that went beyond, ‘miss miss Timmy kicked me.’ I’d ask for more information on the Egyptians or Vikings or if that story about Newton and the apple were true.

This trend carried on, until my last year of primary school. I always excelled in the Arts as well as the Humanities. Some teachers were obviously perceptive enough to see some vestiges of intelligence and treated me accordingly. Others were just bastards. In any case, in the last year I was lucky enough to have a liverpuddlian teacher named …., ah, bollocks that’s always the way. He allowed me to read what I liked and I was very much into the literary exploits of Molder and Scully from the X-files. I even remember him telling me, “teachers are just people, they like to be able to catergorise students.” And there it was, my first real truth from an adult, outside of the family.

What all this rambling is meant to encapsulate, is my first hand experience of the education system failing to capitalise on my love for English, the Humanities and the Arts and instead quite literally forced me to pick subjects in my later years that would, ‘get me a job.’ I felt almost completely alone for ages, as everyone I knew seemed to be buying the same message, that providing that you absorb every text book and provide carbon copy answers, not only will you succeed in your academic career but also your vocational one.


I couldn’t believe it. Here I was surround by people who were gushing out figures and dates that had absolutely no resonance with them.

A lot of my friends are finishing their degrees now and all come back with similar complaints.
“I’ve tried to get a job but everyone else who applied had either more experience or a Masters.” What now then? If the vast majority of people in my school year have gone on to do degrees does that not indicate a rise of robots with 1sts, 2-1s, 2-2s, as massive inflation?

In any case, its not just because I’m an academic failure and deeply jealous…I want one now! With nations like China and India producing many more robots, with text books tattooed onto their very beings, than this country is, perhaps then our biggest commodity will be creativity.

After all it’s very hard to teach creativity to a robot, it’s much easier to nurture it in humans. And had it not been for a measly 2% of the teachers through my academic life doing just that, I might have turned out like one of them. All steel and no soul.


If you haven’t switched off completely, and you might have, what with the large number of robots about, then watch this video. Its Sir Ken Robinson giving a speech at the recent TED lectures, which I’ll probably write about too as it’s ‘awesome.’ He covers the same points that I have and more, in a succinct and amusing way, that you’d expect from a man of his years. Go Ken!

Ikea vs Ben

DIY furniture: The scourge of man and man’s relationships with women, other men and animals. Ikea: The word makes some orgasm, some weep and some think stylish, reasonably priced furniture. For me, apart from frustration, I think of death. Let’s not forget the Cult of Ikea became so feverish that at the opening of the North London store, people physically threw themselves on the pyre of worship, so to speak. Last time we bought a chest of draws. Quite small, about five draws, piney, woody and shiny.

The cardboard packaging removed, all the composite guts of thing were strewn on the floor. It’s all wood basically and there’s only one tool, amazing. Ikea was founded by Scandinavian’s and they’re nothing if not down with good design and efficiency. Piece of Nordic piss. But it wasn’t, was it. Parallel piece A didn’t slot into peripheral piece B. Shouting erupted. The wooden screw driver tool was brandished. People were almost blinded. However, being British and using that supposed pluck like a cockroach surviving nuclear fallout, we prevailed. The object stood, if slightly to the left and all the draws worked. Ha ha, we really do live in the future, now.

The Art World vs Ben

I went to an exhibition held by the I-2-U gallery in Notting Hernia. It was possibly smugger than the rest of the The Hernia due to this eye sore.

In true Nathan Barley idiocy what should, at face value, have been a den of inequity and corruption is in fact a highly sort after residence for smuggers.

Once at the gallery, an evening of booze, floose and ceramic poos (if only). It wasn’t all arse speak, there was a Palestinian guy there who I talked to at length. His view of the world was bleak; I said everyone should buy teak.

Brent Cross vs Ben

After hurtling through repetitive suburbia we finally reached the temple of Buy This Now! Entering by a side cavity, navigating a forrest of lamps followed by a veritable treasure trove of tack. Things you never thought you needed but you do, you so do, you know you do: flamingo shaped cutlery, one of a kind pillow covers, draft excluders with silk embroidery ooooh...



Once we cleared death trap John Lewis, the main, people clogged arteries of Brent Cross lay ahead. I passed a stand that told me because I and everyone else here is an idiot, 'YOU ARE EXPERIENCING HD' but was it referring to the TV screen or the high definition hell hole all around?

Dodging, and in some cases, simply cutting through Paris Hilton clones, like overgrown orange vines. If it wasn't the Paris Hiltonities, there were wannabe gangstaaas or bloodied consumer zombies. I was in Dawn of the Dead sans a baseball bat. This is exactly the sort of reason we should sell guns in this country.


Staggering into HMV, mentally wounded, I found what I'd been seeking. A massive sale of DVDs, which gods willing, none of the shop attendants would try and help me with, 'Apocalypse Now? I fink dat's under comedy you knowz.' The one upside; an attractive girl trying to sell Wiis. We can Wii anytime but not in my house, that's disgusting.

You should never ever, under any circumstances go to Brent Cross. It will only suck you in and then you'll have to work there, which is the same as being undead or trapped in Dante's Inferno. They've even got whole areas that are communication black-holes, you can't even ring for a evac. Crucify the Cross!