Morality schmorality.

Given that Beckyboo and Ritchieroo are soon about to “do the right thing”, I’ve been thinking a lot about morality recently.

The other day we had an event instore with lots of kids making cardboard spiders. It was much fun, albeit tiring. Plus I got a chance to talk to small children and give them sweets without being arrested. As a stubbly Asian man aged between 20-35, any day that passes by without being arrested is, well, once less day without being arrested.

The little ‘uns are so adorable, if you talk to them in a reasonable manner they respond in kind. They are without prejudice….little containers of curiosity and wonder.

Later, a guy came in looking for the latest ‘arry Po'er book. I showed him the paperback on shelf (£8.99), but remembered we were selling the hardback for £2.99. Anyway I found myself wanting him to buy the paperback partly because a) I’m lazy, and b) I find myself moving on the slippery slope towards a ‘sales mentality’. I’m becoming jaded. However, I stopped myself for a moment, realised this, and gave him the cheaper one.

How do you stop yourself becoming morally jaded, and be more like the children? At some stage prejudice, intolerance, bigotry will find a way to piece their subtle minds.


Some difficulties occurred when construting the spiders. I naturally assume spiders are male, so I say “and, what would you like to call him?” during the crucial point of bestowing a name to spider.

“Rosin” comes the reply.
“Oh, ok” says I.

The next child comes along.
“So what would you like to call it?”, says I, bearing in mind the spider’s feelings.
“Her, what do you want to call her!” shrieks child.

I started to think about this for a bit. What is the generic gender of a cardboard spider? What would s/he prefer to be called. Doesn’t the spider have a choice in all this?

Hmm.
…

I saw United 93 the other day, found it very moving. However, one thing bugged me during it, and it was what nice glasses the head terrorist had. I really, really want those glasses. They were rimless, and kind of silvery. I mean it’s not the glasses’ fault they happened to be perched on the nose of a terrorist. I had this exchange with moody on tills:

“Mate, it’s a fucking shite film man, it’s invasive, fucking emotional terrorism.”
“- Yeah, it was terrorism.”


Stupid morality.

You have 17 missed calls from the above caller…..

Woke up on Thursday (snow day) to the following voicemail from moody:

“Dude wake the fuck up maaaaan, god its snowing and I need to do a photo and I’ve got a great idea its gotta to be in the day so wake up man, fuckin hell, laters”


Turns out he wanted me to pose naked in the snow, the darkness of my skin contrasting with the whiteness blah blah blah. Anyway, I declined, but was very much up for posing. I practiced my intense stare, and went off with him to find a field of snow. We found a mound nearby, clambered on it, and began to pose. Apparently I can stand still very well. I must put that as a skill on my CV. I think it’s a combination of many hours standing at the Globe, being on my feet all day at work, and my increasingly mystical yogic powers. Incidently my body did something incredible in yoga on Friday. I can’t really describe it exactly, but let’s just say I was pleasantly surprised. And no, it’s not what you think.

Inspired by moody and my experience in the snow, I decided to take some photos of my day snowed in, as seen below:

Grillup in the snow

Unfortunately after its exertions in the snow, my grillup required reheating. The compromises one makes in life.

It was pretty hard to keep my eyeballs open while posing, what with the ‘snow blindness’, but I think moody was pretty happy with the results. He can do unique things with a lens, and to discover more, I went out with him at night to scope out some locations. After driving around and taking some shots, we ended up in the McDonalds car park looking at puddles. It was dark and cold, but he managed to get a good shot by a large puddle. Some figures in a white van began to pull into the car park. Sensing danger, moody quickly gathered his things. “Are we splitting?” says I. “Yeah, let’s be off”. The strangers sped towards us, and after me being doused by the van driving over our puddle, we scattered off into the night.

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Personally speaking…

Had a day off today so spent it thinking. My moody friend wants to take a photo of me for a project and I have to write a paragraph to go beside it. The remit is ‘what inspires me’.

I drunkenly wrote this paragraph yesterday after getting in from a pub quiz [we (Bonnie and the Booksellers) came 2nd and won our stake back, woo!]. It went something along the lines of “I force myself to believe that beauty and aesthetics inspire me, but basically it’s my own selfish desire to stay alive”. Bit over dramatic, I know.

But thinking about it today, I realise that to an extent it’s true. I’d like to say that beauty, truth, soulfulness, music etc inspire me but to be honest, living is overcoming laziness.

Take for instance meeting people for the first time. I assume that all my experiences and personal history culminate in the personality I present to you. However, In order for someone to get to know me a bit deeper, I ought to fill them in on the stuff I’ve been through or my experiences… I suppose it’s about sharing these with someone else. But this is a very repetitive process, especially for someone as lazy as I. I suppose the reason you keep doing this is on the off chance someone surprises you and you get along with them. I'd rather listen to someone tell me about themselves though.

I suppose you could take pleasure in constructing a new personality every few years or so and see how far you could take it. Two people recently told me that they are completely different people to how they were 2 years ago. One has completely changed in terms of music they liked, clothes they wore and people they hung out with and the other didn't realise they were creative but once they did everything made sense and precipitated an awakening of sorts.

Anyway, I don’t think I came to any conclusion about all of this, but I basically thought that living requires you to do repetitive things. For instance meeting new people and having the same conversations again in the hope of making new friends. Or listening to songs, reading books, and watching films, in the hope of experiencing something great or learning something new. In some ways, this is a depressing thought, that you do these things in the ‘hope’ of gaining something worthwhile. I suppose you can always take pleasure in the ‘new’ – you have no choice but to.

I could go the reverse and decide what doesn’t inspire me. Well I can tell you straight away that it’s the useless England team and their inept manager.

I hope it snows loads tomorrow.

Superbowl Sunday

I couldn't think of anything of note to write today, so I thought I'd stick on my mate's poem:

my nightmares take me greatly, make
me shake and make me hate me,

despair has cake'd me, midnight jaded,

all my light has faded, all my life

unstable waded, into rotten water,

sunken to the deepest torture

http://moodyinc.deviantart.com/

I had this chip butty for dinner today:

poetry and chip butty

mmmmm.

"Use a spoon to scoop up the skunge..."

Nothing much happened today except my supervisor taught me how to shoot heroin.

Spurs lost.

But I did go to the gym and do 4 miles on the cross-country ski machine. In order to stave off boredom I brought my headphones along to listen to the radio. There's a varied selection, a couple of discussion channels, a pop channel, rocky one, and clubbing one. Naturally I pick the clubbing one. But so does everyone else it seems.

By about 15 minutes in, I turn to my right and notice that everyone's synchronized. Arms are thrusting, legs are pumping, sweat is dripping, all to the strains of Pump up the Jam by Technotronic.

Somehow, I feel hollow inside.