Monkey Christmas

Three monkeys fighting in the playground. Blood and fur going everywhere, when one stops and shouts

“Hey stop. STOP! What the fuck were we fighting for anyway?”

and one of the other two cries

“All the BANANAS!”

So they start again and fight and fight and bite and bite until one of them pull’s off another ones tail and says

“Hey stop. STOP! Doesn’t this look like a hairy banana?!”

and pretends to start eating it as if it were a banana. The other two monkeys roll around laughing until the first monkey has just about imaginarily peeled his hairy banana.

“Hey stop. STOP!” cries one of the other two monkeys. “Who’s tail is that anyway?”

So they all stop and start looking at their own butts, but as is traditional in the animal world, they can’t quite see, so soon enough they are all just spinning around on the spot trying to see their rears. This goes on for much longer than it should as they each occasionally catch a glimpse of one of the other two’s tail so panic and spin even faster.

After a while a nearby child takes pity on the monkeys as he sees they have started throwing up on themselves and all around them but still continue to spin. The child takes up a small collection from the other children and he goes over to the monkeys and says

“Please stop spinning. That’s not a tail, that’s an unconscious ferret who got caught up in your scuffle. I’ve brought you some bananas”.

Now of course monkeys can’t understand humans, but the word bananas transcends species and race, so within 5 seconds all three of the monkeys had jumped on the boy and were tearing the bananas out of his hand and eating them. These weren’t the smartest monkey’s in the world though, and as he said ‘bananas’ (plural) and yet they had only had one banana each they kept searching the boy until they accidentally on purpose killed him. Then in a blood curdling monkey scream one of the monkeys cried

“THE CHILDREN. THEY HAVE THE BANANA’S”

and the monkeys charged the children and killed them all in search of their yellow gold.

And that is why they don’t send monkeys to school anymore.

Merry Christmas.

Even when the world is dark, the sun can still shine

I love it when a single shaft of sunlight hits my face. Like when you’re sitting there without any natural light, be it because of blinds or clouds, and then suddenly a ray of light comes through and makes you smile. And feel all warm inside even though that massive ball of fire is only actually heating a small part of you. It’s frickin awesome.

I remember long ago when I used to work at Barclays I used to take daily breaks sitting in the sun. By this I just mean that in the 15 minutes or so each day that the sun could get through the neighbouring buildings (and if I was lucky the clouds), I would just roll back my chair and sit and close my eyes and forget that I was at work. Was a beautiful thing. But then I’d open them again and see the hustle and bustle around me. And some people staring at me usually as I had my eyes closed and looked like a freak. But anyway, good times, good times.

Strangely one of my favourite things about shaft’s of sunlight is that you can see all the dust in the air within them. I always think it’s pretty amazing when you are in a room and it seems all nice and clean and still, until a sunbeam bursts in and shows the intensity of the filth and movement in the very air you are breathing in. The filth doesn’t bother me, but the idea that there is such an incredible amount of stuff floating around us all the time, and we just can’t see it unless it’s illuminated by our star is indicative of all life. And it’s pretty cool to look at too.

I used edible glitter on a cake once, and as I was just experimenting, I guess I used a shit load more than I should have, as the next day when that beam of light came through the window the whole room looked like it was sparkling. It was intense. It was beautiful. King Kong would have appreciated it.

Even on a cold day you can still find warmth. Even in an ice cube, you can freeze a chilli. Even a bathroom floor can be heated. Even ice cream can have hot fudge sauce on it. I may hate the sun, but I appreciate everything in it’s right place.

Or is that everything all of the time? Damn confusing Radiohead

We only come out at night

I love the night time. It’s not just because I hate the fucking sun so much, it’s just because to me everything at night just seems right. The best feeling in London is at 4 or 5 am when there is no-one about and the city just seems amazing. During the day there are so many people about that everything is just buzzing and busy and used up so that you can’t really see the wood for the trees. At night time though you feel like a king as you travel through those amazing city streets that you belong to and that belong to you. You just want to touch everything. And even the air tastes different. During the day there are wafts of food and smoke and fumes and sweat, but at night, at night time it’s different. It’s pure. And not just because it’s cold and I love the fucking cold so much, but because it is actually a beautiful thing. If only there were stars to see. And no bit of weird sky an inch tall all around the horizon.

My beautiful girlfriend and I once came back from someplace absolutely fucked sometime in some early morning. And I got my duvet and we sat outside in the garden on the floor just looking at the sky having a smoke break. Huddling from the cold and love, we just sat and whispered and looked up. There were no stars, but it was beautiful. The hour and the peaceful quiet made that more true. The world felt so empty and quiet. And somehow right.

Damn I miss smoking. It’s been 50 days or some shit now. No wait I don’t miss smoking. It was a bad thing. A bad thing.

Anyway, night time offers other benefits to us regular folk like improved TV, no working, possibilities for drinking, for shagging, for smoking and of course for wondrous sleep. So in general, night time is a good time.

Good night.

To Sleep

I really wish I was dead right now. I could do with a rest. If I only I would be conscious to enjoy it, that coffin would be a joy to live in. Well die in. Or be dead in. Whatever.

But I can’t put my faith in death being like sleep, so I gotta keep going. I said from before the start that 2005 was gonna suck. And it has. Really really badly. Been a surprisingly good year for films though. Swings and roundabouts I suppose.

Doesn’t life suck when stuff happens to you that you have no control over. I mean you’re carrying on with your life and then suddenly something happens and everything is fucked for some period of time. And sometimes you can’t tell people about it, so then you start acting weird. And that effects them and the ripples spread.

Or sometimes you do something and to you it means nothing, but to the person you do it to it means a lot. And you change something in them forever, without spending a single thought on it. This is ok when you change them for the better, but it’s frickin terrible when you change them for the worse. Or they ask you about something that you know that you’re in no position to talk about, but you do anyway and you somehow make things worse. When all you really wanted was to stay the same.

The same. Or to change but keep parts of yourself. Or to change entirely. All of these roads are fucking hard to walk down. Sometimes reputations outlive their applications. Sometimes they underlive them. Sometimes you do stuff over and over again and think that people will have noticed or that it will have mattered, but in actuality it’s only you. So you might as well stop. But if you stop then you’ve given in. And you should never give in.

Except when you’re wrong. And who really knows when they are wrong? I love being proved wrong, but at the same time I know I’m pretty condescending so I must seem like I always think I’m right. But I don’t. I know I’m as fallible as everyone else. Everyone else doesn’t seem to think they’re as fallible as me though. I take time to stop and think what in my life I’m wrong about often. It seems to me that other people don’t like to do this. And if I tell them to, they get angry. I suppose it’s a case of arrogance. Probably my arrogance. I’d like to think everyone’s. But if I say that, you’ll get mad. Because no-one likes to think they’re wrong about how they are acting in general.

Which is why no-one will ever think of themselves as the bad guy. In films it’s so black and white usually. But in real life we have to wait for history to judge, and as it’s written by the winner, we really are fucked for the truth. When it comes down to people though, we just each have to think if we’re doing what we think is right. And it’s hard. If you always try to be nice, and other people aren’t nice to you, should you be mean back? If you do something to someone, should you consider their feelings before or after or at all? If you have done something unrelated to someone, yet they seem upset by it, should you dismiss them for interfering or listen for next time?

But there won’t be a next time. Because every moment is different. You just have to choose what it is you want to do, and who it is you want to be in each of them. I just have to choose what it is I want to do, and who it is I want to be in each of them.

And right now, I wish I was dead.

Breathe

1: “So have you heard that Justin’s not smoking anymore?”
2: “Not smoking? What do you mean by that?”
1: “Well he doesn’t smoke anymore”
2: “Really? Justin? How the hell does he do that?”
1: “I don’t know man. It’s weird when you see him now. No smoke coming out of his mouth. No cigarette in his hand”
2: “No cigarette in his hand?! I suppose that would be a good way of getting around it. Where does he get his smoke from then”
1: “Nowhere, he just doesn’t smoke.”
2: “That’s unfuckingbelievable. What about when he’s got a cigarette in his hand, what the fuck does he do then?”
3: “What the fuck does who do when?”
1: “Hey alright man, we were just talking about Justin not smoking”
3: “Yeah I heard about that. He told me that the trick is to not buy any cigarettes”
1: “I guess, but what about if he gets one off of someone else?”
2: “Or if he’s already got one in his hand?”
3: “Well he also said the trick is to not put any cigarettes in his mouth, and to not light them”
2: “Yes but what if he’s already got one”
1: “Yeah like if someone had given him one?”
3: “I don’t know, I guess he just doesn’t ask for one. Or if he does by accident then he doesn’t smoke it. I was out with him the other night in the pub and he wasn’t smoking”
1: “NO! In the pub! I thought that he just wasn’t smoking at reasonable times. How do you go to the pub and not smoke? I mean you’ve got your pint in one hand and your fag in the other. If he doesn’t smoke it then what does he do with it?”
3: “He just didn’t have one in his hand. He was just drinking.”
2: “Without smoking? That’s just fucking strange”
1: “Yeah what does he do when he moves his hand to his mouth to take a drag if there’s no cigarette there?”
3: “Umm.. I don’t know. I didn’t see him do that. I suppose he just doesn’t do that”
2: “And what about all the fag machines in the pub? How did he not use them?”
3: “I DON’T KNOW! I’m just telling you what I saw alright. He just somehow didn’t. I even offered him a cig and he turned it down”
1: “That’s amazing. He turned it down? No fucking way. That's not possible is it?”
2: “Yeah i suppose it is. But I can’t even imagine someone doing that. Let alone Justin.”
4: “Hey guys, let alone Justin what?”
3 “Have you heard Justin’s not smoking anymore”
4: “Yeah I was on pills with him the other night and he didn’t smoke a single one”
3: "Really!”
2: “That’s just fucking incredible!”
1: “Are you sure? Because I don’t see how that’s possible”
4: “Yeah I’m sure. He’s such a fucking quitter”