Mzebonga

Swindon twinned with Disney World

2009-12-13T12:24:00.001Z

I promised myself that I wouldn't renew hostilities with Swindon and that I was very much done with my animosity towards the town.

I didn't lie. I've come to realise that Swindon is just as mediocre as a whole host of other towns and cities in the UK. I have to say that my attack was both grossly generalised and quite offensive and for that I apologise. You can make broad, sweeping comments like the ones in the article and they'll always represent a small portion of a community - and those people do exist in Swindon - but to claim a town of a quarter of a million people are like it is just flat out wrong.

However, while Swindon is just as lacking in things to do as a whole raft of other towns, I just got a little pissed off due to the number of public officials who stood up and insisted that this wasn't the case. The facilities in Swindon sucked at the time - the Oasis was outdated, the Link Centre burned your eyes just walking in the door due to the vast amounts of chlorine used and, well, no one ever really mentions a whole lot else. There's a bowling alley, a couple of cinemas and a nearly-bankrupt football team. Otherwise, you can go shopping and drive around a multitude of roundabouts. To quote the Internet: "epic win ".

Again, none of this really singles Swindon out.

What does single Swindon out is that they've now been twinned with Disney World in Orlando. I shit you not.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the partnership: an ever-expanding, commercial, poorly-managed venture that has its glory days firmly fixed in its past is being twinned with an ever-expanding, commercial, poorly-managed town that has its glory days firmly fixed in its past. Seems quite apt to me! No wonder the Disney World judges didn't even need to visit the place. I'm sure they just used Wikipedia!

Oddly enough, there is every chance I might be heading to Disney World in Orlando next year - not really through choice but through other forms of persuasion - and could get to see the Swindon exhibit at Epcot. I'm especially excited because it is "not known what it will contain". Roundabouts? Shops? A slight nod to a steam engine? A signed Jan Åge Fjørtoft Swindon Town F.C. jersey? A long diatribe about how good the Link Centre and the Oasis are?

I wait with baited breath!

Seriously though, I hope something good does come of the pairing. I can't see what Disney World will get from it but if it helps raise the profile of Swindon a little bit and bring it out of naff mediocrity then all power to it.

I hate McDonalds

2009-09-21T09:00:00.000+01:00

I was clearing out my cupboards and found an article from the Observer on 20th October 2002. It was given to me by a fellow politics student who knew of my strong distaste for large corporations and especially those that perpetrate advertising campaigns that border on viral (designed to infiltrate the minds of young people and make sure that they become lifelong (and usually obese and/or diabetic) customers. I'm anticipating a letter from some legal schmuck telling me that both those statements are untrue and libellous but the fat and content of your average happy meal, I would tend to argue my case for me... (according to the article, there are 550 calories and 25 grams of fat in your typical Big Mac)

The article offered a startling fact sheet and I figured they'd be a good area to talk around, even 7 years later...

1) McDonald's is the largest toy distributor in the world
2) 96% of US children can identify Ronald McDonald by name - second only to Santa Claus
Principle evidence for why I can argue that McDonald's unscrupulously targets children - they are distributing more toys than any other retailer in the world and only Santa is more well known by kids... I'm pretty sure that adults aren't going to be drawn to buying them so there's only the one real target. In McDonald's defence, they're not the only one doing this but they are the only one that is doing it with 550+ calories running in tandem.

I'm not sure what these stats say about kids in general: they seem to know people who they associate with receiving toys. They're a bunch of mercenary little bastards!

3) One in three cattle in the US bred for meat is used by McDonald's
Using some statistics found online I found out that there were in the region of 96,100,000 head of beef cattle in the US. That means that there are nearly 32,000,000 McDonalds cattle in the US alone... Not the most reliable source but Wikipedia states:

cattle are cited as the greatest adverse impact with respect to climate change as well as species extinction

Cows are reknowned for their their methane production and Wikipedia further states:

a methane emission will have 25 times the impact on temperature of a carbon dioxide emission of the same mass over the following 100 years.

So, call it how you want it but the proliferation of McDonald's equates to the the deepening of the climate crisis. You could always try the Australian suggestion - apparently it's quite good. Me; well, I'm sticking to vegetarianism.

4) In Japan, where "r" is rarely pronounce, Ronald McDonald is Donald McDonald
5) Ronald McDonald was later replaced in France by Asterix, under a McDonald's strategy of "acting local"
This is one of the things that really makes me hate McDonald's: their insidious local advertising. The French hate them for their intrusion upon local food markets (let's face it, the French make good, healthy food for much the same price and in much the same time as a Happy Meal). In Britain, I've noticed a sustained campaign over the last 5 years of McDonald's adopting a green motif as opposed to their HORRIBLE, brash, "American" one. Their restaurants look more acceptable in British streets now, even if they're selling the same old soggy burgers and fries!

6) One in 200 people across the world visits a McDonald's daily
One in 200 people are fat bastards as a result! It doesn't make clear how many will visit McDonald's every other day or every week and, worse, it doesn't make clear how many people will have multiple meals there every day... There was a case recently in the UK where a woman took her children to McDonalds on a daily basis.

The problem seems to be that more and more people (read: morons) think that this is actually a balanced diet and McDonalds keep trying to pass it off as such by adding salad options etc... (Still packed full of calories)

---

The article pre-dates the likes of Super Size Me and Fastfood Nation in highlighting some of the alarming things that might not be immediately obvious from McDonald's own promotional material (although, much of the article was about the downturn in the fast food market).

For me, it's a good account of why we should be careful around fast food (or other unhealthy food products including soft drinks and chocolate products) as they attempt to promote their products against a wave of government warnings about the possible long term effects (and, in the UK, the horrible consequences on the National Health Service!).

I still hate McDonald's. My hatred began far more than 10 years ago, when I lived 5 miles from the nearest McDonald's and still would leave the house every morning to find their wrappers on my front garden.

For what it's worth, I think their marketing campaigns rank them as cunts of the highest order. And as for their food... Well, I'd probably getting more nutrition and find it more enjoyable to eat out of a trash can.

Parenting On Trial

2009-09-14T09:00:00.001+01:00

So the BBC churned out a programme called "World's Strictest Parents" where unruly British teens are sent to stay with strict parents in another nation.

First point to make is this: the two kids they got were not the sharpest tools in the shed and, more than that, they were little assholes who were poster children for what happens when you make parents powerless (i.e.; the death of smacking as a punishment). I wanted to throttle them (although, to her credit, the girl learned quickly and got herself together) - buy the end of it, I developed a healthy respect and a lot of sympathy for her).

Second point, some of the points made by parents of the American family in this particular episode were valid and particularly their observations about the kids they had temporarily adopted. Their attempts to make time for their kids and teach them the value of working and philanthropy were pretty damn admirable.

However, there were elements of their lifestyle that were just insane. They granted their kids no freedoms. There were the usual things, such as a flat ban on cussing but their kids had no right to privacy. All children in the house (including the British guests) were subjected to inspections that started with their bags and extended to any electronic platforms (cameras were checked, cellphones are audited and any foul-mouthed mp3s are deleted from iPods). More than that, all online passwords were known to them and the kids were watched while they browsed the net...

I understand the parental desire to protect your children from things that may be harmful to them but there are clearly points at which it goes too far.

I'm accused by some adults of being a bit of a harsh taskmaster with the youngsters in my family but, I like to think, I'm also reknowned as pretty damn fun. The way I see it is this: there are rules and, within the realms of those rules, there is freedom to play, have fun and learn. Let's face it, how far can you go to protect your kids? How much cotton wool can you wrap your home in before your kids choke on it?

Still, when you've got idiot kids who whine when people won't bring them kitchen role to wipe some dirt off their fancy shoes (wipe your own fucking shoes!), maybe that's the way to go. Maybe the complete lack of boundaries that the Brit kids had needed the completely insane levels of parenting that the Americans offered... I think the answer is most definitely somewhere in the middle.

Oh, and despite all the conditioning, the eldest American kid totally oggled the Brit girl's tits when they first met. Rightly so - good on you son!

Making Time For God

2009-09-07T09:00:00.000+01:00

Religion is something that I constantly circle as a topic for idle pondering during the day. I was trying to figure out how to articulate how I perceive religion and it's taken a long while but I feel like I'm getting a little closer...

As a basis for for this argument, I should clarify: I believe that much of science (until proven otherwise by better scientists) is fact. Like Bill Hicks, I don't subscribe to the concept that Dinosaurs were put their to test our faith and that God is just fucking with us (and, moreover, that if we happen to believe plausible explanations for the things that are in front of our face, we will burn in hell). The "Creation Science" theory just doesn't hold water - not in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Now, I know a lot of Christians will be sitting there nodding sagely and believing that those who espouse Creation Science are misguided zealots who are holding onto antiquated views. To you I ask this: if you don't believe the message in the Bible (or Old Testament, if you want to be specific), just how Christian can you be? Are you less Christian than the zealots or are you some other religion that should be properly defined...? God knows there's a lot of "Christians" who are turning to Buddhist teachings and faith healing in this modern age and just how far can you go and still be classified a Christian? How much lemonade do you add to a lager before it becomes a proper shandy? How much before it's just lemonade with lager in it? Anyway, that's a whole other argument. My argument today is why I AM agnostic and why I AM NOT religious.

I have a finite life. I might get to see 100 years, if I'm lucky but, more likely, I'll get bored and die a long time before that. The Universe, however, seems to be pretty damn infinite and even within the realms of our planet there are more things than I can ever hope to see or understand.

In my - for arguments sake, let's say - 70 years, I have the task of discovering the answers to a number of enormous questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What makes me happy? It's hard enough without the whole makeup of my life changing with a certain amount of regularity - people come, people go, I get sacked, I get a new job... And on and on.

In the midst of trying to find my place in the world and understand this life, I don't buy into the concept that we should stop or pursuit of answers and give thanks to a deity. I strongly believe that our pursuit of answers is our thanks.

Understanding and appreciating the miracle of our lives and the world around us is the greatest tribute we can give to the marvel that is life. To this extent, many of the original churches and cathedrals mimicked this - they were the pinnacle of human architecture for their time (however, the flat-pack, North American style are not). If you're doing something you love, with someone you love and you're enjoying the life you've been blessed with (and you're not pissing on others trying to do the same!) then you're giving your tribute to any deity that there may be in the next life...

Quite why you'd bother defining yourself as belonging to a particular religion above and beyond that is an elusive concept to me. After all, it's quite possible that you really don't share that many beliefs with the others in your religion... You might as well just be happy being you and believing what you believe: you don't need a priest to validate that.

Things Are Afoot

2009-08-20T16:04:00.001+01:00

Things are a leg. Maybe an arm. Other body parts too. Especially a spleen. Yes, things are a spleen. Am I padding this post? Hell yes!

Okay, so it's been a while since I updated and this constitutes one of those completely pointless "I'm sorry I haven't updated more often posts". But I am trying to let you know that new things are happening on Mzebonga.com and this should tie in with all my efforts on BogGoblin.co.uk.

Suffice to say, I am having to do a lot of research, not only for this stuff but other external things and, while time consuming, it is proving to be incredibly enjoyable.

Yes, this was a crap post. Sorry.

The UK Government Says I'm Deprived

2009-07-27T09:00:00.001+01:00

A year ago, while working for a local organisation and researching the features of their local area, I discovered that I am classified as living in a deprived household. In fact, I grew up in a deprived household! Why? I do not, nor have I ever - nor has my family ever - owned a car. I don't know how to drive one!

I always considered myself somewhat bourgeois for this choice... I'm not sure why but it seemed like one of those half-measure, middle-class efforts towards saving the planet. Certainly, there is a phenomenal effort on the part of the Government to reduce carbon emissions (evidenced by the vast investment in the London to Swansea mainline announced this week), so doesn't it follow that the sacrificing of a car in favour of public transport is the bastion of the socially conscious suburbanite?

Not so much. Not having a car saves me something like £150 per month in tax, insurance, fuel, maintenance etc... Not to mention the cost of soothing my environmental sensibilities by trying to afford a fuel efficient one... No, the sheer cost of a vehicle lists it as an exclusion factor by our government.

So, I'm a deprived citizen of the United Kingdom. But (other than buses filled with idiot chav teenagers), I quite like public transport - it's just fun to sit back and watch the world go by without the stress of worrying about what other drivers are doing around you.

It just seems to be a contradiction for the Government to be pushing for lower carbon emissions while claiming that non-car owners are deprived... Just how much does the automotive industry raise in tax revenue for it to be prioritised like that?

Fuck My Life.

2009-07-21T17:56:00.001+01:00

You get those moments in life where you realise that you've just kind of shut yourself off for a few weeks and half of existence has passed you completely by. I get this a lot.

A lot of things have come to my attention this morning and its left me with a bad taste in my mouth (worse than Texans).

I am on the borderline of missing a close friends wedding because I've been playing fast and loose with my finances. While my financial situation was affecting only me, I was pretty satisfied to just let it go on but when it gets to the point where I'm letting friends down, it's just not on. Got to buck my ideas up.
I have been pawing at things I need to do rather than actually committing to them: everything seems to have been half-measures. Starting now, full measures are required: let's get shitfaced on how big our measures are!
This blog has descended back into the realm of whining. This is bad. It was due to comeback as some sort of subversive, socialist manifesto but has just gone to the middle ground that Internet musings so often find. Am I losing my edge?

To remedy this situation, I plan the following:

I am going to Germany. I am going to Canada. These are not statements of hope or aspiration. These are statements of fact.
I will find myself gainful employment by the end of August.
I will begin to comment and offer my spin on an item in the previous week's news in at least every other post on this blog (please feel free to suggest something during the week that may merit my attention).

Angry Little Soldier

2009-07-13T09:00:00.002+01:00

Not long ago, I was described as an "Angry Little Soldier" by a friend of mine. I've not doubt that, to her, it was merely a passing comment meant to describe me in one of my more irascible moments but, even fleetingly, it did seem to be a decent fit.

I often rally against accusations that I am "angry": it's not that I'm driven by a persistent aggression rather than my anger comes from consistent and persistent frustration and impatience - as I hope many of the posts on this blog can attest! But, yes, it does present itself in long rants littered with expletives that can be described as "angry". It's not inaccurate. In my more egotistical moments, I'd like to think I could be compared to a Jimmy Porter-like character.

Maybe I am a something of a soldier too. I like to stand up for causes and push for greater equalisation in society. It's not the sort of fighting that would put my physically in harms way but I'm not above digging my trenches, holding my line and fighting to the last in a metaphorical sense... Again, following my ego, I'd love to be like Ernesto Guevara, fighting for the freedom in my little corner of the world...

This is all, of course, complete bollocks and the reason why the phrase was so accurate was because of the word "little". My attempts at exercising my frustration or fighting my corner are completely ineffectual, rendering the other two words quite laughable - but in an affectionate way.

And so I am quite happy with the badge "Angry Little Soldier". I take it to mean that the people closest to me realise that I'm an asshole but they believe I'm a harmless asshole with the best intentions.

D-Mo Generation

2009-07-06T09:00:00.003+01:00

I want to coin a phrase just for the hell of it. The Internet is popularising stupid terminology such as “staycation” and “pwnage” and I want to get in on the act (although, I must confess that, prior to looking them up, I really had little idea what either of those two examples meant).

The Internet gave way to the term “emo”. When I say “gave way”, I mean it broadly popularised it. It may have been in existence before that but it came to a lot of people’s attention through crazy shit on the Web. I don’t, therefore, see any reason why I can’t be getting in on the act with a broadly meaningless term of my own. Ladies and jellyspoons, I give you “d-mo”.

“D-mo” stands for “demotivated” and captures a growing demographic in their 20s and 30s who are trapped between two generations of crazy people all the while waiting for their time to come when they can begin to redress the global balance.

Think about it, if you’re in your 20s or 30s, odds are you look at the generation above you and, in particular, the world leaders and go “holy shit, I can’t identify with these people and I’m damned sure that they don’t do much to represent my interests” and then you look at the generation below you and go “fuck me, they don’t know jack: their school tests are ridiculously easy, they’re protected from everything by the state and they’re growing up to be crazy and spoiled”. This has to have an enormous demotivating effect and lead to general apathy about life, the universe and everything. I mean, what do you do? You bide your time until your generation becomes the legislators and world leaders all the while hoping and praying that the younger generation somehow learns to communicate in a language more advanced than text-speak. You listen to the news report telling you about the pensions crisis that will affect the generation that preceded you, all the while silently understanding that the Government aren’t even discussing the fact that you’ll be lucky to get a pension at all. You see interviews with youngsters who can’t seem to finish a sentence without saying “like” or “y’know” 24 times in the process. World leaders drag their feet on climate change worrying about the immediate ramifications without consideration for the fact that, without action, there won’t be any world left to save. What the hell are you meant to do?!?

I could be wrong, this could be something that affects generations other than my own but it does seem like my generation is a sleeping giant waiting to be awoken. We’re used to the fact that China is a major power and needs to be dealt with – no doubt my generation in China realises that they need to play nice with the rest of the world too! We realise that we can’t just strip mine the whole planet and hope that it won’t cave in. We realise that politicians and news groups are governed by special interests and cannot always be trusted to do what’s right. And where do these realisations lead us? No where. Because we also realise how disenfranchised we are by the economy at large: how much we are slaves to industry and corporate might. We have little hope but to wait for our turn and try to make the most of what little, limited life we have. It’s a crushing reality to live with and the defining feature of the “d-mo” generation.

There you go, Internet, have another stupid term to play with.

Why Even Bother?

2009-06-15T00:00:00.000+01:00

After a couple of recent health scares, I have had cause to consider the things in my life that cause anxiety. As part of that, I have tried to make sure that I am diligent in avoiding those things. Honestly, this is often a gigantic waste of time: so many anxieties (or causes therefore) are the things (and people) that are right there in your face on a daily basis.

First amongst my realisations was just how extensively I medicated myself against these anxieties. I realised that I had been drinking a lot. This was a lot less than many of my nearest and dearest but the pattern and volume was enough to give me pause for thought. Moreover, in the interim, I was tanking myself up with caffeine (mostly in the form of sugary soft-drinks that are borderline evil). The damage this was doing to my body was horrendous and would lend itself to kicking lumps out of my usually unassailable psyche.

I've never wanted to shy away from the big questions in life and I've always been aware of the fact that there should often be more than there is (my article "Being Mzebonga" should, hopefully attest to that - which is why I brought it back out of mothballs). I remember vividly the feeling that I got in an English Literature class when I was 16 and, for the first time ever, a teacher asked me for an opinion. Not an interpretation or an implied answer. An opinion. In 16 years of life, I had never really been asked to venture my own opinion and, after that point, it struck me that we spend so much time doing as we're told without question. If you have pause to question whether that is a bad thing, you need only look at Nazi Germany. One can only hide behind "following orders" so much and, at some point, one has to question the morality of ones actions.

So, like the Germans under Hitler, just how often do people do things because it's what they expect to happen rather than what they should be doing? Most people (particularly, so I'm told, North Americans) find their 9 to 5 jobs excrutiatingly. Most employers, no matter how consciencious they claim to be, will kick you to the curb rather than take the time work through any issues with you. If the money gets short, you're going out the door no matter how long you've been with the company. So why would we ever kowtow to these forces? Why are we such prisoners to the Machine; this bizarre construct of people and the items we contrive?

Think about it. There is nothing in society that is not made by man. We invented currency. We invented anything that you'd care to purchase with said currency. If these things don't serve to make us happy, why aren't we inventing something else? If so few of us find contentment in the Machine, why do we compromise ourselves for its benefit?

If the Machine is solely comprised of human beings, surely the collective will of those human beings can influence what the Machine produces. What would happen if you didn't go to work tomorrow? What would happen if 100 people didn't go to work tomorrow? How many does it take before the system buckles? The point is, that the Machine, as we have unwittingly contrived it, takes the influence of millions at a time before it changes and, while its at it, it encourages apathy instead of discontent.

You see, we're trapped by our belief that we can never influence the Machine: it requires just too many of us to care about how awful it is before it will change. How do you organise (let alone find) 100,000,000 people to boycott their jobs for a week in the pursuit of a more equitable global distribution of wealth and welfare? In many societies, welfare has become a dirty word "used by communists" *cough*USA*cough* (little secret: welfare is not exclusively communist - much of the western world has a welfare system in place). But wouldn't most people concede that it'd be nicer if the gulf between the richest and the poorest was getting just a little bit smaller every day? Who wouldn't want that - I don't see how poor people help rich people... If poor people have more money, it's more people for the rich to sell to. Surely this is just common-sense economics... Are we really controlled by the richest (and apparently greediest) margins of our society? If we are, then it's only through overwhelming numbers that we change that order.

I'm trying to personally face this problem head on right now and try some things that don't strictly conform to the world order and, let me tell you, while it's not impossible, it is difficult and the number of people who will play to your own internal anxieties ("I don't know how you could do that", "are you sure?","how do you afford it") is overwhelming. But, if you hold your course, you can get the briefest of glimpses how life can be when you're not being controlled by overbearing, automated processes.

Start small. Work the word "no" into your vocabulary. Have the courage to walk away from things that make you miserable and hold out for the things that make you happy. It takes patience and courage - change always does - but, if you're lucky, when you come out the other side you'll be stronger, happier and ready for the next big challenge. As you go, you, like me, may find parts of yourself that were cast aside - why else would Mzebonga.com and BogGoblin.co.uk be slowly dragging themselves out of their respective mires? It may turn out to be a fool's errand but, in the words of someone a lot wiser than I: "when push comes to shove, you've got to do what you love, even if it's not a good idea!"

Oh My God, I’m Going To Die!

2009-06-08T00:00:00.001+01:00

It’s probably not perceived as the most sensible thing in the world to begin a blog of this ilk by asking: “what’s the point?” First thing that you should be aware of is that this is my book and I’ll do whatever the fuck I like, thank you very much. Secondly, I think it’s the best place in anything to start: The only reason the human race progressed to this stage of existence is by asking questions. So, yes, we’re going to discuss death.

Let me relate to you my experiences with death, I’m sure you’ll be fascinated. At the age of sixteen, I woke late one night to the thought “Oh my god, I’m going to die one day!” This rattled around in my skull for all of about 3 seconds before my synapses gradually developed the question: “And?” I found a certain degree of apathy to that startling revelation. Let’s face it, the opening years of my life had not exactly been enjoyable and the prospect of being subjected to 60 more of the same was blatantly unpalatable: this led me to the conclusion that death wasn’t really all that much of a problem to me.

That may seem a pretty callous statement to make and, sure enough, it is. I’ve had a lot of discussions about life and very few have focussed on the idea of making sure you don’t die. Yes, each and every one of us has concerns about slipping off the mortal coil, but the qualifier is that we don’t do it before we get to do any of the things that are important to us.

So, on that night, some time in 1996, I quickly evaluated what was important to me. Very quickly. It was a moment that could be compared to being asked at an interview: “so why do you want the job?” The truth was, I didn’t want the job, it just paid better than anything else that was available to me. Let’s face it, I could make the decision to be alive or I could just die. That really ought not to be a difficult decision: live or die? Ummm…

The decision ought to be simple. It ought to be so bone jarringly obvious as to make you laugh when the question passes someone's lips. But it rarely does. In fact, you're more likely to elicit a defensive reaction of “Oh, how could you say that?”. I can say it easily... VERY easily.

In the process of making a decision, it can be the first thing that crosses my mind: the most fundamental question to test whether your current direction is the right one. For example, “Hey, do you want eggs for dinner?” initially becomes a binary question “do you want some edible sustenance or would you like to kill yourself?” If you're taking a while to sort that question out, you've deviated from the path you want to follow. If you believe it to be possible that you would rather die than eat your next meal, your life choices need to be considered in the stark light of day. And, so, that's how I figure out whether I've made the right choice or not.

It's not to say that I spend hours agonising my own mortality and sometimes hope for death rather than continue in a shitty job, it's more that it provides an assessment of my most basic instinct – survival – when stacked against the overwhelming force of modern-day society. When “The Machine” begins to grind on me, I have to question my place in it. When I find myself believing that I have ended up in the wrong place, I have no choice but to move on.

Don't get me wrong, I am in no way advocating that there will ever be a situation where a dull job merits suicide - anybody who does resort to that is failing to see things in their proper context – but one has to have a respect for one's own life before you can really make a go of it. I suppose what I'm really suggesting is a matter of tolerance: just how much degradation can you stand at the hands of the mechanisms of society and corporatism before it makes you question the value of your life. Whenever it becomes a question, the only option available to you is to find something new.

BEING MZEBONGA

2009-06-01T15:02:00.003+01:00

(Article originally written for TheInsaneDomain.com in 2005)

I am Mzebonga, I’m 24 years old and there is nothing else that I can tell you about myself. Having just come off the tail end of a wet weekend in which I sat down and watched Office Space and American Beauty, I have found my life suddenly floodlit by moments of clarity and woeful inadequacy.

I’m a small man, which is something that is quite a trick at six feet two inches. I aspire to lofty goals, I fiercely defend those I love and I am, to put it bluntly, all mouth and no trousers.

I could title this article the same and give you a run-down of my daily life except, well; I have nothing to fill it with. There is nothing of any possible consequence that I could relate to you that would be worth putting in this article. The key thing that Lester Burnham highlights in his day in American Beauty is jerking off in the shower: something that I don’t even allow myself the time to enjoy in the morning. Besides, why would I artificially enhance my day only to have it fall away beneath my feet? Much better to have something to look forward to when you get home after a long day of manoeuvring yourself around equally small people with their own selfish agendas and their individual Reichs.

This is the point at which I start relating to each of you in turn the things of no consequence that pepper my days in the belief that, if I share the frank details of this, it will somehow help you rationalise and justify your own drab existences. The difference this time being that I don’t actually subscribe to that anymore. You’re all being made far-too-painfully aware of how little life inspires and challenges you. You don’t need some random third party telling you all over again. All I can do is tell you that I know and I feel it too and I’m sorry.

There should be more to life than this. Life is something more complicated than 9am to 5pm of trying to make yourself look busy by moving paper around a desk and covering up the fact that you are talking on the phone to the few friends that you have left in your advancing years. And, yeah, advancing years really covers the day that you leave education because that is the day that life suddenly comes knocking on your door asking for you to pay back on your account. The interest payments on that are horrendous and you’ll be paying them for 40 years or more.

Welcome to the 6 billion strong zoo where specimens are successfully being born into captivity at a rate of about 4 every second (Outstanding achievement award goes to China for meeting 25% of that quota) while only 2 manage to find a way to get out every second – that way being, inevitably, in meeting one’s demise. But, yeah, they’re finding ways to make you live longer and fight off more diseases. Moreover, they are finding new and exciting ways to make your life completely and utterly drab.

It’s just self-fulfilling: they want you to be obliged to do your work to feed into the system to make things work for some rich guy at the top of the chain so that he can live a better life. The trouble with that is, from all accounts I have read, rich guys don’t seem to have a lot of fun because people keep on dreaming up new and exciting ways to make their lives stressful. What you’re looking at here is a machine with 6 billion miserable people in it serving only to make more people to be miserable so that the machine can be bigger. What is the point in a machine that makes itself bigger but does nothing else? There isn’t one. Yes, I happily concede that the human machine is an innovative one. We have travelled to space; we have developed ways on producing and storing energy and we continue to push back the boundaries of our knowledge. But what has this done for the machine? While the machine gets bigger, the process isn’t getting any smoother: the cogs aren’t continuing to grind down the people who the machine comprises of.

In fact, innovation has really only so far made us aware of how tentative our grasp on existence is. Meteor collisions; Global Warming; cancer, HIV – how can you not sit around and fear for your life? But then, what kind of a life have you got to fear for in the first place? Will you miss the office when you’re gone? You fear for your life because it is the only thing you have going for you. Moreover, that life you hold so precious is being ruined for you despite every attempt you make to turn its downward spiral into a soaring ascension.

If you’re anything like me, innovation is ruining you. Chances are that, as you’re reading this website, you’re somewhere in the ballpark of having my mundane habits: television, Radio, games consoles and, worst of all, the Internet.

I suppose it’s just the circles that I keep that lead me to believe that the world is slouching towards a lazier way of making and keeping acquaintances. I, personally, have lost all my social skills and I would like them back. If anyone checks them into the lost property office, could you please inform me ASAP? If you happen to find some discarded sex appeal, I’d like to lay claim to that too.

Things just don’t seem to be happening for anyone I know. Everybody has something to worry about. When things get better for my friends and family, they never seem to break the cycle – it’s just a rung on a ladder. It’s just another part of this huge machine that engulfs us all. I think I sometimes find it hard because even my simple aspirations of doing a job I actually like seem to be these huge hurdles to overcome and the long term goals of settling down, starting a family and – God forbid – actually being happy seem to be a product of mere fantasy. Not that I don’t hold hope.

If I didn’t hold some hope; if I didn’t believe that I could somehow break the cycle and get off the world at the next stop, I swear to whatever deity may be listening right now that I would jab a blunt object through my skull and make this article my last message to mankind – a suicide note, if you will. But I won’t.

The fact that life has nothing to offer me is not a problem with me: it is a problem with life. In a change from my normal stance of having nothing to back up my grand claims, I have decided that the line I draw in the sand shall find its final resting place here: I refuse to concede to an opponent who stacks the deck against me. I have just the chips that the croupier dealt out to me on Monday, 13th July 1981 and I refuse to crap out. I will reinvent the game if I have to.

I am the Mzebonga and I will roar into the dark, cold, rainy night as a beacon to those who will follow.

Sojourn Ceases

2009-05-25T14:23:00.000+01:00

The last however-many months have proven difficult for me to explain because I haven’t really wanted not to be around. As ever, “real” life clashes with our best attempts to be the person we want to be. C’est la vie.

I say “real” because I’m increasingly aware how incongruous it all seems. Prior to my silence, I had stepped up my rants about “The Machine” (I honestly believe that they will continue over the weeks, months and years – yes, years: I’m back in for the long haul, motherfuckers) and I’m aware that I am a slave to it: I enjoy working but I don’t enjoy work (and all which it implies). Every morning, I'd wake to have an inner argument with myself: to go to work or not? It ultimately becomes a “to die of starvation or hypothermia on the street or live comfortably” argument. As time moved on, I find it harder to see the benefits of the second option. I’m losing sight how the boredom, annoyance and disappointment that I put up with at work is balanced out by cable TV, central heating and dinner (the last of those is what terrifies me, since I rarely miss a meal).

That sums it up, the more bored, annoyed and disappointed I felt upon leaving work, the more that carries into my evenings and personal time: TV, central heating and dinner inevitably feels that much more boring. This, in turn, carries into the next day where these emotions are further exaggerated.

It’s not just tasks or distractions that get affected by this. I can feel myself becoming bored, annoyed and disappointed by people; be they family, friends, work colleagues or even complete strangers. It is leaving me with a feeling of complete disengagement from society as a whole. I can talk to people all day long, have a laugh with them, share my thoughts on life and the cosmos, but still feel completely isolated from them as individuals.

During this period, I felt increasingly bored, annoyed and disappointed by a former mistress of mine – the Internet. I could point a finger at Newgrounds.com, whose policy of “Everything by Everyone” appears to have given a once luscious ground of innovative and amusing animations away to half-assed, unfunny, poorly spelled travesties or tributes to the innovative and amusing animations that were posted 3 years prior. I could point a finger at YouTube.com, who have gone from allowing a multitude of creative and unorthodox characters to find their way into the mainstream, only to have this pounced on and replaced by the likes of Chris Crocker (famed for crying about Britney Spears) and Marie Digby (while reasonably talented, still a cynical ploy from some shrewd music executive). I could even point a finger at my idols and favourites, Weebl and HomestarRunner, who just, somehow, don’t seem as funny as they used to be.

I’m building up to say this: I can point the finger at none of them. I’d be deluding myself if I didn’t admit that these things weren’t there all along. I think I’ve just had sensory overload or maybe I’m just not interested enough to seek out the stuff that I always used to.

I don’t believe I’m alone in this feeling (I’m aware that saying this is probably going to give any psychologists reading this some sort of bizarre diagnosis: saying that I am disengaged from society but not alone in that feeling is probably a symptom of some neurosis that one of you can, no doubt, fill me in on). Maybe the Internet really is starting to lose its once shiny new feel and just another place where they’d build a Starbucks and a McDonalds if they could.

I ought to give due credit to the schemes adopted by friends of mine, such as JCP and McDiablo, in forcing themselves to post regular targets for writing; I purchased a guide to blogging that will hopefully encourage me to discipline and direct my blogs away from the random and ceaseless raving that went before; and to David Duchovny’s latest series, Californication, that has managed to capture my attention with breasts for long enough to sell me a story that I can get involved with and that feels like it relates to me and my struggle to move my sites forward over the last few months.

I’m actively distancing myself from my apathy: purposely giving myself a multiple personality disorder, if you like. My apathy is for the world that I just can’t find a way to engage with. But this time, these rhetorical diatribes, rants and soliloquies are mine – and how I’ve missed them! Without them, I’ve been living hand-to-mouth on alcohol and music trying to both repress and experience some kind of fucking emotion outside of the neutral range.

So I plot my return and hope to be able to discipline myself, as others have, to contribute something meaningful to my sites at regular intervals (I hope fortnightly!) and, if I lose a job or friends because of it, so be it. That is not and has never been my intention.

My intention is, in a grandiose sense, to slowly infect people, who may chance to read this drivel, with my own personal opinions and viewpoints in the hope of somehow positively affecting the world as a whole. Moreover, as I watch the world being polluted with the languages of hAx0r or l33t or whatever and SMS, I reserve my right to counter the onslaught by making use of long, obscure words with reckless abandon and probably in the wrong context.

The truth is rather more to the effect that, like all bloggers, I long to feel like my thoughts and opinions on a whole range of bollocks might actually means something to someone and that I could be liked, respected or, dare I say it, loved for them.

The basic drive to do this, though, is that I’ve had these voices captive in my head for months and I can no longer live with it: let the Internet have them so that I can sleep peacefully at night.