Not being a naturally organised or together person but wishing most of the time to at least pretend to be grown up enough to organise my life to some degree; I rather enjoy lists. Particularly aspirational ones.
It’s not necessarily that they provide a means by which to measure your perception of success with each successive strike off, more that they encourage thought about what is really important, about that which you care the very most.
On that note, some time last year I compiled such a list.
Which I have subsequently (and probably inevitably) misplaced, somewhere between moving house and just not being grown up enough not to have misplaced it.
I do however, remember one item from said list: “Write a piece of poetry that is not unutterably self indulgent, you self absorbed, pretentious, Kerouac wannabe.” Or something to that effect.
I think I have managed it… just.
I also had “Write some good poetry” on said list … I don’t think I’m quite there yet… however some of my fellow wanky poets do seem to rather enjoy my inane douche-baggery… It’s all terribly subjective I suppose… I guess if you look hard enough you can find a strange beauty in most anything.
I was largely inspired by the goings on of the last couple of weeks… nothing particularly earth shattering or life altering has occurred (save our visit to Mauschwitz – which was rather life altering for the teeny rodents involved – in so far as it was life ending. I might have cried. A little bit. Ok, a lot… like a child in fact… Mr Ben was terribly stoic about the whole thing though… how uncharacteristically manly of him?!?!)
The last couple of weeks have seen Captain Sideburns and I watching the entire back catalogue of The Mighty Boosh, which aside from making me a little bit fall in love with Noel Fielding again (this happens intermittently – we currently have a very strained fantasy relationship – it’s almost like he doesn’t care about me at all) has also seen us obsessively singing “Future Sailors” at each other and the subversive irreverence has apparently bored its way into my subconscious.
Our outing to a quaint little venue called the Cube, in which the bar staff seemed to have arbitrarily swapped the contents of their mixer bottles around in some kind of bizarre practical joke, meaning that I was forced to drink vodka & coke (which was masquerading as sparkling water) as there was no lemonade (there was – it was hiding in the tonic bottle as Mr Ben found out when he took his first sip of Gin & tonic), provided the perfect backdrop for the stupendously brilliant Enablers. The snake hipped, silver tongued, middle aged, balding front man of said band and more precisely his doomy, cynical, but ever so beautiful lyrics teamed up with my Boosh brain to make some kind of weird drug induced psychedelic poetry smack down … awesome! (Also I am now the proud owner of number 178 of 200 of his delightfully illustrated collection of lyrics/doomy beat poetry – thank you, electro funk goblin.)
In short – I done wrote a poem again… one that I quite like, actually.
I’m now considering writing another aspirational list.
Point 1 on said list should probably be “find old list.”
In other news, Mr Ben and I spent the prior weekend largely eating cheese and defacing children’s colouring books – with Crayola crayons, no less! It’s not what you think – so far there has yet to be the addition of any raging man cock to a single picture. Instead we have gone for something far more sinister and insidious… our efforts include chaos fawn, doomed sea voyage complete with emerging sea monster, Death Bus 2000: The Final Solution and alien abduction in a sleepy rural village… but no penises… we are however running short on ideas, so stylized tentacle porn may well turn up at some point.
This may be why adults aren’t generally allowed to play with children’s toys.
I have also discovered that the men in my life are rather enamoured with the ridiculous reality bitch fest that is America’s Next Top Model. Don’t get me wrong, I’m rather a fan myself (particularly of makeover week – I enjoy watching nasty girls cry) but I have got nothing on these two “heterosexual” males. Bets were placed this week on how many girls would cry while getting their hair all cut off/dyed/badly weaved etc. – I figured there were enough badasses in this cycle that only 2 of the remaining 11 would cry… I was spot on… but even this proud victory paled into insignificance next to the whooping, hollering and general chatter that emitted from the boys during our Tuesday night TV session…
Benders!
Finally – Mr Ben is going to Germany for 3 months in April. I’m trying really hard to be ok with this… but I’m totally not. I may be a nightmarish basket case for a while as I work out how to combine being supportive and being sad.
Sorry.
News worthy Pixie out.
It’s not necessarily that they provide a means by which to measure your perception of success with each successive strike off, more that they encourage thought about what is really important, about that which you care the very most.
On that note, some time last year I compiled such a list.
Which I have subsequently (and probably inevitably) misplaced, somewhere between moving house and just not being grown up enough not to have misplaced it.
I do however, remember one item from said list: “Write a piece of poetry that is not unutterably self indulgent, you self absorbed, pretentious, Kerouac wannabe.” Or something to that effect.
I think I have managed it… just.
I also had “Write some good poetry” on said list … I don’t think I’m quite there yet… however some of my fellow wanky poets do seem to rather enjoy my inane douche-baggery… It’s all terribly subjective I suppose… I guess if you look hard enough you can find a strange beauty in most anything.
I was largely inspired by the goings on of the last couple of weeks… nothing particularly earth shattering or life altering has occurred (save our visit to Mauschwitz – which was rather life altering for the teeny rodents involved – in so far as it was life ending. I might have cried. A little bit. Ok, a lot… like a child in fact… Mr Ben was terribly stoic about the whole thing though… how uncharacteristically manly of him?!?!)
The last couple of weeks have seen Captain Sideburns and I watching the entire back catalogue of The Mighty Boosh, which aside from making me a little bit fall in love with Noel Fielding again (this happens intermittently – we currently have a very strained fantasy relationship – it’s almost like he doesn’t care about me at all) has also seen us obsessively singing “Future Sailors” at each other and the subversive irreverence has apparently bored its way into my subconscious.
Our outing to a quaint little venue called the Cube, in which the bar staff seemed to have arbitrarily swapped the contents of their mixer bottles around in some kind of bizarre practical joke, meaning that I was forced to drink vodka & coke (which was masquerading as sparkling water) as there was no lemonade (there was – it was hiding in the tonic bottle as Mr Ben found out when he took his first sip of Gin & tonic), provided the perfect backdrop for the stupendously brilliant Enablers. The snake hipped, silver tongued, middle aged, balding front man of said band and more precisely his doomy, cynical, but ever so beautiful lyrics teamed up with my Boosh brain to make some kind of weird drug induced psychedelic poetry smack down … awesome! (Also I am now the proud owner of number 178 of 200 of his delightfully illustrated collection of lyrics/doomy beat poetry – thank you, electro funk goblin.)
In short – I done wrote a poem again… one that I quite like, actually.
I’m now considering writing another aspirational list.
Point 1 on said list should probably be “find old list.”
In other news, Mr Ben and I spent the prior weekend largely eating cheese and defacing children’s colouring books – with Crayola crayons, no less! It’s not what you think – so far there has yet to be the addition of any raging man cock to a single picture. Instead we have gone for something far more sinister and insidious… our efforts include chaos fawn, doomed sea voyage complete with emerging sea monster, Death Bus 2000: The Final Solution and alien abduction in a sleepy rural village… but no penises… we are however running short on ideas, so stylized tentacle porn may well turn up at some point.
This may be why adults aren’t generally allowed to play with children’s toys.
I have also discovered that the men in my life are rather enamoured with the ridiculous reality bitch fest that is America’s Next Top Model. Don’t get me wrong, I’m rather a fan myself (particularly of makeover week – I enjoy watching nasty girls cry) but I have got nothing on these two “heterosexual” males. Bets were placed this week on how many girls would cry while getting their hair all cut off/dyed/badly weaved etc. – I figured there were enough badasses in this cycle that only 2 of the remaining 11 would cry… I was spot on… but even this proud victory paled into insignificance next to the whooping, hollering and general chatter that emitted from the boys during our Tuesday night TV session…
Benders!
Finally – Mr Ben is going to Germany for 3 months in April. I’m trying really hard to be ok with this… but I’m totally not. I may be a nightmarish basket case for a while as I work out how to combine being supportive and being sad.
Sorry.
News worthy Pixie out.
