I was kind of hoping that it would never come to this, but for a variety of reasons which I can’t really go into right now, it looks like I truly have no option but to shamelessly fluff every writing gig, freelancing job and revenue sharing scam to all and sundry for, as I just said, reasons which I would rather not go into right now. I guess there’s no time like the present, so I suppose I might as well begin with the one I’ve been wasting the most time on lately, mainly because Constant-Content.cm has dried up and, to be brutally honest, nobody is buying anybody’s shit.
So, onto Triond.com. Let’s get down to brass tacks, as the dear Dr Gonzo would inform us. Basically, Triond.com is a website which allows you to write about whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want, and earn a fistful of dollars on the side. Actually, it’s more like a meagre handful of cents, because unless you’re a true cyber geek who knows the ins and outs of the information highway (which I most certainly do not) you will sure have a hell of time trying to get some decent exposure. It’s fun and casual, and there is an at least small thrill to watching the hit counter and earning counters on your stuff gradually, gradually, painfully increase. Always a good thing to do...naaaat.
So, to conclude very hastily, if you’re interested in writing for fun and cash at Triond.com, please feel free to click here and sign up. You’re probably wondering why I’m so eager- well, I’ll level with you. If you click the link, I get a small referral bonus, but I’ll also fluff your material in the near future and it will be a symbiotic relationship of sorts. So drink up, fuckers.
Wednesday 28 July 2010
Sunday 18 July 2010
Abfahrt Von Gedanken...Going Up...Bad Fries And Fremdenfeindlichkeit
THE WOODS ARE BURNING! Yes. And if I don’t at least try and regurgitate this filth onto something civilised, like a keyboard, it’s just going to ferment in my brain until I start foaming at the mouth and somebody gets shivved. Probably me. I’ve got a maggot in my brain for each hour of sleep that I lost last night, a monstrous debacle of jet clouds, turbulence and cold, empty hotel rooms. Frankfurt airport is Hell. No questions asked.
I should probably get some sleep, but this needs must raus. I’ve still got that weird, out of town feeling, driving like an asshole, pushing the car up to over one hundred on the drive into town, and watching other people being watched in traffic. Someone grinded past playing Lady Ga Ga – no one plays that out of their own free will, I thought, and gave the poor girl a poor sympathetic grimace. But what the hell was I doing? Where the hell was I? Goddamn these useless tangents.
Let’s start from the beginning, that would be the most rational place to commence. My diary notes are hazy at best, barely spilling over a single page of A5 but the few scraps I can salvage from it will have to do:
It’s not a binge if it doesn’t give you cardiac arrest, and then, scrawled into the corner, The Mountains....Jonny’s in America.
I’d left town on a high and was dreading the possibility that sometime, sometime soon, I would crash down suddenly and unexpectedly, in a most inconvenient place, such as up the mountain, or something, Yes, I’m afraid of Americans, I’m afraid of the worst...
But time out of town seemed almost synonymous with recuperation and the opportunity, greatly overdue, after all this forgetfulness and arrogance and gnashing of teeth, to finally just chill the fuck out. Enough shaking. There is good beer in Austria, and good people, and they know it. There were no malicious sideways glances or glares as we exited the Terminal at Graz, no pallid veils of tolerance. Those would come later, when we met the other countries. It was hot in the city and I was sweating like a pig, but that was OK.
The others were friendly – and then some. We rolled up to a hotel in Judenberg, considerably more salubrious than the hellholes pasted over tourism leaflets in the airport, and the staff had faces made from real skin. No fakes grins and thick clumps of foundation to hide the xenophobic turmoil of their brains. Excellent good. Hours later, perhaps many hours, I strike up a conversation with one of the employees at the bar and the ice breaks easily thanks for a few somewhat endearing grammatical errors on my part. Austrian German was tougher than it looked, and the host on the plane had taken to my attempts at all kindly. But this was different – I was instantly adopted as her little pet, something to stroke and coo at when the job got dull as hell. It suited me fine, as did the extra beer and cigarettes.
Heavens forfend – twenty minutes of frantic typing and all I produce is mush. The relevant content, you couldn’t stretch it over the eye of a needle. Very poor indeed. The cider can is getting low and my keyboard’s groaning with the strain.
NB: My companion for the week has been HS Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 and there is a lurking fears in the sleep deprived fibres of my brain that, sub-consciously, this will into some pathetic, sick, contrived work of pseudo-plagiarism. Hideous. But words are words and I’m out of brain cells.
I should probably get some sleep, but this needs must raus. I’ve still got that weird, out of town feeling, driving like an asshole, pushing the car up to over one hundred on the drive into town, and watching other people being watched in traffic. Someone grinded past playing Lady Ga Ga – no one plays that out of their own free will, I thought, and gave the poor girl a poor sympathetic grimace. But what the hell was I doing? Where the hell was I? Goddamn these useless tangents.
Let’s start from the beginning, that would be the most rational place to commence. My diary notes are hazy at best, barely spilling over a single page of A5 but the few scraps I can salvage from it will have to do:
It’s not a binge if it doesn’t give you cardiac arrest, and then, scrawled into the corner, The Mountains....Jonny’s in America.
I’d left town on a high and was dreading the possibility that sometime, sometime soon, I would crash down suddenly and unexpectedly, in a most inconvenient place, such as up the mountain, or something, Yes, I’m afraid of Americans, I’m afraid of the worst...
But time out of town seemed almost synonymous with recuperation and the opportunity, greatly overdue, after all this forgetfulness and arrogance and gnashing of teeth, to finally just chill the fuck out. Enough shaking. There is good beer in Austria, and good people, and they know it. There were no malicious sideways glances or glares as we exited the Terminal at Graz, no pallid veils of tolerance. Those would come later, when we met the other countries. It was hot in the city and I was sweating like a pig, but that was OK.
(The author, bemused, sleep deprived, pissing away the time before climate change fear-mongering)
The others were friendly – and then some. We rolled up to a hotel in Judenberg, considerably more salubrious than the hellholes pasted over tourism leaflets in the airport, and the staff had faces made from real skin. No fakes grins and thick clumps of foundation to hide the xenophobic turmoil of their brains. Excellent good. Hours later, perhaps many hours, I strike up a conversation with one of the employees at the bar and the ice breaks easily thanks for a few somewhat endearing grammatical errors on my part. Austrian German was tougher than it looked, and the host on the plane had taken to my attempts at all kindly. But this was different – I was instantly adopted as her little pet, something to stroke and coo at when the job got dull as hell. It suited me fine, as did the extra beer and cigarettes.
Heavens forfend – twenty minutes of frantic typing and all I produce is mush. The relevant content, you couldn’t stretch it over the eye of a needle. Very poor indeed. The cider can is getting low and my keyboard’s groaning with the strain.
NB: My companion for the week has been HS Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 and there is a lurking fears in the sleep deprived fibres of my brain that, sub-consciously, this will into some pathetic, sick, contrived work of pseudo-plagiarism. Hideous. But words are words and I’m out of brain cells.
Friday 2 July 2010
Extortion!
Out of the pungent vapours of beer, sweat, and god knows what else, down the stairs, down the ragged red strip of fabric, through the entrance (Why are we going through the fire escape? This must be some kind of administrative error.) and into, really, nothing in particular. The venue looked not dissimilar to some hideous old aircraft hangar that had sagged in on itself, crippled by its own self loathing, and there wasn’t a vibrant statuette or proud portrait frame in sight. (Call that a red carpet? Someone asks, a rhetorical question, we presumed. It looks like it’s had something amputated. The poor fool. He was probably right)
‘It looks like a fucking bingo hall,’ someone moaned and, according to a partially torn poster hanging uncomfortably above the urinal, it certainly was. It would seem that the architectural dress code, if such a thing truly exists, had strictly prohibited style, and it was perhaps for this reason that an attempt to merrily carry open bottles of wine inside the hangar/hall/hole was met with an orgy of frowning and tutting at the door, and someone faintly implying that I was being an inconsiderate asshole.
‘What do you mean, he can’t come?’ Some poor drunkard moaned, clutching her wine bottle tightly against two sagging burst balloons, ‘you mean this isn’t a suitable companion?’ Not unless style or class was on the agenda, but it seemed that the venue and the latter were no longer on speaking terms.
Matters improved considerably at the bar – reasonably over the top, treat-yourself-luv-it’s-the-fucking-ball price labels, but self conscious and guilty about it – however there was once again a sudden and unpleasant surge downwards as we approached the table. Everyone is talking about cummerbunds. I am not wearing a cummerbund – in fact, I don’t even seem to be wearing socks.
Eventually, sustenance arrives, born lethargically on the huddled backs of fierce, angry women who bark strangely exotic words at each other, referencing, presumably, the food, but in between their brain and their mouths some terrible transformation takes place, and what spews out orally is nothing more than garbled ejaculations. ‘Broo-lay! Krem-fresh! Do-fin-wars!’
‘Right.’ A particularly terrifying individual is stood directly behind my chair, glowering down at the puny post-it card bearing my name and some odd initials. ‘I wan’ a Gammon and I wan’ a Chikkin,’ she snarls at the hapless young boy, tentatively bearing a bent tray loaded hideously with the rickety plates of the meal, costing in excess of twenty pounds.
‘This isn’t Gammon, damnit,’ my drunken companion seethes, eyes fixed down on the sinewy strips of meat, mercifully all but submerged in gravy. ‘This is ham – this is just ham!’ Someone informs him that, really, the two meats are essentially exactly the same, but the attempt at consolation was promptly torn down and devoured hungrily, the hapless agent branded as ignorant and uncultured. Unlearnèd in the manners of food. Quite.
My attention drifts away from the small lump of chocolate on my plate which followed the Gammon – which didn’t taste too bad, even if it wasn’t true gammon – and over to the flashing lights and bold white panels of the photography stand across the hall. There seemed to be some minor dispute taking place.
‘What do you mean you can’t take a picture of all five of us?’ A bold young man was retorting incredulously, as his friends looked on in horror and restrained admiration for this defiance of the infallible photographer, ‘there’s more than enough room – we need to do a group photo.’
‘Group photos come later,’ he said. They didn’t.
‘Do not question my authority as a supreme fountain of aesthetic knowledge.’ They didn’t.
The masses then seeped into the centre of the hall, a dance floor of sorts, and so began the final desperate spasms of egotism. There might have been a band playing.
This strange throng of animals had moved as one for six years. But as the last synthetic fibres began to peel away, no one took much notice.
‘It looks like a fucking bingo hall,’ someone moaned and, according to a partially torn poster hanging uncomfortably above the urinal, it certainly was. It would seem that the architectural dress code, if such a thing truly exists, had strictly prohibited style, and it was perhaps for this reason that an attempt to merrily carry open bottles of wine inside the hangar/hall/hole was met with an orgy of frowning and tutting at the door, and someone faintly implying that I was being an inconsiderate asshole.
‘What do you mean, he can’t come?’ Some poor drunkard moaned, clutching her wine bottle tightly against two sagging burst balloons, ‘you mean this isn’t a suitable companion?’ Not unless style or class was on the agenda, but it seemed that the venue and the latter were no longer on speaking terms.
Matters improved considerably at the bar – reasonably over the top, treat-yourself-luv-it’s-the-fucking-ball price labels, but self conscious and guilty about it – however there was once again a sudden and unpleasant surge downwards as we approached the table. Everyone is talking about cummerbunds. I am not wearing a cummerbund – in fact, I don’t even seem to be wearing socks.
Eventually, sustenance arrives, born lethargically on the huddled backs of fierce, angry women who bark strangely exotic words at each other, referencing, presumably, the food, but in between their brain and their mouths some terrible transformation takes place, and what spews out orally is nothing more than garbled ejaculations. ‘Broo-lay! Krem-fresh! Do-fin-wars!’
‘Right.’ A particularly terrifying individual is stood directly behind my chair, glowering down at the puny post-it card bearing my name and some odd initials. ‘I wan’ a Gammon and I wan’ a Chikkin,’ she snarls at the hapless young boy, tentatively bearing a bent tray loaded hideously with the rickety plates of the meal, costing in excess of twenty pounds.
‘This isn’t Gammon, damnit,’ my drunken companion seethes, eyes fixed down on the sinewy strips of meat, mercifully all but submerged in gravy. ‘This is ham – this is just ham!’ Someone informs him that, really, the two meats are essentially exactly the same, but the attempt at consolation was promptly torn down and devoured hungrily, the hapless agent branded as ignorant and uncultured. Unlearnèd in the manners of food. Quite.
My attention drifts away from the small lump of chocolate on my plate which followed the Gammon – which didn’t taste too bad, even if it wasn’t true gammon – and over to the flashing lights and bold white panels of the photography stand across the hall. There seemed to be some minor dispute taking place.
‘What do you mean you can’t take a picture of all five of us?’ A bold young man was retorting incredulously, as his friends looked on in horror and restrained admiration for this defiance of the infallible photographer, ‘there’s more than enough room – we need to do a group photo.’
‘Group photos come later,’ he said. They didn’t.
‘Do not question my authority as a supreme fountain of aesthetic knowledge.’ They didn’t.
The masses then seeped into the centre of the hall, a dance floor of sorts, and so began the final desperate spasms of egotism. There might have been a band playing.
This strange throng of animals had moved as one for six years. But as the last synthetic fibres began to peel away, no one took much notice.
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