John Walker's Electronic House

Well then, have a splendid one.

I’m heading to Guildford for a few days, where I fully intend to write my book and read many others. What I will of course do is sit around playing on my GBA, and then go to the pub. But I think that intending to do good things is nearly the same as doing them.

I did open up my book the other day, and I’m fairly pleased with what I have. I just need to find the motivation and the wherewithal to write more. Hopefully some dead time and a laptop will get me going. We’ll see.

I discovered a book the other day that I was slightly surprised to learn I didn’t write. It’s called “Change the World For a Fiver”, and is definitely on sale in Waterstones. Oddly enough it’s five pounds, and it contains an enormous number of ideas for how to change the world. It brings me joy that others understand the microscopic possibilities for changing the world, as well as the macroscopic (if such a word exists).

Containing ideas like:

“Capture a child’s imagination: When kids ask you to read a story to them, it’s because they know something you don’t. They know you’ll both feel richer for the experience.”

“Write to someone who inspired you: Nice to do. Nice to get. What is there not to like about it?” (comes with a postcard to fill in).

“The art of reverse haggling: Confuse the wonderful people who work in charity shops. Pay them more than they bargained for.”

And so on. It does get a bit twee (even more than above), and occasionally spurious, with the awful page about taking half as many muscles to smile as frown. Gawd. And also demonstrably complete rubbish. Smiling takes 12 muscles, frowning takes 11. Complete breakdown of those muscles here. And as my friend Mel once said, “And it only takes half as many again to punch someone in the face.”

But despite this, it’s a great idea, and it comes with a pack of seeds for growing trees, which is great. It also suggests leaving good books lying around for other people to find, which is the best idea I’ve heard in ages.

Have a merry one. And don’t buy the shitty Band Aid single, if you haven’t already. If you feel the need give the money direct to the charity, and don’t fund the music shops and recording industry.

Bob Mandel is a writer for The Adrenaline Vault, an online games magazine, reviewing all your favourite PC games in their own inimitable fashion. Below is my tribute to Bob Mandel, their most outstanding writer, all in his own words. Everything is used by ‘fair use’ and all copyright belongs to Bob Mandel and The Adrenaline Vault.
Bob’s work features many distinctive traits, but I have chosen to concentrate on one of them. Here are excerpts from the “Intelligence & Difficulty” section of the review. I hope that this in some small way captures the originality and inspiration that fills all his work.

I know everyone does this, but I never have, and hey, it’s the week before Christmas. Here are some of the search engine entries that have led people to discovering this blog.

baby doctor botherer

One of many variations using the obscurity of the word ‘botherer’. And possibly one of the more disturbing. As with most of these mysterious searches, the two key questions are: 1) What was this person looking for, and 2) Why did the think this result one that merited visiting?
I like to think that this person intended to learn ways to annoy a local paediatrician, but just didn’t know how to spell paediatrician. I hope they weren’t too let down at the lack of irritation suggestions, but in case they should return, here are a couple of ideas:

1) You could place adverts in the local papers promising a free Pokemon giftset to all children attending the surgery.

2) You could spray swearwords all over the doctor’s house, and then bearing pitchforks and burning torches, chase them from the town. A helpful link here.

banana spliff

Surely by now everyone knows this doesn’t work? I couldn’t work out how this one had come about for a while, but then it all became clear. From the tales of Holland, Yahoo!’s search! engine! combining the flavours of fruity beers with the mocking of a rubbish Brit. Again, the crushing disappointment of the searcher, desperately trying to create the mythical budget high, must have been awful.

gasps in evolution

This is beautiful. I wish I had written it. The passage that tricked Google was, “Hale’s photography bemused and caused gasps. Its evolution over the year has been splendid to be confused by…”. Although I may now write a book with this title. I think I can lay some claim to the words, since I appear to be the number 2 result for the phrase on Google. Look out for Gasps In Evolution: An Exploration of the Breathless Nature of Nature’s Breathlessness by John Walker, in all good-to-fair bookshops.

losing the voice

Far worse than losing your voice, is losing the voice. When put in possession of the voice, one of the huge responsibilities is to keep it in your sight at all times. I dread to think of the individual’s panic when they realised they’d lost the voice, and in desperation had to search the internet for tips on recovery.

continuous consumption of paracetamol

In my understanding of the world, the story here is that someone was on the verge of a suicide attempt, and had the foresight to research it properly beforehand. Rushed suicide attempts are lazy and disorganised. But then, during this preperation, by the grace of God, Providence, Fate, stumbled upon this blog. Yes, the reference was only to the desire for cough medicine without the drug, and certainly not what was being looked for. But despite this, the entry was still read, and then a couple either side, until eventually the witty prose and fascinating insight became a beacon of saving light, giving both hope in the future and a reason to live. This brings the number of lives saved by this blog to three figures.

w!nk

The only thing that brings me more joy than the knowledge that botherer.cream.org is the number 2 result for “w!nk” on the Belgian Google is the knowledge that it’s the number 1 result for “w!nk” on the international Google. And best of all: for no reason. However, it’s life-affirming to learn that all “w!nk” traffic will be coming my way.

Google says, “Did you mean: wnk“. No, I’m fairly sure that’s not what they meant.

Yesterday was spent mostly alternating between procrastination and writing a feature for Gamer. Which I got finished. But that’s not what I brought you here to talk about today.

Today we’re talking about the True Meaning of Christmas (TMOC).

I’m so utterly sick and tired of hearing this phrase. Because, pray tell, just what exactly is the True Meaning of Christmas?

I’ve asked around, and I’m not exactly getting a lot of answers. The most common response has been to describe the events of the birth of Jesus, which is clearly not an answer to the question. It’s the description of an event, not an exposition of meaning. So when pushed, I then tend to get told what I would prescribe to be the True Meaning of Easter. After pointing this out, the final conclusion tends toward, “Uh, you know, it’s about, well, I don’t know.”

Which might go some way towards explaining why this so called TMOC is so lamented.

This discussion walks a tightrope over a cavern of far too many hoary old cliches, in danger of suddenly plummeting into a, “Jesus wasn’t born on the 25th of December” or a, “The Christians stole a Pagan festival and have no rights to dictate how it should be observed.” Of course both are completely true, but don’t need repeating. And anyway, anyone can have their festival whenever they want, so Christians have every right to do whatever they want during the Winter Solstice. Yes, yes, yes, the reasons Christians originally picked that particular date wasn’t exactly in the spirit of the season, but that’s bygones, move on. And don’t say, “But they don’t have a right to impose it on anyone else.” That’s the whole point of this piece, you idiot.

However, if I am to hear this endless barrage of complaints about the “commercialisation of Christmas”, or “how the TMOC is lost” so very often, I at least want some sort of suggestion as to what exactly should be happening. Because so far as I can tell what these barking hoards demand is that the day be spent in silent meditation in a grey room, contemplating the extraordinary revelation of a baby born in a cave. But why? Because the Bible I read doesn’t seem to think the whole thing was that much of a big deal.

First Gospel, Mark, doesn’t even bother mentioning it. That’s reasonably noteworthy, you might think. In writing an account of the life of Christ, he didn’t think it merited even a cursory glance.

Matthew explains the merest outline, concentrating more of the events of a few years later with the visit of the Magi and the flee to Egypt.

Luke goes into a great deal more detail, taking pages explaining the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth and their conceptions, but when it comes to the apparent True Meaning of Christmas, he skims through it in a couple of paragraphs. Interestingly, the nativity story we all know so well then tends to miss out Luke’s ending. Much about the cuddly shepherds, but then we inexplicably skip over Jesus’ circumcision and the awesome accompanying prophecies of Simeon. Instead things skip back to Matthew’s Magi tale, chronology be damned.

And finally John… oh, he doesn’t mention it either.

So what exactly is going on?

The conclusion is inevitable, and in danger of becoming a tiresome cliche itself: Christians have got their focus a little bit skewiff. Easter, guys. That’s the important one. The trouble is, enough people say this, but no one does anything about it. And why? Because of hypocrisy. If anyone really gave a damn about the lost TMOC, they’d organise themselves into making one massive deal of Easter Sunday. That they don’t reveals the truth here – everyone loves the big party of Christmas, but some people just want it for themselves. My friend Nick was recently at Trafalgar Square where an excellent atmosphere was in the air, happy people sharing in free mince pies, and a general air of positive spiritedness. And then one lunatic harridon Christian began screeching about how they were all heathens and that they should stop this wanton revelry and go to church. She sure showed them the love of Christ there then.

My goodness, Christians ought to take stock for a moment. Christmas is the most clear-cut celebratory festival in the Christian calendar. Easter’s tricky, the conflict of tragedy and joy so hard to know how to approach. But Christmas – Jesus is alive! Woo! What’s to mourn? And yet the sight of people having a good time because of a season kept bouyant by Christianity is enough to drive people to public breakdowns. They aren’t having the right sort of peace and goodwill! Stop this immediately, and go into the most miserable place possible – a presumably empty church. (I presume that it was not at a time when services were likely to be occurring, as otherwise this woman’s presence in public is inexplicable).

Solution: Christians need to start making their own big deal of Easter, as well as Christmas. Because, as a Christian, it is a big deal. It’s the point. It’s the moment in Christ’s life that none of the Gospels skimp on. For crying out loud, it’s just so bloody ridiculous, trying to fight for this TMOC that no one can quite identify and that two out of four Gospels don’t even care to mention. But importantly, as well as Christmas. Because Christmas is great! Decorations, presents, food, sharing, allowing ourselves to enjoy a naughty moment of excess, kids having an amazing time. It’s awesome. And it only continues because of the promotion it receives from Christianity. People should be proud of that.

So I was having this conversation in Waitrose with Sian, when the lady behind the checkout said, “Well, it’s about the renewal of hope, isn’t it?”

It would appear she’s right.

Which to my mind doesn’t preclude the sharing of mince pies in Trafalgar Square.

Sofas.

It was how I knew I had transfered from ‘feeling a bit ill, but ignoring it and just carrying on’ (which lasted from last Thursday through to Tuesday), and ‘I’m dying, I’m dying, everything aches and if I have to blow my nose one more time then my nostrils will crack up to the bridge, why can’t death just take me?’ (yesterday and today).

I picked up my duvet and carried it through to the lounge.

It was almost involuntary. I just knew, Wednesday morning, that the only right thing to do was to carry my bedclothes to the sofa, and to set up camp there. The sofa isn’t comfortable for this. It’s only a two seater, and I’m three seats long. But more severely, I no longer have any tolerance for daytime TV. To be honest, I have no tolerance for any TV at the moment, not tuning in for anything but Dick n Dom in da Bungalow on Saturday mornings. This is true. I’m missing loads of great television, and have been for almost a year now, but I just don’t have the drive to watch what’s on the telly. DVDs – all the way. Good TV series, on disc, watched at the times I choose at the pace I wish for. I think I’m prematurely ready for the forthcoming TV On Demand service the BBC are supposed to be launching next year.

In fact, this is almost exclusively how I consume radio now. Apart from whatever is on as I do the washing up, it all comes via their archive. The BBC’s Listen Again service is my favourite innovation of recent times. I probably listen to two to three hours of Listen Again stuff each day. It seems the only sensible way to consume such things. I want to listen to the Moral Maze each week, but 8pm on a Wednesday isn’t ideal, and certainly not on a weekly basis. However, at When I Chose To Click On It pm is perfect. And I think I’ve decided the same needs to be true of television – if a programme is good, I want to commit. And I don’t want to start worrying about going out on a Tuesday in case something is on the TV, or whatever. So hurry up with that.

Which is to say, er, that I haven’t the ability to sit in front of the endless drivel that once would distract on a sickly morning off school/work. Which is to say: I’M BORED OUT OF MY MIND.

I’ve also learned the interesting fact that I have no friends whatsoever. In the last two days of complaining to everyone, no one has come to my flat to make me Lemsip. No one has suggested a game of Scrabble. No one has even produced an interesting “Ahhh.”

This is the standard of texts I’ve received:

“Look u silly man, take some more cough mixture, think of all the little dying children & just be grateful ur alive! No sympathy I’m afraid. U most soldier on 4 the kids.”

Thanks, JO DOLBY.

But it does give me some comfort. I had begun to wonder if I was the only person who said, “cough mixture”. I realised a couple of years ago quite how ludicrous this sounds, and I think someone else questioned my use of it. I was beginning to think that no one else used this term, instead the more logical “cough syrup” or “cough medicine”. “Cough mixture” does sound as though it should be something taken when one finds that there is not enough coughing occurring. Anyway, somewhere within JO DOLBY’s CRUELTY, a sliver of hope was found that I was at least not the only person to say this silly phrase.

She’s lovely really.

Well, thanks for the waves of sympathy expressed today. I’m overwhelmed by how much better I feel for all the loving words in my time of disease… Oh no, wait, I’m confusing what happened with WHAT DIDN’T HAPPEN EVEN A BIT.

Really, that day one of Science at school wasn’t teaching us about the mystifying mucus-generating abilities of the human body demonstrates a woeful failure of the education system. It simply isn’t possible for my interior to produce such waterfalls of goo at such a tremendous rate, without either my continuous consumption of gallons of water, or my shrivelling up in the manner of your favourite dried fruit. I have done neither.

Unless… unless. Unless my mistake was yesterday, when having a bath. Perhaps that is it – the master-stroke of the evil virus. The desire to have a long, hot bath is not a response to the sickness infesting every cell of my body – it is a SYMPTOM! I was merely feeding it! Lying in that hot water, creating an osmotic potential, I was only doing everything it wanted. The they-turn-out-to-be-very-selectively permeable membranes of the human skin, tissue and sinus tributaries leapt upon this opportunity to restock perhaps as much as eighteen pints of soapy bathwater with which it could generate its Grouchland rainbow of coloured snot.

I shall never bathe again. And showering would seem too much of a risk.

I finish with an open letter to the Evil Pharmaceutical Companies of the world:

Dear the Evil Pharmaceutical Companies of the world,

With the large amounts of money you make from the patenting of vaccines capable of preventing HIV infected mothers from passing the virus onto their unborn children thus preventing the slowing of the spread of this epidemic across the poorest nations in the world, you always claim you fund your research projects, without which you would not be able to “cure cancer” as you so fondly promise. Since your progress in this area is proving somewhat slow, might I encourage you to dedicate a small amount of these profits into creating a placebo cough medicine?

What I require is a thick, gloopy substance, identical in both taste and viscosity to regular cough syrup, but without any of the active contents such as paracetamol. With this, I could then take the recommended dose of delicious, yummy medicinal syrup, and then avoid the almost-all-consuming temptation to chug the rest of the bottle and the ensewing visit to hospital and liver failure, and instead knock back 500ml of the harmless double.

And then, once this project is complete, could you disband and destroy yourselves, thus removing one of the most despicable and evil forces of money and power on the planet.

Love to all,

John Walker

I have a cold, and with this, have lost my voice.

Not entirely, although for one aback-taking moment I called out something to Jonty only to produce a mystifying rasping air noise and no sound at all. I’m left with a range of croaks that appear to vary in severity upon every utterance.

I love losing my voice. I wish I understood why. Perhaps it’s an attention thing. I can remember, in the past, exaggerating the croakiness of my voice without realising I was doing it. I’d then react in surprise to something, and discover I’d been faking it to even myself. I am weird.

However, this time there’s no need for exaggeration. And I find myself wanting to show it off to other people. Oh please, tell me this isn’t just me. Or am I more mental than previous surveys believed?

Sadly, the excitement of a raspy, croaky voice is always tempered by being filled to the very brim with day-glo snot. This morning I coughed up something of a golden brown colour. And I mean golden brown. If King Midas had the same virus, I believe this would be the colour of his hanky contents. And as with every cold, I’m finding myself fascinated by my body’s ability to generate quite so much mucus at quite such an extraordinary speed. After blowing a good couple of pints of goo from the inside of my head, it’s only a matter of minutes before new reserves begin bubbling to the surface. What is it made of? What causes these excellent colours? And why don’t people enjoy discussing this subject matter as much as me?

Clearly I’m not demonstrating the tempering of the enjoyment here, with this celebrations of bogey, but sadly it’s not all tissue-inspecting fun. My nostrils are beginning to get chapped and sore, and my enthusiastic chugging of Beecham’s All In One has left me with an empty bottle and a night of that awful coughing where you daren’t put any effort into it as you know how much it will hurt only to be betrayed by a sudden confusion of breathing, coughing and gasping as your diaphragm spasms and your throat is suddenly barbed wire and stinging nettles.

Please do phone me to hear this excellent rasp before it goes away. I think there’s maybe one day left in it.

Right, you’re going to have to squeeze your eyes tight shut if you’re afraid of a bit of a swear.

Below are the lyrics to the King Missile song, It’s Saturday, which until the RIAA and BPI catch me and imprison me for the rest of my unnatural life, is here to STEAL LIKE A PIRATE.

It goes like this:

I want to be different, like everybody else I want to be like.
I want to be just like all the different people.
I have no further interest in being the same,
because I have seen difference all around,
and now I know that that’s what I want.
I don’t want to blend in and be indistinguishable,
I want to be a part of the different crowd,
and assert my individuality along with the others,
who are different like me.
I don’t want to be identical to anyone or anything.
I don’t even want to be identical to myself.
I want to look in the mirror and wonder,
“who is that person? I’ve never seen that person before;
I’ve never seen anyone like that before.”
I want to call into question the very idea that
identity can be attached.
I want a floating, shifting, ever changing persona:
Invisibility and obscurity,
detachment from the ego and all of its pursuits.
Unity is useless.
Comformity is competitive and divisive and leads only to
stagnation and death.
If what I’m saying doesn’t make any sense,
that’s because sense can not be made.
It’s something that must be sensed.
And I, for one, am incensed by all this complacency.
Why oppose war only when there’s a war?
Why defend the clinics only when they’re attacked?
Why are we always reactive?
Let’s activate something.
Let’s fuck shit up.
Whatever happened to revolution for the hell of it?
Whatever happened to protesting nothing in particular,
just protesting ’cause it’s Saturday and there’s nothing else to do?

Hello you lot.

I’ve been fairly absent really, despite faffing around with colourful archives. The truth is, that’s been easier to do than to write the blog. And I’m wondering if that’s hypocritical of me.

Blogs, as I’ve said many times, are an exercise in ego. They are the manifestation of the desire to be noticed. This isn’t a negative. If a blog is entertaining for someone to read, then it is surely a positive. But it’s folly to pretend that the motivation of the writer is anything else. But the nature of this kind of blog (as opposed to information resources, or fictional blogs) is that they are also walking a fine line between sharing personal information and deliberately attempting to entertain. Combining the two can be extremely risky, and it’s something I’ve enjoyed doing. The rants I’ve written tend to be rants I’ve been having with friends. The oh-so-hilarious rambling observations will have been about something that’s been on my mind that day or recently. And the reports of things that have happened are even more obvious.

So when what’s happening is really tough, I have no idea what to write. I was entertained a couple of days ago by the notion of attempting to write something funny despite feeling incredibly low. I didn’t do it, but the challenge amused me. What stops me is a desire to be real – to share truth on this, no matter how trivial. I want to write honestly, and when the honesty I have is too private or too difficult, I appear to only clam up.

So I’m going to share a thing that’s been happening. I’ve now deleted about four attempts at a sentence explaining the inherent weirdness of not knowing a lot of the people reading, but each time it descends into introspective bogwash.

I have what we in the medical profession call an Anxiety Disorder. This means that I am not able to control my anxiety, and regular, ordinary things that can normally be dealt with sensibly cause me to escalate into emotional explosions and panic attacks. These are pretty scary. I’ve had these for about six years, on and off, normally in phases of a few months. At the moment I’m about as bad as I’ve ever been, which would be the first time six years ago.

The reason I’m sharing this is a sensible one. I’m not the only one. I’m especially not the only one who hasn’t done anything about it for the last half-decade. And it took someone else making me (and I really mean making me) admit that it wasn’t a way to live and go to the doctor to have me do anything about it. Because I’ve always felt like I should be able to cope with things, and that I can’t is my failure. Not true.

It’s damaging. It’s hurt me too many times, and it’s just hurt me again.

But this is a positive post. Yes, it’s painfully self-exposing and improperly personal. But we’ve already established that’s a reality of blogs. I’m doing something about it, and it will get sorted out.

I guess I’m saying, if this is hinting at you to do something about it, do it.

That’s enough of all that.

I weigh exactly 15 stone.

1 stone down, fat fans.

Go team me.