Poulet de Marge and an internet drumming 14/08/2006
Well another week begins and I think I was slowly coming out of this mood that I've been in. What it was I don't know. SAD, micro mid life crisis, time of the month, lack of sleep? Who knows but I think you need them and now and again, almost like rebooting your computer or servicing your car.
We had an important client meeting on Monday afternoon which went well. I contributed little but my two directors were awesome as usual. Sometimes I look at them when they are steering a meeting with complete pride. Had a really good swimming session and moving into the near deserted shallower, learner pool helped. I don't know if it's because it's warmer, shallower and less chlorinated but it seems almost harder to swim in. My swimming buddy and I were doing 10 continuous length sets at a go, which was really working. The competitive element of him being alongside provided the extra motivation to really make me push and I felt reassuringly knackered and tight afterwards.
The contender was ok though the fight a little disappointing. They had an older family guy, Gary Balletto, who had an impressive record but revealed that he hadn't fought for two years and a younger, more arrogant fighter, Aaron Torres, who was looking at boxing to get him off the mean streets. It was one of the scrappiest, least talented fights that I've seen in a long time. Gary came out swinging and looking for a quick knockout but had obviously lost his accuracy and connected with little of the haymakers that he was launching. Aaron was impulsive and woefully unco-ordinated but at least he was able to connect.
In the fourth round he hurt Gary and I thought it might have to be stopped but he then slipped while trying to connect with the punch to end it all. This gave Gary the chance to recollect himself and it ultimately saved him. GB won the fight but they were both lucky to have fought each other as I think some of the hungrier fighters would have taken them apart. The series is good but not as good as the first one yet. I know everyone always says these kind of things but the format has changed. I miss not having sly there or their post show critiques and there is yet to be a fighter that has caught my attention like Sergio or Alfonso did.
Lost double bill night on Tuesday night which was good. I did get a little frustrated in the first one when Jin was acting almost like the last few months hadn't happened but it kinda worked out alright. Sayeed and Andaluscia (I'd check the spelling on IMDB but I would probably stumble on some kind of spoiler!) headed off to see if the guy in the armoury story about crash landing in a balloon stood up. I gotta say that he was winding me up something chronic as was Locke in the second episode. His dad screws him over by stealing his kidney and he has a chance to land him in a world of shit but rolls over like some docile pup. Christ, he needs to grow a goddam backbone. I was becoming more annoyed at his weakness until the emergency shutters crushed his legs and he got to see some mysterious map on the shutter door when a UV light kicked, interesting. Even more enjoyable was how right at the end Sayeed returned to break the news that the guy in the armoury was bogus. I don't mind waiting for a fornight when at least I know that they aren't going to drag this guys story out for weeks on end.
Headed down to Sevenoaks, where I used to work, on Wednesday to catch up with an old friend. As well as looking forward to seeing him, which I hadn't done for about two years, I was also looking forward to ordering some food from the Slug & Lettuce, that we were meeting in. You know how much I enjoy my food and when I had last been in there (2 1/2 years ago) I had ordered a platter. Along with the requesite flat breads and dips they had some skewers with chicken and chorizo pieces on them. Naturally I'd had chicken before but the not the chorizo and I loved it. I think after my first taste I had entered a little chorizo phase and tried adding it to pizzas and pasta but it never lived up to the 'platter high'. Hence after a long sabbatical I hoped to experience that chorizo eureka moment once again. We gassed for about half an hour or so and then I made my order. Just as I had paid and was walking back my friend suddenly got up to say that he'd had a call from his wife and had to shoot off immediately. I probably could have taken the platter all by myself but I didn't welcome the idea of sitting on my own a la 'billy no mates' in a bar on aWednesday evening. Thankfully they refunded me the cash and I headed back to my car. Maybe if and when I get a date with a girl I'll suggest a slug and lettuce just to experience the platter, though how impressed she will be with chorizo juice dribbling down my chin is another matter.
It was a work friends birthday on Thursday so stopped at Sainsburys to pick up a b/day badge and one of the large scrumptious chocolate cakes and some other bits. I'd broken one of her mugs about four or five months previously and had been promising to get her a replacement since. What a better opportunity then to at last pay my dues. She is legendarily difficult to buy for as if she sees something she wants on the net immediately buys it. What she didn't have though was an assortment of 11 different mugs and one cup and saucer set. The cake was outstanding, particularly with the extra thick double cream that I 'd bought to accompany with it.
I'd ordered those Sennheiser headphones that I had seen in Bluewater on Wednesday and they came through a day later. They are the mx75 sport ones and are the basic inner ear type ones but with a small arm then hooks behind the lip of your outer ear to keep them in place. I considered them because normal inner ear ones seem to just fall out when I move my head by a millimetre yet the full over the head style ones do look a little silly. I read some reviews on amazon which said the only bad points were that they came in neon green. Man, I love neon green. Innovative packaging that they came in and they certainly looked pretty cool. First try in the ears didn't go to well but I will reserve judgement until I've had a further chance to try them out.
That evening was State of Trance and while it played I trimmed and prepared the chicken for the following days lunch. I'm sure many of you have noticed the wonderful recipe for Egg & Crumb chicken on my Food section. Last year for this persons birthday I had brought in my famous Bolognaise sauce and this year after being ridiculed for admitting that I cooked the chicken in margarine I decided I would show them what they were missing. I'd got everything ready, borrowed a camping double gas hob from my step dad and bought a bottle of gas. Preparation of the chicken is required though and with seven mouths to feed spent nearly two hours dissecting the 15 chicken breasts that I'd bought into a range of big and small goujons. The 'egging and crumbing' which birthday girl did was relatively painless, though I was grateful for her help it was just my fussiness in cutting out tiny veins and those goddam, annoying tendon looking bits. Discovering a vein or something like that when chowing down on some chicken is like finding a bone in fish so my OCD'ness was kicking in to remove this problem. We had two large plates done in total and left them in the fridge for the Friday.
I might add that State of Trance was brilliant again. How does Armin manage to source so many cool new tracks, particularly when so many DJ's just play the same old stuff. This mix, like the previous one, was a lot more hard trancey and he seems to be whipping me back up into a frenzy in time for a fortnight Saturday.
Came in on Friday and checked the visitor stats on my site as I usually do every day or two to see that my previous daily record had been smashed and that I'd had over 100 hits to my site, with 80 plus being unique. Wow. I wondered what it could be and then then checked out italk2much.com which I had submitted my site to about a month ago for them to review. They had reviewed and caned it, which I will go into later, and this was where all the hits had come from.
Today though was marge chicken day as my dish had now been renamed and come 12.15 ish we set up the double hob, connected the gas, lifted the shutter to help with the expulsion of cooking smells and I started to melt the margarine in the large frying pan that I'd brought along. There was a lot of chicken to be cooked but I didn't want anyone to go hungry. I ended up having to split it into four equal batches that seemed to take about 20-25 minutes to cook. I love where I work. It might be surreal the notion of me cooking fried chicken in the office but I love the way that when we want to do something we simply find the means to do it. A few months ago I was being ribbed for cooking my chicken in margarine, well this particular dish, and here I was cooking it up for us all to eat.
As I cooked it up others prepared and laid a table, even to the point of printing a menu in my honour:
Main - Poulet a la marge
Sides - Pomme frites, Haricots blancs a la sauce tomate, Haricot verte, Champignon a la marge, Salade verte
Dessert - Gateau fromage blanc fraise, Fromage planche (cheddar, cheddar or cheddar)
Drinks - Coca cola (regular), Coca cola (zero), Pepsi (regular), Pepsi Max, Mineral water
Beverages - Expresso, Expresso deluxe, Mellow Birds, PG Tips tea, Green tea, Fruit tea
Gratuities welcome
An hour and ten minutes after I started the chicken had been cooked and we all sat down at the prepared table. What a feast. I enjoy a hot lunch as you may know but sitting down to see everyone tucking into the chicken that I'd prepared felt great. Naturally I was concerned what others might think as I have an unsophisticated palette and what is enjoyable to me might not be to them. I needn't have worried as we all set about demolishing the food on offer. As I feel at nearly all of our hot meals, the feeling of being a team was great as was chewing down on sweet, succulent fried chicken, chips, baked beans, mushrooms and a buttered roll. Everyone seemed to gourge themselves until there were no pieces left and we pushed our plates away with contented bellies. Post meal banter kicked as one or two of us rubbed our bellies rueing the one piece too many that we'd eaten. That's just the way I like it though. If you can't cook the finest food then at least let your guests leave with full stomachs.
The rest of the afternoon was a muted affair though there was room for a thin-ish slice of strawberry cheesecake to add a little sweetness to the savoury succulence. I downloaded some State of Trances onto iTunes and with them playing and after everyone had head home turned my attention to my website review on IT2M.
I can't really say a great deal about it. If you submit a site for review then you run the risk that it won't be liked and it certainly wasn't. I was described as being "a crappy writer, with no concept of punctuation and obviously a serial killer", that "Everything was long-winded, delusional and completely and utterly pointless" and that I should "Get the hell over yourself". I can't deny it didn't sting, particularly the last comment about getting over yourself. I always felt my site was written with a self deprecating tone, especially with the ironic statement about the kind of people that have sites on the front page. Surely everyone who writes something that they assume others will read has to be into themselves don't they?
Like I said though I couldn't really say anything. If you don't want to hear bad things then don't submit it. Regular readers to the site posted their thoughts and comments as well and I decided to check some of them out to validate their criticism. I'll confess some of them bugged me as I wouldn't lay into someone without prior provocation and I thought I would do them the courtesy of responding with my thoughts on their sites. Doing this, combined with calling their comments unrequested stirred up a right royal hornets nest. This one word led to a right little spat. I had used it to justify why I felt entitled to reciprocate with a review of certain individuals blogs, yet they took it that I had the arse that they had responded.
I was glad that people had visited my site but was simply trying to articulate why I felt I had the right to comment on other peoples sites if they had commented on mine, as opposed to not having the right to lash back at the reviewers on IT2M. Either way they misunderstood me and some verbal bantering ensued. To be fair it got me really pumped up. I had some wicked trance playing, was still charged from the amount of protein that I had consumed and was enjoying the chance to exchange fire with other people. It took me back to the first days of going on the Tidy board when the verbal duelling fired me up and left me feeling invigorated. I guess even combative exchanges are a form of interaction and some interaction is better than none.
It was good to take the gloves off and they responded as they always do by either taking themselves out of the game by resorting to expletive filled retorts (you've just so won when they do that) or trying to act nonchalent then going running back to the board or should that be playground to display the emails that I'd sent direct to their blogs.
So what did I learn.
1. that there are a lot of silly tarts out there who have blogs with salacious titles and unnecessary expletive strewn content in a woeful attempt to make them appear wild or sassy.
2. that there are a fair few blokes who although in reality are IT geeks consider themselves gangsta for flipping the bird and speaking with 'attitude'.
3. that whenever you encounter a board 'clique' and don't defend yourself are considered a sap yet when you do are accused of taking it too seriously.
4. that if you don't used juvenile language like 'fuckoff you munting bitch' and attempt to articulate your thoughts more intelligently are told that you are being passively aggressive.
5. that having a website in a world of blogs is a heinous crime
6. that most, but certainly not all, blogs are fluff and bluster. Pretty pictues, fancy wallpapers and swirling fonts that have been 'pimped' to the next level but in fact tell you nothing about the individual. All sizzle but little sausage.
7. that people only want to make a comment on something if it can be seen by others, highlighting the lack of emphasis they place on their own opinion. Being only read by the receiver is not enough and thus it's apparently only valid if others can read it.
Over the weekend they made me Fucktard of the Week which was nice and did make me smile. The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about I guess. I enjoyed my 15 minutes of internet fame/shame, it resulted in over 350 additional hits to my site and if that pushed one person to my site who wouldn't have normally gone there and then made them smile then I'll be happy.
I realise that I probably don't come out of this too well. Even documenting it here makes me appear that I've been taking it way too seriously and have obsessed about it. I don't think I have but it's something that happened over the course of the week and thus needed to be mentioned. Yes their thoughts had an impact but if one admits that a compliment has an effect then one has to admit that a criticism will as well.
I am proud of my site. When I re-read the content it still makes me smile but it I know that it certainly isn't faultless. I always wanted a clear, simple and easily navigable layout to my site but compared to other blogs it could look dull and lifeless. Some of the content, particularly the journals, are very long and maybe less than enticing to new visitors. There may also be validity in me being a crappy writer and a poor user of punctuation. For this I can only take steer from those that comment to me. Some like the way I write and others don't. I do like the fact that it does, in my opinion, reward the diligent reader. Dig a little deeper, scratch beneath the surface and you may find a better picture of the real me.
In my more reflective moments I wonder whether it was worth slating others, did it achieve anything? Maybe not but it certainly didn't seem that these others wrestled with their conscious about putting the boot in so why should I feel bad for reciprocating the favour.
So why did I submit it and why do I continue to push for it to gain exposure to new people. For this I'll quote my answer to a friend who asked me the same question. "Yes the site is a central collective for my thoughts but I like to share thoughts and experiences with others. For me, someone liking who I am or liking what I think about, can be a confirmation that maybe I ain't that bad a person. The idea that something I write could get someone thinking or laughing makes me smile and in a way validates who I am and that I have something to offer. Sometimes allowing others into your head doesn't make you feel so alone."
Being fuelled by chicken, trance music and the need to say my piece meant that I stayed up pretty late on Friday night. Even when I got home I was still pumped but eventually managed to nod off. Caught the hours back up on Saturday morning before hitting the gym in the afternoon. I hadn't been for a few weeks so wasn't expecting anything marvellous but it was good. The headphones held up very well and the Armin mix that I was listening to certainly enabled me to keep going when I might have otherwise got bored. Hit a new club/bar that night which wasn't bad but seemed a little 'clique'. Certainly a good venue and had some cosy little bars and nooks that would be excellent to sit down and chat with a girl in if you managed to find one. I was drinking that night for a change which only served to get me very tired. Some Eastern European girl attempted to dig me out over my Pardon Moi t-shirt but frankly I couldn't be bothered. I normally do the driving so my friend and I had our roles reversed and it felt weird. He wasn't firing and the drinks were just making me tired. Left there around 1.00 and headed home. It was good to discover another place to go.
Sunday was a very nothing day really. Washing, tidying up, a little X-boxing, hoovering and general mooching around the flat. I continued listening to the Armin mixes on my nano whilst I did these, even the xboxing, as the music was just so good. There is a remix on ASOT 260 of Lost in Love which is one of the first ever dance tunes that I truly loved way back when I listened to my first dj mixed dance album, Reactivate 10. It's just outstanding and is re-filling my veins with a love of Armin and trance. Until next week then folks.
We had an important client meeting on Monday afternoon which went well. I contributed little but my two directors were awesome as usual. Sometimes I look at them when they are steering a meeting with complete pride. Had a really good swimming session and moving into the near deserted shallower, learner pool helped. I don't know if it's because it's warmer, shallower and less chlorinated but it seems almost harder to swim in. My swimming buddy and I were doing 10 continuous length sets at a go, which was really working. The competitive element of him being alongside provided the extra motivation to really make me push and I felt reassuringly knackered and tight afterwards.
The contender was ok though the fight a little disappointing. They had an older family guy, Gary Balletto, who had an impressive record but revealed that he hadn't fought for two years and a younger, more arrogant fighter, Aaron Torres, who was looking at boxing to get him off the mean streets. It was one of the scrappiest, least talented fights that I've seen in a long time. Gary came out swinging and looking for a quick knockout but had obviously lost his accuracy and connected with little of the haymakers that he was launching. Aaron was impulsive and woefully unco-ordinated but at least he was able to connect.
In the fourth round he hurt Gary and I thought it might have to be stopped but he then slipped while trying to connect with the punch to end it all. This gave Gary the chance to recollect himself and it ultimately saved him. GB won the fight but they were both lucky to have fought each other as I think some of the hungrier fighters would have taken them apart. The series is good but not as good as the first one yet. I know everyone always says these kind of things but the format has changed. I miss not having sly there or their post show critiques and there is yet to be a fighter that has caught my attention like Sergio or Alfonso did.
Lost double bill night on Tuesday night which was good. I did get a little frustrated in the first one when Jin was acting almost like the last few months hadn't happened but it kinda worked out alright. Sayeed and Andaluscia (I'd check the spelling on IMDB but I would probably stumble on some kind of spoiler!) headed off to see if the guy in the armoury story about crash landing in a balloon stood up. I gotta say that he was winding me up something chronic as was Locke in the second episode. His dad screws him over by stealing his kidney and he has a chance to land him in a world of shit but rolls over like some docile pup. Christ, he needs to grow a goddam backbone. I was becoming more annoyed at his weakness until the emergency shutters crushed his legs and he got to see some mysterious map on the shutter door when a UV light kicked, interesting. Even more enjoyable was how right at the end Sayeed returned to break the news that the guy in the armoury was bogus. I don't mind waiting for a fornight when at least I know that they aren't going to drag this guys story out for weeks on end.
Headed down to Sevenoaks, where I used to work, on Wednesday to catch up with an old friend. As well as looking forward to seeing him, which I hadn't done for about two years, I was also looking forward to ordering some food from the Slug & Lettuce, that we were meeting in. You know how much I enjoy my food and when I had last been in there (2 1/2 years ago) I had ordered a platter. Along with the requesite flat breads and dips they had some skewers with chicken and chorizo pieces on them. Naturally I'd had chicken before but the not the chorizo and I loved it. I think after my first taste I had entered a little chorizo phase and tried adding it to pizzas and pasta but it never lived up to the 'platter high'. Hence after a long sabbatical I hoped to experience that chorizo eureka moment once again. We gassed for about half an hour or so and then I made my order. Just as I had paid and was walking back my friend suddenly got up to say that he'd had a call from his wife and had to shoot off immediately. I probably could have taken the platter all by myself but I didn't welcome the idea of sitting on my own a la 'billy no mates' in a bar on aWednesday evening. Thankfully they refunded me the cash and I headed back to my car. Maybe if and when I get a date with a girl I'll suggest a slug and lettuce just to experience the platter, though how impressed she will be with chorizo juice dribbling down my chin is another matter.
It was a work friends birthday on Thursday so stopped at Sainsburys to pick up a b/day badge and one of the large scrumptious chocolate cakes and some other bits. I'd broken one of her mugs about four or five months previously and had been promising to get her a replacement since. What a better opportunity then to at last pay my dues. She is legendarily difficult to buy for as if she sees something she wants on the net immediately buys it. What she didn't have though was an assortment of 11 different mugs and one cup and saucer set. The cake was outstanding, particularly with the extra thick double cream that I 'd bought to accompany with it.
I'd ordered those Sennheiser headphones that I had seen in Bluewater on Wednesday and they came through a day later. They are the mx75 sport ones and are the basic inner ear type ones but with a small arm then hooks behind the lip of your outer ear to keep them in place. I considered them because normal inner ear ones seem to just fall out when I move my head by a millimetre yet the full over the head style ones do look a little silly. I read some reviews on amazon which said the only bad points were that they came in neon green. Man, I love neon green. Innovative packaging that they came in and they certainly looked pretty cool. First try in the ears didn't go to well but I will reserve judgement until I've had a further chance to try them out.
That evening was State of Trance and while it played I trimmed and prepared the chicken for the following days lunch. I'm sure many of you have noticed the wonderful recipe for Egg & Crumb chicken on my Food section. Last year for this persons birthday I had brought in my famous Bolognaise sauce and this year after being ridiculed for admitting that I cooked the chicken in margarine I decided I would show them what they were missing. I'd got everything ready, borrowed a camping double gas hob from my step dad and bought a bottle of gas. Preparation of the chicken is required though and with seven mouths to feed spent nearly two hours dissecting the 15 chicken breasts that I'd bought into a range of big and small goujons. The 'egging and crumbing' which birthday girl did was relatively painless, though I was grateful for her help it was just my fussiness in cutting out tiny veins and those goddam, annoying tendon looking bits. Discovering a vein or something like that when chowing down on some chicken is like finding a bone in fish so my OCD'ness was kicking in to remove this problem. We had two large plates done in total and left them in the fridge for the Friday.
I might add that State of Trance was brilliant again. How does Armin manage to source so many cool new tracks, particularly when so many DJ's just play the same old stuff. This mix, like the previous one, was a lot more hard trancey and he seems to be whipping me back up into a frenzy in time for a fortnight Saturday.
Came in on Friday and checked the visitor stats on my site as I usually do every day or two to see that my previous daily record had been smashed and that I'd had over 100 hits to my site, with 80 plus being unique. Wow. I wondered what it could be and then then checked out italk2much.com which I had submitted my site to about a month ago for them to review. They had reviewed and caned it, which I will go into later, and this was where all the hits had come from.
Today though was marge chicken day as my dish had now been renamed and come 12.15 ish we set up the double hob, connected the gas, lifted the shutter to help with the expulsion of cooking smells and I started to melt the margarine in the large frying pan that I'd brought along. There was a lot of chicken to be cooked but I didn't want anyone to go hungry. I ended up having to split it into four equal batches that seemed to take about 20-25 minutes to cook. I love where I work. It might be surreal the notion of me cooking fried chicken in the office but I love the way that when we want to do something we simply find the means to do it. A few months ago I was being ribbed for cooking my chicken in margarine, well this particular dish, and here I was cooking it up for us all to eat.
As I cooked it up others prepared and laid a table, even to the point of printing a menu in my honour:
Main - Poulet a la marge
Sides - Pomme frites, Haricots blancs a la sauce tomate, Haricot verte, Champignon a la marge, Salade verte
Dessert - Gateau fromage blanc fraise, Fromage planche (cheddar, cheddar or cheddar)
Drinks - Coca cola (regular), Coca cola (zero), Pepsi (regular), Pepsi Max, Mineral water
Beverages - Expresso, Expresso deluxe, Mellow Birds, PG Tips tea, Green tea, Fruit tea
Gratuities welcome
An hour and ten minutes after I started the chicken had been cooked and we all sat down at the prepared table. What a feast. I enjoy a hot lunch as you may know but sitting down to see everyone tucking into the chicken that I'd prepared felt great. Naturally I was concerned what others might think as I have an unsophisticated palette and what is enjoyable to me might not be to them. I needn't have worried as we all set about demolishing the food on offer. As I feel at nearly all of our hot meals, the feeling of being a team was great as was chewing down on sweet, succulent fried chicken, chips, baked beans, mushrooms and a buttered roll. Everyone seemed to gourge themselves until there were no pieces left and we pushed our plates away with contented bellies. Post meal banter kicked as one or two of us rubbed our bellies rueing the one piece too many that we'd eaten. That's just the way I like it though. If you can't cook the finest food then at least let your guests leave with full stomachs.
The rest of the afternoon was a muted affair though there was room for a thin-ish slice of strawberry cheesecake to add a little sweetness to the savoury succulence. I downloaded some State of Trances onto iTunes and with them playing and after everyone had head home turned my attention to my website review on IT2M.
I can't really say a great deal about it. If you submit a site for review then you run the risk that it won't be liked and it certainly wasn't. I was described as being "a crappy writer, with no concept of punctuation and obviously a serial killer", that "Everything was long-winded, delusional and completely and utterly pointless" and that I should "Get the hell over yourself". I can't deny it didn't sting, particularly the last comment about getting over yourself. I always felt my site was written with a self deprecating tone, especially with the ironic statement about the kind of people that have sites on the front page. Surely everyone who writes something that they assume others will read has to be into themselves don't they?
Like I said though I couldn't really say anything. If you don't want to hear bad things then don't submit it. Regular readers to the site posted their thoughts and comments as well and I decided to check some of them out to validate their criticism. I'll confess some of them bugged me as I wouldn't lay into someone without prior provocation and I thought I would do them the courtesy of responding with my thoughts on their sites. Doing this, combined with calling their comments unrequested stirred up a right royal hornets nest. This one word led to a right little spat. I had used it to justify why I felt entitled to reciprocate with a review of certain individuals blogs, yet they took it that I had the arse that they had responded.
I was glad that people had visited my site but was simply trying to articulate why I felt I had the right to comment on other peoples sites if they had commented on mine, as opposed to not having the right to lash back at the reviewers on IT2M. Either way they misunderstood me and some verbal bantering ensued. To be fair it got me really pumped up. I had some wicked trance playing, was still charged from the amount of protein that I had consumed and was enjoying the chance to exchange fire with other people. It took me back to the first days of going on the Tidy board when the verbal duelling fired me up and left me feeling invigorated. I guess even combative exchanges are a form of interaction and some interaction is better than none.
It was good to take the gloves off and they responded as they always do by either taking themselves out of the game by resorting to expletive filled retorts (you've just so won when they do that) or trying to act nonchalent then going running back to the board or should that be playground to display the emails that I'd sent direct to their blogs.
So what did I learn.
1. that there are a lot of silly tarts out there who have blogs with salacious titles and unnecessary expletive strewn content in a woeful attempt to make them appear wild or sassy.
2. that there are a fair few blokes who although in reality are IT geeks consider themselves gangsta for flipping the bird and speaking with 'attitude'.
3. that whenever you encounter a board 'clique' and don't defend yourself are considered a sap yet when you do are accused of taking it too seriously.
4. that if you don't used juvenile language like 'fuckoff you munting bitch' and attempt to articulate your thoughts more intelligently are told that you are being passively aggressive.
5. that having a website in a world of blogs is a heinous crime
6. that most, but certainly not all, blogs are fluff and bluster. Pretty pictues, fancy wallpapers and swirling fonts that have been 'pimped' to the next level but in fact tell you nothing about the individual. All sizzle but little sausage.
7. that people only want to make a comment on something if it can be seen by others, highlighting the lack of emphasis they place on their own opinion. Being only read by the receiver is not enough and thus it's apparently only valid if others can read it.
Over the weekend they made me Fucktard of the Week which was nice and did make me smile. The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about I guess. I enjoyed my 15 minutes of internet fame/shame, it resulted in over 350 additional hits to my site and if that pushed one person to my site who wouldn't have normally gone there and then made them smile then I'll be happy.
I realise that I probably don't come out of this too well. Even documenting it here makes me appear that I've been taking it way too seriously and have obsessed about it. I don't think I have but it's something that happened over the course of the week and thus needed to be mentioned. Yes their thoughts had an impact but if one admits that a compliment has an effect then one has to admit that a criticism will as well.
I am proud of my site. When I re-read the content it still makes me smile but it I know that it certainly isn't faultless. I always wanted a clear, simple and easily navigable layout to my site but compared to other blogs it could look dull and lifeless. Some of the content, particularly the journals, are very long and maybe less than enticing to new visitors. There may also be validity in me being a crappy writer and a poor user of punctuation. For this I can only take steer from those that comment to me. Some like the way I write and others don't. I do like the fact that it does, in my opinion, reward the diligent reader. Dig a little deeper, scratch beneath the surface and you may find a better picture of the real me.
In my more reflective moments I wonder whether it was worth slating others, did it achieve anything? Maybe not but it certainly didn't seem that these others wrestled with their conscious about putting the boot in so why should I feel bad for reciprocating the favour.
So why did I submit it and why do I continue to push for it to gain exposure to new people. For this I'll quote my answer to a friend who asked me the same question. "Yes the site is a central collective for my thoughts but I like to share thoughts and experiences with others. For me, someone liking who I am or liking what I think about, can be a confirmation that maybe I ain't that bad a person. The idea that something I write could get someone thinking or laughing makes me smile and in a way validates who I am and that I have something to offer. Sometimes allowing others into your head doesn't make you feel so alone."
Being fuelled by chicken, trance music and the need to say my piece meant that I stayed up pretty late on Friday night. Even when I got home I was still pumped but eventually managed to nod off. Caught the hours back up on Saturday morning before hitting the gym in the afternoon. I hadn't been for a few weeks so wasn't expecting anything marvellous but it was good. The headphones held up very well and the Armin mix that I was listening to certainly enabled me to keep going when I might have otherwise got bored. Hit a new club/bar that night which wasn't bad but seemed a little 'clique'. Certainly a good venue and had some cosy little bars and nooks that would be excellent to sit down and chat with a girl in if you managed to find one. I was drinking that night for a change which only served to get me very tired. Some Eastern European girl attempted to dig me out over my Pardon Moi t-shirt but frankly I couldn't be bothered. I normally do the driving so my friend and I had our roles reversed and it felt weird. He wasn't firing and the drinks were just making me tired. Left there around 1.00 and headed home. It was good to discover another place to go.
Sunday was a very nothing day really. Washing, tidying up, a little X-boxing, hoovering and general mooching around the flat. I continued listening to the Armin mixes on my nano whilst I did these, even the xboxing, as the music was just so good. There is a remix on ASOT 260 of Lost in Love which is one of the first ever dance tunes that I truly loved way back when I listened to my first dj mixed dance album, Reactivate 10. It's just outstanding and is re-filling my veins with a love of Armin and trance. Until next week then folks.
posted by payne by name at 2:18 pm
0 comments
