Saturday, 6 July 2013
Steadman@77
Well, I'm on my way, posting this from a train speeding through yellow fields from technology that probably won't hold up in this swinish weather. If I can work out how to post photographs, I'll post a few updates about my day. Hopefully I'll be arriving in London around 11am. The temperature is climbing and I'm dressed for bear.
Friday, 5 July 2013
Friday
Fate continues to test me. It looked at first like I’d found some good luck. I’ve been given a return ticket to London for tomorrow. A friend had been intending to travel for a conference but now won’t be using it. That means I can get to London on the train within two hours. The Cartoon Museum is a good but walkable stride from Euston and the Ralph Steadman exhibition is still on. However, with sickness in the family, I don’t think I can use it. I’ll have another day to decide but it’s hard to see my being able to go. My bad luck continues to defy logic or reason.
I’ve also never known internet traffic to dry up at is did yesterday, continuing into this morning. It almost makes me almost thankful that I’ve got nothing exciting to post except the previous old cartoon. Perhaps Google have changed their search algorithm or Sparks fans have just decided that they’ve had enough cartoon strips. Already today, traffic is about a quarter of what I’d usually expect. Is it the warm weather? Are the perverts on holiday?
Well, no, that can’t be true. Yesterday I had a visitor looking for ‘English armpit sex stories’ which baffled me. Why English? Are our armpits sexier than the armpits of other nations? The searcher was from the Philippines but the visitors I want to talk always come from the Philippines. It’s Fate again laughing at me as I again have to figure out how to spell ‘Philippines’. Note to self: spend an hour memorising the spelling of Philippines. Come on. How difficult can it be? Philip and two p’s.
No job hunt news. With sickness in the house, I’m too distracted and busy. However, I have started work on something for a competition I’ve decided to enter. I’ve never won a thing in my life so I don’t expect to win anything now but it’s good to have some focus when everything else is dragging me here and there.
I’ve also never known internet traffic to dry up at is did yesterday, continuing into this morning. It almost makes me almost thankful that I’ve got nothing exciting to post except the previous old cartoon. Perhaps Google have changed their search algorithm or Sparks fans have just decided that they’ve had enough cartoon strips. Already today, traffic is about a quarter of what I’d usually expect. Is it the warm weather? Are the perverts on holiday?
Well, no, that can’t be true. Yesterday I had a visitor looking for ‘English armpit sex stories’ which baffled me. Why English? Are our armpits sexier than the armpits of other nations? The searcher was from the Philippines but the visitors I want to talk always come from the Philippines. It’s Fate again laughing at me as I again have to figure out how to spell ‘Philippines’. Note to self: spend an hour memorising the spelling of Philippines. Come on. How difficult can it be? Philip and two p’s.
No job hunt news. With sickness in the house, I’m too distracted and busy. However, I have started work on something for a competition I’ve decided to enter. I’ve never won a thing in my life so I don’t expect to win anything now but it’s good to have some focus when everything else is dragging me here and there.
Thursday, 4 July 2013
Annie Hall 3D
Arriving at my desk late this morning. Difficult days grew more difficult with sickness in the family, meaning that I’m being pulling in all directions. However, I keep my head down and try to press on. Little chance to do very much yesterday. Andy Murray was partially to blame but today has been equally hectic with distracting trips to pick up prescriptions and the rest. Not heard from the places I wrote to regarding the various jobs and freelancing opportunities. My comic 1000 words written for some start-up magazine clearly were a wasted 1000 words but I’ll wait until next week before I post them here.
My seventh (seven already!) Sparks strip is now partially inked. Once I’ve finished working on the main lines, it will be a few hours of cross hatching, then it’s lettering on the PC and final clean up. Hope to get most of that done today to post tomorrow but life seems determined to throw obstacles in my path at every opportunity. I must have been a tyrant mercilessly putting my foes to the sword in a previous life because, in this one, I'm having zero luck!
Wednesday, 3 July 2013
It's A Sparks Show: Episode 6
Here's the latest Sparks comic strip. I'm hard at work on Episode 7 so look out for that in the next few days, plus I'm also planning a special three pager in which I intend to improve my drawing of Russell Mael!
Porridge
Grubbing around to find cartoons, I don't think I've posted this one before. It's one of my small cartoons. I draw about six of these on sheet of A4 to save paper, ink and effort. I should do more since I'm running out!
Tuesday, 2 July 2013
Day 2
Don't worry. I probably won't have the focus to maintain these updates about my attempts to escape penury. Today I've been looking into freelancing opportunities. There are plenty of freelance writing jobs out there, just very few which have a broad enough remit that I might actually want to write about something that interests me and would permit me to be funny. Many of these ‘opportunities’ are demands for 1500 words articles, ten times a week, about electronic cigarettes, for which I’d be paid a cent a word. I can’t think of many things I’d be less motivated to write about.
So, I’m currently hammering my way through an article about computer games and I’ve also had a few messages from people who have enjoyed the Sparks strips. I’m now hard at work on Episodes 6 and 7. They should appear in a few days if I can maintain my concentration levels whilst also sending my CV hither and yon.
So, I’m currently hammering my way through an article about computer games and I’ve also had a few messages from people who have enjoyed the Sparks strips. I’m now hard at work on Episodes 6 and 7. They should appear in a few days if I can maintain my concentration levels whilst also sending my CV hither and yon.
The Holiday Snatcher Cartoon
I was talking yesterday about privilege and how people both with it probably view the world differently. Today’s news that Michael Gove will change the rules allowing schools to to get rid of the six week school holiday is perhaps one example of that.
Of course, I have no love of the six week school holiday now that I’m adult. Behind the house, there’s an area that somebody has turned into a communal play area. For nearly two months, it will be filled with the noisy little buggers screaming constantly for morning to night. Writing to that is like trying to tap-dance whilst somebody’s drilling a hole in your foot.
Yet as a kid, the holidays were the only time I was happy. I despised school and only started to do well once I left and began to teach myself. I feel the same way now. It comes down to the degree to which all that (points out of the window at the world in general) demands control of my life. I suppose deep down I have anarchist leanings, though I’ve always liked Orwell’s description of Swift (and probably himself) as being an Anarchic Tory. What I mean by that is that whilst I value order, culture, and civilisation, I also want to be left alone and believe that we all have the right to some kind of strong independent life beyond those horrible exhausted hours that you’re usually left to enjoy after being twisted rotten working your eight hour shift.
The concept of the working week is fascinating and probably deserves a good book writing about it, if it’s not already been done and I’m too lazy to check. I know the eight hour day is a relatively modern invention, being one of those great innovations the Victorians were so damn proud about. The premise was that we work for eight hours, relax for eight hours, and sleep for eight hours. Of course, it rarely happens that way. In my last job, I’d get up at 7am, out of the house for half past, on the train for ten to eight. In the office for eight thirty, half an hour for lunch, leave around four thirty, train at ten to five, home for five thirty. The eight hour day was, in reality, a ten hour day, leaving me six hours to do with as I would. After eight hours proof-reading woefully written leisure industry reports full of horrible management-speak, I was usually so tired I’d usually fall asleep in front of the TV, waking up in time to go to bed. I was lucky. My friend is a teacher and she rarely finishes work before 8 or 9pm. The holidays are the only time she can live a normal life.
All of which makes me dubious about Michael Gove’s plans. Not only does it feel like another opportunity to hit the teachers and turn them into social workers whose primary job it is to keep youth off the streets, it’s another way to establish a drone mentality in the workforce. Force those patterns of obsequious compliance that authoritarians believe should be hammered into the underclass. The older I get, the more I feel that Aldous Huxley had everything correct in ‘Brave New World’. Establish the patterns of behaviour early enough and you govern the future. Private schools will continue to operate with the best interests of students and parents in mind. Comprehensives, I know, will be overworked, stretched, and crammed full of students who will have even less time to think, to learn, and to discover who they are and what they want from life.
Monday, 1 July 2013
The Great Slag Heap
Privilege fascinates me. Not in terms of how people inherit it. That’s not so interesting and seems predictably simple. Privilege interests me in terms of the psychology of actually having life expectations and the way we subsequently value our experiences, moments, and opportunities.
I suppose I’m writing about this because of my current gnarly situation but I was thinking about privilege whilst watching Glastonbury over the weekend. It felt like I was witnessing a generation that had gone to the festival as children and who were now attending it as adult performers. The two things seemed linked, perhaps even destined. Everybody seemed to be either a Mumford or a Son.
Even the conspicuous amount of naff art on display somehow seemed normal, accepted, and appropriate. But it struck me that there are certain classes of people who know how to waste money in a way that seems right. Here in St Helens, the council paid nearly two million to stick a squashed stone head on a slag heap. It’s imaginatively called ‘The Dream’. Few people like it and I know of no locals who have even visited it. It was an example of political art; art voted on by committees of clueless people making political points with public money. It’s not art that speaks about the people or was wanted by the people. It’s not even the work of a local but an artist called Jaume Plensa from Spain. But why is that?
My theory is that the working classes don’t understand art as it is generally understood by the middle class and I say that as somebody deeply working class. Without privilege, we have no real understanding about how to waste money in a meaningful way. We have to import these ideas. Working class art (a term that itself is even questionable) must have a point, a purpose, or at least some financial rationale behind it. If it cost a million, it must make a million and change. It’s why probably the greatest expressions of working class art are those that translate to money. They’re by the Rolling Stones and Beatles and artists like Jack Vettriano whose work translates into the ringing of a cash register. The alternative is art that fulfills a social purpose: hence the woeful drama workshops and poetry projects for ex-miners. There can be no giant spider made from rubble breathing fire out over revellers. That is just a beautiful expression of middle class thinking. Instead, we pretend to know what we’re doing but end up with a big lump of stone which people though would be symbolic but which locals just drive past and grumble about.
Take another example. Today’s hot ticket was for the Murray / Youzhny match which has just finished on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. A nation of tennis fans slipped out of work early to catch it on the BBC and, on the bank of grass known as Henman Hill, ordinary punters were squashed elbow to sweaty armpit simply in order to watch the match on the big screen. Yet as the match got under way inside centre court itself, the Royal Box was empty; row upon row of the best seats in the house vacant except for a few loyal administrators of the game, their cottons and flannels immaculate, their eyebrows untrimmed.
Many of the tickets for the Royal Box are apparently now in the gift of the BBC which perhaps explains why it’s so often full of their first, second, and even third rate talent. It’s a symbol, as though symbols were needed, that we’re no longer a nation that defines itself according to our royals. The true nobility are the quiz show hosts, the petty and preened presenters, the botoxed uber-mums and the trippy-heeled ballroom dancers.
Somebody at the BBC or officials at Wimbledon had failed to fill the box but it passed without explanation. Perhaps the celebs were still necking their champagne flutes. Perhaps they were all stuck in traffic. Perhaps they were suddenly called into the BBC to get another huge lump sum which the country didn't need to pay them but somebody at the topped initialed the cheque. It really doesn't matter why it was empty. The point is that it’s not just celebrities who exhibit this failing. The same happened last year at the Olympics when seats gifted to corporate sponsors were not filled by corporate backsides. The new Wembley is plagued by the familiar spectacle of empty seats in the premium central block, unavailable to the public. It’s often a big red embarrassing emptiness when corporate guests continue to enjoy corporate hospitality after half time.
Rather than seeing this as an example of the growing banality that privilege affords to special events, I see it as another symptom of a system that knows how to be profligate. The super-rich find value in copious waste but so too do people lower down the economic ladder. There is perhaps a sadistic pleasure to be had in not using a ticket for a special event. It’s like the Bullington Club’s initiation ceremony where they burn the £50 note in the face of a beggar. That story might be true but it might equally be apocryphal s but it is definitely resonant because it says that some human nature is governed by childish delights. It’s almost Freudian in its symbolism; as though privilege demands that it be occasionally expressed in wanton terms.
So, I don’t see an empty royal box. I see spaces representing people who need to be wasteful and to glory in that waste simply because they’re psychologically directed in a way that won't be dictated to by material things. To the working class part of my mind, it’s just waste. It’s like relatives who wrap up uneaten food at restaurants or won’t leave food on their plate. Waste not, want not. We heard it from the crib. Those seats could be filled by people enjoying every moment. Why do people buy tickets they don’t use? It has no point! What a waste! Like art, like my cartoons, my work, my writing, and even this blog. No better than a great squashed head sitting upon the slag heap of my mind. Just a dream. Just a wasteful dream.
I suppose I’m writing about this because of my current gnarly situation but I was thinking about privilege whilst watching Glastonbury over the weekend. It felt like I was witnessing a generation that had gone to the festival as children and who were now attending it as adult performers. The two things seemed linked, perhaps even destined. Everybody seemed to be either a Mumford or a Son.
Even the conspicuous amount of naff art on display somehow seemed normal, accepted, and appropriate. But it struck me that there are certain classes of people who know how to waste money in a way that seems right. Here in St Helens, the council paid nearly two million to stick a squashed stone head on a slag heap. It’s imaginatively called ‘The Dream’. Few people like it and I know of no locals who have even visited it. It was an example of political art; art voted on by committees of clueless people making political points with public money. It’s not art that speaks about the people or was wanted by the people. It’s not even the work of a local but an artist called Jaume Plensa from Spain. But why is that?
My theory is that the working classes don’t understand art as it is generally understood by the middle class and I say that as somebody deeply working class. Without privilege, we have no real understanding about how to waste money in a meaningful way. We have to import these ideas. Working class art (a term that itself is even questionable) must have a point, a purpose, or at least some financial rationale behind it. If it cost a million, it must make a million and change. It’s why probably the greatest expressions of working class art are those that translate to money. They’re by the Rolling Stones and Beatles and artists like Jack Vettriano whose work translates into the ringing of a cash register. The alternative is art that fulfills a social purpose: hence the woeful drama workshops and poetry projects for ex-miners. There can be no giant spider made from rubble breathing fire out over revellers. That is just a beautiful expression of middle class thinking. Instead, we pretend to know what we’re doing but end up with a big lump of stone which people though would be symbolic but which locals just drive past and grumble about.
Take another example. Today’s hot ticket was for the Murray / Youzhny match which has just finished on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. A nation of tennis fans slipped out of work early to catch it on the BBC and, on the bank of grass known as Henman Hill, ordinary punters were squashed elbow to sweaty armpit simply in order to watch the match on the big screen. Yet as the match got under way inside centre court itself, the Royal Box was empty; row upon row of the best seats in the house vacant except for a few loyal administrators of the game, their cottons and flannels immaculate, their eyebrows untrimmed.
Many of the tickets for the Royal Box are apparently now in the gift of the BBC which perhaps explains why it’s so often full of their first, second, and even third rate talent. It’s a symbol, as though symbols were needed, that we’re no longer a nation that defines itself according to our royals. The true nobility are the quiz show hosts, the petty and preened presenters, the botoxed uber-mums and the trippy-heeled ballroom dancers.
Somebody at the BBC or officials at Wimbledon had failed to fill the box but it passed without explanation. Perhaps the celebs were still necking their champagne flutes. Perhaps they were all stuck in traffic. Perhaps they were suddenly called into the BBC to get another huge lump sum which the country didn't need to pay them but somebody at the topped initialed the cheque. It really doesn't matter why it was empty. The point is that it’s not just celebrities who exhibit this failing. The same happened last year at the Olympics when seats gifted to corporate sponsors were not filled by corporate backsides. The new Wembley is plagued by the familiar spectacle of empty seats in the premium central block, unavailable to the public. It’s often a big red embarrassing emptiness when corporate guests continue to enjoy corporate hospitality after half time.
Rather than seeing this as an example of the growing banality that privilege affords to special events, I see it as another symptom of a system that knows how to be profligate. The super-rich find value in copious waste but so too do people lower down the economic ladder. There is perhaps a sadistic pleasure to be had in not using a ticket for a special event. It’s like the Bullington Club’s initiation ceremony where they burn the £50 note in the face of a beggar. That story might be true but it might equally be apocryphal s but it is definitely resonant because it says that some human nature is governed by childish delights. It’s almost Freudian in its symbolism; as though privilege demands that it be occasionally expressed in wanton terms.
So, I don’t see an empty royal box. I see spaces representing people who need to be wasteful and to glory in that waste simply because they’re psychologically directed in a way that won't be dictated to by material things. To the working class part of my mind, it’s just waste. It’s like relatives who wrap up uneaten food at restaurants or won’t leave food on their plate. Waste not, want not. We heard it from the crib. Those seats could be filled by people enjoying every moment. Why do people buy tickets they don’t use? It has no point! What a waste! Like art, like my cartoons, my work, my writing, and even this blog. No better than a great squashed head sitting upon the slag heap of my mind. Just a dream. Just a wasteful dream.
Day 1
I passed by, looked in, decided not today. The Job Centre was busy, I was wet and getting even wetter since it was still pouring down with rain. I was also in a black mood made worse by the arrival of my twice yearly statement from the publishers. It was a bad day for it to arrive, as though some great force was determined to end this grim charade.
I didn’t expect any surprises from the statement, though I’d actually sold more copies of my book than I’d expected. Not enough to make a difference but enough for people close to me to choose this moment to remind me of dark truths.
‘Makes you wonder why you bother,’ was a hint of what was to come.
‘Makes you wonder if it’s worth it,’ was the second push of the very sharp blade.
Each successive jab gets closer to the heart of the matter.
‘It’s like expecting to win the lottery,’ was the first hint of the true theme of these conversations.
We all want to make money from what we love to do but it’s the job of relatives to inform you that you should make money at the expense of what you love to do. It's a great leveler, a way of saying that all you've achieved amounts to naught. When people throw these accusations around, I can never decide if it’s a kind of clear-eyed honesty or a twisted delight in exposing raw nerves and inflicting pain. And the pain is real and very deep.
The bitch awful truth is that it is difficult to make money from creative labours. I’d already sketched out this argument earlier today in a post I’d originally labelled ‘Sunlight’ because I was feeling brighter and better. The arrival of the post and my relative’s badgering turned that around and made a good day very bad.
However, I have made strides following Leg-Iron’s advice. I’ve written about an IT Web Administrator position. Chances of my landing it are slim but we’ll see. There’s also something else I’d spotted on Gumtree. I was intending to send a CV until I just realised it was three months unpaid work as a web designer. Yes, that’s right. Unpaid but with the chance of a job after that… I might be a fool but I wasn't born yesterday. A shame it wasn't even a little bit of money. The irony is that I live the most frugal life I can possibly lead in order to do what I do. I’m not looking for a fortune. Just enough to live on. That I can’t even make that is probably a terrible indictment of my talent or my ability to promote myself or possibly a mixture of the two.
There’s a Ralph Steadman documentary due in cinema sat some point this year and I was watching an interview with the great man on Youtube where he said that all his books have eventually been remaindered. That’s sobering in the sense that if there’s no market for Steadman’s work, then there can’t be such a market for anybody’s work. It’s another facet to the internet culture where jokes, cartoons, and funny graphics have become a currency without value. Everybody trades them but nobody ever seems to pay.
Take for instance, the last strip I drew. I spent five or six hours working on Sparks Episode 4 which I now see posted on a number of accounts across Tumblr. Now what is that cartoon worth? The minimum wage is £6.19 so you might say that strip is worth at least £30.95 for five hours work. Hell, I think I’d be delighted to have earned that much. As it is, I earn nothing whilst the owners of Tumblr wrap their advertising around my content.
This is the problem for all creative people working these days. We work for nothing hoping that somebody somewhere will spot out work and say ‘I want to pay for that’. Yet it rarely happens.
So, that’s where I am now. Deeply funked and not sure what to do other than send off my CV to anything that looks promising. To add insult to injury, web traffic has completely dried up. This is possibly going to be the slowest day I’ve known in months. That divine force is trying desperately hard to send me a message and, unfortunately, I am listening.
I didn’t expect any surprises from the statement, though I’d actually sold more copies of my book than I’d expected. Not enough to make a difference but enough for people close to me to choose this moment to remind me of dark truths.
‘Makes you wonder why you bother,’ was a hint of what was to come.
‘Makes you wonder if it’s worth it,’ was the second push of the very sharp blade.
Each successive jab gets closer to the heart of the matter.
‘It’s like expecting to win the lottery,’ was the first hint of the true theme of these conversations.
We all want to make money from what we love to do but it’s the job of relatives to inform you that you should make money at the expense of what you love to do. It's a great leveler, a way of saying that all you've achieved amounts to naught. When people throw these accusations around, I can never decide if it’s a kind of clear-eyed honesty or a twisted delight in exposing raw nerves and inflicting pain. And the pain is real and very deep.
The bitch awful truth is that it is difficult to make money from creative labours. I’d already sketched out this argument earlier today in a post I’d originally labelled ‘Sunlight’ because I was feeling brighter and better. The arrival of the post and my relative’s badgering turned that around and made a good day very bad.
However, I have made strides following Leg-Iron’s advice. I’ve written about an IT Web Administrator position. Chances of my landing it are slim but we’ll see. There’s also something else I’d spotted on Gumtree. I was intending to send a CV until I just realised it was three months unpaid work as a web designer. Yes, that’s right. Unpaid but with the chance of a job after that… I might be a fool but I wasn't born yesterday. A shame it wasn't even a little bit of money. The irony is that I live the most frugal life I can possibly lead in order to do what I do. I’m not looking for a fortune. Just enough to live on. That I can’t even make that is probably a terrible indictment of my talent or my ability to promote myself or possibly a mixture of the two.
There’s a Ralph Steadman documentary due in cinema sat some point this year and I was watching an interview with the great man on Youtube where he said that all his books have eventually been remaindered. That’s sobering in the sense that if there’s no market for Steadman’s work, then there can’t be such a market for anybody’s work. It’s another facet to the internet culture where jokes, cartoons, and funny graphics have become a currency without value. Everybody trades them but nobody ever seems to pay.
Take for instance, the last strip I drew. I spent five or six hours working on Sparks Episode 4 which I now see posted on a number of accounts across Tumblr. Now what is that cartoon worth? The minimum wage is £6.19 so you might say that strip is worth at least £30.95 for five hours work. Hell, I think I’d be delighted to have earned that much. As it is, I earn nothing whilst the owners of Tumblr wrap their advertising around my content.
This is the problem for all creative people working these days. We work for nothing hoping that somebody somewhere will spot out work and say ‘I want to pay for that’. Yet it rarely happens.
So, that’s where I am now. Deeply funked and not sure what to do other than send off my CV to anything that looks promising. To add insult to injury, web traffic has completely dried up. This is possibly going to be the slowest day I’ve known in months. That divine force is trying desperately hard to send me a message and, unfortunately, I am listening.
Sunday, 30 June 2013
Saturday, 29 June 2013
It's A Sparks Show: Episode 4
A very quick Sparks strip inspired by the actual launch of the new Sparks store. I still don’t know how many of these I’ll draw except to say that they constantly cheer me up. I have another on my table right now, though I probably won’t finish it until Monday or Tuesday. I'm still getting no close to capturing the likeness of Russell Mael.
Friday, 28 June 2013
The Large Greasy Bucket Called Humanity
I’ve probably written one, two, ten or twenty posts like this one yet rarely publish any. They always sound like a moan when they’re actually an attempt to express sheer disbelief at the things I discover.
No matter how much effort I put into writing or drawing original and good (okay, that’s questionable) content for this blog, the hoped-for traffic rarely arrives. My illusion that intelligent people with good (hopefully warped) humour will find their way here is shattered when I look at my total of page views. It can be stuck for hours and then suddenly I’ll have a hit and I’m delighted until I realise that the visitor is looking for ‘pornography’ or ‘3D porn’ or ‘plywood sex’ (don’t ask!) or ‘leather fetish’ or ‘Clare Balding in the nude’.
The pageview number sticks again until another hit comes in. Somebody has just searched for ‘Daniel Radcliffe’s cock’.
Silence. Many minutes pass. Another hit: ‘long+neck+woman+sex’.
Half an hour later, another hit: ‘secretary t*ts out getting f****d you tube’. I’ve edited that one, not because I’m prudish but because I don’t want to become the internet’s number one go-to resource for that particular term. I once wrote a post where I complained about the local cycle route into Warrington being blocked at one point by taxi drivers taking prostitutes into the bushes. I’ve now become the top internet resource for people wanting to know if there are any prostitutes in Warrington town centre. Well, there aren’t. They’re all hiding in the bushes along the bloody cycle paths.
Okay, not all visitors are quite that bad (although the above examples are just from today) and my traffic is better than I’m suggesting. Thanks to seven of you I can at least say I have regular readers. People do also arrive here from Google looking for more intelligent things than ‘rubber sex truss’ (another gem from today). However, running a website really does give you a privileged view of human nature and what you see is routinely so depraved that, some days, it makes you wonder why we even bother.
As a species we’re clearly devolving and the process won’t stop until we’re just a large greasy bucket of primal sex juice labelled ‘humanity’.
No matter how much effort I put into writing or drawing original and good (okay, that’s questionable) content for this blog, the hoped-for traffic rarely arrives. My illusion that intelligent people with good (hopefully warped) humour will find their way here is shattered when I look at my total of page views. It can be stuck for hours and then suddenly I’ll have a hit and I’m delighted until I realise that the visitor is looking for ‘pornography’ or ‘3D porn’ or ‘plywood sex’ (don’t ask!) or ‘leather fetish’ or ‘Clare Balding in the nude’.
The pageview number sticks again until another hit comes in. Somebody has just searched for ‘Daniel Radcliffe’s cock’.
Silence. Many minutes pass. Another hit: ‘long+neck+woman+sex’.
Half an hour later, another hit: ‘secretary t*ts out getting f****d you tube’. I’ve edited that one, not because I’m prudish but because I don’t want to become the internet’s number one go-to resource for that particular term. I once wrote a post where I complained about the local cycle route into Warrington being blocked at one point by taxi drivers taking prostitutes into the bushes. I’ve now become the top internet resource for people wanting to know if there are any prostitutes in Warrington town centre. Well, there aren’t. They’re all hiding in the bushes along the bloody cycle paths.
Okay, not all visitors are quite that bad (although the above examples are just from today) and my traffic is better than I’m suggesting. Thanks to seven of you I can at least say I have regular readers. People do also arrive here from Google looking for more intelligent things than ‘rubber sex truss’ (another gem from today). However, running a website really does give you a privileged view of human nature and what you see is routinely so depraved that, some days, it makes you wonder why we even bother.
As a species we’re clearly devolving and the process won’t stop until we’re just a large greasy bucket of primal sex juice labelled ‘humanity’.
How to Bullshit Your Way To Wealth and Happiness
My wayward eyes sometimes catch an accidental peek at ‘The Apprentice’ and I feel the hot pain of acid reflux choking in my throat. Are those people really the best young business men and women of their generation? Is this humanity’s future, these strange, anodyne hermaphrodites capable of reproducing by simply looking at themselves in the mirror? If these are our best, then why do I feel like our planet is plunging into the sun? Why do they make me want to run away and hide in the woods, eating otter feet and wearing a wild badger as a hat?
Yet another part of me recognises that the reason I don’t like these bastards is because they exude the confidence that eludes me. Confidence is all you really need to survive. Oh, hesitation had its charms for a while in the 1980s. Doubt and self-awareness were perhaps good while they lasted back in the nineties. But we now live in the 21st century and life is all about Confidence: three syllables and one capital ‘C’. This isn’t a time to go around calling yourself a name like William Adams. People will abbreviate that to Bill and how good would that make you feel? No, you need to get creative with punctuation. Call yourself ‘will.i.am’. Turn it into a brand. Copyright it. Make a tattoo of it. People will then begin to see you for what you really are or am…
Hell, let’s just move to San Francisco, open our own internet startup on the back of one ill-conceived idea and a hell of a lot of capital. I’ll grow my chin hair into interesting shapes. You can invent your own yogurt which you’ll carry around your neck in your own trademarked rubber goitre. And if anybody says that we’re mad, we’ll just laugh because we know differently. We’re just confident!
Except perhaps – just perhaps – over confidence is starting to become a problem. Of course, that’s a message you won’t hear from ‘The Apprentice’. Ask a surgeon if they can operate and they would probably ask for vital signs and detailed medical history before they decide. Ask the chancers on ‘The Apprentice’ and they’d punch the air as they shout ‘yes we can!’ They’d be up to their elbows in spleens and kidneys before you’ve noticed they were only supposed to be removing your toe nail.
But where has this culture of arrogance and over confidence come from? It has to be a generational. We don’t look back and think: Marie Curie, now there was one great bullshitter and that Albert Einstein found a good marketing gimmick when he scribbled down e equals mc squared. Yet ask many people who know nothing about football who is the greatest footballer and many would say David Beckham. Beckham the ever silent. Beckham the enigma standing at the back of the stage as great events unfold. Beckham on his speedboat racing down the Thames as some poor bastard hides beneath the dashboard and actually steers the craft. Beckham the Confident.
Like many bad things and just a few good, overconfidence is probably a legacy of the Thatcher years. It was Thatcher who encouraged people to aspire higher and, though there’s nothing is wrong with aspiring to better yourself, somewhere the ends became less important than the means. Status was more important than the skill that got you there. Suddenly there are characters like Grant Shapp holding vast sway in the political life of our country.
The problem is that confidence is seen as synonymous with talent. We’ve bred a generation of super-children, all eager to grasp the world in their fat little fingers and make it their own. It’s everywhere you look: young screamers with old faces and absolute confidence in their abilities and ambitions. The reality is that we’re actually breeding a race of bullshitters, fast talkers, and people who can give a good presentation where opinion is more important than fact. When they get a little older, they’re reviewing the papers from London on Sky News or the BBC, expressing the same parochial views in a way that admits no shades of grey, no doubt, no humility towards the utterly unknowable entirety of the world and cosmos.
Yet I should be so lucky to have that middle class confidence. That ability to bullshit has become a requisite to success. It opens doors. I occasionally look down job listings and fall into a sobbing mess in the middle of the floor because even the simplest job demands the track record of a NASA astronaut. I read the job requirements for a bin man and I feel daunted by the qualifications.
What can I do? Nothing! My skills are ill formed, incomplete, a mixture of the self-taught and half-forgotten. If only I could bullshit and tell a lie that I could do all those things!
Because bullshit overwhelms us and it keeps us down unless we take the pill and become one of them. And my advice is to do just that. I’m thinking of slipping that pill myself pretty soon. I want to become a guilt-free bullshitter because there’s no nobility in remaining true to your values or beliefs. People will think you’re weak, confused, lacking ambition and drive. Climb that corporate ladder. Climb it because it gets easier the higher you go, up where the oxygen is thinner, where it starves your brain and it encourages the bullshit to grow.
Yet another part of me recognises that the reason I don’t like these bastards is because they exude the confidence that eludes me. Confidence is all you really need to survive. Oh, hesitation had its charms for a while in the 1980s. Doubt and self-awareness were perhaps good while they lasted back in the nineties. But we now live in the 21st century and life is all about Confidence: three syllables and one capital ‘C’. This isn’t a time to go around calling yourself a name like William Adams. People will abbreviate that to Bill and how good would that make you feel? No, you need to get creative with punctuation. Call yourself ‘will.i.am’. Turn it into a brand. Copyright it. Make a tattoo of it. People will then begin to see you for what you really are or am…
Hell, let’s just move to San Francisco, open our own internet startup on the back of one ill-conceived idea and a hell of a lot of capital. I’ll grow my chin hair into interesting shapes. You can invent your own yogurt which you’ll carry around your neck in your own trademarked rubber goitre. And if anybody says that we’re mad, we’ll just laugh because we know differently. We’re just confident!
Except perhaps – just perhaps – over confidence is starting to become a problem. Of course, that’s a message you won’t hear from ‘The Apprentice’. Ask a surgeon if they can operate and they would probably ask for vital signs and detailed medical history before they decide. Ask the chancers on ‘The Apprentice’ and they’d punch the air as they shout ‘yes we can!’ They’d be up to their elbows in spleens and kidneys before you’ve noticed they were only supposed to be removing your toe nail.
But where has this culture of arrogance and over confidence come from? It has to be a generational. We don’t look back and think: Marie Curie, now there was one great bullshitter and that Albert Einstein found a good marketing gimmick when he scribbled down e equals mc squared. Yet ask many people who know nothing about football who is the greatest footballer and many would say David Beckham. Beckham the ever silent. Beckham the enigma standing at the back of the stage as great events unfold. Beckham on his speedboat racing down the Thames as some poor bastard hides beneath the dashboard and actually steers the craft. Beckham the Confident.
Like many bad things and just a few good, overconfidence is probably a legacy of the Thatcher years. It was Thatcher who encouraged people to aspire higher and, though there’s nothing is wrong with aspiring to better yourself, somewhere the ends became less important than the means. Status was more important than the skill that got you there. Suddenly there are characters like Grant Shapp holding vast sway in the political life of our country.
The problem is that confidence is seen as synonymous with talent. We’ve bred a generation of super-children, all eager to grasp the world in their fat little fingers and make it their own. It’s everywhere you look: young screamers with old faces and absolute confidence in their abilities and ambitions. The reality is that we’re actually breeding a race of bullshitters, fast talkers, and people who can give a good presentation where opinion is more important than fact. When they get a little older, they’re reviewing the papers from London on Sky News or the BBC, expressing the same parochial views in a way that admits no shades of grey, no doubt, no humility towards the utterly unknowable entirety of the world and cosmos.
Yet I should be so lucky to have that middle class confidence. That ability to bullshit has become a requisite to success. It opens doors. I occasionally look down job listings and fall into a sobbing mess in the middle of the floor because even the simplest job demands the track record of a NASA astronaut. I read the job requirements for a bin man and I feel daunted by the qualifications.
What can I do? Nothing! My skills are ill formed, incomplete, a mixture of the self-taught and half-forgotten. If only I could bullshit and tell a lie that I could do all those things!
Because bullshit overwhelms us and it keeps us down unless we take the pill and become one of them. And my advice is to do just that. I’m thinking of slipping that pill myself pretty soon. I want to become a guilt-free bullshitter because there’s no nobility in remaining true to your values or beliefs. People will think you’re weak, confused, lacking ambition and drive. Climb that corporate ladder. Climb it because it gets easier the higher you go, up where the oxygen is thinner, where it starves your brain and it encourages the bullshit to grow.
It's A Sparks Show: The Slave To Fashion
I know I said I probably wouldn't draw any more of these Sparks strips (Part 1, Part 2) but after Ayumi's kind comment and Leg-Iron’s encouragement, I found myself drawing two long oblongs on a piece of paper late last night, not knowing what I was going to do with them. I needed very little encouragement to draw Russell Mael in his plus fours. Something about Sparks always brings me back to cheerfulness so I continued late into the night with this strip being the result.
This afternoon I need to just sit here and write some one panel gags. My list of ideas is beginning to look a little short and I need those ideas for the days when my brain isn’t firing but when I want to draw.
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