The end is nigh, chocolate is out and the Dilluminati are coming

Rumours in the wider web of the world are circulating that the Dilluminati, Shadow Lords of the Deepest Darkest Blackest Hole, are planning an invasion. Although I am always a bit sceptical when it comes to world invasions and evil plans etc. etc., I am afraid that this might be the real deal. Partly because they have uploaded a trailer on Youtube, partly because they give us a month's notice. 

I like well organised villains: it's a lot more fun if you don't have to fight them in your knickers because you were surprised to see them on a Sunday morning. Also, they come in August - a good month for an invasion - night falls late and the temperatures are usually high, so you can stay out for a bit longer to fight Evil, whereas in December, you have tea at 4.30pm and that's that. Hooray for Summer invasions.  #sothatisallgood

Furthermore, I haven't seen the Dilluminati for a long time. Like, a very long time. Neither have I seen the Daleks, for that matter. It would be great to get all the folks together again and have some massive reunion fight-do, like in the good old times when your spaceship ran on Alkaseltzer, filmed the other way round. I admit, my current office job is not the most challenging position I have ever held, but the real compromise is my outfit: I was used to wear a long cape, a head piece, make-up, and all that, but at work they require me to wear 'decent' clothing. Mind you, apparently, horns are not decent. And they weren't that happy about my lunch box either (what's wrong with living goats????).

So, hooray for the Dilluminati, looking forward to see them again - I'll keep you posted non-existent reader.

My neighbour's head and other egg-shaped jokes

Where is the fun gone? Jokes used to be funnier, laughing was laughier (yes, autocorrect, I want to write laughier!) and situations not this tense. Tense as in, interviewing strangers to come and live with me (ok, us) and trying not to kill myself for asking about hobbies and interests - under these labels. No, no, no, no. (hitting knee on desk, howling with pain, stumping - sprained foot, howling some more) Now that I have left a rather prestigious (blah) British university behind me, life is so infinitely beige. Beiger than beige, sand-coloured at best, maybe even nude, as in Kate Middleton's nude platform heels that have been much discussed in the Daily Mail and that are even more boring, now that they have been properly exposed.

Mincemeating shoes has never been fun.

Neither has googeling cooker lights. (Yes autocorrect, googeling is a word)

So this is my spare time occupation. Sigh

Somewhere between the last couple of Tschardonnéis (as opposed to Chardonnays served elsewhere) and the mini organic baked potatoes, it went horribly wrong. Life in its beignets (I keep this, it was meant to be 'beigeness' but obviously autocorrect has other things in mind #fatwriter) has no highlights, no chocolate chips, no glazing. It's plain beige. To the extend that I am watching Alan Titchmarch on 'Elizabeth: Queen, Wife, Mohter' (ay autocorrect! you correct me everywhere else, and then leave this?????) while I am writing this to balance out the creative input. To keep me awake too, painkillers for the afore mentioned sprained foot are taking their toll. And no, NHS tyrant, I will NOT keep my foot quiet for the next 6 weeks. I. Have. A. Life. Albeit beige.

Yesterday Once upon a time that happens to be just yesterday (that is today; tomorrow of course, it will no longer be yesterday #beige #petty) I went to the British Museum (I limped from Holborn and let myself fall down the stairs to the Lecture Theatre) for a bit of culture that I'd almost forgotten about. I booked the tickets in early April, not knowing that I would fancy some Shakespearian drama in June, just sort of hoping I'd not been run over by a bus by that time. And surprise, Henry V The Hollow Crown is a rather good play adaptation with Tom Hiddleston as King Hal. The man himself was there too, for a bit of fan-bathing, as well as some other British film royalty. And there was lots of wine, which was more important than Hiddleston in a suit. Representing our local monarchy, another citizen from the land of the 'I've never met anyone from there' accompanied me to savour the fruits of my early booking. #drunkandgreedy

We both agreed that it was worth not watching ITV's Friday night program in our pjs, to go to the BM.

Today The following day, in the land of the sleeping prince from downstairs, my hunter and gatherer instincts called me to the City Centre. Nature's signs and sounds announced the quarterly shedding of the shop floor-skins with brightly coloured signs ('SALE') and the sound of a new beginning (walking past McDo I heard Peer Gynt, I kid you not). My natural instinct tells me that I need more footwear to get me through the summer into fall, as well as some overpriced carrying devices for the incredible amount of things that I .... carry around with me. Thus I ventured into a tourist-infested centre, where, upon arrival, I regretted with immediate immediacy to ever have set a foot on the pavement outside Oxford Circus Station. #cringe 

However, I had not yet seen the full extend of the situation. When I'd fought my way out of the masses (limping like a shot bambi) I spotted Tom Hiddleston, lurking around - stalking me, no doubt. Again, careful to be careful, I tried to walk past, not letting him spot that I'd spotted him. Dear inexistent reader, stalkers, so I thought, were only stalking people less famous than myself. Never, so I believed, would anybody dare following me, the highest of all higher profiles, to the effect that I made my way, hasting hastily, to the nearest Underground. I had to leave multiple pairs of foot protectors and several carrying devices on the shop floors, returning empty-handed and scared. I have decided not to leave the house again until I know with certain certainty that my stalker has left the country. I may have to put him under surveillance.

Thus I remain here, in the outskirts of E2, with nothing but my books (which, surprisingly, are very beige) and the notes in my books. #smartass

Some books are real gems when it come to the notes. 

Until life is again filled with free wine and fountains of Italian Prosecco.

The hipster holiday: how to spot a German blindfolded

My legs. Not hipster. Jeans intact. Brogues.

The hipster, resident of Shoreditch and Hackney is in a holiday mood. How do I know? Well, recent weather changes have initiated the common hipster to change caramel-coloured suede moccasins and royal blue trousers for a more convenient, air-cooled look of shabby plimsoles or loafers and cut-off 80s denims. Ideally to be paired with white socks or bare feet. Summer is here.

Summer must have seen the bikini-clad Southeners and the topless chavs on Oxford Street and decided that, after all, rain suits England sooo much better. I write this in my winter socks, sipping tea, with a bowl of broth next to me. It's June 5th, Happy Jubilee.

Other signs to recognise summer are of course the usual: people are accessorising themselves with Starbucks' Frappuccinos, it's always everywhere Pimm's o'clock and if you can't see the Shard, it's not the mist, it's the smoke of London's barbecues. In fact, there is something profoundly Victorian about bbqs, in that every single household in my neighbourhood is smoking the hell out of their backyards, to make the best use of rats, mice and Tesco meatballs. Now, while at Pimm's o'clock last Thursday, I must have been three times  over the legal limit, I do not really feel summer yet. Yes, I have gone through a whole bottle of Nivea's finest 50+, but that is about it. Smells are positively autumnal, the clothes very wintery and every intention to make scones and jam turns into chocolate chip cookies. Also, I have been watching Nigella's Christmas Feasts (very vintage on Youtube), The Hairy Bikers on meat, more meat and puddings, as well as Jamie Oliver's Christmas stuff. And I did not skip Mariah Carey 'All I Want for Christmas' yesterday on my iPod - I turned up the volume. And with Her Majesty Gary Barlow staging a massive charity gig, it feels very much like Christmas. Come to think of it, on December 24th, I wore a hoodie (nothing else), whereas today, I was sporting more layers than an onion. Am I complaining? You bet I am!

In Central London (I thought today would be a good day to go, because everybody was celebrating some stuff or another), there was the inevitable crowd of tourists, where my learned eye immediately separated the Germans from the rest. (Italians are quite easy to spot too) But how is it possible that spotting a German is not just easy, but evident. Living with the least German of all Germans is not what has schooled my eye in the recognition of an ethnicity that will never learn how to stealth itself abroad. Living very close to the German boarder or speaking the language is not it, either. I venture to say that what makes me alert to their Germanness is their Germanness. Could it be the moustaches? Maybe. The jeans and Esprit shirt combination? Maybe. Is it the generic haircut, sported by very nearly every German woman and girl? Maybe. Could it be demeanour? I guess there is not any one answer to this, but I suppose that it is the combination of all these factors that makes them so easy to spot. And to avoid. Am I being racist? Yes - I am after all a Middle European, and while I am not patriotic per se, I cultivate a inborn national dislike for all our neighbours. We are the best, let's face it. Which is what every other nation thinks too.

Starving at the cinema and the American Dream

I don't review anything - I moan. And by god, do I have to moan about this. Yesterday Friday Sometime, I went to see Hunger Games, and what a complete waste of my time and capital it was. Colossally boring, plot somewhere between Twilight and Star Wars, appeal of All the Pretty Horses. I vowed at some point earlier in my life, never to pay again for bad movies. And there was I, next to a couple who could have done with a private room, with a partial hangover, watching flawless Americans and one Australian run through a forest. Plus Donald Sutherland, who is neither British nor American, but sort of Canadian, and then again not. 

Boots, the mother of vouchering

No I don't review. Unless it's absolutely necessary. Recently, I haven't seen that much, there weren't just any free tickets - my new obsession - and I was writing essays, so culturally, it was bleak. Much like the weather at the moment, an appalling mix of rain and wind, with a little hail thrown in, and that's just lunch hour. But I return to my newest obsession that is oh so very pas chic, and oh so very unsexy. Vouchering. I had to adapt this from the American 'Couponing', which sounds a little bit like an actual activity, whereas vouchering sounds like something your 65 year-old neighbour does on a rainy Sunday afternoon. In reality (that is this weird space-time thing outside the matrix), I am searching for vouchers and freebies on a rainy Sunday afternoon, to find a different way of financing my life, once I graduate into unemployment. The very addictive source of this obsession is a television show that came only recently to my attention, Extreme Couponing, a TLC outcome, posted on Facebook by a Maple syrup-country national that you, dear inexistent reader, better not try. It is instantly addictive. Like heroin. The show follows overweight and overanxious, but underfucked Americans in their daily life as unemployed couponers, who spend up to 60 hours of their lives clipping coupons to buy 77 bottles of mustard they don't eat, or simply store in their epic larders, that are infinitely better stocked than the corner shop around the, errr, corner. Stocking up on nappies when you don't have any children, stocking up on 1000 tubes of toothpaste, when you already have about 5000 at home. Or stocking up on 67 packets of cream cheese, when any human being, no matter how much they love cream cheese, cannot eat more than one a week. At most. But they freeze well, apparently. Only they can't freeze them because there is no space in their freezers, (note the s), because they've buries a whole cow there. 12 pound of steak. 12 POUND of steak. and that is just the steak. Pizzas and other varieties of frozen food are 'a staple of the extreme couponer' because they last forever. The most appalling part of the show is that nobody seems to want to decrease their stockpile, i.e. eat all that shit, and use the toilet paper and the 1000 disposable razors. No - they all just continue buying the stuff, until their toddler has to sleep in toilet paper and kitchen towels, because there is no other space. I wonder whether this phenomenon would catch on in the UK, since the consumers here have a tendency to, hmmm, not voucher. Even the nectar cards, or their Tesco equivalent are not that popular because it takes an effort to use it, and effort is not something people like to put into their weekly shop. I include myself. I think that efficiency is key in London shopping. Rarely do I see people handing over their 4000 vouchers after a gruelling 3 hours at the till, to then break the till and make the poor Tesco guy call his manager to fix the problem. At my local supermarket, one of the cashiers is so effective that she doesn't even bother with the formalities: no look at the customer, no hi, no goodbye, no thanks - she is the epitome of the fuzz-free shopping (some people call her rude, but I see beyond that, I think she must have seen Extreme Couponing).

So how come that in the land of the triple pasteurised, filtered and plasticised cheese, people prefer to spend time cutting out stuff in the paper, than earning money with whatever skills coupon-cutting involves? Is this the American dream? Has the coupon trend replaced the dishwasher-to-millionaire story, where anybody could raise to have as much money as they'd wished to, as long as they put enough effort and dedication into it? Or is this just part of the growing addiction or obsession, at the very least, with shopping, the compulsion to substitute meaningless lives with consumer goods and the accumulation thereof? I don't really like to quote here, so I don't, but it does remind me of the theories of two grumpy, dead Germans, who wrote in a German town not too far from where I come from. And of course of various very grumpy, bald French people.
The real sadness of the program lies in the portrayal of the subjects, who are almost invariably portrayed as the heroes of the show; it is a glorification of the compulsive tendencies of these people, for the entertainment of the viewer. In an episode where little more happens that people buying groceries, real time is so minced and patched together that reel time appears as an action-packed 10-minute trip to the supermarket. However, these people spend 6 hours or more in the supermarket, and to do this, you must be desperate or very lonely. Otherwise, could or would you want to spend 6 hours pushing a trolley around in a cold supermarket, on an almost daily basis?

Why lasting cannot last in a week of everyday lasts

I am in the final round of my education. Tomorrow, or today (1.39 am) I commence what will be the last week of proper school days in my life. And I couldn't be less interested.

So over to more exciting things: I have finished THE present and it sits here next to me, wrapped in brown paper, in its full glory, waiting to be shipped and delivered come the end of the week. I feel the pain a mother feels to see her child leave the nest. I put my whole heart into that parcel, and I hope the charming notifications on the outside will encourage the postman to handle it with extra special über-care. I have an intuition that he or she won't, but by then, I no longer hold any control over it. 

Also, I finish work, which is a bit more sad than finishing school, because I really like work. I think I have written about it before. I even had to capitalise it. I will attempt to drown my sorrow in carrot cake: I find that a good measure of sugar always helps overcoming the lasting feeling of interrupted routines. I think I might have written about that, too. 

Camilla I Regina

A lot more exciting is the run-up to Thursday's school event/do, which involves even more sugar, and possibly, a lot of high percentage beverages. It is of course a fancy dress evening (my insistence), and the theme is rather royal. I hope to impress with this charming hat (picture), a blonde flick-wig, and a navy blue dress. I am Camilla I, Queen of England (what else?). I even learned how to smile like her. The rather angelic touch of the picture is due to recently uncovered/discovered photoshopping skills on my behalf, so that now every single image that leaves the Fruit is digitally altered. Bliss.

I won't lie here, you, dear non-existent reader, have probably seen better. You will, of course. But remember the blood, sweat and tears that have contributed to this charming image, and you will award me an Oscar. Or the equivalent for photoshoppers. I really like my costume, the hat is very Edwardian, quite heavy, and will leave me with an irreparable neck damage for the rest of my life, but it's soooo worth it. 

Shallow, you say, non-existent reader? Bah, humbug, that's an Ascot-neck for you. Speaking of Edwardian, I just saw Julian Fellowes' latest effort, Titanic, in an ITV mini-budget, mini-series version. Mini-pleasure. 2 minutes into the program and I KNEW that I wouldn't like it, let alone follow it with the same attention to detail (that is obsession to me and you) that I follow Sherlock with. No, 2 minutes in, and I have not only a massive déjà-vu, I have a bad déjà-vu. While I won't even go into the accuracy debate - I am no authority, but those clothes seem a little too starchy on the stoker - the plot is borrowed from Titanic, the movie, and Downton Abbey, the not-yet-movie. But, haha, it's not just borrowed, it's a bad copy: the story of Jack and Rose, A and B, is retold with a different set of A and B in a slightly different version of the story. In fact, I suspect that one of Fellowes' mates saw the original movie and then, via Chinese whispers, got the message to Fellowes, who re-told the story is an awkwardly upper-class way. Today is the last I have seen of this monstrosity. 

Portraying the servants, yet keeping that distant gaze is what one does, isn't it? It's nice to see that they are there, but that's it. Those filthy creatures are not to venture into the dining room. Let alone the drawing room. Prime example: that French mistress we all know not to be married to that bloke she's with. No, she's married to Mark Ronson, everybody knows that. Uuuuhuuuhh, they are together but not married. Does such a thing exist? Not in Fellowes' world - I very much doubt it. In the land of country houses and posh toffs in morning gowns, people are either married or dead. There is no in-between, Unless you are a man in possession of a good fortune much in need of a wife. Then you may spend a glorious 95 minutes on screen, chasing Keira Knightley (or somebody equally costume drama-ish), without being married to her. You may consider proposing once or twice, in the rain, in a shed, under a table; but never, never for the love of god let that plonker Collins get her. We all know why.

The creation of need: a birthday present

Hooray, I get to buy a birthday present! I love buying and making presents (more of that later), but sometimes, my super hot, topless male muse is a bit slow on his feet and does not inspire me at all. Still, he's topless. However, I need to find a birthday present for a bored Capitalist in the land of the banks. A very bored Capitalist who is also looking for a job. I have this project that I am working on at the moment,  '25 Days to 25', a mammoth project if ever I've seen one, where I dedicate some time every day to the creation of, what is essentially a glorified diary for creative people. A mood book, if you like, dear non-existing reader. 

Here is a detail of the cover picture: I call it
 'Daniel Craig through the mincer'
(and I've cut him in pieces, too)

It's coming along nicely, I have written, pasted and rambled into it every single day since the beginning of March - and I do not see a reason why I should loose interest or creative drive. But for a quarter-centenarian, a simple book is not enough, is it? I was really inspired at first, but then realised, I have no cash to spend on original art, or anything else for that matter. And I lack talent for most other things. I even thought about making a blog for the bored Capitalist, but it's much more fun pasting stuff into a book. Then there are several rules I must obey in the search of the gift: a. it has to be postable (this rules out the Pug) b. it has to be a no-food (my own rule, don't encourage eating) c. it has to be really fun (common knowledge) d. it can't be a voucher (see c.) e. it can't be a graffiti-ed mannequin, a customised dress, a petticoat, a hat, candles, cosmetics, homewares or a two-tiered cake. Which leaves me with......what? 

In eleven years, I have outsourced cool birthday gifts, including fake vouchers for intimate piercings. So what now? Should I make a fresh start? Buy a pyjama? A scarf? Should I try and breed funky birthday gifts, like they do when Tuna has been outsourced? I can see a birthday gift farm with lots of free range birthday gifts, reared and fed to perfection, ready to be presented to somebody. Seeing that I can't even keep a blog alive, I doubt that I'd be much of a birthday gift breeder, but you never know.

I have managed to isolate my problem: it has to do with narrative. No narrative, no gift, that seems to have been my policy for the last eleven years, and unconsciously, I want to continue this line. ('A newspaper subscription!' cries my inner self, but no, I have done that as well) I have googled birthday gifts and frankly, the websites are appalling: you would only buy something on a designated birthday gift website if you're desperate and can't really stand the person, or don't really know them.  This smells like a business opportunity (just saying). 

So narrative: I had an idea whilst serving beer to people who don't buy art. I will make a gigantic box filled with empty promises. HA! Doesn't that sound cool? Also, I want to include one of these pug-cards I saw in Spitalfields Market, the ones that have little legs attached and are filled with helium. Joy of joys, I love completely pointless gifts. 

Reviewing the comedy that is 'Online Job Applications' - a new play by Samuel Beckett

My last post made me think about the arbitrariness of reviews and critiques you read wherever you go. Even if you're not going, but reading the Evening Standard on the tube. Can an opera about a musical survive the critical assessment of the harsh ES critics: I say yes. If they write it pre-release. Which is where my ingenious idea comes in: what we need to do is pitch them ideas and concepts, infiltrate their brains before they have seen a single act, show them ridiculous drawings of costumes, props and sets and make them believe it's the greatest show this planet has ever seen - it's called marketing.

Chris Bracey via Daniel Poole in Redchurch Street

Right, now apart from stating the obvious, another week has passed without progress - in any way. I am contemplating my mother's default way out: getting married. Even in times of great despair, lodged between historical chronics and aspiring lawyers in the library, I would not concede to getting hitched. Unless one of the pre-lawyers obliges. Yes, the bleak days of dissertation writing are descending upon me in their dreariest, most boring outfit. Stats of the past two days: cake, two film rentals, no shower, library, youtube. And that is just the prequel. Wait for the methodology chapter - the most futile chapter in every dissertation where you present, not what is interesting or important, but how you got to the bits of information that you can't write about because you need the word count to write about how you found it out. It drives me crazy. I don't even want to find our anything anymore.
What I am doing now is watching The First Knight on BBC, with Richard Gere and Sean Connery, both of whom have appalling British accents. And having one of the quarter-yearly life admin sessions, where I am going through piles of Excel sheets all labelled 'my life', to find that my accountant abandoned me ages ago. Ok, sooooo, back to BBC.

(The protagonist turns to the audience. She is wearing an old t-shirt; in the background we hear some of the dialogue of The First Knight)

I would want to complain at this point, so I do, unless ITV rolls the credits midway through my speech, or Audi drives their latest steel monster into the frame. On the subject of: job seeking. You should know, dear audience, I LOVE to work. In fact I love working so much, I had to capitalise it. The only problem between me and my love for work at the moment are these awful online applications, awkwardly formatted PDF documents and descriptions over descriptions of coffee-mate positions advertised cunningly as 'assistant' or 'junior so and so'. And it's not even the case that I don't like writing an application, because I like writing about myself. It's the writing part that these generic application forms get wrong. They don't want a cover letter where I can express myself in a clear grammar, with illustrations of my working life - no, they want Twitteresque joke-elaborations of no more than 28 1/2 characters about me, my previous jobs, my aspirations and my references. These applications are processed by a computer tracing keywords and eliminating everybody who writes without using those. It reminds me strongly of my old Biology class, where points where gained if certain words appeared in the text of your answer. Needless to say, I nearly failed the class. I am just not very good at using standardised, formulaic prose to express myself about....myself. So, I probably fail to get a job. Despite one and a half degree, some half decent work experience and a serious need for money.
Every time I start one of the online applications now, I feel like crying, because I know that the same questions will litter the way to the final, relieving sentence: 'Thank you for submitting your application. We will be in touch shortly'. Well, who is we? He? Who is that 'we' who tells me time and time again that they will be in touch with me and really, they never are?

(Curtain. No re-entrance of the protagonist. The audience is violently pushed out of the theatre)

Metro: 29th February 2013

Samuel Beckett, the author of 'Online Job Applications' strikes again. The play is a masterpiece on the confusing nature of the digitalised world of the current employment market and its weaknesses. He manages to highlight the unnatural relationship between employment seeker and computer, and the attentive critic spots technological determinism as a recurring motive and background of the play. The jobseeker, played brilliantly by a job seeking unknown, manages to convey real despair and confusion in the tradition of Beckett's plays. One does recognise elements of 'En Attendant Godot' and 'Molloy' in the character, but it is the first time that Beckett focusses on a female lead in search of an unknown, unreachable goal. The confusing nature of the online system, played by an exquisite Bill Nighy, fills the audience with doubts about their own careers, and it is not by any chance that Beckett included into the stage directions the presence of a psychologist and a motivation trainer. We feel that this is not the last we have seen of the anonymous jobseeker; we hope that Beckett will again use this character in a series of plays or novels, and built up on the confusion we experienced in this first encounter with the jobseeker.
It is an honour to see this play.

(Curtain again, a second one. Enter Beckett, in knickerbockers. He remains silent)