First, a disclaimer: I know I look pretty damn awful. It’s intentional. I was faced with either shaving and grooming myself… or working with it! Anyway, it’s what’s on the inside that counts, right?

I have a basic idea of where the story’s going, so I’ll try to update fairly regularly. They’ll probably just feature into-the-camera style monologue, but who knows… maybe I’ll start getting creative and exploring ‘the bunker’. Don’t be surprised if the style changes a bit in the first few installments either; I’m fairly new to the video thing, so I have to play with the software a bit and see what works!

Make sure you don’t miss an example of one of my, um, flexible facial expressions towards the end. And don’t give up until you get to the end — it’s short, and it’s worth it! You might also have to turn the volume up!

For those of you expecting something else entirely: sorry for the interruption; programming will resume as normal tomorrow.

Day 37 is my video blog’s title, by the way. It rolls off the tongue rather nicely I thought.

Before I start, I just thought I’d say that I re-discovered my sex drive today. But that’s for a separate topic tomorrow!

For some illustration, though, my life had become awfully like this little snippet. And I’m only 24. I need sex, damn it, or I might wither away entirely.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking of the directions I can take the plot of Day 37 — obviously a rather-posh sounding Brit stuck in a bunker is already fairly ‘wacky’, and could provide for a plethora of jokes as the snob tries to go about his every-day business, like making tea, or shaving, or hunting foxes. This is probably quite safe, and guaranteed to pull an audience of ‘Brit lovers’.

The other option is to chronicle my slow descent into insanity. Working my way through the list, performing weirder and more depraved acts to keep my mind active (I have quite a nice list of things I can try to do on camera… like put both my legs behind my head…) From my table-top roleplaying experience, I can do insanity quite well… this is probably the funnier option, for me, and for the audience.

I’ll try to decide by tonight, and plot out the rest of the storyline as I discover more about myself, and the bunker that I’ve somehow ended up in. If you have a strong feeling about how the plot should develop, now’s your chance to voice your opinion! Expect chapter 2 sometime later tonight.

And if you didn’t see the first chapter of Day 37, go watch it! (Over 100 people have now… be part of the CRAZE! And give me 5 stars, of course…)

I went with the going-slowly-insane route for the plot of Day 37, my new epic video diary/vlog. Who needs sanity anyway? It’s a totally overvalued trait… Right?

As always, it was rehearsed and recorded in about 45 minutes, so don’t expect fantastic production values. If you titter, just once, I’ll be happy. If you grin broadly, laugh out loud, or — dare I say it — gigglesnort, I’ll chalk it up as a massive victory for hairy, yeti-like British men the world over!

Enjoy!

Do I wash my hair, or do I keep it for another installment of Day 37?!

If you couldn’t see it very well in Chapter 2 of the vlog yesterday, here’s a well-lit version:

It’s a tough choice…  I guess I have until tonight to decide.

It is with great pride, and with almost no hesitance at all, I give to you the third — and final (for now!) — chapter of Day 37, a story that chronicles the poor plight of a Brit destined to spend all of eternity in a bunker, where no one can hear him fart.

There will be proper pictures of the half-beard to follow, don’t worry!

Well, to put it as simply as I can --
Good and evil are so close as to be chained together in the soul.
Man isn't truly one, but two. Now what if we could break that chain --
separate those two selves --

(his face alight, lost in his subject)

To free the good in man, and let it go on to its higher destiny... to segregate the bad in man --
and let it destroy itself in its own degradation!

Spencer Tracey said it so eloquently in the 1941 film version of Jekyll & Hyde, the story of a brilliant scientist — Dr Jekyll — trying to separate good from evil. While the book itself isn’t considered a ‘classic’ it has created a massive amount of spin-off works — other books, films, TV shows and, most importantly, a musical! The story looks at the duality of the human psyche: good and evil. It actually seems to be very close to the Freudian theory that evil thoughts banished to your unconscious mind impact on your conscious (’good’) mind, ultimately resulting in an the eruption of your very own Mr Hyde.

We should embrace and nurture both our naughty and nice sides, basically, lest we turn into weird and depraved creatures of the night.

Regarding the musical (which many people consider to be overly dramatic and a bit lacking in substance), it’s well worth watching just to marvel at a single actor performing a duet on his own, both as Dr Jekyll and the beast Hyde. Lots of frantic head turning and make-up is required! It’s actually one of my favourite musicals, and I have my first girlfriend at university to thank for introducing me to it (she’s the one I turned gay, for those of you trying to keep up…)

Anyway, that attempt at intelligent discourse brings me neatly onto the topic of the split personality that I developed in Chapter 3 of Day 37, my epic video diary of a poor guy slowly (well, not so slowly it seems…) going insane in a bunker. It occured ot me that you probably couldn’t quite appreciate my good and evil ‘duality’ with the poor quality of my video camera. So, not wanting to disappoint, I prepared this lovely composite showing both my good and evil sides.

Have a nice weekend! I’m off now to go and terrorise some local grocery stores. I’m going to walk in once, only displaying my evil side and ask for booze and cigarettes. Then I’m going to walk in again, this time displaying my scarily-young-and-pretty side, asking the shop attendant with a straight face ‘Have you seen my evil twin brother?’ I’ll let you know of the results…

I know it sounds like a treatise of utmost, contemporary importance, but actually it’s just a recap of a few things that I’ve been up to in the past week, and what’s to come.

If you’re an avid Sebite (OK, perhaps it’s too early to go and deify myself) you’re probably well-aware of the what’s to follow… but it wouldn’t do any harm to read all about what’s hapnin’ (too much Marvin Gaye!) here on my blog.

First of all, I am still running a fantastic competition that everyone should enter. It’s free to enter, you just need to tell me what you’re most passionate about. It can be good, or bad, or ugly — just something that really gets your juices going. The prize is some original art which I will lovingly craft for you, using my awesome photographic skills, which you will be able to use for your blog, or avatar, or… for anything really! If you still didn’t enter, enter now.

Next, and probably most importantly, I made my debut on YouTube. Not one to pander to peer pressure, I decided that if I wanted to video blog with 3 weeks’ worth of facial hair… I damn well would! Forsaking my razor, shampoo and sanity, I filmed 3 chapters of a ground-breaking and revolutionary drama, Day 37. Follow a hairy, cross-dressing Brit as he slowly loses his sanity after falling into a subterranean bunker. If you missed the link, HERE’S ANOTHER (after watching chapter 1, check out 2 and 3… it gets better!) 200 people have watched me lose my sanity and don a leopard-print spandex shirt… don’t you want to see what all the fuss is about?

Penultimately, for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been taking part in a ‘photographic assignment’. This is basically a group of people that all take photos of a concept or phrase. ‘Watery Wednesday’, ‘Funny Friday’ (alliteration is sadly rife in such communities). There’s an awful lot of them, and they vary in quality a lot. Luckily the one I’ve been taking part in , Skywatch Friday is quite good! Not only do they garner bonus points for a distinct lack of alliteration and word play, my huge stocks of landscape photography tend to feature startling skies. I feel quite at home submitting my landscapes to be admired and pored over by discerning viewers (and, importantly, other landscape photographers!)

There have only been a few ‘That’s nice’ replies so far, which is good…!

I’ve also just taken up another, shared challenge: ‘Motoring Monday’ (…) I think it’s just going to be a one-off though, so I’ve created a new category on the blog for Motoring Monday, Skywatch Friday, and any other photographic assignments that I take part in. Feel free to visit it from time to time, if you want to see some pretty photos — they won’t turn up on the front page of the blog, or the normal RSS feed.

Finally, this week I regained my sex drive. Obviously that’s not really news that’ll stop presses, but it could become news, in the not-so-distant future! Hopefully not the ‘turn up on your doorstep 18 years later’ kind of news, either.

Oh, and because I love the picture just a bit too much (the picture, not myself, it’s an important distinction), I’m just going to stick it in again (!) for everyone to enjoy.

I still look like this, for anyone wondering. Walking around town today was interesting: those on the other side of the road all smiled at me; those I bumped into all quickly stepped away and begged Our Lord for protection…

Please, fast forward 2 months.

As mind’s eye pans over the green, leafy British countryside the rapid staccato percussion of a helicopter’s blades can be heard. As we grow closer, the chopper comes into view. Hovering, its illuminating search light pointed down at the ground.

On the ground firemen and other emergency-response types move around quickly, with purpose. An a-frame and winch is assembled, with a taut steel cable running from it down into a pit as dark as pitch.

One of the firemen activates the winch. After what seems like an eternity of grinding gears and the sound of steel plinking tightly a hirsute… thing is hauled out of the hole and quickly lifted onto a stretcher. Half man, half something, he — it — blinks in the bright lights.

As he is dragged away from you and into the back of an ambulance only one thing is heard, a slight mania in his voice: “I can lick my own elbow you know!”

…

And that, kind sirs, is my epic escape from the bunker in Day 37.

Below is the next installment of Day 37. The beardless aftermath that picks up the story again, a week or month after Sebastian has been rescued from a bunker that he was trapped in for 3 months. If you haven’t seen Chapters 1-3 of Day 37, I suggest you watch them first, as this one won’t make much sense without the back story!