I was going to write about books today, but my mind’s on other things. Perhaps after I finish reading Pratchett’s latest (Nation) I might write some kind of mini-review. Ironically, any book reviews that pretend to be intelligent and ‘deep’ tend to be completely unreadable… I should probably avoid doing that.

(Which reminds me, this year’s Bad Sex Awards were recently announced: http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsex_11_08.html, well worth a read, if you find my blog entirely untitillating… which is unlikely, but one never knows what kind of readership one has…)

Ah, screw it, I’ll give you some choice excerpts from the Bad Sex Awards 2008. Who needs to write quality prose when you have tripe like this available:

“…but he didn’t know what name to call her. ‘Mrs Rougement’ was the name he had always known her by. God, she was antique, but here they were. Her face gleamed with his jism in the spotty light of the motel room, there on the far end of East Beach, within sound of the sea. The rhythmic relentless shushing returned to their ears. She laid her head on the pillow and seemed to want to be kissed. Well, why not? It was his jism. Having got rid of it, there was an aftermath of sorrow in which he needed to be alone; but there was no getting rid of her. ‘Call me Sukie,’ she said, having read his mind. ‘I sucked your cock.’”

Yeah. That was the most PG-13 passage I could find, too.

I’ll stop with the excerpts now, lest my blog become un-worksafe.

Okay, ONE more.

“At last, she could no longer control the world around her, her five senses seemed to break free and she wasn’t strong enough to hold on to them. As if struck by a sacred bolt of lightning, she unleashed them, and the world, the seagulls, the taste of salt, the hard earth, the smell of the sea, the clouds, all disappeared, and in their place appeared a vast golden light, which grew and grew until it touched the most distant star in the galaxy.”

Really, if you want to read some more, you’ll have to do it in your own time… preferably alone.

It’s kind of hard to draw myself away from reading it, to write this, if I’m totally honest, but I’ll try.

I went out yesterday to try and take some photos, but they didn’t come out all that well. Sometimes the eternal grayness of England can be a little annoying. Then the clouds have an annoying habit of only dissipating when it’s almost twilight — I haven’t seen the sun since I took those photos, actually. I guess it’s even worse up in the Arctic circle, where they only have a few hours of daylight in the winter. Maybe they don’t have the greyness though…

That reminds me! I was invited to Norway! To … um… see some fjords! I think they have some pretty girls too, and lots of oil. And fjords; many fjords. They’re meant to be rather pretty though, and I’m sure they look all glassy, magical, crystalline and blue in the spring. EasyJet can probably get me there for the same price as a sandwich from an airport departure lounge. Reminds me of the time I spent about 8 euros on a tall glass of orange juice in Istanbul airport (en route to Antalya), a meager 40 times more expensive than the 20 euro-cent glass I had in the seedy, stinky, characterful back-streets of the Bazaar.

I think the thing I loved most about my trip to Turkey was Thermessos. I arrived at the bottom of a rather large hill (mountainous by my woefully understated natural-phenomenonish British standards), where a guy in a hut was quite obviously sleeping, whiling away the hours. I poked him gently until he awoke. I tried to communicate that I wanted to see Thermessos, the mighty, unassailable city! The city that Alexander the Great failed to conquer! He simply pointed up a rocky, mud path. That’s tourism in Turkey. A 2 mile mud path up a steep hill… which finally spits you out at the ruins of an ancient city that once had a sizable population. There’s something about standing in an almost-complete Roman theatre, one with 10,000 seats, and singing as loud as you possibly can. It was contrasted rather starkly by a trip to the Colosseum in Rome, which was jam-packed with thousands of tourists. Rome only really exists in its current form to facilitate tourism, it seemed.

Time to finish reading the smut… (Check out the one that features a character called Sebastian…)

My cute, curvy Cuban friend Jossie (what kind of name is Jossie anyway? Is it a nickname of Josalyn?) recently posted a picture from her childhood. She told a sad tale to accompany her salad days photo from a school yearbook; a tale of her mum oppressing her wishes to look less like a floppy-haired, goofy blood clot (my description, not Jossie’s — don’t hurt me!) Not one to miss an opening, I thought I would share my childhood woes: the struggle and strife, and life, of a bowl-cut Beatles lookalike.

Unfortunately the haircut was not fleeting. It stalked me ruthlessly throughout my formative years, with my mother only allowing me to grow it after my 16th birthday. To this day I’m still haunted by brief visions of John Lennon out of the corner of my eye when I look in a mirror. Perhaps it was a rite of passage: become a man, develop body hair, lose my virginity, and stop looking like a poor, podgy, pudding basin child. My mother swears she wasn’t doing it out of spite, or some kind of cruel and unusual punishment. She also denies a childhood infatuation for the Beatles.

In actuality, I think my curse goes back another generation, to my grandmother. I’ve seen photos of my mother as a child, and she has the exact same hair cut as me. The contagious nature of nurturing!

While other parents beat their children, continuing the chain of abuse from their parents, my mother abused me mentally, with a formless and floppy coiffure.

Why am I making such a fuss about a haircut? Well, the clue was in the title — my haircut was really the only thing that plagued me through my childhood. Mind you, I didn’t have a girlfriend until I turned 18, and that sucked. I was always the one looking on and sighing wistfully from afar. I wish someone had told me back then that girls like guys to be confident and go-get-’em. It was only after I left school that my sister informed me that all the girls I fancied had a crush on me. I think that was the saddest day of my life, knowing I’d missed out on kissing some seriously beautiful European girls, and that I might never get a second chance. Thinking back, maybe it was the hair that scared them all away when I got close… Damn you, mother.

I was also bullied for a year or two, which caused some self-esteem issues throughout school (and was the main reason I never had the balls to ask a girl out). It was stupid, being bullied for being the brightest kid in school — and having a stupid hair cut (Damn you, mother!) Really, it’s depressing that such groups of people exist; they weren’t even bad on their own! I was friends with some of them individually, but when they grouped up… Ugh.

Anyway, I’m still a little mentally scarred from the bullying, and it’s probably my only mental ‘flaw’: I lack self-esteem when it comes to girls. I don’t actually believe a girl could be interested in me. It’s OK, while I’m talking, but when it gets right down to it, it becomes that that classic question: ‘How do you get a girl that’s laughing at your jokes into your bed?’ If anyone knows the answer to that, let me know.

With a grown-up view of things, I can see that my self-confidence issues are without merit and totally insane; but hey, who said fear or self-deprecation of any kind was rational?

But back to the happy childhood: you can see from the blurry background of the photo, that I was at Disneyland, at the age of 3 (I was a very large child!) By the age of 3 I’d been to Disneyland and Disneyworld and I’d walked up the steep hills of San Franciso. Back in England I was liberally educated, studying whatever I wanted to study — and excelling. I disliked sports, so I stopped running around and kicking balls. Instead I spent my time dissecting and rebuilding computers, and later programming and playing games on them.

The problem with a happy childhood is that there are no real stand-out moments that I can easily relate to and write about. I remember running around a lot — something I don’t do any more — and being a lot more bouncy than I am now. I remember being given a lot of attention from both my parents, and my inquisitive nature was never quashed. There’s a lot to be said for gentle guidance and the continual feeding of a young, impressionable mind.

I don’t propose to know more about parenting than anyone else — God knows I’ve not done it myself yet — but bringing up a child ‘correctly’ must be an interesting balancing act, if ‘correctly’ can even be defined (something to do with societal norms, I guess). I have friends that were brought up by completely claustrophobia-inducing and burgeoning parents, and I also have friends that might as well not had parents. Obviously I can’t be objective, as I’m the one in the middle, but I definitely think I’m the most ‘balanced’ of any of my friends.

It reminds me of my first week at university — do you know who partied the hardest, drunkenly slept with the most people and got horrendously sick? The kids that came from very strict backgrounds.

Temperance is the way forward!

Oh, just to tie it all up… Despite the hair, I do look a lot cuter in the picture than the modern-day hairy Sebastian, right? You can even see my dimple! Nice comments might encourage me to do a ‘Sebastian as a teenager’ entry (still sporting the Beatles bowl-cut!! Thank you, mother).

I also want to add that I still own the Transformer that you can see at the bottom of the photo… it’s on a shelf behind me, looking very dirty, dusty and worse for wear, but still very much my favourite toy.

Finally I’ve got around to banging out the details of the competition. Sorry about the delay! You can see the fruit of my labour across the top of every page though! Please let me know if it doesn’t work, and if so, which browser you’re using. If you’re reading this in Google Reader or something, do me a favour and click through to my blog — it’s quite pretty, really!

Anyway, the competition — to start with, here’s the prize:

I, Sebastian, will ingeniously craft some kind of avatar (or logo), for your use online. The interpretation of your name and/or blog used to create said avatar (or logo) is left to my sole discretion. In all honesty, it might be completely awful but there’s an outside chance that it might be really awesome**.

This competition is open to anyone but I am the only person that will be choosing the winner. Upon choosing the winner, I will do my best to dig around your blog/online presence and create a photo (or some kind of digital amalgam) that I think embodies the soul and spirit of you.

The prize will be awarded to you in the form of a high-quality image that you can use freely, as long as the attribution to me is preserved. Always wanted a funky new header image for your blog? Or a BODACIOUS avatar to use on forums or when commenting on other blogs?! This is your chance! Perhaps your only chance! (Unless it goes really well, then I might do it again)

So what’s the competition? How do I win?

(You can tell I haven’t really thought this through…)

You must, in 100 words or less, tell me what you feel most passionately about.

It can be something you love, or perhaps something you hate, fear or abhor. You can leave it in a comment, or you can send it privately.

I’m not really going to penalise you if you use more than 100 words (but I do love being arbitrary; it’ll force you to use long words like a German!), but try to be short and punchy — everyone likes short and punchy. The contest will end when I feel like it; probably in a week or two, depending on how many entrants there are. You have plenty of time to choose those 100 perfect words that best describe your most passionate feeling!

Good luck to all that enter! And good luck to me…

** There’s a real chance that I’m going to totally fail, but I will try my very best to make something you’d be happy to use publically.

Okay, I’m exaggerating slightly, but in my head it’s a lovely, golden trophy. With gilded bits, and encrusted rubies. And a blank plate at the bottom with just my name on it, because I’m the first — and last — to wield such a virtual machination.

Yesterday I was linked to by WoWInsider — the ‘definitive’ World of Warcraft news source. It’s basically a huge collection of journalists that write about every aspect of WoW. One of them, Jennie Lees, wrote a lovely little article about gamer psychology, and linked to my own articles on the topic. She went a lot deeper than I, looking at the Myers-Briggs scale, and even Helen Fisher’s work on brain chemistry.

Anyway, it means that, today at least, I can enjoy a brief moment of Internet celebrity. I recorded an audio blog to commemorate this moment, which hopefully isn’t the high point of my career — but who knows!

 
(If you can’t see the player, you’ll have to visit my blog)

Tomorrow, however, life will no doubt slip back into normality. I’ll have to wash my body myself and make my own meals. I should enjoy this moment while I can!

Where did I put that bag of cocaine and those escort call cards…

I finally caved: a video blog is coming.

I have a basic concept — a concept that embraces my complete apathy when it comes to shaving, and expands upon it, hopefully in a funny fashion.

Hopefully the first little bit will be up later today. It’ll be episodic, like the Penis Monologues (which are hilariously now #2 on Google!). There might be a bit of an over-arching story this time around too, so stay tuned!

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.

For those of you that don’t watch enough Simpsons (and you’d be forgiven for stopping around Season 10!), or simply want the source of one my favourite phrases, take a look at this:

Right, with the derivation out of the way (I love etymology), I can now continue: my sex drive has re-emerged. Banished to a dark pit of deprived despair a couple of years ago he has finally reared his angry, chauvinistic head; and he’s eager to catch up on everything he’s missed — he wants to find out what’s been hap’nin in the world of coitus in specific, and penetration in general.

I think my re-kindled interest in sex has a lot to do with my current infatuation with 60s and 70s Motown and Disco music. It’s so sappy in places; love, sex, devotion, spiritual empathy: it’s all there in droves. I have no idea if they were really happy, but they sure paint a picture of an eternal, lush, golden summer. Listen to some Isley Brothers, or Diana Ross & The Supremes, and you’ll quickly know what I mean.

I guess the infinite energy pumped out from their their music, plus the affections (and the rather explicit situations my vivid imagination has recently put me in) of a certain cute girl were enough to stoke the proverbial fire of passion and lust.

I’m literally bubbling over with affection now. If you allow me a moment of crudeness, I simply can’t wait to stick it in something.

Perhaps more interesting than the return of my sex drive is the question that most red-blooded males are no doubt asking right around now: Where did your sex drive go?!

It’s a good question, one I think I can answer. Having once been the ‘5 times a day’ guy at university (my poor girlfriend — the morning-after walk into university was always funny), and recently ‘once every 6 months if I’m lucky’ I’ve seen both sides of the spectrum: Raging, unabated erections versus long, cold winters of discontent with nary a bulge to be seen.

Where did it all go wrong? Well, after my relationship at university I certainly needed a break. I like the company of others, but I certainly prefer spending time alone. I do tend to grow bored of all but the most interesting people (that’s a topic for another day), so it was nice to finally get away from university and spend some ‘quality time’ with myself. Obviously though, sitting on my own in my room or outside on the grass reading a book isn’t really conducive to meeting a girl and having wild, passionate sex.

Then there was the gaming. The long, never ending hours of gaming. From sunrise to sunset, gaming. I’m not sure if there’s a medical answer to this one, but I certainly felt less alive. For the longest time it was all about my ‘gaming essentials’ — my eyes, my hands, and my quick thinking — I’d all but forgotten about my meaty lovestick. And so it continued, for 18 months, until The American came back into my life.

I don’t want to re-hash the story too much (I kind of need to wait for my memoirs before I ‘dish the dirty’ on this one), but let’s just say that my senses were fully revitalised when she waltzed back onto the scene, into my arms, and then into my bed. During this time, I managed to play video games and maintain an erection — surely I’d just hit the motherlode?!

It wasn’t to be, though. As quickly as she had reappeared, she disappeared again. As did my throbbing purple-headed Indian. Poof. Like Leviathan sinking back into the deep, dark expanse of my sexless soul.

It was such a system shock, losing the girl that I’d chased for so long. That was about 18 months ago though and today I am happy to say it seems I’ve finally found the ability to create, flesh out and indulge in lustful thoughts again. Watch out, ladies!

Goodbye celibacy; hello sexual intimacy, how I missed thee.