“What Are You To Me?” by Unkle is a soothing break halfway through the album… “So many times I’ve overflowed, so many faces come and go. I play my cards into the sun and try to work out what you are to me…”
[Stills from the "Eye For An Eye" video by Unkle]
And after much anticipation, my copy of the limited edition Unkle album fell through my letterbox. Chris tells me it’s very limited, with only 5000 available worldwide. If I ever get around to releasing a record I’m going to make darn sure that I release a limited range of say 1000 in “special limited edition, individually numbered brown paper bag packaging.” What a great idea this is, to produce things in limited quantity and thus take some insurance out on your financial future via your own work. I know for a fact that comic book artists/writers/inkers/tracers do this everytime they release a limited edition book. They’ll always keep the ones numbered between around 1-10 (because these are the most sought after and hence most valuable) and sell the rest off at prices hiked up higher than your socks on Boy Scout’s Day. When it’s my turn, I’ll be doing the same, keeping the earliest numbered ones to sell off later when I go bankrupt from the rock n’ roll lifestyle of constant partying and constant refereeing of wet t-shirt competitions. It’ll be a tough life, but somebody’s got to do it.
Right now H is going through a rough patch and I was reminded of how easy it is to dispense advice like some sort of vending machine, but how so much more difficult it is to take that advice. When a person has consumed you whole, you’re left with that pining feeling. You feel pins and needles on the underside of your heart at pressure points that cause it to become clenched. But like pins and needles, it passes. It just takes time. We had a very short exchange via SMS the other day. I’m not even sure how to help in such situations where time is the main factor, but it seems that what I do works for some, some of the time.
H: Help! I am really tempted to send him a text to ask him how he’s doing. Help me!
Me: How can I help? I can’t exactly slap some sense into you (literally) from all the way over here can I? =) Don’t send him that text. You’ll just be giving him another chance to make you unhappy.
H: Thanks! I think that worked.
And there goes another installment of her perpetual drama, which I have recently dubbed No-sex and the City. I’m totally in her corner when she’s in the ring with this bozo. I don’t want that guy to get a punch in there and get her dazed let alone knock her down for the count. Everyone knows he’s not worth her time. Even she knows that, but all bastards have that ability to make the truth seem like something not worth facing up to. They have that potent ability to cast a blindness upon their charmees, rendering them emotional myopics. Attachment is and will always be a strange thing. You can fall for someone just as easily as you can fall out with someone. After falling hard and then falling out hard, you may then begin to hate that someone, but you fall into cycles of realising that you can’t live without them and then realising that you can’t live without (hating) them. And so the wheel turns and turns and when it stops, nobody knows.
There’s a scene in Dead Poets Society when Robin Williams’ character Mr Keating asks his students to stand on top of their desks. He then asks them what they see. This was more than just an insight into the life of the vertically blessed; it was a lesson in perspectives and the importance of constantly changing the way you look at things. For this reason, I think every guy should have a good female friend and vice versa. Any guy who has good female friends would agree it’s more than just a bit of an eye-opening experience. The extreme shopping isn’t nearly as half as bad by the 5th outing and the hormonal ranting sessions are amusing most of the time.
And here’s a little known fact. Not everyone knows this, but I used to be female. Yes, it’s true. I started life as a female, but wait for it… it was only for a few weeks before the genes on my Y chromosome kicked in and decided that I will have an extra appendage right there. Developmental pathways dictated that I would be born male, but I did have that period of being female in the earlier stages of gestation, just like all the other men out there (no exceptions here, I don’t care how many nerds you can bench press or how many coaches you can tow using your teeth). Despite the fact that we all used to be women for a time, the memory of it becomes long lost over time, moreso in men of course. Once the testosterone kicks in, you’re left struggling to stop excessive bodily hair growth, resist the propensity to snarl at Alpha males and in extreme cases struggle with the urge to howl at full moons. They say men and women are from different planets and it might as well be true. Us men with our Martian ways of thinking more than seldom oppose women’s own Venusian ways of thinking and it’s great to have a friend tell you how they do things in Venus when all you know is Mars. If there were more platonic friendships between Martians and Venusians, there would be so much less heartache in the world. I think a lot of men need to be groomed emotionally and in a sweet way, like being groomed with a honey comb, to play with words. God knows that I know what it feels like to boil over and want to destroy every little thing that opposes me, whether it be an alarm clock or an ill-timed malfunctioning inkjet printer, but I try not to let the testosterone emancipate my rage and govern my actions. You know, it’s the testosterone that makes people aggressive. Be sure to point that out next time you’re having a row with your female friend/girlfriend.
Let’s take a moment to think about David Blaine. He’s been in that box for 4 weeks now and the newspapers reported that he has appeared to have gained weight over this time! I was checking the comparison photographs and it sure seemed that way! The newspaper decided to test this further by taking a urine sample from him to get it tested in a lab. And would you believe it? His pee contained high amounts of ketones, which are chemicals the body produces when experiencing starvation. So I guess if the newspapers are to be believed, he really is starving in there. The strange thing is that if he were to eat anything now, his body would just go into shock! My body does that anyway when it’s given a dose of crispy aromatic duck pancakes, but I guess when you don’t eat for so long, it’s only natural that your body slowly starts to forget how to use its digestive organs.
The stunt can’t just end with him surviving the ordeal and sashaying off to the nearest Burger King with his jacket draped over his shoulders in the style of a Jason Priestley wannabe. No. This would disappoint a lot of people, especially the hate mongers who have pelted various food groups at his perspex cage. But the trick has to end with some sort of illusion otherwise people will no longer take Blaine seriously as a magician, but typecast him as a show off. People would begin/continue to leer at him in the street and turn their noses up at him at showbiz parties where his party trick now would be to not ingest anything at that party, or the next one after that, or the one after that, etc. People would get tired of his trickery and ask him to leave. He could then catch them off guard if he heads for the door by impressively levitating over the buffet table. What an exit!
It was leaked supposedly accidentally a while ago on a radio show that Blaine’s stunt will end with him faking his death. On the last day he’ll fall ill, so a crane will lift the box he’s in over the river, but via a staged accident the box will fall into the river. They’ll be unable to find his body and believe him to be dead, but he will later emerge alive from the river. I’m not sure if this was one of the bona fide proposed finales to his stunt, or a sucker punch delivered to catch the public by surprise with a more sensational climax, such one of the following:
1. They go to release him, but over the few weeks he had managed to construct a realistic dummy of himself out of nappies and papier mache. It is then revealed he had made his escape ages ago by greasing himself up (using the copious amounts of grease he smuggled in his hair) and squeezing himself down the urine chute. All this under the cover of night.
2. Blaine starts levitating in the box. Someone goes to investigate and lifts the lid off the box and Blaine continues to float into the sky till he disappears from radar. For his own safety and the safety of aircraft, the military launch stinger missiles to bring him down.
3. They go to release him, but he pulls at his face, ripping it off to reveal that it had in fact been David Copperfield inside the box the whole time.
Either of those would be like, whoa.
