this week during free moments, i've carnivorously devoured information to compensate for the numbing tedium of constantly revisiting the change in atmosphere between Yalta & Potsdam, or the differences between dr. faustus and the tempests final soliloquies.Finished Mcewan's Solar and feel that broadcasting my opinion on it won't amount to much as its generally conforming to that of everyone elses. Whilst it might have been an entertaining challenge for him as an author to craft such a loathsome, vapid and egotistic protagonist as Micheal Beard who sustains his repugnance for 300 pages, for the reader stuck in the company of this slothlike aging, balding, serial philanderer it is a lot less enjoyable. The general effect is roughly analogous to being hemmed in by the window seat next to such a person on a train who proceeds to declare their innermost thoughts, however superficial or unfit for public testimony, on their mobile phone to the entire carriage at great volume for the duration of their journey. Also, to again slavishly regurtigate an often cited criticism of McEwan, the research taken for the novel often appears to be stitched onto the story as an afterthought; however meticulous the authors acquired knowledge of quantum theory, and environmental physics might be the passages which exhaustively release this don't actually contribute that greatly to the plot apart from to further add to the readers growing antipathy towards Beard. Out of the McEwan i've read i found his novella Amsterdam (which similarly deals with the plight of two antiheroes caught in extensional dillema's) a lot less overwrought and much more satisfying. The partitionment of the book into three separate timeframes during the noughties did give him a vehicle for some welcome social criticism.Ultimately then Solar left me recovering from that anti-climatic hangover you are burdened with after leaving an unsatisfactory novel that is strangely absent in the case of a film or record. I think its the intimacy and commitment of a read that leaves you faintly resentful towards the writer who leeched of your time, whilst you persevered on through compelled by a sense of obligation to see through what you've begun.

No such feeling was apparent in the Godfather however which my zapper-finger remained monogamous to for the entirety of the 3 and a half hour running time. Having overcome the preliminary discomfort with what sounded to be an emphysema blighted Marlon Brando i preceded to find it gripping, funny and stylish. Its the moments of cinematic lunacy and flagrant extravagance that made it such a thrill. Such a scene in Mikey casts a fleeting glance at his newly beloved getting to grips with the steering on a voluptuous black 1930's chrysler as she laughingly skids on the gravel and he makes to go inside having being recently informed of his brothers death at the hands of a rival gang. Then, as he draws his lingering glance away the camera shifts to rest on a sheepish looking gangly youth taking a backward glance on a runaway down behind the veranda. Just as we twig it's the mob the shiny black curvature of the vehicle with its jubilant brunette inside is engulfed by an enormous explosive fireball, and before the ring of the BOOM has disappeared with unintentional pathos the shot is faded into another of a ballroom. etc etc...

Ode To Allen (first draft)

Bon voyage bonhomie

We’re bounding out from the shadow of days

sun dialled by the clink of yellow porcelain.

No more, will the fall of sand be

Ushered through by snide remarks.

Where laughter echoes,

And vendettas are ordained

On strangers

From our swelling colony

Just off the mainland

In this regency court of

Caffeine fuelled jesters entertaining

Never

More. Shall we sidle up

To

The wizened omen

That lurches behind the counter.

Here, time is idled with

Alarming precision.

Where endless hours

Have been stolen on a

Kaleidoscopic

Wurlitzer of

Talk.

People arise and are seated

In fitful bursts like the brass valves of trumpet imitation Tuesday, 20 April 2010 (or was it Thursday I forget)

Columbus’s and Walter Scott’s arrive and harbour themselves

But can’t deter us from our headfirst propulsion into the void.

On Salinger’s passing, an elegy I cannot recall,

But still his epitaphs scrolled in affected cool.

The ladies come and go, talking in acronyms.

To those excluded from the eye

(Where sunlight filters through in patches)

Its best to deride.

Shivering beyond the

Reaches of air revolving doors

Into an empty foyer

Stand hordes of taciturn civilians

Wielding pitchforks,

Casting scorn,

On the blood sport still enacted

In our cerebral coliseum.

Subterranean, to wit, (to who?)

A dank yellow habitat for

The Harringtoned Buffoon

Or perfect ping-pong,

The designated

Quarter of the rohypsters,

Pretentious Wanker’s

Bear hair (swoon),

PZ’s, non-descripters,

Our new-conscripters

And the veteran hipsters,

Soon will arrive the midday swarm,

Of plaid and caps

Whirlwind regiments of Leggings and plaid

Soaring golden legs, marching out of step

Bohemia’s lost tourists.

Furrow browed Femme fatales,

Bourgeouis conformists, Sullen

Beauties and aspiring Casanova’s

Facing in opposite directions.

Narcissus sitting, narcissus fixating!

On the quivering reflection in his mug.

All filing habitually from the mouth to the

Gullet to the stomach of Allen,

Then stewing in the broth of searing exclusivity

That haunts the confines

Of this most pedestrian café.

From the epicentre we have heard and have not disclosed

The breach of heart

and stammer of soul.

Final gasps of dropouts

With their fading 60’s rhetoric

Breath held captive as they preach,

Portraits sheltering from a torrent of strokes.

So as you search for your future in

The sediment of this drunken broth

Keep an emblem of our wasted days.

And if it all becomes too much

I’ll amble back to when

We sat out there and basked beneath cloudless sky’s

Spiders jailed in pacing round an enormous empty glass.

an ending to my autumnal coloured daydreams of life on campus

Eyes open, then rubbed , fall out of bed , walk down the stairs, roused from lethargy to see father eagerly wielding official envelope at me like he is brandishing a hand-grenade, but oh no much worse, my fate is sealed in that cardboard coffin, envelope opened with haste, father waiting with apprehension, scan through the stock response, yadda yadda yadda, third paragraph, 'unfortunately..', letter dropped, definite lunge felt as organs resume their original positions, mounting stairs , nose streaming, cranium resounding with an ominous, amplified, blood-curdling ,hoarse, war-cry of 'fuuuuuuuck'.

So i have not made it into oxford, and having soaked it up, just about, am possibly relieved. I'll admit It has bludgeoned my ever more frequent autumnal palleted day dreams, of life amongst the dreaming spires in a scarf, jacket, thesis and library loaned books clenched under armpit, corrugated coffee mug warming my other hand wearing a veneer that i could barely sustain at the open day. Have heard numerous rationales from family and friends today, and am beginning to feel incredibly guilty for the surge of relief that soared when i heard of a fellow applicants dismissal. My aunt told me of the surprisingly low level of intellect she studied amongst at cambridge, and of the oxbridge tendency to favour regurgitator's . Academic rejection however civilly phrased is still a dent, albiet temporary, to entertainment of my future prospects. Decided though prefer the egalitarian aesthetic and overall idea of studying at UCL if i don't get in there, then will have to resort to taking up bridge jumping.

Have reavulauted performance in H.A.T, perhaps radical indictment of anglican and catholic church for remaining to be overtly misogynistic , in response to a 14th century testimonial from a monasteries monk wasn't the best idea. Also bitter critique of capitalism

am currently deprogrammed,

a human pyramid collapsed under its own idiocy in the crowd at the bloc party gig in truro on thursday, breaking my fifth metatarsalin the process, so given that my house is of the tall and narrow build, i am stationed on the bottom floor sofa for the forseeable future, sharing sleeping quarters with the dog.

Being once again cast in the role of an invalid, it takes a bit of effort to prevent diving into the welcoming embrace of despondency and inertia. Given that, its probably not best that my reading material for the last week has been Kafka, the trial.

If ever a book is likely to conform the inescapable curiosity that 'the man' has secured our fate, and that we're all destined to march placcidly to our preordained execution for a crime we're not aware of having committed, it is this one. Alongside the solemn tiding's of kafka, i brushed up on my frankly abysmal art history and read Gombrich's comprehensive, if impersonal, standard 'the story of art'. although admittedly i skipped the chapters on cave paintings in a race to the rennaissance.

sadly these two wheren't in it.

From my woebegone chamber i havent just consumed highbrow material though i've watched the frankly shit haiwaain shirted crime capers of Ocean's eleven and twelve on consecutive nights. I've also prescribed daily doses of Malcom Tucker's bile and venom in the form of the thick of it boxset, as well as making a valiant effort to immerse myself in the shady world of the baltimore drug barons and narcotics squad in the wire. Its taken about 4 episodes to now truly be able to track the narrative through the dialogue, given that a) it has brought home to me how unbelievably white i am and

b) conversation is conducted at breakneck speed, something not often encountered in cornwall where speech tempo is set at a meandering 6O bpm. Alongside this i can just about withstand the journey from the sofa to the kettle, giving rise to numerous cups of drained coffee growing amongst the detritus around where i'm sleeping. I have listened to extortionate, maybe even lethal quantities of fleetwood mac this week.

The man denied an entry through the door to the law by the doorkeeper, his hope never diminishes, his light at the end of the tunnel is not extinguished until all his reserves are used up until he has exhausted all his physical stamina, obscure as Kafka is if i persist i'm sure i'll find that lesson useful.

out of the chaos will inevitably rise order which will dissipate into further chaos, until, visible upon the horizon through my rose-tinted binoculars, i shall hobble across the finishing line into the fracture clinic and have my cast removed.

24/5

A relentless injection of

Objectivity, Into hotel lobbies, airport lounges, Chinese takeaways

The restless consumer of

Headlines sits eyes drowned in the pool.

Words chase each other along the static plasma

across a famine stricken country, through the local triviality;

past the dour grey suits trying to wriggle free from an answer,

headlines take laps of the length of this screen.

The gravitas of the anchors shown

with the weight of their apathy

Neutered in their pastel blue suit, sweating under the lights,

Boredom greets you in the guise of concern,

The water sits to the left, a reminder they’re human

You wish, you could look away, but you can’t.

In every anodyne cell the world talks to no one.

Fastened to be ignored upon a faux-substance panelled wall

The place where eyes are idly hung between shifts

They’re hooked.

and drip-fed Water-Cooler topics, To wash it down, days condensed into managable chunks, remove the bones, and homogenise it.

The five-minute hate concludes

Until that’s a wrap and

the return

of a fresh packet of intransitive angles.

They return, stapled smiles,

I have not moved

yet have travelled so far,

My own grand tour

courtesy of bbc news 24

thoughts on final destination

The thought that occurred to me after having lost 85 (mercifully not even 90) minutes of my life watching the festering heap of jock decapitation ludicrosity, that was final destination 4 (IN 3D) was to wonder of how such an abomination had succeeded in dragging its ketchup-splattered comedy-mutilated corpse into my cinema? How could such a corny, unintelligible heap of insincere moralizing hero mediocrity, and chauvinistic jock 'doofus stoopidity, have even had a first draft? Let alone many alterations! The entire affair seemed to be composed of the off-cuts that failed to make the grade for any of the years higher-budgeted blockbusters, the lines t00 stale for Bay, the humor too lowbrow for tarantino. In fact if final destination 4 had a brow, it wouold probably rest somewhere near its dribble drenched chin. Any of the rudimentary cheap thrills that could be squeezed out of watching loathsome cretins suffer in all manner of innovative ways, where exhausted by the 1st films end and its evident from the opening scene here that the barrell of comedic slaughter had been well and truly scraped. Hollywoods textbook ethnic sterotyping managed too meet its pinnacle with george, the hapless reformed alcoholic security guard, who was given the prophetic slice of genius that was: 'goddamnit, i've spent all day trying to kill myseelf' before engaging in a Champagne toast 'to life' a few minutes later. The entire cast was assembled of vaguely familiar 2bit nobodies whose most memorable performance came as vomiting party extras in the later american pie films. The special effects where a dire selection of polystyrene rubble props, and budget cgi explosions which even in 3d failed to elicit the earth-shattering awe they seemed to deem themselves worthy of, such was there petrol drenched frequency. The entire farce played out like an over-budgeted health and safety, hazard awareness training video, the audience being treated to tentative glimpses of open (where is the lid???) cans of oil or petrol teetering over raging inferno's which seemed to have sprung from nowhere, it was as though for my six pounds and fifty pence i was meant to circle the fucking danger's and lapses in safety in the scene depicted !

saturday

The guests have left, so my sister me and my dad have stewed in lethargy for two days, whilst my mum was painting a diminutive posing aristo in the north. I have had a weekend off work and have failed entirely to carry out any of my lavish proposals of how to spend it. Since the Barcelona clan have gone we've allowed our smiles to fade and have each retreated to our spaces. The house has become like a colony of islands which we each inhabit braving the waters of interaction only for essentials before hot footing it back to our screens. In the aftermath of the week long invasion we have recuperated with such extremity that on saturday the most effort i exerted was to shower. Across three floors of the house shrapnel of our downtime, is strewn all over; shoes and socks deployed where gravity has left them, books upended, half drunk coffee's perched worryingly close to table edges, ruf's fag ends smoldering in glasses, wires, chargers and odors are left in our wake as we listlessly travel from room to room.