Basic Essentials or Required Luxuries?

As I sat here in bed, reflecting on the series of events that had occurred over the course of the weekend, I happened to glance at the time. 7.48 am. Dusk. 12 minutes until the landlords come round. 12 minutes until they close in, the people from the other side of the veil, coming to inspect the house with the South West's senior Drugs Analysis Expert, some guy who I knew would turn up in a metallic foil jumpsuit complete with a metal detector and forensic dogs that could sniff out a single crumb of intoxicant from up to a mile away.

They said they were going to check out the loft, or cave in the walls or something. Save us some money on heating. It's ok, I wanted to say to them. We haven't even paid any bills yet. The urge to just ride it out, see how long we could go was in the air. There was no point hiding it. There was several letters from the TV licensing people threatening to come round and break the door down, handcuff us and drag us out of our beds at some god-forsaken hour when I would not even be watching the deadly Tele-visual Device. But still it remained unpaid.

So I was sat there in bed, time going weird on me, hard to keep track. I went down to tidy up some more. But the house is too far gone. Strange things went on this weekend, things you cannot just tidy away at 7.35 am on a monday morning.. What day is it? My sources tell me Tuesday but I am dubious... By the Gods, has it only been 4 days since Clarity? Reason? When you begin a serious session, even just a fat smoke, a bit of a kain, the tendency is to push it too far, see how much you can ride it out, to see if you can still maintain and continue to ingest these mind-altering and messy intoxicants whilst keeping your grip on reality, some sort of sanity and light at the end of the tunnel.. Some light to work towards and to help guide you as you crawl your way back to life and sanity again. And we had pushed it.

8.10 am. They should be here any second. Everyone else is still asleep. Locked in their coma's, their bodies doing one final drastic thing to cleanse and to heal- complete unconsciousness. Even our clean housemate is gone, out cold I presume, probably picking up on the vibes and feeling the energy forms of the house. Bad vibrations, messy chakra's. I began to roll a spliiff, perfectly aware that the land-lords would soon arrive in this no-smoking, buttoned-down Christian house, to set loose the hounds and flush us out of our drug filled dens. I didn't care. I needed this spliff. Some kind of normality to set me straight. It had been a very messy and confusing weekend. The 4 days had seemed like a lifetime, a long week. Confusing vibrations.

I only had one Rizla. Disaster. This was terrible. Here I was, in bed, and with the Lords of the Land coming over, to let themselves in, with one skin to roll this joint. No time to move and search. Was it over? Were they already here? I could hear noises.. What would they see?

Too much had happened to cover it all up. It was pointless. Inevitability. To clean up too much would have been suspicious. They would be expecting some mess, some proof of chaos. We were, after all, students. Students of the World. Give them what they expect, no more, no less, and they will draw their own conclusions, their rambling nonsensical ideas of what goes on would be satisfied, with hopefully no idea as to why the vibrations got so messy, why it deteriorated, and why there are mushroom heads and stalk on the kitchen table.

Like I said I tried to clean it up, part of me could not see and was still only half awake. Coughing and spluttering I made my way downstairs and tried to piece it all together. I needed a some chocolate milkshake, the cold calcium-enriched lactose blend would inspire clarity and soothe. Enrich the body, it was now time for the Detox session. A week of cleansing and purifying the body, flush the toxins out of the body, get a grip. Don't show them any fear. The hounds will be after you. For money, bills, rent. You name it, they will find you. But show true grit, never back down, and you will get by. They do, after all, want to break you. It inspires complacency if you give up too soon. Rather, start as you mean to go on, give nothing away, and they will not know what to do. We haven't even set up our bills, let alone paid anything. Yet they still pump this house daily with gas, running water, electricity. Basic essentials or required luxuries? The vibrations were still confusing, sounds downstairs, hard to maintain and find out what was truly going on. I need some roach.

Next to me on the cabinet, lay the last incense stick. A van. Is that them? But it was necessary. Smoke the spliff, light the stick, pass out. Hopefully I would sleep through the worst of it. But still, it worried me. How much would they see? What would they truly notice? Would they pick up on the vibrations? The wavelength of the house? Would they see the hidden evidence? The subtle tones and shades and object placement that showed signs of a massive drug binge? A powerful and intense trip that spanned this long weeked.. how much would they know?!

It started out as a simple enough Friday night. But there was something in the... That was definitely them. Car door.. noise. I only just lit the J, would I have ...time..? - Some tones in the air that said that we all wanted to get fucked. It was subtle, but the vibrations were telling us, nay warning us that it was going to get messy, we must prepare. Stockpile the drugs, you never know what you might need, when you might need it. Doorbell. Ground ZER0. ( I think they are in the house) what to do.

They are inside the house.

I put the joint out and welcomed unconsciousness. It came quickly. One last survival mechanism, body shut down. No sound, do not attract their attention. The knocking on the door continued and so did the doorbell, disturbing the vibrations in the house- nobody stirred, I was losing consciousness fast and had no intentions of moving.. then they were inside the house. It was out of my hands.. They would see it all for what it was.. It was over..

12.01pm... The people are inside the loft. For now. So tempting to lock them in there, cutting off their escape route and leaving them stranded.. They only want to survey us anyway. They did that once, came round to go into the loft but never came down. After a while we assumed they'd gone and sparked a joint. They probably left in the night, after they had surveyed us and reported us to the appropriate authorities. But we hadn't done anything wrong, not yet.

Not sure what to do. Still on another wavelength, vibrations chilled and thoughtful. Who knows what the day will bring? Full of potential, but no skins it seems. Means a trip to the shop is inevitable. But not quite ready to leave the house yet. I must find a RiZLA []

Boxes and Angles

So I guess my first blog post wasn't really much of an introduction, or much of anything really. Just a rant of some form, about the state of affairs and how we seem to be going downhill when we should really be evolving.

Ah dear. Well I have been writing some stories of late, some twisted macabre and some slightly more sane. It is mostly a form of release, a creative outlet, and there are few things that compare to sitting down and freely writing, smoking heavily. I'll post some up I reckon.

Life seems very strange when you don't have money. I myself am skint at the moment and let me tell you, the world is a different place. Days do seem to blend together and it's funny because the prominent advertisements and shops don't really work when you don't have money, so you are in a sense more free, less restrained. See with different I's.

Thinking outside of the box is as simple as realising oneself is inside a box. Stepping outside of the box then is a natural process.

Looking at things from different angles and then saying "fuck the angles" and looking at things as a whole affords a greater degree of interest and insight. All opinions are valid, understanding those opinions is of importance, though you do not have to be impartial to view things from an impartial viewpoint. Understanding cannot be given, it can be taught in a sense but only the self can wake itself up.

Forever, and ever.

Never negotiate with those in a position of power. They ultimately settle all scores with money, something you do not possess. The world is an easier place to them and so are never on the same wavelength as those attuned to normality. The chasing of paper and coins is the most dangerous drug in the world. Thousands are addicted, and they don't even know it.. Capitalism is the worlds biggest dealer, and thousands are dying each day from it. Drugs are illegal but money is mandatory. It's injected into your eyes when you look at an advert, or it's smoked and inhaled in the lungs. But without money, you would die. The dependency gets so bad, complete withdrawal is often fatal. Nobody helps out someone who's outside the system. The system is everything. It provides your hopes, your ambitions, how to think, the shared values and meaning to life.. whatever you want it to do, the system does it. And in the system, money is the key to everything.

Advertising and marketing has to be one of the most evil careers invented by the human race. I have no qualms with honest, sincere marketing, trying to sell a product based on it's own virtues. A product should, in essence, sell itself if it is good enough with not much effort needed by the people behind it. Merely the basic facts should be needed to prompt people to buy/use/see the product, if it is worthy. My problems with this area of the job market lies in the way marketing and advertising has evolved to become a form of brainwashing. Repetitive jingles; catchy slogans; conspicuous and deliberate use of certain colour; hidden meaning; saturation- all used to make you think that you need the product that is being advertised, or staying in your head so as to make sure that the relevant information is imprinted in your brain so that you recall it at the optimum moment. In reality, the freedom of choice is slightly removed as advertisers seek to persuade you in their own, special way, to spend money. One of the worst things about it is how adverts are everywhere you turn. On buses, buildings, TV, the internet, magazines and newspapers, shops...all 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 1/4 days a year.

Graffiti is illegal. Even the most artistic, informative, thought-provoking, intelligent piece of street art is illegal unless it is on a designated graffiti wall, for example. To write one's opinion, to exercise freedom of speech and to write, on a wall, one's feelings is illegal. And yet advertisement is allowed to saturate one's day, from the moment you step outside your house to the moment you return and turn on the TV or laptop, billboards and slogans and phrases and jingles and pop-up ads pierce your eyes, and travel down your optic nerves to be catalogued in one's memory. It is possible that even in sleep the subconscious is playing out the day, complete with the relevant adverts that you saw that day, all 300 of them. So you cannot write on a wall but advertisers are allowed to pin up huge posters and eye-catching, possibly 'humorous' billboards across the country. The individual has no choice in viewing these, at one point or another throughout the day.

I suppose my biggest issue with the job lies in the job itself. People are paid, often vast sums of money, to come up with the best ways of making people pay money. Not simply buying the product, whatever it is, but by a form of subtle brainwashing that tells people that they need the product, it will "solve all their problems", make them "happier". A lot of the messages are subtler, utilising certain shades and colours and sounds to trick you. The ideal aim of advertising would be, to persuade everyone who saw the advert that they needed to spend money on the product so that the company behind the product and those marketing it can make lots and lots of money. The more people persuaded, the more profit gained. So it is in the best interests of the advertisers to persuade as large an audience as possible. So therefore the advertisers are not going to play fair, and indeed they do not. (1)

Those in marketing have no conscience and they have no soul. As you climb the corporate ladder

you are asked to trade morals for cash, compassion for self-interest, individuality for hive-mentality,

humanity for impartiality.

Some days I really do wonder for the future. Some days it all seems so simple, and on those days I can

almost see the trivialities and wars as being immature. Because, truthfully, we are in the 21st Century, a

new millennium, and we have reached an age of vast technological advancement and monetary gain. And

yet we entered into a decade of warfare and "terrorism", mainly from the western governments utilising the

media to terrorise the people and to enforce martial law and restrict individual rights of the people, rights that

have been fought for for all of human history, in a way. It all seems so immature when you look at the bigger

picture. Whichever way we look at it, we all have to die at some point. We all have a short time, a miniscule

period of time when compared to the timescale of the universe, infinitesimal even, on this earth in order to live

out our lives. And we all have equal and valid share to this planet, as do our children and the children of all of

the nations and tribes. Therefore it is in our own interest to help others, for if everyone helped others we would

be helping ourselves.. We should be doing all we can to prevent climate change, to reduce emissions, to stop

warfare, to uphold human rights, to fight evil. But we accede our powers to those with money, as if having more

money qualifies you to rule the world. Whilst our leaders are attempting to reach a consensus on future "targets"

to reduce emissions etc., corporations such as Texaco (2) (now owned by Chevron), Shell, Nike etc, are

destroying the world, damaging third world countries and human rights, and showing their middle finger to all

those who stand by shocked and confused as to the power of these corporations and their disregard for the

planet. Money buys freedom, the freedom to do whatever is necessary to make more profit, even at the

expense of the planet. (3) It seems to me that the talks of politicians and debates are rendered futile if this

unchecked global capitalism which thrives on disaster and abuse is allowed to continue. This is what is

destroying our planet the most, wars based on profit and resources, with companies such as Halliburton (4)

making vast profits out of the war business. Extremely wealthy companies do not have morals or restrictions,

they are a vast body made up of individuals that aspire for profits, from the bottom of the ladder to the top of

the pyramid, the rich want to get richer and the poor want to get rich, when serious money is involved morals

are traded in. This is what is destroying the planet faster than anything else- corporations, banks and

organisations that are more powerful than the governments, and indeed many of the governments are in the pay

of these companies. Until this is sorted out and this disaster capitalism is unveiled for what it is, then no progress

can be made.

(1) Advertising techniques

(2) Texaco's involvement in Ecuador

(3) Companies Blacklisted

The Beginning of the End

Well it seems I have succumbed finally to the inevitability of the world of the 'blog'. A strange word, both irritably catchy and strangely alluring, it appears to successfully capture, in one syllable, the collective thoughts and ramblings of the general public. A one-syllable word that is immediate and in a sense meaningless, perhaps my thoughts and ramblings that I usually amuse myself with or spout at random intervals throughout the day. I would have liked to have started this years ago, to be perfectly honest. Many viewpoints, ideas, stories and the like have probably been forgotten over the years or sunk into my sub-conscious mind to create problems with my mental health in future years. It seems that a lot of our generation are set to rack up large psychiatrist bills in future as we stumbled out of the 90's in a daze, as the bright summer sun started to fade and the 'Real World' loomed overhead, as we all look at each other in unanimous realisation that we are unprepared for the trivialties and bureacracy of the working world. Our parents and figures came out of the 60's, 70's and 80's in much the same way, their illusions shattered and many recovering from the withdrawls of the culture of the times. And we are even more unprepared than they were. We have nothing to look forward to, an age of technology and instant communication allowing us to look at the broad history behind us and realise that it's all been done before, and age-old violence continues even into the new millennium. I heard once that we had been branded "the lost generation", the late 80's and the 90's generation. Fitting title. Many do seem lost, the failures of the past burdened on a confused people. Maybe we'll make a difference, one day. And hopefully it will not be too late.