Movement

I've decided to move the blog from blogspot.com to wordpress.com with a slight change of name. From 'The Old Name Was Shit' it is now 'The Last Name Was Shit' reflected in it's changed address.

www.thelastnamewasshit.wordpress.com is where you can find the new blog, all the posts have been imported.

For nostalgia's sake I will not delete this blog. My reasons for moving are that more can be done with a wordpress blog.

Feel free to follow the same old shit but just from a different location :)

JPH x

Too long.....too uninteresting

Yet again it's been ages since I have written a post and to the zero people who read this I apologise. For the past few months not much has happened. I've met some new friends which is always a bonus, went to see the funky motherfuckers Shalamar at Indigo2, which was splendid and now I'm doing some reading for tomorrows 'Empire' lecture.

Turning 21 yesterday was strange in it's absence of any strange feeling about it. It came and it went. Although you get the customary people asking 'how does it feel'. Well Gladys, it's basically same shit different day so forgive me if I don't have a life-changing experience or epiphany just because I've been on the planet for 21 years. It's not even a numerical milestone. It's an odd number in the middle of a decade. However, as someone pointed out to me, I can now legally drink in America. That's like telling a dog in Britain that a Dingo in Australia has learned to play the saxophone...it makes no fucking difference to that dog in Britain's life, unless he actually likes jazz. I have enough faith in the canine community to conclude that on the whole they don't like instrumental masturbation no more than some idiotic human beings do.

Joined the Labour Party a couple of days ago, just to see what it's like. Well, I wasn't gonna join those BASTARD Conservatives was I? Doctor Who was great and now I've lost the will to sum up some of the last 2-3 months in one post so bye.

JPH

Fair Enough....It's Been a While

It's been a while yes, but if I wanted to wax lyrical about my uninteresting life to make myself look deep I'd be other bloggers.

More later

JPH

A Summer Worth Happening

It's coming closer to the end of the Summer Holiday. It has been one of the most stressful, depressing, unproductive and boring periods of my life. I like to think it was worth it. For one now I know that however much I try to help people, if they don't listen, there's no point. Also that 95% of the people I make jolly with during Uni are two-faced children who haven't grown up, that as long as women have a drink they're happy, that there really is no bounds on how low people are willing to go and how disgraceful the deeds are of some people who's motivation is revenge or selfishness.

These experiences have however been productive, as now I know how to conduct myself, who to trust, who not to bother with, who the dead-wood is and who I will be friends with for a long time after University. I still haven' t developed a mechanism to drift away from people who I don't want in my life anymore or didn't even want there in the first place, but that will come in time.

Anyway...let's lighten this post up.......erm.........*cough* well ok, there's nothing been worth talking about or remotely good that's happened recently worth mentioning.

JPH

TV Mag

Every Saturday I have an age old routine. Get up, have a fag, go downstairs, read the TV Mag. I've been doing this for ages, yet, somewhat surprisingly it's the first time I've ever clocked on to how pathetic the people writing in to the letters page are:

'Dad's too bad:

When is Hollyoaks going to give bad boy Ste a shot at being a dad? The poor guy's ex Amy left him holding baby Lucas - and then two strangers totally took over! I think Ste has been trying really hard compared to some dads.

Laura Henderson, Ferryden, Montrose'

O.k. so she's from Scotland...can't have much else to do...

'Saluting Susan:

I think Susan in Neighbours is fantastic for offering to be a surrogate mother for her daughter Libby. She is such a good person for trying to help. However, I understand Karl's worries. I hope he can come to terms with it because it is what Susan wants to do.

Jess Barnes, Bristol'

IT'S NOT FUCKING REAL!! YOU SAD, BORED, LONELY AND STUNNINGLY FUCKING RETARDED STUPID POND LIFE CUNTS!!!

I love Eastenders, I have watched it since I was a child and hell... sometimes I do empathize with the characters as if they were real, but not once have I ever felt compelled to write in to a T.V. magazine and make it look as if the only thing working in my brain is a small chinchilla trying to press very small buttons with an immensely sizable paw. The people who write in to complain about smut and swearing aren't even half as bad as the fuckers who write letters like the ones above because at least they have some grip on reality. Do these same people think that the Teletubbies are real? That Most Haunted isn't a huge con? That tatty old arsehole Arlene Phillips actually isn't pure bone dust inside? Or that Jeremy Clarkson isn't just a right-wing anus face, who is on the contrary a philosopher, who spouts views which are not the equivalent of a dank-tuft of rectal pubic hair? Or perhaps even they believed the misapprehension that the nation didn't just skip to the sports section of the tabloids when Jade Goody was breathing her last unintelligent breaths?

I always get up on the right side of bed..

JPH

Done

It's been over a week I know. Any posts that would have been made were taken over by essays, revision, bombshell headfuck news and just plain tiredness. So now it's only a month until Uni begins and I'm looking forward to it a lot. I believe I did enough to pass the retakes and I'm just glad they're over with.

So now what to do with the month? I could do fuck all with this next month and I'd be extremely happy. I'm mentally knackered after the past week. It's fucked me in more ways than one so I'm glad now that I can be lazy, listen to Prince, eat Pizza and watch movies now, with nothing else to be done. Being lazy is good.

Sorry for the shortness of this post, I'm sure I'll procure a humourous soon but at the moment I cannot be arsed.

JPH

Reshits - Update #3

The decision has been made that Edmund Burke just really is too complicated to continue to pursue an essay question on. I'm tentatively looking at Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his concerns for freedom with the 'social contract'. This first one is only 1,500 words, so lyrical doesn't need to be overly waxed. Rousseau seems to be a lot easier to fathom, I just seemed to forget how philosophy can tie you in knots and leave you watching Eastenders forgetting what the fuck you were just working on and what the hell it's about.

Got up at twelve this morning with the taste of skunk shit in my mouth. I really must stop smoking before I go to bed. Not talking to certain people is going well, I'm remaining calmer and more stress-free as it goes everyday.

JPH

Reshits - Update #2

It's unimaginably annoying when you're supposed to be working, reading that huge textbook which talks in alien gibberish and putting together an essay that for the rest of the night, that you end up really wanting to write a script. That's always the way and discussions with Cocky Balboa have certainly whetted my appetite to write the masterpiece we've been talking about.

It's always happened that way: when I need to work, I want to write and when I have free time I can't muster up the courage, strength or motivation to create a single poem, prose, novel, novella, script, haiku, sonnet, play, screenplay or anything remotely creative. This lack of motivation which begins from the bollocks up has to end here.

Whenever we talk about this unifying idea of my creation and his contribution (which will end up to be vast I'm sure, don't worry, we will share billing) there just seems to be a real enthusiasm and drive to go out there and get it done but it always comes at times like these, where much like a dog with constipation that has a rectal dysfunction which causes it to flop out, the summer has a decency malfunction from the rear, which flops out with Uni work.

Well, it's 03:24am and I need to sleep to more drama on my ipod with the 8th Doctor. No more nightmares please. Another Reshits update tomorrow then I shouldn't wonder. God knows who I'm even addressing, no-one reads this arse-gravy anyway.

JPH

Reshits - Update #1

I have decided (wisely or unwisely) to use messrs Burke and Paine for my first resit essay and have come to the thoroughly thought out, sage, drawn out opinion they they're both wankers. Too interested in what was happening overseas they wrote long polemics based on natural law, rights, revolution. In short they had far too much time on their hands.

N.B. Just remembered that dream I had last night where I woke up screaming. I saw ***** in my bedroom doorway and started flying and twisting and turning away from h**. Really weird. I did however eat a cheese sandwich and listened to an 8th Doctor Radio Play which was quite sinister, so will blame it on that.

The plan is to bang the first essay of which I have to learn anew certain aspects of my course (due to my punctuality) by tomorrow night, then tackle the Marx and Hegel essay on Saturday (I know some of the Marx and Hegelian theory of alienation) leaving Sunday for revision and the rest of the week to fine tune the essays in case I get anything wrong. Sounds like a plan, now let's see if I can stick to it. It's going to be a long hard slog, not helped by me continually writing on this fetted piece of sparrow shit.

JPH

Reshits

That time of the year has come again where I have to pay for my lack of effort and discipline by doing parts of a course I hated doing in the first place ALL OVER AGAIN. It happened last year when I couldn't be arsed to go to an exam and didn't do two essays. I suppose I have improved since then: this year the only thing I've missed out is one essay, however, the poor quality of one of my exams and an essay which I was writing heartbroken have come back to put a crocodile clip on my testicles and are whispering in my ear: 'come on, do us again you potentially brilliant, currently slobbish arsehole'.

The worst thing about the course I'm having to atone and make up for is the fact that it's impossible to teach yourself unless you're a genius. I'm no thickie, don't get me wrong I'm fucking amazing, but what's the use of talent without hard work? I know all that 'dogged, hard-work with plentiful teaspoons of discipline' lifestyle would benefit me highly and stop me dreaming so that I could actually live my potential. It just takes a bit too much effort to implement.

So hello again: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Mill, Hegel, Kant, Marx, Gramsci, Rawls, Nozick and Sandel. You may not recognise me chaps, I've heard of you but couldn't be bothered to introduce myself. My lecturer wanted to but I decided he was a dusty prick with a bad taste in jumpers who was also cannily reminiscent of Ted Danson as the Vicar in Three Men and a Little Lady. You've never heard of that? I recommend you watch it, it's quite funny with a solid 80's soundtrack including 'Waiting For a Star To Fall' by Boy Meets Girl.

In case you didn't realise, the whole time I was writing this spontaneous tropical current of dirge I should have been writing essays.....ahh well.

JPH

P.S. Philosophers may not like it but it's a fantastic song -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxlAK8oKgdE&feature=related

Greatest Albums- I'm that bored....

#1 Prince and The Revolution - Purple Rain
Released: June 25th 1984

1. Let's Go Crazy 10/10
2. Take Me With U 8/10

3. The Beautiful Ones 9/10

4. Computer Blue 7/10
5. Darling Nikki 9/10
6. When Doves Cry 10/10
7. I Would Die 4 U 10/10
8. Baby, I'm A Star 9/10
9. Purple Rain 11/10

Pint-sized perv Prince is sometimes unfairly put out in Michael Jackson's shadow. Of course, in terms of physical stature this happens with everyone in terms of Prince but musically I find it very hard to go along with 'Thriller is the most seminal and greatest album in recorded history'. Don't get me wrong, I love Thriller, it was an unbelievable achievement in 1982 and in the horrible music industry that we have now, it's even more of one. In an album now you get 4 decent songs and up to 10 filler tracks, all poor and hardly noteworthy by white and black acts. The whites are in love with their guitars and tales of 'real life' with tight black jeans and an appalling sense of fashion. With the black people it's delusions of grandeur taken a step further, many believing they are Michael Jackson reincarnate or simply those who came from a rough background and won't stop speaking fast over music because of it.

Michael Jackson made an album of NO FILLER in....Thriller, however, a couple of tracks like Baby Be Mine and even Thriller itself seemed out of place. Prince took it further two years later, when he made an album of NO FILLER and it sounded COMPLETE. There was no filler tracks and everything melded together. That's why Purple Rain is the best album I've ever heard. It certainly isn't as popular as Thriller or even Bad but in my opinion it's a greater achievement.

The songs display Prince's song-writing and composing ability more than any others. The lyrics, written entirely by Prince and more grounded in experience than any of his pop contemporaries are accompanied by experimental pop music, which shifts the gears and genres so many times that although the songs are different entities, they are all bound by the same threads and backbones. Darling Nikki gained the album a first: the Parental Advisory message which we see daubed on so many albums and singles now all spawned from Prince's cheeky (some would say sensual) tale about a sexual encounter with a nyphomaniac in a hotel, who the protagonist saw 'masturbating with a magazine'. Mentions of sex toys further compounded the outrage of the simple, head-scratching church going Americans.

One of the other points of the album is that it's purely enjoyable, there is not a track that you can't dance or cry to, it's just a masterpiece of accessability just like Thriller but without the duff track that a 'masterpiece' usually contains. Computer Blue is the weakest track on the album but by no means is it duff. It's a straightfoward dance number...fuck knows what it's about but that doesn't seem to matter because it fits into the album so well. Let's Go Crazy and I Would Die 4 U are joyous. The first is a song that everyone will dance to because the song simply compels it and the second a lovely...love song which is just as dancable, yet equally rousing and easy to sit and listen to.

The Beautiful Ones is a gorgeous (must stop using this word) love ballad of heartbreak and yearning for a lost love and Take Me With U is a nice, fresh sounding duet which has an ability to make me smile no matter what. Prince sounds demonic and warning in When Doves Cry, a self-confession of fault and flaws sung to the most experimental music on the album, it still sounds fresh now. Baby, I'm Star effortlessly inflames the sense of potential in all of us and confidently breezes through to the last track which is by far the most atmospheric, beautiful and emotional rock song ever written.

Purple Rain feels like sadness and awe at the same time. It's 8 mins 42 seconds of genuis from start to finish. Every note of music has been poured out with honesty and emotion and denotes further Prince's genuis and mastery in flexing his genre-changing muscles (however small they are). The string arrangement is beautiful and Prince, who's vocals i've briefly touched upon, has a pained, howling voice in the end which ecaspulates acceptance, resignation but despair. The work of his backing group The Revolution are brilliant, but that work is all orchestrated by and fitted around the great voice of Prince himself who was and is a fucking star.

The album - soundtrack to the eponymous cult film starring Prince - won an Oscar for Best Original Song Score, stayed at the top of the Billboard 100 for 24 weeks and is certified 13x Platinum as of 1996 achieving 13 million sales. Hey, it may not be as much as Thriller, Bad or even Dangerous, but in terms of quality it's at least on a par with and in my opinion, better than those 3 MJ albums. Purple Rain shows how untouchable Prince is to copycats these days, none sound like him, none look like him. It's simply an important album and a gift from heaven (as Prince may put it).

I suppose I have to mention the film, which I love. It can help those who are finding the songs hard to understand (idiots) to get them in the films framework. For When Doves Cry the comparisions to the singer's parents can be understood with the Kid's parents in the film. Morris Day and the Time are also in the film...which makes it fucking brilliant..but I really could go on about it all day so I'll stop now.

Unfortunately and understandably Purple Rain's 25th anniversary was overshadowed by Michael Jackson's death on the same day. Fake death as a ploy? We can wish. However, just like Thriller this album will stand the test of time and when the unfortunate day comes that Prince pops his 6 inch heels the last star will have died and the music industry will be an even more desolate place, with no messiah to save it.

JPH

P.S. I know I must have mentioned the words 'album' and 'song' many times but fuck it.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master,
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Fucking Hell

It's been a while since I last posted. Mainly I've been doing nothing with my time except for procrastinating, worrying, ignoring and laughing. Well, the blogging community has it's share of poor, meaningless blogs so it's about time I returned to my duty to balance the decent enough with the shit.

There is a lot of humbuggery going on in my life at the moment. The time I'm willing to have for people is slowly dwindling and I'm getting annoyed at even the slightest things. A lot of it is just me being honest. The way people talk, what they say and what they do is digging away at me. I used to be such a supposedly carefree character, now I'm an honest cunt. I'm only interested in maintaining friendships with a small handful of people and they know who they are...the people who have doubts about whether it's them aren't on my menu.

You see, there's an honest bit of blogging, not mixed up with created situations just to give the impression that I have something to say when I don't.

From the garbage of a summer I've had I can now come to several conclusions:

- Do not drunkenly insult females
- Red Dwarf before bed is a sensational idea
- Next time bunking a train, when caught, give fake name and address
- Do not spend THAT much money
- Do not be pressured into doing things when you don't want to do them
- Do not go to gigs when you're poor
- Pall Mall are VALUE for money
- Do not bring national pride into question
- Honesty IS the best policy
- Stop suffering fools

They're the only things I'll be taking away from this shitty summer. I have to start revision for resits on Monday, loans come in September 28th. Those are the most important things happening in the next 2 months.

Until next time

JPH

History Lesson I

As I sit on my overused computer chair, smoking with two cups of tea and numerous DVDs scattered about the place I hear the shrill cries of 'what does your blog name mean'? A clever person would have deduced that the use of 'doth' makes it a reference to the past, perhaps 14th-16th century? Well, you surprise me with your intelligence because those decades encompass the time that a very famous man penned the line 'some say youth doth rule me'.

With further skills of deduction one could perhaps deduce that this man had defiance in him in his youth, perhaps something that people thought his young and tender years couldn't handle? Maybe a point to prove.

I highly doubt you came to these conclusions but so rare is good conversation these days the only way it can be achieved is either with a small group of people or in this instance myself. (Maybe too much pretension there).

The man in question is serial shagger, ginger pubed, fat bastard and overall tyrant Henry VIII, who penned the lyric in this poem:

Though some say that youth rules me,
I trust in age to tarry.
God and my right, and my duty,
From them shall I never vary,
Though some say that youth rules me.

I pray you all that aged be
How well did you your youth carry?
I think some worse of each degree.
Therein a wager lay dare I,
Though some say that youth rules me.

Pastimes of youth some time among
None can say but necessary.
I hurt no man, I do no wrong,
I love true where I did marry,
Though some say that youth rules me.

Then soon discuss that hence we must
Pray we to God and Saint Mary
That all amend, and here an end.
Thus says the King, the eighth Harry,
Though some say that youth rules me.

He really was an arsehole in his later years. He turned from a young, handsome, ambitious and graceful King into a tyrant, who, after one domestic would play tennis and feverishly masturbate over a roasted pig on a plate while two of his wives severed heads were used as sex toys by executioners. Of course, this is a well established point of view. It makes it easy to hate a historical figure if you view that figure in only one dimension. The 'sexy' U.S. programme 'The Tudors' would have the viewing public believe that 'Harry', as his friends and interloping cocksuckers would call him, was a very handsome 30 year old with not an inch of fat. The fact that he would be over 40 when the series began and already a fat fuck seems to have been ignored. I suspect this is for the benefit of Americans, who don't have a history themselves and feel it's meritorious and beneficial to take a whole legion of artistic license with ours.

The truth is, at first Henry was a kind, noble King, somewhat over-conscious of fulfilling and carrying on his father's legacy. It also seems he was incapable of being told 'no' after the demise of Sam Neill- sorry, Cardinal Wolsey, the last man who could influence Henry.

Henry wasn't married 6 times as the popular history would have us believe either. He had 3 marriages that legally stood. Henry is of course one of the most influential monarchs who ever lived. He created the Anglican Church, was the first to make Catholicism seem a rotten, shit infested thing and wasn't really that bad. He just wanted to be Mufasa and needed a Simba to make this life-long dream a reality. If The Tudors show him watching the Lion King I highly doubt it would make the lack of historical fact in the show any fucking worse.

That post was shit but I was bored, so there.

JPH

I Got a 'B' For Being Spectacular

I was recently looking over my vast collection of paper earlier on and I found something that really took me back to those happy, heady days of school. The great days where football was played on concrete daily, when you could throw an apple at a teacher and scurry away with no-one grassing you up. Those were the great days of my life. It seems life has been a downhill slump ever since.

What I found was a short story I wrote in year 10 for English. I remember at the time I was none too impressed with Mr Gunningham for giving me a 'B' for it. By my early standards it was wildly imaginative and actually....if I may say so, quite brilliant.

It was a story about a frog, imaginatively named after those 10p chocolate bars called 'Freddo' and set in the backdrop of an inter-species war between land and flying animals in a back garden in Kensington. Freddo was an assassin frog employed by the 'Al Capone' of the garden 'Sparrow', who was profiting from the war by selling the services of his mercenaries who were composed of bees (of which Sparrow owned a hive, thus unlimited troops), whilst sabotaging the two warring factions war efforts to keep it forever in stalemate. I had made up nice names for all of these armies, but I can't lay my hand on the story at the moment, it's somewhere in this swamp of paper.

Anyway, Freddo tracks down and kills a gang off pacifist insects intent on stopping the war, who were to reveal the sabotages to the leaders of the two armies. This was witnessed by a young frog called Sam, but rather than let Sparrow know of this, Freddo tries to guide Samuel to safety whilst crossing the battle ground of the garden to 'Peace Turf'.

The ending was frenzied, the war got to a crucial point with dogs and cats collaborating, defections to both sides and Freddo killing Sparrow who was intent on killing Sam himself. The war eventually ended in a blood-bath with neither sides winning until the leaders made a peace treaty and the clear up action began with the maggot cleaning services put to use. The last line was one of the human owner of the house going out to sunbathe and calling back to his wife: 'get me the disinfectant, it fucking stinks out here!'

It was well written and a nice bit of imagination if I do say so myself. I will never forget the lingering anger that I had when it was given a 'B' when other kids had been writing typical horror and ghost stories and securing themselves A+s. Maybe one day I'll get the chance to actually write a full novel on it but for now I'm happy enough to appreciate it as a rare finished work, which is actually pretty damn good.

JPH

Weak of Hand

It's been nearly a week since my last post. Don't let that give you the illusion that I've been spectacularly busy because I assure you, I haven't been.

It's been a week of bi-polar proportions, a couple of good nights out amalgamated with some drops in mood occurring due to people who in their own ways make my life difficult. Whether they mean to or not is another matter.

What's been getting me to sleep recently is Red Dwarf series I-VIII, playing all the episodes of a series in one big chunk with the commentary on. Effective DVD commentary fascinates me and it only seems to work with comedy films or programmes as the people concerned are wits and funny in their own rights, so it makes for an entertaining listen.

Wednesday deserves a post in it's own right really, so I will conjure up one as soon as I can be bothered from my hat of magic tricks. Last night, or if I'm more precise, Friday night was funny and entertaining, but isn't it always when you go out with your mates for a small booze and go to a grotty, yet popular club where there seems to be an abundance of midgets?

Other than that nothing has really happened. A few new writing ideas need to be put into fruition, as like so many others I have plucked from the sky, they are still in their embryonic stages which, in rough terms, can be described as recurring thoughts accompanied with me saying: 'ooo, that would be good'.

Friday also brought to my attention that lack of aptitude I have for dancing. In February last year I went to the very same club, pissed out of my head doing Mick Jagger impressions to anyone who was willing to see me stamp one foot with my lips protruding from my face singing 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction'. At the peak of my merriment I was dancing without giving a shit what I looked like, the result of this may have looked good or bad. This time around, drinking slightly less, I couldn't dance to save my life, my legs were leaden, my hand kept on touching my neck. I believe this is the one thing that holds back my skills for rhythmic movement: what the fuck to do with my hands. I shall have to work on it, if I can find the power to give a toss....

What I might do to break this awful boredom is review the albums that have shaped my life so far individually in posts. Will give me something to do other than frequent naughty sites and eat cheese whilst watching Shakespeare: The Animated Tales which yes....I do have on DVD

Well, until next time

JPH

For the Sake of It

I would have posted at the weekend, but fate seems to have driven a wedge between me and absolutely anything interesting or inspiring as of late. A resentment springs on me as I see other people's infinitely more interesting lives but since everyone else is a cunt, the resentment soon evaporates into nothing but apathy.

Recently I've been thinking about my future: love life, job...overall destiny. I've welcomed these thoughts as someone welcomes yellow hemorrhoids, however, they are a welcome respite from the doom-laden thoughts that normally occupy my mind. I've been thinking about forcing a few ideas I've had on, first in short story form and then translating them into script form. A lot of what's in my mind idea-wise has centered around Victorian London and the events of that century. It's an era of poverty, sepia toned evil and horror that greatly interests me. It just strikes me as odd how ideas mutate.

Firstly they start off as an image, a scene or a particular sort of character that you'd like to see. The rest is all added on over sometimes an extremely long amount of time. My comedy idea has been in the offing for 4 years. First it was to mirror the great things in all the comedies that I like: the sense of male interaction and camaraderie, the absurd and the banter. As I grew older the idea matured and evolved from a Young Ones copycat to a self-sustaining comedy which grew from my experiences and surroundings. The dialogue wasn't simply insults and farce anymore, at times the situations now border onto Comedy-Drama, I'm just not too sure which route to follow. The characters become less gag-machines, more real, finding humour from everywhere, rather than interaction with those who surround them being the only basis for laughs.

I expect to be productive with my ideas before Uni begins again, or i'll continue in the cycle of being to lazy to write while having the time and wanting to write when I don't. Motivation is the key as to whether i'm going to get out of this rut.

Unmotivated

JPH

Death of Respect

This will probably sound like a - hard done by - post by a 'youth' who's continually pissed off at being plastered with same ASBO as the minority of cunts who make people's lives hard but fuck it, here it goes..

When masturbation and Indiana Jones followed by my weekly visit to Casualty left me unenamoured with bugger all to do, I found myself tempted to watch a documentary on BBC Iplayer called 'Death of Respect'. This programme sought to determine whether there was a genuine lack of respect and morality in these hustly, bustly, stabby times and if so, on whos door should the blame be left at in the shape of a flaming bag of dog shit?

At first I was expecting an hour-long diatribe on how the 'youth' of today is steadily eroding those crucial British values of respect, family, stuff-upper lip and tolerance. This was only a part of what it achieved.

At first all the show seemed to press was the lack of 'cap-doffing' when a funeral procession passes by. I think somebody failed to notify the host, who was bordering on ancient, that no fucker has a cap to doff anymore. What it didn't do, which was refreshing and somewhat surprising, was pillory today's generation as drug consuming, binge-drinking nihilists, who beat up grannies 24/7 and take a break from this arduous schedule of immorality and cuntitude to get another chav pregnant whilst keeping a firm eye on a coathanger to get rid of it.

It interestingly went further back to all the previous decades where young people have had a sense of individualism and movement. It blamed fashion, music and liberalistic ideas and it blamed the people who have given birth to children since the 60s. It blamed Thatcher, yuppies, money, drugs, secularism...in fact, it blamed all the major events in history since the 1950s as laying the foundations for this awful problem. It would have saved an hour of television had there just been a picture on a screen of a pointing finger, above it the words: 'It's all your fault you cunts!'.

I admit myself, that there are a group of young people in this country, not particulary belonging to any specific generation who don't deserve to breath the air that keeps them alive. What exactly can we do to stop this though? If I was too choose between Cameron and Brown to sort out wankers, it'd have to be Brown...at least he looks like he can fuck someone up and wasn't born with a rod up his arse.

Respect has arguably disintegrated over a long period of time, but the show made the point that an immediate solution just isn't there: if it took generations to lose the morality that we once held, then it's going to take roughly the same amount of copulating to get a fair crack at re instilling it. Sometimes I do feel a bit sick at seeing white kids act black, thinking its a particularly charming thing to be a slobbering, bent-legged retard whilst showing all the hallmarks of being a spaztick without knowing what one actually is. To be reminded of what a lovely person I am and how conscientious and responsible my friends are all I have to do is take a trip to my own secondary school at the years that followed me to see examples of individuals challenging Darwinism in their own devolved way.

It seems society and the press has put whole generations of young people in a bowl and whispered at us, showing a hating glint in it's half closed eyes 'you're fuckers and the world is shit because of you' when most of these members did, in their bygone youths, exactly the same excesses as todays 'youth' have seemingly conjured up anew. Thats my biggest problem with this.....problem: people say 'youths'....I'm a youth...does that make me a cunt too?

I'm not saying I have the answers to any problems...because I don't, but surely backing the infintely tarred entire youth into a corner is only going to induce people fighting their way out of it?

Rant over...smile :)

JPH

Catharsis

Catharsis is what I'd forgotten that blogging provides. I have tried several times to make a blog, write a diary, keep a journal but all attempts have been flawed by my sense of having to impress people, to propagate it for others entertainment. It's only been a week, yet I have discovered what I needed a blog for.

It's for all the things that are on my mind, to be able to pull them out and stick them in a post on a pretentiously titled online journal. It's for my sanity which always rocks back and forth on the sea of madness, threatening to sink. It's for the health of my hands, which simply can't keep up with whats on my mind with a pen in them and the fact that I should write everyday to hone my skills by putting a part of me out there, near hidden, but still there.

My previous exploits at blogging had imaginative titles such as 'soul pollution' but truthfully irrelevant posts to me, I mean, who wants to know that the only day of the week that has an anagram is Monday? (Dynamo if you're interested). Despite the unimportant and muchly-thought-about posts, the seeds of honesty and the self-service that blogging really is were present in smatterings...

'27th December 2007

PISS PAINS!

Let me set the scene for you:

Greenwich Theater, an average panto is on the stage directly in front of you and you have had a few beers. There is a little bit of a signal that you need to go to the toilet, but you can control it for now.

20 minutes later and you're sweating, you can feel it beating down the door. Your left leg starts twitching insanely and your suddenly gripped by the fear that if you hold on any longer your bladder will actually burst inside your body.

So you sit there and, even though you've been told to not go to the toilet during it, you get up and jump, run, all sorts of movements down to the toilet. In there you experience an out of body moment that you will remember forever as the piss is streaming out like a waterfall.

Well, I thought it was interesting'

That had to have been one of the worst experiences of my life and yet one of the funniest but my oh my have I grown up since then. I still see life as a huge batch of material ready to be turned into a joke, but I suppose now that I'm actually tasting life and am somewhat less of a sociopath I'm funnier. Subtler. My writing skills have matured, my ego has been hit from all sides...to put it simpler, since then...i've lived. Now I know It's good to have a moan, it's great to have a joke and it's even better to shove it all online, knowing that it's your little secret, which only you can choose yourself to show people, rather than something specifically designed for you to link to people hoping they'll see it and find it funny.

Well, that's my little piece on the benefits of blogging and long may my attachment to this one last. In 10 years time I hope to look back on this and see what a twat I was, but a twat who could express himself and was unashamed or perhaps unaware that he was one.

Keep Blogging (to whoever reads this)

JPH

Who's Looking Over My Shoulder?

Upon reading an article on BBC Entertainment News I felt as sick as a dog...

It appears that a 30 minute sitcom surrounding Freshers has been commissioned for BBC2. Sound familiar? Well, it did to me seeing as it's almost a carbon copy of an idea i've been working on for donkey's years. This isn't the first time this has happened either. There have been several films in the past 2 years which have strikingly similar premises and plots to ideas that have been scribbled on pieces of paper by myself.

Yes, I know that I haven't been copied, but I feel as though this has thrown down the gauntlet to me to get my skates on and write something substantial before it pops up under a different guise on mainstream television. I'm going to carry on with this idea, knowing that the premise is similar to that of 'Fresh' - the imaginatively titled behemoth of plagiarism - but that mine will be better and unique. A further positive point is that 'Fresh' has been put in a pre-watershed slot on BBC2, so I will still have the freedom to make it closer to real student life and real student banter than any pre-swearing time slot sitcom could ever be or devise.

It really is about time I got my skates on and used that 200 mph brain in my skull. It's high time all those ideas which are in the countless notebooks and pieces of paper in my shoeboxes burst out of their cardboard prisons and away from that useless gel sachet they have to keep company with. Plays, sketches, scripts, screeplays, all of them waiting to be freed from the confines that my lack of motivation provides and turned into butterflies from the cocoons of laziness, free to roam the world and to reach people.

I promise all of that will happen after Eastenders.

Regards

JPH

P.S. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8153351.stm (it looks shit from the one picture)

Stayin' Alive

Forgive me if my recent posts have been mundane, self-piteous and boring. That's just the way the stale, mouldy cookie has been crumbling recently. Hardly anyone reads this anyway so I'm pretty much talking to myself. This boring old summer is dragging on a bit isn't it? There's only so much I can take of sitting in front of my computer watching old episodes of Sooty & Co mouthing the theme tune with a cigarette in one side of my mouth and a twiglet in the other. Peeling off my computer chair due to the layers of sweat my unhealthy body produces to occassionally empty my bladder and bowels, whilst looking in the mirror to see any evidence of whether facial crabs lurk there. Waste management is indeed the highlight of my day.

It's not been a summer of great news all round. I feel like Oliver Twist with one leg who has had the misfortune of meeting Fagin's older molesterous brother, whom also has a perchant for amputee porn (Dickens missed a trick there). O.K. things aren't THAT bad: I still have my health, a roof over my head but the rut is enormous and nearly too much to get out of. Retakes have to be done in August, 3 aspects of a Politics Course to get myself worked up about are trundling their incomprehensible way towards me. I'm not big on philosophy. There's no money to do anything with, I'm even considering sticking ads up on here and getting people to come on and see my innermost thoughts all in the name of money. I have no idea what my team are getting up to and how the fuck we're going to get through a season in League One. Women are doing my head in: the lack of attractive ones, the ones who think they're attractive and the stalkerish, annoying, psychotic ones who have the capacity to ruin my day. There are the ones who are posh or from far away who think that a taste of London is to hang around with the dregs of society, the wrong sort of people, invariably putting themselves in danger. Men...I have no problem with because we have common sense, it seems the opposite sex has fallen behind.

The end of summer can't come any sooner really, the sooner I'm back at Uni, with money and work to do I'll be happy.

Oh, by the way...I'm still alive.

Still Breathing

JPH

Dead Heads and Threats...

Today has been a rather mixed bag. I have the threat of a kicking hanging over me, which is about as potent as Calpol is alcoholic, but is disconcerting nonetheless. Now I find myself trawling the net looking for a drawing of a dead Michael Jackson by a Polish journalist.

It's not a very nice drawing, it shows an emaciated bald man, eyes screwed up in different directions, a collapsed right nostril with surgical scars and burns on the scalp. It just struck me as very odd that a human being could cope with so many metamorphoses in a lifetime, but I have to remind myself that this was no ordinary human being. The Sunday newspapers have a knack of ruining my appetite.....

The kicking comes from a drunken night out with Cocky Balboa and BurT. A lesbianic, breasted ponce-girl had the nerve and audacity that her place in society permits to undertake jokes at our working-class expenses. I can't remember too much of the night, but I remember the word 'common' being thrown about and me responding with a series of drunken jibes. If sober, this would have washed over me and finished leaving me with the inevitable 'I should have said that' syndrome. However, I was fucked. So insults about lesbianism (she attended a local all-girls school, so there is logic there) and her social status ensued.....I'm sure there was something about pony fucking in there too....weak I know, but sharp wit was rendered useless by scores of Becks and pints of frothy stuff (insert sperm gag here). That was the end of it really, well, her trying to climb over a table to presumably slap me was stopped by a mutual friend.

On seeing her later that night at a bus stop I could have apologised when she said 'I didn't really like you tonight'. I intimated that I couldn't care less as I was drunk and when drunk I believe I could shove a badger up Chuck Norris' arse. So that was that.

A month passes and I hear it through the grapevine that I 'started' on her, her brother is out looking for me and knows where I live..if I'm honest near the exact location. The nature of the rumours could be from sheer hearsay or actual direct quotes, nothing could happen, something could. The former is more likely. The most disconcerting thing is that it plays on my well established paranoia. I know I'll be on my guard for the next few weeks, gauging threats in my head, being James Bond in my mind without the girls and the 60's chauvenist attitude. The threat of the sibling is an old one and one which rarely comes into fruition, but it's still not a nice thing.

I have level headed people around me telling me I have nothing to worry about and that if anything was going to happen it would have happened by now. I can see the logic, but my stomach still churns in the logic of the knowledge that I'm not a fighter..if anything I'm a bleeder. I wish a simple life without the threat - however much it lacks in potency - of a kicking.

Well, it may come to pass..it may not, I doubt it will, but if by some sheer twist of fate I do go by the way of MJ, please don't let there be a God-awful Britains Got Talent contestant singing within inches of my corpse.

Regards

JPH

How Quickly Things Change

'Dear *****,

Thought i'd write you a notes just to tell you that you're the best thing that ever happened to me and I love you with all my heart and soul.

Forever and always yours

*****

xxx'

Within my shoeboxes full of ideas and scribbles I found that written on the first page of a small blue notebook I'd forgotten all about. It can't have been more than 9 odd months ago now that it was written. Bloody hell. It shows me that nothing in life is permanent, but it also makes me decry the person who would say such things only for them to become redundant. After the events of last year, whenever I hear two people in the heartswept thralls of love, I can't help being a cynic. I never used to be like that. She turned me into that. Well, here's to first loves, everyone has to have one, everyone has to lose one. The ultimate innoculation for idealism.

JPH

These Summer Days Get To Me

These Summer days get to me,
I blink and they're gone,
I've used up all the hours,
and nothing I've done.

Just smoked more cigarettes,
stared at the screen,
my eyes go all funny,
they start to scream.

Break out
of this 'nicotine stained cage'
I think in a rage
but I don't want to.

I need motivating,
a peak to climb,
just something to aim for,
to slow down my time.

These Summer days get to me,
I think I'm not the only one
who sits inside and watches people
needing a job to be done.

JPH