A Yorkshireman displaced

 It’s impossible to walk in the city centre without small children careening into my kneecaps at high velocity. There is no snow, just a persistent rain blowing in from the Irish Sea. The British Genetic Queuing Instinct becomes crippled in these situations, we stand confused in shops like carrier pigeons that have been dragged off course by powerful magnetic fields. Sensible queries like ”Excuse me ma’am, are you in the queue?” garner baleful looks and possible hatred. My neck retreats further into the interface of my scarf and coat. I wish I could hibernate. I wish I was a big shaggy Kodiak bear.

I wish I could say something trite about how shopping in the cold and the wet taught me a life affirming message about the true meaning of Christmas. I wish I could say that I stopped to help a homeless person and my dark calloused heart was made clean by simple goodness. That’s a lot of wishing. I didn’t do those things. I purchased some presents, possibly ones that will sit in other peoples’ dark cupboards, forgotten, maybe wasted. I got cold. I drank tea and thought about going back to Yorkshire to see my family with all their combined quirks, neuroses and flaws. I wonder how they cope when this lanky son returns with money problems and ‘relaxed’ employment prospects.    

 The weather outside is frightful and I wish I was a kodiak bear.

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I don’t generally approve of meme-spam but I don’t generally approve of X-Factor either. I do however approve of both Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen and the news that Simon Cowell is producing some soulless cover of Hallelujah makes me deeply sad.

There’s a facebook group called  Jeff Buckley for Xmas no 1.

Also if you feel so inclined you can buy the Jeff Buckley version from & digital or itunes or some such

I wouldn’t normally include commercial links in my blog but I’m making an exception just this once.

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I’ve been living out off my friends’ spare room now since last august (due to circumstances beyond my control). All my possessions reside in large plastic crates or in piles. In twenty seven years on this planet I have acquired a lot of books, various assorted and ill paired socks and other garments and some musical equipment. In the event of an epic and uncontrolled conflagration, I’m not sure what I would rescue from this pile. Frankly I’m not even sure if any of it would be worth saving. Maybe this means I have achieved a zenlike state where possesions are meaningless and fleeting. Maybe this means I’m poor. I’m not even sure of the answer myself. 

 With any luck in the next few weeks I shall be moving into a nice new flat which features leather sofas and a jacuzzi bath. Needless to say, this will a step from the accidentally nomadic to the vaguely stable. Perhaps now I will decide that my life is not, nay CANNOT be complete without an Ikea rug, matching throws and crystalware. I hope that my desire for security doesn’t come at the cost of my soul.

I’m having beans on toast again for tea tonight.

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Many words have been typed on internet forums, blogs and newfeeds about oil. It’s effect on the environment and economy. There is one thing that both green groups and rightwing think tanks always forget about in these discussions. How oil is created.

 I’ll spare you the geology 101 but most readers are probably aware that oil is created from super crushed organic material that has been compressed over millions of years*. That organic material was once alive.

 The stuff that currently resides in the petrol tank of your car or the bus you rode to work on was once a velociraptor or a giant fern in a cambrian forest or an early rodent or**…. well you get the picture. Oil seems a lot more precious when you realise you’ve been burning velociraptors to get to work doesn’t it?

* Unless you’re a creationist

** Okay it probably wasn’t actually a velociraptor or a T-Rex but I’m trying to be poetic.

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and since I happen to like Sufjan Stevens, then I’m kindly providing you with a link to his rendition of my favourite carol: The Friendly Beasts

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If you check out PCWorld’s list of lamest blogs you might have noticed that Mr Walker’s Dullest blog in the world cam in at number 6.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/153615-6/top_11_lamest_blogs.html

Actually I think Yorkshireman Displaced can be pretty dull reading at times. As well as turgid and badly written. I feel cheated out of a place in this league table. Especially since all I’m blogging about this evening is other peoples blogs. Maybe this is turning into some kind of metablog, where all I blog about are other peoples blogs like an endless hall of mirrors.

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I was pondering earlier. Specifically I was pondering the cost of information in terms of distribution, storage and accessibility. Back in Roman times, information storage was relatively expensive. Stone tablets had to be made to store the information, stonemasons were needed to carve the tablets, the average Roman citizen would not be able to read or afford such tablets. Paper cheapened the cost of information but it was really the invention of the printing press that meant that information was easily reproduced. These days, those of us who live in the majority world use google as often as tap water. 

 I think if I had to pick a human characteristic that defined us as a species it would be information storage. Chimpanzes communicate with one another but they (as far as we know) don’t record hunting grounds, neither do dolphins or wasps. To quote Cory Doctorow “Human beings build encyclopedias like termites build mounds”. This is why we blog, because blogging is the royal jelly of the internet, cultivated by worker drones living humdrum lives and quietly categorizing the world around us into something meaningful.

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A friend of mine had the tricky job of explaning remembrance day to her four year old daughter recently. This involved explaning what guns were (girls are apparently less interested in high calibre firearms at that age than boys). To quote my friend, a gun is a a machine you hold in your hands that makes pieces of metal fly towards other people at high speeds. I think my friend missed out the bit about what happens when aforementioned high speed projectiles reach those other people, because her daughter’s response was ”Why would anyone want to do that?”.

 To be honest I can’t think of an answer to that question. At least, I can’t think of an answer that would please a four year old.

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Presented as uncritically as possible.

Never let me go - Kazuo Ishiguro

Watchmen - Alan Moore

The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo

McSweeneys No. 25 (see www.mcsweeneys.net if you don’t know what it is)

I list because after breathing, categorizing things is a human being’s most basic activity. The list is the most basic form of category. I’m not going to tell you if I think any of the above are good or not as a deliberate act of postmodernist metacriticism.

 I have too many caffeine molecules in my bloodstream right now to make the slightest bit of sense. 

Good day/night, where ever you may be.

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Firstly a big “thank you” to the hard working boys at wibsite hq for their overhaul. Everything on the wibsite looks spiffy (if you only ever read my blog then check out the main site).

Yorkshireman Displaced is still ekeing out his nomadic existence in the shadowy world of his friends’ spare room. Soon though he should have some sort of bachelor pad in the bohemian part of town where he can discuss Neitzsche and drink tea until 4am without upsetting housemates or neighbours.

When I’m not describing the finer points of my existence in some sort of third person narrative I’m still trying to get my multimedia business off the ground, attempting to draft a novel as part of NaNoWriMo and office temping to pay the rent.

I’ve been writing bits of two novels actually but I don’t know which one to try and concentrate on the most. One of them is about all the things Buddha was before he was the Buddha. I don’t believe in reincarnation but I thought it could make any interesting plot device (Buddha the velociraptor anyone?). One of them is about daydreams and the places they can take you (and maps and tea and photography).

If you had a choice which book would you want to read? I’m going to write democratically depending on what you reckon.

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