Life's Remedy A Melody Floating On

So, today is my 36th birthday.

I'm 36.

I have absolutely no idea what that's meant to mean. Am I supposed to think a certain way, be doing something specific by now, act in a certain manner, earn a particular salary? What are you meant to be at 36? Is there some kind of average consensus and if there is then I don't think it's me.

I've never really been one to celebrate birthdays as the passing of time, which is why I'm always very bad at having birthday parties. I tend to see my birthdays as a more reflective day, a time to look back and see if I've learnt from the past and to look forward at where I want to be heading next. It's probably something we should do every day but a birthday's a decent enough milestone to judge things by. A whole series of orbits of the earth around the sun from the moment you first appeared on earth.

I find our fascination and loathing of aging to be most strange. And quite sad. I feel as if as a culture we're constantly trying to offset the inevitable rather than embracing the idea and then just going off and enjoying life whilst it's still there. We can't fight age and we can't fight death. To deny this is to deny nature and to deny nature is ultimately to waste all the beauty that it has to offer. And it doesn't change the fact that there is an end, somewhere down the line. So instead we spend millions trying to look younger, offset the signs of age and then cast off our elderly as if they were a plague, in doing so somehow affirming that perhaps we will be the first ones to be immortal. When one day it will be these people reaping the fears of aging that they have sown, cast off themsleves as the next generation blunders ahead into a sea of anti-wrinkle creams and hair dye.

And yet the most beautiful people I've ever seen are those who wear the signs of their life proudly, with dignity and distinction. Every line, scar, blemish, wrinkle tells the story of their life and for those who have lived lie to the fullest it is a wonder that no artist, poet, musician or film-maker has ever matched.

So here I am, 36 years on this planet. 36 years of experience that is my own and no-one elses. 36 years of tools to discover, challenges to face, changes to experience and conquer; each year that has passed and each year that is to follow the same, each one to be taken on its own merits. I hope that I will always feel this way on my birthdays each and every year I have left: looking forward to what life has to throw at me rather than retreating further from it. Because as far as the numbers go. Well they're just numbers really.

There's a SNUFF song that never ceases to plaster a smile across my face. It's maybe a little cheesy but I like it:

I catch my thoughts and I pray that love will warm your day
If life is cold and cruel, I pray love warms to you
If the seasons turn against you, the winter wind should get you down
If life is cold and cruel I pray love warms to you.



Tunes: SNUFF: Sunny Places (from the album Demmamussabebonk)

Coming Over All Tim Robbins

At the end of The Shawshank Redemption Morgan Freeman walks across the sand towards Tim Robbins who's sanding his boat. I think that what Freeman's character is thinking at that moment is: "Hot damn, we've got a boat!" And Robbins is thinking: "Thank Christ, now I have some help..."

There are, I believe, two schools of thought to the sanding of boats. There are the romantics and idealists who see it as an honourable task: the care and attention taken to the noblest of all travelling vessels in man's eternal quest to battle the greatest of the elements; the constant struggle of our ultimate destiny with total freedom. Then there is everyone else who thinks it's just nuts.

None of the first group actually own boats.

My hands are rubbed raw, everything hurts, I have splinters with splinters in. There is so much more to do it's quite terrifying.

Of course I loved every last skin flaking minute of it. I'd still be sanding now if it wasn't a) dark and b) I'm physically incapable of doing any more.

This past week at work has been what management trainers would call 'challenging'. This is possibly why they fall only a few paces above traffic wardens and third world dictators in the food chain. If I want to be challenged I'll try talking to someone in a civil manner before I've had a shower.

Tunes: Pearl Jam: Pearl Jam

Q: How Do You Make Five People Really Miserable?

A: Go with four friends to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl.

This highly unpolished lump of steaming excrement is quite possibly one of the worst films I have seen for ages. It is as Ant put it, as bad as you expected the first one to be.

Only much much worse.

Dull, unimaginiative, badly everythinged and wasting a classic character in Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow.

Two word review: utter fuck. I'd rather eat my own shit than have to endure that again.

EDIT: yeah, its Dead Man's Chest. Sorry. So incensed I couldn't even remember its name.

Saturday Evening

You know how hard it is to get a swan to pose?

Look At The Size Of That Thing

After their arduous climb the little green adventurers came to the mouth of the giant ice cave. Their jaws fell open as they saw the behemoth: a vessel from another world; a monument to ancient Gods...

I also like:

Pod Solo, Princess Pea-a and Peabacca race towards the Millenium Frozenbagofpeas on the planet Hothpoint whilst being chased by the evil Darth Broad Bean.