I Appear To Be Watching The X Factor.

Why am I doing this?

A bunch of boring boys just sang a boring and now it's adverts already.

Now it's attempting to make me care about someone because they used to be in a relationship and are a little overweight. She is not fat, but has probably been called fat in her lifetime, because people have a tendency to be fucking dickheads.

And now she is singing a boring song boringly too.

She looks like Edvard Munch's "The Scream" when she sings.

Apparently it was a "Massive song." Sounded boring to me. Apparently she "Sang the heck out of that song."

Okay, maybe she is a little fat, but seriously, who gives a fuck?

And now it's adverts again?! Do they have an ad break after every song now? That's gonna get real fucking annoying.

I was on the loo. Who's this guy? In the rehearsal clips he looked like a cross between Matt Cardle and Chad Valley. Now he looks odd. And he is singing a boring song in a boring way. Is it boring week on The X Factor this week, or is every week boring week?

I don't know, I haven't seen any of this series. I've been avoiding it. Why am I watching this?

Oh God, he just did something really horrible with his lips that made me feel a little bit sick.

Apparently he's in a league of his own. I agree, if that league is a league of people who've made me feel physical ill purely by the power of lip quivers. Then he is definitely in a league of his own.

Why would you want to be in a league of your own? Surely that would be defeating the point of being in a league in the first place. Also, if you're in a league of your own, then technically it can't be a league, surely.

Wow! No advert break!

Who's this girl? She looks Irish. Is she Irish? She sounds Irish too. I think she's Irish.

Oh, and now we have a sob story. Yeah, go on X Factor, exploit this girls misery, why don't you?

She has a very odd singing voice. She sounds like a cross between a very lonely girl and an Icelandic wood imp. A bit like a childish version of Björk without any of Björk's vocal power.

The one out of N-Dubz just said one of the most trite things I think I've ever heard in my life.

Gary Barlow just sounded really creepy, like he's a teacher trying to fuck one of his pupils.

More adverts.

I stated cooking food and have come back to find a boy who looks like a cross between a Thundercat and a member of The Horrors singing very badly.

This is truly fucking horrible. I'm going back to the kitchen.

Back briefly. Oh, is this guy this year comedy entry? Okay, thing about Jedward and Wagner was that they were fun. This guy's just shit. It's kind of embarrassing.

Back now. Adverts. Did I miss them all doing that "Oooh, ha ha, I don't quite know how to react to the comedy act!" thing? I bet it was HILARIOUS.

OH MY GOD! STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT! I DON'T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU! HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE? PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE!

Oh no, sorry, just the next singer. Thought some really creepy guy had broken into my flat.

Mate, if I could see my heart beating thru my chest, I'd be straight on the phone to NHS Direct rather than singing some slushy love shite about it.

*Enter generic judge comments here. Same things all tv judges have been saying for years.*

I'm sorry, but he looks so fucking creepy.

(Dermot, this guy isn't going to understand a Hades reference. He looks like he barely understands his own underwear.)

Girl band. Let me guess, everyone hates them, right?

Apparently, yeah.

It would help if they didn't look like total idiots.

Oooh, graffiti. Is this going to be "Edgy"?

No.

But they're not bad actually.

Oh. They just got to the chorus. Oh dear.

Yeah, this lot will not be bucking the "No-one likes the girl bands" trend.

The judges don't agree with me.

Oh God, please stop with the clichés, judges.

Adverts.

OH LOOK, MEN CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO COOK, HA HA HA.

(Actually, I am pretty lazy when it comes to cooking, so I myself do just reinforce this stereotype and am therefore in no real position to complain.)

WOAH, WHO IS THIS CRAZY CHICK? SHE IS MENTAL.

That's what I'm supposed to think about her, right?

Right.

OH MY GOD, SHE'S, LIKE, REALLY UNIQUE AND SHIT.

To be fair though, she can actually sing. She is clearly a better singer than any of the others.

Okay, there are more to come but I've had enough of this now. I'm going to the pub. I'm going to get drunk.

Bye bye X Factor.

National Poetry Day, Tuesday 6th October 2011.

Yes, I lied. This post isn't going to be the one I said I would write in my last post, because, well, just because. Instead, for my 500th Potato Farm post (yes, that's right, 500), I'm going to write a little bit about my experiences of National Poetry Day yesterday. I'll try to keep it brief, because, as I said in an intro to a poetry performance I did recently, who likes poetry? No-one likes poetry.

("My experiences" makes me sound like such a tosser, but I couldn't think how to word it better.)

Well, firstly I suppose it started with me writing some drafts in Tate Modern as I was waiting for everything at the Southbank Centre to kick off.

Actually, no. The day kicked off with me walking down a street called The Cut and seeing a man buying a doner kebab at about 9.30am, followed a couple of minutes later by someone in Prét A Manger feeling my hand and saying "Wow... You have a cold heart." (Yes, she definitely did say heart, not hand.) But after that I suppose it started with me writing some drafts in Tate Modern as I was waiting for everything at the Southbank Centre to kick off.

I like Tate Modern. I didn't just write stuff there, I had a look round first obviously. Tate Modern has one of my favourite paintings in it, Picasso's "Seated Nude."

I'm one of those people who likes art but knows cock all about it, so it's probably due to a lack of imagination that I always end up going to Tate Modern. Also, that thing that makes people tend to eat the same thing when you eat out at or get takeaway from a certain place regularly. That "Well, I know I like that, so I'll just have that again," feeling. I suppose that's covered in the phrase "Lack of imagination" really, isn't it.

So, yes. Worked on some poems of my own, then went to Southbank Centre for 1pm to see Michael Rosen kick things off, as the first section was aimed more at children (though there were a fair few adults there too, not just me). Michael Rosen, for those who don't know, used to be the Children's Laureate, and it's easy to see why. He is extremely good at performing to and engaging children. It helps that his poems are very funny too.

Anyway, I don't want this to turn into some sort of review. But there were four names I did note in my phone, of poets I hadn't seen/read before who I thought were good.

Glyn Maxwell:- Oh, that's bad. I can't remember Glyn Maxwell now, but I must've thought he was good, otherwise I wouldn't have made a note of his name (and no, I wouldn't have made a note of him because I didn't like him. I saw a poet who I didn't like, whose poems were pretty much all about the same thing and were delivered in a really dull durr-durr-durr-durr-durr manner, and I didn't make a note of his name, so there).

Catherine Labiran:- Now, I do remember this woman. She was introduced as a new, upcoming young London poet, and I remember thinking when she started her first poem "Oh God, she's just going to sound tediously like about 90% of all other modern London poets, isn't she?" BUT, after the set up of the first four lines, she turned the poem on it's head and was really, really good and didn't fall into the boring traps of so many other London poets. She actually had something really interesting to say about women's perception of themselves and said it in a really engaging way.

(Didn't I say I didn't want this to be a "review"? I guess sometimes it can't be helped.)

I had a similar feeling about Joelle Taylor when she started. That of "Oh God, here's yet another joyless social commentary. Quick, where's the knife to cut my ears off, coz I don't think I can stand yet another droning London poem." I mean, if I were from London this may be interesting, but I'm not so it's kind of like when you have friends who are younger than you who say the same things that you were saying years ago as if they're new and insightful when in fact what they don't realise, and what you didn't realise when you were that age and saying them, is that it's just the same old rehashed, clichéd annoying arse that everyone's been saying for years and years and no, it really isn't interesting to someone who has "been there and done that" as it were. BUT, then about halfway through her first poem, she also managed to start saying something genuinely interesting and in enough of a different way to make you think, "Oh, okay. Yeah, that IS shit. I'm with you now."

The last name I wrote down was Jo Bell. Jo Bell is a well known name in "The poetry world" but I had never read any of her work before. I definitely will be now though, as she was absolutely brilliant.

Rounding things off were three poets I am already a fan of, who were all great. Jo Shapcott, Jackie Kay and Simon Armitage.

Jo Shapcott was a "Consumate professional" as they say (I must admit that I don't entirely know what that means, but it feels appropriate to use it here), delivering her poems flawlessly, but without any sense of perfectionism. It was more that she seemed to be really enjoying being on stage in front of us, which was nice.

Likewise, Jackie Kay seemed to be having the time of her life. She was hilarious. Really fun delivery of her poems and genuinely funny banter in between. Looked like she wasn't even trying. My highlight of the day, for sure.

Simon Armitage by contrast, very dry, but then that's what you've got to expect from him and you either like it or you don't (NOW who's saying the same things that have been going round for years and years, Axl, HMMMMM?). I know people who don't. I do, and I enjoyed him.

The only bad thing was that the Poetry Takeaway was there and EVERY time I walked past there was a long queue, so I didn't get a poem, which was annoying as John Osbourne was on the stall yesterday and I think he's brilliant. I really wanted a poem by him.

Really nice to see a unique and such a good idea as that taking off though. The Poetry Takeaway really is a very cool thing.

AND seeing as it was a Thursday, what better way than to finish off the day than by going to The Roebuck pub in Borough, for my favourite poetry night, "Bang Said The Gun."

This was the third time I've been and I've loved it every time. It is the most fun and atmospheric poetry night I've been to. Those guys really know what they're doing. It ALMOST makes me wish I lived in London so I could go every week. Seriously, I actually like it that much.

AND one of the poets performing made me cry. I told him he nearly made me cry, but that was a lie. There were tears in my eyes and on my cheeks. His name was Oli Foster, and he did a poem that really resonated with how I'm feeling about things in my life at the moment. It was one of those "Oh my God, it's as if they're speaking directly to ME," moments. I am envious of his delivery too. He seemed to get every single word pitch perfect, and could flick between feelings instantly. He was my other highlight of the day.

The featured act was a guy called Tshaka Campbell, who was good, but did slip a little bit into an "All women are goddesses and all men are sacks of faeces" mentality, which was a little annoying.

I entered the open mic contest. Didn't win, but I don't mind. It's just fun to be part of it. Genuinely.

And then home. It was a good day. Despite my "Cold heart."

Hello Mark, Gareth & The Soup Emu.

Wow! At least three other people still look at my blog! Awesome!

This is just a short one. My next blog post will be a long, rambling and tediously introspective one about me and the act of writing. Woopee. It will also be my 500th post on this blog.

For my 499th post, I just want to share this poem I saw on YouTube which makes me laugh every time I watch it. It's called "Rude Bastards" and is by a guy called Martin Galton. I think it's flippin' great and I hope you do too.

Enjoy.

UPDATE: This is also really good, in my opinion. It's called "Father & Son" and is by Richard Auton. Enjoy this too.

Hello Jamie.

Jamie, I'm addressing this blog post to you personally, as I am pretty sure you are the only person who still ever looks at my blog. Just in case there is still someone else who ever looks at this, I will still be writing about things in a fairly vague manner.

I worked some shifts last week covering for someone who was on holiday. This included Tuesday. I'd forgotten how weird Tuesday's are in that shop. When I worked full time, a theory I had was that Tuesday was the day you would get the weirdest people in, and the highest volume of weird people. The Tuesday just gone showed me that in fact not a theory but actual fact.

Exhibit 1:
I was serving a woman who was looking at me a little strangely. She eventually asked,
"Do you have a sore throat?"
"No," I replied.
"You sound like you have a sore throat."
"No, this is just how my voice sounds. I do get that a lot though." (This is true. A lot of people who don't know me assume that I have a sore throat when they first encounter me.)
"Oh... Well, maybe you have a prolapsed vocal chord or something then."
Cue stunned silence from me as I literally had no idea how to respond to that.

Exhibit 2:
A man came up to me and asked if I could help him. I said yes, but it turns out that was a lie, as he asked:
"Do you have anything like Pink Floyd but made for babies?"
Cue a very long "Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..." from me as I try to figure out how to tell him that just because he's made something up in his head, it doesn't mean that it exists, without being rude. I'm not sure I succeeded.

Exhibit 3:
I was serving someone at the till and their friend/daughter/whatever was on the phone to someone. The phone person then said, very loudly,
"By law, I have to have credit and texts on my phone at all times."
Cue me being baffled for the next couple of hours as I try to work out what the fuck she was on about.

And those are just the ones I can remember/remembered to note down at the time.

Verdict:
If you want to meet the absolute most crazy crazies in Oxford, hang out in the basement of hmv for a day. Dress lightly tho, as the air conditioning still doesn't work.

The Album "Total" by Sebastian.

Someone, I can't remember who it was now, mentioned that I never review anything on here anymore. Well, that's because I hate music reviews. Or rather, I hate what they have become.

Almost all music reviews now fall into two categories:-

1) The Empty Review: Smug reviews that serve only to show how clever/trendy/relevant the reviewer thinks they are and barely say anything about the music itself.

2) The Boring Review: Smug reviews written by people who see themselves as being about that trivial stuff and write purely functional reviews that are lacking in any sort of joy or interest.

Music journalism has become stale and filled with people who have no interest in anything past their own egos and seem to have forgotten that people are supposed to actually want to read what you write/publish. If I went out in the street and started handing people cards that just said "Look at me! I'm great, I am!" people would think I were a total dickhead, but dress it up as a music review and it's somehow alright.

Now, my plan for this post was to try and write something that was both fun and informative. This however has the drawback of me seeing myself as above both categories of reviewer and therefore DOUBLE SMUG. However, the fact that I'm even writing this post could be seen as me being obnoxious and smug anyway, so I'm just gonna go with it.

I've become a little obsessed with the new Sebastian album, "Total." I fucking love it, and here is my review of it:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sebastian - "Total"

Kate looked at her watch. Thomas was thirteen minutes late. He was always late.

She took her phone out of her handbag. To kill time she looked at Facebook. Someone had put up a video of a cat supposedly saying the words "I love you." Kate remembered the video she saw a while ago of a dog doing the same thing. It occurred to her that many of the videos of animals on the internet are utterly pointless. Still, they made those boring moments at work much easier to deal with.

Another friend of hers had put as their status, "Go to Wikipedia and click "Random article". This is the name of your genitals."

Kate was surprised to find out that her genitals were in fact Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos. Kate was shocked at the thought that her vagina could have initiated the Trojan War. It hadn't of course, but she momentarily imagined that her vagina was the reincarnation of Eris and had done this in a past life. Kate felt both guilty and powerful.

Thomas arrived with no apology, simply a "Get in."

Thomas drove Kate back to his house.

Once in his bedroom, Thomas told Kate he had something to play her. He took a cd of the new Sebastian album "Total" out of his bag and put it on his stereo. "I love that you still buy cd's," Kate said to him.

The album was a masterpiece of "The French Touch," a particular form of house music synonymous with French dance acts, most famously Daft Punk and Justice. Samples, dirty sounding synths, with beats you just can't help but bounce your head to.

Kate was mesmerised. The music was infectious. She couldn't help but dance.

"Thomas, this is really good!"

"I know, right?"

"This album is so good, it makes me want to take my clothes off!"

"Well, I'm not gonna stop you!"

Kate, feeling the power of a Greek goddess coursing through her body, with a feeling of reckless abandon tore her clothes off and pounced on Thomas. Thomas wasn't used to Kate being so forward. It excited him. He ran his hands over every curve of her body as she kissed his neck and undid his shirt. When she stroked the bulge in his trousers with her thigh, he felt like he was going to come instantly, but he managed to control himself.

They made love. It was the most passionate love either of them had ever had.

Afterwards, as they held each other in a sweaty, post-coital embrace, Thomas said to Kate,

"I think we should always fuck to that album."

Kate agreed.

"Paul, what kind of review is this?"

"Well, I was going for something a little different."

"It certainly is that. What's it saying about the album though?"
"That it's a French house album that's really good, that you can't help but move to. It's exciting. It's primal. And it's really sexy."

"Sexy?"

"Yeah, sexy! There's a kind of filth element to the sounds he's using that along with creating some hard sounding tracks, makes you want to take your clothes off and fuck."

"So it's a sexy, dirty, dance album?"

"Yeah!"

"Why not just say that then?"

"I dunno, I just thought it would be fun to do it like this."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Erm... That went in a completely different direction to what I had planned. Hmmm...

Hello Blogger, My Old Friend...

Hi. How've you been? Sorry I've been away for a while. Here is a brief explanation why:

I've been writing my dissertation. It's a creative writing dissertation. I'm writing a play. It's a comedy about three men who kidnap their local MP. What I have learned from doing this is that writing a play is actually really fucking difficult. Every single word I write sounds unconvincing and stale. I didn't think this would be a problem as normally I am told that my ability to write dialogue is rather good, some even say it is one of my strongest points.

I just had to lick Ribena off my laptop keyboard. It tasted like hot pebbles.

But no, turns out that writing a play is an entirely different beast. Dialogue that would be fine in a story, is often awful in a play. You have to almost completely rethink what it is that dialogue is actually doing, and it seems virtually impossible to write good play dialogue the more I try it.

But my tutor likes my ideas. Which is good.

But I have no idea what I'm going to do for my essay.

And every bit of work I do on my play/dissertation creates about three times as much work still to do.

And I have just over three weeks now to get it all done.

Which is nowhere near enough time to get everything done to a good standard.

I'm totally screwed and will probably end up only getting a 2:2 now.

(I am borderline 2:1 at the moment because I am really shit at writing essays.)

If I don't get a 2:1, I will hate myself. I will see myself as a failure.

I am competing in the Hammer & Tongue Oxford Slam Poetry Final next week. I am crapping myself even more than I normally would be due to the fact that Simon Munnery is headlining the event. Simon Munnery is one of my favourite comedians.

I am writing a poem for someone to use in an art project they are doing. It's an awesome idea, but I've gone for something stylistically different to what I normally do and I have no idea if what I'm doing is any good or not.

And I've just been asked to be involved in something I can't tell you about yet. It's a fairly small thing, but it's quite exciting and I'm looking forward to it. It's gonna be happening after all this other stuff is done too, so I'll actually be able to enjoy it.

Whereas right now, I'm going "AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!" quite a lot.

NaPoWriMo 2011.

April is finished and so therefore is "National Poetry Writing Month."

Out of the 30 days of April, I only missed one; the 16th.

That's 29 poems in 30 days.

(Well, I see it more as being 28&1/2 due to the fact that I only got halfway thru my idea for the 30th poem, but that's just me being picky really.)

Sure, a lot of them need quite a bit of editing and rewriting if I'm gonna use them going forward, but looking at it in that way, I now have a bank of drafts and ideas that I can work on and hopefully make into some pretty decent poems. I'm really looking forward to seeing where some of these go.

(I've done some of them as they are in performances and they seem to have gone down pretty well already, so fingers crossed...)

I'm actually really proud of myself for having done it. Whenever I decide I'm gonna do one of these challenges, I never seem to make it more than a third of the way thru. The fact that I actually stuck with this to the end is pretty awesome for me.

If you fancy having a read of them, they are at my tumblr blog here: http://paulaskew.tumblr.com/

Some of them are humourous, some aren't supposed to be. Some are pretty bad, but others are alright actually. And there are only 2 or 3 that I really hate.

Go on, shoo. There's a good reader.

30 Day Song Challenge: 30

Day 30: Your favourite song at this time last year.

Oneohtrix Point Never - "Hyperdawn"

I was actually sad enough to go into my last.fm page and look up what I was listening to in April last year because I couldn't think of what to put for this one. There wasn't really any one artist or song I listened to significantly more than any other. So I looked at what I listened to on April 30th last year, just to be really pedantic. Turns out I listened to a lot of Oneohtrix Point Never that day, so I've picked my favourite song from the album "Rifts." Enjoy.

(Sadly the sound quality of tis vid isn't great, but it's the only vid I can find on YouTube for it, so it has to do. Listen anyway, it's a fucking great track.)

and with that, we are done. Sorry if this whole thing got tedious. I hope there were enough songs you liked to make it worth it.

30 Day Song Challenge: 29

Day 29: A song from your childhood.

MC Hammer - "U Can't Touch This"

The first album I ever bought was MC Hammer's "Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em" when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I got it on cassette. The album has a song on it called "She's Soft And Wet." I had no idea what it meant, I genuinely thought it must be about someone who was caught out in the rain or something. People always think I'm joking when I say that, but I was 9 or 10. What else was I gonna think it was about?

Anyway, I played that album a hell of a lot. I loved it, and of course this was the song I loved the most off it. Still makes me smile a bit when I hear it.

30 Day Song Challenge: 26, 27 & 28.

Day 26: A song that you can play on an instrument.

Day 27: A song that you wish you could play.

Day 28: A song that makes you feel guilty.

Okay. I can't play an instrument, which means that pretty much every song I like is one I wish I could play.

And, a song that makes me feel guilty?! What?! That is one of the most stupid things I have ever read.