Jack Wills, Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lacoste, Ralph Lauren Consumer Culture…

Right, just a quick rant right now.

This is something that my friends are all too sick of hearing from me, but I genuinely mean it – the culture that surrounds these people, brands etc (I often call them Polo Shirt Wankers, Boat Cunts and Rich Kid Posers) is so fucking horrible. It’s a culture which says “I’m upper class, I’m rich, you’re not wearing these horribly over-priced brands and looking identical to me, so I am therefore better than you.”

I think people who need to spend sometimes over £50 on a polo shirt that just makes you look like a ponce (or a jacket that says “Badminton Horse Trials” on it – and costs over £100.) are just insecure and very weak-minded. They are following a trend of today, and trying to make people think they are better than they really are, when in fact it just makes them seem like pompous wankers. In reference to the jacket I saw, 99% of people who wear it don’t even ride horses, they wear it as part of this pathetic horse/rowing/polo culture which traditionally (and still, to the people who have their heads firmly OUTSIDE of their assholes) has been seen has one for arrogant, poncey and superficial rich kids.

Don’t get me wrong, I like to dress well myself. But the clothing trend that they are part of excludes the poor and is designed to make them feel like they are part of this very clean-cut “better-than-you” culture. For me, a timelessly smart shirt for £15-20 from somewhere like Burtons/Next/New Look, a pinstripe suit-jacket from Primark for under £30, and some smart faded-black Burton’s jeans bought in a buy one-get one half-price offer is both trendless/timeless and also multipurpose – I can wear this combination with several different shirts to parties or nights out, I can even wear it to work, I don’t look like a prick, and it’s accessible to a much larger group of people.

Even casually, brands like Joe Browns, Bench. and such are very cool, down to earth and don’t cost a ridiculous amount of money. I went to a SuperDry shop in the UK and found that a pair of very standard, plain shorts cost over £50 – ridiculous. Just for a little logo.

Maybe I’m just ranting, but I lose a lot of respect for someone if they wear a new polo shirt every time I see them, each costing around £50 – it screams attention-whore and in insecure, weak-minded trend-follower. Of which I am miles away from.

Apathy and Frustration

So, it goes like this. The past few weeks have been mighty hectic for me. Plenty of social events, working later than usual at my new job, extra personal commitments etc. I kept busy and therefore could keep my negative thoughts out and be one of those who are more ignorant to the points that I raised in earlier blog posts.

But this weekend, in a more rare moment to reflect, I woke up.

Truth be told, I had been treading a very fine line recently with regards to emotions. I finally, unfortunately, tipped that balance, drank a lot more alcohol than I usually would, and essentially made a fool out of myself subsequently. I woke up feeling terrible, but I didn’t have a hangover. It was a moment of realisation. I still don’t know who I am, what I like, what I dislike. I felt betrayed, I felt that my efforts with my friends, with making myself the best person that I can be, with everything, were for nothing. I felt like every time I wanted to further my life or make others happy, it was given a negative slant or it was another excuse for some hurtful gossip and drama. Simply put, I was confused, sad and frustrated.

Unlike other occasions, it’s stayed at an extreme for a long time. I haven’t wanted to do anything. The first thing I want to do when I get out of bed, is get back into bed. I haven’t wanted to meet up or even talk to my friends, I just feel lonely, underwhelmed or rejected either way.

At the risk of this being the apathetic rant of an emotionally confused man, I will say that it is with reason. I’ve outlined all of my theories on life in earlier posts, and those thoughts have come back to life, at a time where the group of people I hang out with have become more and more out of touch with their emotions, more and more frigid and work-driven, essentially becoming the personification of the things I truly despise, and it’s saddening to see. But it’s even more saddening to have us fall more and more out of sync, because they are happy to fall into this meaningless, loveless grind, but I distance myself from it, and try to seek emotion (specifically love), and a meaning to the most strenuous of routines (or an alternative to it).

I wear my heart on my sleeve, and put out as much of my emotion as I still can tap into; and with that, get hurt a lot easier too, but at the end of the day, I live by a relaxed, slow lifestyle in most aspects, but when it comes to happiness and love, to quote the great Robert Herrick;

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a-flying.

And this same flower that smiles today,

Tomorrow will be dying.”

We may never know how long we’ll be here, or how long certain opportunities will exist, or what would happen if you’d just put your heart and soul into something, so I do it as many times as things matter to me. Why others don’t is beyond me.

November 2010 Trip to Portsmouth

So, I got back a couple of days ago from a lads trip to Portsmouth to stay with some friends from uni. There were 3 of us that flew over from Guernsey (with another joining us afterwards), 1 from Sussex uni, 1 from Exeter uni, and the rest of the peeps were at uni in Portsmouth.

What a few days they were.

Firstly, we arrived on Saturday, 13th of November, in Southampton. Had our first pint in the airport at about 9:45AM… Standard.

First pint of the trip... 9:45AM

Then we got a train to Portsmouth, where we met up with the rest of the lads and had a drink and some lunch at a nice Wetherspoon pub called The Isambard Kingdom Brunel, had a shop about the city and basically chilled till the evening.

The lads of "LADS ON TOUR"

In the evening we went out, watched the Christmas lights get turned on, watched Jackass 3D, then headed out to a bar. By this point we had to make up for lost time, as it was around 10PM, so we ended up doing about 7 shots and a pint each in the space of about 30-45 minutes, which was interesting.

First Night Out in Pompey

We stayed with a few of our friends who were very kind to let us sleep there, until the Wednesday when we left. We had many, many enjoyable experiences, I met some new, cool people, had a great time, partied hard (4AM shirtless power metal session with some legend called Fraser that I’d just met, after coming back from a club, epic)…

The beginnings of a Power Metal session

… Got paraded around another club while wearing a pink visor (I have no idea either), while Fraser was basically tapping any girl he could find on the shoulder, pointing to me and saying “LOOK: THE VISOR!”…

"The Visor"... Which would later make a guest appearance at Pure nightclub

… Got several nicknames including “The Visor”, “Ground Beef” (story for another day), “The Hollywood” (after me drunkenly claiming that I should be known as that after ‘getting an oscar for my startling performances… in bed’), “The Legit” (after this terrible group), and generally drank a lot with my friends while having a great time…

Us having a laugh in the house

… Apart from my hangover on the last day. Worst. Hangover. Ever. I think I drank the most I’ve ever drank, I literally have no recollection of anything after leaving Pure as “The Visor”. I apparently went to a rip-off of KFC called “Ken’s Fried Chicken”, got a burger, starting falling asleep, got kicked out, puked outside, got carried home by a friend and his mate, was sick again in their sink (adding me to an elusive list of people who have been sick in my friends uni accommodation, apparently ), and next thing I know I’m fully clothed in bed with the worst hangover of all time… And the prospect of having to get up, pack my bags, get on a train and then a plane home. That was NOT fun. But, to be fair, I don’t usually drink so much that I’m sick, so that’s a rare event.

I made it seem like we were drinking 24/7, but that really wasn’t the case. I got to see a lot of the city and have fun with my friends in arcades and such, while also seeing how student life is, including how much the work as well, and all of it really inspired me to push as hard as I can to get to uni for next year. I really, really preferred the city, the people, the lifestyle, the method of work etc over there, in my tiny window of life there. Coming back to Guernsey has been a major come-down because it really makes you realise how terribly boring this island is, and how the quality of life is actually pretty mediocre.

Just in case somebody is actually reading this…

Just to let you know I am working on a couple of posts, but they’re pretty beefy ones and haven’t had a chance to write much lately, but I promise they’ll be coming soon!

 

-Matt

Consumer Culture

Just a short release/rant.

After steady thought, I realised that a lot of the things that make me a misanthropist are down to one main thing about the world… The life we all lead in this western, capitalist world, is ridiculous purely because of the foundation; consumer culture. And I cannot understand how others don’t understand this.

You work 9-5. You see a shirt or something in a shop. You ‘like’ it (more likely, because it’s the next ‘big thing’ and it’s popular). You buy it with your earned cash. This doesn’t fulfil you. Repeat mindlessly, without questioning it. Thus, daily life is a very hollow, empty ‘happiness’ of keeping up with what’s shoved down our throats by the corporations.

And this adds another point. Marketability, profits, and the effect that has on the so-called fallacy that is “job satisfaction” (the biggest oxymoron around if you ask me…). The point is, yeah I’m not disputing that you might enjoy one job more than another. But those who actually have their eyes open can surely never feel truly happy in their job. Whether it’s to do with hours, money, what they’d rather be doing with that time (nobody can argue against the idea that 99.9% of people would rather be either relaxing somewhere, pursuing a hobby or making love to a beautiful woman, no matter how good their job is, these are much more attractive prospects). These points are moot however, as what I’m talking about is the fundamental difference between enjoying something and studying it for a reason, and then doing it as a job. It becomes a chore. It becomes something you do for the sake of it. Take fashion designers as an example; they must love the designing, and putting their heart and soul into the work. But the big companies tell them what the new, hot summer style is going to be. So they have to mindlessly, soullessly create this because it’s going to be the ‘big thing’ this summer that everyone ‘has’ to have. And they design it, reluctantly. Yes it’s still design, but only 50% of what they love about it (therefore proving my point that true “job satisfaction” is a myth when you think about it; this can be applied everywhere, it’s all about profit and manipulating the masses with propoganda-esque marketing). And everyone will go out and buy the products. It’s the next big thing, after all. It’s the style that’s back in fashion for this years summer, and all their friends are wearing this style. And the cycle changes every year. Every month. And it’s all done by faceless people behind-the-scenes, crunching numbers and working out the best way to reel them in. Thank God everyone plays ball and bites. Thank God nobody questions the bigger picture. All they see is a nice piece of clothing that their friends all love and will be jealous of. What they don’t see are the men in suits behind it, rubbing their hands in glee as they dupe the weak-minded majority for the umpteenth time. It’s so easy, they think. Tell them what they want. Portray the products with popular people; goddamn we all need it.

And yet it’s hollow just like everything else, on top of that. And so stale, so contrived for profits. And we all make it so easy for them.

Now, being brought up in this way, in this lifestyle, I will admit I am not perfect. I am guilty of living by this way quite often too. But one of my main theories is that, in order to truly think about the world, humanity and society, and actually analyse it properly, is by being a hypocrite, essentially. The vast majority of the reason why I am so disgusted at humanity is purely down to knowing exactly how my own brain works, the things I’ve done, and the fact that others are much, much worse than that, despite me already being disgusted enough at my own mind and faults.

Insignificance

It struck me the other day just how fucking insignificant I am. Not just me. All of us. I don’t even mean it in the clichéd sense that everyone talks about. We really are nothing. Just a number. It’s the great façade that we humans just ignore or are completely ignorant to.

There’s so many different ways to look at it, but each way concludes that I, one person of 6,867,000,000 on this 510,072,000 km² planet (29.2% of that surface area being land), am so terribly insignificant. So utterly, utterly replaceable.

Putting it simply, we’re nothing. And yet, strangely and ridiculously, so self-important.

I’ll spare as much of the numbers as possible, I’ll just put it this way; if someone was looking down on me, my brain, the part of me that actually allows me to type these words and to have the capacity to think, to feel emotions, to love, hate, philosophise, everything; this brain is 1/40th of my body. And if you were to look down on my average-sized house, filling a page, I’d be a pin-prick, or at the most a small dot, on that page. And then if you were to look at the island I live on, Guernsey (218th biggest country in the world, apparently, roughly the size of a large town/small city, somewhere between the size of Middlesbrough and Southampton), my house wouldn’t be visible. You’d see the big sports stand near my house, but it would only occupy the size of the head of a nail.

Then zoom out to Europe, the continent this island is on. The entire island is barely a tiny pin-prick in the sea, whole countries like France and Spain all being on the page happily, but still insignificant considering the amount of people, and houses in those countries.

Zoom out further to show the entire Earth, and Guernsey isn’t visible at all. In fact, the entire United Kingdom would only be the size of a fingertip.

Now let us consider how insignificant we are in relation to our house, our town, our country, our continent and our Earth.

Now let us consider that Earth is actually a very, very average planet. Many smaller, many bigger. In our very average Solar System alone, we can look at Jupiter. If it were hollow, we could fit roughly 1321 of our Earths inside of it, and still have some room left over.

And yet, what is this planet, along with ours and all of the others in our Solar System, bound by? That’s right, the gravitational pull of the Sun. Quite an average star really. Yet you could fit 960,000 Earth’s inside of it, or more, depending on how you look at it.

Earth-Sun scale

Now, things are looking pretty insignificant. Just think about you, the pin-prick on your house, which in turn is a pinprick on your city, which in turn is a pinprick on your country, which in turn is the size of a penny in comparison to your continent, which is one of several on your planet, which only under 30% of it is land, which is dwarfed by plenty of other planets, is the size of a needle-head on the above scale diagram. Oh, and you’re one of well over 6 billion people on this very average, tiny planet.

But I’m not even done yet. I’ve barely explored the universe! The biggest star in the known Universe, VY Canis Majoris, is 2.7 billion km in radius. You could fit over 9.2 billion of our sun (bearing in mind the size of our sun in comparison to our planet) in it. Look at the following diagram; you can’t even comprehend how huge this star is. You can barely see the curvature of the side of it, and the Sun is still a pinprick. It’s absolutely enormous.

And bear in mind this; there are roughly 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in our universe. The furthest away galaxy is 14 billion light years away, that’s 14 billion years it would take for light to travel from there to our Earth. Considering that light travels at 3.0 x 10^8 m/s (670,616,629 mph), and our fastest road car can travel at 267 mph, oh and that the average human life span in the UK is 79.4 years… Feeling insignificant yet? Now, for a second, imagine how many of those stars could have planets orbiting them. Well, there’s nine planets orbiting our sun, so there could be any number of planets orbiting many of those stars. How many of those planets could fit our planets description, and thus have some form of intelligent life on them? I’d be willing to bet a huge amount of money on that being a pretty large number of planets.

We’re truly nothing. We’re all just 1 of 6,867,000,000, on a planet 960,000 times smaller than it’s sun, which in turn is a star, which is 1 of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in the universe, and fits 9.2 billion times inside of the largest known star in the universe. The closest star to us is 4.2 light years away. The furthest galaxy away from us is 14 billion light years away. Now consider the speed of light, being 2,511,673 times faster than our fastest road car, the Bugatti Veyron, and therefore how far away those things are…

Think about that, just for a second, before worrying about pathetic man-made problems. It’s so, so humbling. And so disappointing that we make life so difficult for ourselves in the wake of that.

June

So, other than England being knocked out of the world cup, I’ve had a pretty awesome June. I went to Download Festival mid-June, met loads of really cool people, drank an unhealthy amount of alcohol, saw some of my favourite bands, discovered some new bands, ate rubbish fast-food, and altogether had an awesome, overly indulgent time!

On the first day we pitched our tent in what was essentially the sitting area for a load of Scottish guys. They seemed a little peeved at first but then they helped us put our tent up and that night we sat and drank with them and had a good laugh, in fact we became good friends throughout the festival, drinking and talking about all sorts of stuff throughout the trip, we’re hoping to go next year and meet up with them and form a camp together. They even invited us up to Aberdeen (where they live) to meet up with them at some point and go out on the pubs/clubs and such.

The bands were just incredible, for the most part. Highlights include: Killswitch Engage (Holy Diver live was a brilliant tribute to Dio), AC/DC, Rise to Remain, Holy Grail, Lamb of God (was about 5 people from the front), Megadeth (about 2-3 people from the front), Rage Against The Machine (despite getting crushed), 3 Inches of Blood, The Morning After (incredible show), Slash, Whitechapel, Motorhead and Aerosmith. The other bands I saw were all fantastic too but these were my favourites of the weekend.

All in all, I had an awesome time and it was a huge shame to leave. I’m feeling the blues of that right now. Quite a lot.

A week and a half later, however, I ended up back in the mainland UK, in London this time. I saw my favourite band, Between The Buried and Me, live, in the Camden Underworld club. It was boiling hot and sweaty as hell, but it was amazing. The best gig I’ve ever been too for sure. I was close enough to touch Paul’s guitar for most of it, got a high-five from him and shook hands with and met most of the members. It was an amazing experience.

(Unintentional emo section coming up; just speaking my thoughts and feelings)

Now, I’m back on the island. I’m back at work, doing a job that I’m not suited to in the slightest, and everything about life as it stands just feels fairly unfulfilling and frustrating. It’s not that I’m depressed as such. It’s not the same as the old posts I made in the past about life. It’s just an intense feeling of emptiness, of not caring about anything, of being elsewhere in mind. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t lonely. Every day I become more and more empty, needy and frustrated. Every day I think back to times I had with my friends at school when life was more care-free, or see the people around me enjoying their lives either in ignorance or in fulfilled happiness with a partner. Or both, as the case often is. I feel little connection to the world around me and honestly have, or feel, no commitment in terms of family, relationships, long-term employment or love for the location. I feel totally disposable, and the island and what it has to offer to me is mutual in that sense. I have no reason to be here. To wake up every morning. To do a job I don’t care for. To work every day for however many hours and feel purpose from that. I earn money, for what? To fulfil hedonistic desires that I myself am fundamentally disgusted by anyway. I need to get out of this closed off circle. I have a few simple joys, don’t get me wrong, but they feel few and far between. I’m not trying to say I have it technically worse than anyone else. I just don’t have the mindset or the purpose that those people do to keep them going through the worst parts. And this is my problem. I feel empty. There is no reason.

In more upbeat news, I am the lead guitarist of a band now. We play metal, some originals, some covers. The covers aren’t really my style of metal, the originals are closer towards it, but either way I enjoy playing it because it’s much more fun to play, to me, then to listen to. Stuff like Atreyu, A Day To Remember etc… I’m used to much more technical stuff so I don’t have to focus or worry as much on messing up, so I can have a bit more life in my performance.

Anyway, I better go to bed. It’s nearly 1AM and I have work tomorrow at about 8:45AM. Fantastic. Another slow day doing very little productive, for no tangible reason to me. I really need a big distraction, or a new job, or preferably both. I can’t wait till university, or until I have enough money to travel for 6 months-1 year.

“Get out of this closed of circle…” Between the Buried and Me – White Walls.

Man’s Greatest and Most Valuable Currency: Confidence

First of all, I’d like to apologise for not posting in the past few months. The reason why will become apparent in the rest of the post.

Those who have read the older posts from late 2009 and early 2010 will know that I was in a limbo of not knowing who I am, what I wanted out of life, and was not particularly happy with the society I live in. My self-confidence was almost nil, and I was very frustrated with life in general.

It took me many painful months, perhaps even years depending on how you look at it, but I am seeing the light. And I have little idea as to why.

I’ll be honest. I had to hit rock bottom for me to start to ascend again. I was literally at breaking point. I was becoming more and more out-of-the-loop, more reclusive, less confident and all the while, less happy. My mind was essentially dying as I struggled to put together my thoughts and ideas. I descended from a state of disgust at society for reason, and being able to intelligently and theoretically state why, to a state of blind frustration and anger at the world around me that I couldn’t even explain coherently.

It took this descent for me to decide that, one morning, enough was enough. I was fed up of feeling this way; that I was useless, that every day in the mortal, living world, was a waste. That I was hated and that I was gradually becoming everything I used to hate. So I sought help.

And help I got. I won’t go into the details, as this isn’t the point of the post. But it certainly was a turning point; I started to feel better almost immediately, almost as much due to the relief of my admission to the problem, as the actual physical help I received.

So I came into work, and decided that the first thing I could change, was my attitude to life. Only slightly, I still wanted to be fundamentally me, but to be more open-minded. I took the harsh criticism with a pinch of salt, taking only the constructive to heart, and took all positives as stepping-stones to success. I accepted the fact that, perhaps the work I was doing wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. But it is something that I do on the way to that thing, whatever it may be. I started to turn round to the idea that, in fact, I can fit in, in today’s society, even if I fundamentally feel it is flawed.

Essentially, I stopped caring. I’d managed to do this for many areas of my life in the past, but never in the correct way. I’d done it for my appearance, other peoples emotions etc, but never in a way that would truly make me feel happier. And what a release it was; I always knew it would help, but I could never do it; it’s not something that you can consciously decide to do. That’s why I’m not trying to hand out advice; I honestly have no idea how it happened, other than admitting defeat and taking control of the situation, rather than lamenting in my lack of perfection. I’m purely trying to share my story. Perhaps it may even help others in a similar situation.

It wasn’t easy, but it was harder on the descent, as the social anxiety and paranoia associated with the lack of confidence that I had was almost unbearable, particularly considering my line of work (sales person). As I improved, others noticed, and complimented this. This brought me higher again, but it was only two weeks ago when I really felt that I’d hit a landmark.

I actually had a terrible experience that could have easily critically injured or even killed me, but I managed to come out of it with only a few cuts and burns. I have no idea how I didn’t break any bones or have any more damage done to me, but at that moment, with my teeth chattering from shock, I sub-consciously felt everything get put into perspective. Less than 12 hours later, I met up with my friends, started drinking, met and talked to many new people, and did and said a lot of things which I would have usually been too embarrassed to do, or done awkwardly. But I felt free. My friends had previously told me how they value my company and that I am a good person despite my own opinions. And, truthfully, I was lucky to be out that day. In a nutshell, I, without consciously deciding to do it, released my inner-self from the external inhibitions that I forced upon myself, and it felt fantastic. Others saw it to, without my mentioning anything. Even people who don’t know me as well as others mentioned it. I was receiving compliments and having good experiences with the opposite sex, in contrast to my previous self either failing, or dreading failing too much, in the past.

Put simply, as I gained confidence, I gained happiness. And, in this world of impressions, without confidence, we will always feel oppressed and saddened that we cannot achieve what we want. But we cannot simply gain confidence. It’s something that comes to us, when the time is right. I never believed I’d have it. As a matter of fact, I still have a way to go. But, from the awkward, mumbling, shaking teenager to the loud, confident, happy, humourous man who exists today, I feel that I’m getting there. And that’s the start of a fantastic journey that I am looking forward to partaking in.

Me and some of my friends enjoying a drink, less than a day after my accident!

This is human life at its best… We’ll televise this event…

This is unrelated to anything really, I just want to let you know that I’m still around and wanting to continue this blog!

I just dug up a cover…

Found this on my hard-drive, me and my friend Ollie did this cover of Mr Crowley by Ozzy Osbourne, when we were bored one day last summer. Guitar Pro drums, little/no mastering and most of the tracks being done in one take, so don’t expect too much!

Matt: Guitar, Bass, Synths, Backing Vocals, Production
Ollie: Vocals

Drums are from Guitar Pro.

Again this was just a quick cover that me and Ollie did to relieve some boredom, it isn’t meant to be perfect

Just thought I’d share it with you guys, since I don’t have anything much to blog about tonight. Have a good day tomorrow!