ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS

we were in the car
and my wife said
everyone on Facebook is complaining
about Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip.

so I was like:
who is complaining? what are they saying?
mums, she said. they are all in the cinema, with kids.
enduring Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip,
and, like, it's really terrible, the
worst thing ever.

it's the voices, I imagine, I said.
those fucking voices...

look, I continued,
I'd take a kid to see that movie
so long as I got to take something that took me out of myself.
like I'd go if I could take valium.
or heroin, maybe.
or, like, OxyContin.

MY DESCENT INTO DRUGS HELL
the headline would shout, leading to...
"it all started when I needed something
to take the edge off Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip" 

GET LISTED AS A TELEMARKETING MASTER

TO BE THOUGHT OF AS A TELEMARKETING MASTER, YOU MUST:

• WRITE A VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTION OF A RECENT INTERACTION YOU'VE HAD WITH A SEEMINGLY WITLESS TELEMARKETER
• PUT IT ON YOUR BLOG
• TWEET A LINK TO IT, PUTTING IN APPOSITE HASHTAGS:

THIS ISN'T VICTORIA https://t.co/bwwdHWBmYH #telemarketing #nuisancecalls #B2C

— this is my england (@thisismyengland) February 24, 2016

• WAIT FOR COMPANIES AND CONSULTANTS WORKING IN MARKETING AND TELEMARKETING TO DO THIS, WITHOUT, ONE MUST ASSUME, FOLLOWING THE LINK AND READING YOUR SHIT:

LONG TIME NO RUNNERS

Big pieces of graffiti on the sides of trains carrying commuters into, out of and across London: a while ago I was seeing them regularly...

• Mar 25, 2013
• Mar 22, 2013
• Mar 20, 2013
• Mar 4, 2013
• Jan 3, 2013
• Oct 12, 2012
• Sep 16, 2012
• Aug 22, 2012
• Aug 14, 2012

Then nothing like that for ages. Until last week. On the TUBE, no less:

THIS ISN'T VICTORIA

my mobile phone rings. I don't recognise the number. I answer.

ME: Hello? (my voice is obviously male. hoarse, even, because of my heavy cold)
CALLER: Hi, this is Thomas from the Incident Support Team.
ME: What kind of incident do you think I've been involved in, Thomas?
CALLER: Is this Victoria?
ME: No. Can't you hear it's not Victoria?
CALLER: ...
ME: Is it Victoria Jones you're after? I get about 50 calls a year for a Victoria Jones. I guess she used to have my mobile number. Or she's put my number in when filling out some form. So if you can strike my number off your list, that'd be great.
CALLER: Cheers.

IMPERATIVES

take advice,
take heart,
take heroin.

do yoga.
do charity work.
do crystal methamphetamine.

do it in the bushes.
do it in the morning.
do it at some guy's house.
do it do it do it.

do it on that patch of land behind the drive-thru McDonalds.

watch your weight,
watch your mouth,
watch porn.

pass the peas,
pass water,
pass away.

but
don't
tell

me
about it.

WWBAGWFT1: GREEN MAN SHIT

It is widely understood that the German language outperforms English in one important area - a facility for the creation of abstract nouns which neatly (i.e. with one word, albeit sometimes a rather long one) convey quite complex and highly specific concepts or emotional states. Examples:

• Schadenfreude
• Vergangenheitsbewältigung
• Kummerspeck
• Torschlusspanik
• Fremdschämen
• Scheinselbständigkeit

With this in mind, so begins an open-ended series of challenges to any German speakers who may happen to stumble on this is my england. These musings will be known as WWBAGWFT (What Would Be a German Word for That?)and will work as follows:

• a highly specific (usually complex) situation, feeling or concept will be described
• entry concludes by asking "WWBAGWFT?"

Here goes, then, with the first of these:

OK, so you know when you're on foot and you arrive at a pelican crossing and you press the button because you need to cross the road? You know how when you press the button a light is meant to come on indicating that the button has been pressed? Sometimes the word "WAIT" lights up, right? On some newer crossings, just a red circle of light comes on around the button, yeah? Usually it works. Sometimes it doesn't. OK, so for WWBAGWFT1, there is more than one concept in search of a German abstract noun:

• WWBAGWFT1A: a word to capture the feeling you experience when the "WAIT" (or red light circle thing) doesn't illuminate and you're not sure whether the whole thing is working... like how long should you wait for the green man before beginning to believe that your pressing of the button had no effect?
• WWBAGWFT1B: a word to capture the feeling you experience when the following happens: you have pushed the button when there is no one else at the crossing; another pedestrian arrives, clearly sees you standing there waiting and then decides to push the button again herself/himself. To be clear, the nature of the feeling you experience is negative. Perhaps you even find yourself saying to yourself "Does that cunt think I'm too stupid to push the fucking button?". Crucially, the "WAIT" (or similar) thing is ILLUMINATED as a result of your having ALREADY PUSHED THE FUCKING BUTTON. So, in addition to your feeling affronted at the new arrival possibly thinking you are too stupid to push the button, you experience a feeling of contempt arising from the fact that this person has either not noticed the illuminated "WAIT" thing or, worse(?), has noticed it and presses the button anyway... almost as if the signal won't change when you push the button but will change when they do... because... why?
• WWBAGWFT1C: A variant, blended, situation based on the ones described in WWBAGWFT1A AND WWBAGWFT1B(above), i.e. you have pushed the button, the "WAIT" thing has not lit up (as per WWBAGWFT1A), you are waiting for the signal AND THEN another pedestrian rocks up and presses the button (as per WWBAGWFT1B)... so WWBAGWF the feeling you experience when you see that the new arrival notices you waiting, notices the "WAIT" thing is not lit and the presses the button... so you're probably telling yourself "He thinks I'm just standing here like a prick without pushing the button, waiting for the green man to appear by magic. Fuck him for thinking that!!!"

OK then. Let's see if any passing Germans can assist.  

ONE PERSON WHO CARES VERY MUCH

I don't often think about Bukowski these days. Years ago, I used to think about him and his writing a lot. So much so, in fact, that the first thing I ever really did on the internet was to build a very simple Charles Bukowski tribute website. In 1998, I think. That led to seeking out fellow fans of the man's work, a number of whom used to hang out in a dingy corner of usenet set up ostensibly to host discussions about the Dirty Old Man of San Pedro. I say ostensibly, because Bukowski was rarely discussed there. The main action was endless flame-wars, some interesting, some dull, some demented. I remain friendly with one of the former habitués of that group, the Chicago-born, Florida-raised and now Germany-based M.P. Powers, author of the novel Fortuna Berlin.

Powers has been a good listener and a damn good talker on the numerous occasions I've met him - in Boynton Beach, in Miami, in Palm Beach, in Berlin and in London. We've corresponded a fair bit, too, over the long years since sometimes finding ourselves on the same side of this or that fight between warring usenet lunatics in the late nineties. So I think (without checking) that I am right when stating that I seem to remember him saying he doesn't care much for most (all?) of the posthumously-released collections of previously unpublished (or unpublished in book form) Bukowski stuff. He is not alone in this. A good number of Buk enthusiasts seem to baulk at paying for scraps and cast-offs of dwindling quality as the late author's last remaining cupboards, notebooks and waste-paper baskets are wrung dry.

There is something in this. But for all that, I do continue to buy this stuff when it comes out, the most recent acquisition being The Bell Tolls For No One, a ragtag of short stories, many (but not all) of which are from Bukowski's L.A. Free Press column of the 1970s. Based on what I've read so far, the quality is patchy. What's more, as I started to read, I decided that I couldn't be certain that I was reading some of this material for the first time ever. Because as many who have read a lot of Bukowski's prodigious output can confirm, the Dirty Old Man endlessly retold, refined and reworked a number of (apparently/supposedly) real incidents from his own life across short stories, poems and sections of his novels, adding and omitting details with each retelling.

This very point is mentioned in the introduction to this collection, written by its editor David Stephen Callone:

Several of the stories included in this volume demonstrate how [Bukowski] worked and reworked [his] material. He creates the same narrative anew; he doesn't copy, but starts over. He is always retelling his autobiography but selecting different details, reinventing instead of rewriting... It is typical of Bukowski's method of selecting episodes from his life and reworking them, adding specific details and usually elaborating on reality by adding invented plot elements. He is constantly engaged in telling and retelling his life, giving it the structure of myth so that the two become inseparable.

None of this is meant as a criticism of Bukowski's tendency to refine and rework the same incident over and over. I certainly don't have an issue with it. Quite the opposite, really. It's become a genuine pleasure to encounter one of the writer's sexual escapades or quotidian frustrations for the umpteenth time. The myth-building process described above by Callone is a big part of what I enjoy. But, for me, it has, in the past, sometimes caused confusion about whether or not I've read any given poem, story or collection.

My own Bukowski collection is now pretty much exhaustive. I own all of the novels and am confident that I've picked up every available collection of short stories and poetry. Added to this are a number of biographies of Buk and collections of essays about his work. What I have not acquired, however, is a perfect recollection of all of the titles. So if you asked me to name the titles of all of those books from memory, I would not be able to do it. Very occasionally, this causes a problem. For instance, when I bought The Bell Tolls for No One last week in the flagship Charing Cross Road branch of Foyle's, I also spotted The Continual Condition in the poetry section and simply could not decide whether or not I already owned a copy. I called home and imposed upon my wife's time, having her check my bookshelves to confirm that I did, in fact, already own a copy of the book in question.

Anyway, the good folks at City Lights Books in San Francisco responded very quickly to the following question:

Hey, @CityLightsBooks, have all the stories in "The Bell Tolls for No One" definitely NEVER appeared elsewhere in book form? Thanks.

— this is my england (@thisismyengland) January 19, 2016

It was confirmed that two stories in  The Bell Tolls for No One have never been published before and that the remainder have only appeared in publications such as the L.A. Free Press, Open City and Hustler.

Pleased to feel certain that I an indeed reading these familiar-but-new-to-me stories for the first time, I press on with my new purchase, taking my time to enjoy it and think about it.

When reading Bukowski, I almost always find a line which stands out precisely because it reminds me strongly of one of my own experiences or thought processes. Among the pages of The Bell Tolls for No One, I have already found a line of this sort. In a passage from a third person (unusual for Bukowski) piece from one of the Notes of a Dirty Old Man columns, a man and a woman are discussing relationships and how they end. The man speaks: 

"It's always the same. The is one person who cares very much and one person who doesn't seem to care, or who only half-cares. The one who doesn't care too much is in control. The relationship ends when the one who doesn't care gets tired of the game."

The woman asks him "which ends" he has been on, to which he replies that he has been on both ends.

This exchange captures precisely what used to depress, frighten and annoy me about my relationships with women. The end always left me feeling either like a cold-hearted cad or like a broken-hearted victim. There was always the imbalance of power described in the conversation from Bukowski's Dirty Old Man piece. By my mid-thirties, I felt about ready to give up on "the game" and was wondering what I might end up resorting to when possessed with the urge to seek companionship or pleasure.

But then I met the wonderful woman who last week helped me check whether I owned a copy of The Continual Condition. Now I am no longer preoccupied by that question of the "one person who cares very much" vs. "one person who doesn't seem to care." But reading Bukowski's brief observation brought back that familiar unhappiness. It's very possible, as my reading continues, that The Bell Tolls for No One will yield further such powerful moments for me. I guess this is why I don't mind continuing to buy this posthumous output. However much I am minded to agree that the quality is variable, I keep in mind that even Bukowski's weaker stuff has a tendency to contain something which will resonate.

DAVE PEELS ANOTHER FACE OFF

that David Cameron is everywhere. has always been everywhere. why, even though he's just 49 years old, he was singing patriotic songs as a member of the Red Army back in the early 1970s. these days, when he's not making the case for bombing Syria, he's appearing in one of the misleading pictures accompanying those annoying links you see courtesy of clickbait merchants like RevContent, OutBrain etc, whenever you read anything anywhere. the photo, it has to be said, may give some insight into how Cameron, at "49", has a forehead smoother than a baby's:

COMMODITISATION OF EDGY

it isn't edgy whatever edgy is even supposed to mean when some dick spends his trust fund on a coffee shop whose schtick is being cuntishly and unfunnily mean to women poor people etc. and "pulling" pork definitely isn't edgy now fucking maccy dees are into it and it wasn't anyway even when it was all artisan and beards and tattoos and allllll thattttttttttttt

VERSED IN WORDLESS ACTS

"Perhaps love finds its most perfect expression in a gesture. Her hand curved around his hand. The human memory is deeply versed in wordless acts, best at retaining the quiet moments of tentative contact..."

from Julia by Otto de Kat

Another moment, then, when fiction rings truer than truth, with a few lines of a novel adding weight and substance to a notion I've had somewhere towards the tip of my own tongue for many years. It's been there for about 20 years now, placed, I am sure, by the echo of an instant that has never left me.

I am lying in the dark in a narrow bed in a back bedroom of a second floor flat in ulica Kielecka in Kraków. I believe the girl lying next to me is fast asleep. Somehow, in shifting the position of her body, she places her foot lightly against my calf. The sole of her foot rests there for a while, feeling cool at first but growing warmer from the contact. Its imprint hasn't faded.