Thursday 29 December 2011

I live at the speed of my mind and I love with the strength of my heart. I am happier than I've ever been. But only because I know where I have been.
The thing about wrath is you have to know your buttons and who has got their grimy mitts on them. For instance, I hate driving in L.A. because I hit people. I do not mean I hit them in their cars. I mean I hit their bodies with the car I happen to be driving. This is not my fault. The residents of Los Angeles plod across streets and around corners like they are (again) either looking for addresses or waiting to be touched by actual angels. You can blame the Pedestrian Right of Way Law in California. These fucking idiots just trot out into the middle of the god-damn street, so they are begging to be weeded out of the fucking gene pool. Because of this, I have officially hit forty-seven people in almost as many cars. Don't worry, I will not be arrested because as a rule I wear a fake moustache when I drive anywhere, in any city.

Monday 19 December 2011

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

- Christopher Hitchens

Tuesday 13 December 2011

Monday 12 December 2011

A take on my old school

“When I got back home in my demob suit, Colin made me get rid of my pets as a punishment. I was only allowed to keep one gerbil. I swallowed this predictable piece of petty cruelty down into the ol’ hate factory. Somehow those boffins at Hockerill, who I’d so fastidiously despised, had managed to give me quite a good education. I suppose I was trapped there and forced to learn. From then on, I could define myself as being cleverer than everyone else. When I went back to Grey’s school - which was just the normal comprehensive which most of the kids I’d known at primary school had gone to - no one seemed to know what the fuck was going on with anything. I thought: “Hang on, these people are idiots.” And this instinctive humility would stand me in good stead throughout the years of academic underachievement that streched ahead of me.”

- from Russel Brand’s autobiography “My Booky Wook”

Thursday 8 December 2011

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.