Field Day

 I send emails to my friend Alex every so often and he thought that the latest one was particularly funny. Since I am very receptive to flattery, I thought hey, maybe I should put it on my blog? Yeah.

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I'm going to the Field Day festival on Saturday, if you thought EotR was trendy, Field Day makes it seem like a trainspotters appreciation meeting. Going with Ben and the London gang, it's going to be berserk. I would suggest that you come, but I fear that the mere thought of a hipster wearing a grateful dead t shirt with cut off sleeves and shorts made of organic hemp from Sudan (with a Uniqlo label), and a sparrows nest (with birds) carefully placed on the head, with a tilt which varies every minute depending on the fashion at the time, would make you vomit viscous bile - which, ironically, in itself would be considered 'cool' and so quickly adopted by the other festival goers. So the festival would quickly become overwhelmed with bile, which boat shoes are ill suited to resist. Presumably, the festival organisers would be aware of how fashion works, so would quickly take down any festival goer who deviates too much from the current fashion trend. Thus, you would be thrown out of the festival, which you didn't particularly want to go to anyway, so feeling frustrated and angry, you would walk to Epping Forest, where you would adopt a simpler way of life. After a few content months of living this way, you would happen upon a young maiden, washing her clothes by a stream. She would also be an exile, so you would talk and rejoice in your mutual ambivalence to modern youth culture. But one day, while chopping wood at your self made home, you'll hear a noise. You'll think 'Oh no, why now? WHY?!'. Your beloved will come rushing over, the wildflowers that she had been collecting spill over the ground, 'They're coming!' she whispers. She rushes inside. You look off in the distance, opening your mouth slightly to increase your hearing ability. You can only hear the birds and the leaves rustling in the wind. Wait. You hear a jingle, like a dozen bracelets on one arm rubbing against each other. You hear someone shout out 'Last one on drugs is a dickhead!'. It is followed by cheers. You can see them, and they have seen you. The leader says to his friends 'Oh wow, an authentic country cottage, let's set up an impromptu party. Iona, have you got the candles? Sideways Len, have you got the bunting? Let's get to work!'. Iona is about to arrange a candle decoration when THUMP, an arrow pieces her chest. She looks down at the wound. It has cleanly pieced her retro linen cardigan, which was on sale from Topshop. She pulls out the arrow, blood spurts from the wound. She falls and dies. Some of the others immediately rush over, 'let's make tie dye with her blood, it'll be so cool!' they say. THUMP THUMP THUMP. The three of them fall to the ground. You look round and see your beloved notching another arrow, you bow your head and utter 'My lady'. Your hand grips tightly on your axe. You go to work...

So begins the saga of Alex and hipstergedon.

To be continued...

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I'm going to Field Day on Saturday, it should be fun. Alex doesn't really like the whole hipster culture scene,. And tries to avoid them at all costs. I write 'all costs' but I guess that's hyperbole - if he saw a clique of them outside Tescos, and he was hungry, I'm sure he'd walk through them to get in. Or if a clique of them held his family hostage and demanded that he buy them the albums on Pitchfork's best album list, he'd probably attack and kill them, rather than run away. I don't really care about all that 'hipster' stuff, I guess I have characteristics of one anyway. Ironically, so is Alex in some ways. Though, I think the true meaning of the word is affectation. Like wearing t shirts with annoyingly loose collars. Or wearing glasses without any lenses or which lack even a modicum of visual corrective properties.

Noble gases

I heard a good song lately, the album hasn't been released but I have found the song on a Brazilian radio show - it starts at 1:26. A nice summer song. There's a cool 20 minute sufi song which I might listen too after it. I heard it on Damon Albarn's XFM show back in 2005. I was driving home from my friend's house late at night, and I switched on the radio and heard it. A good song. I have no idea what they're talking about, but the music is nice. It reminds me of Christmas. Which I guess it interesting since Christmas is a Christian affair but the song is about Islam. They're both Abrahamic religions, so I guess it's still appropriate. I couldn't care less about the religious aspect of Christmas. I guess that's why I don't really care about getting presents or getting caught up in the season. Christmas normally works out with my family texting each other about what presents each of us want. My mum is kind of religious, but not in a 'in your face' way, more of a 'I was brought up Christian and the thought of death scars me' kind of way. She goes to church most weekends and goes to a bible study group. I sense that she's disappointed that all three of her children are either agnostic or atheists. I guess I'm an atheist, though the word is a bit weird, I'm more apathetic when it comes to religion - it all seems a bit silly, like unicorns and fairies. I was brought up a Christian, and I was sent to Christian camp until the age of 13, and I went to Sunday school etc. I was never particularly interested in it. I remember praying before I went to bed when I was young and that I had trouble grasping how the praying process works - did I have to say (or think) 'amen' after the prayer as a equivalent to 'over and out' on two way radios. It all seemed a bit silly to me. I think I stopped praying when I was 11/12, though I can't be sure. Then I had an existential crisis at 7, when I realised that someday my parents would die and so would I. Christian camp was a funny place. The first few camps were quite a laugh, because we were young and the leaders didn't force God stuff down our throats. But it got a bit weirder in the later years. Once, they got everyone in the main hall, and played us a video of Jesus getting executed in rather gory detail. The nails going in etc. And they played heartfelt music in the background. By the end, you could hear people sobbing, they were saying 'Oh, the suffering, how could they (the Romans) do that? It's awful' etc. I was thinking 'Well, the Romans did that to a lot of people, and they had other methods of execution which were much worse'. We then walked out and everyone went back to their rooms. I was sitting in my room when a leader knocked on the door and asked to speak to me. We sat on the stairs and he asked me how I felt about the video and how I was affected. I told him that I was obviously a bit sad after watching a video of someone getting executed (even though it was Willem Dafoe), but that I didn't really care about religion and that I wasn't ready to become a bible wielding Christian. It didn't help that I considered Jesus' execution a form of suicide, since he recognised that he had to die in order to achieve his goals, and did everything possible to be captured and to infuriate the Jewish council, who would invariably call for his death. I guess that's the whole sacrifice part of it though.

Another funny incident was when they led us into the main hall again and sexually abused all of us in turn, the girls first, then the boys - they played Gary Glitter's My Gang in the background. Hahahaha, that didn't happen. That would have been pretty horrific if it did, and I'd probably blank it from my memory, so perhaps it did? Haha, I'm sure it didn't. What I was going to write was: they led us in the main hall for the evening prayer and since it was one of the last days before we went home, they made it a bit more fancy. They made us stand for a while, and the camp leader said to us 'Now we're going to pray, if you don't want to be here, please don't feel like you have to'. So, everyone is there, standing still, listening to hymns, praying, crying. My brother turned around and shouted 'Screw this' and walked out. I stood still for an instance then followed. When we got outside, I turned around and saw a large number of people also leaving. We had started a walk out. My friend stayed in the hall because that they were giving out wine for people who stayed.

I can't remember if I've written about that before.