User Profile Friends Calendar

Below are the 25 most recent journal entries.

	2006.02.02  23.52 Musical chairs What is life? Many people have different answers to this. For some life is a spiritual pursuit- a task for getting closer to one’s inner being or creator. Other people think that life is an event that must be experienced to its very end, having as much fun as they can. Other people think like this, I pay little attention to them for I know what life is. The important question is what is the meaning of life. Life is a game of musical chairs, with an infinite number of players and an almost infinite number of chairs. Somewhere in the party room of existence the chairs are laid neatly in a row, while the DJ with his flashing light display waits patiently to start the music to which we all must run around to. This is for certain. The area of doubt about life comes when considering how best to play the game and what are the rules. That is the question, how do you win life’s game of musical chairs? There are as many answers as there are combinations of chess moves, and everyone in the world would upon asking give you a slightly different answer, each certain that their method of play is correct and infallible. A hedonist or egotist would tell you that musical chairs is a simple game, just run, jostle and push your fellow players out of the way. Anything to make sure you are the last man sitting. A religious person would say that it is best to try and win a seat when the music stops and then donate it to somebody more needy and less able bodied, safe in the knowledge that their kindness would win them favour with their God. An even more charitable person would deliberately stall to let someone else have the last remaining chair. Philosophers and anthropologists wouldn’t play the game at all. They would stand by the buffet table and observe closely what was going on. They would stand with those with low self esteem who wouldn’t see the point of playing the stupid game anyway. The capitalists would not waste their time on running around the chairs for victory. Once they had secured their first seat they would sell it to the player that didn’t get one and use the money to buy their own chair. Communists would change the rules of the game so as to guarantee that everyone gets a seat when the music stops. Socialists would make it easier for the slower and older people to get a chair, and so make the game fairer. And autocrats would simply kill anyone that took the seats before them. But what about atheists and cynics, how or why would they play the game at all when they have come to the conclusion that when the music stops, the winners and losers are condemned to the same fate anyway? The only prize for the winner is momentary fame and glory. And what of the old and experienced, that after a life time of playing the game are sure they know how the game works, and know that the sad truth is no matter how long you play the game, how ever many circuits you complete around the awaiting chairs, the music never stops. The DJ just stares at you through his blue tinted sunglasses with his finger over the ‘pause’ button for all eternity. And life is just spent in preparation of what to do if it was to ever stop. And although you may be certain that you would pounce on the nearest chair faster and smoother than anyone else. You never really get to find out. I was at a party the other day, and I was unfairly deemed to have cheated at a game of musical chairs, I’m just still bitter about it. Kris kristian_farnan@hotmail.com Music: Interpol- Slow hands

	2005.07.20  20.23 Bureaucracy will brake your heart Hello Everyone. I can only apologise for my absence over these past two months. Those of you that have read my previous entries will probably know that I hadn’t been feeling on top of the world. Well, a lot has happened since then, and I will go over it all, but first I want to tell you that I’ve spent some time in Ireland and I have only yesterday got back to England. Most people that live or have ever been to the Emerald isle will tell you that it is among the most beautiful countries in the world and contains the nicest people. I was in New Ross; the birth place of my grandmother, and without exception every single person I met there went out of their way to make sure I had a great time; which I did. Despite this though I am glad to be back in Blighty with all the congestion and people that don’t say hello to you in the street. My time in Ireland helped me clear my head and let me realise what was important in life, And most importantly not to worry about the little stuff in life, which is handy. The other two major things that has happened in my life since my last entry are: I have gotten a new girlfriend; Nathalie her name is (the ‘h’ is silent.) She is brilliant, she is everything I need; she’s clever witty and very patient with my bumbling stupidity. She never seems to get angry no matter how many times I mess things up (which believe me is plentiful.) And she has one key factor over my last girlfriend, and that is she doesn’t suffer form multiple personality disorder. Quite an obvious prerequisite for a future mate you may think but you would be surprised how for people check to make sure their partner isn’t clinically insane before asking them out. Yes Nathalie is normal, staggeringly normal* in fact, and normality is what I’m after. The other thing that has happened is that I’ve got a car: a 1994 Volvo 440 no less. It is amazing machine; testament to Swedish engineering, or at least it was, until I got hold of the car keys. The first three weeks of owning the car were fantastic. I drove everywhere with my friends I suddenly realised I had to Brighton, Thorpe Park and South End. Then one day Nat and I decided to go for a road trip to the Hell Fire Caves in west Wycombe: An old chalk mine used in the eighteenth century and is supposedly (like every other tourist attraction in Great Britain) haunted by ghosts of people that died there. On the way out of the car park I reversed up a large kerb and knocked the bumper off the car. Which wasn’t good, what was even less good was that my number plate was of course connected to said bumper, and while you still can technically drive without a bumper, it is illegal to drive ‘numberplateless,’ so as soon as I could I managed to rip the number plate off and using sticky back plastic (which I didn’t know up until then actually existed) and very clumsily stuck it to the grill. So apart from the crappy look of my car it was still road worthy. In the same week as this it was time to sort out accommodation for the following academic year. Andrew, Iain, Vijay and I had all decided to stay in the same house we were in for the first year, Matt being the spotty little turncoat that he is had made plans to move out, and so Nathalie was to take his place in the group. I remember the day clearly: it was a bright sunny day, uni had finished for summer and everyone was in high spirits. We had all arranged to meet outside the accommodation office to declare our intentions, we all turned up on time and everything seemed to be going smoothly. Being the diplomat of the group it was down to me to do the talking. The accommodation office has a large hatch that opens onto the corridor so people can talk to the accommodation group without having to go into the room. By the time we got there there was quite a queue of students lining up by the hatch, all with the same idea as us (This day was the deadline to declare your accommodation you see) and after a fifteen minute wait or so it was our turn; a small, bald man in a striped shirt and tie greeted us. “Hello there” he said. “Hi, we’ve come to secure our property for next year.” “Ok, what’s the address?” I told him, and he disappeared for a minute or so, he eventually returned with all the paperwork of our house. “Umm, I think there’s been a bit of a mix up.” “Oh, what’s wrong?” “Well another group have shown interest in your property and have placed a reserve on it.” This, as you might imagine came as a bit of a shock to us. “Another group?” “Yes, about three weeks ago.” “But I don’t understand, we were told we had until today to form a group and declare the house ours.” “No, you had until today to come up with a group, you had to put a reserve on the property you wanted two weeks ago.” “What, how can we put a reserve down on a house if we haven’t got a group to go in it?” The man in the suit scratched the hair he didn’t have on his head. He was in an awkward situation; clearly somebody had fucked up with the paperwork and sent us out the wrong documentations, but he couldn’t admit to a mistake, not to students. At this point Andrew piped up: “It clearly said on our papers that we had until today to get our house.” “Do any of you have that sheet of paper on you?” we looked around each other, of course we didn’t, why would we have needed it? “No groups have been round to see the house, have they Iain?” I turned round to Iain who had been at the house for the whole term. “No, no one” he said shaking his head. “So?” said the bald man. Keep calm Kristian, I thought. “How can somebody put a reserve on a house they haven’t seen?” The man shrugged. “Look I’m just telling you the facts Ok, someone got in first on your house, so unless they withdraw their reserve you lot are going to have to find another place to live next year” the tone of his voice was outstanding;; it was as if he was blaming us for the massive cock up. Now our problems were twofold: firstly, we had lost our house and so would have to split up for next year, secondly of course as this day was the deadline to find a property, we couldn’t secure anywhere to stay, unless we could each find our own accommodation in the next four hours, which any university student would tell you is an act of futility. So, it seemed that I would have to commute to uni next year; a prospect I was not looking forward to. As it turned out the group that had made the reserve on our house had found a better place they liked almost the day after and had in fact withdrew their reserve. So our house was ours all along, only the bald bastard didn’t know that because the documents for reserves and the documents for withdrawal of reserves were kept in separate files in separate drawers. “Fucking bureaucracy” I remember thinking at the time. All it ever does is hinder, it never helps, still at least the problems with the house had been solved, so it looked like I would be able to enjoy my summer after all. About a week or so later I was driving back to Milton Keynes for a few days rest at home. When I parked up outside the house my mum saw the damage to the front of the car. “Ouch, that looks nasty” she said. “Thanks.” “You know you can’t drive around without a number plate.” “It’s Ok I stuck it to…” as I looked round at the front of my car I saw that my number plate wasn’t there, it must have fallen off somewhere between High Wycombe and Milton Keynes. I very, very seldom swear in front of my mum. “Bollocks!” I cried out loud. “Relax, get a new one tomorrow at Halfords. Do you have all the documents with you?” “Yeah its all in the glove box.” So early the next day I drove to Halfords, careful not to cross the path of any police cars. Once there I approached the number plate department. A tall, bearded man in no suit greeted me. “Hello sir, how can I help.” “I was wondering if it would be possible to have a number plate made.” “Certainly sir, do you have any proof of ownership on you?” “Yes” I said and passed him the thick, grey ring binder stuffed full of documentations (the previous owner of the car was very anal and kept every bit of paperwork to do with it.) After flicking through it he looked up at me. “I’m sorry, you don’t have the necessary papers here.” He couldn’t be serious, I had about thirty pieces of official documents with my name and the registration of the car on. I looked at him blankly. “I’m afraid you need your D5 document, once you have it bring it along and I’ll make it all up for you.” And with that he disappeared out the back, leaving me standing in a motor shop ready to scream. Driving back to High Wycombe with my cardboard makeshift number plate I had all but lost my faith in human intelligence. Filing, litigation and paperwork have all been instigated to prevent human error, but bureaucracy has slowed everything down and made everything worse, now everything is governed by forms, questionnaires and ‘tick here boxes,’ all forms of human intervention is being weeded out. Bureaucracy is the antithesis to common sense; whereas a human can use their judgement to get things done, bureaucrats seem determined to reduce anything and everything to numbers and statistics, to de-humanise the whole process of living. In all aspects of life we have to fill in paperwork that no one ever reads: getting a bank account, applying for a job, getting insurance, buying a car, selling a car, even getting an e-mail address requires an e-form to fill out. Just make sure you don’t pick the same username as someone else. The tragic thing is that the whole system is flawed. Karl Marx once said that capitalism holds within it the seeds of its own destruction, the same is true of bureaucracy. The whole thing exists to eliminate corruption and forgery, but the more paperwork there is the more open to mistakes and illegality there is; for a piece of paper is much easier to forge than a human is to fool. As you can imagine, I was feeling pretty disillusioned with everything ‘official’ at this time. So you could probably guess at the panic I felt when, four days before my trip to Ireland I discovered that my passport was out of date. This couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t be happening, but it was, it was written down in bold black letters; my passport expired three whole weeks ago. What was I going to do, it was far too late to get a new one. I made the decision not to tell my dad and Wax as I knew they would over react. Instead I kept my mouth shut and prayed that the airline would have an attack of common sense and let me through. As we arrived at Luton airport I felt strangely happy that I’d kept my out of date passport secret from my brother as for the whole day he was nervous and tetchy and knowing that my passport wasn’t valid would have sent him into a blind panic. Queuing up at the check in desk I kept telling myself that the lady at the front probably wouldn’t even notice the passport: no, she would just check to make sure the names matched up and give them back to us. Well of course she didn’t. In fact it was the first thing she noticed when checking our luggage. “Excuse me sir, your passport is out of date.” “Is it?” I said feigning surprise rather well I thought. Wax turned to me with a daggers. “Do you have any other form of identification on you sir?” “Yeah, I’ve got my drivers license.” I quickly pulled it out of my wallet. She checked it and gave it back to me. “Thank you sir.” That was it, she let us through. I couldn’t help but smiling as we entered the departure lounge. “I can’t believe you” my dad said shaking his head. “How long did you know that it was out of date?” “A few days.” “I cant believe you.” Ever since I heard about the trip to Ireland I couldn’t wait for it. Being half Irish it was always a place I’d wanted to go, and when I got there it was every bit as good as I thought it would be. What I wasn’t expecting were the differences in attitudes. The first night I was there we were in a pub called The Rag with a load of our Irish relatives. At eleven o’clock I asked one of them what time the pubs close, he said: “Whenever everyone goes home.” “Really, are they allowed to stay open all night?” “Officially closing time is at eleven, but the police are pretty lax about enforcing it. They sometimes come in and say to the barman ‘come on, time to close’ but they never fine anyone.” This was fantastic, it was like music to my ears; finally people were making a stand for common sense. On the same night I learnt that officially children under eighteen were only allowed in if they kept quite and didn’t attract attention to themselves. I fell in love with Ireland there and then. On the way back from the pub, our cab driver pointed out a building at the bottom of the street we were staying at. He pointed out that power cables were going straight into the house and out the other side because the builders couldn’t get planning permission to move them. Never in a million years would you get away with that in Britain. I took a picture of it, you can view it here: http://www.deviantart.com/view/20749058/. That house became a sort of shrine to me for the time I was there. So, in conclusion: if you ever feel that we live in a soulless world where everything you do just makes up statistics; don’t worry, it isn’t like this everywhere, there are other ways of living; you just have to find it. And five points for the first person to point out that this journal entry about bureaucracy is the longest one I’ve ever done. Kris Kristian_farnan@hotmail.com *Now that’s good hyperbole. Music: Death in vegas: Hands around my throught

	2005.04.29  14.13 The suicide entry Webheads let me ask you a question. In the course or your life, have you ever, even for a second ever seriously contemplated suicide? And I don't mean the sort of curiosity or wondering about how you would do it or what effect your suicide might have on someone else, I mean really sat down and thought about it as a form of action? I have. In fact I came within twenty minutes of suicide once. As any of you that have been reading my journal would probably have guessed by now, I am a loser. Now being a loser is fine so long as you realise you are one. I have no friends at uni, I'm falling behind on the work (I have about fifteen essays to catch up on and counting) I have no girlfriend, no one close to talk to, I am ugly, uncharismatic and annoying. Now I could live with all those qualities, I could live my life in a state of perpetual misery safe in the knowledge that I will never get anything better. That was my philosophy and it stood me in good stead for ages, until the worse thing in the world happened: I got a girlfriend, and not just any girlfriend, but the most beautiful, funny and caring girl in the universe. 'Wa hey' I thought, quid’s in. And for every second I was with her I was tripping on love. Now you know how that turned out; yada yada yada she dumps me, goes out with another poor fellow and completely deletes me from her life. Only, she didn't. In fact she has still never to this day said that she wanted to split up with me. If I wanted to be technical about it we are still going out. No, she just stopped talking to me, and that was kind of the problem. You see, now that I had known what happiness and popularity was like, I couldn't go back to just being a loser again. I felt utterly, utterly depressed and alone. I couldn't cope; I spent every night locked in my room stifling my crying so as not to alert the other housemates, all the time wondering 'why won’t she speak to me?' Eventually I made the decision: I was going to kill myself. I suffer from chronic headaches so my doctor had given me some XXL strength painkillers, and on the day I decided to kill myself I had about thirty of them left, easily enough to overdose on. I remember planning it all out; I would do it at midnight, that way I wouldn’t' be found until the next day, by then it would be far to late to save me. At ten in the evening I wrote my note apologising to everyone. Then I did what I had never done since I was five years old: I prayed. I prayed to the God that I hoped existed, I told him I was sorry and I begged him to forgive me. But when midnight came I didn't take the pills, because at 23:40 my mobile phone rang. Lowe and behold, it was Marisa, she had called me to check I was alright. I told her I missed her deeply and that I wanted to be with her, she told me that she would be there for me. We chatted for a good hour. She saved my life that evening. True she has reduced me to tears many times since but I haven't gone back to the pills yet. So why haven't I killed myself since? things haven't got any better, in fact things are getting progressively worse almost daily. The fact is that I'm a coward. And although I am certain I would have done it that night if she hadn't have phoned, the truth is I haven't built up the mental strength to do it since. I have always had a massive amount of respect for people that commit suicide. I have always thought of them as people that have made a stand against sadness and misery. Kurt Cobain, Virginia Wolfe, Alan Turing all stood up against the hypocrisy and lies that dogged them all their lives. They are self martyrs. In Roman times suicide was not seen as a cowardly way out like we see it, it was seen as a honour and a test of character. I'd been meaning to write this entry for weeks but I couldn't figure out a way of writing it without it sounding like I am crying out for sympathy, because I'm not. Don't worry I'm not going to kill myself anytime soon. I'm just starting to get used to being a loser again. Neither am I abdicating suicide as a good way of solving problems, of course it isn't. I just want to know if I'm the only one that has felt so down that they have felt the need to end it all. And why are suicide rates the highest they have been for decades? Kris kristian_farnan@hotmail.com Music: Athlete- Twenty-four hours

	2005.04.09  13.12 Don't panic Hello Webheads. About two weeks ago I started a new job at a cinema near to my university. Before all the people who got the job with me could start we had to sit through two eight hour days of training and lectures. It was mind numbing, I could physically feel me body decaying as I sat in my chair listening to our team leader explaining what RICE stands for. Although to be fair we did get paid for it (and on a little side note, there was one girl who sat through all the training and then never turned up for work, and this got me thinking 'maybe she's a professional trainee,' maybe she goes to all these training days, gets paid for them and then moves on to the next. Not a bad idea if it works as they pay about £100 pounds a time.) Anyway, a sizable chunk of what we had to learn concerned fire safety and procedures; we had to learn where all the fire exits are, what to say to people when the fire alarm sounds, how to make sure the cinema is empty etc and etc. The main thing we learnt through all this was 'don't panic.' 'Don't panic,' that has always been a great a British reserve; our ability not to panic. Do you remember about five years ago when there was a bomb threat at Aintree race course? Everyone was told to evacuate and to remain calm, and they did, they calmly and slowly left the race course, almost oblivious to the fact that they could be killed any second. Douglas Adams once wrote that the most important thing about interstellar travel are the two words 'Don't panic,' and like most writers of his genres, Douglas Adams was a prat. You see, I have always believed that our bodies do not do things to us that would put us in harm unless it is malfunctioning, so if our body is making us panic we are panicking for a reason. Do you remember all those needless fire drills we had to do at school? We had to get out the building in an organised fashion and not to run. Well fuck that, if I am in a building that is on fire I will get my own way out and I WILL be running. Panicking is designed to get ourselves out of danger; I've come to the conclusion that staying calm often results in more danger than panicking does. Imagine if General Custer had panicked at the battle of Little Big horn, he might not have been laughed at two hundred years later by year eight history classes up and down the land. What if the captain of the Titanic had panicked when his ship got struck by an iceberg, I reckon a lot more lives would have been saved (actually I take issue with the whole Titanic disaster, have you been on a ferry recently and actually counted how many life boats there are? people say it was an atrocity that the ship didn't have enough life boats, they still don't! Ship companies are just better at covering it up nowadays.) Of course, I'm not saying that panicking is always the right thing to do; I'd imagine that if you were coming up to a set of traffic lights that remaining calm would probably stand you in good stead. But I have just never understood why we all have to remain calm during a fire; wouldn't everyone get out quicker if they were just a little bit scared? Kris kristian_farnan@hotmail.com Music: Bob Marley- Redemption song

	2005.03.28  12.58 Rejoice in thy youth How do Webheads I'm getting old. That’s a lie, I'm not getting old at all, in fact as a twenty year old male I am at the absolute physical and mental peak of my life. Never again will I be in as good a shape as I am in now. I feel young, I feel like I haven't stopped growing up yet, and I feel lucky that I am a youth at the beginning of the twenty-first century; a fascinating time to be alive. I'm just wondering how long it lasts for. How will I feel when I'm thirty and forty? As a youngster I hadn't really put much thought into old age until a few days ago. I am home for Easter for a the week and we have my Nan visiting while I'm here. My Nan is my mum's mum and she the last remaining grandparent I have. she's massively old, I forget exactly how old she is but she is in her late seventies and she's not in the best of shape: she's a smoker, half deaf and diabetic. Perhaps unsurprisingly enough she is also depressed, morbidly depressed. It had never occurred to me before that old people get sad, I had always thought that as they get older they get jollier and more willing to give out cash, but when I see my Nan the way she is it puts a lot of things into perspective. Whenever I go through one of my bouts of loneliness and depression I know deep down that I haven't got anything to be sad about and that I'm just feeling miserable. But old people, they have a lot to be down about; they're decaying bodies, their lack of physical energy and of course the fact that they could die any day. It makes me feel glad to be alive, but also that I'm wasting the time I have. I don't really fear growing up, and when I die I want to be a very old man, but I don't want to regret my life either, I don't want to look back and say to myself 'you wasted your life Kris.' That's what I'm scared of. And when I think about it, I'm wasting a good hour of my life every week writing this thing for my fellow Webheads. Ah well, I am your servants. I'm not saying that old age is a thing to dread of course. I have spoken to many people that say that being old is fun; you can do what you like when you like. So perhaps growing old is nothing to worry about, we should just sit back and enjoy life. Either way we have no choice so here’s to oblivion. Kris kristian_farnan@hotmail.com Oh on another subject. I am getting a lot of feedback from people about this weblog, and I sincerely thank everyone of you that takes the time to read my page and tell me your views on it, but none of you are leaving comments for me on the page itself. It would make me the happiest person in the world if everyone that reads the page can find out what other people think about it. So if you would be so kind and post comments on the weblog, it doesn’t matter if it's good or bad things you want to say, in fact I enjoy reading the very few negative things I have received, it shows me that you enjoy expressing your freedom of speech as much as I do. Thank you kindly Kristian Music: Sigur Ros- (Untitled 3)

	2005.03.16  11.03 Lets talk about sex, baby Hello webheads Freud was right you know: sex is everywhere, from the clothes people wear to the advertising boards we see, everything is an attempt to get us turned on, and why? Because the need for sex is one of our most basset instincts, sex works in getting whatever people (usually women) want. As I write this in my uni library, I can look out the window onto the town below and notice all the people going around with their lives, all of us are a result of sex. If not for sex the Earth would stop spinning on its axis and get pulled towards the sun. Quite frankly I'm amazed anyone ever has any nookie at all, especially in this day and age, what with all the thousands and thousands of people dying from sexually transmitted diseases every day, and when you think about it the whole act isn't very pleasant; a whole lot of juices and bodily parts changing places and entering places. I am very much a virgin, and by the looks of things will remain one for a very long time to come, the whole idea of it terrifies me, you can't just enjoy sex, you have to be good at it. they're are millions of people that make a living out of telling us how to have better sex, it's hard to turn on channel 4 after eight o'clock without hearing snippets of wisdom for a resident 'sexpert' explaining what we mere mortals are doing wrong, can't people just have a laugh at sex? I am useless at pool, I really am rubbish, however I enjoy playing it because it's fun even though I never win, but what about sex? you can't say 'oh I'm rubbish at it but I still enjoy it.' Being a teenage adult with access to the internet I have glanced at my fair share of pornography, but now I can't even derive pleasure from that as every image I view just reminds me how badly I'm getting left behind. I think I was born in the wrong time, I think I was meant to be born in the 50s before people had sex, what a great time that must have been. In case you're wondering, yeah I am still single. Kris kristian_farnan@hotmail.com Oh and by the way, I got one of those new fangled phones for Christmas, and last week I finally figured out how to receive email on it, so feel free to email my phone at kristianfarnan@3mail.com Music: Radiohead- fake Plastic Trees

	2005.03.09  16.02 Who's in charge? Hello Webheads, me again When I was a kid I used to love playing Hide and Seek, I was a master at it especially considering my height. I remember playing epic games with my brother and all my cousins whenever we went to my Gran's house. My family have always been very competitive so we were always trying to out do each other and stay hidden for the longest time, and there's a lot of tactics involved, the trick I found was to sometimes hide in obvious places, such as under covers or behind doors as this in turn made them less obvious as the person looking for you would assume that you had found a better place to hide. Happy times indeed. But now I'm grown up, and I haven't got anyone to find, and no one to find me, however I still feel like I've been playing hide and seek all my adult life. Recently I have been travelling on trains a lot and I have discovered that they are very lonely places; they give you a lot of time to think, and think I try to. Have you ever wondered about your place in this universe? I have, and it's not a pleasant thought. Of course if you believe in God or any form of higher being then you're sorted, like wise if you believe in nothing at all and think that we are just living our lives randomly and in chaos you can at least take comfort in the fact your life is out of your hands and that nothing matters anyway. But what about the large group of people that haven't made their mind up yet? Let me share something with you now my fellow Webheads: I, until very recently was a Christian, It's not that I have suddenly stopped believing in God or anything, it's just that I have too many questions and doubt in my mind to sincerely call myself a believer. I mean, there is a lot to suggest that we are alone in this godless universe, a recent example is the Asian tsunami, how can any God that has the power to control the Earth allow something like that to happen? I suppose the only reason God exists is so we can sleep at night safe in the knowledge that there is someone watching over us. But I don't want to believe that there is no one in charge of this planet, because if there isn't then what hope have I got? I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm lonely, and I know for a fact I’m not the only one, and the only thing that stops me braking down into a suicidal depression is the hope that things will get better, and at the minute the only way I can think that that is going to happen is if God intervenes. But even if he does exist then what have I done to deserve being found, I 'm just one person, there were thousands of innocent people killed during the tsunami. I emailed the Samaritans a while back, I was quite reluctant to do so, not because I was scared to confront my feelings but because I was worried that they were just going to be patronising and 'there there' about it all, but my fears were laid to rest, the email I got back was helpful and made sense and did help me feel better. If you're feeling genuinely depressed then I would definitely recommend them, you can email them at jo@samaritans.org Despite all this, I have learnt enough from life to know that things do get better, and nothing stays bad forever, and whether it's God, nature or good old fashion fate that makes things change I hope something happens soon, for hope is all I've got left. Kris kristian_farnan@hotmail.com Music: Hope of the States- Black Dollar Bills

	2005.02.22  14.46 The end of the affair Hello again webheads Your humble narrator has returned after ten weeks of not updating this weblog. I can only sincerely apologise for my absence, the thing is until ten weeks ago I was a miserable person, and good art only tends to come from miserable people, take a look at van Gogh, Wilde, Wolfe and Dickens and you'll see that they used their misery to create works of art. So, ten weeks ago as you may have read I lost my misery, bitterness and sadness when Marisa told me that she loved me, since then I've been happy and content every second of my waking days and because of that I Haven't had any cause to complain about anything. That's one of the reasons why I've been away from this log, another is that I know how annoying it is to constantly be reminded of how lonely we are and how happy other people are, and I knew no one would want to read a journal consisting of good news and optimism. So, I hear you ask, why have I come back to this weblog now? Well alas, my love affair is over, Marisa has left me for someone else. It was all rather sad from my point of view. Marisa and I used to phone each other at least everyday when we weren’t together, until February, when the phone calls stopped. She would never make contact with me and never answer the phone when I called her. I made every effort to get in touch with her, I phoned her, emailed her, wrote to her, I even travelled all the way from High Wycombe to her little village in Bedfordshire just to see her. I guess I knew it was over long before she told me; I just wanted to know for certain. Last Wednesday I made another attempt to phone her on her mobile, a man's voice answered. He told me in no uncertain terms to fuck off and leave Marisa alone. So I did, I walked away, and I haven't made any attempt to get in contact with her since, save for a text message telling her that I wont bother her again. For days after I was in a state of confusion; why would she have treated me like that, I've never done anything to upset her. After the confusion came anger, absolute, childlike anger. For the first time in my life I hate someone, I hate Marisa and I want her dead. And these feelings terrify me; I've never felt like this about anyone before and certainly no one that's played such a part in my life. I feel ashamed that I feel unadulterated hatred for someone, I've always believed in peace and love, but now I just feel bitterness and anger because of her, and that makes me hate her even more. Perhaps Newton was right when he said that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, maybe it's easier to hate someone you've loved, to wish death on someone that's saved your life. Either way I was thinking about the old saying 'it's better to have loved and lost...' and This makes me wonder, would I have still gone through all the great times I did if I knew that it would end like this, and I think that if I'm honest the answer would be yes. I've learnt a lot about life in these ten weeks and I've learnt that far from being the stupid, ugly, unlovable scumbag I thought I was, I am able to be loved. I can at least take comfort in that. Anyway the upshot of all this is that I am back writing trivial entries in this journal. Next subject: What ever happened to Wagon wheels? Kris kristian_farnan@hotmail.com Music: The Antipop consortium- Ghostlawns

	2004.12.09  13.08 Do come in Well now Webheads It seems that I have grossly underestimated my online popularity, as it seems that despite my best efforts, people are actually reading this journal. Until now I had always been safe in the knowledge that my journal goes unnoticed by everyone. This meant I could write anything I wanted without fear of reprisal or criticism. It also meant that I didn't have to be careful about what I wrote about people. But now, with people actually reading what I have to write I'm going to have start thinking about what I commit to this journal. I don't think I can handle the fame. Yesterday I received an email from someone known as bluewolfie. She had some how stumbled upon my article about Marxism and very kindly decided to get in touch with me to tell her feelings on it. Now this means that at least one person has read my journal without my prompting, and who knows, there may be others that have read it but haven’t got in touch, scary. Add this to the number of 'known' people that read my journal: Marisa, Gema and my four house mates, that means that at least there are seven people reading what I have to write, Seven! Ben Elton can only dream of numbers like that. For about a year now I have lived in envy of my good friend Gema's webpage (there's a link to it further down this page.) She has had literally thousands of people viewing her art page on deviantArt, which if you don't know is a sort of care in the community website for sociopaths, loners and the unemployable. I even asked her to put a link to my page on her's, but as of yet she still stubbornly refuses to do so, this is probably a good thing if I thought about it, the vast majority of people that visit her site are weirdos and people I wouldn't want viewing my respectable webpage anyway. So, to all my new found friend(s) out there in cyberspace: thanks for dropping in. Please feel free to get in touch with me about anything, even if you think I'm rubbish. At least I know you care. Kris kristian_farnan@hotmail.com If you'd like to read bluewolfie's journal, visit www.blurty.com/users/bluewoflie Music: Kasabian- LSF

	2004.12.06  20.39 The good will out Hello Webheads My mum has got a saying: 'Things can turn on a sixpence,' I think this basically means things can change suddenly within a short time. The term originates from the fact that London cabs can (apparently) turn on the spot, and hence take up a tiny area in doing so. I'd never given the saying much thought before, but yesterday I discovered that things can indeed 'turn on a sixpence.' The thing that did the turning was my life. The theme park that I work at is running through its Christmas season at present. This involves a trip to Santa, a free gift for the kids and a snow storm at eleven o'clock, three o'clock and six o'clock. The park is incredibly popular at this time of year and on Sunday we actually sold out of tickets. The park closes at six but by seven o'clock there were still people in the park. This was a big problem for me as I had arranged to see Marisa at seven to see The Incredibles. I didn't get to the cinema until ten passed seven. As it turned out Marisa didn't get there until twenty passed anyway. When she finally got there she was wearing a long flowing black coat I'd never seen her in before, she looked beautiful, despite the fact she was wearing her work uniform underneath her coat. She gave me a massive hug and instantly I was feeling good. We got into the cinema just in time for the trailers to start, we sat near the back, the cinema was surprisingly empty. Now I should I say that the film was excellent and very funny, it was while watching the film that Marisa and I got close, eventually we started kissing, then she whispered in my ears 'I love you.' Boom. Suddenly a big dipper firework ignited and exploded inside of me. Like a figure skater turning on the spot, I could almost physically feel my life ricochet off those words and bounce off in a new direction. At that exact point my life turned on that sixpence and I felt like the luckiest man in the world. Like all the bad stuff that had ever happened to me was just counter balance for that moment. But then I thought 'what if I missed heard her, what if she said "I'm a fool" or something like that?' But as I stared into her dark eyes, lit up by the action on the screen, I could tell I heard her right. I whispered in her ear 'I love you too,' which, was something I'd been wanting to tell her for months. And that (as some people say) was that. That happened over twenty four hours ago now and I'm still on a mental high from it. I still can't help smiling when I think of the words she said to me. One thing I've learnt in the passed day is something I never really understood before: love is the most important thing in the world, everything else fades into insignificance by comparison. So when you find something or someone to love, love it with all your heart, let your soul become saturated by it. Think of it like a spiritual detox, you let the love flood through your system, washing all the negativity away until your just left with the feeling in you like I have now. Now I don't care about me having no friends at uni, I don't care about not having a car, all I care about is that someone loves me as much as I love them. So Marisa, if you're reading this, you're the most important thing in the world to me and I love you very much. Kris kristian_farnan@hotmail.com Music: Louis Armstrong- What a wodnerful world (My favourite song)

	2004.12.01  19.56 Closet communists Hello Webheads I have come to the conclusion that I might very well be, through no fault of my own, a Marxist. I didn't choose to become one, and I sure as hell didn't want to be one, but I've realised that for years I have been lying to myself that capitalism is the best way to run a society. I am dreading coming out and telling my mum and dad that I dabble in Marxism. You see, the way the British education system works means every first year university student has to take four 'units.' Nearly everyone (including myself) takes three units, these are subjects we have chosen to study, in my case the three areas of study are creative writing, drama production and film studies. This means that we have one unit left to take. So at my uni (the BCUC) everyone's fourth unit is 'using theory.' Now, everyone that has been subjected to the disaster that is the British education system will know that 'theory' is a bi-word for 'dullness,' so it was with some reluctance that I turned up for the first class. My fears however were unfounded as I actually find the lessons fascinating. So far I've learnt about Adorno's theory of standardisation, Freud's theories of sexuality, and most importantly of all, Marx's theory of society. Before these lessons I had no idea what Marxism was all about. I knew he was a left wing communist of course, but I didn't know why his theories are held in such high regard. As it happens, I think I've been a Marxist for years and not known it. I have always believed that the rich exploit the poor, that money drives everything and the 'super structure' keeps us oppressed, but now I have Karl Marx in my corner, and he's intelligent, he's not an idiot like me. "But hang on a minute, how can you sincerely say you are a Marxist, aren't you part of the super structure yourself, don't you work for a living an earn a wage, aren't you a producer in this capitalist mode of production?" Yes Bob, all this is true, and it's something that has been troubling me for a while. How can anyone in Britain claim to support a communist society when we ourselves benefit from capitalism? It's very easy to support one mode of production while living off another. For years I used to believe that no one can truly support communism because of this. But recently I've realised that none of us have chosen to live like this, the only reason we work for a competitive wage is because that's how our society works, and if we didn't immerse ourselves in it we would die. I think what I'm trying to say is don't be afraid to believe in something radical, even if it's never going to happen, and especially don't let anyone tell you that communism can't work. "What about Russia, they had forty years of communist rule and look how they turned out." Well Bob, Russia hasn't really benefited much from capitalism either. Has it? I hope you don't think less of me now, I have always tried to steer clear of the political as it always alienates people, but how can anyone fully support the current state of society? Especially now Bush has been given another term. Can you tell I'm a uni student now? Kris Kristian_farnan@hotmail.com If you're interested (and I know you are) about finding out about Marx, I find a fairly good resource is http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/marx.htm Music: Massive attack- Teardrop

	2004.11.30  14.14 The Marisa virus Hello Webheads A few days ago I decided to check to see if my blurty journal still existed, and lowe and behold, it still does. You see, I've been away from the internet for so long now that I had just assumed that it would have been shut down and the web space given to a more deserving cause. I'd been meaning to get back to my log for a while now and I thought I would have to start a new one from scratch, indeed even when I discovered that this diary still exists I thought I had better begin a new one. But eventually I thought no, I'll keep this one alive. A hell of a lot has happen to me since my last journal entry and I'll quickly bring you up to speed. You may have noticed the new and improved stream line look of this journal, I think it looks better than the old 'note book' style, you may disagree, let me know what you think of it. The reason I changed the look of the log was partly out of boredom, I like to mess around with things. But the main reason I changed it was to signify a new era of my life. You see, it was my twentieth birthday last Sunday, that's right, I am the big two zero. My birthday had the potential to be a sombre affair, but in fact I had a great day, I'll come back to that in a minute. Since September I've been at university, the BCUC no less, you can visit their website at www.bcuc.ac.uk I've been here (I say here because I am writing this in the computer room of the uni library. I didn't sign up for the 'computer induction course' so its taken me nine weeks to figure out how to log onto the computers) for ten weeks now and I hate it. It's not the course or uni I hate, it's just the fact that I haven't made any friends. The thing is, I'm not very charismatic or intelligent or outgoing, and university is a breeding ground for charismatic, intelligent, outgoing people. Because of this I don't really fit in. I get on well enough with everyone, but there's no one I've really 'clicked' with. I'm lonely all the time and until about two weeks ago I was seriously thinking about quitting. But now I have just enough incentive to carry on, allow me to explain. When I worked at Gulliver's land over the summer, some of my time was spent as a ride operator. At the end of each day we had to sweep up and clean our own areas. While sweeping my area at the end of the days I would often run into Marisa, she was a ride operator too and we would chat about trivial things while sweeping away the rubbish. Over the weeks we became good friends and we started seeing each other outside of work. One day we went to Thorpe park together, that was a great day, (Oh yeah, did I mention I've lost my car? Well, I have, but I'll mention that on another day.) Anyway, one thing I should mention about Marisa is that she is insanely nice, and I do mean insanely nice. The first time she met me she gave me a hug, she does that to everyone she meets, and her kindness rubs off on whoever comes near her. She irradiates goodness, and because of that I loved spending time with her, she made me feel better about myself. But once that summer came to an end and we finished our season at the theme park, we separated, I went to uni, she went off to college. For a while we kept in contact, but eventually the texts stopped coming and she stopped picking up the phone when I called her. I thought I'd done something to upset her. So to recap, I'd lost my car, my job, my best friend, I was alone at uni with no money. You can see why I wasn't feeling on top of the world. I was all ready to drop out of uni when one day (about three weeks ago) I got a text message out of the blue from Marisa saying that she was sorry that she hadn't been in touch, her phone was broken and she couldn't pick up. Then she told me where her new job was, (I won’t say where in case any wierdos are reading this.) So one day I wondered into her new shop and there she was. She asked if I could meet her after work, which I did. Straight away it was like the old times. I was instantly feeling good about myself again. Ok, so that's the context, now my birthday. On my birthday I met up with Ben, I hadn't seen him for ages, and Gema and Marisa. Gema had done me a doody print of my pet dog, which was really cool. Marisa had gone off the scale of kindness. She had got me: A slinky (an official slinky) a Disco light, a magnetic dartboard, a balloon with 'happy birthday' on it and best of all, a toffee cake with 'Happy birthday Kristian' written on it. I kept thinking to myself 'I don't deserve all this' it must have cost her a small fortune. She made my birthday. Now I've got my job back at the weekends so I get to see Marisa every week, which is just enough exposure to her 'goodness radiation' to make me want to stick at uni. I have no idea if she knows how much she means to me. I can only hope I mean a tenth as much to her. Kris kristian_farnan@hotmail.com Music: Embrace- The Good Will Out

	2004.07.13  18.47 I ate all the peas Over the passed few months I've been thinking a lot about food. You see, I've come to realise that everything is bad for you. In order to eat completely healthily you need to die and be re-incarnated as some sort of insect creature that could quite happily eat it's own vomit. I've been making a conscience decision to eat better food recently and that of course includes the dreaded F&V. I've never been to hot on fruit and veg. Some fruits I can handle, the basic stuff: apples, oranges, bananas and what have you, I quite enjoy munching on a Satsuma every now and then. But vegetables, fucking vegetables, I (as I'm sure most people) have been deeply traumatised by vegetables from a very early age. To this day I can't even look at peas without being reminded of the good old days of the '80s and early '90s when my whole family sat around the dinner table every sunday afternoon to tuck into my mum's roast dinner. [Now, before I continue I want to make clear that there are few things in the world I enjoy more than my mum's sunday roast, this is in no way a slur on my mum's roast cooking, in fact it's because I like my roast so much that it makes the story of the peas even more tragic] Even now when thinking back I can see the leg of chicken, the strips of pork, the potatoes (and yes I know potatoes are vegetables too, but at least they're making an effort to be liked) all swimming in a spring of gravy. The reason I can recall it so clearly is that we still have it every sunday like clockwork. The only thing that let the ambrosia fit for the Gods down was of course the pile of peas lined up neatly behind the Yorkshire puddings. As a kid I always hated peas but would always eat them, not out of politeness or because I wanted to make it look like I enjoyed every bit of my mum's cooking, no, the reason I always cringed and swallowed my peas was because my mum would always say 'you have to eat your greens, they are good for you' and of course being a mere child I genuinely believed it, as a kid I just thought that some food had to taste horrible, that's why they put gurkins in burgers. Up until recently I've always thought that all vegetables were good for you, despite how disgusting they taste, but a few weeks back I was think about blood donors and why you can only donate blood to someone with the same blood group as you, you see the human body rejects things that it doesn't think is good for it, and hence if vegetables were good for you, wouldn't your body accept them and make them taste good? But no, instead our bodies hate to swallow vegetables and in most cases takes measures to avoid it, why would it do that if peas were good for us? So from now on I'm only going to eat veg that I like the taste of, which basically means potatoes. Kris Music: Bell and Sebastian- I'm a cuckcoo

	2004.07.11  13.33 Fireflies Hi all I've been abroad for the last week so I haven't had a chance to update my journal that no one ever bloody reads, but I'm back now and I feel I should talk about something specific that happened to me while on this holiday, but first I need to need to add some context... I am a member of The Leon school concert band, and every two years we go on a tour of a European country, last time we toured Italy and the time before that we toured Austria. this time we were going on a week's tour of The Czech Republic, I couldn't wait, I'd always wanted to visit eastern Europe and behind the old iron curtain. We were staying in two hotels, the first was in Prague and was a converted high rise block of flats, it was horrible but still very interesting. Everyone was in high spirits and seemed to be enjoying themselves. On the first day we arrived we spent an hour or so in the main square in Prague. It was on the second day that I got attacked by a dose of sadness, but alas it wasn't a case of 'The blue screen effect' no, I knew exactly why I felt so down. The coach journey to Prague took almost eighteen hours, which was surprisingly bearable as a lot of my old friends were sat around me and we were able to chew the fat for hours on end, it turned out of course that all my friends were in a relationship or had a boyfriend or girlfriend or was with 'someone special' i.e. all my friends were being missed by someone back home. This made me feel a bit lonely but I knew I could bare it because there was always someone else in the same single boat as me: that person was Howard. Howard and I were in the 6th form together, he was the year below me. Me and him had a lot in common, we were both clumsy, ugly people with no charisma but was liked by everyone due to our sense of humour and easy going nature. We always got on really well and on this coach trip he was sat one seat in front of me. 'Maybe this isn't going to be so bad' Edward said to me in my head, I knew Howard would be there to make me feel better. But no, even this hope was pulled away from me as I found out on the second day that he had acquired himself a girlfriend. This meant that it was just me, I was the only one that had no one to go back to. 'Bloody typical' I thought, and then the sadness started creeping in, and lasted for another 3 days. Right that's the context dealt with. Now I can talk about the specific thing that happened to me on the last two days of the trip... After Prague we travelled to the town of Karlovy Vary. The second hotel we stayed in was much nicer than the first, it was in a dense forest in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. Being young, excited and British we all wanted to go and explore the woods around the hotel, which we all did. it was beautiful, I spent hours in the forest exploring. At about ten o'clock I was in the hotel bar with some of my friends, when Gema came in, clutching her very expensive camera (She's a brilliant photographer, I’ll try to get her permission to put a link to her web page on my journal) she told me that she'd seen some cool stuff outside, I asked her what she'd seen and she told me she'd seen fireflies. Now one thing you should know about me is that ever since I was about four years old I've always wanted to see fireflies, so when Gema told me she'd seen a load of them I was understandably quite excited. I asked her to take me to where she'd seen them and it turned out they were only about a minute's walk away from the hotel. Gema led me to a clearing just off the road leading up to the hotel, and in the otherwise pitch blackness of the woods was a swarm of tiny green specs of light dancing around the sky. In an instant my sadness and woe and gone, my feeling of loneliness had disappeared as I surrounded by these tiny fireflies. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen in my life, I was speechless, I felt as if my soul and been given an injection of sugar. I spent ages watching them dance around me. Walking back to the hotel I felt a sense of peace, because no matter how bad I felt, or how shitty the world appears to me I knew that somewhere in the middle of the Czech Republic there is a swarm of fireflies lighting up the forest every night. I like that. Kris PS Since writing this journal I've spoken to Gema and she has reluctantly allowed me to put a link to her page on here. So visit: http://insignificant-other.deviantart.com/gallery/ and see how good she is for yourself Music: The Cure- In between days

	2004.06.21  17.59 Things to do on your own I am a loner And as such I get to spend a lot of time thinking. This is not to say I don't have friends, it's just the friends I do have never seem to want to spend any length of time with me, which I can't blame them for, any of them will tell you that I am one of the most annoying people in the world. Anyway the point is that I get to spend a lot of time thinking of things to do to pass the time, and I thought I would share some of these activities with you. So while you're waiting to get aroused enough to crank another one off, why not try some of these: Step of faith. For this you will need a long flight of stairs, the type you get in an office block, basically it has to have one long step in the middle, you can find these types of stairs in schools, hospitals etc. Stand on the step that is two steps up from the long middle one, facing it. stand on one leg and bring your other leg straight out in front of you so that your legs are at right angles (or as far up as you can get it), once your leg is in the air close your eyes and fall forward. The object of this game is to land on the long middle step so that the leg that was in the air is now on the step while the leg that was on the step is now in the air behind you. If you can complete this movement without flinching or opening your eyes then congratulations, you've cracked it. Now step up to the next step and try the same thing again. Light echoes. This one takes a little explanation. When you look at your reflection in the mirror, what you are seeing is light coming off you and bouncing off the glass back into your eyes, so in actual fact your reflection is showing what you looked like a thousandth of a second ago. With this in mind: What you need for this experiment is a long corridor, the longer the better but it must have a window or a mirror at the end of it. Stand at one end of the corridor facing your reflection in the mirror/window and hold your arm out to the side of you, then bring it down in a sort of 'flapping' motion, repeat this motion over and over again while looking at your reflection. Remember it is important that you keep your 'flapping' at a uniform speed. After about 30 seconds or so of flapping you may notice if you look very carefully that there is a tiny delay between the time it takes for you to do a flap and your reflection to do a flap. The longer you flap for the more apparent it can become. Trust me it works. The hands of time. This is basically a variation on an old classic. All you need for this is any piece of furniture that your mum, dad or anyone claims as their own and hence always uses. Once a day move that piece of furniture one centimetre to the right when no one is looking, this works best if the furniture is on floor laminate as it doesn't leave a mark in the carpet. after about a month or so of doing this you should visibly notice the difference, but with a bit of luck, the person that uses it wont. Keep doing this until the piece of furniture becomes obstructed by something (wall, door, cupboard, garden fence etc) and see if they ever notice it's been moved. God I'm lonely Kris Music: Underworld- Rez

	2004.06.17  18.03 One day of revolution Did you know The United Kingdom is one of the most densely populated countries in the world? Around about sixty million of us share this tiny rock just off the coast of France, and this got me thinking that we, as Brits have an awesome amount of power. How much money do you think the British branch of McDonalds makes in a single day? And how much money does the government make from petrol in a single day? And how many people do you think read The Sun newspaper in a single day? A lot of money can be made in twenty-four hours. In this country alone a corporation can make tens of millions of pounds a day, all that is needed is for one in sixty of us to spend a single pound and a million has been made. Now imagine this: What if everybody in this country stopped buying a burger from McDonalds for a single day? Or what if for a day no one filled their cars with petrol? Or what if for one day no one read the Sun newspaper? These are of course just examples, it would work with anything, the point is that we have the power to make any corporation lose millions of pounds and all we have to do is not to spend our money for a single day, it's a good feeling to know that. All we have to do is unify. It is of course in the Government's best interest not to advertise the fact of how powerful we as a populace can be, and there is a very good reason why. Think of it like this... I believe that every one of us has the power to reach our potential, whatever that may be. Some of us may be given a better chance that others but if we all try hard enough we can all be what we want to be. But if we all reached our true potential it would mean the end of society as there would be no one to sell us our groceries at the supermarket and no one to fix our TV when it brakes down and no one to clean our windows etc etc. When you were a kid did you honestly want to be a plumber when you grew up? I didn't think so. For the sake of society we are lead to believe that we are given roles in life and that we must live out these roles. One day we will wake up from this apathy and realise that as a nation we can make things better so easily. All it takes is one day of revolution. Kris Music: Moby- My weakness

	2004.06.16  17.42 A worm in an apple OK, it's time for me to talk about one of the most self destructive of all human emotions. I am referring to guilt. I am a very guilty person. By that I mean I have a lot of guilt in my life. It never used to bother me too much, after all, I'm sure everybody feels guilty about something they did or didn't do in their life. But lately I have been losing sleep over my feelings of guilt. When I try to sleep at night my mind splits off into two different personalities, let's call them Edward and Bob. Edward is well spoken, smiles a lot and is constantly giving me reassurance that I'm doing a good job, where as Bob has a thick cockney accent and is always reminding me of all the stupid things I've done in my life. Now up until recently both the voices have been in balance, one would cancel out the other, but over the last few months I've been hearing nothing from Edward. Nowadays all I hear as I lay in the darkness is Bob's cockney voice whispering in my ear telling me that I'm a 'Worthless piece of shit'. I try to block him out, but I can't, he's inside my head. Now as I try to sleep I am being forced to answer countless questions about my past: 'Why did you hit him? What if you hadn't sent that e-mail? What if you didn't say what you said to your dad? What if you had kissed her back? What if you'd had gone to that party?' It's driving me mad, I don't want to have to justify myself every night. Perhaps my brain is seeking some sort of absolution. Or maybe I just want someone to tell me I'm doing Ok. I don't mean to sound down-hearted, after all I know how dull it can be reading and hearing about yet another teenager going through a 'mid-youth crisis' so I promise I won't make a habit of it. This will be one of the only times I rant about how I'm feeling, I normally much prefer writing about my philosophies of life. it's just that it's getting me down, when I think of all the stupid things I've done or said in the last few years I start to realise that I am a pretty selfish and stupid person. And that's the thing, I am trying my best to be a nice person but I'm just too clumsy. I can't keep going on thinking about all the mistakes I've made in my life, and hopefully when I start uni in October I'll have to chance to start again with a clean slate and put my demons to rest. On another note. Does anyone know how to get chewing gum out of a fleece jumper? I wouldn't normally ask but it's my work jumper and it's the only one I have. Kris Music: Add N to (X)- Plug me in

	2004.06.15  17.41 Time Here's a question. In the world today there is well over a thousand different languages being spoken, in fact some countries have about five different languages in them. Even in Britain there are still many minority languages being spoken: Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Gallic (Irish and Gallic might be the same thing, I'm not sure). With all these different versions of noises flying around imagine how difficult it would be to get everyone in the world to speak the same language. I think you'd agree it would be impossible. So with that in mind, here's my question: how come everyone in the world tells the time the same way? Think about it. There are so many cultures on this planet, so many different ways of living, and yet a clock is a clock anywhere in the world. there is no other invention that is so universal. A car for example is driven on the left in some countries and on the right in others. Who decided that there are twenty-four hours in a day? it wasn't me, I don't trust clocks. I don't think time exists, not naturally anyway, I think the whole idea of time is a man made invention. I mean lets imagine for a moment that we have no way of keeping time, wouldn't it appear that everything was happening at the same time? You may think I'm talking rubbish, and I probably am, but let me ask you something: that water you drank this morning- where do you think it came from? it wasn't created yesterday. The water we drink now is the same water that the dinosaurs were drinking millions of years ago. Since the beginning of the Earth there has been exactly (and I do mean exactly) the same amount of water in it. We are sharing our water with our ancestors, I like that idea. I think the point that I'm trying to make is that although it might seem like a month and a half has passed, I have actually in effect made this journal entry only one day after making my last one. And remember this, a clock measures time, it does not measure distance. Kris P.S. In all honesty, while I was writing this journal entry 'Clocks' by Coldplay came on the radio. Music: Coldplay- Clocks

	2004.04.16  19.08 Herbicide My dad's in a bad state. He finds it hard to walk sometimes as his left leg hurts whenever he applies any amount of strain on it. I can't remember what the name of the affliction is but basically the bone structure of his foot is collapsing in on itself. Not a nice thing, and it makes even simple tasks such as walking up stairs seem difficult and painful. I hate to see him in pain whenever he walks. But despite his almost constant pain, he is a keen gardener. Our house is on the end of the block and our garden goes round the back and side of the house in a kind of 'L' shape. It's not very big but my dad prides himself on making it look beautiful in the summer, which he certainly does. It's one of his few physical hobbies. However, seeing my dad's garden does bring back some regret for me as it while seeing my dad garden about a year ago that I thought to myself 'How hard can it be to keep a plant. I bet I could do that'. This thought has led to a series of disappointments for me. I thought I would keep a small plant in my room. Something that would radiate calmness in my otherwise chaotic life. But being as I am I didn't want to get any old plant. Instead I bought a 'Bonsai starter kit' for three pounds. Perhaps the fact that it only cost three pounds should have been a clue to how successful it would be. After about two months my bonsai died, despite all the love and care I gave it. After that I got some stinging nettle seeds to much the same result. Finally I brought some Venus fly trap seeds. These did sprout but, as usual, died. For some reason I have a complete inability to keep anything alive. I am a plant serial killer, my victims are piling up, and after each killing I feel the urge to do it all again. Maybe I am psychotic, or at least have psychotic feelings towards flora, I don't know why. I love plants, I think their beautiful and I always do my best to keep them alive. I always follow the directions that come with them. Perhaps my plants feel suicidal. perhaps they'd rather end it all than have me as a dad. Whatever it is it's starting to weigh heavy on my conscience. And I'm starting to wonder if people can tell I'm a murderer because no one ever wants to spend anytime with me. Perhaps their scared that I'll kill their daisies. Or maybe I just smell. Kris Music: Grandaddy- AM180

	2004.04.15  19.36 Stuff confuses me As you may have guessed by now, I'm not a particularly intelligent man. In fact, ask any of my friends and they'd probably tell you I'm quite thick. At my work I get to handle lots of money. And today for no particular reason I started wondering who is on the back of all the English notes. After about an hour I'd worked out that Charles Darwin is on the ten pound note, Sir Edward Elgar is on the twenty pound note and a man named John Houblon is on the fifty pound note (who I think was the gatekeeper of the Bank of England at some point). But one thing still remained a mystery to me: Who the hell was on the five pound note? I tried working it out by her signature but it is unreadable, I tried working it out by the picture on the note but is was just of the woman surrounded by what looks like children. I asked all my workmates but they didn't know (or care), I asked my family and they didn't know, I asked all my friends but he didn't know, I was at a loss, and it was really starting to bug me, I don't know why it was bugging me, I just needed to find out. At the end of my shift I took out one of my own fivers and studied it very closely, eventually I discovered some almost microscopic writing, and written in the tiniest of fonts was the name 'Elizabeth Fry' written over and over again. I had never heard of Elizabeth Fry before and wanted to know what makes her feel she's good enough to be on my money. I looked her up on the internet but with little joy. All I could discover about her is that she brought in some prison reforms. I was happy that I'd worked out all the faces on the notes. But after a while this got me thinking about other things that I don't know about. And it turns out I don't know anything. To this day I don't know how magnetic attraction works. I know WHY it works but not HOW it works. I remember being taught hundreds of things in school: the principals of flight, atomic power, X-rays. All the time we are told why stuff works, but not how stuff works, so we are left not really knowing anything about the physical world around us. I've always thought of physics as a branch of philosophy: always leaving me with more questions than answers. And while I'm on the subject, another thing that confuses me is why philosophy students sit exams. How can you possibly fail a philosophy exam? I thought the whole point of philosophy was that nothing can be proven and nothing can be dismissed. I guess I'm never going to understand anything. Even when I'm driving my car my brain is plagued with questions: How do planets stay in orbit? How do the gears in a car work? Should I have stopped at that red light? Every day I feel that I have got 'Just enough intelligence to survive'. Am I the only one tormented with questions all the time? Damn, another question. Kris? Music: The Streets- Turn The Page

	2004.04.13  17.48 The Blue screen effect Do you know what Blue screen is? I'm sure most of you do. For those of you that don't know Blue screen is a technique used for decades in the film industry to artificially create a background. A blue screen is just what it sounds like, it is a big wall coloured royal blue (A blue screen can in fact be any one colour and is actually most commonly lime green nowadays, however it is always known as Blue screen) which is added to in post production. Without Blue screen many films would have been impossible to make. The one draw back to Blue screen is of course that the background doesn't really exist so the actors have to act in front of nothing and use their imaginations. Sometimes I feel that I'm not really in the scene I'm supposed to be in. Do you ever feel that you're not where you think you are or want to be. Perhaps you're at school or work but your mind and spirit is with your friends or on a nice warm beach somewhere. Or maybe it's the other way round. Maybe you should be having the time of your life but you still feel like you're trapped at home or in a classroom. I often find it quite hard to feel what I'm supposed to. Last year me and seven of my best friends went for a weeks caravanning holiday in Clacton. It was a laugh, it was a lot of fun and I know it was, and looking back on it I did have a really good time. But while I was on the holiday I spent most of my time feeling sad, indifferent and depressed for no seemingly good reason. It was as if my emotions were out of context of what I was experiencing because I didn't really feel like I was part of it. I think I felt like this because of a thing I like to call 'The Blue screen effect' as it was the same as feeling something that isn't there. I’m sure everyone suffers from the Blue screen effect at some point. Maybe you feel sad at a party or happy at a funeral and can't explain why. Although sufferers of the Blue screen effect often can't explain their 'Out of context' emotions, there probably is always a deep rooted explanation for it. You just need to figure out what it is. The Blue screen effect can have a positive or negative impact on a sufferer, depending on the scenario. My advice is if it makes you feel better than you should feel then go along with it. If it makes you feel worse than you should feel then try to find out why it is you're feeling it. And remember this. Film directors almost always use Blue screen to make a bigger impact on a scene. Kris Music: Blur- The End Of A Century

	2004.04.12  23.15 Phobos deimos I like sleep. In fact I sleep so much I could class it as one of my hobbies. So when something disturbs my sleep I get understandably annoyed. With this in mind I think I should let you know that I didn't get any sleep at all last night. 'Why didn't you get any sleep Kristian?' Well I'll tell you, but first I need to explain that I'm sleeping on our sofa this week as my Nan is round and she's got my bed. I also need to point out that I am an arachnophobe and hence not partial to certain eight legged creatures. Everyone else in the house had gone to bed and I was ready to go to sleep too. I was lying on the sofa reading a few chapters of 'To kill a mockingbird' when from the corner of my spi-dar (a spi-dar is a sort of sixth sense that all arachnophobes have which gives them the ability to sense a spider's presence so well they can see one in the dark in another room) I saw a house spider scuttling across the floor at death defying speed. Why do they run so fast? it's not as if they've got anything to run away from, quite the opposite in fact. I put my book down and watched this spider as it ran to my shoes and then under my TV and finally in-between a plant pot and a wall. I sat bolt upright and watched as the spider remained absolutely motionless, staring at me. At this point my brain divided into two sections: The logical section, and the other ninety percent. the logical tenth of my brain was saying to me: 'Now come on Kristian. it is an arachnid and can not form creative thoughts and hence is not here to scare you. Just go to sleep and let it go on it's business. Being scared of it is not justification to hate it and kill it'. Where as the other part of my brain was going: 'That little bastard knew you were going to sleep now and has come out to keep you awake all night. Are you going to let a little insect do that to you? you're going to have to kill it. If you don't it will crawl on your face and wake you up screaming like a little girl'. Clearly two good augments. I decided to take the best bits from both the sections of my brain and stayed awake looking at this creature for hours. I couldn't sleep, not just because of the threat from the spider but because I knew that if I did get to sleep my half awake mind would think any type of contact on my body would be an arac-atack and send my flying. So I didn't sleep. Instead I just sat up watching the barrel scraping broadcasting of late night television. At about five in the morning the stand off had still not ended. eventually the ITV Night screen appeared (A public service programme letting insomniacs know it's too late for them to try and get any sleep) and I had had enough. I decided to risk it and turned the lights off and closed my eyes. I tried forcing myself to go to sleep but that was futile. You can't 'will' yourself to sleep, it has to be a kind of passive pursuit. And so I just laid in the darkness wondering if the spider had moved and waiting for someone to come down stairs and find me awake. When day break did finally come. The spider had gone. Why are so many people in the world frightened of spiders? I can't believe that countless millions of people are all being irrational. There must be some point to arachnophobia. Some people (me included) react more rationally when there is a chance of getting beaten up than when we see a spider. Maybe it's proof that there is a God. Maybe he's looking down on us going 'As human beings you are the most evolved beings on my planet and yet I can bring you to your knees with a simple octo-limbed animal. Ha ha ha'. Whatever the reason for fearing spiders are, I don't like it, I don't like it one bit. Kris Music: The Mull Historical Society- Asylum

	2004.04.11  12.43 Beta love (Part one) I like to consider myself an old romantic at heart. One of my favourite films is Amelie. If you haven’t seen it I suggest you do. Basically it's a love story about two shy loners. I love that film. I often find myself thinking about love. I see it in different forms everywhere I go and in everyone I meet. Countless poets, philosophers and story tellers have tried to work out what love is, mostly unsuccessfully. And I'm afraid you wont find any answers from me. But what I do know is what love does to people. The way I see it, there are two types of love: Lets call them 'Alpha' love and 'Beta' love. Most people have the Alpha love type of love in them. I'm full of it. I love my family, I love my best friends, I love to see people smile, I love to hear laughter, I love seeing the countryside on a sunny day, I love looking at the sky on a clear night and seeing countless stars, etc and etc. All these things fall under the 'Alpha' type of love and I am no doubt a better person because of it. Everybody knows what Alpha love feels like so I wont spend anymore time talking about it. Beta love. Now this is where things start to get confusing. Beta love is the type of love that Shakespeare was on about when he wrote West side story. It is the love one person has for another they want to spend the rest of their life with. I have never been in this kind of love. I once thought I was, but now I can look back and release that I was just confusing it with loneliness. And that's the problem. Most people confuse Beta love with other emotions they feel, be it infatuation, lust or awe. People quite often can't work out what it is they're feeling for another person so they genuinely believe it's love. Let me ask you a question. throughout your teenage years (assuming you are over your teenage years as you're reading this, if you're not then let me offer my commiserations. You've got a rubbish ten years ahead of you) how many times have you thought you were in love? If my teenage friends are anything to go by then the answer would be quite a few times. Do you think that it's a coincidence that the time of our life that we feel love the most is the time that our sex drive is highest? Love has nothing to do with sex, lust has everything to do with it. Don't get me wrong. I do believe in true love, and when you see two people that are genuinely in love with each other it does lift the soul. I just think a lot less people ever find true love than have claimed to. The problem I have with love is how destructive it can be. The whole point of love is that it's supposed to make you feel good and better about yourself. However most of the people I know who think they're in love have let it in some form destroy them. That’s not what love is about. What I'm trying to say is next time you think you're in love, ask yourself ''Am I really in love?'' And if you are going to love something or someone, love it with all your heart or don't love it at all. Kris Music: Eagle Eyed Cherry- Save Tonight

	2004.04.09  18.46 The third universal constant There are three certain things in this universe. 1) Everything will end, 2) Everything changes, 3) Little children love stickers. At the theme park where I work. We are given a big roll of stickers to give it to the kids. Sounds simple enough, and usually is as we only come across a family of children at a time. But at the end of the day someone (usually me) has to stand by the exit and give out stickers to the kids as they leave. And every single day without fail a pint size riot ensues. I try explaining to the children that everyone who wants one will get one. But they never listen, how can they? My voice is always drowned out by the screams of 'Can I have a sticker please!' as they Descend on me much like a school of piranhas descends on a slab of meat dropped into their tank at Brighton aquarium. At least one child always ends up getting hurt or upset because their sticker fell off and got trodden on, and at least one parent asks for a fair few on the roll to take home for the kids that couldn't come. Yesterday was the worse. Yesterday several coach loads of children turned up, and lo, all decided to leave at the same time. The riot that started was immense. Thousands of children surrounded me in a huge mass. They literally forced me up against a wall and started crushing me. I could feel the air escaping out of my lungs. All I could do was give out stickers as fast as I could and pray that they would leave me alone. But they didn't. Wave after wave of children hit me as I clutched to the roll of stickers as if it was my only defence from them ripping me apart. In the end my manager had to come to save me. I gave him the roll of stickers and he put them away. Eventually the mob dispersed and I was free to inhale again. Why do children love stickers so much? I was the same as a kid. I would always give money to charity people at shopping centres because of the promise of a little round sticker with 'British Red Cross' written on it. Not that I could read it of course. Maybe it's because that stickers aren't normal objects. Things aren't made to stick to things. But stickers do. We lose our fascination with stickers as we get older and discover alcohol and pornography to keep us occupied, which in a way I'm quite sad about because I still love stickers, but in another way I'm very glad that adults don't love stickers as much as kids, because if they did, I surly would have been flattened to death by now. Kris Music: Linkin Park- Faint

	2004.04.08  19.43 Why wont anyone steal my bike? I'm not an ungrateful man. For my nineteenth birthday my mum bought me a brand new mountain bike. It's brilliant, it has twenty one gears, suspension and it's yellow. My mum got it for me to ride to work on, which was a good idea as it's not really cost effective to drive to work everyday and I could do with the exercise. So at the first opportunity I rode it to work. It handles like a dream. The top of a long downward spiral started the day I first rode the bike to work. One of the many good features about the bike is that it has a quick release saddle. This means that you don't have to mess around with spanners and nuts every time you want to adjust the height of the bike. Unfortunately, this also provides ease of movement for practical jokers, as well as I discovered when I found my bike at the end of the day saddleless, which in turn meant of course that I had to ride home (a thirty minute journey at the best of times) standing up. I can't really hold a grudge against the person that stole my saddle as I can't guarantee that I wouldn't have done the same if I'd seen an unoccupied bike with a saddle waiting to be stolen. It does have a certain comic value to it. And so my bike stood, unused in the garden, forced to embrace the harsh December weather while I earned enough money to buy a saddle and the quick release mechanism that goes with it. Problem was, my job ended a few weeks after that and what little money I had was spent on travelling (which I might talk about at a later date). And so my bike remained in the garden, left to slowly rust, and where it still remains to this very day. The thing is, my bike is now in a limbo stage where it's no longer ride worthy but too new and expensive to get rid of. The only way to solve the problem is if someone steals it. In the past twelve months. My car has been broken into twice and my garden has been invaded once. With this in mind, I thought that it would be a safe bet that my bike would eventually get stolen. Especially now I've moved it to a position where it's visible from the outside. I wake up everyday and hope that some 'Have a go villain' has made off with it. But every day I find it in the garden, slowly decaying. It bothers me that I want so much for something of mine to be stolen. But it's the only way I can think of to resolve the problem. But no. In the four months that I've left my bike outside there has been absolutely no criminal activity in my whole street. Do criminals enjoy upsetting me? What is wrong with these people? Kris Music: The Avalanches- Since I Left You