Past my bedtime. Who can be bothered going to bed at this hour? Not I, by Methuselah. I'd only spend hours staring at the stars, wondering what in God's name happened to the ceiling. While I am a fan of sleeping (particularly those minutes one snatches before they have to get up), I cannot count myself as a fan of bedtime. This is made further ironic upon consideration of my affinity for solitude and peace - a little "down time", as it were. But the trouble with taking a break is that it's only enjoyable if you're taking time off something else. Given that much of my waking hours are spent in idle contemplation, bedtime is run-of-the-mill fare, in which I do much of the same thing that I've done the rest of the day. And by that time, I am usually sick to the back teeth of my own company; my snide little tirades, self-important bluster, unimportant philosophising and all the been-there-done-that corners of my brain. When it comes to the end of the day, I would appreciate a bit of communication. Not necessarily with a lover or life partner, but simply a like mind who would indulge me in conversation until I fall asleep.

Books, being the clever little things they are, tend to fill this gap. My past few nights have been spent with a collection of Philip K. Dick's short stories, Stephen Fry's Moab is my Washpot and a brief, helpful biography of Nietzsche. Friendly and slumber-inducing reads all, if I do say so myself. Though as mentioned earlier, a genuine thinking human being would top all of these. While single life is hardly reprehensible, a well-thinking missus with which to share my pre-oneironautical state would go down a treat (no pun or innuendo intended). And though my sex life is roughly comparable to the image of paint drying on a wall, I am an old hand at pillow talk. Like the aforementioned Mr Fry says in a sketch in which he portrays a stretchingly modern vicar "One figure from history I'd enjoy meeting would be Oscar Wilde as I can imagine he was a very good conversationalist - but also, because I can imagine he'd be very good in bed". And like Edmund Blackadder says in conversation with a petulant prostitute "Look, if I'd wanted a lecture on the rights of man, I'd have gone to bed with Martin Luther".

This rings a chord with me. I often wonder what the calvacade of history's respected statesfolk, philosophers, preachers, lecturers, critics and writers were like between the sheets. That famous myth about John Ruskin having been terrified by his wife's pubic hair springs to mind, though it doesn't really hold water (once more, no pun or innuendo intended). We all know that Socrates was an outrageous bugger, Nietzsche was syphilitic and that Swift treaded a strange line between coprophilia and coprophobia, but these are the dark, sensationalist bits we all dredge up so that we might feel better about ourselves. And not that this doesn't make sense - after all, why else does the song run that Hitler only had one ball? Why else would we smirk and whisper at those stories of Conservative ministers who, having publicly espoused family values and clean living throughout their lives, suddenly turn up dangling from the ceiling dressed in peroxide blonde wigs and clutching oranges in their mouths, with the Thai houseboy as the only witness? Such sexual schadenfreude is the same reason why we ache for dirty stories concerning those who are otherwise admirable - the whole mentality of the man who compares himself to Kennedy by saying "I may not have averted the Cuban Missile crisis, proposed the Civil Rights Act and won a Pulitzer prize - but at least I don't sleep around".

Why can't we give equal commendation to the nice lovers of history? And I don't mean Casanova or Lord Byron, who were famed for being lovers - that's something else. What I do mean is - did Tennyson ever bring his wife some flowers? Did Shelley, after a long day of angst, ever come home to find that Mary had run him a bath? Was Orwell any good at giving cuddles? It's the sad thing that we all know that Ted Hughes was a complete bastard to Sylvia Plath, but the warmth between William Blake and his wife Catherine isn't as well-known. My thinking is once we start considering the possibility that such figures might well have been kind, thoughtful types, we are one step closer to thinking of them as genuine human beings. One of the many problems with modern society is the whole Carlylian notion that the integrity and character of the heroes of old are beyond us. However, the main difference between the average prat in the street and Alexander the Great was that the latter realised he could be Alexander the Great, while the former doubts any possibility of such greatness being linked with himself. We are taught that in paraphrase to Twain's statement, men can only be born great - they will not have it thrust upon them.

As such, we can blame our failings on the old notions of hereditary systems, old-boy networks, aristocracy etc or "never having had the right chance". The sad thing is, there's not much stopping me, you or anyone else from being heroic or brilliant - apart from the choice not to be. Originally, everyone doubts they will be as influential as their idols. Monty Python never believed they would have the scope of Spike Milligan, Tolkien never thought Lord of the Rings could outdo Beowulf and I daresay that Plato held himself as a second fiddle to Socrates. However, we are all equally in the light of such deities, believing ourselves impossible or unworthy of their talent. In this day and age, most people are so terrified of the burdens and necessary labours of success, that they will consistently write off their mediocrity as the result of not having gone to the right university, or not having been born into money. To make matters worse, they will decry the achievements of others due to those exact same reasons - people are better than them not because they have worked harder or pulled their finger out, but because their parents knew somebody else's parents. And consequently, those who have achieved due to neither hard work nor fortune become idols. The multitude of apparent "role models" churned out by reality television, sport or pop music replace scientists, theologians, artists, writers etc. And this is where the real neat trick comes in - these shiterati have succeeded not due to hard work or intelligence, but nor have they done so due to familial connections or class. Rather, they have the benefit of TALENT

And how the idiots love their "talent". We cry out for shows like the X-Factor, Big Brother and Britain's Got Talent (an obvious contender) to show us exemplary individuals who are where they are due to the simplest of good fortune. This has the dual benefits of on the one hand allowing these heroes to be "one of us" (i.e. a member of the working class) while on the other eschewing us from any responsibility to follow in their footsteps, as they themselves admit they are only there due to luck and some small measure of delicious talent. Take Katie Price/Jordan as an example. Her main talent began with her showing off her breasts, before then beginning her career as a woman who had once showed her breasts, then becoming famous for the dalliances she got up to thanks to the fame of being a former glamour model, which got her on to a reality TV programme, that provided her with the chance to hook up with an idiot, which...oh Christ, read it for yourselves. It makes me sick to type it.

The maddening thing is that even though Katie Price could become a "role model" for young working class girls, having risen from such a station herself, the fact of the matter is that not many young working class girls will end up like her. They can entertain the dream of being like her, but will end up working on the perfume counter at Boots or pushing burgers at McDonald's. The dream is handy as it keeps them satisfied with their lives, though remains distant enough to remain beyond their reach. A headier mixture of Tantalus and Marxism ne'er was found.

I feel sorry for any poor bugger who decides to not accept mediocrity and instead chip away at the big stone block of their own potential greatness. Despite the fact they have studied how their idols made it to the top and decided to do the same for themselves - which is never an easy path to tread - their success will constantly be maligned by a mass of wilful underachievers, who laud the benefits of the "university of life" and "common sense". Their critics will think that happiness and accomplishment came to them on a silver platter of middle-classness, with a side of white zinfandel, organic apples and entry tickets to the Hay-on-Wye festival. The bugger of the thing is that success often comes with a particularly dear price tag, and those who dream otherwise are in the same state as all dreamers - asleep.

Speaking of which, it would appear this post has turned full circle, and I must away to the land of nod myself. Here's hoping that I get another decent post in before Christmas.

Given that the Americans have once again proven themselves to be incapable of choosing truly evil presidential candidates, I have decided to foist this choice upon them...



DOOM/CALIGULA: Because even a coalition made up of a comic book supervillain and a mentally suspicious Roman emperor aren't as bad as McCain/Palin.

Was hoping this wouldn't turn in to some damp-cloth, sentimental dream journal, but a portion of last night's dream was so interesting that it deserves committing to memory. It appears that my dreams have points they wish to make clear and I'd be doing them a disservice if I made the mistake of forgetting them.

By hook or by crook, I ended up in a library. It seemed a very homely sort of library, filled with assistants and clerks who were happy to help people with their inquiries. From the clothing and speech of the people around me, I came to believe I was in 1970's New York - everything was somewhere in between The Warriors and Sesame Street. The folks running the library had also been clever enough to hire groups of extremely tall men as orderlies to help shorter people get books off the higher shelves - one such gentle giant even helped me with a search of my own, though I cannot remember the book I sought. As such, I felt very much at ease and was at leisure to wonder the library undisturbed.

One section of the library intrigued me. As with most libraries, a rack of smaller bookshelves ran across the dead middle of the hall, whilst the walls were flanked with taller shelves. However, suspended in the aisles between the two sets of shelves was something akin to a washing line, covered in thousands upon thousands of paper tags. Upon further inspection, each of the tags bore the name of a human being. I found that after a bit of practice, I could lift myself from the floor using this line, and guide myself around the room by shimmying along the aisles.

After a short while, I discovered that the names on the tags belonged to different groups, and each section of this line was accompanied by a different load of books for the purposes of historical research, politics, genealogy etc. It turned out that the first section of the line was made up of the names of black slaves who had died during the Middle Passage, so that black people curious as to their history could trace their bloodlines back to the slave trade and beyond. The second part of the line contained the names of Jews murdered during the Holocaust, and was also supervised by a group of kindly-looking Jewish men sat behind old computers, who informed me that if a Jewish person was interested as to their heritage, or were hunting down a grandparent who was suspected to have been killed by the Nazis, they could not only check with Polish, German etc. authorities for the correct records, but could also help them follow their ancestry back to the days of Moses. The third and final part of the line was reserved for a kind of "anyone else" category, stretching from Anglo-Saxons to Russians and Far-Eastern Asians.

It pleased me hugely that somebody had set up such a room, and with such humane intent. I felt that this place embodied something very gratifying about the common human spirit - a building of learning which not only hired tall people to help you get stuff of the shelves, but also had one place in particular devoted to helping individuals discover their past and help peoples gain closure with the atrocities done to them in the past. All in all, a puzzling but nevertheless pleasing dream.

From my walks to work, I can see autumn's on its way. The trees are starting to lose their green, though leaves haven't started falling yet. Personally, I like the autumn. I've always found that hearing the rain and wind outside always makes me feel a lot more grateful about being indoors. Bathing, sleeping and sitting in the armchair all take on a strangely more homely air. Strangely enough, though a house looks at its best in the summer, it always comes into its own in the winter. As for whether that applies to those inside the houses is another thing, though I suspect it may well be true. And as an added bonus, cold weather also allows me to get away with wearing scarves and those extra thick walking socks. However, it's going to take a good length of time before we see the autumn proper in this neck of the woods. The weather has remained unusually mild for this time of year, and what should be the start of the autumn has turned in to an overcast - yet nevertheless pleasant - Indian summer.

Actually, the weather in general has become extremely unreliable. On Monday and Tuesday, I was walking to work with an umberella due to the lashing rain. By Wednesday, I was going in with sunglasses. If you want any proof that planet earth is getting warmer, North Wales is the place to look for it. We don't even have defined weather patterns or seasons anymore - just a back-and-forth quibble between mild sunshine and dreary showers throughout the year. Here's hoping we get snow this Christmas. The last time I remember that happening was '95, and we were lucky enough to see snow on Boxing Day; proper, well-packed, thick snow at that. Apart from them, every other snowfall I've seen in my lifetime has degraded to lethal slush by the end of the afternoon and turned to rain shortly afterwards.

One of the other bonuses of autumn is the rapid load of events that land during this final part of the year - namely Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night. Both of them bring foods and eating regimes which would be inexcusable any other time of the year (i.e. toffee apples) and have that great quality of being able to get most of the British public out of their homes during nights which even the hardiest of penguins would think twice about. Plus, Hallowe'en is the only time of year when I can really get away with wearing a silly costume.

Anyway, dragging myself from my seasonal reverie, not much is going on in my life at the moment. Have spent much of my time between friends and work, trying to keep a balance between my working life (which, despite its many boons, is a drag from which I will soon need to extricate myself) and my social life. Making a point of going out whenever invited; the trick being that I can afford it these days, despite a cast-iron overdraft. Am glad of company in all its forms these days - my spare time has become more precious and as such I have polished my appreciation for those few with whom I choose to spend that time. Work is a drudge and does make a dint in my time, but life in general is rather good.

Speaking of work, have decided to compile a small list of all the oddest conversations I've had with would-be customers, along with my comments to set the context...

5

Me: "Hello; my name's Iwan, and I'm calling from John Williams..."
Homeowner: "I've already got windows and doors, thanks very much."

The above is one I get fairly frequently. Can't understand why people think I wouldn't take that for granted, or even believe it could get them out of talking to me. If they didn't have windows and doors they would be completely unable to access the inside of their own home, unless they had an open roof and opted to abseil from a handy helicopter. Either that, or they have been placed in solitary confinement; and given the fact they have a landline telephone, that option seems a tad unlikely.

4

Me: "Hello; my name's Iwan, and I'm..."
Homeowner: "NO thankyou - I'm NOT interested."

Oddly, this is one that crops up a lot too. Granted; this is a tactic I'll used if I don't want to be bothered, but it seems a bit jumping-the-shark if they don't know where it is I'm phoning from - or indeed, the reason I'm calling them in the first place. Who's to say I'm not a policeman calling to report the fact that their child has been the victim of some hit-and-run accident, or a representative of the Lottery Commission preparing to hand over substantial amounts of cash to their needy bank accounts? For Christ's sake, they should at least give me the chance to bore/annoy them BEFORE they snub me.

3

Me: "Hello; my name's Iwan, and I'm calling from John Williams..."
Homeowner: "Oh gosh - you lot have rang me (insert number here) times this past hour"
Me: "I'm afraid that's impossible Miss, as we've only been online for ten minutes"
Homeowner: "(silence)"

We'd been having a problem during the early weeks in which the system was having trouble with recycling numbers, and as such a lot of people complained that we'd rang them previously. However, with this example, the boss proved that some people would happily lie in the hopes of getting out of a phone-call - or usually mistake a phonecall from another company for one from our own. I'd been having some trouble that week and this call helped pierce my belief that all those whom I called were innately truthful people.

2

Me: "Hello; my name's Iwan, and I'm calling from John Williams..."
Homeowner: "Hello there John! How are you??"

I don't think the company's founder-owner has ever made a personal stab at tele-marketing. Ever.

1

Me: "Hello; my name's Iwan, and I'm calling from John Williams...is that Miss Griffiths?"
Homeowner: "Oh, there's no such person!"

This reply had me tickled for a while. Normally, whenever I get the name of the homeowner wrong, I usually get the more correct and sensible reply of "No-one of that name lives here", "Sorry - she's not lived here for ages" etc. However, this woman's claims that there was no such person as Miss Griffiths made me smile. Surely, there must be some woman called Miss Griffiths living on planet earth somewhere? I mean, it wasn't as if I'd rang and asked "Hello, is that Father Christmas/The Loch Ness Monster/Zeus?" etc. Some people, eh?

Finished reading Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar - am now far more familiar with wartime Russia, though am still somewhat sketchy as to what the phrase 'Stalinism' actually construes. Nevertheless, it's a damned good read and took up a large chunk of my summer, which otherwise might have been filled with mind-drowning piffle. I still have Richard Overy's The Dictators to go through, as well as Antony Beevor's Stalingrad and The Battle for Spain - but wouldn't mind turning to more fictional fare beforehand, and it would have to be something much more cheerful. The history of Stalin's 'court' is such a bloody history. John Webster might have written it. And as I say, I'm unfamiliar with the political arguments behind Stalinism, but it's execution (an ironically apt phrase!) appears to run like thus:

Despite some reservations from your political benefactors, you achieve power. In order to maintain power, you discredit your opponents and eventually have them murdered. To cover up the murders, you hold large-scale trials, publicly disgracing anyone with close connections to the victims. After a long string of confessions - extracted through torture - you get enough evidence to have all possible perpetrators (apart from yourself, of course) murdered; along with their families, neighbours and house staff. To keep an element of fresh blood amongst your cohorts, you murder the older ones and have them replaced by younger men - and when a dangerous war is upcoming, you make the sensible choice of murdering your most capable military staff. After the war, you murder anyone who made any kind of mistakes. Because you need to make sure everything's kept hush-hush, you discredit and murder the man who organised the first waves of murders. And at the end of all these annoyances, you die in your holiday home - though there is a possibility that one of your potential heirs might have had you murdered, and in order to win the fight for your legacy, the remainder of your successors have him murdered.

Hence, of course, why I need something more cheerful. I still need to finish Kerouac's classic On the Road, which may brighten my reading experiences up a bit.

Got my first pay slip from work today. My wages probably won't get in until Friday - which is a pain in the arse considering they were meant to be paid in yesterday. But, in any case, so long as I've money on Saturday (as I'm planning on heading out in the evening), I'll be a happy man and happiness shall no doubt follow in my wake. It may not be an awful lot of money, but like my dad pointed out, it's my money, and things can probably only get better from here.

Spent a small portion of the money I got back from my deposit on the flat in Swansea on cookies, milkshake, shower gel, bubble bath and cheap DVDs - got Michael Mann's Heat, Richard Linklater's adaptation of A Scanner Darkly and Cy Endfield's classic Zulu, all for eleven pounds. I bought the first film because it's not only brilliant, but is also the first film where De Niro and Pacino appear onscreen together. I bought the second film because I enjoyed Waking Life and am a great fan of Philip K. Dick. As for the third, it's one of those endearing British war films - historically inaccurate and slightly sermonising, but great to watch if you've the free time and enough tea. And plus, that bit when the Welsh regiment sing Men of Harlech is just great.

Hello all. Been a while since I posted last and a little bit has changed in my life. I've since graduated from university and found myself a job back home. Currently, I work evenings (17:30 - 20:30) in a call-center, cold-calling for a local window firm: i.e. I ring up random strangers and try to convince them they want to become a show property for our latest range of products. Tomorrow, I have an interview with a local supermarket in the hopes I can get some work with them too.

This is of course hugely motivated by my need to start making some money. I'm scraping the very end of my overdraft and effectively have no money to my name - at least, not until Tuesday, which is pay-day for my telemarketing job. Should I get work at the supermarket, I'll be able to speed up the rate at which I earn and hopefully get out of this overdraft quicker. Once I'm comfortably back in the black, I'm going to start thinking about taking driving lessons, getting my own place etc. Living at home is fair enough as my dad charges practically sod-all rent (which includes food and utilities - very cushty!), but I miss the independence that came with having my own home. Essentially, I want to take that sense of independence I had while living in my own house in Swansea, and then marrying that to the economic independence I've gained through getting my own job.

To be brutally honest, neither job is one I'd really wish to work. I had a huge sense of self-confidence and drive once I'd got my degree, but now that seems to be ebbing away thanks to ennui and a complete feeling of not moving forward. Once I've worked these jobs for long enough, I'm really going to have to consider heading back down to Swansea and doing an MA (a "definite maybe") or getting some journalistic work. In any case, I'll have to move away - there's only a few local papers around here and none of them will hire me; despite my previous experience with student journalism, despite an excellent reference from my previous editor and despite a first-class honours degree. A lot of them seem to want courses approved by the Press Association.

To be honest, had someone informed me in advance that the Eng. Lit course wasn't much of a selling point, I definitely would have considered it. Now don't get me wrong; I'm perfectly happy with what I learnt on the course. It helped me expand my intellectual capabilities far beyond the plateau which they'd struck after I left school. My knowledge of English Literature, though hardly exhaustive, has been broadened by the course; and consequently I have also seen a change in views concerning such matters as art, culture, society and politics. Plus, my time in Swansea was very much enjoyable and the people I met down there were nothing short of saints. However, I do feel as if I've been shot in the back by the education system in this country.

Take my school life for one example. During that period which many people (quite wrongly, if you ask me) describe as "the best days of your life", I was hectored into such retrospectively meaningless exams as the SATs and the GCSEs. I know that these things are part of a gradual process and that, say, had I not performed well at my SATs, I'd have ended up in a lower set in the GCSE classes, which would have hampered the possibility of my returning for sixth form etc. However, once I took each step, the previous one would descend in to redundancy and irrelevancy. In the meantime, I was stuck in a school filled with largely closed-minded and annoying teachers. At their worst, they were infuriating and ineffective, seemingly concerned only with some kind of classroom warfare. There were definitely a few shining examples who taught me to think outside the box (I owe a debt to my string of English teachers here), but otherwise I can't really say I enjoyed school. People often argue that one of school's better sides is that you get to spend the day with your friends - but heck, my friends and I could have hung out with one another without the interference of school.

The fact I got a D in Graphic Design doesn't keep me awake at nights. In fact, whenever I do find myself awake at night, I'm often nocturnally delighting in the knowledge that my school life is quite firmly behind me. Never again will I be called upon to pointlessly run around a field, or sit and sand the edges of some shoddily-made plastic desk tidy. I won't have to submit to the rude barks of idiots telling me to take my coat off or some other completely inconsequential act of rule-breaking.

Y'know, this takes me back to a post I wrote many moons ago (19th June 2004 - find it, if you like!), concerning an irked parent who'd reprimanded me for speaking English (I went to a Welsh-language secondary school), prompting her to ask the question "You're not advertising the school very well, are you?". Back then it was simply an irritating statement, spawned by that quaint Welsh characteristic of fearing for the language, and out of the mouth of a woman who (despite being annoying) was ultimately irrelevant in my day-to-day existence. But these days, it's bullshit like that which really pisses me off. Given a greater degree of assertiveness, righteous indignation, confidence and conversational flair - essentially all the stuff I have now, so this is a great example of what the French dub le spirit d'escalier - I probably would have torn the silly bitch apart for her ill-thought statement. Disregarding the fact that she completely seemed to have forgotten what schools are meant to do, this was nothing short of offensive. I should have realised then that people should be free to discuss things in whatever language they desire, and that any attempt to limit me to one alone was an assault on my free-mindedness.

Thing is, it's that spirit of self-righteous nationalism which oiled the cogs of that school. Don't get me wrong - I have nothing but love for the Welsh language and find it to be one of the most expressive, most poetic languages on planet earth. If they put any kind of vote up to help it along, I'd vote for it. I'm quite happy to consider myself a Welshman, but only to a point. Had the school had their way, I'd be stuck in some kind of cultural loop and I doubt I would have broadened my horizons. That school was in a rapidly progressing society in which young people could contact people on the other ends of the earth on a daily basis.

I think it's the falsehood of the vast majority of it that bothers me. All that effort gone to such little outcome. When I think of all the times I was reprimanded for not performing well in GCSE classes, and then note that I don't even bother to put my GCSEs on my CV...well, it's bloody annoying. Once you understand that all the grind you went through was just for an educational league table, some kind of cynicism takes over. Like all the effort you put into the system was part of a big joke, and it's taken you nearly nine years to hit the punchline. I worked hard at school in order to get where I am today - and where I am today (with eleven GCSEs, three A-Levels and one first-class honours degree from a reputable university) is sat in front of a list of names with an automatic dialler and a headset, being hissed at by people who think just because I'm trying to sell them windows that I am a two-bit, self-satisfied conman. In the meantime, the people who arsed around in school, had a whale of a time and left early in order to start working have made more money than I have - not to mention the fact that having not gone to university, they've accrued less debts.

This might sound snobbish, but hey - shouldn't something be done about that? I'm a card-carrying listener to Radio 4. I read newspapers that don't have to fill themselves with breasts and horoscopes in order to make up sales. I think sitting and listening to Under Milk Wood is fun. I've visited book launches. I read Philip K. Dick, Allen Ginsberg and Arthur Conan Doyle. To me, Big Brother means more than just some head-rotting experiment in televised social Darwinism. I like poorly-dubbed kung fu films and heady regional ales. I enjoy aimlessly wandering through the detritus of urban, suburban and rural societies, taking myself on the psycho-geographical derive of the French situationists. I appreciate intelligent graffiti. I revel in the grand, golden schemes of subversion and satire. I can discuss the origins of political Islamism, the plays of Shakespeare or the brilliant spirit at the heart of Monty Python. I keep an eye on world events and can tell the difference between Gordon Brown and the Sugar Puff Monster.

And yet....and yet....

And yet I'm made to feel culturally subordinate to poorly-dressed slobs whose conversation stretches no further than football, tits and aggression. Though I have made my achievements, I'm stuffed back on to the bottom rung of the ladder with everyone else. Because I made the heresy of putting my faith in academia during a time in which anti-intellectualism is rampant. That's not to say I believe that there has ever been a time in which we so-called "ivory tower intellectuals" have not seen some kind of prejudice acted against us in some form or another, but hell; it's still depressing.

Ultimately, I think that the past few days/weeks/months have shown me that as things stand at the moment, things are never really going to cater to an individual such as myself. In complete defiance of the god-knows how many years I've had to slog my sorry guts in studying and examinations (and hey - not to keep bringing this up, but I succeeded at them!), I'm going to have to keep slogging in largely uninspiring career positions and face grievances at the hands of people I thought I'd never have to deal with.

After all's said and done (and by the looks of it, I've said and done a lot during this post) this isn't the light at the end of the tunnel which I expected it to be. Granted, I don't doubt that after a few more hard runs down the tunnel I'll reach some kind of satisfactory illumination. But as I've been discovering over the previous weeks, this isn't it. Light's still a long way off.

Just to let you all know, my results arrived in the post yesterday, and I am to graduate from Swansea with a First Class Honours Degree in English Literature with Creative Writing. Needless to say, myself and my friends and loved ones are very chuffed.

Yes, it is I; Mr-Very-Rarely-Posts-Anything. A fair few things to report from my bit of the world, oddly enough.

The obvious one is my having had exams and written essays since I last blogged here. To the best of my knowledge, the whole thing seemed to go reasonably well; though there's always that niggling sense I could have tried a bit harder, but such is our human lot. I won't be finding out about results/grades for a little while longer yet, but I will let you all know once they're through.

In other news - news which renders my current user-picture somewhat inaccurate - I've had my hair cut and tidied. Here is the necessary picture. I apologize for looking like such a morose old bugger, but unfortunately this is the best picture to demonstrate the significant choppage of my locks.



Personally, I quite like it in its current tidier state; though I will miss having waist-length, ghost-of-King-Charles hair. I remarked to the bloke sat next to me in the barbers that I was essentially having my adolescent years cut away; but what with my adolescent years being such a boring and ineffective point in my life, I was happy enough to see them go.

As to why I had my hair cut...

Around November 2007, a couple of flatmates and I applied for the the Jet Programme, a venture set up by the Japanese government to get English-speaking westerners into the country, so that they might teach the English language to its young people or act as translators for expanding companies etc. Having been told by a tutor that it would be a good idea for me to gather some experience before I tried my hand as a professional writer, I decided that Japan wouldn't be a bad idea; as a nation, it interests me in a multitude of ways. And that was without the motivation of the ¥3,600,000 (about £17,000), which would cover my living costs and help me start repaying the loan. Perhaps above all else, this would look good on a CV. With this in mind, we applied round the end of November, and were informed around mid-January that we had reached the interview stage.

Great. Fine, dandy and brilliant. Except of course that we had to journey from Swansea to London. See that fairly lengthy blue line which occupies most of the bottom segment of Great Britain? That was our route. Of course, luckily, this was the M4, which is one of the United Kingdom's major roads. However, it wasn't even that simple. We decided early on that we weren't going to travel by train as that would put us out of pocket; therefore, we settled on coach travel as a cheaper alternative. First we would have to take the bus from Swansea to Cardiff (at five in the morning!), then wait around in Cardiff until we could get on the coach to London. This may seem a bit much, but seeing as I'd already sacrificed a good wodge of cash on passport fees, correspondence expenses, a new suit and a haircut, I wasn't prepared to part hands with yet more money for the trains when the coaches were hardly any worse.

The journey was surprisingly do-able. I even had my first Bacon-'n-Egg McMuffin™ in a McDonald's in Cardiff. Never, in the history of human cuisine, has so much needless grease been forced into so small a breakfast. And when you start the day with something so hideously coronary-inducing, something that plunges the depths of your stomach in the same way that a bar of soap will always go straight to the bottom of the bath, you know that you cannot legitimately eat anything else unless it is no thicker than two millimeters and crafted entirely from low-fat ice. Say what you want about McDonald's; they may be eating the planet's resources, driving Third-World peoples into starvation and economic ruin, brainwashing small children with their heinous advertising campaigns and pursuing their One Taste Worldwide agenda with frightening energy, but they have created an item of food which even I recoil at. And I think that a pizza-and-ice-cream diet is perfectly sane.

London itself startled me, as it always does. On the way in, I caught sight of a shop which sold - and I'm not kidding here - life-size casts/replicas of dinosaur bones. At no point had I ever conceived that a market existed for such goods. And, for the first time in my life, I was genuinely confronted with the thought "I will never, ever get to go in to that shop". Bit dispiriting, I can tell you.

Anyway, the Japanese Embassy was easy enough to locate. After being passed through various security checks and led up and down endless staircases, my interview was held in what may well have been a storage room. It was pretty rigorous and the interviewers were bloody hard. I was quizzed on a horde of stuff; a lot of which seemed fairly irrelevant at the time, including my views on contemporary Welsh politics (that'll teach me for putting my Welsh pride on my personal statement) and the length of my hair (considering I'd just cut the damned thing, this ticked me off a teensy bit).

Once my mates and I had left the Embassy, gathered out belongings and re-united for a (poorly-drawn, sedimentary, expensive) pint in the Hard Rock Cafe, we concluded that it was a grueling experience for the lot of us. We won't find out how it went until April - to the best of my knowledge, it could go either way.

Anyway, back to the present.

Other changes have been in effect; I am currently in the position of associate editor for the university newspaper's film section. Again, something that will look good on a CV - and it doesn't require a massive amount of responsibility on my part, either. Though I've been getting dribs and drabs of my writing (namely reviews of books, plays etc.) out there through the paper's culture section, I felt I'd have fun trying something a bit more involved and educative than just the writing part. I've only had the position for roughly a fortnight, but everything seems to be turning out well enough. Coincidentally, went to see Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd earlier this evening and will probably review it in due time.

As for things I'm reading/writing at the moment, there's a fair bit of material. I'm currently drafting an essay on cyberpunk's portrayal of the body in William Gibson's Neuromancer and The Matrix, so I'm having to sift through a few texts in order to read up on it - such gems as Feminism and the Body, Decoding Gender In Science Fiction, Cyberspace, Cyberbodies, Cyberpunk and particular essays in Donna Haraway's Simians, Cyborgs and Women. Whenever possible, I'm reading Robert Graysmith's Zodiac (I really enjoyed the film) and Jack Kerouac's On The Road. Recently finished Giles Foden's The Last King of Scotland and Stephen Fry's oh-so-edibly-delicious autobiography Moab is my Washpot. Visit his website and read his "blessays" (i.e. blog-essays). They're brilliant.

Well, I suppose that's it for now. If anyone wants to get ahold of me, you know where to find me.

Much love,
Iwan.

With exams looming over the horizon in their characteristically ominous fashion, I have begun reading up on William Shakespeare. Although I have been receiving lectures on the man and his work since early October, I spent a good six hours reading up on him yesterday and have become further astounded by his capabilities. Plowed through the opening chapters of two very different, very interesting texts: John Russel Brown's "William Shakespeare: Writing for Performance" and Jonathan Bates' "Shakespeare and Ovid". I have begun to see that Shakespeare must have been a particularly clever writer, and it's odd that such a notion has never struck me before. There is an awful lot of engaging stuff to be found in trying to understand that gulf between poetic creativity and dramatic engineering; between artistic brilliance and popular entertainment. And what's more, it only takes a sprig of logic to realise that Shakespeare didn't get a gentleman's home in Stratford-upon-Avon for nothing; the man was churning out two plays a year, and even when the theaters were shut he still came up with deeply interesting narrative poems; not to mention his sonnets, which were perfect examples of the Petrarchan form yet great subversions of Petrarchan themes.

Although nor can we make the mistake that Shakespeare was a be-all and end-all in the world of English literature; his influences came from the aforementioned Ovid (in particular the Metamorphoses and the Fasti) and Hollingshed's histories. People often make the mistake of naming Shakespeare an excellent craftsman of stories - although this wouldn't be wrong, the real joy of the Bard (in my opinion) is his ability to subvert existing stories - throw them up in the air and examine them from a different angle. He did this with murder, monarchs, magick, madness and any other number of things, putting on romantic comedies and dark, existentialist tragedies with equal skill. And of course, his influence still lasts into the present day (10 Things I Hate About You, anyone?).

Yet again, I approach this blog with the shame-faced ignominy of a so-called "blogger" who knows they haven't been blogging for quite some time. To those loyal few of you who give my journal an interested glance as you scan through your Friends page, I issue to you the heartiest of apologies. And as always, this has not been due to constraints on my time or lack of material to write about, but pure lazy absent-mindedness. I always come here to give everyone else's journals a look-in, but come the moment to add to my own and I'm washed over by a purple-black wave of guilt. For each day I don't add an entry is another day further away from my last one, and so it gradually becomes more and more easy to neglect it. All the hassles of hyper-linking, spell-checking all of those other nasty things make it easier still for me to walk away and not write anything. And then comes the final stake through the heart - the fear that what I write is not interesting. Which is, of course, a very big fear.

Speaking as a young man who plans on becoming a writer in later life, nothing is worse than the thought that my work could engender tedium and disinterest. And it was only very recently, when writing an (incomplete) essay on Writing Tragedy and Trauma that I realised that all writing should be interesting. It could have quiet mounds of meaning; dense blankets of subtext; steaming oodles of linguistic flare and contented little bobbles of literary awareness, but in and of itself, those things won't necessarily make a work interesting. It needs charge; pace; energy; life. It is in having found this Promethean spark that writers can finally go to their work knowing that it will be interesting. And it is this spark which I am in the midst of hunting ("The Hunting of the Spark", eh?).

My main hope in writing this blog is that you lot are interested in it. I know for a fact that I am interested in it; mainly due to the fact in however-many-years' time, I can look back on this venture with a critical mind and note all of its quaint qualities; my evolution as a writer; my tastes; my political viewpoints. When I started this blog, I was practically a socialist; believing that everything would be fine if we took the "too-much" money away from the very rich, and gave it to the very poor, thereby equalising everything and making everyone far more happy. The diverse injustices of oppression would fade, and the working man would rise strong into the sunshine; ready to join with the masses and end tyranny.

However, by this point, I have realised this entire thing is bollocks. Collectivisation of the means of production will not lead to a freer, more stable society; the only thing that does is make a society more productive. On the contrary, if you hand everything over to the government, then the politicians, bureaucrats, power-mongers, moralists and idealogues have you by the...well...I suppose you can guess.

Nowadays, I tend more towards libertarianism. I believe that every single person has the right to do whatever they see fit, so long as it does not harm another or infringe upon their privacy. I want the politicians out of our wallets, our bedrooms, our media and pretty much everything else. Human beings, by and large, are wise enough and mature enough to make the right decisions about who they sleep with, who they marry, what they spend their money on etc. However, the politicians would have us believe otherwise; that we cannot be expected to look after our own goods, and that they - having given up their time to do so - are innately given the right to look after it for us. Religious fundamentalism, the "War on Terror", and increasing levels of government surveillance are all perfect examples of this. Ultimately, I suppose I have something of an anarchist about me in the actual sense of the word, rather than the more destructive force it is commonly taken to be - I want us "an arkon" - i.e. without rulers.

Why? Because our archons usually have the occasional few within their ranks who aren't satisfied with managing our daily lives. They would also like to dictate how we should live our private lives. Be they the PNAC, Mary Whitehouse or any other such type, there are always people who are repulsed by the thought that certain people are allowed certain modes of expression which are outside of their control. In the case of the PNAC, many of their members have direct involvement with the policy-making process in Washington. In the case of Mary Whitehouse, with her public backing and use of archaic laws, she was able to heavily censor the BBC and call protests against things she found tasteless. Come to think it, I best post this up here as an example...

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This is the beginning of a documentary entitled "The Secret Life of Brian", which showed the war between the Monty Python team and the legion of religious right-wingers who planned to censor their controversial film "The Life of Brian". Anyway, back to my rant...

For a good look at how modern-day governments have attempted to re-seize their status as the lords of the manor, take a look at Adam Curtis' The Power of Nightmares, a documentary which shows how the War on Terror has taken primacy over other political issues and been used to great effect by both the neo-conservatives and the Islamic fundamentalists. I really urge you to download it. John will carry on urging everyone to watch it, too. Seriously. We're not going to let up any time soon.

(On another note - for a very good download, seek out the stumbleupon toolbar. Both the Firefox and IE versions are available at that site. Since I downloaded it, surfing has never been so fun and informative in equal measure. Anyway, back to my rant...again...).

To return to my earlier - and much-mired-in-the-recent-blob-of-politics - point, this journal requires more work on my part. It is practically indispensable in my efforts as a writer, as it demonstrates how I have gone through varying stages in my outlook, style, content, references, complexity and everything else. Given that I'm currently doing a "Life Writing" module for my creative writing course, it's bloody handy.

Well, I must admit my brain is currently shagged out at the moment. Hope this blog lends you all with enough things to peruse - and of course, that it has made you interested. Download that stumbleupon toolbar, as well - you won't regret it.