A Christmas Song

I wrote a song about Christmas.

Well…I say “wrote”…and I say “song”…and I say “Christmas”…

Weapons of Choice

Today’s weapons of choice, in the war against…whatever it is I am trying to defeat by spending hours throwing around iron in a gym…

On the Road Again…Again…

Back in August, I posted this photo of my car, a rare 1977/78 Datsun 260z, which I had just got back on the road. It had just spent 9 weeks in a garage, having £1200 of work done to it, whilst I went through two motorbikes…

Then I got it back and took it DRIVIN’!

Then my starter motor went and it sat motionless for a very long time.

Now, once again, my car is back on the road and MORE ROCKING THAN EVER BEFORE! Watch out world! (Because I can’t see out my steamed up windscreen.)

Alright, Christmas Dinner…Let’s Dance!

Squatting in the name of the Lord…

Merry Christmas!

Whilst the local populace is listening to lonely old men waffle about morality in ostentatious castles built with money extorted from the poor and desperate, my family are drinking morning beer, listening to Iron Maiden and waiting for my uncle to judge our midnight gingerbread house-making competition. Happy Birthday to You (Jesus).

Midnight Mass

It has just turned Christmas day, which means many Catholics will be attending midnight mass at this very moment. My own feelings on this event aside, I thought I’d spend a couple of minutes writing about my thoughts on the Christmas in general.

Christmas, no matter what they tell you, has nothing to do with Christianity and nothing to do with religion. Not anymore. In modern England, Christmas is a time of year where we make a special effort to celebrate the love we have for one another and joy of giving, sharing and being kind.

These are all qualities that nice, sensible people display as often as possible, whether it is Christmas or not. Yet, alongside every other moral quality that people possess, these are entirely independent of religion and can – indeed must – be found and cultivated without the need to declare any far-fetched meta-physical claims.

‘Good’ people don’t need religion to be kind to each other. We are civilised and learned enough to make moral judgements and decisions without appealing to archaic texts and the barbaric principles they prescribe (if you can wade through the bile and hatred contained in these texts, you can occasionally find an appeal to be ‘nice’ to each other).

Christmas time, more than maybe anything else we share, proves what an enormous capacity for love we possess, irrelevant of what we believe. This is what we should celebrate.

Climbing Update

We are still climbing! We seem to be improving too! Of course, we still screw up a lot:

Spring is coming, however, and we must be ready to face

THE ROCK!!

THE TEN TON CHALLENGE!

Friends, I have done it! “Done what?”, you ask? Why, nothing less than the

TEN TON CHALLENGE!

Sadly, this is simply something I invented myself and it isn’t that hard. Still, it was something to work towards. Essentially, the goal is to shift ten tons of iron in one half-hour long squat session, comprising of ten sets of ten reps at 100kg.

I have been building up to it for a few weeks, by doing something like this:

Week 1: 70 x 2, 80 x 4, 90 x 2, 100 x 2

Week 2: 70 x 2, 80 x 2, 90 x 2, 100 x 4

Week 3: 80 x 2, 90 x 2, 100 x 6

Week 4: 100 x 10

Excluding warm-up sets, naturally.

I neither know nor care whether this was the right way to approach this – it seemed to work out just fine!

[EDIT: I have now gone on to perform my first set of 15 reps at 110kg! I screamed… According to the one-rep max calculator, my maximum squat should now be 180kg…I know for a fact it is not…but I really want to try and see…)

Paul McCartney Fronts Nirvana!!! (But Actually Doesn’t. At All.)

This is the epitome of why new media (or social media, or indeed the world in general) needs to sit on a hundred dicks and cut its own face off. This is what every single news outlet said prior to this performance (and for some reason continues to say):

MCCARTNEY TO REPLACE COBAIN!

THE AGING BEATLE WHO DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHO NIRVANA WERE WILL PLAY THE ROLE OF ICONIC GRUNGE FRONT MAN, KURT COBAIN, IN A BLASPHEMOUS ANAL PILLAGE OF A NIRVANA REUNION GIG! WILL HE BE AN ADEQUATE REPLACEMENT? THIS OVERPAID WANKER WITHOUT A SINGLE WELL-INFORMED OPINION SAYS “HELL NO!”

In reality, of course, that wasn’t even close to resembling the truth. Nirvana didn’t do a reunion gig (in the slightest), nobody ‘replaced’ Kurt Cobain and McCartney knew exactly who Nirvana were; he just didn’t realise he was jamming with three former members all at once on the first occasion.

What actually happened was four legendary musicians played a song together, at a charity fund raising event for people whose lives had been devastated by a natural disaster. In my opinion, that’s entirely brilliant. Especially when one of those musicians is a lifelong inspiration to three of the others…

But no – this perfectly acceptable, enjoyable and heart warming event was immediately cut to pieces and poisoned by the constant stream of vacuous bullshit that makes up the media, apparently for the sake of getting a few thousand people to skim-read a badly-written article and fly into a pointless and entirely unjustified rage.

It’s like KFC or McDonalds for the heart and mind. Fast Emotion.

Can’t be bothered to form a decent opinion? Created a life for yourself that is too tedious to stimulate any genuine emotion? Too stupid and lazy to make your own judgements on entirely inconsequential situations? Never fear! Popular Demand presents…New Media!

That’s right, folks; we take unrelated facts, cobble them together in a shamelessly inaccurate manner and present them to you in an explosion of distracting sensationalism, for your immediate disgust and outrage!

Don’t worry; every time you realise we spout nothing but total bullshit based on the flimsiest possible evidence, we’ll distract you with EVEN MORE BULLSHIT, so you never feel bad about yourself, or question your gut reactions to exaggerated nonsense!

After all, why should you have to take time out from watching fucking X-Factor to switch on your steadily deteriorating mental faculties? Life is hard and tiring and boo hoo hoo – take a load off, champ. New Media.

Fuck it entirely…he said on his blog…after doing his job…as an online content writer. HA! Also, check out my tags for this post – shameless and hypocritical, eh? Pathetic.

Shaolin Martial Arts in Tufnel Park, London

Today, I had the pleasure of visiting the Shaolin Temple in Tufnel Park, London, to watch demonstrations of the various forms and arts they teach.

I’d be lying if I said I could remember everything they showed (there was a lot) and, to be honest, I’d probably get it wrong if I tried to explain. Suffice to say, everything they demonstrated was staggeringly impressive and utterly beautiful; from the regimented execution of perfect forms and staged combat, to the unbelievable two-finger handstand, countless flips and dazzling weapon displays.

To be honest, however, that wasn’t a surprise. Before I even arrived, I had an inkling that these people were going to be pretty special. What did come as a surprise, was the general atmosphere of the temple.

To outsiders, martial arts – especially the most traditional – can seem quite intimidating, humourless and austere. The mind leaps to cold-eyed masters dishing out stringent authoritarian regimes of exercise and punishment. I think we can blame Hollywood for this…

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Despite their obvious dedication to their arts and the thousands of hours that have clearly gone into perfecting their movements, the overall atmosphere of the temple was fun, relaxed, happy and entirely liberal. They really couldn’t have made it any more inviting and welcoming an experience and, for that, I was very grateful.

As a final point, the leader of the temple (I don’t know his name or official title) made a great point about the martial arts. He was far more learned and eloquent that I, but he said something along these lines: as the name suggests, the martial arts are art-forms, movements and exercises based on combat. Although many of them are entirely functional as fighting styles (or complementary to them), that is not necessarily their purpose.

The movements are simply inspired by combat and, when executed properly, can help to practise and promote dedicated combat movements; learning to shift your body weight fluidly, for example. I think this is an important difference to bear in mind when considering martial arts, which most people think of as fighting styles to be compared and contrasted.

Anyway, enough of my nonsense – here is the good part. The pictures!

The Hardest Phone Call…

It’s that time of year again. Time to make the hardest phone call:

“Hello, Lolita. Yes, it’s me. I know I don’t call you very often, but it has been too long and it’s getting uncomfortable, especially at night when I’m trying to sleep. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to ask you to do, but you’re the only one I trust to be…discrete.

OK, I’ll let you take control if you insist, but just…please don’t go too far. What you did to me last time made me feel little embarrassed… I find this all quite awkward anyway; having to wash in your special sink beforehand, giving you my money when the deed is done and then leaving whilst I’m still wet – it’s all just a bit humiliating.

God, this call is always tough. Why do I feel so nervous? I mean, even my closest friends and family didn’t notice or comment last time and, when I finally told them what I’d done, they acted supportive…

Yet I always felt like I looked bad… I thought people were laughing behind my back. Just like every time before, I swore I’d learn from my mistakes and not let things get out of control again!

But I can’t help it. I can’t deny the state I’m in and I won’t be content until you’ve worked your magic on me. I know you’re busy – you do as many women as men these days – but when do you think you can fit me in?

Not until Friday?! Ah fuck it, I’ll go to Tony and Guy.”

The Meaning of Life

Lying in bed, counting all the shits I don’t give and supping on a delicious Whisky All In. Sadly I have no sugar or lemon juice, so I have replaced those ingredients…with a Mars ice cream.

I’m pretty sure this is the meaning of life…