The northlondonhippy

Archive for May, 2007

Where’d the last year go?

It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I was pre­view­ing the sev­enth series of Big Brother, and now here I am writ­ing about BB 8, which launches on Chan­nel 4 this evening.

Can you feel the excitement?

Nei­ther can I.

Usu­ally, there is more of a build-up to the start of a BB series, but it seems to me that there’s far less of a buzz. It seems that the whole thing is dis­tinctly low key.

That’s prob­a­bly inten­tional fol­low­ing the inter­na­tional con­tro­versy sur­round­ing Celebrity BB, a few months ago. Remem­ber? Shilpa Shetty vs Jade Goody? How could you forget!

The pro­duc­ers of BB, Ende­mol, don’t want any trou­ble, yet they know that the pro­gramme is really only suc­cess­ful when there is con­flict. Chan­nel 4, on the other hand, view BB as the cash cow that it is; it’s respon­si­ble for gen­er­at­ing the lion’s share of C4’s annual income, so they want to be as cau­tious as possible.

C4’s desire to avoid any prob­lems have led to var­i­ous rumours: about a crack police squad mon­i­tor­ing the live feed, with pow­ers to arrest house­mates or shut the entire thing down; news­pa­per reports that C4 has vetoed sev­eral poten­tial house­mates for being a bit too “wacky”, instead insist­ing on safer choices. And most of all, they have stated that the theme of this year’s series is “fun and love”.

Oh dear. I really hope most of that is bull­shit. Per­son­ally, I’d rather see the police out on the streets, arrest­ing vio­lent crim­i­nals, not watch­ing TV for three months!

The house design is meant to reflect this sense of fun. They’ve put the cooker in the bed­room! Crazy, man! They might even deny them a toaster and ket­tle! Good, golly, gosh, what will they do?

Am I sound­ing a bit jaded this time around? Damn straight, I am. BB is sup­posed get big­ger, meaner, wilder, and nas­tier, every year and it feels like we’ve taken sev­eral giant steps backwards.

I don’t want a kinder, gen­tler, Big Brother. That would suck in so many ways and on so many lev­els. I want twists, I want con­flict, and I want peo­ple to hate each other! That’s not too much to ask for, is it?

There’s one wild­card in all of this, that will com­pen­sate for what­ever steps the pow­ers that be take, to keep things level and that’s the 12 new house­mates. Even with all the screen­ing and psy­chi­atric test­ing, they are still just peo­ple and that makes them unpre­dictable. It’s down to them to do things that keep us all hooked.

And we will be hooked, we always are; the pro­gramme is addic­tive. I don’t know about you, but I have an addic­tive per­son­al­ity and just can’t help myself. Once I start watch­ing, I know I’ll stay with it till the bit­ter end. You will too.

As I’ve said count­less times, I am a sucker for the for­mat. What does that say about me? What does it say about every­one who watches?

It says that deep down, we’re all voyeurs and given the chance, we’d sneak a peak at anything.

Do your ears perk up when you hear some­one whis­per­ing? When you see a mar­ried cou­ple bick­er­ing in a shop, do you try to secretly glance their way, to see what you can pick up? And when your neigh­bours argue, do you turn down the TV, to try to hear what they are saying?

Big Brother is almost the same, though you need not hide your shame when you stare at it, full-on, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Big Brother appeals to the secret Peep­ing Tom in all of us.

Con­tro­versy will always find a way, where BB is con­cerned. I’m sure no mat­ter what they do to keep things calm, it will still make the front pages of the news­pa­pers before the sum­mer is out. “Big Brother in SOMETHING shock” the head­lines will scream.

At the very end of the series, so says another rumour, they are going to blow the house up, as they are mov­ing to a new loca­tion next year. That would imply that the explo­sives would need to be set before the finale, in and around the remain­ing house­mates. Is that safe? Does it mat­ter? At least it insures one way or another, that we will see some sparks fly inside that house!

So there you go, that’s my lit­tle look ahead to the next three months of BB. Expect spo­radic hippy cov­er­age of Big Brother 8, right here, when­ever I feel like it.

Dig it! Feel the free love!

Accord­ing to a YouGov poll com­mis­sioned by Reader’s Digest, and quoted by many news­pa­pers today, includ­ing THE TIMES, the influ­ence of the swing­ing 60s is still felt today.

As if they have to tell me!

As the coolest, high­est, most fan­tas­tic hippy in all of north Lon­don, I know just how per­va­sive the influ­ence of those before me had on society.

Shouldn’t hip­pies run the world?

Of course they should, as long as you don’t have any impor­tant world-running that needs doing before noon. Then we might have a problem.

Hey ho my friends, fans and fel­low trav­ellers. I want to ask you a question.

My last cou­ple of posts, while immensely enter­tain­ing, weren’t exactly focused on any­thing in par­tic­u­lar. I would like to change that…and I would like your help!

What would you like to see me write about?

Is there some topic or sub­ject that inter­ests you that you would like to see me tackle with my patented “hippyspin”?

I’m seri­ous; this week, I’m tak­ing requests!

Go on, send me an email – I’m really easy to reach, my address is:

thehippy@northlondonhippy.com

I can’t promise that I will def­i­nitely write about what you sug­gest, but I will con­sider all sub­mis­sions. And if I use your sug­ges­tion, I’ll big you up, old school stylie like, here on my hap­pen­ing web­site thingy. You will be the envy of all your friends and the sub­ject of deep sex­ual desire from com­plete strangers if I do!

Oh, and while I’m seek­ing your thoughts and opin­ions, here’s some­thing else? Do you want me to do the whole Big Brother thing again this year?

I’m torn on that one myself and what made me think of it is I dis­cov­ered that the next series, the eighth, begins at the end of this month.

I know I’ll end up watch­ing it, I’m a com­plete sucker for the format…but what I want to know is, would you like me to write about it regularly.

I have to say that my vis­i­tor num­bers do go up dur­ing BB sea­son, so maybe I know the answer this ques­tion already, but I still would like to hear what some of you out there in inter­net­land have to say.

So, go on, get in touch. I’d love to hear from as many of you as pos­si­ble. My inbox is ready and recep­tive, so what are you wait­ing for!

I’m bored.

Very bored.

It’s Sun­day morn­ing, I worked last night and I’m try­ing to unwind before hit­ting the sack, only I’ve got noth­ing to do.

That’s why I’m here.

I’m just killing time.

Does that make you feel bad? Like you are my last choice for entertainment?

I don’t mean it in that way, I swear. You know I only like to post stuff when I’ve got some­thing to say, not when I want to waste 5 min­utes while I smoke a spliff and relax before bed.

Can you think of any­thing more waste­ful than wast­ing time?

Time is the one thing we all have in finite sup­ply; it’s the one thing that every liv­ing crea­ture, here on planet crap­pola, has in common.

“We don’t have enough time”; “time is run­ning out”; “I wish I had more time.” We’ve all said those things, haven’t we?

Yet here I am wast­ing time.

Killing it.

Killing time…

…but that’s because I’m bored…

…but not as bored as you!

You just spent a few min­utes read­ing this drivel.

Sorry I had to kill your time too.

I feel the need to post some­thing this morning.

Any­thing!

I feel the need to amuse, inform and entertain.

I feel the need to make my pres­ence felt on the world wide whaddiyacallit.

There’s only one problem…

I’ve got noth­ing to say!

Well, that’s not strictly true, I’ve always got some­thing to say.

Who doesn’t? They say opin­ions are like ass­holes; everybody’s got one.

Or in my world, I refer to a lot of peo­ple as “opin­ions” and if you think about the pre­vi­ous sen­tence, you’ll decode the secret mes­sage that these par­tic­u­lar peo­ple never seem to get!

What I really mean is, I don’t have a topic to drone on about this morn­ing. Yes, it is morn­ing, here in north Lon­don, right now as I am tap­ping away on my key­board, writ­ing this dri­vel just for you!

And it is just for you, my beloved, loyal and truly adored hippyfans.

As my mother used to say, when she would yell at me for some­thing that she had already yelled at me for; “I’m not yelling just to hear myself. I’m shout­ing at you!”

Well, it’s the same when I post some­thing. I’m not post­ing this so I can read it; that’s the intended pur­pose of my thoughts. No, I am post­ing this non­sense to be read, appre­ci­ated and pos­si­bly wor­shipped slightly.

Ok, not wor­shipped slightly, but totally and com­pletely, like the true liv­ing god that I am.

Ah-hem.

Any­way, that can’t be true, because I can’t be god and “a mes­siah for the new mil­len­nium” at the same time can I? I can surely try!

Dou­ble ah-hem, now just leave it, you pseudo-deity.

Actu­ally, it’s cool that I’ve made a god ref­er­ence; because I had a real cre­ative break­through on some­thing I’ve been work­ing on for a very long time. It’s one of those extra lit­tle side projects of mine that I men­tion from time to time and it has noth­ing to do with my real life job or this blog.

Basi­cally, it’s a novel I’ve had per­co­lat­ing in my head for over ten years and here’s where it gets confusing…it’s my semi-fictionalised auto­bi­og­ra­phy. It’s my life lived right in a lot of ways and very much the same as real­ity too.

I told you it was con­fus­ing! No won­der it’s taken me this long to get my head around it.

Any­way, the break­through has to do with the phi­los­o­phy behind the story and one of the themes that will per­vade the narrative.

Ooooooh! Lis­ten to me get all pon­cey and pseudo-intellectual!

Remem­ber, it’s bet­ter to be a pseudo-intellectual than a proper one, because us PI’s have actu­ally touched a girl, smoked a spliff and danced with the devil in the pale moonlight.

Maybe that last bit’s just me.

The theme and phi­los­o­phy of which I speak is the total rejec­tion of the con­cept of god and god’s exis­tence to the point of extreme blasphemy.

If I can’t be god, then no one can!

I’ve never believed in god (and the lack of a cap­i­tal G is infuck­ing­ten­tional), not even as a child. I can remem­ber ques­tion­ing the logic of it all at a very early age and think­ing that it was as ridicu­lous as Santa and the Tooth Fairy (again, cap­i­tals on pur­pose, blas­phemy ain’t just for xmas, it’s for life!).

I’m not say­ing you can’t believe in god, if you want to. It’s your choice and I believe in reli­gious free­dom, espe­cially the free­dom to reject it all.
You can have faith in a “higher power”, if you need to; or per­haps a belief in an order to the uni­verse, if you must.

I might even buy into that one; that there is order to the uni­verse. I just don’t think we will have the slight­est clue as to what that order is as the enor­mity of it as a con­cept is well beyond the capa­bil­i­ties of the tiny lit­tle meat-computers in our head.

So was that last sen­tence, nearly!

And look, if you do believe in god and you really think that there’s a guy in the sky with a long white beard and a longer white robe, run­ning the show down here, then you must absolutely detest him because of all the point­less grief and suf­fer­ing his actions cause us every day of our stink­ing, rot­ten exis­tence on this hell­hole of a planet we call home!

If any­thing, all the bad, the evil, the shit in this world is proof pos­i­tive that there is no god. For if there were a god, then bad things wouldn’t hap­pen to good peo­ple and pets. For if there were a god and he cre­ated us in his image, he sure as shit would treat us all a lot better.

Now, if I were god, life for every­one would be noth­ing but free beer, weed and blowjobs. You’d all have per­fect health and per­fect lives and you could have a lie-in every Sun­day (or Fri­day or Sat­ur­day, or every­day depend­ing upon your present denom­i­na­tion and level of devo­tion) because I wouldn’t want to be wor­shipped in the clas­sic “go to church” sense of the word.

But I’m not god, I’ve never been god and unless my take on the uni­verse is com­pletely wrong, I’ll never be god. And this last sen­tence is proof I’m not insane either!

If you approach it ratio­nally and log­i­cally, there’s only one con­clu­sion that can be reached: God didn’t cre­ate man, man cre­ated god. And man did a shitty job of it too!

And that’s the under­cur­rent of my next novel. Bet it will top the best­seller list in the first print­ing! After all, you will all buy it, won’t you?

In the next cou­ple of weeks, once I wrap up a few other things, I’m going to be ded­i­cat­ing a lot of time to this par­tic­u­lar side project. I’m giv­ing myself a very loose six months to com­plete a first draft of it. Then comes the really hard part…convincing some­one it’s good enough to publish.

And if I fail, there’s always the inter­net. I hear they let you pub­lish any old shit on the web. If they didn’t, then how did this par­tic­u­lar hip­py­post get here?

Greet­ings, my friends; I hope life is treat­ing you excep­tion­ally well.

It hasn’t been a great week for me, but rather than dwell on the bleak and dreary, I’d rather share some­thing more pos­i­tive with you…

I bought one of these this week:

It’s from my friends at EDIT and you can see the prod­uct page for it by click­ing RIGHT HERE.

There are two things that make this piece spe­cial right off the bat; one, it was designed by EDIT, exclu­sively for EDIT and two, it’s only twenty quid!

I know, I couldn’t believe how inex­pen­sive it is either!

Now, here’s the thing, even though the cost is cheap, the qual­ity of the con­struc­tion is first class. It has a nice heavy, sturdy feel in your hands and it could def­i­nitely take a knock or two as well. It’s well designed and really sharp look­ing too.

But the real ques­tion is, how does it smoke?

Smooth, baby, really smooth. When filled with water, the two fil­tra­tion cham­bers do a really good job of cool­ing the smoke. I’ve been hit­ting on this bad boy all after­noon and I am really dig­ging it!

I’ve been look­ing for a pipe like this for a while; one that is ideal for chill­ing out on the sofa, while watch­ing TV. It’s just the right size and weight, with a decent sized bowl. I couldn’t have designed a bet­ter pipe myself, even if I tried!

Check out the whole line of Bush­mas­ter bub­blers, because they come in more colours than just that blue one!

This hippy can heartily rec­om­mend you pur­chase one. I promise, if you get one of your own, you will love it too!