Camp? 

Camp as a row of tents

America is in uproar now that Mrs. Terri Schiavo, the brain damaged lady, has died since she had her feeding tube removed. It's very sad and heart wrenching, but I saw the videos of her, and if I was in her state I too would like to die humanely. I think if my loved one thought it would be best for me, and I trusted them enough to make that decision, then it should be allowed. Sadly the womans husband ended rowing with her parents and her siblings, but when she was in a position to make decisions, Schiavo chose her husband. As life goes, as we mature and we find oursleve, we choose who we want to spend our lives with, and offer our souls too, and it's rarely our parents. She trusted her husband to look after her, and make loving choices for her, and the controversy came down to in-law family disputes, and as is sadly often the case, the underlying cause, it bacame evident, is religeon. Euthenasia is against gods will we're told. In fact it's a fight against God. Bullshit. Not that this stands as a Living will, but I now would like it to be known that if I become in a poor state such as Terri became, I would like my closest to make a decision for me. I would rather not be left in this state, but I don't suppose I would be in a position to really give a fuck, so whatever makes you happy. However, if I choose to pass my trust to someone who isn't family...that was my choice. Don't squable please. You can only blame me now. I suppose this could act as an argument for gay marriage. When does one decide that their partner becomes the decision maker in such instances? Oh fuck, I'm thinking again. Anyway, I was side tracked. So I suggested that euthenasia could be good in the right circumstances (well it would suit me if I became in the state that Schiavo became), but starvation?!? At the end of the day, that's what they did to Schiavo when they removed her feeding tube. That can't be good. they don't starve murderers in America on Death row, they don't starve cats and dogs when it's time for them to say hello to the golden gates. Even pets have a more humane death. Surely an innocent such as Terri deserved a humane death too. Oh it's oh so complicated, and weird, and beurocratic.

I was walking through Liverpool City centre today, and a guy passing in the street said of me to his mate "What is it about gay people and scarves?" Now I admit, it probably wasn't suitable weather for a scarf, but when I left the house in the early(ish) hours it was raining, and at this later point in the day, I admit to be sweating like a Donkey chasing a carrot on a stick. But who said I was gay? I wasn't dressed particularly gay as far as I can tell - Brown jumper, dark blue jeans, brown Pod boots, brown belt, maybe the Jacket was slightly dodgy, but I'm sure it dosn't confirm 'gay status.' So this, and my draw on recent past evidence suggests that I must be a tad light on my feet. Yes, it must be campness. I don't think I'm camp. I've heard that so many times from many gay people, and all of whom I've thought - DENIAL! So let me take this a step further. I sometimes act camp in the aid of humour. Honest! Okay okay, I was never camp, and I actually do feel I am becoming camp. So what's the problem? Oddly, there are huge prejudices amongst the gay community against camp people. There's the camp camp (oh I'm so funny) and the straight acting camp (whatever 'straight' acting is). I will always try my best to fight against prejudice, so I will stand up for camp people no matter what the circumstances. I have no problem being with camp people, if any one insulted camp people weather there be a camp person present or not, I will stand up against that prejudice. And I am not talking shite here, I just can't understand that kind of homophobia. But it's now become apparent that I have camp tendancies. Not just from today, but also from what people have been saying to me more and more lately. And this is a different matter. I'm not too comfortable about this. It's weird. I am happily, and I think openly gay, however there are some times when I might feel like I would rather not reveal this information. Does this make me not out as a gay man? Lets say for example when amongst a bunch of seemingly straight guys, I may worry about how they could re-act. Maybe this is down to my own prejudice, but I also have to consider self preservation, and weigh up the risks. And suddenly it appears not telling people I'm a puff may actually no longer be in my control. I oouze gayness. I say gay. I don't have to tell people any more. Maybe I'm just a control freak not hppy about loosing control.

Easter Bunnies

It was my Grandad's 70th birthday this weekend. We celebrated with a party. It was the usual family affair, home made apple pie and lumpy custard, drunk family members arguing. And being our family there is always some new gossip. This time, it was that one of my 16 year old cousins is pregnant. That's nothing new to our family, but we still seem to all have to act like it's such a surprise that this kind of thing can happen to our model family. It's a running joke between me and one of my cousins about how this seemingly perfect family is so far from it. What with divorces here there and everywhere, mental breakdowns, gays, and people comparing who has the nicest council house. Not the nice middle class family my grandparents hoped for. Nor in fact the family they tell people. Occassionally stories come back from people about how nice it is that cousin x is now doing his Phd, and congratulations on making it to Cambridge. All completely fabricated stories. To keep himself busy, Grandad has taken up Geneology, which is a posh way of saying he's making a family tree. Now it was always my understanding that family trees were meant to look like trees, with branches. I've never seen one look like ours, it could be better described as being a family afro. I'm sure there isn't supposed to be loops in them, and yet it appears Great Great Auntie May is also our Great Great Great Grandmother, and later became Great Great Uncle Gerrard.

I've got a mini-life plan now. I've been listening to lots of my friends, and now I've decided what I want to do. At least it's the plan for the moment. I've decided to swallow my pride and go back to selling cars. It was something I enjoyed, and I think I'm in a much more confident position to tackle any prejudice now, plus the law is on my side now too, so I could tackle it head on should I want to. Not that I'd want to get the law involved. I know I quit selling cars to do a degree, but so what. The degree was a dream, and now I've lived that dream. The next part of my plan is a huge U-turn in my original thinking. I'm not going to rush out and buy property. I may now never buy property. What's the point? I'm never going to have children to pass it down to, and it just ties you down. Instead, I'm going to travel. I'll sell cars in Liverpool or Manchester for a bit, get back into the swing of things, and settle some debts, and then I think I might go and work abroad somewhere. I could sell cars in any English speaking country I guess. I'd also like to visit France a lot more, and try to pick up their language. I love France. Naturally, me being me, this plan is always likely to change. I never do like making plans, but for the moment, to all those who keep asking me what I'm going to do next, this is the answer.

Happy Easter everyone. Easter never had an impact on me really, but i did notice that Easter Eggs no longer come with mugs. A sad sad loss.

Easter Egg mugs we miss you 

In da house

Press da button

http://sites.gizoogle.com/?url=http://emilbird.blogspot.com/

This is Williamson Square, they appear to be building the new water feature on this pic. Sorry I couldn't integrate this pic, I'm back to being a fool. You'll just have to cope. Read below to figure out why this pic is here. Or just guess. 

Golden showers

I finally got my mobile reconnected after the blighters at O2 disconnected me for non paypment of my bill. I could recieve calls, but couldn't make any. It acted as my mini-social experiment as to weather or not I could live without my mobile phone. I use that phrase deliberately because it ammuses me when people say they can't live without their phone. So I was always interested to see how it would effect my life if I had no phone. I didn't die, so that's good. Answer A - I can live without my phone. I became more reliant on e-mail, fortunately I have access to it at the mo, but the real problem was remembering phone numbers. I'd have to carry a diary with me I think, with all numbers and to keep track of my plans, an additional benefit of new phones is they have callenders now. Or maybe a file-o-fax. Wow...that's an idea. I'd love a file-o-fax. Leather bound. I found something interesting out during this unplanned experiment; a minimum 30p to make a phone call from a phone box. 30 pence!! I remember when it was ten pence, then not long ago everyone went mad when they made it 20p, and now they've just snook that extra ten pence in, I tell you. Anyway having your phone disconnected does have a huge benefit. I'm not alien to having my phone calls barred, and this often means I have to call O2 to cough up my coppers. Now I don't know what sort of a recruitment scheme they have at O2, but let me tell you they always manage to make sure I end up talking to the cutest sounding lads. Mark my words I won't be rushing to pay my bill next month either. I love that they never know what they are doing so I have to stay on the line for longer. I love bad customer service, it brings out rapport, communication, and fun. Well it does with me and O2 men.

Liverpool has just installed a beutiful 'water feature.' Essentially water sprays out of the ground, and makes an arch. It's nice. And romantic. And something that children can't resist running through, and drunk people throw their mates into, and come a glorious summer young love couples will want to run through hand in hand to cool their hot bodies. Great if you want to smell like an old plant pot. I was one of the drunk type over the weekend, and me and a pal got soaked courtesy of this water feature. It seemed fun but clearly the water is recycled through the system, and we ended up ponging of stagnant water. It ruined my night out. I'm sure this is to the joy of the local yobs who will take pride in their yellow water feature. I think they should put a taxi rank their myself.

It's done!

It's all over, my dissertation is complete! I can now have my life back. I've printed off three copies. Two for uni, and one for me. I'm very proud of it, it's the size of the yellow pages. In total it's 182 pages long, and has over 24000 words in it. If you don't include appendices it is 11200 words, but I did write the appendicies too, so it deserves a mention. I guess if you read it you'd get incredibly bored, and probably think I am a pretensious twat. It's got some words in it which I never use, never have used, and probably won't use again. Words such as perrenial, quantitative, pertinant, and postulates. I would have liked to have squeezed the word antidisestablishmentarianism in there too, but I had no need for it. I did get the word derrogotary in there though as part of a game. Me and my friend gave each other a word which we had to get in some how. My sentence was 'Getting the views of employees is a way of evaluating the HR management in the perspective of those actually experiencing it, and establishes the real benefits for workforces, or conversely the escalation of exploitation and injustice in the workforce, and derogatory practices.' I just sort of threw it in on the end. My friend had to get masterful in, I'm not sure if she managed it or not. My dissertation is dedicated to my Mum, and the dedication makes the first page after the cover, it reads thus;
I dedicate this to my Mum, Julie Bird; thanks for being my stress sponge for the past two and a half months, my support structure for the past two and a half years, and my Mum and Dad for the past two and a half decades, in this you have helped me fulfil this dream and many others.
I thought it was quite nice.
Any way it's a new leaf now. I start work experience tomorrow. 5 weeks full time unpaid at sahir house. Here's the link again www.sahir.uk.com I'm a bit nervous now. Oh and I should be getting my student loan tomorrow, which will be handy. I had my phone cut off because I never paid the bill, I can recieve calls but can't make any. Doh! So I'll be paying that asap. Anyways, I'll update again soon, but I can't go on now, because I'm boring myself to tears.

A question!

When you haven't got a lot to give, is it wise to give away what you've got?

Diss this

I'm drunk

I'm drunk....surprise surpsise. My cousin is going to Japan tomorrow, so I went for a drink with him. I'm at home now, and he isn't. I should be bothered because his home is miles away from where we where drinking.
Imagine being at the end of a long term relationship, and after years of security, and I mean years and years..you might be considered old...imagine being at the end of that relationship and finding, and feeling that the only way to get on is through dancing!! Sounds rediculous dosn't it.

It's a Womans world

I've got a friend of mine staying over at my place at the moment. She was struggling with her dissertation, she hadn't started it, so I said come and stay at mine for a couple of weeks, and we can motivate each other, and help each other. So she took me up on my offer. Now there are somethings I don't understand about women. I went to the shower today, and there was hair all over the soap, it looked like a monkeys dead featus. How does this happen? I thought I was the one supposed to be going balde, and it dosn't happen to me, but then, I don't wash my hair with a bar of soap. Maybe it's just another one of those things gay men don't understand about women. Like when you are 25 years old and you hear a couple of 17 year old lads talking about a womans piss hole, and her baby dispersing hole. Really? You mean there are two holes? Well that's news to me. And I'm still not a hundred percent sure about the truth in that, it may well have just been a wind up. But then it got me thinking about, and I daren't ask anyone about this, but is there a third hole for a man to put his willy up? I just don't know. Plus with the added complication of a clitoris, which I'm reliably told looks like a little man in a boat (?!) no wonder women are always complaining that their man dosn't know what he's doing 'down there'.

Testing again

To put pics in my blog I've had to start learning this whole new language called HTML. I don't know why, I really can't understand why I can't just copy and paste, but hey ho...that's life. Anyway, here is my friend Hannah. Okay it's actually an Afghan Hound, but they have the same haircut, and I find it quite endearing.

And look I can write here too...I am the greatest!

OMG

I can't believe it....look....there is my face>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I laugh in the face of technology

Finally three months on, I've managed to get my photo into the profile bit of my blog. I am so clever. I actually feel very rewarded by this. I just have to figure out how to integrate them with text now, and give them titles. Give me time. I also want my pic in the top of my blog bit, but I'm not ready for such advancements yet. I'm sorry to have imposed my face on you so much for the last two postings, I needed to reduce it's size..not it's size as such, but it's number of bytes. Woop woop........
Let me just try this
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/13/3907/640/lederhosen.jpg
or this
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/13/3907/640/lederhosen.jpg
or this

I'm just getting the hang of it okay! 

Is the writing above? It's me again. 

I'm just testing my abitility to send pitures here...bear with me. 

Diss life

I want my life back! It's been taken over by the all consuming dissertation I have to do as part of my final year at University. It's taking so much away from me, and will do for the next two weeks. I miss conversation 9all I talk about is dissertation this, dissertation that). I miss shopping, I miss work which I had to give up, I miss going to the cinema, lunch with friends and most of all I miss going out for a drink. It's been days now....a record. And worse, the one opportunity I did have to go for a drink, due to my lack of previous consumption, I got drunk after two sips and turned into loony boy. I don't remember much of this night, I went out with a bunch of puffs, hit some gay bars and that's all I know really. I do remember this one scenario; I was chatting to some guy and he introduced me to his boyfreind. When he told me I just looked at them for what seemed like twenty years, and finally concluded 'you don't suit each other.' Charming aren't I. Well I awoke the next day with a head like thunder and checked my messages. I must have turned into super-tit. I had e-mails from my fellow party goers saying things like 'Don't take life so serious' 'Be yourself' ' I was only pulling your leg about your coat, don't take it so to heart' 'don't be so harsh on ugly people, we can't all be perfect' and 'what happened to you, you left early'. Well I don't think I did leave early, I'd judge by those messages that what I actually happened was I dissapeared up my own arse! I took most to heart the thing about ugly people. I mean, I speak to ugly people all the time, in fact, some of my best friends are ugly. Surely I'm not an ugliest, I don't think I'm so far above my stations that I would judge people on appearance. Or am I? This particular e-mail I recieved seemed to indicate otherwise.

It appears my blog readership is actually somewhat bigger than I had imagined. Somewhat relieveing my paranoia that I was writing to me and three, but bringing it's own problems that I now feel increased pressure to perform! Anyone know any good jokes? I'd like to welcome two new bloggers, check them out (american stylee). Firstly I'd like to introduce the prolifically complicated, the amazingly dedicated, the wholly untruthful but currently trying to prove me wrong, the one and only Mr. Stuart Cornes http://stuboo.blogspot.com/ And last but not least please give a warm hand to the amazingly tall, the very talanted Quentin Tarrantino impersonator, the fast-tracking, high rising, speedy networking, the lovely Richard Prosser http://richipro.blogspot.com/

Merseytravel.....I guesss you can't be all bad...but I still can't love you

I've had a turbulant relationship with Merseytravel this past six months. For those of you who don't know who Merseytravel is (I have heard that my blog is read as far away as Formby), it is our local travel operator who seem to be boss of trains, buses and ferries. I'll start with some background info, I gave up my car about 6 months ago, and ever since have had to become life dependant on all that Merseyrail does. To be honest, I was never really familliar with public transport before then, so it was all a little new to me, but I was sure it couldn't be that complicated. Well it wouldn't be if the organisation had some sort of consistency. My first major encounter resulted in me being fined ten pounds, and told I was a liar. The story goes thus; I got to to my local train station and there was a long queue of angry customers and no sign of rail staff, and whilst queueing the train pulled in so, I decided to get on the train, in order to pay at my destination. I thought this was reasonable, but apparently not. When I reached my destination, I freely approached the unattentive guard and offered to pay full fare, I didn't even try to blag that I had got on at a closer station, I'm an honest guy. I was told that because I had boarded without a ticket I was liable to pay a ten pound fine. So it's my fault they don't employ enough staff at my local station to keep the queue's down. It's my fault that they haven't invested in ticket machines is it? Ofcourse it is! It's certainly my fault for being honest when I could have just walked past yet another Merseytravel employee who wasn't doing their job properly, and have never been seen again. But I had to go and be good. But ofcourse I'm not honest am I, I'm a cheat that bunks trains, and furthermore when I honestly tell them my address for them to bill me, I get told I'm dishonest, infact I'm virtually called a lier. Because this little hitler who wishes to fine me, actualy wants to try to do his job properly, and rather than phoning my local station to confirm my queue story, chooses to ring his colleague to confirm my address using the voters role, only the dim Merseyfuckwit at the other end of the phone line is incapable of doing his job properly, and tells hitler that I am lieng about my address. WHAT?! 'Maybe it's only seven years I've lived there then, not eight' I concede. So he checks again, and naturally that proves I do actually live in my house, but by this time, I may as well have waited for the next train at my station and stayed in the queue. And to add to my embarassment one of my work colleagues has turned up with a ticket. Great! I look like a a tight arsed train bunking twat. I did appeal, but I lost. Then this week, they only go and try to save themselves. Me and a friend of mine went to get the train from Liverpool central station. We paid for our tickets, and went to the usual platform. It was late, we were tired, and it was the last train. We read the digital information board, which explained there was going to be a rail replacement bus service for part of our journey due to engineering work. I can accept that, these things happen. So we patiently counted down the number of minutes the board informed us till our train was to depart...5 mins...4 mins...3 mins...2 mins...1 mins (that's actually what the board said)...then...a blank board..no train in sight, and no more info! We were understandably puzzled, and then it dawned on us, today, the train decided it was going to use a different platform. How nice of Merseytravel to inform us! And just to re-iterate, it was the last train. So I went to speak to a guard, who just kept telling me the train had left and there were no more trains, and it had gone from platform 2. I know this now, don't keep telling me over and over again, why didn't you tell me before?! I soon realised I was speaking to a robot, and being the competent consumer that I am, I asked to speak to the station manager. He sent me over and I explained my situation to the manager. His response was, to phone someone (they like that) to confirm that the train had actually passed through the station. I knew the answer to that, I had told him that I knew that, why don't these people listen? Then he told me there was engineering work, I also knew that. Then he told me I should check the boards on each platform. Really? Why should I, the train appeared to be coming to the same platform it had come to for the last six months 75 times a day. Should I trek about checking all the platform notice boards to check for platform changes every 30 seconds, or maybe the train will come earlier at another platform one day, or maybe even travel along a different line? Obviously the onus is on me to expect these likelihoods and phone evry station frequently when wanting to go home. Or maybe a simple tannoy announcement would have sufficed, or a simple updating of the electronic notice board from whoever it is that sits in their cushy office playing with the computer that operates it, or maybe they are too busy using the phone. Anyway I was complaining to the station manager who was in no way whatsever goign to accept responsibility, and so that was it..we were off, we were going to walk the 10 mile walk in the freezing cold dark. When suddenly from nowhere, like a shining light, the manager told his colleague "I'll get them a taxi". I was absolutley gobsmacked, this person, Peter Robinson, was going to get Merseyrail to pay for our taxi home. For a moment, all was forgiven. Amazing, inconsistent, and customer saving.
Bless Peter Robinson.