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Crippled under eternal joy,

Where mothers wept, they lost their boy.

Crossing paths meet together,

Responsibility lies light as feather.

Covering over all logical thought,

Their brain ignores all once taught,

Crushing away their memories,

And ending their humanity.

Squandered Fortunes Among Hope and Chance

Watching people have their dreams crushed is a funny thing, it gives a feeling that comes somewhere between amusement and complete tragedy, for me anyway. Apparently, the rest of the nation seems massively amused whilst watching people walk onto a stage only to be slammed down by a panel of talented people, and that's becoming more and more popular amongst almost everybody you see while walking down a street. It's never been an oddity that people are amused by freaks or others who they can easily look down on, quickly jump back a few decades and you can pay to stand in-front of midgets, people with disfigured bodies and bearded women, it wouldn't be surprising if it wasn't for society telling us it was wrong to do, that this would also still be normal for people to do.

Unfortunately it seems to be human nature to find someone or something weaker than you and then berate it, or watch and laugh as they fall apart, it's not new, just easier to see due to Media saturation. As much as I want to sit here and tell myself that it's okay, it isn't, it's disturbing, and I'm not going on a Crusade about how we're all evil and deserve to be judged for it, I just think it's going too far, even compared to decades ago when it was common place.

My main reason for writing this goes on from this point:

I can't understand how people let themselves fall into such average lives, working a Office job 9-5, Five days a week with an okay salary. How can you not want more than that? How can you not look at something else in the world and aspire to doing it? Being so complacent that you convince yourself that a life you never planned is now okay 'Just because' it pays for some stuff and keeps your family going. There's millions and millions of these people all over the world working in jobs that they never wanted, that they obviously never started out Adult life wanting to do, and it angers me to think that so many of them have dreams they never accomplished.

Sure, I'm not one to talk about forcing myself to do things to further my immediate position in life, half the time I seem to do the absolute opposite and try to make things go backwards, or in some alternate possibility which seems (so far) to have worked out. I'll take risks, I'll work hard on what I have to do, but I still don't have my future even half set out, I don't think most of the people my age do, I'm not even sure if you're supposed to when you're 20 but I sure remember being told I should know when leaving school at 16. Can you honestly look back to when you were that age and think that you would have actually made a trustworthy decision? I know well that I wouldn't have, if at that age you were forced by Law to make a decision that determined the rest of your life, the world would already be over, because 99% of people had no idea at all what they wanted out of life other than being happy and not dying a painful death, two things that are very related.

What does any of that moronic rambling even mean though? Probably that it's too late to be writing this kind of continuous thought and actually hoping that it makes the slightest bit of sense. Either way when the pin drops, I'll put all my money and effort behind whatever seems like the best idea at the time, I'll never live a blindly optimistic life but I'll damn sure do a better job at making sure I don't ever end up in a situation I'm only 'Okay' with. Everyone aims big at the start, why not, we were brought up thinking we could do whatever the hell we wanted, and we can do providing we try hard enough and more often than not, sink enough money into, but peoples self belief, effort and tolerance all fly straight out that giant window, and they settle for whatever they see first that suits the majority of their needs.

I'd rather be dead.

I swear to whoever I can that I would rather be dead that live such a meaningless and harmless life. No-one ever started out with the intention of being average, why do most finish their life in that category? I'll make something out of myself somehow that's for definite.

Overdue

It's all too obvious already exactly what this entry will be about, I feel disappointed in myself for not bothering to delve into the mess sooner, but in all honesty when you're out of the country and away from the mess, it's not as immediately important to you as it is to the people who were fighting Looters off and the Policemen forced to tackle the rioters.

The country I tentatively give the moniker 'Home' was for the first real time in what seemed to be full collapse, whether you look at it Socially or Economically, the cells bars were rusting through and the imprisoned escaped into the streets with the intention of causing havoc. The Boiling Point to this entire situation is at heart, or as far as much of the media would lead you to believe, about one man's death. The man in question was Mark Duggan, 29 year old father of 4. Whether you choose to believe he did wrong in his life is up to you, Police evidence says he was carrying a converted Starting Pistol that fired real ammunition, I don't doubt that what they say is the truth but with the earlier stories of Police Corruption this year, I think it might be smart to take everything with a pinch of salt, and probably a little shake of scepticism too. That said, I do believe he was carrying and in the end his own demise was very much his own fault, regardless of how the Police acted. This sparks a Peaceful Protest from his Family, quickly spawns into a night time session of looting and general pilfering from Mr Duggan's 'Connections'. All that is just the set up to what I actually find important, the events mentioned above wouldn't be something too uncommon to hear about in America on a bad day in a bad area.

The days after the first night of badly Policed Criminality are the things I, and the majority of the Country find important, the behaviour and inclusion of the regular British public in the riots and looting in the next few nights. I followed the events post Duggan's death, and at first I was surprised to see something happening in London that wasn't being crushing quickly by Police like it usually would. People running through the streets, some with faces covered, some morons without, smashing property, looting shops and starting fires.

The second day, it began to become apparent that the Police's lack of effort in quelling the disturbance had spurred (No joke intended, it's too easy/been done) more people to join them and misbehave. Now before I go too far and really make it look like I believe the Police were just being lazy, I know they weren't, it was mainly because of the Handling of the Riots last year with Water Cannons and Kettling used on Students, I don't agree with those practices, but if you go to a Riot you should expect it, and really if the Police can do things like that we should be allowed to as well, fair's fair right? Due to those 'Protests' the Police were significantly stunted in their choice of action, and without using some violence there wasn't much they could do to scare rioters. This, and this alone was the reason these riots continued for more than the one night which wasn't even necessary, if the Police were authorised to show some aggression, fire some Rubber bullets and shoot some water, it would have ended within a few hours. How can I be sure? Because the so-called 'Gangsters' and Londoners that were out giving a bad name to the rest of the City are also the same people who would back off as soon as the Police showed them they were going to get put in their place.

I remember one day in High School when I was probably around 12 or 13, and we had a Sports Teacher that intimidated everyone, even up to the Higher Years and College level, he isn't immediately important in this story, just bare with me. For some reason one of the Older kids decided that we'd all gang up together in the Playground and March out of school, or against the Head Teacher, something stupid that only a bunch of 12 to 16 year old's would think would work. There was probably at least 200 to 300 people there, and I remember marching up the steps of the Playground and towards the front gates, literally 30 seconds into this we heard 'It's Mr G----! Run!!!' and that second the entire crowd spun round and ran back towards the Playground. It was at that moment that I realised two things; 1. Mob Mentality is very easy to get stuck into and 2. It only takes one person that people are scared of to stop something, no matter how big it is.

That time in my life resonates with me to now, I knew that if the Police would show some force, be allowed to do their job properly that this bunch of weak-minded, crowd following morons would have fallen straight back into line and everything would have been fine. Instead, we've ended up with a bigger mess than I think anybody ever imagined when this first started, and who knows where we'll go on from here.

TBC.

He Had A Dream...

The 4th of April clearly doesn't mean that much to a lot of people these days, I'm ashamed to admit that even I found myself realising only because of a section in 'Fear and Loathing on The Campaign Trail' while I rode the train out to Hell this morning.

Forty-Three years ago, on this very day, a man was killed in cold blood, and in most cases that wouldn't be something overly special due to the amount of murderous pillaging that happens now, and even back then... But he was someone important, someone that still is important even today.

Forty-Three years later in a country thousands of miles away from where his body fell, he will still be remembered with great importance and missed by millions because of what he stood for, the words he said, what he believed in, and, what he dreamed of.

Martin Luther King was killed by James Earl Ray for standing up for the rights of others and more importantly what he believed in. What were we told in school at a young age? Were we told to silence people who thought differently and bully them? No, but because of human nature that's how it plays out, even when people are children, a bully resorts to their ways purely by acting under a dislike for what someone else looks like or what they say, and look at it now, children's prejudice is all grown up, and now it's called Racism or Sexism or Homophobia, and when you try and silence that person who wants to speak their thoughts freely, you take away our freedom to fight without the need for physical confrontation. But who needs that? I mean why sit down, talk about something, be civilized, when instead you can take millions to war and have their heads blown open and limbs separated? Let alone all the people that survive and have to suffer the rest of their lives in situations they shouldn't be in.

Amongst other things, all he really wanted was equality for people with the smallest difference of a variation in skin colour.

The saddest thing of all is, we're still working towards that equality when it should come to us all so easily.

From Here On Out.

Why bother with mediation any more? When all it brings is distinct unhappiness, I may as well begin to ignore this horrible situation and do what feels right even when I know it's wrong. Yet this isn't a situation that brings no repercussions, quite the opposite in this case, a giant mess and shit storm of terrible things that will probably make this itching feeling pale in comparison. After all, digging yourself into a black hole of debt is never advisable, just preferable at this time in life.

When left with no other solution, this is the only thing that makes sense to me, either continue on with no money, or add to the damage I've already caused with the fee's handed out by those ghastly government types, claiming: 'We'll take you in! Teach you the final parts of your education and let you have a good time doing it!' When in reality even the ignorant knew to take the claims with a large pinch of salt, maybe even pepper too. Yet over a year and a half in, these feelings still eat away at the back of my mind, taking up valuable space that could go towards something worthwhile, even if I'm in no state to express what exactly.

Life itself is a wonderful thing filled with so many variables that it's possible to turn your entire life upside down in the very second I write this, and when you find yourself in a situation that you like, it sometimes becomes impossible to shift yourself from the normalities you've become comfortably accustomed too, with that said, I still have the complete ability to do whatever I want, I just choose not to with many of the worse things. Regardless of this, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I'm giving up on what that shriveled brain of mine says is the right answer, and going with the complete opposite, a dangerous opposite that could potentially have effects on my life for years to come, but who really cares about that now, if you continue on with enough money to live comfortably what does it matter? Money clearly being the keyword here, the thing that controls practically every persons life worldwide on this formerly-blue but now Black ball floating around space, why the change? Because we're all controlled by money, and that doesn't warrant a calming colour anymore.

Far from believing the 'Life with no material possessions' is a good idea, albeit admirable nonetheless, I'm left with that choice to plunge myself further into darkness, or continue on, penny less and miserable.

The choice is obvious, I'm going out in style.

Tragedy in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Everyone should already know what this is about, from the blanketing media coverage over the last twenty four hours, and if it hasn't crossed your radar by now stop reading this and instead, search the term 'Japan Earthquake'.

It's truly impossible to anticipate such an event, even with todays technology you can see it coming but fail to prepare for exactly what is about to take place. Yesterday morning, March 11th 2011, at around 11.30 GMT, I awoke as usual only to go online and find that a 7.7 Earthquake had struck Japan just off its coast, 'Jesus!' I thought, just over a month or so after the Christchurch decibel in New Zealand we've got another disaster on our hands, but that was before I began reading the article that the headline protruded from.

In my mind, there was absolutely no doubt of the devastation caused by this terrible incident, I quickly began to think back to the Haiti Earthquake last year that registered magnitude 7.0 and flattened an array of buildings taking over 316,000 lives. I knew for a fact this event may be bigger in magnitude, but with Japanese building regulations in a country prone to Earthquakes, it wouldn't be anywhere near the death toll of the Haiti Incident. So far most media outlets have been claiming the Death Toll may be around 1,300, the only problem now is that the town of Minamisanriku, a small town sitting on the coast, has 9,500 people that are unaccounted for. Seeing the pictures doesn't give me too much hope.

As I ventured down the page to read updates from the last 5 hours, the thing that hit me hardest was that it was now saying the quake was 8.8, possibly even 9.0, and the aftershocks were in the 7's and 6's. With the amount of time I've wasted reading up on Natural disasters, I knew straight away this was bigger than I'd ever seen before, nothing this big had happened in recent years.

What followed was hours of searching sources trying to find out exactly what was happening to the country, I watched waves crash across the landscape, washing away buildings like they were made from paper, engulfing rivers and overflowing out of them in seconds, only to continue on, marching forward, ripping apart everything ahead of it. The most shocking images came from watching the helicopter footage, witnessing cars trying to escape the coming assault, a black mass washing over everything filled with debris, debris that was in flames whilst the water carried it. To imagine what it must have been to see that mass coming towards you I'll never know, and despite my lack of any religious sentiment, God help them, because anyone there was out for their own live at that point, and it saddens me to think that they probably did get away with it this time.

Seeing the pictures of Japan this morning was equally as devastating as what the World witnessed yesterday. Some of the water had receded, leaving shards of houses, trees, cars and even boats pushed across the landscape in places you'd never find them in almost any other situation. The clean up effort will be gargantuan, and I wish I could be there helping, it would certainly make a difference to sitting here whilst witnessing and wishing that I could be there.

All we can wish for now is that the Fukushima Nuclear Plant does not add to this situation with a meltdown. Despite the building surrounding the Reactor exploding this morning, the reactor itself is yet to worsen as far as I've heard today, I can only hope for their sake it stays that way.

My wishes, condolences and hope go out to every single person in Japan right now. Good luck to all of you, you will pull through.

In the Midst

This whole band thing has been pinballing back and forth for months now, you could even count the previous years of attempted and failed bands, but in all honesty there wasn't enough songwriting, or good songwriting at least, to really merit it. 'Hell' would be a nice way to describe what it's been like, despite seeming mundane for the most part, it has been a huge pain to organise everything to get this far. Currently, I'm sitting with a huge amount of riffs, sections, lyrics, practice recordings, jams, band names and God knows what else that have accumulated over the past two or so years that I've been doing this, to the outside observer it looks like a mountain of work and a lot of time, and the latter is true, but a mountain? Hardly.

The last few months have been by far the most productive, back in Summer 2010 whilst I was travelling through parts of Spain and Morocco, the 2 things I was carrying musically was my laptop, with all my song parts on, and eventually a 3/4 Classical Acoustic that I picked up in a small, but extremely impressive classical music store in Barcelona (If there was a Metal shop selling Flying V acoustics, I would have been with it, but I was low on money and starting to get withdrawal symptoms from not playing.) It's a weird thing to look back on, especially when you consider your spouse's parents being around all the time you're practicing and writing small parts of songs, but eventually I got it going, and ended up getting about 3 songs and 10 to 15 sections done in the four or so weeks we traveled round.

That was basically the thing that sparked the band off again, and got me working towards it properly and attempting to organise everything, without bothering about all that stuff, I essentially continued the writing process through the end of 2010, making some good songs and sections that could be used elsewhere. Now I'm sat with so many files I can barely even organise or look through them, but the important thing is the Folder on my Desktop marked 'EP'. That folder holds the 6 tracks (and 1 intro) that will compromise the EP that will get recorded and released in the first half of this year. I'm honestly really excited by the idea of finally getting all this done professionally, even with the Multimix and H2 that I've got, it's not ever going to replicate the feel of being in a Studio working on this properly.

Looking through all these recordings and files, it literally documents as far back as 5 years worth of my life's work, and yes, most of it is terrible but you wouldn't really expect much else from someone who started doing bands as soon as they started playing an instrument properly. Lots of awful, awful riffs mixed in with some strange lyrics that definitely used to have meaning back at some point. Looking through them is fairly unnerving... Look:

These flames were lit by the tears of millions of children,

The People who died due to poverty and war, (Chorus)

Not because of you, you were never important that night,

The flames were Set. A. Light.

What does that even mean? I know where it's coming from in terms of subject matter and meaning, but why was I even writing that back when I was 15? I didn't know shit back then, I was just a kid who was happy enough to basically run around the streets of a town at night, get arrested and do loads of stupid shit, those lyrics weren't even something that seemed to be an outlet to rid myself of those thoughts, they just seem to exist purely because I wanted to try and write something meaningful. God alone knows, there's some songs in there that do have some sort of real meaning, but it's so easy to tell the difference between the two feelings.

I'm looking at them now when I'm gearing up to write lyrics to 5 or 6 new tracks that I've been making along with a friend/band member, and in all honesty looking at how I've matured in the last few years makes me know whatever I'm going to write about is going to actually mean something properly. I've always got something to say, I've been in a world 5 years longer in a position that shows me the World in a completely different light, and it's been bad and good, but why focus on the good when I want something slightly poignant, but mostly aggressive and angry. It truly is a comfort to know I'm entering what might be the easiest part of the songwriting process with a clear mind and a full head of ideas, it's also amazing to be able to pick anything up that has words on and instantly be able to riff them into a song structure with ease, all I can really say is I'm looking forward to getting this done and moving forward again with the band, or what we have of it currently.

In all honesty, I believe this will lead somewhere, with the effort we've put in this time there really is some great riffs and song parts, and I'm not one to say everything we've made is amazing, there's parts I enjoy and parts I wonder about, but at the same time I wonder about all of it, because to us what might sound good, may be terrible to everyone else. The bottom line is once this is all finished and recorded, it's done. That's all that really matters because then it's done and finished and we can finally aim to get somewhere and have the thing in our hand that we need to get there. Now is the time to do this.

The music industry is hard to get into is it? Bring it on.