It May Be That Yonder Beggar Is A King

I despair of the occult community, any occult community, 99.9% of the time. We don't deserve to be taken seriously. Yes. I can shoot fireballs and I'm descended from dragons, everyone else seems to be.
It's not even the kiddies any more, although a fluff bunny wiccan still gets my gander up ten times more than a hardcore christian. It's the plethora of pseudo-scientists who struggle to justify their crackpot theories in the languages of modern science. You just don't get it! If you could do that, it would be modern science.
Art is it's own language for things that can't be conveyed, and art is, and probably always will be, the last refuge of the practical occultist once we've grown into our long trousers as a species and understand at least the shape of our own ignorance.

Fucking loonies.

I've hit my usual hump of inactivity. There's nothing for me to do between now and uni starting, so I promptly do nothing. My sleeping pattern is the first casualty, hence I find myself sitting, bored enough to do an LJ entry at half three in the morning while my girlfriend slumbers in the next room.

I'm going to be twenty three in a few months. Yeah, I know, it's not old in the slightest, but I've always pushed myself to be ahead of where I should be mentally, even if it was knowing how best to deal with a paralysed drunkard in the Gosforth days. Even if the paralysed drunkard was me. I'm at that stage now where I should be seeing my attempts to craft myself into something approaching the person I want to be bear fruit...

...Hey, I said ATTEMPTS to craft myself. I never said successful attempts...

...where was I? Oh, yeah. Bearing fruit. I look around at all these people who are published writers in their teens, or world famous performers, and my inferiority complex twitches and demands to know why I'm not there yet. Unfortunately my only answer is that I wasn't doing my thing in the right place at the right time, which is what this all boils down to. Being successful at anything approaching the kind of stuff I can see myself being happy doing for the rest of my life involves disgusting amounts of dumb luck, a commodity that's never been in too great supply for me on a day-to-day basis. My life could go by to it's completion and I'd never have gotten that one chance to make something of my talents, and I'm getting to the point now where I can no longer make excuses when comparing my progress to others'.
Meh, I suppose if I can turn the impotent rage and frustration into what people charitably call 'drive and ambition,' I might still turn out alright.

Aside from musing on the sorry state of my life as it is, long periods of inactivity also make me miss the past. I miss people I used to know, places I used to be, things I used to be able to get away with doing. But of course I miss all that with the benefit of hindsight. If I wanted to do any of it again, I'd want to do it as me, knowing what I know now and purely enjoying it, rather than me as a 17-19 year old lunatic.

Suffice to say, there's a lot I'd do differently, and a lot I'd ressurect if I had the slightest chance. I miss the tension. I miss it all the time.

And that's quite enough hidden messages for one entry, cheers.

-444

So I've been giving writing performance poetry a go. My long-held misgivings about descending into poetry as an art form have slackened a bit, having been watching and reading some above-average stuff lately. Maybe there's life in the medium yet. Let's see.

Without further ado, I present my first effort.

Picking Up

Every day I'm picking up
From some sketchy fucks
And it leaves me stumped
How to fill the blunt
When there's such a want
When there's such a want

I buy weed from a psychopath
Who just sits and laughs
Do the math
I just want to swap money for some decent grass
Puff puff pass
Or to give the bong a blast
Buckets if I'm feeling crass
Buckets if I'm feeling crass

Then there's the type who'd short-weight his best friend
A poor business acumen
Which wouldn't work on Dragon's Den
In the end
I just can't contend
Have you got a lend
Of a joint so I can start to mend
I can start to mend

Every day I'm picking up
From some sketchy fucks
And it leaves me stuck
At the mercy of the Governmunt
Of the Governmunt

I know that prohibition
Plus the poet's rhythm
Helps the exposition
Of the stuff of which I've written
But I preach a schism
Underground or locked in prison
Isn't where I want to be sittin'
Not a comfortable position
Not a comfortable position

...I'd much rather buy my drugs in Tescos.

***

Whatever. At least I'm not doing contemporary dance.

Rantallion

noun • /ran-TAL-yən/ • a man or boy whose penis is insufficiently long, in its ‘relaxed’ mode, to exceed the length of the scrotum.

-444

It's been brought to my attention that ganja is currently so scarce in Hull at the moment that gangs of armed chavs have taken to invading dealers' homes and raiding them for pot.

Now this amused me more than anything else. Keep an eye out for gangs of radgies cheesing it up the street and see if you can trip one up and loot it. They can be like the little gnome things that pop up at the end of every level in Golden Axe!

-444

It's a shame I never seem to post on here any more.

Well, I mean it's not a shame for you guys, once a month is more than long enough to go between reading things I write. I meant for me. It used to be marvellously therapeutic to hammer shit down in here, I wonder why I stopped. I mean the vlogging just gave me a better outlet to chat shit, but I'd never use it in the cathartic 'get it all out, you'll feel better' way that I used the LJ for. Ah well. I'd like to say I'm going to change it all and start jotting stuff down in here more, but that would be an unashamed lie. I'll probably get bored as soon as I get back to uni and busy.

And busy I will be, dear children. The coming semester sees your friend and humble narrator getting down and dirty with the proceeding...

* I'm president of the Hull Alternative Culture Society (HACS). That is to say, I will be, once I've written the charter and changed it from the Hull Alt and Goth Society (HAGS). The reason for the change is that basically there aren't any goths in the whole thing, apart from perhaps my VP, Grant. So if we open it up a little, we're no longer just about the music, therefore not competing with the Rock Soc (we'd lose). Plus, president of the Alternative Culture society looks a niggerload better than prez. of the Goth club on my CV.
Problem is, we have next to no members after a string of less-than-brilliant presidents ran the society into the ground. We NEED good freshers this semester or we're sunk. Basically, HAGS/HACS is the societal equivalent of that old game where you put the water balloon in the spherical machine, and you passed it around the circle, and when the timer ran out the balloon would explode and the person holding it would get wet. I really don't fancy being the guy who killed HAGS.

* I'm directing with the drama society in first semester too. We're doing Oxtiern by the Marquis De Sade. Gods alone know how my co-director Tom and I got voted in. An eight-person cast with largely male roles is NOT the usual 'ahh let's be lovely and get everyone feeling involved at the expense of a good production' approach of the society. Not that there were any sub-standard productions last year... well... except for the ones I wasn't in. Chortle chortle.
I just hope I can direct as well as I act, it's a risky thing to put on for a first semester piece. Again, it depends on our fresher intake, as so many members of the society have done something stupid like graduating.

* Karaoke: I'm definitely keeping my Thursday nights, as well as getting the side-room for the union's monthly rock night, Full Metal Jacket. The great thing is, no-one uses the karaoke in the side-room, so I get what amounts to a DJ set. I am the Carter to Dan Peck's Ritchie.
Unfortunately, the girl who works Wednesday nights at the student night Tower is stubbornly refusing to let me have her job, otherwise I'd be pulling in serious paper. Which I kinda need to do. The sneaking suspicion that I'm a lot better than her at the job also doesn't help.

* Degree: I have one, and would sort of like to keep it that way. I finished second year on a 2:1, 62 points. Considering everything that's been going on, a point up on where I finished last year is pretty tidy.

* Again, I'm trying to sort a band out, yadda yadda yadda. Every other entry in this thing chronicles another attempt to start something like that until other people fall out or lose interest or have babies or never hear from me again. I'm my own Axl Rose. In any event I'm going to at least try to be more artistically active, I'm still working on drafting Multi:Versal, as well as putting a rough plan together for the Ernth trilogy. Anything that gets the juices flowing is welcome.

* And last, but not least, baby stuff. Yeah I've been saving it. We're back to the adoption idea now, and seem to have settled on it nicely. It's a girl, or will be, and having had the adoption process explained to us, it turns out we get to name her. Now this is pretty huge. I get a hand in ONE decision made for my baby girl. If I pick out a name that gets her beaten up at school, I doubt I'll be able to live with myself.
Joking aside, the whole thing is getting pretty gnarly. I go through weeks at a time of just drifting through the concept, vaguely aware that I have a daughter spawning somewhere that I have to give up. Other times I see an advert for pampers on the telly and have to choke down tears. Having been informed that it could take up to ten months after little Rorina makes her debut until she's securely with her new family, I can't see things getting any easier any quicker.

But I really don't want to dwell on the negative. To go into the fact that a close friend has been diagnosed with cancer, and I myself have obstructive sleep apnea, as well as cycling through 3 housemates in as many weeks and money disappearing from my account, would just put a damper on the show. If I do end up using this journal more often, I'm sure there'll be emo whining enough to go around.

Anyway, this one's been pretty long. I'll cut it off here, and say that I love you all.

Especially you.

Fraternally,

-444

I spent the last half an hour crying my eyes out and dancing around my front room like a dervish to an obscure Nevada trip-hop collective.

So, yeah. Summer's good. How are you?

-444

I only ever update this thing nowadays when I'm procrastinating in the library.

So, I'm pretty much utterly fucked. I need to vent this out here, if you're having a good day, skip away.

To recap, a friend of mine, Hana, is now pregnant. It's mine, from about a week before I got back together with Charlotte. If I'd kept it in my pants for seven more days, I wouldn't be writing this.
To her credit, she told me first. After I'd suitably freaked out, I asked her what we were going to do. I was told we were going to do what we had to do, and abort it. I agreed, having a kid before I want to, if I ever want to, has always been my worst nightmare. I go with Hana to the clinic, we have the preliminaries, I won't bore you, and it seems set.

Then Hana bottles it.

I get a call when I'm home over easter that she's going to have it, and give it up for adoption. I try to argue that it won't be easier to give it up when it's popped out and looking cute, she won't have any of it. To be honest, the more I thought about it the less I wanted to abort it myself, to the point where I realised I was only okay with the idea when I was forcing myself not to think about it. I maintain that I'm pro-choice, but when I got faced with the choice myself, I didn't want to kill my healthy baby when we could make two people who wanted a child but couldn't incredibly happy. Couple this with the kid having a chance, always a good thing, and after thinking it over, I agreed that it was the best course of action.

Then Hana bottles it.

Yesterday I was informed that she's keeping the child and raising it. Cue aforementioned worst nightmare coming true. What the fuck am I supposed to do? I apparently have no say in the matter whatsoever, which I totally respect when the kid's still in there, but once it's born...

That's the thing. Hana has told me she doesn't expect me to help, but I couldn't live with myself if I was one of those fathers who bailed. However, there's just nothing I can do for this child. By the time I finish uni, if all goes to plan, the child will be two, maybe three, and I'll still officially have nothing to offer it. I could drop out, but if I take a break I'll never go back, and if I drop out completely I might as well stick a pistol in my mouth now. I can't go back to living how I was before uni, and with things the way they are, that's exactly what would happen. There are fewer jobs for bums with A-levels now than there were two years ago.
Thing is, Hana's done the whole uni thing. She's graduated, she has a career, she at least stands a chance of doing something constructive with the kid, her emotional problems aside. I can't. Every plan I laid for my life has been completely fucking shattered, and I've been shoe-horned into it. By taking it in steps, first the abortion, then the adoption, then keeping it, I've slowly been suckered into being absolutely helpless over this thing that I'm going to have hanging over me for the rest of my life.

What's doubly fucked is just how hard it is not to be selfish about this. The child has to come first, but I truly believe that it's best interests lie in being adopted by two people who are prepared and ready for it. What options do I have, though? Bail and be one of those guys you see on Jeremy Kyle, drop out of uni and get a 9-5 to support it or conduct the rest of my university and post-grad life with an eye towards taking up this horrible burden once I'm done.
I caught myself last night wishing, praying for a miscarriage, or for it somehow not to be mine, or for Hana to see sense and have it adopted. She's doing this to prove to herself how she's all grown up and ready for the big wide world, but you don't use a baby as a fucking ping-pong ball to do that.
See, I know what I am and what I can do. I could tie myself to this baby, but I don't know what I'm doing when I graduate, even where I'd be or who with. I want stability for my child, and to that end I can't, in good conscience, tie it to me.
I have nothing to offer this kid once it's born, fuck all for at least the first three or four years of it's life. I refuse to bail on it, and that's just what I'd have to do if Hana kept it. The one way I can do something positive for this child is to entrust it to people who are prepared and ready to give it more than a mediocre life. Try telling a broody pregnant woman that.

The one silver lining is that Charlotte has stayed with me through all of this. Other than that, I'm fresh out of ideas. Do I have any right to be this selfish? I just want it to go away. I want to be rewarded for trying to make some worthwhile progress in my life for once, instead of having this heaped on me.

-444

So. Let's run through what a busy little boy I'm being this semester...

* I'm running the karaoke at the student union now, which is (shock, horror) a paid job. From the stockroom at Argos to the dizzy heights of student union celebrity in two little years.
* I'm running for student union president, more of a piss-take than anything else, but you know what students are like, and if I get it I'll take the job. More on that later.
* I'm running a PBM steampunk DnD campaign and playing in two others, this takes up more time than you'd think, and is possibly the reason why the geek are too busy to inherit the earth.
* I'm hopefully playing either Macb... erm... the title role, or Banquo in Macbe... erm... the Scottish Play, run by the union drama soc.
* I plan to kidnap my bass-playing friend Matt and beat, drug and/or cajole him into playing in some kind of strange industrial/trip-hop band I have an idea for. It's been two, three years since I've been in a band I enjoy and I'm fucking sick of it. I love playing music and will do so now, please. I'll need a guitarist too, but they grow on trees and spring from the earth.
* I have the second year of my degree to think about when all that's done.

The prudent reader will notice that a lot of that is centred around my beloved alma mater. This may or may not come as a surprise, considering the distaste I have for most students. Not in an 'I'm better than them as people' way, it just annoys me, academically speaking, how many of them picked their uni and course seemingly at random, resit first year a couple of times then knuckle down to get their 2/2. No, you shouldn't be here. Get the hell out and stop cheapening my degree, you lollygaggers. It pleases me to play the fool most times but I'm actually serious about this.

I'm also keeping busy kind of intentionally this time. I've come to the conclusion that I'm one of those people who need to be kept occupied or risk ending up spending every day stoned out of my gourd and masturbating ten times a day out of boredom rather than carnal need. Being a people person (ye gods I hate that phrase) is a big part of who I am, and logically should form a big part of what I do. Any seething misanthropy I come out with is well earned, or in line with my whim if I just decide I don't like someone.

Contradictions. They're cool too.

Oh, and I've started re-updating the youtube stuff. God knows what I'm going to say this time around. The occult scene on the tubes has dwindled to a few satanists ranting at each other and a few pagans ranting at everyone else... so... a bit like the occult scene everywhere then. There are one or two gentlemen who still interest me with their videos, one or two of them even do me the honour of reading this journal, but for the most part it's the same barren wasteland of the pseudo-scientific mind. However, people tend to enjoy my videos, so judge the audience, not the author. I've yet to find a camera I didn't want to be in front of. Ooh Stobo, ya big tart.
Hopefully I'll be able to keep on top of this journal too as a kind of companion, I totally blanked it during the last run of videos, but people have started to come across it, along with my myspace (a long disused relic of the pre-facebook aeon), and I hate to think I'll inadvertantly end up ignoring people just because they try to talk to me through a medium I no longer use. I'm not the international occult superstar I jack off to images of myself as just yet. Ignoring people just because they ask daft questions is the preserve of the douche.

Anyway. That's all for me. God this has taken about half an hour to write. I'm sat in the union library with a slightly-more-than-attractive alt-looking young lady directly opposite from me. I'd say something along the lines of 'god damn, I need sex,' but that sentiment leads to nothing but trouble for me lately. I might just go wank out of a window onto the heads of some unsuspecting sports science undergraduates.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. That's THREE wanking references for the price of one in this entry! See my works, oh ye mighty, and despair!

-444

So, it's 2009. We're nearly in the future!

I'm also marvellously stoned on two delicious little bullets I skinned up just a few scant minutes hitherto, oh my brothers and sisters. Here comes one of THOSE updates, no, don't worry, I've missed them too.

2008 was a strange one. Things were looking shaky there over summer, but I reckon I managed to pull it back over the winter months. Still, you can't have everything you would like, I for one would love a sense of proportion and an ability to, once in a while, value the long term and secure over the short-term and ill-advised. Still, the weasel and the fawning sycophant in me always save my hide in return for a hefty toll of self-worth, and they do not extend credit.

Loss and gain. Of course they're not equal and if you think so then go cry karma in downtown Treblinka. Overall though, I feel far more fully developed in myself than I did at the start of the year. I'm invincible, I have to be or I'm fucked.

I'm developing a hell of an ego though, as in I'm starting to believe that I might be something other than the mewling child I still think is my level. I don't like it. How I actually am as a person is irrelevant, I just get awkward as hell thinking anyone might believe something positive about me. Difficult to explain. It's not an emo thing, it causes me no anguish whatsoever. I suppose I just like knowing that everyone thinks of me as exactly how I want them to, how I portray myself as. Errant opinions must be checked to see they fit in.

I'm a fucking tit.

So what do I want to do in the coming year? Write more, finish the graphic novel I'm co-doing at the minute, start another with a fellow sorceror and gentleman of the wizardly arts, write more of my own stuff, RP more because it's EXCELLENT practice, get my degree on a solid footing, branch out from weed a little, I just realised I put 'write more' twice, keep my fucking dick in my pants occasionally, forge stronger relationships with people I think are cool but don't spend enough time with, try harder to get along with people I think are scum but are close friends of good friends of mine thus making the situation awkward when we're all together, kill a man, not really I was just joking, or was I, yes I was, oh, okay then, I also want to pick up the pace with magickal practice, I've been getting lazy as hell, too many things in the way, never the time, well I've decided that I'm pushing for something special this year, stay tuned...

...

...What the FUCK just happened to my grammar? Christ, Stobo, get a grip man! But yes, that was pretty much it. I don't do resolutions because they're for silly poos. Do excuse me please while I toke deeply of another half a bifta or so...



Bah, I've smoked more than I thought there was like, one toke left on that. Nightmare, fuckin' nightmare. Maybe some more cider? I should really get that last one smoked though, that way I won't be tempted to just wake and bake tomorrow. I need to get some uni work started, I'm a week behind schedule because I'm off filing in Carlisle again. Oooh yeah, I forgot to put this on here. I shot a heavily stylised gangster flick over summer up in Carlisle with a bunch of films students I met though my friend Spence. The trailer is here...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyc7Ln1CDoQ&feature=channel_page

It's not finished yet, problems with the director or something you know what these kids are like. But yes, they want me back to do another short for them. It's all artsy and flowing, you're going to love it. But it means I have a week less time to do my essays. They're not long, just hard. And I want to draft them a couple of times too, just to be on the safe side. I'm actually really loving my course this year, be a shame to fail it.

Right, I've had enough of you. Time for another bifta and bed. I love you all, happy new year and may something good happen that will nearly blow up the world but we all come together, learn the value of love and stop the world blowing up, ushering in a new age of utopia.

-444

So, I was reading the Times today, and on one page we were treated to the science editor's piece on the Pope's latest outburst about homosexuality being... well, not the greatest thing in his opinion. The science editor didn't really give much table time to moral outrage, that had been covered over the past few days. Instead he discussed the nature/nurture issue relating to homosexuality. A really interesting scientific read.
On the next page, we had Archbishop Tutu with a piece berating us all for our godlessness which ultimately led to the credit crunch. There was a little more reasoning than that, but the jist was that we needed to all pull together, find Jesus, and rebuild the economic community "with God not as an add-on, but as a foundation." I shit you not.

Science, religion, consumerism, morality. Everyone seems to have a lovely little plan for the human race and a nice litte audience to lap it up.

The occultist, on the other hand, is a truly damned being. Dismissing 'faith' out of hand, and demanding, if not proof, then at least results, we distance ourselves from the religious community, who tend not to like us at the best of times for some reason. At the same time, I truly believe that the magnum opus for anyone serious about magick, sooner or later, must include some measure of vision for humanity's future. Even if it's grimdark as fuck and we keep it to ourselves, once you realise that we're all part of something greater, vis a vis; the human race, it's impossible not to see how you fit into it all, and why it would be much easier if the guy over there would stop being so bloody stupid. Unfortunately this often translates to a code of morality. Scientists, at least the ones with all the money and the biggest lasers, tend to maintain they're above that sort of thing.

Straddling science and religion, desperately trying to juggle the useful bits of both and avoid falling off the tightrope of sanity into the spiked pit that is Choronzon, the occultist is met at the end of his journey by stony indifference.
Imagine for a moment that I achieve final enlightenment and come up with the ultimate functional utopian vision for humanity, one that works. It hasn't happened yet, but give it time. Who the fuck is going to listen to me? The scientific community would laugh me out of the building as a superstitious hippy, and the religious community would burn me at the stake. Oh, and in case you're wondering about all the other occultists? They're far too busy bickering about who's the true heir to Crowley or what current we're currently on (awful pun intended, it's been a long day).

So, does the magician up sticks and quit? I would if I could. No, it's not as easy as just losing. The fact is, kiddies, nowadays the magus is a quantum mechanic and the Master of the Temple works for the Inland Revenue. Thankfully, if that's not your scene you can always look in on what the Ipsissumus is doing, he's sat over there on his laptop, loading up a graphic design package.

Thank fuck for that.

-444

ps: Happy Christmas to everyone, and if you're reading this on facebook (that fucking site still insists on importing my whole blog) and don't know what I'm on about, google be thy name, you might learn something.

I'M STILL ALIVE!

Anyone care?

Awww. :-(

-444

Jesus, I've just read something on here which has really really weirded me out.

Not a lot does that.

Sometimes it's good to chart how the people around you have changed. We all define ourselves in relation to others, even if it's as a reference point for what not to do. If they've changed, it's just possible that you have, and change is good.

It is wrong that I want to be sixteen again, though? Just at this moment in time?

-444

Self-destruction is a motherfucker.

What do you do when you first see through the trappings of mass consumerism, the obsession with image, with beauty, and the opinion that the two are even slightly connected? What do you do when you not only see through it, but begin to loathe it for the grotesque perversion of the gift of life that it actually is?

One idea is to ignore it, play along, pretend that the TV and the job and the degree and the fake tan are all not just nessecary, but real. This is a totally viable route, totally sound. You get your nervous breakdown over and done with, lather rinse, repeat.

A second route is utter self destruction. Move into a garret with a bunch of no-hopers. Turn to alcohol and drugs, buy these two things before you pay rent, bills or buy food. Sign on the dole and don't particularly try too hard to find work. £45 a week will get you a loaf of bread, a block of cheese and everything you need to make the world go away.
They want you to be beautiful, and you can be. You can be more beautiful than the stars in their heavens. But stars burn out, black holes are forever. Every day is a sneer when you live like this, a mortal insult to everything they could have made use of you becoming. They can't use ugly, they're not programmed for it. Take you mensa-IQ and your eloquence and fashion it into a spike that you drive up their urethras every day, because you're not playing and you're taking the dice home with you. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly.

For a time, this works. Your self-justification and your swaggering arrogance are momentum enough to drive you so far down, until you're sat there, gaunt and pale, on your throne of shattered bottles and burning cig-ends, FUCKING PROUD that you've been so off your face on pills that you haven't slept in five days, damn their eyes!

Aaaaaaaaaand it's about this point where you stop. There's only one place lower you can go, and you don't have the balls for that, do you? That wasn't the point, was it?. You weren't doing all this just to do something as mundane as to die, were you? It was a glorious statement, it was poetic, you were a libertine, the lord of the underworld, the Hidden King.

So what then, smartarse?

See, this second approach really isn't about the act of self-destruction, but the process of it. You want to exist as something evil, but this is not a way to exist. You're not turning your back on what society wants you to be, you're charging at it with a dagger drawn, screaming. But the thing is, you can't win, they have guns, and bombs, and reality television. What's more, you're hopelessly outnumbered. No, they can't use ugly, but they can swallow it whole and not even stop to chew.

So what's the answer? Well fuck, I don't know, do I? If I did I wouldn't still be angsty enough to be writing this drivel. All I can say is what I took from behind door number two. There is a way to do it, just. When you've thrown away everything a person both wants and needs, you're able to tell the difference between the two. The great lie they spin is mostly about bringing about this confusion.You don't NEED true love, but you NEED some Jimmy Choos. But you, you've seen what a human being truly cannot live without. Take that, sort it, and carry it with you.

Unfortunately, kiddo, you have to play their game. Mainly because we've come over all Rage Against The Machine and are defining 'Them' as basically anything we disagree with, which is everything. But the thing about playing a game is, once you learn the rules you can play it better.

And the thing about self-destruction is, it'll destroy you.

-444

RIght, so that's basically one year of university over and done with. What's to report?

Well basically, it's been a pretty shitty end to the year. Having made such a catastrophic mess of things, along with the shit hitting the fan in various ways and shades among most other people I know, I'm leaving a couple of weeks early. Hull is no longer a particularly pleasant place to be for me and mine, and a few months away over summer while things cool down is probably for the best.

But no, seriously, I fucked up this past semester. I screwed the pooch. Big time. Allowing myself to get emotionally attatched to anything within an obtainable radius is as bad an idea in Hull as it is in Newcastle. Ah well. Everyone involves is, I'm sure, safe in the knowledge that I'm regretting it, paying and suffering for it every minute of every day since. It's one of those rare occasions where I can actually say if I'd had my time again, I'd have swung it differently.

But no sense crying over lost friends, alienated acquaintainces, awkward feeling presiding over pretty much everywhere I regularly go and the most consuming sense of having been the biggest prick I've ever been in my life.

Course-wise, things have been cush. Having not done an exam in three years, it was a shock to the system to do one again, but I've passed with relative lack of effort, as per usual in most things. I should be on to a winner when I start actually trying in second year.

In point of fact, there's a lot I'm going to change in second year. Not least of which would be actually participating in half the societies I've signed up for. As it stands I'm press-ganged into the drama soc and I go drinking at Spiders, which is basically what passes for being a member of the alt soc down here. It doesn't help that the alt/goth population of Hull consists of the same twelve people who go to all the same things and are EVERYWHERE I GO AND I CANT ESCAPE FROM THEM WHEN IT ALL GOES SO HORRIBLY WRO...ahem.... sorry about that.
So yeah, next year I'm thinking less drinking, more... I dunno... fencing perhaps. Or the style of karate they teach down here, something keep-fit which isn't as lame as a sport. Hanging around with AU types would probably give me HIV.

That's about it to be honest. Not entirely sure how badly I want to be home, but equally unsure of the wisdom of staying in Hull to the bitter end.

To be honest, I begin to suspect I'm the same wanker wherever I go.

-444

It's hard to express how and why I got into magick without giving the short version and sounding frivolous, or giving the long version which makes me sound unhinged.

...But hey...

Short version: I was bored, it seemed like a lark.

Long version: I was a desperately unhappy and dissatisfied with my life as an early teenager, socially inept in all the areas that mattered and struggling to maintain my thin facade of confidence in the face of my overwhelming mediocrity. The study of the occult seemed like an escape from all this into a world where nothing was true and everything was permitted.

One way or another, I slowly let it consume most of my free time. I won't bore you with the details of my spiritual journey through the re-trodden steps of greater sires, but, deprived of the means to make a youtube vlog on the subject, I fancied jotting down where I think I am at the minute.

Can I cast spells? Probably not in the sense you mean, no.

Do I talk to spirits and demons? No, and neither do you.

Is anything I keep about my person a protective charm to ward away negative energies? Don't be fucking stupid.

So if I can't do any of that 'light as a feather, stiff as a board' garbage, and am in fact less convinced of it's existence than I was when I started, why do I persist? Why do I still call myself an occultist? What have I gained since I first hammered 'witchcraft' into altavista (yeah, it was that long ago) to pass the time on a saturday afternoon?

One word.

Peace.

Peace with myself. I am no longer the mewling naive child with the weight problem and self confidence running in the red. I practice mind control, the useful kind: power over my own mind. I'll take some small measure of control over myself before any amount of control over the outside world and other people, any day ending in Y.

I was never in the game for power, because it's a ridiculous concept. Money I've gone with and without, I prefer with but it doesn't cripple me either way. Women at my beck and call? Thanks, but I'm a man of modest means.

No, if I had to describe myself at all, it would be as some kind of transhumanist/materialist job. The road now leads to enlightenment, in whatever shape I find it, in a rational and sane manner.

...But that being said...

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dream't of in your philosophy.
- (Hamlet act I, scene v)


-444

ps: If anyone reads this on facebook, can you please tell me how to stop that damned site stealing my blog? It's getting annoying.

Gary Gygax, the creative genius behind dungeons and dragons passed away today.

...Wonder if he dropped any good loot.

-444

I'm in a very good mood this evening. Tired, but rather fulfilled. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I'm really cracking on with understanding stuff, I'm starting to really see what everyone harps on about when they talk about The Great Work. an understanding of what magick is, rather than what you want it to be.

It links back to my youtube stuff really, people are actually listening to my crap and saying 'aye, not bad son.' Or at least variants thereof. I had a real moment tonight when someone I'm pretty sure I've met before subscribed to me and started messaging me like I was some kind of bloody guru. That's a test, believe me. The temptation to say to yourself, 'hey, maybe I do have something worth teaching to people,' starts tugging at you and you look at your subscribers list and all these people who are waiting for something new from you because even with your cynical nature and your joking presentation of stuff, you know more about this shit and have seen and done more of this shit and can take more of this shit than the average cunt on the street and you...

...write a book called Dianetics and start a cult.

No. What I did was remember that I'm 21, utterly clueless, and that the medium my disciples choose to find me on is fucking youtube. I'm not saying this was a test like the HGA working or crossing the abyss, but it's a test that a lot of people fail. Did not the great prophet say, 'you are not a beautiful or unique snowflake.'

The Great Work of magick is the betterment of mankind through spiritual means, not getting my ego fellated by sweaty-palmed teenagers from Idaho. At least if I was an honest-to-goodness pagan I could start a coven and my harm could be limited to those stupid enough to spend time with me.

But no, you've just got to ride it out. Magick is as magick does, and all you can do is just do it. The Great Work, I'm coming to believe, will find you if you're in the right mind frame.

I love you all.

-444