21 Guns, box made of pine.

I got a letter from the Government, the other day. Opened it and read it, it said they were suckers.

By the other day, I mean 2002. And replace 'Government' with Wandsworth Council.

They didn't want me for the army. They were summoning me to court for non-payment of Council Tax for a year or so when I used to live in their fiefdom. Thing is I was a student then and was exempt from paying Council Tax. So I trucked on over to their town hall with the Exclusion Certificate to tell them they'd made a mistake.

You get shown into a sealed room, with a teller behind re-inforced plexiglass. She talks to you through a speaker. They want you to know who is boss.

They told me it didn't matter if I could prove my exemption, the whole household had to.

Now I lived in the property two years. The first year I lived with my friend Alex, Alex's girlfriend and a lizard bitch, who also was the girlfriend's sister. I lived with Alex because I liked him, they lived with me because I hadn't met the lizard bitch yet. Everyone else they liked had and didn't want to live with her. When the third year rolled around Alex moved back into Halls, and so his family dispersed and I stayed at that address and let better friends, and a useless midget move in with me. I didn't see much of Alex that final year, and when graduation came and went that was the end of it.

Wandsworth Council were ok with the second year I lived there, my friends and the midget had all proven our exemption. But Alex and Company hadn't. And under a scheme they called 'joint and several liability' I was eligible for paying £500 or going to court. They had gotten ahold of me, and no one else, and they wanted my money.

I tried reaching Alex, but I think he had gone to France. I only had the parents' address for the girlfriend and the lizard bitch, from when I organised deposits on the house. They didn't respond.

I was unemployed. I didn't have £500, and if I did I wasn't going to pay for something I was EXCLUDED from paying as a student. So I went to court.

It was frustrating.

By no means was it a horror. This tale and the ones I'm going to tell next never put my life in danger. They never hurt my loved ones. I didn't lose a limb or go mad. In two seperate jobs I worked while at University I was lucky enough to work the shift AFTER the branch had been held up by gunpoint. First the Apollo Video got robbed, and a pregnant co-worker had a gun shoved in her face and dragged out back to open a safe. Then two years later I went to work an evening shift at Threshers and when I got there the police were still talking to this guy Terry, who had been pistol-wipped on the back of the head, his phone stolen and the tills emptied.

Thankfully no-one has ever pointed a gun at me, or threatened me like that. I've not even been robbed.

But still, going to court for this made me so angry. A real impotent rage. The law was law, but the situation was injust, unfair. The fuckers.

My Dad came along to back me up, and to voice his disgust before the judge. The magistrate was kind enough to give me, and Wandsworth a month or so to get proof of my co-tenants' Student Exemption. I'd already tried. For obvious reasons the Universities couldn't supply me with confidential documents regarding other students, Data-Protection act and all that. Wandsworth had clout enough to do that. I hoped they would and went home and waited the next appearance.

My second time in court the Magistrate told me what Wandsworth had found. The girlfriend's University had given details or her exemption. Lizard Bitch's University had done the same. Alex's University, which was also my University don't forget, didn't give up any details on Alex.
The fuckers.

But. 3 out of 4 was good enough, the magistrate said. That meant the whole household was exempt.

Except. Lizard Bitch dropped out of her last semester because she'd gotten pregnant. So for that last bit of the year, only two of the house were students in the court's eyes. Tax would have to be paid for then.

(Lizard Bitch had started going out with this very rich chap, of family money. I think she crapped out a child just to stay in shoes and handbags. She didn't quit smoking, though, and from what I heard the kid was born with a massive heart defect. Nice one.)

My dad wrote out a cheque for that amount then and there. He thought we could fight it still, but he didn't like the idea of it hanging over me for however many more court dates it would demand.

They pushed me, though. I still carry the baggage of that stupid farce around. I grit my teeth now as I write. It was stupid. It was unfair. Anyone could have seen I didn't deserve to be there, but I had to for the sake of petty bureaucracy. I wanted to hulk out. But I was puny human. I sat and let the system lay its smelly egg.

Been pushed before. Not by the system. By people. Again, small fry, but I still drag these chains. I still see them when Blackdog comes. Examples of when cunts got their way. Examples of when I was made to look more pathetic than I naturally am.

Coming home from school and a trio of boys from another establishment fell into stride behind me. They started with basics: I had glasses.

I didn't mouth off, so they progressed to kicking my bag, then my bum, and then just between my legs. At this point I asked if they'd refrain from doing that.

That was my arsenal. To find a word that suggested I was an even bigger nerd than they had anticpated. I didn't say 'Stop doing that.' or even 'Fuck off.' I asked if they would refrain from doing that.

'No. Dunno what that means.'

The rest of the walk home they took turns to push me over the knee-high walls of each front garden I passed. I'd stack it into a rosebush, pick myself out - they'd wait - and then walk five yards and have them do it again.

They knew which one was my house, and so I was spared the indignity of being pushed down my own front path. My mum shouted something from the window and I can't remember how they responded. I just wanted to unlock the door so I didn't have to cry in front of them. I'm about 13 years old, I really don't want to be seen crying.

My mum had seen one of the boys before, knew where he lived and so she called the police. She rightly felt that had this happened to my dad, it would be assault. There wasn't any reason why that standard shouldn't apply to a schoolboy. Later that same night a woman constable came to my door with one of the boys and his parents. He issued a sheepish apology and some story about how he'd been picked on, riding the bus home, and took it out on me. His parents assured me he'd not be going to his pony-riding lessons this week as punishment.

Yeah. I know. Pony-riding. Must have hurt to have me hear he was learning to ride a pony.

I didn't feel like that worked then, and I don't now. He was given a ticking off, more than likely forgotten two weekends later. I was cut and bruised and shaken and left feeling intimidated by my journey home and by other kids in general. I hadn't provoked him. He crossed a line, and as far as I'm concerned, suffered no consequences. The punishment I saw him get was pathetic. I was only told he'd lose a privilege, for a week. Can't tell you if he actually did. It wasn't a fraction of what he did to me. I wasn't happy with that. I wouldn't have been happy even if he got the same treatment as he gave to me. No. I didn't ask for what he did to me, I didn't deserve it. He should have been punished for electing to cause trouble. Punishment for what he did, and punishment for the decision to do it. That's genuinely how I feel on the matter. It should be visited back harder on those that act out like this. Those people that robbed my co-workers: they took, and injured and intimidated. But they also did it to people who didn't deserve it. They tipped the scales. Do you follow? What happens to them should be worse. That's the balance.

We go forwards in time now to the start of the same summer I was having that trouble with Wandsworth Council.

I was walking along a street in Portsmouth with a girl when the senses I'd atuned since that first humiliation told me trouble had fallen into step behind me. The girl didn't pick up on it, and I didn't want to simply say 'I'm being followed.' So I tensed up and looked for a way to steer myself away from them. She pointed out a tattoo on a girl's arm walking by and I pretended not to see it, and so stopped and looked behind on the pretense of checking out what I'd missed. There were two fellas, older than me, I think. Heftier. They walked by and I acted out admiration for this passing girl's art.

But they only went ahead about four steps and then they just stopped. The girl I was with still hadn't pegged them as trouble, and so I got told to hurry up and walk with her. They stood on either side of the pavement and when I passed between them, the guy on my right said 'What you lookin' at?'

Like he'd learned how to bully from characters in Byker Grove, or Eastenders.

'Nothing.' I wasn't even looking at him. I didn't want to afford him the opportunity to say that very line. I was looking at my bell-bottoms thinking that this is perhaps a town where trouser-styles can get you into trouble. I'd backed the wrong horse.

They let me walk a couple of steps more and then the same guy settled on punching me in the back of my head.

I fell into a shop and they leered from the outside. I left through a side exit, and was sick for the rest of the week I was in town. I couldn't remember their faces. I was worried I'd see them again and not know and be their easy mark a second time. Every tracksuit wearing, Ben Sherman was potentially one of them. This is 33% of the population of Portsmouth. (33% push prams behind these men, and another 33% are either in the prams or running screaming alongside. 1% makes up every other demographic unaccounted for.)

Nothing whatsoever happened to these guys in recompence for punching me in my head and tainting my trip to the seaside.

And this is how it goes around the world for all of history and humanity.

Needless to say it's my big bugbear. I carry plenty of rage around anyway, bottled up, for the usual follies I've acted out. The bad choices I've made, my romantic ineptitude, failing to create the right sort of opportunities for myself. But all of these I can blame myself for. I fucked myself over plenty of times. The Giant Cosmic Viking Bear energy comes from when someone else has been inconsiderate enough to fuck me over.



So when I look to escapism, I like best what satisfies this gripe. Man-Who-Has-Been-Pushed-Too-Far stories.

I like my action and suspense. And within this field there's a lot of stuff I enjoy. I like the Wrong, or Running Man story, exemplified by the likes of North By Northwest, Minority Report, The Fugitive. This probably comes in second to my love of guys pushed too far stories. There's a lot of cross-over anyway. First Blood has a guy who is pushed too far become a running man. The Bourne series has a running man who is pushed too far.

I like it when it's a team, and not just a man against the odds. The Untouchables, The Wild Bunch, Jaws, the Star Treks, Lethal Weapons, Last Boy Scout

I like it when the man alone is bound by nobler causes than revenge. His duty to stop something happening, or put the bad guys away. Die Hard, Spartan, Superman and most James Bond films.

And then there's the rest. Heist movies. Duels. Hybrid chase movies, crime movies, war films. The Taking of Pelham 123, Heat, The Getaway, The Dirty Dozen. There's a big mix under the action thriller banner.

But I empathise the most with payback. If halfway through one of these noble cause, or team or running man movies the protagonist has a reason to avenge something, then the thing gets twice as good for me. They messed with the wrong guy this time.


This week gone I watched two movies of I put in the pushed-me-too-far field. The first and best is Stander.

I'd seen it before, but liked it enough to buy and hence got to watch it again theother day. It's a weird film, in terms of trusting you to put your sympathies in a man who starts off being a South African Police Officer during apartheid, who then graduates to being a bank robber. Though it's designed to show the latter career as being the nicer, more humane choice of the two, and that's not difficult.

Tom Jane plays Andre Stander. I like Tom Jane. I feel sorry for him that his shot at playing the ultimate pushed-too-far; The Punisher, went with an otherwise crappy movie. His Frank Castle was the best thing about it and leaves me hoping the sequel can match his potential this time.
In Stander he brings much more flair and energy than The Punisher, but at the same time he smoulders with unchecked rage.

I don't know a whole lot about the true story of Andre Stander, but the film goes with him resenting the Police and the killing he's done of black rioters. The bulk of the police force's efforts are shown as being spent in the black ghettos, and if a white man wanted to, he could get away with a lot when the police's attentions are held in this way. So Stander finds himself trying to handle the guilt of shooting unarmed protesters, and the frustration of seeing his career wasted on such campaigns. He's a man who has been pushed-too-far-this-time, but doesn't know where to push back. How to find levity. He struggles to find away to fuck over others but still redeem himself.

So he ends up robbing institutions and confounding the police. But always at risk to himself. We aren't given much by way of Stander enjoying the money. But we are given a lot of Stander enjoying the robberies, enjoying foiling the police, enjoying his notoriety increase. It's his revenge. And when it seems almost like it's too fun, he has someone beat the living shit out of him, hoping with it comes some redemption, but he's ultimately lost. His enemy is too grand, too abstract. He resents the disorder, the injustice of nature. Nobody can avenge themselves upon that.

It's a good and over-looked film. Former Games-Master host Flexy Deckchair is in it, but don't let that put you off. He's quite good in it, considering. It's funny and dark in equal measure. Playful without ever losing sight of its morality. and it's got a magnum force soundtrack from Free Association. I recommend it.

YouTube punked out on Stander goodness.



The other DVD I went for is Breakdown, which isn't as good, but I put it in the machine when I want a certain kind of fix.

It's kind of man-on-the-run, but the baddies picked on the wrong-guy-this-time. It's the resourceful and tenacious Kurt Russell on the case.

I thought Jonathan Mostow was going to go from this, his breakout movie onto tighter, almost Brian Singer-esque fare. But he hacked straight to Bon Jovi submarine movies and the shit Terminator movie. Breakdown isn't particulary original. A cocktail of Spielberg's Duel, The Vanishing and Ransom. But it's tight. It doesn't waste time. It's a hamburger. You don't want it to be original. You want our hero to shout 'where is she?' as he tortures a thug. You want him to issue '...or I'll blow your fucking head off' ultimatums. You want ketchup and mustard.

So I like it. There's a truck chase in it too. And the bad-guy gets one of those moments when he realises he's been beaten and how he'll die. Bad guys need to be given a second to appreciate their fate. That was my beef with Mission Impossible 3. Davian needed to see it coming. All worthy bad guys do. And JT Walsh is a cold sociopath here. No crazy wild-eyed lip-sucking scenery-eating show-boating. He's methodical and humourless.

Breakdown. I just get comfort from it. Base needs. Couldn't find a trailer for it. Have this instead.





Am I stil going? Are you?




After last week's seven-year-itch revalation, I had one of my own this week. I bought my first pair of jeans in over a decade. I don't mean ten years not buying, I mean ten years never wearing. I can't remember why I outlawed denim, maybe just what it does in the rain that I didn't like, but I told myself never to wear the stuff. But I felt compelled, so I paid cash money to own again.
I was so happy with these jeans that I went and bought another pair.
Then I took a look at myself and saw what I'd become.

Back when I was working part-time jobs in Wandsworth, renting out videos and selling beer and fags, I saw a lot of a type of man I came to villify. I called him Putney Chap. For the most part he was either South African or Australian, but this wasn't a qualifying detail. I hated these guys. All identi-kit. I drew a picture of one, and it was all of them. White, late twenties, quiffy duck's bum hair, jeans, non-descript menswear, probably works in media, or as barstaff. Back then I was a beardy skinhead, wore glasses, black flares and typical metal attire. I wasn't one of these guys. I was recognisably me. And one of the only metallers in this neck of the woods.

But now I'm them. I work for a TV company. I have quiffy duck's bum hair. I'm late 20s. I have no beard, no glasses. I wear non-descript, generic menswear stuff from H&M, with more subtle choices in band or retro tee-shirts going on. I am Putney Chap.

Except I don't have the physique, the swagger or the confidence they demonstrated. I'm not popular or with babe. I feel like I've sacrificed my integrity for no reward. The changes are on the surface. Someone I used to work with said I looked "boyband" without my beard. I know what he meant, but I still look misfit. Sunken eyes, shifty demeanor. I look like a ghoul. It's just I have tried to groom myself.

It would be nice to go a year without feeling like I'm in an identity crisis.

I put burgers in the oven at the start of writing this issue. They must be coal now.

So I'm with job now. Properly. Unless I seriously fuck up or the place closes down. It's nice. I like it there. I like the people and the area and the attitude.

When the sun agrees with me, I take my lunch to the grounds of Chiswick House and lay on the riverbank by the swans, ducks and water-rats.

I have been animals before. I am a shape-shifter. I have been a frog and a toad, an Alsatian, a bear, a hawk and now I am a crocodile. I sun myself by the river, watching people with carniverous interest. I stay quite still and my mouth curls up in a cruel smirk. Then when time comes I creep away, and the people judge distances between themselves and me.

***

Saw Clutch last night. If you're looking for upcoming stoner-rock outfits then their support acts Taint (from Wales) Witchcraft (from Sweden) and The Sword (Austin, Texas) might be a good place to start. Taint and The Sword were at the more Mastodon end of things. Witchcraft were Sabbath all the way. Clutch ruled, though I was denied a run of anthems I hoped to hear. They've just got too many good songs.

***

As this Blog keeps getting less and less accessible and more and more about talking about myself to my friends, I figured I could bulletin here too. On the weekend beginning 18th May, I would like to have a birthday get-together. I've not had a shindig in my honour for many years and I'd like to test my popularity and the integrity of my friends by maybe hiring out a room, or at least booking a corner of some London drinkery to see in my 27th. What I'd like from you is any ideas for places good for that sort of thing, and your unwavering commitment to being there. Not much to ask is it, you fucking flakey assholes?


That's it. Going to eat my coal now.

Oh yeah...comic thing. Haven't done much. Will be a while before you see anything new.