Harry Deansway

February 27th, 2013

schoolnight:

• Rojo Perez
• Rae Saani
• Eddie Brawley
• Meghan O’Keefe
• Joel Weidl and Hunter Nelson
• Miguel Dalmau
• Big Barrel Boys
• Abbi Crutchfield
• Jason Saenz and Dom Manzolillo
• Harry Deansway

Hosted by Sasheer Zamata!

Exit The Mainframe, Why I’ve Turned Off And Tuned Out Of Facebook

So Last week I pulled a big lever that deactivated my personal Facebook account. I took the red pill and unplugged myself from the matrix. Sure I’m going to miss staring vacantly at my news feed eight hours a day as amusing pictures of cats and unamusing pictures of peoples babies hone into view. Yeah I’ll shed a tear for the pointless status updates warning us about how Facebook was selling our private lives down the river and we need to change this setting, forward this status to ten friends and dance under a full moon dressed as a Hopi Indian. Good bye tagging, poking and perving I’m off to be more imaginative with my procrastination.

I have made no meaningful friendships through Facebook. Since joining in 2008 there have been countless Friday or Saturday nights where I have stayed in due to not having anything to do, this despite having 900+ friends. I haven’t got laid through Facebook, despite logging on at two in the morning drunk on several occasions. I’ve seen plenty of pictures of people having great nights out on Facebook but I haven’t had a great night out with Facebook. “Yeah I was at a club on my own and I logged into Facebook on my phone so I was with my 900 Facebook friends. I didn’t get a chance to enjoy the night as I was updating my statuses as everyone else was on Facebook not at the club.” It’s never asked me down the pub. When I split up with my girlfriend all Facebook wanted to do was tag pictures of her having a good time with other guys and show me status updates about how well things were going for her. If anything it took her side.

When your life is going badly (as it often has been in the last four years in my case) the last thing you want to hear is how well everyone else’s is going. It’s bad enough finding out someone you know has got a promotion or is getting married now you are privy to the joy of some virtual hanger on you’ve never met in real life too. Where once one could happily sit and imagine how badly everyone else’s lives were going now thanks to Facebook nothing is left to the imagination. It is plain to see that everyone is doing better than you. Before we lived lives of quiet desperation now we lead lives of pointless status updates.

And friend is definitely the wrong term for people you know on Facebook. It’s more of a friendship simulator, the feeling of friendship as if manufactured in Taiwan or programmed on a spectrum ZX by a serial killer. Great if you don’t have any friends in real life, are a travelling door-to-door salesman or a lizard. Also asking someone “Do they want to be your friend” was fine at nursery school, aged thirty two not so much yet on Facebook you get about ten of these requests a week.

Until your laptop can dispense alcohol intravenously, you can stick your penis into a girls profile and Facebook can recreate the atmosphere of a night bus socializing on a computer is never going to come close to the real thing. I’m all for computers helping us with a finite set of arithmetic and logical operations but lets leave socializing on them to World Of War Craft players and blow up doll owners.

Why not keep up with further blog posts by liking my official Facebook page AS I’M  A MASSIVE HYPOCRITE Facebook.com/deansbomb

Currygate

Hello I am writing to complain about a lunch I had in your lovely pub the other day. First of all let me say what a nice pub you have the décor is classic, the staff are friendly and you have a wide selection of ales and ciders, which were very pleasing. However the meal I had was one of the worst I have ever eaten. Lets start with what I purchased was described as “Massaman Beef curry”.  In my experience this is normally a sumptuous beef curry made with coconut milk and potatoes flavoured with Thai spices in rich gravy. What I received was a bowl full of coconut milk with some raw cabbage, four pieces of chewy beef and 6 giant roast potatoes. Roast potatoes in a curry for a moment I thought I had stepped into a Heston Blumenthal restaurant not a quaint pub in Highgate Village.

The whole point of a curry is to cook all the ingredients together and let them become tender and full of the flavour of the curry. Putting a load of separate ingredients in a bowl full of coconut milk does not a curry make and should certainly not cost seven pounds. I’m all for culinary innovation but your “roast potatoes curry” was a bridge too far.

Needless to say I am very disappointed as when I walked past the pub it looked like a lovely place to come and have some lunch. I would definitely come there again to eat if the issues with the food were addressed.

I understand the need to seek extra revenue streams due to the troubles that pubs are going through. What with the smoking ban, being undercut by the supermarkets and all the other problems. I am loathe to write this but your “Massaman Curry” is not only verging on a breach of the trade descriptions act it is daylight robbery.

Regards, Harry  

PS To add insult to injury ten seconds into Tim Buckleys Dolphins, one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded, “in my opinion” and a track seldom heard out of the comfort of an up there own arse music fans home a member of staff saw fit to turn it off and replace it with the Stereophonics. Cutting Buckley off in his prime was bad enough but replacing it with not a single track but what appeared to be a full Stereophonics album is not only a crime against music but one against civilized society that should be punishable by hanging. Any landlord who thinks a customer should be subjected to a roast potato curry whilst listening to a full Sterophonics album should be frog marched out of the hospitality industry and into a mental institution.    

Slave Songs and Signing on: Exploring the Career Opportunities Open to an Under Qualified Over the Top Freelancer

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

Einstein

Following another one of my famous difference of opinions (I’ve yet to meet anyone who has the same opinion on anything as me in business) I have finally found myself in the Job centre with it’s hallowed sick stained carpets and dead eyed purveyors of potential employment. I am here due to completely running out of money following the aforementioned difference of opinion. I have no income whatsoever and none on the horizon for at least the next six weeks. I had to get an emergency crisis government loan in order to eat for the next nine days, which transpired to be £27. That’s £3 a day to eat, drink and try and be a human being. The problem was that I had to travel to High Barnet in order to collect the loan, a journey you wouldn’t wish upon an employed man let alone and unemployed one. The woman on the phone assured me that a thing called a yellow ticket existed that gets broke unemployed people to the dole office, what she didn’t tell me was that it was only valid on a magic carpet driven by an Octopus, well it might as well of been as both the bus and tube drivers looked at me like I was mad when I demanded to be let on with my “yellow ticket”. They looked even less impressed when I explained what I thought a yellow ticket was and what it entitled me to.

I’ll make sure to mention this episode if I am lucky to get a job interview in the next few weeks.

As William Shakespeare once said “Not even being able to afford your bus fare to the dole office is the great leveller” there is nothing quite like standing in the street claiming to be the owner of a yellow ticket in order to collect £27 to make you reconsider your chosen career path in the entertainment industry.

For the last seven years I have skilfully avoided the need to have what is known in the trade as a proper job. A combination of self employment success, ex girlfriends supporting me and stealing has meant I’ve avoided the fate I had suffered in my earlier years. Six years of hard labour was enough to put me off them for life. Even when I was employable I had a 100% sacking record, which has left a massive reference shaped hole in my current attack on the jobs market. Some of the sackings were undeserved like when I was sacked from a well know fast food chain for eating a 5p flake “gross misconduct”, not even a full flake half a flake you stick in an ice cream. Another time a famous High street coffee chain fired me for being “too sarcastic” this didn’t stop me picketing outside and getting two A4 pages of signatures in my defence. Some sackings were deserved I suppose, like putting an authoritarian cinema managers prized mountain bike in Loot for five pounds with the cinema’s phone number. This lead to a lifetime ban and a letter being sent to all members of staff entitled Procedure For If Harry Enters The Building (Step one: Ask him to leave - Step Five: Call the police). The time I was fired from a supermarket was fair enough. Using the excuse my granddad has died, for not showing up to work three times was one time too many, even if the third was my “step granddad”

The problem I find myself with now is the jobs on offer to someone who has pursued a career as an artist at the expense of qualifications are tantamount to being a slave for rich people. So instead of Coffee slave you are a Barista and you work on Box Office and are not a cinema slave, restaurant slaves are Waiters or waitress’s. I think I’d be more inclined to take a job like this if we just reverted to calling a slave a slave. For one thing you’d be a much more interesting guest at dinner parties if you reffered to yourself as a slave “Honey come and meet Harry he’s a slave.” Plus slaves have some good songs Like “Hoe Emma Hoe” and “Chained To The Land”. Lets not forget you get a slave name, (First name: the month you were purchased. Surname: how many rocks you can lift at a time) mine would be October Five. Songs and slave names aside you can see why this is hardly appealing for someone who has spent the last seven years sitting at a laptop in their pants during the day and sitting at the pub in their trousers in the evening. I may have earned a pittance in those years but I worked hard doing something I love and the freedom was of more value than any amount of money.

So in order to survive the next 6 weeks until I can get back on my feet as a freelancer it seems to me that I have three options. Become a slave, continue to sign on or drink bleach. Alternatively I could get another government loan in nine days time and travel round town with my yellow ticket until I get some work in. So whilst I deliberate Sophie’s choice I might as well fill in my CV, if you hear of any jobs for an outspoken, anti authoritarian slave let me know.