ben brooks lives here

we made it (histry) my hed feals lite

2011-12-05T03:06:00.000-08:00

good morning. it's december now. i forgot that sort of. we did blogs agen seems like. i liked reading them all. it was fun. it's colder now. hi everyone

daily picture for the lst time evr

humorous caption: ****
serious caption: i. cant. believe. it's. over.

i'm taking a break from the internets. my attention span is 'zero' and i've stopped reading and i've stopped writing. there is stuff i'm supposed to do and i'm not doing it. until i've finished a new book i wont blog/go on facebook/talk on gmail/use twitter/read things online. i'm going to check my emails twice a day. once in the morning and once when it goes dark. im going to ask some people if they want my twitter account for ~a week but probably they wont. i think i will lose ~75 followers.

today i am going to go and read and then i have to get a train to a meeting. i dont feel like i will say anything in the meeting. i feel scared of going outside today. feel like as soon as i go outside a lion will try to eat me and i will say 'why is this happening' and it will say 'this is 'the outside' you arent in bed now jesus'

if anyone wants anything or wants to just be talking people
then my email is
brooksben at hotmail dot co dot uk
feel like i will get better at responding to emails now

thanks for being nice humans everyone
nightnight

i like being tired and not having to do anything which is all the time i guess

2011-12-01T07:42:00.000-08:00

i could probably save the plant in my room from dying

but I am not going to

when I have plants the plants die

i wanted a bonsai tree for like a year

then I got one and I let it die

i kept it on my windowsill

and it had no leaves

and it looked good like that, I thought

it is probably not good to have a lot of dead things in your bedroom

it probably depletes your heart or something

i feel as terrible as a cactus

i feel like a pencil case that used to have pencils in but doesn’t have pencils in anymore

just a tiny eraser and a 2p coin

not really im being stupid

i feel like a human person lying in a bed at 3oclock on a Thursday

thinking about doing a lot of things

understanding that I am not going to do any of them

i don’t know why my brain still thinks about doing things

seems like

stupid

seems a waste of time/energy/brainstuff

i want my brain to not think about doing things that I am not going to do

like washing or cooking or replying to emails

or writing another book

feels like that isn’t happening

imagine if you won a Pulitzer prize

did you imagine it

i am imagining it

feel like my speech would be dumb if I won one

because I’d be ‘in shock’ or something

it would probably be

‘thank you for this Pulitzer prize’

or like

‘this is great I love this’

i wish my dreams were plots from YA novels

because they have been very serious lately

and I am worried about what that means

like I had this one four days ago

where I kept watching this man secretly rape children

and I was like ‘better not tell an adult otherwise he will rape me too’

but then I did

and he tried

and the dream ended with me in a room

and him outside the room

and him saying ‘let me in’

and me saying ‘no you’ll just rape me if I let you in’

i felt heavy when I woke up

but I did what I always do

i boiled the kettle and made a cigarette and sat at the desk upstairs

i typed on my computer while thinking

i hate this

jesus

sometimes

right before I fall asleep

i say

see you tomorrow

to myself

ufsi daisy

2011-11-27T09:37:00.000-08:00

good morning person. how is the world today. seems quiet. my arms have been heavy lately. sometimes they will get 'too heavy' midway through doing something and i will stop doing it. feel like this blogpost will be long/have lots of pictures in it. here is a picture that a kind human man took of copies of grow up in a 'hmv' (i think) in it i am hanging out with my pals brett and fran and hunter.

listening to 'dashboard confessional' right now. want to drink tea but dont want to make tea. halp. okay going to make tea. okay the kettle is boiling right now. not sure why i put this jumper on. it isnt cold. just 'seemed natural'. okay made tea.

some pictures from crossing border appeared. here is a picture of me reading before patrick wolf. hi people. people were very quiet and did laughing in the right places.

here is a 'backstage' pic. i hadnt slept and didnt want to be in any pics.

here is a picture of humans on the bus to antwerp. i was going to label it but now im not. if you look on the middle left you can see adam levin's bald head and i am sat one in front of him.

sorry for all the pictures. have i ruined everything. here is one more picture. it is of me talking to people in front of other people.

okay. 'enough of that'. just imagined a tv advert shown during a war where a woman takes something out of an oven and turns to a camera and says 'i crumble under pressure' then her/her family (minus the 'drafted' men) sit around a table and eat the 'apple crumble' with ice cream.

My friends call me ‘the grasshopper’ because this one time I crawled under my bed and rubbed my face against the carpet until my carpet burns were so severe that I passed out

Not really

My friends call me ‘blaze’ because this one time I was walking a dog and then I gave the dog away to a man because he looked said and I associate dogs with happiness even though they cant smile

Not really

My friends call me ‘gaystyles’ because this one time I spent 33 hours on the internet

Not really

My friends call me ‘one leg short of a chair’ because this one time I cried in the bath until the bath was overflowing and then I called a plumber and the plumber just told me ‘the problem is inside of your hart’

Not really

I only have ~ 3 friends and they mostly call me ‘ben’

I never really had a nickname except for when I was 10 and the girl I had flute lessons with called me ‘benjamin bunny’ sometimes

We’d always go back to our classroom to get our coats after flute and the classroom would be empty because school would be over and I’d say ‘let’s have sex’

One she said ‘fine’ and I just stared at her for a while and then left

here is the spanish version of grow up

breaking up that text baby. what a considerate guy. dw there is more eye candy to come. feel really hungry but feel like after I eat food I nearly always feel ‘emotionally drained’. feel like i get the same feeling after eating as i get after engaging in a mild to moderatelyserious argument. just thought 'shit i havent drunk my tea' then took a big gulp of it then felt 'overwhelmingly moronic' for a second.

Pablo poveda came to stay for a couple of nights and we talked about writing books and luna Miguel and tao lin and jordan castro. On the first night I was tired from not sleeping. We met up at 1 and went to drink beers and then got a train home and drank more beers. I went to bed at like 7pm and slept for a long time. The next day I felt bad and I went and sat in my room and tried to work but just watched ‘book klub’ again and then felt less bad. Then we drank and stayed up and talked more and cooked and I felt better and it was good. Pablo’s ladyfriends from notting hill came over and I think one of them might have been wearing fur but im not sure. We played knuckles and I’ve got a few big scabs today. He had to wake up early this morning to catch his plane. Byebyepablo. Feel like the whole time I wanted to call him ‘pebbles’ but I didn’t really have ‘the balls’

here is the catalan version of grow up. when they sold catalan rights i said 'what's that' and so did my mum

in spain people wear kilts and wield red baseball bats seems like. should i try to take author photos where i am 'flipping the bird'. not sure. yelawolf said that when he got a picture with justin bieber he tried to 'flip the bird' but justin bieber's manager wouldnt let him. good try yela.

Feel like it might be time to work out what my ‘brand’ is. I am pretty ‘all over the place’. I wrote books where the words were different sizes and then I wrote a book about bored teenagers where the words were the same size. I gave some money away on twitter. I shouted in some tinychats. I started blogging again. Would like people to think of me as ‘that guy who [defining characteristic of new brand]’. Maybe ‘that guy who writes about feet’. Or ‘the guy who cooks very well’. Or ‘that guy who invented [new way of writing]’.

nothing is going to happen again is it

hope everyone in the world is good

email me if you want to do guestblogs still

or if you want to be interview by me in my inimitable interviewing style

brooksben at hotmail dawt co dawt uk

nightnighthumans

guest post: sarah sahim (hallo human persan)

2011-11-26T05:33:00.000-08:00

I have made this youtube playlist for you, please enjoy it and listen to it whilst reading this pointless post.

As a ‘yoof’ of today, I feel like I am losing touch with the world around me, I am already starting to feel too old for my time, not only in my mind is this reflected but I already have two fucking white hairs and Steve Buscemi's eyes if they were bigger and brown.

The cognitive repercussion of my physical ‘attributes’ is that I am ready to retire in Ireland, on my own, with a banjo, growing potatoes, getting drunk and manifesting my intoxicated, belligerent, misanthropic teenage self and this will be due to the fact that I have yet to achieve what I want despite being a 'tender yoof'.

I do not feel tender anymore, I feel like mutton.

it appears (according to some of the more yoof-slotted/savvy/whatever friends of mine) that everything that I point out as ironic is in fact, not ironic. For example, my Dad saw this driving school called ‘DIVA WHEELZ’ and I was cracking up with laughter, that’s ironic, right? The old biddy running it thought it was a fuckin’ brilltoast name in fact it’s cheesier than… an upper-middle class cheese board.

Apparently, I also see things ‘too differently’, another example of this ‘cryptic’ observational attitude of mine was my reaction to this dude I met and I think he’s called Carl but he just looks like a Carl and I don’t really know his name although he told me so let’s call him Carl, he has this crappy old Nokia phone that has a faux-gold plated rim and it’s so rad! I see it as a statement about society and all our flashy shit (and bling bling) and how we don’t need it to get shit done, as long as you have a sense of humour (as indicated by the flashiness of the rim) but apparently he doesn’t own the phone for that reason. It makes me sad that our generation don’t appreciate little, stupid perks of our meaningless lives and instead it takes a generic, idiotic, slapstick, whiney American multi-camera sitcom to make them flail all over facebook due to its cancellation after running for too many goddamn years (you got the fucking hint yet?)

Is it normal for a gal not to care about topshop and sluts r us?

Why does everyone fucking call each other a ‘ledge’? Is that meant to be representative of the meaning of Bill Withers’ ‘Lean on Me’?

I do not want to wear my g-ma’s best friend’s clothes for a hefty price because she is dead.

I don’t want to pretend to like Arctic Monkeys, attend their gigs, take photos on Instagram on my piePhone and post it to twitter and facebook for the INDIE CREDZZ because they are shit.

What the fuck is up with :3? It’s a ballsack with eyes, WHAT EMOTION IS THIS SUPPOSED TO CONVEY?

I wouldn’t be caught dead in a club because I can’t stand the sight of yoofs dancing to cuntish tripe.

I don’t want to take a ‘seductive’ photo of myself, post it to facebook and say “hoe em ghee, I’m so ugly L” and get 987 likes and a bunch of equally attention-seeking females telling me I’m “gorge bb”.

I don’t want to dance around like a slut in crystalised underwear and I don’t want to invest in the ‘dying’ cotton industry b/c a faux-twee shit tells me too.

I mean, I just want to listen to The Mats, Deer Tick, Cass McCombs and Dirty Projectors all day, everyday. I want to write for some dry, brilliantly underrated single-camera sitcom that will be cancelled after one season and then carry on with my unemployment watching more television and listening to more great music. I also want to make awesome, fuzzy mixtapes for everyone else like me and laugh at how the world doesn’t ‘get’ us.

I just want to live in a time where pretentiousness isn’t necessary, especially for a female to get by in life.

Can’t we all just chill the fuck out?

p.s. buy Ben’s book, this was unpaid product placement courtesy of Sarah Sahim.

thanks sarah mate

sarah has a tumblr

sarah runs the blog 'damngoodshit'

sarah has twitter

i cant format blog posts

im sorry

guest post: lily dawn (hallo human persan)

2011-11-24T07:26:00.000-08:00

The worst thing about winter holidays is that I don't have a family.

I used to have a very big family

but when my boyfriend and I broke up

he took his family with him

and now my old family belongs to another girl.

I wonder if they will give her the same type of gifts for christmas.

Today I walked past a store window downtown

decorated with a hundred beautiful artistic unique christmas tree ornaments

and started to cry.

I turned around

and went home.

I have been crying all day.

I keep thinking about how I don't have a family

and am completely alone in the world

without love.

I keep thinking of that Peter and Gordon song, "World Without Love."

I used to think it was really romantic,

but now I think it's really sad and depressing and makes me cry.

It's like I am living in that Four Tops tune, "It's The Same Old Song."

My cat Sanka spoons with me every night though so it's okay I guess.

I don't remember the last time I cried

but it's nice to know that I still have a soul,

somewhere inside me there is still a living soul.

I'm not a monster yet.

I have been on Celexa for over a month now for anxiety.

Friday I told the doctor that I still have frequent panic attacks.

I thought he would give me more xanax.

But instead I am no longer prescribed Celexa. Or xanax.

Now I am prescribed Prozac.

Tomorrow I start Prozac.

Prozac.

I'm not a monster yet.

lily has a blog

lily has a tumblr

lily has twitter

thanks lily mate

hi everyone

omg is this my actual hand

2011-11-22T01:17:00.000-08:00

good morning persons. home suite home. i got back to london yesterday evening and then drank a beer and ate some foods with crispin and now i am at my desk and it is morning. the world is turnen i guess.

on the last day of den haag i think everyone was being fragile. we ate pea soup and then i walked to the hotel with francis. john boyne came into the hotel and said hellos. i said how i liked 'the boy in the striped pyjamas' and john said how he liked 'ed sheeran' so we went to watch ed sheeran play. then we watched the low anthem and i kept thinking 'if i vomit, where should i do it'. the cup i had in my hand was too small and had beer in it. i settled on 'into the hood of my hoodie' but then i didnt vomit anyway so w/e.

after that i had to read/answer questions on stage with anne roetman who had been translating my 'columns' into dutch. the interviewer asked if i liked it there and i said 'no i hate it and i want to go home'. i was worried about being sick still so i ran away to my hotel room after i read. that meant i missed peter and pola and sacha doing theirs which was sad but at least i didnt vomit on anyone.

in my hotel room i rewatched some 'between two ferns' for a while. at ~1.30am i decided to go to the 'afterparty'. there were big rooms and djs and things. people did dancing a lot. i think i tried to do dancing. at some point a male man started talking to us 'out of the blue' then i realised he was from newvillager and 'gushed' at him a bit. at ~4 we went back to the house of some nice dutch humans and had beers. i felt ill and walked back to the hotel. on the way i saw the humans from newvillager again and they were nice. i couldnt sleep at all so at ~7 i walked to the fake lake next to the dutch parliament and sat on a bench and stared at ducks. it was very foggy i couldnt see much. here is a picture of it out of google

i walked back to the hotel and still couldnt sleep. we had to meet in the hotel lobby at 10.30 to get the coach to antwerp. the coach was delayed by 2 hours via fog. when we got on it i was sat in front of adam levin. we discussed travel games we could play then we just played 'going to sleep'.

when we got to antwerp i went to my hotel room and fell asleep. i was woken up by a phonecall saying 'where is your column' again, so i wrote that, then slept more. at 9 i had to read before patrick wolf played. the audience were nice and did laughing. it seemed like a lot of people. then i had a beer and watched patrick wolf. on the last song he ran around the audience and danced with people and hugged them. what a keutie.

i went outside for a cigarette. some people asked me to sign books and i drew big wonky hearts on them. two boys from antwerp spoke to me and one said 'he came for patrick wolf and i came for you' and i thought 'that seems impossible'. they were being kind humans but i was not very good at talking via being tired. i wanted to watch more music but i just walked somewhere and bought a pizza and took it to my hotel room. it wasnt cut up and i didnt have cutlery so i tore it. they had english channels on tv. i watched 'im a celebrity get me out of here' and fell asleep. i had 2 very vivid dreams. in one i accidentally cut part of my penis off and got very anxious about it. in the other me and justin bieber became very good friends and then our relationship started to dissolve and i got very anxious about it.

there was a call at 6.15am from hotel reception and they said 'your driver to the airport is here'. i pushed lots of things into my bag and ran downstairs. on the drive, nickelback and the friends theme tune came on the radio and the driver turned them up. my flight wasnt for a long time. i ate a 'belgian breakfast' and wrote for a bit. i sat somewhere and looked at the planes and read. the people next to me on the plane were talking about xfactor. i tried to listen in to get 'up to date' with the hot gossip but i couldnt really understand.

feel like it sounds like i was complaining a lot about being ill/tired. actually it was lots fun. everyone was a bigheart and the places were pretty ettttttc. just maybe would have drank less on the first nights. guess i will try to write a new book now so they let me go again.

morning mug pic

humorous caption: my 3 favrit bands
serious caption: is it winter now

hope everyone is doing okay. remember to liv 2 the max btw. still people can do guestblogs if they want. think there are 2 guestblogs coming up. they will be very good btw. btw, is it okay to have a marmoset as a pet. okay byebye btw

guest post: lexie reed (hallo human persan)

2011-11-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

yesterday i had to go to this picture company in the mall for a job interview! i did not feel nervous but i did not want to go inside either! i told my friend that i didn't want to go inside but he just looked at me and bit into a big cinnamon pretzel! i thought "hey, gimmie that pretzel!" but i just went inside instead! i could not remember the lady from the phone call's name, so i just walked toward a person and announced that i had an interview scheduled! the person whispered "oh yeah, i'll go get her, you can have a seat if you want to." i didn't want any of the seats, but i sat down in a small black chair anyways! it squeaked and i felt my face turn red because i felt overweight! i coughed very loudly in case the seat decided to squeak again while i crossed my legs! a lady with scarlet red highlights in her hair came out of an office and said "hi i am bonita! (boe-neat-uh) i thought, wow that is spanish for pretty and i need to stop focusing on her hair! we sat on a couch in the mall outside of the store where old folks sit when they are tired! one old folk had a little boy named andrew with him! i told bonita i liked kids a lot and said hi to andrew! bonita, andrew, and i sat on the couch and bonita joked that andrew could help me with my interview! i thought "i'm going to need your help, andrew," and he looked at me like he thought i needed his help! i answered questions! i laughed at jokes that may have not been jokes! i told andrew and bonita about my hamster and the little hamster croissants my mom bought for him to eat! i said bye to andrew and bonita said "i like you so i am going to hire you!" i resisted the urge to tell her that i am not a lez but that i would take the job! i filled out paper work! the person i walked at has a name and it is candy! i like candy the treat, but i do not know if i will like candy the person! i was holding my coat in both of my hands and felt self conscious but i kept holding it anyways! i am not excited about my job, really, but after all of that i bought a cinnamon pretzel and ate it on the carousel in the food court! that was fun!!!

lexie reed is from texas
lexie reed has a tumblr
lexie reed has twitter
lexie reed has a wordpress

thanks lexie mate

den haag baby

2011-11-19T05:34:00.000-08:00

hi werld. im in den haag out of the band 'the netherlands'. it is cold and different here. i am reading and writing for this music/literature festival. every morning i have to write something and send it in before 12.30 to be translated. yesterday i was woken up by a call at 1 saying 'where is your article'. here is the things me and other humans are doing at it.

yesterday i read before 'emmy the great'. when we were 'backstage' i tried to say something to her but she had headphones in and just shook her head at me. i thought, that is notnice mate.

lexie reed ('yelawolf's wife') will do a guestblog tomorrow. follow her on twitter guys. she is a winner imho.

after the readings and music we went to a bar and i talked to adam levin a while. he took a xanax or something and just drank tonic water because they didnt have vodka. it was nice. then we went back to francis' hotel room and i think i was being weird to everyone but i dont remember that much so it's fine. there were a lot of people and the hotel room was quite small. we drank 'wine mixed with orange juice' i think. is that 'bux fiz' kind of. not sure. it was fun.

a woman just said 'housekeeping' through the door and i said back 'guest' and she said 'housekeeping' again and i said 'i've been expecting you' and she said 'do you need service' and i said 'no' and now she's gone

here is a picture from google of den haag

also here is a picture of a female girl holding 'the instructions' by adam levin. you should read it. it is one of the best books in the werld.

she hated it baby

there are piles of books by the festival bar. yesterday i said to a female 'is this where i pay' and she said 'haha no but give me money if you want' then she said 'buy my book' and i said 'i will my your book if you buy mine'. so we did that. except her book is in dutch so i cant read it. also it was more expensive than mine. what a terrible deal.

the back cover is just a really big picture of her face. i carried it into the toilet and someone stared at me and i thought 'no, absolutely not'.

feel like that pic has macro potential
'the pic that spawned a thousand macros'
hi

okay. going to just walk around the hotel room for a while. i like it here. i would live in this hotel room maybe. might try and turn the television on. 'hit me up' if you're around here i guess

also email if you want to do a guestblog
i will say yes
brooksben at hotmail dawt co dawt uk

the kind of apple i am eating is called a 'jazz apple'

2011-11-15T00:14:00.000-08:00

good morning. it's about 8am. i couldnt sleep at all last night so this morning at ~7 i walked up to the park. i sat on a bench and had a cigarette. some people who were walking their dogs said 'good morning' to me and i said 'good morning' to them while thinking 'yeah bb, im doing it' re living. it was cold and a little foggy. my hands went a bit blue and i looked at them and thought 'haha nice hands you twerp'.

seems like i have a piece of 'jazz apple' stuck between my teeth. just stood in front of the mirror and tried to get it out. kind of worried that it's going to be there forever now. not sure what my 'plan of action' will be re getting it out. not exactly sure which two teeth it is between. kind of worried that im going to get upset and rip my teeth out.

photo of the day:

humorous caption: hello sailor
serious caption: really getting upset about this piece of 'jazz apple'

when i checked the guardian this morning, it said this (not sure if it's funny but w/e):

probably wont be able to really do anything until this 'jazz apple' goes away. i dont know why i ate an apple even. seems totally stupid now. my jaw hurts from opening it wide.

was going to type about other things but now feel only concerned with this bit of 'jazz apple'

'jazz apple'

jesus

i found this picture on the internet of a human female reading grow up. it was part of a flickr set of her holiday in paris. hope you had a nice time mate.

omar de col is very good at blogs. i guess he is the prince of the november blog revival. 'full steam ahead' you guys. let's all do more posts. hold my hand pls.

jackson's been blogging over here too. feel not far away from humans when i read his blog. feels very good. not sure if it is a real secret. i like the url. topical.

going to go brush my teeth really hard for a while

going to start adding labels to posts i guess

nightnight persons

*update* tried to swill water through my teeth to get it out and ended up just spitting water on my feet *update*

*update* brushed my teeth really hard and my gums are bleeding and feels like the piece of 'jazz apple' is only part gone *update*

*update* seems to have gone *update*

back wen i was rappen 4 the hel of it

2011-11-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

good morning. today i woke up at like 8. i go to den haag in 3 days to read and write at this festival. im excited for it. other things im excited for:

-feeling tired tonight
-getting to a point in my life where i have a beard
-having a 'near death experience' where i see a sexy angel and then start being jewish
-watching a rom com tonight instead of doing things that i should be doing
-paul rudd

hi everyone. it's me, yelawolf, doing a guest sentence (or threehahalol) on this hot blog. anyone up for a party tonight? let's cut the sleeves off our tshirts and kiss each uvver.

just googled 'how do i make my hair like yelawolf' but nothing good came up.

drank an isotonic sports drink today. i think i could sea my breath tdai. seemed exciting. welcome home winter. i just want to sleep until my hair is white and not there anymore. i just wanna party.

picture of the day

humorous caption: mugshot
serious caption: i cut my fingernails 3 days ago

i think i am 'out of shape'. i think i should 'get into shape'. it is weird thinking about body shapes. what body shape do i have. i wish i had the body shape 'polar bear'.

*regular feature* cut and paste in a tweet i can see while im doing in the blogpost *regular feature*

JodieJaaade Bambi

Mum: 'why are you being so smart?!' ...yay. I'm being smart. :3

yelawolf says that if you shake up gadsden alabama then meth falls out. i dont know anything about that. i know a little bit about murakami and a little bit about antarctica. in an interview someone asked lana del rey why video games got so popular. she said 'i know a lot of things, but i dont know that'. i dont think i know a lot of things.

we had two humans from kentucky staying for a couple of days. they were very nice. they had a farm and were engaged. we got drunk and talked about things. on the last day we played knuckles. that is where you take turns sliding a coin at each uvvers knuckles. the person who loses is the person who gives up. at the end, jacob's knuckles were very bloody and mine only had a bit of blood on. the table we played on got quite bloody. i am going to try to make people play knuckles with me in den haag.

nightnight yelawolf

nightnight lana

nightnight job out of the bible

nightnight person

put a penguin on it

2011-11-09T05:32:00.000-08:00

good morning. today i woke up at 8 and ate porridge. it was the first time i have woken up that early for lots and the first time i have really eaten breakfast in maybe a year or something, except for when we were on holiday in france and we ate in the hotel gardens and i didnt feel sick.

alice may connolly did 'happiness plans' for people and they were very good and she drew me a picture of a narwhal wearing 'nike dunks' and reading 'erotic narwhal fiction'.

an american proof came today. grow up has a penguin on it now. they changed the quote on the cover to dennis cooper. a while ago i was drunk and facebookchatted dennis and was weird to him maybe. oh dear.

also they send me a copy of the manuscript with notes on it. like they changed the word 'bonnet' to 'hood'. there were lists of things like characters names and place names and references. here is a page of them

just saw the word 'hungry horse' on that. it is a pub where they serve food on big plates. in junior school once a boy left because his parents went to open a 'hungry horse' somewhere. he told everyone they could come and get free food and no one did because he was weird.

*regular feature* a tweet i can see while i am doing the blog post *regular feature*

crispin best

R.I.P any sandwich you just ate

to do list: anything

i read something on the internet about how eating breakfast makes you happier. yesterday in the bath i shampooed my hair twice and read james frey. what if after the rain there is just more rain bb.

here is the german copy of grow up. title means 'we grow up at night'. not sure if i posted this before. feel tired.

was going to post the spanish one but cant find it. time to do blogs errybody. nightnight

any persan halp me

2011-11-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

good morning. i missed two days of doing posts. revival seems to be 'plowing on' though. via everyone. congratulations, we are all here right now and it is raining. also, congratulations on your new pet marmoset (just add water).

on sunday me and crispin and socrates went on a train to brighton to read at 'any person halp me' which is done by laurens verdonkschot, giles ruffer, and vicki tingle. mark stevenson and his friend will came from wigan. it was a lot of fun. i laughed and forgot about feeling ill. jacob steinberg read via skype. everyone read things. they did an 'open mic' and some pretty intense humans read some pretty intense poems. after them me and giles read a story by crispin and i did an 'improvised knife crime slam poem' which maybe seemed like it was just being mean about other humans who had read but wasnt much. felt positive about the things people read and the way they sounded while they were reading them. mark was quite ill from being blindo. afterwards we walked to laurens' house and watched episodes of the simpsons. crispin hit a drum and sang lion king for a bit.

in the morning me and crispin and mark and will went and stood on the beach. it was just pebbles and everything was grey. it was just like 'neverending greyness' which seemed sad a little but also nice. my shoes got wet because the water touched them. i wasnt wearing socks. a dog came up to me and dropped a tennis ball and i threw the tennis ball and it ran after it. classic dog behaviour or something.

humorous caption: hi, it's me, crispin, from the gym

when we got back to london mark got a fine for not having a railcard when he had a railcard ticket. we hugged and him and will went to catch their megabus back to wigan. i got a train home and had a shower then got a train to give aurist some los campesinos tickets for that night which i wouldnt be using. from there i got another train to soho and we went to a screening of socrates/chris killen/joe stretch/other human people s film. it was very good but i was very tired. peter bloxham was there being a nice guy. giles came over from brighton. i wasnt speaking very well because of wanting to be in a bed. we ate at wong kei and it was raining and i went home.

feel like everything i just typed was boring maybe. sorry everyone. a good catchphrase is 'not this time'. going to try and do writing again. when i start thinking 'the things you are thinking right now are stupid' then i am going to sit down and write for a bit until i stop thinking that.

i know i owe people books and cant send them at the moment via money so sorry.

there is 'milkybar ice cream' in our fridge i think. might go upstairs and eat some. it is 4.53am. i woke up at 2am maybe. going to watch 'frozen planet' again. the narwhals seem awkward to me. i like them. there's a part where two teams are swimming towards each other and then they stop and stare at each other for ages and then all start swimming in the same direction. their tusks seem sad.

nightnight

life is what happens when you are asleep (halping hands by holding them #3 katekkkkk)

2011-11-04T15:06:00.000-07:00

day #4 bb. running a little late. it is nighttime. i cooked some kind of soup and it tasted okay i think. it had carrots and peas in. drinking beers. being alive.

today when i woke up it was already dark. i dont know why. seems suspicious.

daily picture of human:

caption: today i am wearing you like a wetsuit

today i googled 'british antarctica survey jobs'. i am not an engineer. i am not a scientist. my hands are small and i sleep a lot. i still think about it though. i imagine waking up and going outside for a cigarette and everything being like 'endless snow' or something. seems good. i dont know if that's more depressing than waking up and being on a hill where you can see london 'skyscrapers' from. both of them are probably good when the sun is fainting.

where do people want to live. woods and sea seems good. they are both 'up for grabs' i guess.

going to brighton on sunday to read with other positive life living humans. if you are there then say this password: 'hewmungus', to me, and i will ask you about your life and then give you a 'verbal map' to 'lifelong happiness'.

today i went to sainsburys and stared at a wall of wine for a long time. had vague thoughts about a lot of things. wanted to lie down and rub my face against the lino. didnt do that. there were a lot of people in sainsburys. a lot of them were excited students. wanted to pick up ~9loaves of bread and try to walk out. didnt do that. planned to say 'i have a family to feed'. planned to run quickly and cry loudly so they let me off.

i think i might not be able to do blogposts tomorrow/sunday. i am going to try. the november blog revival is in 'full swing'. swell the ranks gaylords. type anything.

halping hands by holding them #3 kate a human

kate used to have a tumblr called milktrees. it was followed by a lot of people i think. it got closed down because of dead animals and stuff. now she has a twitter and a blogger and a tumblr. i think i have asked her 'repeatedly' to write a book or something. i hope she does.

me: okay

hi kate

Katherine: hi benjamin

me: please describe your mood using colours and foods

Katherine: ok i would have some cous cous but plain cous cous not the lemon and coriander one and an old apple thats gone soft and im black like oil slicks

me: sounds tasty maybe. i think for the rest of the interview i will ask you questions from 'faq' sections of websites about ghosts and the afterlife. is that okay

Katherine: ok

me: How can I tell if I am a ghost?

Katherine: you will be able to live in the internet and cockroaches will like to sleep in you

me: Will I like living in the afterlife?

Katherine: yes you will have a nice kitchenette and a garden with a swing

me: that sounds pleasant. you have 'put my mind at rest'.

Where do other animals, like dogs and tigers, exist after they leave the physical world?

Katherine: i think maybe they get recycled into soft toys dogs live forever

god lets the best ones come to live with him in the ocean

me: Can a ghost follow me home?

Katherine: yes every person has at least 17 ghosts with them at once

me: Can a ghost physically hurt me?

Katherine: yes with ghost knives but they dont hurt

me: 'phew'. Can I talk to a ghost? Will it talk back to me?

Katherine: you can talk to them but they cant hear you and ghosts talk back but in the same way theyre real lonely

only plants can hear them

me: How can I connect with the fairies?

Katherine: go to the forest and cover yourself in honey and roll around in the dirt then u have to stay there for 2-5 weeks and they invite you to their houses

me: Do you sell ghost tshirts?

Katherine: yes 100% real ghost ectoplasm

me: thanks for letting me interview you kate mate

Katherine: thats ok benjamin

happy everything everyone

imagine if your heart was a rucksack (halping hands by holding them #2 omar de col)

2011-11-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

it is day #3 of this hot new life. it is eveningtime. it was raining a lot this evening. i went for a walk. i like doing walking in the rain because things seem better maybe. if i look at a bike when it is not raining then i think 'that is just a bike, depressing' but if i look at a bike when it is raining then i think 'that is a bike, with water dripping off it, excellent'.

on the walk a sad looking man asked me which direction the thames was in. i said i didnt know. i thought 'is he going to jump into it' but he was wearing all waterproof clothes so i thought maybe not.

photo of my bod 4 the day:

caption: i will never break your legs because my body is too small

last night me and crispin went to a poetry thing in a library. everyone was drinking red wine. one of the people reading said 'i wont read this one, it's racist', and another one of the humans who was reading earnestly said 'it's okay, everyone here is over 16'. it seemed like a weird night or something.

now i am staring at my computer waiting for crispin to get home from work so i can interview him.

this video is very good

there's a new david attenborough thing called 'frozen planet'. it makes me think about the first book i had, 'heroes of polar exploration'. i used to read it a lot. like every night maybe. i didnt like the end chapters. there were machines in the end chapters. i liked the first ones. thinking about captain scott makes me sad. how when he reached the south pole amundsen had got there first and then on the way home he died. i used to draw maps of antarctica on everything and tell everyone that i was going to go there. i used to like imagining being sat alone in a small tent at the south pole.

i still have the book. here is a bit from it i like:

'Dust had not returned to dust in the eternal cold of the graveyards. The dead vikings slept holding their crosses in folded hands; their clothing of shaggy woollen lay in the same creases as on the day of the burial. Their well preserved bodies were gnomelike, undersized, with bones bent from rickets and other deficiency diseases.

Examination of these bodies revealed that few vikings had lived beyond their early twenties. Undernourished after many years of insufficient food, Greenland's once vigorous settlers had become stunted dwarfs. One explanation for this is that as Greenland's trade with europe was beginning to slacken, her climate coincidentally was undergoing a change. Gradually the cold became more and more severe. Pastures no longer grew tall grass, and the thinnings herds of cattle soon could not supply all the food the settlements needed. A slow process of malnutrition finally destroyed an entire civilisation.'

cosebelle did a very nice review of the italian grow up.

'Element is not negligible, the writing of Ben is a river in flood, that will overwhelm the freshness of the clever deconstruction of the concepts and vocabulary, with surreal irony that draws a smile on his face even more melancholy, and wisdom, wisdom then you lose a kid who by years, wisdom amazed that leaps out of the commonplace, that challenges the conventional wisdom and is able to surprise and captivate like to know who he was until recently only child.'

how kind bb!

halping hands by holding them #2 omar de col:

omar is a young human from one of 'the mouths' in england. he runs this blog and joined the november blog revival with this great post.

kellyhuckabyyy: is ur shit together

ask me my opinion on current events or something

me: okay

hi omar

kellyhuckabyyy: lol

hi ben

me: the first few questions i am going to ask you are going to be questions that have been asked to linkin park in interviews

kellyhuckabyyy: lol sweet

me: Where are you? They told me that you would be calling from the RV travelling across the country.

kellyhuckabyyy: i am in the south of england on the second floor of a two story house the is moving because the world is spinning so its like an RV but with a fridge i guess also i am infront of my laptop

that*

shit

me: So, is everybody healthy?

kellyhuckabyyy: ye i guess so

we are all still more than zero and less than two ppl

me: I heard also that you guys are going to be going out with Papa Roach in December.

kellyhuckabyyy: lol jsz

papa roach's office christmas party ye its gonna be off the railings

me: So Linkin Park isn't named after anything?

kellyhuckabyyy: ye i heard it wot park they played in the first time

me: okay. that's enough of those.

kellyhuckabyyy: those were good

good journalism

me: now i am going to ask you a question that i was asked a few days ago

Recent events such as the London riots, the global recession and Middle Eastern revolutions have indicated that civilisation is undergoing an accelerating transformation. Why do you think this is the case?

Sent at 9:22 PM on Thursday

kellyhuckabyyy: yo my browser crashed soz

me: that's okay

did you get that question

kellyhuckabyyy: ye i did

i am going to answer it

me: good

(twerp)

Sent at 9:24 PM on Thursday

kellyhuckabyyy: hm

lol

riots seem funny, not sure what they achieve, keep thinking 'white ppls problems' RE the london riots, middle east is maybe because ppl got sick of the heat i guess

feel unsure about the word 'civilization'

and 'accelerating transformation'

wait

im not done

lol

me: here we go

kellyhuckabyyy: WAIT

Sent at 9:28 PM on Thursday

kellyhuckabyyy: feel like things like this in history happen a lot and in 15 years no one will care and these will just be wikipedia entries ppl will use to write essays for school and find sweet references

keep thinking abt the butterfly effect

the movie with ashton kutcher

me: you and those bloody butterflies

kellyhuckabyyy: feel like that movie will have more of an impact on society tbh

i think 'clueless' was maybe more important that the riots

okay that is all i can think

me: lol

how do you feel about the humans in london who are 'camped' outside of st pauls because other people in the world have more money than them or something

kellyhuckabyyy: keep thinking 'white ppls problems'

not sure

Sent at 9:31 PM on Thursday

kellyhuckabyyy: i think when i hear ppl say variations of 'fuck capitalism' they aren't sure what they are talking about, and the word 'capitalism' is a word that ppl under 25 think is bad so they are like 'ye fuck capitalism' and make friends with other ppl under 25 and have parties where they say 'fuck capitalism' to each other

(when you said ppl camped outside st pauls i assume there are a lot of placards that say 'fuck capitalism' on them)

me: i think the placards say like '$=dickheads' and stuff

kellyhuckabyyy: lol

me: if you had to make a placard that showed your 'outlook on life' what would it say

kellyhuckabyyy: maybe like 'alive 4 life' or something

ben

i think i would find this easier if you emailed me questions or something

also i have to go smoke

me: omar this is going great

calm down

kellyhuckabyyy: haha

okay

wait lemme smoke

brb

me: it's almost 'a wrap'

Sent at 9:37 PM on Thursday

kellyhuckabyyy: sweet

sry for ruining your evening

me: you are making my evening

kellyhuckabyyy: haha

self esteem +1

me: is there anything you have particularly strong views on at the moment omar

kellyhuckabyyy: yea

i signed a petition on avaz.org about a month ago

that was like

'save the bluefin tuna'

because i was rly into tuna are that point

but now they keep emailing me links to other petitions

and tbh i only care abt tuna

and i feel strongly that they shouldnt email me

but i kinda like getting emails and feeling strongly about something

so i haven't unsubscribed from it

so i don't even know what i am or who is this

me: when was the last time you did a tear from your eye

Sent at 9:47 PM on Thursday

kellyhuckabyyy: about two weeks ago i cried a lot one night due to [various family dramas]

i only cry about once a year i thin

me: im sorry to hear that

what sound do you make when you cry

i am being probing. i am louis theroux.

kellyhuckabyyy: haha

i think when i cry i sound like i am laughing

i hiccup as well

my skin goes from yellow to reddish yellow

like a peach

me: that was beautiful

thankyou for being interview by me omar

kellyhuckabyyy: haha

its ok

thank you for interviewering me ben

feel rly hot in my jumper but feel too lazy to take it off

fact fans: i have learned how to not have the times next to all the questions. the words are still a bit to the right now though.

now the words are on the left again. this is unbelievable. have fun eaten ur foods erryboddy. merry christmiss

windows open please children (halping hands by holding them #1 giles ruffer)

2011-11-02T07:15:00.000-07:00

it is day #2. just imagined saying 'it's day #2' to a video camera being held very close to my face. then saying 'and we've run out of food and it's -20degrees and the soundman keeps trying to snog my face off'.

here is the picture of me holding a mug for the day:

humorous caption: does my hand look big in this

for the fact fans: it is a different mug from yesterday

shopping list: bread, milk, teabags, skullcap, tao lin poster

*regular feature* 'pasting a tweet i can see while typing this blog post into this blog post'

@elaaiine: It's 9:30am and I just dipped a kitkat bar into coffee

'in solidarity' stephen tully dierks has also done a blog post. it is good. this is now a legit revival i think. there will be a chapter in 'the history of the internet, vol 3' titled 'november 2011: the rebirth of the blog'.

last night felt vaguely 'hysterical' then went for a walk in the dark. a woman looked at me aggressively or something. i thought 'i am going to start kicking you until you fall over and then i am going to take off your shoes and put them on my hands and run away making lobster sounds'. but then i didnt. i think i wish i was more brave a bit.

halping hands by holding them #1 giles ruffer

giles ruffer is a super male man from brighton, england. he maintains the blog http://libraryofdust.blogspot.com/

me: okay

let's try this

it might 'fall apart'

hi giles

gilesruffer: hi ben

1:25 am me: what is your mood today (1-14)?

gilesruffer: probably about 8

i feel pretty good

but slightly disappointed in not having done a lot with it

me: now you are doing something

1:26 PM gilesruffer: yes

thank you

me: could you please start listening to '1000 miles' by vanessa carlton

gilesruffer: ok

1:27 PM it's started

me: okay, how do you feel now

gilesruffer: same

thinking about how the drums sound

"punchy"

these are some punchy drums

okay

me: i couldnt agree more

1:28 PM gilesruffer: there was just a bit which kinda made me want to pump my fist

me: just vaguely thought 'if i was young, i might think fistpumping was putting the fist in a girl and pumping it back and forth'

1:29 PM okay let's get to 'the meat' of the interview:

gilesruffer: okay

enough dilly-dallying

1:30 PM me: if a human was walking into their kitchen to make a lasagne, but halfway there they felt an 'attack of apathy' and just sat down on the floor, what song would you tell them to listen to in order to 'get back up'

1:32 PM gilesruffer: 'strobolights' by supercar

me: im listening to it now. in the video there are aminals doing things

1:33 PM gilesruffer: seems like the kind of song that you could listen to during a 'cooking montage'

me: and the 'climax' of the song would be where you dab some of the mixture on your loved ones nose

and then you both laugh

1:34 PM do you have a favourite piece of 'religious advice 4 lyf'?

1:36 PM gilesruffer: this macro: http://libraryofdust.tumblr.com/post/7853652197

me: inspireing

1:38 PM do you have a 'getting to sleep' tip 4 humans

1:39 PM gilesruffer: the last two nights i have fallen asleep while on skype to my girlfriend

apparently i go to sleep quite quickly as well

1:40 PM i remember being very young and not being able to sleep because i was worrying about what happened to you when you died and so i went downstairs and my parents were still awake and i talked to them about it and then there was something on tv and i got distracted by that and then i went to sleep

1:41 PM i think as long as you're distracted by something then it's okay maybe

me: can you remember what your parents would tell you to stop being afraid of dying

1:42 PM gilesruffer: they told me that when i went to heaven i would meet a lot of people like my dad's mum and my mum's dad who i never got to meet because they died before i was born

1:43 PM me: did they ever 'elaborate' on heaven. e.g 'heaven will be filled with sweets and power rangers'

1:44 PM gilesruffer: no

me: when did you stop thinking you would go to heaven and meet your dad's mum and your mum's dad

1:45 PM and was there a 'marked increase' in sleeping difficulties around this time

gilesruffer: probably around 13/14/15

all those ages

and yes

1:46 PM but i also had rly bad acne which made it difficult to sleep i remember

me: ditto

okay, finally

1:47 PM if someone was going through 'a major life upheaval' or something

e.g 'a break up' or 'a bereavement'

what would you recommend to them

to do

1:48 PM gilesruffer: listen to they might be giants for a couple of months

1:49 PM and the song 'paris 1919' by john cale

me: thanks for halping the werld, giles

gilesruffer: o shucks, thank you ben!!

oh no the words are all on this side now. i dont think i have 'gotten the hang' of this at all. i think they do 'blogging courses' at the local library. might try that.
dear the world, have a fun day

pop punk isnt ded (halping hands by holding them #0)

2011-11-01T01:19:00.000-07:00

good morning. it is 7.36am. seems wet outside. i thought 'is the sky yellow or is my window yellow' then i opened the window and put my head out and the sky was yellow. it isnt that yellow. it is maybe the colour of a ~40 year old man who has a liver problem.

couldnt sleep yet so watched strawburry17 videos. she is still alive. i checked statcounter and saw that this blog was the number one search result for 'strawburry17 feet'. then i clicked on the link then i read old blog posts. seemed like i was very excitable age 17.

a thing that blogs have is a picture of the person writing the blog 'drinking' out of a mug while they type (impossible?):

caption: i am drinking out of this mug and typing about my lyf with the hand that isnt holding the mug (not pictured)

24th june, 2009: The only things I care about are blog hits, money and girls
and all of those things are "down".

oh look the font has changed now

i think i like this colour better

if a house was this colour and also 'good value' then i would buy the house

decided to start trying to do a blog every mornen for a month. going to give blogs 'the kiss of life'. going to have 'regular features'. okay here is the first regular feature. it is called 'i will pick a tweet that i can see when i am writing this and i will paste it into the blogpost':

'ugh I have to make profiteroles today and I actually cannot be bothered.'

oh no the font has changed again

i wouldnt buy a house this colour i dont think

going to paste some of those nice skin colour words down here so it changes back

i think i like this colour better

there we go

this is great

i am really getting the hang of this

everyone should start doing blogging again. remember when people used to do that. remember when barack obama got elected. that was great. we watched a video of it in politics and i teared up while thinking 'that man is absolutely beautiful'.

i am going to make this blog a very entertaining place to hang out with your friends. there is going to be a pool table and free comdoms. you are going to stay off the streets and not rape anyone or steal their shoes.

it would be nice if everyone started blogging again. blogging can change your life more than yoga can because yoga is just where you try to make your body into animal shapes but animals dont wear lycra so it is stupid, i feel.

not really sure how this is going

cant tell

cant hear a plause at all, which seems ominous

listening to radio 4. they arent really saying anything funny right now. they are talking about stuff that has/will/might happen. 'the news'. 'the boring bit'. 'not enough jokes'. 'am i hungry at all'. 'not sure'.

i am going to interview people and make them 'spill the beans' re 'tips 4 lyf'. it will be called 'halping hands by holding them'. i believe that everyone in the world their harts are connected by a yellow umbilical cord which is invisible.

how do i get into 'cybercrime'. if i do, is there a likelihood i will engage in any physical fighting. how will you prepare me for that.

here is a picture of outside my window

humorous caption: what is my laptop doing outside! honestly!

eww it is sew wet outside that is disgusting everything looks like it has been licked by a massive dog eww

okay i am going to go and lie down. oh just imagined meeting the cast of a 'straight to dvd' film and being flattering to them by saying 'someone must have punched one of my eyes because i am seeing stars'. i think they would like it if i said that to them. i think we would be frens.

everywon have a gr8 day today is your day bb use it 2 go into ur bed and try to wissel chords

i got formspring

2011-10-26T14:09:00.001-07:00

http://www.formspring.me/titanicultrafan

murakami party (jacob's actual pants that jacob's actual butt have tuched)

2011-10-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

1Q84 came out on monday
was it monday
i'd already read it via review copy
it was already one of the best books ebba

murakami is my dad

here is a twitter bio i have written for murakami: novelist, early riser, ladies man and all round good egg. follow me i'll follow you.

we went to a murakami quiz on launch night in a big bookshop in london
there was free sake and sushi
i tried to spit my sushi out
i got visibly upset when we came second by two points
first prize was special edition boxset of all 3 volumes number 1 of 111. they said it was worth '£750'.

we got these tshirts though. and a dvd.

best 3 murakamis: 1) hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world 2) 1Q84 3) wind up bird chronicle

LITERARY FASHION SHOW:
those two pictures
all of the clothes in them are lit clothes:
-headband= from ana carrete
-underwear (these are uncomfortable for the penis) = from jacob steinberg
-tshirt = from my main man murakami

a man called 'desert of hiatus' made an album 'entirely dedicated and in homage to' my first book fences. it is very very good. i have listened to it a lot. feels reel

http://desertofhiatus.bandcamp.com/album/fences

i am a carpet in 'the carpet warehouse' that no one is likely to buy because i am the colour 'saffron sunset'
i am a lemur

think i might press my face against the 'stove' and then eat a 'bread' and then drink a 'beer'
BLYHDHDUDBDHJDBDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

good morning japan
i hope u ladies wekken up feelen good bowt urslefs

night

mean things italian humans have said

2011-10-15T16:46:00.000-07:00

good morning

keep thinking 'dj tao lin' and then laughing

keep thinking 'that is where you will be and i will be here'
then kissing my hands and thinking 'they taste different to your hands i feel'

i stayed with greatbabedotcom in scotland recently
we saw jeffrey lewis play
he was keutiebutts
in scotland there are girls and boys
it is intense

i think grow up has come out in italy
it was in italian vogue, mtv, and marie claire which seemed funny and weird
also did an irl interview for an italian paper
google translated it and the woman called me 'pimply' and said i wasnt a writer
also did a phone interview for someone
and the woman said she hated interviewing me in the interview

'billie jd porter' is a human who does a television programme about teenagers having sex with each other
also she does films and 'spinning discs' i think
recently we walked around ldn and ate little burgers and she took this picture of me in a bookshop and put it on her blog pretty creepy really

what a hot edition of wuthering heights that is

oh hai dan brown, it's me, your dog walker

seems like me and elaine sun and madison langston are all getting 'idgi' tattoos. i encourage everyone else in the world to do this. it will bring everyone closer together. it will make blogs real again.

we did it: 4 days/12 romantic comedies

2011-09-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

I watched 4 yesterday. It's all over.

Just wright.
basketball and love.
i.lovedit.

leap year.
ireland girl man
ilvoedit.

when in rome.
magic fountain love
ilovedit.

life as we know it.
orphaned child raised by hatin godparence
cried repeatedly
because now this huge section of my lyf is ovr!
ilovedit.

not sure why i did it really
i did though

I think I just wasn’t that happy and I thought that it would make me happier

Maybe it did

I bought running shoes and went running

I went shopping and bought fruit and vegetables

I was shuffling around the supermarket listening to gold panda

I was wearing tracksuit bottoms and a hoody that went to my knees and no socks

I looked like someone who was watching 12 romantic comedies in 4 days

Everyone should do this

It will change your life

I finished ‘life as we know it’ at ~1am

After the last romcom finished I put Vanessa Carlton on and I tidied my room

Then I folded some clothes and put them in drawers

Then I watered my plant

Then I put on my onesie

Then I ate some sunflower seeds

feel ready to start livin lyf agen

day #3 of 4 days/romantic comedies challenge

2011-09-23T06:37:00.000-07:00

yesterday i was hungover and i watched five romantic comedies
it was a strange day i think

the first two films had jennifer anningstons in them
i spent 4 hours with jenjen basically
in one of the films she got a man to give her his sperm so she could make herself preggers with it
but her best friend switched his sperm for the sperm
what a bloody mess

that film was called 'the switch'

i. loved. it.

the other film with her in it was called 'the bounty hunter'
her ex husband was a bounty hunter
and he had to 'bring her in'
and they fell back in love
nice one you guys!

i. loved. it.

then i watched 'the back up plan'
this one had jennifer lopez in
it was another one where 'artificial insemination' featured heavily
it was pretty awful
the man's job was making and selling goats cheese or something
jaylo ran a pet shop

i. loved. it.

i watched 'she's out of my league' next
maybe the best one of the day
it was about a man who looked ~14 and worked as 'airport security'
he got a girlfriend who was greater than he was
he was like 'um what lol i am going to ruin this'
so that is what happened in that one

i. loved. it.

i went upstairs and spoke to my housemates for a bit at this point
it was about 2am

next i watched 'it's complicated'
this was the old people one
(shout out to elaine)
this one had alex baldwin in
he was in she's out of my league too
it was pretty boring
it had steve martin in
meryl streep
shout out to meryl
meryl, if you're reading this, give up
JK!
ilybb

i. loved. it.

is this challenge draining the colour out of my life
or is it injecting my life with colours that i never even knew exist
not sure
lol

good morning

day #2 of 4 day/12 romantic comedies (never go outside) challenge

2011-09-22T14:07:00.000-07:00

day 2 was yesterday
i woke up late
i ate a banana
i watched 'how do you know'
which had paul rudd and reese widderspoons in
the plot was really weird
reesey got kicked off the USA women's baseball team which made her sad
paul lost his job and got told of for fraud or something and his dad was jack nikkelsong
also owen wilsong was in it
felt like they didnt let paul rudd be paul rudd enough
paul rudd is my favourite man
anyway

i.loved.it.lol.

here is the bloopers reel
look at paul rudd

paul rudd is the perfect guy
i love you man is the best film to have come out of the film industry
look

after the film i went out with crispin and got back late and drunk so i didnt watch anymore
that means i have to watch 5 today
so far i have watched 3
2 of them had jennyfur anningstons in them

just thought 'you're really doing this arent you'

well yes, i am, is the answer to that

i am hoping to learn all about love and comedy
i am hoping to learn how to tell a story or how to 'spin a yarn' maybe
i dont know why i am doing it really
it's like going on holiday sort of
i am enjoying it
only i am not looking forward to some of the films on the list
for example the old people one

okay
i should go and watch two more films before bed now
nightnight

4 days/12 'romantic comedies' (never go outside) death challenge

2011-09-20T18:10:00.000-07:00

hello

I decided to watch 12 romantic comedies in four days

I have watched 2 this evening

the 12 romantic comedies will be these

the first film i watched was 'valentine's day'
it had lots of people in it
an 'all star cast' that's called
taylor swift was in it
her character was 'female moron'

i. loved. it. lol.

(between the two films, i made noodles with mushroom and tomatoes so that was pretty fun)

the second film i watched was 'going the distance'
it had drew barrymore in it and also a man
some great talk about 'dryhumping' in it
dialogue seemed 'natural' at times

i. loved. it. lol.

feel really like at the end of these four days i will have grown somehow. like maybe i will be more romantic or funnier than i am now. maybe i will gain 'perspective'.

going to shower now
cant wait for tomorrow

i made a pome using quotes from the 2011 films 'no strings attached' and 'friends with benefits'

2011-09-19T07:14:00.000-07:00

me and crispin watched both of them last night
i think neither was good
they were the same film kind of
crispin said about how the main actress from each won had been in black swan
funny
look at them now
hello ladies

Why Didnt You Just Asssk Paul Rudd 2 BE in IT

You have a boat

I live in Jersey

Just shit on my face

You give me premature ventricular contractions

Can I finger you

You’re very talented but fuck you

Im not fucking asking you out

Let’s play tennis

You look like a pumpkin

Take me to adam’s house

Look at my face

The pumpkin patch called

They want their pumpkins back

You look like a pumpkin

Can I finger you

I’m a doctor

I hate breakfast

Let’s play tennis

I work 80 hours a week

I am so glad you are my friend

You have like really big eyes

This is getting too intense

I can sing some third eye blind

Shane posted a picture of my light boxes tattoo on his tumblr with the other ones.
http://ivomiticecubessowhat.tumblr.com/
the tattoo says 'dtf' under it
also i got a tattoo of an umbrella

lungenerkrankungen

2011-08-29T08:15:00.001-07:00

I think I’ve spent like most of my advance

I mean

Am I going to have start eating vegetables now

Have I done something wrong

Feel like I have

I liked when we did ustreams and American people watched them

Lol

Hey what is it called when you feel like

Hey never mind

Hey what is the recipe for that pasta you made which was pasta with vegetables in it

My internet was bad this morning

Lol

I have been invited to this festival in den haag and be paid to write a daily thing about it with some other hot ass hotties

St Vincent and dry the river and alan hollinghurst (lol) and james frey (lmao) and the low anthem and david whitehouse and fences and other people will be there

Someone said that they put everyone in the same hotel

Feel like I am just going to follow Christopher Mansfield around maybe

How many owl city songs/how many strawburry17 videos/how many showers

Before everything feels normal again

etgar's plot chart

2011-08-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

good morning
where is everyone

susie anderson wrote this story at for every year and it is very good

charlotte started this blog where she posts things she finds in the books she catalogues as a job and it is interesting and cute

me and crispin went to see steve roggenbuck read via skype in shoreditch the other night. it was an 'internet poetry' thing. it felt exciting. it was strange that something happening irl felt 'relevant'. sam riviere read too but i missed it because i went to the shop to buy beers. he was a warmhearted bearscout and recognised me and crispin. i think i just got a papercut and it hurts. steve 'brought the house down'. felt really good to see him taking over london like that. afterwards everyone went to a pub up the road and me and crispin had to drag the man who lives above me there and it was funny.

~~if anyone wants a grow up then i have lots of australian copies~~
~~they are a bit not as nice as the english ones but the words are the same~~
~~email brooksben at hotmail dawt co dawt uk~~

;] out

here is a screenshot that will convince you to want one

here is the italian cover and the wraparound from it. originally it was a picture of naked kids but the mum of the kids said no way u guys! the title means 'our lights'

back

2011-08-21T14:08:00.001-07:00

-----------

this isnt everything

2011-08-15T22:11:00.001-07:00

'British novelist Ben Brooks, author of Grow Up, set out on a one-hour £20 ($31.94) donation spree to any American willing to tweet their Paypal email. (full disclosure: ‘I got mine’) Only 19 recipients were accounted for in the most effective literary Twitter stunt ever. 19x£20=~$545.17#' hot lit gossip

i made a new video where i get drunk and write 'fuck everything' on my chest in makeup

2011-08-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

do i look okay in yellow or disappeared from benbrooks on Vimeo.

behind the scenes

what does it mean if you are underneath the table (i am in the bed)

2011-07-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

Soon after the fountain was erected, newly-enrolled students of the Georgia Augusta university began to climb up the fountain and to kiss the statue which rapidly became a university tradition. Because the climbing of the fountain was usually celebrated with excessive consumption of alcohol and loud cheers of fellow students and because the number of students largely increased after World War I, police issued a decree in 1926 that officially forbade the climbing and kissing of the statue. A law student who was prosecuted for kissing the goose girl in the same year, took the case to court. However, the superior court of justice in Berlin legitimated the edict.

As the fountain has been subject to vandalism, the original statue of the goose girl can today be seen in the Stadtmuseum while the fountain only carries a copy. After a severe assault during the winter of 2004 (malicious arson), the fountain needed to be disassembled and underwent major restoration.

regjo

2011-07-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

hello hello. grow up has had more reviews. im in germany. im in a cafe and it's the evening beginning and i am a bit drunk and you can smoke in here. just finished the radleys by matt haig. it was very very good. not sure why im here but i probably wont go back to london for a couple of weeks. might go to warsaw. kind of want to go and see the northern lights. listening to ghostmice. just read the morning news profile of muumuu house and thought 'awwwwh ily' re tao lin and noah cicero.

that picture is a picture charlotte took of someone we dont know reading Grow Up on the underground. seems really funny.

want to get a crispo/franky tattoo via mmminscoe so it officially becomes a 'youth craze'

xxxxxxxxx

oh hai crispin, happy birthday

2011-07-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

here is your surprise party:
come in
everyone you've ever known or will know or wont know is here
it is a fancy dress party
the theme is:
sad executives
the drinks are:
bacardiribena
i will get you a water now
look, sarah is over there
her nipples...
sit down
the house band
(they are called 'everything you've ever wanted to happen can happen tonight if you just calm down')
are going to play a song now
crispin born feat lil wayne by brooksben
good job band
my toe sure is tapping
um
do you want some hot wings
or peanuts
or lemon
okay
time to dance?
okay
you're right
this is going to be hilarious

that was fun
time for a 'stiff' drink now i guess
(undiluted lime cordial)
there is someone here, crispin,
who has got something he wants to read for you
go on mate
dont be shy

Birthday Wish

It’s your birthday time again;
It’s true; there’s no denying,
Another year has come and gone;
You know that I’m not lying.

So for you, the birthday person,
Here’s what I want to say:
I hope this birthday’s the best one yet,
In every delightful way.

So happy birthday to you.
Have lots of birthday fun!
May your birthday wishes all come true,
Even if you have a ton.

By Karl Fuchs
that was great karlreally nice jobwhat a voice you haveit is like plywood or something else great like thatthe atmosphere in here is greati know it's only the village hall buti mean it's the people rightnot the placehehe look at amandaher feet look like dead sealsokaythe house band are getting ants in their pantstime for another song band i want to spend the rest of forever looking for a bowling alley with you but not finding one by brooksben woahthose guys are going to be hugeyou mark my mouthit is getting latebring down the lightsspeechspeechspeechohseems like everyone is just a bit sad or maybe tired nowwe should lie downwe can just go under these plastic tables and sleep foreverthis is nicetop and tailgood morninghappy birthday mate

thirteen thousand tigers tied with silver string

2011-07-08T08:38:00.000-07:00

hasidic kitchen

2011-07-04T07:04:00.000-07:00

the third review was not good also
it is good though
that people have hands
i woke up at 9 today
i watched a thing about amityville
i watched a thing about the exorcist
i thought about being hungry or maybe not being hungry or maybe being thirsty but not for cola
just ordered pasta online
feeling sweet
smelling bad
angels on your body baby

today i will sit down in the shower and hum

2011-07-03T04:58:00.000-07:00

first review of Grow Up in the Guardian, nice one jane housham mate

2011-07-02T04:32:00.000-07:00

seemed really bad. not like a 'negative review' just a 'strangely crude' one maybe.

'How is it possible for Brooks already to have reached these far shores of experience, tossing out his shocking little grenades of nasty sex, porn, drug abuse and torpor? I suppose he wouldn't have got his novel published if it was about doing well in his A-levels and enjoying cycling and photography.'

'Enjoying cycling and photography.'?
'Enjoying cycling and photography.'?
'Enjoying cycling and photography.'?

Feels like 'when was the last time Jane met any 17 year old kids outside of Enid Blyton books'?

Just seemed like saying 'he made some things up so his book would be published' which seemed a little rude mate, sorry.

Also, she misquoted.

hehe

be nice

will it be warm today

2011-07-01T02:25:00.000-07:00

promotional video from benbrooks on Vimeo.

things that mean there are other things in other places

2011-06-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

oh it has been a long time since these jumped up again again. where are the pigeons. i moved back to london. they are all here.into a flat in a victorian house. it has a garden with an apple tree at the bottom. the street is pretty like a film where people have cartoon emotions and good shoes. there are trees. i have a desk with a lamp like they have in parliament. grow up comes out on the 7th. there is going to be a launch party on the 4th. i am scared. there have been lots of things happening and now for a few days i am going to do zero things. i think i am going to interview my housemates and put it on here. i think i will just interview everyone that comes here. there is some spaghetti in the microwave. im eating in the cat kigu. i hope i dont spill food on it. back and didnt spill food. watched four rooms. watching. the sun is out a bit and the garden is bright. going to tidy and wash clothes. send emails everywhere. brooksben at hotmail ddddd co dddddddd uk that is my one the one for you is your name and then and then. today i have been looking at wigwams

some things today switzerland ftl

2011-06-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

this article appeared in the bookseller yesterday i think

some exciting things are in it

'Canongate is planning to give a limited number of free e-book copies of Grow Up, the debut novel by 19-year-old Ben Brooks, ahead of its paperback publication in July.

The publisher released the e-book this week, priced £2.49, with the paperback to follow on 7th July. Along with the giveaway, Canongate is planning a Twitter competition with the NME, video interviews through Twitter and a competition to find new young writers, which it is judging jointly with Dazed and Confused. Writers between 16-19 will be able to enter a fiction piece of no more than 3,000 words through the Don't Panic marketing agency website. Judges on the competition are Brooks' editor Francis Bickmore, Dazed and Confused deputy editor Tim Noakes and Brooks himself. The winner will receive editorial advice and help with building their profile online, as well as the story or extract running on the Canongate website.'

all

things

that

will

happen

hello

what has happened

to this

idk

okay

planets dont have mouths

2011-06-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

hello
where is everyone
it seems dark in here
stop kicking me
stop kicking me
stop kicking me

hello i am miranda july and i have a new film coming out and it looks good

hello i am frank hinton's chapbook and i am pretty and i havent been read yet but soon

i didnt do anything today
i recorded this today

today i was not a kite or a cat and you were not a planet by brooksben

on like the 12 or something i am moving to london i think
properly this time
into a flat

hello
nightnight

oh what is that put it back in the wardrobe

2011-05-20T14:08:00.000-07:00

what is happening
not sure
everyone knows how super ana and richard chiem are

i started a srs art blog
it is called
is this what underwater is

the royal wedding happened while I was asleep

and in the morning my head hurt

and I drank orange juice until it came back out

I thought about people for a while

here is a motivational quotes

The older you get, the more rules they are going to try and get you to follow. You just gotta keep on livin’, man. L-I-V-I-N. ““ Wooderson, Dazed and Confused

pls try hard

i was going to sort of hit myself and then i felt sad

2011-05-18T13:41:00.000-07:00

oh dear okay

2011-05-11T06:44:00.000-07:00

but whatever if i never get taller and i never learn to knit

2011-05-10T07:12:00.000-07:00

i am listening to jordan castro's band's song for the fourth time in a row or something
it is here
http://theohioans.tumblr.com/post/5148412272/jawbreaker-the-ohioans

it is good
jordan castro seems good
i feel about him the same way i feel about gilmore girls
like they are both nice
if the weather is alright

it doesnt matter if you dont write
only if you do
is that a rule
that is probably a rule

listening for the fifth time now

today the weather is not exciting
there arent that many people i would marry
you know
i'm worried that no matter who i marry
i wont remember it

i am not in scotland anymore

when things are relative to each other
it just means that everything is everything
which isnt that exciting
except that bit at the end
where joaquin phoenix walks into the water slowly
and it gets deeper and deeper
and he disappears a bit
i think that happens whenever i leave the house

have been googling 'writers residencies iceland' recently
saw a film called 'jar city' which was 'icelandic crime thriller'
it was bleak
and everyone lived in houses that looked pretend
but i think they werent

probably everyone is joaquin phoenix

this room isnt moving
the dog is even sleeping a lot

it is like 15:09
did sartre say something like '3 in the afternoon is really gay because it is too late and too early'
idk
dothatfuckensnowangeldude

okay
going to make tea
and sit on the computer

nightnightx

i think u r wicked

2011-04-28T10:33:00.001-07:00

i am in st andrews. it is in scotland. it is by the sea. i have been here for a week or something. i have used the toilet far more than i usually do. it is the royal wedding tomorrow i think. this town is where they met. there is a place outside that says on it 'where will met kate' in big letters and then 'for coffee' in very small letters.

the first person to email brooksben at hotmail.co.uk i will go to waterstones tomorrow and buy a book and send it to you. waterstones needs help right now. blankets and things. you know.

grow up things are exciting still. it is going to be published in america by penguin and in canada by house of anansi and it will also be published in catalan. i am wetting myself.

the instructions by adam levin seems very very good so far.

xxx

i think we should go to sleep now

2011-03-29T08:58:00.000-07:00

good afternoon

hello

link heavy day

Do not touch dead calves or hanging witches this is your hour

For the attention of The Queen:

Stars are not mice mice are not clouds keep your hands in your pockets learn to blow smoke ships

For the attention of Aira:

Be thorough and enthusiastic in all that you do

&"*"&"*"&"*"&"*"&

the cover for IQ84 is nice

(All of the bears on Gaizinkalns)

Gravel but a silver underland

grow up is going to be published in italy by ISBN

and in Germany by Berlin Verlag

(&I am currently experiencing bouts of unprovoked rain

Because I am adolescent)

Is that right

Do I win yet

2012 Olympics

I will hide under the desk

Until you arrive

(You will not)

the autumn canongate catalogue has appeared as a pdf

in it me and david whitehouse talk about our books

david whitehouse is really nice

he wrote a book called bed

it is very very good

it is sad and funny

you can pre order it

In bed during the national anthem

when the light drops and the room fills up

I am hungry

I need the toilet

Toast is nice

Toast with just butter and like a cup of tea and like a book where the words are the same size

also you can preorder Grow Up

from Amazon

or from WHSmith

or from Waterstones

I think from wherever really

It is only like 5pounds in some places which seems good

It will be nice if people buy it I think

I hope people like it

'am i more important than the trees"

"than all the trees i ever saw'

'and the ones you didnt"

"and those too'

night night

cub scout

i think that maybe i dont know (bees?)

2011-03-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

things with grow up are going well

like in bed

it will be published in spain by Blackie Books

like in the bath

they publish brautigan and things

i think i have not been keeping up with much except for 'privileged'

they show 'privileged' at 3:35am on channel 4

two episodes

it is american

they only made one series

it is set in 'palm beach'

today nothing happened

i had a dream about being on trains in latvia with pockets full of pounds coins

how weird is that?

how weird is my dream?

my dream that i had?

you know?

here are things they say in 'LA INK' with 'Kat Von D':

-'the shop' : meaning 'the tattoo shop', the shop owned by 'Kat Von D'

-'get inked' : meaning 'to get tattooed', variants: 'you got ink?', 'where's your ink?'. 'you cant work here, you aint got no ink'

-'the tattoo family' : meaning the 'group of friends' working at 'the shop' who think maybe that they are 'closer' because they all are 'inked', comparable maybe to something like a 'cleft palate club'

my sister bought 'red top milk'

'red top milk' is like white water or whatever or something

if you havent you should see steve roggenbuck's pony club

http://www.downloadhelveticaforfree.com/

feel like sometimes you are not really facing mecca when you pray

i mean i'm not

sorry

j.a tyler's promotional campaign for his new book:

If you don't like my book I'll write you another book on the inside of that book. Order it, read it. If you don't like it, ship it back to me & I'll write a new book for you on the inside of that book. Yes. This is how much I believe in these words. A MAN OF GLASS & ALL THE WAYS WE HAVE FAILED: http://www.fuguestatepress.com/man.html

sunday

2011-03-20T08:43:00.001-07:00

grow up grow up grow up

2011-03-16T07:41:00.000-07:00

proof copies and the sales jacket of grow up came today. i am excited. they are pretty. dave brown from the mighty boosh did the cover. the hat and nose and mouth and eyes are raised so you can run your hands over the book and it feels nice.

hope everything everywhere is fine

WE ARE ALL EVERYWHERE #1

2011-03-14T17:05:00.001-07:00

tomorrow is not friday or the day after or the day after

2011-03-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

i am trying to live like when i was small

i am

i am only eating things i want to eat

(toast, tea, yoghurt)

i am smoking as much as i want to

i put my socks on before my underwear

and jump about in front of the mirror

i think about buying a house in rural bulgaria

then not coming out of it until i have worked everything out

i try to do handstands in the living room

(i'm not wetting myself or anything)

i move my head sometimes

when a man in the computer is singing swear words

(the swear words i know are fuck and dick and no other ones)

i am planning on learning how to speak polish

i am planning on getting taller

it is likely that things will happen tomorrow

i am really sorry about all that water in japan

it looks sad

essay on kat dixon essay on 'neo-dadaism'

2011-03-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

kat dixon wrote an essay saying something about 'neo-dadaism'

saying it should 'yawn itself out'

feel like you could just click off steve roggenbuck's book of poetry downloadhelveticaforefree.com

if you dont like it

instead of saying it should disappear

it's really good though

dont think anything should disappear

essay seemed like someone watching naked children playing in the sea

and not being able to play with the naked children in the sea

and saying 'dont really understand why those children are playing naked in the sea, doesnt mean anything, they should stop'

seemed gay

yea

okay

whatever

art exhibition #3 (i think)

2011-03-10T05:44:00.000-08:00

hello welcome to my third art exhibition

it feels really amazing to have my art on display like this

here have some white wine

come and meet paul

paul is a copyeditor

paul can juggle

show us paul!

yea come on paul!

dont be a stupid dick paul, show us!

see, i told you

good job paul mate

the art exhibition is called 'where is the nearest masonic lodge'. it is about searching for faith in 2011. it is about exercise bikes and hydroponics.

there is a story behind this first piece; i did it on microsoft paint.

This piece is about whether it is okay to hit your child because your child said that he/she was gay. if they said it as a joke dont hit them. but dont love them either.

this piece is about about using facebook to make people think they like you and then meeting them in a park and taking off your clothes and disappointing them.

this piece is about losing your virginity age 10. it is about getting all the vaginas. it is about working the room.

this piece was created shortly after south sudan gained independence from the north. we waited so, so long.

pretty self-explanatory. where is god, where is my lighter, etc etc. 'serial killer'.

this piece is about the 'brown people vs god debate'. death to israel. haile selassie.

have some more wine if you want.

i hope you liked the art.

where's paul gone?

fuck you paul.

rod stewart.

i am wearing everything i own.

a woman wearing a trenchcoat stared at me this morning

in a disapproving way

like it is not okay to kiss dogs in public

and we werent even kissing

we were just nose rubbing

and when she walked passed she smelled like my first girlfriend

it made me feel tired

sucked some serious dick last night

not really

i never do anything

sorry

he is a bit taller than i am

2011-03-01T04:14:00.000-08:00

are you okay

you have gout

hahahahahahahahahahahah

go to bed now

the radio is there when you are sleeping

2011-02-22T07:09:00.000-08:00

hello

some things happened recently

on wednesday i went to edinburgh to see lovely people at canongate

i wandered around the offices and used the toilet twice

in the toilet there i looked at myself in the mirror and laughed for a bit

there were some cover designs for grow up and they were good

francis bickmore is a handsome man with a microwave heart

we went out and ate turkish food and i refused to eat anything that wasnt meat basically

i stayed in a hotel and went to glasgow in the morning

i met stephen o'toole and kirsty turkington

later stephen o'toole disappeared

later he appeared again

later crispin best appeared

in scotland you cant buy alcohol after 10pm except in pubs

the next day we went to a pub with a bad name and sat there for ~8 hours

at some point we went downstairs in the pub and it was a club that played jackson 5 a lot

there were metal bands playing in the pub

a girl said to me 'i like death metal, but my secret love is hardcore'

i went outside for a cigarette and the girl i was talking to started crying and crispin and stephen and kirsty saw it through a window and thought it was funny

she was crying because i punched her womb or something

a lot of things happened

i dont remember all of them

a tiny, extremely excitable man appeared and started dancing outside

feel like i cant really write things about it because i might get told off because 'privacy'

but if i was someone else and i was writing about it i would put this: ;] after stephen's name

in the morning there were two women at stephen's house

we watched 'hot tub time machine' and it was very good

there was a part in it where 'the boy' typed into his phone 'lou looks like stewie from family guy'

and every time i went to the toilet after that i thought about it and laughed

i am laughing about it right now

oh this wasnt a very good blog post i expect

felt very conscious of not typing things about other people too much not because i am important

because it is rude maybe

not sure really what the etiquette is really in regard to 'blogs and real life'

hello ana carrete

hello sarah san

nothing is pretend today

2011-02-14T07:12:00.000-08:00

good morning
it is valentines day today
how exciting
there are two dogs in my life
one is a mastiff and one is a retriever

my favourite review in the garden was written
by rmp
it is of fences and an island of fifty
it is here
it made me feel like a microwave with milk in it for a while
TO CELEBRATE
ML Press are offering copies of An Island of Fifty for $10 with free shipping

(it says 12 but when you click through it will say 10)
that is a very lovely deal i think
you could just buy it and tear out pages to use as bookmarks
it is 156pp
you will not need to buy any bookmarks for ages
or you could just draw beards and glasses on all the words
or you could give it to someone you want to do sex with
and tell them to email me
and i will woo them for you
dennis cooper put it in his 'best of 2010'
and his a warmhearted honey badger

it looks very pretty anyway

so you could just leave it on a table

for other people to turn through

when they are waiting in your living room

for you to get changed into something sexier than what you were wearing when they arrived

thanks everyone

people have been appearing on my bed recently

which is sometimes nice

on wednesday i am going to edinburgh to see canongate

canongate are nice

everyone is nice in the world, basically

except for the man in the film 'expired'

the one that calls sex phonelines

and says to his girlfriend a lot

'i am so nice to you'

and then shouts at her

thinking about things

there is a chance that within the next ~2 months this blog will become 'a proper blog'

maybe

okay if anyone still reads this

hello

you are all very nice

i want real internet again so i can do gmail

hello

thank you

be okay

i also am the kitchen

2011-01-14T04:22:00.000-08:00

and i will marry you when we get taller

have a couple of hours left to do new draft
feel calm and okay

the pop serial tumblr is good
pop serial #2 is maybe out or will be out soon

mike young said he didnt like island of fifty on htmlgiant
this morning i listened to simple plan and put my hood up and jumped about in front of the dog and the dog fell asleep

read the sunset limited a couple of nights ago
yea

i want to go on loose women
i want to touch kate thornton's hand and tell her i know how hard it is being a woman
(i have no idea how hard it must be being a woman)
(but there is a book called 'women on top' on my mum's bookshelf)
(so i reckon quite hard?)

let me fall into the valley of the sofa where there are never coins only buttons!

started googling 'bulgarian homes for sale' again
started masturbating more in my head than before

hi everyone

early end of years today

2010-12-28T06:22:00.000-08:00

well done on doing another year
what a lovely year
good job everyone

dennis cooper put island of fifty on his best of 2010 fiction list
he is a really nice man
if i could knit i would probably knit him a hat

steve roggenbuck made this really good trailer for pop serial 2
i am in pop serial 2
and also in the lovely trailer
well done steve mate
happy new year

spoke to editor at canongate about edits for this book on the phone
i have a lot to do i think
time to put on something with sleeves
and then roll the sleeves up
and then take the something off
and then take a shower
and then drink tea
and then have a cigarette
and then sleep for a while
and then lie in bed listening to radio 4
and then roll around in bed a little
and then walk the dog
and then learn how to pick locks with sharpened fingernails
and then start doing edits

that is my plan for the new year
woah
what a year

can you still buy 'golden nuggets'

i have run out of things to say now
goodbye
have fun

evening gowns, breadcrumbs, this is a desk now

2010-12-22T11:55:00.000-08:00

it is four minutes close to eight. i am sat at a desk. this is the desk where i sit now. it is black outside. i am wearing a ball gown and i have urinated in my boxer shirts. not really. the house across the road is full covered with christmas lights. mostly they are blue and white. there is not as much snow now. there was a lot of snow. i walk the dog in the field over the road and the snow came up to my calves. lots of middle aged women walk their dogs in the field. they say hello to me. i say hello to them. cold isnt it, they say. yes, i say, it is cold. the field is white. really cold, i say. adding 'really cold' onto the end is a sort of social flourish i think. look, it says, i am extremely good at talking to you. i can extend the house into the garden and add value. the indian man in the shop at the end of the round doesnt ask for my id anymore. he always sighs. i feel he knows secrets about something. i walked to the library today too. it was the last day it will be open until after christmas. i held a book by ismail kadare and thought, so you won the booker prize did you. tried to write again today but couldnt. didnt get to watch all of loose women. woke up at 1. told nan i woke up at 12. walking on the pavement today i wanted to run across the road and hit two small girls who laughed between each other because i thought they were laughing because i am boring and nothing. even though i am. everything is fine. by all accounts. curtains drawn. we take baths and we wear towels. nothing much at all.

good morning news

2010-12-20T03:45:00.001-08:00

so canongate will be publishing my next book in july. it is exciting. i will be financially fine and able to move to back to london and do nothing but write for a year. the book is called Grow Up & Blow Away, at the moment. the name may change. being on canongate means sitting next to chris killen and miranda july and yann martel and barack obama. things are okay. good morning. night night.

would you ever touch a woman, am i eleanor rigby, deepak chopra dies at the end

2010-12-04T15:09:00.000-08:00

i am a guy who will draw whatever you want, hello everyone, please do not give away your socks

parties in the gulf stream

2010-11-22T08:56:00.000-08:00

we love telly

2010-11-10T02:26:00.000-08:00

have not blogged in 'record time'(?)
dont have internet really
that is not interesting
no it's not

currently writing story to go in the vinyl insert for this band's debut
um

seems like i have an agent now

seems like things are 'on the verge' of going very well

maybe within 2 weeks there will be news of some sort

pride of britain

sunday mash

got nominated for pushcart prize by j.a tyler, how lovely, thanks everyone

just thought 'joan rivers'

just thought 'myself'

prince charles is talking to someone on the television right now

he is fidgeting

(race?)

'fucking whales'

honestly,

who will win x factor for example?

cher will win x factor for example

for example i will place a 'bet' of maybe one pounds on her to win for example

dramatic love scene from radio 4 play:

'where are you going?'

'where aren't i going?'

'i'm taking the fucking beanbag'

'fine'

okay night night

it is early morning

bratislava you move like a ferret

2010-09-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

nobody reads this blog anymore, not even me

i am going to fail several thousand people in several hundred ways

will you steal a car with me tomorrow morning
we can crash it somewhere
we can talk about how good the bonnet looks crumpled
we can bleed from our eyes and necks

i left london
im living with my nan
yesterday i was shaving
and she came into the bathroom and said
'that isnt how you do it'
and she took the shaver out of my hand
and rubbed it all over my face in circles

1.

She’s in the house when I get there she’s in the bathroom she’s pissing hard. The sound of her piss is a canal down the corridor I shouldn’t have come to this house I shouldn’t have come here. I always come to this house I always come here and I know I shouldn’t. I go to the bathroom and vomit on her head and it’s chasing down her cheeks but she wont leave that isn’t what she does it isn’t she’s going to stay here until I can arrive. I say that I’m going to telephone the actress she’s punching her own ears she cant hear.

2.

The actress hits the doorbell the actress is teary. Inside the house the actress she undresses the actress she has us press our skins together but she’s still in the bathroom she’s smashing things I can hear her very well. The actress tells me I am not hearing anything the actress tells me to lie on her. I try to make coffee and smoke a cigarette but the actress she pulls my head into her vagina she tells me to be grateful she tells me to stop trying to arrive in houses and start being glad I even have hands.

3.

I hit the actress over and over the actress bruises heavy the actress cant move I pull the duvet over her head I tell her be glad now. She’s in the bathroom I’m in the bathroom I tell her I’m leaving the house I tell her I’m going away she’s chewing china tiles because she isn’t there.

$£%£$£%£$£%£$£%£$£%£$£%£$£%£$£%£$£%£$£%£$£

pentagons, diagrams, all kinds of paper; rice, sugar, tracing
things like this
things you can put in your hands

nothing to do with anything at all

just sleep and then you can wake up and see how everything is exactly the same

okay okay we can lets go
jump the mattress up and bruise your scalp
dont go out today
you know it will make you sleepy

All starts are good and bright (damning reviews, masturbation, tea ceremony)

2010-09-21T05:33:00.000-07:00

The first 'full' (I think) review of The Kasahara School of Nihilism has appeared.
Read it here if you want.
It is damning.
The woman that wrote it ghost writes YA novels.
She praises Murakami a lot in the review.
She talks maybe more about Murakami than about the book she is 'reviewing' (mine).

Here are some choice quotes about how awful the book is:

'not one of these characters managed to startle, perturb, or otherwise move me to the extent May Kasahara did in even a single scene of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.'

'Again and again, this fiction steps from its knife’s edge of plotline into total incomprehensibility.'

'The characters’ streams of consciousness sound like they were extracted after a heavy dosing of sodium amytal'

'deciphering this author’s motivations is beyond my limited powers of comprehension.'

That last one is my favourite maybe. It seems to mean 'i didnt get it at all. it was bad'.

Here is the single nice comment in the review:

'Even the repeat appearances of a god-like bear didn’t pique my curiosity enough to keep me turning the pages. Although the book lurches closest to humor and charm in this creature’s company (in one nice exchange, the teens’ schoolteacher, feeling insignificant, complains, “Sometimes I shrink into my own palm,” to which the bear commiserates, “Paw"), these moments arise out of such a jumbled context that the any poignant absurdity is lost. '

Anyway, review seemed good and disinterested and i enjoyed reading it. i made a cup of tea to drink to while reading it.

If reading this review has made you want to purchase the book then you can do so
from Fugue State Press
or from Amazon

I cannot go on hotmail from this computer. At the moment this computer is all I have. That is why I have not been able to reply to things. Will get on hotmail soon probably. my gmail is cernisdead at gmail.com anyway so yea.

Here is a paragraph from something I will submit probably to pop serial

' Once the penguins are gone Del Sparto carries slum back to the hide. He doesnt see Sprake, only Treblinka moving up caravan steps, pulling scabs off the undersides of her wings, then Gabriel Pope throwing crates down in the hide. He gives the bear a nod and goes out to the boneyard. Del Sparto's thinking that he doesnt want the Lizard to come tonight (she goes to Bullface some, and Bantam, rarely stays bedded with Sprake) and he's thinking can Lilico get out later. '

Seems random like that i guess. okay, have fun everyone

strawburry17 Die Antwoord day #3 hands in the shape of the forehead

2010-09-10T05:26:00.000-07:00

i hope that from now on when i write 'you' on this blog you have severe doubts about whether the 'you' is you or is maybe some other 'you' who you know about or maybe dont

recently there have been very few things pushing me through completing this novel. one of these things has been die antwoord. sometimes i will say 'okay i am going to go and write my novel now' but i will just sit and watch die antwoord interviews and music videos and live things and do the dance to 'enter the ninja'.

die antwoord are from south africa. they 'zef' a lot. they say 'next level shit' a lot. here is a short introductory video.

all up on the interweb. i hope you are following and feeling great. david lynch is one of their biggest fans. he invited them to his house and things. here is another one of their songs. learn the dance.

good job. now, in an attempt to further alienate everyone who has every read this blog
i am going to do strawburry17 things again
no im not
not going to post any strawburry17 videos
thinking about die antwoord more
thinking about maybe once this is done i could just write a novel about die antwoord
could interview jack parow about zef
maybe will ask channel 4 for fifty thousand pounds to go and film a documentary of them
will make a fake cv saying
'i have made lots of documentaries'

feel intensely positive when i think of them during daily life.
the lovely and talented hermione hoby recently wrote an article about die antwoord for the guardian.

going to go and 'write my novel' now. goodbye.

all the other halves all our staircases

2010-08-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

going to repeatedly watch this low quality video of adam gnade

if you are in london you should probably come to this tomorrow

if you are able bodied you should probably be fist fighting with the moon

if you have no gag reflex you should probably be swallowing depleted uranium

if you are a young ornament, vinyl hat, or wto representative then you will probably enjoy this

if you are still awake then various things will show signs of movement

if you say that it has been too long then it has and im sorry

in general, i am

im sorry if i do not reply to comments but i am grateful

thank you for putting money on me in books

if ever you want that money back and i have it then just say

writing about things that have been a long time unturned

in states of sadness and movement

maybe beginning to think it is not possible to save everyone

i would like for one man to appear on the television and speak in ways which will make everyone vomit

not really capable of doing posts anymore

i do not think 'this has happened i will blog about this'

i think 'i am going to write a blog post and i do not know what it will say'

behind with various things

everyone in this jacuzzi is alive

hello we are from earth and we would like to befriend you

2010-08-23T16:57:00.000-07:00

you said, i said
etc etc

From German to English

Waldeinsamkeit

the feeling of being alone in the woods

it is possible to get a lightbulb into your
mouth but not out, for this reason there is no
God.

There is a photograph of her smiling
(tie tied and hair up) then one of her
not (pine needles in her legs, bare)
then one of a man's face (large, looks like
a potato) then twenty five words in bold
(exciting news everyone) then five hundred
more but smaller (a magician looses his
sex appeal when you learn) then
sexy sexy sexy sexy womens

okay, okay

met this sexually attractive, budding young photographer not many days ago. believe that the first time i heard her voice 'irl' it was on the phone and it said 'are you on crack?' because i said 'they will not let anyone out of the station'. what a great everything.

the dazed and confused article issue thing is out.

no news really. everything is hush.

nawh

did 5 questions for 3am

did an interview with ani smith for we who are about to die

reread wind up bird chronicle. murakami blanket.

feel stremely excited about reading richard yates by tao lin you know tao lin right you know him tao lin do you know tao lin etc

have made a pact with myself involving the merchant navy

for heaven's sake
pigeons descend upon him,
about her he says it's like eating tar on toast
with that girl

window war

2010-08-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

oh i havent done a blogpost for a long time
definitely because blogs are dead
which is okay
it would be good to have a large party with people where everyone does a huddle and someone does a speech and you all do that hand thing that hockey teams do and then everyone turns around and deletes their blogs
it would be exciting if the internet was closed for a day
really really bored 'in general'
okay
things that have happened

i was written about in an article in the observer
it was about 'new experimentalism'
it covered me and b s johnson and lydia davis and that mccarthy who isnt cormac
the article was also put on the guardian website
and written about in 3am and on bookslut

pretty much have a new favourite book which is one of hour television by kristina born
seems really strange that it didnt do better
really kind of hurt and i felt in awe and things

the dazed and confused article will come out i dont know when
seems like it will be a large picture of me and a small article
dennis cooper spoke to the lovely female writing the article about me
he said some very nice things
then i spoke to him and felt extremely nervous and couldnt speak so well

on wednesday i have an interview at a 'gourmet pie shop'
sounds really tasty

feel extremely frustrated at my hands
for not writing more
they seem very feeble
i keep telling them
'fucking get me a million pounds'
and they sort of look up
and sigh

saw star fucking hipsters play the other week
before the gig we were in the bar next door
and nico de gaillo was stood right there
and she was extremely extremely attractive
and very small
and i imagined her in a wedding dress and me saying
'you look like a million pounds'
and then her wrinkling her nose
and then me saying
'that's like one and a half million dollars'
and then her smiling
and then her saying
'i am very happy that we are getting married'
and then me saying
'this is the happiest day of my life'
and then later in bed when everyone has gone home
we are quite drunk
and i can say
'time to spend some of that money'

dear dignitas,
i think i am too boring
i think i am a dull person
and it would be best for everyone if you said yes
lots of love
benxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

NO CRARING

2010-07-23T19:24:00.000-07:00

AVE {U U URNE D HTHHE HOILELHOUS OHNW WUILL YOU ACCEPT HUSI WHAT is a huijamanan anywyaayh wher Is cpanslsocik jw(*tuieoeri Is abnc:lgp b+)s_)t the nest fo all them (poahhet eopeuverone jerrup ehver i)yuop*u cani ieaoll efall in lvoeop me with me
please fbjehoihpkhihpfver ytou

oj fuck off buy rbeookks or whatever yodusd ar ehsit i hate whevegrtubn v uywhateever you wna tui uy tius oh fuck offf 3ghrweewq[fhnjk
oj abywone
ih ytooiu
DO NOR BIRUY ANYTHING I WRITE

colombo

2010-07-18T17:01:00.002-07:00

it is one oh one am. i am looking at a tall building through a large window. and the building is lit up. people are moving outside. there are lots of sounds. i am not used to lots of sounds at one oh one am. where i come from everything is quiet all of the time. i am in london. hello i have moved to london. i have moved to london with no money and no job. today was spent doing a photoshoot by a canal for 'dazed and confused'. there was the art director or something and a photographer and a stylist. it seemed really funny to have a stylist. nobody put my penis in their mouth during the entire thing. it seemed totally fucked. what am i even doing. why the fuck am i the only blog full up with fucking chinese proverbs. is it possible to swallow a glass ball containing a fire and to have the fire burn inside of your stomach and warm you from the inside out. in the past i have thought 'if i move to london i will never be on my own'. one of the lights in the building has just gone. some people are talking in the street. shouting. going to go press my face against the glass. okay back. not really sure what it was. someone came into the building. vaguely consider becoming a human ouroboros by chewing my toenails. really really feel like a lamppost. how long could i do this for. like write this blog post i mean. i am spending time in my life writing this blogpost. my life will end eventually. i am spending time in my life writing this blogpost. this blogpost could be the last thing i do. i could walk through to the kitchen and push a frying pan down my throat. the world is large and upsetting. people are inconsistent and strange. it seems like people arent venn diagrams. the people in the building opposite have a large television. i want to go outside and walk to somewhere and pay money for a cup of tea and talk to someone while drinking the cup of tea. and everything will be like the film lost in translation. not sure how i feel about cities. what are all these sounds. what is happening. who are these people. why are they so busy. this blogpost could literally go on forever. might just type until i pass out. might build a chandelier out of cutlery. no. it isnt my cutlery. there are very many people in london and right now none of them are speaking with me. fuck everything else. what is work. what is neckjob. what the fuck is huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhu. why cant people walk everywhere enter say speak. this is- i am going to go and make tea maybe. make tea and write. should i do that. nothing matters. i should write. i should write or else i will be here forever staring at a building with some of the lights on with a television showing explosions with people who arent me trying to make each other feel less lonely. it just seems as though there is no such thing as the loud crush felt when a sky falls. is this a long blogpost. no it isnt. if you have read this then you are a human being and you will eventually die and you have spent some of your alive time reading this. thanks. that is very kind of you. i hope you always have enough tshirts for you and your scarecrow. i still might join the merchant navy. indecision is a hymn sung by renaissance homosexuals without the ability to taste sweet things. also you own a liver but you are not proud. a trophy is a plate that someone has spat on. okay. well. going to go and do something other that this slutting piece of shit. you motherfuckers. this is fucking bent. you fucking queers. i am going to become an airbag. i am going to save david camerons life and later urinate into his coffee mug. i am going to put his shoes on my hands and then hit him with them. i am going to wipe my penis against the collar of all of his shirts before he puts them on. i am going to fall passionately in love with his wife and have sex with her until she cant breathe and is dead. it seems like this moment has lasted for almost ever. the time is one twenty four now. look at all that time. the internet just crashed and half of this post was lost. maybe 1000-2000 words. but that's okay. because. please be heaven, hollow, tall x

radiators

2010-07-07T08:12:00.001-07:00

i have not written a blog post for a while maybe. this weekend i went to london. met a number of internet people 'in real life' for the first time. everyone was very nice and super. we went to a party on a roof with a man who kept saying 'do you want a sausage'. i think ani smith has some pictures of me 'staring with awe' into her fridge. would feel stupid typing things in detail. just very much felt positive about everyone etc etc.

you can preorder The Kasahara School of Nihilism on Amazon now if you want.

it is also present on goodreads, twice. thankyou to whoever put it up. grateful. it is here and it is also here.

you can also preorder it from fugue state here.

what a lot of serious things.

i think i like my dog because she cannot tell when i have hurt other people.

i think i like my hands because they seem to stay roughly the same no matter what happens.

someone on this website where people post each other books they dont want anymore has asked for a copy of fences. if anyone has a copy of fences and thinks 'oh this is pretty shitty' then i encourage to send it to the person. i think that the person pays the postage costs.

not going to school and do not have a job. if anyone would like to employ me then i would like to say yes. my email address is brooksben@hotmail.co.uk. i can procrastinate, draw pictures of wrinkled eyes, roll cigarettes, throw things, read, do basic arithmetic, and sleep. if this sounds like what you are looking for then please 'get in touch'.

feel like this is maybe the most boring blog post i have ever written.

hello

orange

2010-06-30T01:20:00.000-07:00

last night had a dream with strawburry17 in it. throughout the dream she was small and had her front teeth smashed in. she laughed sometimes. i kept saying to people 'lets go and see strawburry17 again' and then people would be like 'no, lets go to the toilet and have drugs'. when we went to the toilet to have drugs there was a sort of toilet guard who engaged us in conversation about cathedrals. it ended with strawburry17, watching her perform in a place that looked like this irish bar in germany. when i woke up i went back to sleep to see her some more. eventually i had to get up because i have an exam soon.

a house is just a house even if you take it apart even if you throw it in a river even if it is small enough to swallow and excrete.

sort of want to go up to the reception desk in an office and shout at the receptionist 'YOU DID THIS, YOU BROKE US' and then the whole office will think she is 'the one with the violent and very young boyfriend' and none of them will like her ever again and i will have ruined a life which is pretty good going.

what would happen if you were the first person a blind girl saw after she could see again because of pioneering eye surgery? for a second you could probably tell her that everyone on earth looked exactly the same as you.

would we act differently if the soundtrack to lord of the rings was constantly playing everywhere?

feel like i want to watch jeremy kyle and drink tea. that is lucky because it is exactly what i am doing.

going to pour boiling water over my head and blame it on the sky.

the women on this programme have awful voices. they both gave the man heroin money and they almost had a threesome with him.

good morning.

please find the party below

2010-06-26T06:31:00.001-07:00

Today is partyday. This is the part where you have just arrived and arent drunk yet and dont want to speak to anyone. You can go and preorder The Kasahara School of Nihilism here right now if you like. And you will probably get it in a few weeks or less or more. It was written before Island. Does that mean anything no. See the earlier post for crispin best's critical appraisal of the book.

Now you have had some beers/vodka/tequila/drugs and you are starting to mingle. Everyone here is kind of stupid but you are thinking that if you just get really drunk that wont matter. Thanks to James Chapman I now have a wikipedia, go and hang out with it and add funny jokes there. I am fully prepared for people to fuck with it because that seems to happen lots.

Next you have started talking to an awful girl and nodding your head when she says words and thinking 'i want to see your vagina and more'. Dennis Cooper has listed An Island of Fifty as one of the early candidates for best of 2010. Somehow it managed to jump in with shit like josh cohen's witz and justin taylor's everything here and chris higgs' marvin mooney. Dennis Cooper is really nice. He is like an uncle who every now and again sends you envelopes full of money. I have never had a relative like that but I have heard about them.

The awful girl is leading you into a bedroom! She keeps saying things like 'i am a waterfall' and you are drunk enough to reply 'i would like to swim in you'. Im sure there was some other news but I have forgotten it all because I am having such a great time at this party.

You play great music to 'set the mood' before you get sexing.

now its the morning
woah what have you done
you silly person
quick
leave before she wakes up
dribble on her face if you want
to make yourself feel better

really want to go to texas
no future!

trumpkin, you're a brick

2010-06-15T03:04:00.000-07:00

if ever anyone agrees to publish any of my books ever again then i am going to point my finger at their eye and go 'okay, but i want a fucking wikipedia' and then i am going to say 'and a house' and then i am going to look away and say 'and a blanket' and then i am going to put my face in my hands and say 'and you'.

seems like it would be fun to read submissions for something/somewhere. seems like lots of people get to do it. if anyone wants me to aggressively turn away every piece of writing with the word 'transgender' in it for them then please ask. i will be reliable and great. i will reply to people with personal rejections which say 'please forward a picture of your rack and then i'll decide'. but that is a lie because i dont really like 'racks'. only vaginas. and white bread with lots of butter on it.

currently 4/7ths of the way through writing something. when it is done i will redraft sadie.

have an english exam in two hours.

does anyone want to email me and pretend like we have been married for two years and are still happy/willing to try new things 'sexually'? like for example getting a black male into our bedroom and teasing him with eels.

writing this makes me feel like 'terry pratchett's camp son'.

so far this is the piece of writing i have done most research for. this is because normally i do 'zero research'. this is because i am not a 'real writer'. but that is okay because the whole world is here to play.

when this english exam is done will someone buy this book off me. it is two goldsmith plays. the book is from maybe the 1940s or 50s. there are pictures in the book. and what pictures.

carah naseem typed out a part of island of fifty because she is a great bookcase. you can go and read it here.

really i just posted this so i dont have to go and revise. now i am going to eat noodles.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO FEEL GREAT

When the breast of the hills meets the colour of the sea

2010-06-10T08:05:00.000-07:00

In 2013 ML Press will release my fourth novel 'Upward Coast & Sadie'. I feel excited for this though it is quite far away. The time will allow me to heavily revise and add to the book. I feel probably better about than other things I have written. Think if possible the book might be released earlier but we will see. We will see.

*update* It now looks like the book will in fact be released in 2012, before the world ends. however in order to be able to do this ML Press is going to need to rack up subscribers during 2011 and 2012 so I encourage you to go over and do so. A lifetime subscription is only $250 which I can imagine being well worth getting now as the press continues to grow. You are all good people in possession of superb faces. *update*

You can now buy An Island of Fifty from Powells if you like.

Working on something else also. Should be revising. Philosophy exam at 9.15 tomorrow morning.

'Mixed feelings' about the future.

The dog is ill and smells like holocaust. She vomited on the carpet today. I sprayed kitchen cleaner on it and panicked. She wandered out by the fish pond because she was embarrassed and sorry.

Seems like existence is composed of 'this house' and 'everything else'. And I know very little about 'everything else' but rather a lot about 'this house'. In the day, when I should be revising, I have taken to walking circles round the living room then going to stand in corners and push my face into them so my cheeks get squashed and then smacking my hands against the wall thinking 'I wonder what the neighbours think this sound is'. I know that they will hear it because I often hear them having sex. Sometimes I can hear them having sex in the morning when I am in the conservatory having a cigarette.

My sister is on the phone. She just said into the phone 'gammon, cheese, and ketchup sandwich' then laughed. She is saying the names of other foods now. I wonder who is on the other end of the phone. They must be easily amused/gormless.

I do not know how I will feel at that bit where my body stops growing and starts decaying.

Dear Everyone,
Thankyou for reading this blog and buying my books sometimes when you are not broke because your car is dead or you have to pay for a pets funeral. I feel extremely flattered that people think I am worth their time. All of the people alive right now are the best people ever.
Love Ben

My sister is still on the phone. She is on the phone and making tea at the same time. This is fucking amazing. She just said into the phone 'its kind of nice to have some drama'.

Think The Kasahara School of Nihilism has been delayed slightly while we get some typos fixed. FSP are going to do pre-orders for it for a little bit. Not yet. But soon. So soon. The typos were pointed out by Ana Carrete who is attractive and great. She sent me a parcel containing nearly inedible mexican sweets, a spanish card game and a headband. Ana was told 'you cannot send food in the post' but on the declaration form she still wrote 'lollies, card game, headband' because she is defiant. It is interesting that Ana found the typos even though english is not her first language.

For the americans and also young anti-television british people, this seemed like 'the best thing that has been on britains got talent' although when people spoke about it they were quite demeaning.

Think that is it for today. Thankyou.

please buy my arms and legs

2010-06-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

So my copies of island came and they look wonderful and you should go and buy it now please. Here is the cover and the back cover.

Here are the spines of three copies. The book looks thick. This is funny.

Here is a picture of me that I took for ana carrete when we were both sat at our computers. I have used it as a device to break up the book pictures.

Here is a picture of the book with bookmarks either side of it. On one side of the bookmark are pictures of me and Sasha's books and on the other side is molly's book and the anthology cover. There are also bookmarks with a story by Ken Sparling on one side and a story by Neila Mezynski on the other side.

Here is a picture of inside the book. It is of a part near the end.

Reading this has convinced you to buy the book. You can go and buy the book here.

My mum said about the book 'i liked the other one better'.
My mum is highly unreliable. Maybe that has convinced you to buy the book.

If you buy the book between now and thursday and then you email me saying 'i bought the book' then i will go on gmail and have cybersex with you. Maybe that has convinced you to buy the book.

To further convince you here is a great piece of news from ML Press:

FREE shipping this week only on all Mud Luscious Press subscription packages:

$20 for Ben Brooks' AN ISLAND OF FIFTY & Sasha Fletcher's WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED
$30 for those two + Molly Gaudry's WE TAKE ME APART
$40 for those three + [ FIRST YEAR ] an mlp anthology

We published these books because they are phenomenal & their writers are tremendous.

In other news I will have some news in a couple of days probably.

You are all superb people.
Thankyou.

safety and other

2010-05-31T09:38:00.000-07:00

i am convinced now that if you smother all of the birds i will be happy. feel barely anywhere. looking out of the conservatory at the dog looking at the fence. the dog looks in awe. the dog is looking at the birds. next door they are hammering. the dog is looking about to find the source of the hammering. i cant see the dog now. i anticipate that the dog will come in here and make me touch her head and try to convince me to touch her belly.

today i am going to fix the bits of the novel. but i dont have the energy to redraft it full yet. it is called UPWARD COAST & SADIE. will trade it for a shack if the shack is not going to be bulldozed.

have thought 'long and hard' about deleting this blog and not writing anymore. seems like that would end in me at the bottom of a well laughing.

thinking how naphyrone seems awful and nrg-2 is probably only 5-IAI and both are probably not great substitutes for anything.

the dog came in. she is looking at me. like right in the eyes. she is staring. the skin around her legs is all bunched up in fat wrinkles. i am going to take a picture of both of us 'right now' and add it to this post.

i can only hope that this eloquent and moving blog post has convinced you to pre-order an island of fifty .

for some reason here is a short excerpt from The Kasahara School of Nihilism which i guess will be out soon.

The Kasahara School of Nihilism'A bear walks through the gulf, staring at the valley slopes with wondrous sadness. His arms outstretched, he begins to run as fast as feeling will allow him. The valley slopes slide inwards. Dry dirt crumbles under the grey sun and trips his stumbling feet while he clutches at ethereal boughs in the air before him. He starts to notice that there is no ground and that he is not there at all.

Nobu and Hoshi are separate.'

Probably that has convinced you not to buy anything with the name 'Ben Brooks' on it.

I encourage you to send your attractive daughter to my house so that I can put my fingers on her bum. On but not in. I am maturing.

School is over now. The last day of school was weird I guess. A band of friends played in the last assembly. I am going to perhaps unwisely post a video. John reads this sometimes I think. John is the pretty one on the right who wanders about a lot. Hello John. The video looks funny/lame when people stand up. It eventually seems to turn into the partyboy dance. Everyone is alive right now.

This concludes our blog post in which nothing happens. Thankyou for not applauding.

Morning

2010-05-26T04:10:00.000-07:00

Thanks to people that replied to the post below. Your books will be sent soon I encourage you to write about the experience of trying to slip them onto bookshelves. If anyone experiences any trouble then I encourage them to commit arson.

And I encourage you all to eat your pets.

Working on something at the moment which I guess would put me into one of the lists in light boxes.

Light boxes release day yesterday.

I will write something about lb soon.

I like in Evelyn Waugh's vile bodies the angels with their wings in cases. Think it's there anyway.

Here is yesterdays headline from my city paper:
'Doped-up Teens' 100mph Joyride'

I think what that means that everyone is starting to get bored and restless.

Cant wait to get out of here.

Literally, nothing.

And if I ever tried to jump a bonfire again then I would purposely trip myself.

Daily s-Press wrote about An Island of Fifty yesterday. I encourage you to pre-order it.

This feels like waiting for a deer without a head in the royal forest of a king with hooks for hands.

-He stowed a brick in his underwear so that when they caged him he could leave.-

'Huge' Promotional Campaign For Third Book

2010-05-17T11:32:00.000-07:00

Pretty soon my third book 'The Kasahara School of Nihilism' will come out on Fugue State Press. It will look like that picture above. Inside of it there are illustrations that look like this.The illustrations were done by Dan. If you want him to do illustrations for your book or something then email him at dnvenn@googlemail.com and he will probably try his best to help you so long as you are not an irritating bitch.

Here are things Crispin Best has said about the book:
-'i think it is a great thing'
-'i enjoyed it'
-'i felt good and optimistic for you'
-'i do probably prefer this to fences'
-'i felt like it was an accumulation of images'
-'language was used strongly'

here is a summary of the book by Crispin Best:
"if someone said 'what is it about?' i would say 'it's about a school burning down'

but it doesn't matter if that's not what it is about

that's what i liked and took from it

the school burning

chizuko sato

the bear

the two women (very excellent)

yamagato sensei"

LARGE SCALE PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGN
Pretty much I am not good at promoting things. But I came up with an idea for this one and ran it past james and he said 'do it'. So it will be done. Although how many people choose to participate will be unpredictable. Here is how it will work:

1. You will sign up to the large scale promotional campaign by emailing your address and the name of a local bookshop which you will need for later to brooksben@hotmail.co.uk
2. When the book has been printed (pretty soon) I will send you a copy of the book.
3. You will read the book hopefully.
4. After you have finished reading the book you will put it onto the shelf at your local bookshop. Inside the book will be written:

Dear Happy Shopper,
Please take this book home with you
You do not have to pay for it because it is not really supposed to be here
If someone tries to arrest you then please email me and I will come to get you out of jail. You can send the email to kasaharabail@gmail.com
I hope you enjoy the book,
have a great life
Ben.

5. You will go on to eat meals, go on dates, do sex and general live.
6. I will gradually become more and more wealthy until I become so wealthy from this scheme of giving away free books that I stop the scheme of giving away free books.

I hope people feel positive things about this. It will make me very happy if you participate.

Possibility Of Nakedness
Also please pre-order An Island of Fifty if you havent. Sasha Fletcher has already sold out his first print run through pre-orders and I think I am far behind. Sasha got paid to get drunk when he sold out his print run. Because he sold out his first print run a second print run is being done. I would like if this happened to An Island of Fifty but also am aware that it may not. But please try mates. I feel an intense sense of competition except it isnt really competition because I am going to lose. Pre order Pre order Pre order. If the print run is sold out in 1 week then I will send a totally naked picture of myself to 'Other' except the penis will sort of be blurred out. I feel like the chances of that happening are maybe 2% so probably I will not need to get naked.

I hope everyone is well.

there is a female in my bed who will not be quiet

2010-05-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

oh jesus christ

i am thinking about that guy who killed his wife in his sleep

i am thinking 'maybe i could pretend that happened'

i am looking around and i can see a deodorant can

and a mug

and a beer bottle

and a hardback book

and a guitar

and i am trying to decided which will kill you fastest

because everything that comes out of your mouth

should not ever come out of anywhere

because actually i want to know zero things about you

because actually you are not an interesting female

you have not done good things

you do not think well

you are not in possession of gifts

and it is not exciting that you moved some jeans at work today

or gave your friend a discount

or totally got checked out by an old asian guy

i literally just want to sleep

maybe once i finish these novels they will let me join a movement

maybe this will end badly

maybe the sky is plastic and the trees are shit

it is getting harder to find ledges

if you were a church then i would be screaming that the children were gone

and the stone is glass and hailstones run

down our legs

to lodge in your knees

to drive men through the way

that when i write YOU in a poem or a novel or here

actually i am speaking about no-one anymore

and it has been that way for a while

and i cant decide

Udder

2010-05-10T02:54:00.000-07:00

Crispin and Socrates have started a snazzy new internet magazine called 'Other'. Go to it here. Become part of it. Submit your lazy deaths. Wake up and watch. Write.

Lord knows why ropes tangle.

Or why people climb into ovens and sometimes never climb back out.

It is the middle of the year but already things are dead. I guess there is a drug that has died and with it the parties full of people gurning and being in love. Sitting up till 5am talking shit about how great everything is or was or will be. Possibly it is a good thing that the year of that is over. But it was pretty okay.

Currently I am finishing off a novel. After the novel I will finish off this collection of short stories. That novel and that collection and Fences are all on the same thing. They are all the same thing. Except one is abstract and one is less abstract and one is less abstract again. For the sake of ease I may call it The Trilogy of Vagina Far Away.

We have had our elections. We are idiots. I am an idiot. I panicked with laughter and voted 'Monster Raving Loony Party'. Hung parliament. Maybe the only good that will come of this is electoral reform. Maybe we will AV Plus or something else sweet. But also we wont cope with minority govt or a coalition for very long. Nobody knows. On television David Mitchell said 'we are essentially ungoverned and falling into chaos'. Henning Wehn participated in the ch4 election coverage. He is a great german guy.

I am listening to the new Laura Marling album. I am thinking 'nice one Laura'. I am thinking 'maybe I can go to her wedding somehow when she marries Marcus mumford'.

I have a confession to make but I have to send a telegram to mexico before I can make it.

This is not sustainable.

Devendra B is a pretty attractive man.

Christopher Mansfield is a pretty attractive man.

I have watched too many episodes of sex in the city to be heterosexual anyway.

Ranking of females in sex in the city:
1. Carrie
2. Charlotte
3. Samantha
4. Miranda

Miranda is absolutely shit.

Ranking of males in sex in the city:
1. Steve
2. Harry
3. Smith
4. Aleksander
5. Trey
6. Stanford

Yesterday I watched the last episode of sex in the city again.

Here is a very good song by some very good guys.

If anyone will let me live in their castle/villa/stately home in about a month that would be sweet. I promise to repeatedly touch the dog and make it feel good and also to flush the toilet and also to not spit on the carpet.

Okay hope you are all 10/10.

nobody invited you here i dont think

2010-05-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

if you tell me that your hands are cold
I will warm them up and swap naked pictures with you
if my hands are cold they’re in your mouth

I’m picking up change from the ground
just to hurt you because my hands are still cold
I’m being serious
I want to tell you these things but instead I say
hello I wrote things and they’re not about you so they’re shit
you seem very much younger than yesterday or something

in my room you roll your hair all around your face
it looks like a turban but I can’t see your eyes and I hide
my hands inside your hair
you look around and tell me you need bigger breasts
you say “lick me” softly so i cross my arms and uncross them
cross and uncross them again and keep doing this until i make up my mind

that’s not normal

An Island of Fifty

2010-05-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

So pretty soon An Island of Fifty will be coming out. That there is the cover, designed by Steven Seighman. I am excited for holding this book eventually. I cant imagine holding it really.
Here are blurbs:

'AN ISLAND OF FIFTY is a new literary bomb, resulting in the shrapnel of gold, ships, ocean, chandeliers, dreams, blood, & flame. Old & stale literature won't know what just hit. This is something new masking itself in the old & I'm so so so excited

Shane Jones, author of LIGHT BOXES'

'Ben Brooks is popping quarks with AN ISLAND OF FIFTY, spilling new flavors

of literature on the swampy bookstacks of old.  Call it new political, new
ecological, new sociological, new poetic activism, or even new imaginary
creationism.  This book builds up to tear down and tears down to build up.
Desire as melancholia, progress as slippage, and wanting for wanting’s
sake.  The floodgates crumble.  I relish the shape of this new wordspace,
the play of noise and whisper, the unfamiliar voices, and the ache of
nihilism paradoxically juxtaposed with the gleam of hopeful invention.

—Christopher Higgs, author of The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney'

I think that both Shane and Chris are highly trustworthy people.
You can preorder the book here.
If you do then I will be your friend.

*

I am giving up certain things now.

*

In the future I would like to lead someone into my room and say
'this is where the magic happens'

*

I was a finalist in Sean Lovelace's htmlgiant wink wink contest.

*

Just watched doctor who. Amelia Pond is 'extremely fit'.

*

Nobody else is in the house.
Nobody else will be in the house for a while.

*

I watched the whole of series 2 of peep show again today.

*

Fiction not psychostimulants.

*

Meth lab castle.

*

What do you call a what do you call a what

*

Last night I heard these things said repeatedly:
'art is so subjective'
'words mean nothing'
'what is freedom?'

*

People are geniuses it turns out!

*

Okay goodbye.

Political Round-Up

2010-04-21T12:34:00.000-07:00

Gordon Brown is our primeminister. Nobody ever voted for him to be primeminister. People voted for Tony Blair but then he got embarrassed and went away. Not many people like him. He is not very good looking. 'Somehow' he got blamed for 'the worldwide recession' just because he was chancellor for a bit one time.

He is boring. When the volcano exploded and people were stuck 'on the continent' he sent two navy ships to fetch some people and lots of people were like 'you twat' because he was doing it to get votes. As a joke some people called him 'Admiral Brown'. Pretty much for a while he was like 'i am never going to win anything ever again'.

David Cameron is the conservative hat. For a while he was like 'I am going to win' and some people were like 'I like that Cameron guy'. Pretty much everyone hates him again now because he is shit. He is creepy and aloof.

He has tried repeatedly to look like a normal human being. The only way he could 'win back' support would be if this poster said 'my dad used to wank off every night'.

There was a debate on ITV as part of the campaigns. It was on prime time. Nick Clegg is the Liberal Democrat smile. Turns out nobody knew he existed which is why he wasnt do very well in the polls. Suddenly he is 'more popular than churchill' and 'the british obama'. I think we have had a labour or conservative government for 100-150 years????????? who knows???????????

Fuck it. We are saved. Dave is angry at Nick because he thinks there will be a hung parliament now and Nick will side with Gord because Gord brown nosed him. Gord is happy about it.

Today is the Queen's Birthday. Happy bday lizzy.

one hundred one hundred five

2010-04-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

we just had sex and it was fun

but now im so hungry

there is a dancing kitten in my stomach

can we go downstairs and put our heads in the fridge

or will your dad wake up

he used to kill people in the army

somehow he doesnt think about it forever

Fourteen

2010-04-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

lately my heart has been beating quicker

when i am in the shower it hurts

i look everywhere

i think 'please nobody see this'

when it happens i know what it means

it means

get lined paper

and write a thousand girls names

and masturbate into a sock

or there is a way of functioning

where you make her clothes an illusion

where you put your saliva into her coffee while shes peeing

because probably she will never watch your ceiling from your pillow

As Yet Untouched By Priests

2010-04-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

Seems like i am not good enough to say i will do something then actually do it. the people posts thing. the people will continue in themselves. feel funny today. la cocaina no es buena para su salud. isnt this thrilling. a cathedral of flies. just found out strawburry17 works as a receptionist for a construction company. feel mild shock. just watched a ten minute strawburry17 blogtv. have an exam at 11.00am tomorrow. probably it would have been best to look at things related to that instead. perhaps. i am going to give up cigarettes and atheism soon. hey does someone want to play a ball game. in bed last night i kept screaming at random and she kept saying 'you're weird' which is fine. tweed. i am going to use this space to revise now. sorry, i was midway through a study. the participant and the confederate were then sat opposite each other with the participant at the computer. the confederate was asked to read aloud a list of words and the role of the participant was to type them into the computer using the fucking keyboard. after 3 minutes the two were told that they were benders and also that they had to swap roles. before testing began the participant and the confederate kissed but also were told not to touch the alt key as it would cause the program to crash and data to be lost. confederates altered the speed of reading the letter to the participant depending on which condition they had been allocated. after 60 seconds into testing the computer crashed and the experimenter accused the participant of hitting the alt key. to manipulate false incriminating evidence the confederate was asked whether they had seen the participant press the alt key. this was varied across the conditions. that was actually quite useful. good. will sleep at 10 and wake at 5 maybe. received 14 responses to strawburry17 but will post none of them because that was a lie. humbugs. the humbugs would be a good name for an electro band or a television programme about a group of naughty children. i thought today that most of the things which make me happy are american. for example strawburry17, sex in the city, the daily show and james chapman. for this reason i will move to america. earlier i thought 'it would be fun to type thoughts about everyone that follows this blog' and then i thought 'no that would be just as dull and dead as everything else that appears on here'. okay i hope people are ripe and christian.