Searching Other Guys' Luggages At The Airport

Hello and hi to whoever reads this. Today I started searching a stranger's bag at the airport by mistake and he...but wait let's take things from the scratch.

No matter how stupid this may sound sometimes I feel like I’ll run out of things to say. Like I won’t be able to write down a simple even honest sentence ever again and I’ll start sucking at what I think I suck less. A knight will come while I’m asleep tie me up and wake me up just to make me watch him having sex with an ugly witch on the next bed. Then chop my head off, take it home and use it as a cocktail pitcher.

Well, when in a situation like this I’m often in the dilemma of either writing down the last thing I have in mind with the hope that this move will trigger more and more thought, or save it cause that’s the last crappy thing I have and will ever think that will be worth of mentioning.

Anyway, a flight for me usually gets weird, awkward and goofy. Either there’s a kid crying or screaming right behind me, or I’m getting to sit on the aisle seat and every time the flight attendants pass me by with their cart, they hit my knee and wake me up like they do it on purpose. OR I fall asleep and wake up every two minutes checking if I drooled and made a fool of myself. BUT not this time.

This time the less predictable happened. No, I didn’t get blown in the toilettes or asked to fly the airplane after it was high-jacked by terrorists and John McClane called me on the radio to land it safely as his wife was in there.

I met a guy who I’d met before during a tram ride in Manchester 7 or 8 months ago. Now, it’s alright for you to think “why the hell you’d strike up conversations on the tram with strangers you weirdo?” and it’s alright for me to answer of course “because that’s what people do.”

I can’t spell the guy's name but he’s Finish. I get to sit next to him as there’s nowhere else for me to sit. I look at him and say “I think we’ve met before”. Hell I was on the aisle seat again, so I thought if I could get to talk with the guy I wouldn’t have a problem waking up every 10 minutes by flight attendants hitting me with their stupid carts.

He used to be in a “fast intelligent rock and roll slash punk band”. He tells me how he formed his first band when he was 12 and then got a record deal when he was 15 playing hardcore punk. He claims it was not that hard to get signed, as hard core punk was on the up back then and there weren’t many hardcore/ punk bands in Finland. “You haven’t listened to faster band than us” that’s what he claims him and his friends used to say. He also says that they managed to get a record deal cause they played like many California hardcore bands. “Like circle-jerks, black flag, you know that kind of stuff.”

The flight attendant interrupts our conversation asking if we’d like anything to drink or eat. I get a blueberry muffin and pretzels. He gets milk and tea and then he continues with his story.

Apparently he got big headed by signing at a young age and it didn’t work out. He keeps telling me stories about touring and sleeping on friends’ floors. Friends and bandmates of his not taking things seriously and just drinking all the time to the extent they weren’t “awake if they didn’t have a drink”. All that by scratching his goatee- which was long- and while I had finished my pretzels.

I didn’t have to talk. The more silent I was the more I think he felt obliged to fill that silence and he kept on talking. He’s a fast talker. With a bit of a stammer.And a weird laugh- he laughs in a high pitched voice while looking at you and then gets completely serious and stares blankly in front of him- But all in all, he’s a nice guy.

At one point I run out of questions and the conversation starts getting boring. I take out one of the magazines I’d bought – in which I read an article about sex addiction and a woman who ruined 2 marriages, cheated on both her ex-husbands repeatedly with her coworkers and had more one night stands that she can remember- and I offer him a magazine from my bag. He says he’s alright and that he has this ability to switch off his mind when he’s bored. 5 minutes later I see him picking up a crappy airline magazine. 2 minutes after that I can see his hand falling slowly. I look at him and he’s falling asleep. He struggles to stay awake. But he gives in and starts snoring.

We arrive in Manchester and I’m waiting for my suitcase when I see one which looked JUST like mine. It’s all wet like all the others but something doesn’t seem right. So, I kneel down and open it. In the top I find two shirts. I hadn’t packed any shirts. I try to find a way to open the main part of the suitcase when a guy probably 19 years old walks over and says “excuse me sir…I think that’s my bag” while my head was stuck in the main space of his bag.

I look up and then at the belt and see my bag. I stand up and say “yeap you’re right” and run and grab my bag. I bet he thought I was just waiting there to pick any bag I found unattended cause I open mine too to make sure that it’s mine.

Well I lied back up when I said nothing awkward or weird happened this time. But it wasn’t that bad.

As you can see, I picked the first option. I just arrived in Preston and settled in in my hotel room. They’re happy that Christmas is around the corner and they show it by playing “Jingle Bells” and other Christmas songs through the halls’ speakers. They even have Christmassy music in the elevator. But, despite the great Christmas spirit they have no wifi. “It’s down since yesterday. We were expecting the technician to come fix it today but he didn’t show up” said the semi-fat receptionist. But turned out she had absolutely no idea what she was talking about because the internet’s working just fine. My phone’s dead. My room’s phone isn’t working as well and they didn’t give me my gravy at KFC. Kernel I've been loyal but your troops betrayed me.

To top that there’s nothing worth watching on the 100+ something channels on the T.V here.

But I have my Christmassy tunes from down the hall, my cigarettes and my laptop. Oh wait no I don’t have my laptop cause I gave it for repair and the guy fucked it up even more so now I have my brother’s laptop. So I have my Christmassy tunes spreading the joy from down the hall and my cigarettes.

Till the next time keep goofing it up and bababooee

Meat Pies, Sandwiches And Some Panties In The Weirdest Of Twists

Dear diary and bored to the bone readers,

This entry is about guitars and averagionality, sandwiches and cheese pies, 7 year old notes, thoughts of giving up and mental slaps.

Our performance in last night's gig was below average. Mistakes were made, barely anyone showed up and all we managed was to sweat, embrace an embarrassment, spend 21 euros at the bar for 3 double southern comforts and celebrate after wards with sandwiches, beers and cheese-pies.

The owner of the bar was a major dick. If he had a whip I bet he'd use it to make us play. It was 11:30 or so and everyone was outside having the last sips from their beers. I was on stage making the last preparations when he said “alright start playing already”. I look around me and I was all alone. I look up and say, “play? I'm the only one here, everyone's outside...you want me to play alone?” He says, “yeah play already!”. So I just strum my guitar up and down and say “there you go I just played...”.

He starts yelling at my friend who was at the bar saying that he's going to cancel the gig if we don't start playing and he won't take no irony from a guy who's half his age. All his panties were in a twist at that point. I put my guitar down and go outside to tell the 10 or so people to finish their beers and come in cause the owner is going crazy, when the door man says “don't bother the gig might get cancelled.” I laugh a little and walk back in.

We get on stage and start playing. There are 4 or 5 people in the bar apart from us. During the second song the rest of the people walk in. Now we count around 15 or 20 people. Hip hip hooray. Our first three songs come out alright. No mistakes but still not perfect for us. During the third song my guitar goes off. We continue playing. We finish the song and I change the cable. The guitar goes off again and I disconnect my delay pedal completely.

We start playing the next song in the list. “Atrophy”. I start playing it a tone higher. I get pissed off and anxious as it sounds crap and in all that confusion I try to find out what's wrong. Finally I realize I'm being a major moron and I correct it at the first chorus. Then we play some covers. “Gin and Juice”, “Anarchy Camp”, “Backyard” with “Heat of the moment” as an intro. Mistakes keep happening, like playing the songs a little bit faster than we should. I'm still let down and pissed off. We finish our set.

A guy shouts “play one more song!” My friend says, “that's all we had...”. The guy says “play Anarchy Camp again!” My friend says “sorry but we can't cause we played it terribly anyway...” Then the guy says “PLAY GIN AND JUICE!” The rest of the band have started packing their stuff on stage and I just stand there confused not knowing what we're going to do. The guy looks at me and says “play the beginning of GIN AND JUICE!” I play the beginning of that song and remind everyone that we might suck but we sweat and we did it for them. Some how that joke seems to get some approval.

We get off the stage, pack our stuff and I go to the bar. I start thinking that maybe we should just call it quits. That was a hard slap on the face and maybe this isn't for us. A friend of ours from another band comes and comforts me by saying “you played alright, but shit happen, don't worry about it, I know you can play way better”. That felt nice but only for a couple of seconds, but much appreciated all the same. Never thought that nice guys like him existed. Meh, you learn something new every day.

The other band finishes playing and we head off. The clock shows 2:30 am and everyone's heading home. Me, my best friend and another friend of ours talk about getting something to eat and then head to a bar. We sit at a sandwich place and start eating and talking. At this point I start over thinking of how much we sucked and sympathy and excuses do nothing but make things worse. “maybe we should just call it quits”

I eat one sandwich, one cheese pie, a slice of pizza and ham-cheese and bacon pie. My friend eats a cheese pie, a meat pie and a sausage roll. The other guy eats a cheese pie. The clock by now shows quarter to four and we decide to head off to a bar.

We get in the car and start driving. We drive down a road where prostitutes hang out. One of them was BEAUTIFUL so me and the other friend of mine make my best friend drive down that road once more to check her out before we go to that bar we were planning to go. He moans and whines but we manage to convince him. Her face was beautiful. She didn't look worn out or tired or like a junky like some of the street prostitutes. If she was standing alone dressed less slutty she could easily be mistaken that she was waiting for someone to pick her up. But she was doing that already, but with the only difference she was waiting for anyone to pick her up.

Anyway, we drive to that bar. We get in. It was crap. We leave. We go at our friend's cafe place which he had to open it at 6 am. At this point the clock shows 4:15. We're all relatively tipsy and tired. We say the stupidest of jokes and do the stupidest of things that only a tipsy guy with no sleep would laugh with. Once again I keep thinking that maybe we should quit.

At that point I think, “fuck it. We shouldn't quit. We should try harder and yeah shit do happen. Maybe that's all we needed to wake us up and start taking things seriously.” This mental slap made everything look better this morning. I was looking at notes and lyrics written 7 years ago and they sucked hard in comparison with the notes and lyrics I have now but I kept doing this cause most of all, as much as cliché as this sounds, I do this for me. It makes me happy, plus it's one of the things that I suck less at and these are the things that everyone should hold on to and keep honing.

We're not going to become millionaires, we may never fill a bar/club, but at least it makes me happy and it makes me smile. Plus another friend of mine today told me that whilst on the bus going through his ipod he wished he had some of our music on it after being at our last night's gig and he didn't even know how much I thought we sucked cause he had to leave to catch the last bus at 12:15 a song before we finish. I want to believe he was honest and if our music makes some people smile and dance then that's all I want.

Moral of this story, is apart from, you have to find what you suck less at and keep honing it and never quit whatever gives you happiness, also, sandwiches and cheese pies and ham-bacon and cheese pies after beers and southern comfort is one of the best pleasures in life.

I love you all the same, till the next time, bababooee and always wear condoms...no matter what you do.

P.S: Can you pay a prostitute for a 15 seconds hug without fucking her? Or is there an unwritten rule that says that that's wrong? Meh...if any of you alpha males out there tries it or has tried it and know, get back to me.