I had never been to a strip club before. I almost hope I will never go to one again.

It took me a while to figure out why. I would by lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the evening. I did not find the club seedy or disrespectful to women – from what I saw, it wasn’t. The twenty pound notes I found in the nooks of my bank account were delighted to find a new home in the purses of young enterprising ladies. I was not put off by feelings of discomfort because those feelings disappeared within minutes. Neither did it make me feel deviant – and if it had I would have considered it a good thing.

The reason, I think, is that my memory of the evening at the strip club is one of weirdness. I like that memory. And I don’t want to dilute it.

I – and the rest of the stag herd – went to a classy, upmarket club. The same women in a different building, with different furnishings and lighting, would not have made for the same experience. The mood felt right. The price even made the club seem more respectable.

At the entrance we were greeted by two bouncers. They made us feel welcome and they made the club feel professional. After a quick introduction we were lead down a set of stairs into a small foyer. Our guide stopped there, turned to us and enlightened us of the rules, the prices, the location of the restroom and of the cash machines. Then he turned again and lead us through the entrance of the lair, past the bar, past the pole, past private entranceways until we came to our table. Our waitress arrived as we did and asked for our drinks order. Three buckets of beer in ice was a relatively cheap option for the group.

We were given a few moments to settle. A dancer was already on stage, bending into her feline sway. My friend soon remarked that he had sat in the wrong place, before noticing that the seats had wheels. He span to face the stage.

I glanced to my left and saw a horde of semi-naked women, kettling like vultures waiting to scavenge on our money. The beer arrived; I picked up a bottle and took a sip. And then the women descended.

One girl sat next to me and asked me my name. I knew she only wanted my money but I was polite. I told her mine and she told me hers. Then she asked for a sip from my bottle and opened her mouth ready for me to pour. As I did so a little dripped down between her breasts. She asked me to dry it for her. “Am I allowed to do that?” Apparently I was.

Then she asked if I wanted a dance. I had intended to resist their charms, but I said yes almost instantly.

She held my hand and guided me through the club towards a semi-private room.

“Have you been here before?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“I’m going to show you the time of your life”, she said. She didn’t, but she made a good attempt.

One song is what you got. Sooner than I wanted she was getting half dressed again; pausing to place another twenty in her purse. I enjoyed the getting-dressed part; it was so unrehearsed and casual compared to the dance. This girl, however, should probably have rehearsed more, because she forgot to put her underwear back on.

After her second attempt at dressing, she guided me back to my table, gave me a little kiss on the cheek and sent me on my way. A brief affair. Completely unsatisfying. But already addictive.

When I returned to our table I could not find the beer I had abandoned, so I picked up a fresh bottle and settled back into my chair. That chair, built for one occupant, soon found room for a policewoman. I examined her uniform and noted that it was not the standard issue.

She made her advances. I was resistant and informed her that I wanted to finish my drink. But she told me she had been warming up. And I enquired how. She said she had been doing stretches. I asked how flexible she was. She put her legs behind her head. I put my beer down.

The policewoman was a grinder and she barely left my lap. Later that night a friend told of how he had paid for a second performance and said that it had been exactly the same dance both times. I became certain this dance was unique when I found her splayed naked across my lap, struggling to free her hair from my shirt button. “This is not part of the performance” she said.

That was my favourite moment of the evening. It brought home just how weird the situation was. A splash of reality in an otherwise dreamlike world.

The third woman spent more time talking to me and I finally got to finish almost a whole drink. She was from Poland. Studying fashion design (unless that was the next girl; I admit I began to mix them up). We talked for at least ten minutes and so when she asked about a dance, accepting felt like the only decent thing to do.

I was more relaxed for this dance, and enjoyed it more. When she finished she asked if I wanted her to continue for another song and I failed to say no. I took in her soapy smell, responded more as she closed herself around me, enjoyed looking into her eyes but did not forget I was paying to admire her body.

At the end of the second dance she said she felt amazing as I watched her. That I’d done something she couldn’t understand. I told her I thought she said that to everyone. She said she didn’t expect me to believe her, but tried to explain that there was something about the way I looked at her that made her feel good. She sounded genuine. I told her I had no idea if she was playing with me or not, but that she was making me feel good about myself. I remain confused.

This was my third dance (and forth). I heard later from one of our party that at this time he was talking to one of the other girls about me: “I was told he was gay, but I’ve hardly seen him since we arrived”. They speculated that maybe ‘gay’ in my case just meant that I was very happy. When I returned he asked me and I explained that I found each sex fairer. The girl he was with then appeared at my side.

The rest of the time at the club is a hazy memory. I know there were at least three more dances, but I do not remember them like the first three. Maybe they were too perfect and so there was little to remember; or perhaps I had just become girl drunk. I wondered afterwards whether I should feel bad about this memory loss, but then figured none of the girls would remember me either.

I do remember managing to stay at our table long enough to experience one pole dancer performing on stage. My back was to her when I noticed everyone looking behind my shoulder. I turned and saw the most incredible acrobatic display. Held upside down by her legs, she slid slowly down, effortlessly disobeying gravity, turning and wrapping herself around the pole before touching down on the stage in a split. It was less erotic and more impressive to the point of impossible.

At the end of the night there was a great feeling of emptiness; and not just in my wallet. The bathroom attendant had told me not to fall in love. I never have yet, so I didn’t believe that was going to be a problem, but it sure was difficult to shake them out of my head (even the hazy memories bring flashbacks).

There is a knowledge when you walk into the club that it isn’t the girls who are being exploited, it is us customers. Strippers may be real women, but I have no idea how much reality they shared that evening. We customers swap money here for doses of perplexity.

Money alters the experience of these women, creating something incomplete and surreal. A conversation you can believe is so much more fulfilling than the naked flesh of a hot stranger. But I have to recommend these nubile dancers as a very rare treat.

I used to be a pessimist, and found that didn’t work out so well. Over time I became an optimist, and found that didn’t work out so well either. Eventually I learnt to be proactive.

Optimism is far superior to pessimism. You look for the best, you find it and that makes you happy. But, I found it also made me slightly delusional. At some point reality came knocking and I realised that thinking positive thoughts only brought peace and happiness to me and to those I now smiled, rather than frowned, at.

Other people, on the other hand, were still bullied, fell ill, got injured, got killed, still suffered financial hardship, took addictive substances, still had their woes.

So the next stage was to be proactive. I used my re-awakened pessimism to find the problems. Looked for the good, the opportunities and the solutions with the optimism. Then got to work.

When I first made the distinction between dreaming and doing, it felt like an insight that would dramatically change my life in an instant. But the trouble with self-improvement is it’s never as easy as the books tell you. Yes, I thought to myself, I shall be proactive… but my first attempt involved pacing my house merely thinking about being proactive while the washing-up remained un-washed-up.

Over time, I did start being proactive on things that really mattered. Lots of things. A new thing every day. I wanted to solve all the problems in the world, and ended up solving nothing.

I learnt that I had to focus and the focus was to start with something selfish. I was reaching my middle-twenties and I had not yet established a career for myself. A career had to be the first stage, and I’d been neglecting it. I had fallen in love with the open-source software movement. I saw what good it could do to provide useful software to everyone for no cost and with the freedom to use it how they needed. More specifically, I found Drupal and examples of it being used by charities to help them organise, raise money and communicate. I loved how I could work on building a tool for commercial or even fun reasons, and then see the tool used for great things I could not foresee. I had found my career.

When that clicked I really did become proactive. I had found what I wanted to do and so stopped getting distracted. Over the past year I have spent my time learning to code, learning to design, and learning all the other ins and outs of being a web development professional.

I’ve learnt a lot in that year and a half. Not in small part because I didn’t stop for things like evenings or weekends. I got hooked on a dream – had a solid reason for following it – and managed to block everything else out.

My view of the world over that time has gradually matured. I keep on finding new bits of the puzzle and figuring out how they fit into the big picture. That’s exciting. Sooner or later I realised that I could make my own pieces and change the picture slightly. That is even more exciting.

It is addictive.

Right now I am learning how to make my first piece. It’s difficult and hard work but I am determined to figure it out.

But here is the problem: I hunger for my picture of the world, and the disparity between that and reality annoys me. There is a sense of having my optimistic delusional-self back, but somehow being aware of it. There is an arrogance in there, which wraps itself around an inferiority complex. And probably worst of all, although I love my family and my friends and would go to huge lengths to help them, I also resent them interrupting me or otherwise distracting me from seeking the world I would like to create. I want to help on my own terms. Somehow I’ve found a way to mix selfishness and selflessness together.

It’s not like this is a new personality for me. I’ve not really changed just because I now have a solid goal. It’s just that there now seems to be a reason for being the way I am. Not a cause, but a reason.

Unfortunately, I’m not really happy with who I am. I don’t have the fun that I could fill my time with. I don’t live stress free like I could. I’m not always there for my friends like I probably should be.

And yet, for the first time in my life, I am not willing to change.

Today we received a leaflet through the door, advertising a new citizen-news website; an alternate news source to the main stream media.

They claim that the main stream media has agendas which do not fall into the category of ’spread the truth’. I don’t need much convincing to believe that this is true. It must be so frustrating for a journalist working in these times; having to put up with such restrictive tight deadlines and editors choosing Britney type stories (does that really sell papers?). Stand up and go independent I say. Please!

Until that happens I look for hope wherever I can, so when I saw the leaflet I thought I’d check it out.

I was rather surprised to find that a site which wanted to be an alternative to the main-stream would just be a blog full of links to main-stream articles. No original content; not even a commentary. How does that make sense? Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what you would expect them to be doing?

My non-surprise was to find another conspiracy site based on wild speculation and a side of mass paranoia.

Then I realised how stupid I was being. This isn’t a conspiracy site at all! They are simply pointing out examples of where main-stream-media have written particularly bad articles. It took this post to finally make me come to my senses. I must say they are doing a great job; that’s one of the worst pieces of main-stream journalism I have ever seen.

Anyway, I’ll keep dreaming that one day someone will do some real investigative journalism.

Being one of the ten people who have yet to buy an iPod, the iTunes store has always been next to useless for me. My only choices to get new MP3s that I can play on my portable player has either been to steal it or to head back into the 1990s and purchase a compact disc.

Several months ago Amazon gave me hope when they began offering DRM free music from their store; but they failed to offer it to non-American residents. Have none of these companies heard of the new global world?

But Aha! Today I discovered Tesco Digital. A place to buy legal – free from DRM – downloadable music in the UK.

Bravo Tesco!

The selection is rather pathetic at the moment, but it is a start at least. Worth checking out as a first port of call.

[note that the MP3s are DRM free, but the WMAs are not.]

It was deep; intelligent; sensitive; it met my high expectations.

Then – about 20 seconds after the credits rolled – it all hit me and I completely broke down.

I don’t think this one is going to live within its running time.

What’s this? A blog post?

Yes. Yes, it is.

That’s the thing I like about my blog. It’s here when I want to write something and when I don’t, I keep it out of sight.

It wasn’t always this way. Not long ago I used to worry about posting on my blog. And I used to worry that I’d gone a week without plucking a guitar string. Or a whole month without putting lead to paper.

Then I thought, screw it.

I’m really only doing these things because I enjoy them. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter if learn to play like Clapton, draw like da Vinci, speak German like a German.

Because I’m the kind of person who likes learning new things, and taking on challenges, I don’t really need to pressure myself into trying harder. I’m already trying too hard as it is.

I used to be the kind of guy who would have panic attacks when he visited the library. Too many books. How was I ever going to read them all?

I’m amazed how long it took me to figure out that I didn’t need to.

I’m even more amazed that people are still complaining about this same thing. It’s getting worse they say. Social networks, text messages, blogs, twitter, facebook. How does one keep up? Information overload has becoming a serious problem and it’s only going to get worse.

Or perhaps it’s all in their heads.

I’ve just looked it up. I have 197 subscriptions to various blogs. I probably get about 400 posts to read every day. But I have a secret. There’s this little button in Google Reader called ‘Mark all as read’. And what some people don’t know is you can press that button even if you haven’t actually read all of them! Seriously! I’ve been doing it for months now, and I’m totally getting away with it. Nobody checks.

And here’s the really amusing thing: If you step back from the noise for a while and gain some perspective, you’ll realise that the ones who try so hard to keep up are the ones who keep up, but the ones who don’t try to keep up are the ones everyone else is trying to keep up with.

• He can’t use a camera
• He can’t use any device with a camera built in (so pretty much every mobile phone)
• He can only use the internet in relation to employment (but must get the police constable’s permission first)
• He can’t be in any contact with anyone under the age of 18
• He can’t enter any area predominantly used by children
• He can’t be in any house if there is a child there
• He can’t take any job without asking permission of the police constable
• He can’t hire a car without notifying the police

Why take a mentally disturbed man, cripple him of any possible chance he has to function in a modern society, and then release him back into such a society?

(BBC News article)

I used to watch a telly program called ‘You’ve Been Framed’. It was basically a collection of home video clips that were funny. Until, that is, they ran out of new clips, and it just became a series of people falling over. After not too long, I stopped laughing and started to actually feel sorry for the poor people who slipped, fell, had a piano land on their face, etc.

Then there was the presenter’s commentary.

In order to escape this commentary, we invented the web and waited patiently for YouTube to arrive. Which is fine as long as you ignore the comments. (Why can’t I can’t ignore the comments?)

Finally, today I came across an example where the commentary actually helps make it funny. I think the trick is to use it to tell the story behind the clip.

We like stories. And the best comedians tell stories rather than jokes.

Have a read and listen.

(I really do hope he doesn’t make it a ring tone.)

(If you don’t think kids are funny, try dads)

It’s a rather upsetting fact that my government are equally as nosey. But I’m certainly not going to go out of my way to have a government look through my private files.

With the US elections now in full swing, I have to wonder if any of the candidates support freedom.

It’s sad. I liked the United States when I last travelled there. It would be nice to return one day.