The Talkies...

So, here it is... over a year after I promised myself I would, I finally dug out the courage to behave like a total idiot on camera solely for the purposes of entertainment. Therefore, if you are not entirely entertained by this I shall consider myself a failure and go back to eating my socks.

Sound levels seem to be my biggest weakness evidently, which I guess I'll need to work on if I ever do get round to making another one of these "talkies". After all that is the plan, hence the name "Introduction". (BTW in case you didn't get it, the "hardly" bit is supposed to be ironic and running in a similar vein to alias "HardlyAmazing", which is itself ironic since I'm actually awesome!)

The Grand Proof-Read of 2011: There was a video here for "Hardly An Introduction" but as far as I can remember, the videos are no longer public, and besides, they weren't that good anyway.

A Wee Matter That Hath Strucketh Me

Regarding the fact that it's been a year since I started the original "aquamaroon" blog (which seemed a decent idea at the time until I got bored of the hosting site and the name itself) and the fact that I've been moaning about not being able to do any of the fun creative shizz I had originally wanted to do, it has occured to me that since I am in fact able to carry out said fun creative shizz now, I actually haven't done anything about it. I think I mentioned in the last post about that ol' notion of "cold feet" and while my feet are physicaly quite warm thanks to the polyester and nylon coating of blackness I currently wear, the internal metaphorical part of these pedals upon which I often walk have plummeted to Antarctic depths.

This idea comes courtesy of a Facebook message I read earlier this evening from a friend who was querying a similar idea... the idea of some random person plonked in front of a rolling camera talking absolute nonsense, visible through a window as hosted on a video hosting website whose name may or may not rhyme with BlueCube. (Not sure if I made that joke on here before... in hindsight I think I probably did and for this I am eternally sorry and shall pay more attention to myself in future. If not, then that's a joke I just made up now off the top of my head)

Basically, I'm struggling to come up with anything to be of talking aboot and if anything I need support and/or guidance.

Prior to this, at a couple of points over the last year I sent messages to the accounts of two rather notorious 'BlueCube' bloggers in the hope that I might receive a brief message of support and/or guidance in return. The names of these bloggers I'm reluctant to reveal for two reasons: [one] quite frankly I wish my messages to remain anonymous and [two] quite frankly I don't feel like giving them much recognition due to the lack of response I received. Spiteful? No! More... deserved, I'd say.

Anyhoo... I think I mentioned previously about biting the bullet but unfortunately the last time someone shot at my mouth, it ended in my teeth shattering into thousands of tiny pieces and consequently resulted in me being kicked out of my magical double act. Either that or nobody's given me any bullets to chew on as a before-dinner snack lately. This is probably just a bit of a copy of the last post but I felt I'd have to write again due to my lack of responses,which seems to be a running theme now anyway.

You Wait Months For A Blog Post And Then Two Come Along At Once!

Although, whoever 'you' may be, bless you for actually reading this.

Anyway, onto the crux of the matter. I couldn't come up with anything for yesterday's addition other than it was the first post of 2010. Admittedly, I sort of regret doing it since it's so short and pointless, but then again that sort of contradicts my "No Regrets" outlook on life. Besides, maybe it's the short pointless ones that are best, I don't know, I tend not to do them. Maybe I should do more though, it would certainly fill out the space and make it at least look 'lived in'.

And going off on another tangent (oh yes, it's gonna be one of those ones), the "No Regrets" approach to life just makes such sense to me. Sure bad things happen in your life (in fact, it just so happens that "Shit Happens, Deal With It" comes in at number 2 in my philosophy chart) but it's the summation of every occurence in your life that moulds and shapes you into the person you are today. So enjoy the good moments, look back at the bad moments and mistakes, learn from them and move on. "Life's Too Fucking Short" (our highest new entry in at number 3).

Back to the point I was originally trying to make until I was rudely interrupted by myself and my ever-sidetracking brain, lately with my adventures in the field of filmmaking, I've been pondering whether to do video blogs of myself either rambling or talking attempts at humorous stories/anecdotes/etc... However, I'm at a stage of 'cold feet' now ,since I have the equipment to produce such material yet my lack of confidence in myself doesn't seem to be pushing me forward into actually sitting myself in front of the camera and reeling off what I might consider to be funny but others may find excruciatingly dull!

Do I bite the virtual bullet and just do it, and if I make an ass of myself then it becomes a case of "oh well, No Regrets"? Or should I maybe consider other routes to inject humour into videos before broadcasting them to the world (i.e. carefully plan myself, aka "Slow And Steady Wins The Race" [#4])?

Discuss if you're there.

Only Three Days Late, But Still...

Farewell to the noughties decade. Now it's the tens/teens/who-cares-about-naming-it decade.

What do I say in this first bloggage of 2010?

Since I last posted: I've worked, I've purchased various material possessions, which over time will decline in physical quality yet will possibly flourish in sentimental value, and I've had a shave.

One Month Later...

See, I told you I wouldn't post "tomorrow"...

At least I think I told you... it's been so long since I've been here I cannae even remember.

Anyway, the end of this festive period is almost over, with Jesus Day down and January nearing and I'm still waiting for the hold of alcoholic intoxication to take over. I have finally resorted to the fact that I shall be remaining sober until 8:47pm, 31 December 2009 and not recovering until 8:47pm, 1 January 2010.

But it's at this time of year I've been on my music spree, with the occasional CD album bought for me by a fat man in a red velour suit and the rest of my wishlist being obtained through the power of iTunes and the art of downloading. And the joy of listening to old voices with new songs is just about keeping me sane for my work in retail, nay but days after everyone finished gathering mounds of shopping.

Anyway, yeah, the rant never came, and I don't think it will for a while since I've been weaving a beautiful tapestry of wonders behind it to link it with several other subjects in the style of stand-up comedy, in an attempt to perform it to the hypothetical crowd in my head and make me feel worthy. Like I said, music is only keeping me slightly sane. The rest of the time I'm susceptible to delusions. Furthermore, I need to work on it if I'm ever going to have the guts to put up videos of me talking to myself on a particular video streaming website, which may or may not rhyme with BlueCube.

Speaking of which, a couple of college vids have managed to make their way up there after painfully long hours of uploading. So long in fact that hibernation managed to take over for a lot of it, thus numbing said pain. Uploading overnight, however, does unsettle me a little since the case of this newish computer contains a fair few handfuls of blue LEDs inside (you know, to make sure you know it's still switched on), and without my glasses on in bed, it creates a strange glowing blue blur sitting in the corner of the pitch black room whirring away thus adding to my insanity and fuelling personal speculation that I may in fact be not of this planet and the Mothership has come to take me back to where I belong.

Just as long as it doesn't take me before New Year's, I don't mind. Need to get a bit bladdered first.

Now go here: http://www.youtube.com/user/HardlyAmazing

We Are The Chronologically Challenged Of Today

Because apparently we can't use the word "Youth" any more for fear of hurting kids' feelings, whether they have knives and knuckle-dusters or not.

'It's OK if you hurt my feelings, I'll just hurt your kidneys'

Anyhoo, I just read that Politically Correct/Incorrect/Debatable/Neutral/Who-the-hell-really-cares story and decided to write somewhere about it and figured "Hey... I've got this..."

I've been observing a certain aspect about young people recently, though. Mainly in habits and attitudes and I've pretty much had this whole rant about a certain something circling around in my head for weeks now. I've wanted to put it up here but out of fear of looking like I hate people and looking like I want to make them look bad, I've had cold feet about the whole thing. Having said that, it's just come to my attention that it's extrememly likely that nobody is actually reading this. Hell, I doubt anybody knows this space on the web exists.

Maybe tomorrow then. I'm too tired now and what with the silly season approaching thick and fast now (Remember folks, just another 26 shopping days left before the anniversary of the birth of some magical fellow called Jesus and the death of some musical fellow called James Brown) people, more specifically 'customers', are becoming more and more wrapped up (no pun intended) in their holiday shopping. The consequence of this, more stupidity, more stuff left lying around unwanted, more ignorance and arrogance leading to me doing more work. And I know, work is supposed to be just that, work. But I can't help feeling a little co-operation would be at least showcased at some point.

Ack, just moaning on and on about nothing I can do anything about, I guess. But still, the worst perpetrators tend to be those further on up the chronological scale. I would call them "Old" but out of fear of being considered Politically Incorrect, I'd like to settle for "Youthfully Challenged". Of course, as previously established, we shouldn't really use "Youth" any more and so I therefore have no other alternative but to opt for labelling these folk... (deep breath) "Chronologically Challenged, Challenged". However, much like when two negatives cancel each other out and form a positive, so too do the two 'challenges' neutralise each other. So really, the best way to describe the older generation is "Chronological"... or the very definition of Time itself!

Like I said, nobody's reading this... at least not any more!

Greeeetings from Windows 7!!!

So here it is! Finally, the end to all my pissing and moaning about not having any decent equipment to get on with work of the moving visual kind.

I finally have a funkay computer (which is, like, a step up from "funky") with the capabilities of Windows 7 thrown onto it, with such features as snapping things to the sides, shaking single windows to clear the place up, and some weird cursor glow over active programs in the taskbar... and no, I'm not actually a representative of Microsoft biggin' it up fo' da Windows 7 massive! I just find it quite funky, or funkay as I've already established. But it does run at an impecable speed that if only my Internet connection could keep up I'd be so ecstatic I might as well pop, which would unfortunately cause quite a mess in this little corner of my room where I've set everything up.

....Anyway, with all good things come a downside... the crippling downside of this one being that as of this day I have no edit software on the dang-blasted thing. Still I'm remaining optimistic, despite the fact that it was actually being pessimistic that got me to this point.

See this time last week, in that pathetic excuse for an institute of learning we affectionately call "college" (because let's face it, "pathetic excuse for an institute of learning" just uses too much breath), I was feeling like I was getting nowhere very slowly with three projects to complete within just shy of a month and no discernable way of physically doing them, I needed to take matters into my own hands. Screw saving! Four hundred and eight of my hard-earned pounds went into fuelling the bits and bobs which would eventually become the machine I so affectionately call "Clancy". Over the course of the week a wee bit more was pissed away on my endeavours to get the latest W7 (that's short for "Windows 7" since I can't be bothered typing out "Windows 7" every time... even though I now realise I just typed it twice) and a monitor of sorts so that I can actually view what ol' Clancy's trying to show us.

Pretty much, it's now a Monday on from last Monday and I still feel like I'm getting nowhere slowly with said three projects. Nevertheless, the difference between this week and last is that now I'm confident I'll actually be able to get something done without having to rely on the institute of apparent nothingness.

I am of course exaggerating here. Obviously the college does have suffienct equipment available for its students... just very limited access to it. That is until now, since of course numerous amounts of complaints have finally led to someone making a decision this week into allowing us more access. But I say "too little too late, mere mortals! I've got a Clancy now!"

"Why Clancy?" you may ask, to which I reply with an incoherent "Uh-unno?" accompanied with a jolt of the shoulders and pathetic head tilt.

In other news, certain people have come back into my life, same people have left my life once again, and the world keeps on spinnin'... just like my poor confused brain!!!!!

Insert Title

So, I've been having a bit of a crisis of Faith as of late. But don't let that keep you from reading this shit.

I've been trying to adopt a new style of writing (or really a more "natural" style of writing to me as you might see from the previous post) mixing rant and rhyme together in a bit of a flowing manner. However, after that first one I seem to be struggling, hence it's not coming to me as naturally as one might hope. And whenever I try to write something funky it turns out to be some sort of self-indulgent rant about some bad thing or another (...take this, for example) with no rhyme or flowing structure at all.

What's more is that my seemingly endless venture into attempting to get some form of magnificent computerised technology with some form of magnificent video editing software capabilities is... well... just that. Seemingly endless.

Basically, I feel like I'm going nowhere slowly and just want something to get done.

They say that patience is a virtue and all good things come to those who wait, but at this rate I'm half-expecting the world handed to me on a plate (Hey! That rhymed a lot... see I can do it when I'm just blagging my blogging). Waiting just seems to wear me down and I'm getting pretty darn tired.

Either that or this tiredness is coming from the coldyness that's been plaguing my throat for the last few days.