Oh yeah. A blog. I was meant to do one of these hours ago, but what with old Gaddifi popping his clogs, and then a meeting where I had two coffees that seemed to have contained more caffeine than someone who works in media after bathing in coffee, my brain is floating somewhere in a bubble of mind mayhem. The day has not been good to me. Starting this morning with a fight with a printer its just cruised along a level of mediocrity that unfortunately makes it memorable for being so unmemorable. I have a horrible feeling that at some point in my future as I struggle once again to remember the best gig I’ve ever done or a really special time, instead I’ll scrabble about with the time I was run over and landed like Spiderman and today, the day of extreme ‘meh’. Some days are set up just for that. Today was planned as ‘meh’ for weeks. Today was the day of ‘seeing my accountant’.
There are some duties in life that I can’t believe anyone could ever enjoy. Adding up receipts and putting the results into columns just to work out how little you earn and how much of that paltry earning can be handed over to the government to be put towards legislations you don’t agree with is most definitely one of these. With help from L, I’ve spent the last week gradually adding up all my flimsy bits of paper from April ’10 to April ’11, differentiating between ‘drinks for comedy reasons’, ‘drinks for drinks reasons’ and ‘drinks for drinks reasons I can pretend are for comedy reasons’, with L taking note of exactly how many egg sandwiches I had on the road in that time and the vast amount of Lattes. It appears that if you are what you eat from 05/10 to 05/11 I was a frothy egg of disgust. Which to be fair, sounds right.
Comedy is, by far, a brilliant avenue of employment if your thing is to evade tax in every way. I can’t imagine that you’d want to take up all the other areas of comedy just to pursue such things – the severe poverty, constant self angst and dealing with twats probably doesn’t balance the pros and cons – as you are able to claim off many a thing. Clothes – yep I wear those on stage. Yep, all of them. Those cinema tickets? Well I wrote a joke about that film didn’t I? And that trip to Norway where you didn’t gig at all? Er, well that’s conveniently in my last Edinburgh show isn’t it? How about that time you went to La Porchetta with friends for a friends birthday? Well someone laughed at something I said didn’t they? Er, what? Yes, these are straws I’m clutching on.
Either way, while I happily attack those corporations avoiding paying tax back into the economy, I have more double standards than a drunk flag maker and if I can avoid throwing what pittance of money I have into the hands of this shit government, I will try my very best. Doesn’t mean its remotely exciting though. It also doesn’t mean I enjoy it when five minutes before I leave to go see my accountant our printer decides it doesn’t want to work and after aggressively firing two bits of paper at my legs as though its in the most violent game of tic tac toe ever seen, completely crashes. Sure its paranoid to blame such a thing on the fact I was wearing my Rage Against The Machine tshirt and perhaps said printer took that as a slap with a glove around its monitor, but that’s exactly what I blame it on. That and the fact that it was a necessary element of ‘meh’ Thursday. Along with not being able to find anything funny about Gaddafi, having a meeting that overran and now a need to do work despite coffee brain damage and a need for a nap. I can see the future now when my life flashes before my eyes on my death bed and all I see is a series of egg mayo receipts and a printer flashing up a message telling me I turned it off incorrectly. Sigh
