day 69... " make a non obscene phonecall today"

Simple enough i thought, i should hope the majority of my phonecalls are none obscene. Maybe i could just call a mate, have the kind of chat we'd usually have revolving around footie, scran and what time we plan on meeting down the southie?.

Was that really all that was required of me? phone someone and avoid being offensive during said call? It seemed a tad easy.. However when i read further i saw that i was required to " call a stranger at random and whisper nice things about them down the line"

That sounded more like it, or at least more pervy and potentialy arrestable.. i know how the book loves to make me do unacceptable things, so at about 4 in the afternoon i picked a number at random with nothing in mind " nice thing" wise, I thought id just shoot the sauce and see what came naturally.

i dialed... being sure to enter the untacable number code first... and the phone rang and rang... noone picked up, so i picked another number and again it rang and again no pick up ... but this time there was an answering machine .. the book stipulated that should noone answer the correct thing to do was to leave them a message.. so i did.

It went something like this...

hi it's me
your really lovely.. you really suit red, wear it more often.
Your garden looks amazing this time of year,... well done with that.
better go.. speak to you soon (kiss sound)
bye.

NON obscene phone call made..

fin.

day 68... "Today talk to a plant for at least an hour"

Here i am sat withe vera in hand... talking, inspiring.. listening, like a botanical dr doolittle... i heard nothing.

i thought id try and get into vera's headspace by making myself look more plantlike... the hood went, up all green and shiny... surely now she would feel she could open up... make it a 2 way conversation. I prepared to communicate with plantlife as mankind never had before.

The focus of my atention was vera, she generally sits on the kitchen windowsill taking in the rare light at the back of the house. Today as instructed i talked to her for an hour. clearly not in one sitting  that would be nuts ,but i reckon in a few spells i managed 60 mins , i tried to provide her with encouragement to grow, and advice.. i even sang to her briefly, thats bound to prompt either a growth spurt or death for vera.. i will keep you posted.

I would love to tell you i felt some kind of spiritual connection with vera while i whispered words of encouragement  tenderly into her leaves , truth is i didnt.. To be fair tho, she did have her leaves clipped not long ago (to be used on a burn) and noones going to feel at their best with cliped limbs.

* ARE leaves the limbs or the hair in human terms?


plants talked at...done!

day 67... returning my junk mail

day 67... "Today return all of your junk mail"  this task is great, im not a big fan of junk mail.. it is in my view no different to being stopped by chuggers ( charity muggers) or being phoned by an indian telesales person claiming their name is david  every half an hour. So returning my junkmail to sender .. my pleasure, i generally leave my free passes to frankie vaugn sites, account detail requests from nigerian generals with millions to deposit in my bank to build up.

Today i had 19 junkmails in my inbox.. i didnt delete any the last few days knowing this task was on its way, so methodicaly and with a certain degree of excitement... injury claim companys, blatant holiday based scam places, weight loss pill distribution centres (some cockneys bedroom) among other places (though no nigerian generals mansions suprisingly) will all have been suprised and overjoyed i imagine to recieve back theyre propaganda.

So... i am 19 bits of junkmail lighter, that cant be a bad thing, and at very least all of the companys i replied to now have a slightly better apreciation of how annoying it is to recieve unsolicited junkmail.

junkmail returned -  mission completed.

day 66... homeless for a day!

day 66... and today i was homeless all day long, Benrik had guidelines as to what was acceptable to take on my trip.. this was based on how i had dealt with the homeless in the past, now although i ocasionally give to the homeless,  i havnt always been massively sympathetic. I used to tremble with glee at the question.. "alright mate can you spare 20p for a cup of tea?" without delay they would recieve said coin... along with a prolonged look and then a "well.. wheres my cup of tea?" This for me and the boys was hillarious, less funny for the poor homeless dude i imagine , But to be fair you dont really care about that in your mid teens.(maybe that was just us)

The guidlines as to what you may take were as follows:-
 If you regularly give to the homeless  - a sleeping bag, comfy walking shoes and a 5er.
If you occasionally give to the homeless  -  some woolen gloves,and a blanket
If you never give to the homeless -  a flea ridden sheet, a broken unbrella and foreign coins.

So on bitterly cold and moist morning, and still feeling particularly ill i headed for home for the day, the streets of seaton carew. Not being able to put myself in any of the categories comfortably i took no woolen gloves or bed equipment, but i did wrap up warm and put a fiver im me sky rocket (beggars always have at least that much) Today the streets were my home, and although i wouldnt be begging i did take a sign, just to let people know i was hungry... not hugely but i could certainly have done with a littke something.

So here you see me on the prom prom prom (there was no sign of any brass band  playing tidely om pom pom) I am sharing my sign with the general public, i spent time on the beach,chilling on benches.. drinking the odd hot drink while sitting outside shut down shops.

Here you see me, board on show, having a  rest on a bench, (check out the borrowed beastly body warmer, and homeless man hat) It was tough finding a bench that wasnt either full of chilling seagulls or their recycled diet. It was crazy cold out there after a couple of hours, and i started to feel a little sorry for myself being out in the cold while feeling so ruff, but to be fair homeless people probably dont feel tip top most of the time, you know with all that living and sleeping outside business. I was gaining a real understanding of the life of a hobo.

I carved a very intricate and atractive design into the sand highlighting the plight of the homeless , after making it for a good 20 mins i was devestated to discover that my batteries had died, and so no photograph was possible.

Here i am back at home later in the day, thawing out, and feeling happy that i could relax in the warm cozyness of my bed chamber . Did i truly gain a new respect for the homeless and the conditions they contend with? Yeah i think i probably did, does it make the 20p for a cup of tea joke any less funny? NO

I was indeed homeless for the day- bosh!

day 65... iconoclasm day

day 65... "iconoclasm day" So in essense today i am to alter an image. The book brought to my atention the importance we  as a world put on captured images, Including the fact that we dont like throwing away images of loved ones, perhaps convinced that what we do to the photo in some odd voodoo like manner we do to  the subject.

The importance of images in everyday life, from early man who believed having/ carying drawn images of the mamoth would aid him in catching one, to the powerfull imagery used by governments and movements of all descriptions in their propaganda, even down to present day and our obsesion with images of the rich and famous, we are a world entranced  by  images.

Some photos are  instantly recognisable, That photo of che guevara, john lennon with his round shades and peace fingers, britain's anti nazi posters of the war era (which i love), andy warhols self portrait.

So .. down to business  for my image today i avoided the absoloutley obvious, there will be no winston (though he is my idol), no che, no stalin... what we will have tho is another of my heroe's one that is so often demonised by my counrtymen. I feel it important to take an image of said individual, and show her in her true light. ( see the results below)

BEFORE

some would claim this is a pensive, premeditated pose , that excelently illustrates  her cunning yet agresive nature.

AFTER

However i think  this image is in similitude of the paintings catholicism likes to knock up of its saints.. its like maggie is asking the almighty for his help to guide our great nation from its current state in to stiller waters.

What a woman  as i sit here now gazing at her , her words cascading through my head.

" u-turn  if you want to,  the lady's is not for turning"

" we want our maney back"

"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."

"If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim."


"I'm extraordinarily patient provided I get my own way in the end. "
I love maggie, FACT.

ok enuff maggie worship

So as required i altered an image, id love to think that when people google (or whatever they use then) images of margaret in 20 years this is the most popular one.

PHOTO altered.

day 64... Glorifying terrorism?

day 64... " Today glorify terrorism " Well as you can see, today i was required and requested to glorify terrorism, i wasnt happy about this...terrorism is something i  have no soft spot for (unsuprising i know). So i had a good think about 2 things 1. A way in which i can justifty doing this task to myself, and 2. doing it in a way that has some degree of finesse, and puts no lifes in danger.

This is me, looking all mysterious, like someone who could at any second declare a holy war against the east (I realised that i was viewing terrorism as a crime of those in the middle east)In reality terrorism takes place all over the world... surely there is gorilla warfare going on somewhere which stems from a cause i could support. I had a good look, and while there were groups i has sympathy with, there methods were always counterproductive.

  So I'd had my think  and decided the best way to deal with this task was to make cup cakes and decorate them apropriately ... extoling the virtues of terrorism through baking and the pipin of iceing.

The cake mixture was made, i boshed it into cup cake paper tray thingies, and put them in the oven, and as i did so riled myself up by thinking arnt these cakes in those savage conditions (in the baking heat of the oven) a perfect analogy of isreals plight in the middle east? encompassed all about by forces that intend to do it harm?

Here we see my cakes.. after i'd iced them with an apropriate message for the day, (possibly an inapropriate one for any other day) if you cant read my wonky icing words, the message is "yes 2 terrorism" (only after spelling my message out with the back end of a spoon did i see that we had icicng in a little squeezy tube) too late!

Taste my produce infadels!! No seriously tho ... this is me with my cakes, and as i posed i considered the quote "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" And thought, hmmm what a loads of balls.

Like every sneaky wannabe terrorist does  i hid my message within a seemingly safe and secure environment, notice how the message seems inoquous enough within the dennis the menace themed  cakes i made at the same time. Islamic extremists like to hide their hatred, and illegal practises from the general public, by teaching them within buildings that are not for people not of their persuasion, with this cake trick i atempted the same form of camouflage. evil within the guise of normality.. you like what i did there?.

In the end, there was only one fit and proper end for my terrorism cup cake, i took it, reant its skin from it and savagely bit through it, i considered keeping it stress positions or playing horific american rock to it in a loop on full blast. But at the end of the day.. im not a a terrorist or a torturer of baked goods.. so i bit it in half and chwewd till it was gone.

After doing away with the offending article, i realised there was an oppertunity here to use the framework that once promoted terrorism for good!

Here we see what i in my genious came up with. "YES TO GRAPES" wonderfull, not only healthy and delicious but a great deal less harmfull than jihad of any description.

So today i glorified terrorism through the making of baked goods, and although

it didnt sit well with me, (at the risk of sounding like a nazi soldier) i was just following orders.

TERRORISM GLORIFIED : DONE!

day 63... sending a non threatening letter.

day 63... And today i was invited to "  send a letter to someone at random with a photo of yourself, a £5 bill, no explanation and no sender address, see what comes of it"

There are many different types of letter one can send, but as you have just read this particular letter is intended for someone i dont know,  it is to be sent completely at random... i had an idea of what manner of letter i wanted it to be, but the first decision to made was paper colour, knowing i was going to make the letter itself look quite harsh, i thought it was important that i offset this with a neutralish tone   i asked  a friend to pick from the 4 options below..

I then set about cutting out the letters to form my message, by now your getting what manner of letter this is to be, im a massive fan of blackmail   lettering (i may just  have invented that term)  used  in a  totally innocent form.. i like to make christmas and birthday cards using the same technique.

So here we see the finished letter, turned out to be more of a card.. so thats nice eh? thanks to barb for the wise powder blue choice, i believe it adequatley defuses the possible menacing look to the letter.

So as we can see the message is intended to confuse the recipient, "what the hell is this about ?" is what were aiming for ... i thought id give it the look and feel of corespondence between two dangerous types  that had  accidentally been posted to the wrong address.. or better still that the recipient would rack their brains for anything it could relate to. Hopefully they dont know what it relates to, as i dont. what a sad  irony   that would be .

the letter with its contents, the bill for £5 with no explanation, and the photo of my good self ... how unlucky would it be to post it to a contract killer completely by accident? Im betting that wont happen.

Ive been wondering what the reaction of the recipient will be, and i guess all i can do is go off what i reckon my reaction would be... the conclusion i reached is i would definatley either laugh for an hour solid,  or be baffled and shiz myself... in which case. Aproved!

ready for enveloping and posting .

So i did what was required, sent a letter with the neccesary contents and no return address, now i intend to sit it out, i really hope whoever recieves it is amused.

If they are not amused, at least suitably baffled.

Either way they got some post that was not a bill, and at least interesting.. we all like to get unexpected post of the none printed kind right... right??

letter sent: mission a resounding success