About This Is This
This is what?
This is this.
This ain’t something else.
A blog of occasional daily life with patchy outbreaks of funny, scattered values and the chance of philosophy from the east.
In summary, Cliff Jones.
But what does it mean?
The title This Is This comes from my inability to describe what it is that this site was when I started it in 2004. It’s just some of … what it is. It’s a “thing” thing. It’s specifically haphazard and haphazardly specific. It’s a website just like millions of others and the more I try to make it sound unique, the more ordinary it seems. This site is just what it is, hence the title.
The actual line comes from a speech given by Robert De Niro in the Deer Hunter, and you can read about that some more if you want to or listen to the speech.
Vital statistics
Name: Cliff
Defence: 8
Attack: 5
Courage: 7
Stealth: 9
Strengths: Speaks French, plays guitar, can see in dark
Weaknesses: Colourblind, asthma, cheesecake
Armour: Sense of humour, headphones
Special move: The “should have said” after-rant
Five things I should know how to do and can’t
1. Play chess
2. Remember basic details when telling a story
3. Roll my R’s
4. Bake
5. Look interested when I’m not
Five things I shouldn’t know how to do but can
1. Read upside down just as well as the right way up
2. Whistle REALLY fucking loud
3. Swim without using my hands
4. Find North using a watch and the sun
5. Play the mandolin
Five actual useful things I can do well
I am, without a doubt, the least clumsy person you could ever met. I never drop anything, I rarely spill and my recoverey rate is second to none (ninja footsave). Maybe I take too much care and attention over everything I do, but I hardly ever stumble, falter, cack-handle or hamfist. I am the anti-clutz.
2. Put Up Shelves
Oh I can put up some fucking shelves. I can tell if something’s not dead flat without using a spirit level. I’m quick, too, and I enjoy it, even the cleaning up. It’s probably the only ever time I dust. And when I’m done, I have to put something on the shelf. Anything will do, but when I do - there’s the feeling. I have a unhealthy fascination with drill bits. I have two power drills, I know my hammer setting from my rotary and I can put shelves up on everything, perfect, every time. Tiles on 50mil pasterboard? Stand aside, it’s going to be all right.
3. Sense Of Direction
I have an insane sense of direction. I can read the sun and the stars, but mostly I just know where I am. I could explain this further, but I’d be going round in circles. Not literally, because I never do that.
4. Laugh
Funnily enough (or not) I don’t find jokes funny. Mostly they are unfunny, so it’s more like relief when they are. I laugh at the day to day stuff. You know, I say something, then you say something else then I say that thing that sounds funny.
5. Sleep/Not Sleep
I can sleep anywhere and through anything if I want to. I can also sleep for short amounts of time and wake up myself up when I’m needed. I can get ten minutes of decent sleep between train stops and feel good afterwards. I can also not sleep, if I want to. I rarely need more than six hours and can get by on four if I need to.
More about me
There’s an autobiography of sorts, called The Sum Of All Years, my idea being that each year could only contain the number of words for that entry, because I am a word geek.
You can glean the memes with 4 Things and 36 Questions and the Navel Gazer.
I wrote a book up here called All Of Monday’s Reasons.
I play a few instruments and write lots of songs.
I work for the BBC internet journalism team and the views expressed on this site are my very own and not those of my employer.
Read the BBC’s guidelines on employee weblogs.
If you have any questions or comments relating to the corporation, please contact them directly.
Contact
If you have internet access you can send an email
Spoil
Or, you know, buy me stuff.
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