even men with steel hearts...

..love to see a dog on the pitch. slightly demeans the monumental news of Peel's death on tuesday to have that as fron page news. but still cheers us up.




trouble is, these days, you never see a dog on the pitch.

what are you, some kind of fascist?

talk about music snobs... i submitted my SFA review with a mark of 86%. Beth called me up and said she wanted it out of ten. i gave it eight. you see what i'm getting at.

Vernon Kaye simulator

today i've had an email, a call, and three text messages telling me John Peel has died. thanks everybody, sorry i can't reply to all your communications individually.

i'm reminded (sudennly) of staying with anna, and how she didn't want to sell a comissioned UV painting, because she'd put too much of herself into it, and it was basically too good. this popped into my head thinking about Tony Hart's 'the gallery', where they could never return your pictures - if you love something, you must let it go.

but Peel's fucking dead.


listen to some interesting facts about numbers by simon singh (ta b3ta).

i'm going to go home and fight the zombie.

and possibly cry in my pint.

edit: a couple of recent dreams.

this morning i was at a Super Furry Animals gig. Micheal Jackson was there. we ended up having a dance-off, which was unfair because he was wearing an animated street fighter two t-shirt and it was distracting me.

a couple of days ago, i was back in Indonesia. there was a significant 'authority' presence. we had to levitate/fly around everywhere, but i kept landing, i had to do long, low-grav-style leaps instead of the real floating everyone else was doing. i had to go to the toilet at night.

i just listened to a very good song called 'The Devil and Danny Cohen' by Danny Cohen, from the album 'Dannyland'. not that he's self obsessed or anything.
www.anti.com to listen to a song of his. it's not as good as the one i was listening to, though...

and Kieron's posted the last episode of Negativeland on big robot. don't read the last episode unless you've read the rest, so click the 'gillen archive', not the picture under 'current gillen'. and now... i'm going home.

hm. how do avoid getting a Grubbs burger tonight?

text from a Bernard Matthews trade ad:

WE HAVE THE POWER
Back in 1985, Bernard Matthews recognised the potential of shaped products for children with the launch of Golden Drummers.

Over The years we have continually innovated, successfully harnessing pester power to become the true market leader.

that's pearly, isn't it? they're so proud of themselves.

everything was so nice.
my project was to be based on a book called 'virtual music', in stock in the library. commentry by, obviously, Douglas Hofstadter. i put Alec Empire's intelligence and sacrifice into my ears, and galloped towards the bus stop (my bike has a flat tyre). it being tuesday, the market was on, and just as i was walking under falmer house, i spotted out of the corner of my eye - Alan Moore's 'a small killing'. propped up against the legs of a cheap table. i rushed over, and scrabbled through leaves of comics - 2000AD monthly issue 74, comprising Halo Jones book 1! there was a spiderman comic by garth ennis as well, but only one issue, and well.. i got so sick of preacher.
i felt so cool.
the monthly and the graphic novel cost me a total of two pounds.
i went to cafe scientifique with Alex, Simon Singh and a cosmologist from Sussex talking about the big bang - you see, it's not that matter in the universe is spreading out - it's that space is expanding. oh, my love of understandable, crazy science!

wednesday was spent waiting for the NTL man to come. he didn't; the reason? "oh, apperently, no-one was assigned to do it." worse excuse ever. shouldn't put up with that kind of abuse. saw Drop Dead Dave's debut dispension, down de Freebutt. very deep, good music. they played four or five (now familiar) songs, being Abi and Astra plus pianist, which makes her songs much properer. er. i don't think they need anyone else.

but then thursday... it all went a bit skew-y. i realised that, even though i'm enjoying all my courses, that doesn't mean they might not be beyond me. eek!

click for the unofficial no-hands gallery!. some are well shit, but others are delightful.

and so: come round our's on saturday, we're having a party. it'll be big.

this wasn't very good was it? i'll try harder next time.

to finish off, here's my idea for a comic strip or sit-com called...

ROSEMARY'S BEER BELLY

Abstract: drinking shit beer makes you a twat.
one night, in the union bar, Rosemary Mint buys a pint of Foster's lager. however, surprisingly, it's the Devil's piss.. no, literally the Devil's piss! (there was an mix-up at the bottling plant.) the piss sickens her, but though she can't help herself, she keeps drinking, and the beer soaks through her stomach wall, causing her belly to swell and become possessed, and it directs her to do awful acts, which i haven't thought of yet.

it would work very well as a Viz one-off; if anyone wants to develop this with me, drop me a line at the usual address.

oh fuck.

the world is my skip

see that comment on the last post? that's from liz. 'short american person', to quote her good self. liz, please leave your email adress next time so i can get back in touch with you. i never write it down when Jess tells me.

i've cleaned up the jokes section.

happy birthday dan!

here are some very good songs.

do it AGAIN.

so Laur and i were watching The Berzerker DVD the other night, while we ate our lovely curry. that Luke - The Berzerker himself - hardly plays or sings a note of the record, and causes his guitarists to nearly dislocate their shoulders trying to play his riffs, which he's sequenced at simply stupid speeds, meanwhile his singing is put in at a slower speed, then time-stretched - well, the whole thing is pretty sick. Luke just seems calmly obsessed for the whole document, seemingly not sleeping, and barely letting his musicians get a wink either. seemingly the Captain Beefheart of bloody-minded-death-speed-core, and all that that entails.


did the shopping (in the piss) yesterday and nearly bought a Zoid - the brachiosaur model. but it was a tenner! and what's with the Co-op selling McSlurry toys anyway? i was still in impulse purchase mood, and bought two of the most gorgeous mugs - big, round, and chocolate-coloured. dinner = parsnip, carrot, and potato mash, with Beano-style sausages.

yesterday i watched the entire first series of Spaced.

i'm not proud.

edit: Keiron Gillen posted this link to KLF's The Manual. enjoy.

edit2: there's a whole new Ergo Phizmiz record to download, i haven't heard it yet, but it's a collection of Velvet Underground covers, so it's going to be great.

"You look like the drum and bass type..."

said the man handing out flyers, to the woman next to me, as i was walking onto campus. "and i don't?" i queried. we laughed about it. i didn't take a flyer.

this happened a while ago, but i'm reminded of it as i myself have been handing out flyers to people this lunch time. a common conversation would go:

G: trade justice interest you at all?
Passer-By: no.

i was picking on ethnic minorites (deliberate misspelling; i do want to rank for "ethnic minorites"), people wearing lots of cloth, shells round their necks, beards... quite why i gave one to sally and amy - park village house mates - i don't know. i'd love to see them their though.

COGS OPEN LECTURES AUTUMN 2004
Professor Margaret Boden
Tuesdays at 11-11.50
Biology Lecture Theatre, John Maynard Smith Building

October 12 Man as Machine: Origins of the Idea
October 19 Are Minds Machines Too?
October 26 The Rise of Computational Psychology
November 2 The Birth of Connectionism
November 9 When GOFAI was NEWFAI
November 16 A-Life in Embryo
November 23 Philosophies of Mind and Machine
All welcome - particularly Informatics first and second year undergraduates, new masters and DPhil students, COGS-IDP students, and interested students of Psychology and Philosophy

i like that last bit - for some reason, they deliberately excluded third years in that list; to the effect that they may as well have listed 'everyone that's not a third year'. the image of maggie, standing at the door, scanning for potential third years (who don't get that complimentary glass of wine) brings a titter to my eye.

REEVE DEAD

does that make those jokes funnier or not?

"Without leaving his wheelchair, he was able to make great strides toward a cure for conditions like his," Kerry said.

cheese.

meanwhile, here's two sides of a debate:

Callum Rankine, Species Officer, WWF.
Animals do not exist for our benefit. They exist because they evolved to do a certain job within nature. But if a species does not benefit people directly, they often don't see a reason to conserve it.

We at WWF are looking at it from an ecological point of view: All species are doing a job, even if we don't know what that job is.

Removing a species from the ecosystem is like removing a rivet from an aeroplane without knowing its function. Nobody would want to fly in that aeroplane - but that is what we are doing to our environment. We are causing species to go extinct left right and centre without knowing what they do.

As far as we know, this is the only planet we can live on. We are stuck here and we are mucking about with our life support system. That doesn't strike me as sensible.



Ian Parker, author and game hunter.

As many life forms are harmful to human well-being, it is downright silly to say we should preserve the world's biodiversity in toto.

We want to exterminate Aids viruses, bacteria that cause tuberculosis, malaria plasmodia that kill millions of children annually, and countless other harmful pathogens. So it is, too, with black rats and locusts.

Our welfare relates directly to eliminating harmful forms of life and we are unavoidably committed to modifying our environments to suit our particular needs.

Common sense calls for accepting that in many cases, this means exterminating some of its elements.

The challenge conservationists face is to keep them as few as possible, and avoiding dogmatic and palpably insupportable claims that all must be preserved.

bye the waye, there's a new 3-track demo by colourmap for download, and it's most definately a marked improvement.

this time next week:

19th October 2004:The Big Bang ? the greatest story
ever told?
Simon Singh, writer, broadcaster and bestselling
author of Fermat’s Last Theorem and The Code Book, and
Andrew Liddle, Professor of Astrophysics, University
of Sussex
Everybody has heard of the Big Bang theory. But how
many of us can actually claim to understand it? Join
bestselling Simon Singh as he tells the story of the
brilliant minds that deciphered the mysteries of the
Big Bang, and hear physicist Andrew Liddle’s take on
some of the physics that underlie the universe.

at the terraces, where i once had a reather tasty meal with pops. mmm.. food. time to go and eat.

add to wish list...

two compliments today: "you're looking well" and "you're looking very clean". Jess said my life was "pretty much perfect". my new album is being produced by rick rubin. at the expense of not going to Rita's funeral, i've had a very good weekend, in which i've slept with two ladies (technically)*. friday involved being so up for it, that on my solo walk back from the pub, i popped into the glouschestershire, and had a bit of a jig, and then Ewa appeared and the night went on, until i was ejecting five strangers from my house at four o'clock in the morning. Ewa stayed the night, bless her, and her thankfully-odourless feet. then to london for Ed's birthday party, dressed as 'Radiohead's 'difficult' period'. lots of lovely faces, old and new. upon the point of leaving for brighton at two, Ruth turned up, and we sat chatting to the sound of Billy Bragg 'til four, then went back and watched The Simpons. went for further drinking with Ed and Pete in a terrible Scream pub the next day, and was home by ten in the evening, for Grass, and Laurence's parents had left me a bottle of organic Black Isle Porter, for which i am very thankful.

i used to get away with saying 'clarts' without bringing strangers home for a jam. interesting.


this takes the biscuit:


grilly.xxx
* dammit jim, i'm a doctor, not an ambiguity!
that said, i don't have a new album, and i don't want to make salacious, dirty humourisms based upon my adventures of the mate of the bloke who set up the P.A.. i just thought it was funny that i can technically get away with saying that.

EDIT: looking at the baby tiger sketches page, i notice that alongside Monica Queen is an act called 'Quinn'. could this be the same Quinn that felighted audiences in Durham with tales of his 'Dirty Laundry', 'Pink Pashmina', and 'Expensive Giraffe'? i think we should be told.

larvely..

Super furry animals long peel session - listen to it before they take it down (wednesday).

and check the fuck out of the Swarrrm track near the start of the program. that's so sweet.


i love them already. why do the japanese do everything so very well?

"what does 'creativity' mean to you?"

erm..

that was the focus group on the new 'excellence in creativity and learning' centre the university is bidding for funding for. the Government has decided that although our insitutions are (to sum up) 'fuckled', it's going to put extra money - that could be going on the basics, and the essentials - into special, high-tech, caucasian pachyodermic, point-missing, new, malleable spaces.

on the other side of the argument - it will refurbish a part of the university already listed for such as part of the 'rolling upgrade' plan, and provide a space for design students to do stuff they used to have to do on corridor walls in east slope.

the woman asked, "what can we put in to make it more creative?" and i said "drugs." she didn't like that idea.

yes. rachel's dinner for us was fun and entertaining. she lives with two women who have a cat - a big, round, tabby cat which will qwuite happily bite you, the naughty thing.

oops! seminar.

x

yay me!

i got 20/30 correct on this difficult analogies quiz, which just pushes me into the 'gifted' category. it's difficult not to smile at myself and think how great i am, but then, i'm good at difficult things. except fancy dress.


'funky drummer guy'. yes, it's from b3ta, and i don't want to have to keep putting their stuff up here, so please, just read it, annoying and smarmy and frequently bobbins as it is.

here's some more:

>> God FAQ <<
Some thoughtful people haven taken the time and
effort to collect all the available information
about God and collate it into a handy 'Frequently
Asked Questions' list. Everything you could
ever need to know about God and more.
http://www.400monkeys.com/God/index.html

new elliot smith mini-site

here.

laurence just sent me an email from his gmail account; it arrived in hotmail's junk folder. political? toi?

quickly: just searched for difficulty, looking for inspiration for ed's party on saturday, for which the web page is classic, but iw on't put it up as it contains contact information, and detailed directions to his house - and we don't want gate crashers! what came up first? the Which OS Are You? quiz! even better-sounding is the Which Nigerian Spammer Are You? quiz, which it offers at the end.

i'm superhorney, like single malt whiskey...

the ultimate sick jokes page? now lets never talk of that again. what's really sad is the repitition - people should take some responsibility for their jokes. god, i'm so sick of dead baby jokes now, although i remember Thom being sick of them first. Joel had a really good one though last night, on the way to his induction to Grub's. what was it? there was something kind of superior about it...

meanwhile, as i was drifting off to sleep last night, thought about the concept of "meeting up for a drink". what's that all about, eh? it stares us in the face, how insecure we all are, everytime we want to meet someone. "lets me up for something to occupy our hands, and distract us from each other, and fill in the silences when we run out of things to say, and relax(alcohol)/stimulate(caffine) us so that we can interact better."

the weekend was excellent. Father and i left warslow at seven(?), got to brighton about 11.15, then picked up an Eshna's and got to the house. i had been allocated the same room as last year, and since Jess had done the same, and entirely recreated her old room, i was left with the piano on the other side of my wall.
what did i say? what was the one thing (or an otter) i didn't want this year? fortunately, i'm an 'easy going guy' (or so i tell girls online) and i don't actually care that much. i got my amp. yup.
so during our curry, Mitri says we should unload the car now, while it's quiet. so we lug all the stuff into my room; it only took me a couple of hours (three) to pack it up, since a lot was still in the boxes it was brought in. and then, at one in the morning, he says: "right. i think i'll go home now." his eyes were really wired, and he's raring to get it out of the way. he drove to somewhere round brummygam way, slept, got home at eight, slept until twelve. the mad bastard.

the next day, we Laurence and i said hello to brighton. hung out in dave's (i copied and pasted that sentence from an old post). actively didn't buy ceedees. because i just got an old David Wrench record from '97, where he does a very good Nick Cave impression throughout, and an MJ Hibbett record. and that night, we went to the Sanctuary Cafe (see last post). he was class, and the guys after him, actually only one astronaut and a friend of his on guitar, was absolutely excellent. someone was fiddling with a delay effect too, which was fun, but didn't really improve the performance. and then Rosie's party, which was the best for ages, because every one was so nice to me. people normally turn their noses up, like my grandma susan always said they would. so thanks to every one who was there for making it so nice. sunday... wait a minute, i'll just check Laur's blog... right enough, dave's diner, house shop, house meeting, it's all there. seeing Beth again was delightful. drunk some single malt. went to bed.


and last night, was Astra and Abi and the Warmal pub (or something). hugely delightful, and full of vaguely familiar pretty faces. please go next time she's on. her songs are rather deep; i can't find it in myself to write stuff like that, or Martha Tilston. maybe my life just isn't that emotional. i think the last actual song i wrote was 'Edmond'.


the only other thing i have to say is: i'm planning on playing ultimate frisbee again this year. need to work on my forehand, as my gfinger still hurts when i try that one.

love,
grilly.x