do you believe in the power of dreams?

i recited these dreams to myself many times, until i was sure to remember them. there was a third but it mustn't have been worth remembering.

dream one
i landed a job as a computer programmer. cause for celebration? no. the person working on my right was a hateful moron, and the person on my left was ollie glass. he had headphones on and asked me some question loudly. it may have been offensive, or it may have been understanding - i remember both emotions. so, this being a dream, i shot him, only, it turned out he was a t1000 and no matter how many times, he kept reforming; then i sodomised a penguin.

dream two
mark z. danielewski had a new book out. it was written in two colours, and had loads of inserts and junk kept falling out of it. it cost 68 pounds.
the manchester evening news reported that my father was having an affair, and as such, there was a media circus outside his flat (where i am typing this now, but it didn't look anything like it). he was nowhere to be found. i took a stroll down to his restaurant, and there he was, with a big fake moustache, odd clothing and a wig.

happy new year everyone!

self help graffitti

i've just discovered the joys of flickr, and it's much, much better than hello, which i'd been using. here are some recent photos.


pavement, brighton.


bin, manchester.


computer monitor, trafford park.

i've just had a very pleasant evening with ewa in an underground bar with loud music and a very good juke box. but today i really discovered the joys of 'his and hers', which i bought in a charity shop.
now, ever since my copy of mansun's 'six' came with an incorrect disc tray (opaque instead of clear) i've had an eagle eye for hidden secrets in cd cases, which explains my quick discovery of the kid a secret booklet. in my copy of his and hers, behind the standard disc tray, is a reciept: "virgin megastore brighton, 13/07/94, 13:26: 11.99, cash 15:00". oh. i feel so touched that the owner would keep that forever, and then simply discard the album to a charity shop. i will now go through the pulp back catalogue and buy everything. it is my new mission, since i have fallen in love with jarvis so much more than when i bought 'different class' nearly ten years ago, nearly ten years younger.
i nearly cried to 'pink glove' on the bus today.

doom on a phone/ spot the swastika/ VALERIECHRIST

doom on a mother fucking phone! jesus! and it's not even that much like doom!
doom rpg is a fairly simple, standard rpg, that actually reminds me of the 'desktop adventures' series by lucas arts. there are lots of graphics cribbed straight from the game (and wolfenstein 3d, which it feels more like since the levels are entirely flat, although the variety of enemies is definately more doomish). it distracted me for a good eight hours. there are some fun in-jokes, but naming the levels as merely numbers is a let down.


i took this photo:


and sent it to log (he had a thing on his website about a while back about crymi signs). he responded with a really very, very interesting fact. it is that this picture

(done by log's mate chi)
up until very late in the day, had a swastika hidden in it too. i wonder if you can guess where it was going to be?

so saturday, i got to see valerie. i didn't think it was going to happen for three reasons; 1, i couldn't get anyone to come, 2, val wouldn't be on 'til gone midnight which was getting a bit late for me, and 3, it was sold out. these were countered thusly: 1, you're being wussy; 2, you're being really wussy, and 3, ring up the venue and beg. and so it came to pass that i wandered across the river and into salford at ten o'clock at night and found a literal waste land, the manchester skyline beautiful cranes adorned with faery lights. i trotted into the venue with my three pounds (spent on a copy of the new valerie e.p.) and as chloe pomes (who didn't do any poetry, and wasn't even in drag - unless drag is defined as 'something a woman would wear' instead of 'something that a woman would wear that a man would not wear, unless he was.. (swallows own head trying to define the paradox of drag)') span around in a little circle on her own, i leant against the bar and read my private eye. when suddenly, pow! jo was upon me and being very nice and valerie are great to me. my great fear is that they're being sympathetic, and actually see me as a stalking saddo, which was properly allayed that night. i met another long term val fan, marion, and we got talking - she's got a show on local radio tonight which i will listen to - as long as i could, given the volume of the music and the throat-scratching affect of talking over it. a brief walk upstairs and there was a disco party on the middle floor, and a graffitti hang out on the top floor (the building is a dis-used mill).

the first band on were smartypants, two fun girls in the blue minkies/valerie vain, thus, young people using whatever cheap things they can find to make great fun music, and top they were too. banterlicious. then dragula, the three piece "undead dance-drag troupe", did a turn. given the darkness, make-up and people in the way, i honestly couldn't tell you if they were men in drag as women, or women in drag as men, or women dressing up as if they were men in drag (sailor's costumes), i've really no clue.
the next act was completely sick. jewish, of course, my parent in my head is telling me. gideon conn and his band were completely amazing, in the slickest most polished sense, and they're going to be big. they must know it; that's why they've got backing singers (ok, there's a cause and effect thing going on here). they were great, in a completely professional way, and what could make for a more classic valerie gig and playing after an amazingly professional band (are you listening, surferrosa, with your five 'k' debut?) then dragula did another bamboozling performance ('sometimes it's hard to be a woman', in army gear) and it was time for valerie, who hadn't played together for two months.

i don't need to go into the rest. they'd obviously planned the gig quite well, with songs seguing into each other and things, but it all went to hell. i can only laugh heartily as i remember the hi-jinx and antics, with elvis throwing potentially lethal objects into the audience, culminating in a cymbal stand hitting jo's head ("sometimes you can be a little too rock and roll, elv," she managed). i think they might have got in trouble for what they did to that drumkit. i think the gideon conn band might remember them for a long time.

it must have been nearly two when i left, what with everyone running late, and i swapped media with marion - i gave her a copy of purple milk, and she gave me a copy of her mini-zine, 'the wedding conspiracy', which i read several times on the way to mother's christmas party yesterday (more about that later) and really wanted to shove it in the face of the 'reveal' reading woman, scowling at everything across the waiting room for me, and say, 'look! some people have different opinions, and here they are!' anyway, i'm very impressed by it, and her entry on a certain work based website (anonymity is important here so i shan't link it or nothing) is really very well written indeed. yay me for finding someone new to mutually back slap!

over.

some things i found funny

the first annual cooked and bombed tumbleweed awards for bad comedy
including some awards made up just for nathan barley (Most Patronising/Annoying Reaction Shots In A Comedy Show'?). satisfyingly, little britain wins 'most overrated show'.

euros childs' tour diary
i've always loved him, but i never realised he was this funny.

it's important to laugh, because this morning i accidentally recorded five minutes of guitars one semi-tone sharp. i don't understand how it happened, i must have got confused during downtuning and ended up at the same pitch i was at before.

you've also got to laugh, because 900 protesters were "'rounded up'" at the wto summat in hong kong, which is slightly more important.

i think i'm going to become an anarchist.

cry out loud

i've just been listening to the best song i've heard all year.

and then i found out they played in this town four nights ago.

and i said 'noooooooo!'.

whatever happened to the spinach soup?

i forgot to buy stock cubes from the shop, so i tried to make a saag aloo instead, but it turned into mashed potato with spinach, on staffordshire oat cakes.

tonight i am keeping it simple.

whatever happened to 'go home and be a family man!'?

the observant amongst you may have noticed the disapearance of 'go home and be a family man!' from my downloads sidebar. there files are still on my music page, but i've decided to make them less obvious in light of my current and forthcoming releases. let me explain.

the story may start with my first cd, and second 'first album proper': grilly and the orange pants band's 'their orange, there pants, and they should be banned'. it was 74 minutes of hissy low-fi. somehow i'd unlearned the lesson of my first 'first album proper', 'campaign against normality', for which i'd bought a 40-minute cassette and filled it with my own songs. previous to this, i'd simply filled 90-minute tapes with covers and an occasional original number, ran off a tape cover in microsoft publisher; this happened about three times, the best being the first release, which was live recordings with ben dobson on piano. most of everything was awful, if not for the material for the execution - not owning a four track, i simply used two tape decks and a mic to bounce up a song. this meant that the rythm track was often the most indistinct in the mix, having been seriously degraded. my lack of playing ability, and fear of being caught recording so vocals were only semi-whispered also made matters worse. anyway, so i did a 40 minute album of my own stuff, as it was all the songs i had at the time. we can draw a direct line from there to here. my next record was the afore-mentioned orange pants band, which should have been split into two parts.
after this, i have another 45-minute side of unreleased stuff (one track was incorporated into ttvcb as 'pessimist's love song'), and then i went to durham and decided to record a proper album with a proper track list, ultimately 'try the view change button'. but it still had too much on. i originally envisaged it as having sub-sections, like e.p.s, but in the end just had the whole thing as one order. it was an hour long. i wouldn't say the album was too long.. but tracks were excluded from it. after i left durham, and the album still wasn't finished, i kept recording. and after a point, i thought, 'these tracks are too different to my durham material to use on try the view change button. that is my durham album, and it is as finished as durham. these songs shall make a new album.'

an album - be it a single, an extanded play or a long play - is all about the tracklisting, and how the songs work together. this is why i have always finished songs and put them online straight away, and then let the vision of the album come out of how those songs interact. i saved those new songs - ayufa, edmond, and david trimble - and then came 'dovedale joints'. divided into two distinct halves, with tracks fading into each other, real sequencing and seguing, and my first stabs at production, since during it's recording i attended a music tech/sound recording course. it was, at long last, my first 'real' 'first album proper'. the decks were almost cleared, although i still have unused songs from this era and before. and then came, slightly premature, my idea for my next album: 'go home and be a family man!'

i'm not sure when the title apeared in my head, but it must have been in first year of brighton when we found ourselves back on street fighter 2:championship edition. while back in manchester, i'd slightly written two very long songs: 'the girl in the kid a top' and 'new boyfriend'. but i didn't have the means in brighton to record them straight away, and used fruity loops to create music instead. when i did get my electric guitar down, i started recording 'the girl..' and a new song, 'love'. i envisaged the new album from start to finish, and recorded an acoustic demo of the whole thing in a night, plus the fruity loops material. but slowly, new songs ousted the old, and i changed the name and structure of the album; it became 'womansour', simply because i thought it was a better title. it would be stretched across two mini-cds, like a real record has two sides of 20 minutes. i had enough songs (i still have the conceptual covers for this version). but what with 'the girl' taking so long to record and being so central to the two-disc concept, it was cut along with half the material, and what remained was the five tracks you see today. four out of the five songs were entirely written in that year, so it's very documentary. 'go home..' was going to be along shortly.. wasn't it?

over the following year, i produced another full cd of material, 32 tracks, which lead me to start planning an album based around the levels of doom 2.. this never materialised, but the odd thing is, i've only used one of the tracks on that cd on 'on benefit', which is 'quinlank', recorded in a week long binge of whiskey and ciggerattes, because, seriously, i thought that's how rock stars got their creativity. i meant to record a whole album that week. so those doom 2 songs - including my banging first year fruity loops tracks - are still waiting in the wings..

so then rebessica arrived, and i started writing songs to be performed by a band - 'midweek cd purchase' and 'klein bottle' certainly so. so after my experiances with that falling through, and being on the dole, the new album has taken shape, but it is not 'go home'. it is not so different, but it is different. it's an interesting mix, that the first and the last tracks (also fanthorpe) were written some time ago, but all the others are 'new' songs. and the new material is really quite rocking - quinlank, midweek and klein bottle are pretty heavy songs, and forever was a rediciously heavy song, once. purple milk (acoustic), the newest song on the album, will offset this nicely, i hope. but i run the risk of falling into my own criticisms of my attorney's silver bullet that "it's a shame there's not a section with several 'proper' songs together" (a criticism that i now disagree with. i love the album to bits (as you can see from my new lyric below the photo), although i still think 'the moon and the sea' is underbaked). it's only eight songs, and one of those is a cover, although the overall length is a classic 42 minutes thanks to those bulky book ends.

i think i might go and do some recording now. or make some spinach soup.

a new irish joke

and i'm going to do this very quickly.


this english couple go abroad to ireland for their autumn break. they get across to galway on the first of october, and set up their tent in a camp site overlooking the atlantic ocean. they have a wonderful time, in this, the most cosmopolitan of provincial irish towns, and wake up the next day feeing fine. that day is full of fun walks, site seeing and entertainment.

imagine their shock the next morning when they wake up in their sleeping bags to find an irishman in their tent with them, pooing everywhere.
"bless my dear aunt sally! what in god's name are you doing!" cries the englishman.
"didn't ya know? it's de turd of de tent," replies the irishman..

















































































phonetically pronouncing 'the third of the tenth' in a 'hilarious' 'oirish' accent.

two minute songs

tracklisting, for those who've recieved, or are yet to recieve, this auto compilation in track-number order; my itunes, selected by 1:59 < time < 2:01

russell preston - picking
bal sagoth - hatheg klah (or something)
mansun - being a girl (part one)
stephen jones - +i'm not sure what it's called+
stpehen jones - +i don't know it's name either, but isn't this bizarre?+
half man half biscuit featuring andy kershaw - running order squabble fest
eels - blinking lights (for me)
grilly - shit
pentangle - cold mountain
half man half biscuit - new york skiffle
kefranski - morning sickness (jez alex acoustic session)
zabrinski - cewwlddieattt (or somethnig else. in welsh)
the serpents - dusted
pentangle - waltz
dillinger escape plan - calculating infinty
try to relax - +i'm not sure of the name - it's the one with the lovely harmonies at the end+
my attorney - i'm so tired
radiohead - hunting bears
pink floyd - eclipse
radiohead - i will
bjork - +something off medulla+
grandaddy - away birdies with special sounds
napalm death - the politics of common sense
frank zappa - let's make the water turn black
mugison - +unknown title, but it's a lovely piece of music, a little like some of those silly instrumentals damon would hide on blur albums+
daniel barenboim - +do you expect me to be able to know which bach fugue this is just from listening?+
hammell on trial - worrywort
realized? i've no idea of the name, and it's in japanese so i wouldn't worry. good though.
eels - blinking lights (for you)
nick drake - +home recording, don't know the name of the song+
nick drake - +as sim+
russ conway - rule britannia
unknwon digital hardcore track

game spotting

as i got up this morning, i noticed two things: i didn't have any socks to wear for work (i mean, *any*, they were locked in the washing machine), and i hadn't done the washing up from the night before. this wasn't such a problem; i only have one pan, and would simply have to wash it tonight. but i realised that the reason i hadn't washed it was to instigate the 'can you do your washing up?' conversation with my father, whose flat i am using to live in. i don't know whether i wanted this conversation out of familiarity or masochism, but sure enough, later he said it was a bit scruffy and i should clean up after myself properly. it wasn't a pleasant experience by any means. but i feel good about understanding my actions.

which leads me to a game which i never wrote up here: "the 'games people play' drinking meta-game". what you do is, as you go about your daily business, watch out for people playing life games, deliberately or not, including yourself. when you notice discover one, go out and get drunk.

by the way, i'm thinking of changing keeing up with the times by changing the ephel duath lyric above, 'are you coming to poison my remarks?', to one from their new album. the suggested quote in the packaging is 'when you still confuse the smile to offer/it's hard to feel the perfect vibration', but i quite like the self-explanatory 'to glide from the light blue of desire's room/seems to be my favourite sing song'. thoughts?

one more coversation unto the breach

today, she told me i couldn't contribute to the office soundscape and put a cd on.

joanna: i want to listen to the radio.
grilly: i *don't* want to listen to the radio.
joanna: there are other people in this office, you know.

why doesn't she know? how simple is she? of course i won't put on my offensive music. i put on my acceptable music.. and she goes and demonstrates her ringtones over it, while saying, 'no, this one's really annoying' to her neighbour. doesn't she realise that what i play is alrady a compromise? and why doesn't she understand democracy? there are three people in a room, therefore, time is split evenly between them as to what is played. i am happy with silence at work, fuck, i prefer it to the distress i get from key 103. if, there are five people in a room, and four want to listen to the radio, that still leaves me with time in a working day to put a fucking cd on, and still i try and not piss people off as much as they deserve for putting me thruogh this crap.

i could go on about what i hate about the radio. the adverts first, then the djs, then the music. but what i really hate is her, because of how she hates me with no reason, and because she makes me believe that the class system has something to say (no! cause and effect, dammit!).

the ironic thing is, the job isn't that bad. i've got to the stage where i've accepted it, and i could do it for another month (although i'd have to accept that i could do it indefinately before i'd really broken/been set free), but i have to get away from her. it's not healthy for me to be around her. i don't like disliking people. i'm terrified of what it could do to me, even if i try to stop it. i clearly don't belong there, and while trying to persevere has it's merits, what happens if i lose my a piece of my mind trying?

* lifelong disappointment
* because you're crippled by self-awareness, and they're not

gallow slutt 04

<p>ur</p>le milk is now online.

1. purple milk
2. love (try to relax remix)
3. sex
4. fair trade whore

upon downloading, update tag info accordingly, and please try not to think of 'start wearing purple'.

notae benne! this is an updated version of sex. the old version now only exists on your hard drive, if you downloaded it.

new valerie 7" out soon, performance on 17th december, guest list only, who's coming?

another conversation

johannnna: what do they check on your m.o.t.?
gary: your emissions..
j: what's that?
lindsey: *something to an effect*
j: oh! i thought you said 'your ignitions'!
g: no, 'your emissions'.
j: what's that?
grilly: *fumes*

ah, there's one in every office.

2 conversations

the start of the day: a man stands on the metro platform next to me. he starts whistling loudly.

me: sounded like you were going to into 'hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy' there.
him: i've never heard it. my saddo older brother read that. he was always reading, instead of kicking a football around.
me: er.. really?
him: about 13 months older. 'course, (*sympathetically*), he lives on the other side of the pennines.. not much to do around there.

the tram arrived, i got into a different carriage.


the end of the day: everyone's packing up.
joanna, my colleague: got to run, i'm driving into manchester
me: oh, could i get a lift?
her: no, i don't think so. (exeunt)

that doesn't look as unreasonable on paper, but she did say it quite unpleasantly. the next few weeks are going to be fun, with a capital punishment.

huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh

i have to be at work in seven and a half hours. at work with those morons and that radio and steve penk. i will ask tomorrow to put a cd on, and try and fit it to their simple tastes. already, today, i have intuitively scared myself off from saying asnything 'too clever'. i'm only going back to make myself a stronger person. otherwise i would quit tomorrow.


aha! but wouldn't a strong person stand up for themselves, and say, no! i will not spend my working day in mental solitude from these ant brains! i will quit!? which is the strong approach? which is better for me in the long run? mmm.

on benefit

the next releases from gallow slutt software are planned as follows:

purple milk (grilly04cd)

1. purple milk (single version)
2. love (try to relax remix)
3. sex
4. fair trade whore
5. gold top (not yet recorded)


which will preceed:

on benefit: 8 songs of impotence and frustration for the long-term unemployed (grilly05cd)

1. the girl in the kid a top
2. the kinky friedman crime club (formerly 'quinlank')
3. fanthorpe
4. midweek cd purchase
5. forever (the berzerker)
6. klein bottle fish tank
7. purple milk (acoustic) (not yet recorded)
8. new boyfriend (not yet recorded)

that's how it looks now. the album needs a lot of re-recording before it's ready, and i'm very excited about the adventure recording 'new boyfreind', and frightened that it won't sound as good as it does in my head. it's really four songs stuck together so it shouldn't be too different, apart from sticking them together. i'm toying with th'idea of playing around with track marks and 'nested songs'. watch this space.

oh yeah, and i've remixed sex so i might put that up instead, but i can't decide which one's better. i might open it up to the forum.

it's good to be optimistic, because, bloody work. after working three days in a mark's and spencer's office doing griding data entry - taking print outs and entering the meaningless data back onto a different computer, or even deleting a series of data value by value and then entering it back into a different part of the same program, and yet still being pissed off finding out i won't be working any longer than three days - i did a 6 hour shift in carrington's in didsbury, and got thirty quid cash in hand. i felt like pissing on it. but give me thirty hours of that a week, i suppose it's not too bad. ceteris parabis, however, i'd rather be doing seven and a half hour days at seven and a half pounds an hour, and reciting 'your call is very important to us' by sparks to keep me sane (totally digging the cd, ed).

---

now. if someone rung me up, and i was in the bath, of course i'd say 'ooh, i'm just in the bath' without a second thought. but when (certain?) girls do it it's so difficulting. i can't help but imagine them naked, like when someone farts and you can't help but visualise their rippling sphincter. so why do i keep mentally rerunning the conversation to myself in my head? hmm. of course, if anyone said they were in the bath, i suppose i'd picture them naked. it can't be helped. but when certain people do it, i can't help but blush and turn very english indeed. oh, i say.

on a similar point, apparantly someone came into the offy recently with tourettes, and kept saying things like 'knickers', 'tits' and 'ooh matron'. it's great what people think is offensive. charming.

anyway i should be at home now. whoops.

the making of purple milk

last night i recorded 'purple milk (single version)' from scratch in about three hours, and it sounds awesome. i can't wait to mix, master and put it to up here for you to hear, it's a proper pop song and i'm very excited. it just happened so quickly - i spent weeks on 'love', and months on 'kid a top'. am i getting faster, or my arrangements/songs getting simpler? partly must be to do with the rebessica experiance - i wrote and recorded 'midweek cd purchase' and 'klein bottle fish tank' for a band, so i wasn't sticking down layers of studio introspection, of which there is none on 'purple milk', which is a two-riff song. kbft is a three riff song, mcdp is five. quinlank is three; fanthorpe doesn't work like that. la.
i do worry that it 'purple milk' sounds too much like part a of 'new boyfreind', which i will record next if all goes to plan. it's in the same time signature of 12/8 and has a similarly stompy chorus.

i saw an erotic film set in a bank the other day. it was called 'debit does balance'.

why are hollywood directors good at picking up drugs?
because martin scorscese!

---

the covers band demo tracks which i will email to the man:

superstition (wonder)

this town ain't big enough for the both of us (mael)

voice: pete
piano, clavier: jez/laz
guitars: grilly
the drums: ed
the bass guitar: thom

the worst bagel ever.

if this weekend just gone is remembered for anything, it'll be ixxy's bagels in euston station for monumentally fucking up my bagel for breakfast. how much is a plain bagel, i asked. 75p, they said. that's three pounds you'd be paying for filling. right, i'll have a sesame bagel. ixxy's had a time release bagel rack; you put them in at the top, and they are conveyed down to the bottom where they drop out toasted. oh yeah, i forgot, you cut them before you put them in. there were two asians working behind the counter, male and female, and the woman was clearly the newer, as the first bagel she dropped down it got stuck. after it was retrived, the second one went in. this one got stuck too, only this time, she couldn't get it out. the man hurriedly cut another bagel in two, but all askew, my heart sank as i could see that getting stuck as well.. but it didn't. it dropped through, pushing the other bagel out onto the counter, and both halves came with it. oh woe, i thought, as he brought out the butter, and smeared the clearly cold bagel all across it's middle. aside from the ash around the rim, it was completely uncooked. and yet i recieved it with all the grace becoming of a customer, and thanked him. and this is what the story is really about; why am i so passive? i should have laughed at him, like andyhead in venice at the ice cream seller with the deliberately limp-wristed curling skills. i should have done something about it. i wasn't in a hurry. i wish i could relive it and try again. so sad.

so that story's slightly fallacious, as the bagel is maybe the most forgettable incident. saturday, getting to london and meeting big gril in the city - nay, epi - center of london crowds, and thusm, commercialism, we went for a very nice japanese meal, of tofu teriyaki for me, which was bean sprout central and quite lovely, and a box of various things for dan. we met ed on sean connery's hand print, recorded for the 'league of extraordinary gentlemen' film, and went to chandos bar. and who was there but another durhamer called tom, who i instantly recognised but couldn't for the life of me place until he said how i knew him. it's possible that we watched the princess bride together, but that may have just been andy, the guy who got married in scandinavia, and myself and possibly jo? ah, i remember that evening; borrowing the video from jim - whatever happened to that whole crowd? the only one i have any sort of contact with is gareth, is sometimes online on msn, although we've not 'chatted' for ages -, bumping into andy and the others, andy saying, 'yeah but i've got to be up in the morning and etc.', and me resorting to the 'once in a lifetime' argument and winning. i had a quote from the spark on my bedroom door - something about christian's being more likely to spit on a person - which i had to explain in order to not seem completely outrageous to the jesus crew. ahem. oh god, where was i?

so there we were, ed, my brother and me, and we're not going to follow them into that gay club, not at that volume and not and that price - ok, £3 isn't much if i want to go in somewhere, but otherwise we can forget it. so the three of us continueud onto another sam smiths pub, charming with all the trappings of an olde pub, like bits of wall sticking out at shoulder height that you have to climb under to go to the toilet, and eventually, jez, pete, pete's mate (sorry i've forgotten your name) and even the kitchen sink, yes, cara flowers, who i've not seen since valerie on st. valentine's day last year (?). there was a hearty debate, inter-group bonding and breakages, and it was a swell night. went back to dan's and slept in his very cold living room - it was better after i moved onto the couch. i thought my sleeping bag would protect me..

on sunday, after remembering that i'd left my shoes at the front door because they, and now the carpet, were covered in poo, i left ealing with all my belongings and was at tottenham court road station by 10.00. no-one else was, or would be there for at least half an hour. i walked off down the street, stopped outside a closed megastore and asked two passing policemen where a cash point was, despite the fact that a lloys/tsb sign was visible from where we were standing (obviously i didn't realise this at the time, but i'd just been down the road where they said and there was nothing there, so i looked on. i had the best veggie sausage roll; i can't remember the shop, but there was one in bath when dan lived there. turning back and going down another road (charing cross?) i was surprised to find exactly the same shops as i'd just walked past, but in a slightly different order. if anyone tells you capitalism and globalistation are about choice, just point them round there, it was like a stuck looping cartoon background. eventually i found an independant cafe, but it was the pits and was supplied by star and j.j. fast food catering. at least there were hash browns. it was all i ate until falafel and chips at midnight; but more on that later.

i'm going to break a wierd taboo now - it's not even mentioned that it's taboo, it's so unspeakable -, and mention the band, because no-one else has. we got in and tried our best at 'this town...' and 'kate', which finally clicked for me on the train home. when the time ran out we fled across london to another studio, practiced practiced practiced, and recorded two cuts which maybe i'll be allowed to link to. i can't wait to hear them; they sounded terrible at the time, but i'm hoping that that'll have rusted away somewhat. then we went to 'east london's newest music venue', an original claim, as by music they mean smash hitz t.v. at full volume on two inescapable screens.

then i went off to see melt banana with matt and his spare ticket. 'i'm being good' were supporting, and didn't impress me much, but the banana were amazing. i've been waiting for this gig a long time, on both previous events they had sold out. i went giddy just before they came on when i realised they were finally touring 'cell scape', and they'd be playing all that crazy guitar/beat stuff - what that guy can do live with his hands and feet is incredible. on the record one wonders if it's just been messed up with protools but when he's making those noises in front of you, one must simply accept it. they remained nearly effortless for the whole performance, an hour including two encores, by the end of which, the singer's throat muscles were really starting to show, although her voice was still perfect. you think she's just cute, don't you, in her white hoody, with her little nippy voice (that's a reference to her noise, not her race), but blimey, she must do some working out - she is strong.

this morning something happened which has been waiting and building for a while - i bumped into russell preston. there i was with my shit bagel, sat on the floor, waiting for the platform to be announced, and suddenly there he was, coming over to me, and my jaw went slack. i just couldn't believe it, meeting someone i'd been so eager to re-establish contact with (i tried over friendster a while ago but didn't follow it throughand ended up looking too foolish to re-attempt). he's been in london a year. i chatted as long as i could, but trains won't wait.. maybe we'll meet up again soon..

i meant to record 'new boyfriend' tonight, but watched the first episode of the prisoner instead, which may set a worrying precedent. it's the first time i've seen it since tinyness, and do you, i think i prefer captain scarlet (at this stage). the audio mixing was terrible, background noise over one person's lines and then silence over the next! the acting was pretty crap too. very wierd camera work - generally quite bad, but with occaissional flashes and very short cuts that were quite maddening, in a good way. hmm. i'll try not to watch them all at once.

to cap things off, i've discovered that i have my own page on last fm - click the link in the side bar over there ->. then, download all my songs, install audioscrobbler, and listen to me for a while so that i get a fan. currently, 8 people recently listened to me. i'm one; who are the others? ah internet.
on a similar, and hopeful note, after looking at my profile i notice that big bruv dan 'big' gril is not only my friend, but also my musical neighbour. what tangled webs we weave!

why is breezy veruca footwear like a portrait of oliver cromwell?
because they're both wart sandal!

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my last weekend in brighton was pretty much as good as any. it was fantastiic to bump into someone on on western road on friday night - it felt like the old days. it was even better that it was ed, a mate of boy robin's, and that he told us there was a house party at robin's pad, just like the old days, but without falling down the stairs .
i wonder whatever happend to that shirt?

something happened on monday too. i'm sure it was pretty nice.

it was my going away party again last tuesday night - i say again because going through my diaries i found a page of friends in durham, with two columns next to their names: 'seen' and 'said goodbye'. that was more of a rolling three day party as everyone graduated around me. this year, it was three quarters of our house (to be fair, i didn't tell thom, but then i thought the chances of him taking a day off work at two day's notice were so low it wasn't worth the effort). when the two people who had come by nine o'clock, astra and rachel (who brought the required nibbles), both left, it looked like that was it. when simon arrived at ten o'clock and was largely ignored in favor of some last minute file swapping (real men exchange files, not pleasantries) it looked like it was over. it was such a shame. the house looked swell, and my room, lit by fairy lights, candles and beautiful agony (which confused astra while she was upstairs on the 'phone) was the dream hang out. but at a last minute, the cavalry arrived - anna and robin and kate and joel so we went down stairs and the beer got drunk and the tunes got played and then 'his and hers' came on and the party ended, everyone left. i could feel it. there are times when i'm deejaying when i'm wilfully punishing my audiance, i'll admit, seguing into d.e.p.'s 'the mullet burden' before finishing with radiohead's 'fog' (or anything else), but that last night, i wanted people to stay as long as possible, and had to play to the crowd. fortunately, the crowd were friends with similar music taste, so simian, terris, tv ont'radio and pulp were quite well recieved, people bobbed along in their seats and joel said he felt like dancing (although he always does and it's a good job he didn't if it was going to involve him making the hole in the wall larger). people went, we went to bed.

on my last day in brighton, i packed. i cycled down on to the beach to watch the sun set with a pack of chips, and was mobbed by hungry seagulls, as if they were saying, 'go! go back to the north!' i mentally rode around all my haunts; the walmer castle, for pizza, guiness cocktails and beutiful songs by abi and astra; the house rach, robin and simon had, and how i would always linger too long in perfect comfort; queen's park, "...and sussex!" on may day; deep kemptown, where i saw low perform in a church with alex, near the hand in hand brew-pub; the concorde where i saw a so many excellent bands - the plan (twice), the luna, the duath, the markets, and so on; meeting john peel in the free butt (where i saw all the other really good bands)and thanking him for getting gorky's to play, but being to shy to give him a copy of dovedale joints, so jess had to do it; turning veggie and finding it so easy; the mystery of deep hove. but what really sticks in my mind from brighton is missed opportunity. i could have put a band together. i could have played at an open mic every night. we could have had a monthly dj slot in the penthouse. i could have got a better degree. i could have eaten at terre a terre. i could have gone to that gig that i didn't feel like. icould have made some of my own friends instead of leaching off alex. i could have had a university girlfriend. but maybe i couldn't! and i don't regret my time.

that last night we went out to departure lounge at the prince albert (ironically enough), but never made it, as we got distracted at robin, kate and jess's house with top trumps (see earlier post), although jess was still out and busy with mad brighton stuff. there was an excellent play somewhere near the middle: five is a good number to play with, and the more of a state people are in the more brains are needed to bolster the game (sorry if this sounds trite but it's difficult to think properly when the computer you're typing at has a two second lag between you typing the words and them appearing).
somehow, maradonna was played by robin. selecting the atribute, "famous people who sound like other famous people", she gave him an 8 (for obviously, maddonna). it was a tricky play, nearly unbeatable, but kate piped up with robin williams (for robbie williams). moving horizontally through game space, via the deck "people who were good when you were young and are still good", she went to tina turner, and played her "legs" for 9. lindfrodo christie almost had it, but i took the round with a flea. selecting the deck 'insects' after an interminable wait, i played a dung beetle, using it's "affection for poo". laurence won the round with g.g. allin; and so forth. robin donated several boxes and an amplifier to my cause, and both have already been hugely enjoyable, so thanks.
i went back to finish off packing, which happened at 4 o'clock. there was a lovely point where catherine came over and i had a reviving cup of tea, but eventually i had to spurn her to finish the job. 8 hours later my room was clean and empty of meaningful belongings (but full of unwanted furniture) and i was riding north with my father. it was a relaxed goodye to laurence; "i'd hug you but i've an erection and i'm only wearing tiny pants," i said, to which he replied, "that's ok, we'll do it next time." we don't need tears. it's better than that. but how far removed from that early meeting when he asked on leaving, "don't i get a hug?" tommy was in a very huggy mood, after sitting on his bed watching his screen saver while mitri and i packed up the car. even simona wanted a hug.

anyway, kolak crisps: lemon and chili flavour are delicious. not in a naff 'sensations' way, but in a tasty food way. they're made with all natural ingredients (according to the pack), are refreshingly thin, are only sold in easy news on trafalgar street, and as far as i can make out, haven't been picked up by snackspot. someone better review them quick!

and bloody heck, i know i shouldn't even mention it, but little britain is such trite! i don't understand how two previously talented people can make something so... rubbish; it's the only word, and yet be so wildly succesful. yes i only watched two scetches, but it was really painful.

oh yeah, and today, i was meant to sign on in manchester. so i go to a job centre in town, and after waiting for the lady to stop nattering to the man in the queue in front of me - who turned out to be merely an employee, and she looked somehow startled when she noticed me, even though i'd been standing there staring at her for a minute; but they don't do benefits, only adverts, so she directs me to the one in rusholme, from her list of other job centres "it's a very handy list this," she sayd to the man; "and who've youu got to thank for that?" he replied. the website he got it from, if you ask me, but if he wants to take the credit he can. well i tell you, never has a busride so short taken so long (hearing two students sat behind me continually refer to it as the 'curry mile' and never once as rusholme was interesting). off the bus, i walk down the less-than-great 'great western road' (huh, they should see the one they've got in brighton, and that one actually goes west not east) and find the job centre in question, which, as it turns out, has been closed to the public since april 2003. some fucking list.

scrobbling free

i kind of regret that 'sex' is slightly underbaked, but i just can't be bothered to polish that turd. yes, some variation in the drum loops or a break beat or two would be fun, but it was never a 'real song' anyway. maybe what i don't realise is that it could have been, if i'd have made the effort.

i never wanted to get into audio scrobbler; i never saw the point, i thought of it like another eVanity craze like myspace. but i've been suckered by the new iteration, last.fm, that promises you personalised radio, not based on tracks they play you, but on songs you listen to on your computer anyway. i've already tried to investigate one 'dj baku' who lots of people who like 'swarrrm' like - i'm guessing that genre hopping style will be quite prevelant (they're both japanese), unlike the whole more regimented 'so you like gorky's.. have you heard of belle and sebastien?' style that i'm more used to on the internet. this is data-mining done right (*polishes shot gun*).
here's my page, in case anyway wants to add me. unfortunately, my computer seems to have broken itself and won't handshake, and i can't find the options (because they're not there). also i'm leaving in two days time and i've no idea when this pc will be on the internet again, so it's all a bit futile really.

what is totally fucking futile is how wonderwall is still in the charts, and has been since day one. it seems to have dropped out of the top ten a few times along the way but it must still be there, bubbling under. on a par is the postal services 'such great' which i was listening to on a mixtape from imogen last night, which has always been riding high, along with the killers' revolutionary 'somebody told me' and franz ferdinand's epic 'take me out'. and you can see some great effects when as new album comes out (or when it hits the download programs); look! coldplay week, and system of a down week. and of course, despite few forays into the song charts, radiohead is the number one artist every week, followed by either green day or more recently coldplay, and then always the beatles. isn't that fun?

do you want to listen to four new euros childs songs and an interview? well click this link here. it's a bit annoying because the presenter is obviously trying to pretend she's on the radio, when she's an employee of a record company.

so despite being morose and longing, i do often get a strong anti-relationship feeling. i suppose this's the part of me that's 'given up'. it's not a fear of 'commitment'; it's fear of lack of control. it's not the cynical sheen that is based in jealousy, i sometimes find my self positively relieved that i don't fancy anyone at the moment. i'm sure that'll change very easily; i just hope i won't get hurt again next time.

i'm so sick of 'punk funk'. i never liked it much in the first place, but it's really starting to bloody grate.

i've been working on a new game, 'card fighter 2'. i'm got some rough designs sketched out - basic rip offs of a few different card games, but it may have a really nice exchange, trade off, blow for blow dynamic. more soon.

webcest

what's going on? i don't know.

there's another new song - it's okay, but it's not another 'love'. well, sequels are never as good, are they? here it is - i give you sex.

yesterday i saw a blackbird with a white head, in the pavillion gardens. i took two photos but the daylight was too bright and i couldn't see the screen so neither came out. it wasn't a clean break into white feathers, it became patchy and then went completely white. i can't really explain it, but if that's not a sign of the apocalyse, what is?

so it's been a good period for cross platform media; last week, we watched the doom movie (yes, it was pirate, no, i'm not paying for it) and we/i've been playing the warriors computer game (bought by tommy at laurence's bequest, whether or not loz admits it). the doom movie is absolutely shit, largely because it doesn't have very much to do with doom (and if they'd done a literal translation that would probably have been shit too, so it's a complete waste of time). doom is about zombies with guns, hell, and the legions of cybernetic monsters contained therein. this film was about having an extra chromosome that turned people into either monsters or superheroes, depending on whether they were genetically good or bad. it's great science fiction, defined as 'completely fictional science'. there the monsters in this film amounted to three imps (no fireballs - they had very long tounges instead) and one daemon. i'm not going to go on.

translated the other way, the warriors game is okay as far as free-roaming brawlers go. rockstar have reinvented the beat 'em up for their own grand theft auto generation, meaning you can't just edge the screen forward pixel by pixel to trigger the next bad guy (sadly, there are no 'bad guys' in the warriors; every character, except maybe enthusiastic newby rembrandt, is a thick fucking twat). it completely expands upon the universe, by making you battle through the 'playoffs,' a la so many world cup football games, and we find out all those crazy, surreal gangs in the film that looked so fun are just petty thugs, who do nothing but pump iron, fight people who are identical but for their uniform, chase 'tail', mug, fight some more, steal, run shit protection rackets, and generally reinfect a wounded society with it's own vomit; their whole existence is an absolute drain. you get points for every thing you break, every last bin bag. the level that really turned me off it was the order to cause loads of crime to distract the police stake-out, by way of beating up factory workers. quite distasteful.

it would be cool to write a program that took current news.bbc.co.uk articles and thesaurised it into stanzas of nostradamus speak.

so simon out of simian/garden has already got another spinoff/sideproject, the usefully titled 'robert jesse and simon lord', and they have a 7" out later this month, as does euros childs, whose name i have consistenly mispronounced for eight years.

link post

Campaigners feel that Live 8 and Geldof hijacked the MPH campaign for a very different cause. Their focus was not on global poverty, but Africa. And their demands were not those of MPH, but of the Commission for Africa, a government-sponsored think-tank whose members, hand-picked by Blair and Brown, were described by Professor Paul Cammack, writing in these pages, as a ‘web of bankers, industrialists and political leaders with connections to the IMF and the World Bank, all committed to spreading the gospel of free market capitalism’.

red pepper on the betrayal at the heart of 'make poverty history'

found from linkmew,
found from uk resistance.

i wanted to link to chomsky's 'malignant design' post, but he just ended up going on about global warming, as per, and failed to develop realise it's potential.

games people play

both of these games reward rounds with points, which may be spent on armor, weapons, spells, potions, food, or saved to try and 'win' the game, although in both cases, the winner is the player who has had the most fun.

1. the cockney rhyming slang game.

this game takes the form of 'charades', in that there is one player performing, and other players have to guess what the answer is, while thinking of what there own performance will be.

a player says a sentence [X] of the form [a]B[c], where B is a word from that sentance replaced by a piece of obscure or new cockney rhyming slang of the form B (&) D, E. the mystery word E should be implied by the content, accent, and appropriate delivery, of [X]. there are two points at stake here: one each for guessing D and E. consider the following example:

i nipped down the baker's for a hugh.

the first task is to work out how this matches the pattern [a]B[c]. since hugh does not make any sense in the sentence, we can calculate that [a] = 'i nipped down the baker's for a', B = 'hugh', and [c] is empty (warning! it is possible that this is incorrect. maybe 'baker's' was the mystery rhyme, and it would make 'hugh' make sense. this is subtley implied by the possesive apostrophe and s. fortunately it is not the case).
so we are looking for rhyme of the form 'hugh (&) D, E', where E is something you would find in a bakery. the obvious solution is 'hugh and cry, pie'. a point for each correct word. thus the answer can be tackled from both directions of the rhyme and the content.

2. top trumps
you know top trumps - the crazy statistical card game everybody loves, for half an hour. any deck gets boring as the game stretches on into infinity with no joy in sight. so why not play with all the decks in world? in your head?

a player picks something out of their head that can have a statistical attribute. given this freedom, the player may pick anyone of any skill at anything, and thus can play a tough game ("egon spengler, hair factor: 8", for instance). the remaining players must think of other things or people that have an arguably higher value in the first player's chosen field; they have to be beaten on home turf, as it were. in this, the game is not dissimilar to that other pub thinking game, 'best band'. however, when the players agree on the winner of the round (which theoretically could be the player whose go it was) the winner must 'draw a new card' from the same 'deck' as their victorius card. they are free, of course, to claim whatever deck they wish to for their next card, and play begins again. the winner of the round receives a point. if no decision can be made as to the victor of the round, a draw is declared and the players must introduce another card into the round in the same category, and continue until a clear winner arises (n.b.: this gives lower scoring players the chance to introduce a really really good card that they've just thought of, which may beat even the original card). a replacement card may only be played in the case of a draw.

a variation exists where if nothing can be thought of to beat the initial card, the losing players may challenge the active player, like in the card game 'cheat', to reveal a superior card to the one played. failing this, the cheating player has a point taken off them.


both of these games may contain long periods of silence.

books i might write, if i ever read enough to be able to do so.

these are my rough ideas;

1. a person has a life-long dream. one day, he resolves to pack his life up and follow his heart, and gets absolutely beaten down with needless, unthinking, cold force, and he is left in ruins. think '1984/brazil' without the politics, or 'gia' without the beauty.

2. a homophobic man starts writing a book about a gay man who is in love with his adopted son, and starts to realise he is writing the book from his own life, as he is lusting after his own (genetic) daughter. the reader is presented with chapters from the fictional book, which the homophobe uses to explore possible situations etc.

3. a world where war is so entrenched in society that there is no front line, and governments are as mobile as corporations. war is conducted via email, and carried out between colleagues at adjacent desks. you might notice how in some ways this reflects our current political climate.

i think i may have had more once.

ah, unpacking from a holiday you know you shouldn't have gone on. you'll hear all about it soon, but i didn't take any photos or keep a detailed diary.

there are two tracks of the new ephel duath album on their website. even tommy commented on how good 'vector (third movement)' is (after a couple of minutes of listening); it doesn't have the immediacy of 'the passage', but spends a long time in very loose jazz structure, but by the end it had blown me away all over again, and i felt it, the crazy joyous magic i remember when i first heard the passage and couldn't believe that a band existed that made music that good or interesting. the new compositions are stunning in their incoherence (their biog says of the new material: 'The concept of a song is put aside and the repetition of the riff is nearly extinct'), and i don't want to listen to the new songs outside of there context too much, but i don't quite want to buy the album yet; it has to be a special moment, like when i've some money.

i went to the job centre for 9 o'clock this morning, for my sign on, and found it closed until 10. hmm, i thought they've given me an impossible appointment. i looked at the slip of paper and saw it said 'tuesday, 9'. oh bugger. how could i do that? i knew i wasn't going to able to make tuesday, i was sure i remembered telling them.. so i went into town for a coffee, etc., and came back to plead my case at 10. so then it turned out i hadn't missed my appointment - it was on thursday, not tuesday. it even said the date on my slip. i was just so used to fucking up that i took it as read that i'd come a day late. i don't know why i'd decided it was today not tomorrow though, but at least i had indeed managed to arrange a keepable appointment. now i just have to make it out of the door again.

not so manic now

i do worry, you know.

what a terrible mess i've made of my life.

it wasn't a deliberate ploy to not tell my family about going to budapest.

it's the kind of thing that's hard to explain, and it's why i want to run off and become a monk because i'm sick of having to battle with my subconcious. it's hard to avoid giving that kind of information out, and yet it's not something i've made a concious decision to hide - i just got to this week, and realised i'd managed to let the fact remain hidden. obviously this is something i've done naturally and now that i've finally woken up to the fact it looks like i have been hiding it deliberately. which left me in the situation - do i tell the folks, and face the wrath, or keep shtum, and live with the fact that a tacit lie makes me a bad person? i was advised different ways by different people. so i told shell (mother). she gave a short laugh, but left the actual bollocking to tim. i forgot to remind her to forward on the post or asked if she'd recieved her birthday present. tim's valid criticisms will make up for any implications unsaid by shell. i know them (the criticisms) already, i've made them myself. but i booked this trip ages ago, assuming i'd have a job by now (see previous posts on discovering how quite how incapable i am). the carrington's boys say to give them a shout in a week or two for some work for the christmas, which i will be very grateful for.

it's not like i could have ever cancelled the flight, thanks to fucking easy jet, which is why i'm going. that's not the point anyway; i'm going because i thought i'd have a job now. does that mean i should not go if i don't have a job? maybe, but life's more complicated than that. i've already paid for the flights a long time ago, and it's only a bloody weekend. and i can't leave laurence in the lurch - or did i set this whole situation up so that i wouldn't have an escape route?

it's not that important. it's just a stupid situation that should have never arisen. i don't trust myself anymore.

i'm just so worried about everything all the time.

anyway, i need to pack.

i'd like to especially wish ed, jez, and pete good look recording the demo. still a lot of luck and stuff needed for this, but it's a good thing we're onto here.

she will be sorely missed.

coping?

what's the difference between coping and not coping? a couple of days ago, i dreampt i had a nervous breakdown in a baker's (it didn't look like this), ripping into loaves and kicking the counter, until one of the baker's said 'there, there', and i collapsed in tears. coping could be simply not being able to deal with one's workload, but what about the emotional effects - it just builds up until you have to crack, not that breaking down gets any of the work done. staying in brighton was supposed to be me asserting my independance, and instead, it's proved i'm absolutely fucking incapable.

so we're quitting this house in january, and, not having a job, it seems staying down here after then is quite unneccesary. in fact, looking for a reason to stay do here is unnecessary, and why do i have to wait until january? i don't even have a christmas temp job lined up. if by some miracle i manage to secure some work this week, i have to ask myself; do i even want to be in brighton?, which is really to ask, where would i like to be? it would be terrible to jump ship to a different part of the country, only to carry on in exactly the same way. which is possibly the most frustrating part when i look back over the last five months - i didn't move because i realised i needed to change my way of life, not my geography. the problem is me. i knew this when i finished uni, but i don't seem to be able to even start freeing myself.

as always, i've gone off on a rant and then realised i'm missing the point. the reason i stayed in brighton in the first place was to be with friends (as well as an assertation of independance). now it seems that i don't know that many people here any more. thom never came and laurence is leaving. the dream of rebessica is forgotten - yes, being in a band was part of the brighton mission too.

so plans?
plan a) manchester.
there's a good chance i could get some christmas work in carrington's again. then i could work temporarily in dimitri's (says dimitri). beyond the short term, however, i can't see myself staying in manc that long. sure, i could do kelly's for a couple of years. but what's the point? but what's the point of doing anything at all? i don't know why i keep flitting between nihilism and somethingism. it really irks me how i have to keep working things out from first principles. i really want to teach myself the pointlessness of life.

plan b) newcastle. i have friends there. but suddenly that's not so important anymore - i can't continue to plan my life around what my friends are doing. i have to do something for me. however, being there would be good me. newcastle is as good as or better than anywhere else. why be anywhere else? newcastle is the good. make me an offer, andy.

plan b1) germany. this was briefly disgust with imogen lovely. i don't know what on earth i would do in germany, other than be able to get around europe easily, and be a hausmensch for imogen, which would be a dream come true for anyone, surely. but for the time i can entertain the fantasy.

plan c) london. I hate london, but it's difficult to ignore. while it has friends, it has the whole job thing going on. the decision between newcastle and london may come down to the whole job thing.

more ideas as they come.

by the way - whatever happened to terris?

we take pudding very seriously

here's documentry evidence of a couple of recent puddings:

mars bar cakes.
a recipe demonstrated by laurence.




















custard fondue
i'll take the credit for this: why pour custard onto cake, when you can dip the cake in the custard?







you may think that's a bit indulgent, but we had such a good dinner last night that we really deserved pudding, you see. that makes me think. from an early age, i've been led to believe that you have to 'deserve' pudding, for instance, by eating your vegtables, and i can remember refusing it once when i knew i'd been bad. i was a tremendously fussy eater as a brat.

"you can't prove i'm saddam hussein!"

when people deny that a court has jurisdiction, one is always left in an interesting predicament. or not, because just because someone doesn't like what's happening to them, doesn't mean it's not. so when saddam says:

"I don't answer this so-called court, with all due respect, and I reserve my constitutional right as the president of the country of Iraq. I don't acknowledge either the entity that authorises you, nor the aggression, because everything based on falsehood is falsehood."

he clearly hasn't read the little prince; one is only president as long as one's objects agree.
he actually got me quite worried when he refused to name himself;

"You know me, You are an Iraqi and you know that I don't get tired."

while the court still has jurisdiction, what happens if the defendant refuses to answer to their own name? but the name isn't the important bit - they only have to prove that he is the same person that commited the crimes he is accused of.

this became irrelevant later in the day's events, when Taha Yassin Ramadan got all the philosophy out of the way for us:

"I repeat what President Saddam Hussein said."

all quotes from bbc.

a wierd and as far as i'm aware overlooked thing in alan moore's watchmen is the oompahloompahs. ozymandias has these oompahloompahs, right? three interchangable guys he saved in vietnam, who live in his secluded mansion and do all butler-type jobs. for all intents, they're oompahloompahs. why does he kill them just before the other watchmen arrive for the denouement? what's all that about? i've never been able to figure it out. we see him sacricfice a quarter of a million people to save the world, a 'heroic' act, but why then simply poison his three servents? sadism? necessity? answers on a post card please.

by the way, whilst wkikpedia is good, sometimes it's best to leave stuff to the experts. so here they are: sequential tart's continuity pages.

last night, after stuffing myself with good curry, i went to turds, as per, and got stummin'. i didn't have much of an idea before i went about what i wanted to play - i fancied getting 'jameson's bones', an old orange pants band number, out of retirement, and maybe play something off dovedale joints, which you can download, in it's entirity, in the side bar. in the end, i decided to do 'name in vain' on the ukelyale (a triple first: first public performance, first performance of the song on a uke, and first performance in a foreign key). then i played 'if...' by the divine comedy on the guitar. for round two, i played edmond, then opened the floor for requests. i played a few bars of smoke on the water and fucked it up (i don't understand how), attempted and failed at enjoy the silence (the guitar hadn't been tuned right after edmond), aborted and debuted disposable friends, which i didn't plan on doing at all. 'ramshackle' doesn't cover quite how tawdry my performances were. people said i was good (while conceding that having a setlist is a good idea) but it just doesn't sit with my experiance of the night. it was an incredible four drink night, thanks to the introduction of drinks vouchers for performers. i got home, and the place was alive; emile, julie's brother had arrived, and the kitchen was rocking to booze, cards, and speedy punk music. we watched some of emile's hilarious home movies, played a potch of mario, then i went to bed while, deep in the night, someone was out defacing brighton's most important natural resources: it's motoring adverts.

the above image is a link to laurence's site where some photos are, and it is also a hotlink of one of those photos. there's not enough credit given/bandwidth stolen on the internet.

so what an interesting weekend. friday night was excellent and i'm still not sure if we really stayed up to five o'clock or not. while waiting around waterloo, i found a small looking, but large acting pizzeria/trattoria/bar, and with an hour to kill before meeting time, i sat down with my book and had a not great pizza. i think it was the water coming out of the fresh tomatoes that ruined it. i was sitting outside to escape the smoke and noise, next to a patio heater (and how i longed for my global warming tape). after a fashion, the waiters come out and set about trying to turn it on. i told him i didn't want it on, and explained that this was because of the environmental effects (it wasn't even cold). he seemed confused, because he moved the heater to the other side of the patio and started fiddling with it over there (where there already was one). i left, and didn't tip. a few minutes later, i was back there with pete and ed, as in all fairness, it does seem like the only place anywhere near waterloo, which appears to be in the middle of bleaksville, like the set of the running man. ed and i proved we where were real men putting our knives and glasses down on the table in fornt of us. when jez arrived, we started writing down set lists for our new band which isn't called psychic monkey, honest. pete effectively joined there and then, and officially joined later, before a decidedly erotic wrestling match with his sister lizzie - while sitting on her back, every time he said "have i won yet? if you promise you won't kick me, i'll get up", so she kicked him, which only prolonged the physical contact lizzie craves (i didn't say this, it was freud). so thanks to her and dave for putting me up.

i didn't get too drunk and i slept well and woke up feeling refreshed, and then watched the muppets and headed out to forum 3 to 'network'. upon leaving islington tube, i was recognised by a friend of kate 'built' palmer, called marie, who i spent the next few hours enjoying the company of, before we went our seperate ways at the station again. waiting for ed to call, i got a halloumi, spinach and mushroom crepe from a dodgy stand, then went off to find a pub. i walked straight past two before going into the american themed 'lil red' bar. comfortable, quiet, playing lovely acoustic music (the man didn't know, but said it might be the arcade fire) and i ordered half a pint and crikey! captain beefheart and his/the magic band were on the tv! i asked the man if he could put it through the speakers, but he said no, the volume's broken, it's just for visuals. so i just watched, which was a pleasure too. then i sat down for two hours and waited for ed to call again, during which time i finished 'the three stigmata of palmer eldritch' and wanted to cry. even though most of the book wasn't that good, quite weakly plotted, just the fear at the end of not knowing quite when the drug experiance has ended, and whose trip is it anyway, and does it project you as a phantasm into the future or is it completely illusory, was wonderful/terrifying. so then i went home. i realised i couldn't really afford another night/day in london and set off to victoria, where i got a message from ed saved when i was on the underground (obviously). it's amazing how much we've come to rely on mobiles and i'm quite sick of it.

yesterday was spent entirely in the kitchen, with haggis, and cards.

what is it about the revered that makes them spout rubbish about euthanasia in public? even dr. johnathon sachs, who is among the most sensible, progressive and right thinking person in the media, feels the need to tell people (okay, i read this on totally jewish dot com) that euthansia is bad, and like the bishop of oxford writing in the independant, has nothing to his argument other than a belief in a god, which is the adult equivelent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting 'i'm not listening' over again. guys; it's your god. it can tell you to do whatever you want it to tell you to do, so don't use it as an argument for absolutism; and don't try and use this motivation to affect the lives of people who aren't your flock.

just been thinking about the song, 'pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile' (if you don't remember it, ask your parents), and i noticed the song doesn't ask you to throw away your troubles, it actually seems to say take them with you every where you go. i suggest an alternative lyric: 'give all your sins to a goat and slaughter it'.

the new ephel duath album isn't out today after all, but in two weeks.

did you know the bbc has an ethics sub-site?

i've had some crazy dreams recently, but the wierdest has to be that david wrench's new album was released on vinyl with an extra three records for about 70 quid, and i remember handling it but not buying it.

i've written a new song: 'whatever happened to the kikey yids?' (for which i sincerely apologise):

oh, whatever happened to jew...

yom kippur's almost over,
the day went by so fast,
the only thing to look forward to,
the pass(over)..

it's yom kippur, and i'm fasting. i've often postulated that a day of fasting is a jew's excuse to have two really massive meals, one before and one after. so last night, after walking around co-op vowing to destroy myself, i bought a few very simple ingredients (i.e. ready meals) and absolutely stuffed myself on bolognase and couldron's new mushroom bake, until eating itself was a chore. i do not recommend the mushroom bake. it is a stiff grey goo that never heats through to the core. hmm. i'm probably just not cooking it enough..

brian froud has announced dark crystal 2. this fills me with a mix of joy and cynicism. the dark crystal doesn't intstantly strike me as the kind of film that was ever intended to be expanded upon an further. i can only imagine them shoehorning in a bunch of stuff that was somehow not mentioned the first time round; the conception of the dark crystal was so complete that i imagine they'll find it difficult to expand upon it further, and the plot leaves something to be desired at first glance. however, i'm surprised they're doing dc2 at all; dc is nowhere near as popular as labyrinth, whose sequal turned into mirrormask. it's niche, and i think that's a healthy audience to try to sell to. i think they're doing this because they want to, there's certainly no pressure for them to do it. so i now i'm very much looking forward to it. but it's still years away.

i did a song in an hour last night. it shows. it's my indiest song ever - somehow, my fingers just fell into that old gallagher pentatonic.. here it is, disposabe friends. i wanted to write a really sad, moving song about losing contact with old friends, but somehow this abortion captures the feeling better. but it signals a new era of recording for me - midi drums.

this made me laugh: barely.

ah, brooker.

Look at the way mobile phones are marketed — apparently, when you buy one, you’re buying something that will “express who you are”, something others will judge you by. If that’s true, society might as well drown itself in a bucket and have done with it.

i love thee.

and how can r. kelly still be in the public eye? lets compare him with someone else who rode the peado-coaster and survived: micheal jackson. jacko was accused of peadophilia and settled out of court. that's tantamount to accepting guilt. then another slew of accusations came through, and he was aquitted of every one, while a crazy woman released doves for every cry of 'not guilty' (i'd have loved to know what she would have done if he was found guilty of anything, maybe she had a couple of vials of anthrax hidden in her clothes). r kelly on the other hand has been charged not only 21 counts relating to the production of peadophilia, of which 14 are still outstanding; he was then charged with possession of child pornography, 12 counts, but the charges were dropped because the evidence was collected illegally. it's like the 'have you ever been caught sheep shagging?' playground catch 22; 'nearly, but the evidence was obtained illegally so i escaped capture on a formality.' fascinating.

in a shock buck to the trend, beautiful agony has a full body orgasm on it's site:
.
anybody fancy getting a subscription and mailing it to me?

so it looks like 'psychic monkey' might be setting up in the drydock...

banshees and brighton and R bloody KELLY

so there's this old irish folk tale of the banshee - not a specific story (as far as i'm aware) but the general myth told to children and men in pubs - if you hear the banshee screaming your name, soon you will die. something made me think about this in a new light today - banshees are always women. you know, those things with tits and hair and difficult personalties. anyway, all myths have a basis in fact, don't they? so how could we interpret this as an exclusively irish phenomenon? well, i have a theory. it doesn't make it uniquely irish as far as i know, but think about this; a woman screaming your name means you will soon die. lets think about the common folk in the middle ages. i don't think that's a superstition. when do women scream people's names? not very often actually. one everyday, bandied-about, as yet-untested theory is during sex (jess nicols did actually say my name once or twice during intimate play, which may or may not have been deliberate). so what happens if mrs. o'connor screams 'ooh, paddy murphy!' during sex with her husband? it means mr. o'connor will soon be knocking at mr. murphy's door, and he'll probably want to at least kill paddy. so there we have it.

wikipedia has a slightly better article on banshees. it puts me right on a few inconsistancies for sure, but if i recognised that i'd have to delete what i've just spent a whole grandaddy album writing.

incidentally, did anyone notice a recursive cliche in that piece? it is the commonly held presupposition of 'no smoke without fire'. it backs itself up. everything recieved must have some truth to it, because otherwise it wouldn't be bandied about. but why is that last sentance itself true? well, y'know, no smoke without fire. and so the cycle continues.


what made me think of people shouting the wrong name during sex? r kelly. the man is a genius. you need to go to his website. do you see (and hear) the mp3 player at the bottom right of the site? you need to scroll that to track 15, and listen to part one of his urbane infidelity saga, 'trapped in the closet'. alledgedly, videos exist for all five parts so far, but i've not been able to be bothered to find them all (yet). this is actually the very funniest thing i've seen since ray cooney died.
after you have listened to the first five parts of that (i.e. all that's there), check out kelly performing part 6 live on the mtv awards (mov) and look at his face. and his arms. 'live' is an exaggeration; he is miming, but at least he's appearing live, and he sure is 'lively' so i guess that counts. i was laughing like a child at this, on my knees in front of the computer (my back's hurting today).


what's wrong with brighton? i'll tell you what's wrong with bloody brighton. you go into 'suga qube' bar (which doesn't sell any kind of bitter). you need the loo, so you go in. it's tiny. they've put a mirror above the sink , surrounded by dressing room style light bulbs. opposite this is another, full length mirror. this area has a kind of crazy twist in the ceiling, it comes in slanted in every axis towards the sink. i go to the crapper. there is another mirror in there. there's also another sink. coloured lights. i unload. there's no toilet paper. what's more, there's not even any soap at that sink, now that i have to thouroughly clean my left hand. that's whats wrong with brighton. all fur coat and no knickers (as my mum used to say).

edit: while investigating the banshee's fairy roots, i came across this folk metal group, tuatha de danann. flutes, guitars, the odd retro lead synth. they sing in english and have titles like 'dance of the little ones' and 'brazuzan - taller than a hill' they're like the irish sepultura.
which is ironic, because they're also brazilian.

this is important.

disney own the muppets. that's ok. i can deal with that. but they are on the verge of quite literally murdering them.

they plan to hold auditions to find people to perform the muppets all over the place. do you see? i never realised before, but the muppets are only 'real' because you can't meet them, like real celebrities. if this goes through, they'll be everywhere, and that means they'll stop being real; imagine if you saw bob dylan playing in every bar, and it was as real as the real bob dylan? bob dylan would stop being real. he'd be dead.

this is going too far, and it's down to people like you and me to save the muppets.

i found this at tough pigs.

the untied kingdom (or manchester untied)

well, i've got the colours 'right' again, so comments are legible now. now to learn some proper html/php and so to the next big update (apparently, i didn't get the spannerworks job because there was no proof i could do html so i think this is important).

everyone seems very keen to have a part in the kid b project (i'd like to think there's absolutely no chance that the final album will be called that). i might tentatively stretch to a tracklisting:

1. Everything In Its Right Place: bishop fuckers?
2. Kid A: nes advantage
3. National Anthem:?
4. How To Disappear Completely: dandy o'howitzer
5. Treefingers: radio feisar
6. Optimistic: hanson?
7. In Limbo: ?
8. Idioteque: rebessica?
9. Morning Bell: grilly (i bagsed it first)
10. Motion Picture Soundtrack: the gallow slutt collective

there are a lot of question marks here. motion picture soundtrack has got to be recorded as a singalong in a big echoey room with as many instruments and singers as possible, at least everyone who appears on the record. in limbo is surely the most difficult song. any takers? what can we put girls girls girls and dude where's my car down for?

other music that i forgot to write about the other day:
garden have put their new album online to stream.
you should email andy and ask him for a copy of 'silver bullet' his new understated work, 'silver bullet'.


i went to the job centre the other day, to explain myself (as you do). however, it turns out they'd closed my claim because i'd not been in. i'd been working three days too long, which meant i'd have to do a 'rapid reclaim'. it's a tenuous definition of 'rapid'; although the forms themselves were surprsingly light, they couldn't fit me in for two weeks.




speaking of covers by the way, does anyone want to form a functions/party/covers band and play in the french alps over the skiing season for 450 quid a week per person? this is a genuine request.

jumping through loopholes

why is a shepherd's pie like weatherproof paper?

'cause it's lamb innit.
========================
man walks into a bat, and says "ow!", 'cause it's a vampire bat.

here's a page of pictures i took recently. unfortuantely, due to unforseen circumstances (hitting the delete button carelessly), some of the better ones are lost forever. but never mind.

lots of music news..

the gallow slutt collective is to produce a cover album of kid a, surely a fantastic idea? if anyone would like to join the collective and contribute a track, they'd be most welcome. so far we've not got much. some of the tracks will be very tricky. maybe we could just stick hanson's version of optimistic down..
speaking of which..
a tantalising glimpse of the new radiohead album:

"so now we have..
lots of loose ends.
or starts.
two weeks sketching things.
chipping away at structures.
making polyphonic sweeps.
mountains of words.
the blackboard is filling up."

the blog is at dead air space.

on the earache side, ephel duath's 'pain necessary to know' is out on the 17th, but the berzerker's 'world of lies' has been pushed back january to make room for promotion, which is a better idea than letting it get swamped by other releases, and vide versa, from a marketing point of view.

the locust are playing here (brighton) in early december.


i have songs, and riffs. i need to use them and am restless from not doing so. this requires a working amp (my amp finally gone fuck). buying an amp requires a job. this what actors call 'finding my motivation'. i do plan on recording the uke version of purple milk this week. but then i'd like some percussion instruments for that, which puts me back to square one. i just printed out 15 copies of my cv at university, but didn't proof read it, because i assumed i'd do that before i emailed it all over brighton. oops. or maybe i printed out the wrong one. i'm finding out now.

i've never actually used this amp on a recording (except the secret track on 'try the view change button', fact fans), but i really want to start. it would make my recordings sound more like real ones.

i'm off to carry on writing the song that had the working title of 'kefranski song' but now might be called 'disposable friends' or then again, soemthing else entirely.

g

free will and tomfoolery

what do you call a northern comedian?
a manc-jester?
no.

are people who read c'leb mags actually worth saving? what and who are we fighting this ideological battle for? people died in trenches so they could we didn't have, oh, just arrgh.

a qote from hofstader:

unless a person designed himself and chose his own wants (as well as choosing to choose his own wants, etc. [which leads to an infinte regress]) he cannot be said to have a will of his own.

this is what i was talking about with my superhero whose special power was free will. the only possible way to have free will would be to have no internal state, the body literally as a vessel for the soul, which is why i said all that stuff about being able to have absolute control over every cell and molecule in his/her body. dr. manhatten from the watchmen, which i reread last weekend, has really got me thinking again. it would thus be interesting for our hero to look like a normal person, but was actually hollow (except for the tube conecting mouth to anus and urethra, which can be percieved as outside the body), with a soul inside - the first ever. everyone else is completely deterministic. except that snake plicit in this argument is its own downfall - because we are not in a closed system, but a huge and chaotic one, it becomes impossible - nay, intractable - to actually determine what people will do (unless you're doctor manhatten - "a puppet who can see the strings"). so we might as well say we have free will after all.

no, again. while the minuteae is unpredictable, the broad trends are determined. choice is an illusion, but to an uncertain degree, and we can happily act with will. especially when we think we have free will and delierately try and break the cycle - then things get interesting. think of the person who was beaten as a child, and is now on the verge of beating his/her own children before someone says, "you can change". this is important - how the study of free will afects our predetermined lives. i digress. one can predict groups of people, and even individuals, very accurately. but one can never be certain, and there is always at least a small amount of chaos.

another thing i loved in watchmen this time round was rorschach's chapter. i'd love to use his and his doctor's diaries as commentry over an instrumental piece. but i found the last few panels slightly fallacious - the doctor is examining his rorscach tests after his wife has walked out, and writes something along the lines of "i wanted to say it looked like a pretty butterfly, but it just looked like [something disgusting]. but even that is masking the true horror. it is a picture of nothing." i would go one step further; i would say it's not a picure at all. it is nothing.

at work, the middle-aged man i was sitting next to, said to me,
"you only put your card up for the totty, eh?"
(you see, we put our green cards up in the air to show we're free and the red ones to show we've got a problem, so when a student walks into the room everyone who's free sticks their green card up.)
this was clearly untrue. i put my green card up whenever i spotted anyone waiting. besides, i don't think in terms of 'totty'. but i didn't want to say that, nor 'actually, a fie upon the creed of woman, i shall ne'er know that warm comfort again.' so i said
"actaully, i'm gay."
i couldn't help myself (see above).
"oh, right, okay. well, you just have a different kind of totty, don't you?"
did he lose that round or me? i think we both came out looking pretty bad. i told him i wasn't gay after all, i just said it to see how he would react. but that's not true - it just seemed like the best thing i could possibly say.

so then later, he asked me my name again. i was clearly wearing my name badge, and yet again, i could't help but lie. he was inviting me to take the piss out of him, and i wasn't really taking the piss anyway, just taking the opportunites where they arose. so i said my name was john.

later, he called me john, and i said
"eh? my name's not john. it's david," and i pointed to my name badge. he was so confused.
"whyever did you think my name was john?"
"well.. er.. i was speaking to jennifer yesterday, and i asked what your names were, and she said you were called john."
i didn't realise i was experimenting on this guy. he looked like he actually believed what he was saying. a simple, 'i don't know', or a factual 'stop being a dick! you told me you were gay, and you said your name was john!' would have sufficed. i didn't think i was even that convincing. but he was not only fished in, but also this analogy can't stretch far enough to convey my intended meaning. did he really invent a memory to make sense of the situation, a la (spoiler alert!) 'under suspicion', starring gene hackman and morgan freeman? how many times have you reimagained a memory, only to consult someone else who was there, or your diary, and find that it didn't happen like you remember after all? i know i've done it, 'though i can't recall any specific examples now.

la.


oh yeah, and then i went to see super furry animals on my own and it was bloody brilliant. first gig where i have actually found myself putting a hand in the air without meaning to. some suspiciously album-like sounds going on - see my comments about zabrinski's bacnking tracks - but a totally wonderful gig nonetheless.