Musics I done

Monday, January 31, 2005

party party

for all those whose number i've lost, or have forgotten, it's my birthday, precious, this sunday, so in honour of this momentous fucking occasion, you (you that's reading this) are invited round on saturday evening, at any time 'til we ask you to leave.
11 parl crescent road - here is a map.

lets make a tape echo machine!
looing forward to a quiet night in alone, i took to removing the horrible old strings from, and cleaning, my electric guitar. upon doing which, the nut fell off, preventing me from re-stringing. so i thought, "since no-one has any super-glue, why don't i see what it looks like without the scratchplate?"

what i never knew was that the scratchplate is an integral part of the guitar. underneath, the pick-ups don't lie nicely in well cut holes in the body, they're screwed to the front piece, as is the selector switch; it just wouldn't work without it being there. so i'm looking for a perspex one instead, so the lovely wood behind, and all the circuitry, can be seen. won't that be pretty?

the end of an ear.

womansour is finished.
i burned off all the rest of my 3" cds - about twenty - and they were all corrupt.
thus, there will be no more CD versions of womansour, unless you ask me very kindly indeed, and even then you'll just get a nasty normal cd, and not one of the gorgeous red fractal ones with the scandisk-style cover.
as promised, i have put the whole thing online (128kbps mp3).
you can listen to it here.
funny that this happened, just as i met Rebessica. fate?

Thursday, January 27, 2005

2046

the pictures are so expensive these days, that it's hardly worth going. especially when you find out that not all foreign films are good.

the plot, i think was: in 2046, the time machine is invented. at this point, the future ceases to exist; 2046 is the last year, containing all subsequent years, since they are only a time portal away. a vast rail network spans the globe - you can get anywhere and anywhen in a matter of moments. everyone is happy, and no-one ever need leave 2046, the infinite city.

except our hero. he is in love and bitter, and sets out for hongkong, 1966, and tries to make a living as a simple newspaper journalist and, of course, a sci-fi author, writing of a mythical future, which he in fact used to inhabit. will his contempories, who can imagine nothing of his history, uncover the truth?

no, actually, he wasn't from the future at all, he was from singapore. he has sex with a beautiful whore and she fells in love with him, then he falls in love with his landlord's daughter but she moves to japan to marry her boyfriend. as far as i can tell, that was the entire plot, yet it took more than two hours. the film was so slow, that things happening slowly wasn't deemed quite slow enough by the director, who decided that many lingering shots of girls smoking, crying, or looking at the sunset, should be played back at a lower frame rate, just to drag out the tedium even more. it wasn't bad, it was just very, very long. there was no discernable begining, middle, end structure, just few achingly long shots of people who no effort has been made for you to garner any sort of emotion for. if John Cage made a film, this would be it.

i was on the LJIT, and i came across this. what are the chances of that?

the guy at the computer next to me, who looks so much like barney that i can't remember his name, keeps calling me 'jilly'. i don't want to correct him.

my project suporvisor doesn't recognise me. as in, upon meeting me, has no idea how i am. so i'm on my own with this one.


A drawing of Yehuda's father emerging from the crematorium chimney
it is important to recognise that today marks 60 years since the official liberation of auschwitz. but once freed, where did the captives go? many were kept in liberated camps for their own good, by the allied armies, and where in not much better conditions. still, they were better off inside than out, where in some areas they would likely be killed by locals.
selective quotes from the above linked article:
'The soldiers had been told not to take any of the camp prisoners with them because of the diseases they might have'
'I know some people are so full of hate they won't speak to Germans and so on.
But thanks to the most wonderful people I met after the war who somehow spiritually and mentally saved me I came to the conclusion that you can forgive someone who accepts their own guilt.
I was a teacher for 35 years and I tried through education to tell my story. That is more constructive than the destructive forces of hate, which mainly kills your own self.'



on top of this, the crazy frog ringtone is the most popular in the world. it has earned over £10M.

we have learned nothing.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

factscist.

this photo is by Ed, you can see other wonderful images of his birthday party here.

what a lovely bunch of cocoanuts.
inspired by hotmail's default function of stuffing gmails into the junk folder, i have now convinced it to stick it's own service annoucements in the same place. haha.

last night was difficult. the kind of difficult that makes you want to grab a 4-pack of lager and drink the last can with the plastic ring still attached. *don't worry*, i didn't drink the lot. watched the digimon movie and et crisp sandwiches, while L explained to me exactly what the fuck was going on.

pete (him on the left) has got a lovely new song on his website. click his name (pete) over there ->.

graffito of the month was a stencil of marty feldman as igor in young frankenstein. that really touched me.

Monday, January 24, 2005

Britain's angriest failures

so we were sitting round the camp fire this week. person x was talking about their chlamidia test, and how they entered you into a competition to win a sum of money as a reward. two trains of thought left the conversation station: 1) it's well fucking sad that such STIs are now so common that people have to be bribed into taking a test for them, and 2) myself and the others in the conversation were at disagreement with person x as to the neccessity of our having a test, since, personally, i'm less sexually active than Walt Disney's frozen head. 'dead from the waste [sic] down' and wierd and something had better happen on valentines day or you fuckers are going to pay.

edit: what i wrote above doesn't make sense. if things were really bad, people wouldn't need bribing, they'd have to get tested. but then Chlam is has no short term syptoms, so maybe an incentive is necessarry.. and my distaste obviously comes from some moral assumption about temporal polygamy. whatever. as i said, i'm an agnry failiure, and my opinions should be read with that in mind.

we went to see team america, world police. i invited Thom, but he'd already seen it on a rip. i invited person y, but she didn't get back to me. the way text conversations are going these days (they're slowing down, have you noticed?), i expected her to text me back the next day and say sorry, no, i had plans. she didn't. what she did do, though, was walk straight past us without 'noticing'. in the cinema. i invited someone to the cinema (passively, it must be said, with my usual self-depricating slant) and not only does she not say 'no, i'm busy,' not then and not since, but she's going to the bloody cinema at that time anyway, and then walks straight past me! L says she genuinely didn't see us. the film itself, was good. needed more silly humour, like the hammer joke, rather than endless jokes about how crap puppets are HOWEVER the 'look at the shit puppets' as a metaphor for hollywood films, linked in with the critique of american foriegn policy, was worth making a film about, and then to stuff in piss-takes of everyone else - protestors, the U.N., tyrants, is very clever, but you really only need to see the first half-hour. maybe they should have cut it down to an hour and had it as a tv special?
it brings up an interesting issue about Supermarionation, Gerry Anderson's technique he used in his puppet shows. i can't remember what it was.

andy stayed a merry while with me, during which we made photo stories of the endings for street fighter. these beauties will be online soon; i suggested our next project should be the endings for mortal kombat. i just checked them out here. they're absolutely rubbish, no wonder i couldn't remember any. however, if you read any of them, read Raiden's, as his at least has a sense of humour.
on monday we had a rebessica practice which was good.
on tuesday we went to see Ewigkeit, Basted (turbo-glam-rock) couldn't play, due to injury, so the first band were coming on as we entered.


Trauma Pet; two girls and a minidisk player. it was silly. the singer was caked in makeup, completely OTT trash-goth get-up and had uninspired melodies. the other girl was enthusiastically playing a bass guitar that covered her other wise exposed knickers (wooo!). the music was fairly tasteful though.

fraudstein(also a duo, but unlike the Pet, they don't allow external links to their images) started what we thought would be a synth-metal act, but afer one song put down the guiatr and went more down the Johnny Violent route to hardcore. and then ewigkeit came on, surprisingly with a full band (plus backing tracks). we stayed for a few good songs and then piled into the gloustcer before 11. on our way to the bar, 'know' by the Down came on, so i hit the floor, and then they played fucking panasonic youth by the Plan. i t didn't get any better than that, even after i'd had five vodkas poured down me. so at some point we left.
wednseday astra was playing at the prince albert, but we didn't make it out of the house, choosing an evening of grass the game and eating.
thrusday was team america and school work
friday we did the SF2 photo shoots and stuff
saturday i bought frank miller's 'the dark knight returns' after Steve's soft sell: 'in '86, when it came out, you were like, wow! this amazing fascist critque of batman, but now it just seems that miller himself is a fascist.' and Andy went up to london to see Jo, who i've not seen for ages.

i made a new comic - the adventures of sine wave! i might scan it in to show you, but it was concieved on the back of a post card so it might only reach it's intended victim. i was thinking about introducing a couple more characters, but they'd have to be (rendered as waves), and that's my favourite thing ever so i couldn't possibly rip it off.

i found this after i read the photo credits on the back of my copy of the princess bride.

knock knock jokes
knock knock.
(you) who's there?
Treblinka.
treblinka who?
"try blinking your eyes really fast, it's like being in a disco!!!!"

Knock knock
Who's there?
Auschwitz.
Auschwitz who?
Auschwitz your papers with mine, now you get to go on the death train!

Knock knock
Who's There
Guantanamo
Guantanamo who?
Guantanamo Mowlem

by me and ed.

i bought happiness, imprinted into 7 inches of black vinyl; a 750 pressing of Gruff Rhys' new single (is it just a ploy to release Furries records through placid casual instead of sony?). it was great, i felt like a member of an exclusive club. later, i learnt it was but a club of fools, for both sides of the single are contained on his forthcoming album. there was no point in owning the record other than to just say 'i am one of 750 people who own the gruff rhys single.' dafty.

Monday, January 17, 2005

a drinking buddy is just a stranger you haven't had a fight with yet.



i saw this and i could smell the plastic potato himself. it's like he was right here in front of me..

not only..
but also..


things they could fuck up about V for vendetta (and check out the director's credits):
the bit where the detective 'drops a trip' (a la Jim Garcia in tvgohome) in the abandoned concentration camp, to try and understand V;
the archiac, old-fashioned-computer feel;
references to homosexuality as something that should be tolerated.

i mean, how can hollywood succeed at doing something anti-factscist? it's a paradox. i want to think of it as the wachowski brothers (eek!) paying their dues; that they could do a 'Peter Jackson' on it, as true fans of the book. but it'll probably be shite. it's not what they'll taking out that worries me, but what they'll change. unless they set it in a 1997 that never happened, it'll all go 'sci-fi'.
never mind.
and Gilliam's not doing watchmen.. noooo...


and this is great on so many levels..

anyone else notice my change of link there - it used to be 'how am i driving?' to take you back to the index; i might change it more regularly. keep you on your toes.

x

Friday, January 14, 2005

the thing about that prince harry thing, aside from the bad taste, is that it's such a shit costume. it's just a crap arm band.

that's what nazis should look like; like viv and keith on a night out.



something magical happened today. an unexpected package was dropped into l's hands. it wasn't my eagerly anticipated (not than you can anticapte in any other way other than eagerly) playground law book; amazingly, it was a ephel duath t-shirt and a bunch of about thirty flyer/stickers. its not an official t-shirt, which is wierd, but it's nice and black and will look great next to my red one. so why me? i'd like to think that it was because they somehow found my address and posted it to me, actually it's those x-taster guys. while that was very nice of them, their viral marketing scams seem slightly off to me.


i've never really trawled through the B3ta message boards before, but a came across this today:


call me.

grilly

Thursday, January 13, 2005

do you like my new colour? i spent ages on this colour. when you find a good colour there's only one thing you can do - contrast it against black and white. and the colour that was there before that you didn't get around to changing.

did i tell you the old school gave me 200 pounds for my trip to indonesia? it's very good, that. i can finally say i did some fundraising. i have to write a report, less than 500 words, by the end of february, which i must say, i'm very looking forward to. reliving the scene.. i was thinking of sitting on those steps just the other night. happy memories. "there y'are, julie." "there y'are grilly." "here i am yvonne." ah, those were the days.

so, i was walking back from co-op, with a carton of organic whole milk, and what do i see ahead of me on my quiet back street pavement but a girl lying on the floor! "are you okay?" i ask, but she cuts me off, as she sees me and stands up.
"hello. you look a little taller than me."

when faced with something that one does not understand, it's amazing how well one copes. it just flows past you, different parts of your mind take over and looking back you think of all the things you should have said or done.
you see, these houses have subterreanean living rooms, with sunlight only from a window that looks at the ankles of passing neighbours and car headlights (it's the angle). being a pit by the side of the road, these things get filled with litter, so many people fit a pane of glass or a wire mesh over it to stop things falling down. Jess's solution was the effort-minimalising cover up scheme; by putting a piece of cloth over the lower few inches of the window, all the terrible waste disappears from view. fantastic. this lassy here, though, had a different kind of litter down her pit.

"there's a kitten stuck down there."

not the babiest of kittens, but definately a tiny cat, lost early in the morning (about nine o'clock, see below). she had removed her grating to get down to it, but couldn't reach it, with her short arms and amble bosoms. i get on the floor and reach down, but it won't come to me, not realising the danger it's in. i go further, but i soon start to take risks with my balance, so i ask her to hold my legs. it seemed so normal, and innocent at the time. she grips them and i'm able to slide further in and grasp the blighter. she tries to let it go, but it makes a move back towards the pit, so we check it's collar - "monkey" - and she takes it inside to ring the owners. and i never saw it again.

imagine coming down stairs for your cup of tea, opening the curtains, and there's a bloody cat staring you in the face. that's the crazy world we live in.


i've been waking up ever day at eight o'clock this week, and its great. it's a new step for me. the day is so long! the morning sun so bright! the opportunites for helping girls rescue kittens are endless.

there you are, ewigkeit.


should be fun.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

this mac just ate my fantastic post about my journey back from the co-op, so instead here's the tracklisting for the next ephel duath (www.ephelduath.net) record:
Few stars, no refrain and a cigarette, Crystalline Whirl, Pleonasm, New Disorder, Vector, Vector – second movement, Imploding, Vector - third movement, I killed Rebeccah.

metal.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

and fer fecks sake, i've had three bloody goatses on Livejournal today. what's with that? can't you guys get enough of his uber-redness?

edit: four. i wonder if it's just one person posting it repeatedly..

The Pope Show

last friday, i was dragged out to the (new) Event 2. we're only popping in for a minute, they said. after twenty minutes standing at the bar alone, waiting to be served, it got to much. i went over to L and aimee (superhero name: Vowel Girl) and threw an actual tantrum. "I hate it here and i'm leaving!" stood around a bit more, as people made up there minds, and then i left, alone.

somewhere round the clock tower (the northern point of brighton's very most horrible area) i remembered: i'd forgotten my keys.

queue standing outside the door, waiting to see if L had his phone in his pocket (no), and then ringing around people back in brighton (i.e. Tom Foreman) to have somewhere to go. so i went round tom's house and we watched Nightwish videos and played table football. he thrashed me! but then it is in his house, and weighted funny.

highlight of the weekend was standing at the pelican crossing on london road (brighton's poorest area) and witnessing a violent argument between a mum and one of her daughters, who she'd just rammed with her double push-chair.

reminds of that 'chav scum' story with the eight-y.o. boy who says to his mum at the bus stop,
"mum, can i get an earring?"
"no," she says, "earrings are for girls."
"not always! remember dad?"

interesting diesel sweeties today, about mobile phones. heard a quote on the radio from the person who just published the research paper for the government - "there are - er, may be risks associated with mobile phones". yes. even so, a possibility of a risk is still a risk, yes?

One in four seven to 10-year-olds now own a mobile phone - double the levels in 2001, according to latest figures.
eek.

L woke me up before 8 o'clock today. it feels great to be up this early, and i know i'll sleep well tonight (as oppose to the last few nights, Chomskying myself to sleep).

The Pope walks in to Ladbrokes...
"i'd like to put some money on the 12.45 from cheltnam", he feebly mumbles from inside his glass shield.
"alright your worship", says Sam the Bookie, from behind his glass shield, "which horse would you like to bet on?"
"no, that's the Dali Lama. I'm the fucking Pope."

cheers - a list of veggie beers (and not-veggie beers)! fookin's isinglass. the thing is to quote (!) guiness,
Production processes in the UK are subject to strict UK/EU legislation and at present isinglass is the only fining agent suitable for stout, which has been approved in the UK. Any new fining agent, especially synthetic substitutes, would not be approved for use without rigorous testing both in Europe and by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States. As yet there are no suitable alternatives available.


my beloved stout.. i wonder, what about porter?

.xXx.

edit: but are by-products of the animal industry that bad? well, is there such a thing as a by-product? discuss. here's another interesting link on the same subject.
and another.

edit edit edit: of course, what Guiness was saying is complete bollocks, their are veggie stouts (e.g. Sam Smith's), G just use Isinglass cause it's cheaper. hmm, well just wait till they have to put 'contains fish' on their pumps, that'll show them.

Monday, January 10, 2005

'le sigh'

after mis-reading the title of an email, i'm reminded of the last time someone asked me 'so are you two together?': when i was with James Carey in Gormanston. oh no, i said. it's not like that at all.

saturday was records day - the rounder records sale. when i've got some time, i'd like to review all the records i got this year, but for now i'll just say: good stuff. the higlight was the Caninus 7" (www.pitbullgrindcore.com), but MC Mabon is the best pop music i've heard for a long time.

astra and abi - now known as 'Astrid', soon to be 'Aughra' (i hope) - rocked a fat one again, and thanks to the Joogleberry guy, and a top-notch sound too. well done guys. so many nice people there.

grillyxx

Thursday, January 06, 2005

this is what nathan barley looks like
so i dreampt i was in Tesco's, and they had the new radiohead ep for sale, but not only did they have that - the album spinoff, with new tracks and remixes and stuff - but they had a spinoff of that, with aphex twinny names, on a 3" cd, in red or white packaging. people from school, including clarkey, were there.

and the day after, i dreamt of cunt, and then she pooed in my mouth.

so i'm in brighton again, working hard on the assignments for next week. waking up late. going to the pub. coming home. finding food - the synthetic chicken soup comes in handy there. not really realising what life is, but feeling more in touch with reality than i blindly assume most other people are.

what was fun, was when we were in The Druids, with Astra and Tom (yay!) and we were talking about different things, etc, and Astra 'got really tired' and 'had to go home'. and then we talked about at exactly what point of the conversation had exhausted her so, to do it better next time.

pubs don't have seats built into the walls anymore. what's that all about? and they all play hyped-up automatic electro-music. alcohol is a depressant, you morons. play sometihng more relaxed.

and in the book of fight club, he doesn't die and go to heaven. he's in a hospital. read between the lines.

is it just me, or am i not in a very good mood?

well, happy january. oh, i don't know. i just want internet in my bedroom. that's all.

i'm going to go home and be a family man.

Saturday, January 01, 2005

grillly's xmas blog

well, it's gone midnight so i guess that makes it 2005. right. i came back from the pub early (michelle made me come; i insisted that i didn't want to go, but she said that would make her sad (and push the nails further into baby jesus's eyes)), stayed ten minutes, had a Talisker bought for me, pushed a tenner into the earthquake relife fund, and came back home. i finished off watching Brazil, which really put the fuckers up me. i haven't seen it since Father made us watch it about 17 years ago, so all i remembered was the bit where that man (who i found out was Bobby D) gets covered in newspaper and disappears. if i wasn't in a mood before, the ending of that film really ruined me.

well, so my xmas, etc... stayed in one night and taped (yes, magnetic tape!) all Tim's Smiths records off vinyl (plus b-side only track 'money changes everything). note to purists - 'how soon is now?' is not on 'Meat Is Murder'. please skip this track on the re-issue.

other fond memories include accidentally introducing my lovely cousin Georgie into 'the Killing Game' as she called it (she spotted the cacodemon icon on my desktop... i'm not made of stone...), and visiting Emma (and partner) and Sarah 'Toy' Gill in Nottingham, where i also did my xmas shopping. i bought sick presents for everyone. Emma and i went to the Earahce records xmas party, which i wore my valerie t-shirt for (for some reason, i though that maybe black would be a bit of a cliche). Decapitated were amazing. i danced a bit to them, but they just made you headbang by being so death-core. and i haven't had a proper head bang since i last saw them, with labrat and incision.

but is this what it is now? meeting up for lunch in the next county at the oldest pub in england? Sarah sent me my only christmas card this year, and possibly last year as well. so i'm sending out happy january post cards in the new year, please don't feel obliged to keep them. if you could pass me your address.

Iona said how she didn't like depressing stuff, so i gave her my copy of Oyster Boy as a present, and read her some of the poems. i'd forgotten...

i really got sick of the farm a few days ago, but couldn't get it together to leave. you wouldn't find me in Newcastle tonight. nor Brighton, London or even Manchester. it's hard to keep thinking "it's just another night" when there's so much pressure to do something big. not from the TV companies, of course. they've had so much shit on this year.

i made 3 resolutions last new year; then i dropped one, because it's not something you can try to do. no, you can't hurry love. but the other two i've actually achieved - pass the year, and get a band together. i've been thinking of a cover of "That joke isn't funny anymore" sung open mike style until the last infinite reprise which would go really heavy and post-rock. i was feeling quite secure until recently; did i write up my "winter's a good time to be single" rant? it fell down, because it's also a great time to be in a relationship. being coupled in mid-summer just makes you a cunt, and otherwise you're just tremendously bitter. bitter. but being here, i have been all wistful and folorn. lying in the thick snow on christmas day under neath a garden tree looking up at the stars, wondering at the sheer beauty of the area, but at the same time knowing it would be so much better if i had someone to share it with.

and finally, i present my guest comic: bear and pear! (stolen from Thom)

panel one:
(bear is handing a wrapped box to pear)
B: happy xmas, Pear!

panel two:
(P is tearing the wrapping from the box)
P: a Roy Chubby Brown video? why on earth did you get me that?

Panel three:
B: because i hate you.




even more finally:
Pinocowo!

long ago in central Europe, a buthcer, Gipetto, lovesick, scrawled the graffito of love onto the side of a cow; then the magic of the fairies brought the burger made of the cow to life! "someday," said the burger, "i'll be a real meal!"

there was much more than that of the burger story, but it;s been lost in truncati