The Dictionary of an Incredible Illness

Dinner for One

2011-06-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

I've not had this little verbal communication with someone born in my own decade since I was a salmonella ridden 16 year old par boiled vegetable, comatose in a hospital in Spain ejecting green liquid from every single hole in my body like a waterlogged flute.

At least then I didn't have a choice.

I'm on an IT course. I look forward to meals.

I can't even chuck myself out of the fucking Travelodge because the windows don't open. But there's a reason, because if they did, the realisation of the sterility of the place, you're own existence and the amount of businessmen who have cried, masturbated, cried then purchased a disposable razor from the downstairs vending machine while simultaneously trying to eye up the half attractive reception girl who only really cares about the £4 an hour she's getting to buy a round of drinks drinks on Saturday at Liquids who half smiled at your unattractive fat head out of pity, would drive suicide rates pan global.

In the boardroom they can't hear you scream (except they can as there's me and 5 menopausal women and 100 other empty chairs)

James Dawe

2011-01-22T16:47:00.000-08:00

A Pescetarian Christmas

2011-01-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

I made Christmas dinner, I wrote this

http://cuizine.tumblr.com/post/2683376021/a-pescetarian-christmas

Alligator (Grizzly Bear Cover)

2010-07-19T02:45:00.001-07:00

Alligator (Grizzly Bear Cover) by matthewjgilbert

....

2010-07-07T01:01:00.000-07:00

verycleverchildren by matthewjgilbert

youwereneverlovelier

Sometimes I do songs on my own.

http://drawn.ca/2010/03/24/scott-cs-great-showdowns/

2010-06-29T02:58:00.000-07:00

2010-06-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

The Oregon Trail

2010-05-04T04:12:00.000-07:00

Having been recently mugged for the second time in as many years in the beautiful industrial shitheep that is my place of birth, London, I've decided to pack my bags next year and head for America. I'm going all immigrant and have decided to decend upon 'The Land of Opportunity' like a pissed eagle desperate to scavange some faith in humanity. I'm about 90% more likely to be shot but ya know.

I've decided to go along The Oregon Trail. I don't know how long it'll take, how much it's going to cost or even who's going to drive me, but I'll get there somehow Mr Whiskers, somehow.

Anyone want to drive me?

Ohio

2010-04-21T02:07:00.000-07:00

"In America, they spend more money incarcerating people than they do on educating people. You're talking almost $2m to murder someone on death row. If they took that money and gave you 30 years to life or 20 years to life, they could use the rest of the money and educate five people who want to go to college." - Da'rryl Durr

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/20/darryl-durr-death-penalty

Sea by Me

2010-04-01T05:43:00.000-07:00

Dirty Puddles of Media

2010-03-08T03:14:00.000-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/08/jon-venables-details-prison-recall

I remember this crime being the first real one that registered as a child. I was 9, a similar age to the accused, and I distinctly remember the hysterical reaction that greeted it from the media every time I woke up to watch TVam every morning. I was at that age of curiosity, I was starting to be allowed to go to play football after school with my pals but what I remember was that I just couldn't fathom the crime - it was too removed from my life to be real, the actual actions of the accused just didn't compute.

So many years on and here we are again. The same old grainy footage is wheeled out by the media to try and shock a new generation of people into understanding something before their time. But it isn't shocking anymore. The McCann disappearance is now the pedastal for 'evil' child crime in this generation and the media carnival shat on it from such a great height it dissolved the shock, made it unreal and made the victim a caricature, a distant character in some awful film where there is no ending.

These media storms, especially ones involving child crime, are blown so powerfully into hysterical whirlwinds that they seem politically motivated; throwing accusations that devalue the crime and trying to outsell eachothers newspapers by making the parents of the murdered seem repetitive and uneducated as they harangue them for throwback comments to stick on the frontpage.

Sometimes it makes you glad print media is going out of business.

Anyway, here's a really good article about it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/mar/08/jon-venables-comment-michael-white

My Own Salad Garden

2010-02-10T04:47:00.000-08:00

There comes a period in everyones life when it's time to kick back and care for things other than yourself. Cats, dogs, snakes, children; these varying species offer differing periods of struggle and fullfillment by developing their lifeforms into obedient, social acceptable creatures.

Recently I've decided to venture into this niche world of dulaity and give a tiny 16th of my time to a living thing other than my own being. So this Saturday I'm going to a shop to pick up some little caged dudes I ordered off the net a few weeks back. I've psyched myself up, I've read books and articles about their behaviour, researched their moods and desired food intake. Finally, I'm ready to give up about an hour of my day to a living being other than myself....

Cucumbers.

Well not just cucumbers. I've got three medium sized pots so I decided to go fucking batshit and render some spring onions and radishs too. These seeds all for the price of one whole cucumber. Who's laughing now Tesco? Me that's who.

I will raise them like my own offspring but if they die prematurely does that mean I can't have children? Are you allowed to keep children on your windowledge?

Sequels/Trilogies

2010-01-21T03:32:00.000-08:00

So true.

I miss this guy....

2009-12-29T15:24:00.000-08:00

ALOT. Seriously take some time out to listen to David Foster Wallace read his own work; it's magical.

TTOI

2009-12-08T05:38:00.000-08:00

The greatest story ever told

Take Me

2009-11-30T13:24:00.000-08:00

http://florizel.canalblog.com/

Glands

2009-11-25T02:21:00.000-08:00

Like the oppressive forces of dictatorships in far away countries that are impossible to relate to, men's deodorant overpowers the male armpit gland with as much subtlety as a tank in Tienanmen Square.

I just can't relate to the overpowering smell that overdress' many a underarm male hair follicle. They are the smells of competitive sport, the aggressive whiffs of predatory pursuit and confidence that I, obviously, am never really going to be atune to.

Memories of sitting in the changing room after being picked last, having been stuck in goal with mud encrusted up to my hairless ball sack while my physically superior classmates sprayed thick litres of this juice on their genitalia instead of showering - because 'they weren't a poofter!' - are obviously ones that I cherish highly (Lynx was the choice then - having a new flavour of Lynx, say Africa, was like having Nike's or something).

So a few years ago, to appease my inferior masculine frame, I decided women's deodorant was the way forward (using men's deodorant now would be like using a whole can of weedkiller on a single blade of grass).

I'm a comforting smell, a bit like laundry.

2009-11-05T05:04:00.000-08:00

So I went to New York for Halloween. It was good and hectic. Lots of food was eaten, lots of crap, weak American beer drunk. Saw Pissed Jeans and nearly did the same to my denims once or twice.

Seriously though, the food is so much better than it is over here if you're a veggie like me. It's embarrassing.

Gutted I didn't make it to Coney Island though.

Here are some pictures taken by Mr J Kontos.

The Single Launch

2009-10-16T05:54:00.000-07:00

I know no-one reads this, but ya know, I made the poster....x

The Decline of The Ploughmans

2009-10-05T02:18:00.001-07:00

During various trips to cold and sexless seaside towns with my grandparents as a young child, highlights were of occasion, but normally few and far between. Obviously the trip to the miniature village was one such highlight but the other was always, always, pulling up at some crusty looking country pub, having a pint of the regions sugary coke and enjoying it's take on the English ageless and cultural divider The Ploughmans.

Normally there was a lump of Cheddar (in the Early 90's I'm pretty sure Brie was seen as a negative, foreign influence)accompanied by a bit of salad (ignored), a variety of pickle, half a loaf of crusty bread and eye-stinging, nervous system destabilising pickled onions.

Typically English in its arrangement(basically cobbled together with left over bits from the kitchen)it provoked a creative side in these sleepy country pub chefs too often used to microwaving the local supermarkets cottage pies. I've seen some come out on a plate, I've seen some served on a chopping board, I've seen some with homemade chutney, I've seen some with tomato ketchup(?)....I've even seen some with (whisper it) three types of cheese (http://www.pubs.com/pub_details.cfm?ID=216)!

Alas. Trying to get a ploughman's nowadays is, pretty much, impossible. Big cities just don't cater for such culinary subversion. Even if I was driving around a windy country lane I'm not sure a ploughmans would adorn a gastro pubs menu. They're just not in vogue.

Me and a friend, when searching for a ploughmans in London's East End, discovered the bizarre cross gendered food politics of our local pubs. As they are trying to cater for a variety of different culinary needs and cultures, many pubs neglect the homemade principles of good food and well, have a section that serves badly made Thai food.

To me that's bizarre, especially when there are so many good Asian Restaurants that I'd rather eat in in East London, for probably a similar price, cooked by someone who will probably be Asian and therefore have a clue about said food,... but then again I wouldn't have a gigantic football screen enhancing my culinary experience.

So we trudged on, disheartened, thinking we'd have to work up an appetite for the Pad Thai noodles when finally, after an hour looking we chanced upon the sacred ploughmans....yet it was found not in a pub but um, a rather large coffee shop...

http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/directory/1150/24927.php

Worth the wait though it was.... a Stilton ploughmans! Homemade chutney and homemade bread....

On a Sunday it was perfection....

P.S. By the way, this place charges nearly £20 for a vegetarian roast....£3 more than a normal roast. Why??

http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub87.html

Random x

Yep

2009-09-21T05:47:00.001-07:00

chroniclebooks.com/images/items/9780811/9780811869669/9780811869669_large.jpg

Ghosts

2009-08-26T03:32:00.000-07:00

FROM farm3.static.flickr.com/2474/3633710452_62c88a1bc5.jpg?v=0

My Fav Video

2009-08-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

Not only are Pavement my favourite ever band and Malkmus my fav intelligent homosapien, this is also my favourite ever music video.

Father to a Sister of Thought is a mellow tune and the super 8 footage really gives it a hazy quality that compliments the laziness and lounge like slide guitar of the song. It also gives off a heat, a mid-western heat in the super-8 footage and an underground club heat that is shown in the sweltering red/orange performance footage.

It's pretty basic, it's just someone following the cowboy dressed band around a ranch while interchanging it with some sweaty performance stock. But to me that's what a music video should do and especially with such a playful band like Pavement, a band of personalities.

I Apologise For My Youth

2009-08-21T07:17:00.000-07:00

It's not even a renaissance really. Even before John Hughes died people were going on at me about these supposed early teen films I'd never seen. Shocked expressions quickly turned to disgust as I told them I'd never seen The Breakfast Club. I have also never seen Weird Science, Pretty in Pink or Ferris Buellers Day Off. I've also never seen Lost Boys.

I remember watching a couple of pre-teen movies, like the Goonies and Back to the Future as a pubeless geek, but I've just never really been into these sort of slacker teen things. I'd probably watch them if they were on, but I dunno, I don't really want to seek them out and never did.

It's not like I'm not a big movie fan either. I've seen other Hughes stuff, like Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck but there's something about the teen comedy that has never appealed to me. But maybe I just liked John Candy.

The more people go on about them the more it makes me not want to watch them. Not that I'm a rogue loner or an intriguing outsider myself who's against the tide but I certainly won't get them ten years after I was supposed to be introduced to them.

Then again, maybe that's why I'm such a loser.

Back

2009-08-05T12:16:00.001-07:00

Front

2009-08-05T11:53:00.000-07:00

Not Cool [3]

2009-07-22T01:27:00.001-07:00

Not Cool [3], originally uploaded by Phil Sharp..

My Band by Phil Sharp for Loud and Quiet

Curb It

2009-07-21T04:55:00.000-07:00

I can't stop watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. Where was I when it was on?

Great LP Cover #1

2009-07-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Cunt Fest

2009-07-10T03:43:00.001-07:00

'' ....blame it on the boogie. ''

2009-06-25T03:55:00.000-07:00

''.... But life isn’t that banal or that stupid. Life isn’t about grit and grime and squalor. Life is getting angry at destroyed cat jigsaws. Life is the amazement at seeing the Vanity Fair title erupt as a scarlet mohawk-cum-quiff across a dainty Johnny Depp’s forehead, and the drooling anticipation of watching a Brian McManus-recommended terror-comedy on my computer later tonight. And of course the sight of tireless, tie-less and tire-burning liberal rioters taking to the streets of Tehran.

I speak as someone whose greatest craving at this exact moment is not world peace and universal democracy or a rational and global redistribution of wealth, but a can of ice cold ginger ale.

And of course all this bollocks is written by an idiot who has polished his image as an existentialist, atheist hard-man and anti-mope, forever sneering at the tribes who wallow in self-pity -- the gothers, the emo kids, the Smiths fans -- the whole 900-block-wide marching band composed entirely of the white male urban middle classes who are convinced that (as the most affluent and pampered human beings who have ever walked the planet) theirs is a story worth hearing. Blissfully unaware that they are but a few generations away from regular visits to the doctor who would wind parasitic worms from their beer bloated assholes using sticks. (Check out the AMA logos, those smiling beasts are not snakes).

You could blame this fallacy on poor education, cultural deterioration, or simple moral decline.

Me? I blame it on sunshine. I blame it on the moonlight. I blame it on the boogie. ''

Steven Wells.

SOURCE >>>>

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/in-extremis/Steven-Wells-Says-Goodbye-49054426.html

The Undeniable Line of Music and Sport

2009-06-23T03:46:00.000-07:00

In physique, sportsmen and women are incomparable to their musician counterparts. It’s not just the differing amounts of fluid, food and banned substances that craft these opposing isomorphs so differently; it’s their conflicting natures of dedication through perfection and creativity through crash-bang fun times that set them apart.

Rarely, very rarely indeed do sportspeople have an ear for good music. In the Guardian they ask sportspeople, occasionally, their top ten songs that get them ‘up’ for their athletic performance. 90% of the time it’ll be a big tune from said sportspersons youth, or a recent number one ‘big’un’ that you’ll here if you past any Yates’ at around 9pm on a Saturday night. To prove my point England spinner Monty Panesar recently stated Phil Collins was a …’big-time legend’ and that “I don't like hardcore rock. You know, really hardcore. Like... erm, Guns 'N Roses - that's too much for me. It's too heavy for me to listen to. Too many drums, too much guitar... too much..." Hardcore, eh?

It’s a similar way round from a musical point of view. It’s almost unheard of that popular musicians, especially in this country, should trump or be associated with any other sport apart from football. Forever in my head will be the celebrity football matches of the nineties, with such amazing talented musicians as Robbie Williams, Rod Stewart in his fucking Celtic/Scotland Shirt and a Gallacher brother (Damon’s excused). Also, remember the unforgettable fact that in 1996 football and lad rock merged - Yes, ‘3 Lions.’

For me, Britpop killed my love of football.

I, like many other musical people feel slightly tarred by the lad pop brush when mentioning a penchant for sport, especially in a nationalistic sense. I’m going to lay the marker down now and say it…. I’m a big sports fan. Pretty big, as long as it isn’t football. I have a strange sense of not really wanting to be English, yet wanting most English teams in many sports to tonk the invariably financially weaker country.

Maybe it’s the fact that I was literally rubbish at sport at school. I mean literally dogshit. I wasn’t even so bad that I got picked last. I was sort of a floating phantom of nothing, a physically weak runner who could pass the ball sideways or play a half balanced defensive stroke back to the bowler in my garden, who when attempting a flamboyant stroke was invariably bowled. I was weak and shit and seeing England or Great Britain destroying (or not) some small nation makes up for those years of falling over. It’s individual imperialism.

The fact that I knew what a ‘silly-mid-off’ a ‘cover drive’ and a ‘third-slip’ were, was held in deep secret as I went to one of the worst schools in South East London. A mention of cricket would mean you were without doubt homosexual. Football was our forced religion. I think I played cricket once before the bats were all ‘lost’ i.e. my fellow gym friends stole them to administer some sort of beating. Possibly to the PE teacher.

The line between the macho posturing of sport and the quite aesthetic and vulnerable side of music is a strange mix, especially considering the fact I absolutely abhor macho bands (I mean, don’t kick footballs into the crowd! What’s that about?) My penchant for slightly camp, weird, wonderful and whiny (see Mi Ami etc) music only adds to the bait.

I believe I’m a sports fan only because I appreciate its creativity; the special movement in a line break, the dedication in place kicking, the elegance in a backward cut. But I also like the violence of a spear tackle or a slog sweep for six. That’s why I also like a loud four chord punk scream-a-thon I guess.

Pavement, the masters on intelligent rock, were one of my musical heroes and were also huge sports fans. Bob Nastanovich is a huge fan of horse racing. Stephen Malkmus is a huge baseball and basketball fan! Read Here!

I don’t know shit about baseball, but I’ve played a fantasy cricket league and me and my dad used to always look up to see how many runs Graeme Hick had scored for Worchester on the weekend. Great England discard Ramps is still plodding along nicely though.

I don’t know. I’m not going to turn up at my next gig wearing a British and Irish Lions Rugby shirt, but I’m pretty much looking forward to the next Test against SA. I’m also looking forward to watching the Ashes but then I’ll be going to see Marnie Stern or whoever in the evening.

This stuff can mix.

More Ideas....

2009-06-17T04:07:00.000-07:00

www.booooooom.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/booooooom_furuta_05.jpg

Dina Goldstein

2009-06-17T03:55:00.000-07:00

FALLEN PRINCESSES

http://www.jpgmag.com/photos/645759

Gutter Funk

2009-06-15T02:44:00.001-07:00

I knew this would happen.

13 years ago I frolicked in this very playground, my hair combed back and blow dried in some early nineties white boy high top, my Mickey Mouse tracksuit soiled and sweaty from an afternoon of 20-a-side football.

I get pangs of panic even now just thinking of how much a loser I was, invariably lost in my severely round head, which incidentally made me look even younger than the 12 year old I was.

Anyway, I’m writing this from my old primary school, looking out over the playground where nothing, apart form the ICT room I now work in, has changed one iota. The gloss in the assembly halls, the crap wooden benches, the arse numbing wooden chairs, the coat pegs, the tiny toilets, the tarmac, the smell of cakes wafting down the hall …. I’m regressing like the Karate Kid.

A job is a job apparently, but seeing the relics of my youth evoke mixed memories has been a weird experience so far.

I said I’d never go back to Downham. But here I am again.

SE London 4 life>? Eh.

This Monkey's Gone to Devon

2009-06-09T12:13:00.000-07:00

Knackerbarrell

2009-06-09T12:12:00.000-07:00

Cover?

Fuck

2009-05-14T17:25:00.000-07:00

It's hardly surprising that young people and politics mix like talent and Britain's Got Talent when politicians have their own moats.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5310200/MPs-expenses-Paying-bills-for-Tory-grandees.html

Being made redundant recently and struggling to pay the rent when politicians claim 'allowances' for the cleaning of their moats or having a chandelier fitted in some far away mansion, kind of, ya know, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

When on top of a £70,000 a year salary with no mortgage to pay on their 2 - 3 homes they are allowed thousands of pounds to claim on fruit and veg when the third sector is struggling to stay afloat with no government help....

I tell you what, I can't be bothered to keep typing, because there is a hideous gap between these people, my life and general reality that makes it inconceivable that they are allowed to make decisions on how I'm supposed to live my life. It's a waste of anger.

They are defining peoples lives while some slave cleans their moats on our money.

Seriously, we all need to wake up.

Fuck.

Animal Man/Man Animal

2009-05-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s51/miss-snezhok/selff/09bd3ac6.jpg

I really want to do a photoshoot dressed as an animal.

Can this be arranged?

Will buy chocolate.

'....we're responsible for our own happiness'

2009-04-27T05:57:00.000-07:00

Natascha McElhone on her lovers death.

Now, I never read the Mail but here is her obituary for her husband, written days after he died. It's moving, raw and ultimately beautiful.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021685/Natascha-McElhone-I-believe-I-wont-feel-skin-more.html

x

Credit Munch

2009-04-17T04:50:00.001-07:00

April 17th 2009.

Today I will join the other 2 million or so unfortunate/lazy/scrounging/incapacitated individuals and become unemployed.

Redundancy has its perks. Namely a large pay off for the life stealing service you’ve given. But because I've been strung along like a dumb carrot drugged donkey for the past 14 months on measly monthly contracts, I will receive zero dolla’.

Thankfully, I'm a fairly laid back individual, but when every single day I hear that this 'recession' is only akin to one last seen when Hitler and his crew were bombing the existence out of ‘good ol’Landaan's apple and pear’ racketing businesses, I slightly sigh.

'My god,' I think. 'Am I really going to have to get a job picking up glasses at the Hawley Arms?' (This is what a friend had to do. After numerous unpaid overtime lock-ins listening to toothless indie cunts in straw hats, he became an IT consultant).

Shudder.

Although I'm generally deficient of plans in my life, I feel I need to come up with some. Not plans that involve emailing wide, young professionals in some parallel recruitment centre hell, but budgeting for my unemployed, bum like existence.

Food

Everybody likes food. Even homeless people like food. Even though they look like Skeletor and spend the change they magnet on smack, they sometimes eat. So, on a budget that may consist of a few coppers and one big shiny gold coin, what can you get? Well, the Great Irish Famine might have been over 270 years ago but it doesn't stop my mate dishing out suitably impoverished meals for the sake of breaking a fiver. Soup and potatoes might sound like something Heston Blumenthal might only come up with in his dreams, right next to his bacon flavoured ice-cream, but it does exactly what it says on the tin. Literally.

It's a tin of soup, with some (tinned!!) new potatoes plopped in it like drowning bald heart attack victims.

Drink

That guy on the bus hiding a can of alcohol in a blue plastic bag at 8.30am as you go to work might be slightly ashamed that he has to get lashed before he inputs data into his giant spreadsheet, but I don't have to be. I now don't have a job. True he's probably drinking lager that could rip the fur off a cat, but he is no mug. It only cosy him 10p.

Drugs

Coke is too expensive. So go to the forest and pick some mushrooms. They might give you diarrhoea and might not be halluciagenic in the slightest, but if you become ill it means less money on food. Win win.

Or just stop doing them.

Rent

Add boy to the end of this word and you might not have to pay any at all. Works even better if you know your landlord is susceptible to you cupping his balls instead of receiving your standing orders.

Mine isn’t.

One Sonic Ritual

2009-04-16T03:04:00.000-07:00

farm4.static.flickr.com/3013/2902098656_19de69042e.jpg?v=0

utopia

2009-03-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

fc27.deviantart.com/fs11/i/2006/253/9/7/greece_is_great_by_CDcrew.jpg

inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/mxborder_03_25/m28_18302519.jpg

More ideas....

2009-03-19T09:26:00.001-07:00

data.tumblr.com/17207786_500.jpg

Oneday

2009-03-19T09:22:00.001-07:00

farm4.static.flickr.com/3230/3141128313_2c03b86509.jpg?v=0

Not Cool

2009-03-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

data.tumblr.com/Q3vCFPeTTkcm7r9xhfqyqHudo1_r1_500.jpg

Ideas....

2009-03-19T08:54:00.000-07:00

z.about.com/d/arthistory/1/0/L/7/04_Yanobe_Atom.jpg

Ψυχολογία

2009-03-08T15:29:00.000-07:00

Lotta_on_her_bed_by_AlexanderB.jpg

Stuff I've been thinking about lately >

> How Jade Goody's rehab in the public forum from racist chav to valiant mother has only come about in her death. The most extreme case of celebrity martydom? The only possible conclusion?

> How the above photo reminds me of Rivington and Orchard.

> How I find real short crop hair on girls too attractive.

> How I'm going to cope when I'm made unemployed on the 17th of April.

> How I'm finding music more boring every time I use my Ipod.

> How I play music live quite a lot, but actually hate going to gigs.

> How I feel slightly agrophobic everywhere when I'm not with someone I find interesting.

> How people are putting S's at the end of normal words to induce some humour(s).

> How, in general, it is difficult to start again.

> How my hangovers haven't been so bad lately.

> How expensive nice food is.

> How much I hate my flat.

> How much a haircut helps.

> How being 25 has made me feel tired.

> How much I like getting up early.

> How much I like girls deoderant to mens. It's just too sport.

> How much I like the 172 bus route.

Vatican of Evil

2009-02-08T13:30:00.000-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/08/englaro-italy-vatican

Tony Hart

2009-01-19T06:19:00.000-08:00

This made me cry a little. It's so amazing. Reminds me of waking up at 6am at my Nan and Grandads.
x

'It Was Lovely....'

2009-01-18T15:40:00.000-08:00

Sitting at a restaurant with my family is generally an enjoyable experience, more so now because of their new middle class surroundings, which means I rarely venture out of my poverty shack to see them as often.

Being English is certainly a condition that should be added to a vocabulary somewhere, because it's a queer disposition that means you cannot question the validity of the meal you have paid money for, even if it looks like a shit.

I know what beef wellington is right. So I know what a vegetable wellington should look like. It should look like a beef wellington without the beef in it. Don't serve me a pile of diarrhea and sprinkle some rocket all over it because you made a massive cock up.

I've seen Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmare's enough times to know the chef deserved it over his face, but where did the balls go? The big fat balls? I forgot, I'm English, I don't have any.

Well, my nan has. Served a lamb roast that nearly removed her dentures with every bite, the waitress made the eternal error of asking if it was 'ok?'

'Shit.'

We fear she may not be English after all.

Words

2009-01-18T15:34:00.000-08:00

Words I pretend to know the meaning of but don't really and can't be bothered to look up even though I have a 1st in English which obviously means nothing to anybody anywhere because I suck >

schadenfreude

zeitgeist

There are more, probably in the dictionary.

Ray Quinn

2008-12-24T05:49:00.000-08:00

sometimes a vasectomy is the only answer

All Change....

2008-12-21T15:33:00.000-08:00

I have no more roots in the Northern Kent/Southern London lego block part of the world that is Downham. Gone. Zilch. No more will I be called 'faggot' at a bus stop. No more will I see the giant Woolworthes (though this is for a few other reasons) set ablaze. No more will I see the 2 hollow shells of the decaying Green Man and The Tigers Head pubs, the former set a fire by gypsies. No more will I see the Food Hall M&S and actually wonder why it is there.

My parents have left southen London or a suburban life in a part of the world that might still consider me queer, but wouldn't do it with such an instant and determined ideal of violence - they may just set me on fire late at night in one of the many adjoinging fields that back onto the new abode.

There's deer. There's rabbits. There's geese. There's no ethnic minorities. It's certainly going to be a white xmas folks.

And I enter my flat everyday to the same orchestral strains of the same tramp asking for the same pound coin in Brockley.

I'm also off to New York for New Year. I hope I don't come back.

Please Watch This....

2008-12-10T02:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/10/assisted-suicide-television

Tramp

2008-12-09T08:43:00.000-08:00

Every single day I open the same door at the same time and see the same tramp asking me for the same amount of money.

February 20th

2008-12-08T08:13:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_20th

Kurt Cobain and Phil Neal.... my idols

x

Crocodile Dundee and the Enhancement of Life with a Kukri Knife

2008-11-24T02:42:00.000-08:00

I think it was Crocodile Dundee who (faced with an incompetent pen knife wielding mugger) exclaimed in his irksome Aussie strain, ‘Ya call that a knife? This is a knife!’ Instantly pulled from his thick leather knife holder was what Nietzsche might have referred to as a ‘fuck off stabber.’

Hearing daily news of the young being stabbed at a pretty consistent rate, I begin to wonder where are all the Crocodile Dundee’s of the world are at to sort the trouble out? But then I think, maybe that’s the trouble, there’s just too many of them.

Anyway. Earlier this year I was at my grandparents house and while watching the usual Deal or No Deal/Countdown head burp, my granddad starts talking about the amount of people getting stabbed in the world. Though trying hard to solve the Countdown Conundrum and not conjure up any sticky images of Carol’s Voderman (brains are nice), I am drawn into my granddads sudden talk about knives. I enquire. It continues. He is now talking, from what I can recall, about the First World War and the Gurkha Knives that his brother had given to him. I enquire again. My nan then says she wants them out of the house. Confused, I then see my granddad leap up from his chair and go upstairs.

My granddad died not long after he brought these down the stairs at their small home in Hammersmith. It annoys me so much that I can’t exactly recall where each one is from or how he managed to acquire them.

When he died I knew my nan didn’t want them in the house so I asked if I could have them. She gladly gave them to me wrapped in a suspicious plastic bag along with the medals he received from the Navy in the 2nd World War.

I’m doing research on them at the moment. The amazement when I first saw them was tempered when on further inspection, there was still lots and lots of blood vaselined onto them.

The Kukri - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kukri

This is the one I’m annoyed with the most because I can’t remember the actual story behind it. I can’t remember if it was found in a gurkha’s head or in a German’s or not.

Now, this little one I do remember something about. It was found in the gut of a German, but was bought at a market by my Granddad for a rather cheap price. It has an ivory handle. Though I don’t know its make. Nike perhaps.

I wish I found out more about them, because finding out about them is finding out about him. I’m not a fan of knives or their masculine posterity, but these bloody slices of history fascinate me because of their ridiculous passage into my granddads hands. Which have now reached mine. They are from a time that I hope I’ll never see, but seeing them is a reminder of how survival and living are our most feral instinct.

Matt.

Yes?

2008-09-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

Certainly the End of Something or Other - David Foster Wallace 21/02/1962 – 12/09/2008

2008-09-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

I can’t remember why I bought ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.’ Maybe someone recommended me it or it was one of those hideous Amazon recommendations you get when you buy a ‘similar’ authors book (like writers fit in genres like the shelf guides in music shops).

It took me a while to get into it. I mean, I had not seen anything like it. I was immature, the titles were complete sentences and the language so detailed I longed for something easier. That was until I read the essay ‘Tennis Player Michael Joyce’s Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesque and Human Completeness.’ To read in utter detail the way the mechanics of Joyce’s serve, without pause, worked, changed the way I would view structure, grammar and influence the overall way I would write. It screamed of love, utter love for language and the subject that he was covering. I couldn’t put it down. I couldn’t put ‘David Lynch Keeps his Head’ down (I read it three times in a row). I recommended him to everyone. I knew I couldn’t, but I wanted to love writing as much as this guy.

When I got into work this morning and habitually skipped the data entry by venturing onto the Guardians website, I was speechless when it said Foster Wallace had committed suicide. It was only yesterday I tried to find out whether he had any new work coming out and only a month ago that I ordered ‘The Best American Essay’s of 2007,’ just because he edited it.

Being an admirer of a writer is a strange one, say, compared to a musician, band or whatever. It’s myopic. Nobody can hear what you’re reading, it’s you and this person’s language taking you on a journey nobody on the outside of the cover can imagine at that moment. Unlike an Ipod, you have to work for it. It’s intimate. But reading his work also made me want to write.

Not that some of his work couldn’t be difficult. His short story collection ‘Oblivion’ was in some parts intrinsically detailed hard work, but in others phenomenally beautiful. Most encountered the fragility of the human position and each character’s struggle with life, but the most tragic story, ‘Incarnations of Burned Children,’ moved me so much I dedicated a poem of loss to it during my final year poetry dissertation.

His breathless way of creating a gasping narrative to encounter the situations of the protagonist and the humour in his essays and stories helped me to form my own use of, what I thought was, unique grammar and structure during my degree. I wasn’t sure why I was at Uni but reading his work made me understand that working creatively was the only way forward, even if I fucked up my first year. I can specifically remember skipping my English Lit class to go to Borders on Charing Cross Road with my last ounce of Student Loan to purchase his newest book. It was called ‘Consider The Lobster,’ and I remember reading ‘Big Red Sun’ (his essay on the American Porn industry) on the 188 crossing Waterloo Bridge back to my university for the creative writing class I was only really there for. I laughed all the way.

I’m sure there will be a lot more interest in David Foster Wallace’s writing now. I’m sure people will pour over his work looking for theories into his death. I’ve read some blogs saying he was the ‘greatest writer of his generation.’ I’m not amazingly read so I’m not too sure about that, but he was and still is definitely the most forward thinking and inspirational one in my life.

In a writer you can build up a picture of that person through their language you read. Reading the obituaries today, the universal praising and messages of mourning, I came to the conclusion that everyone came to the same close – he was just an intensely intelligent guy, without pretensions, who was constantly trying to understand a way to write about and comprehend life.

That is why I don’t understand his death at the moment, the violence in it, and the way he’s now going to be almost, fictionalised. But then again, maybe his ambition to question his existence, to be this huge brain coupled with depression and this celebrated prodigy was all too much. That’s not for now. Or maybe ever.

I want to remember the endless footnotes. The way he made me understand American politics and McCain in particular in ‘Up, Simba – Seven Days on the Trail of the Anticandidate.’ The way he wrote without sides, not forcing his opinions on the reader. About his clear passion for tennis and the absolutely funny and brilliant ‘Hail the Returning Dragon, Clothed in New Fire,’ a short essay about Aids I had to order a while back from America.

On the snide, I’ve just printed out his 2006 essay about Roger Federer and I’m going to read it on my way home from work. To not be able to read and be set the challenge of his new piece of fiction or non-fiction is a terrible thought, but I still haven’t read his supposed 1,000 odd word masterpiece ‘Infinite Jest,’ so I’ll hold that thought. Like I said before, the highest accolade I can give him is that he made me want to write. And he will continue to do so.

On Updike’s protagonist in the novel ‘Toward the End of Time’ –

‘Updike makes it plain that he views the narrators final impotence as catastrophic, as the ultimate symbol of death itself, and he clearly wants us to mourn it as much as Turnbull does. I am not shocked or offended by this attitude: I mostly just don’t get it. Rampant or flaccid, Ben Turnbull’s unhappiness is obvious right from the novel’s first page. It never once occurs to him, though, that the reason he’s so unhappy is that he’s an asshole.’ – David Foster Wallace – ‘Certainly The End of Something Or Other (1998).

Matt.

The Trouble with British Politics….

2008-09-14T09:01:00.000-07:00

.... is that it is too damn stuffy. Not only is there a tiny percentage of non-white politicians gracing the planks, there is a huge percentage of middle England representing our values.

British politics has had its hand in colonial means for centuries and as if feeling shame was an after thought, those imperialistic values still seem to exist within the walls of the Houses of Parliament. The grand palace of argument is decorated with gold raped from the black hands of the people we overtook, forever in the background when the two political forces have their weekly battle of good vs evil. But how that line has now blurred too! As the Presidential race in America hots up with side splitting inaccurate yarns posted on various television networks and websites, our very own Prime Minister looks like the sort of person who would struggle to work a toaster. It does not inspire. I’m not the fulcrum of political matters, clued up to every single tax cut promise and heating allowance for the old, but I know I like a politician who can make my toast. It’s easy to say British politics is boring and uninspiring, but my god, compared to America’s WWF extravaganza, our politicians seem like the wrestling equivalent of the Dinner Lady Saturday’s at Lewisham theatre.

It’s easy to blame the politicians themselves; their suits, Brown and his plumy Scottish accent trying to tell me ‘everything’s alright.’ But I want glitz and glamour. I want (insert fairly big British Band) playing the political hits before my next Prime Minister promises me and my other 79,999 fellow screamers, ‘CHANGE!’ Maybe it’s because we just haven’t got the facilities. I mean, it would be pointless Milliband walking tall somewhere up North, walking out at Derby’s County’s Pride Park in front of some 3000 farmers, with a bit of a shit PA and Girls Aloud doing that ‘Underground’ song. It would just be a bit pointless. It wouldn’t be like Obama striding out, would it? You’d get this skinny white, posh, frail First Class Accounts Graduate holding onto a rail promising the farmers that mad cow disease isn’t really ‘real.’ It’s all just a bit crap.

Sadly, we know Labour has as much chance of winning the next election as I have, so we have to rely on David Cameron for our futures. He is, sadly, the most charismatic politician in the race even if, by his class, accent and ‘hug a hoodie’ love, his distant family undoubtedly had their hands bloody somewhere in Africa. Brown makes this prick look like JFK or something; just by his complete ineptitude of grasping the fact that politics has evolved since Labour was for the working class.

That disaffection just doesn’t exist anymore. I just can’t see many people caring enough in this country to vote for someone even if they offer free blowjobs with every X. There is a weirdo apathy within our youth culture that doesn’t relate to issues outside of the family. You could tell by the Mayoral elections. Most of the votes came from the borders of London (fuck knows why they’re included but hey ho); white, middle class places full of middle aged conservative strong holds that actually cared enough to spot the fact that people are apathetic and voted. And look what got in!

Politics needs a make over. At the moment it’s a Sunday supplement where we see some party members we’ve never heard of ramble and stutter on and on about the war in Iraq. It’s done, get on with it! At least you can pick the three or four villains out of a criminal line up when it came to the Republican’s latest rein: Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfelt, Powell…. These guys were great. It’s like the fucking Addams Family or something!

I’m not even sure now if it is a class thing. Get them all on Big Brother. Get five Conservatives and Labourites (No Liberals) to discuss policies, sleep, smell each others shit and shag for 60 weeks or for however long it lasts. It’s going to be massive! It might just make a kid somewhere want to vote.

Interesting Article Alert ....

2008-09-09T03:54:00.001-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/08/relationships.healthandwellbeing

treatment by others. These two forms of anger are episodic. The third type of anger is however dispositional and is related more to character traits..

2008-08-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve been angry for a long time. Ever since I walked in on dad eating the chocolate hob nob Charlotte and I left with a cool glass of milk for Santa on the windowsill. I think. I’m pretty angry now. I’m angry that there is only one plug socket in the room. This means it’s either this laptop or the stereo. I’m punching the keys. I’ve accidentally underlined a word. I CAN’T EVEN SMOOTH THIS MOOD WITH BJORK!

You see, I’ve been getting these intense crippling migraines. Ones that make me blind and give me pins and needles down my left side. My speech slurs. I struggle to think straight. I’ve had to leave work. I’ve become too scared to travel in case I walk onto a train track. I tell people. They say ‘take a paracetemol.’ This makes me more angry. It’s lucky I can’t see them.

I’ve been putting it down to this anger – this complete irrational fury at the little old ladies who insist on walking REALLY slow on narrow pavements. This anger at the Pez dispenser I bought that turned out to have NO Pez’s in it. I mean they just don’t sell them. ANyWHERE! This nauseating anger at the blank cd’s that ‘mysteriously disappeared’ from my room, knowing full well that I left them at my old flat - I have often caught site of myself in the bathroom mirror PUNCHING myself on the side of the head. I have woken recently to find a few hundred stressed hairs looking up at me going ‘why are you so angry?’ I’m angry in my sleep. More than once I have had a fight with Elmer Fudd, because the cunt slurs his words when we’re chasing that ‘pesky rabbit.’

I recently lost somebody who used to regularly end conversations about me with ‘…and Matt was outraged!’ I lost this person because I was angry.

I’m angry at Bill Gates every time I place another number into the never ending Excel spread sheet I’m lost in at work. I’m angry at all bus drivers in the world. I’m angry at my bank for cutting my overdraft. I’m angry at YOU. But recently I’ve found the ultimate symbol to channel this never-ending stream of utter hatred towards. They are my new muse. You may have heard of them. They go by the name of… estate agents.

Now, it’s nothing new to think that every estate agent is an utter cocky prick, but to skin these money grabbing pigs alive with the very keys they open the shithole flat they’ve taken me to see? Is that a natural reaction?

If you think I’m coming on, let’s say, a little strong, let me set the never-ending visceral stream of inconvenience scene they have orchestrated since the beginning of the year.

Me and my future live in buddy have had some minor hitches. First it involved racism (the estate aget brought an Asian kid round to view a flat with us and constantly referred to it being ideal for his ‘large family’ and his ‘curry cooking.’ (Reside)

A second one didn’t turn up (Rocodells).

A couple of brothers turned up for the third nearly an hour late only to show us into the property, knock on the door and find it had already been rented out. Nobody told them apparently.

However, by the sixth viewing all was forgotten. I was a brand new property and had wood floors, a brand new kitchen, one of those stand up radiator things. He even said he’d get the landlord to throw in some beds! Too good to be true???? We said we’d take it. We exchanged a holding fee, signed a contract and were promised the move would take place on the Sunday. It was the Tuesday. Too good to be true???? When it got round to the next Monday, the Tuesday and the Wednesday and we couldn’t contact the bloke we began to telepathically feel the pangs of an error. Eventually, he called us in a state of apologetic beaver. There was a problem. The water wasn’t right. It wasn’t turned on. Or fitted. Or there weren’t any pipes at all? He didn’t know. This bloke couldn’t even get the answer phone message right on his mobile without forgetting who he was and without a minutes worth of silence before the beep (by that time you’ve already said your message to absolutely nothing).

It was going to take a month to fix. But did we pull out???? Did we fuck. Buoyed by the fact that maybe he was just a bit clumsy, a bit of a fool, a doughnut - we cut him some slack. We reasoned it could take us a month to find somewhere else. THIS SHIT HAPPENS.

As the four weeks encroached on us like my inherited Alzheimer’s, we began to worry yet again. TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE???? With only sporadic news from our hero throughout the month, we were anxious to set a date to move in. After leaving three text messages, an angry voicemail and several unanswered calls we were informed that it wasn’t the water (!) but the electricity (!!) that was the problem. It was going to take another week. Now, these seemingly polar opposites of the energy worlds can be merged sometimes we figured somehow so, ya know, we cut him the last bit of slack.

A week and no calls later we get the news that it ACTUALLY WAS THE WATER and the flat had changed owners. ‘It may take another few weeks,’ he croaked.

We are now still trying to get our money back off him (Bambos – Sirus Lettings).

My heart pressure rises every time I think of his bald fat head. But there is room for one last gemstone in these shit thick rent islands. Completely disheartened by our previous experiences we found another place in deepest Brockley. From the outside it looked pretty grim, but we’re both working class heroes so we gave it a go. The rest happened in this order -
- Guy turns up without keys.
- Guy has never even set foot in the flat.
- Guy doesn’t even know how many bedrooms it is, what number it is, what floor it’s on, how much it is a month.
- Guy precedes to tell us that they only do long term lets (18 months), says we should higher our budget because this is the best we can hope for with our ‘small’ budget (we’ve seem 6 other flats that are better and for the same price), wants us to give him a £500 holding fee, then a £300 admin fee for a flat we just said to him looked like someone had died in it. Someone had died in it. There were bags of the dead woman’s clothes tied up in some spare room.

He then claimed the place was completely wood flooring while we are standing in a room with carpet (Ludlow Thompson).

Some people say anger is the strongest emotion. That it is a purer more real expression. That in display it must be aimed, because it can be so irrational and spontaneous. But however pure it is, I don’t want to die of some brain aneurysm, completely bald on a bus quietly exploding my brain in swear words because some kid won’t turn his phone down.

It either isn’t suppressed anymore (and I turn into that MENTAL FUCKING NUT BAG OF AN IRRATIONAL FRUITLOOP from the Greyhound bus in Canada and hack some kids head off and start eating his fingers because he’s fallen asleep and the song he’s listening to is REALLY QUITE LOUD AND ANNOYING!) or I calm down and shrug a lot more. I ignore these fools, these money grabbers, these rogues of capitalist Britain and give them an ironic high five on my way through.

Either this or I lose more people.

So coming to a bus near you, turn your phones with your home made MCing UP, UP, UP….

I’ve chosen the latter.

Dirt McDirt

2008-06-24T15:31:00.000-07:00

Being mugged at knifepoint isn't as stressful as first feared.

Exasperated at news coverage containing various identical incidents of knife crime around (semi-near) the places I like to wander in the hours of the feral/mad/drunk/crack-head/insomniac/dogwalker, and being the stoic lefty of a passive household; I believed Michael Moore, the Guardian, Obama, Starsky and David Milliband when they said 'crime doesn't exist.' Knowing that I have, on occaision, been attacked in various indie cred-shops with language or bottles still made no weight with me as I have always put it down to my dislikeable face.

This all changed when I encountered fear in the shape of a kitchen knife weilding skin head engineering my robbery with the elite grasp of the English language -

CH: 'Gis is Yer Stuff....'

Me: 'Ok...'

It was the easiest pickpocketing he'll ever do, but when he had my bag and wallet he was sure to have left the most disappointed. Around 5am on a Sunday morning I thought I heard his very sigh.

As I didn't initially report the crime I'll never add to that 20 odd percent who claim to be a victim of knife crime. I'm sure it can be traumatic and I'm sure that losing that laptop covered in your house insurance is agitating but.... druggies need to pay for their shit too. I mean who would supply London with its cold stream of white talc if these people weren't funding it by robbing weedy fucks like me....

I was dressed like this

Boris, Boris, Boris....

2008-05-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

I'm sure there are many, many bloggers in london who have whinged at the prominent notice that Boris Kerfaffle (?) Johnson will be running London for the next 3 years or so. I'm sure people who harboured a faint wet dream, that some lefty with communist ideas might get in in the form of some weak Independant/ Green type Party, ripped their genitalia off as the massive margin of error was announced. I shook my head. Then went to Italy.

Coming back from a country that is run by a 'dictator' in the shape of Silvio Berlusconi really does throw it all into perspective. The young I met in the suburbs, the cities and cow laden narrow streets of South Eastern Italy all agreed it was pretty damn shit. Whinging about mayor who has about as much power to decide how much I pay for the bus doesn't quite seem to cut it. Not when there's an actual rich 'corrupt facist' running a large economy in Europe.

But on my arrival back I did expect a little change. Like free umbrellas or the end of the bendy buses. Maybe a policeman on every street corner or horses instead of cars. But I'm still occaisionally paying 90p to travel on the bendy bus to NX.

HINT: Make sure you have at least 90p on your Oyster. Stand/sit near the scanner thing. Then only when you see the transport gestapo do you scan it. It'll save all the worrying and save you a few bob.

Sadly sometimes change is needed to spark something spectaular. The Conservatives will win the next general election hands down. This is sad, but maybe after a few years of few discernable policies and the drafts reinstatement, middle class suburbia and the tennants of Tennants will forge an unlikely revolution.

I doubt it.

If the general British public was in charge it would still be a tuppence to get on the bus and the routemasters would be taking you to work. Long live capitalism, I'm too content for a revolution.

My Near Future

2008-05-20T15:53:00.000-07:00

Switzerland

....

2008-04-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

What are the rules for writing a funeral speech? How many cliches like 'He was a good person....' or 'He was loved by many people...' do you need to add to make it viable?

I've never been to a funeral before and certainly haven't read a eulogy in front of the people who miss him immeasurably.I sort of feel a little guilty for volunteering because I almost feel vulnerable to accusations of 'being shit' at it and taking over the whole proceeding as a personal triumph of confidence....

I'm doing it as no-one else would and I can't have him going to some Vicar's hollow template.

It's going to be very hard. But I'm not worried about breaking down, I'm more worried about fucking it up, shakeing uncontrollably at the altar or losing speech. I sometimes feel like a monotone. This isn't the time for nerves.

Help!

x

The Bell Curve

2008-04-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

I was told a little while ago that my granddad died of Alzheimer’s. I couldn’t quite work out how he actually died. Did he just forget to breath? Keep forgetting to eat until his final emaciation? It’s still never been explained to me fully, but in a long line of mental degradation on my father’s side I stand to inherit it, along with the richness of gout.

Although Alzheimer’s isn’t a mental illness, it is the saddest of declines in dignity that affords your lasting days are fraught with guilt and embarrassment. To dementia and on to manic depression, society’s longing to ignore the decay of people who have paid taxes, killed Nazi’s and who held you on their knee is now hushed into terrible care via the NHS, where being left to die next to the mentally deranged is pretty much routine.

Around 300 people out of 1,000 experience mental health problems every year in Britain, where 9.2% of our entire British population suffer from depression with anxiety. Depression is still seen as a bit of an ugly word, an easy excuse because it is a disease that is physically unrecognisable in its distortion of the human body. It can be hard to define, and is stuck with verbal stigmas like it can be ‘run off’ down the park or cured with a healthy diet.

The most recent available survey shows that in 2006 31million prescriptions of antidepressants were rightly or wrongly issued to the masses, where in well over 600,000 were issued to children . Recently some research has suggested that ‘anti-depressants have little clinical benefit for most patients’ and that ‘only the most severely depressed patients’ should be prescribed such drugs, likening certain pills with a ‘placebo effect’ it gives the patient.

My Nan is what can be safely called a manic-depressive. My dad has had this constant ache since he was born knowing that at any time his mum could have a ‘funny turn’ (‘funny’ means ‘full scale manic episode’ in SE London). But if your family member is ill, diseased, whatever, please leave the London borough of Lewisham. Apparently it has a mental impatient wing. Less surprisingly, it’s pretty rank. Not renowned for being the most pleasant hospital, for it treats the whole of SE London’s ill, it is by far one of the biggest in London, by far the biggest in South London, but probably lacks the beauty of sitting in a nice wealthy area to extract that type of budget from the government.

Coincidently or not, my dad’s favourite film is ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ so he can see the sense of absurdity in these visits (once my dad had a full scale conversation for an hour with a smartly dressed woman claiming responsibility over his mum – she turned out to be a patient), but humour probably gets lost when you’re probably sharing a corridor with someone who’s just killed the next-door neighbour and ate them.

As well as the Prozac, sadly my Nan has had a penchant for electroconvulsive therapy (loves the stuff), but gladly they’re phasing it out (Probably because of the huge bill rise by Npower - Or the fact that it isn’t the 40’s anymore - Or the fact that evil demons don’t live inside your skulls nowadays). To believe that in the 21st century people were still strapped into beds, a plastic gum shield inserted between their teeth and blasted with fuck knows how much voltage makes me wonder how advanced our medicines have actually become.

Similarly, these famous people also had ECT - Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath and Francis Farmer. So glad to see it worked out well for them.

I remember when I was a little skint and decided to work with my electrician father for a week at an old people’s home. It was the first day of the first test of the Ashes Series when England beat the Australians, but that isn’t the reason I remember it. I remember it because of the bitter taste of urine you’d get by breathing when entering the front reception area. It still upsets me to this day thinking of when I was doing some random bit of light bulb screwing, I’d look to my left and see these faces distorted in dementia, like moving pictures of Munch’s Scream, carrying cabbage patch dolls, talking to them in hushed voices like they were their children. It was like some weird roll reversed nursery school, but you wouldn’t let your children play in the conditions.

We try and forget these people, tut or laugh when we see someone out of our norm acting a tad ‘difficult’ on the bus (if you’ve just moved from nowhere-shire to Goldsmith’s and a morsel sceptical, let me recommend the 136 bus route to Grove Park for the most scenic tour of mental institutions). Society is keen to wash their hands of these people; they want people to make them money, not cost them.

Matt Gilbert

Sources:-

http://www.mind.org.uk
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/08/uk.liberaldemocrats
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7263494.stm - University of Hull - Professor Irving Kirsch
(ECT) Shock Therapy to you and me

The One and Only

2008-02-17T07:25:00.000-08:00

I rarely have the privelige to sit back and view the delights of Saturday night television, but last night in a state of terrified boredom I managed to break the mould and view the stunning, thought provoking, expensive televisial bliss.

Saturday night really is the Special Olympics of television. What I encountered was a sort of, believe it or not, shitter version of Stars in their Eyes. It was like being in an alternate reality for an hour where people neither looked, sounded or acted in any way like the projected 'star' they were desperately yearning to resemble. There were also issues of mental health involved, because each contender was constantly refered to by their 'stars' Christian name. I didn't catch it all, but I think there was a ginger white guy who blacked himself up to resemble Lionel Ritchie. The deflated, hollow essence that was once Graeme Norton's career stood there and constantly called this bloke 'Lionel.'

As 'Elton, 'Dusty,' 'Rod,' 'Frank,' and 'Britney' et al looked on desperately trying to ignore the mental health implications of suddenly having two names and now forever being known as 'that shit (insert star name here)' whenever they appear in the street/Butlins, it reminded me what being out on Saturday night was all about, even if it's raining, minus 10c outside and I can't afford to get on a bus.

And what the ufkc was a guy doing on it impersonating Robbie Williams? The premise of the show, I have now been reliably informed, was to win a chance to perform in Las Vegas as a tribute act to said 'star.' Who the fuck thought being Williams was a sure on bet? The cunt isn't even known in America! Now that's a big gamble, even for Las Vegas.

It's yet again people screaming 'Look at me' through the television, but with the weird notion of being somebody else. Someone better and more talented then they'll ever, ever be. I don't get it either.

A couple of blokes doing shit impersonations. Apparently that's Sinatra.

NEW YEAR'S STEVE

2008-01-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

'Modern Life is Rubbish'

2007-12-09T17:40:00.000-08:00

If anything is a definiton of why 'Modern Life is Rubbish' it is Hollyoaks. From the title sequence that neglects any notion of subtlety, to the incest obsessed storyboarders who wouldn't know how to deal with a 'sensitive issue' if it unfolded itself within the womb of a recently aborted child pregnancy - the show represents everything that is wrong with my life. When one of these 'writers' wives turns round and actually says 'John, I've got cancer,' I bet his first idea is how to issue a character with the disease and 'highlight' the issue in a garish, melodramatic way. While throwing in some more incest of course. 'That pretty girl MUST don the bald cap.' It's got to that point where everything has become too fast. There isn't enough pleasure in speed anymore. Survival doesn't seem the best way to exist, when everything blocks and streams into pavements.

We're constantly surrounded by or have become survivors. People who just, well, survive. Live their life in a state of bank balanced persecution, sucking on the tit of unemployment one minute then sucking the cock of retail the next. It's the cancer of modern life that there isn't a single moment to examine a period of bliss.... 'I want ten good years at the end of my life.' We want this in the present, for the rest of our lives. Our lives have now been tinged with an expectation that can never truely be fulfilled. Love isn't necessarily the initial yearn of our existence, because being 'respected/better than your neighbour' is an easier reality. Fame, infamy, respect, call it whatever, it's the desire because it is now obtainable, within reach, a reach that could settle you forever.

London is the hotbed for the worst fractured kinds; wandering around without a talented pubic bone, who have once sipped the curdled milkshake of instant gratification. Rotten bands have rotten musicians, have inturn rotten wanderers who breed forgettable patterns of a recycled non-fiction that has become something of an unreachable fiction born out of something only touchable with tal..... time.

Clocks.

?

I slip down the slipstream in austere parchment when it's just so much easier to sleep.

W*********'s

2007-11-25T15:52:00.000-08:00

You can only drivel away in soul destroying worlds for so long - there is only so much ignorant banter you can take, shocked of all intelligence, acquiring books for esteem peasants in the SELF HELP section. If the books were Mars Bars it'd be called Tesco's. I look into the faces of the fractured libido's that buy 'The Game' and freeze. The degregation for sex via confidence via the deconstruction of any potential sparks/feelings. The disability in following Paul McKenna. He can make us all a rich, popular, happy, non-smoking, non-wanking grey teapot of neutrality. Diet yourelf a smile, FATTY. Sew lips together and breed over Voderman's Detox expertise. Shit in bins for months. Conspiracy Theorists devour David Icke. The Illuminati, the delegation of a higher power, when the Queen is a lizard....you like? Are you an Anti-Semite? Questions, Question, Answer, Book Not On Shelf. Moved. Misplaced. Tarot yourself a future. Psychic's will help you to manage your past in a comfort hug of easy solutions. Easy now. And maybe religion isn't your evil. Maybe ignorance never tires. But saves, in giant NIV.

I get hit by a bus and I get left for 10 minutes, the letter....

To Whom it May Concern,

On Sunday the 28th of October around 17:35pm I was struck down by a bus turning into what I believe was Gate C at Catford Bus Garage. I am writing this letter to confirm the details of what happened in hope to receive some answers and information regarding the aftermath of the incident.

As I was walking past the entrance on my way towards the bus stop next to the retail park where I would have got a 171 into Central London, a bus coming from the direction of Lewisham indicated to turn right into the entrance. As it stayed still and had no intention of moving I began to cross past the entrance and was struck on my right side by a single decked bus coming from the Downham direction as it swung speedily turning left into the entrance. I was knocked to the ground where I received injuries to my hand, arm and leg. This incident was witnessed obviously by the driver of the single decked bus that stuck me and should have most definitely been witnessed by the driver of the other bus I thought initially would be turning into the bus garage.

On being hit the driver parked his bus and came to inquire about my injuries. He then called the emergency services and disappeared for between 5-10 minutes while I lay stricken, now inside the bus garage entrance, with possible serious injuries. The other bus driver who initially indicated drove straight past me and into the bus garage.

On returning the bus driver began to berate me for ‘jumping in front of his bus.’ I have no death wish and considering I may have had broken limbs and I was still on the floor I find this completely unacceptable. He was accompanied by another driver, possibly the driver of the initial bus, who began smirking while I tried to pull myself onto my feet and gain some composure until I became verbally angry at them for the situation.

A more senior worker then took me onto a bus to keep me out of the rain until an ambulance arrived, for which I was thankful for, and was moved into the ambulance where I made a police statement and refused hospital treatment.

Although the driver had plenty of time to look and brake (I was nearly across the entrance and struck by the front-right side of the bus), I understand that it may have been an accident and initially felt like I didn’t want to take further action. But what I demand to know is why I was left by myself for a critical period regarding a possible head injury, where I could have been seriously injured again if another bus driver used that entrance without looking? Why I was left pretty embarrassed in full visible view of the street as I lay on the floor, while another driver drives straight past me and another smirks at the fact I’ve been hit by a bus? I think this is completely ridiculous and disgusting and although I was told by the police there is no law regarding leaving someone helpless on private property, I am taking advice as to whether I can claim against some kind of negligence on the behalf of the responsible and the bus company.

I am on a temporary contract where I work at W*********’s and I have lost pay, which will now effect my rent payment. I also missed a gig I was playing in New Cross on the 29th also losing earnings due to the pain in my right arm. I haven’t been contacted by anyone at the bus garage regarding my health. I’m pretty sure nobody would like to be treated like I was after an incident that resulted in injury, shock and embarrassment.

I look forward to your response.

Matt Gilbert

Lost Penguin (The End)

2007-10-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

I think it was fitting to end it in such a shambolic way. Tears weren't particulary shed, there was no massive protest, there was no tour to publicise one final push for some acual cash.... Exactely how every band should end. Just stop. Bang. Finish.

I just hope people who saw the three of us perform realise how boring and formulaic most bands are live these days, how easy it is to make music you like and that being involved with people you love is far more important than working with/for musicians (maybe we can make you a hit single!). We rarely played with a band we actually liked or even respected for that matter and I hope they felt the same way about us. But what hurt me more than anything was to be initially bracketed with a handful of bands that had/still have the need in life to be IMPORTANT. That meeting with some dude at Universal I'm sure was nice, but seriously.... he's called the new intern.

This fast food music world is a world we didn't want to be part of anymore. We didn't care about selling out gigs, selling records or getting signed. It's a fact nobody really wanted to release us because we were pretty unreliable and didn't care, but we turned down management because we wanted to be able to do anything we wanted at anytime.

That is why we played art shows off the cuff. Played gigs for no money. Toured up North on a fucking Megabus, throwing up on it for 8 hours all the way back home. None of us can drive. It is why we are releasing our EP ourselves, making no profit.

Radiohead copied us.

We know we were maybe important to about a handful of people, but I hope people listen to us in the future and go, 'actually they weren't that bad,' and maybe they could start a band that is as loud and chaotic. Not a stupid electro/dance band in the name of 'punk.' You know who you are!

It was a blast.

Matt

Uganda and Her Mouthful of Dust

2007-08-23T11:59:00.000-07:00

I am wrapping Christmas presents
in pretty pink and gold paper,

like the plastic surgeon

I fold old skins from last year’s leftovers,
smooth my hands over creases,

trim off the excess fat

to stitch with vines
of cellotape taut to my shelf.

Over my shoulder

a girl’s lips and ears are missing,
hacked off by a boy of 12.

She looks unfinished,

not deformed or inhuman,
unreadable but for her eyes

big and brown,

her lashes erect
write words her mouth now cannot say.

If I could I’d sprout her lips with texture,

a kiwi’s skin, a feather,
coax them back with a peach’s fur,

or a kiss maybe

to dress them up in a pout of wild colour.
But I wrap boxes here, useless,

separated by pixels, a million miles of skin,

her eyes frozen in Uganda’s civil war,
she queues for a plastic surgeon

with a mouthful of dust.

'The pair remained on good terms and on 30 May she picked him up from a party in Crosby and went back for drinks with friends at Mr Jones's house....'

2007-08-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

I can finally see why people find it so hard to leave jail - to regain faith in a way of life now alien to them. I can also see why people begin to live inside their job, becoming a slave to an invisible bar that isn't entirely there.

Meh.

You do this for money and nothing else.

I'm a barrel of contradictions. Before I quit I used to go into the job with some weird merge of 'fuck you I'm one of those creative souls destined for a greater destiny beyond the scanner' and 'hey, but what if I stick this out? I could create an envirOnment of stability in my life far beyond the financial arse-pit I'm currently in!' These two contradictions have been beaten into me from (the former) a poetry teacher I had at Uni and (the latter) my own flesh and blood red blood. They don't sit well.

>>>>>>>?<<<<<<<<

It's a weird feeling of wanting to kill the new temp who actually does his work (a temp has a responsibility to do as little work as conceivably possible) and a need to sample praise for your scanning, just in case you swallow the colostomy bag of permanent employment and need for the feeling of that you can do THIS.

The two contradictions of creativity and stagnant cripple altering pain finally came to a head on Monday and I decided to quit. Not before I gave into the managers whine of 'too short a notice' and agreed to end today. That's 1 hour of internet bore saving, 2 hours of lunch and 13 hours of scanning. I'm bored of absently pleasing you.

I can now afford a new passport though, yay!

What bother's me most though, is that I have taken the high ground and chose to quit mind numbing jobs for fear of this mythical creativity and I'm still not entirely sure how I want to express it. The music is finished in October. Maybe I should re-start the poetry, dust off the quills and pen a magical thesis on pescatarianism. I hate poetry though. Or maybe I should make more music.... I can't be bothered to write about music this instant.

I can create music but I am in no way a musician. I'm a writer but in no-way I can write.

OOOoooooooooooooooo Big Brother's on.

Your Mirror To Your Neon Self

2007-06-04T16:35:00.000-07:00

Underage gigs are shit and are rotting the youth of today with neon propaganda.

Being young was about being bored, where you had the disassociation with your stars and idols, so much so that they were untouchable, rogue gods that made you want to be untouchable just like them. But now you can touch them at an early age. You can see the inevitable shit rise of a band and because adolescents get bored and aren't used to the statement, the idology of certain bands they haven't been exposed to, music becomes cheap, disinteresting and a place to dance championing saliva.

Underage gigs are good for bands to think they are actually a tiny bit important, because kids are so easily manipulated and haven't formed their opinions yet. How can you tell a good or shit band today? If they make you dance or not?

Playing guitar in front of a mirror was fun when I was a kid. Taking over that bands music, being that lead singer or guitarist is part of a ritual all future musicians should struggle through, without the tempting notion of seeing shit bands and realising, hey, music is fucking easy to play, I'll make people love us by writing shit lyrics to post-punk, danceable, electro music (We Smoke Fags etc etc).

It's become too easy.

The most fun I ever had was playing in front of the mirror.

The Future is Unwritten

2007-05-23T17:13:00.000-07:00

Watching the Joe Strummer documentary by Julien Temple made me realise what an amateurish, art school, melodramatic director the latter is and what a beautiful person Strummer actually was. I guess at least Temple got that across, between putting bizarre vaguely racist images of belly-dancers when it emerges Strummer once lived in Turkey during his early years, or putting weird animal cartoons in some subversive link they may have been saying about authority.

What was a joy was sitting there with a true Clash fan and a fan of the man Joe Strummer, so much so he has his face tattooed on his shoulder and the 'London Calling' album sleeve on his left arm. To see the unpeeling of Strummer before our eyes was a unique experience because it seemed to question the roles we were playing in society the more Strummer was exposed on the screen. Here was a man totally selfish, but totally selfish with seeing a greater future, maybe knowing he couldn't change it. The merge between 'punk' and Strummer was a strange one at times and was completely manufactured in the forming of The Clash by wanting to be this attitude, this stench in the air in the 70's, which at the time was The Sex Pistols. It's a weird contradiction but punk was never the spikey hair, the gobbing or pogo-ing, it was the belief to try and make something happen regardless of your social standing.

I'm not sure he even called for a revolution. It was more of a personal, single-minded revolution. I'm pretty sure he never believed he could change the world, he may have wanted to on some level but his journey was seeing how far he could go in reinvention, the constant test of oneself to test the boundaries. That's why he let The Clash get so famous, because what is playing underground venues or bleeting on about something to a small audience. That's why their songs are pop songs, angry pop songs, with lyrics almost hidden away under his groanful slur. That is 'punk' for me. Taking this shitty genre that has no disconcerable meaning and making people think they like 'punk,' they are 'punk,' when they are just really listening to a popular culture. It's laughable but shouldn't be lost.

Music's just music no matter how you dress it up.

He liked the infamy of people thinking he was doing something important. When that started to crack though, that's when his story started to become sad. The Clash became a parody at the end, members leaving/sacked etc etc and they became a huge punk cliche. What you saw after the split was a man broken and desperate for that importance he once held. I guess you could denounce it as sad, but to reach a point where no-one regards your ideals as the gospel and to venture into the distopia that was the capitalist 80's and 90's, must have been a shock. He was this old 'punk' doing the odd shitty movie appearance. His single mindedness had not moved with the Thatcher/Conservative era, an era which must've angered him more.

How do you reinvent yourself when nobody is really that angry at anything. How can you preach when nobody is following your church? He found peace in the end in the world, not as a fight against it. I think he may have realised how important he was to a generation and to one generation was enough to plant his seed for a future that is unwritten, but he could maybe, in passing CD's or conversation, influence.

I did cry a bit when him and Mick Jones played at the fireman's benefit. You think maybe they could've gone against every grain in left-ist idealism by getting back together, but I think it got raped enough at the end of its existence to try and reinvent The Clash. To do it off the cusp, as Jones said 'an inspirational moment,' made it thoroughly moving.

Temple's choice of celebrity Strummer endorsers made me feel a bit sick though. Yeah Bono's a cunt, has been ripping The Clash off for years while selling U2 to every organisation going for a few quid, but what the fuck were two of the Chilli Pepper's doing on it? 'They've made us progress and challenge people with our music' Flea said. Such cornerstones of challenging music, while having Hyde Park gigs for £50 a ticket? I guess that's how you sell films too though.

'Punk' for me isn't an attitude, a two fingered salute or a way of dressing, it's a strive to test the boundaries of personal authority and the challenge of invisible sysyems. It's an expression of talent, a way to force whatever you think is your opinion or art onto someone or something. It's just that maybe you need a so called 'punk' band to do it.

The Fountain

2007-05-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

Life is addictive.

Unplanted Daffodils

2007-05-20T17:31:00.001-07:00

The Daddy could hear the screams
but couldn’t quite place the fuss at first,
his hands between a traffic of new daffodil bulbs
unsure of their growth in this damn spring weather.
Then those hands at the banisters,
at the chipped paint of the baby’s door,
at the Mummy crazy above the cot
shaking the Blue Anna
with her own busy fingers,
trying to push her cries
into the tiny lungs
or swallow the Blue Anna back within the womb,
to start this mess again
ten months before.

The Blue Anna,
too delicate to wake,
ignorant of all this excitement –
the way the Mummy’s panic
made purple her arms,
the way the Daddy lit up, momentarily,
thinking maybe he could turn her on outside,
cradle her alive like the Mummy’s fickle fingers could not.

A bird digs noisily for worms,
inconsiderate but for the season’s schedule.
The patter of rain
as loud in the mud as
the Daddy’s handfuls of silence.

I Think I'm a Father

2007-05-20T13:12:00.001-07:00

Leave in womb for 8 ½ months
at gas mark seven and remove.
Wrap in towel, add pink bow with
a twist of talcum powder and
serve with constant screaming and shitty nappies.

You are screaming as I’m writing this.

Eyes search like twin lighthouses
gunning for attention, lighting a
face full of odd numbers -
a pencil sharpener for a nose.
A fat undercooked puff pastry head,
dried in a light mane of cobwebs
a big hole for a mouth cut so endless,
only an idiot may fill.
Kicking in panic a fallen ladybird,
a bee I must have just pulled the wings off.
And why don’t you smile at me?
For you smile for my lover, your mother, your brother.
I talked of names when you were still dressed in lover’s womb,
still plugged in via umbilical cord,
but not one resembles your genderless bag of red blood cells.
You love the mother.
She can bring you happiness from her swollen B-cup that
no bottle bond can replicate.
She can clone more of you if I pass tomorrow,
I can’t if she hangs next week.
Even the toys get your smile!
Mr Bear can be your father.
I’ll bring him the adoption papers.
Six-pound skin wrapped microphone!
I click my fingers but no response.
I tell my lover you must have aspergers, a
dollop of autism or the obese midwife dropped you on
your fat head at birth.
Lover says it will pass.
The walkie-talkies hiss and spit steering me
unconscious in a drunken night train.
Even when they don’t we check
to ensure no cot death.
This cot laced with low flying suicide aeroplanes
and dream catchers of barbwire that trap you like a
prisoner of war porcelain doll,
scared to kiss as you might fracture and drown.
I’m a clumsy fool.
Lover says you have my eyes,
well you can keep them, as they are red and sighing.
Lover says you have her lips and if so,
‘bastard’ will be your first word.

Haiku

2007-05-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

To wrap you up in
cotton wool would be to kill
too many good sheep

Lewisham

2007-05-20T13:10:00.001-07:00

I place a key between my knuckles,
curse the moon for turning on my race –

‘Whitey’ I hear from the crowd at the corner shop,
like time in the night,

shocking eyes with tick tock numbers.
The moon lays a carpet over pavement,

for my feet to see the broken bottles, shit
and needles, to show me the homeless I go blind to

in light,
but tonight,

I pass the estate where a fifteen-year old
has just been dismembered, she,

from my old school, raped, cut into pieces,
opposite the hospital of my birth, where

they still send Nan for shock therapy, where
they’ll take me hours before my hearse.

The mosque stands out like a sore fruit now,
a dull building of brick and little colour,

but it isn’t the architecture that dawns, but
the five letter word ‘ISLAM’ high above,

next to the petrol station, a war at peace in
Lewisham, because somebody needs to take

money from the religion of car.
Kebab shops Mecca the hungry drunk,

a Weatherspoon’s pub turns into an arena,
a coffee shop sells branded insomnia

where guns used to be sold,
legally, illegally, who cared?

We’re in South East London,
a bruise the size of a crater,

uncared for, un-plastered,
fists of skinheads canvas the old cinema,

spouting swastikas, listening to rap –
they breed noisily in this austere bone.

The key rests in my palm now like a stolen gem.
I’m nearly home – past the burnt-down estate,

Peter Pan’s Pond and artificial
lamps that dance,

buzz on and off,
more than the pylon-choked stars –

so burn this graveyard. This cemetery of heritage
is on its deathbed – 22 years and never one more.

Tide your Puberty

2007-05-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

I hid my body in the back,
between the gutted skin of a coat,
under the oversized white shirt
that curled at my knees: ‘You’ll grow.’
Behind the shadows of gym doors.

Others watered their bud aloud,
proud to display patchwork secrets,
nervous hands cupping their age –
the ‘Queer!’ in a caught eye,
the sharp slap of a wet towel,
the chase with an erect penis.

Behind nature’s timetable,
I’d hide from those eyes.
Cower invisible in corners,
quiet in rehearsed dress,
muddy knees in trousers noisy in smell,
the stains from deodorant
sliding off sweat.

Sometimes the slow were culled,
the ones who couldn’t shield their
bald bodies with practice,
pathetic shapes discovered,
then stripped of their cotton blindness –
pulled into showers to view
border-less torso.
To understand why we knelt at night,

to wake with hair beneath our arms.

The Dictionary of an Incredible Illness

Dinner for One

James Dawe

A Pescetarian Christmas

Alligator (Grizzly Bear Cover)

....

http://drawn.ca/2010/03/24/scott-cs-great-showdowns/

The Oregon Trail

Ohio

Sea by Me

More Poster Stuff I Do

Dirty Puddles of Media

My Own Salad Garden

Sequels/Trilogies

I miss this guy....

TTOI

Take Me

Glands

The Single Launch

The Decline of The Ploughmans

Yep

Ghosts

My Fav Video

I Apologise For My Youth

Back

Front

Not Cool [3]

Curb It

Great LP Cover #1

Cunt Fest

'' ....blame it on the boogie. ''

The Undeniable Line of Music and Sport

More Ideas....

Dina Goldstein

Gutter Funk

This Monkey's Gone to Devon

Knackerbarrell

Fuck

Animal Man/Man Animal

'....we're responsible for our own happiness'

Credit Munch

One Sonic Ritual

utopia

More ideas....

Oneday

Not Cool

Ideas....

Ψυχολογία

Vatican of Evil

Tony Hart

'It Was Lovely....'

Words

Ray Quinn

All Change....

Please Watch This....

Tramp

February 20th

Crocodile Dundee and the Enhancement of Life with a Kukri Knife

Yes?

Certainly the End of Something or Other - David Foster Wallace 21/02/1962 – 12/09/2008

The Trouble with British Politics….

Interesting Article Alert ....

treatment by others. These two forms of anger are episodic. The third type of anger is however dispositional and is related more to character traits..

Dirt McDirt

Boris, Boris, Boris....

My Near Future

....

The Bell Curve

The One and Only

NEW YEAR'S STEVE

'Modern Life is Rubbish'

W*********'s

Lost Penguin (The End)

Uganda and Her Mouthful of Dust

'The pair remained on good terms and on 30 May she picked him up from a party in Crosby and went back for drinks with friends at Mr Jones's house....'

Your Mirror To Your Neon Self

The Future is Unwritten

The Fountain

Unplanted Daffodils

I Think I'm a Father