"men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness"

-from 'wittgenstein's mistress' by david markson

so, the cat's gone all lumpy, or to be more accurate, she's now a warty old lady. the vet took some blood to rule out cancer (and did) but in order to do so they shaved a small patch of hair from her leg and from under her chin. this was getting on for three weeks ago and the fur has failed to grow back. seemingly at all. when the vet removes her lumps they're surely going to have to shave where they are... all signs point to us getting back a patchwork cat. she's also gone a bit mental in her dotage. she's taken to having strange anxiety attacks where she becomes terrified about nothing specific for roughly five minutes, hisses, hides behind the couch and then appears fine. is this what we've all got to look forward to in old age?

my first what i shall call 'intimate jam' sample was sent off to the marie stopes clinic. jizz by post seemingly the way these things are done. only days later the website tells me that i am, as far as this first sample goes anyway, devoid of seed... apparently this can be a misleading reading (hey, that rhymes) and might not mean that i've got the post vasectomy all-clear. a few weeks later however and another, final sample is posted... the result:

"neg". the letter of confirmation arrived the very same day. so it's official, i'm "negative" ... but then that can't really come as much of a surprise.
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so now at least i can legitimately wear the sweatshirt i got for christmas from my parents, printed with the slogan 'i.o.f.b.' (meaning: 'i only fire blanks'). not joking, this garment really exists.

an amusing phrase: 'prudent aggression'. use it, abuse it, and enjoy.

the elusive tobias has taken to performing stand up comedy. a braver man than i, he took a course in his vegetarian shoe home of brighton and now he's hard at it, both standing up and being comedic. simultaneously. hostess elisabeth and myself went along to the comedy cafe, a restaurant cum comedy club, the decor of which is a clashing, psychedelic, day-Glo mess, kind of like if the yellow submarine vomited. it was an open mic night, peopled with comics just starting out and to be honest most of them were pretty fucking rough. others weren't funny at all. you could almost hear the audience's buttocks clenching. then on comes tobias and is really very good. and more importantly very funny. i came away thinking, y'know what, i might like to have a go at that... by the morning though r e a l i t y had thankfully seeped in and the idea seemed not such a good one, in fact closer to a very bad one. anyway, well done tobias... the next bobby davro? or even, dare i say it, the next 'cue gary!'?

side note: you may be able to see that at the bottom of davro's wikipedia page (at least when i visited it) it reads/read "bobby davro is also an avid monkey thrower and has competed in the national game against world champion alan webster." um... the only alan webster i could find on wikipedia is an ex-postman and convicted paedophile, whose profile mentions nothing about either monkeys, or the throwing of same. it appears i've stumbled on a case of what i'm choosing to call 'wikirape', a mischievous online pastime where users input plainly false or ridiculous 'facts' onto the wikipedia site just for fun; apparently this usually just includes the 'killing off' of certain celebrities by typing in a date of death.

i recently i found myself saying the following sentence out loud to someone: "i think two rapes is one too many". i'll leave you to ponder the circumstances in which it was said, and the myriad of possible psychological problems i may be suffering from that caused me to say it.

every time we're on our way by d.l.r. to greenwich we pass a building that houses the company 'netscalibur' which never fails to irritate me as perhaps the worst company name i've ever heard. i mean, what are they trying to say with this terrible cack-handed play on words? it's just an embarrassing attempt at being clever and memorable, the latter of which it achieves by just being plain annoying and therefore the last company i would ever use, had i the need of their services.

"rembrandt's pupils used to paint gold coins on the floor of his studio and make them look so real that rembrandt would stoop to pick them up... the coins having only been coins until rembrandt bent over... still, if rembrandt had had a cat, it would have strolled right past the coins without so much as a glance. which does not imply that rembrandt's cat was more intelligent than rembrandt. even if it so happens that rembrandt kept on doing that, incidentally, no matter how many times they tricked him. "

-from 'wittgenstein's mistress' by david markson

fellow student update:
* lydia suggested forming a film society which i thought was a great idea, and she went about looking into it. apparently the university are all for it and have even given her a budget. what this budget could be for i've no idea, hiring dvds? tea and biscuits for post-film civilised chat? coke and hookers? she's asked me to help her run it... i think i'll have to point out to her that i would struggle to promote inebriation in a building dedicated to the fermentation of alcohol.

here's an opportunity for all you heathens to get right with god, something for all you terminally computer illiterate gullibles and metaphysically retarded imbeciles out there. gaze in awe at the least jewish looking jew ever misrepresented.

hostess elisabeth and myself recently attended a performance of anthony and cleopatra by the rsc, starring patrick stewart as anthony, and it was really very good. good actoring. much recommended. hostess elisabeth and myself were a little nervous in case during the course of the play mr. stewart might have had the line: "make it so", or "number one", or say the word "engage", as we weren't sure we would be able to contain our juvenile amusement. we were doing ok until the character of caeser actually did say "make it so" and we giggled quietly and in an imbecilic fashion. shame on us. also, i think we were sitting in front of john reid. should've slapped the fucker.

and then, if only briefly, snow! hostess elisabeth left for work, then came back for the camera and wandered around taking pictures. hostess elisabeth? b i g fan of the snow. that night the news tells me that the gritters are out in force... everybody sing: "grittaaahhh... feels like this"

on the limehouse cut we have a number of waterfowl, mainly coots and moorhens, both of which, for reasons unfathomable to others, hostess elisabeth has categorised as one species and given it another name: leamens [pron. lee-muns]. no one knows why. no one knows where the name 'leamens' came from. no one knows if perhaps professional help should be sought. but leamens it remains...
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last weekend we took a stroll north east along the canal and saw a car upside down in the river lea. an impressive feet considering there are no roads nearby and a good two foot of wall between the toepath and the river. answers on a postcard.

during her recent smear, the nurse referred to hostess elisabeth's cervix as "her" and then piped up "there she is, she's smiling at me" anthropomorphic reproductive organs anyone? i can see the disney film now... is anyone else going to have nightmares?

an invitation to the opening of the new guilty kilts shop on carnaby street arrived in my inbox this morning. “where masculinity meets elegance” reads their slogan; which i think i'll nick for my epitaph... sadly i'll have to give it a miss, as i'm not doing anything that evening. ahem. i shall be going along however once they're up and running... maybe a new kilt is a good idea. i ask you: can a grown man ever have too many skirts in his wardrobe?

this weekend i bought a new suit, which i'll admit i ummed and ahhhed about quite a bit before cash handover. it felt a little like an extravagance but then it was a lovely suit (black with blurred red pinstripes) and so eventually i gave in to my consumerist urges. i now have four suits, of varying qualities, conditions and fits. hostess elisabeth calmed my doubts upon buying this latest one by chirping up with: "well it's only a matter of time before we'll have funerals to go to".

and so my appearance in court to give evidence against our mentalist intruder arrives. we got there and after going through an airport style security metal detector and being frisked, we were given a short interview by the oldest man i've ever met, who was part of the witness service, attempting to allay any fears or reticence i might have had about testifying, about what would happen once i was in the courtroom etc., older than god, yes, but he was very nice and was clearly doing his best to make me feel better -i almost felt bad that i wasn't more worried and therefore in need of his services.
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after a v e r y long wait in the witness room, with it's awful magazines and framed pastel prints -tellingly with no glass, we were told that our case probably wouldn't be seen that day because of an 'incident' that had turned another of the courts, and the area leading to a third court, effectively into a crime scene. because of this all the cases that could be heard in those courts would most likely be fed into the court i was scheduled to appear in, thus jamming things up and forcing a postponement. but what was this incident? well, it seems that someone had gone into this other court, through the security metal detector, had received the all clear, then had gone back out to the street and upon returning had been merely waved through by the security man. m i s t a k e. upon reentering the courtroom he had apparently then proceeded to stab someone with the screwdriver he had 'smuggled' in. lovely.
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later we're told that the closed courts had opened up and that we may well be seen after all. still more waiting ensued...
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but of course the mentalist accused didn't turn up (kell-soopreez) and so we had to
wait for a bit more to see if they wanted to see the case in his absence... but then they chose not to. and so we were sent home having effectively wasted our entire day. arse and buggeration. currently a warrant is out for the mentalist intruder's arrest but quite honestly if he's still in the country we can add stupid and batshit insane to his already dubious list of attributes.

the cat has now had her wartectomy. apparently ketamin was administered during the procedure and what looks from the receipt like a 3cm sub-cutaneous mass was removed. the amount of shaving seems a little gratuitous: and as you can see the scar is quite horrific too. looks like a ruddy bullet hole.

there are some very scary pants in top shop. among the women's underwear there are racks and racks of girl's pants that are, quite honestly t i n y . and by tiny i don't mean skimpy, they're not thongs or kinky lingerie, they're normal pants but just very small. they look like children's pants but aren't. the idea of even a young adult female fitting comfortably into these things is close to frightening. this can't be normal.

out in to central london, we notice a tube ad for thames water featuring mr. potato head. the crux of the ad being that if we all washed our vegetables in a bowl rather than under running water that we save ooooodles of water (and thus helping to correct thames water's frankly cretinous mismanagement -but that's another story). hostess elisabeth observed, with a withering tone, that mr. potato head always looks like a man, even when dressed as a woman. "i mean," she said dismissively, "those earrings are just ridiculous."

this time around the recommended and reviled section is brought to you courtesy of hostess elisabeth:

hostess elisabeth's recommended: (audio) 'dead! - the grim reaper's greatest hits' -cd- various artists / (comestible) parma violets / (visual) freshly fallen snow / (sensorial) watching the 'leamans'

hostess elisabeth's reviled: (audio) "high-energy gay dance shit" / (comestible) milky tea / (visual) the cat's wound / (sensorial) leaving the cat at the vet to be de-warted

"you will say that i am old and mad, was what michelangelo wrote, but i answer that there is no better way of being sane and free from anxiety than by being mad."

-from 'wittgenstein's mistress' by david markson