" two djs are talking to each other, one says to
the other 'want to go and see a movie?'so the
other replies 'i don't know, who's the
projectionist?' "

- b3ta.com

the cat has become a food inhaling machine. the bloody thing's ravenous appetite is out of all control. despite the fact that she is on vet proscribed diet food and gets only a strictly measured amount, she fails to shrink in any way. i think when we go out she phones out for pizzas. if they ever make a film of the beast of bodmin moor, she's a shoo-in for the lead role. she's constantly hungry and wolfs down her food, well, like a wolf... a wolf with a hundred tapeworms... who also have tapeworms... who also -but you get the idea. we've been feeding her the proscribed amount for months now and yet her appetite refuses to diminish. she howls (again, not unlike a wolf) at night to be fed some more. hostess elisabeth bought her an automatic feeder, which makes available a helping of food at a pre-set time and yet the cat attacks the thing to try and force it open. hostess elisabeth also bought her a 'play n treat' ball but it's empty as soon as it's put on the floor. she is a feline hoover.

an email from lang:
"the headline on the dartford news shopper this week says 'help blind children'. i thought it was a campaign to actually blind sighted kids. oh well."

jesus there are some cheap bastards on ebay. we're selling our cross trainer due to hostess elisabeth's back and my dodgy knee (are we fucking old enough?). we put it up as 'buy it now for £20 or make me an offer'. someone offers £12, which was rejected, then someone else offered £18, the first person matched the offer of £18 and hostess elisabeth told them if they made it £20 then he had a deal. we just want rid of the thing. "no i think 18 is the max i can do" was the reply. yeah because you'd be foolish to pay another t w o q u i d for something barely used and worth in excess of £100 new. foolish. after a few arsey emails this idiot eventually coughs up to 'buy it now for £25'. we give them a slot to pick it up, they fail to show. they ask if we could get it as far as stratford where they could pick it up. what a tit. the saga continues... it turns out this moron is a young girl who phones to arrange another pick up time and then announces "so, it's £20 yeah?" and hostess elisabeth has to explain that no, as they clicked 'buy it now (for £25)' they have to pay, wait a second, just work it out, carry the two... that's it, t w e n t y f i v e p o u n d s. the girl says she doesn't want to spend any more than £20. christ on an exercise bike (in fact this exercise bike) people are idiots. so we list the thing again. again the same stupid bitch makes us an offer... of £20. now why we'd accept that when the day before she'd been told that it was £25 or nothing i have no fucking idea. someone with an i.q. above single figures finally takes and interest, puts in an offer and collects it. phew. we then get a message from the original fool: "why didn't you accept my offer??? very sad" yes you are, y e s. y o u. a r e.

"the nietzsche family circus pairs a randomized family circus cartoon with a randomized friedrich nietzsche quote." enjoy:

"god is dead."

a week or so ago i was lucky enough, along with hostess elisabeth and mr. roast, to see htrk (hate rock [trio]) live at the luminaire, kilburn:
...
"htrk manage to record the missing semi-industrial dirt soundtrack to that richard kern film you know he has in the private stash of him and lydia lunch getting to 'know' each other while watching david lynch movies [20 jazz funk greats]
"slinky, sexy deep bass and synth throb with goth drippings from berlin (by way of melbourne). like the kills on the shit that killed billie holiday." [nme]" - from the luminaire website
...
htrk sound like alan vega's drum machine on the wrong speed, coupled with early swans tempos and repetition, swathed in birthday party era rowland s. howard feedback/noise guitar (but more of him in a bit). jonnine sings a disinterested and yet strangely avid drawl, as if she'd cut your fucking throat if only she could be bothered (official website). so, anyhoo, i'm in the toilet 'taking' a piss and i hear someone being violently and repeatedly sick into the basin next to the cubicle. i finish, go to wash my hands and find htrk's bass player, sean, recovering from the aforementioned regurgitory abandon -the basin awash with sick. "you alright mate?" he asks me, calm as you like. "um, yeah, fine" i answer and then inquire as to whether there is any new htrk merchandise on sale that night. i manage to wangle myself (and mr. roast) an advance copy of the (as yet unreleased) album 'marry me tonight' (produced by rowland s. howard), sans packaging (which jonnine tells me they'll post to me if i email em my address). re-sult. i then make a bit of a tit of myself by holding the cd and telling them i'm "really excited"... i vaguely recall jobless jon in japan doing something similar when we met gordon from cindytalk.
...
headlining the night at the luminaire were the devastations (also from australia) -a kind of latter day, cleaner version of the bad seeds. no doubt in relation to their origin, at some point during their set an audience member shouts: "a stingray stole my baby!"

the long waited for appointment for hostess elisabeth to have injections in her spine has been postponed for another month. cunts. she's been waiting for this for about 8 fucking months and a few days before it she gets a message on her mobile. that's it. cancelled. what's that? you're in constant pain? well you'll just have to fucking wait. unbefuckinglievable. the nhs is being run like a market stall. remind me, how many years of a labour government is this we've had now?

i've finally bought a new cd player (from those nice people at richer sounds -join on their vip club, you get great savings), it's a marantz cd5400 with, among other features, pitch bend! now why you would need to speed up or slow down a cd is beyond me (i mean, it's not a djing cd player, so it's not for mixing) but i can't deny that i love it. great fun.

apparently ray lamontagne has been "shaved by a woman" ... kinky.

so, here we are again, yet another november 5th goes by without me hearing the cry of "my eyes! my eyes!"... pah. and it wasn't for want of trying believe me. we arrange an evening of fireworks at the chez liles down in brighton, hostess elisabeth buys a selection of pyrotechnics and when we get there andrew and myself go out and buy some rockets (something about men and rockets, i don't know, freud would have a field day)... everything goes great and we have a very entertaining evening of bangs and beer, there's something just so satisfying about playing with explosives. at one point we (ok then, i) get a little over excited and decide to set off two rockets at once. i put one in the plastic tube they gave us in the packet, and the other one next to it, pushed into the earth of the flower pot. too far into the earth it would soon transpire. i tied the fuses of the two rockets together, lit them and retired to, if not a safe distance, then an unsafe one (all the fireworks specified 25 feet, we were all about 8 feet away). one rocket, the one in the tube, shot up as it was supposed to and exploded colourfully. we oooh, we aaahd. we all looked down to the second rocket, fizzing away in the flower pot, not moving. at this point all i thought was "o bugger, a wasted rocket". for some moronic reason i'd forgotten that when rockets run out of boost, they explode. it was a big flower pot and what with the rocket's stick, i'd say it stood about chest height. and so it was at chest height that the thing exploded, spraying mr. liles and myself with green and red fire. for a moment everyone went deaf. cue nervous laughter. i'd compare the rocket's explosion with that of a 'bouncing betty', or 's-mine':

...but without the shrapnel.

so, as i've mentioned, i'm currently at university. the whys, hows and at-your-ages aside, i think i'm getting into the swing of things, if a little slowly; but things keep happening to remind me what a strange situation i'm in, that is, being me, being there. in a 'reading poetry' class (don't ask), the lecturer gives us copies of a poem by robert frost called 'stopping by woods on a snowy evening'. he asks us if any of us were familiar with the poem. "um, yes" i say and he seems quite excited, "i think they um, they used it on an episode of the muppet show..." (true) and then all at once he's less excited. in the same lesson, he's talking about stress within lines of poetry, how putting the stress on different words changes the meaning of the line. "for instance" he says "if i said 'shut that door', with the stress on 'shut' it would mean 'shut the door, rather than open it'. it has a different meaning then if i said 'shut that door', meaning that door, not any other. if i said 'shut that door' i would be..." he looked around the class, wanting one of us to finish his thought. i put my hand up. "larry grayson?" i tried. would you believe no one laughed?

fellow student update:
* tori doesn't know who kate bush is
* emmanuel has vanished, as i'm told many people tend to at university
* alex managed to work a scooby doo reference into his recent poetry essay

"there are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths."

while in the student bar last week (well, when in rome and all that), a very enthusiastic girl sidled up to us and handed out leaflets about a march happening that sunday. she represented the university's socialist society she said... in fact was the founder (perhaps sole?) member. she had picked the wrong people to lecture. while lydia asked her barely disguised sarcastic questions, i read the leaflet. "bring the government down!" it read at the bottom. i asked her what she intended to replace the government with once she'd brought it down. "a true people's government" she replied with still more enthusiasm, i'd obviously got her on her favourite subject, i.e. her role in the saving of the world. "and how do you intend to stop this people's government becoming corrupt, oppressive and murderous like every other 'people's government' that has ever existed on the planet ever?" she quickly changed the subject. funny that.

these people's catalogue came through our door... with this candle in it. £195. for a candle. that's a c a n d l e . are you fucking kidding me? what is it, the size of a fucking bungalow?

my vasectomy present from hostess elisabeth: very apt for 'the snip' i thought.

a great piece of reading from our friend mr. dawkins. some of my favourite phrases:
...
"plonkingly witless"
...
"this sounds terrific, right up until you give it a moment's thought."
...
"the hunger to misunderstand"
...
"the characteristic flabbiness of theological reasoning"

saw some shitty magazine over someone's shoulder on the tube, the cover headline of which read "snatched and raped from my own front door", it struck me as funny that after seeing that i noticed the name of the magazine was 'love it!'.

two stickers found littering the bollards and lampposts of violet road:
...
sticker #1:
"according to the government you are an islamic extremist if you:
love the prophet muhammad (saw),
call to islam,
reject occupation,
like to live under islamic law,
reject freedom and democracy,
want an islam education for your kids,
own fertiliser and an ipod,
or speak arabic on an airplane..."
...
sticker#2:
"shari'ah: the only option for the uk
shari'ah in the uk means an end to crime, an end to prostitution, an end to alcohol-related crime, and end to pornography, an end to paedophilia, and end to racism, and end to exploitation of women, an end to greed & discrimination, an end to poverty"
...
...now i'm no fan of this government, far from it, but these stickers were written for, and distributed by, fucking simpletons. irredeemably foolish people. one fuels the other's imbecility; it's kind of a idiot's circle of fuck. as far as sticker#1 is concerned, no, the government has never said that you are an islamic extremist if you are one of those things listed, and yet i think it would be difficult to argue that you're not should you, say, both "love the prophet muhammad (saw)" and "reject freedom and democracy"; that's kind of the definition of an islamic extremist isn't it? m o r o n s. as for sticker#2, shari'ah law is such a laughably huge step back into the dark ages and inanity that i'm surprised they don't also claim the same benefits for believing the world is flat, that the sun revolves around it, or that "dogs can't look up". religion: pushing man ever backwards towards the primeval ooze.

in heaven, all the interesting people are missing."

great sound / colour animation, or, if you want to get technical: " a musical realization of the motion graphics of john whitney as described in his book 'digital harmony' " -whatever that means. great fun anyway, very nice harmonics too.

the venerable gude has suggested a road-trip

this incident is described as being "like a grease fire"... "the crematorium is back in business and the funeral director said they'll notify the family to assure them their loved one wasn't harmed.".. of course he wasn't harmed, he was f u c k i n g d e a d .

following my eulogy of great but sadly defunct london band penthouse (in america fifty tons of black terror) here , i was contacted by the guitarist who'd found the page by googling fifty tons of black terror. so, the internet actually works? whodathunkit? anyhoo he contacted me via the unsong myspace site and thus i became aware that not only is there a penthouse myspace page but this chap (john free) has a new band, gin palace, who also have a myspace page! in addition to this i discovered that charlie finke, lead singer of penthouse, has a new band 'the cesarians', who, that's right, you've guessed it, also have a ruddy myspace page, as do 'blood safari' who he also sings with! anyway, i bought two cds from the gin palace page and recommend them without reservation. rock and filthy fucking roll. buy them. do it now. don't make me come over there...

hostess elisabeth returned home last night to announce that the car had been stolen. o for fuck's sake seemed to the appropriate response. we went out but there was no broken glass, no sign of car. in what i thought of as a fruitless straw-grasping exercise hostess elisabeth called the company that runs the parking for our building, in case our permit had somehow slipped out of sight and it had been towed. turns out it had, but not because the permit had moved. apparently they changed their permits and news had failed to reach us; no signs up around the building, only a letter than ended up god knows where. for this mistake of someone else's we had to cough up £400. then hostess elisabeth opens a letter telling her that one of her catalogues has employed a debt collection company to retrieve £30 she hadn't even been told she owed them. then a letter from the letting agent telling us that the rent cheque bounced, even though there's no earthly reason why this might have happened. it was quite a fucking day. if i were the type to believe in bad luck i'd be slicing off bunny rabbit's peddle extremetors left, right and bloody centre. hostess elisabeth suggested that we might be able to buy some luck on ebay...

recommended: (audio) 'orphans - brawlers, bawlers & bastards' -3 x cd- by tom waits / (comestible) macaroni and cheese from the automat / (visual) the bouncing betty fireworks / (sensorial) the return of central heating!

reviled: (audio) christmas carols -already / (comestible) sommerfields own hummus / (visual) missing car / (sensorial) monday morning, 9:00, 'reading poetry'

"out of damp and gloomy days, out of solitude, out of
loveless words directed at us, conclusions grow up in
us like fungus: one morning they are there, we know
not how, and they gaze upon us, morose and gray.
woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only
the soil of the plants that grow in him."