"death comes slowly like ants to a fallen fig"

-from 'the night i saw george raft in vegas' by charles bukowski

last night i had a fight with my showerhead. i know how it sounds. but it provoked me. you see, it's a bastard. the problem with it is that if, as i do, you like a shower "that you can scratch your back with" -as a colleague recently put it- then you have to turn the knob all the way, thus receiving the highest pressure from the noozle. the thing is though if you do this on my showerhead, then after a seemingly random amount of time it works loose from the holder and jumps at you, leaping away from the wall like some kind of angry serpent, and in the process covers e v e r y t h i n g in water, including the bathroom ceiling. as you try and get a grip on it to prevent your showertime resembling nothing short of the great fucking flood, it spits in your eyes, thus blinding you, making the whole 'capturing' process even more difficult. just such a palaver occurred last night. hostess elisabeth was no doubt calmly watching television, or perhaps checking her emails when she heard a crash, an incontinent barrage of swearing and suddenly there i am, incandescent with rage, naked as a jaybird, dripping wet, storming through the lounge to the kitchen. once there i threw open the cupboard under the sink and pulled out the gaffa tape, which i then proceeded to take back with me to the drenched bathroom and to use to crudely adhere the bastard fucking showerhead to its holder. i mean, pardon me for expecting the thing to, o i don't know, fucking work like it's supposed to. i mean yes i turn it all the way up but if the knob goes all the way round then why in the name of god's own arsehole shouldn't i be allowed to turn it thusly? p i e c e o f s h i t.

colgate max fresh 'kiss me mint' is like brushing your teeth with sweets; as alarmingly wrong as this sounds. sadly our tube from new york has now run out and for some ungodly reason you can't buy it in the uk. tits.

this year hostess elisabeth and myself 'resurrected' our easter tradition of old and went to see a zombie film, thus paying lip service to the whole "he died, he got up again" nonsense that easter's supposedly all about; the film in question being romero's latest 'diary of the dead' . o dear me. what an ll-conceived steamer of a film. as if 'land of the dead' wasn't bad enough. with it's unbearably contrived (and by now horribly overused) handycam premise and it's embarrassingly poor script, not to mention colon-enragingly abysmal acting, i'm afraid to say that 'diary of the dead' makes 'cloverfield' look good; and that's not an easy thing for any film to do. i will say though that i learned something from the film, namely that, apparently, not to mention inexplicably, the amish are made of blancmange. i'll say that the acid bit was good. i'll admit that the last line was good. otherwise though this is a horrible misfire. there's been talk of the film "reestablishing the dead franchise" but in actual fact i fear this film has done a lot more to kick said franchise to death and bury it in the garden... and to make it stay there.

"when the television finally goes off, half will go immediately insane. the other half will just sit there waiting for the television to come back on."

- charles manson

monkey

monkey is our new kitten and is, i have discovered, made almost entirely of toffee. when not leaping around like the very dictionary definition of mania, she melts into the strangest positions and just... falls asleep. i wish i were made of toffee too.

london wants me to vote for my mayor but, to my mind, i wouldn't vote for who wins big brother, so why would i vote for mayor? ...meanwhile over the pond we have the joint improbabilities of a black man and a woman against a white male war hero. i'd like to think the american public have it in them to surprise me but... well, whoever wins they still have to bend over to appease the religious lobbyists and flag waving lobotomies that infest their country. i think it's called hobson's choice. all hail the status quo.

democracy the problem, of course, isn't the democratic system, it's the living parts which make up the democratic system, the next person you pass on the street, multiply him or her by 3 or 4 or 30 or 40 million and you will know immediately why things remain non-functional for most of us. i wish i had a cure for the chess pieces we call humanity... we've undergone any number of political cures and we all remain foolish enough to hope that the one on the way now will cure almost everything. fellow citizens, the problem never was the democratic system, the problem is you. -charles bukowski

fellow student update:
*zoe is 21, and is, as the name would suggest, a girl. zoe has a badge maker. zoe has made some of her fellow students badges:
... ok, so the slogan may have come from... someone else. but still.

if i may offer you, dear reader, some advice, it is this: don't eat gizzard. don't. even if the venerable gude recommends it. it's like chewing on congealed turd. with added gristle. it's just wrong. i've never eaten anything wrongerer.

in a public toilet just off berwick street i noticed a small manhole cover in the floor on which was embossed the words "rodding point". euphemism anyone? it struck me that it probably wasn't the only 'rodding point' to have been utilised within that public toilet.

our new salt and pepper shakers, when placed together, hug, and look sort of sweet, the kind of thing that forces an "awww" in the sentimental and the feeble minded:

awww, ahem. when apart however, they look, unless this is just me, somewhat more like the marauding undead:

(take heed romero, this is how it's done).

so. there i am, suited and booted, on my way to see miss rose thorne wow the crowds at madame jojos with her latest routine, and i stop off on oxford street to get some money from the cashpoint. i choose the halifax on the north side of the street as the barclays has a big queue. in goes the card, in goes the pin number, out comes the money. just then a man taps me on the shoulder, and as i'm obviously irretrievably stupid i turn to see him holding a folded five pound note. "excuse me, did you drop this?" he asks. i ponder less than a millisecond and say that yes, i did and thank you. i take the fiver, which after a moment's hesitation he lets me have, and thank the man again. i turn back, collect my £30 and wait for the card to be ejected. and wait. and wait. it's round about this time the exact measure of my aforementioned irretrievable stupidity hits me like a warm piss-stained blanket in the face. someone, or more accurately someones, had just bought my switch card, and it's maximum daily withdrawal limit of £300, for a measly five pounds. i'd say they got the better deal there. not having a mobile phone, yes i know, i know, o the irony etc., i run all the way to madame jojos and use miss thorne's phone. within ten minutes of the theft/idiocy spectacle the card is canceled, but unsurprisingly, the next morning's internet perusing shows a predictable £270 hole in my account. in hindsight i now remember another man standing too close to me in the queue and the tiniest look the man handing me the fiver threw behind me before he let it go. it was all done like a slick magic trick and i, playing my part as the 'mark', stumbled obediently into and through the whole routine like an opiated imbecile. i think i'd be angrier if it wasn't for the fact that my moronic numbskullery and petty greed has to take a large portion of the blame.

i have finally secured a cd copy of the princess tinymeat compilation album 'herstory':
which collects all his/her/their material onto one disc and includes the fantastic sloblands 12" (though sadly without it's amusingly saucy cover). it came via germany and is in practically mint condition; it even still has its obi strip! ah the pleasures of material acquisition.

...and speaking of which, unless i am very much mistaken, i believe this is mr. tinymeat as he exists today. give it a listen, some of his stuff's really rather good. great use of accidental and/or unusual sounds. the jury remains out on whether his member remains quite as diminutive.

via the venerable guide, some quaintly hopeless future predictions from the garish dying days of the 70s. enjoy and... watch the skies!

product of the venerable gude's lovely anniversary gift to hostess elisabeth and myself (a trip to lille, france) i give you, a blue chocolate cat:
mascot and flagship product of au chat bleu , a beautiful little chocolate shop in the heart of the town that i can't recommend highly enough, if only for the incredible smell as you walk in. lille appears somewhat less than impressive as you exit the eurostar station (having been booked onto the disney train, no doubt by a smirking gude) stretching out as monolith after monolith of ugly concrete/glass horrors:
once you get into lille proper though it reveals itself to be quaintly old world, with it's winding lanes, leaning buildings and cobbled streets.
granted it seems to be the dogshit capital of europe but otherwise really rather attractive. it struck us both on the way there that our french was somewhere below rudimentary; negligible might be closer to the mark. i remembered how to say "sit down" and hostess elisabeth how to say "shut your mouth" but, perhaps astutely, we thought that this might not be enough. i should also point out that should anyone, while we were there, have inquired as to the whereabouts of a monsieur lafayette, and should said monsieur by chance have been located in a garden, then we'd be more than up to the task of furnishing them with an answer. sadly, and not all that surprisingly, this failed to happen. once we'd unpacked and starving hungry, we hunted about for a bistro type establishment, prepared to put our best british menu pointing fingers to good use. i quite fancied a croque monsieur, which i thought would be a safe bet in france. it would appear not. the closest i could find was something called 'le welsh' and which the menu informed us included toast, fromage and jambon, and so i ordered away. what turned up was a largish shallow bowl filled with hot melted cheese. positively drowned under said cheese was the aforementioned toast, together with a slice of ham. a w h o l e l o t t a c h e e s e. still, i ate it, declaring that for at least the next week my digestive system would be a fromage free zone; when in rome consume fatty dairy products in copious amounts as the romans do, and all that. a good time was had by all.

recommended: (audio) 'the man with the golden arm' comp. elmer bernstein, arr. barry adamson / (comestible) marks & spencer's pain au chocolat bread & butter pudding / (visual) miss rose thorne in 'the scarlet woman' / (sensorial) the pleasures of acquisition

reviled: (audio) "excuse me, is this your fiver?" over and over in my head / (comestible) gizzard / (visual) an absence of switch card / (sensorial) wet slippers

and finally: