Don we now our gay apparel

Happy Fucking Christmas

Diagnosis : Music

Hogmany is fast approaching and 2005 is drawing to close. Now is the time for the music critics, the journalists, the celebrity DJs and presenters and the average everyday music fans to come scurrying out of the woodwork and force their music tastes on a disinterested public. Now is the time for "Best Albums 0f 2005" lists, and their brethren, to run rampant across all forms of media. And this particular shit pool of the media is no different.

I present to you:

"17 Albums Which Were Released
In 2005 And Were Very Good"
(It's probably in order, but who can really say?)

1. Xiu Xiu - La Foret
2. Sigur Ros - Takk
3. 65daysofstatic - One Time For All Time
4. Arab Strap - The Last Romance
5. Buck 65 - Secret House Against the World
6. Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger
7. Minotaur Shock - Maritime
8. HORSE the band - The Mechanical Hand
9. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
10. Kevin Blechdom - Eat My Heart Out
11. Patrick Wolf - Wind in the Wires
12. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
13. DJ Koze - Kosi Comes Around
14. DJ Scotch Egg - KFC Core
15. Jason Forrest - Shamelessly Exciting
16. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
17. Hrvatski - Irrevocably Overdriven Break Freakout Megamix

I'm pretty sure that's way it should look, but there's still some time left in the year for a young pretender to stake a claim. Here's the 'Honourable Mentions' and why they missed the cut:

• kid606 - Done With The Scene EP : it's an EP, innit? So, not technically an album, so not on the list. Still fucking awesome though
• Arcade Fire - Funeral : I've not listened to this enough for it be included. It is good, though. Oh, another thing, I'm pretty sure this was released in 2004?!?
• Fantomas / Melt-Banana [Split CD on Unhip Records] : well, this only clocks in at about 3 minutes long, so I could never justify listing it. It is cool as fuck, though
• Animal Collective - Feels : again, I've not listened to this enough, either, but after seeing them live earlier this year, I had to give them a mention
• Test Icicles - For Screening Purposes Only : see above. Fucking shite name, though. Band and album
• Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman, I'm A Machine : much like Arcade Fire, I'm pretty sure this was released in 2004

So that's about it. I may come back and edit some comments onto the list, it looks a little sparse at the moment, but other than that, we're done here. I've got a big fuck-off pile of CDs strewn about my room now, and will spend the next hour meticulously putting them back in the right order. I love my life.

I'm sorry, but what's creative about further harshening tequila?

A couple of years back, at Christmas I made this monstrosity:



That's two hot-ass motherfuckin' chillis, tops cut off, then left in a bottle of Smirnoff in a dark cupboard for a 2 months.

On Christmas Day my Mum decided it would be a good idea to harrass my wee brother's pals into doing shots of it. Jesus fucking Christ I thought we were going to have to go to the hospital. After sampling it straight myself, the only word I could use to describe it would be 'AHHHHHH! Dear God why are my lips not made of asbestos? Why God, why the pain? Take my eyes, take my fingers, take my balls, just stop the burning fucking agony'.

My ex did say it made an awesome Bloody Mary, though. Through her burns mask.

This year, rather than use pure, pussy, untainted vodka I'm going to do it slightly differently. I'm doing it with dirty, dirty, slutty tequila. Two chillis rammed up her and papped in the cupboard for a while, that'll get her all hot and heavy. I canny wait to dish it out on Jesus' birthday.

Feeling quite zlaradno

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I've abandoned this blog, and my life, and ran off with Cappy, my gorgeous kangaroo concubine. You'd be dead wrong... though she does look lovely in taupe lipstick and kitten heels, and she is always asking me to come away with her. Anyways - I've had three weeks off work; three weeks of laziness, drunkenness, debauchery and only minimal creative output, so I've not really had much of worth to write about.

That's not to say that even minimal creative output isn't a huge step up for me. I managed to actually get some music done, which was a bit of a shock. I also got some t-shirts designed, and there will soon be a website selling said designs, in the near future. Not entirely my thing, my good buddy is doing shirts too and is in the process of doing the site, but it should be cool. See if you can find a link on this page, you fucking internet detective, you.

Since 2005 is drawing to close I'll be compiling my end of year album list, which may or may not be of interest to any of you fuckers. All the cool kids do it, and I've done one the last few years, so it would be churlish of me to miss it out this year. There's been some awesome shit released, though I haven't bought my usual amount of CDs this year. Still - it'll be hard to whittle it down to 20.....24.

On the first of January last year I started a daft wee project (well, I say wee - it has been a year long thing), which I expected to get bored with, but which looks like it's going to arrive at completion come the first day of 2006. I'm gonna start fucking around with that very soon, and if it looks vaguely interesting I may put some parts of it up here. Oo - cryptic.

Fun Fact:
Irritating as fuck, kids programme Bodger and Badger was originally pitched as a saucy late night farce, entitled Todger and Badger. It would follow the misadventures of a tatty badger puppet and a large foam phallus as they embroiled themselves in all sorts of hilarious japes. When it was picked up by the BBC and switched to a pre-watershed timeslot, it had to drop most of the racier elements; but some traces do remain. The creamy 'mashed potato' facials, for instance.

That's yer lot - cock off

A little late, he staggered through

Since this blog is almost one year old, and this DJ Scotch Egg album I have on isn't really conducive to shitting out new content, I think I'll do the lazy and thing and link to some of my favourite posts of the last year. 'Cos, you know, I'm a literary genius and some of this pish needs a second airing.

The Early Life of Venetian Snares - this is all 100% true, I swear to fuck

Shoelace Tension Discrepancy - The Facts - who says only the children and the spastics have trouble tying their laces?

Science! Part 1 - shit, I forgot about this. I really must try and do it one of these days

schlechte Tätowierung - wherein I rant about Friendster

They all float down here - spending an hour in a floatation tank.....I'm such a fucking hippy sometimes

Scuppered at the last hurdle? - yes yes, I'm worried that god is videotaping all my hilarious fuck-ups to he can show them to me upon my demise

Some advice - last but not least. Come have a look at my most ill advised rant which garnered more feedback than anything else I've written

That's your lot. Everything else I've written has been fucking dire. Indeed, most of the stuff linked to above is shitty too. A good writer is not me. Enjoy

"The air was continuously alive with gay synthetic melodies"

Whenever I come back from Glasgow I always feel (and look) like I've been raped in the face with a bus. I've been back about 3 or 4 days and only now do I have the strength to type out any sort of coherent shite.

So yeah - Animal Collective in Glasgow was a laugh riot, they were really fucking good and odd and good. Pick up their new album if you like, I won't fucking bother. I went to see my current favourite band 65daysofstatic on Wednesday night, and spent a fuckton of the Queen's pounds on merchandise. Christ, I've probably got a 65daysofstatic toothbrush kicking around somewhere. They rocked the fuck out of the place for what felt like an hour and half (it may have been a wee bit longer or shorter, 'twas hard to tell), playing pretty much everything off their first album and some great stuff from the new album.

On Thursday I went to the NFT to a thing called Antenna, where they show new music videos. Who was on the panel? None other than Spike Motherfuckin' Jonze. Jesus Christ. He was a bit nervous and shit, I think he must be terrified of people, but he came across as a likeable, talented guy and he provided the people questioning him with nice wee anecdotes as answers to their questions. Garth Jennings (part of Hammer & Tongs) was there, too, and he was one funny fuck - he looked incredibly comfortable up there on stage, witty bastard. In addition to the star studded Q&A, they showed some awesome new videos, the highlights being Tiga's new one, and one from Venetian Snares' new album. The track itself was a sub-par orchestral Squarepusher rip-off (I'm not that keen on the album...as a whole), but it was saved by a moody, inventive and downright crafty video. Shit, have I just badmouthed my hero on national internet?

As a companion piece to my Amazon list, "CDs I Lost When I Went Back To Glasgow And Got Drunk", I've just knocked this bad boy up:

"DVDs I lost when I went back to Glasgow when I went back to Glasgow and got drunk"

Yes kids, that's right - my idiot tax is increasing. Bye for now

Welcome to the afterfuture

I was standing there, in the toilets of the moving train, handrail in one hand, cock in the other, trying desperately not to get piss all up and down myself, when it came to me - Sprayvy! Aerosol gravy. I swear to fuck it could revolutionise the food service industry. I want to be known as the "Aerosol Gravy Magnate", how cool would that be?

On to more pressing matters. I'm back in Glasgow, and I got tattoo number 3 today. Fuck me gently with a chiansaw, it is badass. I would furnish you all with a photo, but I forgot my digital camera, and it's still a little raw and I canny get a decent photograph of it with my phone. Also, I was away seeing Japanese darlings Afrirampo last night. Christ they know how to rock. I really must get everything they've ever done.

I'll leave you with this poem, about the joys of seducing a ferret:

Oh handsome ferret with your eyes so blue
That watch me dance in front of you
Lying, supine, on your back
You watch me head to the red wine rack
With Beaujolais, I dash back quick
And out, you've got, your ferret dick

I think we'll leave that one right there.

"Okay, I need one each of the following tapes"

• Whispers In The Wind
• To Each His Own
• Put It Where It Doesn't Belong
• My Pipes Need Cleaning
• All Tit-Fucking : Volume 8
• I Need Your Cock
• Ass-Worshipping Rim-Jobbers
• My Cunt Needs Shafts
• Cum Clean
• Cum-Gargling Naked Sluts
• Cum Buns 3
• Cumming In Socks
• Cum On Eileen
• Huge Black Cocks With Pearly White Come
• Girls Who Crave Cock
• Girls Who Crave Cunt
• Men Alone 2 : The KY Connection
• Pink Pussy Lips
• All Holes Filled With Hard Cocks
• Happy Scrappy Hero Pup
  

Mistaken Tourist

Just out of curiosity (and also to satisfy my planet sized ego) I signed up to one of those sites that track visitors to your blog/website/hilarious toast eBay auction. Fuck me, over the past few weeks I've realised - there are actually people that read this shit on a (semi) regular basis. More than I would ever have guessed.

I'd like to give a big shout to the lone guy from Vietnam who checks it every week, and the sick fucking bastard who got here via a referral from some search engine while looking for "gay pictures of Optimus Prime". You, sir, are a class act.

I pretty much just got pissed off my fucking arse for my birthday. Drunk Marc was in full effect. And I didn't get many presents at all. Being 25 sucks almost as much as this lame ass blog entry.

Back to Glasgow on Tuesday. Hopefully I'll have something humourous to say then. Maybe I can punch a nun in the cunt on the train up, or something. I'm sure that'd get a few hits from Google.

Oiseau mort

Hey fuckheads, how's things? God almighty, there is something wrong with me, I swear to fuck. Almost 25, and now, now of all fucking times, a wisdom tooth decides it's going to start putting in an appearance. What the hell?

Anyways - I've managed to pull my shit together to actually get a ticket to see Squarepusher, so that's one out of the list of many that I'll definately be going to. Whoop-de-fucking-do. God, I hope he steers clear of playing anything off Ultravisitor. Also in keeping with the 'got my shit together' theme, I've pretty much finished designing the new tattoo I want for my birthday. Don't worry - you'll see it when it's fucking done. Christ you're impatient.

Right, onto the point of this update ('cos these updates always have some awesome purpose) - I've been seeing an awful lot of dead pigeons kicking around the pavements of London recently, so I did what any self respecting halfwit would do; I started documenting them with my phone camera. This is the first one I took, the day John Peel died:



The quality isn't too hot, but I'll make up for that by showing you my favourite one so far:





If you click on that picture, you can have a higher resolution copy of it. Though, why in the fuck you'd want that I don't know. You sick fucking bastard. Do you think he died of lung cancer? Maybe that's the last pack of fags he ever smoked, sitting right there next to him. Will the tobacco companies stop at nothing?

If I get anymore good pictures of dead pigeons, you'll be the first to know.

Cometh the month, cometh the man

As 2005 rampages towards its inevitable, logical conclusion (an inappropriate drunken pawing at a Hogmany party), we draw ever closer to Rocktober - the month of my birth. I will be a quarter of a century old this year, and I still have the brain, thoughts, sexual desires and hand-eye coordination of a high-voiced acne-ridden 16 year old. We men never fully grow up, do we? It's sad really - women my age are thinking about babies, marriage, buying a house, and here I am wondering what Playstation 2 game I want for my birthday (The Warriors, if you were wondering), and whether or not my chocolate cake should have a He-Man made of icing on it, or an Optimus Prime.

I'm a fucking a child, basically.

But enough of this maudlin nonsense, what I really want to talk about is gigs. Oh yes. Gigs. Due to my inability to get time off to go back to Glasgow for Instal, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for some hot shit down here in sunny London. Here's what I've found:

• 26 October - Rhythm Factory

65daysofstatic & Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies

Not only are 65daysofstatic releasing a new album, but they are fucking touring too. Ahhh. Having only heard about them at the beginning of the year, they have quickly become one of my favourite bands. Get yourself along to one of the other UK shows (or this one) for a heavy dose of post-rock breakcore nonsense.

• 31 October - Scala

Patrick Wolf & Friends Halloween Spooktacular

Patrick is supporting Bloc Party all over the land, but if you want to see him headline this seems to be your only chance for a while. The Bloc Party dates are all sold out anyway, I think. Expect him to be dressed as a gay Robin Hood-esque goth while he belts out his angsty electro-ballads. Probably.

• 04 November - Cargo

Minotaur Shock, Radioactive Man & more

Folktronica is such a dirty word. But hey, if lazy journalists can use it - so the fuck can I (and I can split infinitives with profanity too). Minotaur Shock is fucking awesome, and is supposedly named after a discredited type of therapy that they used to dish out to mental patients during less enlightened times. The head doctor would charge into the lunatic's room, gibbering, with a minotaur mask on. Yeah, that'll cure them. Radioactive Man, too. That's all I gotta say.

• 04 November - Overkill @ Elektrowerks II

Mistress, Trencher, Charlottefield, Modeselektor, Tim Exile, Phil Collins 3, Sharkattack, Ceephax, Shitmat, V/Vm, DJ Scotch Egg, The Gasman, Chevron, Ebola, Mully & Bunglegushcore, Miss Hawaii, Cutting Pink With Knives, Ommm, Romvelope, D/J Rupture

Jesus Cunting Christ. That line up makes me want to weep with joy. Almost every one of my favourite (at the moment) electronic artists (ok, so VSnares and Jason Forrest ain't there, but don't be nitpicky) are playing this gig. I'll really only be going the Minotaur Shock gig if I canny find someone who'll go to this with me. I reckon this could kill the last vestiges of adequate hearing I have left. Jesus...just...Jesus.

• 05 November - Camden Barfly

Robots In Disguise & more

The 2 chicks from the Mighty Boosh (Electro, Nanageddon and probably another couple of episodes too) will be dishing out their brand of punk-funk to the drunken Camden bastards. Lovely.

• 14 November - Trash @ The End

TIGA! Erol Alkan will probably be there too

If ever there was a time to make an effort to go to Trash, it would be this night. It will be oh so very trendy. And gay. Very very gay.

• 17 November - Koko

Squarepusher & Luke Vibert

Having never seen Squarepusher, I really should try and make this. I'm just worried he'll only play stuff from his most recent album (Ultravisitor), which I thought was shit. Luke Vibert is cool though.

Now, going by my track record I reckon I'll make it to one, maybe two of these nights. Why oh why must I be so fucking shite? Because I'm a fucking wean trapped in the body of a slightly bemused adult.

Come on, birthday. Come on

Attention Whoring Worldwide

What the fuck is going on in this world? Seriously? What did people do before God blighted us with the dull fuckery that is Myspace? Have you seen this shit? "My e-penis is so much bigger than yours - I have 144 friends". But how many of them have you actually met, dickbag?

I canny talk. I've just started a Myspace page. Yet another repository for lists of my favourite films and music, pictures of me in 'uproarious' situations, links to pages of people whom I DO NOT KNOW and occasionally links to, wait for it... actual real life friends. Gasp.

Friendster is bad enough, but Myspace lets you fuck about with the layout of your page. There are literally millions of identikit emo-bawbag's pages filled with shitty pictures, bad, bad embedded mallcore MP3s and impossible-to-read black on dark blue text.

But you know all of this, because you have a Myspace page too, don't you. Every fucker and their pet spastic has a page. It's going to hit critical mass at some point in the near future - every Myspace user is going to be friends with every other Myspace user, wasting away years of their lives exchanging poorly written comments with one another while drooling over their keyboards. "OH MY GAWD, U R SOOO HAWT IN DAT PIC"

Maybe I'm getting a bit old and jaded, but these social networking things are really starting to grind my gears. I have no use for them whatsoever - I don't use them to keep in touch with mates (I use phones and email for that), they're basically just more ammo for a future stalker. But I will continue to sign up, I will continue to 'add people' to my friends list and I will continue to write painfully unfunny comments on the pages of people who I wouldn't shit on if they were on fire. I will continue because I am just as big of an attention whore as everyone else. I need more online friends than my other online friends. I need to validate my existence by counting the number of people who have viewed my profile.

So here, here you fucking go -
http://www.myspace.com/bape_monkey

Add me you cunts.

NORMAL SERVICE WILL RESUME SHORTLY

In the meantime - have a look at this happy fuck. He loves his job.

Art Wank

Jesus, I canny believe I've been down here for over a year and only just paid a visit to Trash. I don't want to say it's London's version of Optimo, but it was quite similar in crowd and music, if not aesthetic and ethos. Hahaha, what the fuck am I talking about.

Anyways, the reason I ended up there is thanks to these boys - A Cult Called Karrianna, who were playing at the Elephant and Castle in Camden, on Monday night. The only way I can think of describing them is - Motley Crue, fronted by Bobbie Gillespie, covering Bon Jovi songs in the stlye of Felix Da Housecat, New Order and Depeche Mode.

They fucking rocked, and afterwards my mate and I found ourselves wandering Tottenham Court Road, following the gay hair and t-shirt and tie crowd to Trash. A good time was had by all, and work the next day was a fucking chore.

Back up to Glasgow tomorrow. Fan-cunting-tastic.

Aw yeah, and you absolute jerk-offs had better be watching The Mighty Boosh.

Science! Part 1

I was sitting a couple of weeks ago in the flat. Bored. On t'internet, as you do. And I said to my flatmate "Did you ever hear of the guy who strapped helium ballons to a chair and floated up through the sky?" Obviously he didn't believe me, so I had to use the power of computers to prove to him it happened.

The Snopes page is here, and it's quite cool, when you actually read what the guy done.

But that got me thinking, thinking about whether or not I could attempt something like that myself. I decided it was far too dangerous, and would probably be really expensive. Then my flatmate's wee dog scampered in, jumped up on the couch, and grinned at me like a spaz.

She's a little daschund, very much like this...



...though without that fetching coat. Now, I thought, how cool would it be to take her out a walk, with her floating at the end of her leash, five feet in the air, suspended by helium balloons?

Very, was the answer. All I had to do was work out how much it was going to cost.

Now, she probably weighs between 5 and 7 kilograms, depending on how much she's eaten recently, so I had to figure out how many helium balloons it would take to get her off the ground.

I found out your standard one foot diameter balloon, when filled with helium, can exert an upwards force capable of lifting about 14 grams.

OK, taking the weight of the dog, for simplicity's sake, to be 6 kilograms we get:

1 balloon = 14 grams
1 dog = 6000grams

6000/14 = 428.6 (rounded up) balloons.

Obviously we have to round that up again, to get one full balloon, so call it 429 balloons, to equalise the upward force exerted by the balloons and the downward force of the dog. She would probably rise quite slowly, so she'd be easy to keep on the end of the leash.

"But how much would that cost?" I hear you ask. Well, Balloons.co.uk price the hire of their HG331 N2O Canister at £135.71 (click that link and scroll down). Problem is, it will on inflate 330 12" balloons and we need 429. So, we'll have to hire an HG330 N2O Canister (which can inflate 165 12" balloons) too. That'll set us back another £95.76.

Total price so far - £231.47. They do deliver though, so that's quite nice.

With those 2 canisters we can inflate 495 balloons, which from Balloons.co.uk will set us back 8p each. Let's call it an even 500:

500 balloons x £0.08 = £40. Nice. I reckon they'd deliver them when they bring the helium, too.

Grand Total, then - £271.47, and for that we get 500 helium balloons, with a flight time of between 8 and 10 hours. Plenty of time to wander about London getting odd looks.

If anyone has a spare £280, I'm totally up for this. The logistics of actually inflating and attaching almost 430 balloons to a dog not much longer than a foot will have to wait until all the equipment is right there in front of me. I'm sure it won't take long.

(Christ, imagine if I accidentally let go of the leash. My flatmates would kill me and burn me in the bath)

Deep in the juju, I was chasing the train

Alright you worthless motherfuckers, I'm betting you wouldn't know decent comedy if belted you round the chops with a live baby, then proceeded to shit on your shoes. Which is why you should care that The Mighty Boosh is back on the BBC next week. It's fucking awesome, and should be watched by everyone. EVERY-FUCKING-ONE.

The lovely, lovely people at the BBC have provided a live stream of the first episode, "Call of the Yeti", which you can watch by clicking right here. I'm not totally sure if you can view it outside the UK, so feel free to berate me for giving you false hope.

Enjoy

No service on the Circle Line

Yeah, bits of London may have been blown the fuck up, but it's very much business as usual, which is pretty cool. Other than a couple of extra Polis at the Tube stations and the odd controlled detonation of a suspect package outside my work (and other people's, presumably), everyone is pretty much going about there lives as normal. It's all gravy.

And am I the only person who thought of Monkey Dust when they heard the identities of the suicide bombers this morning? Good English boys, born here and into cricket, football, booze, Chicken McNuggets, kissing girls, and all that jazz.



"This Wednesday, death and destruction will rain upon your heads...."

"Eh, our Shafiq, we can't do Wednesday, it's West Brom versus Villa on pay-per-view!"

"....This Thursday...."

"There is a clause in all of my contracts, that my liver is to be buried seperately, and with full military honours"

After finally kicking the balls off GTA:San Andreas the other week, my wee dinky PS2 has been deathly quiet. I'm not a total game addict or anything, but it's nice to be in the middle of a game, to be able to waste away a couple of hours bashing buttons and hitting hookers with a spade. Thanks to my wee bro' I've discovered that the mighty mighty Rockstar are due to bring out a PS2 version of my all time favourite 70's gang film, The Warriors. Click that to view the trailer, it looks fucking fantastic. It's out in Rocktober, the month of my birth - I think I'll ask Mummy and Daddy dearest for it, all nicely wrapped in Scooby Doo paper.

I mentioned Rubber Johnny in my last post. Well, if you are too fucking cheap to buy the DVD, you can click this link to view it on t'internet. Enjoy.

I'm off out tonight to a pub quiz at the AKA Bar. We fucking won it last month, by some bizarre drunken luck. £100 bar tab we won, and we fucking hammered half of it in about 30 minutes. We're defending our title this time (as well as caning the rest of the bar tab), if only so we can hear the name 'Cartoon Sex Clowns' called out over the speakers again. Send some cocking luck my way, bawchops.

I'd like to volunteer to be in charge of booby traps

Wales was absolutely fuckin' mental. There's something glorious about being stuck in the middle in the middle of nowhere with tonnes of drink, drugs and headcases. Far too many people were taking their lives into their own, rather shaky, hands and doing all sorts of wacky shit. Explosive rockets, unicycling down treacherous hills, Super Soakers filled with paraffin (ok, that's a lie, even in our state we knew this was a bad idea), Mushroom tea, stunning sunshine, cows, dogs and enough Grolsch to take down George Best and his army of livers - it was all good fun. I've been back for quite some time, and I still don't feel like I've recovered.

I've been haemorrhaging money recently - as well as the usual 'social expenditure', Futurama Series 3, Jim Jarmusch's 'Coffee & Cigarettes' and Chris Cunningham's (slightly disappointing new short) 'Rubber Johnny' have just crashed through my letterbox and two seconds ago I ordered a suave new Zippo from eBay.

I don't even fucking smoke.

Waxing Gibbous

Do you know that way, when you've built something up in your mind and you're really looking forward to it, then it turns out to be utter shite? Well, I had been looking forward to 65daysofstatic for so long, I was sure that was going to happen. And did it? Did it fuck. They are easily one of the best bands I have ever seen - the drummer, especially, is fucking insanely talented. The only way I can think of describing the cacophany they create (and I hate doing this) is like a cross between Mogwai, M83, Squarepusher and Venetian Snares. My ears are still ringing. Buy everything of their's you can, savour it, and bask in the knowledge that if there is any justice in the universe, they are going to be fucking giant.

Sin City. That was the other thing I've been looking forward to for ages. I won't bore you with a sub par review, needless to say it's fucking brilliant.

I'm getting lazy at this writing malarkey. I'm off to Wales for the weekend, hopefully when I come back I'll be full of vigour and enthusiasm. And stories of drink, drugs, explosions and the shooting of rabbits. Yup.

Happy Birthday Natalie Portman

My CDs arrived the other day. I honestly don't know what the fuck - I should not be allowed to order CDs with a hangover, I always go for stuff that I wasn't really after. I ended up with Elektro 4 - Keystroke One and Solvent - Apples & Synthesizers which should be reasonably fucking cool and Ascoltare - Gallery, which I think I must have ordered due to seeing his name in the same sentence as DJ/Rupture. I've also got the new issue of the Wire, hahahahahaha.

It's the 65daysofstatic gig tomorrow night, and I have not been this excited about seeing someone in quite some time. If I don't end up with permanent hearing damage I'm gonna want my money back.

Right, have a look at this - "'Asbo' and 'chav' make dictionary". Now, I have no problem with 'ASBO', 'Chav' and 'Ned' making it into the Collins (Mickey Mouse) Dictionary, as they are commonly used terms in this country, but have a look at some of the other random buzzword shite they've put in there. 'Retrosexual', 'Property Porn', 'Bouncebackability'? What in the ever-loving fuck? No one has ever even said those fucking things outside the sphere of the media. They are 'cool' gimmicky words bandied about by Nathan Barley fucking cunts in the pages of Heat and the Sun and shit like that; no one fucking using them. Imagine saying 'retrosexual' to someone in the pub, you'd be fucking knifed. And with good reason.

Collins knows they are a fucking third rate dictionary and are loading their pages with this utter dross in a cynical attempt to get themselves into the news. And it's working too. Fucking cunts.

Seeing as they are turning into a print version of Urban Dictionary, I wonder how long it'll take for them to include 'Wank Ma Shite'.

Mystery in Spiderville

Fucking Imageshack - why have you lost my title image? You motherfuckers. Udo will watch over us, from the relative safety of Painted Over until such times as I can dig out the old image.

Enough fucking shite, you want to know about the Death From Above 1979 gig don't you? You don't? Then fuck you, and the rest of you quiet down, this isn't a fucking school picnic. They rocked harder than dinosaur bones, and I was drunk as fuck - that's the whole night stripped down to it's bare elements. On the merchandise front, I picked up a slew of badges, none of which are particularly good - I may hand them out to tramps the next time I head into town. Also, due to the aforementioned 'drunk-as-fuckness' I was pogoing about like a fucking mental patient, leaving countless cuts and bruises on my body and completely fucking my shoes. I think they are beyond help, I may have to chuck them and buy a new pair. God damnit I love those shoes as well. In the ensuing hangover the next day I ordered a fuckload of CDs from t'internet - I literally have no idea what I bought, and I'm purposefully avoiding looking at the confirmation emails. I wonder what surprises are winging their way to me.

I'm glad I went though, as it's put me back in the mood for gigs. I'm gonna go and see 65daysofstatic in a few weeks, and hopefully Sons and Daughters and, if it's not sold out, Aphex Twin. So there you go.

If the scientists who built me could see me now, I think they'd be justifiably proud

I should rant about boys 'n' girls shit more often, that last post got me the most feedback I've ever had. On the the other hand, do I really want to be another whiny emo cunt? Maybe.

Now, I know it seems like pop music Armageddon at the moment, what with that cock juggling cunt-fuck 'Crazy Frog' stampeding towards the number one spot (I'll leave the rest of this rant to someone who actually gives a shit about the state of the UK charts), but for me it's a pretty good week. I just ordered Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger, Autechre - Untitlted and Lyrics Born - Same Shit Different Day, which will be the first CDs I've bought in ages, and I'm off to see Death From Above 1979 tonight. I'll try and report back tomorrow with my verdict, and news of any badges purchased.

In other music related news - I won the latest Ninja Tune newsletter competition, which is pretty awesome for someone who never wins a fucking thing (OK, so I won a competition years ago that coincided with the release of the 'Masters of the Universe' movie, but I won't count that as I was really wee. God I thought those toys were the shit - if only Mother hadn't fucking gave them away! Anyways...). I won a 'Ninja Tuna' hoody, designed by Mr Scruff. It's not really my colour (dahling), but it's comfy and supposedly 'rare' or some shit.

One last moan before I go - I just got Gozu, Three Extremes, Stacy and Junk through the post, and Sin City and Star Wars are out in the cinema - and I'm working all fucking weekend, it's typical.

Now fuck off.

This peach is sub-par

I ain't updated in a while 'cos, basically, I haven't had much of interest to say. I was planning to write up a big fuck-off review of my week back in the land of chibs and Whisky but I really don't think anyone wants to read that, and I certainly canny be fucked writing it. So, instead I'll do a quick run down:

The Warriors
Showing at the Glasgow Film Theatre with a new and improvised soundtrack being layed down by some New Yoiker named Tes - this was.......interesting. First off, he didn't keep one sound from the original film - all the dialogue only appeared as subtitles. This meant we missed the infamous "Can you dig it?" and "Warriors.....come out and playeeeeeeee" bits, and you canny have the Warriors without them. Secondly, some of the music just did not fit the movie at all. Tes' stuff was very like John Carpenter in places, but at other times it was like the fucking 'Gonk' from Dawn of the Dead or some shit. You do not laugh at the fucking Baseball Furies and you do not use music that will make people laugh at the Baseball Furies. When I went for a pish about halfway through, there were guys in the toilet up for rushing Tes (oh Glasgow) and just playing the rest of the film with the original soundtrack. This heated atmosphere did yield one classic moment though - when Luther was clanking the bottles together on screen, tonnes of motherfuckers in the crowd were all filling in the sound effects themselves by clanking their empties together - vaguely menacing and fun. Tes done a bit of a freestyle at the end, which was pretty cool and probably the only live hip-hop I've ever seen in a cinema.

Pressure
I headed down to this after the movie and met up with the boys outside. Fuck me it was good to be back in the Arches - you forget just how punishing the techno can be, ensconced in those sweaty stone vaults. Vitalic rocked the fuck out of the place and Adam Beyer was immense. Why can't we have techno like this down in London?

Laptop Jams
Live laptop tomfoolery in the basement of the Brunswick Hotel, which is a sweet little venue. The music took a while to get going, as it was basically 6 or 7 random guys just sonically bouncing off one another, but there were some nice moments. The visuals were shite though.

Titanium
Heavy metal afternoon/night in Barfly, organised by my ex's sister. This was pretty cool, even if me and my wee brother were the only ones not in black tops. We had to leave early so I only caught one band - not really my thing, but hey, it was for a good cause.

LCD Soundsystem
Playing in a venue fucking miles away on the South side of Glasgow called the Tramway. We walked in and the Optimo DJs were warming up, which was pretty fucking cool. Hot Chip were supporting and they were damn fucking fine. James Murphy and company were amazing, though I was pretty toasted by the time they came on so am probably no the best judge of quality. I canny remember if it was 'Daft Punk are playing at my house' or 'Losing My Edge', but they done a really shitty version of one of them. The only low point of their.

Soundhaus
We swanned along to the Soundhaus after LCD Soundsytem, to cap off the night. We were contemplating going to the almighty Optimo, but ESG were playing and it was a bank holiday so the place was fucking wadded and rammed. The Soundhaus is a filthy (in the best possible way) wee underground/member's only place and is always fucking banging. This night was no exception - I was fucking motherfucked (good choice of words there, Marc'o).

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Jesus. Maybe I'll write up a proper review of this, fuck, I may even go and see it again just to get a second opinion (come-down Marc'o was technically the one who seen it). Basically - Martin Freeman and Mos Def are amazing; Sam Rockwell......what the fuck was going on with Zaphod? Zooey Deschanel was hot but a bit wooden; the Vogons were good, but given too much of a central role; it was 'Hollywoodised' a bit too much; the Guide itself was under-used, as was the Improbability Drive; it was cut down quite a bit from the book (and the book is not that long at all); the newly introduced sub-plot with John Malkovich was shit and pointless and shit; it looked lovely, and I think I'll leave it there. I did read the book again on the way back down here, so I suppose it's good that it reminded me to re-read them all again.

Fuck, can you believe this is the quick run down?

Asia Argento is fucking hot

I've been back in Glasgow for almost 2 days now, and it feels a bit odd. It's so fucking small. Anyway, tonight's the night when shit really kicks off - The Warriors screening @ The GFT, then Pressure @ The Arches, which will no doubt fuck me up good and proper.

While looking through the wee booklet for Triptych, I realised that Savage Pencil does all the illustrations for the festival this year (including that crazy owl I used on the last entry I wrote about Triptych). Jesus, I forgot how fucking awesome he is. His insane scribblings can be seen adorning the pages of Ken Hollings' masterpiece Destroy All Monsters, which you severely have to fucking read. Now.

Here's a little present for you, dear reader. It's the mid 80s electro hip-hop stylings of the Latin Rascals, with their tribute to Eddie Murphy - Axel F (New York Rap Remix). Enjoy, I'm off to get some breakfast.

The Early Life of Venetian Snares

Aaron Funk was born in 1977 in Baraboo, Wisconsin to snake farmer Leviathan Funk and aeronautical engineer Missy 'Misdemeanour' Funk. Aaron had a rough and troubled childhood, fending for himself amongst his father’s reptiles, battling the poisonous creatures for morsels and scraps to eat, and sleeping with one eye open. It was here, at a young age, that he learned an appreciation for the power of music; he would sing the fanged bastards to sleep in order to steal their food and milk their fangs. This milking went on for many years until Aaron was confident he had enough. As his father came in one day with the usual offering of lifeless rats and mice Aaron pounced, forcing him to the ground and pouring the toxic venom down his throat. At aged 7, he made good his escape. But not before liberating his father’s wallet from his jacket pocket.

Arriving on a Greyhound bus in Cottonwood, California in the summer of 1984, with his heart full of hope and his stomach full of something other than rodent flesh, he fell in with a group of Bavarian gypsies who ran a travelling circus. He spent his days learning the ways of the acrobat, and his nights increasing his musical knowledge through the folk songs of his new 'family'. Aaron became more and more confident in his abilities and decided he would make it his life's work to garner fame and riches, and one day rid the world of snakes, much like Saint Patrick did in Ireland, all those years ago. Knowing full well Bavarian troubadouring and snake-charming lullabies wouldn't be sufficient for world domination; he built his first synthesizer from a broken Sinclair Spectrum, bits from an old Ford Model T and some corrugated iron, at age 14. It was with this unwieldy piece of machinery that he shaped his first album, 'Jack Rabbit Ham-fistedness and It's Effect on the Third Trimester of Unwanted Pregnancies'. It contained only 2 compositions, one of them being a 70 year old man intoning the word 'brass' over and over again for 50 minutes, with a looped beat from an old Nina Simone song in the background, and the other being Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' played backwards. Kerrang called it 'A truly groundbreaking album, best listened to at the lowest perceivable volume while eating an artic roll', whilst NME described it as 'The future of rock and roll' and awarded it a prestigious '5-Stars'.

The success of this debut album made Aaron a multi billionaire at the age of 16, so he shelved his promising music career to become a Pirate Kiss-o-gram. He believed that this job would give him the mental clarity he would need to formulate the 'Snake Apocalypse' he desired so much. His life continued on quite comfortably for just over a year, but a string of unwise investments in anti-snake hammers and a catastrophic addiction to plantains swallowed up the vast majority of his fortune and forced him into hiding just days before his 18th birthday.

Nothing much was heard from Funk until, late in 1999 he re-emerged, now calling himself Venetian Snares. His first release under the new moniker was the 12" 'Greg Hates Car Culture', which caused massive ructions in the burgeoning electronic music scene. A breakcore and gabber monster, NME described it as 'The future of rock and roll' and awarded it '5-Stars', whilst the Wire devoted 18 pages to it, each painstakingly written out in hieroglyphics using the blood of Seb Coe. This would just be the first of many groundbreaking and genre-defining works Venetian Snares would release, and was a call to arms for an ever changing and exciting electronic music scene.

Fifteen Interesting facts about Aaron Funk

-He is composed entirely of heavy photons. If you get close enough, you can hear the plasma his body is comprised of, vibrating

-He has a 17 year old lactose intolerant cat named Trevor

-In Minsk there is a fifty-foot tall glass statue of him, which dominates the city's main square. At midday on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes the sunlight is focused through the statue onto a point no larger than the head of a pin. Every year the mayor lights a cigar using this focussed light, which is then passed around the fathers of any babies born on that day

-He discovered Tungsten and Molybedenum

-He has guest starred in 57 episodes of the Simpsons, but has only ever had one line. It was 'You wanna go faster? I call disaster'

-He is an avid breeder of geese and swans

-Twice a year he visits the concrete encased reactors at Chernobyl. He writes profane limericks on the walls using pink lipstick

-He has a base on the moon where he is constructing a giant laser, which he plans to use to carve his initials into the polar ice caps

-He has a coat made entirely from the bee's fur. It took a crack team of blind lepers in Cambodia 5 years to make it

-There is a room in each of his mansions where he houses his vast collection of out-of-date, unopened Ambrosia Creamed Rice cans

-He is afflicted with Picquerism, which he satisfies by poking girls with French bread in the queues at Tescos, then running to his car to masturbate furiously

-His favourite film is Shallow Grave, and he one day hopes to marry Christopher 'Dr Who' Eccleston

-He does not believe in the second law of thermodynamics and was once charged with attempted murder for beating a man to within an inch of his life for even mentioning the name 'Carnot'

-He has a horse called John, but refuses to ride her, as he is scared of being kicked in the face whilst putting the saddle on her back. This is due to a childhood phobia of the board game 'Buckaroo'

-His favourite food is pâté made from the hearts of baby starlings, suffocated en masse in giant Hessian sacks


Venetian Snares new album 'Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett' is available now from good record shops

Live MP3s can be downloaded from VSnares.com

I said it knowing full well I had no intention of doing it

This has got to be the greatest safety video in existence. It's a wee bit slow to get going, but when it does......Jesus. It's like the Evil Dead, in a German warehouse.

I've been seeing a lot of good films recently, and have to recommend Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr Vengence, Bubba Ho-Tep and The Machinist. My love for Christian Bale is well known, so I won't go into detail about the The Machinist. Let me just say, it's a bit more David Lynch-ey than Brad Anderson's last film Session 9, and better for it.

Now, Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr Vengence.......fuck me. I thought Takashi Miike was where it was at with regards to Asian cinema but these 2 Chan-wook Park films show just how fucking awesome and batshit crazy the Koreans are. You literally owe it to your brain to see them. They both deal with similar themes (revenge, inter-familial bonds, motherfuckers getting fucked up), but they do it in totally different ways. The range of emotion they take you through is unparralelled in most films coming out just now - you will not forget these movies, they will be burned into your psyche. Oh, and they are both stunningly photographed too.

Bubba Ho-Tep was good.....probably better than I gave it credit for, at first. I had built it up in my head so much that I was quite disappointed when I watched it. Then, after thinking about it for a while I realised I had kind of missed the point. I was a expecting an off the wall action film with JFK and Elvis kicking the shit out of a Mummy and cracking wise. What I got was a beautifully touching film that made you think. And I'm pretty sure that's better. I'm gonna rewatch it again soon with this new mindest.

So, what's coming up next? Sin City, which everyone informs me is the shit. Romero's Land of The Dead, which has gotta be awesome. Star Wars - if Lucas fucks this up I'm pretty sure someone will put a hit out on him, you know what enraged geeks are like. And coming up really soon - The Hitchiker's Guide to The Galaxy. I'm gonna go see this when I'm up in Glasgow, and I really don't know what to expect. The previews look amazing, but will it capture the book's glorious nonsense? I hope so.

Cursed by his own hubris

In addition to the fucking television, inexplicably buried in the back garden, my flatmate introduced me to this little gem in the kitchen sink the other day:


Why yes, that's right - a motherfucking dead baby mouse, apparently drowned in the very same water we used to wash the dishes. I done what any self respecting man would have done - laughed, photographed it, then picked it up by the tail and threatened to hurl it over the back wall onto the road. We ended up binning it instead.

Oh well, I'll have to amuse myself by immolating the ants who seem to be infesting the kitchen as well.

I'm gay for Christian Bale

When I first heard that Christopher 'Memento' Nolan was directing the new Batman film, 'Batman Begins', the first thing that popped into my head was "I hope there's more fire-breathing horse action than the previous films". Looks like my prayers have been answered:

Batman Begins [Trailer Mirror 1]
Batman Begins [Trailer Mirror 2]

It's Christain Bale, as Patrick Fucking Bateman, as Batman. It's gonna be so many different kinds of awesome.

No mean city

I'm all booked up for going back to Glasgow. One week of fucked up debauchery awaits, from the 27th of April to the 4th of May. As you may or may not know, that is the weekend of the Triptych Festival, Scotland's premiere eclectic music festival sponsored by an alcoholic beveridge. So far the only things I'm definately going to are the showing of 'The Warriors' at the GFT on Friday (with live DJ accompaniment), LCD Soundsystem on the Sunday and Optimo, also on the Sunday night. I'll probably go to Pressure, which is the motherfucking best techno night in the UK, on the Friday night (with Slam, Adam Beyer, Percy X and Jacques Lu Cont DJing, and Vitalic playing LIVE) and spend all day Saturday in Mono, so it should be a fuckin' messy weekend.

It'll be good to get back for a wee week and see all the bawbags again, it's been too long.

Oo oo - if you don't know the Perry Bible Fellowship, you should click here. I swear to fuck if you don't laugh at these comics I'll come round your house, stab you in the fucking face with a Philips screwdriver, douse you in petrol and watch your humourless body burn to a crisp.

"I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds"

I've now realised how nonsensical it is to have the Blog called one thing (Spirit Creature Not Wearing The Shape Of A Man) and have the URL as something else (http://circushands.blogspot.com), so I think it's time for me to change that title image. Right now, I canny be arsed, so here is a picture I took of a squirrel:



I stamped his guts out 30 seconds after this photo was taken. I'm sure I heard him call me a prick.


EDIT - - I've changed the title image now, to give everything a bit more uniformity. I dunno if I'm happy with it, but it'll have to stay that way until I can get my grubby paws on a copy of Photoshop.

Sweet Zombie Jesus

To celebrate Jesus rising from the grave to feed on the blood of the living, I ended up going to Transmission at the Alexandria Palace in North London. It's a behemoth of a place, perched atop a hill overlooking London. Majestic is probably a pretty good word to describe it. I'm too young to have gone to any proper old skool raves, so it turned out to be quite a mad experience - 10,000 fucked up gurners bouncing away with whistles, white gloves, glow sticks, horns, etcetera in a listed building, it's a cool way to spend a balmy spring evening. It'd been ages since I'd had a good dance, too. There's actual mobile phone footage of me in action, which is bound to be a laugh now the weekend has worn off.

In other news - I got one fucking paltry easter egg. And it was hollow, as usual. Imagine an easter egg that was like a Creme Egg, filled with sugary albumin and yolk - that'd fuck you with diabetes before you even got halfway through. That's the motherfucker I want to get my hands on.

My CDs arrived the other day, though I've only had a chance to listen to 65 Days of Static. Fuck me it's awesome - like Mogwai only a bit more immediate, and a bit more electronic. Rather than listen to the other new stuff, I decided to listen to the little fucking rabbit in my head instead - he told me to order Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning, Bright Eyes - Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and Modey Lemon - Thunder and Lightning. I suppose the little cunt has a point, I really canny believe I don't own them yet.

Remember - remove the head or destroy the brain.

Future Elbow Fortress

Jesus titty-fucking Christ, I'm getting a bit lackadaisical about updating this Blog (are you supposed to capitalise it?), aren't I?

Due to my poor showing last year, in regards to CD buying, and consumerism in general - I've decided to go batshit crazy this year and put any money concerns to the back of my capacious mind. To this end, I've been buying a fuck-tonne of CDs. The best finds of the year so far have been:

Death From Above 1979 - You're a Woman I'm a Machine
This is heavy as fuck and makes you want to dance about like a loon. I think they are being hyped to fuck, but this is one band that deserves it.

Duran Duran Duran - Very Pleasure
With artwork that can only be described as 'GAY', the look of this CD may put some people off. Fuckwits! This is an amazing masterpiece of an album (the first to be released on Jason Forrest's CockRockDisco label), full of jackhammering breakcore, 80's synths and Amen breaks.

ADAADAT - Trade & Distribution Almanac Volume 2
I swear to God I'm in love with this label. At only £7.49 there is no excuse not to buy this CD. Buy it.

I've just ordered some CDs from my ever growing list of shit that I must buy ('possessions define who I am') - 65 Days of Static - Full of Math, Hrvatski - Irrevocably Overdriven Break Freakout Megamix and Romvelope - One Course Meal.

Hopefully they'll come sailing through my letterbox quickstyle.

People who update their website frequently aren't having sex

So yeah, Nathan Barley's been getting much better after a lacklustre start. I've actually been 'Laughing Out Loud' at bits of it. Be sure to watch the new one this Friday - it's the most like the 'Cunt' strip on TVGoHome so far. There are a coupla harsh as fuck bits.



Anyways, I went to see Roots Manuva at the Brixton CARLING(TM) Academy on Friday night - he fucking rocked. When he done Witness, the place almost came. There was a guy standing next to us, skinning up, and one of the girls I was with said she was gonna try and get a draw. It was only when he sparked it that we realised he had crumbled crack into it. Oh Brixton, you are incorrigible.

All Yesterday's Parties

Within about an hour of my mates arriving in London we were fucked. God knows how I survived living up in Glasgow (ok, so it gave me an ulcer, but that's neither here nor there). We pretty much tore shit up in London town for a couple of days, and before I knew it I had my hands on a spare ticket for All Tomorrow's Parties, and was on a train to Camber Sands. Saying it was a 'bit cold' when we got there is like saying 4 guys fucking is a 'bit gay', but after braving the temperatures and getting all our shit (including a Slint goody bag, wooo) we finally got into our chalet. That poor chalet, we were only in it about 15 minutes before it looked like Hiroshima, post bomb.

Anyways, Friday night was awesome - I remember being terminally drunk while taking in Deerhoof, no thanks to the busload of spastics (and single darling) they had manning the bar, but the rest of the night was, understandably, a blur.

Rather than waffling on, I'll just outline some of my favourite shit:

-Mogwai. Goddammit they blew me away. I've seen them before but this time they were something else. They played a couple of awesome new songs, dragged Aidan Moffat up for a wee sing song and closed the set with a stunning rendition of 'Like Herod'. My ears are literally still ringing.

-Although it was unbearably cold at times, it was fun just bouncing about, enjoying the atmosphere. Wandering round the site, drunkenly banging on chalet doors was ace - it was one of the many ways I ended up talking to much random headcases.

-Being drunk for an entire weekend! I mean, how debauched is it to have pretty much 24 hour drinking available? Not that I've never spent a whole weekend off my rocker, but it was great doing it in such a cool place.

-Seeing Slint. Although I'm not a massive fan, they were pretty damn good, and their programmed TV channel in the chalet was good fun.

-Love as Laughter were a nice surprise. I think I've heard some bits and bobs from them through various mates, but never really took notice. I reckon I'll have to nab some of their stuff now, after a rousing live performance.

-Neil Hamburger (off the wall comedian) said some of the harshest statements I've ever heard. It was a great way to start the Sunday. Some of his best jokes being - "What do you get if you cross Elton John with a puma. I don't know, but keep it away from your ass.", and "What's the difference between a porcupine and Courtney Love? If a porcupine pricks you with one of its needles you won't get HIV." Classy.

-Badges, tonnes of them! I have more Slint badges than one man could ever need!

-Sitting listening to Matmos while chatting up a couple of randoms. It just seemed.....so right.

-Seeing my mate Stewart bouncing about giving out copies of his (now award winning!) Beard Magazine. He was like a giddy schoolkid. I think even Dave Pajo got one. Oh, and the wee bastard got an interview with Mogwai!

The only bad things were:

-Forgetting to go on the Go-Karts

-Having to leave early and thus missing Sons and Daughters (who were a late replacement for Mark Kozelek, who had stubbed his toe or something). They are one of my favourite up and coming bands, and I really wanted to see them again. I was very close to just ignoring work on Monday morning, but sense preavailed. My mates inform me they were perfect on stage. Grrrrr.

-Having to miss most of Early Man, due to having to go on a dope run. They looked like they were gonna fucking rock.

-The sparseness of the bands - When looking at previous year's lineups, you see far more artists. Only about 4 of the shows have really burned themselves onto my mind permanantly. I imagine it's so everybody could get to see all the bands, but it did cause a nightmare trying to move around the place. And why stick Mogwai on at that time in the afternoon? Even they made a comment about it.

-The Red Nails. They were shit.

All in all, it was one of the most enjoyable musical experiences of my life. My body is still paying for it (not to mention my wallet, damn desirable Rock Action t-shirts), but it was worth it. I'd love to go to the Vincent Gallo curated one in April, but I doubt it'll happen. So, next year then.

Yams Yams Yams

Expect an update on All Tomorrow's Parties.....just as soon as this brain of mine starts working properly again. What a fucking week I've had - get a visit from the boys, end up in Camber Sands. Yes, it all makes sense really.

Oh, and it seems like Nathan Barley ain't too bad. I caught episode 3 last night, and found it to be quite amusing. No where near as brutal as Ideal was, though. Fucking harsh.

'Butter me up baby, I'm ready for my close up'

I'm all about the scarlet nail polish

Fucking internet purchases. I've ordered a metric fuck-tonne of T-shirts over the last 3 or 4 weeks from various sites on the 'net, and not one of the fuckers has arrived. Some of these companies are no more than two-bit fucktards, but the others are respectable entrepreneurs. I reckon my bastard postman is knocking them off...I've never seen him, which makes me suspicious.

Anyways, my parents were down visiting for the weekend, which meant a coupla days of heavy boozing. God, I was working on both days too, I didn't start until 4pm. It was a merry old time. I was supposed to meet them in a (very heavy duty) Ranger's pub to watch the Old Firm game on Sunday, but I got there so late it was full. There was a whole swathe of guys jostling to get in, and after talking to a few of them we decided to get a taxi to another pub showing the game. It was a strange sensation watching the game with a load of random crazy Scotsmen, none of whom knew one another an hour before, but I had a good laugh. And the 'Gers won.

The boys come down this weekend, so no doubt I'll be fuckin' pratted for most of the time. Ah, the heady life of an alcoholic.

Keep it Jackson...

"We'd be fools not to ride this strange torpedo to the end"

Hunter S. Thompson

RIP

July 18th 1939 - February 20th 2005

"Age of Stupidity"

Nathan Barley just finished 20 minutes ago. All I can really say is 'hmmmm'. It was ok, not at all 'laugh-out-loud' funny, but still pretty good for a first episode establishing it's characters and setting the scene. It was quite slow and subdued, not what most people would be expecting from 'Meedja Terrorists' Morris and Brooker. The dialogue was more reminiscent of Brooker's stuff, I thought, but it did bear the hallmarks of Chris Morris' direction. The bit when Ashcroft was being interviewed for the Weekend on Sunday was excrutiating, almost Jam like. And speaking of Ashcroft, I thought Julian Barratt's acting was excellent. Nathan Barley himself was pretty obnoxious, but not how I imagined him from TVGoHome

The funniest bit? The 'Nazi Experiments in Colour' poster behind the film producer, that gave me a bit of a chuckle. It could almost be a headline from the Day Today - 'Nazi experiments with colour result in German pigment embargo'.

"Peace and fuck you! Believe!"

Scuppered at the last hurdle?

I'm not at all religious. I'd like to think that when we all die our souls go to Heaven and all that shit, but it's just not sensible in any way, is it? Okay, so maybe a tiny, sliver of a percent of my irrational mind could entertain the suggestion that maybe, just maybe, there could be an afterlife. But do you know what that tiny sliver of a percent worries about? Do you? It worries that, when we finally shuffle off this shitty flesh sack and go to meet our maker (whoever that may be), he won't make it particularly easy to get into Heaven/Valhalla/Nirvana/Wherever.

Basically, I worry that when you and the Big Man finally go head-to-head, he gives you one obstacle to overcome before ascending to the realm of harps and angels. He sits you down in his blinding white office, wheels in a video/TV combo (like they used to do in school when you were gonna watch a documentary about 'Dangers in the Kitchen' that the Home Ec teacher taped off Bitesize Revision on BBC 2 the night before), takes a tatty, Asda's own brand VHS from his briefcase and proceeds to show you every silly and embarrassing thing you've ever done. And you have to watch it all, with him cackling over your shoulder like the twisted bastard he truly is. Imagine it, having to explain all your idiotic behaviour to the Creator of the Universe. All your late night drunken phone calls. All your piss poor chat up lines. All the unfunny shit you were spewing while stoned or gouched or wasted. All your totally pathetic emo moments - randomly punching walls and all that shit. All those wasted opportunities. All the times you done fell over, durrr. Those times you were sick....through your nose. All of it. With JAHWEH sat there pissing himself. "What the fuck were you trying to do there?", he'd say, "How exactly was that going to work?"

And that's what the tiny sliver of a percent of me worries about. That God's a little bit off-kilter in the humour department.

On a seperate note - I watched 'Heathers' again the other night. I had totally forgotten how fuckin' awesome it is. You must purchase it, even if the 'Special Edition' is a bit sparse with the extras. Oh, and get the new LCD Soundsystem album - don't think, just get it.

Panda forward, chums. 2005 is marching ever onwards

Le singe

There I am, trying to calm down the bear in the cage, when over strolls a little bastard monkey. He proceeds to noise up the poor bear by poking him with a stick he found. I go over to intervene and the little fucker jumps up and attacks me, jumping all over me, hitting me with his little stick. He even attempts a few bites, and that's the last thing I need - fuckin' rabies. I manage to fight him off, even though he's unnaturally strong for a small primate, and hurl him over towards a large oak tree. He scrabbles about in the grass and somehow, he finds a knife. One of those stilletto numbers, proper fuckin' nasty. He advances towards me, screaming and screeching like a monkey possessed and lunges at me, stabbing. At this point, and I swear to God, my mobile goes off, waking me up. A fuckin' shitty text message. How annoying is that? I really wanted to know how I was gonna disarm that monkey, and if I was gonna release the bear. I read the text message, then conked back out. My dream this time was far more bizarre, epic and unresolved. Why can I never finish the good dreams?

They all float down here

Now, I don't normally go in for all that 'hippy-dippy' shit (it's mostly a loads of baws) but when my flatmate went for a float a month or so ago, he said it was fuckin' awesome, and that was good enough for me. I turned up at Floatworks at 12.30 today feeling unusually nervous (it was probably a combination of the fear of the unknown, the heavy breakcore in my CD player and London 'Motherfuckin' Fuckers' Transport - how I loathe the Underground), and was invited to take my shoes off, don a pair of plastic flip-flops, take a seat and fill in some forms. Jeesus, fuckin' flip-flops - this was more hippy-ish than I was expecting.

The forms were just your standard affair, but there was a nice wee bit informing you not to be fucked up on drink or drugs. No no, for today you will be experiencing 'pure' alteration of your consciousness, so you don't wanna be half-cocked already. They gave me a wee booklet to read, and also a menu. 'A menu for what?' you may ask - a menu for....the music! They play music for the first 10 minutes, to ease you into the whole thing, and you get to choose which dreamy, trancey, ambient dirge gets piped into your pod. I only mention this because one of the tracks had, and I shit you not, 'Suitable for vegetarians and vegans', written next it. What the fuck?! I seriously couldn't work out if this was a joke or not. Maybe all the other tracks were made by banging the skulls of minks together while stamping on a pig, I really wouldn't want to hazard a guess.

Okay, onto the float itself. The 'pod' that you get into looks like a Fisher Price version of the thing Neo wakes up in, after being expelled from the Matrix. You get in to the, really quite shallow, water, lie down, press a few buttons to shut the door and turn off the light, and then that's you stuck with nothing but yourself for company for the next hour. The water is jam-packed with salts 'n' shit, so the way you float on the surface is really cool; the water and air are kept at body temperature, so it's hard to know where one ends and the other begins; it's completely silent - the only thing you can hear is the sound of the blood pulsing through your body and and your own, slightly alien sounding, breathing; it feels much more spacious than it actually is - a few times I totally got lost and didn't know what way I was orientated.

Lying there felt a bit like trying to fall asleep - there were random thoughts whizzing about my brain for what felt like hours, but when that subsided (I may actually have fell asleep for a few minutes, it was hard to tell) I started to really enjoy it. I didn't experience any visions, but I'm sure there were a few auditory hallucinations - voices and stuff, which is pretty cool. It makes your body feel really weird, because you feel like you're floating in nothingness - it totally fixed a lot of wee niggling things I had going on, and my fucked back feels a lot better (though hunching over this computer to write this is possibly negating that).

When the hour was up I got up out of the tub and showered all the shit off me, got dressed, paid the nice people, then wandered out into the cold London afternoon, feeling kind of odd. The only way I can describe it is.....well, it was like an 'anti-hangover'. You know that way when you have a slight hangover and everything just feels shit and a bit wrong? Well this was the opposite of that - things just felt right. Maybe it's 'cos it's the first time I've been truly relaxed in years - I mean how often can a 21st Century Westerner really say they just went an hour with absolutely no stimuli whatsoever?

I wandered along the South Bank, Joanna Newsom on the headphones, knowing smirk on the face. A train went by me on the bridge, it had 'Jim is bent' scrawled on it in foot high letters. All was good and right in the world. I still feel kinda peachy right now.

(Oh, and 'No' - I didn't piss in the floatation tank)

Bricking Swans For World Peace

I'm on a total 'Swan Hate' at the moment. I don't know what it is about them, but I just don't see them as the beautiful 'True Love Forever' animals that everyone else does. To me they're just the arrogant fucks of the bird kingdom. They don't even make sounds like a proper bird, with all that hissing and cackling - it's like someone decapitated a bird, then stapled a feathery snake onto the body, in place of the head and neck. And that thing about them being able to break a human arm with their beak? What the fuck is that all about? Is that even true? Let me tell you, the fucker wouldn't get the chance. He'd have his neck broken with a well aimed brick from 30 yards. So yeah, fuck 'em.

By Christ did I see a film at the weekend! Team America : World Police....it was imense. At first it's a bit goofy, but funny in an 'oh look, it's puppets swearing' kinda way, but once that wears off you get right into it. The songs are magic, especially the one where they basically just rip the piss out of Pearl Harbour; and the range of emotion they get from the puppets' faces is remarkeable. It's also good to see both the American Left and Right getting the fuck ripped out of them. Go see it, FUCK YEAH!

Tomorrow I'm going for a shot in a floatation tank. Will it be a transendental experience, will it be boring, will I fall asleep, are you allowed to pee in the tanks? The answers to these and other questions coming tomorrow (or possibly later).

Diane, I have in my hand a small box of chocolate bunnies

Holy fuckin' shit, that took a lot longer than I thought. After an hour of cutting up tape, lining up bits of paper and the over-misuse of colourful curse words - the massive Rasterbation is UP. Ho ho, it's a fucking belter, I swear to Christ. But before we get to that, let's look at the lengthy, and particularly uninteresting process I went through before I even started putting it up.

The other day I decided I was going to use the cool picture of Johhny Depp in 'Fear and Loathing'. I ran it through the Rasterbator and... well, after printing it out it looked like this:

This, while pretty cool, wasn't exactly what I was looking for - so up on the wall it did not go. I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do with the 21 sheets of A4 that this baby used up. I imagine they'll be used by Drunk Me to scrawl messages to Sober Me, to remember to buy milk or some shit.

I decided to piss about and waste some more ink by putting Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks above the kitchen door:

...look at him, watching over the sitting room like some iron willed god. 'That's damn fine coffee', he seems to playfully say, while fixing you, paradoxically, with the cold dead eyes of a veteran FBI Agent. I wish that photo turned out better, but alas - I canny get it to look decent. Remember that bit in the first series of Twin Peaks when he walks by the llama? The look they give one another still sends me into apoplexy.

So, with that one in place I decided to pay homage to one of my favourite trash films of all time - The Boondock Saints. If you haven't seen it you should check it out - it's a cool wee piece of brain candy, and has enough random violence in it to keep even the most desensitized bastard interested. They're like Irish Punishers! These bad boys now reside in space above my bedroom door:



OK, I know they don't look too hot in this photo, but in real life they look fuckin' badass. You have to walk under their silenced pistols and menacing gaze to walk out of my room.

Now, on to the main event. I've been on a bit of a David Lynch trip recently, watching Twin Peaks, watching the films, downloading music from said films, etc. so I thought 'Fuck it, it really should be Mulholland Drive'. My favourite image that I could find from the film is this beauty:



...it's absolutely perfect; it has the right contrast, it's iconic, it's the fuckin' shit. And when printed out onto 32 pieces of A4 and carefully tacked up on the wall above my bed it looks like this (click it to see it bigger):



...sweet fancy fuckin' Moses, is that not a thing of beauty? It's glorious, it truly is. It completely dominates my entire bedroom. Christ, I feel like fuckin' 'King of the Pimps', all I need now is a mirror over my bed.

Don't take any guff from these fucking swine

So, I spent the vast majority of the weekend completely pissed off my face. How thoroughly depressing. I did manage to play a load of Burnout 3 on the PS2 with my flatmate, though. Virtual drunk driving is a truly great invention of modern man, it's so much fun it's bordering on the illegal.

I also squeezed in a wee walk to Portobello Market, where I bought a small selection of tat, and a couple of decent CDs from Rough Trade. Due to the aforementioned drunkeness, the CDs aren't even out of their cellophane. On the walk back we found a framed Full Metal Jacket poster that someone had thrown out. I thought, 'fuck it, I'll have that'. So I did.

It has caused me to rethink the decor in my room. I'm gonna do a big fuck-off rasterized image to put up over my bed. This is the best website to use if you wanna do one yourself - Rasterbator. I swear to God, it's the fuckin' shit. The only thing is, I dunno what picture to use. At the moment, I think it's gonna be this one...



...but I'm not sure if there's enough contrast going on for it to look cool. Though, how could that fuckin' Gonzo maniac not look cool, eh? Hmm, I'll just have to try it and see how it looks.

Anyways, expect an update, WITH MOTHERFUCKIN' PHOTOS, once I've got it all done and up on my wall.

Laters

Soft, like a velvet child

Following on from yesterday (and in more ways than one - fuck me in the face with a Biro, I might actually be building some sort of narrative structure here), I thought I'd draw your attention to the video for 'Soulwax - E-Talking'. It's a clever wee video and the song's pretty cool too, though I think they start to lose it towards the end (the video I mean, not the song). I mean, since when did anyone really consider whiskey to be a drug? Though, come to think of it I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a narcotic beginning with 'W'. Actually, no - fuck it, that's easy - Wormwood, as contained in Absinthe. There's yer drug beginning with 'W' (which is still, technically alcohol). The video was filmed in Fabric, and I was actually in the DJ booth that Soulwax are seen DJ'ing in, with paper bags on their heads. Not that I was actually doing anything productive when I was there, no, because I am a talentless fuck when it comes to music. I was mostly getting in the way.

Right-o - onto the video. You can view it here.

Enjoy.

Embrace the Infinite

Well that was a pretty hectic weekend. On Saturday I did fuck all, 'cept sit in the flat and drink Grolsch/use the 'net. I gave that 'Jerry Springer - Opera' a swatch, just to see what all those demented fuckwits were getting themselves in a tizzy over. It was quite funny and had some decent songs, but it wasn't groundbreaking. Or maybe it was, I've never really seen an opera before, modern or otherwise. David Soul was cracking as Jerry, he was quite uncanny in his depiction.

On Sunday I was guestlisted for Fabric. It's the first time I've been there (first time I've been anywhere near Farringdon, too), and it was a fucking monster of a night. The sound system in the place is fuckin' immense, you could hear every little nuance of the music. What was supposed to be a 'quiet' night got slightly out of control - I ended up, off my champer, sitting in some wee tea bar at 5.30am, drinking scolding hot tea with a bunch of randoms from Chelmseford. Oh, and we nearly died on the way home. The taxi fucked right into a bag of bricks on the A40 and we were nearly mangled on the crash barrier. After we came to a standstill, we made our excuses, then got the fuck outta there and onto the Tube. All in all, a good night.

And that's the end of this 'Dear Diary' moment. I'll try and have something important/funny to say tomorrow when I've fully recovered from this ungodly *hangover*.

[Oh, if you don't have it yet I strongly advise going here and downloading 'Daft Punk is Playing At My House (Soulwax Shibuya Remix)'. It's fuckin' awesome and kicks the balls off the original. Oh aye, try and find 'Soulwax - E-Talking (Soulwax Nite Version feat. Nancy Whang)' , too. I would find it for you, but I'm not your bitch - one track is all your getting.]

'PANDACORE' or 'Panda Corps'?

I don't care what people say about Banksy, I fuckin' love him. Seeing a wee bit of his art as I'm walking down the street really brightens up my day. Buy his new book. In fact, fuck it - buy all his books. If it wasn't for him, Britain (and in particular, London [and in particular, Shoreditch]) would be even more of a soulless grey fuck-up of a place. If it wasn't for him you'd be even more aware that the place is inhabited by brain-dead robots and cunts. If it wasn't for him you wouldn't be able to giggle like a girl at the drawing of the cute wittle wabbit on the wall. Aw look at his itty-bitty bomb, he's wuvvely.

Right, that's enough of that. I haven't bought nearly as many CDs as I'd have liked this year (due to the whole 'moving-to-London' thing) and I know I've left a lot of decent ones I bought recently back in Glasgow, but that isn't gonna stop me inflicting this on you:

Music made in 2004 that was good and that I bought

I have no idea why I choose to write these things on Amazon. I'm such a corporate sell-out. Oo oo, here's last year's, in case you missed it. It was far better.

Laters

Shoelace Tension Discrepancy - The Facts

You know what it's like, you're rushing out to meet someone, just about to cross the threshold and leave the house, when you realise you have no shoes on. So, you throw on your favourite trainers, tie the laces, then bound out the front door like a giddy schoolchild. It's only when you're halfway down to the train station that you realise something ain't right. Your feet don't feel symmetrical, with every step you feel a nagging unease. Fuck - one of the laces is tighter than the other. You stop, loosen off the shoe then re-tie it. A few steps later you it's becoming apparent you've made things worse. Try as hard as you can, but no amount of tweaking or fine tuning can get both your shoes in sync, and it'll be smouldering away at the back of your mind for as long as have the shoes on, cutting into your soul like a big sharp thing.

Shoelace Tension Discrepancy (STenD), folks - that's what's happening here. It's been the scourge of humanity since primitive man first invented mammoth skin shoes. Wars have been started because of it (Hitler was a chronic sufferer), husbands have murdered wives and children over it (the infamous 'Mammett Sneaker Murders' in Wisconsin in 1977) and it almost caused a fatal error in judgement during the 1969 moon landing. Looking at this graph:



...we see that not only is STenD becoming more common over the years (as society's attention span becomes so degraded, few people can tie their shoelaces properly first time), but that the instances of it are becoming far more devastating for sufferers. Since 1998 'Lace Rage' has risen by 38%; UK businesses are losing over 16 million working days a year due to employees constantly fiddling with their laces; children's development is suffering because of their increased irritation when learning to tie their laces. If something isn't done soon, the human race is well and truly fucked.

But what can we do? There are several schools of thought on the matter, here I'll show you 3 of the most popular:

1.Velcro - velcro suffers from similar problems to laces, but these can be remedied far more easily due to the nature of the 'hook & eye' mechanism. The downside? Most velcro shoes look like a pile of shite.

2.Leave the laces tied all the time - this is the most popular approach. Unfortunately it can lead to the inside back of the trainer getting fucked up, due to the strain put on it when moving the foot in and out of the shoe.

3.Alcohol - this is my preferred method. When you go out, if you notice you are suffering from STenD, get yourself to the pub for a few pints. Soon you'll barely even notice you're wearing shoes, never mind that there's a problem with them.

Hopefully you have found this information useful, and if you're one of the 3 billion people worldwide who suffer in silence from STenD, you'll know you're not alone. Far from it.

With a little understanding, together we can beat this menace.

Doctor Marc'o van Bastard SCD, ESS
Professor of Lace Mechanics and Aglets, Clydebank University

Londoners don't know jack-shit about Hogmanay

Hello again Internets people. Do you know what I seen in Tesco this morning? Fucking mini-eggs, shitloads of them - piled up in the impulse buy bit, just in front of the registers. I mean, for fuck's sake, we've only just recovered (or not quite) from New Year and they're already pushing Easter on us. What the fuck? This has to be some sort of record.

Talking of New Year, how was it for you? Did you go to some shitty party and get depressingly drunk? I'll bet you did. My body's still reeling after the shitstorm of abuse I subjected it to over the weekend. The Hoxton Pimps night was pretty fucking cool. It started off in appalling fashion as no one seemd to know what the fuck was going on - it was wall-to-wall bawbag as people were jockeying for dance floor position and fighting like crack-addled hobos to get a drink. The bells came and went with very little fanfare - WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH LONDON PEOPLE? After midnight everything calmed down and it turned into a very respectable wee night. We were proper fucked, and continued it on throughout Saturday, too. All in all - good, but it really didn't feel like a Hogmanay night due to the lacklustre, 'I'm too fuckin' cool to jump about like a loon at the bells' attitude of the Hoxtonites.

I'm paying for it all now, though, with a cold/sore throat combo on it's way. Fuck-a-doodle-doo.