Thursday, October 30, 2003
This is one of the most wonderful threads on ILE in ages.
10/30/2003 11:19:00 pm
Ian mentions a debate on the Stylus Staff Messageboard about the upcoming end-of-year feature, and all the necessary-but-evil debates about what qualifies, why, when, where, and, most pertinantly, whether the list is supposed to represent your 'favourite' records of the last 12 months, or the 'best'.
I was considering attempting to put together something about my feelings (which err very much on the subjective favourite side of the equation) but I'm not sure that would be helpful. So, in order to further the debate, I've thrown it to I Love Music. I will, however, add a small equation drawn from the initial discussion to this post;
If you're distinguishing between 'favourite' and 'best' then you are effectively saying several things -
1; I have 'poor' taste
2; I also have 'good' judgement
3; The two are not the same thing
4; I know better than myself
5; I do not trust my own reaction to works of art
6; I am prepared to lie about the way I feel in order to appear objective
10/30/2003 08:12:00 pm
Am I happy? What is happy? Am I just getting on with things?
10/30/2003 08:09:00 pm
The joys of public transport...
Only two carriages this morning for the 8.31 from Dawlish, officially the busiest train in the county. But that's OK, because it's half-term, so the College Kids aren't aboard and seats are, if not plentiful, at least available. Anyway... there was a bloke sitting diagonally behind me across the aisle listening to his CD walkman, and as the train slowed to stop at Starcross I could hear for a brief second as the engine quieted a few notes of guitar, second-hand sound drifting in my direction. Can! But what Can? Clear notes of guitar, almost a recognisable solo or riff, suggesting that it was early. Monster Movie? No, no. Not even that early. It took me a few minutes to place it, first in terms of which album it was from, and then, in quick procession, which song. Tago Mago! "Paperhouse"! Wonderful! I was tempted to ask the guy what he was listening to, but didn't, in case I was wrong and it was bad Belgian heavy metal, but I knew it wasn't. Train ettiquette doesn't permit strangers to converse about early 70s German free-jazz-prog-rock. And of course, as mentioned mere seconds ago, the embarassment had it not been Can at all would have been unbearable at that time in the morning. I like to think the chap was actually Phill Brown, who engineered those Talk Talk albums I'm always wittering on about, but the chances of him being on the 8.31 from Dawlish are somewhat remote, so in all probability it was just some bloke who likes Can.
As I was walking down the aisle to leave the train at Exeter St. Davids I noticed another man reading Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights, and felt that, for once, the cultural intake of my fellow commuters matched my own, which gave me a sense of connection to the morning journey that I've seldom felt. The world's not such a bad place after all.
10/30/2003 03:25:00 pm
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Doesn't this totally devalue the way you felt before though, all the angst and rage and so on, by being a very simple and obvious solution to it? A solution that you knew existed. Doesn't the fact that emotional involvement and sexual contact have combined to ameliorate, alleviate, cure, end your existential angst, make that same angst seem so much less profound now? Did the angst complicate and delay the facilitation of the solution?
In other words; good on you, buddy.
10/28/2003 02:25:00 pm
Thursday, October 23, 2003
And what's more, if you are scared of spiders then you will always, subconsciously, be on the look-out for spiders, and thus see more spiders than the people who are not afraid of spiders see.
10/23/2003 08:37:00 pm
The below is also, of course, part of the reason why I am an asshole.
10/23/2003 08:28:00 pm
There are three tragic things about the recent (apparent) suicides of singer-songwriters Matthew Jay and Elliott Smith, and the “music world’s loss” isn’t any of them. The first tragedy is the loss of two human beings; sons, brothers, lovers, friends and more, no doubt, to the various and individual people around them. I cannot begin to comprehend how the people who actually knew these two young men (24 and 34 respectively, almost the same as me and my eldest brother) feel, and I shan’t do them a disservice or disrespect by even trying.
The second tragedy is that they will no doubt be added to the pantheon of musicians, pop and rock stars, who led sad or crazed lives and who died early. The myth of the romantic soul shall remain undimmed; the artistic temperament too fragile and beautiful for this world, chewed up and spat out by the music industry. It stretches back to Keats. No; it stretches back to Jesus. Lennon, Cobain, Joplin, Hendrix, Drake, both Buckleys, Coltrane, Aaliyah even. You can count James Dean too. Canonised by death. Is it a basic human need, to try and understand death by mythologizing it, by making those who die young somehow seem more special and wondrous and delicate than the rest of us? Perhaps. Perhaps it’s a capitalist thing, the need to use somebody’s myth and image to market what little product they managed to create in a short lifetime to as large an audience as possible? No. I’m not that cynical. The fetishisation of the talented young deceased will continue, I’m afraid, and it makes me sick to my stomach.
The third tragedy isn’t a third at all, but a refraction of the second. Or, rather, the second is a refraction of the third, which is the simple fact that here we have the lives of two young men, two amongst thousands every year, who felt unable to continue living in this world. People who thought, for whatever reason, that they had no option, no chance, no reason, to make their life into whatever they felt they needed or wanted in order to make it worth prolonging being alive. Two young men who felt so bad, in fact, that they had to desperately stop being alive.
I can’t pretend to understand depression. I am, I think, to aware (read ‘solipsistic’) to find myself in a position where I felt I no longer had control enough over my own life to make it worthwhile. I have felt low. I have felt my feet slipping into the undertow. I have wanted to run away or leave or break things or change who I am and who sees who I am. But I know that’s nothing. I’ve seen too many people I care about be reduced to real and persistent mental and emotional anguish, anguish so severe that it requires medication, counselling, and training to ameliorate. Not cure; ameliorate. (As much as I can care about anyone after being raised to think in a language where the self-singular pronoun is privileged over and above any group or singular ‘other’ pronoun, capitalised, no less, I, made more important than you or them or us. And a language where I can make no linguistic distinction between a friend and a stranger, between someone who sells me a train ticket and someone I share a bed with; they are all you. You can claim the English language is the richest in the world but compared to the French, with tu and vous to distinguish between and demonstrate affection towards people other than yourself, our single, dismissive you is a barbaric and damaging term.) I don’t like the term clinical depression but the fact is that 50% of people in the western world (and we think we’re so civilised because we have phones that you can play games on) will experience a period of it at some time; clinical because it is diagnosed and treated. God only knows how many people who feel the same or worse, who should go to a doctor or counsellor, never do.
The fadeout of Blue by Bark Psychosis might just be the saddest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. At least today, anyway.
I had Matthew Jay’s first two EPs, but gave them away a year or more ago because, while I thought they were pretty enough in their way, I couldn’t care for them. I have only ever, to my knowledge, heard one Elliott Smith song (“Baby Britain”), which was on a compilation CD made by Embrace and given out to fans who attended one of their secret gigs a couple of years ago, and which I remember thinking was wonderful. Not, however, wonderful enough for me to go out and buy his records.
Olly, this is why I’m worried about you, and why I alternately want to walk away from you or kick your arse. Who you are really is only limited by your imagination and your ability to see through what you imagine into actuality.
10/23/2003 08:27:00 pm
Any ends necessary that don't fuck up anybody else. Balance and bravery.
10/23/2003 11:54:00 am
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Decide who you want to be and take steps to make that who you are. Do something differently every day. Notice when a situation arises which necessitates you respond, and pledge not to respond in the manner which is typical of you. Do not be bound to system and definition because of who you think you are. Be aware at every second that you do not have to be acting the way you are acting. Reduce all angles to zero.
"If you are ten degrees and walk a mile from your origin then you may appear broad but it is an illusion. If you are no degrees, zero, then you have no origin and you are as broad as you are non-existent. With OK Computer Radiohead opened up to 180 degrees and walked a mile and appeared to be everything. Where do you go from there? Back upon yourself? No. You dissolve yourself, you become no degrees, and you become no degrees by going full circle, reaching 360 and closing."
Dissolve yourself. At this point you can go in any direction and the direction is decided by YOU.
A conversation between young Sam and I. Which just happens to be, in a roundabout way, about this kind of thing.
From last January...
Are we talking extreme existential desolation here? Nihilism as result of existential hopelessness, voidness of the soul, post-God lack of purpose? My favourite subject. Taxi Driver, Keep The Aspidistra Flying, Fight Club, Nausea, The Outsider, hooray! Urban masculine postmodern existential miserablist ennui! All the protagonists and all the writers are male! Because we, men, aeselfish wee bastards! Oh yes! Guilty at our lack of success, beauty, at repulsed by our repugnant laziness and selfishness and lack of drive and passiona nd commitment, crippled by our inferiority complexes, we invent existentialism! "I am not lazy, I am not selfish, I am deeply sensitive and profound and in great philosophical pain at all times..." I love it. And I also hate it. William and I regularly discuss at length techniques for living in a modern world and not succumbing, aggreeing that the best way is to get to the bottom of the existential trough and then bounce back up again (both of us having seemingly done this - my particular rock bottom was reached in a strange confluence of drugs, drink, Sartre, perfume, ecological disgust and complete absence of faith and hope = great fun!), realising on the return journey just what a twat you've been. The point at which nihilism occurs as a possible alternative/way out/solution is, I believe, just before you hit the bottom of the trough.
But isn't nihilism as idealism = purposelessness as purpose? The belief that no principles or beliefs can have meaning is in itself a belief and does in itself have a meaning! Isn't therefore the pursuit of nihilism an effort in itself and therefore un-nihilistic? Is it something that requires conscious thought or is it achieved by regressing to the idiot savant state, or Deleuze & Guitarri's condition of the schizophrenic? And at that point are you nihilistic or do you just act in a way which is nihilistic? And is there, at root, a difference?
But anyway. How to bounce back up? Become Zen! Yes yes yes. Abdicate from the Western duality of mind(spirit/soul) and body, of art and science, of romantic and classical! Yes yes yes. Seriously, I read The Tao Te Ching and The Tao Of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, plus some Debord and Heidegger and lots of stuff about Buddhism and so on and so forth, thought about things a lot until I came to the conclusion that it's not that bad. All these things that piss you off (the mundanity of most discourse, the insincerity of everyday communication, the insidiousness of business, the ulterior/interior motives of government, the dehumanising effects of city life, the unstoppable flow of capitalism, the creation within us of false and disproportionate desires [we're not all gonna be beautiful artists, rock stars, writers, monarchs footballers], pollution, any of it, all of it), you can avoid some of them (don't like living in the city? Don't live there! There is always a way out) and those you can't avoid you can live with, and even enjoy some of them (those petty, redundant conversations - just 'cos they're petty doesn't mean they're evil, doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed or productive). Culture itself does not make anyone into a pariah, it can't, it's a thingy, it doesn't exist, it's just a collection of stuff we do. You make yourself into a pariah and therefore you can unmake yourself into a pariah too. And you keep reading and you keep listening and looking, and you see the people who are getting on with their lives and are happy and you don't copy what they do so much as how they do it, because it's not about events or objects or articles but rather about approaches. Nihilism! Yay! It's escapable, and existential angst which causes it is escapable too!
are you nihilistic or do you just act in a way which is nihilistic? And is there, at root, a difference?
A mate of mine kept on cheating on his girlfriend, and everytime he'd do it, he'd ring me the next day and say "but I'm not a bad person am I? I don't mean to do it!" After a while I got bored of this little roleplay, and replied, very sensibly, "if cheating on one's girlfriend makes one a bad person, then you ARE a bad person, simply because you do cheat on your girlfriend. The intention matters not one jot." We try and seperate the 'being' from the 'acting' when really they are one and the same, the 'being' in our logic tied to the 'soul' and the acting tied to the 'body', when there is no duality between the two! Stop talking about your liver or your legs or your ears as if you bought them and realise that they are you and you are them and that that is not a big thing, it's just the way it is and they can change and you can change and nothing is immutable! Yes yes yes!
Nihilism = bad for you, and objectionable, and yet you still quite enjoy it, like wallowing in self-pity or picking a really bad scab. It gives you an excuse to be shit and to be a shit, takes off any of that oh so burdonsome weight of expectation, for a little while at least. Cos you either grow out of it or you die! A|nd the weight of expectation is never really gone anyway, never really divorced, it just gets hidden, and it'll come back. After all, that's why you're a nihilist, isn't it? Getting rid of the weight of expectation means embracing now and not the future or the past, and nihilism is about not even embracing now, not embracing anything, except futility, and that's wrong, because now isn't futile! Now is great!
So, to conclude, nihilism = dud. Getting out of nihilism = classic.
-- Nick Southall (n.j.southall@ex.ac.uk), January 22nd, 2003.
For more...
Next, read The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart.
You do not have to be the way you think you are.
10/22/2003 07:38:00 pm
Oliver, fucking stop it. Stop painting yourself into a fatalistic, paranoid corner. I shall elaborate tonight. But for now, just fucking stop it.
10/22/2003 03:35:00 pm
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Version 150.
10/21/2003 08:59:00 am
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Comedy bomb. Yes, I like the idea of that.
10/18/2003 11:49:00 am
Friday, October 17, 2003
Consider this a moment...
You are in a war, a dirty, long-fought desert war which has seen the death of many men both friend and foe. You are alone in a horizonless plain, shot and bleeding slowly to death. No, not alone. The only other living being is the man who shot you. Consider his nature. Is he a bad man? Is he a man who believes he is good? Is he a good man?
The bad man sees you, bleeding slowly and painfully to death, his own bullet lodged deep beneath an artery, your life-force flowing quickly from you, your nerve endings caught in the agonising space between excrutiating pain and the relief of blissful numbness. He knows you will take an age to die, alone and in pain. The bad man shoots you in the head and kills you instantly, before turning and walking away.
The man who believes he is good sees you, bleeding slowly and painfully to death, his own bullet lodged deep beneath an artery, your life-force flowing quickly from you, your nerve endings caught in the agonising space between excrutiating pain and the relief of blissful numbness. he knows you will take an age to die, alone and in pain. The man who believes he is good says he cannot shoot you again, that you must think about what you have done, that you must make peace with your god, before turning and walking away.
The good man sees you, bleeding slowly and painfully to death, his own bullet lodged deep beneath an artery, your life-force flowing quickly from you, your nerve endings caught in the agonising space between excrutiating pain and the relief of blissful numbness. He knows you will take an age to die, alone and in pain. The good man shoots you in the head and kills you instantly, before turning and walking away.
Where is the bad man and where is the good man?
10/17/2003 09:16:00 pm
Nick sits at the computer in his bedroom, tapping at the keys, pausing and retracing his digital steps every few seconds as his slightly drunken fingers hit the wrong keys, Massive Attack's remix of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's "Mustt Mustt" schloozing from the small, fake-wood speakers positioned to either side of his flatscreen monitor (digital interference flashing pink as he illegally downloads more music), each speaker a light brown box, some nine inches high, powered by the small, glass-fronted Sony minisystem which sits, pushed shamefully into a corner, atop the chest-of-drawers to his left. Cables spiderweb behind and beside the dressing tabnle which masquerades as a desk. Nick considers whether he is a cultural tourist, an athiest fake, stealing pleasure from devotional music created in a world which is almost entirely other to him. If they want Coca-Cola then I can want Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, he thinks. Is that wrong? I never liked Coke anyway... Nick doesn't understand the words (now past Mustt Mustt and onto the less Westernised Devotional and Love Songs) and cannot ever hope to, but the swirling, magnificent arc of Fateh Khan's voice, the endless surge of tabla-based percussion and the droning, heart-yanking instrumentation beneath the rhythm does something in his chest and guts and the back of his head that makes such considerations seem trivial. Who cares about right and rite and understanding and religion when there is this?
10/17/2003 09:09:00 pm
Olly, you're a beautiful man. Thank you. x
10/17/2003 09:09:00 pm
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Olly - you left an html tag open somewhere.
10/15/2003 06:35:00 pm
I'm at work. I feel exactly the same as yesterday, which is that I suspect I am about to be ill but am not really ill yet. My tonsils are swollen slightly and a touch sore. It's a very strange condition. Oh well, there are Maya Deren films to be catalogued and screenings of Kiarostami (sic) films to be arranged and no doubt this afternoon there will be discussions of Pink Floyd's early output to have with Billy (as well as discussions over whether he wants copies of Massive Attack, .O.Rang, Mouse On Mars, Can or all of these...). My S L S K name, should you wish to peruse my folders, is frighteningly obvious, writ in big orange letters at the top of the page...
Sam is as wracked with confusion and multiplicity as any other 16-year-old, he's just got more fonts for its expression. Sam, I never knew why I liked anything until recent- no, I still don't know why I like anything, not really, I'm just very good at making up reasons by lying, bullshitting and blagging. The "some of this may not be true" caveat at the beginning is purely wonderful. We always need to be reminded. Make your life a fiction.
10/15/2003 10:23:00 am
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
In other news, I've just watched one of my favourite scenes in movie history again; the moment in Blue Velvet when Dean Stockwell's narcissistically louché and threateningly camp drug-dealer-come-pimp mimes along with Roy Orbison's strange and beautiful "In Dreams", using what looks like a miner's lamp as a fake microphone, his smoking-jacket-suited frame draped against a doorway. Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth, the very essence of psychotic for the rest of the film, stands only inches from Stockwell, his being wracked by some inner turmoil and long-repressed trauma, mouthing every word. Is it a homoerotic scene? Very possibly you could read it that way, but the charge between the two men is emotional rather than physical. The balance of power between the two men is strange; moments before Stockwell begins his performance he pops a pill in Frank's mouth, like a mother feeding a helpless infant, but it's Frank's inner furnace and his resultant inability to remain incapacitated by the allure and emotional resonance of the song that ends Stockwell's mime, positing power very much in his hands, giving the audience jurisdiction over the actor. Who the director and stage-manager of this spooked, cathartic rendition are is up for debate; Frank stands apart from Kyle Machlachlan's idealist hero and his own henchmen who form the bulk of the audience, but the performance is till very much for Frank, everyone else's presence is merely incidental.
10/14/2003 11:24:00 am
Argh.
10/14/2003 10:59:00 am
I want to buy some new jeans and some shoes and I need to sort out a new mobile phone.
10/14/2003 10:59:00 am
Damn you, germs! I have things to do!
10/14/2003 10:59:00 am
And maybe for a couple of days after that.
10/14/2003 10:59:00 am
But also, probably, no work tomorrow.
10/14/2003 10:59:00 am
That means no football.
10/14/2003 10:58:00 am
Asshat.
My tonsils have swollen up overnight.
10/14/2003 10:58:00 am
Monday, October 13, 2003
Sheath has arrived; many many thanks to the person concerned. (Actually got here Friday, I'm just forgetful.)
10/13/2003 10:01:00 am
Sunday, October 12, 2003
Addendum to below post; a chair would've been good. If I'd been able to sit down I'd have loved it. If I'd been able to sit down and if the sound had been a bit better and between a bit and a lot quieter - the cavern is a cavern, the bass in there reverbs like a Hippo giving oral (it hurts my head like a hundred dogs!). And if maybe the Cavern's typical crowd wasn't quite so rock/punk oriented; I'm not sure they knew what to do with Four Tet live, although people were obviously enjoying it. At least the bits when he wasn't pitch-shifting backwards samples and bottom-end filtersweeps so that they made a; your head ring like a fire-alarm and b; your stomach threaten to collapse on the floor.
10/12/2003 12:44:00 am
Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
No...
Four Tet Live @ Exeter's Cavern Club, October 11th 2003
Or...
Why Electronic Music Doesn't Really Work Live, Especially in a RockTM Venue
I mean what are you meant to do? Dance? Pogo? Sing-a-long? Nod your head? Cheer when you recognise a bit of a song from his latest critically-acclaimed album, no matter how mangled-up and spasticated Kieron has chanced to make it this evening? Get really high? Retreat to the bar? Chat up student girls in vest-tops? I saw people doing all these things. None of them looked convinced (especially the student girls).
So what's the problem? Well, for a start, visually, to watch Four Tet is essentially to watch someone play a computer game whilst nodding their head to abstract techno.
Ah fuck it.
It's nearly quarter to one in the morning and I can't actually focus on the fucking screen. I need to go to bed. Tomorrow I have to watch Brazil eat Jamaica and write about Luke Vibert. I have lots of interesting thoughts about Four Tet live which I'll edit into this post when I can be arsed.
Good night and God Bless.
10/12/2003 12:25:00 am
Saturday, October 11, 2003
Go to a gig today. I'm off to see Four Tet this evening. Not quite a band, but there you go.
10/11/2003 10:57:00 am
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
For fuck's sake, like; I know I'm cool, I know I know a lot, I know I sit in the corner with 600 CDs above my desk, I know I'm tapping away on the keyboard as if I don't care about you (and believe me, most of the time I don't), I know you're 18 or 19 or fucking 57 and away at university for the first time and it's scary and you've never really used a library and I know I work here but I am not fucking psychic; I cannot tell what you want if you just come up to me sheepishly with something in your hand and stand 3 feet away looking at your fucking new shoes and don't say anything to me. I am not MAGICAL. Not for you, anyway.
Working in university libraries is fun.
10/08/2003 01:50:00 pm
A litany of shit.
In descending order of nastiness, stupidity and disrepute...
1 2 3 4 5 6
I think it's fair to say that professional football in this country is slipping rapidly down a very dark hole.
10/08/2003 11:07:00 am
What a surprise, blogger's a bit fucked.
10/08/2003 11:00:00 am
I saw a real, live badger last night, running down the back road from Teignmouth golf course to Dawlish Water, causing me to crawl along at 10mph as he weaved across the road. I must've followed him (blame Kenneth Grahame, but all badgers from now on are anthropomorphised as male) for half a mile before he ducked through a hedge. I've only ever seen dead badgers before.
10/08/2003 09:22:00 am
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
How many ways do I love you, Mouse On Mars? Many, many ways.
Only seven of us turned up tonight, fucking pathetic, just 'cos they lost last Sunday (I never play on Sundays, who the fuck wants to get bodychecked by fat men when they could be eating crumpets, eh?- last season I made two appearances, one as substitute striker [my natural position, being selfish and lazy and possessing a thunderous and occasionally accurate right-foot] and one as rightback [not my natural position]; I scored one goal, which was when I came on upfront- moral of the tale?- never ask Nick to play in defence). But only five of the people on the next pitch turned up too, so Steve switched over and we took them on. Had we concentrated we could've scored 20, as it was we won 8-2. Billy challenged me to score seven but after a spectacular left-foot volley went an inch wide, and another left-foot shot rifled off the post I started having fun rather than concentrating, as we all did, indulging in foolish dribbles and chipped passes for team-mates to volley clear of the fence. I did score one though, the opener, a proper head-down Ronaldo burst. Billy headed a corner clear, I picked the ball up and went at their only defender who'd hung back, left him on his arse and nutmegged the keeper with satisfying aplomb FORZA! Man, I love scoring goals. Love love love scoring goals, love nutmegging people, squeezing through gaps I shouldn't be allowed to get through, picking out instant, ad-libbed passes to my brother for him to score from, turning past people, surprising people by how fast I can be when I do run, how sturdy I am when I'm barged, but most of all I love love love scoring goals, and I love scoring spectacular goals best of all, turning the keeper, smashing the back of the net out, diddling defenders and stroking it home left-footed. Don't get me wrong; I'm shit, but I enjoy it.
10/07/2003 11:20:00 pm
Monday, October 06, 2003
Marcel Duchamp. The link is on the left near the bottom. I actually read it for about 15 minutes too, which is a record, and what's more I enhoyed it. Olly, have a gander; you're not the only disaffected youth in a job he hates. But you knew that anyway.
Lisa it's your birthday...
I find the episode of The Simpsons where Bart turns Homer's shirt pink in the wash, which leads to Homer being institutionalised and meeting a brickie from New Jersey who pretends to be Michael Jackson, almost unbearably affecting. Still, after seeing it probably half-a-dozen times over the years, the bit at the end where Bart and 'Michael' sing Lisa a birthday song ("Lisa it's your birthday! / happy birthday, Lisa!") accompanied by piano and wastepaper-basket-bongos, makes me want to cry. Which, for anyone who experiences actual real emotions like an actual real human being, is the equivalent of crying lots and lots. I am always hideously aware of situations which should or could make me cry, and thus I never actually do cry, because if you know it's going to happen it's contrived and therefiore meaningless. Which is, of course, shit, but there you go. I've cried a few times over the last 18 days. I have, if you didn't know (if you care), split up with my girlfriend of the last two-and-a-bit years, which is why AusPishFish has been somewhat erratic of late (apologies to anybody who caught the incredibly profane post that appeared for 30 minutes last Tuesday at approximately 11.30pm - I know at least a couple of people did; rest assured that I have calmed down and avoided smashing the person concerned's face into tiny fucking bloody pieces with a bat, though I've still dreamt about doing it a couple of times). I shan't go into the reasons (they are long and boring and miserable and not at all like a soap opera) for fear of upsetting anyone any more than has already happened. But anyway, yeah, that song in that episode; makes me want to cry.
10/06/2003 08:56:00 pm
Maybe I ought to... Nah. Sod it. Read James' blog, the link is on the left near the top.
10/06/2003 08:29:00 pm
Drugs are bad, kids. Even natural ones.
10/06/2003 09:20:00 am
Sunday, October 05, 2003
"You're too beautiful to love these plastic things, my friend..."
10/05/2003 10:36:00 pm
I hate Philip Larkin, miserable shithead that he is/was.
This Be The Verse
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself."
10/05/2003 11:22:00 am
Friday, October 03, 2003
Read the world through the eyes of a 12-year-old AOL user.
My next review will be squeezed through this.
10/03/2003 04:32:00 pm
Kill yr pussy.
10/03/2003 11:40:00 am
Thursday, October 02, 2003
Oh yeah, I stuck my Amazon Wishlist at the bottom of the links. This means buy me things.
10/02/2003 01:18:00 pm
It's all about the reverb and the bass, you see. "Where The Geese Go". Only you can't hear the bass when you read the lyrics... But if you know the tune you'll get it.
10/02/2003 01:16:00 pm
I love Sam, but he's wrong about The Clientele. I ripped (should I say that, RIAA?- I spend thousands of pounds a year on music and fully intend to buy a real copy later in the year, so eat my fuc) The Violet Hour from S0ulseek over the weekend (my user name is guessable if you want anything - or you can always email me), and it's a lovely, woozy, warm record. I made the mistake(?) last night of listenign to it as I was going through dozens and dozens of photographs on my old computer and deleting them, so I can sell it, and the wash of nostalgia that ensued was only just the right side of bearable. The photos, for what it's worth, were all from two to two-and-a-half years ago, and most of them are of people and things from university. The nostalgia wash was compounded by a 45-minute phone call from Olly. To have kept the photos would have involved saving them all to floppy disk and transferring them to the new computer, which, frankly, I couldn't be bothered with. They're only pictures. I think it's good to clean out your closet every so often.
I was going to write about the actual Clientele record, but seem to have avoided doing so. I promise I will later.
10/02/2003 10:59:00 am
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