cNutgroist

2007-10-25T02:32:00.000-04:00

Blogicide Note 2.0

No I really don't have anything else to say right now. I am writing a book which completely takes care of this. It might never see an editor, let alone ink, paper and proles but god damn it im writing it anyway. No need to explain further.

You've all already read some of it

And thanks for the squeals, moans and general overdrive

Don't watch this space

2007-08-28T11:23:00.000-04:00

Quick break in the vow...

I check my spam regularly because it's never 100% accurate. And because I need a bigger penis.

And I just found this...

---- Forwarded Message ----
From: "nutgroist@yahoo.com"
To: nutgroist@yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, 28 August, 2007 8:32:30 AM
Subject: nutgroist@yahoo.com - Store

Charles Schwab

If you're having trouble viewing this email with images, click here.

So i'm now apparently spamming myself. I've a good mind to report myself, or maybe sign the fucker that did this up for spam. Seriously though, how on earth is this possible? And why would they do it?

That is a good price for Viagra though. Email me if you're interested

2007-08-24T16:49:00.000-04:00

Well, I died

And still they want to deport me

So I'm going on a silent retreat for much of next month

And working on a book

And a best man's speech

And applying for a new job

And moving country again

So for now, i'm going to practice the silence thing in advance, if not quite yet in retreat

Back soon....

...ish

2007-08-13T08:55:00.000-04:00

Taking a break to go drown in a river this week, aka whitewater rafting, aka brownwater rafting by the time i'm finished.

But hey, if i do drown, at least i get to stay in Canada...

2007-08-08T20:57:00.001-04:00

Two things I never thought i'd do....

1. Go to an open mic night with a guitar and get up to sing a couple of songs

2. Join Facebook

As it turns out, I was so nervous that my first song sounded like Nick Drake whispering from inside a lead-lined pillow, and not very good at that. So for the encore I BLASTED out a song and let everything rip. And it was... how can i put it?
Good.
It was something I've always wanted to do, get on stage in a dive-bar and bang out a few tunes to a bunch of half-interested boozers - all the better for being in Montreal in front of a bunch of comedians who were all expecting me to do 'my stuff'.

As for ComeOnMyFacebook.... I'm sorry, I have no idea why I joined. Those bloggers who know me, or want to, and have a facebook account, get in touch via email and we'll play a little show and tell.

2007-08-07T16:44:00.000-04:00

So there are 6 miners trapped in a mineshaft in deepest Utah, still another 3 days away from rescue, and nobody knows if they're alive or dead.

Honestly, have you people not seen Hollywood films? Of COURSE they're alive.

But I do wonder if famous psychic Sylvia Browne would care to comment this time?

Ah!

Oh!

No!

Yes!

taken from http://www.stopsylviabrowne.com/articles/c2c_sago.shtml

2007-08-01T22:16:00.000-04:00

Oh that mountain in Greece
When we heard those wild geese
And the song of the lonely goat herder

The sky turned deep blue
And I whispered to you
"What a wonderful night for a murder"

We crept through the farm
Without raising alarm
From the vigilant crippled cheese-curder

Til we came to a barn
With a roof almost gone
And I stood you as quiet as a birder

But before I could make
Up a minor eathquake
You began quoting Wolfgang Von Goethe

Some Sturm and Drang shit
And the earthiest bit
From Mahler's Das Lied Von Erde

You said "It's high time
That you paid for your crime
Before it can go any further"

So you hit me for six
With a series of kicks
And that was the point when I heard a

Falling steel girder*

*this poem has been cancelled due to an overambitious rhyme-scheme and failure to cohere. Here, have a bit of The G-Stav instead.

2007-07-29T22:18:00.000-04:00

"Fucked if I know", said Cliff

2007-07-27T02:58:00.000-04:00

It's a quarter to three, there's nobody in the place here but me...

Im in a bar, some anonymous bar somewhere downtown in the back end of a side street, one of those bars you hear about but never think to go in. Yet here I am sat at the bar, not quite yet slooped down behind the neon beer signs. I'm on my 4th or 6th scotch, Louis Armstrong on the stereo but I'm getting my ear chewed off by 'Raphael', 2 stools down, who seemingly has no home to go to. I'm half-heartedly flirting with the waitress, haven't eaten in 2 days and barely slept in twice that. My heart isn't sufficiently mended to be have been rebroken so soon and I realise I shouldn't be here.

I also realise, in a bit of a flash, I'm actually not here at all. No, I think I'm in a Tom Waits song.

Finally. I've 'made' it. And it feels.....

Bad.

So, I resolve to do what all his antiheroes do sooner or later. Get a car and just drive.

I'm going to see if I can get to the Atlantic tomorrow, just point the car east and put my foot fucking down.

Because I shouldn't be in this dark drinking hole in Quebec or in this distant continent at all right now. Monday, yes. Next year and beyond, most definitely. But right now I should be somewhere else. It's just that I can't be where I'm supposed to be - and I can't quite believe it. So I'll go as far as I can, to the bit that left Britain and Ireland behind rather longer than a year ago.

And when I get there, I'll ask it if it was such a good move.

Tom Waits - Bad Liver and a Broken Heart

Tom Waits - Frank's Wild Years

Buy buy!

2007-07-23T00:34:00.000-04:00

The Revenge of the Shit

As the weeks went by, it became obvious that Wars and I were stuck with eachother. I had even managed, in the last weekend of July last year, to find an eccentric old lady in Dun Laoighaire who was delighted to take her. 4 days later, I was called to recollect these damaged goods. SW had made a mockery of her goodwill, her care and her beautiful apartment. This woman was of a certain age, for sure, but she was also very French, a wealthy-looking art collector (ie. a kept woman) and completely fucking noisettes. I remember she 'had a lover in the Lebanon' and everything, but everything in our conversation was related back to sex. She had decided, after living a life of complete and avowed selfishness, to try and look after something - hence Star Wars. And it would have worked beautifully if only the cat had assented. It was when I returned to collect her, in failure and shame, that she chose to register her disgust with me. I popped her into my car and then returned to get her stuff from the apartment, saying my goodbyes, only to open my car door and find a fresh cat turd plopped out neatly on the front seat.
So I took her home again and she positively relished her return. My girlfriend at the time, still a full week away from laying her own disgusted gesture on me, had offered to co-foster in her house so that I wouldn't feel so stuck with an animal I had been ambivalent about. I took the symbolism to heart - this poor destitute rag of cat, once many years ago a great and vital beast no doubt, would be rehabilitated by our good care and love and would flourish once again.
I would commit and make this work. It would be beautiful, rewarding and demonstrative of our amazing ability to renew our love.

And then she dumped (on) me.

I still don't know exactly what happened or why I was responsible for what did, but a year down the line it's got all the relevance of a footnote to a foreword in a book about bollocks. I'm here and now and making different mistakes, thank you. I was left, quite literally, in a world of shit. Came home from the dumping to find Star Wars had somehow psychically, empathetically vomited all over the flat. My bed, chair and lounge carpet were the big recipients. I was, i'm very ashamed to say, violently fucking upset and very grateful that she was faster than me or i'd have done something i'd have hated myself for, forevermore. As it is, I shouted at her with the deeply angry voice of God himself and she vanished quicker than *sniff* my hopes and dreams 20 minutes earlier (oh piss off. I've written precious little about the worst day of my entire life thus far. Can't tell the Star Wars saga without the Nutgroist Love-Lost Telenovela). I sat down, stared again at the vomit, and spent the rest of the week puking my eyes out.

But of course, symbolism be damned, I still had a cat to care for. So I made peace with her and realised that the real meaning of all this was that there but for the grace of Dog went I. Staring down the barrel of my empty future, I was now deciding whether I was going to go and live on the streets (tempting but highly stupid and, as romantic gestures go, suicidally silly), keep on living in hope and Dublin (very tempting but not the most comfortable state of extra-marital affairs to maintain, when i'd just spent a year creeping along the tether) or just fuck the fuck off to wherever the fuck and try to forget the last ten years ever happened (ummm.... I've done much better than I expected, but I don't necessarily recommend it). Really, my cat's life had been a mixture of all three. Clearly a housecat of origin, for she had little problem understanding what indoors was and showed no obvious feral traits, yet cast out to live on her own she obviously didn't manage to make a good go of it.

But she also never gave up.

I would redouble my efforts to relocate her but this time, we'd try out of Dublin, now a city of blight for us both. And in the meantime, we'd have a laugh. I'm not consciously trying to put a photomontage in your head of us sitting by the fire, playing monopoly, gorging on cake, getting pissed on Grappa, dancing to James Brown and the like. But nevertheless we had some good times and she became ever more friendly. Whilst the shit and piss decreased, regrettably the vomit increased and so I tried a few different dietary regimes to see what the offending foodstuff was.

I also let her out of the apartment a few times, trying to give her a feel for the area, meet the local alleycats who ruled the backstreets of the stadium near my place etc. But she'd just hide in the nearest bush and not come out for hours. I even decided to give her her own home entirely, in front of the washing machine in the utility room, located outside and underneath the stairs. With a basket, a door left ajar and me topping up her food and drink, I thought she might become an independent cat again who I could regularly visit and feed and give affection to (shit, only now do I see something more symbolic in this relationship, but anyway...) but instead, some local fucking brazen Tom came and nicked all her food and sent her scurrying to the very far corner of the utility room, behind a MASSIVE pile of accumulated crap from the landlord that was covered in grease, oil, shite, glass, leaves, cobwebs and more shite. And I, tired and sick from a cold, having not eaten in several days nor slept in weeks, spent 4 or 5 hours emptying it out into the driveway, cutting both hands and breathing in huge bags of 1980's dust, breaking all manner of materials in the process, long into the night, just to reach my poor, frightened pussycat. Who then bit me very fucking hard when I finally reached in to get her. It took all the willpower I had left in my broken body not to lock the door and melt down the key.

And then, a miracle. A friend of friend of a wonderful comedy promoter friend of mine had found someone about 3 hours drive away in the middle of the country who would simply love to take her. They fostered all manner of cats and no matter how difficult this one was, it wouldn't be a problem and would I like them to drive over and collect it?

No, fuck it, my dear, I shall come to you. You're doing me and my cat the biggest favour possible, so it'd be a pleasure. Is there anything I need to do beforehand? Oh, get a blood test? Vaccinations? Sure, I can do that. I'll do it first thing tomorrow. Yes, of course I understand. Can't have one animal infecting all the others. The vet seemed to think she was clean from all that sort of stuff but yes, one can't be too careful and no I don't mind at all

The next day, Star Wars, my now ex-sister-in-common-law and I drive to the vet and get the tests started. The vet is very happy to hear we've found a home for her and bids us on our way.

The next next day, Star Wars, my now ex-sister-in-common-law and I drive to the vet and are told that the results of the blood test mean that poor Star Wars is suffering from jaundice, which is leading to liver failure and a prolonged and extremely painful death. We have to put her down. As we walk back in some distress to the car outside, we notice something is missing from this picture. It's the car. I'd inadvertently left it in a zone in which you can only park when there's a fucking R in the Month or an S in the Day or some screw-the-people greedy bullshit and so the Dublin Municipal Parking Enforcement and Waffen SS Department had picked it up and taken it away. Oh Star Wars, if you'd only known how much a blood test and car requisition cost these days, you'd have had the good grace to tell me you were dying and ran under my car when you had the chance. Although in retrospect, if I'd have had any common sense at all, I'd have been able to read the vomit more accurately. Which, by the way, had recently become much rarer in frequency. Things had been looking up, at least for her.

In fact, as the ex-sis-in-common-law and I tearfully, defiantly discussed when we did finally return home, Star Wars had never been in better health. Could the vet be wrong? We couched opinion from all sides and eventually all but I decided it was for the best that she be put to sleep. And so, with a heart heavier than Led Zeppelin playing on the Titanic, we took her back a few days later to be, oh what a pretty word, euthanised. The vet explained very simply that she would inject my cat with a strong sedative that would make her fall asleep and within a minute her heart would stop beating. In fact, because Star Wars was in such a weak state, it shouldn't take more than ten seconds. I made one more feeble protest to the effect that she was no ordinary cat and should be given more time to improve, but it was quickly brushed aside by many years of accumulated medical evidence and my own scorched-earth policy in regard to, well, anything and everything that was associated in any way whatsoever with my about-to-be former life.

I don't think it's right to describe her death in detail here, though I remember it all too clearly. Let's just say that after 30 seconds, she was looking at us with puzzled eyes and I knew I shouldn't have brought her.....

TEN FUCKING MINUTES LATER, AFTER MANY SOOTHING EMPTY WORDS OF REASSURANCE FROM THE VET AND ANOTHER, MORE POWERFUL INJECTION, SHE WAS STILL MOST PALPABLY ALIVE. HER HEART BEAT AND HER CHEST ROSE AND FELL. I STOOD STARING AT A THING DETERMINED NOT TO GIVE UP.

It took a third injection, directly into the heart to kill her.

We drove home, my little sis in tears and I as numb as a coma. 10 days later I was gone too.

Star Wars, Dublin, August 5, 2006.

A superb breakbeat taken from an album I used to own a very rare original copy of a long, long time ago.

2007-07-15T10:29:00.000-04:00

A New Hope

So Star Wars and I drive home. She's very calm, surprisingly. Like she knows she's being rescued, that no harm can come to her. She's probably dreaming of a nice meal of tuna or mouse, a warm home to prowl around in and a comfy lap to curl up on. When I was very small, we'd had Fleabag, a typical 1970's moggie who used to sit on my lap every afternoon cradled in my arms, until the day she decided to jump out of them and run headlong into a truck on the main road outside our house. Then in my teens there'd been Beethoven and Buttercup aka Blackbum, both of whom were absolute bitches to me and just as stylish, cruel, and deeply sexy as any lady I was to encounter later on. I hated them because I think that's what they wanted.
But with the rescue of Star Wars came my chance to reconnect and make peace with The Feline. So I pick her up, still docile as anything, and carry this bag of bones to my door. Whereupon opening, she shoots upstairs into my apartment and promptly disappears. It takes me a good 15 minutes before I find her, in my open wardrobe hiding behind some thick winter jumpers. I reach my hand in to pull her out but it doesn't get further than the spine-chilling rasp that tells me she might need a bit of time to readjust. Turns out she needs about 2 weeks, only coming out briefly to eat and drink when she thinks im not looking. Her toilet is mainly my wardrobe too. I of course had stupidly thought the neighbour would find a home for her immediately but, despite daily briefings, she never did. So I went out and bought every piece of cat-related equipment you can find and made her aware of all the nice things I'd bought for her. When she did finally emerge to spend time out in the apartment, she considered the littler tray carefully, before deciding to shit and piss next to it, twice daily.

It's funny how quickly you can get used to cleaning up the horriblest poo and wee - I'm now no longer afraid of that aspect of fatherhood - but it's also scary how quickly you can get used to NOT cleaning it up immediately. Friends would come round to meet the new lady in my life and I'd be sitting in my lounge drinking a cup of tea, eating a biscuit, reading a magazine, nice bit of reggae on the stereo, large splat of cat diarrhoea on the carpet, piss dribble up the wall - that sort of thing.

Certain friends, if they were to read this (or know of it's existence) might accuse me of waiting for them to come round and do it for me. That's a scandalous lie based entirely a misreading of coincidence. You just happened to arrive while the steam was still coming off the freshly-laid

But yes, over the course of the time I had her, Star Wars managed to shit on every floor, on every chair, on my bed, in my bed, in my bath, on my sofa, on my stairs, on the windowsill, in my car, on my carseat and most memorably of all, on my lap. It would have been explicable if she had never used the litter tray, but she did. It was an option for her, just one of many. She might take it, she might not. She often did, but she often didnt. I tried everything, of course. Feeding her at regular hours, then making a note of when it was poo time so i could follow her around with the tray and if need be pick her up mid-shit and shove her onto it. That never worked, for she would hold it in until i got bored and the very second my attention wandered, there's be a pooey or weeey smell coming from somewhere new.

Oh yes, she also shat and pissed in every cupboard, wardrobe and closet space I had. Many clothes were ruined. She was clever too, because she only chose the good ones.

To this day, when I smell Ammonia I think of her and I, battling it out. Me with my big bottle of disinfectant, her with her capacious, prolific bladder. It was war, no doubt, and my side was annihilated. I even tried sanctions, first cutting out the special lactose-free milk (who knew cats were lactose intolerant? perhaps we do have something in common after all?) and downgrading to shit catfood instead of tinned tuna, sardines and kippers (alright, i was advised not to make it regular anyway), then to dry food only, with wet food becoming a treat. Obviously starving was out of the question, though I did think about purposefully constipating her.

My sister-in-common-law and I had taken her to the vets for an initial assessment and they'd warned us that Star Wars was desperately thin, having not eaten for many weeks and might have sustained liver damage through jaundice. Apparently cats aren't designed to go without food and water for a long time. Who knew? I had presumed she was a kitten, so small and wretched did she look. The vet said she was probably 4 to 6 years old. I don't know if she looked at the rings on her feet or something. So it was our mission to care for her and fatten her up, and in less than a month we'd scrubbed her down, doubled her weight and made her feel wanted. She was looking healthy and starting to be more outgoing and affectionate. This became a problem too, as I'd often wake up in the mornings with her sitting on my face. She also took to coming and asking for food whenever she was hungry, which seemed to be every morning at around 6am. I'd feel a paw dabbing at my face and hear a miaow in my ear, then as soon as i'd open my eyes she'd make me follow her to the bowl and pour out some chow.

Meanwhile, everybody I'd ever met in Dublin and plenty of people I hadn't had been doing their best asking around for possible adopters. Many potential suitors had come and then quickly gone again when they realised the scale of the task. Clearly I was trying to offload some faulty feline goods here but secretly I must admit I was a little pleased. I was starting to grow fond of her and her me. At that point, I was still thinking I was going to be living in Dublin and although I hadn't checked the terms of my lease, my landlord had never ever been round and couldn't care less as long as he got his 1100 euro for the glorified shoebox on stilts that was my apartment in the shadow of Lansdowne Road (literally the shadow, when the sun deigned to feckin' shine).

'Tomorrow', how the Empire Struck Back - in the form of liver failure and, er, lover failure.

2007-07-11T02:42:00.000-04:00

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...well, ok, a year ago to the day...and in ireland..no, england...well...

I was in England for my friends' wedding. The fact that I saw them quite unexpectedly here last weekend in Montreal on their wedding anniversary has prompted this post. I was staying with one of my best friends in South London whilst I was there. It was, I think, the day of yet another boring world cup final. Now the night before I flew back to Dublin, he'd told me his big news:

"We're getting kittens"

-oh, great. What are you going to call them?

"Jango and Boba"

And I said... "that's ridiculous. I'm tired of people giving their pets pop culture references as names. I promise you now, if I ever get a cat, I'm going to call it 'Star Wars' "

I might add that I don't like cats - because dogs rule - so this would be a doubly cruel thing to do. Next day, on returning to Dublin, I take a bus to my then-girlfriend's house to pick up my car and as I am literally putting the key into the lock of the driver's door, I see an old man in front of me leaning over the railings of her next door neighbour's house talking to someone in this sunken open basement. I'm mildly interested until I notice that he's talking and the respondent is miaowing.

And yes, this is going where you think it is. Only it's ultimately a tragedy and not at all funny. So read on, mirth fans.

I go over and there below us is the most heart-breaking scene you ever saw: a tiny black, white and ginger-striped muddy, thinning rug of pussycat hair and eyes trapped in this deep concrete bunker with no food, no water and no way out. But I have keys to the ex's house so I go in and grab some slices of ham and a tin of tuna from her fridge, chuck one slice down to the cat and we watch her pounce and tear it apart as if she hasn't eaten in weeks. Turns out she hadn't. I throw some more down and the same thing happens. Old man and I discuss things and he says a neighbour round the corner has a ladder, so I go and ask and this very kind middle-aged couple come over with their ladder and lower it down, then the husband bravely descends and has a bit of a struggle to pick her up but eventually he does - and as he does, he lets out a sickening grunt, which I cannot understand until, as he climbs back up the ladder and places the cat in my hands, suddenly makes complete sense. For although this is a full size adult cat, she feels exactly like a stripped roast chicken-carcass. There's little more than just fur and ribcage attached to this dirty, manky head and lifeless tail. As she empties the tin of tuna and a big bowl of water I've put out for her three times, the four of us look at eachother and all say much the same thing...

"Well, I can't take her"

So we call the ISPCA and they can't and we call our cat-loving friends and they can't, but the lady says she has a definite connection to a cat fosterer who she can't get in touch with until tomorrow, so I reluctantly (though maybe not entirely so) pick her up and pop her on the passenger seat of my car with no idea where the hell i'm going to put her when i get home. Just that I have grown strongly attached to this wretched thing who looks like it's had a rough time (I think pop psychiatrists call it 'projecting') And as I drive off, the neighbour asks 'what are you going to call her?' and that's when I realise that less that 12 hours earlier i'd made a promise I never thought I'd have to fulfil (for why else does one make such promises?). And so, a year ago this week, I became the proud foster-parent of a 4 year old tortoiseshell calico cat named Star Wars

Tomorrow... How Star Wars turned to the Dark Side, shat and pissed on every single valuable thing I had and ended up killing my pet Ewok

2007-07-08T15:20:00.000-04:00

*STOP DE-PRESS*

It appears I was somewhat hasty in my judgements back there, for indeed I am still attached after all. Good. However, after my best friend, an old school friend, my girlfriend's flatmate, my landlady and even the satanically well-versed Salman Rushdie all going through big ugly splits within the last week, it would be wise to hold off on that combination toaster/goldfish bowl wedding gift you were planning on buying me. I'll let you know when...

But just to be sure, I hereby vow never to go to another concert of theirs. No, that's not actually strong enough, is it? I vow never to consider going to one of their gigs. If I accidentally end up at one, all well and good, but I shan't tempt death, destruction and jazz for people who would rather call it dance music (which is kind of what it is)

Here's a peace offering to, like, the universe maaan: another Cinematic tune, quite inappropriately called Burn Out

If you don't have their music, it's time to buy some.

2007-07-06T04:00:00.000-04:00

What is it about The Cinematic Orchestra playing in my town that promotes serious misfortune?

4 years ago they played Ronnie Scott's and I was due to go, but at the last minute my ex's dear cousin died and we were in Paris for the funeral instead. Friends who went pronounced it "best gig ever". It had not been such a good week for me. I may write about it at some point. It certainly bears retelling.

6 months later, they played Shepherd's Bush Empire and my best friend bought tickets for us. As we reached the venue he realised he'd forgotten to bring them. And indeed he had no idea where they were. We spent the night driving around London listening to their albums instead. Not bad but also kind of shit, too.

And so, last night, they played Club Soda here in Montreal as part of the Montreal Jazz Festival. They were brilliant, just brilliant and very almost worth the wait. It's true what they say - Luke Flowers is an amazing drummer, there is a sense of absolute perfection to what he does that makes the live show sound like a very tight recording session. They played all the hits, had a special guest spot from the vocal, local boy Patrick Watson and finished with the best and bizarrest cover version I've heard in a longly while: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring! It was deep, dark and viciously, viscously funky. (Not that the crowd liked it too much - more of that later) Even the lighting was original and rather fitting, I dare say even cinematic. The band looked like they were encased in these great sombre primary colours bleeding into eachother through darkness and fog, just like you see in press shots of live acts but actually never in real life. To be fair, though, the band had an easy ride as half the crowd were clearly in love with every note of their music, wildly applauding every intro that they knew and throwing many bizarre whoops and cheers out for some fairly unexceptional moments of soloing and for the rare harmonic changes of the pieces themselves. To give Jay Swinscoe credit, I think what he's managed to do better than anyone else out there right now is crack the jazz conundrum: how do you make jazz accessible to the millions of people around the world who have the ears to listen to it but don't? His answer is to play it like it's dance music and damn the purists if it gets people interested. Good man. So that was all great then.

Oh, and I went with my girlfriend of four months who is also a big fan of the band. We both had a great time after a difficult couple of weeks and by 3am we'd walked back happily to her apartment.

And at 3.10am I'm walking home down Rue Rachel, single again.

Here's the fucking Rite of Spring in all it gory, anyway, taken from this blog which is a bit more expansive about the music itself.

2007-07-05T01:40:00.000-04:00

A beautiful moment on the subway today.

I'd just come from a bit of an expensive new-agey holistic bullshit session complete with untestable methodology and highly interpretative results, by which I mean I don't believe in it at all, rationally, yet I feel it all too keenly to dismiss it as pure nonsense. The difference between the me that walks into that room and the me that walks out of it 90 minutes later is undeniable, palpable and significantly lighter by 70 dollars. Something good is happening, we just have very different language and viewpoints to describe what.

So I walk into the train carriage that's arrived at my metro station, sit down and immediately begin to scan my environment for the usual array of physical threats, edible prey and fertile cavewomen but instead I somehow settle my eyes on a young, dark kid dressed in all his gangster finery. He's maybe 19, looks half-Indian and half-African, kind of big and threatening - and... looking... straight... back... at... me.

I wasn't prepared for this, I'm normally so good at peeping around that no-one sees me seeing them and besides, I don't stare idly into peoples' eyes without good reason (if then). But my brother taught me to stare down anyone and everyone, always, and it's a piece of advice I've recently re-applied for licensing rights of, having gained a brash slice of confidence in the last few years (relative to a fieldmouse with a birthmark, anyway). So I stare straight back, and of course he's NOT flinching. And I'm not flinching, because I'm a man and he's a boy. A couple of miliseconds go by and still he doesn't budge. I can read in his eyes the simple, completely justified thought "What is this odd-shaped white man doing staring me down? Does he really want me to kick his ass? I will kick his ass" and with that in mind, I opt very quickly to lose this battle of 'wits', darting my eyes any which way but that - and besides, it's really gay staring into a man's eyes on the train. What if... but no... it could never be. Or could it...?

I look back. I can't help it, I just have to. I'd only looked away half a second ago and already i'm back, staring at him. I can't even think why. I'd say it's because I have an appalling short-term memory, meaning my thought processes go something like "Where was I? You were sitting here staring at that guy in front of you. Oh yeah, thanks. No problem" But for some reason, and I think it's not unconnected with my previous chakratic fondlements, I SMILE at him. I think it comes from realising the absurdity and hilarity of the situation more than any desire to actually make peace. I'm really just smiling at myself, not at him at all. However, he catches my eye again, sees me smiling and I watch him struggle, really struggle with himself over the next split and a half seconds as he loses the fight, breaking into a massive, beaming grin too. And all the while we're still staring at eachother and for all the world to see it looks like two young men from different sides of the tracks, both dressed in their boldest heterosexual clothing, have finally found true gay love, through the barricades, by staring into eachothers' eyes and smiling. Oh god.

We both look away, but I can't stop laughing now and out of the corner of my eye I see he's also still very amused by this. And so we reach level three of major social awkwardness as I pray it's his stop next and get my wish granted.

Well I guess it was his stop. He got off. To be honest, if it hadn't been, then it would have been mine. Maybe I forced him off with my disarmingly friendly fauxmosexual advances? I have to watch myself now, though not too closely.

2007-07-04T12:28:00.000-04:00

Happy July 4th. It's important to remember the important things. DO double-click pic to read the inspirational inscription...

Taken in Vermont last week. The towns went 'Hippy. Redneck. Hippy. Redneck. Hippy. Redneck' all the way along. I wonder if you can guess which kind of town I took this photo in?

Anyway, I'm in the midst of the biggest jazz festival in the world right here in Montreal at the moment, and clearly unable to articulate just what that means right now, hence the pic below taken from last night's soiree downtown.

2007-07-04T01:59:00.001-04:00

2007-07-02T01:44:00.000-04:00

Coming soon from ECM: Keith Jarrett - Rants.

Featuring the all-new Montreal July 07 rant Part I: "Everybody with a ..f..fucking camera, put it on the floor if you want any more music, otherwise we're fine walking off. Someone has to stop technology's march of...ignorance and...lobotomising..there.is.no.reason.to.have.a.photo.of.us"

and Part II: "If i know French newspapers... and i do, the headline tomorrow will be 'Keith Jarrett says No Fucking Photography, it won't have anything to do with music or anything to do with what we played. It might have something to do with what we wore, because visual media's everything now, so cut the damn thing out. You still have years to live, without your camera."

And the famous Chicago Feb 07 harangue, previously released here

The embarassing Vienna Nov 04: "I will not sit down until you stand up. You, yes, the guy videotaping me. Do me a favour and forget the home souvenir. I know you've paid to come here but I pay in my own way. Please"

And the thought-provoking London July 03: "The problem with music today is that the double-bass is recorded so loud on CD that people can't hear it unamplified anymore, but when we play live we have to turn it up and then it distorts everything else. If people could only just listen"

Special Bonus Tracks

The notorious London 1989: *Audience cough*, he raises his hands off the keyboard in mid-solo, *applause*, silence.... "Now I've finished"

The infamous Paris 2006: http://skittlesmaze.blogspot.com/2006/11/jarretts-regime-of-phlegmy-fear-jazz.html
Note the blogger and many of his readers' desire to have KJ perform perfectly whilst according to their standards of behaviour, though to my knowledge none of them have performed to his standards of musicianship

Next month: Keith Jarrett - Grunts, a collection of the best groans, moans, squeals, screams and swoons from the master himself. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll come in your pants - all things you'll hear in these recordings. Piano edited out for clarity. Limited Edition Aphex Twin remix due Fall '07.

2007-06-28T00:10:00.000-04:00

Do you remember, dear, that time I was in Africa? I forget which country but it was one of the darker ones - bones through their noses, inflation at a billion percent, arbitrary state borders and an irrational hatred of the white man, you know, the full-on limbo-dancing voodoo-and-missionary stew. We were out there doing important zoological research, hunting for the last of the lost dinosauruses, complete with Italian documentary crew and all. We thought it would make our fames and fortunes, so you gave me your modified elephant gun and I took my small-bore bazooka, though of course I checked it in on the flight. I tried to hire a family of natives to assist but it turned into such a bureaucratic nightmare that I was forced to simply buy them outright instead. I had the full intention of probably setting them free or maybe selling them back at a profit, if one was to be made - in which case I could have shared the money with them. At the very least, I would have taken them back at the end of the trip and got my money back, even if I had to break some bones and call it defective goods. Just like with Argos, really. Anyway, it's gilt-edged the prestige they got working for us, they could have commanded a much higher price for their indentured servitude after that. If only they'd have lived. Besides, it was a politically necessary move to throw some cash around the place, having accidentally killed one of their gods during a spot of grenade practice. That's how you make friends in these dark holes - by talking their language. Let them know who's equal, you see. But of course with their President for Life personally welcoming me at the airport with the now traditional gesture of open arms trading, I only had to give him the cheap Russian knock-offs that fell off the back of a serf that i'd got for part exchange in a deal for the franchise rights to the chain of Chernobyl Fried Chicken stores (slogans: "13 finger-licking good", "the other green-coloured chicken from Kiev", "a half-life at half-price") that I'd won in a poker game along with half a million dollars worth of breast enhancement surgery and a crateload of Mogwai (which turned out to be just the one grumpy little critter with a 2 litre bottle of San Pellegrino). If you recall, I thought I'd been saddled with a 3 bob groat, a 10-bob zloty, a fool's florin, a siamese dog god, a jelly fist, a chinaman's kneecap, a metric pound of pasteurised bumcheese etc. But you suggested combining the two, et voila! A 500 strong troupe of fat-knockered hula-dancing Chinese fairie folk, a nice little revenue stream for me now that they pay for themselves (with a little extra work on the side, well, in the back) closing Les Folies Barbares every night except Frunday. I hear they've taken Clermont-Ferrand by storm, absolutely painting the town red after midnight. FYI, I saved twenty grand of the surgery money to get Mother's fat arse cut down to size, with the excess currently being sculpted into a larger-than-lifesize marbled-meat impression of me at birth, which may act as the centrepiece to the Grand Vizier's Garden Party this Springtember. His Royal Fanciness requested a live Matryoshka troupe but I told him, the last group still in existence died out due to a fungal infection passed on by Fludmilla, the teenage tearaway of the family and a registered slut. Near as hell decimated the Imperial Navy at Omsk, which went in no small part to our famous victory at Crimea. You never knew because I kept it from you but this coincided with a general downturn in my fortunes, having invested heavily in Gravy for Gays Inc. So when the Spunk Bubble burst, I was left with little more than egg-white over my face. I had to sell my controlling stock in the Greek Orthodox Church and a Kidney. Patriarch Kleftikos was a happy man but Archbishop Dialysis was most certainly not. I also sold my Echidna. And my Hare. And my Hart. And my Cock. And both my Bullocks. I still miss them. If I hadn't won a contract with the German Government to print their banknotes during the great economic boom of 1929-33, I might still be wanking and crying for coins and trinkets on the great cobbled streets of Covent Garden, alond with Father who, to the best of my knowledge, is still there, running a cartel of wank-cryers - or is it cry-wankers? please consult the Oxford with you dear? - who pay him a portion of their takings for the best spots where they might ply their trade and more besides for the curious tourists, the sympathetic and the out-of-town school trips. Give Father credit, when he started they said it would never work. And when it worked, they said would be just a flash in the pan. But now, 3 weeks later and he's still going strong. A lot of tears have flowed over those ever-smoothening cobblestones, some salty, some milky, and he's turned it into an internationl tourist spot to rival Speakers' Corner, The Tower of London and that grassy verge in Hyde Park where the Queen Mother once took a golden shit. The story goes she was out riding one morning and got caught short so, game old bird that she was, rather than have her equerry open him mouth for her to lay a steaming fat one in, as was customary in that family's middle-class German heritage - one only needs to watch 1000's of hours of that country's most extreme pornography to understand that quickly - she hiked up her skirts, removed her anal chastity belt and dumped out a large nugger of purest goldenry. An alchemical miracle that old girl, many would accuse her of swallowing the Philosopher's Stone, though she swore it was just the gin and vendettas. Some say it was encrusted with jewels and the Royal Seal itself, before being taken away by a footman and chopped up into bite-size lumps, as with any normal, pooey Royal Shit, and then distributed among the poor, again, as with any normal Royal Shit. Another theory has it that it was divided into two roughly equal pieces which were then rushed by steam train to the helicopter pad, where one was flown to the Diocese of Canterbury and one to the Diocese of York. The respective Archbishops then 'took' their portions as Holy Communion and that's why the Anglican Church is in such a good state as it is today. Incidentally, I have received an invitation to their wedding and must think of a gift. As you know, the only person of sufficient stature in the good old Church of E to officiate the union between these two lovebirds is the Queen herself - and she says she's busy opening a Bingo hall in Riyadh that weekend. There's also the thorny theological issue of what happens when a Most Reverend marries a Very Reverend, and although biologically impossible, if they were to have a childling, would said progeny not be more senior than the Crown itself? This is not simply idle speculation, though it's that too. For one thing, we may someday see a female Archbishop, though quite why the Almighty may seek to test us in this baptism of fiery menstrual blood and modernity i do not know. Perhaps to show the flesh-eating, blood-drinking St Peterites of Rome just how silly they look not being able to fuck eachother. And for another, if any pair of fine, upstanding Christian males are going to conceive a little miracle, it's going to be the Very and the Most Reverends, Mr And Mr Archbishop themselves. If Mary can conceive Jesus Christ himself without getting some much as a fingerfuck, it should be no problem for one of the two churchmen to poo out a minor Saint after what im reliably informed is an absolutely rock-solid dicking. Like most of these seemingly intractable issues in life, I find playing out all the consequences in theory to be the best way towards resolution. To that end, I'm wondering if you know where my pack of Top Trumps Bishops and Cardinals is please? Incidentally, I don't want to worry you but I've been visiting a certain somone who shall remain nameless, every wednesday after he's done answering Prime Minister's Question Time, to play a round or 80 of Top Trumps Nuclear War. I shall try and encode a message in this letter that only you will get, ok? It will be subtle and come without warning, I warn you. So, while you're looking for my cards, I suppose you might want to grab Top Trumps Build A Nuclear Bunker and Trivial Pursuit Stockpile Food and Medical Supplies edition, because I ran across this idea the other day, when I was out running, and I ran and I ran and I ran until I saw our friend Izzy Gunnagh-Startagh-Waugh nodding sagely as he packed all his wife and kids and all his belongings into lead-lined suitcases to be shipped off to somewhere very far away that rhymes with Zoo Kneeland. But fate's a funny thing, though not funny ha-ha. So maybe I'd say I'll see you there, under the Ploopla tree, where the orange-foot dudo do roam.

2007-06-26T23:23:00.000-04:00

Sunday Morning, 8am, Montreal - Famous Rental Car Firm*

-Good morning, I've come to pick up my Hyundai Average 1.1 which I have booked for two days at quite a reasonable rate I believe

"Certainly Sir. Let me see now, one Economy Car at two days quite reasonable rate, plus unreasonable federal tax and inexplicable, additional Quebec tax, equals not so reasonable after all please - do you want car insurance with that?"

-Oh I suppose I do actually

"Great. That'll be exorbitant at two days, but it is necessary. Would you like to pay for the excess waiver should you need to use your insurance? It's quite ridiculous, especially at two days"

-Hmm, I think I'll take my chances thanks. I'm not planning on crashing or anything. This does cover medical bills and the like, right?

"I'm afraid not sir. It's just for the car. You'll be wanting our slap-in-face pricey medical insurance, which, let's see, at two days per person works out to be... a little over a sickening shock"

-Ok, wow, so... how much is that overall, then?

(She tots up the figures on a calculator)

"In total, that comes to a-helluva-lot-more-than-you-budgeted-for and then-some. Will you be paying by Credit Card sir?"

-There'd better not be a fucking charge for that, bitch

"No indeed sir. And it's a very good job this conversation is largely reconstructed from memory, or i'd have slapped you if you'd actually called me that, you honky kike"

And she'd be right, too. But here's the point of this all...

"Anyway, Sir, I can see that we're all out of our basic Economy model Hyundai, so if it's ok with you we'll have to give you something a little better, at no extra charge of course"

-Oh, sure. At no extra charge? Ok, I'm very interested in whatever you can give me

"How about a Ford Mustang GT? Does that sound good?"

At which point a little slither of pure boyhood fantasy joyrides up my spine, does a couple of doughnut turns around my head and then settles down for a purr in my chest where it gently cups my beating heart and begins to whisper soft but outrageous promises to drive to San Francisco immediately and chase down some bad guys

I'm no car man, to be honest, though as a child I was for a time obsessed with sports cars and speed in general. I am still able to summon up plenty of irrelevant statistics about fast cars from the 1970's and if anyone wants to let me ride their Panther Kallista or De Tomaso Pantera, get in touch and i'll blow you. Of course, these were all European and very sophisticated looking ladies indeed. The only American speed machines I considered worth knowing were the rocket-powered, land-speed-record-breaking bastard machines that ex-Air Force people and backroom-based hicks would build and race across salt flats. But in the last few weeks i've been noticing this big, brassy car with the wild horse on the front grill and thinking how god damned attractive it looks (although initially it's always 'ooh, an Aston Martin...oh..')

And then I see the car and by the time I've walked up close to it, I've damn near put a dent in the driver's door from my erection. Somehow, some way, with no sage advice to the contrary, this nice young lady had lent me, a state-certified ADHD suffering nervous, suicidal lunatic a fucking wild beast that does 0-60 in under 5 seconds (on an automatic gearbox, dont forget) and demands to be ridden at its top speed of 147 miles an hour.

So I yielded; frequently, gleefully, illegally.

It's difficult to liken the power you feel behind the wheel, or more accurately on top of the accelerator, to anything else (except maybe for when lifting one's magic sword aloft and invoking the Power of Grayskull). But it's easy to understand why a certain country of doodledandys find themselves going out with regularity to perform the occasional aggressive takeover of an asset-rich but poorly-managed foreign corporation, or "country" if you're gonna be picky. Most Europeans pay between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 times what Americans do and most of our cars dont do a pathetic 17mpg or 25 on the highway (I filled up both days I had it and it was, embarrassingly, dirt cheap). I think successive governments have had to keep the price of gas ridiculously low to avoid serious social unrest. That and making sure they are easily distracted by everything their culture has got to offer.

*I haven't, obviously, been employed by Ford or Famous Rental Car Firm (aka Fuck Me 'Til It Hertz) to promote their products but if anyone reading this from either of these firms wants to give me some money that would be ok. I will happily promote your stuff in the guise of blogposts to all 27 or so readers I get everyday. And if you pay me double, I will stop promoting your stuff.

Q. Lalo or Serge? Lalo or Serge?

A. Lalo and Serge

2007-06-21T01:36:00.000-04:00

So I think i've figured out how to tell the maturity of any given town or city by applying a very special formula that I discovered the other day whilst walking past an unaffiliated gaggle of pretend young ruffians loitering without intent outside a typical Montreal boutique selling fancy and dandy to the classes of the middle and above. I should point out that if this post comes across as a little snobbish, elitist or downright misanthropic, I have at least achieved something.

The formula is quite simple, really:

(NFB/M²x100) /(NTT/M²x100) = SC

Or, Number of Fancy Boutiques per square mile divided by Number of Tupac T-shirts worn or for sale per square mile = how Shit your City is.

Montreal has a SC factor of almost ∞, since I have yet to find a single Tupac T-shirt in this city. It is, I suppose, an ideal place to live.

Here's a shop not far from where I live that sells nothing but mushrooms. Actually that's not strictly true, for it sells mushroom-related products, finery, fancy and dreams. I have yet to go in, only for the simple reason that I have promised myself to enter and ask 'Do you sell mushrooms?' and I don't think I quite have the sufficient chutzpah to do it yet.
Here's a shop not far from where I live that sells nothing but tomatoes. Actually that's not strictly true...etc etc
Tell me, how does this shop survive? Do you find yourself wanting an edible arrangement of a morning and then thank the lord you can just pop in to this shop for the solution? How many people need to want this to make a viable business? Do you even regularly desire non-edible arrangements, say of flowers or lego and the like - and then bring it home from your regular non-edible arrangers and think to yourself 'No, this isn't good enough. It must taste of something too. I want to eat it'? And anyway, when do you eat an edible arrangement? What is the timeframe here - do you bring it home, sit it on the windowsill and then start picking at it? Fucking hell, I sound like Jerry Seinfeld.

2007-06-18T23:14:00.001-04:00

Yes, Montreal certainly does have its fair share of 'specialist' shops

2007-06-15T11:42:00.000-04:00

Why I love using Western Union: they make you ask a secret question which only the recipient will know the answer to. In this case, I chose 'What is your middle name?'. Read on for the 'answer'...

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: okay. rents paid

Me: lovely. did you get asked the question?

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: yes. curse you

Me: !!

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: i got the russian girl. i knew i'd get the russian girl

Me: EXCELLENT! TELL ME ! TELL ME HOW IT WENT! (I shoulda gone for ‘Baba Yaga’)

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: i show my passport, thinking, I won't need the question if i have id…but, lo… and with 20 people in the queue behind Me

Me: !

I am already pissing myself

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: she says... eet eess not on your passport?

Me: oh fuck!

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: joo muss speel eet

Me: SORRY!

HAHA

i hope you got it right

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: thank Christ, she couldn't see the answer!

Me: oh?

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: it's a blind entry (like a web passport)

Me: right

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: so here's Me thinking "is it rumple or rumpel"?

"the bank closes in 10 minutes..."

Me: fuck. i did text you the spelling. i shoulda said

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: true. nah, alls well...you got value for money

Me: so you said it, right? and she looked how, exactly?

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: of course... but it might as well have been "charles" for this girl. "ah jes. my couseen iss called Rumplestiltskeen"

Me: im so happy

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: and i can start breathing again. until next month

Me: indeed. what you need to do, i think, to avoid being short of money every month, is get some straw. and a spinning wheel

Rentally-challenged Dublin Pal: invest in gold thread futures

"boy with magical goose done for insider trading"

2007-06-15T01:28:00.000-04:00

My landlord last month, as people are milling round my apartment with a view to renting, asks me one of his classic out-of-the-fucking-blue questions that I love. He's taken a shine to me, and I to him, despite the fact that i almost burnt to death in his property because he doesn't know how to put a handle on a door. So, apropos of zero, he comes out with...

"Hey, you like Chinese Girl?" (and actually, I rarely do. Not my usual type)

-Er... I... like...all...kinds of girls, Ricky (his Anglicised name, obviously)

"I have neice in Shanghai, you wanna meet her? She really nice girl. Young, pretty, good looking, very nice girl"

-Oh! Im...really... flattered, Ricky. Thanks. But...uh...I have a girlfriend.

"OH NO!!! YOU HAVE A GIRLFRIEND?!?!"

-Yes, i'm afraid I do.

"you SURE you have girlfriend?"

-yes, im pretty sure, Ricky

"but my neice, she such a nice girl and you such a nice guy, best tenant ever, i think you hit off big time"

-Ricky, thanks so much for thinking of me (and i am really touched by this, even though it's probably shady as fuck) but I really do have a girlfriend

And he literally clutches his head with his hands and says, again, "OH NO! Are you SURE?"

2007-06-10T15:20:00.000-04:00

Sorry, did you say Jeff Buckley's dead?

-Yes, yes I did

Well who's this then?

(press play, then quickly shut your eyes for a minute if you want to take the true Buckley challenge)

She's Every Woman

Add to My Profile | More Videos

2007-06-10T14:32:00.001-04:00

Im not saying it's true...

"The reason Paris Hilton got sent back to jail is because there was nowhere on her body discreet enough to put an electronic tag"

...But im not saying it's false either

2007-06-10T09:56:00.000-04:00

A beautifully written article about the modest rise in coverage of Atheism in the American media reminds me of something I've been hearing a lot recently:

Anti-religious campaigners like Hitchens will say that we'd be better off without Religion which, on balance, has caused more death and misery for more people than anything else. To counter this, proponents of religion will argue that the two biggest genocides of the twentieth century were engineered by Atheist regimes. For example..

The fact is that while religious wars have been fought for centuries, militant atheism has slaughtered more people than religious zealots ever have. The greatest mass murders in history have been committed not by Christians but by Communists Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. More than 100 million have died at the hands of these militant atheists since the early 20th century.

From these good people

To which I say "Where do I fucking start?"

Doesn't this do a small disservice to, oh i dont know, the 6 million Jews, Gypsys and other undesirables to the Nazis, not unknown evildoers and yet not avowed atheists as far as i'm aware? Twisters of Christianity, for sure, but believers nevertheless. Is it really acceptable to play the numbers game as the basis for "who's more evil"? Apparently every life isn't sacred - or at least morally equivalent to every other life, or they wouldn't quibble over the number killed in the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials. It opens up the old debate about sacrificing the few for the many but in less conditional terms.

But what really confuses me about this argument is simply that both Communist regimes had far more in common with religious movements than anything resembling the purely secular. They were political religions with strong cult figures in apparent total command, and also had an all-knowing, history-predicting big hairy man in the sky - Karl Marx in this case, no less revered than God and Son as a saviour, an emancipator, a reliable father-figure.

When there is no separation between Church and State, they obviously become one. But in the cases where there is no Church at all, it seems that the State becomes the de facto Church. So you either (appear to) buy in wholeheartedly or you get purged, culturally revolutionised, re-educated, year-zero'd, gulag'd or just plain killed.

And in both cases, of war-catalysing Religion and industrially-genocidal Communism, neither of them have absolutely anything to do with god.

2007-06-09T04:39:00.000-04:00

the determinedly deep brown, mahogany funk ripples through bass space, a trebled triple throb of pulsing lime lights across the blacquamarine horizon of an emptiness, a fragile space that used to be silence, something vast and empty of infinite, unrealised potential. And then, from the unexpected, a soft suggestion of sound becomes a full-blown, brazen commitment to shake out a rigid rhythmic ribbon of bouncing, punchy stabs of pure colour, robust trembles in a lower register between liquidity and solidity, a rhizomatic slink, a fretted-thing in flight, a riff so urgent, so desperate for expression, so troubled by its uniqueness it never rests, choosing the widening spiral of renewal for self-validation. It struggles to be free, for where could it go that isn't better than where it just was right now?

God I love Snow Patrol's new single. It's really great. The words mean so much. The music's so original. Sound of the summer. All of Britain's dancing to it, i'm sure.

This, however, is a piece of shit. Determinedly deep brown, mahogany shit

2007-06-07T12:14:00.000-04:00

It's ugly, expensive, crowded, the rest of the country doesn't like it and prominent people are paid to go on about how great it is.

So maybe it is a perfect logo.

2007-06-06T15:45:00.000-04:00

I love posts that write themselves. Thanks to Digitalspy

Emily: (referring to Charley dancing/pushing her hips forward) You pushing it out you nigger.
Nicky: (shocked laughter) Em, I can't believe you said that.
Charley: You are in trouble.
Emily: Don't make a big thing out of it then. I was joking.
Charley: I know you were... but that's some serious shit, sorry.
Emily: Why?
Charley: Oh my god. I'm not even saying it.
Nicky: Just don't talk about it anymore.
Emily: I was joking
Charley: Do you know how many viewers would watch that?
Nicky: Okay, don't make a big deal out of it.
Charley: Fancy you saying that. I can't believe you said that.
Emily: Somebody has already used that word in this house.
Charley: No way. (Pause) Yeah, me. I'm a nigger.

Nicky laughs.

Charley: I am one. Fancy you saying it. I know maybe you see it in a rap song. Maybe you and your friends sit there saying it.
Emily: I'm friendly with plenty of black people.
Nicky: And you call them niggers?
Emily: Yeah and they call me niggers. They call me wiggers as well.
Nicky: I'm quite shocked.
Charley: I'm fucking in shock.
Emily: It's not a big deal though is it?
Charley: Not for us it ain't. Fuck me.

Emily says she was reading from the age of two and gives herself 10 out of 10 for intelligence. This is all part of her very honest attitude to life, and she says “honesty gets me into trouble – teachers hated me for being so honest. Friends like me for being honest. I expect honesty back”.

Politically, she considers herself to be right wing and will be voting Conservative in the next election.

2007-06-04T14:50:00.000-04:00

"This is the vision at the very heart of our brand," said London 2012 organising committee chairman Seb Coe.
"It will define the venues we build and the Games we hold and act as a reminder of our promise to use the Olympic spirit to inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world.
"It is an invitation to take part and be involved.
"We will host a Games where everyone is invited to join in because they are inspired by the Games to either take part in the many sports, cultural, educational and community events leading up to 2012 or they will be inspired to achieve personal goals."
"It's not a logo, it's a brand that will take us forward for the next five years," he told BBC Five Live.

"It won't be to be eveybody's taste immediately but it's a brand that we genuinely believe can be a hard working brand which builds on pretty much everything we said in Singapore about reaching out and engaging young people, which is where our challenge is over the next five years.
"If we don't that, then frankly the whole project is unsustainable."
Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "We want London 2012 not just to be about elite sporting success.
"When people see the new brand, we want them to be inspired to make a positive change in their life.
"London 2012 will be a great sporting summer but will also allow Britain to showcase itself to the world."

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said: "This is a truly innovative brand logo that graphically captures the essence of the London 2012 Olympic Games - namely to inspire young people around the world through sport and the Olympic values.
"Each edition of the Olympic Games brings its own flavour and touch to what is now well over a century of modern Olympic history; the brand launched today by London 2012 is, I believe, an early indication of the dynamism, modernity and inclusiveness with which London 2012 will leave its Olympic mark."
Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell said: "This is an iconic brand that sums up what London 2012 is all about - an inclusive, welcoming and diverse Games that involves the whole country.
"It takes our values to the world beyond our shores, acting both as an invitation and an inspiration.
"This is not just a marketing logo, but a symbol that will become familiar, instantly recognisable and associated with our Games in so many ways during the next five years."

Well, I for one can't wait to see this amazing Olympic Logo, sorry, Brand. I am thoroughly convinced by Seb Coe, Tony Blair, Jacques Rogge and Tessa Jowell, all of whom I have a great deal of respect for and would trust with my life - especially Tony Blair. It just sounds GREAT, doesnt it?!

2007-06-04T11:44:00.000-04:00

Oh.

I think there's been a mistake somewhere

2007-06-02T21:24:00.000-04:00

...continued from

A pig and poke
Of rum and coke
A poke and a pig
Of a freshly-fucked fig

A Black and Tan
Of a caramel flan
A Tan and a Black
Of a spiced-lamb rack

A time and place
For boiled bouillabaise
A plaice and a thyme
Marinaded in lime

A wing and a prayer
Of "Oeufs Leo Sayer"
A prayer and a wing
Of a Singapore Sling

A cock and bull
Of a gooseberry fool
A bull and a cock
Of a hot ham hock

A wink and a smile
Of a grilled paedophile
A smile and a wink
Of a milk-poached mink

A hammer and tongs
Of crystallized dongs
The tongs and a hammer
Of a strawberry jammer

...to be concluded

2007-06-01T15:03:00.001-04:00

It was 60 years ago today
That Sgt Pepper taught the band to play

2007-05-30T02:57:00.001-04:00

The reporter on NPR, some weird-named Ivy-League type, yesterday put forward a theory about Jeff Buckley that he predicted his own death through drowning in a lyric to So Real

" ... And I couldn't awake from the nightmare
That sucked me in and pulled me under
Pulled me under".

A preposterous suggestion, of course.

Here is a list of other water and death imagery in his lyrics that clearly show Jeff had no idea what would happen...

Mojo Pin

"Don't wanna weep for you, I don't want to know
I'm blind and tortured, the white horses flow"

"Precious, precious silver and gold and pearls in oyster's flesh
Drop down we two to serve and pray to love"

Grace

" There's the moon asking to stay
Long enough for the clouds to fly me away
Well it's my time coming, I'm not afraid to die"

" Oh drink a bit of wine we both might go tomorrow"

"And the rain is falling
And I believe my time has come
It reminds me of the pain I might leave behind..."

"And I feel them drown my name"

Lover you should have come over

" Looking out the door
I see the rain fall upon the funeral mourners
Parading in a wake of sad relations
As their shoes fill up with water
And maybe I'm too young"

Eternal Life

" Eternal Life is now on my trail
Got my red glitter coffin, man, just need one last nail"

Dream Brother

"Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over..."

The Sky is a Landfill

" Circle around the park
Joining hands in silence
Watch the evil black the sky

The storm has ripped the shelter
Of illusion from our brow"

" We cast our funeral rose inside
And bury the need to prove"

Everybody here wants you

" I know the tears we cried
Have dried on yesterday
The sea of fools has parted for us"

Opened Once

"Just like the fiction
Rushing in your riverbed"

"Just like the ocean
Always in love with the moon
It’s overflowing now
Inside you"

Nightmares by the Sea

" I’ve loved so many times and I’ve drowned them all
From their coral graves, they rise up when darkness falls
With their bones they’ll scratch the window, I hear them call"

" Stay with me under these waves, tonight
Be free for once in your life tonight"

Witches Rave

" I float just like a bubble
Heading for a spike"

New Year's Prayer
"

Stand absolved behind your electric chair, dancing"

" Leave your office
Run past your funeral"

Morning Theft

" Your eyes and body brighten
Silent waters, deep"

" A heart that beats as
Both siphon and reservoir"

Vancouver

"Now, smell the rain of London it still insists
That we beg for our purity
As if we are pure in the rain of our contentment
As if I can think of this no more."

You and I

" You and I
Ah, the calm below that poisoned the river wild
You and I
Tears that dry on a rude awakened child"

" If we had only known
In a way
We’d never reach this ground"

I rest my case

2007-05-29T10:42:00.000-04:00

Ten years ago today he died and it feels like yesterday

I first heard Jeff Buckley in New York, busking in the pissing rain somewhere downtown (near Macy's? I forget) in the summer of 1991. I'd been obsessed with Hendrix for several years and was drawn to any musician who jammed on an electric guitar in the same way. It's that funky, gritty, swooping sound that pricked my ears as I first turned a corner in the rushour, looking for my Dad who I was meeting, and saw this young, good-looking guy with short, spiky hair and wearing a long grey trenchcoat. He was playing (if i remember rightly) a black guitar through a very loud portable amp and smiling broadly at the world going on in front of him. I stood and listened from across the street for a couple of minutes, absolutely transfixed by this guy who was really playing what he saw in front of him: The insane bustling humid downtown Manhattan people colony running through a furious torrent of weather. It had been a boiling summer and now was the moment where some serious steam was being let off

So I go up to him, chuck some coins into his hat and ask for a simple request:

"Can you play some Hendrix?"

And without missing a beat, he played the opening chords to The Wind Cries Mary. He grinned as he played the three famous chords and I smiled back, utterly disappointed he'd picked a soppy ballad when i'd really wanted to hear what he could do with Voodoo Chile or Machine Gun.
But in retrospect, I'm so glad he did because if he hadn't, I'd never have known i'd seen Jeff Buckley busking. You see, I didn't talk to him, never even asked him his name and 5 minutes later my Dad arrived and I was gone.

The first clue was that the first time I remembered this incident was when I bought Live at Sin-E a few years later and heard that guitar on The Way Young Lovers Do. And saw the front cover pic of the spiky haired gent on the front cover. But I didn't think it was actually him, just very familiar.

It wasn't until he died and I read the biography Dream Brother that I understood two key facts:

1. He was busking in New York in 1991
2. His favourite Hendrix song was 'The Wind Cried Mary' (his mum's name)

Hardly conclusive, but I know what I feel - and of course it doesn't really matter because I have his music and that's enough. Oh, and I saw him play for an hour at Glastonbury in 1995, one of the great musical experiences of my life (I only wish I'd got there earlier for Everything But The Girl, who brought him on as a special guest for a few songs. "Even greater" said my brother, later).

It's ironic, too, that when I was in New York, I'd just recently discovered his dad's music, having borrowed Dream Letter: Live in London from my local library, which had been blowing me away all summer. Every play drew me deeper into a world that at the time was deeply attractive to me: psychedelic folk; 12-string acoustic riffs; meandering soft electric solos counterpointing the vocals; deep, slinking jazz bass and stoned vibes but above all, the richest, tenderest, most exultant singing I'd ever heard. These songs were in the tradition of Dylan, Neil Young, John Martyn, Nick Drake, Pentangle, The Incredible String Band, CSN, Joni Mitchell et al but they grabbed me much, much more.

And if i'd have got his name, i'd have doubtless told him how much I loved his dad's music and that would have been the end of that. He was not a fan of his dad and nor would I be if he'd abandoned me at birth and spent the sum total of 6 weeks with me later in life before dying of a heroin overdose.

But that's my Jeff Buckley story and I'm sticking to it.

Here's a brilliant and bizarre recording of him covering Dylan on live radio, down the phone

I Shall Be Released

and, after many years of having it, I finally have got round to listening to this. It's Jeff and his then girlfriend Liz Fraser from the Cocteau Twins. It's been well worth the wait.

All Flowers in Time

2007-05-25T01:16:00.000-04:00

Telling stories about your standup is like telling people about the erotic dream you had last night: it’s boastful, it’s personal, it’s unsolicited and always always always far more interesting to the teller than the listener. So listen up, bitches

Monday night I’m playing Top Toronto Comedy Club Number 1. There’s a brilliant couple of MC’s, a Rising Star, a couple of excellent young standups, a lot of average-to-shit ones (I see no difference, personally) and me. It’s a good night. The first time I’ve let friends and family come to see me. The pressure’s on and im cacking myself, but it goes well enough. I even drop two purposefully awful jokes to show my confidence and test myself – a foolish tactic since they bomb like the motherfuckers they are because, as im later quite emphatically told, ‘Canadians don’t like puns’. Perhaps if I hadn’t prefaced the second one with ‘if you didn’t like the last joke…’?

The Rising Star headlines and is clearly a cut above the rest. It’s all run of the mill, predictable stuff, but with a real strong delivery. His tales of fragility and anguish are quite loveable and his personality and ease on stage shines through.

Tuesday night I’m playing Top Toronto Comedy Club Number 2. I don’t have a gig but I’m prepared to lie to get one. Getting what you want in this country is, for me, simply a matter of being extremely English and absolutely expecting to succeed. Happily, the MC/Promoter is a nice guy and takes to me, so I get a spot without too much effort. My Jewdi mind tricks are strong tonight. And oh look, Mr Rising Star is on the bill again. He does a completely different set and is just as great. I’m envious.

But I have also never seen anything like this before. The MC turns into a total bastard on stage and genuinely slags off the acts he doesn’t like. The first guy up we’re told was ‘so good last week, we asked him back to do it again’

Except he’s rubbish. And if there was any doubt about it, the MC sets us straight afterwards…

“ Not sure why I asked him back now. You’re getting a real $3 show tonight. Fuckin’-A”

Then a truly unfunny young man gets up and performs to howls of derisive laughter at his every non-joke, before walking off stage to polite applause for at least having had a go. It doesn’t help that he''s dressed in a vast comfort-blanket of a winter coat, stands 4 feet away from the mic and mumbles every word. And then he sits down to hear this from the stage

“There you go ladies and gentleman. The worst act I’ve ever seen. Don’t applaud.”

A lively, very sexy woman gets up next, having been hyped up all night as The Future of Comedy by this guy, only to do 5 minutes of material about being Colombian to complete, bewildering silence. It’s her first ever gig and she’s not put off, because she rightly feels like she’s achieved something in just doing it and is admirably ecstatic as she returns to her seat. And the first words out of the MC’s mouth upon retaking the stage?

“Well, THAT was shit”

I get up and have a blast, finally getting back that feeling of having fun on stage. I'm very happy, especially when he asks me back next week. And I shall prepare for his public disdain

After the gig, as im standing on the subway platform for my train home, the truly terrible youngster appears with two embarrassed friends and I tell him, quite untruthfully, that I’ve had worse gigs than his performance tonight.

But he doesn’t want to hear it.

“Im not saying my material is all funny, but I think most people just don’t get it”

Try talking into the mic. People couldn’t hear you.

“WHAT?”

Try. Talking. Into. The. Microphone.

And he is CRUSHED.

Wednesday night, I walk into Top Toronto Comedy Club Number 3 (of 3). A guy and a girl are sitting on tables idly bitching about something in their lives. I ask for the promoter, explaining I’m a travelling comedian after an open spot and the guy asks me to tell him more.

But before I get a chance, the girl pipes up:

“oh, hey! I saw you two nights ago!”

-Great…

I’m lying. She must’ve hated me. Too late now. What the hell, I know it’s a risk, but…

-Was I any good?

And instead of answering me, never a good sign when you’re asking someone a direct question, she turns to the promoter guy and says something that I heard the previous night – and the night before (and every night before that)

“He does intellectual comedy”

I doubt she meant to convey the absolute contempt with which it came across and for sure her accent didn’t help but I quickly realised that I wasn’t going to get a gig tonight. For some reason, in this city of socially, politically and environmentally aware, highly educated people, dick jokes are the order of the day. A la carte and prix fixe, chef’s special and all you can eat. Dicks dicks dicks. Jokes that ask you to actually think are not welcome. No, Professor, you can save your fancy cordon bleu gaggery for special occasions, like the non-existent Intellectuals of Comedy tour.

But when I return later, he's put me on the bill anyway.

And the thing is that I don’t really do such intellectual stuff. I’m not even close. I do clever dick jokes, at best. Maybe in Ireland I approached properly intellectual stuff because I came to know my audience, but then I left at the very moment I had truly found my feet on stage, becoming just another struggling newbie who didn’t know how to connect with their audience. I also stopped writing jokes because nothing much struck me as that funny anymore. Partly that is down to being in a new society again where I wasn’t yet able to see the chinks in the wall of self-image that this country so successfully projects. And partly it was because I’d had the emotional shit kicked out of me and then bagged up to take with me on the plane. I’ve been dipping my fingers in for a sentimental lick ever since.

So my gigs last year were tough and any success I had I failed to capitalise on at the time. I just didn’t get the same buzz from it anymore. It’s got to matter. I’m wasn’t sure why I was getting up there – it certainly wasn’t because I needed to entertain people - so I stopped

A true example: Do you know how Catherine The Great of Russia died? She was crushed to death by a two-ton urban myth.* Perhaps not the best example cos it’s not really funny is it? More clever or, oh I dunno, intellectual? Well my message to the audience is this: fuck you. I have read far less books than any of you people, failed more school exams and slept through more university lectures than any of you. I’ve got the memory of a ZX81 and the processing power of a ZX80. And I make metaphors like a mushroom makes war. But seriously, you have to stop treating live comedy like it’s on tv – we** are not there to spoon feed you your entertainment. Live comedy takes some collaboration, so turn your brains back on and accept it. It’s more fun if you join in, anyway, because you get little cerebral rewards of pleasure every time you get the joke.

So I go up and do my thing and it’s really tough. Im not nervous enough and the room half empty and effectively dead. I’ve forgotten how to grab a dying audience and shake them up. None of us do well, except for the MC’s, who are the same amazing dudes in the first club.

As a headliner, out comes Mr Rising Star. And he throws away any pretence of doing material in favour of chatting with the audience. Of course, the thing is that the front row is entirely filled by 4 ancient ladies that remind us of the Golden Girls. One has a Chinese toyboy, by which I mean he looks to be in his mid-50's. And while these overly bouffanted and heavily rouged dames are not above being charmed by some funny young men, they are tired and surely a bit disappointed with how shit the night’s been. So when he latches onto them and they prove unresponsive, he only pushes harder to get some kind of reaction out of them. It’s all good natured and the questions he asks aren’t that intrusive, but still they won’t give him anything. So he talks directly to the oldest one, sitting next to her boytoy, who is particularly poker faced throughout the whole thing. There might just be the upward curl of a lip on her face, perhaps he’s getting through?

So he carries on. “Perhaps you’re just tired? Perhaps it’s past your bedtime and you’re just waiting to go home?”.

He pushes a little further. “You clearly don’t find me funny. And that’s ok. Im not feeling it either.”

Still nothing. “Why else would you give me that stony expression? I think it wouldn’t take much to respond if you really tried. No? ”.

And then he pushes too far.

“Perhaps if you tried not being such A GIGANTIC BITCH"

And as the first synchronised gasps fade into the dead acoustics of the room, she gets up, gathers her coat, handbag and young man. Then she dodders, shell-shocked, slowly out.
And as she’s leaving, I swear you can almost hear the ssssSSSSSSSSUCK as all the oxygen in the room goes with her.

It is, in some sense, the ultimate heckle. For how do you respond to someone you’ve A: genuinely hurt for no good reason? And B: isn’t there anymore?

We are then treated to 15 minutes of him trying to deal with what he’s done. It takes him a good 14 before anyone starts laughing again, at least from something funny. He tries to make friends with the rest of the audience but they’re all a bit too shocked to do it either. He tries to do his material, the winning stuff I heard the previous two nights and it’s so bad he doesn’t finish any of it. I think my feelings towards him at this moment are much the same as everyone else’s in the room: I hate him, he’s a rude cunt who’s shown the world his ugly side and not really noticed. And of course, I massively admire him for sticking to the stage instead of running into the busy Toronto traffic looking for a messy, instant death. It’s what I would’ve done and im sure what she would’ve wanted.

As I walk out of the club with the last of the audience gone, I pass the old ladies, their mantoy and a very stressed looking promoter. It’s weird, it’s like a standoff. They’re all standing in a circle and nobody seems to be saying a word. Either they’re battling psychically or they’re just too fucking shocked to actually speak.

5 minutes later, having taken the wrong direction, I walk back past the club and, looking through the window into the lobby, I see the same people in the same positions. Still not moving. Except this time the promoter, hands held out in the international signal of contrition, shoots me an exasperated look that screams: Please. Kill. Me

*I presume this is a myth. I can only assume it stemmed from a game of Chinese Whispers that got out of hand. It started out as a sore throat, turned into her feeling a little hoarse, and ended up with her having had an Arabian Stallion strapped into a fuck-harness and lowered down onto/into her

**or ‘I’, anyway

2007-05-22T17:01:00.000-04:00

2007-05-22T03:42:00.013-04:00

A sliver and slice
Of all things nice
A slice and a sliver
Of all things liver

A slap and tickle
Of Branston's Pickle
A tickle and a slap
Of pickle in a bap

A nip and tuck
Of well-roasted duck
A tuck and a nip
Of a walnut whip

A kiss and tell
Of Os a Moëlle
A tell and a kiss
Of fresh physalis

A spit and swallow
Of spaghetti al pollo
A swallow and a spit
Of hot pommes frites

A duck and dive
Of oyster and chive
A dive and a duck
Of the oyster you shuck

A nod and wink
Of sweetened squid ink
A wink and a nod
Of a deep-fried cod

to be continued...

2007-05-19T14:06:00.000-04:00

Overheard in a bookshop…

"This book’s in Spanish"

-Yes?

"Does it come with subtitles?"

I swear, you couldn’t make it up!

And yet I did!

2007-05-18T08:16:00.001-04:00

Marc Ribot and Apostle of Hustle tonight
The impossible to google !!! tomorrow night
Me! And then, straight after, the incredible Mice Parade monday night

Slap me!

2007-05-16T08:40:00.000-04:00

You know it's going to be a random day when the first thought you wake up with is "I wonder if Gennady, that Belarussian boy I had a Barmitzvah for back when The Soviet Union wouldn't let him have one of his own is now a successful Russian Oligarch? I should track him down to see. He owes me"

And the second thought is "I could blog that"

2007-05-15T00:40:00.000-04:00

8am. My alarm goes off and I reach down to stop it. But it's not where it should be, so I'm forced to open my sticky, prickly eyes and grab around with my numb fingers. Turns out it's sitting next to a writing pad, on which I've written this single line.

"That's odd", said God

Well put, the Lord.

It is odd. My unconscious life has always had a soft edge of near-realism to it, ever since I can remember - which would be when I was three and woke to find myself out of bed, taking a piss into the waste-paper basket in my bedroom. On the plus side, I didn't need a poo. I've done my fair share of walking as a child and talking as an adult, usually complete gibberish (as I say, always had a touch of the nearly real) which is all very well and good and normal. Apart from an occasional lucid dream or the infrequent, inexplicable, massive scratches over my face or body nothing that noteworthy has taken place in a while. Certainly I don't expect to be taking notes in the physical world whilst im doing things like wallowing in my muddy hippocampus.

But I sleep with a pen and paper by my bed, just in case I wake and actually have something to write that's worth... um...y'know.

Not that it happens too often when I'm awake and inspired. So imagine my surprise and delight and shock and surprise again at waking up this morning to discover this message. Of course, I have no idea what the dream was about, if indeed the message was accompanied by one. I'd love to know though

It's the third time this month, in fact. Normally if something comes to me in a dream and it's powerful enough to be written down in my sleep, it's a gag or some kind of jokey thing that i've somehow heard and found amusing, yet when I wake the next morning, regardless of the context of the dream it came in, it's normally of the order of

"Cheese bananas"

Which, unless you're in the dream at the time, is not by any objective standards actually that funny. Though I suspect that's where many of a comedian's shittest jokes come from, held onto by the steadfast and gloriously misguided belief that if it worked on the dream audience, it'll work on a real one. Eventually.

But a few weeks ago I dreamed I was IM'ing the daughter of a friend of mine (don't even...) but in the dream we didn't actually have computers so were writing to each other using pens and paper and our messages were coming up on each others pads like automatic writing. Sounds spooky but it wasn't. Now I don't remember the conversation but I did wake up to find i'd written this:

"R we on R beneficial tip"

And then last week, I awoke to discover this elaborate, food-related 'joke' that must've had them bursting their gall bladders with laughter in my dream:

"I just feel like cabbage has a way of ruining my sex life, y'know?"

-What sex life?

"Exactly"

2007-05-09T20:19:00.000-04:00

"What do you want from England?" asked a friend who came to stay recently. "oh, that's easy, I really miss th...uh...hmm". Because you see, Canada has ample supplies of Marmite, Fish and Chips, British Beer and The Queen on the money. So what else is there I actually miss? Oh, loads, I think..

Twiglets: Wholemeal and yeast, dusted in milk powder and maltodextrin - like fossilised poos from the Marmite monster - I love them, miss them, will be writing to Jacobs in a feeble attempt to get them to send me some. These guys know what it's all about... http://www.awholelotofcrunch.com/

Whelks: Grey, seaside, rubbery rock-pool jewels doused in white pepper and vinegar. Tastes of childhood. Add winkles and potted shrimp and you have true, fishy love.

Immigration Officials: "British Passport? White? In you come, pal."

Good neighbours: If you get pissed off with your country, you can always move to France. The next nearest place to Canada that's worth living in is.... also France.

Paedophiles as the root of all evil: How I miss the British press and its loyal, evolved readership

People that look like me, sound like me, dress like me and like the same things as me but are, for some inexplicable reason, complete cunts and fuckers: And why do I miss that? This isn't a rhetorical question - literally, why the fuck do i miss that? I think.. actually... maybe I don't.

2007-05-09T19:54:00.000-04:00

Proving once again that paedophiles are more cunning than their non-child-abusing, human counterparts, the new trend in Portugal i believe is to have your face surgically removed thus avoiding detection or scaring kiddies with your evil caddy-faddling features.

The other real story here...

2007-05-09T17:08:00.000-04:00

Two so-far unrelated stories from the BBC:

Condoms 'too big' for Indian men

By Damian Grammaticus
BBC News, Delhi

There is a "lack of awareness" over condom sizes

A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.
The study found that more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms.
It has led to a call for condoms of mixed sizes to be made more widely available in India.
The two-year study was carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Thursday, 11 May, 2000, 13:29 GMT 14:29 UK
India hits the billion mark

India has 16% of the world's population but just 2.5% of its land

India's population has passed the one billion mark, according to the country's census commission.
However, experts see little cause for cheer because of diminishing natural resources and increasing poverty, illiteracy and unemployment.
News that the one-billionth baby had been born was officially announced in Delhi at 1232 local time (0702 GMT).

and for dessert, this little nugget of gelt

Large condoms for S African men

South African men might enjoy buying extra large condoms

A range of extra-large condoms has been launched in South Africa, to cater for "well-endowed" men.
"A large number of South African men are bigger and complain about condoms being uncomfortable and too small," said Durex manager Stuart Roberts.

um....*kojff!*

2007-05-02T07:22:00.000-04:00

From the BBC...

Wife put excrement in man's curry

Jill Martin pleaded guilty to culpable and reckless conduct

A disgruntled wife has admitted feeding her estranged husband a curry containing dog excrement after their relationship broke down.
Jill Martin, 47, pleaded guilty at Paisley Sheriff Court to culpable and reckless conduct against husband Donald Martin.
During the hearing, defence solicitor Terry Gallanagh likened the case to "an episode of Desperate Housewives".
Sheriff G.W.Sinclair deferred sentence on Martin until 1 November.
Depute Fiscal Margaret Dunnipace told the court that on 13 March, after placing the dinner in front of her husband Donald and watching him start to eat it, Martin had burst out laughing.

You can see in the photo above just how ashamed she is. I think we'd all like to see a picture of her husband, the man who ate a shit. No matter what else he's done in life, i'm afraid that's it for him. Reputation sealed. He could save the world from a nuclear holocaust, cure AIDS and become President of Earth but to me, and you, he'll always be known as "the man who ate a shit".

Jill, should you ever release a cookbook, here's my contribution:

2 Eggplants
Big handful of Okra
Fresh Coconut
Fresh Dogshit
Dried Dogshit
Onion
Garlic
Ginger
Green Chili
Fresh Tomato
Ghee
Cumin
Curry Powder
Fenugreek seeds

Slice onion, garlic, ginger and chili thinly and fry with the fenugreek seeds in sunflower oil til soft and turning brown. Cut the tops off the okra and slice the eggplant into small cubes, then add to the pan.

In a separate pan, dry-fry the coconut, having carefully separated it from the shell . When it starts to smoke, remove it from the pan and grate into thick shreds. Now add cumin seeds to the pan and do the same. Remove before they burn and grind in a pestle and mortar to a rough consistency. Turn the heat up on the pan and add a big lump of ghee. As soon as it starts to bubble, add the fresh dogshit and turn regularly to sear, thus sealing in the juices and keeping it from turning to mush.

When the vegetables soften sufficiently, transfer the fresh dogshit into the pan. Break it up into lumps first. I prefer bite-size but don't copy me. You know how you like them. When the shit has started to take on a golden brown (for this reason, I recommend not using Retriever, Setter or Lab turds as they are naturally this colour - and besides, they are too nutty for this dish anyway), add the freshly ground cumin and an equivalent quantity of curry powder. The flavours should really start to take off at this point, so it's best to dip a finger in and taste before adding salt. When things start to dry up, add the fresh tomato. Again, I prefer it whizzed into frothy oblivion before introducing it to the curry. You may prefer it chopped roughly or mushed up first. Whatever way you like it, remember to remove the bitter stalk at the top of the pith first or it will ruin the taste of the curry.

5 minutes before serving, add the flaked toasted coconut and the dried dogshit onto the surface of the curry. I suggest a freeze-dried, vacuum packed turd from your local deli, though if you're in a hurry a common-or-garden-or-pavement air-dried turd will do. Avoid fur, which is a sign of early fermentation. If you can get it, Old White Crumbly is the white truffle of dogshits.

Serve with basmati rice or nan. A strong, fruity, young Alsatian wine would go with this, rather fittingly, or maybe a glass of fresh fizzy cat's piss if you don't drink alcohol.

2007-04-30T21:44:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you just see the most extraordinary things...

Wanted: A tattoo artist to practise on me.

Reply to: sale-321351149@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-04-29, 10:57PM EDT

I would like to have a tattoo but do not have the $$$$ to pay shop rates.
If there is anyone who is putting together a portfolio and would like someone to work with i am open minded and willing.
Cheers !!!

Location: toronto
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 321351149

And...

The "Treskilling" Yellow, or 3 skilling banco error of color, is a postage stamp of Sweden, and as of 2004 the most valuable stamp in the world. At a price of $71 billion (USD) per kilogram (as of 1998) it is one of the most valuable things in the world by weight and by volume. (However, it is not as expensive as antimatter and some radioisotopes.)

and to answer your next question...

...in 2004; the annual production of antiprotons at CERN was several picograms at a cost of $20 million. This means to produce 1 gram of antimatter, CERN would need to spend 100 quadrillion dollars and run the antimatter factory for 100 billion years.

I bought some soy sauce the other day from a Japanese corporation that have been operating since 1645

I heard that it's not unknown for black people who visit China to have scores of local people following them around asking them "to do a rap". If only I had hotlinkable proof. Will this do?

Oh, and it was a significant date yestertoday: So a big happy birthday to your-friend-not-mine, The Devil, from all here at Hellonearth. And while we're at it, a big boohoo deathday to Mr Adolph G Hitler and wife, who tragically had a bit of a suicide on this day in history.

2007-04-25T16:14:00.000-04:00

i said i was not the only one...

from this post

to this video

and from this post

to *shudder* this video

2007-04-25T13:04:00.000-04:00

Due to popular remand, I offer you the amazing Tuna Mayo sandwich recipe, courtesy of Rajiv the Red.

1. Tin of BC Wild Albacore Tuna.
2. Organic Baguette, purchased from Organics on Bloor, 476 Bloor St West
3. Mayonnaise, if you have the time made this way. If not, you can make the time.
4. Dijon Mustard
5. Capers
6. Red Onion
7. Organic Romaine Lettuce

Split the baguette lengthways. I use a large, sharp bread knife, though there are other ways. If you have a good band-saw, for example, or a sharp laser. Spread the mayo and the mustard inside quite liberally, say 3 parts mayo to one part mustard. Again, a knife is good for this purpose, though try not to use one as large or sharp as the knife mentioned above. A softer, gayer knife would be good for this creamy, mustardy, mayowawy mix. If you don't have one, you can use your fingers or perhaps a chocolate finger if you don't have any of those. Then flake up the tuna and plonk it in chunks all along. I use a small fork but a more modern Tuna flaker can be employed. However, be careful to remove tuna from the tin first for more effective edibility. Empty tin can be used as a flavoursome bird bath for birds or an aspirational pond-dwelling for a shrimp. Or both.

Salt and pepper the tuna with salt and pepper, then place a significant amount of capers and chopped red onion on top. The best method is to take the capers in small amounts, even individually if you have the time and dexterity, and transfer them from the caper container to the soft, fishy landing strip. Chopped red onion is best achieved by peeling a red onion and then chopping it with a sharp chopping knife on a surface suited for chopping. Try a specially made chopping board if you live near a source. I chop it into small sizes, personally, but you can try medium or large if you prefer. Do not attempt to add the onion whole, even a trusted friend or counsellor advises this method. It will not be of sympathetic flavour or texture and your meal will be ruined.

Wash or don't wash the lettuce, that is a personal choice. I do wash it but only in moist air, since to introduce gushing water can instantly make the lettuce wet and difficult to dry out again without losing colour, shape and flavour. Read instructions on the back of the lettuce for more detailed information. To ensure there are no insects or creepy-crawlies caught hiding within the leafy filaments, I always introduce a few medium spiders to the lettuce for a couple of hours beforehand. Spiders eat everything both creepy and crawly but are completely allergic to lettuce, so they make ideal symbiotic partners for such an endeavour.

Drizzle a bit of Extra Virgin on top, ideally Olive Oil but any Mediterranean girl sufficiently young, juicy and hard-pressed with a peppery taste will do. Return the top of the sandwich to its rightful place and eat with mouth.

Tomorrow, digestion.

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Fish in the Dish

2007-04-24T13:01:00.000-04:00

People are coming to see my apartment at the moment. It's a sure sign I must be moving out.

I don't mind too much having so many people come through and judge my standards of living, it's just that i'm trying to live and work here at the same time. A case in point, a good friend showed me his fantastic tuna mayo sandwich the other day and i've been eating it ever since. Two days ago, i'd hungrily put together this fishy beauty and was halfway through wolfing it down when my bell goes and i remember that yet another couple has kept an appointment i've failed to remember. Thankfully on this occasion i'm neither asleep, out or in the bath, all of which have happened recently.

So they come through into my flat and they are clearly, immediately, totally Rock. The guy is in his early 40's and super-talkative, with long thin jet-black hair, pendants everywhere, handlebar tache, a billowing white shirt down to his knees and tight black jeans and leather boots. He looks like an Italian Bill Bailey. His girlfriend is tall, short spiky blond hair and stick-thin. She doesn't say much. Despite a very imposing presence. I like them. But they're greasy. It's a Canadian phrase I've picked up which, like, totally exagerrates, y'know, dude?

But they are. They're greasy. Almost groisty

So they wander around, check a few fundamentals and then decide quick perceptively that it's just too small. He turns to see my office and says "Well, I can see you've got a sandwich on the go, so we'll be off". We shake hands and they prepare to leave - a short walk indeed to the door but I've already turned my back on them and walked two paces to my kitchen sink where i proceed to wash my hands before rushing back to my hand-held lunch. And it's THEN I hear the door click, realising that I have just delivered the ultimate insult: Shaking a man's hand and then immediately turning round to wash mine.

My stomach once again intervening between my head and the outside world.

I was going to upload Kathryn Williams doing the Nirvana song 'All Apologies' but then I noticed that the next tune on the album is her cover of the quite frankly much better and maybe more apt Pavement song Spit On A Stranger

2007-04-22T10:58:00.000-04:00

Happy Earthday, Screw You
Happy Earthday, You Too
Happy Earthday, Where's my fucking cake then?
Happy Earthday, Boo Hoo!

2007-04-19T01:41:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting on a train to Toronto, a not unusual state of affairs for me these days it seems. It's late, the carriage is half-full and people are getting tired. It's a 5 and a half hour journey from Montreal with literally no scenery between Lake Ontario and the St Laurence. A more boring landscape you'd be hard pressed to find. I found 1000 miles of car-wreck littered, meth-fueled inbred-hick prairie infinitely more gripping than this. God should apologise for this little bit of the world, it really just does not stand up to his other achievements.

(EDIT: God's been in touch to say that due to an oversight he actually missed out a few areas of the world, the Ontario/Quebec border being one of them [The Saudi Peninsula, the Kerguelen Islands and Luton were the others], in the 6 days he gave himself to complete the Universe Project . He'd already booked his skiing trip for day 7 and it was non-returnable, non-refundable so he was forced to subcontract. To the Devil)

So everyone's trying amuse themselves in other ways. Old people are playing cards and discussing events that didn't happen the way they remember them 50 years ago; young couples are cuddling, giggling, watching action movies on their laptops; the franco-geeko-robot opposite me with the serious, impassive, acquiline face has been playing Civilisation without removing his gaze from the screen for even a single second. Not in fact since before he sat down, took his coat off and opened up his laptop. Me, i'm sitting here working, listening to the recently hype-believed Joanna Newsom and writing this because when I look round at all these people, I see something I've always wanted to see and at the same time, really never wanted not to see:

And it's obvious, really. With the huge growth in laptops, cellphones and portable dvd player usage in public places, coupled with a general increase in liberal attitudes, eventually I was bound to see someone in public quite blatantly watching something extremely private. I guess I'm old fashioned sometimes, because I expected a large, bearded, more-than-half-blind social misfit wearing a bomber jacket, odd socks, edible thong and a sign above his head saying 'Im horribly fucked up' doubled over throttling a bit of himself over a sticky copy of Razzle. That, at least, was a good honest public pervert in my day. But instead I see a mid-20's (and how i hate this next word, but it's so apt i'm going to use it anyway...) hipster couple two seats behind me quite clearly watching footage of a gigantic Japanese gangbang. What looks like several HUNDRED couples, spaced neatly on judo mats in what seems to be an enormous sound stage, having choreographed sex which on its own would be quite deathly boring but done up like a Janet Jackson video (no, not that one) looks quite extraordinary. Not that I was looking intently or anything.

There they are then, two regular people just unapologetically watching a bit of dirty porn in the absolute non-privacy of a Via Rail train carriage (Train 69 from Montreal, I shit you not). I remember when the net first became widespread and the media really frothed about how pornography would be readily available just about absolutely everywhere and how the liberal intelligentsia were planning to make nice middle-class families watch 2 hours of hard Gayness instead of University Challenge and tennis every evening. Apparently this would also encourage working-class families to breed more feral children, misappropriating the anus to double the amount they can squish out. Soon they'll be forcing foetuses to watch Dutch fisting films in kindergarten etc etc. But it didn't quite happen, did it?

Then cellphones got more sophisticated and some people dredged up the grainy fear again, this time a fear of other people who might be watching their favourite hot teen dog buggering series whilst waiting in the queue at the post office, or waiting at the dole office for their free house, car, salary and wife or whatever it is all these twisted asylum seekers obviously get upon entering a safe country. Again, it didn't happen, though we did get a full-scale demonisation of these straw men in order to sell news and foster controlling opinions - yet the attractively paranoid prophecy remains unfulfilled. If you're feeling nostalgic, don't worry, it's recycled and regurgitated often enough to come by again soon.

I wasn't looking round, of course. I wouldn’t have even noticed this couple and what they were doing if i hadn't been spying on...sorry, if I hadn’t heard giggling – loud giggling – over the plucky plucky harpy chirrups (see tune below) in my headphones. They were watching it and laughing. That's fair enough, it was pretty comical. Most adult entertainment is, especially when set up against reality. You can show anything and everything on camera - except for passion. That's not so easy.

I am very tempted to get up and see if she’s giving him a tommy tank or he’s giving her a jiminy whig. They did suddenly go very quiet but they're still watching. Im guessing they’re from Montreal rather than Toronto. God, what a city. I should have guessed when we passed that pillar of salt on the other side of Mont Royal.

And they’re watching it on the in-transit wifi service, by the looks of things. Like, how much do you have to need to see porn that you would boot up your laptop, pay 8 dollars sign-on fee plus 8 an hour, on a not even remotely empty train journey? With your partner? I wonder if there are any laws against that sort of thing? Or if the Quebec law is different to the Ontario law?

This is your captain speaking. We are entering Anglophone Canada, please adjust your language and extinguish all pornography. In the compartment in front of you, you will find a large stick. You are required by Ontario Law to stick it up your ass for the duration of your stay. Have a good trip.

Joanna Newsom - Cosmia

2007-04-10T10:33:00.000-04:00

Maybe this is a subject too delicate for someone with my sausage-fingered writing to tackle, but I still have to ask: Is it just my imagination or are the Chinese the original inspiration for science-fiction aliens?

To Western eyes, they’re the closest thing to a people from outer space and really they were the first minority to enter a lot of countries that resembled no other. Sure, there were the odd African and Arab traders in European cities, not to mention the Jews and Gypsys of course. But in each case these were practically subsumed into the dominant culture of Europe, leaving any remaining noticeable differences to be viciously seized upon, then enslaved, exterminated or ostracised.

Whereas, Chinese people look very different, speak very different, their written language and food both entirely unrecognisable as such to Western eyes. They were perceived as clever in such different ways, had a reputation for inscrutability (because we couldn’t read their body language? what more basic barrier can there be?), a different code of ethics, honour and loyalty. All ripe areas for misunderstanding which led to... Alienation.

Now look at movie aliens, so frequently portrayed as having certain human-like characteristics: slitted, slanted or bugged-out eyes; tiny or non-existent noses, just nostrils instead of proboscic protuberance; hairless; altogether uniform in their features; hugely numerous with total devotion to a leader that closely resembles the rest of them; infiltration through integration but always keeping a separate identity. How far back does it go? Late 19^th century with H.G Wells and Jules Verne? And how far back does Chinese immigration go? Someone please tell me. I don't have time to do the reading.

Im thinking both about 1950’s B-movie aliens here and indeed the more modern ‘grays’, but also the expressionless monsters from Dr Who and of course Star Wars. Lucas went so far as to make the two scheming ambassadors who played one side off against the other in The Phantom Menace (usually reserved for the Jews) so undeniably Chinese that even they noticed and complained (JarJar just had a more effective lobbying group so you might not have heard about it). Blade Runner and other futuristic films featuring humans and aliens living together always
seem to have the Asiatic peoples as more in tune somehow with our interplanetary friends, don't they?

Maybe the original thinking was ‘they have to deal with all our dirty laundry and build our railroads, they must be here for another reason’? Whatever, I am suggesting that such work comes at least in part from our subconscious way of dealing with the first significant wave of immigration into Europe and North America. It's the concept of the Yellow Peril transplanted into the distant future.

...And another thing about Star Wars: Is Chewbacca really just a Space Yeti? Doesn’t Jabba the Hut remind you of Chairman Mao? Weren't the furry things on Endor in fact Vietnamese tree people or the famous Wild Men of Borneo? Was C3P0 made in Japan? And R2D2 the cheap knock-off from Korea? I could just possibly be taking this too far.

Even Gremlins, which isn’t sci-fi exactly but does explicitly deal with the weirdness of the something originating from China, portrays both the cute side to the Mogwai and the ugly, nasty side of that same creature when it turns into a Gremlin. That film could be interpreted as the ultimate in paranoid Middle American fantasies – or perhaps it’s a parody of that? You could read it as a parable about immigration, where the locals are thinking ‘just one won’t hurt’ and ‘if we look after them properly we’ll all get along just fine’. But of course one slip-up and 'they' start multiplying. Soon they’re taking over, killing indiscriminately and oh just absolutely ruining Christmas. Interesting as well that when they take over the bar, they suddenly become Black – boozing, whoring, fighting, swinging from the chandeliers and playing their crazy jazz music. Is there a single greater fear in small-town America?

Now, Gizmo is still the good guy and so we get to see the two sides of this unwelcome presence play out its conflict. Of course, this is the movies so after much death and destruction Good does eventually triumph over Evil, much like American history. Except that in the film, they learn a valuable lesson.

Gizmo was always the good immigrant and as such doesn’t try and upset the status quo. Moreover, he’s solitary and is quite literally owned by an American. It’s when his dark side comes out, which threatens to kill him, that we see his true colours (Red, White and Blue in case you missed the leaden metaphor falling onto your head). He’s the kind we want. The new, non-threatening, buying-into-the-dream citizen. Not the other kind. Not the ugly ones with fangs, scaly skin and their own culture. Let’s microwave those motherfuckers.

There's even a sexual subtext here - Don’t ever get a Mogwai wet or it will breed.

I still think it's a clever liberal parody of American values and fears, though. At least I hope so.
And just what do the Chinese think? Of course they're not saying, because they’re too busy plotting the takeover of this planet / trying to eat us with noodles.The other question is: what sort of aliens do the Chinese put in their sci-fi films? I do hope they're blond-haired, big-nosed giants who don't work very hard and have no effective leaders.

Big Bang - Ping Pong

2007-04-10T10:26:00.000-04:00

Saw this last week, from the Michigan Daily...

Masturbating trespasser booted from frat
Woman refused to leave PIKE house in mid-afternoon
By Jessica Vosgerchian, Daily Staff Reporter
3/26/07
Police have been unable to locate a woman who entered the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house without permission on Thursday and began to masturbate on a couch.

While fraternity members were eating in the dining room, a woman entered the house's living room, took off her clothes and started masturbating, said LSA junior Dan Nye, the president of the Washtenaw Avenue fraternity.

No one saw the woman enter the house or knew how she got in. Nye said she could have entered through the front door, which was left propped open while it was being repaired.

Fraternity members asked the woman to leave the house, but she refused and continued masturbating for about half an hour, Nye said.

When members asked the woman if she was all right, she casually replied that she was fine, he said. The woman was talking on her cell phone at one point, said LSA sophomore Adam Bayard, a member of the fraternity.

She walked out of the front door wearing only a thigh-length black coat after a fraternity member called the police, Nye said. When police arrived minutes later, the woman had already left.

According to a police report, the woman was between 20 and 30 years old, had short brown hair and appeared to be under the influence of drugs.

"Obviously, she was very disturbed," Nye said. "It was not how a normal person would respond to people."

The woman told fraternity members that her name was Melissa and she was a student at Eastern Michigan University, according to the police report.

Fraternity members said they will throw out two couches in the living room because of the incident, Nye said.

Police said the break-in appeared to be an isolated incident.

Now what's interesting to me is that when I tried a similar stunt in a University of Toronto sorority yesterday...

2007-04-03T01:38:00.000-04:00

It was a full-moon last night. They seem to occur almost monthly these days.

There's tension here in Toronto, nothing tangible that anyone else can feel but maybe I'm just more attuned now I've become a native Quebecquois? We Canadiens understand this. Vive nous libre, etc

Police in Britain have known for years that a full moon signals a spike in crime statistics (and indeed crime..*ahem*) as more and more people get more and more rowdy and things in town centres the length and breadth of the land kick off just that little bit easier. So we get more coppers put on the streets on such nights to keep the peace and stop people acting so much like the hairless scared monkeys they are. Because everyone calms down when they see a group of policemen waiting for them outside a nightclub, ready for a fight.

As I watch the hairs on the palms of my hands grow thicker and oilier, it occurs to me that this is where the Werewolf myth might originate - it's all about the Beast Within, isn't it? A hidden wild animal, completely unfettered by considered behaviour, that only comes out at rare moments and then wreaks absolute havoc. We all have the capacity for tearing a throat out yet we barely see it, blithely overlooking a dim glimpse of our destructive nature and failing to hear the whisper of fear (of self?) from within. Thank god we in our modern society have made room for the timeless, ancient rituals of going out at night and getting dangerously pissed, dancing badly to loud, shitty house and garage, then trying to mate with anything that temporarily can't walk.

It's not so unusual to suppose that the moon may affect our behaviour. Just think of the etymology of the word 'lunacy'. Just ask the nearest pre-menstrual woman. Though keep your throat covered. Just ask the nearest sea.

We're born this way, highly sensitive to our natural environment. Only when we encounter the rather more unnatural environment we've built around ourselves, of a 24/7 season-less year with every convenience on tap do we risk losing touch with it. The challenge is to get back to that stage of natural sensitivity without smashing a beer bottle into a random stunned stranger's stupid baboon face at 3am. Unless they've been staring at your girlfriend's tits, in which case fuck it. He was asking for it.

What are the benefits in embracing this beast and letting it out? Do the scary underclasses just fuck and fight, the middling-classes go snowboarding and work on aggressive new marketing campaigns whilst their ruling classes idly spend their days figuring out new ways to quietly manipulate the lifestyle choices of the fuckers, the fighters, the snowboarders and the soulless dicks? Is it really true happiness to realise your animal nature?

Recent research shows that each of us is born with a genetically coded happiness, a "set point" which we return to regardless of our circumstances in life. Whether you're in love, grieving, dying or you've just won the lottery, your level of happiness eventually settles down to the predetermined degree that applies only to you. This is great news if you're generally very happy but also there's no need for despair if you're a miserable old cunt. You're born that way.

Isn't life dandy?

!!! - Must be the Moon

2007-03-26T02:10:00.001-04:00

dont analyze this too deeply

you will go insane

just stop now

and yes, get out

from my point of view

it was random

noone has an agenda against you

in Toronto

please

dont look into this

you will go crazy

and get overly paranoid

That's the message I got yesterday, cut into the skin of a dead dog and dumped on my doorstep

Only joking (and oh ha ha how amusing that was) but it really is the message that three people have independently proffered, almost word for word. Which certainly is of interest and help to me, because it confirms in my mind that there is obviously a conspiracy going on - everyone is telling me to forget about it and move on. What is it that they know which I don't? What are they hiding from me?

I aim to find out.

With the help of my trusty, transparent new sidekick Geefwee the Goblin King*

Apollo 440 - Mad Mountain King

*who'll be guest blogging all next week while I am out fighting damsels and rescuing dragons

2007-03-26T01:41:00.001-04:00

Saturday

I wake at 11am with an aching fuzz in my head and gripping clogged lungs. My apartment stinks of burnt newspaper. I can’t close my door for fear of not being able to get out again.

My landlord calls again, he's coming round to replace the door handles. At 5am he was standing in my apartment telling me what a good tenant I was. He still doesn’t think I should leave and anyway, he needs two months notice. I politely tell him to go fuck himself, in words that leave him in no doubt that I will break the contract and he will not argue. He is lucky I haven't screwed the old door knob into his face. And then my neighbour comes by and confirms it was my mailbox and mine alone that was stuffed with burning paper. So I must conclude that somebody doesn’t like me.

He’s a good guy, my landlord, I appreciate him telling me that I shouldn’t have to worry about anything. He’ll take care of extra security and in the meantime, I shouldn’t be paranoid because it would make no sense for someone to be victimising me. So please, don’t leave good tenant who always pays on time.

But somebody doesn’t like me so much they’re prepared to commit arson. Somebody hates me. Sure, they probably chose the mailbox because it's contained enough to only cause a big nuisance. The building probably was not in any real danger, nor intended to be. But I have no wish to fight this out. It’s a big city and I’d been thinking of moving further downtown anyway. I enjoy the impermanence of my life most days. It's a big change from the stability I craved and perceived to have had before. But what is the virtue in learning to live with the uncertain threat of danger? If you can comfortably leave it behind, then is it wrong just because you're not facing up to your fear?

I haven’t had more than a passing angry word with anyone in the 6 months I’ve been here. Certainly I have done nothing spectacularly wrong to anyone. I don’t buy drugs from anyone, I don’t get outrageously drunk and fight people, I don’t campaign for or against anything.

All the flimsy excuses I can think of don’t add up. My landlord did suggest that being Jewish could be the reason, my full beard and hair growth do make me look a little more Jew-ish than usual. But I am writing this in a café in the Jewish Cultural Centre down the street. There are more Jews in this city than just about any other minority. If someone's got a problem with the Jews, they’re going to be very busy and very arrested very quickly. There is an Israeli-owned coffee shop opening up down the other side and it’s true that they should’ve opened up a year ago or so but have had too much flak from activists determined not to let them. But I have shown no visible signs of oppressing Palestinians and nor will I.

Serious theories from friends and family range from:

-It's something the previous tenant did to someone and they're getting revenge without a forwarding address.
-It's a pissed-off eco-warrior who hates to see someone too lazy to recycle.
-It's a complete coincidence.

All the homeless in the area know me, just as they know all the residents here. I give money and cigarettes to some on occasion – and none to others. I have my own rules and I don’t stop to explain them. I have been more generous of late, even paying a guy who sometimes sits in a nearby doorway ten dollars to help me carry a bit of discarded furniture down the street and up into my apartment.

Is it a disgruntled garbageman, pathologically obsessed with everything in the system having to be done just so or it sends him into a paroxysm of hate? He ought to know I got the message 2 weeks ago and that any further infractions are not from my waste management.

Or is the homeless guy selling newspapers outside the LCBO right? He told me that he was in a similar situation a few years back and now, what he’s learnt from his AA meetings is that sometimes shit like this happens to teach us a lesson we didn’t know we needed until we got it. That’s karma neatly summed up in a sentence and it would accord with the 8 million other lessons I’ve been receiving since just before I booked my ticket.

It's a positive spin on this and one that predominates my attitude for now. Yet I'm still getting suspicious of other people's motives when I already know they're genuine. Now I remember what it’s like to let fear overtake reason. Staring at people, catching a gaze as they walk past me, I am throwing accusatory looks everywhere at everyone without at first knowing it. It's only reflected in their brutally returned expressions and only noticed if I move back into some kind of normal state of awareness.

Now at last I get the paranoid, quick-to-blame culture of people who feel themselves to be hard done by. If you can’t get resolution on someone who’s done you wrong, it can fuck up your relations with everyone else in the world if you let it. You can even become unnecessarily querulous and questioning of those who seek to do you right.

I remember when someone stuck his cock through a hole in the wall and tried to wank onto me in a disabled toilet in Uxbridge many years ago. I walked around for several days wondering if the guy who just walked past me and stared at me was him. No, it was the guy behind him who just stared at me. Or it was the guy walking behind me, following me and staring at me. Why were they all staring? What was it about me that everyone found so fascinating they had to stare straight at me? Did they all know a man had basically tried to shine my shoes with his own-brand polish the previous day? I’d better stare them out. Each and every man in the street. That way nobody will think I’m vulnerable and nobody will dare look at me. It's safe that way. I must've gone through a week like this and even to this day, every time I use a public toilet, something in me still hardens.

*cough*

Erlend Oye covering Lee Hazlewood - No Train to Stockholm

2007-03-24T03:25:00.000-04:00

This could have been goodbye. The last post of the blog. This could have been the
last thing i'd ever write.

40 minutes ago I woke up hearing voices in the corridor outside. By the time I got up to answer my knocked door, I'd smelt the smoke, heard the smoke detector going crazy and made a note to get my shit together and get out of here. Sure enough, my neighbours on one side had heard it and decided it wasn't one of the frequent false alarms we get in this block. I'm impressed. It's 3am and they're some of Toronto's hardest working stoners. We wake our mutual neighbour and discuss the situation. To me it smells like burning paper and it's obviously coming from downstairs, probably a mailbox fire. Such things are started deliberately of course. Our mailboxes are found in the little antechamber between the front door and the street. I turn the corner, go down the stairs to the first floor and just see a wall of dense smoke where the ground floor should be.

I don't panic. I go back upstairs, coughing, and tell my neighbours the most probable explanation. Nobody thinks to call the fire brigade or our landlord. Thankfully someone a bit more switched on in the flat below me does those things while it's dawning on us all that this smoke is getting heavy. My place faces out onto the street and has only one way in. My neighbours' places both face out back and have a second exit. Naturally they bid me to come through theirs, so I go to gather my things - clothes, shoes, wallet, coat, laptop, phone - the essentials, still feeling relaxed and so taking a little bit of time. Then I stick my head out the window to see what's going on down in the street below and I find they're already out there and wondering where I am.
I pick up my back, go out of my door and go to neighbour 1's. It's locked. Fine, I'll just go to neighbour 2's... locked. I go back into my apartment and try to go through the fire door, yes the FIRE DOOR that separates my place from neighbour 2's. And it's locked. Fine, fine. I'm still not panicking, I'll stick my head through the window again and ask them to come back up and open their front doors. Fine, someone heads up and I again pick up my bag, go to my door, turn the knob a....

aa...

aaa....

aaaa...

*PLOCK*

nnnnnnn.......

ddddddddddddd....

....it has come off in my hand.

I am now locked into my own apartment

I cannot get through my door, I cannot get through the fire door and I cannot get through the window that would surely result in a splatted me down on the street below. The smoke is coming in nicely now and I'm starting to think about more creative solutions to the problem. Like taking a shower with my clothes on, putting a bag over my head and running down the stairs through the fire. Or holding my breath til the firemen get here.

1...2...3...4...5...6...7...BOOM!

The firemen arrive, literally booming through the door downstairs, piling in like a kill-crazy commando group and just as I run out of breath, heading for the shower. They'll get me out, I just need to call out to them. 5 frantic minutes of shouting later and they're getting the message that there's someone inside. It's probably a bit of a treat for them, this fire being hardly worth sobering up for. Some classic big burly guy opens the door from the outside with his square jaw and I am free to go through my neighbours' at last. I exaggerate of course, I can't see his jaw because he's wearing an enormous gas mask, shrouded by a cloud of opaque smoke that obscures any other vision. I'm starting to feel very lucky indeed.

A minute later I'm out on the street and we're all wearily laughing about it while. As a huge amount of firemen and cops mill around trying to do something now the emergency is over, the stoner guys next to me start to panic and hope they don't get busted for their big bag of BC weed. Pah, you can't get busted for that. This is Canada. They should worry for me and my kitchen crystal meth factory.

Still, the weather's nice so it's been a pleasant way to take the evening air. Could have been pretty savage 3 weeks ago. Dying of hypothermia to escape immolation. Oh the irony.

So I wasn't in any real danger, at least none that I saw. But it was a touch of bad luck that my cheap heavy door chose to give up working in the one single moment I needed it to perform its doorly duties effectively. It looks like a giant, soundproofed monster of a door when in actual fact it's a cheap piece of crap painted a dull metallic hue to look that way. Who knows if the fire could have spread? There's plenty of old wood in our stairwell, so yes, it's very possible. Then that would have been big trouble but I have my faith in the firemen here, so no, I would not have burned to the ground with the building. I would simply have died of smoke inhalation long before.

Or have I trained my lungs to accept massive doses of toxic fumes over the course of my life? Maybe I should dedicate this post to my good friends Philip Morris and Howard Marks?

So now the question is 'who did it?'. Perhaps it's an anti-junk mail crusader, fighting our corner and upset that someone had put up a large NO JUNK MAIL sign above our mailboxes? Or perhaps it's a pro-junk mail crusader, fighting against us and upset that someone had put up a large NO JUNK MAIL sign above our mailboxes? Or maybe it was the fucking twat who 2 weeks ago ripped from the mailbox wall the notice from the garbage services explaining that some residents had been putting their waste out in the wrong bags and shoved it into my letterbox? Maybe I shouldn't have stuck it back up on the wall the next day with a handwritten note calling him or her 'a fucking twat'? Which of the mailboxes was the one set alight will determine my attitude to living here from now on.

Because I'm thinking of leaving.

Hawksley Workman - Smoke, Baby

2007-03-23T01:15:00.000-04:00

..and I tasted the truffle oil on its exit almost as much as on its entrance...

Sticky shit, that stuff.

2007-03-19T20:28:00.000-04:00

...And surely there was really no pre-lapsarian paradise of all safe fungi and fugu? Adam ate the apple to see the truth, not to stay within the complicit fiction which up until then God had arranged for him. Being born into a state of Grace is all very well but you have to fall from it to really appreciate what you've lost - and indeed what you strive to regain. It could be a parable for meat-eating, cock-sucking or just the act of peering through the veil of ignorance into the real world glimpsed just dimly beyond . Surely it was a stitch-up, God setting Adam up for the fall as surely as a British tabloid builds some poor sucker up to adoration and then cuts them down again, only to celebrate their fall and eventually their rise again to self-determination. It's a celebration, almost a sanctification of good, honest hard work.

I once knew a wonderful old Frenchman called Gerald, difficult to believe i know but i really did, who maintained that not only were all religions the same but that he could prove it: Founder of Judaism (and by extension, Christianity, Islam and general Monotheism) - Abraham. Top man in Hinduisim: Brahma. Sounds similar enough to my ears. The ExMM always maintained there was a strong parallel between the stories of Krishna and Christ. It's not just linguistic coincidence in both these cases, there really are similarities in both narratives. They were iconoclasts who changed peoples' attitudes, peoples' hearts even - and overhauled orthodoxy in the process (though their most devout followers today are pretty scary, somehow going entirely against the original spirit of their teachings and becoming a new orthodoxy that is sorely in need of another clasm). I accept the comparison though Jesus, to my knowledge, didn't play the flute and wasn't blue (even there though, you could build a tenuous argument based on the special quality of this, the azurest of hues, found almost nowhere in nature and thus venerated in the symbolism of the Pieta)

Plenty of cultural innovations spread far and wide, from West Africa to the Far East and everywhere in between in the crucial period of history where we just started writing things down. In this sense, the real Mavens were the nomads and the traders, which is why there are people from Accra to Kaifeng who proudly proclaim Jewish heritage. We are like a benevolent bacteria upon the earth, spreading ideas and tastes (and not greed, hatred and Satanism [that's Jimmy Page's fault] as some would have it) without ever sticking around long enough to take blame/credit. So it's entirely possible that Jesus came from India, or indeed that his ideas did (just what was he doing between the ages of 13 and 30?). Or indeed that Abraham's teachings evolved back into polytheistic idolatory but with a far more rigourous philosophical structure (and it's entirely up for debate as to whether Hinduism really is polytheistic anyway, all gods being aspects of the one as I misunderstand it).

So the point of this post is that I've finally filled in a missing piece of the puzzle. I was struck by something I heard a while back, which is why so many young men and women in the western world gravitate towards Buddhism of all the non-Christian religions. Think of the life of Buddha:
He was brought up entirely within the confines of his family's world, a palace where everything was available to him and he saw none of the down sides of life. Then one day he broke free, saw the terrible suffering in the world and strove to reconcile these two. After a bunch of adventures, he eventually resolves this by sitting under a tree and refusing to move until he reaches enlightenment. For many young men and women in the West, the thing to do after education (or during if they're very brave) is to go travelling, leaving behind the convenient, comfortable existence of their home life and instead see how others live. They may not know it explicity but they are indeed trying to reconcile their easy lives to that of the more common experience of life on earth: as Mr Hobbes said, it's nasty, brutish and short. What is that if it's not leaving the palace walls for the first time? We all look for the tree, though it can manifest itself through a multitude of more harmful ingestations - it's fitting that he got there under a tree, having finally stopped travelling, or running away as I would call it. No-one gets there while they're actually backpacking through Cambodia or ball-deep in a girlboy for the price of a beer in Koh Samui.

Now compare Adam's experience again, growing up in an actual Paradise where everything is available but for knowledge itself. You'd think he'd be happy with that but he chooses instead to know the truth, with the full understanding that he cannot get away with this transgression since God is watching, and is cast into the wilderness. This is a place where life is hard, people die and the future is uncertain. It's a fundamental human impulse to go beyond ourselves, to seek out the truth no matter how unpleasant and life-altering it may be. Something innate motivates us to sacrifice our epistemic comfort for the far less comforting actual truth. It's practical philosophy in action.

Indeed Eden was not even an earthly province, so that when cast out from there he is said to have taken his first steps on the Earth upon a mountain in Sri Lanka of all places

If you take the view, as I do, that all these stories are allegories for the common human condition of the loss of innocence when leaving childhood (if you're lucky) and the struggle to return to that precious world-view after a lifetime of tainted experience, then it's not hard to believe that the example of Adam and Eve's fall represents a common, highly indentifiable narrative in our own lives. Why else are these fairy tales still so popular? There are 7 basic types of story in the world and I only know of two books which encapsulate them all: Lord of The Rings and the Bible.

It's why Tom Cruise movies have been so successful (and his recent ridiculous behaviour has dashed all our complicit fantasies about the universal, aspirational character he plays). In every single one he starts off as a cocky young guy at the top of his game, not a care in the world until something unexpected but entirely fated happens that shakes his faith, his very being and he is cast into turmoil, doubt and fear. Then through a blatant display of inner resilience and worthy struggle he realises what has happened, rebuilds himself into a real man who has learnt the valuable lessons in humility and fragility and can finally rejoin society as a more responsible, enlightened being. Thanks Tom, you're an example to us all.

Oh no, hang on, that's Buddha.

Cut Chemist - The Garden - Some masterful landscaping from a Jurassic park ranger.

2007-03-17T12:01:00.000-04:00

What I did on my other holiday: Part 1

Friday afternoon and I'm in a deeply pleasant cafe in Montreal in the coolest part of town (because I'm there). The decor is very 1972 Romanian hotel lobby and with a live dj playing deep house and broken beats it's quite the place to work and to write. A man has just sat down at the table next to me and he smells strongly of eggs.

And he is now ordering eggs.

It's a rare thing these days. In the 1970's, the decade the world has recently decided to euologise as the best ever (the visible world most of us are plugged into being run largely by people in their late 20's to early 40's, it's conveniently just far away enough to misremember), everybody smelled of food products. Everybody.

All Indians smelled of curry, all Frenchmen smelled of garlic and it was common knowledge to every 5-year old who'd never met one that all black people tasted of chocolate. Part of me still believes the first two ( none of me believes the last one thanks to the distinctly flesh-flavoured lips of Fatima from Angola when I was 15) and the only reason that nobody realises any more is because we all eat curry and garlic so we smell of them too. Therefore none of us do. It's, like, a paradox, maan. Leaving aside questionable distinctions of birthright, back in the apparently good old days what on earth did we, the gor-blimey great British public smell like to foreigners? I can't imagine. Probably jam sandwiches if the diet of most of my childhood friends was the norm.

I remember a boy in my primary school who strongly smelled of eggs, several boys who smelled of various cuts of cheap ham and one boy in my secondary school who famously, unashamedly smelled of baked beans. Curiously, though each on their own exuded a disgusting stink to be avoided under any and all circumstances, if they were stood close together in a sweaty gym class the temptation to lick them for breakfast was almost overwhelming. Thank god we didn't have a boy who smelled of ketchup and mustard or there'd have been a sexuality-challenging feeding frenzy and I can personally guarantee at least one case of hidden cold sores

I've known several women whose hair smells range from lightly toasted sugar to darkly roasted wookie, the former a maddeningly alluring smell but sadly not convincing as a last-minute substitute for creme brulee topping when the Vicar and his disarmingly sexual niece drop round unexpectedly for a plate of cheese gossips and a cup of hot suspicion. The Ex-Marriage Module used to say my armpits sometimes smelled of hamburgers. I was so horrified I never asked if she was referring to just the pure all-beef patty or whether the special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickled onions in a sesame seed bun was included in that too. I use deodorant now.

update: he's had his eggs and the smell has gone away! Perhaps it's some eggy deficiency in the blood of these descendants of 17th century French criminals, prostitutes and the mentally ill? I should ask.

I often privately bemoan our species' loss of the instinctive, intuitive part of our lives - at least within certain societies - and nowhere is this more obvious than in our changed eating habits. I'm not even talking about the alarming convenience of intensive agriculture and the frustrating inconvenience of the Chicken that has so far failed to evolve into 12 boneless breaded salty nuggets upon maturity and then box itself up for shipping. I'm just making the point that people don't inspect their food before eating anymore, so that when I do I'm thought eccentric. Many's the time I've eaten a meal in good company and as each course arrives in front of me, I dip down to give it a good sniff yet arise to faces of bemused, haughty disapproval. It's partly out of curiosity, so I get a better impression of what I'm about to eat, yet there's surely something deeper involved too: a practise as old as humans themselves, checking out what it is they're about to consume for reasons of safety as much as of taste. The world has always been full of dangerous foodstuffs so it would make sense for us to have evolved this basic reaction (and as we decrease the genetic and seasonal diversity of those generally accepted safe-to-eat foods, aren't we opening up the chances of all going down with the same bird lurgy or whatever?).

update: shame, he left before I could enquire. There's nothing a Frenchman probably appreciates more than an Englishman in cracked french asking him just why he smells. Never mind. I'll ask that rugby player over there in the corner, chewing his hand.

Many years ago, I suggested someone should make a device that allowed you to smell your own bum, a unwieldy steam-powered Victorian brass whirlygig that comes complete with filters, dials, wheels and a fully-illustrated 200-page manual. My brother wryly claiming that whilst it was a good idea, he would prefer to continue with the manual method - ie. using his fingers. We both were joking but now I think there was some truth buried within both of our suggestion. Maybe it's a need to check, again, your own health? We've all taken a crap and felt like there was something wrong (some of us more recently than others). It could be that just as there is an index of stool health, the gloriously named Bristol Stool Scale (I defy you not to laugh at Type 4), there is in our subconscious a dimly glimpsed understanding of healthy-to-unhealthy poo smells.

Today's post was brought to you by our sponsors "Mr Proust's Organic Madeleines", now with 20% more memories and "Fila Brazilia" who invite you to Spill The Beans.

2007-03-17T11:50:00.000-04:00

Happy St Patferrick's Day

2007-03-17T11:49:00.001-04:00

And so, in honour of Dexter and the Montreal weather, here's Cat Power trying to satisfy this hungriness: Wild is the Wind

2007-03-17T10:55:00.000-04:00

"He really likes you"

- Yes, I like him too. He's been all over me since we met

"It's strange. He normally doesn't like strangers but he really likes you"

-Look at that! Hello, where d'you think you're going?

(he nuzzles into my crotch and then jumps up and tries to hug me)

"Dexter! Leave him alone!"

-What did you call him?

"Dexter"

-That's a great name.

"Well, we thought it was appropriate cos he must be more dextrous than the average cat. With his seven toes"

-Wha..?

I look round to see Dexter's paws creeping along my shoulder blade, approaching my neck in another attempt at feline embrace. I see he has, indeed, two front paws with two extra, miniature-paws sticking out of the sides like side-cars on motorcycles. There they are in all their 7-toed gory glory....

And I freak.

AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

2007-03-08T12:22:00.000-05:00

The Refugee All-Stars of Sierra Leone: "Living Like A Refugee"

2007-03-07T01:01:00.000-05:00

There is a hub of Laundromats two blocks south of me, i think 5 within 5 minutes walk of eachother and absolutely none anywhere else for miles*. The one I use to use was near a great cafe that I recently had this conversation in.

"Have you met the Troll yet?"

-excuse me?

"Have you met the Troll? The crazy old man who lives underneath the laundromat... He's an old Italian man, very tall, white haired, comes up from the basement and steals womens' underwear. He's been busted twice but the landlady can't get rid of him"

-no, i haven't. that's nasty.... er, does he only steal womens'?

"Why? Have you lost clothes?"

-every time

"Nice underwear, yes? He takes it. To wear"

So there it is, an old italian pervert walking round a basement sniffing dirty knickers whilst wearing mine.

I hope. The reverse is more frightening.

*Except I've finally found one, only a few minutes' walk away in the heart of Koreatown. I can't decide whether to use "laundrette" or "Laundromat" to use. I think i prefer "Laundromat". It's more American and it's probably more politically correct. "Laundrette" is clearly a feminised noun that implies it's womens' work. I suppose Laundromat is in its own way just as sexist since it sounds so masculine (But it's reverse sexism, you see, so that's alright. Well it is whilst we men continue to be in charge. The more apparent concessions we give to the little ladies, the further we solidify our manly power. Sssh).

Speaking of old Italian perverts, here's one of the greatest tunes ever to come out of that strange land. Adriano Celentano's brilliant pisstake of the English language, Prisencolinensinainciusol and one of the funniest videos ever made on Youtube

2007-03-06T00:42:00.000-05:00

What I did on my Holidays: Part 6

At 9:30 that Saturday, no, Sunday evening the train pulled out of Union at last, bound for New York via Michigan since Indiana had been closed due to snow. Not the just the main station there – the State itself. Or was it because two freight trains colliding earlier that day throwing the entire rail network of the United States into the proverbial chaos? All the track is owned by the freight companies and all the passenger trains are run by separate providers, creating a situation where the freight gets priority and the passenger trains (and by extension the passengers themselves) are treated like freight. Take a look at a map and see the fun route.

Bound for Buffalo where I’m due to ‘hang out’ for half a day before boarding another train to Toronto. The latest estimate is that I’ll reach it some time before the coming Apocalypse. Bearing in mind I haven’t been following the news for a week and last time I looked this fine country and Iran were headed for a big slapping match, that could easily mean I’ll get there in time for my connection.

I’d been advised to check out a famous diner where they do the World’s Best Buffalo Wings. Not a coincidence, it turns out, since the sweet sticky chicky wings originated there. Visions of herds of gigantic wild buffalo swooping over Lake Ontario, frantically flapping tiny feathered wings sticking out of their midsections were created and destroyed in an instant. Apparently they go from Mild to Hot to Dangerous to 911 – so called because on more than one occasion they have had to call the emergency services after someone seriously damaged themselves after trying to actually eat one. I resisted the temptation to make a 9/11 joke, and still do

And so at 7am when I should have been in the ‘Flo, instead I’m in Toledo, Ohio. It's not much like Toledo, Spain. The buildings are gray, the sky is gray, the people who’ve been waiting on the platform all night because their previous train got cancelled 48 hours earlier have a touch of grise to them. I feel sorry for them becau…hang on…they’re coming into my carriage and…

“excuse me, no, it’s that carriage down there with all the empty seats you want. Yup”

Right, sorry, let me just lie down again on my stretched out double seat and get comfortable. Man, there are some weird people coming into my carriage. I have to make them feel uncomfortable and since I haven't washed in three days and now own a terrifyingly adult beard, this won't be difficult.

8am. I enter the Dining Car to grab some breakfast and I get wedged into a booth with a man the size of Bono’s ego. Not fat, not overweight and not a thin man struggling to get out. This guy was born mountainous and then grew. I’ve always had a fear of the morbidly obese – perhaps the clue is in the job description; their unnatural frame hints at a higher probability of imminent death than the smaller, average look; I’m scared of them because I think they’ll be morbid in their outlook on life because they’re all so sad which is why they eat so much of course. If this is true – and I’ve absolutely no idea if it is – then I’m scared of them because they wear their tragedy on their frames for all to see. We’ve all got problems but you can’t see a broken home or a broken heart bulging out of someone’s clothes. It’s like eating with someone who’s got some noticeable degree of physical disfigurement – you want to be able to treat them no differently than anyone else and you want them to act that way. They too want the same things from you but it doesn’t happen so much. Even if we say and do all the right things, it’s still an act and our barely perceived micro-movements give this performance away. These things act as social tells that betray our real intentions – we can’t see them in the normal sense but they are sensed, if not clearly perceived. Tics and twitches are by comparisons huge klaxons denoting personal unease. I try to relax.

I’m also scared because I think they’ll eat me.

But here I am, sat opposite this vast industrial poo factory and im thinking that my primal fear of being eaten by an amoral a-merican greedy guts is only natural but nevertheless he’s a human being, well, two human beings, like everyone else and so maybe with all that bulk in him maybe he’s a thoroughly fascinating guy. And if my vicious descriptions of the overweight are wrong, then so is my assessment of these guy (sic).

But

He’s not only boring, he’s mind-crushingly kill-me-now boring. Whatever happened to the jolly fatman who hung out in the sweetshop with us as kids? He giggled and dribbled at everything and never shared his big bag of booty with us but we loved him for it anyway. And he almost never tried to touch us and we almost always ran away when he almost never did. I must have had 50 conversations in the last few days with all walks and waddles of life but I hadn’t once had to endure half an hour of short monotone statements ranging from “I went to London once” to “Have you seen the Queen?” to “Have you seen The Queen (the film)” to “Are you gonna eat the rest of that egg?”. I sat there and watched him eat a normal sized plate of food faster than I would eat a pea. He was very efficient, his arms presumably having got the measure of his mouth long ago. He knew exactly where to put his fork (I’m not the only one who has trouble always getting his food straight to his mouth, right?) and displayed an impressively skilful method of switching between eating, talking and breathing. Nevertheless, he managed to dribble from his bottom lip a dangling dollop of pure saliva that I saw slither forth, trace it’s way down his chin and into fat air a full ten seconds before he did. He also dropped some food onto his boobs, at which point I looked away but my peripheral awareness and outright prejudice tells me he returned it to his mouth and felt all the better for it.

Now some who have shared a dining experience with me in the past may well say ‘it sounds as if he eats like you’. Yup. That's why I can criticise.

There’s also a man on this train wearing a full length black latex catsuit with yellow stripes down the legs and a built in, massively protruding codpiece. It’s the precise opposite of Uma Thurman’s in Kill Bill but much shinier. He’s way over 6 foot, mid-40's, sensible glasses, short back and sides, wearing black boots and carrying a few regular luggage bags. I think I massively admire the man – he doesn’t blush, he doesn’t give any outward sign that the rest of the world is staring, laughing and making jokes about him. He either doesn’t care or doesn’t know and I hope it’s the former. It’s probably the most comfortable thing for him and I’m sure Chicago and New York treat him well but god help him if he gets stranded at any point in between.

There’s another man, at least 80 years old, who I first saw back at the Court, sitting at a table drinking coffee and slowly jotting down telephone numbers from the cut-out and circled back pages of a local newspaper. As I walk past, I take a quick glance at the pictures of buff young studs ready for some heavy manly action and I can’t help but wonder if he knows exactly what he’s doing. Perhaps he’ll meet Uma on the train and they’ll fall in love? It's Strangers on a Train all over again, with the emphasis on 'strange'.

But for all their nuttiness and willingness to stand up for individual rights whilst denying others' their own, there is a remarkable level of tolerance here. At first I found it very difficult to adjust to so many conversations about politics and religion. People very quickly lay their cards out on the table and I'm not used to that, coming from a country where you never bring those things up if you want to stay friends. But here they just fucking go for it and i really like that. I still kept most of my opinions to myself, since virtually all of them are misanthropic, offensive, pessimistic, atheistic and worst of all highly logical. Im not about to defend that kind of seditious talk to anyone who grew up in a patriotic environment. But it's nice to know that aside from a few words, I can basically say what I like still. It's a freedom we have pockets of the West at rare times but still I forget that sometimes, some places, this can't be done. I hope I continue to honour this fought-for right which has been a long time coming.

So what did I say to the barman in the snack car, stood next to an Amish elder as I fumbled through my wallet for the right notes, dropping coins all over the counter?

“Jesus fucking Christ, you bloody fucking bastard. Oh….. Sorry”

He pretended not to have heard. For a man living a 17^th century English Puritanical lifestyle that sounds about right.

Final encore from the Jarrett-chives. Over The Rainbow. You'll notice that it's absolutely fucking beautiful and you should be buying some of his music.

2007-03-05T00:01:00.000-05:00

What I did on my Holidays: Part 5

After 45 hours, 32 stops, 11 life stories, 6 states and numerous trips outside in the frizzing cold for a smoke, we arrived at Union Station, Chicago only 15 minutes off schedule. A great trip indeed. I put my luggage in a secure locker and walked out into the Chicago snow.

And then the nightmare began…about 5 minutes earlier -

I’d said goodbye to my new friends and made for the lockers. Chucked everything I owned inside, including my laptop, closed the door and walked out. Thank the lord and all his lovely angels that two of my travelling companions were in the locker room at the time.

‘Dude, is this your door?’

and I almost didn’t turn round, thinking they were calling after someone else. Oh I’d closed the door alright. Just failed to lock it. It had swung open for all the world to pillage and I’d walked out. Top blokes.

Meanwhile, outside Union Station my relieved future self entered a bloody blizzard and having failed to walk it, hailed a cab to the Art Institute of Chicago (see Monday’s post) to complete a long-awaited, previously cut-short visit exactly a week ago. Jumped out, ran up the steps and had this conversation with the ladies at the information desk.

-Do I need to buy a ticket today? I think it was a free entry day when I came last

“we’re closing in 15 minutes, honey. It’s really not worth it.”

-b-b-b-but, hang on, youre closing at 5pm on a Saturday?

“it’s Sunday”

-oh shit

And it was. I’d lost track of time entirely – that’s probably what being on holiday is meant to be. Damn, it worked too well.

“is the Museum of Modern Art open?”

-no, honey, that’s already closed

“oh damn (didn’t want to swear again). What IS open around here then?”

-there’s really nothing. Even the shops are all shutting at 5.

-nothing at all?

“there’s Millenium Park. It’s one block up. Though it might not be fun in this weather”

And it wasn’t, though I was still impressed. A big flat bit of Chicago given over to gigantic sculptures, including the famous chrome bean, I slouched round it for half an hour in the snow and the slush and started to feel my diminutive size in this gigantic city. Getting soggy feet is one of the simplest, most destructive ways to destabilize a grown man. So I went looking for culture, with food and shelter as a back-up plan.

By sheer luck, opposite where I was lost stood the Public Library a.k.a The Chicago Cultural Centre, which had an exhibition of African housing adornments (didn’t know there was so much more to it than shrunken heads and mortar) that was, crucially, open til 6.

I don’t know how I did it but I managed to get lost in a major city famous for giant steaks, hot dogs, stuffed pizzas and god knows what else and managed to find absolutely nowhere to eat. I wish I could blame it on indecisiveness but I didn’t get the choice to even vacillate over it. Panicking that I couldn't find anything at all to eat, I decided to get back to the train station early and find something around there. I walked for 20 minutes in a complete circle and then back on myself just to compound the error, then gave up and took a cab to Union Station, said in my famous 'i know where im going' voice. And so I was dropped off outside a completely unfamiliar building and went inside to investigate. I found only signs for local trains and realised I was at the wrong place entirely. Still nothing to eat. Stepped back outside, walked 5 minutes down the road with no idea where I was going and hailed another cab to Union Station, the Amtrak one please sir.

1 minute later he drove me back to the building i'd just left and around to the front entrance, the very station I was indeed looking for. The meter had barely crept up 20c since i'd got in. He didn't give a fuck so I decided not to either. After all, it was snowing, I had soggy feet and i'm a dollar-rich Englishman.

Earlier that day in a conversation about junk food, I made the probably true statement that I hadn’t had a McDonalds in 4 or 5 years and I don’t plan on having one ever again. Like many people, I went mad for it as a kid but as an adult I was never a habitual user. Turning up at the check-in, I met up with the same two musician kids from Seattle who saved my stuff in the locker from inevitable pillage and before I even had a chance to refuse, they’d stuck a double cheeseburger in my hands and I was so goddamned hungry I nearly pushed it past my teeth and straight down my throat with my fist. I immediately felt better, though slightly ashamed of myself for eating and enjoying such shit. Within a minute, they’d shoved another one in my hand and refused to let me give it back, though I claimed quite truthfully that I wasn’t hungry anymore. They made me keep it for later. I set out in search of real food.

This time, I knew better than to search outside the station where food for sale apparently doesn’t exist. But still I should have known better than to enter an area called the Food Court. The word ‘Court’ in this case is apt since the culinary crimes committed therein deserve an instant trip to the Justice dispensary. After a brief flirtation with the Cajun and Chinese establishments, I turned a forgotten corner and found the raggediest looking McDonalds ever and I just knew I was going to order a Big Mac with medium fries and a large orange juice and I also knew it was going to be disgusting. I didn’t even eat it in the McDonalds itself, so sick did I feel about the whole affair. No, I ate it in the Banqueting Hall deep within the castle walls of the Court of Foode and mighty physic was not mine victuals. All hail McDeth, for thou shalt be the Burger King.

The Big Mac was the worst I’ve ever had – sizzling cold ground cow-dung topped with a slice of melted orange Duplo, a distant relative of the suspicious cream sauce and a dead relative of a lettuce leaf – all in a sesame seed bun. The fries were cold, hard AND soggy, a triple-pronged bumrape up the jacksy of junk food standards. The orange juice tasted like it had already been drunk. (And when I drank my piss later that night, it was no better)

So disgusted was I with myself and the whole situation I found myself in that when I finished eating I self-loathingly dug out the spare double cheeseburger that was cold and squishy and of course I scoffed that badboy down like the motherfucker it was. I guess my imagined hunger took over to the point that I had persuaded myself that it was actually food and I hadn’t eaten in days. All this irrational behaviour overwhelmed me within a matter of minutes, particularly distressing when I reflect on my new found love for myself. Obviously there's still some way to go.

This trip has taught me three truths I hold to be self-evident: Americans are fat fucks; Americans are fat fucks; Americans are fat fucks. I went back to my pre-divorce stomach size in a week, though the rest of me stayed gloriously gaunt and urchine. But by the end of the trip I looked like some of my less successfully rolled spliffs - basically a snake that's swallowed an egg. It’s also taught me that I’m just not set up for cheap meat. I get a stomach ache when I eat it, though since it’s been with cheese this week it could be that instead. (Don’t care to find out. Still not doing it again for good while). How some Americans manage to stay thin I do not know.

I guess you don't need to know that as I chewed the last bite of McEvil I got a serious pain in my stomach just as if inside me there was a baby kicking...its crack habit. I went straight from the Food to the Poo Court, handily placed adjacent and attempted to poo out food that was already having second thoughts about entering my stomach let alone leaving it. I say attempted also because my record with public toilets is not a proud one and the minute i run out of things to blog about in the present, someone remind me and i shall recount the tale of the curious incident of the cock in the daytime (in Uxbride tube station, no less). So i'm tired, ill, flustered, nervous and really just wanting to get on the next train, get a good seat and sleep. In contrast to either of the absurd colonic donations to the porcelain gift basket of my previous Chicago sojourn, this time my poo simply refused to leave its dark lair. Sure, i sat down and pushed out a few plops but nothing else wanted to come, no matter that there was something lumpy sitting 'on the ledge'.

You know when you're wiping a dripping tap or a snotty nose and no sooner have you wiped away that residue than an equally big deposit had taken its place and you'll wipe it and no sooner that you wiped it than ...etc? Well, if you haven't you should really come wipe my anus some time because that's what it's like and I know you'll love it. The surprising thing was how sticky it was. Did I sit on some glue? Had I just eaten 2 jars of smooth peanut butter? That's what it felt like and was easily the equal in volume. Every wipe would take me one step closer to cleanliness... and one step back. I must have gone through half a big roll of toilet paper and all i got was a smelly hand and the desperate wish to get my trousers back up around my waist and leave this dodgy space. The poo kept coming unabated. The door and walls were incredibly low as it was, presumably so attendants can see homeless guys or addicts in there. Unfortunately, so could any average heighted shitting fetishist. I zipped up still sticky and ran, having also succumbed to the sticky rancid whiff of pure paranoia.

Half an hour later I was back, spooning out more brown butter and trying desperately to stem the flow of this everlasting bumjam. Then as now, I think over what I'm doing and saying and briefly pause to wonder if this is how most men in their mid 30's talk and act - I won't say i'm in the majority, i dont think i have ever been in that apparently hallowed group my whole life, but i also can't believe im the only man of this generation to go through a series of public dietary crises and faithfully report it to the disbelieving, breakfast-ruined world.

And to think I almost went to my friends' wedding in Calcutta, if I hadn't already decided on this trip. I thought it was the safer option but something about the interaction of Chicago and I equals heavy duty, industrial-grade intestinal difficulties. I don't know what it is but I know that as a result I can never, ever, live there, love there, lav there.

And now, even now as I edit this a week later I am very literally doing a poo. It's ok, this time I ate mushroom curry and brown rice with lentils. It comes out better than some curries go in. And it's ok because I'm sitting on the toilet writing this and it's ok because I remembered to take my trousers off this time. And as the last dollop drops plopping into the watery internal rhymes of the u-bend, I have to go because I have a slate to wipe. Clean

Here's yet more from Old Man Jarrett. Entrance from Dark Intervals, 1987. A tiny spontaneous piece so compact and beautiful I've just asked it to marry me. We've got to find a really liberal rabbi and then I'll let you know the date. You're all invited.

2007-03-02T01:32:00.000-05:00

What I did on my Holidays: Part 4

Seattle, San Juan, Victoria, Cathedral Grove, Tofino, Cathedral Grove, Victoria, San Juan, Seattle, Jimi Hendrix, Union Station.... The Empire Builder train from Seattle to Chicago, Union Station, the Glacial Mover train to Toronto, Union Station, Spadina, Home, Work, Sleep

Like I said, I've never been much of a story teller. That doesn't apply to my travelling companions aboard the Empire Builder, a train I boarded at 4:45pm Pacific Time in Seattle and de-trained at 3:55pm Central Time, two days later. If you've got the money to reserve a sleeper, you can if you wish avoid speaking to anyone except in the dining car, where you're forcibly sat next to whoever they forcibly sit you next to. But if you're in coach, as I was, you soon get talking to your fellow passengers and you almost as soon decide who's worth talking to again and who's worth leaping into a ravine belly-first from the speeding many-wheeled beast not to be talking to again. I haven't decided which is which and it kills me that I didn't write down their stuff because I can't do it justice to paraphrase it now(but I will give at least one choice phrase from each). I met a 19yr old International Welder from Alabama ("Ah still lurve the Spiiiice Guuurls"), a 15yr old Messianic Jewish extroverted Goth girl who'd run away from home to spite her loving family ("You have beautiful eyes"), an older gentleman -and i have to be careful here- who has had the worst run of luck in modern history and was taking himself away from the very real temptation to hurt someone very seriously ("You don't carry guns in England?! How do you survive?"), an 80yr old man who'd ridden every piece of rail track in North America and most of Australia and New Zealand and yet wasn't a boring old git ("I expect you'll be writing about all the crazies you met on this train"), a lady who could walk easily enough but preferred to use a motorised wheelchair so she could justify her absolute black hatred of the world at anyone passing by ("My son taught himself Japanese so he could play online games 24/7 and become a famous webmaster. Google him"), the 50's-ish Italian chainsaw salesman from Jersey who doesn't believe in paying taxes, economic intervention or dissing George Bush (-so you're a Libertarian? "I ain't no Liberal!" - no, I mean someone who believes in letting the market decide everything and doesn't believe in public services or government intervention. "I'm a conservative who don't feel comfortable with these fancy-schmancy liberals showing off their education. That's why I left Jersey"), the small-town Dakota lady who's writing her memoirs of being the wife of an abusive alcoholic ("I think the world needs to know the pain I went through. Nobody knows what it's like to live with an alcoholic. You know, he used to....")

The list goes on but the accuracy of my memory does not.

And then back in Seattle at a late night bar there was the drunken Belgian-American who just turned 30 and had a past that was more chequered than Chubby Checker on a chessboard: worked in a hotel in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a gas station in Idaho, lived in a cave in Spain, was bike thief in Amsterdam and now sold Polyester scarves as Cashmere in Seattle ("I used to be so punk, so punk"). We got absolutely gedronken together and I heard his life story three times. At least he was consistent.

Here's the encore to Keith Jarrett's most reknowned record, the classic Koln concert. Try buying it.

2007-02-28T00:53:00.000-05:00

What I did on my Holidays: Part 3

Waiting patiently in a squished-up queue for an alleged bagel at the gate in O’Hare, I was blatantly queue-jumped by the woman behind me, an air hostess who immediately apologised when she realised – I mocked sheer disgust just because I could and she parried back with equal mock horror and shame. So as we pretended to chat I was my usual sickeningly charming self, throwing out more dangerous topics of conversation just to see how unserious she took things. Tall, thin and very pretty for her age, she must’ve been a stunner 25 years ago when the profession itself was still just about holding onto its glamourous past.

When we realised we were on the same flight together, I wondered if I should have been quite so risky in the stuff I said. I like to push the envelope with strangers, but always to give them a laugh they don’t expect. Never to offend or attract and usually not if I think I might actually see them again. So I stepped aboard hoping for a calm, hassle-free flight where I could keep my head down and not have to do the polite smiling thing every time she walked up and down the aisle – until we reach the uncomfortable point where I don’t. Followed by an embarrassed stepping off of the plane where you say ‘goodbye’ and mean ‘I’m sorry I ignored you but I am overly bound up in the stresses of polite behaviour within the confined space of this plane and of modern Western society’. And she will say ‘goodbye’ and mean ‘I know, you fucker. But it’s ok, I’ve had thousands of confused young men pass through this pressurized cabin and a respectable proportion of them pass through my own pressurized cabin and your inability to deal with such a simple situation due to a misunderstanding of the implied rules of the game is nothing new to me, you fucker. Have a nice day’.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, as I often do (I can also get head from myself, which I almost never do). Let it be said that I’ve never flown first class and unless I marry a rich man I probably never will but I got just a taste on my trip from Chicago to Seattle. Sat next to two very talkative guys in coach and with the seatbelt sign barely off, she appeared from nowhere and leaned in over my neighbours to ask ‘are they bothering you? I’ll see if I can have them moved if they are’. I almost shat myself with laughter and embarrassment – the guys were too stunned to say anything, probably both thinking they’d misheard. She then smilingly explained to them that I was getting special treatment on this flight. I literally gulped. They laughed. She moved off to deal with other, less important passengers.

5 minutes later, on a supposedly sold-out flight, she returned to tell me she’d found me ‘a better seat’. I very sheepishly gathered my stuff up, shrugged to my neighbours and left. Walking the full length of the cabin until I just before reached first class, there were two empty seats at the very front where I was sat down, handed a pack of peanuts and a drink and left to deal with feeling of 80 pairs of envious eyes on the back of my head. But it was worth it, for damn sure. I get restless if I’m in a confined space, so I stretched my legs out to the fullest extent since there was nothing but empty space in front of me. It’s why I don’t live in a priest-hole (though I’ve met a few unfortunate Irish lads who…um...never mind).

The most embarrassing moment of all was when she came and offered me and only me a cookie. I felt like a kid who’s travelling alone for the first time and whose parents have asked for him to be looked after. I swear she turned and swished with tangible umbrage simply because I declined the gesture. Of course, maybe I shouldn’t have turned it down like this:

“no, thanks, I’m ok…..Mum”

Oh god, I’ve just reminded a lady of a certain age of her certain age. The envelope had been pushed too far. It’s been turned into a jiffy bag filled with burning dog shit, marked ‘return to sender’

And the stupid thing is, I wanted a cookie. It’s just that I sometimes struggle against the key lesson my mother brought me up with, which is: Always, but always do look a gift horse in the mouth.

Eventually we got chatting again and when I asked for her name and how to spell it, in that faintly understood way that maybe I’d be sending a letter of praise to her employer (which I have), any perceived slight was forgotten. She absolutely made that flight for me. It’s rare that anyone cares that much about what they do anymore. Of course she was just having a laugh in a job she’s done a million times before, trying to keep it interesting. I was reluctant but ultimately happy to oblige. I’d blog her name and the airline I flew but for the fact that they’re probably crazy enough to discipline her for that free cup of peanuts.

When it was time to disembark (or de-plane, as they say here, leaving themselves open to justified ridicule), I had to wait until every other passenger had left before I could nip to the back of the plane to get my luggage. As I grabbed my stuff, over the intercom a voice came through ‘Come on Nutgroist, will you get off the goddamn plane please, we’ve been waiting 10 minutes to close up here. Do you love it so much you really want to stay on? Did I look after you too good?’ And she’s standing at the exit talking down the intercom phone next to the other stewards and both pilots, all arms folded and looking straight at me. So I deplaned pretty quick, saying a hurried ‘goodbye’ and meaning, of course, ’goodbye’.

Today's Keith Jarrett encore is from Paris in 1989. Blues. And it is.

2007-02-27T12:10:00.000-05:00

What I did on my Holidays: Part 2

So after the KJster we went for a drink at the John Hancock tower, the second tallest building in Chicago and 96 floors above the city; the whole thing spread out in front of us with thousands of little tangerine lights (honestly) stretching into lines beyond the horizon. Lake Michigan was like deep space compared to what enveloped it. My friend said it was as if we were looking into a Canyon of Skyscrapers. A hyper-real 3D high-definition slowly-evolving painting, like 21^st century Nazca lines, like a circuit-board seen from the top of the CPU, like that scene in Tron, like the pear martini I had ordered lavishly garnished with overblown simile and a dash of hyperbolic, fruity regret. Here’s a photo I took with my camera phone that does it about as much justice as the State of California gave OJ's in-laws.

We stood over this city, separated only by a pane of glass and felt immensely satisfied with the way the day had gone. But we still took a cab to a 24hr diner famous for selling big fat dirty sausages. For me, it was the resolution of an unconscious wish to visit such an establishment. Though largely unbeknownst to my conscious self, the minute I stepped through the door this dream was realised. After a lifetime of receiving a whole century’s worth of Americana, suddenly here I was: In The Movies. And so tasty were the hotdogs that after eating two plus a box of fries, I went ahead and ordered The Big Al. I had visions of a large long heavy sausage, perhaps baked in a mould fashioned from Big Al’s own, original sausage. Maybe it even came with balls and a cheese filling. But no. Indeed, as the words came out of my mouth to order I realised I’d got myself into a world of trouble:

“You want that diiiIIIiipped?”

-I don’t know. Do I? What is it?

Turning to his colleagues at the grill station. “Aw man, he don’t know what diiiiiiipped is.”

-I don’t even know what a big al’s is. Im from out of town (said in an accent somewhere between Bertie Wooster, Billy Bunter and Little Lord Fauntleroy)

“Yo’, I give it to you haaaalf-diiiiipped. Sweet peppers or hot peppers?”

-Hot, please

And with that, in some portakabin on the upper slopes of Mount Olympus the minor official that deals with the Retribution for Foodic Hubris took a break from his work to crack open the vintage Ambrosia, having just won himself a fat bonus for the classically Greek way he’d guided me to engineer my own downfall, fatal flaw and all.

2 minutes later I get a big wrap of far-from-grease-proof paper and have to unfurl a good five layers of this thing. I feel like im at a pass-the-parcel party where it’s been decided to put a big lump of sticky dog shit in the middle and im the lucky winner. But no, underneath the soggy catering paper is a soggy, sodden hot dog bun jammed with 20,000 very thin slices of mystery meat (at a guess, somewhere between free-range Dog and factory-farmed Cat) and slathered in the chilli equivalent of hundreds and thousands - four colours of minutely chopped hot peppers. Half-dipped meant, I think, that they take the whole thing and immerse it in a big pot of bubbling animal grease for a short space of time. What would it have turned out to be if I’d gone for the full dip? The bap was literally falling apart in my hands as it was.

It looked disgusting but it tasted vile. I only ended up eating nearly all of it, the last little bit I left when my inner adult kicked in and reminded me that this holiday from Planet Vega didn’t mean I was contracted to spend my time in last summer's Beirut. As I left, I noticed they had a framed Zagat certificate on their counter. Either they’d stolen it or Zagat’s standards have slipped a couple of thousand points

The difference between my shits the next day was quite, quite fascinating. Do read on. The one I took at 3am when I got in was smooth, slightly oily, neatly packed and densely flavoured. In appearance it had a nutty brown hue generously marbled with strains of rich mahogany. Delivery was friction-free with gentle and satisfying ploppage. Aftertaste was clean, fresh and sharp. No crumbs.

The one I took at 7am when I woke up was a whole different ball game, if the ball is a lump of loosely congealed poo-flakes and the game is to spray as much of the toilet bowl as you possibly can in the few billionths of a second you have betwixt sitting down and total bowel evacuation.

So I had a shower and washed away the bad memories stuck to my inner thighs.

The one I took at 7:15 am cannot adequately be described within the paltry confines of the English language. It was so spectacularly angry.

If the one at 3am had been the perfect child and the one at 7 was the difficult, tantrum-prone middle child, this third one was the axe-murdering, kiddy-fiddling, black shite of the family. It offered no openings for redemption. That morning I stared into the face of pure evil. Happily, due to a youthful phase of self-experimentation, I rendered myself blind in my brown eye so I don’t actually know what that face of evil looks like but I got a taste of it, a taste even pigs would turn up their snouts at. It was dead. It was wrong. It was a holocaust. A pooclear holocaust.

It was born and it died in the same moment, just a flash of hot black stinking disgust at the world and it was gone again. No name, no recognition, no mark of influence did it leave on the world. And out of the corner of my eye, I swear I saw things swimming in the bowl. I wanted to investigate further but remembered that the Truth may never let me sleep again, so I sent it packing to poo heaven.

(There is no poo hell, in case you’re wondering. It’s not that some poos aren’t good and some poos aren’t bad (and of course ugly), as I hope I’ve gone some way to explaining, and maybe you can argue that there should be some method of segregation for these babies, but really it’s a matter of logic. What could possibly constitute a poo hell? The life of a poo is already poo. How do you make that worse? Burn it in sulphurous fumes?!)

Another absolute classic Jarrett encore from the mid-70's, this time Nagoya. Play it loud.

2007-02-27T02:59:00.000-05:00

What I did on my Holidays: Part 1

You shoulda been there.

12 hours in Chicago to rank with the best of ‘em. Chicago is my kinda town. Chicago is your kinda town. Trust me. Aside from a delayed flight, no cellphone coverage and no backup plan to meet my companions, it was a supremely successful excursion. A costly cab ride took me to a hotel that was so grand I thought id got confused and booked somewhere else, much to the amusement of the desk staff who assured me I really had made a reservation there and it really was only the price I really was quoted. Personally I still think there’s been a fuckup. It was a tragedy to leave the room after only a few minutes and head to the Art Institute of Chicago where I knew my friends would be (sadly the Art Ensemble of Chicago was shut for winter renovations. They were busy redecorating Malachi Favors). I must have known a good third of the paintings in the modern section and had no idea that they all lived in Chicago. Rooms full of Monet, Picasso, Chagall, Modigliani, Leger, Seurat, Kandinsky, Dali, Cezanne, Gaugin, Klee, Miro, Mondrian and even some Van Go - which is what I did very quickly upon realising I only had 45 minutes there before my next chance to find them. You cannot possibly see that much genius in one go.

So I ran back to my hotel, ironed my shirt and put my suit back on to keep my early dinner appointment. Yup, I flew to Chicago, in a suit, in coach. And I looked cool.

A frantic cab ride later, I met my pals in the lobby of Tru restaurant, a place so fine in the dining department that it was taken to the point of absurdity, then nudged over the edge and left it to hover calmly above the canyon of pretentious foodery. Which is to say, what a fucking extraordinary place. Warhols in the lobby was a nice touch, a perfectly made Tom Collins was another but a crack team of Peruvian service commandos ushering us in to the main room might have been called a little over the top.

We kicked off with a unique hors d’oeuvres: A choice of napkins. A. Choice. Of. Fucking. Napkins. This was followed by a welcome greeting from the manager who explained to us the rarity of the experience in which we were about to partake. And I, oh no, I was having none of it until the food arrived, when I suddenly realised that the service and ambience probably has to be this serious if they’re to frame the experience right. Just as taste is partly down to the food’s appearance, that same appearance is partly determined by what happens off the plate. Our Maitresse d’ was a faintly ludicrous porcelain statue of a woman with powdered white skin and african features (which I could also have happily taken as an amuse guele), a voice smoother than a silk worm’s shag pad in the 1970’s and more resonant than Dr Niles Crane ordering another fucking fancy coffee in his elder brother’s sitcom (but unfortunately with all the same intentions and inflections that American foodies must go for but cynical Brits find grating). Adorable and completely silly.

We went for the Chef’s Special Selection. An absolute steal at 140 dollars. Paid for by my dear, dear, dear friend.

The waiting staff might have done their training at the Ballet Russes, such were their synchronised swoopings down on our table to place dishes, replace cutlery and refill our glasses. I don’t think anyone has ever invaded my personal space more effectively and unthreateningly without warning (and why can't girls be more spontaneous?). The first thing actually edible that landed on our table were tiny gravy boats each with a small ball of mozzarella sitting in pheasant consommé, sunk in one and loved by all. There followed another ten or so dishes involving incredible variations on Borscht in a tea cup, Sashimi with crystallised Peppers, Shellfish Fricassée in a Coral reduction, Veal Cheeks, B.C. King Salmon, Prime Beef Ribeye with Cherries and then Cow, Goat & Sheeps' Milk Cheeses

How did they taste? Let’s just leave adjectives out of this. Assume everything tasted as it sounds, only lots better because the best ingredients were used and even if you could manage to approximate the flavours intellectually, I think textures cannot so easily be imagined. There’s no point in saying it tasted great. Of course it fucking did. There are only 43 Relais Et Chateaux restaurants in the whole of the US and this is one of them.

What we didn’t finish (Petit Fours, Banana Bread, Chocolate Hazelnut Mousse) was bagged up and given to us to take away. Part of me was relieved we didn’t have time to eat the full meal at the table. The tastes were overwhelming. You cannot possibly taste that much genius in one go. So we didn’t.

But why was I in Chicago at all? The company, the food, the first decent mattress I’ve slept on in 6 months were all worth travelling for but none would have happened without Keith Jarrett.

That’s right. Keith Jarrett. Keith Jarrett. Keith Jarrett. Keith Jarrett? Keith Jarrett. Keith holy mother fucking Jarrett. There. In front of me. Once again. And in a good mood. How good? Good enough to begin the concert with a humorous anecdote about doing his first ever recording session in Chicago. Good enough to be amused by spotting someone illicitly videoing him (“"I can see those two little red lights... you should at least change the color or unscrew the bulbs. You didn’t think I might be able to see a little red light in the middle of a pitch black auditorium? Why don’t you people ever tape it over with something? It’s like candles on a birthday cake when the lights are off). Good enough to stop playing 10 minutes into his first piece because a woman sat up in the gods above had a rhythmic coughing fit and then resume the instant she stopped with a huge development of the piece, going from dark abstraction to rollicking glorious funk in a hacking splutter and a heartbeat). Good enough to play some of the most beautiful, heart-rending music that’s ever been spontaneously composed. Good enough to cut the first half short when he played a piece so delicate, so intense and so shudderingly gorgeous that he asked us all how he could follow it. Good enough to return for FIVE encores: Miss Otis Regrets, You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To, Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, something I recognised but couldn’t place and finally another beautiful variation on his traditional performance sign-off When I Fall In Love. Definitive stuff. And yet, from the second encore I was secretly hoping that that would be it. I was wrecked, drained, exhausted. Didn’t want to hear more incredible music. Didn’t want to hear any music. Worn out. Now I get why the man himself can’t deal so easily with what he does. You cannot possibly hear that much genius in one go. But we did.

You shoulda been there

EDIT: This is the sort of thing you might have heard as an encore, though from Bremen in 1975. You can't buy it, but you can definitely go buy some other stuff of his. Enjoy! Treasure Island

2007-02-17T01:36:00.000-05:00

The Famous last words of mine in religious history: episode 3 has been cancelled due to the fact that im a pussy

*boom*

See? that was just a distant one

(i only wrote that because im taking a plane toChiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-TOWN!

the windy city

city of wind

ol' chicargy

the 'Go'Le Chic'

tomorrow and in the unlikely event of something bad happening, i dont want *boom* to be my very last word on earth)

*BOOM*

um.....

2007-02-15T15:34:00.000-05:00

Famous last words of mine in religious history: Episode 2a

Jesus: If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also

Me: *THWACK*

Jesus: (rubs cheek) Ow! What did you do that for?

Me: Go on, you little bitch. Turn the other one!

Jesus: (sighs) Here you go

Me: *THWACK*

Jesus: (rubs other cheek, retreating) I'm gonna get my Dad on you!

Episode 2b

A giant fist emerges from the sky

*THWACK*

tomorrow: The Prophet Muhammad!

2007-02-15T09:45:00.000-05:00

From the comments box below:

no need 4 words just a smidgen of anthrax
Anonymous

I think this is too important a reply to leave hiding in the comments box to a blog that less than 40 people a day read, 50% of which are after the latest research on Cuntbusting methodology (if i wanted more readers, perhaps I should just give them what they want?) and another 25% interested in "sexy arab girls" or "arab sex girl" "sex arab" "arabsex" etc. So...

I'd agree with you if it weren't for my crossing the US/Canadian border 4 times in the next ten days. So let me state for the record that your comments are wrong, treasonous, anti-american and most importantly do both slayer and metallica a great disservice by not mentioning them in the same breath.

boom boom

I'd also like to add that I strongly support the troops, foetuses, heterosexual marriage, Lord Jesus and the Divine Right of Kings.

For a man with more cogent views than my own, I recommend Jesus' General

And on an only slightly more serious note, listening to the debate in Congress the other day for the non-binding resolution to condemn the President's troop surge plans I found myself siding with the shrill Republicans who were urging a 'no' vote. It seems to me the new majority in Congress and many on the other side of the floor don't know how to say sorry for collectively losing their heads and voting for the war in the first place. Hilary's excuses are not apologies. Speech after speech was concerned with how they got themselves into this mess in the first place - four years too late. If you're going to condemn the war, actually condemn it and yourselves with it. But after 4 years of bullshit rhetoric about how supporting the troops means supporting the war and the commander-in-chief, what hadn't been true in the past now is. Sending a message to those poor fuckers out there that you don't believe in what they're doing doesn't help matters. But that's a side issue to killing and being killed in general. Nobody knows how to run a war anymore. The generals should be able to do what they need to do and the Commander-In-Chief should fall on his fucking sword if they and he fuck up. Both should have happened by now.

Nobody knows what to do. At least Bush has decided, if only by default, that he started this mess and he's going to finish it. Pulling out now (or ever?) will exacerbate this civil war and prompt a serious grab for the spoils by every neighbour. It could be a battlefield for a very long time as Iran, Syria, Saudi, Jordan and Turkey all feel it necessary to play out their respective differences with eachother and their own ethnic minorities. 3000 american troops dead is really not very much. 60,000 died in Vietnam (Hands up who knows how many Vietnamese died?). Politicians the world over regard people as a resource and maybe they have to if they're going to make any decisions at all. So it's rich, nay luxurious, of anyone to start getting a conscience now about how many people have died - either all human life is sacred in which case you should protest all conflict or its all expendable in the cause of the greater good (which this President's stated, unstated and implied aims aren't).

2007-02-15T01:02:00.000-05:00

I have no problem with Valentine's Day but I think in the interests of balance there should be a day around about the 14th of August where you can send a card to someone you quite passionately hate.

"Ain't Valentine's Day" perhaps?

Which got me thinking. What would I write in such a card? Not that I'd send it to anyone because I just can't be bothered to waste my time and effort on hating anyone that much. The surest way to express contempt is to turn your back upon someone. ~There is no more effective way to make them suffer. So no-one truly deserving (and i cant even think of anyone) will ever get such a card, but underneath there follows a few ditties of I hope may add some fiery balls to the canon...

2007-02-15T00:59:00.000-05:00

Roses are infra-red
Ultra-violets are blue
Science takes the fun out of life
And so do you...Professor

2007-02-15T00:58:00.000-05:00

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Wrap your tulips
around my kazoo

2007-02-15T00:55:00.000-05:00

Rose's are red
Violet's are blue
Varicose veins
The scourge of old British women

2007-02-14T16:18:00.000-05:00

Noses have bled
Violence was blue
Like the bruises to your head
That I am giving you

2007-02-14T16:15:00.000-05:00

Roses are dead
Violets are too
Carnations are next
And then it's you

2007-02-14T02:28:00.000-05:00

...un-pho-to-gra-pha-ble...

2007-02-14T01:55:00.000-05:00

This morning I woke up at 7am, with my face in a book about Buddha

I made myself a tea of penny royal honey and organic apple vinegar.

Ate a breakfast of hemp cereal and a grapefruit.

I worked solidly without distraction until lunch

Listened to Laura Veirs' new album on CD, out in April*

Ate a lunch of eggplant curry with fried noodles

Worked til early evening, listening to the World Service and NPR, having shifted from my office to my lounge and thus missing the advent of the snowstorm

Finished booking a complicated trip to the West Coast and back in which I shall travel by plane, train, automobile, clipper and foot

Bought more supplies at the organic food shop opposite me

Got a last minute call to attend a gig and agreed readily, not realising that I would have to wear 4 layers, 2 pairs of gloves, a hat and a hood because the weather had changed a little since this morning

Saw this guy, Brett Dennen, who is going to big (well, Ron Sexsmith-sized at the very least) because he is a great live act and his recorded output aint bad either

Shot some pool (in which I beat my more skilled opponents) and got to pick the music in the poolhall (Iron+Wine, Sufjan Stevens because I'm going to Chicago-o-o on Saturday), then stole a gorgeous scarf that no-one else was claiming as we left

Bought a vegetarian hotdog, got the streetcar to Spadina and then trudged home through the minus 25 blizzard that has entirely covered Toronto in deep snow. Roads and pavements are indistinguishable from eachother. The streetcar driver had to stop twice to dig out the tracks in front of him with a specially-issued TTC spade.

And if you'd have told me this a year ago?

I'd have presumed you'd got the wrong guy.

But I'm not the wrong guy.

Not anymore, anyway.

EDIT: Here's a Laura Veirs track from her last album, Year of Meteors. As you'll notice when you listen to it, it's fucking brilliant (and you should buy the album)

2007-02-12T16:38:00.000-05:00

What an indifference a year makes

2007-02-10T19:36:00.000-05:00

Famous last words of mine in religious history.

Episode 1:

Lord Shiva: Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds

Me: "Have", Shiva, it's "Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds"

*BLAST*

2007-02-08T23:13:00.000-05:00

János Joplin?

Szÿng?

Ferenc Szinátrá?

2007-02-08T23:00:00.000-05:00

Some people have been adding their own interpretations to wikipedia entries:

Was Matthew Kelly really born under this name?

Is the FA of Ireland really this?

Are these really the Seven Wonders of the World?

all seems a bit suspicious but...

I have no doubt that Terry Nutkins really did this

and this

and this

2007-02-08T22:43:00.000-05:00

Two more things to say.

a. He's nailed a good few things about Britain and its peoples. Im no judge of the quality of a man's wordsmithery (just look at my own flimsy rhymes) but I am of the content it delivers and I pronounce it accurate. Good man.

b. There's another Berlin-Era Bowie song on the album!

Kreuzberg

There is a wall that runs right through me
Just like this city I will never be joined
What is this love? Why can I never hold it?
Did it really run out? In those strangers’ bedrooms

I have decided at 25
That something must change

Saturday night, in East Berlin
We took the U-Bahn to the East Side Gallery
I was sure I’d found love
With this one lying with me
Crying again in the Hauptbahnhof

I have decided at 25
That something must change

After sex the bitter taste
Been fooled again, the search continues
Concerned mothers of the west
Teach your sons how to truly love

2007-02-08T22:22:00.000-05:00

Bloc Party have just released their new album and i'm listening to it as I write this. There are plenty of people on the internet who can tell you what to think about it, that's not why I'm here. I was just struck by the lyrics to the opening track. Apparently inspired by a Brett Easton Ellis novel (although how anyone can be inspired by his work is up for debate), it sounds to me more like they were inspired by a certain International Man. Note the explicit references to the brand of cigarettes, drug of choice, locale, the last two words of the song and of course the complete desire to forget the 1980's.

Song For Clay (Disappear Here)

I am trying to be heroic
In an age of modernity
I am trying to be heroic
Because all around me history sinks
So I enjoy and I devour
Flesh and wine and luxury
But in my heart I am lukewarm
Nothing ever really touches me

At Les Trois Garcons, we meet at precisely 9 o’clock
I order the foie gras and I eat it with complete disdain
Bubbles rise in champagne flutes, but when we kiss I feel nothing
Feasting on sleeping pills and Marlboro Reds
Self-pity won’t save you

Oh how our parents suffered for nothing
Live the dream like the 80's never happened
People are afraid to merge on the freeway
Disappear here

We stroll past the queue, into the magazine launch party
I am handed a pill and I swallow with complete disdain
Kick-drum pounds, off-beat hi-hats, remember to look bored
We suck each others’ faces and make sure we are noticed
Cocaine won’t save you

Because East London is a vampire, it sucks the joy right out of me
How we long for corruption in these golden years

2007-02-04T08:05:00.000-05:00

There's chips and carrots in my head
With cabbage in my knees
I see them when I lie in bed
But not my inner peas

My fingers fat with fishy stuff
And bacon in my thumb
I've candy floss in belly fluff
And gravy up the bum

I've sushi where the sun don't shine
Cos I love Japanese
My veins contain a nice rice wine
But still I find no peas

My waist is like a swiss fondue
All filled with stinky cheese
I've checked the contents of my loo
Yet still no inner peas

The guru and the gourmand both
Request I drink green teas
To rouse myself from rotting sloth
And find my inner peas

"Seek old peas and ye shall find
a multitude of Mendel's clues
forget your stomach, try the mind
your peas are frozen, join the queues

To heat them, eat them, even beat them
whizz them, fizz them, make them slushy
your inner peas arent hard to find
but im afraid they're somewhat mushy

So sow some seeds in armpit hair
And cultivate new pods
Then warm and stroke and pray for rain
Appease your Nature Gods

You'll not find peas in the Seven Seas
Nor in the lands contained
Not even in the birds and bees
Where you feel unconstrained

They dont exist in toxic bliss
Nor all the worldly arts
You need remember only this:
They hide in human hearts"

...and smelly farts

2007-02-03T20:11:00.000-05:00

...and if I end up on the street, here's what I'll say to Joseph Public and wife

2007-02-03T18:58:00.000-05:00

The inventiveness of Toronto's homeless community knows no bounds. I was just chased down in the street, literally chased down, by an old guy holding a shitty Tim Horton's empty paper cup and pressingly queried with this:

"Hey, buddy, can you spare half a million dollars?"

That's some twisted genius right there. For of course I can't spare that much money - who can? And out of those who can, would? But it's designed to get you thinking about what you can spare and for the right kind of person automatically illicits a recompensatory response. If he asked for a dollar, most times you'd say no or sorry and whisk yourself away, feeling bad maybe but leaving him empty-handed nevertheless (and by extension empty-veined, -lunged or -livered because they're all addicts, arent they? Well arent they?!). But to ask for a ludicruous sum of money is to engage your interest in the proposition in the first place and thence to implant the idea in your head that, even though you know they're not serious, perhaps you can help out anyway with a bit of spare change. What's a dollar, anyway? There are almost 5 million people in Toronto; if he gets a dollar out of just ten percent, he's made his target and you should be happy for him.

Actually, 90 cents seems to be the fashionable asking price these days, for similar reasons - you don't ask for change when you're giving money away. You should be able to, perhaps of all the situations in the world handing over a gift is the time you're most justified in dictating without conditions the precise value, yet we are made to feel like we can't. For some reason it feels crushingly awkward to hand over a note and ask for some coins back. Some say the reason is because it belies your still-selfish nature and some say it makes you look like a dick but I think the reason is because this is not a simple, one-sided transaction. It's not just that many, if not all acts of charity are carried out from a motive of self-interest - enlightened perhaps, but nevertheless it's done for one's own benefit as much the recipients'. The other side of the spare coin is that the beggar is not only providing a service for you (Irregular Guilt Assuagement), the key thing is that he knows it. Once you've stopped to take notice of him, he is essentially in control of the situation. You will give him money, there's very little doubt about that. Just how much is up to both of you though be warned, your hand may be doing the coin selecting but if he or she is a skilled vagabond, it is as if they have taken momentary control of your essential motor functions and before you know it, you've handed them a goodly proportion more than the usual.

I did stop for an old lady who was clearly a bit addled though not obviously homeless last week and ended up not giving her any money, though I don't recommend it. Of course, once you've stopped, as noted above, it's impossible to move on again (I didn't realise she was asking me for money or i'd not have stopped) and yet I did manage to get out of it because my phone rang as i was fishing in my pockets for a cigarette to give her and as I answered it, stared her in the face with a very severe and mildly apologetic expression and left her in the street, empty-handed and most decidedly befuddled. I felt pretty shit too.

The reason I give cigarettes over money (not always, but it's my preference) is that I really don't want them spending money on stuff that will kill them and if this sounds hypocritical, then i'm pleased that i've written a successful sentence. I also would prefer not to smoke, so it's my preferred way of cutting down. I am taking back 5 minutes of my life every time I give a cigarette away; I'm also shortening that person's life by 5 minutes, which i'm not overly fussed about since they're not enjoying it anyway. Then there's the reason that I don't mind helping people out - quite the opposite, i wish i could dedicate more time and energy to it than this meagre practice - but i prefer to do it on my own terms. Yes, if you've got the temerity to try and hussle some money out of me, i guess you deserve a reward (though not the Hoser prick that sells the homeless paper on Bloor and Yonge, who I swear I will turn round and fucking deck if he tries his agressive and manipulative shit on me again). It's just that Im not going to give you what you ask for. I will dictate what it is I give you, as is my right since im the fucking donor. If you want a really nice gift, like some fruit or a sandwich or some money, my advice to you is to sit there looking very miserable, wretched even and not solicit money or even attention from passers-by. You will get preferential treatment from people like me, if there are any.

2007-02-01T10:01:00.000-05:00

There was a spot on KCRW last month about Death Row Prisoners' Last Meals. I was shocked to discover that the days of Lobster, Caviar and Dodo Egg feasts are long gone. I quote from www.foodreference.com

In the United States, the actual parameters of the last meal vary from state to state. Naturally there are limitations on the requests. You will not find any convicts chowing down on foie gras and Russian caviar before meeting their maker. Texas limits the meals to food that can be made within the prison. Florida imposes a twenty dollar price limit. Some states will allow take out from pizza parlors or other popular restaurants. Maryland conversely, does not offer its inmates a special last meal. Alcohol is universally forbidden and a final smoke depends on whether the prison is smoke-free or not.

Being on death row in Texas or Florida is bad enough, obviously but I absolutely refuse to be executed in Maryland. I wouldn't even risk committing murder there. There's just no way.

But it's got me thinking about what I'd have as my last meal. Would I go for something I never got to eat in my my life before (and unless that last-minute call for clemency from the Chief Rabbi is heeded, unlikely as it may be in Texas, I never will)? I've never eaten, um..... shit, what have I never eaten?

I've never had Camel or Giraffe or Rhino or Dolphin and I've never desperately wanted them. They're not world-renowned great delicacies either, as far as i know. Then again, I've eaten tinned Tuna a few times, so maybe I have had Dolphin and it wasn't spectacular. My dad extols grilled locusts and deep-fried guinea pig and they do sound perversely tasty, but what if i don't absolutely love them? It seems an absurd choice for a last meal. My grandfather's favourite meal was monkey brains by all accounts, but again, it seems wilfully odd (and pretty close to cannibalism) at a time like this to try something so new. It's probably an acquired taste and I don't want to be eating it going 'yeah, no, hmm, yeah, i can definitely see me getting used to this. i'll probably really appreciate it the next ti...'

Speaking of perverse and primative (sic), it's also not the moment to finally eat bum with chips, peas and gravy. Nor shall I follow it with a dessert of freshly chilled poo in hot custard either, not even if Friar Couscous himself walks in carrying a silver salver upon which sits a juicy deep-fried vagina with a lightly battered dick-dipper, I shall not be tempted. This is neither the time nor the place, thank you.

In fact, if I could have a 22 course tasting menu sent over directly from The Fat Duck or El Bulli, Im not sure I would. Do I want something that fantastic, that life-affirming just a few hours before I'm to get my brain burned out of my skull to satisfy the medieval bloodlust of a deeply-troubled modern society and a State Governor up for re-election?

And besides, nothing too fancy is going to be that filling either. For example, I don't think I could eat Fruits de Mer as a last meal, it seems too light, too frivolous and maybe just a touch too romantic for such an occasion. In fact, no seafood is going to cut it. I don't want to fill up on Moules Frites or Grilled Sea Bass or Crab in Black Bean Sauce or even Grilled Conger Eel, no matter how much I love them all. They're just not substantial enough by themselves. Rightly or wrongly, I always associate fish with alternatives to a hearty, meaty meal. You can slather it in as much beurre blanc as you like, it still doesn't give the same sensation as eating something with legs.

So it's going to be something I know and love. Sadly a lot of meals are connected to people and memories, so it just wouldn't seem right to have them on my own. It might be my favourite meal of all time, but I could never have roast lamb, buttered greens, yorkshire pud, beer gravy and 200 roasted spuds on my own. What would be the point? It's a collaborative meal, one to share with loved ones.

I could have Chicken Curry but only if it's my own recipe and i'm allowed to cook it. It wouldn't need much more than that and a big plate of basmati rice to make me deliriously happy. But if im not allowed to cook it then what's the point? I know just how I like it and no-one else is going to make it better. In fact, I can't even do it myself anymore. It's a recipe that I haven't achieved perfection in for at 3 or 4 years at least, so that's out.

Would it it be my childhood favourite, Steak and Chips (Rump and Rare from the Berni Inn)? That'd be hard to beat and sadly impossible to recreate, since the chain doesn't exist anymore. No chip will ever taste as good, I swear. Maybe I'd be persuaded by an evil slab of Kobe beef with a huge wodge of marrow on top and thrice-cooked frites but if im not allowed a bottle of very good Bordeaux with it, it's a curious form of torture Im not prepared to go through.

I could have gone for a big bucket of KFC with chips but for 3 crucial factors:

1. it's fucking disgusting
2. you call that chicken?
3. it tasted amazing in 1979. it tastes like shit today and even the chips have changed for the worse.

The same applies to a Big Mac meal. Once a glorious evening out and one of the few untainted happy memories of childhood for me was visiting McDonald's in the late 70's with my whole family. How naive we were to think it was so class but truly delicious it all was back then. When the Hot Apple Pie had real bits of apple in it, when everybody said it was Kangaroo Meat (as if they could really afford that!? how little we knew. Though it's interesting that we could easily believe it was not beef) and when the fries came in white paper packets that tasted almost as good as their contents. I date the decline of McDonald's in the UK to the moment when they removed Root Beer from the menu. It still feels wrong to drink anything else with a meal there (not that i've eaten there in many years). I was 6 when I ate my first Big Mac. And my second, straight after the first. It was complete heaven on earth and none have ever tasted as good since. I spent the next 16 hours on a plane to South Africa, silently farting every 15 seconds and loudly, repetitively excusing myself just as my mother had taught me to do. The businessman who I sat next to was very understanding.

I wouldn't say no to a Nando's chicken with chips, rice and extra-hot sauce. But why stop at Nando's when I could have the real thing flown over from Portugal or, even better, Mozambique? Yeah, it's a pretty tasty meal and definitely my kind of soul food. Yet I can't help feeling it's food that doesn't travel well (not sure they treat their chickens any better than KFC either). It works in a Nando's just barely and that's mainly because all the staff, decor and music are from Africa. But really, is it a last meal ever? I don't think so.

Could all this pondering be related to my ongoing veganism? Why yes, I think it could.

So after 'much' thought and because i've got to get back to work, I think i've settled on my final meal at last*

Rhubarb Leaf Salad
Take a big bunch of raw rhubarb leaves, mix with tomato leaves and green potato tubers, dress with a nice vin-regret of nolive oil and mustdead

Chicken Sashimi
Remove skin from breasts and slice into wafer-thin strips. Raw chicken can be a bit bland so i'd recommend a corn-fed variety at the least. Maybe a Poulet de Bresse. Have a big dollop of Wasabi on hand too. Be sure to wash hands, knife and chopping board after preparation as you dont want to spread bacteria everywhere.

Pork Tartare
Take a good piece of Organic Pork and again, slice ultra-thin as if it were prosciutto (which it is, only fresher). Dress with raw bitter almonds and a puree of apple pips.

Colourful Mushrooms on Toast
Gather all the mushrooms you can find in a forest, the crazier looking the better and fry them up in butter and garlic. Add parsley and introduce to toast.

The pooey-bit-on-the-back-of-the-Shrimp Gumbo.
Sure, it's labour intensive but this is a mighty fine southern stew. Good eating. If possible, use whole Fugu and Squid Spines as a stock.

*legal disclaimer - if you're damn fool enough to actually try any of these recipes, i take no responsibility whatsoever for the consequences^. I do suggest you nominate yourself for a Darwin Award though

^certain death

2007-01-31T00:41:00.000-05:00

I'm on the streetcar two nights ago and I don't have anything to read, nobody wants a staring competition and im bored of looking at snow, so I look instead at the adverts above me. It's all the usual crap but there's a new one i've not seen before advertising a service clumsily called 'Askipedia', whereby you text them a question, any question and they will send you an answer. Just 2 dollars. About a pound. One and a bit euros. A billion yen. It's doubtless designed for pub arguments like 'who scored the most goals in a particular hockey game' or indeed 'where's the nearest pub?'. But i'm thinking:

Any question?

Ok.

"Where was God during the Holocaust?"

No sooner have I sent off the text and felt the 12 billion dead jewish eyes' ashen stares (not sure if I intended that pun) than I receive a prompt reply. Wow. They're good. Of course it's just a preliminary reply explaining that the answer will be along shortly and a restatement of the terms and conditions that apply. Im already realising that i've just chucked away some money for nothing, all for being a bit 'clever'. They're not going to want to or be capable of answering such a question, since it's a matter of opinion not fact. Besides, it's almost certainly going straight to a trained monkey with Google, on minimum wage but probably no healthcare. See how they get you?

15 minutes later.

*beep beep*

I flip open the phone with no great anticipation of an actual answer. But I get this...

If God interefered with things like the Holocaust, He would be effectively stripping us of our free will, that or He just doesn't exist.

Well, it is an answer and it's only worth 2 dollars, so I'm not complaining. In fact, Im chuffed that someone's taken the time to reply with something more than I expected. I want to reply that there's nothing inherently wrong in depriving us of our free will, which may after all be an illusion and that plenty of offshoots from the main three monotheistic religions have strongly determinist views of human destiny, which might imply human nature too. But to text back would call into question my sanity and financial responsibility (both of which have rarely been off the debating sheet), so I don't.

It does however give me a line of enquiry I find 'worth' pursuing. So for your pleasure and my reckless curiosity, I am now texting them one of the questions I posed below....

"Who would win in a fight between a duck-headed dog and a dog-headed duck?

...and why?" (I want my money's worth)

THIRTY SECONDS LATER

The dog-headed duck would be sure to win, although the duck-headed dog has size and claws the jaws of the dog's head would be victorious

It's probably just me but I find this a hilariously satisfying answer.

2007-01-30T00:02:00.000-05:00

Me vs The Flu Virus?

I'll tell you now:

3-1 to the away team at the moment, on the 8th day of the annual test. I blame a confident early start where the Me team thought it had gotten the opposition beaten after only 24 hours, celebrating with a victory drink and cigarette or 9, only for it to strike back hard, taking advantage of guard being let down against an unknown foreigner and the relative inexperience of the Me team's capacity to deal with such a wily opponent without its usual soup-making, pillow-fluffing, lemon-squeezing backup.

*sniff*

2007-01-28T22:37:00.000-05:00

Piranhas vs Electric Eels?

2007-01-28T14:21:00.000-05:00

Tag-team wrestling: A pig and a snake on one side vs a goat and a scorpion on the other?

2007-01-26T19:45:00.001-05:00

a salty leech and an anaemic slug?

...on the tip of your nob?

2007-01-26T18:54:00.000-05:00

a hedgehog vs a puffer fish?

...tussling at 10,000 feet?