Venusberg | That's not your heart, it's a piece of helicopter casing

Wednesday, January 31, 2001

This just in from Jen - the Superfriends Drinking Game. Now, I'm pretty sure I've never seen Superfriends, but it has filtered so deep into my geek consciousness that I sincerely believe that I remember whole episodes.

Most peculiar.

Anyone with an interest in this sort of ubergeekery should check out "World's Funniest", in which the Bat-Mite and Mr. Mxypxy-oh for-fuck's-sake (and if you're already lost, you should probably just move on. Nothing to see) go insane and kill everybody.

"We're the Superfriends! We're super-friends to our friends, but super-foes to our enemies. So, are you super-friend or super-foe?"

"Are you super-f*~@ing kidding me?"

Further post-"Nowhere" ruminations.

Beautifully, Stacy Keanan and Cheryl Ladd made a movie together. It's like some made for TV neverland.....

And, although he is not strictly relevant, mention of Jake Busey has put me once again in mind of Straight Magazine - the Magazine for Straight Men Who Aren't Gay - and their incredible Gary Busey Fan Fiction. Nobody can live without this knowledge.

OK, I now have a horrible feeling that if I watch "Nowhere" again, I will realise that it is the most incredible pile of crap ever. At the moment I have beautiful memories....

Decisions, decisions.

Speaking of decisions, I spent Monday night with a friend, chewing over what the Right Thing (tm) to do is concerning his girlfriend of getting on for a decade. Conversations like that always throw me into a bit of a flat spin, because I had the opportunity to secure romantic bliss, and I cocked it. What do I bring to the table? Telegrams from the songs of experience?

Just seen: Nowhere. I think I am in love with Gregg Araki. I don't know if any of them would thank me, but this film feels like a high-speed, hallucinatory whirl through the world of a west-coast Dennis Cooper, seen with PP Hartnett's eyes. Yes, I know, it's the slightly upmarket equivalent of "Lee Evans is like Norman Wisdom....on acid". So shoot me.

But seriously, folks, this is a work of chaotic but intermittently phenomenal beauty, and incredibly funny to boot. And it has perhaps the finest collection of stars ever assembled, almost all of whom have clearly been selected because they are the relatives of faded stars (Jordan Ladd, who must every so often have to say, "Mom, the only films of yours I can remember even vaguely are the ones I was in as well", Scott Caan, but sadly no space for Jake Busey, Hollywood's mightiest man) or faded stars (Stacy Keanan, John Ritter), or features of the pop culture landscape (Rose McGowan, Traci Lords and Shannen Doherty, all of whom are vaporised by a froglike alien - rock on).

You must see this film. Or you must avoid this film. I really can't decide for you.

Well, things are going down at the Underground, bulletin board of my soul. It seems a truly mighty girlfight has broken out between myself and the aforementioned olive of the evening, Kali. Basically, this happened and then this happened and then this happened and then her boyfriend was homophobic and then I got annoyed with him and then she got annoyed with me and when they get together....it's MOIDA!!!!.

Check out the continuing unpleasantness here.

Monday, January 29, 2001

Consider some product P which you desire with an amount D, D causing you to be willing to pay a sum of money M to acquire it. "Advertising" is the activity of some other party such that either:

Your desire for the product increases to E; or
Your desire remains at D, while your perceived value of the product - that is, the amount you would be willing to pay for it - changes to N, where N is greater than M.

Your short skirt, your boots, your thighs. The shelf of your breasts. Your smile as you stepped into the room and I saw your thighs, your breasts, your smile and you, in one convincing campaign and united message, for the first time.

Matt's on the campaign trail, wrestling with "Truth in Advertising" on the UpsideClown

Just what is it that makes today's President so different, so exciting?

And speaking of affairs of the bruised and beaten heart, I had the good fortune recently to come across a file containing some of my half-finished poems from about three years back, most of which are embarrassingly awful, and more importantly a dozen or so poems from my beloved and currently Bostonian Nightwatchgirl of the Moon.

So far so good.

However, sandwiched between the dactyls and anapaests I also came across a couple of letters from an ex-girlfriend while leafing through in search of something half-decent to run with for the writing group tomorrow. There's a certain bittersweet (which, incidentally, was first attributed to Sappho, and is incredibly hackneyed but also, if you take the time to dig through the accreted usage to the pure meaning, is the most fantastic oxymoron) quality about old love letters, of course, especially when one of them describes preparations for the trip where the Loved One was unfaithful to you. However, my quandary is that one of them is somewhat steamy.

Well, OK, it's downright filthy. Those of you who have met me may struggle to believe it, but I knew the love of woman in the dim and distant, and there's nothing backward about the coming forward here. So, the question is, should I bin them for everyone's peace of mind, or keep them as source material for the inevitable novel of twentysomething love affairs in the Metropolis?

Tell me.

Apparently, Grayblog is undergoing a radical overhaul. I can't shake the feeling that this is not a moment too soon. Admittedly, it's been utterly compulsive reading of late, but in much the same way that a dog with a tyre track across its stomach or a dying man is hard to look away from.

Still, for what it's worth, there is one cure for those afflicted with heartsickness. Uncle Leonard.

Saturday, January 27, 2001

And, after a day in my sickbed, here I am in the family home. More tomorrow on the first trip back since the funeral.

Speaking of death, I found out on Thursday that somebody I had been to college and school with, although never known that well, took a dive from Loughborough's war memorial, a bell-tower in the park. Just the thought of the last thing coming up to meet you on this Earth being Loughborough....

Thursday, January 25, 2001

Few of his tutors remember his work, and fewer still of his peers can give any insight into Ellery's student life. "Quiet", "unobtrusive" and "obsessed with pregnant women" are the most common responses found.

A disturbing but excellent UpsideClown this bright, fresh, oh-my-God-I-think-I'm-about-to-die Thursday. George is having issues with Sticks and Stones.

Wednesday, January 24, 2001

Now, in general it is, of course, best, if you have nothing good to say about something, to say nothing at all. I know that. I realise that. Am I some cranky shit-flinger? I think not. Those who have met me will contend that I am the sweetest-natured person in the history of creation. I hope you all understand that.

Which is why I want to make clear that what I am about to say is intended as a compliment.

Dead@32 is perhaps the most boring thing I have ever encountered. Not just the most boring website, but the most boring thing ever, including rocks, trees, German police drama, American Football - you name it.

Phenomenally, hypnotically dull. So dull that I can't actually tear myself away from it. The weblog section is dull as the moon at midday, sure, but that in no way prepares you for the incredible, Zen dullness of the breakout articles.

He goes to San Francisco, and makes it sound like Surbiton on a Wednesday!

He crawls deep inside the mind of Sal, the only person he has ever met, and we idly check the train timetables for a bit of hot sexy action!

He obsesses about Sal just a little more (as might you if she were the only person you had ever met), and we fail to stifle a yawn so massive it tears the top of our heads off!

He finally gets to nob Sal, and describes it in such loving but utterly tedious detail, with such a dead, flat tone - We undress and are sitting there naked, turning (sic) each other by squeezing each other's nipples and kissing passionately - that you wonder with mild irritation when he's going to write about something really horny, like counting the hoover bags in the cupboard beneath the stairs and realising that he has one more than he thought!

Still flabbergasted by his good fortune that he should have the opportunity to get nasty with the only person he has ever met, he shares her confessions about youthful dogsex, with a strange misture of icky perversity and utter sexlessness - "Some of the best erotica I enjoy involves women and animals, usually a dog. Why not? I've never done that, but that doesn't mean I haven't fantasized about it. She was afraid it would freak me out, but nope... Not me. If anything, it makes me more turned on!!" - and we appreciate for a moment the perfection of the double exclamation point, before checking how accurate was our attempt to guess how many sites on the Internet use the word "grouting"!

It's a piece of work, and my admiration for it is boundless. Be warned, though, you really will be transfixed. It's a work of exactitude in literature not rivalled outside Tristram Shandy.

Zidouta has been kind enough to link to me. If only I spoke better Dutch, I'd be able to return the favour with any honesty whatsoever. As far as I can make out, he likes David Foster Wallace, Cannonball Adderley and the Chrysler Building, for starters. So, if you are a little more ept with modern languages than I, why not enjoy the most absurdly comprehensive collection of weblogging links known to man at Zidouta?

Damn. Does this make me a linkslut, doctor?

They look like anyone else in a church service. They join in with the singing. They jot down brief notes during the sermon. They even sip the coffee when the service is over. But it's only later, when the collection is being counted up in the vestry that the church realizes the awful truth � they have been visited by the Mystery Worshipper!

Well, gosh. This is very cool indeed. I'm almost tempted to sign up myself, although "Lots of wanking on about some bloke called God, limited wine list" may be considered largely unsatisfactory qua review.

And, now that you have all those maps, you can play any flavour of Mornington Crescent you like. If you like that kind of thing.

Blue Ruin has posted this link to a physical representation of the relationship between the stations of the London Underground. To be honest, it disappoints me a little. It's too sane and too rational, and it presents too logical a picture of the interrelation between the world and Subterranea. If it's this bloody simple, why bother with a schematic representation at all?

The only answer I can come up with is aesthetic. The London Underground map is one of the most beautiful unnaturally-occuring systems known to mankind, and has inspired its own tributes. And, of course, a school of imitators.

Manhattanites, we can see, find walking north and south almost impossible, while their bridge-and-tunnel neighbours find Manhattan bewildering, depending as it does on the ability to move east and west under one's own steam. The entire Paris Metro runs at a rakish Gallic angle. Only Sydney can take you to Kissing Point and love you until you're Paramatta.

Being able to understand a public transport system is one of the first things that really makes you feel you belong in a place - one reason why the New York Subway is such a cruel joke on a multicultural city. Which is perhaps why I felt so alienated yesterday when, in a fug of exhaustion, I realised I had travelled north instead of south, a mistake which makes that whole zig-zag stutter irrelevant by comparison.

I don't want to have to deal with this city unless I feel up for taking it on.

Tuesday, January 23, 2001

Oh God, but I feel like a shit sandwich. I feel the onrush of flu, beating its great wings, and frankly I am hacked off about it to the nth degree. Hacked off because I was going to work from home tomorrow, and now can't, at just about exactly the time I could do with lying in until 8:30. Hacked off because I see no point in this ridiculous degradation of my capacity to act as a human being. And hacked off because I have had to cancel seeing a friend and her neonate child, for fear of infecting it.

Having said which, going out to a pub with woman and baby is never a good proposition - the baby never buys rounds, no matter how pissed you get it.

Monday, January 22, 2001

Although artistically justified, readers should be aware that the following post contains harsh language. Rather a lot of it, in fact.

Speaking of El Tel, amazingly there appears to be only one document on the Internet containing the phrase "Terry Pratchett is a c*nt". I find this a hideous indictment of the entire medium.

This led to an interesting little exchange between myself and Matt, whose weblog is incidentally sheathed in a pine-fresh new skin as of today. In the auditorium waiting for the Magnetic Fields to start.

Matt had a bone to pick.

"Why didn't you just say 'Terry Pratchett is a cunt', Dan? Then there would have been two sites with that wording."

"Well," said I, thinking aloud, "As you know, I'm not particularly averse to causing offence, but there is something about 'cunt' specifically which I always feel a bit dodgy about. I think it may be the implicit violence in the term, which I don't think you can separate from a certain misogyny. I mean, a lot of words are pretty much decontextualised now - 'fuck', for example, I can quite happily use as an emotional sound effect without anything but a sort of metanymic shadow of the penis-and-orifice connections which make up its primary meaning. With 'cunt'....I don't know, isn't there still a closeness between the descriptive and the pejorative that....everyone's looking at us, Matt."

"No, everyone's looking at you."

Still, their own fault for eavesdropping.

Meanwhile, I feel the "Terry Pratchett is a cunt" webring coming on - a series of sites linked only by the fact that, often utterly without context, that sentence occurs and recurs.

Speaking of Upsideclown:

This 'recipe book' is nothing of the sort. It is an incitement to overthrow society, a passport to revolution.

It's the future and the pasta, on the UpsideClown

I think I may be on the verge of losing my Amazon virginity.

Yep. Strange to think that, although such a disfunctional geek that I have not one but two websites publishing my mediocre thoughts, I have thus far shunned e-commerce. Eek commerce, more like. Partly due to the security risk, but mainly because I know that as soon as I start I will never stop. So, a compromise. Only stuff I have no chance of getting in the UK, in an attempt to control credit card madness.

So far it's not looking good.

The catalyst for this was predictably hebephrenic, typifying the whole Internet experience. The palpitating soul of my inner geek (as opposed to my outer geek, which is similar but larger) was stroked by the knowledge that, somewhere out there was a Powerpuff Girls album, featuring just acres of top tunewelders. This was going to be a problem. Still, nothing I couldn't handle.

Then George, sister in UpsideClown, returned from her journeying in Tasmania with a present - a novel by Lemony Snicket, which was absolutely superb. The others in the series are not currently available in the UK, although I did buttonhole the author recently and he told me they would be in Summer. Still, Summer's a long way away. And, although it looks like Daniel Handler (the man behind Lemony Snicket) has had his first "serious" novel published in the UK, it's cheaper on Amazon and....

I'm in Hell, basically. Thank God they don't have a wider selection of CDs or I'd be doomed.

This is inspired. It turns out that the truly web-safe palette - one which provides maximum function over all machines, browsers, screen settings, etc. - runs to a mighty 22 colours. Most of which are some variation on green. Who says the Interwebnet is complicated?

Speaking of which, it's back to dried blood for Venusberg - what do you think? At some point I will actually design this place, I promise....

It's just wrong..Anna brings you the forbidden delights of Lego porn. Not, sadly, as funny as it sounds, although it is kind of instructive on the sheer banal monotony of pornography, whether posable priapic plastic people porn or not.

Well, terrific. Institutional racism at Feltham prison, including the probable faking of race relations training experience and the death of at least one inmate.

What I find particularly zesty about this pointy-headed tale of our friends in law enforcement is the way that this is described as "malicious racism". Ah, yes. As opposed to the racism that lowers cholesterol and builds muscle tone.

Friday, January 19, 2001

Cobralingus, Jeff Noon's new project, aims to apply filters to language to rerender it in a different form, like photoshop. Sounds a bit sub-Oulipo to me, but then what do I know? As a computer program, it would be genuinely impressive. As a book, it seems merely performative.

This is all Blue Ruin's fault; Christian rewrites of popular songs. I mean, what the fuck? Really, what the fuck? I ask you in a spirit of Christian love, what the fuck?

I have a friend, whom I love very much, who does listen, for whatever insane, syphilitic reason, to Christian Rock ("It's not for the music, it's for the lyrics." Then read a book, goddammit!). Pretty bad idea, but hey, if there are people who make it and people who buy it, then fair enough. But lyrics for Christians to sing so they don't feel like they're damned to perdition for following the hip-wiggling agents of Satan? That's pretty bendy. If you can't take the heat of eternal damnation, stay out of the moshpit, would be my humble suggestion.

Still, the idea of an anti-Darwinism song to the tune of "Hey Hey We're the Monkees" titled "Hey Hey We're Not Monkees" is pretty damn cool. In Bizzaro-world.

Cal. Cal. Cal. Cal. Cal.

Ahem. Sorry. Forgot to link to Cal in the Blogmeet post.

That's Cal.

Cal.

Thursday, January 18, 2001

"In America we have sports. In Britain you have sport.

In America we go into drug rehabilitation. Over here you go into drugs rehabilitation.

This is towards explaining that, whereas in Britain you have the gay male, in America we have....the male gaze."

Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson form one of the finest double acts in modern comedy, which is odd given that their stock-in-trade is heartbreak. He endlessly wry, perfectly poised and surprisingly tiny, she intelligent, enthusiastic and never afraid of the unselfconscious joy of performance. The kind of people New York will be populated by entirely in my Dr. Moreau-like utopia.

Or, to put it another way, the Magnetic Fields at the Lyric Hammersmith rocked beyond the telling of it. 2 days, 4 hours, 69 songs about love...just astonishing.

Best moment, barring all of it, had to be when, after a lengthy ovation and cries of "encore", the band returned to the stage, Merritt held up a hand for silence, leant into the mike, said "Stop clapping" in a tone of finality and walked off again. In most pop stars it would be pissy and annoying. From him it was perfect.

Also met Daniel Handler, but more on that later.

Sleeping on the back-seat my chest tightens and I have to concentrate to breathe, like at fourteen year-old sleepovers. I assume it is the dog hairs before remembering that our dog has been dead for almost five years. All the dogs of my childhood are dead.

Neil's in barnstorming form in this piece of news from nowhere. Suburban Gothic is the style of the moment on the UpsideClown.

"I would kill....Rupert Giles. he(sic) seems too smart. i (sic) don"t (sic) likee(sic) geeks like that. he (sic) would die reading a book"

Well, fine. Killing the readers aside, a surprising (well, surprising to me) number of the fictional character murders proposed on Who Would You Kill have some sexual element. This is surely not a happy thing. Not quite sure if this counts or not:

I Would Kill... Riley Finn! I stab them (sic) in the face and set them (et quoque sic) on fire, dressed as a ninja.

It only works if Riley's dressed as a ninja? Interesting. Tell me about your father....

American political cartoons are like American sitcoms. The British get the best, and its easy to forget just how bad the majority are - just as PBS has never shown a series of "Bullseye". For proof of this, one need only recall that "Dharma and Greg" is prety alpha television. Hmmmm-mmmm.

So, the cartoonists' take on the California energy crisis, perhaps this century's most amusing return of chickens to homestead yet, has been of...well, let's just say highly variable quality. Still far better thatn the German entry on the last page, mind...

OK, UK weblogger's meet. With no attempt to be comprehensive, present were Paul, Matt, two of N2K, Tom, Meg, Catherine, Kylie, Davo, Jen, Nick, Darren, Mo, other Matt, David, Iain....the list goes on - drop me a line if I've forgotten you.

I cannot now get the phrase "What can I do with my long bony fingers and my rubbery lips?" out of my head - cheers Meg. She it is who is also repsonsible for these pictures. Why did nobody tell me that the lopsided smile I worked so hard on after reading "Whose Body?" makes me look ridiculous?

Wednesday, January 17, 2001

OK, this was wacky.

On my way home from the webloggers' meet (more tomorrow, when some other poor sap has sorted out the links), I was stopped by a friendly young man and his companion.

"Hey, you drunk or stoned?"
"So far, neither."
"Ah, I'm Michael (shake of hands). What's your name?"
"David" (if in doubt, pretend to be your dad)
"Tell me, are you gay? Do you like cock?"
At the same moment, his companion is offering me young girls. Got to say, option paralysis. And then, while I'm talking my way through this, he asks if I want some drugs. The man's a pantechnicon.

And, do you know what? When I told him I had everything I needed, it really felt like the truth. Weird.

Tuesday, January 16, 2001

Dang this is morbid. Compelling, though - how often do you ponder what your last meal on this Earth should be? Not often enough, judging from some of the choices. A plain cheese sandwich? One plain flour tortilla? Yogurt? Fuck that noise. After all, it's not like you're going to be stuck with the washing up.

Then there's the "making a point" option, although why exactly Carlos Santana thought the Texas correctional chefs would be up to whipping up a slice of "Justice, Temperance, with Mercy" boggles the imagination. At least you can't overcook a eucharist.

I have to say, I'm with David Castillo:

Twenty-four soft shell tacos, six enchiladas, six tostados, two whole onions, five jalapenos, two cheeseburgers, one chocolate shake, one quart of milk and one package of Marlboro cigarettes.

Now is not the time to worry about your cholesterol. Now is the time to make the life of whoever has to clean up the execution chamber truly miserable.

It's wierdly compulsive to check the last meals with the diners' final statements. G Green, who curiously requests both coffee and tea, must steal the Texan Badass award with:

Let�s do it, man. Lock and load. Ain�t life a [expletive deleted]?

But most of them are just sad. I guess the State of Texas is obliged to keep these records available to the public in the name of freedom of information, but I find it hard to believe they win many converts to the cause of judicial execution.

[links originally from LinkMachineGo]

Just finished: Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson. It's interesting - certainly not a "thriller" with psychological overtones, as one hapless reviewer described it. Also not, I suspect, a 20th-century reworking of the shamanic initiation, at least not in its pure form. A more profitable line of inquiry may be that Lisamarie, who sees dead people (socially - damn, I love that joke), represents the author-as-shaman, whose interaction with the voices of the dead reflects the transition of First Nation Canadian tribal culture from an oral to a written basis. In effect, Lisamarie's grandmother is the last generation for whom talking with the dead is second nature, and as the culture of ritual becomes a matter of anthropological rather than social interest, the signals become cloudy; Lisamarie's encounters with ghosts are confused, often intimidating and never seem to give her quite the information she wants.

Hmmm. On the whole, at present, I preferred her short story collection, "Traplines". This has the same flatly clinical description, but over nearly 400 pages the piling up of misery, depression, alcoholism and personal failure upon personal failure in a small community is perhaps a little much.

Monday, January 15, 2001

And speaking of culpability, Jamie's as far from godliness as it gets:

As I was rounding off my weekly ablutions in the bath today, I reached for the pumice stone to scrub my soles. It wasn't long before I realised I had mistakenly grasped a small, deceased grey rodent, whose beneficial effects on my verrucas were disappointing to say the least. As I rubbed harder, it began to fragment, suggesting it had met with mortality considerably longer than a few hours previously. Perhaps it was time to change the water.

No amount of scrubbing's going to shift the stains on the UpsideClown this rotation.

Oh, that commerce pornography was courtesy of Matt, or more precisely all Matt's fault. He is the Devil.

The angel, along with the heart, has been my totem for years; one of the things I like most about them is the way the concept can be engaged with on so many levels. And part of that is the saccharine bloodrush of the pop culture thrill: stylised winged figures hanging over coffee houses, divine messengers with camcorders swooping through shit mid-80s David Bowie videos, cute anime shojo with wingslits in the back of his nehru jacket and a scimitar at his hip. Angels in America, Angels over England, the Angel of the North, New Angels of Promise, keeping and culling the bloody, squalling new century.

The idea replicates endlessly, spirals out into new forms; it's sexy information, chaos and all good.

But this is the fucking limit.

This is getting ridiculous. Meg has taken the next step into the dark with StorTrooperDance. Seasoned rave kid Matt may take offence that he has been given a slightly spazzed-out hand-pumping gesture, but this merely marks a crossroads in his life: cool kid or geek?

And yes, I know geeks are cool, and I also know geeks can dance, but I want to see Matt doing the dance of the brave little toaster, dagnabbit.

Speaking of El Tel, amazingly there appears to be only one document on the Internet containing the phrase "Terry Pratchett is a c*nt". I find this a hideous indictment of the entire medium.

From an email sent in advance of the party on Friday:

Mmmm...I was thinking possibly of pretending I was Dieter, a German exchange

student whose grasp of English is so poor that he is unable to comprehend
even
how much he resembles Dan, who sadly couldn't make it this evening due to
profound osteoporosis.

See you on the 16th?

The party. In the end, I decided to go, on the grounds a) that Catherine told me to and b) it seemed a little harsh to drop out of a friend's birthday party for fear of ruffling the feathers of somebody I wasn't likely to see again until the next such party. Oh, and c) every other guest was going to be a trainee priest, so if I did find myself in the middle of a crisis that would probably be the ideal place to be, really. Much pastoral care on tap.

So, off I went. I nearly missed the train, and ended up paying vastly over the odds for a ticket. Still, in frustration I did beat the crap out of King's Cross Station, so honours probably about even. A. and J. accompanied me up and were a little disconcerted by a decidedly twitchy performance on the way up - think Christopher Walken on nitrous oxide.

So, we arrived, and....well, it was OK. The party was very pleasant - some top priest action. The ex was just there. We spoke, got on perfectly well, acknowledged that we just weren't part of each other's lives anymore, agreed not to write or call, and that was that.

It's peculiar - I always thought I'd be the kind of person who kept in touch with ex-partners, remembered their birthdays, provided shoulders to cry on, all that. New man that I am. But it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes, depressing as it may seem, it was about the sex. Or the time. Or, in extreme cases, the acute embarrassment. And without that, the whole edifice subsides, slowly but inexorably, into the silt.

Does that make it less worthwhile? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, nobody died, so there we go. No win, no fee.

The only strange thing is how much in love with her I remember being. It really was a different century.

Oh, and lunch in the Bun Shop, Cambridge, which reminds me. If you ever meet Michael Miller, spit in his face. A backwards clock is not always a good thing, jokey exclamation mark or not. This is the kind of pornography that leads to hardback Terry Pratchett collections.

Saturday, January 13, 2001

Microwave lasagne is perhaps our century's greatest tribute to the indomitability of the human spirit.

Think about it. No microwave lasagne has ever tasted anything like lasagne. The slightest investigation would reveal that the constituent elements of lasagne are not susceptible to microwave heating. It tastes of nothing so much as a reconstituted tyre with crispy bits.

And yet, somehwere in bunkers beneath Berne, science still struggles to create the microwaveable lasagne that remains lasagne on a molecular level throughout the entire process. And across the world men and women of good conscience buy the inedible lasagne, in the hope that their dollars will one day lead to the breakthrough.

It's inspiring, I tell you.

It also has certain parallels with the party last night. More tomorrow.

Friday, January 12, 2001

Sweet rubbery Antichrist lubricant.....KPMG have a song.

As you may expect, it's hysterically bad, although it scores points for not just using the phrase "global strategy" in modern music, but finding a rhyme for it.

The question is, did KPMG commission it, or was it sent in by some 15-year old kid in the backwoods of Wisconsin, who just really likes KPMG?

Ex-girlfriend issues. Given that I have essentially been enjoying a life of single blessedness for the last year or two, depending on how one defines these things, they aren't something I've been terribly familiar with. Now, however, I find myself lumbered with not one but two.

Number one is actually pretty no-lose, which is nice. When I sent out e-mail about the festive bereavement, I received an entirely unexpected, and very kind, reply from an ex I haven't even spoken to for what must now be over a year. I would like to reply with my thanks and best wishes, but whereas the last time I contacted her there was a very good reason (the death of somebody she knew), this time...maybe it would be an invasion of privacy. Which is to say, would it be for her benefit or mine, or indeed (more probably) nobody's? Tricky.

The other one is more annoying but less significant. I'm going to be at a party tonight which will also be graced by a more recent (but still distant) ex. Which shouldn't be a problem, except that I received a pretty forceful e-mail in response to accidentally including her on a list directing friends to my latest UpsideClown article. She took hard against the treatment of crematoria. Now, possibly something horrible has happened of which I am unaware, possibly she feels I am being irreverant, or possibly the life of a provincial housewife is pretty uneventful. In any case, there is now this rather awkward party thing where neither of us are on home territory (ie able to go home), and an apparently entirely avoidable crisis has been generated. What to do?

And just when he thought maybe he wasn't a squeaky-voiced , hypercephalic douchebag...

Fruit of the Editor, the Guardian's weekly digest of the news: What it means to be a foreign legionnaire.

Thursday, January 11, 2001

People often ask me where I get my ideas from. It's a problem that I especially have with students. "Professor Browning!" they chorus, their rosy academic faces glistening with joy, "just how do you think of such wonderful and exciting stories? And at the ripened age of seventy-three! Why, anyone else would be dead by this stage, but you carry on publishing marvellous tales of adventure and intrigue which hit the top of the best-seller lists within a week!"

George is ripping and spinning, ripping and spinning.....A Thought on Morality is brimful of yarn on the UpsideClown. It's all too ripping for this boy; I need to lie down with a flannel over my eyes.

I feel dirty. I've just used et cetera when I know I should have used et hoc genus omne. The things we do to be loved in the wacky world of big business, eh?

Wednesday, January 10, 2001

A curious thing happened this morning. A young man, looking rather confused, wandered into the office.

"Can we help you?" inquired our deputy glorious leader, office manager and expert in confused young men, Chris.

"Uh, yeah, where's the toilet?"

Not "Could I use your toilet?" or even "I'm looking for a toilet. Have you seen one?", but "Where's the toilet?". Confusion. He seemed like a polite young man. Perhaps he was operating under duress. After all, very few people ask questions like that out of idle curiosity. However, toilets are pretty intimate things. Many people spend years of marriage together before they even consider going to the toilet on each other. So, this being something of a first date, I felt entitled to probe a little.

"Are you just visiting?"

He was a little nonplussed.

"I was downstairs. They said I should use the toilet upstairs."

Our turn to wear the nonplussed trousers.

"The office downstairs has no toilet? How did that happen?"

The poor boy was clearly discomfited, but we can never resist a mystery, so he gulped out an answer.

"They said it was simpler...."

Genius. The innocent, of course, we let into our facilities with an open heart. But the question lingered....

What is so incredibly complex about the Zone Group's toilet? Is it enchanted? Is there a "knack"? Is it the vessel with the pestle?

Do you know?

This particular meme appears to be gathering pace at a fair clip. Jen, doyenne of Threadnaught and storlwart (yes, ouch), has set up a gallery of the critters. I'm "Dan".

Oh, the Stor link courtesy of Blue Ruin, incidentally.

My stortrooper looks uncannily like me, Matt's less like him. I may post them at some point.This is a dinky little idea for online communities, another form of which can be found at Cycosmos. Regrettably, given how long it takes to make a convincing avatar on Cycosmos, the only people you are likely to meet on Cycosmos, in my experience, are four-square eejits, which renders the whole process a little pointless.

Arse, just lost a long post. Blogger is evil. Blogger is evil.

Oh, hang on. Blogger is free. Damn.

Anyway, never try to post the same thing twice. It's bad karma.

So, changing the subject, The Daily Wav should offer something for everybody.

Tuesday, January 09, 2001

It was shaping up to be a beautiful day. Dave, as he insisted his friends call him in order to keep him grounded, moved almost silently, the only sound the inisistent, almost subconscious swish of his Helmut Lang snarking trousers. The gallery was almost deserted, which suited him fine, allowing him and his discreetly distant bodyguards, selected for their knowledge of modern art as much as their martial prowess, unfettered enjoyment of the twisted formica sculptures before them. Elective Fridge, an unintentional tribute to his bold use of Ambient Gazebo DJs on his latest album, whispered "Music to Watch Art By Vol.1" from hidden speakers. All was calm.

"David!"

A fan, inevitably a fan, but the tone of familiarity was so perfect that Bowie turned by instinct, to see....

A young man approaching him with ebullient friendliness, unselfconsciously seig heil-ing into the indifferent air.

"Hell-o, David! Lovely to see you! How are you!"

A nightmare. His skin was all hot. Thankfully his bodyguards quickly moved, with silent efficiency, to block off the hideous sight, but the young man had remarkable agility, ducking and weaving, singing in a manic screech "Hahaha! Heeheehee! I'm the laughing gnome and you can't catch me!"

Finally, John got a good grip on his shoulders and the others closed in. As he was carried away, kicking and struggling, he cried in a hearty baritone,

"Never you mind, David! They don't dig anything, the big sillies. Why, they're just a bunch of assholes, with buttholes for their brains!"

It was shaping up to be a horrible day.

So, how to combine these elements into a single Bowie-humiliating extravaganza? Picture the scene.....

And, for the bonus ball.....

His hippy/Tommy Steele/Tony Newley phase in the late 60s en generale, which included such horrors as "I Dig Everything":

I wave to the policeman but he don't wave back,
He don't dig anything....

The fact that he wasn't digging flowerkisser Bowie a grave is testament to the preternatural self-control of the law-enforcement of the era.

(Although, if we're honest, a lot of his 60s stuff is actually really lovely)

Embarrassing moment in David Bowie's young life the third.

Tin Machine.

Really not much more to say. But let's anyway. Specifically, sticking a hand up the horse's arse of this shambolically bad idea (Hey! let's borrow Iggy's surviving backing band from the 70s! How contempo can you go go?), let's find "Crack City", in which Bowie shared his feeling on crack addiction. A bad thing, essentially, and people who said otherwise were (and I quote):

Just a load of assholes
With buttholes for their brains

Say one thing for Bowie, when he loses it completely he doesn't do it by halves. Ummm Nelly no.

Embarrassing moment in David Bowie's young life the second:

The "was it wasn't it" Nazi salute to fans in London. What's more embarrassing? That you in a moment of powdery exuberance delivered a Nazi salute, or that you didn't, but wave in such a crap way that everyone thinks you did?

My sympathies to Luke. The only plus of a bad business is that all now know he has a tremendously cool CD collection, if these are representative.

Embarrassing moment in David Bowie's young life the first:

The Laughing Gnome.

This is surely pretty much incontestable.

Yesterday was David Bowie's birthday (and Elvis', and Zenith's "official" birthday). Enormous fan that I am, I realised pretty early on in life that, were I to meet Bowie in real life, I would be unable to form any sort of coherent statement, so deep is my admiration. Even a scripted, rehearsed schtick would be impossible, as I would, having once contemplated the glory that is Bowie, collapse into jelly.

So, in order to maintain any dignity, I have fomented instead my Macchiavellian plot to discomfit and embarrass David Bowie and myself. If I'm going down, he's going with me.

This plan is based on my personal scientific estimation of the three most embarrassing moments in his young life, and the reenactment of same in a way designed to leave him shocked, ashamed and not a lttle confused.

More later.

Monday, January 08, 2001

Speaking of the UK weblogging crew, it goes without saying that I wish Tom and Mo the best possible luck in dealing with their departures from their respective employers and all that is to come.

This is turning into a metalog.

Meg rocks. I excerpt at length this passage from a recent post to demonstrate this:

In other news, my flatmate has just informed me that she doesn't like books, because they clutter the house up. Even on the bookshelves. "So where," I inquired, "do you propose I keep them?"

I shouldn't have asked. Apparently, bookshelves are for ornaments and photo frames and candles, while any books that I'm not reading at the moment should be packed into boxes and "stored in the airing cupboard or something." So now we know.

And that has conveniently decided for me what I shall be doing tomorrow. I shan't spent my hard-earned in IKEA. Oh no, no, no. I shall head down to the Notting Hill Second Hand Book and Comic Exchange and buy as many books as I can physically carry home. And possibly some more shelves, to boot. I love it when a plan come together.

That's the stuff. I had flatmates like this - they came back from their honeymoon laden down with African ornamental oddments, which were pretty tacky in and of themselves. The true horror, however, only became truly clear when you realised that these were not original art per se, but Giacometti-inspired pseudo-Cycladic takes on the garden gnome. Death is the only solution. Even that may not stop them.

It is often reassuring, in a world increasingly contaminated by perfect specimens of man and womanhood, toned, buff and perfect, with extensive IT skills brought to bear on wining and dining your ex-girlfriend or boyfriend, that fiercely autistic people can find love too. This fellow has made it a labour of love to convert Mike Singleton's classic ZX Spectrum Lords of MIdnightseries onto the PC, both with and without updated graphics, but has still found time to write an unbelievable amount of terrible poetry and spawn a wain. Which means he must have had sex at least once. Well, probably, anyway.

Are you obese? And, more to the point, how come men get 0.5 more points on the body mass index before they are considered so? This strikes me as discrimination.

Polyreferential linkage ahoy.

Jen recommends the website for up-and-coming band Departure Lounge, designed by her friend Alice.

I saw Departure Lounge supporting the Magnetic Fields last year with Matt and the strangely irresistable Andrew. The firat song was fantastic, lots of theremin effects and BBC Radiophonic Workshop skillz, but after that they seemed to become a slightly pallid just-post-"Pablo Honey" Radiohead. Still, nice site. Download MP3s. Marvel at the democracy of music in the electronic age. Judge for yourself.

And, after that flirtation with death, how about some death, with flirtation?

The Curious Sofa, created pseudonymously by Edward Gorey, is pornography as it should be wrote. The characters are almost inevitably fully-clothed, nobody is seen having sex, the men are "well-favoured" and blessed with the most crooked smiles, and the women have impossibly huge, shadowed eyes. Oh, and everybody dies at the end. You owe it to your relationship to read it.

A man walks into a crematorium. Ouch. It was an iron crematorium.

I'm up on the UpsideClown today, and am much possessed with death. At the moment I seem to have gone through some wierdzo Superman Red, Superman Blue thing where I'm hyperactively children's entertainer-ish in person, and increasingly dolorous in text.

Ah well. It's there if you want it.

Oh, the horselover was courtesy of Matt, incidentally.

At the gathering after Pat's funeral, while everybody was recollecting simultaneously, I found a bit of fridge magnet poetry in my wine glass. It said "good". Does this count as an omen? What do you think?

Ok, so let me get this straight. This man has married a horse. He has....sex with the horse, presumably. And on the same site that features this little titbit, he includes his CV.

Just so wrong. So, so wrong. The online resource for the man, the myth....here come the shoe-dropper.....iiiiiiiit's Joey!

Thursday, January 04, 2001

Letsbuyit.com has a remarkably upbeat and cheerful website, considering that the "it" in question seems to be the farm.

Wednesday, January 03, 2001

It always amazes me just how damn credulous people are in Jack Chick tracts (From hardcore Muslim to born-again Christian in about two minutes of conversation), and also how ignorant ("You mean Jesus died on the Cross for me?" Yes! Yes, you moron! That is *exactly* what he means. That's what Christians believe. It's the one sodding thing they all pretty much agree on).

The Museum of the Unknown at Oxo Tower Wharf is worth checking out for anyone in London. The theory - "The Museum Of...." transforms into a new museum every 16 weeks - sounds like a difficult one to pull off, and the wildly differing quality of the work tends to support that pulling in enough loans and original stuff for a whole new exhibition every four months is never going to be easy. However, this rapid turnover allows people to take risks and throw things together, creating a curious strain of British folk-art somewhere between a museum, an art gallery, a seafront arcade and a junk shop - two caravans filled with techniques for divination, for example.

Best fun of the whole show was probably Mongrel Media's Urban Monitor (to be found it latest attractions), a Brian Griffiths-y cardboard concoction for the paranoid.

Tuesday, January 02, 2001

While looking for a Calvin Klein link, I happened across the very best and the very worst of the Internet:

It transpires that Calvin Klein's "Obsession" makes lady ocelots want to screw like...well, like mink, but larger. How I have lived without this datum for so long, I do not know.

Meanwhile, David Toccafondi is a scary man. I can just about believe that somebody out there may collect "First printings of Children's Books relating to the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII" and not also have a suit of human skin, but this is just one of his utterly pointless obsessions. "Gloves I have found". "Tea I've had to drink" - presumably to which he has had as a drink, rather than tea he has been compelled by force to drink, which would have been comparatively interesting.

I find it almost touching that at the end of this he has a "Random Crap" link at the bottom of this list, as if to distinguish mere ephemera from important stuff like his collection of business cards from the GAP. I think I love him.

Well, now that Christmas and its attendant round of present-buying has ceased, it's time to begin shopping in earnest. I've never quite understood why people don't postpone the gift exchange until after the sales, but never mind.

To be honest, the visceral joy of sales shopping has faded for me as I have become more intensely phobic of people. These days a crowded shop floor is enough to give me the screaming heebie-jeebies, and I just can't be bothered to queue for ages for the privilege of exchanging money for goods.

Having said which, my top purchases so far include:

1) A new pair of Royal Elastics, which are probably deeply unhip but look gorgeously sleek and feel like wearing solid oil.

2) Egyptian cotton sheets in white, which will require mercilessly frequent washing, but are Jason King to the max.

3) Perhaps a monument to my chastity more lasting than bronze, huge, soft and incredibly comfortable Calvin Klein pajamas. As it becomes progressively more clear that this is going to be another year spent essentially alone, truly comfortable nightwear becomes more of a priority.

The Onion AV Club has some handy hints for the sort of high-impact kitsch that America does so well. Shop ahoy, say I.

So welcome to 2001. Does it feel any different yet?

Whilst mankind takes to the streets asking, nay demanding that you, yes again, you do something, anything, about the state of this world we live in, in your capacity as Man, as someone who can really do something, really achieve something, if only you tried. If only, if only you tried. Which you don't, so I won't love you. I could say that, all of that, and quite truthfully too.

Matt has seen the future, and it hurts. Live and direct on the first UpsideClown of the new millennium.

Venusberg.org finds Blogger very attractive...

elsewhere:

Interconnected
Plasticbag
Oh Skylab
Barcablog
Orbyn

moreover:

Brainsluice
Mo Morgan
Mothninja
Tajmahal
Wherever y'are
Prandial Post

thereafter:

Toby Kay
McCargow
Blogadoon
LinkMachineGo
Methylsalicylate
Hammersley
Joeblog
Grayblog
the Collective
Nick Jordan
Kooky Mojo
Betty Woo
Moth
Mr. Thomas G

the author:

danATvenusberg.org

and finally...

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