| Thursday, March 29, 2001 |
 | A spam e-mail in my Inbox is advertising a live streaming video casino, on the grounds that is is just like being there. To be exact, the title is cut off at "Real live streaming video casino-like being".
I enjoy the idea of a casino-like being....
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| I have had a revelation. There's an automobile advert on UK television at present, in which Matthew Pinsett, holder of three Olympic rowing gold medals, demonstrates the three new models of a particular marque. He then dismounts and, as he heads for the river to tone those oh-so-perfect thighs, says to camera, "Only three? I know just how you feel."
A reference to his former Olympic partner, Steve Redgrave, holder of a whopping five Olympic rowing gold medals, an achievement he will never be able to better, despite his own achievements being nothing short of egregious.
Then, the revelation. Steve Redgrave isn't actually very good at rowing. He's just a fine networker with a good eye for talent. His three coxless companions basically carried him to all five Olympic gold medals, and could have been even quicker if they'd had a halfway competent fourth man. But he's so likable they took the risk.
Is this a depressing fact, or the greatest nobility? Who knows?
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| Wednesday, March 28, 2001 |
| Perhaps the scariest thing about the Celebrity Tax Meter, an attempt to make self-assessment fun if ever I saw one, is learning that George Michael and Tracey Ullman earn about the same. That's mash-up.
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| An eternal dilemma - whose career is, on the whole, more disappointing? Robin Tunney or Fairuza Balk? Both appear in more films that I haven't heard of than films I have. Both appear this or last year in films with the word "sex" in the title, rarely a good sign. Both were in the Craft, which could be considered a good or a bad thing. However, I think Tunney edges it. Balk has a set of credible minor films to her credit - American History X, Things to do in Denver When You're Dead, Almost Famous - to Tunney's - er - End of Days (couldn't afford Winona, dears?).
But, perhaps the clincher, Fairuza starred in perhaps the best film ever made - The Worst Witch. I rest my case.
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| Conclusions from today so far:
The number of people who come to Venusberg looking for pictures of the Brave Little Toaster is about equal to the number who come here looking for dogsex. I hope both groups find something to amuse them. However, I am only linking to one of them. Elsewhere, there is a real poetry to some of the search requests. "Novel AND shaved". "Miniature bat". And, my personal favourite, "She dressed sexy at execution".
Classy, if a little Notsosoft.
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| Further conclusions from yesterday:
Although meeting people from bulletin boards is a slightly scary process, the capacity to drink while communicating without spilling beer on your keyboard is perhaps the most important element in any friendship.
Plus, the phrase "that bartender used to stalk my ex-boyfriend" should be heard at least once in your life, although preferably not while you're in mid-swallow.
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| On the train back, I sat opposite someone who was, although admittedly blootered, in tears, screaming about foot and mouth, cursing all politicians, wishing she had a machine gun, and so on. Very peculiar - generally, I've been pretty much unaffected so far - I eat little meat, and I have not had an opportunity to go to the country - although my mother and sister coming back with tales of only being able to walk along the middle of tarmac roads painted an eerie picture.
This is a bit serious, isn't it? Tell me I'm an eejit.
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| Tuesday, March 27, 2001 |
| The plot thickens. Cohen on Warnes:
Her voice is like the California weather, filled with sunlight. But there's an earthquake behind it.
An endorsement from the master, or a demonstration that uncle Leonard has lost it completely. And what do earthquakes have to do with the weather, anyway? Does one add or subtract points for her decision to illustarte the front cover of Famous Blue Raincoat with....a blue raincoat?
This could become an obsession...
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| Right. The time has come for a reckoning. One of the discussions on the Underground has involved the nomination of 5 songs to obliterate from history. The point being that one of the nominees was the fucking atrocious Dirty Dancing anthem "(I've had) the Time of my Life".
But is this an attempt to spare the blushes of Jennifer Warnes, or merely to pinpoint the worst of her excesses?
After all, this woman used to be one of Uncle Leonard's Cohenettes, and you don't get cooler than that. However, perhaps her no. 1 worldwide hit has turned the head of this previously dependable and talented session vocalist. Was her Leonard Cohen tribute album a salute to her spiritual mentor, an insane flight of hubristic vainglory, or, as at least one fucking lunatic has argued, superior in essence to the original versions?
Tell me. Because I don't think many people have expressed an opinion about Jennifer Warnes this century.
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| Monday, March 26, 2001 |
| A search on the term "I want to be a homosexual" (homage to the Screeching Weasel classic), turns up far more results than "I want to be a homunculus". Curiously, however, most of the results for "I want to be a homosexual" are American priests telling you that you a) shouldn't and b) don't have to be. We can cure you. Shudder. See the rednecks jump and sing....
The homuculus trail ultimately goes pretty cold - of those few who do mention the word, many are talking about Magic: the Gathering (for God's sake), others about Descartes. But there is this one simply incorrect jewel. Doom Patrol fan fiction. Hell yeah.
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| And, speaking in turn of footballers, and particularly those hoofers of the ball with whom there is something horribly, horribly wrong:
It always makes me think of footballers. When you hear on the news how, after the hideous studs-up audible cracking sound day in court punitive damages tackle that left them half a footballer, which is to say one-legged and thus no good to anyone except as a goalpost, Dave Victim had 23 operations on his knee in a heroic fight back to fitness. At which point he plays 14 minutes, somebody finally plucks up the courage to tackle him, and his entire lower leg explodes like a claymore mine of bone and gristle. From never better to never pretty in a moment.
It's time for the sliding tackle of the soul on the UpsideClown.
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| Sometimes the world just kisses you good morning: rarely is one given the opportunity to despise Metro, the drooling, decerebrated free tabloid available at London Underground stations, and Helen Fielding , spawner of chicklit and thus by definition eeeeeee-vil, in a single mental breath. But how sweet the savour when it happens.
Thus, La Fielding. We discover from the sidebar of page 3 of Metro that her £1 million Hollywood dream home is falling apart in a "Bridget Jones-style disaster". Comments the woman herself, "It's life imitating art. If Bridget had bought a house in LA, this would have happened to her."
Right.
So, in fact it isn't life imitating art. It would be life imitating art, if she had written a section in which our heroine moved to La-la Land, and her house fell down. But she didn't, so it isn't. In the name of Bob Fuck.
And, while my blood is merrily percolating at this dreadful attempt to generate an angle, I can remind myself that this is on the third page of a newspaper. As if we'd run out of actual news by the end of page two.
Marvellous.
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| Friday, March 23, 2001 |
| In Oxford last weekend, Damon, George and I stumbled across Bionicle, another mutant offspring of the beleaguered Lego brand. These actually look extremely cool, and have an inexplicably South Pacific background. I love hanging out with Damon and George so much - they have been friends since college, which is actually not such a very long time, but certainly feels it - and it's odd to think that next year there will be no real reason for us to meet in Oxford and hang around the toy section of Boswell's.
Ah well. sic transit....
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| Tom is selling one of his computers. There's a chance to make a real killing here. Check it out.
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| Thursday, March 22, 2001 |
| I am writing to complain about the content of the website 'Upsideclown'. This site purports to be a reputable concern, a hotbed of new writing talent and a forum for 'youth' opinion. In reality it encourages a ferment of lies and deceit, and seeks only to mislead.
Victor is getting a rollicking on the Upsideclown
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| Yay! We have an Internet connection. This is a wonderful thing, if only because I can now find out what I e-mailed to people last night when I was drunk. And apologise.
Speaking of which, I'd like to pause to recommend the Bonnington Square Cafe, on the corner of Bonnington Square and Vauxhall, in aspirational but still rough as a bear's balls Vauxhall. Inexpensive vegetarian cuisine in somebody's living room, served by a charmingly insane staff.
No license, though, so bring your own booze. Which involves either (a) remembering that there is a corner shop right opposite the cafe, or (b) wandering the arches and byways of Vauxhall for half an hour, finding a trade wine shop which sells only cases (not untempting, but a bit cumbersome), then heading deep into darkest Lambeth muttering "Methodist fucking Vauxhall" until you find the one not burnt out shop that will sell alcohol, arriving late but fortunately not as late as the host.
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| Wednesday, March 21, 2001 |
| And yes, that was humour.
Too cold and too tired. And so much to say. I'll write it later. Hopefully, the server will be back up at work tomorrow. Working without an Internet connection is like trying to oppress the weak without a focus of phallic power. Dicey.
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| Monday, March 19, 2001 |
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- You know, I was reading the other day about these guys who get turned on by really fat women eating shit.
- How horrible. I could never do that.
- I dunno. I can see how people might possibly, if they had nothing else to do, like it.
- Well quite. In fact, I've got some videos. And a stiffy.
- Shall we start an email list?
Matt is exploring the depths of human perversity on the UpsideClown. I should also mention that I was going to link to the previous article on procrastination last week, but I didn't get around to it.
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| Uncut's rumours section is a very scary place indeed. I quote:
Arnold Schwarzenegger is allegedly keen to ressurect his long-cherished biopic of Simon and Gurfunkel, with Arnie as Art Garfunkel and Danny Devito as Paul Simon
I think I may have to kill tonight. But even that pales into shabby insignificance compared to the news that Beck, Beth Orton and Elliott Smith are all to appear in a film, playing slightly older versions of themselves in the year 2010. I just hope that it's a futuristic action thriller in the style of Freejack, if at all possible with the three of them reprising in eerie chorus the Mick Jagger role. But I doubt it.
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| Well, this has been a tiring, if profitable, weekend.
Friday evening saw me headed off to Oxford with a banjo on my knee, desperately late for a series of engagements.
I dislike Oxford. I dislike the way that it is turning into a small version of London's more obvious shopping districts. I dislike the way that the student population remains young while I get older. I dislike the tourism, and the fact that there are bars called things like "The Quod". Which is either a very recondite pun or bad spelling....
However, it is a handy place to sleep over with worthies like Damon, Daniel, George and Victor Upsideclown and a cast of thousands. Also, to have lunch with my sister (with boyfriend) and father. Family get-togethers - not something that happens all that often, but a damn fine opportunity to pick brains. We're all competent in different areas, so it's rather like a meeting of the auxiliary chapter of the Super Friends.
Conversely, one of the advantages of Oxford is Blackwell's second-hand section. God knows when I'll get a chance to reread Abbot and Mansfield's Ancient Greek Syntax and Accidence, but it's good to have a copy handy.
Speaking of which, I must do a recently read - haven't for a while. But no time now.
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| Friday, March 16, 2001 |
| And the link to Wherever You Are is on the left. And I'm tired. So there.
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| Please, please, pleeeeeeeease can I write grayblog? Can I can I can I? I would show you fear in a handful of CIMA-qualified dust.
This inspired by Vaughn of Wherever You Are's decision to hand over the reins of power for a week. Give me a week with somebody else's blog and I will make God weep blood....
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| Michael Owen sounds suspiciously like William Hague. Shudder.
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| Thursday, March 15, 2001 |
| This, hopefully, is a joke. This, I am very much afraid to say, is not.
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| I'm posting this so I can check it out later, at home - I haven't seen la Jetee for ages, and a streaming version sounds like something that may just be within the powers of the Internet not to cock up. Cheers, Blue.
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| Certain illusions are fundamentally harmless. For example, my immediate response to flesh-coloured tights and a particular kind of heeled shoe is to think (in the full knowledge that I am wrong) that they are some kind of covering for artificial legs, designed to give them, if not a flesh-like texture, at least some sort of texture in general. This is quite clearly insanity, but does nobody any particular harm, unless I try to remove one.
However, it should probably not be mentioned during psychometric testing. When I was young, psychometry meant Judge Anderson of Psi Division, fantasy object for preadolescents everywhere, touching a gun or corpse and flashing back to a vision of how the crime was committed. To see this term traduced into the science of building a better middle manager is oddly depressing
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| Tuesday, March 13, 2001 |
| Oh, yes. Happy birthday for yesterday, Meg.
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| Monday, March 12, 2001 |
| Occasionally, the sheer badgerfucking niceness of the blogging fraternity-sorority, although necessitated by the fairly constrained environment of the TinyVerse, can begin to pall. So, a little good old-fashioned bitchery can occasionally be rather refreshing. Take, for example, Iansie, one of those grand old men of web design who can, it seems, often be found passing on their wisdom in the vestigially hip bars of my own beloved Hoxton. There is something bracing, charming even, in his description of Venusberg in the source code of his blogmarks as possessed of remarkably bad spelling for someone of a plainly literary bent.
Now, the problem here is that we have no rubric. Which is to say, we have at this point no means of determining what concentration of lexicographical infelicity might be said to constitute "remarkably bad spelling". We might also wonder whether, as cocaine is made massively more fatal by the addition of water, the presence of a literary bent, whatever that may be, might lower the bar at which spelling becomes remarkably bad.
Now, as those who know me outside the TinyVerse will be aware, English is not my first language. However, I am always keen to improve my mastery of the tongue of my adopted homeland. So, open season has been declared on Venusberg. Should you find a misspelling or typo, please, please tell me. Only by learn shall my speaking English good become.
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| Tom was on the verge of getting a raised eyebrow for his desire to be with somebody who thinks in HTML, until I realized that my ideal partner would have at the very least a working knowledge of a) Ancient Greek, b) 20th-Century culture and c) The Transformers. And would be able to teach me things, as well. Like HTML.
Am I the only person who seems to feel that, in an ideal scenario, your partner should be brighter than you? Tell me.
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| Another who l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oves me. Soon the frontier will be down, and you will all bow to your new emperor! Or else I'll dance on your ashes!
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| A search for the words "my dead grandmother punches harder than that" on Google turns up two very different American icons - Eminem and Ferris Bueller. Both really ugly sites, however.
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| The bad poetry site, which just this once is a self-aware resource for bad poetry. What is perhaps most fascinating about this is peripheral to the bad poetry itself, the knowledge that there is somebody in Toronto who wanders (or wandered) around with a placard around his neck saying "Hi, I'm Margaret Atwood, the famous novellist". Nice.
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| This was not the happiest thing that happened this weekend. Nor was it the worst.
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| I'm not advocating a ban on war. I believe that the ritual brutal slaughter of our countries youngest and finest plays an integral role in the psychological upbringing of any young citizen. The knowledge that you little Jimmy, tomorrow, may be called on to go out and butcher some upstart from a nig-nog wig-wog country which doesn't even have a decent system of democracy - doesn't that make you feel proud?
George talking about spilled guts is oddly arousing. Get the full intestinal monty on the UpsideClown
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| According to msn.com's maddeningly chatty page:
Poetry is not simply something you learn at school and forget a few months later. It can be fun, evocative, and exciting to read. Besides, quoting a few lines from a poem at a party will make people think you’re terribly sophisticated!
Forgetting for the moment the basic wanktitude of this statement (and, kids, if you want to impress people at parties, don't waste time learning poems. Be very rich indeed instead), their selection is quite interesting. T.S.Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Wallace Stevens, Andrew Marvell, W.B Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Dylan Thomas and Walt Whitman. Which is simultaneously rather predictable and fucking insane.
"Hey kids, new to poetry? Why not start with The Emperor of Ice Cream and the Wasteland?"
Hmmm....
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| This from the big book of handy hints. If you are selling the Big Issue, it may not be the best idea in the world to spend a lot of your time talking into a mobile phone. Point one: few people will stand politely waiting for you to finish your conversation before getting their copy, because nobody actually wants a copy of the Big Issue. Point two, they may in general feel that other homeless people, who have yet to crack food, shelter and basic necessities and move onto wireless telephony, may be more in need fo their patronage.
This is probably terribly unfair. Our man at Old Street station may well have some enterprising system worked out where he can mobilise according to reports of promising markets, or he may be a part-time volunteer for the Samaritans. But it's all about marketing.
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| Thursday, March 08, 2001 |
| Serendipity. This discussion - interesting more from a psephological point of view than a dialectic one - on (of all places) the Buffy the Vampire Slayer chat room discusses representative democracy - the fact that we elect people, who then effectively hold our democratic privlege in trust until the next election.
Many believe that this is an abusive relationship with our franchise as citizens, and that major issues of state should be settled by popular referendum.
Others believe that the franchise is too easily won, and that universal suffrage makes for universal suffering. Jamie is one such. Fresh, clean and anti-democratic on the UpsideClown. Is he joking, or is he pure evil? You decide...
Now, I'm not a fascist. Just because I don't believe that everyone has a right to vote, doesn't mean I don't believe that everyone has a chance of a right to vote. All you have to do is introduce a small test on election day to let people prove they're capable of thinking rationally, not just voting Tory because 'I don't want a bald Welsh git running the country' (1987, 1992) or Labour because 'The Sun says to, and D:Ream are great'.
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| And, no sooner have I pointed out just how sliver-witheringly shit the Trojan Room Coffee Machine Webcam was, it's been abolished. So, a hearty "fuck off" to pocket-protectors everywhere. Excellent. However, how will we be able to tell who we should never, ever speak to our have sex with now that a link to this perished percolator is no longer an option? "All your base are belong to us" links, probably.
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| What I think I find disturbing about this is the fact that nobody has drawn a parallel with Warhol's Last Supper, which I had the good fortune to see at the Guggenheim Soho in '99. Top stuff.
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| Tuesday, March 06, 2001 |
| Matt's flat is almost exactly as you would imagine it. Functional, but slightly offbeat - you go downstairs, below ground, where one would expect to go upstairs. You have to go past the sleeping areas to get to the living room. The decor resembles nothing so much as that of the elite apartments in Soylent Green - a vision of the near future from the near past - white rooms and low-slung integrated beds. And technology. Technology all over the bloody shop.
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| Megnut.com is now keeping a blog in the source code of the page telling us that she is no longer keeping a blog. This isn't meta, it's just madness. And a pint to anyone who can identify which mod-themed pictorial phenom of the 90s was notable for its conflation of the two words. Tell me.
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| And, in a similar vein...the way this day has started has left me severely in need of a drink. Fortunately Chick is on hand to demonstrate the fundamentally illusory nature of Happy Hour....
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| Basically, Chick has a tract for every occasion--whether you're looking to condemn those Libyan nationalists across the street or your gay dog, they've got you covered. But wait! There's more!
It's pop culture day at Venusberg, so let's start up with one boy's experience of the mighty Jack Chick, right about now.
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| Monday, March 05, 2001 |
| Matt's got it. Tom's got it. For some reason, our thought for the day is change. Or, more precisely, a twitchy ambivalence to events. A sense of unbalance.
Welcome to the mechanics of collapse.
Lately, my own actions have been off. In some cases, quite badly off. Not necessarily wrong, or bad, or good or evil, but off. I feel as if one massive exercise of reason burnt me out, and now I'm moving in a world of numina, moved not by will but by the application of force. It's a curious feeling, albeit not an unpleasant one.
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| The other Meg, quondam queen of webloggers, has shut her doors - so don't bother going to the link, it's just a placeholder. To be honest, I never really read her page - I find Kottke pretty dull, and the whole thing only really got fun when reality surfed in and laid the Graydown on Pyra.
Well, that's my chance of becoming a "blog of note" comprehensively fucked. And for my next trick.....
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| This is what Matt believes. This is a fraction of what Matt believes. This is Matt's belief system, seen through a glass. Through a pinhole camera. This is what you see if you look hard at Matt's beliefs for a second, then look away and blink rapidly.
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| My dearest Roger, (it began) Although I understand entirely your unwillingness to administer the substance to the boy without his consent, surely you must agree that it is only fear and suspicion holding him back from tasting the freedom inherent in the transformation it offers? Come up to Brunswych and let us discuss the matter further! Your devoted conspirator, Casper Harding.
I'm warming to this one - although it's not a stylistically polished as some of his other stuff, I like the ambiguity Neil has created. See if you can determine the mephitic nature of the Shadow over Brunswych, gibbous and gibbering on the UpsideClown
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| The self-drawn web site is a nice conceit. It's only unfortunate that the author then reveals himself to be exactly the kind of person who should be kept off the Internet, with barbed wire and dogs if need be. A link to that fucking coffee machine is the most hackneyed way to be wacky and crazy since the Terry Pratchett novelty T-shirt. Twat in a hat, kids, twat in a hat. This is not some ironic comment on the superfluity of data on the Internet. It's not a kitschy referent of the early days of the Internet. It's just a self-perpetuating meme for people with bottle-bottom glasses and Queen albums.
I mean, really, it's the nerd equivalent of an "All your base are belong to us" T-Shirt - a convenient shorthand for twattishness.
However, having revisited, he does score about twelve thousand points for writing "ALT TAG" in his alt tags. That's pretty damn frosty.
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| Geeking. There's nothing like it. This has been a weekend of geek, beginning with an evening watching shit Christopher Walken vehicle The Prophecy, which has every signifier of bad filmmaking, notably the introduction twenty minutes from the end of a character who sorts everything out.
Then - God help me - I went geek-shopping, picking up two Blake's 7 videos during a 5-minute sojourn in Cheapo Cheapo Records, in the middle of Oli's birthday party. Cheapo Cheapo Records (on Rupert Street, in the heart of Soho's trendy Soho) is a remarkable place. Three separate vendors crammed into a smallish shop, and stacks of CDs and videos divided into handy categories like "MOR/Pop Vocal", with no further subdivision. Round it off with the omnibus edition of Spaced, and you have a very nomates weekend...
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| Friday, March 02, 2001 |
| Tamsin has linked to Mary Plain, which is an interesting coincidence. Well, actually not a coincidence at all, but the point is that I was introduced to the Mary Plain books by Abigail and Judith, her mother, while doing my traditional refugee Christmas last year, and they rock.
I have to wonder, though...who would buy them nowadays?
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| Matt drew my attention to this, from genug :
I thought Venusberg was another local blog - there is a street round here in Hamburg with that name - or is it English for 'Venushügel' or what is it? Multi-poster, witty and somewhat cryptic, at least without following up the links. Reviews of bars I may come across next time I'm in the UK - unlikely though. A blog called dead@32 gets a hilarious badbye.
Am I alone in being slightly disconcerted at the thought of being "multi-poster"? Does this mean that I have no real guiding identity, or several guiding identities? Most peculiar. However, it's always nice to be appreciated.
Genug, for those not familiar, is the property of a bright young man from Hamburg - very good on photography and the image in general. I'll put him in my navigation bar as soon as I have time.
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| Thursday, March 01, 2001 |
| So that's not it. It feels like I'm being kissed, every exposed centimetre of flesh singing with cold, the blood gasping inside me at every touch. There's the ghost of pressure on my left hand, as if somebody was squeezing it. But everybody else is huddled underneath the roofed section with the pervasive stench of piss, keeping out of the blizzard.
I'm rather fond if this one, if only for the utterly specious Blake's 7 reference. The unseasonable weather gives me a chance to relax, take stock, and eat snow in Redemption, straight from the fridge on the UpsideClown.
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Venusberg.org finds Blogger very attractive...
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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...
the archives
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