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

Saturday, June 30, 2001

The Sheffield gang - James and Brooke - were in town to see a former Monkees tribute band to which friends of theirs belong, so we met up for fun. Which was had. Plus, perhaps the finest idea ever was hatched - the Monkees remade in the original period with Davy Jones, Peter Tork, Brian Eno and Charles Manson, with Eno and Charles taking the parts of Mike and Mickey respectively.

"Hey guys, I just met a princes and...well, I think I'm in love with her!"

"Silence.
I am adjusting my theremin.
Speak to Charles."

"Cease to exist cease to exist cease to exist cease to exist."

It's a winner.

Friday, June 29, 2001

This is a scary thing - the water of London is so...individualistic that a special form of tea is being marketed as able to make tea made with it taste less like piss. This is not good.

I'm really rediscovering the joy of Meg. Here, for example, she admonishes Graham for assuming that she only does the things that she details on her blog - shades of a Borgesian map (although the idea of a map the size of the thing it depicts does, of course, originate in Sylvie and Bruno). I do like this idea:

Friday July 29th. Meg awakes. She is told that she talked in her sleep by the disembodied voice of one not mentioned elsewhere that day. She recalls an amusing Grafitto from the night before (interesting, by the way, that, after about six months of this cropping up - apparently stencilled - in Hoxton, it has hit the West End. A new job for our tagger?). She then spends four hours in a trance. Awakes, goes to the Armenian sandwich shop. Spends four hours fuming over the Armenian sandwich shop. Goes to sleep.

What would your life be like if it were limited entirely to the contents of your weblog? Or what would your weblog be like if it described everything in your life, other than long?Tell me.

Thursday, June 28, 2001

Oh, and while we're here - you are not loathe to go clubbing this weekend. You are loath to go clubbing this weekend. Or, if you are feeling kinky, you are loth to go clubbing this weekend. Verb. Adjective. Verb. Adjective. Big fish. Little fish. Cardboard box.

First the clockwork radio, now the clockwork space rocket. With chocolate engines. I particularly like the way the rocket in the photo looks like it is on the verge of toppling over.

This is a comparatively rare one - only encountered once so far - but is so heroic that it needs a public forum.

Hypocrisy, from the Ancient Greek word hypocrites - actor - is the condition of somebody who is untrue to their stated ideals.

Hippocracy, if such a thing there be, is an administrative system in which legislative power is placed in the hands, or rather hooves, of horses.

Caligula allegedly made his favourite horse a senator, and Catherine the Great was also fond of them, but I don't think either counts as a true hippocrat...

This is a comparatively rare one - only encountered once so far - but is so heroic that it needs a public forum.

Hypocrisy, from the Ancient Greek word hypocrites - actor - is the condition of somebody who is untrue to their stated ideals.

Hippocracy, if such a thing there be, is an administrative system in which legislative power is placed in the hands, or rather hooves, of horses.

Caligula allegedly made his favourite horse a senator, and Catherine the Great was also fond of them, but I don't think either counts as a true hippocrat...

Wednesday, June 27, 2001

And might I add that the word you seek, when discussing either the jacket, Gibraltar, or the dire situation, has nothing to do with rectilinearity but is instead from an archaic word meaning narrow? Ah thenkyew.

Jack Fear is on hand to embroider my own momentary lapse of reason with further words of advice for young people.

But surely every fucker knows this? No matter how strait the gate? It's the name of a cockmutilating band, for flip's sake. Who could be so moronic as to get this one wrong?

Ah. Fuck.

Sheer bloody genius. Via Luke

Meg has quite the way with words sometimes. If I ever form a band - unlikely in the extreme as it would eat into valuable reading time - it will indubitably be called Shaky Morning Boner. I've never understood quite how even the most pathetically priapic patron of public transport can maintain even a one-storey morning glory, personally. I mean, I like London's transport infrastructure as much as the next man. Which is sort of the point.

Tuesday, June 26, 2001

I kinda like this - via Joe - but I must confess, pernickety as it may seem, that I hate it when people screw up Latin noun endings as if it didn't matter. Slags.

Some people belong to communities because they want to. Others try to belong to communities because they feel they need to. When a community is forged from the first then infiltrated by the second, you get a mismatch, and the community begins to fall apart.

Paul is being vatic. Despite being too dull by half to understand his nicer meanings, I can't shake the feeling that he may be referring to our own happy community of webloggers, although this is only the guessliest of guesses. If so, what can it mean? Do interlopers threaten? And if so, what kind are you? A sheep or a goat? Tell me.

Well, the ill-famed Rat and Pukeup, home of so much abstract impressionism, is apparently to become the Duke of Wellington, and be targeted at a gay drinking crowd, perhaps as a civilised pre-throbbing-mass-of-too-buff-to-live-hebeliths station before moving on to Barcode or Comptons. But is this really the last bastion of heterosexual (but homosocial) pub culture in the Quarter? Tell me.

I'm on rhetoric, today, for reasons which will probably not become clear at this juncture. There is some top notch stuff out there on the Interwebnet - check out the master of making being completely dogsexed look like a great moment in British self-definition, Winston Churchill. Or gape and gobble at the mad skillz of the Tony. Consider the oddly familiar opening of Nelson Mandela's liberation speech. Or, for an oldy but a goody - and a short one - try the Gettysburg Adress, a veritable Standard firework assortment of rhetorical gimcrackery.

And now you too can promote status-based hierarchical oppression through public speaking, with these handy and fun progymnasmata!

Monday, June 25, 2001

Garry Bushell is a truly terrifying fucker. Has anyone actually read the novel? Tell me
(via LMG)

Ah, Metro. How I love thee. How I love your cheap shittiness. From today's love-letter from London:

And 27-year old Henman, who has come closest...to winning the tournament (Wimbledon), has a clear message for his rivals: "No more Mr. Nice Guy".

Two semi-final defeats to Sampras - in 1998 and 1999 - have forced the 25-year old, from Oxford, to rethink his strategy for the tournament.

And become two years younger. Nice trick. You sub-editor-lacking scum

Saturday, June 23, 2001

So last night I managed to get to the wastelands of West London - Sloane Square to be exact - to see a friend in a play by Sir John Vanbrugh. Plays written by architects are rarely a safe proposition, but by lopping an hour or so out the director turned it into a bedroom farce without the bedroom, and a good time was had by all.

Discussed with Nick, who was also present, just what a cockrotting sinkhole the King's Road is. The men are generally porky rugby yahs. The women seem to be afflicted with tapeworm or tapeworms. Both have vast expanses of space behind their clear, untroubled eyes.

You think I want to find myself thrown out of a pub in SWwhatever, screaming "You don't need a fucking jeep!" at passing traffic? I do not.

Friday, June 22, 2001

Paul is a little gutted not to be included in the nude blogger challenge. It may be for the best. I'm not sure the world is ready for the unclothed loveliness of Oh crikey Skylab just yet.

Speaking of reptilian invaders, or not, does anyone know how I get added to the GBlogs recently updated list? People have been complaining about my absence from it, although updates can be registered here.

I think that this is what you were asking for. I did some digging around in the Argus's files and found this. It's from last Friday.

Following complaints from Mrs Penny Halfacre of Littlehampton, the local constabulary investigated a pile of leaflets found in her back garden following a severe storm last Thursday.

The leaflets, bright red in colour and A3 in size (so technically posters rather than leaflets) were handed over to the council where the above reproduction was made. Approximately half of the leaflets were accidentally destroyed and the remainder are still in the possession of the council.

Let me know if there's anything else you need

George has been spying. It's a common sense revolution, on the UpsideClown.

As ever comically behind in my reading, I've just started House of Leaves. If the joke turns out to be that a book is a "house of leaves", I'm going to kill and eat someone.

So far, not bad at all, and interesting. A piece of mock academia, with a metanarrative accompaniment expressed through footnotes. Which is dinky. Although disorienting. The subject matter and thus much of the reference are presented as avowedly fictitious, but then one starts getting dragged into the gutters. Is there a reason why "Iamblichus" is spelled "Iamblicus"? Is there a point? Or did the author realise that nobody was likely to call him on this? Or did he not know himself? Or is there an Iamblicus without the "h" kicking around as well? And who is Number One?

Apparently the narrative mutates throughout the startling heft of the book. I look forward with interest.

Well, it's a magic 8-ball. Might pass the time. Might not. This entry has been bought to you by Ambivalence pour homme.

Thursday, June 21, 2001

Current affairs. They aren't meta. Excellent. Here's one bold man's attempt to decipher that already legendary Bushism, "the logic behind the rationale". The free world can sleep safe in its big collective bed.

Cuckoo Kid, remarkably, manages to fill an entire page with things I agree with completely. Somebody should give Tom a great job. Meg is a new media doxy of the first water. If Graybo does get warm fluffies, he will never shut up about it.

This is becoming a metablog. Must stop.

Dear all,

Look, I love that you are all so clever. I love that you are articulate and possessed of tremendous lexicographical facility. And I love that technology has provided a platform for the sharing of those gifts.

Conversely, I realise that I am very dim, and my typing skills leave much to be desired. However, from this position of avowed inferiority, could I possibly make two tiny observations?

One reins in a desire. One reigns in a monarchy. Reins. Things used to control horses. Metaphorical usage. See Plato's Phaedrus.

And - indulge an old man - baited breath is breath with a worm stuck on the end. Bated breath, on the other hand, uses an archaic form of abated. Breath which is being stopped, or held. In anticipation.

Now, obviously, dyslexic old me is not suggesting for a moment that anybody should allow their self-expression to be circumscribed by such bagatelles as accepted usage. A straitjacket on creation! However, there is nothing that makes one look quite so silly as fluffing the three-point shot.

Thank you for your time.

Wednesday, June 20, 2001

Regrettably, I suspect that today's slightly chaotic combination of Helmut Lang, Red or Dead, Royal Elastics and (oh God) Gap pretty much disqualifies me in the hipster stakes. Which is a shame, since it turns out that hipsters do have all the fun. See this guide to hipster morality (if it's still there). Then play dress-up hipster.

Of course, it's not all sweetness and light. My own double life as a pill-popping ingenue requires the kind of illumination that some hipsters just can't get anymore. Oh my God, they banned glowsticks. Fucking Batman. Mind you, his skin is soooooo soft...

*thud*

Actually, glowsticks were the source of one of the all-time great culture clash moments. In Selfridges, a young friend excitedly pointed out that glowsticks were on sale. Enthusiastically, I launched into a disquisition on how useful they were for marking out trails when hiking...until I realised that I was getting a wery funny look.

And on the topic:

I first found you by chance, going about my usual business, sifting through seemingly endless files, numbers, spreadsheets, reports, following my normal daily routine, noting anything of interest, use, or future value and passing it on to the relevant interested party, and so on ad mausoleum, and without noticing it at first, I smiled.

James has got someone to watch over him, on the UpsideClown.

Speaking of Matt, with whom I am obsessed, he received me for drinks last night. Topics of conversation included...actually, I don't recall. I wasn't taking notes, and got pissed. Bad combo.

I do, however, remember discussing the phrase "lactating here" and Upsidecrown. If you read Upsideclown, you are cordially invited to celebrate our 100th episode/article/issue at the Crown in London's virulently untrendy Soho (hence the name. Do you see?) on July 6th. If you don't read Upsideclown. maybe you should try it, then come to Upsidecrown if you feel inclined. Click on the links. Click on the links. Click on the links.

Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Meanwhile, the tiny world of blogging goes on apace. Tom, with whom I am obsessed, but not as obsessed as I am with Matt Matt Matt Matt, has asked me to link to Minor 9th, to satisfy a twisted agenda of his own. Fair dos.

Speaking of the tiny world of etc, I will say of the blogyou review of notsosoft only that it is interesting that they thought Meg, like her Bigblogger Housemates, was Antipodean. Proof at last that it is catching.

A curious thing, and one you will have to take on trust for a while - the younger Wittgenstein looks uncannily like Commisioner William Regal of the WWF. This probably fits under "scary thoughts".

Monday, June 18, 2001

Unpleasant thought the third: There is a film out there called Edward Penishands. Scary shit, Bob. Although I think "Edward Jismglands" would be better.

Unpleasant thought the second: UKBlogging sinks to yet lower depths, with Cal's inquiry: which blogger would you most like to see naked? It's got to be Matt, surely. If only to see if his weird grey pallour extends beyond the tan-line zone...

OK. Horrible thought the first. Paul "Jurassic Macca" Macartney is, as we know, dating one-legged lovely Heather Mills. After decades of enforced vegetarianism, how long before he eats the other one?

Even as Joe curses me for making him fall in love with the girl at the indie record store, I curse the Camel. For her tales of shaking and shimmying to the glitterball beat have filled me with a terrible and currently unsatisfiable desire to hear the immortal Frealistic classic, Leonard Nimoy, home of perhaps the only known rap about the pointy-eared one:

New name for bad boy, Leonard Nimoy,
Leonard Nimoy, new name for bad boy.

If anyone has the lyrics of this meisterwork, or a download, please, please, please, tell me. I will love you forever.

Even as Joe curses me for making him fall in love with the girl at the indie record store, I curse the Camel. For her tales of shaking and shimmying to the glitterball beat have filled me with a terrible and currently unsatisfiable desire to hear the immortal Frealistic classic, Leonard Nimoy, home of perhaps the only known rap about the pointy-eared one:

New name for bad boy, Leonard Nimoy,
Leonard Nimoy, new name for bad boy.

If anyone has the lyrics of this meisterwork, or a download, please, please, please, tell me. I will love you forever.

Friday, June 15, 2001

The A-team as fugitives should have been dropped by episode #4, and their names cleared of any wrong-doing!!! After that, the show should have taken on a "Mission Impossible" flavor with each episode starring an individual member of the team!!! And, of course, after every 4 episodes, team them up for a 2 or 3-part storyline. Oh, yeah, and the woman, the REAL woman to enter the cast should have been Julia Nickson (from First blood 2), as a tough, shuriken-throwing Ninja/martial artist code-named: Whisper!!! So she becomes a stereotype, Julia Nickson had beauty and inner toughness that would have given any male something to look at!!!!!

I'm very scared. Jump the Shark, laudably attempts to document why and when television series become shit. It is, alas, hamstrung by the fact that people in general, and people on the Internet in particular, are in general a pack of disfunctional fucking morons. Sad but.

Thursday, June 14, 2001

I think I liked him better when he was battling ecstasy abuse.

This reminds me of my long and utterly unfulfilled love affair with a teller at Borders in Oxford Street who has tiny, tiny ears. LIke all the greatest love affairs, it involves very little speech, significant glancingr indeed any form of contact whatsoever; we don't need those kind of crutches to hold up our feelings for each other.

Tuesday, June 12, 2001

Speaking of human beings disappearing, and moving from the lower depths to the merely risible, I must confess I entertained a definite moment of pity for Wee Willy Hague. Until the moment I recalled that his inflammatory rhetoric led to the BNP's horribly unexpected success. So, screw Hague. really.

Speaking of completely useless, from and on the execution of Timothy McVeigh:

Chris Joy....had come all the way from Alaska to spread the word of his own radio channel by holding up a placard declaring: "Happy Death Day, Burn in Hell, from KZND, Alaska's New Rock Alternative"

"Cool deal," Mr Joy said, when asked...about the execution, "It's good for the country."

Oh, bless you. Bless you, you utterly useless band of fuckers. You incredible legion of cuntitude. Your state has just Flash Gordoned a human being out of existence, and you promote your radio station. You unbelievable fucking assembly of cunts.

Still, before one plucks the placard from your neighbour's eye, perhaps one should first remove the "For Sarah" badge from one's own.

(Quote from The Guardian)

Vaughan finds Blair and co.'s pay rises to be apalling. I'd like to be able to agree, but....

Well, hapless slaphead William Hague probably earned more being a City slimebucket than being leader of Her Majesty's

. And he will no doubt go on to earn more than he did as leader of Her Majesty's

when he returns to the City. And, given that he was, if a hard-working and tireless opponent, and a demon at Question Time, basically a total fucking disaster from beginning to dignified end, how much more will it cost to secure the services of a half-decent leader of Her Majesty's

?

Politics is far too important, one fears, to be left to those who are prepared to do it out of love, altruism or partisanship.

Monday, June 11, 2001

CreeD is the dark, twisted tale of teenager, Mark Farely, whose sometimes denial of reality weaves itself deeply into a fantasy DreamWorld escaping the pain of life and more importantly, his terrible past! Here he becomes the mighty Creed, a stronger version of himself who takes on adventures of wild proportions! But what, exactly is the DreamWorld?

You people really worry the shit out of me.

Oh yes, and the supposition, that, although truly outrageous, Jem would probably have drawn the line at using a big spunky firework to dampen the puffed-out post-punk stage costumes of arch-rivals the Misfits, thus forestalling their attempts to steal her pop crown with the power of men's mayonnaise.

Well, I've been away. What can I tell you? I can only apologise for not announcing that I had to think about things (I didn't), that reality had become too complex for weblogging (it hadn't) or that I hoped all would become clear over time (it won't). Mainly, I've just been out, or working.

So how has everybody been?

And, while I'm touching base, the social event of the maladjusted season was indubitably the Neuro-liguistic programming workshop on Saturday, where a startling number of Barbeloids were gathered together in the name of reorienting the way they look at the world. A sort of dark reflection of the get-together scenes is Crisis on Infinte Earths. "End of the word? Cheesy football?" Nice.

So, yes, new modes of thought. Weird Masonic grave markers. The least assertive grafitto ever - "Tony can be nice sometimes", and the tragic story behind it. The immortal question of whether having G.K Chesterton's signature tattooed on your upper arm is the coolest thing ever or frankly OTT. The dangerous implications of bondage as instrument of policy. The usual Leopold-and-Lerner-and-Loeb amateur angst dramatics.

All very pleasant, reasonably interesting, and an opportunity to encounter some new faces. And Clive's arse. Allegedly.

Wednesday, June 06, 2001

Recommended read - Harry Potter and the Inevitable Victory of Capitalism. Never read them, really less and less tempted to all the time.

In fact, I think I will vote with my feet. By which I do not mean I will stay away, or indeed go anywhere at all other than the polling station. Where I will vote. With my feet.

You can open keyboards? Why does nobody ever tell me these incredibly cool things?

Further up, Meg, den mother that she is to us all, urges us to vote. Well, I probably will, but out of a vague sense of civic duty rather than a burning desire to get out there and elect a government. I approve of being given a say in the running of the country. I object only to the fact that other people are given one as well.

Tuesday, June 05, 2001

You twat monkeys good, soldier.

Monday, June 04, 2001

The blogslutting muscles are beginning to atrophy. I failed signally to get to the minimeet. Although I did spend Friday evening barhopping, or more precisely hopping from bar to bar until we found one where we could sit the Hell down, with Catherine.

Still, what better cure for unhappy memories than some Ecstasy? Well, pretty well anything, according to the Dark Knight himself, with whom, paradigmatically, one Does Not Mess. So says Joe.

Of course, we know what happens to those who flirt with the demon "E" (or "X" for our transatlantic viewers).

Your skin is so soft.
*choke*
*thud*

And before you know it, you're in Europe and nobody ever mentions you again. Harsh.

I'm assuming that Meg is referring to her Antipodean Companions with this rather dinky little table. Either that or we should batten down the hatches for a Hidden Hague-style onslaught, but I somehow doubt it. Personally I rather like the fact that Wee willy's body is taken from that much-neglected doyen of Final Fight, Haggar. Ah, memories of being 14 and hanging around the Showboat Arcade. Really wretchedly miserable memories, now that I think about it seriously. Hmmm.

Pearl Harbour follows the Titanic formula from start to finish. But like everything else in this movie, it has to be bigger. So instead of two young, pretty, lovelorn people, we get three. Instead of one ship sinking, we total an entire fleet. Instead of one well-placed iceberg, we get the might of Japan.

Not, apparently, since Titanic have the critics been so at odds with their public. I would like to make quite clear that I am not Pearl Harbour's public. Even the trailer bought me out in hives.

God, but it looks shit. I think I may have to drink myself into a coma until it has gone away.

The Keirsey Test. I was talking to the beloved Jonesy last night, after far too long, and the subject of such psychometry came up. She has been accepted onto a graduate managerial training course, (thus providing her with both power and, more importantly, a uniform) one of the tests for applicants to which was a multiple-choice personality evaluation containing such classics as "I often feel guilty for things I have not done", "I am a very shy person and have difficulty meeting new people", "I hear voices telling me to kill all the whores", and so on.

Although Jones found the kindergarten psychology of the whole thing rather annoying, she was compelled to admit that it must at least be useful for weeding out those too stupid to realise that confessing to being shy and socially awkward is not going to be a winner in a prospective employee. It does all seem a little absurd, however. Whatever happened to good old trial by fire? It's far harder to bluff your way through that.

I wish Bill Hicks was alive,
I wish Bill Hicks had survived.
But as he'd be the first to answer:
This is the real world, and he had cancer.

I always enjoyed Hicks' stand-up, but I don't think I was ever swept up in the wave of hero-worship that followed his death. I certainly wouldn't describe him as "The Neitzsche of Comedy", primarily because that is perhaps the most fatuous statement in the history of western civilisation. However, he was a great performer, and a terrific, clinical exploiter of the absurdities of capitalism. Check out a routine here, if you are one of the few not to have encountered him.

That said, I do object to the way he ripped off Dennis Leary's, like, entire act.

Sunday, June 03, 2001

I am currently speaking to Leanne, who has observed with some justice that, despite being pretty much the godhead made flesh, she has yet to be mentioned by name on this page. So, big shout out to Leanne.

"Big shout out", that stalwart of pirate radio, is in my mind at present as a result of listening to the new album by Hammel on Trial. It's about half glorious, and compositionally interesting. As you listen, you realise that the songs are describing in synchronic fashion the events of a few days in the lives of a tight-knit gang of self-ansorbed small town crooks. Very Damon Runyon. And possessed of a wry turn of phrase:

Maybe it was the garden of Eden, maybe it was original sin.
Maybe it was the cocaine or bourbon. This ain't no judgement call.

Friday, June 01, 2001

I will return to more regular blogging when my mind and sleeping patterns settle. In the meantime, I leave you in the capable hands of apocalyptic Matt:

In an underwater lake recently discovered in Antarctica we find the second. A creature distantly related to jellyfish has a tiny time measurement organ based upon the resonance of a ring of modified nerve cells. On study of the genetic code, the structure of the organ, and the species' nearest relatives we find that this tiny feature simply cannot be.

It's all breaking down on the UpsideClown.

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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