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

Friday, December 21, 2001

At at certain level of detail, almost anything becomes almost fractally fascinatijng. Take The Z-Man online. The group of people (or person - I'm not sure which is more terrifying) appear to have devoted themselves to capturing every single moment of minor wrestler Tom Zenk's life and transposing it to the Internet. And speculating on the life he may never live - specifically, battling the occult. Wierdly compelling.

As opposed to the rather unfortunately-named Brit wrestler Tim "The Masochist" Wylie.

All very strange.

Thursday, December 20, 2001

Want. Apparently George's flatmate has an article in it, as well. I may be in love.

Habits are bad and dangerous things to pick up, especially from other people. Case in point: looking at er33t's site was a habit I picked up from a friend in Team Orbyt. He seemed like a fresh young man with a lot of interesting and peachy-keen ideas. Alas, one thing led to another and pretty soon I was in love, and then obsessed by, his oddly androgynous charms. So, like any good stalker, I decided to buy him a little present, and hied myself away to his wishlist. Where I found that one of his sincerely-wished gifts was a fantasy book called "Elfsong". Inverted my erection, I can tell you.

What's the most irremediably shit book on your shelves, and why do you own it? Tell me.

Wednesday, December 19, 2001

Rejected letters to Penthouse.

Look at me. Look at us. Look around. I'm awed. I'm struggling not to hug the people around me, to press my cold hands on their cheeks and swivel their head upwards, to force their eyes open. Look!

I remember Matt being enormously excited by this post when he arrived at the pub last week. He's communicated that excitement beautifully at the Upsideclown. And I get to be mean uncle Dan again.

Let me tell you about hate...

Meanwhile, Victor is one mean melonballer.

Schhhlopp! Close combat now, Paul's demise. Jan is riding around on his shoulders, yanking his head back to expose his face. Brandishing a melon baller she endeavours to insert it into the right eye socket, her golden ringlets hanging down in front of her victim. The weapon finds purchase under the lower eyelid; Paul tries desperately to throw Jan off, to lower his head out of harm's way, but she is already in - twisting, levering, gouging. I expect it to pop out, roll along the floor. It doesn't. It is suspended, attached by nerves, string, elastic. In a Looney Tunes moment Paul endeavours to push it back in.

Monday, December 17, 2001

The hallowed halls of inessentialdom are littered with the forgotten labors of daydreaming thespians eager to try their hands at rock 'n' roll. This past year was no exception, as noted eccentrics Vincent Gallo and Billy Bob Thornton each released albums that would try the patience of even their most obsessed fans. Gallo's wispy, twee When has its kooky moments, but it can't top Billy Bob Thornton's Private Radio, a raspy slice of Southern Gothic that finds the nation's premier hillbilly auteur indulging his love for Tom Waits-style American grotesquerie. From the nearly 10-minute spoken-word piece "Beauty At The Back Door" to the cringe-inducing love song "Angelina" ("They thought we'd never make it / Two crazy panthers on the prowl"), Private Radio embodies the misguided spirit of the inessential.

God bless the Onion AV Club's Least Essential Albums of the Year. Their recommendations, sadly, are rather ropier and depressingly insular. No Ladytron? No Bis? No White Stri-oh, actually, they do mention the White Stripes. Quite a lot.

Friday, December 14, 2001

If we start sympathising with idiots, then what next?

Asks non-idiot er33t. What indeed?

Be a backyard wrestling legend. Just like Mick Foley.

Just received this rather marvellous email:

I reviewed venusberg.org and would like a link from it to my client's web site. In exchange, I'll post a link from our site to yours.

Exchanging links like this will help bring in more business for both your web site and mine. An added benefit is increased search engine traffic because the search engines rank sites higher that have a good number of relevant links.

Our client is a company that provides a place to shop for life insurance rates online without the hassle.

I'm tempted, really I am. Although it may mean a deluge of spam, I would like to see a link to me from "a place to shop for life insurance rates online without the hassle". Beats the hell out of Kottke.

And where do Hello Kitty vibrators go to die? Possibly Dildo, Newfoundland.
No, I don't know why. someone seems to have opened a can of sex-n-death over Venusberg. That so rarely happens. Still, Dildo, eh? Dildo.

Thursday, December 13, 2001

It's Sanrio-tastic. Reminds me of a dear friend who found in her travels in Japan that holy grail of kitsch, a Hello Kitty vibrator. Foolishly, she bought one for a friend, but failed to get one for herself, and as such is not currently Majestrix of the Hipster Universe.

What does Hello Kitty do in the night? It makes you come. It makes you kill. It makes you a Cartomancer.

Tuesday, December 11, 2001

Generic sci-fi quarry. This sounds fucking cool, although may not live up to my frankly enormous expectations for it. It was mentioned by a felllow traveller in Boston as we trudged through the driving snow towards Cambridge, after I had proposed a film which was in fact a four-way wrestlefest between rival producers of Dr. Who, Blakes 7, Sapphire and Steel and Quatermass over who gets to film their show first, leading to a shambolic struggle in which each cast constantly intrudes upon the others.

But yes, the quarry. Servalan running across the quarry, immaculate in evening dress. Shaped my aspirations for life.

So, let me be sure I understand this....it's a device that expertly simulates the human ability of walking. Well, fuck me. How useful is that? How useful is that, actually?

Stuff happened in New England, but am now back, and ready to head off to the premature celebration of St. Lucia's day at Garlic and Shots tonight. Well, "ready" in the sense of jet-lagged and exhausted.

I assume that St. Lucia's day - very big in Sweden, apparently - is St. Lucy's, or St. Lucie's, as this is supposed to be the shortest day, and it seems unlikely that there is a St. Lucia and a St. Lucy in a single month. As such, it's as good a time as any to refer to this poem, which rocks.

Tuesday, December 04, 2001

Swings and roundabouts. Ups and downs. One hand and t'other. I love America, and I love being in America. I just don't like flying to America.

Disposable mobile phones hit the famous conservationists of the USA. Excellent. Do you ever get a feeling, normally while travelling on a train into the capital city, that the train you are rocking on is just one of a dozen, a hundred, a thousand trains moving to and fro, and every single one of those trains consuming power, tracing lines and cables back to power plants and turbines, all chewing up resources, and that you have suddenly been smacked in the face by just how doomed mankind is?

It happened to me a week or so ago when I saw my first disposable electric toothbrush - why, god, why? And it's happening again right now.

Monday, December 03, 2001

It crosses my mind from time to time that it would be cool to start a business and hire all of my favorite people who work behind the counter at that coffeehouse, that bagel store, that fast food restaurant. I'm talking about the ones who remember what I always order, the ones who always have something chatty to say that's truly enjoyable, the ones who notice when I get a haircut. There are some truly wonderful people in the world providing incredible customer service finding themselves rather stuck day after day in some particular flavor of nowhere job making little pay. I fantasize about having a place of my own from time to time. Rather than place advertisements to recruit employees I would simply travel my usual routes and lure the beautiful people away. I would be like Charlie. I could take them away from all that and then they'd work for me.

OK, admittedly this is a tale of the hell of not living with HIV, but The HIVe rewards reading. How did you spend World AIDS Day? Tell me.

Sunday, December 02, 2001

Luke directs us to this good advice about how to interact successfully with people working in retail without damaging their poor tender feelings. Which is cool, and yesterday - my cocks'n'socks Christmas present shopathon - I even found myself doing heavy lifting and high-shelf reaching for some very lovely people in a charity shop - and walked away with a free copy of the short stories of Virginia Woolf. Virtue its own reward? I think not.

However, this article fails to take into account the combo of social retardation and vicious one-upmanship that characterises the exchanges at Notting Hill. Bless 'em. I remember someone telling me that the only way he could cope with them was to walk in, ask them what was playing, then tell them that it was shit. This is a modified form of the "Coldwater Suplex" plan, when you scan the racks for some time, before asking them if they have anything by Coldwater Suplex or on their self-titled label. When greeted with utter incomprehension, affect a look of sorrow and return to browsing.

War is Hell, soldier.

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