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

Tuesday, April 30, 2002

Speaking of fame, I think I am in love with Madeleine Nydegger, who has left a message on Giles' guestbook saying:

GOOD LUCK GILES (so far so traditional)
I'm from Switzerland. It's great.

"I'm from Switzerland. It's great" is perhaps the simplest and most touching evocation of just waking up one morning and being glad to be Swiss that I have ever heard.

She's a half-human flying horse. He's a cute perky gothpup with a serious dark streak for the bizarre, found dancing in rock/goth & BDSM clubs around the Midlands mainly.

They fight crime.

Ok, they don't. They're gothic furries.

(Via Blueruin)

Monday, April 29, 2002

Lessons learned from April 1 to April 23 part 4:

The 9th: That whoever you are, whatever you are, wherever you go, you will never escape the fact that somebody else has had a chance to serenade screaming jailbait, and you haven't. Thank Christ. Giles, the crooner in question, is now a songwriter as well as a performer and has about the most flirtatious business card you can think of. This being part of a larger lesson involving always drinking too much at school reunions, for any number of reasons, and the advantages of having somebody around who does not remember the sinister cloisters of the alma mater to provide a) perspective and b) a place to stay.

And, on the first days of the month that, even if it isn't your home anymore, moving can be moving. My mother had finally decided to get the hell out of the family pile, a not unreasonable proposition given that the place was far too big for one person, and that it had suffered, and she with it, divorce, bereavement, a stodgy market for collectable special edition Babylon 5 plates and a good two decades of the East Midlands.

So, my father and I headed up to the family home to pile and sort and lift and carry and grunt and generally do manly things, culminating in an achingly Field-of-Dreams-esque montage of drinking beer from the bottle and watching the sun go down.

You uncover a lot of your history when scrubbing through the loft, and have to make some tough decisions. Out go the Dungeons and Dragons figures (even though Kenickie named their flame-red roadster Venger in honour of the skirt-wearing bad guy). Out go the Fisher-Price figures, thus banjaxing forever my plan to do a live-action Fisher-Price "Grapes of Wrath". But touch Boba Fett's ship and lose a fucking arm.

I think I need to raise my packrat bar very slightly. If I was a wee bit less of a packrat, having now disposed of everything right up to the shores of my current packrat quotient, I could throw out half my clothes, my entire vintage collection of 2000ADs, and a lot of old love letters.

But not books. That's always going to be an Achilles' heel.

Aaaaaah! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

via Orbyn. Thanks for those nightmares, Byn.

Thursday, April 25, 2002

Taking a break from lessons learned from April 1 to April 23.

A blistering dissection of modern Smallvillle. I know, I'm obsessing. It's just...I can't work out if it is the best thing ever or the worst thing ever.

And a conversation from Wednesday evening. The guilty men = me, Matt, Es, Ben and Anna. Essentially, we began with the idea that the Earth was hollow, which led us on to the bit in Foucault's Pendulum where mystics living in the hollow earth levitate while having thoughts of great significance and have to be rescued by their fellows.

Now, one interesting fact about Nick Jordan is that he is, like those subterranean wise men, a mystic. Another is that, famously, he once blogged at some length the tale of how he got a glass rod shoved up his penis. The Amazonian needlefish is also prone to disappearing up the unsuspecting penis, in order to lay its eggs.

So far so good. Depending very much on what your idea of "good" is. So how the hell did we get to a pitched battle taking place between mystic warriors and invading armies of man-sized needlefish, with the fate of the universe in the balance, all taking place in an enormous cock at the Centre of the Earth?

We need help.

Wednesday, April 24, 2002

Lessons learned from April 1 to April 23 part 3:

Saturday: That it's always best to leave a party in Islington early rather than late, but if you have to leave late then it's best to procure the services of someone to sing Voice of the Beehive songs on the bus home. Rock, as Luke might say.

Also, that Body Worlds is a rather curious phenomenon.

I don't know - I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. For a start, although I am prepared to believe that the subjects there (barring the horse, which was quite clearly nicked from Dungeons and Dragons) had signed a release allowing their bodies to be used educationally. What I'm pretty sure they didn't sign was a form saying "I would like people to be able to wander in off the street and pay a tenner to gawp at my plastinated vulva".

In fact, the new release forms especially for plastination are perhaps more interesting than many of the exhibits. In the "why do you want to become a Fisher-Price cadaver" section, there are tick boxes with suggestions like "I am fascinated by the idea of people looking at my dead body", "I want to be perfectly preserved for all eternity" and "I want to save my family the expense of a funeral".

The actual corpses are compelling, although for the sheer profusion of lumpy bits they reveal rather than the slightly fatuous poses - "Look! It's a skinned bloke! But he's playing chess! Quel sang-froid!". Although the Cornelia Parker Corpse was something pretty special.

Also, without the comforting heft of the bowling-bag that is the human scrotum, testicles just droop at about knee-level in a really disturbing way. This is why the next stage of human evolution will be anglepoise testicles.

Also, that if you find yourself in a riot in Hackney, the best direction to move is past the police cars in the opposite direction.

And finally, that Sweethearts is the greatest romantic comedy ever made, and that there is no excuse for not loving Janeane Garofalo. I mean, none.

Tuesday, April 23, 2002

Lessons learned from April 1 to April 23 part 2.

Tuesday: That an exciting world of life-long learning is available for me to ignore.

Monday: That even a cursory reading of The Birthday Letters suggests that Sylvia Plath was a woman of incredible strength of character to last as long as she did.

Monday, April 22, 2002

I know, I have been a but shit lately on the updates front. This is because I have been hiding out in a cave, gathering resources, followers and...evil plans.

Good morning. So, on the assumption that I will learn nothing today of any particular import, here's lessons learned from April 1 to April 23.

Yesterday - That the Totally Spies theme tune is probably the most important single cultural document of our young century. And that my father is officially a veteran.

Saturday - That birthday parties - happy communal birthday to Ben, Anna and Toby - are quieter if you bring a dog, particularly if that dog is the utterly silent and thoroughly beautiful Lucy. And that, if you do not feel the cold and have a walkman and a good book, there are far worse things than to be stranded at the Strand from 2am to 4am.

Friday - That at times a good night's sleep is more important than anything.

Thursday - that Lucy the greyhound (see above) is just gorgeous. And very unlike a greyhound, both through a certain natural dignity and a mind-blending tiger-stripe decal effect. Then again, the only greyhound I have ever been particularly familiar with beforehand was walked by a pair of very stylish lesbians in Hoxton Square. Unfortunately, they had a habit of walking the aforementioned dog, which was lively, affectionate and astonishingly stupid, at a bout the same time that a rather frou-frou woman generally decided to give her daschund an airing. Now. Greyhound - big, fast, dumb as a post. Daschund - looks a bit like a stick. You can see where this is going. Every thirty seconds or so, regular as clockwork, the greyhound would hurtle over, upend the sausage beast, and hurtle back to its owners, secure in the knowledge of a job well done. The daschund would right itself, just in time to take another buttfuck moronic racing dog amidships. And again. And again.

Ever seen a really pissed-off daschund? It's just one of many reasons why packs of wild daschunds have never roamed free on the tundra. Even if something three times their size decides to make them some kind of fucked-up sex weeble, they never really scale past petulant.

Wednesday - that Lex and Clark love each other very much. Also, that slash makes you drunk and your car rubble. And that everybody hates Lana, predictably.

Which Buffy Guy Are You? Find out @ She's Crafty

That I am Oz, not entirely surprisingly.

Tuesday - I confess that it all gets a bit inky around here - more later after a smart drink.

Friday, April 19, 2002

Some kid gets fucked up good by a bad, bad kittie. I love b3ta.

Thursday, April 18, 2002

The tyres themselves are made from a hard rubber derived from oil and developed by the petrochemical industry. Oil itself is concentrated life: rainforests and dead animals compressed and distilled over hundreds of millions of years. The life-force inherent in these things has been squashed and condensed (which is one of the reasons oil is so thick).

Halfway between Clarissa and Cassandra, UpsideClown's very own Matt has taken it upon himself to explain it all. All of it. Why not take all of it?

Anyway, this week it's cars, and it's quality.

Wednesday, April 17, 2002

It makes me unbelievably happy that KITTMaster is offering his skills for professional web design. Check out some of his sites - one, for the near-perfection of their l33t design, and also to enjoy in its natural habitat the pure joy of the slogan Don't Replace It - Reface It!.

Monday, April 15, 2002

They have blogs!

Friday, April 12, 2002

Obviously, pheromone sprays would never help in this situation - who wants to pull a man who has the scent of randy donkey bollocks hanging about him? But this is a serious problem. How does one repackage the old parcel into a new, enticing vision?

Asked to suggest ways to help a friend become more than just a friend, George's recommendations are, as you might predict, totally fucking psychotic. The tao of Twix, on the Upsideclown.

Thursday, April 11, 2002

And, in other news, Jonathan Woodgate, whom the Grauniad describes rather tactfully as "widely criticised for his behaviour after being found guilty of affray following an attack on an Asian student" has had his jaw broken outside a nightclub.

Now, obviously it is a terrible thing when a human being is given a damn good shoeing for no greater crime than wanting to have fun, and I am no sense condoning the assault or any assault like it. Nonetheless, you do have to wonder....did somebody hit him in the face with an irony bar, or something?

Tuesday, April 09, 2002

Good news for Queen Mother enthusiasts everywhere...due to demand, she is being moved from Westminster Hall to the West End.

Monday, April 08, 2002

Apparently, Paul first lived in Olympia when he came to London. Which just seems...counterintuitive, somehow. On a rational level, obviously, you have to assume that Olympia is just like any other Kensington tube stop - rows of slightly tatty terraces, getting more expensive the further west and south you go. But the Olympia itself is such a dominant feature (and, realistically, the only logical reason to get on that little lip of a district line extension unless you do live there) that I always think of the place as a vast, barren flatland dominated by the single massy silhouette of the Exhibition Halls. Savage men scrape a life from the barren soil in its lee, and perish never knowing what will be the absolute shit in carpeting next year.

Tuesday, April 02, 2002

I too experienced the quiet coach, and I too found it just not quite quiet enough. Oh for the accessories for a transvestite killing spree. Damn, those things are cool.

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

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