| Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |
 | George Orwell should be spinning like a turbine in his grave. Fit the right dynamo and we could power the pneumatic drills to bring these bastard monstrosities to the ground... You may recall an article he wrote back in '46, two years before 1984 was released, entitled 'My Ideal Pub'. A pub called 'The Moon Under the Water', with an attentive, busty barmaid, loyal clientele, cracking beer and the greatest atmosphere in the world. Of course (as you might have guessed), the pub doesn't exist; even fifty-something years ago the future of pubs looked bleak. Now, there are about as many 'Moon Under the Water' pubs as there are Red Lions. And they're universally shite. Are these guys even slightly self-aware?
Jamie shares this fascinating piece of information (the Moon under Water in Charing Cross Road is arguably the single least pleasant experience any human being could ever possibly undergo) in his crie de coeur against the modern publastic experience, brewed with Bavarian hops on the Upsideclown.
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| An encounter last night sent me back out of reawakened curiosity to the B3ta boards for the first time in quite a while. And, lo, what did I discover there before the sheer ratio of noise to signal sent me wailing back into self-imposed exile, but this eerily compelling and really very unpleasant page of shark bite wounds.
I think what gets me, apart from the perfection of semicircular holes in human bodies, is the pictures of lesions inflicted by rubbing against the sharks' rough skin. These are creatures that nature has intended to cause damage just by moving past you. Does that make them more dangerous, and thus more menacing, or more like hedgehogs, and thus less menacing? Tell me.
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| Tuesday, July 30, 2002 |
| Tomjmahal points out that the next logical step after the gift-giving is DOA Beach Volleyball slash. Well, there is a precedent. nota bene, that link is not work-safe. If you had to be told that, you are not work-safe.
He also suggested DOA Beach Volleyball Nights, just like the original but with no volleyball, even more shit and sans David Hasselhoff. Whether the presence of David Hasselhoff in the original is currently under discussion is uncertain, but I for one am holding out for a Hasselhoff Cameo in Dead or Alive 4: Bastard Fu. I want to see Jann Lee kick him through a stained-glass window. In pornographically slow motion.
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| Monday, July 29, 2002 |
| And to return briefly to the magic of Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball; one part of successful play will apparently be to make friends with your volleyball partner, which makes perfect sense. What perhaps makes slightly less sense, although still just about clings on to some form of internal consistency, is that one does this by buying them accessories. If the partner likes the accessory, they will wear it to the next game (handbags are probably out).
So, essentially, you have highly-trained if top-heavy ninjebastards who are more used to using spikes to puncture the carotid artery of their enemies than power the ball into the sand, indulging in Mallory Towers-style crushes.
This is altogether too beautiful. I think my eyes are bleeding.
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| Quote of the day so far is indubitably "your lover is attracted to aliens and psychotics". If only I could tell you where it came from. But if I did, I'd have to kill you.
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| By route of the Prandial Pony Express, some remarkably disturbing news. Dead or Alive has throughout its three incarnations been a relentlessly exploitative beat-em-up, distinguished first by the ability to remove your opponent's body armour and subsequently clothes with a well-placed kick. You know, and lots of grunting and jiggling and, hey, martial arts action the way you demand it.
This basic conception steered the producers happily through 3 separate incarnations of martial arse. However, it seems they have realised that the fighting is not the aim of the game, but an encumbrance. The result:
Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball.
I have no idea how exciting my fake girlfriend is going to find this. I think she may catch fire.
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| Thursday, July 25, 2002 |
| Ben Hammersley's weblog is both better and more regularly updated than mine, I suggest that you read it. I also suggest that you leave a comment, as the comments system contains perhaps the best option ever. Along with the usual "remember my details", there is another button offering you the chance to "forget personal information".
By pressing this button I have already forgotten my mother's middle name, the way it felt to wake up next to my first lover, and my National Insurance number. How fucking cool is that?
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| Thursday, July 18, 2002 |
| Oh, just go and read Matt's Upsideclown. Do it.
Although he is perhaps the geekiest of all of us, sometimes I am convinced he is the only one who really cares about other human beings. It's ironic. Insert Alanis Morrissette lyric generator there.
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| Goodies from Meg. Hypertext lyrics, a fantastic idea hampered slightly by the incredibly shitty songs currently in there. If people on the Interwebnet had a scrap of taste, the world would be ours by now.
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| Unintentional referrer log poetry, a continuing series: "mekon get it on". Nice and cool, daddio.
My favourite search request leading to this site ever remains "she dressed sexy for the execution", though.
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| Dream last night. I was, for reasons probably best left unanswered, the second driver for a popular Formula One racing team. While preparing for a race, I discovered that my helmet (missus) was antiquated and too small, and that one of my gloves only had two large fingers, as if I were a lobster with thumbs, and adhered to any surface it was laid flat on. Needless to say, I didn't do very well, and found myself summarily replaced shortly thereafter.
Ah, anxiety dreams. Wha's like 'em?
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| Tuesday, July 16, 2002 |
| This, by the way, is what Luke Perry is doing with himself these days. The Tribe: The Next Generation. Qua. Li. Ty.
Do you feel you could be as or more successful than Luke Perry? Why not try?
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| Cross-stitch my plums....scary news this morning from everyone's preferred late breakfast read, the Prandial Post. Apparently, Barry Sonnenfeld is making a Lemony Snicket movie.This could be very very good or very very bad. He certainly wouldn't be my first choice to direct, although getting Tim Burton in to reprise his "E. Gorey used to be a friend of mine" schtick would be almost farcical.
In fact, now that I think about it, the most wince-makingly obvious directorial and casting decisions for a Series of Unfortunate Events:
Director: Tim Burton, natch. With his penchant for sticky-up hair and swooping camera angles, it's basically either this or John Lydon does Goth Dallas.
Music: Danny Elfman. Ah, Spider-Man. The COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE bodings of menace in the score. The ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY dark tones of the introductory music. The FOR GOD'S SAKE, PEOPLE, HE'S RECYCLED THE BATMAN TITLES NOTE FOR NOTE joy of it. A shoo-in, even if Burton doesn't get the gig.
Viola: Wynona Ryder being at this point the kiss of death, it's down to a straight race between Christina Ricci and Natalie Portman. In both cases, the fact that they are eight years too old will be ignored completely. Like Luke Perry on 90210. Or everyone on the WB.
Klaus: Daniel Radcliffe dubbed by Haley Joel Osment, obviously. What are you, on crack?
Sunny: A massively expensive and utterly terrifying CGI baby.
Count Olof: Ian McKellen. He's not particularly appropriate, but any multi-million dollar adaptation of a popular children's story has by law to support McKellen's quest to burn himself into the collective geek consciousness.
Mr. Poe: Tom Baker. Not quite such a gimme, but the budget's largely been blown on the CGI baby. Besides, somebody has to bring an ounce of class to this farrago. Tom's putting it in now.
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| Monday, July 15, 2002 |
| To remind myself - Rachel and Avnee on Wednesday, Katy and Joe on Thursday, Ben and Anna and Alex on Saturday.
Meanwhile, does the young Robyn actually resemble Jem, doyenne of the Holograms? Personally, I believe such a claim to be outrageous. Truly truly truly outrageous.
(The problem with the theme tune to Jem, if you were a boy, was that it brilliantly used the momentum of satire against it, by making its second line "the music's contagious", thus defeating the obvious parody "Germ - she's truly contagious". One could instead begin with something about poo, usually a winner, but "pooly" isn't a word even when you're seven, and just this once the most successful short-trousered naughty word of all time feels like ashes in the mouth)
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| Oh God. It's so dark. It's so fucking dark. I can't feel my limbs anymore. I can't use my arms. I can't claw out my eyes. Please God, all I want is to claw out my eyes. Please God....
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| Friday, July 12, 2002 |
| God bless B3ta. Even though most of their stuff is too geektastic even for me, they knock it out of the park with surprising regularity. This time, it's mad props for reminding me of The Commercial Closet. In this case, check out their listing of lesbian themes used in advertising.
And, perhaps far more importantly, Going for Gold.
I have dreamy, delirious encounters in which I wrestle with Henry Kelly. I throw him down, and his fall shatters the mountain. He attempts to nude me up like a gunfish. I crush him, and his blandly Hibernian head deforms, growing round and smooth and huge. It's like a zit. I want to squeeze it.
Does Kelly plague your sleep? Tell me.
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| Wednesday, July 10, 2002 |
| Spiderman on Tuesday, after top Tong Mein at the New Culture Revolution. The N1 centre fucking terrifies me. What was it about Islington that made somebody look around it and think, "nope, just not enough overpriced shit middle-class shoppera shit here." You live in cockringing Islington, you scumpuppies. If you've got such a need to be robbed for mediocre noodles served by enthusiastic but clueless Australians, there's a Wagamama in Soho you can reach in thirty minutes. You fucks.
But yes, Spiderman. Which looks like a pilot episode for Smallville hastily rewritten to accommodate the spidery one by the scriptwriting team of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys upon their discovery of a huge laundry basket full of cash. This makes it either the best thing ever or a reasonably entertaining yarn with paper-thin characterisation and at times hilariously bad dialogue. Hilariously bad in a "fuck me, did they just transcribe the 1960s comic here?" way. Heads up, true believers!
Still, it's all pretty pulse-pounding and exciting, and a film with Bruce Campbell in, even for five minutes, is better by definition than any film without Bruce Campbell in. Kirsten Dunst and her terrifying chest (seriously, they are not. Meant. To. Do. That) works personfully with a nothing part, and Willem Dafoe digs deep, finds a hunger for furniture not extinguished by the International Feast of Ham that was Streets of Fire, and chows down. Trust me. Whatever budget didn't go on CGI went on replacement edible sofas.
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| Tuesday, July 09, 2002 |
| Radio 3 is an oft-forgotten pleasure, existing as it does at the bottom of the dial beneath "middlebrow but still listened to by people who wish to think themselves smarter than their peers" Radio 4. However, they have managed to come up trumps twice in the last few days.
First, as I sat on a train leaving a Brighton I despearately didn't want to leave, an evening of arts and discussion to celebrate (or more precisely, mark: Radio 3 is too classy to celebrate; I bet their Jubilee coverage was mainly an Edward Bond marathon) the opening of the Baltic gallery in Gateshead, featuring Simon Armitage reading his new work in a deeply "feel the Tour de Force, Luke" way. He has such a good voice.
Second, because, having given up completely on underground travel this morning, I was soothed into work on the 35 bus by the mellow, mellow sound of Rued Langgaard. Ok, maybe not. Fearsomely avant-garde, Langgaard sounds like somebody delivering a new, oak-lined PC. Atom by Atom. With telekinesis. It's a bit hard to explain.
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| Friday, July 05, 2002 |
| First there was warchalking (yay pioneer Ben). Now, in the first of many parodies (Remember the Megway? Do you? Do you?), we have pubchalking. Whoever wins the race for warhawking (marking wireless networks with artful decorations of thick, chainsmoker phlegm), whorestalking (following ladies of the night around until eventually the excitement gets too much, and then in a twist worthy of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation using the chalk to draw a line around their bodies in your role as a police forensic analyst) and goreporking (shoving your penis into a big pile of entrails) also wins fluffy teddy bears.
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| You may think I meant "especially" in the previous post. Believe me, I didn't.
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| But I never said I cared about global suffering...
What I particularly love about dear Gerard here, apart from his heroic missing of the point (bless), is that he emailed me specially to say:
Just thought I would copy you in on the reply to your lovely message:
Your opinion has been taken on board and duly ignored.
Oh, and people in glasshouses shouldn't throw stones. Unless your blog is entirely dedicated to the suffering of people worldwide, then you can get off your high horse.
Thank you, come again.
Might have been easier just to get a T-shirt printed saying "PLEASE NOTICE ME!". Still, it worked. That was my second visit to Inkiboo, which combines incisive commentary with fine design skills to offer up a platter of weblogging delights. And I'm glad he took the time to take a look at the dear humble Venusberg. Maybe we should start linking to each other?
On other news, Image Bank has the coolest hold music ever. It's theremin-tastic, interspersed with eerie mechanical wails. As if the suffering of people worldwide was in fact being caused then recorded and processed by Delia Derbyshire.
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| Thursday, July 04, 2002 |
| Our Graybo appears to be launching a bid to take advantage of Ed's tragic meltdown to make a claim for the internal non sequitur crown, henceforth to be known as the "Eurosceptics are Fat Award". Observe:
Whilst this will not have the extensive verdant appeal of last year's event (there is verdance, but less of it), it has the advantage that we will not be surrounded by people shuffling along in comfortable shoes (what's the difference between Pride and a geriatrics convention?).
The context of this is clear. Graybo is disseminating the information that, the original plan for Blogmeet having been abandoned, Hyde Park being filled with Pride, they will instead convene in Soho Square. So far so good. Unfortunately, once that fairly simple datum has been delivered, it just goes completely batshit.
First up, the comfortable shoes. Bearing in mind that Chichester apparently does not have homosexuals, reports from the frontline have clearly become garbled. Somewhere along the line, the datum that lesbians are stereotypically assumed to wear comfortable shoes has somehow become corrupted to suggest that all same-sex partnership enthusiasts gravitate naturally towards the Birkenstocks, which may surprise the odd fellow traveller.
Meanwhile, shuffling. Where in the nine worlds this came from is anyone's guess. But, it seems, homosexuals also shuffle. Conversely, heterosexuals tapdance.
Now, if we assume that Pride is therefore full of people shuffling in comfortable shoes, there may well be some resemblance to that and a geriatrics convention. Except for, you know, everything about it apart from the shuffling and the comfortable shoes.
Which, as we hope to have established, are not in themself 100% accurate signifiers of gaysexuality. So, the correct answer to the question "what's the difference between Pride and a geriatrics convention?" would be something like "welll, the average age, the intent of those convened, the music played, pretty much everything in fact, and incidentally what exactly is a geriatrics convention, a feature as alien to the urban landscape of London as queerosexuals are in Chichester?". Followed perhaps by "why doesn't it describe a meeting of practitioners of geriatric medicine, or 'geriatrics' as it is also known?". Then "or perhaps you mean that practitioners of geriatric medicine wear comfortable shoes and shuffle, as opposed to tapdance. And are therefore gay".
Which seems a curious contention, but perhaps a valid one. Have you ever met a practitioner of geriatric medicine who did not tapdance, or was not gay? Tell me
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| Tuesday, July 02, 2002 |
| I have to admit, I'm not sure why it is that breasts are attractive - they just are, and in a way that is attention grabbing (although I find friendly eyes and a warm smile to be just as attention grabbing).
The correct answer is of course, "because breasts, friendly eyes and warm smiles are negatively charged, while Graybo's attention is positively charged".
So, if friendly eyes and a warm smile developed through puberty on each one of your breasts, either in the manner of the protective display of the peacock's tail or as fully-functioning biological oddities, you have not twice but four times the chance of grabbing Graybo's attention.
A similar effect can be obtained by drawing friendly eyes on your breasts and wandering about Chichester in a half-cup bra. Try this experiment now. Now try it with a warm smile. Now try it with both. Record the results in your textbook. Your teacher will collect your work at the end of the programme.
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| Do you sometimes feel like a wery special little boy in a world of fakes?
I generally prefer my posthuman messiahs to be a little better at spelling and a little more likely to get laid, and perhaps less convinced that not being able to have a conversation with another human being between the ages of 11 and eighteen is a sign that you are the above mentioned posthuman messiah. I wonder if they have actually read any books on the logic they claim rules their lives - you know, Frege, Russell, that sort of thing. It seems unlikely somehow.
"You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
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| More from the almost narcotically execrable Freevibe. It's Up to You. What do you do if your friends offer you pot? Or glue? Accept? Decline? Haver? Or possibly, (d), get some richer friends.
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| Lesson of the weekend - ordination can be fun.
Saturday was L.'s big day - or the prelude to her last free Sunday, if you want to be pessimistic. And, because she had swung a London parish, she got to be ordained in the ultra-swank confines of St. Paul's Cathedral, particularly toothsome because it meant the anti-ordination of women Bishop of London had to do the ordaining. Booyaka, really.
Alas, I was unable to pick up the tickets for the VIP area (with free bar and table dancing), so settled into a pew nearer the back for the ceremony. Which was very moving, although the part where the ordinands form a semi-circle around the altar and turn to the audience when their name is read out is terrifyingly reminiscent of Fifteen to One.
I think this concludes my experience of churches for a while, which is probably for the best as I was beginning to memorise the Nicene Creed through sheer repetition. Not that there's anything wrong with the Nicene Creed, of course. And besides, even if you don't believe in God, you're a fool to turn down any deity's blessing in their own home. Just avoid the Host.
I love the Host. I love the idea of communion, the transformation of bread (or, since this was a high Anglican ceremony, those ecumenical Pringles they offer) and wine into the body and blood of Christ. It's the mystery of the Christian Church except, brilliantly, whereas most mysteries are performed inside closed doors, this mystery is performed inside the human body. And yes, I know, con and trans, but that's hardly the point. Whether you actually had little Christflesh niblets inside you is a matter entirely between you and your digestive tract. Unless you are a hobbyist, obviously.
The point is the ongoing devouring, the act of perfect love expressed through omophagy. Eat this in remembrance of me.
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