I was just bored and idly browsing wikipedia about China.. then I remembered about the Chinese embassy bombing. And then I did a bit of searching. I know it's old news and stuff, but a guy I know works for Navy intelligence, or used to but now works for the UN. So, there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade is a fairly detailed report on the Chinese embassy bombing. What he told me was that, rather than "the wrong map" or whatever, it was because the locals had recovered the wreckage from a f117a (Stealth Fighter) that had crashed in Kosovo and had turned it over to the Chinese to sell to the Russians (or whatever something along those lines). http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9905/02/kosovo.01/ is the closest I could find to much mention of the plane crashing - there are a few sites that sort-of say it, but the BBC etc.don't really have any sort of news stories. And it's hard to find much of anything about it. You would think that, as the invisible plane was at the time still quite a big news story in itself, there might be more out there about one being shot out of the sky. And the dates add up. So, here's one for the conspiracy nuts.
Yeah you're a high-rev hauler with all four on the floor
But your a-bone's busted and you're through the door
So do the dead, juice the Coupe
Come on the livin' dead, ooh you're in the soup
Monday, 4 August 2008
Saturday, 26 July 2008
The Sun Has Got His Hat On
He’s been tanning niggers out in Timbuktu
Now he’s coming back to do the same to you
So jump into your sunbath, hip-hip-hip-hooray
The sun has got his hat on and he’s coming out today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CrL-lfqXoc random happy goodness.
Thoughts:
1) A Story For Ladies Who Should Not Let Life Get Them Down
Cornwall, 529AD is the setting for one of the strangest stories of early Christendom I have ever heard about; what I'm writing here is basically scraped together from a few web sources and an essay I read at University that I only half-remember. St. Emeline was born in a farmhouse near Gunnislake as plain old Emeline Argall, daughter of a donkey and ass breeder who lived on the farm and conducted his business at Gunnislake market - that much is known from tax records of the period. What is also known is that there was a an epidemic of the black death in this time, which lead to a shortage of men of a marriageable age. Emeline, as the youngest daughter, was taken into a covent at Essa. Little is heard of her until the spring of 527, when bandits attacked a coach she was travelling in. It is said that the rest of the nuns were slaughtered, but as the bandit put his knife to her throat a choir of angels sang, and the birds flew from the trees and nestled on her shoulders and in her hair. By 528AD local stories tell of a wild woman of the woods who lived with among the birds and beasts. The legends said she spoke to God among the circles in the trees. In 529AD, on a summers day, she was burned at the stake for witchcraft, and as the pyre crackled, every animal in all the farms around the village gave voice. It is said that, for one whole month, the beasts of burden would do no work in the fields, but that after that time, there was never again any sign of plague there, for five hundred years.
2) Further meme - the grand meme of our time, and how I hate it. World class. It sounds like something from Star Trek; it's used by football commentators, politicians, salesmen. That tells you all you need to know. BAN THIS PHRASE!
3) Good luck/bad luck. At some point in the career of Self Employment a.k.a. how not to get rich and die trying, you must acknowledge that the most important thing is self-advertising. I suspect those who try to network too much are missing the point; it's who WHO likes you, it's IF they've got money.
Stuff. It happens.
Now he’s coming back to do the same to you
So jump into your sunbath, hip-hip-hip-hooray
The sun has got his hat on and he’s coming out today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CrL-lfqXoc random happy goodness.
Thoughts:
1) A Story For Ladies Who Should Not Let Life Get Them Down
Cornwall, 529AD is the setting for one of the strangest stories of early Christendom I have ever heard about; what I'm writing here is basically scraped together from a few web sources and an essay I read at University that I only half-remember. St. Emeline was born in a farmhouse near Gunnislake as plain old Emeline Argall, daughter of a donkey and ass breeder who lived on the farm and conducted his business at Gunnislake market - that much is known from tax records of the period. What is also known is that there was a an epidemic of the black death in this time, which lead to a shortage of men of a marriageable age. Emeline, as the youngest daughter, was taken into a covent at Essa. Little is heard of her until the spring of 527, when bandits attacked a coach she was travelling in. It is said that the rest of the nuns were slaughtered, but as the bandit put his knife to her throat a choir of angels sang, and the birds flew from the trees and nestled on her shoulders and in her hair. By 528AD local stories tell of a wild woman of the woods who lived with among the birds and beasts. The legends said she spoke to God among the circles in the trees. In 529AD, on a summers day, she was burned at the stake for witchcraft, and as the pyre crackled, every animal in all the farms around the village gave voice. It is said that, for one whole month, the beasts of burden would do no work in the fields, but that after that time, there was never again any sign of plague there, for five hundred years.
2) Further meme - the grand meme of our time, and how I hate it. World class. It sounds like something from Star Trek; it's used by football commentators, politicians, salesmen. That tells you all you need to know. BAN THIS PHRASE!
3) Good luck/bad luck. At some point in the career of Self Employment a.k.a. how not to get rich and die trying, you must acknowledge that the most important thing is self-advertising. I suspect those who try to network too much are missing the point; it's who WHO likes you, it's IF they've got money.
Stuff. It happens.
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
One With The Birds
Sometimes it's as if the massive cogs of the world just spin and catch you between them, and your hopes and dreams spin off into the distance for no reason and you're left to dangle; you can see where everything goes and how it all fits together, but you're crushed in the teeth. For a moment you might think of all the other people in the world who feel the same as you; you are aware that, really, tomorrow the sun will rise, things will go on as normally in so many ways as on any other day, but really, what is life if not the experience of happiness and sadness? And so, sadness makes life unbearable. To miss someone terribly; to lose hope; to feel a desperate, unfulfillable desire. These things are the depths of life, from where the heights cannot be seen. We strike blindly onward, hoping one day to see the sun rise over the peaks. It will be beautiful. It will be beautiful. It will be beautiful.
McFearless
Get online you, I have some work you might be interested in.....
In terms of life-changing moments, probably not the most obviously significant moment in my life. Although the sender was in Juba, I was presuming it'd be a do-a-favour-for-me-in-London sort of thing; instead, a rushed collection of written and photographic portfolio sent off to someone in need of a photographer and writer in South Sudan for a month, documenting AIDS prevention work and water purification work, at a fantastic daily rate with all expenses paid; on top of that, a clear opportunity for freelance work, with the added benefit of recently-established lines of communication with a good photographic agency - http://www.axiomphotographic.com and the bottom line being it is absolutely and totally what I want to be doing with my life, no question about it. Not because it's a cause I am passionate about or because it's travel, just because it consumes the best of my skills and does SOMETHING with them that doesn't just involve selling a place or an event or a person. How's that for right on?
In the meantime, my daily quota of ire-filled moments remains high, although targets switch often. Today: vocal memes, in particular - "rock up" as in, to rock up to a place; and "mashup", which apparently was originally a phrase used to mean a combination of digital sources being combined into one output (very web 2.0) but has since been stuck onto any event involving more than one person and IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY!! SOOOO ANGRY!!!!! I don't know why.
Walker hits the road
What would I care
I like going nowhere
I got the rain
In terms of life-changing moments, probably not the most obviously significant moment in my life. Although the sender was in Juba, I was presuming it'd be a do-a-favour-for-me-in-London sort of thing; instead, a rushed collection of written and photographic portfolio sent off to someone in need of a photographer and writer in South Sudan for a month, documenting AIDS prevention work and water purification work, at a fantastic daily rate with all expenses paid; on top of that, a clear opportunity for freelance work, with the added benefit of recently-established lines of communication with a good photographic agency - http://www.axiomphotographic.com and the bottom line being it is absolutely and totally what I want to be doing with my life, no question about it. Not because it's a cause I am passionate about or because it's travel, just because it consumes the best of my skills and does SOMETHING with them that doesn't just involve selling a place or an event or a person. How's that for right on?
In the meantime, my daily quota of ire-filled moments remains high, although targets switch often. Today: vocal memes, in particular - "rock up" as in, to rock up to a place; and "mashup", which apparently was originally a phrase used to mean a combination of digital sources being combined into one output (very web 2.0) but has since been stuck onto any event involving more than one person and IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY!! SOOOO ANGRY!!!!! I don't know why.
Walker hits the road
What would I care
I like going nowhere
I got the rain
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Blues From Down Here
Ahh.. enough 80's computer games for now. Enough day-by-day listings of the particles of my life as well; I'm not so busy that I couldn't do it, but I'm trying to decide what it was that I'd like to remember about this point in my life in the years ahead - that last week I went to a lecture on gothic architecture on monday, a fetish club on thursday, to see hancock on friday and to a masked ball last night? Or that inbetween I had a superb and lovely time with the neighbourtwins, or got drunk with icelandic people and someone from Placebo, or that going to a masked ball is a whole lot less fun when an ex seems to have decided to inhabit the scenery like some sort of vast ginger ghoul, leering out from every shadow with Ha! I Am Righteous eyes?
I could write a review of Hancock - He Flies, He Dies, He Survives, What A Surprise - but, history will condemn it to its own shallow grave I am sure. I could write about the difficulty I have with keeping in touch with people, or how there are people I desperately want to be back in touch with, or how one grumpy bastard just won't answer the phone to me any more. I could mention that this week I have been mostly reading this this and this which is as good a mix as you could get, I think.
I don't mean to be trite; I could happily write about any of these things at great length, but, it gets old quickly. Right now I'm sitting here listening to Return To Cookie Mountain for about the millionth time this week, and I still like it, so I want to write about something that always make me happy.
J.G. Ballard is probably my favourite living writer. When he's dead and gone, he'll probably be remembered for Crash and Empire Of The Sun, because they were made into movies (in the case of Crash, badly, despite the artwank reviews provided on account of the Cronenberg direction) which is a crying shame. Ballard at his purest is when he writes his modern fables - Super Cannes, Cocaine Nights, High Rise; books that hit the same note over and over without resorting to the gimicks of sex or sci-fi or magick.
I love the way he writes, always concise, never revealing motives - in a way the whole purpose of his work is to demand that the reader comes to their own conclusions about motive. He is like a journalist reporting from his own imagination, goverened by a brief to spread the word of his own philosophy.
I have not read up on any of his non-fiction, and perhaps it's better that I haven't tried to seek out more exact intended meaning because the reading I take from his books is precise enough already. He writes about the evolution of society, the resounding consequences of modern life. The more we become formulised and categorised and live our lives as such, the more strongly we require chaos, destruction, violence. He tells us that these are traits that make us human as much as any other; that we are animals. That the emotional and mental strain of living perfectly ordered super-lives will make us all psychopaths if we don't take steps to vaccinate ourselves against them.
I think it is too easy to see the cracks in our collective social culture to say that he is completely right, that he tells the whole and complete story. But, when you read about footballers who go on violent rampages or sleep with hordes of whores every week, consider what it takes to be properly motived to perform in your job at the best of your ability when you already have earned enough money to see yourself and all your family happy to the end of your lives. When we reach a certain level of comfort, it becomes necessary for us to seek our own frictions, to create our own parameters for happiness or sadness. Not to sound too Daily Mail, but plenty of the wilful idiocy that leads to regrets the morning or days after happens because of a sort of wistful want for that regret; I've done it myself, had that one drink extra that will leave me kissing the basin until the early hours. As the drink goes down, part of me will think "that's proper".
You might talk about self-control, but in a manner, that is what it is. I rail against my friends for casual, random sex, or extreme drug taking, or overindulgence in any particular sort of food, because the consumptive behaviour is indicative of a life too comfortable for any good. I'm not for a moment trying to suggest I'm any different, and of course I come across as a nosy, foolish, possibly pompous busybody. What I'm about to write won't help that at all: consider chavs. I only write that because you will know what I mean, rather than because I wish to be mean. You might consider them the lowest of society, or not. My point is, that to lead a life which is in the utmost driven by consumerism and consumptive need will necessarily create a class of people like them. And obviously the social and cultural valves will tend to push us towards a consumerist society, for the good of business.
(A whole other story I know, but..) Surely it's unarguable that we are pushed towards a consumptive way of life by every level and switch available. The triple-blow of advertising has been in the first place to sell us products, in the second place to sell us advertising as a means of control, in the third place to sell us ideas and concepts - our modern propaganda arrives in the form of government warning posters and security signs on public transport, and whether or not you agree with what they are hoping to tell us, the methods they use are the same as how we are sold chocolate and cars. Inevitably, the more we are required to notice advertising, the more susceptible we are to it.
Sex, violence and hunger and probably the most base of our desires, the triumvirate that we share with almost every creature I can think to name. But when you look at the people most susceptible to a consumerist lifestyle - what you could call chavs, or uneducated people who have few prospects for changing their circumstance, or however you want to call them - that is the lifestyle which inevitably results. To describe it in ideological terms is pointless; it is not nihilistic, sinful or immoral, because the only ideology which informs the lifestyle is the one that governs the advertising pressures upon it. We are sold sex, violence and hunger at every turn as much as we already desire it; we are made to feel that our hungers for them are healthy, that our hungers should increase, not by any one campagn or poster, but by the uncoordinated mass of them as a whole, and the language of signs that they use.
To have several million people who wear almost exactly the same clothes, jewellery, drive the same cars, eat the same food, live in the same situations is an advertisers dream. Perhaps for the office juniors anyway; it seems a simplified lifestyle, where emotional value is almost completely dissolved into meaningless sex, violence and hunger. I would not for a moment suggest that we have these desires because of advertising, just that advertising makes massive use of these hugely powerful levers in us and amplifies our desires. Because of that they lose their worth.
Consider how easy it is to eat, at any time. We have snack foods, fast food, ready meals, microwaves.. the concept of hunger has gone from being a trigger to make us collect, or hunt, to one of quick gratification. Even if you'd never eat any junk food in your life, fruit and vegetables are available as quickly as you can get to a cornershop in most parts of London. So, the nature of what it means to be hungry has changed, even from 100 years ago, when the majority of food would have been made on-site and so not quite as instantly available as it is now. One of the main consequences of this has been to reduce the value of food to us; we probably think less about what we eat (as a society as a whole) than we ever have before. Violence, which can be seen in any form of competition, is embraced, or at least permitted, universally. We still place a high value on our own pain, most of the time, but it seems that people are as keen as they ever were, if not more so, to make their own point the loudest and most keenly put forward. People argue as much as ever, if not more. And especially with sports, people are keenest to be on the winning side - for the good feeling it gives them, a violent victory by proxy. And sex, even if it was never the case that most people believed in sex only with the one you married, becomes more and more stripped of any emotional value; we consume the sex we have because there is no cost to it, no need to use it as a bait to find someone to take care of your life; no fear of being called a slut if you sleep with someone on the same night you first kiss; no risk of unwanted children.
In effect, what has happened is that we have become, as individuals, free-er to choose how we sate our hungers, even as the ways we can sate them have blossomed and created a larger hunger within us for them. But, as we become more individual, we become less social. Social groups just aren't necessary; however, we remain social animals. By devaluing the cures to our basest hungers, we have lost a lot of what gave us reason in life. To be directionless, aimless and unsure; to be as base as possible; to try to find false reason, whether it's in religion or hopeless political dreams; even, ultimately, boredom: all of them are symptoms of a over-consumptive life, where need has been replaced by easily-fulfilled desires.
Ballard suggests that we are heading for collapse; while it's easy to see the symptoms of the modern age in the lowest classes of society, he depicts how he sees it affecting the higher reaches. Boredom alleviated by violent gangs; synchronised affairs across entire corporate towns; wars between luxury apartment buildings. It is an increasingly believeable picture he paints.
When our base desires are satisfied, what is the purpose of life? The truth is, there is none, beyond that we can genuinely give it - love, ideas, birds, whatever you wouldn't give up for all the money in the world.
Oh my sweet dear
Cold alone poisoning ourselves
engulfed in our own tears
Signed, blues from down here.
I could write a review of Hancock - He Flies, He Dies, He Survives, What A Surprise - but, history will condemn it to its own shallow grave I am sure. I could write about the difficulty I have with keeping in touch with people, or how there are people I desperately want to be back in touch with, or how one grumpy bastard just won't answer the phone to me any more. I could mention that this week I have been mostly reading this this and this which is as good a mix as you could get, I think.
I don't mean to be trite; I could happily write about any of these things at great length, but, it gets old quickly. Right now I'm sitting here listening to Return To Cookie Mountain for about the millionth time this week, and I still like it, so I want to write about something that always make me happy.
J.G. Ballard is probably my favourite living writer. When he's dead and gone, he'll probably be remembered for Crash and Empire Of The Sun, because they were made into movies (in the case of Crash, badly, despite the artwank reviews provided on account of the Cronenberg direction) which is a crying shame. Ballard at his purest is when he writes his modern fables - Super Cannes, Cocaine Nights, High Rise; books that hit the same note over and over without resorting to the gimicks of sex or sci-fi or magick.
I love the way he writes, always concise, never revealing motives - in a way the whole purpose of his work is to demand that the reader comes to their own conclusions about motive. He is like a journalist reporting from his own imagination, goverened by a brief to spread the word of his own philosophy.
I have not read up on any of his non-fiction, and perhaps it's better that I haven't tried to seek out more exact intended meaning because the reading I take from his books is precise enough already. He writes about the evolution of society, the resounding consequences of modern life. The more we become formulised and categorised and live our lives as such, the more strongly we require chaos, destruction, violence. He tells us that these are traits that make us human as much as any other; that we are animals. That the emotional and mental strain of living perfectly ordered super-lives will make us all psychopaths if we don't take steps to vaccinate ourselves against them.
I think it is too easy to see the cracks in our collective social culture to say that he is completely right, that he tells the whole and complete story. But, when you read about footballers who go on violent rampages or sleep with hordes of whores every week, consider what it takes to be properly motived to perform in your job at the best of your ability when you already have earned enough money to see yourself and all your family happy to the end of your lives. When we reach a certain level of comfort, it becomes necessary for us to seek our own frictions, to create our own parameters for happiness or sadness. Not to sound too Daily Mail, but plenty of the wilful idiocy that leads to regrets the morning or days after happens because of a sort of wistful want for that regret; I've done it myself, had that one drink extra that will leave me kissing the basin until the early hours. As the drink goes down, part of me will think "that's proper".
You might talk about self-control, but in a manner, that is what it is. I rail against my friends for casual, random sex, or extreme drug taking, or overindulgence in any particular sort of food, because the consumptive behaviour is indicative of a life too comfortable for any good. I'm not for a moment trying to suggest I'm any different, and of course I come across as a nosy, foolish, possibly pompous busybody. What I'm about to write won't help that at all: consider chavs. I only write that because you will know what I mean, rather than because I wish to be mean. You might consider them the lowest of society, or not. My point is, that to lead a life which is in the utmost driven by consumerism and consumptive need will necessarily create a class of people like them. And obviously the social and cultural valves will tend to push us towards a consumerist society, for the good of business.
(A whole other story I know, but..) Surely it's unarguable that we are pushed towards a consumptive way of life by every level and switch available. The triple-blow of advertising has been in the first place to sell us products, in the second place to sell us advertising as a means of control, in the third place to sell us ideas and concepts - our modern propaganda arrives in the form of government warning posters and security signs on public transport, and whether or not you agree with what they are hoping to tell us, the methods they use are the same as how we are sold chocolate and cars. Inevitably, the more we are required to notice advertising, the more susceptible we are to it.
Sex, violence and hunger and probably the most base of our desires, the triumvirate that we share with almost every creature I can think to name. But when you look at the people most susceptible to a consumerist lifestyle - what you could call chavs, or uneducated people who have few prospects for changing their circumstance, or however you want to call them - that is the lifestyle which inevitably results. To describe it in ideological terms is pointless; it is not nihilistic, sinful or immoral, because the only ideology which informs the lifestyle is the one that governs the advertising pressures upon it. We are sold sex, violence and hunger at every turn as much as we already desire it; we are made to feel that our hungers for them are healthy, that our hungers should increase, not by any one campagn or poster, but by the uncoordinated mass of them as a whole, and the language of signs that they use.
To have several million people who wear almost exactly the same clothes, jewellery, drive the same cars, eat the same food, live in the same situations is an advertisers dream. Perhaps for the office juniors anyway; it seems a simplified lifestyle, where emotional value is almost completely dissolved into meaningless sex, violence and hunger. I would not for a moment suggest that we have these desires because of advertising, just that advertising makes massive use of these hugely powerful levers in us and amplifies our desires. Because of that they lose their worth.
Consider how easy it is to eat, at any time. We have snack foods, fast food, ready meals, microwaves.. the concept of hunger has gone from being a trigger to make us collect, or hunt, to one of quick gratification. Even if you'd never eat any junk food in your life, fruit and vegetables are available as quickly as you can get to a cornershop in most parts of London. So, the nature of what it means to be hungry has changed, even from 100 years ago, when the majority of food would have been made on-site and so not quite as instantly available as it is now. One of the main consequences of this has been to reduce the value of food to us; we probably think less about what we eat (as a society as a whole) than we ever have before. Violence, which can be seen in any form of competition, is embraced, or at least permitted, universally. We still place a high value on our own pain, most of the time, but it seems that people are as keen as they ever were, if not more so, to make their own point the loudest and most keenly put forward. People argue as much as ever, if not more. And especially with sports, people are keenest to be on the winning side - for the good feeling it gives them, a violent victory by proxy. And sex, even if it was never the case that most people believed in sex only with the one you married, becomes more and more stripped of any emotional value; we consume the sex we have because there is no cost to it, no need to use it as a bait to find someone to take care of your life; no fear of being called a slut if you sleep with someone on the same night you first kiss; no risk of unwanted children.
In effect, what has happened is that we have become, as individuals, free-er to choose how we sate our hungers, even as the ways we can sate them have blossomed and created a larger hunger within us for them. But, as we become more individual, we become less social. Social groups just aren't necessary; however, we remain social animals. By devaluing the cures to our basest hungers, we have lost a lot of what gave us reason in life. To be directionless, aimless and unsure; to be as base as possible; to try to find false reason, whether it's in religion or hopeless political dreams; even, ultimately, boredom: all of them are symptoms of a over-consumptive life, where need has been replaced by easily-fulfilled desires.
Ballard suggests that we are heading for collapse; while it's easy to see the symptoms of the modern age in the lowest classes of society, he depicts how he sees it affecting the higher reaches. Boredom alleviated by violent gangs; synchronised affairs across entire corporate towns; wars between luxury apartment buildings. It is an increasingly believeable picture he paints.
When our base desires are satisfied, what is the purpose of life? The truth is, there is none, beyond that we can genuinely give it - love, ideas, birds, whatever you wouldn't give up for all the money in the world.
Oh my sweet dear
Cold alone poisoning ourselves
engulfed in our own tears
Signed, blues from down here.
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Atic Atac
Wednesday: The calm before the storm brought with it a certain anticipation which I could not calm. It was 9 O'Clock when I finally met Rob Luck at the Pembury Tavern. We started on ales, moved to a Belgian Tripel, via calvados, took a detour via stout and possibly a dark german wheatbeer too. There was a huge bag of pork scratchings in there somewhere. There was also a kebab. Guess what? I woke up in the morning with the cat Menina trying to eat some sick out of my bin.
Thursday: Went to the Vyner Street openings with Emilia and her young man; afterwards met Angela S from mtv and we went for dinner at Little Georgia; it was nice, the food was alright except for some grit in the spinach, and it was excellent to catch up with Angela - a long time since we sat down together. She's a funny lady who marches like a toy soldier. Afterwards I went over to Emilia's for a while, where her housemate were in good form, and watched some of a documentary about Bob Dylan's 60's tour of the UK.
Friday: Went to do a promo shoot for a musician called Ike Robinson, who is managed by a colleague of mine. He's a nice chap and we got some nice pictures; afterwards wandered down to a pub by Bethnal Green that was completely ram packed with Bethnal Green Types, coked up to the eyeballs. Afterwards wandered down to Grind-A-Go-Go, where I danced with a police lady and then went home.
Saturday: Went up to Oxford for lunch with my friend Natalie (who gave me a nice bracelet she had woven) at a pub called Jude The Obscure. I had a nice steak and cheese pie, which I had woken up with a desire to eat. I have been getting food cravings a lot recently, including plain donuts, avocado, tomato, salty meat and lime. While on the way back to the train, I tried to open an old-fashioned bottle of lucozade by resting the lip of the bottletop against a bit of fencing and bashing it with my other hand to flip the lid off. I did not succeed in removing the lid of the bottle, I did however bruise the bones in my hand quite badly, which started hurting about a minute after the incident, and then all my fingers went numb. I had to miss the Rollergirls Derby Match which I was very disappointed about, especially as in a daze of pain I didn't realise that the train that had been standing at the platform for ten minutes was the train I needed to be on, and so missed it. When I got back to London, I went to White Mischief. Among the people I ran into: Clayton H, Jenni S, Tammy N, Siberfi, Nicholas Immaculate, Suzanne C, and Sarah B. If you have any idea who most of these folks are, you will understand that it was perhaps a bit traumatising to be inthe same building as them all. I walked to Euston and then smoked for a while before going home.
Sunday: I watched most of a pirate copy of Prince Caspian but had trouble getting through more than about five minutes at a time; it is a long time since any film has made me crave violence quite so much as this one has. Then I spoke to my friend Athena for a while, who is greatly enjoying having her sister over to stay. Or not. Then I went to Dice Club. The bands were very good, especially (again) the middle one called Scum or possibly Skum. Everyone looked fantastic and the weather was nice enough to make standing outside and smoking a lot of fun. I wandered home with a fair few good pictures on the camera as well. A homeless man told me this joke and asked me for money: What do you call a Spaniard with no car? Carlos. I told him it was shit and offered - what do you call a man with no feet or calves? Tony.
Thursday: Went to the Vyner Street openings with Emilia and her young man; afterwards met Angela S from mtv and we went for dinner at Little Georgia; it was nice, the food was alright except for some grit in the spinach, and it was excellent to catch up with Angela - a long time since we sat down together. She's a funny lady who marches like a toy soldier. Afterwards I went over to Emilia's for a while, where her housemate were in good form, and watched some of a documentary about Bob Dylan's 60's tour of the UK.
Friday: Went to do a promo shoot for a musician called Ike Robinson, who is managed by a colleague of mine. He's a nice chap and we got some nice pictures; afterwards wandered down to a pub by Bethnal Green that was completely ram packed with Bethnal Green Types, coked up to the eyeballs. Afterwards wandered down to Grind-A-Go-Go, where I danced with a police lady and then went home.
Saturday: Went up to Oxford for lunch with my friend Natalie (who gave me a nice bracelet she had woven) at a pub called Jude The Obscure. I had a nice steak and cheese pie, which I had woken up with a desire to eat. I have been getting food cravings a lot recently, including plain donuts, avocado, tomato, salty meat and lime. While on the way back to the train, I tried to open an old-fashioned bottle of lucozade by resting the lip of the bottletop against a bit of fencing and bashing it with my other hand to flip the lid off. I did not succeed in removing the lid of the bottle, I did however bruise the bones in my hand quite badly, which started hurting about a minute after the incident, and then all my fingers went numb. I had to miss the Rollergirls Derby Match which I was very disappointed about, especially as in a daze of pain I didn't realise that the train that had been standing at the platform for ten minutes was the train I needed to be on, and so missed it. When I got back to London, I went to White Mischief. Among the people I ran into: Clayton H, Jenni S, Tammy N, Siberfi, Nicholas Immaculate, Suzanne C, and Sarah B. If you have any idea who most of these folks are, you will understand that it was perhaps a bit traumatising to be inthe same building as them all. I walked to Euston and then smoked for a while before going home.
Sunday: I watched most of a pirate copy of Prince Caspian but had trouble getting through more than about five minutes at a time; it is a long time since any film has made me crave violence quite so much as this one has. Then I spoke to my friend Athena for a while, who is greatly enjoying having her sister over to stay. Or not. Then I went to Dice Club. The bands were very good, especially (again) the middle one called Scum or possibly Skum. Everyone looked fantastic and the weather was nice enough to make standing outside and smoking a lot of fun. I wandered home with a fair few good pictures on the camera as well. A homeless man told me this joke and asked me for money: What do you call a Spaniard with no car? Carlos. I told him it was shit and offered - what do you call a man with no feet or calves? Tony.
Friday, 30 May 2008
Alone In The Dark
Friday: May has mostly passed me by; catastrophe and curious festivities have abounded but what I've enjoyed the most is lying in bed determindely refusing the possibility of clothes and/or more than the minimum number of hours of daylight. This has made for interesting night bus experiences (from actually beating up some kids who, of all things, tried to steal a can of red bull from me - why couldn't I do that when they took my glasses? to running into Piper in a contemplative mood - he hates work. Don't we all.) and also enabled me to spend a good percentage of my time enjoying London's nightlife - the Groucho, St. Vitus' Dance Ball, We Could Be Enos, Dice Club, A Pub Full Of Gay Irish Men During Eurovision, a few gigs.. it has been quite busy and there hasn't been a week where I've not gone out at least twice.
In the meantime, the landlord has taken it on himself (after his less-than-perfect attempts with the garden house) to refloor the living room. I don't have a problem with having the livingroom refloored, but the sharp cunt expects everyone else to get involved as well, and hasn't really spoken to me for a couple of days as I've been hid in my room working on my Magnum application. Which, if I'm honest, has really been stressing me out. It is one thing to have a sort-of post-natal-depression thing having "given birth" to my book; it's another to pile on the stress levels with applying to the largest and most prestigious photographic agency in the world, after they emailed me an invite to do so. They invited about 15 people; they accept 0,1 or 2 of them. I would very much like to be accepted. Duh.
Today I am going to Brighton for a few days. It occurs to me as I write this that afterwards, I won't have much reason to go down there any more. None of my friends live there, and I am going down for my brother's graduation, so he won't be there much longer. I have a love/hate relationship with the place. I have had good times there and lots of nice people I know studied there, but I wasn't one of them, so it has always been where the fun was and I wasn't. When I was younger it seemed like the place where EVERYTHING happened; now it seems full of slightly lazy people and very young students. It will be nice to see my brother happy though.
Talking of where the fun is, here's a poem for you crazy kids. First person to email me a title wins a kiss on the cheek and a smack on the bum.
Tell me stories
Whisper them in my ear
(like you mean it)
Let me see the tears in your eyes
When they roll back in your head
Like old times
Let us drink red wine that stains our teeth
Let me overstep the mark
Let’s lose ourselves beneath your stars
While writhing in the dark
A sister, a brother, lovers, worse
Bitten, strangled, smothered, cursed,
Sharing dreams,
bashed for amusement
prisoners in each their own basement
sullen/silent in bemusement
Glowing in a raiment
Cut from parchment
Where written are the stories
Of times gone by
And so we hunt and soar
Two tigers in the sky
In the meantime, the landlord has taken it on himself (after his less-than-perfect attempts with the garden house) to refloor the living room. I don't have a problem with having the livingroom refloored, but the sharp cunt expects everyone else to get involved as well, and hasn't really spoken to me for a couple of days as I've been hid in my room working on my Magnum application. Which, if I'm honest, has really been stressing me out. It is one thing to have a sort-of post-natal-depression thing having "given birth" to my book; it's another to pile on the stress levels with applying to the largest and most prestigious photographic agency in the world, after they emailed me an invite to do so. They invited about 15 people; they accept 0,1 or 2 of them. I would very much like to be accepted. Duh.
Today I am going to Brighton for a few days. It occurs to me as I write this that afterwards, I won't have much reason to go down there any more. None of my friends live there, and I am going down for my brother's graduation, so he won't be there much longer. I have a love/hate relationship with the place. I have had good times there and lots of nice people I know studied there, but I wasn't one of them, so it has always been where the fun was and I wasn't. When I was younger it seemed like the place where EVERYTHING happened; now it seems full of slightly lazy people and very young students. It will be nice to see my brother happy though.
Talking of where the fun is, here's a poem for you crazy kids. First person to email me a title wins a kiss on the cheek and a smack on the bum.
Tell me stories
Whisper them in my ear
(like you mean it)
Let me see the tears in your eyes
When they roll back in your head
Like old times
Let us drink red wine that stains our teeth
Let me overstep the mark
Let’s lose ourselves beneath your stars
While writhing in the dark
A sister, a brother, lovers, worse
Bitten, strangled, smothered, cursed,
Sharing dreams,
bashed for amusement
prisoners in each their own basement
sullen/silent in bemusement
Glowing in a raiment
Cut from parchment
Where written are the stories
Of times gone by
And so we hunt and soar
Two tigers in the sky
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