sunday 30th january, 2005



the next band i do will mostly be like:
shellac
the fall
gang of four
wire
pinback
the jesus lizard

someone asked me why i don't talk about my former bands on here. some band-people's pages i see are these bizarre self-promotional name dropping incestuous kiss-and-tell nightmares so i don't bother. also, and here comes the confessional part, i don't really like the person i was for the majority of my time on the US scene and i'd just as soon not bring ye old skeletons out of the closet. sometimes i'll come across the email address or web page of someone i was friends with back in the days and for a second i think, yeah, it might be nice to get in touch, but a second later i remember some awful events or how it ended badly with said person so i decide against it. sad but true, i've burnt a lot of bridges. i was an insecure, competitive, envious, issue-riddled walking identity crisis when i was younger. it would be nice to be able to round people up one by one and show them how much i've changed but that's a silly fantasy. and what's the point anyway? i don't plan on going back to america any time soon. so if anyone wants to know what bands i was in they can email me... i know how musicians are; you'll just find your band's name on here when you google yourself (stone? house? glass? uh huh?). so i'd just as soon those people who i don't bother contacting remember me as a blip of unpleasantness perhaps best chalked up to post-adolescent angst or drugs or the insanity of NYC in general. the best, happiest memories i have of those times are when i was on tour driving around looking at stuff or when actually playing (on stage or otherwise), lost in the sonic momentum, completely unaware of anything else going on in the world. inbetween gigs there's so much time-killing, psychodrama and hard work just to get to play it hardly seems worth it sometimes. as ingrid bergman's character in autumn sonata says: "i could always live in my art, but never in my life." anyway, if any of you who i don't speak to these days do happen to find me while surfing the intranet, i'm not nearly as much of a cunt as i once was. honestly.

the bathroom floor project went fairly well, although it ended up costing a bit more than we would have liked but was worth it. at least we don't feel dirty all over again the second we step out of the shower anymore. man, there was some nasty rotten floorboard action; the dillweeds who had the presence of mind to carpet a bathroom in the first place didn't put a moisture barrier down! what they did use as underlay was some sort of corrugated fluffy shit that was about was water-repellent as a sponge. not even exagerrating. i used natural cork tiles over a proper moisture barrier and it looks faboo. in the morning i seal it with something toxic and smelly. so watch out ann maurice, there's a new kid in town... derry was at football while this went on so it was just like those sad 'nuts' magazine adverts.

friday 28th january, 2005



derry and i have been spending a lot of time (probably too much time and you'll see why) on this site: b3ta (pronounced "beeta" i guess)... they're having a photoshop duck contest and i can't submit my entry until next tuesday, some weird newbie law they have... anyway, it's surfer's paradise and funny as hell. this would be my contribution:



it's the who, featuring guitar sensation Peep Townsend.
i haven't even mentioned a word on here yet about the surreal experience i am having temping in the public sector for the east sussex county council. today i went to a staff seminar (on the company's dime cos they want me to go permanent, ha ha yeah right) and got to participate in group exercises and soggy sandwiches. what a freak show. once i've had time to digest the whole experience (literally and figuratively) maybe i'll talk about it. maybe i won't! all in all it's pretty boooorrrriiiiinnnnnggggg....

haircut tomorrow and a trip to ye olde DIY centre, lah dee fucking dah.

thursday 27th january, 2005



i can't help but notice there is something seriously wrong with girls who wear white coats (other than those that work in boots)... they think they're so special, the way they mince down the street as if the whole world should get out of their way. is it a 'little princess' thing? "ooh, look at me, i'm a little princess, i'm a little princess..." they all have super-ironed hair and a vacant look in their eyes. rephrase that: they look dumb as a bag og hammers. can i be the only person who's noticed this?

tomorrow night i rip out the bathroom carpet. i am soooo looking forward to that. it's gonna be cathartic!

tuesday 25th january, 2005





this is what we woke up to saturday. living near the water is awesome. there's giant seagulls all over the roads when you first go out early in the morning and it's still quiet, they just do that funny little strut through the streets looking for scraps like they own the place.

i'm trying not to read the newspaper every day anymore, cos it's bad for my brain apparently, so yesterday i tried reading some awful science fiction by paul theroux. i thought it would be good escapism but it was just rubbish. i'd be better off with some classic ray bradbury... but instead i bought a "MAD looks at the sixties" book at oxfam. now we're talking. you got it, alfred e. neuman dressed up as a hippie on the cover... but i still bought a copy of the guardian today. i am bloody hooked. in G2 there was this article about these poor people in hounslow who live right in heathrow's flight path. these sad folk keep getting lied to and dicked around, they just keep adding runways and adding terminals and adding night flights even though legislation had been passed against it. the rulings just keep getting overturned. tessa "arselick" jowell's cronies says the airlines bring in tourists which is good for the economy. then how come there are about 80% more flights full of british people leaving the country to be tourists somewhere else? more new labor bullshi.... aw, what's the use? i'm trying to keep things light & fluffy around here.

i constantly scribble what is going on in my life in little spiral-bound books. they are everywhere. one of my big fears is that i will lose one somewhere and someone will read my craziest dribble without my knowledge. i came across this one last night, written during my final days in los angeles in april 2002.

it's called he said he hates birds

the owner of the packaging store on wilshire boulevard where i had been buying all my boxes and bubble wrap and tape, etcetera, insisted on helping me carry my cartons home. He was from boston himself, a prominent beantown accent being the dead giveaway. after announcing my destination as concord massachusetts, he said i didn't look 'earthy-crunchy', in my 76 cap and all. i said "there's a very good reason for that, I'm NOT." he then asked me why i was leaving LA. at this point in all my "why are you leaving LA" conversations, i must take pause and carefully consider my response. one reason being i don't necessarily want to come off as a raving lunatic. i should just rephrase the question, "why would i STAY in LA?" and leave it at that. the discussion would be very brief indeed. i can't think of one reason to stay. so i didn't. anyway, i tried to keep it short and sweet since i myself was becoming very tired of hearing my infinite reasons for leaving over and over again. i told him LA was all about cars and money, two things i don't give a toss about. then he asked me "why concord? when's the last time you've been THERE?" and suddenly i became tired. tired of hearing his voice. tired of hearing my own voice. i should have been flattered that this guy found me intriguing in the first place and that should have been enough. at least he had some east coast energy, which i really missed at that point. but he smelled like cigarettes, and looked like a fish. and that obnoxious accent was beginning to drive me crazy.

by the time we got to my building (a 2-block walk, cutting through the rite aid / smart'n final parking lot) he had requested my life story, offered to teach me to drive, AND asked me what my favorite food in the whole world was. i could sense sushi hanging in the balance, but it was perched precariously on the rocky precipice of spending several hours with small smelly nasal and annoying. in my tired disillusioned state i let him give me his business card - he wrote his cel number on the back. his name was shawn. he looked like a shawn. elfin. irish. musty. his wacked-out energy was now really freaking me out. i had to switch gears and get away. at that moment, a female roadrunner hopped across the 2 x 3 patch of 'lawn' that graced the front of that awful building full of twenty-something dickheads. i said "look, a female roadrunner," and watched her bob & peck obliviously along. smelly shawn regarded the cute little creature with what could only be disdain. "i don't like birds," he intoned through his sinus cavity. i give myself bonus points for not tearing into him for obvious numerous reasons. i just said, "gotta go!", grabbed my empty, collapsed cartons and ran inside. wow. that was really weird. of course i had decided not to call him (at least a few times by then), but he got my phone number from the order i had placed for my shipping. creep. i probably could have sued him or something but that's the kind of petty crap i was trying to leave behind via my exodus to walden pond and places thereabout (like the cabins of all those famous dead writers i never visited while i lived in concord but that's another story).

the sushi dinner never happened. i must have been growing up; i never would have forewent (is that a word?) free sushi to avoid a potentially (not even potentially) awkward situation before. and, as brian from grand theft audio pointed out in one of our many rambling telephone conversations: 1) he knew i was leaving, 2) he knew where i lived, 3) he was probably going to kill me and cut me up in little pieces, leaving me in black plastic bags on the side of the road. incidentally, the last time i went for uncomfortable sushi against my better judgement it ended horribly with a weird stalker web geek pacing around my desk for weeks. i was warned by my cubicle-neighbor but paid no heed. heed was not paid. no heed. all for the love of fresh dead fish. but that too is another story. he said he hated birds. what made him think he even stood a chance? another incidentally: that's the same packaging store where i met cch pounder. she's cool.

i really like the song "fun for me" by moloko. can't stop listening to it.

saturday 22nd january, 2005



who on the planet ISN'T freaked out by how maniacally scary, self-inflated and hypocritical the chimp's fire and brimstone speech thursday was? forcing any system of government or belief on anyone else is the antithesis of freedom and liberty! who the fuck do you think you are? oh yeah, i forgot, god chose you to rule, blah blah blah... delusional twatneck. you are the regime that needs changing you ass. i read that the speech writer had mild coronary after the 21 revisions the shrub threw back at him. maybe one day the whole lot of 'em will go flatline.

and that grandiose, pompous, vulgar ceremony... and as usual, zero coverage of the protests.

all they want is to brand the rest of the planet and rake in the proceeds. who do you think you're fooling? fuck off already, evil empire!

iran is next. maybe soon he'll decide he doesn't like certain religions, then he can weed out all the 'mentally ill', the 'genetically challenged'... yadda yadda yadda.

i'm not that deep after all. what part of my sick twisted brain compels me to watch america's next top model anyway? wednesday the girls get dramatic makeovers! my relationship with the country of my birth is complex and none too healthy i fear. sigh.

tirades aside, i can't stop laughing at this. please make it stop!

saturday 15th january, 2005



why is this poor little tanzanian boy smiling?


could it be because he has the chance of the checker by the balls? hmmmm?


you know the guardian's photo editor is a sly one!

while we're having a laugh at labor's expense, meet deputy PM and secretary of state john leslie prescott:


oh the wheels on the bus go round and round...
that is, until a welsh protester hits you with an egg, it's every man for himself!


naturally a classic donnybrook ensues...


well ok, this happened in may 2001 but i still find it hilarious. american politics just don't have this kind of robust full-bodied flavor!


john prescott: watch that left hook!

friday 14th january, 2005



i had a dream. in that dream i flew from nyc to san francisco in less than two minutes (just me, soaring through the open air, i have dreams like that all the time where i'm literally cruising at an incredible speed through the stars, high above the earth...).

as i got ready to land in russian hill, i noticed a monkey hanging by his tail from a tree. he was frozen solid. there was snow and ice everywhere. I did a neat little 360-spin down onto the snow-blanketed street to find ann maurice singing with a band behind her. she was doing a native american style story song about how the climate shift came to be, i can still remember the music (i write music in my sleep too) and some of the words... her sage-like voice intoning: "and a-a-a-ll the land became covered in snow...". many people had gathered to hear her tale.

i'm considering emailing her to tell her about it, but she'd probably think i was a crazy stalker or something. maybe i am. ann rules. i especially love it when she tells brits how crap their homes are.

next update: gordon brown gets one right in the nads in tanzania. i kid you not.

tuesday 12th january, 2005



imagine your country is involved in a war. imagine your country is involved in a war that you don't understand. imagine your country is involved in a war that you don't understand, or haven't even heard that much about because you don't have a TV or radio. you hear things on the streets; from your family and friends. people are scared. people are angry. the young men are talking about fighting the enemy. but who is the enemy?

there is a man. a white man named bush. he has a plan. you, your life, your world, none of it matters because this white man named bush has a plan.

imagine you are asleep in your bed. imagine you are asleep in your bed and you are suddenly awakened. imagine you are asleep in your bed and you are suddenly awakened by explosions. fire. screams. walls falling down around you. glass shattering, bullets strafing the walls. your family broken and bloody, dying in pools where they have collapsed. in your own home. with no warning or explanation. just because some white man named bush has a plan.

imagine you survive. imagine you have the sheer misfortune to survive. imagine walking through the twisted bodies, the smoking ash, the absolute ruin of what was once your city, your world. imagine you survive and have to go on living, living with the memories of what once was and what is now. gone. all gone.

now, ask me why i haven't posted an update in weeks so i could bitch and moan about how my job is getting me down, or how christmas sucked, or how people who talk too loud on the train piss me off. because it's all total bullshit.

read this: city of ghosts. taken from the Guardian and reprinted in full here because i think it's important. everyone should read this. and think about it happening to you, no matter where you are. piss-raining england or balmy-halcyon california. think about it happening to you because it happened to hundreds of thousands of people no different than you or i. while we sit back and laugh at how stupid the white man named bush is, or how he looks like a chimpanzee, nothing can match the sheer horror of what he's done. I feel like screaming at the sky. and today how can so many countries, with so much money to give to tsunami relief, ignore the horror of fallujah and iraq? is it a dirty subject? i don't care. what happened in the indian ocean is no worse than what happened in iraq. because they didn't deserve it either (terry jones shares my view: why are there no fundraisers for the Iraqi dead?).

i've been going on for months, nigh years, about the media supression of events in iraq, but since reading Ali Fadhil's piece i can't stop the tears. how can we let this happen, again and again and again?

next update: rainbows, flowers, fluffy widdle kittens and roly poly puppies. why the fuck not?