july 30, 2004
listening to la nozze de figaro by our good friend wolfgang


that is probably the *only* nasturtium blossom we will see in our yard this year. the soil here is so poor they are barely clinging to life & being a novice gardner i couldn't be arsed to dig proper beds to plant in.

weird things abound in crawltown. notable of late:
1) the woman who daily walks in 5" spike heels from three bridges station to the manor royal industrial estate and back again. it's about 3/4 mile each way. i'd like to know what company she works for; apparently they have a very liberal hiring policy in that they employ the clearly insane. her calves look like knotted rope.

2) giant mushrooms growing on a single lawn on tinsley lane. each one is nearly as large as a dinner plate and thick as a steak. do these things make good eating? is it worth finding out?

3) the sheer ignorance of the town planning council. here is a city with an estimated population of 99,974 people, and the largest single-runway international airport in the country, yet they close the only centrally located hospital! oh, they are opening a 2nd useless "leisure center" (the 1st being comprised of a multi-plex, a pizza hut & a mcdonalds, mmm now that's what i call leisure) right on top of thomas bennett middle school where tiny roads already lead to massive congestion during the school season, and sussex university will be opening a campus on part of tilgate forest in two years... can you say "there goes the neighborhood"? prognosis negative. who will benefit from this mindless over-development? certainly not the people who live here - affordable rentals will become non-existent once crawley becomes a university town. mcdonalds (all four of them) and the gross county mall and the pubs will thrive, but that's about it. here is a town that boasts numerous reasons why people should move here & raise families, but god forbid you should go into labor or be involved in a road traffic accident, because this place is not equipped at all to handle even mild emergencies, let alone a gatwick-related air disaster. what are these dumbasses thinking? answer: they are not.

4) the dis- and re- appearance of the motorway bunnies. we were concerned that the little brown rabbits who live on a traffic island by the flyover had perhaps met an untimely fate since it was recently re-landscaped, but we have seen them happily nibbling away again. joy!

the ennui of 9-5 continues. here i pay silent homage to the brave little blossom in our garden pictured above; i like to call it metamorphosis of a nasturtium. it's probably one of the stupidest visuals i will ever create. it's accomplishments like these that keep self-effacement alive and well within me.

oh, and thanks jen! you rule!

i don't call this page rb rants for nothing you know...

july 24, 2004
listening to down in the park by tubeway army and the foo fighters (yes both)


today we spontaneously went to highgate cemetary in north london and could not find the tomb of karl marx. we weren't really trying very hard, it was just fun to walk around in the ancient overgrowth. we saw a very mange-ridden fox and a dead rat that had bees on it. afterwards, a lovely meal and drink at the old crown. i really like the 43 bus that runs all the way to london bridge from highgate, islington & shoreditch. well that's my *yawn* boring update for today. i am very tired from all the walking & looking & talking & living. time for bed. tomorrow, sad boring job and happy book writing. some online mah jongg may fit in there somewhere as well. and probably some soup. la vida loca, for sure.

july 24, 2004
listening to at home, at work, at play by sparks

we just got back from horsham, which is a really cool little (?) town that has a few great outdoor markets on saturdays... so of course the whole time we are walking around i'm saying to derry "i could live here, i could live here"... the mix of super-old architecture with new is well balanced (at least in the town centre) and it kinda reminded me of concord massachusetts a little bit in parts. so when we kiss crawley's ass goodbye who knows, we may be horsham bound. ultimately i'd like to be brighton or hove-actually bound but we'll see where we both end up workwise and what-not. babble on babylon. anyway... there's a weird water sculpture in the middle somewhere and it looks like a giant cabbage on a spire containing a smooth metal globe, and it rises slowly up while water dribbles out the bottom. then all at once it like FLUSHES and falls back down to the bottom. and there are baby cabbage-orbs around it at the end of cement chutes and there are benches around and people actually sit and watch this weird ass spectacle. it may be the sole thing that keeps me away it's so odd. but we got some cool CDs at a stall & nice carrots & cherries & had lunch & yadda yadda yadda. oh, by the way... GIANT FLYING ANTS INVADE CRAWLTOWN. according to my husby this happens once a year for a couple days and it is fucking awful! you're riding your bike & you can feel 'em pinging off your arms & they fly into your ears & stuff. thankfully i wear glasses so blindness has been avoided.

while i'm playing with javascript, here's some of the amusing spam i've received today. expulsion? cezanne? cardiff? elmhurst? somehow it appeals to the dadaist in me but not enough to actually blast them into the void without opening them. enough blah blah blah, off to be the pond police & make sure the kids aren't fishing off the wrong side of the lake again. yes i am turning into a finger-wagging townie. and it's great. show each other the love today.

happy birthday robin xx!

july 22, 2004
listening to slick metal grind by kraddy

our landlord sucks. we decided to do it the "right" way and ask him if we could have a rescue cat and he said no, full stop. he just "doesn't want any pets in the house". what a cock knocker. well for this he can go through the trouble of finding another clean, responsible tenant in november 'cos we ain't having it.

on the brighter side (if you can call it that) i have written FOUR count 'em FOUR chapters for the ongoing saga 27 bus confessions. i've been getting all kinds of twisted ideas about where this thing could go and i want to see just how far i can push this character. the beauty of writing this piece is that it doesn't always have to make linear sense; she spends so much time inside her head that i can just write really weird creepy stuff and figure out later where to insert it along the plotline to further her descent into utter turmoil. kooky fun! also there will be even more vague, obtuse music references so all the hipster doofusses can go "that's a radiohead line" or "hey, that's from a pixies song". and so it goes...

here is (what i think is) a great anatole koletsky piece in the opinion section of today's times - we could act in sudan, so why haven't we? it's a sharp, quick read and i hope you check it out. decades of horror have turned me into a big fucking fuzzy lefty. i just may have to beat myself up in a car park.

i recently found out that someone i knew from back in the even worse days has inoperable lung cancer. my thoughts are with you and your family. there were two good cancer reports also, clean bills of health for wbb and daughter of md. bless. this is the age we live in, where all we can hope for is dodging the swinging pendulum of chronic environmental illness. i write this as cars whizz past me, mere yards away, on gatwick road - i have the door open cos it's too effing hot in here. i'm glad i won't be sitting here much longer.

july 19, 2004
listening to the enemy by guided by voices

if you don't already have isolation drills, get it.

doing updates from work takes forever cos there is an annoying glare on my keyboard which i can do little or nothing about aside from contorting like a crooked drunken freak. coming here these days sucks; the office is closing at the end of september and it's like visiting someone in the hospital who is terminal. you try to be happy and make jokes and go about business as usual, but there's no joy and everyone here is either sad, confused or angry. this was a nice company which got bought by a big not-nice company.

seeing fahrenheit 9/11 brought back to life in me that dark desperate edge which fuels my creativity. i am going to finish my novel. i will try to get it published. i may even do a screenplay version. my anonymity in the UK will allow me to risk embarassment where in the states things (aka people, or my fear of the judgement by same) sometimes held me back. there may not be much time left people. love each other and lead gentle productive lives. stroke a cat. feed a duck. call your mother. recycle. play the guitar. give an old man your seat on the bus. and smile dammit.

man do i have to wiss.

july 18, 2004

go see fahrenheit 9/11, i don't care who you are or where you are. if you're in the states just get that evil moron out of office before he destroys all life as we know it. thank you.

july 08, 2004
listening to misery is a butterfly by blonde redhead

today i am out of my mind with congestion and cold pills, so what could be more fitting than talking about connie francis and leonora carrington? why? these women have led incredible, often tragic lives and have made great contributions to the worlds of art & music. some may disagree with me but I DON'T CARE, IT'S MY PAGE so nyah.

1. Connie Francis


this may come as a suprise to some of you, but her voice literally makes me weep. it penetrates me like a laser, the tone is so strong and pure with that sad wavering quality... this girl is singing straight from the heart and there is no doubt about it. yeah lots of her hit songs are downright silly, but when you listen to "mama" and "where the boys are", you'll be choking back the tears if you have a heart and really listen if you know what i mean. here are two great links i found, one referring to her as a swingin' chick, and another which also does a fine job of detailing her life story. she's had to brave many tragedies and once you know her tale, the haunting quality of her voice becomes even more poignant.

2. Leonora Carrington


the intense, beautiful surrealist who was born to be a socialite and turned her back on all that to pursue her career in art. aside from forming an intense community with the likes of max ernst, andré breton, remedios varo, jean arp, pablo picasso, salvador dali, luis bunuel, octavio paz and yves tanguy among others, she also led an amazing and sometimes terrifying life. here's a couple images:


here's a short biography written by one of her sons, and a very cool interview. even if you don't like her work, she is (still) a most unique visionary, artist, writer, philosopher, dreamer... just reading about her world inspires me. i hope it will you, too.

i was gonna do a bit on john humphrys, but it's just *not* the right day for it. this entry took forever to write cos i'm all drugged up, i have a bandage (plaster) on my right index finger and my co-workers keep coming up to my desk and gossiping like a bunch of old hens. cluck cluck, go away! giant chickens invade my dreams yet again!

july 07, 2004
built too long by built to spill

this cold is lots of fun if you like snot and sounding like bea arthur. anyway, i updated the graphic on the flash page, and i think it's pretty neat-o-pete. the background image is an interior shot of antonio gaudi's sagrada familia church in barcelona, manipulated to look somewhat like a space station by yours truly. i've always been fascinated with his work, it's incredible. a man possesed. but not in a bad way like some presidents out there... i just want to feel better, wah. xoxo

july 06, 2004
listening to myself sneezing

this is how i spent sunday, or "the 4th of july" to some, basically it was sue's kinda birthday party and we had fun fun fun (ignore the typo on one page, i'll fix it later). i wish you could have been there robin :) i'll be thinking of you tomorrow for sure.

oh, that's jean-michel basquiat in the photo, blowing a horn outside the empire state building in nyc. back in the day we had many inspired conversations in the clubs and galleries down-and-east about who-knows-what and i certainly can't remember any of them... but it sure was awesome. new york used to be great. it died sometime in the early 1990s, not too long after he did. oh well.

july 03, 2004
listening to ...nada

whinge alert!

i apologize in advance, usually i'm not like this. i am very upset because i disturbed the blackbird's nest in our hedges out back when i put out some seed this morning & the juvenal flew off into the trees. his mother has been calling and calling for him (we named him stumpy cos his tailfeathers hadn't grown in yet) all day... i hope he comes back. and things just went downhill from there.

later i saw some truly awful things in town, like teenage boys pointing and laughing at a woman in a wheelchair, and half-naked girls stuffed into ill-fitting clothes (do we need to see your bra and belly flab? really? just because you can doesn't mean you should, this stuff wasn't even the right size!). Out of morbid curiousity and against my better judgement i went to ASDA and i can swear here and now i will *never* set foot in that shithole again. someone told me they had a decent organic range... well this person lives in london near canary wharf. 'nuff said you posh fuckhead. it was ugly, grim, horrifying, noisy, crowded (must you bring all 4 of your children under 11 with you?), MY version of hell. even the shuttle driver was mean to me! i know they are owned by "destroy small business" walmart anyway, so i should have known better and got what i deserved.

i've tried to give crawley the benefit of doubt but i'm over it. most of the people i encounter here are clueless, the english equivalent of land-locked middle americans who don't own a passport... i went to three supermarkets and couldn't find ONE bag or can of black beans. by the time it dawned on me to go to the asian market by the high street i just wanted to go home or blind. incidentally, you folks who buy those super-cheap clothes in the chain stores, i'm sure you realize how many sweat shops you are keeping in business when you do this. of course you do. phhht.

on the brighter side, we put together a neat corner desk for me so i can work on my g3 (legacy user alert) without further spinal and wrist injury.