gigglebaby, punk!

2003-12-29T14:02:00.000Z

yes, but i have a live journal account now, which is something. although what that something is i'm far from certain.

anyway, you can find "how can you expect to be taken seriously?" at http://www.livejournal.com/users/artgroupie.

i expect this shall go the way of all flesh, sooner or later.

2003-11-06T12:22:00.000Z

delivered enlightening presentation on aspects of chaucer to a room full of impressed people this morning.

i only mention it because i'd forgotten how thrilling it is to get a round of applause - at any time, from anyone, for anything. still a poor substitute for a hug, mind, but undeniably wonderful on its own terms.

2003-11-05T11:19:00.000Z

worst record covers ever, anyone?

2003-11-05T11:09:00.000Z

your gothic daddy is nick cave, and you're NOT
GOTH, DAMMIT!!!

who's your gothic daddy?
brought to you by Quizilla

2003-11-02T14:16:00.000Z

it’s with a keen interest and frankly revolting slobbering anticipation that i note the imminent arrival of miranda, the new christina ricci pic, on our shores this coming friday. that there website should tell all y’all all y’all need to know (except that i once wrote a very short story called “miranda’s wardrobe”, which addressed all the “burning” questions concerning mysterious stains on dresses...). but anyway, and but of course, when i say “imminent arrival”, and when i say “our shores”, i do in fact mean “sometime, somewhere in belfast, if i’m lucky”.

we’ve been starved enough of cultural nutrition of late, what with bright young things teasingly trailered, then not actually screened; and chicks on speed cancelling, presumably for fear of another firearm stash turning up in the menagerie, or of the menagerie falling down again, or maybe just having been shown a picture of the inside of the menagerie.

how was your halloween, by the way? i played a clawwws dj set in the family sitting room, put away a big bowl of pumpkin pie, let some fireworks sear their image upon my retina, and rounded off the night in fine couch-potato style by watching jane’s on jools.

good times.

2003-10-28T13:52:00.000Z

just found this cool short story by magnetic fields / future bible heroes / 6ths / gothic archies guy stephin merritt (i'm obsessed with him, you know).

2003-10-21T11:57:00.000Z

i was all set to be the first person ever to post a comment on in this world, but all ended unhappily when the evil machines forbade me. have a heart!!!

here, please someone else do it.

2003-10-20T11:50:00.000Z

i'm a-gonna see kill bill volume one today. will report back with my findings.

edit : one viewing of kill bill volume one later...

ok, it's shit.

ok, no. to be fair, it isn't.

devoid of heart and soul, yes. shit? no.

y'see, the problem with it being tarantino's loving homage to the "grindhouse movies of his youth" is that the grindhouse movies of tarantino's youth are right ballex.

it is, nevertheless, a superbly stylised, brilliantly made piece of art/pain/pornography - although patently there is more deliciously twisted beauty in the anime sequence halfway through than there is in every other scene in the movie put together.

perfectly watchable then, and already i have a strange and powerful longing to see volume zwei.

2003-10-16T11:23:00.000Z

yes, but today i shall mostly be reading the "whopping" wives and daughters by miss elizabeth gaskell, as recommended by anthony h wilson of "talking ballex, and being seriously irresponsible with other people's money, and factory records and granada television" fame.

great!!!

meanwhile...anyone remember this? worth a look for the highly original writing as well as the scarily huge pair of scissors (legs crossed now, gentlemen!)

i sense an irate email may be in the offing...

2003-10-15T10:04:00.000Z

i'm just bursting to say a few words about the altogether ridiculous and sublime future bible heroes ep, i'm lonely (and i love it), which is simply the best comfort food music i have heard in an age, and which has been blessed pop balm throughout my very weary week.

chronologically situated between albums number one and two - and possessing its own very distinctive flavour to boot - i'm lonely... may not exactly be fresh from the oven, but if you need some totally guilt-free cheering-up then i urge you with all my blood cells to seek it out. especially satisfying is the title song - in which the wavery baritone of stephin merritt extols the joys of swinging singledom over a feather-boa-flamboyant strobo-pop backing that even erasure would have dismissed as "too gay" - but i'm also over the moon with the hyperactive wee hammer-beats of "my blue hawaii"; totally enraptured with "cafe hong kong", a blood-spattered tale of love in war sung by now-full-time-chanteuse claudia gonson (who as ever manages to sound inutterably glamorous without a whiff of affectation); and positively beside myself with throbbing lust for "good thing i don't have any feelings", in which somebody with "amazing hair" drives a stake through stephin's po' heart and hammers-in the nails on the coffin of his soul. there's also a remix of "hopeless" from the first album, memories of love, but since the band make a rather nifty joke of this in the sleevenotes i reckon they can be excused, just about.

and those sleevenotes, by the by, also contain a recipe for sponge cake. yum.

*

i was looking at the pitchfork website for the first time this morning, and it's good. they're not too keen on future bible heroes, and thus may fuck off, but they provide an interesting "alternative" alternative to nme.com nonetheless.

2003-10-14T11:56:00.000Z

more time-wasting...

...it was kinda inevitable that some geek would come up with this one...

2003-10-14T10:12:00.000Z

you know those times when you happen to be incredibly busy with study-stuff, being showered with so much of it that it kind of crowds everything else out of your head, and every moment spent getting away from it all makes you feel incredibly worried and more than a bit guilty and ashamed as well, like you're seven years old and you've just lost sight of your mum in a huge supermarket...?

well, maybe y'don't, but then maybe - it's likely - y'happen to be a damn sight better at sorting and filing your daily affairs than i am. 'cos at the moment i just feel as though there are all these incredibly lissom things wriggling on the deck and i have to look sharp about pinning them down and nailing 'em, knowing all the while that they're all too likely to slip out of my grasp once i've grabbed 'em and boogie off every which way around the floor, taunting and sassing me...but hey! that's quite enough about my weekend, heh-heh...

i should point out that i really don't mind the obligation to sit at home in my dressing gown, brandy in hand, devouring one clawwwsik novel after another and working out my "angle" for tutorial discussion (interesting mix, the tutorial groups this term : "victorian writers" is the largest, with about twelve people, including mogwai fans - though sadly not "the" "mogwai fan", or "sigur ros fan", or whatever the legendary piss-taking postmodernist hallion is calling himself these daze..."augustan literature", meanwhile, is shaping up to be a group of just three, including me - i do all the talking and they make me look good, y'dig...and "chaucer" is a much more intimidating weekly session, with me struggling like mad to get a word in edgeways while a quota of butch and beefy men sit around a big shiny table and compete to assert their dominance over the text as 50 cent's "pimp" plays in the background...) anyway, what i take exception to is being forced into tackling the crucial essays already! when i'm quite sure i haven't written any for more than five months! and i'm such a rusty filly! but they count towards my degree! noooooo!

anyway, it's a lot of painstaking research (with little chance of all my pains being taken, i might add), a lot of meticulous planning, and a totally unnecessary amount of self-doubt. which is appalling, really, 'cos after all these years of education it should be blindingly obvious that i've got what it takes to pull through these confusing situations with flying colours (or "collars" - look, it's not as if either one of them makes any sense...) but we can all "do a beckham" from time to time, can't we?

i might have posted words of a similarly neurotic strain here before, i can't remember, but damned if i don't indulge myself again. the worse thing about it all is that i really can't bring myself to care about any of it to anything approaching the degree i've just suggested here, but a) complaints are my department, and b) so is melodrama, so there.

will i be ensconced outside botanic station in stained trousers and vodka-sick come christmas, readers? time, and the answer "no", will tell...

*

meanwhile, lorluvaduck! the lying oracle has only gone and gotten himself an "ethernet connection" in his wee chamber at cambridge, an't he? perhaps you know better than i do precisely what an "ethernet" is, 'cos to me it sounds like some kind of silkily-spun web suspended across the stratosphere for the purpose of preserving rare cocteau twins songs that were much too aery and ethereal to be recorded and just floated skyward instead, until the wonders of modern technology... etc. etc.

i don't believe it is all that, actually, but if it means he can blog more often then i'm all for it.

also in the meanwhile, in this world has begun his freshman year in edinburgh (home of detective inspector john rebus, people!), and so best regards to him for the weeks and months to come.

2003-10-07T10:47:00.000Z

know your past life!

Analysis:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How you may feel is unknown, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.
You were born in the territory of modern Ukraine in approximately 1025.
Your profession was philosopher, teacher, writer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a profile of your past life:
You were timid, constrained and quiet. You never showed your creative talents. People considered you strange.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lesson learned in your past life and carried to your present life:
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now do you remember?

2003-10-06T10:55:00.000Z

reviews of fanzine the fourth and fanzine the fifth. at last - somebody who appreciates the new layout!!! in yer face, one and all.

2003-10-06T09:12:00.000Z

am sitting here racking my grey matter in an attempt to think up something concisely insightful 'bout the relationship between self and society in dickens's hard times, something which i shall then be obliged to post on the "victorian writers" module's forum (!) on queen's online. this is a module which, although concentrating on some truly splendid set texts (dickens, collins, the time machine) does possess rather an air of the evil genius for stolid persecution unique to the key skills examiner - high i.t. content, plenty of banging on about "practical skills", and a frighteningly abstract outlining of an imminent and important portfolio project which has all to do with accumulation and development of ideas and "self-assessment" (in other words, a feast of almost-busy-work and egregious nonce-sense about "how my ideas have changed and why", and "what problems arose / did not arise", seem to be called for in unpleasantly substantial doses. d'oh).

it's not even as if i'll be popping dahn presently to the music seller's to lively up myself with the brand new belle and sebastian collection (which i believe hits the high street this very morrow) - i mean, i would be, if not for having actually had my first tasters for it from the radio at the weekend, and promising myself that i'll be doing nothing of the kind. indeed, i shall most likely be lucky even to look upon its cover in a record emporium without bursting into floods of tears, for from the title (dear catastrophe waitress) to the self-same cover (dullish photograph and the sickly sepia-tinged yello of fold your hands child... again!) to the (gulp!) songs within, this bears all the tragic hallmarks of a band whose well of creativity has run well and truly dry (and you never miss the sun till it leaves the sky...), and whose desperation to rustle up something new and interesting and comeback in the wake of band members leaving and mild critic / fan backlash and a long-dormant release schedule has resulted in...well, something not merely troublingly mediocre, as lately i'd expected. it really does sound - on the basis of "step into my office, baybee" and "i'm a cuckoo" - like the all-in-a-day's-work of schmindie journeymen with the recently-acquired-rough-trade-strokes-funded-lolly to pay for a hatefully glossy production job from the bastard son of mr sheen; music that sounds as though it's been written and played by plaid-shirted session musos just glad to get out of mick hucknall's hair for some drinking money; and stu murdoch pretty much forsaking the lispy boy-child vocals that made him one of the most distinctive singers in pop today for a bizarre and vaguely embarrassing shot at...well, christ knows, frankly, but it sounds not unlike ewan mcgregor singing in the shower.

ok, so i have only heard just the two songs, but i think i'm getting the big picture here nice and clearly all the same - this isn't "nobody writes them like they used to, so it might as well be me", this is indie-fucking-fame-academy. who knows, i might just try for that new isobel solo album instead - what can i tell you? it can hardly be worse, and at least she had the good sense to abandon captain murdoch's ailing ship before it ran aground. i still quite fancy her in a non-committal sort of way as well, so perhaps she truly is the clare grogan of her age, and plans to pack in the whole music biz lark fairly soon to move into the exciting world of bbc sci-fi sitcoms, and flirting with john peel on the wireless, and the like.

right. seethingly resentful disappointment momentarily dispelled, then. now go away - i've got work to do...

(edit : hey! i've just received an email from doktor litvack, and apparently there is "no need" to post on the forum for tamarra, due to technical difficulties. y'know, that is sooo like here)

2003-09-30T12:45:00.000Z

this has been a bitch of a "second-day-of-first-day-back". just the little things, y'know? they do add up.

and now i must go to my first lecture in augustan literature, which only last week i realised is not about literature produced during the reign of the emperor augustus. to be honest, i have nat a fucking clue what it is.

2003-09-29T09:32:00.000Z

back @ the university prapper after four months intermission. four months breather from living like a normal person with some vague sense of purpose 'bout their day-to-day existence. i daresay it might be pleasant to me to have that back.

general purpose meeting anglaise this morning, which began in classic anglaise-lecture fashion - the head of anglaise and convener of studies stand mulling over the minutiae of the gaa final, or sthg, while i sit at the back thinking of how i've hurried myself into a tizzy to get to this bizness on time and now it's ten minutes past starting time and it still hasn't started and why don't you just start the fucking lecture already?!? then it actually starts and there are a lot of bad jokes and useless information, and i look around to see if there are any pleasing young wimmin in my vicinity and am not too surprised not to see any, and then there are some worse jokes and then - finally - it's time for me to find out that yes, with crushing inevitability, i have to endure another year at uni with a nine o'clock start to contend with. a nine o'clock start on tuesdays for a bone-crunching, mind-to-jelly two hour seminar. that's just wonderful. and soon i must go and discover the times for my tutorials. one or more of which could also be at the most unholy hour of the morning. and i will shed big splashy tears all about me if this is indeed the case.

*

meanwhile, days ago, i was alerted to the existence of this here blogmajazz. anonymous ex-methody character writes, with links to this very page in the archives. i am only too happy to return "the favour"...

2003-09-22T09:55:00.000Z

oooohhh, me head, readers! i've just had my registration morning at queens - hence groaning. in truth, it could well have been worse, but it was really just "the usual" - much hoking about in manilla folders for documents and artefacts; comedy mugshot for student card; there always seeming to be some sort of language breakdown with half the people i'm dealing with (generally because they are of culchie extraction or of otherwise foreign tongue)...

still, it's done and over with, and now i must away to backbeat to get the felix da hauskat bugged out mix el-pee.

and if i can find just where in the fawk the times of my opening lectures are posted on the way, that'll be a bonus.

2003-09-19T14:54:00.000Z

your soul is worth £20288. for your peace of mind, 48% of people have a purer soul than you.

wewantyoursoul

2003-09-18T15:42:00.000Z

yes. but. y'all! last nite i finally watched my wildly fantastic cave und bad seeds gott ist in der haus dvd, which a few weeks ago i won in an atl stu bailey compo. filmed in all its noir-chrome splendour @ le transbordeur, lyon, on the 8th nite of june 2001 (doubtless i was revising for as levels and couldn't make it), the footage of the concert raises many valid issues for discussion, not least the vexed question of precisely when nick cave realised that he has a great, iconic silhouette.

so we get the silhouette. we get cave elbowing invisible assailants. we get an impeccably dishevelled warren ellis - an authentic celestial star - playing his violin like a hundred-dollar hooker; “saint huck” (“the first song the bad seeds ever wrote”) going down like joy division burning bodybags on the banks of the mississippi river; and the really quiet bit in “god is in the house” descending upon an audience so reverently hushed that you can practically hear the sweat glistening on auld nick’s kisser. beezer gear from beginning to end.

the studio “documentary” on the making of no more shall we part is, meanwhile, largely point-free filler - basically the seeds recording stuff. and then listening to it. with the barest minimum of larking about and fatherly indulgence of cave’s young children. having said that, there are some pretty exceptional highlights - a surly blixa bargeld in foppish-arnie mode (“i kennt herre thee gitarre in my hett-fonns!”); cave-o having his patience sorely tried by the sisters mcgarrigle (mcgarrigles - singing - : “sweetheart come...” cave (deeply pissed off) : “the pronunciation’s getting a little strange. it’s beginning to sound like ‘sweet hot come’. we’re going to have to stick a parental advisory sticker on it”; and cave, bargeld and savage singing : “oh my lord, wrap your tender arms around me...” savage - grinning - : “eat it”.

lastly, the three promo videos are well worth a looksie - two cats locked in a boxing (scratching?) bout; jarvis, jason donovan and noah taylor doing their respective little dances; and - oh baby - the gorgeous empty spaces of the “love letter” vid, perfectly complementing what is perhaps the best evidence that cave’s loveliness is every bit as precious as his incandescent rage.

the cure’s trilogy shows - when i finally get that dvd - had better be something special to measure up to this.

2003-09-08T13:49:00.000Z

You Are Ed Wood From "Ed Wood."SIZE="-2" FACE="Verdana">

You definitely have your name in history, although probably not for the reason you believe. Yet you are very accepting, non-judgemental, and optimistic almost to a fault. You also have a thing for angora sweaters. How could anyone not like you?

Take The Johnny Depp Quiz!

2003-09-08T13:45:00.000Z

bout yez, tigerz. 's been a while. there have been reasons - i've been busy mostly with my zinemajig, which is almost on top of y'all now, and i can't update this from my local library 'cos they've got a frustrate-me-purple mcb style blocking system to protect you from my wanton filth.

not that i've got a big lot to say right about now, save that friday to sunday inclusive constituted by far the worst run of days i've had in such a long while, so if you were one of those halfway expecting me to come and get vaguely flaming with you on saturday night, i do so apologise. just a case of 90% of things going, as they say, "titz-up", 90% of the time.

but anyway, a while ago i mentioned my new idol paul morley's beezer words and music book, which i have now gobbled up twice. i'm about to copy for you now perhaps my favourite passage from it, which crops up in his discussion of lou reed's metal machine music. enjoy, and if you're thinking of grabbing a fanzine it's probably worth bearing in mind that morley's influence is all over certain parts of it. i mean stylistically, and in the ways he looks at and gets inside of music. not in a slightly "blue" way, like this. ahem.

"so, i have listened to metal machine music. you can believe that coming from me as a man much more than you could if i was a woman. there's nothing macho about that statement. it's just that no woman is really going to waste any time listening to more than three seconds of metal machine music. they are certainly not going to analyse it. they are not going to be at all interested in whether the four parts actually have their own distinct character, the first part, the vinyl side a, possibly more minimal than the other parts, truly a build-up of tension, the second part a shit more aggressive, the third part a crap more funky with a moronic veneer of musicality, the fourth part a sort of summary of all that has gone before. it's like there are no female trainspotters. at the other end of the spectrum, there was never a female jack the ripper.
metal machine music could only have been made by someone with a penis, and it can only be listened to all the way through by someone with a penis - it might be that the noise of the record is an attempt at some sort of alchemy to ensure that the penis never loses its ability to get hard. reed conjured up the sound of blood rushing to the nerve ends of the penis, which is why the record has had enduring fascination for a certain type of male rock-and-roll fan, the type who has looked to rock for certain kinds of sexual comfort and stimulation. it is, perhaps, the sound of semen spurting against the ends of the universe, it is the sound of the colossal relief in a man's mind when his penis gets hard, and he can reach orgasm one more time. metal machine music is reed's celebration of the erection, and those of us who journey into it and savour its contours, marvel at its power and stamina, its length, its perfect shape, are really only admiring a penis - our own at best, reed's at worst. what an achievement - reed has managed to plant an erect penis at the very centre of popular music. then again, maybe it is a soft penis, ready to piss all over anybody who gets too close".

appropriately enough, i typed all of the above to the accompaniment of drillzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

2003-08-25T15:37:00.000Z

misery.

i see that i've been going rahnd with talcum powder on the front of my trousers.

you see my difficulty.

2003-08-25T13:38:00.000Z

"they" say a lot of things, don't "they"?

"they" say iraq was / is full of massively destructive weapons.

"they" say "my mate fancies you".

"they" also say that interpol sound like new order before new order were new order;but i say they're new york as noir york, unlike many of their contemporaries they use guitars to touch souls rather than to jerk themselves off, and they (oh, if we really must) "rock". and i'm off to see 'em the neet. i'm especially curious as to what happens to the bass-player's hair when he's in full flow. we shall see.

*

went to dublin last week. if you haven't been for a while, it's an authentically "bustling" cosmopolitan city which embarrasses belfarce big-time in so many respects - i, for one, am writing to my mp to see if we can't get some spides bussed down there asap, as they don't seem to have anything like enough of the blighters...none, to be precise. what they do have is a clawwws monument - a mighty silver needle piercing the eye of the sky, a beacon of burning light when darkness falls upon the city, and a head-spinningly enormous phallic monstosity when you're right up close to it. like i said...clawwws...

and on the journey there and back i read this, the brand new tome from the best writer about music ever to draw breath. it's the sheer bloody fearlessness of the man's writing that i so admire - doubtless born of his devout, perhaps even mental, love of the music - and his eloquently expressed disdain for all that is stuffy and canonical about contemporary music-press scribbling.

he also has the gall to exploit his joy division / new order connections by having his picture taken by joy division / new order photographer anton corbijn whilst looking like a member of joy division / new order. but then "without the listener there is no music", so i suppose he's quite entitled to.

2003-08-18T12:45:00.000Z

yes, i like it when people tell it like it is, but i like it even more when brian eno tells it like it is.

2003-08-18T11:49:00.000Z

the enigma that answers to tim burton - auteur, fey wheyface, shark-toothed moneymaker, prominent architect of the iconography of my teenage years - is presently to return to the fray with a new film directed by him.

tim burton - whom, by opting to helm the doomed-to-be-deeply-dissable planet of the apes facelift, let me down ungently (as, in the end, all heroes are said to) and furthermore would have it known that his new cinematic quelquechose is to be known as big fish.

this does not fill me with great confidence.

and furthermore would have it known that big fish tells the tale of a teller of tall tales (sentient toby jug albert finney) whose tall tales tell of his getabouts as a young mawn, back when he was ewan mcgregor (in itself something of a tall tale, surely...)

mmm...confidence not on the increase, i’m afraid.

and furthermore would have it known that the film is a comedy (if it’s funny) and a drama (if it isn’t).

uh-huh.

oh yes, and the one publicity shot to be released so far features a goldilocked member of the young mott the hoople (on closer inspection, mcgregor) and a red car in a tree.

like i say.

still, it could well be better than...well, it could well be better than.

*

the other day i saw declan, my old tv news reporter chum (from the old lower-6th “work experience”, you understand - really just loafing around an office reading catcher in the rye, punctuated by the odd excursion to film some murdering ratbag for the telly) and - anyway - he actually remembered me! i had half a mind to ask him whether he had any wee jobs going for the likes of yours truly, but i didn’t and he probably didn’t.

my zine, in any event, is sprouting all sorts of improbable limbs at the moment, and generally is consuming far more of my time than the mind knows is healthy.

so you see i’m not lazy. i’m not!!!

incidentally, should anyone desire a copy of issue the fourth, i’ve just had some more photocopied up (and christ! the mindgames that go on in these copying places...), so shower me with coinage and then with your love.

and then with complimentary tickets to blondie, bill bailey and 50 cent (note : not all on the one bill).

ta.

2003-08-12T14:51:00.000Z

yes, but michael moore was in belfast yesterday, at the west belfast festival. i had toyed with the notion of buying a ticket to see him, but like all notions i toy with - especially those entailing the shelling out of dollar - i got bored with it after a spell and soon forgot all about it. however, judging by what i witnessed of the event on the evening’s local newscast, i’m jolly glad i didn’t go.

i remember when i went to see bowling for columbine - a laudably bold and important piece of agitprop, obviously - and feeling mildly illed that the cinema was packed to the rafters with hep-to-a-fault 20-30 year olds (mostly of the male sex, natch) who were present with the palpable intention of laughing their yankeefat-free butts off at the dumb rednecks with guns and feeling lotsa love for their cool liberal take on the world. exactly the sorts, one suspects, who would have constituted the mainstay of moore’s bootlicking congregation at a festival which - and one doesn’t exactly have to be paisley to notice - keeps alive a faint flame in a sickly-scented candle of cultural sectarianism.

apt, therefore, that moore should appear under said festival’s auspices, since his laughably unsophisticated grasp on norn iron politics has resulted in embarrassing globally-published passages which make even shit feinn appear temperate moderates.

whether he disgraced himself yesterday with comments of this kind i simply haven’t yet discovered, but i did see him trot out his trusty old “fictitious war, fictitious president” routine - ok, a heroic speech on oscar nite, i grant you, but here it’s just plain sad to see the man preaching for the squealing pleasure of the converted in a manner vaguely reminiscent of radiohead playing “creep” live. the key difference being that radiohead hate playing “creep” live.

fly your flapping loud mouth back home to the states, michael, for there is yet much noble work to be done.

oh yeah, and in spooks tom blew a big hole in harry with a double-barrelled shotgun and swam out to sea.

which was unexpected.

2003-08-04T14:51:00.000Z

so, tuesday - am i to understand this correctly? - was national foreplay day. and, if you knew that, then you’ll also have known that thursday was national orgasm day. meaning (and i trust that i’m not being too oblique when i say this) that wednesday must have signified something with which i’m sure an awful lot of women out there are all too familiar, and that is where i shall draw a veil over this sordid intro and pretend that none of it ever happened, ‘cos it’s no secret that i’m just not cut out for cracking jokes.

still, i did devote no small amount of thought on wednesday to the puzzle of how exactly those national such-and-suches come about, and if it’s in fact possible to initiate one of one’s own and have it recognised by everybody - what do you need for that, exactly? i trust somebody knows the answer; but, if they do, it would appear as though they’re not bloody telling.

so on wednesday i looked for a sign, for inspiration, for someone or something to detach itself from its surroundings and say “i am a flaming pie...and henceforth you shall be known as the beatles, with an ‘a’...” or at least “oi! there should be a day in my honour, mayte! sort it ahhhhtttt!”

but, alas, nothing truly remarkable transpired all of the rainy day. i met two gentlemen from madrid in the library, was assailed by a small fluffy dog, and listened to a cursory documentary on the cure on bbc 6music. which is when it struck me, of course, that national robert smith day would be a simply marvellous idea. especially in july, and in belfast. we could all grow our hair out and get great big backcomb jobs done (adam’s halfway there already...), raid the contents of our mum’s make-up bags and march up great victoria street; with a colossal stack of speakers assembled outside backbeat blaring out the greatest hits set at full volume as we walked by.

dammit, it should be an exclusively belfast thing! bob could even show up in the flesh and make a poignant return to the interior of backbeat itself, which let’s not forget is the former site of the second incarnation of good vibrations records, visited by bob and the gang circa 1979 and from whence he is remembered by my then-shelf-stacking dad as “a very shy man who drank a lot of coffee” (which is almost on a par with his gem of a description of siouxsie sioux as “a wee small woman with black hair”).

anyway, given that the cure seem to be pretty much everywhere at the moment (recently released trilogy dvd; b-sides box set scheduled for october; two appearances on dom joly’s student sniggerthon; palpable influence on a host of wretched overrated bawnds, from linkin park to the rapture; um...this blog) i doubt whether my proposed national fat bob day will be long in coming.

meanwhile, another day not long in coming is the day i needs must go back to uni (only about another...ooohhh, month-and-a-half?) and i’m currently endeavouring to save myself a heap of frustrating ‘orrible troublesome bother that might arise from rushing things next term if i don’t get up a head of steam with some of these set texts reet nae. as reading lists are - quelle surprise - again not available to anybody in advance, a little premonitory know-how clearly is called for here.

i really do wish that queens university would show their students some godalming respect from time to time, but i understand the feeling at their end is that if they give the studes the fastest known internet access in the western world (which, inarguably, they do) then none of ‘em have the right to complain ‘bout shit, basically.

incidentally, it has come to my attention that the song “dirty sticky floors” on the latest dave gahan solo opus is actually about the mandela hall in queens s.u. just in case you’d wondered.

2003-07-25T12:34:00.000Z

allow me to share this with you...

2003-07-25T12:07:00.000Z

hold the front page!!! further to the dangerous levels of excitement expressed by me in an earlier post, i can now "exclusively" reveal that belle and sebastian-affiliated scots-poppers camera obscura will be taking to the stage in auntie annies sweatbox on september the 16th, weather and knees allowing.

that's camera obscura, y'all!!! listen to lee and nancy, wash your hair in honeydew and get on down there. oh, and ask for a chelsea wopper...

2003-07-23T11:31:00.000Z

here, did somebody say “resignation”? jack straw, geoff hoon, david blunkett, alastair campbell, kim howells and - of course - tony “linda” blair. that’s my wishlist. they should all tender their respective resignations because they’re crap, is all.

i scarcely need comment on the frightful imbroglio au courant (it’s a sideshow all the way, is it not?), but i do feel moved to dwell on a document that popped out of a slippery bbc orifice last week and momentarily gave a tizzy nation a small ice cream headache. yes yes y‘all, remember the advent of the bbc annual report? wherein “auntie” lays down with a grin all the things she’s been wasting your licence fee on during the last twelve months for fractious mps to prod with sticks and make ill-judged remarks about disgraced american accountancy firms? aye, the very same; and indeed the same old incentive to don one’s “disgusted, middle england” hat and write a nice long letter to that dotty old mr dykehead at castle wrongskull.

so chests have been puffed out at the world this year on account of the bbc providing ferociously committed round-the-clock programming for under-fives who have access to digital, or sthg!?! - but hey! enough about bbc news 24 (ker-ching! etc). so a practically intestinal dedication to entertain and entrance via the broadcast of live music continues, most notably in the form of televised glastonbury (like watching somebody boking up the same rancid curry for many hours on end, featuring accidental good bits) and the proms going out live on a plethora of stations - and here’s the groovy thing about this - simultaneously?!?

still, “the corporation” - the only, and frankly fucking sinister, alternative phrase for journos talking ’bout the bbc - certainly warrants some credit for recognising spooks as a flagship show of some classness, even though the last couple of episodes have been slightly milky mugs in a series of strong espresso (and dammit, there’s no better way to start the day than a good coffee metaphor...) you see, i love spooks like my own creation (and gawd, i wish it were) but the episode last week on bbc 3 / this week on bbc 1 hacked me off ’cos it relied on sad caricatures of blingin’ brixton yoof and suave, ginola-like frenchmen; and the one this week on bbc 3 / next week on bbc 1 was chock-a-block with gauche symbolism and vague apocalypse now-ness, although an exciting climax was built up to when tom told harry to “fuck off”, no doubt furrowing the brow of the broadcasting standards watchdog in so doing (“look, guys, you did death-by-deep-fat-fryer in the last series. now you’ve done ’fuck off’. when will you irresponsible grown-ups learn?”)

i’m also all thrilled and stuff that next week on bbc 3 / the following...ah, forget it - jenny agutter will be taking time out from presenting the chelsea flower show and having her hair done to make an appearance of specialhood. sure, the gal who plays ruth has filled the nubile-older-lady slot vacated by jenny after series one, and for me filled it well, but has she had her portrait done by david hockney and been name-checked in a song by tompaulin? i think the answer is “no“, readers. no, she has not.

and meanwhile, what of matthew macfadyen’s ever-unsmiling tom? his chain of messy involvements thus far has gone from bad (a snooze-inducingly “decent” single mum) to worse (jealous-possessive bitch nurse from fiery hell) to miss republican america 2003, something for which i suppose we must forgive him (who among us would, after all, turn down the chance to sleep with an fbi field operative?), but the lady involved he must now discard else relations with harry deteriorate into “your ma” territory.

of course, it could be that you don’t watch the show and have not the slightest idea of what i’m talking about, but if you’re not already a convert for chrissakes give it a go; you’ve got nothing to lose (apart from perhaps a few minutes each day, contemplating a cast member of your choosing - if my drift, dears, you catch...) i should also warn you that your slumbers may well be disturbed by dante-esque visions of “corporation” hq and a manically laughing greg dyke, informing you that he is now in possession of your soul.

but it’ll pass.

2003-07-16T12:52:00.000Z

ok y’all - here’s the nightmare, put plainly and simply for your own schadenfreude. my bedroom (in which - as is my right as a teenage boy - i am accustomed to while away many a solitary hour) is located in the back part of my house, and from the window i can survey at leisure not only “our” back garden but also “his”; him being a slapheaded irritant called, annoyingly, peter. and no, dear reader, these are not paranoid schizophrenic delusions i is having here - reality is not so much biting as tearing off large chunks of flesh and casting armfuls of salt into the gaping wounds.

so anyway, this “peter” is the proud owner of two bastard, bastard hounds. the first “bastard” is for the fact that i would seldom give the time of day to any of the canine species - i prefer cats, and will probably end up living with one (i mean an actual cat; that wasn’t a sexist gag, ho-ho) the second “bastard” refers to the fact that when their master goes “aht” to work, they are left tethered in the garden to bark and whine and howl and bark some more until my eyes have rolled upwards in my head and brains are streaming in jets out my ears. and they can be heard everywhere in the house - admittedly but faintly in some rooms, but in my room more potently than anywhere.

what should i do? what i want to do is lay my hands on a fucking rocket launcher and leave a smoking crater where the beasts once stood, but sadly i’m given to understand that such a course of action is not within my rights. it should be.

returning to the feline thing, my goodly next-door neighbour (not him out back, of course) has three of ‘em - one black, which i stumble upon (not literally - heh-heh) a lot; one ginger, which i see de temps en temps; and one other which i’ve never seen at all, but which apparently is out there, doing its thing. it therefore strikes me as rather odd that a troupe of mice have recently set up a home for themselves somewhere in my garden. not so strangely, they keep turning up dead - but hey! that’s all by the by and par for the course. all i want to see is two dead dawgs.

and i’ll pay you half upfront...

*

while i'm wallowing in such unpleasantness, i might as well mention the madness that seized me last nite. at around thirty minutes past twelve, my mum walked into my bedroom and asked me if i had heard the phone ringing. then left.

the night was still, quiet and bakingly hot. i knew i was going to have trouble sleeping anyway, but - and this may seem absurd if you're reading this on a bright and sunny day - the question put to me had filled me with fear and anxiety. what if somebody had phoned? what awful news could they have to impart with such urgency at this time of night? my mind raced with possibilities.

then, ten minutes later, i heard a phone ringing in the room below me. but it stopped before i could possibly be certain of its reality.

i do hope everyone is ok today...

2003-07-10T13:14:00.000Z

the pitch : carry on up the canon. a postmodern resurrection of the carry on series chronicling hilariously bawdy goings-on in the anglican church.

starring sir elton john as canon jeffrey john; robin williams as archbishop of canterbury rowan williams; barbara windsor as "queenie"; and graham norton as the kinky canon ball.

also featuring the lord god almighty as vincent gallo.

the harry potter spoof was better, y'say? *-off!!!

2003-07-09T12:18:00.000Z

this 'ere is awful. god help you if you reach the end of it.

2003-07-07T12:52:00.000Z

2003-07-07T12:48:00.000Z

do you know, i'm giving serious thought to changing the name of this page. meaning absolutely no offence whatsoever to the person who, as i recall, suggested at least half of it, i weary of being associated with words and phrases that don't ostensibly mean anything, and what's more attract stares from strangers that effect the ever-so-hard-to-do amused / bemused interface rather nicely. my only concern is that, having been limping along in various states of dishevelment (sic?) for more than a year and a half, "gigglebaby, punk!" is (for me at least) something of a comforting institution. to paraphrase sam rohdie (every day of the week) "this is a blog about a blog". changing the name would somehow change all that. i've been thinking : "it's time the tale were told"; which would, i imagine, at least attract some feverish hits from smiths fans (and might also have the added bonus of halfway-fooling the reader into thinking that i have a tale worth telling) but the essence of gigglebaby (whatever that may be) would be lost. wouldn't it?

well i don't know, you tell me!!!

anyway, last nite one consolidated a prevailing mood of dourness by checking out love and death in hull, channel 4's entertaining little docu on philip larkin, and felt the sting of an old wound as one did so (the fact that, aside from a brief flirtation at gcse, the man's work was tellingly absent from my own english classes at methodick college has long been a quiet source of grief to me). the bass player in a new order tribute band once said to me : "joy division? kless when you're a teenager - but you get over it", and would probably have felt the same about phil larkin. well, dearies, despite not yet knowing the bittersweet tang of twentysomethingness myself, i beg to disagree on both counts - although not experiencing either fully as a teenager rather deprives you of the best blackhearted british misery that life will ever proffer for your enjoyment. and when i say "larkin", and when i say "fully", i mean being taught the stuff, in school, which is where it must really hit home. ye olde lecherye of chaucer, while good in its own way, was hardly adequate recompense. in short, i wuz robbed (and you can bury me in hull and put that on my tombstone, too).

as to love and death..., its only failure to my way of thinking was not analysing the mawn's lovelife in sufficient depth. despite the chats with the long-suffering girlfriends, i remained stone-baffled as to how and why people got sucked into long-lasting relationships with the cantankerous old cahnt. well, "there's hope for all of us", as i believe jesus nearly said.

oh, and what a stange juxtaposition on newsnite review on friday, when a poring-over of the larkin doc plus upcoming biographical drama was followed by a brief retrospective on the life and deeds of barry white! naturally, i had to drag out some of my own larkin collection and imagine big barry deep-throating them over swooning disco strings, but it was only amusing for a little while.

2003-06-30T11:43:00.000Z

what does your birthday say about you?

full of charm (well! i do my best)
cheerful (yes. yes, i have felt cheerful)
gifted (have we met before?)
without egoism (that's "egotism", doughbrains...)
likes to draw attention (...to your crass stupidity)
loves life (after midday, yeah)
motion (excuse me?!?)
unrest and even complications is both dependent and independent (this really is quite ballex, no?)
good taste (have you tried my thighs?)
artistic (well done)
passionate (and again)
emotional (well, that's better than "motion", anyhow)
good company (business is booming)
does not forgive (no, i forgive you, really i do)

2003-06-30T10:56:00.000Z

ahoy there jesus freaks and candy asses. don't you ever feel as though it is time for a legend to be born? well, incipient legend or no, the son of shrimp finally has his first prapper full-length cd - the mighty elephant head - on the brink of delivery.

i recently had the pleasure - nay, privilege - of hearing the mix test, and anyone who can actually be fagged to purchase interesting local demos should be delighted to hear it. fresh from a critical mauling in the absurdly overrated au magazine, the shrimp has hit back at his detractors with a treasure trove of bridge-eschewing lo-fi classics, including the moving "end"; which perfectly recreates the feeling of being a small child swaddled in a blanket in the back of your parents' car, returning home all tuckered out from a happy day at the zoo. contact him - won't you? - and tell him you want his babies. or, failing that, his album.

rumours that he is soon to record a version of abba's "sos" with the words "son of shrimp" inserted in the chorus are exactly those - rumours. oh yes.

meanwhile, i watch glastonbury in my living room (it's less boring than the b*st*rd tennis); hurl senseless abuse at one-note dullard david gray, without question the henman of the music world; renew my love / hate relationship with colin murray (look, it's good that norn iron is being represented through the rest of the united kingdom by people other than two-bit politicians and paramilitary spides, ok?!?); and feel like all this couch-potato time is maybe even worth it for rem (save the awful, extended "everybody hurts"), interpol (black suits? summer's afternoon? take a bath), macy gray (who did the excellent "caligula" - if caligula had ever met her he'd have hid in the wardrobe), the free assowwwshayashon!!!, beth orton, royksopp, jimmy cliff, moloko and perhaps one or two others.

get well soon peelie (sob, bawl, snivel).

2003-06-25T13:06:00.000Z

it’s awfully weird how rotten i feel about having so little of interest or import to post here during these days of, y’know, holly. so what’s new, i hear you jibe. after all, i’ve only ever maintained this thing firstly because it amuses me to have an evolving page of opinionated say-so and vaguely psychosexual gibberings for all to view on the worldwide web, and secondly because i’ve never been bored by reading blogs and journals of others, even those of those i don’t know. confusing and disturbing sometimes, yes; but boring ? - never. and oh yeah, some people do seem to make a habit of reading this, which frankly is all the validation one could ask for.

having said all that, i haven’t the remotest intention of updating this daily with, y'know : “mostly relaxed”, “mostly dealt with my correspondence”, or “mostly spilled an alcoholic beverage all down myself and took flak accordingly”.

so now that that’s been made clear, i only hope whoever’s reading this will come back often enough to have a looksie at the news and tidings i do stick up here, however often or otherwise that may be.

there, then. so am i pathetic, as i am happy.

2003-06-23T10:48:00.000Z

You are Donna Hayward.

Laura was your best friend, and her death broke
your heart and drove you straight into the arms
of Laura's boyfriend, James Hurley. Laura
wouldn't mind, right? She would have wanted it
that way, right? You sure hope so, but just in
case, you and James are going to help the
sheriff solve the case and put Laura's tortured
soul to rest.

Which Twin Peaks Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

best tv series. ever.

2003-06-23T10:42:00.000Z

oh that's just peachy, that is. i had thought that the days of being denied access to a view of my own blog were gone. so i'm typing this, but i'm not altogether sure that you're reading it. or something.

anyway.

film - “85”. the study of the ancient peoples - “60”. trifling footnotes in a glittering academic career? discuss.

please bear in mind that the latter was marked within the department that clearly still thinks “we” are at “war”, and has rationed marks accordingly. i’ve actually given some thought to dropping in @ the classics department, methody, and driving home to dempsie and crowe a warning of some value to pupils in their charge - steer wide and clear of ancient history here at queens; ’cos while teaching you about the past they will also do all they can to teach you that you are a fumble-brained ignoramus, scarcely capable of comprehending a spartan’s elbow within such a regal and high-minded field of study, and ultimately supremely fortunate to be awarded whatever credit you get. one can only conclude that the more backs are up against the wall (as they very definitely are when the powers that be have decided to downsize your classical asses) the more defiantly elitist the mentality inevitably becomes. i am unutterably grateful to be free to devote my energies to e. lit come the autumn, and that is all i have to say on the matter.

come the autumn, of course, come “my” next issue and the little musical gift to come with it. sadly, in the course of my dealings with the mcps it has become quite apparent that they are in league with satan, and have attempted to bleed me dry for a license to burn the only featured track with a copyright they administer (it’s more expensive for “low-level productions”, y’see). thankfully, the band in question are forking out the cash to cover me on this, which has induced in me horrendous burning frissons of guilt - even though in theory most of the money finds it’s way back to the band’s bank accounts though a series of strange, strange processes i do not pretend to understand. i sincerely hope that this will prove to be the low-point of the whole experience. certainly obtaining the rest of the tracks should be gratifyingly simple in comparison i.e. “will you send me something?” - “yes”. or, more usually, “can i use this?” - “yes”. happy days.

oh, and do send me your suggestions for the cd cover - it’s got to be something special to make up for the fact that the packaging will be super-cheap. precisely as cheap as one might feel following a disrespected one-night stand at a bus stop in lurgan, in fact.

and no, that would not be a good image for the cover.

2003-06-16T10:48:00.000Z

don’t look now y’all, but pete “the man” is settling into cloudy junery with the aid of some half-cooked “concepts” for getting dahn some fiction already - something he hasn’t been moved to play at for ever so long a time. something has been written (what it is i don’t quite know, though knowing that it’s crummy - mostly it involves musings on lipstick, thunderstorms, and agoraphobia; but, trust me, it’s a dead loss).

i lack not for inspiration, though - quite simply, summer’s the perfect time for meditating on all the almost-grasped epiphanies and visions of past and future that creep up on you on sleepless nights during spells of work / exams; all of those ones mr sandman steals but which come back atcha eventually. mmm, i am whimsical, you’ve guessed! but seriously tho, i have no desire to be opting for that 3rd year creative writing module (with - swoon! - glenn patterson) and discover that i can’t do “shorties” worth a cuss - and with nary a notional childhood in bangkok as a safety net, ho-ho-ho...

but anyway. a motion picture pearl for y’all - dark water, direct from the cold terror factory of hideo nakata (he of ring repute), and definitely more than “just” a ghost story. flaming lips fans may be interested to learn that the put-upon female in this film is called yoshimi, and she is very astutely played by an actress who - like “nicole” (tm) in the others - conveys a powerful sense of a character whose brittleness and instability leave her deeply susceptible to disturbance at the best of times. thus the question is not so much “is this woman in for a butchering?” as “is this woman going to go completely nuts, butchering or otherwise?” - an infinitely more intriguing state of play, i’d suggest.

music wise, if y’all haven’t frittered away your “allowances” on hail to the thief and are eager to hear some real “cutting edge” sounds (with tunes, which is better than without) you could do a whole lot worse than grab yourselves a copy of mogwai’s a1 kick-balls happy songs for happy people. pet sounds for the ambient noise generation - if only you pay no heed to the frequently atrocious song-titles (“boring machines disturbs sleep”? go get yo’selves some guided by voices, tools!)

und so weiter. back when i have some more exam results to cry about.

2003-06-13T15:49:00.000Z

hoorah! i got a "70" in my english exam. maybe, if i tell this to gurls, gurls will like me.

2003-06-06T12:27:00.000Z

so, which local bawnd are you?

You should join THE FELINE DREAM. You are a mincer
and u like prancing about to the pet shop boys.

which band are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

oh, and speaking of felines...

...altogether now - awwwwww!!!...

2003-06-06T11:54:00.000Z

heard any kicking and screaming over the past twenty-four hours? well, that may have been me, being violently dragged, with infinitives being pitilessly split asunder, into the 21st century. this by the acquisition of such fabled newfangled contraptions as “the cd recorder” and “the digital box”. the former parted me from my own cashmoney, the salesman expressing surprise that i wasn’t well into the habit of thieving my tunes over the net already (and my downer on such practices i shall, as i spared him, spare you also). this means that the preparations for compiling “the surprise” (ok, it’s an unbelievably sexy compilation cdr to accompany the next issue of ma ziney) may now continue apace. already i have been honoured with one contribution in particular (and an exlusive one at that) which is sooooo impishly fine, every time i’m standing and the very thought of it crosses my mind, i have to sit down again, sharpish. and, do you know, i’m considering not even releasing it.

ahem.

meanwhile, attainment of the “digibox“ had nothing whatsoever to do with myself; as anyone who has heard my suggestion as to where the bbc can stick their digital channels might guess - however, it does mean that i can watch the next episode of spooks a week in advance, or somesuch; so it can’t be all doom and gloom. rather amusing that it’s led to the bbc fielding accusations of scaremongering (spooks, that is; not the “digibox”). reminds you of just how bloody thin the line between fiction and reality is getting, if indeed it might still be said to exist.

personally, i’m hoping reality is holding its own sufficiently strongly for last night’s dream of getting 19% in my ancient history exam not to be true.

2003-06-02T16:25:00.000Z

this page appears to be ballixed again.

oh well.

i'll fix it when i get the chance.

2003-06-02T15:53:00.000Z

it's called the importance of being morrissey. it's being broadcast by channel 4 at 11.15 pm on the eighth night of this june month. moz speaks to the nation on being blanked by bowie, and will self and alan bennett give thanks and praise. this show is much too long overdue.

2003-05-30T13:29:00.000Z

feel as though i should blog somewhat about the movie centrepiece of last nite’s kite-flying session; a film which just so happens to be one of the very strangest and most truly terrible i have ever gonked at. it is, of course, secretary; and the only positive claim i feel i can make for it is that the plastics really are gorgeous - a pretty-pretty pastel colour scheme of lilacs and indigos and suchlike, which along with the vanilla cola in my mouth and the perfume of the lady in the row behind helped to create a most satisfactory unitary essence.

the tragedy is that the film amounts to little more than late-night fridays on channel 5 filtered through the kooky-processor, with the kind of painstakingly oddball dialogue and mannered-to-the-mountains acting which simply made me want to hurl rocks at the screen before me. i might venture that it’s too self-consciously clever, but really the only respect in which it is “clever” is in how it’s swiping all the plaudits from critics who’ll gladly lap-up any wannabe-arthouse quirkiness that emanates from stateside, no matter how lame-brained, while simultaneously managing to be howlingly, chain-rattling wretched. and i have it in my head now and i can’t shake it out. hideous kinky? they gave the name to the wrong movie, it would seem.

still, the ever-so-naughty s&m-ness of it all did set me to thinking about just what sort of complete-and-utter straightlord i appear to be. i mean, i can honestly say that i have never in my life thought of or fantasised about any form of sexual activity except the old "jostle-in-the-box", with only one person, of the opposite sex, in a bed, with no “attachments” of any type.

but then if james spader were ever to raise his eyebrows in my direction and softly say “do you ever...loosen up...?”, then i too, like maggie gyllenhaal in the film, would doubtless crumble into a silly display of coy smiles and fluttering eyelashes.

bless that man. but please don’t go see the film.

2003-05-29T16:00:00.000Z

i’m bored already! spent the best part of the day wandering around the house like a little boy lost, feeling as though an unfillable gaping hole had been shot through the morning / afternoon interface where revision of notes had hitherto ruled. horrible clammy day outside as well - physically oppressive atmospheric conditions.

as i’ve mentioned here before, there’s just so much i want to get done over the next few months - it’s just that today hardly seems like the appropriate time to start. should be going to see secretary later on, however; practically the sole appealing alternative to those quite bored to sobs with the schmatrix retarded (“if i wanted to see a computer game i’d switch on my playstation, wouldn‘t i?” etc.) i’m not expecting great things from secretary either, mind, although james spader’s sweaty-palmed slant on david hyde pierce “niles from frasier“-isms could, i guess, register respectably on the fun-ometer.

i appear to be the only one i know who actually enjoyed the mawtch last nite - yes, i was crashed out and inert and would have watched any old banality parade seen fit for public consumpton, but i genuinely do think the first 90 minutes were full of fantastically absorbing football, prompting me to pine audibly for the golden days of football italia on sunday afternoons and give serious pondering-time to the current whereabouts of its former presenter, james richardson, whose mastery of the off-the-cuff quip could’ve made regular reticent wallflowers of wilde and waugh both.

anyways...now, i must go in search of a water cooler...

2003-05-28T15:52:00.000Z

greetangs, you slags. i'm back. i had no intention of being so, planning instead to consolidate the school's-out-for-summerness of it all by traipsing into town and embarking upon a reckless consumerist binge. but it's raining and i'm far too beat. exam : "nyeh". much of a muchness and not much to say besides that.

if i don't make it back before next week (gosh, as if anyone even remotely gives a fig), please remember y'all to watch the new series of bbc one's vukkin kless espionage drama spooks, starting "some nite" (sorry!) next week. my faith in another rare series of televisual brilliance is strong, despite the fact that the leading character they apparently killed off in heartrending fashion at the conclusion of series one didn't really die at all! seems as though it was a mock-up of some sort...so although i'm happy the pleasing strong-yet-sensitive black-coffee maleness of matthew macfadyen will be back with us for more nasty-terrorist-thwarting thrills, they better have a bloody good explanation as to why he isn't currently lying in little bitty pieces over a six-mile radius. harrumph!

meanwhile, on the gigging front, cat power is playing in belfast in july. interpol are playing belfast in august. for once (and this we can only hope) the before, during and after of the twelfth of july might not be leaving the pubs'n'clubs here barren for months on end. so, should anyone want to whore around such tantalising evenings of musical and alcoholic delights with yours truly, do gizz a shout...

but now, i disconnect.

2003-05-28T12:57:00.000Z

yes, but here i go with the last in the current spate of exams. it is ancient history. it freaks me out. and, even though i've been working it like missy elliott on a fine e this past while, i still feel like i'm in too deep - and i'm trying to keep - my head up above - instead of going under. or something. student bar mtv screws withcha mind, i fink.

however, my joy at being pretty much a free agent from this day forward has been decisively tempered by my dad's setting out upon a path of medical investigation that could conclude with the verdict that he has asbestos poisoning, on account of working unprotected with the stuff for a brief period in the 1970s. so worrying times, obviously, and all the worse for requiring so much time and paperwork to be gone through before he can actually be screened for determination. not much more i can say than that, really.

hard to know how often i'll be able to update this over the summer, but i hope to make a fairly regular habit of it. for now i'll just wish all the luck in the world to juventus for tonight's champions league final. and remember kids, a vote for juventus is a vote against berlusconi. or something.

2003-05-26T11:11:00.000Z

look, don't talk in the library. people are trying to kill some post-exam messing-about-time on the pcs, geddit?

interesting conclusion to a conversation conducted in hushed tones across the room from me just now :

woman : "mnnnghhh phhrr flirrbel" (i.e. not distinct).
man (loudly) : "haaahhhaaa! morrissey or what, like?"

makes you wonder.

2003-05-26T08:04:00.000Z

just snatching some blogging time ahead of this morning’s film studies exam, which despite requiring me to spend two whole hours in a palpable vacuum of pointlessness is still preferable (just) to yet a-nother morning stewing in ancient history fact-mulch. hey-ho.

how glad i am to be a mere couple of days away from being able to nice-up myself with some summer holiday thrills, and indeed spills, and hopefully to purge myself of the kind of simmering grumpiness that usually arises from weeks of study-inertia. excuse the vented depression, o my readers few, but my guess is that you’d be all-of-a-sourpuss too if your only real breaks from exam-cram heaviness came in the form of desperate sessions of moisturising (my skin’s almost as sepia-toned as a corpse); monitoring the occasional drug deal at the house on the corner of the street; and (naturally) watching the voting in the eurovision and finding practically everything terry wogan says uncontrollably funny (aye, he’s the master, like).

my state of lowness was further exacerbated by, first, my grandmother almost losing a leg in a belief-beggaringly negligent accident in a (don’t)care home; and, second, another appallingly brutal and gratuitous assault upon a friend of mine on a night last week. these are just the type of (sadly, all-too-frequent) incidents which make me feel downright sick-awful that the city i love is such a regrettable shithole. oh yeah, and that cigar-chomping pig tim collins. for my part, i continue to find that bus stops in belfast seem to possess an irresistible attraction for a wide selection of one-flew-over-the-cuckoo’s-nesters who properly belong in a padded cell (hello, loudly-dressed short-round in sunglasses who sat on a wall making burping sounds whilst i anxiously awaited the arrival of the 69a...yeeuugghhhhhhhhh...).

anyway. i digress from this mess. post-wednesday, my two immediate priorities are considering whether to try to wangle another 500 of the queen’s pounds out of the northern ireland arts council as part of the annual arts criticism awards scheme (sure why not? they owe me an awards ceremony, anyhow...) and, as you might well imagine, getting my hands dirty with the next issue of the fanzine. as to that item, issue the fifth is most unlikely to be comin’ atcha as yer standard edition, for truly i tell you that a highly exciting surprise is on the cards. you’ll just have to wait and see...

2003-05-22T12:06:00.000Z

mmmm. tough exam. could have been much worse. overall - relieved. not going to go through all the reflexive analytical bullshit one typically indulges in after an exam, as i've just done it verbally and it never does any good, does it? the feck it does.

still, relieved. especially so after last night's wilful urge to sabotage my chances i.e. not being able to resist 1) the uefa cup final and 2) mogwai on fine raucous form at maida vale for peelfeast, thus foregoing last minute cram-intake.

still. relieved.

(and here's some more light relief).

2003-05-19T10:07:00.000Z

i just can not hack the drudgery of this revision. might this have something to do with the fact that i've been subjected to two sets of exams every year since (it seems) the dawning of history, or should that make it somehow easier to stomach? whatever, the sooner this shit is off my mind the better.

next you should be hearing from me is a kind of post-match report on the english exam (thursday morning), by which stage i should be needing - just like jason pierce - an endless river to wash away all of my tears. moop.

however, this - taken from an article by sue arnold in yesterday's observer - allowed me to expel some of the pent-up boredom and tension in a primal howl of derision :

"talking of ransacking the archives, 6 music, the eclectic digital station that specialises in eighties music, devoted an hour to the smiths, who 20 years ago occupied the same stand-alone non-derivative position as coldplay do today".

genius.

2003-05-16T12:57:00.000Z

adam, it's your birthday. happy birthday adam. although i left steely dan's "hey nineteen" off of yr tape i trust you will be heeding the advice of mr donald fagen regardless, and with "the cuervo gold" and "the fine colombian" you will be doing your utmost to "make tonight a wonderful thing". i'm far too sure you'd hate the song, really i am.

*

question time last nite reacquainted me with olympic swimmer and media hack sharron davies, whom i swam with in a london pool when i was ten, but haven't seen anywhere since. sadly, she was flailingly inarticulate in her defence of bombing the kiddie-limbs out of iraq; and chose to answer damn near every other question that was put to her by smiling coyly and proffering that being british was really quite good when you think about it really, and we should all be throwing our respective bodies (hopefully with a full compliment of limbs) behind britain's bid to host the pepsi-honda-microsoft olympic games. because, when you think about it, fleecing johnny foreigner till he cries like a small child who's just had his limbs blown off sure beats ploughing the cash into (how boring!) the nhs and the railways. yeah?

*

last nite saw, not for the first time this week, a veritable dream parade inside my head. i think this must have something to do with sponging-up revision all day (it always happens during exam periods) and consequently pushing into the depths of my subconscious mind a higher-than-usual quota of the other thoughts i would normally have during the day. well, that's my theory, anyway, and i'm sticking to it. i wake up feeling like i've been watching tv all nite, rather than rip van winkling, which is not necessarily a good thing. and as to last nite's dreamstuff...well! that would be telling...

2003-05-13T12:13:00.000Z

look i know i've put far far too much on here t'day but i really rather liked this sensitively-tuned article on trembling blue stars and i heard this morning that they might be playing belfast as summer plays out and camera obscura might be playing too and *tracyanne* would be there and she would be singing for *me* and it's all be too too wonderful to contemplate...
...

...

...

2003-05-13T12:05:00.000Z

"Cleaning Out My Closet" - you're honest
and will express yourself.

Which Eminem Song Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

that's the last one for now. these things are tough work.

2003-05-13T11:57:00.000Z

You're "This Time of Night!" You're
head-over-heels in love, but not necessarily
with a person. Stop repeating yourself, and go
get pumped full of drugs! You know you want
to...

Which New Order drug song are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

hoi! konrad! where's my brotherhood see-dee?

2003-05-13T11:55:00.000Z

You are HOW SOON IS NOW? You want love but you
can't find it and have just about given up. You
let it get you down but you should CHEER UP YA
MOODY GIT!

What Smiths Song Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

what's this now? smiths fans with a sense of humour? whatever the fuck next?

2003-05-13T11:01:00.000Z

he just popped in to see what condition his condition was in.

entirely unrelated, this, but pray tell what meaning do the fortune tellers assign to "having" a bird (not in the likely lads sense) shit on one's head? more crucially (and this is where it really starts to get interesting) what if one is sheltered by one's hood at the time and remains unspattered by those pesky little white bombs from the sky; totally oblivious to the occurrence until it is kindly pointed out to one sometime later?

i think : my luck's in!

2003-05-13T10:12:00.000Z

here’s a wee hint, loves - go see rules of attraction. “go see” it, that is, if you’re currently resident in belfast; since my understanding of the situation is that said film said its goodbyes from cinemas on “the mainland” some light-years ago, and in fact was probably released on dvd the day before yesterday. in which case, buy the dvd - if you don’t like it, you could always give it to me for christmas, or perhaps use the disc as a coaster for drinks.

but why should you not like it? 2003 hasn’t so far presented us with an especially rich crop of movie treats, nor does it look as though it can be arsed to, but why shouldn’t rules... sport its "cream of the.." accolade with pride? fuck it, how in the name of all that is sanitary in this world did james van der beek ever convince anybody that he was a nice, clean-cut young man? how in the eternal fire set to consume me do he, and the other leading actors in this movie, contrive to garner our sincerest sympathies in spite of playing such bourgeois atrocity exhibitions with such startling conviction?

these are questions to which i cannot provide full and comprehensive answers. however, i will put forward that easton ellis’s young decadents are greek gods in this film - oh, their sensual excesses; their petty jealousies; their superhumanly fabulous bodies - and the college campus is their mount olympus. they’re stuck in the past, without a future to go to, but as characters they are absolutely immortal. after the film’s turbulent pre-credit sequence, there’s a great “gods are in their heaven” montage with the cure’s wonderful “six different ways” waltzing out of the cinema speakers - see also donnie darko’s tears for fears, “head over heels” wordless stop-start-motion set-piece and give thanks for directors who can utilise the pop video approach to add to, rather than subtract from, their films.

yes, as you may by now have guessed, rules... isn’t your average teenage sex-drugs-and-oblivion movie. with sex, drugs and oblivion all amplified to such sterling degrees, how could it be? but there’s also a profoundly post-everything intelligence there - you could write your dissertation on one scene alone featuring two clue-free socialite moms and their two gay sons (and wildly, wildly funny it is, too) - and there’s a visual poetry to match even the darko itself; even in what must surely be the most sickeningly vivid suicide scene ever committed to celluloid.

in fact, i’m now rather tempted to seek out other items of the roger avary oeuvre, post-haste - including the film where rutger hauer animates a patchwork doll composed of several different human beings and which then has flashbacks to all those past lives. weirdly, this film was actually made.

*

aye, and other thing - the new stars album, heart, is out now on setanta records; and - thanks to amazon.co.uk and a kindly auntie with a credit card - i now have the beaut in my disky-revolver! "i'm so hot for the rich girl / her heels so high and my hopes so low / 'cos i don't know how to love / i get too tired after midday..." just one of the incurably romantic sweet-everythings issuing from torquil campbell's lips on the super-swoony single "elevator love letter"; summer-fresh-breezy, aye, yet it rocks like ben nevis. stars, in the same vein as saint etienne, used to be the conduit for campbell and co's intelligent and soulful dream-concept of "perfect pop". on heart, they've almost metamorphosed into actual pop; the kind of music you wouldn't be surprised to hear cosying up to avril lavigne on the one fm daytime playlist - and they've proved themselves marvellously adept at this kind of thing, too. some might say canadians are americans with socialism and intelligence, but i say...*stars*. bless!

*

oh yes, and i’ve got exams soon. it’s appropriate that i should mention this as a footnote of a sort, because they do indeed feel that way - a minor pressured addendum to a distinctly unpressured term. pray for me like aretha franklin.

ach, i hush my mush. and chew the slush to hide the blush. or sthg.

2003-05-13T10:08:00.000Z

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Low
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

yes, and when i was at the shaps t'other day the total on one of my receipts was : £6.66. clawwws!

meanwhile, why not cast your vote in the essential shabba ranks poll on the pdq talky-board?

2003-05-11T14:09:00.000Z

i have just purchased the very special vinyl reissue of dark side of the moon. it may well be that i am ageing at an accelerated rate. or that i am only a small step away from walking into the qub physics building and attempting to give a seminar.

2003-05-08T15:25:00.000Z

meanwhile, in another life...

2003-05-08T15:02:00.000Z

Hilary.

Which Belle & Sebastian Song Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

and the vicar or whatever gave me confirmation...

2003-05-08T14:57:00.000Z

Mysterious, quiet, reserved. You are...

A forest

Come closer and see
See into the trees
Find the girl
While you can
Come closer and see
See into the dark
Just follow your eyes
Just follow your eyes

I hear her voice
Calling my name
The sound is deep
In the dark
I hear her voice
And start to run
Into the trees
Into the trees

Into the trees

Suddenly I stop
But I know it's too late
I'm lost in a forest
All alone
The girl was never there
It's always the same
I'm running towards nothing
Again and again and again

Which Cure song are you?
Test by Ligeia

hmmm, i always thought i was the echoey bass coda on that song. funny that.

2003-05-08T13:57:00.000Z

greetings, hallions. it's another day.

those of you who have been following my ez board exploits as "art groupie" may be interested to learn that i've now married this with my addiction to channel 4's teletext service planet sound, and am now directing the occasional missive into the void (pg. 162, oh ye heathens). i fully intend poking them with the first music-related thing that comes into my head until i tire of them, they tire of me, or the day comes when they pop open with a gigglebaby in an enormous cackling crimson birth. or something.

and yes, if you could sell free time for a profit, i'd be freakin' croesus.

2003-05-07T12:15:00.000Z

"kate beckinsale and christina ricci both fingered my proffered roots knowingly, feeling the little nubs of plastic and motioning to their own..."

although scandalously omitted by the great british public from that there 100 greatest movie actors bobbins what was on sundae and moondae knyghte (cod-chaucerian, anyone?) alan cumming has certainly got it going on to a pretty immodest degree. the gay-as-a-window scots raconteur, who very definitely isn’t rupert everett, has long been brightening the corners in popular cinematic entertainments such as spice world and romy and michele’s high school reunion, as well as kicking a very considerable quantity of ass as a rascally plastic-pop guru in undeniable classic josie and the pussycats, and as nightcrawler in the neu x-men flick. good for him.

and he also has a website, www.alancumming.com, which - strangely enough for an actor’s interweb home - is at some remove from the level of uselessness.

the quotation up above is taken from it. it mentions christina ricci. christina ricci, who remains queen of that tiny portion of my heart that has not been vandalised beyond repair.

leave now, for i must weep.

2003-05-06T08:40:00.000Z

i think it would be somewhat remiss of me not to take this opportunity to remove my hat and show a full head of hair to (the) son of shrimp, whose revelatory live debut to a saturday afternoon arcadia cafe audience of queens, goons, pigeons and baboons (oh yeth, and a thew goth ath well) shocked and delighted belfast scenesters in a manner not witnessed since the vichy boys were memorably let loose over here last year. bloody well done, then.
and pictures here.

respect also to the vichies, playing by candelight, their novelty value waning by now (most likely a good thing) but with sparks of genius still crackling from their gloved fingertips. a quietly terrifying reading of cher’s "gypsies, tramps & thieves" was a definite high.
pictures here.

oh, and while i’m at the shout-outs, top marks generally to the valid.pop boys for their fine taste in art, boundless enthusiasm and hard-headed persistence in overcoming the customary technical balls-ups to put on one hell of an entertaining show.

and plenty thanks to the lovely gel who sold me my cappuccino and cranberry soda. “it’s the little things” etc. etc.

meanwhile, firm but fair “fuck you”s go to belfast taxi firms, manchester united football club, work, the weather, and you know the rest.

ohohoh! and in case you were wondering about my “pre-registration” (i do kid myself sometimes, don’t i?) well, it went just swimmingly, and i’ve now got the modules i want for my second year here.

that’s another year of university.

hurrah. i s’pose.

2003-05-01T14:15:00.000Z

Kayleigh - You die hard romantic, you. Also a
little mean, perhaps you need to be more
careful with other people's hearts! We hope you
get back together, or actually... that you both
find somebody better. Whatever you do, LISTEN
TO MARILLION and all your romantic problems
will be gone (so might all your partners. This
quiz accepts no responsibility for any ruined
lives)

What Marillion song are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! marillion, like.

2003-05-01T08:34:00.000Z

you've read the interview! um, you probably haven't bought the fanzine! but it doesn't matter! why does it not matter! because my written feature on the wunderbar vichies is now online at the bottom of this page!

read, mothasuckas!!!

2003-04-30T13:49:00.000Z

i’m about to go talk stage two module choices with my neu! adviser of studies (i possess no real evidence that my old adviser ever existed at all) who also happens to be my fortnightly instructor in the history of the english language, ivan “herbsman shuffle” herbison. i know where his office is and everything. i’ve even had previous occasion to be inside of it. clawwws! only drawback is, i’m not entirely sure whether i’ve the heart to tell his pudgy-chummy self that i’m not too fussed about doing any english language modules next year, hence ever again; and things’ll get worse if he tries to surreptitiously nudge me into it, peering over the rims of those goldfish-bowl glasses of his, tongue darting quickly to wet the air all stuffy with tweed and academia...who knows what might happen next?

*

found myself in the unlikely position of having to talk about ali g yesterday. this arose from my being quite shocked that my literature tutor, having watched ali g in da usaiii, was quite happily under the impression that a-g is a straight parody of black urban culture. i explained to him that people generally don’t like to imagine that this is the case, what with all the overtones of racism inherent in that position; preferring instead to believe that mr cohen’s shtick is all about parodying the wholesale adoption of such culture by middle-class white-boys. but then, since he’s about as funny as multiple cot death in an infant’s orphanage anyway, it may not be worth losing a whole lotta sleep over. this last i didn’t say, but come on! this guy’s supposed to be teaching me post-colonial studies! where’s the justice in the world? where’s the united states of america when you need it?

*

speaking of which (and it‘s painful, i know) i couldn’t help but have my ears play host to the tail end of a news item in which it was revealed that the infidel bush has promised that the us “will not impose its form of government on iraq”. and democracy is...?

oh, wait...

2003-04-28T14:36:00.000Z

was having a wee jouk at this. i'd completely forgotten about it for many months. and i'm a mite put out by it. i was expecting wit and opinions from you, ellis, not newspaper clippings. you maniac.

pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2003-04-25T10:58:00.000Z

what the hellfire and damnation is this? i go to visit my friend the lying oracle on his wee blog and i get directed to some looney-tunes christian studies site?!? i ask thee!

*

oh, and by the way - this morning. 26 minutes past one. white blood cells starts up. no joke.

2003-04-24T15:37:00.000Z

there's no home for you here

and there was me thinking that i had to “keep it down!” for the benefit of my new neighbours. but after having the white stripes’ elephant coming through my bedroom wall at two o’clock in the morning, this is no longer so much of a concern.

*

film studies professor sam rohdie, last seen entering the ladies’ loos to instruct some girls to leave (this i saw him do with my own two eyes, readers) has apparently taken spiteful revenge on students taking my module in the subject by setting a devilishly difficult compulsory exam question on robert bresson’s ponderous neo-realist flick au hasard balthasar, for which attendance numbers weren’t far short of skeletal.

and, just for extra badness, big sam looks likely to be screening ingmar bergman’s sommaren med monika this coming monday, despite the fact that there’s no exam question on it, there’ll be no lecture about it (the following monday = may day holiday) and despite the course tutor’s pleas to show what would be a far more relevant film about bresson instead.

should you live in the belfast area and would like to join me in killing sam, then do give me a shout. or maybe if you just want to buy a fanzine, ‘cos the new ish is just dying to have your lovely hands placed all over it - come on, you know it’s only right...

2003-04-23T13:11:00.000Z

well, i hope all you good good people had as fun an easter as could be hoped for, involving neither tsunamis of boaked chocolate nor virus-inflicted suffering like the “cold” (as i euphemistically referred to it in its early stages last post) i was forced to sweat out, effectively slamming the phone down on my recently put-on-hold life. my kenneth williams impressions were excellent, but it wasn’t much of a consolation (well, actually, it was).

bitch and moan i don’t wish to do, but i will say that what i went through was probably a damn sight worse than whatever it was that big wuss david seaman woke up with last wednesday morning. er - actually, that is bitching and moaning, isn’t it? sorry.

*
chris morris is, apparently, “planning a comeback”. this could be less fact than rumour, and not especially detailed rumour at that, but it’s still tremendously heartening to think that we might soon be enjoying mr morris’s unerringly accurate oracular satire on our tv screens again (could you have dreamed up tatu when the brass eye “paedophilia” programme was first screened?)

moreover, the news - and the media which reports it - do seem to be in a far more lunatic state than they ever have been. celebrate the liberation of iraq! we’ve got a retired arms manufacturer theoretically calling the shots over there now, and his most likely replacement a convicted felon. it must be the loveliest place to live.

*

on radio 4’s today programme (it could have been the day today) i was fortunate enough to catch the latter part of a side-splitting interview involving some iraqi “expert”, whose clearly appalling grasp of english (or, possibly, deafness) was fair getting on the interviewer’s tits. the final straw for her was when she asked if there was a lot of oil “still to come from out of iraq”. he replied testily : “of course there is a lot of oil outside iraq!”, prompting a hasty end to be declared to the whole embarrassing business. john humphrys, waiting in the wings, was, it’s fairly safe to assume, laughing himself to the brink of asphyxiation at the time.

*

quite the most wobbleheaded article i’ve read relating to iraq recently - and believe me, there have been a few - was a piece by the guardian’s art critic jonathan glancey, written about the collection of artworks discovered in saddam’s palaces. glancey’s take on these - most of which aren’t a million miles away from typical dungeons & dragons poster art - was that they constitute sure proof of a porno-crazed militaristic fascist at firm remove from his box. hmm...wonder what made him draw that shocking conclusion? taken in isolation, the artworks - with the possible exception of phallic missiles blasting off toward the sky - could equally well capture the mindset of comic book guy from the simpsons.

*

staying on the theme of talking absolute rubbish - it’s one thing when some pontificating broadsheet journo does it; quite another when it’s one of your favourite bands. if i have to read just one more time about interpol informing another music mag that they by no stretch of the imagination sound like joy division and i swear by this very column that i will boycott their next record.

what makes it worse is the have-a-go hack’s customary response : “oh my god! they denied the totally fucking obvious! how bold!!” and so on. the sooner i single-handedly rescue the nme from the doldrums, the better - don’t you think?

2003-04-16T11:26:00.000Z

woke up in my new hood for the first time this morning and was greeted by a fanfare of drills, kylie and the half-pints on the street outside having a kickabout. ah, bliss!

unfortunately, i also managed to wake up with the foullest cold in christendom on the warmest day of the year thus far. so, there's a good thing and there's a bad thing.

i came to this university to study english. the only literature assignment i have had to do since last november, and the only one i will have to do before second year, is due sometime in the middle of may. also a good thing and a bad thing...but probably - since i'll be entering next month's exam not so much rusty as absolute scrapyard - more of a baaaaaad thing...

2003-04-14T12:30:00.000Z

this deadly interview is currently creeping its evil way, sars-like, over the intynet. read it and save yourselves the bother and expense of purchasing the next issue of ma wee fanzine, 'cos all it's gonna be is this inquisition of le mearns plus another interview or two plus a piece on princess superstar plus my "personal" piece from tangents plus reviews (including, for the first time, reviews of my fellow fanzines)...and the deadline is slipping, slipping away...

2003-04-08T10:49:00.000Z

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (i.e. relieved sigh) - finally i can publish again. a change of template made it possible. hope you like this newbie, readers. just wish i had even a smidgen of the skill required to, like, customize it an' all...but y'all know i love you anyway, right?

ok, 'nuff said with the italics. in a nutshell, i am a mere one or two days away from "the big move", which is fukking me up bad and making it pretty impossible to get anything done - including blogging my life away here, in all its glorious triviality.

on the plus side, my excuse for not studying is safely provided for. i heart moving house.

2003-04-01T13:58:00.000Z

thankee, mr todd - this animation floats my boat.

(and i would have acknowledged it last week, had publishing not been comprehensively ahined!)

*
saw my old classics guru "war" dempsie today. in a richly symbolic incident we found ourselves crossing the street in opposite directions. some words of greeting were exchanged, a few manly teardrops wiped away from burning cheeks...i'm sorry, i...

*

expect posts infrequently during the next few weeks (just watch those traffic prediction figures plummet!) 'cos i'm on my break, see, and reluctant to spend too much time using the qub library computer facilities until i've removed all that static electricity from my hair and some of the green tincture out of my skin.

just you wait, though - come pre-exam panic and i'll doubtless be "back" in a "big" way...

2003-03-31T13:39:00.000Z

spiders on my brain

recently i experienced the longest, the most painful, and the most savagely disturbing headache i have ever experienced in all my born days. which was nice. woke up with a moderate temple-throbber, went about my daily business and arrived home feeling like my skull was being clamped in an ever-tightening vice. knocked back a couple of painkillers, dropped on my bed and lay in agonising sufferation for hours. what intensified the abject nature of my malaise was the never-before-experienced feeling of wanting to purge everything but nothing from my mind - thoughts, tunes, memories - and an elemental desire to sleep, which wasn’t on the cards. but eventually it came, and i was a healed man.

writing about all of this may seem too banal for words, but i can’t help feeling somewhat anxious about the inexplicable cocktail of sharp pain and weirdness that i would have thought could only possibly occur in the peculiar half-awake / half-asleep sickness of the wee small hours of the morning. i was thinking alarmist thoughts like : “this is cancer / this is meningitis / this is bye-bye” without in any way realising what ludicrous hypochondria was in play.

so, to whomsoever was gleefully sticking needles in the voodoo doll, i hope you’re suitably ashamed of yourself...

*

the prospect of house-changing looms ever closer. now that would do your head in, put your head away and mess your head thoroughly up. looking around my newly-painted-new-room, i was moved by the fiercely melancholy sight of a spider that had got its legs stuck in sticky, drying paint, and had snapped one off in its desperate efforts to free itself. putting it out of its misery, i chose not to take this as an omen of any sort.

someone told me that rene sparks of the handsome family claims to have seen a spider in every room she has ever walked into. someone should tell neil gaiman.

2003-03-27T18:00:00.000Z

yay! i have instant messaging capability now. so, if you know me and you can im like i can im, send me your, um, "details" and we can im to our sweet hearts' content.

2003-03-24T11:32:00.000Z

oh my god! they flouted the geneva convention!

yes, but just don't mention camp x-ray...

oh my god! michael moore won an oscar!

yes, but didn't the sheer punk rock-ness of it all bring a tear to your eye?

oh my god! so did eminem!

yes, but i believe he was engaged in cleaning out his closet. and then his mom needed her closet cleaning out, so he had to get the finger out for that as well...

today i will mostly be falling asleep. i hate the oscars!

2003-03-20T14:42:00.000Z

voice-over

caught that adaptation last nite. it’s a freakishly clever piece of work by anyone’s standards - the failed screenwriter’s viewing of choice, you might think; but in screwed-over-screenwriter land i reckon it’s probably resulted in more sickened stomachs than anything else. like, “no wonder we’re spending our professional lives on the shelf - how the fuck can we compete with this?!?” that sort of thing. i mean, charlie kaufman has raised the bar to well-nigh unreachable heights with this one, and in what so far has been somewhat of an annus horribilis for mainstream cinema his inspired self-indulgence (and yes, the writing / wanking analogy is used!) is a real eye-opener.

adaptation isn’t to be bowed down to and worshipped - it flaunts its flaws and revels in its chaos - but it has woken me up to a gloriously perverse possibility of cinema hitherto (it seems to me) unconsidered by most. of course any cinematic adaptation of a literary work will of necessity downplay the forms and techniques of film in favour of story and characters (and adaptation isn’t any different in this respect) but who would have thought that a film could so brilliantly and transparently autopsy the processes of writing in a way that literature itself never could? perhaps i’ve just stated the embarrassingly obvious there, but - hey! - i’m freshly enlightened in any case.

*

“yes”, y’all say. “but the 75th oscars are coming”. not that “the academy” want you to know that, much - they’re planning a “muted” ceremony with no red carpets and only a modest degree of razzmatazz.

now, there are many reasons to loathe the academy with every fibre of your being. recently i added to my own personal set of grievances when i heard the news that they’d be spurning the excellent brazilian film city of god because it features eight-year-olds popping caps and smoking weed, or for reasons similarly toss-headed.

but to proceed with the awards in any format against the insane and depressing backdrop of an international terrorist action is, well, just a wee bit insensitive.

now all we need is richard gere to win an oscar for his cringeworthy and geriatric turn in chicago and the quantity of plain crass tastelessness in america will have reached such dangerously high levels that steve o, in a demented jackass homage to dr strangelove, will have no choice but to ride atop a nuke onto baghdad for the sake of “national security”.

muh.

2003-03-20T10:18:00.000Z

i wonder what saddam's thinking right now...

let's find out, shall we?

2003-03-19T14:25:00.000Z

Bondage movie! You're into BSDM (Bondage &
Discipline, Dominance & Submission) and chances
are, you're fond of whips, chains, harnesses,
and tight leather outfits. You like to mix a
little pain with a LOT of pleasure, baby!

What kind of porno would you star in?
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i loathe myself.

2003-03-19T14:19:00.000Z

Scary in a very good way, you're Fairuza Balk.
Intense.

What sexy girl are you
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yes, but i wanted christina...

2003-03-18T17:01:00.000Z

yes, i know i'm being a little quiet at the minute.......

...normal service will hopefully be resumed shortly.

2003-03-14T11:47:00.000Z

enon and on and on and on...

yes, but last nite i took a jaunt out to the empire to see the first actual "gig" (you know, with actual "bands") i've partaken of in far, far too long a while. bands were bloodthirsty lovers and enon - both american, both with members in about a squillion other obscure-core outfits past and present and both complete and utter unknown-quantities to my good self.

fortunately it was money well-spent. bloodthirsty lovers impressed with their raw analogue college-rock angst; enon licked my ya-ya's off with their saucy electro-punk stylings, and deafened me with an excruciating tidal wave of feedback at the end. in other words, they rocked like they shouldn't be allowed; which is hard.

mad as feck they are, too (and some bloke took some pictures to prove it...)

2003-03-11T10:14:00.000Z

tits (and an ass)

christina ricci. remember her? “life rage”; a therapist on each coast; queen of the teen screen bitches, though last enjoyed by me as the pale and interesting love interest in tim burton’s sleepy hollow fully three-years-and-more ago? (bless the child doesn’t count; ‘twas a cameo appearance and the film was a duffer). oh yes, and always talking about her cleavage?

the cleavage-obsession (hers and mine) is important, as the current goss on the lately-dormant ricci grapevine is that the celebrated mammaries are due to be unveiled in a forthcoming drool-fest entitled monster, in which la belle ricci plays the role of charlize theron’s lesbian lover.

do you ever feel as though time can’t possibly pass quickly enough?

*

anyway, enough of this wet banter and onwards to a bald wanker. i refer, since you ask, to nick “lists, arsenal, high fidelity, lists” hornby. i’ve never held any grudges against the guy - a couple of decent films have been made of his books, for a start - but his tastes in music have long struck me as stultifyingly conservative and dull, and in his new “opus” 31 songs he attempts to defend his flaccid faves (springsteen, teenage fanclub, nelly frikkin’ furtado) in shamelessly specious fashion.

in a nutshell, hornby writes of how he never listens to suicide’s “frankie teardrop” anymore because as a married homeowner in his forties he no longer wishes to be the recipient of a musical “shot in the head”. violence and danger in music, he says, are attractive to people because of many years of peace and prosperity in society; edgy experimentalism is liked only by young music journalists simply because they’ll always take to something just that little bit different in amongst the vast amount of samey stuff to which they’re obliged to listen; and, frankly, give him a simple three-minute pop song any day of the week.

fact is, his relentless emphasis on the more banal aspects of the music he loves is worrying (one suspects he loves it in much the same way that he loves to kick back with a nice cuppa and watch the golf on telly). fact is, experimentalism does not necessarily equate with metal machine music and you’ll find it in all the best pop (beach boys, bowie - hornby would fain acknowledge this fact, or indeed the aforementioned artists!)

also, violent and dangerous aspects to art - in peacetime or otherwise - feed an ever-present need in human nature. when i listen to suicide yes i get the shivers, yes i get the adrenaline, yes the uncompromising imagery is a bit of a turn-on...hornby wishes not to be “patronised” for no longer caring for such elements in music. well fair enough, but please don’t patronise the rest of us, nick, by coming on like you’ve been in the wars and seen all the horrors in life, you sheltered-ass muppet. admittedly you’ve lived longer and had a lot more thrown at you by life than i have, but you’re a fool if you think the reason hardboiled hip-hop is so popular in inner-city american killing fields isn’t precisely because it reflects the badness of what people see around them, putting their life experience into song.

and hey, if the apocalypse comes to town anytime soon, i’m far more likely to be listening to godspeed you! black emperor than ian dury’s “reasons to be cheerful” while i await the atomisation of my earthly shell.

i’ll stop ranting now. i could compose my arguments in more structured form and send them in a letter to hornby himself, but he’d almost certainly dismiss me as a rabidly hot-headed youngblood and calmly return to his “appreciation” of the aural approximation of a coma that was bruce springsteen’s last effort. scum.

(ps. needless to say, i didn’t actually buy hornby’s book, but listened to him reading extracts from it on radio 4. incidentally, if you listen to john peel’s home truths programme on radio 4 it makes you curl your lip at john peel. that ain’t right!)

2003-03-10T11:14:00.000Z

links are in order.

if the lying oracle approves she can't be bad, like.

and...

i just wish he would get his shit together on this one!

2003-03-05T12:58:00.000Z

why not view this weblog in snoop-ified form?

2003-03-05T11:12:00.000Z

congrats!! your a stereo-typical indie fuck! your
nothin big nor special but still an indie fuck.
you are still into yourself more then anyone
else and look so damm fine. you dont get much
women but just enough to listen to a couple bad
emo records. you need a keyboard.

what type of indie fuck are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

and now i die.

2003-03-05T11:08:00.000Z

i don’t sleep, i dream

yes, but in the early hours of this morning i dreamed that for my imminent birthday (april 6th, not that you require a reminder, i expect) i purchased a literally eye-dazzling electric guitar from marcus music in belfast, and in so doing had the rather unlikely good fortune of effortlessly managing to pick up the girl who sold it to me.

back at my place, things were just starting to get interesting when bloody peter buck from rem turns up at my door, wanting a go at my brand new axe. i fix him coffee, and he pays me back by playing the guitar much better than i can and leaving with my girl.

i remember a side-splitting piece in the last issue of the exclusive which was all about this guy trouserdog’s history of self-love, and in it he recalled with fondness those dreams where you’re humping away with the object of your lusts and wake up absolutely gutted that it’s not real.

hell, i could do with a few more disappointments like that.

2003-03-04T10:18:00.000Z

electronic renaissance

five weeks of this term done and dusted, five weeks to go before easter - can you tell i’m feeling positive? a month ago it was an unappealing, feeling-a-mite-sorry-for-himself peter you got when you came here. now it’s a sexy, "i-love-the-world-and-the-world-loves-me" model.

what can i tell you? moods see-saw, the balance has tipped; but really i’ve got little more cause for joy now than i had cause to snivel four weeks ago, if that makes any sense. but hey, sometimes the sun does be out from behind it’s cloud and sometimes i do be sitting “on campus”, at peace with my fellow man.

and who could fail to be thrilled-to-droplets by the tantalising prospect of “live local electronica” in the mandela hall of a tuesday evening? ok, so the underground nite on fridays is enjoyable now and then, being as it is free of door-tax and cheap of drinks (approx. one poun’ twannie fer a paynt) but consists mostly of my-old-man’s-a-dustman acoustic chicanery from a predictable array of glorified buskers. boo.

the new tuesday nite fandango promises to do the free-thing as well, but with rather more interesting electro-heads calling the shots performance-wise. yay.

‘course, there’ll always be the same old trouble-spelling door-peoples (plain ol‘ unhelpful at best, downright malevolent at worst); the same old primitive plastic cups; and that pa system, which every once in a while can effectively transform the sound of sweet music into the sound of the rumble of an approaching train in the distance, but who’s complaining?

not me.

i don’t complain anymore. *

* (nb. not a valid guarantee)

pps. - it seems the lying oracle has found some sort of point to my tangents article. to be truthful, i wasn't aware there was a point - not that it's meaningless, per se, as i scarcely need comment - but 'twas just some stuff i wanted to purge from my system; just going off on a tangent. on tangents.

i am the lonely ryan adams.

2003-03-03T09:39:00.000Z

You are the lonely Ryan Adams. "Love
hurts" is the famous line from that famous
song way back when, and boy! You had to find
out the hard way.
So your girl just broke your heart, and now your
too depressed to do anything? We love you,
dear,
if that means anything!

What Ryan Adams persona are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

i knew it would be that.

by the by, if you think you can tolerate some "personal" dribblings about music (and stuff) from the mouth of the sharky (it never caught on), then you might try reading this.

tigerless lovemilk. or sthg.

2003-02-27T15:55:00.000Z

like, totally addicted to bass...

2003-02-27T15:33:00.000Z

www.smokehammer.com

worth a look, as always (and check the archives for mucho unconscionably hilarious sleggin' of gerry adams).

and oh yes, it would appear that 3d from massive attack is on a kiddie porn rap. o my gawit.

2003-02-25T17:25:00.000Z

"they're a new rock'n'roll band from america. they haven't released anything yet, but howlin' pelle is reportedly a fan and i can honestly say they are the best band i have ever heard ever!"

...and this week's award for most useless flavour-of-the-month nme-hyped band goes to none other than hot hot heat! that "cure" inspired name"! that "cure" inspired voice! frankly, the only cure requiring to be spoken of here is whatever "cure" is needed to put these daft-minded wretches out of their misery. just say a firm "no", kids.

next week : kings of leon.

...or was that last week?

enough already!!!