Stuff and stuff

Sunday: Worked all day, but found time to do a little post about shaking my spear, below.

Monday: Worked all day, despite it being a holiday in the UK.

Tuesday: Worked until lunchtime, then headed out to the tattooist for some recolouring on a tattoo that I never got finished. It's two years since it last had any work done on it. Now I think it's finished. Though I can't help but feel it still needs a little sumpn sumpn.

Wednesday: Worked all day and got mad pissed off with some people we're working for. What is with people? I know not all people are cunts, but sometimes... sometimes it sure seems that all people I have to deal with are. I also found time to update Such As They Are for the first time in a month. I made a silent promise to post a new movie review over there at least once a week. And Lord knows I have a backlog to wade through.

Thursday: Started the day, as we do most days at the moment eating breakfast while watching an episode of Seinfeld, the show about nowt after which this blog was named. We've been working our way through the DVDs while waiting for Season 5 of Scrubs to get released. Then we headed out to Asda to do most of our weekly grocery shopping. We couldn't find the tofu. I knew it was a mistake but I thought I'd ask a member of staff.

"Excuse me, do you know where I'd find tofu?"
"Uh, find what?"
"Tofu."
"Toad food?"
"No, tofu."
"What is it?"
"It's ... [I tell myself not to mention beancurd or allude to anything 'foreign'...] It's a meat substitute for vegetarians."
"Oh, then it's probably in the meat aisle."
"I don't know," I say. "You carry other products by Cauldron, and they produce tofu. So I thought it might be in the freezer section."
"Oh... I'd better find someone who'll know. Come with me."

I follow her. She talks to another staff member. She too looks confused by the word tofu. I suggest that it could be in the chilled section, rather than frozen.

"Let's have a look there, then," says the second woman, and we walk towards that section. "It's not something I've been asked for before."

We stand there looking at the shelves. My eyes alight on the Holy Grail. I reach for the tofu. "Here it is!" I exclaim gleefully. "I'd better check the sell-by date, since no one knows you sell it!" It's all good. "You'll know where it is now next time someone asks," I suggest. Fortunately they don't kill me. You never know in this neck of the woods. And Asda.

Shaking my spear

Oo er, that sounds a bit like a euphemism for having a wank, doesn't it? Anyway, that's not what was intended.


Instead it was just to say we're going to see some Shakespeare. Not something I do every day of the week, but then it's not every day of the week that the legendary Eamonn Walker (of Oz fame) comes back to his home town of London to play the Moor, Othello, at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, no less.

How could we not treat ourselves to an anniversary matinée? Trouble is, I know Red has A Bit of a Thing for Eamonn, so I'll need to keep a close eye on her after the show, lest she starts telling him how his performance was like a cultural orgasm or something along those lines.

When I phoned the box office to ensure Mr Walker would be playing all shows, including matinées, the posh and elderly sounding woman on the phone said: "Well, I think so. I mean... well... he's... well, he's the man, isn't he?"

"Yes," I replied. "He is the man."

People, we are going to see the great Kareem Said in the flesh, playing Othello. Does Shakespeare get any better than that? I rather think not.

Hello Daddy. And up the Hilary.

All the news that's fit to print! And some that probably isn't...

Well, it finally happened. My mother, long-suffering woman that she is, has remarried. It happened on 11 May, but she didn't tell anyone until a week later at a celebration party. I was invited but simply couldn't make it (work, kitchen, 400-mile round trip).

So I now have a stepdad. And I've never met him. I think that's bloody bizarre, but what can yer do?!

And me sister's up the Hilary. Up the duff, that is; having a bairn; with child; got a bun in the oven. Pick your own euphemism.

This will be her fourth. She's not even 30. And her three kids are between eight and 12 years old.

I'm not a having-kids type of guy, as most visitors here know by now. So I simply cannot understand why someone would have another kid just at the point that she is starting to reclaim her life back.

Oh well. As my wise old gran would have said: "You can't educate pork."

Too busy to blog

It's not got quite the same punk ring to it as as "Too Drunk to Fuck", has it? Imagine, though, if the Dead Kennedys were making it big now. Maybe their most famous hit would be "Too Busy to Blog". Or "Too Tired to Blog", since that scans better.

But of course I'm simply making a statement in the title here about my own lack of words on screen these last few days.

Thanks for all recent comments, though. I always like to try to respond to them all, but that too is beyond my temporal capabilities. Or something. If only I were Doctor Who. Or Hiro. Or even Marty McFly. And I could go back and literally make time to write shit.

Oh well. I'm not. So back to work I go. Hope you all are having a lovely Thursday. It's hot in the office today.

Tell you what, as a bit of colour, I'll upload a sneak peek at a bit of our new kitchen.

Chick, chick, chick, chick, chicken...

For Sunday lunch yesterday, because we had nothing in the house and we didn't have time to go shopping, what with little bits of DIY and great loads of work needing to be done, the wife and I headed to the new eatery in our vicinity.

A few weeks ago it opened its doors. And the queues on that first Friday evening were quite a sight to behold. Unfortunately we didn't have a camera with us at the time because it was most definitely "bloggable".

Anyway, that's the past remote. Let's talk about the past recent.

The eatery? KFC, as you might have guessed from the pic of the Colonel. We're not really big fast-food types, but now and again it must be done. People say not very nice things about fast-food-joint staff -- y'know, stuff about how dumb they are, how no qualifications are needed to do their job, a trained monkey could do it, etc.

But I gotta tell you this: while you may or may not need a brain to work in these places, you damn well better have one if you intend to order there. All I wanted was a bite to eat, but first I had to figure out what. I opted for one of the "meals", but then I had to choose between the standard Zinger meal or the Wicked Zinger meal.

"I'll have the Wicked one."

"Which side order would you like?"

"What are the choices?"

"Baked beans, coleslaw, or corn on the cob."

"I'll have the coleslaw, please."

"And what extra chicken portion would you like? Wings or an extra piece of chicken?" [Like "extra piece" is some technical term for a chicken bodily part.]

"The extra piece please."

"And what drink?"

AAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

And then KABOOOOOOM! My head exploded. It was quite the mess all over the restaurant floor. And they're burying me today. Still, it was worth it. No, sorry, the other thing: not worth it. Definitely not worth it.

Jizz cocks and piss kidneys

And so another season of Peep Show comes to an end. This is, without a doubt, the single best comedy show to have come out of Britain in the past decade, if not ever. Yes, there I said it. You can take your Monty Pythons and Fawlty Towerses, your Porridges and Young Oneses: we've all seen them one time too many, thanks to the glorious BBC's reruns policy. Peep Show is king, the boss of them all.


No, it's not that kind of peep show.

I could say I was there from the beginning of the first episode, the night it was first aired, but that would just make me sound like a piss kidney. Or a jizz cock. But it's true. Earlier that week, way back whenever it was, Red and I had seen stars Mitchell and Webb on some breakfast TV show, flogging their imminent wares. They showed a clip. "What odd fucking shite is this?" I might have wondered aloud. It looked silly, with it's first-person-POV camerawork. But nothing else was on TV that fateful night, so we gave it a go. It fucking rocked back then, and it still rocks now.

And apparently a fifth season has been commissioned. I'm already finding it difficult to wait. Thank heavens for the DVDs.

Things I truly despise #1: The Piano

In the first of yet another series for which I may never get around to writing many entries (see also the Great websites and Whatever became of...? series), today I introduce the Things I truly despise series. This one is quite liberating for me, since it allows me simply to vent spleen on a given issue that gets under my skin.

And today's theme?

This first one is one that I keep pretty close to my chest these days. Fortunately it is slowly becoming but a distant memory. But the truth is this:

I can barely express how much I fucking hated, hated, hated with a fucking passion that pile of bullshit dog-turd movie The Piano. The arguments I have had with people on this... violent, aggressive debates peppered with personal insults... make this the single, unrivalled, undisputed champion of things I truly despise.


The Piano: pretty scenery, nothing more.

Rare are the occasions that I talk about it. I watched it with three or four other people back when it came out, and they all loved it. I couldn't get my head around why. Sure, it's purrdy and all, but the story is just dumb. Here's my synopsis:

Non-talky woman with disinterested hubby and boring kid move to New Zealand. Mute meets local "savage". He fingers the hole in her stockings. She goes ga-ga. She gets her fingers chopped off (by hubby? For infidelity? Who the hell remembers?!). Savage makes her some wooden fingers. And she gets to play her precious piano again.

Someone drip-feed me the coffee, cos I'm falling a-fucking-sleep here!

Anyways... a part of me is curious as to whether I would detest with quite so much venom now, some 15 years later. Maybe I would. Maybe I wouldn't. But I don't even think I want to put myself through it, not even as an experiment.

After this, Harvey Keitel was virtually dead to me. And truthfully he's hardly done anything good since.

Fucking cunting idiot bastard film.

And yet I know some people love it. Red even has it on video. Although of course she has never watched it since we met! What do you all think of it?

“My inspiration has run dry”

Venice: Unlike me, not dry.

What better title for a post than a Natalie Imbruglia lyric? That's right, folks, nothing is right, I am, y'know, torn and shit. Yup, I’m as dry as a nun's cunt, as we used to say back in my old hometown.

The reason for this desert-like state of bloggy being is, as it always is with me, a valanga of work. (That's your Italian lesson of the day. Valanga [literally "avalanche"] is used to mean "shitload".)

Saturday morning I started working at 6am and I finished at 8pm. In between, any breaks I had were used to eat lunch, go food shopping and to the post office, and start clearing out the kitchen.

Sunday I started work at about 8:30am, having had a bit of lie-in, and I finished at 6pm so that I could do some more work clearing the kitchen and have my dinner. I then went back to work at 11:25pm for an hour.

What's with all the kitchen clearing? Well, this week is the week we are having our new kitchen fitted. Everything is changing (except the cooker and washing machine, and I think we are beginning to regret that we didn't decide on new ones of those, too).

So for most of this week we will be without a cooker, oven, and hob, and we also won't have a kitchen sink. Red spent much of her "free time" at the weekend preparing some delicious Italian dishes that we can throw in the microwave, rather than resorting to takeaways every night.

Yes, a fun weekend was had by all. We're into equal-opportunity misery in this household. Even Cat gets a piece of the action. He has been put in a cattery for the week (we call it a spa retreat when he's nearby). This is because the last time we had workmen in (for the bathroom a couple of years ago), he got so freaked out that he legged it out through the back door and we never saw him for hours. When he finally returned he was very quiet. And at about 11pm we realized that he had cut open almost the entire length of the lower part of one of his back legs. Midnight trip to the vet. Severed the ligaments. Hit or miss whether he'd ever be able to use it again. But Doctor Jim was a fucking total genius and you'd never know now from pictures like this the extent of the original wound. We don't want to go through that shit again.

Right, it's 9am. I'd best get to work. I hope to get round to some of my blogpals and check out what y'all have been writing in recent days. Toodle-oo.

By popular demand...

Create Your Own PaloozaHead - Visit Lollapalooza.com

For what it’s worth

I could never be a journalist. I mean, I know I'm a member of the NUJ (National Union of Journalists), but that's because the union is open to editors, photographers, designers, etc, not just journalists.

I admire greatly what journalists do. How could I not? Some of these people put themselves in positions of great danger on a daily basis simply to inform those of us in our comfy chairs just how good we've got it.

Sometime last week I rather belatedly added the Alan Johnston button to my sidebar. I notice that a few of my UK blogpals have done the same.

Alan was kidnapped two months ago while working in Gaza, where he has lived for the past two years -- the only foreign journalist in the area.

I hope he returns safe and sound soon, but the more time passes, the more difficult it must be for anyone to see a happy outcome. Especially given that we have no evidence he is even still alive.

Last night, Alan Johnston was named Broadcast Journalist of the Year. Would he have been awarded this if he had not been kidnapped? Who knows. Certainly we know that his nomination was made before his disappearance, so maybe he would have.

And even if he wouldn't, does that matter? Doesn't the very fact that he has been kidnapped somehow mean he should be given some sort of award? He doesn't have to be there, y'know? He could just as easily be covering safer stories back home in the UK. On the whole, no one would think any less of him for that.

Is it worth it? Being kidnapped, putting your life on the line, just to bring truth to the great unwashed. Who can say? For some people it is. For me, I'm sorry to say it's not. For me, personally, that is. What do they say? "It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it."

What frustrates me in all this is that there is a horribly high chance that Johnston was taken by Palestinians. But how fucking dumb is that? Knowing how pro-Palestine we are in the UK, to then go and kidnap (and possibly worse) one of the people out there bringing your story the attention it deserves... That's got to be the height of stupidity.

Anyway, why not click the Alan Johnston button in my sidebar? Why not put it on your own blog? Events such as 9/11 and 7/7 reinforce the bravery of firefighters, the police, and paramedics, but reporters in hostile areas are out their doing their thing every day too. Why not show some support?

Look at my package!

How often does one get a parcel in the mail that says this on it? Come on, now, you can't tell me it's an everyday occurrence... It came from Canadaland, y'know, from Captain Karen of the Good Ship HMS Swiftsure.


There were some skull mittens for both me and the missus. Sure, cynics among you might say, "But it's summertime, Mr * (asterisk), why would you want mittens?" To that I respond: "Yeah, but we have English summers in England. Of course I'll need mittens!" And they are damn toasty as well as tasty, Cap'n. And don't you think they look great on me doing my Raging Bull Skull impression?

But there were other goodies, too -- too many to show here, including chocolate-covered cocoa beans, a copy of Dostoevsky's Crime & Punishment, toys for Cat, and a typically Canadian fridge magnet (right). I have it on good authority that every home in Canada has at least one of these on their refrigerator. And they sit down on their kitchen stool staring at it lovingly while listening to the government-issued CDs (below) compiled by Karen for the purposes of mind control.



Thank you, Karen, for such a wonderful parcel. Big love to you. With our colour-coordinated skull mitts, Red and I would surely be the toast of our small town (if we ever dared to venture out among the natives, that is).

I do like a good rant...

... so let's hope this is one: Chuck Palahniuk's new novel Rant. This is my first-edition, first-printing hardback, which just arrived from the States today. It's crazy, even including shipping charges, it still came out at less than the $25 cover price buying it through Amazon.com

By the way, American blogpals are advised they should try to attend a Palahniuk reading. Click here for US dates. And Canadian dates are here.

And see how I'm keeping it old skool with the Quantum Leap T-shirt? Fuck, yeah! That T is at least 14 years old and still in great shape. My comic-shop boss (at the time) brought it back for me from Baltimore.

Lock up your T-shirts and CDs

The way they were: Manic Street Preachers, c.1990

Since 1996, every couple of years or so, for a period of about a year, I have to be careful which T-shirt I grab from my drawer and also have to sacrifice a small part of my CD collection.

Why must I do this?

Because every couple of years since 1996, Manic Street Preachers release another terrible album, and I have to ensure I am not seen wearing or listening to anything that might associate me with them.

I first heard of the Manics in July or August 1990. They had just released their third(?) single, "Motown Junk", and had featured on a TV show (Rapido, was it?). Two of their number wore make-up and tight white jeans and home-made T-shirts with various pseudo-political slogans. Those two looked spooky cool, like twins or camp gay lovers. The other two looked a bit lame, with no make-up and bad haircuts.

I was in a band at the time. I figured we were way better than the Manics. The history books, though, seem to dispute this.

Eventually, a few months later, I succumbed to the charms of the group. I bought their first album as soon as it was released. I bought the singles, the T-shirts. I went to see them several times throughout 1992, once even being on the guest list to interview them for a fanzine, though the interview fell through.

I still have the unused ticket from that gig. I'd bought it before knowing I'd get on the guest list. I figured I could sell it at the venue, but there was no one there to sell it to! The place was almost completely empty.

The band went from strength to strength, via a somewhat unconvincing second album, up to and including the powerhouse masterwork The Holy Bible. I mean, how can anyone not love an album that opens with the words "For sale. Dumb cunts, same dumb questions"?

Then the inevitable happened. Their lyrical genius, chief architect, and self-harming anorexic Richey Edwards disappeared in early 1995. No one has seen or heard from him since, and if he is dead his body has never been found.

If that was inevitable, so too was the downhill slide of the Manics' music. From the top of the world, musically speaking, to another unconvincing album, followed by a fifth, sixth, and now seventh studio album. I stopped buying their records (singles and albums) after that fifth album. For me it was unlistenable, and not in the good way that people said The Holy Bible was unlistenable, or PJ Harvey's Rid of Me, or Nirvana's In Utero.

The Manic Street Preachers had become unlistenable in that they had become old, tired, and boring, writing lyrics about household chores and, in interviews, praising the virtues of Dyson vacuum cleaners.

This morning -- a bit behind the times, I know -- I heard their latest single for the first time. I am so mortally embarrassed. I thought they could sink no lower than they already had, but I was wrong.

I know I should make sure not to listen to any Manics records for a good few months. But I also feel I have to wash my brain now, clear my eardrums. Perhaps the only way to do that is to listen again to the band at their peak.

I feel like someone has taken a hugely important part of my past and razed it to the ground, only to build a fucking McDonald's on top of it. Manic Street Preachers have become a bunch of cunts. And not in a good way.

No more will they write the sort of lyric that must be every parent's nightmare:

4st 7lb
Days since I last pissed
Cheeks sunken and despaired
So gorgeous, sunk to six stone
Lose my only remaining home

See my third rib appear
A week later all my flesh disappears
Stretching taut, cling-film on bone
I'm getting better

Karen says I've reached my target weight
Kate and Emma and Kristin know it's fake
Problem is diet's not a big enough word
I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view

I want to walk in the snow
And not leave a footprint
I want to walk in the snow
And not soil its purity

Stomach collapsed at five
Lift up my skirt my sex is gone
Naked and lovely at 5 stone 2
May I bud and never flower

My vision's getting blurred
But I can see my ribs and I feel fine
My hands are trembling stalks
And I can feel my breasts are sinking

Mother tries to choke me with roast beef
And sits savouring her sole Ryvita
That's the way you're built my father said
But I can change, my cocoon shedding

I want to walk in the snow
And not leave a footprint
I want to walk in the snow
And not soil its purity

Kate and Kristin and Kit Kat
All things I like looking at
Too weak to fuss, too weak to die
Choice is skeletal in everybody's life

I choose my choice, I starve to frenzy
Hunger soon passes and sickness soon tires
Legs bend, stockinged I am Twiggy
And I don't mind the horror that surrounds me

Self-worth scatters, self-esteem's a bore
I long since moved to a higher plateau
This discipline's so rare so please applaud
Just look at the fat scum who pamper me so

Yeah 4 stone 7, an epilogue of youth
Such beautiful dignity in self-abuse
I've finally come to understand life
Through staring blankly at my navel.

Callous, moi? Really?

I don't know if this makes me callous or not, but I don't understand why a certain question is not being asked these past couple of days:

What the fuck were those two parents thinking, leaving their three children (all under four years of age) completely unattended in a Portugal hotel room while they fucked off out to dinner?

Please, can some parent out there explain this to me?

As a child-free person, I can certainly see untold benefits of not taking your kids out with you. But if that's the way you feel as a parent, then you should either (a) make provisions for their safety in your absence or (b) not fucking have children in the first place.

All the news reports keep saying that these people felt they were acting responsibly by allegedly checking in on the kids every 30 minutes or so and apparently choosing a table from which they could see the door of their room. Do me a favour!

If I were king of the world, all their kids would be taken into care now, since they are clearly not responsible enough to look after them. I feel for them, honestly. But I feel for the kid even more, and I hope she is found safe and well. And I also feel for the other two kids. They've got real fucking idiots as parents.

A problem of faith

For many years, somebody close to me has firmly held on to one belief system while I mocked, jeered, and denied her words.

But it's not only me. Having spoken with other men on the subject, I came to the conclusion that this belief system was an integral part of the male/female divide.

But this morning, following my shower, I had an epiphany, I saw the light, I was hit with a moment of clarity.

Shaving causes hair growth.

That's right, fellas, you heard me. I've moved over to the dark side.

I first noticed the hair on my right upper arm, the arm I just recently had tattooed. I've had two sessions, shaving before each one, as is the norm, even though there was hardly any hair to speak of. This morning I see that the hair now growing through is already longer than the hair on my upper left arm, which, despite having been tattooed several times, has never really had any more than a quick lick with a razor by the tattooist (as opposed to my meticulous efforts) and I had it tattooed before being particularly hairy there, which leads me to a footnote.*

Then I looked at my forearms. The right one has hair on it, sure, but there's not as much of it, and nor is it as dark, as the hair on my left arm, the tattooed one that has been shaved fully several times.

I can't believe it. I'm still trying to convince myself that hair growth is not uniform and these are just quirks of nature. But the evidence speaks loudly, my friends.

Am I in the minority? Do you believe that shaving causes thicker, blacker hair regrowth. I'm so confused, I just don't know what to think anymore. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.

* I have also come to the non-scientific conclusion that tattooing before hair growth occurs actually retards hair growth.

Seville and elections and Asda, oh my!

Just when we thought Seville couldn't get any better, they go and build this solar power station. Excellent! If you follow the link, there's a little film in the sidebar of that page where you can see how truly cool this is.

Meanwhile, it is polling day in my small town today. While the Spanish are removing troops from Iraq, permitting gay marriage, and building massive solar power generators, we are focusing here on whether or not the public toilets should remain open. This is a "town" with barely any shops worth coming for. Who the fuck do they think needs the public toilets? Certainly they didn't need the public library that used to be here.

And that cunt who currently runs our country has decided not to launch a full independent enquiry into the 7/7 London bombings because it will undermine faith in the security services. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the fact that we have no faith in the UK's security services the reason we want an enquiry? Arsehole.

And on the subject of arseholes, Bush of course vetoed the plans for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. I will hold up my hands here and say that I sort of know where he's coming from as regards not wanting to inform "the enemy" of his troops' withdrawal dates. The problem is, though, that I truly don't see Bush ever pulling out of Iraq. He is in this to win it; and if he can't win it, he'll just stay there pretending he's winning it. Prick.

And on the subject of Bush, I shopped at Asda today. The traffic going towards Sainsbury's was just not worth joining, so we headed the other way for our groceries. Asda has started stocking a whole lot of better stuff than they used to. A couple of years back when I was looking for free-range chicken, I was told that they "had some once, by mistake. Someone had ordered the wrong thing." (That is absolutely true!) Now, though, they actually do stock it! Of course, it's all money in Bush's pocket via his Wal-Mart connection.

Man, it's impossible to know what to do for the best sometimes. I'm pretty sure Sainsbury's gives money to Blair's lot anyway. Maybe I need to find a Spanish supermarket... Anyone know of one in the southeast of England?

Thinking Bloggers

Just before I had my weekend away, it came to my attention that _z. over at urban_memories [the unfinished polaroids] had nominated me as a recipient of the Thinking Blogger Award.


This is what he wrote about me:

"English sarcasm at its best! Not that I am claiming to be the expert, but I can tell you that this sharp blogger is always dead on. His posts are always straight to the point and honest. And between his stories, and the stories of lovely Red, they give you the best topics of discussion in the blogosphere."

I was very touched, and I told him so.

Now, for my end of the bargain, I must do the same and nominate five blogs that make me think, bestowing upon them the gift of the Thinking Blogger Award.

But thinking is a funny thing. The idea of a Thinking Blogger Award says to me something about profundity, intelligence, sobriety. And these, truth be told, are not qualities I particularly look for in blogs. Rather, I tend to frequent the sort of places where I can have fun and get away from depressing stuff.

That said, I know I have written my fair share of depressing stuff from time to time, not least last summer with my rants about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. And my fair share of family woes. And a few lengthy essays on cinema and music. And God knows how many film reviews.

I think, therefore I am. And I most certainly am.

Anyways, bloggers that I nominate now should (if they want to, y'know) comply with the following rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the "Thinking Blogger Award" banner with a link to your own post.

So my nominations are:

1. Red. Is it wrong to nominate my wife's own Red-Letter Day blog? Maybe. But she is the person who makes me think the most in the world. And she has a blog that I think is pretty damn good, covering a wide range of subjects that interest me.

2. Candy Minx. The Gnostic World of Candy Minx was one of the first dozen blogs on my blogroll. What I love about Candy is that she covers such broad ground with her blog. Whether it's a thesis on why American Idol is like Fight Club (I shit you not!) or an appraisal of one of her favourite artists or just a list of search terms that have brought people to her blog, she always writes riveting, intelligent posts.

3. Milla. Milla's Wheel is another one of those blogs that covers all sorts of stuff -- from song lyrics, to the state of Russian politics. There are posts that make you shake your head at the absurdity of the world, and there are posts that make you laugh out loud. Like Red-Letter Day, this blog contains the views of an Italian woman roughly my age living in the UK, and the two blogs are great companion pieces to one another. And those posts in Milla's dialect... Phew, if those don't make you think, nothing will!

4. The Anti Crapitalist. One can go a long time without a new post from AC, as he is affectionately known, but when they do come they are well-informed rivers of bile, often aimed at politicians, but also focusing to a lesser degree on celebrities, crazed shooters, and even concepts.

5. Pendullum. Dribblingwitt???? is a fairly new addition to my blogroll, and in some ways it's perhaps not the sort of place people would expect to find me lurking. I'm not good with long posts, I'll be honest with you, but Pendullum has a habit of fully absorbing me with her poignant personal tales, and before you know where you are you're wearing a wry smile or sporting a lump in the throat. (I know she's been nominated for this before, but what can ya do?)

So, folks, that's my list. And, befitting this post, I really had to put on my thinking cap. I've tried to be fair and honest, and I've gone over and above the call of duty by explaining my choices.

What has surprised me here is the domination by the women. Not because I'm a misogynist, but because I assumed that I might have more in common with white British men of about my age. Somehow it seems I'm more attuned to foreign chicks. Is that such a bad thing?

“Back to life / back to reality”

Ah, don'cha just love Soul II Soul? I had their debut album on one side of a C90 tape back in the day, and on the other side was Soft Cell's Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. Good driving-round-town tape that was.

Anyways, back from Italy to a whole fucking shitstorm of work. Add in yet more offers of work and a schedule that has been shortened during the one working day I was away from my desk (how the fuck does that happen?!), and it looks like yours truly is going to have a busy couple of months.

Suddenly having the kitchen done, going to the dentist, and a tattooing appointment all seem to be happening at a bad time...

Well, onwards and upwards.

I'll try to visit all my blogroll peeps and get a few pics and maybe a video clip up in the coming days, but work has to take priority, unfortunately. Hope to catch up with you all really soon...